pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest
HanEmpire
Delicious
That's not what he said. What you should have read is: "if the Lystheni didn't provoke us we wouldn't push them around, power imbalance or not." Virmire isn't a 19th century imperialist power hopped up on jingoism.
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pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ok, so, we didn't want the Lystheni to spy on us and steal our ship designs. Is that so much to ask?
The Lystheni are the provocateurs here. I'm not sure where you get on the idea that we actually started shit here. We started with the open hand and attempted to interact in good faith.
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- Location
- Italia
[ ] Integrating Reforms: You haveresearched your new naval reforms, you have purchased the equipment it will take to build the fleet you want, you have improved your logistics network to support all of this (barely), and you will probably be fixing your marines at some point. All that now remains is to comb through your entire navy to apply this comprehensive re-working of your entire void military. Time: 3 years. Cost: -50,000 yearly income (permanently, and applied from start of option). Chance of Success: 60% Effect: Beyond restructuring your fleets, actually go through and ensure that your navy is up to date on the new tactics and that your naval academy is teaching it as required. Gain the benefits of Beshkarian doctrine.
[ ] Logistics II: There is never enough. Time: 3 years. Cost: 57,000 credits. Chance of Success: 80%. Effect: Integrating the various lessons you've learned at varying points of your logistics development, improve your logistics network once more so that you can reliably sustain and supply a multi-cluster offensive.
[ ] Lystheni (Trade Sanctions): You no longer trust the Lystheni to host your people, and you no longer care to provide them the materials they've used to keep their projects going. For the safety of your merchants and to choke off the flow of supplies, you are closing down all trade with the Lystheni, and making an organized withdrawal of your people effectiveimmediately. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 70%. Cost 20,000 credits, trade income (-40,000 yearly income). Effect: Halt all trade with the Lystheni, get your people out of there, and close the borders to free travel. The Lystheni, being possessed of non-zero intelligence quotients, will know that something is up. That said, re-opening trade would in and of itself be a potent bargaining chip in any eventual negotiations.
[ ] Lystheni (Making Demands): The Lystheni have transgressed against you time and again, and fresh offenses keep piling up. You could easily turn the courts of public opinion against the Lystheni. Do so, and open negotiations with them in a position of calamitous weakness. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 60%. Cost: 20,000 credits. Effect: Force negotiations with the Lystheni under the implied threat of war, and bargain against that threat to force demands on them.
[ ] Colony Equipment: Assilia is as primed as it's going to be, which about means that you won't have to install orbital infrastructure yourself. Unfortunately, that's only one part of building a colony. You need to purchase the first wave of colonists' equipment -- everything needed to start constructing several small cities across the entire planet, and supply the fledgling colony in the years following its founding. Now that you're all ready to go otherwise, you'll want to take this soon. Time: 2 years. Chance of Success: 75%. Cost: 75,000 credits, -30,000 yearly income (income hit imposed at conclusion of option, persisting until Assilia Prime achieves self-sufficiency, a span of time you have no way of reliably estimating).
[ ] Impending Crisis: The civilian populace has labored for decades under the lash of total war. Willingly, eagerly...but decades, nonetheless. No salarian now lives who remembers the galaxy before the Rachni. Entire generations have been born to the war. And each generation has had a little less, seen a bit more of the economy sustaining them cut away for the sake of the military. In recent years, you've attempted to expand the economy in order to support your burgeoning military spending and projects elsewhere, but you have a lot more people now than you did a decade ago. The economy has not expanded fast enough to support those people, and you keep on having other things to do than to clear the projects that you have to finish before you can even consider expanding the Army and sucking up some of that excess population. It seems...farcical...that a nation at total war could possibly be facing down an unemployment crisis, but that seems to be the reality. Time: 2 years. Chance of Success: 55%. Cost: 36,000 credits. Effect: Set a team to analyzing the problem of your looming unemployment crisis anddetermining what your options are.
