Turn 43 - Tried to Run, Tried to Hide
Negotiations continue with the NRI, in the process of which more information is determined about the refineries and their capabilities.
Each refinery is able to fully refine enough germanium ore to produce a pair of primitive jump cores per year, although the actual core assembly has to take place in orbit. If you fully developed every single deposit of germanium ore in the system you’d be able to support ten such refineries, which is rather enormous for a single system as the NRI has ten refineries across their entire holdings.
According to
SARAH and your own researchers, the more efficient standard core, compact core, and subcompact core require increasingly less raw germanium, albeit at increasingly higher purity standards. Their back-of-the-envelope guesstimate is that a single refinery of appropriate efficiency would be able to support the production of three standard cores, four compact cores, or five subcompact cores a year.
The refineries themselves are incredibly expensive to build and operate, and would be completely out of reach for private industry so it would require intense Imperial investment. Moreover, operating said refineries without completely devastating the environment surrounding the refineries is a seriously non-trivial problem, as the effluent and tailings of the process are incredibly toxic.
They are also incredibly dangerous places to work. Indeed, the NRI had developed their suits of power armor out of the protective gear worn by their germanium refinery workers. According to the records you have, the Star League had solved the same issue by massively automating the process and conducting most of the refining in orbital facilities, with the waste products being disposed of by being dumped into convenient gas giants.
You can already hear the howls of protest and outrage from the Department of Periphery Studies if you were to solve the waste problem with gas giant dumping. ‘Gas Giant’s Got Rights!’ and similarly silly slogans. You’ve been dealing with their shenanigans for so long that you can almost write the script before it happens.
With further negotiations the deal has been improved somewhat. They still want sufficient refined germanium for a single core from each refinery per year but are willing to provide greater amounts of support for your basic Kearny-Fuchida R&D as well as partially financing the construction of the refineries themselves.
[] | Decision | Effect |
[] | Accept Deal |
- NRI would receive 1 cores worth of refined germanium per refinery per turn
- +.25% Tax Rate per refinery per turn
- Germanium Refineries will cost 1,000,000 less each
- Would get ‘Germanium Refining’ research for free
- At full price
- Germanium Refineries (Lvl 1) take 10 years to build at a cost of 1,000,000 a year. Difficulty target of 85.
- Germanium Refineries (Lvl 1) can produce Primitive KF Cores at a rate of 2 per year
- Each Germanium Refinery increases GDP growth on their respective planet by 10% upon completion for that turn only
- Would get +10 difficulty target for all tier 1 KF technology research
|
[] | Continue Negotiations | Unknown Effect |
You unleash the tender mercies of the judiciary on those Delegates and Senators who tried to pull that fast one on you. You certainly veto it, and after meeting with the heads of various parties they are willing to arrange to ensure that they always have some members in the capital in order to counter such moves.
You do wind up demanding that several individuals in the Clerk of Parliament’s office be fired after their involvement in this affair.
Unfortunately the very public chaos and instability isn’t good for your public image, or at least the public’s perception of stability. Jake shares polling data with you that shows nearly unprecedented levels of concern over the state of the Empire, which may have unfortunate effects on economic activity and thus Imperial income via taxation. That’s a bridge you can only cross when you get to it.
The news media is cheerfully pouring gasoline on the fires, all in the name of ratings and ad sales. Disgusting, in some ways, but something you can use. You send Jake out as your hatchetman, and he cheerfully lays into those pushing this entire nonsense. In the short term this is harmful, but longer term you foresee that the higher visibility of your political staff may help you mold public opinion a bit better.
And then it’s that time of year again. Budget time, budget time, bloody boring budget time.
OK, so you hate meetings. And you hate Powerpoint.
Sadly the military briefing teams have found their remotes, and General Jackson gleefully fires up her presentation. And it is a dreaded powerpoint. God help you.
