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Also aren't we close to upgrading Military above Adequate, btw?
That Time I Became A Dictator Of A Small Asian Communist Nation
- Thread starter HeroCooky
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- Original
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Very close. I suspect Airy Modernization alone might do it, if not Airy Might definitely will.
I'll try to come up with more Light Industry projects tho, that section is awfully empty, and our worst stat to boot.
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
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- The other side of the mirror
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- He/His/Him
[X] [PLAN] Marvellous Mechanical Mao
This plan has my full support. It's the best plan available and I have no substantive disagreements with it.
This plan has my full support. It's the best plan available and I have no substantive disagreements with it.
dgr11897
FBI surveillance Tank
- Location
- Behind you
Yeah, I know, my reasoning was more that revealing Iron Tigers, if/when things get worse or if people start eyeing us as a target for invasions could be helpful for getting those people to back off. Basically, I want our Iron Tigers ready as a threat.
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ITs are really more of a last resort TBH because they require foreign boots on Guangchou clay. That's why we're rushing towards modernizing the airy - planes and missiles can sink enemy ships and transports before they touch our shores.
dgr11897
FBI surveillance Tank
- Location
- Behind you
Fair. But they're also an impressive weapons system unlike anything our enemies are likely to possess.
That is why I think we should invest in them, they represent something only Guangchou has access to, a unique advantage that could help dissuade someone from invading, show them we're not to be messed with. If we pull out a weapon no one has ever imagined we could possess, they're going to start thinking about what else we might have up our sleeves, which would also help with dissuading people from trying something.
[X] [PLAN] Marvellous Mechanical Mao
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
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Seconded. We have the luxury of having no land borders and no worries about land invasions as primary means of invasion; so long as we control our airspace and seaspace we can avoid ever having a land invasion.
The followup question, why not a navy? Billy Mitchell answered that question in the 1920s in the US in OTL.
I still think the best way we demonstrate ITs is in support of someone else's land-based operations as a "surprise we have super-duper tank-like vehicles that can help a lot". Whether that be with the NVA kicking Pol Pot's ass when he crosses the line or if our buddy Hua in China needs a hand or something else, they're a great foreign-intervention-tool for us and a great defense-of-last-resort but our first resort should indeed be air power.
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Noooot quite true. A submarine navy is the absolute best counter to any sort of surface navy, and all offensive navies have to be surface navies (because aircraft carriers and troops transports are not thing a submarine can do well). However in our case, we also have to worry about land launched air attack, which means we need an air force. Planes by the way, and the missiles they carry, are a lot cheaper than ships, and they're good for fighting both other planes and ships. So all in all an air based self defense force is more cost effective than a naval based on for an island nation. Ideally you want a mix tho.
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
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Once again, we run into "bestest possible" also being somewhat expensive, impractical, and narrow-spectrum as a solution; once again, we find it opposed by "good enough" being cheap, practical and broad-spectrum-effective.
Seems like that's been coming up a lot in a lot of different fields. Fascinating.
Seems like that's been coming up a lot in a lot of different fields. Fascinating.
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In this case, no, not quite.
While an Airy would be sufficient against our local adversaries, the fact that we have to keep the US in mind means that we need submarines too, otherwise a carrier battle group can come knocking. Engaging one of those with fighters/bombers is possible, but our losses would be... grim. A submarine on the other hand is the apex predator of the ocean. A good sub can sneak up on the CVN and sink it without having to contend with it's air wing.
And based on the bonuses we've accrued to submarine design, our subs will be very good indeed. Adding a handful of subs creates a much more sustainable deterrent than relying purely on our Airy.
Barondoctor
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If the US brings a carrier battle group knocking, I'm pretty sure that's one of those "loss conditions for the world" because something tells me Russia and China would be rather violently interested in what was going on there and that's going to end up being a bloody mess.
So things China would ignore (or go hands-off on) which are still hazardous are primary targets. Stuff like Pol Pot deciding to violently disagree with our foreign policy. Having the perfect tool for a problem that's extremely unlikely isn't as valuable as having a "good enough" tool for a situation that comes up again and again.
And it's not like sinking it would make there stop being a fight going on in our neighborhood. Or that Anti-submarine warfare isn't a field of study and operation.
