Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Rakuhn · Apr 30, 2023

I think we're talking in circles at this point?

For some people, spending seven dice to get the next development of Portals one turn earlier is worth it.
For others, they'd rather only spend four dice and get the next development of Portals a turn later.

Everyone knows everyone else's arguments and positions, and I don't think it's very likely that we'll see a novel one?

Dmol8 · Apr 30, 2023

Welp, this plan is insane, so there is still going to be an approval vote below it for one of the leading plans, but I did manage to get both Portals and Alloys up to around 50% chance of completing this turn:

- Postwar Housing Refits are getting 5 Dice to save money and complete all of them with average luck,

- 4 Dice on Alloys for a 53% chance to complete them and a Die on Fusion to get the Second Phase done,

- 3 Dice on Reykjavik and a Die on Adptive Clothing Development,

- 8 Dice on Reforestation to save money and complete the First Phase before the elections and a Die each on Spider Cotton and Tarberries,

- 3 Dice on Tib Vein Mines because they are the cheapest while not being controversial in-thread, a Die on Red Zone Border Offensives to complete this round of them, a Die on Enhanced Tib Spikes because we need them but there is enough people not comfortable with 2 that I'm planning on it being done in two turns, a Die on Coordinated Tiberium Harvesting to keep that rolling and a Die on getting the research for MARVs to produce STUs,

- 3 Dice and Erewhon on Columbia to slow roll it's completion, 3 Dice on Shalla to keep rolling that one and a Die on better life support,

- 1 Die on University Programs to try and complete that and 4 Dice on the new portal construction for a 48% chance to get that done this turn,

- 3 Dice on the last phase of SADN to get that done, 2 Die each on Infantry Support Drones and Stealth Disruptors to get them deployed and a Die on Unmanned Support Ground Vehicles, feel free to swap that one to the mobile base deployment they cost the same,

- Political promises and 3 rounds of trading our Consumer Goods so we can have more resources and make this plan viable.

[X] Plan Logistical Orbit v3.5:
-[X] Infrastructure (5/5 Dice +27 bonus) 50 Resources:
--[X] Postwar Housing Refits (Phase 1) 114/165/325/485 10 RpD, 5 Dice = 50 R 100%/100%/69% DC 1/10/44
-[X] Heavy Industry (5/5 Dice +34 bonus) 180 Resources:
--[X] U-Series Alloy Foundries (Phase 5) 136/485 40 RpD, 4 Dice = 160 R 53% ADC 50
--[X] Second Generation Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 2) 263/305 20 RpD, 1 Die = 20 R 100% ADC 1
-[X] Light and Chemical Industry (4/4 Dice +29 bonus) 75 Resources:
--[X] Reykjavik Myomer Macrospinner (Phase 5) 883/1100 20 RpD, 3 Dice = 60 R 76% ADC 39
--[X] Adaptive Clothing Development 0/60 15 RpD, 1 Die = 15 R 90% DC 11
-[X] Agriculture (6/6 Dice + 4 Free Dice +29 bonus) 65 Resources:
--[X] Reforestation Campaign Preparations (Phase 1) 252/815 5 RpD, 8 Dice = 40 R 86% ADC 52
--[X] Spider Cotton Plantations (Phase 2) 60/165 15 RpD, 1 Die = 15 R 45% DC 56
--[X] Tarberry Plantations (Phase 3) 3/70/140 10 RpD, 1 Die = 10 R 83%/23% DC 18/88
-[X] Tiberium (7/7 Dice +39 bonus) 155 Resources 5 Political Support:
--[X] Tiberium Vein Mines (Stage 9) 22/160/315 20 RpD, 3 Dice = 60 R 100%/43% ADC 2/54
--[X] Red Zone Border Offensives (Stage 5) 158/210 25 RpD, 1 Die = 25 R 100% DC 1
--[X] Enhanced Harvest Tiberium Spikes (Platform) 0/180 20 RpD -5 PSpD, 1 Die = 20 R -5 PS 1/2 Median DC N/A
--[X] Coordinated Abatement Programs (Phase 1) 82/190 25 RpD, 1 Die = 25 R 47% DC 54
--[X] Tiberium Field Refinery Development (Tech) (New) 0/80 25 RpD, 1 Die = 25 R 80% DC 21
-[X] Orbital (7/7 Dice + Erewhon +34 bonus) 170 Resources:
--[X] GDSS Columbia (Phase 5) (Updated) 643/1030 20 RpD, 3 Dice + Erewhon Die = 80 R 18% ADC 64
--[X] GDSS Shala (Phase 4) 486/520/1485? 20 RpD, 3 Dice = 60 R 100%/ 3/12 Median ADC 1/ N/A
--[X] Life Support Processor Development 0/80 30 RpD, 1 Die = 30 R 75% DC 26
-[X] Services (4/4 Dice + 1 Free Die +35 bonus) 415 Resources:
--[X] University Program Updates 137/250 15 RpD, 1 Die = 15 R 38% DC 63
--[X] Primitive Prototype Portal Construction (New) 0/400 100 RpD, 4 Dice = 400 R 48% ADC 62
-[X] Military (7/7 Dice +1 Free Die +31 bonus) 130 Resources:
--[X] Strategic Area Defense Networks (Phase 4) 125/365 20 RpD, 3 Dice = 60 R 65% ADC 44
--[X] Infantry Recon Support Drone Deployment 0/160 10 RpD, 2 Die = 20 R 67% ADC 42
--[X] Stealth Disruptor Deployment 0/170 15 RpD, 2 Die = 30 R 49% ADC 52
--[X] Unmanned Support Ground Vehicle Development (Tech) 0/80 20 RpD, 1 Die = 20 R 72% DC 28
-[X] Bureaucracy (4/4 Dice +29 bonus) +15 RpT -15 PS:
--[X] Make Political Promises
---[X] Developmentalist: Complete both Library Enhancement Programs
---[X] Militarist (Wardens): Begin Karachi after SADN Phase 1 is fully deployed (Q3 2064).
--[X] Trade Programs -5 PS per Action taken
---[X] Sell Consumer Goods X 3: +15 Resources per Turn, -30 Consumer Goods
-[X] Total Cost: 50+180+75+65+155+170+415+130 = 1240/1225+15 = 1240
[X] Plan Thinking With Portals

