There's no ablat die in the current draft to turn into an Orca die, I'd agree if it was there but the options for poaching dice in the current draft are the Aurora, the Havoc factory, or orbital lasers. None of which I'm super willing to cut, although I guess lasers could get turned into another Orca die. I'd like lasers available to maybe integrate into the Philly before it gets too far done though, and I think the general thread mood is in favor of laser development.
Nah, I'm with you there. I don't want to cut laser development from the plan. If it were me I'd cut the second Havoc factory, but that's a point where we differ.
Turning apartments into ICS is more feasible, although I do kind of want to be seen working on housing even if it's just a token effort. Dropping Tib power to go back to a SMARV die and upgrading the apartments instead would be fine by me, the other 5R could turn a fusion power die into a BZHIS die too. I guess it depends on whether the thread wants cap goods and logistics more or Tib power more. Anyone have strong opinions either way?
Well, I suggested it, so you know what I think.
[] Plan Philly, Auroras, Lasers, Liquid T, and Kudzu Tea
Would really prefer to see one of the Philly dice switched to ICS. All the frontloading arguments for Philly also apply to ICS, and yet this is backloading ICS.
Counterargument: ICS not finishing in 2059Q3
probably won't screw us over as badly as Philly not finishing in 2059Q3. I'd
very much rather finish the ICS in 2059Q3, but I don't consider it quite as high a priority as finishing the
Philadelphia that quarter.
[] Plan Bureaucratic Havoc, ICS Edition
This is a more people friendly plan, and also helps make the air force happy.
I don't think it's that much more people-friendly. The only way for it to get the ICS done in Q3 would be to
not finish that phase of apartments until Q4 (in which case my plan could also have a phase of apartments done then too). And their plan makes less progress on the Caffeine Crisis than mine does, so far as I can tell.
It's not so much people-friendly as military-buildup-friendly.
I really want the Orcas, but this plan has every other wish list item I've been wanting for the past several turns.
On another note, I cannot wait til the Philly is completed and we can use those freed dice to start either pushing forward our economy or military.
Caveat: We're gonna need to keep spending Free dice on space projects for the rest of the plan. The total amount of work that remains to be done is
significantly greater than the amount of work that has already been done.
At minimum, first we need to finish
Enterprise, which is just as big a project as finishing
Philadelphia has been.
And then we need to do a bunch of moon mining.
Anything else we might want (building part of
Columbia, scouting Mars for weird cool transuranics) is going to require even more Free dice investment.
On the other hand,
Philadelphia Phase 5 gives us +1 dice to all categories, which means we can get more done in those categories without
needing our Free dice. In a way it's like having anything from 4-8 extra Free dice, depending on how many of the bonus dice we choose to activate- it probably won't be all of them at first, but it'll be some of them!
[] Plan Bureaucratic Havoc, ICS Edition
[] Plan Philly, Auroras, Lasers, Liquid T, and Kudzu Tea
One has full ICS and does Liquid Tib so we know WTF it does for us.
Second does Orca's and is close enough on ICS we can probably do it next turn.
The problem with
Bureaucratic Havoc as an ICS plan is that it only puts four dice in, when we're likely to need at least 10 to finish the project and probably more like 12 spent total to be
confident of finishing the project. Barring a lucky roll (say, 280 on 4d100), we're likely to struggle to find enough Free dice to spend on ICS in Q3 to get that confidence. Because we might need 2-3 Free dice just for that, easily... And we'll already be needing more Free dice to be sure of finishing
Philadelphia next turn anyway, and Heaven knows there's no shortage of things the Military category might want us to spend Free dice on.
So if the needed Free dice don't materialize, under
Bureaucratic Havoc we only get to spend
at most nine* of our base Infrastructure dice on ICS in the next two quarters. As such, there's a considerable risk of the project rolling over into 2059Q4 under
Bureaucratic Havoc.
This risk is lessened (though not absent) with my '
T and Tea' plan, since it will have rolled five dice instead of four on the ICS during Q2, and since the
Philadelphia will have advanced far enough that we can be assured of completing the project with at most 1-2 more Free dice in Q3, I think.
_______________
(probably eight, since it's not like we'll be
less interested in working on apartments in Q3 when the project's half done)
[] Plan Philly, Auroras, Lasers, Liquid T, and Kudzu Tea
[] Plan Tiberium-Powered Havoc
Liquid T's the one for me, let us hope we set the energy free.
I like look of tarberries but I'm wary of it being left on the vine like spider cotton as people despair at the inefficiency of using Agri for Energy.
Right now, the big reason we're not doing spider cotton plantations is that we have actual Plan goals to fulfill in Agriculture. And getting those out of the way is in many cases
cheaper per die than it would be to build the spider cotton plantations, at a time when we're not exactly awash in surplus Resources.
Tarberries
might run into the same problem... or they might not.
Sounds good to me. I'm perfectly happy to get more progress on the ICS and BZHI, my efficiency brain is mildly annoyed by 4 dice on the SMARV fleet when we could reasonably get it with 3, but I suppose if we didn't spend that Tib die on it this turn we'd be pretty likely to have to spend a Mil die on it next turn instead. And Mil dice are comparatively scarcer than Tib right now so I guess I'll take that trade.
Also still approval voting for the other variants, I could go either way on Tiberium-Powered Havoc vs. the new ICS variant.
[grunts in respect]
I'm seriously considering approval-voting for yours, but need some time to think it over.
I really do worry about cutting Free dice from the
Philadelphia this turn.
