Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
From the man himself.
Emphasis mine. We have options, and they don't fall neatly into one category or another. We just don't know them yet.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- USA
Also from the man himself or approved statements from him
TCN if we want earth as we know it to survive otherwise we lose it to super volcanoes and other Tiberium in the mantle issues.
Does this include non-military refits, like the tiberium processing plants?
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Optimistically, portal technology would give us Logistics: Yes, and allow super easy access to space mining and off-planet colonization and vacation spots. It's still hugely valuable in and of itself. I'm not trying to argue "do this or else".
That said, the reason people keep bringing up the inevitable end of Earth is because, as decided by Ithillid, Earth is already doomed. We can beat back Tiberium, make the entire surface into Blue Zone, and keep the game going past the year 2100. But we have no way to stop the underground Tiberium from reaching the Earth's mantle eventually, where it will then blow up the planet. For better or worse, Ithillid has given us the OOC information that we can't save the planet without TCN or TCN-like technology. The portal technology is one of an unknown number of alternate victory conditions, but it's also not one that prevents the Earth from being destroyed. Until we find or luck upon something that might prevent the whole planet-explosion countdown, people are going to keep talking about how we don't have the means to save Earth... because so far, we still don't have any.
- Location
- Wall Gazing
If we could save humanity by working with Kane to build a TCN and/or kludging one together from luck, hopes, dreams and the Scrin Gatcha, we would do it. If we could save humanity by evacuating the Earth, we would do it. If we could save humanity by adapting to tiberium, we would do it. If we could save humanity by doing none of those things and instead do something else entirely, we would also do that.
The goal is to save humanity, not the Earth. To that end we have three known paths, and a stopgap measure. The stopgap is the 'mine more tiberium' actions to give us more time to complete the other options. The known paths are TCN via Kane/Scrin Gatcha, evacuation into Space, and interfacing with Tiberium like the Forgotten.
The first relies on luck and Kane's nonexistent heart, two things we can't afford to rely on. Still, we should still go for the Gatcha as early and as often as we can and go for replenishing it with the Visitors in Jupiter orbit as soon as is reasonable.
The second path needs a massive amount of space infrastructure, to that end we have/are going to finish two of the four Crown Jewels this plan and most likely will commit to the other two in the fourth FYP. Coincidentally completing both Columbia and Shala will give us 94 Political support and 4.75 thousand permanent orbital residents. That last number is important because it is greater then the average Minimum Viable Population number for K-strategy vertebrates*.
The last known path is to adapt to tiberium, to that end we need to pursue various projects that research tiberium and tiberium lifeforms. This has advantages in that it might give us insight into either how to better combat tiberium, how to protect against the Remembrancer's little tricks, or how tiberium itself works. Unfortunately just about all of the currently available projects to research tiberium and tiberium lifeforms cost political capital. Fortunately the political support we gain from Columbia and Shala will be useful in giving us the room to pursue more ... questionable lines of research.
Baring a miracle, Earth may be doomed, but humanity shall live on.
*The average MVP for K-strategy vertebrates is 4169 individuals with a two standard deviation range of 3577–5129 individuals. Note that this figure is accounting for the effects of inbreeding, not doing so drops the MVP down to 500-1000 individuals. [REF: Minimum viable population size: A meta-analysis of 30 years of published estimates]. Side note, that I'm using biological species conservation numbers should show just how dire the situation is for humanity at present.
The goal is to save humanity, not the Earth. To that end we have three known paths, and a stopgap measure. The stopgap is the 'mine more tiberium' actions to give us more time to complete the other options. The known paths are TCN via Kane/Scrin Gatcha, evacuation into Space, and interfacing with Tiberium like the Forgotten.
The first relies on luck and Kane's nonexistent heart, two things we can't afford to rely on. Still, we should still go for the Gatcha as early and as often as we can and go for replenishing it with the Visitors in Jupiter orbit as soon as is reasonable.
