I would assume that part of the job of a mitigation focused planned city would be to crack open the seed-vaults and try to bring life back to a post-tiberium wasteland. And probably also spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out what sort of nutrients and trace elements etc. they need to add in order for the things they plant to actually grow. Probably quite similar to the later stages of terraforming, now that I think about it.
Well yeah, but in that case, we've got about, oh, five or eight million square kilometers of reclaimed Green Zones to practice on. I'd expect less of a Planned City project and more of a worldwide reclamation project.
 
Well yeah, but in that case, we've got about, oh, five or eight million square kilometers of reclaimed Green Zones to practice on. I'd expect less of a Planned City project and more of a worldwide reclamation project.

True. However the Yellow Zones aren't generally entierly dead, and those who are are generally adjacent to living areas. Now establishing a city in for example the reclaimed areas of the Amazon means you have an area that is unlikely to be repopulated with plants or animals from the outside. Also the natural process of reclamation is likely quite slow and I assume GDI would like to speed it up as much as possible. Understanding how to recover deadzones is as important as knowing how to help the only mostly dead zones along.
 
A distinct point- though I'm not sure it's one that would be best served by a planned city. But this is going to be something the QM will weigh in on when he sees fit.
 
Right now we're at around 70-80 Red Zone mitigation. We have to get specifically unlucky for the Red Zones to advance on us. That can change with mutation, but mutation takes a while to happen and we'd have to get pretty sloppy to let our mitigation slide down very far any time in the next decade or two.
To expand on this: to have Red Zones start advancing on us on a consistent basis, we would have to have one of three situations happen:
1) We get very unlucky with rolls. And I mean, consistently unlucky to a point I would suggest changing dice rollers because it's practically impossible with a properly random roller.
2) We get unlucky with mutation, and it speeds up such that we're losing multiple points of mitigation every turn. This is possible, but again either requires a malicious dice roller, or mutation to get significantly worse than I consider likely.
3) We get somewhat unlucky with mutation, and do nothing to offset it. I consider this very unlikely, because it's essentially saying that we change our priorities and voting trends.

... well, okay, or 4) Enemy action: either the Scrin come back and wreck us, or NOD detonates a Liquid Tiberium bomb.

The point is, none of those situations are likely - they're low probability events.
 
I'm pretty sure that if we push back tiberium far, we risk triggering accelerated mutation.

There have to be reasons @Ithillid is confident in saying that we can't save the Earth by brute force conventional mitigation alone. In principle, if we could get up to 100 RZ mitigation (not hard if we focused on it) and hold ourselves there ahead of mutation, we'd mop up all the Red Zones within, roughly speaking, 5400/50 = 108 turns. That is to say, sometime around the in-game year 2090. And even if the Red Zones hulked out then, it would take them considerable time to force us back across the world and off the planet.

So the QM's confidence strongly suggests that if we do succeed in rolling back the Red Zones collectively, tiberium will start adapting faster, or that there is some other reason why we can't just take the world back that way without a TCN-equivalent.
 
QM did say if Tib goes deep enough planet will go BOOM.

So.. Underground tib deposits? Zones only show situation on surface. Who knows how deep in the planet's crust that BS goes...
 
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To expand on this: to have Red Zones start advancing on us on a consistent basis, we would have to have one of three situations happen:
1) We get very unlucky with rolls. And I mean, consistently unlucky to a point I would suggest changing dice rollers because it's practically impossible with a properly random roller.
2) We get unlucky with mutation, and it speeds up such that we're losing multiple points of mitigation every turn. This is possible, but again either requires a malicious dice roller, or mutation to get significantly worse than I consider likely.
3) We get somewhat unlucky with mutation, and do nothing to offset it. I consider this very unlikely, because it's essentially saying that we change our priorities and voting trends.

... well, okay, or 4) Enemy action: either the Scrin come back and wreck us, or NOD detonates a Liquid Tiberium bomb.

The point is, none of those situations are likely - they're low probability events.
Writ enemy action: Scrin coming back is a instant game over more or less because you can bet that a new Scrin expedition would be a proper military expedition to stomp us out instead of a bunch of miners with lightly equipped PMC/mall cop equivalents.

For NOD detonating LT bomb, highly unlikely due to Kane keeping a very tight hold on strategic tech like LT bomb tech and catalyst missiles. And Kane would most likely not use a LT bomb since he only used the LT bomb to lure in the Scrin mining expedition to loot their tech and threshold tower.
 
