Because they are being rolled as pairs of dice. So I am dropping the third roll on the upper one. The same way as when I roll extra dice by accident in the main voting threadmark, we typically drop the last one on that roll, rather that offsetting.

Alright that answers my question.

Let's check the mathposts:

Mathpost:
Blue Zone Arcologies (Stage 3) 636+15=651/650
Communal Housing Experiments 178/140

Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant (Phase 3) 199/300
Blue Zone Heavy Industrial Sectors 146/500
Reykjavik Myomer Macrospinner (Phase 3) 260/320

Perennial Aquaponics Bays (Stage 2) 513/350
Red Zone Containment Lines (Stage 5) 234/180
Tiberium Processing Refits (Phase 1) (New) 120/100

Offshore Tiberium Harvester Stations 148/200
Improved Tiberium Containment Facilities Development 101/40
GDSS Philadelphia II (Phase 5) 474/1425
Green Zone Teacher Colleges 211/200
Tissue Replacement Therapy Development 42/60
Advanced Electronic Video Assistant Development 33/60
Early Prototype General Artificial Intelligence Development 66/120

Reclamator Hub Red Zone 7-South 189/105
Pacifier Mobile Artillery Vehicle Deployment 144/120
Tube Artillery Deployment 276/200

Shell Plants (Phase 4) 128/300
Naval Defense Laser Refits 381/330
Havoc Scout Deployment Brest 77/110
Havoc Scout Deployment Seoul 92/110

Security Review Military 183/DC50

Results:
+16 Housing
+4 Consumer Goods
+1 Energy Reserve
-4 Energy
+4 Food over 16 turns
+16 Consumer Goods over 16 turns
+5 Political Support
15 Resources/Turn
+50 Tiberium processing capacity
3 points of Red Zone Mitigation
++Artillery, +unhappy NOD missiles

Likely changed values for Q2:
+31 Housing, 18 Population in high-quality housing (assuming Communal housing doesn't count as high quality)
Energy:‌ ‌(+9)‌ ‌(+4 in reserve)
Consumer‌ ‌Goods:‌ Significant Surpluses ‌(+38?)‌ ‌(+5 from private industry)
Labor:‌ Significant ‌Surpluses‌ ‌(+34)‌ (+4 per turn) ‌
Tiberium‌ ‌Processing‌ ‌Capacity‌ ‌(1720/2320)‌ ‌
Political Support: 80
Resources:‌ ‌755

Backup mathpost, with exploded arithmetic for error-checking.

Blue Zone Arcologies (Stage 3) 302+230+104=636+15=651/650
Communal Housing Experiments 72+80+26=178/140

Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant (Phase 3) 125+32+42=199/300
Blue Zone Heavy Industrial Sectors 0+104+42=146/500
Reykjavik Myomer Macrospinner (Phase 3) 4+192+64=260/320

Perennial Aquaponics Bays (Stage 2) 291+174+48=513/350 ->163/350
Red Zone Containment Lines (Stage 5) 74+102+58=234/180
Tiberium Processing Refits (Phase 1) (New) 0+91+29=120/100

Offshore Tiberium Harvester Stations 0+90+58=148/200
Improved Tiberium Containment Facilities Development 0+67+34=101/40
GDSS Philadelphia II (Phase 5) 48+279+147=474/1425
Green Zone Teacher Colleges 149+41+21=211/200
Tissue Replacement Therapy Development 0+16+26=42/60
Advanced Electronic Video Assistant Development 0+7+26=33/60
Early Prototype General Artificial Intelligence Development 0+40+26=66/120

Reclamator Hub Red Zone 7-South 51+102+36=189/105->84/105
Pacifier Mobile Artillery Vehicle Deployment 90+36+18=144/120
Tube Artillery Deployment 184+74+18=276/200

Shell Plants (Phase 4) 3+71+54=128/300
Naval Defense Laser Refits 270+93+18=381/330
Havoc Scout Deployment Brest 0+59+18=77/110
Havoc Scout Deployment Seoul 0+74+18=92/110

Security Review Military DC50/189

And the only thing not matching up are the Security Reviews. Let's see:

Security Reviews Military: 34+30+71+48 = 183

Alright so changes this turn:

+8 Housing + 4 Consumer Goods + 1 Energy Reserve -2 Energy
+8 Housing -5 Political Support
+4 Food over 16 Turns +16 Consumer Goods over 16 Turns +10 Political Support
+15 Resources per Turn
-250 Processing Capacity +50 Processing Capacity
-10 Political Support
-2 Energy

So the tally is:

Housing: 14+8+8 = +30 (8 Low Quality)
Consumer Goods: 34+5+4+1? = +44?
Energy: 13-2-2 (3+1) = +9 (+4 Reserve)
Political Support: 75-5+10-10 = 70
Resources per Turn: 740+15 = 755
Processing Capacity: 2320-250+50 = 2120
Labor: 30+4 = 34

Political‌ ‌Support:‌ 70
SCIENCE Meter: 4/4
Free‌ ‌Dice:‌ ‌7
Housing:‌ +30 (8 Low Quality)
Energy:‌ +9 (+4 Reserve)
Logistics:‌ +7
Food:‌ +21 ‌(+8 Reserve)‌ ‌
Health:‌ +11 (3 Consumed) ‌
Capital‌ ‌Goods:‌ +3
Consumer‌ ‌Goods:‌ +44?
Labor:‌ +34
Tiberium‌ ‌Processing‌ ‌Capacity‌ ‌(1685/2120)‌ ‌

Green ‌Zone‌:

Water:‌ +6
Abatement: 86

Red Zone:

Abatement: 70

Infrastructure: +27
Heavy Industry: +22
Light and Chemical Industry: +17
Agriculture: +17
Tiberium: +30
Orbital Industry: +17
Services: +22
Military: +19
Bureaucracy: +17

Security Reviews:
Military 1 turns ago 2059 Q1
Agriculture 2 turn ago 2058 Q4
Light/Chem 3 turn ago 2058 Q3
Services 4 turns ago 2058 Q2
Orbital 6 turns ago 2057 Q4
Heavy Ind 7 turns ago 2057 Q3
Tiberium 8 turns ago 2057 Q2
Bureaucracy 9 turns ago 2057 Q1
Infrastructure 10 turns ago 2056 Q4


