Oh yeah. Military is booked solid for a while on major projects. Navy and wingmen. And we still have to do the mastodon unless we are going to try and negotiate that down.
Wingman drones drop a bit in urgency once we get the Firehawk drones out. Orca/Hammerhead drones matter, but we don't need to treat them as a super-urgent military priority once we're no longer bleeding high performance jet pilots, I think.
Plus, with Steel Vanguard tapering off regardless, we're going to be taking fewer losses to frontline fighter units, further decreasing the pressure.
On the plus side maybe we can get the last phase of that factory that provides suit discounts done. I think nuuk is probably better for cap goods but light industry doesn't have much else in it besides Bergan.
Personally, I think we should do 1-2 Zone Armor factories in 2061, with the discount from
Reykjavik Phase 4, then do the rest next plan with
Reykjavik Phase 5 in hand.
I think the military is willing to trade Mastodon for a Suit factory, even if the Steel Talons complain.
We actually have so many dice that it's not really an either-or proposition.
The Mastodon's not optional, we need to get it researched and in production by the end of next year lest 2 of our Mil dice walk off the job (unless we negotiate that promise away but tbh all of our military targets should stay. They're all needed except maybe ASAT, which I'd only want to change because the strategic situation has evolved to the point where another orbital ASAT hub is worth less than putting the same points into orbital lasers or SADN). Since there's going to be multiple factories and I don't think we'll wriggle our way out of being mandated to build them, I'd like to just get the Mastodon developed in Q4 so we can budget 2061 with the costs known.
Honestly, I think getting that extra ASAT hub is worthwhile just so Space Force can breathe a little easier and hopefully stand down the giant groundside installation in Greenland a bit.
Don't forget we also have to design and develop the new vehicles, so I would say our military dice might be a little busy.
We don't actually have to do that for any of the vehicles except the Mastodon. Ground Forces doesn't see them as a high priority compared to power armor, so if we're not doing power armor, we shouldn't be doing new ground vehicle prototypes.
When we do get around to the mastodon we should probably research the light vehicle laser as well.
I'm not saying delay researching mastodon or anything. Just that a mobile fortress would probably benefit heavily from having built in anti missile defense.
This is true, and frankly we need to start doing Talons projects for reasons other than "you promised." They
do pay off.
So the gachas are coming back in Q1. We may want to consider focusing on critical service department projects in Q4 and cheaper projects elsewhere, so we have dice and resources available in Q1.
Honestly, nothing eft in there is essential, it's
all "nice to have." Nothing that I'm going to feel even a little bit bad about postponing for a turn so we can do gachas.
I'm of the opinion that we should spend most of our military dice next plan on getting the next generation of vehicles out along with more Zone armour. That's significantly more important than MARV hubs. We have other options for both mitigation and resource extraction that don't cost military dice which are likely going to be needed
The miiltary actually gives a shit about zone armor. We should do basically
only zone armor for the Ground Forces until such time as we've got them well and properly stood up and they go "hey thanks good job."
Then and only then should we even
consider doing other vehicle development except the Mastodon and
maybe a Mammoth refit since those are literally unchanged since before the Third Tiberium War and importantly lack point defense.
Hmm?
A RZ MARV Hub + Inhibitor costs 455 progress at 20/30 per die, and produces 5 abatement, 25 RpT and 2 PS.
Red Zone Border Offensives cost 200 progress at 25 per dice, and produces 2 abatement, ~22.5 RpT and 0 PS.
Hubs are the superior abatement option, and we can use free dice for the Military part. So we don't actually have to cut back on Military spending.
Point of order: We generally have to build multiple MARV hubs to get the option to build one inhibitor.
Getting back into discussing plans for next turn, now that we can confirmation that there are going to be major benefits to RZ Border Offensives, I'd like to propose the following plan...
Heavy Industry 5/5 Dice + 2 Free Dice 130 R
-[] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant (Phase 7): 30/300 (3 Dice, 60 R) (99% chance)
-[] Nuuk Heavy Robotics Foundry (Phase 4): 143/1200 (3 Dice, 60 R) (3/13 median)
-[] Crystal Beam Industrial Laser Development: 0/80 (1 Die, 10 R) (70% chance)
Nitpick, fusion is at 153/300, which is why three dice is enough to give us such a great chance of clearing the phase.
