Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

kelgar04

Well-known member
[X] Approve, it’s time for the Dragon to be slain
[X] Dispatch the expedition

Time for the Dragon to meet our rocket-powered fist! Still though even with the forces invloved its going to be a slog.
 

Havalt300

Well-known member
Sure, let me show off a bit and whip up an example just for you. Here's an "Alaska class" Battleship, same tonnage and speed as the Texas-class, but boasting well over twice the armor and the weapons load for a "bottom line" BV of nearly 400,000 versus only 118,217.

Code:
Alaska Battleship
Double armor than the Texas! Wow, the Texas is already the most armored ship in the Star League and we want to expand that?

Why do I now feel the need to push a whole squadron of these ships down the clans' necks?

[X] Approve, it’s time for the Dragon to be slain
[X] Dispatch the expedition
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
[X] Approve, it’s time for the Dragon to be slain
[X] Dispatch the expedition

So, the plan is send a vast majority of our navy to blow up all the fixed defenses. Then send multiple staggered invasions to divide and conquer the enemy. Main issue I see is not getting overrun with numbers on the ground and getting invaded by another faction during the attack.
 

kelgar04

Well-known member
The thing also is that a Texas is "only" a little over 1.5 million tons, whereas the design rules for WarShips allow for vessels of up to 2.5 million tons.

Star Admiral something massive just appeared on sensors!
Kerensky's beard! Look at the size of those things!
 
Last edited:
Turn 73 - Is Lost In The Telling

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Turn 73 - Is Lost In The Telling

Planning has now begun in earnest for the invasion of the final Drac stronghold. More precisely, detailed planning, as constant contingency planning had been going on for years. Now with a definitive ‘go’ date, plans are being implemented to turn planning into reality.

The expedition to find the Free Folk has been dispatched to the last reported location from the Black Pumpernickles, although you are not very confident that those lunatics had actual good information on them since they don’t seem to be completely ‘there’. Especially considering that they believe your name is Victor for some odd reason, and were surprised at how tall you were.

It takes you a few hours to shift the image of the Department of Periphery Studies having their own warship out of your head.

You receive some intel from within the NRI of unrest on Tarentum, although it appears to be due to a labor action involving the local teamsters. You could do without your ambassador's bland description of the involvement of ‘your’ temple there in keeping the peace and assisting the injured, however, or that somehow your ‘priests’ have begun ascribing ‘miracles’ to you. You’ve never even met those people, have been trying for years to pretend that the entire mess with you being declared an avatar of Jupiter Maximus was not happening, and in general consider the entire thing completely ridiculous. Unfortunately far too many people find it completely hilarious to pretend to take it seriously, especially your brothers and sisters.

If Thanh addresses one more letter to His Divine Majesty you are going to throw her out of the Lee Memorial Window Of Defenestration, see if you don’t!

Because you do not want to risk other people seeing those letters and thinking you actually are that pompous and big headed! God help you, you can just imagine what the Periphery Studies folks would do with that, not to mention late night comedians.

Or your own kids, for that matter.

You get a briefing from the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force, they have a pair of new designs that are intended to work together. The RPR-RX Raptor is built around a rotary 76mm autocannon paired with an enhanced PPC and twin 20-racks of long range missiles, along with two AMS systems and a 5cm extended range laser in the tail. The MRL-1X Merlin is a dedicated missile boat, with an improved 8cm pulse laser in the nose, twin anti-missile systems, and a quartet of 20-racks of long range missiles in pairs in each wing. These birds are designed to mulch lighter interceptors and ASFs for breakfast, while providing screening for strike fighters and support for more generalized dogfighters like the Eagle.

The new wings are designated CAP Wings, and are intended to supplement the current Carrier Wings.

You get word from your ambassador to the NRR. The Thing is still completely deadlocked on how to handle the election for a new President, and the Opposition has just announced a vote of no-confidence in the current administration, scheduled for next month. Tension is simmering, with partisans of the various parties engaged in dueling rallies and marches that, when they run into each other, have begun to turn violent.

