I would expect many industrial processes to now include a preparation step of filtering out any tiberium fragments, or just blasting them with sonic waves.
Well sure, but giant loose piles of thousands upon thousands of tons of gravel and fractured rock are pretty much the ideal environment for some flecks of tiberium to survive the sonic treatments due to, I dunno, a weird echo between two chunks of stone or a resonance or something.
The point being, we'd probably want to at least try to pick places that were reasonably free of tiberium, not rock that had just recently been in contact with the stuff.
Well yeah, that's why I suggested it in the first place. Just... you don't want to use totally random crap as your aggregate; there's a reason why in real life it's usually quarried out of locations where the right kind of stone/gravel can be found.
I would expect many industrial processes to now include a preparation step of filtering out any tiberium fragments, or just blasting them with sonic waves.
Yeah. I'm going to assume that GDI, by now, has a process that works to keep from having this sort of problem, and classify it as something below the level of abstraction.
If we need to panic over something, let's look at STU needs in order to deploy all our advanced tech. (I expect things will add up to triple digits.)
Question for the hive mind/QM: what are the actual differences between the A15 and A16 Orca? I haven't been able to find anything other than "better armed, easier to maintain, engines redline on liftoff sometimes".
Question for the hive mind/QM: what are the actual differences between the A15 and A16 Orca? I haven't been able to find anything other than "better armed, easier to maintain, engines redline on liftoff sometimes".
The Orca of the Third Tiberium war was originally designed to carry 12 AGM-240 Sidearm missiles or an array of other modular weapons systems, ranging from Sidewinders or autocannon to hundreds of unguided rockets. However, during the war itself, by far the most common configuration was six Sidearm missiles. This was a result of three interlocking reasons. First, before the war, Sidearms were considered to be a relatively safe weapon. High precision fires that did not require long loiter times or repeated passes to empty the magazines. This had meant that they were, by far, the most available weapon in GDI's arsenal during the war itself. Second, NOD commanders on the ground tended to prioritize attacking and destroying factories producing for the Orca platform, sometimes at the expense of broader strategic goals. Third, the Venom increasingly made unsupported attack flights, especially ones requiring longer loiter times far too dangerous. While the Orca still carried out tens of thousands of critical missions and provided air support for Initiative forces everywhere from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America, it did so in a noticeably crippled manner. While some commanders were, by luck, influence, or priority, able to authorize heavier missile loads, full packs were an extreme rarity during the war years. Even after the war, full prewar combat loads have remained a rarity.
The refit project as originally envisioned was a relatively simple upgrade package, increasing ammunition load, adding conformal drop tanks, and improving the sensor suite, alongside adding air to air missiles. The resulting design, however, aside from technically sharing a name, has seen nearly every component receiving either sweeping changes or being completely replaced. The new Orca, designated A-16, is a radically more capable platform than its predecessor. With the new fuel tanks, it can maintain half again as much combat range when fully loaded, while the new modular missile pods are actually even more convertible than the old A-15 models.
Beginning at the nose, a remodeled sensor pod integrates the new, more effective, sensor system. Beneath that, a rapid fire railgun on a single axis turret provides capability for strafing runs, and more importantly a means of defense against the near omnipresent threat of Venoms. Wrapped around the cockpit are a number of panels of lightweight carbon fiber and boron carbide. These, along with lightening cuts and the integration of long chain carbon nanotubes have helped keep the weight down, despite all of the additions being made. Along the cheeks, a pair of modular weapons pods have been installed. While not particularly better than the previous model, these are compatible with the new universal rocket systems. Above them, tucked inside the engines, a pair of conformal tanks have been added. Behind that, a third drop tank is located under the tail, for even more range. While the third tank does make it far more difficult to fly, it also significantly increases total range.
So it gets new missile pods, a new railgun, CNT bodypannels, and extra tankage and optional drop-tanks. Hence the engine-strain on takeoff when it's fully loaded.
So it turns out I seem incapable of writing "small" omakes. My GDI Development Issues one is sitting at ~4000 words. And this is ~2300 words. This touches on the Hovertech Initiative fiasco that's the core of the other omake, but this focuses on Mammoth Mk III development.
Edit: (6 Aug 2022) Changed the designations to be in line with my current style guide, added a posting date, and added a user commenting on the article to the end to clarify the "Block 0" vs Block 1 section.
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GDIOnline
Blog category: Military History
"Mammoth 27"
There's a lot of confusion over this design. Some refer to it as Mammoth 27, others Mammoth Mk III. The answer is, well, both are usable though Mammoth Mk III is more correct. The story starts out with the X-66 Mammoth tank that entered service with GDI in late 1999 or early 2000 near the end of the First Tiberium War. It would be redesignated as HBT-4 Mammoth in the late 2010s as GDI worked to simplify its vehicle designation soup from the sheer variety of vehicles being absorbed into its forces. While the HBT-4 was a purely GDI design, it was felt that it was perhaps time for a replacement.
HoverTech Initiative
The first attempt at a replacement was the rather lackluster XHBH-2 Heavy Hover Tank. How was it lackluster? The powerpack was underpowered for its weight and operational requirements. Its firepower was effectively identical to the XMBH-1 Hover tank intended to replace the regular MBTs. The only real noticeable difference was increased armor, which did not help the weight issues. The overall mobility and speed were better than the HBT-4, and theoretically could cross obstacles that the Mammoth could not without a MV-25 Orca Heavy Lift or a LCAC hovercraft.
This attempt ended in early-mid 2021 after a test failure left major doubt in its capabilities. The XHBH-2 was supposed to make a 7 kilometer trip from Aberdeen Proving Grounds to a beach on the eastern side of Chesapeake Bay. Despite claims that it was supposed to be able to handle up to sea state 3 conditions, the prototype had issues crossing in sea state 2 conditions with anything near the speeds promised. Conditions were progressing into sea state 3 when waves swamped one of the air cushion systems and the vehicle went into the drink. It was recovered without any deaths, but the changes needed for all the hover prototypes as determined by a subsequent investigation would have added further to the weight and Ground Forces had already decided to wash its hands of that design. The Hovertech program would largely die in 2023, with the MRH-1 Hover MLRS as the only success from the original program.
Mammoth Mk II
With the collapse of the hover tank program and the shift to a walker-centric program, Ground Forces started the "Mammoth Mk II" program to modernize and upgrade the HBT-4 with the thought it would have to serve into the 2030s before a potential assault walker could be fielded. Among the improvements would be making the tank fully digital, redoing the internal layout to better integrate battlefield management and other system displays, a remote weapon system (RWS), a pair of 140mm cannons, and upgrading the missile pods to provide commonality with the MRH-1.
This development was designated the XHBT-5. In order to try to avoid needing to upgrade the suspension and/or engine, weight savings were looked into. The RWS was deleted. With the deletion of the RWS, the missile pods were reverted to the Tusk missile pods to provide anti-infantry capability as well as weight reduction. A lighter weight 120mm cannon was selected instead of the larger 140mm cannon, but propellent and metallurgy improvements provided a firepower increase on par with using a 140mm cannon without the weight and shell size increase. A new generation of composite armor was put into development to provide similar protection for less weight. It was projected with the changes, the weight increase would be minimal and well within the existing suspension and powerpack capabilities.
In 2027, with impressive displays in capabilities by the prototype XMBW-1 Titan, it was believed that an assault walker was much closer to reality than they had initially thought, and Ground Forces requested funding for Assault Walker development. The Treasury declined the request, noting the ongoing Mammoth Mk II development program was already funded and it didn't feel having two assault vehicle programs going at the same time was worthwhile. As a result, Ground Forces shelved the Mammoth upgrade and redirected the Mammoth Mk II program to design an assault walker. As a result of this change, the final product kept the program name despite being an entirely different chassis and became the HBW-2 Mammoth Mk II.
Mammoth 27
The Mammoth Mk I upgrade project wasn't done however. In 2035, budget cuts were passed down on the military, officially due to the ever decreasing threat of Nod and increasing threat of Tiberium and unofficially due to the secret liquid tiberium research facility that turned central Australia into a Red Zone when destroyed the previous year. The iconic walkers of the Second Tiberium War and the Firestorm Conflict were expensive to maintain and repair. Extensive improvements to the Titan had resulted in the MBW-3 Titan Mk II not long after the end of the Firestorm Conflict, so the initial walker to feel the budget pressure was the cutting edge and expensive Mammoth Mk II.
There were numerous problems with developing a cheaper replacement for the design, most notably with the twin railguns it mounted. Given another 10 years, it was expected for technological development to shrink the guns down to a more usable size but time was not something the Mammoth Mk II had. A team proposed the "Mammoth 27" concept, which amounted to the XHBT-5 concept from 2027, with further modernizations and improvement from an additional 10 years of progress. And in 2036, the Treasury approved the "Mammoth 27" development program.
The need to increase firepower over the 120mm gun of a Titan or likely tank successor to it and no access to railguns pushed Ground Forces to look once more at larger cannons. Given the expected introduction of more tank scale railguns in the 2040s, the turret was designed to handle likely railgun size and the development team looked for the biggest guns to fill the space until then. In that they found 150mm cannons. The various propellent and metallurgy improvements of the 2020s had continued and scaling them up to a 150mm cannon provided a substantial firepower increase over the 120mm version. The Mammoth's Tusk missiles, capable of anti-infantry and anti-air work during two Tiberium Wars, were becoming long in the tooth. The Mammoth 27 reduced the number of missiles per pod, but replaced the 60mm Tusk missiles with 120mm Tusk II missiles.
The armor was replaced with the new generation armor that had been proven on the Mammoth Mk II and Titan Mk II. As originally planned, the internals became fully digital and the internal layout redesign of the hull along with the new turret properly integrated the various new displays into the design. Also as with the original concept, the suspension, tracks, and powerpack were left the same as the Mammoth Mk I to keep costs down.
In 2038, factories began construction in Reykjavik, Iceland even as a survey of Mammoth Mk I reserves was begun. It was discovered that there were far fewer Mammoth tanks in reserve than expected. Investigation led to the discovery that the Forgotten had taken more than a few over the years, and that some had been reactivated for emergency use near the reserve storage locations and were lost in action during both the Second Tiberium War and the Firestorm Conflict. A number of HBT-4s were removed from reserves and sent for conversion and testing as the remaining Mammoth Mk Is were loaded up for transfer to the factories for conversion.
Mammoth Mk III
In 2039, the testing Mammoth 27s were completed, and the Iceland factories started production by beginning conversion of Mammoth Mk Is to what had been officially designated the HBT-5 Mammoth Mk III. Testing was generally positive, though there were complaints regarding the powerpack being underpowered and the suspension being overloaded. These complaints were chalked up to using the somewhat worn Mammoth Mk I parts and would not be present in new build Mammoth Mk IIIs. As it turned out, it was not an issue of worn down parts. While there had been a number of weight saving elements saved from the Mammoth 27 concept, the designers apparently failed to take into account just how much added weight would come from the new turret, cannons, and missile pods, let alone all the additional new technology and current generation CBRNT systems. As a result, the "Mammoth Block 1" program was started in 2041.
The primary purpose of the Block 1 upgrade was to solve the powerpack and suspension issues plaguing the design. With the fact that railguns were expected to be a valid upgrade within the decade, the powerpack upgrade took into account the likely power needs for railguns, plus some additional room for growth. To fit the new design, the engine compartment was lengthened slightly to the rear. The rear suspension and track unit was shifted rear slightly and lengthened in addition to the overall improvement to the weight carrying and cross country travel capabilities that all four units received. The upgrades were well received in testing and limited field work with various units. The Block 1 upgrade was approved in 2042 and all units were upgraded to the HBT-5A Mammoth Mk III standard by 2043.
By the mid 2040s, railgun technology had advanced to the point that they were able to be mounted in the Mammoth Mk III. The Block 2 upgrade program sought to bring that upgrade to the design. Due to the preplanning work on the Mammoth 27 program and the powerpack upgrade of the Block 1 program, the Block 2 program encountered few issues with swapping out the 150mm cannons for a pair of railguns. The biggest obstacle faced by the Block 2 program was the cost of upgrading the vehicles, and as a result in 2045 was approved as an optional upgrade as budget allowed, becoming the HBT-5B.