[ ] Plan Stocking the Piles 2.0:
Infrastructure 5/5 Dice 75 Resources
-[ ] Integrated Cargo System 0/800 15 Resources per Die -2 Lab - 2 E -2 CapG on Completion, 5 Die = 75 Resources
Heavy Industry 4/4 Dice 95 Resources
-[ ] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 3) 199/300 20 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Blue Zone Heavy Industrial Sectors 146/500 25 Resources per Die -4 Lab -8 E on Completion, 3 Dice = 75 Resources
Light and Chemical Industry 4/4 Dice 70 Resources
-[ ] Reykjavik Myomer Macrospinner 260/320 20 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 60 Resources
-[ ] Civilian Glider Development 0/40 10 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 10 Resources
Agriculture 3/3 Dice 30 Resources
-[ ] Perennial Aquaponics Bays (Stage 3) 163/350 10 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Yellow Zone Purification Facilities (Phase 2) 12/160 10 Resources per Die -1 E on Completion, 1 Die = 10 Resources
Tiberium 6/6 Dice 130 Resources -5 PS
-[ ] Red Zone Containment Lines (Stage 6) 54/180 25 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 50 Resources
-[ ] Tiberium Processing Refits (Phase 2) 20/100 20 Resources per Die 1 Die per Turn -250 Processing Capacity if Incomplete, 1 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Offshore Tiberium Harvester Stations 148/200 20 Resources -5 PS per Die, 1 Die = 20 Resources -5 PS
-[ ] Reclamator Fleet Red Zone 7-South Super MARVs 0/210 20 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 40 Resources
Orbital 5/5 Dice + 5 Free Dice 200 Resources
-[ ] GDSS Philadelphia II (Phase 5) 474/1425 20 Resources per Die, 10 Dice = 200 Resources
Services 4/4 Dice 50 Resources
-[ ] Tissue Replacement Therapy Development 42/60 20 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Professional Sports Programs 0/250 10 Resources per Die -1 H -1 Lab on Completion, 3 Dice = 30 Resources
Military 6/6 Dice + 2 Free Dice 100 Resources:
-[ ] Reclamator Fleet Red Zone 7-South Super MARVs 0/210 20 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 40 Resources
-[ ] Shell Plants (Phase 4) 128/300 10 Resources per Die -2 E on Completion, 4 Dice = 40 Resources
-[ ] Havoc Scout Mech Deployment Brest 77/110 10 Resources per Die -2 E on Completion, 1 Die = 10 Resources
-[ ] Havoc Scout Mech Deployment Seoul 92/110 10 Resources per Die -2 E on Completion, 1 Die = 10 Resources
Bureaucracy 3/3 Dice:
-[ ] Security Reviews Bureaucracy 1+2 Dice DC 50

75+95+70+30+130+200+50+100 = 750/755

So here is what this plan does:

- 5 Dice on Integrated Cargo System to get started on that to patch one of our strategic weaknesses. 5/12 Median.

- 1 Die on Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants for a 37% chance and a DC of 64 to complete Phase 3. We will need Phase 4 soon.
- 3 Dice on Blue Zone Heavy Industry Sectors for a Median of 3/5 and an Average DC of 91.

- 3 Dice on Reykjavik to continue hardening our Myomer supply. 100% chance and an Average DC of 2 to complete. Rollover will be important here.
- 1 Die on Civilian Glider Development because we need something cheap and this is it. 92% chance and a DC of 9 to complete.

- 2 Die on Perennial Aquaponics Bays to try to slow roll that plan goal next turn. 20.16% chance and an Average DC of 69.
- 1 Die on Yellow Zone Purification Facilities to finally start on hardening the Green Zones against Food Logistics disruption. 1/2 Median and a DC of 100.

- 2 Die on Red Zone Containment Lines as we need those done for the long term goal of Tiberium Abatement and it's at least going to go up to Stage 7. 87.75% chance and an Average DC of 26 to complete.
- 1 Die on Tiberium Processing Refits since we can only use 1 Die. 66% chance and a DC of 35 to complete.
- 1 Die on Offshore Tiberium Harvest Station to complete it. 94% chance and an Average DC of 7 to complete.
- 2 Tiberium Die + 2 Military Die on the Super MARV Fleet for a 96.39% chance and an Average DC of 28 to complete. We need to defend the Glacier Mines only people. Gideon has been targeting our large mining and processing complexes not our abatement and refugee evacuation complexes. Hey @Ithillid do the MARV Fleets overflow if they have anywhere to go? And does that 2 Mil Die limitation apply per MARV action or just as a general limit for MARV actions per turn?

- 10 Dice on GDSS Philadelphia II to get Phase 5 Rolling into a 10/15 Median and an Average DC of 77.

- 1 Die on Tissue Replacement Therapy Development for a 100% chance and a DC of 2 to complete and support Emergency Tiberium Infusion Deployment. This action won't autofinish any time soon and it's the most important of the ones that were leftover in Services.
- 3 Dice on Professional Sports Programs because we need a Dice discount for Philadelphia II to be on track to complete. 37.41% chance and an Average DC of 57 to complete.

- 4 Dice on Shell Plants to get the Shell stockpile dealt with. 98.42% chance and an Average DC of 21 to complete Phase 4. 31.69% chance and an average DC of 58 to complete Phase 5. The military wants Phase 6 done by the end of this plan which we can slow roll with 2 Dice in Q3.
- 1 Die on each of the Havoc Deployments for a 100% chance and a DC of 2.

- Security Reviews in Bureaucracy because this turn we need to use all the Dice. Next turn we do both Infrastructure and Tiberium Security Reviews because we will have Free Dice we don't have to put into Philadelphia II.

We have the following Strategic, Operational and Tactical Needs and Weaknesses:

- Our Strategic Needs are to keep the confidence level of all our military branches High and to have enough Resources per Turn to activate all Dice while gaining more Dice.

