Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Thors_Alumni · Aug 28, 2023

[X] Approve Admiralty Request

LordSunhawk · Aug 29, 2023

Scheduled vote count started by LordSunhawk on Aug 28, 2023 at 2:17 AM, finished with 12 posts and 12 votes.

11 people have voted
[X] Approve Admiralty Request
- ShadowArxxy
- charclone
- Doomsought
- Winter_Wind45
- hellspawn023
- Rukatin
- darkcloudt2
- Joyousmadman
- Brogatar
- kashim3
- Thors_Alumni
1 people have voted
[X] Approve Admiralty Request
- The Whispering Monk

LordSunhawk · Aug 29, 2023

Turn 142 - I Know Him So Well

The new raiding campaign starts out with a bang.

Literally.

The very first target system contained a large munitions production and storage facility, which detonated in a very spectacular ‘boom’. Only light Black Steel forces were present, validating the decision to expand the raiding. It is now a race between your raiding forces and the Black Steel to destroy as much Black Steel infrastructure as possible before they get their forces back in order to resist.

Other operations are also being fruitful, although you’ve been hitting supply depots and such rather than actual yards so far. Losses are minimal and all well within the capabilities of your fleet train to handle, as no ship has, so far at least, been a constructive loss. You’ve taken casualties among the crews and, especially, among the ASF pilots, but your total combat power in the theater is unchanged.

It appears that the Black Steel have not been bothering with fixed defenses any longer, which is proving to be a quite serious mistake on their part. Evidently your habit of forting up and rebuilding has lulled them into a sense of complacency that is sure to not last all that long, given how quickly they’ve adapted in the past. Your analysts project you have a window of a few months before you’ll start encountering defenses, and your spacers are eager to take full advantage of that window. The more you destroy now when it’s relatively easy the less the Black Steel will have to defend with.

Speaking of forting up, exercises with the new drone turrets are well underway and the drone operators are quite confident that their new ‘toys’ will be very effective indeed. Work is continuing on adapting naval autocannon and gauss weapons to the BattleSat format, but there is some internal debate as to whether or not that is actually important enough to prioritize.

It’s a rather nice bit of news to open the new year with, and the Opening Ceremonies for the latest Olympiad, being held in the NRR this time around, are quite… nordic themed, but with plenty of fireworks as well. Considering the climate of Gotland, you have a feeling that the environment will make for some… interesting interactions with the Grecian-style olympics. Unfortunately, your granddaughter is competing, and will have to deal with that during the mountain biking races.

The early events are going acceptably, although not as well as in the last Olympics. At least your teams are medalling in those events which have completed early, but are not earning gold like you’d prefer. The margins are very tight, however, so it appears to be more a case of the other teams being better than your team slacking off or failing to perform. Indeed, in the decathlon, Team Griffon earns a silver medal, missing out on gold by a single point to a team from the Fringe which is only competing in the decathlon.

Your granddaughter does quite well in the first race of her heat. She’s not on the podium, but is in the top fifteen. The course is especially challenging, going from an alpine glacier down to a small ski town at the base of the chosen mountain. An adjacent mountain is being used for the skiing events, so it is quite cold. For some reason that makes things a bit more popular than normal.

Men.

Bellaterra and Catachan have both been redesignated as Core worlds, giving you a rather nice boost to the number of Core systems. Catachan is especially welcome, given the long, hard road that system had to travel to reach this point. Bellaterra is already a major shipyard system, at least for escorts, making it another welcome addition to the Core worlds, as now the proven shipbuilding capabilities of the systems workers can be applied to larger ship types.

Several other worlds are getting close to earning Core status, which will definitely be welcome when it comes time to build more yards. Pryemmnyy, Nubifragio and Skala are all on the cusp of achieving Core status. Skala is still, technically, an artisan world, but the artisans there have proven to be quite capable of relatively ‘heavy’ industry, just while using older methods of construction. The Interior Ministry has therefore decided that, so long as they continue to prove capable, that Skala can indeed be so designated.

You haven’t received any new intelligence from the Inner Sphere, but your diplomats, attaches, and anti-piracy patrols are working hard making friends and influencing people, raising your overall image within the Fringe. It’s a long process, but it has been quite rewarding so far so you are perfectly willing to be patient.

Speaking of the pirates, 1st Corps is getting rather busy cleaning up small pirate bases and is getting quite proficient at the task. They’ve adopted a unit nickname as the Pirate Hunters, and hunting them is what they do quite well. They have requested additional transports, not for the assaults themselves but in order to rescue victims of the pirates in a more timely and efficient manner. A number of modified Lublin-class transports are being sent forward by the Navy in response to the request pending design work on a new dedicated infantry transport replacement for the old Queen-class.

Thankfully for your sanity the Department of Periphery Studies is pursuing quieter obsessions at the moment, which mostly seems to involve painting miniatures and dressing up in ridiculous outfits, but remaining indoors because ‘the sun burns’.

LordSunhawk · Aug 31, 2023

Turn 142 - The Deal (No Deal)

You have very fond memories of those halcyon moments when you thought that the latest Periphery Studies obsession would be ‘quiet’ and ‘unobtrusive’. You deeply desire to return to those happy days.

Because Periphery Studies has managed to become incredibly annoying and very obtrusive indeed. Not to mention loud. They have evidently decided that they are all vampires and werewolves and that this means they need to wage an epic ‘war’ throughout Griffsport with nerf guns, swords, stakes, far too much makeup… and they are trying to include regular passersby into their ludicrous obsession, giving them small bags of red tokens that supposedly are ‘blood’ for the vampires.

