Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
- Thread starter Blackstar
- Start date
- Alt. History Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Given it seems our labor costs could go up really quickly in the future (At the current rate they might hit 60 by the end of the next plan) I don't think automating our HI sector is something we want to avoid. At least the companies will stay here, and it will be easier to deflect accusations of encouraging parasitism when we can conclusively say we don't HAVE work for them to do.
Though, do we have any reason to expect Grabin or Lomakin to be opposed to automation, as opposed to non-active proponents? I'm in favor of Grabin myself right now, since he has process engineering knowledge (useful for nuclear and coal plants) while also being comitted to general modernization. Lomakin is overspecialized for our needs. But none of the three would be an outright bad option.
The steel thing stings. With two less production, the price is at exactly 40 now? Talk about close. Given the main problem is cost of extraction (I.E. energy costs) from the sub-par ores, building the Krasnoyarsk-Irkutsk cascade should allow profitability to be restored (and hopefully allow stage 3). And that "in a decade" is a clear timer! I wanted to start the Lena cascade in the next plan (Sweet aluminum) and this one in the 10th, but I can accept doing the Yenisei now if we really want to get a handle on steel.
While it works well gameplay-wise, lore-wise it does feel silly for a critfail to retroactively make all our geologists wrong about how productive Bakchar could be (presumably we'd be able to complete stage 3 normally without that).
EDIT: For agriculture, Month knows how to maintain the quality of both poor and good soils, so he's the one option that seriously cares for ecology rather than just intensifying mechanization and chemicalization. The closest we'll get to a direct Smolin replacement. Not sure about the deputy. Keeping Skackov would preserve the old 'ecologist-engineer duo' which worked well, though he IS a Voznesensky man. Bondradenko would focus on high-value profitable stuff but separating farms and enterprises from "anything outside market mechanisms" sounds like a bad idea. And Vasiliev...
Vasiliev... Well, he WILL solve the water problem alright. It's River Reversal, and promoting him means we're irreversibly setting "major redesign of Asia's hydrlogical system" as the accepted political baseline. I want to do this mainly for OOC reasons to see how Blackstart treats the concept, but I don't know enough to say if it's optimal for gameplay.
Though, do we have any reason to expect Grabin or Lomakin to be opposed to automation, as opposed to non-active proponents? I'm in favor of Grabin myself right now, since he has process engineering knowledge (useful for nuclear and coal plants) while also being comitted to general modernization. Lomakin is overspecialized for our needs. But none of the three would be an outright bad option.
The steel thing stings. With two less production, the price is at exactly 40 now? Talk about close. Given the main problem is cost of extraction (I.E. energy costs) from the sub-par ores, building the Krasnoyarsk-Irkutsk cascade should allow profitability to be restored (and hopefully allow stage 3). And that "in a decade" is a clear timer! I wanted to start the Lena cascade in the next plan (Sweet aluminum) and this one in the 10th, but I can accept doing the Yenisei now if we really want to get a handle on steel.
While it works well gameplay-wise, lore-wise it does feel silly for a critfail to retroactively make all our geologists wrong about how productive Bakchar could be (presumably we'd be able to complete stage 3 normally without that).
EDIT: For agriculture, Month knows how to maintain the quality of both poor and good soils, so he's the one option that seriously cares for ecology rather than just intensifying mechanization and chemicalization. The closest we'll get to a direct Smolin replacement. Not sure about the deputy. Keeping Skackov would preserve the old 'ecologist-engineer duo' which worked well, though he IS a Voznesensky man. Bondradenko would focus on high-value profitable stuff but separating farms and enterprises from "anything outside market mechanisms" sounds like a bad idea. And Vasiliev...
Vasiliev... Well, he WILL solve the water problem alright. It's River Reversal, and promoting him means we're irreversibly setting "major redesign of Asia's hydrlogical system" as the accepted political baseline. I want to do this mainly for OOC reasons to see how Blackstart treats the concept, but I don't know enough to say if it's optimal for gameplay.
Last edited:
- Location
- UTC+0
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
[]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan: One of the technical pioneers of the Sevastopol plant's integrated process with further experience in the electronics industry a further focus on modernization is almost certain to involve increased computerization. An electrical engineer rather than a directly applicable profession, a wealth of experience working with early NC machinery along with more refined systems with Elbrus units predisposes him well to a focus on general modernization. He also remains one of the few advocates for the transition of factory labor towards more automated forms, increasing efficiency and freeing labor for intellectual pursuits.
Well, Denisov is already noted as "conventional", so if we don't at least have a deputy advocating for it, I doubt he will implement it with any kind of urgency. And the fact the text says Karapetyan is one of the few advocates for it implies it is an unpopular stance to take so I doubt the others will any time soon.
- Location
- The great frozen north
I see thanks for catching that. It's a big update and I was in a hurry, I missed a few details.
