Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
Jarow
Well-known member
[X] Approve Operation Bronze Predator
Seems a relatively safe enemy annihilation, and we do need to do that.
[X] Approve Operation Cookie Crumbles
Two systems left to possibly have stuff, might as well keep one of them unable to defend against us. The third remaining Drac system is a bit further, I can understand waiting until we have a more solid foothold.
Seems a relatively safe enemy annihilation, and we do need to do that.
[X] Approve Operation Cookie Crumbles
Two systems left to possibly have stuff, might as well keep one of them unable to defend against us. The third remaining Drac system is a bit further, I can understand waiting until we have a more solid foothold.
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
same here, wonder if we can arrange to have her brought in.
[X] Approve Operation Bronze Predator
[X] Approve Operation Cookie Crumbles
[X] Approve Operation Cookie Crumbles
It does. It's clear that she understands that his survival is a very unlikely scenario given the likelihood of the Dragon pulling a Hitler at the bitter end, but I'm sure she would appreciate good-faith attempts on our part.
darkcloudt2
Well-known member
[X] Approve Operation Bronze Predator
[X] Approve Operation Cookie Crumbl
[X] Approve Operation Cookie Crumbl
Rukatin
Malfunctioning NPC at Best.
Heh, now I'm imagining Periphery Studies advocating for us to build glow jungles after watching Avatar, completely ignoring the fact we already have some on our own planet.
Turn 58 - Can You Feel The Breath Of The Observer
Turn 58 - Can You Feel The Breath Of The Observer
Combat Report - Operation Bronze Predator
As predicted the operation went relatively smoothly, the defending forces were significantly outmatched by 1st Armored and had no mech forces of their own.
Interestingly, a single brigade of foot infantry managed to hold out against the initial wave of attack through very creative use of urban terrain and improvised anti-armor measures. The commander at the scene held off on a second wave, requesting more in depth orbital recon of the area before proceeding.
It was found that the brigade appeared to be defending an evacuation point for civilians, with over a million Drac civilians packed within the defended zone. As all other objectives were well in hand, the local CO held in place and radioed HQ for instructions.
It took several hours, but after assurances were given to the brigade CO that the civilians would not be summarily massacred, combined with testimony from Drac civilians within the current occupation zone of the same, the Drac brigade commander ordered his forces to stand down. Several ISF agents attempted to cause trouble but were cut down with only minor losses to the surrendering forces.
You do find orders that had been issued by the Dracs to massacre all Polish civilians and Kilburrough-origin slaves, orders which had not been carried out, nor preparations for carrying them out made. The continent’s garrison commander is among the dead, however the brigade CO who surrendered was aware of the orders, and that his direct CO had no intention of carrying them out, relying on endless requests for ‘clarification’ to avoid doing so as long as possible.
It appears that major cracks are appearing within the Drac command.
The continent you are now occupying has a great deal of industry, but it is almost all component-level rather than complete mech or ASF level factories. The local ‘friendly persuaders’ are still resisting in concert with ISF agents. The local Home Army cells are fairly small and scattered, but when debriefed have nothing ill to say about the actual garrison forces, only the internal security forces which were not under military command.
Interestingly, the captured Brigade CO, who is the highest ranked Drac prisoner taken so far, is on a surprisingly friendly first name basis with the local Home Army CO, as they were neighbors, and evidently the Tai-sa was fully aware of his neighbors activities but had never reported him, although he’d also never let slip any classified information.
The information about left small toes proves very useful, about three dozen ISF agents are identified in this manner, although all but a bare handful manage to commit suicide rather than be taken in.
-----
Operation Cookie Crumbles Combat Report
Friendly Losses - no hull losses, minor damage to HMS Shannon, will require 1 week in the repair yard to repair.
Enemy Losses - 36 Overlord dropships, 3 Monolith jumpships.
Your forces jumped in right on top of a flotilla of Drac Monoliths with a large task force of Overlords about to dock.
The Drac forces transmitted “Glory to the Dragon!” and attacked, but were utterly annihilated before they could close to weapons range. HMS Shannon suffered a serious weapons malfunction in the battle that resulted in damage to her Barracuda launchers, venting the compartment to vacuum prevented a catastrophic magazine explosion at the cost of 3 lives among the crew.
