Star Citizen Live: 2950 Imperator Election

9 October 202001:01:121,780 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hi everybody. Welcome to Star Citizen Live. That's two weeks in a row I tripped up on the name. I'm having a thing with the Star Citizen Live. if this was live or not. Just in case you're wondering if it's live or not. Well, last week I I went through three other names before I got to the right one. Star Citizen Live the 2950 Imperator Election Special. I'm your host Jared Huckaby and we're going to jump right into it. Our guests are the esteemed members of the CIG Narrative Team. Let's take a few moments before we dive in, go around the circle and introduce yourselves cuz for everybody's show it's somebody's first show. Is that how it goes? That's beautiful. Everybody's show is somebody's first No. No. Very poetic. We're off. We're off. Uh we're going to We're just going to start in the We're just going to start in the corner and go clockwise around.
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Sherry, you're in the you're in the first slot there. Who are you? What do you do for Star Citizen? Um I'm Sherry. I'm the archivist and associate writer at Star Citizen. I manage and populate the Electropedia. Um and I do star systems planetary stuff. Physics. I I don't know why I just I expected you to scream physics like like Ricola and I don't know why. Uh we'll just go around clockwise. It's one of those days already people. Will, who are you? What do you do and why do you do it? Oh, like normal clockwise. Uh I'm lead writer Will Weissbaum. Hi. Hi everyone.
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Uh and I work on the narrative of Star Citizen Squadron 42, the persistent universe, uh all that come to the storylines, writing stuff, dreaming the dreams. And I'm really happy to be able to be here to talk about the Imperator Election. I just realized why you're confused cuz you're seeing a mirror version of the broadcast. So so so where I on your screen I'm on the left, on their screen I'm on the right. So it's actually So Sherry that that that's why you were surprised. So Stage clockwise. Have stage clockwise. Cuz to me you're on the right, Jared. But Cuz mine's weird. Anyway. Let's not bring politics into this. Sorry. Dave, who are you? Haddock. What do you do? And what's your favorite Michael Keaton movie? I'm Dave Haddock. I'm the narrative director
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at at Cloud Imperium. So I'm kind of just have my hands all over the place and do all sorts of weird stuff with Squadron 42, the persistent universe. We kind of help out with marketing stuff if they need it. Uh Uh yeah, been been here since since the beginning. Happy Happy SC birthday, by the way. Oh, yeah. Happy birthday. Yeah, happy birthday. I I I have very fond memories of watching the Chris's uh GDC speech. And And when this is the the web broke out. I was in Austin. Is that where the GDC was or was it Houston? It was in Austin, right? Austin. Yeah, yeah. Um But yeah, my Michael favorite Michael Keaton movie, I would probably say either Jackie Brown or Beetlejuice. Is Michael Is Jackie Brown
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the best Batman. Is Is Jack Is Jackie Brown really a Michael Keaton movie? I feel like you have to be name on the poster above the title for it to be your movie. Oh, okay. That's why Dave made his own Jackie Brown poster. Oh. Yeah, I did a recut of it. Uh Uh okay. If that's If that's the case, then I would probably go uh Beetlejuice Well, he's not above the title in Beetlejuice. I'll go Batman Returns then. Batman Returns. Adam, hi. Hello, hello. I'm Adam Weiser. I am I'm good. I'm a writer for CIG. So yeah, I work with Dave and Will and Sherry and assist on everything they they just described. So if they need more stories or item descriptions or anything, I'm I'm here to help. And just to give full full kudos to Adam, he's been spearheading the a lot
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of the recent election lore posts that you've been reading and doing an absolutely fantastic job with it. So, I've been enjoying it, hopefully you have. So, thanks, Adam. Yeah, they're super good. It's a good time to I'm going to go ahead, Adam. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a I appreciate it, but yeah, it's a completely collaborative process that we've been working on for for over a year and talking about and slowly kind of like thinking through. So, it's it's been a lot of fun and I'm excited to discuss details with with everyone today. So, it's it's worth it's worth uh promoting. Uh there is a post on the robertsspaceindustries.com website right now. It's up in the carousel along the top. I think it's in like the third spot if you need to look for it. Uh that has a nice rundown of the candidates as well as a complete listing of numerous posts that have gone out uh over the last several months at the very least as well
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as uh many Galactapedia articles uh that are available on the Galactapedia about each candidate and stuff like that. So, before we dive into the questions, uh and we'll take questions live and we'll take questions from Spectrum and whatever, uh let's recap this process up to this point first. Uh because, you know, for somebody they're like, "Wait, you're doing an election? What?" This has actually been going on for a while. We had some primaries already. Uh who wants to recap how we got to where we are right now? Should we all do it at the same time? Yes. Um on the count of three. So, uh for for the current election process, um just a very broad overview for how we kind of drew it up is uh about a year out from uh from, you know, uh October 8th, uh so a year ago, um basically the
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UEE would open up entries for anyone who wanted to basically run for Imperator by submitting videos and filling out this questionnaire for what they would basically set out to accomplish as Imperator. And uh citizens were allowed to go watch these videos and start to vote and narrow down this extremely wide field to 10. Um so that's considered essentially the the primary voting period. Then we reduce it down to 10 candidates and those 10 candidates then have a few months to pitch their case to the wider citizens of the universe. Uh and a secondary uh vote is then taken. I I believe it's like mid-April in that in that range. Um and again voting periods will last a few weeks so it allows people from all around the empire to to go into facilities or or vote where they
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need to. Um Yeah, because uh in the uh empire there isn't faster-than-light communication speeds. Everything has to go through jump points and it takes a little bit longer so they have a longer voting period to allow for the full collection of all the votes from all the systems to be brought together. It's Yeah, and you know the thing is too with the opening uh the idea is that it is literally open to, you know, all citizens. That like you don't have to be a politician and and and the idea behind that was this idea this this notion that they wanted the best ideas to come from whoever. Like if someone has a really good idea and it and people react to it and respond to it then you can be nobody and come from anywhere. And if your ideology or your plans or your viewpoint uh really resonate with people then it's sort of built to allow you to to
