darkcloudt2
Well-known member
[X] Send a squadron
Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
[X] Send a squadron
Winter_Wind45
Well-known member
[X] Send a squadron
GooseElite
Well-known member
[X] Send a squadron
Turn 95 - Well If I Had Money
Turn 95 - Well If I Had Money
There is one thing that you had decided soon after becoming a mom, and that was to follow your great-grandmother’s example about rearing children. Keeping them in the hothouse environment of the palace was a bad idea, so you made sure to bring them out of it and into the ‘real world’.
Case in point, your daughter Tamara has turned 5, and is now old enough for the most junior level of the hovercraft racing league. Of course, your cousin who runs the overall league had decided that the most appropriate birthday present for Tamara was her very own racing hovercraft compliant with the level. She’d been incredibly excited by it, but you put your foot down. While you allowed her ‘nuncles’ to teach her how to drive on the palace track, they were not allowed to tune it, they were not allowed to adjust it, and they certainly were not allowed to soup it up. And once she was able to safely handle the little thing, you brought her to a public track.
You’d instructed your guards to be ‘discrete’, and if you didn’t know what they looked like and knew that they were there you’d miss them, but you were actually able to drive yourself to the track, from a discrete landing strip so you avoided paparazzi tracking you. You had a minimal disguise, just a pair of contacts to change your eye color and had combed your hair into a different style than you wore at formal events.
Your daughter promptly abandoned you to go play with other kids her age, while you pushed a stroller with your 3 year olds ‘help’ containing your youngest. Markus was with you, although he’d gone off to supervise the unloading of the hovercraft, leaving you to mingle with the other ‘race moms’ at the track.
You aren’t sure who is having more fun, your daughter racing around on the track, or the parents in the stands, you among them. For the youngest kids they don’t really track who wins or loses, the focus is more on learning how to drive safely and having fun.
You get back to the palace that evening, relaxed and recharged. This is the sort of thing you need to do more often.
It’s not all fun and games, the squadron that you’d sent off to Novagalicia had arrived and engaged a few Black Steel corvettes who’d been harassing the system. So far no heavy Black Steel forces have shown up, but given past behavior it would only be a matter of time. The Romans are cranking out their little gauss corvettes as fast as they can and concentrating them in the system.
The NRR has dispatched a number of wings of their fighters to join that picket force in response to their treaty obligations. They have also dispatched reinforcements to assist your own defense forces along the galactic northwest frontier due to the continuing risk from the Black Steel. So far there have been no signs of them, but that situation is not expected to be all that stable. Still, you will take any time you can beg, borrow, or steal to build up your navy in hopes of being able to match the Black Steel and drive them off for good.
Increased trade activity between the alliance partners has led to the creation of a new trade route, significantly boosting commercial activities throughout the Empire. Your government, of course, gets a share of the profits thanks to tariffs, a welcome boost to your budget.
The first children conceived under the fetal importation plan from Kilburrough have reached their majority and are beginning to sign up for the military, although not all do as many choose to pursue other interests. Reading the reports you find it quite encouraging that so many of your citizens who were unable to have children of their own had opened their homes and their hearts to these kids, and all medical tests have shown them to be precisely as Kilburrough had promised, with no issues detected.
Of course, then the Kilburrough emissary has to be his? Her? It? Usual self and promenade into the palace in a bizarre fashion that has to be seen to be believed. The usual complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling ‘fashion sense’ or ‘good taste’ is glaringly evident.
Of course, Tiberius decides that he is not going to be out-blinged by the emissary and shows up at your elbow wearing a dayglo fluorescent toga with a neon rainbow laurel, and the infuriating man has obviously bribed the raptors into agreeing to have their hides painted in matching patterns. All three looking far too smug.
The emissary is quite effusive in their thanks for how ‘faithfully you are holding up our bargain dahling’. And then drops a typically Kilburroughan bombshell as if you already knew, that it was quite nice to see their old deal with your ancestor had held up so well.
They’d claimed that before, of course, but your great-grandmother and grandfather had shrugged it off. You decide not to and demand that he show the receipts, so to speak.
