Turn 95 - Well My Baby Went Out
Operational Report: Parabole
- Friendly Forces Engaged
- Battlecruisers
- Heavy Cruisers
- Light Cruisers
- Frigates
- Destroyers
- Corvettes
- Enemy Forces Engaged
- Battleships
- Other Ships
- 3 Aegis-class
- 2 Sovietskii Soyuz-class
- 1 Unidentified ~1 million ton vessel
- 10 Essex-class
- 5 Vincent-class
- Friendly Losses
- 1 Dido-class
- 5 Corvus-class
- Enemy Losses
- 1 McKenna
- 3 Aegis
- 2 Sovietskii Soyuz
- 10 Essex
- 5 Vincent
The attack caught the Black Steel in the middle of establishing what appears to have been a logistics base in the system, with the unidentified vessel acting as a construction ship controlling a large number of drone dropships which were assembling the facility. The defending Black Steel forces sacrificed themselves to cover the escape of the unidentified vessel, which was able to jump out using a pirate point in the system. The partially constructed facility was destroyed by the Black Steel prior to engagement.
Of note, the Black Steel forces had no dropships or fighters in system and fought in a relatively uncoordinated fashion, especially after the departure of the unidentified vessel. Analysis indicates that at that point all remaining Black Steel ships effectively switched to some sort of pre-programmed kamikaze mode with their accuracy dropping to near nil, which ultimately allowed the attacking force to defeat them in detail. The
Dido that was lost was lost to a golden BB hit to the jump core rendering her a constructive loss, most of the crew survived.
The two
Scharnhorst and two
Canarias class vessels took substantial damage in the engagement but were able to survive to limp back to friendly territory. The NRI is picketing the system where the engagement took place.
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Several weeks later you have the opportunity to meet with Admiral von Falkenrick. The engagement was even more one-sided than it seemed in the report. Once the unidentified command ship jumped out, which it did very quickly after the task force entered the system, the Black Steel forces seemed to become utterly robotic, without anything even vaguely resembling sentient thought behind their actions. Initial analysis of the debris found full racks of unlaunched drone fighters and they still had the dropships on their collars during the engagement, which reduced their acceleration significantly. Unfortunately salvage revealed very little that you didn’t already know, beyond confirming that none of the Black Steel vessels had any sort of atmosphere or life support systems on board.
Still, it’s nice to see that even though they are very formidable, the Black Steel isn’t perfect. Hopefully with that base destroyed the Black Steel threat on that flank is lessened for the time being.
The meeting with the bank executives goes fairly well, they are quite supportive of your solution, although they do point out that in the world of high finance what they were doing was an accepted part of doing business, showing that multiple highly successful investment banks make use of similar strategies with varying degrees of success. They are quite proud of their efforts, in fact, and show that they were exceptionally careful to remain within the limits of the law, but they do agree that the public relations damage that could be caused by unscrupulous parties is worth fixing the loopholes that they used in the manner that you recommended.
This will lead to some minor economic issues as banks adjust to the new regulations and such, but does ensure that your own approval and reputation take no hits as the planned attacks on both are blunted before they can be unleashed. You are given to understand that quite a few media types are very put out with you over this.
Good.
You spend more time at the track with your daughters and husband, taking time off from official duties to mix with the people. Some folks have realized who you are, but much like with your great-grandmother they seem mostly pleased to have you among them. It does give you some valuable perspective of what people outside the palace bubble are thinking as well, which is a lovely side effect.
The Department of Periphery Studies is up to some shenanigans. Evidently some poor damned soul made the grave error of playing the song that never ends in the presence of one of the esteemed tenured faculty members, who subsequently had to be tranquilized in the campus infirmary after refusing to eat or sleep because she couldn’t stop singing. Eventually the staff was forced to resort to knock-out gas for the health of the distinguished faculty and the sanity of the long suffering staff.
After all, it goes on and on my friends, some people started… OK, I’ll stop.
After all, it is now budget time. And while you do enjoy these meetings, you do admit that it does take time away from your kids, which you mildly resent.
