Q3 2062 Results
- Location
- The Underdark
EV 101: Tips and Tricks for your new electric vehicles.
Eris_Gearhead
So, lots of new drivers on the road in new Treasury built EVs. And, while I don't own one myself (I have an old, prewar Solaris VIII, Quadra for my own) they are pretty good vehicles all told.
Now, they do have a few features that will catch you out if you are not aware of them. One is that they do have a few more things manual, and a lot more manual overrides, than the old prewar models. Your parking brake lever is by your left foot nearest the door, standard accelerator and brake pedals, but there is another thing down there that you might not be expecting. They decided, for some reason to use a separate emergency braking pedal down there, for your left foot. In my test uses, it was very good at stopping the car, but it is very abrupt. Don't touch it unless you want to come to a very short stop.
Otherwise, prewar vehicles tended to use a lot of touchscreens, but don't expect to see more than a small one here. The entertainment setup is a lot of manual dials and some very, very clicky switches. Again, lots more manual setup going on, and a lot of things that are easily handled in gloves, likely another military carryover. They are using a full suite of MFDs and a projected HUD for the driver, so you can see your speed and some other key stats without taking your eyes off the road at all. And there is a helmet HUD option, with a cable connection in your seat for anyone who wants to be driving with a full environment suit on.
As for driving modes, there are a few, including a blackout mode that I accidentally turned on. Blackout mode is pretty hard to use, but it cuts all interior and exterior lighting down to minimum, sets all your sensors into the lowest power mode or cuts them off entirely. I would strongly suggest that under blackout conditions, you stay home of course, but they are blackout capable if you for some reason end up driving one of these in the middle of a bombing raid.
FloatingWood
You'd think that the old parking brake lever between the front seats was a bad idea, but frankly, I'll take that over accidentally smashing the emergency brake pedal.
Also, unless those EVs come with light armoured vehicle levels of protection, you are crazy if you want to drive through something even vaguely explosive. I'd say they forgot to dummy it out from a police specific version.
*Space*Ferret
#Floating_Wood nah, I think it's probably just paranoia. They had plenty of time to work the designs out, seems unlikely it could be entirely unintentional.
Regardless of the reason, I'm glad the option's there. Obviously it's a terrible idea to try going anywhere under blackout conditions, but on the off chance you are on the road already… well, something's still better than nothing, especially if you're in a zone near some of the crazier Noddies.
HigherThanYou
Too slow.
GDIWife
I'm currently doing a training course to learn to drive these new vehicles. It's not going great so far, I managed to reverse it into the wall on my first try in the vehicle.
I think it's going to take me a lot of practice
InTheZONE
#GDIWife Wait, ground vehicles too?
GDIWife
#InTheZONE T_T
FloatingWood
#GDIWife, this is with the best of intentions, but maybe you should have someone take a look at your eyesight?
GDIWife
#FloatingWood I've had it checked, it seems to be fine
JohnnyBull
I do enjoy the kinesthetics of a good clicky switch, so that entertainment panel sounds lovely. I don't know about buying one, but I'm sure getting one of these in the neighborhood carpool will make my transit to the museum or work much more efficient and comfortable. As for the blackout mode-I've operated engines on the Talyllyn Railway. Can't be much harder than old time steam.
InTheZONE
#JohnnyBull I feel like you have to worry about steering a lot more with a car than a train.
You know, because of the rails
JohnnyBull
#InTheZONE Spoken like a man who has no appreciation for the finer points of engine management. I'm certain that it's simply a matter of stearing calmly and keeping one's eyes firmly on the path ahead.
InTheZONE
#JohnnyBull Spoken like a man who's never steered a great big hunk of metal along various YZ roads for hours on end. Seriously, the difficult part was often finding a usable piece of road.
I'll admit it's probably much better now but I'll stick to my jetpack. I'd need to requalify anyway.
ClassicalGDIdiot
#GDIWife See this is why women shouldn't drive!
GDIWife
#ClassicalGDIdiot I'm so glad you could find a username that matched your personality
Solan
Well fortunately the Treasury EVs can just be considered the baseline and not the only new things out of the block. While many can consider them to be a bit more old fashioned and safety focused it is a great way to restart the auto industry. Hopefully, we'll have new products that can get better for everyone.
Q3 2062 Results
Resources: 1205 + 5 in reserve (-30 from Reconstruction commissions) (-15 from Bureau of Arcologies) (-15 from Consumer Industrial Development) (100 in Reserve for Banking)
Political Support: 109
SCIENCE Meter: 4/4
Free Dice: 7
Erewhon Dice: 1
Dice Capacity 59/60
Tiberium Spread
23.94 (-0.02) Blue Zone
0.04 (+0.00) Cyan Zone
0.29 (+0.02) Green Zone
23.24 (+0.13) Yellow Zone (97 points of mitigation)
52.49 (-0.13) Red Zone (80 points of mitigation)
Current Economic Issues:
Housing: +65 (16 population in low quality housing) (+1 high-quality housing per turn)
Energy: +15 (+5 in reserve)
Logistics: +17 (-2 from military activity)
Food: +25 (+24 backed reserve, +5 unbacked reserve) (Perennials: +1 on Q1 2063, +1 on Q4 2063)
Health: +13 (-3 from Wartime Demand) (-10 from refugees)
Capital Goods: +15 (+2 per turn from Distributed Industrial Authority) (+223 in reserve)
STUs: +11
Consumer Goods: +154 (-5 from demand spike) (+5 per turn from Private Industry) (+3 per turn from sub-departments) (+2 per turn from perennials. -1 per turn Q2 2063, -1 per turn Q1 2064) (Net +8 per turn)
Labor: +38 (+3 per turn from medical care) (+2 per turn from Immigrant qualifications) (-2 per turn from private industry) (-1 per turn from other government) (Net +2)
Tiberium Processing Capacity (2610/3350)
Tiberium Reserve (0/500)
Taxation Per Turn: +60
Space Mining Per Turn: +100
Maintenance Reductions: +50
Green Zone Water: +5
STU Production and Consumption
Net: +11 per turn
Production: +26 per turn
Consumption: -15 per turn
10 Economy (4 Structural Alloys, 2 T-Glass, 2 Harvesting Tendrils, 2 Hovercraft)
4 Aircraft (2 Tactical Lasers, 2 Plasma Munitions)
1 Military Ground Vehicles (1 Mastodons [Shimmer Shields, Point Defense Lasers], 0 Havocs [Shimmer Shields])
Status of the Parties
(strong support, weak support, weak opposition, strong opposition)
Free Market Party: 228 seats (0; 58; 30; 140)
Market Socialist Party: 486 seats (200; 155; 81; 50)
Militarist: 754 seats (250; 270; 144; 90)
Initiative First: 335 seats (0; 0; 20; 315)
United Yellow List: 176 seats (110; 40; 20; 6)
Starbound Party: 461 seats (300; 90; 50; 21)
Socialist Party: 426 seats (200; 190; 26; 10)
Homeland Party: 50 seats (25; 25; ; 0)
Biodiversity Party: 34 seats (9; 5; 20; 0)
Reclamation Party: 12 Seats (9; 3; 0; 0)
Developmentalists: 1038 seats (460; 278; 250; 50)
Military Confidence
Ground Forces: High
Air Force: High
Space Force: Decent
Steel Talons: Low (Trending to Decent)
Navy: Low (Trending to High)
ZOCOM: Decent
Plan Goals
Provide 77 Consumer Goods points from the Treasury
Provide 27 Consumer Goods from Agriculture
Increase Income by 710
Increase Tiberium Processing limit by 920
Increase population in space by 17.95k
Provide 28 Points of Red Zone Abatement
Provide 30 Resources in grants
Spend at least one die on Steel Talons projects every turn
Projects
Complete Karachi Planned City by end of 2065
Complete Chicago Planned City by end of 2065
Deploy Medium Tactical Plasma Weapons
Depoy Orca Wingman Drones by end of 2065
Deploy Services AEVA
Complete North Boston Phase 5
Develop and deploy Governor-A refit
Develop and deploy Conestoga class
Complete at least 3 Blue Zone Inhibitors by end of 2065
Compete Dairy Ranching Domes Phase 2 by end of 2065
Complete 1 of Nuuk, Reykjavik, Bergen
Complete all phases of Red Zone Border Offensives before 2064
Complete SADN Phase 4
Complete at least 5 Ground Forces Zone Armor factories
Complete all of the following projects:
Advanced ECCM Development,Zrbite Sonic Weapons Development, Ultralight Glide Munitions Development, Transorbital Fighter Development or follow on heavy ship development, Combat Laser Development, Buckler Shield Development, and Unmanned Support Ground Vehicle Development
Complete 2 phases of Reforestation Campaign Preparation
Complete Gravitic Shipyard Bay
Promises to Litvinov:
Do not activate Free Dice (except for Tiberium) unless all Department Dice are active.
Spend no more than two free dice per turn on Military.
Activate Munitions Department
Activate Refit Department
Hand off at least 20 points of Capital Goods to market over the course of the plan.
Complete Improved Hewlett Gardener Refits before end of plan
Politics
The Initiative has seen relative stability in the political sphere. Where there is certainly discontent, the end of the refugee wave, the massive ongoing investments into space colonization, the expanding private market, and the rapid and radical expansions in new foods and consumer goods have meant that there are fundamentally fewer problems for the politicians to fight over. There are certainly rounds of scandals, and there are new problems with the hardliners, who have begun to rally around a new set of standards, and have begun advocating for intensive investment into defensive technologies, including shields, defense networks, and other means of ensuring that the Brotherhood will have more difficulty threatening the Initiative's homeland.
Assassination
One of the Treasury's own has unfortunately been caught in an assassination. Since the opening of suborbital shuttle services into and out of the Himalayan Blue Zone, Gulati has repeatedly traveled into the region to both see family, and to coordinate construction efforts in the region. While launching out of the Zone, her shuttle was taken under fire by a ground based laser installation north of the Zone, and lost control, crashing into the Red Zone kilometers north of one of GDI's rail lines. While rescue teams were on site within an hour of the shoot down, there were no survivors.
Culture
Culture is an ever changing beast, and while the Initiative certainly produces far less of it than the late 20th century, there certainly are major works being developed. While much of it is simple escapism, with non-Tiberian alternative history being one of the bigger genres at this point in time in terms of speculative fiction, there has been a noticeable turn for the negative in recent months, with more emphasis being put on a world without Tiberium falling prey to climate change, political instability, and continuing wars.
Otherwise, in the fashion world, animal products – now that they are beginning to be available – are back in vogue. Leather and wool especially are now the dress of choice for the cutting edge of fashion, alongside other natural materials. Fake furs and 'pleather' follow this trend for the more cost-conscious or less discerning. They have always been available, effectively anyway, but have typically not been in favor, with the previous styles going back decades, leading to noticeable price spikes even in those categories. While the vast majority of the Initiative will never adopt such styles, it is a noticeable change from the yellow zone chic that had been the norm previously, reflecting a change in worries, and a noticeable change in how GDI's fashion conscious present themselves.
Brotherhood of Nod
Krukov has once again made moves, with a second Varyag (without identifying markings) spotted flying south towards India. This is almost certainly a new build, not the end of his fleet. While an interception was attempted by Apollo fighters armed with plasma missiles, they were unable to make a firing solution before it slipped under the watchful eyes of Bannerjee IADS.
The Brotherhood has also been pushing forward their anti-aircraft technologies. South of Rio, what appears to be a pair of small pyramids have sprouted up, likely a take on CABAL's Obelisk of Darkness concept, but arranged differently, using a set of large sensors to better track high altitude targets. The pyramids are relatively small and triangular, only about thirty meters from the best estimates of Intelligence Operations.
At the same time, Stahl has been organizing his occupation of the American South along more civilian lines. He has sent one of his lieutenants, a man by the name of Eduardo Durrance, to take command of the Brotherhood in the region. While Durrance, to the best of InOps knowledge has little experience governing, he is a known commander, and while he did not precisely cover himself with glory in the Regency War, he has repeatedly put down uprisings against Stahl's rule, and has acted as a hatchetman before.
Negotiations between Yao, Bintang, the Bannerjees and GDI have continued to move slowly, with inspections remaining the key sticking point. While they have conceded the right of GDI to board pilots for a number of key passageways, most notably for the routes off the coast of Korea, they have extracted noticeable concessions over shipping volume, and struck a number of dual use items off the lists of forbidden goods.
At the same time, the Initiative has begun mooting around the concessions to be made by the Brotherhood. While the populists would be more than happy to start from the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and escalate from there, the more realistic position is going to be a series of military and territorial concessions, likely including a cessation of raiding activities against GDI shipping in the South Pacific, among other goals.
Military Priorities
[ ] Communal Blue Zone Arcologies
While not a universal solution, communally structured arcology buildings will provide some degree of cheap to construct high quality housing for GDI populations. While it is not going to be universally popular, some groups are going to actually be happier built into their own small communal organizations, separated by a degree from the more atomized mainstream.
(Progress 396/395: 15 resources per die, +6 High Quality Housing, +2 Consumer Goods, +1 Energy Reserve, -1 Energy) [27]
Communal living is far from the easiest thing in the world, and with this program that has been proven once again. While the program has stumbled, with multiple families having to be dropped due to interpersonal issues, there are more than enough people with the right personalities and without too many major conflicts. In fact, those who have made it through the program had begun to self-organize almost before selection was completed, and began to play a major role not just in populating the buildings, but in finishing them out.