[ ] The Best Way To Deal With Pickpockets...: ...is to cut off their fucking fingers. Whether you're taking this conflict with them loud or not, you want to deal with their network now. You know exactly where it all is. If a part of that network extends past the Lystheni Embassy, rip it out. Anybody outside the embassy walls is fair game. Any equipment out in the open now belongs to you. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 85%. Cost: 25,000 credits. Effect: Inform the Lystheni that you see their intercept devices -- and that their presence does not well please you -- by way of removing it and any of its operators by force. Afterwards, pump them for everything they know or contain.
[ ] Board of Shareholders: Kirai has reported an undercurrent of unrest in the high-society meetings (once parties, before wartime spending choked the luxuries industry to death) to which she is still frequently invited. The corporate types that tend to attend have been in a state of near-existential restrained terror since your purge of the Ministry of Finance, but with your recent moves, they've slowly begun to relax. Now, suddenly they're back to grimness. Paranoia and tension are the renewed orders of the day. Something has happened to rattle them, and it wasn't you. Find out what. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 65%. Cost: 35,000 credits. Effect: Dispatch CI-Division agents to find out who think they can scare the piss out of your favorite victimscitizens without notifying you
[ ] Barrier Miniaturization: One of the Tessavar Outpost's research team had a...breakthrough, let's say...investigating eezo principles. Upshot is, she thinks she can make personal kinetic barriers. Throw funding at this mad scientist. Time: (Repeats until the combined results of all rolls taken towards this option equal or exceed 100.) Chance of Success: (As before; nat-1's cost the amount rolled instead of gaining it as something Goes Horribly WrongTM.) Cost: -35,000 yearly income until option completes. Effect: Develop practical infantry-scale kinetic barriers.
[ ] Quarian Tech Adoption: You have sliced a huge amount of data from the 3rd's databanks. Now it's time to go through it and see what's there. Figuring out how to use it without making it blatantly obvious that you stole from the Republic is another matter, but let's...just...leave that for when you actually have all of these lessons learned, shall we? Time: 3 years. Chance of Success: 90%. Cost: 35,000 credits. Effect: Run through the mass of data you acquired and sort out what you already know, what you can use, and what's out of your reach, and how you'd go about applying all three.
[ ] The Prime Minister Is ComingHere?: Something is up with the Amalinya prothean dig site. Whether or not you're letting Durrahe head over, you want to make sure that failures of communication like this never recur. Head on over there, put the fear of you into them, and get this project back on schedule. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: ? Cost: 10,000 credits. Effect: Attend to this personally. Visit the Amalinya siteand figure out what's going on there.
[ ] Logistics II: There is never enough. Time: 3 years. Cost: 57,000 credits. Chance of Success: 80%. Effect: Integrating the various lessons you've learned at varying points of your logistics development, improve your logistics network once more so that you can reliably sustain and supply a multi-cluster offensive.
[ ] Lystheni (Trade Sanctions): You no longer trust the Lystheni to host your people, and you no longer care to provide them the materials they've used to keep their projects going. For the safety of your merchants and to choke off the flow of supplies, you are closing down all trade with the Lystheni, and making an organized withdrawal of your people effectiveimmediately. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 70%. Cost 20,000 credits, trade income (-40,000 yearly income). Effect: Halt all trade with the Lystheni, get your people out of there, and close the borders to free travel. The Lystheni, being possessed of non-zero intelligence quotients, will know that something is up. That said, re-opening trade would in and of itself be a potent bargaining chip in any eventual negotiations.
[ ] Lystheni (Making Demands): The Lystheni have transgressed against you time and again, and fresh offenses keep piling up. You could easily turn the courts of public opinion against the Lystheni. Do so, and open negotiations with them in a position of calamitous weakness. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 60%. Cost: 20,000 credits. Effect: Force negotiations with the Lystheni under the implied threat of war, and bargain against that threat to force demands on them.
