So something of a
quick analysis here. First of all, it is the other side, but that makes it just as biased as our perspective if not more so. For starters, Merin's 'Adverse to Politics' trait is on full display here. She calls out Sokolov has pushing to remove Torres because of politics due to his angling to become Director, but the opposite is true as Sokolov pushing to remove Torres has hurt his chances of becoming Director and the political choice would have been to leave the matter alone. Not to mention that Sokolov was going to leave the matter alone until General Raymond convinced Sokolov to pursue it. Claiming Sokolov pushed for Torres' removal because he doesn't think the military can be trusted falls flat when it was Sokolov trusting a member of the military that led to him taking that course of action. So while our general staff might be united in supporting Torres and being upset with Sokolov's actions, we had an American general like Merin herself who pushed for Torres' removal. So while this is the perspective of our general staff and it is important to consider, it is also important to remember that this isn't the perspective of our entire military and our senior military leadership has not been united on the issue of Torres.
Additionally, the idea that Sokolov got people killed by not doing SADS soon enough is Merin refusing to take responsibility. She was the one who didn't inform us of its importance and just expected us to know it was a high priority and that situation was only resolved because Sokolov noticed the lack of communication between the treasury and military on what the military needed. Merin likes to complain, but she was equally at fault for the situation as Sokolov was if not more so and unlike Sokolov, she didn't take any measure to resolve situation. She might have a point about a lack of deployment, but complaining that we didn't do the things she refused to tell us were a priority is on her.
Third, Merin's complaining about the budget ignores that fact that the military is taking a second priority to the security forces, something that was pushed by Hardtmann not Sokolov, and that while we might have a budget akin to the US military, we are not just the military. We have to pay for infrastructure, industry, research and all that supportive stuff. Not to mention how much we have had to spend on the navy thanks to Nobou's goals for this plans. If we hadn't had to spend so much on the navy, we should have gotten more of the army deployments done by now. We had to spent plenty of money on researching the supernatural, sorting out our logistics and supply chains. Having more APCs and guns is not use if you lack the logistics to get them to where they are needed or to have the parts and facilities needed to keep them maintenance so they don't begun useless when they first break down.
Finally, we aren't just limited by the budget though I am not sure what the in-game explanation for the dice is. We only have so many dice to spend and for all that Merin is complaining about us not spending enough on the military, we have consistently been activating all of our military dice each turn. Not to mention that we have been doing multiple deployments each turn on top of other things such as the naval goals imposed on us by Nobou or the sorting out the ammo supply chain. She complains about us not spending enough, but we have consistently spending what we can on the military and prioritising it over every other department to the point we have probably spent more on military than we have the next two departments combined.
That said, they aren't completely without a point even if Merin is tunnel-visioning on her part of the UNDC and ignoring the rest of it. We do need to get more deployments done, but it just isn't something that can be magically resolved by throwing more money at it as dice are just as much of a restraint right now as resources. As I mentioned above, we have been doing multiple deployments each turn and unfortunately, it isn't a case of us not doing our best, but our best just not being good enough.
Hardtmann has a point about secondary locations and convoys being underdefended, but I doubt that the vampires and the shadowmercs will hit those. The GLA would for sure, but the vampires seem to be more interested in precision strikes to fulfil specific goals rather than whittling down our strength or trying to defeat us in open conflict like GLA are. So they are a concern, but I am more worried about GLA hitting them than the mercenaries. I also want to know what airbases Wu is talking about because I have no idea what those are. It might be another case of the general staff assuming that we should know what they need rather than telling us what we need.
They also have a point about DARPA and the Lycain weaponisation as we have been putting that off in comparison to our other commitments to other organisations. We should get around to doing that sooner rather than latter.
In summary, they have some valid points, but a lot of it, mostly Merin, is complaining that we are constrained by logistics and reality rather than being able to magically do what is needed and making up excuses to blame Sokolov and Nobou rather than taking responsibility for the general staff's faults. Merin is either incompetent outside of leading troops or she just wants to blame Sokolov for everything and is retroactively looking for reasons to come to that conclusion rather than looking at the facts and coming to that conclusion.
I have some more respect for Wu and Hardtmann after this, but my respect for Merin has taken a nosedive because she is ignoring the facts and trying to blame everything on Sokolov rather than admitting that she might be at fault, Torres might have been in the wrong or that there is no magical solution to fix things or that maybe, just maybe that might be more to the UNDC than just its military divisions or those pesky things such as supernatural research or logistics might be important.
Well considering we spent a lot of our money on bases we had no use for aside from garnering support, and maxed out our fuel path for some reason. I don't blame them for being pissed.
Yeah, this is just plain wrong. None of our bases have no use beyond politics and all of them are useful to the UNDC. As for fuel, we need it for all of our plans, boats, tanks and pretty much all of vehicles. Buying vehicles is useful if you have no fuel for them to run on.
Lady, the US military spent decades building up its equipment pool to achieve its current state of military mobilization, and relied heavily on world war era surplus created in the context of gigantic mass production enterprises built on something close to a command economy.
The military you're a part of has only existed for about five years, and had to source all its arms in that amount of time. Equipping a million soldiers is not a quick job, especially when you don't have pre-existing contacts with arms manufacturers and pre-existing depots carrying previous-generation equipment for your million man army.
Not to mention that we have been actively spending on the military and have been consistently activating all of our military dice each turn. Merin seems to think that we can just magically fix things by throwing more money at the problem or that we can afford to exclusive spend our budget on the military and ignore things like infrastructure, industry and research into the supernatural.
I think to some extent we are in effect greatly overprepared for global conflict to the extent that we've been neglecting the actual ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Less that we have been neglecting the Middle East in favour of doing the other aspect of our jobs. Handling the GLA and the Middle East would be a full time job for the UNDC. Meanwhile we need to consider things such as the forest spirits (friendly and hostile), the werewolves, the vampires, the demons and the supernatural in general. Merin has a point that the current situation isn't acceptable, but she seems to think that Sokolov can magically make things better by throwing more money at the problem.
... Well, what if we ask one of the Cairngorm spirits (or one of the respective) to come with us to South America as an "expert witness" to help us get a scope of the situation there (and I have a feeling they are carious of the state of they siblings as much as us). Even if it doesn't result in a peace talk we at least have some info on the South American spirits.
