Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Turn 78 - Who Will Go Down To Those Shaded Groves

The Alliance summit has wound down, with President Nordlund already on a dropship heading home when the Consul from the NRI requests a private meeting with you.

And drops a small bombshell on you. In addition to the automation and educational tech they’ve already gotten from you, they'd like to make one more trade, production specifications for several new technologies that you don’t have yet in exchange for double heat sinks and, when you complete it, the production specs of lamellor ferro-carbide.

Then they reveal the R&D projects… something they are calling Hyper Gauss, or an ultra-rapid fire gauss rifle that works similar to a rotary autocannon and full up naval gauss weapons, with 1, 2 and 3 meter bores. The consul has brought along the blueprints for what they are calling the Corvus class corvette and informs you that the only thing they are truly lacking is the armor compounds, but they are also asking for official licenses for the DHS out of a sense of polite obligation.

You call in Thanh and she is appalled. Impressed, but appalled. Four 3m bore naval gauss in fixed spinal mounts, a further four 2m naval gauss in two twin turrets on the forward flanks, but incredibly cramped quarters, minimal cargo space, no drop collars at all, only a single attachment point on the ventral hull for a lone small craft to be semi-comformally carried. The only person on board with their own quarters and bathroom is the captain, everybody else is housed in a pair of bunkrooms with a common washroom, and even that is incredibly cramped. On top of that the ships themselves look almost crudely built, not a single curve to be found, just flat plates and surfaces. It’s a brutalistic approach to warship design that is actually somewhat appealing from a pure efficiency standpoint, but you understand Thanh’s point about it not fitting in at all with your navy's needs.

It’s a hell of a lot of firepower on an extremely small hull, though.

According to the consul, the NRI will initiate mass production of these scary little buggers as soon as they get access to the armor compounds, and intends to build them as fast as possible. They’re really not all that interested in building anything bigger, as far as they are concerned quantity has a quality of its own, and they’d be able to churn out multiples of these for every battleship out there. You’d already known that the NRI is rather more sanguine about losses than you are and this certainly fits that philosophy. So they lose ten of them to kill one enemy ship, that’s OK so long as they build eleven for every enemy ship then need to kill.

They also inform you that they hope to be able to export the Corvus to alliance members under the terms of the agreement, which requires Alliance approval for all such internal exports of any tech shared under the tech sharing agreements.

QM Note - the stats for the Corvus for those interested

There’s a new fad on Griffon, teeny tiny one person trikes that look like somebody took an egg, put some wheels on it in a reverse-trike arrangement, made the top half out of glass with a hinge at the back, and painted in crazy colors. They are technically bicycles, since they have pedals, but those are strictly optional for any enthusiasts who’d like to recharge the electric motors by pedaling, otherwise they are run off of a tiny fuel cell engine. They just barely meet all safety requirements for ‘motor assisted bicycles’ which they technically are, but are starting to really annoy everybody else on the road since they’re slow - they technically have a maximum speed of 100 kph making them legal on all roadways in the Empire, but take over a minute to reach that speed… downhill - , take up the same parking spaces as a full up motor vehicle, and tend to be driven by the most annoying sanctimonious smug bastards on the road.

Considering that you were in a motorcade that was stuck behind one of them while heading to the beach for your granddaughter’s birthday and it caused you and your granddaughter to be late for the party you’d arranged? You count yourself among those annoyed. The smug little bastard driving the Egg Solo? Well, you are newly appreciative of the versatility of LAMs as one of the LAM pilots attached to the Imperial Guard swooped down, picked the damn thing up, and flew off with it to the station house after the bastard refused to pull over for the police escort, asserting that he had the right to use whatever lane he wanted on the road. You do officially reprimand the pilot for crushing the vehicle like, well, an egg after the jackass had gotten out of it. A reprimand that consisted of you managing to keep a straight face while reading it, followed by punishing the pilot by requiring him to carry a six pack of his favorite beer all the way home and consume the same at his convenience.

