Aradynic Dominion

The Aradynic Dominion is a massive nation occupying the region galactic east of Human Space. It is unified by the principle of algocracy, or the concept that major life decisions can be made and economic resources be allocated through computer algorithm to ensure a fair and equal outcomes, in principle. In their belief of this system, their mission was to conquer and convert the entire galaxy through force in order to gain access and optimally distribute all its resources. They are the chief antagonists of the Empire in Peril universe.

After offering humanity its ultimatum, the Human-Dominion War broke out. The war would end in the destruction of their supercomputer leader, leaving the massive nation without any leadership capacity. The post-war years have left most of its worlds destitute, under human occupation, or controlled by local warlords.

Government
The citizens of the Dominion have no say on practically anything in life. There are no people in positions of government leadership of any kind--not even local councils or municipalities. Policies for where each person lives and works, who they marry and how many children they have are decided by the mass calculation of every possible life and economic parameter, albeit with the theoretically benevolent intention of maximizing aggregate quality of life. However, the catch is that aggregate quality of life is constrained by the requirement that all people's lives must be improved an equal amount at the same time, so that none are better than others.

The closest thing to government administrators in the Dominion are data entry and processing workers who aggregate the information about their districts' people and economic output for analysis by the AI. There is also a branch of secret police called the FzSTp who ensure compliance with the AI's directives and monitor citizens for political dissidence.

One challenging aspect of law enforcement in the Dominion was the AI's policies on states of mind. Some of those were implemented by constructing buildings with a particular type of architecture to maximize productivity, while others literally required people to entertain particular thoughts in their minds, usually to reinforce their belief in the system.

ATMOS-7 Supercomputer
All final, top-level calculations are run through a central artificial intelligence calling itself ATMOS-7. What it stands for and who the other six were are still unknown since Dominion citizens aren't educated on history, and all of ATMOS's historical knowledge was destroyed along with the mainframe.

The AI is itself was capable of speaking to people directly, and able to make diplomatic communications with major governments. Unlike an individual head of state, it was capable of being in many places at once, allowing average citizens to communicate with it a lot more than human-based systems of government.

During the Battle of the Dyson Sphere, it was revealed that a live human was actually at the center of the computer, providing the necessary value judgements on every major decision. This also revealed that the Dominion's calculations weren't nearly as objective nor rational as first thought.

Computer Infrastructure
An algocracy on the scale of hundreds of planets and likely trillions of individuals required an insane amount of information about every single person, group and region. People's careers, health status and even personality traits were all logged across time, requiring vast amounts of data storage alone, not to mention the actual processing power required to perform calculations in real-time on such a scale.

Many entry-level aggregative calculations were done locally in processing stations across the Dominion's planets, with only the output numbers and regressions being sent to the central AI for higher-level analysis.

The Dominion pioneered superluminal communication, allowing raw information to travel through subspace itself. This required a network of vast relays the size of cities. They preferred to construct anything process and energy intensive on already very cold planets, since computer processing generated such a tremendous amount of waste heat. On planets like the Icebox, cold air could be pumped inside through heat exchangers as free coolant.

Society
Dominion society is characterized by an almost fervent ideological belief in their political system and way of life. Citizens are encouraged to actively practice a politically-adapted form of cognitive behavioral therapy, where they frequently interject positive and pro-government ideas in their own thought processes. According to the Aradynic ambassador to humanity, 90% of Dominion citizens self-report an "exceptional" quality of life. It was not illegal to report unhappiness for personal reasons, but it was illegal to criticize or question the decisions of the governmental AI.

Proponents invariably show how simple and egalitarian life is under a planned system. Workers were only paid about 200-300 guild equivalent per year, although their housing, food and healthcare was already provided. Their income was considered an "allowance" instead, to spend on petty luxuries, usually novelty items and trinkets.

Dominion society was extremely culturally permissive. Races and species are widely accepted and discrimination on that basis was illegal. Distinctions between genders in species that have them were practically nonexistent. There were few if no social institutions and groups outside of the State to regulate behavioral values on citizens' downtime, and the government allowed for surprisingly wide "entertainment freedoms," which referred to vices like promiscuity and substance abuse.

Food
Government-run cafeterias and provided three equal portions of food per day, calculated by the species and bodyweight of each person. Food was processed in a large, central facility, grinding up various crops, meat and chemically-isolated supplement nutrients into a homogenous grey slurry. SEA analysis indicated that it did in fact provide a balanced and healthy diet for the majority of citizens. Citizens could use their allowance to purchase better supplemental food items like fresh produce and snacks, but there were no complete meals available to buy aside from the state-provided ones. Especially in the more rural and lush Aradynic colonies, there was a thriving black market for fresh food either made from siphoned factory ingredients or poached from the wild.

Economy
The Aradynic Dominion's economy is hard to estimate, given that all output and production was managed by a central artificial intelligence. Basic goods and services were allocated mathematically equally in principle, but in practice there were a multitude of supply chain issues that were not easily resolved by computer algorithm. Computers did a relatively poor job responding to disruptions caused by disasters or second-hand factors.

The Dominion is stated to have had a "merciless command economy" designed to maximize productivity at any cost. Full environmental exploitation was common on resource-rich worlds, and safety was often a lesser concern. Underground mines were notoriously prone to cave-ins, and mass factories were typically forced to work in unsanitary sweat shop conditions.

The number of goods and services available were far smaller than other human economies, due to the processing power of the AI not being able to accommodate all the nuances of different brands that competing corporations could. Products were considered rough around the edges and workmanship in skilled labor jobs was generally very poor and rushed. Algorithmic quotas and organization was often irrational because equality of outcome was prioritized above quality of life, so vital resources would be spent reallocating workers and goods to other areas to ensure even distribution.

Although the state of products weren't very good, relative poverty was very low. All citizens had their basic needs met, and issues like homelessness and malnourishment was practically unheard of. The government used examples of poverty in other economic systems as propaganda excessively.

A significant portion of industrial output was dedicated to the military, although citizens were assured that it was a temporary drain on their resources that would bring access to more as they conquered more species. The metallurgy involved in their naval starships in particular required a large amount of artificial elements to conduct particle currents across their entire hulls as weapons. Dominion weapons are particle beam based, and require rare metals to conduct them as well as for electronics to regulate them.

Job Distribution
Jobs in the Dominion were assigned according to need, proximity and representativeness. Workers were unable to move without the permission of the AI, and were usually sent off to worlds where it determined industrial growth to be most important. When a sector of the economy was growing, the AI would take people from the closest region or planet in order to be the least resource-consuming, then it would consider an equal, randomized distribution of species, races and genders to fill those job openings.

Hazardous jobs that were prone to deaths had the most openings, so the majority of workers who were reassigned would be sent to those occupations. The nature of industrial labor in the Dominion made work reassignment a dreaded action. So long as the birth rate and assimilation of new species outpaced the death rate, the AI saw no need to spend resources improving occupational safety. Usually, the worker's entire family would be moved with them, but not always, particularly if their spouse was needed at their current job.