- Pronouns
- He/Him
Looks like most of them aren't doing well, except for Homeland, Biodiversity, and ugh, Initiative First.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
Looks like most of them aren't doing well, except for Homeland, Biodiversity, and ugh, Initiative First.
I think your plan would have lost if you hadn't modified it to include the InOps promise. After doing so, momentum swung decidedly in your favor.
So yeah, adaptability and flexibility, and people being aware that you are willing to change your plans based on new information rather than creating an entirely new plan for minor to moderate changes, I think tend to be a significant net-benefit.
-----
Really, the most benefit people get out of posting early plans is that they allow the establishment of priorities, and to start finding hidden benefits and costs, early, so that by the time the real vote comes around they tend to be more polished, or even serve as a basis for other people's plans.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, it's like I always say: a falling meteor shower sinks all boats. If the average results are underperforming, that'll tend to cancel itself out. Initiative First may do well this cycle, but they'll still be a small minority party whose policies lock them out of governing coalitions because they keep spitting in the Cheerios of all the other parties. At this point, the actual Yellow Zoners who get to vote in elections significantly outnumber Initiative First, such that it's usually a better idea to appease the first group than the second.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Or CRP.
OK no 4 of you on the same page no you get a tax for this:
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yeah well I'm not one whose plans get criticized or even noticed most of the time so I have no reason to tinker with my plans as much.
By the way you do remember that doing lunar mining of any sort reduces progress needed for any Lunar Project because we build up more infrastructure on the moon? How do you think building actual lunar cities would affect the lunar infrastructure? Or finally being able to do water mines?
Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I do the same thing and I lost, so I have no idea.
Your plan started gaining significant momentum (and, iirc, overcame his soon after) when you added the InOps promise. Once he changed his plan to be more like yours, though, you lost that competitive advantage. At which point the ball was back in your court.
It's tough, which is why I don't make plans.
Amusingly, when I saw "more moderate goals," my first thought was "IF ONLY more people had voted 10k space pop instead of 20k...."
Though, honestly, at this point, I don't even mind that much. Even if space pop turns out to be the first plan goal we fail, what we've achieved is a miracle alone. It feels like we're building two stations simultaneously in about the same time frame or shorter than we did Enterprise alone. We have fusion yards that'll majorly improve our building and supply of lunar facilities/colonies as more ships come out of it. We're probably going to have lunar "cities" well before the end of the decade. G-Drive ships will allow us to rapidly expand to Mars and the Asteroid Belt once we start seriously looking beyond lunar orbit.
...What's going to be our celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the first moon landing? It's coming up in 2069, so we better start thinking. I think we're gonna miss First Contact Day though.
As to possibilities that Nod might try to stop us from continuing to snowball our space expansion and evacuation... well, there's an old saying - "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
--
On liquid tib.... GDI once had a liquid tib research facility in Australia, back when central Australia was a YZ. Kane had it blown up in 2034. Central Australia has been a Red Zone ever since. I'll be fucking ecstatic the moment our power becomes sustained enough that we can dismantle all of our liquid tib power plants without worrying about power needs. Sure, everyone points to the time in TW3 that we ion cannoned a stockpile of liquid tib and how bad a RZ was created from it, but I think the Australia debacle is a bit more to scale with a liquid tib plant.
Though, honestly, at this point, I don't even mind that much. Even if space pop turns out to be the first plan goal we fail, what we've achieved is a miracle alone. It feels like we're building two stations simultaneously in about the same time frame or shorter than we did Enterprise alone. We have fusion yards that'll majorly improve our building and supply of lunar facilities/colonies as more ships come out of it. We're probably going to have lunar "cities" well before the end of the decade. G-Drive ships will allow us to rapidly expand to Mars and the Asteroid Belt once we start seriously looking beyond lunar orbit.
...What's going to be our celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the first moon landing? It's coming up in 2069, so we better start thinking. I think we're gonna miss First Contact Day though.
