Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Turn 27 - Just a jackknife has old MacHeath babe

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Turn 27 - Just a jackknife has old MacHeath babe

You have the rare pleasure of not having to come up with a speech on the fly for once. Jake has learned enough about your ‘style’ and preferences that he was able to write a full speech for you that you didn’t need to deviate with at all.

You pretty much put the most obstreperous of the Lords in their place with it, pointing out that the planet was in a state of war, and thus the normal priorities couldn’t be considered valid. You manage to make it quite stirring, with plenty of references to the hardships caused by the dastardly Dragon. After all, this was being broadcast, so it was quite possible the Dracs were listening in so a few choice adjectives were more than warranted.

Public reaction is pretty positive, and you start getting reports about new farmland being tilled and prepared for food crops. Food prices are dropping, although to be fair the majority of what is being grown is more high yield crops rather than high nutritional value crops, so there are some health issues caused by the increased access to cheap food.

You are watching the holo one evening when a new music video comes up, with the anchor of the news program snickering. At first you think it’s something that the Periphery Studies department cooked up.

Then you recognize the three ‘musicians’ performing

You glare at Willis. He’s too busy laughing. So are you.

Evidently your three boys had gotten together and recorded a parody video of ‘Vegetable Rights Activists’... and your husband had known about it. He’d, in fact, done much of the recording.

Then the Periphery Studies people take this seriously and start actually organizing protest marches on farmer’s markets. You get a horrible headache from all of this.

It’s obviously Willis’ fault. He probably inspired the boys. Unfortunately your attempt at a glare is ruined by how hard you are giggling at the sheer absurdity of the situation.

Then again they are also pretty good. You decide to counter-troll your loving sons by having Isoroku contact a few professional promoters he knows and having them offer the boys a contract for distribution. With ALL the paperwork.

The grumbling and muttering and dark looks you get from your sons is totally worth it.

There are several more communications with Tai-sa Gustavson, pretty much all being handled at the ministerial level rather than requiring your direct input. According to Sarah the Tai-sa seems to be quite serious about not mistreating the civilians. His men are still in, admittedly well-insulated, tents while he prioritizes completing prefab residential blocks for the civilians. In the months since his arrival there have been no public executions, and the infantry who are guarding the fields seem to be adopting a far more hands-off manner. No whips have been in evidence at all.

You have seen several other apparent malefactors being hanged, but all of them appear to have been DCMS soldiers who somehow ran afoul of whatever passes for military regulations in the Combine. The brothel has been shut down, although the building itself appears to now see use as an off-duty watering hole for the troops Sarah sees no signs of it being used for its prior purpose.

He has gotten reinforcements, though. While the Excalibur has departed, along with one of the Mules a pair of Gazelles and a single Buccaneer have arrived. As far as you can tell they contained additional ground crew for the ASFs, but Sarah reports that a number of larger ASFs that are not in her databanks are being assembled. They appear to be medium fighters, on the large end, with a flying wing layout. Sarah has no information on what these fighters are capable of which is rather worrying as the Dracs have 18 of them.

There is a severe earthquake on Castor. Luckily there are no casualties and damage is minimal, however landslides from the quake reveal large deposits of rare earths which are highly valuable. Exploiting these materials would be highly beneficial to the economy, but safely accessing them would be.. Expensive, if rather straightforward.

[] Go for it - up front cost of 10,000, +5% GDP this turn, +1% Tax Rate this turn
[] Save it for later - there will be an action to exploit this deposit

There’s another mess in Parliament. And this one is a doozy.

It started as a minor story in the business section. A small but dynamic company manufacturing fuel-cell powered farm equipment had been targeted for a hostile leveraged takeover a few years ago. The company engaging in the leveraged takeover had been one of the major players in that sector, although far from a monopoly.

Following the leveraged takeover, however, the company in question had promptly shifted all of its unprofitable business lines that it was stuck in long term contracts for, along with nearly all of the corporate debt, into the formerly independent firm, then spun it off.

The spun-off company had just gone into bankruptcy, completely unable to ever operate effectively burdened as it was by unsustainable debts and worthless contracts that made it nearly impossible to ever become profitable. With that failure, large numbers of small investors have lost enormous amounts of money, as when the company had been spun off the ‘parent’ firm had partially financed it by a stock shift into the division in question right before it was spun off. The large institutional investors had ensured that all of the shares split off were those of independent small investors, thus they are reaping the rewards of the increased profitability of the parent company while the small investors took it in the shorts.

