No there will be no religion in these quest we voted not too have it.
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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
No, we voted to not have government-controlled/sponsored religion, aka no Piety score. We didn't vote to have an automatically areligious society or galaxy.
- Location
- United States
[X] Plan: Dealing with the Dumpster Fire
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes, but most of those happened during a span of time when I wasn't doing yearly "this year in the Systems Alliance" updates. Plus, I had a good "this was a weird year to be a Jew in Alexandria" narrative going, what with Caligula's bizarre anti-Jewish dickery, so it fit in with the rest in a way that the establishment of an early church in, say, Corinth wouldn't have.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
Fair enough.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
General thread consensus is that we do want independence. However, we want it under our terms. The bill proposed by the legislature was a bill to let them draft and sign a Declaration of Independence. This is ... not good. It gives them direct control over the contents and wording of the declaration with no chance for input from us.
So we need to propose our own declaration, essentially.
Proposing our own declaration? Why did we assemble the Assembly then?
I think that purging 'em until they start drawing up reasonable laws is better. It is more dictatorial, but does not imply that the Assembly are "yes"-men to the degree that pushing Mira's declaration would.
Also, write-in:
[ ] Adress the Assembly: You vetoed Virmire's first attempt at secession. This was an unpopular move. It was a necessary one.
Assembly is compromised - either by fear or by greed; You are not sure which of the two. You have to address that issue immediately, before their vices take root, and therefore directly. You need to speak to this body, to tell them where they went wrong, and to get their response - not a rumor, but a statement.
Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: ?%. Cost: ? credits. Effect: Speak to the legislators, both as a body and as individuals; Tell them about their perceived faults, and get response of the same kind.
I think that purging 'em until they start drawing up reasonable laws is better. It is more dictatorial, but does not imply that the Assembly are "yes"-men to the degree that pushing Mira's declaration would.
Also, write-in:
[ ] Adress the Assembly: You vetoed Virmire's first attempt at secession. This was an unpopular move. It was a necessary one.
Assembly is compromised - either by fear or by greed; You are not sure which of the two. You have to address that issue immediately, before their vices take root, and therefore directly. You need to speak to this body, to tell them where they went wrong, and to get their response - not a rumor, but a statement.
Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: ?%. Cost: ? credits. Effect: Speak to the legislators, both as a body and as individuals; Tell them about their perceived faults, and get response of the same kind.
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- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean, to be fair, the motivation behind granting yourselves unlimited and unchecked veto power was exactly that you all were more comfortable with an Assembly of yes-men (I could say that more kindly, but I'm me
).
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- Location
- California
SV is incapable of trusting NPCs with, or giving them, agency and power of their own. News at 11.I mean, to be fair, the motivation behind granted yourselves unlimited and unchecked veto power was exactly that you all were more comfortable with an Assembly of yes-men (I could say that more kindly, but I'm me
- Location
- USA
To be fair, we tend to be proven right. NPCs with power tend to be our opponents, incompetent, or dangerously incompetent opponents. Allied NPCs that can handle their own problems for the most part and don't have to be taken by the hand are really rare.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Honestly, I'm not sure I'd even mind whatever the Assembly thinks the declaration should look like. But I want to know, and I'd like a reasonably accurate picture of what the various sub-factions within the independence movement want... and why they want it.
For instance, a huge amount of the politics of the early US government, including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, had to do with political maneuver. With jockeying for political position among the states, rivalries between states and political factions within states, and even the personal interests of the figures involved. A lot of decisions that would have seemed either inconsequential or arbitrary at the time to someone who didn't know the nuances of the politics were very important in the context of those politics.
Now I'm just confused.
Since when is it somehow insulting to propose legislation for a legislature to vote on? In real life heads of state do this all the time. How is it somehow better to start unconstitutionally purging legislators in great big piles, rather than simply saying "I'd like to suggest this bill."
Basically, I'm with what Simon said HERE
I'm also lukewarm towards it, and my main preoccupation is to ensure it's widely accepted and non-controversial, with clearly defined limits as to what we claim as territory and what we can negotiate over.
