- Location
- USA
Incorrect as we have given them far more than this in agri. And someone part of the treasury should know htat.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- The Underdark
Needs a title.
Oledoms
Friesmancer
To be fair, he is just making an analogy. He knows that there are more, its just he is trying to make a point
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It works as a figure of speech. In the post-TWIII world, I'm pretty sure "fungus bars" is a universal GDI metonym for "stuff the Treasury's giving you that, while strictly speaking okay, isn't as good as you'd like and you can't shake the feeling that there could be better, y'know?"
We'll be making fungus bar jokes when we first meet the krogan.
We will then learn that the krogan think fungus bars are delicious.
Rather like how people tend to disparage spam, and then run into Korean Army Base Stew or something similar.It works as a figure of speech. In the post-TWIII world, I'm pretty sure "fungus bars" is a universal GDI metonym for "stuff the Treasury's giving you that, while strictly speaking okay, isn't as good as you'd like and you can't shake the feeling that there could be better, y'know?"
We'll be making fungus bar jokes when we first meet the krogan.
We will then learn that the krogan think fungus bars are delicious.
Budae-jjigae - Wikipedia
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I actually kinda like spam, personally. I'm weird.
REACTIONPOOOST!
A few things in the capitalization cause me to Randomly Twitch, but then, I'm the one who keeps capitalizing terms like "Logistics" when I mean the game indicators and not the generalized abstract concept.
But commenting on some of what was said in the context of our actual budgetary realities and what we've done:
The big eaters have been the military and, importantly, the power plants needed to support military production. Orbital's been a consistent heavy treasury sink, eating well over 10% of our budget, but nobody complains about it because in the back of our minds we're all aware we may need to escape the Earth within the next few generations.
At the same time, our expenditure in Light Industry projects (the area that most directly translates into Consumer Goods) hasn't been low, but it's been heavily focused on things like the myomer macrospinners or big fertilizer plants, which don't directly make consumer goods in and of themselves.
There are two allocatable resources in Treasury's system: Resources and Free dice. We have not spent a single Free die on portal research. And as for Resources... Well, one thing you'll notice is that projects in Agriculture and Light Industry that produce consumer-facing improvements tend to be cheap per die compared to the big stuff. Our budgets in Agriculture and Light Industry have not been Resource-capped in the turns since the portal program began.
Consumer Goods yummies in Agriculture are currently not being pursued, not because Treasury doesn't care, but because we have that Stored Food target hanging over our head and a giant refugee wave to feed, and getting out in front of that is hard. We've been working on that project with all available dice all the way back into 2060 or earlier; I'm not sure how many times we've left Agriculture dice fallow during the current Plan but I don't think it's actually been that many.
Consumer projects in Light Industry- well, you'll notice we pivoted to a turn of doing pretty much nothing but that as soon as the war wound down enough that the projects appeared in our inventory again.
For "money" (read: Resources or Free dice) spent on the portal project to be used meaningfully to improve consumers' situation, we'd need a way to make the money travel backwards through time to a turn when the reason we didn't activate some consumer-boosting project was because we literally couldn't afford to. It's been a long time since then, unless you count Sports Programs over in Services.
Now, the closest we can come to "you could have done something else with the money" is "Treasury could have intentionally reduced its budget via grants." But again, we don't have that button to push anymore, out-of-character; it got taken away from us. It gets me frustrated when people in-character in-setting are blaming us for not doing a thing we literally do not have a button to do, I dunno.
But that button got taken away OOC, because people couldn't stop having repetitive communism versus capitalism arguments in the thread no matter how many times they were told not to.
We have a few projects that could be interpreted as "less on fancy weaponry," but the priorities set by the representatives are overwhelmingly still things we have to spend 20 R/die on.
Also, the representatives' requirements often don't even begin to cover what the military actually needs.
If we'd restricted ourselves to just the Plan promise requirements in 2058-61? The Air Force would have been fucked. Everything they needed (Orca refits, wingman drones, tactical lasers, plasma missiles) wasn't there. None of it.
The Navy would have been fucked, just as fucked as they were canonically if not more so. Parliament apparently didn't think the naval situation merited expecting us to turn out new ships in this Plan, not back in 2058. We had the Governors coming online, sure, but that was about it. Now, we made that same mistake- but the point is, Parliament, despite having a strong independent line of contact to the generals and admirals, also made the same mistake.
REACTIONPOOOST!
A few things in the capitalization cause me to Randomly Twitch, but then, I'm the one who keeps capitalizing terms like "Logistics" when I mean the game indicators and not the generalized abstract concept.
But commenting on some of what was said in the context of our actual budgetary realities and what we've done:
Honestly, Tiberium hasn't been the big eater there. Tiberium operations tend to pay for themselves very quickly, so within a year or so the revenue stream from the operation is already stood up and funding something, somewhere else in the government. There's a reason why we've been able to run pretty much as many 20 R/die projects as we like for several turns in a row now, whereas the idea of doing the same thing in, say, 2055 would be laughable.
The big eaters have been the military and, importantly, the power plants needed to support military production. Orbital's been a consistent heavy treasury sink, eating well over 10% of our budget, but nobody complains about it because in the back of our minds we're all aware we may need to escape the Earth within the next few generations.
