Defense Minister's Desk

Welcome to the Defense Minister's Desk! This thread will be used by the Minister of Defense to keep the public up to date on matters relevant to the North Pacific Army. Questions may be posted in this thread or, if concerning sensitive information, sent directly to the Minister of Defense. The current Minister of Defense is @9003 .

For rules, information, or links pertaining to the North Pacific Army, please consult this thread.

Alright, let's get this show on the road and off the rails!

Firstly, I'd like to thank @Pallaith for giving me this opportunity to serve as his Minister of Defense, my predecessor @mcmasterdonia for his hard work last term, and the members of NPA High Command, who have all been incredibly supportive so far.

As it stands, there are some areas where the NPA's operating very well. We have a solid core of active updaters, we're consistently hitting more targets in an update than any other org bar Lily, we're consistently able to attract members of other orgs to run with us, and we're very much in the loop when it comes to major operations. We've also made major technological improvements thanks to @9003, which have opened up ways of running ops that were previously unavailable to us. We have a new jump point, LunarPunk, which both updates later than our old one and avoids the issues we had with the old one's founder nation.

However, there are also multiple areas where things are, to put it bluntly, a mess. Our forum infrastructure is wildly deficient, with threads that haven't been updated or used in years, threads and training materials that are horrifically out of date, threads that simply haven't existed despite how useful they would be, and an entire forum area whose permissions haven't been touched for an extremely long time (the delegate and most of high command didn't have access to our forumside command area, while long-gone members still did). I've started tackling that by creating this Desk thread, a combined information/links thread, and a standing orders thread, along with updating some existing ones including the reports thread and regional exemptions thread (another out-of-date resource that hadn't been updated for the better part of a year). While I've updated the org's roster (and added a new section for former members), the NPA's mission logs still haven't been updated for over 3 months. The org's discord server has also undergone a bit of modernization, though there's still much work to be done there. Though we're consistently getting good update hit numbers, we just don't have very many pilers, which limits our ability to contribute to holds or protect important targets. The org's Legal Code section, among other things, mandates good behavior, makes it a crime for the MoD to not try hard enough, requires that the NPA not use “excessive force” or cause “permanent harm” unless there’s an exemption, treats passwording and closing embassies as equally destructive, and requires that the NPA give natives “the tools to restore the region to its native state” prior to moving our nations out (despite that making no sense where game mechanics are concerned).

The beginning of this term is very much going to be focused on reconstruction: reconstructing our administrative infrastructure, reconstructing our recruitment efforts (I've coordinated with @Sir Kasto to add an NPA recruitment template for the Gameside Advocates, which is a good start), reconstructing our rank system and associated expectations (officers who don't lead and soldiers who don't do anything shouldn't be officers and soldiers; I've started by removing all CTEd and long-gone recruits from the roster), and so on. A solid foundation and good infrastructure will significantly help the org's operations and growth. As this will be an incremental thing, we'll be making frequent use of this thread for updates on it.

To help with this administrative stuff and managing the org in general, I'm pleased to appoint @Nimarya and @Owenstacey as Deputy Ministers of Defense (take your oaths if you feel like it). Nim's been the backbone of the org for a long time, and is one of its most dependable leaders and members. Owen's a recently promoted General who's led numerous ops and has been an active presence in high command.

There's a lot of work to do, so let's get to it.

As per this report, @Lord Dominator has been promoted from Sergeant to Warrant Officer. Congrats!

Hello, hello, it's a new term, which means there's a lot of stuff to do.

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for leaving the position so abruptly this summer. Chalk it up to a number of unfortunate circumstances. This definitely left the org in an awkward position, though @Nimarya's done a fantastic job (as usual) with the remainder of the previous term and it's a shame to see her go.

While updating is important and we'll (obviously) continue doing that both on our own and with our partners, our top priority right now must be rebuilding the NPA's numbers and activity from the ground up. For some time now, the NPA's been almost exclusively powered by a tiny handful of active individuals, leading to significant lulls when even one of those people cannot maintain that activity. This is unsustainable and shouldn't be an issue for a military with a feeder as its recruiting base. Especially given that a number of experienced officers have either gone inactive or left the game entirely, replenishing our numbers must be a focus this term.