And he does, your great, great, great grandfather had suffered an injury making it impossible for him to father children as a teenager during the wars that raged in that period, a Kilburrough trade delegation had been on planet, and a deal had been made, with your great, great, great grandmother being artificially inseminated with an engineered fetus derived from both of your ancestors DNA. This had, the emissary is quick to point out, been on one of the extremely rare occasions when Kilburrough had sent out such trade delegations, since people sadly tended to misuse their work.
And he drops another bombshell, blandly stating that it was quite a privilege to get to work with Cameron DNA.
Back up. Wait… WHAT?
He seems quite surprised that you didn’t know this tidbit, that the Griffith family was a cadet branch of House Cameron dating back to near the founding of the Terran Hegemony itself.
SARAH confirms this, pointing out that only somebody with a DNA profile saved in her system would have been able to fully activate her, and that the Cameron DNA was so saved and your great-grandmother had been a match. The AI had simply assumed that you all knew about this, since if she hadn’t been a match her built-in defensive systems would have killed everybody in the complex who tried to hijack her.
You manage to not swear at that, something you are quite proud of.
So you evidently have a direct, familial claim to rule the Star League. A Star League which no longer existed yet over whose corpse all of the Great Houses in the Inner Sphere were evidently fighting.
Wonderful. This couldn’t possibly cause any problems whatsoever. What could possibly go wrong?
Sarcasm can be so liberating.
There is one thing that you had decided soon after becoming a mom, and that was to follow your great-grandmother’s example about rearing children. Keeping them in the hothouse environment of the palace was a bad idea, so you made sure to bring them out of it and into the ‘real world’.
Case in point, your daughter Tamara has turned 5, and is now old enough for the most junior level of the hovercraft racing league. Of course, your cousin who runs the overall league had decided that the most appropriate birthday present for Tamara was her very own racing hovercraft compliant with the level. She’d been incredibly excited by it, but you put your foot down. While you allowed her ‘nuncles’ to teach her how to drive on the palace track, they were not allowed to tune it, they were not allowed to adjust it, and they certainly were not allowed to soup it up. And once she was able to safely handle the little thing, you brought her to a public track.
You’d instructed your guards to be ‘discrete’, and if you didn’t know what they looked like and knew that they were there you’d miss them, but you were actually able to drive yourself to the track, from a discrete landing strip so you avoided paparazzi tracking you. You had a minimal disguise, just a pair of contacts to change your eye color and had combed your hair into a different style than you wore at formal events.
Your daughter promptly abandoned you to go play with other kids her age, while you pushed a stroller with your 3 year olds ‘help’ containing your youngest. Markus was with you, although he’d gone off to supervise the unloading of the hovercraft, leaving you to mingle with the other ‘race moms’ at the track.
You aren’t sure who is having more fun, your daughter racing around on the track, or the parents in the stands, you among them. For the youngest kids they don’t really track who wins or loses, the focus is more on learning how to drive safely and having fun.
You get back to the palace that evening, relaxed and recharged. This is the sort of thing you need to do more often.
It’s not all fun and games, the squadron that you’d sent off to Novagalicia had arrived and engaged a few Black Steel corvettes who’d been harassing the system. So far no heavy Black Steel forces have shown up, but given past behavior it would only be a matter of time. The Romans are cranking out their little gauss corvettes as fast as they can and concentrating them in the system.
The NRR has dispatched a number of wings of their fighters to join that picket force in response to their treaty obligations. They have also dispatched reinforcements to assist your own defense forces along the galactic northwest frontier due to the continuing risk from the Black Steel. So far there have been no signs of them, but that situation is not expected to be all that stable. Still, you will take any time you can beg, borrow, or steal to build up your navy in hopes of being able to match the Black Steel and drive them off for good.
Increased trade activity between the alliance partners has led to the creation of a new trade route, significantly boosting commercial activities throughout the Empire. Your government, of course, gets a share of the profits thanks to tariffs, a welcome boost to your budget.
The first children conceived under the fetal importation plan from Kilburrough have reached their majority and are beginning to sign up for the military, although not all do as many choose to pursue other interests. Reading the reports you find it quite encouraging that so many of your citizens who were unable to have children of their own had opened their homes and their hearts to these kids, and all medical tests have shown them to be precisely as Kilburrough had promised, with no issues detected.