As to possibilities that Nod might try to stop us from continuing to snowball our space expansion and evacuation... well, there's an old saying - "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
--
On liquid tib.... GDI once had a liquid tib research facility in Australia, back when central Australia was a YZ. Kane had it blown up in 2034. Central Australia has been a Red Zone ever since. I'll be fucking ecstatic the moment our power becomes sustained enough that we can dismantle all of our liquid tib power plants without worrying about power needs. Sure, everyone points to the time in TW3 that we ion cannoned a stockpile of liquid tib and how bad a RZ was created from it, but I think the Australia debacle is a bit more to scale with a liquid tib plant.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Should have taken 40k pop goal.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
Biodiversity and Homeland are doing great, yes! Also anyone else found it funny BOTcommander rolled so poorly for Starbound?
- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
There could be a bit more discussion when the new turn options are posted.
People tend to post full plans immediately. There were plans posted in about half an hour of the last new turn post.
But unless people are sitting around at home with a spare hour, that can be too much info to properly discuss.
People will jump onto any available bandwagon when they pass through, which can be a problem if the discussion of the options hasn't matured yet. Even if we agree that we have made a better plan after voting has started, getting the vote tally to reflect that takes time.
People tend to post full plans immediately. There were plans posted in about half an hour of the last new turn post.
But unless people are sitting around at home with a spare hour, that can be too much info to properly discuss.
People will jump onto any available bandwagon when they pass through, which can be a problem if the discussion of the options hasn't matured yet. Even if we agree that we have made a better plan after voting has started, getting the vote tally to reflect that takes time.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
That's one reason I keep bringing plan stuff up again and again; I'm hoping to get people looking as critically as possible at as many aspects of the situation as possible. I've already made multiple revisions based on that in this draft cycle alone.
EDIT:
And part of the problem is that there just isn't frickin' time for a full discussion at the time of the turn posts. Ithillid tends to favor moratoriums about four hours long between the time the update drops and the time voting starts, and it takes very little time for the early proposed plans to develop an overwhelming lead that makes it hard for new plans to catch up unless they are wildly more popular.
If the moratorium period was more like 24 hours long, there'd be a lot more time to discuss things in depth in that timeframe instead of people just throwing around drafts they have ready and having a few hours of flurried conversation about it.
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- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
Unfortunately, we tend to get new options on new turns, which means you are sort of building momentum towards what would be good from the options of a turn ago.
That can make it hard to swing around to the new options.
I'm also not sure that we get the full participation in pre-turn plan discussions.
Not sure there is any optimal solution for this. The best we can do is recognise what the downsides are.
That can make it hard to swing around to the new options.
I'm also not sure that we get the full participation in pre-turn plan discussions.
Not sure there is any optimal solution for this. The best we can do is recognise what the downsides are.
- Location
- The Underdark
That is something where I am trying to balance between having enough time to discuss the turn, and not giving it so much time that people disengage too much.
- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
Well, there is nothing to stop us discussing things further before we throw up plans.
We do have a couple of days before we need to have a plan posted.
Even if we look at the before moratorium time. Do we need to throw up a complete plan to discuss priorities and options?
A plan itself is just bookkeeping, not the actual decision making.
We do have a couple of days before we need to have a plan posted.
Even if we look at the before moratorium time. Do we need to throw up a complete plan to discuss priorities and options?
A plan itself is just bookkeeping, not the actual decision making.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
Personally I like it as it stands. A lot of people are fire and forget voters, or are only interested in the quest getting pushed forward and don't care to much about the details, so long as plan goals or a project that for whatever reason they deem as important to them is on the list. They might read the between plan discussions, they might not. They might go over the whole list of options for the turn, they might not.
Discussion usually slows down at the end of the second day anyway, and only keeps up if the vote is hotly contested. I think it's good as is.
Discussion usually slows down at the end of the second day anyway, and only keeps up if the vote is hotly contested. I think it's good as is.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Having participated personally in this process many many times by now, I am absolutely certain that you are nowhere near the point of giving it so much time that people disengage too much. And it is debatable whether you are truly giving people enough time to discuss the turn at all, since there are time zones where the entire moratorium happens while people are sleep, or away at work and likely unable to engage seriously with a quest on SV.
If everyone with an interest in participating were somehow guaranteed to be there when you post the update, and they all had four hours with nothing else to do but discuss it, that would be enough. In practice... not so much.
