Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Simon_Jester · May 31, 2021

Shard of Victory said:
I am not trying to covince anyone, since I'm well avare that my persuative power is less than zero. I attempt to provide oposition, and remind people about less mechanical effects of grants - mainly lining the pockets of people willing and eager to use this money to subvert current democracy and manipulate government to further enrich themselves.

I think you overstate the ability of 15-30 Resources per turn to bring about this result.

Shard of Victory said:
I would love this to be true, but hasn't author mentioned FM party being in pockets of corporations? You kinda need to have corportions to be in their pockets. I presumed that they are still there, sustained by billionare wealth.

GDI has been running under total war and/or planetary emergency conditions for at least 30-40 years. There is no way they survived this long without taxing billionaire wealth as close to "into the ground" as possible.

I strongly suspect that the Free Market Party, while maintaining cordial relationships with whatever corporate interests survive, is mainly functional because of a very real and genuine grassroots constituency that wants to restart the economy because they want toothbrushes.

Twiggierjet · May 31, 2021

deleted

Shard of Victory · May 31, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
I think you overstate the ability of 15-30 Resources per turn to bring about this result.

I mean that's enough resources to build cities and continental railroads, so... Not really?

Simon_Jester said:
GDI has been running under total war and/or planetary emergency conditions for at least 30-40 years. There is no way they survived this long without taxing billionaire wealth as close to "into the ground" as possible.

On one hand, good point, on the other, this guy exists:

Ithillid said:
John Henry Morgan
John Henry Morgan, a self described "Ultracapitalist" was born in the 1980s, and inherited his father's Tiberium mining concern in 2000. John Henry, and his adopted brother Nwabudike, turned the relatively small mine into a sprawling buisness empire throughout the first two decades of the 21st century. With interests ranging from consumer electronics to Becoming the richest man in the world in 2020, he lost his brother and his company in 2027, the former to NOD attacks, and the latter to GDI's nationalization program. He has spent the last twenty three years being a buzzing gadfly in the Initiative's political sphere, using his still grand fortune as leverage to attempt to bring back market solutions to the many problems facing the

Like he has fortune to use, so billionare wealth seems to be fine.

Crazycryodude · May 31, 2021

Twiggierjet said:
Also, while we are on the subject, I think we should also look into building the craft/maker facilities at some point. Letting people just make their own goods would take a lot of pressure off of us, if not mechanically then at least narratively speaking.

I think we can fit it in by the end of the year pretty easily, next turn even if we want to use free dice. Our Tib security review turned up people taking home sheets of steel or whatever to make their own frying pans in their garages, the bare minimum we can do is set up an official pipeline for materials and tools that people can do that with instead of embezzling industrial materials from work. It's cheap, it uses dice we have a big bonus to, and it gets us political support I'm all aboard with the maker shops.

Lightwhispers · May 31, 2021

Shard of Victory said:
But you already do that? You are math man, not me. You have posted multiple times how grants are ineficient, you don't need me parroting your talking point. But someone needs to have some sort of ideological backbone and not be detached technocrat. And if people spite-vote, well, that just means that they value their spite that much more than both logical and emotional arguments.

The point being made is that you are pushing ideology that is detached from the reality of the situation, so that it comes across as not only being ideologically motivated, but also sabotaging our efforts to (re)build a functional society. When you push an agenda that is only tangentially related to the actual situation, you're going to make people hostile to your agenda. If you continue to do so, I will conclude that you are intentionally trolling.

Shard of Victory said:
I would love this to be true, but hasn't author mentioned FM party being in pockets of corporations? You kinda need to have corportions to be in their pockets. I presumed that they are still there, sustained by billionare wealth.

Corporatists, yes. Corporations, not really - they were all nationalized. The Third Tiberium War fucked everything up. It's also worth noting that the Free Market party kicked out John Henry Morgan, who is now an Independent, for being too capitalist. So, a certain amount of wealth remains, but the corporations they used to grow their wealth (and oppress people) do not.

Twiggierjet said:
Also, while we are on the subject, I think we should also look into building the craft/maker facilities at some point. Letting people just make their own goods would take a lot of pressure off of us, if not mechanically then at least narratively speaking.

Oh, yeah. Once we have free dice available for non-crunchtime things, that's definitely on the docket. Especially with the budget crunch next year, which will make low-R-cost dice attractive.

