Attempting to Fulfil The Plan: ISOT Edition

[Chimeraguard]

I do take your point, but I would also like to point out that they are almost certainly not producing any of their own steel or pharmaceuticals.

Yes, they can make up for a lot of that with salvage (especially the steel), but within the next several years that is going to start running out in varying amounts.

Meanwhile we are going to get better over time, not worse.

Click to shrink...

They are absolutely producing their own steel and pharmaceuticals.

The entire reason our pharmaceutical industry is so supercharged right now is because the SSD managed to poach one of the main New Washington pharmeceutical teams, and they stole a bunch of equipment before they left.

The American Republic of Turkey we know had a steel industry because in canon they tried to privatize it (which was such a disaster the state had to take control back.)

 

[Magus Zanin]

They are absolutely producing their own steel and pharmaceuticals.

The entire reason our pharmaceutical industry is so supercharged right now is because the SSD managed to poach one of the main New Washington pharmeceutical teams, and they stole a bunch of equipment before they left.

Click to shrink...

Then why is there a massive hole in the market that we are exporting drugs into?

Steel I get that we would not see it exported and producing limited quantities isn't that hard, but if they had the kind of pharmaceutical production we currently do then why aren't they flooding the market for trade income same as we are.

Edit:
Keep in mind that I'm not talking about producing a few dozen tons of new steel by melting down pieces of cars or even raw iron ore or whatever. I'm not at all disputing that they can do that.

This conversation was about Industry. As in, the ability to produce new goods on large scales. As far as I'm aware, we are the only power in this world using industrial mining practices and feeding industrial scale converters to produce our own domestic steel in the thousands of tons.

Of course, part of that is because we need to. With us lacking access to steel salvage and the facilities to turn it into finished goods, we don't have a choice but to do this. But it is a significant advantage in the long term.

 

[Chimeraguard]

Then why is there a massive hole in the market that we are exporting drugs into?

Steel I get that we would not see it exported and producing limited quantities isn't that hard, but if they had the kind of pharmaceutical production we currently do then why aren't they flooding the market for trade income same as we are.

Click to shrink...

Egypt has a population of 2-2.5 million people and probably rapidly rising, and most of the larger nations don't want to do anything that might strengthen them because they are direct rivals (New Washington's ally is competing with Egypt's vassal for control of Cyprus, Rome is racing to eat the Levant before Egypt can, and Crete wants to colonize bits of Africa and has a much smaller population of Americans who know how to make medication anyway.)

Meanwhile the PRM is on the opposite side of the Eastern Mediterranean from Egypt and there's several major powers between them.

Plus there's nations like the Lukka and Qatna that are filthy Downtimers that don't have Egypt's prestige so New Washington doesn't trade with them.

Edit:
Keep in mind that I'm not talking about producing a few dozen tons of new steel by melting down pieces of cars or even raw iron ore or whatever. I'm not at all disputing that they can do that.

This conversation was about Industry. As in, the ability to produce new goods on large scales. As far as I'm aware, we are the only power in this world using industrial mining practices and feeding industrial scale converters to produce our own domestic steel in the thousands of tons.

Of course, part of that is because we need to. With us lacking access to steel salvage and the facilities to turn it into finished goods, we don't have a choice but to do this. But it is a significant advantage in the long term.

Click to shrink...

By the time the quest started, the scrap trade was already dying down. New Washington, the CKE, Crete, Rome, etc. are all absolutely producing their own steel via mining and industrial processing.

If anything, New Washington would be even further along the industrial process than us if it weren't for the Vanguardist War, since they have a much better access to educated American population rather than tossing Bronze Age peasants into the factories.

 

[Lord_Abaddon]

This conversation was about Industry. As in, the ability to produce new goods on large scales. As far as I'm aware, we are the only power in this world using industrial mining practices and feeding industrial scale converters to produce our own domestic steel in the thousands of tons.

Of course, part of that is because we need to. With us lacking access to steel salvage and the facilities to turn it into finished goods, we don't have a choice but to do this. But it is a significant advantage in the long term.

