Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
310 Progress actually, unless they have a 6th phase I've forgotten about
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Allright, time to make my big argumentpost. First I will try to go through all the options individually and then go through some combos.
Combos:
Personally I see three combos being worth discussing.
Maximum Space Expansion
-Station
-Gdrive
-Fusion
I will be honest, I like this. The loss of somewhat admat is regrettable, but it leaves us with the best of both world shipwise and should give us a pretty big advantage in terms of future station, lunar and ship construction, all good things for space.
Maximum Space Industry
-Admat
-Gdrive
-Fusion
The Station bay does not save us this much in the immediate run and a focus on advmat still leaves us with maximum shipyard, earth-luna shipment and flexibility in terms of the rest of the solar system.
Mixed Industry
-Admat
-Station
-Gdrive/Fusion
I guess this is what it will come down to in the end, a knife fight between fusion and Gdrives. And I know which side I am on. This but with Gdrives gives up space infra + speed gdrives + you get your goddamn low-g manufactured Crystals. Everyone is happy.
So my money is on []Gravitic Shipyard
ORSCT is a powerful and useful tool. However, it is not something I would use one of our Enterprise slots for. We are still in the space-should-be-for-space-expansion-phase and this is something in space to support us on the ground.
I will be honest, I don't see the appeal of this. But everyone else seems to go wild over Advanced Materials, so it has to do something right. Many of the things produced in the bay are likely for niche applications that benefit our military, ground industry, infrastructure first and space second. The only saving grace for is the mention that it might benefit getting faster Gdrives.
Sattelites are not that big of a part of space expansion. Dismissed.
The big one. We will have very big station goals next plan and the ones after that. We already have a 20 point discount on stations, can get another 5 from Leo IIs and 10 from this, for a total of 45, or a relative amount of 18.75% compared to our existing discounts. Over the all phases for Columbia/Shala the extra 10 points add up to 10+20+40+80+160=310 progress points per station, or roughly 4 orbital dice, saved. This means faster progress, it means more can be done with less dice. As much as I don't like this one because it takes away from my personal favourite, it is too good to pass up.
Some might say I am biased. But we need to take this. People might try to argue that fusion is in some way better in something, and they might be right right now, but wrong medium to long term. The truth is the Gdrive is a gamechanger in terms of propulsion that flips the game of space travel. No need to carry reaction mass as propellant or worry about ship weight. A Gdrive ship can be as heavy as it wants it will go anywhere at the same absurd speed. No need to worry about required deltaV to get anywhere. You might be able to go faster than the Gdrive with conventional rocketry short term, but that's it, short term. Even at the best theoretical conditions a 0.5g fusion engine burns through hydrogen fuel too fast, not to speak of anything heavier like oxygen or nitrogen. If you take out the extra weight and volume requirements for the enormeous engines and fuel tanks a conventional spacecraft needs to match little pathfinder even for a shirt while, you probably end up with more cargo space on pathfinder itself. The faster we get the damn things beyond 1g+ acceleration, the sooner we can use them to just straight take off and land on earth to make use of their physics cheating magic to lift anything that fits into their cargo bays straight into orbit at effectively zero cost.
I will give Fusion some points. As it stands now it has the advantage of simplifying mass transport between Luna and Earth, in terms of STU cost. There is a hidden cost named fuel that seems to not be talked about but whatever. Gdrive travel between Earth and Luna is still faster and in terms of Mars travels, one of the fusion trawlers would need to be worth around 36.5 Gdrive ships or be outperformed.
Combos:
Personally I see three combos being worth discussing.
Maximum Space Expansion
-Station
-Gdrive
-Fusion
I will be honest, I like this. The loss of somewhat admat is regrettable, but it leaves us with the best of both world shipwise and should give us a pretty big advantage in terms of future station, lunar and ship construction, all good things for space.
Maximum Space Industry
-Admat
-Gdrive
-Fusion
The Station bay does not save us this much in the immediate run and a focus on advmat still leaves us with maximum shipyard, earth-luna shipment and flexibility in terms of the rest of the solar system.
