Certainly feels bad when the overall results were positive. Like ashes. I suppose that makes it feel more real, but getting real Doomer vibes from just reading. Not sure if that is just me though.
Shame about the Scrin tech just being a better solar panel basically. And the caloric processor is a dead tech unless we dump more research into to make it less of morale tank. I guess we can't push forward anymore or Nukes fly. That makes certain plans iffy.
There is more but this turn was hard too read without getting despondent.
"Nothing is so terrible as a battle won, except for a battle lost."
Reynaldo is leaning hard into the worst aspects of NOD, namely terror attacks.
Regarding Ion Storm Collectors, they are a *massively* better solar panel, both in terms of amount of energy collected, and resilience when hit with high-energy/exotic radiation. Regular solar panels would likely just burn out in an ion storm. I imagine developments from this will help with fusion power efficiency, a few generations on.
Caloric Processor tech is not great, but it is likely going to be useable to handle a certain percentage of our food storage needs... just smaller than we'd like.
The corpse starch project isn't dead at all. We just have to put more dice into actual reserves, probably including free dice. The problem is we're trying to do the reserves relatively last minute and then instead of building a significant amount of food reserves we've spent several turns doing a project that should have taken 2 at most (gotta love nat1s) and then researched barely edible paste.
"Nothing is so terrible as a battle won, except for a battle lost."
Reynaldo is leaning hard into the worst aspects of NOD, namely terror attacks.
Regarding Ion Storm Collectors, they are a *massively* better solar panel, both in terms of amount of energy collected, and resilience when hit with high-energy/exotic radiation. Regular solar panels would likely just burn out in an ion storm. I imagine developments from this will help with fusion power efficiency, a few generations on.
Caloric Processor tech is not great, but it is likely going to be useable to handle a certain percentage of our food storage needs... just smaller than we'd like.
The big thing with CRP is that we are going to need to make a sincere effort to 'real' food storage efforts before CRP 'virtual' stores will be accepted (hopefully we'll know soon enough based on the -PS costs how bad the situation is).
Fortunately, that doesn't mean that we need the cursed Freezers (although we certainly want them soon). What the politicians are looking for is for us to press the "Extra Large Food Stockpiles" button, and continue building the other food stockpiles.
We'll probably want to throw Erewhon at the former. We may even want to throw a free die into the department to be able to get 3 dice on aquaponics in the coming turn. Still, we have a lot of competing interests for those dice, so it'll be interesting to see where the thread consensus lands on their expenditure.
Parliament is, to put it mildly, displeased with the results, seeing it as a means of avoiding the stockpiling goals with 'virtual stockpiles,' and as 'food' not fit to be fed to food animals, even if it was available as a category. While it is unlikely for Parliament to try to ban the technology entirely, at this time it is likely an incredibly bad idea to put it into action.
Another representative described the ongoing strategy as "systematic underinvestment in vital food supplies, instead chasing high tech Wunderwerkzeuge."
"While it is unlikely for Parliament to try to ban the technology entirely, at this time it is likely an incredibly bad idea to put it into action" reads very clearly to me as "this is political suicide to try and use right now." In the future maybe Parliament will relax, but in the current moment I think the CRPs are firmly off the table as an answer to "how do we hit our stockpiling targets?" We're going to have to finish out this FYP on real food stockpiles, that's our punishment for the nat 1.
The project is not dead. It is more that you can't dodge building an actual stockpile. Parliament, and the committee overseeing it are mostly just irritable right now, because they see you as having basically ignored their priorities.
Because uhh, in fairness, we kinda have been. Our standard plans begin with us pushing harvesting to up income to then fund the things parliament wants in the latter part of the plan.
When, for a variety of reasons we fall behind on income/ have other demands on food. it means stuff like food storage falls behind.
There's been other stuff slowing us but yeah. It's fair to say food has been delayed.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Bureaucracy) (51) [22]
Are we allowed to select multiple options on the Bureaucracy security review? I'd like to both eliminate outside influences and establish official backchannels if that's possible.