At worst hell jump the gun on some of the fancier automation techs and saddle some factory with early adopter woes. As for qualifications he is from the sevastapol plant and has experience in automating high value production lines so it's not like he's an amateur. Historically we already know that automation is inevitable just from the nature of us having a profit based system with easy trade between countries with way lower wages than us, so imo getting on it early and using the rapidly booming service sector to eat the unemployment sounds like a good way to prevent problems down the road.
The downside of course being that we also really need electricity so the other guy is also a good pick.
The downside of course being that we also really need electricity so the other guy is also a good pick.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Regarding Agriculture and dams: One practical worry is that pursuing it will cause our Agriculture and Infrastructure ministries to butt heads as Infra insists that massive projects to reshape the surface of the Union is exclusively their job and the two argue about how much diverting the water south will interfere with using it for electricity production on the river cascades and who's apparatchiks get the privilege of working on it.
We already have one river reversal project available, the Volga stabilization. Under Infra.
We already have one river reversal project available, the Volga stabilization. Under Infra.
I am not sure why you think that Borisenko would suck us into manned Mars and Venus missions? For one, that would take BIG nuclear drives, not the smaller ones we're contemplating to fire probes off or maybe even do that Lunar landing, for another, we've already demonstrated that we can pull back from a manned race and provide alternatives that give the politicians things to brag about.
I think you may be under-estimating just how big a deal diverting the rivers of Siberia would be. Keep in mind this is one of the things that falls under "so crazy even the OTL Soviet Union balked". Significantly, the wetlands those rivers feed support a big chunk of the birdlife of Asia and the European USSR (since you know, alot of birds migrate). A crash in the bird population would mean a crash in the population of insect predators, which would hit yields as well as generally hammering everything whose seeds got dispersed by birds, eats birds or gets eaten by birds, destabilizing the ecologies around the farm.
It may be redundant to say this, but the ecological problem isn't simply one of "pedal to the metal until the 21st Century when all of this suddenly becomes an issue" - it is an issue for the present day of the quest.
It's just an issue that our ministers don't have the mental or political tools to grapple with, so between that and other pressures, "do no harm" isn't an option. But choosing between bad and even worse options is still meaningful.
Now, it may be that doing the Volga is in our interests, since that experience might hasten the inclusion of ecological ramifications into the planning process. But that might be an optimistic take
I'm not sure about that...
The 70s in OTL were a period of intense change in industrial processes - Karapetyan might not be the right man to make 1960s factories hum, but we have his very conventional boss for that. And in a decade, if we haven't largely automated industries like car manufacture and tool production (precision tooling means machines) we are toast.
So someone who isn't a good fit for building the factories of yesterday, but who can help us build the factories of tomorrow with his conservative boss keeping things grounded actually sounds like a good team for a transitional period.
I do wonder if we need to double the grid though... Lomakin seems focused on overtaking the Americans for the sake of overtaking the Americans. Whether we actually need that much power is an important question though.
While there's no sign of slacking in demand growth yet, in OTL the satiation of electricity demand/capita arrived with shocking suddenness. Today, most of the cost of electricity for people living in the Pacific Northwest of the US is paying debts taken out for powerplants that were never built, or built, never used and then demolished, because the power company in the region was expecting demand to keep doubling in the 70s, but it didn't.
Regards,
fasquardon
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X]Alexander Gavrilovich Kogutenko
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
[X]Boris Alekseevich Rodionov
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
Edit:
To hopefully not getting completely bodied by Japan in the future.
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
Edit:
To hopefully not getting completely bodied by Japan in the future.
[X]Alexey Andreevich Borisenko
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
- Location
- The great frozen north
Our current HI head is a coal miner. He might not modernize our coal mining and power plants as much as others might, but conventional deposits and cycles will suffice for us for the next decade. We don't particularly need a deputy who's also pushing power hard.
Bondarenko is a trap option that will let enterprises run wild, so for that plan we need to keep Skakchov as deputy. Problem is the other minister candidates have issues: Paskar focuses on large state farms rather than smallholders, Month wants to expand the Virgin Lands campaign rather than intensify, and Songalia demands a degree of chemicalization we can't match in the 9th plan with how desperate for petrochemicals we'll be (and wants "water control"- does it refer to local water management, or do they also want river reversal?). I think Month is the least damaging, presumably they have interest in not immediately ruining all those new soils. Songalia I could tolerate (non Russian, yay affirmative action!) since as a 'conventional' they won't totally ignore mechanization, though we'd have to take a low agri target next plan and catch up in the 10th.
I like this idea! The Volga is our smallest River Reversal project and the one place where doing it patches a slowly bleeding sore (lowering water levels in a very important shipping route) rather than trying to build a whole new water system we could life without. Doing this least harmful option to show SupSov we're not cowards, and then pointing to the damage it does in Russia to show them that doing it elsewhere is totally not worth it, sounds like it's worth a shot at least!
