Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Artifex

Well-known member
[X] Agree to the Infrastructure Act of 3002
[X] They did the crime, they’ll still get credit for ‘most hilarious crime ever’
 

Brogatar

Well-known member
[X] Agree to the Infrastructure Act of 3002
[X] They did the crime, they’ll still get credit for ‘most hilarious crime ever’
 

Jarow

Well-known member
Just finished binging, great quest and I can’t wait for more.
Congrats on catching up in the quest! I strongly recommend joining the discord if you haven't already, we do a lot of discussion and earn rerolls in there (mostly via design competitions, if you're at all interested in battletech designs).
 
Turn 72 - This Time It's For Blood

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Turn 72 - This Time It’s For Blood

The Griffon and Roman Women’s shooting teams are given the most amusing punishment you’d ever heard of, as apparently the judge in the case found things just as hilarious as everybody else, and obviously agreed that the dumbarses had well and truly earned their atomic wedgies.

They are required to spend a collective 12 hours of community service signing copies of the most amusing photograph of the event at a children’s community center at an anti-bullying event, with the theme ‘if you are a bully, this might happen to you when you run into a bigger fish.’ Both teams completely ham it up, hiring local acting talent to dress up as over the top police officers to ‘drag them to their doom’. Then the local police join in, and you are absolutely rolling on the floor as they all show up wearing Groucho Marx glasses and fake noses and mustaches. And foam rubber riot batons, which they proceed to use to silly effect.

Great fun is had by all. Including the judge, who showed up dressed as Judge Dredd, complete with a Lawgiver pistol firing nerf darts. You and the NRI ambassador also put in an appearance once it became clear it was becoming an event.

The Griffon system government promptly embarked on a series of massive public works projects using the funds set aside for the purpose by the Infrastructure Act. Reading the reports you are shocked at the sheer scale of the projects undertaken, but reading more closely shows that none of them are, individually, at the scale of a DoME project, there’s just a ton of them going on at the same time, all with the same goal of massively boosting the system economy.

Considering that as far as you can tell the Griffon system has never seen this much activity at once? You believe that ‘massively boosting’ might be a case of great understatement.

A new colonization dropship design has entered production in the civil sector. Able to carry 10,000 passengers in reasonable comfort, the new design has revolutionized internal immigration and colonization efforts. As a consequence, workers can more easily follow the money, so to speak, and travel from system to system as they are needed.

((QM Note - as a consequence, the 2d6 roll for additional population in Peripheral systems is now a 5d6 roll, the multiplier is still 100,000))

At the Olympics, you are still not totally comfortable with the Naked Volleyball, considering it a gimmick at best, but to be fair it is a gimmick that is drawing in the crowds and the revenues, making hosting the games actually profitable for the host planet, unlike in the past where the local economy tended to suffer a bit. Griffon in general isn’t all that prudish either, and you certainly aren’t, but it does seem a tiny bit tacky.

But still, you do attend, even if you go to the Men’s event more for your wife’s benefit than your own. Even if she’s trolling you terribly with comments about how you needed to go out there and ‘represent’. You’ve been married over 40 years and you still sometimes act like newlyweds, you suppose that’s the secret to a happy marriage. So of course you promise to ‘represent’ if she does so at the women’s match, leading to a playful tussle.

The Griffon men do very well, winning the actual matches, even if the Rasalhaguians clearly ‘showed up’. You are pretty certain that if the matches were decided by the vote of the women in attendance the Rasalhaguians wouldn’t have had to settle for silver. Just saying.

The Women’s event was more heavily attended, as seemed usual, and Team Griffon dominated quite handily. And other body parts too. But you keep it professional. Your nephew, Jeremy Paul, the youngest son of your brother James, is out there cheering on his girlfriend, who’s the team captain for Team Griffon. There is naked handholding going on. It is exceptionally lewd, even after his girlfriend pulls on a track suit after the match.

