Attempting to Subvert the Plan: Dominion Edition

Retcon: Should General Horner (the MC) have been The Magistrate (Starcraft 1 PC)?

  • Yes

    Votes: 35 43.8%
  • No

    Votes: 29 36.3%
  • This does not matter to me

    Votes: 16 20.0%

  • Total voters
    80
  • Poll closed .
"What's up my gentles and spacebillies! My name is Vuwurian and welcome to my stream!"
 
I mean they say college is when you experiment and at this point he is a relative unknown so him doing gaming videos and commentary videos could be fun. He mostly says away from politics, though as time goes on he starts inserting a line here and there as he sort of slowly tests his politics without stepping on toes.

Also I'm totally for this!

Maybe he also has written some essays that have been posted and such giving his thoughts on certain events.
 
He could also have a fan club or one million twits followers. Having to deal with them seems like a handful and also a good training for managing large numbers of idiotic masses.
 
That is why I do not want to neglect any potential ally. The more we have on our side the shorter and more successful a coup can be. We do not want a bloody civil war or to fail at deposing Mengsk.
This isn't me really disagreeing with you so much as using what you say as a launchpad, but...

Of course, what kind of allies we can make depends on what our plans are. More on this below.

Putting Valerian in charge is absolutely silly. There's literally no reason to do it except that blizzard has a hard-on for monarchies.
Well, it has the advantage of simplicity. See...

Those of you familiar with CGPGrey's Rules for Rulers, a cynical but in some ways insightful piece, may recognize what I'm about to say:

The secret to overthrowing a government and reshaping it to one's liking is to create a strong network of key supporters who will back that new government. The reason revolutions are more difficult than coups (and much less common) is that a coup can usually integrate part of the existing power structure into itself, so part of your network is pre-built. In a revolution, you're creating effectively the entire new network over the dead bodies of the old network. This requires a very costly struggle and one requiring much more favorable conditions or more extensive preparation.

...

A coup that replaces Mengsk with Valerian requires no radical restructuring of the Terran Dominion. Duke and Warfield still run the military, Starke still runs the secret police, Horner still runs the Treasury. There's some risk to them that Valerian will seek to clean house or cherrypick his own loyalists. But the risk is if anything less than with Arcturus, because Valerian doesn't have as many delusions of grandeur and is capable of recognizing when it's better to avoid creating antagonism with a reign of terror, hopefully.

Thus, none of Arcturus' top-tier advisors have an incentive to prevent a coup that replaces Arcturus with Valerian. The thing can be done fairly quickly, with a surgical strike. All that is really necessary is to:

1) Make the sales pitch to Valerian without him ratting us out to his father,
2) Arrange a way for Arcturus to be killed,
3) Arrange for the right tools in place to present Valerian as the new heir.

(1) is an unknown to me since I never actually played Starcraft II but is presumably plausible, (2) is relatively easy with collusion from Starke or de Santo, and (3) is easy-ish for Treasury with its far-reaching bureaucracy.

Arcturus falls down 100 flights of stairs onto a giant pile of dynamite, so sad. Crown placed on Valerian's head, which (looks up the thread) may or may not have cat ears on it. Everyone keeps doing the same jobs. The face on the coins changes. "The king is dead, long live the king." Life goes on, except for Arcturus' life in particular. Very simple.

...

By contrast, a more radical change to the system requires more struggles against the existing power structure. After all, a man like Starke or Duke would definitely be very worried about what a radically restructured government might mean for his own personal future. Neither their skill set nor their biography makes them well suited to life in a republic with government by the masses. Staring down the barrel of a war crimes tribunal or something like one, they may prefer their chances under Mengsk.

This means we have a lot more of a fight on our hands to impose the new government. We have fewer allies who have direct access to Mengsk's personal security in a way that would ease the initial decapitation strike. And we have much more risk that if we approach potential allies, they might sell us out as a 'dangerous radical' who is likely to pursue an action that will get them killed by the rebels later if not by Arcturus here and now.

...

From an abstract perspective, a republic is better and putting Valerian in charge is worse. But the risks of pursuing the former course of action are higher than the risks of pursuing the latter.
 
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I remember Valerian not being a bad sort; certainly a lot more reasonable than his father.

The ideal is that the Terran Dominion stops being a military dictatorship with an enormous amount of indoctrinated conscripts ready to come down like a meteor on various peoples, but a decent start would be at least making sure it doesn't explode today.

This is mostly because the events of Starcraft 2 haven't happened yet, and an exploded Dominion would be
very, very bad
for several reasons.

For now, we still need the conscripts, and we need society to run reasonably well until we really, truly are certain the RTS plot wars over.

Then we can have ourselves some deep rooted societal reconstruction.
 
