But hey nature being mostly dead mean we can rebuild it in our own image with biopunk solutions.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
Maybe in exnod territory from the Earth unification and in the sequel quest, but it literally takes political effort to try to deny the earth exploding so I don't share your optimism in the gdi public being happy with as you said biopunk.
- Location
- USA
It depends on the region. It was mentioned way back somewhere that GDI still has/had forest Camo for their troops on Madagascar. The British Isles are also likely "okay" since they've always been blue zone. Biodiversity probably isn't great as a whole but not everything is gone.
The biosphere wasn't gone even before the restoration efforts. It certainly wasn't in good shape, but it existed at least in Blue Zones.
Trees, grass, bushes, etc still existed by 2050, at least.
Trees, grass, bushes, etc still existed by 2050, at least.
Not saying anything is left but that most people will able to see the rugged patchy survivors as nothing but a constant reminder of how much has been lost, like how people see a old whale skeleton and won't think about the current progress of helping them out but how my there used to be in the wild.
Hey, who knows how much biomass there still is in the oceans, specifically the deeps. If it made it through the biological Tiberium phase, it should be ok.
At the least there's still plankton and photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans since there's still a breathable atmosphere.
At the least there's still plankton and photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans since there's still a breathable atmosphere.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not necessarily. Earth's atmosphere has enough oxygen in it that at OTL population levels (and consequently rates of conversion) it would take a few thousand years to deplete to the point where life is completely unsustainable - 1300 years at minimum. And given the near total collapse of the biosphere and mass die-off of humanity ITL (remember that the world population has whittled down to somewhere between 1.4 and 1.5 billion by this point) rates of oxygen consumption are notably lowered.
That's interesting, but by lack of options we've had to reseed the oceans or interact with them at all, they're probably not completely dead.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, keep in mind that the ocean (mostly) isn't going to get worse from lack of attention to reseeding, whereas on land we're at serious risk of having the topsoil washed away by particularly bad storms. The one isn't going anywhere, while the other could set back terrestrial reclamation efforts by decades if we don't hop to it.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
On the other hand, "there is so little oxygen-producing life on the planet left that it's unstable and will doom us if something else doesn't get us first" does sound like the kind of thing that, to put it mildly, would at least be on our list as a project that we could throw some Agriculture dice at.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Again, we have (conservatively) centuries to deal with it. Earth will explode from Tiberium intrusion into the mantle before atmospheric oxygen even begins to become a problem.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah, but it's not like any of our other Agriculture projects help with that problem. Again, you'd think someone would have at least mentioned it in passing.
The agriculture people probably know it but since it's not a near time issue and is not as flashy as the earth exploding don't see it getting the Publics major attention.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
People we literally do have an Action to do in Orbital if you are that worried about Oxygen running out on Earth:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah, but again, if it was a fundamental obstacle to any hope of restoring biospheres, you'd think that we'd see SOMETHING in the Agriculture project list about it. Something like "reseed the oceans with algae" or something like that.
Q3 2065 Results
- Location
- The Underdark
GDIOnline Q3 2065
New Spacecraft Designs: Do We Have Impulse Control?
Peter Katsulas
The new spacecraft designs we're seeing, the Caravel and Fluyt, have… interesting new engine designs. To give a massively oversimplified description, they take existing fusion engines, apply repulsorplates to the exhaust, and thus get a lot more thrust from the same amount of power/propellant. You do not want to be right behind them.
The Caravel is in the same general size category of the Leopard, but looks like it can go a lot further with roughly the same propellant. As in, Luna further. The Fluyt, well… I've only seen one, but it's a Big Boy. Carrying an order of magnitude more cargo per load, it also needs a massively more specialized launch facility, but it means we can lift entire chunks of a space station at once, with obvious benefits.
The costs here are also quite large, especially in specialized materials and equipment, but I think it's definitely going to be worth it.
FloatingWood
Sings the Flying Dutchman shanty. Poorly.
That's a big boy allright. Thousands of tons to the Moon is a hell of a lift.
ShadyMouse
So wait, these new engines; Are the repulsor plates letting us turn full size engines into what are basically Ion engines, scaled up?
AgathaH
I haven't seen one in person (curse shift assignments!), but dealing with that cargo load had a lot of schedules changed. In a good way, though.
#ShadyMouse I think it's mure just adding a lot of dV to the fusion engine's exhaust stream, so I'm not sure if that qualifies for what you mean or not.
FloatingWood
#ShadyMouse, not quite. The standard 'big boy' engine GDI uses these days is a fusion torch, which means it's an engine using fusion plasma to provide great thrust and high impulse both. Ion engines are a type of engine that electrically accelerate a very low mass stream of ions to a high velocity, hence the name, which offers high impulse but very limited thrust.
Given that repulsor plates are supposed to work on 'basically anything that has mass', I see no reason why you couldn't use them to enhance the exhaust velocity of ion engines the same way they enhance the exhaust velocity of the fusion drives though, and I'm sure that more than one bored rocket scientist or engineer has done some napkin math about exactly that.
AccomplishingProvidence
Is there any word if there are thoughts/plans to eventually craft vessels that use repulsor-boosted fusion torches and repulsor-boosted ion engines? So that there's an option for an extremely powerful "burst" in the torches, and more fuel-efficient ion engine?
MadCat
#FloatingWood, why would the engineers need napkin math when they got paid to actually build the things. Hail our glorious Mad-Scientist-in-Chief, Seo Thoki!
The War on Tiberium: Inhibitors, Glaciers, and Extraction
Mia Deeps
We've seen multiple different efforts to increase Tiberium harvesting and abatement, from many new inhibitor networks, a new glacier mine northwest of the Sindh region, and more controversially a completed MARV hub in southern Australia and further expansion of the enhanced Tiberium spikes. Added to the projects of last quarter, they represent a significant opening of new fronts against Red Zones, and additional pushback against subsurface Tiberium infiltration.
Over the past 9 months, Red Zones have been reduced by over 4% of their area at the start of the year, but we are seeing growth from the underground veins, with the Red Zone-equivalent area growing by about .5% of total land surface area.
I'm hearing about some new methodologies for attacking these subsurface veins, along with an expansion of existing ones - more and more dense inhibitor networks, more subsurface mining, and new superdeep mines which may incorporate multiple technologies that are being used separately in existing operations. The Treasury and ZOCOM are, from what I've heard, not particularly optimistic about what progress we are likely to make, but optimism isn't really their job. Punching the rock into useful resources is, and they seem to be doing quite well at that.
FloatingWood
Is there even anything we can do about the deep tiberium? I mean, some of that is more than 6 kilometers down, how do you even get at it?
MadCat
We have the technology. It's called Enhanced Tiberium Spikes and Inhibitors. Just uh, ignore that the former are politically problematic and the latter are expensive to build and run. But yeah, if we can't abate Deep Tib directly through mining it, then using Visitor tech is all we have.
MajorMiner
Even back in the 1970s, the Kola borehole got down to 10k depth. Now, that was a relatively small diameter, but we can get down there, and we can get at least some machinery down there. Will it be enough for mining, or just for data collection? Dunno.
AgathaH
Sounds like a boring job.
flees
FloatingWood
Get your head out of the clouds, Agatha.
Also, can we stick the business end of an inhibitor down there?
MadCat
As far as I'm aware, there is no theoretical limitation on inhibitor sizes. So logic says we should be able to, but trying to make one that fits into a 60cm diameter hole or less is going to be a challenge. I don't think I've heard of one that wasn't at least a couple meters wide, and those were being transported by truck or rail. So we're definitely looking at needing a new design to fit. When we get that depends on our glorious Treasurer, Seo Thoki, and his mad quest for SCIENCE! Read, its liable to get deployed in the next year.
AccomplishingProvidence
#AgathaH, I hope you didn't have to dig too deeply for that one.
#FloatingWood, I would suspect that's one of those "sometime soon" goals. Based on what we're seeing it's likely a goal of just getting something down there to break up or "draw up" the Tiberium first, and then progress to something like an Inhibitor.
Still and all, the progress against the Red Zones is heartening. No one benefits from their continued existence, regardless of what some Nod leaders have tried to proclaim in the past. In the short term, if one were to think of Earth herself as a garden, we're finally at least cutting back the weeds within the garden. One day soon perhaps we can say we're truly removing them, but every step helps.
Q3 2065 Results
Resources: 1540+420 in reserve (-30 from Reconstruction commissions) (-15 from Bureau of Arcologies) (-15 from Consumer Industrial Development) (-10 Division of Alternative Energy) (-20 Department of Munitions)(-30 Department of Refits) (-240 InOps) (-60 General Pool) (100 in Reserve for Banking)
Political Support: 100
SCIENCE Meter: 4/4
Free Dice: 6
AI Dice: 4 (full bonus)
Dice Capacity 60/60
Tiberium Spread
Surface
26.985 (+0.28+.125 from Karachi project over 3 turns) Blue Zone
1.68 (+0.19+1.49 from Karachi project over 3 turns) Green Zone
0.07 (+0.00) Cyan Zone
23.305 (+0.47,-1.655 from Karachi project over 3 turns) Yellow Zone (115 points of mitigation)
47.96 (-0.94) Red Zone (110 points of mitigation)
Underground Tiberium infiltration estimates:
0.67 (+0.33) Blue
12.75 (-0.89) Yellow (46 points of mitigation)
87.49 (+.56) Red (27 points of mitigation)
Next Mutation Roll: Q2 2066
Current Economic Issues:
Housing: +100 (+87 LQ, +13 HQ) (1 high-quality housing per turn)
Energy: +58 (+6 in reserve) (+5 per turn from sub-departments)
Logistics: +28 (-14 from military activity)
Food: +66 (+26 backed reserve, +5 unbacked reserve)
Health: +45 (+6 Emergency Health) (-8 from refugees)
Capital Goods: +61 (+2 per turn from Distributed Industrial Authority) (+628 in reserve)
Consumer Goods: +60 (+10 per turn from Private Industry) (+3 per turn from sub-departments) (-15 from realignment) (Net -2 per turn)
Labor: +5 (+3 per turn from medical care) (+2 per turn from Immigrant qualifications) (-2 per turn from private industry) (-3 per turn from other government) (-1 from graying population) (Net -1)
Tiberium Processing Capacity (3070/4200) (720/1850 HG, 1350/1350 IHG, 1000/1000 X) (HG: 1 per 90, IHG: 1 per 80, X: 1 per 40)
Tiberium Reserve (0/500)
STUs: +13
Taxation Per Turn: +240 (no change from economic turbulence)
Space Mining Per Turn: +100
Maintenance Reductions: +50
Increased Refining Efficiency: +100
STU Production and Consumption
Net: +13 per turn
Production: +51 per turn (7.6 HG, 15.9 IHG, 22.2X, 6 RZ SMARV)
Consumption: -38 per turn
31 Economy
-6 Tiberium (2 Harvesting Tendrils, 2 Sonic Weapons, 2 T-Glass)
-25 Other (8 Structural Alloys, 6 Hovercraft, 2 Gravitic Shipyard, 2 Microfusion Labs, 3 Caravel Shipyard, 4 Fluyt Shipyard)
7 Military
-4 Aircraft (2 Tactical Lasers, 2 Plasma Munitions)
-1 Ground Vehicles (1 Mastodons [Shimmer Shields, Point Defense Lasers], 0 Havocs [Shimmer Shields])
-1 Strategic Air Defense Networks
-1 Navy (Lasers)
Projected Fusion Power Plant Decommissioning
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2065
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q3 2066
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2066
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q2 2067
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q3 2067
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2067
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q2 2068
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2068
Status of the Parties
(strong support, weak support, weak opposition, strong opposition)
Developmentalist: 705 (200; 400; 75; 30) 17.6%
Militarists: 629 Seats (300; 100; 200; 29) 15.7%
Starbound: 618 Seats (400; 100; 100; 18) 15.5%
Market Socialist Party: 555 Seats (300; 155; 50; 50) 13.9%
Socialist Party: 493 Seats (250; 100; 93; 50) 12.3%
Free Market Party: 405 Seats (50; 150; 100; 105) 10.1%
Initiative First Party: 334 Seats (0; 34; 100; 200) 8.4%
United Yellow List: 117 Seats(80; 30; 7; 0) 3%
Reclamation: 99 Seats (50; 40; 6; 3) 2.5%
Homeland: 41 Seats (20; 10; 5; 6) 1%
Open Hand: 4 Seats (2; 2; 0; 0) .1%
Total: 4000 Seats (1652; 1121; 736; 491)
Military Confidence
Ground Forces: High
Air Force: High
Space Force: Decent
Steel Talons: Decent
Navy: Decent (Trending to High)
ZOCOM: Decent
Plan Goals
Increase Income by 70
Increase population in space by 550
Spend at least one die on Steel Talons projects every turn
Projects
Complete Karachi Planned City by end of 2065
Deploy Governor-A refit
Complete at least 1 Ground Forces Zone Armor factory
Complete Post War Housing Refits
Promises to Litvinov:
Do not activate Free Dice (except for Tiberium) unless all Department Dice are active.
Spend no more than two free dice per turn on Military.
Outreach
Starting in Q2, a covert outreach has been made from the Brotherhood of Nod to the Initiative. While the exact contents and the identity of the person reaching out have been obscured, the name of Jackson Waterley being brought into the equation has GDI analysts sitting up and paying attention.
This is not merely a warlord seeking some accord; Waterley had been considered a likely casualty of Nod's internecine strife, but his great military skill and lacking political awareness fits the profile for what Kane's inner circle looks for before when it desires a problem solver. As do his sudden disappearance and return.
Politics
The political sphere is fairly quiet. With Carter all but guaranteed to be the next leader of the Initiative, the politicians are preparing for both a last second rush of work that would be of interest to Litvinov, as well as currying favor with Carter for once he takes office as Director. While there are constant debates over a number of topics, the most significant one at this time is how to allocate representation to the orbital populations. While so far they are close enough, and work on the same calendar and clock as others in the Initiative, there are concerns about how to accommodate the differing needs of populations that are further out, and may well have separate needs from other Initiative populations. There are, broadly, three main proposals. First is the banding system. Cislunar colonies getting their own zone, and then, as the Initiative steps out beyond that, each new band of settlement becoming their own zone administration. That however, has problems as the bands go out. As a result of orbital mechanics, Earth would have a faster response time to a problem in the belt than a Martian based command structure for about half the time, for example.
