Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Simon_Jester · Dec 11, 2021

So again, just to provide a basis for discussion, I've posted a draft plan. There are still some significant holes- I have yet to even try to allocate the bulk of our Tiberium and Services dice, but there's still 150 R left unspent to apply to those dice.

TENTATIVE 2059Q3 BUDGET: 760+50 = 810 RpT

660 + (Four Tiberium Dice) + (Three Service Dice)/810 R
7/7 Free dice used

[] Plan Tentative 2059Q3 Plan- 210R on Military, OSRCT, Auroras, Super Orcas, Bureaucrats.

Infrastructure 5/5 Dice + 2 Free Dice 105 R
-[] Integrated Cargo System 307/800 (7 Dice, 105 R) (82% chance)

Heavy Industry 4/4 Dice 95 R
-[] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant (Phase 3) 258/300 (1 Die, 20 R) (97% chance)
-[] Blue Zone Heavy Industrial Sectors 336/500 (3 Dice, 75 R) (92% chance)

Light and Chemical Industry 4/4 Dice 60 R
-[] T-Glass Foundries (Stage 1) 117/350 (4 Dice, 60R) (83% chance)

Agriculture 3/3 Dice 30 R
-[] Perennial Aquaponics Bays (Stage 3) 163/350 (1 Die, 10 R) (1/2 median)
AND EITHER
-[] Wadmalaw Kudzu Plantations 0/??? (2 Dice, ?? R) (???)
OR
-[] Strategic Food Stockpile Construction 0/150 (2 Dice, 20 R) (51+ % chance)

Tiberium 6/6 Dice 40+??? R
-[] RZ-3N? MARV Hub (Beirut) 0/125 (2 Dice, 40 R) (combined with Mil dice, should finish two hubs)
-[] FOUR OTHER DICE, TO BE DETERMINED
-What are our options for offshore tiberium mining?
-Only build tiberium power plants if we are confident they will explode gently.
-Red Zone containment is expensive and starting to hit diminishing returns, but there might be a special reward for completing all stages/phases.

Orbital 5/5 Dice 100 R
-[] GDSS Philadelphia II (Phase 5) 474/1425 (4 dice, 80 R) (97.4% chance)
and ONE OF
-[] Study Novel Material 0/50 (1 Die, 20 R) (83% chance)
OR
-[] GDSS Columbia (Phase 1) 0/80 (1 Die, 20 R) (58% chance of Phase 1, 1/3.25 median to Phase 2, 1/8 median to Phase 3)

Services ?/4 Dice 20+?? R
-[] Early Prototype General Artificial Intelligence Development 66/120 (1 Die, 20 R) (89% chance)
-[] (OTHER STUFF?)

Military 6/6 Dice + 5 Free Dice + Bureaucrats 210 R
-[] OSRCT (Phase 1) 0/220 (3 Dice, 60 R) (64% chance)
-[] URLS Deployment (Phase 2) 105/200 (1 Die, 15 R) (41% chance)
-[] Orca Refit Deployment 0/200 (3 Dice, 45 R) (68% chance)
-[] RZ-3N? MARV Hub (Beirut) 0/125 (2 Dice, 40 R) (Also Tib dice, median finish 2x hubs, maybe 3)
-[] MARV Fleet YZ-6a (Savannah) 182/210, (Bureaucracy, 20 R) (~88% chance)
-[] Aurora Bomber Deployment 0/??? (2 Dice, 30 R)
---(??% chance, hopefully allows strike on Krukov)
---(if two dice is not enough, we take the URLS die and/or one of the OSRCT dice, as needed)

Bureaucracy 3/3 Dice
-[] Bureaucratic Assistance (Savannah MARV fleet)
-[] Make Political Promises
--[] Try to get protecting moon mining income extended through 2062 reapportionment.
--[] Appeal to Development/Starbound.
--[] In exchange, offer additional +RpT tiberium income to be reapportioned and/or additional small/medium space projects.

F0lkL0re · Dec 11, 2021

It's been 11 turns since we last reviewed Infrastructure so we might want to do that before finishing ICS.