Finishing the buildings was a fairly standard procedure, with the normal array of cross checks and other mechanisms to ensure that the work done has been of good quality and is safe to live in, especially for children. The same applies to furnishing. While nothing in the buildings is particularly different from nearly any other building in Initiative territory – the same chairs, same tables, same wallpaper in a lot of areas, structurally it is fundamentally closer to institutional structure, rather than traditional housing, and at the same time, struggling with a balance between safety and livability. Take, for example, the entranceway. A large, wide open entranceway is welcoming, and convenient for a wide variety of purposes, both practical and ritualized. On the other hand, those large open areas make it fundamentally more difficult to conduct damage control and secure the building against both internal and external threats. It also makes it more difficult to find a Tiberium intrusion. And the same problem repeats itself time and again across the building. They need large areas for communal living, but in doing so are compromising other functions and other needs.
[ ] Urban Metros (Phase 4)
Developing the new urban cores will require not only industrial and commercial developments, but longer term preparation and interconnectedness. While much will be able to be handled by light and heavy rail, or riverine barges, and other energy cheap means of transport, much will be based on buses and trucks as well, especially as the manufacturing base spreads beyond the industries that can be healthily colocated with human habitation.
(Progress 221/145: 15 resources per die) (+3 Logistics, -2 Energy) [67, 82]
Metro is not just a system of light rail, but an all-encompassing mass public transit design. In many cases, the new cities sprouting in reclaimed territory are very difficult to build subways for, due to a combination of groundwater and Tiberium contamination of the soil that they are built on. However, there are other alternatives, like buses, surface light rail, and, in some smaller locations, taxi services and ride sharing initiatives. Beyond those, they are also a series of key interlinks connecting the towns and cities across the newly claimed Blue Zones to the broader military and logistical networks. For example, rather than having to break a shipping container for most of the things that any given town needs, it can be cross-loaded from a standard train, to a local train, and only broken a few kilometers from the destination, significantly reducing the man hours required. Similarly, some stores even feature cargo loading stations to accept deliveries directly from trains – especially large shopping complexes and the very largest of dedicated stores. While this is far from universal, as it forces the idling of trains until the material is fully offloaded, it similarly benefits these select locations more than further fracturing transport.
Many of the new towns are still fairly rough-and-tumble places – military families having moved forward to be closer to soldiers manning the front lines, prospectors and Tiberium abatement teams commingling with Yellow Zone refugees, and people displaced by the Regency War on fronts that went more poorly for GDI. But despite being roughly thrown together in such a way, they have formed a surprising degree of community.
[ ] Suborbital Shuttle Service (Phase 2)
GDI's fleet of Leopard shuttles has reached a point where at any given time some significant portions are sitting without mission payloads. By retasking them towards suborbital shuttles, they would be able to reach anywhere in the world in a matter of hours at most. This will allow GDI to further tighten the bonds between Blue Zones and significantly cut travel times for critical supplies.
(Progress 110/240: 25 resources per die) (+5 Logistics) [52]
Progress on the suborbital shuttles has been remarkably limited. While not precisely unexpected given the resources directed, it has mostly been pouring concrete, rather than anything more complicated. Focus has been primarily in the form of building new runways in areas of the world that had not seen major services yet, and expanding runways on critical areas, like the Himalayan airfields that are the zone's lifeline to the outside world – the source of nearly all their STU technology, and even simpler things like CBL laser arrays, especially those larger than are used as point defense modules.
The resources have simply not been provided to seriously expand services quite yet however, especially with the pressure being put on the Initiative's fleet of Leopards with the incredibly rapid construction of Columbia and Shala, and more broadly the goal to put twenty thousand people in space by the end of the plan. Serious efforts are being made, and maintenance crews are working as hard as they can, but even so, the pace of launches has put the brakes on plans to expand the suborbital services, especially as the Leopard IIs are having slower production than expected.
[ ] U-Series Alloy Foundries (Phase 2)
Large scale use of the STU alloys will affect not only structural work, but a substantial number of other projects, ranging from blades and cutting devices, to various forms of highly conductive wiring. These alloy foundries will be a substantial investment into the future of the Initiative, and a baseline to add additional metallurgical advancements to. Demand for these materials is nearly universal, and expanding existing production of them is the best means to satisfy it.
(Progress 575/575: 40 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -2 STUs) (5% discount on many projects)
(Progress 186/570: 40 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -2 STUs) (5% discount on many projects) [64, 86, 48, 93, 13, 58, 52]
The U-series alloy foundries have been a nearly monomaniacal focus of Initiative industrial investments, and one of the broadest spanning operations in recent memory. Unlike the chip fabricators and planned cities, these are appearing near almost every major Initiative city, and beyond that, there are the factsheets that have to be distributed by the millions. With these STU-containing alloys appearing everywhere from structural steel to toaster ovens, the idea of keeping it secret is effectively laughable. The Brotherhood of Nod has not been slow on the uptake, with multiple agents caught trying to cross the borders smuggling samples back to their masters.
More broadly, while still a miniscule sliver of GDI's overall metals industry, they are an increasingly significant one, with high priority projects able to dominate the market, and noticeable bidding wars occuring between them. A number of architects have also produced a selection of 'visions of the future' representing designs which might use U-series alloys for such humble materials as rebar or window frames, which has allowed for seemingly impossible concepts.
Technologically, the bases are fairly common: the electric arc furnace and the vacuum arc remelter. First prototyped in the 1810s by Sir Humphrey Davy, and Sir William Siemens, among others, they would not see commercial use until the end of the century, and would not become more than a specialized process until after the second world war. With GDI increasingly decarbonizing, by the early 2020s, nearly all alloying plants were using some form of electric arc furnace as their baseline, taking advantage of nuclearization and the vast amounts of baseload power made available. By the late 2030s, the last old 'basic steel' furnaces reliant on coal were retired, with modern arc furnaces requiring carbon introduction to produce steel. The same methods can be used to also introduce some STUs.
The second process is significantly more modern, with the first uses in the 20th century, primarily for various high value products, like the aerospace and medical industries. By taking an alloy and remelting it under a near vacuum, the product can be precisely cooled, and offgas any volatiles that it had taken on during the alloying process such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen among others. Here again, trace elements can be added, as the molten metals are de-gassed, homogenized, and any inclusions removed. For some alloys, especially with aerospace uses, this step is repeated several times to carefully control the exact level of purity.
[ ] Personal Electric Vehicle Plants
While production of commercial scale trucks is sufficient, there are a substantial number of people who need or want a variety of smaller vehicles for a number of reasons. Ranging from small cooperatives who need minivans and microvans, to families wanting personal transport, these small vehicles are, for the most part, currently out of favor but in great demand.
(Progress 298/295: 10 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -4 Energy, -2 Capital Goods, +8 Consumer Goods, +4 Logistics) (+10 Political Support) [75]
The mass transit system is designed around the needs of large factories, and clusters of businesses. For a complex like the North Boston chip fabricator, it works, and it works quite well. However, for small, standalone businesses, it does not work nearly so well, due to potentially unpredictable scheduling, and a need to go to locations that are less well serviced (there are only so many kudzu tea shops that can be in the immediate vicinity of a major factory after all).
The vast majority of the Initiative population are likely to never own a personal vehicle, or for that matter have a license to operate a motor vehicle for reasons ranging from cost to a lack of necessity. However, delivery vans, taxis, microbuses, and other rental or service vehicles are likely to be interacted with on an almost daily basis. There is even demand for public limousines, mostly for weddings and other ceremonial uses where those who hire them can pretend to indulge in the most conspicuous consumption.
Electric vehicles are actually surprisingly old, with the first examples found in the 1830s; carriages converted to be powered by electricity, and a number of smaller model vehicles, often powered by non-rechargeable primary cells. While they did not go anywhere, they were the first, but ended up more curiosity than staple. It was not until the 1890s that battery technology had evolved to the point where practical electric vehicles could be built, with 1897 seeing a fleet of electric taxis deployed to the city of New York. While across the 20th century, electric vehicles would be effectively outcompeted by internal combustion engines, that approach hit a terminal decline in the early 21st century, in part due to the skyrocketing price of liquid fuels, and the military necessities demanded by the First and Second Tiberium Wars.
[ ] Improved Continuous Cycle Fusion Development (Tech)
While the existing CCF plants are certainly functional, there are a number of upgrades that may well lead to improved efficiency over simple water boilers. While this project will be more of an iterative improvement, trying to get a few percent more megawatt hours per plant out of a relatively similar design to current systems, it is likely to see significant further revisions as other fields improve.
(Progress 196/120: 20 resources per die) [74, 84]
Work to improve the design of continuous cycle fusion has been more iterative than anything else, with the core focus being to make a plant that can actually last, rather than the current ones that have been undergoing progressive breakdown. While there were design proposals using forcefield technologies, among others, the winning design, produced by a French design bureau in Brittany is a fundamentally conventional design, built using mass quantities of superconductors to provide magnetic containment for the plasma field inside the reactor. While it does make some use of force field technology as a backup, and has been modified to make use of STU-bearing alloys, it is otherwise entirely a design built with purely human-derived technologies in mind.
While there have certainly been proposals for designs that make more extensive use of materials and technologies enabled by STUs, none have been adopted despite their greater per unit power production potential. The most notable among these designs offered an approximately 50% increase in effective energy production per reactor, but was discarded for the same reasons many others were, as adopting it would mean that GDI's ever growing demand for more energy would swallow the entire production of STUs just to construct and maintain the fusion reactors. With a variety of developments depending on these difficult to acquire elements incoming, designs demanding such rare materials in large quantities were discarded in favor of a design that could be produced with minimal STU investment and still provide the required energy production level.
[ ] Carbon Nanotube Foundry Expansions
While making longer carbon nanotubes is still difficult,manufacturing substantially more carbon nanotubes is relatively easy and quite desirable, given that it is a way to add strength to many other materials.
(Progress 219/285: 20 resources per die) (+4 Capital Goods) [10, 89, 51]
In search of a quick source of capital goods, the Treasury has turned to expanding production of bulk carbon nanotubes, and associated products. While production of very long nanotubes remains firmly a laboratory process where hundreds of attempts might snap for every one success, bulk CNT factory production is an odd mixture of the cleanroom and the coal mine. Ever since their discovery, Carbon Nanotubes have been made by a variety of processes, but GDI's industrial production has been standardized around the NuHiPCO method. This process, while slower than some others, has a rate of iron catalyst impurities of only about 2%, and is relatively energy efficient, requiring only pure carbon monoxide in chemical inputs. Each NuHiPCO machine can run for about 15 days before being cycled off and the production harvested, while maintenance is performed. This does mean however that the number of such machines needed is quite high, and upkeep must be religiously performed. While many factories have been completed, only about half of the needed NuHiPCO machines have arrived.
The coal mine is the processing of the bulk CNT products. While tremendously strong, CNTs are also co-created with fullerenes, amorphous bulk carbon, graphite dust, and even microdiamonds. These must be separated from the product, which itself must be handled carefully. Raw carbon nanotubes are somewhat fragile in compression and shear easily, until they undergo any number of finishing processes. All this combines to create quite a number of carbon by-products that must be carefully disposed of, mostly by burning them back into carbon monoxide. Until they are however, they form a fine black dust that is insidious in its abilities to escape from containment and cover everything in soot. The finished nanotubes are in demand for everything from medical treatment to structural carbon fiber body panels for personal vehicles.
[ ] Artificial Wood Furniture Plants
Wooden furniture was at one point a commonplace feature of homes and kitchens, yet decades of war and the ravages of Tiberium have left only carefully guarded antiques and a handful of examples of once common products. While the artificial wood incorporated in these new pieces is only as strong as cheap particle board, replicas of 20th century furniture made with these materials will still be in high demand as ways to demonstrate one's wealth and power, given the extremely high demand for wood.
(Progress 106/95: 10 resources per die) (+4 Consumer Goods) [50]
The wooden furniture as produced is not moving as fast as GDI had originally expected. In part, this is due to the furniture not actually being what people have in mind. With most of the models being effectively single pieces, pressed and fused into shape, they are not precisely what most people think of when it comes to wooden furniture, the carefully carved, often skeletonized and padded arrays in designs that have changed relatively little for all of human history.
A noticeable worry – one of many, and one not expected to be seen by the Initiative survey teams – among the write-in responses about the product is a concern over evacuations. GDI maintains a whole matrix of responses based on priority, duration, area, and a number of other factors, meaning that on one end of the evacuation charts, Initiative engineers will be literally stripping the wiring out of the walls of apartment buildings to either deny them to the enemy, or to preserve materials in the cases of an uncontained Tiberium outbreak. On the other end, there are evacuations where people are being stuffed like cordwood in every available means of transit with nothing more but the clothes on their back, as happened thousands of times across the Third Tiberium War. The wooden chairs, being oddly shaped, relatively heavy, and impossible to break down, would almost certainly have to be left behind in all but the most permissive evacuation environments, and that is creating a certain amount of nervousness about the product.
[ ] Home Robotics Factories (New)
While most of the designs are already in production, bringing them to the masses rather than keeping them for the Initiative proper's use will require a substantial number of new factories, and expansions to already existing facilities.