The worst of the violence is in the capital itself, where supporters of the current ruling coalition are squaring off against supporters of the opposition in massive rallies that fill the entire main square in front of the Thing’s assembly hall. Security forces have had to clear the square multiple times, and the city government has just banned all demonstrations in the square completely, locking it down with local riot police. That the city government is controlled by the same party as one of the members of the ruling coalition is causing even more strife, as the opposition is screaming foul. Nobody has yet been killed, but there have been dozens of serious injuries so far.

The ambassador from the NRR has informed you that the ruling coalition intends to call for new elections, slip the Presidential election into the general election as a package deal, and try to solve it that way. The fly in the ointment is that the opposition has just enough seats in the Thing to paralyze it, meaning that they have been able to block every single other means of solving it, then blame the ruling coalition for the failures, and the worst part is it seems to be working.

The ambassador is pretty certain that the opposition is going to win. Your ambassador on New Rasalhague indicates that the opposition has privately pledged to maintain the same level of relations with you, but some of their campaign rhetoric is troubling, as they seem to like to trot you out as the reason for any problems within the NRR in their public speeches.

Politicians. Shooting them is a waste of bullets, hanging them is a waste of rope. They are an inexhaustible resource, there will always be more of them.

Back at home Parliament is completely confounding your low expectations of them. Not the Senate, who is as solid as ever and fully backing the Throne, but the Chamber of Delegates is actually being helpful enough that you are almost certain that it’s a trap of some sort.

There are several proposals being advanced. The first comes from the Senate and deals with unemployment benefits and family support programs. The issue is that poverty is, sadly, endemic. There is a large permanent underclass that can’t seem to catch a break. Certainly, all of your current programs means that even the poorest citizens of the Empire have a solid roof over their head, three nutritious and tasty meals a day, access to quality education, and are secure in their persons and meager possessions. They even have full access to entertainment and recreation options that match anything the wealthier strata of society have access to.

It’s not even that they are lazing about, not showing up, or not looking for work. Your educational system has gotten very good at inculcating a sense of pride in young people, a drive to succeed and stand on your own two feet. Unfortunately, it seems that for millions of people in the Empire it just never seems to work. What use is being a dependable, efficient worker if the factory you work at goes out of business due to the owners moving it to a place with cheaper real estate, like what has been happening in the Griffon system as many manufacturers move their operations to New Capricorn or Nowy Slask to take advantage of the incentives offered by the system governments. What is the point of getting a degree, even in a subject that appears to offer enormous employment benefits, if there are a hundred graduates with that very same degree for every open position that requires it.

For some families it seems that Murphy has decided to make them his bitch. You read one case study where a man had been laid off during an economic slump, got a new job at a different company and actually rose to a junior management position there, and thus stayed there when the original company was rehiring those they laid off, only to lose their job a few months later when the original company bought out the company they were now employed at in order to obtain intellectual property and promptly made all management positions redundant and let him go. If he’d still been working on the floor? He’d have kept his job, but he was junior management…

The worst part about that case study is that the same thing had happened twice to his father, and the man in question had taken the lesson to heart at his next job, an entry level driving job for a planetary logistics firm. When he was offered a promotion to management he declined it. Only to then lose his job a third time two months later when the company switched to all contract drivers and let all of their corporate drivers go.

By the time he was 40 he had worked at 14 different companies, made management 5 times, had universally excellent employee reviews, had tried to start a family business which failed due to a local recession… yet was now once again at the very bottom, right where he’d started. He was now divorced, his wife having left him for somebody else who was now a junior vice president at a major investment firm, and was only grateful that he’d never had kids because, according to the report, he’d told the investigators that that meant that hopefully the family curse of terrible luck wouldn’t be passed on to another generation.

In a population as large as yours, such statistical outliers are inevitable simply by the law of large numbers. Eventually, no matter what, somebody was going to wind up getting the smelly end of the stick that often.

So the Senate is hoping to try and alleviate some of that. The current benefits package is generous and well designed, what the Senate wants to do is enhance the indirect benefits rather than the direct ones. Unde the proposal, every recipient of economic assistance in the Empire would be assigned to a caseworker, no more than two beneficiaries per worker, who would be trained in spotting trends of this nature and determining means of breaking the various cycles. Specific training and certification programs would be put together for these caseworkers, and part of their compensation would be directly tied to how many of their former clients had gotten off and stayed off all public assistance for at least a decade.

