Might I suggest agriculture mechanisation to help hit our food goal since it will let us do more with what we have.
It's a very attractive project, especially in the first stage; the problem is that it consumes Capital Goods (we have many other options for +Food that don't), and Energy (we have at least one option for +Food that doesn't, though most do).
So our decision to take or not take it will be contingent on our Capital Goods supply and the needs of other Capital Goods-consuming projects, especially the military.
The good news is, we don't really need this project to meet our short-term Food targets.
Turians: We will either get along famously, both sides will side eye each other with guns in hand, or shoot each other until the other side sues for peace. GDI would get Turian culture on good level, but would react very badly to an alien incursion. The scrin left scars. Really depends on if talking or shooting happens for the initial contact.
Yeah.
The one piece of good news is that we'd be encountering them
elsewhere. Assuming they don't just randomly open fire for stupid reasons, we'll at least be aware that
we came to
them and hopefully that will help.
Asari: Blue alien space babes, way better than green alien space babes! The most diplomatic faction, though overbearing. Though some of the colonies could be pretty trigger happy. Could cause some friction due to Asari looking down on humans for being "young" or just dying young.
Salarians: NOD flashbacks intensifies. The focus on tech, stealth, and skullduggery would remind GDI of NOD. Could bond over geeking out, or cause problems when they try to steal tiberuim.
Krogan: The genophage could inspire sympathy, but if the first contact is via violence I would not be surprised if tunchaktka gets some shiny green crystals. Either by throwing them at them or some being taken as loot. Tiberuim enhanced krogan, just what you didn't know the galaxy was missing.
You are not wrong though I can't imagine GDI being bastardy enough to throw tiberium at the krogan as a weapon given what humanity's been through by that point.
And... well, given that all other galactic races except the krogan are short-lived compared to the asari, I assume the asari are broadly speaking used to not pissing off aliens short-lived compared to themselves.
Getting rid of him is a major selling point. The guy will just not die, and there are video/photo records of him from 50+ years ago that show he hasn't aged at all. Coupled with the fact he has survived things like being shot in the head, making him someone else's problem could be pretty attractive. Also avoiding tib war 4, fighting against him in tib war 4 would really really suck given in how bad shape the planet is in. Because the first thing to fall would be tib mining and containment.
Yeah, especially since he'd be fighting us
after (in this notional scenario) we explicitly refused to build the TCN he needs built. At that point, assuming his real goal of "ascension"
requires the TCN, and we have every reason to think it does... Well, he's a bit short on options. His endgame would seem to require him to either replay that World Altering Missile gambit (not gonna fly,
literally, with GDI having robust ASAT and anti-missile defenses), or to somehow conquer the world intact enough that the surviving industrial base can be put to the task of building the TCN himself.
And the downside of our current situation is that we
HAVE preserved and expanded enough industrial base that Kane could conceivably do that. If his focus in Tib War Four was on seizing industrial infrastructure and conquering civilian populations without slaughtering them, he might well be able to take over enough Blue Zones more-or-less-intact-ish that whatever was left would be, say, roughly vaguely equal to what GDI
actually had left in canon by 2062.
So if Kane has to say "fuckit, back to my
original plan of total world domination and
making the survivors build my TCN for me," then he has at least some hope of succeeding on the basis of that plan. Whereas it would have been a hopeless strategy for him in the canon timeline because there was so little left of civilization by 2062 that a fourth war would have reduced both sides to mutually assured destruction as the tiberium finally overtook everything.
Almost certainly. Fortress towns are still warzones under regular attack from nod and/or it's still a yellow zone with ion storms, tiberium, and all the attendant problems therein.
True. Moving them into Yellow Zone arcologies farther back from the front lines would probably help. And
those arcologies are a straight-up, relatively low-cost +Housing option.
The problem, though, is that people aren't gonna want to move from a Blue Zone commieblock to a Green Zone arcology in large numbers, so that only gets us so far by letting us shift Yellow Zone civilians into safer and more comfortable residences. We still have to make the Blue Zoners happy with
their housing situation.
GDI on the other hand, has very compact dense cities in the blue zones, where a lot of people are packed into high density housing and arcologies which are all in one housing developments. So a lot of people have things very local, home, work, shops. So don't need personal transport, along with good rail transport and (I think) bus services. And stuff is either in walking distance or can be gotten to using public transport.
Rural areas, effectively yellow zones in our case, particularly fortress towns, well. The general public there, again, have everything packed into a small area and simply have little need or desire to leave the bubble of safety the fortress provides because outside the walls is a case of "here be dragons" said dragons in this case being tiberium and nod flame tanks.
Sure some motor vehicles would be nice for those who need them, but as is with the arcologies and high density duplexes combined with good quality rail, they're not really needed. And without large amounts of traffic the cities are cleaner, with less traffic and without long commutes and morning rush hours, at least, not those involving heaps of vehicle traffic.
Yeah, but as the density of the cities
decreases (and even building duplex housing has this effect), you still have more strain on transportation. Remember that Logistics isn't just tracking personal vehicles on the one hand and airlift/sealift/freight trains on the other. It's tracking the availability of buses, light rail, and all the other modes of transport used as mass transit in urban areas too.
I'm not inherently opposed to housing grants and the likely result of that. But in my humble opinion such housing should be a supplement to our own efforts, rather than the main source of it. Tiberium being what it is, the bulk of our housing should be well defensible and concentrated. Beyond that, I enjoy the concept of arcologies having everything within easy walking distance, and the resulting lack of need for motor vehicles. Most if not all of our cars would be electric of course, cutting down on pollution and those who live near rail lines likely need good sound proofing. But there's definitely something to be said for less noisy cities.
I don't disagree (although if everything is crowded into big apartment buildings and arcologies, there may be less noise but you're a lot closer to its sources; it can be a sideways move rather than an upwards one).
The problem is, well...
holy shit the arcologies are expensive and each phase is a huge investment.
Ithillid has said he will be using the pre-automobile version of suburbs for this. So, like the suburbs that were being built around New York City in the 1800s, with public transit links to the main cities.
In other words, very little like the modern conception.
A lot of people seem to be arguing from their RL experience/ideology, which is only vaguely applicable to the situation in-quest.
GOD, I KNOW, RIGHT!?
