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Why? We only have 2 Military Planets on the list; after this choice, that leaves only 1 Military Planet.

We're a multi-species polity. Anything that fosters peaceful, productive trans-species organization, political or otherwise, is something that it's in our best interests to foster, given the natural fracture points that already exist in our society.

A situation where an entire species was mostly voting a volus supremacist candidate as a joke is not good for society.
Mira needs to be thinking in the longer term beyond her rule, and establishing norms of behavior for political organizations, rather than futilely attempting to stamp them out; all that does is drive them underground. Channel the flow, don't stand in front of the tide.

Furthermore, Kirae mentioned having been part of the effort who engineered the bloc asari vote for the batarian former PM.
Ergo, they already exist, only with the arrangements being made in quiet backrooms. Better to bring those things out where transparency acts as a check on certain types of dealmaking.

EDIT
Besides, more generally, parties enfranchise the poor and civilian to have a voice in the selection of political candidates before they even get to the polls.
The rich and powerful do not need parties to distort the political process, and are advantaged by the lack of any existing political centers to impede them.
Not really seeing why? Last thing we want to do is overstretch.
And I will point out that the Salarians hold only two clusters, and are a Tier 1 polity regardless.
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Firstly, kudos on coming up with something that looks like a plausible ancestor of the Admiralty Board setup we see in canon.
Well done.

I'm getting a very Roman Republic feel from this writeup, with almost a 1:1 correspondence between the quarian Senators here and the Roman senatorial families of OTL. And tons of nepotism in play, because regardless of how meritocratic they say their system is, I note the lack of any actual political power shared with the plebes, and there is no indication that the quarians are magically immune to corruption and complacency.

Given it's lack of an executive, this governmental design lends itself very much to policy paralysis and infighting, and is inherently unstable given how it disenfranchises its plebes. And the fact that they abandoned the galactic stage to the asari and salarians rather than risk cultural contamination is a pretty good indicator they realize how fragile their system is. Their cultural immune system is weak, so to speak.

This is especially noticeable when you consider that the asari's best buds are salarians, who are basically a neofeudal society whose politics are managed by dalatrasses. And yet their government feels no threat of Asari cultural subversion.
Rannoch is overdue for a Caesar-type to harness the disenfranchised and throw everything into chaos.

I foresee Rannoch being a big headache for us post-war; too big to ignore the way we ignore the lystheni.
The politicians are unlikely to be thrilled at the return of hundreds of thousands of veterans exposed to alien ways of doing things, regardless of what's said in public. Not once they begin to talk.

On the brightside?
We may see quarian immigration post-war, depending on what their migration policies are like.
Assuming we figure out quarian medical requirements.
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That's after about 2800 years of canon.
This is much earlier in the timeline. Do not assume that things are anywhere as ossified as they are in canon, and the ferment of the years of war are putting even more things in flux.

Note how while Mira is a Maiden, her best friend, who followed her to Virmire, is a Matron.

This works for me.
We expect people to have their personal biases; as long as they're up front about them, do not subvert final decisions, and are competent? No problem.
Exposure to a variety of opinions is a good thing; it prevents groupthink, and reduces the likelihood of something blindsiding us out of the blue.


The lady is effectively our chief of staff, which is one of the most powerful positions in a political administration.
Think a cross between Karl Rove, Rahm Emmanuel and John Podesta. Only much better looking.
Of course she'd be this way regardless of her opinions.


She's still only Intrigue 20 vs Shurna's Intrigue 23, and Shurna has an entire Ministry behind her.
Not to mention that she's been cut off from Citadel space for at least sixteen years. And only approached us seven or eight years into our tenure.
If she was an active agent of the Citadel, I think she would have been much more proactive about doing something about Corruption McFucker

I suspect Kirae is just what she seems: A connected asari matriarch with Opinions and Concerns, but no actual employer.
Probably has an Interesting backstory; I would not be surprised to find she retired here after working for Asari Republic Intelligence, or something similar.