Serving as a more extensive testing body for the Mammoth Mk III Block 2 upgrades, the Steel Talons became concerned that the defensive capability of the tank was falling behind the offensive capability. To that end they began the Block 3 program in 2046, seeking to use recent technological innovations to provide an as-needed defensive boost to the tank. Known as Adaptive Armor, the system would provide startlingly high improvements to the armor of the Mammoth tank. Unfortunately, the system required more power than the tank could produce, and the final version of the upgrade had a re-tuned power distribution system that would pull power from the weapon and mobility sectors to ensure the adaptive armor got full power. This resulted in a claimed 25% reduction in rate of fire and 15% mobility reduction. The Steel Talons are quick to note that in exchange, the armor provides a 30% increase in armor capability compared to a regular Mammoth Mk III. Between the trade-offs for the improvement and the cost of the upgrade, plus the fact that it came out in the middle of the Third Tiberium War, Ground Forces did not approve the Block 3 upgrade for use by its forces. The Steel Talons, however, would make extensive use of it and even included Adaptive Armor on a number of Titan Mk IIs and were the only users of the XHBT-5C.
Future Mammoth
As of 2060, the HBT-5B Mammoth Mk III (Block 2) is the standard assault tank of GDI. However, a number of improvements have occurred in the years since the Third Tiberium War ended. As such, what lies in the future for the Mammoth Mk III? A theoretical Block 4 has a number of options to choose from.
The Universal Rocket Launch System has been around a couple years at this point, so upgrading the missile pods to use it wouldn't be out of the question - though which system given the current 120mm Tusk IIs is certainly up for debate. But getting URLS systems most likely isn't simply for the missile commonality and simplification it brings. There's been hints of GDI wanting to develop railgun munitions for years to expand the capabilities of their railguns beyond hurling metal slugs at extreme velocities. If this gets developed, it also seems a no brainer to include in a Block 4 upgrade.
Of course, there's the RWS/AMS stations added to the MBT-6 Predators years back. It seems like a necessary improvement to the assault tank's capabilities. Maybe have two stations? Hot missile death seems a big threat to an assault tank. Perhaps better integration of ablative armor pucks to the layout.
There have been rumors of a new assault walker the Steel Talons are chomping at the bit to develop, but given that it sounds to be a smaller, cheaper Mammoth Mk II, it seems unlikely it'll supplant the Mammoth Mk III in Ground Forces use. As for a Mammoth Mk IV replacement? That's an interesting question, and really depends on how many major changes are made before GDI decides it's a proper new tank iteration. I wouldn't be surprised if a Mammoth Mk IV shows up in the next 5-10 years with another major boost to firepower as with the previous generations of Mammoth tanks. After all, who knows what the mad scientists in the Steel Talons will reveal to the world next in heavy firepower?
Posted on: 3 Jan 2060
Comments (58)
HeavyMetal3045
Before I get started, I did look up what kind of easily available information was around on the Mammoth Mk III development. Turns out, not a lot. Mostly press releases. So I'm going from the angle that you don't quite realize what's involved in military vehicle development, particularly with the Mammoth Mk III.
GDI military development can be broken up into two general categories and four phases. First category is Development, and consists of the design phase and the prototype/testing phase. Design figures out what's needed and comes up with the design. A small number of prototypes are then built and tested on some Proving Grounds. At this point, the entire project could stop if the testing results are bad enough and it's doubtful changes to solve them. Otherwise, we might have a series of changes and prototypes to work out the issues. The second category is Deployment, and consists of LRIP and Full Scale Production phases. LRIP stands for Low Rate Initial Production. With this, GDI has a factory or two built and a few hundred vehicles built with them in order to both test the building process to work kinks out, and to get enough vehicles to kit out a unit or two for end user testing. If the testing works out well enough, additional factories are built in order to handle the production needs of the military and full scale production starts. If it doesn't, well, the final phase doesn't happen.
At the time I was in service, Development was one funding request, LRIP was a second, and Production was a third. Buddies still in service indicate that LRIP and Production have merged into a single Deployment program, but it's apparently worked out since everyone involved has fairly recent combat experience to draw on when working on designs before anything gets to potential end users. Also, a lot of the design work goes on without Treasury funding, so the Development program is more final design work and prototype testing. Cheaper Treasury request, if nothing else. I wonder if that was the case back with the Mk III. Note - "Block 0" doesn't really exist as an official designation. The LRIP version is simply "LRIP" on the end and Block 1 is the production version regardless of how few changes are made from LRIP to Production (at the time and to now). So "Mammoth Mk III (LRIP)" would be more accurate.
As I understand it, a Steel Talons unit was the first unit to get them, and I'm sure that was an… interesting experience for all involved. What my unit got was probably a YHBT-5-1. The lack of a block designation plays merry hell with designating prototype variants. The main difference between the -1 and the original (officially, I don't think they differentiated between the versions; everything LRIP was HBT-5) was tweaks and improvements to the power pack, and some tweaks to suspension. Given that LRIP and Production were different Treasury programs, a lot of work was done on the LRIP program funding or by the Steel Talons before the Production program was funded. Why the delay? Above my pay grade. Given the budget cuts to the military in that time frame, could simply be that was when they freed up funding to continue the roll-out, or they were giving the Steel Talons time to suss out the issues so Production would go faster.
In any case, in mid 2041 we got 4-5 new Mammoth Mk IIIs. I believe this version was largely based on further Steel Talons modifications plus all new power pack and suspension, and it was designated XHBT-5A, so was likely to become the production model. The rear track units shifting rear was definitely from the Steel Talons's YHBT-5-2 version to the best of my knowledge. They were a dream to use in comparison to the LRIP versions we initially had. Not sure I want to know what the original version the Talons' got was like. By the end of the year, all of our LRIP HBT-5s were gone and we had a full supply of HBT-5A. Any LRIP Mk IIIs would've been relegated to training units, overhauled into Block 1 configurations, or simply put into reserve storage. 2043 was when the last Mammoth Mk II unit transitioned to the Mk III Block 1.
My biggest regret was that I never got to test or crew an (X)HBT-5B. Railguns on a Mammoth Mk II were amazing, and I wish I could've gotten the chance to put them to use in a Mk III. Not a big enough regret to sign up again though. Got more important things to take care of these days.
Definitely not dead. I am currently about 25k words into the update, just struggling with really one last big section, and a couple smaller ones that I am very much not happy with.
Definitely not dead. I am currently about 25k words into the update, just struggling with really one last big section, and a couple smaller ones that I am very much not happy with.
If it's for all the rolls and stuff there's not much to be done about it. But if it's also covering things like the Nod non-Nuclear response or world events it's a little strange.
Unless Kane made his own move. Then it would all need to be one thing.
It is more that the parts that I am running into issues with are spread out. So there are a couple in the battles, one in the main update, and the like. There is a conversation with Litvinov and Hackett that I am struggling to make sound natural. There is one of Mehretu's infiltration operations that I am trying to complete. A couple other things.
It is more that the parts that I am running into issues with are spread out. So there are a couple in the battles, one in the main update, and the like. There is a conversation with Litvinov and Hackett that I am struggling to make sound natural. There is one of Mehretu's infiltration operations that I am trying to complete. A couple other things.
It is more that the parts that I am running into issues with are spread out. So there are a couple in the battles, one in the main update, and the like. There is a conversation with Litvinov and Hackett that I am struggling to make sound natural. There is one of Mehretu's infiltration operations that I am trying to complete. A couple other things.
FloatingWood
Well, shit. Just….
Kay,having trouble finding the right words.
Trouble typing too. Buzzers Scrin used 10 years ago were nasty, but kinda knew they were coming, could try and hide.
Didn't always work. Usually didn't work.
How try and hide when guy in front of you at the check out yells 'in the name of Kane!' and just falls apart?
How am I not dead?
ChocolatauPain
What in God's name is wrong with these bastards? My boy is having nightmares after someone left a bag of flying knives in his school. How do you comfort a child who had his favorite teacher sliced open before his eyes? What do you say when he asks why that happened?
EvaDatabase
Been off the grid for a long time, haven't been on here for ages. Hell of a thing to come back to.
I'm seriously interested in TW3 history, and the buzzer always fascinated and terrified me. Saw stories of them slipping into vents and clearing out entire bases, leaving nothing but bloody smears. Normal base security can't do a thing. How do you even fight a swarm of flying knife bugs using guns?
Well, needless to say, the fascination part is gone now.
FloatingWood
Any of; lots of bullets, grenades, sonics, flamethrowers if creative and lucky. Heard rumours of ion cannon pulse killing massive swarm, hit only a few in TW3.
There are ways. Just risky. Generally safer to be in an armoured vehicle. Wear your envirosuit. Won't always save you, just helps survive. These buzzers less dangerous than scrin buzzers. Still nasty.
GDIWife
Hospital near me got hit while helping refugees who had obviously been insufficiently security checked. It should be obvious to everyone that this cannot continue. We need to drastically increase checks on every refugee allowed in and that means slowing the intake drastically to allow InOps to do their damn jobs. They're overstretched and being rushed by political pressures to take in more refugees quicker and our doctors and nurses just paid the price, along with some refugees who I'm sure would have much preferred to be in a queue somewhere than bleeding out on a hospital floor.
#FloatingWood Any recommendations for civilians? My husband said to get behind something solid and press yourself up against it, they don't seem to steer as well as the scrin ones
FloatingWood
Bodyarmour, dodge, corners. Not sophisticated pathing. Relentless while active. Poor target selection, hits people already wounded/recently dead. Not picky, will go for nearest target. No coordination.
Prefers center mass. Can deflect with arms/legs. Dangerous, sharp, can lose limb. Do not catch, will lose hand.
InTheZONE
I can confirm what FloatingWood said about body armour, not that it helps civvies much. Was doing security on a convoy during an attack and one of the fuckers sent a bunch of them at me. Turns out my suit was better at stopping buzzers than his was at stopping a railgun round.
If you're a civvy in LoS of one of these then the first thing you do is break LoS, then hide. Their sensors are fairly pathetic, even a cupboard door can block them. Hide until the all clear sounds. If you aren't in LoS, skip straight to the hiding part if you hear an alert.
AgathaH
This is secondhand from orbit, which seems like a good distance right now, but one of my grad school lab partners nearly go blown up by something new that made it through some pretty thorough scanners. I've no idea where they got the new tech, but these are definitely some new tricks that are being pulled out.
I Survived
Crucible
It is with deep regret that I must confirm the death of several members and associates of the Open Hand. An attempted assassination carried out against my person by the misguided has resulted once again in pointless and unnecessary death and destruction.
War is sometimes a necessity, when reason fails and survival is at stake; but war is not glorious. Though we may survive war, it is not something that makes us grow. It diminishes us. With every life lost. With every home destroyed. With every dream shattered and love snuffed out. With every widow and orphan made, Humanity is diminished irrevocably.
It is my dearest hope that there will someday come a time when Humanity will no longer raise its hand against itself. Though I have been grievously wounded, my soul and body endures in the hopes that I might help that time come.
Until that day arrives, please join me in remembering those who we have lost, and mourning those who no longer have anyone to remember them.
KropotkinsGhost
Well it looks like NOD wasn't one bit happy with yinz playing ball with the GDI. Either that or the Initiative First is trying to run yinz underground. Either way I hope your wounds heal quickly and I offer my hospitality if yinz ever come to BZ-2, I know a nice hangout for some local Open Hand voters we can hang out with.
GDIWife
Those BASTARDS hit a hospital near me. They took in refugees out of kindness and concern then one of the sick fucks took out a dozen hospital workers and several of their own people! This is EXACTLY why I say we need to stop taking these people in without THOROUGH CHECKS DONE BY INOPS! They are currently overstrained, overworked and we just cannot take those refugees into our homes, our hospitals, our schools until they have ALL been checked, double checked and TRIPLE checked. How many people have to die before the bleeding hearts in charge realise they're KILLING US!!!
#Crucible Now you see exactly what kind of people those who follow your sick and twisted religion are. They'll murder civilians and children, even people like you who are supposedly one of them! The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and this tree is rotten.
FloatingWood
Wife, shut up. This is not the thread for this.
#Crucible, hope you recover soon. Regardless of what I think of your religion, it really, really needs voices that call for something other than the spilling of blood.
ProfCollingsworth
#Crucible I'm glad to hear that you have survived the attack(s?). I wish you a swift recovery and good fortune in convincing more towards your path, and away from those who believe that killing the innocent is justified.