The House of Commons is in an uproar, however every single action taken by everybody involved was, technically speaking, perfectly legal. They followed every single regulation to the T, they obeyed every single disclosure requirement, they did everything by the book so well that regulators haven’t been able to find even a minor violation to hang an investigation on.

It was a perfect storm, and it all came down to timing. The notices about the stock shift had gone out, but had done so at the same time as the markets had gone crazy from the opening of Pollux and the associated business boom. None of the notices had ever been, well, noticed, buried as they were beneath masses of other news. Suspicion of deliberate intent had been defused by the minor detail that the company had republished the notices in a paid advertisement several weeks later, well before the deadline to object to the stock shift, but that ad had never run in the intended time slot because it got preempted by the mandatory evacuation order and Martial Law declaration.

It’s a mess. There are loud cries to ‘do something’, but there really doesn’t seem to be anything to do that would in any way be helpful.

You decide to punt this down to your economic and legal advisors, see what they come up with.
 

Jarow

Well-known member
[X] Go for it - up front cost of 10,000, +5% GDP this turn, +1% Tax Rate this turn
Not that expensive, and easily pays for itself.
 

Ridli Scott

Well-known member
Maybe if the cost was 10 times we may think about no doing it. But this is free.

[X] Go for it - up front cost of 10,000, +5% GDP this turn, +1% Tax Rate this turn
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Just checked the Polity screen on the spreadsheet and noticed that our support among the Commons is at 200 while among the Lords it's at 71, and with this decision it should drop it to 51. I'm not saying it's the wrong decision - far from it - but we should really keep an eye on our support among the Lords for future decisions.

Well the Lords need to stop being such stupid, selfish assholes all the time.


[X] Go for it - up front cost of 10,000, +5% GDP this turn, +1% Tax Rate this turn
 
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Jarow

Well-known member
Just checked the Polity screen on the spreadsheet and noticed that our support among the Commons is at 200 while among the Lords it's at 71, and with this decision it should drop it to 51. I'm not saying it's the wrong decision - far from it - but we should really keep an eye on our support among the Lords for future decisions.
One thing to note - that was after the decision was applied, they were both equal before that (though, it is probably worth taking the political action to improve relations)
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Following the leveraged takeover, however, the company in question had promptly shifted all of its unprofitable business lines that it was stuck in long term contracts for, along with nearly all of the corporate debt, into the formerly independent firm, then spun it off.

This may not violate any current laws, but it *is* clearly malicious exploitation of the rules. They didn't spin off the division in anything remotely resembling good faith.

Edit: In real-life terms, a company cannot actually directly transfer its debts to the spinoff; the way debt is offloaded to a spinoff is by the corporate officers of the spinoff agreeing in advance to *buy up* the debts of the parent. We could handle this by duplicating U.S. laws under which, "The transfer may be viewed as a fraudulent conveyance under creditors’ rights rules if payments to the parent are not made in return for reasonably equivalent value and leave the spin-off company insolvent. "

With that failure, large numbers of small investors have lost enormous amounts of money, as when the company had been spun off the ‘parent’ firm had partially financed it by a stock shift into the division in question right before it was spun off. The large institutional investors had ensured that all of the shares split off were those of independent small investors, thus they are reaping the rewards of the increased profitability of the parent company while the small investors took it in the shorts.

This, too, is clearly malicious, but it's also confusing because to the best of my limited knowledge, it doesn't parallel anything in real-life stocks. As far as I know, you can't actually say, "These stocks represent this section of the company, so when we spin it off, the stock you bought in Company X automagically becomes Company Y stock."

Edit: Yeah, you can't actually "dump" investors into the spinoff. "A spin-off involves the pro rata distribution of a controlled corporations stock to the distributing corporations shareholders without their surrendering any distributing corporation stock."

(If this is legal under Roost law, then a *huge* loophole exists in the way stocks are fundamentally designed, and that needs to be altered to broadly match the modern Western model.)

Corollary: YOU MADE ME LOOK UP FINANCIAL LAW AND CORPORATE STRUCTURING. I HAD BETTER EARN SOME REROLLS FOR THIS!
 
