Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

Simon_Jester · Mar 16, 2024

Luminous said:
Maybe. Or maybe the sunk cost falicy could kick in and you hitch yourself to a sinking ship trying to bail it out with a bucket. Both are possible, and until the situation changes I'm not willing to pretend otherwise.

The thing is, the Terminus Alliance may fall apart, but it won't fall apart soon. If our long-term ambition is to come out of its presumed-inevitable collapse with a big chunk of it attached to ourselves, that's going to require us to be fairly involved in Alliance politics and popular and respected within the Alliance.

For the next fifty years or longer, possibly much longer.

Pittauro said:
I was thinking there might be some we might just fail to notice, as the Rachni might make it look as it's just a "worthless rock".

Well, given the way Poptart runs games, I don't think we can rule out occasionally having us accidentally blow up a Prothean relic that crashed on an asteroid and we just didn't know about.

But in the scheme of things... not that big a deal.

I'm also not sure what I'd want to use the anti-veto on. Do you have a specific idea as of right now? Best I can think of is something to make the military more effective, (unified command), or something to basically make internal trading easier/faster/cheaper (zero tariffs policy? sharing of tech?)

In fairness, we didn't know we could get an anti-veto until quite recently. We hadn't really thought too hard about trying to influence Terminus legislative politics, because our connections to the Alliance are still forming and Alliance internal politics is pretty firmed up already.

So we'd almost inevitably need some time to figure out what we wanted to do with the favor.

Pittauro · Mar 16, 2024

Simon_Jester said:
But in the scheme of things... not that big a deal.

well, it COULD in theory be a big deal, depending on what we bombed... but we really have no way of knowing, so I'd just not worry about it.

I mean, for all we know a random asteroid has a fully functioning prothean beacon hidden inside it that is NOT working for the Rachni due to Indoctrination, but that's always a possibility.

Randino Treviani · Mar 16, 2024

Simon_Jester said:
The point being that this is a bad time to ask the Terminus Alliance for more territory, at least until a little time has passed and the lack of security in Maroon Sea is no longer at the forefront of their minds.

We wouldn't be asking now. We'd be asking when we took another cluster, preferably shadow sea where the question of our ability to defend it is rendered mute by our ability to just shift defenses and fleets guarding Maroon sea a relay forward. Easily 6 years out. They'll forget about maroon sea by the end of the month if we throw them a shiny Volus favor to squabble over and their is a battle fleet defending the relay.

"Wait, what were we mad at the commonwealth for."
"Hell if I know. Now here's why giving Korlus the Volus investments is the logical course for the alliance to take..."

Pittauro said:
I'm also not sure what I'd want to use the anti-veto on. Do you have a specific idea as of right now? Best I can think of is something to make the military more effective, (unified command), or something to basically make internal trading easier/faster/cheaper (zero tariffs policy? sharing of tech?)

We could get a tech sharing at cost bill passed. Not the stuff their happy to sell for a reasonable buy off, but the good stuff that they want to keep to themselves. Granted, not everything, but at least one or two tech that we weren't getting them to just share with everyone else for anything Virmire can afford. Normally it wouldn't be enough for this, but with the Commonwealth contributing Yulair Reactors, Ablative Armor, and Yulair Automation tech to the pile, it falls into the realm of doable.

Some extra authority and negotiation powers when conducting deals to bring Rannoch into the Terminus Alliance that would speed up the process significantly.

Pushing through democratic policies or standardizing basic living standard rights within the alliance.

Claiming Shadow sea for the commonwealth if we take it in the next great offense is a more long-term one.

Getting Beshkar a position of authority over the Joint fleets offensive operations so that if their using one of our raiding fleets, there at least using it right. I'm gonna be real fucking pissed if we give them a Raiding fleet and they lose it because their comprehension of offensive warfare sucks, let alone their understanding of Beshkarrian doctrine.

I imagine PP has more.

Pittauro · Mar 16, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
Pushing through democratic policies or standardizing basic living standard rights within the alliance.

this one might be the hardest one to pass. After all most terminus polities are dictatorship... or, worse, a corporatocracy.

