People - quad members, potential quad candidates, mhocmeta thread makers, election results complainers - often talk about wanting "dramatic overhaul" of the way MHOC works. However, what we inevitably get is minor tweaking around the edge of the calculator. Major change the MHOC gameplay last happened way back at GE8, the introduction of simmed elections (rather than asking random redditors to vote). This was 5 years ago, and in my opinion it may now be time to have a similarly large level of radical overhaul. This post is not a fully-fledged proposal, rather, it is my intention that future Speaker/Head Mod candidates consider ideas including this one (or other similarly radical proposals) in future elections for Commons Speaker. Without further ado:

Scenario-Based MHOC

• MHOC is to operate by running a series of "scenarios" or "campaigns", each lasting a fixed amount of time (say 6 months).
• In these scenarios, Quad act as sort of "Game Masters".
• Quad say things such as: "Here is the situation, there is a Blue-Yellow coalition government, but public support is falling fast due to the XYZ issue. Will they be able to resolve the problems before their polling falls critically low and they're removed from office?"
• Then next term rinse and repeat but with a different scenario and different people in power etc., with Quad dictating seat totals and other pertinent details each time

Benefits

• Each term has concrete winners and losers. The scenario can be a success (Blue-Yellow resolved the issue and regained their polling) or failure (the opposition created a press frenzy, the government couldn't resolve the crisis, and the opposition forced a vote of no confidence). This is a benefit over our current system in that currently we often have the situation where "the Red Party did well, but all the other parties did even better, so the Red Party lose polling", which really is just a feel bad moment. You can play well, but there is no way of just making your polling numbers continually increase because each party's "score" which they use to measure success at the moment is a fraction of a pie chart which can't be more than 100%. In fact, depending on the scenario, you could literally have scores representing the number of voters each side has won or something.
• We can completely disconnect polling from the number of members a party has. This has been a personal bugbear of mine for ages - we've made some progress over the years, but at its core, the polling calculator does just measure how many people each party has and how much content (debate/legislation/press) each party is capable of putting out. Instead, polling/success in the campaign can be entirely driven by things like policy and debate quality (and probably still press). Polling can actually measure success rather than number of members.
• We can abolish election campaigns. Maybe you're one of the few people who like election campaigns, but I tend to find most of MHOC is pretty sick of them. With Quad unilaterally deciding how many seats each party has, we have no need for election campaigns. One potential reason to keep election campaigns is that it is often a period which boosts recruitment for MHOC. However, with the scenario gameplay, we still naturally get the recruitment boost once a term because people will (hopefully!) be excited about participating in the new campaign.
• No need for accusations of Quad bias. Seat totals are unilaterally decided for interesting gameplay to engage the parties, by design they're not meant to be "fair" or a representation of how well your party did last term. You might have had a great 50 seat party in government last term and succeeded in your campaign, and next term you might be a much smaller opposition party. That's fine, it's not because you did badly, it's so other parties have a go at governing, and yours has a go at opposing.
• If people are sick of having to do work for MHOC/need to take a break, they can. There's no pressure of "I have to work hard now because otherwise I'm letting down all my friends not just now but for future terms to come too". You can just sit out for a campaign if you want, and come back next time. Maybe your party does a bit worse this campaign, but the slate is wiped clean for next time and you still have a shot at success even if you didn't do anything this time round.

Further Options

• This would be a natural opportunity to do a canon reset, if people wanted it. Could boost accessibility for new players. This is by no means essential to the proposal though, and I'd want to debate it separately. Likewise, each of the campaigns could be one-off, or they could continue between scenarios.
• Terms could be longer or shorter. Maybe every term could be 3 months rather than 6 months - it doesn't matter very much because we don't have to worry about people getting burnt out from frequent elections (though probably some scheduling cooperation with devo is still in order). They could even be a variable length (the scenario continues until someone achieves X or gains Y points etc.)
• Quad structural overhaul. I would suggest that one natural way to make this work would be to nominate/choose/elect specific Game Masters for each term, such that the person who is Game Master for the term is chosen to be Game Master because they already have a good plan for a campaign. Perhaps this could involve prospective Game Masters submitting proposals of scenarios to the Head Mod for selection. Haven't really settled on the best way of doing this yet, but there are numerous options.

Some Example Scenario Ideas

• Can the Government resolve a global crisis (e.g. Russia-Ukraine war) while a separate domestic crisis (e.g. cost of living) is affecting the people of the UK at home, without losing the faith of the voters or allowing the global crisis to spiral out of control?
• A big Government scandal is uncovered! (Maybe an MP dying, or an expenses scandal, something that our current system isn't well suited for.) Will they be able to control the narrative in time?
• A big referendum! Scottish independence/Northern Irish independence/abolish the monarchy for instance, without one side being forced/scripted to win (we can just choose to not continue canon between this scenario and the next one if need be). This could be run as an extended campaign, or (maybe more interestingly), it could start as term-time, e.g. with an anti-referendum party in power who is desperately trying to make sufficient concessions (e.g. more devolution) in order to prevent the referendum taking place, and perhaps to swing voters in the event the referendum does happen. Perhaps the referendum is contingent upon a version of the Direct Democracy Act, and will only happen if a certain number of signatures are reached (which could be used as "score" for the term).

I would welcome any further questions, critique, suggestions etc., but I do feel that the best way for a radical overhaul like this to be progressed would likely be as part of a Commons Speaker manifesto. If anyone is interested in running for CS on a manifesto like this (or with another totally different radical overhaul), do get in touch.