Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- Wall Gazing
Honestly, its a die I'm seriously considering promoting to Lunar Heavy Metal Mines. We would need to cut something somewhere for the 5 R needed though. Either moving a YZ harvesting die to GZ intensification or cutting a service die (likely one of Medical Assistant's) outright. My main concern with the former is if we even have stage 7 of GZ intensification unlocked, and with the latter it is how severe our health situation is post the raids and refugees.
We are yet to develop Mastodon, so next turn would be the development project for it.
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- He/Him
You are absolutely right of course, but of all the bay options I still want the G-yards most.
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- Location
- Outside the Box
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- She/Her
More money now means you can use that money to make even more money later. If you want to win long-term, playing the econ game is the only way to go. For that, we should focus on G-Drive enabled space mining first and expensive-as-heck Earth-Luna system megaprojects afterwards.
Besides, we have the Scrin portal tech to enable a full evacuation in the long-term. But that'll be very expensive to develop. Asteroid belt mining for piles of RpT will enable us to go down that tech development tree while still affording everything else. Squatting on the moon when we're so close to "the largest box of shinies outside tiberium glaciers" isn't going to help us get there. (Or afford to build up the moon, either.)
- Location
- USA
Given that one of the lines is: ranging from existing uses, where it is likely to be a substantial efficiency upgrade
Yeah industrial lasers is something we will regret skipping on and really should be done Q3 as it is an upgrade for some of our current industry.
As long as we get the station bay from one of the Ent 5 bays. That will save too many dice when we do the other 2 stations to skip.
We don't have the full options with all the text and numbers (we will next turn but not yet). In the meantime, a turn or two ago Ithillid teased some of the Enterprise bay options. I can't find the post but it was a list of option titles, along the lines of
1. Hella cap goods bay
2. Hella con goods bay
3. Fusion rocket shipyard
4. G-drive shipyard
5. Advanced microgravity materials bay
6. Military hardware bay
7. Station discount bay
8. Satellite discount/upgrade bay
- Location
- Outside the Box
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- She/Her
We don't yet know how successful Stahl was. It could be he's "only" secured his YZ territory and GDI can't push any farther. But, in keeping with "prepare for the worst" I've been thinking about how we could afford to build a MARV hub for Blue Zone 8. One possibility I thought of is substituting Admin Assistance dice for the two Military dice we need to allow Tiberium dice to be used:
-[] Reclamator Hubs 0/335 3 dice 60R 4%, 4 dice 80R 41%, 5 dice 100R 83%, 6 dice 120R 98%
--Alt: 2 Mil 1 Tib dice 60R 6%, 2 Mil 2 Tib dice 80R 58%, 2 Mil 3 Tib dice 94%
*--Alt B: 1 Mil 1 AA 2 Tib dice 80R 41%, 1 Mil 1 AA 3 Tib dice 100R 88%, 1 Mil 1 AA 4 Tib dice 120R 99%
*--Alt C: 2 AA 2 Tib dice 80R 25%, 2 AA 3 Tib dice 100R 78%, 2 AA 4 Tib dice 120R 98%
(Though keep in mind, AA die/dice might be more efficiently used in other Military projects instead, depending.)
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"Find a way to get people off Earth" isn't a crazy megaproject it's step zero for the entire space evacuation plan. The portals are purely speculative with no guarantee that they'll ever hit a point where we can move hundreds of millions of people through them, at least on a timescale that will happen before it's too late for hundreds of millions of people on Earth. Building a giant industrial base in space that ends up supporting a few million Blue Zoners that won the evacuation lottery is going to be a super bad look to the other 1.3 billion people stuck on Earth. We need some kind of active and visible solution for getting significantly more people off the planet than we have or everyone that loses the lottery is going to start rioting when they realize they're going to be left to die down here. Promises of magic portals at some mystery point some indeterminate number of decades in the future isn't going to cut it imo.
During the stabilizer constellation rush, we ran the fusion fleet flat out 24/7 and supplemented with chemical rockets, and managed to launch ~3,000,000 kg of stuff into orbit per week. That's rounding up a little, and the fusion fleet has grown since, but none of the numbers here need to be super accurate to illustrate what I'm getting at. If we went back to that pace of launches, and filled the cargo holds with perfectly spherical frictionless "average adults" that weigh exactly 70kg and can be crammed like sardines into a cargo hold with maximal efficiency, that's ~2.2 million-ish people per year. The actual number would be a lot lower since humans aren't perfectly spherical and frictionless masses that you can stack in a cargo hold, but close enough for eyeball estimates.