Of course, then the Kilburrough emissary has to be his? Her? It? Usual self and promenade into the palace in a bizarre fashion that has to be seen to be believed. The usual complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling ‘fashion sense’ or ‘good taste’ is glaringly evident.
Of course, Tiberius decides that he is not going to be out-blinged by the emissary and shows up at your elbow wearing a dayglo fluorescent toga with a neon rainbow laurel, and the infuriating man has obviously bribed the raptors into agreeing to have their hides painted in matching patterns. All three looking far too smug.
The emissary is quite effusive in their thanks for how ‘faithfully you are holding up our bargain dahling’. And then drops a typically Kilburroughan bombshell as if you already knew, that it was quite nice to see their old deal with your ancestor had held up so well.
They’d claimed that before, of course, but your great-grandmother and grandfather had shrugged it off. You decide not to and demand that he show the receipts, so to speak.
And he does, your great, great, great grandfather had suffered an injury making it impossible for him to father children as a teenager during the wars that raged in that period, a Kilburrough trade delegation had been on planet, and a deal had been made, with your great, great, great grandmother being artificially inseminated with an engineered fetus derived from both of your ancestors DNA. This had, the emissary is quick to point out, been on one of the extremely rare occasions when Kilburrough had sent out such trade delegations, since people sadly tended to misuse their work.
And he drops another bombshell, blandly stating that it was quite a privilege to get to work with Cameron DNA.
Back up. Wait… WHAT?
He seems quite surprised that you didn’t know this tidbit, that the Griffith family was a cadet branch of House Cameron dating back to near the founding of the Terran Hegemony itself.
SARAH confirms this, pointing out that only somebody with a DNA profile saved in her system would have been able to fully activate her, and that the Cameron DNA was so saved and your great-grandmother had been a match. The AI had simply assumed that you all knew about this, since if she hadn’t been a match her built-in defensive systems would have killed everybody in the complex who tried to hijack her.
You manage to not swear at that, something you are quite proud of.
So you evidently have a direct, familial claim to rule the Star League. A Star League which no longer existed yet over whose corpse all of the Great Houses in the Inner Sphere were evidently fighting.
Wonderful. This couldn’t possibly cause any problems whatsoever. What could possibly go wrong?
Sarcasm can be so liberating.
For the honor of House Cameron, we clearly owe the Periphery Powers a great moral debt, which we can now repay by giving them exclusive favored trade access until they are richer and more powerful than the Inner Sphere.
AlphaOmega
Well-known member
Considering the vast gulf in population, development and industrial capacity between the Periphery states and the IS them surpassing the Successor States is basically impossible. Well, maybe they would be able to surpass the Capellans if they will get as savaged as they were by Hanse in the 4th SW but the others and St. Ives compact since its only a couple of planets but the others? I really doubt it.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
To be fair pre the Reunification Wars the Taurians where effectively the 7th great house and pre Amaris deciding to throw it all away the RWR was in that same position
Yacovo - Better Star League
Yacovo
Occasionally spouting nonsense
Omake: Better Star League
Protector Calderon entered the debriefing room with just the right amount of haste befitting the current crisis. Every month there are more and more reports of “Star League” fleets of warships, (honest to liberty warships!), visiting more planets in the Concordant’s sphere of influence. Planets seem to split from intense panic, grim spite, or immediate surrender with the fleet’s arrival. The latter happening too often for the Protector’s liking. Every planet that falls is one less for these pretenders to chew through before reaching the Concordant.
Protector Calderon: “So, what is the current summary of these new invaders from the Deep Periphery?”
Admiral Fonn: “According to our agents, these “Better Star League” ships showed up a year ago. They have been visiting worlds and intimidating them into allowing them build installations on their planets and in their orbits. They claim it is to “fix the terraforming and quality of life projects Worse Star League never got around too” To their credit, they are fixing a lot of abandoned terraforming tech around the periphery”.
Protector Calderon: “Typical Star League propaganda for setting up military bases to keep “the uncivilized” in line. Though if they are imitating Star League, why do they call it Worse Star League?”
