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Ad Astra ex Lutum

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I'm sure there will be some other people putting our arguments and plan ideas with the panopticon, so I'll put forward a few ideas for ones that try to deal with our morale situation through the other options.

[]Plan: Anti-Oligarch Operations
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries (-15 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Basic Infantry System Production (-20 Mobilization Capacity for 3 Months)
-[]Expand Type 41 Car Production (-15 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Civilian Work Programs (-60 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs (-20 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Department Six Evaluations (-25 Mobilization Capacity)

This plan is a combination of basically everything but the panopticon, with the work programs, jobs from infantry factories, morale programs, and starting sting operations to catch any higher ups. The most easily swappable option here is the Type 41 cars, but there aren't that many other options that cost the same or less to pick up instead, the elephant in the room of the panopticon not withstanding. I picked up the cars though since I do think we'll be needing a lot of them to motorize and support all the light infantry were raising, as well as possibly tow the big artillery pieces we're putting out if they're up for it.

[]Plan: Riding the Edge
-[]Decentralization of Armaments Industries (-50 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries (-15 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Basic Infantry System Production (-20 Mobilization Capacity for 3 Months)
-[]Expand Type 41 Car Production (-15 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Found the Defense Engineering Command (-10 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs (-20 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Department Six Evaluations (-25 Mobilization Capacity)

This one is cutting it close to what I think is the minimum we can get away with for morale actions, with just the infantry factory jobs, morale programs, and sting ops. In exchange it gets to decentralize and harden our arms industry as well as get our reverse-engineering elves organized for the slew of captured equipment likely coming our way very soon. Options to swap out the Type 41 for something else are the same as above, but another possibility with this plan is to drop the DEC too and have 25 mobility to play with. There are a bunch more useful 20 mobility picks that we could start a month earlier then, such as Tunnels, 3rd Gen, Air Force, Cargo, and Chemistry.
 
Adronio said:
[]Plan Secure Morale And Expand Production, VTOL
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries (-15)
-[]Continue Expanding AFV Production (-30x4)
-[]Expanded Air Force Funding (-20x3)
-[]Urban Metro Systems (-10x6)
-[]Civilian Work Programs (-60)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs (-20)
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I think I've come around to focusing on winning the ground war in the short turn rather than long term. Of the two I like this one better.
 
Adronio said:
Urban Metro Systems to continue hardening our key industrial and political targets.
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Could I convince you to found the defense engineering command instead? We already are getting scans of captured alien equipment from the moon and I'd expect us to get far more samples directly on the planet once they make a landing.
 
Fireiy said:
Could I convince you to found the defense engineering command instead? We already are getting scans of captured alien equipment from the moon and I'd expect us to get far more samples directly on the planet once they make a landing.
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Yeah, you could quite easily. It was in the original plans I made. I'll think about it for a bit while im writing another post.
 
I think any attempt at dealing with the morale issue without picking [] Reinforce Internal Networks is ultimately futile. It's like trying to extinguish a fire without turning off the stove; the source of the problem will continue to fuel the flames. On the other hand, if our population can't even hear the Alien's demands to surrender then collaborators won't even be able to, well, collaborate with the Alien Enemy.

It also has the upside of giving us a much more accurate understanding of our own population's morale and desire to fight.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
 
OatmealOatmeal said:
I think any attempt at dealing with the morale issue without picking [] Reinforce Internal Networks is ultimately futile. It's like trying to extinguish a fire without turning off the stove; the source of the problem will continue to fuel the flames. If our population can't hear the Aliens demands to surrender then collaborators won't even be able to, well, collaborate with the Alien Enemy.

It also has the upside of giving us a much more accurate understanding of our own population's morale and desire to fight.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
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Its also a one way door to a surveillance state, and I frankly do not trust Richie to relinquish that after the war has passed. This is re-starting the Panopticon, which was what the Oligarchs used to quash dissent and keep the population docile, without solving any of our underlying societal issues, merely masking them, so we have no incentives to actually adress them. Frankly, its a last resort option, when we haven't even begun to adress morale by more conventional means that have worked really well in real life. We have a population that understands the ills imperialism inflicts on the population, we fought a world ending war over it. We can reframe this conflict to press those buttons pretty effectively imo without opening Pandora's Box, we even have the option to deal with our massive unemployment which is the root cause of many of our morale issues.
 
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Adronio said:
-[]Continue Expanding AFV Production (-30x4)
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Can I ask the reasoning for this in particular, since I feel like with us already over achieving on giving UNISA everything they asked for and the time it would take for these new factories to spool up more Type 41 plants to help motorize many of the light infantry armies we're still raising right now. I imagine they can spin up quicker too given the design's just a fast light truck rather than a whole amphibious IFV, it offers pretty much the same potential firepower, and the project is going to give it some frontal laser protection too.

