The Darkness Reforms

[Darkness' Edge]

I've had in mind for several weeks to write a series of amendments to the constitution to fix minor problems that have come up in its first month of operation.

I have copied only the affected sections of the constitution (most sections have had minor changes made). Any sections deleted will be in italics, any sections added will be in bold.

Comments, please! I'm opening this up to discussion before it is put to a full poll.

For confusions sake, I'm going to post changes to each article in a seperate post.

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Article I: Commission Structure

Executive Branch

Commissioner:
Has the right of:
*Playing the game for the citizens
*Acting as he deems fit if there is an emergency
*Advising any other part of the government

Has the duties of:
*Following directors orders on there field of expertise
*Posting SAV`s and turnlogs on the forum
*Overall keeping the citizens aware of there situation.
*Holding turnchats (as long as possible) 2 times a week
*making turnthreads and keeping them updated
*Posting polls on how our bases should be named
*Serving his faction the best he can

The Commissioner shall physically play the game.

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Director Branch

All directors will have to post their general strategies in the 'office' thread. This will outline possible situations where the commissioner can not ask for orders from the directors but will have to act on the general orders.

Directors must poll all major decisions, such as deciding what science advance to pursue, what to build in a city, or where to place the workers in a particular city. However, they can act on minor decisions without polling the people, such as what to do in the event of a mindworm attack.

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Director of Peacekeeping Operations:
Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner to move military units
*Ordering the commissioner to design military new units, disband old military units and upgrade current military units.
*Advising any other part of the government
*Requesting buildings and military units with the Director of buildings productions.
*Polling Planetary Council decisions on Atrocity Bans

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Director of Foreign Affairs

Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner on talks with foreign factions
*Advising any other part of the government
*Polling on Planetary Election and Supreme Leader decisions

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Director of Energy and Industry:

Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner to rushbuild, use money in trades, change worker placements, and move crawlers
*Advising any other part of the government
*Requesting crawlers and buildings with the Director of buildings productions.
*Polling Planetary Council decision on salvaging reactor core
*Polling Planetary Council decisions on Global Trade Pacts

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Director of Terraforming and Colonisation:

Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner to move terraformers and colony pods
*Ordering the commissioner to design new TC units, disband old TC units and upgrade current TC units
*Advising any other part of the government
*Requesting terraformers colony pods, and buildings with the Director of buildings productions.
*Polling Planetary Council decisions on raising and lowering sea levels

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Director of Base Production

Has the duties of:
*Choosing between various requests made by the directors
*Starting polls about Special Projects
*Listing to the will of the people about the Special Projects
*Serving his faction the best he can
*Posting polls on how our bases should be named

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Article II: Government Policy

Playing ahead:
No person is allowed to play ahead to:
*Gain information about foreign factions
No person is allowed to play ahead for any reason.

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Article III: Polls

Elections:

[B]No-confidence votes

* The word abstain is hereby stricken from the constitution, and replaced with the term 'xenobanana'. This replaces the abstain option in all official polls and elections. This then follows the time-honored precedent where a banana vote signifies disagreement with all choices on offer, or, to put it more negatively, a no-confidence vote in the poll or candidate being voted on.[B]

Official polls:

Poll:
*Xenobanana
*Write-in-option
*Minimum of 3 days
*Minimum of 2 days
*Maximum of 7 days
*Clear and not biased question and answers

Unofficial:

May be started by all members of the faction. They are purely information gathering polls

Poll:
*Minimum of 3 days

First Post:
*Expire date (if any)
*Link to discussion thread (if any)

[Darkness' Edge]

Almost all of the reforms in the Director Branch concern the Planetary Council, and who is responsible for what decisions.

The only changes here that really need explaining are to do with the introductory paragraphs. I propose deleting a paragraph which really doesn't have a whole lot of use, seeing as I don't even know what it means and no one did it all last term anyway.

The paragraph I propose adding insures that directors poll on all major decisions. Feel free to reword it in more sensible language though.

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Article I: Commission Structure (continued)

Director Branch

All directors will have to post their general strategies in the 'office' thread. This will outline possible situations where the commissioner can not ask for orders from the directors but will have to act on the general orders.

Directors must poll all major decisions, such as deciding what science advance to pursue, what to build in a city, or where to place the workers in a particular city. However, they can act on minor decisions without polling the people, such as what to do in the event of a mindworm attack.