TheFourthman · Dec 11, 2021

Ithillid said:
Ration Board
The Initiative Ration Board has opened proposals for the next decade of Initiative rations, beginning with the 24 hour ration packs. With a spread of 90 meals planned for variety as an initial run and the potential to add more, it is an ambitious project to revitalize the ration for the common soldier. Over the past decade, the ration board has revised the ration effectively every other year as the Treasury has managed to put more food diversity and greater supplies to hand. In the early years of the decade, it had dropped to a mere seven

Army marches on its stomach so good to see.

Hope the new reruns never taste better and they finally remove the charms.

Ithillid said:
The Offshore Tiberium Harvester stations, despite their political problems, have been a rousing success story. Operating in the near shore littorals, out to about a hundred and fifty meters deep, the stations have begun hauling in a significant load of Tiberium. However, they do have problems. Most notably the limited number of areas that they can effectively operate. As they are large flat bottomed craft that need to remain relatively still during a harvest, they cannot effectively operate during significant storms, or fast moving ocean currents. Beyond that, they are also vulnerable to attack. With the Brotherhood of Nod stepping up their naval activities, it is only in secure areas, like the Baltic Sea, North Sea, Sea of Japan, or the Sea of Okhotsk, which are surrounded by blue zones, and have constricted accessways that GDI can lay defensive lines across, where they can be deployed. This means that in total, there may be more construction, but it will be a limited supply, not a long term strategy for development.

I know this has issues but it is addressing something I've had a concern over. Tiberium sediment runoff. Like I'm sure some is growing naturally as well but just like the stuff under our feet? We need to clean up the ocean floor.

Ithillid said:
While some of the problems of bulk cell culturing have not been solved, a scaled down version has been. By applying seed clusters of artificially created pluripotent stem cells layers of tissue can be effectively regrown. While it does tend to create areas of hypo and hypertrophic growth, it has been shown to work, with good binding to existing skin and muscle mass. At this point, it is not a cosmetic procedure but a lifesaving one.

This will really help with surface level Tiberium treatment. It's a bit squicky but you could debride infected skin and muscle and then grow good tissue.

Ithillid said:
With the defensive laser development there are two key systems. First is the defensive satellite. A five petalled flower, the satellite is mostly a series of solar panels, linked to batteries and capacitors. In the central core, a set of three large CBLs are the striking weapon. When fully charged they can fire all three rounds over the course of about six seconds. While it will take hours to fully recharge, and is unlikely to stop more than one or two missiles in that time, it is a fairly capable system, especially with how much of it is simply coolant circuits there to keep the crystals from warping and cracking.

The other half is a station mounted design. With the destruction of the ASAT control center showing the potential flaws of the system, a similar design has been drawn up to serve as a bolt on gunpod, locally controlled using the sensors of an existing space station, and working from its power supply. While it is capable of much higher rates of fire, and has substantially more coolant to work with, it is also burst limited, with bursts of nine to twelve shots being the limit before any particular mount needs to cool down

Both of these are interesting. But the station mounted ones are a Lot more interesting to me.

Ithillid said:
In the field, they have proven to be a significant maintenance problem. The jump jets burn out quickly, and repeated impacts rapidly wear the knee and hip joints. Beyond that, there is the shimmer shield. While it is relatively useful, especially in reducing the incoming damage from laser weapons, it is also a significant tuning problem. It often decoheres rather than retaining tune, at least with the current models. However these were not unexpected problems as this is a radically new platform. While some are likely to be worked out in the field, others are likely to remain until the second or third generation of the platform.

Well they got their toy time for them to make it work.

Ithillid said:
"Morale soared to unprecedented heights on base today as a living legend came by to give his namesakes the once-over. Colonel Havoc himself down to my base, to see the Havocs! We've graduated our best Wolverine pilots to run these things, and they're taking to them like ducks to water. Lieutenant Inazuri has been working his ass off getting his platoon into fighting shape. The only problem is, now all the other units are green with envy-I saw Captain Inazuri watching the Lieutenant a little more closely than I liked. And not in her normal 'I want to bang my husband but we're on the clock' way, more like 'my husband is an idiot and I will punish him for it.' Just hope she does it off the clock, I do not need an anti-fraternization review in this unit. Too many people sleeping around on this base."

Colonel Adrian Keynes, Steel Talons, Lisbon Garrison.