Randino Treviani · Mar 16, 2024

Pittauro said:
this one might be the hardest one to pass. After all most terminus polities are dictatorship... or, worse, a corporatocracy.

Yeah, it would be very hard to push through a lot of them, but Suval is already behind this sort of thing so we'd have omega support, and Garm isn't going to not side with her, our sub-faction will follow our lead, so getting one of the other passed is doable.

Pittauro · Mar 16, 2024

As I said, I'm leaning towards economic development for Virmire, but the anti-veto is a close second. Still, as we've been told with the Volus this kind of favour tends to have an expiration date, so we'd likely have to use it soon, so having clear examples of what we hope to obtain from it might help convince people voting for it.

Randino Treviani said:
Getting Beshkar a position of authority over the Joint fleets offensive operations so that if their using one of our raiding fleets, there at least using it right. I'm gonna be real fucking pissed if we give them a Raiding fleet and they lose it because their comprehension of offensive warfare sucks, let alone their understanding of Beshkarrian doctrine.

this one in particular might be worth considering. They already want us to be the Alliance's muscle, but having formal control over the joint fleets would be an easy way to gain even more prestige and good PR, and that can be translated into political power for further concessions later on.

Randino Treviani · Mar 16, 2024

Pittauro said:
As I said, I'm leaning towards economic development for Virmire, but the anti-veto is a close second. Still, as we've been told with the Volus this kind of favour tends to have an expiration date, so we'd likely have to use it soon, so having clear examples of what we hope to obtain from it might help convince people voting for it.

No. With the volus the favor had an expiration date because the council is a rival space coalition. Since terminus is allied rather than a rival, the opposite is true.

PoptartProdigy said:
The Volus favor had the potential to degrade since you're now signatory to a rival power bloc, so best to offload it before things soured; getting a favor from the Alliance for a one-time exception to the veto rules is more internal, and involves a significant enough procedural issue that people want exceptions handled clearly and consistently. After all, this would set the precedent that veto exceptions can be granted. Nobody wants to run the risk that if they get one later, it can go away at the discretion of the Alliance.

As PP explains here. It's permanent, because the polities that hope they'll have one some day don't want a precedent for this sort of thing becoming invalid. It's not going to disappear on us if we sit on it for a decade while we work towards taking shadow sea.

Pittauro said:
this one in particular might be worth considering. They already want us to be the Alliance's muscle, but having formal control over the joint fleets would be an easy way to gain even more prestige and good PR, and that can be translated into political power for further concessions later on.

In general having the largest share of credit going not only to our fleets but an acknowledged war hero of Virmire is a good thing yes, but it's also that the terminus is better at defense than offense, while Beshkar is, not the opposite, but more proven in one than the other. The operations will go better if he's in charge.

Simon_Jester said:
Well, given the way Poptart runs games, I don't think we can rule out occasionally having us accidentally blow up a Prothean relic that crashed on an asteroid and we just didn't know about.

But in the scheme of things... not that big a deal.

Nah. There was a discord conversation. It's days old and a lot of people have posted since, but nothing of significance is getting destroyed by worthless rocks. In contrast, something valuable is likely being lost with anything more than worthless rocks, even in the fancy write in.

Simon_Jester · Mar 16, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
Nah. There was a discord conversation. It's days old and a lot of people have posted since, but nothing of significance is getting destroyed by worthless rocks.

It feels weird for Poptart to give us that kind of guarantee, not gonna lie.

At the same time, I suppose it doesn't change the situation much, since I'd support the "blow up worthless rocks" position anyway. Even if I think there's some one-in-a-million chance that those specific rocks conceal valuable artifacts, the need to win the war in a reasonable amount of time overrides speculative one-in-a-million chances that we can't even follow up on without sacrificing millions of lives.

jjffjhjf · Mar 16, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
Consider then the fact that right now, whatever happens, the terminus is feeling iffy about us right now because all their thinking about is us leaving Maroon Sea undefended. if the Rachni don't attack, wouldn't it be good if the Terminus Alliance Leaders had a nice volus favor to be distracted with arguing over? Wouldn't it be good if the citizens of terminus had this big morale boost from hope of what this could do for their polity to distract them from their doubts about the commonwealth?

