- Location
- Northish
Whelp at least the world can't point fingers at us for being the darkest pit of human misery for once. Let the AKs flow comrade, in a few decades we are going to need that sweet sweet cobalt ore.
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
Thanks, but from the sounds up it you need Good Luck more than we do.
IIRC crit win range was 98-100 for non-ministry dice now? Who rolled the 98?
Our own rolls were... tolerable. Shame about the poor rolls on Oil Cracking. Rocketry and Reforms were decent, the 20 on modernizing to R7U is a little worrying though. We failed to elevate political allies much, but that seems manageable. As for our targets:
I did not expect CONSOOM to be the one department where we're meeting targets- Soviet Gucci must be pulling a whole 'lotta weight. Agri... I expect it will catch up, once we get pesticides and fertilizers going. CaoGoods are 'severely behind' the small target, but to be fair we haven't doen much there yet. Partly thanks to the repeated shit buss rolls.
I'm worried about our MFPG being behind though. We did a lot in the first two turns- all three Perm levels, oil and coal modernization, and the Karaganda steel mill. And we're still behind.
Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
We need MOAR STEEEEEELLLLLLL!!!!!!!
- Location
- The great frozen north
Not getting Taganrog stings given now much resources the steel plants are. At least since one of the car plants failed we won't hit a steel deficit, but boy do we need to get the other steel facilities done. Including the arc furnace one, boy that will suck power.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Part of the problem might be measuring value, rather than production.
Our extra steel production pushed the price down, thus limiting progress.
- Location
- Italy
If that's it, all we'd need to do is to bring steel down under 50 just on the last turn of the plan...
- Location
- Northish
I can't imagine we have a problem with steel production quantity, on the discord Blackstar confirmed we are outproducing the US and our OTL counterpart.
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Now, what can we do to prepare for that?
- Location
- Northish
Make some smart invests in the new Communist Republic of the Congo after handing off a few thousand AKs to grateful locals? Having friends in Africa never hurt and in a best case scenario we can work with Congo authorities to partially monopolize cobalt before everyone else learns how much they need it. In the OTL the two top producers were them and us after all.
The problem is more likely that we need more cheap steel since that hits us in the pocketbooks more deeply than just its production since we have the world's largest housing project getting done and lots of infrastructure and factories needing a lot of steel. We are trying to build a car industry from the ground up here and more steel is needed.
Appropos of nothing I think we should do the rocket plant next turn. We'll probably go negative on aluminum but -10 rpt to make up for the short fall is no big deal on its own and if it gives discounts to two programs it breaks even monetarily while giving our space program and associated technology a big boost.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Well, thing about MGFP is that it mostly fuels our other industries instead of doing anything on its own, and we're OK at keeping up with demand. So even if it makes a political mess, failing to meet that target probably won't cause us economic problems.
Will getting that sweet cobalt drive down option prices like the other minerals from Perm did? Of so them HECK YEAH SCREW BELGIUM.
The 200 resource (at 2 dice) initial investment is quite steep. Needs to save about 20 RpT to pay off over the rest of the plan (neglecting the penalty for negative aluminium, with it it's 30). Still, probably better to do it sooner rather than later. Next turn is the last one we'll have the stockpile from the loan I think (?), I guess doing it then is reasonable. (We also want to do telecoms, but now that the cost of THAT is knocked to 60 resources per dice, it's no longer as hard a pill to take. 1 dice roads, 1 rail, 3 telecoms next turn?)
- Location
- Northish
While the main value will be after lithium-ion batteries are invented cobalt allows for superalloy production, advanced tooling, and more. Having a cheap supply can only help as we transition to more advanced manufacturing.
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
China's on friendly terms with us still, right?
Otherwise, LiOn batteries will be difficult for the USSR. Deposits for it are pretty inequitably distributed, and without Soviet-Chinese partnership we might be better served pursuing Sodium Ion (with the right chemistry, it can completely skip the majority of the scarce elements used in batteries, at a fairly minor performance cost) or Aluminum Ion technology.
- Location
- Northish
I doubt they trust us extensively, but we have been trading everything from guns to machine presses without issue for well over a decade. Plus they don't trust the US/European powers far more and we are the strongest ally they have.
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
That makes lithium ion batteries a possibility at least, then. Especially possible if Chile goes socialist. The only three old world countries with any notable reserves of lithium are Australia (stretches the definition of old world), China, Zimbabwe, and Portugal (stretches the definition of 'notable reserves), and roughly 3/4 of those old world reserves are in Australia with the remaining 1/4 mostly in China.
- Location
- Italy
once we further expand oil production we could probably make gas/oil pipelines to trade with them. That's likely to come up later though.
We'd also likely want to build such pipelines connecting us to our other allies, and at some point we might also wish to integrate the electric grids as well.