That dude is still kicking around. It's crazy the old warhorse hasn't kicked the bucket yet.

Ithillid said:
[ ] Reclamator Hub Blue Zone 2 (Progress 58/125) (Richmond)

The Richmond to Washington area has long been an important core for GDI administrative work. While it has been deemphasized in the decade since the Third Tiberium War, it has not seen an end to its importance. The Pentagon is still one of the keystone administrative and recordkeeping centers for GDI. The old American Library of Congress and the Smithsonian collections are still one of the most complete records of pre Tiberium civilization in the world. This MARV hub is built with one purpose. Not to mine Tiberium but to ensure that some of the last remnants of the time before do not vanish from the earth, at whatever cost must be paid. It is a final holdfast, a fortress unlike nearly any other on earth. Ringed not only with artillery and railguns, it plays home to some of the only land based antimissile systems that have a reliable chance of working. While its ability to defeat Brotherhood Strategic arms targeted anywhere beyond the immediate environs of the MARV base is limited at best, the base itself is likely to be able to stop most strikes short of actual saturation fires

Kind of want this for the added defense for the sites in question. If we had more dice I'd say buy the MARVs for it as well but we got schedules to keep.

Ithillid said:
Politically, this has been relatively well accepted, with only the Initiative First making even pro forma complaints about the rescheduling. With masses of physical evidence, and the vast stretches of Red Zone in between, the new scheduling is long overdue, not least to better reflect the situation on the ground.

IF has a hot take? Color me shocked.

Karugus said:
Not going to lie, I feel like the Aurora was practically made for deploying plasma warheads. Not something we can probably invest too rapidly into, but something to consider

Be a good upgrade to it if nothing else.

Rakuhn · Dec 11, 2021

I wouldn't use military dice on MARVs unless we are willing to commit at least 5 tiberium dice on them. Military dice are too precious right now to spend on MARVs unless we get a lot of bang for the buck.

Dheer · Dec 11, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
I want some sense of the actual scale of how dangerous they are. Fifty liters of liquid tiberium isn't a lot in one sense (think "smaller than a beach ball,") but it might be a lot in the sense of "if this went kaboom, it would explode like a two-megaton bomb," in which case we really don't want to build them. I asked @Ithillid about this, so hopefully, we'll get some feedback on how big of a kaboom we're talking about.

If you want a sense of scale for how dangerous liquid tiberium is. The liquid tiberium bomb truck which had approximately a truck worth of liquid tiberium when it was detonated by the ion cannon by itself had a yield of two gigatons. Which was worsened by the fact it caused a chain reaction with nearby tiberium causing the yield to increase drastically above that. If the truck worth was 3000 US gallons which approximately is 11356.24 US liters, and you divide 2,000,000,000 by 11356.24 then 1 liter of liquid tiberium in energy detonation is about 156,115 tons in yield. Assuming my quick and messy calculations are correct then 50 liters of liquid tiberium yield would be about 7,805,750 tons. If the gallons the truck contained are larger, yield per liter would be lower and the calculation is wrong. However it must be noted that this sort of detonation can only occur when fired upon by the ion cannon, which the possible threshold of ion technology causing it to detonate unknown, as catalyst technology of Nod or nuclear weapons cannot cause this sort of reaction. Hope this helps.

Ithillid · Dec 11, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
I want some sense of the actual scale of how dangerous they are. Fifty liters of liquid tiberium isn't a lot in one sense (think "smaller than a beach ball,") but it might be a lot in the sense of "if this went kaboom, it would explode like a two-megaton bomb," in which case we really don't want to build them. I asked @Ithillid about this, so hopefully, we'll get some feedback on how big of a kaboom we're talking about.

Depends pretty heavily on what sets it off. It is not an engineered liquid tiberium bomb getting hit by an Ion Cannon, so it is significantly less than @Dheer suggested, but still in the multiton detonation range. Few kilotons with a catalyst device.

TheFourthman said:
That dude is still kicking around. It's crazy the old warhorse hasn't kicked the bucket yet.

Too angry to die.