Click to shrink...

comrade, that is absolutely not the case. every state around is setting up resource extraction, steel making, and pharmaceutical industries. it is not hard to get a host of people to dig up rocks and melt them down at scale. the massive market hole we're exporting to is egypt, which other states don't want to trade with because they don't want to turn it into a powerhouse.

the advantage we have as a state is our education apparatus, which is rapidly creating literate fifteen year olds out of previously uneducated downtimers, which other states do not quite care to do for the most part. rome is trying to do that, though we don't know how successfully

 

[Magus Zanin]

Egypt has a population of 2-2.5 million people and probably rapidly rising, and most of the larger nations don't want to do anything that might strengthen them because they are direct rivals (New Washington's ally is competing with Egypt's vassal for control of Cyprus, Rome is racing to eat the Levant before Egypt can, and Crete wants to colonize bits of Africa.)

Meanwhile the PRM is on the opposite side of the Eastern Mediterranean from Egypt and there's several major powers between them.

Plus there's nations like the Lukka and Qatna that are filthy Downtimers that don't have Egypt's prestige so New Washington doesn't trade with them.

Click to shrink...

And what does any of that have to do with selling them Molly or some other recreational drug in exchange for food security and other trade goods?

Edit: it's not like they're selling them antibiotics or something else actually important after all.

Second edit: I guess it's possible that they inherited the uptime government's hate for recreational drugs and therefore are making an ideological decision not to produce any of them. That makes as much sense as anything though, because realistically there isn't that much of a difference between what they theoretically could make and what we are exporting.

 

[Magus Zanin]

comrade, that is absolutely not the case. every state around is setting up resource extraction, steel making, and pharmaceutical industries. it is not hard to get a host of people to dig up rocks and melt them down at scale. the massive market hole we're exporting to is egypt, which other states don't want to trade with because they don't want to turn it into a powerhouse.

the advantage we have as a state is our education apparatus, which is rapidly creating literate fifteen year olds out of previously uneducated downtimers, which other states do not quite care to do for the most part. rome is trying to do that, though we don't know how successfully

Click to shrink...

Cool, so why is no one else building coal-fired warships? The impetus is clearly there, between the pirates and the various wars. And the resources would clearly be there, between new steel production and the coal necessary for such.

Again, I'm not saying they can't do it. I'm saying that for whatever reason we are doing it on a larger scale than they are.

 

[MordredRaal]

[X] Plan Spending Drug Money

 

[Blackstar]

Cool, so why is no one else building coal-fired warships? The impetus is clearly there, between the pirates and the various wars. And the resources would clearly be there, between new steel production and the coal necessary for such.

Again, I'm not saying they can't do it. I'm saying that for whatever reason we are doing it on a larger scale than they are.

Click to shrink...

Crete quite literally built the first steam powered ironclad before we even started laying ours down. A basic puddling furnace is not outside the bounds of basically every single power on the med with any up-timer involvement. Bessemer converters are a bit more complex, but given the advantage of steel arms and tools practically everyone involved is going to have a steel industry if provided with even a year of stability. We are a second wave state and our educated base of personnel is going to be smaller then anything first wave, we are probably the most industrialized out of the second wave states and will stay that way, but given any form of stability most of the first wave will lap us and laugh at us for at least a decade until our mass education programs actually start kicking in properly. Most powers involved are also in land army wars and have prioritized steel for cannons or other arms, a navy is important, but there are so many viable places to put steel that most states do not want to spend the massive amount of money laying down an ironclad, plus some may be in the process of building them and we just do not know about it, because it does take years to build the dam things.

 

[VonVonson]

Basically we got really "lucky" with that famine a while back, as it threw western anatolia into complete chaos and prevented them from really focusing on economic development in favor of hell wars and internal unrest that squandered a large amount of their advantages. As it stands I think we have a slight edge in industrial output in certain sectors but not an insurmountable one

 

[Crazycryodude]

[X] Plan Spending Drug Money

Cool, so why is no one else building coal-fired warships? The impetus is clearly there, between the pirates and the various wars. And the resources would clearly be there, between new steel production and the coal necessary for such.

Again, I'm not saying they can't do it. I'm saying that for whatever reason we are doing it on a larger scale than they are.

Click to shrink...

Crete just sailed an ironclad past our capital like last year.

