Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
we currently have 26 some billion in the treasury. this is literally pocket change.
IceWing_mk1
Well-known member
[X] We can rebuild them, we have the technology
[X] We can rebuild them, we have the technology
Turn 97 - It Gets Hotter
Turn 97 - It Gets Hotter
You are at the track watching your daughter race around in her little hovercraft, having a grand old time and enjoying spending time with the other parents, when one of your aides calls you aside to take a call.
There’s been a massive earthquake on Nowa Warszawa, a frighteningly shallow 9.2 centered near the largest city on the planet. Thankfully the death toll is very low due to the excellent safety standards for construction that exist even in areas where tectonic risks are considered extremely low, however the amount of damage to the city itself is considerable even if you escaped a mass casualty event.
You are simultaneously gratified and saddened that there were less than a hundred deaths, despite the billions in damage. The system government is handling the rebuilding out of their own budget and have not requested any imperial assistance, although this will have an impact on their economic growth this year.
Researchers have determined that the HPG interference in some of your northern tier systems is likely being caused by an incompatible HPG system broadcasting in the area, fortunately simply adjusting the frequencies for HPG transmissions clears up the interference, however you are not able to decipher the signals being picked up due to them being in an unknown format, encoding, and type. Researchers are fairly confident that the origin point for these signals is GX-C26.
You have an occasion for your palm and your forehead to engage in illicit love when you receive reports about the aftermath of a ‘victory celebration’ in the Nya Kopenhamn system for the recent naval victory which evidently proves that the process of instilling proper, sober, rational decisionmaking in the system is a work in progress as the ‘celebration’ results in nearly the entire system having to shut down due to the murderous hangovers following the celebration. Looking at the numbers you wince, as if you divided the total alcohol consumed during the celebration by the population of the system you come to a grand total of about three liters of various alcoholic beverages per person if you include all of the children in the calculation.
Good thing your medical technology is as good as it is, or you’d lose the system to alcohol poisoning. As it is, you lose almost an entire month's worth of productivity there instead.
You head back to the track with all of your kids, the youngest to just toddle around in the play area with expert supervision from undercover Imperial Guardsmen, while your two eldest are racing! Tamara is finally old enough to actually compete in actual races, while 5 year old Lisa has inherited her big sister's old ‘racer’ for the really little kids league. You have put your foot down on your cousin’s efforts to ‘modify’ Tamara’s hovercraft. Instead you do it yourself with Markus’ help.
You know which end of a wrench is which, darnit!
Tamara didn’t win her first race, but she did quite well for one of the youngest kids in the lineup.
You are in a quite good mood when you return to your office. Unfortunately this made you less than alert to possible Tiberius shenanigans. You are thus quite surprised when you sit down at your desk and a fanfare immediately sounds, thanks to your dear old friends setting up a pressure sensor to your chair. And, of course, Tiberius and his deputy, accompanied by Sekhmet and Wadjet, promptly file into your office in full Roman regalia, the two grifftigers looking incredibly amused at the foam plastic ‘armor’ draped on them, not to mention the helmets, and promptly start proclaiming AVE IMPERATRIX!
You stand up, remove the sensor, sit back down, fold your hands on your desk, and heroically manage to keep a straight face rather than encouraging him by laughing.
He’s actually here simply to report on what Parliament has gotten up to lately, but figured you could use a good laugh. You are not going to give him that satisfaction, although you do get a small modicum of revenge by correcting his declension of Latin, much to his mock dismay.
Apart from all of the routine material coming out of the legislative branch of the Empire there’s one significant proposal that you are not certain about.
The Commerce Act of 3027 is, on one level, fairly straightforward as it simply would fund a massive expansion of the network of commercial space stations across the Empire, building sufficient stations in one massive project to give every system currently within the Empire a full network of them, thus maximizing the benefits of trade, both internal and external. All in all it appears to be a quite good idea, until you get to the price tag.
You are at the track watching your daughter race around in her little hovercraft, having a grand old time and enjoying spending time with the other parents, when one of your aides calls you aside to take a call.
