>I believe that we want our government to be viewed as legitimate. The last government probably left unfinished business, so it would be good to know about it.
>And if it was viewed favorably, or at least if the leader was, we could take advantage of it for PR purposes.

Of course, of course. But since we have a nice assistant that can help us be perceived as legitimate, and given that we apparently have gone through some hoops already to get to be the one-and-only-ruler-of-Gorvia and any and all troubles from the civil war will in all likelyhood be brough to our attention anyway, I don't think it will be that much trouble. Particularly not if we solve some of the country's troubles and improve on its fortunes.

>One hundred million PER MONTH for that? Less sweet of a deal. That's 1.200.000.000 annually, per cell. For reference, assuming a crom is about a dollar, that means that the entire United States intelligence apparatus, including all the various agencies, is only around 40 cells in size.

A crom may not be equivalent to a dollar, and espionage may or may not be insanely expensive in the world Gorvia belongs to. It's a balancing mechanism. Considering what a Cell of spies are able to do, they're consequently expensive.

>All I'm looking to accomplish with our intelligence agencies at the moment is to provide us with a realistic assessment of the state of other nations which is entirely independent of their governments. Not to shoot, rob, or sabotage anyone; just get some people we can rely upon to look at the right things and ask the right questions of random civilians on the ground. This is not particularly nefarious, but it's exceedingly valuable in planning foreign relations. Can we manage that with one cell, spreading their attention thinly to make up for the fact that we're not really asking much?

If it's not particularly nefarious, perhaps you shouldn't ask it from spy cells? You might be having unrealistic expectations on what our spies are supposed to do, or far too realistic as the case may be.

86faf0's point about ambassadors and their entourages being spies lite is also valid.

>>326034
The assistant still needs material to work with. On a related note, why are we not pulling strings from the shadows? Oh well, we can get a robotic body double later.

Also, there's one thing I'm probably never going to let up on. Infrastructure. Roads, airports, utilities, communication, etc.

Good infrastructure facilitates growth. Especially since we're natural disaster prone, it needs to be upgraded to survive them.

Having underwater high speed trains going between our two territories would be awesome.

>why are we not pulling strings from the shadows?
i am going to stress this until everyone realizes we are not going to use our people, but our neighbors.

the gorvian people is smart, they need to stay smart, and tehy like to riot. attempts to manipulate them will lead to riots.

>Having underwater high speed trains going between our two territories would be awesome
yes. oh god this is the kind of things we should be stealing.

>Good infrastructure facilitates growth
to win at globalization we need cheap energy and working hours. we will most likely not get the last one, but im hoping that a upgrade to the destroyed infrastructure will help greatly.

>My opinion is that the last president is a non-issue. He died five years ago, which caused a struggle for power and influence in our nation. We won that struggle recently, and now we get to rule.
>So let's get our ruling on and not think too much about the past unless it rears its ugly head.
seriosuly this sounds like something sadam would do.

>assuming a crom is about a dollar
global economy would favor something like 2 croms = 1 dollar.

>government to be viewed as legitimate
this so fucking much. i dont want to discover trhu the worse way possible that the UN equivalent does not like us because they have spies everywhere and discovered we are just a bunch of vultures

>>326034
>If it's not particularly nefarious, perhaps you shouldn't ask it from spy cells? You might be having unrealistic expectations on what our spies are supposed to do, or far too realistic as the case may be.
>86faf0's point about ambassadors and their entourages being spies lite is also valid.
You have a point here, in that it's not been made entirely clear if our intelligence service is supposed to be heavily cinematic or more grounded in realism.

But anyway, if we want to gather information about other nations, we've basically got our diplomats and our spies to do it, and that's it, right? So I've been operating on the assumption that anything unofficial is the bailiwick of the intelligence department. If it's possible to do a significant amount of information gathering without having expensive investments in the intelligence department to do it, by all means; otherwise, I think it's reasonable to throw a cell or two at the problem. Just because something doesn't involve technical criminal activity doesn't mean that intelligence agents aren't the right ones for the job. Seeing the right things while walking around and understanding its implications is a job that requires a good deal of training.


