So in your own words people finding out about Karachi years before we make the attempt is no problem? You do realize that means that the Indian Warlords are going to mine and build up the shit out of that location then. What do you think that is going to do to the forces we send to take that spot?
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
So in your own words people finding out about Karachi years before we make the attempt is no problem? You do realize that means that the Indian Warlords are going to mine and build up the shit out of that location then. What do you think that is going to do to the forces we send to take that spot?
Sorry, I don't understand?
I'm not denying that the Treasury made mistakes, I barely understand the mechanics, and I don't even remember the caffeine plant. But the whole idea of building food storage during a war/refugee crisis is completely unreasonable. We need food in the supermarkets, rather than food stored safely away in a bunker.
Parliament/the voters seems to want a Giant Food Stockpile to guard us against any future crisis. However, we are dealing with a present crisis, and putting food away for later makes no sense when you are being flooded by refugees. As far as I can tell, there is no sound justification for why we have to frantically work to build a food stockpile now, rather than waiting until the situation stabilizes and we can build it up bit by bit.
And yet you have such strong opinions, curious.
You're misusing the phrase. "Fighting the past war" is only unwise when it involves not learning from the mistakes made during that war, and taking into account the changes made during and since that war.
Currently, we have NOD guerillas and terrorists attacking civilian targets - why do you seem to think they are unlikely to attack our food production?
I recognize that the desires of the people with regards to the food stockpile are not entirely rational, and they're probably demanding more than we need. However, accommodating non-optimal demands is part of working in a democracy. And maintaining public morale is something that is wise, because it means they are willing to put up with other unpopular things that might need to be done.
Especially since we are quite capable of both meeting the current surge in food demand, and increasing the stockpile. It just requires us to actually do more than the minimum in terms of Agriculture spending.
That's the exact opposite of what I said.
I was criticizing the characterization of making those backchannels official, by saying it was trying to solve a problem by decree.
I kinda doubt that regarding the Treasury. I mean, dealing with terrorist attacks and assassinations, that's the military's job. Or InOps. We just fund military development and deployment. The war is tapering off, so units can get cycled off the frontlines and can participate in other things. And our military project funding resulted in the rather impressive results handed out by the military over the last year.
- Location
- USA
Yet there is. Our bosses say we need one. Therefore you're not being helpful quibbling the whys and how much because it doesn't matter what the Treasury thinks when our bosses say get it done. Our job is to get it done. Just like the increasing stockpiles we'll have next 4YP given the options we had during our recent renegotiation.
And you constantly quote out of context, strawman, use personal attacks, or use red herrings. Your rather known for that dude. Slinging mud like this does you no favors when trying to convince people on a topic. Try to include an actual argument for or against the topic in question rather then attack the person making it. Otherwise it just looks petty. Like you have nothing else to use in the debate and have to resort to those tactics.
Last edited:
If you actually have a sound justification for why we need a Giant Food Stockpile urgently, please provide it.
It does not require a genius to recognize that "put more food on shelves" and "store more food for a future emergency" are not mutually compatible goals. Short of spending a much larger share of resources on food- and resources are rather scarce during a war- we had to make a choice. We chose food on shelves, not food in bunker.
One-sentence sniping contributes nothing and accomplishes nothing. If you cannot reply with substance, it is better not to reply at all.
Because our food production is diversified and widely distributed?
Nod guerillas and terrorists can still attack it, of course, but Nod guerillas and terrorists can attack any number of things. The solution to that threat is to increase our food production, which will also help us with the refugees flooding into our territory. Putting canned food into a bunker to prepare for a possible future catastrophe does nothing to solve our current problems beyond helping our citizenry deal with their past trauma. Which is obviously useful, but it doesn't put food on shelves.
We will accommodate their non-optimal demands, because that's how democracy works. That does not make it better to have politicians shout at us for failing to make Useless Number Go Up quickly enough for their liking, especially since we were busy doing useful things with those resources.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I expected a greater degree of public support during the final stages of a global war. An understanding that even if everyone get enough calories, food variety would diminish and we would come to expect some degree of scarcity. The attitude of some members of Parliament is particularly frustrating because we were- and are- involved in a global war, and that war meant that we had larger concerns than creating a suitably gigantic food stockpile for some future crisis.
I wouldn't be nearly this annoyed if Parliament wanted us to lay aside food going forward, but we've just had eight special updates reminding us that this is not business as usual.
True. The pressure may be great, but it's below our level of abstraction. It does make me wonder, though; given Nod's apparent willingness to break out nuclear sunshine and their refusal to accept peace, how will we deal with conflict going forward?