You then head over to watch the soccer matches at a rather lovely stadium that is packed. Team Rasalhague has been surprisingly dominant in the preliminaries, and that continues in the actual tournament itself. In three matches they score 10 goals, while allowing none. Team Griffon is crushed by the Romans in the semi-finals, resulting in them getting a bronze medal for the Men’s tournament.

The Rasalhaguian women are even more dominant in their tournament, scoring 12 goals and allowing none. Team Griffon is able to manage a second place finish, however, holding the Rasalhaguians to only a single goal in the final match.

Team Griffon comes roaring back in baseball, however. An eight inning no-hitter in the opening game set the tone for the entire tournament, with the Rasalhaguians coming in second based on point differential with the Romans. In softball Team Griffon once more is dominant, although in this case based on pure offensive output as the scores put up by the softball team look like they belong in a football game or something. This time the Romans managed to edge out Rasalhague for the silver.

Even here on Nowa Warszawa, attending the year long festival of sport that is the Olympics, you cannot escape the dread budget meeting monster.

General Stewart is up first. “Your Majesty, the military has grown large enough that a reorganization might be required, at least in the near future. We’ve been drawing up plans for this for some time, so all we would need is approval for implementation. In addition, the Aerie is starting to have some issues with the sheer numbers of recruits. The Calliope Military Academy is helping immensely, but we are seeing numerous issues recently.”

She brings up a display. “In short, we would solve both problems at the same time. A new Griffon Naval Academy will be established, based out of the Griffon system. They would focus on training crews for Jumpships and Warships. The Aerie itself would refocus itself solely to Aerospace, training Dropship crews and ASF pilots and support personnel. The Calliope Military Academy would be joined by the former ground training facilities and personnel from the Aerie, who would be reorganized into a new school focused on all ground forces, with the CMA focusing on infantry and conventional forces, and the new Griffon Military Academy focusing on Mechs.”

She brings up another slide. “At the same time, the AFGE would be reorganized. A General Staff will oversee the entire military, reporting directly to the Crown, and would be responsible for overall administration. The Imperial Griffon Navy will focus purely on Jumpships and Warships, the Imperial Griffon Army on all ground forces, and the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force on all dropships and ASF units. In terms of seniority, the Navy will be the Senior Service in the black, the Army on the ground, and the Aerospace Force during landing operations. Ground fortifications would come under the Army, and space fortifications under the Navy.”

“Meanwhile,” she continues, “even while reorganizing, we still would like to stress the importance of continuing to grow our production infrastructure in order to maximize our capabilities. We are growing, which is stretching our forces, but we have a growing number of serious threats to deal with, which require greater concentration of forces. Once we’ve eliminated the Dracs from the equation the situation should ease, at least to some extent, but until then we need to grow as much as possible.”

She steps back, and Colonel Jenkins takes the podium, still irrepressible. “Ground Forces has a number of requests, Sir.” he says, cheerfully ignoring the traditional protocol of calling you ‘Your Majesty’, which you rather appreciate actually. “To start with, we need us a Raider Regiment, and we need it assigned to the First Rapid Reaction Brigade. Next, we need four Assault Regiments and a single Standard Mech Regiment, to fill out the 7th Assault Brigade and the 8th Assault Brigade. Then we’d like you to spend our hard earned tax dollars on three Armored Cavalry Regiments and four Light Horse Regiments, as we work on building another Cavalry Division. Finally, the 7th Infantry Division has been asking us about a little brother, so we’d like to get one by procuring three Armored Regiments and six Mechanized Regiments to keep the infantry and trackheads happy and well fed. And finally, 4 Garrison Regiments just to keep the lights on and clean the barracks.”

