Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
[X] Sign the Banking Reform Act of 3024
Val the Moofia Boss
Well-known member
[X] Sign the Banking Reform Act of 3024
Turn 94 - It's Sexy But It's Hard
Turn 94 - It’s Sexy But It’s Hard
Despite his protests that he was the co-author of that term paper and hadn’t given it to Parliament, but merely mentioned it in passing to the Eldest and that it was all your great-aunt’s fault anyways for saving it, you still have Tiberius tossed back into the duck pond by Sekhmet.
The Pan-Griffon Games are continuing, with the same intense levels of competition. It is rather refreshing to see competitors from across the Empire winning gold medals rather than the Core worlds cleaning up. Granted, the Core Worlds are bringing home the lion’s share, but considering their populations that was to be expected.
The Black Pumpernickels are back in Griffon space and are cheekily advertising a mystery performance for the Griffon system in a few months. When asked what it will be they get very evasive, beyond confirming that they are stepping outside their usual comfort zone and not doing Gilbert & Sullivan for a change. They then book the largest and most prestigious opera house in Griffsport for a six month run starting in December.
You tried to wheedle the information out of them but they insisted on talking about the weather. Cheeky bastards.
Naturally the Department of Peripheral Studies hears about this and begins protesting plays in general, on the grounds that as soon as the actors get out of character they are killing said characters off and thus committing homicide. They have formed the Theater Police and are marching around the theater district carrying big signs and fuzzy handcuffs. The Actor’s Guild, after consulting with the staff of the Department, cheerfully play along, informing the distinguished professors that they aren’t going out of character, they are simply pretending not to be their characters for a little while.
There has been no activity from the Black Steel so far this year, but you are not relaxing your guard in that regard. You bloodied their nose a little bit, but you are sure that they’ll be back.
A conflict has sprung up between the Aerospace Force and the Navy. For the first time you had achieved ASF supremacy at the Battle of Stahlkampauge, however the Navy points out that after doing so the ASF forces proved woefully ineffective at making attack runs on the enemy warships. This is done with Admiral Fisher’s usual complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling tact. The Aerospace Force points out that the vast majority of the ASFs deployed were aerospace superiority birds, not strike birds, and that such are not designed to survive such attack runs.
So the Navy is naturally demanding that the Aerospace Force allocate more Strike Fighters to naval flight decks, the Aerospace Force insists that they need them on the fixed defensive stations for defensive purposes.
You are somewhat inclined to take the Navy’s side here, looking at the TO&Es of the various wings assigned to naval flight decks you notice a great preponderance of interceptor and dogfighter designs, with a distinct minority of strike craft. Even the assault fighters embarked are of the sort optimized for anti-ASF use. Since Admiral Fisher has been procuring massive numbers of flight decks in order to allow for numerical superiority, this points to the Aerospace Force still having a fighter pilot mentality.
After much yelling, posturing, and general unpleasantness the Aerospace Force finally agrees to procure large numbers of the new Quetzalcoatlus strike fighters and use them to swap out the Griffon squadrons assigned to the Saipan-class carrier wings.
You take the time to go on a family vacation on board SS United States, cruising the passage between Castor and Pollux. Many of your staff have young families and they bring them along, giving your kids plenty of playmates while the adults spend time relaxing at the pool or in the various lounges. It’s a very enjoyable time, and thankfully the universe cooperates with you and doesn’t send any fresh crises your way while you are trying to relax, recharge, and rejuvenate.
A few days after you return to Griffsport it’s time for the yearly budget meeting.
General Jenkins leads things off. “Well, I’ve got good news! The RRF has finished submitting all of their back paperwork and, while they are all complaining that their fingers have gone numb, we’ve finally reenabled their access to electronic filing so they no longer need to use pen and paper.” He’s smirking, and you can’t help laughing at that. “After all, they’d been avoiding doing their paperwork for so long that they didn’t remember that that option existed, far be it from us to make their remedial education easier, yes?”
He checks his notes. “So no drama from the Army for a few years, Your Majesty, which I’m sure is welcome news considering our less grounded comrades shenanigans lately.” That earns him scornful looks from both Admiral Fisher and General Romanov.
