NationStates

Thoughts?

Draft 4
Title: Lost at Sea

Description: Years after the end of the failed search for the missing sailboat Adventurer and its crew, the boat was finally found, locked in pack ice in the oceans around Northern Brancaland. As major news sources bring the incident back into the spotlight, concerned citizens are asking how to prevent this from happening again.

Option 1: “Obviously, we need to have all boats create and submit a travel plan to my office before they leave port.” says Minister of Maritime Matters @@RANDOMNAME@@ while setting a new globe on your desk. “We’ll track them with radar and send a rescue team if they stray off course or send a distress call. Private boaters would have to pay a small fee to cover expenses, but it will be worth it for everyone's safety.”

Effect: rescue teams are overwhelmed searching for boats a few meters off course

Option 2: “Everyone knows that you’ll reach the Great Ice Wall if you sail too far!” exclaims infamous flat-earther @@RANDOMNAME@@ while trying to flatten your globe with a rolling pin. “It would be too much of a hassle to use all that fancy radar to track boats, especially when the solution is obvious: Ban boating! If no one sails, no one will get trapped in the ice!

Effect: @@NAME@@ is pretty much landlocked

Option 3: "You're all overlooking the biggest problem, the ice!" exclaims @@RANDOMNAME@@, the one member of the "Climate Changers Society", while lighting your globe on fire. "If we increase our carbon dioxide output by removing our environmental protection laws, we'll raise the temperature of the globe and melt all the troublesome ice! Sure, it might take a few years and we might lose a few coastal cities to sea level rise, but out boats will never get stuck in ice again!"

Effect: citizens wonder why the government is stocking up on sandbags

Option 4: “Avast! Ye government knaves have no right to dictate where me and me hearties travel!” shouts suspected pirate @@RANDOMFIRSTNAME@@ Blackbeard, barging into your office and waving a cutlass and impaling the remains of your globe.“Ye government scallywags! The @@LEADER@@’s Revenge shall sail wherever we please with no interference, or you’ll walk the plank!”

Effect: ships no longer sail as no one wants to encounter the @@DEMONYM@@ Pirate Crew
Small changes to the wording of option 2.

Draft 3

Replaced the cheapskate with a flat-earther and added Baggieland's pirate-speak suggestions.

Draft 2

Added a crazy 3rd option and changed some wording to extend this to all types of boats.

Draft 1

Years after the end of the failed search for the missing sailboat Adventurer and its crew, the boat was finally found

Was there any evidence on board about hat had happened to the crew?

And seriously, who likely is it for a ship that's been missing for years to be still on the surface rather than long-since sunk?

Bears Armed wrote:And seriously, who likely is it for a ship that's been missing for years to be still on the surface rather than long-since sunk?

While I can't give odds, it is something that has happened. HMS Resolute, for example, was a polar exploration ship. It became trapped in ice in late 1853, and was abandoned in spring of 1854. A year and a half later, in fall 1855, it was found floating free more than a thousand miles away, and was recovered and returned to the crown. These days, the Oval Office has a desk made from that ship's timbers.

A seaworthy ship floating free can survive quite a bit in the right conditions!

How about "the boat was finally found, run around in remote northern Brancaland." This would imply that it crashed a while ago and was only found now.

The SS Baychimo was abandoned in 1931 after it got trapped in ice (with the intent to reclaim it once the ice melted, but to make a long story short, they lost track of it), and was last seen still afloat in 1969.

Once, a mere lifeboat was found adrift 27 years after the ship it came from sank (unfortunately, that shows that it failed to do its task of saving anyone's life, or they'd have driven it to shore sooner).

The Governor Parr is also said to have been sighted for "many years" after being damaged in a storm and abandoned, although how many isn't specified. This one is suspect, most sources I can find are parrotting each other.

Okay, so the definite examples of ships getting lost like that in RL are "all" from ships exploring or trading in the arctic...
Wouldn't that therefore probably be the most probable situation in the NS-verse as well, with any exceptions far too rare for (a) people in so many nations raising this issue to be likely, and (b) any governments that do apply new rules because of this situation to ALL shipping rather than just to ships specifically going into the arctic (and/or the antarctic) to be -- even by NS standards -- very plausible? A problem with ships going into the ice calls more for new rules about ships going into the ice, not for new rules about ships that are going anywhere... At the very least, shouldn't there be at east one option which takes this approach.
(I note that neither option 1 nor option 2 would have made any difference in the case of the SS Baychimo: It was on a planned course, and was only half a mile from shore when abandoned...)

