Investigatory unfinished

Depending on who you ask, a government is merely a monopoly on violence within a geographical area ~ Me, just now. IDK about a source, have some more possibly-unfinished mind vomit that's been banging around my drafts for however long.
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Counter-Admiral Bgal'djuyk was having a bad day.
Now, to be fair to the Universe at large, Counter-Admiral Bgal'djuyk probably deserved a few more bad days than he'd actually had over the past couple of years. He was quite par for the course for the military he was in: while he wasn't corrupt enough to be a problem, nor heavy-handed enough to inspire disloyalty, nor too high on his own authority to have delusions of grandeur or independence, he was still corrupt, heavy-handed, and somewhere in the realm of mildly stoned on his own authority. Oh, and also nowhere near as competent as he could have been.
Granted, the situation he had been put in would have required more than his own heightened competence to break out of, as it was really an end product of an uninterrupted chain of minor mistakes going back three months, and no amount of competence would have allowed him to counter the tactics his unknown opposite was pulling - although with hindsight he could certainly have responded to the developing situation faster and more efficiently than he ended up doing.
Hindsight, however, doesn't matter very much in the thick of things unless you have a way to actively turn back time, or otherwise change the past. Which was something that Counter-Admiral Bgal'djuyk certainly couldn't do - although, considering how the enemy were in the process of kicking down the internal security door between them and him, it was really quite understandable that he was hoping that he could. Ideally on the scale of years, rather than minutes, but honestly anything above about twenty seconds would have done him good at that point.
Nominally, said door would have been able to withstand impacts far greater than the impact of a biped's hoof behind some emblazoned and moderately damaged yellow power armour operating on three out of four generators, but... only nominally.
The ship that the door (and both sophonts) were on was neither a relatively new build nor a relatively old build, and it was neither important nor unimportant. It was, for all intents and purposes, just one of many others of its kind constructed for the Ngae'thikhian Corporation. It had passed all inspections (which included and were mostly limited to a thorough once-over with mark one eyeballs) and had not come in over budget, so there was no real reason for the Ngae'thikh to reject it.
It was right about now, however, that the unnoticed... irregularities in its construction would come to fruition. Of the two inspectors responsible for checking this area of the vessel - what would, in almost any other situation, be an unimportant connecting hallway - one of them had been let go over a month earlier to save on overhead costs, and the other was coasting towards retirement and could really have cared a whole lot more. So when a few security bolts were stolen by a labourer looking to use them on one of her own projects, a few more incorrectly tightened by a different one with an arm injury, and one or two more inserted a little too zealously by a newer hire who didn't know any better, nobody had really noticed. And, when the enterprising black market metal trader who had scooped out some of the door's materials to sell got caught doing the same thing a month later, nobody had thought to recheck the doors he had previously worked on.
The end result of all of this was a door that very much could not withstand what it was nominally supposed to be able to. As it crumpled under the force of a power-armoured kick, clearing the sightline between the muzzle of a moderately personalised legacy-issue laser rifle (used because it was more reliable than the new standard-issue, not because the latter wasn't bullpup, now shut up about it) and the skull of the a high-ranking officer in the process of getting to a place from which he could evacuate his flagship, yet another domino fell in a long chain of knock-on effects: that the Ngae'thikhian Corporation had just lost a valuable (though not necessarily irreplaceable) high-ranking officer in the middle of a battle, which, for the fleet he was supposed to be commanding, was really quite a large inconvenience indeed.
Or, to put it in fewer words, Counter-Admiral Bgal'djuyk's day very quickly got a whole lot worse.
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Meanwhile, in the next star system over, the cyan power-armoured boarding teams were having a lot more trouble than their yellow counterparts two and a half lightyears away. And (although they would never admit it) they were having a whole lot less fun, too. Indeed, most of the fun in the boarding action was being had by Leftenant Bunkingsmythe's platoon of Royal Marines instead. Partly because, unlike the unfortunate Counter-Admiral, they had functional blast doors to play with, but also because, in the words of one particular moribund cyan-garbed soldier,
"WHY IN THE NAME OF THE GREAT MOTHER WOULD THERE BE A LASER TURRET THERE?!?"
Now, in terms of last words, that's not exactly the most heroic thing for a soldier to say, but it is certainly understandable, especially when the laser turret in question was deployed specifically to position you in the sightline of a rather quite dashing and well-trained marksman and, just as importantly, in front of the barrel of his trusty Lee-Enfield Mk X̅L̅.
But, for as much as Private Gommingsop would boast about this specific kill later over his third through fifth cups of Private Lesterway's self-made Westmorland* tea that evening, the poor cyan marine on the other end of his barrel did have a point. Because, unlike poor Counter-Admiral Bgal'djuyk, Bunkingsmuthe's platoon weren't stationed on a "proper" warship. While the unlucky Counter-Admiral had simply taken a run-of-the-mill battleship as his flagship when he was promoted to the position, the flagship provided by the Human navy to Admiral Siobhan "It's pronounced See-Oh-Ban" O'Croydon was a communications vessel - a communications vessel with, nominally, nothing more than basic self-defence weaponry that wasn't rated against anything more than space junk, fire-and-forget missiles, and maybe the odd enterprising bomber if you're lucky.