If you're another part of the GDI state with a legitimate need to know what the Treasury's planning, we really should have officially vetted and properly secured ways to talk to each other. I have zero problem sharing notes with the War Department, or Welfare, or InOps, or any of the rest of our coworkers. Formalizing that will both make our lives easier AND secure the information better.
I really don't trust leakers to the private sector however. Even if the individual talking directly to the Treasury is trusted, the people they talk to back at the shop aren't. Other parts of the GDI state are under constant and direct InOps scrutiny, I trust them to be pretty secure. Private cooperatives and political parties exist under much looser security constraints however, the Treasury cannot afford to keep leaking information out to the wider civilian sector. The Brotherhood will inevitably infiltrate many of our private businesses/political parties, if they haven't already, the attack surface is just way too broad for us to ever be sure of policing. So official backchannels for coworkers are good, but we need to cut off the leaks to everybody outside the GDI state.
Because uhh, in fairness, we kinda have been. Our standard plans begin with us pushing harvesting to up income to then fund the things parliament wants in the latter part of the plan.
When, for a variety of reasons we fall behind on income/ have other demands on food. it means stuff like food storage falls behind.
There's been other stuff slowing us but yeah. It's fair to say food has been delayed.
I have two proposals for next turn's agricultural production First is:
Agriculture (4 dice) 40R
-[] Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays (Phase 4) 75/140 1 die 10R 75%
-[] Freeze Dried Food Plants 151/200? 1 die 20R 91%
-[] Strategic Food Stockpile Construction (Phase 2) 38/150 1 die 10R 28%
-[] Extra Large Food Stockpiles 1 die auto
The second is much more...ambitious.
Agriculture (11 dice+E) 160R
-[] Agriculture Mechanization Projects (Phase 1+2) 0/400 4 dice 60R 7% (phase 1 100% completes)
-[] Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays (Phase 4) 75/140 1 die 10R 75%
-[] Tarberry Development 0/40 1 die 20R 100%
-[] Poulticeplant Development 0/50 1 die 20R 95%
-[] Freeze Dried Food Plants 151/200? 1 die 20R 91%
-[] Strategic Food Stockpile Construction (Phase 2) 38/150 2 dice+Erewhon 30R 99%
-[] Extra Large Food Stockpiles 1 die auto
My thoughts are:
Agri 4/4 40R +24
-[] Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays (Phase 4+5) 75/280 2 dice 20R 18%
-[] Freeze Dried Food Plants 151/200 1 die 20R 91%
-[] Extra Large Food Stockpiles 1 die auto
This works on ensuring we have enough food to convert into reserve, gets the freeze dried done and also puts food into the reserve so we can show actual progress on the goal (and saves a bit of R) with this and the fertilizer I hope we have enough food to slam reserve food Q2 and Q3 with our agri dice.
"We all see what we expect to see. I once shook hands with Kane himself. Forged ID, clipboard, box of tools, and a hoodie with a scorpion tail on it. I went in, worked on one of their computer terminals that was on the fritz. Fixed it of course, but the goal was really to plant a bug in their system. And Kane told me that I was upholding the values of the Brotherhood. Nearly gave me a heart attack."
Tali got maybe a few bruises and some nice combat data, Crucible is alive, which is good, and we have some new political party leaders. I believe the other two (failed) assassination attempts are being described in the battle updates.
While construction is currently outpacing immigration, that is not expected to last, as the weakened Brotherhood warlords are likely to see massive emigration as their grasp on their populations slacks, and the Initiative lines are closer than ever to major yellow zone population centers. For much of the next year at minimum, GDI is likely to see massive waves of immigration.
[ ] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 6)
A further wave of Green Zone Tiberium harvesting will both improve the logistical connections across the forward Green Zones and provide greater numbers of forward hardpoints and firebases for Initiative troops.
