Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Artifex

Well-known member
@Jarow:

Yep i was aiming at the Warship Entries mostly, I got confused in the last few Budget rounds because you've listed usually like 60 Prinz Eugen, while in actuality we got only 20 Prinz Eugens per turn, I'd suggest that you maybe list the turn when the entry got added, in order to keep track of the time intervals from laying the keel to the actual commissioning.

[X] Take your time to be thorough
 
Turn 108 - I Woke Up In A Soho Doorway

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
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Turn 108 - I Woke Up In A Soho Doorway

There’s a major scandal in the Bāṛi system that is giving you quite the headache, although the IGMP and Special Branch have already resolved the actual criminal side of things. The largest retail chain in the system had been systematically falsifying their income reports, draining their retirement investment funds, and generally engaging in serious financial crimes, but doing so in a clever manner that concealed the situation through sheer, brazen, brass-balled audacious lying at a scale that nobody believed that anybody would do something like that.

It therefore turns out that the system’s prosperity was almost completely built upon a house of cards, IOUs, empty promises, and deception, and with the final failure of the corporation involved the local economy is in a state of collapse, shrinking by almost 10% this year alone. Just about the only industry doing well in the system is the passenger transportation sector, as millions of people depart for greener pastures. There is so much rot within the system economy that your analysis is that it would be best to allow it to burn itself out rather than pour money into an endless black hole trying to save a dying economy.

The corrupt cabal involved have already been tried and convicted of their crimes, and sentenced to death by hanging as the level of fraud and embezzlement more than exceeds the threshold for capital punishment. They had been squirreling money away into NRR, NRI and Bourbon accounts, and all three of said governments have facilitated legal proceedings to seize said ill-gotten funds. No such proceedings were required with Kilburrough, as the Kilburroughans preempted the request by turning over the funds before you could even formally ask them to.

The Olympics have begun, although you are too busy to take too much time away from work watching them while planning military operations and managing the growing Empire. You do make a point of watching the recaps every evening with your kids as a family activity, and later on you intend to take a vacation on board SS United States, you aren’t your grandfather and have no intention of working yourself into an early grave.

The Black Pumpernickels have shown up again, this time promoting an epic tour of Roger’s and Hammerstein musicals. Conveniently they’ll be in the Griffon system around the time you already planned your vacation, so you pencil in a few shows as well. From them you get news of the Crimson Storm, they are expanding rapidly to the galactic south, and are hopeful that in a few years they’ll be in a position to more actively help you against the Black Steel.

You have one other headache so far this year. The RRF. Had a victory party. If by party you mean ‘epic bar crawl that resulted in the entire division winding up in jail’. It takes you over an hour to read the summary of the damages caused by their drunken revelry. Four hundred gallons of peanut butter? Really? The alcohol bill alone runs higher than the normal maintenance budget for the entire division, you have complaints from multiple elements of the city government, and for a moment you are utterly clueless as to just why the RRF picked a relatively backwater town on New Port Royal for their revelry. And then you reread the name, and realize that they evidently set out to make the ancient song true, because they have indeed been ‘Banned From Argo’.

Your forehead and your desk have an intimate, loving, and repeated encounter. You do decide that, on top of whatever administrative punishments levied by the Army, that the entire Division will be required to reply by endorsement with a full explanation of precisely why they thought this was a good idea, with full citations and footnotes required.

You wind up having to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with several disputes arising from the ongoing post-operational review of the Imperial Griffon Army. There is an unfortunately loudly indignant group of ‘reformers’ who are proposing solutions to the reviews challenges that are, frankly, ridiculous. Every single one of them is convinced that the operational review process is a fraud, because their pet designs aren’t being instantly adopted as the works of utter genius that they are. Amaunet is grumpy about this entire thing, as they keep on bothering her as well.

In this you quite strongly agree with Amaunet and General Bradley, these ideas are ridiculous. The ‘Mech Of The Future’ is not going to be a 20 ton mech armed solely with a massive array of anti-personnel gauss rifles, nor is the ‘Tank Of The Future’ a 10 ton tracked vehicle capable of 120 kilometers per hour and armed with a single 5cm pulse laser. Nor is replacing all of your mechs with light Land-Air Mechs that are solely optimized for speed and armed with nothing but a 5cm pulse laser and a pair of AP Gauss rifles anything even resembling reasonable or even sane.

Fortunately for these morons it would be an abuse of power to have them all referred to the Department of Periphery Studies for evaluation as potential tenured faculty. Equally unfortunately none of them are uniformed officers so they can’t simply be fired. You finally decide to foist all of this mess off on a poor unfortunate intern who is given a form letter and permission to have the Imperial Guard haul these idiots out when they refuse to accept it.

