Neither. The effort requires nothing in terms of monetary investment, just time and personal ability invested over the coming season. The stat involved contributes directly to the respective cause without causing that stat to be diminished.
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For Weatherby!
Given the tense news from the frontier, many civic-minded Weatherbeans have decided to do assist directly in preparing for the worst. Options are available for both hawks and doves.
[…]
The total number of skill points allocated to each bucket will determine the change in Weatherby’s overall preparedness going into the next season.
(emphasis mine)
Are our preparations meant solely to be hedges against an unknown future event? e.g. New Prussia either will or won’t attack, and our preparations will only affect the outcome of that event, whatever it happens to be.
Or will our preparations change the likelihood of future events occurring? e.g. The majority of players take a hawkish stance, and thus armed conflict becomes much more likely, if not inevitable.
Or is trying to guess which might be the case all part of the fun? 
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If one has a Mysterious Adversary, are they one strike and we can go back to life or are we ever in suspense waiting for the next shoe to drop?
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Likely the former, but one can never be sure with a mysterious adversary - that’s why they’re mysterious.
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To answer @Wisconsin_Platt’s question:
Modest transfers are acceptable among family members, slightly less so among the landed classes. One can:
Loan <player> 100
loan a family member up to 100£ without penalty. Loaning more than that to a family member or making a loan of any sum to another player has a penalty of Rank-25, scaling to larger sums - roughly 25 rank per 100£.
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Oh god, it’s the return of Badass Space Banking.
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Could be worse. You’re not looking for repairs of a… foreign-made coach-and-four, are you?
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Ummm… do we semi-newbies even want to know what that’s all about?
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Heh. No. @messana knows how to run a much better game than the one with the license plates, poop-driven vehicles, and crowd-funded auto repair.
The banking (or peer-to-peer lending, at any rate) just tends to pop up because as a player base we’re too damned cooperative.
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Poop-driven vehicles???
You’re right. I don’t want to know.
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It was a lot of fun at the time.
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This is not a full explanation but it’s a start
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This is a dry, but if you’re curious @Nightflyer …
The original Badaass, invented and curated by the FANTASTIC Pat Race in 2013, featured “group rewards” that required some level of co-operation, but also provided substantial immediate benefits to individuals who betrayed the group. What game theory aficionados call “Prisoner’s Dilemmas.”
Unfortunately for the hyper-competitive conditions Pat Race was trying to foster, a game theory aficionado among those original two dozen players thought it would be fun to subvert that “Lord of the Flies” game ethos. A major tool for that subversion was interplayer loans. “Space Banking.” To Pat Race’s immense credit, he adapted as the game developed and created a joyous adventure of mutual discovery.
Over the course of the game, a high degree of inter-player interaction emerged. Ironically, the key tool wasn’t the mathematical optimizations of the game theory aficionado but an older and deeper tool completely outside the math: Narrative.
Through several more games since, the group has made a conscious effort to move away from the strongly mathematically-driven original game mechanic ( eg “there is a 75% probability that a blaster will cause 2-12 point of damage, while use of the defense shield will deflect the first 3-18 points of damage”) towards descriptions (“a ship approaches you rapidly. You may fire your blasters or raise your shields”)
Hence the recent Badass Games, where game design supports players build ing characters with backstories and motivations from which the players drive their own stories forward and weave those stories together.
There’s also story about “Space Banking” honking off a certain Publisher of a Major Blog who didn’t think we were Doing it Right. As Gamers say, “We Show our true selves when playing games.” But that is a story for someone else to ell.
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Do we need to get to 10/10 to succeed in our Legacy Projects?
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Not necessarily. 10/10 would represent automatic success, while 7/10 would represent significant progress. Characters that survive and still have resources available will continue to work on their legacy projects in the epilogue.
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Can we send the Life Partner and Little ones out to the estate while burning the midnight oil and dodging the bombs in city, to protect their lives while risking one’s own for fame and fortune?
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I dare say, the standard was set in Old Brittania:
“The children will not leave unless I do. I shall not leave unless their father does, and the king will not leave the country in any circumstances, whatever.”
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I dare say, @David_Falkayn appears to be reading my mind. The standard must be set after all.
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Just to be absolutely clear,
-
Who is the sixtth non-military member? I count 10 military and 5 non military. Will manwich get a vote, too?
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If the identical number of players choose option 1 (publicly stand with Weatherby) as choose option 4 (embrace New Prussia), option 4 “fails” and governance of Weatherby does NOT pass to New Prussia.
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Only the five (six?) non-military Leviathan Members, (@nimelennar, @wisconsin_platt, @Donald_Petersen, @David_Falkayn, @mrmonkey), may choose Option 1 or Option 4
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If none of those 5 (6?) non-military members choose option 1, and a single one of those five (six?) chooses option 4, New Prussia takes over the government and the valiant efforts of our military Members will be in vain.
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Option 5 does NOT count for the tally. If , say, all but one of the non-militiary members choose options 5 (resistance) and one chooses option 4 (embrace New Prussia), New Prussia takes over the government.
That’s a lot of political power in a small number of appendages…
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