Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 21 - Fluff and New Advisors

You have discovered a new horror of parenting.

Learner’s Permits.

Jeremy is finally old enough to officially learn how to drive somewhere other than the hovercraft track, and he naturally is very eager for this.

Obviously Willis can’t teach him, because your loving husband is a fighter pilot and fighter pilots are all adrenaline junkies who drive far too fast. So you crack your knuckles and buckle up, buttercup. Your boy will learn how to drive from you, and considering you’ve never gotten a single traffic ticket in your life (since becoming Queen) and thus have a perfect driving record (please disregard the stack of speeding violations when you were a teenager) you are confident that you will make a perfectly safe driver out of your son!

Lessons go quite well, actually. His experience on the track is obvious in how well he manages to handle the car you personally picked out to be his first vehicle to learn in. After the first few minutes you even completely forget about being nervous that your little man is behind the wheel.

You are so happy about his progress that you happily sign the paperwork to allow him to take his driver’s test early.

Which he promptly flunks, because he was driving too fast.

Obviously Willis has been giving your boy under the table instruction!

So you make sure you are in the car for his second go, and the examiner fails him again for driving too fast, when you are quite certain he was driving at a perfectly safe and sensible speed.

You bring this up and discover something. The only reason you didn’t have stacks of speeding tickets was because all such tickets were ultimately issued in the name of the Queen, which is you, and it is not possible for a lesser official to act in the name of the Queen against the Queen. You technically don’t even have a driver’s license, because driver’s licenses were issued under the authority of the Queen and as Queen you don’t need one because the licensing bureau cannot issue the Queen a license under the Queen’s authority. It makes your head hurt.

While you pout about this manifest injustice to your perfect driving skills, Willis (the traitor!) takes over teaching Jeremy how to drive and, shockingly, he passes this time.

You sulk for a solid hour about this.

Sekhmet finds it utterly hilarious though. So does Janet. So does Bastet. So do your kids. So does every single other person in the Palace.

Traitors.

So you do the only sensible thing, you slip into your kids play room, grab a big foam toy sword, and proceed to chase after all the snickering traitors to beat them for their treachery!

Much fun is had that day as the impromptu melee spreads throughout the Palace grounds, embroiling all the visitors to the complex, most members of Parliament, and a good chunk of the local community in an impromptu foam sword free for all.

You needed this. So did everybody else, as you can almost see the tensions and troubles of the past few years fading away as people cut loose and had fun in a harmless manner.

You do get SOME work done, of course. Both Dr Young and Professor Chapman forward you their lists of recommended candidates for their replacements as they go into retirement.


For the new Minister for Foreign Affairs

[]	Name	Diplomacy	Intelligence	Justice	Special
[]	Louise Hallis	3	0	0	-1000 Upkeep
[]	Isoroku Nikishina	3	0	0	Add 1 free Cultural Action each turn
[]	April Thomlinson	3	1	0
[]	Regina Callahan	3	0	1

You take the time to meet each of them to get an impression of their personalities and how well you might mesh with them.

Dr Louise Hallis seems like you’d be dealing with Dr Young 2.0, she has nearly the same serious personality and reminds you irresistibly of an irritated librarian.

Isoroku Nikishina is currently the cultural affairs department head and conceals a rapier wit beneath a stoic exterior. During your interview he somehow shifted the topic to music and kept it there for some time, and you later learn that he is a professional musician himself when not engaged in government work.

Dr April Thomlinson strikes you as dangerously sharp. She doesn’t seem to miss much if anything from a single glance about the office.

Dr Regina Callahan has only just finished her PhD dissertation on the confluence of foreign relations and justice studies.and seems to be quite enthusiastic about the subject in your discussions.

For the Political advisor position you also have four choices.

[]	Name	Political	Interior	Political Rating	Special
[]	Dustin Xi	3	1	5	-1000 Upkeep
[]	Christina Ebon	3	2	-5
[]	Charlotte Mann	3	1	10
[]	Jake Mroczkiewitz	3	1	5	+20 Crown Influence Targets and has an awesome Polish name

Dustin Xi has long been Professor Chapman’s top assistant and chief of staff, and while he is perfectly willing to step up to the top job he doesn’t strike you as at all eager to do so and would be perfectly content to remain in the background.

Christina Ebon strikes you as incredibly aggressive. She has a background in business and seems to have an almost feral attitude towards overcoming business obstacles and objections. She’d be hard to work with, but extremely effective. Just… keep her the hell away from the press.

Dr Charlotte Mann is almost the antithesis to Christina, she’s calm, collected, and has a very soothing presence. She has a knack for communication, which is natural considering that she teaches Political Science and Communications at the University.