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Decim

Chronic on/off lurker
This, too, is clearly malicious, but it's also confusing because to the best of my limited knowledge, it doesn't parallel anything in real-life stocks. As far as I know, you can't actually say, "These stocks represent this section of the company, so when we spin it off, the stock you bought in Company X automagically becomes Company Y stock."
This is the kind of thing where due to Ex Post Facto rules, you can't really go back and undo it. However, you can come up with additional legislation to effectively make this a one-time thing so that companies can't do this shit anymore. Probably with a big fat fine of the parent company for malicious action if it can be swung.
 

Wageslave

Well-known member
RL commentary

Actually, it *can* and *does* happen -- or the money is dumped into a nearly worthless 401k.

And it's perfectly legal (at least here in the U.S.) because it's not 'wages' but 'other compensation' which has less regulation by design to encourage business to use it.

RL example: Our Company had an Employee Stock Share Programme. Employees were encouraged to invest in the company, were given shares with voting rights, and encouraged to participate in the fiscal health of the Company. The Company would even *match* the purchases up to a certain percentage, and cover the tax burden for double that amount.

...then when the Company started engaging in what we shall call 'creative accounting' (for the major shareholders benefit) the Employees put forth a resolution for a full forensic audit of the Company finances at the Annual Shareholders meeting.

We were then 'rewarded' with being told that 'it wouldn't help our declining market value if others found out our finances' and 'Oh, by the way, those shares you USED to have? We're buying them back at at current market value (market was in downturn, shares were worth a tenth of what we'd 'paid' for them on paper) and we'll put that into a 401k for you. Isn't that nice and generous of us to take such badly performing stocks off your hands at no charge?'

And then when that BS was done, they spun off our section of the company for 'having too much debt' and tried to force us into bankruptcy. New sub-Company was bought up by a Capital Venture group, who made it 'look' like we'd turned it around, and then the Company bought us back.... to repeat the process (without employee shares this time).

SOMETHING needs to happen to this bigger company, something subtle that completely *isn't* the Crown or Government getting involved -- after all, it's all 'legal' (if determinedly not moral). I'm hearing a call for either the Dynamic Duo or... a certain slippery rodent....
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
This is the kind of thing where due to Ex Post Facto rules, you can't really go back and undo it. However, you can come up with additional legislation to effectively make this a one-time thing so that companies can't do this shit anymore. Probably with a big fat fine of the parent company for malicious action if it can be swung.

True, but that's frustrating to players since the "loopholes" themselves are being created ex post facto, making it impossible to actually solve them until after they've caused a crisis.

In any case, such overt "legal-but-malicious" action really tempts the Crown to ask Michelle and Janet to take a vacation in the direction of the company.

RL commentary

Actually, it *can* and *does* happen -- or the money is dumped into a nearly worthless 401k.

They can do certain things that are *like this* in effect, but they can't actually, directly do this. I've added explicit citations to my previous post.
 

Culsu

Agent of the Central Plasma
Founder
We'll eventually need to throw the lords a bone or two, lest Gustavsson gets the idea to use them to undermine us.

[X] Go for it - up front cost of 10,000, +5% GDP this turn, +1% Tax Rate this turn
 
Turn 27 - You know when that shark bites with those teeth, babe

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Turn 27 - You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe

Janet and Bridget sit down for a meeting with you to lay out the situation.

“First of all, there was nothing illegal here. Unethical, oh yeah, shady? Yup. Sleazy? Definitely. They are in full damage control and ass covering mode at the moment with the press and their stock is taking a pounding as quite a few farmers are declaring they won’t use their products.” Janet says, grimacing a bit. “But nothing illegal.”

Bridget nods. “Now what the House of Commons wants to do would go way too far. Leveraged buyouts are a rather important tool for investors to use to clear out deadwood in the market. Some of these companies might be salvageable, but in general if a company is actually healthy a leveraged buyout would fail, leaving the would-be buyer in a very poor position. Like, bankrupt and regretting their life choices. Get rid of leveraged buyouts, like the Commons is proposing, and you will have the market full of undead companies that simply are never going to be actually profitable and will probably just be static capital sinks. It’s very stable, but you’ll never see any sort of economic growth, especially of the sort we need, in such a scenario.”