For now we still have to expand production on lots of both raw and processed goods: Plastics, Oil and Gas, Steel, Aluminum, Cars and Buses, Medicines and drugs...
Actually, quick check on the wiki
so, in Original Timeline, we're actually VERY close to the construction of what I think was the first pipeline to other countries.
That will be a BIG source of income, and will allow us to expand production pretty quickly. We'll have to be careful to not overcommit on Oil though. Our economy needs to be based on more than that.
We don't want, for example, to be left behind on semiconductors/microchips, and once they become an option we'll also likely want to invest on alternative electricity sources, like Wind, Solar and Geothermal.
Geothermal: we're close to when it was first used, though I think it has limited potential for scaling in the short-to-medium term.
Wind: it's technically already around, but I think it's not good enough on a large scale for us. Then again, there's plenty of empty land in Russia where we could probably build them if we can come up with a good model.
Solar: the idea and tech sort of exist. the problem, as always, is efficiency and mass production. Then again, we can begin by using it for our Rocketry missions. Mars and Venera projects will certainly need solar cells tech after all, and that can be a starting point for our research into mass-adoption use
We built a pipeline to Warsaw, as well as tanker terminals for the Baltic (Leningrad) and Black/Med Seas (Rostov) in 1951. Petrorubles aren't that lucrative compared to a lot of our other hustles anyways, we've had so much oil all game that it's never even been tracked we just always have enough, the machines and consumers that burn the oil are a better moneymaker for us at this point than yet more oil depressing the price even more.
- Location
- Italy
we really need a post to track what kind of big factories/infrastructur things we have already. it's easy to forget about the old pipelines.
A post collecting completed actions (highest stage only), maybe? or something like "this 5 year plan accomplished this"
Informational: Achievements of the First Five-Year Plan
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Hm, you know. That's just crazy enough to work! I'll start compiling. I'm open to suggestions and will go on adding and expanding to this post as time goes. Maybe we can talk Blackstar into giving it a threadmark in Informational.
For a baseline of where the USSR stood economically and technologically speaking at quest start (as of this writing, barely thirty in-game years ago), see here.
1928: Sergo Ordzhonikidze takes command of the Five Year Plan. Extensive construction of lock and dam systems on the Dnieper river. Completion of the major Uralmash heavy machinery plant in Sverdlovsk. Reports include roughly 3000 on-site deaths at Uralmash alone, including frostbite, disease, and numerous workplace accidents.
1929: Expansion of the Siberian telegraph system. Massive efforts to expand the Donbass coal mines; even at this early date, losses in the mines motivate Comrade Sergo to try and shift focus in favor of mechanization. Baku oil complex begins production, but there is an ecological disaster, with a major oil spill on the Caspian Sea. Closed cities founded for academics. Bureaus of Agriculture founded and kept apolitical at considerable cost in Party support; reports of the inefficiency and lack of equipment found in Soviet agriculture begin filtering their way up to Moscow. Major efforts to increase agricultural education and outreach. Major efforts to keep said programs as apolitical and scientifically grounded as possible, pursuant to which, Lysenko gets purged as a wrecker. Unfortunately, the overzealous NKVD purges hundreds of scientists working in 'soft' fields, with lasting effects.
1930: Expansion of the river barge and (Far Eastern) shipyard infrastructure, along with further expansions at Baku. Establishment of new polytechnic universities, locomotive works, phosphate mines, textile works, and the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. USSR dumps ridiculous amounts of coal from the Donbass onto the German economy, exacerbating the Great Depression. Construction begins on the planned cities at Zlatoust and Magnitogorsk.
Comrade Sergo has long conversation with Stalin (!) and convinces him (!!) that he is doing communism wrong (!!!). Schemes to brutalize the peasantry via de-kulakization and forcible relocation to collective farms are scrapped; Stalin is persuaded that the transition to mechanized agriculture means that thepeasants rural proletarians do not necessarily need to be brutalized to the brink of oblivion after all! Stalin initiates a purge of pretty much everyone in the party to the left of him on collectivization. Massive programs toward rural modernization, but drive to collective farming is focused around voluntary transition rather than forced migration. Significant reductions in overall deaths due to famines and purges of rural populations in the Soviet Union compared to OTL. Purges still ongoing; ULAG forced labor camp system is folded into overall VSNKh system.
1931: The gulag workforce suffers terribly during efforts to construct extensive lock and dam systems on the Neva River in the grip of the Russian winter, though the program succeeds in providing copious electricity to the city of Leningrad at the cost of thousands of lives. Further shock labor campaigns are thrown into the task of building up the great steel mill city of Magnitogorsk and the nonferrous metal complexes around Zlatoust, though the latter proves challenging enough that casualties are high even by the statistical commissariat's standards. The USSR makes much of the establishment of new air mail services and the redistribution of land in many rural towns, along with campaigns to repair run-down Czarist-era housing and facilities in rural communities. The state hospital and school systems are expanded.
