Remove ads

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
[X]Staggered Launches

Definitely don't want to pack our launches too much. I'm ok with either staggered or Full Survey, but am going with the less ambitious program for now, since I'm not confident in our ability to do the other one.

[X] Alexander Fedorovich Kamenev

From a Dice perspective it's between Infra and CI for me. Either would be important fields and we want to spend focuses on both but can spare at most one, so picking one of these is the obvious choice imo.

I am in favor of the Infra guy because, looking beyond the dice, I think his ideas are more valuable. We don't need someone to tell us to drill more, and while bonuses would be nice, I value an opportunity to shift away from a reliance on prison labor more highly.

[X] Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev

All of these guys are great and I'd be happy with any of them. I'm personally voting for Gorbachev because I'm hoping that a greater equality in the legal system will lead to a better power structure overall. But I'm happy with any of these guys winning.
 
Last edited:
General_Urist said:
Crazy is convincing on the probes, but that does mean we'll need to really hope we don't get cost overruns on the Light Launcher and Nuclear Engine projects.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

With Full Surveys, we would only have 10 RpT left, which is barely enough for nuclear drives themselves unless we cut something else - and we don't really have anything to cut, even 2nd gen Luna is better to be continued since that would us provide with more incentives for manned exploration of the moon.
But we presumably would be able to fund our way through nukes, if while forcing Glushko to stay within budget.
And light launchers or even mercury probes are things that could be deferred, as former is not necessarily needed with our RLA capacity built up, and latter would benefit from waiting until nukes are done and probes design team is (mostly) done with outer system probes.
 
I'm not a fan of all this focusing on the rurals. Investing in them is not efficient (because they live in the boonies). And theh are less politically active and dangerous (I assume) than the city dwellers. And the rurals are an ever shrinking part of the population.

It's very important work helping the rural situation, it just seems like it's a thread brain worm. It seems obvious that investments in urban areas have far higher reward:effort ratios, but rurals have become sacred so we have to help them.
 
edqu said:
I'm not a fan of all this focusing on the rurals. Investing in them is not efficient (because they live in the boonies). And theh are less politically active and dangerous (I assume) than the city dwellers. And the rurals are an ever shrinking part of the population.

It's very important work helping the rural situation, it just seems like it's a thread brain worm. It seems obvious that investments in urban areas have far higher reward:effort ratios, but rurals have become sacred so we have to help them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think you're wrong on rural investments being less economically efficient right now. After all, we are dealing with both low density and low population (as well as lacking infrastructure to get to these places). However, investing in them does have an important economic benefit imo. It helps our agriculture sector stand on it's own. We can modernize equipment, develop new pesticides, fund factory farms, etc but if we don't raise the quality of life out in the rurals, it's going to be hard for the agriculture sector to find quality labor to do these important jobs. And if the agricultural sector can't find talent, we're going to have issues meeting plan goals for this sector.
 
Blackstar said:
The East African Federation has performed poorly if adequately for the time, the temporary shock in petrochemical prices led to widespread protests against the government as recently modernizing urban areas experienced acute fuel issues. The quick resolution of the fuel supply and measures towards improving stability did allow the situation to return to normal but the problems are still there.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Jeez that was close. Imagine how much worse the EAF situation would have been had the plan with the tariff compensation won?

Even then, we narrowly avoided setting CMEA on fire. Let this be a lesson: The price of Petroleum is extremely serious business and we need to keep it low because letting its price (especially CMEA price) climb is even MORE damaging than letting the price of Steel climb.

Anyways, while I still favor the Circassian, if he's obviously going to lose the vote than my second choice is the infra deputy. Infra hell is eternal, and given infra usually eats free dice getting two extra infra dice is good for flexibility still.

Also @Blackstar a couple questions: 1) Since we completed an extra stage of Samotor, how many extra Gas Projects did we get for it?
2)To confirm: Does resource cost of the three Outer Systems options include the 5 RpY from Jovian probes since they're "Effectively Combined", or is the 5 RpY from Jovian in addition to the resource cost of the Outer System options?
 
General_Urist said:
Also @Blackstar a couple questions: 1) Since we completed an extra stage of Samotor, how many extra Gas Projects did we get for it?
2)To confirm: Does resource cost of the three Outer Systems options include the 5 RpY from Jovian probes since they're "Effectively Combined", or is the 5 RpY from Jovian in addition to the resource cost of the Outer System options?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Gas projects are solved for this plan and petrochemicals and gas are largely being unified for the sake of simplicity as its not like your going to really use the natgas fraction for anything but electricity or flaring. The 5 RpY is in addition to the cost of outer system probes.
 
