Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

HousePet · Nov 1, 2021

F0lkL0re said:
I'm avoiding putting more then one die on Processing Plants so we don't go using our emergency energy reserve which as the name may suggest is for emergencies not just because we don't want to wait for a new phase of fusion plants to complete.

You've got a 97% chance of the Fusion Power Plants completing. I don't think there will be any use of emergency reserve. Two dice on the Processing Plants gives a 0.6% chance of the Processing Plants finishing without the Fusion Plants. A crit fail is more likely.
I will only be concerned if more than 2 dice are on Processing Plants and less than 5 are on Fusion Power.
Going too low on the Processing Plants means that we might not get them done the turn after, unless we deliberately over resource them. Which means it costs us income either way.

F0lkL0re said:
Comats can be done with one die and will give us both PS and a small boost to logistics so since we're needing both just now I thought it a worthy sacrifice.

Having a spare project to score a bit of Logistics and PS when we need it later could be useful. We aren't pressed for Logistics this turn.
The bonuses from a completed Philly are far too useful.

Dmol8 · Nov 1, 2021

Derpmind said:
It would be nice to make Chicago and Jeddah less important targets by doing the Processing Plants. Maybe both phases, just to be safe.

Also, one consideration for next turn is that our double-nat 1 on tidal plants cost us some amount of PS, so it might be prudent to do a couple PS-increasing projects.

Alright, but the best way to do that would be to make more processing plants so we don't need to use Mecca and Chicago as our main staging points. And as has been pointed out we are doing PS projects this turn. Multiple of them on top of our crit success giving us some political support.

Anyway with all this talk I have a new version of my preliminary plan:

Political‌ ‌Support:‌ ‌60?
SCIENCE Meter: 4/4
Free‌ ‌Dice:‌ ‌6‌
Housing: +16 (24 Low Quality)
Energy: +1 (+3 Reserve)
Logistics: +6?
Food: +21 (+8 Reserve)
Health +9 (-4 Consumed)
Capital Goods: +2
Consumer Goods: +36
Labor: +31
Tiberium Processing Capacity: (1645/1720)
Yellow Zone
Water: +6

Infrastructure +22
Heavy Industry +17
Light and Chemical Industry +12
Agriculture +12
Tiberium +25
Orbital Industry +10
Services +17
Military +14
Bureaucracy +12
+5 to Development Projects
+5 to Technology Working Groups
+5 to Station Building

Last Security Review:
Light/Chem 1 turns ago 2058 Q3
Services 2 turns ago 2058 Q2
Orbital 4 turn ago 2057 Q4
Heavy Ind 5 turns ago 2057 Q3
Tiberium 6 turns ago 2057 Q2
Bureaucracy 7 turns ago 2057 Q1
Infrastructure 8 turns ago 2055 Q4
Agriculture 9 turns ago 2056 Q4
Military 11 turns ago 2056 Q1

[ ] Plan Running the Eyewall v. 4.3
Infrastructure 5/5 Dice 90 Resources
-[ ] Blue Zone Arcologies (Stage 3) 95/650 15 Resources per Die -2 E on Completion, 2 Die = 30 Resources
-[ ] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 3) 25/200 20 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 60 Resources
Heavy Industry 4/4 Dice + 3 Free Dice 140 Resources
-[ ] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 2) 0/300 20 Resources per Die, 7 Dice = 140 Resources
Light and Chemical Industry 4/4 Dice 40 Resources
-[ ] Blue Zone Light Industrial Sectors (Phase 1) 0/250 10 Resources per Die -1 E -1 CapG -3 Lab on Completion, 4 Dice = 40 Resources
Agriculture 3/3 Dice 40 Resources
-[ ] Perennial Aquaponics Bays (Stage 2) 123/350 10 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Wadmalaw Kudzu Development 0/40 20 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 20 Resources
Tiberium 6/6 Dice 140 Resources
-[ ] Tiberium Processing Plants (Stage 1) 0/200 30 Resources per Die -4 E -2 Log on Completion, 4 Dice = 120 Resources
-[ ] Railgun Harvester Factories (New) Porto 0/70 10 Resources per Die -2 E -1 Lab on Completion, 1 Die = 10 Resources
-[ ] Railgun Harvester Factories (New) Maputo 0/70 10 Resources per Die -2 E -1 Lab on Completion, 1 Die = 10 Resources
Orbital 5/5 Dice + 3 Free Dice 155 Resources
-[ ] GDSS Philadelphia II (Phase 4) 362/715 20 Resources per Die, 7 Dice = 140 Resources
-[ ] Expand Orbital Communications Network (Phase 5) 117/135 15 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 15 Resources
Services 4/4 Dice 30 Resources -5 PS
-[ ] Green Zone Teacher Colleges (New) 0/200 5 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 15 Resources
-[ ] Emergency Tiberium Infusion Development 0/120 15 Resources -5 Political Support per Die, 1 Die = 15 Resources -5 Political Support
Military 6/6 Dice 75 Resources
-[ ] Sonic Mobile Artillery Vehicle Deployment (New) 0/??? 10 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Naval Defense Laser Refits (New) 118/330 15 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 45 Resources
-[ ] Security Reviews Military 1 Die
Bureaucracy 3/3 Dice
-[ ] Security Reviews Military 3 Dice

90+140+40+40+140+155+30+75 = 710/710

Alright here is the new form of my plan after some massive changes in actions needed next turn:

- 2 Die on Blue Zone Arcologies to keep them rolling.
- 3 Dice on Yellow Zone Fortress Towns to secure our supply lines. 87% chance and an Average DC of 32 to complete.

