Moonister of Defense II

 

Hello TSP!

 

I’m Moon (better known as Emodea to some) and I’m here to seek your vote to be reelected as Minister of Defense. I believe that I’ve still got a lot left to contribute to the SPSF and this wonderful region as MoD. I believe that I can continue to thrive in the role and lead the SPSF to new heights over the next four months, if I’m given the chance to do so.

 But first, a recap of the last two months;

• We had little to no presence at all in regular, mundane updates when I took over, with me, HumanSanity and Witchcraft & Sorcery being the only consistent updaters with the SPSF tag at that point. Since then, we’ve significantly expanded our presence in updates, now hovering at 3-4 available updaters almost every update. Not only that, but we’re now capable of pulling 7-8 updaters at a moment’s notice any time, an impressive feat that marks just how far we’ve come.
  
• Our turnout in liberations, which was already on the upswing since last year, has ballooned out in recent times. The liberation of China saw the SPSF bring twenty nine unique updaters to the operation, a record at that time. It was topped off by the sieges of A Liberal Haven two weeks later, with forty five SPSFers showing up to help us out. While site instability would go on to compound our efforts in the latter instance, it still remains an exceptional achievement that solidified our status as one of the leading militaries out there. Our commanders are also among the forefront, with HS, W&S, Roavin and Nakari playing crucial roles in the successes of the aforementioned operations behind the scenes.
  
• We’ve also ramped out our civilian outreach and saw some pretty nice gains come through, including unearthing promising updaters like Qawe, Pronoun, Venatrix and more, as well as expanding our Tidal Force roster with willing participants who are eager to try out military gameplay but doesn’t have the requisite time for it.[/align]
  
• Speaking of the Tidal Force, it has gone through some developments as well. Apart from new members joining its ranks, a renewned gameside infrastructure has been put in place to utilize our gameside-only members who were left out of previous missions. While still in its infancy, I have high hopes that it will significantly contribute to the SPSF’s successes once properly developed.
  
• While this is kind of premature, the SPSF is slowly developing a friendly, helpful culture that revolves around the worship of cake as the one true dessert, as envisioned in my previous campaign. I only hope that this positive culture only continues to grow even when I’m not at the helm.
  

 

While it would be nice to claim that all of these awesome things happened solely due to me, that would be just being disingenuous. I had a great team of Generals to assist me in my tasks, as well as a level-headed Prime Minister in HS to keep me in check and guide me through logistics that I really didn’t understand before. And I’m not even mentioning the plethora of people who supported me and just kept doing their job without ever asking anything in return, who made my life as MoD significantly easier by simply being themselves. I thank you all and hope that I’ve managed to reciprocate your trust in me by my work over the last two months.

 

So without further ado, let me present you my plans:

 

Continuing Tidal Force’s Development
If I had to choose one thing that I feel like I should’ve focused more on, it’s the Tidal Force. In my quest to create a reliable regular updater force for the SPSF, it kinda got neglected. That isn’t to say that strides weren’t made, it’s just that those strides came more as afterthoughts rather than those that came with a full-fledged focus.

 

I hope to rectify that in this term should I get reelected. The Tidal Force will remain one of the main things I intend to focus on, with my intention being the same as before; to develop a considerable piler force that we can utilize when a situation demands it. My plans for a RMB/TG-based recruitment campaign remain, alongside keeping up with our civilian outreach which has netted us the lion’s share of TF recruits this term.

 

Developing New Talents
Let’s be real; R/D can be pretty tiring and people flame in and out of activity all the time here. It’s important for a military to facilitate an environment that is conducive to developing new talents as well as put significant stock in it, in order to ensure that its successes are sustainable and to increase engagement with a promising player that makes them want to stick around for the long haul and continue contributing to it. It’s a surprisingly overlooked part of the entire “integration to the military” thing and we have been definitely guilty of it in the past.

 

Fortunately, that has changed, thanks to tireless efforts from my immediate predecessors. The SPSF now boasts a robust integration system that continues to be refined as time goes on, best evident by our recent successes in civilian outreach. However, improvements can and should be made wherever possible, and W&S intended to do so according to his campaign in October last year.

 

I plan to pick up where he left off, focusing on revisiting our training guides and seeing where we can improve things to help trainees smoothly understand the intricacies of R/D without making them feel overwhelmed. I also plan to take a look at how we train our officers and see what adjustments we can make there to prepare our prospective officers to be versatile, well-rounded officers who are able to help out with anything a hypothetical large-scale operation may require. That means emphasizing on less glamorous skills like spotting and native communication, skills that I don’t believe have been institutionally trained here. While I don’t expect to make huge progress within the next four months, I hope that I can at least get the foundations set up so that my successors can continue building upon it.

 

Managing Public Perception
I had an epiphany recently. Well, epiphany might be overselling it, but more of an introspection. Over my previous terms as MoD and MoM, I was too focused on getting things in order internally and didn’t care enough about what the community thought of my work. Which was a mistake in hindsight, as it sent the message that the ministry was inactive and wasn’t doing anything worth talking about (coughmy MoM termcough), when it was the farthest thing from that. However, simply focusing on “agendaposting”, as I believe is how the cool kids say it, and not getting anything done wasn’t the way to go either. A balance must be struck between focusing on internal development and publicizing those developments to the wider community as to keep them informed of the good work that was being done.

