Housing, Housing Housing: The Thread of Ongoing Housing Crisis and the Beginning of Reconstruction.
Alan Summers
So everyone, after far too many rounds of small cramped apartments, we finally have proper housing again. Still small, still cramped, but hey, at least I can stretch my arms out without hitting my mother, my daughter, and our cat. And we have some local greenspace where I can let my family run around without worrying about anyone getting lost. And the proximity to the schools is quite nice.
Also, I finally saw a GDI survey team come through and haul away a handful of Scorpion tanks that had been left there since the war. A few had been graffitied up by local teens, but frankly they were an eyesore, and I am glad they are gone. A few of the shell holes have been prettied up rather than being removed, but, well, only so much the Treasury is willing to do.
Disgruntled Old Hand
I can understand your anger and annoyance. Though as someone on the inside who has certain access there has been a lot of damage from the war to more critical systems that needed to be fixed first. We were close to a capital good crash.
SpeakerToManagers
I do not agree with this policy of pulling down our beautiful old suburban home built in the 90s. Our house might have had some damage, but it would have been perfectly repairable with some new studs and drywall. Instead, now they've pulled down the family home and divided the lot up! I have to deal with these unwanted renters and one of them is from *Chicago* and I do not trust a Yellow Zoner who enjoys fungus pizza casserole. This is blatant government overreach and I will be complaining to my representative.
Stralyan1998
I can't help but kind of agree even if the poster above me really needs a lesson in manners (and what's wrong with fungus pizza casserole?). My area is remote enough to remain untouched for now but I really hope the GDI won't force us all to move into their new planned cities, or at least to let us actually own our own homes if they do. I don't particularly care for the idea of some landlord swiping my home out from under me, even if that landlord is wearing a badge.
MajorMiner
So, I'm stuck out here in a Tiberium-infested hellhole, but I've been hearing good things from my parents and extended family about this. I'm looking forward to a rotation back where green things aren't trying to eat me. I'm planning on eating a lot of salads, as revenge.
Pizzaislyfe
<message deleted by moderator>
User was threadbanned for derailing and extremist foodie prejudice
Fireofunknownorigin
I am surprised nobody tried to take those tanks for salvage lord knows you could make a pretty penny on it these days. Even if all the good systems have been stripped already the armour and drive systems gotta be worth something at least. If not it sounds like an investment you fix up now when parts are plentiful and wait to sell to a collector a decade down the line or something.
Stralyan1998
It is. All the old military equipment around my area has already been looted so thoroughly that the GDI cleanup crews just went and skipped it. I've got some nice pots and pans that I'm pretty sure someone bled on in a past life. The fact that they were just sitting there until getting hauled away without anyone taking a bite is making me think Alan's area had it pretty well.
Fireofunknownorigin
Can't be if he is talking about living in a refugee camp, my guess is he was near a major battle and the inspectors are swamped with UXO. Meaning that wrecks are just the bottom of the priority list and so common the local economy for the parts is wrecked.
Stralyan1998
Surely there would have been some use for them?
JamesandBonesy
James: I wanna thank Miss Gloria from Public Affairs for helping me and Mister H down the street with making sure he got all his yard decorations back, aside from the ones that went boom. (He's still grumbling about those ones, because he made sure that Bonesy wouldn't set them off, even if he dug into a rabbit hole.)
Bonesy: Woof!
PiningForTheFjords
We haven't been hit as hard as some of the more industrial blue zones or the yellow zones, but it's still good to see the harbour getting cleaned up. The Salvage Sculpting competitions were fun, but having a fully functional harbour is better. Yes, there's been competitions sculpting and decorating salvaged war material (nothing explosive or with live ammunition, all that stuff was the first to get salvaged and sold back to GDI). Humans will find entertainment where they can, even with limited resources.
Quality of Life thread MarkXXVIII: the Qualitying <REDIRECTING OFF TOPIC HOUSING THREAD DISCUSSION TO ITS MORE RELEVANT THREAD by major moderator>
LaserKiwi2000
WOOT! Finally got access to new books again! It's just some old classics but damn if it feels good to have my tattered bookshelf with books I am barely going to read because I am too busy reading fanfiction and shitposting with the new device I got! Haha suck it, Sister! A smart phone and a new laptop! Pretty sure I got lucky with the distribution of the first batch. Time for some Crusader Kings 2.
Edit: ooh moderator moved discussion. Makes sense.