Mixed Industry
-Admat
-Station
-Gdrive/Fusion
I guess this is what it will come down to in the end, a knife fight between fusion and Gdrives. And I know which side I am on. This but with Gdrives gives up space infra + speed gdrives + you get your goddamn low-g manufactured Crystals. Everyone is happy.
So my money is on []Gravitic Shipyard
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Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
-[ ] Station Bay
-[ ] Gravitic Shipyard
-[ ] Fusion Shipyard
This is what I'm feeling. Laying out a full foundation for continued development.
-[ ] Gravitic Shipyard
-[ ] Fusion Shipyard
This is what I'm feeling. Laying out a full foundation for continued development.
So I think I'd like both shipyards mainly for the synergy boost being probably pretty great for them. Also, Fusion drives are likely to make building stuff on the moon and various space mining stuff cheaper due to better bulk transport and I'm convinced the best way to get people into space is lunar cities not stations, purely because of how small Columbia is.
G-drives I think are mostly important for their future potential, something I want to start iterating on now, not some point years down the line.
Meanwhile I think AMat will synergise with the shipyards in getting us tech improvements for the ships faster.
Stations would honestly be a pick if we could choose 4 bays, it just gets edged out by AMat in my opinion because I think it'll help shipbuilding less
G-drives I think are mostly important for their future potential, something I want to start iterating on now, not some point years down the line.
Meanwhile I think AMat will synergise with the shipyards in getting us tech improvements for the ships faster.
Stations would honestly be a pick if we could choose 4 bays, it just gets edged out by AMat in my opinion because I think it'll help shipbuilding less
True enough, but I think that the more plentful and more advanced near-Earth industry will be better for our future space development than a leg-up on gravships. They and the opportunities they offer are, in the end, the most long-term ones, and in this case the bigger short-term advantage will ultimately be more beneficial, in my opinion.
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- Location
- Earth
My thoughts:
Military Bay
With the Regency War winding down, I think we really need to focus more on space infrastructure rather providing more ass-kicking on the ground. As much as I would love being able to orbital drop heavy assets, we should only pick this if we want to be going on multiple major offensives this coming plan. For example, if we were doing multiple Karachi-level offensives or going heavy on amphibious invasions. For things like that, I think our incoming Bogatyr-type heavy floating capital ships can cover this angle (minus the 'prompt' response part).
Satellite Bay
So first off, satellites are not stations. So this bay would benefit things like the high-orbit Ion cannons, Orbital Defense Laser, and Tactical Ion Cannon Network (phase 1). These are more military focused projects that would be benefit from the bay.
Advanced Materials Bay
Instant infusion of +8 cap goods, which is nice. Jevon's paradox in this case means the decreasing cost of STUs mean an increasing in demand, negating the cost savings (but only the cost savings are negated, it's doing more with the same amount of STUs). Politically neutral, which is nice. It does say it will "inform" new technologies, but it's a little vague on exactly how.
Station Bay
Potentially a 310 progress discount per 5-phase station. With us needing to build more Shala-class and Columbia-class stations, in addition to any future Enterprise-class stations, this is the bay we really want if we want to start expanding humanity off-planet. Potentially we could be doing 3+ stations, so at minimum a 900 progress discount. In addition, moving people and infrastructure off-planet makes it less vulnerable to Nod and also makes Kane nervous. If GDI appears to be leaving a dead planet for Kane to hang around in, he's going to be desperate in any negotiations. My personal seal of approval
Gravitic Shipyard
I feel like this is a lynchpin project. As a quest, we need to decide if we want to do a little or a lot of solar system work. Work like Mars (and potentially stuff from the quest's sequel), Venus (and its Tib continent), and the Scrin base in the outer solar system. If we don't take this option, we'll be heavily limited to within lunar orbit focus. I'm almost certain Martial colonies will become too expensive to do without this option. Probably good synergy with fusion shipyards. This is something for people to consider where the quest is going. Note: this will put heavy, heavy, heavy pressure on Kane. Gravitic ships are great for long haul and it really looks like GDI will end up leaving Kane alone on Earth. This is the option for pressuring Kane.