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progress. Now obviously, you know, more established political parties and political figures have a built-in base and uh awareness as far as like around around you but And money. Uh yeah, Yeah, lots of money. Lots more money. Uh you see that that idea that it sort of opens it up for everybody which is sort of more of an egalitarian kind of type When you say open to everybody you mean citizens. Right. So so it's only only people who are actually established citizens of the UE. Is there any kind of uh age limit? Like like we do 30 like for the US citizens it's 35. I think we discussed that and I don't think we landed on a on a age limit because our minimum age or anything like Yeah. I mean citizenship has, doesn't it? Uh yeah, you have to I think that's
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that's like I think it's 18 or I think it was 18. Yeah, so 18-year-olds can absolutely be Imperials. You heard it here first. Well As long as they're citizens. Asterisk. All right. Uh so I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean I mean the the open period and and to highlight this kind of craziness and kind of like wide swath of candidates you get from the open period, we we made the first post about that uh section a Star Wars where they were actually watching these different kind of like crazier candidate videos. So it was a way to kind of fill in the the world to so um you guys would understand that there were this this wide swath of people that were coming forward with very weird and strange options and obviously some of them are just looking
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for attention. Most of them like like Dave said aren't going to be able to reach the the top 10 because they're not going to get the general support. They won't have the money or the the built-in political system machinery behind them kind of like generating votes. Um but it it is a very open process and and doing so then allows a candidate like Leilani Addison who has no previous political experience to get her ideas out there and start to maybe build steamroller campaign that could come out of nowhere in this in this version of an election and and make an impact. I'm not entirely certain Leilani Addison isn't a fabrication personally. Like I I I there's there's a little there's in the realm of history behind these characters of like she kind of coming out of nowhere. I'm wondering if she's maybe not a fabrication of some
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political of some some party with a political agenda, but that's my opinion. So that's the lore how we got here. Let's let's go behind the scenes a little bit. How did we get here behind the scenes? When did this process start for you guys? How did we create our candidates? How did the primary process work? How did we get to where we're at behind the scenes? Well, weirdly enough it actually started probably in 2013. At least the initial conversations of this this idea of you know, a lot having some kind of election thing where we allow the community to take part in it. Like how does it because again because the community interaction is is such a big part of this and sort of woven so much into the fabric of this game that it was like
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but it was again it was that sort of thing of like how do we do this in such a way where it it's not you know, we accidentally don't you know, elect a bowling ball because people think it'd be funny which it would be. Uh but I mean everyone supports Bodomich Boatface as Imperator. Yeah, totally. But it didn't really kind of get rolling until actually it was last CitizenCon when at our panel we we sort of unveiled we'd been sort of talking about it and we're like, "Hey, you know, it's uh we're we're starting to I don't know if we'd actually established the the exact date where the Imperator was supposed to turn over that we were sort of coming up to that wall. Yeah, we we had the we had the 10-year term limit established and then just from the way the lore had been working out I think it was actually a backer who kindly pointed out that we're rapidly or reminded us at least that we were rapidly approaching our term limit on
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the forums and so we're like, "Oh, that's that's a really good point." And that little seed started putting to the motion of this idea of how we could we could move forward. Yeah. And and sort of as far as the structure goes again we're trying to figure out a way like how Adam was saying with this sort of super wide swath in the beginning that that eventually narrows down you know, would this government approach you know, this type electing this type of official, you know, to again cuz you know, they're coming off of the the Messers and stuff like that. They would want a way to make it seem like politics is accessible to the people and plus it gives opportunities to have sort of more eccentric um type candidates sort of pop up and you know, play around with sort of like the you know, Lord Buckethead uh thing if you're familiar with that. Supreme. Yeah.
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Uh And we had previously established that new citizens get um take their oath and everything and become citizens on Citizen Day. That's the name on October 10th, Citizen Con. Uh in real life Citizen Day in lore. And so the idea that new citizens would get the right to vote in this once-a-decade election was really cool to us. And so we decided to anchor the timing of it around uh that day of starting the Imperial election at that point. So, that was that was pretty fun. Um Yeah, so with a lot of like a lot of other things in Star Citizen, we we started with this broad structure that they worked through for um Citizen Con last year. And then we started to have meetings after that to
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slowly start to specify and kind of draw on the details about how the voting timeline would work, what candidates would uh you know, kind of be interesting and highlight uh certain themes or aspects of the game that we thought would be interesting. Um or kind of like play into um storylines that were already there. Uh Mira Ngo is a is a Senator uh Senator from Terra that we've mentioned in lore going back years. So, we knew the um the the Terra as capital kind of like theme is something we'd want to lean into. And she It seemed like a a wonderful way to kind of like pull this person who had represented that idea previously in the lore and elevate her to the candidate that's really going to
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bring that message forward in the in the election. So, it was it was about kind of getting more specific and then looking back at previous specifics and seeing how we could tie some things together to to bring some consistency to the to the universe. Okay. And And I'm sorry, go ahead. And if you saw our our citizen con presentation last year where we talked about kind of the pertinent issues facing the empire that helped us all provide a framework. So, we came up with what would voters in the universe really care about. What would they be talking about at the time and laying that on a grid and making sure that we had candidates with opposing views to make an interesting election for us about you know, and genuine proposals that we could believe in see as being viable options. Like we wanted to make it hard to pick.