KidRockHater2030
Excellent, I managed to get my novella authorized for publishing on a small level; 10 thousand copies for now. There fortunately isn't a major set of requirements in terms of getting one's work published on a small scale, possibly because it's been several years since we had publishing, and the Arts needs to be less regulated for a time to see how the dust settles. Either way, "The Jaffa Who Cried Tib" is available for purchase at your local New Zealand and Australian Blue zones. It is a semi-comedic dig upon Aucklanders. It must be noted, for most out of NZ audiences, that Aucklanders were notorious for gaining extra resources in the local abatement rollout than they arguably needed. Auckland never actually lost some small areas of blue.
EvangelionLover2020
OMG! I saw a picture of the most handsome Forgotten dude. That guy was RIPPED! I mean, he's probably contagious or something, but there was a cool anime aesthetic with his eyes softly glowing and I swear when he smiled in the gif I got, there was a tiberium laced filling, a bit like gold?
SecurityGuardBen
Thank god Dr Granger saw sense! Not today, hawks!
@LaserKiwi2000 Neat! I think I have an old copy of that too, but I am on the backlog for a new computer that actually has a graphics card.
SpaceLover
Woot! Finally a complete space station again! Let's hope this investment continues.
GorgonRamsey
Still not enough spices for more than a single proper meal a month! "We have capsicum online now" bullshit! It's been three goddamn years and not even enough spices to emulate reruns of My Kitchen Rules and other shows? Fucking hurry up goddamn it, jesus christ. I just want some good fucking food!
EvangelionLover2020
@GorgonRamsey Absolutely. I mean, it's nice to have something every so often, but it's almost worse than never getting it. The memory of how good the flavours are but never being able to fill the void. Maybe they should just have the generic Oregon, Thyme, Mint and Paprica on mass production? You can do a lot with those, you just need enough.
LaserKiwi2000
@GorgonRamsey, @EvangelionLover2020 I just want some goddamn Coke again, or some Mountain Dew. I want sweet! I want endless amounts of fizzy. FANTA! Gimme FANTA. Videogames and fizzy. Maybe chips? Wait when are we getting corn chips? Corn grows fast and doesn't use much water right?
SoreButt1billion
Yall talking about food. I just want some goddamn proper toilet paper. I once cried myself to sleep watching one of those CottonSoft ads. God I miss rampant consumerism. Fuck tib.
AntHater
Good thing about Tib is that it really reduced the hassle of needing to buy bug spray. One less shortage we need to think about.
Archer
@AntHater Tell me about it! Fuck ants.
AutomodGulag
95% chance that discussion of Ants does not contribute to a thread about housing. Cease this at once or all shall be purged.
MODERATOR: AutomodGulag gets time-out. Also, not Jokes about gulag please. Also thread moved already.
UmamiUmamiUmami
How about this! Centrally mass produced UMUMI! It's basically GoodMSG. Easy to make. Goes well with rice. Also Rice! We need more rice production. And noodles. Heck, wait. When was the last time anyone could replicate the most basic of manga meals?
Feanor
Holy crap. My old account and username I made as a joke like ten years ago still works and nothing happened to it!
Anyway, I just have to ask: why are everyone manga obsessed? Where's the BETTER fiction? Where's the talk about Tolkien and the Silmarillion? I ordered two sets of the entire Legendarium. Where are my Tolkien fans at?
Mithrandir 103B193
#feanor
First: Fuck Feanor. Second. Was wondering the same thing? Maybe bad thread for it. But we ARE here. I ordered it too. Wait time of a month though. At least there was a spare issue of FMAB that I picked up from someone, oh god. The Anime spread is catching me too.
LaserKiwi2000
#Mithrandir 103B193 nah you're good. Looks like moderator moved our segway into a less specific thread.
Who's Archer a reference of? *types into GDIoogle* Ahah! A comedy spy cartoon. Something for my backlist.