[X] Plan Increase Productive Forces
-[X] Infrastructure (6/6 dice, 30R)
--[X] Korhal: Capital City Augustgrad (Phase 2) [MANDATORY] 262/400 (4 dice, 20 R) (99.08%, 1/8 median phase 3 if either SCVs or Tool and Die completes, 2/8 median phase 3 if both complete)
--[X] Brontes: Orbital Cleanup (Phase 2) [Reconstruction] 106/200 (2 dice, 10 R) (74.44%, 4.06% chance of Phase 3 completion if SCVs completes)
-[X] Heavy Industry (5/5 dice + 4 free, 90R)
--[X] Vardona: Ardonin Heavy Vehicle Factory (Phase 2) 33/300 (6 dice, 60 R) (70.74%, 89.44% if Tool and Die completes)
--[X] Nephor II: TerraUnion Tool and Die Works (Phase 2) 53/200 (3 dice, 30 R) (80.16%)
-[X] Light and Chemical Industry (5/5 dice, 25R)
--[X] Tyrador IX: Refugee Workshops (Phase 2) [Reconstruction] 152/400 (3 dice, 15 R) (4.17%, 23.94% if either SCV or Tool and Die succeeds, 59.68% if both succeed)
--[X] Mar Sara: Endureum Extraction Operations (Phase 1) [NEW] 2/400 (2 dice, 10 R) (2/8 median phase 2, 2/7 median phase 2 if either SCV or Tool and Die succeeds, 2/6 phase 2 if both succeed)
-[X] Environmental (5/5 dice, 30R)
--[X] Korhal: Regreening Effort (Phase 1) 48/100 (2 dice, 10 R) (95.65%)
--[X] Tyrador IX: Establish Farmsteads (Phase 2) [Reconstruction] 360/400 (2 dice, 10 R) (92.97%, 2/8 median phase 3 if either SCV or Tool and Die succeeds, 2/7 median phase 3 if both succeed)
--[X] Mar Sara: Restoring the Biosphere (Phase 1) [NEW] 0/200 (1 die, 10 R) (1/4 median, 1/3 median if either SCV or Tool and Die succeeds, 1/2 if both succeed)
-[X] Services (5/5 dice, 50R)
--[X] Vardona: Angustia Orbital Shipyard Complex (Phase 2) [NEW] 79/500 (4 dice, 40 R) (3/10 median, 0.92% if SCVs succeeds)
--[X] Korhal: Katherine Mengsk Memorial Veterans' Hospital [MANDATORY] [NEW] 0/300 (1 dice, 10 R) (1/6 median, 1/5 median if SCVs or Tool and Die succeeds, 1/4 median if both succeed)
-[X] Military (6/6 dice, 50R)
--[X] Brontes: Refloating the Fleet (Phase 2) 37/400 (4 dice, 40 R) (0.19%, 18.41% if SCVs complete)
--[X] Brontes: Fort Riley Orbital Training Center 0/300 (2 dice, 10 R) (2/6 median, 0.78% if SCVs complete)
-[X] Research (5/5 dice, 75R)
--[X] High-Efficiency Conduits [Tech] 0/200 (3 dice, 45R) (14.74%)
--[X] New Model Weaponry (Phase 2) [Tech] [NEW] 198/250 (2 dice, 30 R) (87.75%)
-[X] Bureaucracy (5/5 dice, 55R)
--[X] Services/Administration/Logistics/Operations Mechanization Endeavor 94/300 (4 dice, 40 R) (65.27%)
--[X] Veterans' Benefits Program [MANDATORY] [NEW] 0/400 (1 die, 15R) (1/8 median)
-[X] Personal (4/4 dice, 20F)
--[X] Korhal: Have a Talk with Director Starke DC 80 (2 dice, 10 F) (83.47%)
--[X] Korhal: Go Drinking with Colonel de Santo DC 60 (2 dice, 10 F) (92.97%)

R: 405/605 -> begin Q2 with minimum 610 R
F: 20/70 -> begin Q2 with minimum 110 F
P: 30 -> begin Q2 with 30 if Augustgrad, Ardonin, Korhal, NMW, and SALOME finish and we pass all Personal projects (30 - 10 + 10 - 5 - 10 + 10 with a -5 from Starke for going over)

Swapped out TRUST for Starke from my draft plan.