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Yeah, and and and also the thing too was sort of like the referring to the sort of body mcboatface thing like we because we were sort of opening up this idea of letting the backers elect the imperator and honoring that basically was we we wanted to kind of get down to five candidates who would potentially challenge us. You know, like could throw us curveballs as far as a creative team as far as like what the direction the political direction of the empire changes to based on their priorities. But at the same time still have it make sense of like you know, it's not it's not going to be anything really drastic as far as like a tone change or something like that. So, it was it was finding candidates who had enough personality to make them pop and feel like they were real people who had
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you know, ideologies and viewpoints that they could stand on that again would could potentially throw us curveballs, you know, ala you know, Addison with her stance on AI uh, know, terrifies me at night. Uh, but again, it's one of those things that's like we can, you know, wo- wo- work with that. We have to figure out a way to work with that, which would be really just sounded very interesting and also kind of a fun way for the community to kind of again keep us on our toes and surprises. uh, the overwhelming sentiment from the community questions that came in on Spectrum, uh, were were about is this real? You know, it's is is this a real election? I Is the voting that begins tomorrow, you know, a real thing that I'm sorry. We're We're not Is it a real thing? And And will we
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will we honor the winner no matter who people vote for? And will it will it act Will we actually take the direction of the universe in the direction of this new emperor? That's the idea. Yeah. That's why again, like we didn't want We didn't want a Voting McVoteFace in there because that would, you know, people would do it just if nothing else to see if you know, so Yeah. I mean, to to touch more on what Dave said, uh, like we wanted we wanted Imperator candidates who had who were strong as characters, who had very clear personalities that shown through, and who would have policies that the community could get behind that would affect the story in a real a very real way. Yeah, and uh, just just I'm sorry, Jared. One just to kind of add into that. Like like I was saying, it was a very collaborative process from kind of like specifying how we wanted the
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election to go, drawing out the characters, Sherry adding a spin when doing the Galactopedia. So, we've been slowly specifying and kind of, you know, trying to enrich in the world. And I guess with this election, we're essentially asking the the backers to help us make a decision as to which direction to take and and what lens to kind of help frame the the the events that are going to occur over the next few years, you know, what is it going to be through a Costigan lens or is it going to be through an Addison lens? So, we're we're hoping that you guys are going to direct us into into which way you know, we we kind of like help drive some things going forward. So. All right. So, let's then let's get into some of the backers lower questions, the questions that they had and were voted up on spectrum
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that would maybe sway their particular decisions. Uh First off, overall, how much executive power does the Imperator in the UEE actually possess? Since there's no prime citizen anymore and legislature's mostly in the hands of the Senate, what you know, what kind of power and influence does the Imperator actually have? They're in a lot ways of setting the agenda for the UEE for the next 10 years. They they can't enact laws on their own, but they drive the conversation and are representative of kind of the people's will that way if you know, a candidate's coming out saying I want to shut down Synthworld, that becomes an important issue for the next 10 years. It's not a guarantee that will happen because of a democratic
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system and all the senators have to come on board and and vote and you know, all the systems have their say, but that becomes a major issue at that point. Yeah, they also have the ability to appoint appoint people like the appointment of the high secretary. So, like the high secretary will have a profound influence on like what infrastructure projects get funded and what don't. You know, that kind of thing. That's like that's on the Imperator to pick someone who'll do a good job. I I think a good example I'm going to just going to say that they they they bring in their people. So, yeah, you know, as far as the the legislative aspect of it, yes, the Senate handles it, but the the person in charge of the Senate is picked by you know, it's picked by the Imperator. So. I I think a good example from the previous term for Imperator Costigan is the the Human-Xi'an Trade Initiative, which
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really opened up how much Xi'an businesses were were allowed into the UE space. And that was one of his pet projects is that he really wanted to push our our current, you know, relationship with the Xi'an forward and open that up more. And so that was him driving that conversation, making the votes happen, and cheerleading that that policy. Um for people who follow the the weekly column links and if you're not aware, uh there's a there's a lore post that goes out uh publicly on the robertsspaceindustries.com website every single Tuesday as well as lore uh articles in uh the Jump Point magazine that goes out every month for subscribers. So there's tons of lore that gets published. Uh in a lot of those sources uh there there's a lot of mention about how the economy in the UEE
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is pretty bad at the moment. Uh especially public spending is at a very low point. But since there are no numbers or reports from the government, that's mostly hearsay. Uh can you give us a little impression of what the economic problems or hardships of this new imperator space with when he or she enters office? This is from a person who reads those posts, by the way. Sure. I mean again, you know, with the the the economic struggles are you know, I mean again, we're not we're not going to get too detailed as far as like outlining what the GDP of a planet is cuz that would fry my brain. Uh But um yeah, I mean they've got to they they they come in they got a lot of things that they got to deal with. You know, I mean that's what part of the debate was last week of like uh how do you handle the the Synth world?
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You have this thing that's completely just draining money. And right now there's sort of no end in sight as far as uh when they're going to un make the actually accomplish anything. So, you know, if you're looking for a quick financial boost to the the economy cut that thing off and redirect that money into other things, you know, so it'll they they got a lot. They got a Vandal military conflict to deal with. They got, a thinned out military and law enforcement. They got Synth world. They got a bunch of stuff to deal with. So, it's going to be fun. Synth world is Synth world is a scam. Oh, wow. Wow. It's a It's a money laundering operation as far as I'm concerned. Let's talk about Saul and Terra. Are
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there any credible indications that conflict between Saul and Terra could actually lead to some sort of civil war in the UEE? And if that's a real danger, how would each candidate probably handle this crisis? I personally think that as long as the war with the Vanduul is going on, that military resources in the UEE will be very occupied with that. But, once the war with the Vanduul ends, if indeed it ends, well, I mean, anything could happen. Yeah, I mean, it's I don't know. It's a tricky question cuz again, like some of our candidates are more Right now, the sort of the Mir Ono, obviously, is the much the loudest proponent of you know, part of my my goal is that I want to actually enact a transition.