She shuffles her notes, glancing over them. “Worse, it’s extremely rare for a leveraged buyout target to be in the sort of situation we have here. Most are the old dinosaurs who left innovation behind in our great-grandparents day and have been coasting along on momentum and complacency. In this case, the corporate leadership were brilliant engineers but terrible businessmen and didn’t have the good sense to bring anybody on board who had actual business sense. Their numbers looked good on the surface, which led to many small investors snapping them up thinking that with their exceptionally clever designs and patents they had a sure-fire winner. The institutional investors avoided it, because they could see the underlying fundamentals were terrible. Smith-Conway Agricultural Systems took one look at this, and saw an opportunity for pure profit. They pulled off the leveraged buyout, took all the patents and production lines that they needed for their own core business, then spun loose all the costs and liabilities. They’ll ride out the poor PR from this mess, but it is probably saying something that their lobbyists are amongst those pushing for the leveraged buyout ban… because that will give them protection while they handle the situation.”

Janet then speaks up. “That’s not to say that there aren’t things we could do. Smith-Conway took advantage of the fact that they never officially amalgamated the stock, so the small investors were simply taken for a ride. They also put their own people on the board of the spun off company who signed off on the entire debt load transfer. All completely legal, like I said, even though it has the appearance of corruption it doesn’t actually violate any actual laws, merely ‘norms’.”

Bridget nods. “So the best thing we can do is, in terms of the Commons plan, tell them to cool their jets. You’d have to ask Jake about how badly that’ll piss them off, but what they are proposing would be very bad economic policy. I expect that the Commons won’t be all that eager to work on an alternative either. Jake’s the expert, but my read on them is that they’ve promised too much to back down.”

You call Jake in to the meeting and he nods at Bridget’s analysis. “My people have been monitoring this. Too many Members in the Commons have made too public a commitment to killing off leveraged buyouts to back down. It’ll be a hit to your popularity, in the short term at least, but it would be the right thing to do.”

Janet pipes up. “I would propose that we place harder limits on debt transfers and such. My recommendation is that only debt accrued after the leveraged buyout may be transferred to any spun off company that results from said buyout, and that no corporate officers of the parent firm would be permitted to serve on the board of the spinoff. Also regulations that any stock held in the buyout target must be amalgamated at the time of buyout into equal class shares in the new owner to prevent them from dumping off the small investors.”

Jake nods “That’s something we could push through, but I’d advise starting with our allies in the Lords. Like I said, the Commons has picked their hill to die on, and they’re not going to be able to back down without a fight.”

[] Approve of Advisors plan - +1 Economic Rating, +1 Economy, -25 Approval, +1 Approval Change, +1 Politics, +10 support in Lords, -25 support in Commons.

[] Support the Commons in banning leveraged buyouts - +1 Approval, +1 Approval Change, +1 Politics, -10 Economic Rating, -10 Economy.

[] Hold the course - -10 Approval -50 support in Commons

Then it’s time to meet with the advisors for the budget. Yay. Not.

General Swanson leads things off. “Your Majesty, thank you for the support for 1st Armored, 2nd Brigade. Building off of that, we’d like to recommend continuing to fill out the Mechanized Regiment, as well as finishing off 1st Battalion to full strength. In terms of mechs, we’d advise continuing to devote all Ambush production to the Cadre, and all Pathfinder production to 2nd Battlemech Battalion, 1st Battlemech Regiment, 1st Brigade. Finally we would like to advise we use the Aerie’s research capacity to research the Beagle Active Probe. It’s such a basic upgrade for the Pathfinder that it can be done for no special cost, as the design has the mass and volume already allocated for the system.”

General Reyes then takes the reins. “We have a full wing of Rocs now, however with the growing number of enemy dropships we cannot in good faith recommend reducing production. Until we have sufficient Defiant class ships in service the Roc is our heaviest hitter. Our initial analysis of what we can determine about the new fighters the Dracs now have is that it is most closely comparable to the Eagle, we recommend boosting production of Eagles and have been working out a refit option with the latest technology.”