..."Rated against" in this case not equating to "is only effective against", as fully half of the cyan marine boarding troop and the metaphorical spirits of their well-shielded and highly-armoured boarding craft will tell you. They will likely also go on a rant about how their part of the plan was only agreed on specifically because the Human flagship was a lightly-armed communications ship instead of an actual warship, as even the hair-brained schemers who came up with the plan of boarding the enemy flagship(s) and decapitating the entire chain of command didn't think it would have worked on the Humans if their flag was being flown by a proper warship, but, aside from being a minor falsehood (the cyans would have had backup had the Human flagship been a conventional one, but they would have gone ahead with their mission regardless), such a rant is also a digression from the aforementioned main point.
Which, in a short paragraph or so, is that the Human fleet had a great day that was only really brought down by the news after the fact that the Germans had won on penalties. Again. (Oh, and the fact that they had to retreat due to their position becoming untennable due to the front collapsing elsewhere, but that's just what coalition warfare is like sometimes.)
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As a direct result of the substantial interior defences aboard what was - and this must be stressed - a communications vessel, the Human Flagship was not successfully boarded at the start of the battle. The Human fleet was able to hold their section of the line for a full sixteen hours longer than any other allied fleet in their sector, and were ultimately able to retreat to the second line of defence in much better order when they were ordered to turn tail and flee fall back. Thanks to jumping away in good order (and a lack of chronic cost-cutting), the Human fleet also arrived in a far more intact manner than any others, with even their stragglers arriving not too long after their main fleet - compared to the multiple days that the unused, unmaintained, and remarkably cheap backup drives of many other vessels from other militaries would take.
For the Ngae'thikhian Corporation, who had expected the attack on 'their' sector of the front to be a large prestige boost to their already prestigious military wing, the collapse and rank devastation of their forces in several systems at once proved to be a humiliating affair that was only further compounded by the fact that it was the heroics of a governmental contribution (and a significantly smaller one at that) that actually managed to earn the prestige instead. Fortunately for them, though, they weren't comically stupid, so an investigation into the Human military was launched in an attempt to figure out what lessons could be learned.
The first answer was found very quickly. The ships the Humans used - even their flagship - cost what would be colloquially referred to as "way too much money". Rumours suggesting that a member of the investigatory board fainted when he heard about how much (when factoring in the R&D costs) each one of the Human "sensor ships" individually cost are substantially true, although they do unfortunately tend to omit the snazzy effects on the powerpoint and the epileptic tendencies of that particular board member, the importance of which shall be left to the reader's discretion.
The condensed version of the report the Ngae'thikh investigation eventually produced was that, in monetary terms, the quote-unquote "small" Human contribution actually cost about as much as their own, so it was no wonder that they performed so well in the one system they had been tasked with holding. The idea of corruption as an alternative cause for the cost was quickly discarded, because corruption on the scale that would be required does not, in fact, lead to a stronger fighting force, and if you think that is the case you probably need more common sense. Many other reasons with more substance behind them were also proposed, however, of which there were three with significant substance to back themselves up:
The first was the bureaucratic hellscape (specifically the 'scape of the single hell of Ngae mythology) more vulgarly known as 'the procurement process for warships for the Human military'. Specifics of this process are almost always omitted in discussions of this topic - ostensibly to save the reader's sanity, but really just because nobody can be bothered to look them up and make sense of them when rewriting the above sentence in an essay or report. That alone should provide enough context to deduce exactly why it's a copulatingly huge money bin, but there's only so much red tape you can shove in front of something before it stops being a thing, so the bureaucracy alone was insufficient to explain the funding density gap.
The second was the stupid amounts of R&D the Humans did that allowed their ships to be very slightly more efficient at what they do. Efficient in the spatial, non-monetary senses, of course. In a typical category of equipment - say, main guns, secondary guns, point-defence, shields... you get the idea - something maybe 90% as efficient as what the Humans used could be obtained for a tenth of the price without too much hassle; yet, for some reason, the Humans really seemed to like making their stuff more expensive.
However, the third and most important reason why the Human ships cost so much was because the ships that the Humans actually ended up building were over-engineered to the hells (specifically the two hells from Thikh mythology) and back.
To an extent, these expenses could be justified. After all, it is entirely possible to comprehend why someone might want interior defences installed on a flagship-type vessel, even if the odds are that said defences will never get used and the flagship will just be blown up in any of the old-fashioned ways available to whoever it's fighting. It is also entirely possible to comprehend why some fleets might be constructed with multiple primary FTL drives instead of a primary and secondary - an elite fleet being slowed down by otherwise minor damage might prove disastrous in the long term, and hedging against this bad luck is typically seen as worth the cost for at least one dedicated force in any given military.
