Election: Director of Internal Affairs

[Maniac]

You have three days.

[Cedayon]

Since our Holy Emperor TKG ( ) can't run for DIA this term, I'm offering to take care of the office

I'll keep this short: In addition to the normal duties of determining placement and naming of bases (there may not be many new ones at this point, though) and rubberstamping approving/rejecting rush requests and all that, I'll compile data on all our crawlers, formers, and crawlable squares to (hopefully) bring more coordination to our terraforming and resource collection efforts. This will be important when we get a mag tube network going, since crawlers and formers will have fairly easy (<= 1 turn) access to almost all of our land territory.

I'm sure Voltaire can do the job just fine too, so it's more a matter of how active he and I will be. Of course, you all are who decide what's important, so please ask any questions you may have

edit- I should add that I'm not normally able to attend turnchats because my University is... nah, I'll be nice... in any case, I can't usually be on IRC. For the particular month of March, I expect to be IRC-available (ie at home) for the Saturdays of the 8th, the 15th, and the 29th, which is 3 out of the 4 or 5 total turnchats for the term.

[Voltaire]

One of the reasons I ran for this office was because I thought the previous administrations spending was out of control. Unnecessary rushes week after week. Many will say that our economy is strong enough to support the spending, this may be true nevertheless there are better uses for the money such as reducing the tax burned on our citizens or increasing psych spending.

As a fiscal conservative if elected to office I am making a pledge to take considerably far more consideration when it comes to the approval of rushes. This, for all you rush high governors and directors out there, far less will be approved. We should save our money for when it really matters, not waste it on every little thing because a governor feels that he/she cannot wait a few turns more for something.

[Cedayon]

Well, it seems we don't agree as much as I thought. I'm more of the opinion that ec's, beyond a certain reserve, exist to be spent for the betterment of the Faction.

You're on to something when you say there may be "better uses" for the money, but there's only so much one can pour into psych before the returns are less than one would get by investing ecs into the rushing psych buildings ("psych buildings" meaning rec commons, tree farms, etc, and network nodes since we have the VW). Diverting econ spending to labs is probably more worthwhile, but ultimately we need to back up our technological advancement with production and rush-funding to keep our infrastructure up to speed with our new techs.

On another note:

We should save our money for when it really matters, not waste it on every little thing because a governor feels that he/she cannot wait a few turns more for something.

I agree that money should never be "wasted", but we generally take care to avoid actually spending money more money than would generate minerals (ie never allow more than 10 min overrun), so in theory there's no actual "waste", per se.

As for "every little thing", well, we aren't rushing *everything*, particularly in the high-production bases, and typically restrict ourselves to the relatively-inexpensive facility rushes (well, except for TKG ).

Then there's "a governor feels that he/she cannot wait a few turns more for something."... hmm, I agree that some moderation is in order here, but I think you're missing the point of at least some of these rushes... for example, how long should the people in Cyclops and Twin Peaks have to wait for network nodes? They don't have excessive mineral production (partly due to no boreholes and a lack of all-that-many crawlers), and they've got a lot of stuff to get to. Rushing cash gets them along and speeds up infrastructure (and general) growth by a great deal.

To go back to the beginning of the quote, "We should save our money for when it really matters", I ask: how much? and what for? ... I definately agree we need a fairly large reserve of ecs to deal with emergencies (flash-upgrades and rushes, etc) and to be ready for large overhauls of our units (ie when we get clean reactors)... but what do we do with the rest? Sit on it, slowing the growth of bases that can't do much production on their own (I'm thinking sea bases and new/low min land bases here)? We don't gain interest on the stuff, you know, and there's always an "Energy Crash" event around the corner... (edit- I forgot to mention the rushing of SP's to avoid losing the race with another faction... in this case I say that we're pulling away enough tech-wise that a serious race is less and less likely, and that we have the production and crawlers to instabuild SP's with very little if any rushing cash)

In any event, I do plan to (if elected) do some careful analysis on our energy production and rushing habits, as well as poll what kind of reserve we should maintain and what kind of rushes to allow as a general policy.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough, thanks for providing an issue to discuss

[Cedayon]

One other thing that I wanted to bring up (not necessarily related to the fiscal conservatism issue):

I plan to come up with some sort of general policy for the division of rushing funds among regions... we haven't run into a great deal of scarcity problems, but I think it would be good to get something in writing regarding who can expect to be able to spend what on which things. I would poll the specifics of any such policy, of course.

And before any of you ask, no, I wouldn't be un-objectively inclined towards JV (should I become governor there) in this policy... you'll all get your chance to make sure of that in the polls

[Method]

cedayon. i'm sure he'll do a great job. plus, i don't agree with voltaire's "don't spend any money" idea.

oh, that, and he called me "holy emperor TKG "

[Cedayon]

Originally posted by TKG
oh, that, and he called me "holy emperor TKG "

When in doubt, use shameless flattery

Thanks

[Voltaire]

You're on to something when you say there may be "better uses" for the money, but there's only so much one can pour into psych before the returns are less than one would get by investing ecs into the rushing psych buildings ("psych buildings" meaning rec commons, tree farms, etc, and network nodes since we have the VW). Diverting econ spending to labs is probably more worthwhile, but ultimately we need to back up our technological advancement with production and rush-funding to keep our infrastructure up to speed with our new techs.