At the same time, our expenditure in Light Industry projects (the area that most directly translates into Consumer Goods) hasn't been low, but it's been heavily focused on things like the myomer macrospinners or big fertilizer plants, which don't directly make consumer goods in and of themselves.
Ironically, this slams into budgetary realities and goes "splat."
There are two allocatable resources in Treasury's system: Resources and Free dice. We have not spent a single Free die on portal research. And as for Resources... Well, one thing you'll notice is that projects in Agriculture and Light Industry that produce consumer-facing improvements tend to be cheap per die compared to the big stuff. Our budgets in Agriculture and Light Industry have not been Resource-capped in the turns since the portal program began.
Consumer Goods yummies in Agriculture are currently not being pursued, not because Treasury doesn't care, but because we have that Stored Food target hanging over our head and a giant refugee wave to feed, and getting out in front of that is hard. We've been working on that project with all available dice all the way back into 2060 or earlier; I'm not sure how many times we've left Agriculture dice fallow during the current Plan but I don't think it's actually been that many.
Consumer projects in Light Industry- well, you'll notice we pivoted to a turn of doing pretty much nothing but that as soon as the war wound down enough that the projects appeared in our inventory again.
For "money" (read: Resources or Free dice) spent on the portal project to be used meaningfully to improve consumers' situation, we'd need a way to make the money travel backwards through time to a turn when the reason we didn't activate some consumer-boosting project was because we literally couldn't afford to. It's been a long time since then, unless you count Sports Programs over in Services.
Now, the closest we can come to "you could have done something else with the money" is "Treasury could have intentionally reduced its budget via grants." But again, we don't have that button to push anymore, out-of-character; it got taken away from us. It gets me frustrated when people in-character in-setting are blaming us for not doing a thing we literally do not have a button to do, I dunno.
We just now spent 4/5 of our Light Industry dice this very quarter on Civilian Support Expansion (Phase 1), a project that is literally all about expanding Consumer Goods production to meet new demand. The fifth die? Security review. [shrug]
[grim laughter] If. Only.
But that button got taken away OOC, because people couldn't stop having repetitive communism versus capitalism arguments in the thread no matter how many times they were told not to.
I think that trying to translate this into concrete recommendations would quickly turn kind of crazy, honestly?
We have a few projects that could be interpreted as "less on fancy weaponry," but the priorities set by the representatives are overwhelmingly still things we have to spend 20 R/die on.
Also, the representatives' requirements often don't even begin to cover what the military actually needs.
If we'd restricted ourselves to just the Plan promise requirements in 2058-61? The Air Force would have been fucked. Everything they needed (Orca refits, wingman drones, tactical lasers, plasma missiles) wasn't there. None of it.
The Navy would have been fucked, just as fucked as they were canonically if not more so. Parliament apparently didn't think the naval situation merited expecting us to turn out new ships in this Plan, not back in 2058. We had the Governors coming online, sure, but that was about it. Now, we made that same mistake- but the point is, Parliament, despite having a strong independent line of contact to the generals and admirals, also made the same mistake.
I'm thinking that we might want to start reserving resources to prepare for the next plan. It would make it a lot, lot easier to activate all of our dice, instead of leaving them fallow.
To that end, we might want to consider cheaper projects for non-mandates/non-income generators. I don't think it'll have too much of an affect in Q2, but Q3 and Q4 we might go a bit heavier?
To that end, we might want to consider cheaper projects for non-mandates/non-income generators. I don't think it'll have too much of an affect in Q2, but Q3 and Q4 we might go a bit heavier?
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- Location
- The Underdark
Yeah, just don't allocate the funds. If your total spend is less than the total available, you save what you don't spend in a reserve pool.
- Location
- USA
Anadyr and Portal is likely to finish Q2/Q3 which alone should see us spending less Q4 so we should be able to do full dice each turn while still rolling over R from Q4 to the next plan
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Hmm.
It's worth considering, but a bit tricky to make happen. Remember, the other side of that coin is that this is the best possible time to do expensive 30 R/die and higher projects, because we won't be able to find the money to fund them later. For example, the naval laser refits are a 450-point 30 R/die project that is realistically likely to require 5-6 dice at a reasonable minimum. If we don't fund those refits now, it's likely that we won't be able to afford them until some time in 2063, at which point we're treading on the heels of our Karachi preparations. Bergen Phase 3 and Suborbital Shuttles are in a similar situation, as are a number of Tiberium projects (though Tiberium usually gets good funding even in the early phases of a Plan, precisely because we need it to get the budget back up to everything else).
But I'll be bearing it in mind- we should consider having R left over from our 2062 budgets to build up a reserve, even a small one, as a positive good. And 50-100 R in the piggy bank at the start of the Plan would go a long way in that very first turn when money is tight and we're likely to be asking not "which dice are left fallow" but how many?