Jake of the Impossible to Pronounce Last Name (he patiently corrects your initial mangling of it, there are far too many letters in odd combinations!) has you in tears of laughter within minutes of your interview starting. When he isn’t poking fun of his own Polish heritage he’s very cogently breaking down the political rivalries within Parliament. He’d be a definite asset in terms of managing other politicians, that’s for sure.

QM NOTE - Vote will remain open until there are a minimum of 8 votes or 24 hours have passed.

QM NOTE 2 - ShadowArxxy is banned from the foam katana armory for repeatedly bopping the QM.

 

[Jarow]

Definitely hard choices here.

[]	Isoroku Nikishina	3	0	0	Add 1 free Cultural Action each turn
[]	Regina Callahan	3	0	1

For Foreign Affairs, I think one of these would be best; we rarely run into issues with Intelligence actions. A free cultural action could be helpful, but no idea what those might actually be. Justice we only have two actions, which we've consistently been using lately, so it might be helpful.

[]	Christina Ebon	3	2	-5
[]	Jake Mroczkiewitz	3	1	5	+20 Crown Influence Targets and has an awesome Polish name

For political, I'd say one of these. The extra interior from Christina is excellent, as that's one of our most stretched areas. I'm a bit more nervous about that -5 political though. Jake on the other hand, gives +5 and greatly helps crown influence.

Fluffwise I like Isoroku Nikishina and Jake Polishname (who, thinking about it, might be helpful if we get to the Drac held planet during his tenure).

Preliminary vote:
Diplomatic:
[X] Isoroku Nikishina
Political:
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz


EDIT: per QM, advisors matter for more than just number of actions, so keep that in mind too

 

[ShadowArxxy]

You bring this up and discover something. The only reason you didn’t have stacks of speeding tickets was because all such tickets were ultimately issued in the name of the Queen, which is you, and it is not possible for a lesser official to act in the name of the Queen against the Queen. You technically don’t even have a driver’s license, because driver’s licenses were issued under the authority of the Queen and as Queen you don’t need one because the licensing bureau cannot issue the Queen a license under the Queen’s authority. It makes your head hurt.

Hold on, clearly this is because your perfect driving skills are the platonic ideal by which all other drivers are measured and weighed. Yes, this must be so. Because you're the Queen and you say so. Willis is totally a traitor for saying that's not how platonic ideals work.

[X] Isoroku Nikishina
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

In terms of personality options and background, it's my opinion that we should try to have a variety of backgrounds and perspectives among our advisors.

QM NOTE 2 - ShadowArxxy is banned from the foam katana armory for repeatedly bopping the QM.

*cheerfully grabs a foam non-katana and continues bopping the QM*

 

[Thors_Alumni]

[X] Regina Callahan
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

 

[kelgar04]

[X] Isoroku Nikishina
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

 

[Joyousmadman]

[X] Regina Callahan
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

 

[Lightwhispers]

[X] Regina Callahan
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

QM NOTE 2 - ShadowArxxy is banned from the foam katana armory for repeatedly bopping the QM.

*bop*
*hides the foam warhammer*

 

[kelgar04]

Inserted tally

Adhoc vote count started by on Aug 7, 2020 at 7:18 PM, finished with 6 posts and 0 votes.

No votes were able to be tallied!

 

[CurtisLemay]

[X] Regina Callahan
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

 

[Wageslave]

Minister for Foreign Affairs
[X] Isoroku Nikishina

Political advisor (Because QM's character's life is suffering )
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

 

[Tolack]

[X] Isoroku Nikishina
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

 

[LordSunhawk]

Inserted tally

Adhoc vote count started by on Aug 7, 2020 at 10:41 PM, finished with 10 posts and 0 votes.

No votes were able to be tallied!

 

[Ridli Scott]

[X] Louise Hallis
[X] Jake Mroczkiewitz

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 21 - Parliament and Progress

Spoiler: Not precisely traditional

You had intended for there to be a formal introduction of your new ministers, but after consulting with Isoroku (as he asks you to call him, on the grounds that whenever he hears Mr Nikishina he starts looking for his father) you decide to let him introduce himself.

Which he does.

Spectacularly.

You hadn’t realized that ‘loves music’ translated to ‘is spectacularly good with exotic traditional Japanese instruments’ and ‘professional musician’ translated to ‘is in a band with his wife, sister, and their friends’.

That uses ancient traditional Japanese instruments.

To play Western-style heavy metal music.