The second and most bluntly simple proposal is to maintain all of the solar settlements as colonies, running direct control from Earth. While this has its advantages in terms of centralization, it does mean that any problem may end up being resolved by functionaries with neither interest nor experience with local conditions or interests. Certainly feasible enough at the current level of off-Earth populations, but a larger and more widely spread humanity of the future would no doubt chafe under a government that by nature of how it's organized has no need to be fair to the colonies.
The third proposal is distinctly ambitious, and foresees a humanity that has spread beyond the Sol system alone and to other stars. With years if not potentially decades of information lag a distinct possibility, it proposes a considerable devolution of power to far outlying populations. Sol would, of course, still be central in the way GDI is organized, but that would be because of its industrial and cultural weight. For system wide populations it most resembles the first proposal, defining Zones on the basis of response speed from a central location rather than attempting to do so on the basis of distance from a specific body in the system.
[ ] Karachi Planned City (Phase 5)
A final serious push to secure the region, with two primary goals. First, to secure the flank, putting Initiative boots firmly against the Red Zone – producing a new front for major Red Zone harvesting activities – and second to firm up the logistical links between the mountains and the sea.
(Progress 854/780: 20 resources per die) (+8 Logistics, +4 Housing, -2 Labor) (+India and Iran Stuff) (Can spend mixed Tiberium and Infrastructure dice, at least 1 die must be Tiberium)
Karachi is anything but a gleaming jewel. Slabs of concrete and prefabricated buildings line reclaimed and reconstructed avenues, themselves built for machines more than people. Plain, drab, a glorified fortress. All of these are words that could be easily used to describe it. At the same time, it is a lifeline. Even now, there is a constant flow of metal up into the mountain fastnesses of Blue Zone 18. There are Indian fusiliers looking over their new Zone suits, there are factories to produce myomer bundles now beginning those first few slow painstaking steps to culture the fungi.
Along the eastern border of the front GDI has, for the most part, simply settled into defensible positions. While launching an invasion into India would be foolhardy at best, the Initiative is well positioned to do it if it becomes necessary. Operationally, the area has cooled down dramatically with al-Isfahani having been forced back, and both sides are situated well and staring each other down over open sights. Neither side particularly wants to fight a war, and that extends to the naval conflict. Submarine operations, piracy, and commerce raiding have all been tapering off, again, due to the interlaced nature of the comparative positions. Certainly, another major conflict would open holes, but both sides have begun to adopt a policy of live and let live, in this case, starting with the local warlords signaling a willingness to step down or cease operations in exchange for limited concessions.
In the western side of the Initiative's holdings, most of the effort of the Initiative engineers has been put into a series of branch roads – ribs attaching to the spine. The next step – really the last one remaining – is to begin pushing a full scale border offensive into the Red Zone. The Shah's forces may have been defeated and dispersed, but Tiberium is no lesser foe. Likewise do the mountains loom tall despite their instability, undermined by habitation, water, and Tiberium all.
In the Himalayas, the plans are twofold. First are the industrialization efforts. Although the Himalayan region was hardly ignored by the Initiative and its forces are adequately mechanized, a pre-Tiberium history of relative poverty and a post-Tiberium history of isolation has left it poorly developed. Bringing it up to the standard set by many of the other front line Blue Zones is going to be a process that will span at least a plan, and likely more. Second is turning existing infrastructure into a properly substantial space port. The Himalayas, because they were the most isolated Blue Zone, saw the most use of suborbital shuttle launches, and so have the most infrastructure for doing large scale Caravel launches of any Blue Zone. While it will be far from the only site doing such work, it is going to be one of the bigger ones, simply because of the number of runways set relatively close to each other.
[ ] Postwar Housing Refits (Phase 3)
Finalizing housing projects, and fitting out the last of the postwar housing for long term living is going to disrupt a relatively small number of communities, but, at this point the housing in many cases does need significant work, and can be made much more sustainable in the long run.
(Progress 167/150: 10 resources per die) (-5 Housing, +3 High Quality Housing)
The last of the postwar blocks have been refitted. While still far from luxurious, they do represent a significant upgrade. Overall, displacement has been minimized by the relative slowness of the program, with people still moving – but most often between blocks, rather than being forced out of the city entirely. Beyond that, rents – while higher than they were for the pre-refit blocks – are still dramatically low for the environment that they inhabit. Many are (barely) negative, in part to minimize the impact on the populations that live in these spaces.
More broadly, the future of Initiative housing is posing a question that is very much up in the air. On one hand, projections are anticipating the Initiative's population to stabilize – between life extension programs, reproductive programs, and space colonization offering hope – halting its steady decline, and it is likely that the Initiative will at some point need to build additional housing. Not just for refugees, defectors, and populations taken from the Brotherhood by force of arms, but a net natural increase of the Initiative's own.
On the other hand, what form that housing may take is a question with some complicated answers. Vast swathes of arcology blocks are certainly functional and defensible, but are also expensive. Orbital housing is even more so, especially because just building residences alone is not going to be enough – they need something to do, and the essential emptiness of space and the relative early stage of Initiative orbital investment means that all infrastructure must be built to demand. Establishing primary sector jobs will require a substantial investment regardless, but so much of it is automated this will provide only a limited number of jobs, while allocating space to secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors is going to need substantial bureaucratic reform to establish, define and enforce the necessary regulations.
[ ] U-Series Alloy Foundries (Phase 6)
Shifting goals from bulk alloys to more specialist systems, tib resistant cutting blades will be a relatively minor but significant shift in GDI's ability to harvest Tiberium. While it will be expensive for what GDI gets out of the program, it is also an investment in the core technologies and competencies of working with STU based alloys.
(Progress 411/455: 40 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -1 STUs) (-10 progress requirement on tib mining projects, -10 progress requirement on heavy industry projects)
Pushing forward work on specialist systems has for the most part run into problems with tempering. Heating and cooling metals can create a wide variety of different traits in the final product, even with the same chemical composition. A properly tempered blade is both hard and springy. And creating such a blade with U-series alloys is proving a challenge, as even in small amounts STUs can fundamentally change an otherwise unremarkable alloy's nature, requiring higher heating, or less heating, more or fewer thermocycles, and a number of other tweaks, many of which are still being worked out. Most of the blades coming out for testing are currently simply too brittle to be more than one-shot items: hard, but an impact to the wrong point would shatter them into a thousand pieces. Those blades that prove more resilient have proven difficult to reproduce, with the fact that sometimes no detectable difference exists between a blade that failed the tests and one that passed causing no end of frustration.
[ ] Second Generation Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 7)
With second generation plants a proven concept, GDI needs a relatively rapid pace of construction, with the first of the first generation plants expected to begin reaching serious failures in a matter of years, and the limitations on construction speeds meaning that total production is noticeably bottlenecked.
(Progress 335/270: 20 resources per Die) (+19 Energy) (-1 Labor)
(Progress 65/270: 20 resources per Die) (+19 Energy) (-1 Labor)
The supply of superconductors coming out of Bergen have proven to be a significant easing in the process of construction. Many of the reactors coming online with the current batch – somewhat exceeding expectations in their numbers as Bergen is gearing up faster than anticipated – are yet insufficiently protected from adverse outside conditions, like bombardment with Brotherhood standard munitions. While the internal systems are functional, as is the radiation shielding, these are essentially naked reactors, with little more around them than is required to keep the rain off. The fusion system itself is a relatively mature technology, and one that GDI is now very familiar with building, smoothing the construction process substantially as procedure is reformed due to the now proven superfluous nature of some of the steps.
Technological development in this area is difficult. It is not hard to produce a superior reactor, so long as you don't mind using over a ton of elerium per reactor, or otherwise obscene amounts of rare, hard to build, and extremely high technology systems. Building a better reactor that is economically viable, however, is, as it turns out, almost impossible. One part of this is priorities. While some scientists and engineers have attempted to find simplifications, or ways to get the same energy yield from the reactors with easier to manufacture components, most have been looking for ways to increase the density and energy of the plasma to produce more power.
[ ] Flexible Superconductor Development (New) (Tech)
Flexible superconductors, under the product name Caterium, has been something of a surprise breakthrough. While still somewhat limited in degree of flexibility, it is a significant upgrade to military applications, and a noticeable one for moving superconductors significantly down the chain towards, although likely not all the way to, the home.
(Progress 205/120: 25 resources per die)
Despite efforts to give it a proper name, Caterium has stuck as the name of compound 65-Z5-D2, the most effective of a number of flexible superconductors developed for the Initiative. Unfortunately, there are still problems despite the compound's success. Most notably, Caterium is presently yet problematic at higher temperatures and in higher electromagnetic flux environments. Putting the cables in a cooled environment, such as a computer, works, but few computers need the sheer amounts of energy moved around by superconducting systems; by contrast, the systems that could benefit from them (such as Initiative railguns) would in many cases need to be redesigned to provide additional shielding and cooling. Experiments for low gravity environment production have been promising, but as of yet inconclusive.
In a lot of ways, Caterium as it is now is most advantaged in terms of size. Rather than needing to work around prefabricated sections, superconducting wires can be bent into an appropriate shape, meaning that oftentimes less material can be used. For example, in a test model Guardian APC, about five kilograms of weight were cut from the HTSC system. While not much on a multi ton vehicle, it is still a significant improvement, and one that has greater impacts elsewhere.
[ ] Adaptive Cloth Factories
While primarily for consumer goods, adaptive cloth is adaptive cloth, and the production will also feed into military procurement among other fields. Mostly, the Initiative will solely be producing the cloth, and then farming it out to private fashion houses, and Initiative backed design studios to do much of the work of integrating it into things that people will actually wear.
(Progress 103/300: 15 resources per die) (+5 Consumer Goods)
Making adaptive cloth is proving challenging. One of the biggest challenges is mass production of the requisite nanocrystals. While guanine is relatively simple to make in bulk, the problem is reliably crystalizing it, and then embedding those crystals in a way that can be manipulated, especially in large sections. One of the key elements here is that the production is statistical rather than reliable. Making strips for a ghillie suit, or accents, is one thing, but making a full cloak, or an actual outfit has so far been a problem.
There are two key issues here beyond the statistical element. One big part is shaping. For most outfits, the grain of the weave is not going in any one direction, but rather depends heavily on what strains are being expected to be put on the clothes. With adaptive cloth, the direction of the grain is fundamental, especially anywhere where the cloth is folded over on itself. Of course, all of these are solvable problems, especially when the strips that are being made are being received across the fashion world with quite a bit of interest.
[ ] White Goods Programs
White goods are major home appliances. While the state of the art has progressed in the last fifteen to twenty years, nearly all of those appliances in GDI's houses are old models, designed before the Third Tiberium War, and in many cases significantly before then. While wholesale immediate replacement is not viable, looking at the progress in various fields, should allow for GDI to make some efficiencies and conveniences more readily available.
(Progress 182/200: 15 resources per die) (-1 Capital Goods, +4 Consumer Goods, +1 Energy, +1 Labor)
One of the biggest remaining problems is simply distribution and marketing. While there is plenty of slack in the logistics system, at least at the moment, convincing people that it is time to upgrade is proving something of a problem, especially with the average age of appliances across GDI. While there is some level of planned obsolescence, aimed to coincide with other home maintenance cycles as best as possible, pushing substantial upgrades like this one is largely something that homeowners have to manage themselves, and go out of their way to do.
Most of the upgrades are relatively minor things all told. There are some improvements in electromagnets in an induction cooktop, or efficiency improvements to the fan systems on standard convection ovens, and for higher end models, steam injection systems. No doubt all citizens will eventually acquire these better machines to replace failing equipment, but that will take quite some time.
[ ] Wildlife Restoration (New)
With the new wildlands maturing, it has become clear that a certain level of animal presence is required to maintain a healthy biosphere. By tapping existing stocks of small and medium animals currently kept in zoos it will be possible to seed the various biomes with animals that enforce the required degree of flora diversity.
(Progress 198/180: 25 resources per die)
Restoring wildlife has to start from the ground up. While a significant portion of that does include various charismatic microfauna – for example: squirrels, rabbits, moles, and guinea pigs, among others – there are also thousand other species that many people find annoying, most notably mosquitos, significant numbers of other fly species, ticks, and the like. While efforts are being taken to minimize the human impact of a number of the elements, at the end of the day, these species provide critical biomass – such as mosquitos and their larvae providing food for frogs and dragonflies among other things.
[ ] Salvebrush Development (New)
A development on the poulticeplant, the salvebrush is intended to provide topical salve, adding both productivity, and antiviral properties. While a relatively minor innovation over the extant poulticeplant, it is a noticeable degree of effort. As per agreement, samples of this plant will be provided to Nod.
(Progress 99/80: 20 Resources per Die) (Plant Genetics)
Salvebrush is essentially a 'poulticeplant 2.0.' Higher concentrations of medical properties, more resilient and capable of surviving with little water or nutrition, the plants are (across most of the Initiative) simply self-sustaining, and need little more care than being left in a window box.
There are, however, problems in their introduction: mostly issues with negative medication interactions; and in some, relatively small portions of the population, they can cause significant headaches and even migraines. While for most within this population the cure is better than the disease, and no known interactions have been notably hazardous enough for rollout to be restricted or halted, working out the precise interaction is going to be an interesting and ongoing problem for the medical field to deal with. Salvebrush plants are currently being offered alongside a voluntary logging of the recipient's reported medical profile, in order to help construct a more comprehensive database of interactions.
[ ] Kingsfoil Development (New)
There are a number of ways to produce antibiotic, antiviral, antiparasitic, and antifungal agents, some of which are safe to be consumed in parallel. While not as effective as dedicated single-target agents can be, kingsfoil is intended to be a high speed first resort that is hypo-allergenic as well as highly compatible with most commonly used medication, and so minimization of side effects has a higher priority than maximization of impact.
