User blog:Lancia Stratos/"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference," November 14, 1957

A now for a brief detour.

Having put together my plan for unlocking all series, I should have been able to sit back and just get on with it. Thankfully, to keep things interesting, that did not turn out to be the case. This posting is more of a case study on how you can 'go with the flow' because of the planning rather than the merits of the plan itself.

Eisenhower followed his above quote by stating that by creating a plan you "keep yourselves steeped in the character of the problem". Thus when the "Aston Martin Vantage GTE " went on sale on Black Friday I knew I could use this offer rather than wait for "Masters of Speed ". Even the "Get it now" price was lower that its showcase price or that of the "Porsche 911 RSR (2015) " which the plan marked as an alternative. Thus it was a no-brainer to pick it up there and then.

The "Get it now" purchase also unlocked "Masters of Speed" so I thought I'd have some fun and unlock and buy the "Porsche 911 RSR (2014) " which the plan stated should be picked up in "Speed Demons ". Little did I realize how that was going to muck up my wonderful plan but, because of the planning, I think I still came out ahead!

So, while moving through "Supercar Elites ", "Speed Demons" became unlocked. No surprise there. The plan had the "Koenigsegg Agera " as the gateway car for that series but, I realized, I now had the "Porsche 911 RSR (2014)" so I could start working on that series before unlocking the Agera[1]. Moreover the "Pagani Zonda R " was on sale at 40% off, i.e. 240GC, provided I could unlock it! While the plan did not include purchasing it, taking the "Koenigsegg Agera R " in preference, a quick run of the numbers meant that, by skipping the last three Zonda R Engine upgrades, the GC total would be 628GC which is less that the showcase cost for the Agera R and the resulting Zonda R should have enough PR to get through enough of the "Zenith Series " to unlock "Road to Le Mans ". Thus, suddenly, my whole plan was reformed simply because of the GTE sale.

I was not sure how long the Zonda R sale was going to last so I've spent the last few days dashing through the needed races to unlock and, now having done that, buying it at the discount price. This also has brought up a wrinkle that I'd not considered before, namely doing partial Bonus Series. In this case I can 'skip' the remaining races in "Speed Demons" for the moment and return at a later date to get the Agera R at a showcase discount (if it does not appear on sale before that). and thus skip that buying it in "Masters of Speed".

And none of this would have been possible if I'd not invested the time to make the initial plan.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[1] The "Porsche 911 RSR (2014)" is not sufficient on its own to unlock the Zonda R as it is not competitive in any of the speed related races. Once the Agera was unlocked and bought it was used to deal with those races.