ME is a RPG-shooter. The races were tailored with that in mind, hence the krogan.
Because honestly, if it was a space game, the salarians would be a better bet for a galactic threat than the krogan, whose only relevant trait was their ability to breed fast.

Antimatter does not care how good you are at boarding other people's property; it will destroy it regardless. And antimatter was in wide use by the time of the Rachni wars.

But the krogan portrayed in the series are terrible workers. Undisciplined. Prone to berserking in a bloodrage.
Too stubborn to take instruction or orders, even among old soldiers who should know better.
Maybe they were different pre-war, but nobody says so.

Industrial war is way more reliant on logistics and supply than how gnarly your footsoldiers are. More depends on teamwork and cooperation than personal prowess.How good your nations is at mining, and turning that mined material into ships and guns matters more than how many bullets your infantry can survive.

Bullets are cheap, after all; if the soldier can survive 1 bullet, shoot him with 19 more.

The krogan, no matter how good they've been portrayed as on the ground, have no particular edge in space, which is where war would be decided. Or in producing the materials that fuel a war machine. Nor do they have the political organization necessary for total war.
It makes no sense to anyone who takes a hard look at them.


They were different from canon though. Krogan pre-Rachni war saw the blood rage as a disease (metioned in the ME2 hospital level) and treated it like a mental illness, and almost no one even had it. During the war the rage was seen as something desirable in soldiers, and eventually things shifted to where they are in canon.

You can see this in how the game displayed their governmental structure as well. Wrex is leading a coalition of clans because he personally is strong, and he has powerful backing in the female clans, but his only 'lieutenant's are his brother and wife.

But in ME3 you wander through abandoned krogan city, which had small apartments. Much higher population density requires a more complex form lf government.

Also, in ME 2 there is an entire mission that takes place in a massive hospital complex, so there would have had to have been institutions of learning, vs canon's promotion through shotgun. It could very well be that there were enough krogan engineers and scientists to take advantage of the rapidly expanding population and technology.

My best guess is that before the krogan were uplifted by the salarians they had a pretty well developed planet, with their own birth control methods to keep population down and an institutional dislike for the blood rage. During the war the 'resonable' krogan were either killed or lost power to their new martial focused kin, and the new martial focus is what resulted in canon.

After the rebellion and with the genophague in place, they were past the point of no return population wise, even more of the 'reasonable' krogan are dead, and now they are also galactic pariahs. Add a couple thousand years of pride and bitterness and canon is what you get.

Caution: At least, this is what I remember. Actual sources may prove me wrong.
 
Certainly the lack of 'infinite money, the sinews of war' would not have helped.
Are you a Gibbon fan then 'It's the Christians'?
I favor the latifundia idea myself.
The extreme concentration of wealth is definitely one of the primary causes in my mind* along with the inherent institutional instability in their "selection" of the autocrat.

EDIT: *I remember reading about how 6 roman senators owed something like 70% of the land in the roman province of Africa during the late imperial era and how they basically avoided paying any taxes due to the privileges aquired through their senatorial positions.
 
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Hey folks, I think we've had enough of the Roman Empire stuff.
I can't find the quote right now.
@PoptartProdigy can you confirm if Lissa is a maiden or matron?
I remember Marae is a matron.
Lisa S'Voi, your old friend and Minister of Finance, is a maiden like you. Marae Dantius, your Minister of Relations who hosted you and Lissa in her home for many years following your arrival on Virmire, is a matron.
 