[ ] Colony Equipment: Assilia is as primed as it's going to be, which about means that you won't have to install orbital infrastructure yourself. Unfortunately, that's only one part of building a colony. You need to purchase the first wave of colonists' equipment -- everything needed to start constructing several small cities across the entire planet, and supply the fledgling colony in the years following its founding. Now that you're all ready to go otherwise, you'll want to take this soon. Time: 2 years. Chance of Success: 75%. Cost: 75,000 credits, -30,000 yearly income (income hit imposed at conclusion of option, persisting until Assilia Prime achieves self-sufficiency, a span of time you have no way of reliably estimating).
[ ] Impending Crisis: The civilian populace has labored for decades under the lash of total war. Willingly, eagerly...but decades, nonetheless. No salarian now lives who remembers the galaxy before the Rachni. Entire generations have been born to the war. And each generation has had a little less, seen a bit more of the economy sustaining them cut away for the sake of the military. In recent years, you've attempted to expand the economy in order to support your burgeoning military spending and projects elsewhere, but you have a lot more people now than you did a decade ago. The economy has not expanded fast enough to support those people, and you keep on having other things to do than to clear the projects that you have to finish before you can even consider expanding the Army and sucking up some of that excess population. It seems...farcical...that a nation at total war could possibly be facing down an unemployment crisis, but that seems to be the reality. Time: 2 years. Chance of Success: 55%. Cost: 36,000 credits. Effect: Set a team to analyzing the problem of your looming unemployment crisis anddetermining what your options are.
[ ] The Best Way To Deal With Pickpockets...: ...is to cut off their fucking fingers. Whether you're taking this conflict with them loud or not, you want to deal with their network now. You know exactly where it all is. If a part of that network extends past the Lystheni Embassy, rip it out. Anybody outside the embassy walls is fair game. Any equipment out in the open now belongs to you. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 85%. Cost: 25,000 credits. Effect: Inform the Lystheni that you see their intercept devices -- and that their presence does not well please you -- by way of removing it and any of its operators by force. Afterwards, pump them for everything they know or contain.
[ ] Board of Shareholders: Kirai has reported an undercurrent of unrest in the high-society meetings (once parties, before wartime spending choked the luxuries industry to death) to which she is still frequently invited. The corporate types that tend to attend have been in a state of near-existential restrained terror since your purge of the Ministry of Finance, but with your recent moves, they've slowly begun to relax. Now, suddenly they're back to grimness. Paranoia and tension are the renewed orders of the day. Something has happened to rattle them, and it wasn't you. Find out what. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 65%. Cost: 35,000 credits. Effect: Dispatch CI-Division agents to find out who think they can scare the piss out of your favorite victimscitizens without notifying you
[ ] Barrier Miniaturization: One of the Tessavar Outpost's research team had a...breakthrough, let's say...investigating eezo principles. Upshot is, she thinks she can make personal kinetic barriers. Throw funding at this mad scientist. Time: (Repeats until the combined results of all rolls taken towards this option equal or exceed 100.) Chance of Success: (As before; nat-1's cost the amount rolled instead of gaining it as something Goes Horribly WrongTM.) Cost: -35,000 yearly income until option completes. Effect: Develop practical infantry-scale kinetic barriers.
[ ] Quarian Tech Adoption: You have sliced a huge amount of data from the 3rd's databanks. Now it's time to go through it and see what's there. Figuring out how to use it without making it blatantly obvious that you stole from the Republic is another matter, but let's...just...leave that for when you actually have all of these lessons learned, shall we? Time: 3 years. Chance of Success: 90%. Cost: 35,000 credits. Effect: Run through the mass of data you acquired and sort out what you already know, what you can use, and what's out of your reach, and how you'd go about applying all three.
[ ] The Prime Minister Is ComingHere?: Something is up with the Amalinya prothean dig site. Whether or not you're letting Durrahe head over, you want to make sure that failures of communication like this never recur. Head on over there, put the fear of you into them, and get this project back on schedule. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: ? Cost: 10,000 credits. Effect: Attend to this personally. Visit the Amalinya siteand figure out what's going on there.
- Location
- Austria
Lytheni are opposed by a big honking polity with massive military and stuff.
