Turn 55 - Now Mister MacArthur’s Got Blood On His Hands
You have a medical dilemma on your hands, at least policy wise. The small number of Atarashian natives among the freed slaves are in very poor physical shape, mostly due to their own physiology in combination with the harsh treatment of the Dracs.
They are light-worlders, their planet that their ancestors have called home for over five hundred years has very low gravity and a thin atmosphere. The oxygen levels in the atmosphere are just barely enough to support human life. Anybody who wants to engage in strenuous activities in that atmosphere needs an O2 tank or has to be in a pressurized environment.
As a consequence, the Atarashian natives tend to be very short and very slender, to minimize O2 needs while still being able to subsist. In normal pressures, Ataroshians act, well, drunk. The higher O2 concentrations act like a drug on them, making them rather loopy. In addition, they struggle to move in normal gravity, and even after acclimating to the air and coming down from their O2 high they still are limited in their mobility.
Medically, all of the refugees require an enormous amount of care, they suffered under extremely brutal conditions and none of them are in anything you’d consider ‘healthy’ shape. However the Atarashians require special consideration.
The simplest solution might be to simply keep them in the various orbital habitats. The downside there is that those habitats tend to be dedicated to supporting industrial activities, making it risky to house refugees there, plus every Ataroshian housed there displaces a worker needed for maintaining production.
A longer term solution would be to settle them on Griffon IV. Of the three inhabited planets, Griffon IV has the lowest gravity, although still higher than Atarashi II. They wouldn’t be totally comfortable, the higher gravity would be difficult for them, but it would have the lowest cost for you and isn’t truly harmful to the refugees.
Finally, if you are feeling extravagant, you can build a dedicated orbital habitat just for the refugees. It would be expensive, and would need to be regularly expanded, but it would give the Atarashians a comfortable place to live as well as permitting them to become productive members of society.
| [] | Existing Orbital Habitats |
- -5 Economy Rating - Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt
- -5 Economy Rating - Griffon II Orbitals
- +10 Pop Adjust per year Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt
- +10 Pop Adjust per year Griffon II Orbitals
|
| [] | Griffon IV | |
| [] | Dedicated Orbital Habitats |
- Up front cost - 10,000,000
- 200,000 upkeep
- +1% GDP Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt for 10 years
- +1% GDP Griffon II Orbitals for 10 years
|
You receive a proposed operation from the Navy. Three
Monoliths would be assigned, jumping to a non-standard point that is still well outside the jump limit. HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Barfleur and HMS Centurion would remain with the jumpships, All 22
Lightning-class ships would then commence a ‘Thunder Run’ at one of the remaining Drac shipyards. The
Monoliths and escorts would then jump to the opposite side of the system to pick up the raiders, before returning home.
The raiders would borrow a page from the Dracs playbook, jumping in so far out that hopefully they won’t be seen, then accelerating hard before coasting the rest of the way in. The planners are optimistic, as they doubt that the Dracs have anything like
SARAH coordinating their orbital surveillance. It is, however, a high risk operation.
| [] | Approve Operation Barrage |
| [] | Deny Operation Barrage |
And then it is your favorite time of year again… bu bu bu BUDGET TIME!
General Stewart leads things off “Your Majesty, as last year I must stress the need to build up our strategic materials production across the board. We also need to continue to grow our ground forces production facilities, especially if we wish to build up expeditionary capability to start actively liberating worlds from the Dracs.”
Jeremy now takes over the podium. “Well, I’m going to get right into it. We have the ability to produce at most three regiments of Mechs, 2 Assault or Heavy, and 1 up to Medium. Therefore, for Mech production this year we recommend two Garrison Mech Regiments, which will be assigned to the 1st Garrison Division, with their Armored Cavalry Regiments moving to First Armored’s 2nd and 4th Brigades. In addition, we recommend procuring a Pathfinder Regiment to round out 1st Armored’s 1st Brigade.”
He checks his notes for a moment. “In terms of conventional forces, we recommend starting to work up 1st Infantry Division, as such we recommend the procurement of a pair of Mechanized Regiments and a single CAS regiment in order to fill out 4th Brigade. I will note that ferro fibrous armor production is a serious bottleneck in terms of expanding our conventional forces, just as endo steel is for our Mech forces.”
He then takes his seat as General Reyes, Miss Powerpoint Herself, takes the podium… with a Powerpoint… luckily it’s a brief one.
“Your Majesty, none of the new Dropship’s coming online this year require air groups, however the new
White Tower does, therefore we recommend procuring 3 Carrier Wings for service on the
White Tower.”
If you thought that was all…
“However, Your Majesty, one of my staff has proposed sending a Training Wing to be based on Calliope IV, with the intention of providing the locals the opportunity to learn how to operate aerospace fighters while also supplementing their defenses. The
Falcon trainer requires relatively little in the way of maintenance, making it deal for such a duty.”
Considering that ‘one of her staff’ also correlates to ‘your beloved daughter who obviously wishes to spread the ASF cult to new fertile ground’...
