Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

[Simon_Jester]

The ocean is quiet. If you let them hunt by area they'd know hostile just by noise. If your the only sub working the Sea of Japan and hear a sub? Wouldn't take too much to know it's Nod.

At this point we're probably better off with sensor nets and drone subs then trying to recoup our lost sub skills.

Click to shrink...

The thing I was getting at is that Nod has more experience working with submarines and making them very stealthy than we do. We'd have to relearn that more or less from scratch, because I'm pretty sure GDI's navy hasn't employed a significant number of submariners in a very, very long time, nor engineers who specialize in designing them. This isn't like surface combatants where we have continuously updated experience pools in how to operate them and what they need to have in their design.

So Nod submarines will also be able to play the game of "I hear a sub and I'm pretty sure it's not one of mine, plus it sounds like there's a fucking broken dishwasher bolted to the propeller because GDI forgot how to build an attack submarine thirty years ago. Must be a GDI hunter-killer, full torpedo spread, praise Kane!"

Which is, yes, an argument for more sensor nets and drone subs... And the problem with drone subs is that GDI doesn't trust autonomous robotic combat vehicles, and remote-controlling a drone underwater is hard.

 

[Necratoid]

Well this is the song that never ends. The navy fights off surf ships to the death and wins... while the submarines continue to take no damage and do whaterever they want. Battleships mauled and the enemy loses destroyers. A horrid trade in tonnage.

Solution.... more hulls too fight surface ships. More funding for the navy twits that think of submarines as the problem we have ortilery for. The solution for the underwater menace is energy weapons from orbit.

Best I can tell given infinite resources the navy will still be useless versus subs... what a money sink.

 

[K von Carstein]

Best I can tell given infinite resources the navy will still be useless versus subs... what a money sink.

Click to shrink...

Why would it be? With enough money on them, the other branches can compete with Nod. Why would the Navy be any different? Nod advantage isn't a rule, we can mitigate it.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Well this is the song that never ends. The navy fights off surf ships to the death and wins... while the submarines continue to take no damage and do whaterever they want. Battleships mauled and the enemy loses destroyers. A horrid trade in tonnage.

Solution.... more hulls too fight surface ships. More funding for the navy twits that think of submarines as the problem we have ortilery for. The solution for the underwater menace is energy weapons from orbit.

Best I can tell given infinite resources the navy will still be useless versus subs... what a money sink.

Click to shrink...

You are utterly, utterly incorrect.

1) Battleships were mauled on both sides. Both the enemy and we lost lighter surface combatants. I don't know what the tonnage trade looks like because we don't actually know what the respective tonnage figures even are, and our industrial capacity relative to Bintang is a huge uncertainty factor.

2) We did not lose a single naval combatant to submarines of any kind. Submarines were, in this battle, land bombardment assets only. Unless you count the submarines that launched the Kelpie strike, in which case said submarines were also aircraft carriers, because Nod bullshit.

3) Our ongoing funding is NOT "more hulls too fight surface ships [sic]" We are currently working on yards dedicated to two major new ship classes: the Shark-class frigate and the new light carrier design. The Sharks are escorts, which includes, importantly, anti-submarine warfare. Having large numbers of Sharks means we can at least begin to consider dedicated hunter-killer task forces for going after Nod submarine contacts when and as we hear them. The light carriers do not carry Firehawks and are by far more effective in the ASW role than in the maritime strike role against surface targets. Both ship classes are, thus, about as optimized for antisubmarine warfare as GDI is likely to get. If they were any better suited to ASW for their tonnage, they'd be cripplingly overspecialized.

4) The reason the navy does not have ship classes optimized for antisubmarine warfare is not because they are "twits," it is because we did not build such ships for the ten year period after Tiberium War Three, and because prior to that time the Navy was relying heavily on an aging fleet of escorts that are much the worse for wear now, but which performed adequately up until the war winnowed their ranks and used up the last of their endurance.

5) Therefore, you are flat wrong about the Navy being "useless versus subs." The Navy has scored sub kills before, but quite simply, they have only a few hundred modern-ish-ish blue water hulls with which to patrol a global ocean against submarines that could be anywhere and are based out of dozens of naval bases scattered all over the world. Thus, they cannot be everywhere and do everything, and as a rule, it is all they can do to mostly keep the Nod submarine fleet away from our merchant marine. If we want a navy capable of hunting down Nod submarines wherever they are situated, and of regularly patrolling all of the sealanes to hunt for such submarines, we will need to build it ourselves... Something we have declined to do.

 

[Chronic]

Bintang deploying nukes after countering our own superweapons could be used by a savvy politician to reactivate our own nuclear program. You know, make Nod sweat a little and maintain MAD, because right now they could get the idea that they can soon use their strategic arsenal freely once they've put Ion Shields over all their vital facilities.

 

[Vilegrave]

I audibly gasped.


I believe we have a problem.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, them going all in on Navy/Water tech to this level is actually a paradigm shift i didn't see coming.

