Re-reactionpost?
REREACTIONPOOOOST!
Developmentalists
Andrew Addams has stepped into the leadership position without too many serious challengers. While he is certainly far from the best leader the Developmentalists have had, he is also far from the worst, and the Developmentalist coalition has sat strong for much of a decade after the Hawks shattered, a testament to the flexibility and popularity of a platform that promises wealth. However, the Developmentalists are a very broad camp, primarily split along two axes: Economic, and Social.
On the economic axis, the Developmentalists hold many camps, from a few stragglers of the Marxist movements of the 19th and 20th century on the far left, to corporatists on the far right. One of the few topics that all elements agree on is the power of the government to influence the economy. Beyond that, there is little agreement, with some demanding grant programs and life support for big businesses, and others demanding a firmly centrally planned economy.
On the social axis, it is a question of rights, responsibilities, and powers. On one end of the spectrum are the levelers, working from a principle of "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." On the other, there is little concern for individual rights beyond the right to directly contract. Between are hundreds of different inclinations.
While Addams has the unenviable role of herding all of the cats into a single direction, fortunately, as the designated successor, he has seen few real attempts to challenge his leadership. Although some radicals on each end of the spectrum may stage walkouts of the party, it is unlikely to actually change the makeup, or for that matter much of the power of the Developmentalist Party. Fundamentally, the Developmentalists have held strong through the last decade, and have been in a position to dictate Initiative policy to a degree greater than ever before. And it has led to victory after victory.
To an extent, they seem to be heavily profiting from just
being big. They're so big that it's very hard to form a viable coalition government without them, and until or unless that changes, they remain very influential. No big surprises here.
Militarists
Chaeon Yong has had to forge an unsteady compromise between the branches of his party. The Militarists as a whole have been defined by what they are not. They are not Hawks, and they are not the Initiative First. They are the people unwilling to join Blue Zone chauvinism with the cause of fighting the Brotherhood of Nod with every tool in the Initiative's vast arsenal.
However, in 2061, there is something of a crisis of faith, primarily because GDI has won the most convincing victory in its history. There were defeats certainly: Damages to Initiative fleets, the destruction of the Indianapolis railway junction, the bombardment of Tokyo, the repeated devastation of GDI forces in South America, but GDI drove the Brotherhood back on nearly every front, brought one of the largest of the warlords low, and demonstrated the capability of vast swathes of the Initiative arsenal.
Yeah. The Militarists are probably feeling like Wile E. Coyote after finally catching the Roadrunner.
"What the hell am I gonna do
now?"
For Chaeon, navigating this morass of different factions has been difficult, with many of them wanting mutually incompatible goals. While he has been able to gather a reasonably strong core of supporters, he is simply not as charismatic as Al-Jilani, and has been forced to rest on a more loose confederation, rather than a centrally planned party.
We may see some fragmentation here as some members of this party join other parties now that they are more emotionally secure about GDI's ability to defeat Nod in open warfare.
Milk and Honey Protests
With the winding down of the war, GDI's successes in the field have not yet translated to a victory at home. While in the abstract the populace find the Regency War to be a satisfying reversal to the patterns of large-scale wars against the Brotherhood, in the real, a discontent that tapped from the same well of the past used by the Initiative First and the nearly broken FMP made themselves manifest. Dubbing themselves the Milk and Honey Initiative and led by a former attorney, Emil Hahn, the movement started with a core of formerly middle-high class citizens that did not regain their previous standard of living prior to the Third Tiberium War. In another time, their concerns would have been addressed by either the Free Market Party or Initiative First. With the subsequent hardline attitude of both parties towards the Treasury and the disfavor they incurred in the process, the concerns of the proto-movement went unaddressed even as they moved to different parties.
Now, however- they have found the right time to strike. The Milk and Honey Initiative have used their considerable contacts across the Initiative media and political landscape to ensure that they have been given a share of the limelight, and in doing so, grabbed the attention of the newly arrived and integrating YZ population, while at the same time pitting themselves against the Parliament and the Treasury in particular. Hahn's call for action marks the end of nearly every speech he has made: "Moreover, if the Initiative is to control the economy, give us automated communism, not barracks socialism."
While stunts like this have not endeared them to their peers with differing viewpoints, the draw of the movement is more than apparent. Though contained within a framework of broadcasted interviews and letter writing campaigns, there is a raw sense of indignant anger at the seeming neglect of administration to the people that were part of the GDI first, rather than those after. While Hahn and the persuasive core of the Initiative always prefaced their tirades as 'an equal cause to be celebrated by the new and old alike', if left unchecked and festering, it may move to an outright anti-governmental opposition. Currently, it is a relatively small organization, a few tens of thousands spread across the world. However, this is unlikely to last.
I mean, we get it, we can work on this. We can improve the civilian economy.
Litvinov
The next time Seo saw Litvinov, it was a local strategy meeting in Washington, and she was looking better. To those who knew her, she was still thin, but there was a glow to her cheeks, a bounce in her step. With the war winding down, but not over, Seo could still hear the ringing of "Dixie" even over the rumble of treads as a fresh brigade passed through Washington.
...Dixie?
"Strange times makes for strange bedfellows. People want the storybook ending. A land fit for heroes, an end to wartime constraints, and the like. There was a reason Churchill got the boot in 1945 after all."
"Well, the next plan is coming up, this one is being wrapped up well, and I expect you can get some extras done?"
"Depends on which extra you are looking at. Boston? Unlikely. But I can spend more on civil accommodations. It has been pointed out to me quite forcefully that we have spent the last few years gearing up to fight this war, not relieving the wounds of the last."
