Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

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Turn 133 - Is Everybody Happy?
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    • LordSunhawk

    LordSunhawk

    Das BOOT (literally)
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    Turn 133 - Is Everybody Happy?


    You decide to direct the Navy to develop multiple variations of both dreadnought and supercarrier designs in order to thoroughly determine what the options were once actual detailed design work was possible. Admiral Fisher does indeed grumble a bit, as predicted, but you are sure he’ll get over it.

    Economic news continues to be quite positive across the board. With the new trade route into the region of the minor powers demand has suddenly increased for many manufactured goods, which has resulted in a number of factories which had been shuttered due to shifting demand reopening, easing unemployment in the Capital March and leading to the current economic boom in that region. Several analysts are concerned about possible inflationary pressure, but the central bank is handling the issue smoothly.

    One of your furthest outlying anti-piracy patrols entered a system right after a rather brutal attack involving mass orbital bombardment with high-yield nuclear devices. They were not close enough to engage the attacking unit, but got high-quality scans of the ship. The warbook has identified it as an Aegis-class heavy cruiser, with an emblem painted on it that resembles a mix between those of House Davion and House Steiner with, oddly, a hint of the House Liao emblem as well in the border. The survivors all report that the ship identified itself as being with the Federated Commonwealth and had demanded that the people in the system turn over ten percent of their children to them as ‘tribute’, when they hesitated they began their bombardment and landed a raiding force that abducted a number of the survivors, mostly young girls. The raiders were in a hodgepodge of mechs, identified via videos taken by survivors as a very motley and eclectic mix of ancient designs, mostly ‘bug’ mechs such as Stingers and Wasps. The mechs were in surprisingly poor repair and were mostly unpainted, although SARAH thinks that they had had whatever paint had been on them stripped off, as her analysis indicates that they had originally been either a light gray or white color scheme. The raiding infantry were wearing what appeared to be downgraded Nighthawk power armor suits.

    If it weren’t for the Black Steel threat you’d commit more forces to these patrols, as it is you have sent instructions to be on the watch for vessels matching those sensor readings. Thankfully, due to your highly sophisticated sensor suites, you have an excellent readout on the mystery ship’s sub-light drive and KF signatures.

    Parliament is hard at work at the moment. You do get some reports from the Eldest, as well as your supporters in the Chamber, that the politicians are being rather supportive of the Crown this year, and much of the politicking seems to center around fairly minor matters, in the grand scheme of things. Thankfully it isn’t an election year, which might be contributing to the more helpful nature of Parliament at the moment.

    The main piece of legislation that they are working on is a bit of a doozy. It’s not fully completed, but the Eldest has asked for your input as to whether or not you would support it as it is very sweeping.

    The Civil Service Act of 3063 is a comprehensive overhaul of the entire Civil Service system, proposing to make use of the latest innovations in workforce management solutions to streamline the Civil Service. By eliminating bloat and unnecessary duplication, the legislation aims to increase the overall efficiency of the Civil Service while reducing overall costs.

    []ActionArgumentResult
    []Support the Civil Service Act of 3063While you have managed to maintain a comparatively lean and efficient bureaucracy, the private sector has managed to innovate in ways that further streamline administrative overhead without sacrificing quality. These reforms would implement the latest workforce management techniques to the civil service across the board, allowing the same number of total civil servants to accomplish far more actual work in a given calendar year, while reducing costs thanks to eliminating duplicative efforts, wastes, and inefficiencies.
    None of these techniques are, in and of themselves, innovative. All are currently industry standard across your economy in every segment of society. There have been no actual issues within society concerning them, as they were all developed in partnerships between management and workers, rather than imposed in a top-down manner simply to boost the bottom line. Indeed, many of the techniques originated within the workforce itself. What is innovative is applying these methods and techniques to the civil service, which has become rather more ossified and rigid than may, strictly speaking, be desirable.
    The current ‘incentive’ system disproportionately rewards seniority due to the high degree of subjectivity inherent to it and the fact that it is the most senior civil servants who decide who gets the bonuses, and thus they wind up over-valuing the sort of work that they are doing over that done by more junior employees. As a consequence, there is an undesirably high amount of turnover in the junior ranks.
    This is not to take anything away from the valuable work that civil servants accomplish, nor to say that they are not working hard. But rather that they are spending too much of their time on needless ‘make work’ tasks that are functionally obsolete in the modern economy.
    • +1 to Civil Service Reform level
      • A 10% reduction in overall ‘General’ upkeep costs
    • +10 to Civil Service Expansion Level
      • This gives 10 additional general actions each turn
    • +1 Politics
    • -1 Approval Change
    • Sets title ‘the Reformer’
      • Unknown effects
    []Oppose the Civil Service Act of 3063This is outrageous, the current system was put in place by your grandfather and has not once failed the Empire, there is absolutely no need to change it, especially like this. The civil service are stalwarts of the Empire!
    One of the most egregious changes in this package of so-called reforms are the drastic changes made to seniority systems, making it so that long-term employees, who have worked hard for the Empire, are no longer permitted to select their own assignments, which has long been a benefit given to such veteran civil servants. Instead they would be subject to the same impersonal assignment system as the newest greenhorn.
    Moreover, the obscenity of the proposed performance-based merit pay systems eliminate all incentives for long-service civil servants to spend their valuable time and effort mentoring newbies, rather they would have to spend that time instead scrambling after chimerical performance milestones.
    • -1 Politics
    • +1 Approval Change
     
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    • A

    Artifex

    Well-known member
    Oh boi,
    seems to me we have some serious false flaggers corewards of our territory...

    [x] Support the Civil Service Act of 3063

    This seems a nice thing to do, and government systems need regular overhaul before the deteriorate too much and it seems our current version of the civil services is about to deteriorate.
     
    S

    ShadowArxxy

    Well-known member
    Comrade
    [X] Support the Civil Service Act of 3063

    This reform package might be going a bit far in almost completely eliminating seniority benefits, but I'm inclined to adopt the reform with the in-character consideration of keeping an eye on things and being willing to partially roll back some of the reforms if they turn out counterproductive.
     
    The Whispering Monk

    The Whispering Monk

    Well-known member
    Osaul
    [x] Support the Civil Service Act of 3063
    **You mean I get to SHRINK a bureaucracy!!!? Where do I sign!?
    ***The other benefit is that it's going to happen while our private industries are expanding, so any people that leave will likely have a fairly gentle transition.

    Oh yeah...it was Comstar/WoB/WTH-the current name is
     
    charclone

    charclone

    Well-known member
    [x] Support the Civil Service Act of 3063

    Sounds like the FedCom succeeded in crushing/absorbing the CapCon, probably through the St. Ives Commonality, and the C*/WoB is now trying to gather people to brainwash into its army in a panic, after its earlier false flag attacks.

    Or MadKat won the civil war, and was a Liao puppet, and is now going even further off the deep end.

    My money is on something of the former, though.
     
    Kilvanya

    Kilvanya

    Well-known member
    One thing that stands out to me about the whole false flag smash and burn thing is that unless this is very very heavily AU in the IS then even if the FedCom went bug fuck nuts and is doing this the time required to build warships and train competent yard hands means they would have to have started this warship program before Melissa was born, given how long it’s taken us to work up to big ships even with an active warship using enemy driving the spending we have put into it, meanwhile the IS has to balance garrisoning hundreds of worlds and beating out unrest and brush fire raids on all sides.
     
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