- Our Strategic Weaknesses currently are a lack of full new generation Tiberium processing (which we can mitigate by building new processing plants, but isn't going away until we do both the retrofit and the new generation of Tiberium storage/silos), not enough consumables (which can be fixed by building up ammo, ablat and sensor stockpiles) and not enough slack in our Logistics system for fighting a war (which we can fix by building up more Logistics projects).

- Our Operational Needs are a better distribution of personnel (civilian and military), a better defensive envelope around the Earth so NOD can't use the orbits against us (so the completion of the ASAT system and the installment of new armaments for it), rapid expansion of space infrastructure and Tiberium abatement in all environments (we are currently not doing enough to mine it out of Blue Zones, we are not cleaning the ocean floor, the Red Zones don't have complete containment lines and we are not doing enough in Glacier Mining).

- Our Operational Weaknesses currently are a lack of completed Railways in Blue and Green Zones for better direct population transfer, a lack of Integrated Cargo System for better ablation of Logistics during a war, a lack of Zone Armor so that ZOCOM isn't doing the job of the regular military and a lack of enough quality Housing for our population.

- Our Tactical Needs are better education for all (Litvinov is going to be really helpful with this), Labor pool expansions, Mental Health treatment actions, more options in Orbital Supremacy (Orbital Lasers, High Altitude Ion Cannons, Orbital Nuclear Stockpiles and Orbital Strike Regimental Team Combat Stations), deescalation of everyday life from the war footing and better preparation of our population for participation in military actions.

- Our Tactical Weaknesses currently are an insufficient amount of Yellow Zone Fortress Cities, lack of NOD anti-stealth deployment, lack of Orbital Lasers, the Himalayan (isolated, which can be fixed with a MARV Hub and Karachi), South African (too many eggs in one basket, can be mitigated with Reykjavik) and Arabian Blue Zones (ZOCOM HQ and the Blue Zone from which the Mecca complex is run, needs a MARV Hub and more Fortress Cities), Security Reviews (DC is still too high for 1 Die so we need Philadelphia II completed to be able to run two of them at the same time which will mitigate some problems), better local Food and Water supplies for the Green Zones and the lack of Plasma Shuttle Logistics which would enable better binding of the Blue Zones into a more coherent entity.

Rushing Philly won't make anything magical happen. All it will do is make assigned dice contribute ~5% more than they currently do. We won't even notice it.

Actually we would have noticed it this turn with Tissue Replacement Therapy finishing because of those ~5% more.

And when are we getting the 200 more resources per turn needed to activate all those dice? :p

Multiply the 70ish average from each dice by our now-58 dice, and you get 4060 progress each turn. That incoming +232 is HUGE....
No wait, it is a 5% increase.

We already have +15 Resources from this turn and I'm doing a minimum of 55 and a maximum of 75 Resources per Turn gain just in the next turn. Add on that that there are a lot of 10 Resources per Die actions and a lot of Bureaucracy actions to burn Dice on and we can manage for a few turns while we build up those 200 Resources.

Look, I never said we should stop questing (using Free Dice) towards Philly 5. I'm just pointing out that it is not the Holy Grail (TCN), it is just a +2 weapon (decent bonus).
Also, we don't yet have the weapon proficiency (resources per turn) to wield Philly 5 properly yet, so it only works as a +1 weapon (+5% effectiveness of dice).
We also don't have a lot of anti-theft (ASAT) devices to ensure that it isn't stolen from us (damaged by a nuke) by those Insulting Frenchmen from Scene 8 (NOD).
What I am saying is that while we could sprint (assign all Free Dice) towards Philly 5 in the next DnD session (quarter), we may as well quest (use Free Dice) towards getting that weapon proficiency (more harvesting) so that we can use it properly. As well as quest (use Free Dice) towards getting better armor (Capitol Goods Infrastructure), and ensure we have a better anti-theft (ASAT 4) setup first.
And unless I'm clip-clopping (using coconuts (doing the maths)) wrong, we aren't likely to get Philly 5 in the next DnD session (quarter) anyway.

Actually even if we sprint towards Philadelphia II with all the Free Dice we can't get it this turn because the Median is 15 Dice and we can only put 12 on it. Doesn't change the fact that putting 10 on it gives us a lot more room for actions next turn as we won't need Free Dice on it then most likely.
 
They are not empty, but yes, a lot of that +30 housing is in the Green Zones as people have moved out.
Well, that's good to know. On the other hand, @Derpmind , I still think we need to make sure those areas are well-watered. Among other things, if we do well in the upcoming Warlord Dogpile event, we're likely to want to push the borders forward, and to see another wave of refugees, many of whom will filter through the Green Zones we now have on the way inwards. Plus, having plenty of water supplies makes us less vulnerable to civilian casualties in the Green Zones during the warlord dogpile, and it's not a realistic option for us to build enough Housing to fully depopulate the Green Zones aside from volunteers in the time available.

Hm, so I'm pretty new to all of this and I have to admit that, despite reading everything, I barely understand the planning aspect of each turn. That being said, wouldn't a good option for logistics going forward be the Suborbital Shuttle system?
It's a delicious option, but has some problems.

You're totally right about it being an option that keeps getting better (the first phase is kind of ass, the third phase is excellent). And you're right about it being easy to defend which totally matters.

The problem is that it's really freaking expensive to fund in Resources, and with us having so many things demanding that we spend 20 R/die on them (myomer macrospinners, fusion power, Capital Goods industrial complexes, space stations, MARVs, almost anything involving tiberium in any way...) Well, it's just hard to find the budget for the shuttles.

Railroads and the ICS are both a lot easier to fund, at 15 R/die. But railroads are less dice-efficient than the later phases of Suborbital Shuttles, and the ICS has a huge up-front cost plus it eats a couple of points of Capital Goods at the tail end.

I also have a few questions as to why the inhibitors haven't been deployed yet, is it just resource concerns or is there some grand plan in that background to roll them all out in the same turn so that the green apple pop rocks of doom don't get a chance to adapt?
It's literally just resource concerns.