Though of course, that is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
I'm not talking about how long the vote period is. I'm talking about the discussion period before the vote begins.
The fact that the discussion continues on up through 24-48 hours quite actively suggests, to me, that a four hour moratorium is a bit on the short side if you want everyone to have a chance to participate and for the active participants to think things through and significantly reshape their plans in light of new information.
It's questionable whether we should routinely be swinging around to new options on the turn they appear, because they're not automatically better than all the options that were already there. We've repeatedly seen swings like that, however, in cases where there was a clear and present actual need for the new project. People were quick to jump on the stabilizer constellation and the alloy foundries, for instance, because those were really good options and there were compelling reasons to pursue them immediately. But if something like a weapons upgrade project appears, we do have to think long and hard about whether we should be chasing it at the expense of other projects that were already on the docket.
Well, I don't think we'd get better results from just all collectively agreeing to have no full-dress drafts whatsoever about "so what are we gonna do" except during the four hours immediately after a turn post, then having a rousing debate over whose fully drafted plan with double digit vote support (though it was hammered together in about four hours or less) should win for 24-48 hours afterwards, and then going back to deliberately not talking about it again for the next X days/weeks.
The plan drafts are, functionally speaking, just a vehicle to get people looking at something that at least resembles a list of projects and priorities we can actually do. They do take some effort to modify, but that reflects the simple and crude reality that not all changes to a plan are easy or simple, and sometimes doing things like budgeting and prioritization are hard. I don't think that trying to sublimate this reality and obscure it behind a collective agreement to not draft plans would do us any favors.
At some point, if people aren't showing up to converse about what is to be done at any time in literal weeks of discussion, there's a limit to what can or should be done to encourage further participation. Not everyone even wants to engage with the game that way, and you can't "disadvantage" someone by doing something they never wanted to do it in the first place. You can't put me at a competitive disadvantage if I'm not even choosing to play that particular game.
Deliberately not thinking about the topic yourself to avoid somehow gaining an advantage over those who may or may not want to spend the time thinking about it later is a losing proposition.
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Mind, the turn around time between 'vote called' and 'results' is notably longer than the turn around between 'results' and 'new turn'.
I've much fewer problems with next turn plans being discussed in the lead up to the new turn post, in comparison to a plan having just been voted on.
I've much fewer problems with next turn plans being discussed in the lead up to the new turn post, in comparison to a plan having just been voted on.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I get the idea, but a lot of the time, the results post isn't giving us a lot of new information about what happened, mechanically, that we didn't get from doing basic arithmetic upon seeing the dice roll. The results are great, the results are lifeblood, the results are giving us vital context, the results often change our minds!
But we aren't having to wait for the results post to know whether the Phase X fusion reactors or tiberium mines completed, because we already know.
Again, I really don't think we'd be doing ourselves a lot of favors by blocking out the majority of all time during the quest and saying "no, no, no talking about what to do next during this time." It's not actually bad to talk about what to do next.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No one has suggested doing this. The source of the proposal you're arguing against is yourself.
Honestly, besides getting so few votes on the two plans I put out recently-ish, the vote opens up right in the middle of my work shift so it'd be a few hours before I could drop my plan into the thread for votes (...which might also account a bit for the low vote counts on them, but I think the lack of alloy foundries in them was probably more important), so I gave up on trying to do plans. I typically have enough time to read the update and some/most of the discussion before I need to go to work.
So not bothering to make plans works out in that my plans don't end up late off the starting line, and I don't spend a lot of my pre-work time on trying to figure out what modification/corrections need to be done, or spending that time post-work and getting even later off the starting line to attract votes. And since I don't really campaign for my plans once voting begins, being later out the gate would just make things worse. (And no, that's not poking at Simon, because the first plan I did was on a turn he chose not to do any plans on.)