The second path needs a massive amount of space infrastructure, to that end we have/are going to finish two of the four Crown Jewels this plan and most likely will commit to the other two in the fourth FYP. Coincidentally completing both Columbia and Shala will give us 94 Political support and 4.75 thousand permanent orbital residents. That last number is important because it is greater then the average Minimum Viable Population number for K-strategy vertebrates*.
The last known path is to adapt to tiberium, to that end we need to pursue various projects that research tiberium and tiberium lifeforms. This has advantages in that it might give us insight into either how to better combat tiberium, how to protect against the Remembrancer's little tricks, or how tiberium itself works. Unfortunately just about all of the currently available projects to research tiberium and tiberium lifeforms cost political capital. Fortunately the political support we gain from Columbia and Shala will be useful in giving us the room to pursue more ... questionable lines of research.
Baring a miracle, Earth may be doomed, but humanity shall live on.
*The average MVP for K-strategy vertebrates is 4169 individuals with a two standard deviation range of 3577–5129 individuals. Note that this figure is accounting for the effects of inbreeding, not doing so drops the MVP down to 500-1000 individuals. [REF: Minimum viable population size: A meta-analysis of 30 years of published estimates]. Side note, that I'm using biological species conservation numbers should show just how dire the situation is for humanity at present.
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- Location
- Mobile, Alabama
The issue I'm seeing with a lot of our planning is that we're talking minimum numbers for species survival. But the Scrin are here in system. They need to be dealt with first. Because if we get down to low numbers they will attack us.
They aren't invading now because we're at home with infrastructure. Take that away and they will attempt to kill us.
They aren't invading now because we're at home with infrastructure. Take that away and they will attempt to kill us.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
"I know these noodles look like condensed waste and taste like moldy gym socks and wet cardboard had a rancid hare-baby Little Timmy, but think of it this way. Because of your sacrifice, we can already send small streams of charged particles through tiny portals! Why, in a century maybe we can toss a book through! What's a book? Oh don't worry I'm sure the benevolent Treasury will allocate resources enough for one book a decade sometime soon!"
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What strawman are you even attacking here?
- Location
- Wall Gazing
Colombia and Shala will not be that end of the station construction, though to be safe I would want some improvements to our orbital military assets prior to building a lot more stations. Plus I would want those stations to be built (or at least positioned) further away from Earth to prevent any Philadelphia 1 style strikes, and to protect them from the potential tib ejecta when liquid tib hits the mantle.
Further, we know that a proper lunar colony is gated behind Columbia so there will be some permanent off world there as well.
I point out the MVP as an important note in securing humanities continued survival. Clearly there are other limitations, us needing a space fleet to defend against and take the fight to the Visitors near Jupiter is one of the things needed to properly make the evacuation path viable it also increases the chances of the TCN via a refreshed Scrin Gatcha.
I think? that it's the idea that if portals wouldn't be worth sacrificing dice for next year, then why are making the decision to do so now?What strawman are you even attacking here?
Personally, I believe that it is possible to fund both portals and good food. The key is just to downgrade dice in other departments. Whenever two projects are of similar desirability, we should choose the cheaper of the two, even if we can 'afford' the more expensive one. And yes, we will probably eventually complete the second one. But the key is that as we complete projects, new projects are unlocked, some of which may be of greater importance than the more expensive project, or may be cheaper for a similar scale in effect (as an example Civilian Support Expansion was both cheaper and more time-critical than Reykjavik).
There's also the potential for certain tech, such as [REDACTED], to significantly change the calculus on the remaining projects. By pursuing cheaper projects first, we give ourselves more time for those factors to come to the fore.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
What strawman are you even attacking here?
The people advocating for continuing to put literally hundreds of Resources into Portals for decades-in-the-future gains when we have critical needs right now, are seemingly also the people advocating for using the CRP technology to fill a notable portion of our Plan Goals for Food Stockpiles, despite all of the narrative evidence this is not a great idea. Most of the plans hinging on investing in CRP seem to do so to help fund Portals.
The immediate issue is that they want to use infra dice to fund CRP, so they can use free dice in other, non-agri, departments. It's a regular fight to get the full allocation of Services dice at all, so Portals don't really have an effect there.