>>326035
>Also, there's one thing I'm probably never going to let up on. Infrastructure. Roads, airports, utilities, communication, etc.
>Good infrastructure facilitates growth. Especially since we're natural disaster prone, it needs to be upgraded to survive them.
I can back this. And funding upgrades will help with our current unemployment problems, as well.

GENERAL INFO:
The technology of the world Gorvia and the other nations are in is (roughly) comparable to the 70s or 80s of our Earth.

On ESPIONAGE COSTS:
Yes, 100.000.000 for one cell is a lot. But consider what one cell is able to do: It is an entirely independant structure, capable of operating undercover for months, not only in a neutral but even in a openly hostile enviroment.
Cell is probably a bad choice for a name. "Independent Operation Center" might have been better.

I don't want to encourage the use, but I feel like I have to say that espionage can be worth many times its money under the right circumstances.

I thought the comparison with the US having 40 cells was great and it even makes sense if you look at your type of leadership and your population numbers.

If you want general info about your neigbbour nations, I should have maybe stated previously that Gorvia is not "isolated" in any way.
General Information about other nations will begin to flow soon, no need to bother your MI6 equivalents.

Common sense can be applied to most situations.
No need to use infantry divisions for scouting or a spy network for something you could read in a newspaper/library.

ANOUNCEMENT:
I'm sorry the quest is moving so slowly at the moment, but losing my text files with all the DAMNED ECONOMY FORMULAS was kinda a slap in the face... After I reorganised my stuff this weekend, updates will get a regular rythm, but at the moment I'm constantly like "How much did this cost? In what way did healthcare influence population growth again?", which makes it all a bit... awkward for me. I feel like catching up with my own quest.
Also, I know the whole "manage a government" stuff can be a bit dry.
But I always liked that kind of games and seeing how /quest/ will turn Gorvia into a hellhole or a paradise... seriosly, a hundred times worth the effort.

>>326059
It's just that right now we need to figure out what our neighboring countries are like. I'd rather spy on a country with military power and no resources than any possible allies.

Dammit, who though running a country would be this difficult?

Things to discuss on the new update.

Infrastructure- A five year plan would make the monthly cost 166,666,666 or 333,333,333 for either plan. That's assuming we don't just pay for it out of pocket (a bad idea), or take out a loan (which would include interest).

An important question to ask would be if either option is easily upgradable. Will we have to re-build each decade, or can we just integrate new technology as we acquire it.

Jobs- We should promote entrepreneurship and give citizens the tools and knowledge to succeed.

On the matter of the telivision station, it is a good Idea. In fact, liberals should be easily placated if we promise to use it to bring about unprecedented transparency to government.

On the matter of government- States (or provinces or whatever we have) elect their local governments by popular election. The peoples governments shall then nominate representatives for terms of no more than eight years, to be confirmed by the people.

(I assume that in the states there will be a multitude of parties and candidates, so a plurality should be enough.)

The candidates from every state shall be joined by a representatives from the navy and military, as well as any other officials we care to appoint, to advise the national leader, us.

We're not a dictator, we're just the only man qualified for the job.

before anything, you should post your suggestion there.

secondly, we should do one-year plans. in 10 years we will either be very bankrupt or not losing money like fuck, so we will be able to pay for upgrades when the time comes.

for now id like to do infrastructure upgrade AND decomission some military to both generate jobs and dim our expenses.

if we get stable in 2 years i would be happy already.

>>326088
We're going to revamp an entire countries infrastructure in one year?

You really want to put those six million to work don't you?

>>326091

Stanislaw's words, our economics advisor. He told us the estimated build time would be six months up to a year. Gorvians are apparently VERY productive.

>>326088

I'm opposed to one-year plans until we're economically stable. Let's take it a few months at a time and see what happens and how well we do. Decommissioning parts of the military wouldn't produce more jobs, it would only produce more jobless people. It would help balance our deficit though, but I'd like to try to find other ways to do that before ripping into our country's defence(/attack) force with the Cost Cutter.

>>326101
Well, another alternative would be to take out a loan. Wehter from an entity like the International Monetary Fund, or we could raise money with bonds.

Both could get us the money now while allowing us to pay them off a little at a time with (hopefully) negligible interest.

We also need to find which Victory Condition we're working towards. I'm personally leaning towards Space Race or domination.

