Turn 63 - Hosanna Meus
You are enjoying a rather lovely early winter day when the latest crisis hits your desk.
An issue has been detected in the endosteel forgings used for mech production. Nothing at all critical, although it is somewhat annoying. A slight flaw in the stress analytics during initial development has been discovered and confirmed. The actual impact is minimal, structures that should have had life spans of centuries would, without correction, fail within decades. The problem isn’t in the material itself, but rather that in order to protect against certain edge cases in sheer load you needed to actually round off the structural members by a few tenths of a millimeter to prevent stress concentrations. The amount of material needed to be removed is about a tenth of a kilogram from an assault mech at most.
The fix can be easily done in the field by any qualified technician, although it will probably irritate every single one of them in the process as they have to run ultra high grit sandpaper over endosteel ‘bones’. Fixing the actual extruders is also easy, but far more time consuming as this requires disassembling parts of the entire assembly just to get to the extruders in question. As a consequence, this year you won’t be able to build any new units that require endosteel while the work takes place. It’s annoying, but from reading the reports on the issue nothing more than that.
You do order immediate reviews of the analytics for Ferro Fibrous, Ferro Aluminium and Ferro Carbide, but all of those check out properly. The issue with the Endo was an unexpected stress accumulation that didn’t show up in any of the test samples, because they were only tested for a few years at most, whereas it took over twenty years for the issue to start to show up. None of the mathematical models would have caught it.
The Aerie has completed work on their newest training mech, which could well be a beneficiary of this situation. A 30 ton quad mech with an identical movement profile to the
Wolf Spider, the
Trainer is designed to instruct cadets in combined arms operations as well as quad mech piloting. Older Mk II Light Battle Armor suits will be brought out of storage, refurbished, and issued as training suits for cadets on the infantry track. Ironically, the new Light Training Regiment has more potential combat power than the older Training Regiment, despite the older unit using individually more capable
Cadet mechs. The difference? Combined arms with the battle armor suits.
A good lesson for aspiring Mechwarriors, in your opinion.
| Name | Cost | HP | A/D | Specials |
| Trainer | 237.19 | 8 | 18 | None |
The alacrity with which the NRI accepted your offer to take the Pugnus Deorum leaders’ families as exiles is a mite suspicious, leading Jeremy to conclude that they’d intended to simply exile them in the first place but had raised the entire macabre mass execution as a gambit to prompt you to take them without billing the NRI for it.
Clever, but you’ll remember this.
They also accept one of the defense station designs submitted by a consortium of industry, and the value of those contracts is such that you have seen a very welcome boost in income this year. You’d been thinking of giving them a possible rebate, but the shenanigans concerning the exiles pretty much kiboshed that bit of generosity.
The primary in the Nowa Warszawa system has entered a phase of heightened solar activity, heralded by a number of large flares and coronal mass ejections. Nothing all that hazardous, but it does require some rerouting of space traffic and early replacement of some communication and weather satellites in orbit.
The local government on Calliope IV has passed legislation to begin construction of a commercial space station in orbit. If successful, they intend to build one in Calliope III orbit to serve as a hub for research and tourism.
| [] | Approve |
- Adds 1 Lvl 1 Space Station to Calliope IV Planetary Orbit
- +1 Econ Rating - Calliope IV
- +1 Health Rating - Calliope IV
|
| [] | Reject | |
Some of the early research teams on Calliope III have returned to Griffin’s Roost, bringing with them several interesting discoveries and, well… pets.
The pseudo-raptors of the planet are clearly not ‘true’ dinosaurs, for one thing they have distinct genitalia similar to most mammals rather than a cloaca, although they are feathered. More importantly, they are about as smart as a herding dog and appear to easily accept humans as ‘pack’.
The raptors have a commiserate relationship with the Rex-analogues, and appear to have readily extended that same relationship to humans. The raptors help guard the nest from scavengers and other small predators, and the Rex/human protects the pack from larger predators that might threaten the raptors as well as allows the raptors to assist in hunting.
Doesn’t hurt that they are very colorful, very playful, and seem more than smart enough to be considered ‘tame’, as they apparently are not going to spoil the ‘deal’. Your youngest grandkids, of course, are already begging you to get them raptors of their own.
And then there are the cute and roly poly Lystrosaurus analogues which are about the size of a dog and look utterly adorable. They’re incredibly friendly to everything, yet were almost the cause of a civil war among the research teams.
You see, their tails are broad and heavily muscled with a thick fat layer, but no bones. And apparently are incredibly delicious when grilled like steaks once the skin is removed. You can, in fact, verify that this is so, as they are tender and juicy like the very finest cuts of prime beef. On the other hand, the animals themselves are incredibly cute, enough so that killing them for their tails seems almost sacrilegious.
