Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Simon_Jester · Jun 11, 2022

Hazard said:
We can make those Plan goals too, you know?

Sure, they're not as big a deal as some, but Starbound is bound to have a wide variety of space goals we can use to steer the Plan negotiations.

We don't get to select what Starbound will accept as space goals. Things like the Conestoga yards may not even be on there, and even if they are, it's gonna be hard to justify a 30 R/die project for a while. I'd like to do the research project to design the ship class in 2061Q4 if we can spare a die for it.

Derpmind said:
@Simon_Jester Unless I'm mistaken, did you delete your post, then re-post it with an entire second post's worth of stuff? There's no reason to do something like that. Double-posting is allowed on SV as long as you're making a significant post and/or not spamming. Given how the second part of your post is over 2,000 words long, (compared to the first part's 900+,) there wasn't any need to delete the old post, and it can actually be confusing for people who saw the original post and may assume your new one was the same as the old one, and so skip over the additions you made.

I normally try to avoid doubleposts, and there's no way to go back and retroactively fix it now. Usually when I do that, it's because there's a good reason, so even if it was a mistake in this case, I don't know what to tell you.

Void Stalker said:
Because from the perspective of the politicans they really see the end goal shifting and ELFS does that so this should head off potential trouble

I figure building a bunch of storage facilities (as my plan does) will also help, while not taxing our actual Food surplus so heavily.

Like, under my plan, Seo can point to big-ass buildings that we are busily filling with canned beans and say "that is what we are doing." It's not necessarily going to shut up all the critics, but it'll help, and it ensures that we stay Food-neutral or Food-positive for the turn.

Also, I want to do ELFS with an Erewhon die, and Erewhon is busy helping out with the economic census this turn. Next turn I'll be doing security reviews in Bureaucracy and have Erewhon pitch on the ELFS project.

My goal is to get mil plan goals done by Q3, by min die ASAT if it does not finish I can drop 1 die Q2 and maybe 1 Q3 so we are not wasting die and letting us move free dice to other categories if need be. As it is with 4 dice OSRCT should finish the current phase Q1 with overflow letting us have a good chance at 3-4 dice to finish it Q2 and if not drop 1 die Q3. That lets us be more effecient with our use of free dice and with the plan goals focus I have can allow us to get other stuff such as zone armor done.

Finishing the last frigate yard is not going to be as much help as getting the escort carrier wave going, we need escort carriers to counter raiding by providing basing for ASW aircraft, that provides a bigger coverage area compared to frigates. And the carriers are a plan goal the frigate yard is not. And there is enough potential dice needed to hit plan goals that putting them off is a bad idea.

If we don't count the frigate yards as a Plan goal (even though they are obviously needed), then our dice needs for military Plan goals are, conservatively:

(3) Complete ASAT Phase 4
(9) Complete OSRCT Phase 4
(1) Railgun Munitions Development
(3) Complete at least one more phase of URLS production
(4) Deploy Mastodon (Based off precedents for Havocs, Titans, etc.)
(7) Complete New York and Dublin Light Carrier Yards
(1) Complete Nagoya Light Carrier Yard

That's a total of 28 Military dice. Again, I'm being conservative- trying to make sure everything will have a significantly greater than 50% chance of completion.

Then we have "strongly advisable this year" projects that I consider quasi-mandatory.

(1) Skywatch Telescopes
(4) Seattle Frigate Yard

In fairness to you, there's an argument for switching the Seattle frigate yard and one of the light carrier yards, since it's not a massive public humiliation or breach of promises if some fuckery involving Seattle drags out construction into 2062Q1.

HOWEVER.

I'm going to push back hard on the idea that the escort carriers will impact the naval situation more meaningfully than the frigates. The escort carriers take much longer to actually hit the water and do anything, and the frigates, while not as capable of proactive actions, are capable of providing close escort for convoys and (importantly) highly capable anti-missile escort for the carriers we have. This is especially important with the conversion carriers, which are very vulnerable to antiship missiles of any kind. I think both options have significant impact and there is a very good reason why the frigates are listed as a "defensive Navy" option. I do not think the naval situation will improve until, as a minimum condition, the first wave of frigates out of each frigate yard have already hit the water. Given the time it takes the light carriers to build, even if we snapped our fingers and completed every single yard of both types right now, three waves of frigates would be in the water (180 ships) before the second round of light carriers (something like 18 more ships on top of the 18 in the first wave, as I recall) could be completed.

The frigates are going to be very impactful, and they will impact the situation quickly once set up, which makes delays all the more problematic because it means the existing crisis will drag out longer.

At the same time, the light carriers are not inconsequential, we did promise, and narrowing down the total number of carrier yards we need to build is far from a bad thing.

I would highly suggest focusing on plan goals otherwise you are opening us to either overkill to finish in Q3 or have to try and finish in Q4 with a chance to miss.

I very much think we can pull off the frigate yards alongside everything else, especially if we're willing to continue spending Free dice on Military heavily, as you clearly are since you keep suggesting thirteen-die plans and whatnot.

Phht said:
I'm gonna need a cite on this to refresh my memory. After all, if they had that ability, then wouldn't they have had the ability to, I dunno, make a Havoc not fire its weapons when the trigger is pulled? That was, after all, the entire reason the Varyvag raid failed. Havoc pilot heard his hatch opening and just held down the triggers in the hopes the noise would alert everyone else, which it did. Maybe link to the Zone Armor suit control Deltas showed after OSRCT showed up at that one research center raid? Because if they have that level of control, particularly in combat, and I somehow missed seeing it or forgot, I'd really like to know.

In fairness, you're right. They can disrupt the function of mechanized equipment, but cannot just casually lock down every such piece of equipment in range. On the other hand, the fact that that Delta was even trying to gain access to that Havoc suit, and nearly succeeded in doing so, suggests that this is a relevant concern.

Remember, the Remembrancers were having trouble fighting drop pod Zone Troopers during exfiltration. That is, at a time when their presence in the area was already known, when their movements could be tracked by anyone in range to see them with infrared sensors, and so when they were taking fire from long range (probably outranging their own control abilities) and thus in exceptional danger.

Their ability to shut down a mech suit from closer range would be a separate issue.

With that said, the Remembrancers (and Nod's many many many other Shadow teams, Confessors, and other infiltrators and elite assault units) would not use hallucinogen gases if those gases did not work. This is a weapon we have seen deployed over and over against us whenever we try to defend a high-value target, which should make it obvious that we have reason to want that weapon neutralized.

The problem with this is... what are we not spending dice on in Q2 to fund immediate roll out of any deployment project that results? Frigates? Plan Goals?

If the rollout of hallucinogen countermeasures turns out to be an excessively and unacceptably dice-hungry project, we will simply not do it until later. We have, on net, lost nothing, because we would have had to do the development anyway.

Personally, I suspect it will be either a very low-dice project, or potentially a zero-dice non-project, because the "countermeasures" are quite likely to be relatively minor modifications to existing equipment, or "have the same agencies responsible for existing ongoing pharmaceutical production" start to make and distribute one more pharmaceutical to the troops, along with the many many others they already provide."

Out of respect for @Void Stalker , and mindful of the fact that so far we have put considerably more effort into frigate yards than light carrier yards, I am flipping the 'build order' of the Seattle and Dublin yards in my own mind.

