Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

PeaceMaker 03

Well-known member
Hansa
Since Sara has the IFF for the DCMF then she would probably rule out the other houses as well. She also would have recognized a Wolverines IFF so that rules them out. And it would also rule out the rest of the Clans. So its either scavengers, Comstar, Or a group of civies fleeing the succession wars. And now I am positive that we need to head to the Polish planet since they may have headed there. Moving on, there really isn't many options for who the unknown IFF belonged too. Its probably going to remain an unsolved mystery.

Possible it is the Hanseatic League? or Someone like Jarnfolk <spell>

The issue is a Starlord is not a common JS, even less so out in the periphery.

A Starlord with 6 Mule Dropships on docking rings is a major load of cargo in the inner sphere, out in the backside of space, what could be profitable enough for that amount of cargo capacity out in this neck of the woods?
 
Turn 26 - She Could Spit in the Eyes of Fools

LordSunhawk

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Turn 26 - She Could Spit in the Eyes of Fools

Jake looks an odd combination of sheepish and surprised as you give him the Mom Look of You Done Messed Up Boy.

“Babcia made all of us learn those phrases and responses, and drilled us on them everytime we visited.” he replies with a shrug. “She never told us why, she never told us where we’d be called upon to do so, only said that if we were ever to be in a command center of the 331st with somebody who was ‘worthy’ that we must say and do those things.”

He shrugs again.

You don’t need to ask why he never volunteered it, because you knew that answer. You’d compartmentalized the knowledge of the facility extremely tightly, and Jake had never had ‘need to know’ until the reports came in about what was inside. Therefore nobody had ever told him you’d found this facility in the first place, and contrary to how insightful Jake was, he wasn’t psychic.

You ask him what he did know.

“Not much more than that, Babcia gave all of us grandkids pins with that insignia on it when we were little, told us they were important.” he shrugs, digs into his pocket and pulls out a cheap faded little metal pin which, sure enough, has the 331st insignia. “Also that we were to never name any of our kids Aleksander or Nicholas, or we’d be disowned. Gave us stuffed toys like the ones that were found here as well, all of us got stuffed wolverines, but we were always told that the others were stand ins for the bad guys. She had all sorts of stories about the toys, and as a kid I loved them, but I always thought they were just that, stories for little kids.”

He looks over at the holo display, which was currently showing some historical footage from the Wolverine Annihilation.

“Knowing what I know now, they were stories of where we came from, and what had happened to our ancestors. But she never told us that.” he sighs “And unfortunately Babcia died when I was 16, so I’ll never be able to ask her. As far as I know she was the last of her generation in our little community over in McEvedy Garden’s in Griffsport.”

He pauses. “And yes, Isoroku was one of my neighbors growing up, he’d have heard the same stories I did.”

And he’d been outside the security bubble as well. Damnit.

Restricting information about the cache had been the right decision, it had ensured against any leaks and had worked. It only worked a little too well.

This was something for later, because even as you pondered it Sarah interrupted you.

“Alert. Activity detected on Griffin IV. Alert. Activity Detected on Griffin IV.” sounded from the speakers, and the holodisplay switched to showing the entire Sabre and Leopard CV force lifting off.

You promptly order that the Aerospace Force be alerted and readied for intercept. You watched with cold eyes as the Aqueduct joined the Kuritan force, the sensor suite here more than capable of displaying the intricate ballet of hot decking and refueling that is going on.

It becomes clear very quickly that this force is heading for L4, probably intending to destroy the factories there. You also see the Drac Buccaneer and Mule lifting off and heading outwards towards Griffin V.

You don’t even look towards General Potter, who’d joined you in the command center. “Analysis.” you asked.

He never got a chance to answer, as Sarah responded in her clearly artificial voice. “Attack is 99.4389% classified as a Reconnaissance In Force combined with Distraction. Targets are orbital infrastructure. Primary Purpose is 94.325% like to be to distract from transferring base to Griffin V. Analysis of available assets show no high probability strategic options to prevent transfer.”

General Potter looks bemused rather than annoyed at being preempted.

“I’ll go with what she said, Your Majesty.” he says in his deep rumbling voice.