Now, it will likely be the case that next plan that we will leave many dice fallow thanks to our Portals investments today. But that isn't the cause of us investing in CRP before the end of this plan. Potential CRP investments today are due to:
-not reserving enough resources at the end of the last plan
-starting investments into the gachas in Q2 of the plan, instead of waiting until they wouldn't preclude investments into basic goods and services
-throwing tons of free dice at the military
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Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
👇You can't talk about a half finished Tendrils Phase 2 and opportunity costs from using Dice on Tendrils Phase 2 because if you say half finished that implies that you've use 4-6 Dice on the Action before this plan ended and as such the opportunity cost is minimal.
If we were to roll 7 Dice on Tiberium Vein Mines we would get at minimum 40 Resources per Turn out of that:
Once the Tendrils Phase 2 is done we will be getting 44 Resources per Turn out of such an action. And that is before we go for the Super-Glaciers. My goal for the end of this plan is for us to reach within a spitting distance of 2400 total Tiberium Resources Harvested so we can get 800 Resources at 30% Reallocation.
Also the only reason my plan has 7 Dice on Tendrils Phase 2 is because I can't find a spot in it to shake loose a Free Die because I'm trying to do our plan goals at the same time
My plan is doing both Plan Goals and the Portals because it is doable and as such I am doing it.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It's not, but assuming the TCN is more or less as in canon, it's by far the easiest way and the way most likely to succeed. Other plans for constructing a TCN-equivalent would seem to rely on us either:
1) Us somehow seizing the Tacitus from Kane by force or deception (good luck with that), or
2) Getting quite lucky with our Visitor/Scrin gacha rolls, or
3) A miracle dropping out of the Forgotten research that we're pursuing in a very back-burner way, which I imagine would have been the focus of the "adaptation" pathway had we chosen that route at game start. It speculatively might be that we could theoretically genetically engineer a million psychic "tiberium whisperers" who can collectively tell the stuff to sit down, shut up, and stop endangering the planet with its reckless growth.
I hope you can agree with me that each of these options involves something of a long shot. If there's a fourth option, I have no idea what it is.
But as a basic logical consequence of all of this being true, we have, broadly speaking, several layers of 'plan' for what to do about the part where tiberium is eating the Earth:
Plan A: Kane stops being quite so much of an asshole and coughs up blueprints for a TCN.
Plan B: Somehow get the Tacitus out from his selectively intangible/invulnerable gigantic fortress whose layout is unknown to us and that is secured by heavily indoctrinated and heavily equipped troops with copious xenotech.
Plan C: Say "Screw you, baldy, and screw your stupid Tacitus, I'm going to go make my OWN TCN, with blackjack and hookers!"
Plan D: Say "Oh shit, attention all passengers aboard Starship Earth, all passengers to the lifeboats, please evacuate the planet in a calm and orderly manner, except Kane who can get out and walk because fuck you, Kane."
Now, we can debate whether Plan B and Plan C should trade places, but I think we can agree that Plan A is most practical, and Plan D is least satisfactory.
The thing is, if Plan A fails... well, Plan B and C are both long shots, while Plan D is something we know we can accomplish to at least some extent in the reasonably near future. And the relative quality of Plan D (that is, the percentage of humanity we can safely evacuate) is likely to only increase over time, even if Plan D is never better or more desired than Plans A, B, or C.
Thus, if Plan A fails, it behooves us to at least consider Plan D, and to do what we can to ensure that Plan D is, as a plan, no worse than it has to be.
I love my ship, but that doesn't mean I won't lovingly maintain the lifeboats and strive to ensure that there are enough of them.
You just now spent considerable time and effort discussing the idea that doing it a year from now would be no worse than doing it today, as far as I can determine. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who interprets your posts that way.
Proof by induction suggests (inductively suggests, not deductively proves) that if doing it a year from now is no worse than doing it today, then it's not what you'd call urgent barring something very strange going on.