(Progress 114/145: 15 resources per die) (-1 Energy, -1 Capital Goods, +4 Consumer Goods, +1 Labor) [91]
Converting robots to home use from public spaces is not quite a one-to-one problem. While there are a significant number of overlaps with public spaces, the fundamental problem is in the homes themselves. People, as it turns out, love to customize their own spaces, ranging from different arrangements of desks, to carpets, rugs, and tapestries hung on the walls and sprawling onto the floor. While for some homes the existing models work just fine, most were designed with hard and relatively grippy flooring as their baseline, where smooth hard wheels provide plenty of traction. Yet, trying to use those same wheels on a rug, for example, has tended to produce the rug moving at best, and in most cases, a simple flailing, rather than actually cleaning the floor for example. All are solvable problems, most notably in the wheel and suspension base, but it is taking a fair bit of effort to make the changes in ways that do not complicate the systems.
[ ] Wadmalaw Kudzu Plantations (Phase 3)
A final and substantial upgrade to the system of Kudzu production will see a finally sufficient level of caffeination returned to the Initiative. While not as important as many other things, having a hot caffeinated beverage serves as a social lubricant and does noticeably improve overall outcomes on the macro scale. (Plant Genetics)
(Progress 502/450: 10 resources per die) (+8 Consumer Goods) (+1 to all dice) (Will Complete Q4 2062) [72]
Tea has a global history dating back for thousands of years, but the first book to be written on the topic dates only to about 760 CE, when a Chinese man by the name of Lu Yu wrote the Cha Jing, or Classic of Tea. While certainly not the first of its kind, with Lu dedicating one of the Classic's longest chapters to a chronological compendium of religious, poetic, and medical writings on tea. It is an eclectic mix of works, ranging from Shen Nung's Treatise on Food to the poem "Climbing the Tower in Ch'eng Tu" by Chang Meng-Yang, which is the oldest surviving work that we have on tea.
And for Lu, tea had a special meaning in terms of preparation, use, and social class. A proper tea preparation was a signature of someone who was well mannered, who was not just a drinker of tea, but a connoisseur of the product. The best russet leaves from sunny slopes or shaded groves, the twenty four tools needed to make a proper pot of tea, the correct waters to use, the proper boil the water for tea should be brought to and a conversational knowledge of tea's properties. But, interestingly enough, Lu never attempts to describe the taste of a good cup of tea. That would be left for the reader to decide.
For GDI, whilst tea proper is a scarce luxury only really enjoyed by those who are lucky or skilled enough at navigating the logistics system, there is kudzu tea. Which, whilst considered to be not as good as real tea by many, is now an everyday luxury found in effectively every lobby in the Initiative and nearly every home, a symbol of how far the Initiative has come in the last twelve years – from barely hanging on, to being able to launch an entire new product that sets an entirely new global standard for itself.
[ ] Vertical Farming Projects (Stage 3)
A third wave of facilities – still focused on GDI's secondary cities – will see broad-scale development of additional meat and egg production, but also a selection of consumer and core crops. While the program overall will continue to be expensive, it is a way to increase most significant indicators.
(Progress 235/235: 15 resources per die) (+4 Food, +4 Consumer Goods, -2 Energy)
(Progress 134/235: 15 resources per die) (+4 Food, +4 Consumer Goods, -2 Energy) [36, 11, 70, 66]
The vertical farms have been added to dozens of cities, many of them actually relatively far from logistics links. Simply put, while they are useful, they are both primarily doing last mile deliveries, and they are not nearly as important as the core industrial goods of the Initiative.
The Initiative does tend to eat local. While there is certainly a substantial amount of food being shipped around the world, the shift to climate controlled, and environmentally isolated farming styles has meant that local conditions effectively do not influence what can be grown. Strawberries grow as well in the arctic circle as they do in Africa or Japan. For the average citizen of the Initiative, their food travels less than a hundred kilometers to reach them, and while there certainly are substantial shipments of food across the world, they are more limited in many ways than the late 20th century.
[ ] Dairy Ranches (Phase 1)
While meat is a key status symbol for many, the sustainable option is actually focusing more heavily on dairy, offering up a suite of cheeses and other milk products that can provide additional protein and significantly expand dietary diversity.
(Progress 155/195: 20 resources per die) (+6 Consumer Goods, -3 Food, -1 Energy, -1 Labor) [42, 57]
There are fundamental slowdowns in the process that cannot be bypassed. Even with the most aggressive breeding programs, cows, sheep and other milk producing animals reproduce only so fast. Cows generally produce only one calf, sheep often produce only a single lamb when the ewe is still young. Goats generally produce twins, but even those herds will require much time to expand from the minuscule populations that survived. Construction of the future habitats for milk producing animals vastly outpaces the expansion of the herds, although as population growth hits its stride and newborn animals become of breeding age that is likely to change.
For now, hundreds of domes stand by, waiting for the first animals to arrive, while the agricultural department expands its animal handling and veterinary staff as aggressively as it pursues the expansion of the herds. But just the production and storage of milk is not the goal of these facilities. Although a wide variety of processed milk products exist, this phase of construction is focused on the production of cheese. The main reason for this is that cheese is a dairy product that takes comparatively well to long term storage; while many cheeses are considered to have an 'optimal' age range when it comes to flavor, much of that is merely a matter of taste.
Production of cheese is a fairly involved process, with curdling, forming, pressing and aging, with many variances producing different cheeses, and every step influences the final product. The leftover whey is still useful, providing raw material for whey cheeses, butter, and a variety of other products, and will be processed until it is little more than water.
[ ] Tiberium Vein Mines (Stage 4) (Updated)
Further progress on vein mines is going to be a fairly intensive program. However, it is also going to be profitable and more importantly increase the safety of the population, with networks of underground tunnels designed to provide containment rings around major urban areas, in an attempt to secure them from large scale Tiberium incursions.
(Progress 190/190: 20 resources per die) (Additional Income Trickle [25-35]) (+1 Yellow Zone Abatement) (-1 Capital Goods)
(Progress 185/185: 20 resources per die) (Additional Income Trickle [25-35]) (+1 Yellow Zone Abatement) (-1 Capital Goods)
(Progress 25/185: 20 resources per die) (Additional Income Trickle [25-35]) (+1 Yellow Zone Abatement) (-1 Capital Goods) [47, 39, 44, 58]
Income 2d3: [3, 1] = +60 RpT
Massive efforts have been made in building new mining complexes. The complexes are enormous arrays not just below ground but on the surface. Each has entire farms of Tiberium silos, most have direct rail connections to a nearby processing plant. Clouds of steam pour from cooling towers dotted across the sites, piles of Tiberium crystals lie in T-glass tubs, whirring pumps keep the depths dry as air pumps keep the fresh air flowing. A delicate waltz of iron and flesh, chrome and carbon that cannot stop even for a day or hour as they fight against the cancer that is eating the world.
Even with repetition however, it is a hard job. The vast majority of the sites are in isolated areas, the deep backwaters of the Blue Zones. While there are certainly populations, the simple fact is that GDI is the most urbanized population in human history. There are areas where you can go for thousands of kilometers and never see another human being. And these are where many of the new Tiberium mines are. The average mine, even if the workers never go below ground, is fundamentally isolated and isolating. There are few breaks, and little in the way of recreation. Even with the Initiative putting resources towards ensuring that every mining complex has a physical library, sports, fitness, and other options, for most people it is a machine for psychological distress, and it takes a special kind of person to handle the conditions, ones that are rare and difficult to recruit.
[ ] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 8)
A further wave of Green Zone Tiberium harvesting will both improve the logistical connections across the forward Green Zones and provide greater numbers of forward hardpoints and firebases for Initiative troops.
(Progress 98/95: 15 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-15 Resources]) (1 point of Yellow Zone Mitigation) (1 Stage available) [56]
Income 1d3: [3] = +15 RpT
Butting up against the forwardmost positions of the Brotherhood of Nod, GDI has pushed its harvesters into the often vast no man's lands found on the borders between the green and the yellow. While in some areas, like the Florida front, the lines are fortified mere tens of kilometers apart and allowing both sides to continuously shell the other, across most of the world, the distances are much greater, with the maximum range of Initiative shells falling far short of the nearest Brotherhood position, and the same being true of the opposite. It is in these areas that GDI has begun stepping up their harvesting operations. And it is here that the still relatively new railgun harvesters have seriously shown their worth. During the Regency War, the vast majority of operations where Initiative harvesters encountered Brotherhood assets, came in the form of stealth tanks striking from the shadows, or breakthroughs of Scorpion tanks or heavier Centurions and Avatars. None of which the railgun harvesters were actually designed to fight. Here and now, they are mostly encountering small, lightweight assets, ones where trying to suppress them with artillery is, most of the time, a waste of shells, as by the time the shells arrive, the Brotherhood are no longer there.
[ ] Improved Tiberium Containment Facilities Construction
While not immediately a requirement, building a limited ability to contain Tiberium beyond the limits of GDI's ability to process it will provide both wartime redundancy and allow for greater offlining of resources. Tank farms of Tiberium are admittedly a security risk, but one not particularly greater than existing Tiberium silos present around the world.
(Progress 115/115: 20 resources per die) (+500 Tiberium Reserve)
(Progress 11/115: 20 resources per die) (+500 Tiberium Reserve) [88]
Tiberium Silos have gone through many redesigns, and have always been a part of Tiberium harvesting. Holding onto capacity is a fact of life in an age of routine supply chain disruptions and the potential for global war to break out at any moment. However, few of the containment methodologies have been particularly successful in the long term. Even the best terrestrial science required the wholesale replacement of interior linings in a matter of weeks, which makes the large-scale use more than a little problematic, especially on the Treasury's timescales.
Developed originally as one of the first products of the destruction of the visitors, so called Tiberium Glass has seen widespread deployment as protective equipment, coverings for critical infrastructure in tiberium contaminated environments, and is used extensively as interior linings for tiberium silos, pipelines and other refinery equipment where possible, but has not been used for its original purpose, the long term containment of Tiberium, by GDI, until now. In addition, most silos are actively cooled, lowering the temperature of the Tiberium to around -40, cold enough to markedly decrease its activity, though this does require free energy that is not always available. While not even T-glass is invincible, it is estimated that these silos will last for months without cooling or years with it.
Construction has been concentrated nodally, with sizable stockpile capacity being assembled in Jeddah, Chicago, South Africa, Dandong, and San Diego as core facilities of the program. While they are currently resting empty, they are both preparations for the Improved Hewlett Gardener process to begin deployment, and as an emergency reserve in case of supply disruptions.
[ ] GDSS Columbia (Phase 4) (Updated)
Rapid development of the station has left it with plenty of rough edges. While the habitation spaces will be massively expanded, more than doubling in capacity by the time the next wave completes, there will also be significant effort made towards tuning and refining existing systems.
(Progress 545/545: 20 resources per die) (1k Permanent residents) (+2 available Bays) (9 Political Support)
(Progress 146/1085: 20 resources per die) (2k Permanent residents) (+3 available Bays) (10 Political Support) [92, 66, 15, 28, 95, 29]
Work on Columbia has continued at its frenetic pace, with multiple casualties as the work crews continue to push themselves to the very limits of what can be considered safe. While there are few quarters that can be cut in the process, a result of being a settlement in a region only marginally less hostile to human life than a Red Zone, there are rough edges aplenty, and the settlers have been taking up hand tools in nearly every spare hour to smooth them over. Sharp edges ground down or lacquered over, poorly finished welds either tucked away or finished properly. It is a work in progress, one that is likely to continue for the duration of the station's existence.
The station itself has added another thousand souls to its residency list, still mostly a Blue Zone elite, more parts of long running projects to produce semi-skilled spacers. While this is not producing much in the way of unrest among the Initiative's formerly Yellow Zone populations, there are some rumblings, but mostly tamped down within the United Yellow List, and as news about the actual living conditions on the stations filters down to the people below. While this has not slowed the clamor for more stationbuilding, with the idea of being away from Tiberium a push factor so substantial that no amount of stories of complicated interfaces, lacking amenities, and draconian safety rules can slow, let alone stop.
[ ] GDSS Shala (Phase 2) (Updated)
With the core of Shala complete, a steel snowflake in space, it is ready for the first habitants, and more importantly the first of what will become a substantial set of experimental agronomy bays. While most are designated towards short term crops like wheat, rice, and peppers, some handful are planned for longer term options. These range from C. cassia and M. fragrans, to apples, pears, lemons and more. (Station)
(Progress 135/135: 20 resources per die) (.1k permanent residents) (+1 Food) (5 Political Support)
(Progress 270/270: 20 resources per die) (.2k permanent residents) (+2 Food, +1 Consumer Goods) (10 Political Support) (+1 available Bay)
(Progress 95/540: 20 resources per die) (.3k permanent residents) (+4 Food, +2 Consumer Goods) (15 Political Support) (+2 available Bays) [63, 75, 73, 84]
Work on the Shala has focused primarily on adding yet more bays, and adding more crew quarters. While relatively spartan, especially compared to the apartments found on Columbia, they are still comfortable spaces, and with many fewer units, they are being held to a far higher level of fit and finish.
Farming has always been a family business, and while GDI operates on a generally collectivized and extremely automated basis, farming can still be very dynastic, with entire families living on a separate cycle from the rest of society, based on the life cycles of the plants that they tend.
