[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.
[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.
[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.
[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.
[X] Plan: Budgetary Survival
@Ridli Scott You left out the '[' at the start of your post.
[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.
[X] Plan: Budgetary Survival
-[X] Military 5
--[X] ASF Dispersal Fields - Capricorn
(ASF field near other part of nation)
--[X] Harden Factory 1 to 1
(Protect the factory we're more likely to use sooner)
--[X] Train complex entrance team
(Cheap, gets us complex sooner)
--[X] Field Test Skysweeper AA Tank
--[X] Field Test Avenger Anti-Air Hovertank
(Integrated AA for if our ASFs can't deal with enemy)
-[X]Interior 5
--[X] Comprehensive Survey of the twin continents of Castor/Pollux*
--[X] Build a Battlemech Factory outside Griffsport
(Begin battlemech production)
--[X] Scout the Titanium w/Penguin Fighting Grip
(minor GDP boost and get us closer to titanium mine's bigger boost)
--[X] Build Championship Hovercraft Racing League stadium and course
(Happy kids and GDP boost)
--[X] Establish Harbor on Castor
(Next step towards Wolverine compound)
-[X] Diplomatic 3
--[X] Increased funding for the arts
-[X] Political 3
--[X] Extend full citizenship to Grifftigers
(Tiger citizens!)
-[X] Research 3
--[X] Aerodyne Dropships (small)*
--[X] Materials Research lvl 2
(Progress towards tech level 2)
--[X] Improved Automation lvl 3
(Economy Boost)
--[X] Advanced Infantry Weapons - Energy
(One of two weapon types, we want both)
-[X] Intelligence 3
--[X] Counterintelligence Surveillance
(cheap enough not to stop)
--[X] Decode recovered data drive*
-[X] Justice 2
-[X] Training
--[X] 1st Armored
(Untrained units)
Do you have any idea how much time it would take to play out planetary defense force sized battles using anything remotely close to full BTech rules? Besides, if Sunhawk had anything remotely like that much time and energy, it would be better put to developing less Mech-centric rules that give tanks, artillery, and air support their proper dominance.
I'm not proposing anything close to full BTech rules. I'm proposing that unit strength should depend on the nature of the target. I think the counterfactual required to use Lanchester's laws (that different units are targeted at the same rate) is likely to remove less fun than the counterfactual currently in use (that weapons are undifferentiated blobs of BV). If the required assumption about fire distribution doesn't wash out the weapon distinctions in combined arms forces, and I can't actually make guarantees until I build a spreadsheet and run some test cases which I won't bother with if Sunhawk is strongly wedded to his rules, the time to sim a battle would depend on the number of kinds of units worth distinguishing, not on the number of actual units or the length of the battle because there would be no rounds except an initial exchange of single use weapons.
The important counterfactual here is that everyone who is actually participating in the Quest is having 100% fun already. No fun has been "removed" as you claim, and no fun would be added by your proposals.
Differential equations are one of the most horribly anti-fun things in the history of ever.
Atarlost, keep in mind this isn't being run by a computer, but by hand. I understand that there are benefits to that approach, but it's a lot more effort both than needed and desired. If the quest was solely a combat simulator, it might be more worth it, but it's far more about building the empire, with combat being a necessary occurrence, than about complex battles.
As a member of the group responsible for handling combat, I know that this level of abstraction is already complex enough to deal with in a reasonable time frame; making it more complex will merely reduce the ability to handle every other part of the quest. It took 10 minutes for an extremely simple dropship v Roc test, ignoring any setup Sunhawk had to do; there's a lot more involved in something with multiple groups running around, especially when you also add in a ground combat stage.
[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.
[X] Plan: Budgetary Survival
If the system is a pain wouldn't it be easier to dump all the units into a game of Megamek and just let princessbots on both sides fight it out? That's generally what I do when I'm writing something and want to make sure the outcome isn't ridiculous by the rules.
The current system is an acceptable compromise between reasonableness and speed. Changing to a more active system would take forever, and bring negligible benefit to a quest not actually centered on combat itself. We're aiming for a reasonable target of about an hour for full combat, which we have a pretty decent chance of meeting with the current system.