Well, we have a better shot now that we know we may be able to replenish the pile of Visitor salvage by going out and zorching the aliens around Jupiter. How much better that makes our chances remains to be seen.
Hopefully, if we can spin out our mitigation long enough and develop enough Visitor-derived esoteric bullshit tech, we can reach a level of understanding of tiberium that permits original research into whatever parts of a crude TCN-alike that we'd need even without copying the answers from the Tacitus or captured Visitor hardware.
But, as noted above, it's still kind of a long shot.
1) I for one am definitely planning around needing to fly out to Jupiter and go zorch some unwanted Visitors. All the best ways forward in space involve them leaving the solar system and never coming back, or us doing all things over their dead bodies.
2) With that said, the point that if we have 5-10 thousand people and an intact industrial base capable of replicating itself and all critically necessary tools in space, we have a reasonable chance of preserving humanity barring outside intervention... is well taken. Props to @doruma1920 for bringing up that bit of information.
3) Just to repeat myself, I am definitely planning around conquering Jupiter from the Visitors. Absolutely. And building up waaay more than five thousand people in space, even if Kane finally smokes some weed and realizes he's been such a dick all this time and gives up the TCN blueprints literally in-quest tomorrow.
I am trying very hard not to be extremely verbally aggressive, because your characterization of my/our plans is so wildly inaccurate that the words that come to my mind are along the lines of "liar." From long acquaintance, I am making a deliberate choice to reject the possibility that you might be knowingly telling untruths here. It is difficult and requires considerable effort of will on my part, but out of faith in you, I am doing it.
...
Assuming that this is merely a failure of comprehension, let me point out some facts.
1) All tasks in this game consume two things: dice, and resources/money.
2) Portal research takes Service dice. We have five Service dice per turn and very few mandatory things to spend them on. Therefore, it is effectively a given that there are enough dice to research portals.
3) Service dice can only be used to do Service things. No Service thing has anything to do with agriculture. Thus, assuming we can complete the portal research project without using Free dice, there is no possible way for the portal project to deprive the agriculture effort of dice.
4) Combining (2) and (3), we see that the portal project cannot realistically, and in currently implemented and drafted plans HAS NOT, consumed any dice that could conceivably be used for any agricultural purpose. We do not have a project to make Stored Food out of Service dice. You know this.
5) That brings us to money. The portal project takes a lot of money. Presumably, your argument is that because the portal project is spending a lot of money, that means there is less money available for other "critical needs" projects. Since CRP is the hill you are clearly focused on bombarding, that strongly implies that the "critical need" in question is agricultural in nature, and specifically is related to the Stored Food target. Thus, the most most steelmanned possible version of your argument that I am able to construct is of the form: "We are taking money/resources that should be spent on achieving the Stored Food target, and spending it on portal research!"
6) There are two ways in which the argument in (5) could be true. Either:
6a) We could have failed to activate an Agriculture die due to lack of funds, which instead went to portals.
6b) We could have chosen to assign more Free dice to Agriculture, but did not, because funding them there would be too expensive, so we spent our Free dice on some other cheaper project.
7) Argument (6a) falls on the following fact: Portals did not become available for research until 2060Q4. We have activated all our Agriculture dice on that turn and the subsequent turns. Even if we were psychic and knew the portal research would drop much earlier, we were also activating all our Agriculture dice in the turns directly before that, too, as far as I can determine.
8) Argument (6b) falls on the following fact: the Stored Food target is cheap per die. While most things we spend Free dice on are 15-20 R/die projects, building granaries and aquaponics bays is a 10 R/die project. Taking Free dice off Military or Orbital projects and putting them on Agriculture to get us to the Stored Food target faster would save money. If we were really trying to save money for an "all the portals" meme plan that didn't actually leave other dice outright fallow, one of the first things we might try would be to put ALL our Free dice in Agriculture where there are plenty of 10 R/die projects to do.
9) Combining (7) and (8), it is just plain objectively false to claim that there has been any turn in which money, that is to say Resources, could not be found to fund our Stored Food commitment because of portals.