Run the fusion rocket fleet flat out 24/7 launching nothing but people - no supplies, no industrial launches, no cultural preservation efforts, nothing but refugees crammed in every corner of the ship - for the next 50 years straight and we can evacuate about 100-120M people before Earth's doomsday timer runs out. That ain't gonna cut it for me, we need to at least quintuple the size of the fusion rocket fleet just to get all the start-of-game Blue Zoners off the planet, much less the rest of humanity and anything we want to bring with us. Fusion rockets are our only viable evacuation method, and we need an unspeakable number of them. Starting up the fusion shipyard now is kind of a big deal, it really should have been started years ago. Delaying years more is losing out on tens if not hundreds of millions of people worth of difference in evacuation capacity.
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However we evacuate the people in the end, its the moon, we will be more limited by how much liveable infrastructure we have there and we need lots of quest Resources to build that infrastructure.
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There's plenty of cash floating around in our economy and it's only going to go up as we start intensive Red Zone mining and Lunar industry continues to develop. By far the hardest challenge in colonizing the solar system is just getting out of Earth's gravity well, if you can do that you're 90% of the way to anywhere. We need a massive increase in ability to ship stuff up the well more than we need anything else, or humanity is doomed to be a few tens of millions of lottery winners this time next century.
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- Outside the Box
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We have nowhere to put those people yet! You're putting that hypothetical fusion fleet ahead of actually building places that can even fit millions of people in. It's going to be years before we have fully-ready space habitats, and when that happens, we'll likely be able to build a project to crank out fusion ships. But right now, what we need most is the RpT to build the tools to build the tools. Not to construct a ladder when there's no roof to climb up to yet.
I'm revoking your Treasury license. There is never enough money. There's always a more expensive and more effective alternative. Always.
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First off, starting a shipyard when you need it instead of years ahead of time is going to bite us, as we're so painfully learning right now. And beyond that, the rockets can carry habitat modules and construction robots before they carry people? People are a useful way to illustrate our evacuation problem but they're hardly the only thing we need to ship up the well, most of our launches right now are industrial goods after all.
More broadly our biggest problem is being stuck at the bottom of a giant gravity well and fusion rockets are the only thing we have that can overcome it right now. Maybe something magic will come along in the future but as for what we can actually rely on right now, we need to get significantly more mass from Earth to space (whether it's people or robots or paintings) and fusion rockets are how we do that.
It's not like we're even locked out of Belt exploitation if we don't build a g-drive shipyard, we just have to do Belt mining with fleets of robot fusion freighters taking ballistic trajectories to and fro over a few months rather than g-drive freighters taking brachistochrones in a few weeks. It's harder to get over the initial hump, sure, but once the supply lines are established and the robots are going back and forth the material throughput is just as reliable.
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Shipping massive amounts of habitat modules is not the solution, especially since they would only take away from space and weight that could be used for people. You need to have the infrastructure to produce power, air, water and food for all the people already on site. Crashbuilding a population and industrial infrastructure on the moon cannot happen overnight. If you want to be able to transport more people out of Earths gravity well, you can also do so by no longer needing to ship up air, food, water, habitation etc.
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- Location
- Outside the Box
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- She/Her
We know we can start mining the asteroid belt as soon as we have some g-drive ships to reach there. After Enterprise Phase 5 finishes and the war is over, we should have the dice and focus to build whatever-it-was-called station over in the belt and get mining.
See, we actually don't have the infrastructure to do that. We can send g-drive ships over as-is, but fusion freighters are going to take time to allow them to reach that far. The biggest obstacle to Belt mining is shipping the people over who'll manage all of it. G-Drive ships are ideal for that. A Fusion ship that'll take months to get there and months to get back, not so much. We'd need to build possibly multiple crewed and supplied way-stations to enable a mining crew to reach the belt with their perishables (and their sanity) intact. Or we could use a G-Drive ship that'll make multiple trips during the quarter. The latter obviates so many supply issues it's not even funny.
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- Location
- The Underdark
So, one thing is that part of the reason you want to have an orbital spacecraft yard is so you can make a set of tradeoffs that don't conform to the needs of the ground bound system. Think more Battletech's Behemoth and Argo classes than anything else. Designed for (at most) Martian gravity not Earth, and primarily existing to be able to do things in deep space and in other orbitals significantly more cheaply.