My best guess is that before the krogan were uplifted by the salarians they had a pretty well developed planet, with their own birth control methods to keep population down and an institutional dislike for the blood rage. During the war the 'resonable' krogan were either killed or lost power to their new martial focused kin, and the new martial focus is what resulted in canon.
This isn't canon though.
By the time they were uplifted by the salarians, they had nuked themselves back into the stone age, and were tribes roaming the post-apocalyptic Tuchanka landscape. Never invested in birth control even when they were industrializing.
I quote:
The krogan homeworld boasts extreme temperatures, virulent diseases, and vicious, predatory fauna. Around 1900 BCE, the krogan discovered atomic power and promptly instigated many intraplanetary wars, sending Tuchanka into a nuclear winter. With most of their industrial base destroyed, the krogan entered a new dark age and warring tribal bands dominated. Populations remained low for the next 2000 years.
Tuchanka
Ancient krogan society was once rich with cultural, architectural, and artistic accomplishments. However, the krogan birth rate exploded despite the natural limits of their predatory homeworld once they achieved industrialization. Technology made life "too easy" for them, so when they looked for new challenges they found those in each other. Wars were fought over dwindling resources as the krogan expanded.

Four thousand years ago, at the dawn of the krogan nuclear age, battles to claim the small pockets of territory capable of sustaining life escalated into full scale global war. Weapons of mass destruction were unleashed, transforming Tuchanka into a radioactive wasteland. The krogan were reduced to primitive warring clans struggling to survive a nuclear winter of their own creation, a state that continued until they were discovered by the salarians two thousand years later.
Krogan
Prior to the genophage, krogan population growth was limited by predation, disease, and war. Even so, the birth rate exploded once the krogan achieved industrialization, leading to wars over resources and living space. Other species on Tuchanka suffered greatly as the krogan expanded. When the krogan ran out of land, they settled into an arms race that ended in nuclear devastation. Tuchanka's relatively short Golden Age was at an end.
Prior to the ecological devastation of Tuchanka, blood rage was extremely rare among the krogan. Back then, while all krogan were capable of heightened anger and violence in fight-or-flight scenarios, almost none experienced insensitivity to pain. The one percent who did were those suffering serotonin-suppression. At that time, krogan society regarded the condition as pathological, and medicated or imprisoned sufferers to protect them and society.
Following nuclear ecocide four millennia ago, evolution selected only those krogan afflicted with blood rage for survival. Today there is no living memory among the krogan of a life without mindless, murderous fury.
Codex/Aliens: Non-Council Races
The krogan the salarian met had no memory of industry or large scale society, and were uniformly afflicted by the bloodrage. And had been that way for four thousand years.
 
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We were talking about the events of the Krogan Rebellions three or four hundred years uptime, not the Rachni Wars. Antimatter was a thing then, and I'm pointing out there was zero incentive for anyone to leave their infrastructure behind to be exploited by the krogans.

Not after the lessons of the rachni war.
Ah, that makes sense. What you said was that antimatter was in wide use by the time of the Rachni wars, which wasn't correct, but I suppose also not really what you meant.

And regarding the codex - let's just agree that Bioware did very poorly at space things. (Well, except for SPACE MAGIC. :rolleyes: )
 
And regarding the codex - let's just agree that Bioware did very poorly at space things. (Well, except for SPACE MAGIC. :rolleyes: )
:V
Lisa S'Voi, your old friend and Minister of Finance, is a maiden like you. Marae Dantius, your Minister of Relations who hosted you and Lissa in her home for many years following your arrival on Virmire, is a matron.
Ah, thanks.
Dunno why I thought Lissa was a Matron....

Vote tally.
Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on Feb 12, 2018 at 11:53 AM, finished with 232 posts and 47 votes.
 
I suspect Kirae is just what she seems: A connected asari matriarch with Opinions and Concerns, but no actual employer.
Probably has an Interesting backstory; I would not be surprised to find she retired here after working for Asari Republic Intelligence, or something similar.

Exactly. She is manipulative and wants to push us in a specific direction, certainly, and that makes her worthy of watching. However, I'm not going to really worry about her (we've got her under a microscope) until we have regular physical contact with the Asari Republics and the Citadel.
 
As long as Mira seems like the best bet to stay alive, I think backstabbing will not happen.
 
