Besides, from what I've gathered the metros aren't actually finished when we finish the project, it's just funded and then the actual building gets done in the background. So long as we don't wait until the end of the plan to toss another dice in they have enough funds to keep things going for a bit until they have to wait for more money. Even then a metro being half completed for a few years isn't the worst thing in the world.
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.
Ashheap
Friend-shape little shrimp smoking remnants
- Location
- Bottom of the pot
Concerning Augmented Earthmoving, why are we trying to even catch up with the US? I thought this was a big no no from the start, also what's the state of our geology and weather research? Can we detect nuclear detonation from seismic and air sample yet?
Why is there no plan with Book Production? It cost only 100.
It seems our metro are quite more than adequate so if any plan with Trans-Siberian Road, GAZ plant and Civilian Airports got my vote.
Why is there no plan with Book Production? It cost only 100.
It seems our metro are quite more than adequate so if any plan with Trans-Siberian Road, GAZ plant and Civilian Airports got my vote.
Augmented Earthmoving is quite difficult to get right while not exceeding environmentally, economic and health limits. The historical track record on it for everyone was fairly mixed at least so far I could find, including the USSR.
So going for it now is a bit of a thing on whether you believe this time will for some reason be better. If not it's a wasted resource though.
So going for it now is a bit of a thing on whether you believe this time will for some reason be better. If not it's a wasted resource though.
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If we want to extend the canal system so that you can run a barge all the way from the far east to the Baltic we're basically going to be required to use nukes, theoretically it would be possible to do it with conventional earthmoving but it would cost thousands of progress points that we really don't have to spare. So it's either nukes or no deep water system past the Urals, and if we want to keep making number go up on the back of cheap industrial metals and energy we kinda need the deep water system to go past the Urals within the decade.
It's a fair point, but it does require being able to use it in a way that's actually usable. Else you just spent resources on something that in the end still doesn't get you a canal system.
I'm not going to claim to know how it will turn out though, it's possible in theory after all. But original USSR never really mastered it to the levels needed to make such a thing possible. If this is due to just not caring enough to really try, being less capable, or just the inherent problems in using nuclear devices in close proximity of a lot matter that can be irradiated... well that I don't really know for sure.
Still I think as such that at the least this project has a very definite chance of failing, quite possibly for many decades to come. The goal could be never reached.
Perhaps some one has an idea what the actual odds on it might be though.
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- Location
- The great frozen north
It's funny. We joked about the nat 1 on steel being because Kos was doing destalinization, and the actual nature of the nat was basically that some plant managers were so obsessed with steel production uptime that they didn't want to properly upgrade their old Stalin/Mikoyan-era equipment. Koba's Ghost continues to influence his followers eh? E:
As for recreational nukes, I'm not super-clear on how it went OTL but I don't think Plowshare and friends created any cripplingly irradiated wastelands or such. I think it might work. The main reason I want to do it so much is a little gamey, I'm simply curious what zany schemes Blackstar will allow us to fund if it succeeds. And even if it fails, well it's only one die and it will score us some political brownie points with those people scared of the Yanks outrunning us.
As for recreational nukes, I'm not super-clear on how it went OTL but I don't think Plowshare and friends created any cripplingly irradiated wastelands or such. I think it might work. The main reason I want to do it so much is a little gamey, I'm simply curious what zany schemes Blackstar will allow us to fund if it succeeds. And even if it fails, well it's only one die and it will score us some political brownie points with those people scared of the Yanks outrunning us.
Well they're not obsessed with uptime so much as not wanting to downsize themselves out of a job, better machinery = fewer workers and fewer workers require fewer managers. Meanwhile saying "fuck the machines just hire more people" lets you add more serfs to your little managerial fiefdom instead of having to draw straws to see who gets downsized out of the office.