Yeah. Good news is, we have quite a lot of wiggle room in Infrastructure, Light Industry, and Services right now.
Chicago Phase 4 might be worth doing just for the Consumer Goods surge to BZ-2 and to a lesser extent across the Atlantic in Europe... if not for the need for a
lot of +Housing.
The Greedy Yellow Zoner
In Initiative First, and other organizations that oppose current government policies, a new figure has appeared, the "Greedy Yellow Zoner." Typically, these figures are a woman and several children, each one with a cart full of supplies. The caption reads "This is what you work for!" "They live on your backs!"
There is a degree of truth in this, as there is in any good lie, but in nearly every case, it is one of a few things happening. To begin with, most Yellow Zone refugees are doing a single large shopping trip within a few days of arriving at long term lodgings, with most having arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs, so they are stocking up. Beyond that they are engaging in hoarding practices, storing as much as they can, mostly of bulk nonperishables in order to save for the hard times. While most Initiative citizens do not, trusting in the ability of GDI to maintain stockpiles and reserves, for many Yellow Zoners outside of the core of the Brotherhood of Nod, it has been second nature to maintain their own stockpiles, and to keep them hidden as best as possible. The most common way has been to hide them under beds, inside closets and the like, away from immediate inspections. More rare, but decently common, is tearing up the floorboards and walls to install hidden caches.
Aaagh. Well, IF can go fuck themselves, but hopefully this will fade with time.
Starbound has put forward an incredibly aggressive goal, looking for a bare minimum of ten thousand residents in space permanently, starting with Shala and Columbia, and then rapidly expanding from there. While this is likely to be nearer to a roof than a floor in practical terms, it is red meat for their base, many of whom would rather not continue fighting the Brotherhood of Nod for the wastelands of Earth.
I honestly have no idea if we can hit the 'ten thousand' or not.
Columbia and
Shala combined get us to 4750 residents. Unless the station bays
on those stations include more big habitat modules (quite possible), we'd need to complete a project gated behind one of those. As of now,
@Ithillid has not shared information on what such projects might look like, which makes me very anxious about agreeing to this target.
The Socialists and Market Socialists have put together what they call the Restart Manifesto. While it is pushing a broad range of social and political programs, the elements that the Treasury needs to be concerned with are fundamentally requests for a series of grant and loan programs, the founding of an economic development bank, and beyond that a series of major programs focused on consumer goods and creating a major surplus of capital goods to kickstart the overall economy.
We can do that.
The FMP has made overtures to the Developmentalists, but have not made common cause. While this is almost certainly a matter of the Developmentalists internal realignments, it is likely indicating a significant softening of their stance. Instead of being a party backed primarily by the old power structure, it is likely to be an increasingly Yellow Zone party, as they are the individuals most likely to head towards the private sector in the current day and age.
Huh. Dunno what to make of it.
Yellow Zoners aren't accustomed to a big GDI government watching them and doing lots for them, so they
are going to, by inclination, be thinking more of what private individuals can do as opposed to institutions. Honestly, being in a Yellow Zone under Nod is probably more business-friendly in many ways than being in a Blue Zone under GDI. Nod often doesn't give a shit what you do as long as you praise Kane and supply whatever they need for the war effort.
The Initiative First Party has once again put forward a project list that privileges Blue Zone loyalists over all others. While they are gaining in power currently, it has become a party of protest more than anything else, a force that people turn to whenever they dislike the path of the current Initiative government. While their individual issues are typically not all too popular, in aggregate they have enough support to be problematic.
This isn't
good, but we can keep it manageable by doing well. Initiative First are bigots but not the kind that pose a credible threat of a fascist coup attempt or anything, so as long as the government does a good job. We shouldn't freak out too much about them, especially if FMP is starting to turn into "the party of having a respectable private sector" instead of "the party of giant megacorporations and a billionaire-ruled GDI."
The Brotherhood of Nod
The Regency War has effectively wound down. While some fronts, like Siberia, are still seeing higher than normal activity levels, and the Brotherhood has remained on far higher than normal nuclear preparedness levels, the end of Initiative offensives has brought much of the conflict to a close around the world. In many areas, the Brotherhood has begun attempting to deescalate local tensions, especially in South America, where Stahl has been allowing additional Tiberium harvesters through the lines, and cutting back significantly on the number of submarines he has been shipping out.
Ah-HA, I
KNEW Stahl was behind some of those submarine attacks!
Magnificent bastard.
Bet he was behind the Manchester(?) attack, the one that sank at least one of our cruisers, too.
At sea the conflict is still relatively active, although the Navy has had to pull back on many fronts. The high tempo of operations in the last year has forced maintenance deferrals, and a significant number of ships need repair and overhauls before things break and the ship becomes a liability. This has put more pressure on the merchant conversion carriers, which have managed to step up to the plate to some degree, but CVE GDS Ginebra has been mission killed. Salvage operations are already underway to pull it off the sandbar it rests on, but the battle damage it suffered prior to beaching itself makes its future seaworthiness questionable.
Pity, but at least a ship that grounded itself to avoid sinking probably didn't lose too many of the crew.
With Bintang having been chastised for going "ARRRR" too hard, and Stahl pulling in his horns after receiving a "good work" from Kane (!!!), we can afford to do this... though it's still a reflection of just how very very thin-stretched the Navy was through this war.
In the Himalayas, operations have remained at a relatively low intensity. However, losses in the close quarters tunnel fights continue to mount and seem to escalate, even with the widespread use of grenades. While so far it seems unlikely to be a critical issue, it is undermining BZ-18's overall defensive preparedness, and has increasingly isolated many of the forwardmost outposts, which rely heavily on specific tunnels and tunnel networks for reinforcement and resupply.