Not really seeing why? Last thing we want to do is overstretch.
And I will point out that the Salarians hold only two clusters, and are a Tier 1 polity regardless.

True. The main reason why the Systems Alliance's colonies were so vulnerable to slavers, pirates, Collectors, merc groups, etc., was because they rushed to settle as many colonies throughout the Attican Traverse as possible far beyond the capabilities of the fleet and marines to protect them. It's a strong argument to limit our initial territory once we declare independence or become a Citadel member state to just Sentry Omega, Attican Beta, and the Kepler Verge since:
1. Easy to defend from outside threats since AB's relays would be easy to turn into a heavily fortified gateway to all three clusters.
2. Just fully colonizing and exploiting those three clusters alone will take centuries.
3. We already have military control of all three clusters (minus the Rachni holdouts, Lystheni, and any other unknown threats we should be able to deal with sooner or later) and, assuming the Rachni War lasts as long as it did in canon, will have been under our control and administration for over a century by the time the war ends, making it an easy (relatively speaking) sell to the Citadel Council.
 
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True. The main reason why the Systems Alliance's colonies were so vulnerable to slavers, pirates, Collectors, merc groups, etc., was because they rushed to settle as many colonies throughout the Attican Traverse as possible far beyond the capabilities of the fleet and marines to protect them. It's a strong argument to limit our initial territory once we declare independence or become a Citadel member state to just Sentry Omega, Attican Beta, and the Kepler Verge since:
1. Easy to defend from outside threats since AB's relays would be easy to turn into a heavily fortified gateway to all three clusters.
2. Just fully colonizing and exploiting those three clusters alone will take centuries.
3. We already have military control of all three clusters (minus the Rachni holdouts, Lystheni, and any other unknown threats we should be able to deal with sooner or later) and, assuming the Rachni War lasts as long as it did in canon, will have been under our control and administration for over a century by the time the war ends, making it an easy (relatively speaking) sell to the Citadel Council.
I guess that makes sense.
I think it's the fact that we're in two separate blobs on the map, it makes me want to grab Nubian expanse and Hades nexus to get rid of the border gore.
 
I foresee Rannoch being a big headache for us post-war; too big to ignore the way we ignore the lystheni.
The politicians are unlikely to be thrilled at the return of hundreds of thousands of veterans exposed to alien ways of doing things, regardless of what's said in public. Not once they begin to talk.

On the brightside?
We may see quarian immigration post-war, depending on what their migration policies are like.
Assuming we figure out quarian medical requirements.
We could be a useful safety valve for them. Instead of whatever repressive measures they have in place now they can just let the ambitious/malcontent plebs immigrate to Virmire.
 
True. The main reason why the Systems Alliance's colonies were so vulnerable to slavers, pirates, Collectors, merc groups, etc., was because they rushed to settle as many colonies throughout the Attican Traverse as possible far beyond the capabilities of the fleet and marines to protect them. It's a strong argument to limit our initial territory once we declare independence or become a Citadel member state to just Sentry Omega, Attican Beta, and the Kepler Verge since:
1. Easy to defend from outside threats since AB's relays would be easy to turn into a heavily fortified gateway to all three clusters.
2. Just fully colonizing and exploiting those three clusters alone will take centuries.
3. We already have military control of all three clusters (minus the Rachni holdouts, Lystheni, and any other unknown threats we should be able to deal with sooner or later) and, assuming the Rachni War lasts as long as it did in canon, will have been under our control and administration for over a century by the time the war ends, making it an easy (relatively speaking) sell to the Citadel Council.
I seem to recall seeing at least one ME galaxy map with an additional relay connection for the Kepler Verge. (ME3 map, for example, has the link from Shadow Sea to the Kepler Verge.) So, while it's up to PoptartProdigy to make sense of conflicting maps, I wouldn't count on it remaining a single-relay cluster. Which... is not really a good thing for us in the short run, as having the Attican Beta cluster as a choke point helps a lot.
 