Fortunately, the raptors showed the solution to the problem and a path for both the ‘delicious!’ and ‘cute!’ crowds to co-exist peacefully. Like several species of lizards, the tails detach if tugged hard enough, then regrow over time. The detachment seems to cause absolutely no distress to the creature, who doesn’t seem to even notice. Studies have shown that there are no nerves in the tail, it is pretty much purely a mass of muscle, a bit of fat, and the blood vessels that feed the tail appear to be designed to close themselves off when the tail is removed.
So, in other words, you can have your yummy Lystro tail steak and pet the Lystro without feeling guilty. Win win!
And, of course, your grandkids also want their own Lystros as pets too.
A number of Lystros have been imported to Calliope IV already and the locals have organized ranches to breed them for their tails. It looks like it may be a useful little industry for the planet.
Nowa Warszawa remains in an unsettled calm, there have been no new major attacks by either side as the deployment of additional security forces has had an effect, The new detachments of the Imperial Grifftiger Mounted Police have started patrols in some of the more raucous regions, which has had a further chilling effect on the radicals.
On Griffon IV there have been some minor earthquakes along a previously thought dormant fault system. The quakes are well away from settled areas and are only being picked up by seismometers. The largest has been a 4.9 and from the geology of the area it appears that might be the highest intensity likely. Geologists are pleased to see tectonic activity, as it indicates that the planet may be able to sustain the terraformed state long term.
A crime ring has been broken up in the Inner Asteroid Belt. Mostly involving financial crimes and tax evasion, the arrests have caused some disruptions in the Belt’s economy, but long term effects are expected to be positive. This year will see a small reduction in expected GDP output, however.
Nowy Gdansk has seen a boom in population this year as many Poles from Nowa Warszawa have travelled there seeking work, in addition to the knock on effects from a baby boom about 18 years ago. Over the next several years the working population of the planet is expected to explode in numbers due to the extremely high birth rates since 2975.
The first commercial jumpship yards have begun construction, building non-military knock offs of the
Caravel that have been stripped down to be more cost-effective for commercial concerns. You will start seeing a boost in commerce in a few years as these commercial jumpships start to come online, meanwhile you are seeing a slight boost in the economy overall as the yards begin construction. A number of aerospace companies are currently racing to build additional commercial yards as well.
A group of investors on Calliope IV have approached the Crown with a proposal to build vehicle factories on the planet, initially for spare parts and such for resident armored and garrison units. Currently spares for the garrison's vehicles need to be shipped in from the Griffon system, and some companies on Griffin’s Roost might be unhappy if local competition took away a cash cow from them, as they’ve been previously able to charge premium prices.
| [] | Invest in these factories |
- 10,000,000 cost
- +1 Econ Rating - Calliope IV
- +5 Factory Rating - Calliope IV
- +5 Infrastructure - Calliope IV
- Next turn only
- Reroll any negative Econ Rating rolls for Calliope IV
- -.01% GDP growth Griffin’s Roost
|
| [] | Encourage the investors to partner with Griffin’s Roost firms instead |
- +5 Factory Rating - Calliope IV
- +5 Infrastructure - Calliope IV
|
Similarly a consortium of investors from the TTP in conjunction with local businesses are requesting Imperial permission to begin construction of a full shipyard in Kuroisora orbit. They’d be able to finance the initial construction, any expansion would need to be paid for by the Empire.
| [] | An excellent idea |
- Adds a Level 1 shipyard to Kuroisora
- Would be producing 2 standard dropships
- +1 Econ Rating - TTP
- +5 Infrastructure - TTP
|
| [] | It doesn’t fit our long term plans | |
Likewise a different investment group headed by Lee Aerospace is seeking permission to build a complex of ASF factories on Calliope IV. The investors would finance the initial groundbreaking, but the Empire would need to pay for the expansion up to fully operational factories able to produce front-line ASF designs in quantity. The bid by these companies includes a pair of orbital facilities as well, one for Ferro-Aluminium and the other for Double Heat Sinks.
| [] | Superb, permission granted |
- +3 Factory Rating - Calliope IV
- +3 Infrastructure - Calliope IV
- +1 Econ Rating - Calliope IV
- +1 Health Rating - Calliope IV
- Adds the following
- 1 Lvl 1 ASF factory
- 1 Lvl 1 Ferro Aluminium Orbital Factory
- 1 Lvl 1 Double Heat Sink Orbital Factory
|
| [] | Not now, maybe later | |