Approval vote because I would like the portals done before I would like Alloys done, but my plan does both so it may be a mute point.

Edit:

[X] Plan Re-Thinking With Portals 2

Another approval vote added in.

Necratoid · Apr 30, 2023

Shadows said:
I have zero compunctions about dropping 4 dice on Portals - in one turn, even! - I just want to get Alloys done more. Hence, my plans

There is actually a major issue with Derpmind's meme plan... Though not actually one that has come up as of page 1800. GDI has been hellbent on those U-Alloy plans for a while now and is getting into the home stretch of it. NOD is going to see that GDI found something... something they are willing to drop those plans for entirely for, at least for a quarter, and shift an absurd amount of resources into. Its a secret project.

NOD is naturally going to going be obligated to ask... why? Why would they do that? What the hell GDI? What are you doing there?

I'm not actually sure NOD ever figured out what the portal project was the first time they investigated GDI's portal efforts. So having just under half of GDI's global economy spontaniously and randomly shift to a secret project is going to be rather attention drawing. What was so insanely important enough to reshuffle almost half of the budget/resources towards out of no where.

What they do know is that the other major shift was suddenly an insane amount of resources are abruptly focused on trees. Why trees? What is this? That makes no real sense.

In short... NOD intelligence is going to collectively brown note and start pressing all the panic buttons.

You probably don't want NOD to do that.

Voidseer · Apr 30, 2023

Necratoid said:
In short... NOD intelligence is going to collectively brown note and start pressing all the panic buttons.

I'm sorry but the idea that we can (even by accident) make NOD intelligence have a collective brown note over something like a major pivot to reforestation is just funny to me.

Lightwhispers · Apr 30, 2023

Derpmind said:
This far into the vote, I have to say, I never expected what was originally supposed to be a memeplan to still be so competitive. It was really just me throwing together something (seemingly) absurd for the fun of it, and I only accidentally managed to make the rest of the plan work out reasonably. So I'm just happy that so many people liked it enough to vote for it.

With how the vote's gone, I suppose I should try a more serious argument as to why we'd want to try to finish the portal project in one turn. Mainly, it's to avoid lag time. Say, for the sake of the argument, that we'll always get a new portal project 2 years after we finish the previous one. And if we do the portal project at a slow, reasonable pace, it'll always take us 1 year to complete it. The pattern would look like this:

Portal 1 year.
Wait 2 years.
Portal 1 year.
Wait 2 years.
Portal 1 year.
Total: 7 years, or 28 turns.