>Decommissioning parts of the military wouldn't produce more jobs, it would only produce more jobless people. It would help balance our deficit though
the idea is precisely attempt to keep the unemployment rate while taking out part of our expenses.

the gorvian people should be happy to know that the army received a bit of a rest.

>>326125
a loan would make it worse. we dont need more money, we need more income.

Coup 2010/05/27(Thu)10:30 No. 16330 ID: 14324f
File 127498142941.gif - (231.81KB , 1141x883 , 1274926001585.gif )

QUEST OPTIONS: DIFFICULTY CHANGE
ENABLE HARDCORE MODE: EXTREME REALISM


Oh shi-

>>326127
A loan would allow us to pay for any big budget items without taking a huge chunk out of our budget. Why do you think businesses establish lines of credit?

>>326132
we dont neeeeeed money. we need income.

any loan we take will generate further expenses. we will be paying taxes. we should not rely on loans, at least until we actualy go on red.

>HARDCORE MODE: EXTREME REALISM

...Whoops.

(That's a joke, right?)

>Online economy lectures.

No, I've just played some Hearts of Iron, which this Quest seems based on. Bar the fact that it's looking to be a bit more realistic with a lot more options. Which is pretty sweet.

>Forming ministries, ministers for budget areas.

That's the 'doers' segments of executive power, which we want to keep as cold and hard a grip on as possible. Forming this first government, we probably had/have a choice in who gets to be ministers/in charge of what, effectively allowing us to put in people we trust to be capable (and, y'know, loyal). Also, it might get somewhat tedious if we have to manually appoint/vote on every minister in our government.

Please consider letting us 'do this' without actually doing it, dear quest author.

>Dictatorships bad!

I could argue that point, but for now just keep in mind we don't have to be very moralistic or follow the norms of standard ethics and ruling here and that the more dictatorial powers we have, the easier we can order and justify things like wars, increased spendings, forced drafts, societal change, etc. Getting limited from doing something we want to by legislation would be annoying. At any rate, Miss Florence says we don't have to worry about this just yet, and that she has an idea. Let's stay in charge for a little while and see what she means.

Having done some reading, I've also realized that what I've been aiming for is really termed a "dominant-party system". I was trying to phrase things so that us staying in charge for a prolonged period would be seen (in the beginning) as more of a temporary measure to prevent the nation from falling into political anarchy again. Then when people finally get around to think about being more independent, we'd already be entrenched and popular enough that dislodging us will be unfeasible.

My main point is that there are routes in forming Gorvia's power structure we could take that would leave us in power without ending up in revolts every year or having the largest Oppress-o-meter on the continent.

>Ideally we should make 6+ fixed political parties. They should cover even anarchy. Most specially anarchy.

Parties will, in general, 'fix' themselves, assuming we allow several parties to form. They'll wax and wane over time and with public opinion. (I don't see why anarchy would be so special, as the point of anarchy sort of defeats forming political parties.)

>Loan money!

Let's wait with that. We have money, it's just that like every other government, we have too many things to spend that money on.

i see the part about ministers. im still thinking in how we can do this "right".

to remain in power we could consider a "replacement" program by using the political parties.

every year there would be elections and we would have two puppets running. having black ops or not we are bent to win simply because we did camed out heroes in this civilian war.

im hoping we will bend to the sim city part of this. as long as the budget is not on dead red, we are on the chair.

>Are we massively subsidizing everything?

Possibly. I would consider it to be a game mechanic. Our nation's industry needs oil and resources, and to keep it working for us we have to keep it supplied too. Don't think too much about it. Especially don't think too much about how we, as the president, can order the industry to start producing luxury goods out of the blue, then turn around to tell those self-same factories to refine more fuel, etc.

>Television! Journal! Television!

A tax-sponsored national broadcasting service is actually a rather good idea, as it can allow for an ad-free, interest-neutral, high-quality media service. Such services have long been established in some countries where media neutrality and the right of free speech are held strong. For example, Norway and the United Kingdom have their NRK and BBC respectively. The issue, I believe, is that we'd stay in charge of it, rather than allow it to be an autonomous and politically neutral service.

We could have a journal/newspaper too, but I think we'll have more success with a broadcasting service.

>every year there would be elections and we would have two puppets running. having black ops or not we are bent to win simply because we did camed out heroes in this civilian war.