My original thought to aim this more at private/recreational boating, with some ambiguity about the exact cause of the loss of the Adventurer. I made the assumption that government and company boats would already have safety measures in place that private boaters would not.

I'm thinking about making a second draft with a focus on all boats and not just private boaters, possibly involving boats encountering ice.

Is this draft better than the current draft 2?

Draft Idea

If the boat was found in Bracenland, what's it gotta with @@,NAME@@? Was it a @@DENONYM@@ ship? Is @@NAME@@ part of an international comittee on boat safety? In either case, why wouldn't @@LEADER@@ forward this issue to the appropriate minister?

Australian rePublic wrote:If the boat was found in Bracenland, what's it gotta with @@,NAME@@? Was it a @@DENONYM@@ ship? Is @@NAME@@ part of an international comittee on boat safety? In either case, why wouldn't @@LEADER@@ forward this issue to the appropriate minister?

Yes, it was supposed to be a @@DEMONYM@@ ship. Now clarified in the description.

As for passing off the issue to another minister, I don't think that's a problem. Plenty of other issues could theoretically be sent to a minister.
For example,
#288 to a Health Minister,
#292 to a Tourism Minister,
#578 to a Military Minister.

The Super Fork wrote:Avast! Ye government knaves have no right to dictate where me and me hearties travel!” shouts suspected pirate @@RANDOMFIRSTNAME@@ Blackbeard, barging into your office and waving a cutlass. “Ye government scallywags! The @@LEADER@@’s Revenge shall sail wherever we please with no interference, or you’ll walk the plank

Just a bit of pirate talk for you, not that I ever was a pirate!
I think the government are more likely to be landlubbers than scallywags. I would change the name of the ship to ANIMAL's Revenge, I just think that would fit better. Finally, you'll be walking the plank. Yarrr!!!

New draft, changed up option 2, added a sub-plot about Leader's new globe and changed up the pirate speak a bit.

The Super Fork wrote:Everyone knows that you’ll reach the edge of the world if you sail too far!” shouts infamous flat-earther @@RANDOMNAME@@, while trying to flatten your globe with a rolling pin. “It would be too expensive to use all that fancy radar to track boats, especially when the solution is obvious: Ban boating! If no one sails, no one will fall off the world!

I think the cheap-skate is better than the flat-earther. The premise is about ships getting lost, not falling off the edge of the world. The Adventurer was found in pack ice, pack ice is found at the poles.

I think that flat earther is more relevant to the issue as a character than the cheapskate, however, your point makes since.

I reworded the option to avoid falling off the earth.

“Everyone knows that you’ll reach the Great Ice Wall if you sail too far!” exclaims infamous flat-earther @@RANDOMNAME@@ while trying to flatten your globe with a rolling pin. “It would be too expensive to use all that fancy radar to track boats, especially when the solution is obvious: Ban boating! If no one sails, no one will get trapped in ice!

This also makes more sense because one of the more popular flat earth models has ice all around the world.
https://wiki.tfes.org/Flat_Earth_-_Freq ... _Questions

The Super Fork wrote:“Everyone knows that you’ll reach the Great Ice Wall if you sail too far!” exclaims infamous flat-earther @@RANDOMNAME@@ while trying to flatten your globe with a rolling pin. “It would be too expensive to use all that fancy radar to track boats, especially when the solution is obvious: Ban boating! If no one sails, no one will get trapped in ice!

Okay, that's better, I would take out the "it would be too expensive" bit. The guy is arguing about safety, not money.

Baggieland wrote:

The Super Fork wrote:“Everyone knows that you’ll reach the Great Ice Wall if you sail too far!” exclaims infamous flat-earther @@RANDOMNAME@@ while trying to flatten your globe with a rolling pin. “It would be too expensive to use all that fancy radar to track boats, especially when the solution is obvious: Ban boating! If no one sails, no one will get trapped in ice!

Okay, that's better, I would take out the "it would be too expensive" bit. The guy is arguing about safety, not money.

Relics from the cheapskate Fixed.

Looking good.

Any other suggestions or comments?

Go for it.

It's a fun issue, send it in.

Submitted!

Good Luck!

Good luck!