Comparatively, if you are building for mass evacuations, that is the kind of thing where you get one or more five phase fusion yards to pump out enough rocketry to move masses and masses of people. But right now, you don't need that, because you have nowhere to put them.
Comparatively, if you are building for mass evacuations, that is the kind of thing where you get one or more five phase fusion yards to pump out enough rocketry to move masses and masses of people. But right now, you don't need that, because you have nowhere to put them.
Cool, sounds like a good reason to invest more in building a native Lunar industrial base. That can only be seeded with launches from the bottom of Earth's gravity well, which we can't afford at scale right now, and is probably why the fusion shipyard is explicitly marked out as contributing to "lunar projects." All our factories and people are on Earth. For the first wave of space colonization, which we're definitely still in, the things are going to have to come from Earth. Our Lunar bases have all been built with materials from Earth. Enterprise and Philly were both built with materials from Earth. Shala and Columbia will also be built with materials from Earth. Our first Lunar cities (plural) are going to be built with materials from Earth and filled with humans from Earth.
Even if the Enterprise manufactures all the bulk structural elements and hull plating etc. it can't make every single industrial good known to mankind. The overwhelming majority of our industry, especially the high precision stuff that you want making your space hardware, is on Earth and that's where it's staying for the forseeable future. Enterprise can make you a steel plate but it can't make you a three axis high precision myomer operated assembly arm, at least not without getting those myomers shipped up the well. It's going to take an industrial base complex enough that it needs MILLIONS of people to support it before space industry is truly self-sustaining, probably when the Moon gets built up enough to snowball its own extraction and manufacturing industries off each other. But all the infrastructure to get to that point is coming from Earth.
It'd be a hardship posting but getting deployed to the asteroid mines isn't super different from getting deployed to an oil rig or a glacier mine. It's entirely possible, and was the whole plan before pure luck threw g-drives into the mix. You only need a small handful of humans to oversee all the robots that will be doing the real work, and honestly we can even build them a g-drive ship if they really want it. Assembling a few bespoke g-drive ships beyond the Pathfinder is worth it, but we don't need to dedicate a whole industrial bay to that forever. If we're choosing a ship type to have cranked out en masse for as long as Enterprise is operating, the thing we need vast uncountable numbers of are fusion rockets. Mass production g-drive ships would be nice but not necessary, we can meet our bare needs with bespoke assembly outside a shipyard.
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Mr. Mica
Capitalism cannot fix Global Warming.
- Location
- Earth
I spent last planning season reviewing 12+2 plans. Two because I did Derpmind's & Simon_Jester's twice, with the later adjustments. It gave me a lot of appreciation for the time it takes to plan all of this, and I imagine it is at least twice as much work on the QM side. Also, nearly everyone made math mistakes, I only really remember not finding any mistakes in Derpminds, which was on point.
So, to get a better appreciation for what it takes to make a plan, I made one. Mainly for my own amusement.
To set the scene, imagine a bunch of Treasury interns, staying nights at the office to help with the war effort, finding periods of downtime between the really hectic times, with nothing to do, they throw their heads together and make like the big boys.
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16Ui78mLnsg5rUZzClAOVqX36tjwqY3ofGYyDxSoBMKI/edit?usp=sharing
I made the plan with Doruma1920's Preliminary Four Year Plan Required Dice as of the start of Q3 2060, Derpmind's Preliminary Probability Array, and Ithilid's Q2 2060 post
The plan is a bit power heavy, and there could be a bigger focus on Capital Goods, but that hotplate is slightly cooler than power right now. Since Security Reviews (Bureaucracy) holds onto an operations die afaik, it is only a single die for ~90% to succeed if I read Derpminds post correctly, which I might not.
Then the two Bureaucracy dice is spent on an Adm die, which is sent to Orbital. Since Orbital is really needing dice for the plan goals to be met, and if I read the story blurbs correctly, then the people really want off Tiberium Earth, which is very understandable.
4 die spent on development of Mastodon, Hallucinogen Countermeasures, Advanced ECCM and Hallucinogen. Mastodon because it is a plan goal,
Countermeasures because the idea of a Scarecrow-style fear gas is really awful (imagine being so scared you shoot your mates, what a nightmare.), and Advanced ECCM since broken communication lines is always really bad.
7 die is spent on energy focus because it is really needed, a higher drain in that area will put the Initiative in the minus, and black/brown-outs is not something you want in a war.
The majority of the military dice is spent on the navy, since that is where the toilet is on fire the most right now, with the exception of plasma warheads and weaponry deployment.