Q2 2053 Results
Resources: 415 + 0 in reserve (45 currently allocated to other departments) (15 allocated to the Forgotten)
Political Support: 65
Free Dice: 5
Tiberium Spread
14.37 Blue Zone
30.8 Yellow Zone (61 points of mitigation)
54.83 Red Zone (26 points of mitigation)
Current Economic Issues:
Housing: Sufficient but low quality (=) (4 in refugee camps)
Energy: Substantial Surpluses (+6)
Logistics: Substantial Surpluses (+6)
Food: Sufficient production, some inefficiencies in distribution (+3) (+2 stored)
Health: Substantially improved (+4)
Capital Goods: Significant Shortfalls (-4) (collapse in 10-14 quarters)
Consumer Goods: Titanic Shortages (-22)
Labor: Gargantuan Surpluses (115)
Status of the Parties
(strong support, weak support, weak opposition, strong opposition)
Free Market Party: 19 Seats (1; 2; 6; 10)
Hawks: 31 Seats (1; 5; 18: 6)
United Yellow List: 10 Seats (7; 3; 0; 0)
Independents: 7 Seats (0; 4; 2; 1)
Developmentalists: 53 Seats (34; 16; 3; 0)
Plan Commitments
95 Mitigation (8 remaining)
2 stages of space stations (1 remaining)
Personal Water Purification Units
[ ] Blue Zone Reconstruction (Phase 2)
While much of the work has been spun off into its own projects, there are still many sites with battle damage. Ranging from ports in the north of France, to the surviving cities of the Australian and New Zealand Blue Zones, there are still tens of thousands of sites with remaining battle damage, from ships in need of refloating or on site salvage, to docks that need shell holes filled in, to trainyards that are currently manhandling freight. Once this is completed, a great deal of projects will be opened up that will benefit the blue zone populations greatly.
(Progress 182/500: 10 Resources per die) (+ Logistics, + Health)
Starting in on the larger reconstruction project, the first major step was the question of what could be left alone. While many of the leftovers of the war were either things that could be safely ignored or fitted in with little effort through landscaping, others are significantly more problematic. With the length of time since the war, many areas had already seen weathering effects and life begin a process of molding the battle damage into just another part of the landscape. Bomb and shell craters had been filled in with water, and become part of the landscape in parks throughout the blue zones. On the other hand, there were also more substantial problems. The most common of which were destroyed vehicles judged not worth recovery. While immediate post war surveys had found many of them, resources had been stretched too tightly for the units to be recovered. Now, with a more thorough mandate, a large number have been recovered, either for restoration and delivery to military museums, or recycling into more immediately useful forms, depending on the degree of damage.
[ ] Blue Zone Duplex Row Housing (Phase 1)
With the proper high density housing running directly along many of the high volume transit lines, there are many spaces in between. Duplex row housing, two houses stacked on top of each other, one typically at ground level, and one accessed by a stairway, can fill in these areas, and can be serviced by lower volume transit options. The current plan has these arranged in blocks, around a central greenspace. Each unit is far larger than existing apartment blocks, representing a space designed for families and children, rather than the bare minimum to crowd people in.
(Progress 223/200: 10 resources per die) (+++ Housing)
The first wave of duplex housing has been completed. Built as continuous structures with independent entrances, this is only really viable in the Blue Zones. The sheer number of entrances and exits make properly sealing the place a nightmare. While not exactly spacious, especially not by pre First Tiberium War standards, where an average home could easily reach over two hundred square meters of floor space. Comparatively, these units are typically between 100 and 120 square meters of floor space. Still, that is nearly twice the size of the older apartment buildings. However, there is a lot more space than that floor implies. The buildings are arranged into blocks of 54 units, surrounding a central green space. While this is usually relatively long and narrow, others are squares or circles, depending on the terrain in the build area. While furnishings are still spartan, they are somewhat more available than they were to the original set of apartment buildings. Much of this first wave is dedicated to families, especially those with young children, and as such are built with access to schools in mind. For most, a school bus can take them only a few minutes to school, and for some, it is even within walking distance, although this is relatively rare.
[ ] North Boston Chip Fabrication (Phase 3)
GDI's newest Chip Fabricator is ready to enter full scale production. While this will begin to require substantial amounts of energy, it will also provide much of the capital goods required to begin replacing old equipment and bringing online projects like the Zone Armors currently being stockpiled for a lack of chips. It will also begin outputting some substantial amounts of consumer goods with supplies that are not immediately needed. While it will not fully fix the Capital goods crisis, it will solve the chips crisis in the immediate term.
(Progress 664/600: 15 resources per die) ( ++++ Capital Goods +++ Consumer Goods -- Labor --- Energy)
The impact of the North Boston plant is hard to overstate. While only completed near the end of the quarter, after a large selection of its parts had to be replaced due to defects, the impact has already been felt around the world. From zone suit factories pushing out bumper loads of new equipment, to local factories kicking into action after their control circuits are replaced, to replacement parts finally being available for laptops, although there year long wait estimates are not particularly uncommon. The sum result is a near equalization of supply and demand for capital goods. While not everything is available, and there is a substantial amount of technical debt and legacy equipment still in service, the ongoing demand is nearly met.
While the factory is not yet complete, its original foundation is fully operational. Future projects will either build extensions from scratch, or completely rework the design for either greater production or more advanced chips. However, such a project will cost more than the entire plant has so far, making it a far off goal rather than a feasible project at least for the current plan.