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Now, whether she she's she can't just say it and it happens. So, obviously, like Will said, there's a democratic process that has to happen in order for her to pull it off. So, it's no guarantee that even if say she wins, but again, kind of the idea is like if she does win, then that would become more of a priority. So, it could have its reflections. But again, like if if Titus Costigan wins, there's no sense saying of like there would still be the people who are like advocating for Terra to be, you know, the new capital, but they don't have it doesn't have as much political clout because Yeah, the the issue won't go away. Yeah, Mir- Ono could again try to push the agenda in the Senate where where she's a representative from but you're not being the the Imperator the the captain of the UEE ship to a certain degree she doesn't obviously
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have the power or the the the authority to then kind of be able to to to really go in the direction but she could try legislative. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean the the Imperator is the head of the UEE is the figurehead of the UEE it's just it's again the it's not that type of thing cuz again they want to get away from that sort of Messer era thing where there's like I decree this and then that's law and if you disagree we'll shoot you. Uh I I I There's a lot of voices. There there's definitely movements on on Terra and in other systems for separatist things about the UEE's gotten too big. We can't control all these diverse systems with just one centralized government. We should all be ruling ourselves as individual systems and maybe the loudest version of that is on Terra but Mir doesn't take that stance. She believes in the empire but just wants to see the
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capital relocated for a Terra-centric view of the government and and it's interesting to think about whether it would actually whether the UEE would go to the point of a civil war if a system applied to separate from the empire or whether it would be a peaceful transition. Cuz they I mean there have been, you know, Karen rejected its representation and its recognition after the Messer era so they were they did have senators and they were so disgusted by what happened under the Messers that once they got out they said we don't want to be considered a recognized planet and abandoned their senators basically like they vacated their seats. So there I think you can you can again like I think to get to armed conflict there's a there's always a path for it but it's not necessarily a
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clear one. It would have to be pretty obvious like a violent separatist movement trying to kickstart something. But but yeah. As a follow-up to that since since the since the terror thing is is now become a campaign issue because of Mirano. Put yourself Put yourself in Mirano's shoes. She's got a campaign stop on Earth. She's got to convince the people of Earth to vote for her. How does she do this? I mean what's her tact? What Sorry, you I'll just say this quick before Adam goes on, but one of her one of the things that she wants to do is preserve the ancient buildings, ancient art, ancient history on Earth. So she's
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she's she's not trying to say that we'll abandon Earth and throw it in the garbage or anything. So her I mean well from a certain point of view. Like she wants to turn like the the ancient institutions and architecture and whatever of Earth into we preserve and revere and like like more like a museum or something like that and less like something that we are burning down by using so many resources. Like you know what I mean? she recognizes Earth as as our ancestral home ground. Yep. But like it's just not a we've moved beyond that. Yeah, one of the interesting wrinkles in her character I discovered while while writing her for this campaign was realizing that we we'd written her as coming from this long line her her father, her grandmother were also
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senators from Terra and have represented the system. So she actually grew up and spent time as a child on Earth. She was raised there for a handful of years. So she's not anti-Earth. She has a deep love and reverence and out of maybe a lot of the other candidates, she's maybe spent more time on Earth between the Senate and her childhood than a lot of other ones. So this isn't a this isn't a disregard for the planet. It It's uh a want to preserve it as you're right as Sherry was saying the the historical heart, but still kind of like symbolize to the empire and to our alien allies that humanity is evolving and we are also Terra is a better representation of who we are currently and where we want to go from her perspective. Got you. She's certainly been there more often
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than Kilos. I mean, than Titus. Titus. So, so so in order So, in order to preserve the Earth from the rigors of running an entire galactic empire, we should move the the capital to Terra so that so that Earth can uh recover. I Yeah, I think it's just it's it's also that thing too of, you know, we have a that that notion of a dark history. And there's a lot of association, I think, of like who we were in sort of our darker times that Earth was sort of the cent the center point of. And with Terra, it's like it's a it's it's a symbolic gesture as well of like you know, we are who we are today. We are not who we were back then. So, it's it's
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to the citizens of Earth she would probably say like, "Look, you know, this is not saying that Earth didn't do its job or it's not Yeah, exactly as everyone's been saying. Like, it's not a useful planet. It's just that right now we are an evolved society. And this becomes a a representation of that evolution because we have now This is the planet that we you know, uh inhabit that we kind of have treated better. We kind of control it all in a much more, you know, egalitarian type way because we you know, we live sort of in harmony with it rather than you know, Earth which was overpopulated and kind of torn apart and then rebuilt and stuff like that. So, it's I think it's also that sort of symbolic aspect of it that that's important of like the message it sends to the Xi'an culture that we're sort of acknowledging our past but we're moving
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beyond it. Earth is old and busted and Terra is the new hotness. It smells a little weird. Earth Earth has a little bit of funk. Have you gone outside yet? the grandma house. We need to get rid of the mildew but you know Let's Let's move on to Addison a little bit. Uh Addison has a has has has pretty strong opinions about the state of AI. Uh before we get into her views, let's uh set the table a little bit. What is the current state of AI in in in in the in the Star Citizen universe? Well, I haven't really thought about IT MUCH. I'M KIDDING. THAT'S David Haddock. It So, there is no AI. Uh as far as it's a an endeavor that scientific endeavor
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that people keep trying to do pursue uh but it always sort of ends poorly. Uh They've They've tried in the past. There was the Artemis which was an AI controlled piloting program that was supposed to take a a slow boat colony to the nearest star uh that disappeared. Uh there was like a traffic thing that they tried to build that could just was chaotic and caused a bunch of people to crash and die. Uh it's It was So, in the lore sense, it was always one of those things where like they kept trying to do it. It kept failing and they just were like, "You know what? We're done." And but every 10 or 15 or 20 years, somebody's like, "I have the I'm the one who's going to solve it." And they do and then some catastrophe happens. Uh The important thing about the the stance on AI is that it's actually the sort of the behind-the-scenes thing where