TheFourthman · Dec 11, 2021

Ithillid said:
Too angry to die

He's literally in the wrong game it turns out. Dude was supposed to be a Metal Gear character but he was born in the wrong universe. Dude would still fist fight Kane on a threshold tower if he got a time to show up.

dptullos · Dec 11, 2021

Derpmind said:
I think you're being quite overconfident. Our immigration is limited by the territory GDI holds; civilians have a hard time fleeing across the blasted waste of the Tiberium-invested wastelands. If we don't continue to take territory, our immigration will slow down to a trickle.

We're expanding in the Middle East, and Gideon's defeat in the South will permit us to claim more of his territory.

Even if Stahl's success in South America limits our ability to take and hold more territory there, every Nod defeat now presents us with an opportunity to claim more territory. And our policy encourages refugees and defectors, so we'll be able to build Home Guard units to defend that territory.

Not continuing to take territory would require us to be threatened on every front, which would require far more coordination than Nod can currently manage. Besides, even if Nod was coordinating, neither the Middle Eastern warlords nor Gideon are currently strong enough to oppose our territorial expansion.

Edit: Can we get word of QM on population growth? I'm not asking for exact details, just a general sense of how the population transfer is working.

JOJOBRN · Dec 11, 2021

For the tiberium power cells, the update says:

Ithillid said:
While a far cry from the Brotherhood's version with hundreds of liters of Liquid Tiberium and having some 100 to 400 megawatts of power pumped into it

Ours is fifty liters, and puts out three times the input for six months. I'm going with 50 megawatts of output. 6 months by 50 mw gives us about 220 mwh, which is about 780.000 gigajoules, which equals about 190 kilotons of TNT. Obviously, that probably won't happen,, but a few kilotons might? No idea

DecaffeinatedOwl · Dec 11, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
Oh yeah. I am definitely in favor of developing an air-to-air variant of the Aurora bomber.

We could call it... the Apollo!

More generally, Auroras are apparently much faster than the Nod hypermaneuverable alien-tech fighters in a straight-line chase, which makes those fighters functionally incapable of intercepting Auroras. It's theoretically possible to intercept a Mach 4 bomber with a Mach 2 fighter, but not realistically possible to do so without the Mach 4 bomber's consent.

The thing is, the lack of BVR missiles due to bullshit stealth means the Apollo has to slow down and maneuver to engage air targets. It has to play on the Barghist's level.

Which is where have a nuclear-tipped AAM would come in handy, in regards to not needing ideal launch conditions--it can be dropped out of a munition sled and still have a reasonable probability of a hit. Which in turn means the Aurora never has to slow down to engage air targets.

Basically, where the Apollo is an air superiority fighter like the F-22, the NAAM-armed Aurora is a hypersonic interceptor, more in the vein of the YF-12.

Simon_Jester said:
The thing is, the hypersonic glide bombs won't necessarily hit the defense laser installation specifically.

And doesn't have to. The whole point of the glide bomb is you not only don't have to overfly the target, you don't have to overfly the air defenses either.

Which significantly increases the expense of your air defense grid, because now you don't just need missiles and laser turrets capable of engaging hypersonic aircraft, you need more of them to guard a much wider perimeter.

Khop · Dec 11, 2021

I've expressed as much on the discord but I feel I must say it here as well that the Karachi Sprint makes my stomach turn over when I think about how it's going to be our first major offensive action and the land front BZ connection is coming out of the Himalayas and the other will have to be a landing supported by planes in Oman and any fleet carrier that can be freed up. If the foe gets better rolls this time, on their own turf with a serious potential to cut lines of supply then we really could be betting a lot of progress on a questionable dice roll.

If only we had time to even just rush out the Sharks for protection duty.

Voidseer · Dec 11, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
Agriculture 3/3 Dice 30 R
-[] Perennial Aquaponics Bays (Stage 3) 163/350 (1 Die, 10 R) (1/2 median)
AND EITHER
-[] Wadmalaw Kudzu Plantations 0/??? (2 Dice, ?? R) (???)
OR
-[] Strategic Food Stockpile Construction 0/150 (2 Dice, 20 R) (51+ % chance)

Simon_Jester said:
Orbital 5/5 Dice 100 R
-[] GDSS Philadelphia II (Phase 5) 474/1425 (4 dice, 80 R) (97.4% chance)
and ONE OF
-[] Study Novel Material 0/50 (1 Die, 20 R) (83% chance)
OR
-[] GDSS Columbia (Phase 1) 0/80 (1 Die, 20 R) (58% chance of Phase 1, 1/3.25 median to Phase 2, 1/8 median to Phase 3)

@Simon_Jester for the orbital part of your plan I recommend Colombia in place of Novel Material study for now. We get more support and restore hope sooner that way. As for agri I advocate Kudzu over Food Stockpiles. We have a fair stockpile already so we can afford to wait a little on that.