Our bosses say "Do something useless", so we'll do something useless. The "why" is collective trauma, and the "how" is "By doing fewer useful things". It's simple enough, but the Unelected Bureaucrats reserve the right to feel annoyed when the Elected Leaders snipe at them for not doing the Useless Thing fast enough during a major war.
Truly, the work of a public servant is frequently made more difficult by the public you are sworn to serve.
BoSPaladin
The Paladin
It's a bit 'fence sitting' of me.
But... both sides have a point. Yeah it sucks to have fingers wagged at us for not doing x thing *now* when we have things y and z we just did plus things d e f and g still to do as well.
And we are planning on doing x soonish. Indeed theoretically it 'should' have finished on one dice.
But, on the flip side parliament represent the wishes of the public.
Stored food is the axe on the wall for emergencies. And yes, there's no emergency right now. But, if a fire breaks out we'll really want that metaphorical axe. And.... yeah, we kind of have a smaller axe with splinters in it that should help. But parliament want a better axe.
So yeah. I think parliament has concerns that in their mind are reasonable. While on the flip side the treasury (us) have our own concerns and what we see as reasonable explanation as to why x isn't done yet.
It's just how it goes. I think we're doing okay. But yeah, there are some concerns which we should address.
But... both sides have a point. Yeah it sucks to have fingers wagged at us for not doing x thing *now* when we have things y and z we just did plus things d e f and g still to do as well.
And we are planning on doing x soonish. Indeed theoretically it 'should' have finished on one dice.
But, on the flip side parliament represent the wishes of the public.
Stored food is the axe on the wall for emergencies. And yes, there's no emergency right now. But, if a fire breaks out we'll really want that metaphorical axe. And.... yeah, we kind of have a smaller axe with splinters in it that should help. But parliament want a better axe.
So yeah. I think parliament has concerns that in their mind are reasonable. While on the flip side the treasury (us) have our own concerns and what we see as reasonable explanation as to why x isn't done yet.
It's just how it goes. I think we're doing okay. But yeah, there are some concerns which we should address.
- Location
- USA
I'm going to say it again- the issue is one of perspective, the politicians only really have the view point of the end plan goal and do not have the understanding of the intermediate steps which the treasury does (nor should they, not their job). So they see the plan goal not moving and get understandably concerned, while we see prep steps being laid but that is not visible to them. Hence why I am pushing to do the extra large stockpile this coming quarter because that is something visible to their scope, while we still pump out more food production and the other steps needed.
Well there's the rub isn't it friend, you've just told me you don't understand the mechanics of the game so I feel somewhat like a potter with no clay. I describe an order of operations error where we built Kudzu before stockpiles (something which is definitely more pertinent to a war scenario and would certainly have nipped this whole political bust up in the bud) and you tell me you have no idea what I'm talking about.
We're not in the final stages of the global war. We're in the final stages of this flare-up of the global war, which has been going on for over 60 years. Which is still ongoing, even if both sides are taking a step back to rest, rearm, and reassess our positions.
And, notably, which is arguably the lesser of the two conflicts GDI is taking part of. The other being the war against Tiberium, which is currently going okayish, but we are waiting for the shoe closet of mutation to finish dropping.
Well, you could make a giant effortpost like @Simon_Jester usually does, explaining your position. Or you could try to provide a simplified version that still made sense. Instead, you chose to drop a one-sentence post sniping at my position without elaborating on your own.
We may have committed an order of operations error, but that wasn't what I was discussing. I was talking about why we would want food stored away for a future crisis rather than food on the shelves for our present crisis. Perhaps you could provide a better explanation of why Parliament would want a Giant Food Stockpile beyond widespread societal trauma?
In that context, isn't it easier to argue for a certain degree of scarcity? The war has flared up, and we so we had to put an enormous investment into the military. People have less food variety because Nod is on the offensive, and when Nod goes on the offensive civilians have to tighten their belts until things quiet down.
I agree about the war against Tiberium, but that is an even stronger argument for accepting wartime sacrifices. We have to fight Nod, we have to fight Tiberium, and we have to feed millions of refugees. The Giant Food Stockpile is a task that can wait until the war has cooled down.
Vote closed
- Location
- USA
You keep using the word "useless" a lot when it's explicitly not such. Is it perhaps... sub optimal? Sure, I'll grant that. Sub optimal isn't "useless" though. We still get a big pile of food if we need it and plenty of agriculture supporting it if we need more food.