I say 'Dublin' because I'm a bit concerned about Gideon going apeshit and nuking the Eastern Seaboard, so I'm trying to distribute military production facilities I don't want disrupted away from BZ-2 for a while insofar as possible. Obviously we can't make every important capability in BZ-2 redundant (if nothing else, there is North Boston), but when it comes down to practically a coin toss which yard we build, I know which one I favor.

Given that Dublin is a cheaper yard than Seattle and has a reasonable chance of completion with only three dice, this also frees up a fourth OSRCT die, which is much appreciated on my end, and simplifies Energy calculations... likewise.

Budget:
1020/1020 R
7/7 Free Dice

16 Initial Energy

ENERGY WORST IMAGINABLE CASE (Nagoya and Dublin and Anadyr (!) but no fusion phase, sub-1% chance)
+16 -1 (fertiizers) -2 (Anadyr) -2 (drones) -1 (freeze drying) -1 (mechanization) -5 (Nagoya) -5 (Dublin) = -1

ENERGY WORST PLAUSIBLE CASE (Nagoya and Dublin but no fusion phase, sub-10% chance)
+16 -1 (fertiizers) -2 (Anadyr) -2 (drones) -1 (freeze drying) -1 (mechanization) -5 (Nagoya) -5 (Dublin) = +1

ENERGY MEDIUM CASE (fusion phase and Nagoya OR Dublin, 25-30% chance)
+16 +16 (fusion) -1 (fertiizers) -2 (drones) -1 (freeze drying) -1 (mechanization) -5 (Nagoya/Dublin) = +22

[] Draft Attempting To Supply The Canned Beans
Infrastructure (+34) 6/6 Dice 80 R
-[] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 6) 220/300 (2 Dice, 40 R) (Phase 6, median 104/300 on Phase 7)
-[] Blue Zone Apartment Complexes (Phase 3+4+5) 72/160 (4 Dice, 40 R) (Phase 3, 97% chance of Phase 4, 18% chance of Phase 5)
Heavy Industry (+29) 5/5 Dice + 1 Free Die 180 R
-[] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant (Phase 8) 67/300 (3 Dice, 60 R) (65% chance)
-[] Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr 85/320 (2 Dice, 100 R) (8% chance)
-[] One Die on Laser Project (???, 20 R just in case; allocate elsewhere if this proves totally unnecessary)
Light and Chemical Industry (+24) 5/5 Dice 55 R
-[] Chemical Fertilizer Plants (Phase 2) 276/300 (1 Die, 15 R) (100% chance)
-[] Civilian Drone Factories 104/380 (4 Dice, 40 R) (74% chance)
Agriculture (+24) 4/4 Dice + 2 Free Dice 80 R
-[] Freeze Dried Food Plants 151/200 (1 Die, 20 R) (91% chance)
-[] Agriculture Mechanization Projects (Phase 1) 0/150 (2 Dice, 30 R) (63% chance)
-[] Strategic Food Stockpile Construction (Phase 2+3) 38/150 (3 Dice, 30 R) (99% chance of Phase 2, 18% chance of Phase 3)
Tiberium (+39) 7/7 Dice + 1 Free Die 240 R
-[] Harvesting Tendril Deployment (Phase 1) (New) 0/600 (8 Dice, 240 R) (95% chance)
Orbital (+26) 6/6 Dice 120 R
-[] GDSS Enterprise (Phase 5) 102/1535 (3 Dice, 60 R) (3/17.5 median)
-[] Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1+2) 45/305 (2 Dice, 40 R) (96% chance of Phase 1, 12% chance of Phase 2)
-[] Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2) 276/320 (1 Die, 20 R) (98% chance)
Services (+27) X/5 Dice 70 R
-[] 70 R WORTH OF SERVICES STUFF (Mad science gacha, hallucinogens, sports, ???)
Military (+26) 8/8 Dice + 3 Free Dice 195 R
-[] Skywatch Telescope System 64/95 (1 Die, 10 R) (100% chance)
-[] Railgun Munitions Development 38/60 (1 Die, 10 R) (100% chance)
-[] Hallucinogen Countermeasures Development 0/40 (1 Die, 15 R) (100% chance)
-[] Orbital Strike Regimental Combat Team Stations (Phase 3) 5/295 (4 Dice, 80 R) (81% chance, 4/8.5 dice towards Plan target)
-[] Escort Carrier Shipyards (Nagoya) 171/240 (1 Die, 20 R) (73% chance)
-[] Escort Carrier Shipyards (Dublin) 0/240 (3 Dice, 60 R) (54% chance)
Bureaucracy 4/4 + EREWHON!!!
-[] Conduct Economic Census DC 100/150/200/250 (4+E Dice) (96.1% chance of DC 250, 99.6% chance of DC 200)

Lightwhispers · Jun 11, 2022

Rakuhn said:
Security checks are balanced around each department needing to be checked once per plan (aka, once per sixteen turns).

I'm generally in favor of checking departments more often than that, both to hedge against Nod rolling abnormally well and to give ourselves wriggle room in case we don't have dice available.

Our current problems in agriculture are probably due to a lack of focus in the department, not wreckers. It's only been 8 turns since the last sweep.

Regarding the bolded sentence, that's only partially true. NOD gets a vote too, and apparently other people are making infiltration rolls than just NOD. Ithillid said that he originally thought we'd be doing security checks once a plan or so, but that's not to say that we might need to do them more often, especially if events push NOD towards infiltration and against open warfare.

HousePet · Jun 11, 2022

Simon_Jester said:
I'm not a fan of doing that. The big problem is that in Orbital, the plan target (aside from mines, which are in the bag) our entire goal is "fill this progress bar on this one project." It's probable that we can do that without Free dice expenditure, but not certain, and I'd like to get enough of a buffer of progress in the bar that we can either finish in 2061Q3, or at least get so close that the outcome is effectively predetermined.

Also, it would be really nice if we could afford to do something, anything in Orbital that isn't just finishing Enterprise Phase 5 and then immediately transitioning to whatever next Plan's targets are. There's stuff like the Conestoga design that I'd really like to do. Or the Enterprise bays. Making some progress on that would be nice.

Hmm.

Those extra projects are certainly nice to chase. But we do have free dice in three more turns that we can use for them.

Derpmind said:
@Simon_Jester Unless I'm mistaken, did you delete your post, then re-post it with an entire second post's worth of stuff? There's no reason to do something like that. Double-posting is allowed on SV as long as you're making a significant post and/or not spamming. Given how the second part of your post is over 2,000 words long, (compared to the first part's 900+,) there wasn't any need to delete the old post, and it can actually be confusing for people who saw the original post and may assume your new one was the same as the old one, and so skip over the additions you made.

I was watching that happen, it was confusing, but I can't rule it out as a forum glitch.
@Simon_Jester It looked like you were editing a post to include more quote-responses in it. Please only do that if your original post is small, and your extra part is also small. It is confusing if someone checks the thread while you are doing that.

doruma1920 · Jun 11, 2022

Simon_Jester said:
[] Draft Attempting To Supply The Canned Beans

I like this plan. The only thing I would change is swapping a die from BZ Apartments to Shuttles, and that only if there wasn't any need for the 20 R in Services. The other potential change I might go for prefer depends on where CRP ends up and how much it costs.