Fusion Shipyard
I feel like this is also a lynchpin project like Gravitic shipyards, except a focus on everything within lunar orbit. Rather than expanding to the outer solar system, this a large focus on stations and especially lunar cities. Same pressure on Kane as the Gravitic shipyards for the same reason, leaving his ass on the planet. This pick will likely lay the groundwork for orbital infrastructure of our network of stations and the moon.
This will be my vote when it opens.
-[ ] Station Bay
-[ ] Advanced Materials Bay
-[ ] Gravitic Shipyard
Military Bay
With the Regency War winding down, I think we really need to focus more on space infrastructure rather providing more ass-kicking on the ground. As much as I would love being able to orbital drop heavy assets, we should only pick this if we want to be going on multiple major offensives this coming plan. For example, if we were doing multiple Karachi-level offensives or going heavy on amphibious invasions. For things like that, I think our incoming Bogatyr-type heavy floating capital ships can cover this angle (minus the 'prompt' response part).
Satellite Bay
So first off, satellites are not stations. So this bay would benefit things like the high-orbit Ion cannons, Orbital Defense Laser, and Tactical Ion Cannon Network (phase 1). These are more military focused projects that would be benefit from the bay.
Advanced Materials Bay
Instant infusion of +8 cap goods, which is nice. Jevon's paradox in this case means the decreasing cost of STUs mean an increasing in demand, negating the cost savings (but only the cost savings are negated, it's doing more with the same amount of STUs). Politically neutral, which is nice. It does say it will "inform" new technologies, but it's a little vague on exactly how.
Station Bay
Potentially a 310 progress discount per 5-phase station. With us needing to build more Shala-class and Columbia-class stations, in addition to any future Enterprise-class stations, this is the bay we really want if we want to start expanding humanity off-planet. Potentially we could be doing 3+ stations, so at minimum a 900 progress discount. In addition, moving people and infrastructure off-planet makes it less vulnerable to Nod and also makes Kane nervous. If GDI appears to be leaving a dead planet for Kane to hang around in, he's going to be desperate in any negotiations. My personal seal of approval
Gravitic Shipyard
I feel like this is a lynchpin project. As a quest, we need to decide if we want to do a little or a lot of solar system work. Work like Mars (and potentially stuff from the quest's sequel), Venus (and its Tib continent), and the Scrin base in the outer solar system. If we don't take this option, we'll be heavily limited to within lunar orbit focus. I'm almost certain Martial colonies will become too expensive to do without this option. Probably good synergy with fusion shipyards. This is something for people to consider where the quest is going. Note: this will put heavy, heavy, heavy pressure on Kane. Gravitic ships are great for long haul and it really looks like GDI will end up leaving Kane alone on Earth. This is the option for pressuring Kane.
Fusion Shipyard
I feel like this is also a lynchpin project like Gravitic shipyards, except a focus on everything within lunar orbit. Rather than expanding to the outer solar system, this a large focus on stations and especially lunar cities. Same pressure on Kane as the Gravitic shipyards for the same reason, leaving his ass on the planet. This pick will likely lay the groundwork for orbital infrastructure of our network of stations and the moon.
This will be my vote when it opens.
-[ ] Station Bay
-[ ] Advanced Materials Bay
-[ ] Gravitic Shipyard
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
No, but we do have two stations. 310 plus 310.
Complication: The question isn't whether one fusion ship can outperform one gravitic ship by being 37 times better.
It's whether we can afford 37 fusion ships for each gravitic ship. Right now we must surely have hundreds or thousands of fusion spacecraft to do everything we're doing in space, and we have exactly one gravitic ship. The gravitic ship gives us amazing and unique capabilities, but even if we had a factory to churn out dozens more like her, the limits of our STU budget would prevent us from making the ships in truly unlimited quantities.