That doesn't seem too bad. But compare it to us doing an unreasonable pace, and we cram that portal project into just 1/4th of a year:

Portal 1/4th year.
Wait 2 years.
Portal 1/4th year.
Wait 2 years.
Portal 1/4th year.
Total: 4.75 years, or 19 turns.

There is, in fact, quite a significant amount of time that could be saved. We can reasonably deduce, from what we've been told, that the portal technology will require us to do multiple successive projects over many years. And while we cannot change how long it'll take the science to advance between projects, we can speed up how fast we work on the projects when they do show up. And if we do each project in sequence as fast as we can manage, we can accelerate the availability of the later, more impactful stages by entire years.

Alternately, we can look at my revision of Thinking With Portals, which accepts definitely taking half a year to complete the Portal project (as opposed to the 52% chance of it taking that long with the base plan), while addressing most of the issues that others seem to have with the plan.

Portal 1/2 year.
Wait 2 years.
Portal 1/2 year.
Wait 2 years.
Portal 1/2 year.
Total: 5.5 years, or 22 Turns... which is 3 turns better than your (best-case) proposed scenario, and has a decent chance of not having any more delay than there would be for the base plan.

Dmol8 · Apr 30, 2023

tenchifew said:
@Derpmind
I… actually really like this plan?
I thought I would not vote for any none alloy plan, but I can understand that a plan investing 400 resources in portals does not have enough to also get another alloy foundry, and it has everything else essential.

I think I will vote for it.

Edit:

Void Stalker said:
@Derpmind if you could fit alloy 5 in that would be amazing, as it is I think our heavy orbital commitments means we don't want to delay the cost reduction from alloy 5 as that helps make up ground there. Still means that Q4 we can push a lot of R into portals.

My plan has both Alloy and Portal buildings.

Simon_Jester · Apr 30, 2023

bigking321 said:
Yes. But we have more going on than portals.

If we completely abandon all other goals to bum rush portals whenever they show up they would be useful faster.

But we would screw up everything else.

I don't see getting portals a few turns faster as worth chucking everything else we were planning.

Portals will be useful. But they aren't a plan goal. They aren't urgent. We don't need free dice in agriculture.

In this case, they're not causing THAT much damage to our other plans. We've still got plenty of room to make everything work out reasonably well as long as we don't do anything foolish.

bigking321 said:
And it puts free dice on agriculture to afford it. Which is a category that doesn't need any free dice. That hurts heavy industry and orbital that really do need the free dice.

Looking over Doruma's math, we do need the Free dice, but we don't need all the Free dice there. My plan has Free dice on Tiberium. Future plans by me that are relatively 'balanced' might put Free dice on Tiberium or Military. It's okay, if you ask me.

Rakuhn said:
I think we're talking in circles at this point?

For some people, spending seven dice to get the next development of Portals one turn earlier is worth it.
For others, they'd rather only spend four dice and get the next development of Portals a turn later.

To be fair, no one has any assurance that we will actually spend three dice on portals next turn if we spend only one or zero dice now.

I, myself, might have remained content to trickle in one die per turn to the project if not for being a bit galvanized by Derpmind's own plan.

If my plan wins with its one portal die, I will likely want 2-3 dice on portals (depending on details, depending on whether we roll, say, a 5 or a 50 or a 95) next turn... but I might have been content to do otherwise. Plans in any one turn are not fully binding on what will happen next turn.

Necratoid said:
There is actually a major issue with Derpmind's meme plan... Though not actually one that has come up as of page 1800. GDI has been hellbent on those U-Alloy plans for a while now and is getting into the home stretch of it. NOD is going to see that GDI found something... something they are willing to drop those plans for entirely for, at least for a quarter, and shift an absurd amount of resources into. Its a secret project.

NOD is naturally going to going be obligated to ask... why? Why would they do that? What the hell GDI? What are you doing there?

A valid point.

Especially since the alloy project is very much NOT a secret. It can't be, since we're using the alloys all over the place including in routine civilian construction. And I'm quite sure Nod is perfectly capable of, say, flying a recon variant of a Vertigo stealth bomber over our territory at high altitudes now and then to get a rough idea of any new major industrial megaprojects we're starting.