Simon_Jester · Jun 11, 2022

Lightwhispers said:
Regarding the bolded sentence, that's only partially true. NOD gets a vote too, and apparently other people are making infiltration rolls than just NOD. Ithillid said that he originally thought we'd be doing security checks once a plan or so, but that's not to say that we might need to do them more often, especially if events push NOD towards infiltration and against open warfare.

Which... they have, given how badly open warfare just turned out for them, and that Kane is pretty clearly arming Reynaldo with The Good Stuff (TM) in the form of Nod's tame buzzer swarms in response to Reynaldo's plea for support. And those buzzers are far more effective as a tool of infiltration and sabotage than for open warfare.

With that said, now that we have four Bureaucracy dice, it's not much of a burden for us to do security sweeps aggressively. There are eight departments, we can potentially sweep two at a time... We could easily sustain an average pace of one sweep per department per two years and still occasionally be able to do something else with Bureaucracy a few times per two years.

(four turns of sweeping other departments, one turn of sweeping itself, three turns of Everything Else)

HousePet said:
Those extra projects are certainly nice to chase. But we do have free dice in three more turns that we can use for them.

I'm not sure what you mean by this- my main point is that I would like to get Enterprise close enough to "done" in 2061Q2 and Q3 that in 'Q4 we have at least one or two actual Orbital dice that can be spared for other projects, so that we can finally do the Conestoga design.

At the moment, we expect Enterprise to take about 17.5 dice to complete. My current plan allocates it three in 2061Q1. If we spend no further Free dice on the project in Q2 and Q3, that leaves us needing about 2.5 more dice.

If the fifteen dice we roll up to that point go well, we might be very confident in allocating, say, three dice on Enterprise Phase 5 and completing the project. If they go poorly, we might feel the need to allocate all six Orbital dice in 2061Q4, and that's the outcome I'm trying to avoid by investing a few Free dice in advance.

I was watching that happen, it was confusing, but I can't rule it out as a forum glitch.
@Simon_Jester It looked like you were editing a post to include more quote-responses in it. Please only do that if your original post is small, and your extra part is also small. It is confusing if someone checks the thread while you are doing that.

I apologize for the confusion, I usually wouldn't do it in that situation, it was an unusual instance on many levels and I'd appreciate it if we could let the matter drop, if that would be all right?

doruma1920 said:
I like this plan. The only thing I would change is swapping a die from BZ Apartments to Shuttles, and that only if there wasn't any need for the 20 R in Services. The other potential change I might go for prefer depends on where CRP ends up and how much it costs.

Even if CRP is cheap and attractive to build, I'd like to save it for later in the year. Q3, probably, since I'll want the Infrastructure dice free in Q2 to work on Chicago. I want us to do 1-2 turns of conventional "store a bunch of food" actions before doing any CRP, as a way of reassuring the legislature that we really are trying to provide satisfactory, palatable food in the storehouses, not just inedible blech that is arguably marginally preferable to death by starvation.

It'll look better if we've already piled fifty billion cans of beans and umpty million metric tons of dried rice into the storehouses before we start building "calorie reclamators." Because that addresses the legitimate complaint legislators might have that we are attempting to comply with their directive in a manner they would never have wanted. We can say no, we're doing what they wanted, and in any vaguely normal situation where the storehouses are needed, the storehouses will be there. And the calorie reclamators are just a last last line of defense against famine, for scenarios where the situation is already fucked up beyond all recognition.

My Q2 lineup is probably going to be Chicago-centric.

For instance, Derpmind figures that one Heavy Industry die and five Infrastructure dice give us a 34% chance of clearing the phase; six Infrastructure dice gives us a 76% chance. Since we're forced to spend a second Heavy Industry die in Q3 if we don't finish, the option of spending all six Q2 Infrastructure dice on Chicago sounds pretty attractive, and maybe even piling in a seventh with Free dice for a 96% chance of completion.

On the other hand, now that you mention it, not spending on Shuttles in either Q1 or Q2 is pushing it- I doubt we'd be in any danger of losing Progress on the action, but it leaves things undone for longer than I would like.

And, hm. Doing things as a rush-build is not necessarily great, so maybe it'd be best to grit our teeth and accept a more 'even' split of something like one Heavy Industry die and three Infrastructure dice on Chicago in each of Q2 and Q3... in which case there's more wiggle room to do other things.

In any case, my Q1 plans are dominated by a desire to finish the fortress towns... but my gut instinct is that were not going to see massive Nod counterattacks in Q1 anyway, with their conventional forces still somewhat on the back foot and GDI digging in, and that even if we lose a few bits of territory, it's most likely to be ones the Nod warlords were really really unhappy about losing and willing to risk a lot to get back. Which might actually be advantageous in a big-picture way.

Lemme see if I can push things around, put one dice on fortresses and one on shuttles instead of two on fortresses. I'm willing to slow-walk the fortresses; I'm pretty sure we can hold defensible frontiers right around where Steel Vanguard stopped in 'Q4. And falling back from those frontiers by a few dozen kilometers here and there might not even be so bad, given that our "offensive stop line" was right just about exactly on the line where Nod would have started slinging tac-nukes around to stop our offensives.

Okay. By turning two OSRCT dice into URLS dice (cheaper, also a Plan target, may make the Air Force happy since they're now using about twice as many air-to-air missiles), I save 10 R that can be used to 'promote' a fortress town die into a shuttle service die, without compromising the 70 R Services budget.

Note that the Services budget may turn out to be a bit more expected if the industrial rollout of crystal lasers turns out not to cost 20 R/die. I'm honestly expecting it to cost less, but wanted to be conservative.

Budget:
1020/1020 R
7/7 Free Dice

16 Initial Energy

ENERGY WORST IMAGINABLE CASE (Nagoya and Dublin and URLS (!) and Anadyr (I!) but no fusion phase, sub-0.25% chance)
+16 -1 (fertiizers) -2 (Anadyr) -2 (drones) -1 (freeze drying) -1 (mechanization) -2 (URLS) -5 (Nagoya) -5 (Dublin) = -3

ENERGY WORST LIKELY-ISH CASE (Nagoya and Dublin but no fusion phase, sub-10% chance)
+16 -1 (fertiizers) -2 (Anadyr) -2 (drones) -1 (freeze drying) -1 (mechanization) -5 (Nagoya) -5 (Dublin) = +1

ENERGY MEDIUM CASE (fusion phase and Nagoya OR Dublin, 25-30% chance)
+16 +16 (fusion) -1 (fertiizers) -2 (drones) -1 (freeze drying) -1 (mechanization) -5 (Nagoya/Dublin) = +22