Each of the stations built so far is also testing a different style of habitation. On Columbia, everything is heavily integrated, with apartments stacked above and below major concourses. Most of the small shops on a Columbia style station have attached apartments for the workers, and while there are areas that are more dedicated to habitation, even they have integrated services scattered throughout. On the other hand, on Philadelphia, there is a more general segregation. Public and private spaces are not fully separated, but all of the elevators on the station are keycard locked, meaning that one has to be authorized to visit, for example, deck 44's command center, or the deck 1 dome. And on the far extreme, there is Enterprise. On Enterprise, although more for safety than anything else, the living quarters and the industrial segments are as segregated as possible. Nobody wants people three hours into their offshift trying to walk through a foundry segment after all.
Much of Shala's early agricultural capacity, meanwhile, comes from transplants, as very little on the station has yet had time to mature. This is both in the form of perennial crops, but also extends to annuals, with one crop of tomatoes in particular exciting a particularly fevered bidding war for the vegetables when they were landed on a returning Leopard. Shala's food productivity is desired as much for its guarantee that it will be free of Tiberium contamination as for its impressive potential scale of operation.
[ ] Advanced Electronic Video Assistant Deployment
The Advanced EVA system will need substantial pools of computer supplies for deployment, but should substantially improve the overall output of the Initiative. It will also require significant assistance from the field, which makes it somewhat problematic for immediate deployment beyond the need for capital goods.
-[ ] Services (Progress 167/200: 20 resources per die) (+3 to field dice) (-4 Capital Goods, -3 Energy) (Locks 1 field die until project is complete) [31, 17, 26]
Services is a big field, and unfortunately that comes with complications. The biggest one is the simple degree of specialization and range of specializations within the field. Areas as widely separated as healthcare, education, and welfare all fall under the general field, and that makes things more difficult. While all need confidentiality, automated paperwork, and data crunching, all of those are things that previous generations of EVAs can manage, often without too many problems.
It was expected that machine learning, and the long experiences with previous generations of EVAs have created an environment where a new generation can be slotted in, and that was attempted. However, the attempt proceeded to break everything from HR services to multiple cases of prescriptions not passing through the system properly, leaving two major hospital services functioning on handwritten notes for over a day as the changes were reverted. A slower, more intentionally disruptive system changeover is being prepared, with the plans being for a rolling changeover, starting in BZ-1 and rolling around the world from there.
[ ] Prototype Biosculpt (New)
Ranging from cat ears to enhanced ankle and knee articulation, there are quite a number of soft tissue options found across nature that can be mimicked for human use without requiring special cellular or extracellular structures. While not all are likely to be successful, especially at this early prototype stage, implanting specifically engineered tissue will play a significant role in the broader ability to allow individuals to redefine themselves.
(Progress 41/40: 15 resources per die) (MS) [10]
The theory of biosculpting is simple. Take a sample of donor cells (easy enough, a simple cheek swab is enough for epithelial cells; most others require a simple biosample, a routine procedure in any case), culture them into tissues, and then implant those tissues into the patient. In theory, since all that is being implanted is biologically identical to the originals, the body should accept them without problems, and integrate without needing further medical intervention. The theory however is where the simple stops.
Unfortunately, the human body is complicated, and cells need care and feeding, they need structures to grow on, they need nerves for sending and receiving signals from the brain. Take, for example, ears. To make a pair of external ears, much of the core is cartilage, a mostly noncellular structure composed of naturally produced protein and sugar polymers. Relatively simple to make, and something where GDI's reconstructive surgeons have been getting fairly close to replicating for years, if not decades in some laboratories. And even then, fairly close still leaves a noticeable failure rate, although that is exacerbated by most of the attempts being on working joints, rather than more cosmetic options. And that is the simple end. Growing nerves, growing blood vessels, those are rather more complicated, and in some ways dramatically more important. Getting them to grow right, reliably, the first time, and integrate into the rest of the system makes calling it simply challenging an exercise in understatement rarely matched in human history.
[ ] Zrbite Sonic Weapons Development (Tech)
The development of improved sonic weapons has been an ongoing concern. While the Initiative before the Third Tiberium War had reached the practical limits of existing technology, work with stable transuranic elements has unlocked significant potential to both downscale systems to create effective sonic guns on the personal scale, and improve larger scale systems.
(Progress 108/60: 20 resources per die) (High Priority) [73]
The Initiative has used sonic projectors in various configurations for decades, with the earliest prototype crystal units dating back to the Second Tiberium War, improved in the interbellum with the Shatterer, and mass produced with the Raider's grenade launcher and the Pacifier's artillery.
The fundamental challenge, however, has always been energy density and efficiency. Zrbite fixes this, by allowing a fairly simple physical lump of material that, when charged, produces substantial amounts of sound, along a very narrow frequency, shaking both Tiberium and people apart. For Tiberium, it is a harmonic frequency, first discovered before the Second Tiberium War, but weaponized there. While there have been handheld projectors going back decades as prototype projects, Zrbite for the first time permits a unit that can be effectively handled by a person, and makes it capable of more than slowing the growth of Tiberium. This is primarily a matter of efficiency of conversion of energy, usually electricity, into sound, meaning that a backpack power supply can output about half a pacifier round every few seconds, creating a relatively short ranged sonic burst.
In terms of practical effects however, it is primarily going to be useful on a small scale. While shells and vehicles are certainly far larger and more powerful, they are also exponentially more STU intensive, requiring far too many resources to be justified as a practical measure. Instead, they are primarily going to be used on more handheld devices, with a sonic pistol under the code designation of Tamborine, and a larger, zone suit compatible design under the designation of Octavia for the moment. While neither are quite ready for full deployment, needing more work to finalize their designations, and more importantly ensure that they are safe for troop trials, they are likely to see massive deployment among not only the military but the Treasury's abatement teams as well – especially the pistol, which is intended for use as a wide angle cleaner, shaking off Tiberium crystals from the hulls of vehicles.
[ ] Orca Wingmen Drone Deployment (Phase 1) (High Priority)
Deploying Wingman drones for the Orca program will rapidly increase the effectively available CAS and ASW assets around the world, especially for land based air. Additionally, with these following the A-16 pattern, and therefore carrying air to air missiles, they will be a significant aid in fending off Brotherhood air attack.
(Progress 260/260: 20 resources per die) (-1 Labor, -3 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 4 quarters to begin, 16 to complete)
(Progress 56/260: 20 resources per die) (-1 Labor, -3 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 4 quarters to begin, 16 to complete) [17, 46, 46, 87]
Aircraft, even one as derivative as a wingman drone, take a large amount of time to produce at a useful scale, especially one expected to be used, and used up, by the thousands. In joint air/ground forces wargames over the last few years, the average simulated wingman lasted between three and five missions, and saved over a dozen Initiative lives. In large part because they fundamentally change the threat matrix, especially as they appear in larger numbers. Rather than a risky strike putting up to dozens of Initiative pilots, each taking over a year to train, in harm's way, that same strike package can be handled by as few as one or two in the most extreme variants of the wargames. And, those pilots have a significantly higher chance of coming back alive, due to the drones having the option of acting as missile catchers themselves.
For the Navy however, they are serving a fundamentally different role. Rather than being used to increase the survival rate of pilots and the ability to take on risky missions, they are being used to increase the throw weight of the Initiative's carrier fleet, one that has declined significantly since the layouts found before the Third Tiberium War. A wingman equipped formation can in most cases double the throw weight of one without, for only adding half as much space requirement, giving sharper blades, rather than trying to change the mission profiles.
In either case, deployment is going to be slow. Within the next year, only a bare handful of squadrons will receive a pair for every aircraft in operation, over the next four, while most will get a pair, few to none will receive a second or third, even if operations remain slow, and there is nearly no chance with currently projected levels of production for a sizable surplus to be built up, a vital necessity in case of a future major war. Over the years of the Third Tiberium War's various phases, GDI burned through decades of production and in the immediate aftermath, was operating with effectively zero stockpile and trying to fight on a just in time delivery system.
[ ] Ground Forces Zone Armor (Set 1) (Phase 4) (Very High Priority)
The Initiative's Ground Forces are ready to begin refitting to an entirely zone armored force. The refit will create a leaner, harder, and drastically more lethal force, one that can engage the best that NOD has to offer, and come out on top. While this first wave of factories will only be enough to equip the tip of the spear, that is the area with the most vital set of requirements. A reorganization has permitted the Treasury to more effectively pursue this project, which allows for resources that were earmarked for a factory that completed ahead of schedule to be easily shifted to a factory lagging behind.
Tokyo (Progress 180/180: 20 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -2 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 2 quarters to begin, 10 quarters to complete)
Pyongyang (Progress 170/170: 20 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -2 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 2 quarters to begin, 10 quarters to complete)
Santiago (Progress 28/170: 20 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -2 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 2 quarters to begin, 10 quarters to complete) [82, 81]
The Treasury has completed two more major Zone Armor factories, both in East Asia. While currently, they are primarily slated to supply suits to warehouses from Siberia to Australia and California, long term they are planned to be core support for regional operations, supplying directly to units. The reason for their current posting is that training is still a major bottleneck. While these will fully ensure that there are enough Zone Suits for the Initiative's immediate needs, even with the mountains of metal being fed into the Deep Red Zones, they are likely to be eclipsed in fairly short order by the military's desire to expand its powered armor complement.
Pyongyang is an interesting city. Founded over three thousand years ago, it has been the traditional seat of power in Korea for much of that time. While it moldered under the rule of the Kims, embargoed by much of the world, and kept on life support as they rattled an increasingly aged arsenal for attention and aid, it was revitalized first in the early 2000s, as Initiative funding poured into the city as it became a front line against Brotherhood interests. But it was not until after the Second Tiberium War that it became the near metropolis that it is today. A port city, it is the gateway to the fortifications that line the borders, old and new. Those south of the Yalu, and those across the north of China as the Brotherhood was pushed back step by step.
[ ] Buckler Shield Development (Tech)
A much stronger shield, designed to cover some small portion of the overall hull. While it will likely require substantial redesigns to field, it is also going to provide significant protection for weak points, or allow GDI to reduce total armoring.
(Progress 122/100: 20 resources per die) [87]
A buckler, historically, was a small round shield, primarily used in western Europe as a support for close sword fighting. While the new bucklers are very different, they are also notably similar in purpose. Rather than covering most of the wielder's body, it was used actively to disrupt and block.
One of the key problems with human built shield systems is their weakness. Even the best that GDI can manage are really only capable of taking small arms and light autocannon fire, and from what InOps can find, the Brotherhood of Nod is worse off. The system is actually less of a breakthrough than first expected. Rather than being some folded set of shields, it is actually far more derivative. Instead of trying to project a strong shield bubble around the vehicle, they use a modified variant of the Electroactive armor to energize a strip of shielding, making it substantially stronger, at the cost of weakening the rest of the shields to effective nonexistence.
The practical upshot is that the buckler shield is actually surprisingly easy to integrate. While they are not really compatible with the ablative pucks that have adorned Initiative armor for much of the last decade, the designs to use electroactive armor are still very much in the Initiative's arsenal and – while not compatible with the last generation of armored fighting vehicles – will be an easy addition to the newer designs that have yet to enter prototyping, and one that will allow them to not need nearly as much shield infrastructure as previously expected.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Infrastructure) (95)
GDI's infrastructure spending has been a mixed bag, but one of the largest slices has been in the field of transportation. From road and rail networks, to entirely new forms, like the suborbital shuttle service. All of these offer insights into the future of Initiative strategic planning. The humble railroad has shaped every war that it has served in, from Crimean fields, to Georgian gullies, and the differences in available rolling stock, available resources, and track amenities can play fundamental roles in the success and failure of battles, campaigns, and entire wars.
One Brotherhood cell discovered during the investigation was responsible for the shootdown of Arya Gulati, with her flight in particular being passed over to the unit on the ground with the laser system. While many members were able to go to ground, or otherwise escape ahead of the Intelligence agents detecting them, some were captured or killed, and the others have, at least, been removed from their posts.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Tiberium) (58)
In the last three years, the Tiberium department has seen massive investments, and is actually of interest to many groups, with Tiberium operations being a lagging indicator for GDI's geostrategic investments. Oftentimes only a few kilometers behind the front lines of one of the Initiative's offensives are fleets of Tiberium harvesters, armies of engineers, and uncounted legions of construction robots swarming over the land like ants on a candy bar. For the Brotherhood of Nod of course, this is critical intelligence. Knowing when and where the armies of the Initiative march is something that is in many cases the difference between life and death, victory and defeat.
And then there is the technology. From Tiberium infusions and power generation, to things like Tiberium Glass, to the production and distribution of STUs, the department is involved in an incredibly wide selection of affairs, and has its fingers in nearly every technological pie the Initiative has. Even if they are not a primary participant, they certainly have a representative on site for environmental concerns, and a few more to represent their interests.
While a number of agents have been found, it is unlikely that they are the entirety, both because the Treasury has become predictable in its schedule of sweeps, and because the Tiberium department operates in a large number of areas that are at best awkward for an InOps agent to get to, ranging from deep red outposts, to monitoring stations in the depths of the Antarctic.
A/N : For all the Americans, Happy Turkey Day!
