[X] Plan Build and Research v2
Thanks Pixy
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Ace Combat XCOM: Enemy Skies
- Thread starter hYGP
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- He/Him/His
Might be a bit late, but:
[X] Plan Long Caster Learns To Play Politics
- [X] Delegate (150?)
-- [X] Shen: Recruit Engineers
-- [X] Vahlen: Recruit Scientists
-- [X] Avril: Assess and repair assets
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Where nations are willing, put national military units into a single command under XCOM. These should include air, ground and where possible orbital assets.
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Give XCOM the sole legal right to operate military assets in space (specifically, anywhere above 100km-above-sea-level). Nobody trusts anybody else with the militarization of space, so might as well make it an international body accountable to all nations.
---- If diplomats object, point out that not doing this means Belkan superweapons in space
-- [X] Media: Use our support levels to pressure governments into upping their financial and industrial commitments
- [X] Discuss (25)
-- [X] Rosa Cosette d'Elise - Status of EASA, and key scientists and administrators, incl. Dr. Schrodeder; her thoughts on the Erusean civil war
- [X] Briefings (50 Focus)
-- [X] Status of living Aces from wars in the last 25 years
- [X] Status Reports (75 Focus)
-- [X] Dr. Vahlen
-- [X] Dr. Shen
-- [X] Commander Pulford
- [X] Recruit Staff (25 Focus)
-- [X] Administrative Assistants
- [X] Organize XCOM (100 Focus)
My concern is that we're thinking too small. Given our political situation, I think we want to push hard at the IUN for extra authority -- we're not going to be front-page news or have this level of support for a long time, and I think we want to capitalize on it as much as possible.
[X] Plan Long Caster Learns To Play Politics
- [X] Delegate (150?)
-- [X] Shen: Recruit Engineers
-- [X] Vahlen: Recruit Scientists
-- [X] Avril: Assess and repair assets
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Where nations are willing, put national military units into a single command under XCOM. These should include air, ground and where possible orbital assets.
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Give XCOM the sole legal right to operate military assets in space (specifically, anywhere above 100km-above-sea-level). Nobody trusts anybody else with the militarization of space, so might as well make it an international body accountable to all nations.
---- If diplomats object, point out that not doing this means Belkan superweapons in space
-- [X] Media: Use our support levels to pressure governments into upping their financial and industrial commitments
- [X] Discuss (25)
-- [X] Rosa Cosette d'Elise - Status of EASA, and key scientists and administrators, incl. Dr. Schrodeder; her thoughts on the Erusean civil war
- [X] Briefings (50 Focus)
-- [X] Status of living Aces from wars in the last 25 years
- [X] Status Reports (75 Focus)
-- [X] Dr. Vahlen
-- [X] Dr. Shen
-- [X] Commander Pulford
- [X] Recruit Staff (25 Focus)
-- [X] Administrative Assistants
- [X] Organize XCOM (100 Focus)
My concern is that we're thinking too small. Given our political situation, I think we want to push hard at the IUN for extra authority -- we're not going to be front-page news or have this level of support for a long time, and I think we want to capitalize on it as much as possible.
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- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
First: absent any judgement on whether the plan is good or bad, it's exciting.
Second: Is this section supposed to mean that you are delegating the task of convincing the IUN signatories to merge military units with XCOM forces and to give up all legal right to operate military equipment above 100km, to the IUN itself?
- Location
- Massholistan
[X] Plan Long Caster Learns To Play Politics
- Location
- Singapore
[X] Plan Long Caster Learns To Play Politics
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
IUN was kind of a placeholder there -- I don't actually know if Pulford is accomplished enough a diplomat to do this. I don't get the sense that Long Caster is, and... uh, maybe the best we can do on short notice is Princess Rosa? Are there any other diplomats or public figures we can wrangle on short notice?
...though I hear Rosa's great on TV and full of charisma so v.v
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...I've got a bit of time, so let me write up my thinking in more detail.
IMO, our priorities are, in order:
That's a lot, so let me unpack it.
We can lose in a number of ways, but they kind of reduce to the classic XCOM formula -- either all of our pilots die and we can no longer successfully contest the alien air force; or, our political support is eroded, one way or another, to the point where we can no longer sustain our mission, and the aliens play nation against nation until the ultimate collapse of humanity.