TMI Director Meyer: “When our agents asked the highest ranked personnel they were able, the officer starting going into an impassioned rant. They claim their star empire was founded by a branch Cameron line who left for the Deep Periphery “to make their own Star League, with a blackjack planet and naked volleyball tournaments.” Given reports the pet dinosaurs and large tigers in power armor, this at least sounds like one of House Cameron’s projects.”
Protector Calderon: “Regardless of whether their leader is of the Cameron Line, we have warships near the border we were not expecting. I am authorizing our peripheryward defenses and nuclear stockpiles to be brought to the level our sphereward defenses are, whatever the cost. The draft might have to be instituted, but with all the Star League paraphernalia this invasion is wearing, it might not be necessary."
Director Grimes: “Sir, that level of build-up might agitate the Inner Sphere powers. The Fedrats might use this as an excuse to step up raids. We cannot afford an invasion from two sides.”
Protector Calderon: “If we get any complaint for the Sphere, send them pictures of the warships. Men, our ancestors already fought off one Star League invasion, and the Concordant will not fall to a second!”
Protector Cameron looked around the room at their grim cabinet. This “Better Star League” thinks it can rampage through the periphery doing whatever it wants? Well they will soon see how stubborn this Bull can be!
Protector Calderon entered the debriefing room with just the right amount of haste befitting the current crisis. Every month there are more and more reports of “Star League” fleets of warships, (honest to liberty warships!), visiting more planets in the Concordant’s sphere of influence. Planets seem to split from intense panic, grim spite, or immediate surrender with the fleet’s arrival. The latter happening too often for the Protector’s liking. Every planet that falls is one less for these pretenders to chew through before reaching the Concordant.
Protector Calderon: “So, what is the current summary of these new invaders from the Deep Periphery?”
Admiral Fonn: “According to our agents, these “Better Star League” ships showed up a year ago. They have been visiting worlds and intimidating them into allowing them build installations on their planets and in their orbits. They claim it is to “fix the terraforming and quality of life projects Worse Star League never got around too” To their credit, they are fixing a lot of abandoned terraforming tech around the periphery”.
Protector Calderon: “Typical Star League propaganda for setting up military bases to keep “the uncivilized” in line. Though if they are imitating Star League, why do they call it Worse Star League?”
TMI Director Meyer: “When our agents asked the highest ranked personnel they were able, the officer starting going into an impassioned rant. They claim their star empire was founded by a branch Cameron line who left for the Deep Periphery “to make their own Star League, with a blackjack planet and naked volleyball tournaments.” Given reports the pet dinosaurs and large tigers in power armor, this at least sounds like one of House Cameron’s projects.”
Protector Calderon: “Regardless of whether their leader is of the Cameron Line, we have warships near the border we were not expecting. I am authorizing our peripheryward defenses and nuclear stockpiles to be brought to the level our sphereward defenses are, whatever the cost. The draft might have to be instituted, but with all the Star League paraphernalia this invasion is wearing, it might not be necessary."
Director Grimes: “Sir, that level of build-up might agitate the Inner Sphere powers. The Fedrats might use this as an excuse to step up raids. We cannot afford an invasion from two sides.”
Protector Calderon: “If we get any complaint for the Sphere, send them pictures of the warships. Men, our ancestors already fought off one Star League invasion, and the Concordant will not fall to a second!”
Protector Cameron looked around the room at their grim cabinet. This “Better Star League” thinks it can rampage through the periphery doing whatever it wants? Well they will soon see how stubborn this Bull can be!
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I can't help but snicker!
Especially when the Elder visits by stepping off a dropship...they'll all think it's an UBER Quad'Mech...until he starts taking off his armor. Then they'll just pee themselves.
Orangeduke38
Well-known member
LordSunhawk What happened to that relative of ours who ended up with several hundred sex slave/bodyguards?
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Turn 95 - Well The Girl I Love
Turn 95 - Well The Girl I Love
You receive a report from Admiral von Falkenrick, who is in command of the squadron sent out to Novagalicia. NRI scouts have found a nearby Black Steel supply depot that is in the process of being constructed and he is requesting permission to attack.
The NRI is fully on board, with their available forces ready to go, but they’d need your support to have any chance of victory. A quick analysis from Admiral Fisher and Admiral Sims indicates that he should have adequate forces to accomplish the mission and that the proposed OPLAN appears sound. At this remove they are not willing to second-guess the Admiral on the scene and recommend immediate approval of the operation.