Blue Zone inhibitors cost 30-60 Resources (depending on whether you get lucky and roll one die, or unlucky and roll two), it's unclear whether there's any overflow, and importantly they use a LOT of Energy. You're trading -3 Energy for +2 Yellow Zone abatement, and we already have like +85 or +90 Yellow Zone abatement, when +50 is the level at which on average you are rolling back the Yellow Zones faster than they roll you back. Since every 16 Energy we consume requires us to spend 4-5 Heavy Industry dice building a whole 'nother round of fusion reactors, it's just not feeling like a great deal.

Moreover, we're already likely to roll forward the Blue Zone boundaries to the limits of our territorial control in the next few years as-is, so there's not much incentive to buy expensive Yellow Zone mitigation projects, because we'd need to conquer more territory (activated by the Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting action) to make more progress on that front anyway, and that would take a while.

Yellow and Red Zone inhibitors don't require Energy, but do require us to complete all the MARV hubs in the pertinent Yellow/Red Zone. Which means doing several chained and connected projects that consume Military dice and are expensive to activate.

So doing inhibitors just isn't a very attractive option for us right now.

Lastly, and this has nothing to do with planning but is more a hypothetical question I have about the nature of Tiberium (given that I'm not very well versed in the source material), would the Venusian tiberium that was recently spotted be sufficiently divergent from Earth-based tiberium that the two substances might compete with one another? From what I understand, tiberium is a transmutative substance that leeches minerals from surrounding material to propagate itself, but could this also apply to other kinds of tiberium if they were far enough removed from one another? Is there a point at which one sample of tiberium wouldn't recognize another far-removed sample of tiberium as an extension of itself and instead attempt to cannibalize it?
That is a fascinating and very clever speculation.

The problem is that the only way to test the hypothesis would be to either:

1) Launch Earth-based tiberium into space, which is an instant "HATE HATE HATE" idea for just about any GDI citizen. Or,

2) Return Venus-based tiberium to Earth, which is an extremely bad idea if it turns out that Venus-based tiberium cannot be contained using our existing technology, or spreads much more rapidly than existing Earth-based tiberium. Since if either of those things happens and the Venus-based tiberium gets loose on Earth, we're screwed.
 
It's a delicious option, but has some problems.

You're totally right about it being an option that keeps getting better (the first phase is kind of ass, the third phase is excellent). And you're right about it being easy to defend which totally matters.

The problem is that it's really freaking expensive to fund in Resources, and with us having so many things demanding that we spend 20 R/die on them (myomer macrospinners, fusion power, Capital Goods industrial complexes, space stations, MARVs, almost anything involving tiberium in any way...) Well, it's just hard to find the budget for the shuttles.

Railroads and the ICS are both a lot easier to fund, at 15 R/die. But railroads are less dice-efficient than the later phases of Suborbital Shuttles, and the ICS has a huge up-front cost plus it eats a couple of points of Capital Goods at the tail end.
I think it might be worth it to power past the first phase.

That is a fascinating and very clever speculation.

The problem is that the only way to test the hypothesis would be to either:

1) Launch Earth-based tiberium into space, which is an instant "HATE HATE HATE" idea for just about any GDI citizen. Or,

2) Return Venus-based tiberium to Earth, which is an extremely bad idea if it turns out that Venus-based tiberium cannot be contained using our existing technology, or spreads much more rapidly than existing Earth-based tiberium. Since if either of those things happens and the Venus-based tiberium gets loose on Earth, we're screwed.
Good thing that the SCED has gotten the go by Parliament and the Tiberium Safety Committee to return a piece of Venus vore rock for studies. :)
 
It's literally just resource concerns.

Ah, many thanks, I've been wondering about that for literal weeks lol.

Railroads and the ICS are both a lot easier to fund, at 15 R/die. But railroads are less dice-efficient than the later phases of Suborbital Shuttles, and the ICS has a huge up-front cost plus it eats a couple of points of Capital Goods at the tail end.

That is an interesting segue into another of the questions that's been bouncing about in my noggin. Wouldn't the suborbital shuttle system be absolutely ideal at ferrying resources to and from orbital installations? It seems like that would vastly simplify supply lines later on.

1) Launch Earth-based tiberium into space, which is an instant "HATE HATE HATE" idea for just about any GDI citizen. Or,

Admittedly, that's where I was going with the thought. The way I see it, tiberium is already munching away on Venus so sending a shuttle with an Earth-tiberium sample on a collision course with the planet can't really make things too much worse. As it stands, there is no way we could get set up enough to stop the tiberium that is already there in time, but if my hypothesis ends up having merit we would be introducing a competitor in the tiberium 'food chain' that would end up delaying its conquest of the planet.

And, of course, providing an opportunity for us to use whatever we learn from the experiment to maybe accomplish the same back on Earth. Again, at best it could only buy us time, but it seems to me like we could really use time.
 
Admittedly, that's where I was going with the thought. The way I see it, tiberium is already munching away on Venus so sending a shuttle with an Earth-tiberium sample on a collision course with the planet can't really make things too much worse. As it stands, there is no way we could get set up enough to stop the tiberium that is already there in time, but if my hypothesis ends up having merit we would be introducing a competitor in the tiberium 'food chain' that would end up delaying its conquest of the planet.

And, of course, providing an opportunity for us to use whatever we learn from the experiment to maybe accomplish the same back on Earth. Again, at best it could only buy us time, but it seems to me like we could really use time.
This is a bad idea. Such tests should be made with small samples first. In the worst case Tiberium strains can exchange beneficial adaptations and mutations like some bacteria, which would make Venerian Tiberium resistant to many of our existing anti-tib techs.
 
This is a bad idea. Such tests should be made with small samples first. In the worst case Tiberium strains can exchange beneficial adaptations and mutations like some bacteria, which would make Venerian Tiberium resistant to many of our existing anti-tib techs.

While that is very true, and one of the risks of attempting the experiment whether it be on Earth or on Venus, my point was that Venus is effectively doomed already. Dooming it further would at worst open up the risk that some escapes the planet's orbit and goes free-flying in space, but that risk already exists for both Venus and Earth.

The way I see it, the higher risk is bringing a sample directly from Venus to Earth, because we live on that rock! Unleashing mega-tiberium on Earth would be vastly more dangerous, methinks, and will remain a risk no matter how careful GDI is so long as we're doing the experiment on Earth.

