Part 7: Session 5: Morgan's Experiment

's Experiment



The fourth colony will be named "Kamadeva."



The next scout built will attempt to find and chart Altarian space.



Planetary Development will be researched next, and if possible, Xeno Economics will follow.


…No, Morgan, I'm not going to "congratulate" you. What you did was reckless and irresponsible, especially without senate approval!


But it worked perfectly! And after all, results are all that matters.


How can you even say that?! I-


Quit yer bitching, Skye, it's time to start this circus act! Hey everyone, glad you could join us for the "Everybody bitches out Morgan for bein' a tool" show. I'm yer host, Ulrik Svensgaard.


Please, President Svensgaard. Try to give this legislative body some dignity.


If the good senators wanted dignity, they shoulda elected somebody who had some. Zarkov, you go first, yours is short.



That is sadly correct. And it is Zakharov. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, I resumed funding for Planetary Improvements research. Unfortunately, thanks to the significant budget cuts my division has been operating under, we still have yet to finish the project.


Goddamn sad, ain't it?



Anyways, we charted a ton of new stars, but the damn things were mostly duds, so I won't bore you with the details. At the least, Earth's first new scout was pointed towards where we think the Altarians were coming from when we met their ship.



Recently, the scout says he met some civvy traders who say he's in an Altarian-controlled system. I figure it's not much longer before we chart out the Altarian homeworld.



One of the other scouts moving in that direction found this weird mineral in the Tidus system which we're calling "black platinum." It's some odd alloy of platinum and carbon that can only be forged in supernova conditions, and the damn stuff is even less reactive than regular platinum.


Finding a source of this material this large is virtually unheard of. While black platinum has few industrial applications, its galactic rarity will guarantee demand and increase the economy of whichever sophont claims it. I humbly request that a constructor be built and sent to this resource as soon as possible.


What about the military resource down-right? It is even more important that our potential enemies not exploit such a resource before we do.


Yes, but unlike the dilithium crystals, the black platinum is definitely near another species. We can afford to prioritize the platinum, I think.



Right, arguin' aside, we also found another asteroid field pretty near our own influence region. Shouldn't be much trouble to grab that platinum in any case.



Earth finished building the second scout ship, which I've ordered towards the galactic core so we can see what's up off that way. As usual, Miriam insisted a colony ship sit in the queue until something else gets commissioned.



We also found this, which is nice.



Oh, and there was another system with a pair of habitable planets! A Class 9 and a 7, in this case. Just outside of Bacchus again, although on the other side.



All in all, that area is lookin' pretty lucrative right about now.



Very good. Now, allow me to describe what it was that I did. It is not very complicated; I simply cut taxes down to 1% so that all our taxpayers would know the joys of joining our government.



You still raised taxes at the end. That's simply dishonest.


I don't recall any legal restrictions on when to raise or lower taxes, and the citizenship form does include the line, "taxation may change without notice. I'm sure they are well aware of how governments work.

And look at the results! Moving taxes back to their previous level has doubled our government's surplus! In fact, I believe we can move spending up to 60% or so without running a deficit.



However, the spending cuts have caused us to lag behind the Altarans yet again, and now we have no money with which to purchase their technologies.


That is nothing to worry about. The market will provide us with new opportunities, just you wait and see.


Yang, how about you? What's up with our infrastructure?



Not very much, considering our lack of new constructors. However, the Red Dwarf has finished mining the Vega system, which is sending its resources to Cupid, and it has now moved to Bellatrix, whose mines will export to Bacchus.


How about that other thing, with the United Planets session? I put all my confidence in you, remember.


You rolled an 8-sided die to chose who to send, President. We all saw you.


I told you how lucky I was, didn't I? That's my source a' confidence. It worked out perfectly in the end, after all.


(I swear, I honestly rolled randomly on who to send and it turned up Yang.)


You also have me to thank for giving us the deciding vote. Or did you want us to be limited to 4 modules for every starbase?


Honestly, I have no idea what the representative from the Altarians was thinking. 4 wouldn't even be enough to fully exploit a resource, let alone set up defenses.



Oh, and here's the short version of how all the planets are doin'.


Note how the citizen populations of our colonies has more than doubled since the last quarter ended. We may not have much in the treasury, but we have invested that money in population growth.


Yeah, yeah, that's nice. Now we ain't meetin' until next summer, so I'll see you dickwads then!

New Rules

Each session will now cover 6 months instead of 3 (or around 26 turns instead of 13), so plan accordingly. Going along with this, each session will last 48 hours for sub-committee voting and 24 hours for the general vote. In addition, in support of more and more controversial bills, each proposal now only needs two extra supporters to get into the bill.

I'm also going to add some basic information about current improvements, ship components, etc., into the third post so you all can have a better idea of what can be done right now.

Standing laws:



All colonies must build one miner each once able to do so, and all asteroids found shall be exploited to the fullest extent possible, the order based on proximity to Earth.



Once a weapon technology is researched or purchased, a ship that uses it will be manufactured (to be named "Alexander").



Energy credits and technologies are authorized for any and all foreign technology trades; priority is given to military technologies so purchased. Humanity is prohibited from selling or trading away colonization technologies.



The starting order for all colonial buildings will be: build a factory, a market center, a factory, a market center, one research center, one starport, and one farm (once possible, only up to 13b) in that order, using special tiles when appropriate.


A scout ship will attempt to find and chart Altarian space.



The fourth colony will be named "Kamadeva."



Planetary Development will be researched next, and if possible, Xeno Economics will follow.