In some ways it is far harder to watch the engagement here than while on the submarine. The sheer level of details that the displays have makes it extremely clear that while your pilots are extremely good, the Dracs are equally skilled, and in combination with the Leopards are causing far more damage than they are actually taking. That you manage to do any real damage at all is more a testament to the sheer brutal power of the AC/20’s carried by the Roc and Goshawk than anything else.

The massive furball seems to break apart almost by mutual consent as fuel exhaustion starts to threaten both sides. Not much more than armor damage, thankfully. No birds on either side have been lost, but you can’t see any of the enemy that isn’t sporting at least a scorch mark from a 5cm laser hit, and you can already hear the complaining and bitching from all of the crew chiefs on your side of the fence.

Several days later you get word that the petrochemical find had been verified by the Coast Guard expedition, along with charts and hazard markings that would make it feasible to start the next step. Thankfully the Five Fingers are just large enough that they can be settled and used as a base for exploitation while also being close enough to Phoenix that a port in the Five Fingers would be able to provide basic service to the coastal region of that desolate continent.

Bridget sends you a memo about it, and like much of what your Interior Minister produces, in contrast to her usual stream of consciousness babble it is a concise set of bullet points.

  • Build Port Facilities on the Five Fingers
  • Make use of USS Enterprise and her survey teams to fully survey Phoenix itself
  • While engaged in the survey, do the following as soon as the Port is completed
    • Build government services facilities in the new port
    • Extend Justice services to the new continent
  • Construct coastal infrastructure on Phoenix
  • Build Drop Port in the Five Fingers area
Parliament requests that you approve a measure recruiting retired veterans and pilots who’d served in the earlier attacks on the planet but who aren’t essential to defense at this time to participate in a morale-raising War Bonds tour.

[] Agree - +1 tax rate this year. +1 Approval Change. +1 Politics Rating. Will cost 10,000
[] Disagree - -10 support in Commons and Lords
 

kashim3

Texan, Mandalorian, Alabamian.
[X] Agree - +1 tax rate this year. +1 Approval Change. +1 Politics Rating. Will cost 10,000
 

Vilegrave

Well-known member
[X] Agree - +1 tax rate this year. +1 Approval Change. +1 Politics Rating. Will cost 10,000

Pays itself off as the +1 tax rate gives back more than it costs, also gives nice bonuses on top of that.
 

Lightwhispers

Well-known member
[X] Agree - +1 tax rate this year. +1 Approval Change. +1 Politics Rating. Will cost 10,000

So, both sides achieved primary objectives, neither achieved secondary objectives. Long-term trends probably favor us.
Guys we do not have any money left over from the list to spend on the option

This has been extensively discussed on Dicord.
The Tax rate boost should make this pay for itself, I believe.
 

Jarow

Well-known member
[X] Agree - +1 tax rate this year. +1 Approval Change. +1 Politics Rating. Will cost 10,000

We'll be down to (gasp) a mere 96 approval this turn with this, but it gives us enough money to make up for it's cost
 

Ridli Scott

Well-known member
We need something with more punch to kill some dropships in the same battle or we are going to suffer for a long time. Something with two twin-linked gausses of something like that.
And deploy them in numbers at the same time to surprise the dracs.

[X] Agree - +1 tax rate this year. +1 Approval Change. +1 Politics Rating. Will cost 10,000
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
We need something with more punch to kill some dropships in the same battle or we are going to suffer for a long time. Something with two twin-linked gausses of something like that.

If you look in the design bureau channel on the Discord, there's been some discussion of an space-superiority assault dropship design, and that's definitely a solid answer in the medium term, but all the designs submitted are *very* expensive.

I'm going to point at my own Odysseus class proposal, which is hella pricey but rather dramatically outperforms both of the semi-common canon assault dropships, the Avenger class and the Achilles class. As in, it's only slightly larger than an Avenger at 2000 tons versus 1400 tons, but achieves three and a half times the Battle Value (BV 18,709 versus 5203). Even the much larger 4500-ton Achilles only has a BV of 8118, and canon states the Achilles is "the closest thing to a WarShip" that any of the Great Houses can currently produce.