There’s been a massive earthquake on Nowa Warszawa, a frighteningly shallow 9.2 centered near the largest city on the planet. Thankfully the death toll is very low due to the excellent safety standards for construction that exist even in areas where tectonic risks are considered extremely low, however the amount of damage to the city itself is considerable even if you escaped a mass casualty event.
You are simultaneously gratified and saddened that there were less than a hundred deaths, despite the billions in damage. The system government is handling the rebuilding out of their own budget and have not requested any imperial assistance, although this will have an impact on their economic growth this year.
Researchers have determined that the HPG interference in some of your northern tier systems is likely being caused by an incompatible HPG system broadcasting in the area, fortunately simply adjusting the frequencies for HPG transmissions clears up the interference, however you are not able to decipher the signals being picked up due to them being in an unknown format, encoding, and type. Researchers are fairly confident that the origin point for these signals is GX-C26.
You have an occasion for your palm and your forehead to engage in illicit love when you receive reports about the aftermath of a ‘victory celebration’ in the Nya Kopenhamn system for the recent naval victory which evidently proves that the process of instilling proper, sober, rational decisionmaking in the system is a work in progress as the ‘celebration’ results in nearly the entire system having to shut down due to the murderous hangovers following the celebration. Looking at the numbers you wince, as if you divided the total alcohol consumed during the celebration by the population of the system you come to a grand total of about three liters of various alcoholic beverages per person if you include all of the children in the calculation.
Good thing your medical technology is as good as it is, or you’d lose the system to alcohol poisoning. As it is, you lose almost an entire month's worth of productivity there instead.
You head back to the track with all of your kids, the youngest to just toddle around in the play area with expert supervision from undercover Imperial Guardsmen, while your two eldest are racing! Tamara is finally old enough to actually compete in actual races, while 5 year old Lisa has inherited her big sister's old ‘racer’ for the really little kids league. You have put your foot down on your cousin’s efforts to ‘modify’ Tamara’s hovercraft. Instead you do it yourself with Markus’ help.
You know which end of a wrench is which, darnit!
Tamara didn’t win her first race, but she did quite well for one of the youngest kids in the lineup.
You are in a quite good mood when you return to your office. Unfortunately this made you less than alert to possible Tiberius shenanigans. You are thus quite surprised when you sit down at your desk and a fanfare immediately sounds, thanks to your dear old friends setting up a pressure sensor to your chair. And, of course, Tiberius and his deputy, accompanied by Sekhmet and Wadjet, promptly file into your office in full Roman regalia, the two grifftigers looking incredibly amused at the foam plastic ‘armor’ draped on them, not to mention the helmets, and promptly start proclaiming AVE IMPERATRIX!
You stand up, remove the sensor, sit back down, fold your hands on your desk, and heroically manage to keep a straight face rather than encouraging him by laughing.
He’s actually here simply to report on what Parliament has gotten up to lately, but figured you could use a good laugh. You are not going to give him that satisfaction, although you do get a small modicum of revenge by correcting his declension of Latin, much to his mock dismay.
Apart from all of the routine material coming out of the legislative branch of the Empire there’s one significant proposal that you are not certain about.
The Commerce Act of 3027 is, on one level, fairly straightforward as it simply would fund a massive expansion of the network of commercial space stations across the Empire, building sufficient stations in one massive project to give every system currently within the Empire a full network of them, thus maximizing the benefits of trade, both internal and external. All in all it appears to be a quite good idea, until you get to the price tag.
| [] | Action | Argument | Effects |
| [] | Sign the Commerce Act of 3027 | This act is remarkably straightforward, simply block purchasing commercial space station modules and deploying them across the Empire wherever they are needed. In recent years we have significantly slowed down our expansion of the commercial station sector, with a corresponding slowing of growth in this sector. The new stations would function identically to the existing ones, with identical regulations, configurations, and both benefits and costs. The greatest advantage of the block buy is that we ultimately will save a great deal of money over incremental purchases. Yes, it will be expensive in the short term, but the long term economic benefits are enormous and must not be in any way understated. This will pay for itself within a few years, and going forward will be almost pure profit for the Empire’s coffers from increased tax and tariff revenue. |
|
| [] | Veto the Commerce Act of 3027 | Why are we catering to merchants and traders when we can better spend these funds expanding our military? Commerce is nice, but we have sufficient amounts of it flowing through the Empire. What we don’t have is a powerful enough defense force and wasting this much money on something this frivolous is criminally negligent. This comes under the category of ‘nice to have’, not ‘must have’, and we must not waste our limited funds on such frivolities. If the commercial sector truly desires the benefits of these stations, they can pay for them themselves. The argument isn’t guns or butter, we have enough butter, we don’t have enough guns. Why spend money on more of what we already have enough of? |
|
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
can we afford this?