If the Rachni don't attack, then we defended it sufficiently. If they do attack and we hold the system, then we defended it sufficiently. The only way to actually get bad PR long term from the Maroon Sea being undefended is if we lose the system. Otherwise its a blip, that will be gone potentially as early as next year if we take the Maroon sea action to get permanent defenses/basing set up there instead of this initial reaction fleet we are sending.

Randino Treviani · Mar 16, 2024

jjffjhjf said:
If the Rachni don't attack, then we defended it sufficiently. If they do attack and we hold the system, then we defended it sufficiently. The only way to actually get bad PR long term from the Maroon Sea being undefended is if we lose the system. Otherwise its a blip, that will be gone potentially as early as next year if we take the Maroon sea action to get permanent defenses/basing set up there instead of this initial reaction fleet we are sending.

Our rep won't get worse yes, and recover a little, but we need more than just assurances there was never a problem and proof we are taking it serious now to regain all of the RP we dropped from this.

picklepikkl · Mar 16, 2024

Simon_Jester said:
It feels weird for Poptart to give us that kind of guarantee, not gonna lie.

It's not that weird. "Worthless rocks" are likely carbonaceous asteroids or similar, and it is extremely easy to see if their mass checks out for what they appear to be or if there is something going on with concealed mineral wealth or precursor tech; if nothing else, the rachni would definitely notice when they set up shop on the thing in the first place, especially since precursor tech is just as valuable to them as it is to us. They're not going to leave that shit in the ground just to troll us when we retake it so that we slap our foreheads in disappointment, they're going to extract it and either exploit it in situ or send it to a dedicated base.

jjffjhjf · Mar 16, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
Our rep won't get worse yes, and recover a little, but we need more than just assurances there was never a problem and proof we are taking it serious now to regain all of the RP we dropped from this.

Why do you think that's the case? It seems to me that once the rest of the Alliance sees it was never really a problem, if anything it'll go the other direction at how smart we are and how we can plan around the Rachni. I just don't see our relations numbers staying down because of this, as long as we successfully keep the system.

Randino Treviani · Mar 16, 2024

jjffjhjf said:
Why do you think that's the case? It seems to me that once the rest of the Alliance sees it was never really a problem, if anything it'll go the other direction at how smart we are and how we can plan around the Rachni. I just don't see our relations numbers staying down because of this, as long as we successfully keep the system.

Politics and public perception isn't that charitable or fair. Just having done the correct thing isn't sensational enough to turn the public and leaders opinions. A meaningful victory would do it, but absent that, we need a meaningful PR stunt or follow up military success to distract them with. They'll definitely forget about it, but they need a push to get some momentum behind the process.

Pittauro · Mar 16, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
In general having the largest share of credit going not only to our fleets but an acknowledged war hero of Virmire is a good thing yes, but it's also that the terminus is better at defense than offense, while Beshkar is, not the opposite, but more proven in one than the other. The operations will go better if he's in charge.

well, sort of.

The Alliance's fleets are better at defense because they're not exactly coordinated, I think it was said. in a STRAIGHT offensive they should be better eventually.

on the otehr hand, our raiding fleets are perfect for trade harassing, insertion ops for infrastructural damage, and in general being a distracting nuisance.

Once we get more ACTUAL Battle Fleet though I imagine we could do both offense and raids pretty well, with defense likely to be our relative weak point.

Sir LagsAlot · Mar 16, 2024

I think I'm going to swap from Investment to getting that favor from the Terminus Alliance. In my opinion, it's definitely dropping a short to mid-term advantage in pretty much every field to do so as nowhere is going to put that money to better use faster than the Commonwealth is within the Alliance.

