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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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Blazblade said:
Neat.

Also whose been doing Pentagon Wars with the Mastodon? Who came up with the idea for the current model?
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It's what happens when you leave a project for 10 years while technology marches on. Especially when the military branch's duty is to test out all the latest and greatest newfangled techs. They find a way to fit em.

At this rate we are going to have this happen on every Steel Talon platform I swear.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I'm guessing that in most other areas, GDI got wind of Nod commanders passing out the tactical nukes and hit the 'STOP' button relatively early in the quarter...

While Krukov may just not give a fuck about that particular stripe of Siberia? Or something else is going on?
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Terrain. Mostly you are sitting on the Lena River. You on one side, the Brotherhood on the other. Behind that is a mountain range. not a huge one, but decently rough.
 
My only complaint about the Mastodon is that they didn't fit any direct fire plasma weapons on it. Otherwise I'm happy.

[X] Expand Official Backchannels
 
Nottheunmaker said:
My only complaint about the Mastodon is that they didn't fit any direct fire plasma weapons on it. Otherwise I'm happy.
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Now that we will soon have railgun munitions, the odds are good that there will be very very few Nod things that a Mastodon cannot demolish with railguns, but would be able to demolish with plasma cannons.

It's much like how GDI surface warships are regularly trading fire with Bintang's plasma-armed Nod warships, and honors in the gunnery duels seem to be more or less even. Our railguns work.
 
Reading through the archive currently and I gotta say, "SpeakertoManagers builds mechs" was the most shocking twist so far.
 
Phht said:
[X] Eliminate Outside Influence

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The military actually ought to have enough dice left in it to do all Plan Goals and finish frigate yards without needing Free Dice. Of course, that means we'd be in Q4 still finishing up Plan Goals (or postponing frigate yards until then), but technically we're good. It's just that people at times confuse actual needs with "needs" (that are actually wants) and thus keep pouring additional dice/resources into Military so they can throw dice at other projects this Plan like we're the Military-Industrial Complex with some other departments attached.
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See, that depends on what your definition of "need" is. If it's "things we need to fulfill the stated goals on the ticker" then yes, we can fulfill our military needs without dipping into our free dice. It, on the other hand, you define it as "things we need to ensure the safety and security of the citizens of the GDI" then no, we cannot in fact accomplish this without dipping into the free dice. SADN is our primary method of ensuring Nod cannot simply vaporize a gargantuan chunk of our economy in Chicago and Mecca in a limited exchange of WMDs. Given that we are currently one reckless move away from a 66% chance of exactly such an exchange, completing such a project is pretty much mandatory.
Zone Armor is not a necessity for this plan. Next plan, however, our ability to expand our economy is likely to be gated by the number of Zone Armor factories we turn out this plan, because at the end of the day, the GDI is still a military-industrial complex with a prosthetic state, and the nature of Tiberium and Nod means that your military potential limits your industrial. Furthermore, given that two of the six branches of the military are loudly making "Gib Zone Armor" noises, not making progress towards that effect is likely to see us smacked with an uncomfortable number of mandates during reallocation. It might be prudent to spend free dice to save free dice.
Overall, I agree with your assessment that we should start spending less free dice on the military and more in other areas. Just try to acknowledge that there are things we actually do need that aren't explicitly in the checkbox.
Edit: Oh yeah, forgot.
[X] Eliminate Outside Influence
Reallocation's coming up, meaning we can kick this back to a medium term problem.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Now that we will soon have railgun munitions, the odds are good that there will be very very few Nod things that a Mastodon cannot demolish with railguns, but would be able to demolish with plasma cannons.

It's much like how GDI surface warships are regularly trading fire with Bintang's plasma-armed Nod warships, and honors in the gunnery duels seem to be more or less even. Our railguns work.
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It's not in question if our railguns work though. We've had decades to prove that they work. The new munitions will make them work even better, but again, that's not in question. A big part of the Talons job is finding out what works. That'd be the point of giving it plasma guns.

Though speaking of the specialty rounds, that be a gokd use of Inferno Gel. And our own flamethrowers would be great against the buzzers. Not while they're being used on civilians, but if they show up in future they'd be great.
HousePet said:
Maybe the Deployment project will add one?
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We can only hope.
 
Blazblade said:
So what Territories did we take this turn?
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The main changes are the expansion of Blue Zones into Green Zones, particularly in Western NA, Spain and Australia.

There seems to be a push against the Red Zones in NOD Eastern India and Sudan.

Our MARV Hubs in SA have pushed back the Red Zone there by a few kilometres. We've also clipped a few kilometres off the eastern edge of the NA Red Zone.
 
Okay, first off... did anyone else notice that the Green Zone near Chicago is no longer touching the Red Zone? GDI Tiberium operations go BRRRRRRRRR....

Simon_Jester said:
Except the thing we were ordered to do was NOT "avoid food shortages," a goal we already achieved years ago. It was "go do this new thing."

If we'd built effectively zero moon mines this Plan so far, and Starbound politicians were making nasty noises about how we weren't keeping our promises, you wouldn't respond with "yeah, I know, the moon is totally gone and we have no presence in space, OH WAIT we have the Philadelphia." Because that wouldn't be a good faith response.
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Here's the thing. That is an apple and oranges comparison.