(Progress 84/80: 20 Resources per Die) (Plant Genetics)
Kingsfoil as a new product is an interesting one. Easy to grow, and something that is being presented to the Initiative as a whole as part of a windowsill pharmacy. Kingsfoil, salvebrush, and poulticeplants are, when approached as a set, capable of a great deal – allowing even civilians the ability to produce nearly anything short of fixing a broken bone with very minimal supply lines.
Depending on the strength needed, the simplest way to use it is simply making kingsfoil tea. Many of the products are water soluble, and so can be simply extracted into an infusion, and drunk as something to take the edge off an infection, even though it's not a cure-all. If that is not enough, the leaves can be chewed or eaten, each offering a more complex and comprehensive package. Each option is fairly bitter however, a side effect of the number of different alkaloid compounds being produced in the plant.
The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.
J. R. R. Tolkein The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
[ ] Bioplastics Development (New)
Bioplastics in various forms have been in use since the 1850s. However, a significant number of them are either low- or limited-performance, or simply difficult to produce in the modern-day environment. Genetically engineering a dedicated plant to produce the precursors to high-performance bioplastics is one element of making the Initiative less reliant on Tiberium.
(progress 52/80: 20 resources per die) (Plant Genetics)
Bioplastics are not new. From linoleum and parkesine in the 1850s and early 1860s, to Initiative efforts to move away from increasingly difficult to access oil sources in the 2010s, there has been a fairly constant flow. Most modern plastics used by the Initiative rely on vegetable waste or starches as the substrate for their production.
The development of next generation bioplastics has primarily run into a twin tailed problem. On one side, the plastics that require relatively minimal processing simply don't have the strength and durability required to make them a significant improvement on existing options. On the other side, development projects that have plastics which are capable of being a significant improvement on existing plastics, are a nightmare to purify into a usable product. Engineering a plant that can produce at least some of the required precursors at a sufficiently high purity somewhere in the plant's body is a yet unsolved problem, but research is ongoing.
[ ] Terrain Retention Projects (New)
While reforestation and restoration of the biosphere is currently a relatively low priority, especially due to the risks of Tiberium undermining, that does not in fact mean that GDI cannot care about soil retention and otherwise stabilizing the system.
(Progress 75/160: 15 resources per die)
The key with terrain retention is twofold: leaf cover, and roots. A raindrop typically hits the ground at its terminal velocity – up to around 10 meters per second – and acts as a more potent vector of erosion than most would imagine, in less time than would be expected. In the time before Tiberium, environs such as the North American Badlands that bore large stretches of exposed earth and rock could expect an average of a centimeter of erosion per year, even with sparse rainfall. Putting in leaf cover means that rather than the seven minutes, and kilometers of space to fall, the rain is hitting the plant, and sliding off having spent most of its energy potential, hitting the soil at usually less than a meter per second, depending on the height of the plant. Creeping juniper for example, is a short evergreen, reducing the velocity of the rain all year round, while also spreading over a maximum area.
The overall program is a fundamentally difficult one, not because it has specific requirements, but rather due to the massive amount of space that needs to be covered. While a single flight hits entire square kilometers at a time, when significant portions of the Earth's surface still require cover that square kilometer is very small in comparison.
Seed flight 8-2065-41398 completed.
Note: Low level assessment prior to entering the seeding pattern indicates substantial grass presence. Likely source; blown in from the north by last year's grass fields maturing.
[ ] Enhanced Harvest Tiberium Spikes (Phase 3)
While still a potential political problem, the enhanced harvest Tiberium spikes offer a considerable degree of underground abatement with minimal investment required.
(Progress 303/180: 20 resources per die) (-5 Political Support) (+10 resources per turn) (+1 Underground Red Zone Abatement, +1 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement)
(Progress 123/180: 20 resources per die) (-5 Political Support) (+10 resources per turn) (+1 Underground Red Zone Abatement, +1 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement)
(Progress 0/180: 20 resources per die) (-5 Political Support) (+10 resources per turn) (+1 Underground Red Zone Abatement, +1 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement)
Another salvo of spikes has hit the ground. While still politically difficult, they are part of a much larger campaign against underground Tiberium, and through that lens, they are worth every bit of conspiracy theorizing and political difficulty they face.
Looking at the broader campaign against underground Tiberium, GDI scientists have a number of efforts underway. The biggest is the borehole project. Rather than a surface level Tiberium spike, mechanically drawing Tib to the surface, boreholes are the inverse. The proposal is as follows: Using Tiberium-resistant materials, a 25-centimeter-diameter hole is drilled into the ground, to be an intended depth of ten kilometers, which can then have a compact T-Glass lined harvester planted into it, with the end result of a means to harvest and abate not only that which can be drawn to the surface, but from every level. Beyond that, the sensor programs will use data from the driller to provide a much better look at deep subsurface Tiberium. While the prototype is not without issues, it has shown promise, already providing a more detailed look at the structure of Tiberium around the test site at the remnants of the Kola Superdeep Borehole
A protest against the Enhanced Harvest Tiberium Spike project turned violent earlier today in Kingston, when alderman Indira Danforth incited the crowd with racist chants aimed at the Forgotten. Initiative First has disavowed their alderman's actions, noting that they have been staunch supporters of the Forgotten even before IF separated from the Militarist caucus.
Kingston Broadcasting, 7 O'clock News.
[ ] Tiberium Glacier Mining (Stage 13) (Updated)
The invasion of Karachi has opened a number of new glacier faces. While the infrastructure is not there yet for the bigger and more substantial practices, there is enough frontage to begin serious mining operations at a number of points.
(Progress 199/165: 30 resources per die) (-5 Logistics, +1 Energy) (additional income trickle [45-65 Resources]) (+1 Red Zone Abatement, +1 point underground Red Zone Abatement) (5 Stages available)
(Progress 34/165: 30 resources per die)
Mining into the Pakistani highlands is fundamentally tricky. Punching into a mountainous region is already difficult, and it is even worse when the local security situation is lacking, which makes things more expensive than they need to be. Rather than only having Zone Operations Command forces at the front line, there are detachments of the army riding with every convoy, adding several tons of weight to already overburdened formations.
While only a handful have come under serious attack, each time easily fended off by the Zone troopers accompanying the force, the attacks do show a Brotherhood that is beginning to properly understand how to fight Zone Armor. Snipers have been hunting drones for months, degrading awareness among the troops; every attack begins by attempting to blind the suits, and no attack proceeds with an assault until the suits run out on drone support assets. Equally, the attacks that have been made make extensive use of precision and enhanced penetration munitions, killing Zone troopers in the opening seconds, before they can begin returning fire to the ambushing force.
[ ] Tiberium Inhibitor Deployment (Updated)
Tiberium inhibitors have by now moved from experimental deployment to serial. While each will be significantly energy-expensive and require a major investment of resources, it is now one of the fastest routes to abate the Tiberian menace.
(For Yellow and Red Zones, project is unlocked once all allocated MARV hubs are completed)
Red Zone 1 Europe (Progress 446/100: 30 resources per die) (+2 Red Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Red Zone Abatement)
Red Zone 3 Russia/East Asia(Progress 346/100: 30 resources per die) (+2 Red Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Red Zone Abatement)
Red Zone 2 Africa (Progress 246/100: 30 resources per die) (+2 Red Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Red Zone Abatement)
-Blue Zone 10 South Africa (Progress 146/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 14 Madagascar (Progress 71/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 2 North America East (Progress 234/75: 30 resources per die) (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 11 North America West Coast (Progress 159/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 16 Alaska/Kamchatka (Progress 84/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 6 Japan (Progress 9/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
Another wave of inhibitors have come online in the past quarter, pushing GDI's abatement efforts ever higher. While above ground efforts have proven highly effective with Tiberium retreating on every front, the underground is more stubborn. Much work is left to do to strengthen the defenses, especially in the deeply buried and hard to reach Red Zone deposits, but a combined network now stretches from Hammerfest in the far north of BZ-1 to Suiderstrand at the southern tip of BZ-10. Likewise is there a network across the length and breadth of North America, interrupted only where Nod refuses to let inhibitors be constructed. Together, along with the island networks of Blue Zones 6 and 14 and the already existing networks, will they squeeze the crystal's growth.
This kind of large scale operation is however not without its costs. Many of the engineering teams are effectively living out of V-35s, ferried from jobsite to jobsite, with many putting in 14 to 18 hour days on a regular basis. While there are continuous efforts to maintain some level of work life balance, most of the teams push themselves harder than they need to. At the same time, slowing down would be difficult and intensely unpopular, especially as the teams themselves would in many cases protest what they see as failing to defend their homes.
[ ] Fluyt-Class Impulse Shipyard
A much larger and more ambitious platform, the Fluyt-class, represents a megalifter: designed to carry thousands of tons at a time, lifting entire station units from the surface to orbit and beyond, ready for integration. Built with four primary engines, and a half dozen secondaries, the craft is going to require dedicated facilities to handle its sheer bulk; a number of runways will need to be drastically widened or newly built for this purpose. It is also VTOL-capable, but it requires specialized landing platforms designed to take the force and fury of such events – with a number of other difficulties besides. The Fluyt offers a platform that can do things that have so far been considered impossible, but using it effectively comes with its own challenges.
(Progress 639/600: 45 resources per die) (-4 STUs, -8 Energy, -6 Capital Goods)
There is no way around it; the Fluyt is a brick with wings: thousands of tons of high performance alloys wrapped around a sectioned hold that can be pressurized but does not need to be. It does not fly by any grace other than the grace of a thrust-to-weight ratio of greater than one even when loaded, granted by six secondary impulse drives on swivel mounts at the bow, stern and midships, fed by hydrogen from the central fuel tanks if an atmosphere or solid ground are not available.
Centerline at the back are the four primary engines, fusion impulse rockets of tremendous power and efficiency, capable of hauling the Fluyt from the lower atmosphere of Earth to the Moon and back, carrying with it its maximum cargo weight of nearly eight thousand tons both ways on a single load of fuel with margin to spare.
Despite the deceptively compact design, it is still huge, nearly one-hundred-fifty meters long, a main-body beam of forty, a wingspan of three hundred, and height of thirty. It has no wheels – when landing, taking off or taxiing it 'floats' on the raw power of the secondary engines in ground effect mode, the force spread across an as wide an area as possible. When seated on the pad it rests on a dozen sturdy landing legs while its internal cranes load and unload cargo containers to and from trains beneath it.
And all of this would have been deemed science fiction, if it were not for one blustery September day in BZ-10 when the prototype lifted off from the open dock north of Cape Town it was built in, flew out to the Atlantic, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and flew into orbit. It returned from orbit some six hours later, landing at a fusion-rated airstrip in BZ-14 – part of the Madagascar suborbital shuttle port. As it turned out, the airstrip was no longer fusion-rated after the Fluyt had made its landing, buckling under the weight of the craft.
The shipyard in BZ-10 is already working on the first production model Fluyt, albeit that the work is slow as the ships require a variety of design unique components with long lead times, a matter that will resolve itself as the supply line gears up. By agreement, every Fluyt will bear the name of a province of a BZ, selected by lot in two rounds when the ship is certified, with all BZs participating except for the first draw – as the prototype Fluyt bears the name Holland, BZ-1 has withdrawn from that lottery.
"Don't you think a Fluyt with the name Holland flying over the Cape is tempting the fates a bit?"
"Tempt? No, we did not tempt the fates. We did our best to provoke them to visit their wrath upon us. We baited them to bring us to ruin, attempted to incite their fury. There was a 'Vliegende Hollander' and nothing happened. The design and engineering are sound."
-Fluyt Project Press Briefing
[ ] Lunar Homesteading (Phase 4)
Continuing Lunar Homesteading projects are a combination of beginning to build basic community facilities, including low gravity pools, community exercise spaces, and other amenities, alongside expansions of living space, primarily in already existing homesteading spaces.
(Progress 376/220: 30 resources per die) (1000 residents)
(Progress 156/220: 30 resources per die)
Homesteading patterns have been shifted around the construction of Aldrin. Otherwise suboptimal locations that are convenient to Aldrin are being prioritized over better sites for expansion. Of particular interest is the start of a Lunar road network, as a number of mines in Aldrin's vicinity have seen their population grow along with garages and truck fleets that may haul their bounty across the vast stretches of regolith marked only by wheel tracks, and return with supplies, offering an alternative to using fusion shuttles for cargo transport.
In terms of industry, many of them are specialized in one way or another. For example, settlement MT-23-ENE has been focused almost entirely on the production of craft foodstuffs, mostly various forms of cave fungi, mostly agaricus bisporus, known culinarily by a wide variety of names depending on size and coloration. These mushrooms are then transported into Aldrin to provide a diversity of locally sourced food. Others see different specializations, including assorted light industrial facilities, research and development laboratories, office space, and so on. While none of it can match the scale or efficiency of other off-Earth assets, there is a clear interest among businesses to make a name for themselves among the stars, as they are eager to be part of humanity's ascend into a multi-world species.
[ ] Aldrin Planned City (Phase 3) (Updated)
A ring around the landing site of Apollo 11, the first true city on the Moon will be an enduring symbol of GDI's claim to the stars. A dedicated spaceport, refinery, and industrial facility will begin producing a substantial quantity of capital goods. With the second phase completed and eagerly awaiting the first Moonborn GDI citizens, the third phase will substantially expand the habitation, industry and commercial sections, nearly tripling the city's population capacity once complete and providing plenty of local leisure options.
(Progress 890/850: 30 resources per die) (5500 Residents) (+3 Capital Goods)
(Progress 40/1700: 30 resources per die) (10,000 Residents) (+6 Capital Goods)
Building out Aldrin now sees significant investment into Lunar industrial production: offworld chip fabrication, tool foundries, and similar systems. While, for example, a fusion drive nozzle is still beyond the capabilities of Aldrin's forges, they can build chemical rocket motors, which are significantly simpler – not least because cracking lunar regolith creates a significant amount of oxygen, meaning that, even should Earth be lost, the Lunar colony can produce a reasonable, if small, number of chemical rockets, for circumlunar and similar operations.