[ ] New Moscow Robotics Works
While chips are one of the most pressing crises, one of the other significant hurdles is the provision of robotic assemblies, ranging from waldoes and robotic arms, to Crab, Bee, and Elephant class construction drones. While construction gangs have become a common sight across the initiative, in more normal times, most of the work is handled by drones, assembling buildings under the direction of human foremen. While it will not reach full capacity without the output of more chip fabricators, replacing humans in construction will speed along many projects. (Progress 209/200: 20 resources per die) (++ Capital Goods)
Biomimetics is not a particularly new science. Leonardo Da Vinci attempted to build flying machines by studying bird wings for example. However, the term was not coined until 1969, by Otto Schmitt. Ranging from velcro to the shape of bullet trains, biomimicry can be found everywhere. However in few places is it more noticeable than the Crab and Elephant construction drones.
The former is built for large scale hauling and installation. Its left arm is a modular hardpoint, generally used for a rivet gun, welder assembly, or other fusing tool. Its right is a multi axis manipulator, to position the parts being fused together. Its broad back and six legs give it the capacity to carry loads stably at angles that human, or even tracked vehicles would struggle with, a great asset in places like the Himalayan Blue Zone, where even with decades of terracing, there are many steep mountainsides in the way of construction.
The latter is even heavier, typically used to haul large prefabricated sections around a construction site. With broad sides, the prefabricated section is carefully positioned, and then stabilized with the trunk, ready for other units to link it into position.
Far less biomimetic is the bee. A simple quadcopter design, the bee can either carry light loads, or cooperatively carry much larger ones. Primarily used in a support role, bees swarm around construction sites, delivering everything from rivet refills to water, to the construction units and people on site.
However, construction drones are actually the least important part of the construction at New Moscow. Far more important are the robotic arms that are used to assemble everything from cars to phones, to satellites. The continuing outflow of industrial components has brought many factories much closer to their rated productivity, replacing rooms of manual fitting with efficient high speed production lines, increasing both precision and rate of assembly.
[ ] Leopard Class Construction Yard
The Leopard is essentially an overgrown and overbuilt aircraft, necessary compromises when it comes to attempting to ride a column of plasma into orbit. However, this does mean that orbital engineering teams are not well prepared to handle this kind of construction on a large scale. However, the heavy industrial teams are. Building a construction yard for serial production will be both expensive in the immediate term, and a significant savings in the longer term. (Progress 83/200: 20 resources per die) (+1 Fusion Lift Die)
One of the early recipients of many of the chips and robots was the Monrovia based assembly yard for the assembly of Leopard fusion SSTOs. Spaceplanes themselves are not particularly new, with the hoped for reusability often not appearing in the form of substantial cost savings. The Leopard bucks this trend, primarily due to the massively increased deltaV allowance of its fusion engine, although it still requires substantial overhauls between missions, primarily due to its metallo-ceramic hull going through substantial heating during reentry, requiring a thorough check of all systems between launches. However, even if a Leopard needed to be rebuilt from the engine out with every launch, it would still be a substantial savings, if only due to the sheer mass that it can lift to orbit. However, with the generous deltaV allowance of the ship, they can do much more to control their velocities than traditional spaceplanes with judicious burns, rather than relying entirely on aerodynamics to prevent them burning up in the atmosphere.
The initial assembly yard is, however, little more at this point than a series of buildings. Long cavernous assembly bays and smaller, oftentimes nearly claustrophobic construction plants shape and fuse the titanium structures that form the bones of the aircraft, while other facilities either assemble COTS elements into space ready housings, or build dedicated instrumentation, often by personal attention, if not by hand precisely. The main assembly line sits silent though, as the heavy cranes required to move the larger parts safely have not yet arrived. However, with a final push, and a final investment of ever more common capital goods, the Leopard can embark on its many journeys to the stars above.
[ ]Experimental Carbon Nanotube Plant
The carbon nanotube, an elusive target for 50 years, may finally be within reach of our production methods. Lab prototypes indicate that a median length of 1-meter nanotubes are possible, though quality and length control remain vexing issues. Building a full factory to test these problems in the wild is a necessary test of our ability to create these wonder-resources, and to begin to explore the properties of materials that can integrate them-most importantly, new armor and structural materials
(Progress 171/200: 15 resources per die) (++ Capital Goods)
Carbon Nanotubes were first discovered in the 1950s, and first found uses in the early 2000s. However, these have almost always been in the form of so called "bulk" nanotubes. Unorganized fragments and short lengths of nanotubes have found uses in tape (as it retains its adhesive qualities under extreme conditions without leaving residue), pigments (such as vantablack) and various forms of composite construction. However, long sections of structured nanotubes have been notoriously difficult to synthesize, and even when available, extremely expensive. One of the few areas where material costs have mattered to the Initiative, this has prevented nanotubes from being widely used in everything from armor, where it has potential to disperse NOD laser blasts, to communications and infrastructure.