It's actually far far worse for us if they've started applying this sort of focus to their infrastructure as well, sure we've had decisive land engagements and have a lot of NOD on the run but are any of our forces capable of dealing with potential underwater cities/bases at incredible depths?

If they gain the ability to deploy structures/bases underwater then suddenly they are going to have a LOT more territory available to move into.

 

[Beyogi]

Yeah, them going all in on Navy/Water tech to this level is actually a paradigm shift i didn't see coming.

It's actually far far worse for us if they've started applying this sort of focus to their infrastructure as well, sure we've had decisive land engagements and have a lot of NOD on the run but are any of our forces capable of dealing with potential underwater cities/bases at incredible depths?

If they gain the ability to deploy structures/bases underwater then suddenly they are going to have a LOT more territory available to move into.

Click to shrink...

That would be problematic, but building underwater isn't cheap. In many ways it's harder than building in space. There's also the logistics of feeding these places. So while she probably has underwater cities, I doubt she has more than a few thousand people squirreled away there.

We're now paying the price of landmaxing, but nobody can claim it wasn't successful. We took Europe and Eastern Australia and cleaned up most of North America and pushed in Siberia. Yeah south America and Central Asia didn't go so well, but well can't have everything. Overall we can keep pushing them back on land, while we build our navy. We'll just have to make sure the pendulum doesn't go too far in the other direction, because if we lose territory like Nod just did that'd be utterly devastating for us.

 

[SuperHeavy]

Bintang deploying nukes after countering our own superweapons could be used by a savvy politician to reactivate our own nuclear program. You know, make Nod sweat a little and maintain MAD, because right now they could get the idea that they can soon use their strategic arsenal freely once they've put Ion Shields over all their vital facilities.

Click to shrink...

I doubt GDI tossed or used their nuclear arsenals so even if we had to move the silos the warheads should still be in the inventory. It's just a terrible idea to use nukes that will spew tib particles into the stratosphere when you want to reduce the spread.

 

[Chaeronea]

So is there likely to be another Infrastructure option to help with reconstruction in Tokyo after the naval attack?

 

[Simon_Jester]

Bintang deploying nukes after countering our own superweapons could be used by a savvy politician to reactivate our own nuclear program. You know, make Nod sweat a little and maintain MAD, because right now they could get the idea that they can soon use their strategic arsenal freely once they've put Ion Shields over all their vital facilities.

Click to shrink...

The big issue there is that nuclear weapons require delivery systems and need targets the same as ion cannon do. I don't know that we could, in any reasonable span of time, make a stockpile of nuclear missiles more reliable as a deterrent against major Nod warlords than the ion cannon network still is.

Yeah, them going all in on Navy/Water tech to this level is actually a paradigm shift i didn't see coming.

It's actually far far worse for us if they've started applying this sort of focus to their infrastructure as well, sure we've had decisive land engagements and have a lot of NOD on the run but are any of our forces capable of dealing with potential underwater cities/bases at incredible depths?

If they gain the ability to deploy structures/bases underwater then suddenly they are going to have a LOT more territory available to move into.

Click to shrink...

Remember, there's a big gap between the Kelpie fighter being able to operate underwater (at least for purposes of being launched into the air from a submarine carrier) and Nod having a whole underwater society with giant sea-floor bases.

The Kelpie can operate in the sky; that's not proof that Bintang has sky cities. Likewise, its ability to operate underwater isn't proof Bintang has underwater cities.

So is there likely to be another Infrastructure option to help with reconstruction in Tokyo after the naval attack?

Click to shrink...

Given that we've already got a lavishly funded reconstruction agency going full-bore on repairing things, probably not. It's likely to just get added to the list, unless there's some really critical facility that needs to get reactivated in a hurry to avoid some kind of immediate regional military disaster or something.

 

[Khop]

Best I can tell given infinite resources the navy will still be useless versus subs... what a money sink.

Click to shrink...

What an utterly strange thing to belive while two major anti-sub platforms have just finished development and are now being put into production.

But yes a tolerable result out of all this, one shudders to think what such a force directed against an unready Karachi landing would have achieved. A shame that Tokyo payed the price instead.

 

[Hazard]

Solution.... more hulls too fight surface ships. More funding for the navy twits that think of submarines as the problem we have ortilery for. The solution for the underwater menace is energy weapons from orbit.

Click to shrink...

4) The reason the navy does not have ship classes optimized for antisubmarine warfare is not because they are "twits," it is because we did not build such ships for the ten year period after Tiberium War Three, and because prior to that time the Navy was relying heavily on an aging fleet of escorts that are much the worse for wear now, but which performed adequately up until the war winnowed their ranks and used up the last of their endurance.

Click to shrink...

To add to Simon's point: The Falak was the first time GDI heard of a major Nod submarine construction effort in more than forty years, no party had fielded submarines of notable size in that time. This is mostly because between TW1 and TW2 the seas got absolutely choked by tiberium algae patches that made fielding a navy of any kind near enough impossible that both GDI and Nod stopped fielding ships outright and instead favoured amphibious and hover vehicles of small size, no more than 40ish tons, transported across the world through rail lines and aircraft.