Edit: Then again, doing the experiment on Earth is bound to garner more useful data from any experiments we try given the relative ease of observation.
 
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While that is very true, and one of the risks of attempting the experiment whether it be on Earth or on Venus, my point was that Venus is effectively doomed already. Dooming it further would at worst open up the risk that some escapes the planet's orbit and goes free-flying in space, but that risk already exists for both Venus and Earth.

The way I see it, the higher risk is bringing a sample directly from Venus to Earth, because we live on that rock! Unleashing mega-tiberium on Earth would be vastly more dangerous, methinks, and will remain a risk no matter how careful GDI is so long as we're doing the experiment on Earth.
In its current form Venus Tiberium appears to slowly consume the planet. It took 70 years for 16% of the surface. If we speed up that timeline, our efforts to save Earth will be vain because in a few decades the entire inner system might be uninhabitable due to the debris field that was once Earths sister planet.
 
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I think it might be worth it to power past the first phase.
I am perpetually on the cusp of agreeing with you. I want it, it's just a cast-iron bitch to find the funds for, and that leads to endless vacillation.

Good thing that the SCED has gotten the go by Parliament and the Tiberium Safety Committee to return a piece of Venus vore rock for studies. :)
Well, if we're lucky, Venusian tiberium will turn out to be less nasty than the tiberium we already have, or at least no worse.

Alternatively, SCED Quest may kill us all. :p

Ah, many thanks, I've been wondering about that for literal weeks lol.

That is an interesting segue into another of the questions that's been bouncing about in my noggin. Wouldn't the suborbital shuttle system be absolutely ideal at ferrying resources to and from orbital installations? It seems like that would vastly simplify supply lines later on.
Note the word "SUB-orbital." The suborbital shuttle craft are going to be optimized for very fast high altitude flight through the Earth's upper atmosphere and on ballistic "hops" through space at suborbital speeds. Further boosting the shuttle in question to orbital speeds would be possible...

But since the suborbital shuttles are modifications of existing orbital heavy-lift fusion craft, this would basically just be a fancy way of hitting "Undo" on all the changes we made to turn it into a suborbital shuttle in the first place, and turning it back into something we already have anyway.

Admittedly, that's where I was going with the thought. The way I see it, tiberium is already munching away on Venus so sending a shuttle with an Earth-tiberium sample on a collision course with the planet can't really make things too much worse. As it stands, there is no way we could get set up enough to stop the tiberium that is already there in time, but if my hypothesis ends up having merit we would be introducing a competitor in the tiberium 'food chain' that would end up delaying its conquest of the planet.

And, of course, providing an opportunity for us to use whatever we learn from the experiment to maybe accomplish the same back on Earth. Again, at best it could only buy us time, but it seems to me like we could really use time.
This is the batshit balls-and-glory version of the experiment that you perform when you have many many planets and give zero fucks about what happens to any particular one.

It would be much safer and more sensible to bring back small amounts of Venusian tiberium to Earth and experiment on them in a carefully controlled environment we're prepared to brutally vaporize with ion cannons if anything goes wrong.

If it were feasible to construct a lab on Venus, it would probably be even better to go to Venus and do our experiments on how Venus tiberium interacts with tiny amounts of Earth tiberium there... but since that would involve building a lab on Venus, it's not really very practical.

While that is very true, and one of the risks of attempting the experiment whether it be on Earth or on Venus, my point was that Venus is effectively doomed already. Dooming it further would at worst open up the risk that some escapes the planet's orbit and goes free-flying in space, but that risk already exists for both Venus and Earth.
It might turn out that Venus has had tiberium on it since 1995 or even earlier, and that the Venusian tiberium mega-patch is actually growing very slowly. In which case introducing faster-growing Earth tiberium could conceivably cause Venus to be destroyed much faster.

We should be very careful and try some precursor experiments and data collection before taking such drastic steps.

The way I see it, the higher risk is bringing a sample directly from Venus to Earth, because we live on that rock! Unleashing mega-tiberium on Earth would be vastly more dangerous, methinks, and will remain a risk no matter how careful GDI is so long as we're doing the experiment on Earth.
The thing is, on Earth we can maintain full control of the experiment site and go to extreme measures to destroy it (nuclear device, blow up the whole facility with sustained bombardment by ion cannon) if things go horribly wrong.

On Venus, if we did as you describe, we'd be doing an uncontrolled experiment, and we wouldn't even be able to observe the effects closely or in detail (no microscopic analysis of the two types of tiberium interacting). We wouldn't get nearly as much data from a success, and the worst probable case scenario from a failure would make things much worse.

[I am ignoring improbable scenarios such as the Earth and Venus tiberium types hybridizing into some kind of ultra-tiberium that cannot be destroyed even with nukes and ion cannons, because I don't consider that to be realistic enough to be worth considering]

In its current form Venus Tiberium appears to slowly consume the planet. It took 70 years for 16% of the surface. If we speed up that timeline, our efforts to save Earth will be vain because in a few decades the entire inner system might be uninhabitable due to the debris field that was once Earths sister planet.
On the other hand, it's theoretically possible that there's only been tiberium on Venus since the Temple Prime explosion roughly ten years ago, and that the entire tiberium field on Venus is spreading from a single point of origin. In which case, uh... Well, we might not have that much time before that happens.

As you probably already know but others in the thread may not, Venus does have internal active geology with volcanoes and so on. As such, Venus is susceptible to the same disastrous state as Earth where liquid tiberium generated by tiberium spread mixes with lava and flashes into naturally occurring liquid tiberium explosions.
 
In its current form Venus Tiberium appears to slowly consume the planet. It took 70 years for 16% of the surface. If we speed up that timeline, our efforts to save Earth will be vain because in a few decades the entire inner system might be uninhabitable due to the debris field that was once Earths sister planet.

I don't know why Venus would become a debris field (does tiberium explode at some point in it's life cycle!?) but after looking into it a bit more I think I agree that it's better to do the experiment on Earth despite the risks. Mainly because Venus lacks a planetary magnetic field and the free floating carbon dioxide that makes up the planet's atmosphere can be swept into space by solar wind. Speaking of, can't tiberium turn gaseous? If it can… we might want to watch out for Venus tiberium being swept into the solar system already.
 