We're not as much 'heroes' as the first glimpse of stability in a long time. Also, an election every year would quickly get tedious and inefficient. Governements should be in charge for four years at the very least. Not that it should matter too much, us all plotting to stay in charge for as a long as we can.

>HARDCORE MODE
Twas a joke. More options can be fun, but are sometimes not. Overcomplications are definatly not.

>Hearts of Iron
Guilty as charged.

>Are we massively subsidizing everything?
It's a game mechanic. :/

>various typing errors by me
Will be addressed.


Generally, I think obeying the rules is part of the game. And changing things midgame is not what I ususally do. But I also admit that sometimes things don't work out as intendend, although they looked good on paper. Thus I present....

GAME MECHANIC CHANGES:
Haxxors. No, just a few adjustements.

A) Instead of just the military, the civil population will now use up FUEL as well. It will be a very LOW number, based on the assumption that every second Adult will have a car and Corporations use trucks and trains to transport their stuff. On the positive side, civilians are buying FUEL, so you get a bit more Taxes. But it will occuppy some Industrial Capacity.

Overall, you lose a few Croms, but since you seem keen on getting you own oil company, this will even help you in the long run.

B) Administration will now cost money. Setting up more offices OR issuing orders generates bureaucracy. Money will be lost. The more plans you execute, the more drones will be needed to administrate them. The more you squeeze into a single week/month/year, the higher the penalty. It won't be much, but it will be there.

C) The stuff above might look like I try to steal your monies and piss you off. I'm totally not, I promise.

D) No change, but something like a reminder: Yes, my inspiration was a computer game, but you are playing with a human, not a computer. I'm slightly more flexible. :/

Okay, I'll be more precise: If you don't want to pay hundreds of millions per month on infrastructure, then don't. Delay it, halve investment per month or just stop spending when you're halfway done. It's not carved in stone, as in "you click on a button and the game proceeds to execute the order".
You can modify stuff. I'm not saying you should, but you have the option (and the freedom to face the consequences).



GAME MECHANIC CHANGE PROPOSALS:

At the moment your Spy Cells are hardly worth using. This is sad, since you choose the GIA faction. Thus, I propose this:
A bit like research projects, expenses are generated dynamically by me, but according to what you want to achieve.
For example, instead of using a whole cell to spy on the possible Greyton Secessionists, you post "Spy on Greyton" and I respond "This smaller operation will cost 400.000 per month."

Scrap the Cell system entirely.

To limit abuse, you would have a only certain number of GIA personnel and I would inform you that "currently, 10% of your GIA staff is working on a mission". By investing in ESPIONAGE generally, you could increase the limit over time (new agents being trained etc.).

YES or NO ?



Generally, I'm aiming to get to the next monthly report soon.

>>326178

If that is not too much work for you, then YES.

Simply saying "it costs this much and then you can try anything you like" is EASIER, though. For one, all the requests you'd be getting like "spy on Arnsgatte's Prime Minster's wife to see if she has a lover so we can cause a scandal" would simply be delegated to the "cell" in place.

>>326180
Gonna agree with this.

Final Map Coup 2010/05/29(Sat)10:15 No. 16429 ID: 797af6
File 127515333818.png - (948.98KB , 2000x1500 , southern_continent_small.png )

New spy system will be used, then.

Map was finalized, by the way. Here, have a medium version.
The original is 4000x3000, which saves me a lot of time since I don't have to redraw any details (e.g. a single country).
Also, the different nations now all have a (simplified) history and background. Hoping for diplomatic shenanigans in the future.

Okay, enough attention whoring. New month will start today.

>>326229
The black is mountain ranges, correct?

>>326230
Correct.

Whenever another map is needed (which doesn't show anything like "secret enemy military bases") feel free to request. Thanks to layers, maps can be modified on the fly.

CONQUER ORGOS:

It's a bit far away, though, and military action is always expensive, even 'peacekeeping' missions. We'd be better off thinking of a more, dare I say, INTELLIGENT solution than simply invading or 'moving in' under the pretext to help.

Plus, too much on our plate already.

>Produce more Luxury Goods.

Given that we're producing and exporting them at a net loss the main use for increasing it would be to help keep our population happy (unless I'm totally wrong on how LG are used, as I didn't expect we'd export them) or at least giving the Population a little more employment. Care to clarify, Coup?