We have win conditions but not lose conditions (and of the win conditions I see Test of Time or Can't Unionise as the most practical, because Rep and PO are currency and keeping them in the bank is not super-conscionable, zeroing CO is a bad idea, 5 hour workweek has some knock-on psychological effects like not working at all, and Impossibru would take a lot of doing).
So things China would ignore (or go hands-off on) which are still hazardous are primary targets. Stuff like Pol Pot deciding to violently disagree with our foreign policy. Having the perfect tool for a problem that's extremely unlikely isn't as valuable as having a "good enough" tool for a situation that comes up again and again.
And it's not like sinking it would make there stop being a fight going on in our neighborhood. Or that Anti-submarine warfare isn't a field of study and operation.
We have win conditions but not lose conditions (and of the win conditions I see Test of Time or Can't Unionise as the most practical, because Rep and PO are currency and keeping them in the bank is not super-conscionable, zeroing CO is a bad idea, 5 hour workweek has some knock-on psychological effects like not working at all, and Impossibru would take a lot of doing).
Magoose
SV's Questing Fanatic
- Location
- California USA
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- He
@HeroCooky i have a question:
What is Guangchou's ideas and official policy on their nationals going mercenary? As in soldiers of fortune and other… like minded skills.
Mostly because I have an Omake involving Li Mai and her wife and… well…
I need to know so I can write it up better.
(Along with rolling dice to fuck things up in Africa but details!)
What is Guangchou's ideas and official policy on their nationals going mercenary? As in soldiers of fortune and other… like minded skills.
Mostly because I have an Omake involving Li Mai and her wife and… well…
I need to know so I can write it up better.
(Along with rolling dice to fuck things up in Africa but details!)
HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
Official Policy: "If a worker of Guangchou wants to fuck off and fuck around with military matters and using violence as their goal and primary occupation in life, they are free to suffer the consequences when they find out others may not like that very much."
Public Perception: "Mellow and lukewarm for most. Guangchou had never had to deal with mercenaries on a larger scale in recent history, so for most they are akin to dubiously compentent independent security forces on the cheap."
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There's also the covert ops use for subs, which is where the bulk of their utility will be for us. Delivering and extracting people to and from hostile shores, tapping undersea cables, observing enemy training exercises, recovering weapon test detrius, etc.
Edit: Y'all need to actually vote!
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Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
[X] [PLAN] Marvellous Mechanical Mao
I like it.
I like it.
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- She/Her
Should be light industry:
-[] Build Vitamin Supplement Factory (Helpful) (-1 Reputation)
Should be infrastructure:
-[] Fluoridate the Water Supply (Helpful) (-4 People's Opinion)
I've also been reading about fission fragment reactors...
...and they're actually very not useful to us. They need to use high enriched uranium fuel to keep core size practical (because their cores are mostly empty space to let fission fragments escape), which means they can't breed their own fuel. They're only really useful as military naval reactors on subs (no turbomachinery noise), and as powerplants for planets going into the outer system.
They're not even useful for a Mars mission, because solar thermal is basically just as good and has no radiation hazards associated with it.
Indeed, solar thermal is also much more dual use than nuclear-thermal, because unlike geothermal, we can export solar-thermal plants to places where there aren't geothermal hotspots. As a source of process heat for industrial processes, they could be a huge deal in developing nations, most of which are near the equator. Indeed, we could develop solar thermal spacecraft engines FROM said powerplants.
And yeah, y'all need to vote because I need the dopamine hit.
-[] Build Vitamin Supplement Factory (Helpful) (-1 Reputation)
Should be infrastructure:
-[] Fluoridate the Water Supply (Helpful) (-4 People's Opinion)
I've also been reading about fission fragment reactors...
...and they're actually very not useful to us. They need to use high enriched uranium fuel to keep core size practical (because their cores are mostly empty space to let fission fragments escape), which means they can't breed their own fuel. They're only really useful as military naval reactors on subs (no turbomachinery noise), and as powerplants for planets going into the outer system.
They're not even useful for a Mars mission, because solar thermal is basically just as good and has no radiation hazards associated with it.
Indeed, solar thermal is also much more dual use than nuclear-thermal, because unlike geothermal, we can export solar-thermal plants to places where there aren't geothermal hotspots. As a source of process heat for industrial processes, they could be a huge deal in developing nations, most of which are near the equator. Indeed, we could develop solar thermal spacecraft engines FROM said powerplants.
And yeah, y'all need to vote because I need the dopamine hit.