The new production plant has gone into LRIP, however current variability levels have left the median length closer to 5cm rather than 1 meter, a length where on one hand it is too long for many applications, and too short for many others. However, further refining of the process should allow for a scaling up towards, if not reaching, 1 meter lengths, long enough for the tubes to be spliced together, and allowing for arbitrarily long lengths, alongside weaving, and other secondary processes.
[ ] Prefabricated Shelter Deployment
With GDI already producing large numbers of prefabricated shelters, replacing the Forgotten's shelters is a relatively simple problem. While this will require some limited application of resources and contacts with the Forgotten to make the deliveries, the new modular shelters should be a substantial upgrade in quality of life.
(Progress 67/50: 5 resources per die)
Deployment of the first wave of shelters has begun, primarily along various GDI logistical lines. The population found has become a mixture of children, elderly, and typically young adults. The children and elderly often find the migratory lives of the forgotten tribes difficult, and so are being allowed to settle under the watchful eye of GDI guardians. The young adults on the other hand are looking for work. While not as socially prestigious within Forgotten communities as other potential tasks, working for GDI is often extremely profitable, where limited costs are paired with high rewards, leading to many who cannot compete for the highest positions ready to find their fortunes with the Initiative. As future projects look to more actively utilize the Forgotten, their society and practices will become increasingly clear, however as of this point there are still many frustrating mysteries about their social and cultural practices.
[ ] Yellow Zone Aquaponics Bays (phase 1)
While most food is grown in the blue zones due to easy access to fresh water and the security situation, it is sometimes seen as a noose around the neck of the GDI loyalist Yellow Zones. Building some bays will both provide jobs, and allow for crops that do not survive long transits well to become available in GDI controlled Yellow Zone cities.
(Progress 82/80: 10 resources per die) (+ food)
Completion of the Yellow Zone aquaponics bays has been a near run thing. With substantial effort having to be diverted to building out water capacity for the initial set of beds, they have finally been completed.
A large part of this is due to the expense of supplying water to the Yellow Zones. While Blue Zone water is typically relatively clean, although still not particularly healthy to play in, Yellow Zone water is far more of a toxic stew. While Tiberium is one of the worst offenders, other substantial issues are the morass of toxic byproducts of Tiberium refining, especially the Abdul-Pascal-Kane method. Add onto that the products of low tech and low regulation industrial activity, and the water is often an actively harmful morass to those unfortunate enough to consume it without substantial treatment. A water plant therefore not only has to be a sealed environment, but it has to be a sealed environment where much of this is either filtered or chelated out, often requiring several rounds of treatment to achieve necessary levels of purity. And that leaves the question of how to handle the waste products. While leaving them to become Tiberium would be a relatively easy process, it would also be a risky one as containers could easily leak or breach. While a good solution has not yet been found, GDI has continued to expand the water treatment facilities in order to bring the Yellow Zone aquaponics systems online, and create enough spare capacity for more construction.
[ ] Integrated Biodome Experiments
While there are few immediate needs for greater biodiversity given the widespread Tiberium contamination on earth, if we are to live on this planet long term, there are thousands of animal and plant species that will need to be reintroduced. By building self contained biodomes, test strains can be built up to encourage genetic diversity and expand our collections of source material. This will also be a good starting point for expansions offworld if our experiments bear fruit (Progress 165/150: 10 resources per die) (-- Labor, +Food)
Building a self contained biosphere is another idea that is not particularly new. Back before Tiberium there was an attempt known as Biosphere 2. While both attempts to operate self contained facilities proved to be failures, and lead to mass die offs in the biospheres, they did provide a guiding light to the new program. The first key element of this program was a goal. Each biosphere, seeded using carefully selected species, and housed under a hermetically sealed dome, is intended to be a net positive creator, effectively farming genes, with harvests stored back in the seed banks for future use in orbital projects, or potentially reseeding the Earth. One key element is that these initial projects are not intended to be entirely isolated. Instead, a steady flow of fresh supplies is brought in, creating feeder systems for phase 2 and phase 3 biospheres, constructed under the project, but not yet prepared, intended to be increasingly complex simulations of a natural habitat, and by phase 3 be ready for near permanent self sustaining activity. However, the seeding and the experiment will take years, if not decades to fully mature, as even GDI cannot rush the pace of nature.
