Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Atm, we're a bit busy to go on the other side of the world and far from our heartlands. Especially with the navy in such a bad state.
Speaking of Navy, with the efforts going well in Spain and Western Europe should we try and put down a naval yard within the Mediterranean sphere? With the Caravansai basically ignoring us and Bian stuck in South east asia their doesn't seem to be a prominent NOD naval power there.
Complete control of the sea lanes in the Med would go a long way in securing a path to an eventual African campaign. Where would a good Logistics hub be for that region anyway?
Complete control of the sea lanes in the Med would go a long way in securing a path to an eventual African campaign. Where would a good Logistics hub be for that region anyway?
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Isn't one of our problems the fact we don't know if Kane is alive (even if he probably is), let alone where he is?
Nah. AFAIK we know in universe that he's camping in his alien tower outside Rome, playing with the Tacitus. And much of the Inner Circle is there with him.
ConfusedCanuck
Where did it all go wrong?
- Location
- Neverland
Again aside from Stahl being Stahl this has been a success for us we're pushing them back on almost all fronts here.
- Location
- Wall Gazing
If by African Campaign you mean West Africa, then we already have it. As of this turn there is a BZ land connection from BZ 1 through BZ 5 to BZ 13. Admittedly the connection in BZ 5 is over Gibraltar, but we now have a continuous Blue Zone on the Atlantic coast from the Ivory Coast to Barnetts Sea.
Not frontloading our naval investment was definitely a mistake, but we can still disagree on how we should use that investment.
It would be very valuable to know where GDI's centers of power are located. I do not think that Mecca is a center of population or industry on par with Europe or North America, but I am not an expert. Could the QM or someone who does know tell us where GDI's people and factories are concentrated? That would be good information to have for future planning.
Mecca was not fighting far from home; Mecca was conducting diplomatic outreach. The Caravanserai was a political victory, where we won over wavering warlords whose first priority was their holy city, not the war with GDI. If we had any reason to believe that other Nod warlords were open to a diplomatic settlement, I would be in favor of that.
In military operations, long supply lines are a Very Bad Thing, and you want to find ways to shorten your supply lines whenever it is possible. Our supply lines in North America and Europe are incredibly short, and Nod is weak, so that's where we want to be fighting.
Our presence is much, much stronger in some parts of the world, and those are the parts where we want to fight.
We haven't done more in South America because Stahl has done a great job, Australia is a secondary front that we can take whenever we care enough to finish them off, and Nod's presence in South Africa looks pretty vulnerable to me. I'm focused on North America because Gideon has thrown away his elite forces and on Europe because they are isolated and collapsing. Reinforce success.
The treasury does not tell the armed forces where to go, but we do shape their options through our choices.
There are territories controlled by Nod that are both relatively weak and very close to GDI's centers of power. Those are the territories where we want to concentrate our offensives.
We have no idea what Karachi would have been. Nod India is a black box.
We absolutely can and should leave Stahl alone. Why would we go after the enemy's strength rather than their weakness? I'm perfectly happy to fortify our South America Blue Zone while we go on the offensive against Nod's weakest warlords. Nod is welcome to keep Indonesia and South American and the Urals while we pick off the vulnerable warlords. This is a long war; we aren't going to win in one big offensive, so we should focus on the low-hanging fruit. Each defeated warlord gives us more people and gives Nod less people.
Again, we aren't fighting an entirely conventional war. Nod is a global coalition operating on multiple fronts, so an all-out offensive against their strongest members is not an ideal strategy. If we put all our effort into defeating Stahl or Krukov or India, that would give the weaker factions time to recover and grow. We want to finish them off and win over the population so that Nod can't come back.
Best to halt offences in SA for now. Shore up the defences down there, fix supply issues, wait for our navy to be up to par, and minimise other fronts. Then we can slap Stahl around with aggressive actions. But for this war specifically it's not in the cards, we want to focus on minimising losses down there.
- Location
- Mobile, Alabama
Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.
Just because facts have changed on the ground? Don't pretend there wasn't logic for the Karachi plans.
Still. I'm fine atm with it remaining a blank spot for a bit longer. I think we need to bulk up some more and look at absorbing Gideons areas. Build up the Navy and then take another crack at India. Hopefully at that point we'll have a robust Orbital drop force. Because I think they'll end up being pivotal in any incursion.
Just because facts have changed on the ground? Don't pretend there wasn't logic for the Karachi plans.