Beyond the industrial developments, Aldrin has started to see the first lunar births. While they are being undertaken in artificial gravity, these moonborn children are going to be under significant scrutiny as they grow up, looking for birth defects and symptoms of chronic exposure to low gravities – significant concerns, especially given that the Initiative is looking to move even larger populations into space in the coming years, and is interested in investigating more economical means of doing so, in the face of a growing necessity. A smaller, slower rotating ring is much easier to build (as habitats go) than trying to make a tube capable of sustaining the speed and size to equate to Earth gravity, or artificial gravity systems capable of maintaining the same.
[ ] Wet AI Development (Tech) (MS)
While Wet AI, or Biological AI, is certainly not a new proposal, developing intelligent life is far from a comfortable idea for many in the Initiative. However, GDI does need means of providing for a graying population, and even if it shall fall, perhaps these beings may be a worthy successor.
(Progress 241/240: 30 resources per die)
The Initiative is still far from making Gana of its own. Many of the early models, such as the Afancs, are little more than animals – crude weapons simply pointed in the general direction of Initiative troops and unleashed.
On a practical level, most of the "Wet" AI work has turned into hybrid biological computing systems. Essentially brainpacks, the systems are very much subsentient, and intentionally so. While multiple scientists went off the reservation and attempted to go a lot higher – including trying to build an artificial humanlike brain on one occasion, those attempts flamed out rather than producing viable results. The best results from those ended up being comas and essentially grand mal seizures. Looking towards the future, Wet AI programs are going to continue to attack the problem, likely stealing more tips from the Brotherhood of Nod as they attempt to make not only an Initiative version of the Gana, but attempt to produce proper intelligences.
[ ] Projected Hardlight Development (Tech)
While the Initiative has a number of hardlight systems, so far it has mostly been a curiosity rather than a practicality. However, refinements and improvements in shield technology, and refinements in the means of projecting combine to produce a set of hardlight interfaces that can be scaled out to a relatively small room, allowing touch without touch, giving both tactile feedback, and the safety of gesture based controls, among other things.
(Progress 65/60: 15 resources per die)
The most immediate use of hardlight technology has been digital interactivity, essentially virtual meetings, while being able to get up, move around, and "inhabit" the same space. While synchronizing two booths (each about five meters by five meters) is doable, trying to add a third creates problems, most notably stuttering and synchronization issues. Of course, that is a practical use. For entertainment on the other hand, an isolated booth can, with the right flooring, effectively simulate most environments, although many people report that current responsive flooring technology means that they feel floaty or unsteady as it tries to move them back towards the center of the room despite their movements.
Experience the new HOLODECK! Never has the Star Trek Experience felt so real!!!
-San Francisco Star Fleet Academy advertising slogan.
[ ] Gene Clinic Expansions
While GDI has a number of gene clinics, and efforts to increase access for the population are ongoing, the Treasury can greenlight the funds for a substantially accelerated program. Expanding the services offered should substantially increase birth rates, especially with a dedicated public outreach effort to educate the population as to the benefits such genetic engineering has for off-Earth living.
(Progress 262/240: 20 resources per die) (-2 Capital Goods, -4 Consumer Goods, -2 Energy) (+ Birthrates)
GDI's efforts at natalist policies have leveled out, and 2066 is projected to be the first year that GDI has a positive birth rate in decades, beating replacement rates by about 1.3 percent. Much of this is down to the Initiative offering the triple victories. Victory in space, settling a new frontier for humanity to live long term. Victory over the Brotherhood of Nod, with low likelihood of major conflict for the next decade, and, finally, massive investment in abatement has produced the closest GDI has seen since the Third Tiberium War to a victory against Tiberium.
"Our current estimates indicate a possible increased future draw on educational, reproductive care and housing resources. This does presume that current trends continue, and continue for a decade or more."
"How so? Every time such a thing came up it was a result of major refugee flows arriving in GDI territory, no such an event has occurred despite extensive preparation for the Karachi offensive's consequences, nor is it likely we will see such a thing with how tense relations are."
"To put it very simply? 2066 may be the first time in more than 40 years that the fertility rate is higher than the replacement rate."
-Parliamentary Commission on Citizen Wellbeing, closed meeting records.
[ ] MARV and Reclamator Hubs (Updated)
While Massive Armored Reclamation Vehicles proved themselves on the field of battle in the Third Tiberium War, they are difficult to construct and maintain in the field in significant numbers. Due to GDI's voracious appetite for more STUs, hubs constructed in Red Zones will service the Reclamator variant. By establishing regional hubs, MARV units can harvest and process more Tiberium, allowing for more units to be supported.
(20 resources per die) (Tiberium dice can be used, each project requires at least two military dice before Tib dice can be used)
- Reclamator Hub Red Zone 8 South (Progress 253/250) (Eucla) (2 Points Red Zone Mitigation, 5 RpT) (+1 Energy, +1 STU)
Work on the Red Zone reclamator hubs has continued. While only one, at Eucla, has been completed, it is in a significantly interesting position, essentially on the border between Blue, Yellow, and Red. This has resulted in a diplomatic quickstep in significant ways, because no side particularly wanted to turn it into a shooting war. For the Brotherhood in the western reaches of Australia, it is not considered a winnable war. They had heard of what happened to the Brotherhood in the east, and were in no hurry to reenact that experience. At the same time the Initiative is wary of retaliation from Bintang, and itself is out at the end of a supply line that is quite tenuous, with most supplies having to come over the beach, or on a very minimal road and light rail network along the southern Australian coastline.
"How are we doing on the barrel liners?"
"All things told? We should be able to step down from the mandatory 'everybody is making 50 hours a week' schedule we've been running for the past six months soon, but if there's another major expansion of the MARV fleet we are going to have to expand. We simply can't match the surge capacity requirement for manufacturing otherwise."
-Enfield Arsenal, weekly coordination meeting.
[ ] Mjölnir Design Studies (New)
Designing what is essentially a mobile ion cannon platform will serve both as a foundation for highliner type impulse drives, and a means to build a platform that can move ion cannons around more effectively, both to maximize time-on-target in a orbital support role and (more importantly) provide an earlier interception window for any future Visitor invasions.
(progress 94/60: 10 resources per die)
Under project Mjölnir, a number of different design groups all attempted to put together a functional design for an ion cannon carrying craft. All would share the same armament. A single current-generation Ion Cannon, at least two crystal beam point defense systems, and a secondary battery of at least four 90mm railguns. They would also be capable of at least 1.5 gravities of acceleration at flank and at least one gravity sustained.
Most of the designs proposed are fundamentally conservative – impulse vessels might be less at the mercy of the rocket equation than chemical-thrust or even fusion vessels, but trying to balance tonnage and endurance is still a notable concern. They share a number of key design features: For most, the ship is essentially wrapped around a standard ion cannon, with the gun running typically between 90 and 95 percent of the length of the ship. Most carry a minimum weight railgun complement, typically using either two triple barreled turrets or three doubles, while increasing the laser complement either to three or four clusters.
[ ] Casimir Design Studies (New)
While impulse drives are practical, gravitic drives will be a critical component of any future space warfare, primarily because they have even lesser delta-v restrictions than even impulse drives. Designs for a future warship, drawn on a clean sheet and incorporating lessons learned with the Conestoga platform are another step towards building a proper orbital navy.
(progress 121/60: 10 resources per die)
For Casimir, the design space was significantly more open. Aside from the gravitic drives, there were few rules about what had to be submitted in terms of design. Most of the ships took one of two models. The first is what could be best described as a caracole design, building around doing high angle missile engagements, using the constant acceleration of the gravitic drive to produce extreme high velocity snapshots. Primarily built around the Ptolomy-type missile system, these ships are intended to be first responders, getting up to speed and then slinging as many missiles as possible into the teeth of an enemy fleet. The other is essentially a Mjölnir-type design, just using a gravitic drive instead of a fusion drive. Typically, most of these designs go up to either eight or nine railguns from the six of the Mjölnirs.
With both Casimir and Mjolnir, these are, more than anything else, designs, never going to be implemented in full. Rather they are starting points. Once the Initiative builds proper orbital shipyards, and has the capability to build warships properly, there will be other design considerations, not least of which is the possibilities of additional armor and armament, the choices in defensive schema, and personnel versus automation, among other problems. At this point, it is the Initiative beginning in some ways to dream bigger, dream of more than survival and the next war.
[ ] Next Generation Armored Vehicle Factories. (Updated)
A new generation of metal, a new breed of machines, for a new kind of war. While the Predator, Guardian, and Pitbull have been the symbols of the height of the Initiative's relative overmatch, that is no longer the case, and it is time for a new generation to take the lead.
Progress 85/450: (30 resources per die) (-6 Energy, -12 Capital Goods, -6 Labour, -3 STUs)
Work has begun on a series of new major factory complexes. While labor supplies are at a premium, the tanks and other vehicles are a priority for an Initiative that needs to be ready to fight the next war, not just this one. Progress so far has mostly been surveying, and site selection, because there are a number of competing priorities. On one hand, one HTSC hybrid electric system is much like any other, with all of the next generation vehicles sharing major parts overlap. From track links and electrical engines, to various weapons systems, in some ways it makes significant sense to centralize parts production. On the other hand, those centralized facilities are fundamentally vulnerable, especially in this new age of high precision low yield nuclear warfare.
These are weapons of offense in most cases, the next war is planned to be an offensive one, a chance to shatter the Brotherhood's war machine once and for all. It would not be enough to stop Kane necessarily, but it would ensure safety and security, and force Kane to find a new way, one hopefully less devastating than another Tiberium War.
[ ] Ground Forces Zone Armor (Set 2) (Phase 4) (High Priority)
While the tip of the spear are still equipping themselves with the best that the Initiative can offer, they are a relatively small fraction of the total forces that serve under the striking eagle. A second, substantially larger wave of factories will require both significantly more capital goods, and a sizable workforce to produce enough of the armor to make a difference on those scales. TRADOC and Procurement have both pressured the government to halt the Zone Armor rollout beyond the current phase, believing that it is more important to revise and revisit the concept from a clean sheet to incorporate major technological developments.
(Progress 301/285: 20 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -2 Capital Goods, -2 Labor)
The last of the old-model Zone Armor factories have been completed. With the Initiative not planning a major war anytime soon, and the Brotherhood battered enough that it would take an act of Kane to bring them to the battlefield anytime in the next three to ten years (depending on the political position of the InOps analyst), mechanization is a problem that there is time to solve. There is still a need for more power armour, however, with units shifting their infantry component over to power armour infantry as suits become available and training time permits. Despite this, a sizable chunk of the production is going directly to storage, as the Initiative can afford to ship them expediently to the front line from anywhere on Earth and needs to rebuild stocks expended during the Karachi offensive. .
One of the more significant future-facing priorities is beginning development of auxiliary suits. While the Talons' experiences with trying to deploy a practical support ground vehicle has TRADOC worried, it is still an accepted reality that GDI needs to find ways to move people out of the combat zone. The most common proposals at this point are a teaming system akin to the Air Force's Wingmen – one suit to one auxiliary – or three auxiliaries to a suit.
[ ] Unmanned Support Ground Vehicle Deployment
While the Talons will not require particularly many vehicles to see a large impact on their total deployable combat force, it will still be a reasonably expensive project simply due to the amount of automation that it requires.
(Progress 206/240: 20 resources per die) (-1 Capital Goods, -1 Energy)
At the end of the day, everyone knows the Initiative's current military formulation is, put simply, unsustainable. There are not enough young people to make the recruitment targets, even with the recent increases in birth rates, nor is it likely there will be enough immigrants and refugees who are both willing and able to take up arms in the defense of the Initiative to make up the difference, to get through the neck with the Initiative's military in the state it is in. There are really only two solutions. Either automate, quickly and extensively, or accept a significant decline in Initiative military strength and preparedness.
While support ground vehicles are not the only form that it is taking, it is one where the military does not have to engage with thorny political questions around both the military use of artificial intelligences, or run the risks of pulling human hands out of the combat loop. In terms of practicalities however, the Talons are the experimental branch, and there are ever more projects building up, but have to wait on the results of the support vehicles in order to begin work.
[ ] Hand Off Capital Goods to Market
Supplying the open Market with capital goods at subsidized or at-cost prices will stimulate growth and increase the efficiency of GDI's labor-hungry industries, especially as the aging workforce demands more automation to keep productivity increasing. However, the Treasury has its own plans for such key industrial supplies.
- Hand Off 5 Capital Goods
The markets are still struggling, and still not producing nearly as much as they could. In part this is due to a lack of demand. Luxury goods and the various products where the Initiative does not produce its own, are simply not in massive demand at this point. While the fears of nuclear war are no longer as present, and the Initiative holding the line against underground Tiberium at least so far, there are some indications that consumer confidence is on its way back up, but only so much, at least for the moment.
Most of the automation progress is in various forms of manufacture, and in some ways, that is one of the bigger problems, because none of them can really compete in terms of bulk with the Initiative, especially not when using Initiative standard machines. Where they compete is on quality, and on customization, and neither of those things are priorities for Initiative machining.
[ ]Epsilon Eridani Expedition Funding (New) (Mad Science)
The SCED has put in a funding request to develop, plan and launch a multi-stage expedition culminating in eventual manned expeditions first to Alpha Centauri and finally Epsilon Eridani-h. With no clear timeline and many of the core technologies required not yet developed, funding would go first toward feasibility studies, equipment testing and foundational research.
-(400 Resources, -50 Resources per turn)
Massive funding has poured into the Epsilon Eridani expedition, close to the quarterly production of the Initiative's tiberium harvesting operations at the end of the Third Tiberium War. Much of this funding is aimed directly at infrastructure. While under the direction of the SCED, most of it will be poured into Gagarin station, a major spacedock program, intended to expand on the capabilities of GDSS Enterprise, but rather than a number of smaller facilities, primarily built to be experimental capabilities, this would be the Initiative's first dedicated stardock. Beyond that, it would also fund expansion of gravitic drive production capabilities and further research and development, with aims at least a .1 gravity acceleration improvement before the expedition begins serious construction. Primarily this will be through experimentation with both drive geometries, and improvements to the base materials.
A/N: Well, got this out in a bit over two weeks. Hopefully we can do better next time.
A/N2: If you want to help support this writing, the Ko-Fi is at Ko-fi.com/ithillid
New Spacecraft Designs: Do We Have Impulse Control?
