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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Steel Talon project I want to do most (after the Mastodon) is the Modular Rapid Assembly System Prototypes. That's the path to building mobile bases, which will be a huge improvement in our military options. Plus it might have knock-on effects, like improving the next generation of MARVs.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Kane:
"Brothers and sisters, tell me this: How did I end up on sandwich-making duty and why has all the mayo been eaten BY MY OWN FORCE!?"
Could be a new player. Could be the "known unknown" old player of Nod India. Parsimony suggests the latter to me. Note that the Falaks are primarily cargo submarines based on what we've seen so far, and India is very much the known "hang back, concentrate on economy" player so far.
Also note that no one warlord has a monopoly on submarine technology or attacks, so we shouldn't attribute all submarine warfare (including much smaller, non-Falak missile subs like the ones behind the Manchester raid) to the same warlord. That means there may not be a correlation between "where the Falaks come from" and "who's using submarines to mess with us."
Even if we build the light carrier yards first, there will be frigates hitting the water in large numbers before the carriers do, because the frigates take less time to complete. But the longer it takes to finish the light carrier yards, the longer it will take for the naval situation to reach "okay."
How should I know?
Like, we can speculate on the most viable ways to use what we've learned about this process, but there are endless possibilities. From the sound of it, "corpse starch" is just the Nod version of our fungus bars, and this is an area where Nod probably isn't as far in advance of our baseline as they are in other areas where xenotech is their key to all of the everything. Knowing how they do this may prove effectively useless, or it may be a slight boost. If it's a slight boost, it's probably going to be a boost in the same general area that fungus bars are. Namely, production of emergency rations from the least desirable food that we have, which means it's most likely to affect our Stored Food efforts.
I'm going to note that the mobile/nomadic model of warfare most supported by mobile bases makes the most sense in the context of a war we're not fighting. Insofar as the strategic context of C&C 4 makes any sense, it's a world where territorial bases have been shattered and tiberium has overrun everything but the last ultra-concentrated strongholds before construction of the TCN begins to bring the world back from the brink. Nobody can afford to build and mobilize armies of millions of soldiers, and the terrain is so tiberium-riddled that conventional vehicles have very short operational range before they drive over a tiberium patch and get cancer rocks up in their running gear. So you get giant highly specialized mobile bases to support very small forces that are probably halfway to being what, by pre-TWIII standards, would be ZOCOM units: units trained to fight tiberium almost as much as they do the enemy.
Here, that hasn't happened to us, and if it does we'll be treating it as a loss condition.
But it would be nice to have the option for deep raiding operations and whatnot. And it's very likely to synergize with the MARV Mk. II.
I approve of working on it... along with the other Talons research programs, one at a time, just to see what they do.
Another option is to pull back on our offensives, particularly YZ Harvesting, Rails, and Fortress Towns. Even the latter 2 won't just be back-filling our current territory, but seizing new ground.
This is pure speculation, but I believe that each of the options have the following priorities when choosing territory to claim:
YZ harvesting: Increase income, decrease Nod income, make progress towards population centers
Fortress towns: Secure current territory, seize defensive ground, make progress towards population centers
Rails: Improve interconnectivity, make progress towards front lines, make progress towards population centers
It's likely that we'll be dropping rails to focus on other infrastructure projects for the near future. Suborbital shuttles gives us +16 logistics for the same amount of dice total as rails, and slightly less resource cost per logistics point. I'm hopeful that we'll complete the Hover Chassis Factory within the next year as well, as it will likely lead to a very different logistics paradigm.
So the big questions are YZ harvesting and fortress towns.
Right now, we have 9 phases of YZ harvesting, and are very close to a 10th, 5 phases of fortress towns, and 5 phases of green zone intensification. IIRC, the formula for green zone intensification is max(YZ harvesting, fortress towns +2). So our YZ harvesting operations are increasingly unsupported. It's probably worthwhile to continue slow walking fortress towns to reduce our casualties in the medium term. YZ harvesting, on the other hand, should probably cease expansion entirely after completing the 10th phase, and we don't want to signficantly overshoot its completion. Which will have the side benefit of allowing its then +275% cost modifier a chance to cool down.
