No problem at all.  Glad you're enjoying it.  Now I just need to play out the next quarter and get a report up ASAP!

Glad to read it MisterVertigo, thanks for commenting!

So tolmekian, you see that small summary from the commander at the end?, i think thats exactly what we need to keep the propositions of the staff clear.

Agreed although it should probably be expanded a little, for instance bolding actual proposals to distinguish them from background information. Speaking of which, I think out-of-character posts explaining your reasons for a proposal should still go in the main thread. For example, I already know that I'm going to argue for leaving some of the high-bonus tiles on Fortuna undeveloped because they tend to be money sinks - not something that makes much sense to say in character, and a little inconvenient to put on a seperate thread from my actual proposal.

Edit: Also, the picture for the Sakkra isn't even working, let alone displaying correct stats.

Yeah post like that are ok. We just meant ones like the one you just posted.

Excellent, no more italics . . .

Sorry about the short summary.  It took me a really long time to put the report together so I was crunched at the end.  The way things stand it's pretty obvious what we should be doing - no huge choices.  I also didn't want to push any issues onto the ballot while we are still discussing exactly how it should be laid out.  Although I will occasionally need to present the council with choices that must be made, I'm thinking the council should be the driving force behind generating proposals.  However, if it turns out that it takes too much time and too many replies to put a ballot together, I could easily present a number of choices, like in my earlier post about presenting a sample ballot after giving the report. My concern there is with taking control from the council and forcing the issues.  I also worry about forcing too many micromanagement issues onto the ballot.

I'd really like some input from the council on this.  If you think it would be easier for me to put the first draft of the ballot together then I'm fine with it.  We just have a lot of silent councilors on the issue.

Bullet points:

- The Sakkra pic seems to be working now.  I tested it last night, but it wasn't working this morning. Hmph.

- Short out of character comments are fine, but entire OOC posts and discussion of game or voting mechanics should be kept here.  I intend to keep my OOC to an absolute minimum in my reports, but felt that I couldn't get away without making some comments this time around.  Usually, I find some way to incorporate explanations into the story.

- For example, it would actually be pretty easy to make an in-character argument about how the economy couldn't support the kind of production that Fortuna is capable of.  Or that establishing a lab on the 300% bonus tile would allow us to demolish all four labs on Exterra, save on maintenance costs, and still have the same research output.  It just takes a bit of clever wording.

I agree that the council should be more than just a number of voters (though I'm the first to admit that so far I didn't add a lot of new proposals to the ballots as they were already quite big)

Tolmekian, for me it would be fine if you only added to the ballot the points where you actually want to hear our opinion. From what we've seen so far it looks like there's plenty of (sometimes conflicting :)) ideas being brought up by the council so don't feel obliged to add a lot of choices.

Indeed The Sakkra pic is working now. (Just some italics for the fun of it)

One question for clarification: is the idea to keep all in-character posts in the other thread, including our proposals, questions, responses to the reports? Or should we only post the ballots there?

P.S. Thanks Tolmekian for the detailed reports and all the colourful character posts, your efforts really bring the Kushana Initiative to life!

I'm thinking that the IC stuff would say in the game thread.  Someone following there should see the game as it progresses without need to check here.  We should just be mindful to keep the posts as concise as possible.  I enjoy the rivalry amongst the councilors, but we should be careful not to fill up a forum page just trading barbs.

An example would be my idea about using the bonus tiles on Fortuna to save on lab maintenance.  If someone wanted to know more about how bonus tiles work before taking any action, I think it would be better to have that discussion here than there.  Any discussion of other tricks to help us can be done here before a proposal is made. (by the way I love that trick thread that was linked!)

Speaking of that, besides only having to pay maintenance on one structure, don't you only pay for half of the bonus production?  Maybe I'm confusing it with global bonuses, don't you only pay for half of that?  You know, like a tech that gives you +10% social production.

Soooo . . .  I guess the floor is open to the councilors.  I know the summary was a bit general, but things are going smoothly right now.  If the council is content to let the commander manage for the next quarter, that's fine.  If you want more specifics, feel free to ask in character.  I can give you a little better idea what the commander is thinking.  The research plan will still be on the ballot, so if anyone has any opinions they can be voiced.  So far Xeno Biology and Xeno Medicine were proposed by Minister Andimus.  I"m sure some others will be added based on past discussion.

In the end i think the council is going to be the one putting the big mayority of the ideas in the ballot, so i think a small summary (maybe a little bigguer than the last one) is necesary but not mandatory.

A short comment on market/trade centers (imho too technical to clutter up the main thread with this): a trade center costs 90 SP; not 100% sure but I think this translates into a cost of 90 bc. With a bare planet and the social slider on 20%, it takes about 40 weeks to build a trade center.
The trade center gives a 20% economic bonus. If our average base income of that planet (i.e. before applying building bonuses) the 40 weeks after building it is 10 bc, the trade center will have generated an extra 80 bc by the end of those 40 weeks.