General Bradley takes the podium. “The reorganization is going very well, Your Majesty, and we should start having new equipment for your review next year. We are being very aggressive in terms of making use of omnitechnology to standardize families of vehicles, which should significantly simplify our logistics going forward.”
“Ultimately, we hope to settle on the smallest number of distinct chassis possible. Our current plans are for a 25 ton tracked chassis, a 50 ton tracked chassis, a 75 ton tracked chassis and a 100 ton tracked chassis, a 10 ton and 50 ton hover chassis, and both a 50 and an 80 ton wheeled chassis. All indications are that this should be quite possible, and we hope to have something to show you by next year.”
“For this year, Your Majesty, we have no actual budget requests outside of a further increase in militia numbers. Strategic Material production appears to be at the levels we will need for the future, and there are other budget priorities this year.”
General Romanov is up next, looking just a trifle surly and put upon. To be fair, you had been ragging a bit on the Aerospace Force lately, which was probably unfair of you. “Your Majesty, our most critical area is increasing our training cadre, especially since we’ve been taking advantage of how easy the Griffon was to fly to ease new pilots in. Other than that, as discussed, we are shifting away from Eagle procurement at the moment. Unlike the Army we do still need some boosts in strategic material production that should not wait.”
Admiral Fisher is up next, with Admiral Sims, freshly promoted as the head of BuShips, and Admiral von Falkenrick flanking him.
“OK, let me get right into it. Our new designs performed precisely as predicted, we just need more of them and, hopefully, true battle line units in the near future that can go toe to toe with the best the Black Steel has to offer. The first 19 of our new Parasite Squadrons have gone into service, deployed on our surviving cruisers. Each squadron consists of 1 Saipan, 1 Meteor and 2 Aetna. We’ll be putting 18 more of these squadrons into service this year, and we hope for many more. However we will need to massively boost our parasite production to sustain this. Training Command is still getting on my case about needing more assets, so we’ll still be providing that this year.”
He brings up the display.
Elizabeth is up next. “Your Majesty, while the Interior Ministry is perfectly positioned to support the required military construction, we have several other projects to bring to your attention first.”
She brings up a display on the screen. “We have a pair of new initiatives, building upon the recent work done in New Port Royal as well as the ongoing development, infrastructure, and investment operations that we have been historically engaged in. There are two related programs, both rather unimaginatively named ‘Massive X Investment’, one being for Core worlds, the other for Peripheral ones. Both address fundamental issues that exist within the systems in question, building up infrastructure, arable land, general health and economic investment, and are intended to act as relatively quick adjuncts to DoME terraforming projects in these areas. This being said, here our our economic recommendations this year.”
She switches to another slide on the display. “For DoME we have a large number of available teams, so there is quite a bit that we can do.”
Leila is off in a meeting with the Bourbon ambassador. The Bourbons are complaining about having to pay transit fees to make use of recharge stations in your space when trading with the NRI and NRR, and are being a bit obnoxious about it all. She left you a note that unless you want her to declare war on the annoying Frenchies that she has nothing for you this year.
Tiberius is grinning, which sets off all sorts of warning bells. “Your Oh So Divine Majesty!” he declares with a flourish, then smirks. “Expand the Colonial Office some more, my expansion sense is tingling and we must be prepared!” You look over at Sekhmet, who heads towards him, but the little shit pulls out a Grifftiger treat and succeeds at his bribe check, cheeky bastard. Just because your grifftigers like his wife’s cooking…
Grace rolls her eyes at these antics. “Your Majesty, I am about to explode your budget, because I have one project that is going to consume about half of it.” She says that completely seriously. “But it is a critical one.”
“I also have some good news, I have consulted with Legal and we’ll be able to farm out some of our R&D teams to private industry and commercial interests for some nice income, which should help offset the expense of KF research over the next five years.”
Martina is also absent, overseeing the creation of the Bank Regulatory Board. Her deputy delivers a short presentation concerning current crime rates throughout the Empire, ending with a request for more funding for the Imperial Grifftiger Mounted Police.
Despite his protests that he was the co-author of that term paper and hadn’t given it to Parliament, but merely mentioned it in passing to the Eldest and that it was all your great-aunt’s fault anyways for saving it, you still have Tiberius tossed back into the duck pond by Sekhmet.