Before you get sidetracked with that thought Admiral Benjamin bounces up to the podium, trailed by his latest Loyal Minion with the flipchart and… yup, the bell.
“Your Majesty! Great News!” he beams, then winks at Bridget and does his best Bridget impersonation. “We can build lots and lots of dropships this year so we totally should fill up all the building slips and then any extra ferro aluminium and double heat sinks should totally go towards building the new micro dropships that don’t require dedicated yards to be built so we can have even more forces available.” he then coughs, while Bridget laughs louder than the rest of the table combined.
“Seriously, we have 6 large dropship and 36 regular dropship yards available to us this year. We recommend build four Newport and 2 Newport-C transports in the large yards. For the regular yards our recommendations are as follows. Minion?” His poor abused aide flips the chart and rings the bell on command.
- 9 Colchester-class Parasite Destroyer Escorts
- 20 PGL-50 class gunboats
- 7 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
“Our current intention is to assign the new PGL-50’s to the Zenith and Nadir squadrons, transferring the
Defiants to the defense squadron for Calliope. I will also note that we should have sufficient capacity to produce 42 PPG-01’s this year, if desired, for assignment to the
White Tower in Calliope.”
“Minion?” he commands, and his aide again rings the bell and flips to the next page on the flipchart. “That brings us to the
Silver Tower, and we want at least four of them as soon as possible, Your Majesty. One for the Zenith, one for the Nadir, and one each for Griffin’s Roost and Nowy Gdansk. We should be able to afford building all four, and it will give us an extreme boost to our system defenses.” he then grins. “Minion!” he barks, and his poor poor aide sighs, looking much put upon, then closes the flipchart, picks it up, and walks out of the conference room while dolorously ringing the bell.
“You do realize that your aide has the patience of a saint to put up with you, right?” you comment as the Admiral takes his seat, causing him to laugh.
“I know, Your Majesty, but they just have to put up with me for a year, and if they manage to keep up with my effectively going out of my way to drive them nuts without, you know, going nuts, I know they’ll be able to handle the antics of the junior enlisted when I give them their first actual command in the field.” he replies, eyes dancing.
Bridget is up next, and she’s still chuckling about the Admirals' antics. “Your Majesty! We would like to build a trio of Mech factories on Griffon IV so we have a second light and medium mech complex coming online Soontm” She says with a laugh. “Plus building more production capacity for Endo Steel and Ferro Fibrous. We’ll have a DoME project ending soon, so we should start thinking about the next one, so keep that in mind. And, of course, continuing to build shipyards and repair facilities!”
Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, my staff is ready to start working towards assimilating the people of Calliope IV, primarily by promoting the benefits of citizenship in the Griffon Empire. We expect it to be a fairly easy sale, as the locals are very positively inclined towards us already. We’ve not yet heard back from the NRI about the rebellion situation, nor has there been much activity on the NRR front, although we’re expecting a number of meetings with representatives there on trade normalization in the near future.”
Jake is looking, well, very Jake-like today, leaning back in his seat and grinning. “Your Majesty, may I recommend earplugs?” he says, tossing a set of ear protection plugs to you. You lift an eyebrow but put them in. “We’re in a position to help Bridget make more things.” he says completely deadpan, and sure enough Bridget’s squeal of glee would likely have caused hearing damage without protection.
Mary is up next, she doesn’t make any fancy opening statement this time, merely firing up her presentation software.
- New R&D Opportunities
- Materials Research Lvl 6
- Electronics Lvl 6
- Power Generation Lvl 6
- Orbital Infrastructure Lvl 6
- Improved Communications Lvl 6
- Improved Education Lvl 6
- Recommendations
- Military - 2 teams available from the Aerie
- Heavy Naval PPC
- Naval Laser 45
- Non Military - 3 teams available
- Improved Education Lvl 6
- KF Drive Theory Tier 2
- Ferro-Carbide Armor
“Your Majesty, we are getting close to being able to start refitting the
Morristown, as such, we need to get ready for this. It will take 5 years to research all the underlying technologies, and if we keep to the schedule in 6 years we’ll be able to start the refit. Heavy Naval PPC, Naval Laser 45, and Ferro Carbide Armor are required to repair those components, while improving our understanding of KF Drive Theory will allow us to certify the compact core, while giving us a basis to research compact core design and construction of our own.”
Harry makes it to this budget meeting. “Your Majesty, we have two projects that we’d like to engage in. First, we are currently having to improvise mightily in terms of rapidly clearing refugees through counter-intelligence screening. We’d like to set up small processing stations at the Zenith and Nadir to facilitate this process and speed things along. Likewise, our POW arrangements are… sufficient… but with the prospect of far higher battle tempo we’ll need to expand in the near future, we’d like to get ahead of the curve in that regard.”
Janet is also present “Your Majesty, I’ve spoken with the Senate delegation that visited Calliope IV and they were generally positive, enough so that I would like to initiate a review of Calliope laws with an eye towards easing them into integration with our own law codes.”