#GDIWife Remove the log from your eye, before you criticize the mote in another's.
GDIWife
#FloatingWood The attacks on hospitals, schools, train stations, residential areas and shopping centres seem to me to be far more important than an unsuccessful attempt to kill the leader of a party that nobody voted for
Ormond2020
#GDIWife This is the thread about the assassination attempt on the leader of the Open Hand political party. The thread about the recent terrorist attacks in Europe are pinned to the top of the forum. Easy mistake to make I suppose, since attempting to assassinate one of our political parties leaders is also terrorism, but I don't think you'd bother considering it such given the target.
BlisteredHands
#Crucible Good to see you're on the mend Mx., and that the voice of peace hasn't been silenced. My wife and I had planned to hold a vigil after the initial report of the attack; bittersweet as it still is, I'm glad we don't need to mourn everyone involved.
Please focus on your recovery for now. Better that you're well than risk doing further harm from straining yourself. We'll survive a short absence.
Q4 2060 Results
Resources: 1100 + 10 in reserve (15 allocated to the Forgotten) (35 allocated to grants)(+25 from Taxes) (-5 from Resettlement) (-30 from Reconstruction commissions)
21.29 Blue Zone
2.16 Green Zone
22.82 Yellow Zone (98 Points of Abatement)
53.73 Red Zone (70 Points of Abatement)
Current Economic Issues:
Housing: +36 (31 population in low quality housing) (-10 per turn from refugees)
Energy: +16 (+4 in reserve)
Logistics: +26 (-7 from raiding) (-7 from military activity)
Food: +22 (+10 in reserve)
Health: +9 (-8 from Wartime Demand) (-10 from Refugees)
Capital Goods: +27 (+101 in reserve) [-10 at End of War ] [+1 in Q1 2061 ]
STUs: +11
Consumer Goods: +37 (-22 from demand spike) (+3 from Private Industry)
Labor: +43
Tiberium Processing Capacity (1925/2470)
Labor Per Turn: +4
Taxation Per Turn: +30
Space Mining Per Turn: +75
Green Zone Water: +6
Plan Goals
Consumer Goods: 12 Points
Food: 18 points in reserve
Income: 20 Points
Processing: 280 points
Projects
Complete ASAT Phase 4
Complete OSRCT Phase 4
Railgun Munitions Development
Complete at least one more phase of URLS production
Complete at least two more phases of Blue Zone Apartment Complexes
Complete GDSS Enterprise
Complete at least three more phases of Space Mines
Complete Karachi Planned City by end of Q4 2065
Deploy Mastodon
Complete All remaining Escort Carrier Shipyards
Complete Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr
Deploy Crystal Beam Industrial Laser
Checking In
Litvinov looked old, and thin. She had never weighed all that much, and had lost maybe four or five kilograms in the last year. Clutched in her hands was a mug of tea, the mint sprig still in it – freshly harvested from an aquaponic garden across her office. "I was elected on a platform of peace, of negotiation, reconciliation. Not with the Brotherhood but with those who we gave no choice but to be Noddist. And what has it got me but this damn war."
Rising from her desk, she stared out towards the earth rotating below her. "We beat plowshares into swords and chose to attack, to go out there and tell our sons and daughters to die hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from home. Sometimes it is all I can do to take the flimsi note we send to the parents of the dead and sign them myself. 'The Initiative thanks them for their service.' What paltry words for the things they were asked to do. Tell me Seo, was it worth it? Was all this pain and suffering worth it?"
"I am an economist not a therapist, but I can tell you this much. We are ordering more black ink for our ledgers. It may be dripping red, but tomorrow, and the months and years after look brighter than it has in any time during my predecessor's time, and most of my time.
But if you want a simple number: one hundred million lives. For all the losses, for every life we have sacrified and taken, we have saved more."
"You tell me this, you all do, and I am left wondering if you mean it, or if it is simply trying to reassure an old woman."
"We do what we must. We survive, and as best we can, we live, always hoping that the next day will be just that little bit brighter. One day the rains may come and wash all that we have built away, but we can tell the world not today." Seo turned to look towards the Earth. "When you were elected, there was a dream of a future where we were not defined by the cancer that is eating our world, that green sickness that wiped the old world away but not its sins. I don't believe that dream is dead."
"You have given me a fair amount to think about Seo. I trust that you know I have every confidence in your abilities and your skills."
"Thank you milady." Seo turned – the doors hissing as he exited – only to be ambushed by Hackett.
Hackett looks good. Fit, strong, limping a little bit when an old wound played up. The suit was cut military style, with pouches and sealing pads on the wrists and neck. Every inch a warrior prince in all the ways Litvinov was not. "This may have been a great victory, but it is up to you and Litvinov to secure it. People like you can give the populace a brighter future. in a way that I can't." He cocks his head a little. "It is by dreams of toys and sweets, of leisure and prosperity that great things are accomplished. I can black-bag as many warlords as I need to, slaughter millions with bombs or the environment. But I cannot bring more than a desert home."
"If you can get the Brotherhood to stop blowing up my bloody factories, that would be a good start."
"We will also need to create opportunities. Right now, the only real way to success is by being a loyal Blue Zoner. There has not been a native Yellow Zoner promoted higher than factory manager. Part of this is down to education and skill sets. The Brotherhood produces specialists, they know how to do one thing really well. The Initiative tends to focus on more generalist education, so they have one speciality and a broad competency. If we can sponsor more businesses, develop the civilian economy more broadly, that is likely to be a significant way to both bring up the average standard of living, and provide for faster integration than our own bureaucratic methodology."
"Granger's experiment certainly had its bright points, but I agree, we need an economic policy that does not divorce the means of production from the people. If you can make sure that the worker rights bills get through Parliament, I can put up some of the funding to get things really off the ground on my end. I don't think I can get grant money specifically set aside for refugees to set up their own business, but I can try."
Hackett sighed. "One last problem. Litvinov. She has not been doing well."
"I saw. I tried to reassure her, but I don't think it worked."
"We all see what we expect to see. I once shook hands with Kane himself. Forged ID, clipboard, box of tools, and a hoodie with a scorpion tail on it. I went in, worked on one of their computer terminals that was on the fritz. Fixed it of course, but the goal was really to plant a bug in their system. And Kane told me that I was upholding the values of the Brotherhood. Nearly gave me a heart attack."
"He saw what he expected to see."
"Exactly. And the same applies to Litvinov. She expects war to be terrible and awful, no matter what the actual results are. We can be winning more than we ever have before, and she sees it as a personal failing. If there is a bright side to the recent nuclear threats, it shuts up the hawks and gives us a very good reason to not fight more wars."
"Take care of her. We need her fighting fit again, because these next few years are going to be harder than the wars. Now, I have a flight to catch, and don't want to be throwing the entire week's schedule off because I am the Treasury Secretary."
Assassinations
Tali Jackson
There were few better feelings than settling into the cockpit of a customized Mark III Titan battlewalker. And Tali, despite her secondment to the Treasury, still had hers. Settling into her cockpit, she reached behind her head and settled the neurohelmet over her shaved skull. A common feature still, decades after it had stopped being necessary for the proper use of a neurohelmet.
The cockpit hummed, a deep bass synthetic voice beginning the call and response: "What are we?"
"We are clay, molded and forged in the furnace of war." replied Tali, her hand flipping up the cover of the keypad by her knee.
"We have been clad in great armor, and armed with mighty weapons."
"We are the bulwark against the terror." By feel, she typed the code, 1-9-0-0-1-2-1-0-1-9-9-5.
"We are the defenders of humanity."
"And we can know no fear." Tali said, completing the code, as her mind filled with the technical information being fed to her. A bit odd by all standards, but the taste of apples – half remembered – filled her mouth, an indication of a full munitions load. The tingle in her knees and ankles, the system noting its full functionality,
The cockpit hummed as the motor kicked in, providing that first burst of power, the myomer bundles tensing and shifting – quiet, despite the tons that they were moving. The Titan lifted itself off of its cradle arms, legs at full extension before settling back towards combat positions. Tali grasped its twin control sticks, settling her feet on the pedals as she set it to a leisurely five kilometers an hour. Slow, but this was just a test run. Springfield had sent down a new test run of their beehives, and Tali was looking forward to giving it a shot – literally.
Exiting the mech hangar, Tali increased the speed from a slow walk to the deconflicted top speed, eating up the ground in with long strides as she manually controlled the legs, extending them beyond the standard line to gain a few kilometers per hour.
As she turned a corner, taking her from the mixed use road to the military only route out to the firing range, her target lock warnings blared – a dozen missiles leapt from an apartment building some two and a half kilometers away, taking a high, lofted arc as their guide wires unraveled behind them. Tali skidded, her torso twisting and feet scrabbling as she took a ninety degree turn at full speed, bringing both APS modules to bear on the incoming threat, alongside her main gun. And while she would certainly get a chewing out later, for firing towards civilians... well, at least a beehive round was not going to do much more than chip the concrete downrange. And with the missile launch the people were going to be scrambling for shelter anyway. Flipping the safeties and aim assists off, Tali went in for manual fire control, a simple crosshair popping up as she gauged her shot. Missiles incoming at just over three hundred meters a second, railgun delivering a flechette storm at just over Mach 2 – on low power to ensure enough capacity for a second shot. Time for a bit of skeet shooting.
The gun hummed before snapping out a shot, the shell's casing shattering as it exited the gun under the stresses of firing. 2400 angry bees swarmed downrange. The missiles were separated, mostly to prevent their wires tangling. Tali's shot would spread 2400 flechettes across an area of about fifty square meters at the crossover, or an average of forty eight flechettes per square meter – higher in the core, less towards the outside.
As the missiles and darts met, metal tore and sparked and shredded – four of the missiles were ripped apart under the fire. The second shot was denser, but much closer ranged, and another two fell while Tali's APS swatted aside a further three with contemptuous ease. Another missile found its way into a nearby berm – one of the tail fins clipped by a flechette. One hit her mech, slamming into her knee as she pivoted once more – trying desperately to jink out of the way – and the tens of tons stumbled and collapsed, twisting as she fell, as the remaining missile soared over her head.
The straps caught her, soft padding cushioning her fall as the torso slammed and scraped across the ground.
Crucible
Crucible hobbled more than anything else nowadays. Not yet confined to a wheelchair or a walker, but that was a matter of will, and outright defiance of the doctors that told them they were only doing more damage to their aching bones than anything else. They were simply Crucible. Certainly InOps had dug up their past, a name they had left behind so many decades ago, but now it had nearly faded from their memory – and for nearly everybody else, it was a name of lifetimes ago. Back in their first war they had been a simple water carrier, hauling jerry cans of the life-giving liquid on their back as they risked the fire of the Initiative to bring supplies to the front. Many of the others doing that had fallen – to shrapnel, to airstrikes, to fires from beyond the horizon. Crucible though was a lucky one. A rabbit's foot in those days, running through mountain ranges across southern Europe.
Their uniform had lost its uniformity a decade ago. Now, it was more patches than original material, much like Crucible's body. The helmet had been shattered. Never more than a symbol, its optics had broken in a shelling, and had never been replaced. The armor was dented from years of use and abuse. The right epaulet was long gone, torn off by a sniper's round late in the Third Tiberium War. The left hung on by a thread, worn from long use. Looking at their bare face, they had long sported a series of cuts on both cheeks – a mark of the band that they had fought with so many decades ago. A scorpion tail tattoo on their neck, barely visible above the collar, itself a replacement part taken from an Initiative environmental suit.Their left hand clicked – a sign of wear on an old prosthetic – and the bare metal sometimes screeched when they balled a hand into a fist.
Today was supposed to be like any other day. Walk among the new refugees, answer any questions they could, cook in the soup kitchen (chicken and rice, and knowing the Initiative, mostly vegetables and rice, with the barest hint of chicken), and then in the afternoon, work on correspondence, keeping tabs on the party. With InOps hanging just out of sight, and usually well within sight – uniformed agents keeping tabs on them, a sign of the Initiative's watchful eyes. Their ears, still sharp (even if one had been reliant on a hearing aid for decades now) were the first sign of danger. The high-pitched whine, too sharp and piercing to be the whup whup of the old familiar carryall, marked the approach of a drone. Small, bullet-shaped, with two stubby wings and a pusher prop, it was clearly a Brotherhood device – meant for them, silencing an inconvenient voice. 'No crusader like a convert', and they would know, having been one nearly all their life.