- Location
- Africa
Plan B and Plan C are chancy to risk everything on and Plan A depend on Kane either deciding to not be an asshole or have has wicked way with us over a barrel as things get desperate so that is a none starter , that leaves Plan D which if we advance it far enough has Kane coming to us on his begging us to stay with bribes of shines giving us access to Plan A++ were we get have our wicked way with Kane for all his worth
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes, that's my point, though I think you may be over-optimistic about the chance of getting Kane's cooperation. Among other things, I'm pretty sure by this point that he could build a working interplanetary spaceship with minimal effort. Presumably he needs something interstellar, interdimensional, or otherwise 'above and beyond.'
My further objections to this... insulting fucking strawman you have constructed in your righteous fury against things that do not exist... are as follows:
...
All plans discussed relegate CRP to the very bottom of the barrel of our emergency food supplies. This has been called E-CRP; it's in Infrastructure. Under these plans, under any circumstance where Little Timmy is eating CRP, it is because of some horrific disaster that has overtaken GDI. Something so dire that we are so far into the negatives on Food that we cannot get back up into the positives before reaching the very bottom of our stockpile- a stockpile that will contain at least 23 units of other Stored Food.
In other words, under any plan anyone has actually suggested, any scenario where Little Timmy is eating CRP is a scenario where in any previous period of the game before 2061, we'd already have millions dead from famine. It is... it feels grossly dishonest for you to present this as a certain or predictable outcome of the E-CRP project.
...
Also, Treasury has been running publishing houses to churn out large numbers of books since the summer of 2053, as documented in the 2053Q2 results post. Anyone telling Timmy that GDI has CRP but hasn't "allocated enough resources for more than one book a decade" is either speaking a full decade after some future apocalypse that blasts us back down to pre-2053 levels (which were pretty fucked up levels), or is just plain lying about GDI, maliciously, about a fairly basic and well known fact.
...
Assuming there hasn't been a Tib War III level multi-apocalypse cluster, Little Timmy is eating CRP when no one in GDI is being expected to eat CRP aside from a handful of paid taste-testers and a handful doing it on a bet or dare. You know who is eating CRP on a semi-regular basis? Nod.
Also, his parent or guardian is lying to him and telling him that GDI's Treasury doesn't print books when that isn't true and probably hasn't been true during Little Timmy's lifetime, given that Little Timmy is 'Little' (presumably a prepubescent boy) but also clearly living some time in the 2060s or later.
The most charitable in-world explanation for Little Timmy's experience is that he is living around 2075 in some horrific timeline where something really bad happens in the early 2060s and all quest participants who haven't had a lobotomy drop out and leave only the morons and the edgelords to make all subsequent plans, so that people are still eating CRP over a decade after the apocalypse, and no publishing houses have been re-reopened.
The most parsimonious in-world explanation for Little Timmy's experience is that he is being raised in an abusive home by a pathological liar trying to fill him full of Nod propaganda. Incompetently. And with connections to Nod supply chains, because where the fuck else would they be getting CRP to feed Timmy when it is not planned for distribution for human consumption barring an apocalypse.
If Little Timmy is anywhere within GDI borders, I recommend calling InOps, Child Protective Services, or both.
- Location
- Africa
the GM has explicitly stated that if we can get over 20 million population in space Kane will have no choice but to cut a deal with GDI rather than what happen in cannon(in the game which shall not be named) where straight up was dictating terms and the more pops in space we have the better our bargaining position
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- Location
- Wall Gazing
I'd subdivide Plan C into:
Plan C-1: A kludged together TCN from broken visitor tech, hopes and dreams.
Plan C-2: Getting a bunch of Mutant Psychics together in a Hivemind to pray really hard at the green death rock.
Plan C-3: Some combination of the above.
Not to say that 'screw you, baldy, I'll make my own with blackjack and hookers' isn't a succinct overview of those options.