However, to a much larger extent, these expenses seemed entirely frivolous. There was no need for the Cafeteria on a ship to be able to serve as a bridge if both the main and backup bridges got damaged beyond use. Airlocks didn't need to seal against a pressure an order of magnitude higher than they were ever supposed to see. And what was "Defence against low-effort TTS bots, assuming one stoops low enough to steal this story" even supposed to mean? Hell (pick any of the three), those weren't even the most egregious examples: Human ships regularly considered their engines to be at 'full speed' when at three-quarters of what they could theoretically do; had many amenities that were far in excess of many civilian vessels for a crew that did not require them; and, most egregiously, had void or unused spaces as "future-proofing" which could be used to install equipment designed after the ship itself had been constructed.
And yet, as the report concluded, the results of these expenses could not be denied. The Humans had won the battle they were faced with quite handily specifically as the result of all the money they had spent on ineffective things, and had also won a nigh-unacceptable amount of prestige along with it at the expense of the Ngae'thikh Corporation. If the Corporation wanted to improve; to repair its prestige and prevent such a humiliation happening again (or, at the very least, prevent the massive costs associated with having to replace your entire on-duty fleet on a front because the one you had there was damaged or destroyed in its entirety), something had to be done.
Now, if the Ngae'thikhian Corporation were Human in origin, they would most likely have been liable to discard these results and blame bad luck or something, because the revelation of "more money = better quality" would mean spending more money, and that is something that, for some reason, has a repeated habit of becoming anathema to the Human Business Classes.
However, the Ngae'thikhian Corporation, as the name may or may not suggest, were predominantly Ngae'thikh in makeup. So, as beings possessing slightly more capability to plan for the future, a decision (by majority vote) was made among the corporation to shift their overall military strategy from their current model to one of a higher-quality lower-quantity methodology. While such a shift would take time - the ships they did have were still perfectly usable, after all - they would find, in half a century or so, that they could respond far more effectively to threats that required substantial usage of force, such as the war they were currently engaged in. Additionally, being a corporation as large as they were, they could afford a fleet so large it was unlikely that they would ever become overstretched, a further benefit to the strategy.
...ah, who am I kidding? The Ngae'thikh Business Class are just as bad as the Human ones. Their military hasn't changed a bit. You could probably find a cut corner within five minutes of boarding any ship of theirs, no matter which.
The Humans haven't changed, either. They're currently ten years deep into trying to procure a new batch of cruisers, having somehow blown more on legal fees already than your average nation would have spent on the actual fleet. Which was also the initial budget allocation. If it weren't for the designers of the batch of cruisers the Humans are trying to replace deciding to make them viable for 100 years after their nominal "expiry" date instead of the usual 50, the Human fleet would be a lot weaker and many Human sub-nations would be out a significant chunk of their cruiser screen.
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So, to give you an actual answer to what was promised in the title, the reasons the Humans go over budget? One, they don't know the meaning of the first half of "cost-effectiveness", and Two, Human Lawyers are really expensive.
It's mostly number two.

Hi! I'm an incoming freshie and I just thought about my SHS experience. When I was picking a school, I had two options: the public school where I've spent my whole JHS life or a private school that is far from our home. Initially, I picked the former since it is just one jeep away and very convenient for me. However, my friends pressured me to study in private school because they want new people and new environment. So, I picked the private school. To summarize, my SHS experience was actually fun but I feel like my learnings was lacking. Comparing it to my old classmates in my old school, the STEM program there were really rigorous and their teachers really are supportive. Their curriculum are really good since it was made to prepare them for college. They do a lot of lab activities like dissection and the exciting part they did was an SIP (science investigatory project) for their research. They had I think 3-4 researches and their teacher in research really teach them well. They also joined numerous contests because their SIPs were worthy to win awards. Whenever I see their stories in FB, I can't help but feel jealous.
In my school, it was really like chill and not that so many activities so I think that's an advantage. However, I feel like I didn't reach my full potential. My school had enough facilities for STEM but they didn't maximize the use of it. We just conducted few lab activities and it really sucks because they need to follow a school calendar that's why all the activities we did are rushed and some of them were unfinished. The worst part was we didn't finished our research and it was not even an SIP. It is just a descriptive research that a Grade 10 student can conduct. The lessons that they taught us were really lacking becausr they need to follow a freaking calendar. As much as I enjoyed some of their facilities, learning different things and improving my skills when it comes to STEM were not provided by my school. The friends that I made and the kind teachers that I've met were the only highlights of my SHS experience.
I was just frustrated because I feel like I am lacking of skills and knowledge that could have been beneficial, especially the course that I will take will include SIPs. There's a little feeling of regret haha. Nonetheless, I am thankful that I finished SHS with new friends and will surely miss them.