OK, so the cheeky bugger knows he can get away with that, and it does cause you to laugh as you look over the charts.
  • LAM Production
    • 1 Raider Regiment
  • Large Mech Production
    • 4 Assault Regiments
    • 1 Standard Mech Regiment
  • Medium Mech Production
    • 3 Armored Cavalry Regiments
    • 4 Light Horse Regiments
  • Conventional Units
    • 3 Armored Regiments
    • 6 Mechanized Regiments
  • Garrison Units
    • 4 Garrison Regiments

Colonel Romanov is up next. “Your Majesty, we have 10 Independence class carriers commissioning this year, as well as at least one Oasis II and potentially several White Towers. As such we are requesting sufficient ASF wings to fully equip these new assets. At minimum this will mean 10 Carrier Wings and 4 Fighter Wings, plus 1 Fighter Wing for each White Tower.”

She checks her notes. “For your future consideration, we currently are testing two new ASFs and a new Wing organization, but they are not yet ready for use. We will report the results of the evaluation early next year.”
  • 10 Carrier Wings
  • 4+X Fighter Wings

Your sister Thanh is actually presenting the Naval estimates this year, and she’s smirking at you. “Well, Your Majesty, Your navy.” she manages to pronounce the Capital Letter In Really Big Font, damnit, “is expanding. Here is our proposal to You.” DAMNIT THANH!
  • Conventional Dropship
    • 49 Lancer Parasite Escorts
  • Large Dropships
    • 4 Enterprise-B
    • 11 Majestic
    • 11 Shannon
    • 4 Sentinel
  • Jumpship
    • 2 Brig
  • Warship
    • 4 Dart
    • 8 Dagger
“Oh, and Your Majesty?” she says, so sweetly it gives you diabetes. “Give me more Warship slips to play with.”

Bridget is in a very Bridget sort of mood, like she always is, this time though she’s not mainlining coffee for a change. “Your Majesty. We are ready to begin the colonization of the system we have dubbed New Phoenix for its similarity to the Phoenix continent on Griffin’s Roost. This will be rather expensive, as we will need to build insulated shelters for the initial colonists and they will immediately begin work on colony domes. In addition, we would like to build a new Germanium Processing Facility in the Griff’s Leap system to process the Germanium we are mining there in situ. Our economic teams are ready to work with system governments on focused investments, we recommend both in the Griffon system and once more in Calliope for the greatest return on our investment. Additionally, we recommend outright investing in the economy of New Capricorn in an effort to help pull them out of their economic slump a bit faster. Finally, we have teams poised and ready for any construction or expansion projects you desire for us. Our DoME crews are ready to tackle the terraforming projects in the Calliope System, for example.”

Isoroku is out and about, schmoozing with his counterparts from the NRI and NRR, and his current deputy is handling the briefing. “Your Majesty, about the only thing we have to potentially promote this year, due to the Olympics, is further funding of sports camps for those sports where we might be falling behind a bit. Otherwise, our slate is clear.”

Jake is looking even more run down than before. “Well, Your Majesty, if we do colonize New Phoenix you’ll be wanting us to establish the system government there, which we’re ready to do. In addition, of course, to expanding the Colonial Office some more, trying to get those insufferable jackasses in the Chamber of Delegates to behave, and maybe engaging in some Civil Service expansion so we have more people available for projects overall. Give the word, and it will be done.”

Dr Bryant is up next. “Your Majesty, we have multiple teams ready to engage in R&D work, and have several recommendations in that regard. Some are for future benefits, some are engineering work on new systems.” She fires up the presentation.
  1. 5 Lab Teams available
  2. Research Expansion
    1. Construct New Labs on Nowa Warszawa
    2. Construct New Labs in the TTP
    3. Improve Commercial Stations with Orbital Laboratories
  3. R&D on new systems
    1. Swordfish Anti-Missile Missile
    2. Sub Cap Lasers as Capital AMS