Alternatively with that 30 mobility we could do both Infantry Production and Defense Engineering Command without sacrificing VTOLs or Metros.
 
Big effortpost on the enemy's theory of victory (or more reasonably, our distorted view of it), military and political.

So to start with, there are two 'axes' that the enemy's deployment schemes will have to consider. The first is the axis ranges from 'the core' to 'the fringes', are they going to land in our core or in our fringes- or perhaps a mix of both. From our end we're defending the core much more heavily, but pretending to defend everything more or less equally. I believe they'll focus on our core for those reasons, but ultimately its up to them. The other axis is concentrating their forces vs dispersing them. In theory they could go for a fully concentrated strategy of trying to take, say, the capital, or maybe the doombunker if they know about the artifact (or think its a key C3) node. If they do that they'll probably win wherever they decide to drop the hammer- although those two mentioned areas can probably bloody them very, very badly. If they concentrate while targeting the fringes they'll massively overcommit against very weak defenses and for very limited gains. They won't take any serious losses (unless they run afoul of our anti-orbital batteries, missile and laser) but from what we can see their ability to redirect troops after committing them is much more limited by their VTOL capacity. If they spread out against the fringes they can probably make significant gains (at the risk of getting stuck in unconventional warfare), however if they spread out against the core areas they'd run into larger and larger portions of our strongest forces in the strongest defensive positions, and risk getting stuck immediately and then counterattacked into oblivion on multiple fronts.

Politically speaking they pretty much have a single axis: try to force the current government to surrender vs try to form a collaborationist regime that can supply them with warmaking capabilities and replace the current government. The former is almost certainly unworkable, and would involve them concentrating on the core islands. The latter is theoretically workable but also easily countered by us, especially with our defensive scheme- I'll get into this in a later post. The latter should also involve spreading out more, which is not going to be a great prospect from their perspective I imagine.

In short, I dont think the enemy has any actually good options when it comes to forcing a military-political solution favorable to them with a ground invasion, however everything does indicate they'll try it. I also think we have reason to believe they'll be compelled into committing their forces quite poorly: our deception campaign combined with their likely objectives should funnel them into bad force allocations. One likely strategy that wouldn't be objectively terrible for them is a massed strike on one of the core islands, managing to overwhelm the defenses there and establishing a serious base of operations while somewhat harming our industrial production. The best strategy they might stumble into would be a dispersed landing in the south taking control of the least well defended territories and gaining control over a serious fraction of our population, but also now being committed to garrisoning that land and have even more trouble actually making further offensives. I'll talk more about what we can do in those two scenarios since I believe they're the reasonable worst case ones in another post. I'll also talk about civilian "morale" and what we can do about collaborators and traitors there.
 
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Vi'Talzin said:
Its also a one way door to a surveillance state, and I frankly do not trust Richie to relinquish that after the war has passed. This is re-starting the Panopticon, which was what the Oligarchs used to quash dissent and keep the population docile, without solving any of our underlying societal issues, merely masking them, so we have no incentives to actually adress them. Frankly, its a last resort option, when we haven't even begun to adress morale by more conventional means that have worked really well in real life. We have a population that understands the ills imperialism inflicts on the population, we fought a world ending war over it. We can reframe this conflict to press those buttons pretty effectively imo without opening Pandora's Box, we even have the option to deal with our massive unemployment which is the root cause of many of our morale issues.
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While I agree I don't think Ricky would turn off the new surveillance systems after the war, I don't think he would relinquish the system to the civilian government either. I think he, as well as the rest of the military high command would want to keep it as purely the military's asset, and they don't have as much of an interest in keeping any one person, party, or ideology in power.

Don't forget that we would have had a fascist civil war were it not for the mulligan. If we had the panopticon, we could have prevented it entirely. Department 4 is too unreliable, and we wasted too many political actions that could have been spent reforming the military on trying to infiltrate the PSC and gaining information on the level of the loyalty of our military.

We had an unlucky roll with the morale, but we can still resolve the issue. If we have another unlucky roll, it could dramatically shift the landscape of the war by empowering a fifth column within Dannan. Don't forget that in the first month of the war elected officials of the government were already willing to surrender to the Alien Enemy. Rather than assuming that our people are totally infallible and will fight to the last Seelie, it's entirely possible that there are people willing to surrender and even collaborate to save their lives.

Of course, we wouldn't have to make assumptions or guess about the resolve of our populace if we simply knew via the panopticon.
 
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7th Hex said:
Can I ask the reasoning for this in particular, since I feel like with us already over achieving on giving UNISA everything they asked for and the time it would take for these new factories to spool up more Type 41 plants to help motorize many of the light infantry armies we're still raising right now. I imagine they can spin up quicker too given the design's just a fast light truck rather than a whole amphibious IFV, it offers pretty much the same potential firepower, and the project is going to give it some frontal laser protection too.