Yeah, the Indians may keep pecking at them.
Suborbital Shuttles may help indirectly, but if we can't get Karachi going, we're gonna have problems here. On the other hand, BZ-18 is still fighting on territory
taken from Nod since Tib War III, so the situation can't be too bad.
Going forward, the needs are both widespread and obvious. While current generation vehicles are certainly sufficient, it is an open question if they will remain that way. However, in many of the roles that they are being asked to fill, Initiative infantry and infantry equipment are not. The proliferation of heavily armed and armored gana have pushed the GD2 towards obsolescence in short order, with no feasible munition able to make a significant difference. The navy will need a significant infusion of new hulls, especially with the needs of driving fronts forward, not simply holding the line.
Well, we know what to do there.
I'm confident we can do
Ground Forces Zone Armor rollouts starting
early in 2062, with a variable amount of wiggle room to begin in 2061Q4 depending on how well we do in getting our Space Force targets out of the way. Honestly, I kinda wish we'd negotiated down to "
OSRCT Phase 3 and -5 PS" during renegotiation.
Military Priorities
Ground Forces
At the moment, the priority is primarily towards two factors. New technologies to make future weapons systems more efficient, and the mass deployment of Zone Armor to as many units as possible. While the Ground Forces are currently capable of winning nearly anywhere, it is likely to be at increasing prices as the Brotherhood standardizes around technologies and tactics that have worked in the past.
Yeah. Hopefully, Nod will stand down long enough for us to re-equip with Zone Armor.
Steel Talons
With the Mastodon in progress, the Steel Talons program at this time is focused nearly entirely on preparing for the battlefield of the future, with aims towards hover technology, advanced drone swarms, directed energy weapons, future protection programs and other methods to leverage the advantages of GDI's economy to win the long term war against the Brotherhood of Nod.
Note that Talons projects very often have civilian spinoffs. Much of the reason we even
have a +Health surplus, right now, is because of the neural operating theaters we got out of a Talons tech. We should keep trying to fund them. At least 1-2 dice every 2-3 turns.
Air Force
For the moment, while finishing the Wingman drone project is a high priority, the Air Force is reconsidering its force structure. While many elements are quite capable, some are getting quite long in the tooth, and will need fundamental upgrades to remain relevant in a battlespace primarily opposed by xenotech fighters.
That's a cue that we're gonna need the Apollo factories, just for starters. However, that is firmly a problem for
next Plan.
With new hulls coming online in the known future, and the defensive fleet's section increasingly capable, it is an open question what the navy will actually need. While finishing the existing shipyard projects is important, so is maintaining qualitative parity, so the Navy is formulating programs to improve technological capabilities, provide improved orbital fire coordination, and prepare for future designs.
Okay, that's good. They're thinking and accept that we're doing the right general things in the present moment. I still think we need to prioritize
Naval Laser Refits for 2061Q4 as something important that we'll otherwise struggle to fund in time for Karachi.
Space Force
The discovery of Scrin remnants in the Jovians has radically reoriented the Space Force's desires. Preparing Transorbital combat assets and preparing for combat in the depths of space have rocketed up the priority list, to some extent displacing the needs of supporting Earth. However, doing that will require significant investments in orbital manufacturing, lift capacity, and off-Earth resource utilization.
Space Force has a whole lot of thinking to do before they can contemplate an attack on frickin' Jupiter.
ZOCOM sees its two primary priorities as suit upgrades and the mass delivery of Zone Armor to the other branches of the military. This is an ever more pressing concern as ZOCOM anticipates that the Treasury will seek to make a broad advance into the Red Zones for harvesting purposes. ZOCOM cannot provide enough personnel to cover such operations on its own, and without Zone Armor the risk of tiberium contamination is far too great to hand off even shallow Red Zone operations to the Ground Forces. Just as importantly, ZOCOM is currently looking to rededicate itself to the deep Red Zones, and relieving it of its current heavy infantry duties elsewhere would free up the necessary manpower.
[grunt]
Well, that's blunt. We could alleviate this considerably by doing our
initial income rush with
Vein Mining in 2062 while doing the first few Zone Armor factories. But that won't be as lucrative.
Hopefully, with the impending
Red Zone Border Offensives taking place in areas where Nod warlords have already been defeated badly by definition, we'll have some wiggle room to avoid a repeat of 2055 when Reynaldo hit our operations and locked down harvesting expansions in the Red Zones for years.
Zone Recalculations
GDI's zone designations, and zone mapping, have always had key elements of estimation, and quite a bit of "good enough" in it, especially for the last decade. But with orbital surveillance and observation for the Regency War taking a new priority, along with ever more Initiative eyes on the ground, a much better picture has been emerging, and in the coming months and years, the Initiative has begun embarking on a project to better understand the actual spread of the yellow and red zones, going over old data with a fine tooth comb to eliminate the discrepancies between calculated and actual spread of Tiberium.
Hm. Someone who's been paying closer attention to those numbers than me probably has more to say.
[ ] Suborbital Shuttle Service (Phase 1)Work on the shuttle services have continued. While the physical groundside preparations are nearly complete, the shuttles themselves are something of a problem. Or, more specifically the yard time needed to refit them. With many shuttles occupied with the long, hard route to the Moon, it has been a struggle to get the manufacturing time needed to build custom wing assemblies and control surfaces, let alone mount them. However, progress is still being made, with a critical milestone being reached in late February.
The first suborbital flight by a modified shuttle with a payload (a load of drill bits to be specific) occurred on February 20, taking off from BZ-2 and landing in BZ-18, and then making a return flight later the same day, deadheading back. While more of a political stunt than an actual air bridge, the test was a practical demonstration that GDI has not given up its attempts to connect the isolated Blue Zone. However, a single load of drill bits is far from enough to meaningfully impact the course of operations in the theater.