[ ] Blue Zone Perimeter Redoubts (Phase 4)
A final wave of redoubts, primarily closer to the perimeter fence will both thicken the line as forward bases leapfrog each other as Tiberium sites are harvested, and future proof positions as the line begins to extend, both along the coasts and the interior. While in the future there are likely to be further phases of redoubts as the lines of the Blue Zones expand, the time to begin assembling them is not today.
(Progress 239/200: 20 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5 Resources]) (4 points of yellow zone mitigation)
The final, at least at this time, phase of Blue Zone Redoubts, has been completed. With allocations of needed trucks and aircraft, a redoubt can be disassembled, shipped to a more optimal location, and reassembled in under a week. Additionally, a substantial allocation of guns, mostly smoothbore 152mm pieces, have finally made their presence known. While NOD has not substantially hit the sites, it is only a matter of time until some substantial damage is done, either by the new attack assets, or by NOD finding some way through the defenses.
[ ] Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting (Phase 4)
While existing harvesting operations are at their limit, a new wave of harvesting bases, deep in the yellow zones, can continue expanding our influx of Tiberium. While these will require a substantial security detachment to maintain, and the establishment of a number of new convoy routes, the military has come around on these projects recently as they can serve as base camps for continued operations against the Brotherhood of NOD.
(Progress 49/300: 20 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (4 points of Yellow Zone Mitigation)
Development of the Yellow Zone harvests has been slowed by constant NOD attacks. One notable event included roughly a wing of Second Tiberium War era Banshees that had somehow escaped destruction in the intervening years. While the Banshees lacked the air to air capability, a result of their weak targeting systems, they pushed back multiple convoys over the course of about three days until they were hunted down by mixed Apollos and Firehawks. This is one part of a drastic increase seen in the last two months of a diversification of NOD arsenals. Ranging from various forms of Methyl Organometallic flamethrowers, to radiological devices, to old or variant equipment, it is clear that the Brotherhood of NOD is far from defeated, and has been diversifying its equipment in experiments to find new options and potential counters to GDI developments. Losses on both sides have been high, with many of the new weapons proving as dangerous to their users as their targets, while others have proven to be extremely dangerous, including a new pattern of infantry laser weapon, seemly a variant of the old Firefly rifles used in the aftermath of the First Tiberium War.
Intelligence report: Pattern 2053a Laser Rifle Brotherhood of NOD, South America
The novel P2053a has been found on six battlefields in the hands of soldiers from three different warlords in the South American Yellow Zones, primarily in former Argentina. From captured samples, and test firing under controlled circumstances, the standard pattern is the following.
Weight: 2.3 kg
Length: 900 millimetres
Magazine: 35 shots (rechargable)
Type of Fire: Single shot
Sights: adjustable, back and front sights with optional laser sight attachment point on the right hand side of the gun.
Reliability has been highly variable, with some weapons failing after only 30-70 shots, while others have been able to fire several hundred rounds continuously.
[ ] Red Zone Enclosure Campaigns
While many sections of the Red Zones will still continue to expand unchecked, our efforts to increase GDI's presence in the areas, and the near completion of the Blue Zone Perimeter Abatement efforts, has caused GDI's planners to look towards containment of the Red Zones as the next major priority. One option is to erect something similar to the Blue Zone Perimeter fence along sections of the Red Zones that are at least somewhat secured. While sonic fencing will not stop the spread of Tiberium, it will slow it substantially, buying time for other efforts to be made.
(progress 237/200: 20 resources per die) (4 points of Red Zone Mitigation)
The perimeter of nearly all of the Red Zones is absurdly too long to even have a hope of fully enclosing it. However, some few, such as those found in the south east asian islands, are small enough and contained enough that layers of sonic fences can halt the spread. In these cases a full perimeter has been established, and coastal patrols maintain the aquatic portion of the defenses. For the larger Red Zones, another method has been used, focusing on a shieldwall. Instead of trying to halt the spread, hundred kilometer long shield sections have been erected, directing the growth of the Red Zones away from populated areas as best as possible. While these are of more limited use in actually stopping the spread of Tiberium, it does help somewhat, as the growth is often funneled towards mining operations that can substantially slow, if not entirely stop, the crystal.