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- Location
- Most likely California
[X] Plan Budget Balancing
-[X] Complete Anadyr and Industrial Lasers Before end of Plan (Capital Goods)
-[X] Complete at least three more phases of Blue Zone Apartments (Arcologies)
-[X] Commit to completing five phases by end of next plan (Karachi)
-[X] Complete Anadyr and Industrial Lasers Before end of Plan (Capital Goods)
-[X] Complete at least three more phases of Blue Zone Apartments (Arcologies)
-[X] Commit to completing five phases by end of next plan (Karachi)
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
We were explicitly told that the current round of railroads is backfilling, and by definition fortress towns are backfill because we can hardly build a fortress in territory our armies haven't yet reached.
With that said, given short-term priorities, particularly Chicago, I think we should probably just finish off the current phases of Yellow Zone Harvesting and Fortress Towns, and leave railroads where they are for now until given feedback indicating otherwise. We'll need our Infrastructure dice for housing, Chicago, and hopefully at least some progress on Suborbital Shuttles.
We can then circle back to Fortress Towns as necessary and appropriate once we're not in Infrastructure crunch mode and have the budget for it.
The MRASP concept might work well for ZOCOM. They can maraud through Red Zones with that sort of set-up for quite a time without needing resupply possibly, and would provide amusing new angles of attack against Nod forces that generally think RZ borders as "safe."
"Hey, could we borrow that MRASP prototype? And a few Super MARVs? Maybe a Steel Talons armor unit? ... Hm? What do we want with them? Well, we want to take a look-see near Ayer's Rock, and then maybe sight see up around Darwin, before heading south to pick up some souvenirs from Perth. Road trip'll end back in Adelaide." (Ayer's Rock area being where Qatar's headquarters was before her death, Darwin being a RZ hub site, and Perth being a YZ hub site)
But yeah, most conventional fighting probably wouldn't necessarily benefit from that. Possibly results in a new generation of MCV.
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The Steel Talons program I kinda want to see if the Heavy Combat Laser. It could be the laser from the Scorpion tank upgrade. Or it could be TW3 Beam Cannon.
And if it's Beam Cannon or better, there's only one option available to us. We need to locate a working Mammoth Mk II, take off the rail guns (if needed for power), and slap this laser (or two of them) on it before having it stomp around the battlefield mini-Obelisking Nod forces. ... Actually, take that Mammoth Mk II and give it a massive overhaul first. New modern myomers, more powerful engine, modernized rail guns (might take less space for the same amount of bang?), slap on some LCL and PDS spots, replace the missile launchers with URLS points (or laser systems).
When you need to assault something with prejudice, send the Mastodon. When you need to assault something in such a way that the enemy suffers existential terror and bowel voiding at the sheer level of "fuck you" inbound, send a modernized Mammoth Mk II (Would that end up becoming a Mk IV?). And some Mastodons for support, because you can never have enough "fuck you" in that instance.
Ah, I can but dream. Maybe HCL is the Scorpion level, and it'll unlock a project for a Super Heavy Combat Laser (Siege Combat Laser?) that is more Beam Cannon level?
...I think I might just like to use lasers against Nod for all the decades of them lasering GDI forces.
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
Is SCEDQuest still going on? @BOTcommander closed down his other quest.
- Location
- New England
Yeah, we had an update for last turn.
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
ok, cool. i love space quests.
Bot is busy with school and focusing on it for now.
trooperist
Cinnamon Roll AI
SCEDQuest usually gets an update whenever we get a new quarter. We've already got the one for this quarter so we'll just have to wait.
Lol.
1)The fact that the GM has explicitly desisted from characterizing India suggests that it isnt them.
As does the apparent lack of major submarine activity in the Indian Ocean, which is not what you'd expect in the presence of major submarine-construction complexes on the Indian coastline.
2)Im discounting the other warlords out of hand because no known warlord, not even Stahl, would pass up the opportunity to exploit that sort of propaganda coup for greater clout and leverage inside the literally cut-throat politics of the Brotherhood.
And whoever is running the Falakim program doesnt need or want that kind of leverage, or the attention apparently.
Which says interesting things.
3)Plus there's the funding question. Navies are expensive to design, build and maintain, as Bintang demonstrates, and whoever is building nextgen stealth subs for the Brotherhood probably doesnt have all that much disposable income for land/air war with GDI, or to run multiple other RnD programs.
4)Furthermore, it bears noting that the Falaks were previously characterized in their first appearance as having been designed as missile submarines, and only being used as cargo subs because they werent entirely successful in that role. Their being relegated to cargo duty means there's a Falak-successor out there, and we havent seen it. Not to mention any siblings.
Additionally, while no warlord has a monopoly on submarines, there seems to be a distinct operational difference between Falak-lineage submarines and all the rest, both in design and in use.