But in the long term, the Commonwealth isn't going to be capable of carrying the Terminus Alliance through the war we simply won't have enough citizens to do so nor enough time to gain enough citizens to change that so if we want to shoot for the maximum possible ceiling for the gains the Terminus Alliance and the Commonwealth can make from the war we're going to need to start working to utilize the Alliance better as quickly as possible, and this is the first step in that.

This comes at a risk of course as the higher ceiling of potential that comes from throwing our lot in with the Terminus Alliance also brings with it a lower floor than investing solely in the Commonwealth. But I'm willing to take the risk of an increased chance that the Terminus Alliance might only come out of the war with Hawking Eta, Styx Theta, Shadow Sea, and the Rachni Home Cluster or potentially even less if things go poorly if in exchange that means we have a better chance of potentially seizing everything except Horse Head if things go well.*

How exactly the favor is spent to accomplish this whether that be by consolidating the Terminus Alliance militaries further under the control of the Joint Fleets, bringing the Quarians into the Terminus Alliance, or seizing the Shadow Sea for the Commonwealth to all but guarantee any further gains made on the front go the Commonwealth increasing our influence dramatically over the Alliance long term matters little to me at the end of the day.

*You know excepting the chance of the very much still possible result of the Rachni winning this war.

[X][EXTINCTION] Only bombard worthless rocks. You want to preserve anything you know to contain valuable resources or facilities, but there's no harm in scratching the worthless asteroids that the Rachni occupy purely to be a pain in the ass off the list.
[X][MAROON] Conventionally. Deploy the 2nd Battle Fleet to Maroon Sea. Have one of your raiding fleets pick up patrol duties in Sentry Omega. That will provide a powerful deterrent to any attempts at moving in, and if the rachni try anyway, you should be able to hold long enough to bring in reinforcements.
[X][FAVOR] Ask for something on behalf of the Terminus Alliance, which they will pick, in exchange for one vote of your choice passed without a veto in the Council.
[X][PLAN] Plan Business as usual even if they are Ardat-Yakshi.

Luminous · Mar 16, 2024

Simon_Jester said:
The thing is, the Terminus Alliance may fall apart, but it won't fall apart soon. If our long-term ambition is to come out of its presumed-inevitable collapse with a big chunk of it attached to ourselves, that's going to require us to be fairly involved in Alliance politics and popular and respected within the Alliance.

For the next fifty years or longer, possibly much longer.

Sure, but I don't think that's worth not getting the investment ir tech-trade.

uju32 · Mar 16, 2024

Randino Treviani said:
Getting Beshkar a position of authority over the Joint fleets offensive operations so that if their using one of our raiding fleets, there at least using it right. I'm gonna be real fucking pissed if we give them a Raiding fleet and they lose it because their comprehension of offensive warfare sucks, let alone their understanding of Beshkarrian doctrine.

That misuses him.
Beshkar commands in the field, he doesnt run the navy for a reason.
There is a reason he runs one fleet even in Virmire, and isnt back commanding in numbers.

Not to mention that noone is going to take a fleet thats 90% predicated on Massalian Doctrine and then have a Beshkarian Doctrine admiral run it.

Sir LagsAlot said:
I think I'm going to swap from Investment to getting that favor from the Terminus Alliance. In my opinion, it's definitely dropping a short to mid-term advantage in pretty much every field to do so as nowhere is going to put that money to better use faster than the Commonwealth is within the Alliance.

On airplanes, they tell you to put on your oxygen mask first before trying to help someone else.
And emergency crews are told to prioritize personal safety to prevent becoming casualties themselves.
We have short and medium term issues that we have to survive first, which we need the economic boost for.

Dont be looking so far ahead that you trip over your own feet.

Sir LagsAlot said:
But in the long term, the Commonwealth isn't going to be capable of carrying the Terminus Alliance through the war we simply won't have enough citizens to do so nor enough time to gain enough citizens to change that so if we want to shoot for the maximum possible ceiling for the gains the Terminus Alliance and the Commonwealth can make from the war we're going to need to start working to utilize the Alliance better as quickly as possible, and this is the first step in that.