Still. I'm fine atm with it remaining a blank spot for a bit longer. I think we need to bulk up some more and look at absorbing Gideons areas. Build up the Navy and then take another crack at India. Hopefully at that point we'll have a robust Orbital drop force. Because I think they'll end up being pivotal in any incursion.
I just hope we return to actual planquest some time soon.
- Location
- Wall Gazing
Currently the GDI has a Tiberium Processing Capacity of 2470 and use 1895 of that Capacity. Mecca provides 60+120+120=300 Processing Capacity and 10 RpT directly, and as a result of it we got the four logistics cheap Sinai Peninsula Glacier mines, which combined with the Red Zone harvesting gave us 250 RpT. Mecca gives 12.1% of our Global processing capacity, and 13.7% of the GDI's total income. And that doesn't count BZ 4 which is home to what were some of the richest countries in the world, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman. Even if as an energy producer oil is less valuable with the advent of fusion, oil is still useful for the GDI's mechanized armies as we know from Tarberries. Further, a lot of the known oil is either nod controlled or under tib glaciers, Russia's main reserves are in Western Siberia and controled by Krukov or under the Red Zone. Venezuela is mostly yellow zone. Texas is almost covered by Red Zone and the rest is held by Gideon. Canada is held by Majors. China is Yellow and Red Zone. Nigeria is under the 10 Rings. BZ 4 is the source of oil for the GDI until Tarberry plantations are built. I submit that BZ 4 is a center of GDI power even before the glut of resources from a seventh of the GDI's economy set up shop right next door.
I'm beginning to get the feeling we need those stealth detectors considering how much recent infrastructure damage have been due to Vertigos, which are always stealthed. As much as I hate to admit it, a broader shift to the Autumn Archer strategy makes sense in the South American theater.
We're not out of "actual planquest". We're still in 3-month turns, it's just that with a war on, we're getting more text per turn than usual. And it's making a lot of people think that we can run the military, rather than the Treasury.
Edit: Granted, I will also be happy to see the Regency War over with, because I want to build more things, and delve too greedily and too deeply with Vein Mines.
What we need are the Apollo and Firehawk wingman drones to be fully in production. The biggest problem is "not enough airframes/pilots".
And South America as an active theater of operations is done. Stahl has achieved his goals, and GDI is not interested in losing more people/equipment trying to poke him.
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- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Why are you assuming that the oil is still there, instead of having been transmuted into tiberium? We know that there are two things tiberium loves. Namely, ore-grade minerals because that's what makes people love to spread it all over the place when it's in it's earliest phase of mutation, and organic material.
Oil might not be an ore mineral but the geological formations it is found in are similar to how some ores are found, and more importantly, it is absolutely something that falls under the definition of organic material. Because sure, hydrocarbons like crude oil aren't common in organic life but very similar ones are. Which means the moment a tiberium crystal gets down there, it's going to have a wonderful source of feedstock for rapid transmutation into a major tiberium node.
And everywhere on the planet has seen extensive underground tiberium formation except perhaps Greenland, Iceland and maybe a few other islands like those. Said places all being oceanic islands, thus limiting Tiberium spread from neighbouring regions to ocean floor spread (seemingly much less rapid than it's surface variety), oceanborne crystal's washing up (relatively easily cleaned up) and what areas had people spread Tiberium before they learned about it's dangers which have since likely been either eradicated or had serious containment operations performed. They also are oceanic islands that have been entirely under firm GDI blue Zone status for decades, meaning Nod can't seed their part of the island and have trouble invading it to, amongst other things, spread tiberium as part of nuisance operations during the Tiberium Wars.
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- Location
- Wall Gazing
I am assuming nothing regarding oil for Mecca as that planned city has nothing to do with it. However with regards to BZ 4, the GDI must be getting oil from somewhere as it needs it for its mechanized forces. We know those mechanized forces still use it from the Tarberry project description. We are not using biofuels as our Food situation would be a lot different if we were. The other major sources the GDI has access to are the North Sea and East Greenland Rift Basins. However those don't have the extraction industry that BZ 4 does. All the other major sites are either under a wall of tiberium or controlled by NOD. Tib contamination of the oil supply is a concern, and is likely one of the driving forces behind the Tarberry project. I don't know if we can say for certain if BZ 4's wells were spiked with the evil rock. Still, I may have been over zealous in stating that BZ 4 is the only source of oil for the GDI. However, considering the scale of both the reserves and the already developed industry located there, I remain convinced that BZ 4 combined with Mecca is a center of the GDI's power.
