I am...not sure the Romulans would politically go for the affiliation process the same way we, or even the Cardassians, do. It just doesn't sound like how they think about other species.
Well, the Cardassians don't "affiliate" with other species the way we do, either- but they still have affiliates. Several of them, even.
Maybe it would be more accurate to describe the hypthetical unconfirmed relation between the Ked Paddah and the Romulans as "client" or "minion" or "proxy" or whatever, as opposed to "affiliate." But
you still know what I mean.
Well, if we're going to go for both, why not swap the second shipyard in Ferasa for the one at Amarkia? Ten difference is a good price for a 1 mt berth.
- Request new Shipyard at Amarkia, 45pp (12 turns, 1 3mt Berth, 1 1mt Berth)
We will likely earn the difference by Q2, and if not, cut out the Ked Paddah Diplomancy.
Because we can probably get the extra one-megaton berth somewhere else soon, for the same 10pp price we'd pay for it this way. Also, diplomacy with the Ked Paddah is
especially desirable because we really, really do not want them dropping to negative relations and turning into Sydraxians II: Electric Bugaloo.
At this level it's less about how 'good' you are and more about what your philosophy for Starfleet will be. Which, sure, the Admiral will be controlled by the voters, but their personality and outlook may influence the voting options we get. I feel I've already made may case for why 'time in rank' isn't as important as for lower ranking promotions.
As I see it, here is the requirements for the position of Admiral of Starfleet are:
1) Political Suitability
What this means depends on context. When Kahurangi was selected the main criterion was "not being affiliated with Admiral Rogers," which is how Kahurangi got selected in the first place, with perhaps the strongest other contender being Sousa.* Now, the criteria are more complicated. They include commitment to the expansion of the Federation, since the current president is an expansionist. They include the likelihood that the new admiral will agree to step down gracefully after five years or so, so as to set the desired precedent of shorter terms of office. They include the ability to work with the Council, obviously. They include species- it would be
nice to have a nonhuman to break up the long streak(s) of humans in charge of Starfleet, subject to the limits imposed by the other qualifications listed below, and by other political requirements listed above.
*And by the way, did you notice how Sousa worked smoothly with the person who beat her for appointment to a prized position, for about
ten years? How she did that without undermining her, or even trying to maneuver her into retiring, to clear the way for her own career ambitions? I think she's earned kudos for that.
2) Administrative Ability
This is critical,
especially because the Federation has no civilian bureaucracy in place to support Starfleet as an organization. An administrative incompetent can cause devastating harm to Starfleet, and the president would be very unwise to select anyone, no matter how politically desirable they are, who is not up to the task of running Starfleet as a whole. It would be folly to appoint anyone who lacks the experience and skills, or to gamble on anyone who has not
proven that they have the experience and skills, to handle such a critically important task.
Basically, this restricts the candidate pool to people who have demonstrated a high, and preferably diverse, ability to handle posts of administrative responsibility in Starfleet. That means the people who have held the rank of vice admiral, OR perhaps a very small minority of the rear admirals. And candidates who have
3) Support Within Starfleet
This is important, but not as important as (1) or (2). The reason it matters is that, well, the Admiral has to
work with Starfleet, not just administer it. This is why it would be a bad idea, for instance, for the president to just take the head of the Vulcan member fleet and put them directly in charge of Starfleet. Even if the Vulcans agreed, and even assuming the Vulcan admiral in question was very qualified and politically desirable... they're not Starfleet. They have few or no connections within Starfleet and would not be able to just move in at the top and start giving orders without a lot of friction. This isn't a major issue in this go-around, but hypothetically could be.
...
The only reason (3) is an issue at all is because it ties into seniority. There are a LOT of admirals in Starfleet who will not be happy if someone else is visibly being "jumped up" over their heads very rapidly and placed in command of Starfleet. They might reasonably point out "well, Uhura and Sulu held the same rank on the same ship back in the day, both have roughly equally strong resumes, why is Sulu getting massively fast-tracked ahead of other people who have been flag officers since the early 2290s when she isn't?" Since there isn't a particularly good explanation for this other than "PCs really really want Sulu in charge," that's going to be a problem.