General Jenkins is up first. “Your Majesty, unless we significantly increase strategic material production we will be tightly limited in terms of new ground forces production once the restructuring is completed. We also have some controversies, which I’ll let General Bradley address. Naval production continues to be a priority as well. General?”
General Bradley takes the podium. “We have gotten some complaints from the garrison units concerning force structures and equipment TO&Es for their units going forward. I felt that it would be best to bring this to you directly, Your Majesty, and explain the reasoning behind what we are doing.”
She brings up an image of what looks like a very generic tank. “This is the
Bobcat Garrison Tank, a 25 ton light tank that we propose to make the standard AFV for our garrison forces. The requirements that we placed on this design are as follows.”
She brings up a slide on the display.
- Low Cost
- No Strategic Materials
- Ease of Manufacture and Repair
“In addition there were several other, more peripheral, considerations in this design. Due to the sheer efficiency of energy and gauss weaponry, for example, direct fire non-gauss ballistic armaments have been deprecated in most of the new production, seriously threatening multiple suppliers and reducing our redundancy of supply. Therefore the use of a Class 5 improved autocannon was mooted for the design, and proved to be a good fit for the design philosophy. The final result is a moderately well armored, for its tonnage, tank with reasonable firepower, access to multiple varieties of specialized ammunition due to the deep magazines, and an integral laser AMS system.”
She takes a deep breath. “We have used the same chassis to develop a missile launching tank and an AA tank, all three of which are earmarked for our garrison forces. Your Majesty, to be blunt these three vehicles between them are replacing over a dozen different designs of various types, ranging from IFVs to missile vehicles to scout tanks to an entire family of omnivehicles. As a result, our overall logistical burden for our garrison forces is being substantially reduced.``
“The concern is that they are light vehicles, as opposed to the mix of light, medium, and heavy vehicles in the past. There are concerns that the Garrison Divisions will thus be weaker than before. Your Majesty, this ignores the actual purpose and mission of said forces. They are not offensive units, nor are they intended to be the sole, or even primary, defense of any of our systems except against lightly equipped pirates. They are tripwire forces, civil defense forces, and means of guarding facilities and such against minor threats. In the event of a major planetary invasion, these forces would remain within their fortifications, after all, until our major maneuver forces are available to repel the invaders.”
She looks over to you. “Your Majesty, this is just an advisory at this time, but we felt it important that you were aware of the complaints sooner rather than later. As far as budget requests this year, we are not actually requesting all that much beyond strategic material upgrades and additional militia and, ironically, garrison support.” She smiles slightly at that, drawing a bit of a chuckle from the room.
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Production
- Upgrade ALL Ferro-Fibrous Factories
- Upgrade ALL Endo-Steel Factories
- Upgrade ALL Double Heat Sink Factories
- Procurement
- Garrison Rating
- Militia Rating
General Romanov is attending a conference in the NRR concerning future trends in ASF development. Her deputy, Colonel Smith, is present. He’s a fairly colorless, bland sort of person, and his dull monotone makes it a chore to listen to him.
“Your Majesty, apart from Ferro Aluminum and Double Heat sink production Your aerospace forces are in solid shape and are requesting continued sustained growth in order to best position to meet the expected challenges of future aerospace combat requirements.”
No… inflection… at…. All….
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Production
- Upgrade ALL Ferro Aluminum factories
- Procurement
- 30 Heavy Fighter Wing
- 30 Interceptor Wing
- 30 Light Fighter Wing
Admiral Fisher is looking positively smug, the recent superb performance of his designs has him feeling his oats. You might need to toss him in a fishpond to shrink his head at some point. Admiral Sims is with him as well, and is looking nearly as pleased, but is being far more diplomatic about it.
“I told you that our new designs were good, just wait until we get the
Prinz Eugens into service and you’ll see what real warships are capable of. We have plenty of armor production, so unlike the others I won’t be begging for any more. We just need more construction docks.”
He pauses. “Oh, and I’m going to start breaking out fixed defenses as their own category, so you’ll have to suffer through one more slide. Blame General Jenkins. You might be wondering why we’re not focusing on the biggest yards, that’s because we need numbers as well as capability and the
Dido-class is an excellent balance of that, so we need more slips for those wonderful ships.”