It is hard to overstate just how much damage tiberium algae did to the world simply through the loss of ship transportation. Trade has depended on ships since humanity first started moving large amounts of cargo, and that has not ever changed.

I doubt GDI tossed or used their nuclear arsenals so even if we had to move the silos the warheads should still be in the inventory. It's just a terrible idea to use nukes that will spew tib particles into the stratosphere when you want to reduce the spread.

Click to shrink...

GDI still has nuclear warheads in inventory. It just much prefers to use ion cannons instead.

If GDI uses nukes again, they won't be strategic warheads. Any target that needs a strategic warhead is static, and can be hit by either ion cannons or sustained kinetic impactor bombardment. I mean, what are they going to do, move an entire manufacturing complex in a week? You can move the population and the expensive, hard to replace, small scale equipment in that time. You are not moving more than a handful of the reactor vessels larger than a house in that time, it simply takes too much specialist equipment, and Orbital Command can keep a bombardment up for days.

If GDI uses nukes again, they will have a similar use as Bintang's use of nukes. They would target specific, protected and mobile units with tactical nuclear barrages.

So is there likely to be another Infrastructure option to help with reconstruction in Tokyo after the naval attack?

Click to shrink...

Probably, yes. There is no need for it, because GDI has funded the reconstruction office with what is effectively a blank cheque. It is kind of hard to overstate what a budget approaching 10 billion tic a month can do when it comes to reconstruction efforts. When we first started the project most of the funding went to long deferred maintenance instead because, well, the funds were there, and there wasn't a ton of combat damage that needed fixing worldwide. Just a few major issues, 1 of which got outright crash rebuild at the Secretary of the Treasury's command.

 

[Dmol8]

Alright preliminary plan ready now:

[ ] Plan Winding Down The Disparities
Infrastructure 6/6 Dice + 4 Free Dice 180 Resources:
-[ ] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 6) (Updated) 112/300 20 Resources per Die, 6 Dice = 120 Resources
-[ ] Rail Network Construction Campaigns (Phase 5) (Updated?) 39/325 15 Resources per Die, 4 Dice = 60 Resources
Heavy Industry 5/5 Dice 130 Resources:
-[ ] Crystal Beam Industrial Laser Development 0/80 10 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 10 Resources
-[ ] Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr (New?) 0/320 50 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 100 Resources
-[ ] Puerto Madryn Reconstruction Surge (New) 0/60 10 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 10 Resources
-[ ] Western Europe Reconstruction Surge (New) 0/40 10 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 10 Resources
Light and Chemical Industry 5/5 Dice 105 Resources:
-[ ] Chemical Fertilizer Plants (Phase 2) 94/300 15 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 45 Resources
-[ ] Bergen Superconductor Foundry (Phase 1) 71/95 30 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 60 Resources
Agriculture 4/4 Dice 50 Resources:
-[ ] Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays (Phase 3) (Updated?) 30/140 10 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 30 Resources
-[ ] Freeze Dried Food Plants 126/200 20 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 20 Resources
Tiberium 7/7 Dice 110 Resources:
-[ ] Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting (Phase 10) 174/350 20 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 40 Resources
-[ ] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 6) 46/100 15 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 30 Resources
-[ ] Tiberium Processing Refits (Phase 5) 6/100 20 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Railgun Harvester Factories
--[ ] Bissau 0/70 10 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 10 Resources
--[ ] Porto 44/70 10 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 10 Resources
Orbital Industry 6/6 Dice + 1 Erewhon Die 140 Resources:
-[ ] Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1) 0/150 20 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 60 Resources
-[ ] Lunar Heavy Metals Mines (Phase 3) 217/375 20 Resources per Die, 3 Dice + 1 Erewhon Die = 80 Resources
Services 5/5 Dice 90 Resources:
-[ ] Automatic Medical Assistants 101/300 20 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 60 Resources
-[ ] Hallucinogen Development 0/60 15 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 15 Resources
-[ ] Hardlight Interface Development 0/40 15 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 15 Resources
Military 8/8 Dice + 3 Free Dice 190 Resources:
-[ ] Wingman Drone Deployment (High Priority)
--[ ] Firehawk Wingmen Drones 215/450 20 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 60 Resources
-[ ] Railgun Munitions Development 0/60 10 Resources per Die, 1 Die = 10 Resources
-[ ] Ablat Plating Deployment (Stage 5) 54/200 10 Resources per Die, 2 Die = 20 Resources
-[ ] Escort Carrier Shipyards (High Priority)
--[ ] Nagoya 0/240 20 Resources per Die, 3 Dice = 60 resources
-[ ] Shark Class Frigate Shipyards (High Priority)
--[ ] Melbourne 172/300 20 Resources per Die, 2 Dice = 40 Resources
Bureaucracy 4/4 Dice:
-[ ] Security Reviews Bureaucracy 1+2 Die
-[ ] Interdepartmental Favors 1 Die

180+130+105+50+110+140+90+190 = 985/985

Ugh...I'm back I think. So this plan has:

- 6 Dice on Yellow Zone Fortress Towns to probably (Phase 6 is a 100% chance and an Average DC of 1 to complete and Phase 7 is 68% chance and an Average DC of 45 to complete) get us two rounds of them done so we can be sure that our front line is secure and that we still have Intesification of Green Zone Harvesting to do next turn.
- 4 Dice on Rail Network Construction Campaigns for a 87% chance and an Average DC of 34 to complete and get us enough rail for the last Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting phase of this war.