Bronzephoenix
New member
My understanding is we only have 26 billion in savings
We could afford that during our turn as we'll have all that turn's income to work with, in addition to the savings. We just wouldn't have that money available for other things.
EDIT:
For instance, we spent 175,000,000,000 to cover the Skala nonsense as a 1-time expense.
We could spend the 91 BILLION on upgrading our stellar economy (which WILL net us a profit in the not too-short term, possibly w/in the very next turn) and still come out ahead on spending vs our previous turn's expenditures.
Yacovo
Occasionally spouting nonsense
[X] Sign the Commerce Act of 3027
The cost is not my main worry, it is the cost to lower the Congress’ influence back down; which is going to be a pain. That said, the sheer economic boom is probably a better deal than whatever else will raise their influence otherwise.
The cost is not my main worry, it is the cost to lower the Congress’ influence back down; which is going to be a pain. That said, the sheer economic boom is probably a better deal than whatever else will raise their influence otherwise.
AlphaOmega
Well-known member
[X] Sign the Commerce Act of 3027
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
[X] Sign the Commerce Act of 3027
[X] Sign the Commerce Act of 3027
Gotta build 'em all!!!!
Gotta build 'em all!!!!
GooseElite
Well-known member
[X] Sign the Commerce Act of 3027
Winter_Wind45
Well-known member
[X] Sign the Commerce Act of 3027
Turn 97 - We Laid Rubber
Turn 97 - We Laid Rubber
You are having a perfectly lovely spring day when Admiral Fisher and Admiral Sims show up in your office. And Fisher is smiling.
You have a feeling of dread that he’s about to reveal something else that will infuriate the rest of the Navy and you are not disappointed.
“OK, our logistics trail is better but still shit, and we are still getting outnumbered by way too many to one in terms of fighters. I had the design teams try and solve this problem, and while some old timers are whining even louder than usual and declaring that we’re utterly mad, we’ve decided to ignore the old farts and actually do something useful. Admiral?” he turns to Admiral Sims who gives you an apologetic look before taking over.
“Your Majesty, the main result of our work is the Hosho-class light carrier. At three quarters of a million tons, this ship matches the Dido-class in terms of mass, while being somewhat more lightly armored and much more lightly armed. They have 15 drop collars, can carry two wings of ASFs, and have over thirty thousand tons of cargo space. They also possess significant flag facilities, a robust marine detachment, and are well-armed for self-defense with 160 3.5 meter naval lasers mounted in rapid action mounts permitting anti-fighter and anti-missile active defense.” She smiles a bit. “The vessel is designed to be able to either operate as part of the fleet, providing enhanced fighter support to the formation while supporting her dual fighter wings, or to act as part of the logistics tail of the formation, protecting the transports with her weaponry and fighters. There are plans as well for what would be for lack of a better term a throwback to the ancient wet navy ‘gators’, with her fighter complement replaced with barracks for infantry allowing each ship to carry a full Infantry Brigade into a contested warzone and provide logistics support while there.”
OK, that’s good enough to keep him from being tossed out the Window at least.
Both Intelligence and Justice are still investigating the Skala situation. Interestingly, there is absolutely no evidence of any attempts to communicate back to the Rouges Noir by the suspected agents, nor do they seem to be communicating with each other. This lack of communication allowed them to slip under the radar, as your counterintelligence methods are geared towards preventing espionage rather than this sort of thing.
You are getting scattered reports across the Empire of anarchist activity rising, generally among relatively upper class young people who are for some reason radicalizing a bit. The IGMP has noted that all of these clusters seem to be in regions where asylum seekers from the Bourbon empire who fit the profile of the Rouges Noir were settled, but again there are no signs of any attempts at communication or coordination.