I most definitely do not want any surprises, like our Assembly claiming some inalienable right to what used to be Council territory, like, and I quote:
A joke, yes, but that's apparently an elected Assemblyman, and it doesn't take that much for ideas to catch fire.PoptartProdigy said:
The multiple dreadnought Rachni fleets we ran into in Attican Beta might have had something to do with why we weren't in a hurry to go back after the first time.
Just a little. Teeny bit.
Phoenix Massing has been lost by the Terminus before, and was recovered less than five years ago.
The quarians are well aware how bad things can get.
EXACTLY. Now consider why they didn't move their home fleet.
Especially given that Nazi Germany was by no means a major maritime power, and as of the time of Dunkirk had two battlecruisers in commission vs the Royal Navy's 15 battleships and battlecruisers.
From the front page:
Demanding a renewed offensive does not mean immediately, it means as soon as possible.ATTENTION said:
Note how Admiral Malan explicitly talks about how Quarian logistics aren't set up for long duration or long distance operations away from home; those aren't going to appear out of thin air either.
At this level of civilization? Sure does.
We do IRL, and we don't even have reliable spaceflight, but we've been producing human insulin from genengineered E.coli since 1982.
That's what diabetics use.
Virmire was maintaining a civilization of billions with not much of a military even before the Rachni cut us off from civilization; the fact that we were able to scale our economy to support actual offensive fleets without imploding suggests things about the greater economy at large.
No military strategist is going to advance into a second cluster with the remnants of a fleet behind it.
Especially not a Rachni fleet, given how hardy their colonies are, and how they put them everywhere for fleet support.
That's how you get your supply lines cut, and your fleet isolated and annihilated.
THEY don't. But the society that produces them does.
It has to, to support their labor, to feed them, to fix people with too much cosmic radiation exposure in space, to modify crops for new planetary environments.
As a rush order, we're going to rejigger our agricultural production to ensure that foods Quarians can digest, at least with additives, are produced in quantity. We're going to put this through repeated tests and human trials, to validate it's safety for Quarian consumption, and avoid contamination.
We're doing it without disrupting the rest of our agricultural production.
And we're going to scale it up so that by the time their rations run out in two months, we have a steady stream of food in bulk production to feed several hundred thousand people, and move it to their locations wherever they are.
Similarly, we're going to go through the same process for their medicines.
There, at least, we have the medical formulas, but we're still going to have to go from prototype through animal and human testing to bulk production in a matter of weeks, without getting contamination into the drugs.
By modern standards, it's a bullshit level of scientific and industrial ability, and it's coming out of a colony that's still funding it's war effort without disruption. But for us, it's an everyday industrial thing. From what I can tell, it's only taking time and resources because it's a rush order in the middle of a war, with scientists and resources having to be sourced emergently and thus at a premium. (and because game mechanics).
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As for underestimating the difficulty? Allow me to do some math.
Virmire had a population growth rate of roughly 2% a year over the previous decade, compound interest;going from 5 billion to 6.1 billion at Year Ten.
That was roughly 110 million new mouths every year over the previous decade.
A little over 300,000 new mouths every day. 2.1 million a week. 8.4 million a month.
The entirety of the Quarian fleet population is eclipsed by the natural increase of the Virmirean population over two days.
Feeding them is a trivial effort by comparison with the normal processes of Virmirean society, which would not even be budgeted for if they hadn't been a dextro species.
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
Except that we will have this information.
We will have 'Year 16 Results' update that will give us results of our the Secessionists investigation amongst all other things, and in it's end there will be sub-vote about our declaration.
Just like it always was when we were picking an option with sub-vote.
- [] Plan Bodyshop has an action that could give support to loyalists and I really don't want to strengthen Kirai's position.
- Our corporatists opposition is already courting the Secessionists. I don't want to give them time to inject their own ideas into the Independence movement.