As for all the First Wave states, it's a combination of being ever so slightly distracted with the smallpox epidemic/famine/Vanguard war and constant uprisings/fucking each other over during that crisis year and the fallout. Most of the First Wave and all of the Air Force states (except kinda EGNA, who are surrounded by hostile Air Force states on all land borders and thus are more focused on not getting invaded than building a navy) also think it's a dangerous stretch to even give their downtimers muskets and the alphabet, much less any weaponry or education more modern than that. They have lots more Americans than we do to run an industrial base on, and the downtimers are an oppressed slave caste in most of these places, so they can't really do mass education or even mass conscription to bulk out their army because otherwise the downtimers will just shoot their officers first chance they get.

Our advantages are in scale and being able to actually trust our downtimers with a gun, not knowledge or machinery. We're going to blow past them in like 10-20 years once the mass education starts to pay off, but for now the First Wave/Air Force states have significantly more Americans and significantly more industrial machinery for their Americans to work with. Unless they get their heads out of their assess and undo 15 years of bad blood/light genocide, we will surpass them once our high schools start graduating fresh workers, but that's still a future projection rather than a thing that's happening right now.

 

[Lord_Abaddon]

Edit: it's not like they're selling them antibiotics or something else actually important after all.

Second edit: I guess it's possible that they inherited the uptime government's hate for recreational drugs and therefore are making an ideological decision not to produce any of them. That makes as much sense as anything though, because realistically there isn't that much of a difference between what they theoretically could make and what we are exporting.

Click to shrink...

emphasis added

Export Medication Production (Stage 1): While our production of simple antibiotics and painkillers is sufficient for our population, most of the Downtimers in the Mediterranean have no access to it. This is especially true for Egypt, with its large population as well as fairly easy access to trade compared to more disorganized communities throughout Europe. They would be more than happy to give us grain, textiles, and various other goods in exchange for tiny amounts of substances that cost us a pittance to produce. (15 Resources per dice (0+191/75)) (Complete, Nat 100, quality dice 100, +30 resources per turn) (Stage 2 116+overflow/125, Complete, quality dice 92, +40 resources per turn) (Stage 3 0/150) (Export Pesticide Production (Stage 1) unlocked) (+10 Political Support)

Click to shrink...

yes we are, and we're making bank because they're wonder drugs that they literally don't have the ability to make. egypt is a food pinata. any other drugs we sell them are luxuries, but antibiotics and painkillers are godsends that no one else will sell them because egypt is close and scary

 

[Magus Zanin]

emphasis added


yes we are, and we're making bank because they're wonder drugs that they literally don't have the ability to make. egypt is a food pinata. any other drugs we sell them are luxuries, but antibiotics and painkillers are godsends that no one else will sell them because egypt is close and scary

Click to shrink...

You do realize that there isn't much of a difference between a recreational drug and a painkiller, right? In fact there is basically none from a biological standpoint, the only differences are use case and maybe potency. You might not get high off of aspirin, but you can absolutely get high off of basically anything stronger.

And painkillers are not going to suddenly turn Egypt into a superpower. Staving off a famine with antibiotics would help in that regard, so that's not nothing. But it's also not the only thing we are exporting to them. Everything else is something that the other uptime states have access to in theory but are not exporting in practice.

Are you going to tell me that the various right-wing aligned states are going to hesitate to export MDMA or synthetic opiates to Egypt for fear of turning them into a superpower? Seriously, that's your argument? I guess it could just be them being stupid, but it seems to me that a lot of the famine business a few years ago would have been solved quite easily by trading some containers of aspirin and MDMA for food, at least enough to keep the ruling class fed.

 

[Magus Zanin]

[X] Plan Spending Drug Money


Crete just sailed an ironclad past our capital like last year.

Click to shrink...

I know that, I'm wondering why no one else has done it. Crete is probably the most stable and competent non slave, non right wing extremist state out there, which is why we're even willing to entertain the idea of working with them.

And they had a several year head start on us, and have had less wars and need for ground-based military production, so that makes sense.

What I question is why none of the supposedly significant industrial might of the right-wing downtime powers on the continent have turned their attention to significant steel shipbuilding despite their supposed their large amounts of steel production. Even just being able to secure their coastlines against the pirates should encourage them to throw some resources at that task, but none of them have as far as we can tell. Despite them sharing some of the same advantages Crete has over us.