To clarify I was simply using the increase in psych as an example for what could be done with the funds rather than rushing facilities. Another alternative I would propose and possibly approve given further consideration would be an overhaul of the military by upgrading our defensive units, using our funds for that would free up governors to concentrate on developing the infrastructure of the region rather than spending time continuously building newer military units.

I agree that money should never be "wasted", but we generally take care to avoid actually spending money more money than would generate minerals (ie never allow more than 10 min overrun), so in theory there's no actual "waste", per se.

Waste was perhaps too strong a word, rather I believe more funding should be diverted towards for example completing facilities from scratch versus hurrying the completion of a facility due to be constructed in 2 to 3 turns. This could be better justified given that in the case of the hurrying completion of a facility due to construction there is no justifiable reason why a governor cannot wait one or two turns for the facility to be completed (unless we are dealing with some special circumstance here such as a drone riot, mind worm attack, etc.).

As for "every little thing", well, we aren't rushing *everything*, particularly in the high-production bases, and typically restrict ourselves to the relatively-inexpensive facility rushes (well, except for TKG).

I would question the necessity of the relatively inexpensive facility rushes, as stated I believe that they are unjustified in the industrially developed bases, as for the less developed bases than in order to speed up the production of the infrastructure of the base in question such a rush could have a purpose.

Then there's "a governor feels that he/she cannot wait a few turns more for something."... hmm, I agree that some moderation is in order here, but I think you're missing the point of at least some of these rushes... for example, how long should the people in Cyclops and Twin Peaks have to wait for network nodes? They don't have excessive mineral production (partly due to no boreholes and a lack of all-that-many crawlers), and they've got a lot of stuff to get to. Rushing cash gets them along and speeds up infrastructure (and general) growth by a great deal.

Sorry I clarified my position on the rushes for industrially undeveloped bases. Though as stated I am opposed to the rushes of facilities in industrially stronger bases which can afford to wait a few turns.

To go back to the beginning of the quote, "We should save our money for when it really matters", I ask: how much? and what for? ... I definately agree we need a fairly large reserve of ecs to deal with emergencies (flash-upgrades and rushes, etc) and to be ready for large overhauls of our units (ie when we get clean reactors)... but what do we do with the rest? Sit on it, slowing the growth of bases that can't do much production on their own (I'm thinking sea bases and new/low min land bases here)? We don't gain interest on the stuff, you know, and there's always an "Energy Crash" event around the corner... (edit- I forgot to mention the rushing of SP's to avoid losing the race with another faction... in this case I say that we're pulling away enough tech-wise that a serious race is less and less likely, and that we have the production and crawlers to instabuild SP's with very little if any rushing cash)

How much you ask, I would feel comfortable with our reserves being somewhere in the 10,000-15,000 energy credits. This would leave sufficient funds for more rush requests, and our reserves would still be large enough to at any moment be used for emergencies (as you’ve aforementioned). I should state that I’m not saying that I will not approve all rush request, rather that I think TKG’s administration was too lax in its policies of approving all rush requests (and furthermore ordering general rush requests for the Twin Sea region when I myself did not request any rushes). Of course we should use our reserves to develop the industrially weak bases, but I say we can afford to spend less on rushes for the developed bases and thought this increase our energy reserves to substantial levels. (OCC, we can even consider victory by conquering the energy markets if we keep our budget balanced and allow for some savings).

In any event, I do plan to (if elected) do some careful analysis on our energy production and rushing habits, as well as poll what kind of reserve we should maintain and what kind of rushes to allow as a general policy.

I agree fully with my fellow candidate in this regards, the past administration has too often taken it upon themselves to dictate policy without consultation from the people. I believe we can expect considerably more polls in the upcoming future no matter who is elected.

[GeneralTacticus]

So, Voltaire, if I understand you right, you will veto most rushes in industrially strong bases on the grounds that they don't need them, regardless of how much longer it will take for them to be built? Or do you just mean when there's only a couple of turns to go in production?

And why do you think that we should keep such a huge reserve? That would allow us to buy the Ascent to Transcendance in 1 turn if we wanted to. What do you propose we do with it?

[Cedayon]

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
That would allow us to buy the Ascent to Transcendance in 1 turn if we wanted to.

Just a comment: That would be nice ... but by the time we get the tech, we could have enough crawlers to instabuild it without a single ec or mineral if we really wanted to... mag tube networks and 100+ crawlers tend to make such things quite easy.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Voltaire
Sorry I clarified my position on the rushes for industrially undeveloped bases. Though as stated I am opposed to the rushes of facilities in industrially stronger bases which can afford to wait a few turns.

That would be punishing the good governors and rewarding the bad. I believe we should heavily fund newly found regions, Solaris in other words, but after a certain period they should be self-sufficient; and their "allowance" should be proportional to the 'economy', 'labs' and minerals they contribute to our faction. This will make the strong bases stronger and the weak, when comparing, weaker, but I think it makes sense, both gametechnically and RL, to create several super-prosperous bases, the economic and innovative engines of our faction, instead of all similar but mediocre bases.

[Hercules]

One good debate.

[Hercules]

In the end voted for Cedayon

[GeneralTacticus]

Just a comment: That would be nice ...

Well, of course it would, it just isn't needed.

[Cedayon]

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
Well, of course it would, it just isn't needed.

Right. The money has much better uses than sitting on, past a certain threshold. That threshold appears to be an issue of some debate, so it's best to see what the people think (ie I intend to poll it).

Thanks to everyone who voted for me, btw