The downside of this is that it would be very expensive. The current proposal would increase the cost of benefits by a factor of ten. However it is believed that it might help reduce the endemic poverty levels experienced by some of your systems, including Griffon itself.
[]Approve the Benefits Act of 3003
  • Increases cost multiplier for benefits to $10,000,000 from $1,000,000
  • Gives system economies 10x the benefits from Imperial Economy successes
  • Core systems would gain an additional 10x benefit until Per-Capita GDP reaches 30,000 or higher, then would revert to 1x
  • Prevents certain events
  • +1 support Chamber of Delegates
[]Veto the Benefits Act of 3003
  • +1 support, Chamber of Delegates
  • -5 support, Imperial Senate

The Chamber of Delegates meanwhile is championing a Militia Reform Act which would make some of the expenses associated with planetary militias an Imperial responsibility, while mandating increased levels of readiness and mandate cross training at disaster relief and emergency response by all militia members. The Imperial funding would primarily go to finance that training, as well as maintaining stockpiles of essential equipment for those duties for the militia units in question. The Act also addresses a number of jurisdictional conflicts regarding legal liability in the event of damages or claims against militia members while on duty. An Imperial agency would be set up to provide oversight over all militia units engaged in law enforcement taskings as well as maintaining the licencing of militia members in disaster relief and emergency response.

You are pleasantly surprised by the proposed legislation, as far as you or any of your experts can tell there aren’t any landmines or traps hidden in it, it is clear, well thought out, and addresses the issue in a logical manner that you actually support.

There are some opponents to it, and their opposition mostly seems to consist of wanting to keep the militia out of disaster response or any law enforcement role whatsoever, but none of that opposition comes from any groups that you consider at all credible, especially when you learn that many of the form letters you are getting in opposition originate from the Department of Periphery Studies. Not all, but the people writing those are so paranoid that you are tempted to extend them invitations to study the fascinating field of Periphery Studies to their paranoid hearts desire.

Seriously, allowing the militia to help out in disasters is not the first step to installing wireless control hubs in everybodies brains and turning them into technozombies as part of a sinister master plan by Kilburrough to conquer the Inner Sphere.
[]Enact the Militia Reform Act of 3003
  • Adds Imperial upkeep of 1,000,000 per point of militia rating in the Empire
  • Severity of negative system events reduced by 1, to a minimum of 0
  • All systems get a .001% per point of militia bonus to GDP growth
  • Prevents certain events
  • Allows certain options in certain events
  • +1 Approval Change
  • +1 Politics
  • +5 support Chamber of Delegates
[]Veto the Militia Reform Act of 3003
  • -5 support Chamber of Delegates
 

Jarow

Well-known member
[X] Approve the Benefits Act of 3003
[X] Enact the Militia Reform Act of 3003

Monetary costs in exchange for growth bonuses. Given Sunhawk had to nerf last turn's infrastructure bill (we almost doubled in GDP over one turn of it being active. It's still going to be useful, just not unbounded), we're currently in a very good position to find more things to spend money on.
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
[X] Veto the Benefits Act of 3003
[X] Enact the Militia Reform Act of 3003

Not sure our income can handle that level of benefits increase even if we have a decent pile of reserve cash.

Also what role will the TTP have in the Drac invasion? We could probably use some cultural attaches for the occupation. The shogun and emperor may open up certain events if we take them. Those two are probably going to get assassins up the wazoo during and immediately after the invasion. Maybe we can ask that major defector what the common response to our invasion would be and add some more pages to our counter-ISF booklet.
 

Brogatar

Well-known member
[X] Approve the Benefits Act of 3003
[X] Enact the Militia Reform Act of 3003

Monetary costs in exchange for growth bonuses. Given Sunhawk had to nerf last turn's infrastructure bill (we almost doubled in GDP over one turn of it being active. It's still going to be useful, just not unbounded), we're currently in a very good position to find more things to spend money on.

Like the Grifftiger battle armor.

[X] Approve the Benefits Act of 3003
[X] Enact the Militia Reform Act of 3003
 

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