@Simon_Jester I wasn't suggesting we do all the housing. Chill.

We've gone from 23 Low Quality Housing this turn to 8. And by definition, High Quality Housing can't be in the Yellow Zones. Another phase of Apartments or Communal Housing or whatever can chop that down to a very small size. Meaning we can focus four Infra dice per turn on doing Logistics. Now that's not to say Housing is a permanent solution, but it will take off the pressure on our food supply to the GZs.

Meanwhile, something else that will help with GZ food supply is more food storage. Freeze Dried Food Plants aren't as cheap per-die as the Aquaponics bays, no, but getting 20 food in reserve is one of our plan goals, and it will help keep GZ food supply up in case of transport lines being cut off. Though on that note,

@Ithillid Do we need to finish [] Freeze Dried Food Plants before we do more Food Stockpile actions, or will it take effect on whatever our current stockpiles are?
 
So, stupid question, feel free to shut down, but would Vensusian Tiberium even propagate on Earth? It developed completely differently. Like maybe it can't find a food source on Earth to even grow, but other Tiberium.

A sample of V-Tiberium is needed stat. In the best case scenario V-tib might be a way to clear mass chunks of E-Tib. SCIENCE is needed. Make Tiberium to stop Tiberium. Its designer dogs but crystal death. Like How we made Rat terriers.

Full MAD SCIENCE option.
 
I don't know why Venus would become a debris field (does tiberium explode at some point in it's life cycle!?) but after looking into it a bit more I think I agree that it's better to do the experiment on Earth despite the risks. Mainly because Venus lacks a planetary magnetic field and the free floating carbon dioxide that makes up the planet's atmosphere can be swept into space by solar wind. Speaking of, can't tiberium turn gaseous? If it can… we might want to watch out for Venus tiberium being swept into the solar system already.
Very likely, under certain conditions is turns into Liquid Tiberium, a highly volatile and explosive form. The Scrin wait with their harvesting efforts until a natural liquid Tiberium explosion occurs, which was used by Kane to lure the spiky aliens to Earth prematurely. Such a natural explosion would likely be several magnitudes more powerful than the most devastating volcanic explosions. And we dont know what happens if the Scrin dont turn up to suck the planet dry, the explosions might increase in intensity and frequency until the planet is ripped apart in a grande finale.
 
I don't know why Venus would become a debris field (does tiberium explode at some point in it's life cycle!?)
Yes. Remember that giant two-gigaton explosion we touched off when Kane trolled us into shooting Temple Prime with an ion cannon during the Third Tiberium War?

That was what is known as a 'liquid tiberium explosion.' Liquid tiberium, in contact with a sufficiently violent energy source, yields some truly ridiculous explosions.

Eventually, if and as tiberium spreads on Earth, sooner or later it will reach a point where underground liquid tiberium deposits form and come into contact with magma inside the Earth. This is foreseen as likely to cause gigantic, gigaton-range tiberium explosions, and things may escalate from there.

There's a reason why the Scrin's idea of a suitable facility to mine tiberium on Earth consists of a gigantic tower protected by an intangibility field that makes it immune to all conceivable physical attack.

Mainly because Venus lacks a planetary magnetic field and the free floating carbon dioxide that makes up the planet's atmosphere can be swept into space by solar wind. Speaking of, can't tiberium turn gaseous? If it can… we might want to watch out for Venus tiberium being swept into the solar system already.
Gaseous tiberium is likely to actually involve tiberium dust, because scary as tiberium is, it does seem to rely on having a recognizable atomic structure to do what it does.

The solar wind isn't going to be able to push tiberium dust, or high-mass gas molecules, out of Venus' gravity well.

@Simon_Jester I wasn't suggesting we do all the housing. Chill.

We've gone from 23 Low Quality Housing this turn to 8. And by definition, High Quality Housing can't be in the Yellow Zones. Another phase of Apartments or Communal Housing or whatever can chop that down to a very small size. Meaning we can focus four Infra dice per turn on doing Logistics. Now that's not to say Housing is a permanent solution, but it will take off the pressure on our food supply to the GZs.
I admit that I am in part reacting defensively against the people who are still suggesting we work on yet a third phase of arcologies during this Plan.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that even after we finish off our Low Quality Housing, we'll still have plenty of people living in Green Zones.

First, because remember that much of the Low Quality Housing we built during the First Plan was inside the Green Zones.

Second, because not all housing that exists within GDI territory is actually modeled or tracked by the indicators. We didn't start the game in 2050 with a literally negative (or even zero) amount of physical places to live; hundreds of millions of people already had homes, even as millions and millions more were refugees. When we conquered territory during the offensives, we didn't suddenly gain +Housing from all the new houses we'd overrun, either. So even if we have so much Adequate/High Quality Housing that no one has to live in any of the Low Quality Housing that we built, there will still be plenty of people living in the Green Zones, and making sure they have plenty of access to water is still going to be important.

Meanwhile, something else that will help with GZ food supply is more food storage.
I'm actually proposing to do the water purification action to help with the water supply, not the food supply. Temporary disruptions of food supply can be resolved by frantically shipping in C-rations; water supply disruptions become problematic a lot faster.
 
Note the word "SUB-orbital." The suborbital shuttle craft are going to be optimized for very fast high altitude flight through the Earth's upper atmosphere and on ballistic "hops" through space at suborbital speeds. Further boosting the shuttle in question to orbital speeds would be possible...

But since the suborbital shuttles are modifications of existing orbital heavy-lift fusion craft, this would basically just be a fancy way of hitting "Undo" on all the changes we made to turn it into a suborbital shuttle in the first place, and turning it back into something we already have anyway.

I wasn't think of the shuttles actually entering space, just to be clear, just that a system could be developed to take cargo from suborbital shuttles into space or vice versa easier than it would be to get cargo from Earth's surface to space. Kind of like how planes refuel midair, for example.

