Hm. I wonder if harvester tendrils will make it easier to do underground vein mining? It seems like having a flexible "vacuum hose" that just hoovers up tiberium would be exactly the thing that's beneficial to that.
Well, those are things.
1 dice on each would be really nice
I know we have our disputes, but let me just say:
I'd love to do the harvesting tendrils, but they're likely to prove expensive to implement on a meaningful scale during wartime, so I want to clear out a little of the backlog first.
Plus, selfishly, I want the +RpT benefits of the new harvesters to start coming online when they
aren't about to all get snatched out from under us by reallocation, which given the typical development cycle of this stuff would mean wanting to develop and prototype in 2061 and implement in 2062-63.
I am putting the isolinear chips, though. Not
only to save Erewhon, though that's on my mind.
Looks like we might need those liquid-T power cells, with the energy costs of the new deployments.
Nah, I think we're good with just the fusion power as long as we're aggressive about it and willing to use Free dice in Heavy Industry. Might be worth finishing the one phase we have part-done, but no need to keep pushing our luck.
The idea is that this will hopefully allow for new-build ships to come out with the improved anti-air/anti-missile/anti-bomb defenses. And it also has a good chance of reducing the progress needed for SADN. I consider it worth it.
No, you're thinking that the heavy navy laser is the one that is likely to help SADN?
Since I'm still SADN-curious, would you mind expanding on your reasoning?
Perfection-trapping is what got us into this situation. We simply cannot wait any longer.
And I'm fairly certain Sharks, if not both designs, have Infernium PD lasers.
The first generation
Sharks will be designed "for but not with" infernium lasers, with specific plans to slot the appropriate infernium lasers into place once we've actually developed them. Such is life; we can't have everything, as you point out.
I guess the guy in charge of thinking up new tanks got tired of hitting the "retry" button on his funding application.
I think it's more a case of the new fighting vehicle projects not being something Ground Forces wants badly enough to advance seriously during a war, because of the risk that getting the new vehicle into production and getting crews trained on it would distract everyone from, y'know,
fighting the war.
Oh man, I'm really starting to be torn on everything there is to plan now. Do we keep throwing in on Rail despite knowing that it's just flat out not as good as other logistics options long-term, because it slightly helps with the war effort? Do we really try to keep Naval strong despite there being so little use for that as soon as we hit the 'space stage'?
Real talk, we're gonna need Navy Stronk just to militarily defeat Nod. It's worth it.
And the railroad systems are likely to remain very useful in the long-term until and unless we find some way to trivialize the problem of "have enough STUs to build infinity hovertrucks." Even then, it may well often be more cost-effective to use huge swarms of automated construction worker-bots to make fusion plants and electric trains on railroad tracks out of tiberium, than to waste actually valuable STU elements on routine transportation tasks.
Karachi 2061 quite literally means all hands on deck: finish every Shark yard ASAP and do carrier conversions this or next turn. I'm unsure if it's worth it, or practical at all.
The way I see it, the benefits of doing the crash naval buildup will pay off significantly even if we don't go for Karachi.
If frigates are all that can be built in time then let's rush the frigates and get them that laser upgrade.
I'm planning to slot the frigate laser upgrades in as best I can next turn or the turn after, along with airborne lasers for the Air Force.
The wingmen are also a big project.
I'm thinking we build the Apollo ones, then build the actual Apollo factories so that the firehawks get replaced, then build the orca ones.
I would say build the firehawk wingmen but a 400 point project for a obsolete plane!?! Let's just upgrade.
Uh no, that's not really how it works. First, Apollos aren't a straightforward replacement for Firehawks. They can't carry as much payload for air-to-ground missions. Having more Apollos (and Apollo drone backup dancers) means we can do more interception missions with Apollos, but our Firehawks will still be flying air-to-ground missions. And quite frankly,
Nod intercepts us, not just the other way around, so we still wind up wanting the Firehawk drones to help protect the actual Firehawk squadrons when
they get attacked.
We still want those drones.
Should probably start up on the super conductors asap. Flavour text mentioned that they were the doorway to the next level of fusion plants.
I'm gonna start stumping for Bergen as soon as we finish
Reykjavik Phase 4.
I'm seeing a lot of "if" in here.
The maximum amount of ships we can have available for freeing offensive assets in time to do a Q2 Karachi is 60 frigates, or 40 frigates and an indeterminate number of "floating deathtrap" merchantman conversions. This is if we devote all military dice and most of our free dice (I have not done the math but at least for frigates you need 5 on each for surety, since this idea has absolutely no wiggle room) in an all-boat meme-plan. That way you have ships on the slip starting in Q3, finishing end of Q1 if everything goes smoothly, there are no instances of sabotage (while we are fighting a world war), and/or no supply problems or what have you. Granted if everything goes off without a hitch and if all those yards get their ships out in the minimum possible amount of time, we have that buffer, but as soon as any problem arises in any of those shipyards or conversions, we can pretty much say goodbye to that particular batch of hulls being relevant, which effectively slashes the number of ships we can then expect to be available for the operation by a third or so since the ones we do roll out are fewer and can't cover for as many fleet carriers.
First, I've got a Plan B in the form of a partial Karachi Sprint in 2061Q4, which gives us considerably more wiggle room to roll out frigates in time, allowing us both to potentially get usable frigates out of yards that complete in 2060Q3 or even Q4, and to not (as you allege) be totally 100% vulnerable to acts of sabotage or delays in the yards that complete in 2060Q2.
Second, the purpose of the merchantman conversion carriers isn't to fight Nod's frontline naval forces in the Indian Ocean, it's to free up fleet carriers to do that so that said fleet carriers aren't wasting their time sailing back and forth guarding convoys on relatively secure sealanes such as the North Atlantic and North Pacific.
Additionally, if we do this mad dash to get hulls in the water? We are kneecapping our other military production capacity and ability to support our current offensives either in the short or the medium term. Let me use examples:
The problem is that if we
aren't aggressively rolling out shipyards, our Navy remains weak
anyway, and this will
still have consequences for us outside of Karachi. The Navy currently lacks the means to wear down the Nod naval forces harassing us, so we can expect that harassment to make itself felt, and to continue to make itself felt, for quite some time to come. Ideally, we should have been building escort carriers and frigates years ago to counter this threat, but we didn't, but that doesn't mean the threat has
gone away or will subside on its own
before we build up the Navy.
The naval buildup is both necessary and urgent; it is a vital defense goal for GDI, not just a distraction from other more important projects.
Merchantman conversions (which we probably will have to combine with a minimum of one frigate yard to be rolled out immediately, see above): we do this and immediately lock out a significant proportion of our military dice for probably the next year. Average roll on the military dice (statistically) is 77 (51+26), so assume we need 4 dice per shipyard, 2 for the battleship yard, for a total of 14 dice.
I don't know about you, but I was planning to roll those fourteen dice anyway, because
the Navy actually needs the escort carriers. They will
still be greatly needed when they finally hit the water in 2062-63, and the Navy will be begrudging every turn during which we do
not have them.
We cannot wage an intercontinental war with the philosophy of "it's too late to build ships." The results of building ships during the war may not be ideal, but they are less bad than the consequences of continuing the naval neglect indefinitely until some future ideal postwar time.
I'm not saying we shouldn't approach Gulati, but we have other strategic reasons to need a rapid naval buildup.
Because our naval inability to handle Karachi is not some kind of abstract isolated problem. It is a symptom of
general naval weakness, of being only barely strong enough to fend off Nod attacks on our minimum necessary maritime commerce. Failure to solve the
general problem is the real issue here; the risks associated with trying Karachi under present circumstances are only a symptom of that.