- The Lystheni will see that we don't plan to declare independence soon and plan to position the Citadel's affiliate fleet in the Sentry Omega. Without doubt, once this fleet is repaired it will attack the Lystheni to enslave them and steal back all the Precursors artifacts.
(if you don't believe the Council is planning to enslave the Lystheni, report to the nearest thought police station immediately)
- Location
- Austria
I mean, to be fair, the motivation behind granted yourselves unlimited and unchecked veto power was exactly that you all were more comfortable with an Assembly of yes-men (I could say that more kindly, but I'm me
There is a difference between assembly of yes-men and a veto power lol.
- Location
- Aotearoa
Maybe take one of these FTL comms units via SO local relay as close to Quarian space as we can, and set up a broadcast/listening post. Talk to the Quarians about where they might most likely hear it- like fleet patrols or colonies.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Talk it over with our Quarian admiral.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Clusters are small enough relative to galactic distances that I'm not sure this would help much. Messages from Virmire to Rannoch will take just about the same amount of time to get back and forth as messages from "as close to Rannoch as we can get" to Rannoch.
This is why every cycle uses the relays, they're so much faster that they let you cover in moments distances that would be uncrossable with normal Mass Effect FTL drives. By the same token, no distance we can travel on normal drives is significant on the scale of the distances you need a relay to cross.
Alternatively, serves the secessionists right for trying to slide a fast one past us.
Just saying, maybe we need to figure out how to arrange things so that the corporations aren't the eternal enemy.
This is why every cycle uses the relays, they're so much faster that they let you cover in moments distances that would be uncrossable with normal Mass Effect FTL drives. By the same token, no distance we can travel on normal drives is significant on the scale of the distances you need a relay to cross.
That's a fair point, but honestly I can live with a little movement in that direction. A LOT of movement would be problematic, I'll admit, but you don't actually need a 74% majority to get an independence bill through.
Alternatively, serves the secessionists right for trying to slide a fast one past us.
You know, if we ARE going to declare independence, we're going to have to make peace with the corporations sooner or later. Because when we no longer have the justification of a war economy, they're going to be too powerful a group to leave totally locked out of the power structure.
Just saying, maybe we need to figure out how to arrange things so that the corporations aren't the eternal enemy.
Lystheni paranoia is too unpredictable, chaotic, and powerful for me to expect to be able to avoid it. So I don't weight plans in favor of or against the Lystheni's ability to shadowrun.- The Lystheni will see that we don't plan to declare independence soon and plan to position the Citadel's affiliate fleet in the Sentry Omega. Without doubt, once this fleet is repaired it will attack the Lystheni to enslave them and steal back all the Precursors artifacts.
(if you don't believe the Council is planning to enslave the Lystheni, report to the nearest thought police station immediately)
- Location
- Austria
The answer is, naturally, to arrange removal of the companies
I mean. They are entities with power and interest which won't coincide with those of government. They didn't coincide even during existential crisis, imagine how bad it will get once we are at peace. The best we can do, short of nationalizing them*, is to categorically limit the amount of influence private entities can leverage on politics.
I mean, they made a mess out of economics during the war because we cleaned up the corrupt economic ministry. If we were not at extinction war, they would be next because they were complicit, albeit to the lesser degree than the previous government itself.
We just had too much problems to actually pursue justice, but we are staunchly against abuse of power and corruption, and companies know it. There won't be "peace". If they couldn't shut the fuck up during Rachni War of all things, they never will.
*granted, nationalizing at least some of them may well be the answer
The multiple dreadnought Rachni fleets we ran into in Attican Beta might have had something to do with why we weren't in a hurry to go back after the first time.
Just a little. Teeny bit.
And having an ally who has been shown to be able to break such a fleet wouldn't change things at all? Because if we knew something else was drawing off those forces, that would probably help shape our priorities.
Just a thought.
And if they let themselves simply go on the defensive without creating more of a buffer, who is to say it won't happen again? Your point is actually more of a reason to go now, while they have the advantage and go to retrieve a good portion of their fleet strength.
They already had contributions to the Terminus Alliance offensive. What Malan said was that the Quarians, having believed their fleet lost, would probably start pulling out.