Exports might also help our diplomatic image with whomever we're exporting to. Trade partners are good partners, after all. Kinda like how we want to keep Thrudwen happy to keep those imports flowin'. We're lucky they don't seem to be international meddlers.

INVESTMENT + SPY INSURANCE:

Partner with someone to do shady business practices? Interesting suggestion, but considering how costly spy missions are, and the risk of getting caught are there, the investment would have to be large for us to make a profit worth the risk.

>latest update
Uh, what the heck happened there? It looks like I took stuff partly from our new budget and then accidently got to a wrong line or something and counted everything together.

>Luxury goods and Consumer Goods
Consumer Goods cover things the people in an industrial nation tend to buy rather regulary (food, clothes, children's toys, toothpaste, furniture...).

Luxury goods are things which are really expensive and high-quality. The impact on people's happiness is relatively low, since most will not be able to afford a single LG in their life-time.

LGs are "commonly" sold in countries where people get exorbitantly high wages.

The export is bad at the moment, because the Luxury Goods weren't sold to a specific customer.

Also, people have to get to know you. Next month, your buyers will recognise your high-quality stuff and want more/pay more. They still don't know you.

A specific deal with a nation (or more) over certain resources will usually give better results. But it's not a neccessity.

The remark gave me the idea to probably split things up. Luxury Goods which make people feel good and high-tech products (generators or whole airbuses) which the normal people wouldn't need. Gonna think about that a while.



I hope this answered some questions. Sorry for the goofed budget.

>>326255
in a completely absurd way, how much would it cost to make a bridge between the gorvian island and the mainland?

also what other kind of goods we can make?

so, roin may be the only one to gain with a separation of gorvia people, at least if it is with the intent of joining those lands to theirs.

should we shoot in thin air and try to push the wellonturia to attack them, or we look for intel first?

>Roin behind it.

Whoah boy! You're leaping to conclusions there. If anything, it could be Wellonturia. Have a look at their oppress-o-meter.

>Bridge.

Build an expensive bridge stretching dozens of miles across a strait in an area famed for hurricanes and earthquakes.

What are you even using for brains?

On that note, I am starting to get slightly apprehensive about my idea for an oil company and the expansion thereof of searching and extracting it in our regions.

Any research techs that deal with disaster-proofing our gear, Coup?

>Roin behind it.

Whoah boy! You're leaping to conclusions there. If anything, it could be Wellonturia. Have a look at their oppress-o-meter.

>Bridge.

Build an expensive bridge stretching dozens of miles across a strait in an area famed for hurricanes and earthquakes.

What are you even using for brains?

On that note, I am starting to get slightly apprehensive about my idea for an oil company and the expansion thereof of searching and extracting it in our regions.

Any research techs that deal with disaster-proofing our gear, Coup?

Pah. Internet burp double-posting. My apologies.

>>326268
No problems, all we have to do is spend to disaster...ya know what? Let that be a state initiative. We've got bigger things to deal with.

>Bridge
No, just no. Underwater high speed trains are where it's at.

>>326275
>Underwater high speed trains
...earthquakes don't worry you at all?

I find myself wondering about the viability of setting our national spy services to the task of corporate espionage. Since it seems that we've basically got the government running everything (thus the fact that we pay for it), stealing all the best new techs and consumer goods from other nations' private industry could boost our technologies quite a bit... and stealing corporate secrets is a bit less frowned upon than national ones on the scale of international transgressions.

>other goods
Military Hardware, Consumer Goods, Luxury Goods seem to cover most things. As I said I was thinking about a kind of "Industrial Goods" or "High-Tech Goods" whose main purpose would be exporting (especially nations with a lower technology-level looking to expand their industrial base would be interested in this).

Sometimes, IC will be occupied with special things. If you want to build more factories or if repairs are needed after a massive earthquake, part of your Industrial Capacity will be dedicated to that.

>underwater train
Your infrastructure upgrades include ferry transports and other "normal" transportation methods which are both cheap and reliable.

Special, more exotic requests would have to be funded seperately. Big projects, like "building the world's highest skyscraper" or "high-speed underwater trains" are associated with international prestige, leaps in technology and lots of monies.

