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Per Aspera (Space Agency Plan Quest)

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Anyway, a quick counter to the currently winning plan.

It is not at all realistic about resource consumption. For comparison, this is how we started last year.
Shadows said:
Resources:
445R (+480R/turn) (-35R/turn from payroll/dice purchases)
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And this is how we ended.

Shadows said:
Resources:
45R (+480R/turn - 35R/turn from payroll/dice purchases = +445/turn net)
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That means we consumed nearly 580 resources per turn. 100/turn from reserves, 480 from income. Subtract payroll, and it's 545/turn in free spending.

Our reserves are almost used up now (10/turn left), and the plan wants to reduce free income from 445/turn to 415/turn (reduce percentage to 1% to get 400, use PS to bump back to 460, then increase payroll by 10 from new hires).
De facto, that's 120 resources less per turn, a near 25% reduction.

Meanwhile, our costs have only increased.
The plan recruits a further two dice, which will conservatively consume 20R/turn , but could be as expensive as 40R/Turn
Our orbital rockets cost 35R/turn, far more than Gale's and Beden 20/Turn and 15/Turn.

On top of that, the promises the plan makes are not cheap.
It commits to Big ear and Material research, the two most expensive research projects we have.
It commits to the construction of 2 research centers, the second most expensive infrastructure project we have.
It commits to nuclear power plant design, the most expensive engineering project we have. (Alternative design studies at least is cheap)

---------------------------------

This is plan for if we're planning to not actually launch all that much rockets, because we won't have the funds for it.

[X] Plan Ironically, Not Moonshot
[X] Plan: Second Five-Year Plan
 
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[X] Plan: Wave the flag
-[X] [FUND] 1.5% (-70PS)
-[X] Conduct Materials Research (Phase 5) (+10 PS, Int(M-L) moves 2d10 steps towards Favor, small additional progress requirement added in order to represent finding materials good for civilian use)
-[X] Launch a Venus probe before 1960Q1. (+5PS, +2 to Dnipro Aerospace Metallurgy Centre's bonus)
-[X] Complete Exploratory Propellant Research (Phase 3) by 1956Q1. (+5PS) (Int(D) moves 2d5 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Launch a probe to Mars by 1960Q1. (+5PS, +2 to Long Beach Propulsion Research Complex's bonus)
-[X] Launch a Lunar Impactor before 1956Q3. (+5PS, +2 to New Delhi Physics Institute bonus)
-[X] Build the New Delhi AND Beijing Scientific Complexes by 1956Q1. (+10PS) (Int(C) moves 4d10 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Take the hit for broaching the Nuclear Power topic to the Council. (FWW sets stance: Quietly Pro-Nuclear) (+15PS)
-[X] Conduct Nuclear Power Plant Design Studies (+10PS) (No movement)
-[X] Conduct Materials Research (Phase 5) (+5 PS, FWW moves 2d10 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Conduct Prototype Spaceplane research (+5PS, FWW moves 2d5 steps towards Favor, SDL moves 2d5 steps towards Oppose)
-[X] Complete Exploratory Propellant Research (Phase 3) by 1956Q1. (+5PS) (UWF moves 2d5 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Build and test-fly a spaceplane before 1956Q3. (+5PS, +2 to Sao Paolo Aerodynamics Centre's bonus)
-[X] Transfer APCP formula to the UWF for use in military rockets. (+5PS) (UWF moves 2d5 steps towards Favor, SDL moves 2d10 steps towards Oppose)
-[X] Build the New Delhi Institute for Physics by 1956Q1. (CPAL moves 3d5 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Research Support (-5PS, +3 to all Science and Engineering dice until 1955Q1)
-[X] Broach the topic of Nuclear Power. (-35PS, variable reactions from the Parties, gain permission to further pursue the topic of the usage of nuclear technology)
-[X] Right Stuff Assistance - You have such an incredible volume of applications that it might be worthwhile to ask for help in processing them all. This will auto-complete Right Stuff, but some of the candidates you get might be… less qualified than desired. (-5PS)
-[X] Hire a spacefarer from Africa and the Pacific each. (+10PS, CPAL moves 4d5 steps towards Favor)]
-[X] Hire a spacefarer from South America. (+5PS, UWF moves 2d5 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Hire a spacefarer from the Pacific Islands. (+5PS, FWW moves 2d5 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Hire a spacefarer from Western or Eastern Asia. (+5PS, Int(C) moves 2d5 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Hire a spacefarer from North America. (+5PS, Int(D) moves 2d5 steps towards Favor)
-[X] Hire a spacefarer from Eastern Europe. (+5PS, Int(M-L) moves 2d5 steps towards Favor)
-[x] Commit to building a telescope on the Moon by 1975. (+15PS, FWW will move 20d10 steps towards Favor on completion.)
-[X] Redirect Funding to the IEC - By pulling on the right strings, you can get funding redirected to the IEC beyond the percentage allotment. (10PS => 50R/Turn)
-[X] [GRAD] Facilities
-[X] [GRAD] Engineering
-[X] [GRAD] Science
-[X] [GRAD] Science