A sudden pause in expansion efforts, followed by a sudden resumption, might catch their eye.

I'm not actually sure NOD ever figured out what the portal project was the first time they investigated GDI's portal efforts. So having just under half of GDI's global economy spontaniously and randomly shift to a secret project is going to be rather attention drawing.

To be fair, it's more like 15% of our global economy, tops.

What was so insanely important enough to reshuffle almost half of the budget/resources towards out of no where.

What they do know is that the other major shift was suddenly an insane amount of resources are abruptly focused on trees. Why trees? What is this? That makes no real sense.

Well, the good news there is that we have a plausible explanation in that we actually spent a lot of resources on trees last turn too, so it would seem more like a redoubling of an existing effort, which even if surprising is less surprising than an abrupt cessation of an ongoing effort.

Voidseer said:
I'm sorry but the idea that we can (even by accident) make NOD intelligence have a collective brown note over something like a major pivot to reforestation is just funny to me.

You are right to be amused, in my opinion.

Nod sometimes has trouble grasping why GDI spends such large amounts on 'nonessentials.' As Kane infamously said to us while intentionally livestreaming his beratement of his warlords to us:

"They've been squabbling internally about what kind of vegetables to grow, but you drove them to churn out an entire new navy!"

Rakuhn · Apr 30, 2023

I'd honestly be willing to approval vote for the Thinking with Portals Plan, if it didn't do 3x Selling Consumer Goods to Nod.

Accounting for increased production, it's about a 10% decrease in total consumer goods availability. And it's going to be concentrated to non-dual use goods (e.g. not computer cards), so it's going to be a much larger decrease in goods in certain sectors (e.g. dairy, fruits, nuts, and meats).

To put that into perspective, we've gotten +12 Consumer Goods from the Dairy ranches, and +16 Consumer Goods from Vertical Farms. And this is taking 30 Consumer goods off the shelves and sending them to Nod.

We defused the Milk and Honey movement through the above investments. This is going to cause it to come flaring back to life, and turbocharge the xenophobes. I'm in favor of trade in general, but it should be limited to about our increased production per turn (~10), not several ones at once.

tenchifew · Apr 30, 2023

[X] Plan Thinking With Portals
[X] Plan Logistical Orbit v3.5:

Simon_Jester · Apr 30, 2023

Rakuhn said:
Accounting for increased production, it's about a 10% decrease in total consumer goods availability. And it's going to be concentrated to non-dual use goods (e.g. not computer cards), so it's going to be a much larger decrease in goods in certain sectors (e.g. dairy, fruits, nuts, and meats).

Though also things like pots, pans, clothes, bedding, electric cars, print and digital entertainment media, and so on.

But yes, I do think this is a fair point overall.

Voidseer · Apr 30, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
"They've been squabbling internally about what kind of vegetables to grow, but you drove them to churn out an entire new navy!"

Oh man thinking on this again makes me smile and laugh. :grin:

😄 Yes They 'made us' churn out an entire new navy.

Rakuhn said:
We defused the Milk and Honey movement through the above investments.

Speeking of which we have only delivered on half of this, we need to look into making artificial honey for our people.

dbRevned · Apr 30, 2023

[X] Plan Attempting to Science the Apertures

I don't really care for doing more alloys (I know they are good, and are important to get early for the beniefts. But nut naratively the blurbs for completing stages havent been that intresting to me) however I would rather not just drop 400 resources on portals in one turn. (I would want to do 2 dice this turn, followed up with enough dice to get around 50% chance completion)

Rakuhn · Apr 30, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Though also things like pots, pans, clothes, bedding, electric cars, print and digital entertainment media, and so on.

But yes, I do think this is a fair point overall.

Technically, electric cars would fall under the dual-use bit (military vehicles, dismantled for batteries, engines, and other parts). But yeah, pots, pans, beddding, clothing and entertainment are probably fine. Still, that calls for limited and slow increases in exports, so that

1) Our production can keep up
2) Prices slowly adjust
3) We can stop if we're causing discontent, or if noticeable shortages start happening

Simon_Jester · Apr 30, 2023

Voidseer said:
Oh man thinking on this again makes me smile and laugh. 😄 Yes They 'made us' churn out an entire new navy.