Sorry for taking so long, it has been a pretty intensive month on my end. Will be trying to push out the turnpost tomorrow.
Eris_Gearhead
So, lots of new drivers on the road in new Treasury built EVs. And, while I don't own one myself (I have an old, prewar Solaris VIII, Quadra for my own) they are pretty good vehicles all told.
Now, they do have a few features that will catch you out if you are not aware of them. One is that they do have a few more things manual, and a lot more manual overrides, than the old prewar models. Your parking brake lever is by your left foot nearest the door, standard accelerator and brake pedals, but there is another thing down there that you might not be expecting. They decided, for some reason to use a separate emergency braking pedal down there, for your left foot. In my test uses, it was very good at stopping the car, but it is very abrupt. Don't touch it unless you want to come to a very short stop.
Otherwise, prewar vehicles tended to use a lot of touchscreens, but don't expect to see more than a small one here. The entertainment setup is a lot of manual dials and some very, very clicky switches. Again, lots more manual setup going on, and a lot of things that are easily handled in gloves, likely another military carryover. They are using a full suite of MFDs and a projected HUD for the driver, so you can see your speed and some other key stats without taking your eyes off the road at all. And there is a helmet HUD option, with a cable connection in your seat for anyone who wants to be driving with a full environment suit on.
As for driving modes, there are a few, including a blackout mode that I accidentally turned on. Blackout mode is pretty hard to use, but it cuts all interior and exterior lighting down to minimum, sets all your sensors into the lowest power mode or cuts them off entirely. I would strongly suggest that under blackout conditions, you stay home of course, but they are blackout capable if you for some reason end up driving one of these in the middle of a bombing raid.
FloatingWood
You'd think that the old parking brake lever between the front seats was a bad idea, but frankly, I'll take that over accidentally smashing the emergency brake pedal.
Also, unless those EVs come with light armoured vehicle levels of protection, you are crazy if you want to drive through something even vaguely explosive. I'd say they forgot to dummy it out from a police specific version.
*Space*Ferret
#Floating_Wood nah, I think it's probably just paranoia. They had plenty of time to work the designs out, seems unlikely it could be entirely unintentional.
Regardless of the reason, I'm glad the option's there. Obviously it's a terrible idea to try going anywhere under blackout conditions, but on the off chance you are on the road already… well, something's still better than nothing, especially if you're in a zone near some of the crazier Noddies.
HigherThanYou
Too slow.
GDIWife
I'm currently doing a training course to learn to drive these new vehicles. It's not going great so far, I managed to reverse it into the wall on my first try in the vehicle.
I think it's going to take me a lot of practice
InTheZONE
#GDIWife Wait, ground vehicles too?
GDIWife
#InTheZONE T_T
FloatingWood
#GDIWife, this is with the best of intentions, but maybe you should have someone take a look at your eyesight?
GDIWife
#FloatingWood I've had it checked, it seems to be fine
JohnnyBull
I do enjoy the kinesthetics of a good clicky switch, so that entertainment panel sounds lovely. I don't know about buying one, but I'm sure getting one of these in the neighborhood carpool will make my transit to the museum or work much more efficient and comfortable. As for the blackout mode-I've operated engines on the Talyllyn Railway. Can't be much harder than old time steam.
InTheZONE
#JohnnyBull I feel like you have to worry about steering a lot more with a car than a train.
You know, because of the rails
JohnnyBull
#InTheZONE Spoken like a man who has no appreciation for the finer points of engine management. I'm certain that it's simply a matter of stearing calmly and keeping one's eyes firmly on the path ahead.
InTheZONE
#JohnnyBull Spoken like a man who's never steered a great big hunk of metal along various YZ roads for hours on end. Seriously, the difficult part was often finding a usable piece of road.
I'll admit it's probably much better now but I'll stick to my jetpack. I'd need to requalify anyway.
ClassicalGDIdiot
#GDIWife See this is why women shouldn't drive!
GDIWife
#ClassicalGDIdiot I'm so glad you could find a username that matched your personality
Solan
Well fortunately the Treasury EVs can just be considered the baseline and not the only new things out of the block. While many can consider them to be a bit more old fashioned and safety focused it is a great way to restart the auto industry. Hopefully, we'll have new products that can get better for everyone.
Q3 2062 Results
Resources: 1205 + 5 in reserve (-30 from Reconstruction commissions) (-15 from Bureau of Arcologies) (-15 from Consumer Industrial Development) (100 in Reserve for Banking)
Political Support: 109
SCIENCE Meter: 4/4
Free Dice: 7
Erewhon Dice: 1
Dice Capacity 59/60
Tiberium Spread
23.94 (-0.02) Blue Zone
0.04 (+0.00) Cyan Zone
0.29 (+0.02) Green Zone
23.24 (+0.13) Yellow Zone (97 points of mitigation)
52.49 (-0.13) Red Zone (80 points of mitigation)
Current Economic Issues:
Housing: +65 (16 population in low quality housing) (+1 high-quality housing per turn)
Energy: +15 (+5 in reserve)
Logistics: +17 (-2 from military activity)
Food: +25 (+24 backed reserve, +5 unbacked reserve) (Perennials: +1 on Q1 2063, +1 on Q4 2063)
Health: +13 (-3 from Wartime Demand) (-10 from refugees)
Capital Goods: +15 (+2 per turn from Distributed Industrial Authority) (+223 in reserve)
STUs: +11
Consumer Goods: +154 (-5 from demand spike) (+5 per turn from Private Industry) (+3 per turn from sub-departments) (+2 per turn from perennials. -1 per turn Q2 2063, -1 per turn Q1 2064) (Net +8 per turn)
Labor: +38 (+3 per turn from medical care) (+2 per turn from Immigrant qualifications) (-2 per turn from private industry) (-1 per turn from other government) (Net +2)
Tiberium Processing Capacity (2610/3350)
Tiberium Reserve (0/500)
Taxation Per Turn: +60
Space Mining Per Turn: +100
Maintenance Reductions: +50
Green Zone Water: +5
STU Production and Consumption
Net: +11 per turn
Production: +26 per turn
Consumption: -15 per turn
10 Economy (4 Structural Alloys, 2 T-Glass, 2 Harvesting Tendrils, 2 Hovercraft)
4 Aircraft (2 Tactical Lasers, 2 Plasma Munitions)
1 Military Ground Vehicles (1 Mastodons [Shimmer Shields, Point Defense Lasers], 0 Havocs [Shimmer Shields])
Status of the Parties
(strong support, weak support, weak opposition, strong opposition)
Free Market Party: 228 seats (0; 58; 30; 140)
Market Socialist Party: 486 seats (200; 155; 81; 50)
Militarist: 754 seats (250; 270; 144; 90)
Initiative First: 335 seats (0; 0; 20; 315)
United Yellow List: 176 seats (110; 40; 20; 6)
Starbound Party: 461 seats (300; 90; 50; 21)
Socialist Party: 426 seats (200; 190; 26; 10)
Homeland Party: 50 seats (25; 25; ; 0)
Biodiversity Party: 34 seats (9; 5; 20; 0)
Reclamation Party: 12 Seats (9; 3; 0; 0)
Developmentalists: 1038 seats (460; 278; 250; 50)
Military Confidence
Ground Forces: High
Air Force: High
Space Force: Decent
Steel Talons: Low (Trending to Decent)
Navy: Low (Trending to High)
ZOCOM: Decent
Plan Goals
Provide 77 Consumer Goods points from the Treasury
Provide 27 Consumer Goods from Agriculture
Increase Income by 710
Increase Tiberium Processing limit by 920
Increase population in space by 17.95k
Provide 28 Points of Red Zone Abatement
Provide 30 Resources in grants
Spend at least one die on Steel Talons projects every turn
Projects
Complete Karachi Planned City by end of 2065
Complete Chicago Planned City by end of 2065
Deploy Medium Tactical Plasma Weapons
Depoy Orca Wingman Drones by end of 2065
Deploy Services AEVA
Complete North Boston Phase 5
Develop and deploy Governor-A refit
Develop and deploy Conestoga class
Complete at least 3 Blue Zone Inhibitors by end of 2065
Compete Dairy Ranching Domes Phase 2 by end of 2065
Complete 1 of Nuuk, Reykjavik, Bergen
Complete all phases of Red Zone Border Offensives before 2064
Complete SADN Phase 4
Complete at least 5 Ground Forces Zone Armor factories
Complete all of the following projects:
Advanced ECCM Development,
Complete 2 phases of Reforestation Campaign Preparation
Complete Gravitic Shipyard Bay
Promises to Litvinov:
Do not activate Free Dice (except for Tiberium) unless all Department Dice are active.
Spend no more than two free dice per turn on Military.
Activate Munitions Department
Activate Refit Department
Hand off at least 20 points of Capital Goods to market over the course of the plan.
Complete Improved Hewlett Gardener Refits before end of plan
Politics
The Initiative has seen relative stability in the political sphere. Where there is certainly discontent, the end of the refugee wave, the massive ongoing investments into space colonization, the expanding private market, and the rapid and radical expansions in new foods and consumer goods have meant that there are fundamentally fewer problems for the politicians to fight over. There are certainly rounds of scandals, and there are new problems with the hardliners, who have begun to rally around a new set of standards, and have begun advocating for intensive investment into defensive technologies, including shields, defense networks, and other means of ensuring that the Brotherhood will have more difficulty threatening the Initiative's homeland.
Assassination
One of the Treasury's own has unfortunately been caught in an assassination. Since the opening of suborbital shuttle services into and out of the Himalayan Blue Zone, Gulati has repeatedly traveled into the region to both see family, and to coordinate construction efforts in the region. While launching out of the Zone, her shuttle was taken under fire by a ground based laser installation north of the Zone, and lost control, crashing into the Red Zone kilometers north of one of GDI's rail lines. While rescue teams were on site within an hour of the shoot down, there were no survivors.
Culture
Culture is an ever changing beast, and while the Initiative certainly produces far less of it than the late 20th century, there certainly are major works being developed. While much of it is simple escapism, with non-Tiberian alternative history being one of the bigger genres at this point in time in terms of speculative fiction, there has been a noticeable turn for the negative in recent months, with more emphasis being put on a world without Tiberium falling prey to climate change, political instability, and continuing wars.
Otherwise, in the fashion world, animal products – now that they are beginning to be available – are back in vogue. Leather and wool especially are now the dress of choice for the cutting edge of fashion, alongside other natural materials. Fake furs and 'pleather' follow this trend for the more cost-conscious or less discerning. They have always been available, effectively anyway, but have typically not been in favor, with the previous styles going back decades, leading to noticeable price spikes even in those categories. While the vast majority of the Initiative will never adopt such styles, it is a noticeable change from the yellow zone chic that had been the norm previously, reflecting a change in worries, and a noticeable change in how GDI's fashion conscious present themselves.
Brotherhood of Nod
Krukov has once again made moves, with a second Varyag (without identifying markings) spotted flying south towards India. This is almost certainly a new build, not the end of his fleet. While an interception was attempted by Apollo fighters armed with plasma missiles, they were unable to make a firing solution before it slipped under the watchful eyes of Bannerjee IADS.
The Brotherhood has also been pushing forward their anti-aircraft technologies. South of Rio, what appears to be a pair of small pyramids have sprouted up, likely a take on CABAL's Obelisk of Darkness concept, but arranged differently, using a set of large sensors to better track high altitude targets. The pyramids are relatively small and triangular, only about thirty meters from the best estimates of Intelligence Operations.
At the same time, Stahl has been organizing his occupation of the American South along more civilian lines. He has sent one of his lieutenants, a man by the name of Eduardo Durrance, to take command of the Brotherhood in the region. While Durrance, to the best of InOps knowledge has little experience governing, he is a known commander, and while he did not precisely cover himself with glory in the Regency War, he has repeatedly put down uprisings against Stahl's rule, and has acted as a hatchetman before.
Negotiations between Yao, Bintang, the Bannerjees and GDI have continued to move slowly, with inspections remaining the key sticking point. While they have conceded the right of GDI to board pilots for a number of key passageways, most notably for the routes off the coast of Korea, they have extracted noticeable concessions over shipping volume, and struck a number of dual use items off the lists of forbidden goods.
At the same time, the Initiative has begun mooting around the concessions to be made by the Brotherhood. While the populists would be more than happy to start from the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and escalate from there, the more realistic position is going to be a series of military and territorial concessions, likely including a cessation of raiding activities against GDI shipping in the South Pacific, among other goals.
Military Priorities
- Ground Forces
- Steel Talons
- Air Force
- Navy
- Space Force
- Zone Operations Command
[ ] Communal Blue Zone Arcologies
While not a universal solution, communally structured arcology buildings will provide some degree of cheap to construct high quality housing for GDI populations. While it is not going to be universally popular, some groups are going to actually be happier built into their own small communal organizations, separated by a degree from the more atomized mainstream.
(Progress 396/395: 15 resources per die, +6 High Quality Housing, +2 Consumer Goods, +1 Energy Reserve, -1 Energy) [27]
Communal living is far from the easiest thing in the world, and with this program that has been proven once again. While the program has stumbled, with multiple families having to be dropped due to interpersonal issues, there are more than enough people with the right personalities and without too many major conflicts. In fact, those who have made it through the program had begun to self-organize almost before selection was completed, and began to play a major role not just in populating the buildings, but in finishing them out.