Peter Katsulas
The new spacecraft designs we're seeing, the Caravel and Fluyt, have… interesting new engine designs. To give a massively oversimplified description, they take existing fusion engines, apply repulsorplates to the exhaust, and thus get a lot more thrust from the same amount of power/propellant. You do not want to be right behind them.
The Caravel is in the same general size category of the Leopard, but looks like it can go a lot further with roughly the same propellant. As in, Luna further. The Fluyt, well… I've only seen one, but it's a Big Boy. Carrying an order of magnitude more cargo per load, it also needs a massively more specialized launch facility, but it means we can lift entire chunks of a space station at once, with obvious benefits.
The costs here are also quite large, especially in specialized materials and equipment, but I think it's definitely going to be worth it.
FloatingWood
Sings the Flying Dutchman shanty. Poorly.
That's a big boy allright. Thousands of tons to the Moon is a hell of a lift.
ShadyMouse
So wait, these new engines; Are the repulsor plates letting us turn full size engines into what are basically Ion engines, scaled up?
AgathaH
I haven't seen one in person (curse shift assignments!), but dealing with that cargo load had a lot of schedules changed. In a good way, though.
#ShadyMouse I think it's mure just adding a lot of dV to the fusion engine's exhaust stream, so I'm not sure if that qualifies for what you mean or not.
FloatingWood
#ShadyMouse, not quite. The standard 'big boy' engine GDI uses these days is a fusion torch, which means it's an engine using fusion plasma to provide great thrust and high impulse both. Ion engines are a type of engine that electrically accelerate a very low mass stream of ions to a high velocity, hence the name, which offers high impulse but very limited thrust.
Given that repulsor plates are supposed to work on 'basically anything that has mass', I see no reason why you couldn't use them to enhance the exhaust velocity of ion engines the same way they enhance the exhaust velocity of the fusion drives though, and I'm sure that more than one bored rocket scientist or engineer has done some napkin math about exactly that.
AccomplishingProvidence
Is there any word if there are thoughts/plans to eventually craft vessels that use repulsor-boosted fusion torches and repulsor-boosted ion engines? So that there's an option for an extremely powerful "burst" in the torches, and more fuel-efficient ion engine?
MadCat
#FloatingWood, why would the engineers need napkin math when they got paid to actually build the things. Hail our glorious Mad-Scientist-in-Chief, Seo Thoki!
The War on Tiberium: Inhibitors, Glaciers, and Extraction
Mia Deeps
We've seen multiple different efforts to increase Tiberium harvesting and abatement, from many new inhibitor networks, a new glacier mine northwest of the Sindh region, and more controversially a completed MARV hub in southern Australia and further expansion of the enhanced Tiberium spikes. Added to the projects of last quarter, they represent a significant opening of new fronts against Red Zones, and additional pushback against subsurface Tiberium infiltration.
Over the past 9 months, Red Zones have been reduced by over 4% of their area at the start of the year, but we are seeing growth from the underground veins, with the Red Zone-equivalent area growing by about .5% of total land surface area.
I'm hearing about some new methodologies for attacking these subsurface veins, along with an expansion of existing ones - more and more dense inhibitor networks, more subsurface mining, and new superdeep mines which may incorporate multiple technologies that are being used separately in existing operations. The Treasury and ZOCOM are, from what I've heard, not particularly optimistic about what progress we are likely to make, but optimism isn't really their job. Punching the rock into useful resources is, and they seem to be doing quite well at that.
FloatingWood
Is there even anything we can do about the deep tiberium? I mean, some of that is more than 6 kilometers down, how do you even get at it?
MadCat
We have the technology. It's called Enhanced Tiberium Spikes and Inhibitors. Just uh, ignore that the former are politically problematic and the latter are expensive to build and run. But yeah, if we can't abate Deep Tib directly through mining it, then using Visitor tech is all we have.
MajorMiner
Even back in the 1970s, the Kola borehole got down to 10k depth. Now, that was a relatively small diameter, but we can get down there, and we can get at least some machinery down there. Will it be enough for mining, or just for data collection? Dunno.
AgathaH
Sounds like a boring job.
flees
FloatingWood
Get your head out of the clouds, Agatha.
Also, can we stick the business end of an inhibitor down there?
MadCat
As far as I'm aware, there is no theoretical limitation on inhibitor sizes. So logic says we should be able to, but trying to make one that fits into a 60cm diameter hole or less is going to be a challenge. I don't think I've heard of one that wasn't at least a couple meters wide, and those were being transported by truck or rail. So we're definitely looking at needing a new design to fit. When we get that depends on our glorious Treasurer, Seo Thoki, and his mad quest for SCIENCE! Read, its liable to get deployed in the next year.
AccomplishingProvidence
#AgathaH, I hope you didn't have to dig too deeply for that one.
#FloatingWood, I would suspect that's one of those "sometime soon" goals. Based on what we're seeing it's likely a goal of just getting something down there to break up or "draw up" the Tiberium first, and then progress to something like an Inhibitor.
Still and all, the progress against the Red Zones is heartening. No one benefits from their continued existence, regardless of what some Nod leaders have tried to proclaim in the past. In the short term, if one were to think of Earth herself as a garden, we're finally at least cutting back the weeds within the garden. One day soon perhaps we can say we're truly removing them, but every step helps.
Q3 2065 Results
Resources: 1540+420 in reserve (-30 from Reconstruction commissions) (-15 from Bureau of Arcologies) (-15 from Consumer Industrial Development) (-10 Division of Alternative Energy) (-20 Department of Munitions)(-30 Department of Refits) (-240 InOps) (-60 General Pool) (100 in Reserve for Banking)
Political Support: 100
SCIENCE Meter: 4/4
Free Dice: 6
AI Dice: 4 (full bonus)
Dice Capacity 60/60
Tiberium Spread
Surface
26.985 (+0.28+.125 from Karachi project over 3 turns) Blue Zone
1.68 (+0.19+1.49 from Karachi project over 3 turns) Green Zone
0.07 (+0.00) Cyan Zone
23.305 (+0.47,-1.655 from Karachi project over 3 turns) Yellow Zone (115 points of mitigation)
47.96 (-0.94) Red Zone (110 points of mitigation)
Underground Tiberium infiltration estimates:
0.67 (+0.33) Blue
12.75 (-0.89) Yellow (46 points of mitigation)
87.49 (+.56) Red (27 points of mitigation)
Next Mutation Roll: Q2 2066
Current Economic Issues:
Housing: +100 (+87 LQ, +13 HQ) (1 high-quality housing per turn)
Energy: +58 (+6 in reserve) (+5 per turn from sub-departments)
Logistics: +28 (-14 from military activity)
Food: +66 (+26 backed reserve, +5 unbacked reserve)
Health: +45 (+6 Emergency Health) (-8 from refugees)
Capital Goods: +61 (+2 per turn from Distributed Industrial Authority) (+628 in reserve)
Consumer Goods: +60 (+10 per turn from Private Industry) (+3 per turn from sub-departments) (-15 from realignment) (Net -2 per turn)
Labor: +5 (+3 per turn from medical care) (+2 per turn from Immigrant qualifications) (-2 per turn from private industry) (-3 per turn from other government) (-1 from graying population) (Net -1)
Tiberium Processing Capacity (3070/4200) (720/1850 HG, 1350/1350 IHG, 1000/1000 X) (HG: 1 per 90, IHG: 1 per 80, X: 1 per 40)
Tiberium Reserve (0/500)
STUs: +13
Taxation Per Turn: +240 (no change from economic turbulence)
Space Mining Per Turn: +100
Maintenance Reductions: +50
Increased Refining Efficiency: +100
STU Production and Consumption
Net: +13 per turn
Production: +51 per turn (7.6 HG, 15.9 IHG, 22.2X, 6 RZ SMARV)
Consumption: -38 per turn
31 Economy
-6 Tiberium (2 Harvesting Tendrils, 2 Sonic Weapons, 2 T-Glass)
-25 Other (8 Structural Alloys, 6 Hovercraft, 2 Gravitic Shipyard, 2 Microfusion Labs, 3 Caravel Shipyard, 4 Fluyt Shipyard)
7 Military
-4 Aircraft (2 Tactical Lasers, 2 Plasma Munitions)
-1 Ground Vehicles (1 Mastodons [Shimmer Shields, Point Defense Lasers], 0 Havocs [Shimmer Shields])
-1 Strategic Air Defense Networks
-1 Navy (Lasers)
Projected Fusion Power Plant Decommissioning
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2065
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q3 2066
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2066
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q2 2067
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q3 2067
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2067
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q2 2068
-16 Energy, +1 Labor Q4 2068
Status of the Parties
(strong support, weak support, weak opposition, strong opposition)
Developmentalist: 705 (200; 400; 75; 30) 17.6%
Militarists: 629 Seats (300; 100; 200; 29) 15.7%
Starbound: 618 Seats (400; 100; 100; 18) 15.5%
Market Socialist Party: 555 Seats (300; 155; 50; 50) 13.9%
Socialist Party: 493 Seats (250; 100; 93; 50) 12.3%
Free Market Party: 405 Seats (50; 150; 100; 105) 10.1%
Initiative First Party: 334 Seats (0; 34; 100; 200) 8.4%
United Yellow List: 117 Seats(80; 30; 7; 0) 3%
Reclamation: 99 Seats (50; 40; 6; 3) 2.5%
Homeland: 41 Seats (20; 10; 5; 6) 1%
Open Hand: 4 Seats (2; 2; 0; 0) .1%
Total: 4000 Seats (1652; 1121; 736; 491)
Military Confidence
Ground Forces: High
Air Force: High
Space Force: Decent
Steel Talons: Decent
Navy: Decent (Trending to High)
ZOCOM: Decent
Plan Goals
Increase population in space by 550
Spend at least one die on Steel Talons projects every turn
Projects
Deploy Governor-A refit
Complete Post War Housing Refits
Promises to Litvinov:
Do not activate Free Dice (except for Tiberium) unless all Department Dice are active.
Spend no more than two free dice per turn on Military.
Outreach
Starting in Q2, a covert outreach has been made from the Brotherhood of Nod to the Initiative. While the exact contents and the identity of the person reaching out have been obscured, the name of Jackson Waterley being brought into the equation has GDI analysts sitting up and paying attention.
This is not merely a warlord seeking some accord; Waterley had been considered a likely casualty of Nod's internecine strife, but his great military skill and lacking political awareness fits the profile for what Kane's inner circle looks for before when it desires a problem solver. As do his sudden disappearance and return.
Politics
The political sphere is fairly quiet. With Carter all but guaranteed to be the next leader of the Initiative, the politicians are preparing for both a last second rush of work that would be of interest to Litvinov, as well as currying favor with Carter for once he takes office as Director. While there are constant debates over a number of topics, the most significant one at this time is how to allocate representation to the orbital populations. While so far they are close enough, and work on the same calendar and clock as others in the Initiative, there are concerns about how to accommodate the differing needs of populations that are further out, and may well have separate needs from other Initiative populations. There are, broadly, three main proposals. First is the banding system. Cislunar colonies getting their own zone, and then, as the Initiative steps out beyond that, each new band of settlement becoming their own zone administration. That however, has problems as the bands go out. As a result of orbital mechanics, Earth would have a faster response time to a problem in the belt than a Martian based command structure for about half the time, for example.
The second and most bluntly simple proposal is to maintain all of the solar settlements as colonies, running direct control from Earth. While this has its advantages in terms of centralization, it does mean that any problem may end up being resolved by functionaries with neither interest nor experience with local conditions or interests. Certainly feasible enough at the current level of off-Earth populations, but a larger and more widely spread humanity of the future would no doubt chafe under a government that by nature of how it's organized has no need to be fair to the colonies.
The third proposal is distinctly ambitious, and foresees a humanity that has spread beyond the Sol system alone and to other stars. With years if not potentially decades of information lag a distinct possibility, it proposes a considerable devolution of power to far outlying populations. Sol would, of course, still be central in the way GDI is organized, but that would be because of its industrial and cultural weight. For system wide populations it most resembles the first proposal, defining Zones on the basis of response speed from a central location rather than attempting to do so on the basis of distance from a specific body in the system.
[ ] Karachi Planned City (Phase 5)
A final serious push to secure the region, with two primary goals. First, to secure the flank, putting Initiative boots firmly against the Red Zone – producing a new front for major Red Zone harvesting activities – and second to firm up the logistical links between the mountains and the sea.
(Progress 854/780: 20 resources per die) (+8 Logistics, +4 Housing, -2 Labor) (+India and Iran Stuff) (Can spend mixed Tiberium and Infrastructure dice, at least 1 die must be Tiberium)
Karachi is anything but a gleaming jewel. Slabs of concrete and prefabricated buildings line reclaimed and reconstructed avenues, themselves built for machines more than people. Plain, drab, a glorified fortress. All of these are words that could be easily used to describe it. At the same time, it is a lifeline. Even now, there is a constant flow of metal up into the mountain fastnesses of Blue Zone 18. There are Indian fusiliers looking over their new Zone suits, there are factories to produce myomer bundles now beginning those first few slow painstaking steps to culture the fungi.
Along the eastern border of the front GDI has, for the most part, simply settled into defensible positions. While launching an invasion into India would be foolhardy at best, the Initiative is well positioned to do it if it becomes necessary. Operationally, the area has cooled down dramatically with al-Isfahani having been forced back, and both sides are situated well and staring each other down over open sights. Neither side particularly wants to fight a war, and that extends to the naval conflict. Submarine operations, piracy, and commerce raiding have all been tapering off, again, due to the interlaced nature of the comparative positions. Certainly, another major conflict would open holes, but both sides have begun to adopt a policy of live and let live, in this case, starting with the local warlords signaling a willingness to step down or cease operations in exchange for limited concessions.
In the western side of the Initiative's holdings, most of the effort of the Initiative engineers has been put into a series of branch roads – ribs attaching to the spine. The next step – really the last one remaining – is to begin pushing a full scale border offensive into the Red Zone. The Shah's forces may have been defeated and dispersed, but Tiberium is no lesser foe. Likewise do the mountains loom tall despite their instability, undermined by habitation, water, and Tiberium all.