We win when we build a navy in orbit capable of repelling any alien attack on Strangereal. We don't know enough about the aliens to determine whether they have a critical weakness -- an alien queen/nerve center/command nexus or something similar -- but even if they do have a single point of failure, hitting that just buys us time; it does not fulfill the mission of keeping the peace on Strangereal. Until we can contest the orbitals, the aliens can just keep plinking at us while they build up an invasion force -- they can hit us in all sorts of ways, but we cannot effectively attack their center of gravity.
That implies a few things. One, it implies that what we are doing is buying enough time for our scientists and engineers to build a program capable of going into space; and two, it implies that we're going to have a whole lot of heavily armed weapons platforms in orbit.
To that last point, if XCOM is seen to favor any individual nation, that nation's opponents will seek to build their own space navy -- and we just had major impact events in 1994, do we as a species really want to live through Ulysses again every time there's a major war?
Right now, XCOM is at the peak of its popularity. We inflicted a significant defeat on a major alien force en route to a major population and media center; we have live guncam footage; humanity as a species has suffered no significant hits on any industrial center. Our popularity has nowhere to go but down -- and that says to me that we need to be locking in political advantage now.
I considered adding in the additional clause that the IUN will retain the IP rights to all reverse-engineered alien tech, which would serve as an independent revenue stream for both the IUN and XCOM -- @huhYeahGoodPoint, is that a major focus thing for us, or can we delegate it to the diplomats?
IMO, our priorities are, in order:
- Don't lose
- Win
That's a lot, so let me unpack it.
We can lose in a number of ways, but they kind of reduce to the classic XCOM formula -- either all of our pilots die and we can no longer successfully contest the alien air force; or, our political support is eroded, one way or another, to the point where we can no longer sustain our mission, and the aliens play nation against nation until the ultimate collapse of humanity.
We win when we build a navy in orbit capable of repelling any alien attack on Strangereal. We don't know enough about the aliens to determine whether they have a critical weakness -- an alien queen/nerve center/command nexus or something similar -- but even if they do have a single point of failure, hitting that just buys us time; it does not fulfill the mission of keeping the peace on Strangereal. Until we can contest the orbitals, the aliens can just keep plinking at us while they build up an invasion force -- they can hit us in all sorts of ways, but we cannot effectively attack their center of gravity.
That implies a few things. One, it implies that what we are doing is buying enough time for our scientists and engineers to build a program capable of going into space; and two, it implies that we're going to have a whole lot of heavily armed weapons platforms in orbit.
To that last point, if XCOM is seen to favor any individual nation, that nation's opponents will seek to build their own space navy -- and we just had major impact events in 1994, do we as a species really want to live through Ulysses again every time there's a major war?
Right now, XCOM is at the peak of its popularity. We inflicted a significant defeat on a major alien force en route to a major population and media center; we have live guncam footage; humanity as a species has suffered no significant hits on any industrial center. Our popularity has nowhere to go but down -- and that says to me that we need to be locking in political advantage now.
I considered adding in the additional clause that the IUN will retain the IP rights to all reverse-engineered alien tech, which would serve as an independent revenue stream for both the IUN and XCOM -- @huhYeahGoodPoint, is that a major focus thing for us, or can we delegate it to the diplomats?
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
i am all for recruiting erusean warcrimes princess waifu as our political envoy
Zoosmell
Blind Idiot Arcana
- Location
- Kansas
Losing pilots is an important point, and part of why I'm for developing UAVs as fast as we possibly can here, and ideally getting Huginn and Muninn trained, airborne, and mass-produced as fast as possible. As long as we control the leash instead of some strategic AI (or at least we control the strategic AI), they won't go Skynet on us. More importantly, they can learn from the X-Rays as well, and boy howdy with how they can Star Fox around with regular sixth-gen airframes I shudder to think how much they'll embarrass the ayy pilots once we start getting towards unlocking Alien Aerodynamics.
Most important of all, they're self-replicating and self-spreading. If we have one drone with their AI, we will soon have hundreds. And a lot faster than we'd get a hundred pilots.
Most important of all, they're self-replicating and self-spreading. If we have one drone with their AI, we will soon have hundreds. And a lot faster than we'd get a hundred pilots.
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- He/Him/His
My two concerns are ayy hacking and Belkan hacking, not necessarily in that order. Drones are real nice for all the reasons you mention --my real concern is that we're introducing a vulnerability we won't be able to mitigate through good play and good choices
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
Which diplomats? Remember that what you're advocating here isn't strictly in anyone's best interests but rather everyone's preferences for their geopolitical opponents, and even then it's not exactly an insignificant thing; on the other hand, given the size of the ask already it's not really extra Focus per say.
cokerpilot
Here comes the rain.