[] Draft Attempting To Supply The Canned Beans, Mk III
Infrastructure (+34) 6/6 Dice 90 R
-[] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 6) 220/300 (1 Die, 20 R) (70% chance)
-[] Suborbital Shuttle Service (Phase 1) 92/200 (1 Die, 30 R) (42% chance)
-[] Blue Zone Apartment Complexes (Phase 3+4+5) 72/160 (4 Dice, 40 R) (Phase 3, 97% chance of Phase 4, 18% chance of Phase 5)
Heavy Industry (+29) 5/5 Dice + 1 Free Die 180 R
-[] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant (Phase 8) 67/300 (3 Dice, 60 R) (65% chance)
-[] Isolinear Chip Foundry Anadyr 85/320 (2 Dice, 100 R) (8% chance)
-[] One Die on Laser Project (???, 20 R just in case; allocate elsewhere if this proves totally unnecessary)
Light and Chemical Industry (+24) 5/5 Dice 55 R
-[] Chemical Fertilizer Plants (Phase 2) 276/300 (1 Die, 15 R) (100% chance)
-[] Civilian Drone Factories 104/380 (4 Dice, 40 R) (74% chance)
Agriculture (+24) 4/4 Dice + 2 Free Dice 80 R
-[] Freeze Dried Food Plants 151/200 (1 Die, 20 R) (91% chance)
-[] Agriculture Mechanization Projects (Phase 1) 0/150 (2 Dice, 30 R) (63% chance)
-[] Strategic Food Stockpile Construction (Phase 2+3) 38/150 (3 Dice, 30 R) (99% chance of Phase 2, 18% chance of Phase 3)
Tiberium (+39) 7/7 Dice + 1 Free Die 240 R
-[] Harvesting Tendril Deployment (Phase 1) (New) 0/600 (8 Dice, 240 R) (95% chance)
Orbital (+26) 6/6 Dice 120 R
-[] GDSS Enterprise (Phase 5) 102/1535 (3 Dice, 60 R) (3/17.5 median)
-[] Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1+2) 45/305 (2 Dice, 40 R) (96% chance of Phase 1, 12% chance of Phase 2)
-[] Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2) 276/320 (1 Die, 20 R) (98% chance)
Services (+27) X/5 Dice 70 R
-[] 70 R WORTH OF SERVICES STUFF (Mad science gacha, hallucinogens, sports, ???)
Military (+26) 8/8 Dice + 3 Free Dice 185 R
-[] Skywatch Telescope System 64/95 (1 Die, 10 R) (100% chance)
-[] Railgun Munitions Development 38/60 (1 Die, 10 R) (100% chance)
-[] Hallucinogen Countermeasures Development 0/40 (1 Die, 15 R) (100% chance)
-[] Universal Rocket Launch System Deployment (Phase 3) 0/200 (2 Dice, 30 R) (23% chance)
-[] Orbital Strike Regimental Combat Team Stations (Phase 3) 5/295 (2 Dice, 40 R) (2/3.5 to Phase 2, 2/8.5 dice to Phase 4)
-[] Escort Carrier Shipyards (Nagoya) 171/240 (1 Die, 20 R) (73% chance)
-[] Escort Carrier Shipyards (Dublin) 0/240 (3 Dice, 60 R) (54% chance)
Bureaucracy 4/4 + EREWHON!!!
-[] Conduct Economic Census DC 100/150/200/250 (4+E Dice) (96.1% chance of DC 250, 99.6% chance of DC 200)

HousePet · Jun 11, 2022

Simon_Jester said:
I'm not sure what you mean by this- my main point is that I would like to get Enterprise close enough to "done" in 2061Q2 and Q3 that in 'Q4 we have at least one or two actual Orbital dice that can be spared for other projects, so that we can finally do the Conestoga design.

What I mean is that while we'd like to spend around 4 Free dice in Orbital before the end of the Plan. We can do that on turns other than the upcoming one. We don't need to spend 1 free dice on it each turn.

uju32 · Jun 11, 2022

Void Stalker said:
Finishing the last frigate yard is not going to be as much help as getting the escort carrier wave going, we need escort carriers to counter raiding by providing basing for ASW aircraft, that provides a bigger coverage area compared to frigates. And the carriers are a plan goal the frigate yard is not. And there is enough potential dice needed to hit plan goals that putting them off is a bad idea.

Frigates carry ASW helicopters as well as their shipborne sensors and weapons.

Simon_Jester said:
Out of respect for @Void Stalker , and mindful of the fact that so far we have put considerably more effort into frigate yards than light carrier yards, I am flipping the 'build order' of the Seattle and Dublin yards in my own mind.

Naval priorities in their own words prioritize more ships faster, something our current production rate of CVEs cant really meet, but which frigates can, if we have the shipyards to spam them.
Quoting from the latest update:

Ithillid said:
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.

Escort carrier shipyards put 4x escort carriers into naval service every 18-24 months.
Frigate shipyards commission 20x frigates every 9-15 months.

Quonset Point frigate shipyard was finished in Q2 2060; between Q1 2061 and Q1 2063, it will complete between 40x and 60x FFGs.
Melbourne frigate shipyard was finished Q4 2060; between now and Q1 2063, it will build between 20x and 60x FFGs.
Nagoya escort carrier shipyard finishes next turn; between Q1 2061 and Q1 2063, it will produce 4x CVE/CVLs.

A 3-month delay in finishing the Dublin escort carrier shipyard is not going to change CVE delivery numbers in the next two years by more than 4 ships. But a 3-month delay to finishing the Seattle frigate yard will materially affect frigate delivery numbers by at least 20x new guided frigates.

Dont delay the Seattle frigate yard for the Dublin one.

===
All 30x merchant conversions will be in service by the end of 2061.
The first 12x escort carriers being built in battleship shipyards are all going to be completed by Q4 2062.
Nagoya's first carriers should be in service by Q1 2063.

We will have 42-46x new carriers in the water by the end of Q1 2063, 30x of which will be delivered in the next 12 months.
A little under two thirds of them will be primarily designed for use in the relatively secure waters of the Northern Atlantic and Northern Pacific, but thats still a lot of new flattops.

bigking321 · Jun 11, 2022

Agreed.

Frigates should be done first.

They can help protect the conversions until the escorts get finished.

Phht · Jun 11, 2022

Main opposition to frigate yards at this point: we need, IIRC, 28 dice to complete plan goals. Like our legit, we promised this 3 years ago and reaffirmed we'd do it maybe 6 months ago, Plan Goals. If we spend on frigate yards this turn, that means likely 5 dice on Plan Goals. If we spend 8 next turn on Plan Goals, that leaves ~15 dice in Q3 needed. Even if we spend 10 dice all on Plan Goals Q2, that's still ~13 dice. We are not getting 15 dice in Q3, and 13 is extremely unlikely. Which means we're going into Q4 likely needing to do significant dice use to complete Plan Goals.

The current plan Simon put forth has 9 this turn. That leaves 19 to go. 8 dice per turn for Q2-3 would leave us with ~3 dice in Q4 if we don't get terrible roles. If anything, I'd suggest shifting the Countermeasures dev die to a Plan Goal, and take the free die used by Skywatch this turn to complete Countermeasures dev next turn. Then we could do 10+10 on Plan Goals Q1-2 and have only ~8 dice in Q3 to deal with. That leaves 3 free dice (possibly 4?) for other stuff (likely frigate yards (2-3 dice), Zone Defender Revision (1 die)), and hopefully all 8 Mil dice and 3-5 free dice in Q4 (SADN Phase 1 (4-5 dice), GFZA (3 dice), finish frigate yards (0-3 dice), countermeasures deploy, disco ball refit, etc).