Still, it's a good start, and strongly suggests that BZ-18 will be a major focus of the program in the early phases.
[ ] Blue Zone Apartment Complexes (Phase 3) (Updated)
A third wave of Apartment complexes will be focused on more of the Inland cities, building housing in recently claimed Blue Zones. While these will be noticeably harder to properly defend, these new clusters will become the backbone of actually developing a global interior, rather than major urban areas dotted along the coast.
(Progress 160/160: 10 resources per die) (-1 Logistics, +6 Housing)
(Progress 160/160: 10 resources per die) (-2 Logistics, +6 Housing)
(Progress 160/160: 10 resources per die) (-2 Logistics, +6 Housing) [88, 10, 85, 32, 23]
Housing construction has been a significant investment, with major construction efforts spread across the Initiative's Blue Zones. For most of these, they are new or rebuilt urban cores, in locations like Savannah, where the Initiative has driven the Brotherhood of Nod far back, and new housing construction creates opportunities not found elsewhere. While most of these urban areas are fairly spartan, little more than block after block of housing and with the only shopping being Initiative commissaries, it is something of a blank canvas in many respects, with little surviving of the old settlements that these clusters are being built over there is ample room for industrial facilities to establish themselves.
Unfortunately, many of these cities have also required significant infrastructural and logistics investments to maintain. While they are typically well linked by rails, the easiest, and cheapest way to travel has always been by boat. By adding significant numbers of rail loads to the network, while certainly far from actually straining total capacity, it has created a number of momentary traffic jams and scheduling problems, with both new and old loads running into issues. While many of these are going to be sorted out as the cities develop, it occupies slack that will not be available for priority loads.
Hmm.
You know, if we expand into enough cities like this, it may be that we reach a point where further phases of rail expansion lose that "diminishing returns" malus. Or at least it gets pushed up the line. Right now, Phases 5 and 6 are worth +4 Logistics each, but Phase 7 is only +3 for the same Progress cost. If we have more places that legitimately need expanded rail service, that may change.
Also, "priority shipments" sounds like exactly the kind of thing
Suborbital Shuttles can help with, at least for
low-bulk priority trains.
It bears noting that if we finish
Suborbital Shuttles Phase 1 (which is high-investment, low-return), then Phases 2+3 are very attractive. Even ignoring probable rollover from Phase 1, which we are
very likely to have now that we'll be adding d100+34 to a 156/200 project... Well,
Suborbital Shuttles Phase 2+3 is 450 Progress at 25 R/die for +13 Logistics.
Rail Network Construction Campaigns Phase 5+6 is 650 Progress at 15 R/die for +8 Logistics.
In terms of pure dice efficiency, of course, shuttles are giving us roughly +2.4 Logistics per die while railroads give us almost exactly +1 Logistics per die.
But
even in terms of resource efficiency, which is almost
maximally favorable to railroads given that they're a lot cheaper per die... We're paying roughly 14.4 R per point of Logistics from rails, versus 10.2 R per point from shuttles.
If we can just complete the shuttle project while we still have the budget,
it will be actively cheaper and better all around to just literally spend, say, three dice on shuttles and leave two Infrastructure dice fallow than to spend five dice on railroads. Higher return on investment in all possible forms.
That's partly because we spent a good deal of R to get to this point, of course, but still, it's wacky that we're here.
Construction and investment into CCF Plants has slowed down dramatically. While it is still a major priority, it has moved well away from the punishing pace that had been maintained to build up the Initiative military before and during the Regency War.
That slowdown has given time for a more thorough undertaking of the system. Overall, the system is very much a first generation attempt. Crude in many places, overly complicated in others, and fundamentally not wearing well. Most of the problems are in the reactor chamber itself. Already, there are patches (usually a few atoms thick at most) of radioactive gold forming on the lead walls of many of the chambers. However, even for the most extensive of the gold formation, it is years if not decades away from compromising the shielding. Still, this has meant that stepping up refits to the wartime emergency construction has taken on a whole new urgency, especially filling up the water tanks that surround the lead shielding.
Okay, so that's good news. It's not an immediate "go boom" or "irradiate urban area" problem, and our engineers clearly have some good ideas about how to keep the problem under control.
Also, we can deposit all the radioactive gold on Secretary Boyle's grave. Weirdo goldbug.
The start of the process has been relatively simple. It begins with making seeds. Seed crystals are a critical component, as they inform the way that the crystal will grow and mold as it is formed. Fortunately, rather than having to start from scratch, GDI already has some level of crystal beam laser production, and seeds from the offcuts of those crystals are being shuttled all over the world. Actually building the facilities however has not really yet started, with most sites being little more than clusters of ruins, a shell hole or two, or similar.
-_-
On the other hand, much of the funding has actually gone towards education programs, where a new generation of vocationally trained crystal engineers are being recruited. They will go through months of training in theory, and then be cycled through military production before they move onto actually making the civilian versions. At the same time, a core leadership cadre is being recruited from the military production sites, who will become site managers and shift leaders as the factories complete.
Yeah, we're gonna have to roll a lot of dice on this project in Q2 and Q3 to get it done.
Kinda wishing we
hadn't renegotiated this Plan goal; I was really hoping the rollout would be either cheaper per die, less Progress-intensive, or both.
[ ] Civilian Support Expansion (Phase 1) (New)
With the millions upon millions of new citizens needing everything from bedding to teapots, a solid round of civilian factory expansion is likely to be relatively important, and fairly cheap.
