Turn 42 - Are You Getting It
Buoyed by the great success of the Olympics, although a bit grumpy at your darling daughter for tricking her way into some extremely dangerous racing without permission from her loving mother, you take the time to attend your grandchildren’s various races and events. The kids obviously take after their grandfather with their adrenaline junkie ways (perfect driving record! No tickets! You are NOT an adrenaline junkie! That all comes from Willis!).
You also get to meet Bastet’s cubs, who are cute as can be, even if at only a few weeks old they are already the size of Old Earth bobcats. Bastet is a quite doting momma tiger, yet is very happy to share her cubs with her two-legged family as well. So now you guess you have some four-legged grandbabies. You can accept this with great happiness.
Sekhmet, of course, is as smug as no doubt you are with your grandkids.
Jeremy, meanwhile, is still in command of his Regiment, but has also been heavily involved in wargaming out offensive invasion strategies and tactics. One of the results of that is that, logistically, a Mech-heavy combined arms division would be more useful offensively than a tank heavy one, specifically because for the same given combat power a Mech unit required less lift capacity to transport, fewer drop collars, and was more capable of taking and holding ground in the early phases of an invasion before an armored regiment could reorganize after landing.
An AFV heavy combined arms division, like the 1st Armored and 2nd Armored, would be more capable in the long term, but only once logistics are handled. His analysis also shows the relative logistical superiority of heavier Mechs to lighter ones offensively. A 100 ton assault mech takes up the exact same mech cubicle on a dropship as a 20 ton light mech, since while the assault mech is far more massive, it is proportionally far denser than the lighter mech. Granted, as his presentation rather wryly points out, there are other metrics than pure logistics that Mechs need to be considered by. A 100 ton assault mech would make a piss poor high speed scouting unit, after all.
Thanh, meanwhile, is in command of HMS Hector, despite how slow the
Warrior class is she seems far prouder of her command than her grumpy letters home complaining about Mom keeping her from the cockpit of an
Eagle would seem to indicate.
A naval organizational chart has been proposed by a Tiger Team led by your darling daughter, making several deployment proposals to maximize the capabilities of the ships in the fleet.
A Fast Attack Flotilla would consist of four
Lightnings, with three FastFlot’s comprising a single Fast Attack Squadron, or FastRon. Three FasRons would make up a Fast Attack Group, or FastGru. Organizationally, there will be a slight mismatch in that there will be 2 ‘extra’
Lightnings this year, the Tiger Team recommends pairing them with all 12 of the
Defiants, serving as Leaders for the swift little attack dropships, and assigning 1
Lightning and half of the
Defiants to each Jump Point as customs enforcement and jump point patrol vessels. The team strongly urges increased production of the
Defiant, as it is a highly cost-efficient little ship that is a very useful escort thanks to its speed and firepower in relation to its size and low logistics footprint.
The Tiger Team further recommends halting all future production of the
Microraptor after the fourth one is produced and shifting production to
Megaraptors. The 4 existing
Microraptors would be assigned to the Aerie as training vessels. The team notes that the
Microraptor, while useful as carriers, are seriously outclassed by the projected capabilities of the larger design.
The
Megaraptor would be organized in 4 ship Carrier Divisions, or CarDivs, which would be escorted, ideally, by Escort Divisions of
Defiants.
The team further recommends the termination of procurement of the
Warrior class in favor of converting the facility to a Large Dropship Factory in order to build more
Devastation class vessels. The existing
Warrior class vessels would be assigned to defensive duties around the colonized elements of the system, with 2
Warriors assigned to each to serve as the core of the defensive flotillas, which will eventually primarily consist of more
Defiant class vessels as the little ships are far cheaper to procure than anything else.
Further, they recommend that production of the
Velociraptor cease at 10 units, with production shifting at that point to the
Utahraptor. The larger vessels do everything the lighter ones can do… better. The existing
Velociraptors plus the 4 vessels needed to reach 10 units would be assigned to a Quick Reaction Force in the system defense garrison, using their acceleration to rapidly reinforce wherever they are needed.
The team recommends that the
Devastation and
Tyrannosaurus class vessels be grouped together in Assault Dropship Divisions, or ADDivs, which would be escorted by FASTGRUs once those units come online. The team does urge the development of a missile-heavy dropship based on the
Devastation hull as well.
Finally, the team recommends that a range of assault transports be developed, capable of inserting units ranging from a single lance to a full battalion into a contested landing zone. They strongly recommend the development of a Griffon version of the
Confederate, noting that while it is highly inefficient in terms of drop collars, dropping a battalion of mechs via single-lance assault transports is far less likely to result in a golden BB wiping out the entire battalion.
And then, of course, comes the most fabulous time of the year, budget time.
The military folks are up first, and all are looking serious.
“Your Majesty”, begins General Jackson, “Ground Forces have two high priority requirements, one medium priority requirement, and one low priority requirement. High priority number one is the procurement of a single Armored Cavalry Regiment, to make up 2rd Regiment, 1st Brigade, 3rd Armored, a new formation we plan to stand up to test Colonel Griffith’s proposed mech heavy Division. High priority number two is the procurement of a single Standard Armored Regiment for 3rd Regiment, 1st Brigade, 3rd Armored. The medium priority requirement is the procurement of a single Training Regiment for assignment to the Aerie facility on Nowy Gdansk, which will permit the expansion of training options as the heavy mech facilities come online this year while also improving local security. Finally the low priority requirement is the procurement of a second Armored Cavalry Regiment for 3rd Regiment, 1st Brigade, 2nd Armored.”