- 1 Die on Crystal Beam Industrial Laser Development for a 70% chance and a DC of 36 to complete because it is a plan goal now.
- 2 Die on Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr for a 2/4 Median and no DC to complete because it is a plan goal now and an expensive one so it needs to be slow rolled as fast as possible.
- 1 Die each on Puerto Madryn Reconstruction Surge for a 85% chance and a DC of 16 to complete and Western Europe Reconstruction Surge for a 100% chance and a DC of 1 to complete because:

[ ] Allocate Resources to Reconstruction Commissions (New)
Rather than directly dictating from the top down the projects that require the highest priority, and surging resources to fix them, a more general reservation of resources to solve these problems can speed the repair of damages across the Initiative, rather than focusing potentially excessive amounts of energy on individual projects that may or may not be worth pursuing.
-[X] Maximal (30 resources per turn)

An outpouring of resources has gone to the various local commissions and committees that manage reconstruction. However, much of this funding, at least from the early reports, is actually not going into rebuilding immediate damages. Rather, much of it has gone to various forms of deferred upkeep, refugee management, and a number of other projects, most too small scale for the Treasury to bother managing directly. Most of this is due to GDI simply not needing much in the way of actual reconstruction, and instead having a significant problem with deferred maintenance, some of which has been offset since the end of the Third Tiberium War a decade ago. Other parts are problems where the Initiative and the Treasury have simply not gotten around to fixing them, like intersections that tend to produce traffic jams, undersized roads, and train stations with poor connections to other means of transit. While all of these projects will be useful small scale operations, their overall impact is going to be seen in the aggregate more than anything else.

Click to shrink...

we are plugging the too small to notice holes with our Reconstruction Commissions and should still plug the holes big enough to be noticed by us so we can either get those 30 RpT back before reallocation or have those smaller problems fixed sooner so that the overall quality of our infrastructure rises. Either way this helps us with reallocation by either giving us back 30 and then 9 RpT sooner or by counting as a part of the already reallocated resources next reallocation by decreasing the need for more resources for post-war(s) reconstruction.


- 3 Dice on Chemical Fertilizer Plants (Phase 2) for a 74% chance and an Average DC of 40 to complete because that will combined with the Agriculture actions remove our need for more Food production till the end of the plan unless we get a lot more refugee surges in which case we'll need just a few Agriculture Dice.
- 2 Die on Bergen Superconductor Foundry for a 100% chance and an Average DC of 1 to complete Phase 1 and a 13% chance and an Average DC of 76 to complete Phase 2 because this bastard is expensive. As a reminder I don't expect any action with an Average DC over 70 to complete the turn of the plan it is taken with.

- 3 Dice on Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays for a 100% chance and an Average DC of 8 to complete Phase 3 and a 42% chance and an Average DC of 55 to complete Phase 4 and remove our need for more Food production til the end of the plan which means we need on average 16 Dice to complete the Agriculture plan goals. We have that without any free dice already.
- 1 Die on Freeze Dried Food Plants for a 66% chance and a DC of 35 to complete and get us some food and better stockpile action quality.

- 2 Die on Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting (Phase 10) for a 67% chance and an Average DC of 42 to complete and get us one last push so we can finish off that North-West American fight and then sit down to digest our gains.
- 2 Die on Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting for a 100% chance and an Average DC of 1 to complete Stage 6, 82% chance and an Average DC of 30 to complete Stage 7 and a 8% chance and an Average DC of 80 to complete Stage 8. Stage 8 needs Phase 6 of Fortress Towns completed which this plan does. I am not putting more dice here because of the possibility of overcompletion.
- 1 Die on Phase 5 of Tiberium Processing Refits for a 61% chance and a DC of 40 to complete them before we have to deal with whatever improvements Basic Tiberium Studies gets us.
- 1 Die each on the remaining Railgun Harvester Factories. Bissau has a 85% chance and a DC of 16 to complete while Porto has a 100% chance and a DC of 1 to complete.

- 3 Dice on Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting for a 97% chance and an Average DC of 19 to complete Phase 1 and a 22% chance and an Average DC of 64 to complete Phase 2. I'm expecting both phases to complete with this plan and if Phase 2 is not done we can throw 1 Die it's way next turn.
- 3 Dice and 1 Erewhon Die on Lunar Heavy Metals Mines for a 100% chance and an Average DC of 14 to complete Phase 3. Multiply 196 with 196 then divide with 108​ then multiply by a 100 to see the actual percentage of failure of this action if you are interested.