1) Those frigates are already in high demand even before the CVEs show up, from convoy escorts and coastal picket duty to thickening the defenses around existing carrier and battleship groups to replacing existing Burkes et al.
There isnt going to be a pool of free escorts to draw on if you slow down their construction.
2)I dont agree.
Delaying a 20x frigates/9 months shipyard so as to marginally accelerate the construction of a 4x CVEs/18 months shipyard is not going to shorten our window of vulnerability. Much the opposite.
3)Utimately, there is no tangible effect on ship availability based on when you start building a shipyard, only when you actually finish building it. A shipyard that begins construction in Q4 and finishes in Q1 will start and finish building its first ships at the same time as a shipyard that was built entirely in Q1.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
1) The GM would cheerfully desist from characterizing India even if we were encountering products of theirs, so long as we had no reasonably way of deducing where those products came from. The lack of major submarine activity in the Indian Ocean proves little. GDI only travels the Indian Ocean along well known convoy routes, secured by escorts, both for fear of Bintang and on general principles. GDI does not roam the Indian Ocean freely, and as such, it wouldn't be that hard for Falaks to get past our forces and go where they like, being sighted only rarely. Now, if Falaks regularly cruised the Indian Ocean in great numbers, we would presumably stumble over them more often by chance... if we were looking, which we generally are not. Our Navy is in no position to go hunting for submarines in the Indian Ocean, whereas we would assuredly have spotted large numbers of submarines in the more heavily controlled and patrolled Atlantic.
2) You are correct that other warlords would exploit the leverage that the Falak program gives them. This is not positive evdience, but is negative evidence. Which warlord or faction within Nod, aside from Kane himself and his personal elite, has a firm, secure position? Who isn't prone to grandstanding or demonstrative deeds to 'prove' their superiority? Who is the one that all the other warlords seem to feel safe in bargaining with, exchanging favors or resources or technology for favors, technology, and resources of their own? Whoever's in charge in India, that's who.
3) India almost certainly has the strongest economy of any single Nod faction, probably including Kane's if you count sheer output. India has been kept relatively free of Red Zones (the Northwest got eaten, but that was apparently stopped somehow), and there has probably been far less dislocation of population and industry than in most other Nod-controlled regions, most of which have suffered heavily from the rapid expansion of the Red Zones during the early 2050s. Who better than India to be able to support a reasonably strong army and a sophisticated shipbuilding program at the same time? Especially given that if India controls both biomonster production and the Falak fleet, they are in a very good position to barter with other warlords for advanced hardware they don't have production tooling for themselves.
4) I see no reason that the Indians, or anyone else, couldn't simultaneously be using cargo versions and armed versions of the same basic submarine hull. Also, we don't actually know how old the Falak-class is, because we have almost no canon information on the state of Nod's naval capabilities. For all we know, they could date back to the 2010s or 2020s. Furthermore, we have no way of distinguishing a cargo Falak from an armed Falak unless we catch it in port loading and unloading cargo; all we know for sure is that we have not been attacked by Falaks, or by any other similar superheavy submarines, on a regular basis. And since we also haven't been attacked by a Falak-successor built to the same scale and with similar performance, that proves very little.
Our window of vulnerability will not properly close until we have enough light carriers guarding convoys that we can form effective carrier task forces to strike at enemy bases directly. A purely defensive strategy is not enough to secure ourselves, though we can slow the bleeding.
Also, it is unrealistic to try to finish shipyards in a single quarter in any condition, because we cannot afford to waste dice on surge construction. If we're lucky, we get single-turn completion. If not, not.
- Location
- Wall Gazing
Thats just it in my view. The sooner we can staunch the bleeding, the better off we will be. I acknowledge that we want the carriers out as well, especially as we are probably going to slow down the crazy Free dice Military investment if/when things underperform in Agriculture or Orbital. But, hmm. What if we had something like:
Military 8/8 Dice + 6 Free Dice 240 R
-[] Firehawk Wingmen Drones: 215/450 (3 Dice, 60 R) (57% chance)
-[] Railgun Munition Development: 0/60 (1 Die, 10 R) (87% chance)
-[] Ablat Plating Deployment (Stage 5): 54/200 (2 Dice, 20 R) (70% chance)
-[] Escort Carrier Shipyards (Nagoya) 0/240 (3 Dice, 60 R) (54% chance)
-[] Shark Class Frigate Shipyard (Seattle): 0/300 (2 Dice, 40 R) (2/4 median)
-[] Shark Class Frigate Shipyard (Melbourne): 172/300 (2 Die, 40 R) (82% chance)
-[] Mastodon Heavy Assault Walker Development: 0/30 (1 Die, 10 R) (100% chance)
This being Anadyr Also Alliterates with two Free dice moved from HI to Military and put into Seattle. Setting that up to be in a good position to finish in Q1.