A modification of Etranger's plan that exchanges the construction of Weather sattelites for completely selling out astronaut recruitment. But I don't think that it's that much of a problem, 6 is a perfect size for an astronaut team and I doubt the council will send us candidates that are entirely unqualified.

And even if they are, in our first gen capsules, astronauts are likely to be mere passengers, not actually doing anything. So, launch them once, give them a participation trophy, send them home for parades.

It also does telescopy to free up a bit of extra budget, because we're going to need that with hiring 4 extra dice, and I want a lunar telescope.

[X] Plan Ironically, Not Moonshot
[X] Plan: Second Five-Year Plan
 
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10ebbor10 said:
Anyway, a quick counter to the currently winning plan.

It is not at all realistic about resource consumption. For comparison, this is how we started last year.

And this is how we ended.



That means we consumed nearly 580 resources per turn. 100/turn from reserves, 480 from income. Subtract payroll, and it's 545/turn in free spending.

Our reserves are almost used up now (10/turn left), and the plan wants to reduce free income from 445/turn to 415/turn (reduce percentage to 1% to get 400, use PS to bump back to 460, then increase payroll by 10 from new hires).
De facto, that's 120 resources less per turn, a near 25% reduction.

Meanwhile, our costs have only increased.
The plan recruits a further two dice, which will conservatively consume 20R/turn , but could be as expensive as 40R/Turn
Our orbital rockets cost 35R/turn, far more than Gale's and Beden 20/Turn and 15/Turn.

On top of that, the promises the plan makes are not cheap.
It commits to Big ear and Material research, the two most expensive research projects we have.
It commits to the construction of 2 research centers, the second most expensive infrastructure project we have.
It commits to nuclear power plant design, the most expensive engineering project we have. (Alternative design studies at least is cheap)

---------------------------------

This is plan for if we're planning to not actually launch all that much rockets, because we won't have the funds for it.

[X] Plan Ironically, Not Moonshot
[X] Plan: Second Five-Year Plan
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Click to shrink...

Ah, my bad, I forgot about the -10 penalty from the new dice. Here's what I think we need for the promises, by my assessment:
R/turn at max dice
Prior projects we shouldn't stop:
Heat Shielding15 (but only for one turn)
Observation Satellites15
Human-Rated Rocketry20 (possible cut)
Photovoltaics20
New stuff we're promising:
Materials Research60 (20/die)
Facilities Construction180 (30/die)
Nuclear Power25
Big Ear20-40 (20/die, but we don't need to have two facilities dice on this every month)
Alternative Launch Systems5
2 dice building rockets/turn70
Upkeep45
Total440-495
I had it at 460R/turn, but I'll raise it to 475/turn to give us a bit more wiggle room

While Materials Research is the most costly project, it's also the one that gets us the most PS, for example. We're getting enough from that alone that we could trade PS for money, get the three needed GRAD dice, and activate it all, and still come out ahead. I'm only not doing that because I don't want to overextend ourselves too much when we might get bad rolls.

Big Ear is for the synergy with the electrification promise.

Research centres are a long term investment, not getting them is silly.

Nuclear power is because, well, obviously.
 
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C_Z said:
I had it at 460R/turn, but I'll raise it to 475/turn to give us a bit more wiggle room
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So, you're just assuming a zero resource cost for recruiting astronauts, and doing no prep work work for the interstellar missions you took?