The 3 Monoliths self-destructed rather than surrender. One boarding party was lost in the process, a further 18 deaths.
The system itself was ominously devoid of any communications traffic. The task force probed the system detected massively elevated radiation counts on Atarashi II, closer examination found that the bioweapons facility had been nuked, and the settlements on the planet were suspiciously silent and still.
Wearing full CBW gear, landing parties landed to investigate. What they found was horrendous.
There were no living people on the planet, instead there were dead bodies of Atarashian natives stacked like cordwood, each having rather obviously been killed either by gunfire or swords. Most had been decapitated, and the heads used to spell out a message in the central plazas of the various settlements.
裏切り者の運命
Or translated, ‘The Fate Of Traitors’. There is evidence of an uprising on the planet, and evidently the Dracs chose to brutally suppress it by massacring everybody before pulling out of a now, to them, useless system.
-----
You show Siriwan the imagery from Atarashi. Whatever you had expected, the young woman’s horrified expression was satisfying, at least until the moment she lost her lunch, her breakfast, and whatever else was in her stomach as she collapsed and started vomiting.
You feel bad about that, but you had to test her, to see how she would react to such a horror. You’d barely kept from throwing up yourself when you saw the imagery and read the report, only a lifetime of discipline had kept your stomach under control.
You found yourself rather fond of the young woman, even as her attendant, nearly as green-faced as her mistress, attended to her. The Eldest hadn’t yet rendered judgement, but the griffkittens had taken one look at her and decided that she was another addition to the ‘give poor neglected griffkittens lots of scritchies brigade’. Plus both Bastet and Sekhmet seemed to like her, the Eldest just had been too busy to actually meet her, what with his duties in the Imperial Senate wrangling bickering Senators into not screwing things up.
From what you are able to determine, the Atarashi had risen up in revolt in the wake of your earlier attack on the system, a revolt which was concealed from most of the Drac hierarchy while hand-picked forces ‘dealt’ with the situation. Siriwan had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on, and judging by the horror in her expression you are pretty confident that she is telling the full truth there.
You check the logs from the layovers that your forces took in the system en-route to Kilburrough to see if there were any indications of anything going on, and come up blank. The Dracs had obviously kept this situation very much under wraps.
Over a million dead. And judging by the toxins detected, it appears that the Dracs deliberately poisoned the world as they were leaving. All of the orbital infrastructure that had been in the system has been scuttled as well.
You do discover from Siriwan that the ‘actual’ seat of the Dragon is not on Nowa Warszawa, but rather on Okusawa, and that is where her father spends the vast majority of his time. The Otomo forces on Nowa Warszawa are for show, as is the fortress complex. The fortress was built by her grandfather, and her father utterly shunned it as being unbefitting to the Dragon. The planet was primarily used to blood Drac mech forces, as well as additional military production.
According to her, Okusawa has a significant industry of its own, but is primarily one massive fortress, with only those deemed completely loyal to the Dragon allowed to set foot on the planet itself. There would be two orbital shipyards, but none are jumpship capable, the only jumpship yards were on Nowa Warszawa. They had a listed output of 32 Achilles and 12 Overlords a year, with an unknown number of those Overlords being the Kido conversion equipped with subcapital cannons.
As of the latest information she had, the factories in the system can produce one regiment of mixed Atlas and Stalker assault mechs every three years, and two regiments of Jenners a year. She has no information on ASF production numbers.
When you ask her about why she says the Otomo are ‘for show’, she replies that the Otomo forces seen on Nowa Warszawa are not what they seem, and asks if you have any high quality video imagery of them.
You do, thanks to orbital surveillance. So you show it to her, and she watches intently before selecting a brief clip, which she zooms in significantly.
“Watch carefully, the joints of that Atlas,” she says, using a pointer to illustrate what she means. You do so, and you hear a cut off curse over your earpiece from SARAH. She’d missed that, or not recognized the significance.
