Turn 108 - I Took The Tube Back Out Of Town
The economic system in the Bāṛi system continues to deteriorate as the full ramifications of the collapse of the largest retail chain in the system continue to echo throughout the economy. Considering just how hyper-inflated a ponzi scheme that corporation was, combined with just how brazen the former leadership had been, it’s amazing that anybody manages to keep their shirt in that situation. Thankfully your social safety net is working as intended to cushion the blow, but the overall GDP contraction in the system is almost half a trillion in value with all of the knock-on effects.
The thing is, it would cost almost your entire cash reserve to plug that hole, and doing so would do nothing to fix the underlying faults in that system’s economy. This is one of those unfortunate situations where you’ll need to grit your teeth and take the blow, because anything else would be more damaging in both the short and long term.
There aren’t any real surprises coming out of the Olympics, although the Bourbons are doing better than they had in the recent past in the various competitions. Who knew that selecting athletes to compete on merit rather than birth would have such a drastic effect. That was sarcastic, incidentally.
You do take several days to watch the gymnastics competitions, or at least the recordings of them, as they have become a very thrilling contest of skill, grace, and athleticism between the NRI and Team Griffon, to everybody's great enjoyment. It’s quite gratifying to you to see young athletes compete whole-heartedly in the meet itself, but as soon as they are off the floor they’re congratulating each other, regardless of team, for their accomplishments and triumphs, and consoling each other over their mistakes and failures. The fact that many of them train together in between Olympics is evident, and you are very happy to see it.
The orbital defenses of Pinball got a bit of an unplanned workout, as a ‘dark’ carboniferous asteroid was detected on a collision course with the main inhabited planet in the system. A quick survey showed no economically valuable minerals, so instead of redirecting it into a stable orbit the decision was made to use it for target practice. Several very enthusiastic hours later and the asteroid was a bunch of gravel, sand, and dust. Thanks to some judicious orbital repositioning there was no actual risk to orbital infrastructure, and the citizens of Pinball got a rather lovely light show in the night sky thanks to a truly spectacular meteor shower.
You watch the recordings and are a bit jealous that you couldn’t be there in person to witness it, because you are certain that it was even more awe-inspiring in person than simply on film.
There has been an uptick in Black Steel activity to the galactic northwest, with regular raiding by Black Steel corvettes beginning again. So far your forces are on top of the situation and despite taking damage you’ve so far not lost any ships. This is primarily due to the fact that the Black Steel seems to be engaging in purely hit and run attacks, jumping in well outside the jump limit, thrusting in while recharging, firing a few volleys at extreme range, then jumping out. It’s a galling annoyance that is causing damage and casualties, but sustainable for now.
You’ve gotten to see some of the new equipment that is being tested as part of the overall review process for the Imperial Griffon Army. You’ve even gotten to try out one of the new battle armor suits. Swapping out the anti-personnel gauss for a 3cm laser, slightly improving the armor, adding additional power cells to increase combat endurance, and upgrading the missile launchers to the newest standard all seem to be sensible upgrades. In some ways it’s a downgrade, as the old medium suits had a pair of the AP gauss weapons rather than just a single laser, but in tests the new suits have proven superior overall as a complete weapon system.
You also get a ride in the prototype
Arashi assault mech and are extremely impressed by the sheer destructive potential of the design. They are still working out a few issues, the ECM systems are currently interfering with the laser anti-missile system sensors when both are active at the same time, but engineers assure you that this is normal teething issues and nothing that they are concerned with, the second prototype has some adjustments to both systems which should resolve the issue.
They also let you pilot another prototype, this time a 100 ton quad mech called the
Zō. It has very nearly the same firepower as the
Arashi, despite being a quad, at the cost of less ammunition and a more punishing heat curve as well as the loss of the ECM suite. However it promises amazing survivability thanks to the decision to use a more compact, if heavier, fusion engine combined with the inherent advantage that quad designs have in sheer armor mass.
You inquire about the names and are informed that the designers went with Japanese names for the Assault mechs, German for heavies and lights, and Polish for mediums as the project names, the actual in-service names would likely follow a more unified theme but the general staff hasn’t decided on that yet.
Parliament is in session and a number of pieces of legislation are advancing through the process. Most are utterly mundane, on the one hand it’s nice that the politicians are behaving themselves, on the other it does make things a trifle boring. You quickly find some wood to knock on lest you just jinxed it.
But there is one piece of legislation that requires further attention. The Workplace Safety Act of 3038 would fully centralize all workplace safety regulations into a single unified Imperial regulatory body, rather than the current arrangement where the Crown sets basic minimum standards that all system governments are required to use as the baseline for their own workplace safety regulations. Considering that you haven’t seen any reports of any actual issues in this regard you are rather suspicious about this, since as far as you can tell the current system is indeed working rather well.
On the other hand you are talking about ‘in the weeds’ health and safety issues, which may well not have risen to Imperial attention due to the sheer scale of the Empire. It’s one thing for the Queen of a single world to be able to know about all the miniscule details, but not for an Empress of a massive, and growing, interstellar empire.
[] | Action | Argument | Result |
[] | Sign the Workplace Safety Act of 3038 | It is all well and good to argue for devolution of authority to the local level, and that the current system is working fine and thus changing it is foolish. However, just because it is working now doesn’t mean it will continue working, and the recent issues with the Bāṛi system government failing to catch the corruption that is currently savaging that system’s economy is a warning sign that we cannot expect this happy state of affairs to continue.
We must centralize as much authority as we can, simply to prevent potential accidents in the future. Safety is too important to be left to local hands, it must be an Imperial concern. |
- Establish the Imperial Health & Safety Administration
- Increases upkeep costs by $1,000,000,000.00 per system
- +1 Politics
- -1 Economic Event
- -1 Imperial Economy
- -1 Research Event
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[] | Veto the Workplace Safety Act of 3038 | Not only is the current system working, it is working well. The conditions in the Griffon system are not the same as those in the Edelsteine system or the New Phoenix system, there are different challenges brought about by different environments and different industrial matrices.
The current practice of setting baseline minimums and metrics that the system governments can then use as a baseline to develop their own regulations allows for precisely the sort of flexibility an interstellar empire needs to thrive. The people of Pustina or Pinball should not have to wait for a distant bureaucracy on Griffon to make decisions on their behalf, where they will have little to no input and no assurance that local conditions will be respected. |
- +1 Approval Change
- -1 Politics
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