1)I am reasonably sure that at 8.4 billion and counting, we have the most citizens of any individual Terminus member thats not the Tamaras Rim. And we're both growing and receiving volus immigrants from the Citadel, the only nation with that claim in the Terminus. As long as our economy keeps growing, that remains true.

We certainly have more population than the MIC and the Northern Defense League, who combined canonically provide 63% of the Terminus fleets by tonnage.
If you want a larger population, you need the economy to sustain them.

2) Our priority is to win the war, not make gains from it.
If it was our aim to make gains, I would be pointing out that not every nationstate in the Terminus Alliance is something you want to strengthen in their current form.

Governor Gaim specifically called out up-jumped military dictatorships as a problem in the Alliance, never mind the Jondam Corporate ~~Dystopia~~ Nation

Simon_Jester · Mar 16, 2024

uju32 said:
On airplanes, they tell you to put on your oxygen mask first before trying to help someone else.
And emergency crews are told to prioritize personal safety to prevent becoming casualties themselves.
We have short and medium term issues that we have to survive first, which we need the economic boost for.

There's a difference between being in an emergency situation where ignoring your own safety is likely to get you killed (and thus unable to help others) and being in a stable situation where you have some reasonable margin of error.

It's entirely reasonable to prioritize propping up an ally over propping up yourself if your own position is reasonably secure. And while obviously the military situation is not 'peace' and the Commonwealth's economy is not perfect, there's nothing so badly on fire that we need to be in crisis "gotta make sure I survive, gotta take everything for myself" mode.

1)I am reasonably sure that at 8.4 billion and counting, we have the most citizens of any individual Terminus member thats not the Tamaras Rim.

I wouldn't be so sure. Some of those Terminus colonies may be as old as ours, and have had just as much time to grow. Virmire was a bit special in terms of just how much effort the Citadel put into colonizing it, but not necessarily unique.

I could be wrong, but there it is.

Randino Treviani · Mar 16, 2024

Pittauro said:
well, sort of.

The Alliance's fleets are better at defense because they're not exactly coordinated, I think it was said. in a STRAIGHT offensive they should be better eventually.

on the otehr hand, our raiding fleets are perfect for trade harassing, insertion ops for infrastructural damage, and in general being a distracting nuisance.

Once we get more ACTUAL Battle Fleet though I imagine we could do both offense and raids pretty well, with defense likely to be our relative weak point.

Yes, the irregular nature of the fleets means they have adopted a defensive doctrine of combat, which defines even their use of Battlecruisers, a ship largely designed with offense in mind. Thus, they struggle with offensive planning. Their not worthless at it, but they are lacking, which is a worrying thing when they want one of our precious raiding fleets, especially since the fleets work best utilized simultaneously in multi cluster strike plans. I'm still in favor of giving them the fleet, I'd just like it more if someone from the commonwealth was not only leading the fleet in question, but also holding a position within the Joint Fleet Hierarchy that would allow him to direct the planning of the operation to favorable ends.

Sir LagsAlot said:
*You know excepting the chance of the very much still possible result of the Rachni winning this war.

Yeah. Honestly it's kind of frustrating that one of the things people seem to be against doing is sharing the three war defining techs with the Council so the Rachni don't deal them another crushing blow in a decade, when we have so many other techs on the way.

uju32 said:
That misuses him.
Beshkar commands in the field, he doesnt run the navy for a reason.
There is a reason he runs one fleet even in Virmire, and isnt back commanding in numbers.

Not to mention that noone is going to take a fleet thats 90% predicated on Massalian Doctrine and then have a Beshkarian Doctrine admiral run it.

That's why I specified "if there using one of our raiding fleets". I don't need him to run the entire bloody Joint fleets, I just want to make sure when the same people who build battlecruisers and use them for defense are planning a Raid, Beshkar is there, with the authority to override them if their planning something stupid like sending him into the Ninmah Cluster.

uju32 said:
On airplanes, they tell you to put on your oxygen mask first before trying to help someone else.
And emergency crews are told to prioritize personal safety to prevent becoming casualties themselves.
We have short and medium term issues that we have to survive first, which we need the economic boost for.