Only 7 die is spent on income actions if you count orbital cleanup, which is never enough, investing in investment is the way to go, always.
It was made for fun, so please don't start a big angry argument, those kinda suck the enjoyment out of things. But be sure to come with suggestions and questions, if you have them.
You joke, but I think it is true.
So, to get a better appreciation for what it takes to make a plan, I made one. Mainly for my own amusement.
To set the scene, imagine a bunch of Treasury interns, staying nights at the office to help with the war effort, finding periods of downtime between the really hectic times, with nothing to do, they throw their heads together and make like the big boys.
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16Ui78mLnsg5rUZzClAOVqX36tjwqY3ofGYyDxSoBMKI/edit?usp=sharing
I made the plan with Doruma1920's Preliminary Four Year Plan Required Dice as of the start of Q3 2060, Derpmind's Preliminary Probability Array, and Ithilid's Q2 2060 post
The plan is a bit power heavy, and there could be a bigger focus on Capital Goods, but that hotplate is slightly cooler than power right now. Since Security Reviews (Bureaucracy) holds onto an operations die afaik, it is only a single die for ~90% to succeed if I read Derpminds post correctly, which I might not.
Then the two Bureaucracy dice is spent on an Adm die, which is sent to Orbital. Since Orbital is really needing dice for the plan goals to be met, and if I read the story blurbs correctly, then the people really want off Tiberium Earth, which is very understandable.
4 die spent on development of Mastodon, Hallucinogen Countermeasures, Advanced ECCM and Hallucinogen. Mastodon because it is a plan goal,
Countermeasures because the idea of a Scarecrow-style fear gas is really awful (imagine being so scared you shoot your mates, what a nightmare.), and Advanced ECCM since broken communication lines is always really bad.
7 die is spent on energy focus because it is really needed, a higher drain in that area will put the Initiative in the minus, and black/brown-outs is not something you want in a war.
The majority of the military dice is spent on the navy, since that is where the toilet is on fire the most right now, with the exception of plasma warheads and weaponry deployment.
Only 7 die is spent on income actions if you count orbital cleanup, which is never enough, investing in investment is the way to go, always.
It was made for fun, so please don't start a big angry argument, those kinda suck the enjoyment out of things. But be sure to come with suggestions and questions, if you have them.
You joke, but I think it is true.
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- Location
- Outside the Box
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Reading that makes me super-duper-mega happy. Thank you.
- Location
- Oregon
Could we get a political cost discount on " [ ] Request Reduction in Plan Commitments" for Karechi by saying we will fulfill the commitment when we get hulls in the water? Request DELAY in plan commitments. We do have a solid justification of a war going on.
Alternately we distract them with "Professional Sports Programs"
foobaw
Edit: on second thought building those midwar is a bit tone-deaf.
Alternately we distract them with "Professional Sports Programs"
foobaw
Edit: on second thought building those midwar is a bit tone-deaf.
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Mr. Mica
Capitalism cannot fix Global Warming.
- Location
- Earth
If you want a really good distraction, I hear habitable stations are what the people want.
- Location
- Oregon
Yeah but they're expensive
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- He/Him
Uh, huh. I gotta remember [URL] can do that.
Testing:
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dVIvOs8jKH-Eaid_lVYBo9Xb9fm0ShMW2I1sYhVXeqc/edit?usp=sharing
And I can stand to start doing plans in spreadsheets too--right now I'm doing all my planning in a text editor and calculating budgets by hand. Durr.
One thing I think you can improve on is including completion chances for each item, for readability.
As for the plan itself:
The problem is, Navy yards need heaps of Capital Goods in addition to power, and we're starting to dip into the buffer we got by gutting the civilian economy.
Also, I know the held operations dice is implied, but if you can make that explicit by adding a line item like
Code:
--[]Security Review 1 die autoRespectable.
I can agree on ECCM, Hallucinogen and Hallucinogen Countermeasures.
The Mastodon not so much. With the Air Force and the Navy getting into bad places--I'll get to those later--I'd like to save it for at least after all the yards are done.
Agreed.
And here's where I think we have our biggest disagreement.
Not that the Navy's in a bad way--it totally is and we should fix that pronto. But by all accounts when one wants an Air Force pilot one starts with their grandparents, and particularly with Firehawks we've been spending them like ammunition every time we bump into a Barghest-bis. That's in no way sustainable unless we get the Firehawks their own little designated dying buddies.
We should be investing strongly in both the Navy and the Air Force this quarter and probably for a few quarters yet.