Economic Roll - 5 Degrees of success
Health Roll - 0 degrees of success
Stability Change roll - 0 degrees of success
Stability Rolls
-Political - +5 to one roll (assigned to Castor Harbor project)
-Research - 2 projects +10 (assigned to Human Genome Project and Spheroid Dropships)
-Economic - +5% GDP
Meta Event Roll - 49 - No Event
Dynasty Luck Roll - 34 - 2 - 1000 windfall
Crown Influence Roll - 10 - no roll
Lords Influence Roll - 9 - no roll
Commons Influence Roll - 3 - Fail
[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.
ASF Dispersal Fields - Capricorn
Target - 65
Roll - 43
Result - Success
Train complex entrance team
Target - 50
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS
Field Test Skysweeper AA Tank
Target - 95
Roll - 52
Result - SUCCESS
Field Test Avenger Anti-Air Hovertank
Target - 95
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS
Build a Battlemech Factory outside Griffsport
Target - 75
Roll - 67
Result - SUCCESS
Scout the Titanium w/Penguin Fighting Grip
Target - 75
Roll - 47
Result - SUCCESS
Build Championship Hovercraft Racing League stadium and course
Target - 85
Roll - 73
Result - SUCCESS
Extend full citizenship to Grifftigers
Target - 75
Roll - 71
Result - SUCCESS
Aerodyne Dropships (small)*
Target - 100
Roll - 60
Result - SUCCESS
Materials Research lvl 2
Target - 85
Roll - 81
Result - SUCCESS
Improved Automation lvl 3
Target - 80
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS
Advanced Infantry Weapons - Energy
Target - 110
Roll - 15
Result - SUCCESS
Decode recovered data drive*
Target - 35
Roll - 70
Result - FAIL
Training
1st Armored
Target - 80
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS
Griffin's Roost AeroTraining
Target - 50
Roll - 68
Result - FAIL
You promptly veto the ridiculous proposal from Parliament, sending a number of people who claimed to support you so much that they wanted you to be a dictator in all but name to be highly offended at the public humiliation. You frankly would rather not have such people's support.
Jeremy is in the championship hunt again, and you are both terrified for your little man and incredibly proud and excited. His younger brothers… aren’t in the championship hunt this year, not having won a single race, but they are both cheerfully serving as part of their big brothers crew.
You have such great kids.
You’ve been asked to name the new championship stadium, but you’ve not been able to come up with a single great idea. In the end, you announce the name of the Championship Arena to be…
[] Write-In
The racing in the initial heats is furious. As the popularity of the sport has grown, so too has the money attracted to the sport, even down to the Pee Wee leagues. You are seeing 10 year olds racing hovercraft emblazoned with sponsorship decals, and the quality of the hovercraft themselves has gone up immensely.
As has the cost.
Talking with other parents, many of them are worrying about being able to afford to keep their kids in the sport, especially if they want to be competitive. When the sport had started you could get all the gear you needed for around a hundred dollars, now the cheapest racer out there was ironically your son’s, and it cost well over a thousand dollars new, and the modifications and adjustments made in the palace workshops have easily tripled the cost of it.
This could be a problem, if costs continue to rise then the main reason you’ve been sponsoring the league in the first place could be in jeopardy.
[] Get together with the organizers to require spec chassis and engines, thus massively reducing costs.
[] Get with Bridget Doyle and put together a public subsidy program to provide grants to poor families whose kids want to participate in the sport
[] Get with your father-in-law and arrange for Lee Industries to sponsor the entire Pee-Wee League in order to drive costs to the racers families down as low as possible
[] Write-In
Your son’s racer, of course, isn’t sporting any sponsorship decals, unless you count the multiplying unicorn and glitter star decals that your daughters have been applying.
You think it’s rather over the top, but the girls love it, and you are incredibly proud of Jeremy for not only putting up with it but actively encouraging the girls in their efforts. He puts up with a lot of teasing from his friends over it, but doesn’t seem to mind all that much.
As the championship weekend goes on, your son consistently remains within the top three in each of his heats. Between races your husband is down in the pits with the boys tinkering with the racer while you watch over the girls as they play with other kids their ages in the play area set aside for the children.
The final race comes up.
And Jeremy dominates the race to the point where on the final lap he actually checks up so as to not lap anybody and make the race closer than it really was. The second place finisher is a full 8 seconds back, which on the extremely small circuit that comprises the Pee Wee track is almost an eternity.