- 7 Dice on Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant to get as much progress into it since it is now known that ZOCOM Shatterer factories will need Energy. 12% chance for Phase 2+3 to complete on top of the 99% chance for Phase 2. Average DC is 22 for Phase 2 and 65 for Phase 2+3.

- 4 Dice on Blue Zone Industrial Sectors for some extra Health gain now and because it's cheap. Myomers next turn. 60% chance and an Average DC of 46 to complete.

- 2 Die on Perennial Aquaponics Bay to work towards a plan task.
- 1 Die on Wadamalaw Kudzu Development to work towards another plan task. 93% chance and a DC of 8 to complete.

- 4 Dice on Tiberium Processing Plants to start on removing a strategic weakness. 98% chance and an Average DC of 22 to complete Stage 1 and a 8% chance and an Average DC of 72 to complete Stage 1+2.
- 1 Die each on 2 Railgun Harvester Factories to get some tougher Harvesters for conflict zones before the war starts. 71% chance and a DC of 30 each to complete.

- 7 Dice on Philadelphia II to get Phase 4 Completed this turn. 94% chance and an Average DC of 39 to complete.
- 1 Die on Expand Orbital Communication Network to complete it and harden our communication lines against another nuke Philadelphia masterstroke making the space station less attractive as a target.

- 3 Dice on Green Zone Teacher Colleges to get Litvinov's agenda over and done with for now. 63% chance and an Average DC of 46 to complete.
- 1 Die on Emergency Tiberium Infusion to slow roll it to completion and a better treatment of Rock Lung. I want Julian Bennett to live a longer life so he can preserve more artifacts and maybe even run for General Secretery again down the line.

- 2 Die set aside for Shatterer Deployment Factories. I don't expect them to cost more than 10 Resources and as such putting only 2 Die here and 7 Dice on Energy production instead feels like the right move since Shatterers are sonic artillery + ZOCOM project and as such are independents from our shell plants.
- 3 Dice on Naval Defense Laser Refits to try and get them done. 50% chance and an Average DC of 48 to complete.

- 1 Dice from Military and 3 Dice on Security Reviews Military to dig out some infiltrators out of the Military before the war can start.

Our 3 Main Strategic Weaknesses are: Logistics, Lack of new generation Processing (which we only currently have in Chicago and Mecca) and Consumables. My plan secures our logistics routes with Yellow Zone Fortress Towns, expands our modern Processing Plants so we have less pressure on Mecca and Chicago and builds up Sonic Artillery because it is artillery and it doesn't rely on our general Shell Plants. I also finish our orbital communication network because that makes Philladelphia II less of a masterstroke target.

I'm planning on ramping up dealing with these Strategic Weaknesses alongside making sure all of our military is prepared to fight this war and my stance is defensive. No expanding the Green Zone, just securing it.

Simon_Jester · Nov 2, 2021

F0lkL0re said:
...

"I'm avoiding putting more then one die on Processing Plants so we don't go using our emergency energy reserve which as the name may suggest is for emergencies not just because we don't want to wait for a new phase of fusion plants to complete."

Trust me, @F0lkL0re , we really need the processing plants. Desperately. It is the single biggest weakness in our strategic posture. One nuclear missile we fail to intercept hitting Chicago or Jeddah, and BAM, GDI's economy takes a dire hit right at the start of a war. We need to decentralize the processing plants. It is urgent. The potential consequences of failing to do so include not only inability to increase our income, but also extreme vulnerability to something signficantly more crippling than the need to have rolling brownouts of Energy-consuming infrastructure.

...

"Sometimes you just can't one turn everything and we have a lot of things we need to do so I'm going to at the very least work on them rather then just ignoring them because I can't do it all at once."

Sometimes you can one-turn things, and you just end up wasting your time farting around doing 1-2 dice on each of four projects when three dice on two projects is far more likely to get benefits. We're fighting a war soon. We cannot control or predict what the enemy will do. Deploying more and better weapons now and not six months from now could have a real impact.

...

"It's part of our four year plan objectives so working on it sooner rather then later is a good thing and the deployment will have phases for rolling it out to other parts of the military after the Steel Talons so yes there is a point in doing it."

Yeah, but a lot of other things are part of our Plan objectives, including some of the military projects you're slow-walking. Those projects shouldn't be left arbitrarily waiting because we're doing too many things at once. We're going to be so busy getting military consumables up to speed and the core vital urgent deployment projects that we may not have time to even think about deploying the Havoc until mid-2059.

...

"Comats can be done with one die and will give us both PS and a small boost to logistics so since we're needing both just now I thought it a worthy sacrifice."

The Philadelphia gives more PS and a much more consequential boost to Logistics than an immediate +2 we won't use right away. It's not a worthy sacrifice.