[X] Plan Union Legalizing, SCV Building, and Paranoia Balancing
[X] Plan Super Cool Vehicles, Robots, and Paranoia Balancing
 
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Moratorium's over, so:
[X] Plan Union Legalizing, SCV Building, and Paranoia Balancing
-[X] Infrastructure (6/6 dice, 30R)
--[X] Korhal: Capital City Augustgrad (Phase 2) [MANDATORY] 262/400 (4 dice, 20 R)
--[X] Brontes: Orbital Cleanup (Phase 2) [Reconstruction] 106/300 (2 dice, 10 R)
-[X] Heavy Industry (5/5 dice+2 Free Dice, 70 R)
--[X] Vardona: Ardonin Heavy Vehicle Factory (Phase 2) 33/300 (7 dice, 70 R)
-[X] Light Industry (5/5 dice, 25R)
--[X] Mar Sara: Endureum Extraction Operations (Phase 1) 0/400 (5 dice, 25 R)
-[X] Environmental (5/5 dice, 30R)
--[X] Korhal: Regreening Effort (Phase 1) 48/100 (2 dice 10 R)
--[X] Tyrador IX: Establish Farmsteads (Phase 2) [Reconstruction] 360/400 (2 dice, 10 R)
--[X] Vardona: Supplemental Aquaculture Effort 0/250 (1 dice, 10 R)
-[X] Services (5/5 dice, 50R)
--[X] Korhal: Katherine Mengsk Memorial Veterans' Hospital [MANDATORY] [NEW] 0/300 (1 dice, 10 R)
--[X] Mass Literacy Movement (Phase 2) 0/300 (4 dice, 40 R)
-[X] Military (6/6 dice + 1 Free die, 70R)
-- [X] Brontes: Fort Riley Orbital Training Center 0/300 (7 dice, 70 R)
-[X] Research (5/5 dice, 65R)
--[X] New Model Weaponry (Phase 2) [Tech] 198/250 (2 dice, 20 R)
--[X] High-Efficiency Conduits [Tech] 0/200 (3 dice, 45 R)
-[X] Bureaucracy (5/5 dice + 1 Free dice, 65R)
--[X] Services/Administration/Logistics/Operations Mechanization Endeavor 94/300 (5 dice, 50 R)
-- [X] Veterans' Benefits Program [MANDATORY] [NEW] 0/400 (1 dice, 15 R)
-[X] Personal (4/4 dice)
--[X] Nephor II: Legalize the Dominion Industrial Workers Union (4 dice, 20F)
 
[X] Plan Increase Productive Forces
[X] Plan Union Legalizing, SCV Building, and Paranoia Balancing
[X] Plan Super Cool Vehicles, Robots, and Paranoia Balancing

My criteria are simple, I see SCVs, I vote SCVs.
 
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[X] Plan Something Something
-[X] Infrastructure 6/6 30R (+8 modifier)
--[X] Korhal: Capital City Augustgrad (Phase 2) 4 dice 20R 94%

(-10 Paranoia when complete)
(Progress 240/400, -5R per die)
--[X] Brontes: Orbital Cleanup (Phase 2) 2 dice 10R 26%
(Provides one-time Resource gain upon completion)
(Progress 106/300, -5R per die)
-[X] Heavy Industry 5/5 80R (+3 modifier)
--[X] Vardona: Ardonin Heavy Vehicle Factory (Phase 2) 4 dice 40R 9%

(Reduces groundside and space-based construction project lengths upon completion) (+10 Paranoia)
(Progress 33/300, -10R per die)
--[X] Nephor II: TerraUnion Tool and Die Works (Phase 2) 1 die + 3 free die 40R 93%
(Reduces some project lengths upon completion)
(Progress 53/200, -10R per die)
-[X] Light and Chemical Industry 5/5 50R (+3 modifier)
--[X] Korhal: Canis Chemical Refinery (Phase 1) 5 dice 50R 45%

(Improved yields from all Vespene projects upon completion)
(Progress 0/300, -10R per die)
-[X] Environmental 5/5 25R (-2 modifier)
--[X] Korhal: Regreening Effort (Phase 1) 2 dice 10R 90%

(+5 Paranoia upon completion)
(Progress 48/100, -5R per die)
--[X] Tyrador IX: Establish Farmsteads (Phase 2) 3 dice 15R 96%
(Progress 360/400, -5R per die)
-[X] Services 5/5 50R (-2 modifier)
--[X] Mass Literacy Movement (Phase 2) 3 dice 30R 0%

(+10 Paranoia)
(Progress 0/300, -10R per die)
--[X] Korhal: Katherine Mengsk Memorial Veterans' Hospital 2 dice 20R 0%
(-5 Paranoia)
(Progress 0/300, -10R per die)
-[X] Military 6/6 45R (+3 modifier)
--[X] Brontes: Refloating the Fleet (Phase 2) 3 dice 30R 0%

(-10 Paranoia)
(Progress 37/400, -10R per die)
--[X] Vardona: Treasury Reserve Site Alpha 3 dice 15R 40%
(Progress 141/300, -5R per die)
-[X] Research 5/5 50R (-2 modifier)
--[X] Improved Threat-Recognition Protocol [Tech] 3 dice 30R 0%