(Progress 263/250: 10 resources per die) (+6 Consumer Goods) (-1 Labor) [32, 42, 8, 85]
The rapid increase of GDI's population, to a point where most estimates put it at near parity with the Brotherhood of Nod...
Wait... we have about 600 million people now.
...Nod's probably lost as many or more people to tiberium than to us over the past 11 years, haven't they?
Ouch.
While the new goods factories have not picked up a great reputation, with user reviews being a mixed bag, and currently an unacceptably high rate of failure or other problems with quality control, these are issues that are being sorted out well below the level of the Treasury Secretary, and mostly take time and tweaking, as no two machines are entirely the same.
We may wish to keep shoveling dice into Phase 2 of this project.
Or going back to the drone project- we can in good conscience let that one sit around, but it's a +Consumer Goods project in its own right. And +4 Consumer Goods for -2 Energy and 276 Progress at 10 R/die isn't actually
that bad even before you ignore the +2 Logistics and +1 Health benefits, plus likely spinoffs and successor projects enabled by it.
In the modern day, nearly all of that experience is either pointless or counterproductive. There is no soil to be tilled, no field to plow, no need for sweeping sprinkler systems or, for that matter, a hundred other problems that machines were built to solve. Instead, it is a system of robotic arms, elevators, and cameras, all linked to a single control room. Entire cubic kilometers of production space per person, all automated from the planting to loading produce onto pallets and from there onto trucks.
Which is why it's very easy for us to flip this project back and forth from being a "same food, less workforce" project to a "more food, same workforce" project.
[ ] Freeze Dried Food Plants
Freeze Drying effectively turns most food into permanent, shelf stable systems. While building additional plants to process food in this way will be expensive, it should significantly reduce waste, and increase the lifespan of the stockpiles noticeably.
(Progress 181/200: 20 resources per die) (+5 Food, increases efficiency of stockpile actions, -1 Energy) (Will Complete Q2 2061) [6]
Autocompletion?
Oh thank God.
I will reallocate the die on freeze-drying plants to something else then, in my own plan drafts.
This has only provided further justification for the political powerplays currently ongoing, but as it seems to have little traction among the public the members of Parliament who tried this appear to have overplayed their hand. Luckily the resources dedicated to the project were not wasted; they only require disbursement as everything else has been set up. While this will take some time, time is all that will be required.
"Okay, these plants are like, actually cursed, right? So much investment in them should NOT have produced so little results! We're pushing security up, but we're also gonna get an exorcism, and...hell with it, find me a voodoo priestess and a chicken. I will make literal sacrifices to clear up this bad juju."
-Milton Gibson, GDIOnline
At this point, expendable chickens are hard to come by, so the gods may be unusually pleased by the sacrifice.
Politically, food stockpiles are a very popular idea. While more difficult and complicated than most people like to acknowledge, the mere presence of a set of canned beans is a comfort for many, and discourages independent hoarding, which can be even more disruptive. From a purely numerical perspective, simply producing excess calories is simpler, less expensive, and generally a better solution. However, that policy is also difficult to point to as GDI being ready for systematic disruption, as it is often extremely reliant on entire networks of logistical and governmental systems for function, rather than being able to be deployed by people as low-ranking as a school principal.
Hmmm, that's a fair point. Systemic disruption of GDI's infrastructure could make it very difficult for us to translate "We are at +70 Food" to "everyone actually gets beans." Distribution is a challenge. By contrast, giant piles of canned beans literally every-goddamn-where are
easy to translate into "everyone gets beans."
Though, again, I emphasize that this is a hypothetical consideration that,
by popular demand, is delaying the return of bacon and cheese.
The now developed harvesting tendrils are primarily being deployed to the Red Zone fronts, where they are already making a difference, and elsewhere are beginning to hit other bottlenecks. For example, in the Egyptian theater of operations, the cargo handling port facilities have begun to back up, with more tiberium being churned through them than they can handle. While their coverage is not nearly as good, the new harvesters are much more thorough, with a ten to fifteen percent increase in time to regrowth in the allotments being harvested by the new tendril harvesters compared to the older models, although they are also much more harvester intensive, with the harvesters filling up quite rapidly.
Hm. Faster tiberium regrowth from a harvested area... which from the Visitors' perspective wasn't a downside, but is a problem for us since we
like completely routing out the deposits. On the other hand, we still have the means to harvest the old way where and as needed.
Still, the excellent performance of the new tendril harvesters have seen BZ-2 mate a dozen of the vehicles with the 836th Transport Squadron's V-35s, which fly them to new tiberium breaches to clear out the tiberium contamination and prepare the ground for a new spike or other containment system every few days. While it does put extra strain on the transport aircraft, it has given them an elegant means of responding to outbreaks deep in the uninhabited areas that form much of the Blue Zone.
Nice... though it's a bit chilling to hear the eastern parts of North America as having many "uninhabited areas."
The Brotherhood of Nod's harvesters are a mix of the very conventional, and the very strange. It takes an opposite approach to the Initiative: Dragging the harvesting equipment behind it and using a pair of digging claws to break crystals and kick them up into a hopper. Some parts are extremely conventional, like the dual arms, using much the same technology pioneered over a century ago by Vaino J Holopainen and Roy E Handy, Jr. On the other hand, the actual digging parts are significantly more advanced; a requirement given their purpose. The key is in materials science, and within that there are a number of different solutions. The simplest ones are boron carbide‑silicon carbide ceramics, relatively conventional materials, although usually deposited by use of high energy laser onto the primary blade. For others, it is a fair bit more complicated, effectively using zrbite alloyed blades that are electroplated with a thin layer of Adamant, much like GDI's Tiberium glass designs.