Speaking of Periphery Studies, they are still bouncing around the city on their ridiculous pogo sticks and are starting to hold pogo stick races. Unfortunately with typical Periphery Studies judgment, they decide to hold these races on the beach, with predictably hilarious results.

At least none of the ‘reformers’ have recommended mechs on pogo sticks as the Next Big Thing. You immediately start frantically hitting the nearest piece of wood with your knuckles, because you just know that now that you thought of it one of those idiots will decide that it is the Best Thing Ever and that the only reason it isn’t being done is The Evil Military Industrial Complex or something like that.
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
What’s better than a 100 ton mech? A 350 ton mech! Think of all the armor and weapons it could have. We might not even need heat sinks if we spread out the weaponry enough, internal cooling with the weapons will handle the heat load.
 

Kilvanya

Well-known member
What’s better than a 100 ton mech? A 350 ton mech! Think of all the armor and weapons it could have. We might not even need heat sinks if we spread out the weaponry enough, internal cooling with the weapons will handle the heat load.

Only if we also include a 150 ton LAM with quad artillery cannons to support it!
 

mmgaballah

Well-known member
There is an unfortunately loudly indignant group of ‘reformers’ who are proposing solutions to the reviews challenges that are, frankly, ridiculous. Every single one of them is convinced that the operational review process is a fraud, because their pet designs aren’t being instantly adopted as the works of utter genius that they are. Amaunet is grumpy about this entire thing, as they keep on bothering her as well.

In this you quite strongly agree with Amaunet and General Bradley, these ideas are ridiculous. The ‘Mech Of The Future’ is not going to be a 20 ton mech armed solely with a massive array of anti-personnel gauss rifles, nor is the ‘Tank Of The Future’ a 10 ton tracked vehicle capable of 120 kilometers per hour and armed with a single 5cm pulse laser. Nor is replacing all of your mechs with light Land-Air Mechs that are solely optimized for speed and armed with nothing but a 5cm pulse laser and a pair of AP Gauss rifles anything even resembling reasonable or even sane.
this is clearly a blatant case of graft and the typical games military procurement budget officers usually carry out , in any nation with a sizable and active military industrial complex
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
...and the Griffin Empire's M.I.C. has gone well beyond sizable.

Our MIC reflects, "Existential tier active war for over a continuous century." combined with, "Our world setting is a slightly more rational fan reimagining of a canon that literally runs on insane troll logic politics and economics for the sake of forever war."
 
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mmgaballah

Well-known member
Our MIC reflects, "Existential tier active war for over a continuous century." combined with, "Our world setting is a slightly more rational fan reimagining of a canon that literally runs on insane troll logic politics and economics for the sake of forever war."
so about the exact same as every other military industrial complex in the inner sphere then
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
so about the exact same as every other military industrial complex in the inner sphere then
I prefer to refer to us as “SLDF and their MIC if it had an actual existential threat to fight for a majority of its existence instead of spending it kicking puppies and Tuarians in the Periphery.” I just learned about the Baron and it makes me very frustrated.
 
Turn 108 - I Took The Tube Back Out Of Town

LordSunhawk

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Turn 108 - I Took The Tube Back Out Of Town

The economic system in the Bāṛi system continues to deteriorate as the full ramifications of the collapse of the largest retail chain in the system continue to echo throughout the economy. Considering just how hyper-inflated a ponzi scheme that corporation was, combined with just how brazen the former leadership had been, it’s amazing that anybody manages to keep their shirt in that situation. Thankfully your social safety net is working as intended to cushion the blow, but the overall GDP contraction in the system is almost half a trillion in value with all of the knock-on effects.

The thing is, it would cost almost your entire cash reserve to plug that hole, and doing so would do nothing to fix the underlying faults in that system’s economy. This is one of those unfortunate situations where you’ll need to grit your teeth and take the blow, because anything else would be more damaging in both the short and long term.

There aren’t any real surprises coming out of the Olympics, although the Bourbons are doing better than they had in the recent past in the various competitions. Who knew that selecting athletes to compete on merit rather than birth would have such a drastic effect. That was sarcastic, incidentally.

You do take several days to watch the gymnastics competitions, or at least the recordings of them, as they have become a very thrilling contest of skill, grace, and athleticism between the NRI and Team Griffon, to everybody's great enjoyment. It’s quite gratifying to you to see young athletes compete whole-heartedly in the meet itself, but as soon as they are off the floor they’re congratulating each other, regardless of team, for their accomplishments and triumphs, and consoling each other over their mistakes and failures. The fact that many of them train together in between Olympics is evident, and you are very happy to see it.

The orbital defenses of Pinball got a bit of an unplanned workout, as a ‘dark’ carboniferous asteroid was detected on a collision course with the main inhabited planet in the system. A quick survey showed no economically valuable minerals, so instead of redirecting it into a stable orbit the decision was made to use it for target practice. Several very enthusiastic hours later and the asteroid was a bunch of gravel, sand, and dust. Thanks to some judicious orbital repositioning there was no actual risk to orbital infrastructure, and the citizens of Pinball got a rather lovely light show in the night sky thanks to a truly spectacular meteor shower.