He decides to introduce himself with a free concert featuring a number of asian-themed bands. Part of it is making a point that asiatics are part of the cultural DNA of Griffin’s Roost, but most of it is because these performers are good.

Of course, it freaks you out slightly when one of the bands is made up of three girls the same age as your oldest daughter performing some extreme metal like they were hardened metalheads.

Spoiler: Your daughters better NOT get ideas from this

Discovering that the lead singer is your new foreign minister's oldest daughter makes it a bit more understandable, you guess.

He then gives a stemwinder of a speech, which you heartily approve of. Real Japanese and Asian culture is a part of the cultural stew of your society. But, he stresses, House Kurita twists and distorts the real thing into a dark and fetid megalomaniacal cult of personality and fetishistic cosplay that pretends to be what it can never actually achieve.

The sheer scorn as he starts laying out the ways the Combine utterly fails at Bushido is palpable. By the end of it he is purely mocking them, and has the crowd eating out of his hand.

By the next morning the phrase ‘Magic Bushido Hands’ is trending planet-wide.

The next day you introduce Jake to the public, and he soon has the press covering the event laughing more than you’d ever managed. He starts by making fun of his own last name, cheerfully challenging reporters to spell it without consulting their notes and offering exclusive interviews for anybody who manages it.

None of them do. Hell, you need to consult a notecard if you want to pronounce it right, let alone spell it. Polish has far too many consonants and vowels in the wrong places, in your opinion. Mroczkiewicz, really? Do Polish parents just try to come up with the most insane spelling possible in an effort to taunt the rest of humanity?

He then earns a large number of media brownie points by giving any reporter who tried to spell his name an interview anyways, where his engaging cheer seems to sway even the most hardened of the political journalists over to his side.

Hell, he managed to get the Old Battleaxe of the Press Corps, Mary Masterson, to giggle, something that you would have laid odds on being one of the signs of the apocalypse, as he ever so gallantly escorted her to the interview room set aside with all the manners and grace of an ancient aristo, while flattering her outrageously.

You decide that you picked a solid crew here.

Parliament meets for the first time since your little intervention, and there are plenty of new members to replace those who’d… surrendered their office. Including the single largest grifftiger you’d ever seen in person.

You’d seen video of him, when he licked that locomotive, but he is so massive that even the remodeling undertaken to make the chambers of Parliament accessible to the big cats was almost completely inadequate. He filled the space with an ancient massive majesty that was awe inspiring.

He was obviously extremely old, his fur was almost more silver than black, and he moved with the slow deliberation of the aged. But those eyes were ancient and wise, and he’d clearly taken the time to utterly master the computer interface that facilitated communication between the cats and humanity.

You learn from Sekhmet that this here is the Eldest. And that knowledge shakes you to the core. This is a being who was alive when your ancestors first came to Griffin’s Roost. And he’d spent centuries preparing for the first meeting with ‘those in the flying eggs’.

And his very first act in Parliament is something that, frankly, somebody should have thought about already. The biggest problem that existed on Capricorn was maintaining the railways and surface transportation links between the inland resource areas and the coastal cities. Herds of deathapotamusaurus regularly smashed roads and tracks during their migrations. Repairing the infrastructure was simply part of the cost of doing business and the biggest job of the Mine Security Force was tracking and predicting herd movement.

The Eldest simply proposed taking advantage of all the vehicles being fusion or fuel-cell powered, especially the trains, to allow them to all be buried in massive tunnel networks deep enough beneath the ground that the herds could pass over without interference.

Capricorn was highly geologically stable, and the Eldest had actually consulted with civil engineers who agreed that while extremely expensive, such a proposal was perfectly viable.

Therefore the Eldest proposed legislation to direct the Ministry of the Interior to undertake such a project, to bore massive deep tunnels between the various cities on Capricorn and the inland resource areas, and thus bury most of the vulnerable infrastructure. This would not only nearly eliminate the threat of the deathapotamusaurus herds, but would also provide significant protection for the infrastructure in the event of future Kurita attacks.

[] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.

[] Oppose - -5 Support in Lords and Commons

Another proposal brought before Parliament is rather controversial. It is noted that wealthier children tend to be able to obtain better educations from lavishly funded private schools, while poorer kids are left to languish in poorly funded public schools. This isn’t universal, there are public schools which perform as well or even better than private schools, but the correlation is significant enough to be valid statistically. Moreover, many parents in certain demographics insist on home-schooling their children, with wide variance in quality of the ensuing education.