[ ] Red Zone Forgotten Support
To use the Forgotten in the Red Zones is to substantially reduce the commitment needed to ensure worker safety. While food and water will still need to be shipped in, and somewhat paranoid security measures taken, the use of the Forgotten in Red Zone deployments will mean that some portion of the workforce will not need hermetically sealed living quarters and an array of other mechanisms to ensure zero exposure. While they will of course receive substantially better accommodations than their camps, it is still not as demanding as the measures taken to ensure normal worker health.
(Progress 160/150: 5 resources per die)(-5 RpT) (decreases progress needed on Red Zone operations) (nat 100)
In GDI territory proper, hiring is a relatively straightforward process. A request for volunteers/applicants is sent out, people register interest, and then the best qualified are selected for interviews. With the Forgotten, it is a much more complicated affair. The first step is to talk to the local headman or council of elders depending on the tribe. If they give consent, then volunteers can be asked for from the population, and then dickering can begin over wages. In light of this, GDI's planners initially distinctly over budgeted for the acquisition of labor. Expecting to have to pay both the leadership and the workers, it was a very pleasant surprise to only be expected to pay the workers. While in this case, a cultural disconnect proved to be beneficial for the initiative, it is both a worrying sign of a certain degree of cultural chauvinism in the GDI bureaucracy, and a lack of actually good information about Forgotten cultural practices. Both will need further study and potential remediation.
[ ] GDSS Enterprise (Phase 1)
An orbital industrial hub is a requirement to begin reaching out into the broader solar system. While surface launched probes and land rovers can offer scans of planetary objects and potential habitation sites, our existing facilities are too limited for any kind of development of the inner system. While at this point the structure will serve as little more than a base for GDI astronauts, great things can come from small beginnings. (Progress 160/100: 30 resources per die)
The first stage of Enterprise has been completed, with the permanent station crew, fifty men and women led by Sarang Mikoyan, having taken up residence. With station level artificial gravity online in the living quarters, and water based anti radiation cladding around most of the station, they can live comfortably there so long as they are resupplied, although usually a tour will last no more than six to eight months due to the austere conditions of the core station. While there is currently little for them to do beyond maintaining the systems on board, an initial zero gravity workshop is functional for the crew to assemble probes to launch into the outer system as part of surveying the system for extractable materials. Additionally, work has begun on a first stage industrial ring around the core, intended for use in orbital cleanup and recycling efforts, turning orbital junk into high grade components. While there are still many elements left to add to the station, both in terms of fundamental structure, and additional task modules, it is a mark of a commitment to going to space once more, and staying there in a more systematic fashion.
[ ] Tertiary Schooling
A final wave of mainline school reopenings, Tertiary schooling is simultaneously the most and least important of the programs. While on one hand, it is a final stage towards developing a comprehensive learning system, it is also highly focused on learning dedicated specialist skills, ones that can also be taught at single purpose programs. However, what the college and university environment creates is a place where multiple disciplines can engage in a spirit of freewheeling debate and ongoing creative challenge. In addition to providing the next generation of specialists, these programs will also serve to support a new wave of research programs and technology labs.
(Progress 361/500: 5 resources per die) (--- Labor)
Far more substantial progress has been made on Tertiary schooling without the tragedy of the last quarter. With the Treasury pushing back against Hawk demands for restriction on Yellow Zone students, a series of competitive examinations have begun across the Yellow Zone cities, aimed to find an admittedly relatively small fraction who are qualified to attend university. While in time the Yellow Zones will begin producing students with standard qualifications, at the moment, nearly every prospective undergrad student has fragmentary education at best, and so alternate means of determining qualification is required. To go along with this, construction and reconstruction of dorms, dining halls, and the other support paraphernalia for the classrooms has begun. While some college activities, like competitive sports and fraternal organizations have been progressively deemphasized over the course of the last fifty years, most are still firmly communities in and of themselves, and so require much of the support that any community does.
[ ] Reopen the Publishing Houses
During the war, many publishing houses were forced to close their doors. While some, like scientific journals were forced to remain open as a means of communication and recordkeeping, it is high time for somewhat more entertaining publications to return to markets the world over. These publishing houses will require an infusion of personnel and a substantial investment in new printing facilities, but are also a significant increase in the ability of people to make public and widely distributed statements that are harder to bury than posts on GDI social media.
(Progress 208/150: 10 resources per die) (-Labor ++ Consumer Goods) (5 Political Support)
GDI's publishing houses have finally begun a new wave of book publications, while individual print runs are often relatively small, usually no more than fifteen to twenty thousand copies, they are backed by effectively freely available catalogs of digital materials, which are much more common, especially as computers are finally becoming more available. Many of the early books are collections of poetry or short stories, collated either by theme or author that had been written during the war. With many authors the publication is a posthumous recognition of their work, but an important step in both recognizing the losses, and beginning to move on.