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the idea was that in the earliest earliest conversations with Chris about the Star Citizen universe, this is pre uh GDC announcement was you know, he wanted the the universe to feel tactile and when sort of having discussions about you know, what was it he saw in his head, what was it he wanted to build. You know, he liked the idea that pilots had to get into ships and fly places and that it was a future where you you had to do stuff. It wasn't I have a army of AI minions that I can just send out because obviously an AI will be better pilot or better you know, gunner or whatever than a human being. But you know, he wanted that Star Wars in the turret firing at tie fighters thing. Like that that feeling rather than just oh, the the targeting computer is going to auto lock on it and just blast it from 300,000 km away with
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pinpoint precision. Like so the that became the the goal of that's the universe we're trying to build. How do we justify that? And so that's how we came up with the idea of all right, well, they've tried it a bunch of times cuz it's just just to ignore it doesn't make any sense. Uh so they've just tried it a bunch of times and for whatever reason something always goes wrong and they've just sort of soured on the idea of it. But again, there's that notion of like it's the sort of holy grail. So there's there's always somebody out there who's like I'm going to be the one to crack the nut. The hubris of creating a new life. Um I I mean, there's advanced computer systems and robotics in the universe. We have our drones that fly around. But the goal is for for players to have to direct their actions, to have to be in control of them. You have simulated simple AI like the greeter on
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New Babbage who can have these simulated conversations, but it's very preordained teams. Not Yeah, exactly. So those kind of interactions and friendliness. So the system has gotten towards that, but the desire to have, you know, androids or ships that can manage everything from you. Their humanity has just soured on that overall. For majority, of course, there are people like Addison who say, "We are learning all the time. We can do better." But, it's a similar note to what people have said in the past. So, it's it's an interesting dilemma. She's basically saying previous attempts that AI advanced AI and synthetic life were stopped when all they could do was stand up on chairs.
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No, but we can do more. No, am I right? So, so so Addison's views are pro AI. Talk a little bit about about her views. Is Is it just How How far is Addison wanting to push this if she's elected? I think in her initial pitch, she's basically saying some of these simpler systems we have we're we're due to open up very restricted research and how we can improve them cuz cuz she is of a belief that if we can improve these systems even slightly, they may make things run more efficiently. The The massive manufacturing facilities all over OurCorp might be able to be more efficient, use a lot less electricity. So, she's kind of hoping that that through additional research, we might be
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able to advance those to kind of make some of those I don't know if you want to call them like dummy AI systems better and thus kind of lead to new breakthroughs or to to to new era areas that we can go into. The The argument against that obviously is that once you start to to it becomes a Pandora's Box. Maybe you accidentally discover something that then you can't be stopped or or lead to something bigger. So, that's the argument against it. But, yeah, I don't I She's not out here arguing like full AI everything. She's like, "Hey guys, it's been a few hundred years. We're smart. We can do this in a regulated smart way by taking these incremental steps potentially." But, yeah, but there's obviously potential drawbacks. but just for lifting up the restrictions on on the initial steps. superstitious about this and you know,
00:34:36
like oh, we shouldn't be afraid of the knowledge. Like it's just let's just be smart about it. Yeah, right now a lot of AI research doesn't get grant money, basically. And she wants them to get grant money. And a lot of it's illegal. So so so so so candidate Addison, are you prepared to go on the record now and say that you're not willing to follow the boondoggle of synthetic planets by attending to create synthetic people? I mean, she wants to give more funding to SynthWorld, so that wouldn't work on her. She'd be like, oh, actually, more money to SynthWorld and more money to AI. I'm so glad you mentioned that. SynthWorld for synth people. Because again, that she's I mean, the thing with her SynthWorld thing is also again, the idea that like in the the journey to create SynthWorld, it's
00:35:24
going to unlock potential new innovation that could have applications to other things. So it's like it's not SynthWorld is the goal, but SynthWorld can give, you know, birth to legion of new innovations. Yeah, what did we learn from the space program? Like all the cool stuff that came out of that. You know, initiatives. That's the plan. Uh so behind the scenes And tank. So behind the scenes, if if Addison wins, this was also one of the hot most highly voted questions. If Addison were to win, is that going to mean androids and everything around the corner? No. Cuz again, sort of like we were saying before, that might be her directive of like, hey, we need to loosen restrictions, but uh you know, it it doesn't necessarily mean like she takes office and then the next day there's Bishop
00:36:11
from Aliens, like there's still process you have to do. And again, she's not even saying that the doors would be flung open on AI. It's just it's if people are doing AI, they need to prove that basically they're taking safety precautions to uh you know, minimize loss. They're not taking risky chances, that type of thing. They have to kind of validate what they're doing. So, it's not the wild west with rampant AI, but it also means that like from a sort of a player's standpoint that like, you know, that means that there might be more need for resources on scientific bases and stuff like that like because they're getting more funding to do stuff that down the line there's more kind of uh impact on on various companies. Yeah, that is. So, if Edison wins, we're not talking about boot camp tests a year later or anything.
00:37:00
I I mean Maybe 10 years later. It It'll It'll change the tone of of the kind of missions like rather than like getting sent to investigate rumors of an illegal lab on a moon that might be doing illegal research, you're getting sent to an official lab that maybe is having issues, you know, that that kind of difference. And so, there's different ways we can explore what happens when this grant clears. Like, are we going to see another disaster unfold in real time? Is there a breakthrough that messes up with people or is changes the way it is? So, and they and these are also hooks that we talk to design about. It often inspires them as well and kind of what we've talked about before of our cyclical kind of design style of design and narrative feeding into each other.
