It is effectively a foregone conclusion that, left to our own devices, we will attempt to finish Shala and Columbia during the current Plan. This means that we are likely to get a new goal, one that incentivizes us to aim high and to find new ways of accomplishing great things in space. I think a "space population" target is a likely example. Though if that came up, I'd like some assurance from @Ithillid that we'd be getting SOME kind of "increase space population meaningfully" project that doesn't cost like 1000 Progress just to do at all after Columbia Phase 5 completes, just so we're not forced down a "failure is the only option" path from trying to finish Shala and Columbia.
One thing that would very much not surprise me is, after we establish sufficient presence/population in space/on Luna, we get a similar option to the Bureau of Arcologies - permanently give up a die and a chunk of income to spin off a subdepartment dedicated to building Things In Space.
I also expect these bureaus to grow in size and effect over time, like the investments we've put into the service sector/arts&restaurants have.
There are going to be sub 1000 progress means of getting meaningful amounts of population in space. It will however be noticeably more expensive than other options.
Well, if we can't afford a sizeable Orbital megaproject at 30-50 R/die in, say, 2064-65, we're doing something very wrong.
It occurs to me that this reflects a sort of maturation of space industry. Right now, we can't really build bigger grander stations faster just by throwing more money at them, because too much of the task of building them involves solving the engineering problems and scheduling launches and assembling complex machinery in orbit with tools whose functionality is still constrained. Stuff you can't easily force the learning curve on.
So I could easily see the second generation of habitats being much cheaper in terms of Progress (because we only have to design them once and then churn out a template)... but very costly in terms of Resources because they're really big.
One point against a space population target for the next Plan is that space habitability hasn't really been proven yet. So pushing a target that goes far beyond building the Columbia, which is the testbed for space habitations would be a reckless move. May not be politically viable.
On the other hand, we have roughly twenty years of pre-TWIII experience with the old Philadelphia, major lasting moon bases, and several years' experience with the new Philadelphia and Enterprise.
When GDI's legislature debates whether or not it is practical to have permanent inhabited colonies in space built within a four year period...
They will be having this conversation aboard a literal space station.
Even if they're rotating back down Earthside on a regular basis, that's apt to tilt the conversation strongly in favor of "sure, we've got this."
The breakdown of 'who gets to go to space' is like going to be somewhat (I'm very tired, so forgive me if I miss something extremely obvious) as follows:
First priority - essential staff/crew. The people whose work goes directly into maintenance to make sure the stations don't fall apart and kill everyone else aboard, or who are otherwise needed to staff other critical sectors (like food production and security).
Second priority - researchers and the like whose work is important to the development and expansion of the space colonization program. Includes people like the proposed scientific complement of Shala who are going to be working out the most effective means of spaceborne agriculture.
Third priority - limited lottery targeting a particular subset of the general population; people with useful skills for further expansion and development of space infrastructure (engineering, construction, pilots)
Fourth priority - general* lottery; likely a certain percentage of this is going to be split/allocated between various demographics (deep BZ, mid-term residents, new residents, etc) for a more even cross-section of the population and to avoid unnecessary grumbling about favouritism.
Obviously each of these priority levels is likely to have an amount of 'free' spaces to account for families of the qualifying persons, because not allowing them is likely to tank overall morale.
* for a certain value of 'general' - at the very least (especially for these first-gen habs) people are going to be so thoroughly vetted their dental fillings and gut flora will need to have background checks just to be absolutely certain there're no NOD saboteurs.
Edit: don't ask me about what the actual percentages of each of these are, hard numbers are cancer.
just re-read everything, and I'd like to say, Illithid and BOTCommander have done really well in making a great quest and subquest. Here's to the defeat of NOD and Tiberium!
Dumb question - how far away from Earth when it goes KABOOM our habitats have to be to be considered safe from KABOOM itself and all the shrapnel it creates?
Dumb question - how far away from Earth when it goes KABOOM our habitats have to be to be considered safe from KABOOM itself and all the shrapnel it creates?
Dumb question - how far away from Earth when it goes KABOOM our habitats have to be to be considered safe from KABOOM itself and all the shrapnel it creates?
We have no plausible way of knowing the answer. We don't even know how big the kabooms will be. The one thing we do know is that the Temple Prime explosion probably launched tiberium shards into space, and that we'd be pretty lucky if none of them hit the moon. If tiberium isn't growing on the moon, that's a good sign, and it may be (knock on wood) that tiberium can't grow in a vacuum on a sun-blasted rock in space.
If so, the threat from Earth going 'kaboom' is in the form of ejecta and debris. In which case minimum safe distance depends on just how well shielded you are and whether it's likely to land on you.
If so, the threat from Earth going 'kaboom' is in the form of ejecta and debris. In which case minimum safe distance depends on just how well shielded you are and whether it's likely to land on you.
I mean, a project to tow our space infrastructure elsewhere isn't out of the question if we don't get a TCN IMO. Well, maybe as something that hsppens between this and the sequel quest. Me, I'd like to not be in orbit aroumd a planet that's about to go kaboom. Frankly I don't think I'd like to be on its moon either.
I assume that after we finish the station bay and the Leopard IIs the next thing to do would be getting Columbia and Shala to level 3 to start up food and housing in space. Barring anything else showing up that's a higher priority.
But we've been told point blank by the QM that mitigation alone will not get us out of this. Absent the TCN, Earth has a finite span of time in which to live, probably something in the range of 50-100 years despite everything we've already done.