Something is not right here.
And then budget time rolls around. You still don’t really get why your grandfather always got grouchy about this, although you have heard stories of the legendary General Powerpoint and how she could bore a marble statue to tears.
General Jenkins is up first. “OK, boss lady. We’re still going to be focusing on making our big bad navy ever bigger and ever badder, although Admiral Fisher refuses to moonwalk. Aerospace forces will continue to grow, General Bradley will continue to wrestle with preparations for the big Army reorganization, and you will grumble about having to authorize upgrading strategic material factories again.” He grins at you. “So let’s get started, shall we? General?”
General Bradley gives her boss a moderately severe look. “Your Majesty, our reorganization plans are nearly completed. Next year we will be requesting a significant budget for retooling our Mech factories to fit the new paradigm, but that is for the future. This year we will simply be requesting additional production of strategic materials.” She brings up the chart, which is rather short, simple, and to the point.
The charts she brings up are also quite simple this year.
Admiral Fisher looks like the cat who caught the canary, drank all the cream, knocked over all of the vases, and managed to blame it all on the dog. “OK, unlike those two, we’ve got a big building program so buckle up. We’ll be building the first of the new carriers, building masses of new dropships, finally getting reasonable numbers of destroyers in production at the same time considering our requirements, and turning the corner on churning out all of the big iron we can. We’ll hopefully soon be able to build even larger ships, and our liaisons with the R&D community indicate that we might be able to start initial preparation for this as early as next year, although actual hardware is several years out.”
Elizabeth Lee is up next. “I’d like to start by thanking you for authorizing the buildout of the commercial stations, Your Majesty, this will have significantly positive effects for our economy overall in the long term.”
She consults her notes. “For economic investment and foci we have the following recommendations based on the work of our in-house analysts and staff.”
“We would also recommend recommencing survey work to our northern and northwestern flanks. The four targets that we recommend are as follows.”
“We have a single DoME team available and a request from the Kaiyo system for them to be deployed building the system up as a logistics hub for our growth in that sector of space. A logistics hub in this location would provide excellent support for our New Phoenix fleet base on top of the significant local benefits to the economy.”
Once Elizabeth sits down Leila takes the podium for the Foreign Ministry. “We have sent discreet inquiries to the Bourbons concerning our Rouges Noir problem at the request of Justice and Intelligence, Your Majesty, we will report when we get a response. Closer to home, in light of the various issues we are facing, we would like to recommend the construction of a monument celebrating the victory in the Raj system.”
Tiberius is, for once, dressed sensibly in a business suit, and is looking quite serious. “I don’t want to steal General Messerschmidt’s thunder on this, Your Majesty, but parliament is getting a bit big for their britches and the Eldest is concerned that some of the hotheads might start making trouble. We really need to nip that in the bud and take steps to deal with them. In addition, we would like to continue the public relations blitz we started last year, as well as expanding the Colonial Office to support the growing number of colonies within the Empire. That office is getting perilously close to capacity.”
Grace is up next. “Your Majesty, We have three R&D teams ready to go. We’d like to have two of them focus themselves on advanced fundamental research into Communications and Electronics, while the third works on improving the existing Anti-Aging treatments to further boost their efficacy.”
General Messerschmidt looks a bit grim. “Your Majesty, we are prepared to go dig up dirt on some deserving politicians at your say-so. I’m waiting for confirmation from our contacts within Bourbon space, as well as whatever Leila discovers, to finalize our report on the anarchist situation. I will warn you, it’s not looking good.”
Martina nods from her seat. “Indeed, Your Majesty, I do not think it would be at all presumptuous of me to recommend that you prepare yourself to confirm a very large number of death sentences handed down to some exceptionally slick and plausible individuals.”
You are having a perfectly lovely spring day when Admiral Fisher and Admiral Sims show up in your office. And Fisher is smiling.
You have a feeling of dread that he’s about to reveal something else that will infuriate the rest of the Navy and you are not disappointed.