The panel van that was their ride of choice, a small luxury funded by the activities of the Open Hand, took the worst of the detonation as Crucible bailed out – they hit the ground hard, their shoulder complaining as they made contact with the concrete. Shrapnel shredded the van – killing the driver, who had been seconds too slow to get out of the way – and some punched all the way through, peppering Crucible's back with shards. Their thighs and calves screamed as they tried to scramble to their feet, trying to get out of the way of a potential second strike, or potentially an agent there to finish the job. A figure in dark gray kit emerged from a nearby alley, gun held at a low ready, to ensure that Crucible was dead. But over their head ripped a burst of ammunition, the characteristic supersonic crack of a suppressed GD2 ripping off a burst, bullets flying over their head.
InOps Report - Yasmine "Crucible" Walsh.
Born November 11 1989
Athens, Greece
Affiliation: Formerly Brotherhood of Nod Southern Europe, Formerly Black Hand Confessor Division, Currently Open Hand Party
Yasmine Walsh was born to an impoverished family. Their father was a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, and their mother a Moroccan refugee from Oum Dreyaga, a small community in the western Sahara – the site of a border war between Morocco and neighboring Mauritania. Joining the Brotherhood's ranks on or around early June 1998, they served with multiple Brotherhood units over the next years, earning honors at the Battles of Salzburg and Trieste. Between the First and Second Tiberium Wars, Walsh effectively disappeared, with few records available. By the second war, Walsh was affiliated with the Black Hand, and joined Marcion's order in the years afterwards, being an early member in the European branches of the Brotherhood of Nod. At some point in this time period, Walsh had taken the name Crucible.
By 2040, Walsh had accepted the rank of High Confessor, after surviving a GDI air strike that required extensive cybernetic reconstruction. By 2045, Walsh had relocated to the European Yellow Zone, and took part in the invasion of Paris in 2047. There, she survived both the detonation of Temple Prime, and the Scrin invasion. In 2053, Walsh crossed the border, as part of a refugee convoy, and has since primarily settled down doing political and volunteer charity work.
V-35 Shootdown
While visiting the front, Mohammed Al Jilani, leader of the militarist party was shot down as his V-35 was landing at a rear line base in West Africa, a stopover on his way up to the Philadelphia. A marauding squadron of Barghests had broken across the lines mere minutes before, and while the crew was in the process of expediting the landing, the Barghests launched a salvo of missiles. The V-35 was lost with all hands, exploding in midair as secondary detonations rippled along its flanks.
The death of Al-Jilani leaves his party in disarray pending the upcoming reallocation. However, his successor, Chaeon Yong, a young, second term representative, has been extremely active in shoring up the party, although he has been more than a little deferential to the needs of the Developmentalists, as he needs wins on military policy to ensure his leadership. While less welcoming to the Yellow Zoners than Al-Jilani, his positions are far from those of Hideo Ozawa, and more in line with allowing them to sink or swim on their own merits, opposing both programs to aid any besides refugees, and programs to assertively create an oppressed underclass.
Katie Brown
Leader of the Developmentalist Party, Katie Brown met her end at a groundside conference in Caen, where she was leading a panel on Refugee Integration. Advocating a hardline stance, focusing on rapid and comprehensive integration for all, no matter their backgrounds. While security was relatively thorough, as befits an event where major Initiative figures were in attendance, Reynaldo's attackers were rather innovative, using remotely deployed plasma bombs as effective thermobaric devices, killing with the overpressure waves created when miniature suns go off in close proximity. While Brown was not killed instantly in the bombing, she died in the hospital less than six hours later.
Stepping into her shoes is Andrew Addams. An old man now with some streaks of black in a gray head, Addams is a distinguished gentleman, and in some ways even more radical than Brown was. A firebrand in Parliament, and unafraid to wield the party as a weapon in the many disputes with the Free Market and Initiative First parties, he is firmly on the progressive wing of the party. While not comfortable with a fully centrally directed economy, Addams is a believer in the revolutionary capacity of technology, and in the power of a state capitalist model, where free enterprise exists as an element of a broadly directed system.
Military Priorities
Ground Forces
In the last months, Ground Forces priorities have begun to shift, from winning this war, to looking towards the next war. While the highest priority is the delivery of as many zone suits as is humanly possible, beyond that many of GDI's ground warfare platforms are running into their upgrade limits, meaning that a new generation is required posthaste.
Steel Talons
With only the Mastodon remaining in terms of commitments, the Steel Talons are looking primarily at developing a series of revolutionary technologies, although most will wait until after the war, as they are not yet ready, and there are numerous higher priorities.
Air Force
With technological upgrades ready, the highest priority now is delivery to the field, and preferably in great volume. For the Air Force, the wingman drones are a near requirement as soon as possible in order to maintain air superiority, especially with the rapid intensification of the air war, and the sheer punishment that the Varyag class can take. While current deliveries are helping, and will substantially reduce overall casualties in the long run, further investment in the field will help further increase GDI's capability in the air war.
Navy
Currently, the Navy has substantial problems, between a significant increase in the intensity of the raiding, and the demonstration of Brotherhood capabilities in both surface and submarine warfare. The delivery of new hulls, as soon as possible and in as great a number as possible is considered vital.
Space Force
With the war beginning to draw down, Space Force is most interested in the allocation of more resources to the OSRCT, as it is both a now proven concept, and important for defending the ever more far flung outposts of the Initiative.
Zone Operations Command
ZOCOM sees the two primary priorities as suit upgrades and, more importantly, the mass delivery of zone armor to other branches in order to turn over significant swathes of heavy infantry and shallow Red Zone operations to Initiative Ground Forces, Navy, or other branches, and rededicate their efforts to the deep Red Zones.
[ ] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 6)
Future waves of Fortress Towns will be positioned deeper into formerly Brotherhood territory, and require substantial networks of roads, rails, and other means of support. While not yet at the limits of GDI ability to construct and support such facilities, they are substantially ahead of most other civilian infrastructure.
(Supports Green Zone Intensification)
(Progress 220/300: 20 resources per die) (+4 Housing) (-1 Green Zone Water) [20, 20]
Progress on Fortress Town construction this quarter has been deeply problematic, with multiple towns having to be abandoned or demolished mid construction as Gideon's armies fought their way across Georgia's historic black belt. While the construction crews did manage to safely evacuate in nearly all circumstances, there were also crews forced to shelter in place as shellfire rained around their heads.
Outside of Georgia, the area with the most problems has been Siberia, where it routinely drops below 4.5 degrees, slowing the setting of the concrete and weakening it dramatically. While some pours have been attempted, mostly by less experienced work crews, or those under the most pressure, multiple examples of why this is not done have emerged, with gun plinths cracking under the strain of absorbing the recoil of 152 and 203mm rifles. Most of this is a matter of it being Siberia, more than anything else, and while there are methods to do deep winter construction, many of them are difficult here – as prefabricating concrete elsewhere or heat shrouding run into severe logistical concerns, especially with an ongoing offensive.
Elsewhere, progress has been slow but steady, with another band further out from Chicago beginning to take form as a key exemplar. With the Tiberium being increasingly pushed back, the land is beginning to be reclaimed –although for now it is a Yellow Zone, that will change as GDI manages to affirmatively secure the region.
[ ] Blue Zone Apartment Complexes (Phase 2)
A second wave of apartment complexes, dotting GDI cities and snaking between higher and lower density areas will provide a further boost of high quality housing. While not as Tiberium hardened as the arcologies, that is a distant threat, and one that can be safely disregarded in the immediate time frame in favor of housing people in better conditions.
(Progress 160/160: 10 resources per die) (-1 Logistics, +6 Housing)
(Progress 72/160: 10 resources per die) (-1 Logistics, +6 Housing) [51, 46, 5]
One of the few unmitigated successes has been the provision of housing. While many refugees are moved into pre-war housing complexes or, even more commonly, the residential blocks constructed immediately post-war, a steady stream of new housing units has come online – thousands of families have been asked to move multiple times this quarter, each time into newer (and usually larger) facilities somewhere more convenient for GDI's urban planners. Systematic construction of new housing has mostly been on the outskirts of major settlements, a midband in GDI's housing market.
Fundamentally, not all housing is created equal. In fact, not all housing of the same build quality is created equal. Rather, there are thousands of gradations between the best housing (at this time, arcologies deep in the urban cores) and the worst (a mix of prewar middle and lower class apartment buildings, and bunker complexes). In order to ensure that housing meets demand, there is a pseudo-rental market, with a floating median, to try to match available housing to the people that need it. An urban core arcology for example can demand high rents as a luxury product in its own right, while an older apartment or bunker can (and usually does) have negative rents, with residents instead being paid to stay in them. This system is a relatively recent development, formulated by the Services Department when the availability of housing grew beyond minimum needs and personal mobility became a possibility. While it is far from being perfectly equitable, it seems to offer better results than assigned housing for most populations.
While construction is currently outpacing immigration, that is not expected to last, as the weakened Brotherhood warlords are likely to see massive emigration as their grasp on their populations slacks, and the Initiative lines are closer than ever to major yellow zone population centers. For much of the next year at minimum, GDI is likely to see massive waves of immigration.
[ ] Suborbital Shuttle Service (Phase 1)
GDI's fleet of Leopard shuttles has reached a point where at any given time some significant portions are sitting without mission payloads. By retasking them towards suborbital shuttles, they would be able to reach anywhere in the world in a matter of hours at most. This will allow GDI to further tighten the bonds between Blue Zones and significantly cut travel times for critical supplies.
(Progress 92/200: 30 resources per die) (+3 Logistics) [58]
There are, broadly, three key problems that need to be solved with the suborbital shuttle service: takeoff, cruise, and landing.
While flippant, it is actually roughly accurate. To begin with, a suborbital shuttle is fundamentally noisy. Nothing that can push that much hot gas is anywhere approaching quiet, and requires fundamental engineering compromises at the terminals to be able to load, taxi, and takeoff without deafening bystanders, service workers, or those waiting for the next flight. While that is currently not an issue, it is more due to the launch sites for the Leopard being well away from human civilization – a feature that noticeably contraindicates trying to build a functional shuttle service.
Second, the cruise. Leopards dedicated to the shuttle service will spend much of their time on suborbital trajectories, using either wings or a lifting body to maintain altitude while building speed. While this makes it much easier to maintain a cruise, they will need a number of significant modifications, including a much larger set of wings, and a much streamlined check process to maintain reliable service without needing weeks or months between flights.
Third is landing. Here, the biggest problem is simply space. A typical jet airliner before Tiberium could easily need over two kilometers of runway to land. A suborbital shuttle, having so much more energy to bleed off, and limited ability to circle down (especially with the Brotherhood of Nod potentially trying to take potshots) needs over twice that distance, if not more – especially as longer runways also allow for much less aggressive landing profiles, reducing impact on the aircraft and on the passengers.
In the Himalayan Blue Zone, there is another problem. It is roughly shaped like a giant bowl, surrounded by high mountains, leaving few potential routes to provide a smooth landing – and the construction of a suitable landing strip has already become a massive engineering project, with thousands of tons of dirt and stone moved. However, while the system is currently being built as a lifeline for the Himalayan Blue Zone, there are other facilities being constructed around the world to use this system as a matter of prompt relocation, and some have already come close to completion. While the total daily throughput is likely to only be in the hundreds to low thousands of tons of material, that is plenty for medical supplies, critical components, or similar.
[ ] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 7) (Updated)
The systematic and continuing construction of additional fusion plants is still ongoing, with GDI expecting to require much more construction, even with improved CCF plants on the horizon.
(Progress 300/300: 20 resources per Die) (+16 Energy) (-1 Labor)
(Progress 67/310: 20 resources per Die) (+16 Energy) (-1 Labor) [40, 39, 48]
Fortunately, after further inspections, and a deep dive into fusion plants after the first wave, while some of the early ones do show signs of rapid wear, the rest do not, and are expected to finish out their service lives. The wartime ones are somewhat more marginal however, and it is too early to tell whether the rushed pace of construction has left long term consequences.
As for the plants themselves, while they can be built nearly anywhere there is a distinct limit on regional cooling capacity. Heat transfer is more efficient the greater the differential between the two media is. So trying to cool in already hot water is simply inefficient, and rock is unfortunately not a particularly good conductor. This leaves rivers and streams, and the environmental impact of the constant construction of new plants is already eating into the efficiency of the system. Improved technologies will offset this, but the long term problem of sufficient cooling is likely to remain an issue, as GDI has already used most of the best and easiest to exploit locations.
