Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
I for one welcome the efficiency of a lawful Citadel Council hating Diplomacy loving regime.
FTFY
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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest
FTFY
Year 19 FDO Report: 498 GS
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
FDO Report
With the abrupt change in priorities, the FDO has begun refocusing its efforts solely on valuable sites, regardless of what it takes to develop them. Happily, you have not one, but three high-value mining sites within easy reach of your infrastructure this year, although starting next year you will hit a wall.
SO 8, one of the long-deferred systems immediately neighboring Hoc, was settled as the system of Taras, bringing in a much-needed influx of resources to Virmire's home markets.
SO 21, the next-door neighbor of the research site in Amalinya, has been established under the name of Spectulam. According to your reports, the increased traffic through Amalinya -- and, accordingly, the increased amount of casual communication available to the researchers and the local Army contingent -- has helped ease tensions, in addition to the expected flow of resources.
Virani just barely lacked the budget to set up a third site this year. While ordinarily she would have invested the remainder into improvements in her favorite project of Nimal Pak, her office's changed mission means that she instead banked the leftover amount in order to spend next year.
+44,000 yearly income.
Credit Reserves: 315,000 credits.
Yearly Income: 296,000 credits.
Quick one, here, just to get me back in the rhythm and to resolve the year. Status Screen updates: Reserves and Income now reflect above figures. Cluster Star Map now current with new information. Under, "Stewardship," the description of the FDO has been updated with above information. FDO policy descriptions updated. Broad notes on FDO project costs added, to give you all a way of generally predicting what the FDO can achieve on a given budget.
See you soon with the real update. Now would be the time to remind me of any write-ins I promised you.
EDIT: Population figures also now include frequency of censuses and year of next census.
With the abrupt change in priorities, the FDO has begun refocusing its efforts solely on valuable sites, regardless of what it takes to develop them. Happily, you have not one, but three high-value mining sites within easy reach of your infrastructure this year, although starting next year you will hit a wall.
SO 8, one of the long-deferred systems immediately neighboring Hoc, was settled as the system of Taras, bringing in a much-needed influx of resources to Virmire's home markets.
SO 21, the next-door neighbor of the research site in Amalinya, has been established under the name of Spectulam. According to your reports, the increased traffic through Amalinya -- and, accordingly, the increased amount of casual communication available to the researchers and the local Army contingent -- has helped ease tensions, in addition to the expected flow of resources.
Virani just barely lacked the budget to set up a third site this year. While ordinarily she would have invested the remainder into improvements in her favorite project of Nimal Pak, her office's changed mission means that she instead banked the leftover amount in order to spend next year.
+44,000 yearly income.
Credit Reserves: 315,000 credits.
Yearly Income: 296,000 credits.
Quick one, here, just to get me back in the rhythm and to resolve the year. Status Screen updates: Reserves and Income now reflect above figures. Cluster Star Map now current with new information. Under, "Stewardship," the description of the FDO has been updated with above information. FDO policy descriptions updated. Broad notes on FDO project costs added, to give you all a way of generally predicting what the FDO can achieve on a given budget.
See you soon with the real update.
Now would be the time to remind me of any write-ins I promised you.EDIT: Population figures also now include frequency of censuses and year of next census.
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Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
- Location
- Dancing on wires!
@PoptartProdigy how do we and our advisers think Virani took us denying her request?
I mean if it was her pet project, or was she mollified slightly by the change in priority?
I mean if it was her pet project, or was she mollified slightly by the change in priority?
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
She approved neither of the denied request nor of the change in priority, although she did not actively disapprove of the policy chance. Lissa says that she and Virani have been talking more lately, mostly because both of them recognize that it is far healthier for Virani's career for her to air her frustrations to a sympathetic audience instead of Mira.
- Location
- Europe
Her frustration that we're not bending over backwards to accomodate her constant hunger for more power? Lissa is sympathetic to that? Or does it refer to the shifting priorities of politicians and the demands they place on economists etc?
Decim
On again, off again lurker.
- Location
- St. Louis, MO
I know it's too late for the vote, but @PoptartProdigy, would this have worked as a remit for the FDO?
Return on Investment: In these troubling times, it isn't enough to get resources flowing in from mining systems. What is needed is to get them flowing in and recoup the investment costs fast to keep the credits and resources flowing. The FDO shall therefore prioritize colonization and infrastructure improvements by how fast any given site can hit its return on investment.
