User:Murgh/Structural Reform Act

Overview

The "Structural Reform Act"' was ratified by GalCop High Command exactly one standard cycle after the Great Standardization. If fundamentally altered the construction paradigms of all space-bound structures from the moment of its implementation.

Its announcement was unveiled with carefully calculated timing. As the outrage of the galactic populace over the Standardization began to gather momentum, this second controversy was designed to divert attention from the first, while providing massive financial incentives for planetary economies and giants of industry to fall in line. Conceived entirely by the GalCop Central Mainframe (D.E.E.M.), the reforms were justified by vast projected gains in profits and logistical efficiency, but the consequences for the aesthetics of space travel cannot be overstated.

The incentives

Volumetric Efficiency Standards

The Structural Reform Act did not frame the change as an intervention in industrial design but as an "Economic Liberation". It introduced the Volumetric Efficiency Standard (VES), based on the "Kepler Conjecture", which promised significant profit to those who complied, with commensurate rewards for early adopters.

The industries connected to construction, transportation and logistics in space were presented with a new reality:

• The Argument: A curved hull filled with square cargo crates creates "Dead Volume", a certified average mathematical waste of 26% of the internal capacity of a ship or station. GalCop assessed that that this inefficiency would no longer be sustainable.
• The Promise: By altering all structural design principles to Planar Hulls, flat-sided space craft constructed of "elementary polyhedra" matching the cargo grid, all logistics industry would reclaim its 26% "lost revenue".
• The Boom: To the industrial giants, this was not tyranny but an invitation to a gold rush. Planetary economies that retooled their shipyards to produce "low-poly" plating stood to make profits in the trillions. The leadership of every major space construction conglomerate lobbied aggressively for the Act.

The ultimatum

The Act delivered a brutal ultimatum to the existing fleet: "Modify to Compliance or Decommission". Private ship owners across GalCop-controlled space were given a brief 5-cycle "grace period" to bring their vessels into geometric compliance.

An unprecedented transitional period followed, termed by the mechanics of the time as "The Great Shave". Innumerable space craft, from grandiose luxury liners to humble traders, queued at drydocks for the mandatory restructuring. Their undulating curves were torched off and replaced with crude, angular slab-plating.

• Obsolescence: Hulls determined to be beyond regulation alteration were declared "Geometrically Obsolete".

• The Cost: Owners who refused or could not afford the "faceting" were denied docking permits, taxed into oblivion, and eventually scrapped for their metal.

The Reptilian Registry

To signal this shift, the Act stipulated that the new fleet, whether reclaimed and enhanced or newly constructed, must bear the nomenclature of lawfully compliant space craft, demonstrated by adopting a "serpentine" naming scheme, the Reptilian Registry.

The symbolism was crude but effective: a reptile is an organism whose exterior is composed of scales (flat plates). A snake a flexible tube made of rigid polygons. Consequently, the GalCop Craft Registration Deptartment would only accept name applications that could justify thematic relevance in order to be certified "space legal".

Case study: The Starboat

The transition is best illustrated by the efforts of Marine Trench Co. for whom the continued operation of their submarine-to-space craft, the Fulmar, was critical. Originally a streamlined vessel with compound curves for aquatic hydrodynamics, the Fulmar was flagged as non-compliant.

A desperate solution was found by "facetting" the hull using only 10 massive lightweight alloy plates, resulting in a form bearing only a vague resemblance to its former fluid shape. To pass the registry, the bird name was abandoned for a new anguilliform name, the "Moray". The GalCop Bureau of Clarification would later emphasize that the acceptance of this name application illustrated the "munificence" of the arbitration panel.

Galactic Market Network

Prior to the Reform, interstellar trade was a gamble of hearsay and outdated manifest logs, barter and uncertain currencies. DEEM's introduction of the Galactic Market Network (GMN) replaced this chaos with algorithmic certainty, as GalCop established itself as the galaxy’s central clearing house. The GalCop Credit which is to say "The Credit" ( ₢) became the only recognized measure of value.

With the "Trade Route incentive", an exclusive cartel of systems that constructed a VES-compliant orbital trade station, initially the utilitarian Coriolis station, eventually followed by the Dodo and Ico stations, were granted GMN "trusted node" status.

The advantages and disadvantages to membership became obvious. Key trade hubs with connectivity to instant cryptographical GMN credit transfers made exclusion from the marketplace unthinkable.

Non-compliant systems would be looking from the outside in on the only trading network that truly mattered. Limited to physical asset barter these worlds needed no military sanction to be brought to heel. Cut off from the circulation of the Credit, any system's pretension of "independence" quickly rotted into liquidity necrosis.

The Governor's franchise

To accelerate adoption, GalCop offered local governments a "Franchise Agreement" of irresistible value. The position of Station Governor became the most coveted role in any star system, chiefly seized by local power elite. In exchange for enforcing the Structural Reform Act and the the Reptilian Registry, the local Station Governor was granted:

• Subsidized security: low-cost access to a GalCop Viper fleet for system defense.

• Fiscal autonomy: The right to retain 100% of local commodity tariffs and docking fees.

This consolidation of military and economic power transformed the role of Station Governor from a public servant into an orbital oligarch. A galaxy-wide survey later estimated that over 76% of these posts were attained not through democratic mandate, but through some manoeuvre of corruption. The position was simply too lucrative to be left to the voters.

In local matters of dubious background politics, GalCop never intervened. As long as a station remained a predictably fixed node, the House was indifferent to who spun the wheel.