General Reyes then takes the podium. “For Aerospace Forces we are in a solid position. We will require air wings for the various units commissioning this at the end of the year, however we are planning on reorganizing existing assets to fill those slots rather than purchasing additional units this year as much as possible. As such, we will only require the procurement of a pair of Assault Carrier Squadrons for the two
Warrior-class vessels commissioning this year. The only other procurement we are requesting is a pair of Planetary Defense Wings, one for Griffin’s Roost and one for Nowy Gdansk, which will allow us to concentrate all current formations into carrier based ones.”
Admiral Benjamin is the next one up, and he is grinning. “Looks like your hatred of Powerpoint was well communicated to my colleagues, or perhaps somebody took away their remotes.” he is smirking as the two female officers give him glares promising pain and suffering, which slid off his back like water off of a duck. “I’m pretty sure your daughter gave you an advance copy of the study she led on organizing our fleet. I fully endorse the proposal, and strongly urge the construction of additional production lines for
Utahraptor,
Megaraptor,
Tyrannosaurus and
Defiant. Not necessarily in that order. Honestly, my first priority would be to build a solid line for the
Tyrannosaurus specifically, followed by a few more
Defiant lines. And yes, please convert the
Warrior factory into one for
Devastations, it’ll only be able to build a single one a year, but the trade off is completely worth it.”
General Potter is looking rather amused at the interplay amongst his subordinates, and with a flourish pulls out the remote for the presentation system, earning more Glares Of Doom from the two ladies. He grins at you, aims the remote at the screen, clicks the button… and the screen lights up with the Hovercraft Racing League race your twins are racing in at the moment. “Race just started, Your Majesty, normally we schedule these for non-race days, but I thought we might take a race break, with, of course, your approval?”
You laugh and nod, and the entire advisors council settles back to watch the racing. It’s a pretty good one, with the twins finishing 3rd and 7th after some late race cautions shook up the field. Once it is finished General Potter flicks off the screen. “Needless to say, I endorse everything that my subordinates recommended, on top of continuous expansion of our Endo Steel and Double Heat Sink production capacity to support the new production lines coming online this year.”
Bridget then bounces in her seat, as excited as ever. “Your Majesty, we’re ready to dive into Phase Two of the Colonization of Griffon IV, and it’s gonna be busy busy busy, but we’ve got space in the queue for a few more projects as well to boost income and make all of this far more affordable. First of all, I strongly recommend using DoME assets to shift an asteroid to Griffin’s Roost orbit, will cost us about 5 million over 5 years, but it’ll pay for itself in the first year after that and make paying for the rest of the colonization of Griffon IV much easier. The other project I’d recommend is starting a second arcology on Nowy Gdansk. That’ll take longer, but we’ll have the free DoME teams available for it even during Phase Four, and this will also nicely boost our economic growth across the board. This is a solid case of spending money to make more money, and I really recommend it.”
Focus then shifts to Isoroku. “With the invitation to the NRI to join the Olympics my staff thinks it is important to still have a local set of games, to reinforce Griffon pride internally. On the off-cycle, two years offset from the main games, we propose holding the Pan-Griffon Games, open exclusively to citizens of our Empire. Other than that, we’re still cleaning up after an extremely successful Olympic games this year, and looking forward to the first international games in four years!”
Jake then takes over, grinning a bit impishly as his favorite racer had won earlier. “Well, Your Majesty, we’ve got 4 years to prepare for those Roman’s coming over here for the Olympics, and I for one want us to be ready to beat their cosplaying asses up one end of the stadium and down the other. Best way to do that? Let’s boost support for our athletes, government sponsored training and coaching, the whole works. We’ve got some Griffon Pride on the line here, let’s do our part to make sure it comes up smelling like roses.”
Mary looks over at her Polish colleague a bit disapprovingly, then again
her favorite racer had wrecked out on the third to last lap, causing the last of the cautions. “Your Majesty, we have a number of proposed projects this year over and above that required by the terraforming and colonization plan.” and up comes the dreaded charts, it looks like Mary has made sure to secure her own remote.
- We have 4 research teams that are not committed to ongoing projects, one of which is obligated to research Tier 4 Industrial Mechs, leaving us with 3
- Recommended Projects
- Genetic Engineering Lvl 1
- Makes our population even healthier than it already is, always valuable
- Power Transfer (advanced) Tier 1
- Increases our detailed theoretical knowledge of this important area
- Materials Research Lvl 5
- The final bit of standard Materials science research available before we complete additional advanced research areas.
Well, she at least kept it quick and simple, it helps that there really aren’t any new areas of research available at the moment.
Harry isn’t at the meeting, instead working with counter intel teams to work on monitoring the activities of the NRI embassy. He sends you a brief memo stating that he’ll have some recommendations for enhancing counterintelligence and diplomatic espionage next year.
Janet is likewise not present, although in her case it is due to her youngest daughter having gone into labor just hours before it was scheduled to begin.