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Director of Peacekeeping Operations:
Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner to move military units
*Ordering the commissioner to design military new units, disband old military units and upgrade current military units.
*Advising any other part of the government
*Requesting buildings and military units with the Director of buildings productions.
*Polling Planetary Council decisions on Atrocity Bans

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Director of Foreign Affairs

Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner on talks with foreign factions
*Advising any other part of the government
*Polling on Planetary Election and Supreme Leader decisions

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Director of Energy and Industry:

Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner to rushbuild, use money in trades, change worker placements, and move crawlers
*Advising any other part of the government
*Requesting crawlers and buildings with the Director of buildings productions.
*Polling Planetary Council decision on salvaging reactor core
*Polling Planetary Council decisions on Global Trade Pacts

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Director of Terraforming and Colonisation:

Has the right of:
*Starting polls to ask the people what there wishes are in his area
*Ordering the commissioner to move terraformers and colony pods
*Ordering the commissioner to design new TC units, disband old TC units and upgrade current TC units
*Advising any other part of the government
*Requesting terraformers colony pods, and buildings with the Director of buildings productions.
*Polling Planetary Council decisions on raising and lowering sea levels

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Director of Base Production

Has the duties of:
*Choosing between various requests made by the directors
*Starting polls about Special Projects
*Listing to the will of the people about the Special Projects
*Serving his faction the best he can
*Posting polls on how our bases should be named

[Nubclear]

why doesnt Industry and Energy get contrl over global trade pacts?

[Darkness' Edge]

There are only minor changes to both Article III and Article III here.

The playing ahead clause has been reinserted, due to popular demand. That's all the changes to Article II.

As far as the changes to Article III go, there's three. The first is a move to clear up issues regarding Abstain votes. One of the problems here is that, when this game evolved, the time-honored Banana vote from C2 and C3 DGs was renamed 'Abstain' by DBTS to be more SMAC-like. It basically says this in the constitution as it now stands. Though this is open to change, I propose doing away with the abstain, and replacing it with a defined banana option, for clarity's sake. If the Abstain option does remain, we clearly need both an Abstain and No-confidence vote, which in my opinion, unnecessary for something that is likely to never occur again (or at best very rarely). Reinstating the banana would clear this up instantly.

The second change is an oft-requested one, decreasing the official poll time limit to two days. The third is one of common sense - eradicating the entire section on unoffical polls. The poll is unofficial - there's no need for any rules on it.

Article II: Government Policy

Playing ahead:
No person is allowed to play ahead to:
*Gain information about foreign factions
No person is allowed to play ahead for any reason.

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Article III: Polls

Elections:

[B]No-confidence votes

* The word abstain is hereby stricken from the constitution, and replaced with the term 'xenobanana'. This replaces the abstain option in all official polls and elections. This then follows the time-honored precedent where a banana vote signifies disagreement with all choices on offer, or, to put it more negatively, a no-confidence vote in the poll or candidate being voted on.[B]

Official polls:

Poll:
*Xenobanana
*Write-in-option
*Minimum of 3 days
*Minimum of 2 days
*Maximum of 7 days
*Clear and not biased question and answers

Unofficial:

May be started by all members of the faction. They are purely information gathering polls

Poll:
*Minimum of 3 days

First Post:
*Expire date (if any)
*Link to discussion thread (if any)

[Darkness' Edge]

Originally posted by Tassadar5000
why doesnt Industry and Energy get contrl over global trade pacts?

]

With the lack of a trade or economy minister, I didn't quite know where to put these. They could just as easily go to Industry and Energy.

Any other comments?

[Pandemoniak]

Good work, Comisioner
I still wonder if we could something about that court. Lets add the fun of a roleplaying court, I say !

[Method]

just a question here. does the director of research have the right to play ahead (hold all units and press "turn complete") until the next tech is discovered to see what the choices will be?

EDIT:i think the AT should have to create a new Save report, deadlines/cabinet thread at the beginning of each term, and make sure nobody posts there. any sugestions for improvements to the thread could be submitted via PM.

As for the OPR thread, i don't know if we need to make one at the beginning of each term or not, but i think we should make a new one soon anyways because our current one if full of other people's posts. also, if the AT (or maniac) doesn't make the OPR thread, we could always hire adaMada to do it

[DeathByTheSword]

I agree with all changes of MY constitution

[Darkness' Edge]

In answer to some criticism in another thread...