“OK, our logistics trail is better but still shit, and we are still getting outnumbered by way too many to one in terms of fighters. I had the design teams try and solve this problem, and while some old timers are whining even louder than usual and declaring that we’re utterly mad, we’ve decided to ignore the old farts and actually do something useful. Admiral?” he turns to Admiral Sims who gives you an apologetic look before taking over.
“Your Majesty, the main result of our work is the Hosho-class light carrier. At three quarters of a million tons, this ship matches the Dido-class in terms of mass, while being somewhat more lightly armored and much more lightly armed. They have 15 drop collars, can carry two wings of ASFs, and have over thirty thousand tons of cargo space. They also possess significant flag facilities, a robust marine detachment, and are well-armed for self-defense with 160 3.5 meter naval lasers mounted in rapid action mounts permitting anti-fighter and anti-missile active defense.” She smiles a bit. “The vessel is designed to be able to either operate as part of the fleet, providing enhanced fighter support to the formation while supporting her dual fighter wings, or to act as part of the logistics tail of the formation, protecting the transports with her weaponry and fighters. There are plans as well for what would be for lack of a better term a throwback to the ancient wet navy ‘gators’, with her fighter complement replaced with barracks for infantry allowing each ship to carry a full Infantry Brigade into a contested warzone and provide logistics support while there.”
| Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
| Hosho-class CVL | $25,244,260.00 | DHS, LFA | 1810 | 1060 |
|
OK, that’s good enough to keep him from being tossed out the Window at least.
Both Intelligence and Justice are still investigating the Skala situation. Interestingly, there is absolutely no evidence of any attempts to communicate back to the Rouges Noir by the suspected agents, nor do they seem to be communicating with each other. This lack of communication allowed them to slip under the radar, as your counterintelligence methods are geared towards preventing espionage rather than this sort of thing.
You are getting scattered reports across the Empire of anarchist activity rising, generally among relatively upper class young people who are for some reason radicalizing a bit. The IGMP has noted that all of these clusters seem to be in regions where asylum seekers from the Bourbon empire who fit the profile of the Rouges Noir were settled, but again there are no signs of any attempts at communication or coordination.
Something is not right here.
And then budget time rolls around. You still don’t really get why your grandfather always got grouchy about this, although you have heard stories of the legendary General Powerpoint and how she could bore a marble statue to tears.
General Jenkins is up first. “OK, boss lady. We’re still going to be focusing on making our big bad navy ever bigger and ever badder, although Admiral Fisher refuses to moonwalk. Aerospace forces will continue to grow, General Bradley will continue to wrestle with preparations for the big Army reorganization, and you will grumble about having to authorize upgrading strategic material factories again.” He grins at you. “So let’s get started, shall we? General?”
General Bradley gives her boss a moderately severe look. “Your Majesty, our reorganization plans are nearly completed. Next year we will be requesting a significant budget for retooling our Mech factories to fit the new paradigm, but that is for the future. This year we will simply be requesting additional production of strategic materials.” She brings up the chart, which is rather short, simple, and to the point.
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Production
- Strategic Materials
- Upgrade all DHS factories
- Upgrade all Ferro Fibrous factories
- Upgrade all Endo Steel factories
- Procurement
- 30 Garrison Regiments
- 30 Militia Rating
- Strategic Materials
- Production
The charts she brings up are also quite simple this year.
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Procurement
- 30 Heavy Carrier Wing
- 30 Attack Wing
- 30 Light Fighter Wing
- Procurement
Admiral Fisher looks like the cat who caught the canary, drank all the cream, knocked over all of the vases, and managed to blame it all on the dog. “OK, unlike those two, we’ve got a big building program so buckle up. We’ll be building the first of the new carriers, building masses of new dropships, finally getting reasonable numbers of destroyers in production at the same time considering our requirements, and turning the corner on churning out all of the big iron we can. We’ll hopefully soon be able to build even larger ships, and our liaisons with the R&D community indicate that we might be able to start initial preparation for this as early as next year, although actual hardware is several years out.”