You watch the recordings and are a bit jealous that you couldn’t be there in person to witness it, because you are certain that it was even more awe-inspiring in person than simply on film.

There has been an uptick in Black Steel activity to the galactic northwest, with regular raiding by Black Steel corvettes beginning again. So far your forces are on top of the situation and despite taking damage you’ve so far not lost any ships. This is primarily due to the fact that the Black Steel seems to be engaging in purely hit and run attacks, jumping in well outside the jump limit, thrusting in while recharging, firing a few volleys at extreme range, then jumping out. It’s a galling annoyance that is causing damage and casualties, but sustainable for now.

You’ve gotten to see some of the new equipment that is being tested as part of the overall review process for the Imperial Griffon Army. You’ve even gotten to try out one of the new battle armor suits. Swapping out the anti-personnel gauss for a 3cm laser, slightly improving the armor, adding additional power cells to increase combat endurance, and upgrading the missile launchers to the newest standard all seem to be sensible upgrades. In some ways it’s a downgrade, as the old medium suits had a pair of the AP gauss weapons rather than just a single laser, but in tests the new suits have proven superior overall as a complete weapon system.

You also get a ride in the prototype Arashi assault mech and are extremely impressed by the sheer destructive potential of the design. They are still working out a few issues, the ECM systems are currently interfering with the laser anti-missile system sensors when both are active at the same time, but engineers assure you that this is normal teething issues and nothing that they are concerned with, the second prototype has some adjustments to both systems which should resolve the issue.

They also let you pilot another prototype, this time a 100 ton quad mech called the . It has very nearly the same firepower as the Arashi, despite being a quad, at the cost of less ammunition and a more punishing heat curve as well as the loss of the ECM suite. However it promises amazing survivability thanks to the decision to use a more compact, if heavier, fusion engine combined with the inherent advantage that quad designs have in sheer armor mass.

You inquire about the names and are informed that the designers went with Japanese names for the Assault mechs, German for heavies and lights, and Polish for mediums as the project names, the actual in-service names would likely follow a more unified theme but the general staff hasn’t decided on that yet.

Parliament is in session and a number of pieces of legislation are advancing through the process. Most are utterly mundane, on the one hand it’s nice that the politicians are behaving themselves, on the other it does make things a trifle boring. You quickly find some wood to knock on lest you just jinxed it.

But there is one piece of legislation that requires further attention. The Workplace Safety Act of 3038 would fully centralize all workplace safety regulations into a single unified Imperial regulatory body, rather than the current arrangement where the Crown sets basic minimum standards that all system governments are required to use as the baseline for their own workplace safety regulations. Considering that you haven’t seen any reports of any actual issues in this regard you are rather suspicious about this, since as far as you can tell the current system is indeed working rather well.

On the other hand you are talking about ‘in the weeds’ health and safety issues, which may well not have risen to Imperial attention due to the sheer scale of the Empire. It’s one thing for the Queen of a single world to be able to know about all the miniscule details, but not for an Empress of a massive, and growing, interstellar empire.
[]ActionArgumentResult
[]Sign the Workplace Safety Act of 3038It is all well and good to argue for devolution of authority to the local level, and that the current system is working fine and thus changing it is foolish. However, just because it is working now doesn’t mean it will continue working, and the recent issues with the Bāṛi system government failing to catch the corruption that is currently savaging that system’s economy is a warning sign that we cannot expect this happy state of affairs to continue.

We must centralize as much authority as we can, simply to prevent potential accidents in the future. Safety is too important to be left to local hands, it must be an Imperial concern.
  • Establish the Imperial Health & Safety Administration
  • Increases upkeep costs by $1,000,000,000.00 per system
  • +1 Politics
  • -1 Economic Event
  • -1 Imperial Economy
  • -1 Research Event
[]Veto the Workplace Safety Act of 3038Not only is the current system working, it is working well. The conditions in the Griffon system are not the same as those in the Edelsteine system or the New Phoenix system, there are different challenges brought about by different environments and different industrial matrices.

The current practice of setting baseline minimums and metrics that the system governments can then use as a baseline to develop their own regulations allows for precisely the sort of flexibility an interstellar empire needs to thrive. The people of Pustina or Pinball should not have to wait for a distant bureaucracy on Griffon to make decisions on their behalf, where they will have little to no input and no assurance that local conditions will be respected.
  • +1 Approval Change
  • -1 Politics
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
[X] Veto the Workplace Safety Act of 3038

Yeah we probably shouldn’t throw piles of money to complicate a system that is not showing major problems.
 

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