You tried to reason with the People's Republic. They were very happy to pinpoint where the defective frames have come from; they are very happy to close that factory down and redirect production; they even let you conduct factory visits as often as you like, and let you test for quality as intensively as you wish. But even with these measures, the defective rates have not gone down - they have actually gone up. The situation was so bad that Chen has pushed the estimate time of completion for a quarter to Summer 2050.
You decide to:
A Unfortunately we are not in a position to rock the boat. We accept that their products are going to be defective, and will only let them build less crucial parts, while we specify for a higher standard to compensate. That said, there is only so much parts that can be produced at a lower standard, and thus domestic production is needed to fill in the gap. This will still push the date of completion another quarter down the road to Autumn 2050.
A1 Additionally, we decide to scale down the ship (to be decided in next update) to make up for lost time.
B We will stick to anti-sabotage guidelines to the word. We will dispatch people at every factory looking at every corner of it, we will conduct our own QC, we will place our own security devices with every shipment. This is going to be quite intrusive and the local populace will not like this, but unless we do this we will be never sure of the quality of the products.
C I told you this is an insult to The Reformed Empire of the Rising Sun! Gather every Journalist and Netouyo to bombard the world with the misdeed of the People's Republic!
D Perhaps we should be a bit discreet? We tell our semicon exporters to export defective products. This will perhaps send a subtle message to the People's Republic to get their act together and purge the ringleaders to this conspiracy.
Summer 2048, Estimated Completion: Summer 2050
With the increasing tension, the military self defense forces are pledging you allow arms and armed personnels on board the ark. They have plans for personal arms on board, a railgun on a turret for anti-ship role, guided rockets, orbital bombs, and prototype space fighters/Humanoid robots on board. While the personal weapons are cheap, the space weapons are going to eat up more production. You decided that:
A Minimal policing with cudgels and tasers are enough.
B Lethal force is needed to keep the populace in check and spies out.
A Space weapons? Did you watch too much anime?
B We need some guns as a deterrent, but that's it.
C The Northern Empire and the People's Republic are not friendly. The ship should be armed to teeth, so when we get to the destination, we will land unopposed.
(No partial votes. Also, for the first vote, A and A1 will be counted together, but the choice with more people choosing will be chosen)