Nearly being exterminated by a mining expedition can tend to do that. Once bitten, twice shy.
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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
Wonder how the aliens will react to that actually reminds me that are guys will in general will understand most of the krogans problems and relate to them easier?
KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
I remember running across a quest here that crossed C&C over with Enterprise-era Star Trek. The Klingons, Vulcans, and other surviving species were allied together, trying to slug it out with the Scrin, and GDI got the NX-02 Columbia crossing time/universes to show them how to spaceship/lead their early fleet. 
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Eh.
The krogans have three problems that greatly complicate each other, and interlock to make solving any one of them harder.
Problem one is that their home planet is a death world, which they subsequently made worse by fighting a nuclear war.
Problem two is that they're just so goddamn fighty, like this is not just a stereotype or something, it's an actual problem for them.
And problem three is the genophage.
GDI-affiliated humans will be able to sympathize with Problem One, more or less. Three is, in and of itself, very sympathetic by nature. But Problem Two is less so, because GDI will tend to view very violent people not on its payroll as a problem to be shot.
I think that the Mass Effect race who will find GDI more relatable, and vice versa, by the greatest margin would actually be the turians. Because while GDI has a soldier/civilian distinction in a way the turians do not, GDI is much closer, institutionally, to the kind of regimented, structured society a turian might find comfortable.
Eh. If the Scrin were part of the Council system everyone would be screaming at them for seeding tiberium on garden worlds. Plus, of course, the Reapers would never tolerate something like tiberium within the "walled garden" of star systems they create by linking clusters up with mass relays.
It bears remembering that since the Reapers control the mass relays, they effectively decide which clusters of stars are connected, and which regions of galactic space will be inaccessible via the relay network. Any place far enough from a relay connection is "flyover country," and the Reapers have free rein at the beginning of each new Cycle to decide which places are going to be "flyover country" and which will be connected or at least able to be connected.
But tiberium represents a power they cannot control so easily, including wormhole-based FTL that lets the user "go off-road" and go places they cannot easily be chased down and exterminated by Reapers using mass relays. So they would do everything they could to eradicate tiberium, or failing that to make it impossible for any extant galactic race to find any. Indeed, if tiberium was a known phenomenon to the Reapers they might well see any sign of tiberium proliferation as a sign to trigger an immediate "rocks fall everyone dies" abrupt end to a Cycle, because the Cycle then threatens to evolve in a way they might lose the ability to control.
- Location
- his hidden lair
Honestly? The suggestion I like most so far is to lean in to the lack of easy FTL without setup infrastructure and play a bit with Starcraft. The Koprulu sector? Not convicts, STL colony ships GDI sent out to find new garden worlds given Earth's ecological collapse with the eventual goal of establishing infrastructure allowing Sol to start bringing people over with early and resource intensive equivalents to the Scrin's threshold and portal tech (which, to be fair is the only demonstrated form of FTL in C&C AFAIK). Bam, we get to explore the drama of trying to coordinate research and industrial development over meaningful lightyears, some of the ships could be damaged, some could be affected by Nod saboteurs, and there could be the legitimate drift of people years apart with possibly spotty and still relatively slow FTL comms connecting them (if they even have that).
The dynamic isn't a common one to see in scifi, but it seems like it could work. Especially if we do eventually get SC's ftl and there are limitations on the portal infrastructure. A lot of the groundwork seems to write itself, early Mengsk as a would be warlord taking on some of the trappings of Nod, GDI being content to focus on industrializing Sol and shipping civilians and material into Koprulu with their limited capacity before worlds start dying, Zerg get underfoot, and the Protoss start glassing places and then you literally have the plot of Brood War where the UED equivalent is a lot more sympathetic.
I guess to try and articulate my concern over a lot of the discussion without beating the horse to death- ME feels like low hanging fruit, and I'm not sure its the best we can come up with. If it is? Awesome, I'd love to see it. If it's the only setting you feel confident in introducing- than sure, better that than trapping yourself one way or another. But I do feel like we owe it to this awesome quest, everyone's commitment to making it great (I mean, we've got two sub quests and some great art), and your own dedication and writing that really makes the magic happen to not necessarily settle for the first one we see, y'know? I don't want to derail things, and this isn't an attempt to win a debate or something, but I'd love to see what all the possibilities we could explore are.
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fine. I apologize for not writing it more diplomatically and informationally.