- Location
- Reno
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Plan Planes, Trains, Reefers, and Automobiles
When I looked it up, I think it some times worked as hoped. But other times it risked or did pollute the environment at beyond official safety levels. There was I think also a note how at times pockets of highly radioactive material were left behind that at times had to be protected from contacting the water table. So it kind of left a series of potential risks spread here and there as well if that was correct.
It was at times used to successfully shut down out of control gas wells and such though. But I'm not sure I recall it ever being used in the end for large scale earth moving. I can but imagine this is because they couldn't over come the problems to make this viable, as they kept at it with trying till the end of the USSR.
The best thing that comes to mind that it could potentially be used for was that it could be used for gas fracture mining as well. Though as drawback the gas becomes radioactively contaminated. Though I read a suggestion that this was in principle possible to filter out, so might still be usable as such. Though at the time this project, I think a USA one, was cancelled afterwards.
Maybe it will be all over come this time as such, or not. I really don't know that much about the these projects beyond the superficial in the end, especially on the USSR side. But still don't be surprised if it falls well short of what was hoped, isn't very usable for the projects one really wanted it for, and might lead to some extra problems that might need dealing with in future either I guess.
Well basically, if you're willing to risk the potentially costly drawbacks if you roll really badly, then it's something to try. High risk, maybe high reward I suppose.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Honestly, I'm not even against finishing the metros in those three cities. It's just that they're not my idea of a top priority; they'll be fine either way and the USSR will be basically okay. These are the most secondary-est of our secondary cities, after all.
Because it uses Light/Chemical Industry dice, which are in huge demand for a whole massive array of important things including the early development of computers and also the petrochemical industry.
Expansion of the Automotive Plants (GAZ) is its own whole thing. Trans-Siberian Road is likely to show up in the next few years, but it's competing for Infrastructure dice with a lot of other stuff that's important too.
I'm willing to throw 1-2 Infrastructure dice at it on spec for the applications. Also, well, it's kind of badass, not gonna lie.
HanEmpire
Delicious
Because it's not needed. We're not short on books, Voz is just annoyed that people keep reading fiction and other "frivolous" stuff. That project will flood the bookstores with dry STEM books to turn everyone into technocrats.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I mean, as a massive nerd, I don't really think that having a glut of science books for children is a problem per se, and who knows, we might actually get some engaging Commie Carl Sagan types out of the process. But you make a fair point.
What? No, it's a real consumer publishing industry, he's describing a focus on funding science fiction authors because Voz is a massive nerd who likes scifi, but it's not like we're exclusively printing scifi either. It's funding more state printing houses that will then take commissions to print whatever people pay them to. Voz might subsidize his favorite scifi authors' publishing fees or whatever but it's not like there's censors forbidding anybody from commissioning a romance novel.
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Literally all of the plans have at least one unused free dice. Dice are not a limitation right now, resources are.
Getting the metros done is reasonably high priority but one turn without them shouldn't cause too many problems. Two turns is definitely leaving it half done for way too long though.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Oh?
In that case this project just hit "shut up and take my money" territory for me.
[blinks]
[grumble grumble]
That offends my sense of elegance, if only because my sense of elegance (probably wrongly) insists that there should be some specific area that's so gosh-darn important that it's worth leaving more regular dice fallow to be able to pay to activate more Free dice on that specific project.
But I could straightforwardly be wrong.
With that said, in a way this makes the metro project even more of a frowny face for me. We're to the point where we're spending money on systems the historical USSR found to be such a questionable investment that they never even tried, when money's frankly tight and we could be spending both the money and the Free dice either on another infrastructure project, or on something completely different.
Again, subway systems take literal years to excavate anyway, and it's not at all uncommon for construction to be delayed for weird stupid reasons. The only really practical reason waiting too long would be bad is if @Blackstar cuts the project from our roster, and I have no idea how long that would take.
I can see us doing metros during a later turn without specifically planning for it. Infra hell is eternal and all but imo we've moved out of a lower layer of it. Airports won't actually take that long to do and the renovations will also fill up pretty quickly if we can put more than one dice on them. With one dice needed we likely just need to get some more car exports started and with leftover resources and it's only a matter of time until a turn where the good LCI projects are too expensive and the cheap ones need more than one dice.
- Pronouns
- He
I don't know if this has already been discussed, but what is the situation in Latin American countries, and how did the Cuban revolution go?
Ashheap
Friend-shape little shrimp smoking remnants
- Location
- Bottom of the pot
Well everyone has their larger dreams at times. So long as one is aware of the risks then it's a choice made by everyone taking that in to consideration.
And I will admit, if you did get it to work some how, that would be quite the thing. Just a bit of a risk factor on it.
It's worth noting the value of a metro system correlates some what with the wealth and population scale of an area. Both which are a lot higher in this alternate future. So these might be secondary cities, yes, but their secondary in a very populous country and could possibly already be over 1 million people. A size at which a metro basically starts making sense, certainly a number of European cities that have them at that size.
Still while I knew that for instance Odesa was a fairly sizeable city, I didn't know how much so, so I looked at the real world pop size for Odesa, which until 2022 at least was 1 mil. This is in a less populous USSR and a Ukraine that since the breakup lost 20% of its pop.
Still it's just one number on one date, so to get a more fine grained look at it I found some population over time data for Odesa here, which indicates that in real life Odesa hit about 700k in 1960. Considering the extra pop in this alt timeline and other differences that could lead to quicker city buildup in this timeline, it's quite possibly already over a million people, maybe by a fair bit even, and will be continuing to get substantially bigger yet for decades to come. At least 1.5 to 2 mil seems like a pretty reasonable estimate for the end of the century.
Based on this you probably would want some metro there to bolster your mass transit ability. So I guess Voz was perhaps actually being some what reasonable in their selection criteria for places that should get metro systems. One could probably make a series of further cities you could build them in where the case for it is actually more marginal.
In any case, Odesa as such in this timeline is probably a fair bit bigger then I had initially expected. I thought it would be somewhere well below a million really.
Edit, I did some more work on trying to figure out how the demographics in Ukraine should be different between this timeline and original. Between the no-holodomor, much less war deaths, evacuation of city populace, and much less of Ukraine not being exposed to the Nazi genocide by bullet, that would seem to indicate maybe some 10 million people extra in Ukraine from that. Based on 1959 census data for Ukraine, that would push it up from 41-42 mil to 51-52 mil by that date, which is the highest number Ukraine ever reached in its census in 1989. But the current USSR has had much more pop growth in general and those saved 10 mil people surely would have had children as well. So based on that and the USSR having more then a third more people, this might mean something like another 20 mil people... so a Ukraine pop of 72 mil then. This leads to the conclusion that Ukraine is enormously more populous, with more urban areas in this timeline and that my Odesa estimate above is probably a substantial underestimate. Its very conceivable with that many more people in Ukraine it's already 1.5 to 2 mil.
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- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Vote Called for
Rolls inbound
[X] Plan Planes, Trains, Reefers, and Automobiles
-[X]Infrastructure, 5 Dice + 1 Free, 335 Resources
--[X] Leningrad Renovation: 0/400, 1 die (50R)
--[X] Passenger Rail Network (Western SU): 1551/2250, 1 die (75R)
--[X] Civilian Airports (Stage 1): 0/300, 3 dice (150R)
--[X] Telecommunications Infrastructure (Stage 4): 167/250, 1 die (60R)
-[X]Heavy Industry, 5/8 Dice, 485 Resources
--[X] Novocherkassk Locomotive Plant: 82/250, 1 die (80R)
--[X] Further Arc Furnace Efforts: 0/250, 3 dice (330R)
--[X] New Automotive Plants (Zaporozhye): 153/225, 1 die (75R)
-[X]Rocketry, 3 Dice, 100 Resources
--[X] Cancel Project: Communications Satellite
--[X] Development of the Stalingrad Plant (Stage 3): 88/200, 1 die (100R)
--[X] Hydrogen Engine Programs, 1 die
--[X] Vacuum Electronic Development, 1 die
-[X]Light and Chemical Industry, 8 Dice + 1 Free, 470 Resources
--[X] Petrochemical Pipelines (Stage 4): 92/350, 3 dice (150R)
--[X] Fertilizer Plants (Stage 4/5): 36/560, 4 dice (240R)
--[X] Luxury Goods Initiatives (Stage 3): 63/200, 2 dice (80R)
-[X]Agriculture, 5 Dice, 180 Resources
--[X] Peoples Dietary Initiatives: 71/200, 1 die (40R)
--[X] Enterprise Supply Management: 0/150, 2 dice (60R)
--[X] GOST Standardization: 132/150, 1 die (20R)
--[X] Development of Additional Fruits: 158/200, 1 die (60R)
-[X]Services, 0 Dice + 2 Free, 120 Resources
--[X] Film Studio Formation (Stage 3): 132/150, 1 die (60R)
--[X] Television Station Development (Stage 3): 48/175, 1 die (60R)
-[X]Bureaucracy, 5 Dice
--[X] Dedicate Focus: Arc Furnaces, 1 die
--[X] Advocate Cross CMEA Standardization, 1 die
--[X] Accelerate Rural Development Programs, 1 die
--[X] Negotiate with Kosygin and Podgorny, 2 dice
-[X]Total Cost: 1690/1695 Resources, 5 reserved
-[X]Infrastructure, 5 Dice + 1 Free, 335 Resources
--[X] Leningrad Renovation: 0/400, 1 die (50R)
--[X] Passenger Rail Network (Western SU): 1551/2250, 1 die (75R)
--[X] Civilian Airports (Stage 1): 0/300, 3 dice (150R)
--[X] Telecommunications Infrastructure (Stage 4): 167/250, 1 die (60R)
-[X]Heavy Industry, 5/8 Dice, 485 Resources
--[X] Novocherkassk Locomotive Plant: 82/250, 1 die (80R)
--[X] Further Arc Furnace Efforts: 0/250, 3 dice (330R)
--[X] New Automotive Plants (Zaporozhye): 153/225, 1 die (75R)
-[X]Rocketry, 3 Dice, 100 Resources
--[X] Cancel Project: Communications Satellite
--[X] Development of the Stalingrad Plant (Stage 3): 88/200, 1 die (100R)
--[X] Hydrogen Engine Programs, 1 die
--[X] Vacuum Electronic Development, 1 die
-[X]Light and Chemical Industry, 8 Dice + 1 Free, 470 Resources
--[X] Petrochemical Pipelines (Stage 4): 92/350, 3 dice (150R)
--[X] Fertilizer Plants (Stage 4/5): 36/560, 4 dice (240R)
--[X] Luxury Goods Initiatives (Stage 3): 63/200, 2 dice (80R)
-[X]Agriculture, 5 Dice, 180 Resources
--[X] Peoples Dietary Initiatives: 71/200, 1 die (40R)
--[X] Enterprise Supply Management: 0/150, 2 dice (60R)
--[X] GOST Standardization: 132/150, 1 die (20R)
--[X] Development of Additional Fruits: 158/200, 1 die (60R)
-[X]Services, 0 Dice + 2 Free, 120 Resources
--[X] Film Studio Formation (Stage 3): 132/150, 1 die (60R)
--[X] Television Station Development (Stage 3): 48/175, 1 die (60R)
-[X]Bureaucracy, 5 Dice
--[X] Dedicate Focus: Arc Furnaces, 1 die
--[X] Advocate Cross CMEA Standardization, 1 die
--[X] Accelerate Rural Development Programs, 1 die
--[X] Negotiate with Kosygin and Podgorny, 2 dice
-[X]Total Cost: 1690/1695 Resources, 5 reserved
Rolls inbound
- Location
- UTC+0
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They