It's just annoying that all three of those lose pp, I think is the issue. A "pick who you want to side with" I'd expect a roughly neutral net pp cost, perhaps slightly weighed in one direction or the other if we choose particularly unbalanced groups to make happy or angry.
I dunno. It reminds me of something I said around 2311 quest time, when I was annoyed that we were having to spend political will in the snakepit to get the Council to even
hold sessions regarding the Apiata and Sydraxian situations.
My objection to that was that the Council would have to be utterly derelict of duty to simply ignore crises on that scale. Sure they might arrive at decisions we don't like or can't readily implement. But they should at least be choosing to talk and discuss the issue among themseves, rather than adopt a policy of blind ignorance and hoping the problem will go away if they hide under the covers.
And I suggested that maybe a better way to proceed would be to say "hey, the Council will be holding a session on the Apiata crisis next week; spend 30pp if you want any real influence over that decision." That's frankly more realistic- the government doesn't have to be bargained into making the decision, but Starfleet has to exercise some of its influence and cash in a few political chips if we the players want to wade in and (in effect) control the outcome by exercising a political swing vote. Thus,
all options will cost us some political leverage, because if we don't exert the lever than our opinion doesn't matter.
Hmm.
Is there a reason we can't have pp scores per party? I feel like that might provide a clearer picture of these kinds of situations. Downside is a hair more bookkeeping, and potentially runaway minmaxing unless something is done to keep it under control. A stabilizing trend or some other mechanic to encourage us to keep everyone at roughly the same level?
Hrm. I don't think that would work out well. Aside from the complexity, a lot of our
sources of political will don't come with any obvious party affiliation. We do a favor for the Andorians; which of the multiple parties supported by Andorian councilors gets good feelings about us? We help negotiate a trade deal with the Laio, does that give us cred with the Expansionists, the Mercantilists, or the Developmentalists?
One of the core assumptions of the quest is that Starfleet is a mostly-nonpolitical organization that achieves mostly-nonpolitical successes that earn it the prestige to exert political influences. Trying to divide up our influence by party would tend to undermine that.
Kirk has like thirty such reprimands. It's a slap on wrist for a technical violation.
It's probably not going to hurt Volanen's career anymore than that moon Nash blew up hurt hers.
Enterprise:
"She did NOT blow the moon up. She blew it
down. On top of us."
It's not even bonus. I'd be okay with an argument like "he's seen more rare diseases than the rest of Starfleet combined, don't you want a guy like that in charge of Medical next time we hit a biophage?".
Leslie:
"Well, he's been known to cure 'dead.' That good enough for you?"
