Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
[X] Get the Courts involved while vetoing this nonsense

Also this tactic seems like something we need a constitutional amendment to ensure it can't be used in the future
 

Jarow

Well-known member
With their increased influence,
Huh, they did make it up to 7 without me noticing... oops.

[X] Get the Courts involved while vetoing this nonsense

I'll probably add in the reduce influence actions (intelligence) this turn if there's no other pressures, and improve relations with both houses (politics). Smaller overall boost than arresting, but a lot easier to fix the damage


[X] Proceed

Don't want to risk the opportunity to skip a research action. Research is still the biggest budget area, and the one I stress over planning the most (well, possibly ignoring DoME)
 

Artifex

Well-known member
Hmm, well I feel like we're missing some specifics to the trade agreements and isn't there some proverb in the nature of never accept the first offer ?
[x] Continue Negotiations
- [x] Write-In: Offer to instead join a research agreement for both sides to perform research together for the KF Booms and the regular-sized KF JumpDrives - with possible assistance from the Free Folk KF mechanics? In addition to that offer them a share of 20% for the germanium mined at market price for the next few years? Like 5 turns or so?

As for the parliament, the approval drop is about the same in both cases - because no way in HELL are we going to approve this particular bill - so I'd involve the courts in this matter - we ARE of the "Just" after all.

[x] Get the Courts involved while vetoing this nonsense
 
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Lightwhispers

Well-known member
[X] Proceed
This seems workable enough for me.

[X] Get the Courts involved while vetoing this nonsense
And possibly arrange for the DPS to follow them around until the Courts are finished.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
[x] Continue Negotiations
[x] Get the Courts involved while vetoing this nonsense

I regret that we let them see how much Germanium we actually have. We might have had a stronger bargaining position before that, with them thinking they're taking the lion's share of our production when it's really a sliver. Additionally it may make them see us as a risk, given how ludicrous our production of ASF and DropShips are they have to be wondering what kind of insane JumpShip production we'll begin once we can and if our multi-planet empire is really that benevolent.
 

Jarow

Well-known member
our multi-planet empire is really that benevolent.
Don't really disagree with most of your point, but it's worth pointing out they're a 5 planet multisystem polity, and their worlds are more populous than ours. We have two planets and a couple orbital habitats right now, they're arguably a lot bigger than us right now.

We do have ridiculous Germanium production, and ridiculously effective dropship fleets though. No jumpship tech yet, but we have help figuring it out, and a better understanding of the more complex K-F Boom system, so can see some potential wariness in the future, but we're fortunately pretty contained and rather friendly, so I don't think they're that worried right now. (Also, they've never seen how effective our dropship fleet is - if they're like the dropships they're attacked by, dropships are carrier platforms or other lightly armed transports, not ludicrously dangerous death machines)
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Julia Severina is actually pleasantly surprised at your offer to provide assistance to the NRI to help them in dealing with the pirates. It’s pretty plain that she did not expect that at all.

The single greatest bottleneck for the NRI in proactively handling the pirates is that due to their lack of drop collars and K-F Booms they need to use enormous amounts of highly refined germanium in each of their jumpships, as they need to build truly enormous ones. Germanium is relatively scarce, which puts a serious hard limit on how many jumpships they can build.

[Write-In] A key question here is whether the NRI wants to go after the pirates sooner or later. The best immediate assistance we can offer is to modify our eight Velociraptor class DropShips to be compatible with their non-collar equipped JumpShips, then contribute those to a joint anti-piracy task force. The Velociraptor fits exactly within the 5,000 ton limit for DropShuttle bays, is a terrifyingly capable deep space combatant, and should be reasonably compatible with their supply chains given its Gauss Rifle armament.

[X] Get the Courts involved while vetoing this nonsense

They haven't technically done anything illegal, so a more aggressive response is contraindicated. . . for now. This is about the rule of law, and taking the slow way demonstrates that we are not the despot they are trying to portray us as.

[X] Continue Negotiations

Never take the first offer, really.
 

Wageslave

Well-known member
[X] Proceed
[X] Get the Courts involved while vetoing this nonsense
-[X] If for some reason the Courts decide to allow these changes, amendatory veto to the proposed legislation! Clown Shoes for Parliament, the new proposed uniform must be worn or folks give up their seats! A generous exception made for grifftigers, of course, who are physically incapable of wearing them.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Enterprise DropShip fanart, by me.

fYrKfEk.jpg
 
Turn 43 - Tried to Run, Tried to Hide

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
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.

[]DecisionEffect
[]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 NegotiationsUnknown 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
  1. Flights of ASFs for single flight dropships
    1. 8 Velociraptors
      1. Recommending Eagle ASFs
        1. 8 flights, cost of $23,062.40
        2. 8 Ferro Aluminium Armor, 8 Double Heat Sinks
    2. 2 Devastations
      1. Recommending Griffon ASFs
        1. 2 flights, cost of $7,954.8
        2. 2 Ferro Aluminium, 2 Double Heat Sinks
  2. Fill out partial formations
    1. 2 Flights of Roc IIs
      1. Cost of $7,900
      2. 2 Ferro Aluminium, 2 Double Heat Sinks
    2. 1 Interceptor Squadron
      1. Cost of $3,585.60
      2. 3 Ferro Aluminium, 3 Double Heat Sink
  3. Total Cost of proposed construction program
    1. $42,502.8
    2. 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.”
 

Ridli Scott

Well-known member
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.

I have to ask, why they weren't the ones dumped into a gas giant?

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.

Could we research this state, or at least the previous ones, of automation? It could help us a lot but at the same time... rising unemployment.

And you hate Powerpoint.

Ban Powerpoint in the Empire.
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
thinking about the future what size do you guys want our first warship to be? I'm thinking something in the range of 500,000 to 600,000 tons since anything smaller isn't going to have the needed armor to tank at least a nuke or two which is a required feature for all of our warship designs as far as I'm concerned given how much time and resources the things take to build
 

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