- 3 Dice on Automatic Medical Assistants for a 83% chance and an Average DC of 35 to complete this action because we will need that +5 Health next turn.
- 1 Die on Hallucinogen Development for a 88% chance and a DC of 18 to complete it and get us another + Health option. Hopefully. It might Just be a + Political Support/Mental Health action.
- 1 Die on Hardlight Interface Development for a 100% chance and a DC of 1 to complete because I suspect we will be getting Capital Goods out of this one.

- 3 Dice on Firehawk Wingmen Drones for a 57% chance and an Average DC of 48 to complete. We need these, but using 4 Dice is overkill when we have so many other things we need to finish in Military actions.
- 1 Die on Railgun Munitions Development for a 87% chance and a DC of 19 to complete because is a plan goal that may need as much work put into it as Shell Plants.
- 2 Die on Ablat Plating Deployment for a 70% chance and an Average DC of 40 to complete another plan goal and get Ground Forces what they need to start digging in after this offensive.
- 3 Dice on Nagoya Escort Carrier Yards for a 54% chance and an Average DC of 49 to complete because 4 Dice would be overkill and this is the closest shipyard to Bitang's operational zone which makes this the perfect time to build it while she is licking her wounds.
- 2 Die on Melbourne Shark Frigate Shipyards for a 82% chance and an Average DC of 31 to complete. Sadly can't do this with 1 Die with any reasonable expectation of it finishing with this plan.

- 3 Dice on Security Reviews in Bureaucracy before to make sure it's still clean before we start doing other actions in it.
- 1 Die in Interdepartmental Favors because the last time we did it:

[ ] Reallocate Resources to other departments
One of the limiting factors on GDI's reconstruction has become the limited amount of resources allocated at the beginning of the plan. By moving resources earned from expanding Tiberium exploitation into broader pools, and voluntarily giving up claim to them, the Treasury can earn political support, and bolster other GDI programs beyond its mandate. (Reduces resources per turn by 15 per die allocated) (+5 political support per die)

Click to shrink...

Q4 2052


Resources: 335 + 0 in reserve (45 currently allocated to other departments)

Click to shrink...

Q1 2054

Plan Completion Bonuses: +4 to all dice


Resources: 240 + 0 in reserve (15 allocated to the Forgotten) (10 allocated to grants)

Click to shrink...

It was called Reallocate Resources to other departments, required a Die each 15 RpT and lasted until the next Reallocation when it was folded into the resources we lost during that Reallocation. So we might as well look at what resources we can give away now to get more PS so our next plan is easier to do while also building up more income that we will keep.

As a reminder we currently keep every 3 out 10 Tiberium RpT and all of the Lunar Mining RpT we gain this plan. Also we will get at least 40 Resources per Turn with this plan and can get up to 70 Resources per Turn with it.

If Interdepartmental Favors doesn't work the way I think it does then I will just fold that Bureaucracy Die into Security Reviews. Opinions, if any?

 

[Simon_Jester]

But yes a tolerable result out of all this, one shudders to think what such a force directed against an unready Karachi landing would have achieved.

Click to shrink...

I think it would depend heavily on some specific decision points and details.

Karachi would almost certainly have had priority for the most advanced weapons available, so we would have seen a significantly greater density of Apollo interceptors (with their drones) and tactical lasers and plasma missiles (which would inflict considerable losses among the Kelpies).

The Kelpies would also have been less effective in sustained combat than in this kind of one-off raid, because subsequent airstrikes would have carried a higher proportion of air to air armaments, reprogrammable missiles would have been adjusted with an eye to hit-to-kill direct hits instead of proximity airbursts, autocannon would have been loaded with armor-piercing rounds, and so on.

However, the Kelpies' ability to significantly blunt land-based aviation and other airstrikes while providing Nod with very sinking-resistant aircraft carriers would still have been a nasty surprise.

The submarines' attack on the landing forces would have caused considerable damage. A closely comparable attack would likely not have been disastrous, because long range cruise missiles smacking into an invasion force that's already hit the beaches isn't that big of a deal; India would presumably already be pelting the beachheads with similar munitions anyway, and they'd be much better prepared to defend themselves than a random stretch of Blue Zone Japanese coastline. However, those same submarines launching torpedo attacks against the invasion shipping could have been quite bad, despite how much of the operation we could sustain with an air bridge.

In the worst case scenario, we note that Bintang could afford to be far less inhibited about using nuclear-tipped torpedoes and missiles against an invasion force pushing into Nod-held territory than she would be about launching such attacks against Tokyo. On the other hand, the more damage she actually causes with nuclear weapons, the greater the risk she faces of GDI being infuriated into retaliating against her with full-bore strategic weaponry onslaught of its own, so I don't think scenarios like "Bintang carpet-bombs our whole invasion beachhead with nukes" are realistic even if there is some hypothetical possibility of it happening.