Dont be looking so far ahead that you trip over your own feet.

No, we have at worst medium term issues, which will likely be put off further by loading and unloading revolutionizing a critical aspect of our logistics, trade, and resource collection industries. We do not need the economic boost to carry out the actions needed to survive.

Don't be so pessimistically fixated on a simple imbalance in our economy that you miss important details that clearly spell out we are not about to have the economy collapse around us.

Simon_Jester · Mar 16, 2024

In short, there's a difference between wanting Beshkar to become "Supreme Commander, Terminus Allied Forces" and wanting Beshkar to be "Admiral Commanding, Terminus Fourth Fleet Offensive Raiding Command."

The former is unreasonable and probably undesirable.

The latter is reasonable, given that Beshkar has as much or more success at offensive operations than just about anyone else in the Terminus.

jjffjhjf · Mar 16, 2024

People keep suggesting someone says we are going to have the economy collapse on us, but I'm not seeing people claim that. We do have major economic issues. We've worked hard to mitigate that but we are still a mess. The investment would help with that. The new tech will help with that. Expanding and getting new mining and colonies will help with that. But we've got so much spending still to do. We need that help to keep going and keep pushing. the rest of the alliance is largely set. Our cluster is super rich, but most others are not. We are the polity most able to expand and build and grow and generally get stronger over the course of this war, and I really think we should be investing in ourselves with that volus favor to ensure that we do keep growing and growing as fast as we can.

We want to build more fleets, we've got a massive expansion of the navy planned, a major rebuild of our Army. Then we are going to have to invest in expensive offensive moves soon. We have been working to make all that happen. We've built up our production capacity and so now the hold-up is personnel, specifically trained ones which our new schooling initiatives should help. We've got these new ships that should be so much better than our old ones. We've got some fancy new logistics tech coming online. All of that should help. But we are still a tier 2 power. We are fighting a galactic hyper-power. We've got a super-power on our side via the Terminus Alliance, but we're probably stronger than any 2 other sections of the Alliance. The Citadel is another super-power on our side, but they are also a competitor and if they really start winning, they can take the Rachni's territories instead of us. That's very much not something we want to happen. The Citadel is currently on the defense, they had a major loss of ships, but they aren't going to be slowing down, they are going to be building up. They are probably researching new techs of our own. There's no reason to believe they don't have their own special techs coming online. They have a lot more prothean ruins and a lot more funding than we do.

Mad0Slayer · Mar 16, 2024

Ya I don't see our economy crashing anytime soon but the imbalances in it bother me, could we fix it, yes we can but that'll take time and while the volus investing in us will see most of our issues we need to resolve before they become an issue either resolved or at least only need a little effort to get up to a healthy position.

That'll leave us free to focus on getting better systems in place for RND or military expansion and should allow us to invest in other stabilising elements in the terminus alliance

Sure we won't gain a one shot veto for a beneficial law but we'd gain a lot of political power through a stronger industry and military in the long term.

Though admittedly getting the volus to give a hand to the Terminus Alliance in some way will help I think we'll be around long enough to do that any way in the long run.

Also if we can get the Tamaris rim on our side I think our 2 polities will be enough to drag the alliance to stabilisation without to much issue.

uju32 · Mar 16, 2024

Simon_Jester said:
There's a difference between being in an emergency situation where ignoring your own safety is likely to get you killed (and thus unable to help others) and being in a stable situation where you have some reasonable margin of error.

It's entirely reasonable to prioritize propping up an ally over propping up yourself if your own position is reasonably secure. And while obviously the military situation is not 'peace' and the Commonwealth's economy is not perfect, there's nothing so badly on fire that we need to be in crisis "gotta make sure I survive, gotta take everything for myself" mode.

Thats the thing.
We arent in a stable/secure situation. At least, thats my assessment of current events.
A lot of the voters for Terminus Favor seem to be voting on the assumption that we are stable.