HousePet said:
You've got a 97% chance of the Fusion Power Plants completing. I don't think there will be any use of emergency reserve.

I'm pretty sure the chance of six dice completing the next fusion phase in Q4 is 98%, not 97%, but I could be wrong. It depends on finicky bonus details.

dbRevned · Nov 2, 2021

@Dmol8 , I like your plan, However I would not vote for it unless we build some shell plants, Since from my understanding we need more shell plants to be able to supply those new fortress towns.

HousePet · Nov 2, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
I'm pretty sure the chance of six dice completing the next fusion phase in Q4 is 98%, not 97%, but I could be wrong. It depends on finicky bonus details.

Oh, I just used Derpmind's array from last turn. The increasing settled in bonus might push it up another percentage point.

Regarding certain projects and over completing them:
I'm guessing we'll be going with Tokyo or Nuuk (and I just broke and looked up where Nuuk is...) after this round of Fusion Plants to get more Capitol Goods rolling.
I doubt we'll be chasing another round of Tib Processing Plants anytime soon.
But, are we going to continue to push through to Philadelphia II Phase 5 now? It would be a massive project with no return likely for a year. We may not even be able to utilise those extra dice when it is complete.
Alternatives are Lunar Mining, which would increase our resources. Or Enterprise, which I keep wondering if it does anything to help with orbital project costs or not.

I'm partly wondering if we need to throw those extra resources at certain projects for the extra ~10% of completion, and also wondering what our next line of big goals are.

Simon_Jester · Nov 2, 2021

HousePet said:
Oh, I just used Derpmind's array from last turn. The increasing settled in bonus might push it up another percentage point.

Regarding certain projects and over completing them:
I'm guessing we'll be going with Tokyo or Nuuk (and I just broke and looked up where Nuuk is...) after this round of Fusion Plants to get more Capitol Goods rolling.

After talking to... I think it was @Void Stalker , I think I agree that we should do two rounds of fusion plants (Phases 2 and 3) and then start the Capital Goods train rolling in Heavy Industry.

This is because to get to the real payoff of +CapGoods in Heavy Industry, we need some protracted commitment. With four dice per turn we're only making about 280-300 Progress per turn, and the really rich Capital Goods payouts don't start until quite a bit of up-front investment goes in.

It's 375 Progress to the first +2 Capital Goods from Tokyo. 875 Progress total to +8 Capital Goods from Tokyo.

500 Progress to +8 Capital Goods from Blue Zone Heavy Industrial Sectors.

480 Progress to +4 Capital Goods from Nuuk, and 1120 Progress to +20 Capital Goods from Nuuk.

And Nuuk in particular is an Energy hog, so trying to keep a whole +12 Energy surplus on hand just to feed Nuuk Phases 2+3 would be burdensome if we only finish the second wave of fusion plants.

...

Basically, we're looking at a period of at least a year or so when we just do not have Heavy Industry dice to spend on fusion reactors without either slow-walking our Capital Goods commitments or interrupting them entirely. And that's just to start on the serious upscaling of Capital Goods production we need.

Even if we can throw Heavy Industry the odd Free die here and there, it's just not a good situation, and we want to have plenty of Energy surplus to power through (literally) the hard times.

I doubt we'll be chasing another round of Tib Processing Plants anytime soon.

Yeah, though I fondly hope we won't need to take this one down to the wire and can start the second round of processing plants before we max out our resource cap.

But, are we going to continue to push through to Philadelphia II Phase 5 now? It would be a massive project with no return likely for a year. We may not even be able to utilise those extra dice when it is complete.

Even slow income increase during that coming year will ensure we can activate an extra +8 dice (one per category). And the bonuses are very much worth it. This has all been mathed out; it's the most effective way of ensuring out ability to fulfill the rest of the Plan.

Trust me, lunar mining isn't worth it by comparison (it's just not as efficient as tiberium mining, which we can do in parallel with space station construction). Enterprise is very much worth it, but the thing is that Enterprise upgrades don't do much to benefit specifically Philadelphia. So since the core of our Four Year Plan space commitments is "finish Philly, finish Enterprise, mine the moon," our best path to success is to first do Philly, THEN do Enterprise, THEN slam out the moon mining as fast as we can.

Again, this has all been mathed out.

So yes, overcompleting those projects is very much worthwhile, because all of them are important and rollover won't be wasted. Also, the main reason for overinvesting in specifically fusion, Philly, and tiberium refineries is not so much for the rollover as that we need all of them, right now, so accepting a high risk of noncompletion when the rollover won't be wasted is just a bad idea.

Dmol8 · Nov 2, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
"Comats can be done with one die and will give us both PS and a small boost to logistics so since we're needing both just now I thought it a worthy sacrifice."

The Philadelphia gives more PS and a much more consequential boost to Logistics than an immediate +2 we won't use right away. It's not a worthy sacrifice.

