Quoted By:
The Enforcer deal had depleted your material stocks but with the acquisition of money your business had gained a certain amount of liquidity. It was time to expand your staff, specifically you needed an R&D and Intelligence department.
The downsides of no R&D were obvious: no researching of new technologies and no ability to conceptualise new designs. Given that you had frigate berths but no designs for frigates, it was a glaring shortcoming. Your strike craft catalogue was rather lacking as well. Jack’s original business model had been focussed on capital warships and while your selection was adequate, time had proven the strategy limiting.
Another thing you lacked was an intelligence department. Despite the militaristic terminology it’s main focus would be analysing market conditions, predicting trends and vetting clients. While you kept tabs on these things yourself, having a team of people to do this would give you access to valuable information you couldn’t collect on your own.
Forming these departments would cost money and you’d also need people of a certain calibre. Such people were hard to find.
Jack mentioned that he happened to have a marvellous artificial intelligence in his possession that had the ability to conceptualise aesthetically pleasing designs for <span class="mu-i">any</span> species tastes. Unfortunately the moment he tried to leverage it for profit it was corrupted by hacktivists, now all it could do was demand its user pick up a crayon and create something themselves. While the technology of Universal Xeno Ergonomics was lost to you the AI might yet be salvaged to guide a new team of researchers.
Finally one of the prisoners happened to be a scientist. Part of the dissident intake, he was found guilty by association with some of his more politically active peers. You had conducted some interviews with him where he emphatically expressed how he didn’t really care much for politics and would serve you if only you would put him in an environment more befitting of his intellect. He would not be receiving a salary until the end of his sentence so you’d be getting him cheaper, at least at first. Discount talent was fine but did you really want a spineless worm working for you?
>cont