In response to the extreme casualty rates, VSNKh approves increases in rations for prison labor divisions, in hopes of reducing casualties to accidents and frostbite. Fortified by stacks of pancakes, the ULAG divisions expand the Black Sea port of Nikolaev (today's Mykolaiv) and tear into the task of building a gigantic hydroelectric dam at Stalingrad, and a general extension of power line infrastructure across the Union. The decision is made to establish interregional high-voltage lines capable of carrying significant energy for load balancing purposes; this will be an extensive project but will give the USSR the beginnings of an integrated national electric grid in time. Magnitogorsk and Zlatoust continue to expand by leaps and bounds.
This year also heralds the first major efforts by VSNKh to recruit women for factory work.
1932: Unfortunately, not even pancakes are enough to save the gulag labor divisions dispatched to perform mass repairs and upgrades all along the length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad; casualties are heavily. Construction of a new generation of coal-fired power plants with domestically manufactured turbines works out more gracefully: "the smokestacks continue to billow black smoke, a true symbol of progress." In the summer, the surviving labor divisions converge on the city of Gorky, where they begin construction of infrastructure to support a massive array of factories for machine tools and giant chemical reaction vessels. Construction work on the Stalingrad Hydroelectric Station also continues throughout the year.
A technical education program founded this year proves wildly successful, with the lecture sessions slotted neatly into existing factory shifts as a form of break, and there are major expansions of the public school and university system. Experiments in Soviet science lead to promising starts in the fields of industrial chemistry and agriculture, as prototype coal liquefaction and syngas plants prove effective, and as a seed irradiation program designed to produce mutant variants take off. Rumors that young Nikita Khrushchev is plotting to one day take over the USSR with giant mutant corn are no doubt entirely exaggerated. The Union also takes its first steps into the plastics industry with the creation of a series of bakelite plants.
This year marks the first Soviet guest worker program, with Chinese workers (mostly refugees and convicts) being brought in to help operate various mines and other facilities.
1933: Starting in January, Ordzhonikidze's health, never the best, begins to worsen rapidly. Deteriorating fast, he retired to his dacha, then died in late February after a three week stay in Moscow State Hospital. This came at the effective end of the First Five Year Plan. Comrade Stalin chose another old friend, Anastas Mikoyan, to lead VSNKh onward...
For some... interesting reading assessing the First Five Year Plan's legacy, see Comrade Bazarov's report, here.
Achievements of the Five Year Plans
First Five Year Plan (1928-1933)
First Five Year Plan (1928-1933)
For a baseline of where the USSR stood economically and technologically speaking at quest start (as of this writing, barely thirty in-game years ago), see here.
1928: Sergo Ordzhonikidze takes command of the Five Year Plan. Extensive construction of lock and dam systems on the Dnieper river. Completion of the major Uralmash heavy machinery plant in Sverdlovsk. Reports include roughly 3000 on-site deaths at Uralmash alone, including frostbite, disease, and numerous workplace accidents.
1929: Expansion of the Siberian telegraph system. Massive efforts to expand the Donbass coal mines; even at this early date, losses in the mines motivate Comrade Sergo to try and shift focus in favor of mechanization. Baku oil complex begins production, but there is an ecological disaster, with a major oil spill on the Caspian Sea. Closed cities founded for academics. Bureaus of Agriculture founded and kept apolitical at considerable cost in Party support; reports of the inefficiency and lack of equipment found in Soviet agriculture begin filtering their way up to Moscow. Major efforts to increase agricultural education and outreach. Major efforts to keep said programs as apolitical and scientifically grounded as possible, pursuant to which, Lysenko gets purged as a wrecker. Unfortunately, the overzealous NKVD purges hundreds of scientists working in 'soft' fields, with lasting effects.
1930: Expansion of the river barge and (Far Eastern) shipyard infrastructure, along with further expansions at Baku. Establishment of new polytechnic universities, locomotive works, phosphate mines, textile works, and the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. USSR dumps ridiculous amounts of coal from the Donbass onto the German economy, exacerbating the Great Depression. Construction begins on the planned cities at Zlatoust and Magnitogorsk.