Either way, it seems like the shuttles would be a foot in the door to a way better logistical system to me. Rail is harder to defend and useless from ferrying things to and from space, and our other option has the opposite problems. The shuttles seem like a nice in-between for me.

I am perpetually on the cusp of agreeing with you. I want it, it's just a cast-iron bitch to find the funds for, and that leads to endless vacillation.

I think it might be worth it despite the ugly costs. The shuttles seem like our route towards the best of both worlds in regards to logistics. (Even if it might take awhile, and lead to a lot of hair-pulling in the meantime)

It might turn out that Venus has had tiberium on it since 1995 or even earlier, and that the Venusian tiberium mega-patch is actually growing very slowly. In which case introducing faster-growing Earth tiberium could conceivably cause Venus to be destroyed much faster.

I see, I've been operating under the assumption that the Temple explosion is what introduced tiberium to Venus. If I'm wrong and it instead was introduced entirely separately from that of Earth then it might be worth our time to look into what it is about Venusian environmental conditions that so effectively slows tiberium spread.
 
I don't know why Venus would become a debris field (does tiberium explode at some point in it's life cycle!?) but after looking into it a bit more I think I agree that it's better to do the experiment on Earth despite the risks. Mainly because Venus lacks a planetary magnetic field and the free floating carbon dioxide that makes up the planet's atmosphere can be swept into space by solar wind. Speaking of, can't tiberium turn gaseous? If it can… we might want to watch out for Venus tiberium being swept into the solar system already.

Yes, tiberium explodes at some point in its life cycle.

Kane deliberately engineered the Third Tiberium War to lure GDI into shooting his temple and the liquid tiberium primer situated there so that it'd cause the major tib veins beneath most of the Balkan to explode, signalling to the Scrin that the planet is ready for harvest far earlier than would have been natural.

Normally, that'd happen once liquid tiberium hits the high pressures and depths of the mantle in sufficient quantities, and most, if not all, lifeforms at the surface are long, long dead.
 
Yes, tiberium explodes at some point in its life cycle.

Kane deliberately engineered the Third Tiberium War to lure GDI into shooting his temple and the liquid tiberium primer situated there so that it'd cause the major tib veins beneath most of the Balkan to explode, signalling to the Scrin that the planet is ready for harvest far earlier than would have been natural.

Normally, that'd happen once liquid tiberium hits the high pressures and depths of the mantle in sufficient quantities, and most, if not all, lifeforms at the surface are long, long dead.

Eventually, if and as tiberium spreads on Earth, sooner or later it will reach a point where underground liquid tiberium deposits form and come into contact with magma inside the Earth. This is foreseen as likely to cause gigantic, gigaton-range tiberium explosions, and things may escalate from there.

But wait, if that's the case, isn't Venus tiberium already insanely volatile as it stands right now? The surface pressure on Venus is 9.3 megapascals (93 bar) and the surface temperature is 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), that's nearly as hot as magma just on the surface of the planet and that pressure is equivalent to that found at 3,000 feet deep into the ocean on Earth.

If everything you just said is correct, wouldn't that imply that Venus as it stands right now is rigged to explode at any moment?

Edit: Whoops, forgot to add one of my quotes… >.>
 
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But wait, if that's the case, isn't Venus tiberium already insanely volatile as it stands right now? The surface pressure on Venus is 9.3 megapascals (93 bar) and the surface temperature is 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), that's nearly as hot as magma just on the surface of the planet and that pressure is equivalent to that found at 3,000 feet deep into the ocean on Earth.

If everything you just said is correct, wouldn't that imply that Venus as it stands right now is rigged to explode at any moment right now?
Well, sort of, but the Tiberium on the Venusian surface is currently solid Tiberium. Only Liquid Tib goes kaboom. So at least in the short term, we're safe from it all going up in smoke.

The question is how the Tib will find a way to get a suitable mass of Liquid T in place to detonate it all at once, rather than a constant string of tiny kabooms as T explodes the moment it liquefies.
 
It could be, but we don't know. Its a completely different strain. For all we know V-tib doesn't even do exothermic reactions. Just that it propagates a speed we haven't observed yet. We don't even know hold old the deposit is.
 
But wait, if that's the case, isn't Venus tiberium already insanely volatile as it stands right now? The surface pressure on Venus is 9.3 megapascals (93 bar) and the surface temperature is 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), that's nearly as hot as magma just on the surface of the planet and that pressure is equivalent to that found at 3,000 feet deep into the ocean on Earth.

If everything you just said is correct, wouldn't that imply that Venus as it stands right now is rigged to explode at any moment right now?
the pressures atmospheres and oceans can produce are nothing compared to the pressures inside a planets surface. The pressure at the earths mantle is 1.4 million bar, 15000 times the surface pressure of Venus.
 
Good thing that the SCED has gotten the go by Parliament and the Tiberium Safety Committee to return a piece of Venus vore rock for studies. :)
NGL my first thought when I read this 'Oh fuck three different organizations decided to go full dumb ahead, that or Kane revealed his masterplan of making the future so hopeless we agree to work with him'.

But really that is not a good idea. Study the Tiberium on Venus for a while first, then if nothing worrying came up move on to bringing a bit of it to special facilities in orbit of Venus for easier study, then after we learn enough of how that strain is behaving we can discuss moving it from the orbit of Venus to anywhere else.

We don't dare bring Tiberium to orbit from Earth despite the fact we have a good idea of how this strain works and have the possibility to react in time to destroy it if something goes wrong. Going to Venus to pick the Tiberium strain from there to bring back to Earth has far less fail-safes or contingencies and carries far greater risk of something going wrong. And that is before we consider Nod would burn whatever agents it could for a chance on what is essentially a victory condition to them.
 
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NGL my first thought when I read this 'Oh fuck three different organizations decided to go full dumb ahead, that or Kane revealed his masterplan of making the future so hopeless we agree to work with him'.

But really that is not a good idea. Study the Tiberium on Venus for a while first, then if nothing worrying came up move on to bringing a bit of it to special facilities in orbit of Venus for easier study, then after we learn enough of how that strain is behaving we can discuss moving it from the orbit of Venus to anywhere else.