To add to Simon's point: The Falak was the first time GDI heard of a major Nod submarine construction effort in more than forty years, no party had fielded submarines of notable size in that time. This is mostly because between TW1 and TW2 the seas got absolutely choked by tiberium algae patches that made fielding a navy of any kind near enough impossible that both GDI and Nod stopped fielding ships outright and instead favoured amphibious and hover vehicles of small size, no more than 40ish tons, transported across the world through rail lines and aircraft.

It is hard to overstate just how much damage tiberium algae did to the world simply through the loss of ship transportation. Trade has depended on ships since humanity first started moving large amounts of cargo, and that has not ever changed.

Click to shrink...

Wait... you're sure that the Falak can't plausibly have existed before Tib War III? Because Nod's whole submarine fleet being new would make me more optimistic about GDI being able to oppose them on roughly equal terms...

But then, it's probably not that simple.

I would definitely be interested to hear more about the historical timeline here; Ithillid has made some comments about it but they've been scattered and a bit vague.

 

[MightbeaMimic]

The "Kelpies" are more concerning. I have no idea how they can be heavily armored enough to survive air-to-air missiles and autocannon shells yet still fast enough to chase down Firehawks. Am I missing something? Because an aircraft that is sturdy enough to ignore air-to-air missiles and maneuverable enough to dodge heavier ordinance seems like an "I Win" button for Nod.

Click to shrink...

What you're missing is that this is literally a best case scenario for the kelpies. A surprise attack against an enemy that didn't know they exist, was mostly loaded down with the wrong type of missiles (AShMs) and had the wrong type of ammunition.

In either scenario, ranching or no ranching, we really really do not want to be even close to +0 Food. +0 Food means people are going hungry here and there due to distribution issues and are having to eat the stuff we normally prefer not to make people eat.

Click to shrink...

Worth noting that we have a lot of food that's going into the reserves. 0 food in this case isn't "people going hungry" it's "divert less food production to reserves". We'd have to lose a hell of a lot of food to start with people going hungry again.

That being said, a -food now might lead us to miss the stored food target. That's also bad (if not as bad as people going hungry) and far more likely.

I ask because I can miss things when the conversation gets going but is their a reason we can't have our orbital grid look over India to find all the docks and larger infrastructure?

Click to shrink...

It's worth noting here that we aren't told everything InOps and the military know. We're just the treasury, we're supposed to fund things they want based on the suggestions they give. It's entirely likely that InOps and the military know a fairly decent amount about India, we're just not getting told because why should we need to know?

Well this is the song that never ends. The navy fights off surf ships to the death and wins... while the submarines continue to take no damage and do whaterever they want. Battleships mauled and the enemy loses destroyers. A horrid trade in tonnage.

Solution.... more hulls too fight surface ships. More funding for the navy twits that think of submarines as the problem we have ortilery for. The solution for the underwater menace is energy weapons from orbit.

Best I can tell given infinite resources the navy will still be useless versus subs... what a money sink.

Click to shrink...

Doesn't build ASW platforms
"Why can't our navy destroy those subs?"
SMH

As for everything else there, you're wrong about Nod only losing destroyers to the point where I have no idea where you even got that from, you're wrong about new hulls being specialised to fight surface ships, you're wrong that the navy are "twits that think of submarines as the problem we have ortilery for" to the point where I have to wonder if you've read any of the navy stuff that has been posted and you're wrong about the navy being a useless money sink

 

[Ithillid]

I would definitely be interested to hear more about the historical timeline here; Ithillid has made some comments about it but they've been scattered and a bit vague.

Click to shrink...

Some of that is because I want to leave myself wiggle room for future project discussions. But I can certainly talk about the history of Brotherhood submarines in short form here, and will put together something longer form in a bit.

So, Submarines. The Brotherhood has used them basically since revealing themselves to the world, and long before that to supply secret bases and outposts. And they never really stopped using them. What happened in the Second Tiberium War is that submarines shrank, a lot, and became much shorter legged. you are going from what are basically Typhoonalikes to Type XIValikes at best and often significantly smaller than that. Smaller, more agile, able to slip through the cracks and gaps in the algae.
After the Second Tiberium War, with GDI turning more of its efforts to cleaning up the seas, and other ecological interests, Brotherhood submarines started getting rapidly bigger, with the Falaks being the largest so far seen.

 

[Karugus]

Bintang is almost certainly never ever going to have as proportionally as strong a hand as she had here. Plasma warheads are only going to proliferate, ion diffusers mean the next time she shows up in a few years with a major battle group GDI will probably just say 'fair cop, you made us sink a bit lower on our moral high ground' and start dropping nukes, lasers, electrolasers, or 'charged particle beams' into the equation- and even if we are reluctant to escalate to nukes- Bintang is forced to consider it. Shielding will proliferate, along with other solutions to plasma weaponry.

Bintang puffed herself up, made herself look big and bad- and while she had a decent showing in terms of meaningful damage we didn't actually get hi that badly. And while Bintang can surely replace her losses, she certainly can't replace losses while being able to concentrate more and more forces against us like we can

Chill, my dude. GDI did in fact loot the hell out of Indochina, Indonesia, India, etc - basically the entire vicinity of Bintang - and then leave them for dead. There's a lot of very justified anger there.