To focus on the argument you constructed, I agree with your conclusion. However, while there isn't a Service project that can do anything explicitly for either Food production or storage, there is a project that can mitigate the effects of CRP and E-CRP if we choose to take those options. Sports Programs would do a lot to mitigate the political costs of E-CRP. This doesn't subtract from your conclusion as the dice cost is not so severe that Portals and Sports Programs cannot both be completed. In fact I think your most recent plan proposal included both of them with each having a chance of finishing this coming turn.
- Location
- New England
Mechanically, this is correct. I'm pretty amused at how this would work out narratively:
"After a hard day spent playing laserball, I've got a hankering for a compressed E-CRP-brand powerbar with seasoning packet #34. Keeps me fit and playing!" -pro sports player in advertisement, probably
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Less that he has to cut a deal and more we'll be the ones dictating favourable terms rather than the other way around as was the case in canon or rather, getting a sustainable population in space gives us leverage in any TCN deal.
BoSPaladin
The Paladin
You go to a ballgame and there's regular potato based handheld salty food snacks?
Plus it does incentivize him to come to us with this option so we don't go leaving him on a dying ruined world as Tiberium explodes around him. A very real possibility for him from his perspective.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think it was more like "if you get twenty million people in space that will influence his decision-making process significantly." I hesitate to draw exact conclusions about where the break points are, without recalling Ithillid's exact words. Furthermore, Kane is a wily one and I always, always hesitate to assume that any specific thing we can do will allow us to totally get the advantage over him.
I already mentioned the multiple options for Plan C, but was, yes, trying to be succinct in describing Plan C.
Yes. At the same time, since KnightDisciple is so fiercely opposed to E-CRP on principle, not merely because of the practical fact of it having a Political Support cost. So if KnightDisciple were to get his way, there would be no E-CRP and thus no need to compensate for the Political Support costs.
Eh.
We won't be advertising it because we don't even want anyone to eat it. It's emergency rations for the most emergent of emergencies ever to emerge.
More realistically, we just release the announcement that E-CRP is going into special emergency vault storage in case of Worst Nightmare on the GDI equivalent of C-SPAN... During the first round of televised football matches in recent GDI history.
No one will be paying any attention.
Very few things would please me more than to learn that we've given him nightmares about this.Plus it does incentivize him to come to us with this option so we don't go leaving him on a dying ruined world as Tiberium explodes around him. A very real possibility for him from his perspective.
Nah, we'll just drop it on the press releases page of our website in a "misc" category of little importance during the first round of sportsball games in likely 30+ years. Everyone might miss the notice that way.More realistically, we just release the announcement that E-CRP is going into special emergency vault storage in case of Worst Nightmare on the GDI equivalent of C-SPAN... During the first round of televised football matches in recent GDI history.
No one will be paying any attention.
--
So, I started working through the Quest to locate vehicle introductions/upgrades. I skimmed through one pass already, probably need to do at least one more.
Interesting note - If Slingshots are still in use in 2052+, it appears they have not gotten the railgun replacement that most other platforms did. Q2 2052 mentions Guardian cannons (base turrets) and RIGs swapping over, mentions Mammoth tanks and Predators. Following turn "finishes" the refit, still no mention of Slingshots, just platforms with 105/152mm guns. Though given Railgun munitions is now a thing, that might change (possibly something based on the A-16's gun?), if GDI doesn't straight up replace it with something else, perhaps on a Guardian Mk II chassis or the Pacifier chassis. Or switch to a laser system instead of railgun.
Same turn (Q2 2052), the Field Artillery Development mentions 203mm cannons needing a Predator chassis for a chance at mobility rather than simply a Guardian chassis like the 152mm can use (sidenote - a 152mm SPG on Guardian chassis seems to basically be a 155mm G6 Rhino). This is the only time a possible 203mm SPG using a Predator chassis is mentioned as far as I can tell. Next time things seem to get mentioned, it's field commanders not wanting to bring smoothbore Overseers and asking for more Juggernauts and Mortar Pitbulls. So it seems that the mention is mainly "have to use at least this chassis for 203mm mount" rather than an intended design.