Return on Investment: In these troubling times, it isn't enough to get resources flowing in from mining systems. What is needed is to get them flowing in and recoup the investment costs fast to keep the credits and resources flowing. The FDO shall therefore prioritize colonization and infrastructure improvements by how fast any given site can hit its return on investment.
Not really.
SO36, Military/HQ Mines, is adjacent to both Taras and Spectulam.
SO22, HQ Mines, is at a nexus of Amalinya-Sematra-Emdriss
SO15, HQ Mines, is on the far side of SO3 the garden planet.
FORMER BUFFER ZONE
-Asu Mel, HQ Mines, is right at the nexus of Lystheni planets Tamarl and Masu, and the Lystheni colony/Virmire research planet Sumak.
Plus, it's just one planet jump from Sikel, another research system we currently hold.
-Memrir, HQ Mines, is right next to Lystheni planet Merirai.
We should be covered till the end of Turn 20/Turn 21, which gives us 88-132k over three turns.
At which point we go back to Building Trails.
From the PoV of the purely economic expert, I can see her issues. From the financial requirements of immediately funding our requirements(and the political issues with a distant colony) we have a much stronger case.
-Good. Maybe Lissa will broaden her perspective beyond just economic matters.
WHAT hunger for power?
She is almost definitely ambitious, but she has displayed nothing more than drive and a certain mono-focus in her area of expertise. Which is a GOOD thing, since we are at war, and need competent people with drive and a willingness to challenge the status quo, not mushrooms.
I mean, is Mira power-hungry because she knocked off the previous PM? Or because she isn't especially fond of the legislature? Or the corporations?
We are running a pseudo-liberal democracy here, with loyalty focused towards the State and it's citizens, not individual personalities. We aren't trying to build a personality cult. Mira is not a dictator, and people working under her do not owe her personal loyalty.
Not to mention that if we are trying to build a healthy system, it is in our favor to foster capable people.
We are not the lystheni. Mira is not the Lystheni dalatrass.
If someone all-round superior at this to her came along, I believe she'd be entirely willing to support their candidacy.
EDIT
@PoptartProdigy
You said to remind you of this.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Her frustration that you ignored her and every other economist in your government saying that allowing her to develop Nimal Pak on the ground would have been the single most productive use of her time, bar none.
Lissa is sympathetic to that.
That would be, "Low-Hanging Fruit," broadly.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The far side, yes. That is a forty-eight hour journey with no fuel. Thus, it'll be expensive to start up. And thus, next year, you shall exhaust all easy prospects and start having to reach out to distant systems; you will hit a wall.
The issue with the LBZ systems is that while they are adjacent to Lystheni space, you are not the Lystheni. You have to fly for five days without refueling to reach even the nearest of those prospects. Thus, the startup costs are going to be...steep.
Kinruush
Who?
- Location
- USA
If we spend another action, it'll come out of our Stewardship actions, where we can do way more good doing something else. The point of Virani's proposal was that she handles it in the background. It's the most efficient, best way for her to spend her time. It is not nearly as good of a way for us to spend our time.
Sure. Efficient for her.
But it meant us giving up additional income at a time the budgetary income was crashing, and there was an increasing demand for fixed subventions to stabilize the economy. And that's not including political precedent. So we gave up future income for immediate cash now.
So yes, it was the most efficient course of action for her agency.
Not for the nation at this time.
VoidZero
Passing Flan 布丁魔王
- Location
- Anywhere but RL
I see colonization as something too big and too juicy to allow a minister to take credit for. So I'm supporting steward action for that.
Why?
The primary issue for me was cash flow and setting precedent.
Not taking credit.
We've had ministers taking credit for big things all the time.
Shurna and the lystheni spy ring. Our War Minister and the dreadnoughts, not to mention managing the soon to be a billion man army.
Durrahe and literally ending the plague.
Starting a colony is not something we should be fussing about. There's a lot of things to be done, and plenty of credit to go round.
Kinruush
Who?
- Location
- USA
Except, we didn't give up future income for immediate cash now. We gave up employment opportunities now, future income, and cash now in exchange for cash now.
That cash now pays for the jobs program next turn, for the unemployment benefits now, and the economic intervention fund.
Tens or hundreds of millions of jobs worth of income NOW.
As opposed to future income in the future, and jobs in the future.