Twiggierjet · May 31, 2021

deleted

Derpmind · May 31, 2021

Something we should consider for next turn: Do we want to start Power Grid Reconstruction? We could try to push through finishing the Capital Goods shortage without it, but it'd leave us with 1 Energy left; close to running out and not enough to build anything that needs energy, including our military factories.. Or, given we've delayed the potential collapse even more, we could instead get more Energy to use in future turns.

And I don't think Yellow Zone Power Grid Extension is a good replacement. It only gives a paltry amount of energy, and while it's cheap it'll still cost around 4 or 5 dice. For that many dice we'd be halfway towards Blue Zone Power Grid's +++++ Energy. Not that we don't have reasons to do it, but the ++ Energy this project phase gives isn't worth it on its own.

marids · May 31, 2021

Derpmind said:
Something we should consider for next turn: Do we want to start Power Grid Reconstruction? We could try to push through finishing the Capital Goods shortage without it, but it'd leave us with 1 Energy left; close to running out and not enough to build anything that needs energy, including our military factories.. Or, given we've delayed the potential collapse even more, we could instead get more Energy to use in future turns.

And I don't think Yellow Zone Power Grid Extension is a good replacement. It only gives a paltry amount of energy, and while it's cheap it'll still cost around 4 or 5 dice. For that many dice we'd be halfway towards Blue Zone Power Grid's +++++ Energy. Not that we don't have reasons to do it, but the ++ Energy this project phase gives isn't worth it on its own.

Makes sense to me. Yellow Zone Power may be cheaper, but offers far less overall when comparing total potential benefit over cost.

If the value of + doubles every addition, then the value of Blue Zone Power Grid at +++++ is 24-31, while the value of Yellow Zone at ++ is from 2-3.

Then if accounting for a ratio of benefit over cost in both resources and time for both options, it would be (24-31)/(10 resources x 500-25 completion) vs (2-3)/(5 resources x 300-74 completion), or 0.005-0.0065 vs 0.0018-0.0027. Thus mathematically the Blue Zone Power Grid is just more cost efficient in both resources and time spent vs the Yellow Zone Power Grid option.

That and it also makes sense to tackle the longer and more expensive option before the resource allocation occurs and funding is reduced.

Shard of Victory · May 31, 2021

Twiggierjet said:
Also, if you want a plan quest where the economy in question is a socialist one, blackstar's USSR plan quest and rockeye's plan quests are right there. You aren't exactly being starved of content catering to your tastes.

First, Blackstar's quest are betraying the revolution this very update, and considering that it's USSR quest, from socialism there were only mouth noises to begin with. Second, Rockeye's Chelsca is bad copy of USSR with magic, so it has exact same problems of crushing people under wheels of industry for the glory of state capitalism number go up. This is the only planquest where needs of the people are even given consideration IC. So yes, I am starving for content "catering" to my tastes, because my tastes are not people dying for the sake of vaguely red imperialist state.

Novi · May 31, 2021

marids said:
Makes sense to me. Yellow Zone Power may be cheaper, but offers far less overall when comparing total potential benefit over cost.

If the value of + doubles every addition, then the value of Blue Zone Power Grid at +++++ is 24-31, while the value of Yellow Zone at ++ is from 2-3.

Then if accounting for a ratio of benefit over cost in both resources and time for both options, it would be (24-31)/(10 resources x 500-25 completion) vs (2-3)/(5 resources x 300-74 completion), or 0.005-0.0065 vs 0.0018-0.0027. Thus mathematically the Blue Zone Power Grid is just more cost efficient in both resources and time spent vs the Yellow Zone Power Grid option.

That and it also makes sense to tackle the longer and more expensive option before the resource allocation occurs and funding is reduced.

I am all for some sort of power option soon, but I want to point out Yellow Zone Power gets the UYP more seats, as more of the yellow zones get electricity. It has political benefits as well as mechanical ones.

Completely seperate, I also want to chime in on the grants issue. My original stance was to wait until we were in a better spot with resources before pulling the trigger, the efficiency argument, etc.

Now I can confidently say I will never vote for a plan that offers grants, period, at any point in the quest. Full Spite mode here. I am thoroughly annoyed by the unnecessarily ideological bent the Free Market posters are taking, as well as their persistance in pushing this issue at such a critical time. The mechanical and efficiency-related justifications for the no-grant side have been reiterated, several times, by multiple people, but the Free Marketers insist on being unnecessarily aggressive and dismissive towards everyone who has a different view of how this quest should be. It's incredibly annoying.

Lightwhispers · May 31, 2021

Derpmind said:
Something we should consider for next turn: Do we want to start Power Grid Reconstruction? We could try to push through finishing the Capital Goods shortage without it, but it'd leave us with 1 Energy left; close to running out and not enough to build anything that needs energy, including our military factories.. Or, given we've delayed the potential collapse even more, we could instead get more Energy to use in future turns.