So a number of Members of Parliament from both the Commons and Lords propose legislation banning private for-profit schools and heavily regulating homeschooling into near non-existence, while still permitting parochial schools. Otherwise, all students would be required to attend public schools, funding would be equalized on a per-student basis through the Interior Ministry and ‘donations’ and ‘fundraisers’ would be banned to prevent inequality from taking root between wealthy and poor regions. The curriculum would be standardized across the planet with no variations permitted even to the parochial schools. They’d be allowed to teach religion classes in addition to the mandatory curriculum, but they would not be allowed to alter, contradict, or neglect any aspect of the mandatory curriculum.

[] Support. This is highly controversial. Upkeep of 10,000 a year to maintain the system, an immediate -20 Approval, -10 Approval Change, +5 Research Rating, +5 Economy Rating, increases chances of unrest across the planet.

[] Oppose. No negative effects.

 

[Decim]

[X] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.
[X] Oppose. No negative effects.

 

[kelgar04]

[X] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.

positives really out weighs the negatives and two extra Factories is nothing to sneeze at. Hmm may want to look into some mining industrial mechs if possible.

[X] Oppose. If pressed on the issue:
-[X] Full-spectrum student testing. Any student found deficient in any of the many and varied educational approaches is immediately remanded to the public schools for one year of corrective education or until they can pass the aptitude and education test. On the flip-side if they are found to be exceptional grants shall be offered to help with their education.

Education is a right as is the right of choice so yeah not forcing public school on them. Though we could try improving public Schools maybe making some Royal schools or something?

 

[Tel Janin Aman]

Rather than try to drag everyone down to the same level they should focus on raising public schools up.

Also loved the baby metal reference, saw them live with the chili peppers. After they finished and chili peppers came out Flea said "I bet you all have never seen anything like that before" and he was indeed right.

 

[Wageslave]

Do not argue with the Eldest, for he is hueg and you are dinner.

[X] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.

[X] Oppose. If pressed on the issue:
-[X] Full-spectrum student testing. Any student found deficient in any of the many and varied educational approaches is immediately remanded to the public schools for one year of corrective education or until they can pass the aptitude and education test. On the flip-side if they are found to be exceptional grants shall be offered to help with their education.

Education is a right as is the right of choice so yeah not forcing public school on them. Though we could try improving public Schools maybe making some Royal schools or something?

 

[ShadowArxxy]

[X] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.

[X] Oppose. No negative effects.

[X] Write-In: Education Plan 9

A compromise proposal put forward by a much more moderate rival group of Representatives and Lords instead implements a
standardized national curriculum for core academic subjects only. Elective classes are subject to independent quality control and fact checking standards, but are otherwise unrestricted.

Their plan is more moderate on the funding end as well: there is no ban on private donations and fundraisers, but substantial state funding is provided on a need basis in order to guarantee that money alone is not an obstacle to public schools delivering a solid, quality education.

(( I should point out that restriction of home schooling proposed here is pretty much the conspiracy theory version of what fundie home schoolers think "the liberals" want, and that while fundies are niche relative to Christians in general, they're a *very* disproportionately large and influential chunk of home schoolers. Regulation along these lines is pretty much the scenario that HSLDA waves every time anyone tries to pass *any* regulation of home schooling whatsoever. ))

((On a second, also out of character note, the equalization of public school funding is something that California actually did pass decades ago, only to have it literally hijacked by a ballot proposition which imposed a statutory requirement that all state funding be allocated *solely* in direct proportion to local property taxes (which were the traditional primary funding source for schools, until that was screwed up by a previous ballot proposition). In other words, the government is required by law to *ignore* the financial needs of poorer districts and to lavish matching funds on rich districts in order to make them even richer. This is why you have some public schools still struggling to buy basic textbooks, while others are literally giving away iPads for every student.))

Rather than try to drag everyone down to the same level they should focus on raising public schools up.

The academic performance advantage of private and charter schools is pretty much entirely because they don't allow low performing students to attend at all, while home schooling's academic advantages are paired with a lot of "soft" disadvantages that don't show up on standardized tests.

 

[Thors_Alumni]

[X] Support - If this passes, it will cost 20,000 a year for 10 years. At the end of this time there will be a 1 time +10% GDP boost that cannot be cancelled by any event. The techniques developed in this project will further permit building one buried size 2 factory on Capricorn in addition to the regular allotment. Will increase support in the Lords and Commons by 5 and at the conclusion of the 10 year period increase Political and Economic Rating by 5.

[X] Oppose. If pressed on the issue:
-[X] Full-spectrum student testing. Any student found deficient in any of the many and varied educational approaches is immediately remanded to the public schools for one year of corrective education or until they can pass the aptitude and education test. On the flip-side if they are found to be exceptional grants shall be offered to help with their education.