This being the case, just a handful of Odysseus class ships should give us local space superiority as long as they're paired with a fighter escort that can protect them from being swarmed under.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
So why are they moving? Being further away makes attacks harder for them right?

Not *that much* harder since they have the fuel ship, and Griffin IV is close enough that our ASFs *could* in theory do a long boost to get to them.

Alternatively, it's possible that Griffin IV has hostile indigenous wildlife that's giving them problems -- note that they brought in that Condor earlier which is a full battalion scale infantry transport, and they unloaded the battalion on Griffin IV rather than using it against us.
 

Jarow

Well-known member
In discord, Sunhawk mentioned that Griffin V has more ready access to water without the star league era water purifiers we have now. In other words, this is them settling in for a long siege of us.

This attack? Probably going to be repeated until we're crushed under the weight of the Dragon's "superior industrial might." Which both groups believe favors their own side. Time will tell who's right and who's wrong. (Note that canon designs tend to be a lot lighter on armor than ours, which helps us a lot in battles at this scale)
 
ShadowArxxy - Canon Omake - Better Stressing Through Technology

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Omake: Better Stressing Through Technology

For once, Jackie Griffith was not on board a submarine. Willis was on board a submarine, and Thanh and Sarah were on board the other submarine, but Jackie was in the 331 command bunker where Sarah's sensors and holotank gave her a much, much better view of the battle. This turned out to be incredibly depressing -- she had a pixel-perfect, near real time view of her people going out to fight, but couldn't do a thing to actually affect the outcome of the battle. Sarah's exterior defense turrets were exceedingly formidable, but they did not include full-scale surface-to-orbit naval weaponry.

It was an absolute blessing that none of her people *died* for her to see, but none of the enemy did either. It was clear that while they weren't enough to turn the tide of the battle, those heavily armed and armored Leopard CV dropships were dishing out quite a bit more kicking than they took, and the lack of an equivalent heavy platform for the Griffin Aerospace Force was. . . decidedly suboptimal.

Jackie ended up discussing long into the evening with both Sarah and General Palmer. In the end, nothing was really decided; they definitely needed a trump card to deter further harassment strikes, but they also didn't want to show their hand with regard to DropShip construction capability until they had a decisive number of DropShips available to take maximum advantage of the surprise.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
This attack? Probably going to be repeated until we're crushed under the weight of the Dragon's "superior industrial might." Which both groups believe favors their own side. Time will tell who's right and who's wrong. (Note that canon designs tend to be a lot lighter on armor than ours, which helps us a lot in battles at this scale)

Our superb Eagle ASFs are likely to give us the edge in this particular escalation grudge match, and in the short term we have enough of the Falcons to balance the numbers until more Eagles come online. The big downside for continuing this way is that they'll be able to see exactly what our Eagle production is, which is more valuable information for them than us knowing what their Saber and Leopard CV numbers look like.

I strongly feel we need to come up with a tactical trump card that isn't DropShips yet; we're still better off reserving DropShips to be a strategic trump card.
 

PeaceMaker 03

Well-known member
Our superb Eagle ASFs are likely to give us the edge in this particular escalation grudge match, and in the short term we have enough of the Falcons to balance the numbers until more Eagles come online. The big downside for continuing this way is that they'll be able to see exactly what our Eagle production is, which is more valuable information for them than us knowing what their Saber and Leopard CV numbers look like.

I strongly feel we need to come up with a tactical trump card that isn't DropShips yet; we're still better off reserving DropShips to be a strategic trump card.

Anyone ask Sarah if she has design for capital weapons?

A few dozen capital missiles would be nice now To flatten some leopard CV’s
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Anyone ask Sarah if she has design for capital weapons?

A few dozen capital missiles would be nice now To flatten some leopard CV’s

That would be nice, but it would actually be an even bigger deal than showing off DropShips.

The Great Houses *can* produce capital missiles -- they're not technically LosTech -- but no one dared produce any until the Clan Invasion, because capital missiles are a WarShip weapon and *anything* that even hinted at one of the Great Houses attempting to restore a derelict WarShip would have been a massive escalation.
 

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