Would it be better to double down? Maybe. Yet, Investing in both over two turns opens up gaining a 15 Paranoia reduction in time for the next budget meet.
Investing in only one project makes it fairly likely we can do the same. After all, there's nothing stopping us from doing the bulk of our investment in the other project
next turn.
Per my remarks to Mellowfellow further down this post, there is a
slight dice economy optimization argument for the two-and-two approach (17% chance of 'wasting' one die). But otherwise, it gains us little compared to a one-and-three now followed by a (two or three)-and-(zero or one) next turn. Our Paranoia levels are quite low, and we're not doing any giant +40 Paranoia megaprojects that make it quasi-mandatory to hammer the level all the way down to zero.
And wasting Research dice (in the sense of "there is a 17% chance of this costing us three dice this way when we could have got it for two") is not a big deal to me. Because frankly, we have lots of Research dice relative to the number of high-priority projects. It's not like Infrastructure where just the near-mandatory projects we can
see are going to take several dozen dice to clear.
159 base + modifier of 6 or 8 if we're lucky means 165. If combined with an omake that's 170 or 180. A single raw roll of 20-30 is all we need to pass.
There's a bunch of people who don't want to gamble on a 20-30 percent chance of failing yet again.
Two. So the new penalty is -4, and just two more successes, whenever they come, will wipe it out.
Also, actually, as the Omake reminds us, we do have the Vardonis Hydroponics we'll want to complete before we get Augustgrad Phase 2 complete. Probably not next turn, but I think it'd be good to put two dice into it Q4, to finish it no later than Q1 next year, or something like that?
I hadn't gone over your current plan drafts, but I still wanted to analyze the thought process that went into the previous plan as a point of contention. We have a bonus for Vardona which covers the Vespene project, but that bonus is on a timer till Augustgrad (phase 2) is finished. Considering the Vespene project has multiple phases and high progress requirements, it seemed prudent to focus dice there in the Light Industry section, instead of branching out to do Imperial Surveys.
Honestly, I'm not really feeling the "use that +5 on Vardona while we can" mindset if the project itself isn't a major priority. The gas project
is, to be clear, but I think people are approaching this wrong overall.
Right now, we have a +5 bonus on Vardona projects, which becomes a +5 on Korhal projects later, when we finish
Augustgrad Phase 2. Probably roughly a year from now, since i doubt we're going to try to rush-complete it this year or anything.
Consider what we
won't have a year from now.
There's a good chance we won't have that stupid -4 penalty to all dice from Horner's illiteracy, at this rate. We'll have completed some other industrial infrastructure projects that cut Progress costs, too.
Which is easier? Completing a 450-point project when you're rolling straight d100's, or completing a 500-point project while rolling d100-4+5's? It's the first one. Losing the +5 bonus doesn't necessarily matter that much when there are other factors in play.
When the project is important in and of itself and needs doing quickly, like the SCV factory or the gas refineries, the +5 is a welcome boost. But rushing Vardona projects that are not immediately necessary (such as the hydroponic farms)
specifically because we have the +5 is probably not a great idea. Because the idea that it'll be easier to do now than it will be to do later is founded in the idea that our capabilities are static. They're not.
Furthermore, the Sara system is currently uninhabited and will need infrastructure investment to start exploiting its resources, whereas Vardona's gas has a well developed logistical chain available. Vardona's gas reservoirs is also described as "the sector's richest gas fields" so I find it foolish to ignore an available high-yield reserve in favor of chasing other leads.
TL;DR i believe you made a mistake and wasted 2 dice/turn instead of fully utilizing our available opportunities.
So in other words, either you're expecting me to get in a time machine, or you're just trying to bust my chops about an action in the past, as proof of...
something. I don't know what you're trying to prove, really.
And in the process, you're painting a project that does something you don't
expect to be optimal as "a waste" that, presumably, is worth nothing, on the grounds that it wasn't the project you wanted.
Please stop doing this. It's a great example of how to make a Planquest
absolutely fucking miserable.
They [the Research projects- SJ] might have equal value of returns in dice investment on paper, but the main point was increasing the chance of completion so it would be available for mitigating Paranoia this turn, and reducing the risk of taking Arendt's criminal contacts. I feel kind of silly pointing this out as it should be obvious.
Well, I'm sorry for not seeing that 'obvious' thing, I must be 'silly,' but I'm inclined to disagree with your assessment.
Now, I'm not inclined to fire up Anydice just to run the numbers, but I strongly suspect that three dice on the new guns give you a higher expected Paranoia reduction than two dice on the guns and two dice on the airships.
With three dice, the gun project actually has a reasonable chance of finishing and giving you that -10 Paranoia goodness. With two,
either project is quite unlikely to succeed.
[reads the rest of your post]
...
Actually, after reading the rest of your post, you know what? I'm going to go for the Anydice.
[cracks knuckles]
We have a -4 penalty on Research projects, such as this pair of 0/150 projects that give us -5 and -10 Paranoia, respectively. We'll be optimistically assuming that a canon omake bonus will hit and autocomplete anything within 15 points of success. This is, for reasons that will become obvious, a
favorable assumption to 'plan two-and-two.'
So I go to anydice.com and punch in:
output 2d100+0+(2*-4)+15 ,
and then
output 3d100+0+(3*-4)+15 ,
where '0' is the existing progress, -4 the die bonus, and +15 the omake bonus.
There is a 17.1% chance of getting at least 150 on one of these projects and completing it with two dice.
There is a 53.8% chance of getting at least 150 on one of these projects and completing it with
three dice.
If we attempt both projects, there is about a 3% chance of getting both (-15 Paranoia), since they are individually unlikely. There is about a 14% chance of getting only the airships (-5 Paranoia), a 14% chance of getting only the guns (-10 Paranoia), and a 69% chance of getting neither project (no benefit this turn). Expected Paranoia from a two-and-two arrangement is thus:
0.03(-15)+0.14(-10)+0.14(-5) =
-2.55 Paranoia, over half of which just comes from having
any chance of getting the guns.
By contrast, a three-and-one approach that focuses on the guns at the expense of the airships gives:
0.538*(-10) =
-5.38 Paranoia, because now we have a
reasonable chance of getting the guns.
5.38 is considerably more than 2.55.
...
In conclusion, if you're choosing how to distribute four Research dice with an eye to maximizing short-term Paranoia reduction, favoring the gun project over the airship project is more than twice as effective.
If you're trying to maximize
long-term Paranoia reduction, there is, strictly, a 17% chance of the third die put on the guns going to waste, but frankly, we are dice-rich right now and wasting dice in Research (where we have no specific Plan goals) is not a major concern that should see us constantly slow-rolling projects if we're actually worried about keeping Paranoia low. Since Research projects, along with the much more expensive Military projects and of course Augustgrad, are our three main categories of Paranoia sink.
...
Of course, bluntly, it hardly matters, because we're at 25 Paranoia and there aren't
that many probable sources of Paranoia coming up in this next turn. We'll be fine either way.
But your attempt to flex on me by pointing out the 'obvious,' well... The math doesn't work out the way you seem to have had in mind here.