Sometimes, a bit of research would be neccessary even if the technological preconditions already exist: in case of a long tunnel under the sea, scientists would have to take a look at the geological composition of the ocean bed before any building could start etc. ALTHOUGH tunneling techniques and high-speed trains already exist.
In case of a super long bridge across the strait, it would be massive undertaking with some research involved even if building bridges is an everyday activity for contruction firms.

>Any research techs that deal with disaster-proofing our gear, Coup?

Certainly. Take a look at the newest research project report, directly under the latest Intelligence report.

>quest thread
To quote from Richard III: "Nothing but shame." To get my numbers confused was terrible, terrible. The quest doesn't offer adventure or character development, not even a story per se. Thus you should be able to rely on the correctness of the reports, since that is what your decisions are based on.
Corrected things after I was done biting through my keyboard. :/

>>326288
Yeah I know, the train will come eventually.

Too many good research options, and we don't have money for them all.

Coup 2010/07/01(Thu)13:55 No. 18884 ID: b7fdd4
File 127801774631.png - (1.00MB , 2000x1500 , continent_historic.png )

Shameless bump. Well, not really, there's some info, too.

This is a map showing the Southern Continent roughly a hundred years before the events of the quest.

Some borders have changed and a few nations have disappeared since then.

Coup 2010/07/01(Thu)14:03 No. 18885 ID: b7fdd4
File 127801822846.png - (818.95KB , 2000x1500 , territorial_changes.png )

And this map shows the territorial changes since then.

Green are nations which exist today.

Yellow are territories which changed ownership without the former owner being destroyed.

Red are nations which ceased to exist.

Special cases:
Lovko and Kormun are grey, since neither nation is the legitimate successor of Lovkormuny.

Orange are Heurlyndia and Veltonia, with the throne of Veltonia peacefully inherited by the monarch of Heurlyndia.

Dark Blue are the "founding fathers" of the Jerlan Federation, and the members which joined later are Light Blue.

Purple are the nations which emerged during the rebellion against the Orgosian Empire; apparently only Nostromia and Tarrperia.

Huh, a horrible response time is mine.

Anyway, many delightfully kind words were said at the end of the quest thread. :D

I think I should address some of the things mentioned.

>I disliked that I felt there were a large number of important things I had only a vague or nonexistent grasp of

Thanks for mentioning this point.

>A bit much of the game consisted of being given issues to deal with and dealing with them immediately, instead of making a few decisions and watching our nation change because of it- I understand that being more involved in the decision-making was a good thing, but... I don't know, I just felt kind of like I was playing nationstates at times, and not in a good way.

May I give a possible explanation? I think I felt that when I did not come up with another new problem, the quest would lose interest (e.g. the reader getting in a position of observing instead of participating).
But it’s something which I will remember for the future.

>If you want to eventually come back to this quest some time down the line, I don't think anyone would be opposed to it.

Good to know. In fact, I kept the ending vague in order to be able to maybe revive it in the future.

>IRC channels

I did not log on in the last months. Before, it surely was quite amusing, but it didn’t strike me as benefitting for the quest whether I would lurk there or not. But that’s probably my fault, since I hardly ever say anything...

>I thought I recognized the art style.

Yes, that was me.

> an eventual/possible restart of this thread

A tough one. As I said earlier, I kept the ending vague in order to make a restart possible, but when or even if, I did not decide yet. I think a simple “reboot” would result in the same ending like the previous thread(something I’d like to avoid).

That’s why I want to think about how and what to improve before I start this (or any) quest again.

Change of pace? Changing writing style? Different update schedule? Updates with images? Other problems which could be addressed?

Anyway, what I want to express is: I don’t want to continue “just because”. It should make sense to do so and it should be improved in some way. I have to say, my motivation is quite good, because I enjoyed myself immensely while the quest was alive, but that’s not a good reason to continue (well, it shouldn’t be the sole reason, I mean).


I think that was everything. So long!

It's ok. You do have all the time in the world now. And man! I didn't notice these two maps indicating the recent -history- of the continent. You really THOUGHT about a lot of this stuff!

Glad to hear you had fun, Coup, and I'd actually call that one of the most important things of all. It shows, even. The level of detail and dedication to this quest was pretty phenomenal, at least from your side. Gorvia's world is so well-developed it could be real, and I hope we'll get to explore its nooks and crannies another time.