00:37:49
So, it'll be interesting. That's true for like all of these like, you know, when we have like talked about how the advocacy will have changes or how does it affect the militia systems? And hopefully all that feeds back into how we're thinking about missions and stuff for for all the candidates. Yeah, this this is like I said, why why you vote matters cuz it it gives us the lens through which we'll be making narrative and design decisions going forward. So, uh yeah, just based on whoever you say should be steering the ship it'll it'll definitely trickle on down to a lot of the decisions going forward on our end. So so so so we we've talked about we've talked about a couple candidates here Mir No, Addison Let's talk let's touch on let's touch on let's touch on Costigan a bit. How
00:38:39
how how how is the younger Costigan going to be any different than the one we have now? Well, he'll have less political experience. And he looks a little bit less like Ortwin. He does look a little less like Ortwin. Did you have any problems with that getting that approved? Just personal ones. Costigan I love as a storyline because the idea of humanity as a whole coming off the Messer regime of where it was unquestionable everyone was going to be related anyone in charge was going to have the last name Messer. So we finally got away from that and we're coming up to this first chance to vote for back-to-back Imperators named Costigan and Don't like it. A lot of people have an intrinsic
00:39:25
reaction to not liking it but there are some people in the verse who want that clear dynastic kind of inheritance and are drawn to it and a lot of people are saying we shouldn't even consider that but just take the candidate on his own merits and so it's have merits. I was going to say does he does he have any allure behind the dynasty thing? Uh if essentially he he has been successful in the private sector which is something that that he is basically uh trumpeting. He's also he's also been slightly trying to say hey I've been watching my dad do this for 10 years. So even though I have no political experience, I understand what it takes to actually be in this position. He's like I've got a unique viewpoint into it which is always an
00:40:13
in these circles and Yeah, yeah he's which is which is a weird thing it's a weird a needle for him to try to thread but but he is he is trying to push that and yeah so I I I I think experience running a you know a multi-system massive corporation can have some comparisons to to government. Well. And and the thing too I mean you know bear in mind that that Kilos Costigan was the high secretary before he was emperor so I mean for for most of Titus' life he's been around politics so he's sort of come up around it he knows the players he knows the people he probably gets it more of a unfiltered view you know from his dad about how things work you know
00:41:01
so Yeah he's trying to sell you. I mean that's what he's selling. Yeah that's exactly. And I think like if you look at the current economic state that we talked about a little bit about earlier with the UE and how that's wanting to shift like the cost of government is very high right now and they need more income coming in you look at the past couple decades of like the sale of Stanton system where businesses are taking a larger role in government and that line is kind of starting to blur more and Costigan represents that next evolution business forward government getting rid of some of the restrictions that control how businesses act and where and letting you know Shear much more pure version of capitalism to take form which a lot of people think would be good
00:41:50
for the UE. Yeah particularly when you're dealing with kind of economic a strained economy you know they want to bring in that sort of business and that sort of uh business innovation to help refuel things and re-excite things and and get them back on the up line. You mentioned relaxing some restrictions and stuff let's let's talk about the sale for a little bit. Uh Lasalle, and forgive me if I'm wrong with uh Lasalle is the one who wants to redesign the Fair Chance Act. That's right. He wants to allow mining and other possible business things to happen in a systems that are protected by the Fair Chance Act. All right. So so for because it's always somebody's first show here, give us a quick quick primer on the Fair Chance Act and why we would want to keep it and
00:42:39
why we would want to change it. Uh so it was a a a initiative that was enacted after the fall of the Messers one of the first ones that was initiated basically fall of the dictators who had basically terraformed a planet with a developing evolving species on it that was probably going to achieve sentience. So they terraformed it which completely destroyed their environment and killed every all of them. And the sort of fallout from that they kind of were laughing and drinking while they were pointing at the bodies. And so footage of that kind of got out and that's what kind of sparked the revolution that overthrew them. So the new government set up a a thing basically saying that if you come across a planet that has a developing species as defined as uh you know, they are showing aspects of higher thought
00:43:29
uh that might develop that it's the the planet will be sealed off basically and protected by the government and military and no one is allowed to interfere with the species in their development until they're able to and pro or con. So if they start fighting each other, you let them fight. But until they become spacefaring in which case then we would make contact with them. So they have to get up to that point on their own and then we would reach out to them. But yeah, so Lasalle is basically saying it's obviously you cut off entire planets from strip mining. Well, and he's saying that it's been applied too broadly. Like we look at some of the systems that are now fair chance systems, and there's systems that are just of scientific interest that have no life that have been declared fair chance systems. There's systems where the intelligent species,
00:44:17
he would argue some scientists say aren't, and so there's some question there. And just about that the the fair chance act has been the sledgehammer of a law to block development, and he wants to take a more refined careful approach to it. Yeah, and the Fair Chance Act has been around for since like the early 2800s, I believe. So, like a a hundred 150 years in the in the Star Citizen universe. So, I believe a lot like Admiral Hackett the AI, he's saying we should It's time for us to Addison, excuse me. Uh it's time for us to go back and kind of like re-examine and update this policy for the modern world, for these maybe new modern technologies that would allow us to maybe go extract resources from places that might have life, but may not end up affecting their
00:45:07
development. So, he's I I I think that's part of the angle he's trying to get to is saying like uh I don't want to get rid of this, but let's just re- redefine it. And yeah, let's let's let's modernize it. Don't you agree? Yeah, I mean, he he's trying to present that he is walking a fine line between protecting a planet that only has cellular life that has the Fair Chance Act applied to it, and protecting a planet that has multiple sentient species who may or may not be engaging in warfare. He's he's trying to present that he doesn't want to strip mine planets with like probable proto-sentient or sentient species, but maybe that planet that just has cellular life, I mean, why are we protecting it anyway? Damn. Yeah, that is that is his stance. And do they taste good?