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- Upgrade all Orbital Shipyard
- Upgrade all Refit & Repair Yard
- Light Warship yards
- New Port Royal
- Edelsteine
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Kainga
- New Pollux
- Okusawa
- New Phoenix
- Medium Warship yards
- Calliope
- Griffon
- Nowa Warszawa
- New Capricorn
- Fortifications
- Jump Point Defenses
- Oasis II Recharge Stations
- Procurement
- Standard Dropships
- 100 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
- 41 Trenton-class Transports
- Large Dropships
- 22 Meteor-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 44 Aetna-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 1 Canopus-class Parasite Battleship
- Jumpships
- Escorts
- 30 Fubuki-class Destroyers
- 20 Lyr-class Corvettes
- Light Warships
- 10 Dido-class Light Cruisers
- 2 Vestal-class Repair Ships
- Medium Warships
- 10 Prinz Eugen-class Heavy Cruisers
You make a mental note to defenestrate yourself an admiral as Elizabeth Lee takes the podium.
“Your Majesty, Interior is in excellent shape. We are prepared to support all of the requests from the military for additional production, plus we have several recommendations of our own.”
She brings up a chart. “To start with, economic investment and focus.”
- Economic Focus
- Investment
- Major Investment
“We have three habitable systems that we can colonize this year, Feurstem, Nox, and Raj. Our analysts recommend focusing on just one, however, in order to avoid spreading ourselves too thinly. Based on the return on investment and long term prospects we strongly recommend colonizing the Raj system this year, saving Feurstem and Nox for next year.”
“We recommend against further survey work this year, in order to avoid overextending ourselves.”
Leila is not present, attending a diplomatic event in the Bourbon empire. She left a note that there are no recommendations this year.
Tiberius arouses your suspicions as he’s wearing a sober business suit, a power tie, and has a serious and professional expression on his face. If you manage to ignore the twinkle in his eyes which indicates a Tiberius who is Up To Something, kind of like when your kids are being quiet.
Your suspicion grows as he goes up to the podium, and nothing happens. “Your Majesty,” even his voice is professional, he’s really up to something, you just know it. “The Political Office is happy to report that we hope to have the civil service expansion completed this year, and are prepared to support the colonization efforts in the Raj system.”
He then sits down… looking innocent as can be.
You repeat to yourself, he’s up to something.
Grace comes to the podium looking rather excited. “Your Majesty, thank you for funding the Communcations Act, it has already had a wonderful effect and our researchers are very excited by the possibilities going forward. That being said, we have three teams available and three projects that we very strongly recommend this year.”
- Advanced Short Range Missiles
- Provides advanced munitions and lighter launchers for our current improved SRM launchers, as well as more compact Streak targeting systems.
- Advanced Pulse Lasers
- Leverages the work done on the new laser AMS and 3cm pulse lasers to improve the 5cm and 8cm versions.
- Terraforming Equipment - Level 6
- Boosts the effectiveness of DoME in terms of terraforming projects
General Messerschmidt comes up next, and you have a sneaking suspicion… “Your Most Divine And Glorious Majesty!” he says effusively with a shit-eating grin. “We are happy to report that the NRI has declared a holiday in Your honor, to be led by Your cultus in Your temples! Our agents report that they are planning public parades of portable versions of Your statues through the streets of Nova Roma itself.”
You glance over at Tiberius and his expression is that of a man in whose mouth butter would never melt. You are certain that he’s the one behind this.
The General isn’t finished. “And we have images of the new statue too!” He brings it up before you can stop him, showing a nude version of yourself seated in a throne, scepter in one hand, an orb in the other, pronouncing judgment and looking ridiculously regal for a naked woman.
Martina takes the podium accompanied by the chuckles as you shake your fist at your intelligence chief. “Your Majesty, Justice is fully prepared to support the colonization efforts on Raj. In addition, we would like to report that the efforts to tighten up the investment regulations has been successfully completed with the cooperation of industry.”