The ‘vampires’ are actually the least of the problem, because they are obsessed with skulking around, wearing overly dramatic and theatrical clothing straight out of a production of Phantom of the Opera, and talking in horrid lisps thanks to the fake ‘fangs’ in their mouths as they, surprisingly politely, ask people for blood tokens before going back into ‘hiding’ in the most obvious places ever. It’s the werewolves, who are taking method acting up to Shatner, howling at the moon every night, running around brandishing their ‘klaives’ and demanding people show them where the ‘vampires’ are hiding.

The Periphery Studies staff is hard at work making sure that none of the distinguished faculty get their hands on anything that is actually dangerous, to anything but everybody's sanity that is.

You have started taking light losses in the raiding actions against the Black Steel, the most serious of which was the loss of a pair of Centaur-class CVLs with all hands to a Black Steel ambush. The officer in command of that particular raid got overextended and failed to properly screen his carrier support, resulting in their loss. On the other hand, he did take out the largest production facility discovered so far this year, a large weapons manufacturing station that appears to have specialized in naval missiles. That same raid also took out a dozen Black Steel destroyers and twice that many corvettes, along with several hundred Black Steel dropships and massive numbers of their drone ASFs.

Other raids are taking out mines, supply depots, and minor manufacturing sites. You’ve not found any significant yards yet, but there is evidence that mobile yardships had been present in a few systems but have since retreated. Your raiders are leaving behind early warning satellites tied into your HPG network to give you some early-warning of the Black Steel moving back in to this region.

The Olympics are continuing, and Team Griffon is starting to do much better in terms of actually winning gold medals. In the process, your granddaughter is still in contention as part of Team Griffon for the mountain biking medal, and has complained to you, laughingly, about getting chilly nipples. You’d warned her that this would happen, but she’s still quite enthusiastic and happy to compete.

She’s not had any spills so far this time around, which is a blessing, but the competitors are quite impressed by the NRR’s safety precautions on the mountain and your own officials are taking notes for upgrades to the courses within the Empire.

Parliament is back in session and they are working on another farm bill, which is being promoted by the Eldest as well as the family farmers from the various agriworlds.

The bill is quite comprehensive. First, it would establish an Imperial Seedbank, under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior, in order to guarantee the preservation of heritage varietals of crops. Several strains of wheat, for example, are facing ‘extinction’ primarily due to the specific climatic conditions for which they were bred being terraformed out of existence, however maintaining those strains is very valuable for future terraforming operations. Second, it would initiate land reforms to permit some consolidation of croplands on agriworlds without bringing in large agribusiness megacorporations. Specifically, it would allow cases where family farms are joined via marriage to remain joined when passed down to heirs, rather than required to be split back up as soon as possible. The issue comes from a minor, and unintended, issue with the wording of the original Farm Bill which effectively prevented such consolidations. There are still strict limits on total acreage for any given farm, but more farms would be able to reach those limits under these reforms. Finally it would expand the budget for agricultural inspection, specifically in order to efficiently speed up inspections of outgoing harvests while maintaining the strict health and safety standards that the industry has become accustomed to.

You are rather surprised at the relatively low overall cost of this bill in comparison to the projected effects, and ask your great-aunt to have Griffin’s Roost University double check the numbers. The report comes back that, if anything, the projections are on the low side, as speeding up inspections alone would significantly improve the overall efficiency of the agricultural system.

[]	Action	Arguments	Effects
[]	Sign the Farm Bill of 3072	In a very real sense agriculture is the lifeblood of the Empire, as every single citizen needs to eat, and having a healthy variety of foods available at reasonable costs is the surest means of preventing social unrest and promoting health and growth. We have long worked hard to ensure that the Empire’s citizens are able to afford the basic necessities of life, and this legislation would be a useful tool for this purpose. The seed bank alone would ultimately be helpful to DoME and almost worth the cost of this bill all on its own. The land reforms are comparatively trivial, but will have a strong impact on the efficiency of the farms, especially on agriworlds, while the improved inspections regime would dramatically reduce the overall costs and time required to ship out harvests to our most heavily populated Core worlds. This will, admittedly, result in a temporary strain on the Empire’s civilian shipping markets, as agricultural shipments will surge, but this should even out quite quickly on its own as the markets adjust and compensate. Indeed, this could ultimately be a gift to the transportation sector, as it will open the door for growth and expansion.	Increase Agriworlds Subsidy by 1 Increase overall Agriculture subsidy by 1 +100 POP Limit to all worlds -1 Imperial Economy -1 Economic Event Prevents certain events
[]	Veto the Farm Bill of 3072	The strain placed on the shipping industry by these reforms is, sadly, understated by the proponents. Currently a good quarter of our transport ‘bottoms’ are devoted to the agricultural trade, and this bill is projected to increase that to almost half as farmers will be able to export far more, mostly due to the expedited inspections process. This will mean less hulls available for shipping raw materials to other industries which will, ultimately, drive up costs in those sectors. While it is true that eventually the situation will correct itself and stabilize, this will be a cold comfort for those who will suffer due to the raised prices in the interim. The question that will need to be answered is if the benefits, which admittedly are quite attractive, are worth the cost. We would argue that they are not, and that this bill needs to be sent back to the drafting board for significant revision in order to address the real issues.	+1 Imperial Economy +1 Economic Event -1 Politics -1 Approval Change

Rukatin · Aug 31, 2023