Also you can't just lump this all under "Nod wants/does X." Nod has been pretty clearly shown as a group of semi-compatible factions with different goals and values, and while they share some of those between themselves they're not a single unified bloc in all respects. Bintang's faction so far has been fairly agnostic to the 'expected' Nod philosophy of 'Tiberium good, abatement bad.' And this entire section, Bintang's operation against GDI Japan? This is her retaliating against GDI's indiscriminate use of WMDs (the Ion Cannons).

Click to shrink...

Let's not pretend that GDI got to decide everywhere they held their ground at. Or the fact Tib was being deliberately cultivated in such a way it likely was pretty much immediately made a lot of the world indefensible with early abatement tech. We're not saints- but we didn't just declare hundreds of millions could die because they were poor. Collapse of global trade, orders of magnitude worse humanitarian disaster globally… and GDI wasn't even a formal state at the time. It feels disingenuous as fuck to accuse GDI of being almost genocidally indifferent to Bintang and the region… when almost everywhere got fucked. I feel the need to drive home, if GDI was entirely the rich boy 1st world social club NOD insists it always was and is- the BZs would not include such locales as: North Korea, southern SA, Western Mali, Oman and honorable mention to fricken Kamchatka, Eastern Siberia, and the Himalayas- all while the Mid West flyover states are a festering mass of Tiberium all along the Rockies.

Yes, there are some old world divides- but I'd argue what we observe is likely a product of the preexisting status quo where 1st world countries source a lot of their raw materials and basic processed materials from poorer countries. That gives those poorer countries a lot of incentives to cultivate Tiberium and wealthy countries the means to profit off of Tib without directly involving themselves in it. Yeah- it's awful. It fucking sucks billions of people are dead, but there was never an outcome where the world wasn't going to get fucked up by Tiberium before they learned how to fight back. GDI didn't ravage and plunder Indochina to maintain 1st world lifestyles. They probably were desperately scrapping together and rationing as much food as they can because holy batman billions of refugees. saying 'Bintang has some points y'know' is like saying those medieval accounts of people getting really violent and morbid during the Black Death have some points because a feudal government that didn't understand germ theory failed to handle it. We got Black Death'd people, blaming one group of people or another ignores the horrifying disease in the room. I'd feel bad for her and hers if they weren't actively making the world a worse place in the name of pursuing grudges that were at least partially misplaced from the get go- but they are so I don't.

 

[Void Stalker]

So things are rough but that is because we are behind on naval spending. If anything this should encourage us to really push getting the Shark and CVE shipyards online for anti-sub forces. A few new wrinkles, one of which (ion disruptor) was easy to suspect given its use elsewhere. However that is a good thing in a way. Bitang will be forced to maintain ships dedicated mainly to prodiving a shield with less room and power for offensive weapons. They also represent a possible chink in the armor if they can be targeted- say in the general melee we take down the disruptors than when the fleets break off we can strike at some of NODs retreating ships with our ion cannons still. Since the disruptor only works so long as the platform is intact.

The kelpies are more of an issue but really means that as soon as Apollo-A dev is an option we need to hit it and then the following turn through a dice each at the new apollo factories. That and drones and plasma warheads should help against them.

As far as tokyo- this really drives home how badly we need SADN otherwise NOD will keep on launching these style attacks, unfortunately even with heavy free dice investment between plan commitments and other projects that need to be rolled out I doubt we can start it before late next year or the start of next plan. It does mean we want to keep putting a lot of free dice into mil though because we have counters to a lot of NOD bs we just have to get the factories out or the dev down, or the infra built which takes free dice and a lot of them.

 

[Lightwhispers]

Regarding the GDI anti-sub efforts - that is one thing that will be significantly helped by the Hammerhead wingman drones, since IIRC Ithillid said one thing they do is anti-sub patrols.

And even if Kelpies have a pretty much silent drive system, they (like everything else) should be quite detectable by active sonar. A spread of sonar buoys going active should ruin any future ambushes quite nicely. At which point they're energy-light, missile-heavy, armored Barghests which are stuck in the water.
...which, depending on their underwater speed compared to GDI torpedoes, might be the safest place for them.

 

[MightbeaMimic]

Let's not pretend that GDI got to decide everywhere they held their ground at. Or the fact Tib was being deliberately cultivated in such a way it likely was pretty much immediately made a lot of the world indefensible with early abatement tech. We're not saints- but we didn't just declare hundreds of millions could die because they were poor. Collapse of global trade, orders of magnitude worse humanitarian disaster globally… and GDI wasn't even a formal state at the time. It feels disingenuous as fuck to accuse GDI of being almost genocidally indifferent to Bintang and the region… when almost everywhere got fucked. I feel the need to drive home, if GDI was entirely the rich boy 1st world social club NOD insists it always was and is- the BZs would not include such locales as: North Korea, southern SA, Western Mali, Oman and honorable mention to fricken Kamchatka, Eastern Siberia, and the Himalayas- all while the Mid West flyover states are a festering mass of Tiberium all along the Rockies.