DecaffeinatedOwl · Dec 11, 2021

Khop said:
I've expressed as much on the discord but I feel I must say it here as well that the Karachi Sprint makes my stomach turn over when I think about how it's going to be our first major offensive action and the land front BZ connection is coming out of the Himalayas and the other will have to be a landing support by planes in Oman and any fleet carrier that can be freed up. If the foe gets better rolls this time, on their own turf with a serious potential to cut lines of supply then we really could be betting a lot of progress on a questionable dice roll.

I mean, that's more or less why it's got to be done, too--our supply lines to the Himalaya BZ are really long and awkward and if we can shorten that even a little bit we'll be in a lot better place in the Eurasian theater.

Void Stalker · Dec 11, 2021

Aurora cost is going to determine mil spending but I think for the coming quarter we work on rolling out projects we have developed as well as more income.

Sailor_Skarro · Dec 11, 2021

Personally my main priorities for Military next turn are roughly Auroras, Orcas, Consumables, and Other in that order, maybe swapping Consumables and Orcas, although I'd like to throw the last die at Savannah because there's zero point in leaving it unfinished.

Calvin · Dec 11, 2021

Sailor_Skarro said:
although I'd like to throw the last die at Savannah because there's zero point in leaving it unfinished.

I think we could use Bureaucratic Assistance on that.

Lightwhispers · Dec 11, 2021

Ithillid said:
However, the key systems at this point are not more new airframes but rather new tools for airframes, especially things like the Wingman Drones and other means to increase pilot efficiency.

I wonder if the bolded is a suggestion to do the neural interface system development project.

TripleTango said:
If we wait a year we'll be in the thick of it. I'd rather it get done now even if it risks waking the sleeping dragon in India.

We'll be in the thick of it whether we wait a year or not.

Ithillid said:
[ ] Tissue Replacement Therapy Development
While still far from being able to properly assemble large complex structures from scratch, smaller scale items, such as tissues and skin segments is a first stepping stone towards general replacements. While still potentially traumatic, being able to use a person's own cells as a baseline is a starting point for more complex systems.
(Progress 77/60: 20 resources per die)
[8]

While some of the problems of bulk cell culturing have not been solved, a scaled down version has been. By applying seed clusters of artificially created pluripotent stem cells layers of tissue can be effectively regrown. While it does tend to create areas of hypo and hypertrophic growth, it has been shown to work, with good binding to existing skin and muscle mass. At this point, it is not a cosmetic procedure but a lifesaving one.
While actual deployment will be the responsibility of the healthcare system and the Welfare Department, pushing ahead with funding has been a good investment, as it will begin to alleviate the problems being faced by the members of the Qatarite defectors that underwent Tiberium infusion treatments. It is now far more possible to undertake exploratory surgery to remove tiberium shards growing in their bodies, and provide rapid healing through stem cell seedings, easing recovery and reducing the risks involved.

This sounds like a very early precursor to medigel. Shiny!

Ithillid said:
The other half is a station mounted design. With the destruction of the ASAT control center showing the potential flaws of the system, a similar design has been drawn up to serve as a bolt on gunpod, locally controlled using the sensors of an existing space station, and working from its power supply. While it is capable of much higher rates of fire, and has substantially more coolant to work with, it is also burst limited, with bursts of nine to twelve shots being the limit before any particular mount needs to cool down.

And this is very nice, since it sounds like it will be incorporated in every station we build from now on... including Philly.

Simon_Jester said:
Remember, the eventual need for production is likely to be no greater than the scale on which we build the existing (and in many ways similar) Apollo fighter. The production lines for those were a project that required two 70-Progress, 15 R/die factories that each used -2 Labor and -4 Energy.

3 factories, actually.