Except that is not all it does:

Ithillid said:
[ ] Expand Orbital Communications Network (Phase 4) (Updated)
With ever more communications capacity coming online, more rounds of orbital communications provides for a stronger backbone, and greater redundancy in the face of potential attacks on GDI's orbitals. However, they are beginning to reach a point of saturation, and the limits of current technology though there are still more seats of parliament able to be added.
(Progress 135/135: 15 resources per die) (+2 Logistics) (5 Political Support) (Fusion)
(Progress 79/135: 15 resources per die) (+2 Logistics) (10 Political Support) (Fusion)

Significant progress has been made towards completing the orbital communications network. When the network is completed, GDI will have a global network of communications capacity, connecting every ship, home, and station into a single contiguous network, all able to talk to each other without interruption. While ion storms and other atmospheric events can close off all communications, they do have to be directly overhead.
In more standard affairs, business travel for anything but classified information has been nearly eliminated, as almost all business can be either conducted on a work from home, or telepresence basis. This has notably reduced the weight on both local and strategic logistics networks, leaving significantly more space for other needs. In many cases this has been taken up by transporting secured data or transuranics on the strategic scale, and consumer goods for more local affairs. While it does not reduce recreational travel, it does significantly reduce the peak traffic hours, as people can have much more flexibility. With standard time schedules there are two key rush hours, usually between the hours of 0800 and 1000 in the mornings, and 1600 and 1800 in the evening, the work from home schedule spreads out the travel, allowing for a regularization of schedules and streamlining traffic, rather than having to surge transit options in two time slots of the day.
The only remaining work is a number of hardening operations, leaving GDI able to compensate for losing the Philadelphia hub once more, with communications being routed to the other stations, and being ready to take on additional load in case of Brotherhood ASAT operations.

Finishing Expand Orbital Communication Networks hardens them against Philadelphia II being blown up. This means that Philadelphia becomes less of a masterstroke target.

Which is why my plan puts in both 7 Dice on Philadelphia II and a Die on Expanding Communication Networks.

@dbRevned I'm deploying Shatterers which are a sonic artillery alongside those fortress towns. So I am planning on building more shell plants in Q1, but right now we need our Logistics secured for the front lines with a round of Yellow Zone Fortress Towns.

HousePet · Nov 2, 2021

Okay. I should have just looked at the Fusion Power numbers. 2 Phases is just 9 dice instead of 5.
A one turn delay on starting out Capitol Goods drive should be manageable.
In which case we should go with Reykjavik to ensure we have the Capitol Goods for continued Vein Mining. (And hardening supply against NOD causing a Capitol Good shortfall.)

Simon_Jester · Nov 2, 2021

HousePet said:
Okay. I should have just looked at the Fusion Power numbers. 2 Phases is just 9 dice instead of 5.
A one turn delay on starting out Capitol Goods drive should be manageable.
In which case we should go with Reykjavik to ensure we have the Capitol Goods for continued Vein Mining. (And hardening supply against NOD causing a Capitol Good shortfall.)

The big debate there is whether, after completing Reykjavik Phase 2, we should start pushing Reykjavik Phase 3 or Johannesburg Phase 4.

Johannesburg Phase 4 will have more benefits for things like Ground Forces Zone Armor and mech projects, which we cannot get out of Reykjavik Phase 3.

But Reykjavik Phase 3 will be (320-X) progress for +2 Capital Goods, where X is the amount of rollover we start with.

While Johannesburg Phase 4 will be 651 progress for +4 Capital Goods.

If we get good rollover from Reykjavik Phase 2 into Phase 3, it may be worth it to just throw a shitload of Light Industry dice on and complete the second myomer plant up to Phase 3... at which point Reykjavik Phase 4 becomes hands-down the more cost-effective way to get to Phase 4 and the next round of mech and zone armor cost reductions, and Reykjavik effectively supplants Johannesburg as our primary myomer production facility.

Sort of an interesting example of how minor bits of happenstance can have major consequences.

SheepGang · Nov 2, 2021

Is anyone thinking of doing the paladin development soon? Right now our predators are a little overdeveloped to be extremely useful in the war.

Karugus · Nov 2, 2021

The predators are definitely long in the tooth, but we haven't really seen anything that threatens to overturn GDI's conventional armor superiority. I don't think Gideon's budget Avatars have had particularly impressive showings so far and with the refits going out GDI is fielding more and more Predators while NOD has less and less resources to draw on. There's also his new Scorpion tank, but nothing about it seems particularly extraordinary (the one that isn't a moving Obelisk of Light)

There's absolutely a risk that NOD beats us to the punch on releasing a modern MBT, but I don't think it will be so revolutionary it completely overshadows our Predator advantage, especially when the Predator has aged far more gracefully than the Scorpion, and NOD is going to be slower to update their inventory than we are.

Voidseer · Nov 2, 2021

Karugus said:
The predators are definitely long in the tooth, but we haven't really seen anything that threatens to overturn GDI's conventional armor superiority.

This is likely because we haven't been engaging in much armed conflict where we are deploying our armor. When war comes we will most likely need the new Paladins. Besides we don't know what Nod is developing to counter our tanks. I'm really hoping they don't pull out RA2 style terror drones, those would be bad to go up against.

HousePet · Nov 2, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
The big debate there is whether, after completing Reykjavik Phase 2, we should start pushing Reykjavik Phase 3 or Johannesburg Phase 4.