I guess that makes sense.
I think it's the fact that we're in two separate blobs on the map, it makes me want to grab Nubian expanse and Hades nexus to get rid of the border gore.

I'd be in favor because it gives us a connection to the Quarians. I'd prefer to keep at least one corridor of clusters to wider galactic civilization under our control, just so we can't be isolated again. And those two clusters are the farthest from the Batarians who are likely to become a constant problem to us in the future. Not only do we threaten their primacy over the Attican Traverse and Terminus Systems, but our Batarian citizens have thrown of the caste system so we are a danger to their system of government.
 
On the other hand, the batarians may take such a beating in this war that they're no longer capable of posing much threat; we may end up having to worry about an ambitious Terminus Alliance that wants to recruit us and resents us for guarding our independence, or a bunch of random wandering krogan warlords.

Why? We only have 2 Military Planets on the list; after this choice, that leaves only 1 Military Planet.
We don't urgently need more military bases in our home cluster, and we may well want to establish one in Attican Beta before we even look at our other option in Sentry Omega.

We're a multi-species polity. Anything that fosters peaceful, productive trans-species organization, political or otherwise, is something that it's in our best interests to foster, given the natural fracture points that already exist in our society.

A situation where an entire species was mostly voting a volus supremacist candidate as a joke is not good for society.
Mira needs to be thinking in the longer term beyond her rule, and establishing norms of behavior for political organizations, rather than futilely attempting to stamp them out; all that does is drive them underground. Channel the flow, don't stand in front of the tide.
That's a fair point. On the other hand, I think I'd like to establish the tradition that parties are not the sole or dominant entities of the state, and hopefully the tradition that the head of state is somewhat above partisan affiliation. It may not last indefinitely, but it'd be good for the republic while it lasted.

Factions are inevitable and I think you have a point about channelizing that, but I also think we should try to do everything we can to enshrine the ideas that political faction is much, MUCH less important than Virmirean national identity, and that political faction leaders have little or no power to sway or compel the consciences of their followers.

The krogan, no matter how good they've been portrayed as on the ground, have no particular edge in space, which is where war would be decided. Or in producing the materials that fuel a war machine. Nor do they have the political organization necessary for total war.

It makes no sense to anyone who takes a hard look at them.
Again, my working hypothesis is that the Krogan Rebellions were baaasically an endless series of krogan warlords pulling together ragtag fleets out of a mix of captured rachni industrial assets and whatever they could beg, borrow, or steal from themselves or other races and posing a constant low-level pressure. Beating the krogans any one time wasn't actually that hard, even for the very unwarlike asari and the somewhat unwarlike salarians. But it just kept happening over and over and over until even asari matriarchs were realizing with a certain sick horror that they could no longer really remember what it was like to live in a galaxy free of krogan brigandage.

And finally, when a bunch of strapping 'young' turians, who were warlike enough to fight indefinitely without undue war-weariness but civilized enough to be good neighbors, helpfully stepped up and volunteered to take care of krogan-fighting duties... Well, matriarch and dalatrass got together over a quiet cup of tea, and quietly agreed that it might just be time to encourage them.

The thing is, well... they asked a turian to solve their problem. Unsurprisingly, the turians duly shot the problem by effectively neutering the krogans.

I guess that makes sense.
I think it's the fact that we're in two separate blobs on the map, it makes me want to grab Nubian expanse and Hades nexus to get rid of the border gore.
From the point of view of a galaxy map where 99.99% or more of the space colored in on the map is territory we can't even reach because it's out of FTL range of our relay systems, sure.

From the point of view of a relay network connectivity map we are WAAAY more integral as we are than we would be then.
 