Finishing the buildings was a fairly standard procedure, with the normal array of cross checks and other mechanisms to ensure that the work done has been of good quality and is safe to live in, especially for children. The same applies to furnishing. While nothing in the buildings is particularly different from nearly any other building in Initiative territory – the same chairs, same tables, same wallpaper in a lot of areas, structurally it is fundamentally closer to institutional structure, rather than traditional housing, and at the same time, struggling with a balance between safety and livability. Take, for example, the entranceway. A large, wide open entranceway is welcoming, and convenient for a wide variety of purposes, both practical and ritualized. On the other hand, those large open areas make it fundamentally more difficult to conduct damage control and secure the building against both internal and external threats. It also makes it more difficult to find a Tiberium intrusion. And the same problem repeats itself time and again across the building. They need large areas for communal living, but in doing so are compromising other functions and other needs.
[ ] Urban Metros (Phase 4)
Developing the new urban cores will require not only industrial and commercial developments, but longer term preparation and interconnectedness. While much will be able to be handled by light and heavy rail, or riverine barges, and other energy cheap means of transport, much will be based on buses and trucks as well, especially as the manufacturing base spreads beyond the industries that can be healthily colocated with human habitation.
(Progress 221/145: 15 resources per die) (+3 Logistics, -2 Energy) [67, 82]
Metro is not just a system of light rail, but an all-encompassing mass public transit design. In many cases, the new cities sprouting in reclaimed territory are very difficult to build subways for, due to a combination of groundwater and Tiberium contamination of the soil that they are built on. However, there are other alternatives, like buses, surface light rail, and, in some smaller locations, taxi services and ride sharing initiatives. Beyond those, they are also a series of key interlinks connecting the towns and cities across the newly claimed Blue Zones to the broader military and logistical networks. For example, rather than having to break a shipping container for most of the things that any given town needs, it can be cross-loaded from a standard train, to a local train, and only broken a few kilometers from the destination, significantly reducing the man hours required. Similarly, some stores even feature cargo loading stations to accept deliveries directly from trains – especially large shopping complexes and the very largest of dedicated stores. While this is far from universal, as it forces the idling of trains until the material is fully offloaded, it similarly benefits these select locations more than further fracturing transport.
Many of the new towns are still fairly rough-and-tumble places – military families having moved forward to be closer to soldiers manning the front lines, prospectors and Tiberium abatement teams commingling with Yellow Zone refugees, and people displaced by the Regency War on fronts that went more poorly for GDI. But despite being roughly thrown together in such a way, they have formed a surprising degree of community.
[ ] Suborbital Shuttle Service (Phase 2)
GDI's fleet of Leopard shuttles has reached a point where at any given time some significant portions are sitting without mission payloads. By retasking them towards suborbital shuttles, they would be able to reach anywhere in the world in a matter of hours at most. This will allow GDI to further tighten the bonds between Blue Zones and significantly cut travel times for critical supplies.
(Progress 110/240: 25 resources per die) (+5 Logistics) [52]
Progress on the suborbital shuttles has been remarkably limited. While not precisely unexpected given the resources directed, it has mostly been pouring concrete, rather than anything more complicated. Focus has been primarily in the form of building new runways in areas of the world that had not seen major services yet, and expanding runways on critical areas, like the Himalayan airfields that are the zone's lifeline to the outside world – the source of nearly all their STU technology, and even simpler things like CBL laser arrays, especially those larger than are used as point defense modules.
The resources have simply not been provided to seriously expand services quite yet however, especially with the pressure being put on the Initiative's fleet of Leopards with the incredibly rapid construction of Columbia and Shala, and more broadly the goal to put twenty thousand people in space by the end of the plan. Serious efforts are being made, and maintenance crews are working as hard as they can, but even so, the pace of launches has put the brakes on plans to expand the suborbital services, especially as the Leopard IIs are having slower production than expected.
[ ] U-Series Alloy Foundries (Phase 2)
Large scale use of the STU alloys will affect not only structural work, but a substantial number of other projects, ranging from blades and cutting devices, to various forms of highly conductive wiring. These alloy foundries will be a substantial investment into the future of the Initiative, and a baseline to add additional metallurgical advancements to. Demand for these materials is nearly universal, and expanding existing production of them is the best means to satisfy it.
(Progress 575/575: 40 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -2 STUs) (5% discount on many projects)
(Progress 186/570: 40 resources per die) (-4 Energy, -2 STUs) (5% discount on many projects) [64, 86, 48, 93, 13, 58, 52]
The U-series alloy foundries have been a nearly monomaniacal focus of Initiative industrial investments, and one of the broadest spanning operations in recent memory. Unlike the chip fabricators and planned cities, these are appearing near almost every major Initiative city, and beyond that, there are the factsheets that have to be distributed by the millions. With these STU-containing alloys appearing everywhere from structural steel to toaster ovens, the idea of keeping it secret is effectively laughable. The Brotherhood of Nod has not been slow on the uptake, with multiple agents caught trying to cross the borders smuggling samples back to their masters.
More broadly, while still a miniscule sliver of GDI's overall metals industry, they are an increasingly significant one, with high priority projects able to dominate the market, and noticeable bidding wars occuring between them. A number of architects have also produced a selection of 'visions of the future' representing designs which might use U-series alloys for such humble materials as rebar or window frames, which has allowed for seemingly impossible concepts.
Technologically, the bases are fairly common: the electric arc furnace and the vacuum arc remelter. First prototyped in the 1810s by Sir Humphrey Davy, and Sir William Siemens, among others, they would not see commercial use until the end of the century, and would not become more than a specialized process until after the second world war. With GDI increasingly decarbonizing, by the early 2020s, nearly all alloying plants were using some form of electric arc furnace as their baseline, taking advantage of nuclearization and the vast amounts of baseload power made available. By the late 2030s, the last old 'basic steel' furnaces reliant on coal were retired, with modern arc furnaces requiring carbon introduction to produce steel. The same methods can be used to also introduce some STUs.
The second process is significantly more modern, with the first uses in the 20th century, primarily for various high value products, like the aerospace and medical industries. By taking an alloy and remelting it under a near vacuum, the product can be precisely cooled, and offgas any volatiles that it had taken on during the alloying process such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen among others. Here again, trace elements can be added, as the molten metals are de-gassed, homogenized, and any inclusions removed. For some alloys, especially with aerospace uses, this step is repeated several times to carefully control the exact level of purity.
[ ] Personal Electric Vehicle Plants
While production of commercial scale trucks is sufficient, there are a substantial number of people who need or want a variety of smaller vehicles for a number of reasons. Ranging from small cooperatives who need minivans and microvans, to families wanting personal transport, these small vehicles are, for the most part, currently out of favor but in great demand.
(Progress 298/295: 10 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -4 Energy, -2 Capital Goods, +8 Consumer Goods, +4 Logistics) (+10 Political Support) [75]
The mass transit system is designed around the needs of large factories, and clusters of businesses. For a complex like the North Boston chip fabricator, it works, and it works quite well. However, for small, standalone businesses, it does not work nearly so well, due to potentially unpredictable scheduling, and a need to go to locations that are less well serviced (there are only so many kudzu tea shops that can be in the immediate vicinity of a major factory after all).
The vast majority of the Initiative population are likely to never own a personal vehicle, or for that matter have a license to operate a motor vehicle for reasons ranging from cost to a lack of necessity. However, delivery vans, taxis, microbuses, and other rental or service vehicles are likely to be interacted with on an almost daily basis. There is even demand for public limousines, mostly for weddings and other ceremonial uses where those who hire them can pretend to indulge in the most conspicuous consumption.
Electric vehicles are actually surprisingly old, with the first examples found in the 1830s; carriages converted to be powered by electricity, and a number of smaller model vehicles, often powered by non-rechargeable primary cells. While they did not go anywhere, they were the first, but ended up more curiosity than staple. It was not until the 1890s that battery technology had evolved to the point where practical electric vehicles could be built, with 1897 seeing a fleet of electric taxis deployed to the city of New York. While across the 20th century, electric vehicles would be effectively outcompeted by internal combustion engines, that approach hit a terminal decline in the early 21st century, in part due to the skyrocketing price of liquid fuels, and the military necessities demanded by the First and Second Tiberium Wars.
[ ] Improved Continuous Cycle Fusion Development (Tech)
While the existing CCF plants are certainly functional, there are a number of upgrades that may well lead to improved efficiency over simple water boilers. While this project will be more of an iterative improvement, trying to get a few percent more megawatt hours per plant out of a relatively similar design to current systems, it is likely to see significant further revisions as other fields improve.
(Progress 196/120: 20 resources per die) [74, 84]
Work to improve the design of continuous cycle fusion has been more iterative than anything else, with the core focus being to make a plant that can actually last, rather than the current ones that have been undergoing progressive breakdown. While there were design proposals using forcefield technologies, among others, the winning design, produced by a French design bureau in Brittany is a fundamentally conventional design, built using mass quantities of superconductors to provide magnetic containment for the plasma field inside the reactor. While it does make some use of force field technology as a backup, and has been modified to make use of STU-bearing alloys, it is otherwise entirely a design built with purely human-derived technologies in mind.
While there have certainly been proposals for designs that make more extensive use of materials and technologies enabled by STUs, none have been adopted despite their greater per unit power production potential. The most notable among these designs offered an approximately 50% increase in effective energy production per reactor, but was discarded for the same reasons many others were, as adopting it would mean that GDI's ever growing demand for more energy would swallow the entire production of STUs just to construct and maintain the fusion reactors. With a variety of developments depending on these difficult to acquire elements incoming, designs demanding such rare materials in large quantities were discarded in favor of a design that could be produced with minimal STU investment and still provide the required energy production level.
[ ] Carbon Nanotube Foundry Expansions
While making longer carbon nanotubes is still difficult,manufacturing substantially more carbon nanotubes is relatively easy and quite desirable, given that it is a way to add strength to many other materials.
(Progress 219/285: 20 resources per die) (+4 Capital Goods) [10, 89, 51]
In search of a quick source of capital goods, the Treasury has turned to expanding production of bulk carbon nanotubes, and associated products. While production of very long nanotubes remains firmly a laboratory process where hundreds of attempts might snap for every one success, bulk CNT factory production is an odd mixture of the cleanroom and the coal mine. Ever since their discovery, Carbon Nanotubes have been made by a variety of processes, but GDI's industrial production has been standardized around the NuHiPCO method. This process, while slower than some others, has a rate of iron catalyst impurities of only about 2%, and is relatively energy efficient, requiring only pure carbon monoxide in chemical inputs. Each NuHiPCO machine can run for about 15 days before being cycled off and the production harvested, while maintenance is performed. This does mean however that the number of such machines needed is quite high, and upkeep must be religiously performed. While many factories have been completed, only about half of the needed NuHiPCO machines have arrived.
The coal mine is the processing of the bulk CNT products. While tremendously strong, CNTs are also co-created with fullerenes, amorphous bulk carbon, graphite dust, and even microdiamonds. These must be separated from the product, which itself must be handled carefully. Raw carbon nanotubes are somewhat fragile in compression and shear easily, until they undergo any number of finishing processes. All this combines to create quite a number of carbon by-products that must be carefully disposed of, mostly by burning them back into carbon monoxide. Until they are however, they form a fine black dust that is insidious in its abilities to escape from containment and cover everything in soot. The finished nanotubes are in demand for everything from medical treatment to structural carbon fiber body panels for personal vehicles.
[ ] Artificial Wood Furniture Plants
Wooden furniture was at one point a commonplace feature of homes and kitchens, yet decades of war and the ravages of Tiberium have left only carefully guarded antiques and a handful of examples of once common products. While the artificial wood incorporated in these new pieces is only as strong as cheap particle board, replicas of 20th century furniture made with these materials will still be in high demand as ways to demonstrate one's wealth and power, given the extremely high demand for wood.
(Progress 106/95: 10 resources per die) (+4 Consumer Goods) [50]
The wooden furniture as produced is not moving as fast as GDI had originally expected. In part, this is due to the furniture not actually being what people have in mind. With most of the models being effectively single pieces, pressed and fused into shape, they are not precisely what most people think of when it comes to wooden furniture, the carefully carved, often skeletonized and padded arrays in designs that have changed relatively little for all of human history.
A noticeable worry – one of many, and one not expected to be seen by the Initiative survey teams – among the write-in responses about the product is a concern over evacuations. GDI maintains a whole matrix of responses based on priority, duration, area, and a number of other factors, meaning that on one end of the evacuation charts, Initiative engineers will be literally stripping the wiring out of the walls of apartment buildings to either deny them to the enemy, or to preserve materials in the cases of an uncontained Tiberium outbreak. On the other end, there are evacuations where people are being stuffed like cordwood in every available means of transit with nothing more but the clothes on their back, as happened thousands of times across the Third Tiberium War. The wooden chairs, being oddly shaped, relatively heavy, and impossible to break down, would almost certainly have to be left behind in all but the most permissive evacuation environments, and that is creating a certain amount of nervousness about the product.
[ ] Home Robotics Factories (New)
While most of the designs are already in production, bringing them to the masses rather than keeping them for the Initiative proper's use will require a substantial number of new factories, and expansions to already existing facilities.