The ‘armor’ over the joint is flexing too much to be armor.
“The Otomo forces in that fortress are fake, Stinger mechs with frames fitted to them that make them appear to any casual observer to be Atlases. They are piloted by ISF agents, not actual mechwarriors, and exist solely to sell the illusion that the Dragon never leaves the fortress, zealously working at all times for the good of the state.” She explains a bit grimly. “Meanwhile, my father spends his time in the luxuries of his palace on Okusawa, consorting with concubines, and indulging in spilling blood for his own delights.”
She looks at you, regaining her usual stoic poise. “My father is faithful to nothing but his own pleasures and ambitions, Your Imperial Majesty, why would you think he would risk himself on the front line of any conflict? I know that my little brother is in that fortress, but I also know that my father is nowhere near it”
You have a feeling that, based on your discussions with SARAH and your daughter Sarah about the last Kuritan ‘ruler’ named Siriwan, that the young lady in front of you would just love to serve her ‘beloved’ father a nice dish of puffer fish.
-----
You don’t spend all of your time handling the war. Due to the insurgency on Tarentum the NRI asked you to host the Olympics again. Despite the short notice, Griffin’s Roost has risen to the challenge and meets the deadlines. For the first time there will be three national teams competing and four new events, all proposed by the New Rasalhague Republic.
The Opening Ceremony is a delightful diversion from the stress of the war, filled with music and dance, a celebration of life, of hope, of joy. You quite appreciate it. Siriwan attends as your guest, and you can tell that she is quite fascinated with this, well, alien tradition.
The format has slightly changed, with the schedule shifted around some. All of the track and field events, along with swimming, are held together on the same days in the opening weeks of the games.
In Men’s Athletics, the Rasalhaguians manage a surprising upset, dominating the short and long distance sprints as well as the hurdles, Team Griffon struggles coming out, despite having been favored in the events, as several athletes suffer injuries that require them to withdraw. Competition is nevertheless fierce, but the Rasalhaguian team proves dominant enough to win gold.
The Women’s team, however, redeems Team Griffon’s poor performance on the men’s side with a dominating show of athletic prowess. Across the board, the Griffon women excel at the various events leading to a decisive victory for Team Griffon.
In swimming Team Griffon dominates both the men’s and women’s competition, although the Rasalhaguians come close to snatching the victory away from the women by two tenths of a second.
Team Griffon’s men’s team dominates in the Decathlon, winning 7 out of 10 events outright and coming in a dominating first, however the women’s competition is far tighter. In the end the NRI comes away with a hard fought gold and the Rasalhaguians edge out Team Griffon for silver.
In the Modern Military Pentathlon the Griffon Men are dominant as expected, but the poorly rated NRI women’s team has a truly exceptional performance from one of their members who manages to lift them to the gold.
Combat Report - Operation Bronze Predator
As predicted the operation went relatively smoothly, the defending forces were significantly outmatched by 1st Armored and had no mech forces of their own.
Interestingly, a single brigade of foot infantry managed to hold out against the initial wave of attack through very creative use of urban terrain and improvised anti-armor measures. The commander at the scene held off on a second wave, requesting more in depth orbital recon of the area before proceeding.
It was found that the brigade appeared to be defending an evacuation point for civilians, with over a million Drac civilians packed within the defended zone. As all other objectives were well in hand, the local CO held in place and radioed HQ for instructions.
It took several hours, but after assurances were given to the brigade CO that the civilians would not be summarily massacred, combined with testimony from Drac civilians within the current occupation zone of the same, the Drac brigade commander ordered his forces to stand down. Several ISF agents attempted to cause trouble but were cut down with only minor losses to the surrendering forces.
You do find orders that had been issued by the Dracs to massacre all Polish civilians and Kilburrough-origin slaves, orders which had not been carried out, nor preparations for carrying them out made. The continent’s garrison commander is among the dead, however the brigade CO who surrendered was aware of the orders, and that his direct CO had no intention of carrying them out, relying on endless requests for ‘clarification’ to avoid doing so as long as possible.
It appears that major cracks are appearing within the Drac command.