General Messerschmidt is up next, looking a bit uncomfortable out of uniform. “Your Majesty, we have identified two potential openings in the situation surrounding Nya Kopenhamn that we can take advantage of. One of the worst demagogues on Nya Kopenhamn II has been identified and will be in a relatively isolated location in the near future. We have an agent who has gotten deep enough inside their security apparatus to safely send us copies of his schedule. This individual is exceptionally charismatic and ruthless and is personally responsible for hundreds of ‘sacrifices’ of ‘unbelievers’. Eliminating him, especially if we do it discreetly, would be immensely damaging to the fanatics on NK II. Second, we have identified a major agricultural complex on Nya Kopenhamn III that is growing a genetically enhanced strain of the poppy plant. The enhanced heroin refined from this plant is extremely addictive and adds extreme hallucinations and psychotic breaks to the usual effects of the drug. It is also extremely popular among the most lunatic fringe of the crazies on NK III. Therefore, we recommend striking this complex with tailored herbicides to destroy the crops.”

Martina Kalinowski is up next. “We have discussed the legality of both the assassination and the herbicide strike with the Intelligence people already and are satisfied that no legal boundaries will be broken by either. We are prepared to lay down the foundations for expanding the legal system to New Phoenix if required. Otherwise we are in good shape here, Your Majesty.”
 

Trashman.exe

Well-known member
Are we capable of designing larger warships or does that require another level of jump core research?
We’re going to require another level of advanced jumpship research since the max we can currently design is 250kt.

And here‘s something that I’m going to ask the thread to help with, Sun has given us a thing to decode and if it is figured out, something is going to happen in the quest as a reward.

A s a y a t d j a t a j w d d t t a p a t I f l y g t b y h

This is the thing we’re trying to decode and here’s all the hints he’s given:

there is no cipher
the letters are in the order with which they appear, but they are not all of the letters in the phrase
it is the first letter of each word of the phrase
 

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
It is the first letter of each word of the phrase. No word is omitted. No punctuation is needed. Capitalization is from autocorrupt and is only relevant in 6 of the letters, none of which are capitalized in the sequence and should be, the first letter is irrelevant capitalization as it is the first letter of the sentence, the capital I should be lower case. To gain the benefit of deciphering this all you need to do is determine the rough gist of the message, not the exact wording.
 

Jarow

Well-known member
Well, I'm going to focus my mental efforts on planmaking both short and long term, and leave the GM clue decoding to everyone else. In other news, have a plan for this turn:

[X] Plan: Not decoding cryptic GM clues
-[X] Procurement [$ 25,263,631.87 ]
--[X] Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $11,903,815.62 ] (85)
---[X] 49 Lancer [85]
---[X] 4 Enterprise-B [85]
---[X] 11 Majestic [85]
---[X] 11 Shannon [85]
---[X] 14 Sentinel [85]

--[X] Lay down Jumpship [Jumpship Construction - $448,762.63 ] (65)(->2)
---[X] 3 Caravel* [->0]
---[X] 5 Brig* [->1]
---[X] 2 Brig [65]

--[X] Lay down Warship [Warship Construction - $9,587,269.20 ] (70)(->3)
---[X] 2 Dart* [->1]
---[X] 6 Dagger* [->1]
---[X] 3 Dart* [->2]
---[X] 4 Dagger* [->2]
---[X] 4 Dart [70]
---[X] 8 Dagger [70]

--[X] Purchase New Units [ $ 3,323,784.42 ] (80)
---[X] 6 Fighter Wing [auto]
---[X] 10 Carrier Wing [80]

---[X] 1 Raider Regiment [80]
---[X] 4 Assault Regiment [80]
---[X] 1 Standard Mech Regiment [80]
---[X] 3 Armored Cavalry Regiment [80]
---[X] 4 Light Horse Regiment [80]

---[X] 3 Armored Regiment [80]
---[X] 6 Mechanized Regiment [80]
---[X] 4 Garrison Regiment [80]