We don't dare bring Tiberium to orbit from Earth despite the fact we have a good idea of how this strain works and have the possibility to react in time to destroy it if something goes wrong. Going to Venus to pick the Tiberium strain from there to bring back to Earth has far less fail-safes or contingencies and carries far greater risk of something going wrong. And that is before we consider Nod would burn whatever agents it could for a chance on what is essentially a victory condition to them.

If anyone seriously brings up a plan of putting Tiberium in a ship with a g-drive in the immediate future I am going to become active in the thread just to argue against that madness.
The only one who can stop me is Ithillid, who has signed off on it, and the Tib return mission is a Parliament request to the SCED, so good luck with that.
 
Yes. Remember that giant two-gigaton explosion we touched off when Kane trolled us into shooting Temple Prime with an ion cannon during the Third Tiberium War?

That was what is known as a 'liquid tiberium explosion.' Liquid tiberium, in contact with a sufficiently violent energy source, yields some truly ridiculous explosions.

Eventually, if and as tiberium spreads on Earth, sooner or later it will reach a point where underground liquid tiberium deposits form and come into contact with magma inside the Earth. This is foreseen as likely to cause gigantic, gigaton-range tiberium explosions, and things may escalate from there.

There's a reason why the Scrin's idea of a suitable facility to mine tiberium on Earth consists of a gigantic tower protected by an intangibility field that makes it immune to all conceivable physical attack.

Gaseous tiberium is likely to actually involve tiberium dust, because scary as tiberium is, it does seem to rely on having a recognizable atomic structure to do what it does.

The solar wind isn't going to be able to push tiberium dust, or high-mass gas molecules, out of Venus' gravity well.

I admit that I am in part reacting defensively against the people who are still suggesting we work on yet a third phase of arcologies during this Plan.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that even after we finish off our Low Quality Housing, we'll still have plenty of people living in Green Zones.

First, because remember that much of the Low Quality Housing we built during the First Plan was inside the Green Zones.

Second, because not all housing that exists within GDI territory is actually modeled or tracked by the indicators. We didn't start the game in 2050 with a literally negative (or even zero) amount of physical places to live; hundreds of millions of people already had homes, even as millions and millions more were refugees. When we conquered territory during the offensives, we didn't suddenly gain +Housing from all the new houses we'd overrun, either. So even if we have so much Adequate/High Quality Housing that no one has to live in any of the Low Quality Housing that we built, there will still be plenty of people living in the Green Zones, and making sure they have plenty of access to water is still going to be important.

I'm actually proposing to do the water purification action to help with the water supply, not the food supply. Temporary disruptions of food supply can be resolved by frantically shipping in C-rations; water supply disruptions become problematic a lot faster.

We are still getting a refugee stream of 1 refugee + per turn, which demands housing, consumer goods, food and medical support, among other things. If we want to limit exposure of the civilian population to Nod assaults like what Krukov tried we are going to need more BZ high quality housing, and we are going to need an arcology phase per 2 years on average. We can't eliminate exposure of the civilian population of course, there's a number of civilian production centers and the like that were there already and build by us later that are useful to keep running, but the less people are there that aren't absolutely required to run the place the less damage Nod can do to our population.

Also remember that all our indicators are indicators, which are pegged to 'strictly meeting demand' at 0. As we neared 0 surplus housing we started hearing things about crowded apartments and older people moving out of homes and into smaller condominiums and the like to offer younger families some room to raise a family in as the housing market grew tighter and tighter.

Likewise is it extremely likely that what the Yellow Zones generally consider adequate housing and what GDI considers adequate housing in Yellow Zones differs, and that's before we consider the risk of Nod deliberately destroying residential areas to create a humanitarian crises for GDI to resolve, or the fighting leveling towns along the front lines simply because they're there and make useful hard points.

But wait, if that's the case, isn't Venus tiberium already insanely volatile as it stands right now? The surface pressure on Venus is 9.3 megapascals (93 bar) and the surface temperature is 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), that's nearly as hot as magma just on the surface of the planet and that pressure is equivalent to that found at 3,000 feet deep into the ocean on Earth.

If everything you just said is correct, wouldn't that imply that Venus as it stands right now is rigged to explode at any moment?

Edit: Whoops, forgot to add one of my quotes… >.>

We don't know, which is why we need to study the place first. Unfortunately, it's, well, Venus. There is literally no place with a solid surface more hostile to human habitation and technology within the Sol system than Venus, and I am including tiberium glaciers.

NGL my first thought when I read this 'Oh fuck three different organizations decided to go full dumb ahead, that or Kane revealed his masterplan of making the future so hopeless we agree to work with him'.

But really that is not a good idea. Study the Tiberium on Venus for a while first, then if nothing worrying came up move on to bringing a bit of it to special facilities in orbit of Venus for easier study, then after we learn enough of how that strain is behaving we can discuss moving it from the orbit of Venus to anywhere else.

We don't dare bring Tiberium to orbit from Earth despite the fact we have a good idea of how this strain works and have the possibility to react in time to destroy it if something goes wrong. Going to Venus to pick the Tiberium strain from there to bring back to Earth has far less fail-safes or contingencies and carries far greater risk of something going wrong. And that is before we consider Nod would burn whatever agents it could for a chance on what is essentially a victory condition to them.

The issue with studying tiberium on Venus is that Venus is, as noted 90+ atmospheric pressure at 450+C. And its atmosphere rains literal acid.

Now, GDI absolutely could go for a Venus orbital facility to study the doom rock of Venus there, it has the lift capacity to pull it off. But it also needs to consider just how they are getting hold of a sample of doom rock first.
 
the pressures atmospheres and oceans can produce are nothing compared to the pressures inside a planets surface. The pressure at the earths mantle is 1.4 million bar, 15000 times the surface pressure of Venus.

This is true, but wouldn't the relatively extreme temperature difference decrease the needed depth of tiberium infestation for an eruption event to occur? Extreme pressures would still be needed, but would it still need to get to the mantle equivalent of Venus to go critical?

Assuming, of course, that V-Tiberium has exothermic reactions… which it might not. Gah, there is so much I want to know about V-tib!
 
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