(Progress 114/145: 15 resources per die) (-1 Energy, -1 Capital Goods, +4 Consumer Goods, +1 Labor) [91]
Converting robots to home use from public spaces is not quite a one-to-one problem. While there are a significant number of overlaps with public spaces, the fundamental problem is in the homes themselves. People, as it turns out, love to customize their own spaces, ranging from different arrangements of desks, to carpets, rugs, and tapestries hung on the walls and sprawling onto the floor. While for some homes the existing models work just fine, most were designed with hard and relatively grippy flooring as their baseline, where smooth hard wheels provide plenty of traction. Yet, trying to use those same wheels on a rug, for example, has tended to produce the rug moving at best, and in most cases, a simple flailing, rather than actually cleaning the floor for example. All are solvable problems, most notably in the wheel and suspension base, but it is taking a fair bit of effort to make the changes in ways that do not complicate the systems.
[ ] Wadmalaw Kudzu Plantations (Phase 3)
A final and substantial upgrade to the system of Kudzu production will see a finally sufficient level of caffeination returned to the Initiative. While not as important as many other things, having a hot caffeinated beverage serves as a social lubricant and does noticeably improve overall outcomes on the macro scale. (Plant Genetics)
(Progress 502/450: 10 resources per die) (+8 Consumer Goods) (+1 to all dice) (Will Complete Q4 2062) [72]
Tea has a global history dating back for thousands of years, but the first book to be written on the topic dates only to about 760 CE, when a Chinese man by the name of Lu Yu wrote the Cha Jing, or Classic of Tea. While certainly not the first of its kind, with Lu dedicating one of the Classic's longest chapters to a chronological compendium of religious, poetic, and medical writings on tea. It is an eclectic mix of works, ranging from Shen Nung's Treatise on Food to the poem "Climbing the Tower in Ch'eng Tu" by Chang Meng-Yang, which is the oldest surviving work that we have on tea.
And for Lu, tea had a special meaning in terms of preparation, use, and social class. A proper tea preparation was a signature of someone who was well mannered, who was not just a drinker of tea, but a connoisseur of the product. The best russet leaves from sunny slopes or shaded groves, the twenty four tools needed to make a proper pot of tea, the correct waters to use, the proper boil the water for tea should be brought to and a conversational knowledge of tea's properties. But, interestingly enough, Lu never attempts to describe the taste of a good cup of tea. That would be left for the reader to decide.
For GDI, whilst tea proper is a scarce luxury only really enjoyed by those who are lucky or skilled enough at navigating the logistics system, there is kudzu tea. Which, whilst considered to be not as good as real tea by many, is now an everyday luxury found in effectively every lobby in the Initiative and nearly every home, a symbol of how far the Initiative has come in the last twelve years – from barely hanging on, to being able to launch an entire new product that sets an entirely new global standard for itself.
[ ] Vertical Farming Projects (Stage 3)
A third wave of facilities – still focused on GDI's secondary cities – will see broad-scale development of additional meat and egg production, but also a selection of consumer and core crops. While the program overall will continue to be expensive, it is a way to increase most significant indicators.
(Progress 235/235: 15 resources per die) (+4 Food, +4 Consumer Goods, -2 Energy)
(Progress 134/235: 15 resources per die) (+4 Food, +4 Consumer Goods, -2 Energy) [36, 11, 70, 66]
The vertical farms have been added to dozens of cities, many of them actually relatively far from logistics links. Simply put, while they are useful, they are both primarily doing last mile deliveries, and they are not nearly as important as the core industrial goods of the Initiative.
The Initiative does tend to eat local. While there is certainly a substantial amount of food being shipped around the world, the shift to climate controlled, and environmentally isolated farming styles has meant that local conditions effectively do not influence what can be grown. Strawberries grow as well in the arctic circle as they do in Africa or Japan. For the average citizen of the Initiative, their food travels less than a hundred kilometers to reach them, and while there certainly are substantial shipments of food across the world, they are more limited in many ways than the late 20th century.
[ ] Dairy Ranches (Phase 1)
While meat is a key status symbol for many, the sustainable option is actually focusing more heavily on dairy, offering up a suite of cheeses and other milk products that can provide additional protein and significantly expand dietary diversity.
(Progress 155/195: 20 resources per die) (+6 Consumer Goods, -3 Food, -1 Energy, -1 Labor) [42, 57]
There are fundamental slowdowns in the process that cannot be bypassed. Even with the most aggressive breeding programs, cows, sheep and other milk producing animals reproduce only so fast. Cows generally produce only one calf, sheep often produce only a single lamb when the ewe is still young. Goats generally produce twins, but even those herds will require much time to expand from the minuscule populations that survived. Construction of the future habitats for milk producing animals vastly outpaces the expansion of the herds, although as population growth hits its stride and newborn animals become of breeding age that is likely to change.
For now, hundreds of domes stand by, waiting for the first animals to arrive, while the agricultural department expands its animal handling and veterinary staff as aggressively as it pursues the expansion of the herds. But just the production and storage of milk is not the goal of these facilities. Although a wide variety of processed milk products exist, this phase of construction is focused on the production of cheese. The main reason for this is that cheese is a dairy product that takes comparatively well to long term storage; while many cheeses are considered to have an 'optimal' age range when it comes to flavor, much of that is merely a matter of taste.
Production of cheese is a fairly involved process, with curdling, forming, pressing and aging, with many variances producing different cheeses, and every step influences the final product. The leftover whey is still useful, providing raw material for whey cheeses, butter, and a variety of other products, and will be processed until it is little more than water.
[ ] Tiberium Vein Mines (Stage 4) (Updated)
Further progress on vein mines is going to be a fairly intensive program. However, it is also going to be profitable and more importantly increase the safety of the population, with networks of underground tunnels designed to provide containment rings around major urban areas, in an attempt to secure them from large scale Tiberium incursions.
(Progress 190/190: 20 resources per die) (Additional Income Trickle [25-35]) (+1 Yellow Zone Abatement) (-1 Capital Goods)
(Progress 185/185: 20 resources per die) (Additional Income Trickle [25-35]) (+1 Yellow Zone Abatement) (-1 Capital Goods)
(Progress 25/185: 20 resources per die) (Additional Income Trickle [25-35]) (+1 Yellow Zone Abatement) (-1 Capital Goods) [47, 39, 44, 58]
Income 2d3: [3, 1] = +60 RpT
Massive efforts have been made in building new mining complexes. The complexes are enormous arrays not just below ground but on the surface. Each has entire farms of Tiberium silos, most have direct rail connections to a nearby processing plant. Clouds of steam pour from cooling towers dotted across the sites, piles of Tiberium crystals lie in T-glass tubs, whirring pumps keep the depths dry as air pumps keep the fresh air flowing. A delicate waltz of iron and flesh, chrome and carbon that cannot stop even for a day or hour as they fight against the cancer that is eating the world.
Even with repetition however, it is a hard job. The vast majority of the sites are in isolated areas, the deep backwaters of the Blue Zones. While there are certainly populations, the simple fact is that GDI is the most urbanized population in human history. There are areas where you can go for thousands of kilometers and never see another human being. And these are where many of the new Tiberium mines are. The average mine, even if the workers never go below ground, is fundamentally isolated and isolating. There are few breaks, and little in the way of recreation. Even with the Initiative putting resources towards ensuring that every mining complex has a physical library, sports, fitness, and other options, for most people it is a machine for psychological distress, and it takes a special kind of person to handle the conditions, ones that are rare and difficult to recruit.
[ ] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 8)
A further wave of Green Zone Tiberium harvesting will both improve the logistical connections across the forward Green Zones and provide greater numbers of forward hardpoints and firebases for Initiative troops.
(Progress 98/95: 15 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-15 Resources]) (1 point of Yellow Zone Mitigation) (1 Stage available) [56]
Income 1d3: [3] = +15 RpT
Butting up against the forwardmost positions of the Brotherhood of Nod, GDI has pushed its harvesters into the often vast no man's lands found on the borders between the green and the yellow. While in some areas, like the Florida front, the lines are fortified mere tens of kilometers apart and allowing both sides to continuously shell the other, across most of the world, the distances are much greater, with the maximum range of Initiative shells falling far short of the nearest Brotherhood position, and the same being true of the opposite. It is in these areas that GDI has begun stepping up their harvesting operations. And it is here that the still relatively new railgun harvesters have seriously shown their worth. During the Regency War, the vast majority of operations where Initiative harvesters encountered Brotherhood assets, came in the form of stealth tanks striking from the shadows, or breakthroughs of Scorpion tanks or heavier Centurions and Avatars. None of which the railgun harvesters were actually designed to fight. Here and now, they are mostly encountering small, lightweight assets, ones where trying to suppress them with artillery is, most of the time, a waste of shells, as by the time the shells arrive, the Brotherhood are no longer there.
[ ] Improved Tiberium Containment Facilities Construction
While not immediately a requirement, building a limited ability to contain Tiberium beyond the limits of GDI's ability to process it will provide both wartime redundancy and allow for greater offlining of resources. Tank farms of Tiberium are admittedly a security risk, but one not particularly greater than existing Tiberium silos present around the world.
(Progress 115/115: 20 resources per die) (+500 Tiberium Reserve)
(Progress 11/115: 20 resources per die) (+500 Tiberium Reserve) [88]
Tiberium Silos have gone through many redesigns, and have always been a part of Tiberium harvesting. Holding onto capacity is a fact of life in an age of routine supply chain disruptions and the potential for global war to break out at any moment. However, few of the containment methodologies have been particularly successful in the long term. Even the best terrestrial science required the wholesale replacement of interior linings in a matter of weeks, which makes the large-scale use more than a little problematic, especially on the Treasury's timescales.
Developed originally as one of the first products of the destruction of the visitors, so called Tiberium Glass has seen widespread deployment as protective equipment, coverings for critical infrastructure in tiberium contaminated environments, and is used extensively as interior linings for tiberium silos, pipelines and other refinery equipment where possible, but has not been used for its original purpose, the long term containment of Tiberium, by GDI, until now. In addition, most silos are actively cooled, lowering the temperature of the Tiberium to around -40, cold enough to markedly decrease its activity, though this does require free energy that is not always available. While not even T-glass is invincible, it is estimated that these silos will last for months without cooling or years with it.
Construction has been concentrated nodally, with sizable stockpile capacity being assembled in Jeddah, Chicago, South Africa, Dandong, and San Diego as core facilities of the program. While they are currently resting empty, they are both preparations for the Improved Hewlett Gardener process to begin deployment, and as an emergency reserve in case of supply disruptions.
[ ] GDSS Columbia (Phase 4) (Updated)
Rapid development of the station has left it with plenty of rough edges. While the habitation spaces will be massively expanded, more than doubling in capacity by the time the next wave completes, there will also be significant effort made towards tuning and refining existing systems.
(Progress 545/545: 20 resources per die) (1k Permanent residents) (+2 available Bays) (9 Political Support)
(Progress 146/1085: 20 resources per die) (2k Permanent residents) (+3 available Bays) (10 Political Support) [92, 66, 15, 28, 95, 29]
Work on Columbia has continued at its frenetic pace, with multiple casualties as the work crews continue to push themselves to the very limits of what can be considered safe. While there are few quarters that can be cut in the process, a result of being a settlement in a region only marginally less hostile to human life than a Red Zone, there are rough edges aplenty, and the settlers have been taking up hand tools in nearly every spare hour to smooth them over. Sharp edges ground down or lacquered over, poorly finished welds either tucked away or finished properly. It is a work in progress, one that is likely to continue for the duration of the station's existence.
The station itself has added another thousand souls to its residency list, still mostly a Blue Zone elite, more parts of long running projects to produce semi-skilled spacers. While this is not producing much in the way of unrest among the Initiative's formerly Yellow Zone populations, there are some rumblings, but mostly tamped down within the United Yellow List, and as news about the actual living conditions on the stations filters down to the people below. While this has not slowed the clamor for more stationbuilding, with the idea of being away from Tiberium a push factor so substantial that no amount of stories of complicated interfaces, lacking amenities, and draconian safety rules can slow, let alone stop.
[ ] GDSS Shala (Phase 2) (Updated)
With the core of Shala complete, a steel snowflake in space, it is ready for the first habitants, and more importantly the first of what will become a substantial set of experimental agronomy bays. While most are designated towards short term crops like wheat, rice, and peppers, some handful are planned for longer term options. These range from C. cassia and M. fragrans, to apples, pears, lemons and more. (Station)
(Progress 135/135: 20 resources per die) (.1k permanent residents) (+1 Food) (5 Political Support)
(Progress 270/270: 20 resources per die) (.2k permanent residents) (+2 Food, +1 Consumer Goods) (10 Political Support) (+1 available Bay)
(Progress 95/540: 20 resources per die) (.3k permanent residents) (+4 Food, +2 Consumer Goods) (15 Political Support) (+2 available Bays) [63, 75, 73, 84]
Work on the Shala has focused primarily on adding yet more bays, and adding more crew quarters. While relatively spartan, especially compared to the apartments found on Columbia, they are still comfortable spaces, and with many fewer units, they are being held to a far higher level of fit and finish.
Farming has always been a family business, and while GDI operates on a generally collectivized and extremely automated basis, farming can still be very dynastic, with entire families living on a separate cycle from the rest of society, based on the life cycles of the plants that they tend.