As for all the First Wave states, it's a combination of being ever so slightly distracted with the smallpox epidemic/famine/Vanguard war and constant uprisings/fucking each other over during that crisis year and the fallout. Most of the First Wave and all of the Air Force states (except kinda EGNA, who are surrounded by hostile Air Force states on all land borders and thus are more focused on not getting invaded than building a navy) also think it's a dangerous stretch to even give their downtimers muskets and the alphabet, much less any weaponry or education more modern than that. They have lots more Americans than we do to run an industrial base on, and the downtimers are an oppressed slave caste in most of these places, so they can't really do mass education or even mass conscription to bulk out their army because otherwise the downtimers will just shoot their officers first chance they get.

Our advantages are in scale and being able to actually trust our downtimers with a gun, not knowledge or machinery. We're going to blow past them in like 10-20 years once the mass education starts to pay off, but for now the First Wave/Air Force states have significantly more Americans and significantly more industrial machinery for their Americans to work with. Unless they get their heads out of their assess and undo 15 years of bad blood/light genocide, we will surpass them once our high schools start graduating fresh workers, but that's still a future projection rather than a thing that's happening right now.

Click to shrink...

This makes more sense. If it's not industrial processes that are styming them, it is lacking a significant labor force because they refuse to use downtimers for anything except manual work like resource extraction meaning they would have trouble with large-scale industrial applications like shipbuilding. Even downtime triremes take tens of thousands of skilled man hours to construct. And steel ships would require such man hours to be even more skilled, because it would require actual industrial education.

Combine that with being distracted by land wars and I can more easily see that.

Edit: that could also explain part of the pharmaceutical question as well. If they don't trust any downtimers, then they can't have any of them working in a factory scale like that, which would constrain their ability to export on both the manufacturing and also on the trade end. It would only take one of the traders smuggling out some of your skilled help to lose your industrial secrets to Egypt or other states after all.

TLDR: my problems with the world building are addressed more on the labor side than the industrial side.

 

[Drieder]

[X] Plan Spending Drug Money

 

[prof_Chemical]

Permaculture is a set of design principles. It's no-one implimentation that's meant to outcompete industrial agriculture.
It's a tool in the belt of land use management, to be brought out when the needs and goals align.
To be incredibly laconic,
-use the land in a way that doesnt deplete it faster than it can recover,
and
-work smarter rather than harder. pay attention to what the land wants to do and how you can leverage that to achieve your goals

It's also built up in a globalized, colonial and post-industrial context. As part of a larger and broader movement for degrowth of states and communities that take more than thier share, more than the world's systems can provide or remain together for.

the situation in An Age of Rust is quite different.
there's still a whole planet to consume. the world systems havent been strained to the point of breaking yet.

With pesticides, herbicides, and fertalizer, what would be important imo would be mindfulness of what imputs are being used, where they are outputting, and what effects those outputs are having. Both on people and the wildlife.
Is part and parcel of responsible, community driven agriculture - as much as ensuring adequate drainage.
Isnt anything the rural cadres cant handle. Is no more complicated or time consuming than thier other responsibilities.
And it just makes sense to know where the poison is, to make plans for where it goes.

lastly, food forrests are not meant to replace every farm, that'd even be quite bad for biodiversity. A food forrest is a human led ecosystem, with its own specific uses, to fill specific needs. comprable to a commons village meadow, or a coppicced wood. it's a managed wilderness.
problems with modern farms are myriad, and they dont need a multilevelled food ecosystem to fix them.
vast monocultural plantations of genetically narrow crops burning chemical energy, manpower and reasources to stay alive places they werent domesticated for. The ineficiencies of capitalism include industrial agriculture.
Much better ways to optimise use of machines and chemicals on land for nutrition, caloric output, and human wellbeing.

 

[HeWhoAdds]

[X] Plan Preparing for Mobilization

 

[SemiRational]

[X] Plan Preparing for Mobilization

 

[Acc. No. 1409]

[X] Plan Preparing for Mobilization

 

[Teen Spirit]

I know that, I'm wondering why no one else has done it. Crete is probably the most stable and competent non slave, non right wing extremist state out there, which is why we're even willing to entertain the idea of working with them.

And they had a several year head start on us, and have had less wars and need for ground-based military production, so that makes sense.