(Progress 100/100: 15 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (1 point of yellow zone mitigation)
(Progress 78/100: 15 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (1 point of yellow zone mitigation) (2 Stages available) [2, 52] (+10 Resources per turn)
Construction of expansive Green Zone harvesting operations has been ongoing, as has the transition to Blue Zone harvesting approaches. A Blue Zone, by definition, does not lack Tiberium contamination. Rather, it has a low Tiberium contamination level and Tiberium contamination is being actively controlled. The basis for this is a series of low and high level depots that maintain and operate fleets of harvesters, paired with a network of tiberium spikes. The spikes are both for harvesting and an early warning system, with reductions in harvest throughput highly correlated with outbreaks of Tiberium. With this system, GDI can usually (and increasingly so in recent years since the supply of capital goods has improved) localize Tiberium outbreaks to within ten square kilometers across any Blue Zone on the planet, and begin moving before the outbreak hits the surface.
How this matters to the Green Zone intensification is simple. Instead of just pushing out high intensity setups ever further forward, in many cases beyond the reaches of what the Initiative can properly secure, this quarter's construction has focused on building up Blue Zone style constructions well ahead of the Blue Zones, saving both time and resources by not needing to fully rebuild the system as it reorients from being primarily a harvesting project to a containment one, making the system as a whole noticeably more efficient.
This is nifty. Pushing forward Blue Zone-type abatement and harvesting schemes is a clever strategy. And now that we have more strategic depth, it's workable.
However, with the war beginning to wind down, and GDI beginning to demobilize more forces to catch up on maintenance and reduce logistical loading at the front, the low level harassers have begun to make a reappearance, only to find themselves outmatched by the new and heavier weapons on the harvesters.
While the automatic medical assistants have noticeably freed up skilled medical labor, the primary impacts have been two-fold. First, cutting into the pool of less skilled labor needed by the staff, and in supporting many of the more routine activities. Nurses and doctors are already reporting lower stress levels, as the droids can take over portions of critical importance and of highly technical results.
In hospital work, there have often been traditions of twelve or even twenty four hour shifts. These, to be put bluntly, are incredibly stupid. After about ten hours of even light work, people start crossing the point of negative value produced – and for heavier or skilled work like nursing it is significantly shorter. With each nurse and most doctors working in conjunction with a swarm of robots however, there are rippling effects through the entire field, with more nurses available, more downtime, more ability to have everyone working shorter and easier shifts.
In terms of timeline, the sheer number of Firehawk Wingmen needed is a fundamental problem. Even working flat out, it will be over a year before numbers rise to the point that they will begin making an impact in every theater. At this time the Navy, long in need of extra airborne firepower, (especially after the recent battles in the Pacific,) is getting priority, as the current Atlantis class aircraft carriers can trade two squadrons of Naval Firehawks for three of the new wingman squadrons, giving a noticeable increase in throw weight.
"The problem is logistics, at this point. We're looking at more missions, more fuel consumption, more missiles-we need more airfields and support as well, just to get enough physical slots to hold the damn things. Shipping the drones themselves is easy enough, but we also need to ship the weapons for them, and store enough bombs and missiles for surge missions while not also leaving enough munitions about for a NOD commando to easily blow a whole base sky high."
"It's a wonderful problem to have, mind you. You just have to complain about something."
For a decade now, the long-delayed railgun munitions project has been accumulating test data, prototypes, revisions, and aggressive, pointed memos. It was hoped that these accumulations would, under a bare minimum of testing, yield viable munitions. This has proven to be not the case. Just six days after the approval of a round of tests for variant ammunition, a high-explosive round demolished a railgun at the Yucca Flats test range. At some point, following round after round of revisions, the ammo had seen its explosive cavity shrink to the point where a co-crystalized blend of Trinitrotoluene and Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane was required to meet the desired explosive yield, primarily due to the problems of creating an isolated chamber inside the shell, where the firing energy would not set of the explosive. Unfortunately, firing created enough heat transfer to separate the HNHW from the TNT, causing a rapid detonation while still inside the barrel. This has caused a multitude of knock on effects, slowing development of shrapnel, incendiary, and submunition rounds for all railgun types.