And I don't think Yellow Zone Power Grid Extension is a good replacement. It only gives a paltry amount of energy, and while it's cheap it'll still cost around 4 or 5 dice. For that many dice we'd be halfway towards Blue Zone Power Grid's +++++ Energy. Not that we don't have reasons to do it, but the ++ Energy this project phase gives isn't worth it on its own.

Probably a good idea. We can work on Capital Goods (and maybe Consumer Goods, too) through LCI, while putting our Heavy Industry dice towards the BZ Power. Although we'll also want to put a couple HI dice towards the Leopard construction yard.
And we will be able to come close to finishing our mitigation target next turn. 3-4 dice on YZ Harvesting, the rest on BZ fencing, will get us 4 more, and enough progress on the fencing to finish it the last turn.

Shard of Victory said:
First, Blackstar's quest are betraying the revolution this very update, and considering that it's USSR quest, from socialism there were only mouth noises to begin with. Second, Rockeye's Chelsca is bad copy of USSR with magic, so it has exact same problems of crushing people under wheels of industry for the glory of state capitalism number go up. This is the only planquest where needs of the people are even given consideration IC. So yes, I am starving for content "catering" to my tastes, because my tastes are not people dying for the sake of vaguely red imperialist state.

I refuse to be sympathetic to you taking out your dislike for other quests on this one. If you really need something customized to your tastes, write your own.

Crazycryodude · May 31, 2021

I kinda want Heavy Industry to stay working on the fusion spacecraft yards because they're expensive yet vital, the past few turns have really turned me into a space partisan. The explosive income growth we saw from Tiberium mining and refilling supply chains disrupted by the war got us through the first FYP pretty well, but soon enough we're going to run into the limits of our refining capacity and even though we can build more I expect it will slow down our income growth curve a lot when we have to stop and keep doing expensive refinery projects instead of blasting straight through like 4 stages of Glacier Mining.

Resources from space OTOH face no such limit, or at least a different limit than Tiberium income. Early on there's a cheap and easy source of pre-refined industrial materials just collecting and reprocessing space junk, no need for expensive infrastructure beyond the Enterprise and enough fusion space trucks to keep the Enterprise busy. Take some of that income for projects on the surface and invest the rest into more sustainable space income like asteroid mining and we're golden, but the whole snowball is predicated on us having enough fusion ships to make the trips up and down the gravity well painless.

Of course we can do the fusion yards and the power plants pretty easily, it would just require Free dice but it's probably worth it to throw a couple Free dice at Heavy Industry as long as the Tiberium math isn't too tight.

Derpmind · May 31, 2021

marids said:
If the value of + doubles every addition, then the value of Blue Zone Power Grid at +++++ is 24-31, while the value of Yellow Zone at ++ is from 2-3.

Ithillid said:
A note on designations. Plusses and Minuses are designated out as 2^(N-1) so :
+ = 1
++ = 2
+++ = 4
++++ = 8
etc. etc.
And it is, of course, the inverse for the minuses.

The above quote is how our ++ system works. So Blue Zone Power Grid should give +16 power.

Shard of Victory said:
First, Blackstar's quest are betraying the revolution this very update, and considering that it's USSR quest, from socialism there were only mouth noises to begin with. Second, Rockeye's Chelsca is bad copy of USSR with magic, so it has exact same problems of crushing people under wheels of industry for the glory of state capitalism number go up. This is the only planquest where needs of the people are even given consideration IC. So yes, I am starving for content "catering" to my tastes, because my tastes are not people dying for the sake of vaguely red imperialist state.

While you're trying to crowbar !Revolution into this quest, consider that real socialism wouldn't have the economy controlled by a single authority. A social ownership of the means of production means more than just not capitalism, it means a buy in from society at large into the control of the economy. The Planquest genre of quests depends on the entire economic system under the control of one singular authority, and is thus antithetical on a mechanics level to the goals of socialism. (And especially communism.) We can certainly do Centrally Planned Toothbrushes, but that won't make GDI any more socialist than the USSR in Blackstar's VSNKh quest.

Crazycryodude said:
Of course we can do the fusion yards and the power plants pretty easily, it would just require Free dice but it's probably worth it to throw a couple Free dice at Heavy Industry as long as the Tiberium math isn't too tight.