What I question is why none of the supposedly significant industrial might of the right-wing downtime powers on the continent have turned their attention to significant steel shipbuilding despite their supposed their large amounts of steel production. Even just being able to secure their coastlines against the pirates should encourage them to throw some resources at that task, but none of them have as far as we can tell. Despite them sharing some of the same advantages Crete has over us.

Click to shrink...

Because ships take a fair amount of knowledge, resources and time. Crete was always going to need warships due their status as an island trading group and they already has decent ship building tradition when Americans showerd up. An ironclad for a power like New Washington isn't something they're going to be focused on because naval power is far less of nesscity for them cause their main rivals share borders with them and Rhodes only became a "Oh shit we need to deal with them" level of threat recently.

 

[Chimeraguard]

Even now, Rhodes is really more of an annoyance for New Washington than it is an actual danger or threat to its ambitions.

If anything Rhodes might be something of a mixed bag politically, since Rhodes trades with the former NAR states (and Rhodes mercenaries may or may not make up a nonzero portion of its armed forces.) New Washington's main ambitions are the unification of Western Anatolia under its banner, which isn't really something that Rhodes can interfere with. It might have been something New Washington cared more about if they kept Malta, but since they lost that they've been an exclusively Anatolian power (unless Trebizond is still a New Washington colony TTL, but even then that's the Black Sea instead of the Mediterranean.)

Crete meanwhile, has Rhodes as a direct problem not just because it's a maritime trade empire, but because it has ambitions on expansion across the Western Mediterranean. Which Rhodes and its Zeroth Reich/Reichskommissariat Italia is a direct obstacle and threat to.

We meanwhile also have ambitions on expansion into the Adriatic, which makes Rhodes a direct obstacle to us as well.

 

[garphield]

Vote called for [X] Plan Preparing for Mobilization

Port Facilities (Stage 4) 2d 58+89+187=334/375
Peloponnese City Modernization (Stage 2) 1d 77+156=233/175 complete stage 2 58/200
Telegraph Network (Stage 3) 2d 84+97+62=243/150 complete stage 4 93/200
Paved Road Construction (Stage 1) 2d 27+36+56=119+6=125/125 omake complete stage 2 0/150
Thríambos Ironworks (Stage 2) 2d 24+24+453=501/525
Prometheus Heavy Machinery Plant (Stage 3) 3d 30+94+74+21=219/250
Attica Coal Mines (Stage 1) 2d 86+54+23=163/125 complete stage 2 38/150
Cement Facilities Expansion 2d 9+100+72=181/125 complete nat 100 quality dice 22+20
Textile Industry (Stage 4) 2d 7+52+146=205/275
Complex Goods Production 2d 91+87+7=185/100 complete quality dice 74+5 overflow=79
Synthetic Flavorings and Scents 1d 65+5+19=89/50 complete quality dice 98
Low-Pressure Hydrogenation Reactors 1d 2+5=7/60
Polymer Production (Stage 2) 2d 35+14+10+33=92/150
Agricultural Mechanization (Stage 3) 1d 37+5+119=161/300
Granary Modernization (Stage 1) 3d 93+50+7=150/125 complete stage 2 25/150
Secondary Schools (Stage 3) 5d 40+63+48+11+66+85=313/300 complete stage 4 13/450
Adult Literacy Campagins (Stage 5) 1d 26+63=89/425
Liberated Territorries Agricultural Education (Stage 2) 3d 12+48+54+15+35=164/175 omake?
City Reconstruction and Modernization (Stage 2) 1d 17+113=130/300
Bolt Action Rifle Production (Stage 3) 1d 23+5=28/150
Submachine Gun Production (Stage 2) 3d 82+51+92=225/125 complete quality dice 33 stage 3 100/175
Mine Production 1d 72+3=75/75 omake complete quality dice 82
Improved Coastal Defenses 1d 90/70 complete quality dice 72
Land Fortifications (Stage 1) 2d 10+93=103/75 complete quality dice 59 stage 2 28/100
Universal Military Training (Stage 1) 4d 76+1+8+35+9=129/100 complete nat 1 quality dice 46 stage 2 29/150
Uniform Modernization 2d 75+81=156/100 complete quality dice 9+15 omake=24
Recruit Americans to Ministry 2d 33+10=43
Evaluate Replacements (Agriculture) 1d 78

Scheduled vote count started by garphield on Oct 24, 2023 at 11:23 AM, finished with 35 posts and 15 votes.