I'm expecting the best we can do free dice-wise for Mil in Q4 is 5 free dice. I don't see Agriculture giving up its two free dice this plan. If we get 16-17 dice on Enterprise Q1-3 (3+7+7 or 3+6+7), we could free up that die Q4. If we don't need fusion plants as frantically, we might be able to free up the die from HI Q3-4. And we currently have 2-3 free dice on Mil. I expect 8+3 or possibly 8+4 is the best we could get Q3 and 8+5 Q4, if other commitments don't yoink them away from Mil.

bigking321 · Jun 11, 2022

Plan goals are very, very, important. But they aren't the be all and end all. We still need to react to what's going on.

Something killed the probes by Jupiter. So we need skywatch.

We are starting a lot of really high tech research and nod is trying to steal that stuff and one way is to use hallucinogens to cripple defenders. So we need countermeasures.

The navy needs ships as quickly as possible so it's better to build frigate yards even though we have promised escort yards so that we could have conversions provide ships.

These are completely reasonable things to do.

BoSPaladin · Jun 11, 2022

bigking321 said:
Something killed the probes by Jupiter. So we need skywatch.

Maybe the asari are coming to uplift us with gifts and hugs.

uju32 · Jun 12, 2022

Phht said:
Main opposition to frigate yards at this point: we need, IIRC, 28 dice to complete plan goals. Like our legit, we promised this 3 years ago and reaffirmed we'd do it maybe 6 months ago, Plan Goals. If we spend on frigate yards this turn, that means likely 5 dice on Plan Goals. If we spend 8 next turn on Plan Goals, that leaves ~15 dice in Q3 needed. Even if we spend 10 dice all on Plan Goals Q2, that's still ~13 dice. We are not getting 15 dice in Q3, and 13 is extremely unlikely. Which means we're going into Q4 likely needing to do significant dice use to complete Plan Goals.

The current plan Simon put forth has 9 this turn. That leaves 19 to go. 8 dice per turn for Q2-3 would leave us with ~3 dice in Q4 if we don't get terrible roles. If anything, I'd suggest shifting the Countermeasures dev die to a Plan Goal, and take the free die used by Skywatch this turn to complete Countermeasures dev next turn. Then we could do 10+10 on Plan Goals Q1-2 and have only ~8 dice in Q3 to deal with. That leaves 3 free dice (possibly 4?) for other stuff (likely frigate yards (2-3 dice), Zone Defender Revision (1 die)), and hopefully all 8 Mil dice and 3-5 free dice in Q4 (SADN Phase 1 (4-5 dice), GFZA (3 dice), finish frigate yards (0-3 dice), countermeasures deploy, disco ball refit, etc).

I'm expecting the best we can do free dice-wise for Mil in Q4 is 5 free dice. I don't see Agriculture giving up its two free dice this plan. If we get 16-17 dice on Enterprise Q1-3 (3+7+7 or 3+6+7), we could free up that die Q4. If we don't need fusion plants as frantically, we might be able to free up the die from HI Q3-4. And we currently have 2-3 free dice on Mil. I expect 8+3 or possibly 8+4 is the best we could get Q3 and 8+5 Q4, if other commitments don't yoink them away from Mil.

I happen to agree with you that reallocating the Countermeasures dice would be frankly more efficient.
But I dont feel all that strongly about it.

I do however feel very strongly about frigates.Naval strategy has always been build strategy, and unlike with the Air Force or Ground Forces, we cant suddenly surge production over the course of a couple quarters. And frigates are critical for everything from convoy escort to screening escort carriers and capital ships. Delaying frigates now will keep biting us years down the line.

I will make an alternative suggestion:

After doing the Economic Census in Q1, convert the 4x Bureaucracy dice to 2x Admininistrative Assistance dice in Q2 and Q3, giving us 4x extra AA dice over two turns. Tendrils should give us around 100 RpT IIRC, in addition to income from space mines, enough to fund activating those dice.

Then we use those 4x AA dice to finishing the Escort Carrier shipyards; average rolls for 4x dice is 200 points, and a CVE shipyard is 240 points.Or for finishing ASAT 4 (Plan Goal, currently 36/220).
Or doing Mastodon Deployment(???).

Which will essentially help us guarantee that we'll have almost every official military priority and Plan Goal done by Q3 end.

Simon_Jester · Jun 12, 2022

Phht said:
Main opposition to frigate yards at this point: we need, IIRC, 28 dice to complete plan goals. Like our legit, we promised this 3 years ago and reaffirmed we'd do it maybe 6 months ago, Plan Goals. If we spend on frigate yards this turn, that means likely 5 dice on Plan Goals. If we spend 8 next turn on Plan Goals, that leaves ~15 dice in Q3 needed. Even if we spend 10 dice all on Plan Goals Q2, that's still ~13 dice. We are not getting 15 dice in Q3, and 13 is extremely unlikely. Which means we're going into Q4 likely needing to do significant dice use to complete Plan Goals.

The trick, come to think of it, is to pick actions that we can overkill without feeling stupid. Stuff that will roll over.

...ASAT is perfect for this. If ASAT Phase 4 is 100 points from completion in 2061Q4, we just throw three dice at it, enough that it's got like a 99.99% chance of completing. Sure, it rolls over. So what, there's a Phase 5 and we'd want to build it eventually anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against doing work on ASAT prior to 2061Q4. It'd be a bit much of a gamer move to, say, leave the project untouched until Q4 and then throw 4-5 dice at it, and we'd need 4-5 dice. But putting two into it in Q3 and then, depending on how the rolls go, another 1-2 in Q4 might not be so bad. Rollover past completion of Phase 4 might not be ideal but at least we'd get something for our money.

OSRCT is another where overkill is probably acceptable and there is probably a fifth phase, inasmuch as the Space Force wouldn't say no to even more stations.

Unfortunately, pretty much everything else is no-overflow, and arguably it's to our advantage to begin as many of those projects as early as possible so we can carefully wind them down with small dice expenditures in Q2, Q3, and Q4.

...

Hm. There are eight such projects- ASAT 4, OSRCT 4, railgun munitions, URLS Phase 3, Mastodon deployment (may be multiple actual factories), New York carrier yard, Dublin carrier yard, and Nagoya carrier yard.

Two of the projects (the Nagoya yard and the railgun munitions) are effectively in the "finish off" stage. The other six are still unstarted or effectively unstarted. OSRCT is much larger than the other projects, larger than any two of the others put together, even.

In my own "Canned Beans" draft, I work to finish off two of the projects (as noted). I begin OSRCT, URLS, and Dublin. As noted, it makes logical sense to put off starting ASAT until Q3, because it's a small project with rollover, so having to overkill it in Q4 isn't quite so bad. Not ideal, but not bad.