[X] Plan Long Caster Learns To Play Politics
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
...given that, it's not that implausible to delegate this to Pulford and the IUN, is it? It is in their interests as much as it's in ours.
- Location
- Austria
@Secretariat , I love the audacity and scale of your plan. But, well...are you sure this one won't infringe on sphere of competence of our superiors (again)?
Maybe we should clear it up with Pulford first.
Maybe we should clear it up with Pulford first.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It almost certainly will -- politicians don't like to be taken by surprise.
@huhYeahGoodPoint, is that something we can do between phases/check how much buy-in there is with diplomats?
Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
[X] Learning Our Lessons v2 plus Technology Sharing
January 8th, A Brief History of Usean Militiaries, feat. Stephen Pulford
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
[X] Plan Long Caster Learns To Play Politics
- [X] Delegate (150?)
-- [X] Shen: Recruit Engineers
-- [X] Vahlen: Recruit Scientists
-- [X] Avril: Assess and repair assets
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Where nations are willing, put national military units into a single command under XCOM. These should include air, ground and where possible orbital assets.
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Give XCOM the sole legal right to operate military assets in space (specifically, anywhere above 100km-above-sea-level). Nobody trusts anybody else with the militarization of space, so might as well make it an international body accountable to all nations.
---- If diplomats object, point out that not doing this means Belkan superweapons in space
-- [X] Media: Use our support levels to pressure governments into upping their financial and industrial commitments
- [X] Discuss (25)
-- [X] Rosa Cosette d'Elise - Status of EASA, and key scientists and administrators, incl. Dr. Schrodeder; her thoughts on the Erusean civil war
- [X] Briefings (50 Focus)
-- [X] Status of living Aces from wars in the last 25 years
- [X] Status Reports (75 Focus)
-- [X] Dr. Vahlen
-- [X] Dr. Shen
-- [X] Commander Pulford
- [X] Recruit Staff (25 Focus)
-- [X] Administrative Assistants
- [X] Organize XCOM (100 Focus)
- [X] Delegate (150?)
-- [X] Shen: Recruit Engineers
-- [X] Vahlen: Recruit Scientists
-- [X] Avril: Assess and repair assets
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Where nations are willing, put national military units into a single command under XCOM. These should include air, ground and where possible orbital assets.
-- [X] Pulford/IUN: Give XCOM the sole legal right to operate military assets in space (specifically, anywhere above 100km-above-sea-level). Nobody trusts anybody else with the militarization of space, so might as well make it an international body accountable to all nations.
---- If diplomats object, point out that not doing this means Belkan superweapons in space
-- [X] Media: Use our support levels to pressure governments into upping their financial and industrial commitments
- [X] Discuss (25)
-- [X] Rosa Cosette d'Elise - Status of EASA, and key scientists and administrators, incl. Dr. Schrodeder; her thoughts on the Erusean civil war
- [X] Briefings (50 Focus)
-- [X] Status of living Aces from wars in the last 25 years
- [X] Status Reports (75 Focus)
-- [X] Dr. Vahlen
-- [X] Dr. Shen
-- [X] Commander Pulford
- [X] Recruit Staff (25 Focus)
-- [X] Administrative Assistants
- [X] Organize XCOM (100 Focus)
Nervously, Long Caster worked his jaw. He wasn't sure what Pulford was about to chew him out for, but anybody who served in the military instinctively knew when their superior was about to chew them out and he was pretty sure that his superior was about to chew him out.
"I will grant you this much: your proposed plan has exceeded your work last time, aside from how Chief Logistics Officer Daniel Snow is already at the door waiting to strangle you. I wouldd suggest making time for him, or you will find that he will make time regardless; in any case, you are not expending the Usean Base's resources, so hash out a budget quickly if you do not particularly want me to slash it.
"That, however, is all avoiding the central issue. The central issue is arguing for a unified space command under the IUN-PKF-XCOM, on top of requesting a transfer of national units towards the IUN-PKF-XCOM branch specifically.
"The good news is that you are not annoying anyone within the IUN itself. The bad news is that such a plan is going to annoy every IUN signatory that matters, and quite a few that do not. To explain why would take a lesson on the IUN-PKF and its history, which we appear to have time for.
"Before we begin, I am going to tell you that I have served in all three Continental Wars in the last thirty years. I was an officer when we made the evacuation from the rebel forces in 1998. I was an ISAF colonel during the Erusean attack in 2004, and I was the North Point's chief of airstaff within the IUN-PKF in the Lighthouse War last year. I have served the international Usean militaries for the better part of thirty years, so I know a few things about these efforts.