“Your Majesty,” she then proceeds to ignore the presentation in the background as she leaves the opening image up, which is a rather nice rendering of a group of the new heavy mechs stomping along, “Ground Forces is looking forward to the first fruits of the new Nowy Gdansk complex. Specifically the ability to finally construct a full Standard Mech Regiment. We are requesting a single such regiment to be assigned to 3rd Armored in order to complete 1st Brigade, 3rd Armored at full strength. This will cost $90,772.06, consume approximate 22 units of Endo-Steel production, 1 unit of Ferro-Fibrous construction, and 27 units of Double Heat Sink production, leaving us with 2 Endo-Steel, 26 Ferro-Fibrous, and 66 units of Double Heat Sinks. We would further request a single Standard Armored Regiment to begin the 2nd Brigade of 3rd Armored, which would cost us $54,128.76 and consume 12 units of Ferro-Fibrous. Finally we would like to round out the 2nd Rapid Reaction Force with a 2nd Rapid-Reaction Regiment at a cost of $29,439.32 and the use of 3 units of Ferro-Fibrous production. Our garrison forces are in good condition at this stage, although our staff is starting work on planning for Griffon IV garrison forces pending the establishment of surface colonization.”
General Reyes then comes up, and she has fully fallen to the Powerpoint Side of the Force, as sadly she unleashes the full thing upon you. Her presentation boils down to the following
- Flights of ASFs for single flight dropships
- 8 Velociraptors
- Recommending Eagle ASFs
- 8 flights, cost of $23,062.40
- 8 Ferro Aluminium Armor, 8 Double Heat Sinks
- 2 Devastations
- Recommending Griffon ASFs
- 2 flights, cost of $7,954.8
- 2 Ferro Aluminium, 2 Double Heat Sinks
- Fill out partial formations
- 2 Flights of Roc IIs
- Cost of $7,900
- 2 Ferro Aluminium, 2 Double Heat Sinks
- 1 Interceptor Squadron
- Cost of $3,585.60
- 3 Ferro Aluminium, 3 Double Heat Sink
- Total Cost of proposed construction program
- $42,502.8
- 15 Ferro Aluminium, 15 Double Heat Sink
Admiral Benjamin looks apologetic. “I don’t like these silly things any more than you, Your Majesty, but for compactly presenting data nothing beats…” he pauses a beat, then grins “Handouts!” And promptly passes around folders containing the proposed building plans for this year from the Navy, which have obviously not been prepared in Powerpoint. “We basically have a full slate of open dockyard slips, so if you’ll all turn to the first page…”
- 6 Defiant slips
- 2 will complete this year and commission next, 4 will require 2 years of construction and commission in 3 years.
- Recommend only building 2 this year and upgrading the yards for the others to permit faster construction.
- 2 dedicated Velociraptor slips
- Recommend that these be the last 2 Velociraptors built
- Either convert slips to Troodon production or redesign the Velociraptor to an export configuration for sale to the NRI.
- 4 Lightning slips
- Recommend full construction in these as they make superb escorts for our heaviest units
- 2 Devastation slips
- Currently our most powerful combat dropship, strongly recommend laying down two of these
- 3 Tyrannosaurus slips.
- One is capable of full rate production of 1 completing this year and commissioning at the end of next, the other is like the Defiant slips and will require 2 plus 1 year.
- The full rate Tyrannosaurus slip is a shared slip
- Recommend no Tyrannosauruss be laid down this year, and the two low-rate yards be upgraded for full production starting next year.
- 1 shared slip Utahraptor/Megaraptor/Tyrannosaurus
- Recommend laying down a Megaraptor in this slip.
- 1 Megaraptor slip
- Recommend laying down in this slip
- 2 Troodon slips
- Highly recommend maximum rate production of these vessels.
