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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

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Simon_Jester said:
There's fun, and then there's edgelording.

Remember that after the war started but before Mira's coup, they were the only major power blocs on Virmire, since the previous civilian government was basically a Council caretaker regime that would have had no real legitimacy after we were cut off. The reason they basically owned the government prior to our coup may well be simply that there was otherwise a complete power vacuum, which they expanded into without any particular malice.

Likewise, their inability to "shut up" over the course of a war that's been going on for longer than a salarian lifetime doesn't necessarily make them malignant entities we need to destroy. They do in fact own a lot of stuff and play a key role in our economy. Unless we're explicitly planning to go full command economy (which raises a loooot of complications), they're going to be around in some form, and we do have to reach a viable modus vivendi with them.

I guess my main point here is that while business interests can't be allowed to actively subvert the public good, business interests do have a legitimate role in politics in a capitalist society, especially on matters of international trade and resource extraction. Because they play a role in the state's economy and ability to process resources and exchange goods, their needs and interests are at least relevant as something other than a big uniform slab of villainous enemies.
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What were the steps to accommodate us they took?

I do not disagree with you in principle, but here they have been portrayed via following steps:
1. Threw a hissy fit when we cleaned up the corruption.
2. Tried to blindside us via creating an assembly on their own.
3. Backed our opponent, who ran on pro-business, IIRC, platform.

Like, I would not mind at all making peace with them, but unilateral disarmament is not peace. We've took steps to do some outreach and they...stopped throwing hissy fit? That's the whole extend to which they agreed to meet us halfway.
So. As portrayed up to this point, they were not particularly friendly, as far as I remember.

I would not mind being friends, but friendship implies mutual relationship, not one-sided catering to their whims.


edit: pattern-recognition is not edgelording. :rolleyes:
If Poptart gives them a write-up about...say, willing donations to the front,
or agreeing to postpone independence talk until the date we want,
or willingly collaborating with anti-corruption measures;

anything which would portray them as, while not always on our side of things, mostly friendly set of entities, then I will change my mind. If they stop showing a tendency to be a nuisance in the lockstep, then we can talk about friendship instead of ceasefire.
 
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I think that's all the rolls? Unless some posts suffer critical existence failure or I miscounted. Although we might need to double check if there are any that we're doubled up on.
 
Martial 1: Military Outposts: 40,000: DC 26 - Minister 11 = DC15
Rolled: 44 + 24 (PA) + 11 (M) = 79 (Greater Success)

Martial 2: Take Over The Explorer Corps: 20,000: DC16 - Minister 11 = DC5
Rolled: 82 + 11 (M) = 93 (Greater Success)

Diplomacy 1: PR, Always PR: 15,000: DC33 - Minister 11 = DC22
Rolled: 100 + 11 (M) = 111 (Super Greater Crit Success?)

Diplomacy 2: Approach The Secessionists: 15,000: DC29 - Minister 11 = DC18
Rolled: 30 + 11 (M) = 41 (Success)

Stewardship 1: Expand The FDO: -35,000 Income: DC11 - Minister 10 = DC1
Rolled: 29 + 11 (M) = 30 (Success)

Stewardship 2: Rebalance Food Production: 30,000: DC21 - Minister 10 = DC11
Rolled: 74 + 10 (M) = 84 (Greater Success)

Intrigue 1: Databanks: 25,000: DC31 - Minister 12= DC19
Rolled: 49 + 15 (PA) + 12 (M) = 76 (Success)

Intrigue 2: Digging For Receipts: 32,000: DC56 - Minister 12= DC44
Rolled: 97 + 12 (M) = 109 (Greater Crit Success)

Learning 1: Emergency Response: 50,000: DC51 - Minister 11= DC40
Rolled: 15 + 17 (PA) + 11 (M) = 43 (Slim Fail)
 
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rdc30 said:
Learning 1: Emergency Response: 50,000: DC51 - Minister 11= DC40
Rolled: 15 + 17 = 32
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[ ] Emergency Response: The 3rd RWF is critically low on crucial medical supplies. With many crew members still in need of urgent medical attention, the MotS absolutely needs to divert all available resources to the matter of figuring out how to synthesize those medicines using only materials from an incompatible biosphere. This is...not going to be fun. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 50%. Cost: 50,000 credits. Effect: Divert medical funding to make a brand-new branch of your pharmaceuticals industry appear overnight; address quarian medical problems.
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Only 1 failed action, plenty of crits tho.
 
ctulhuslp said:
What were the steps to accommodate us they took?

I do not disagree with you in principle, but here they have been portrayed via following steps:
1. Threw a hissy fit when we cleaned up the corruption.
2. Tried to blindside us via creating an assembly on their own.
3. Backed our opponent, who ran on pro-business, IIRC, platform.
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1) This is probably unsurprising, since I suspect most of them were already in denial about how much the corruption was hurting the war effort. They wanted to keep their entrenched power base, big surprise.
2) Yes, how dare they try to subvert our power base by getting behind a proposal to create a constitutional presidential republic to replace the existing system of elective dictatorship by popular military heroine!
3) Given that Mira has characteristically bluntly been quite open about opposition to corporations, it is no surprise that corporate leaders think someone more inclined to listen to them should be in charge.

I'm not saying "corporations are our natural allies" or "we should subordinate ourselves to them." I'm saying they're a legitimate part of the power structure on Virmire and we're going to have to learn to live with them in the long run, rather than thinking of them as something to sabotage at all opportunities the way we'd go out of our way to weaken the rachni or even the Lystheni.

The corporations are one of the poles holding up our society's tent, and even if we need to whittle that pole down or shift it from place to place, and even if we have other poles... we don't want to cut this pole down entirely.

Like, I would not mind at all making peace with them, but unilateral disarmament is not peace. We've took steps to do some outreach and they...stopped throwing hissy fit? That's the whole extend to which they agreed to meet us halfway.
So. As portrayed up to this point, they were not particularly friendly, as far as I remember.

I would not mind being friends, but friendship implies mutual relationship, not one-sided catering to their whims.
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Am I advocating for "one-sided catering to their whims?"

The point is, we need to keep them out of politics, but part of that is going to be making sure they don't need to dominate politics to be able to keep doing business. Trying to harness them is going to be more efficient than trying to beat them to death.

edit: pattern-recognition is not edgelording. :rolleyes:
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My sincere apologies, I was referring to the person a post or two above you who was talking about letting the quarians starve todeath.

If Poptart gives them a write-up about...say, willing donations to the front,
or agreeing to postpone independence talk until the date we want,
or willingly collaborating with anti-corruption measures;

anything which would portray them as, while not always on our side of things, mostly friendly set of entities, then I will change my mind. If they stop showing a tendency to be a nuisance in the lockstep, then we can talk about friendship instead of ceasefire.
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Acknowledged, but we shouldn't assume they ARE a uniform block of useless obstruction just because they only get mentioned when they're in our way. Presumably, just about every economic activity we engage in has corporations involved in some way, and most of it's been going pretty well.
 
Sad days. Had I been quicker on the draw we'd have crit military outposts

Edit -- fixed broken auto correct.
 
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If our PR campaign succeeded too well, it may have some of the side-effects of failure; I don't actually want a pro-Council majority and would hate to have to take a second action to partly undo the effects of a booming success on our first action. :p
 
Simon_Jester said:
If our PR campaign succeeded too well, it may have some of the side-effects of failure; I don't actually want a pro-Council majority and would hate to have to take a second action to partly undo the effects of a booming success on our first action. :p
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It'll probably stir up a Pro us faction that follows whatever we throw our support behind. We haven't steered things wrong yet, so why doubt us?
 
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