You just wish you could be late for the budget meeting, but alas they’d just wait for you to arrive.

General Stewart is up first. “Your Majesty, the production plan this year almost completely maxes out our double heat sink production capacity, we need to expand that as much as possible. We are focusing heavily on defensive and logistics needs this year, as well as several specialist units. With that, General Jenkins?”

Your old friend is as irrepressible as ever. “OK, Padrone,” a laugh goes around the room as you cradle your head in pain, “we got us a plan. First, we would like three regiments of Raiders for Egg Crushing Duty, or barring that as part of a plan for a new generation of more flexible pathfinder brigades. To that end, we also would like to get 8 Pathfinder Regiments for, ya know, the Pathfinder Brigades, funny how that works out, eh boss? The we want another Brigade Combat Team for all of your stomping on enemy fun and games. Five more Garrison Mech Regiments round out the mech buys, with 3 Armored Regiments to fill out the BCT and 20 Militia Regiments to increase the number of retired soldiers who get to run around in the mud on weekends and pretend to be respectable the rest of the time, like me!” He throws up a chart of the procurement for you to read.

• LAM procurement (3 total)
  • 3 Raider Regiments
• Light/Medium Mech Procurement (11 total)
  • 8 Pathfinder Regiments
  • 3 Armored Cavalry Regiments
• Heavy/Assault Mech Procurement (8 total)
  • 3 Standard Mech Regiments
  • 5 Garrison Mech Regiments
• Conventional Forces (23 total)
  • 3 Armored Regiments
  • 20 Militia Regiments (use Increase Militia Rating action for cost, 1 action required)

General Romanov is up next. “Thanks to our procurement of CAP Wings last year we are well situated for the Independence class carriers that are coming online this year. We do have a large number of Silver Tower and Oasis II stations coming online this year, with 26 wings worth of hangars to fill. That leaves us with 9 factories idle, which we’d like to use to procure a mix of Attack and Strike Wings in order to boost our defensive capabilities against enemy warships.” She also puts up a chart, more professionally done than General Jenkins’.

• Silver Tower and Oasis II Hangars
  • 26 total wings required
    • 26 Fighter Wings
• General Defensive procurement
  • 5 Attack Wing
  • 4 Strike Wing

Thanh attended the meeting wearing the most ridiculous piece of cosplay yet, a uniform that looks like it sprang from the demented imagination of somebody who was in love with bling, skulls, and being ridiculously over the top. You force yourself not to react, causing your sister to smirk at you. “Once this is done I’ve got a wargame to oversee, that you, brother dear, are invited to. So I’ll keep this short and maybe we can have some fun later. As General Stewart said, we’re focusing pretty hard on logistics this year, but we’re not neglecting combat capability. We’re also almost done with the Naval Review, should be finished this year or Q1 of next. First off, of the little guys, we have 70 slips available for regular sized dropships, and we’d like 70 more Trentons in order to carry all of the Armies toys around for them. We have 41 large dropship slips, for that we’d like 10 Puller and 20 Vandergrift RCT transports along with 11 Majestic parasite battleships. We’d like 10 new Brigs laid down, along with 14 new Stilettos, and finally a half dozen of the new Cleveland class CLs. We’re starting work on a refit program for the Dart, I’ll let you know when that’s ready.”

• Standard Dropships
  • 70 slips
    • 70 Trenton class transports
• Large Dropships
  • 41 slips
    • 10 Puller class Command RCT Transports
    • 20 Vandergrift class RCT Transports
    • 11 Majestic class Parasite BB
• Jumpship/Escort
  • 24 slips
    • 10 Brig class jumpships
    • 14 Stiletto class Light Destroyers
• Small Warships
  • 6 slips
    • 6 Cleveland-class Light Cruisers

Thanh checks her notes. “By the way, once we have Lamellar Ferro-Carbide available, we’ve got designs for a new true destroyer, the Johnston class, that will replace the Stiletto in future production, as well as updates to the Clevelands that will be applied while on the stocks if needed, and three variant light cruisers, including a fast screening unit, an optimized flagship unit, and a missile boat.”