Let's see, I'm happy with a lot of your stuff (I should be, it's mostly a copy of mine
)... You step back a bit from Military commitments but not to such an extent that it's a bad plan in my opinion... Agriculture you change but in a way I remember everyone telling me I should do anyway and y'all're probably right...
Tiberium 7/7 Dice + 1 Free Die 150 R
-[] Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting (Phase 10): 174/350 (3 Dice, 60 R) (99% chance)
-[] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 6): 46/100 (2 Dice, 30 R) (100% chance, 82% chance of Stage 7, 8% chance of Stage 8)
-[] Red Zone Border Offensives (Stage 1): 0/200 (3 Dice, 75 R) (95% chance)
Hmm, yeah, I could go for this, but you undercounted its Resource cost, which may hurt you in budgeting. It's actually 165 R, not 150. And yeah, while I was a fan of going for the inhibitors because INHIBITORS, I don't mind going for this instead... I just wish we could do harvesting tendrils dammit.
Orbital: This is a shameless copy of Simon's strategy to complete the remaining Lunar Mines plan goal. It's not getting Erewhon on exploration, but we are short in Orbital and I'd prefer to concentrate on what we need to do for the Plan.
I honestly don't think Erewhon will be unhappy with playing Moon Minecraft.
I wouldn't mess with red zone stuff till we can free up the zone troops with the armor factories or something.
See, that's the beauty of it. We're doing this in areas where we've already pushed Nod out of the Yellow Zone entirely along a front hundreds of kilometers long and GDI territory butts up firmly against the Red Zones. They're not
perfectly secure, but they're in places where ZOCOM isn't operating hundreds of klicks away from GDI's normal setup of artillery, missile, and air support bases, and where Nod is going to have a rough time getting at them.
Well the rail lines are definitely going to be a requirement for actually creating the deep red zone mines. How else are they going to ship all of that tiberium otherwise? So definitely a requirement.
I think we've build so many railroads in the past year or two that we're probably close to what we need; a few dedicated rail spurs to connect up the tiberium mines are probably included in the opening cost of the project.
I'd question why do Red Zone Border Offensive when you could put 1-2 dice on Tiberium Processing Refit and get that finished off, which helps Plan Goals. 2 dice + 40R for 100% chance of completing it. Frees up a die and 35R for something else. Particularly when we'd be losing 60-70% of that RZ income at most 4 turns later.
Because doing a phase of it helps us plan for the future by giving us a sense of what is possible.
And because we can finish off the refits at our leisure next year. With Steel Vanguard winding down and the pressure of doing phase after phase of
Yellow Zone Harvesting relaxing, we have a lot of wiggle room in Tiberium.
Even if the Red Zone Border Offensives are coming from Green Zones, I think I'd honestly want to wait until we had Zone Trooper Armor factories going for GF first. Otherwise we're sending somewhat under geared GF people into RZs or we're stretching ZOCOM forces more.
No, that's the thing, we can basically just roll up civilian mining units, the kind we use in
relatively secure territory. They'll need armed guards, but nowhere near as many as they'd need anyway.
Besides, ZOCOM has a
bit of wiggle room. They can afford to do one phase without being critically overstretched.
Though I still want to do a Ground Force Zone Armor factory in 2061, maybe two, to relieve that issue promptly. Even the first 1-2 should do a lot of good in that respect.
I'm not saying Chicago isn't something we don't want, it is. I'm saying in the current environment I'd prefer to invest in additional income since we lost a bunch of it this turn do to the warranted heavy investment in Refugee and Repair programs. We can finish Chicago in three turns with just Tiberium dice, or, if we really wanted to, we could crash rush it in one turn if we were willing to spend all of our Infrastructure, Tiberium and free dice. However, that latter option is extreme and not necessary since we can invest in Chicago over a longer period of time.
I think our reasonable goal is to finish Phase 4 in 2061 and Phase 5 some time in the Fourth Four Year Plan. Which I think is what most of us have in mind.