Quantity has a quality all its own, in other words.
The thing is, stations are likely to be where we put a lot of the industrial base, so being good at building stations is going to chain into our ability to build future space industry in general (e.g. to start exploiting asteroid mining)
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not sure if we've got an official ruling, and it's kind of meta, but the end of the Scrin campaign cutscene discusses gathering an invasion force to return. Which seems like a reasonable fear IC, given they clearly left something semi-active behind in the outer system.
Other than that, we've seen several times in quest that building things starts background clocks for improvements ticking, and this seems like a good way to start (or accelerate) g-drive improvements.
I think we need Fusion and Gravity. One gives us inner solar system spaceships other gives us outer solar system ships and I honestly think we can't do without both.
For the last bay:
- not Satelite: It only gives us on-Earth options and we can expand ASAT ourselves whenever we want
- not Military: because while nice the only things it gives us are things we don't need (we have great air, ground and space forces we don't need more or at least not at the cost of limited bay slot).
- not Materials: while amazing and giving us new options we actually have too much new technologies to implement right now (7 new nod tech on our way if I'm right) and except for synergies it does't give us anything else (i think). So aparently it does give us a lot of STU stuff. Still if we can get it built on another station I'd do that.
So I would choose Stations bay, a huge permament boost we are 100% going to use a lot both now and in the long run.
Also speculation time:
- From the description of Advanced material bay it says that it's basicly a lab in space with production capability. So can we biuld it on another station? I mean it would probably be better on Enterprise due to more materials but we can ship them right? And it even says output will be small and it's mainly a lab (if I understand properly?) so it should work on other stations. On the other hand gravity fusion and stations bays sound like enterprise exclusives, so if we really could built material bay latter I would 100% vote for those three.
- Also If we build gravity fusion and stations bays wouldn't that give us a good synergy? I mean building station parts shouldn't be too different from building spaseship parts right? If so we would have three shipbuilding stations together and that should synergize rather well?
For the last bay:
- not Satelite: It only gives us on-Earth options and we can expand ASAT ourselves whenever we want
- not Military: because while nice the only things it gives us are things we don't need (we have great air, ground and space forces we don't need more or at least not at the cost of limited bay slot).
- not Materials: while amazing and giving us new options we actually have too much new technologies to implement right now (7 new nod tech on our way if I'm right)
So I would choose Stations bay, a huge permament boost we are 100% going to use a lot both now and in the long run.
Also speculation time:
- From the description of Advanced material bay it says that it's basicly a lab in space with production capability. So can we biuld it on another station? I mean it would probably be better on Enterprise due to more materials but we can ship them right? And it even says output will be small and it's mainly a lab (if I understand properly?) so it should work on other stations. On the other hand gravity fusion and stations bays sound like enterprise exclusives, so if we really could built material bay latter I would 100% vote for those three.
- Also If we build gravity fusion and stations bays wouldn't that give us a good synergy? I mean building station parts shouldn't be too different from building spaseship parts right? If so we would have three shipbuilding stations together and that should synergize rather well?
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Adv Materials Bay is apparently a case of Jevon's Paradox.
Or, in other words, any application that uses STUs is now either cheaper, or more effective, causing us to want even more.
Considering the sheer number of applications that use STUs that we have on the table, such as G-Drives, Shields, Tendrils, Hover, Flying Ships, Lasers, Plasma Disruptor Missiles, [Redacted], Structural Alloys, Zrbite weapons, Zrbite digging claws, T-Glass, and the numerous more that we will hopefully get, I think it is very, very valuable.
Or, in other words, any application that uses STUs is now either cheaper, or more effective, causing us to want even more.