You are actually a bit nervous for the post-race inspection, but the scrutineers clear it clean and then you allow yourself to go a bit nuts.
Next year Jeremy will be moving up to the Junior league. You try hard not to think about how much faster and more dangerous that league is compared to the kid-friendly Pee Wee league.
At least you’ll only have to worry about him and the twins…. Wait… JEREMY! NO!
Your son. The boy you are so incredibly proud of… has just given Thanh his racer as an early Christmas present! NOT YOUR DAUGHTER TOO!
This is all totally your loving husbands fault. You complain to the Sergeant-Major the entire way home as the kids celebrate with daddy.
And of course it is totally impossible for you to say no when Thanh gives you the Big Kitten Eyes and asks if she can really race like her big brothers next year.
There’s still hope that Sarah won’t be infected by this adrenaline addiction!
Yeah, right. She’s also Willis’ daughter.
You are doomed, she’s almost guaranteed to also want to race, even if right now she’s more interested in dolls.
Back in the office you receive a report from General Potter about the finalists for a very hotly contested design contest. You look over the final entrants and the initial evaluations done by the test and evaluation teams. All of them meet the specifications set out in the request for proposals.
[]
Name
Cost
Speed
Fuel
HP
Attack
Defense
Special
[]
Calico
1588
9
8
70
15
15
Armored
[]
Claw
1108
9
5
58
12
12
Armored, Armor Piercing
[]
Corgi
1380
11
8
62
13
13
Swift, Armored
[]
Dire Penguin Mk II
1108
9
5
66
14
14
Armored
[]
Kestrel
1408
9
6
66
14
14
Armored
[]
Kitten
1068
9
7.5
58
12
13
Armored
[]
Mustang Block 2
968
9
5.5
58
12
12
Armored
[]
Stymphalian
1540
8
5
86
18
18
Armored
[]
Thunderbird F4A
1508
8
6.5
66
14
14
Armored, Armor Piercing
[]
Thunderbird F5B
1572
8
7.5
70
15
15
Armored, Armor Piercing
[]
Warhawk F7A
1188
11
5
58
12
12
Swift, Armored, Armor Piercing
Once you make your choice a factory will have to be built in order to produce the winning design.
You also receive the reports on the results of the various training exercises going on. The specialized training for the complex entry team is underway and they are already reporting good results, although they are not finished yet. The cannon-cockers of the 1st Armored are enthusiastically putting rounds down range and have been showing progress, but they still are rather green.
Meanwhile the techs and training officers for the new AeroTraining Command are suffering from palm-to-face disease to an extent that you wonder briefly if the RRF Curse has transferred to the new unit. They send you an urgent request to appoint a new CO, as the one originally assigned had been medically retired after a high-speed collision between him on a motorcycle and a Griffin Gull on a coastal road.
You have two choices.
[] Josephina Brewer, +5 to training targets. Reputation as a friendly and capable instructor
[] Joe Hines, +5 to training targets. Known hardass with those under his command, but produces excellent results.
The new set of dispersal fields have been constructed on Capricorn, on sites that are picked out by the local Grifftigers as being safe from the less friendly wildlife of the continent.
You’d discovered a new species there, incidentally, a small bear-like creature that loved to climb and was even cuter than a Koala bear. Fears about it being hostile and aggressive rapidly faded when it was learned from the grifftigers that they only ate berries and, according to Sekhmet, their main defense against the ‘tigers was ‘being too cute to eat’.
The fact that the first people to meet them promptly got cuddled by one caused them to be nicknamed Cuddlebears. The zoological people are studying them carefully, but it is believed that within a year or two they might be cleared as being safe for human interaction.
Your daughters immediately lay siege to you for one. Sekhmet and Bastet traitorously join in, although you can tell that Sekhmet is just humoring her daughter. You wind up promising the girls that as soon as the zoo people say it’s safe you’ll get them cuddlebears of their own, but they’ll be required to take care of them.
The field tests for the Avenger and Skysweeper go extremely well, with each of them fully fulfilling Nollak Industries claims about their effectiveness in targeting airborne targets. You are somewhat disturbed by the seeming fanaticism with which the corporate motto of ‘If it flies it dies’ is repeated by everybody you meet from that company, and Willis is most certainly weirded out by the whole thing.