I think that there is merit in getting a phase of BZ Light Industrial Sectors happening for a bit more Health.
Completing that and Reykjavik Phase 2 would likely take 2 turns.
After 2 turns we should be starting Tokyo/Nuuk. However, those will take two turn before they start producing Capitol Goods, unless we use Free Dice.
And Reykjavik Phase 2 only produces 1 Capitol Goods.

Hrm...

This is really just a question of how much we want to build up Reykjavik to feel secure. If we need Capitol Goods, the answer is always to throw Free Dice on HI.
And in the situation where NOD does sabotage Johannesburg, it is important to remember that we can just bump Reykjavik up to Phase 3 in one turn if we need to.
So I don't think we need to worry about building up Reykjavik too much at the moment. Getting it to Phase 2 will be acceptable. Getting the bonus from Johannesburg Phase 4 1 quarter earlier is quite possibly worth it.

Karugus · Nov 2, 2021

Voidseer said:
This is likely because we haven't been engaging in much armed conflict where we are deploying our armor. When war comes we will most likely need the new Paladins.

We'll want the new paladins- but we really haven't seen anything suggesting the Predator will be entirely obsoleted soon. NOD next gen MBTs could convert entirely to stable BilPro cannons and it would just mitigate the firepower advantage of the Predator. Lasers run into our ablat, particle cannons probably would be mitigated by ablat, are incredibly expensive, and never seen mounted on an armored' vehicle.

You can say it's because 'we're not engaging much armed conflict' but we've literally warred with entire armor brigades on the Russian plains. Military development doesn't just come out of nowhere, the form of NOD's next gen MBT will likely be informed by the latest round of upgrades the last gen Scorpion sees, and besides bolt on missile pods and mixed laser/cannon formations we haven't seen much development on that front. Keep in mind, the Russian Warlord who is the premier armored formation user of the Brotherhood is in large part using captured GDI material. That's not exactly conducive to independently developing a homegrown next generation tank. Especially when in the past, NOD has always preferred new additional capabilities over raw capability- the Avatar's modularity and the Tick Tanks burrowing for instance.

Simply put, NOD doesn't benefit nearly as much from their MBTs as we do with ours. They have less incentive to invest in developing it than we do ours, less lines of research to develop it along, and have workshopped fewer technologies on their most recent iteration of the Scorpion.

Simon_Jester · Nov 2, 2021

HousePet said:
I think that there is merit in getting a phase of BZ Light Industrial Sectors happening for a bit more Health.
Completing that and Reykjavik Phase 2 would likely take 2 turns.
After 2 turns we should be starting Tokyo/Nuuk. However, those will take two turn before they start producing Capitol Goods, unless we use Free Dice.
And Reykjavik Phase 2 only produces 1 Capitol Goods.

We're coming up on urgent need for Capital Goods, enough so that it's actively a bad idea to do Blue Zone Light Industrial Sectors right now, not only because it doesn't yield Capital Goods, but because it actively consumes some.

We don't need to trade -1 Capital Goods and some Labor for +1 Health that badly right now.

This is really just a question of how much we want to build up Reykjavik to feel secure. If we need Capitol Goods, the answer is always to throw Free Dice on HI.
And in the situation where NOD does sabotage Johannesburg, it is important to remember that we can just bump Reykjavik up to Phase 3 in one turn if we need to.

Well, the trick is that if Heavy Industry is already busy, what do we do with Light Industry? We can take it as given that Reykjavik Phase 2 is likely to be the next project completed, as it's quite popular and we now have the Resources to activate dice for it, at least some of them. The only question is where to go from there. Beginning Johannesburg Phase 4 puts us on the road to more useful bonuses, especially if we want Zone Armor, but Reykjavik Phase 3 would be a good way to pick up another +2 Capital Goods, which is nothing to sneeze at given all the demand we face.

So I don't think we need to worry about building up Reykjavik too much at the moment. Getting it to Phase 2 will be acceptable. Getting the bonus from Johannesburg Phase 4 1 quarter earlier is quite possibly worth it.

Quite possibly- but it's also quite possible that we get better efficiency metrics from Reykjavik Phase 3+4 than we do from Johannesburg Phase 4. We could be looking at, say, 900 Progress for +6 Capital Goods from Reykjavik versus 650 Progress for +4 Capital Goods from Johannesburg, in which case we'd honestly be better off just going with Reykjavik unless we're in a huge hurry to unlock the Phase 4 benefits.

It wouldn't be this way except that the Reykjavik plant costs less per phase.

HousePet · Nov 2, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
We don't need to trade -1 Capital Goods and some Labor for +1 Health that badly right now.

Let's just see what effect the escalating conflict has on our Health status before we jinx it...

Simon_Jester said:
It wouldn't be this way except that the Reykjavik plant costs less per phase.

I am puzzled by that. Are we sure that Reykjavik will get the military bonuses (without the added cost) if it becomes the larger factory?

(And what do the superconductors even do? For what reason are they so expensive and even strain logistics channels just for a small Energy boost???)

Simon_Jester · Nov 2, 2021

HousePet said:
Let's just see what effect the escalating conflict has on our Health status before we jinx it...