 

I particularly like how HS approaches this, with timely biweekly updates that summarizes the work the Cabinet has done over the past two weeks and lays the outline of the future things that’s going to be done. It’s a good way to ensure transparency and accountability, helps people remain grounded with a clear deadline to achieve their goals within and keeps the Assembly informed about the successes and failures of the Cabinet and evaluate their overall progress more clearly.

 

While the MoD is included in these updates, I want to bring back the monthly updates the MoD used to do in mid 2021, which would serve as a more detailed overview of the things the SPSF has done over the past month, as well as things I plan to do in the next month. Think of software development diaries, but it’s for a cooperative military force in a 19yo online political simulation game. Are they going to be instructive for prospective MoDs reading it? I hope so. Are they going to be particularly well-written? I don’t think so. But are they going to be embarrassing? You betcha.

 

The usual special reports whenever we successfully tackle a major operation, whether it be a large liberation, an impressive series of occupation defenses or fash bashes that we do with allies, will continue with a bit more emphasis on, how can I put this, flair and creativity. The most apt comparison would be this wonderful announcement conjured up by Ike for our recent non-aggression pact with Balder, the quality of which I hope to replicate in the future. Let’s hope that all those SC writing will finally come to some use for me…

 

And that would be all! I'm open to answering any questions you might have about my campaign.

 

Conflict Of Interest:
I'm a Legislator in The South Pacific, as well as a Officer in the South Pacific Special Forces, a Senior Staffer in the Ministry of Media, a Junior Staffer in the Office of World Assembly Legislation, a Junior Staffer in the Ministry of Culture and the Ambassador to The West Pacific and 10000 Islands.

 

I'm also a Warden-Lieutenant in The Order of The Grey Wardens, a defender military-focused region and an embassy partner of TSP. I'll be preemptively answering a commonly asked question here that I'm fully confident in my ability to balance my duties and responsibilities in both regions and my full focus will be on the SPSF for the duration I serve.

 

Finally, I'm currently serving as the Councilor of World Assembly Affairs in Refugia, a medium-sized, internal-focused region that I joined in April 2021. I can safely say that my duties there won't overlap with my duties in TSP should I get reelected.

(This post was last modified: 02-03-2022, 10:48 AM by Moon.)

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Very excited for you to be running again!

Questions:

The Tidal Force will remain one of the main things I intend to focus on, with my intention being the same as before; to develop a considerable piler force that we can utilize when a situation demands it.

How will you further advance Tidal Force? This is a goal, not a route to get there. RMB promotion and a regional TG is a good idea, but I'm interested if you have more or further ideas.

That means emphasizing on less glamorous skills like spotting and native communication, skills that I don’t believe have been institutionally trained here.

I like this very very much.

I want to bring back the monthly updates the MoD used to do in mid 2021, which would serve as a more detailed overview of the things the SPSF has done over the past month, as well as things I plan to do in the next month.

Would you work on this entirely on your own, or would you try to offer opportunities for other SPSF members to be involved? If so, at what level?

Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces
Ambassador to Balder
Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

Reply

How will you further advance Tidal Force? This is a goal, not a route to get there. RMB promotion and a regional TG is a good idea, but I'm interested if you have more or further ideas.

I can't actually think of any other ideas that would help us net gameside recruits for Tidal Force, apart from doing post-major op civilian outreach that we've already been doing for a couple of months. I think the best way of expanding it is to conduct implicit recruitment in the region, i.e through posting TF orders on the RMB, collaborate with MoM (which is in a bit of a slump recently) to produce promotional stuffs for the SPSF (things like articles highlighting why defending is fun/good, interviews of prominent SPSFers et al.), open Q&As of senior SPSF leadership in both the Discord server and the RMB and above all, word of the mouth from SPSFers about the opportunities of advancement we provide, the positive culture we boast and the achievements we showcase. Even little things like a few additional lines about joining the SPSF with a link to the executive application at the end of the monthly or special reports can go a long way to gain new recruits for Tidal Force and the SPSF overall.
 

Would you work on this entirely on your own, or would you try to offer opportunities for other SPSF members to be involved? If so, at what level?

I honestly don't think that other SPSF members, except for the Generals Corp, should be involved in what primarily should be a task for the MoD.

The way I've interpreted MoD's role up until now, is that of the civilian leader of the SPSF; someone who bridges the gap between it and the Assembly, someone who is essentially the face of the regional military to the wider Gameplay community during the time they serve. While it's essential for us to prepare prospective MoDs for the duties they'll eventually take on one day, I don't think it should come at the cost of taking away what I believe to be one of MoD's natural responsibilities and passing it on to someone else in the name of "preparing the future generation of SPSFers".

I've already stated in my campaign that I wish to expand the training repertoire of our Soldiers and Officers, and that will include imparting communication skills, whether it be with natives or Legislators who ultimately hold you accountable for your actions.

Although I'm certainly open to the idea of open-sourcing those special reports to some of our more creatively-minded SPSFers, if they wish to take it on themselves

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