There's currently not a crisis. That's why. Things are difficult but by every measure possible we won the war with, at best, minor damage to significant civilian targets. We won, big time. We lost 0 ground. We had no civilian megadeath like we did barely a decade ago. This global war? MASSIVE VICTORY. We're "complaining" about winning so hard we have more population to deal with, more land to reclaim and more resources than ever. In return we've had to rebuild a couple factory complexes. GDI has so much collective trauma that barely registers. 60 years of war, calamity and destruction does that to people.
That's why parliament doesn't feel like holding back. If we'd had a quarter of the damage the last big flare up caused to our civilian economy we'd be running around like we were on fire. They'd shut up about stockpiles and be ok if we were behind then. That didn't happen, GDI flattened most of the warlords we had conflict with, except the "Literal RTS munchkin power" warlord and the one who's based on sea power and we then lost to because we did fuck up.
So they feel fine reminding us of promises we made because for the treasury there was not a major enough disruption to back down on plan goals.
And if you tell Parliament that there will be a different Secretary of the Treasury by next Reallocation.
Parliament has been clear; we need to create bigger food stockpiles. Notably, we also need to increase food production capacity, mostly to cover the creation of the food stockpiles unless the refugees eat tons of Food indicator.
Therefore, we really should be using the 16 dice we have left in the plan to find enough food for 18 points of Food Stockpile, which means a total of 36 points of Food Stockpile unless we finish up a high efficiency form of Food to Stockpile conversion. Better get to it, I suppose.
BoSPaladin
The Paladin
That there's the rub. Parliament wants stockpiles of food while also asking for us to feed our current people to a sufficient calorific requirement. I.e not enacting rationing. While we are also bringing in new people and feeding them. And parliament wants the food to not taste like cardboard. And they want chicken and beef back on the menu. And they...
You get the point.
It seems two faced of politicians to want to demand meaningful food stockpiles while also demanding we not go back to rationing. And then also throwing a hissy fit at us taking one of the cheapest 'food' options possible.
Like, yeah. I agree. They're asking a lot.
On the flip side. It comes from a good place. They want to be able to feed everyone now and feed them well. While also wanting to be sure people will be fed in future. Just in case.
And yeah, as treasury it is our job to see to all that.
Reward for good work. More work.
Honestly, when it comes to the canned sunshine, look at the context of use. We use ion cannon against naval units, Bintang uses canned sunshine against our naval units same engagement. Outside of that... the Shah of the Atom used nukes to break an encirclement of Nod forces in the Middle East in 2055ish? Prior to that? Maybe Kane popping Philadelphia in 2047. Nod, for all its faults, seems disinclined to use nukes or tiberium shard weapons where there's sufficient civilians adjacent to the target that could get hit. Stahl's heavy industry attack? Cluster munitions, not shard munitions, IIRC. Tokyo? Conventional warheads. Indianapolis Junction? IIRC, the area was sparsely populated, so minimal civilian collateral. Chicago? Well, I'm not really sure how many residents are in the area nowadays that aren't directly tied to the Planned City or MARV hub operations. And it didn't matter in the end because we overran the ground units before they could launch and the air units failed to make it through to the drop point.
How do we deal with conflict going forward? Near future, we stop pushing into hard pressed major warlord heartlands. That's what caused the safeties to come off tactical device use. Also, stop trying to slap Bintang's ships with an ion cannon so she doesn't slap back at our ships with nukes. Longer term, SADN would help prevent issues outside the tactical/theater level. Maybe some form of disco ball hover SPAA (or Mastodon variant with all weapons and shields removed to increase power to the disco ball system for hopefully longer engagement distance) to serve as an anti-missile defense vs nukes at the tactical/theater level. Utilize back channels to sway Nod warlords to go neutral (see Caravanserai, though technically I don't think they were actually Nod, just largely Nod allied due to supplies, etc; also somewhat Nod China) so we can focus on actual enemies and preventing Tiberium from exploding the planet with all of humanity still on it. Karachi shouldn't put pressure on India or Shah's heartlands, so that should be fairly safe to hit without worrying about shard bombs or nukes. We just have to worry about bioengineered horrors instead.
You have had these arguments made in the last few pages, the nightmare scenario has been discussed to what end would we profit by having me needlessly inflate my word count with bluster?
You have discussed how we be would be required to cut other things and though the description of the order of operations I have told you what could have been cut and moved. That is the relevance. You seem to simply not believe there could ever be a food crisis when it is described to you so why would I continue to attack a hopeless angle?