-[ ] Eliminate Outside Influence
While a complete purge of the bureaucracy is inadvisable, a few rounds of firing, and a series of mandatory refresher courses on information security may help stem the outflow of information. However this is likely to only be a very temporary solution, as the Treasury will still maintain an extremely large role in the overall economy, and therefore be of great interest to other parties.
(-5 to Bureaucracy dice until Q2 2061)
-[ ] Expand Official Backchannels
With there being no end in sight to the interests of other parties, offering up a series of more secure lines, with vetted and verified representatives acting as official backchannels to outside interest groups. While it is still a security risk, runs the risk of being seen as political favoritism, and may grant those interest groups outsized influence in decision making with time, there are significant advantages to actively addressing the root causes of the problem.
(+5 Political Support)
I'm rather in favor of Eliminating Outside Influence, but would be mostly okay with the backchannels. Either way, we should probably do a second Bureaucracy security review in a year or so.
We were never going to use terror drones like Buzzers in significant capacity, especially in close tight quarters where buzzers (should) thrive, they'd run into a bunch of flamethrowers.
Ranching Domes in 2061 may still be possible. We just have to reduce free dice use in Military to compensate. ...Which to some probably means no Ranching Domes in 2061.
--
So yay, Tali and Crucible survived! Fuck, we lost Al-Jilani and Brown. Double fuck, Nod has buzzers. Dammit Kane, you could've given something less horrifying to Reynaldo for his trek out to you.
Also, I know we meme Kane's knowledge a good bit, but anyone wonder if Kane actually knew Hackett was GDI and said that to him for his own amusement?
I'm amused at the ZOCOM blurb. I seem to recall that I was expecting GFZA to get put to use in shallow red operations, and here seems to be confirmation that ZOCOM's quite willing to pass that off to Zone GF along with the expected "heavy infantry" commitments. Thank god the Steel Talons are going "get the Mastodons going, we can wait a bit for more mad science." Air Force and Navy are as expected (though perhaps a Firehawk Mk II or other successor might be coming up soon, given the drone control problems).
As someone whose mother was a RN for longer than I've been alive (35 years at one hospital at the time she retired, and that wasn't the first place she worked), it's nice to see nurses are getting better working conditions!
Going to hold thoughts on the CRP result until I see Q1 2061 options. I won't be in favor of CRP factories, but the infrastructure option could still be on the table, as long as we're pushing food stockpiling as well (and get that damn freeze dried plant done).
As for the choice at the end, I'm torn between the last three options. I'd rather not have third party influences in the system, so 2 and 4 would be fine. I don't want a negative to dice, so 3 and 4 would be fine. But I don't like people at the Treasury having loose lips, so I'm kinda against 4.
If this is the shit they get up to when left to fiddle with concepts too long, we really need to speed up some types of development funding. ;D
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I went with the GDI Online "blog" approach for the simple fact that any errors that pop up in it could be explained away as not having all the facts, not having access to the archives/documentation, etc. Also, it could be a bit that some of what's said is technically true, but was spun to make things sound better/worse that actually was the case. Maybe the writer was a YZer that made it into a BZ early in the 2050s, got interested in Mil His and has a grudge of sorts against the Treasury for budget cutting the military, resulting in GF slowly abandoning swaths of YZ to Nod for 10+ years.
