Yeah, I agree. I do think that next turn if we're at 260/300, it'd be better to toss in 3 dice or something, but that's just because failing to do the Census at all would be a very, very bad look for us.
It'll depend on the exact numbers and how they play out. If it's a difference between a 99% chance and a 99.8% chance or something, it's probably not worth the extra die in my book, but if it's a difference between a 95% and a 99% chance, that's different.
And, hell, there's a better than 50/50 chance that my plan either finishes the action, or puts it so close to finishing that it completes on bonuses alone in Q4 even with a single die.
So can we finally start working on Korhal Regreening next turn or is it going to be one of those actions put off forever?
I dunno. If my plan wins, we'll be working on it. Maybe not as fast as you'd like, but not all that slow, either. I suspect Mengsk will get a little cranky if the phases of the regreening (which he apparently doesn't care about) significantly outpace the phases of the Augustgrad construction (which he does).
Late reply but this honestly doesn't track for me: if you wanted to reduce expected Paranoia gains, it would be more productive to shift your dice allocation, like how you put only 2 dice on Fort Horner (30ish %) that would've provided some reduction to offset Arendt's Criminal contacts. Fort Horner completed anyways, but it required omake bonus. It comes off like a wasted Personal dice as it had a very low risk of failing so it's inefficient mitigation.
The exact manner in which I shifted dice allocation reflected a desire to balance "lower expected Paranoia" against "accomplish specific goals." The bulk of my Free dice were allocated to the Nephor II reconstruction project, because I very much wanted to complete Phase 1 of that project for reasons I've already discussed. Since Free dice were not immediately available purely for Paranoia reduction, I was reduced to shifting dice within individual categories.
You will note that I did exactly that in Research, shifting a die from the university project (eliminating its 15% chance of adding +5 Paranoia) to Broken Mesa (increasing its chance of subtracting -10 Paranoia by nearly 30%).
To do the same in Military, I would have had to take dice off
Refloating the Fleet to complete Fort Horner, which struck me as being counterproductive given that
both are Paranoia-cutting projects with roughly equal (negative) Paranoia return on dice investment.
There might purely hypothetically have been some way to efficiently try to fulfill my core objectives with lower expected Paranoia through some clever bit of dice-juggling, but in all honesty, I tried the things that immediately sprang to mind, ran the numbers, decided it was good enough, and put it out there on the theory that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Also, I question the wisdom of starting Sara Surveys that'll unlock more Reconstruction projects added to the pile we need to complete. If we're trying to solve the resource shortage, there's a Vespene Gas project that explicitly states we have a critical need for.
Since the Sara survey itself is not a reconstruction project, I kind of doubt that any subsequent projects will be. Mengsk doesn't seem to care much about the place, probably because his blackened, twisted heart only has room for
one totally bombed-out wasteland world, and that's Korhal. Note that the projects likely to come out of the Sara survey are described as "recolonization," not with the keyword "reconstruction."
Of course, while we're at it, if you actually look at my plan draft, I propose to invest
one die in the nearly completed Sara survey in the coming turn, versus
five dice in the aforementioned vespene mining project on Vardona. Note furthermore that we're going to look pretty silly if it turns out there were very lucrative mining projects in the Sara system just waiting for us while we chased other, more marginal things elsewhere.
So unless the point of your debate with me is to persuade me to climb into my time machine and change the outcome of a past vote, I don't really see much point in this. Dropping the survey in the middle to put one more die on the other project seems like kind of a waste.
Well yeah, that's kind of my point.
One die now could save us 2-3 dice next turn. That's a really good deal.
I'll run the numbers if I have time- not right now.
The thing is, if it's more like "one die now has a 30% chance of saving us 2-3 dice next turn," it becomes more questionable whether
that is a really good deal. It all depends on details, rather than being a simple no-brainer.
(It's weird how some people want me to invest less dice in projects where if we fail, we get caught and Mengsk remembers that as "oh hey, Horner's trying to build an independent powerbase..." While others want me to invest more dice on projects where if we fail, people remember that as "oh hey, sometimes Horner comes in at the deadline with some excuse about how he's got something almost finished but there was a weird last-minute fuckup that cramped his style even though he poured a ton of resources into the project over a six month period." But these aren't the same people, so it's not inconsistent or anything, to be very clear! Just disconcerting to be in the middle.)