For the Initiative currently, it is the more conventional designs that are the most likely way forward. While they don't last nearly as long as the zrbite alloy blades, they produce much less wear on other parts of the system, as vibrations do not only impact the joint between the arm and the blade, but also the other joints as the vibrations echo up the arm. However, the core technology is more broadly useful, effectively creating a superior cutting edge due to the vibrations and the superhard exterior.
Interesting. I look forward to seeing where this is useful.
If it's good enough in vein mining applications, we may want to consider a shift in focus and just do a shitload of vein mines in 2062Q1-Q2, to give Zone Armor factory rollouts some time to take pressure off ZOCOM and let us
really kick into high gear with the
Super Glacier Mines.
A meme plan that throws 14 dice at vein mining, assuming
no increased efficiency here, would be good for six phases of vein mines in theory, or +150 RpT, which is nothing to sneeze at for single-turn income increase. And it would let ZOCOM relax and unclench.
However, the other half of the construction project is habitation and life support. The housing areas being built are still more worker barracks than proper homes. Each person gets a single room, little bigger than a prison cell. Beyond that, everything else is done in communal areas. While some people have lived on the station for years, most are on three and six month cycles, spending about half their time on the surface. However, this is not unusual, and GDI has decades of this kind of living, and for that matter, more luxurious living exists on the Philadelphia.
You gotta be some kind of crazy to want to work here! Long hours, bad quarters, hard work-work so hard you just wanna fall into your bunk and sleep most days, and you'd better get used to sounds and motion! There's always some noise coming in through the hull. "There is no sound in space" Bullshit there isn't! You can hear goddamn everything-the extruders, the smelters, the welding crews, worksuits and shuttles docking and undocking, the whole nine yards. Only time I ever get any quiet is when I'm buttoned up for my shift, and even then there's always the suit making noise.
So why do I work here? Two reasons: because I believe in the work, and I eat like a king! Join the orbital construction corps for two eggs, two slices of turkey bacon, and a slice of pie every day!
Jabulani Anders, Worker on the Enterprise.
Well, that's something.
Hopefully our second-generation stations, built post-
Columbia, will have better living conditions. Certainly, post-
Shala, the food will be better.
The rare metals mines have begun producing a number of trace ores. While sourcing these materials from Tiberium is far easier than mining them on the Moon, if the worst of the doomsaying is realized to be true, GDI will need to relearn how to use these minerals from other sources.
...We are now considering "inability to continue mining tiberium" as a form of
doomsaying.
Additionally, with the teams mostly deployed instead of setting up to deploy, the temporary problems created by the drumbeat of development in the last quarter have eased up somewhat. While it is still harsh and poor by the standards that many of the more idealistic branch of Starbound aspire to, the complaints at least have slackened.
Well, that's good. We'll work on improved living conditions in the next Plan.
Around the prepared landing pads, networks of quarries have begun reshaping the lunar surface. Even so, they are distinctly small scale, a few dozen kilometers in area total. Instead, the biggest implications are political. Starbound, seeing the completion of their goals incoming at least six months before reallocation, has begun serious lobbying to again preserve lunar mineral income for the Treasuries' use. While they are receiving noticeable pushback, especially from the other departments, it is likely that they will be able to pass it once again. Fortunately, the military, led by the Space Command has been pushing for it too, seeing the Treasury as being key to building up towards orbital monitors and eventually actual spaceships capable of taking the fight to the outer system in case of a second Scrin invasion.
This is very good news for us... Although the catch is that we're going to have to
spend that money to keep up the implicit bargain. No leaving Orbital dice fallow. We can probably get away with doing
Orbital Cleanup and neat stuff like that in 2062Q1 or something, but we need to have an early start on our Plan goals in 2062 to
use all the moon mining income Treasury has helpfully saved for us.
The fourth and final issue is that right now GDI is footing the bill for all of it, but if professional sports is to maintain itself successfully it will need to be able to support itself financially, at least for the most part.
Somehow, I don't think that'll be a problem, once we get the ball rolling and provide grants for "make sports paraphernelia" factories.
The first breakthrough has actually been in a recently developed system, specifically in the field of Hardlight systems. With the Initiative now knowing what to look for, a further pass over the remaining Scrin systems has resulted in a far better understanding of their shield projectors. While replicating them at full power is far beyond the Initiative's ability at this time, they do have significant implications for the ability to produce low power shields and Hardlight systems projected beyond a bowl. It is reputed that the laboratory in question has already produced and attempted to duel with a pair of lightsaber-like devices, but as of yet no hard evidence has been found of their existence.
Advanced hardlight. Nice. And potential further advancements in shield technology.
Lightsaber duels in the research labs were inevitable.
Second is harvested from the Scrin networks. What seems to be a black boxed artificial stupid for lack of a better term, it appears to be a relatively complicated priority management and navigation system for drone control. While controlling drone swarms is something that has been experimented with for the last half century and beyond, it can still be a very limited and finicky task, one that hopefully this advanced control system is able to make practical on a battlefield or strategic operational level.
Charming, and with a lot of potential. And if it's incomprehensible and alien enough, Nod may struggle to hack it!
(Nod will hack the shit out of it, won't they)
Finally, spurred on by the discovery of Scrin still in the system, multiple functioning transceiver units have been found. The Scrin do, after all, talk to each other, and one of the ways that they do that is by using transceiver units in both narrow and broad speaking patterns. While GDI sensors have historically not been able to track these effectively, their hidden signals interspersed with Tiberium interference, it is possible, if not likely, for GDI to be able to track any active Scrin signatures across the system using this method. Even less likely, although theoretically possible to attempt, is hiding a GDI ship's identity using one of these transceivers, and using that to bypass defenses on Scrin ships and bases that remain in the system.