Bondarenko is a trap option that will let enterprises run wild, so for that plan we need to keep Skakchov as deputy. Problem is the other minister candidates have issues: Paskar focuses on large state farms rather than smallholders, Month wants to expand the Virgin Lands campaign rather than intensify, and Songalia demands a degree of chemicalization we can't match in the 9th plan with how desperate for petrochemicals we'll be (and wants "water control"- does it refer to local water management, or do they also want river reversal?). I think Month is the least damaging, presumably they have interest in not immediately ruining all those new soils. Songalia I could tolerate (non Russian, yay affirmative action!) since as a 'conventional' they won't totally ignore mechanization, though we'd have to take a low agri target next plan and catch up in the 10th.
HanEmpire
Delicious
[X]Boris Alekseevich Rodionov
[X]Pyotr Andreevich Paskar
[X]Keep Skachkov
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
For Agri, I want to go with the candidates that will try to reduce water use instead of doing River Reversal. RR is a meme that must die for the wetlands of the Union to live. And, y'know, prevent ecological collapse.
I initially wanted to promote Skachkov but the other two deputy picks are garbage enough for me to keep him there; Bondarenko is an SOE man who'll balloon agri-SOEs to Too Big To Fail levels while Vasiliev wants River Reversal. Skachkov at least worked on soil loss prevention IRL and should have similar expertise TTL.
[X]Pyotr Andreevich Paskar
[X]Keep Skachkov
[X]Grigor Sergeevich Karapetyan
For Agri, I want to go with the candidates that will try to reduce water use instead of doing River Reversal. RR is a meme that must die for the wetlands of the Union to live. And, y'know, prevent ecological collapse.
I initially wanted to promote Skachkov but the other two deputy picks are garbage enough for me to keep him there; Bondarenko is an SOE man who'll balloon agri-SOEs to Too Big To Fail levels while Vasiliev wants River Reversal. Skachkov at least worked on soil loss prevention IRL and should have similar expertise TTL.
- Location
- Earth, Milky Way
"Bad thing is probably going to happen, so let's contribute to that bad thing and intensify it!"
Let's avoid heating up the global cold war between paranoid superpowers armed with huge amounts of nukes, shall we? Just cause we didn't all die in our timeline, doesn't mean that's not going to happen in this quest. Maybe their hawks escalate first and get some minor win in some truly irrelevant third world country, who cares? Let's not throw fuel on the fire.
"Bad thing is probably going to happen, so let's contribute to that bad thing and intensify it!"
In this case I don't care about waterway ecologies so I have no problems with building dams. But have you been reading James C. Scott?
[X]Alexander Gavrilovich Kogutenko
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Yuri Ivanovich Lomakin
To be fair i think we are swiftly going to find more people in favour of automating factories when we jack up labour prices as i imagine enterprises suddenly begins being real eager to shed labour when it stops being cheap as dirt
[X]Advance Skachkov
[X]Nikolai Fedorovich Vasiliev
[X]Yuri Ivanovich Lomakin
To be fair i think we are swiftly going to find more people in favour of automating factories when we jack up labour prices as i imagine enterprises suddenly begins being real eager to shed labour when it stops being cheap as dirt
Communism is definitely not a high modernist ideology despite what the socdems/liberals/fascists/stalinists/ecomodernists want you to believe
sorry Leigh Phillips if you're here I hate you buddy
everyone go read kohei saito's "Karl marx's eco-socialism"
now the ussr was absolutely an ecocidial monstrosity and just a perfect mirror of the us
it's even worse and more like the us in this quest than otl
money, markets, Wage labor, a belief in growth, a diehard belief in industrial society being one way and one way only, eurocentric Enlightenment ideas
and this quest does a great job showing just awful and dystopian and truly non communist all this is
we're effectively playing the ultimate villains
allows one to see just how bad our own modern world is and the ideas behind everything
it would be so fun to play the eventual eco-terrorist/green anarchist/degrowth socialists movements that spring up and show people just how radically different different understandings of communism and liberation are
everyone should check out the xenopoesis quest for a communist un focusing on restoring the world
also mnkh thread "how to blow up a pipeline" bookclub when?
sorry Leigh Phillips if you're here I hate you buddy
everyone go read kohei saito's "Karl marx's eco-socialism"
now the ussr was absolutely an ecocidial monstrosity and just a perfect mirror of the us
it's even worse and more like the us in this quest than otl
money, markets, Wage labor, a belief in growth, a diehard belief in industrial society being one way and one way only, eurocentric Enlightenment ideas
and this quest does a great job showing just awful and dystopian and truly non communist all this is
we're effectively playing the ultimate villains
allows one to see just how bad our own modern world is and the ideas behind everything
it would be so fun to play the eventual eco-terrorist/green anarchist/degrowth socialists movements that spring up and show people just how radically different different understandings of communism and liberation are
everyone should check out the xenopoesis quest for a communist un focusing on restoring the world
also mnkh thread "how to blow up a pipeline" bookclub when?