That leaves the two projects to begin in Q2: the Mastodon deployment and the New York carrier yard. Predictably, either Nagoya, Dublin, or both will still need finishing off. URLS will need finishing off. OSRCT will merit continuation. A plausible lineup would be something like

3 Dice: New York carrier yard
2 Dice: other shipyards (in descending order of priority: finishing Nagoya, finishing Dublin, starting Seattle)
1 Die: URLS ongoing
1-2 Dice: OSRCT
2 Dice: Mastodon Deployment (either one die on each of two small Havoc-like factories, or two dice on one Wolverine-like production process)

That budgets 9-10 Military dice for 2061Q2, depending on how well OSRCT is going, because I'd like to have a strong chance of finishing Phase 3 in 2061Q2. We should reasonably budget 1-2 Military dice for things that are not Plan goals or Plan goal adjacent (Seattle is 'adjacent,' in that it is critical and we'd be very unwise to leave it undone longer than necessary), which puts us in the range of 10-12 Military dice that is consistent with our past track record.

...

At the end of that, in 2061Q3, we'll hopefully need at most 1-2 dice of effort to finish of any remaining light carrier yards in 'Q3, and 1-2 more to finish off the Mastodon deployment. Two dice for ASAT (with the full intention of finishing in 2061Q4 if need be)and 2-3 more for OSRCT (depending on how many dice are going into finishing projects) brings us to eight. Either start Seattle with three (rough and eleven dice leave little room for other priorities, but implies that we've been unlucky in Q1), or continue Seattle with less and have a bit more wiggle room.

And, yeah, we end up probably needing to spend dice on ASAT/OSRCT in 2061Q4, and that is okay, since we get some actual rollover there.

There's some space for the Zone Defender revision, rollout of hallucinogen countermeasures if that's even required, a few things around the edges... But yeah, everything up to 2061Q4 ends up being tight. We can loosen things with intense Military Free dice spending, but we'd need to average pretty aggressive spending.

Stuff that's still on the table in 2061Q4 and will need to be addressed, in descending order of priority.

1) Naval laser refits (effectively untenable to do in 2062, unless we have it down to 1-2 dice, so to me this is top priority),

2) Zone Armor factories (getting one is desirable, or two, but notably we CAN afford to finish off the factory with a single die in 2062Q1, our budget'll be tight but not that tight).

3) SADN (really, REALLY needs work and should be done through Phase 3 before Karachi if at all possible)

4) Orca/Hammerhead Wingman Drones (high naval/air priority, needed to get the light carriers up to full performance but no light carriers enter full service before late 2062 anyway)

Other things (advanced ECCM, stealth disruptors, etc.) should be postponed until late 2062 or early 2063 when we're specifically beefing up to tackle Karachi and when the budget has been re-inflated.

The current plan Simon put forth has 9 this turn. That leaves 19 to go. 8 dice per turn for Q2-3 would leave us with ~3 dice in Q4 if we don't get terrible roles. If anything, I'd suggest shifting the Countermeasures dev die to a Plan Goal...

I am loath to do this because we keep delaying one of the few techs we have that is likely to have any impact on the performance of Nod commando raids, and we always wind up hating the consequences of a successful Nod commando raid.

I'm expecting the best we can do free dice-wise for Mil in Q4 is 5 free dice. I don't see Agriculture giving up its two free dice this plan...

If we get 16-17 dice on Enterprise Q1-3 (3+7+7 or 3+6+7), we could free up that die Q4...

If we don't need fusion plants as frantically, we might be able to free up the die from HI Q3-4...

1) If we get two Free dice on Agriculture in Q1, Q2, and Q3, we're almost certain to have the Stored Food target firmly in the bag by 2061Q4 without any Free dice in 2061Q4.

Taking "Attempting to Supply the Canned Beans" as a benchmark, we're looking at two dice on farm mechanization and three on the granaries. Keep that up for three turns in a row (with one die per turn for whatever-else) and we're 81% likely to have completed both phases of mechanization. Our progress on the granaries will have tallied up to a median of 671 Progress, with a 90% chance of having at least 560 Progress and a 10% chance of having as much as 782 Progress.

We probably need 112+175+200+225+250 = 962 Progress, so, hm. Not great- though probably good enough to finish in Q4 with 4-5 more dice.

If we could allocate the two 'whatever-else' dice to the granaries, then our 90%-50%-10% breakdown looks like 697/820/943 Progress, meaning a very slim chance of completion in Q3 and quite high confidence of completion in Q4, even without further Free dice investment... after, mind you, having already thrown 11 dice into the project.

(ELFS, filling the existing storehouses, fits into this whenever we're confident that we have -16 or -12 Food we can spare; it can be done with Erewhon or AA dice at any time)

...

2) 3+6+7 seems a likely baseline for Enterprise; it would be unwise and improvident of us to invest less. At median levels of luck, sixteen Enterprise dice in 2061Q1 through 'Q3 leaves us at 102+1304 = 1406/1535 Progress. At that point, we could complete the station in Q4 with four dice on the bonuses alone, let alone the rolls, so we won't need Free dice.

On the other hand... if we are spectacularly unlucky (as in, a 5% overall chance of being this unlucky), sixteen Enterprise dice in 2061Q1 through 'Q3 would leave us with 102+1114 = 1224 Progress out of 1535 to go. Then we have roughly 300 Progress to go before omake completion, and things are a lot more touch-and-go. Spending all six Orbital dice in Q4 after that would give us a 99.75% chance of project completion, though, so we probably still wouldn't truly need those Free dice... though it might seem worth sacrificing one extra die out of an already-swollen 13-15 die Military budget, if we chose to go that route.

...

3) We are probably still going to need fusion plants. The remaining mandatory and quasi-mandatory military projects are respectably hungry. Seattle needs -6 Energy, the light carrier yards need a total of -15, the URLS factories need -2, and the Mastodon production line is likely to total requirements of at least -4 (like the Havoc production plants). On top of that we have Anadyr, farm mechanization, and civilian drone factories (-2 Energy each), and also freeze drying (-1 Energy). Putting it all together, we're looking at -36 Energy.

Our existing surplus is about +16, so that means building two more full phases over 2061, at least. Three would be nice, but two will probably be sufficient. We might be able to get by on one phase of fusion plants if retrofitting our existing red zone facilities with ion storm collectors turns out to be really worthwhile, but that's going to compete with other stuff like "get more Red Zone abatement," so we probably shouldn't lean on it too hard if we can help it.

My "Canned Beans" plan and most others I've seen for Q1 give us a good chance of getting the first of two phases, but we'd still probably need at least 5-6 dice worth of fusion power by 2061Q3 just to hit all our Plan targets without going into rolling blackouts. And yeah, it's needed by Q3, not Q4, because almost all that energy-burning stuff needs to be done by Q3, so the power needs to be available then too.

But we can probably relax in Q4, because by then the combination of two phases of fusion power and whatever ion power we've done should be enough to take the load of all the stuff I listed, plus any optional Energy-consuming things we might do like Suzuka (which I really want to do by Q4; we're not that hard up for Heavy Industry dice or even Free dice, and it's wasteful to let the hover tech languish that long)

uju32 said:
I do however feel very strongly about frigates.Naval strategy has always been build strategy, and unlike with the Air Force or Ground Forces, we cant suddenly surge production over the course of a couple quarters. And frigates are critical for everything from convoy escort to screening escort carriers and capital ships. Delaying frigates now will keep biting us years down the line.

There's a balance to be struck. Remember, at this point, we're delaying one third of the frigates, not all the frigates. We already have two of the three designated frigate yards online and beginning construction, whereas we have only about a quarter of the light carrier yard space ready to go and laying down keels.