That's a fair point, but we have a pretty thick buffer, so I'm not too worried.

I am puzzled by that. Are we sure that Reykjavik will get the military bonuses (without the added cost) if it becomes the larger factory?

I'm pretty sure I remember @Ithillid telling us that if we built up Reykjavik to Phase 4, it would get the military bonuses.

And that the reason Johannesburg phases cost more is that Reykjavik was designed from the ground up to take advantage of lessons learned by building Johannesburg.

(And what do the superconductors even do? For what reason are they so expensive and even strain logistics channels just for a small Energy boost???)

Superconductors are presumably hard to make, hence the extreme Resource costs. The Logistics strain is because you're shipping large amounts of material from a factory in frickin' Norway all around the world. With that said, the Capital Goods and Energy payoff is well worth it, viewed against the Logistics alone.

The Resource cost is staggering, but if we were rich enough we could afford it. And I strongly suspect there are hidden/narrative benefits associated with getting the superconductor plant up to Phase 2 or 3. Dunno what it would help with- maybe hover vehicles, maybe making fusion reactors cheaper, I dunno.

BOTcommander · Nov 2, 2021

I think smaller fusion plants that can power ships may require a certain amount of available superconductors but dont quote me in that

sunrise · Nov 2, 2021

The bergen superconductor project is something for near the end of the plan when we are dice limited again instead of resource limited or at least have a higher income per dice.

Faraway-R · Nov 2, 2021

So, to say a bit on how big of a hit losing Mecca will be.

In the worst case scenario, we will lose it entirely and all regional benefits we get from it - that is four RZ Mining and Glacier Harvesting sites. That is a lot.

We will lose a minimum of 290 RpT, and 300 Processing Capacity. And make no mistake, I fully expect all of these come from the Treasury discretionary funds, that is our income, not from overall GDI budget. A possible silver lining will be getting back the Logistics investments into those glaciers (since we no longer need to send the airlift capacity that way and can redirect it), which will, possibly, offset the loss of logistics elsewhere.

To give you a sense of scale, it's 17.3%, or a bit more than 1/6th, of the entire GDI income, and more than half of what we had at the beginning of the quest.

From the POV of any Nod hardliner, destroying Mecca is the equivalent of setting GDI back a year in terms of income and the ability to deploy new materiel - not counting the loss of political capital.

Sadly I cannot quite give the exact numbers for Chicago in terms of its capacity being filled...

But I can definitely say that Chicago Processing Capacity stands at 170 PC (50 old-style, 120 new-style), we had 1190/1300 capacity when it first came online (when it gave us 50 PC), and without Mecca we will drop to 1355/1420 PC... So we can and should assume that Chicago is more filled than not - with the highest it can be filled without redirecting Tiberium from other refineries being 165/170. Again if we are looking worst case scenario this is the correct value to assume since it will hurt us the most if Chicago is destroyed.

Unlike Mecca, we do have a MARV Hub to protect Chicago. The cold calculus of war tells me it is much better for us if Mecca remains intact and Chicago falls, if we have to choose one.

Summary.

Mecca Planned City is estimated to have 290 RpT, and 300 Processing Capacity. A year of investments to recoup losses, not counting the loss of ability to deploy new military developments.

Chicago Planned City is estimated to have 165 RpT (at most*), and 170 Processing Capacity. Half a year or so to recover.

Chicago is more heavily protected and is less valuable for GDI, it is both more likely to survive and, if we have to lose one, a less bad option to lose - both for the price Nod will pay and for the impact it will have on GDI economy.

* Edit - the absolute minimum Processing Capacity of Chicago that is filled is 120, to take advantage of the new Tiberium Refinement process and produce stable transuranics. Our spare PC can fit this, if barely.

uju32 · Nov 2, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
If we go ahead with the 2058Q4 plan I've drafted, it should be possible to make space for an aggressive push on shell production in 2059Q1. Maybe something like:

2 dice on tube artillery rollout
2 dice on OSRCT
3 dice on shell plants
2 dice on ablatives
1 die on URLS production (slow-walking towards Phase 2)
1 die on finishing naval point defense or Super Orcas.

This would total 11 Military dice, but that's no longer an "all-in" investment for us; if we have the Philadelphia it means there are still two more Free dice left to allocate elsewhere, or to other military projects. If we really want to go whole hog on the military, that gives us enough over-capacity to put thirteen dice on the military and push even more aggressively.

I would suggest pooling all the consumable expenditures on one project at a time in order to attempt to push to address the deficit faster and allow GDI the margins to resume an offensive posture faster.
6 on Shells or 6 on Ablat or 6 on URLS.

Right now, I judge Shells as being the bigger need.
Even on defense, being able to simply dump ordnance on a suspect grid square from 20-70km away materially discourages Nod fuckery and allows us to send out patrols further away in the knowledge they have fire support on tap.

Rakuhn said:
We really should be aiming for at least 8 dice a turn into Orbitals. 9 if we want to make use of the Enterprise's discounts.

8x dice per turn for the next 12 turns is 96 dice and an average of 4800 points, not counting dice bonuses.
Im not sure we need that much, and suspect you are underestimating the effects of Philadelphia 5.