We obviously arent going to collapse and die tomorrow, but we are operating on a very fine line with little room for error.
Which is why my flabber is repeatedly gasted by arguments to pass up the money that would help with stabilizing the economic part of the nationstate equation.

Simon_Jester said:
I wouldn't be so sure. Some of those Terminus colonies may be as old as ours, and have had just as much time to grow. Virmire was a bit special in terms of just how much effort the Citadel put into colonizing it, but not necessarily unique.
I could be wrong, but there it is.

Doubt it. These werent settlement colonies, they were extraction colonies.
Old maybe, but the infrastructure to support that growth would have been lacking. We know how much and how long it cost us to provide nationstate support until they became stable, and none of those were getting that AFAWK.

Virmire was a settlement colony on a garden world, funded by the Citadel, so it got a lot of growth that wasnt organic.

Let me do the numbers here.
The Remnant and the Frontier Confederacy are both coming off multi-year Rachni occupation.
With everything that means for population levels when an opponent with orbital superiority parks a ship above your planet.

MIC and the Northern Defense League both explicitly lack huge populations, but control large swathes of territory, and have just been far enough from the front lines to to invest in their militaries uncontested.
The MIC in particular is characterized as not particularly stable, and is one of two nationstates whose leader has a military title.

Omega is predicated on their eezo and their diplomacy. Omega itself can support maybe a couple million in canon?
*checks* 7.8 million.

Korlus has the infrastructure around the eponymous ship dumping planet.
Jondam we dont know much about, and I suspect that if they had that sort of economic mass that a high single digit/ double digit billions population represented, that corporation would be trying to throw its weight around more before we showed up.

We know nothing about the Rim Dominion besides up-jumped military state + junior member of the Cooperatives.

CONCLUSION
The Terminus Alliance, not counting Tamaras Rim or Virmire/Attica, is probably double digit billions.
But I doubt any single nationstate has Virmire's population.

POST-SCRIPT
Looking at the Mass Effect Wiki, Korlus had 3.8 billion as of the time of canon.
This is roughly 2000 years from now.

For a different set of colony numbers?
Ilium had 85 million after 500 years of colonization.
Esan, an asari colony annexed by the Hegemony and renamed Lorek has 4.7 million after 400 years

Pittauro · Mar 16, 2024

uju32 said:
Not to mention that noone is going to take a fleet thats 90% predicated on Massalian Doctrine and then have a Beshkarian Doctrine admiral run it.

Fair, though there might be a division between raiding fleet command and battle fleet command, and we have Beshkar command the raiding fleets?

That said we STILL have Battle Fleets, so we might be able to find an admiral suitable for that command too.

Or, I suppose, we could keep command of the raiding fleets, and leave the battle fleets to another polity. Preferibly one of our allies, but most important thing there is competence.

uju32 said:
1)I am reasonably sure that at 8.4 billion and counting, we have the most citizens of any individual Terminus member thats not the Tamaras Rim. And we're both growing and receiving volus immigrants from the Citadel, the only nation with that claim in the Terminus. As long as our economy keeps growing, that remains true.

We certainly have more population than the MIC and the Northern Defense League, who combined canonically provide 63% of the Terminus fleets by tonnage.
If you want a larger population, you need the economy to sustain them.

It also helps that, you know, we control multiple worlds.

PoptartProdigy said:
Sorva Prime: The sole point of interest in Hoc's neighboring system of Sorva, Sorva Prime is a full-fledged garden world. It has recovered from its harvest crash; the locals are feeding themselves, and have enough surplus to sell it to the rest of the Commonwealth. Their next objective is to begin tapping into their planet's natural resources.

Assilia Prime: Sharing a system with a planet composed nearly entirely of metal, Assilia Prime is a world destined for life as an industrial powerhouse. Despite its thin atmosphere, your first-ever colony is the current jewel of your colonial network. The colony is ringed by countless orbital refineries turning the ore from the metal world into usable product, and orbital factories churn out finished products in droves. With shipments now arriving on Virmire, the colony serves as a powerful message as to the promise of colonization. Furthermore, with colonization now firmly established, hydroponics and dome farms planetside have grown to the point where the population can feed itself, ensuring that the colony can go fully self-sustaining if they need to.