I kinda understand them going for dirty tricks out of fear.
You mean like we spied on Quarians and stole their ship design?
I kinda understand them going for dirty tricks out of fear.
You mean like we spied on Quarians and stole their ship design?
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
These situations have zero relevance to each other. How we have acted with the quarians has zero bearing on how we have historically acted with the Lystheni.
Additionally, if we actually end up using the option to ask permission from the quarians for the data, we have still, as far as they're concerned, acted in good faith. What they don't know won't hurt them, is an actually valid idea in such a situation.
The issue with the Lystheni is that we acted in good faith and they did not reciprocate. Ever.
I see Mira is drawing her ideas mostly from a US political system analogue.
In other nations, political parties live and die on the regular if/when their ideologies fall out of favor; even in the US, the dominance of the Republican and Democratic parties is a 20Cen thing, with such luminaries as the Whig Party, the Progressive Bull Moose Party and the Federalist Party having lived and died in previous centuries.
Some others remain adaptable enough to survive, but that's because they adapt their ideologies to the changing times and the needs of the populace they serve.
Some others remain adaptable enough to survive, but that's because they adapt their ideologies to the changing times and the needs of the populace they serve.
Well this promises to be an exciting couple of turns.
Noting there is no option in the Military options for pulling a Commodore Perry and sending a "visit".
And the only non-aggressive options lock up our slots for two turns.
Anyone wanna bet that the sudden grimness of the corporations is because they are getting blackmailed?
Our last break was in Turn 14, so we can afford to skip one more year. MUST take a break in Year 18 though.
[]Plan Nutcracker
-[]Martial 1: Integrating Reforms: -50,000 Income permanently: 3 years: DC41 - Minister 11 = DC30
-[]Martial 2: Marine Expansion: 30,000: 2 years: DC31 - Minister 11 = DC20
-[]Diplomacy 1: Lystheni(Making Demands): 20,000 : DC41 - Minister 11 = DC30
-[]Diplomacy 2: Lystheni(Trade Sanctions): 20,000 + -40,000 Income: DC31 - Minister 11 = DC20
-[]Stewardship 1: Colony Equipment: 70,000 + -30,000 Income(starting end of year 2): 2 years: DC26 - Minister 10 = DC16
-[]Stewardship 2: Administrative Overclocking: 42,000: DC31 - Minister 10 = DC21
-[]Intrigue 1: The Best Way To Deal With Pickpockets: 25,000: DC16 - Minister 12= DC4
-[]Intrigue 2: Board of Shareholders: 35,000: DC36 - Minister 12= DC24
-[]Learning 1: Quarian Tech Adoption: 35,000: 3 years: DC11 - Minister 11= DC0
-[]Learning 2: Dietary Supplements: 40,000: DC31 - Minister 11= DC20
-[]Personal 1: Personal Attention Integrating Reforms [Military 24]
-[]Personal 2: Personal Attention Lystheni Making Demands[Diplomacy 16]
-[]Personal 3: The Prime Minister Is Coming Here?: 10,000
Credit Reserves: 398,000 credits.
Yearly Income: 298,000 credits.
BUDGET: 30,000 + 20,000 + 20,000 + 70,000 + 42,000 + 25,000 + 35,000 + 35,000 + 40,000 + 10,000 = 317,000 credits
-90,000 Income
REASONS
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NavySeel
"I don't know what I'm doing."
- Location
- Places
Yeah, because there's no grey area between doing exactly what we want and actively fucking us over, stealing our tech and breaking treaties.
I honestly didn't mind them taking stuff from that precursor place other than it being mildly annoying., but they are really pushing it.
HanEmpire
Delicious
A big honking polity that tried to deal fairly and in good faith, and got spat on in return. And are you really trying to equate Virmire, a polity trying to win an existential war, with a band of schizoid paranoiacs? We're already considering options to make the theft official and give the Quarians proper payment. What have the Lystheni done to repay us for the shit they've been taking?
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10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Honestly, if Mira didn't want large consensus parties, she shouldn't have gone with the form of governement she's chosen.