The continent you are now occupying has a great deal of industry, but it is almost all component-level rather than complete mech or ASF level factories. The local ‘friendly persuaders’ are still resisting in concert with ISF agents. The local Home Army cells are fairly small and scattered, but when debriefed have nothing ill to say about the actual garrison forces, only the internal security forces which were not under military command.
Interestingly, the captured Brigade CO, who is the highest ranked Drac prisoner taken so far, is on a surprisingly friendly first name basis with the local Home Army CO, as they were neighbors, and evidently the Tai-sa was fully aware of his neighbors activities but had never reported him, although he’d also never let slip any classified information.
The information about left small toes proves very useful, about three dozen ISF agents are identified in this manner, although all but a bare handful manage to commit suicide rather than be taken in.
-----
Operation Cookie Crumbles Combat Report
Friendly Losses - no hull losses, minor damage to HMS Shannon, will require 1 week in the repair yard to repair.
Enemy Losses - 36 Overlord dropships, 3 Monolith jumpships.
Your forces jumped in right on top of a flotilla of Drac Monoliths with a large task force of Overlords about to dock.
The Drac forces transmitted “Glory to the Dragon!” and attacked, but were utterly annihilated before they could close to weapons range. HMS Shannon suffered a serious weapons malfunction in the battle that resulted in damage to her Barracuda launchers, venting the compartment to vacuum prevented a catastrophic magazine explosion at the cost of 3 lives among the crew.
The 3 Monoliths self-destructed rather than surrender. One boarding party was lost in the process, a further 18 deaths.
The system itself was ominously devoid of any communications traffic. The task force probed the system detected massively elevated radiation counts on Atarashi II, closer examination found that the bioweapons facility had been nuked, and the settlements on the planet were suspiciously silent and still.
Wearing full CBW gear, landing parties landed to investigate. What they found was horrendous.
There were no living people on the planet, instead there were dead bodies of Atarashian natives stacked like cordwood, each having rather obviously been killed either by gunfire or swords. Most had been decapitated, and the heads used to spell out a message in the central plazas of the various settlements.
裏切り者の運命
Or translated, ‘The Fate Of Traitors’. There is evidence of an uprising on the planet, and evidently the Dracs chose to brutally suppress it by massacring everybody before pulling out of a now, to them, useless system.
-----
You show Siriwan the imagery from Atarashi. Whatever you had expected, the young woman’s horrified expression was satisfying, at least until the moment she lost her lunch, her breakfast, and whatever else was in her stomach as she collapsed and started vomiting.
You feel bad about that, but you had to test her, to see how she would react to such a horror. You’d barely kept from throwing up yourself when you saw the imagery and read the report, only a lifetime of discipline had kept your stomach under control.
You found yourself rather fond of the young woman, even as her attendant, nearly as green-faced as her mistress, attended to her. The Eldest hadn’t yet rendered judgement, but the griffkittens had taken one look at her and decided that she was another addition to the ‘give poor neglected griffkittens lots of scritchies brigade’. Plus both Bastet and Sekhmet seemed to like her, the Eldest just had been too busy to actually meet her, what with his duties in the Imperial Senate wrangling bickering Senators into not screwing things up.
From what you are able to determine, the Atarashi had risen up in revolt in the wake of your earlier attack on the system, a revolt which was concealed from most of the Drac hierarchy while hand-picked forces ‘dealt’ with the situation. Siriwan had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on, and judging by the horror in her expression you are pretty confident that she is telling the full truth there.
You check the logs from the layovers that your forces took in the system en-route to Kilburrough to see if there were any indications of anything going on, and come up blank. The Dracs had obviously kept this situation very much under wraps.
Over a million dead. And judging by the toxins detected, it appears that the Dracs deliberately poisoned the world as they were leaving. All of the orbital infrastructure that had been in the system has been scuttled as well.
You do discover from Siriwan that the ‘actual’ seat of the Dragon is not on Nowa Warszawa, but rather on Okusawa, and that is where her father spends the vast majority of his time. The Otomo forces on Nowa Warszawa are for show, as is the fortress complex. The fortress was built by her grandfather, and her father utterly shunned it as being unbefitting to the Dragon. The planet was primarily used to blood Drac mech forces, as well as additional military production.