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- Upgrade All Orbital Shipyards
- Upgrade All Refit & Repair Yards
- Construct Escort Yards
- Bari
- Chuma
- New Castor
- Nowy Slask
- Nowy Wrocław
- Pieklo
- Iskra
- Bohren
- Stahlfurt
- Griff’s Leap
- Construct Small Warship Yards
- Kainga
- Construct Medium Warship Yards
- Calliope IV
- Edelsteine
- Griffon
- New Capricorn
- New Pollux
- New Port Royal
- Nowa Warszawa
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Okusawa
- New Phoenix
- Defense Stations
- Black Towers
- Edelsteine
- Nowy Wrocław
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Griff’s Leap
- New Castor
- Black Towers
- Procurement
- Regular Dropships
- 100 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
- 40 Trenton-class transports
- 30 Long Beach-class Parasite Missile Destroyers
- Large Dropships
- 30 Saipan-class Parasite Carriers
- 17 Meteor-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 34 Aetna-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 1 Canopus-class Parasite Battleship
- Jumpships
- 7 Windjammer
- Escorts
- 30 Fubuki-class Destroyers
- 30 Lyr-class Corvettes
- Small Warships
- 20 Dido-class Light Cruisers
- 7 Hosho-class Light Carriers
- Medium Warships
- 20 Prinz Eugen-class Heavy Cruisers
- Regular Dropships
- Production
Elizabeth Lee is up next. “I’d like to start by thanking you for authorizing the buildout of the commercial stations, Your Majesty, this will have significantly positive effects for our economy overall in the long term.”
She consults her notes. “For economic investment and foci we have the following recommendations based on the work of our in-house analysts and staff.”
- Economic Focus and Investment
- Focus
- Core
- Calliope IV
- Periphery
- Feurstem
- Core
- Massive Investment
- Core
- Edelsteine
- Periphery
- Bari
- Core
- Investment
- Pinball
- Focus
“We would also recommend recommencing survey work to our northern and northwestern flanks. The four targets that we recommend are as follows.”
- GX-M18
- An Orange main-sequence star that is believed to possess terrestrial planets within the habitable zone
- GX-J18
- A comparatively bright Red Dwarf star, astronomers believe that there are certainly gas giants in the system, and potentially habitable planets as well
- GX-H19
- The primary of this system is a red dwarf, however we have already detected a brown dwarf companion, and there is every reason to expect at least some habitable planets here
- GX-E26
- A yellow primary slightly cooler than Sol, multiple planets have been detected by our astronomers in remote surveys
“We have a single DoME team available and a request from the Kaiyo system for them to be deployed building the system up as a logistics hub for our growth in that sector of space. A logistics hub in this location would provide excellent support for our New Phoenix fleet base on top of the significant local benefits to the economy.”
Once Elizabeth sits down Leila takes the podium for the Foreign Ministry. “We have sent discreet inquiries to the Bourbons concerning our Rouges Noir problem at the request of Justice and Intelligence, Your Majesty, we will report when we get a response. Closer to home, in light of the various issues we are facing, we would like to recommend the construction of a monument celebrating the victory in the Raj system.”
Tiberius is, for once, dressed sensibly in a business suit, and is looking quite serious. “I don’t want to steal General Messerschmidt’s thunder on this, Your Majesty, but parliament is getting a bit big for their britches and the Eldest is concerned that some of the hotheads might start making trouble. We really need to nip that in the bud and take steps to deal with them. In addition, we would like to continue the public relations blitz we started last year, as well as expanding the Colonial Office to support the growing number of colonies within the Empire. That office is getting perilously close to capacity.”
Grace is up next. “Your Majesty, We have three R&D teams ready to go. We’d like to have two of them focus themselves on advanced fundamental research into Communications and Electronics, while the third works on improving the existing Anti-Aging treatments to further boost their efficacy.”
General Messerschmidt looks a bit grim. “Your Majesty, we are prepared to go dig up dirt on some deserving politicians at your say-so. I’m waiting for confirmation from our contacts within Bourbon space, as well as whatever Leila discovers, to finalize our report on the anarchist situation. I will warn you, it’s not looking good.”
Martina nods from her seat. “Indeed, Your Majesty, I do not think it would be at all presumptuous of me to recommend that you prepare yourself to confirm a very large number of death sentences handed down to some exceptionally slick and plausible individuals.”