I proposed a nightmare scenario, you proposed another nightmare scenario and then in your list or crazy solutions we aught not to waste time doing you include
which is actually very much in the cards. I cannot move you because you simply do not believe in disasters it seems. What better explanation for why parliament wants a big stockpile? They lived through a disaster so described and are in positions of high awareness to see how we could enter an era of disaster again.
Perhaps "sub optimal" would be better, but it feels like the food is pretty useless right now, and we could build it up gradually over the course of a few years without much danger. And while having the food in case of an emergency isn't the worst idea, there are a lot of people who need food right now, and there are a great many ways that we could expand our food production so that we have more food in the future. I'm not totally opposed to putting food away for a future crisis, but the degree of urgency we've assigned to the task is actively harmful to our other goals.
Good point about us crushing the Regency War! I was annoyed because I thought Parliament should be more grateful, but it seems their conclusion is that the war went great and we should finish all the Plan Goals ASAP. While I appreciate the vote of confidence, I feel it is more than a little misplaced.
It's not the end of the world. We'll stack a bunch of food in bunkers, which will provide both public support and some degree of actual security, and we won't be able to do other things that probably need doing more urgently. However frustrating it is to see our Elected Overlords making unreasonable demands, that is something that Elected Overlords do.
Parliament wants bigger food stockpiles ASAP and they want more and better food ASAP and they want improved space stations ASAP...
At some point, we have to prioritize and decide what actually has to be done As Soon As Possible versus what can be done over a couple of quarters. Politics prevents us from just saying this, but Parliament has not been clear. They give us more goals than we have resources, and then they become annoyed when we don't accomplish all of the goals on schedule.
Yes, this.
Okay, this is more substantial.
The problem with disaster planning is that you don't know what disaster you're planning for. Maybe there will be a food crisis, and you need a Giant Food Stockpile. Or maybe there will be a nuclear launch, and you'll desperately wish that you built a SADN? Or maybe Tiberium will mutate again, and you will regret not having thrown everything into space programs.
A massive, urgent investment in any future disaster means that you're less prepared for all of the other disasters. Or the problems you have right now. If we prioritize food stockpiles, it means that we aren't prioritizing SADN or space. If we prioritize SADN, it means we aren't prioritizing food stockpiles or space. We have multiple known problems, along with multiple possible threats, and Parliament screaming at us over failing to safeguard against one future threat just isn't helpful.
There isn't some kind of logical analysis here. Parliament/the voters haven't determined that famine is the most likely threat. It's just the enemy that they're most familiar with, and so their past trauma makes them very focused on making sure that it doesn't happen again.
Maybe we could have cut Kudzu and replaced it with food stockpiles. We've certainly made technical errors in the past. But the underlying problem here is that Parliament/the voters are making trauma-inspired choices, then becoming upset when we fail to adequately address their trauma. We do not have unlimited resources, and soothing the fears of GDI's people is not a substitute for dealing with the very real and immediate problems of the present day.
And thus the mechanics problem rears it's ugly head again as you list three things in three categories that are in no way mutually exclusive. You keep saying this, that it's not our fault because we need to prioritise but your points are being undermined because for so many of your examples it's simply untrue.
Last edited:
Oledoms
Friesmancer
This is why I am pushing to divert all Free Dice to Agriculture for the next turn. We can at least show Parliament that we are willing to acknowledge their request for this turn.
Let us complete The Fertilizer on LCI, make 5 to 6 Dice on Mechanization for +20 Food and 2 Dice on the Plants. No more Nat 1 or single digit progress on the Freezing Plant to ensure efficient storage.
Let us complete The Fertilizer on LCI, make 5 to 6 Dice on Mechanization for +20 Food and 2 Dice on the Plants. No more Nat 1 or single digit progress on the Freezing Plant to ensure efficient storage.
If you only count dice, then sure, they're not. But dice isn't the only thing expended to do projects. The Resource budget per turn is global, not per category. That's the spot where you start to run into funding issues and have to prioritize.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Mechanically, we have to build the Stockpiles. It is not something we have a choice about. It is a Plan Goal, something we promised to the Congress (and by extension, GDI's citizens) at the beginning of this 4-Year Plan. If we deliberately choose not to fulfill a Plan Goal, we will be hit with penalties up to and including having Seo, our player character, fired.
Not building the stockpiles is not an option. Neither is going back in time and building the Stockpiles earlier. Your entire argument is completely pointless.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
There'd be a lot less complaining if steak and bacon was back on the menu.