It was a trade off, but her plans implicitly assume the rest of the economy AND THE WAR would do fine until she got up and running.
That's not an assumption I'm comfortable making.
VoidZero
Passing Flan 布丁魔王
- Location
- Anywhere but RL
All those actions were voted in by us thus had Mira's seal of approval during regular budget/planning season, allowing the office to start a colonization effort outside of that review with their own budget seems too big a jump in autonomous capacity.
We would explicitly have been giving permission for her to do it by expanding her remit.
Which is why she came to us first, instead of simply going ahead and doing it. Like a reasonable civil servant.
I mean, our War Minister doesn't ask our permission before building individual capital ships.
I don't really buy the "colonization means she's power hungry or going to divert cash/peddle influence" argument.
We don't worry about it with our War Minister who essentially runs a chunk of the economy favoring particular shipyards, or our Stewardship Minister who could modify regulations to favor particular businessmen.
Or our Intrigue minister who could basically use state resources to spy for private interests.
Kinruush
Who?
- Location
- USA
It was an assumption that every economist we have on staff was willing to make. And you still keep making the assumption that we would have gained substantially less this turn if we'd accepted the proposal, which has never, at any point, been implied by anyone. In fact, Poptart has given every indication that accepting the proposal was the single best choice we could have made with Virani to increase our short-term income.
Yes, they agreed it was the most efficient expenditure of her time and effort.
They didn't say it would produce the most short-term income, in the two years before we get +80k Income back from the completion of several projects, which was what we were more interested in at this time.
I am making that assumption based on current mechanics.
Colonies have lag time before they become productive. Nimal Pak had no indication it would be any different.
This is wrong.
Assilia is literally next door to our main population center, has a massively exploitable metal planet in-system, is a mostly habitable terrestrial planet, has been prepared to the tune of roughly 120,000 credits over several turns, and had 100 million people shipped there during an unemployment crisis.
We still don't have any idea when it will become self-supporting, let alone break a profit.
Your assertion that Nimal Pak, a distant planet that's livable only with ground domes, would as a ground colony promptly begin turning a profit without the tens of thousands of credits we invested in recruiting colonists, or the years of prepwork, or the handpicked colonists, has no basis.
Seriously, I was voting for exploitation of the SO28 microcluster from the beginning.
When I say whoa there, it's not because I doubt it's longterm productivity; it's because it's shortterm economic and political viability is in doubt.
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@Kinruush
As a reminder, this is how SO28 was described on first discovery:
Domes are not just nice to have on SO 28/Nimal Pak, like they are on Assilia for non-Batarians, but a necessity for life.
It's going to be profitable. It's going to take setup time.
It's going to require significant ongoing importation of supplies.
We aren't likely to move 100 million people there, with families and children and pets; not least because getting that many people to move to a barren wasteland is going to be...difficult.
Probably closer to 10 million, and it will almost certainly cost more than Assilia to maintain.
As a reminder, this is how SO28 was described on first discovery:
It doesn't have an atmosphere.
Domes are not just nice to have on SO 28/Nimal Pak, like they are on Assilia for non-Batarians, but a necessity for life.
It's going to be profitable. It's going to take setup time.
It's going to require significant ongoing importation of supplies.
We aren't likely to move 100 million people there, with families and children and pets; not least because getting that many people to move to a barren wasteland is going to be...difficult.
Probably closer to 10 million, and it will almost certainly cost more than Assilia to maintain.
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Kinruush
Who?
- Location
- USA
The two colonies are just simply not comparable. Virani has been preparing Nimal Pak's system for colonization for years, and it is set to dramatically increase profit when that actually starts:
The tens of thousands of credits would all come out of the FDO's budget, which we have sitting at 70k, and the colony would not be the same size or scale as on Assilia:
It is explicitly intended to be a similar size and scale as a normal mining outpost. It is explicitly supposed to take a similar amount of time to set up. The differences are that it takes more money to start, it takes more labor, its existence actively improves every other mining colony in the system, and it gets even better over time.
So, yes, when I say that Nimal Pak would likely turn a profit without all the trouble we went through with Assilia, it has an awful lot of basis. In fact, that was pretty much the majority of the point of the proposal. It would start out great for our economy and only get better over time.
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Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Let's just settle this by going to the source. @PoptartProdigy is it accurate that even in the immediate term, having Virani develop Nimal Pak was the most profitable choice from a purely economic perspective?