She lays out a set of folders to all present. “Simply speaking, this is a very straightforward upgrade. We replace the armor with the same tonnage of ferro-aluminium, replace the 8cm lasers with their extended range counterparts, switch to freezers and increase their number to soak the increased heat load. This left us with 3 tons to play with, one proposal was for a pair of twin short-range missile launchers to increase close-in punch, the other was to focus on defense by incorporating a pair of anti-missile systems in the same locations. The full upgrade would cost under 2300, at 2275.20, but would tie up our freezer experimental stockpile and ferro-aluminium production for the year. Going forward, we would need to build and expand both the freezer and ferro-aluminium orbital factories in order to maintain full production rates of the upgraded model.”

[] Agree
[] Disagree

Admiral Kirk takes the podium. “Production on the USS Defiant is going well with no significant issues reported. If we were to expand the yard where she is being built she would, of course, be finished quicker. USS Harris is also doing well. We would be able to fully study the Confederate, but that would require a fresh production line if we want to build them. Otherwise, Your Navy is doing well.”

General Potter nods from where he is seated. “The first class in the Aerie is doing well, once they graduate we’ll have a number of options available based on lessons learned. Other than that, I fully endorse my subordinates budgetary requests.”

Bridget is her cheerful best. “Your Majesty! We’re building building building and we’d like to build some more! Can we please get that port in on Five FIngers, and maybe get started on infrastructure up there because that would do great things for our economy which is starting to get a little strained by all the military stuff not that we don’t badly need all the pew pew pew which we totally do but we need to also be able to guarantee we can pay for it and so we need to build build build!”

Short for her, but her point stands.

Isoroku is looking serious, but he always looks serious. “With the diplomatic talks ongoing we have determined that the primary motive of the Kuritan forces is to neutralize us as a threat to their great Operation Bakkustabbu. I get the sense that the Tai-sa is not all that interested in fighting us and may be persuaded to stand down with nothing more than a promise to not interfere. I’ve checked with Sarah and the Rasalhague worlds where he appears to hail are not the most… loyal… to the Dragon. That might be a factor. Closer to home, I’d like to recommend we do some music this year for cultural affairs programming. But I’m sure you know that.” he smiles briefly.

Jake takes up the baton. “More Town Halls! And maybe chat with Parliament to keep things smooth, straight, and level.” he grins.

Dr Palmer is not present, as she’s in the hospital at the moment for a routine procedure. She sent a memo before she took medical leave, however. “A few things. First, either have our biomedical teams work on a cure for cancer, or the life extension therapies, both are very valuable. In terms of more physical and less medical research, improving basic technologies and increasing our orbital infrastructure would pay off in many ways.”

Harry simply sends you an eyes-only memo stating that they are fully ready to deep dive into the background of any people implicated as being affiliated with the 331st, and to do so quietly and in background so as to not cause any ruckus.

Janet is, well, Janet. She brings you a big steaming cup of coffee. Which you are very grateful for. “Your Majesty, as we continue to grow our law enforcement resources are starting to face more and more challenges. We have records of special police teams called SWAT which were specially trained to deal with higher risk environments and situations. We’d like to replicate that capability.”
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Janet and Bridget sit down for a meeting with you to lay out the situation.
<snip financial stuff>

We pretty much have to assume she's correct "in character", but . . . ugh, this is something already solved in RL legal restrictions (as cited above). Do you want us to have to take degrees in accountancy? Evil, evil QM...

[X] Approve of Advisors plan - +1 Economic Rating, +1 Economy, -25 Approval, +1 Approval Change, +1 Politics, +10 support in Lords, -25 support in Commons.

[X] Disagree

Edit: On second thought, this upgrade package isn't the greatest idea because it's using a *limited production* resource for relatively little gain, versus at least waiting for more tech to be unlocked.

Janet is, well, Janet. She brings you a big steaming cup of coffee. Which you are very grateful for. “Your Majesty, as we continue to grow our law enforcement resources are starting to face more and more challenges. We have records of special police teams called SWAT which were specially trained to deal with higher risk environments and situations. We’d like to replicate that capability.”

In practical terms, how would this differ from simply having the military liase more closely with the police? That isn't an option in the United States because of posse comitatus, but Griffin's Roost isn't the United States.
 
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kashim3

Texan, Mandalorian, Alabamian.
[X] Approve of Advisors plan - +1 Economic Rating, +1 Economy, -25 Approval, +1 Approval Change, +1 Politics, +10 support in Lords, -25 support in Commons.

[X] Disagree

[X] Plan: Spend ALL the money!
 
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