According to her, Okusawa has a significant industry of its own, but is primarily one massive fortress, with only those deemed completely loyal to the Dragon allowed to set foot on the planet itself. There would be two orbital shipyards, but none are jumpship capable, the only jumpship yards were on Nowa Warszawa. They had a listed output of 32 Achilles and 12 Overlords a year, with an unknown number of those Overlords being the Kido conversion equipped with subcapital cannons.
As of the latest information she had, the factories in the system can produce one regiment of mixed Atlas and Stalker assault mechs every three years, and two regiments of Jenners a year. She has no information on ASF production numbers.
When you ask her about why she says the Otomo are ‘for show’, she replies that the Otomo forces seen on Nowa Warszawa are not what they seem, and asks if you have any high quality video imagery of them.
You do, thanks to orbital surveillance. So you show it to her, and she watches intently before selecting a brief clip, which she zooms in significantly.
“Watch carefully, the joints of that Atlas,” she says, using a pointer to illustrate what she means. You do so, and you hear a cut off curse over your earpiece from SARAH. She’d missed that, or not recognized the significance.
The ‘armor’ over the joint is flexing too much to be armor.
“The Otomo forces in that fortress are fake, Stinger mechs with frames fitted to them that make them appear to any casual observer to be Atlases. They are piloted by ISF agents, not actual mechwarriors, and exist solely to sell the illusion that the Dragon never leaves the fortress, zealously working at all times for the good of the state.” She explains a bit grimly. “Meanwhile, my father spends his time in the luxuries of his palace on Okusawa, consorting with concubines, and indulging in spilling blood for his own delights.”
She looks at you, regaining her usual stoic poise. “My father is faithful to nothing but his own pleasures and ambitions, Your Imperial Majesty, why would you think he would risk himself on the front line of any conflict? I know that my little brother is in that fortress, but I also know that my father is nowhere near it”
You have a feeling that, based on your discussions with SARAH and your daughter Sarah about the last Kuritan ‘ruler’ named Siriwan, that the young lady in front of you would just love to serve her ‘beloved’ father a nice dish of puffer fish.
-----
You don’t spend all of your time handling the war. Due to the insurgency on Tarentum the NRI asked you to host the Olympics again. Despite the short notice, Griffin’s Roost has risen to the challenge and meets the deadlines. For the first time there will be three national teams competing and four new events, all proposed by the New Rasalhague Republic.
The Opening Ceremony is a delightful diversion from the stress of the war, filled with music and dance, a celebration of life, of hope, of joy. You quite appreciate it. Siriwan attends as your guest, and you can tell that she is quite fascinated with this, well, alien tradition.
The format has slightly changed, with the schedule shifted around some. All of the track and field events, along with swimming, are held together on the same days in the opening weeks of the games.
In Men’s Athletics, the Rasalhaguians manage a surprising upset, dominating the short and long distance sprints as well as the hurdles, Team Griffon struggles coming out, despite having been favored in the events, as several athletes suffer injuries that require them to withdraw. Competition is nevertheless fierce, but the Rasalhaguian team proves dominant enough to win gold.
The Women’s team, however, redeems Team Griffon’s poor performance on the men’s side with a dominating show of athletic prowess. Across the board, the Griffon women excel at the various events leading to a decisive victory for Team Griffon.
In swimming Team Griffon dominates both the men’s and women’s competition, although the Rasalhaguians come close to snatching the victory away from the women by two tenths of a second.
Team Griffon’s men’s team dominates in the Decathlon, winning 7 out of 10 events outright and coming in a dominating first, however the women’s competition is far tighter. In the end the NRI comes away with a hard fought gold and the Rasalhaguians edge out Team Griffon for silver.
In the Modern Military Pentathlon the Griffon Men are dominant as expected, but the poorly rated NRI women’s team has a truly exceptional performance from one of their members who manages to lift them to the gold.
Val the Moofia Boss
Well-known member
Hooray for the Drac brigade CO. I wonder where he will go after this war is over.