"In Usea, the modern history of combined commands starts in the 1998 Continental War, where the remaining civilian governments-in-exile formed the Allied Forces command. The Osean Federation, of course, left the conference room the moment they had to abide by a schedule that was not theirs, so the remainder of the Usean forces could either hopelessly watch on as the rebel forces couped every country on the continent or they could pool their resources and commands to become the Allied Forces. They chose the latter.
"Osea, naturally, returned at the moment when the Allied Forces' victory was inevitable, but the Usean representatives were not feeling particularly kind after Osea left them to fend for themselves. I think that was the only time I have ever seen - regardless, I am digressing."
Long Caster shifted uncomfortably; Pulford's constant critique of Osea was making him want to defend Osea out of principle, but interrupting his superior officers never ended well.
"After winning the war, however, what the Allied Forces command found was that by pooling their commands in desperation, their overall strength rose out of proportion to their strength on paper. Forming an Allied Force command also helped obviate the extremely thorny question of "who directs Stonehenge fire?" to "a supranational coalition does". That is how the Independent States Allied Forces were formed: as a continuation of the Allied Forces command in the 1998 insurrection.
"Four years after impact, however, Erusea split off from the ISAF before launching the second Continental War, quickly seizing Stonehenge and then leveraging their total air superiority into a conquest of the entire Usean continent. After the ISAF's victory, Usean influence over Usea's continued survival reached its peak; the ISAF was considered one of the preeminent military powers in the world, and in the military planners' wildest dreams, capable of going toe-to-toe with either the Osean Federation or Union of Yuktobanian Republics, should the need arise.
"Then Osea began its influence work, especially under the aegis of President Harling. They began proposing joint infrastructure projects with Usean countries; on the one hand, they were rebuilding Usea, but on the other hand, it was extremely clear to everyone that the rebuilding of Usea was on their sufferance.
"Using that diplomatic leverage, they convinced through Usea through other channels to integrate the ISAF with the IUN peacekeeping forces, with the promise that they would allow the ISAF to operate mostly independently. This was not an uncontroversial decision, mind you; even back in 2006 there were rumblings that the IUN was mostly an Osean puppet. To Osea's credit, they mostly pulled through - for about a decade.
"Cue 2016, and Harling's successor's narrow defeat at the polls for "investing huge amounts of money into foreign infrastructure projects", and Osea begins throwing its weight around. It increased the size of its military, and then started filling up the IUN-PKF with their military. Not something other countries can formally protest, but worrying, nevertheless. Then Osea decided it was a good idea to burn all their political capital to shuffle around all the IUN-PKF units, and now everybody is convinced that the IUN is an Osean puppet, Osea included."
Pulford snorted. Long Caster prepared to open his mouth.
"It is very telling that the Lighthouse War began when Erusea attacked IUN-PKF units, but towards the end of the war Osea was preparing to accept Erusea's surrender."
Long Caster clicked his teeth together.
"So that brings us to the present, where you are now proposing that the IUN, perceived to be an Osean puppet, act in a way that hinders Osea and hinders all of the people who would have been inclined to support us in opposition to Osea, in addition to requesting military aid from the IUN signatories."
Long Caster rubbed his jaw, thinking for a moment about his rationale.
"Sir, I proposed this because we are currently in the peak of XCOM's popularity. We won't have a better opportunity to use political advantage than right now. More importantly, sir, space is a place where any one country deciding to act alone could ruin the rest of space for everyone else. The Battle of Farbanti's aftermath comes to mind, sir.
"In any case, the military aid will seem like a small favor in comparison to that."
Pulford sat still, eyes a million miles away. After a short eternity, his eyes refocused.
"Are you ready to handle a hundred hour week again?" he asked, but there was a certainty in Pulford's voice that made Long Caster sure that this was not a question just about his capability.
[] Yes
[] No
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[X] Yes
ACE OF ACES
ACE OF ACES
[X] Yes
I like how you tied in a decent look at the political situation into this choice. Osea is used to getting their way (like the US-expies they are) but this fight goes beyond Osea's interests and our actions should reflect that.
This is probably a more important fight than any engagement or alien Terror mission will ever be. Let's get to it.
I like how you tied in a decent look at the political situation into this choice. Osea is used to getting their way (like the US-expies they are) but this fight goes beyond Osea's interests and our actions should reflect that.
This is probably a more important fight than any engagement or alien Terror mission will ever be. Let's get to it.