Each of the stations built so far is also testing a different style of habitation. On Columbia, everything is heavily integrated, with apartments stacked above and below major concourses. Most of the small shops on a Columbia style station have attached apartments for the workers, and while there are areas that are more dedicated to habitation, even they have integrated services scattered throughout. On the other hand, on Philadelphia, there is a more general segregation. Public and private spaces are not fully separated, but all of the elevators on the station are keycard locked, meaning that one has to be authorized to visit, for example, deck 44's command center, or the deck 1 dome. And on the far extreme, there is Enterprise. On Enterprise, although more for safety than anything else, the living quarters and the industrial segments are as segregated as possible. Nobody wants people three hours into their offshift trying to walk through a foundry segment after all.
Much of Shala's early agricultural capacity, meanwhile, comes from transplants, as very little on the station has yet had time to mature. This is both in the form of perennial crops, but also extends to annuals, with one crop of tomatoes in particular exciting a particularly fevered bidding war for the vegetables when they were landed on a returning Leopard. Shala's food productivity is desired as much for its guarantee that it will be free of Tiberium contamination as for its impressive potential scale of operation.
[ ] Advanced Electronic Video Assistant Deployment
The Advanced EVA system will need substantial pools of computer supplies for deployment, but should substantially improve the overall output of the Initiative. It will also require significant assistance from the field, which makes it somewhat problematic for immediate deployment beyond the need for capital goods.
-[ ] Services (Progress 167/200: 20 resources per die) (+3 to field dice) (-4 Capital Goods, -3 Energy) (Locks 1 field die until project is complete) [31, 17, 26]
Services is a big field, and unfortunately that comes with complications. The biggest one is the simple degree of specialization and range of specializations within the field. Areas as widely separated as healthcare, education, and welfare all fall under the general field, and that makes things more difficult. While all need confidentiality, automated paperwork, and data crunching, all of those are things that previous generations of EVAs can manage, often without too many problems.
It was expected that machine learning, and the long experiences with previous generations of EVAs have created an environment where a new generation can be slotted in, and that was attempted. However, the attempt proceeded to break everything from HR services to multiple cases of prescriptions not passing through the system properly, leaving two major hospital services functioning on handwritten notes for over a day as the changes were reverted. A slower, more intentionally disruptive system changeover is being prepared, with the plans being for a rolling changeover, starting in BZ-1 and rolling around the world from there.
[ ] Prototype Biosculpt (New)
Ranging from cat ears to enhanced ankle and knee articulation, there are quite a number of soft tissue options found across nature that can be mimicked for human use without requiring special cellular or extracellular structures. While not all are likely to be successful, especially at this early prototype stage, implanting specifically engineered tissue will play a significant role in the broader ability to allow individuals to redefine themselves.
(Progress 41/40: 15 resources per die) (MS) [10]
The theory of biosculpting is simple. Take a sample of donor cells (easy enough, a simple cheek swab is enough for epithelial cells; most others require a simple biosample, a routine procedure in any case), culture them into tissues, and then implant those tissues into the patient. In theory, since all that is being implanted is biologically identical to the originals, the body should accept them without problems, and integrate without needing further medical intervention. The theory however is where the simple stops.
Unfortunately, the human body is complicated, and cells need care and feeding, they need structures to grow on, they need nerves for sending and receiving signals from the brain. Take, for example, ears. To make a pair of external ears, much of the core is cartilage, a mostly noncellular structure composed of naturally produced protein and sugar polymers. Relatively simple to make, and something where GDI's reconstructive surgeons have been getting fairly close to replicating for years, if not decades in some laboratories. And even then, fairly close still leaves a noticeable failure rate, although that is exacerbated by most of the attempts being on working joints, rather than more cosmetic options. And that is the simple end. Growing nerves, growing blood vessels, those are rather more complicated, and in some ways dramatically more important. Getting them to grow right, reliably, the first time, and integrate into the rest of the system makes calling it simply challenging an exercise in understatement rarely matched in human history.
[ ] Zrbite Sonic Weapons Development (Tech)
The development of improved sonic weapons has been an ongoing concern. While the Initiative before the Third Tiberium War had reached the practical limits of existing technology, work with stable transuranic elements has unlocked significant potential to both downscale systems to create effective sonic guns on the personal scale, and improve larger scale systems.
(Progress 108/60: 20 resources per die) (High Priority) [73]
The Initiative has used sonic projectors in various configurations for decades, with the earliest prototype crystal units dating back to the Second Tiberium War, improved in the interbellum with the Shatterer, and mass produced with the Raider's grenade launcher and the Pacifier's artillery.
The fundamental challenge, however, has always been energy density and efficiency. Zrbite fixes this, by allowing a fairly simple physical lump of material that, when charged, produces substantial amounts of sound, along a very narrow frequency, shaking both Tiberium and people apart. For Tiberium, it is a harmonic frequency, first discovered before the Second Tiberium War, but weaponized there. While there have been handheld projectors going back decades as prototype projects, Zrbite for the first time permits a unit that can be effectively handled by a person, and makes it capable of more than slowing the growth of Tiberium. This is primarily a matter of efficiency of conversion of energy, usually electricity, into sound, meaning that a backpack power supply can output about half a pacifier round every few seconds, creating a relatively short ranged sonic burst.
In terms of practical effects however, it is primarily going to be useful on a small scale. While shells and vehicles are certainly far larger and more powerful, they are also exponentially more STU intensive, requiring far too many resources to be justified as a practical measure. Instead, they are primarily going to be used on more handheld devices, with a sonic pistol under the code designation of Tamborine, and a larger, zone suit compatible design under the designation of Octavia for the moment. While neither are quite ready for full deployment, needing more work to finalize their designations, and more importantly ensure that they are safe for troop trials, they are likely to see massive deployment among not only the military but the Treasury's abatement teams as well – especially the pistol, which is intended for use as a wide angle cleaner, shaking off Tiberium crystals from the hulls of vehicles.
[ ] Orca Wingmen Drone Deployment (Phase 1) (High Priority)
Deploying Wingman drones for the Orca program will rapidly increase the effectively available CAS and ASW assets around the world, especially for land based air. Additionally, with these following the A-16 pattern, and therefore carrying air to air missiles, they will be a significant aid in fending off Brotherhood air attack.
(Progress 260/260: 20 resources per die) (-1 Labor, -3 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 4 quarters to begin, 16 to complete)
(Progress 56/260: 20 resources per die) (-1 Labor, -3 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 4 quarters to begin, 16 to complete) [17, 46, 46, 87]
Aircraft, even one as derivative as a wingman drone, take a large amount of time to produce at a useful scale, especially one expected to be used, and used up, by the thousands. In joint air/ground forces wargames over the last few years, the average simulated wingman lasted between three and five missions, and saved over a dozen Initiative lives. In large part because they fundamentally change the threat matrix, especially as they appear in larger numbers. Rather than a risky strike putting up to dozens of Initiative pilots, each taking over a year to train, in harm's way, that same strike package can be handled by as few as one or two in the most extreme variants of the wargames. And, those pilots have a significantly higher chance of coming back alive, due to the drones having the option of acting as missile catchers themselves.
For the Navy however, they are serving a fundamentally different role. Rather than being used to increase the survival rate of pilots and the ability to take on risky missions, they are being used to increase the throw weight of the Initiative's carrier fleet, one that has declined significantly since the layouts found before the Third Tiberium War. A wingman equipped formation can in most cases double the throw weight of one without, for only adding half as much space requirement, giving sharper blades, rather than trying to change the mission profiles.
In either case, deployment is going to be slow. Within the next year, only a bare handful of squadrons will receive a pair for every aircraft in operation, over the next four, while most will get a pair, few to none will receive a second or third, even if operations remain slow, and there is nearly no chance with currently projected levels of production for a sizable surplus to be built up, a vital necessity in case of a future major war. Over the years of the Third Tiberium War's various phases, GDI burned through decades of production and in the immediate aftermath, was operating with effectively zero stockpile and trying to fight on a just in time delivery system.
[ ] Ground Forces Zone Armor (Set 1) (Phase 4) (Very High Priority)
The Initiative's Ground Forces are ready to begin refitting to an entirely zone armored force. The refit will create a leaner, harder, and drastically more lethal force, one that can engage the best that NOD has to offer, and come out on top. While this first wave of factories will only be enough to equip the tip of the spear, that is the area with the most vital set of requirements. A reorganization has permitted the Treasury to more effectively pursue this project, which allows for resources that were earmarked for a factory that completed ahead of schedule to be easily shifted to a factory lagging behind.
Tokyo (Progress 180/180: 20 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -2 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 2 quarters to begin, 10 quarters to complete)
Pyongyang (Progress 170/170: 20 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -2 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 2 quarters to begin, 10 quarters to complete)
Santiago (Progress 28/170: 20 resources per die) (-2 Labor, -2 Energy, -1 Capital Goods) (Projected: 2 quarters to begin, 10 quarters to complete) [82, 81]
The Treasury has completed two more major Zone Armor factories, both in East Asia. While currently, they are primarily slated to supply suits to warehouses from Siberia to Australia and California, long term they are planned to be core support for regional operations, supplying directly to units. The reason for their current posting is that training is still a major bottleneck. While these will fully ensure that there are enough Zone Suits for the Initiative's immediate needs, even with the mountains of metal being fed into the Deep Red Zones, they are likely to be eclipsed in fairly short order by the military's desire to expand its powered armor complement.
Pyongyang is an interesting city. Founded over three thousand years ago, it has been the traditional seat of power in Korea for much of that time. While it moldered under the rule of the Kims, embargoed by much of the world, and kept on life support as they rattled an increasingly aged arsenal for attention and aid, it was revitalized first in the early 2000s, as Initiative funding poured into the city as it became a front line against Brotherhood interests. But it was not until after the Second Tiberium War that it became the near metropolis that it is today. A port city, it is the gateway to the fortifications that line the borders, old and new. Those south of the Yalu, and those across the north of China as the Brotherhood was pushed back step by step.
[ ] Buckler Shield Development (Tech)
A much stronger shield, designed to cover some small portion of the overall hull. While it will likely require substantial redesigns to field, it is also going to provide significant protection for weak points, or allow GDI to reduce total armoring.
(Progress 122/100: 20 resources per die) [87]
A buckler, historically, was a small round shield, primarily used in western Europe as a support for close sword fighting. While the new bucklers are very different, they are also notably similar in purpose. Rather than covering most of the wielder's body, it was used actively to disrupt and block.
One of the key problems with human built shield systems is their weakness. Even the best that GDI can manage are really only capable of taking small arms and light autocannon fire, and from what InOps can find, the Brotherhood of Nod is worse off. The system is actually less of a breakthrough than first expected. Rather than being some folded set of shields, it is actually far more derivative. Instead of trying to project a strong shield bubble around the vehicle, they use a modified variant of the Electroactive armor to energize a strip of shielding, making it substantially stronger, at the cost of weakening the rest of the shields to effective nonexistence.
The practical upshot is that the buckler shield is actually surprisingly easy to integrate. While they are not really compatible with the ablative pucks that have adorned Initiative armor for much of the last decade, the designs to use electroactive armor are still very much in the Initiative's arsenal and – while not compatible with the last generation of armored fighting vehicles – will be an easy addition to the newer designs that have yet to enter prototyping, and one that will allow them to not need nearly as much shield infrastructure as previously expected.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Infrastructure) (95)
GDI's infrastructure spending has been a mixed bag, but one of the largest slices has been in the field of transportation. From road and rail networks, to entirely new forms, like the suborbital shuttle service. All of these offer insights into the future of Initiative strategic planning. The humble railroad has shaped every war that it has served in, from Crimean fields, to Georgian gullies, and the differences in available rolling stock, available resources, and track amenities can play fundamental roles in the success and failure of battles, campaigns, and entire wars.
One Brotherhood cell discovered during the investigation was responsible for the shootdown of Arya Gulati, with her flight in particular being passed over to the unit on the ground with the laser system. While many members were able to go to ground, or otherwise escape ahead of the Intelligence agents detecting them, some were captured or killed, and the others have, at least, been removed from their posts.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Tiberium) (58)
In the last three years, the Tiberium department has seen massive investments, and is actually of interest to many groups, with Tiberium operations being a lagging indicator for GDI's geostrategic investments. Oftentimes only a few kilometers behind the front lines of one of the Initiative's offensives are fleets of Tiberium harvesters, armies of engineers, and uncounted legions of construction robots swarming over the land like ants on a candy bar. For the Brotherhood of Nod of course, this is critical intelligence. Knowing when and where the armies of the Initiative march is something that is in many cases the difference between life and death, victory and defeat.
And then there is the technology. From Tiberium infusions and power generation, to things like Tiberium Glass, to the production and distribution of STUs, the department is involved in an incredibly wide selection of affairs, and has its fingers in nearly every technological pie the Initiative has. Even if they are not a primary participant, they certainly have a representative on site for environmental concerns, and a few more to represent their interests.
While a number of agents have been found, it is unlikely that they are the entirety, both because the Treasury has become predictable in its schedule of sweeps, and because the Tiberium department operates in a large number of areas that are at best awkward for an InOps agent to get to, ranging from deep red outposts, to monitoring stations in the depths of the Antarctic.
A/N : For all the Americans, Happy Turkey Day!
Sorry for taking so long, it has been a pretty intensive month on my end. Will be trying to push out the turnpost tomorrow.