The Pan-Griffon Games are continuing, with the same intense levels of competition. It is rather refreshing to see competitors from across the Empire winning gold medals rather than the Core worlds cleaning up. Granted, the Core Worlds are bringing home the lion’s share, but considering their populations that was to be expected.
The Black Pumpernickels are back in Griffon space and are cheekily advertising a mystery performance for the Griffon system in a few months. When asked what it will be they get very evasive, beyond confirming that they are stepping outside their usual comfort zone and not doing Gilbert & Sullivan for a change. They then book the largest and most prestigious opera house in Griffsport for a six month run starting in December.
You tried to wheedle the information out of them but they insisted on talking about the weather. Cheeky bastards.
Naturally the Department of Peripheral Studies hears about this and begins protesting plays in general, on the grounds that as soon as the actors get out of character they are killing said characters off and thus committing homicide. They have formed the Theater Police and are marching around the theater district carrying big signs and fuzzy handcuffs. The Actor’s Guild, after consulting with the staff of the Department, cheerfully play along, informing the distinguished professors that they aren’t going out of character, they are simply pretending not to be their characters for a little while.
There has been no activity from the Black Steel so far this year, but you are not relaxing your guard in that regard. You bloodied their nose a little bit, but you are sure that they’ll be back.
A conflict has sprung up between the Aerospace Force and the Navy. For the first time you had achieved ASF supremacy at the Battle of Stahlkampauge, however the Navy points out that after doing so the ASF forces proved woefully ineffective at making attack runs on the enemy warships. This is done with Admiral Fisher’s usual complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling tact. The Aerospace Force points out that the vast majority of the ASFs deployed were aerospace superiority birds, not strike birds, and that such are not designed to survive such attack runs.
So the Navy is naturally demanding that the Aerospace Force allocate more Strike Fighters to naval flight decks, the Aerospace Force insists that they need them on the fixed defensive stations for defensive purposes.
You are somewhat inclined to take the Navy’s side here, looking at the TO&Es of the various wings assigned to naval flight decks you notice a great preponderance of interceptor and dogfighter designs, with a distinct minority of strike craft. Even the assault fighters embarked are of the sort optimized for anti-ASF use. Since Admiral Fisher has been procuring massive numbers of flight decks in order to allow for numerical superiority, this points to the Aerospace Force still having a fighter pilot mentality.
After much yelling, posturing, and general unpleasantness the Aerospace Force finally agrees to procure large numbers of the new Quetzalcoatlus strike fighters and use them to swap out the Griffon squadrons assigned to the Saipan-class carrier wings.
You take the time to go on a family vacation on board SS United States, cruising the passage between Castor and Pollux. Many of your staff have young families and they bring them along, giving your kids plenty of playmates while the adults spend time relaxing at the pool or in the various lounges. It’s a very enjoyable time, and thankfully the universe cooperates with you and doesn’t send any fresh crises your way while you are trying to relax, recharge, and rejuvenate.
A few days after you return to Griffsport it’s time for the yearly budget meeting.
General Jenkins leads things off. “Well, I’ve got good news! The RRF has finished submitting all of their back paperwork and, while they are all complaining that their fingers have gone numb, we’ve finally reenabled their access to electronic filing so they no longer need to use pen and paper.” He’s smirking, and you can’t help laughing at that. “After all, they’d been avoiding doing their paperwork for so long that they didn’t remember that that option existed, far be it from us to make their remedial education easier, yes?”
He checks his notes. “So no drama from the Army for a few years, Your Majesty, which I’m sure is welcome news considering our less grounded comrades shenanigans lately.” That earns him scornful looks from both Admiral Fisher and General Romanov.
General Bradley takes the podium. “The reorganization is going very well, Your Majesty, and we should start having new equipment for your review next year. We are being very aggressive in terms of making use of omnitechnology to standardize families of vehicles, which should significantly simplify our logistics going forward.”
“Ultimately, we hope to settle on the smallest number of distinct chassis possible. Our current plans are for a 25 ton tracked chassis, a 50 ton tracked chassis, a 75 ton tracked chassis and a 100 ton tracked chassis, a 10 ton and 50 ton hover chassis, and both a 50 and an 80 ton wheeled chassis. All indications are that this should be quite possible, and we hope to have something to show you by next year.”