Your first Battlemech factory is online and operational, ready to accept orders for the Ambush light mech. General Potter recommends forming an initial training battalion for the ‘Mechs rather than immediately placing them in operational service, on the grounds that once the battalion is properly established as an adjunct to the Aerie it will ensure that future Mechwarriors start out at a high level of basic skill.
[] Agree - will form a Training Battalion unit
[] Disagree - will form an Operational unit
QM Note - Training units are always in ‘training’ mode with attendant higher upkeep costs, however once a training unit is at Veteran status, in conjunction with the associated advanced training center new unit quality will start at Veteran instead of Regular
You get the first reports back from the titanium deposits. The acoustic defense system is proving quite effective at driving off the dire penguins. Field tests of the acoustic ‘fence’ systems prove efficient, although it is strongly advised to still build regular physical barriers in the event of a power failure to one of the pylons.
The scouts are able to construct a small protected harbor of sufficient size to begin exploiting the deposits in the near future.
There is a great deal of grumbling and muttering from certain elements of Parliament over the extension of citizenship and hence full civil rights to grifftigers. Once again you are annoyed that so much of it seems to come from groups that nominally support the throne, causing you to grit your teeth and resist the urge to publicly tear into them for their hypocrisy. As it is a small number of Lords publicly denounce the plan, costing you some support in that House.
Sekhmet, on the other hand, is very happy and gleefully bestows the Lick Of Approval upon you. And when Ms Forsyth shows up for her monthly meeting to discuss issues from the opposition viewpoint she too is the proud recipient of a Lick Of Approval.
Of course, you have been around the big cat long enough to realize that she’s Up To Something™.
Said suspicion is confirmed when a few weeks later Sekhmet asks you to invite Dominique and her boyfriend to the official ceremony recognizing Grifftiger citizenship. There you get to meet with whom the ‘tigers call ‘The Eldest One’, whom you instantly recognize as the gigantic locomotive sized tiger you’d seen in that recording.
You feel rather callow when you learn that he was already nearly an adult when your ancestors first came to Griffin’s Roost, and that he’d actually watched as the ‘sky eggs’ had flown overhead en-route to landing at what were now the ruins of the old colony site.
He then bestows a very sandpapery Lick Of Approval to you and Willis, before chuffing in feline laughter at your expressions.
And, while you are there, you see a gamboling cub and his mother quite firmly adopting Dominique as ‘their’ human. The expression on Dominique's face is precious.
The aerospace engineering teams proudly present their first full dropship design, along with all the specifications for production equipment required to actually build it. To your annoyance, you sense the hand of your beloved husband in the name… Enterprise.
You sweetly turn the tables on him by declaring that it was obviously required that any ship named Enterprise must have the prefix USS on the front of it, and moreover any away team crews needed to be issued red uniform jackets.
You manage to keep a perfectly straight face as the engineering team is torn between laughing at you catching the joke and running with it, and horror on the same faces at realizing that you caught the joke and are running with it..
Further improved automation technology spreads like wildfire through the industrial sectors of the economy, increasing productivity significantly. Thanks to the combination of job retraining available through your education programs and the generous unemployment benefits and job placement assistance through the Interior Ministry, there is no net effect on unemployment.
The materials science teams finish their work as well and the data they developed has been sent to the teams doing low level work on ferro-fibrous and endosteel technologies.
Harry Owens reluctantly reports that they still haven’t managed to crack the datadisk, but they’re still working on it.
Finally, you get the opportunity to play with the prototypes for a hand-held laser rifle. You are warned that it overheats rapidly, so only fire single shots and wait at least 15 seconds between shots to avoid dangerous heat build up. These weapons show promise as a general purpose weapon capable rather than the far more specialist nature of the initial generation of needlers.
Ba was first mentioned in Turn 3 but I can't find mention of her name anywhere. @LordSunhawk can you help with this? Personally I'd love to see a school or a children's hospital ward named after ba - or after Sekhmet
Ba was first mentioned in Turn 3 but I can't find mention of her name anywhere. @LordSunhawk can you help with this? Personally I'd love to see a school or a children's hospital ward named after ba - or after Sekhmet
Ba was first mentioned in Turn 3 but I can't find mention of her name anywhere. @LordSunhawk can you help with this? Personally I'd love to see a school or a children's hospital ward named after ba - or after Sekhmet