Beyond that, an outpouring of work has begun to come from Yellow Zones. While little has yet been published, Yellow Zoners have sent in thousands of manuscripts, stressing the systems of review and critique. Most of these are only found in hardcopies, with digital files often difficult to maintain under Yellow Zone conditions.
[ ] Point Defense Battery Development
Defending against a missile has been a point of development since the late 20th century. This is fundamentally a difficult affair. Hitting a small, often maneuvering target that is accelerating towards the gun platform has always been an issue. With the ever shrinking size of munitions payload in the last half century, the problem has only gotten worse. Modern munitions can put nearly as much payload on target on a warhead half the size. (Progress 46/40: 10 resources per die)
The first use of an anti ship missile came in 1943, when on 25 August, an HS 293 glide bomb struck the HMS Bideford, a royal navy sloop. The first ship sunk was two days later, when another sloop, the HMS Egret, was sunk by another such bomb. In 1967, the Israli ship Eliat became the first ship sunk by a ship launched cruise missile, taking three hits from P-15 Termit missiles launched from Egyptian boats. While all major navies in the latter half of the 20th century put significant effort to defend themselves against such missile threats, by the midpoint of the 21st century, three trends had made those efforts obsolete. First, modern missiles are significantly more energetic than their 20th century counterparts. This has meant that a missile of equivalent impact can be substantially smaller. Second, increased Tiberium particulate in the air has rendered missiles much harder to detect against the background noise. Third, modern missiles have much greater maneuvering envelopes than those of the mid to late 20th century, ensuring that their paths are much more difficult to predict.
In attempting to counter these weapons, size, speed, and rate of fire are key. Three programs have passed through the primary testing phases. First is a set of superimposed projectile box launchers, intended to deliver a controlled burst in fractions of a second, a concession to the short time between acquiring a target and impact. Second is a micromissile system, using kinetic kill heat seekers to attempt to intercept incoming fire short of the ship. While useless against the relatively cold bombs delivered by the Vertigo, many of NOD's missile systems can be quite adequately intercepted. Finally, a point defense electrolaser has passed through testing. Based on the old Volt auto rifle of the early 2000s, the design ensures short dwell times by shorting out the missile. While it will not stop impacts, it will prevent most detonations. While none of the systems are perfect, hopefully in combination they will prove quite effective.
[ ] Light Combat Hydrofoil development
The Global Defense Initiative has thousands of kilometers of coast to patrol. While the larger scale Battleships and Carriers can certainly project force, and existing hovercraft are quite capable of doing inshore patrols, there is a substantial gap in more long range patrol exercises and aircraft interdiction. A small 50 meter hydrofoil design, carrying both missiles and autocannon, can cheaply provide high speed coastal patrol and interdiction duties.
(Progress 41/40: 10 resources per die)
The hydrofoil is centuries old. First patented in 1869, and first tested full scale in 1904, hydrofoils are fast, at least for boats. Rather than driving a hull through the water, hydrofoils primarily ride on top of the water, with only a relatively small blade actually cutting through the water. Attempts at military use emerged in the 1940s, however they did not come into their own until the cold war.
GDI's newest watercraft, the 50 meter hydrofoil is designed to maintain speeds of 92 kilometers per hour on its foil, and carries a pair of point defense box launchers (one fore and one aft) along with eight standard multirole missiles in two launchers, one on each side of the ship. While their combat endurance is notably poor, their speed and range more than make up for it, with a single ship able to cover a radius of up to 450 kilometers from base, and still return by the end of the day.
The navy intends to build them at three plants. One for the Asian theater of operations, one for the Atlantic, and one for the Pacific. While the precise locations have not been determined, the projected order is likely to be large, doubling the number of hulls that GDI operates in all likelihood.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 60 + 1 operations die) (86)
GDI's military procurement branch has developed an effectively split system. While there are substantial numbers of known compromised devices still in service, primarily due to the lack of replacement parts to build new systems, an entire second system has begun to be assembled, with the two systems as much as possible not talking to each other. While this has created some logistical snarls, and significant confusion, it is one of the only ways to ensure that the ongoing infiltration problem has been substantially resolved. The sweep however, has not produced any new infiltration efforts, indicating that so far as at least some of the infiltrators are concerned, the risks of inserting a new probe are not worth risking what material does make it out of the system.