(Progress 0/250, -10R per die)
--[X] New Model Weaponry (Phase 2) (Tech) 2 dice 20R 79%
(-10 Paranoia when complete)
(Progress 198/250, -10R per die)
-[X] Bureaucracy 5/5 35R (+8 modifier)
--[X] Establish the Office of Forecasts and Trends 4 dice 20R 59%

(Unlocks statistical trends) (Unlocks estimated number of phases for project completion) (+10 Paranoia)
(Progress 0/200, -5R per die)
--[X] Veterans' Benefits Program 1 die 15R 0%
(-5 Paranoia)
(Progress 0/400, -15R per die)
-[X] Personal 4/4 25F (-2 modifier)
--[X] Korhal: Go Drinking with Colonel de Santo 2 dice 10F 86%

(Unlocks military-related Personal projects upon completion)
(DC 60 to avoid +10 Paranoia, -5F per die)
--[X] Korhal: Have a Talk with Director Starke 2 dice + 1 free die 15F 94%
(Unlocks security-related Personal projects upon completion)
(DC 80 to avoid +10 Paranoia, -5F per die)
-[X] Free Dice 4/4
-[X] 3 in Heavy Industry
-[X] 1 in Personal
-[X] Resources stockpile 200/200 Income 165/405 Total 365/605
-[X] Discretionary Funds (F) stockpile 10/10 Income 15/60 Total 25/70
 
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[X] Plan Super Cool Vehicles, Robots, and Paranoia Balancing
-[X] Infrastructure (6/6 dice, 30R)
--[X] Korhal: Capital City Augustgrad (Phase 2) [MANDATORY] 262/400 (4 dice, 20 R)
--[X] Brontes: Orbital Cleanup (Phase 2) [Reconstruction] 106/300 (2 dice, 10 R)
-[X] Heavy Industry (5/5 dice+2 Free Dice, 70 R)
--[X] Vardona: Ardonin Heavy Vehicle Factory (Phase 2) 33/300 (7 dice, 70 R)
-[X] Light Industry (5/5 dice, 25R)
--[X] Mar Sara: Endureum Extraction Operations (Phase 1) 0/400 (5 dice, 25 R)
-[X] Environmental (5/5 dice, 30R)
--[X] Korhal: Regreening Effort (Phase 1) 48/100 (2 dice 10 R)
--[X] Tyrador IX: Establish Farmsteads (Phase 2) [Reconstruction] 360/400 (2 dice, 10 R)
--[X] Vardona: Supplemental Aquaculture Effort 0/250 (1 dice, 10 R)
-[X] Services (5/5 dice, 50R)
--[X] Korhal: Katherine Mengsk Memorial Veterans' Hospital [MANDATORY] [NEW] 0/300 (1 dice, 10 R)
--[X] Mass Literacy Movement (Phase 2) 0/300 (4 dice, 40 R
-[X] Military (6/6 dice, 50R)
--[X] Brontes: Refloating the Fleet (Phase 2) 37/400 (4 dice, 40 R)
--[X] Brontes: Fort Riley Orbital Training Center 0/300 (2 dice, 10 R)
-[X] Research (5/5 dice, 65R)
--[X] New Model Weaponry (Phase 2) [Tech] 198/250 (2 dice, 20 R)
--[X] High-Efficiency Conduits [Tech] 0/200 (3 dice, 45 R)
-[X] Bureaucracy (5/5 dice + 1 Free dice, 65R)
--[X] Services/Administration/Logistics/Operations Mechanization Endeavor 94/300 (5 dice, 50 R)
--[X] Veterans' Benefits Program [MANDATORY] [NEW] 0/400 (1 dice, 15 R)
-[X] Personal (4/4+1 Free)
--[X] Nephor II: TRUST Civil Auxiliary Pilot Program [TRUST] DC 60 (2 dice, 30 F)
--[X] Korhal: Have a Talk with Director Starke, DC 80 (3 dice, 15 F)
 
I wonder if we've met our daughter in law yet….

…Anyways, good plan Quest QM.

[X] Plan Increase Productive Forces
 
[X] Plan Increase Productive Forces
[X] Plan Super Cool Vehicles, Robots, and Paranoia Balancing

I could not decide which I wanted and so I am voting for both.

--

I do think two dice for the Starke meeting in Increase Productive Forces might be low balling it, but its not the end of the world.
 
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[X] Plan Union Legalizing, SCV Building, and Paranoia Balancing

Still acclimatizing to the quest, so going for union-building over anything else.
 
[X] Plan Increase Productive Forces
[X] Plan Something Something

Talking to De Santo and Starke is not only narratively interesting, it opens new options. It means we stop neglecting an old war buddy and we can finally find out what Starke wants to talk about.
 
[X] Plan Increase Productive Forces
[X] Plan Super Cool Vehicles, Robots, and Paranoia Balancing

I disagree with Union Legalizing, right now we need to push forward on making sure we have all the Personal paths unlocked so we can evaluate and prioritize.
 
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