- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I hope you're right, but I'm unsure. My main objections to keeping the target as-is are:
1) We might have problems handling both "feed the refugees" and "store enough canned beans" in the time available. The refugee wave's increased Food consumption isn't necessarily going to stop at "GDI's population eats -10 more Food now." For example, right now there might still be a lot of people in our recently overrun and newly integrated Green Zone territory (e.g. the bits of Western Europe that Reynaldo was active in) who are still eating whatever they used to eat, from those same facilities... in which case for safety's sake we're probably going to have to shut things down and feed them from proper GDI aquaponics facilities just to ensure they're not getting a side-order of tiberium chips on our watch.
2) It puts us under a very inflexible time constraint. Five turns to complete a sizeable megaproject. I'm a bit shuddery about that.
3) The combination of refugee Food and demand for the storehouses may bring us close to going into the negatives, closer than I would like, to the point where something like a localized bioweapon release or major shipping disasters could cause localized famines. Food is one of those indicators where you really really don't want to be running a thin surplus, especially when Nod's warlords are feeling pissy, beaten up, and potentially desperate. I'd like more time.
The big thing is, we have strong pressure to do Anadyr anyway, because if we don't do it now, it's probably getting delayed until 2065 at the earliest.
Personally I'd be happy to build Anadyr and the laser rollout and START work on Nuuk, in the full acceptance that Phase 4 won't get finished until some time in late 2062 or early 2063.
Refits take time, but we have a few years. Frankly, I think you're being over-optimistic about when the Navy will be ready for Karachi. It's not clear to me that we'll even have a significant number of escort carriers by then. I think we may well need to wait until 2063 or even 2064, and given the option of a Karachi Sprint, we can wait that long and still hit the Plan target.
Bear in mind that we're contemplating Karachi in 2062 (at the earliest) or 2063-64 (more likely in my opinion). The anti-laser ablatives and railgun munitions are must-do well before Karachi can happen.
My one thing is that I consider the Islands a higher priority than the Victories. We have fairly well-developed shore bombardment capabilities, especially for a target relatively close to an existing Blue Zone, such as Karachi. What we don't have is fully developed amphibious warfare assets.
We just finished Nuuk Phase 3 this turn. We're sitting at +30 Capital Goods, -5 from the blown up factories as I understand it.
Even factoring in the loss of the +10 at the end of the war, we're still comfortably in the positives through a few more turns of military factory production, and we've got several more points coming down the pike from Enterprise, Bergen, hopefully the laser project, and Anadyr.
Nuuk Phase 3 pretty radically changes the Capital Goods balance all by itself, in terms of "what can we afford." It's not enough to let us go hog wild with AEVAs, but it is enough to let us do a whole lot of war factories at 1-2 points per.
That's delightful to hear, and I'm eager to see your supporting evidence.
On the other hand, even with 'only' freeze drying, we're already at the point where the Progress cost of building the storehouses is going to greatly outscale the Progress cost of building the agricultural supply chain to grow the food.
Well, my understanding is that having Columbia Phase 1+2+3 finished before Enterprise Phase 5 comes online locks us into higher Progress costs for the late Columbia phases. So we end up spending more dice total, on net. We only "save" dice from the perspective of the current Four Year Plan.
On the other hand, I haven't forgotten all my arguments for trying to squeeze in a few Columbia phases back in 2059 when I thought we might be able to fit it into the schedule and get away with it.
I could see it either way. Honestly, "do some Columbia" probably aligns better with our actual needs and goals, even if "finish Enterprise" is slightly more mechanically efficient in a spreadsheet sense and is more in line with the low-resolution high-ambition goals set in 2059.
I will say that renegotiating the Enterprise Phase 5 target to a Columbia Phase 1+2+3 target makes it entirely unnecessary for us to even worry about renegotiating the moon mines, and nets us considerable extra Political Support in the runup to the Fourth Four Year Plan negotiations, potentially letting us get away with stuff like genetic engineering research that we'd otherwise have to shrink away from due to the PS cost.