With the placement of Planetary Council decisions to various directors, I just picked where I thought they could best go. If anyone's got any better ideas on who should poll on each of the PC decisions, I'll be happy to change them.

TKG: I deleted that paragraph because the way it seemed to be written wasn't what was happening. Do we need to have in the constitution an instruction telling the Commissioner to have a thread asking for orders?

Pandemoniak: That's coming. I thought about including it in this batch, but I thought it'd get too complicated. So I decided that first I'd get all these minor changes out of the way, then come back and work on a court. What I plan do for that is adapt the Civ3 model and customise it to the needs of this game.

[Method]

ok, thats fine, but:

Originally posted by TKG
does the director of research have the right to play ahead (hold all units and press "turn complete") until the next tech is discovered to see what the choices will be?

[Darkness' Edge]

In short: ask DBTS.

Originally, I was going to propose banning all playing ahead, but then I thought he might have had some reason for keeping it in.

[Darkness' Edge]

Tass and I have just been talking about the issue of 'Abstain' and no-confidence.

I think a large amount of the problems here comes from a decision DBTS made with writing the constitution. (sorry mate, but it was your call ). He got rid of the banana option from the other democracy games, and replaced it with the word abstain, to sound more SMAC-like. The problem with this is, the two, definition-wise, aren't exactly the same, though constitutionally, abstain is a renamed banana vote (that is actually in the constitution).

The people have clearly voted for a no-confidence motion, but to clear this up in future, I suggest doing away with the 'Abstain' option, and replacing it with a 'Banana' option, like the other DGs. It might not be as SMAC-like, but it would stop this from happening again, as a banana vote has always been a vote of no-confidence in the candidates or poll choices.

Have I made any sense?

[DeathByTheSword]

@DE about the banana thing I dont like the name but i can agree with you maybe besides a write-in and abstain we can have an extra one because Tass voted abstain because the didnt like the election times and the rest voted for no-confidence. now you will have to choisen in one name split it or dont but renaming it doesnt matter...atleast that is what i think.

@TKG when i typed the Constitution and was thinking about playing ahead I was thinking about what pro`s there are of playing ahead it being 5 o`clock in the morning driving from the most souther part of the netherlands to the most norther part (no I wasnt behind the weel ) i could only think about getting tactical info about the enemy I forgot about exploration and tech. so what there have to be changed is

NO playing ahead is allowed.

what do you think!?

[Darkness' Edge]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
@DE about the banana thing I dont like the name but i can agree with you maybe besides a write-in and abstain we can have an extra one because Tass voted abstain because the didnt like the election times and the rest voted for no-confidence. now you will have to choisen in one name split it or dont but renaming it doesnt matter...atleast that is what i think.

Actually, in the DoSE election, Tass publically stated that he was also placing a vote of no-confidence.

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
what do you think!?

Yes.

Time for draft number two.

[DeathByTheSword]

i still think changing the system because of one little problem is a bit far fetched (the onlu reason i am so against it is because of the name 'BANANA' )

[Pandemoniak]

About abstain, no-confidence and bananas.
Technically, the abstain vote is indeed a banana vote, and therefore a non-confidence vote. Congratulations to DE (and Tass) for pointing this out in the DBTS Constitutiton. But in order to stay more SMAC like, we could have an option for "Bananian Fungus" instead of simple bananas or biased "ABSTAIN".

About playing ahead for the director of Science
I think that would be a mistake to allow any kind of play-ahead. I understand it makes the work of the Director of REsearch more complicated, but it would ruin a part of the fun of the roleplaying : it is normal to be uncertain of the different technologies we'll be able to research.

[Darkness' Edge]

Second draft is now complete, taking into account most suggestions listed here.

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
About abstain, no-confidence and bananas.
Technically, the abstain vote is indeed a banana vote, and therefore a non-confidence vote. Congratulations to DE (and Tass) for pointing this out in the DBTS Constitutiton. But in order to stay more SMAC like, we could have an option for "Bananian Fungus" instead of simple bananas or biased "ABSTAIN".

That's exactly right - thanks for wording it more clearly than I did.

I like the idea of renaming the banana to be more SMAC-like. For now, it's listed as Banana, but if anyone can come up with a more SMAC-like idea, I'll change that.

Any further comments, now that some changes have been made?

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Darkness' Edge
Second draft is now complete, taking into account most suggestions listed here.