If the Navy just wanted to extract a commitment to "build 4-5 yards by 2061, I don't care which kind" back when we made those promises while doing the conversion carriers, they could have gotten it. They specifically asked us to commit to the light carrier yards. Assuming that our admirals are not fools, this suggests that they consider the light carriers to be a co-equal priority alongside the frigates.

And, well. Consider two scenarios:

1) We finish all three remaining carrier yards by 2061Q3, but due to bad luck the Seattle frigate yard takes until 2062Q1 to finish.
2) We finish Seattle and two carrier yards by 2061Q3, but due to bad luck the remaining carrier yard takes until 2062Q1 to finish.

Only in case (2) do we get a procession of admirals marching down to the nearest orbital launchpad to fly up to the Philadelphia and demand Seo's balls in a bag. In case (1) we get merely grumpy admirals, but they were already grumpy anyway.

So in the interests of avoiding that eventuality, we do need to make sure we get the light carrier yards started soon enough to be insulated against potential construction delays and misfortunes in our attempt to finish them on time.

Even if that means that the Seattle yard is delayed.

If the admirals don't like it, they have the power to change the terms of what they ask of us.

I will make an alternative suggestion:

After doing the Economic Census in Q1, convert the 4x Bureaucracy dice to 2x Admininistrative Assistance dice in Q2 and Q3, giving us 4x extra AA dice over two turns.

I'm not averse to doing 1-2 AA dice in 2061Q2, but want to save 2061Q3 for the civil satisfaction surveys. Because we really need that information going into the reallocation and Plan promises... but our analysts will, realistically, need time to digest the information first.

It'll depend on how bad the situation is. If we roll such that using AA dice to finish off projects with, say, a 97% chance of completion is attractive, or conversely if using one to "eke out" a project so that it goes from having, say, a 50% chance of completion to an 88% chance of completion is attractive, we should go for it in 2061Q2. If not, not. We'll see. Security reviews are another thing it might be nice to do too, after all.

Hm. It may be desirable to use AA dice in 2061Q4, as well, to get the maximum possible 'lift' out of our relatively swollen RpT budget.

NinjaMAster · Jun 12, 2022

The Caloric Reclamation Processors are actually a really big deal for food production, but not directly due to their products general unpalatability.
To humans.

Between them and the fertilizer plants, quite a bit of agricultural waste can now suddenly transition from inedible material used as compost to calorically rich biological feedstock. And it doesn't matter if it tastes terrible as long as it's fed to something that doesn't pick up the taste. Even if it does, do you really think they'll complain if their eggs are a little gamey when they now have omelets for breakfast? For the first time in decades? Even if animals don't like it, it's likely that fungus farms can significantly speed up production with an easy source of relatively available calories for the fungus to metabolize. Insects certainly wont care either, so there's another way to cut out any potential tastes while still being efficient with the calories.

Readily accessible calorie sources are incredibly useful for feeding all kinds of things, and 'good enough' is a staple of agricultural feedstock for a reason. It works, and it scales up.

Simon_Jester · Jun 12, 2022

NinjaMAster said:
The Caloric Reclamation Processors are actually a really big deal for food production, but not directly due to their products general unpalatability.
To humans.

Between them and the fertilizer plants, quite a bit of agricultural waste can now suddenly transition from inedible material used as compost to calorically rich biological feedstock. And it doesn't matter if it tastes terrible as long as it's fed to something that doesn't pick up the taste. Even if it does, do you really think they'll complain if their eggs are a little gamey when they now have omelets for breakfast? For the first time in decades? Even if animals don't like it, it's likely that fungus farms can significantly speed up production with an easy source of relatively available calories for the fungus to metabolize. Insects certainly wont care either, so there's another way to cut out any potential tastes while still being efficient with the calories.

Readily accessible calorie sources are incredibly useful for feeding all kinds of things, and 'good enough' is a staple of agricultural feedstock for a reason. It works, and it scales up.

I'm pretty sure fungus farms already process inedible biological waste products quite well. We're not feeding wheat into the rooms full of fungus that get processed into fungus bars.

Using this stuff might very well make things worse because undesirable fungi might well grow on it just as readily as the semi-edible fungus bar fungus does.

Now, you're not wrong that it may provide some increase in efficiency of processing animal feed. It's at least possible that we might see a reduction in the -Food cost of Ranching Domes from developing CRP, or from deploying them as an Infrastructure project.

However, experiments show that animals really, really don't like "corpse starch" either; they don't eat it eagerly, and I believe the phrase was "the test rats went on strike for better working conditions." Higher animals do have some minimal standard of palatability in their food, and they won't grow big and healthy with lots of meat on their bones, or lay big healthy fit-for-consumption eggs, on a diet of something they only barely peck away at to avoid starvation.

bigking321 · Jun 12, 2022

If energy becomes a problem there's always that tiberium power sitting there. Only needs two dice then we can see what happens.

Oledoms · Jun 12, 2022

Just a thought related to the next Plan, the Graduates on the 2054 Q1 Option had three possible Dice , two can be directed to other fields while one have to be attached to the second die. However, this option did not appear on the 2058 Recruitment.

This maybe due to two reasons, first is that the Treasury might be the only secure employment for new graduates at the time to prevent competing with the established and older workforce with no work yet available. Second is that the corporations and universities have no means to resist the treasury from taking new graduates in.

The reason that the monopoly ended in 2058 is that the Grants were already being distributed and such there are more jobs available and the Treasury can no longer monopolize the Graduates from Universities and such fewer graduates can be obtained.

However, with more Yellow Zone Graduates rolling off the Universities and a massive population boom from the refugee wave. Will there be a increase to the amount of Dice that will roll off the Graduate recruits?

Considering that many Corporations, establishments and even Universities hold Firster Sympathies and likely be biased against hiring Yellow Zone employees and students in the near future, the Treasury maybe the ones willing to hire them after college.

Derpmind · Jun 12, 2022

For the Navy, it's not just important to build more Shipyards. We also need to do the Infernium Laser Refits. Last time we slept on naval point-defence, it really came back to bite us. And the refits are also needed to properly outfit all the Shark class frigates we're putting out. I know the refits are expesive, but they'll give our ships better defenses so we won't be losing as many to NOD attacks, which makes them another way to bolster our ship numbers. We should be putting dice into that project, and soon.

Dmol8 · Jun 12, 2022

Derpmind said:
For the Navy, it's not just important to build more Shipyards. We also need to do the Infernium Laser Refits. Last time we slept on naval point-defence, it really came back to bite us. And the refits are also needed to properly outfit all the Shark class frigates we're putting out. I know the refits are expesive, but they'll give our ships better defenses so we won't be losing as many to NOD attacks, which makes them another way to bolster our ship numbers. We should be putting dice into that project, and soon.

Next turn when we have the resources to spend on that.

Hey @uju32 are you OK with a 14% chance and an Average DC of 69 to complete the frigate shipyards set? Or do you need 4 Dice used on that for the 64% chance and an Average DC of 61 to complete it?

bigking321 · Jun 12, 2022

Derpmind said:
And the refits are also needed to properly outfit all the Shark class frigates we're putting out.

Nooooo?

All the new ships get the lasers.