-[X] General [$ 1,302,325,094.90 ]
--[X] Construct Oasis II Heavy Recharge Station Griffon Nadir* [->2]
--[X] Construct Oasis II Heavy Recharge Station Nowa Warzsawa Nadir* [->2]
--[X] Construct Oasis II Heavy Recharge Station Edelsteine Zenith* [90]
--[X] Construct Oasis II Heavy Recharge Station Catachan Zenith* [90]
--[X] Construct Oasis II Heavy Recharge Station Nowy Wroclaw Zenith* [->1]
--[X] Construct Silver Tower Nowy Wroclaw [->3]
--[X] Construct Silver Tower Edelsteine [->3]
--[X] Construct Silver Tower Nowa Warzsawa III [->3]
(No pirate point invasions of our planets allowed)

--[X] Construct Germanium Processing Facility Griffs Leap [100]
(Lots of benefits, and our naval construction is growing like crazy)
--[X] Economic Investment New Capricorn [85]
(I feel sorry for them, probably not a bad idea to help them out)
--[X] Rationalize Law Codes* [85]
--[X] Build HPG Station Calliope* [80]
--[X] Build HPG Station Griffon IV* [80]
--[X] Build HPG Station Nowa Warzsawa* [80]
--[X] Construct White Tower GX-B3 Zenith [90]
--[X] Construct White Tower GX-B3 Nadir [90]
(Only remaining system for the Dracs to leave their fortress world through. Unless they use pirate points, I guess, but not sure how comfortable they'd be doing so with no doubt terrible crew)

--[X] Organize a separate Naval Academy [85]
--[X] Reorganize the Aerie as an Aerospace Academy [85]
--[X] Reorganize Military [85]
(A more functional military sounds like a good thing to me. And procurement has so many rolls that preventing the need for rerolls can only help us)
--[X] Initial Colonization of New Phoenix (GX-A5) [75]
--[X] Establish Legal System for New Phoenix [80]
--[X] Establish System Government for New Phoenix [80]
(New colony! Even if it's probably going to take DoME to make it a place people will want to live in)
--[X] Focus Development on Core World Griffon [65]
--[X] Focus Development on Peripheral World Calliope [65]
(Economy is good, and these are the best contributors in their respective categories)

--[X] Build Relations with Senate [60]
--[X] Build Relations with Chamber [60]
(Senate likes us, but can truly love us if this succeeds. Well, until they do literally anything, I guess. Chamber still hates us, and we need to solve that as soon as we can)
--[X] Broadcast Propaganda to Nya Kopenhamn III* [~]
--[X] Broadcast Propaganda to Nya Kopenhamn IV* [~]
--[X] Assassinate demagogue on Nya Kopenhamn III [85]
--[X] Drop herbicide on Nya Kopenhamn IV [85]
(Sooner we solve the issues the sooner we get two new legitimately populated worlds)
--[X] Expand general bureaucracy of the Empire [75]
(More actions=great)
--[X] (Sports) Fund sports camps to improve performance in low performing Olympic sports [80]
(Olympics are a point of national pride. Therefore, we need to win a lot.)

--[X] Survey GX-A2 [75]
(This is probably where the Dracs are getting their "primitive" people from. So lets not let them keep it)
--[X] Survey GX-C13 [75]
(Now that we have the Mirandas, we can start poking towards the pirates again)
--[X] Upgrade All Ferro Fibrous Forges* [auto]
--[X] Construct Jumpship Yard Nowa Warzsawa* [auto]
--[X] Build LAM Factory on Calliope IV [->1]
(The first second factory may have gotten killed by a squirrel, but now we're going to build it back again, but stronger.)
--[X] Expand Capital Shipyard [85]
--[X] Expand All Shipyards [100]
--[X] Expand Refit and Repair Yard [100]