Alternatively with that 30 mobility we could do both Infantry Production and Defense Engineering Command without sacrificing VTOLs or Metros.
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Due to the spool up time I'd want to do more UNISA sooner rather than later, since they produce the core equipment of our main offensive formations who are gonna get expended very quickly in actual combat. In addition more factories means more islands that can build their own equipment and as such be more self sufficient in case of enemy operations. The Type 41 is much quicker to spool up, and we have a more limited pool of combined arms armies that will actually be ready for offensive operations (actual reservist formations with unfucked command structures as opposed to the mass volunteer armies), and can more easily motorize them.
 
Adronio said:
The best strategy they might stumble into would be a dispersed landing in the south taking control of the least well defended territories and gaining control over a serious fraction of our population, but also now being committed to garrisoning that land and have even more trouble actually making further offensives.
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Another bad thing about this scenario is that it would look like a success with good further prospectives for the aliens, which means that their commander (stakeholders?) could more convincingly request reinforcements from their superiors (sponsors?).

It's a possible scenario, which would mean that sooner rather than later it would be necessary to invest into hidden shipyards and more submarines (as this would remain the only mobile anti-orbital option).
Not at this point, but in the next few months probably.
 
OatmealOatmeal said:
While I agree I don't think Ricky would turn off the new surveillance systems after the war, I don't think he would relinquish the system to the civilian government either. I think he, as well as the rest of the military high command would want to keep it as purely the military's asset, and they don't have as much of an interest in keeping any one person, party, or ideology in power.

Don't forget that we would have had a fascist civil war were it not for the mulligan. If we had the panopticon, we could have prevented it entirely. Department 4 is too unreliable, and we wasted too many political actions that could have been spent reforming the military on trying to infiltrate the PSC and gaining information on the level of the loyalty of our military.

We had an unlucky roll with the morale, but we can still resolve the issue. If we have another unlucky roll, it could dramatically shift the landscape of the war by empowering a fifth column within Dannan. Don't forget that in the first month of the war elected officials of the government were already willing to surrender to the Alien Enemy. Rather than assuming that our people are totally infallible and will fight to the last Seelie, it's entirely possible that there are people willing to surrender and even collaborate to save their lives.

Of course, we wouldn't have to make assumptions or guess about the resolve of our populace if we simply knew via the panopticon.
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"Well, maybe the civilian government will force the dictator with emergency powers and the military at the palm of his hands to dismantle the security state" seems incredibly sketchy.

We have no lack of options to raise morale and deal with collaborationist movements (which don't even significantly exist right now, the PPM was a small party full of nuts that were immediately disregarded and thrown in jail), why not try that before we go full surveillance state? I am not suggesting we throw our hands in the air and trust the Seelie population to fight to the last (which might not even be needed anyway), but like, what's being suggested here will lead to a huge, likely permanent shift to how our government approaches our population. Not as a group they need to listen to and provide solutions for, but one they can mostly ignore since our surveillance state makes things seem hunky dory by masking real issues and letting the government know and deal with any dissenters.

EDIT: Like, we can even go full McCarthy with Department 6 if we are that worried about collaborators. It would suck, but at least its something that will go away eventually.
 
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Josiah said:
Another bad thing about this scenario is that it would look like a success with good further prospectives for the aliens, which means that their commander (stakeholders?) could more convincingly request reinforcements from their superiors (sponsors?).

It's a possible scenario, which would mean that sooner rather than later it would be necessary to invest into hidden shipyards and more submarines (as this would remain the only mobile anti-orbital option).
Not at this point, but in the next few months probably.
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The main tool against them would be investing in, to but it bluntly, terrorism in order to 'reduce' collaborator elements and keep the enemy from establishing useful and productive collaborators- and then yeah needing to invest in proper shipping and win the long war. It would also involve building more nukes and critically better missiles to deliver them with so that we can get a proper landing going on.
 
Lol who cares about armor, simply irradiate the enemy craft so hard theyre left intact for us to plunder after the war in a couple months

Really eager to see how landings go next months, those good rolls in the orbital lasers should hopefully make them a bloodbath. Shame we can't get SPAAGs and hypersonics online in time tho
 
"They advocate now for a sort of commercial pact, with the opening of the planet, exploitation of local resources, and establishment of companies as a first step of general colonization."

I think the biggest danger is just people deciding its hopeless and going "I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords". This is probably the last turn we have to set something up to monitor for that while the planet is mostly not on fire. We definitely have Elves who would accept the offer to be an alien comprador.
 