Ithillid said:
The head of the committee, Julius Wilson commented that "When we ordered the reconstruction of food stockpiles, it was with the intention of heading off shortages in case of war. With the ongoing war, and only a year left in the plan, it is obvious that Seo Thoki and the Treasury have decided that actually storing food is an unimportant bagatelle, rather than a vital element to prepare the Initiative to endure shortages."
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This person is complaining that the Stored Food was intended to head off shortages in time of war. They specifically point to the current war and complain that we haven't stored enough for the war.

This is more like "You needed to stock x amount of cereal by y date in case we run out of pancakes for a major influx of people because someone ruined the mix! It's still well before y date and no one has ruined the mix and the major influx of people is already going down to normal and we've yet to get anywhere close to needing the cereal, but how dare you not have stocked more cereal!" while the pancakes are not in any danger of running out and it's still well before the deadline with plenty of capability to deal with the cereal issue without endangering the pancake mix supply.

And if a situation during the war arose where we had needed to dip into the Stored Food or nearly needed to, we would've done what we always have when an unexpected crisis rears its head - change our spending priority to solve the problem ASAP and then some. The Treasury has a bit of a track record on that at this point (also a track record of leaving some things a bit closer to the wire than some may like, but completing them in time anyhow). And the politician would've been right to call us out on not having more stocked in such an event.

This feels more like politicians using the plant sabotage to grandstand for the public to earn political brownie points with citizens rather than the committee actually doing their job by double checking that we're capable of accomplishing the goal in spite of the freeze dried plant set back plus all the refugees and prodding us a bit by pointing out that if we fail, the committee is going to gleefully rake us over the coals in public view as a result minimum.

But maybe my annoyance at politicians everywhere seemingly spending more time farming voter/donor/other support than actually doing their fucking jobs properly is biasing my view of things here. I mean, I kinda want to slap down an Extra Large stockpile in Q1, and then ask why they're complaining to us about needing to ration food to avoid shortages, after all, we just nearly doubled the food stockpiles which they were just bitching at us about having not made more progress on, so could they just make up their damn mind, or let us do our thing and get it done before Plan end.

...Probably best to just let this particular conversation end and just move on with doing what we were going to do anyhow regarding stored food progress. Even if we disagree over the politician and committee's actions, we're still going to be going forward with getting the stored food done in time as planned.

Ithillid said:
If you don't want Talons projects turning into Pentagon Wars, you do them in something resembling a timely manner.
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I dunno if I'd call the Mastodon a Pentagon Wars. I mean, the original form would've been a competitor to the Mammoth Mk III and there would've ended up being debates about which to keep in service on cost/maintenance grounds and do we really need a small supply of assault walkers instead of an uniform force of Mammoth Mk IIIs. Now we have an assault walker that fills a different role in GDI's arsenal. The Mammoths are breakthrough tanks. The Mastodon is more akin to an assault gun, moving with the infantry and providing fire to support the advance. It complements the Mammoth's role now rather than compete with it.

Besides, at least this one doesn't have a crotch cannon. We're making progress! (And then the Talons slap their medium tactical plasma weapon on the ventral surface of the Mastodon, giving it a crotch cannon anyhow, just to spite my hope.)

I do kinda want to see an anti-missile variant. Delete the cheek railguns (or at least one set), add lots of Predator AMS points everywhere on the forward arc. Nod forces launch a bunch of ATGMs/RPGs, Vegas laser light show ensues. Hm. I wonder how easy it would be to swap out a cheek railgun mount for something like a Pacifier arty system. Or would that need to be more like a disco ball/VLS area replacement?

If anything, our escort carriers are more Pentagon Wars. After all, we deliberately delayed them to slap a variety of tech including drones on, resulting in numerous changes in the design concept over time to accommodate the things we felt it needed and caused what could've been a 40k ton design to hit 50k+ tons.

IndustrialVice2 said:
See, that depends on what your definition of "need" is. If it's "things we need to fulfill the stated goals on the ticker" then yes, we can fulfill our military needs without dipping into our free dice. It, on the other hand, you define it as "things we need to ensure the safety and security of the citizens of the GDI" then no, we cannot in fact accomplish this without dipping into the free dice. SADN is our primary method of ensuring Nod cannot simply vaporize a gargantuan chunk of our economy in Chicago and Mecca in a limited exchange of WMDs. Given that we are currently one reckless move away from a 66% chance of exactly such an exchange, completing such a project is pretty much mandatory.
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In the next year, our definition of need is very much "Complete Plan Goals." Full Stop. Anything above that is bonus. Skywatch and frigate yards aren't plan goals, but since Skywatch keeps an eye for extraterrestrial threats and there's a definite concern about that now, and frigate yards improve our convoy protection and general naval capacity, they're practically plan goals. And all of those can be met without touching free dice. Meanwhile, we have Agriculture and Orbital with little to no slack in dice in the event of bad rolls. And note, my suggestions on dice spending for this final year has always been on increasing the amount military gets once more in the later half of the year should other areas no longer need the added support, and not completely ditching free dice usage on military per turn any turn.

Now, longer term, "need" has a different definition. Except "things we need to ensure the safety and security of the citizens of the GDI" is so vague that it would mean every single Military project is a "need"... because all military projects contribute to that goal. That's the purpose of the military - to ensure the safety and security of your country's citizens against external threats. Your definition of need is "Military."
 
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