My thoughts as well; two dice on Leopard Class Construction Yard and at least 1 die on the Power Grid. But it'd take a full turn's plan to figure out how many free dice to throw at Power Grid; perhaps just the 1 non-free die if we'd rather use those free dice elsewhere.

Shard of Victory · May 31, 2021

Derpmind said:
We can certainly do Centrally Planned Toothbrushes, but that won't make GDI any more socialist than the USSR in Blackstar's VSNKh quest.

I will take superrich not controling every facet of society.

Void Stalker · May 31, 2021

Crazycryodude said:
I kinda want Heavy Industry to stay working on the fusion spacecraft yards because they're expensive yet vital, the past few turns have really turned me into a space partisan. The explosive income growth we saw from Tiberium mining and refilling supply chains disrupted by the war got us through the first FYP pretty well, but soon enough we're going to run into the limits of our refining capacity and even though we can build more I expect it will slow down our income growth curve a lot when we have to stop and keep doing expensive refinery projects instead of blasting straight through like 4 stages of Glacier Mining.

Resources from space OTOH face no such limit, or at least a different limit than Tiberium income. Early on there's a cheap and easy source of pre-refined industrial materials just collecting and reprocessing space junk, no need for expensive infrastructure beyond the Enterprise and enough fusion space trucks to keep the Enterprise busy. Take some of that income for projects on the surface and invest the rest into more sustainable space income like asteroid mining and we're golden, but the whole snowball is predicated on us having enough fusion ships to make the trips up and down the gravity well painless.

Of course we can do the fusion yards and the power plants pretty easily, it would just require Free dice but it's probably worth it to throw a couple Free dice at Heavy Industry as long as the Tiberium math isn't too tight.

We can process up to 1,000 and Saarland will increase that. As is next 4YP I expect to do glacier mining Q1 to build our income back up a bit, otherwise we will need to rely on cost reductions (such as fusion dice, lithium plant and myomer work) or progress reductions (getting Cap goods fix and certain Cap good projects in particular).

Simon_Jester · May 31, 2021

Shard of Victory said:
I mean that's enough resources to build cities and continental railroads, so... Not really?

It's a few percent of the planetary GDP. It's not gonna be enough to enable control of planetary GDP unless you posit that the planetary government was already conspiring in advance to enable that specific thing to happen, to the extent of fucking around with basic survival.

I'm sorry, but this really is kind of a paranoia. In real life capitalism has had to control an overwhelming majority of national and planetary GDP for economic clout to turn into real power to control politics. In the short to medium run, having a private sector that consists of something like 10% or 20% of the overall economy just isn't enough to have the kind of effect you fear on any reasonable timescale.

And in the long run, either we're all dead of tiberium, or we're all post-scarcity because of tiberium.

Shard of Victory said:
Like he has fortune to use, so billionare wealth seems to be fine.

And his fortune is a tiny fraction of what it once was, I bet.

Take away 99% of Jeff Bezos' net worth and he's still, admittedly, rich- but he's not rich enough to singlehandedly play games with a world government beyond lending a bit of weight to an already extant faction.

Helher · May 31, 2021

It should also be understood that many of these grants could also go towards stuff like cooperatives and other forms of enterprise as well

Shard of Victory · May 31, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
I'm sorry, but this really is kind of a paranoia. In real life capitalism has had to control an overwhelming majority of national and planetary GDP for economic clout to turn into real power to control politics. In the short to medium run, having a private sector that consists of something like 10% or 20% of the overall economy just isn't enough to have the kind of effect you fear on any reasonable timescale.

Maybe I am paranoid, but I bleed on this hill enough, I might as well die on it.

BOTcommander · May 31, 2021

Vote's closed.
[X] [Carter]CarterPlan New procedure, new problems
-[X][Carter]Expand VTOL Airfields 0/200 (2C/Die) 1 die, 1 Aux die
-[X][Carter]Expanded Power Production 114/125 5/5C (1C/Die) 1 die
-[X][Carter]Vehicle Hangar 0/50 (1C/Die) 1 die
-[X][Carter]Harvester Maintenance Hangar 0/100 0/5 (3C/Die) 2 dice
-[X][Carter]Part Fabrication Plant Upgrade Stage 3 18/75 (3C/Die) 2 dice
-[X][Carter] Titan Rocket System 0/100 0/1 AP 3 dice
-[X][Carter]Mission: Unmanned Orbiter [Luna] 0/50 1 die
-[X][Carter]Mission: Unmanned Lander [Luna] 0/200 3 dice
-[X][Carter]Recruitment Drives (DC 30/40) 1 die
-[X][Carter]Hire Bureaucratic Staff 0/50 0/5C 1 die