This version (I wrote it, IIRC), is mostly immune to gerrymandering, but it imposes strong pressure on parties to unite. After all, all candidates are elected (presumably by majority vote) in their own zone. That means that splitting the vote (by having 10 different Independence parties) will cause your platform to lose.
In fact, I will not be suprised if it turns into a 2-party system.
This version (I wrote it, IIRC), is mostly immune to gerrymandering, but it imposes strong pressure on parties to unite. After all, all candidates are elected (presumably by majority vote) in their own zone. That means that splitting the vote (by having 10 different Independence parties) will cause your platform to lose.
In fact, I will not be suprised if it turns into a 2-party system.
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Personally, I'm all for going to war. These seem like a pretty clear set of justifications to me.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Did you incorporate the +16k we get prom not sequestering money to pay for the War Bonds?
- Location
- Austria
"What they don't know does not hurt them" is a good reason for us to spy on people but not really a good reason for people spied upon I assume.
The issue with Lystheni is that we failed some diplo rolls and they thus were unsure whether we are acting in a good faith.
Wre flubbed politely asking for info a particularly paranoid polity, which kinda resulted in worsened relations which neither really tried that hard to repair.
Scatter with what? They barely qualify as a viable state as is. If they 'scatter' it just means they kill themselves via wear-and-tear on equipment within a year or two.
Eh. Nations other than the US have a higher rate of turnover of parties than the United States' de-facto duopoly.
The UK, Israel, France, Spain, and that's just off the top of my head.
There are usually a couple of constants, but smaller parties come and go. Her promise to watch them die when their task is done is nothing new.
Like you pointed out, it's not about the Lystheni; if we need surprise to crush a polity whose total population is smaller than that of Moscow, we need to fire our entire officer corps. It's about diplomatic precedent, and how we look to others.
Au contraire. It massively nerfs everyone else.
The Asari live a thousand years in this quest; long enough that the average politically inclined matriarch can spend centuries accumulating connections and favors, a support base and personal following, even if they had to do it from scratch, and still have enough time to spend a couple decades strip dancing on bar tables.
In comparison, the salarians live around forty years. The batarians live to around one hundred and forty. The volus to two hundred and fifty.
In the absence of parties, asari win everything. Which isn't something that's healthy for a multi-species society.
I understand some of their concerns; even the paranoid can have enemies.
I don't sympathize, though. Their reactions are pathological.
This is bullshit though.
If they fled Citadel space, there's a reason for that, and it would be public. Asking them for information that is public knowledge in Citadel space is not not something a reasonable observer can claim to be an imposition.
This is a gross mischaracterization.
We don't really care what they do to themselves with the consent of their population; we have our own problems.
It's them breaking agreements with us that rankles. That and secretive military buildups when we're at war with our space relatively undefended. And secretive mass experiments.
We've been straight with them. We signed over an area of space larger than what we currently use, as a sign of good faith.
When they kept being assholes, we just kept an eye on them, but otherwise kept quiet.
But there are limits.
Meh, espionage is a fact of life. Everyone does it, even allies.
The physical installations are way beyond the pale, and deserving of a smack, but if all they were doing was setting up a listening post in their embassy to listen to OTA transmissions, I would shrug and change our codes. And do the same thing to them.
It's not the espionage that rankles, it's the negotiating in bad faith, and the flagrant violations of signed treaties.
The kind of thing that makes them look untrustworthy. And the primary trigger for this looming confrontation now is whatever the fuck they're doing in a restricted treaty zone that involves what looks like vast chunks of their population.
Agreed.
But there's a delicate line between keeping an eye on your massive neighbor, and aggravating them.
Like I said, even allies spy on each other. It's only an issue for those who want to make it one.
EDIT
No, I didn't.
The GM will do that at the end of the turn, along with whatever the FDO forks over.
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- Location
- Austria
Yes.
But...
This.
Neither stealing our schematics nor taking stuff that at the time was technically not ours is such a transgression.