The refits have us start bringing in older ships and giving them lasers.

Unless I have completely misunderstood that project.

BoSPaladin · Jun 12, 2022

It doesn't get said enough.

But despite the sometimes heated arguments. The players heavily invested in working out percentages and new plans. You make things easier for the rest of us by coming up with good plans.

So thanks to all of you Who make it easier for me to be lazy and either just vote for a plan or let the thread run on autopilot so i can enjoy the story worry free.

HousePet · Jun 12, 2022

Given how many shipyards we still need to get done, and how long they take to deliver; I don't think we are gaining anything by micromanaging which ones we do complete next.
We just need to get them done as soon as reasonably possible.

Even putting 3 dice on Seattle and 2 dice on each of the unstarted Carrier Yards would be fine. They would still have a chance of completing, but then they would likely just need 1-2 more dice each in Q2 to get them all done.

Derpmind · Jun 12, 2022

bigking321 said:
Nooooo?

All the new ships get the lasers.

The refits have us start bringing in older ships and giving them lasers.

Unless I have completely misunderstood that project.

I'm honestly unsure now. The following description from the Shark development might mean we simply had to do the design project for the lasers, or it might mean we have to complete the refit project instead. On a re-read, I think it means the former, but I can't say for certain.

Ithillid said:
While the two point defense lasers are currently crystal beam designs, they are not intended to be such in the final product. Instead, as a naval point defense version of the new Infernium lasers is finalized, that will be installed in its place, with the greater heat efficiency offering a significant improvement in defense quality.

uju32 · Jun 12, 2022

Simon_Jester said:
3) We are probably still going to need fusion plants. The remaining mandatory and quasi-mandatory military projects are respectably hungry. Seattle needs -6 Energy, the light carrier yards need a total of -15, the URLS factories need -2, and the Mastodon production line is likely to total requirements of at least -4 (like the Havoc production plants).

Point of dispute:
I doubt that the Mastodon is going to require more than -1 Energy. Unlike the Havoc which has also found much wider use with ZOCOM and I think the orbital drop troops as well as the Talons, the Mastodon is exclusive to the Steel Talons, the single smallest formation in the Initiative at roughly 1x corps.

Also, its a superheavy. GDI deploys Mammoth superheavies in discrete battalion-size formations by WoG, which means roughly 60x vehicles. Assuming similar force levels, and with the Steel Talons being a corps-size formation, you are looking at triple digit numbers of vehicles at the high end, and thats including engineering samples.

The only reason I can see for more than one factory is likely for redundancy purposes.

Simon_Jester said:
There's a balance to be struck. Remember, at this point, we're delaying one third of the frigates, not all the frigates. We already have two of the three designated frigate yards online and beginning construction, whereas we have only about a quarter of the light carrier yard space ready to go and laying down keels.

Simon_Jester said:
If the Navy just wanted to extract a commitment to "build 4-5 yards by 2061, I don't care which kind" back when we made those promises while doing the conversion carriers, they could have gotten it. They specifically asked us to commit to the light carrier yards. Assuming that our admirals are not fools, this suggests that they consider the light carriers to be a co-equal priority alongside the frigates.

I do agree there's a balance to be struck. What I dispute is on what side the Seattle shipyard belongs in priority.
With Brotherhood naval activity at unprecedented levels since the end of TW3, the admiralty has apparently rediscovered the industrial advantages of (relatively) lighter escorts.

Our admirals know how long it takes to build a CVE; we've laid down twelve, in addition to the merchant conversions.
They know that no amount of talk will make them build faster than 18 months. The fact that they are urging more hulls faster, instead of more carriers faster, despite the fact that we have 2 of 3 frigate shipyards up rather points towards one conclusion.

This doesnt mean they are letting us off the hook for the CVEs.
But it does very strongly imply that they consider the frigate shipyards at least as important, if not more so, in the short term.
My two cents, at least.

Simon_Jester said:
And, well. Consider two scenarios:
1) We finish all three remaining carrier yards by 2061Q3, but due to bad luck the Seattle frigate yard takes until 2062Q1 to finish.
2) We finish Seattle and two carrier yards by 2061Q3, but due to bad luck the remaining carrier yard takes until 2062Q1 to finish.

Only in case (2) do we get a procession of admirals marching down to the nearest orbital launchpad to fly up to the Philadelphia and demand Seo's balls in a bag. In case (1) we get merely grumpy admirals, but they were already grumpy anyway.

So in the interests of avoiding that eventuality, we do need to make sure we get the light carrier yards started soon enough to be insulated against potential construction delays and misfortunes in our attempt to finish them on time.
Even if that means that the Seattle yard is delayed.

Simon_Jester said:
If the admirals don't like it, they have the power to change the terms of what they ask of us.

1)In scenario 1, we potentially lose carriers and merchant crews that we cant replace for years due to ship construction speed, and take more damage from Hail Mary's like Bintang's strike at Tokyo.
My apologies if I come off as lecturing, but its worth remembering that plan goals are not the only metric of success.

2)We can have Seattle done in Q1 and all three remaining CVE shipyards done by Q3 2061.
We should not even have to use AA dice in Q1 2061, only in Q2 and Q3.
Maybe in Q4.

2)The admirals do not have the ability to change the terms of what they ask of us one year to the end of the deadline.
Or even in the middle of a war. People would rightfully feel aggrieved at having those changes sprung at short notice.
Doesnt mean there are no consequences to ignoring them when they state urgent priorities.

Simon_Jester said:
I'm not averse to doing 1-2 AA dice in 2061Q2, but want to save 2061Q3 for the civil satisfaction surveys. Because we really need that information going into the reallocation and Plan promises... but our analysts will, realistically, need time to digest the information first.

It'll depend on how bad the situation is. If we roll such that using AA dice to finish off projects with, say, a 97% chance of completion is attractive, or conversely if using one to "eke out" a project so that it goes from having, say, a 50% chance of completion to an 88% chance of completion is attractive, we should go for it in 2061Q2. If not, not. We'll see. Security reviews are another thing it might be nice to do too, after all.

Hm. It may be desirable to use AA dice in 2061Q4, as well, to get the maximum possible 'lift' out of our relatively swollen RpT budget.

I am of the personal opinion that Civil Satisfaction Surveys can wait till Q4 2061 or Q1 2062.
The results are only going to be relevant at our reallocation in Q1 2062, so getting it a turn early is not urgent.

If @Phht is right about priorities and scheduling, then attempting to get everything essential done by Q3 should take precedence over less important projects. That gives us the final turn to clean up any items that didnt finish on time, or to address any unforseen issues like critfails and battle damage.

EDIT
I would have suggested postponing Economic Survey until Q3/Q4 2061 as well, but we dont have the R to fund activating additional AA dice until we finish Tendrils.

uju32 · Jun 12, 2022

Dmol8 said:
Next turn when we have the resources to spend on that.

Hey @uju32 are you OK with a 14% chance and an Average DC of 69 to complete the frigate shipyards set? Or do you need 4 Dice used on that for the 64% chance and an Average DC of 61 to complete it?

I would greatly prefer 4 dice.
A partly finished project gives the same lack of mechanical benefit as one we havent started at all. We dont get anything out of slowrolling projects with 4 turns to the end of the FYP

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