- Location
- USA
Try making a plan without anadyr and portal for Q2, that feels like we would have R left over and I think we should because between knocking out portal, NOD gacha and Anadyr in Q2 and Q3 I feel like we could be going full out in Q4 while also rolling over some R, more so since we should be doing some tib actions (like border offensive and 2nd tendrils) with some of that finishing Q2/Q3 so more income Q4 on top of the most expensive projects done on previous turns and free dice likely on agri and orbital in Q4 to finish plan goals/set us up for the next plan
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think at that point I'd take reduced PS payoff or a slight malus just to lower the target, because then we have no margin for error and very little in the way of flexibility as to what projects we take. It's frankly bad to be in a position where you commit yourself to doing literally nothing but "work on hitting this target" in an entire category for an entire Plan, as we've seen in Orbital where a lot of other interesting stuff gets left in the dirt because we Must Finish Enterprise.
That has nothing to do with anything I said.
I'm not talking about what these guys in particular will or will not be able to do to set the terms of debate. I'm talking about what Parliament, as a whole will want to prioritize. What will be most important to them in the coming Plan? The exact shape of our requirements will be heavily shaped by that.
If Parliament decides they want to buckle down for Round Two of the same kind of planetary devastation the Visitors caused in Tib War III, then we can expect to see requirements for very large Stored Food quantities, more Capital Goods storage, space-based military defenses designed to attrite an alien armada before it makes planetfall, heavy investment in surface-to-aerospace weapons, and general investment in more advanced combat platforms of whatever kinds we expect to be effective against the Visitors (e.g. sonic weapons).
If Parliament decides that they want to prioritize the civilian economy, we'll still see some of those things on some level, but we'll see greater emphasis on Capital Goods surpluses, Consumer Goods increase, RpT income precommitted to be granted to the private sector in some way, and quality of life projects.
It depends on what else we do elsewhere. I'll run the numbers later- gotta go run an errand fairly soon.
Another way to think of it is that if we do save the resources now by choosing cheaper projects, that doesn't inherently preclude us from then spending it on those more expensive projects later. It could be more of a spacing out between turns, where the goal for the rest of the year is to try to reduce the average expenditure in the departments. And if it turns out that we still have one or two expensive (non-plan goal) projects near completion on Q1, we'll have the resources available to finish them then thanks to our prior forbearance.
And if it helps any, keep in mind that once we complete all of our military goals that we will unlock the military refit department, which will apply upgrades such as naval laser refits on our behalf.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes, but my point is that there's a balance to be struck. There's a fairly specific short list of "we clearly need this" projects that just plain cost a lot. And we'll have too many other priorities to want to spend on them again until the next time our budget is somewhere north of 1000 RpT, which probably won't happen until, oh, some time in mid-2063, unless we're doing better than I expect. Saving some resources now won't do much to bring that day forward, in my opinion, because as long as our budget is low, we won't want to spend the reserve on expensive-per-die projects at all. We'll want to spend on avoiding fallow dice, or at most on "promoting" dice so we can do a 20 R/die project instead of a 10-15 R/die project.
I'm totally in favor of trying to set aside some cash, but not if it costs us the ability to complete within 2061 some things like Bergen Phase 3 or Naval Laser Refits or a few other projects of the same general type.
I haven't yet seen good information on this. I believe you, but could you please provide clear information?
- Location
- The Underdark
Basically, it will be a military die, a small amount of your military bonus (probably -5 to military dice) some money and in exchange you get probably about 20-30 points of progress (total amount to be determined when I actually write it up) per turn on all projects that involve refitting existing factories. So deploying the Governor-A, Apollo-A, Naval Lasers, etc. You can still spend to speed those projects up, but you can get an amount of passive progress.
That could be hugely useful, allowing us to do things like deploy the new APCs and Paladins while allowing Mammoths to complete from the department
- Location
- USA
Would it be noted which projects are refit actions or would lead to refit actions?
Regardless that sounds very beneficial.
We could knock out a bunch of development projects and have the refits come online over a year or so without having to bother with a lot of deployment projects.
Unless they were a new design of course.
Regardless that sounds very beneficial.
We could knock out a bunch of development projects and have the refits come online over a year or so without having to bother with a lot of deployment projects.
Unless they were a new design of course.
- Location
- The Underdark
Refit actions almost always have refit somewhere in the title.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Good to know. All the more reason to at least TRY to get all the Military plan goals done by 2061Q3.
I'm mostly playing the idea of not investing in Nod Research Initiatives while we are working on the Portals and Bogatyr.
While we will invest in them sooner rather than later, it will allow us to make our services/research resource investments less spiky.
While we will invest in them sooner rather than later, it will allow us to make our services/research resource investments less spiky.
- Location
- MSC
Will it be simultaneously or one refit project at a time?
- Location
- USA
It takes some time for tech we get from gatchas to show up in our project lists.
Probably best to knock it out now so the timers start.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm not so happy about that. Nod techs tend to be fairly easy to implement in beneficial ways. I don't want to put them off... and again, 30 R/die projects tend to get put off for a long time at the start of new Plans.
Or if you mean to work on the Nod tech in Q4 instead of Q2 or whatever... Well, I don't think that a lack of spikiness helps us. Resources put in the piggybank in Q2 will spend just the same as an equal amount of Resources put in there in Q4.