In all fairness, we had been doing only fairly limited shipyard construction and the Navy was in a terrible state, and we unironically did rush-build a huge global array of shipyards (and multiple entire phases of fusion reactors to power them) within like a year or two because of the scale of naval threat we faced.

I strongly suspect that if Nod had just chilled the fuck out and the Regency War had never happened, we would still have multiple unfinished light-carrier and frigate shipyards, instead of just the Seattle yard.

Rakuhn said:
Technically, electric cars would fall under the dual-use bit (military vehicles, dismantled for batteries, engines, and other parts).

Yeah, but all those individual things are realistically things Nod has no trouble making for itself anymore, and they've been moving away from the "cheaply equipped swarm" model that favors such improvisation and technicals anyway as their population advantage over us has collapsed.

I'd feel pretty sanguine about selling them an electric car or something.

Prime 2.0 · Apr 30, 2023

I have decided that I want to have more fun. I want spikes and portals, I think it would be really funny if nod did a brown note, and the other plans I had an interest in are so far behind as to not be part of the race.

[X] Plan Thinking With Portals

Let's ball.

Necratoid · Apr 30, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Well, the good news there is that we have a plausible explanation in that we actually spent a lot of resources on trees last turn too, so it would seem more like a redoubling of an existing effort, which even if surprising is less surprising than an abrupt cessation of an ongoing effort.

Not quite. There has already been flavor text about trees from the yellow zoners. Trees freak them out as they are thought of as useless Tiberium magnets. Its become a thing they are viewed with unhappy thoughts and NOD is in the zones where trees are known as bad juju.

So GDI spends a quarter doing rando projects involving trees of all things... that are apparently for the outside world and not in domes. The next quarter massive efforts are seemingly randomly focused on trees. GDI must have some reasons for this madness... apparently its a thing people want enough to do these massive projects involving trees.

So now NOD has trees are becoming important for some inexplicable reasons. The best option is that its a resource savings booster for some other project they aren't seeing. That or trees are a mind control hazard or part of some kind of PLAN they aren't seeing. Either way a lot of the budget is going towards trees... and a lot of it is going somewhere. Somewhere important enough to stall the U-series plant out completely close to the end.

NOD pretty much has to investigate this oddity of behavior. If trees are suddenly reduced to kind of a thing that doesn't matter its going to bring up questions for NOD. Having all these resources going into a secret project is going to make it a thing they have to deal with. What is so important? What?

Its actually worse if the project finishes and suddenly nothing comes of it. This is a midstep project so its unlikely to do anything they ca figure out any time soon. The most logical reason for the mad science director of GDI's treasury to do a secret crash program like this is its a project that required itself to be built that fast. They are going to be going nuts until they figure out what you did there.

NOD's only real idea is going to be GDI found an 'I win' button level super project and the logical reason for there being no real observable effect is that its the kind of project that has a spin up time. You know the type: 'Survive 30 Minutes' missions or the kind that screws people over in stages of infection.

So NOD pretty much has to figure out what the GDI is doing this for. Its actually worse if the 'obvious game changing super project' remains a mystery box. That means spy-ops have failed... time for the zerg rush on the site.

Again, not telling you you can't do this. Just stating Its probably going to force NOD's hand... somehow. Most of the won't actually consider just asking what that is all about.

The only other response is NOD deciding it is the trees they should be concerned about and going after them... which means NOD is going to spent efforts on hating on the trees. Yes, that would be a pretty strange reason for the wars to go hot again.

Simon_Jester · Apr 30, 2023

Necratoid said:
So now NOD has trees are becoming important for some inexplicable reasons. The best option is that its a resource savings booster for some other project they aren't seeing. That or trees are a mind control hazard or part of some kind of PLAN they aren't seeing.

...Mind control trees.

In fairness, we did capture one of their greatest plant geneticists not long ago. Sure, he says we're sharing all his work with them, but do they really know that?

PARANOIA MAY DESTROY YAAA!

Rakuhn · Apr 30, 2023

[X] Plan Thinking With Portals
Fuck it. Either I'm right and this is a significant boost to Initiative First and it goes against everything we've been saying about how important it is to consider our people's QoL, or I'm wrong and everything will be fine.
Either way, it's better than continuing to think about what ifs.