This is a risk, however, Admiral von Falkenrick has a fairly substantial portion of your most modern warships under his command, and if he loses the battle you may see your naval build up negatively affected, especially with the build times for the truly heavy iron. On the gripping hand, you will have a number of heavy cruisers and battlecruisers commissioning this year, and next year you’ll have a major tranche including a full ten Prinz Eugens. So it might well be an acceptable risk. If you manage to destroy that supply depot before it becomes operational you might be able to redistribute forces away from that flank for a time.
This is why you are the Empress, you get to make these sorts of calls.
The IGMP brings a matter to your attention. A moderately sized corporate bank here in the Griffon system has been caught manipulating the financial markets, however what they are doing is not, strictly speaking, illegal. Unethical perhaps, shady, underhanded, and sneaky most certainly, but not quite illegal. Moreover what they are doing is benefiting their investors and depositors rather than defrauding them, indeed this particular bank is showing some of the best investment returns in the market, it’s just that they are being sneaky little snakes about it, taking advantage of loopholes around the margins of regulations in order to score an extra bit of benefit here and there.
Again, no laws are being broken, even by the strictest and most restrictive reading of them. No regulations are being broken. Bent, certainly, adhered to by the letter and not the spirit most definitely. But not broken.
Where things become a bit problematic is that the board of directors for this bank include a number of businessmen who are well known to be highly supportive of the Crown, indeed you’ve met many of them at various functions in thanks for their earnest dedication to the Empire. And while none of them have broken the law, you are quite uncomfortably aware of just how bad this might look if the opposition press were to get their eager little hands on the story and do their usual viewing with alarm fan dance to discredit you in the court of public opinion.
You can see the headlines now, and it would be very troublesome. On the other hand, none of these businessmen are doing a single thing that’s actually wrong, which would make the opposition news sources have a field day as they’d be able to yell and scream about the ethics, while if you were to take any action they’d suddenly be able to switch to emphasizing your ‘lawless’ actions.
You sometimes really hate allowing a free press.
You are honestly not sure how you want to handle this, it’s a minefield, and you feel like you’ll be having to tap dance through it while wearing lead snowshoes.
Parliament, meanwhile, is in session. Tiberius brings you the latest proposals for your consideration.
There are two, neither are earth shattering, but both require your attention. The Imperial Senate has proposed the Health Care Cost Containment Act of 3025. You were worried for a moment reading the title, but then you got into the meat of the proposal.
The legislation is surprisingly straightforward.
Firstly, it would establish an Imperial fund to provide financing to charitable organizations involved in providing health services to the poor and indigent. Effectively it would be an Imperial matching scheme, providing funds equal to the amount raised by the organization for qualifying services intended to provide free health care to the poor.
Secondly it would incentivize health care providers to provide at-cost or below-cost services to said charitable organizations by granting them an official seal of Imperial patronage, which would cost next to nothing but would be excellent advertising for those providers. Straightforward criteria have been proposed for this purpose. It would require members of the Imperial family to make the occasional appearance at the various institutions involved, but you’d been doing things like that ever since you were a small child.
Finally it would establish an oversight office within the Interior Ministry to ensure that the program is administered properly empire wide. This office would also be responsible for maintaining the fund itself, communicating the fund to the prospective recipients, and all other ancillary tasks associated with the program.
The Chamber of Delegates is proposing the Access to Communications for Education and Science Act of 3025. It takes you a moment, then you groan at the deliberate creations of an acronym. ACES indeed.
Lame title aside, the actual legislation is fairly serious. The underpinning of the Empire’s success has long been your excellent educational system and the enormous benefits a well-educated populace brings to the table. Your R&D engine is as powerful as it is because of the excellence of your schools.
However as you have grown, your education system has sprawled out across the Empire. Even with the existing HPG network it has become difficult, not to mention expensive, for scientists, teachers, and students across the Empire to communicate with each other outside of their own local region.
This act is intended to rectify that issue. It would finance an Empire-wide project to build a dedicated HPG network for the use of schools and scientific institutions. This network would run in parallel to the regular, commercial and military network, and would be fully at the disposal of the education system.