We can justify a war with it, but that's...not a high bar to clear.
Like I said, that should be public info.
The fact that asking for it freaked them out is.....interesting.
Yes it was a bad roll, but that sort of thing shouldn't freak out normal societies, or people without something to hide.
We don't know.
Given that they don't know the Rachni were a thing before they met us, they've been out there for better than thirty years, doing god knows what.
We know they've been looting alien artifacts.
They managed to survive and retain spacefaring capability even before we met them. I prefer to err on the side of caution.
- Location
- Central Europe
@uju32 I thought you were going to be all over that Logistics option?
Any particular reason you prefer Marine Expansion over Logistics II?
Even the description of Intergrating Reforms ...
Any particular reason you prefer Marine Expansion over Logistics II?
Even the description of Intergrating Reforms ...
... seems to hint that our logistics are still lacking.
It's not why we're drawing up war plans though.
It's the secret fleet. And the major treaty violations. And the secret mass experimentation on what looks like their civilian population.
At a time when we're facing an existential threat to our front.
Any one of them might be ignorable, barring the last one because possible genocide/nonconsensual alterations to significant numbers of people; combined, it can't be ignored. Not with the IC example of the rachni as a race that simply went nuts and wasn't crushed fast enough.
At the moment the plan is to use economic pressure and public outrage to pry them open and ensure this isn't a threat.
If it doesn't work, the army get a workout.
Logistics II is three years, Marine Expansion is two.
In the event the Lystheni thing goes hot and we can't simply abandon an ongoing project, I want to be able to free a slot for offensive action by Turn 19.
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pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is the key problem here. As @uju32 said it's not necessarily the spying, it's the negotiating in bad faith and essentially profiting from us while we guard their asses from the rachni. Had they proceeded to contribute to the clusters defense in some way, I imagine we wouldn't be so sore.
Well, no. It's not really a reason. In the end, it's solid justification. The sad fact is, the Lystheni spying and actions have actually hurt us.
Exactly.
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- Location
- Austria
Well, what about first saying it? Just, like, say it: "hey you; we are kinda miffed that we are all on the front taking on Rachni while you do nothing; care to contribute?".
If they refuse then you'll be correct on this.
I just...we did not really try all that much to solve it diplomatically. We screwed diplomacy up a couple of times and never picked it up...and they are not diplomatic sorts either.
I wouldn't even care if they weren't contributing; they're small enough that it's arguable if the best they can do isn't free trade.
I might hold it against them in the future, but it wouldn't provoke diplomatic or military action.
But having to spend effort covering our asses against whatever they're doing......
We're doing diplomacy now. We're not exactly jumping them in the dark with a knife to the kidneys.
- Location
- Austria
Well, specifically your vote yes.
Although on this note, I am not sure combination of sanctions and demands is a good idea.
We are demanding recompense for them being dicks, implicitly pulling Admiral Perri....while also putting sanctions on them.
Some mixed signals.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We had a written treaty which they expressly violated. We did not just fail a couple diplo options. We failed a couple, passed a couple, and had a peace treaty. We allowed them an embassy, which they used as a covert base of operations. We opened trade with them, which they used to build warships and not contribute to the common defense.
It's more than a couple failed actions.
Also, we really shouldn't have to ask for help with the existential threat. "Hey, this thing wants to kill us all, we would really like your help."
- Location
- Austria
Using embassy for covert ops is pretty much what literally everybody does though - like, I think people would be baffled at embassy not being used as a base of covert ops.
Using trade to build warships...is entirely within their rights? It is up to them to decide what to do with the trade.
Stealing schematics is literally what we just did, only on a bigger scale, to Quarians, so, again - it's just a normal part of diplomacy; can be used as a justification for public, but unless you want to have such justification it's not a big deal.
The only problematic parts are a research station in violation of treaty and lack of war contribution- and it probably was prompted by those relics in which they are now conducting fission experiments. So, again, they had a reason to it seems.
Which leaves us with a lack of their war contribution - to which it's reasonable to respond with poking them about it first.