My view on the Krogan Rebellions is that at some point during the intervening centuries of peacetime between the Rachni War and the Krogan Rebellions, the krogan as a race learned how to industry, and thereby produced a war machine. Alternatively, that when the salarians performed the uplift, they did not pass down weapons and only weapons, thereby shackling themselves to a race of economic dead weight for an unknown period of time during a time of total galactic war, but rather also passed down and helped to create the technology and infrastructure for the krogan to maintain their own materiel.
 
From the point of view of a galaxy map where 99.99% or more of the space colored in on the map is territory we can't even reach because it's out of FTL range of our relay systems, sure.

From the point of view of a relay network connectivity map we are WAAAY more integral as we are than we would be then.
Speaking of maps, do we have a pre-Rachni War map showing who claimed what system?
 
Well, that bodes well for our prospects, especially since the Council may be more heavily preoccupied regaining influence in the Terminus (with which it shares a border and where systems were never directly touched by the wars) than it is with regaining influence in our region of space (which has been devastated by the rachni).

My view on the Krogan Rebellions is that at some point during the intervening centuries of peacetime between the Rachni War and the Krogan Rebellions, the krogan as a race learned how to industry, and thereby produced a war machine. Alternatively, that when the salarians performed the uplift, they did not pass down weapons and only weapons, thereby shackling themselves to a race of economic dead weight for an unknown period of time during a time of total galactic war, but rather also passed down and helped to create the technology and infrastructure for the krogan to maintain their own materiel.
Plus, krogan are pretty long-lived. Once you teach a generation of krogan the skill set to operate an industrial base, they stay taught for several hundred years, unless someone methodically kills off that generation of krogan or create a situation in which they are all likely to die by intra-krogan violence.

Given the timeline, some of the older krogan of the Rebellion era would have remembered the contact, uplift, and Rachni Wars quite clearly. That probably includes any technical and engineering training they received.
 
True. The main reason why the Systems Alliance's colonies were so vulnerable to slavers, pirates, Collectors, merc groups, etc., was because they rushed to settle as many colonies throughout the Attican Traverse as possible far beyond the capabilities of the fleet and marines to protect them. It's a strong argument to limit our initial territory once we declare independence or become a Citadel member state to just Sentry Omega, Attican Beta, and the Kepler Verge since:
I think it's the fact that we're in two separate blobs on the map, it makes me want to grab Nubian expanse and Hades nexus to get rid of the border gore.
Pretty much.

If we have to claim one more cluster, I would advocate the Hades Gamma cluster; a hub system that controls access to at least two others.
The Hades Nexus and Nubian Expanse are things you can sign rights of way agreements for, and as long as you hold Attican Beta, in wartime you can simply take control of it, or go Nubian Expanse>Hades Nexus>Phoenix Massing for access to the Quarians and Terminus.

Or take the alternate route of punching up the Maroon Sea> Caleston Rift>Phoenix Massing, which gives the additional benefit of access to the Terminus once you capture Caleston Rift.
We could be a useful safety valve for them. Instead of whatever repressive measures they have in place now they can just let the ambitious/malcontent plebs immigrate to Virmire.
Which is one reason I foresee it being a headache for us.
Because those malcontents are going to come here to settle, organize and possibly fundraise, and then go back, and legally we can't interfere much, even if we wanted to. Will complicate our diplomacy considerably. And our Intrigue.

We don't urgently need more military bases in our home cluster, and we may well want to establish one in Attican Beta before we even look at our other option in Sentry Omega.
Military Outposts affect military reform rates.
[ ] Military Outposts: You've identified a few systems in Sentry Omega suitable for the establishment of dedicated military outposts. Setting up a base in one of them would establish extremely thorough ship basing and provide a secure basing point for your military deeper into the cluster. Time: 1 year. Cost: 40,000 credits. Chance of Success: 75%. Effect: Establish a permanent military presence in a system of your choice (sub-vote to follow for which). This provides a secure base within the cluster for your ships to use and provides excellent ship basing quickly. Certain systems will also provide passive benefits to background military reforms. Will provide enough docks to hold the 3rd RWF.
And given as Survey is going to prioritize Sentry Omega, we're not going to be plopping down anything in AB anytime soon.