FrozenChosen · Apr 30, 2023

[X] Plan Attempting to Science the Apertures

HousePet · Apr 30, 2023

Derpmind said:
There is, in fact, quite a significant amount of time that could be saved. We can reasonably deduce, from what we've been told, that the portal technology will require us to do multiple successive projects over many years. And while we cannot change how long it'll take the science to advance between projects, we can speed up how fast we work on the projects when they do show up. And if we do each project in sequence as fast as we can manage, we can accelerate the availability of the later, more impactful stages by entire years.

This math only works if the people working on the portal tech take time off while we are constructing each prototype. Why would that be the case?
They've dropped a design on our desk, and now they are off to the Bahamas until we find out whether the design works?
And why assume that we cannot change the gap between breakthroughs? The University Program Updates project suggests otherwise. Better computers should also help.
Even if we argue that it is a funding issue, the funding is topped up with the first die assigned, not the last die.

Simon_Jester · Apr 30, 2023

HousePet said:
This math only works if the people working on the portal tech take time off while we are constructing each prototype. Why would that be the case?
They've dropped a design on our desk, and now they are off to the Bahamas until we find out whether the design works?
And why assume that we cannot change the gap between breakthroughs? The University Program Updates project suggests otherwise. Better computers should also help.

You're entirely correct, but at the same time... not gonna lie, I don't think that the portal meme plan really does meaningfully delay our efforts on all those other fronts. A bit, in some ways, but not meaningfully.

Even if we argue that it is a funding issue, the funding is topped up with the first die assigned, not the last die.

Many times the Results blurb for a nearly-finished project is "we've got the project worked out except this one stupid glitch, an additional infusion of funds is required to deal with it."

Lightwhispers · Apr 30, 2023

Rakuhn said:
[X] Plan Thinking With Portals
Fuck it. Either I'm right and this is a significant boost to Initiative First and it goes against everything we've been saying about how important it is to consider our people's QoL, or I'm wrong and everything will be fine.
Either way, it's better than continuing to think about what ifs.

*Pouts in the key of "please approval vote for downballot plans you like.*

Derpmind · Apr 30, 2023

Dmol8 said:
[X] Plan Logistical Orbit v3.5:

Your plan reminded me that there were places I could still manage to get some discounts to my plan. Thus, the following:

As I see it, two of the biggest objections to my plan are that I put free dice in Agriculture, and I put three dice into the Trade Programs. After some extensive work trying to balance the budget, I believe I've resolved both of these issues. The following plan has no free dice in Agriculture, and is only doing one die on Trade Programs. Explanations below.

[X] Plan Re-Thinking With Portals 2
-[X] Infrastructure 5/5 +2 free +1 Erewhon dice 100R
--[X] Blue Zone Arcologies (Stage 4) 1/480 3 dice + Erewhon 60R (3.5/6 median)
--[X] Postwar Housing Refits (Phase 1+2+3) 114/485 4 dice 40R 22%
-[X] Heavy Industry 5/5 dice 110R
--[X] Second Generation Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 2+3) 263/595 3 dice 60R 11% (100% Phase 2)
--[X] Second Generation Repulsorplate Factories 0/560 2 dice 50R (2/6.5 median)
-[X] Light and Chemical Industry 4/4 dice 75R
--[X] Reykjavik Myomer Macrospinner (Phase 5) 883/1100 3 dice 60R 76%
--[X] Adaptive Clothing Development 0/60 1 die 15R 90%
-[X] Agriculture 6/6 dice 30R
--[X] Reforestation Campaign Preparations (Phase 1) 252/815 6 dice 30R 16%
-[X] Tiberium 7/7 dice 165R
--[X] Tiberium Vein Mines (Stage 9) 22/160 2 dice 40R 91%
--[X] Red Zone Border Offensives (Stage 5) 158/210 1 die 25R 100%
--[X] Tiberium Inhibitor Deployment (Blue Zone 4 Southeast Arabia) 52/85 1 die 30R 100%
--[X] Enhanced Harvest Tiberium Spikes 0/180 1 die 20R (1/2 median)
--[X] Coordinated Abatement Programs (Phase 1) 82/190 1 die 25R 47%
--[X] Tiberium Field Refinery Development (New) 0/80 1 die 25R 80%
-[X] Orbital 7/7 +2 free dice 190R
--[X] GDSS Columbia (Phase 5) 643/1030 4 dice 80R 41%
--[X] GDSS Shala (Phase 4) 486/520 4 dice 80R 100% (4/11.5 Phase 5)
--[X] Life Support Processor Development (Tech) 0/80 1 die 30R 75%
-[X] Services 4/4 +2 free dice 430R
--[X] University Program Updates 137/250 1 die 15R 38%
--[X] Library Enhancement Programs 0/180 1 die 15R (1/2 median)
--[X] Primitive Prototype Portal Construction (New) 0/400 4 dice 400R 48%
-[X] Military 7/7 +1 AA dice 130R
--[X] Strategic Area Defense Networks (Phase 4) 125/365 3 dice 60R 65%
--[X] Infantry Recon Support Drone Deployment 0/170 2 dice 20R 58%
--[X] Stealth Disruptor Deployment 0/170 1 die + 1 AA die 30R 30%
--[X] Modular Rapid Assembly Prototype Factory 0/280 1 die 20R (1/3.5 median)
-[X] Bureaucracy 4/4 dice +5R
--[X] Administrative Assistance 2 die auto
---[X] Infantry Recon Support Drone Deployment
--[X] Make Political Promises 1 die auto
---[X] Developmentalist: Complete both Library Enhancement Programs
---[X] Militarist (Wardens): Begin Karachi after SADN Phase 1 is fully deployed (Q3 2064)
--[X] Trade Programs 1 die auto
----[X] Sell Consumer Goods +5 RpT
-[X] Total: 1230R/1230R