In the Himalayas, the plans are twofold. First are the industrialization efforts. Although the Himalayan region was hardly ignored by the Initiative and its forces are adequately mechanized, a pre-Tiberium history of relative poverty and a post-Tiberium history of isolation has left it poorly developed. Bringing it up to the standard set by many of the other front line Blue Zones is going to be a process that will span at least a plan, and likely more. Second is turning existing infrastructure into a properly substantial space port. The Himalayas, because they were the most isolated Blue Zone, saw the most use of suborbital shuttle launches, and so have the most infrastructure for doing large scale Caravel launches of any Blue Zone. While it will be far from the only site doing such work, it is going to be one of the bigger ones, simply because of the number of runways set relatively close to each other.
[ ] Postwar Housing Refits (Phase 3)
Finalizing housing projects, and fitting out the last of the postwar housing for long term living is going to disrupt a relatively small number of communities, but, at this point the housing in many cases does need significant work, and can be made much more sustainable in the long run.
(Progress 167/150: 10 resources per die) (-5 Housing, +3 High Quality Housing)
The last of the postwar blocks have been refitted. While still far from luxurious, they do represent a significant upgrade. Overall, displacement has been minimized by the relative slowness of the program, with people still moving – but most often between blocks, rather than being forced out of the city entirely. Beyond that, rents – while higher than they were for the pre-refit blocks – are still dramatically low for the environment that they inhabit. Many are (barely) negative, in part to minimize the impact on the populations that live in these spaces.
More broadly, the future of Initiative housing is posing a question that is very much up in the air. On one hand, projections are anticipating the Initiative's population to stabilize – between life extension programs, reproductive programs, and space colonization offering hope – halting its steady decline, and it is likely that the Initiative will at some point need to build additional housing. Not just for refugees, defectors, and populations taken from the Brotherhood by force of arms, but a net natural increase of the Initiative's own.
On the other hand, what form that housing may take is a question with some complicated answers. Vast swathes of arcology blocks are certainly functional and defensible, but are also expensive. Orbital housing is even more so, especially because just building residences alone is not going to be enough – they need something to do, and the essential emptiness of space and the relative early stage of Initiative orbital investment means that all infrastructure must be built to demand. Establishing primary sector jobs will require a substantial investment regardless, but so much of it is automated this will provide only a limited number of jobs, while allocating space to secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors is going to need substantial bureaucratic reform to establish, define and enforce the necessary regulations.
[ ] U-Series Alloy Foundries (Phase 6)
Shifting goals from bulk alloys to more specialist systems, tib resistant cutting blades will be a relatively minor but significant shift in GDI's ability to harvest Tiberium. While it will be expensive for what GDI gets out of the program, it is also an investment in the core technologies and competencies of working with STU based alloys.
(Progress 411/455: 40 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -1 STUs) (-10 progress requirement on tib mining projects, -10 progress requirement on heavy industry projects)
Pushing forward work on specialist systems has for the most part run into problems with tempering. Heating and cooling metals can create a wide variety of different traits in the final product, even with the same chemical composition. A properly tempered blade is both hard and springy. And creating such a blade with U-series alloys is proving a challenge, as even in small amounts STUs can fundamentally change an otherwise unremarkable alloy's nature, requiring higher heating, or less heating, more or fewer thermocycles, and a number of other tweaks, many of which are still being worked out. Most of the blades coming out for testing are currently simply too brittle to be more than one-shot items: hard, but an impact to the wrong point would shatter them into a thousand pieces. Those blades that prove more resilient have proven difficult to reproduce, with the fact that sometimes no detectable difference exists between a blade that failed the tests and one that passed causing no end of frustration.
[ ] Second Generation Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 7)
With second generation plants a proven concept, GDI needs a relatively rapid pace of construction, with the first of the first generation plants expected to begin reaching serious failures in a matter of years, and the limitations on construction speeds meaning that total production is noticeably bottlenecked.
(Progress 335/270: 20 resources per Die) (+19 Energy) (-1 Labor)
(Progress 65/270: 20 resources per Die) (+19 Energy) (-1 Labor)
The supply of superconductors coming out of Bergen have proven to be a significant easing in the process of construction. Many of the reactors coming online with the current batch – somewhat exceeding expectations in their numbers as Bergen is gearing up faster than anticipated – are yet insufficiently protected from adverse outside conditions, like bombardment with Brotherhood standard munitions. While the internal systems are functional, as is the radiation shielding, these are essentially naked reactors, with little more around them than is required to keep the rain off. The fusion system itself is a relatively mature technology, and one that GDI is now very familiar with building, smoothing the construction process substantially as procedure is reformed due to the now proven superfluous nature of some of the steps.
Technological development in this area is difficult. It is not hard to produce a superior reactor, so long as you don't mind using over a ton of elerium per reactor, or otherwise obscene amounts of rare, hard to build, and extremely high technology systems. Building a better reactor that is economically viable, however, is, as it turns out, almost impossible. One part of this is priorities. While some scientists and engineers have attempted to find simplifications, or ways to get the same energy yield from the reactors with easier to manufacture components, most have been looking for ways to increase the density and energy of the plasma to produce more power.
[ ] Flexible Superconductor Development (New) (Tech)
Flexible superconductors, under the product name Caterium, has been something of a surprise breakthrough. While still somewhat limited in degree of flexibility, it is a significant upgrade to military applications, and a noticeable one for moving superconductors significantly down the chain towards, although likely not all the way to, the home.
(Progress 205/120: 25 resources per die)
Despite efforts to give it a proper name, Caterium has stuck as the name of compound 65-Z5-D2, the most effective of a number of flexible superconductors developed for the Initiative. Unfortunately, there are still problems despite the compound's success. Most notably, Caterium is presently yet problematic at higher temperatures and in higher electromagnetic flux environments. Putting the cables in a cooled environment, such as a computer, works, but few computers need the sheer amounts of energy moved around by superconducting systems; by contrast, the systems that could benefit from them (such as Initiative railguns) would in many cases need to be redesigned to provide additional shielding and cooling. Experiments for low gravity environment production have been promising, but as of yet inconclusive.
In a lot of ways, Caterium as it is now is most advantaged in terms of size. Rather than needing to work around prefabricated sections, superconducting wires can be bent into an appropriate shape, meaning that oftentimes less material can be used. For example, in a test model Guardian APC, about five kilograms of weight were cut from the HTSC system. While not much on a multi ton vehicle, it is still a significant improvement, and one that has greater impacts elsewhere.
[ ] Adaptive Cloth Factories
While primarily for consumer goods, adaptive cloth is adaptive cloth, and the production will also feed into military procurement among other fields. Mostly, the Initiative will solely be producing the cloth, and then farming it out to private fashion houses, and Initiative backed design studios to do much of the work of integrating it into things that people will actually wear.
(Progress 103/300: 15 resources per die) (+5 Consumer Goods)
Making adaptive cloth is proving challenging. One of the biggest challenges is mass production of the requisite nanocrystals. While guanine is relatively simple to make in bulk, the problem is reliably crystalizing it, and then embedding those crystals in a way that can be manipulated, especially in large sections. One of the key elements here is that the production is statistical rather than reliable. Making strips for a ghillie suit, or accents, is one thing, but making a full cloak, or an actual outfit has so far been a problem.
There are two key issues here beyond the statistical element. One big part is shaping. For most outfits, the grain of the weave is not going in any one direction, but rather depends heavily on what strains are being expected to be put on the clothes. With adaptive cloth, the direction of the grain is fundamental, especially anywhere where the cloth is folded over on itself. Of course, all of these are solvable problems, especially when the strips that are being made are being received across the fashion world with quite a bit of interest.
[ ] White Goods Programs
White goods are major home appliances. While the state of the art has progressed in the last fifteen to twenty years, nearly all of those appliances in GDI's houses are old models, designed before the Third Tiberium War, and in many cases significantly before then. While wholesale immediate replacement is not viable, looking at the progress in various fields, should allow for GDI to make some efficiencies and conveniences more readily available.
(Progress 182/200: 15 resources per die) (-1 Capital Goods, +4 Consumer Goods, +1 Energy, +1 Labor)
One of the biggest remaining problems is simply distribution and marketing. While there is plenty of slack in the logistics system, at least at the moment, convincing people that it is time to upgrade is proving something of a problem, especially with the average age of appliances across GDI. While there is some level of planned obsolescence, aimed to coincide with other home maintenance cycles as best as possible, pushing substantial upgrades like this one is largely something that homeowners have to manage themselves, and go out of their way to do.
Most of the upgrades are relatively minor things all told. There are some improvements in electromagnets in an induction cooktop, or efficiency improvements to the fan systems on standard convection ovens, and for higher end models, steam injection systems. No doubt all citizens will eventually acquire these better machines to replace failing equipment, but that will take quite some time.
[ ] Wildlife Restoration (New)
With the new wildlands maturing, it has become clear that a certain level of animal presence is required to maintain a healthy biosphere. By tapping existing stocks of small and medium animals currently kept in zoos it will be possible to seed the various biomes with animals that enforce the required degree of flora diversity.
(Progress 198/180: 25 resources per die)
Restoring wildlife has to start from the ground up. While a significant portion of that does include various charismatic microfauna – for example: squirrels, rabbits, moles, and guinea pigs, among others – there are also thousand other species that many people find annoying, most notably mosquitos, significant numbers of other fly species, ticks, and the like. While efforts are being taken to minimize the human impact of a number of the elements, at the end of the day, these species provide critical biomass – such as mosquitos and their larvae providing food for frogs and dragonflies among other things.
[ ] Salvebrush Development (New)
A development on the poulticeplant, the salvebrush is intended to provide topical salve, adding both productivity, and antiviral properties. While a relatively minor innovation over the extant poulticeplant, it is a noticeable degree of effort. As per agreement, samples of this plant will be provided to Nod.
(Progress 99/80: 20 Resources per Die) (Plant Genetics)
Salvebrush is essentially a 'poulticeplant 2.0.' Higher concentrations of medical properties, more resilient and capable of surviving with little water or nutrition, the plants are (across most of the Initiative) simply self-sustaining, and need little more care than being left in a window box.
There are, however, problems in their introduction: mostly issues with negative medication interactions; and in some, relatively small portions of the population, they can cause significant headaches and even migraines. While for most within this population the cure is better than the disease, and no known interactions have been notably hazardous enough for rollout to be restricted or halted, working out the precise interaction is going to be an interesting and ongoing problem for the medical field to deal with. Salvebrush plants are currently being offered alongside a voluntary logging of the recipient's reported medical profile, in order to help construct a more comprehensive database of interactions.
[ ] Kingsfoil Development (New)
There are a number of ways to produce antibiotic, antiviral, antiparasitic, and antifungal agents, some of which are safe to be consumed in parallel. While not as effective as dedicated single-target agents can be, kingsfoil is intended to be a high speed first resort that is hypo-allergenic as well as highly compatible with most commonly used medication, and so minimization of side effects has a higher priority than maximization of impact.
(Progress 84/80: 20 Resources per Die) (Plant Genetics)
Kingsfoil as a new product is an interesting one. Easy to grow, and something that is being presented to the Initiative as a whole as part of a windowsill pharmacy. Kingsfoil, salvebrush, and poulticeplants are, when approached as a set, capable of a great deal – allowing even civilians the ability to produce nearly anything short of fixing a broken bone with very minimal supply lines.
Depending on the strength needed, the simplest way to use it is simply making kingsfoil tea. Many of the products are water soluble, and so can be simply extracted into an infusion, and drunk as something to take the edge off an infection, even though it's not a cure-all. If that is not enough, the leaves can be chewed or eaten, each offering a more complex and comprehensive package. Each option is fairly bitter however, a side effect of the number of different alkaloid compounds being produced in the plant.
The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.
J. R. R. Tolkein The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
[ ] Bioplastics Development (New)
Bioplastics in various forms have been in use since the 1850s. However, a significant number of them are either low- or limited-performance, or simply difficult to produce in the modern-day environment. Genetically engineering a dedicated plant to produce the precursors to high-performance bioplastics is one element of making the Initiative less reliant on Tiberium.
(progress 52/80: 20 resources per die) (Plant Genetics)
Bioplastics are not new. From linoleum and parkesine in the 1850s and early 1860s, to Initiative efforts to move away from increasingly difficult to access oil sources in the 2010s, there has been a fairly constant flow. Most modern plastics used by the Initiative rely on vegetable waste or starches as the substrate for their production.
The development of next generation bioplastics has primarily run into a twin tailed problem. On one side, the plastics that require relatively minimal processing simply don't have the strength and durability required to make them a significant improvement on existing options. On the other side, development projects that have plastics which are capable of being a significant improvement on existing plastics, are a nightmare to purify into a usable product. Engineering a plant that can produce at least some of the required precursors at a sufficiently high purity somewhere in the plant's body is a yet unsolved problem, but research is ongoing.
[ ] Terrain Retention Projects (New)
While reforestation and restoration of the biosphere is currently a relatively low priority, especially due to the risks of Tiberium undermining, that does not in fact mean that GDI cannot care about soil retention and otherwise stabilizing the system.
(Progress 75/160: 15 resources per die)
The key with terrain retention is twofold: leaf cover, and roots. A raindrop typically hits the ground at its terminal velocity – up to around 10 meters per second – and acts as a more potent vector of erosion than most would imagine, in less time than would be expected. In the time before Tiberium, environs such as the North American Badlands that bore large stretches of exposed earth and rock could expect an average of a centimeter of erosion per year, even with sparse rainfall. Putting in leaf cover means that rather than the seven minutes, and kilometers of space to fall, the rain is hitting the plant, and sliding off having spent most of its energy potential, hitting the soil at usually less than a meter per second, depending on the height of the plant. Creeping juniper for example, is a short evergreen, reducing the velocity of the rain all year round, while also spreading over a maximum area.
The overall program is a fundamentally difficult one, not because it has specific requirements, but rather due to the massive amount of space that needs to be covered. While a single flight hits entire square kilometers at a time, when significant portions of the Earth's surface still require cover that square kilometer is very small in comparison.
Seed flight 8-2065-41398 completed.