QM did say if Tib goes deep enough planet will go BOOM.

So.. Underground tib deposits? Zones only show situation on surface. Who knows how deep in the planet's crust that BS goes...
This is part of why we've had advocacy for vein mining. We're literally only scratching the surface.

I get that there's going to be a push for Red Zone Border Offensives and the concomitant super-glacier mining in the next Plan just for the sheer weight of RpT it makes available, but I think we should make it a goal to do several phases of vein mining between now and 2065, just so we can start to get a handle on the scope of the problem under our own territory, let alone in the current deep Red Zones.
 
I'm pretty sure that if we push back tiberium far, we risk triggering accelerated mutation.
Ithillid was talking about the underground Tiberium deposits. We don't have any kind of effective way to deal with the Tiberium burrowing its way through the Earth's crust and towards its mantle. Even if we did tons of Tiberium Vein Mines, there's way too much Tiberium that's too far deep underground that we can't get to at all.

What we can do, theoretically, is clear the surface of Tiberium. It wouldn't stop the Earth from exploding eventually when Tiberium converts the mantle into an ocean of liquid Tiberium, but it would buy us decades of time in order to evacuate the planet and/or build a TCN. (If we ever get the plans for creating a TCN, which isn't certain by any means.)

The deep underground Tiberium is a slowly ticking time bomb that our mitigation can't touch. But the surface Tiberium would have killed us much, much faster if not for our conventional mitigation efforts.
 
This is part of why we've had advocacy for vein mining. We're literally only scratching the surface.

I get that there's going to be a push for Red Zone Border Offensives and the concomitant super-glacier mining in the next Plan just for the sheer weight of RpT it makes available, but I think we should make it a goal to do several phases of vein mining between now and 2065, just so we can start to get a handle on the scope of the problem under our own territory, let alone in the current deep Red Zones.

We should just do both. And also Red Zone Containment Lines being completed so we push on those everywhere.

As for over 100 Mitigation pushing Tiberium to mutate more? I doubt it. Tib was going to mutate mitigation or no mitigation so it's not relevant in that context. Mitigation over a 100 is probably going to get us into a different sort of trouble what with Green Zones only existing for a year at best.

At this point with the Yellow Zones we will need offensives more often to keep spreading Blue Zones without some loss in mitigation. We need more Red Zone mitigation stat to get them pushed back so NOD has the breathing room to keep retreating from our claiming the Yellow Zone so we don't escalate into another knife fight in a phone-booth kind of war.
 
Do GDI and NOD even know about that time bomb?
Does Kane know?
Kane definitely knows. Why do you think he detonated the LT bomb? To draw the Scrin mining expedition to this world so he can loot their tech on top of having the Tacitus to solve the problem and gain the Threshold tower.

The 3rd Tiberium War was never truly about taking down the GDI (it was a stretch goal at best). It was about luring the Scrin in.
 
Bet your ass. Why do you think he's so eager to get off this rock? :p

More generally, how do you think he knew how to summon the Scrin? He must have known they'd be attracted to liquid tiberium explosions, either by reading that information off the Tacitus during Tib War II, or from some other source.

Which in turn means he must have at least a rough idea of what liquid tiberium explosions occurring in nature imply- that a planet is in the process of being blown apart by tiberium.

And if he didn't know that, he must have figured it out after capturing the Threshold tower, because the tower's ability to go out of phase and its internal equipment would lead logically to a mind like Kane's considering:

"What environment is this tower designed to survive, that requires such defenses?" Normal Scrin buildings don't have invulnerability phase shields, and yet are perfectly fine in Red Zones or even in direct contact with tiberium as far as we know. The Scrin must clearly intend to go on harvesting resources on a planet that is in the process of being outright destroyed, or it wouldn't be worth bothering with the invulnerability.

Do GDI and NOD even know about that time bomb?
GDI can calculate its existence. We know enough about tiberium. We know it's going underground. We know enough about liquid tiberium to know it naturally forms from tiberium under certain conditions, and that it would go 'kaboom' on contact with magma.

I suspect there's still some scientific uncertainty, so Treasury experts aren't yet proclaiming it... But I'm pretty sure the knowledge is there.

Nod as a whole, as distinct from Kane? Dunno. Hard to say.