Also, being that they're using publicly available info, they might not understand certain things based on press releases or the like. Or damage to news archives from TW2-3 onward might've partially corrupted some news bits and it hasn't been fixed yet? Take the Mammoth Mk III Block 0 and Block 1 upgrade program. You could interpret it as "Block 0 went into production, GF had to use it for 2 years before Treasury admitted there was an issue and funded the upgrade program." It could also be interpreted as "Block 0 was the Low Rate Initial Production model and had the potential to be the actual production model. Testing showed issues, unit use confirmed it, attempts were made by one unit (I figure the first unit to get Mk IIIs was a Steel Talons one because they'd probably have no issue with tinkering on it to solve issues) to fix things, the fixes improved the issues but didn't solve them, and preliminary work started on sourcing new engines and the like. Then the Block 1 upgrade program got funded to put the Steel Talons' track unit modifications into effect, replace the suspension/tracks/transmission/engine etc with better designs, etc. Then Block 1 entered production as the actual first production model, with some Block 0s converted to Block 1, but most just phased out by new build Block 1s as they were built." Of course, the second being true doesn't necessarily fully negate the first also being true.
And if I wanted to come up with a user name for the blog writer (or perhaps leave that blank and just have a "Comments" spot underneath with a "top rated" comment under it, so that there's nothing in the blog writer's username that could hint one way or the other on their views), I could actually have someone leave a comment pointing out that second part was actually the case (I think I'd have that user be HeavyMetal3045, being a Mammoth crewmember 2030-2045, and was a Block 0 user in the second unit transitioned). It would keep true Ithillid's thoughts that Block 1 was the first production model, while allowing for a Block 0 predecessor to exist. Might go back and do that at some point. Dunno.
I actually did the GDI Online blog thing for my first, as yet unposted, omake for the reason that it might not be fully accurate, and thought it would be a good idea with this one as well. I'll probably keep doing that beyond this last one and the at-some-point-to-be-posted one, because the ability to write something that could be mostly/generally true, yet doesn't straight up conflict if in Quest knowledge ends up showing different (because we actually "have" the clearances to know more of the story than random civilian does) is nice.
If you want to institutionalize the government preferentially leaking information for the greater benefit of the people who get their hands on the information rather than, you know, properly following the procedures that are focused on making sure the public gets informed as to the government's plans when the government is ready to roll those plans out...
Basically, if you want insider trading and other corrupt schemes without being able to do anything about it, official backchannels is how you get it.
-[X] Eliminate Outside Influence
While a complete purge of the bureaucracy is inadvisable, a few rounds of firing, and a series of mandatory refresher courses on information security may help stem the outflow of information. However this is likely to only be a very temporary solution, as the Treasury will still maintain an extremely large role in the overall economy, and therefore be of great interest to other parties.
(-5 to Bureaucracy dice until Q2 2061)
The real issue, to me, is that the information is getting to places it should not be getting to at the time. Rolling out some information security refreshers sounds like a good idea.
Anyway this tells me they don't want upgrades to old gear but for us to start making entirely new gear for them which is going to be a hassle for us so joy.
-[ ] Purge the Bureaucracy
While some degree of infiltration from interested parties is inevitable, by making examples out of those who have filtered out information, firing and blacklisting them at the very least, and prison sentences for some, the Bureaucracy can be put into its place below you. While this will lead to massive overall problems, as the Bureaucrats become too scared to talk to each other, let alone outsiders, and will likely come with political consequences, it is an option.
(-20 to Bureaucracy dice, -1 Bureaucracy die)
And yeah let's not do this please it's a bridge to far and it would alienate a lot of our allies too. And I'm not going to vote for this issue doesn't seem to big of a problem to me.
My preference, because I guarantee some of the people being leaked to, are passing information to NOD.
If other departments want information, they can ask for it.
What in God's name is wrong with these bastards? My boy is having nightmares after someone left a bag of flying knives in his school. How do you comfort a child who had his favorite teacher sliced open before his eyes? What do you say when he asks why that happened?
As the missiles and darts met, metal tore and sparked and shredded – four of the missiles were ripped apart under the fire. The second shot was denser, but much closer ranged, and another two fell while Tali's APS swatted aside a further three with contemptuous ease. Another missile found its way into a nearby berm – one of the tail fins clipped by a flechette. One hit her mech, slamming into her knee as she pivoted once more – trying desperately to jink out of the way – and the tens of tons stumbled and collapsed, twisting as she fell, as the remaining missile soared over her head.