Four dedicated HPG stations would be built in each settled system of the Empire, allowing for constant, real-time communication across the network. This would allow students, teachers, researchers and scientists unprecedented connectivity, giving a massive boost to scientific cooperation and coordination.
Grace is extremely enthusiastic about this project, noting that it is something she’d been planning on proposing in the near future anyways but she’s quite happy to see that the Chamber has preempted her. She provides you with briefing papers on something called ‘ARPAnet’ from old Earth, and contrasts it with your current far more segmented and isolated communications infrastructure. She points out that if this is successful, it may well be possible to expand the regular HPG network to permit the same thing for business and government purposes.
You receive a report from Admiral von Falkenrick, who is in command of the squadron sent out to Novagalicia. NRI scouts have found a nearby Black Steel supply depot that is in the process of being constructed and he is requesting permission to attack.
The NRI is fully on board, with their available forces ready to go, but they’d need your support to have any chance of victory. A quick analysis from Admiral Fisher and Admiral Sims indicates that he should have adequate forces to accomplish the mission and that the proposed OPLAN appears sound. At this remove they are not willing to second-guess the Admiral on the scene and recommend immediate approval of the operation.
This is a risk, however, Admiral von Falkenrick has a fairly substantial portion of your most modern warships under his command, and if he loses the battle you may see your naval build up negatively affected, especially with the build times for the truly heavy iron. On the gripping hand, you will have a number of heavy cruisers and battlecruisers commissioning this year, and next year you’ll have a major tranche including a full ten Prinz Eugens. So it might well be an acceptable risk. If you manage to destroy that supply depot before it becomes operational you might be able to redistribute forces away from that flank for a time.
This is why you are the Empress, you get to make these sorts of calls.
| [] | Approve Operation: Parabole |
|
| [] | Deny Operation: Parabole |
|
The IGMP brings a matter to your attention. A moderately sized corporate bank here in the Griffon system has been caught manipulating the financial markets, however what they are doing is not, strictly speaking, illegal. Unethical perhaps, shady, underhanded, and sneaky most certainly, but not quite illegal. Moreover what they are doing is benefiting their investors and depositors rather than defrauding them, indeed this particular bank is showing some of the best investment returns in the market, it’s just that they are being sneaky little snakes about it, taking advantage of loopholes around the margins of regulations in order to score an extra bit of benefit here and there.
Again, no laws are being broken, even by the strictest and most restrictive reading of them. No regulations are being broken. Bent, certainly, adhered to by the letter and not the spirit most definitely. But not broken.
Where things become a bit problematic is that the board of directors for this bank include a number of businessmen who are well known to be highly supportive of the Crown, indeed you’ve met many of them at various functions in thanks for their earnest dedication to the Empire. And while none of them have broken the law, you are quite uncomfortably aware of just how bad this might look if the opposition press were to get their eager little hands on the story and do their usual viewing with alarm fan dance to discredit you in the court of public opinion.
You can see the headlines now, and it would be very troublesome. On the other hand, none of these businessmen are doing a single thing that’s actually wrong, which would make the opposition news sources have a field day as they’d be able to yell and scream about the ethics, while if you were to take any action they’d suddenly be able to switch to emphasizing your ‘lawless’ actions.
You sometimes really hate allowing a free press.
You are honestly not sure how you want to handle this, it’s a minefield, and you feel like you’ll be having to tap dance through it while wearing lead snowshoes.
| [] | WRITE-IN (effects determined by QM, winning action gets a reroll) |
Parliament, meanwhile, is in session. Tiberius brings you the latest proposals for your consideration.
There are two, neither are earth shattering, but both require your attention. The Imperial Senate has proposed the Health Care Cost Containment Act of 3025. You were worried for a moment reading the title, but then you got into the meat of the proposal.
The legislation is surprisingly straightforward.
Firstly, it would establish an Imperial fund to provide financing to charitable organizations involved in providing health services to the poor and indigent. Effectively it would be an Imperial matching scheme, providing funds equal to the amount raised by the organization for qualifying services intended to provide free health care to the poor.