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That wasn't what I had a problem with. That you felt this was something you had to explain at all was the problem, and no amount of diplomatic language would have made busting in to push your view of how a tangential subject to the thread should be developed. We're all nerds here, but I hope we are cognizant enough of our behavior to not mansplain and "Uh Actually" like we're characters from some 80's movie who are gonna be mocked for their knowledge of Star Trek. Sci-fi fandom shouldn't be about memorizing stats and proving you have bigger and bigger numbers, but that was a major strain of the WarsVsTrekVsB5 scene that SB and other websites still carry with them to this day in their culture. And to be frank, I think that old style of 'debate' is actually pretty fetid and a blight upon us.
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
- Pronouns
- He/Him
*shrugs*
Stats and numbers make more sense to my brain then story/plot does. Always did. Even before I was on SB.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I dunno. Firstly, coming in and saying "I think Mass Effect populations might actually be quite large because [reasons]" would at least be fair if done politely, it'd just be a person saying a thing without doing any particular harm. Like a lot of quest threads, we have semi-cyclic periods of activity and downtime and we are definitely in a downtime right now; a little off-topic discussion would be a forgivable sin, I think.
The act of disruptively mansplaining/"ACK-tually-ing" is very hard to separate from the tone in which things are spoken.
Secondly, the effort to think quantitatively about a limited data set is not inherently toxic. It lends itself to toxicity when combined with teenage ego problems, or with fundamentally toxic personalities who'd be asinine no matter what they were talking about. And I mean 'lends itself' semi-literally; it actively gives toxic personalities or the toxic behavior of individuals more room to be toxic.
But in and of itself, it's just a hobby, and if it's a silly one... Well, so is stamp collecting, when you think about it. I don't know about you, but if I got angry at someone who wanted to show me their stamp collection, I'd feel like I was kicking down.
BoSPaladin
The Paladin
I like the part where GDI has railguns.
...So! I've got a couple of 'whacky' plans for next turn.
First, let's have "Plan Absolute Development Apocalypse."
Now, that's obviously not a lot of *guaranteed* success, but it ought to make good progress on some important projects while actually saving money. But maybe you think the Steel Talons have gotten short shrift? Then let's try Plan "Our Most Sincere Condolences."
But Vehrec, you cry, what about the Navy? Okay, the Navy, sure, we can do something for the navy...
How's that for the navy?
First, let's have "Plan Absolute Development Apocalypse."
Code:
-[] Reclamator Fleet YZ-5a 1 die, 20R 80%
-[] Orbital Strike Regimental Combat Team Station 0/225 2 dice 40R
-[] Remote Weapons System Deployment Predator 0/240 3 dice 30R 30%
-[] Ablat Plating Deployment (phase 3) 91/200? 2 dice 20R 80%
-[] Point Defense Refits 15/250 3 dice 30R 33%
Code:
-[] Reclamator Fleet YZ-5a 1 die, 20R 80%
-[] Titan Mark 3 Deployment 0/175? 3 dice 30R 76%
-[] Mastodon Heavy Assault Walker Development 0/30 1 die 10R 100%
-[] Havoc Scout Mech Development 0/30 1 die 10R 100%
-[] Rapid Fire Laser Deployment 0/?? 2 dice ?20-30? RBut Vehrec, you cry, what about the Navy? Okay, the Navy, sure, we can do something for the navy...
Code:
-[] Reclamator Fleet YZ-5a 1 die, 20R 80%
-[] Governor Class Cruiser Shipyards
-- []Hampton Roads 2 dice 40R
-- [] Vladivostok 2 dice 40R
-- [] Durban 2 dice 40 R
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
I'd say that if you're that interested in sailors you should meet some and have some fun
Nah, I'm just taking the opportunity for some punnery. It's pretty clear that you're going for a 2/1 dice per turn at an 11% chance for two and a 59% chance on three, so after this turn the unfinished yards that can finish with one dice will be slow rolled, and the parallelism does lend to that... but I'm not really feeling the whole "three at once thing". What if our Cap Goods can't sustain a full three completions (or two completions, which is more likely)?
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god i do talk some shite. this entire post was motivated by me wanting to make a 'gay sailors' style pun. the other bit is just an attempt to go over the threshold of 'not entirely a shitpost'.
anyway. something something join the navy?
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I'm surprised you didn't go for how the plan is a lot of ship-teasing, because each only has 2 dice, which is an 11% chance each... and if I have my math correct, still only has a 29.6% chance of one completing. So, likely getting close, but no actual shipping with it.I'd say that if you're that interested in sailors you should meet some and have some fun
Nah, I'm just taking the opportunity for some punnery. It's pretty clear that you're going for a 2/1 dice per turn at an 11% chance for two and a 59% chance on three, so after this turn the unfinished yards that can finish with one dice will be slow rolled, and the parallelism does lend to that... but I'm not really feeling the whole "three at once thing". What if our Cap Goods can't sustain a full three completions (or two completions, which is more likely)
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god i do talk some shite. this entire post was motivated by me wanting to make a 'gay sailors' style pun. the other bit is just an attempt to go over the threshold of 'not entirely a shitpost'.
anyway. something something join the navy?