Xarin Tul Prime: Another garden world, Xarin Tul Prime makes Virmire's third full garden world. More distant from Hoc than Sorva Prime, Xarin Tul Prime nevertheless develops quickly. Colony planners make full use of the planet's single, vast megacontinent, centralizing development and installing extensive ground infrastructure to ensure that the colony's settlements form a vast, self-supporting network. The colony is feeding itself thus far, but have yet to really start feeding goods back into your broader economy.

Vol Kam Prime: Your only volus garden world is something of a political coup for you. It secured quite a bit of favor for you with your volus populations, and has given them a place in your polity where they can walk without the benefit of pressure suits or advanced environmental engineering. It should help to ensure that the volus minority does not fall into irrelevance, over time. You have also opened free migration between Vol Kam Prime and the Vol Union. The colony has rapidly set to work setting up an adequate source of food, and is now self-sustaining. Various investors from the Union have also immigrated, and brought with them seed funding to establish enterprises on the planet.

Nimal Pak Prime: The centerpiece of a microcluster within Sentry Omega, Nimal Pak Prime is the natural focus point for the combined mineral wealth of entire star systems. Protected by the military bases in Vayrule, supported by the fruits of the surrounding systems, and the focus of an intense colony drive and a decade-long effort at buildup, this promises to be an industrial world of unparalleled quality. Despite the massive amount of setup it has demanded, the world has reached profitability in record-breaking time, and promises to bring in more profit still. That said, it is not a garden world; they still rely on food imports from Virmire.

Taramnal Prime: The former Lystheni homeworld, while not the most hospitable world, is broadly fit for sapient inhabitation. Since the integration of the Reorganized Lystheni Colonies to the Commonwealth, you have been reworking Taramnal to serve as the administrative node for that segment of space -- only sensible, given the thin logistical trail you have to support the area. Lystheni administration has left two marks on the world. First, it is entirely self-sustaining, and could survive with minimal disruption if completely severed from your capital. Second, despite a rapid influx of former Lystheni from worlds of Morael Prime and Sumak Prime, the population is tiny, under twenty million. Dalatrass Shereel has begun producing more daughters than typical for the Lystheni, in order to close the gap between them and your core salarian population.

Eletania: Your newest colony, Eletania is still establishing its first permanent settlements, and it realistically never promises to be your most populous colony. With a mere 10,000,000 residents and choked by allergenic spores, it is an economically marginal planet. While you have ready access to antihistamine drugs permitting unshielded exposure to the spores for brief periods, most settlements will remain confined to higher altitudes. The colony's primary value is political, in anchoring your presence within and claim to the Hercules system and the Attican Beta cluster. It also serves to solidify your military presence in the region with a civilian population base.

Virmire, Sorva Prime, Xarin Tul Prime, and (I think) Taramnal Prime are Garden Worlds. We also have a VOLUS Garden world (Ammonia-based), and a couple not-quite garden worlds that are still immensely valuable.

Our population is only going to grow further, and as we expand into more systems and clusters (there's plenty to explore from secondary relays even ignoring the Rachni territory and primary relays) that's only going to get better.

uju32 · Mar 16, 2024

Pittauro said:
Virmire, Sorva Prime, Xarin Tul Prime, and (I think) Taramnal Prime are Garden Worlds. We also have a VOLUS Garden world (Ammonia-based), and a couple not-quite garden worlds that are still immensely valuable.

Yeah.

We also have a Quarian-spec garden world that is currently unused and unoccupied.
The level of bounty in Sentry Omega is...unprecedented, and is concentrated such that there are network effects that will come into play even more.

Like I mentioned earlier, we are literally the only Terminus Alliance nationstate that Im aware of thats currently receiving immigrants from the Citadel in the middle of a total war. People with their skills and their assets.
Which speaks to both confidence in our military ability to defend our planets and our government+economy.

They are not moving to Omega or Korlus or Jondam.

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