• ---

  10 people have voted

  [X] Plan Preparing for Mobilization

  • Teen Spirit
  • Lord_Abaddon
  • midnight77
  • Jeggaza
  • Nevis
  • TheZealot
  • Magus Zanin
  • HeWhoAdds
  • SemiRational
  • Acc. No. 1409

  3 people have voted

  [X] Plan Spending Drug Money

  • MordredRaal
  • Crazycryodude
  • Drieder

  2 people have voted

  [X] Plan Preparing for Fortification with Mobilization
  -[X] Port Facilities (Stage 4), 2 dice (20 Resources)
  -[X] Peloponnese City Modernization (Stage 2), 1 die (10 Resources)
  -[X] Telegraph Network (Stage 3), 2 dice (20 Resources)
  -[X] Paved Road Construction (Stage 1), 2 dice (10 Resources)
  -[X] Thríambos Ironworks (Stage 4), 2 dice (30 Resources)
  -[X] Prometheus Heavy Machinery Plant, 3 dice (60 Resources)
  -[X] Attica Coal Mines (Stage 1), 2 dice (20 Resources) 2 lib
  -[X] Cement Facilities Expansion, 2 dice (20 Resources)
  -[X] Textile Industry (Stage 4), 2 die (20 Resources)
  -[X] Complex Goods Production, 2 dice (50 Resources)
  -[X] Synthetic Flavorings and Scents, 1 die (20 Resources)
  -[X] Low-Pressure Hydrogenation Reactors, 1 die (20 Resources)
  -[X] Polymer Production (Stage 2), 2 dice (40 Resources)
  -[X] Agricultural Mechanization (Stage 3), 1 die (10 Resources)
  -[X] Granary Modernization (Stage 1), 3 dice (30 Resources)
  -[X] Secondary Schools (Stage 3), 5 dice (50 Resources)
  -[X] Adult Literacy Campaigns (Stage 5), 1 die (5 Resources)
  -[X] Liberated Territories Agricultural Education (Stage 2), 3 dice (15 Resources)
  -[X] City Reconstruction and Modernization (Stage 2), 3 die (30 Resources)
  -[X] Bolt Action Rifle Production (Stage 3), 1 dice (25 Resources)
  -[X] Submachine Gun Production (Stage 2), 3 dice (60 Resources)
  -[X] Mine Production, 1 die (10 Resources)
  -[X] Universal Military Training (Stage 1), 5 dice (50 Resources)
  -[X] Uniform Modernization, 2 dice (20 Resources)
  -[X] Recruit Americans To Ministry, 3 dice (15 Resources -6 PS)

  • Vehrec
  • RadicalCali

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Plan Total: 714

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Plan Total: 602

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Plan Total: 501

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Plan Total: 661

garphield threw 7 100-faced dice. Reason: Plan Total: 320

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Secret Total: 538

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Secret Total: 593

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Secret Total: 660

garphield threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Secret Total: 553

garphield threw 10 100-faced dice. Reason: Secret Total: 578

garphield threw 9 100-faced dice. Reason: Quality Dice Total: 486

 

[Vehrec]

Okay so once the draft riots calm down, would it uh...be safe to try to do *more* drafting?

 

[General_Urist]

Nat 1 on universal military training? Uh-oh, what madness is coming? And our uniforms are shit too. At least we have good concrete for our forts?

Speaking of guns, how is our ammo production situation? Submachine guns will guzzle that stuff, even bolt action rifles consume a massive amount by the standards of muzzle loader era warfare.

EDIT: Why were we evaluating replacements for the agri minister again?

 

[Lord_Abaddon]

EDIT: Why were we evaluating replacements for the agri minister again?

Click to shrink...

she's a hippie who doesn't want us to use pesticides and fertilizer

 

[Angle]

EDIT: Why were we evaluating replacements for the agri minister again?

Click to shrink...

she's a hippie who doesn't want us to use pesticides and fertilizer

Click to shrink...

Without actually giving us good options for 'organic' agriculture, either.