We'll tackle this focus on recruitment in a few ways:

1. I've restarted contacting new citizens via the forum regarding the NPA. This kind of direct communication was effective when I was VD, and was effective last time I was MoD. If people are interested in this sort of thing, I'd like to create a team within the NPA dedicated specifically to forum recruitment.
2. The Gameside Advocates oversee the RMB and promote various government events and ministries on it, including the NPA. The Ministry of Home Affairs telegrams nations to promote and recruit. Working with both the GAs and HA will be important to ensure the NPA's promoted gameside.
3. NPA operations and news must be consistently promoted to the region and the wider game, through Discord pings, TNP forum posts, NS forum posts, regionwide TGs, and RMB posts.
4. When a new member joins the NPA, it's critical that they have access to up-to-date training materials, tools, and active officers able to train them. Nimarya was working on a series of training guides last term, and I'd like to see those come to fruition.
5. Card incentives have always been effective at bolstering existing recruitment and retention efforts. Even something as simple as giving new members a legendary card for their first two operations would help, and with the government card gifting service being operational, we now have a straightforward way to make card-related events and incentives happen.
6. Many NPAers don't have Discord. These members tend to get lost in the weeds even if they're otherwise active, since they don't receive Discord pings. While the Standing Orders thread I made last term helps, all NPA members should be contacted via the forum as well as the Discord with new orders.

On a broader level, it may be worthwhile to re-examine some of our current ways of doing things from the perspective of recruitment. The NPA dispatch is tucked away inside the Handbook. Perhaps it could be featured more prominently. A forum account is mandatory for joining the NPA, even though there's nothing about being a member of the auxiliary that should require it (it's not like pile orders are exactly sensitive anyway).

Related to the above, many members and prospective applicants simply can't update consistently, even if they're otherwise available outside of update. Yet there are plenty of ways that such people can contribute to the NPA, such as recruiting for it or helping keep our materials up-to-date. Currently, the Ministry of Defense exists as a sort of vestigial body within the executive. Perhaps it could be developed into something that lets interested people help out in a way that doesn't involve being available at specific times of the day.

Alongside recruitment, we need to focus on getting our administrative affairs in order and keeping them that way. I updated the informational threads from last term, along with the NPA FAQ (for probably the first time in 6 years). The roster is also up-to-date; I removed a number of CTE or otherwise inactive people and contacted the org's members to establish people's availability for updates. This mainly just leaves the mission logs, which haven't been touched in months. Once the initial effort's out of the way, it shouldn't be too tedious to keep them up-to-date.

In case it wasn't said elsewhere, the Chiefs system created by @mcmasterdonia is no longer in effect, though @9003 will remain Chief of Tech. It's the only one of the roles that had any observable benefit. The current members of High Command are @QuietDad and @9003 indefinitely, and myself and the Deputy Ministers provisionally.

Speaking of which, I'm pleased to announce that @9003, @Kronos, @Lord Dominator, and @St George will be Deputy Ministers of Defense this term. Welcome aboard!

After a sudden and sad turn of events, He shall not be named vacated office, and now I am in charge. In what can only be described as my own style this opening speech will be kept short. As well as most likely riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. However, with the power of Grammarly, I can now spell check on the run!


My goal this term or what is left of this term is to 180 the NPA. The NPA is in a unique spot right now with a bear bones crew that is active. Most of who have built years of rust up on what was once state-of-the-art skills. Outlined below are some projects I have that you can look forward to and I will let the projects speak for themselves:



Project Rewrite:
The current laws governing the NPA allow for several limitations and loopholes. With the help of my staff in HC I have laid out the starts to rewrite the current guiding laws. It is my hope to be able to release this draft to the RA shortly. Allowing for the highly skilled proofreading that I lack. The goal of Project Rewrite is also to give the NPA a better direction and the ability to be fully trained and prepared in the current R/D world.

Operation N.E.W.T:
New Education With Technology. We have and continue to have state-of-the-art tech. Courtesy of the Chief of Tech who if I do say so myself is not only the best person in TNP. He is also incredibly skilled at R/D and well deserves endless gifts of legendary cards... but I digress. Our tech is state of the art and I am currently working on an out-of-update training program OUT for short. To allow officers and soldiers to practice updating even if they can not often attend updates. OUT is powered by GOB (Need some words that it stands for) and as such would allow someone to train without requiring another person to be online at the same time.
The other side of NEWT is creating and more so finishing guides to our tech. What good is tech if no one can use it? My goal is to utilize my team to write/finalize step-by-step guides for tech as well as R/D in the modern sphere.

More to come.

Due to a family bereavement I'm resigning as Deputy Minister. I... don't have time for NS right now.

St George:

Due to a family bereavement I'm resigning as Deputy Minister. I... don't have time for NS right now.

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Sorry to hear that MJ