Considering the sheer number of applications that use STUs that we have on the table, such as G-Drives, Shields, Tendrils, Hover, Flying Ships, Lasers, Plasma Disruptor Missiles, [Redacted], Structural Alloys, Zrbite weapons, Zrbite digging claws, T-Glass, and the numerous more that we will hopefully get, I think it is very, very valuable.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
The costs stand right there. Iirc both bays just produce a new ship X every Y quarters. Last I heard Fusion was four times as fast as Gdrive. The most efficient transfer Luna-Earth takes ten days, a 0.5g Gdrive ship can make it in 4 hours. Taking this into account means in raw output a fusion ship needs to be worth roughly 15 Gdrive ships to be on power with cargo capacity to Luna and 18 (I accidently used wrong numbers for Mars somewhere, Most Efficient Transfer to Mars is 2 years for conventional, 10 days for Gdrive) for Mars. Edit: Take into account optimal transfer windows for anything not the moon are rare.
The moment we hit 0.55gs these numbers drop more in favor of the Gdrive and if AdvMat gives us another 0.5gs or more it gets even worse.
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Fair. That being said, a 220 point discount isn't much especially when you consider that it's only 220 points if everything is built 100% efficiently with 0 overrun. It's more likely to be something like 150 points saved.
I think long term it's more important to build up the moon and mars than it is to build stations (I'm talking after Shala/Columbia) tbh. Columbia is getting a few thousand people into space, maybe tens of thousands if we build all the bays to max occupancy numbers. For any actually decent proportion of the population to get to space even without a hypothetical evacuation that's millions. I don't think stations are the way to go for that
So the station bay is basically required, not literally but it comes out net profitable on just the two space stations we're going to be required to build in the near future, much less any future stations beyond Shala and Columbia. That's slot 1 filled and I don't think it's going to change.
As for the rest, I think slot #2 should go to the fusion shipyard. Lunar colonization is where the bulk of our population and industry is going to be for the forseeable future, and even once we're ready to leave Luna the fusion barges can manage Mars well enough too. In immediate practical terms though a boost to Lunar projects has much the same logic behind it as the station bay - we know we're going to have to do a lot of work in that area no matter what our far future plans are, the first few steps lead through the Moon regardless of where we want to be in 50 years. So stacking Lunar discounts early is just as important as stacking station discounts early. Also something I haven't seen mentioned yet is this:
Which brings us to only one remaining slot. I know I definitely want one of either advanced materials or the grav shipyard, but not 100% sure honestly. I'm still very skeptical about any trans-Lunar colonization plans until the Visitors are dealt with or at least much better understood, and the advanced materials bay is definitely the technocratic long term choice to make our space colonies the best they can be. I think I ultimately come down on the side of doing the AM bay now to get the broad spectrum upgrades and ensure that when we finally do build a g-drive shipyard (probably a dedicated station or Lunar shipyard in the second generation projects post Shala/Columbia) it's the best g-drive we can manage. But I'm not 100% opposed to the g-drive bay in #3 either, I just think that the AM bay matches our current situation better while g-drives are jumping the gun early.
As for the rest, I think slot #2 should go to the fusion shipyard. Lunar colonization is where the bulk of our population and industry is going to be for the forseeable future, and even once we're ready to leave Luna the fusion barges can manage Mars well enough too. In immediate practical terms though a boost to Lunar projects has much the same logic behind it as the station bay - we know we're going to have to do a lot of work in that area no matter what our far future plans are, the first few steps lead through the Moon regardless of where we want to be in 50 years. So stacking Lunar discounts early is just as important as stacking station discounts early. Also something I haven't seen mentioned yet is this:
The ruling party that massively dominates Parliament and has been the Treasury's natural ally/sugar daddy all game really really wants it. This is a core priority for the people who are both our bosses, and nominally represent the popular will as well. I think that promotes it to being guaranteed a slot as well.
Which brings us to only one remaining slot. I know I definitely want one of either advanced materials or the grav shipyard, but not 100% sure honestly. I'm still very skeptical about any trans-Lunar colonization plans until the Visitors are dealt with or at least much better understood, and the advanced materials bay is definitely the technocratic long term choice to make our space colonies the best they can be. I think I ultimately come down on the side of doing the AM bay now to get the broad spectrum upgrades and ensure that when we finally do build a g-drive shipyard (probably a dedicated station or Lunar shipyard in the second generation projects post Shala/Columbia) it's the best g-drive we can manage. But I'm not 100% opposed to the g-drive bay in #3 either, I just think that the AM bay matches our current situation better while g-drives are jumping the gun early.
