1. I'm considering changing this mechanic because it makes for more complexity. Let's say that yes, you do have to eat the surcharge no matter what. This is meant for you to be able to spend a little extra on important techs, not for you to just keep a spare pool of RP to prevent anything from going badly.
2. 100 RP? That's why that upper limit exists? And that will include helping with some "below abstraction" civilian refits like governmental buildings, mass transit, etc.
1. Makes sense.
2. I wasn't sure if it was 100 RP cap straight, or "it varies depending on how well SSDIPS rolls, because the design costs themselves will".
If it's 100 RP straight and we have to pay the surcharge regardless, I believe I will take the boost back off of SSDIPS, since expected savings from boost is only around 10, while the fixed cost is more like 34.
I would argue that setting up a global sensor net to detect any congregation of cultists anywhere on Denva, and giving the Denvans the designs so that they can go on to do the same anywhere else they end up expanding, along with psy-shielded bots with tranq-guns to round up any suspected cultists detected by that network is plenty of anti-chaos preparation. In every other area of research Plan: G-1st Counter-Insurgency featuring shields for literally everybody falls behind. It doesn't make any progress on warp comms, doesn't resolve the last bits of research for Faith or Void Abaci, and it doesn't close up the last bit of missing capability for OMC usage.
I also like my diplomatic take on the action to actually help Denva with their cultists of course.
Now, now - while it was a bit uncharitable of Meianmaru to say you served
no long term interests, saying that mine falls behind in every other respect is equally reductive - we both pursue longer term benefits, just in different fields.
As you say, you make progress on warp comms. That's good, it's something we want before we leave even though we only get limited benefit from it before departure - scouting ships can be sent out and report back the old fashioned way just fine, after all, but even the scouting ships need abacuses, which you finish. I gave credit for Faith, likewise, and I'm not unlikely to switch my command action to a diplomacy action on yours, as I've already said.
However, let's not forget what long term benefits
I am pursuing in plan G-1st:
- It tees us up to finish up and bind Bongo immediately next turn, through psy encryption and general psy shield upgrades between SSDIPS (which does say it improves shielding generally) and MS Controlled shielding backed by a boosted MSCR.
- It knocks out almost every prerequisite for export-ready psychic shielding:
- SSDIPS directly lets us design trade goods to print in bulk, bringing costs down to match our other economically viable trade goods
- Machine Spirit Controlled Psy Shields is a prerequisite for self-healing psy shields, a go-to-jail-do-not-pass-go hard requirement for our shielding to be sold to anyone who does not have the spare manufacturing capacity to repair it, much less to people (most, in otherwords) for whom it should stay black-boxed.
- The RP funneled into Denva for their misceallaneous shielded designs, while below abstraction, are still designs we have, and designs that are all part of the necessary kit to provide an uplifted or reformed world with hardened infrastructure, and the experience of this very deployment will tell us what to consider when deploying that infrastructure to a contested planet.
- My bot redesign benefits from SSDIPS - it is already psychic shield mass production ready, no redos needed.
Ironically, it's actually the
short term where our plans differ in effectiveness. Abacus manufacturing, Faith, partial progress on intelligence coding, large-scale OMC... distinction between Vita using spy sats on denvan orders or denva using them directly from the start aside, we're not actually using any of those things this turn! And while many can contribute to potential next turn plans, most of them can just be gotten at the same time as what they're contributing to.
By contrast, every RP my plan spends is in direct service to our immediate goals, not the least of which is hardware psychic encryption to eliminate all possibility of
Bongo feeding info to the cults, while still forwarding our existing "complete on denva" agenda. Without even slowing down our other plans, it just invests
more in making sure that no matter the rolls, we're prepared to ace this Ground First Counter-Insurgency.
(title drop)
Fulfilling short term goals reliably in a way that
does not delay longer term ones by recognizing what can be done immediately and what can be deferred is, ultimately, what good build order planning is all about. When the chips are down, that's why I think mine is bette: it does more, while not doing anything slower, simply by doing things in a different order. Birds and stones, you know the drill.
But really, all of this explains what we mostly already knew: Focusing our research effort squarely on things that knock the cultist problem out first is more effective than diluting our effort across things that we will only use after the counter-insurgency is done.
Hence, my vote remains:
[x] Plan: G-1st Counter-Insurgency featuring shields for literally everybody
That said, I'm out of time - edits such as to fixing the repair bay BP will happen in eh, call it 3-4 hours? I should get around to rejiggering the cleanup action as a diplomacy like Kyle's then too.