“And then I thought you’d like to see a demonstration of just how lethal the
Devastation actually is, Your Majesty. We discovered a small asteroid that was on a collision orbit with Griffin’s Roost, and so we did this after it was determined that it had zero commercial value…”
A video plays on the screen showing the pair of
Devastation class vessels unleashing utter hell on a small rocky asteroid, completely pulverizing it into space dust. OK, that was totally impressive… and to think of just how much more lethal future combat vessels would be with heavier capital and sub-capital weapons…
The Admiral then hands the podium over to General Potter. “Your Majesty, I once again fully endorse the production requests of my subordinates. Additionally I would like to commend General Reyes and Admiral Benjamin and their respective staffs for the herculean effort required to fully reorganize their commands in light of the multiple demands of our multi-planetary empire. I would strongly recommend the construction of a pair of
Star Forts, one at the Zenith and one at the Nadir, in order to better support the Zenith and Nadir patrol squadrons.”
Bridget bounces in, bouncily. “Your Majesty! Building all the things is going great and we’re totally ready to build even more things if you’d like us to build more things! We really need to boost Endo Steel production as much as possible, so I’d strongly recommend building and upgrading those forges to build all the endo-steel we can build so we can build more things that require endo-steel to be built. We also could use more Ferro-Fibrous production, and Ferro-Aluminium is in better shape but we could use more, but we really badly need all the Endo-Steel we can build, we are completely tapped out on that resource. We’re not going to be able to do much to help the Griffin II Orbitals, what with all of the problems they are having with those volcano comets and such, but I’d really recommend focusing some development work on the Inner Asteroid Belt. Oh, and I’ve got good news my staff has banged heads together and so it’ll take less oversight to change production at the dropship yards so yay less bureaucracy even if some of my bureaucrats are crying because they now have to do other things but that’s OK because that lets us build more stuff out of real stuff and not paper. Oh, and with the three free
Enterprise class ships can we start surveying the Outer Asteroid Belt, Griffon VII and Griffon VIII? Please? We may find more stuff to build out there, or at least places to build stuff!”
Isoroku is a stereotypical island of calm next to his bouncy colleague and simply smiles faintly. “Music festival, Your Majesty? My wife has a new composition she’d like to perform…” is all he says. There’s little new on the diplomacy front outside of the negotiations over the Germanium Refineries, after all.
Jake is looking a bit frazzled. “Well, my big thing is that we are going to want to shore up some more support in Parliament to try and keep the idiots in check. I’m all up for some more schmoozing if that’s what you need, Your Majesty. My staff has all sorts of ideas for more underhanded means of boosting our political position, but I’ve been sitting on them in that regard since one of our more valuable assets is a reputation for being incorruptible.”
Mary has her usual custom presentation. It’s not Powerpoint, but it looks like the sort of thing that a University professor would use.
- New Research Areas
- Full-Head Ejection System
- Somewhat expensive, but might boost survivability rates of mechwarriors in the event of needing to eject in harsh conditions.
- Sub-capital Missile - Stingray
- In many ways less capable than the Piranha, however the larger warhead is more efficient at cracking armor and inflicting internal damage to well armored targets.
- Research Recommendations
- Non-Military
- Electronics Lvl 5
- Power Generation Lvl 5
- Orbital Infrastructure Lvl 5
- Improved Communication Lvl 5
She does give a short talk as well “Your Majesty, we have the Aerie teams focusing on cracking the KF Drives, we’ve completed the basic research required for the colonization plan, and have enough teams free that with some hard work we can advance our basic research in all relevant fields as far as we can push it without the more specialized work of the advanced and focused areas.”
Harry is at the meeting, looking slightly stressed. “Your Majesty, we have nothing really for you this year. Until we have better communications we won’t be able to readily coordinate intelligence gathering in the Roman Empire, and we have no way to insert agents anywhere else. Right now my people are mostly treading water.”
Janet looks over at the Intelligence chief, then back at you. “Justice is in good shape, no problems to speak of and I’ve got people actively looking for them. Otherwise we have no budget requests this year.”