Comrade Sergo has long conversation with Stalin (!) and convinces him (!!) that he is doing communism wrong (!!!). Schemes to brutalize the peasantry via de-kulakization and forcible relocation to collective farms are scrapped; Stalin is persuaded that the transition to mechanized agriculture means that the
1931: The gulag workforce suffers terribly during efforts to construct extensive lock and dam systems on the Neva River in the grip of the Russian winter, though the program succeeds in providing copious electricity to the city of Leningrad at the cost of thousands of lives. Further shock labor campaigns are thrown into the task of building up the great steel mill city of Magnitogorsk and the nonferrous metal complexes around Zlatoust, though the latter proves challenging enough that casualties are high even by the statistical commissariat's standards. The USSR makes much of the establishment of new air mail services and the redistribution of land in many rural towns, along with campaigns to repair run-down Czarist-era housing and facilities in rural communities. The state hospital and school systems are expanded.
In response to the extreme casualty rates, VSNKh approves increases in rations for prison labor divisions, in hopes of reducing casualties to accidents and frostbite. Fortified by stacks of pancakes, the ULAG divisions expand the Black Sea port of Nikolaev (today's Mykolaiv) and tear into the task of building a gigantic hydroelectric dam at Stalingrad, and a general extension of power line infrastructure across the Union. The decision is made to establish interregional high-voltage lines capable of carrying significant energy for load balancing purposes; this will be an extensive project but will give the USSR the beginnings of an integrated national electric grid in time. Magnitogorsk and Zlatoust continue to expand by leaps and bounds.
This year also heralds the first major efforts by VSNKh to recruit women for factory work.
1932: Unfortunately, not even pancakes are enough to save the gulag labor divisions dispatched to perform mass repairs and upgrades all along the length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad; casualties are heavily. Construction of a new generation of coal-fired power plants with domestically manufactured turbines works out more gracefully: "the smokestacks continue to billow black smoke, a true symbol of progress." In the summer, the surviving labor divisions converge on the city of Gorky, where they begin construction of infrastructure to support a massive array of factories for machine tools and giant chemical reaction vessels. Construction work on the Stalingrad Hydroelectric Station also continues throughout the year.
A technical education program founded this year proves wildly successful, with the lecture sessions slotted neatly into existing factory shifts as a form of break, and there are major expansions of the public school and university system. Experiments in Soviet science lead to promising starts in the fields of industrial chemistry and agriculture, as prototype coal liquefaction and syngas plants prove effective, and as a seed irradiation program designed to produce mutant variants take off. Rumors that young Nikita Khrushchev is plotting to one day take over the USSR with giant mutant corn are no doubt entirely exaggerated. The Union also takes its first steps into the plastics industry with the creation of a series of bakelite plants.
This year marks the first Soviet guest worker program, with Chinese workers (mostly refugees and convicts) being brought in to help operate various mines and other facilities.
1933: Starting in January, Ordzhonikidze's health, never the best, begins to worsen rapidly. Deteriorating fast, he retired to his dacha, then died in late February after a three week stay in Moscow State Hospital. This came at the effective end of the First Five Year Plan. Comrade Stalin chose another old friend, Anastas Mikoyan, to lead VSNKh onward...
For some... interesting reading assessing the First Five Year Plan's legacy, see Comrade Bazarov's report, here.
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- Location
- Italy
well, this is nice! I didn't expect someone to immediately follow up on it!
In any case, even with all the problems we still have, it's kind of miraculous just how much things have gotten better in these 30 years.
Generally speaking, standards of living are WAY up, we produce MANY times more of everything, there is now a decent infrastructure in terms of railways and electricity, and electricity is available more or less everywhere, education and healthcare are more or less universal (if not quite up to standards in more rural areas), we export lots of things, have plenty of "allies", we have something approaching a modern concept of "justice"...
Also Stalin and Mao died sooner that we hoped for, and I imagine we won't get OT North Korea either, so it all seems to be going pretty great!
AND we're on course to reach the moon first, and about to introduce plenty of new technologies as well into the country, like solar tech for the rockets, Arc Furnaces to improve steel production...
- Location
- Russia
These were mass built in quest in early 50s already. It's simply a specialized process, suitable for scrap processing and some specialized alloys, but not for primary smelting of iron out of ore, and description of current expansion reflects it.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
By the way, as I chug along through this, can someone explain to me exactly what was happening with the rewriting of the Partmaximum back in 1932? I'm a little confused.
- Pronouns
- Viewer
If I understood it correctly that was an action we took to prevent the partmaximum from being repealed. The partmaximum was a limit on the salary that a member of the party could have. So to prevent the party members from repealing it and being able to have huge salaries from the bonuses they recieved we rewrote it so that they instead recieved a salary at a 2 to 1 ratio compared to the average employer.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Threadmarked and counted as a cannon omake, thank you for doing this/summing up the information. Part-Max re-write mostly messed with the ratios as a mid-line compromise from a full repeal/to encourage party members to stop taking unofficial income. It changed the ratio, but it only mildly reduced the whole payment in kind benefits that most party work involved.