00:45:55
Do they taste good? Only one way to find out. What garnish goes best with All right. Our our fifth candidate is uh Sherrod, and the thing I remember from Sherrod is uh is her stance on that Synthworld is a is a scam. Am Am I Am I Am I Am I overstating that? Uh Sherrod wants to stop, you know, Synthworld in its tracks, reevaluate, make it stop hemorrhaging and bleeding money from the entire galaxy. Uh this seems like a pretty good thing to me. Yeah, basically she I mean she's the sort of she's the current high secretary uh of under Costigan. Uh so she's hoping and that she kind of steps up into his role. But yes, I mean her sort of thing is like we need to hit the brakes on Synthworld. They need to prove unless they can prove definitively
00:46:44
like, "Hey, we got a timeline for this or we're making legitimate progress, we're going to think about shuttering that program." Yeah, she's also um as as high secretary for the past like 8 years, she I believe has seen how much the infrastructure of the empire could use an update. Um so one of her campaign promises was to to fund a infrastructure project in each system in the empire. And I really think she would in her heart believes credit should go to improving infrastructure in these systems rather than the Synthworld right now. Or at least until as Dave said, there there is a clear plan um uh for the Synthworld. So um yeah, she she she's got she's got uh the economic state in her mind because she's been
00:47:32
dealing with this for the these past 8 years, and she is prioritizing the infrastructure improvements over Synthworld at this at this moment. Yeah, and she she personally um in her in her career as high secretary and before, she makes it a priority to try to tighten loopholes and root out corruption where she sees it. So um in my opinion, she sees Synthworld as something that has not had the oversight that it needs in order to justify the continual cost. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities for for graft and sort of people to take advantage of it by charging $30,000 for pens and stuff like that. Yet if I were one of her competitors, I would say it has gotten out of hand under her watch. But technically again cuz she's you know, Costigan empowered her like she's his high secretary. So I think her
00:48:23
counter argument is like I I was doing my job because I was enacting the policies that Costigan wanted to do. Uh so she's not throwing him under the She's not throwing him under the bus, but just saying like, you know, she's not she's a work she's a soldier, you know, like she's doing following what she was told to do. Yeah, also he hasn't endorsed her. So I mean she can say whatever she wants. and and who's to say that she didn't say wasn't privately saying like, you know, Kilos, we need to cut this synth world crap and him going, "No, I like it. I want to you know, I like $30,000 pens." Uh Hey, they write upside down. Yeah, that'll be worth it. Uh or you can just use a pencil. With that. Sherry, you bring up a good point that uh the current Imperator has not
00:49:10
endorsed a candidate. Uh is he planning to? He is not. Um he is a member of the Universalist Party and usually the uh Imperator who is in charge who is a member of the one of the political that has a candidate will endorse the candidate of their political party. But in this case, there are two Universalist candidates and one of them is his son. So he has he decided or in my opinion, this is what he decided because he has not outright said anything yet. That he had to make a choice between backing what his party wanted with Sharad and backing what his son wanted. So he chose instead to do nothing. Yeah. And we I saw this question on the on the forums too about multiple
00:49:57
candidates from the same party. And it's it's totally allowed and has happened in the past. It's become less in favor because the parties feel like it splits their vote and hurts their chances at taking the Imperator seat. So usually someone when they make the primaries will potentially drop out or back one of the other candidates. Um but this has happened in the past where you have enough candidates who believe that they have the rightful heir to the throne so to speak and which was maybe a poor choice of terms in being part of Cartas Castian. But um But yeah, so it's uncommon but not unheard of in in the Imperator election. Yeah, and and we like that bit of diversity within how the parties run themselves, you know, how we we tried to like the Universalists it's like best ideas come forward. Uh the Transitionalists the Mir No's party kind
00:50:45
of coalesced around her because she is the most prominent figure in that party right now. And Paul La Salle seemingly was running the Centralist party for years prior to the election as a way to to kind of freeze out potential other candidates is is what his opponents would say. So it it it just thought it was interesting how you could we could we could give the different uh parties a little bit of uh flavor by giving you know giving how they they deal with their their Imperator candidates a little differences. Uh we we've got just a couple minutes left. Let's step a step behind the scenes a little bit. We've we've we've we've been talking a lot about the story and all and remember folks that there are there is the post on the robertsspaceindustries.com website that details the bios for everybody and then a a whole host of links on that page to
00:51:34
previous lore posts as well as the Galactapedia articles where you can learn all about it before you begin casting your vote tomorrow. Um Let's talk about Let's take some behind the scenes questions here. Uh the candidates all appear to either be right-wing, centrist, or barely pushing center-left in this person's opinion. Why are there no extreme left-wing candidates? I mean, weirdly enough, I for me at least, like when we were looking at these, I wasn't sort of thinking of like doing one-to-one analogs of like, "Oh, this person's right-wing or left-wing or central." Like, I don't really care. Like, it was more of just like it was sta- once we came up with sort of like the five topics of like the synth world, the Vanduul,
00:52:22
um the economy, uh xeno relations, stuff like that, it was just sort of like filling out a chart of like Who's going to be for what? And who was against them. Like, that kind of thing. So, they as a as a lineup made made sense. And then kind of give them that sort of sprinkling of the uh I mean, I Yeah, but that's just that's just me. I mean, There's also a lot of traditionally left, quote-unquote, policies that are already law within the UEE. You know, the idea of universal healthcare, universal education, universal housing. So, the Empire on a whole has kind of these backbones to which maybe is why they didn't come up so much in this election versus the people who are voicing objections to it because of the status quo.