Yes, there are some old world divides- but I'd argue what we observe is likely a product of the preexisting status quo where 1st world countries source a lot of their raw materials and basic processed materials from poorer countries. That gives those poorer countries a lot of incentives to cultivate Tiberium and wealthy countries the means to profit off of Tib without directly involving themselves in it. Yeah- it's awful. It fucking sucks billions of people are dead, but there was never an outcome where the world wasn't going to get fucked up by Tiberium before they learned how to fight back. GDI didn't ravage and plunder Indochina to maintain 1st world lifestyles. They probably were desperately scrapping together and rationing as much food as they can because holy batman billions of refugees. saying 'Bintang has some points y'know' is like saying those medieval accounts of people getting really violent and morbid during the Black Death have some points because a feudal government that didn't understand germ theory failed to handle it. We got Black Death'd people, blaming one group of people or another ignores the horrifying disease in the room. I'd feel bad for her and hers if they weren't actively making the world a worse place in the name of pursuing grudges that were at least partially misplaced from the get go- but they are so I don't.

Click to shrink...

Here's the thing, I agree with you here but do you think any of this matters to the people that got left behind? Sure, GDI couldn't save everyone but that doesn't change the fact that they were abandoned and worse, looted while they were abandoned. The cold logic of "well this could save people elsewhere" doesn't stop the anger of people that were left to die with nowhere to turn to but NOD

 

[Takareer]

An unassuming name for a piece of technology derived from the last Threshold Tower, it allowed for near-perfect transferral of energy between wireless pylons.

Click to shrink...

Put this on a rocket and you have a missile capable of piercing the ion cannon defence grid. So much for that not being a concern...

 

[Lightwhispers]

Put this on a rocket and you have a missile capable of piercing the ion cannon defence grid. So much for that not being a concern...

Click to shrink...

You assume it would fit on a rocket, much less work while on a rocket far away from any other such pylon devices.
Now, we definitely do want to get a laser-armed augmentation to the ASAT network active as soon as possible... but what you propose ignores a number of non-trivial engineering challenges.

 

[Takareer]

You assume it would fit on a rocket, much less work while on a rocket far away from any other such pylon devices.
Now, we definitely do want to get a laser-armed augmentation to the ASAT network active as soon as possible... but what you propose ignores a number of non-trivial engineering challenges.

Click to shrink...

Nod just put wireless power transmission sourced from alien tech on the battlefield, I think you'll agree that being wary of them overcoming a few engineering challenges is not undue alarm.

 

[Vehrec]

So things are rough but that is because we are behind on naval spending. If anything this should encourage us to really push getting the Shark and CVE shipyards online for anti-sub forces. A few new wrinkles, one of which (ion disruptor) was easy to suspect given its use elsewhere. However that is a good thing in a way. Bitang will be forced to maintain ships dedicated mainly to prodiving a shield with less room and power for offensive weapons. They also represent a possible chink in the armor if they can be targeted- say in the general melee we take down the disruptors than when the fleets break off we can strike at some of NODs retreating ships with our ion cannons still. Since the disruptor only works so long as the platform is intact.

The kelpies are more of an issue but really means that as soon as Apollo-A dev is an option we need to hit it and then the following turn through a dice each at the new apollo factories. That and drones and plasma warheads should help against them.

As far as tokyo- this really drives home how badly we need SADN otherwise NOD will keep on launching these style attacks, unfortunately even with heavy free dice investment between plan commitments and other projects that need to be rolled out I doubt we can start it before late next year or the start of next plan. It does mean we want to keep putting a lot of free dice into mil though because we have counters to a lot of NOD bs we just have to get the factories out or the dev down, or the infra built which takes free dice and a lot of them.

Click to shrink...

I don't think we're really that far behind on naval spending-yes it might feel that way, but the navy is very expensive. It's actually cost us more resources than almost any other branch of the military. And we've given it plenty of dice-the problem is that ships are really quite expensive. We didn't invest anything in the navy first-plan but we've kept most of the Brotherhood from challenging us at sea at least-our big expensive ships are a strong disincentive to try piracy and the like.

SADN networks are big and dice-expensive, as big as our current naval obligations, and covering civilian centers would push them to become even bigger. I doubt we will see them until the back-half of the next plan.

Put this on a rocket and you have a missile capable of piercing the ion cannon defence grid. So much for that not being a concern...

Click to shrink...

A pylon on a rocket probably takes up several tons of payload, minus more for the Disruptor itself, which are not small pieces of equipment. So you're looking at a launch vehicle the size of at least a Soyuz or Falcon 9-and maybe more like a Saturn IB or Proton. Bigger, more obvious, more time to bring our lasers to bear-though we should probably do some modern lasers, sure.

 

[TheFourthman]

Nod just put wireless power transmission sourced from alien tech on the battlefield, I think you'll agree that being wary of them overcoming a few engineering challenges is not undue alarm.

Click to shrink...

You'd still be making them burn the R&D and deployment. Plus tech in Nod is not always equally distributed.