Lightwhispers · May 31, 2021

Carterquest Results:
Expand VTOL Airfields 162/200
Expanded Power Production 114+71=175/125
Vehicle Hangar 103/50
Harvester Maintenance Hangar 39/100
Part Fabrication Plant Upgrade Stage 3 18+67=85/75
Titan Rocket System 115/100
Mission: Unmanned Orbiter [Luna] 89/50
Mission: Unmanned Orbiter [Mars] 96/50
Mission: Unmanned Lander [Luna] 154/200
Recruitment Drives (DC 30/40) 72 Pass
Hire Bureaucratic Staff 37/50

So, we got a vehicle hangar, new power plant, another part fab plant, the Titan rocket build, a couple Orbiter missions planned, and people recruited so we can lose the -25 penalty that hurt so much for Tiberium and Industrial projects this turn. The rest... would be nice, but isn't terrible to not have finished this turn.

And next turn we should get the VTOL airfields completed, for cheaper part purchases.

Chronic · May 31, 2021

Personally I am interested in whether Grants do unlock new, more efficient options. Admittedly, it's very suboptimal as presented, but there should certainly be some juicy public-private partnerships and scientific innovations from start-up companies locked behind reanimating the private sector. The question is, how far behind?

How much money do we need to throw into a sinkhole before we see some returns?

Esprit · May 31, 2021

Chronic said:
Personally I am interested in whether Grants do unlock new, more efficient options. Admittedly, it's very suboptimal as presented, but there are should certainly be some juicy public-private partnerships and scientific innovations from start-up companies locked behind reanimating the private sector. The question is, how far behind?

How much money do we need to throw into a sinkhole before we see some returns?

Given we're currently at the "grandmother's kitchen jam bottling" level of peak-capitalism, I think space-relevant startups are a rather long way off. So, uh. At a very rough guesstimate with no real basis... 256 grant-turns (eg. 256 turns with 1 related grant. 128 with 2. 64 with 4, etc.)

Ithillid · May 31, 2021

Chronic said:
How much money do we need to throw into a sinkhole before we see some returns?

Depends on a whole bunch of factors. If you are willing to empower a handful of effectively Zaibatsus or Chaebols, not all that long/much. However they will wield significant amounts of power and can make your life very difficult. On the other hand, if you are looking at a more diversified/equality driven portfolio where you are spreading the wealth around, and focusing on small businesses or cooperatives, it will take longer, but you will also hold a lot more of the high ground. Similarly, things like tax policy and degree of regulation will both influence how your private economy develops.

Chronic · May 31, 2021

Esprit said:
Given we're currently at the "grandmother's kitchen jam bottling" level of peak-capitalism, I think space-relevant startups are a rather long way off. So, uh. At a very rough guesstimate with no real basis... 256 grant-turns (eg. 256 turns with 1 related grant. 128 with 2. 64 with 4, etc.)

I dunno. We're about to set up tertiary education, which means we'll finally get new, young programmers, engineers, scientists. And if I know anything about academics is that there is a persistent subset of free thinkers who'd rather not work for the government if there is any other option for getting food on the table.

And we don't exactly need Space X here, a group of programmers figuring out a better, more user friendly CAD-program that helps with prototyping wouldn't need much initial investment and could have disproportionate effects. Now apply this across the entire economy and we might have something interesting at our level of play.

Absoloot · May 31, 2021

I agree with putting more dice into fusion ships. We're in a horrible situation with regards to infrastructure and industry, but there is an advantage. We get to choose how we rebuild, and while obvious compromises have to be made to house and feed people NOW, we can still insitute some good, long term policies. Focusing on sustainable means of space travel now, should really get the orbital snowball rolling later. There is so much potential for easing our situation if we can really get the space industry kick started. Totally down.

I'm not sure what the best choice is, but I know we're going to have to adresss that massive labor surplus at some point too. That's all essentially unemployment atm, and while I don't think we should exploit them at all (by exploit I mean it a la exploitation), leaving people idle with nothing to do to feel helpful, or productive, and without the supplies to make art or music, that whole sector is just going to be discontent as time goes on, and they stop starving or freezing to death.

I think widely distributed coops, small businesses, and community craft centers and the like are a pretty decent idea as a compromise. We restart the private sector but keep it distributed to avoid the rise of a capitalist class. The problem is this solution is slow to grow, and we're steal fighting an extinction level crisis, so I'm not sure we can afford the slow, sustainable, long term option.

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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