May 2022 - Opening Statement
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with threads that haven't been updated or used in years, threads and training materials that are horrifically out of date, threads that simply haven't existed despite how useful they would be, and an entire forum area whose permissions haven't been touched for an extremely long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thread, along with updating some existing ones including the reports thread and regional exemptions thread (another out-of-date resource that hadn't been updated for the better part of a year).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.
