Vein Mining is incredibly important. Underground abatement could delay the destruction of Earth which, I believe, is caused by liquid Tiberium deposits interacting with the mantle.
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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Pronouns
- Viewer
[X] Plan Mad Science Inbound- Tentacles and Phasers on Stun
- Location
- ?????????
[X] Plan Secure the Gains
[X] Plan Secure the Gains + Fortresses
[X] Plan Secure the Gains + Fortresses
- Location
- Mobile, Alabama
Himalayan Book of Grudges.
I do notice none have tickled my fancy yet. Same with the rest of the low and no vote mafia.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think we are making a mistake if we assume that setting up lots of little tiberium harvesting operations and dotting them with railgun harvester factories immediately is either required, or a strong step towards, securing the new conquests. It will help prevent raids and over time have benefits, but I really don't think it's a necessity that justifies skipping over the tendril harvesters.
I respect that Secure the Gains is trying to rush towards portal research, but I don't think it's necessarily as good an idea as what we get by rushing the first phase of tendril harvesters. Because if we get that +90 R, then we really can afford to do both portals and Anadyr at the same time... and to do other major expensive projects more vigorously too, after the portal research is done with.
It's just that by coincidence, deliberately picking a lot of cheap actions happens to appease the people who want us to keep doing "Steel Vanguard boosting" Tiberium actions, because those actions tend to be cheaper compared to stuff like Red Zone Inhibitors and Tendril Harvesters and Red Zone-facing actions in general really.
This is something we would do in order to be well funded for 2061 as we face the need to do a long list of expensive projects: portals, Anadyr, Bergen, shuttles, research gachas, and naval laser refits.
If we delay another turn or two, it will be almost pointless to do such a surge, because the R cost of building the surge will not be repaid before we lose the bulk of the funding anyway. It is pointless to spend 60 R to get +30 RpT for two turns, for example, as a strategem to make it easier to pay for expensive dice. One would have been better off just not funding the program in the first place, and diverting the resources to whatever one wanted to spend the extra money on.
If you want to do a bunch of vein mining to give us the funds to do a lot of expensive stuff at once, great, but you're going to need to "go big or go home" by rolling several Vein Mining dice. I'd respect a plan to do that, even if I'd question whether that's what we should be doing instead of Tendril harvesters.
-Arya Gulati, Longplait
I respect that Secure the Gains is trying to rush towards portal research, but I don't think it's necessarily as good an idea as what we get by rushing the first phase of tendril harvesters. Because if we get that +90 R, then we really can afford to do both portals and Anadyr at the same time... and to do other major expensive projects more vigorously too, after the portal research is done with.
Yes, it did- because in that particular draft plan, I was deliberately cutting the Tiberium budget by taking cheap actions, in order to find the R to fund Anadyr dice.
It's just that by coincidence, deliberately picking a lot of cheap actions happens to appease the people who want us to keep doing "Steel Vanguard boosting" Tiberium actions, because those actions tend to be cheaper compared to stuff like Red Zone Inhibitors and Tendril Harvesters and Red Zone-facing actions in general really.
Because there is a strong argument for doing a major income-boosting surge now, pushing us well beyond our original income target to the tune of 50-100 RpT.
This is something we would do in order to be well funded for 2061 as we face the need to do a long list of expensive projects: portals, Anadyr, Bergen, shuttles, research gachas, and naval laser refits.
If we delay another turn or two, it will be almost pointless to do such a surge, because the R cost of building the surge will not be repaid before we lose the bulk of the funding anyway. It is pointless to spend 60 R to get +30 RpT for two turns, for example, as a strategem to make it easier to pay for expensive dice. One would have been better off just not funding the program in the first place, and diverting the resources to whatever one wanted to spend the extra money on.
If you want to do a bunch of vein mining to give us the funds to do a lot of expensive stuff at once, great, but you're going to need to "go big or go home" by rolling several Vein Mining dice. I'd respect a plan to do that, even if I'd question whether that's what we should be doing instead of Tendril harvesters.