I don't see any reason we can't make refined fuel out of Tiberium considering we can make everything else, including several varieties of outright handwavium.
- Location
- indeterminate, possibly non-existent
- Pronouns
- Any
I believe we are directly synthesizing fuel oils from substrates produced from tiberium. It's quite feasible given the amount of energy GDI generates, and hydrocarbon fuels are pretty much exclusively used by the military at this point.
If GDI is still using widespread plastics, it almost must be synthesizing it from basic feedstocks it can obtain from tiberium. Even with the lower population they still only have access to a small portion of the world's oil deposits, which would have long since been drained. If they were using biofuels they'd need to be dedicating large parts of the blue zones' surface area to growing trees or other sources of cellulose to supply not just the military, but the many civilian uses of hydrocarbons besides powering vehicles. Large enough that we as the treasury would have needed to be managing those forests.
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- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Why do you think we aren't getting fuel from biofuel? After all, GDI had extensive military supporting infrastructure built up before tw3, as well as a bunch built or rebuilt during it. With the military getting priority in everything it needs, even if that leaves the civilian side of things suffering badly because TW3 never really ended. It just stopped being a major, constant global war and merely downgraded to continuous skirmishing. Which means the military needed to remain at high combat readiness or they'd open the possibility of Nod getting a major stike in even as battered and they were.
As for the civilian sector, that's basically pure electric. No need for fuel there so our improvements of the situation hasn't changed things in regards to how much fuel might be used.
So we actually be producing more 'food' than is being used for food or consumer goods that we know of, with a large chunk of the unknown supply composed of Pre-End of TW3 Biofuel Production Crops. But because we didn't completely screw up and have the Food go even more negative than it was at the start of the quest, there was no need to find out by asking the military to possibly divert some of their absolutely critical fuel supply chain towards feeding the civilians.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
Please don't start with the this. We never left the plan quest.
Can't rush something as good as this has consistently been.
- Location
- Wall Gazing
My thought process for why we aren't getting fuel from tiberium goes back to the tarberries. If we were getting fuel from tiberium, why would tarberries be an option? Further, while peak oil has definitely been hit, the oil requirements of the word have gone down, if only becuase of the massive loss of life. I do agree that our Food production has also been producing cellular feed stock for plastics, thats what the consumer goods attached to food producers like Vertical Farms and Shala are.
I'm less certain that such farms also produce biofuels as most crops that can be processed into bio fuels can also be eaten. And if they were an option people would not have been eating fungus bars. Right now I could buy food waste going into biofuel production, but that doesn't mean crude oil wouldn't be used to supplement our current supply, nor does it mean sources of it wouldn't be used to augment our reserves.
- Location
- The Underdark
So, when it comes to oil, you have a few separate things going on.
1. Defueling has been a longstanding priority for GDI. Basically all of your civilian vehicles are electric, and nearly every military vehicle is hybrid-electric. You have cut fuel usage to the absolute minimum.
2. Biofuels are another source, not a huge one, but one that has a sizable role as a reserve fuel.
3. Your nuclear plants can actually make hydrocarbon fuel. Basically, a nuclear plant is (ideally) creating a stable amount of power all day long. The thing is that on average, the load on the power grid is lowest in the middle of the night, and highest around 18-2200 local time. So at night you can take all that spare power, and use it to make hydrocarbons. While energy intensive, it is something that you are doing.
4. Tiberium derived fuels. Both the Hewlett Gardener and Mobius Granger processes create either hydrocarbons or hydrocarbon precursors that are easy to convert into hydrocarbons. It helps. It is not a permanent solution, but it helps.
1. Defueling has been a longstanding priority for GDI. Basically all of your civilian vehicles are electric, and nearly every military vehicle is hybrid-electric. You have cut fuel usage to the absolute minimum.
2. Biofuels are another source, not a huge one, but one that has a sizable role as a reserve fuel.
3. Your nuclear plants can actually make hydrocarbon fuel. Basically, a nuclear plant is (ideally) creating a stable amount of power all day long. The thing is that on average, the load on the power grid is lowest in the middle of the night, and highest around 18-2200 local time. So at night you can take all that spare power, and use it to make hydrocarbons. While energy intensive, it is something that you are doing.
4. Tiberium derived fuels. Both the Hewlett Gardener and Mobius Granger processes create either hydrocarbons or hydrocarbon precursors that are easy to convert into hydrocarbons. It helps. It is not a permanent solution, but it helps.