For all we know getting the mining tendrils done increases the efficiency of the Vein Mines significantly. Vein Mines is, more than anywhere else, where that tech will have the most impact imo.
I've speculated the same myself, because it so vastly simplifies the mining process- but we'll see. A lot of the stuff required for vein mining wouldn't be simplified that much, and the mining tendrils themselves are really expensive, what with finicky STUs and xenotech integrated in to replace what was once a big uncomplicated steel sweeper arm and a box.

Ithillid was talking about the underground Tiberium deposits. We don't have any kind of effective way to deal with the Tiberium burrowing its way through the Earth's crust and towards its mantle. Even if we did tons of Tiberium Vein Mines, there's way too much Tiberium that's too far deep underground that we can't get to at all.

What we can do, theoretically, is clear the surface of Tiberium. It wouldn't stop the Earth from exploding eventually when Tiberium converts the mantle into an ocean of liquid Tiberium, but it would buy us decades of time in order to evacuate the planet and/or build a TCN. (If we ever get the plans for creating a TCN, which isn't certain by any means.)

The deep underground Tiberium is a slowly ticking time bomb that our mitigation can't touch. But the surface Tiberium would have killed us much, much faster if not for our conventional mitigation efforts.
You're not wrong, though if we went really ham on trying to get down and dig up subsurface deposits it might buy us some more time. Ithillid mentioned "tiberium boreholes," which I imagine are the next logical step after completing some insane amount of vein mining. That might help a bit.

But sooner or later, we'd miss a deposit deep down in the crust, liquid T would come into contact with magma, and boom.
 
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You are reasonably suspicious of big baboom being a possibility. Your scientists are not dumb. A lot of it, however, is still firmly in the category of being reasonable supposition and hypothesis rather than cold hard inevitability.
 
Honestly, my biggest worry with underground mining is what happens if we accidentally bore into a liquid tib pocket. Not necessarily an issue under Blue Zones, but as we push further out/deeper with the mining/abatement (or Blue Zones range further out), it'll become more worrisome.
 
Honestly, my biggest worry with underground mining is what happens if we accidentally bore into a liquid tib pocket. Not necessarily an issue under Blue Zones, but as we push further out/deeper with the mining/abatement (or Blue Zones range further out), it'll become more worrisome.
Liquid Tiberium is volatile, but it's not that volatile. GDI is likely to be very careful with explosives if they use them at all.
 
Liquid Tiberium is volatile, but it's not that volatile. GDI is likely to be very careful with explosives if they use them at all.
How likely it is to explode isn't so much the issue. Also, in that case I'd be more worried about liquid tib finding electricity on equipment given how liquid tib power cells/generators work IIRC than accidentally hitting a pocket with an ion cannon. I'm more worried about the effects of liquid tib on equipment/people.

If you hit a pocket, it'll probably come spraying out until pressure is relieved. How much effect would that have on the mining equipment being used? Would we even be able to recover that sort of contaminated equipment? If it's manned equipment, how bad off would the crew be? How would we clean up the liquid tib, or would we just write off that section of mine?

That's my more concern. Though now there's also the "what happens if we accidentally spark one off?" thought in my mind.

... There's no large liquid tib pockets near Yellowstone, right?
 
That's my more concern. Though now there's also the "what happens if we accidentally spark one off?" thought in my mind.

... There's no large liquid tib pockets near Yellowstone, right?

Yellowstone is currently covered by RZ-7. We have gotten close to it in our pushes from the east and west, but it is still covered by that tib glacier.
 
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If you hit a pocket, it'll probably come spraying out until pressure is relieved. How much effect would that have on the mining equipment being used? Would we even be able to recover that sort of contaminated equipment? If it's manned equipment, how bad off would the crew be? How would we clean up the liquid tib, or would we just write off that section of mine?
Thankfully we aren't using manned equipment to mine subterranean Tiberium. We are using remote controlled drones, it is why Vain Mining costs us cap goods. It likely those drones are getting badly contaminated with tib, and we are just working them until they break and then replace them with freshly produced new ones.

Liquid tib we will likely just have slurped up using the same (or similar) method used for tib spikes (although once we have tib tendrils it gets a bit better). To my knowledge many of our current methods for possessing tib involve converting tib crystals into liquid tib. So a liquid tib deposit is doing some of the work for us, it is just a little more dangerous in that state. 😅
 
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I imagine improving drone technology, hover tech, harvesting tendrils, and visceroid research would dramatically improve how we deal with vein mining and liquid tiberium.
 
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