That is a long term argument for doing it in the next year or two, not a short term budgetary argument for doing it now. The distinction is important.
"What do you think motivated me to make a massive deal for Karachi in exchange for my anomalous freakish civil engineering skills? I've got grudges in my ledger."
-Arya Gulati, Longplait
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- Location
- USA
For harvesting tendrils I think we should do them now. But if we don't then we might as well just partially finish it then wait for after redistribution to finish.
No point in doing it right before we give up the resources.
No point in doing it right before we give up the resources.
I'll add the usual caveat that the income won't be wasted by other departments after Reallocation, but yes, the Treasury will only be seeing most of the income we generate until then.
- Location
- New England
Aren't we going to lose like 70% (or whatever) of our income come end-of-plan (just based on what happened the last couple of times)? So wouldn't it make sense to "save" up the high return projects until after that?
The Treasury will lose that, but other GDI departments (InOps, Military, Archives, Social Services, etc) will be getting that income, and the more they have, the less we need to do for them. (Plan requirements are likely to be reduced, some projects may autocomplete/never be needed, etc.)
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Also, y'know, it's kind of a dick move to continuously hoard all of the income.
- Location
- USA
We should probably let them have a decent chunk this round.
With all the new territories and refugees inops and social are probably severely strained.
Edit: Dang it. I'm slowly being convinced to nearly finish harvesting tendrils now and then rush the first and second phases after redistribution.
Or would the politicians see right through that and be really annoyed at us for playing around like that? Like since we would deliberately be withholding income for the next phase they might take the moon resources as retaliation or cost us political points.
With all the new territories and refugees inops and social are probably severely strained.
Edit: Dang it. I'm slowly being convinced to nearly finish harvesting tendrils now and then rush the first and second phases after redistribution.
Or would the politicians see right through that and be really annoyed at us for playing around like that? Like since we would deliberately be withholding income for the next phase they might take the moon resources as retaliation or cost us political points.
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- Location
- Earth
That would be so transparent they would definitely punish us.
- Location
- New England
It's not hoarding, it's "forward-thinking preparation in case we need more resources at some indeterminate point in the future" lol
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Jesus Christ, no. The rest of the GDI government is not the enemy.
- Location
- USA
Given the 2nd phase boosts our other harvesting actions and it being one of the higher costs in tib we do want to finish it this plan so that when we slam income recovery Q1 and Q2 of next plan we are getting even more out of it.
Also yeah keep in mind the more income we gain now the more is rolled off so the other sections of GDI take care of their own areas and less likely we need to invest dice to cover them.
- Location
- New England
Honestly, I'm just bullshitting around anyway - it's a moot point, neither of the winning plans does anything of that nature.
As for the idea that there will be less requests made of the treasury because we give the other departments more money, that's a little naive.
As for the idea that there will be less requests made of the treasury because we give the other departments more money, that's a little naive.
[X] Plan Secure the Gains
[X] Plan Secure the Gains + Fortresses
[X] Plan Secure the Gains + Fortresses
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan Mad Science Inbound- Tentacles and Phasers on Stun
I think the dice on Tokyo is a bit too many given we have that repair commission. Am still convinced overall that harvesting tendrils are more important.
I recognise that leaves our gains less secure than other plans. I judge the risk low enough and the rewards great enough I will vote for it regardless
I think the dice on Tokyo is a bit too many given we have that repair commission. Am still convinced overall that harvesting tendrils are more important.