Yes. We do in real life. Which does not necessarily translate to the setting of a quest, or the ability to get something produced in the short timeframe of 2 months.
As opposed to most of our economy being retooled to support the military-industrial complex? Which is not an unreasonable explanation either...
It entirely depends on the objective you're after. Are you intending to take and hold the second cluster? Are you intending to retrieve say, a cut off fleet with the promise of support ahead of you? Are you raiding an enemy cluster?
Sweeping generalizations, like you are making, are very misleading.
And we're assuming we can do this in a period of two months! Do you have any idea how short a timeframe this is for R&D? Much less growing enough of a crop to feed this many people? Even presupposing you have the technology doesn't mean you can do it quickly.
You yourself point out all the disruptions this is going to make to our production lines - what is the guarantee, when considered from outside, that we'd even have this ability?
It may be tempting to look at a general tech level and population and claim that it is obvious that a power should be able to produce medicines and crops for a completely different biome in a ridiculously short amount of time. But I think that's dangerous.
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- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
And that would be one of the kinder ways I declined to use.
In form, yes. In function, however, the outcome is that nothing passes of which you don't approve, same as if you went with the yes-men. Thus my commentary on the subject.
- Location
- the Moon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I have absolutely no idea what you two are arguing about, could either of you enlighten me?
@uju32 argues that despite what was said in the post re: the Quarians being up for an offensive, if they knew their fleet was safely behind our lines, that no, they would not be willing to launch an offensive, since they had lost their fleet. To justify this, he uses the example of how we didn't go looking for survivors of the 1st fleet at the beginning of the quest and hunkered down - even though the situations are entirely different.
He further argues that by looking at a map and knowing how many people we have on Virmire, an outside party could make a substantive argument that Virmire could definitely create enough dextro food for hundreds of thousands of dextro-needing sophonts in just a couple months.
My position is that, as the post explicitly states, if the Quarians knew that their fleet was safely behind our lines, they would be eager to go on an offensive to retrieve them - or at least, to support the offensive they currently are participating in, as opposed to withdrawing.
Further, I argue that since the Quarians currently have the Terminus Alliance holding Phoenix Massing, providing a buffer to the Far Rim, this makes the situation objectively quite different from ours in the beginning. Thus, if their fleet has not truly been lost, then it would be to their benefit to push for a breakthrough to get them back before they starve, since I do not buy into the argument that because one is capable of projecting military power, one must therefore, be capable of achieving miracles in genetic engineering in a short amount of time.
To do otherwise - when one knows they are alive, but short on rations, and may die without your intervention would be to show a callous disregard for one's military, and people, profoundly affecting morale at home. There is a significant difference between a fleet dying in battle, and a power choosing to abandon a fleet which another power fought heroically to save to starvation and death.
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
1) You need the resources for the breakthrough
2) You must bring repair ships if you want your fleet back
3) Or transports, if you just want to save your crew
4) You must survive the flight back
5) Volus are living on Virmire, right? Means Virmirians have experience with rather 'other' life support systems.
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Counterpoint: we have no special expertise in this area, yet are clearly able to feed the Quarians so long as we are willing to allocate resources to doing so. Therefore, whatever you think of the plausibility, in-universe it should be reasonable to assume that such a task is achievable. The only reason for your proposed disconnect between our actual capabilities and the Quarians' assessment thereof would be if we possessed some sort of unusual advantage which, in fact, we do not.
I don't disagree that some resources are necessary for a breakthrough, but given that Malan was saying the following...
Fleet Admiral Malan said:
This implies that they have the resources to commit to an offensive, only that currently, since they are unaware of the survival of the 3RWF, they are not willing to. As for the Volus, that's an established species which had resources to support them in place.
As long as we not only allocate our resources, but half the total efforts of our Ministry of Learning and our Ministry of Stewardship, at the possible cost of the other projects we could be working on. Again, since they don't know if we've geared our production entirely to military pursuits to survive as long as we have, there is no way to be certain...