Note: Low level assessment prior to entering the seeding pattern indicates substantial grass presence. Likely source; blown in from the north by last year's grass fields maturing.
[ ] Enhanced Harvest Tiberium Spikes (Phase 3)
While still a potential political problem, the enhanced harvest Tiberium spikes offer a considerable degree of underground abatement with minimal investment required.
(Progress 303/180: 20 resources per die) (-5 Political Support) (+10 resources per turn) (+1 Underground Red Zone Abatement, +1 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement)
(Progress 123/180: 20 resources per die) (-5 Political Support) (+10 resources per turn) (+1 Underground Red Zone Abatement, +1 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement)
(Progress 0/180: 20 resources per die) (-5 Political Support) (+10 resources per turn) (+1 Underground Red Zone Abatement, +1 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement)
Another salvo of spikes has hit the ground. While still politically difficult, they are part of a much larger campaign against underground Tiberium, and through that lens, they are worth every bit of conspiracy theorizing and political difficulty they face.
Looking at the broader campaign against underground Tiberium, GDI scientists have a number of efforts underway. The biggest is the borehole project. Rather than a surface level Tiberium spike, mechanically drawing Tib to the surface, boreholes are the inverse. The proposal is as follows: Using Tiberium-resistant materials, a 25-centimeter-diameter hole is drilled into the ground, to be an intended depth of ten kilometers, which can then have a compact T-Glass lined harvester planted into it, with the end result of a means to harvest and abate not only that which can be drawn to the surface, but from every level. Beyond that, the sensor programs will use data from the driller to provide a much better look at deep subsurface Tiberium. While the prototype is not without issues, it has shown promise, already providing a more detailed look at the structure of Tiberium around the test site at the remnants of the Kola Superdeep Borehole
A protest against the Enhanced Harvest Tiberium Spike project turned violent earlier today in Kingston, when alderman Indira Danforth incited the crowd with racist chants aimed at the Forgotten. Initiative First has disavowed their alderman's actions, noting that they have been staunch supporters of the Forgotten even before IF separated from the Militarist caucus.
Kingston Broadcasting, 7 O'clock News.
[ ] Tiberium Glacier Mining (Stage 13) (Updated)
The invasion of Karachi has opened a number of new glacier faces. While the infrastructure is not there yet for the bigger and more substantial practices, there is enough frontage to begin serious mining operations at a number of points.
(Progress 199/165: 30 resources per die) (-5 Logistics, +1 Energy) (additional income trickle [45-65 Resources]) (+1 Red Zone Abatement, +1 point underground Red Zone Abatement) (5 Stages available)
(Progress 34/165: 30 resources per die)
Mining into the Pakistani highlands is fundamentally tricky. Punching into a mountainous region is already difficult, and it is even worse when the local security situation is lacking, which makes things more expensive than they need to be. Rather than only having Zone Operations Command forces at the front line, there are detachments of the army riding with every convoy, adding several tons of weight to already overburdened formations.
While only a handful have come under serious attack, each time easily fended off by the Zone troopers accompanying the force, the attacks do show a Brotherhood that is beginning to properly understand how to fight Zone Armor. Snipers have been hunting drones for months, degrading awareness among the troops; every attack begins by attempting to blind the suits, and no attack proceeds with an assault until the suits run out on drone support assets. Equally, the attacks that have been made make extensive use of precision and enhanced penetration munitions, killing Zone troopers in the opening seconds, before they can begin returning fire to the ambushing force.
[ ] Tiberium Inhibitor Deployment (Updated)
Tiberium inhibitors have by now moved from experimental deployment to serial. While each will be significantly energy-expensive and require a major investment of resources, it is now one of the fastest routes to abate the Tiberian menace.
(For Yellow and Red Zones, project is unlocked once all allocated MARV hubs are completed)
Red Zone 1 Europe (Progress 446/100: 30 resources per die) (+2 Red Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Red Zone Abatement)
Red Zone 3 Russia/East Asia(Progress 346/100: 30 resources per die) (+2 Red Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Red Zone Abatement)
Red Zone 2 Africa (Progress 246/100: 30 resources per die) (+2 Red Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Red Zone Abatement)
-Blue Zone 10 South Africa (Progress 146/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 14 Madagascar (Progress 71/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 2 North America East (Progress 234/75: 30 resources per die) (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 11 North America West Coast (Progress 159/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 16 Alaska/Kamchatka (Progress 84/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
-Blue Zone 6 Japan (Progress 9/75: 30 resources per die (-3 Energy) (+2 Yellow Zone Abatement) (+2 Underground Yellow Zone Abatement) (1 Political Support)
Another wave of inhibitors have come online in the past quarter, pushing GDI's abatement efforts ever higher. While above ground efforts have proven highly effective with Tiberium retreating on every front, the underground is more stubborn. Much work is left to do to strengthen the defenses, especially in the deeply buried and hard to reach Red Zone deposits, but a combined network now stretches from Hammerfest in the far north of BZ-1 to Suiderstrand at the southern tip of BZ-10. Likewise is there a network across the length and breadth of North America, interrupted only where Nod refuses to let inhibitors be constructed. Together, along with the island networks of Blue Zones 6 and 14 and the already existing networks, will they squeeze the crystal's growth.
This kind of large scale operation is however not without its costs. Many of the engineering teams are effectively living out of V-35s, ferried from jobsite to jobsite, with many putting in 14 to 18 hour days on a regular basis. While there are continuous efforts to maintain some level of work life balance, most of the teams push themselves harder than they need to. At the same time, slowing down would be difficult and intensely unpopular, especially as the teams themselves would in many cases protest what they see as failing to defend their homes.
[ ] Fluyt-Class Impulse Shipyard
A much larger and more ambitious platform, the Fluyt-class, represents a megalifter: designed to carry thousands of tons at a time, lifting entire station units from the surface to orbit and beyond, ready for integration. Built with four primary engines, and a half dozen secondaries, the craft is going to require dedicated facilities to handle its sheer bulk; a number of runways will need to be drastically widened or newly built for this purpose. It is also VTOL-capable, but it requires specialized landing platforms designed to take the force and fury of such events – with a number of other difficulties besides. The Fluyt offers a platform that can do things that have so far been considered impossible, but using it effectively comes with its own challenges.
(Progress 639/600: 45 resources per die) (-4 STUs, -8 Energy, -6 Capital Goods)
There is no way around it; the Fluyt is a brick with wings: thousands of tons of high performance alloys wrapped around a sectioned hold that can be pressurized but does not need to be. It does not fly by any grace other than the grace of a thrust-to-weight ratio of greater than one even when loaded, granted by six secondary impulse drives on swivel mounts at the bow, stern and midships, fed by hydrogen from the central fuel tanks if an atmosphere or solid ground are not available.
Centerline at the back are the four primary engines, fusion impulse rockets of tremendous power and efficiency, capable of hauling the Fluyt from the lower atmosphere of Earth to the Moon and back, carrying with it its maximum cargo weight of nearly eight thousand tons both ways on a single load of fuel with margin to spare.
Despite the deceptively compact design, it is still huge, nearly one-hundred-fifty meters long, a main-body beam of forty, a wingspan of three hundred, and height of thirty. It has no wheels – when landing, taking off or taxiing it 'floats' on the raw power of the secondary engines in ground effect mode, the force spread across an as wide an area as possible. When seated on the pad it rests on a dozen sturdy landing legs while its internal cranes load and unload cargo containers to and from trains beneath it.
And all of this would have been deemed science fiction, if it were not for one blustery September day in BZ-10 when the prototype lifted off from the open dock north of Cape Town it was built in, flew out to the Atlantic, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and flew into orbit. It returned from orbit some six hours later, landing at a fusion-rated airstrip in BZ-14 – part of the Madagascar suborbital shuttle port. As it turned out, the airstrip was no longer fusion-rated after the Fluyt had made its landing, buckling under the weight of the craft.
The shipyard in BZ-10 is already working on the first production model Fluyt, albeit that the work is slow as the ships require a variety of design unique components with long lead times, a matter that will resolve itself as the supply line gears up. By agreement, every Fluyt will bear the name of a province of a BZ, selected by lot in two rounds when the ship is certified, with all BZs participating except for the first draw – as the prototype Fluyt bears the name Holland, BZ-1 has withdrawn from that lottery.
"Don't you think a Fluyt with the name Holland flying over the Cape is tempting the fates a bit?"
"Tempt? No, we did not tempt the fates. We did our best to provoke them to visit their wrath upon us. We baited them to bring us to ruin, attempted to incite their fury. There was a 'Vliegende Hollander' and nothing happened. The design and engineering are sound."
-Fluyt Project Press Briefing
[ ] Lunar Homesteading (Phase 4)
Continuing Lunar Homesteading projects are a combination of beginning to build basic community facilities, including low gravity pools, community exercise spaces, and other amenities, alongside expansions of living space, primarily in already existing homesteading spaces.
(Progress 376/220: 30 resources per die) (1000 residents)
(Progress 156/220: 30 resources per die)
Homesteading patterns have been shifted around the construction of Aldrin. Otherwise suboptimal locations that are convenient to Aldrin are being prioritized over better sites for expansion. Of particular interest is the start of a Lunar road network, as a number of mines in Aldrin's vicinity have seen their population grow along with garages and truck fleets that may haul their bounty across the vast stretches of regolith marked only by wheel tracks, and return with supplies, offering an alternative to using fusion shuttles for cargo transport.
In terms of industry, many of them are specialized in one way or another. For example, settlement MT-23-ENE has been focused almost entirely on the production of craft foodstuffs, mostly various forms of cave fungi, mostly agaricus bisporus, known culinarily by a wide variety of names depending on size and coloration. These mushrooms are then transported into Aldrin to provide a diversity of locally sourced food. Others see different specializations, including assorted light industrial facilities, research and development laboratories, office space, and so on. While none of it can match the scale or efficiency of other off-Earth assets, there is a clear interest among businesses to make a name for themselves among the stars, as they are eager to be part of humanity's ascend into a multi-world species.
[ ] Aldrin Planned City (Phase 3) (Updated)
A ring around the landing site of Apollo 11, the first true city on the Moon will be an enduring symbol of GDI's claim to the stars. A dedicated spaceport, refinery, and industrial facility will begin producing a substantial quantity of capital goods. With the second phase completed and eagerly awaiting the first Moonborn GDI citizens, the third phase will substantially expand the habitation, industry and commercial sections, nearly tripling the city's population capacity once complete and providing plenty of local leisure options.
(Progress 890/850: 30 resources per die) (5500 Residents) (+3 Capital Goods)
(Progress 40/1700: 30 resources per die) (10,000 Residents) (+6 Capital Goods)
Building out Aldrin now sees significant investment into Lunar industrial production: offworld chip fabrication, tool foundries, and similar systems. While, for example, a fusion drive nozzle is still beyond the capabilities of Aldrin's forges, they can build chemical rocket motors, which are significantly simpler – not least because cracking lunar regolith creates a significant amount of oxygen, meaning that, even should Earth be lost, the Lunar colony can produce a reasonable, if small, number of chemical rockets, for circumlunar and similar operations.
Beyond the industrial developments, Aldrin has started to see the first lunar births. While they are being undertaken in artificial gravity, these moonborn children are going to be under significant scrutiny as they grow up, looking for birth defects and symptoms of chronic exposure to low gravities – significant concerns, especially given that the Initiative is looking to move even larger populations into space in the coming years, and is interested in investigating more economical means of doing so, in the face of a growing necessity. A smaller, slower rotating ring is much easier to build (as habitats go) than trying to make a tube capable of sustaining the speed and size to equate to Earth gravity, or artificial gravity systems capable of maintaining the same.
[ ] Wet AI Development (Tech) (MS)
While Wet AI, or Biological AI, is certainly not a new proposal, developing intelligent life is far from a comfortable idea for many in the Initiative. However, GDI does need means of providing for a graying population, and even if it shall fall, perhaps these beings may be a worthy successor.
(Progress 241/240: 30 resources per die)
The Initiative is still far from making Gana of its own. Many of the early models, such as the Afancs, are little more than animals – crude weapons simply pointed in the general direction of Initiative troops and unleashed.
On a practical level, most of the "Wet" AI work has turned into hybrid biological computing systems. Essentially brainpacks, the systems are very much subsentient, and intentionally so. While multiple scientists went off the reservation and attempted to go a lot higher – including trying to build an artificial humanlike brain on one occasion, those attempts flamed out rather than producing viable results. The best results from those ended up being comas and essentially grand mal seizures. Looking towards the future, Wet AI programs are going to continue to attack the problem, likely stealing more tips from the Brotherhood of Nod as they attempt to make not only an Initiative version of the Gana, but attempt to produce proper intelligences.
[ ] Projected Hardlight Development (Tech)
While the Initiative has a number of hardlight systems, so far it has mostly been a curiosity rather than a practicality. However, refinements and improvements in shield technology, and refinements in the means of projecting combine to produce a set of hardlight interfaces that can be scaled out to a relatively small room, allowing touch without touch, giving both tactile feedback, and the safety of gesture based controls, among other things.
(Progress 65/60: 15 resources per die)
The most immediate use of hardlight technology has been digital interactivity, essentially virtual meetings, while being able to get up, move around, and "inhabit" the same space. While synchronizing two booths (each about five meters by five meters) is doable, trying to add a third creates problems, most notably stuttering and synchronization issues. Of course, that is a practical use. For entertainment on the other hand, an isolated booth can, with the right flooring, effectively simulate most environments, although many people report that current responsive flooring technology means that they feel floaty or unsteady as it tries to move them back towards the center of the room despite their movements.
Experience the new HOLODECK! Never has the Star Trek Experience felt so real!!!
-San Francisco Star Fleet Academy advertising slogan.
[ ] Gene Clinic Expansions
While GDI has a number of gene clinics, and efforts to increase access for the population are ongoing, the Treasury can greenlight the funds for a substantially accelerated program. Expanding the services offered should substantially increase birth rates, especially with a dedicated public outreach effort to educate the population as to the benefits such genetic engineering has for off-Earth living.