I recognise that leaves our gains less secure than other plans. I judge the risk low enough and the rewards great enough I will vote for it regardless
- Location
- Most likely California
[X] Plan Secure the Gains + Fortresses
- Location
- Canada
[X] Plan Mad Science Inbound- Tentacles and Phasers on Stun
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The income won't be wasted by other departments, but it will be effectively impossible for us to fund things like portal research or suborbital shuttles anyway, and that's a problem. Suborbital shuttles are desirable for a variety of reasons (for instance, they probably extend the Himalayan Blue Zone's lease on life if pressured by Nod and if that siege doesn't get lifted by default as the Regency War grinds down)... But we can't afford to do that as a program in the context of 2062, because we don't have the income. We certainly won't be able to afford xenotech factories or high-end research projects with costs of 40, 50, or God help us 100 R/die.
Basically, I know the rest of the government will take that income, and I know why they will do so, and I respect their right to do so. At the same time, it behooves us to make hay while the sun shines, and the sun is shining in 2061, but not 2062. If we want to have an income surge to fund extra high-end projects in 2061, it is best for us to have that surge now with the tendrils (or some alternative like slamming out 6-8 dice on vein mines), rather than later in mid-2061 when we won't have time to break even.
It's a mixed bag.
The legislature gave us a very specific target they wanted us to hit for GDI's overall income. I doubt they'll complain much as long as we hit that target, because it represents something like a 50% increase in GDP, even if theoretically we could have exceeded it by another 10-20% if we really tried.
Historically, we have a pattern of doing high-income actions like glacier mining right after reallocation to surge our budget back up to what it was before. The government seems to tolerate that, because we're providing pretty darn good year-on-year GDP growth and making things better, and we spend the income we control on genuinely useful infrastructure and stuff.
Also, we already have a candidate for something to "save" for 2062: the super glacier mines gated behind Red Zone Border Offensives. The medium term plan is to do the key supporting actions in 2061 (ion storm collectors, arguably tendril harvesters, and Red Zone border offensives), then only enact the super glacier mines after reapportionment.
Yeah, it's not just InOps. Our original income target was calibrated on the assumption that our population was going to be about 500 million. With the refugees and new territories it'll be more like 600 million... which means our per capita GDP is about 85% of what we expected it to be. For the economy to be as good in 2062 or so as we'd hoped before Steel Vanguard became a possibility, well...
The Legislature wanted GDI's overall economic income (tiberium, moon mines, taxation of normal economic activity) to be, as far as I can tell, 2050 R per quarter unless I'm doing my math wrong. There may be some 'untyped' income coming in from other sources, but I don't know about that. The point is, if we use that as a benchmark... To get the same per capita GDP with our expanded population, we'd need it to be more like 2450 R... And we're not gonna be able to find 400 R in a hurry.
Though come to think of it, that does give us some serious urgency in trying to boost income this year. If we just hit the old target, GDI's per capita GDP is significantly lower than was expected, though still better than in 2058 when Seo took office. If we exceed the income target by 100-200 points or even 300, which is probably achievable... Well, the economy's looking a lot better.
This may help us avoid a rise in popularity for Initiative First and other parties opposed to further incorporation of refugees.
It's not out of the question if it's really obvious. Personally I'm thinking along the lines of "do Phase 1 before reallocation, maaaybe slow-walk Phase 2 so it completes in 2062Q1." That way, the rest of the government does get a cut.
But the thing is, we don't need to hold this back! We already have something in reserve- the super glacier mines. If those are even more impressive than normal glacier phases, then knocking off two of those plus some vein mining should be more than enough to put us in a good place.
Again, the problem is that the sheer scale of the Tokyo damage will take the repair commission a year and a half to fix on its own, apparently. That's a long time to leave ourselves weakened with respect to key naval infrastructure in the Pacific, potentially long enough for Bintang to recover and hit us again while our own basing infrastructure is a problem for us. Also, it's a long time for us to keep having to pay into the fund, whereas if the war winds down and we've rebuilt Tokyo quickly and cheaply, there's hope that we'll actually get the reconstruction funds back sooner.
So this is partly me expecting that by investing three Infrastructure dice and 45 R, we can get back the 30 R/turn we're paying into the reconstruction fund at least two or more turns earlier than would otherwise be possible.