-[X] DoME [$ 95,000,000.00 ]
--[X] Terraform Calliope II [->4]
--[X] Terraform Calliope V [->4]
(Neither planet is overly nice, but adding more land to our soon-to-be-core system can only help us)
--[X] Construct Air Filters on Nowy Śląsk III* [85]
--[X] Construct O'Neill Cylinder Cluster in Griff's Leap* [->7]
--[X] DOME - Arcology Cluster Griffon* [->5]
--[X] DOME - Asteroid Redirection Calliope* [70]
--[X] Parliament Radiation Screened Habitat GVI* [->2]
--[X] Parliament Radiation Screened Habitat GVII* [->2]
--[X] Edelsteine Initial Terraforming and Colonization* [->7]

-[X] Research [$ 346,000,000.00 ]
--[X] Improve Commercial Stations with Orbital Laboratories [75]
(More research success chance is helpful, cheaper research is helpful, and research event is nice. Also getting more expensive a we add more commercial stations, so probably better to do it sooner rather than later)
--[X]Construct New Labs on Nowa Warszawa [->1]
--[X] Construct New Labs in the TTP [->1]
(Lets us do more research. Finishing off the previous set of research still left us with a lot of money leftover, so we can probably afford the new research slots)
--[X] Advanced Compact Core Theory II* [->1]
--[X] Advanced Compact Core Design II* [->1]
--[X] Advanced Compact Core Construction II* [->1]
--[X] Swordfish Anti-Missile Missile [85]
--[X] Sub Cap Lasers as Capital AMS [85]
(Krakens were problems that we hopefully won't have to face much in the future, but capital missiles are still annoying. So better capital AMS sounds very much like a good thing to me)

-[X] Miscellaneous [$ 18,100,000.00 ]
--[X] Peacekeeping [2,000,000][->?]
--[X] Megafactory [15,000,000][->3]
--[X] Olympics [100,000][->0]
--[X] DoME study [1,000,000][->0]
--[X] DOME - Plant Subarctic Forests GIV* [QM Penance][->1]

$721m leftover. Lots of focus on defense, but I like us not being open to attacks. I found it relatively easy to make the plan this turn, we had only had 1 thing I really needed to take extra time thinking about (I considered replacing Senate relations, which admittedly isn't that important, but decided to keep it after the important things all fit in). Feel free to take and modify if you have different opinions though.

Today I realized that my map of where we've surveyed apparently lost a system (GX-B11), so we'll probably end up claiming it next turn (unless we're too busy). It has no planets, and it's apparently really hard to get to it's asteroid belts, so it's not too important a target right now anyways.
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
[X] Plan: Not decoding cryptic GM clues

Can’t wait for those Rad Habitats for GV’s to get done. Stupid Parliament pork project.
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
Hey, people who get the combat mechanics better than me. How viable would it be to build a free squadron of AMS boats for the Drac invasion?

We seem to have the capital ships on lock and Krakens are going to be rare. So the main thing to deal with in the void will be the hoards of chaff sent our way.

Extra Autocannons on the gun line and extra bodies to eat kamikazes could go a long way and we could just send the survivors to other squadrons when the invasion is done.
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
A s a y a t d j a t a j w d d t t a p a t I f l y g t b y h

A strikeforce attacked you as The Dragon jumped a Texas and JumpShips with DropShips designed to takedown a planetary aerospace theater including fortresses like yours generating brutal hyperinflation

Yeah, I doubt that's really it but after spending quite some time that's the most coherent sentence I've managed to come up with, especially knowing there are exactly 6 capitalized words and no punctuation.
 

Trashman.exe

Well-known member
A s a y a t d j a t a j w d d t t a p a t I f l y g t b y h

A strikeforce attacked you as The Dragon jumped a Texas and JumpShips with DropShips designed to takedown a planetary aerospace theater including fortresses like yours generating brutal hyperinflation

Yeah, I doubt that's really it but after spending quite some time that's the most coherent sentence I've managed to come up with, especially knowing there are exactly 6 capitalized words and no punctuation.
Every J is capitalized, as is one T
a D an A and an P are also capitalized

These are apparently the last hints Sun is going to give.
 

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