Secondly it would incentivize health care providers to provide at-cost or below-cost services to said charitable organizations by granting them an official seal of Imperial patronage, which would cost next to nothing but would be excellent advertising for those providers. Straightforward criteria have been proposed for this purpose. It would require members of the Imperial family to make the occasional appearance at the various institutions involved, but you’d been doing things like that ever since you were a small child.
Finally it would establish an oversight office within the Interior Ministry to ensure that the program is administered properly empire wide. This office would also be responsible for maintaining the fund itself, communicating the fund to the prospective recipients, and all other ancillary tasks associated with the program.
| [] | Action | Arguments | Effects |
| [] | Sign the Health Care Cost Containment Act of 3025 | For the poorest among us, even with our extensive social safety nets, a health crisis can be the difference between keeping a roof over the head and food on the table and becoming homeless. There are many charities dedicated to the hard, rewarding work of helping those on the edge, but they are always chronically short of funding. This isn’t government funded healthcare, it isn’t mandatory insurance, it places no mandates, imposes no regulations, twists no arms. It is a means by which the Imperial government can support the existing charitable institutions as they labor to alleviate the costs associated with healthcare. Nothing more, nothing less. Those healthcare providers who are willing to proactively lower their prices in order to better serve the poor and needy would be rewarded with a token patronage. Those too greedy to do so will not. How any person of good will could object to that is beyond us. |
|
| [] | Veto the Health Care Cost Containment Act of 3025 | When will this end? We already have an enormous social safety net. We already subsidize education, wages, food, and shelter. What more must we do before these bleeding hearts stop coming back with their hands out demanding we give them more? Even the poorest among us already get the most basic healthcare services free of charge, it is only specialty and advanced services that are so expensive as to be an issue, and frankly their expense is a factor due to the difficulty and cost of providing those advanced services and treatments, not out of some sense of greed. The margins are already razor thin as it is, so the insinuation that those who charge reasonable prices are too greedy to deserve Imperial patronage is an insult. The people working in those healthcare institutions need to pay the bills as well, they have families and their own expenses to meet. Insinuating that wanting to charge a fair price for their services is somehow greedy is well beyond the pale. |
|
The Chamber of Delegates is proposing the Access to Communications for Education and Science Act of 3025. It takes you a moment, then you groan at the deliberate creations of an acronym. ACES indeed.
Lame title aside, the actual legislation is fairly serious. The underpinning of the Empire’s success has long been your excellent educational system and the enormous benefits a well-educated populace brings to the table. Your R&D engine is as powerful as it is because of the excellence of your schools.
However as you have grown, your education system has sprawled out across the Empire. Even with the existing HPG network it has become difficult, not to mention expensive, for scientists, teachers, and students across the Empire to communicate with each other outside of their own local region.
This act is intended to rectify that issue. It would finance an Empire-wide project to build a dedicated HPG network for the use of schools and scientific institutions. This network would run in parallel to the regular, commercial and military network, and would be fully at the disposal of the education system.
Four dedicated HPG stations would be built in each settled system of the Empire, allowing for constant, real-time communication across the network. This would allow students, teachers, researchers and scientists unprecedented connectivity, giving a massive boost to scientific cooperation and coordination.
Grace is extremely enthusiastic about this project, noting that it is something she’d been planning on proposing in the near future anyways but she’s quite happy to see that the Chamber has preempted her. She provides you with briefing papers on something called ‘ARPAnet’ from old Earth, and contrasts it with your current far more segmented and isolated communications infrastructure. She points out that if this is successful, it may well be possible to expand the regular HPG network to permit the same thing for business and government purposes.
| [] | Action | Arguments | Effects |
| [] | Sign the Access to Communications for Education and Science Act of 3025 | The benefits for science and education are self-evident. The smaller scale communications networks we’ve built within universities and such have been very useful, meaningfully linking them all together into an Empire wide network of networks would allow for amazing work. It would be incredibly expensive to set up, but it could well be the prototype for something amazing for the commercial sector as well. |
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| [] | Veto the Access to Communications for Education and Science Act of 3025 | We should not waste money on such useless boondoggles. Next thing you know, they’ll be claiming that businesses that exist solely to do business over this uber network of theirs would be a thing, and that’s just ridiculous. |
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