Bridget isn’t present for the meeting, as she was taken to the hospital suffering from the flu earlier this morning. Her deputy is handling the briefing. “Your Majesty, in addition to expanding our DHS production, we have several specific projects that Minister Doyle wished to brief you on. First of all, our engineers have designed a new module set for the commercial space stations which can be leased by commercial interests for various profitable purposes, including accommodations, light manufacturing, storefronts, etc. The other thing is an initiative to build major cultural venues of various kinds in conjunction with system governments. Things like sports stadiums, opera houses, theaters, or museums. The Department of Mega-Engineering is ready to begin work on further terraforming Edelsteine as well as Calliope II and the Minister is highly supportive of such allocations of resources.”

Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, the Foreign Ministry has no specific projects that require funding approval this year, we are still working in conjunction with our allies on the final treaties finalizing the Alliance and will have them for your approval by the end of the year.”

Lien is up next, the tiny Vietnamese woman looking rather pleased. “Your Majesty, we have a number of projects that I’d like to pitch to you, if I may. First of all, we have all noted how our budgets are growing rapidly, which is very useful indeed. However we only have so many hands available for doing the sort of work which the increased funding permits. With that in mind, expansion of the civil service, while somewhat expensive in terms of up front and continuing budgetary commitments, would allow us to manage a heavier workload overall. Second, the Parks & Recreation program has proven exceptionally popular among the public, with utilization rates exceeding expectations by almost 15%. You know the old saw, a happy workforce is a productive workforce, and we are certainly seeing this effect in action. We would like to capitalize on this and expand the program further. It takes some potentially profitable land off the table for development, but so far we have seen that it is almost as effective as militia forces for offsetting negative circumstances in the various systems while being somewhat cheaper as well. Therefore, we consider this to be a wise investment for the future.”

Doctor Bryant is up next. “Your Majesty, with the completion of our Compact Core R&D last year we’ve got 4 R&D teams ready for the next challenge. I’d like to keep the warship teams at work in that field, as well as either researching better methods of industrial automation or researching assault grade battle armor suits.”

General Messerschmidt has an expression you have come to dread. “Sir, before I get to the interesting stuff, we have several opportunities in the Nya Kopenhamn system that have just come up and which require a fast decision. First, on Nya Kopenhamn III, the nuttiest of the religious nutjobs are holding a massive conclave around a ‘Holy Site’, the climax of which is supposed to be a mass burning of ‘heretics and traitors to the Faith’. Our planners think it would be quite appropriate to unleash some naval PPC hellfire on the conclave before they get to that step. Second, on Nya Kopenhamn IV, the crazy hippies have over a hundred ‘squares’ currently locked in pillories in the central square of what passes for those lunatics capital, these people apparently were caught listening to our agitprop against the nutbars in charge of the planet and, well, I’ve seen the photos taken from our orbital assets and the way those poor people are being treated is abominable. We’d like to land a small assault force to rescue them from the crazies. If nothing else, we owe it to them for indirectly putting them in that situation in the first place.”

He pauses, looks at his notes, then directs a great big smirk your way. “And congratulations, Your Majesty, your cult’s rotation as Prima Fides has been quite successful, reports are that your cult has moved into third place in terms of popularity. And Your Highness,” he turns to Thanh, “Your own cult is now in sixth place and has opened a very popular Lupanar Templum on Nova Roma itself that our agents report is ‘quite nice’.”

It takes you a moment, your Latin is very rusty, but then your eyes bug out a bit as Thanh starts laughing.

Martina is chuckling at your expression as she takes over. “Your Majesty, we have two major initiatives we’d like to advance. They are closely related. Both the Special Branch and the Imperial Grifftiger Mounted Police have become important parts of the law enforcement apparatus for the Empire, but both are suffering from manpower shortages. We would like to address this by expanding both units. This will allow for greater responsiveness to serious criminal situations within the Empire, both in terms of prevention and resolution.”