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
I'm... I'm not even ashamed of me missing that. It's too fucking brilliant. Thank you for your art-post: @Vehrec you're a goddamn shiptease.
(Yes, I get it; 2 die on the first action to build any given yard one turn and then slowrolling that yard until it is done, in parallel with other yards, is the most resource and dice efficient, but that's not my point here. The excuse is "something something Capital goods crunch if we roll too well on those actions". The point is juvenile gay seamen jokes)
Yo! @Ithillid is the GDI navy only amazingly gay, or is it fabulously gay?
Edit: Proposal to thread: Any plan that has two or more shipyard actions that have a non-zero[1] chance of completion in those two+ shipyard actions should have the word 'shiptease' in the plan. All credit goes to Verhrec and Lightwhispers, because that way they get the blame too
[1] Edit edit: But not 100% chance either, of course.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Comedy aside, there's something to be said for doing partial progress on several projects with the intent to finish them more rapidly on a controllable schedule... but there's so much else in the way of 'military necessity' going on that spending more than about four dice on Governor shipyards is deeply questionable. Especially when it's competing with ablatives and shell factories, both of which are urgently wanted by Ground Forces.
Plus, we did come out of the last turn with a Capital Goods surplus, so unless whatever plan we settle on for Q2 plans to go hog-wild on small-scale +Capital Goods projects and bank on that surplus to do the bureaucracy option... We don't really need to fear the consequences of completing a shipyard or two.
Plus, we did come out of the last turn with a Capital Goods surplus, so unless whatever plan we settle on for Q2 plans to go hog-wild on small-scale +Capital Goods projects and bank on that surplus to do the bureaucracy option... We don't really need to fear the consequences of completing a shipyard or two.
While they're wanted I'm pretty sure that governor shipyards are higher priority, in addition getting them out earlier is better, as unlike shell factories it's going to take some time to get something usable. For a modern destroyer I believe it takes 4 years from memory to be built, taking into account GDI building processes they'd likely take somewhere between six months to a year to be built likely leaning towards the latter. That's two quarters before we get ships out of it and they have to cover the entire sea. In contrast we have enough shells at the moment to sustain operations but we're lacking when it comes to expanding further or launching any major offensives whereas we're pretty much completely lacking cruisers. The next phase of shell factories will likely take a lot less time to get something useful out of.
I remember there was a quest ages ago on QQ where the main character was building up a trading empire set in an equivalent on 16th or 17th century, and his best friend captained one of his trading ships and ran the administration of his small fleet. Said friend was also half-seriously trying to set up various female nobles, adventurers, businesswomen etc with the main character, leading to the following conversation -
"Why are you hinting to all these women that I'm on the market for a relationship?"
"Hey it's my job! I'm your shipping manager, after all."
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I like this plan.
Gonna agree that this one is nice.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I already discussed this. I don't think this kind of analysis works out as simply as you think, because it sort of... gets backward... the impact of long construction lead times on actual strategic military outcomes.
The practical effect of "we build a shipyard one quarter slower than we theoretically could" is roughly along the lines of "the Navy has one cruiser less than it theoretically could, somewhere on the ocean, for the duration of the buildup," with "the buildup" likely to be running up through the 2060s.
Because getting the first few ships out of these yards has effectively zero strategic impact- the impact is of necessity going to ramp up slowly and increase incrementally, quarter by quarter, precisely because the yards cannot 'surge' production of warships in numbers great enough to be impactful in a naval war.
By waiting this long to do the Governor design and shipyards (and we had our reasons), we are already committed to a military reality in which there won't be enough Governors to make a strategic difference in the naval war until, optimistically, 2058 or later. Maybe more like 2060 or later. Delaying one shipyard just means we have slightly fewer ships during this timeframe, or that the deadline for "you will have ant X cruisers by time T" is pushed forward by, oh, something like 1-3 months.
By contrast, shell factories can surge production and be immediately impactful, enabling Ground Forces to launch new operations within a few months of the new factories coming online.
Now I'm not saying "ignore Governor yards." But what I am saying is that if, after we slam out the first 2-3 yards at three dice per turn, we choose to dial back to 2/turn for the last 3-4 yards, it's not going to cripple the Navy and it may be worth it for the impact on other branches of the armed forces.
This is a meme plan that commits us to seven or eight dice on the Talons, nearly ignoring the rest of the military and leaving us with about 1-2 dice left for all the rest of the armed forces' high priorities.
It is not a good idea unless we've stopped caring about everything but the Talons.
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