[Incidentally, this sounds like the kind of internal administrative problem that turns helpful admirals into Old Guard no-bonus admirals]
(2)
also ties into the seniority issue, but in a different way. Six or seven years ago, Sulu had commanded ships and a starbase, and that was it. He'd never been the head of any Federation-wide overall bureaucratic department of Starfleet. Even then, he was placed in charge of the Explorer Corps, which is administratively small, which delegates a lot of its power and authority to the explorer captains, While he shows promise of being quite good at this job, the reality is that Sulu hasn't had much opportunity to fully display the kind of administrative ability the head of Starfleet needs. By contrast, Sousa has been running Shipyard Operations for about ten years, supervising what almost has to be the largest overall buildup of both infrastructure and ships in the history of the Federation. She is very qualified in this respect- and the same could be said of Erikson, ch'Vohlet, and arguably Ablett. If we were going to ignore seniority, (2) would probably argue in favor of us appointing ch'Tharvasse, who as Kahurangi's chief of staff has been massively involved in every part of the Admiral of Starfleet's job for roughly seven years. Not so much Sulu, who's only had a large department of Starfleet to run since Ablett went on sabbatical back in 2309.
Now, you made a major point about the importance of (1), and you weren't wrong to do so. But Sulu doesn't really have strong qualifications there except those shared by other candidates. He hasn't shown exceptional signs of being better at handling Federation politics than the other vice admirals. His 'expansionist' credentials aren't better than the other vice admirals. He's just as much a continuation of the 'humans in charge' streak as Sousa would be. About the only real point in Sulu's favor from the president's point of view is that he's older than the other candidates, and therefore more likely to retire sooner than them... but even that is far from certain and would depend on Sulu's physical health and mindset.
So it comes down to the fact that in the first metric (political qualification) Sulu is not remarkable compared to the field of competitors. In the second metric, he
might be equal or superior to them, but has not had a chance to fully prove his ability- as they have. In the third metric, he would probably run into more problems than any of the candidates Oneiros listed.
That said, UP will obviously always be our biggest and most important yard, and I would be happy to get it up to 4/4 berths so that it can be host prototype builds for all our Explorers and Cruisers, while still being a major production center.
Personally I favor 4/1/4 (with the odd '1' being a two-megaton berth). I'd like to build A two-megaton berth somewhere in the Federation, so that we have the engineering know-how to build more when we want- because at some point we'll probably want to commission a new ship class of between one and two million tons, and it'd be nice to have at least SOME options for places we can work on those besides "in our designated
Excelsior berths."
Plus, I have this image of the Cardassians attacking us and us pulling out the
Kadak-Tor for refit and induction into Starfleet service, since seriously, why not do that if they're already at war with us anyway? And we'd need a two-megaton berth for that.
Now that being said, my real point is that even given our commitment to building some more berths soon, expanding Utopia Planitia is not our
priority. And expanding yard infrastructure to the four new member races probably should be, because it signals to them their equal partnership in the Federation, just as starting yards over Andoria and Tellar Prime signaled that to the Tellarites and Andorians.
[The Betazoids are arguably not as key here because there are still a LOT of cheap ways to get one-megaton berths, so 30pp for a pair of them isn't that good a deal]
It's gotten to the point where crew and berths are starting to become equal constraints. That said, I could see going for the UP expansion and an Academy expansion, putting off the start of the Ferasa shipyard until next year.
And this year we'll actually be forced to build less than we would like to because a repair job will be occupying a berth. That's a signal to me that it's definitely time to think about expansion.
Given that we nearly always fill up our berths
anyway, and hardly ever leave berths open for more than a few months at a time, regardless of how many there are, I don't agree.
None of us would want to leave a berth standing empty if we have a choice. But as long as we have a construction project in every berth, we will ALWAYS have to curtail construction whenever a ship needs repairs (unless we can luck out and contract with a member world or affiliate, like we did when
Courageous hit that mine).
So it's a circular issue. Whenever we create a new berth, we create new construction projects to fill it, and whenever all our berths are full, you take that as evidence we need more.
The only solutions are to actually
leave berths permanently open, which has not hitherto been our policy... Or to simply accept that we'll have to bump certain kind(s) of construction if we need to do major repair work on our ships, and try to make sure we always have a berth or two available for that purpose on reasonably short notice at any single time.