While that latter trick, the
Independence Day gambit, will probably only work once... Well, if we're careful we can make that one attempt really count.
The results are interesting. While clearly not a large-scale base, approximately half the average size of the ones built during the Scrin incursion, it is built around a gateway. The base currently appears thoroughly inactive, being nearly the same temperature as the Europan surface, but it is a significant potential risk if it can communicate to the outside universe. While details are a little difficult to make out, much of the base seems to be resting on a low power mode, emitting little enough that the first automated pass registered it as being nothing more than an unusual terrain feature. It was only when humans began sweeping the area that it became obvious that there was a base there.
Hmmmm. That strongly suggests that the Visitors
aren't doing a ton of busy-busy-bee von Neumann machine work. It sounds more like they left a facility there during the invasion, something it would be inconvenient to have running on Earth where it might get shot at by uppity locals, and then when GDI hulked out and stormed the Threshold towers, whoever (if anyone) is left alive on that base was left with no way to get home and no way to expand their base into something that
could get home.
Though they might still have the means to communicate with the rest of the Visitor civilization. Not good, if true.
The parliament however has been informed of the discovery, but at this time has not yet formulated a response. The most likely answer is an endorsement of rapid development of a space military, although it is still unknown whether or what they are willing to sacrifice in pursuit of the ability to project force to the moons of Jupiter.
Yeah, I figured.
[ ] Escort Carrier Shipyards (High Priority)
As GDI has a vast need for escort carriers, there are two tracks. First is simply building a number of supporting elements to build carriers between supporting the battleships. Second is building a number of dedicated shipyards for their production. While both will require substantial infrastructural investments, the former is substantially cheaper than the latter
-[ ] New York (Progress 0/240: 20 resources per die) (-5 Energy, -2 Capital Goods) (Nat 1) [1, 85]
The New York carrier shipyard is technically speaking in Brooklyn, a new part of an ever-expanding complex of shipbuilding assets. However, the project seems to have been completely cursed, with delay after delay ranging from the practical to the symbolic. In late February, all such delays became completely academic, with a large-scale tiberium outbreak punching through right between two of the slipways, and smaller outbreaks compromising two other buildings on the site. While nobody died, two workers were injured when their crane was consumed by tiberium, and the site was comprehensively compromised.
The 836th Transport Squadron brought one of the first tiberium containment units on the scene, with their novel harvesters able to contain one of the smaller outbreaks and fight it back to the point where a trio of harvesters could maintain a constant harvest on the exposed vein within the first day of operations. The rest were dedicated to fighting the main outbreak. While by the end of the quarter the outbreak was contained, it has made the site nonviable, with multiple Tiberium spikes situated in places that are at best difficult to work around, and at worst sitting in the middle of a drydock.
"Archeological sites, Union rules that date back to 1910, NIMBY pushback from the local arcology dwellers who don't want to look at a shipyard, now we can't get enough fucking porta-potties and fencing because the main distribution hub is backed up on orders-what next, is a Tiberium vein gonna blow through the middle of my construction site?
- Arnold Burton, two weeks before a Tiberium vein did blow through the middle of his construction site.
Oh God my sides.
Well, guess we're back to the drawing board there.
-[ ] Dublin (Progress 242/240: 20 resources per die) (-5 Energy, -2 Capital Goods) [97, 93]
The Dublin bay has been extensively reclaimed, piles of rubble driven into the sea, with grand quays expanding out beyond that. The navy yard is technically speaking in Howth, taking over a pair of long abandoned golf courses to serve as the primary fabrication areas, with the yard jutting into the northern aspect of the bay. Dublin has been a gracious host to the thousands of construction workers, with a steady stream of temporary workers and a small but noticeable boost to naval recruitment. Progress was incredibly fast, especially as the local bureaucracy made every possible effort to get out of the way, with the areas already seeing road and services connections before the first of the workers arrived on the site.
Compare, contrast.
Luck of the Irish, I guess?
🍀
-[ ] Nagoya (Progress 243/240: 20 resources per die) (-5 Energy, -2 Capital Goods) [31]
Nagoya has more limped over the finish line than sprinted. While the resources poured into it have been significant, it has also run into noticeable problems, with the biggest being fuel. When Bintang bombarded Tokyo, she managed to destroy significant parts of the total fuel reserve for the Blue Zone. That has had significant knock on effects, especially with the Air Force, always a voracious consumer, stepping up antisubmarine operations this quarter. This required thousands of extra flight hours in order to suppress Bintang's operations across the Eastern Pacific, with the Navy also pushing additional hydrofoil patrols out to intercept smaller submersibles. In turn, that significantly choked off the spare fuel supplies for Treasury operations, including the shipyard. However, that has proven to only result in a few weeks delay in the opening of operations, as the work crews were still able to finish despite operating on shorter shifts and with smaller drone swarms than usual.
Hey, at least it's done.
[ ] Mastodon Heavy Assault Walker Deployment (New) (High Priority)
Building major Mastodon production facilities in Carentan and Wonsan will construct the core of the long term heavy industrial sites for the Steel Talons. Located to support still open battle fronts, GDI expects them to last for years, and be close enough for the Mastodons to walk cross country rather than stressing rail networks with special trains.
(Progress 113/225: 10 resources per die) (-3 Energy, -1 Capital Goods, -1 Labor, -1 STU) [39, 22]
It occurs to me that if just the production lines for relatively small numbers of Mastodons are eating -1 STU, then we have no reasonable hope of deploying STU-based materials in sufficient quantity for the whole military ground force to build vehicles around them (e.g. Visitor-tech hovertanks).