That's exactly right - thanks for wording it more clearly than I did.

I like the idea of renaming the banana to be more SMAC-like. For now, it's listed as Banana, but if anyone can come up with a more SMAC-like idea, I'll change that.

Any further comments, now that some changes have been made?

How about xenobanana instead of banana?

[Darkness' Edge]

Originally posted by Tassadar5000 How about xenobanana instead of banana?

Done. (for now)

[DeathByTheSword]

The word abstain is hereby stricken from the constitution, and replaced with the term 'xenobanana'. This replaces the abstain option in all official polls and elections. This then follows the time-honored precedent where a banana vote signifies disagreement with all choices on offer, or, to put it more negatively, a no-confidence vote in the poll or candidate being voted on.

and here is my problem in an election you dont know if it is a no-confidence vote in the poll or in the candidate.....

[Darkness' Edge]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword


and here is my problem in an election you dont know if it is a no-confidence vote in the poll or in the candidate.....

I really don't think this matters.
It's never happened before, it will likely never happen again.

A no-confidence vote in a candidate doesn't happen easily. There has to be an overwhelming backlash for it to happen, which is why it has never happened before.

I've been trying to word this up for about five minutes, and I've just about given up. Let me put it this way. In all the time both democracy games have been running, the only polls the banana has won have been stupid, informal polls that made no sense. There was one concentrated effort in the C3DG, but even that petered out, and he was returned reasonably comfortably. They use the banana in this method, even with their ridiculous attention to detail, and haven't had any problems.

If it's good enough for them, why shouldn't it be good enough for our more informal game?

[Method]

i think there should be something in the constitution about "if a director is away for a certain period of time without notifying the commissioner (or anyone else) ahead of time that he/she will be away, then they need to be replaced"

that, or let the court handle it (if we get one)

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once we get a lot of bases, are we going to divide them up into regions? maybe 4 bases per region or so. if we use regions, IMO we'll need a DTC, DBP and DEI for each region, otherwise, managing 20+ bases would be too much for 1 person to do.

that or combine the DTC, DBP and DEI and make region governors. just a though

[Maniac]

We'll need more participants in that case. Or perhaps we should limit our expansion to a certain number of bases.

[Darkness' Edge]

Originally posted by TKG
i think there should be something in the constitution about "if a director is away for a certain period of time without notifying the commissioner (or anyone else) ahead of time that he/she will be away, then they need to be replaced"

]

That's really not a bad idea.

Originally posted by TKG
once we get a lot of bases, are we going to divide them up into regions? maybe 4 bases per region or so. if we use regions, IMO we'll need a DTC, DBP and DEI for each region, otherwise, managing 20+ bases would be too much for 1 person to do.

that or combine the DTC, DBP and DEI and make region governors. just a though

We're going to need a LOT more people. The Civ3 game's the only one on Apolyton that can handle a system like that at the moment.

[Method]

i agree we'd need a lot of people, but 20, 30, 40, 100 bases is a lot for one person to terraform, decide workers for, and manage production for

what other choice do we have?

[Darkness' Edge]

It's not an issue that's too important yet.

But once we have, say, 10 to 20 bases, I think any ministry that needs it should start taking on Deputy Ministers, like the C3DG.

Base Production and Industry and Energy, certainly, are going to need some. Later on, Foreign Affairs and Peacekeeping Operations may need some as well.

[- Groucho -]

I said this in the poll thread but it probably should have been here:

Polling for worker placements should not be in the constitution. There will be way too many of them very soon - already it's getting out of hand. Instead we should have base production polls like:

Please indicate how production at TBIBTU should be optimized:

For MINERAL production
For FOOD production
For ENERGY production
For RESEARCH production
For [I can't remember the other talents] production
For BALANCED production

The Director would then place workers/assign talents to optimize production of whatever we're after. Any more detail is way too much macro-micro-management.

[Darkness' Edge]

I'm inclined to agree.

I said this in the other thread, but I'll repeat it here - that isn't being voted on here. It's already in the constitution, and the only reason it's listed there is because I'm making changes in that section of the constitution

But while we have three bases, I think any poll activity is good activity. After we've got another two, I'll probably write it into an amendment.

Or as I said in the other thread, someone else can write their own bloody amendment.

[DeathByTheSword]

I say governers per a region all under and apointed by a director the director can be a governer himself too