Ablat armor seems like it's be usable with all designs, so I noted "added ablat mount points" as a minor version for Predators, Guardians, Pitbulls, Titan Mk IIIs, and Mammoth Mk IIIs. Wolverine Mk III was designed same time as ablat armor, so I'm pretending it was designed with adding ablat in mind. Havoc post-dates Ablat dev AFAIK, so likewise presumably has whatever mount requirements baked into the design.
Fun fact - the Ferro Aluminum Armor was tested in Q2 2058, with the refit option showing up the next turn. The refit should cover Guardian Mk I, Pitbull, A-16, Wolverine Mk III, and Zone Armor. Potentially Overseer, Slingshot, Surveyor, and Rig as well. (Do harvesters have armor?) Presumably Zone Defender Revision would cover it for that particular ZA design as well.
Same turn (Q2 2052), the Field Artillery Development mentions 203mm cannons needing a Predator chassis for a chance at mobility rather than simply a Guardian chassis like the 152mm can use (sidenote - a 152mm SPG on Guardian chassis seems to basically be a 155mm G6 Rhino). This is the only time a possible 203mm SPG using a Predator chassis is mentioned as far as I can tell. Next time things seem to get mentioned, it's field commanders not wanting to bring smoothbore Overseers and asking for more Juggernauts and Mortar Pitbulls. So it seems that the mention is mainly "have to use at least this chassis for 203mm mount" rather than an intended design.
Ablat armor seems like it's be usable with all designs, so I noted "added ablat mount points" as a minor version for Predators, Guardians, Pitbulls, Titan Mk IIIs, and Mammoth Mk IIIs. Wolverine Mk III was designed same time as ablat armor, so I'm pretending it was designed with adding ablat in mind. Havoc post-dates Ablat dev AFAIK, so likewise presumably has whatever mount requirements baked into the design.
Fun fact - the Ferro Aluminum Armor was tested in Q2 2058, with the refit option showing up the next turn. The refit should cover Guardian Mk I, Pitbull, A-16, Wolverine Mk III, and Zone Armor. Potentially Overseer, Slingshot, Surveyor, and Rig as well. (Do harvesters have armor?) Presumably Zone Defender Revision would cover it for that particular ZA design as well.
- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
That sort of makes sense, but in other ways makes no sense.
I was responding to the suggestion that we delay Nod Research Initiatives for Portals, by saying that I thought we should do the Research Initiatives first. Something that you had just posted as well.
I had a caveat saying that should we somehow run out of Plan (extremely unlikely given that we have 18 dice minimum left in the Plan and that Nod RIs should only take 2 more dice), that we could (and would) still finish the Portals in Q1 next year. I was only talking about economic feasibility. I never indicated that it was desirable.
To interpret my statement as saying that we shouldn't do Portals in such a way requires the someone to conclude that doing the Nod RIs somehow lock us out of Portals this Plan for no apparent reason, and then requires the conclusion that we can't spend 100R in Services for 1 quarter at the start of the next Plan.
I spent considerable effort pointing out that we can spend 100R in Services after Reallocation if needed, for something this important, and also that we likely won't as we consider the Portals to important to not run over. (Possibly should have said we'd use free dice? But we aren't dice constrained in Services, so...)
Given how many logic leaps it takes to get from 'Nod RIs before Portals' to 'we don't need to do the Portals now', presumably you'd just assumed I was talking crazy stuff. In which case it would have made much more sense to just ask me for clarification, cos that isn't the crazy stuff I just say like that.
I usually explicitly label my crazy stuff, and put it there for discussion.
It is entirely possible that there is no difference between funding to Portals now and later though.
Assume we have a full schematic and theoretical understanding of the Visitor's Portal technology. There are still many other hurdles that we need to get over before we can use it.
1: Do we have the exotic materials that are likely needed for it?
2: Can we even manufacture the components with our level of engineering?
3: Can we power it yet?
And I've had a thought about the liquid T deadline. It might not be as bad as we think.
Because the 'adaptation' route still had to have a way of dealing with this issue, which presumably wasn't a full TCN like we might be wanting. (Or at least not the same TCN.)
So there may be multiple ways of dealing with the liquid T issue.