They're a lot better than grim gray brutalist apartment blocks or grim gray
modular apartment blocks. And for a lot of our citizens, that's what they've got.
I think we're going to come under unwelcome political pressure for beelining Mecca this hard to the exclusion of the arcology project. I don't want to stop working on it, but I don't think we should treat it as a "full steam ahead" project the way we're treating North Boston or the stabilizer.
I'm going off
@Lightwhispers ' numbers here, but I think we're now at 970/1200 Progress on North Boston. 628 at the start of the quarter, plus 242 from the dice, plus 100 from the dice
bonuses... 970, yeah.
We're at the point of the project where we have to think seriously about the style in which you want to complete it. Only 215 Progress to go before it hits the omake threshold. By my math, five dice gives us a 98% chance of completion. Four dice is 87%. Three dice is 48%.
I think we should only put four dice on North Boston. It lets us resume work on another project, it gives us a very high chance of finishing, and worst case our
BIG Capital Goods eating project (the stabilizer) won't complete until Q4 anyway, so we can 'tap' North Boston over the line with 1-2 dice in Q4 if we need to.
Overinvestment in this project is probably counterproductive because while North Boston Phase 5 is great, it's going to be a
long time before we can take it seriously as an option. Perhaps long enough for the 'banked' progress to decay, even. Furthermore, while North Boston is good, Nuuk is
better, more efficient for the price. I think it was you who convinced me of that. We want an incentive to make Nuuk the next big thing in Capital Goods, not to have 150-200 banked progress on North Boston getting all the casual "finish what we started" arguments.
I don't really like starting both projects at the same time. We're not going to have the resources, in the foreseeable future, to commit to both of them in a big way. And we really do need to focus Resources on priorities while we have them to spare.
Since we don't urgently need the Food from the next generation of Yellow Zone project
right now, I think this might actually be a good time to work on that caffeinated kudzu stuff, even alongside of spider cotton. We may not be able to squeeze both deployments in, but it's something.
Why have nine stabilizer dice when we have ten?
I guess Orbital needs the review too, for the safety of the stabilizer network.
I'm against this. First of all, I don't like spending Free dice on security reviews; it implies that we have nothing better to do with them. Secondly, we have an
enormous Services bonus, almost as good as Tiberium, and it's
going away in two turns. Is this really the time to say "nope, can't afford it" to the prospect of rolling more Services dice? I honestly think we've been weakening Granger a bit by doing that so often, although that's partly because we keep knocking off Services actions as fast as they appear...
because of his bonus.
Tempting, but Yet Another Turn Ignoring The Talons does not enthuse me.
Again, not a fan of burning Free dice on Bureaucracy just to push security reviews through.
I could be wrong and
@Ithillid might correct me, but I'm pretty sure Phase 1
was the refits, and Phase 2 is when we start actually breaking ground on new missile factories. So the consequences of slowing it down aren't as severe.
See, personally I'd rather put all our fusion dice on the stabilizer in hopes of pushing it close to completion. If we're lucky we won't
need more than about 6-7 fusion dice in Q4 to be assured of completing the project, at which point finishing off ASAT becomes easy. I feel like we're doing it backwards here, risking an outcome where this turn we're hurting for lack of fusion dice, and then next turn we don't even have anything productive to
do with all our fusion dice.
So personally I favor something more like...
[] Plan Remember the Home Front
Infra 5/5 85R +15
-[] Blue Zone Arcologies (Stage 2) 138/600 3 dice 45R (3/7 median)
-[] Mecca/Jeddah Planned City (Phase 3) 523/640 2 dice 40R (see tib)
HI 5/5 80R +20
-[] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants 0/350 1 die 20 R (1/5 median)
-[] North Boston Chip Fabricator (Phase 4) 870/1200 5 dice 60R 87%
LCI 3/4 45R +15
-[] Chemical Fertilizer Plants 184/200 1 die 15R 100%
-[] Pharmaceutical Synthesis Centers 0/250 2 dice 30R (2 dice/3.5 median)
Agri 2/3 40R +15
-[] Wadmalaw Kudzu Development 0/40 1 die 20R 91%
-[] Spider Cotton Development 22/40 1 die 20R 100%
Tiberium 5/5+6 Free 220R +35
-[] Mecca/Jeddah Planned City (Phase 3) 523/640 1 die + 2 Infra 20R ??%
-[] Tiberium Stabilizers 674/2000 10 dice (10 fusion) 200R 0%
Orbital 3/3 60R +15 (10 Fusion dice)
-[] Security Review 1 Orb die
-[] GDIS Pathfinder 158/300 2 dice 60R 54%
Services 4/4 45R +30
-[] Domestic Animal Programs 0/200 2 dice 20R 30%
-[] Expand Medical Schools 207/300 1 die 10R 53%
-[] Advanced Prosthetics Development 0/40 1 die 15R 100%
Military 5/5 80R +15
-[] Cruiser Yard- Hampton Roads- 45/185 2 dice 40 R ??%
-[] Universal Rocket Launch System Deployment(Phase 2) 105/200 2 dice 30R 88%
-[] Havoc Scout Mech Development 1 die 10 R 100%
Bureau 3/3 +15
-[] Security Reviews(Orbital) DC55 3 dice+1 orbital 99%
Free 6/6
-5 tib, 1 bureau
655/650 + 5 (655 for the turn)
PS 60
Three dice (one Tiberium, two Infrastructure) is enough to finish
this stage of Mecca, and
yes we'll keep spending on it, but the arcology political issue has been coming to a boil for several turns now. It's time for us to remember what we promised ourselves we'd do, and actually start spending dice on it. I'm not saying the Mecca project isn't important, but it isn't the only thing in the world that really matters, we shouldn't just be
grudgingly considering arcologies.
ASAT waits for more fusion launch capacity- remember, the defense network is
there, it's just that in theory it could still be paralyzed by simultaneous strikes in orbit and
fucking Greenland. The window of vulnerability isn't so much a window as it is a slab of drywall. This lets us tackle the cruiser yard we started last turn and frees up resources to take advantage of our Service dice.
These two posts don't agree with one another. Fine. Third mathpost by me:
