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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

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Glad to see the government not just kicking our asses for once (road debacle aside). I think we just need to accept the road mandate, we are not really in a position to argue for an end to prison labor (such a positive result from a double crit fail is super sus after all) and politically arguing against it is probably more of a hassle then accepting it, putting on an earnest effort we probably should have commited to anyway and worst case scenario failing it by a bit at the plan's end. As for hiring, those 2 infra dice are definitely tempting, and the students coming in under our patronage will serve as solid cadres by next plan as they are promoted. Though the -3 is a blow. As for the degree of reorganizations and the anti-corruption option, idk. But am sure the threadviet will come up with compelling arguments for them.
 
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Well, that certainly could've been worse. We are certainly in the midst of some tumultuous times. I'll have to mull over the options presented to us this turn. On an initial readthrough though, I think we can afford to push back at least a little on the roads mandate to bring expectations a bit closer to reality. Have no strong opinions on hiring, re-organizing, or anti-corruption at the moment.
 
Vi'Talzin said:
Glad to see the government not just kicking our asses for once (road debacle aside). I think we just need to accept the road mandate, we are not really in a position to argue for an end to prison labor (such a positive result from a double crit fail is super sus after all) and politically arguing against it is probably more of a hassle then accepting it, putting on an earnest effort we probably should have commited to anyway and failing it by a bit at the plan's end.
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I think conceding here is a bad idea. We would be essentially forced to shock-build a road project in order to reach our plan goals, which is going to cause problems down the line. Even if we manage to construct regional roads in the plan itself, the road maintenance service isn't equipped to handle the sudden increase in demand, requiring even more infrastructure projects to fix that. All while we lack the transport companies to actually make use of the roads, leading to a considerable effort in infra giving us decaying and mostly unused roads.
Part of the job of any economy minister is to politely tell the government when it's ideas are really stupid, so I think it's necessary to argue against the goals. Even if we can't, it's good and necessary to be on the record that the new demands are unrealistic.
 
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Also: Please, please, please, pick aggressive restructuring. This essentially reworks the economy into segments that can be allowed to go bankrupt, reducing the hold mega-complexes like the gorky tooling plant have over the whole economy. This wouldn't just prevent economic shocks from something going wrong in a specific area, it would also actively help our anti-corruption goals by breaking the power of the big institutions. If the large complexes aren't too big to fail, our anti-corruption efforts can go further and are less vulnerable to sabotage by actors in the sectors trying to protect their extortion rings cybernetically optimized feedback relations.
 
Red Rationalist said:
I think conceding here is a bad idea. We would be essentially forced to shock-build a road project in order to reach our plan goals, which is going to cause problems down the line. Even if we manage to construct regional roads in the plan itself, the road maintenance service isn't equipped to handle the sudden increase in demand, requiring even more infrastructure projects to fix that. All while we lack the transport companies to actually make use of the roads, leading to a considerable effort in infra giving us decaying and mostly unused roads.
Part of the job of any economy minister is to politely tell the government when it's ideas are really stupid, so I think it's necessary to argue against the goals. Even if we can't, it's good and necessary to be on the record that the new demands are unrealistic.
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Its 1966, putting a few more dice on roads at worse means the ministry assigned more personnel from the labor reserve and bought new equipment for them to do their jobs. We are not conscripting peasants with no winter coats and giving them a shovel, orders to conjure up 100km of road and nothing else. As for road maintenance, the opposite is true. Paved roads require less maintenance than the mud and gravel roads we would be replacing, we even had an action that highlighted this issue.
Blackstar said:
Expanded Technical Services:

The horrific state of roads has caused major failures of maintenance services from two directions. The gravel and dirt used in much of the union gets either muddy or snow-logged for much of the year, limiting what can be done when clearing. Further, operating vehicles on rough terrain and snow is heavy on the machines, leaving mechanical failure rates higher than they would be in a normal road system as in the West. Efforts to fix the problems need to be initiated immediately rather than further expansions of high speed rail or other luxuries. Current efforts to increase the scale of technical services and fund them more can serve as a temporary solution, but they are an explicitly temporary solution
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Klim, who is a transport engineer, explicitly says that paving roads will decrease maintenance issues. Like, you can argue that its too expensive and it takes away too many resources from other infrastructure projects to ramp up capacity, which is what Klim says in the option to push back against this. But anything else is a bit suspect. We are an economic superpower running a planned economy with incredibly capacity for economic mobilization, if we want to decisively adress the issue of roads at the expense of other things we can.
 
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Vi'Talzin said:
Its 1966, putting a few more dice more dice on roads at worse means the ministry assigned more personnel from the labor reserve and bought new equipment for them to do their jobs. We are not conscripting peasants with no winter coats and giving them a shovel, orders to conjure up 100km of road and nothing else. As for road maintenance, the opposite is true. Paved roads require less maintenance than the mud and gravel roads we would be replacing, we even had an action that highlighted this issue.
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I'm not talking about labour dying, I'm talking about the considerable economic disruption from trying to upgrade the entire national road grid within 3 years.
We are constructing a massive number of new roads in addition to reinforcing old ones, especially in areas that have a bad road network compared to the western SU (basically everything outside the southern Urals). While yes, upgrading the system will decrease maintenance requirements per road mile, we would also be considerably adding to the road mileage that needs to be maintained in areas that have so far seen comparatively limited motor. traffic.

Edit: Thinking more closely about the question, the maintenance requirements for upgraded regional roads could stay the same or even increase. Upgrading their capacity could induce additional logistical demand, especially if we try to reap economic benefits by increasing the size of our truck fleet in coordination with newly built roads. Greater usage of those roads due to the roads being more economically viable would increase the wear on the roads, leading to increased maintenance requirements. Additionally, road maintenance also uses the same material as road construction, which will become more pricey due to added demand during the rapid building of new roads, leading to funding being insufficient for road maintenance.
I'm not saying that this will absolutely happen, my point is we don't know the actual impacts of upgrading the roads and should therefore pursue a slower expansion. This would allow our technical services to more easily scale up their operations to meet the new challenges.
Vi'Talzin said:
Klim, who is a transport engineer, explicitly says that paving roads will decrease maintenance issues. Like, you can argue that its too expensive and it takes away too many resources from other infrastructure projects, which is what Klim says in the option to push back against this. But anything else is a bit suspect.
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I don't disagree a paved road needs more maintenance than a asphalt one (assuming equal use), but newly built roads to allow a sufficient transfer of cars from high capacity into regional ones add to the total maintenance required. I'm quite worried about rapidly adding to the technical service demands by building too much new road mileage in 3 years, overburdening the services and causing maintenance neglect as the services fail to keep up.

Also, since we are talking about Klimenko's opinion, Klim calls the scale of road construction called for "absolutely unrealistic".
Blackstar said:
[]Accept the Goal: Knuckling down and accepting an absolutely unrealistic scale of road construction will at least mollify the most offended in terms of the expansion of the road system. Funding will have to be allocated preferentially along with labor along with a likely neglect of other sectors, but the scale of construction necessary is too large for anything else.
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That is not the ministry language for "a challenge we might meet", it's Klimenko for "this is nearly impossible even if we solely focus on road building".
 
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[] Plan Reform and Reorganization
-[]Aggressive Restructuring
-[]Hiring Drives
-[]Deviate Towards Labor Policy
-[]Enable Consolidation
 
Red Rationalist said:
I'm not talking about labour dying, I'm talking about the considerable economic disruption from trying to upgrade the entire national road grid within 3 years.
We are constructing a massive number of new roads in addition to reinforcing old ones, especially in areas that have a bad road network compared to the western SU (basically everything outside the southern Urals). While yes, upgrading the system will decrease maintenance requirements per road mile, we would also be considerably adding to the road mileage that needs to be maintained in areas that have so far seen comparatively limited motor traffic.

I don't disagree a paved road needs more maintenance than a asphalt one, but newly built roads to allow a sufficient transfer of cars from high capacity into regional ones add to the total maintenance required. And since we are talking about Klimenko's opinion, Klim calls the scale of road construction called for "absolutely unrealistic".

That is not the ministry language for "a challenge we might meet", it's Klimenko for "this is nearly impossible even if we solely focus on road building".
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What economic disruption? Like, we are building roads. If anything that will increase it as transport costs go down, more areas become more accessible, a WPA style jobs program serving as stimulus. When you pave a road, you don't close it, the asphalt laying vehicle stays on one side of the road, and traffic bypasses it.

And as for maintenance, its just something that needs to be done. If maintenance costs outstripped economic return in general we wouldnt be building those roads in the first place, and our roads are so underdeveloped right now that I don't think we are at risk of that. They aren't even demanding local roads Blackstar mentioned we are getting soon, "just" the regional ones that see decent traffic.

Anyway, if we go all in on roads with 12-13 dice its possible. But even if we don't achieve it, getting like 70-80% (1470-1680 progress) done by investing a more reasonable amount would probably mollify the Supreme Soviet somewhat and probably be less costly politically than arguing with them right now.
 
Vi'Talzin said:
What economic disruption? Like, we are building roads. If anything that will increase it as transport costs go down, more areas become more accessible, a WPA style jobs program serving as stimulus. When you pave a road, you don't close it, the asphalt laying vehicle stays on one side of the road, and traffic bypasses it.
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We aren't just turning paved roads into asphalted ones, but also increasing capacity by building new roads. This would close roads. If you pursue a vary rapid upgrade program, especially in areas with a poor road network, you disrupt logistical transport if you close a road. That's economic disruption, potentially significant ones locally with a bit of bad luck in regard to the remaining roads.
Vi'Talzin said:
And as for maintenance, its just something that needs to be done. If maintenance costs outstripped economic return in general we wouldnt be building those roads in the first place, and our roads are so underdeveloped right now that I don't think we are at risk of that. They aren't even demanding local roads Blackstar mentioned we are getting soon, "just" the regional ones that see decent traffic.
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Sure, but infrastructure projects need to be done at a reasonable pace. Also, we would absolutly build economically unviable roads if the SupSov tells "we want as much road mileage as possible yesterday". Road building is relatively cheap, the real costs come in after a while. That's a contributing factor to american suburban sprawl, the initial expansion is cheap, but long-term maintenance costs are quite pricy.
MSH said:
So? Honestly, using all infra dice on roads is a good idea. It's the mid-60s and we haven't reached the point of paved roads. This is a bullet that really ought to be bitten.
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Maximum pace isn't always better. I'm not advocating against an investing heavily into roads, I'm against accepting unrealistic goals by politicians that lead us to neglect anything else in infrastructure. The point of the entire first half of the quest were the adverse impacts of expanding one economic institution too quickly at the cost of anything else, I would like us to avoid this particular mistake because a few SupSov polticians decided to set road mileage as the most important indicator. For god's sake, let's not swing into the other extreme by only building out roads this plan.
 
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The gravel roads are closed, washed out, blocked by tree fall, or snowed in most of the time anyway, a few people getting stuck on one lane getting waved through by some poor fuck in the labor reserve is small potatoes compared to the areas outside of western Russia getting real roads
 
Red Rationalist said:
We aren't just turning paved roads into asphalted ones, but also increasing capacity by building new roads. This would close roads. If you pursue a vary rapid upgrade program, especially in areas with a poor road network, you disrupt logistical transport if you close a road. That's economic disruption, potentially significant ones locally with a bit of bad luck in regard to the remaining roads.
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This honestly makes no sense to me, if there wasn't a road already there, then we aren't closing any roads. And even if this were the case for argument's sake, as the post above me points out, a lot of these roads are so bad they are literally uncrossable during especially snowy seasons as Expand Technical Services shows.
Red Rationalist said:
Sure, but infrastructure projects need to be done at a reasonable pace. Also, we would absolutly build economically unviable roads if the SupSov tells "we want as much road mileage as possible yesterday". Road building is relatively cheap, the real costs come in after a while. That's a contributing factor to american suburban sprawl, the initial expansion is cheap, but long-term maintenance costs are quite pricy.
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Nothing has changed about the projects themselves, just the timeframe to get them done. As I said before, the biggest argument against this is the opportunity cost in other infrastructure projects as we ramp up roads. And no, we aren't getting suburban sprawl. We don't have the incentives for that to happen, even if we deliver what they're asking our road system is still deeply inadequate, and that's just not how our housing program works. Anyway, yes, its probably an unrealistic pace unless we heavily commit. But I still believe not putting a fuss now and delivering underwhelming results later is much better than getting into a fight with the Supreme Soviet now. Our position is at its shakiest this turn after all, if we survive to the end of the plan, as we exit the current recession and deliver results we can probably just eat the political cost of not delivering 100% of what they wanted.
 
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Blackstar said:
Bankruptcy Proceedings
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While poor financial and investment decisions are one thing, we are getting to the point where some of the infrastructure is just too old and expensive to use. Sure, it's the bosses job to find that point where transitions between the old and new can be made with the least amount of pain, but we missed that gate. So now the question is who can manage that transition: the current management or a new batch. Recent memory would say a bailout is bad and only rewards poor management, but the breakup and sale of the company isn't foolproof. We're already very close to the 90s Oligarchs, this sale of large state-backed enterprises is exactly how the new elite came to power. The state was learning capitalism in real-time and investigating who was buying what cost money the government didn't have.

I'd back restructuring only if we're able to put a through examination of who's buying things up so we can create a diverse, competitive heavy industry sector.
Blackstar said:
Labor Transfers:
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Honestly, prison labor is just going to keep being a thing in the Soviet Union. The market forces are too strong, the creation of a middle class is always going to drive a search for a sustained source of cheap workers. I'd rather keep that source in-house where the state can keep an eye on it and regulate rather than shut it down and have to play whack-a-mole trying to get the companies to stop using underrepresented immigrants. Plus the road network in the US was a massive public works program meant to generate jobs during The Great Depression and in the post-war period. Get the unemployed, get the common criminals, get anyone who wants some nice retirement benefits and a thumbs up from the Party. If we're ever going to fix the roads across Eurasia, the scale of workers is going to be unprecedented in human history.
Blackstar said:
Engineering work on a further generation of lunar landers has gone above and beyond any expectations with the cannibalization of equipment from the moon program. The lander design itself has not been that useful, but the radar altimeter and control machinery itself has been adapted to a newer program. Using the enhanced capability of the high energy transfer stage along with a far greater landing system it is believed that a payload return mission from the moon can be conducted. Securing enough kg of space rocks will pose a far more challenging question as return payload sizes are going to be minimal due to the restrictions in guidance packages and energy required. Still, something as simple as retrieving a few kg of soil samples before the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution can present a massive international victory.
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I think that's a very significant first, and a technological breakthrough. If we can even get a probe back instead of just data transmitting until the batteries die or the atmosphere breaks the unit, that means we get very valuable data on the actual execution of a round trip. Data that can inform the landing of a manned mission by improving the accuracy of specifications.
Blackstar said:
As some variation on a strange joke, the next flight has been planned to have a German, Pole and Georgian as the first intercosmos flight.
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The German was told to say he'd been exiled to the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
The Pole was told he could not paint wings on the capsule.
The Georgian was told to speak with a cockney accent.:V
Blackstar said:
Western USSR Regional Roads:
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Well. Shit. We knew our biggest economic limitation was roads, but getting told that our most invested area is basically impossible to get up to standards in any near timeframe is rough. This is why we're probably going to have to bite the bullet on using a reformed Shock Labor system.

When you get right down to it, all the major interstate road networks in the west had military input and planning. That's probably enough of an excuse to justify peacetime military involvement.
Blackstar said:
The mobilization of the largest enterprises towards a new standard of computing and the capacity of having a massive calculating and tabulation unit on tap has driven a far larger extent of demand than expected. The mass release of the first Elbrus units has driven a far wider adoption than initially expected. Improved computing hardware in the form of denser transistor cards have already been made available with production almost entirely sold out. With increasing wages, the massive employment of programers to improve control has been seen as preferential over a massive number of secretaries. More importantly, the coherency and reliability of numbers has allowed the consolidation of critical personnel, favoring many enterprises' management. Some industrial applications have further started to apply computing systems towards direct process management, effectively eliminating floor staff in favor of a machine doing much of the work.
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You know there's going to be some jokes about whether the new computer gets to sit in on union meetings and get the same benefits as the secretary or worker they replaced.

"One day, a representative from the local Party walks in late to a meeting with plant management. He sees a dozen computers all plugged into each other. His response is that it's rude to speak in a language some in the room can't understand."
Blackstar said:
Resumption of Punishments
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The fact a plurality of people across different branches of government and society all came out against bringing back reactionary policies is a good sign that we've improved people's awareness of how the system works and what can help or hurt it. But it's going to make that prison labor much more difficult to execute if people start complaining that the justice system is broken and the Shock Labor has no rights as a worker. Not too broken up this appeasement measure got rejected, more worried about how similar measures will be viewed.
 
Holy shit we're gonna be loaded. I do worry getting the extra funding now will mean we won't get a good option available during the Atomash plan though.

I much prefer []Prioritize Quality. We will likely never have the massive boni we had under The Voz for a while, and it's particularly bad this plan. After the big expansion of the ministry under Voznesensky I think we'll make a good impression by taking it a little slower to preserve our institutional knowledge.

Not building roads will have a political cost no matter how we slice it. I figure better to promise getting it done now and risk Klimenko getting yeeted at plan's end which may well happen anyway, rather than starting yet another round of messy sausage making. (Oh by the way? With the increased critfail range from anti-corruption we'll almost likely get another fail on roads before the plan is over even if we don't chase the target)

Could someone please explain what the critfail on air conditioning means? It sounds sorta like we're comitting to just slapping an AC unit on every building instead of bothering to design for efficient climate control, but I thought that already happened from our second critfail on the project. What's happening now?

Well fuck that Second General Meeting is a shitshow. No serious planning, just political sausage making about which political enemies corrupt bastards to purge. I say []Let it Pass. And by that, I mean remain resolute. We made a plan, and we're STICKING to it. The ministry will be ruled by ORDER, major anti-corruption investigations will not be abruptly derailed for political convenience. And I sure as heck don't want to owe favors.

(But just in case: @Blackstar if we chose one of the two options that ends the investigation early but rolls extra anti-corruption dice next turn, what will be the impact on our global malus and critfail chance?)

Terminator57 said:
Here's a new omake in my "totally objective journalist treatment" series. It's called "Advancing development: the beacon of African socialism".
I hope you will enjoy it as much as the first one.
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Nice. I dream of red armies marching from Salisbury to Algiers.... probably a pipe dream though. And how cute is it that 'actually focusing on agriculture' counts as major adjustments for local conditions... ugh.

Speaking of which, next turn we need to finally take some bureaucracy actions to reform the laws farmers operate under, to get some structural improvements going.
 
Blackstar said:
In a decade of planning the industrial might of the USSR was raised to match the developed West in the most arduous period of planning and the Union and her people called for it to be done again. Road Building has lagged behind the West with a lack of emphasis due to the sheer breadth of the Union, but with newly developed automotive technologies and the development of the agricultural economy the time has come to revolutionize the countryside. Ambitious plans of constructing roads to every town and paving them are on the lips of every planner, with a target of decisive overtaking the West in all aspects by the end of the 9th Five Year Plan. Even now, capable planners are grappling with the hardest issues on rapidly raising production and development in every office and institute. -Pravda, Nov 21st, 1966
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When we get a double nat 1 and the Pravda our central propaganda piece comes out saying everybody wants to build roads then even if it is a terrible idea (i don't think it is) then we need to do it saying no is almost directly opposing the party and if we want to do deeply unpopular decisions like restructuring and ending investigations early then we can't afford to oppose every other faction because "technically" they are setting unreasonably hard goals.
 
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Seems that with a roll of 35 the Expanded Food Program was unpopular, but got passed in full scope. OK.

With our big machine shop in GreatGork falling apart economically, now is definitely time to get Sevastopol started.

Blackstar said:
Only European CMEA has been included in the current programs, but some tentative initiatives have been proposed for the integration of Asian partners but they have been rejected due to the significant social differences.
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God damn it so much for international solidarity. If we end up with a racism-powered breakup of the CMEA because SupSov doesn't want the unwashed yellow peril casually strolling through Moscow I'll be pissed.

Getting a Red EU and Red Schengen would be good mind you, but it's barely a consolation prize if we lose China and SEA.
 
General_Urist said:
Could someone please explain what the critfail on air conditioning means? It sounds sorta like we're comitting to just slapping an AC unit on every building instead of bothering to design for efficient climate control, but I thought that already happened from our second critfail on the project. What's happening now?
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Effectively your going to be building your next generation of standardized housing with HVAC units built in.
 
We need to be bold, let the spirit of the New Soviet Man™ carry us to eternal victory !
I hereby propose a sketch:

[] Plan New Soviet Man™
-[]Aggressive Restructuring
-[]Hiring Drives
-[]Accept the Goal
-[]Let it Pass

(feel free to discuss it)
 
Sort-of in favor of taking the L regarding the Roads thing and trying to complete it as much as possible. Granted we would likely need to also pick Hiring Drives because I think we would need the Dice to have an actual chance at completing that goal. We need to build the roads anyway, so this would only change the pace and timing in which it would be done.

Regarding the results of the Second General Meeting, I am most in favor of Let It Pass. I could be convinced to support Enable Consolidations and Apolitically Maneuver, my concern there is the fact that a favor will be owed. I am against Backstabbing because it would basically set the Ministry on fire and Move Past It because it ends with multiple favors being owed.

Edit:

Also, I am in favor for going with the Aggressive Restructuring option and properly dealing with the systematic issues that caused Gorky of all enterpises to go under.
 
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