The fusion shipyard is straight up described as best for Lunar operations, so I think it's a pretty safe bet that the fusion freighters will have more Lunar throughput than g-drive freighters. Once you go farther afield the math suddenly flips right around, but g-drive ships are hard capped on volume while I think the fusion ships are supposed to be fuckhuge space container ships that can't go down gravity wells but can move truly obscene amounts of bulk compared to a g-drive ship. Sure the g-drive is 15x faster but that doesn't matter when the fusion barge carries 50x as much cargo, or that's the design intent at least.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I will fight you, everyone and the squid on this I do not care.
To me, it looks like fusion shipyard synergizes pretty well with stations. Maybe not mechanically, but certainly narratively. It lets us get more stuff into space faster, not just materials to build stations but also people to crew them or live on them. It lets us be more ambitious with the Moon and potentially Mars and Venus. Even with technological developments, G-drives will not be a significant factor in our lift capacity for a long while, so it will not become redundant any time soon.
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So I disagree with this statement that because the station bay is net profitable it's therefore required. Sure, we'll benefit from having the Station bay. We'll also benefit from having any of the other bays. That's basically the point of them.
The question is whether we'll get more benefit from the station bay than from the other bays. I disagree with this due to the importance of Lunar architecture in the future (fusion), the benefits we'll get from getting better g-drives faster (AMat and G-drive) and the benefits we'll get from generally superior ship production (fusion and g-drive)
These are the 3 I think I want most
-[ ] Station Bay
-[ ] Advanced Materials Bay
-[ ] Gravitic Shipyard
The Station Bay pays for itself and generally supports out ability to build more space stuff.
The Advanced Materials Bay is good for tech research which would be useful, especially if we can get more alien research from the ones hiding out by Jupiter. Also capital goods production seems to be something of bottleneck and +8 for 400 progress is a cheap and reasonably efficient of getting more.
I want the Gravitic shipyards over the fusion ones because we already have the capibility to both build fusion ships and some amount of access to the local resources. Our ability to build Gravitic ships seems more limited and would give us much better access to the rst of the solar system. The Gravitic ones are also what we'd want to poke the aliens which is something I want to do later.
-[ ] Station Bay
-[ ] Advanced Materials Bay
-[ ] Gravitic Shipyard
The Station Bay pays for itself and generally supports out ability to build more space stuff.
The Advanced Materials Bay is good for tech research which would be useful, especially if we can get more alien research from the ones hiding out by Jupiter. Also capital goods production seems to be something of bottleneck and +8 for 400 progress is a cheap and reasonably efficient of getting more.
I want the Gravitic shipyards over the fusion ones because we already have the capibility to both build fusion ships and some amount of access to the local resources. Our ability to build Gravitic ships seems more limited and would give us much better access to the rst of the solar system. The Gravitic ones are also what we'd want to poke the aliens which is something I want to do later.
To be fair, the fusion ships that Enterprise would build are supposed to be big skeletal things that you can cram mountains of bulk cargo into for transfer between GEO and Luna. Getting things from the surface to GEO is still the job of Leos and Unions, which we have other projects to expand production of.
But being able to move giant mountains of manufactured goods out to the Moon and come back with giant mountains of moonrocks to feed into orbital industries will still be extremely important for developing cis-Lunar space. Leos and Unions can't do nearly the amount of bulk shipping required if we want to talk about millions of people on the Moon. They're just too small and too compromised by needing to operate in an atmosphere/down a gravity well, bespoke spaceships designed from the keel up to optimize for microgravity space operations will be required for any serious bulk. The Developmentalists aren't idiots, they want the fusion shipyard so bad because it's probably the single most key project for heavily intensifying economic output in space.
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