“For this year, Your Majesty, we have no actual budget requests outside of a further increase in militia numbers. Strategic Material production appears to be at the levels we will need for the future, and there are other budget priorities this year.”
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Procurement
- Increase Militia Rating by 30
- Procurement
General Romanov is up next, looking just a trifle surly and put upon. To be fair, you had been ragging a bit on the Aerospace Force lately, which was probably unfair of you. “Your Majesty, our most critical area is increasing our training cadre, especially since we’ve been taking advantage of how easy the Griffon was to fly to ease new pilots in. Other than that, as discussed, we are shifting away from Eagle procurement at the moment. Unlike the Army we do still need some boosts in strategic material production that should not wait.”
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Production
- Upgrade all Ferro-Aluminum Orbital Factories
- Upgrade all Double Heat Sink Orbital Factories
- Procurement
- 30 Heavy Fighter Wings
- 30 Strike Wings
- 30 Training Wings
- Production
Admiral Fisher is up next, with Admiral Sims, freshly promoted as the head of BuShips, and Admiral von Falkenrick flanking him.
“OK, let me get right into it. Our new designs performed precisely as predicted, we just need more of them and, hopefully, true battle line units in the near future that can go toe to toe with the best the Black Steel has to offer. The first 19 of our new Parasite Squadrons have gone into service, deployed on our surviving cruisers. Each squadron consists of 1 Saipan, 1 Meteor and 2 Aetna. We’ll be putting 18 more of these squadrons into service this year, and we hope for many more. However we will need to massively boost our parasite production to sustain this. Training Command is still getting on my case about needing more assets, so we’ll still be providing that this year.”
He brings up the display.
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- New Orbital Shipyards
- Pieklo
- Awha
- Kaiyo
- Bohren
- Grand View
- Expand all existing Orbital Shipyards
- New Refit & Repair Yards
- Grand View
- Expand all Refit & Repair Yards
- Escort Yards
- Chuma
- New Pollux
- New Castor
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Okusawa
- Small Shipyards
- New Pollux
- Medium Shipyards
- Calliope IV
- Griffon
- New Capricorn
- New Port Royal
- Nowa Warszawa
- Okusawa
- Kainga
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Edelsteine
- Jump Point Defenses
- Stahlkampfauge
- New Orbital Shipyards
- Procurement
- Standard Dropships
- 100 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
- 18 Cadet-class Training Dropships
- Large Dropships
- 21 Meteor-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 42 Aetna-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- Jumpships
- 7 Windjammer-class
- Escorts
- 10 Wolverine-class Training Ships
- 10 England-class Frigates
- 10 Fubuki-class Destroyers
- 20 Lyr-class Corvettes
- Light Warships
- 14 Dido-class Light Cruisers
- Medium Warships
- 10 Prinz Eugen-class Heavy Cruisers
- Standard Dropships
- Production
Elizabeth is up next. “Your Majesty, while the Interior Ministry is perfectly positioned to support the required military construction, we have several other projects to bring to your attention first.”
She brings up a display on the screen. “We have a pair of new initiatives, building upon the recent work done in New Port Royal as well as the ongoing development, infrastructure, and investment operations that we have been historically engaged in. There are two related programs, both rather unimaginatively named ‘Massive X Investment’, one being for Core worlds, the other for Peripheral ones. Both address fundamental issues that exist within the systems in question, building up infrastructure, arable land, general health and economic investment, and are intended to act as relatively quick adjuncts to DoME terraforming projects in these areas. This being said, here our our economic recommendations this year.”
- Economic Focus
- Core
- Edelsteine
- Peripheral
- Bohren
- Core
- Investment
- New Port Royal
- Massive Peripheral Investment
- Kaiyo
- Massive Core Investment
- Kainga
She switches to another slide on the display. “For DoME we have a large number of available teams, so there is quite a bit that we can do.”