00:53:09
So, it's what it is one thing to kind of consider that like the current position of the UEE and how the use uh candidates are reacting to it. I I think when I was reading the posts, and I've been following along as they've they've been going up and everything, the the the the sense that I get, and we have not had this conversation, so you can you feel free to tell me if I'm interpreting this wrong, but the sense that I have gotten from reading your posts on this uh going back to 2012, and especially over the last year, is that simply running a galaxy is a lot more complicated than pointing everything in this direction or pointing everything in this direction. Yeah, the running a galaxy exists in the gray areas. I mean that was that was always again like you know that was one of the core tenants that Chris wanted when going it was like we did not want the evil empire. We did not want everyone good.
00:53:57
There was a lot of gray. You kind of like people. You didn't like people. There were there was just tough to kind of nuance to decision making. Yeah, but one of my favorite comments I like to see in any of the Imperia articles is when people start to debate policy positions and about how oh I really like this candidate because of this but I really don't like that about that candidate. So I like that yeah there there are no straight white knights or straight kind of like like terrible like there there there shades of gray all around because I've if there's a perfect politician out there I've I've never met her or I'm I've never never heard about him. So I I wanted to make sure that we had a bit of that diversity of opinion even within candidates trickle on down through
00:54:45
everyone. And I mean we had some of the more extremes in the earlier ones like there was I can't remember his name but there was the guy who was sort of like the real hardcore like you know I hate the Human first type dude. Right. Oh yeah. Calvin Garret. He didn't get he didn't get past the primaries right? Yeah. No. No no we got to the second round. Yeah he got to the second round. Yeah he didn't get past the secondary vote. But it was it became one of the things again going back to what we were saying earlier of like you know we want to yes the the community is picking but we wanted to kind of keep it a little hemmed in just so we didn't kind of it didn't take us in a direction that we're like uh you know I'm not sure if the game would necessarily want to go that way. So we that's why we we kept them kind of the way we did. And if you go back and look at those primary candidates those are touching on
00:55:32
storylines that we want to have in the universe for you to come across even though they're not the main political views that human first initiative we want to have as a threat going on and there's a lot of I mean he made it that far in the election process so there's a lot of people who agree with that even though it's a controversial stance. So we want that to come out when you're exploring the verse of running into people who feel this way. So So so just because somebody doesn't win this election doesn't mean that's the last you're going to see of them in the in the ongoing story of Star Citizen. I'd personally like to see Kassi run in the next for the next Imperator. That would be a lot of fun. For those that don't know Suj Kossi was the first Tevarin elected to the Senate. So and that was in a senatorial election we did
00:56:19
three four years ago. So yeah. Senate elections are a whole different beast happening at a different time. Yeah. I was I was actually surprised she didn't win this one. I was also surprised that she didn't manifest in this one. I I I I I thought that was kind of obvious. Maybe that's why it didn't happen cuz it was obvious. Well couldn't do posters yet. Yeah. I I I think I think Kassi needs a little bit more It's long term. It's long term. Just to throw out one quick quick answer to one of the questions on here. Will there be machines or polling stations in the game? Right now the voting is only on the website just to clear it. It's something we want to look at down the road but for now for now make your voice heard on the website. In the game though you can go check out some awesome election posters
00:57:07
that and and kind of election ads that are in 3.11.0 that just got released so please I think those are really cool so you should see them around stations and Last question before we let you go. Who are you voting for? Addison. CHAOS. I DON'T KNOW. I MIGHT GO NEAR A NULL. Just to stir things up. I think I like her policies, but she's she's fun. She's got some interesting She's I it'd be that or Addison because Addison is definitely like as much as AI unsettles me, it would be an interesting challenge to have to to deal with creatively. Yeah, I mean, I think Sherrod honestly
00:57:56
does have good ideas and good policies. So, if I were if I were thinking about it from like a long-term economical standpoint, I think she'd probably uh do the best job. But, my heart my heart is with Addison. Will Will? I'm not going to say. It's It's a private vote. That's fair fair fair. Adam, did you have a vote? Um I It's It's so tough because I've had to get inside the head of all five of these candidates and try to understand their their pitch what what they're for and what they're against. Uh But, my parents are both educators. Um I I and Addison kind of comes from that background. And I I think I would probably vote for her just for just for fun. But, um yeah, I think Sherrod could also would might be a better choice for the actual game world. So, it's uh There's that
00:58:45
divide between like auto universe Adam versus in universe Adam and yeah. Lead writer Will is excited about all these candidates by the possibilities they're going to offer. And I hope the community I I hope to be surprised by them. I'm I'm really excited. I I've been seeing the debates, following along, and it's been absolutely fantastic. So, thank you for all being so excited about participating in this conversation. It's meant a lot. Yeah. Yeah, it's very cool. Thank you, Uh for for myself, I think I'm going to vote for Sherrod for a for a very selfish reason. What's that? Sith world? I I never want to see Sith world finished. I want to be able I want to be able to fly around it like the like the partially constructed Death Star from Return of the Jedi. I never wanted to see it finished. So I the Olympic Stadium is exactly so so exactly I want a giant partially constructed synthetic planet
00:59:36
to explore I never want it finished for what I want in the game. Parts from it too. So I'm I'm voting for even if there's just a slight chance that it could push it push development towards that. All right guys, thank you so much for taking the time to be here on the show. That's that's our show. As we usually do we are going to throw the raid to a star citizen streamer who is playing right now and the star citizen streamer we are rating today is nerd show intel is a terrific streamer has possibly the most impressive streaming setup. I've ever seen for a human being. On this planet.
01:00:24
It's it's it's it's it's almost too And I'm not jealous at all. And when you go there. And you join him and say. Jared is not jealous at all. So for star citizen live. I'm Jared. That's Dave. That's will that's Adam and that was Sherry. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week everybody. Take care. Bye bye. Bye.

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