[X] Plan Thinking With Portals

Infra: I'm delaying Suborbital Shuttles a turn. It's not something we need in a rush, and is easy enough to do next turn. Instead, I'm putting some of our free dice here on the (cheap) BZ Arcologies. Similar to Simon's plan, BZ Arcologies help build a bigger buffer of HQ Housing for the likely immigration we get from Karachi, and building them also help reassure people who might be a bit upset at us doing the Postwar Housing. I could switch this to Rail Networks if people want, though those have unfortunately become less effective as shown in the most recent update.

I'm not doing ECRP, despite it being 5R cheaper, because I know lots of people strongly object to it.

Tib + Orbital: First off, I'm switching the (somewhat controversial) Forgotten Experimentation for Tiberium Vein Mines. Again, like in Simon's plan, plus it more than makes up for the 10RpT we're not getting from doing lots of Trade Programs. I moved a free die off of one of the BZ Inhibitors and replaced Erewhon's die with it. This makes Columbia more likely to finish. And we're still doing one Inhibitor, not as much as I'd like but still moving forward with it.

I could put another die on Vein Mines, but I don't think we want to spend that many Capital Goods on them currently.

Services: Library Enhancement Programs. Cheap, and everyone likes books, right? Plus an extra free die helps make up for lost time on other Services projects.

Military: I switched one die from the Shark Frigate to doing the Stealth Disruptor. It's one of our most desired projects on the list right now, what with Nod kinda using stealth, like, everywhere and all the time. And it's only 15R/die. I also put our AA die to use here.

I didn't want to do any of our (Munitions) projects, because despite there being a couple that only cost 10R/die, we already have the bureau automatically working on them. The GD-3 Deployment is low priority and would cost 3-4 dice, and I don't think the Ferro Aluminum Armor is a priority for us at all. I also didn't put any free dice here, because I don't want Nod to think we're escalating our military again.

Anyways. Please give feedback if you think I should make more changes for this new plan. I think everything still works, but I had to do a lot of shuffling things around to make all the numbers work, so there might be parts that I didn't realize people really wouldn't like.

HousePet · Apr 30, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Many times the Results blurb for a nearly-finished project is "we've got the project worked out except this one stupid glitch, an additional infusion of funds is required to deal with it."

This is more of a proof of concept demonstration than a research project.
There is no way they would ask for 400R if they hadn't tested the principles and designs thoroughly first.
But we won't be told what they've been up to. We don't have the need to know.

Part of what bothers me is that Boston 5 costs around 300R, and gives significant concrete benefits.
I can't see any significant benefits from portals until we have better computing, energy generation and something like the advanced materials station.

grimely · Apr 30, 2023

[X] Plan Logistical Orbit v3.5:

This plan is sexy. I love this plan. I want to marry it and raise 2.5 children together. The fact that it managed to shove in alloys, enhanced tiberium spikes, field refineries, and portals is a minor miracle. The only way I could love it more is if it didn't do the consumer goods trade three times.

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web

The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web

Twink Death Sufferer