(Progress 262/240: 20 resources per die) (-2 Capital Goods, -4 Consumer Goods, -2 Energy) (+ Birthrates)
GDI's efforts at natalist policies have leveled out, and 2066 is projected to be the first year that GDI has a positive birth rate in decades, beating replacement rates by about 1.3 percent. Much of this is down to the Initiative offering the triple victories. Victory in space, settling a new frontier for humanity to live long term. Victory over the Brotherhood of Nod, with low likelihood of major conflict for the next decade, and, finally, massive investment in abatement has produced the closest GDI has seen since the Third Tiberium War to a victory against Tiberium.
"Our current estimates indicate a possible increased future draw on educational, reproductive care and housing resources. This does presume that current trends continue, and continue for a decade or more."
"How so? Every time such a thing came up it was a result of major refugee flows arriving in GDI territory, no such an event has occurred despite extensive preparation for the Karachi offensive's consequences, nor is it likely we will see such a thing with how tense relations are."
"To put it very simply? 2066 may be the first time in more than 40 years that the fertility rate is higher than the replacement rate."
-Parliamentary Commission on Citizen Wellbeing, closed meeting records.
[ ] MARV and Reclamator Hubs (Updated)
While Massive Armored Reclamation Vehicles proved themselves on the field of battle in the Third Tiberium War, they are difficult to construct and maintain in the field in significant numbers. Due to GDI's voracious appetite for more STUs, hubs constructed in Red Zones will service the Reclamator variant. By establishing regional hubs, MARV units can harvest and process more Tiberium, allowing for more units to be supported.
(20 resources per die) (Tiberium dice can be used, each project requires at least two military dice before Tib dice can be used)
- Reclamator Hub Red Zone 8 South (Progress 253/250) (Eucla) (2 Points Red Zone Mitigation, 5 RpT) (+1 Energy, +1 STU)
Work on the Red Zone reclamator hubs has continued. While only one, at Eucla, has been completed, it is in a significantly interesting position, essentially on the border between Blue, Yellow, and Red. This has resulted in a diplomatic quickstep in significant ways, because no side particularly wanted to turn it into a shooting war. For the Brotherhood in the western reaches of Australia, it is not considered a winnable war. They had heard of what happened to the Brotherhood in the east, and were in no hurry to reenact that experience. At the same time the Initiative is wary of retaliation from Bintang, and itself is out at the end of a supply line that is quite tenuous, with most supplies having to come over the beach, or on a very minimal road and light rail network along the southern Australian coastline.
"How are we doing on the barrel liners?"
"All things told? We should be able to step down from the mandatory 'everybody is making 50 hours a week' schedule we've been running for the past six months soon, but if there's another major expansion of the MARV fleet we are going to have to expand. We simply can't match the surge capacity requirement for manufacturing otherwise."
-Enfield Arsenal, weekly coordination meeting.
[ ] Mjölnir Design Studies (New)
Designing what is essentially a mobile ion cannon platform will serve both as a foundation for highliner type impulse drives, and a means to build a platform that can move ion cannons around more effectively, both to maximize time-on-target in a orbital support role and (more importantly) provide an earlier interception window for any future Visitor invasions.
(progress 94/60: 10 resources per die)
Under project Mjölnir, a number of different design groups all attempted to put together a functional design for an ion cannon carrying craft. All would share the same armament. A single current-generation Ion Cannon, at least two crystal beam point defense systems, and a secondary battery of at least four 90mm railguns. They would also be capable of at least 1.5 gravities of acceleration at flank and at least one gravity sustained.
Most of the designs proposed are fundamentally conservative – impulse vessels might be less at the mercy of the rocket equation than chemical-thrust or even fusion vessels, but trying to balance tonnage and endurance is still a notable concern. They share a number of key design features: For most, the ship is essentially wrapped around a standard ion cannon, with the gun running typically between 90 and 95 percent of the length of the ship. Most carry a minimum weight railgun complement, typically using either two triple barreled turrets or three doubles, while increasing the laser complement either to three or four clusters.
[ ] Casimir Design Studies (New)
While impulse drives are practical, gravitic drives will be a critical component of any future space warfare, primarily because they have even lesser delta-v restrictions than even impulse drives. Designs for a future warship, drawn on a clean sheet and incorporating lessons learned with the Conestoga platform are another step towards building a proper orbital navy.
(progress 121/60: 10 resources per die)
For Casimir, the design space was significantly more open. Aside from the gravitic drives, there were few rules about what had to be submitted in terms of design. Most of the ships took one of two models. The first is what could be best described as a caracole design, building around doing high angle missile engagements, using the constant acceleration of the gravitic drive to produce extreme high velocity snapshots. Primarily built around the Ptolomy-type missile system, these ships are intended to be first responders, getting up to speed and then slinging as many missiles as possible into the teeth of an enemy fleet. The other is essentially a Mjölnir-type design, just using a gravitic drive instead of a fusion drive. Typically, most of these designs go up to either eight or nine railguns from the six of the Mjölnirs.
With both Casimir and Mjolnir, these are, more than anything else, designs, never going to be implemented in full. Rather they are starting points. Once the Initiative builds proper orbital shipyards, and has the capability to build warships properly, there will be other design considerations, not least of which is the possibilities of additional armor and armament, the choices in defensive schema, and personnel versus automation, among other problems. At this point, it is the Initiative beginning in some ways to dream bigger, dream of more than survival and the next war.
[ ] Next Generation Armored Vehicle Factories. (Updated)
A new generation of metal, a new breed of machines, for a new kind of war. While the Predator, Guardian, and Pitbull have been the symbols of the height of the Initiative's relative overmatch, that is no longer the case, and it is time for a new generation to take the lead.
Progress 85/450: (30 resources per die) (-6 Energy, -12 Capital Goods, -6 Labour, -3 STUs)
Work has begun on a series of new major factory complexes. While labor supplies are at a premium, the tanks and other vehicles are a priority for an Initiative that needs to be ready to fight the next war, not just this one. Progress so far has mostly been surveying, and site selection, because there are a number of competing priorities. On one hand, one HTSC hybrid electric system is much like any other, with all of the next generation vehicles sharing major parts overlap. From track links and electrical engines, to various weapons systems, in some ways it makes significant sense to centralize parts production. On the other hand, those centralized facilities are fundamentally vulnerable, especially in this new age of high precision low yield nuclear warfare.
These are weapons of offense in most cases, the next war is planned to be an offensive one, a chance to shatter the Brotherhood's war machine once and for all. It would not be enough to stop Kane necessarily, but it would ensure safety and security, and force Kane to find a new way, one hopefully less devastating than another Tiberium War.
[ ] Ground Forces Zone Armor (Set 2) (Phase 4) (High Priority)
While the tip of the spear are still equipping themselves with the best that the Initiative can offer, they are a relatively small fraction of the total forces that serve under the striking eagle. A second, substantially larger wave of factories will require both significantly more capital goods, and a sizable workforce to produce enough of the armor to make a difference on those scales. TRADOC and Procurement have both pressured the government to halt the Zone Armor rollout beyond the current phase, believing that it is more important to revise and revisit the concept from a clean sheet to incorporate major technological developments.
(Progress 301/285: 20 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -2 Capital Goods, -2 Labor)
The last of the old-model Zone Armor factories have been completed. With the Initiative not planning a major war anytime soon, and the Brotherhood battered enough that it would take an act of Kane to bring them to the battlefield anytime in the next three to ten years (depending on the political position of the InOps analyst), mechanization is a problem that there is time to solve. There is still a need for more power armour, however, with units shifting their infantry component over to power armour infantry as suits become available and training time permits. Despite this, a sizable chunk of the production is going directly to storage, as the Initiative can afford to ship them expediently to the front line from anywhere on Earth and needs to rebuild stocks expended during the Karachi offensive. .
One of the more significant future-facing priorities is beginning development of auxiliary suits. While the Talons' experiences with trying to deploy a practical support ground vehicle has TRADOC worried, it is still an accepted reality that GDI needs to find ways to move people out of the combat zone. The most common proposals at this point are a teaming system akin to the Air Force's Wingmen – one suit to one auxiliary – or three auxiliaries to a suit.
[ ] Unmanned Support Ground Vehicle Deployment
While the Talons will not require particularly many vehicles to see a large impact on their total deployable combat force, it will still be a reasonably expensive project simply due to the amount of automation that it requires.
(Progress 206/240: 20 resources per die) (-1 Capital Goods, -1 Energy)
At the end of the day, everyone knows the Initiative's current military formulation is, put simply, unsustainable. There are not enough young people to make the recruitment targets, even with the recent increases in birth rates, nor is it likely there will be enough immigrants and refugees who are both willing and able to take up arms in the defense of the Initiative to make up the difference, to get through the neck with the Initiative's military in the state it is in. There are really only two solutions. Either automate, quickly and extensively, or accept a significant decline in Initiative military strength and preparedness.
While support ground vehicles are not the only form that it is taking, it is one where the military does not have to engage with thorny political questions around both the military use of artificial intelligences, or run the risks of pulling human hands out of the combat loop. In terms of practicalities however, the Talons are the experimental branch, and there are ever more projects building up, but have to wait on the results of the support vehicles in order to begin work.
[ ] Hand Off Capital Goods to Market
Supplying the open Market with capital goods at subsidized or at-cost prices will stimulate growth and increase the efficiency of GDI's labor-hungry industries, especially as the aging workforce demands more automation to keep productivity increasing. However, the Treasury has its own plans for such key industrial supplies.
- Hand Off 5 Capital Goods
The markets are still struggling, and still not producing nearly as much as they could. In part this is due to a lack of demand. Luxury goods and the various products where the Initiative does not produce its own, are simply not in massive demand at this point. While the fears of nuclear war are no longer as present, and the Initiative holding the line against underground Tiberium at least so far, there are some indications that consumer confidence is on its way back up, but only so much, at least for the moment.
Most of the automation progress is in various forms of manufacture, and in some ways, that is one of the bigger problems, because none of them can really compete in terms of bulk with the Initiative, especially not when using Initiative standard machines. Where they compete is on quality, and on customization, and neither of those things are priorities for Initiative machining.
[ ]Epsilon Eridani Expedition Funding (New) (Mad Science)
The SCED has put in a funding request to develop, plan and launch a multi-stage expedition culminating in eventual manned expeditions first to Alpha Centauri and finally Epsilon Eridani-h. With no clear timeline and many of the core technologies required not yet developed, funding would go first toward feasibility studies, equipment testing and foundational research.
-(400 Resources, -50 Resources per turn)
Massive funding has poured into the Epsilon Eridani expedition, close to the quarterly production of the Initiative's tiberium harvesting operations at the end of the Third Tiberium War. Much of this funding is aimed directly at infrastructure. While under the direction of the SCED, most of it will be poured into Gagarin station, a major spacedock program, intended to expand on the capabilities of GDSS Enterprise, but rather than a number of smaller facilities, primarily built to be experimental capabilities, this would be the Initiative's first dedicated stardock. Beyond that, it would also fund expansion of gravitic drive production capabilities and further research and development, with aims at least a .1 gravity acceleration improvement before the expedition begins serious construction. Primarily this will be through experimentation with both drive geometries, and improvements to the base materials.
A/N: Well, got this out in a bit over two weeks. Hopefully we can do better next time.
A/N2: If you want to help support this writing, the Ko-Fi is at Ko-fi.com/ithillid
- Location
- USA
Very good results though labor is riding a very thin margin that we will need to keep in mind for the last turn. Abatement efforts went very well and we picked up a good chunk of under ground abatement though it might be time to start the vein mines up again. We should finish the factory to make them slightly less progress. Also just a bit more space expansion is all that is promised so we are pretty flexible the final turn.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Okay, so in the short term we have deterministic rollback of tiberium on the surface...
...and we can no longer lose the entire underground Blue Zone area in a single turn of cursed bad rolls, though TWO turns would be possible. That's about the best we can hope for right now, and it's a good place to be in as we look for the end of the game next turn.
Oooh, this is creaking. I'd hoped we'd be able to boost things upwards.
I get the feeling that if we were playing the 2066 Fifth Four Year Plan, post-TCN negotiations (I wish I wish I wish), one of the top priorities would be that military logistics automation process. It's one of the few straightforward big +Labor projects we have.
I think we're also hitting the point where Treasury might slow the construction of new replacement fusion plants for the next year or so, because we don't really have the specialist labor to staff a lot more plants. Even though we need the Energy...
This is a good place to be as we enter Q4; these are all things we can be confident of achieving in a single turn easily.
Hm. Have we heard that name before? And/or is that the Legendary Insurgent?
Does al-Isfahani still have ports and a coastline? I'm not sure how much coast he had left that wasn't Red Zone... Or, well, I have a bad sense for where al-Isfahani's remaining territory is.
The problem I noted earlier, of us pushing up against the limits of what our available labor force can do in terms of fusion power, also incentivizes us to design a more efficient third-generation reactor somehow.
But our priority would arguably be "make the things easy to run" and not "make them have higher energy density."
A heavily automated plant that cost 0 Labor but produced 10 Energy instead of 19 would be very tempting right now, and isn't that a hell of a note.
Oh come ON, surely we can find SOMETHING else to feed those fuckos besides mosquitos.
GRRRR!
HAH! Finally, as the game ends, we get close to this!
Yeah, there's the reward. Three Red Zone and five Blue Zone inhibitors.
Truly, that runway died a hero, giving its life so that lesser runways might live.
Wooot!
CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
- Location
- the Netherlands, apparently
We last heard of Waterley in Q4 2054 [1], where he was described as a military genius with no particular political acumen who had suddenly disappeared after working for multiple different warlords. At the time, GDI assumed he had either died or been picked up by Kane. He is not the Legendary Insurgent, who passed away prior to Operation Dawn Star [2].
[1] See below:
[2] See below:
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Psyraptor
Polania Player
- Location
- Canada
Wait, so the quest is ending next turn?
awww, will there be a sequel, post TCN?Unless im misunderstanding.
- Location
- The Underdark
Unless something comes up in my life, my plan at the moment isWait, so the quest is ending next turn?
Unless im misunderstanding.
1. Write the last five updates, one of which is aimed to come out tomorrow (Q4 2065)
2. Find a job and get settled in, while working on some other projects (Mechanist, Victoria Eternal, Tauhammer, a few others)
3. Start the Sequel.