Attican Beta is a buffer; somewhere we can afford to give up if shit gets really tough. No major bases or investements there until we're certain we can hold it. That's why all that's there are extractive industries and logistics, nothing essential.
What we're aiming for next is Logistics II, which is a different story, and has nothing to do with Military Outposts.

That's a fair point. On the other hand, I think I'd like to establish the tradition that parties are not the sole or dominant entities of the state, and hopefully the tradition that the head of state is somewhat above partisan affiliation. It may not last indefinitely, but it'd be good for the republic while it lasted.
1) So you push a Diplomacy campaign to foster other transpecies organizations in addition to political parties. Professional organizations. Boy Scouts. Fan clubs. Anything and everything that works as social glue and brings more people into contact with each other.

But parties are central to a nation's political life; you can't really get around that.

2) No head of government is somewhat above partisan affiliation. Not how it works.
Ceremonial heads of state might be, like the British monarchs, but executive ones are not.
They cannot be and be effective at governing.

The difference is the belief that other people/parties are acting in good faith, which allows different parties to work together for the common good.
And that's not something that can be legislated.
Factions are inevitable and I think you have a point about channelizing that, but I also think we should try to do everything we can to enshrine the ideas that political faction is much, MUCH less important than Virmirean national identity, and that political faction leaders have little or no power to sway or compel the consciences of their followers.
1)I don't believe we're dealing with politics at that level of granularity.
Not in this quest.

2) Political faction leaders DO have a lot of power to sway the consciences of their followers. That's how parties work.
That's why Mira has any power. That's how MLK worked. JFK. How LBJ got the Civil Rights Act past Congress.
How Prohibition came about.

What you want are leaders who are representative of the opinions and concerns of the vast majority of their supporters, not just the loudest or the deepest pockets. And who keep their best interests at heart.
 
Military Outposts affect military reform rates.

And given as Survey is going to prioritize Sentry Omega, we're not going to be plopping down anything in AB anytime soon.

Attican Beta is a buffer; somewhere we can afford to give up if shit gets really tough. No major bases or investements there until we're certain we can hold it. That's why all that's there are extractive industries and logistics, nothing essential.
At the same time, some forward basing for our ships in Attican Beta would be really useful. We know we have to keep up active naval patrols in that cluster to plink rachni holdouts and make sure none of them manage to rebuild ships. If we're still doing that five or so years later, the need's not going to go away.

For that matter, we did capture some stations with ship operating capability, didn't we?

I understand the desire to not put anything major as an investment in Attican Beta, but if doing so would free up ships or improve our ability to keep the cluster secure, it becomes a tradeoff we may want to think about at some point in the next few decades.

1) So you push a Diplomacy campaign to foster other transpecies organizations in addition to political parties. Professional organizations. Boy Scouts. Fan clubs. Anything and everything that works as social glue and brings more people into contact with each other.

But parties are central to a nation's political life; you can't really get around that.

2) No head of government is somewhat above partisan affiliation. Not how it works.
Ceremonial heads of state might be, like the British monarchs, but executive ones are not.
They cannot be and be effective at governing.
I'm going to be honest with you, I think parties are about as natural and inevitable a part of the political order as capitalism. That is to say, they are clearly the dominant sociopolitical framework in the world as we know it, and it's obvious why they became dominant. And yes, you can make valid arguments that it's for the best that they became dominant.

But at the same time, that's not to say there are literally no alternatives worth even thinking about or considering. So I object to the casual way with which you throw around references to inevitability. I don't want to get into a huge endless argument about it and don't really feel like I have the time, but I do hope you can at least accept that there's a difference between "this is, on the whole, the way it is" and "therefore, this is exactly how it has to be, everywhere, forever."

The customs of our tribe are not always the laws of nature, or what's the point of even having science fiction in the first place?
 
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