By the end of Year 2, we should have added: Philadelphia 7 + Seo Settling In 5+ Graduates malus expiry 2 = 14 points
Added to our current Orbital 9, the base Orbital bonus becomes 23; 28 if you're working on Stations.
And that doesnt count any discount from finishing Enterprise.

Thats when Seo actually begins to come into his own.

Crazycryodude said:
The point where we desperately need to pour all our dice and money into the military to not get wrecked by NOD was passed probably 3-ish years ago. Shells are a persistent and annoying bottleneck but we're hardly at the point where NOD is going to start inflicting major defeats on us because of them. The new artillery is a very high priority to get out in the next turn or two, and the shell plants definitely need to happen in 2059. But I'm more and more starting to disagree with the thread wisdom that we're somehow still running on the ragged edge of defeat despite like 5 years of writing the military a blank check and going on the offensive for the first time in decades.

This is obviously not to say that the military is perfect and we can start ignoring them, at absolute bare minimum keep their base dice pool 100% active and we can probably toss them the occasional free die. But I promise we really can afford to back off the gas a little bit and focus the Free dice on civilian sectors again.

I'd have to disagree.

Nod has not stood still either, whether technologically or industrially. And we know nothing of what, if anything, is coming from Kane's control of the Threshold Tower and the Tacitus, since Nod has generally been better at hiding their RnD projects. We're essentially peering at a cloudy crystal ball.

Still, we can make some guesses.

Despite our material improvements in supplies and equipment quality, we are currently facing a major conventional strike by a warlord with the industrial capacity and logistics to stage an armored offensive across hundreds of kilometers at one of our Blue Zones. This was a turn after another warlord attempted to mousetrap a cruiser squadron.

The warlords are feeling comfortable enough to get frisky, despite our advances.
That worries me enough to drive investment.
Id really like to finish Warfactory Refits and unlock those extra Mil dice, but I dont think thats on the table till Year 3 at the earliest.

Ithillid said:
So, right now, the chances of actually losing a Blue Zone are very very low. Still possible with some abysmal luck, but low. On the other hand, losing Chicago or Jeddah are a lot more possible, but both of those are point targets. A sufficiently motivated Brotherhood of Nod is effectively always going to be able to take one or both of them out. The key words there being sufficiently motivated.

Low but possible is not comforting. Especially given Cheyenne Mountain.
But I guess thats the point.

Simon_Jester said:
Yeah, but in certain key areas (like "do we have enough shells, Y/N"), nothing much has changed since the Battle of Chicago in 2056. The city's more complete and better supplied, but that doesn't make the garrison inherently much stronger, and GDI's not the only faction that can get stronger with prep time. We know Gideon hasn't been very aggressive since Chicago, and I don't think that's just because he's sulking in a corner. He'll have prepared.

Also, well... if you're gonna say Gideon blew his wad fighting Chicago, all I can say is that it's been going on two years, so I'm not at all sure he's not ready for Round Two.

Point of correction:
I think we finished the MARV hub outside Chicago as well, so Chi-Town is a very hard target indeed.
Mecca-Medina is much less so, due to the requirements of diplomacy and the proximity of a bunch of Nod warlords.

TripleTango said:
We are, in a sense, already sticking our dicks out by doubling down so hard on glaciers ZOCOM's starting to cry uncle.
I do still think it was the right call--we needed the money to spend on ZOCOM and the rest of the military in the first place--but they're definitely in a delicate spot at the moment and if we're not quick to dig in we can get that chopped off before we know it.

And the Navy's also in a rough patch: we've only just got enough hulls to ensure the security of convoys under the present tempo, and Natuna Isles showed that NOD has a near-peer navy with quite the bag of tricks up its sleeve, to say nothing of land-based stealth aviation and the biotechnological Gaia-wannabe that is India. We are in no way assured of victory at sea.

Karachi should reduce their commitments since they no longer have to worry about security for the Red Zone sections of the supply lines to the Himalayas. And we really should start rolling out GF Zone Armor sometime in the next six months in order to relieve more pressure.Do 1-2x Silkcotton for the Cap Goods.

Navy's not really in a rough patch.
Our Confidence level is Decent, up from Low, and thats before finishing Busan and rolling out navalized A-16s and finishing the Laser PD refit. We retain the force advantage in any engagement, even when ambushed.

But Nod is not standing still either, and we dont really have that much margin for error, even with the Air Force backing up the Navy in places like the North Atlantic and Mediterranean.

F0lkL0re said:
We're losing PS due to the double crit fail in the tidal power power plants this turn on top of the 15 we spent on lobbying for the negotiation corps so I want to cover however much that cost us and work on getting more so we can do more SCIENCE!!! in later turns.

We also critted on one of Litvinov's pet projects, which is going to make up for much of the PS loss.
PS gain is unlikely to be a priority.

SheepGang said:
Is anyone thinking of doing the paladin development soon? Right now our predators are a little overdeveloped to be extremely useful in the war.

Both the Mammoth and Predator are old designs but fully upgraded.
We only just finished the last Block upgrade on the Predators a year, a year and half ago, and there's yet to have been sufficient new tech introductions to our techbase since then to be worth working on their successors.