One thing I'll fess up to, seeing as someone else mentioned it, is that it felt like we were getting into (slightly) too many (potentially complex) situations at once, and it was starting to get a bit tricky keeping track of it all, and a bit daunting to considering facing and responding to.

It's okay to leave us some downtime to deal with the problems we're currently facing before forging ahead and presenting the next...Or even just taking no response to something as a sign to dismiss/autosolve the issue (and/or perhaps bring it up again in some advanced state, as appropriate).

That said, flooding us with choices and things to deal with also made it, in my case at least, feel like a more 'authentic' ruling experience, minor bouts of stress and all. Yes, being (slightly) stressed on how to deal with things was a positive thing for me. Guess I'm a little weird.

I did notice that you forged on pretty well when we sometimes forgot, or didn't care, about certain troubles (such as the hippie-protest one that our aide auto-handled). I think this was positive since it prevented the quest from getting bogged down waiting for an answer to something people had cases of tl;dr, didn't care about the issue, or simply completely missed it (which is surprisingly easy to do in quests of growing complexity like this). You also did a spiffy job of balancing the suggestions we made, offering counter-advice and presenting options through our foils. A+ work there.

Another thing I loved were the occasional sketches. They didn't dominate, but simply enhanced the message of the text. The duke's sister' with her coat of arms, the maps and their comparisons, the characters standing around (helmeted Stanislaw and giggling Florence made me cackle rather badly, I'll admit), the blind woman in army clothes; semi-colored bursts of life depicting the people and places behind the text. Adding splashes of color here and there on the character sketches did wonders, by the way. By no means am I saying you should focus all your effort on sketching (most of the good stuff was in the posts, after all), but the correct sketch to the right post did add a lot to the mood for me.

As partially mentioned earlier, Florence and Stanislaw were also excellent foils to the 'State Monitor', handling our (sometimes weird, sometimes simplistic) questions, requests, suggestions and demands with (mostly) serious aplomb, appropriate for governmental agents (and human beings!). I really liked their characterization, especially how we were racking up a few background points on Stanislaw by deciding to participate in the Lovko-Kormun conflict.

Really, when we first picked them I simply thought of them as NPCs who would give us a bonus to their fields of expertise. You made them into something much more than that.

You also kept a brisk updating pace for most of the time, which was very good. You could probably have stretched out certain updates a bit more, but usually when something falls past second page, it's time to give it a small bump.

All in all, I think this quest, unfinished though it is, was a credit to tgchan, and it certainly did a hell of a lot more right than wrong (in my opinion, milage may vary).

Do make a splash if you enter questing again, Coup, because I want to be around for the next one.

>>329494

Oh, and the Warhammer40K quest WAS you? Hah! I liked that one too. I always love a good take on that classic dystopia (like the Ciaphas Cain series).

And, hey, you random quester. If you're reading this, seriously consider giving this poor man some feedback.

You don't have to tell him a million things like I do, but he's looking to improve, and if we can help him do that, maybe we'll see him back in the ring again faster too, eh?

>>329494
On the matter of the IRC channels; all I can really suggest is to try to talk more. Or at least announce updates, for instance.
You will usually get at least some discussion going on, anyway.
And if the chat topic isn't something you feel like participating in, you don't have to. Obviously. (That's why I suggest logging in on both channels; you can pretty safely ignore one in favor of the other if the topic goes a direction you don't really care for.)

>>329627
I really liked your 40K quest. You should hang out in IRC with us. We're usually talking about penises.

>Do make a splash if you enter questing again

*splash*

Ah well, I decided to continue.

Knowing the first thread is useful, but not necessary.

A few changes to the economy system:
- civilians use slightly more fuel
- the army needs less Military Hardware and Fuel during peace-time (frees up IC), but (much) more during war-time
- the export/import system was revised
- the number of people working in the First Sector was reduced to better represent the fact that Gorvia is a modern nation
- new (minor) costs: police, prisons, fire fighters and similar, combined under the point “Public Security”
- a few other minor things which nobody will notice

All the above is totally unimportant, though, since you are stuck in a foreign country. :D

Ahem, by th way, I am fully conscious that this quest represents a, uhm, “niche”, but I think it might still be worth a second try.