Or the version where a die gets moved from Melbourne to Seattle, reducing the former's chance of completion to 14%, but giving the latter a 14% chance of completing (26% chance one of them completes). That would be very die conservative, but might not be the best move given we still need to staunch the bleeding, and the best way to do that is with more Frigates ASAP.
"Falak" is almost assuredly a GDI reporting name, not what the original designers named it, I wouldn't read too much into it. Like the Afanc-class gana isn't from Wales, it's just the name the intel nerds pulled out of a hat.
The key difference between the new Talons laser projects and our existing point defense is the infernium laser technology we very recently stole. The crystal beam laser is 50+ years old and it shows. The Light Combat Laser project is to develop a new GDI infernium laser that can match or exceed modern Brotherhood lasers, not their outdated stuff from three wars ago.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, I still disagree with you about the wisdom of going 1-and-6 on our allocation of Free dice to Heavy Industry and Military, as opposed to 3-and-4 or maybe a compromise 2-and-5... But subject to that caveat, I'm not complaining. Honestly, while I may quibble about build order, just getting the yards done in a timely manner falls under "good enough," I suppose.
(And I do feel that there are good reasons to go for three dice on Anadyr this turn. Next turn we'll have 30 R/die research gacha projects popping up and we will very much want to take them, so trying to spend more than one die per turn on Anadyr will be painful, especially if we're also committed to continuing Bergen.
I am not a fan of being that dice-conservative with our shipyards. If this were a commitment we'd gotten at the beginning of a Plan and we just needed to do it to say that we'd done it, fine, but not when the naval situation is this bad. I'm very much willing to spend a Free die to move a yard from having a 14% chance of completion to having an 82% chance.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if two yards each have a 14% chance of completion, the chance of at least one completing is more than 26%...?
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
[X] Plan Budget Balancing
- Location
- USA
Based on the text we got from just starting phase 1 of Bergen I'd say it's absolutely essential.
It looks like a ton of next generation projects are locked behind it.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
All the more reason to get the bulk of our Anadyr spending out of the way now with those first three dice. We do not have the kind of economy that can comfortably support 100 R/turn on two Anadyr dice, 90-120 R/turn on research gachas, 60-90 R/turn on Bergen, and a 200+ R/turn military budget, all at once.
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- Location
- Wall Gazing
Yeah, the R situation is going to continue to be problematic. Though I don't think we want to put more then one die (or however many are needed to get a chance at completion) at a time on Anadyr after the initial investment due to how much each die costs to activate. I can imagine a 2 and 5 distribution that keeps three dice on Anadyr to get it to the point for a chance of completion. The extra die in Military and the dice you have on escort Carriers instead going towards 4 dice on Seattle to give it good odds of finishing.
I don't disagree with you, I also prefer the former version as it gives a much higher chance of actually finishing a Frigate yard this turn. Something I am highly in favor of as the sooner the bleeding is staunched, the sooner we can work on healing the damage.
Probability Rule of Addition: P(A Or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)
Probability Independent Events: P(A and B) = P(A) * P(B)
Chance of either yard finishing = .14 + .14 - .14 * .14 = .2604 = 26%
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Eh, I didn't actually sit down and do the arithmetic; you're right. Brain misfired.
More generally, that's my point; I want to put three dice on Anadyr this turn so that we don't unnecessarily prolong the period of having to dig up 50 R per turn to spend on it, one die at a time, during 2061, when we'd really rather not. This turn, we've got plenty of good stuff to do that can make that more or less sustainable. That won't last forever.
More generally, that's my point; I want to put three dice on Anadyr this turn so that we don't unnecessarily prolong the period of having to dig up 50 R per turn to spend on it, one die at a time, during 2061, when we'd really rather not. This turn, we've got plenty of good stuff to do that can make that more or less sustainable. That won't last forever.
The MRAS system is going to be a bit different than the C&C4 Crawlers. Iirc Assault Crawlers are going to be basically Fatboys from Supreme Commander. Shitload of guns, able to resupply and rearm aircraft on the move, build replacement vehicles and parts from available resources. And basically allow a offensive to proceed without worrying as much about logistics.