- Planetary Optimization (required)
- Edelsteine
- Recommended DoME projects
- Terraform Kaiyo - Stage 0
- Terraform Bohren - Stage 0
- Terraform Grand View - Stage 0
- Terraform Bari - Stage 1
- Terraform Chuma - Stage 1
Leila is off in a meeting with the Bourbon ambassador. The Bourbons are complaining about having to pay transit fees to make use of recharge stations in your space when trading with the NRI and NRR, and are being a bit obnoxious about it all. She left you a note that unless you want her to declare war on the annoying Frenchies that she has nothing for you this year.
Tiberius is grinning, which sets off all sorts of warning bells. “Your Oh So Divine Majesty!” he declares with a flourish, then smirks. “Expand the Colonial Office some more, my expansion sense is tingling and we must be prepared!” You look over at Sekhmet, who heads towards him, but the little shit pulls out a Grifftiger treat and succeeds at his bribe check, cheeky bastard. Just because your grifftigers like his wife’s cooking…
Grace rolls her eyes at these antics. “Your Majesty, I am about to explode your budget, because I have one project that is going to consume about half of it.” She says that completely seriously. “But it is a critical one.”
“I also have some good news, I have consulted with Legal and we’ll be able to farm out some of our R&D teams to private industry and commercial interests for some nice income, which should help offset the expense of KF research over the next five years.”
- R&D Projects
- KF Drive Theory - Tier 4
- Required to build Large Shipyards to support 1.5 million ton and heavier warship designs
- Modular AMS
- A proposal for a self-contained modular installation of the current Laser AMS system
- Commercial R&D
- QM Note - adds 1 success to Imperial Economy rolls
- Industrial R&D
- QM Note - adds 1 success to Imperial Economy rolls
- KF Drive Theory - Tier 4
Martina is also absent, overseeing the creation of the Bank Regulatory Board. Her deputy delivers a short presentation concerning current crime rates throughout the Empire, ending with a request for more funding for the Imperial Grifftiger Mounted Police.
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
I am all for preventing the Bourbons from expanding anywhere so that system must be claimed.
Yacovo
Occasionally spouting nonsense
It is time for BIG ships. Will we outmass Inner Sphere and Clan warships at this point? Or will the balance changes mean even bigger ships will be needed?
The largest possible warships in the system are 2.5 million tons, and yes they do exist (see the Leviathan).
Does this mean we've hit the "future tech" level on those research tracks?
Jarow
Well-known member
Not impossible, but the way they actually work is that we trade research slots for economic boosts. They aren't "research this and permanently get bonuses," but "while researching this 0-cost item get bonuses."
No canon ship in Battletech actually reached the 2.5 million ton limit on the design system, although the Clans' 2.4 million ton Leviathan class came close. The famous McKenna class BB is 1.93 million tons and was the largest Inner Sphere combat WarShip, exceeded only by the Newgrange class yardships at 2.3 million tons. The re-divided Lyran Commonwealth's 1.25 million ton Mjolnir class was the largest of canon's "reintroduction" era new build WarShips.
In other words, we haven't fully caught up to the Star League and are at a significant disadvantage to the Black Steel who are firmly a post Star League tech level, but we're overall on par with the Inner Sphere in the early post Clan Invasion years. They had salvaged examples of pretty much *all* non-experimental Clan tech but took a long time to successfully reverse engineer and mass produce it, whereas we have more limited independent invention of Clan-equivalent tech that we fully understand and have been mass producing for decades.
That Mjolnir class is both faster and tougher than my Prinz Eugen class, but it's also far more lightly armed and has only four drop collars. In practical terms, the Great Houses outmatch us tremendously in economic might and strategic depth, but our individual units are vastly better. They have much more combat experience with Battlemechs, but we have an even vaster gap in our favor when it comes to naval combat.
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Val the Moofia Boss
Well-known member
We might be able to spare a few ships for that in a few years if the war against the Black Steel turns in our favor.
Jarow
Well-known member
If I had to guess, I'd say sometime in the reign of our successor, but it'll be a while even if we decide to ignore all logic and start sending long distance explorer ships there. Until our borders actually get nearby, not much benefit in letting them learn about us. When they do get that close, we should be big enough to be a better trading partner than conquest.
For the record, "North" (towards IS) and "find Black Steel" are my two main priorities for exploration.