Even the Army is only thinking sometime in the future in their advisories.
So I'd say no.

Simon_Jester said:
I'm pretty sure I remember @Ithillid telling us that if we built up Reykjavik to Phase 4, it would get the military bonuses.
And that the reason Johannesburg phases cost more is that Reykjavik was designed from the ground up to take advantage of lessons learned by building Johannesburg.

I remember the same thing as well.
So its probably true.

BOTcommander · Nov 2, 2021

uju32 said:
Im not sure we need that much, and suspect you are underestimating the effects of Philadelphia 5.

I think the more important thing about Philly 5 are the +1 Dice per category.

uju32 said:
I'd have to disagree.

Nod has not stood still either, whether technologically or industrially.

Nods military power and tech advances roughly by the equivalent 5 Dice per turn (Discord QM info). 6 Dice is enough to keep our current advantage and yes, GDI currently has the strategic advantage in most areas as told to us by Ithillid ooc many times.

Simon_Jester · Nov 2, 2021

uju32 said:
...

"I would suggest pooling all the consumable expenditures on one project at a time in order to attempt to push to address the deficit faster and allow GDI the margins to resume an offensive posture faster.
6 on Shells or 6 on Ablat or 6 on URLS."

I mostly agree but not quite entirely. The one caveat I have is that URLS Phase 2 is 94 Progress away from completion- plausibly within reach for a single die, easily within two. For URLS in particular that was my target and I think it justifies a one-die slow-walk. However, I agree with your conclusion that instead of splitting dice across ablatives and shell production, we should focus on one or the other at a time.

...

Karachi should reduce their commitments since they no longer have to worry about security for the Red Zone sections of the supply lines to the Himalayas. And we really should start rolling out GF Zone Armor sometime in the next six months in order to relieve more pressure.Do 1-2x Silkcotton for the Cap Goods.

Karachi is, realistically, a medium to long term project. Even optimistically we're not getting it done until 2059Q3-4, and it'd be... extremely bold... to start work on Karachi now when we don't have a good handle on how the upcoming Nod offensives will look. In the shorter term, the sonic cannons will help ZOCOM a bit. A Ground Forces power armor factory is a logical next step, but I don't think we can do it right away unless we ignore at least one of the following:

1) Super Orcas
2) Naval point defense
3) Tube artillery rollout
4) Consumables expansion
5) Space defense (orbital lasers, ASAT 4, OSRCT 1)

Each of those is a project likely to consume 3-5 dice in its own right, at least, and in some cases much more. So when you add it all together we're going to be very busy bees in the Military category for the next three turns or so before we can get a handle on all of that.

...

"Both the Mammoth and Predator are old designs but fully upgraded.
We only just finished the last Block upgrade on the Predators a year, a year and half ago, and there's yet to have been sufficient new tech introductions to our techbase since then to be worth working on their successors."

Nitpick: The Mammoth tank is actually an old and rather creaky design, and upgrading to the Block Four is very much on the menu for us.

...

"Even the Army is only thinking sometime in the future in their advisories.
So I'd say no."

Yeah. Right now, Ground Forces would much rather have power armor than better fighting vehicles; they're relatively happy with their vehicles. And since rollout of any of the major vehicle categories (e.g. the Paladin) is likely to be a project that involves several large production lines much like the Zone Armor factories, I think we should make some progress on Zone Armor rollout for Ground Forces before we start seriously trying to develop new ground vehicles.

BOTcommander said:
Nods military power and tech advances roughly by the equivalent 5 Dice per turn (Discord QM info). 6 Dice is enough to keep our current advantage and yes, GDI currently has the strategic advantage in most areas as told to us by Ithillid ooc many times.

We do have the advantage, you're not wrong, but if we don't keep compounding the advantage we lose the ability to take the initiative. Also, Nod has access to sexier tech than we do, at least on average, so it's entirely plausible that they can accomplish as much with five dice as we do with six, or that they just plain use their dice more efficiently.

I don't mean to be panicky, mind you, but I don't think we can just stretch back and sip martinis, at least until we're a bit better supplied and have resolved some key issues like "need to ease things up for ZOCOM" and "Navy needs upgrades" and "consumables shortage."

Vehrec · Nov 2, 2021

I wouldn't say that the mammoth tank is *creaky* by any stretch of the imagination. The Mammoth is a solid design, especially with it's dual railguns config, and Universal Missiles have already been rolled out to it. Barring a revolution in armor tech, or some kind of new weapons technology (Modern Lasers maybe) we probably won't see a strong need to retire the solid backbone of GDI's superheavy armor formations. Rolling out RWS to them is presumably just abstracted away in the larger scrum of our total tank fleet.

BOTcommander · Nov 2, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
Nitpick: The Mammoth tank is actually an old and rather creaky design, and upgrading to the Block Four is very much on the menu for us.

The mammoth is a senior tank, but most Nod commanders will still choose to run if they see twelve of them driving over the horizon.

Breaking News

Apparently Mammoth Mk IV will maybe have shimmer shields integrated into its design, there will be no shield refit for the Mk III.

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web

The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web