[ ] Crystal Beam Industrial Laser Development (Tech)
Crystal Beam laser technologies, now released from military exclusivity, is likely to be a substantial upgrade to a wide variety of Initiative technologies, ranging from existing uses, where it is likely to be a substantial efficiency upgrade, to a number of new uses, such as long distance laser cutting.
(Progress 108/80: 10 resources per die) [74]
The Crystal Beam laser systems are notoriously finicky in field conditions. While certainly effective, and increasingly widespread, crews have a habit of burning out the sensitive laser systems as they try to kill incoming missiles, and more broadly mismanaging the heat curves, meaning that the weapons have a tendency to lose effectiveness (especially as they age). Beyond that, they also have a tendency to develop surface imperfections, which have similar effects. However, in an industrial use-case, many of these are lesser problems. A line can be halted, spare parts staged mere meters from the cutting head. Additionally, industrial laser systems have far lower requirements compared to those of the missile defense system, as they don't have to maintain the rapid pulsing of military point defense systems.
The rollout is likely to be slow, as making the lasing crystals is a difficult and labor-intensive process, as they have a tendency to develop noticeable internal imperfections that can drastically disrupt the laser. However, that rollout is likely to solve two problems, as it is likely to reduce overall energy costs, and provides a new method of rapid welding, cutting, and sintering on a large scale.
[ ] Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr
With the Isolinear chip a reality, rather than a work of science fiction, GDI can begin substantial development of a prototype small scale chip fabricator. While it will be a massively expensive project, it is putting resources towards a new generation of computing technology that leaves all existing models in the dust.
(Progress 85/320: 50 resources per die) (+4 Capital Goods) (-2 Energy) [56]
Overlooking the south bank of the River Anadyr, the new chip foundry from the outside looks like any other sizable industrial site. Nondescript boxes for buildings, linked by a series of tubes and tunnels. It is what is inside those boxes that is important. Right now, they mostly stand hollow – empty monuments to what is yet to come. The key components are in the process of making the tools to make the tools. While GDI has built a small scale chip fabricator, that was a unique construction, built using tools that are effectively unique in the world. To scale that up, there are facilities across the Pacific coast that are building up components to build the new chip fabricator. Additionally, the dock facilities that will haul in the bulk supplies and haul out finished chips are waiting for the coming of warmer weather in order to pour most of the concrete, as it has been far too cold for standard concrete pours to set properly.
Progress has been slow on making those tools, especially the sinterers. While heat is an inherent requirement, needed to fuse the components of the chip together and create a unified system rather than a glorified pile of sand, a miscalculation of as little as a tenth of a degree in the heating process can ruin the chip. While on the small scale the sinterer can wait and be cooled back to baseline, when trying to scale that up, it is significantly more problematic, meaning that it will have to operate under near constant heated conditions. This requires more advanced hardware. While the crystal beam lasers will make this easier to achieve, it is still going to be an extremely finicky element, in an already finicky process.
[ ] Chemical Fertilizer Plants (Phase 2)
With the initial phase of fertilizers completed, and many of the lowest hanging fruits plucked, the next phase is to begin supplying more specialized nutrients and existing ones in greater bulk. While this will be somewhat more expensive for the rewards, it is still worthwhile.
(Progress 276/300: 15 resources per die) (+4 Consumer Goods, +4 Food, -1 Energy) [94, 40]
Chemical fertilizer production has run into a number of roadblocks. While certifications are on their way, the same people are hard at work recertifying a wave of prewar developments and nationalized companies. While important work, it has been a stumbling block to turning the factories on, despite them being completed. While the Initiative tends to use relatively little in the way of chemical fertilizers, preferring other means to ensure growth and, as best as possible, retaining a closed cycle system to keep putting nutrients back through rather than wasting them, these will increase crop yields and more than make good on inherent losses through the system.
Beyond that there are often security concerns. While the chemical fertilizers are quite useful, many of them can easily be turned into explosives with relatively minimal effort. Although this is far from universal, many of the most important are. This has lead to a series of intensive controls, especially in Europe, but to a lesser degree all around the world.
[ ] Bergen Superconductor Foundry (Phase 1)
With the proof of concept for larger scale superconductors well and truly proven, a large-scale facility capable of producing at least thousands of kilometers of the material is required. Bergen, on the coast of the North Atlantic, will provide a more than suitable location to provide for shipping superconductor tubes around the world.
(Progress 95/95: 30 resources per die) (+1 Energy)
(Progress 190/190: 30 resources per die) (+1 Capital Goods, +2 Energy) [79, 87]
When it comes to the cutting edge of technology, it is a constantly moving target. While material science moves somewhat more slowly than most other fields, there have been noticeable changes in precise combinations of elements and the crystallization processes. For Bergen, it is a marginally new breed of rare-earth-based pseudoceramic metalloid-rich hybrid structure that is created using laser sintering or ultra-cleanroom furnaces, but can be worked somewhat like a metal at high enough temperatures. This enables it to be drawn into wires using mostly traditional methods, then spun into windings for electromagnets. However, at operational temperatures (below 15C) it is much more brittle and inflexible.
For Bergen itself, construction teams have been working around the clock, with rooms being filled almost as soon as they have been cleared. This has created traffic jams, with carts full of rocks having to negotiate passageways also being used to bring in heavy machinery. However, this has provided a long term advantage: a systematic network of cart tracks, which should make upgrades substantially easier in the decades going forward.
While most of these rooms are rarely going to see humans, the environmental control systems for a structure like this one are massive. One of the few things that does not have to be nearly so actively managed is temperature. While the industrial processes put out substantial amounts of heat, a combination of the surrounding mass of rock and a collection of pipes circulating water keep the temperature comfortable even when the facility is going at full pace.
[ ] Civilian Drone Factories
Civilian drones have a large number of potential uses, ranging from rapid delivery of goods, medicines, and simple recreation. While flying a drone is not the same as flying an actual aircraft, it has often been a popular sport, with drone races (both in stock and custom categories) being a fairly popular sport, especially for children.
(Progress 104/380: 10 resources per die) (+2 Logistics, +1 Health, +4 Consumer Goods) (-2 Energy) [80]
Civilian drones have been a site of contention for decades, with military authorities oftentimes hating the concept, especially as the Brotherhood of Nod has made good use of disposable drones for terrorist attacks. For a long time, the military has been primarily interested in deconflicting the extremely low altitudes, allowing for indiscriminate fire. However, in recent years, civilian pushback has reached a point where it is practical to begin mass producing a handful of known designs.
Beyond the politics, the civilian drones in the planning stages are primarily multirotor designs, effectively a massively scaled down version of the carryalls that have been popular for decades. While there are many requests for fixed wing drones for use in surveying, and a wide array of other fields, these are fundamentally more difficult, because the Brotherhood has a tendency to use very similar models as the basis for a lot of their attack drones. The largest are designed to carry a single intermodal container, the same that are mounted on trucks, trains, and ships. While they can't carry the heaviest of loads, and have a range measured in bare tens of kilometers, they are primarily acting as cranes, moving bulk supplies to otherwise inconvenient locations. Far more relevant are the smaller scale drones, primarily intended to carry small, high priority items, such as organs, medication, and similar.
As a key concession to the military environment, the drones will be fixed to semi-automated 'guide rails' for longer ranged flights, especially in urban environments. While this will congest the skies rapidly as drone fleets increase in size, it is a small concession, especially compared to the wide array of other demands proposed to maintain security – such as built-in hardware kill systems, power to weight ratio limitations that would have crippled the program from the get go, and a wide variety of other demands. While the drones are still going to be noticeably fatter, slower, and louder than they have to be, it does get the program off the ground, and with the security services potentially getting their hands on drone fleets of their own, there is quite a potential to remove these limitations in the future.
[ ] Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays (Phase 3)
With refugees swarming GDI's borders, and the population expected to increase by some substantial number of percentage points across the next year, massive new and expanded aquaponics bays are going to be a core element in being able to feed that population. While other facilities can help, these will be the backbone of what can be done.
(Progress 140/140: 10 resources per die) (+6 Food) (-1 Labor)
(Progress 75/140: 10 resources per die) (+6 Food) (-1 Labor, -1 Logistics) [62, 75]
The construction of new aquaponics bays has been a major part of the systematic construction aimed at supporting the refugees. While the current wave has eaten up the majority of the increase in throughput, the prospect of significant reductions in caloric intake or food diversity have been staved off.
The civilian experience of the refugee wave has mostly been in the form of bare shelves, a result of a bottleneck in stocking and shipments. Increases in demand have not quite been matched with increases in throughput, meaning that shelves get stripped bare faster than stocking crews can put more supplies back on the shelves. For the average store, there are maybe a dozen stockers, and they have been increasingly overworked between unloading cargo transits, and putting supplies on the shelves.
[ ] Freeze Dried Food Plants
Freeze Drying effectively turns most food into permanent, shelf stable systems. While building additional plants to process food in this way will be expensive, it should significantly reduce waste, and increase the lifespan of the stockpiles noticeably.
(Progress 151/200: 20 resources per die) (+5 Food, increases efficiency of stockpile actions, -1 Energy) [Nat 1]
The Parliamentary committee on agriculture, specifically the subcommittee on storage and crisis response, has increasingly seen the Treasury's approach to solving the problem of stored food as fundamentally unserious. With the Treasury's slow investment in freeze drying plants, and the recent collapse of one plant in the north of Paris due to sabotage, it has been all the excuse the subcommittee needed to begin bringing administrators and engineers in to answer questions.
The head of the committee, Julius Wilson commented that "When we ordered the reconstruction of food stockpiles, it was with the intention of heading off shortages in case of war. With the ongoing war, and only a year left in the plan, it is obvious that Seo Thoki and the Treasury have decided that actually storing food is an unimportant bagatelle, rather than a vital element to prepare the Initiative to endure shortages."
Another representative described the ongoing strategy as "systematic underinvestment in vital food supplies, instead chasing high tech Wunderwerkzeuge."
While few of those answers have been particularly politically problematic for the Secretary or the Department, it has slowed progress on the freeze drying plants, and signaled that the Parliament is likely to take a much greater interest in managing reserves. In order to prevent that, and to fend off more intrusive demands, the Treasury is likely to need to get out ahead of the problem.
Beyond the political problems work on the freeze drying plants themselves has been slow, a result of both high demand for many of the parts used in the plants, but also a series of sabotage operations. The plants, as a civilian project, are relatively soft, meaning that they are often used as training exercises against live opposition for the Brotherhood's more inexperienced operatives.
[ ] Caloric Reclamation Processor Development (New) (Tech)
Taking the Brotherhood of Nod's technology to produce high bioavailability "food" blocks will provide both a means of creating virtual food stockpiles, and convert otherwise waste goods into usable calories and nutrition. While trying to feed GDI soldiers or civilians these rations outside of the deepest of emergencies will be politically unpopular at minimum, it is a useful means of extending vital food stockpiles.
(Progress 94/40: 5 resources per die) [65]
The Caloric Reclamation Processor is, simply put, a chemical and biological stomach, breaking down nearly anything into a foodlike product. While GDI has captured many examples of this technology, it has never had a full understanding of the operational principles – mostly because the end product is so disgusting that previous administrations had more scruples about what they were feeding their people. The final product of many processing rounds is a grey-green fibrous thread that can be compressed into biscuits, or left alone as a kind of very weak noodle. While more or less nutritionally complete with the addition of common multivitamins or fortification, the result of reconstituting the raw starch in boiling water tastes like 'cardboard crossed with moldy gym socks.' Attempts to reduce the off-flavor of the product has resulted in, at best, only increasing the tastelessness of it, causing more cardboard and a slight rancid aftertaste to come to the fore.
The products to become food are first macerated, broken down into small components, and then fed into a hopper, where a computer inputs the right combination of engineered bacteria – cultured elsewhere in the device or, for more portable systems, in a series of containers – which begin to break down nearly anything into nutrients. The resulting paste is then sterilized with a combination of heat and radiation, before being extruded.
Parliament is, to put it mildly, displeased with the results, seeing it as a means of avoiding the stockpiling goals with 'virtual stockpiles,' and as 'food' not fit to be fed to food animals, even if it was available as a category. While it is unlikely for Parliament to try to ban the technology entirely, at this time it is likely an incredibly bad idea to put it into action.
[ ] Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting (Phase 10) (Updated)
While finishing up the current expansion phase of harvesting operations along the GDI/Nod borders is unlikely to cause issues, aggressive development of further offensives into the deep Yellow Zones are at this point increasingly likely to trigger operational and potentially strategic exchanges, as warlords will respond to deep drives into the Brotherhood heartland, although it will break the territory held by warlords into increasingly small pockets.
(Progress 350/350: 20 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (3 points of Yellow Zone Mitigation) [37, 79] (+5 Resources per turn)
While the Brotherhood has not yet chosen to unleash its arsenal of strategic armaments, it has been pushed to the absolute limit. Many of the backchannels and Hackett's intelligence networks have indicated that Brotherhood nuclear preparedness has been increasing, with nuclear arms being dispersed to lower levels, and command authorizations being passed down to allow lower level commanders to unleash large portions of the total Brotherhood nuclear arsenal if they believe their positions are being threatened.
Intelligence Operations had missed the signs. To be entirely fair to them, the signs were hard to spot, and the Brotherhood had long played shell games with its nuclear stockpiles – both against itself and GDI. How many nuclear devices, at what readiness, and mated to what systems were all questions that GDI had rarely been able to answer well, and many have long suspected that not even the Brotherhood or Kane himself knew in total.
As for the projects themselves, aside from a handful of potential sites near the edges of the GDI advance that were abandoned, much of the development has gone fairly well. Across the edges of the current Initiative advances, there are numerous sites already developed by the Brotherhood of Nod for Tiberium harvest, including the erection of quite a large number of spikes. Instead of needing to build entirely new systems, taking theirs over has been quite lucrative. However, this has meant that ongoing harvest is less valuable than it could have been. Brotherhood spiking operations are usually far less clustered than Initiative ones, partially due to them not prioritizing containment as much. This has lead to lower than potential growth, even though it has been a meaningful increase in the overall budget.
[ ] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 6)
A further wave of Green Zone Tiberium harvesting will both improve the logistical connections across the forward Green Zones and provide greater numbers of forward hardpoints and firebases for Initiative troops.
(Progress 100/100: 15 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (1 point of yellow zone mitigation)
(Progress 78/100: 15 resources per die) (small additional income trickle [5-10 Resources]) (1 point of yellow zone mitigation) (2 Stages available) [2, 52] (+10 Resources per turn)
Construction of expansive Green Zone harvesting operations has been ongoing, as has the transition to Blue Zone harvesting approaches. A Blue Zone, by definition, does not lack Tiberium contamination. Rather, it has a low Tiberium contamination level and Tiberium contamination is being actively controlled. The basis for this is a series of low and high level depots that maintain and operate fleets of harvesters, paired with a network of tiberium spikes. The spikes are both for harvesting and an early warning system, with reductions in harvest throughput highly correlated with outbreaks of Tiberium. With this system, GDI can usually (and increasingly so in recent years since the supply of capital goods has improved) localize Tiberium outbreaks to within ten square kilometers across any Blue Zone on the planet, and begin moving before the outbreak hits the surface.
How this matters to the Green Zone intensification is simple. Instead of just pushing out high intensity setups ever further forward, in many cases beyond the reaches of what the Initiative can properly secure, this quarter's construction has focused on building up Blue Zone style constructions well ahead of the Blue Zones, saving both time and resources by not needing to fully rebuild the system as it reorients from being primarily a harvesting project to a containment one, making the system as a whole noticeably more efficient.
[ ] Railgun Harvester Factories
The Railgun Harvester is a significantly heavier design than previous Harvester systems and so requires a new series of factories. While by the standards of military production these will be overall fairly limited, they will provide a noticeable increase in income, especially from more heavily contested regions.
-[ ] Bissau (Progress 100/70 : 10 resources per die) (+5 Resources Per Turn) (-2 Energy) [61]
The Bissau railgun plant has been a quick construction, with the factory almost entirely assembled from prefabricated parts fused together with the barest of assemblies. Meanwhile crews are still being familiarized with the updated construction process – especially the railgun fabrication bay, which is the most different part from working on any other harvester. Currently, test parts are beginning to pile up – with some parts of the facility being massively more productive than others, leading to a significant number of parts actually going to other harvester factories.
Bissau itself is a relatively smaller city, with Dakar, Conakry, and Monrovia having become the major cities for the Blue Zone. While certainly not the only major industrial site, the railgun harvester factory has brought substantial infusions of funding, and a small but significant number of high paying jobs to the area, leaving ripples throughout the city. Two new restaurants have opened up, both being funded nearly entirely on local capital, although one does take advantage of Initiative cultural heritage funding.
-[ ] Porto (Progress 108/70: 10 resources per die) (+5 Resources Per Turn) (-2 Energy) [25]
Despite widespread sabotage efforts by the Brotherhood of Nod, against both the workforce and the factory building itself, the first railgun harvester out of Porto rolled out the doors at 11:42 December 28, 2060. By the end of the day, two companions had joined it. While production is currently extremely slow, the factory has been completed, and is well on its way towards full production.
More broadly, with the full set of factories completed, and the war beginning to wind down, it is time for a substantial reassessment of the railgun harvesters generally. While during the war months railgun equipped harvesters took heavy losses persistently, this was primarily due to the opposition that they were facing. Typical pre-war raiding parties simply did not survive in the face of the Initiative's forward-deployed armor, while the forces that could and did operate in that threat environment were both too heavily armored for a lightweight railgun to be effective, and too heavily armed for any harvester to be survivable against them. However, with the war beginning to wind down, and GDI beginning to demobilize more forces to catch up on maintenance and reduce logistical loading at the front, the low level harassers have begun to make a reappearance, only to find themselves outmatched by the new and heavier weapons on the harvesters.
[ ] Ion Storm Collector Panel Development (New) (Tech)
A number of Scrin vehicles mounted Ion Storm collectors, a means of supercharging themselves via the energy discharges of ion storms, and a massive advantage in Red Zone Operations. While the Initiative cannot produce anywhere close to the same energy density, Initiative Red Zone operations will greatly benefit from harvesting panels that draw on that energy, especially those more generally connected to the power grid.
(Progress 124/80: 15 resources per die) [80]
On Scrin vehicles the Ion Storm collector, when fitted, was a small cage-like construction – six claw-like ribs, with a metallic ring as a base. Acting like a lightning rod, it was able to provide a significant amount of energy to a Scrin vehicle, increasing its overall capabilities. GDI's scientists have been working for years to produce something similar, and in recent months have had a breakthrough. Rather than try to produce a similar form factor, a much lower efficiency can be gained with a simple collector panel – harnessing a very similar technology to existing solar cells, just calibrated to a much higher energy spectrum to catch the ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths that are a significant part of the output of an ion storm. Beyond that, energy can be harvested using electron nets, catching lightning strikes and the exotic products thereof, and splitting them down to a manageable stream of energy.
For most bases in the Red Zones, the benefit is fairly marginal. While they do rely on a mix of small fission plants and fuel generators, an ion storm collector can't really fully replace them. What they can do however is cut the overall energy costs across the entire system, providing fuel to the fleets of vehicles from the Sabatier process, decreasing parts wear, and being able to reprioritize those small nuclear reactors towards more civilian purposes. However, the bigger, more integrated border offensives are likely to be one of the few places where there are significant impacts to the broader grid, as there it is possible to run the wires out to the sites and harvest them for energy.
Deployment is one of the more problematic parts. While the system as a whole is relatively simple to set up, production lines will need to be created from scratch. Additionally, erecting bands of panels around the bases will fundamentally require a very different layout, using fewer roads, and deeper perimeters. These will be relatively easy to fit onto new bases, however older bases are likely to see a much smaller benefit.
[ ] Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1)
The Moon's craters hold the remains of the many asteroid impacts that have scarred the moon over millennia. While currently not feasible to mine, it will be the rebirth of the Initiative's non-tiberium based mining and refining infrastructure.
(Progress 45/160: 20 resources per die) (+5 Resources Per Turn) [19]
If regolith harvesting is akin to strip quarrying, and heavy metals tends to be more conventional mining, rare metals harvesting has more in common with ancient bog iron, or the ancient practice of panning for gold. Rather than having a singular operational base, the harvesting process occurs over dozens or hundreds of square kilometers, with manned rovers and parasites picking up remnants of ancient asteroid impacts. These in turn are typically housed at a large permanent base, usually one of the, by now, numerous conventional mining bases scattered across the surface of the moon.
However, there has been a critical problem: launch space. With so many launches going to the moon, the large core rovers have been incredibly problematic, as they require nearly an entire shuttle apiece. While smaller assets, like the collapsed prefabs, or mining drones, are much easier to ship out, the relatively few main rovers mostly remain stuck in planetside warehouses.
[ ] Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2)
The silicate compounds in the Moon's crust contain extractable levels of iron, titanium, and aluminum, making them incredibly useful as a source of bulk materials. While processing will require massive amounts of energy in some cases, it is also a useful beginning point for developing the solar system.
(Progress 276/330: 20 resources per die) (+15 resources per turn) [38, 43, 67]
A second wave of major regolith mines has been nearly completed. However, there are a handful of key problems. First is constructing enough hard landing pads for landing. With the sheer number of mining projects being authorized and deployed, hard landing pads are effectively a requirement to upkeep the fleets of Leopards and Unions being deployed to the moon. Lunar dust is effectively a mass of miniscule, razor-sharp knives, with none of the weathering that makes earth sand and dust relatively rounded. The blast of even a single fusion drive craft suicide burning can send clouds of those razors flying for kilometers when doing a soft landing. For doing virgin field work that is an acceptable problem. When trying to build not only large arrays of mines, but delivering for a wide variety of mines, with multiple types of equipment on a single launch in many cases, it is a significantly more important problem.
With the number of mines now spread across the surface, much of the construction is being staged out of existing facilities, rather than using the life support systems of the Leopards and Unions that are bringing out the supplies. This has advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, the surface facilities are far more hardened and with significant surpluses of backup life support, so even doubling or tripling the number of people living there for short time frames does not stress the system all too much. It also means that few ships are actually tied up, meaning that they can supply a much higher tempo. However, it has another problem. Until the pad is constructed, all supplies and materials have to be shipped in overland, which is a significant bottleneck, at least for the moment. But the criss-cross of semi-prepared roads now beginning to take shape on the moon's surface, and the number of heavy rovers, are both beginning to set up a system for significant settlement and development.
"As you can see, the interior of the so-called mining colony is little more than a pressurized cluster of the standard G330X habitation units. You can also see that the crew are forced to hot-bunk, with thirty men and women sharing a single room and a single shower. We are creating unsafe and unsanitary work-camps on the moon, which will, mark my words, turn into a disaster if the government does not fund the appropriate measures! The construction of the Columbia station is urgent, both as a home away from earth, and to prove the technologies needed to make these lunar cities actual places where human beings can live instead of being packed into cans like sardines."
-Bernadette Herzog, Starbound Representative
[ ] Lunar Heavy Metals Mines (Phase 3)
Heavier metals such as titanium, iron, magnesium, and many others are incredibly useful for a wide variety of industrial and aerospace technologies. There are many subsurface deposits scattered across the moon, some of which are economical for extractive activities.
(Progress 375/375: 20 resources per die) (+20 resources per turn)
(Progress 25/365: 20 resources per die) (+20 resources per turn) [34, 97]
The Heavy metals mines have been the one actual success story of this quarter's construction on the moon. With the original set of mines having been working for some time by this point, Phase 3 has done a significant redesign, focusing less on surface minerals, and more on getting in at deeper, and oftentimes harder to reach patches. Using many of the same techniques as the vein mines down on earth, these mines are increasingly burrowing beneath the surface, seeking out rich veins. From here, it is then shipped out to Enterprise for processing as the shuttles return. However, with the massive number of cargo runs, many have been forced to deadhead on the return trip rather than carry a load of ore, as there is simply not enough production.
More broadly, many of these mines, once they have been tapped out, are likely to become the starting points for lunar cities. With the moon bathed in radiation on a near constant basis, the best solutions are (rather than large domes) a series of prepared landing pads and small surface domes for both practical and recreational needs, with the vast bulk of the city dug in underground. These mining tunnels will provide a solid foundation for construction to begin along – able to start from the bottom up, rather than trying to dig beneath the city and potentially undermine the foundations.