--
Regarding "not doing draft plans, just discuss priorities" before the new turn is put out... what is the difference between "alloy foundries should be a top priority" and "Alloy Foundries 9D, 360R"? Both show a level of priority, but one's just incredibly vague on the actual numbers involved. Would hiding the numbers really change anything of the discussions besides debates over the actual level of funding? Given that draft plans get debated back in forth for days/weeks, I'm not sure a good plan could be hashed together in just 4 hours. Imagine the recent debate over Shala and Columbia max funding, but with all the references to the amount of dice deleted. Would it have been in any way more productive to leave out specific dice totals?
So not bothering to make plans works out in that my plans don't end up late off the starting line, and I don't spend a lot of my pre-work time on trying to figure out what modification/corrections need to be done, or spending that time post-work and getting even later off the starting line to attract votes. And since I don't really campaign for my plans once voting begins, being later out the gate would just make things worse. (And no, that's not poking at Simon, because the first plan I did was on a turn he chose not to do any plans on.)
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Regarding "not doing draft plans, just discuss priorities" before the new turn is put out... what is the difference between "alloy foundries should be a top priority" and "Alloy Foundries 9D, 360R"? Both show a level of priority, but one's just incredibly vague on the actual numbers involved. Would hiding the numbers really change anything of the discussions besides debates over the actual level of funding? Given that draft plans get debated back in forth for days/weeks, I'm not sure a good plan could be hashed together in just 4 hours. Imagine the recent debate over Shala and Columbia max funding, but with all the references to the amount of dice deleted. Would it have been in any way more productive to leave out specific dice totals?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Derpmind, perhaps I'm simply not understanding what other people are suggesting, in a way that's very obvious to everyone except me.
But it does look to me like there are other people suggesting "maybe we shouldn't have discussion, or should have discussion but shouldn't have full-dress plan drafts, except during restricted times."
At a bare minimum, it looks like a reasonable, not-uncharitable, not-intentionally-strawmanning, good faith interpretation of these posts would suggest a suggestion, or at least a discussion or consideration, of the idea of restricting times.
I may be to some extent misinterpreting or overinterpreting what I'm seeing. But I'm not just making this up out of whole cloth. I'm sorry, I know I'm eminently capable of being wrong, but I'm not that delusional.
... This.
So very very much this.
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- Location
- USA
I think we're doing alright.
Maybe a longer moratorium to allow more discussion before people start voting, but voting already takes like two days so I'm not really sure what that would help. People change what they are voting for all the time.
I really like the discussion between updates on what to do and such.
Admittedly, there isn't as much debate as there used to be. Pretty much because several categories are locked into only a couple of options due to plan goals and such.
Orbital is just Columbia and Shala with a couple dice in other areas. Heavy industry is alloys and powerplants. Light Industry is Reykjavik. Agriculture is moving into reforestation. Military really needed SADN.
Once the plan goals and common sense stuff start getting knocked out I'd expect the between turn debates to really pick up steam as we gain more flexibility.
And Simon's plans do tend to win more often than not because he puts the work in and, in most cases, he addresses plan goals and concerns in a logical way. He debates his points, takes criticism into account, and is willing to change his plans if people seem to want it.
I could start putting my own plans forward but
1. The math is a bit much for me.
2. It would basically be 95% Simon's plan.
3. I don't really have that kind of time.
So I'm pretty much good with the system as is.
Maybe a longer moratorium to allow more discussion before people start voting, but voting already takes like two days so I'm not really sure what that would help. People change what they are voting for all the time.
I really like the discussion between updates on what to do and such.
Admittedly, there isn't as much debate as there used to be. Pretty much because several categories are locked into only a couple of options due to plan goals and such.
Orbital is just Columbia and Shala with a couple dice in other areas. Heavy industry is alloys and powerplants. Light Industry is Reykjavik. Agriculture is moving into reforestation. Military really needed SADN.
Once the plan goals and common sense stuff start getting knocked out I'd expect the between turn debates to really pick up steam as we gain more flexibility.
And Simon's plans do tend to win more often than not because he puts the work in and, in most cases, he addresses plan goals and concerns in a logical way. He debates his points, takes criticism into account, and is willing to change his plans if people seem to want it.
I could start putting my own plans forward but
1. The math is a bit much for me.
2. It would basically be 95% Simon's plan.
3. I don't really have that kind of time.
So I'm pretty much good with the system as is.
Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah I'm on the train of "Let's pick less intensive plan goals next time", personally. I'd like to have the freedom for us to debate what exactly we want to do, and have time to pick fun oddball options because we can.
Granted, even with our current goals we do still have several departments where oddballs can appear and get picked.
Plans aren't arcane and they're not hard to make in any sense. I do think if we were to change anything about the Turnpost->Moratorium->Voting flow, it would be to extend the moratorium to a full 12 hours, but reduce the voting period to a day and a half. Or just make the moratorium and the vote both a day. Ultimately whatever works best for Ithillid is what we go with.
Granted, even with our current goals we do still have several departments where oddballs can appear and get picked.
Plans aren't arcane and they're not hard to make in any sense. I do think if we were to change anything about the Turnpost->Moratorium->Voting flow, it would be to extend the moratorium to a full 12 hours, but reduce the voting period to a day and a half. Or just make the moratorium and the vote both a day. Ultimately whatever works best for Ithillid is what we go with.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
A lot of this stuff is going to open out soon, except for Orbital and Heavy Industry. In Heavy Industry, we are rapidly approaching the turning point where we stop making alloy foundries... and lo and behold, we have to switch over to North Boston pretty much right away if we want to be confident of finishing it before the end of the Plan. In Orbital, likewise, pretty much as soon as we finish the Crown Jewels, we're probably gonna have to pivot directly to work on the moon base. If we're lucky, Ithillid's pessimistic estimate of 350 Progress per 1000 inhabitants will turn out to be [i[very[/i] pessimistic and we'll have enough wiggle room that with Free dice on Orbital we can finish off the target and then have some time to fuck around and enjoy ourselves. But it's gonna be rough, yes. On the bright side, by the end of this Plan we'll have a well developed idea of how to build scalable space infrastructure up to a self-sustaining level and we'll have a frickin' small city on the moon to go with our major mining complexes, so that's kind of awesome.
...
In Infrastructure, part of the problem is that we're actually doing quite well in all the indicators Infrastructure touches on. Low Quality Housing isn't nearly as much of a problem as it was before the giant apartment-building wave, Logistics is rock-solid with the pressure of the Regency War off, and if we want more of either of those things we can just build them. It's to the point where I'm seriously considering 100% optional projects that are barely even being asked for like completing Fortress Towns because fuckit, why not?
In Light Industry, the big problem is that at the moment as far as we know, we basically have two megaprojects and like... one other action in the entire category. There's just so little to actually do there that there's not a lot of space for really serious dispute over what is to be done. Maybe there's more cool stuff gated behind the megaprojects or otherwise coming down the pike, I dunno.
In Services, it's really great that we have some projects that aren't just AEVAs, but if anything the category suffers from too few intense requirements connected to the Plan goals. We can basically just do whatever we want and chew through every project currently on the roster apart from the AEVAs within a little more than a year, and with our Health indicator being rock-solid there's not a lot of sense of urgency on any one project. It's all getting done really soon anyway.
In Agriculture, basically we have the option to do so much that, again, there's just not a lot of point stressing over it, since we've made so much progress on the one really pertinent Plan target that some of us are starting to talk about building more phases of granaries just as a flex or something and I don't even disagree with them.
...
The really interesting categories are Tiberium and Military. These are areas where we have a lot of commitments, like a lot, but importantly they are diverse commitments. We've got to do a little of everything and it's hard to prioritize, and we can easily find genuinely important non-luxury items to keep buying up with any dice we're not spending on the plan commitments.
If all the categories were more like Tiberium and Military, with no single clear best way forward and a plethora of different interesting projects competing for attention, then plan votes would be a lot harder-fought and more hotly contested in my opinion. Then again, the turn posts would be even more unmanageable for Ithillid; I'd fold up like a cheap umbrella trying to keep it all straight, I think...
Since this is a subject I kind of want to put up for an informal referendum... Let me ask.
How do people feel about going heavy on reforestation dice this turn and next turn? What are your thoughts on that? My notion had been to try to get at least Phase 1 done before the election, but we could get a fair amount of tarberries with that effort. What do people think?