C_Z said:
Big Ear is for the synergy with the electrification promise.
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It seems a bit pointless, because you're taking that promise to get 5 PS, but the only option we have to actually build that missing point of industry/electrification is to go bother councillors, and that'll cost 10 PS just to open up the subvote.
 
10ebbor10 said:
So, you're just assuming a zero resource cost for recruiting astronauts, and doing no prep work work for the interstellar missions you took?


It seems a bit pointless, because you're taking that promise to get 5 PS, but the only option we have to actually build that missing point of industry/electrification is to go bother councillors, and that'll cost 10 PS just to open up the subvote.
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No? The prep work for the interplanetary missions is materials research 5 in order to make lightweight tanks for upper stages, observation satellites so we have a payload, and Big Ear so we can listen to their transmissions. What else could we pick at this point?
 
C_Z said:
No? The prep work for the interplanetary missions is materials research 5 in order to make lightweight tanks for upper stages, observation satellites so we have a payload, and Big Ear so we can listen to their transmissions. What else could we pick at this point?
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Big ear is a radio telescope, it won't do any interstellar satellite control. That would probably be an expansion of tracking stations.

Anyway, we'd probably also want the assembly complex and launchpad expansions. We're not going interplanetary on a 30 tonne launch site.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Big ear is a radio telescope, it won't do any interstellar satellite control. That would probably be an expansion of tracking stations.

Anyway, we'd probably want the assembly complex and launchpad expansions. We're not going interplantetary on a 30 tonne launch site.
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While it is a radio telescope, those are also used for communications in exceptional circumstances (Parkes Observatory, famously, was used to get the signals from Apollo 11 and parts of the Voyager missions). As long as the antenna is trainable, then we can use it for interplanetary signal reception.

I am vehemently against designing a new intermediary rocket before our crewed lifter, and I don't think it's necessary to take a peek at Venus and Mars. When @CyberFemme and I took a look at the actual design of our rocket, we estimated that it's horrifically inefficient (which makes sense, we started designing it before we did much in the way of materials or structural research). We could get just shy of a ton to orbit with the same rocket design if our tanks were made to the same performance as something like Titan, which correlates to around 250 kg to Earth escape, and that's enough for a flyby probe. If we need to, we can also use a few sounding rockets as radial boosters while still using the 30-ton pad.
 
C_Z said:
While it is a radio telescope, those are also used for communications in exceptional circumstances (Parkes Observatory, famously, was used to get the signals from Apollo 11 and parts of the Voyager missions). As long as the antenna is trainable, then we can use it for interplanetary signal reception.

I am vehemently against designing a new intermediary rocket before our crewed lifter, and I don't think it's necessary to take a peek at Venus and Mars. When @CyberFemme and I took a look at the actual design of our rocket, we estimated that it's horrifically inefficient (which makes sense, we started designing it before we did much in the way of materials or structural research). We could get just shy of a ton to orbit with the same rocket design if our tanks were made to the same performance as something like Titan, which correlates to around 250 kg to Earth escape, and that's enough for a flyby probe. If we need to, we can also use a few sounding rockets as radial boosters while still using the 30-ton pad.
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the actual 'big ear' project was very unstearable, and only able to scan the sky as the earth rotated. It looked like this from the side:

(___________,__/ The canted line is a radio-reflector, the curve is a parabola, and the coma is the detector it's all focused on.
 
Vehrec said:
the actual 'big ear' project was very unstearable, and only able to scan the sky as the earth rotated. It looked like this from the side:

(___________,__/ The canted line is a radio-reflector, the curve is a parabola, and the coma is the detector it's all focused on.
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Yeah, I'm familiar, but I hope we can steer it towards a dual-use steerable dish (edit: we're chronologically around the same time as the Lovell observatory, so a really big dish is definitely an option), especially because the Ohio State observatory was intended for whole-sky surveys and isn't great for what IMO we need.
 
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[X] Plan: Nuking, Rebuilding, and Freedom
It is the only reasonable plan that does not have us making a promise to launch interplanetary probes before we have even properly probed our own natural satellite.
 
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