Nuclear Drives is expected to be 10 RpY, but it being more expensive than expected is possible so I'd rather leave room for it. And I am quite enthusiastic about it. It would be good to do some research into fundamental engine tech to give us extra avenues in the long term rather than just shoving all our spare space budget into probes. Sure, the improved electronics will have some transferability to the manned program, but I'd rather diversify a bit.

And ideally we'd also fit in the Light Launcher, but if we can't it's not a big setback since we have the RLA-1. Inefficient, but most of the expense of a program is in R&D rather than launcher cost.
 
Getting the full survey done would definitely show off the Soviet Space Program as few other things could do. I don't think the USA realistically can answer to that any time soon at all. These are long lead time projects which take a lot of effort to initially setup. Especially the Uranus and Neptune ones are basically pretty much impossible with out a super heavy launcher, and I guess in this case also having a good coincidental line up of planets to help things along with gravity assists. If you want to do those missions later on it quite possibly will be harder to achieve. The drawback is of course the cost of sending so much that far out, but any kind of success would probably be in the text books of the entire world for decades to come. So in that sense it would some what counter out the USA being the first to have men orbit the Moon and show off the Soviet Space program is still achieving impressive firsts.

It should also be noted that part of the costs is also in preparing the ability on Earth to communicate that far out in a reliable way. These would basically be a number of very large antenna in several locations around the world in required infra for the project as well as communication lines to them from the Soviet Union. They're a one time expense though as once you have them, you have them. After that one can send further missions to the outer system at will really based on past experience and existing infra, basically like what the USA does now with its occasional Jupiter and Saturn missions.


As for things one could ponder cancelling in time, the communication satellites certainly come to mind as an option. At current it's a program for rapidly further developing the capabilities of such sats, but one can wonder how much longer one really needs to do this. Other groups are free to launch some level of sats to space themselves and communication was an early one to take off in the USA in the 60s already. So I do think this is an option for cancellation if one wants to free up a bit more budgetary room, I do wonder if it would really matter much if cancelled in the 70s as such.
 
Since petroleum has become so critical I think we should look into fuel efficiency, alternative fuels and petroleum exploration and refining.
 
Moratorium's up I believe. For space I think the Full Surveys option is the right call here, that's supposed to be our big splash to make up for not doing any crewed missions beyond the basics. It's ambitious but it's still a fraction of the cost of a moonshot and it's actually achievable with a decade of lead time and a little luck.

For deputy, Balakirev is who we need most to get us out of our current petrochem pickle, but I'm fully aware he's a pretty boring choice for the long haul. If we want to start grooming a real successor to Klim and not just an administrative assistant for a weak sector then I think Berzegov has a lot of potential too. The +1 Free die isn't quite as helpful as +2 Chemical but the extra flexibility makes up for it enough that I'm not upset. Approval voting for both of them right now, I think I might actually lean Berzegov as the better heir but Balakirev is a safe bet.

And for the new Services deputy secretary, I think Tatarchuk is the best of the three to maintain at least some small commitment to rural QoL even after we shift gears to an HI focused plan. Getting the rurals properly integrated into state services is important because that's pretty much the last frontier of extreme poverty left in the USSR, the cities are pretty unfucked (at least compared to where they started) but large parts of the countryside are still living in nearly preindustrial conditions. Lots of easy support that can be picked up for cheap out there, expectations are lower so even token investments have an outsized impact.

[X]Full Surveys

[X]Vladimir Fedorovich Balakirev
[X]Nukh Aslancherievich Berzegov

[X]Nikolay Fedorovich Tatarchuk
 
[X] Staggered Launches
[X] Nukh Aslancherievich Berzegov
[X] Alexey Ivanovich Krylov
[X] Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev

I'm changing to Krylov because I've been seduced by Free Stuff. In fact, communism is when Free Stuff! Literally just bribe the public to let us be popular, government is actually easy and I'm the only person to ever figure it out-
 
Last edited:
Traveller76 said:
Since petroleum has become so critical I think we should look into fuel efficiency, alternative fuels and petroleum exploration and refining.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It would be a lot simpler to just do loads of petroleum projects. The USSR is absolutely not a nation with a shortage of viable oil fields that needs to figure out a non-petroleum route to energy security. It's just a matter of how much resources get invested in drilling.
 
KingCrimson1081 said:
It would still be a very bad thing from a strategic perspective enough so that without the Soviet collapse America might make policy to incentivize companies staying in America.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Then China and India will outcompete them with their cheap labor regardless.

You said "overseas" it doesn't matter where it is. It doesn't have to be China. Even India is not terrible choice even though they are in our sphere. There is many choice like SEA, they'll go where they want.

USA will put tarriff to protect their industry? It doesn't matter India and China will outcompete USA outside of USA. Then USA's industry will have limited pool of consumers.

So either they sink within USA or swim to land of cheap labor.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top