[ ] Automatic Medical Assistants (Updated)
GDI's medical system is extensive, however it is also significantly overworked. By supplying a number of automated assistants to conduct routine procedures the valuable manpower can be concentrated working on more important and skill based fields.
(Progress 302/300: 20 resources per die) (+5 Health, +4 Labor, -4 Capital Goods, -2 Energy) [28, 56, 26]
While the automatic medical assistants have noticeably freed up skilled medical labor, the primary impacts have been two-fold. First, cutting into the pool of less skilled labor needed by the staff, and in supporting many of the more routine activities. Nurses and doctors are already reporting lower stress levels, as the droids can take over portions of critical importance and of highly technical results.
In hospital work, there have often been traditions of twelve or even twenty four hour shifts. These, to be put bluntly, are incredibly stupid. After about ten hours of even light work, people start crossing the point of negative value produced – and for heavier or skilled work like nursing it is significantly shorter. With each nurse and most doctors working in conjunction with a swarm of robots however, there are rippling effects through the entire field, with more nurses available, more downtime, more ability to have everyone working shorter and easier shifts.
[ ] Less Lethal Security Electrolaser Development (New) (Platform)
The lightweight capacitors and laser system developed by the Scrin seem to offer the security services a capable new weapon, with less inherent lethality than a kinetic firearm, and significantly more standoff range than traditional tasers, even the designs that fire various forms of remote charges.
(Progress 126/50: 10 resources per die) [94]
The primary breakthrough in the security electrolasers has been in the step up transformers, increasing voltage and decreasing current. While a conventional laser system is plenty for the platform as a whole, and an important concession to safety, it has limited the overall range. Beyond that, there is the standard battery box, a common feature across most Initiative arms, typically found in the stock. While here, it is in the same place, it is more accessible, as rather than being a power source for an optic and potentially a few other systems, it is the primary magazine. With the resources pushed for this project, most of the time has gone into refining the hardware, trying to make it slimmer, more functional, and most importantly, easier to use.
The end result is a bulky, boxy, firmly two handed weapon, with ten settings in three groups. The first setting (nicknamed 'tagger mode') is intended to simply make people aware that they are too close. While the laser is creating the channel, the current is about ten percent of maximum power, enough to warn most people outside of insulated clothing. Settings two through five are increasingly high levels of stun – with setting five being typically considered the maximum safe payload against a fit young man, and most people reaching their limit around setting four. Settings six through ten however are primarily designed to fight cyborgs, such as Eva Core, found years ago infiltrating the Initiative. While settings eight and above are likely to permanently damage their sensitive electronics, being able to put them down hard and fast is considered far more important than preserving the data.
From a production standpoint, nearly all of the elements can be assembled with components off the shelf, with only some small modifications being needed for the transformers. In light of this, the project is going to be handed off almost entirely to the security services, rather than being a problem for the Treasury to solve, especially with reallocation occuring in a year.
You want to know what the worst part of testing these stunners was? We had to knock a granny down. Little old lady with a heart condition and a widow's hunch, 97 years old. She was actually a former representative who wanted to see if it was "really safe" and boy let me tell you I almost had a heart attack watching her fall down. It was the absolute last test, worst case situation, but man, I hated it.
-Personal log of Henrietta Jones
[ ] Pinhole Portal Early Primitive Prototype Construction (New) (Tech)
Portals are a potentially revolutionary technology for communication, transport, and dozens of other fields. However, at this time, it is only ready for a critical test run, seeing if the very most basic of functionalities, a short range pinhole, can be created.
(Progress 56/180: 100 resources per die) [24]
For the most utterly secret development projects, GDI has the closed cities. Appearing on no maps, emitting no signals, hidden as much as possible. Typically hidden deep in the Blue Zones, these cities are exercises in security through obscurity, oftentimes fifty or more kilometers from the rest of civilization. For the Portals, this has become a political issue, with multiple factions slapping ever higher classification levels onto it. This has substantially slowed the project, as the closed cities are not, in fact, research heaven for any but the most absurdly dedicated of workers.
For the Pinhole facility, code named Project Carcinisation, work has been north of Glasgow, deep in the Scottish Highlands, rolling hills that for most of recent history were home to more sheep than people. Two sizable structures (mostly concrete) have been set up to try to do a point to point pinhole, the theoretically simplest level of portal construction. The limitations of the closed city system has made this incredibly slow, with every requisition order having to be authorized and infiltrated by the security services, rather than the very efficient systems of the Treasury's economic planners.
The attempted attack by the Order of the Remembrancer has set the security services in a tizzy, with security reviews, more security reviews, and trying to track down the leak by any means necessary. While so far the search has not targeted the scientists, it is likely only a matter of time, especially if the research project sees further attacks.
[ ] Hardlight Interface Development (Tech)
While the Scrin's shield technologies are still poorly understood, one of the oddball technologies currently in development is hardlight interfaces, using the shields to project holograms that can be interacted with in a three dimensional environment. While not useful for everything, it does offer far more customizable interfaces, and can do significant work for computer assisted design and similar needs.
(Progress 91/40: 15 resources per die) [91]
What You call hardlight Is Not. It Is Their shimmer shield technology in an array that results in a three-dimensional Object You can directly interact with. It is done by the shields in the array refracting visible light for You. It Can Not resist You due to the emitted shields being insufficient in power. It Does offer tactile feedback for You with each button's edge being identifiable by touch. It Can have 18 buttons per 400cm2 square with each button a minimum of 1cm2. Its interfaces are predominantly tanks or tubs as It's projectors required multiple angles to generate the Object. Generated Objects without support are currently nonviable with current Objects necessitating larger structures.
An Additional Comment; It is a Unique Sensation to process.
Addendum: Broadly speaking, all hardlight interfaces are tubs or tanks, with the projectors having multiple angles to create their figure. While freestanding interfaces might be possible at some future time, currently, any attempt at hardlight has only worked when built into some larger structure.
"I don't mean to complain about this – goodness knows, it's nice to have the work done and the development of an exciting new technology finished. But I feel like that there could have been a bit more...humm, It's hard to say exactly. Certainly, more clarity from Erewhon. I'm still baffled by the final abstract; it reads more like a riddle than a puzzle and some of the solutions to creating hardlight that AI made are certainly Machine Learning Solutions if you get me."
-Chae Mirae, Head Scientist Hardlight Project Commentary.
[ ] Wingman Drone Deployment (High Priority)
With the Wingman drones, GDI has begun to lay out a platform for a future of warfare, primarily built around pilot survivability, and preparing for a series of larger and more intensive aerial campaigns around the world.
- [ ] Firehawk Wingmen (Progress 454/450: 20 resources per die) (-1 Labor, -6 Energy, -2 Capital Goods) [74, 77, 10]
Firehawk wingman rollout has been a slow and painstaking process. With the first deliveries happening as effectively Christmas presents to their units, the Wingmen have only had bare days to make an impact. While any influence they have at this point is circumstantial, they have already begun forming a reputation as good luck charms, with the handful of Wingman drones dropping casualty rates on the missions they were assigned to by over a third. With priority going to squadrons also being issued the Infernium laser modules, this decrease in loss rate is primarily due to the pilots being better able to stand off from the main engagement, tossing in their wingmen instead. For the drones however, loss rates are high – higher than for standard pilots in fact.
Despite interface improvements, pilots are still complaining about unintuitive and slow controls. While some of this is simply learning time, it is also a matter of the control scheme on the Firehawk being decades old, and having limited amounts of spare space for additional displays and toggles.
In terms of timeline, the sheer number of Firehawk Wingmen needed is a fundamental problem. Even working flat out, it will be over a year before numbers rise to the point that they will begin making an impact in every theater. At this time the Navy, long in need of extra airborne firepower, (especially after the recent battles in the Pacific,) is getting priority, as the current Atlantis class aircraft carriers can trade two squadrons of Naval Firehawks for three of the new wingman squadrons, giving a noticeable increase in throw weight.
"The problem is logistics, at this point. We're looking at more missions, more fuel consumption, more missiles-we need more airfields and support as well, just to get enough physical slots to hold the damn things. Shipping the drones themselves is easy enough, but we also need to ship the weapons for them, and store enough bombs and missiles for surge missions while not also leaving enough munitions about for a NOD commando to easily blow a whole base sky high."
"It's a wonderful problem to have, mind you. You just have to complain about something."
Armond Torres, Air Force Captain.
[ ] Skywatch Telescope System
While no longer a requirement for further exploration of the solar system, a constellation of Skywatch telescopes will be useful for the Space Force as well, as an early warning tripwire in case of another alien invasion or asteroid bombardments.
(Progress 64/95: 10 resources per die) (High Priority) [38]
While 'there is no stealth in space' is a longstanding truism, it is not entirely accurate. Rather, it is far more accurate to say that there is no 'full spectrum stealth.' On a habitable world, it is quite possible to use a combination of methods to reduce emissions across effectively the whole spectrum to the point of near invisibility. This is the method that, for example, the Brotherhood's Stealth Tanks use. Comparatively, in space, the advantages of one system in certain spectra are often at the cost of being more obvious in others. So, in order to better spot an incoming enemy, multiple types of telescope are required.
Beyond that, when it comes to telescopes of any kind, there are fundamental tradeoffs to be made. For one, fundamentally different telescopes are required to see different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. For another, there are significant trade-offs to be made in terms of view range. A telescope designed to magnify Saturn's rings to a point where they can be easily seen (about 25x magnification at minimum) is not the same system as one that could pick out individual rocks in the rings, but at the same time can sweep a much larger portion of space.
The number of different systems required has been a major stumbling block. While most are in small-scale production, scaling them up has been slow and difficult, with the telescopes mostly being effectively artisanal assemblies. When trying to build entire constellations of these units, that is noticeably problematic, as creating a single platform at a time is very different from creating a whole series of a single class, meaning that rather than being able to simply scale up existing production, entirely new facilities are needed to produce the series.
[ ] Railgun Munitions Development
While the Initiative has deployed railguns for decades, the only munition has been some form of inert slug, either an ovoid in early designs, and a fluted dart in later ones. Typically, this has been all that is needed, with its sheer kinetic force capable of doing much of the damage. However, with rail weaponry taking up an ever larger part of the Initiative's arsenal, more forms of ammunition are likely to be required.
(Progress 38/60: 10 resources per die) (Very High Priority) [7]
For a decade now, the long-delayed railgun munitions project has been accumulating test data, prototypes, revisions, and aggressive, pointed memos. It was hoped that these accumulations would, under a bare minimum of testing, yield viable munitions. This has proven to be not the case. Just six days after the approval of a round of tests for variant ammunition, a high-explosive round demolished a railgun at the Yucca Flats test range. At some point, following round after round of revisions, the ammo had seen its explosive cavity shrink to the point where a co-crystalized blend of Trinitrotoluene and Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane was required to meet the desired explosive yield, primarily due to the problems of creating an isolated chamber inside the shell, where the firing energy would not set of the explosive. Unfortunately, firing created enough heat transfer to separate the HNHW from the TNT, causing a rapid detonation while still inside the barrel. This has caused a multitude of knock on effects, slowing development of shrapnel, incendiary, and submunition rounds for all railgun types.
Beyond the critical problems of high explosive rounds, which are the highest priority for most forces, the other rounds have been equally problematic. The Air Force and Steel Talons, for their rapid fire railguns, have wanted duplex or triplex munitions, which would separate out into a burst of darts midair. Here, the problems have been equally widespread, with about a tenth of the rounds used in the most successful test either failing to separate or fusing together in the barrel. While less of a problem with three to six round bursts, testing has shown that problems increase with the length of burst, with bursts above twenty rounds having a rapidly increasing failure percentage.
The only one to have been unproblematic enough to allow test rounds to go to people outside of dedicated research and development bases has been the Beehive. 2400 5-gram flechettes packed into a tube, and then fired out the barrel like a particularly overgrown shotgun. Most of the problems in its testing came from the fact that it is derived from an artillery shell, and the railguns have a different enough launch profile to create both problems with the bursting coming too early, and not coming at all – with the shell in the latter case flying through the air effectively inert. However, fixes are relatively easy as it is almost entirely stamped metal.