Cassiemouse
Market Atheist
[X] [PLAN] Marvellous Mechanical Mao
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
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Re: the vote - You're winning 5-2. The last non-intense vote was 6-0, the vote when I raised hell was like 9-6. Considering I'm actively not-raising-hell and instead endorsing your plan, the 5-2 is okay.
Re: nuclear reactors - I actually spent a bit of time studying power plants of various types writing for the Star Wars quest in my sig (when you give a crystal-energy-scientist a chance to study lightsaber crystals and lightsaber construction you get some interesting results.)
Conclusion being that the VVER-440 schematics we got are for a Pressurized Water Reactor. At a really crude level, it uses fission to heat water in a pressurized pipe in order to boil water in a different pipe in order to turn a turbine with the steam before cooling the "different pipe" water to recirculate it.
They have a bunch of neat safety features that make them great for a country just getting into nuclear power: they tend to not go into a runaway-reaction state because of a couple of negative feedback loops. The radiation is contained to the pressurized pipe so the "different pipe" is un-irradiated. If functional power is lost to the reactor it'll shut down rather than running amok.
On the negative end, the metallurgy requirements can be tricky and there's some challenges with getting and maintaining fuel quality, and there's the usual radiation hazards of operation.
With other countries starting to interact with us, being able to wave nuclear power around is probably a good idea.
Re: nuclear reactors - I actually spent a bit of time studying power plants of various types writing for the Star Wars quest in my sig (when you give a crystal-energy-scientist a chance to study lightsaber crystals and lightsaber construction you get some interesting results.)
Conclusion being that the VVER-440 schematics we got are for a Pressurized Water Reactor. At a really crude level, it uses fission to heat water in a pressurized pipe in order to boil water in a different pipe in order to turn a turbine with the steam before cooling the "different pipe" water to recirculate it.
They have a bunch of neat safety features that make them great for a country just getting into nuclear power: they tend to not go into a runaway-reaction state because of a couple of negative feedback loops. The radiation is contained to the pressurized pipe so the "different pipe" is un-irradiated. If functional power is lost to the reactor it'll shut down rather than running amok.
On the negative end, the metallurgy requirements can be tricky and there's some challenges with getting and maintaining fuel quality, and there's the usual radiation hazards of operation.
With other countries starting to interact with us, being able to wave nuclear power around is probably a good idea.
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I'd like to take advantage of our bonuses to leap-frog it tbh: +6 Reactor +6 Any Technology +5 Nuclear Expansion is a +17 to the reactor action. That means we're into... molten salt fast reactor territory.
HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
Don't forget that you may roll with maluses~
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I mean, I think we've done all we can to reduce risk - the only thing left to do is to get access to Soviet nuclear expertise. I'm hopeful we can do that turn after next. We'll roll the first reactor action with no bonuses, and try to get access to high end Soviet research by impressing them with turbines (need to do this as part of infiltrating western R&D anyway). Then the second reactor roll we apply all our bonuses and see what happens. I'm not really banking on getting molten salt fast reactors in particular, that's just the direction that seems reasonable narratively.
But I'll be happy with whatever you throw our way.
A breakthrough is a breakthrough.
Simple as.
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
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There's a saying in a roguelike I play when people are in position to get a first win but have some unexplored regions they're interested in pursuing to explore extended endgame areas:
Just Go Win.
Far as I'm aware, we're still working on our first real powerplant win, our first nuclear-anything win. There is no prize for exceeding our energy needs by a factor of 10 vs factor of 100.
Just go win. VVER-440 is a reactor that's still a win to get anywhere on this upcoming plan.
When good is on the table and you reject it to chase perfect, we lose both marginally and overall compared with taking the good on the table and then spinning it up into excellent. If we add in electrification to get reasonable electricity coverage to all our people (what kind of electricity coverage are we looking at presently?)
Watt I'm saying is, I don't understand your resistance to empowering our citizens currently, because I'm amped about getting what we can get, and if you find the puns revolting, they'll be the crown joule of my next turn plan.
[X] [PLAN] Marvellous Mechanical Mao
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I don't want a better reactor for better performance. I want a cheaper reactor.
And we lose literally nothing by doing it this way? It literally involves just one more action - the nuclear expansion of Mingxiang. Everything else we were going to do anyway. There's no real opportunity cost here?
Oh gods, those puns. 😩