If that's the case, then it's mildly annoying that we're basically playing an unwinnable game from the start and at least one of the start options is basically "lol wrong git gud scrub"
If that's the case, then it's mildly annoying that we're basically playing an unwinnable game from the start and at least one of the start options is basically "lol wrong git gud scrub"
Assuming we have Columbia and Shala as Plan goals plus a nebulous commitment to population in space. Also, I'd like to get a bunch of Lunar mines done early in the plan so we get a boost in RpT over the entire plan and continue to develop our space industries. Ideally we finish or nearly finish Enterprise in Q3 with the liberal use of Free dice, that way we aren't over spending dice in Q4. As a result I think it would be a good idea to finish clearing the orbits in Q4 if we have the spare dice, that will generate stored R for us to use in the new plan and get us some PS going in to Reallocation.
In the new Plan, the first thing I think we should build in Orbital is the Leopard II factory as it will give efficiency improvements to the mines and the stations (potentially including the station bays), this is important as we would either want to immediately roll in to the Station Bay if we are tight on dice in Orbital, or if we have some slack, we should divert to continuing the Lunar mines to generate a bunch of income for the rest of the Plan. Once we build the Station Bay, with or without the brief detour of Lunar Mining, we should roll into the Stations.
One thing to think about is which Station to build first, or even to build one half way then build the other then go back and finish the first. Now both of the stations, when complete will have 6 bays, and they each receive their first Bay with the completion of Phase 3. They also generate the same amount of PS (20) over the first 3 phases, though Shala generates 35 PS over the last two and Columbia generates 19. Shala also generates 3 Food and a Consumer Good over the first three Phases and Columbia puts 0.45k more in orbit then Shala does over the same period. Note: with the bonuses from the Station Bay and the Leopard II factory we could build the first three phases of either Station with ~5 dice median.
I think the strategy of building the first three phases of each Station first is because: First, we can do it for both Stations in one turn each with no Free dice investment. (Assuming total progress of 65+130+260=455 Progress, 6 dice gives 75% chance). Second, it would give us access to both of the Bay lists for Columbia and Shala, giving us additional information that might change our priorities as to which Station to finish first. If one station had a bunch of Bays that were needed for our Plan Goals, the Economy, or for general Save Humanity™ reasons, we would clearly need to prioritize that station first to unlock those additional Bays. Third, it gets us over a thousand people permanently in space, growing their own Food in a sustainable manner, and generally being our few settlers of the final frontier.
The other options of committing to either Columbia or Shala and finishing them entirely before stating the other locks us in a bit too much in my opinion, and given that the first three phases of both Stations are quickly achievable, it seems to me that starting both Stations and then deciding which one to finish first is the better choice.
Q1 2062: Leopard II Factory
Q2 2062: Station Bay
Q3 2062: Shala/Columbia Phase 1-3
Q4 2062: Columbia/Shala Phase 1-3
With possibility of Lunar Mines for a turn or two starting in Q2
Due to whose needed? That roster is going to be heavily Blue Zone residents to begin with and it'll be a mess. But there's nothing to be done for it. Those people have the most government scrutiny and are most likely to have the skills. Once people realize the space train is going to keep running stuff will even out.
Plus every group we send up? Means more space in the core to being more people in. Every group that goes up to space to live is a housing upgrade down the line for those still on earth.
Until the infrastructure is there to open the floor gates and then we can really start moving people.
1. With the strategy that you picked, you bought time. Multiple Decades of time. With adaptation, a significant number of your tib and free dice would have been forced to go to things that were not abatement focused, leaving you with a lot less margin. With the same rolls you got, you would have had no blue zone left in the mid 2060s, maybe early 2070s, because you were focusing on other options.
2. There are solutions outside of the other two presented. And the Abatement option made those significantly more possible.
3. The other two plans would have had massive complications of their own. With Space, it would have been a constant balance between putting people up there in tin cans, and making sure they had livable, sustainable structures. With Adaptation, it would have been an even more breakneck race against time, trying to come up with some safe way to live with Tiberium while also not getting fired and having that entire branch locked off by the rest of the Initiative. The complication with the abatement strategy is that it is not something where you win by simply hitting the money/abatement button hard enough. Because that would be too simple.
The options were
1) Hit the Abatement button so hard tiberium gives up (you will need a form of the TCN at minimum, hope you roll the right results).
2) Hit the tiberium science button so hard you can survive on a tiberium world.
3) Hit the 'fuck off we are leaving' button so hard that it doesn't matter Earth is doomed, most of the population has fled the planet before it went boom or got eaten anyway.
Going for option 1 was the most in character for GDI and is what we went for, and it is still possible, if unlikely, for GDI to develop a TCN or TCN like structure independent of Kane coughing it up in exchange for a ride off planet. Even if GDI fails, we are stacking enough Abatement that it is likely that we can hedge our bets with 'flee to space' in a highly successful manner.
With Space, it would have been a constant balance between putting people up there in tin cans, and making sure they had livable, sustainable structures
The detonation of Temple Prime. Kane had secreted a pool of Liquid Tiberium in the building, and more or less gave the Initiative every reason to think shooting an Ion Cannon at it was a good idea. It was not a good idea.
Mostly because it both brought the Scrin, and covered significant parts of the world in Red Zone.
The best idea that I can come up with is that it is something that occurs at a sufficiently late point in development of the Tiberium infestation as pockets of liquid tiberium hit the mantle.
Cutscene from C&C3, GDI Ion cannon igniting Kanes Liquid tiberium bomb. With the story hinting later that this kind of planet (and the point seems to be also LEO) wrecking explosion will happen frequently on their own once tiberium has spread far enough.
The scrin use it as a signal that the world is ready to harvest and any native civ isn't a problem anymore.
With Adaptation, it would have been an even more breakneck race against time, trying to come up with some safe way to live with Tiberium while also not getting fired and having that entire branch locked off by the rest of the Initiative.