Maybe a new policy should be enacted: before entering combat, all crewmembers onboard dropships are to don spacesuits. The crew complements for dropships seems to be range from about 40 to 100 people, so it should be easy to provide spacesuits for everyone.
Damn, we came back to Atarashi too late. In retrospect we should've gone back right away. We should also probably set aside a jumpship to regularly jump into neighboring systems to check their status (such as New Rasalhague and the NRI) to make sure that they are still alive, exchange news, etc.
According to the map, Okusawa seems to be the furthest system away from us towards the North West. Can our jumpships travel that far in one jump?
Okusawa can produce two regiments of Jenners a year? That's 216 to 360 Jenners per year! And an additional regiment of Atlas and Stalkers every 3 years! So they're putting out at least 1512 to 2376 mechs every 6 years. On average that's 252 to 396 mechs being produced per year (assuming that they have enough materials to keep all of the factories busy all the time). Those 100 Jenners they threw at us years ago was nothing! They might have thousands of mechs! Holy crap, we're not going to be able to invade Okusawa anytime soon... we should be worried about them invading us! And if Okusawa is a fortress world, then they can likely shield most of their mechs in bunkers, so we can't just have our awesome space forces blow them up from afar. Wow.
Well, that's assuming that they're all the real deal, and not just paper mache mechs.
Seems rescuing little brother here on Nowa Warszawa will be easier than previously thought, but Okusawa... man that is going to be bad, perhaps impossible right now. And this is just the deep periphery; if Inner Sphere army levels are even bigger than this...
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Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
All the Mechs in the world won't help against us blasting them from orbit though
Trashman.exe
Well-known member
We can just barely reach Okusawa if we jump from Nowa Warszawa.
For jump distance that our jumpships can do is 30LY, if you look at the bottom right there's a astrographic map which shows that two squares equal 20LYs.
Jarow
Well-known member
I'm pretty sure it's two from Griffon's Roost, but we're close to fully controlling Nowa Warzsawa. I think it's only a jump away from there.
As for Atarashi...
On the plus side, now the Dracs arguably only control one planet/system (Killborough seems mostly independent). Nowa Warzsawa's remaining defenses are basically paper tigers - we'll probably lose some people defeating them, but no real risk of losing there
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Orangeduke38
Well-known member
I know the Overlords could carry 12 regiments or 432 mechs/ vehicles and 72 ASF's between them. But do we know what and who were in those Overlords when we blew them up?
Were there any identifying unit features?
Were there any identifying unit features?
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You know that they launched zero ASFs, beyond that you can't tell.
According to the map, Okusawa seems to be the furthest system away from us towards the North West. Can our jumpships travel that far in one jump?
Okusawa can produce two regiments of Jenners a year? That's 216 to 360 Jenners per year! And an additional regiment of Atlas and Stalkers every 3 years! So they're putting out at least 1512 to 2376 mechs every 6 years. On average that's 252 to 396 mechs being produced per year (assuming that they have enough materials to keep all of the factories busy all the time). Those 100 Jenners they threw at us years ago was nothing! They might have thousands of mechs! Holy crap, we're not going to be able to invade Okusawa anytime soon... we should be worried about them invading us! And if Okusawa is a fortress world, then they can likely shield most of their mechs in bunkers, so we can't just have our awesome space forces blow them up from afar. Wow.
The more positive piece of the strategic picture is that the Dragon now has has zero JumpShip yards at his disposal until he upgrades the yards at Okusawa, and he's not producing NEARLY enough fighting DropShips to prevent us from hammering those yards flat with a massed naval strike, especially since the only large Drac naval concentration left is in Siriwan's hands, and she's not going to be attacking us with it.
Also, keep in mind that orbital bombardment with full-capital weapons is an order of magnitude nastier than with subcapital weapons. If you look at the Strategic Operations sourcebook, there are actually rules for fortress bombardment. . . the only fortresses that resist full scale orbital bombardment are Castles Brian, and even they will be worn down by sustained fire. If we have to dig the Dragon out of his hole, we can do so.
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Didn't slaver land have space yards though?