"Right, we're going to have to halt the tests for Types 5a, b, and c, 12a through 21e, 23b, and everything 26a and up. We still need to run the extended-firing tests, and we're still waiting on new rails from the shop, so we can't afford any more interesting failures until they arrive. Oh, and Mount 3 won't be replaced until Tuesday, so Type 27a is downchecked without a full redesign."
-Project Lead Shreeve
[ ] Ablat Plating Deployment (Stage 5)
A final wave of Ablat production will allow for stockpiles to be built ahead of potential Brotherhood energy weapons development, and allow for replacements at a much higher rate than currently used. It will also mark an end to the plan goals for production of Ablat, which should make the Militarists in Parliament quite happy.
(Progress 240/200: 10 resources per die) (Very High Priority) [42, 92]
While current generation ablative plates are beginning to struggle significantly against the Brotherhood's newest generation of plasma weapons, they are still broadly effective. However, with the new weapons becoming increasingly common, it is only a matter of time before a new generation, or an improved other system is needed. The problems that it is facing are primarily a mixture of form factor, and expected damage models. A laser is typically a very narrow, often as low as one to two centimeter in diameter beam, and only really ablates that particular area. As a result, the ablat puck was designed with that threat environment in mind. A small easily replaced unit that could absorb a handful of laser blasts was effectively ideal, especially as it could be stacked. Plasma however, is somewhat more liquid. In order to create plasma weapons with any degree of effective range, it has to be formed into a semicoherent stream, which, when it impacts a target means that instead of simply hitting one area, it actually spreads out significantly on impact, creating a wide hole.
Consumption however has rapidly spiked, with many units demanding as much protection as they can possibly get. While the old standbys of adding armor, tracks, sandbags, wood, or similar are either risky, unavailable, or not particularly practical, slathering on extra layers of ablative plating is relatively effective, and offers notably improved protection against incoming plasma fire. However, it is also leading to the maintenance demand rapidly increasing, as tanks, APCs, and other vehicles strain motors, gearboxes, and suspensions with all of their added weight – sometimes with vehicle crews trying to add multiple tons of armor to the front and sides of their vehicle.
[ ] Escort Carrier Shipyards (High Priority)
As GDI has a vast need for escort carriers, there are two tracks. First is simply building a number of supporting elements to build carriers between supporting the battleships. Second is building a number of dedicated shipyards for their production. While both will require substantial infrastructural investments, the former is substantially cheaper than the latter
-[ ] Nagoya (Progress 171/240: 20 resources per die) (-5 Energy, -2 Capital Goods) [13, 67, 13]
Nagoya has long been a center of aviation, the home of Mitsubishi, and surrounded by industrial sites, including one of Japan's oldest munitions plants further inland at Okazake. The usual fare of the region's production leans towards robotics, aircraft, and light shipbuilding, expertise which is of considerable use to the carriers the new shipyard will be constructing. The city was mostly untouched by the Third Tiberium War however, and this has meant considerable difficulty finding a site fit for such a large production complex and the logistical connections across Nagoya and the rest of the Japanese Blue Zone necessary to supply it. With the coastline near the city of Nagoya already heavily built up, it was decided to instead shift the location of the shipyard a bit further south down the coast towards the slowly decaying ruins of a long abandoned town. While the ruins are physically too small for the entire complex, it is large enough for most of the above ground structures needed, with the docks themselves under construction as piles were driven into the dredged and exposed seafloor behind a coffer dam before the pouring of vast quantities of concrete to build the tiered, heavy, sturdy structures themselves. They are as yet below sea level and as unfinished as the rest of the complex, waiting for equipment, tools and on site infrastructure, but the construction team expects that a minor infusion of resources will see this project to completion.
[ ] Shark Class Frigate Shipyards (High Priority)
The Shark unfortunately is of a size that GDI cannot simply reuse an existing ship's extra slipways to build the class. Too small for even the older destroyer shipyards, it needs much of its own dedicated space.
-[ ] Melbourne (Progress 329/300: 20 resources per die) (-6 Energy, -2 Capital Goods) [34, 71]
The Melbourne shipyard has been completed. With the Good Idea Fairy firmly banished, the shipyard has finalized in good time, and hull members have begun to be cut for the first wave of ships. Work is slow, with many workers having former heavy industrial experience – but not ship fabrication experience. While the two are related disciplines, they are not quite the same, as unlike with most heavy industrial projects, it is difficult to remove humans entirely from the project area.
Beyond difficulties with crew, the subcomponent system is not quite as seamless as hoped. While the best attempt was made, errors of less than a millimeter build up and is likely to mean significant effort in final assembly to patch the gaps left by misalignments in production. For example, the conning tower assembly is about a quarter of a millimeter too long to fit well with the bow assembly and the first section of the stern assembly. While a small problem, it is one that will slow final production for the Shark class.
[ ] Mastodon Heavy Assault Walker Development (High Priority) (Platform)
The Mastodon Heavy Assault Walker is intended to be a smaller, and substantially cheaper, replacement for the Mammoth Mk 2. Armed as a breakthrough asset, with anti aircraft missile launchers and rapid fire chin mounted artillery, the Mastodon is as much a weapon of terror as a weapon of war.
(Progress 97/30: 10 resources per die) [66]
Delayed for nearly a decade, the Mastodon has seen over a hundred revisions to the platform, and repeatedly increased in weight as new capabilities have been needed. This has reached a point where in order to get the ground pressure under control, it has needed to shift from a four legged design to a hexwalker, simply to keep the ground pressure to a relatively reasonable level. While the core is still a battery of four railguns, they have moved from the chin to the cheeks, being raised for better angles, and allowing the mech to lose over a meter of overall height. The artillery has also been lightened, going from a battery of conventional artillery, to standard railguns, using standard ammunition, although at marginally higher velocities due to improvements in superconductors, and other technical fields.
Starting at the bow of the vehicle, it has a forward secondary cockpit. While it can be entirely operated from an internal CIC, the secondary cockpit is a concession to the fact that cameras and sensors have been shown to be not entirely reliable. Behind that boxy cockpit are the two dual railgun turrets, with the railguns set effectively side by side, with a twenty centimeter gap in the middle, as these, unlike the Mammoth, were never intended to be manned, and have options for munitions storage other than the turret. Behind them, as the vehicle widens towards the shoulders containing the first pair of legs, are a pair of rapid fire railguns – mostly designed for infantry sweeping, but in the case of air attack they can return fire as a form of gun-based SHORAD. Behind that is the main body of the vehicle. At the very core is an infernium laser tube, with the 'disco ball' up top to provide mobile antimissile support. While its sensor suite is noticeably smaller and lower power than that of a ship, and the laser itself is much lower powered, it is still capable of engaging between two and three missiles at a time – although that depends on them being the longer ranged missiles, in the style of Stahl or Krukov, rather than short range sprinting close attack rocketry. Behind that is essentially a pair of VLS racks, packed full of Thunderbolt 20s – primarily intended for anti-aircraft work, but they can also be used for bombardments – and then finally a stern-mounted rapid-fire railgun, again positioned to shoot at incoming aircraft as well as infantry.
All of this is protected by both shields and armor, but more care has gone towards the shields as a defensive system, as the vehicle ran heavily into both size and mass limitations on current myomer bundles and joints.
Doctrinally, the job of the Mastodon has shifted, from being an independent heavy assault unit, deployed in company strength to smash through hardened brotherhood positions, followed up by lighter Talons and Initiative units for exploitation, much like the entire lineage of the Mammoth Tank. Now however, it is intended as a centerpiece to company scale attack groups, supporting lighter units as they push forward, with longer range anti-missile systems, antiaircraft missiles and dual purpose rapid fire railguns, and a powerful sensor suite.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Heavy Industry) (100) [76]
The Heavy Industrial sector has always been a target, with both espionage and sabotage based infiltration attacking the system as a whole routinely. This has only stepped up in recent months, with the aggressive action of the Brotherhood against both stockpiles and production facilities exacerbating the problems. Digging them out has been a slow and painstaking process, with multiple spy rings being ousted, many who seem to have been targeters rather than infiltrators.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Orbital) (110) [86]
The orbital sector has slacked off significantly from their fanaticism a decade ago. While some of their near paranoiac security procedures have become embedded in tradition, others have not. Problematically, the drumbeat of expansions, new mines, new stations, and new crews have created holes for infiltration, although primarily on the surface, with most crews still being very difficult to infiltrate, being tightly bound and working together in a high degree of isolation from anything but official Initiative channels for long periods of time. While the Brotherhood certainly knows of GDI's efforts beyond the immediate bounds of Earth's orbit, including the details of the discovery of Tiberium on Venus, they do not seem to have been able to convert that into technological or serious informational gain.
[ ] Security Reviews
GDI has often faced problems with infiltration by the Brotherhood of Nod. A full security review of one department of operations can mitigate or discover infiltration, however it will take a significant amount of effort. (DC 50 + 1 operations die) (Bureaucracy) (51) [22]
Investigating the Bureaucracy has been a slow and painstaking affair, with care having to be taken to avoid stepping on too many toes. While most of the civil service is loyal, hardworking, and dedicated, the Bureaucracy has been increasingly studded with agents, or the proxies of agents, not only from the Brotherhood of Nod, but a wide variety of outside powers. In some ways, this should be expected, with the Treasury maintaining a wide selection of powers, and a firm hand on the economic currents, everyone from the larger cooperatives, to the political parties, to the other branches of government are all jockeying for a view on what the next decision out of the Treasury will be. While many of them, especially those working for other parts of the Initiative, are conscientious, effective, and above all else competent workers, they are feeding information along backchannels to other factions, many of whom are looking for the best positioning to make good advantage of the Treasury's decisions.
-[ ] Purge the Bureaucracy
While some degree of infiltration from interested parties is inevitable, by making examples out of those who have filtered out information, firing and blacklisting them at the very least, and prison sentences for some, the Bureaucracy can be put into its place below you. While this will lead to massive overall problems, as the Bureaucrats become too scared to talk to each other, let alone outsiders, and will likely come with political consequences, it is an option.
(-20 to Bureaucracy dice, -1 Bureaucracy die)
-[ ] Eliminate Outside Influence
While a complete purge of the bureaucracy is inadvisable, a few rounds of firing, and a series of mandatory refresher courses on information security may help stem the outflow of information. However this is likely to only be a very temporary solution, as the Treasury will still maintain an extremely large role in the overall economy, and therefore be of great interest to other parties.
(-5 to Bureaucracy dice until Q2 2061)
-[ ] Expand Official Backchannels
With there being no end in sight to the interests of other parties, offering up a series of more secure lines, with vetted and verified representatives acting as official backchannels to outside interest groups. While it is still a security risk, runs the risk of being seen as political favoritism, and may grant those interest groups outsized influence in decision making with time, there are significant advantages to actively addressing the root causes of the problem.
(+5 Political Support)
-[ ] Leave It Alone
With Intelligence not really seeing this as a major problem, and no evidence of comprehensive leakage to the Brotherhood of Nod, allowing people to relax and discuss work with friends and relatives, and other forms of natural information leakage is simply common sense. Fighting it is not generally worthwhile in the long run, and the risks of influence are too high to make it more official.
A/N: Four hour moratorium for discussion. Will try to have the battles finished by the time the vote is complete.
A/N 2: Have some WORDZ!
Losing Jinnai hurts quite a bit. Also we are going to need to do some major dev and deployment projects to try and help counter the terorism angle they are working. And refugees have increased to 10 housing per turn so more confident to push my proto plan of trying to get 2 phases of apartments with a chance at a third. Flip side is this means population is leaving NOD reducing their manpower
It will be interesting to see what new actions unlock next turn.
Also we still have the war post sounds like Gideon made a move.
edit- might put 2 dice onto freeze plants to make sure that finishes next turn
edit 2- wait is Tali Jackson dead or just injured?
As for Mastodon, I scared of looking at a price per unit. It only need an ability to plant a target for ion cannon and we can called it the end game unit, sadly, I'm sure Nod will brought something out as it's counter part.
Certainly feels bad when the overall results were positive. Like ashes. I suppose that makes it feel more real, but getting real Doomer vibes from just reading. Not sure if that is just me though.
Shame about the Scrin tech just being a better solar panel basically. And the caloric processor is a dead tech unless we dump more research into to make it less of morale tank. I guess we can't push forward anymore or Nukes fly. That makes certain plans iffy.
There is more but this turn was hard too read without getting despondent.
