7 dice a turn isn't delaying it though? That's a full tilt. After accounting for portal discounts (assuming they start in Q1). We have
((33-7)*.85)= 22.1 dice required through the rest of the plan to meet our goals.
We'd need to put in 2 more orbital dice to complete the project by the end of Q3. And that'd still leave us with (9*4)-23 = 13 orbital dice to play around with throughout the plan. And that's assuming that the project doesn't get any more efficient, which (as I noted previously), is unlikely.
----
Please forgive my bluntness, but my last set of conversations with you have taught me that I either need to be blunt with you or not interact with you at all. But to be fair, you did basically just call me a colossal idiot, so maybe I shouldn't be feeling too bad about it.
I know you know this, that you've done the math, and you know that ~7 dice a turn is not a delay, it will still let us achieve our goals prior to Q4, and is still acknowledging how important orbital investment is. So why are you implying that I said that we should delay further and that I thought it is not important? Is it just to strawman what I'm saying to highlight the need for high investment in orbital to everyone else? Was it just a misreading? If not, what is your actual objection to my statement? What are your real goals in orbital, that what I'm saying threatens?
[blinks]
Part one of what happened there is that I remember... I could swear at least two, definitely one, round of having to argue with people that yes, seven dice on the homesteads is necessary, as opposed to "too much, we should go slow." As the 'I' of now fully understands, you would likely agree that we can't "go slow" any longer.
Through some combination of fatigue and mishap, I interpreted your post as "I don't think the space population target will be a problem, the naquada ring project will take care of everything," with the follow-on of
"thus, no need for the seven dice." That is to say, I conflated its conclusions with earlier conversations on the subject.
Rereading with a slightly clearer and significantly better-rested mind, I see now that I have made a serious mistake in how I interpreted your post.
...
I don't enjoy the accusation of 'strawmanning to highlight;' I don't do things like that on purpose. But then, I must admit the word 'foolishness' was quite provocative on my part, especially under the circumstances. So I walked right into that accusation, fair and square, whether I enjoy the experience or not.
If you have an actual personal preference for non-bluntness you could have dropped that specific bit without loss of apology- you
have my apology, to be clear. But I walked right into it anyway, and have no cause for real complaint.
...
On a related note about just "is it worth spending dice on these space projects when we have naquada coming up..."
I will say that I'm still comfortable with my current dice allotment (seven Orbital on the lunar homesteads and three Free on the assembler bay), even given that the naquada ring portals will likely make our space operations significantly more efficient in the near future.
Naquada ring portals will take the assembler bay's Progress cost from 255 down to about 215-220, we are still quite likely to need three dice to complete the project anyway. I can see some value in postponing the assembler bay project and trying it later in hopes of 'saving' one Free die net, but getting the light industrial prototype into place seems worth the
potential reduced efficiency in my opinion.
Because we move from about a 1.8% chance of being able to complete the assembler with two dice to a 25% chance with naquada ring portals, and in the three fourths of possible outcomes where we
don't get it in two dice even with the portals, we have to build two-and-one dice investment.
So we'd go from spending three Free dice now and getting roughly:
80% chance of getting the assembler bay in 2064Q4 (total cost, 3 dice)
20% chance of getting the bay in 2065Q1 (total cost, 3+1 = 4 dice)
to waiting a turn, then getting roughly:
25% chance of getting the assembler bay in 2065Q1 (total cost, 2 dice)
75% chance of getting the assembler bay in 2065Q2 (total cost, 3 dice)
In most scenarios we don't really save dice on net. And we eat a one-quarter delay that is quite likely to become a two-quarter delay.
We could just wait and spend three dice on the bay in 2065Q1 for a greater probability of completion (98% instead of 80%, roughly), but then we're trading a one-quarter delay for a 20% chance of saving a die (three dice instead of four), and that just doesn't feel worthwhile either.