At least, barring some really great tech for getting more STU out of the same amount of tiberium.
Hallucinogen countermeasures are a multivarious problem. While there are certainly means of filtering out the gas, none meet all the criteria needed for a practical response. Various forms of wet filtration, for example, do not hold up long without maintenance, and asbestos based filters are almost more dangerous to the user than what they would protect from...
In the short term, I should think not, but in the long term, yes if you have to keep breathing through them.
The second potential line, long term prophylaxis, also suffers from significant problems. While the side effects are certainly manageable, it is difficult to prevent hallucinogens from binding, especially without significantly impacting neurotransmitters in general. In testing, all options that had shown effect on cultured cells ran directly into problems with bad dreams, depression, manic episodes, and a wide variety of mood swings caused by the drugs as side effects.
Yeah, go figure. Hard to protect your brain chemistry from an invasive drug without also protecting it from, say, "basic common sense."
Third and fourth are short term prophylaxis and treatment. Here, there has been more progress. While immediate prophylaxis is the easiest, with a newly designed counter agent able to bind directly to the hallucinogen, it unfortunately does not stick around in the system, being filtered out by the kidneys in all tested individuals. This means that taking it directly before or during combat is the best approach.
Frankly, that's what I was hoping for. Nod's hallucinogen gases are the greatest threat as a weapon for overpowering small forces of defenders at critical points in high-intensity combat. Having something you can use as a counter-agent, even for a few hours per does, is a big step up, because you can jab yourself with it as soon as you know there's a firefight coming.
As for treatment, there are a few possible antipsychotics that will help quite a bit. While they do not keep soldiers in the fight, if taken immediately upon exposure, it will reduce them to a relatively compliant zombie-like state until the effects of the hallucinogens have worn off, where they can be safely escorted out of the fight to recover.
Well, having the soldiers who get hit dosed up on thorazine (or whatever) instead of shooting their buddies is an improvement I guess.
While the last quarter mainly had problems, this quarter saw solution after solution, with the selection of only the fittest designs, and the ones that would be easiest to bring to the field. The shells selected for the larger caliber guns are beehive, explosive, and shrapnel. However, for the smaller railguns a much larger profusion of rounds is being made available. The most important here are the incendiary and high explosive incendiary rounds, which will take a burst from poking holes little bigger than a pre-tiberium coin, to punching holes bigger than a fist.
Nice.
In terms of deployment, it is likely to be a substantial set of constructions, especially as GDI's next generation vehicles transition entirely or nearly entirely over to railguns. While refitting and expanding the munitions production chain to provide the required supply of railgun munitions will not require much investment per factory, there are many factories to refit, or replace entirely.
Hm. Sounds like a big 10 R/die project, hopefully. Something we can sink our teeth into in 2062 along with (I devoutly hope) the ferro-aluminum refits (which if we aren't gonna do them in 2062Q1-2, we probably will never do at all).
One of the bigger problems left to be solved is with variable fused ammunition or other smart munitions. The current designs have shown unacceptably high failure rates, as between failure to separate, failure to deploy, failure to arm, and failure to detonate, only a very small fraction function properly. A big part of the problem is the electromagnetic flux involved, along with the friction of the whole system.
Yeah, the gun is basically EMP-frying the fuzing system; I can't imagine that being a realistically surmountable problem. We'll just have to keep using missiles for smart munitions.
[ ] Conduct Economic Census
It has been over a decade since GDI took a comprehensive census of its economic affairs outside of its own industrial efforts. With taxation becoming an ever more noticeable part of the Initiative's economic base, a better understanding of the people and companies is likely advantageous.
(DC 100/150/200/250) (346) [25, 99, 69, 69, 8]
The simplest word for the civilian economy is pathetic. It exists, but it has struggled to take shape into something that can actually compete to any meaningful degree. While the roots and routes of this problem are complex, and oftentimes tangential, there are broadly four key overlapping problems:
1) Competition for highly qualified labor.
2) Lack of circulating investment capital.
3) Lack of sufficient access to capital goods for digitalization and automation of systems.
4) Lack of overall liquidity.
Okay, we can solve (2) and (4), and frankly Parliament is likely to solve those problems for us during reapportionment. (3) is a problem well within our wheelhouse: produce more Capital Goods. Probably a sign that we're gonna be asked to finally finish
North Boston Phase 5 next Plan, which may not be a bad thing because it's a good way to use Heavy Industry dice that doesn't cost much per die.
To begin with, there is the labor force. For the vast majority of the graduates of the Initiative's schools and universities, the next step is joining one of the Initiative's branches, and slowly working their way up the seniority ladder. While slow, it is also a fairly safe route, at least so long as the graduate is not pinned with a particularly major screwup. This has meant that many of the workers are either building skills and experience to make up for testing poorly or not getting the Initiative job that they actually want, and then jumping ship when they can, rather than staying and forming a core experienced workforce. Or they are simply lower quality overall for one reason or another. This has slowed the growth of companies generally, and has especially impacted smaller companies, which can't offer the incentives to stay that a larger one can.
I'm a bit confused about what's going on here, how it becomes such a problem for the private sector, and how to fix it... oh.
Oh, I see.
People are taking private sector jobs
and then deserting to work public-sector. Huh.
Still, I see now why the incoming Yellow Zone refugees are, to the probable surprise of some of us, likely to vote FMP in 2064 at this rate. At the same time, I also see why we should start thinking of FMP as not just an enemy, because they're no longer just "the party of megacorps." They're "the party of even having a civilian economy instead of centrally planned toothbrushes."