In other words, for planets with a base income below 10 bc, we would be running an extra deficit during 40 weeks only to become break-even after about 90 weeks... Meaning that for low population planets that generate little income, it's better to leave them undeveloped until the population has grown and the base income has improved.

On the topic of keeping the discussion from getting out of hand, wanted to announce that I intend to draw up the ballot for the current session before we reach 125 posts (and a new page), so make sure to make any comments/proposals before then.

Ah, a perfect opportunity to use the planning thread.

We can currently build Advanced Market Centers, not Trade Centers.  That makes quite a bit of difference in the analysis.  Some . . . staff members may have misspoken, so let's clear that up.  AMCs give +12% econ, have 1bc maint, and will take 7-8 weeks to build if our new worlds focus social.  I checked, and it would add 5bcs to spending, so that would mean 35-40 bcs to build.

I've never been a hard number cruncher, but it's my experience that packing unproductive worlds with economic buildings ASAP goes a long way toward bringing my economy out of the hole.

Now to wrangle up the Viceroy for a response . . .

For the research plan I propose that we finish xeno research, then research universal translator, then let the commander decide what is best to research.

For foreign relations I suggest we research universal translator (as stated above), so we can gift the Drath a few bc so they don't get too pissed at us and use their super ability to make everyone go to war with us.

For all other matters, I say we let the commander do what he believes is best, since he has done a fine job thus far.

Thanks for the clarification, I had been wondering whether we were stuck with market centers or already reached trade centers... apparently we're in between both.

For econ buildings with a maintenance cost, I usually take the easy route rather than calculating too much: if the +12% econ is higher than the 1bc maintenance, it's worth building ASAP. It's simplified because it ignores the 40bc building cost, but it's an easy minimum :)

I've noticed some concerns on the main thread about the Drath. If this isn't just in-character concerns about an unknown species, here's a thread with advice on handling them

Facing the Threat of the Drath

(Yes, I did contribute to it)

I wonder if TMS2224 and Master123rw will participate in this session.

Yes, I will be participating, Councilor SarcFa, however I have no objections/concerns at this time. I belive that the path the commander has put us on is acceptable. So, why clutter up forum space with useless chatter? BTW: I thought that Master123wr was discharged from the council.

TMS2224

Master123wr hasn't been discharged . . . yet.  I'll probably drop him from the list if he doesn't check back in by next session.

With that, it looks like all 6 active councilors have checked in.  Time for ballot making.

PS - It probably would be nice to at least make a short post sometime after the report is posted.  That way we're not waiting around before proceeding.

I'll be posting the ballot this evening. If Master123wr hasn't checked in by then, he's probably dropped out.

Edit: Also, I'll only be putting up space for "For" votes, in order to save space. Although some might disagree, I think it's not really necessary to know who is against a proposal, especially in mutually exclusive proposals. For instance, if the council is asked to declare war on a race or not, it's obvious that everyone who votes to declare war is against a peaceful solution, and so forth.

Alright, the ballot has been up for three full days.  Time to close session?  I see TMS2224 has checked in on his topic, so maybe he doesn't have a vote either way.  Or maybe he's against everything and we have no way of knowing.

If we close up by tomorrow I'll try to get the report up this weekend, but may get pushed back until early in the week.

Good one

Alright, the first part of the report is up.  By "prolonged interruption" the commander means that I'm going to post the reports as I can, instead of doing it all at once.  Since we started using this thread for discussion, it's a lot easier for me to do that without having the report get broken up by commentary. Sooo . . . please wait until I've finished the report before commenting.

Thanks!

There it is.  I like being able to post at my own pace.  A couple things from a planning perspective:

• UP issues - I can't save in the middle of a vote.  The only way for us to bring it before the council would be for me to save game, end turn, see the issue, present it to the council, get the votes, then go back and keep reloading and ending turn until I get the same issue again.  I'm willing to do so, but maybe we could limit it to issues that may actually require some input.  This sessions issue was a no brainer - of course we want the Thalans to pay!
• Trade negotiation - this is really fiddly due to the nature of the game.  I can't imagine a really good way to have the council control this except very generally.  Give it some thought and let me know if you have any concerns.  Maybe we can just discuss the issue and not have specific votes except in special circumstances.

That's it for now, I think.  Have at it.

Regarding UP, I feel it's not worth the hassle. I feel confident that you'll cast a good vote, many of the UP issues are indeed no-brainers.

Trade negotiation:
- ideally we would come up with a wish list of technologies we want to acquire from the AIs, at least for a reasonable price
- practically I think we can agree on some common principles (e.g. don't give away diplomatic techs, try to acquire technologies in this or that direction)
Again, the hassle of having to save, get our input, reload and do the negotiations would slow down the process a lot.

At least that's my 2 cents...

Agreed. BTW: I like the broken up messaging a lot: soooo much easier to read!

Edit: This site is great for making up names, just a thought. http://rinkworks.com/namegen/