Simon_Jester said:
Again, Auroras are a specialty aircraft and there will never be that many good known targets for them at any one time, nor will they ever be deployed in extreme numbers in any one place barring something really weird like "Oh shit, LEGION just went CABAL and we need to blow up the place it keeps most of its server farms, NOW."

I suspect that the most frequent use for them will be "we have a team getting close to a NOD FOB, get in the air and ready to make them regret their life choices."

sunrise · Dec 11, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
-[] Integrated Cargo System 307/800 (7 Dice, 105 R) (82% chance)

I can see going for 6 dice here but do we need this so badly we want to spend free dice we might not need as the odds are:
Integrated Cargo System 207/800 5 dice 75R 10%, 6 dice 90R 46%, 7 dice 105R 82%

DecaffeinatedOwl · Dec 11, 2021

sunrise said:
I can see going for 6 dice here but do we need this so badly we want to spend free dice we might not need as the odds are:
Integrated Cargo System 207/800 5 dice 75R 10%, 6 dice 90R 46%, 7 dice 105R 82%

...Same, actually. We can plink with a die in Q4 on the off-chance it falls through.

Ramble · Dec 11, 2021

So do we need to build more fortress cities? I love seeing Blue Zones expanding and all, but fortress cities are supposed to stop attacks before they hit the blue zones. The fortress cities being in the blue zones seems a little redundant.

Also yes. More MARVS.

joe6168 · Dec 11, 2021

Ramble said:
So do we need to build more fortress cities? I love seeing Blue Zones expanding and all, but fortress cities are supposed to stop attacks before they hit the blue zones. The fortress cities being in the blue zones seems a little redundant.

Also yes. More MARVS.

I suspect we may be starting to see the development of a sort of divide between the heavily developed core blue zones, and the far less developed former yellow regions.

Void Stalker · Dec 11, 2021

Simon_Jester said:
-[] Study Novel Material 0/50 (1 Die, 20 R) (83% chance)

I would say this is pretty high since it is a research project which means it will take time to figure out use. And we can instead of using a dice in the next few turns keep that future dice on stations with both the additional settling in bonus and the philly 2 bonus.

DecaffeinatedOwl · Dec 11, 2021

Ramble said:
So do we need to build more fortress cities? I love seeing Blue Zones expanding and all, but fortress cities are supposed to stop attacks before they hit the blue zones. The fortress cities being in the blue zones seems a little redundant.

Also yes. More MARVS.

We still, to my knowledge, have substantial GZ area left, just very thinly populated and mostly militarized. Further entrenchment wouldn't go amiss.

EDIT:It's not that the Green Zones all got converted into Blue Zones--although a little of that happened too--it's that all the people that lived there moved to blue-er pastures as housing became available.

And we're about to open the Pakistan Logistics Corridor via Karachi, which will give us a total of 2300 kilometers of new YZ logistics lines to cover.

Which brings me to MARVs. As we're about to open a new front on the Indian Subcontinent via Karachi, I think we should strongly consider an India or Himalaya MARV Hub before a Middle East one.

Model DC.14F · Dec 11, 2021

Ramble said:
The fortress cities being in the blue zones seems a little redundant.

After we manage to secure Karachi, maybe we should do more Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting before building more Fortress Towns? I think that's the project used to get more Green Zones.

Lightwhispers · Dec 11, 2021

Ramble said:
So do we need to build more fortress cities? I love seeing Blue Zones expanding and all, but fortress cities are supposed to stop attacks before they hit the blue zones. The fortress cities being in the blue zones seems a little redundant.

Also yes. More MARVS.

Yes, fortress cities will be helpful in securing Green Zones and protecting the Blue Zones, especially the more heavily industrialized areas. That's probably going to wait for 2061, both because we'll want to have at least 1 more phase of Shell factories, and because a lot of people seem intent on working on Karachi in 2060, and then we will want to do the third Arcology plan obligation.

Model DC.14F said:
After we manage to secure Karachi, maybe we should do more Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting before building more Fortress Towns? I think that's the project used to get more Green Zones.

It is, and that will depend on military confidence/readiness. I'd like to start work on the Ground Forces Zone Armor before we start pushing out more like that, but we'll see.

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Officially not an Inquisitor

The Lurker

Just a humble lurker