[]Plan Secure Morale And Expand Production
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries (-15)
-[]Basic Infantry System Production (-20x3)
-[]Continue Expanding AFV Production (-30x4)
-[]Found the Defense Engineering Command (-10)
-[]Civilian Work Programs (-60)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs (-20)

[]Plan Secure Morale And Expand Production, VTOL
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries (-15)
-[]Continue Expanding AFV Production (-30x4)
-[]Expanded Air Force Funding (-20x3)
-[]Found the Defense Engineering Command (-10)
-[]Civilian Work Programs (-60)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs (-20)

Just posting the updated versions of my plans, since I have convinced myself that the 'waste' of 10 saved Mob Cap is less important than the Defense Engineering Command now that we're starting to reverse engineer stuff.

[]Plan Secure Morale And Expand Production, Fringe Focus
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries (-15)
-[]Deepening of Tunnel Networks (-20)
-[]Continue Expanding AFV Production (-30x4)
-[]Found the Defense Engineering Command (-10)
-[]Civilian Work Programs (-60)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs (-20)

Adding a third variant, given my analysis that a fringe focus might be the worst one for us, hedging our bets might be the smartest thing. This one would help a lot with the irregular warfare that would follow.
 
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[]Plan Long Term
-[]AI Allocation Systems: (-40) (+10 per Month)
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries: (-15) (Construction Project)
-[]Urban Metro Systems: (-10 for 6 Months) (Construction Project)
-[]Found the Defense Engineering Command: (-10 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Civilian Work Programs: (-60 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs: (-20 Mobilization Capacity)

What can be built in preparation for the alien landing has been built under the assumption that the landing will be next turn, as such this plan is more to prepare for a longer war.

[]Plan Mid-Long Term
-[]AI Allocation Systems: (-40) (+10 per Month)
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries: (-15) (Construction Project)
-[]Basic Infantry System Production (-20 3 Months)
-[]Civilian Work Programs: (-60 Mobilization Capacity)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs: (-20 Mobilization Capacity)

Self explanatory.
 
Anyway, one of the options I feel has been a bit slept on but I think is incredibly important is this one:

[]Deepening of Tunnel Networks: Dug-in tunnel networks have proven themselves in lunar battles and the use of significant screens of earth is a classical aspect of asymmetrical warfare. This will focus on tunneling out from primary defensive zones otherwise ignored by Plan Orange to allow for the shipment of personnel and materials across the under-protected continent. Most of these will be narrow and primarily built for military work over any significant other purpose but the ability to strike asymmetrically even with imperfect units cannot be underestimated. (-40 Mobilization Capacity) (Construction Project)

The Southern Continent is definitely our soft underbelly, and our fortification work there was lacking despite a pretty good roll. We are also sending the dregs of our army to defend it, so its very very vulnerable to any landing operations:
Blackstar said:
Build Fortified Works in the Southern Sector (70)

The least equipped sector with under-equipped mobile units is unlikely to offer much resistance without fortifications and has zero hopes of a mobile defense under current Plan Orange Allocations. To amend this fortifications have been extensively urban with linkages to key mining industries starting to be constructed under protected railways to maintain the flow of materials. Port buildings and loading areas have also been made redundant and fortified to keep up some flow of material towards the industrial centers and ensure that Dannan can continue to resist even if it is disrupted. Many small towns have received basic trench and tunnel works around them along with mines, giving more strung-out elements in the sparsely populated South some defenses against an easy landing, even if they are entirely insufficient for defeating larger Enemy formations.
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Thus I think we should seriously consider getting started on this as soon as possible, our units there are mostly of Abysmal equipment and morale, so every force multiplier they can get is important. We need those mines, and we can't let the Aliens get a solid foothold without a fight.
 
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[]Plan Not One Step Back
-[]Expansion of Mining Industries (-15)
-[]Deepening of Tunnel Networks (-20)
-[]Expand Type 41 Car Production (-15)
-[]Found the Defense Engineering Command (-10)
-[]Civilian Work Programs (-60)
-[]Domestic Morale Programs (-20)
-[]Organize Department Eight (-15)

A more short term focused plan that works on shoring up our lowest quality troops with additional fortifications and motorizing the higher quality infantry so that they're more useful for the immediate counter attack on the landing zones. It also organizes Department Eight in order to demoralize the invaders right as we're starting to break into their encryption.
 
All i really have to add is that while panopticon is an easy solution to many things i don't think that it is a good solution. Will we suffer more and spend more resources without it i don't doubt it. But if we are going to create the surveillance state at the first whisper of dissidents then we are do not have much moral ground to stand on
 
Blackstar said we have 8 abysmal --> adequate per month, and 6 adequate --> acceptable and 6 acceptable --> good, in terms of equipment, IIUC.
 
Failing to expand plutonium stockpiles is fundamentally unacceptable. We have one trump card, and it's nukes. This is it, this is the do or die turn for production, and it probably won't even be a complete run because of the failure to do it from the start.
 
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