Turn 33 - When People Run In Circles
You rather like it when Parliament actually pulls their weight for a change rather than simply being a pain in your backside. It’s a refreshing change.
The passage and implementation of the new plan has immediate effects, resulting in a surge of economic activity throughout the system. Civilian dropships are hard put to keep up with the surging demand for raw materials from the asteroid belt and it appears that the efforts to boost the economy have fully paid off already, with even better things projected ahead.
The Luxury Airship company that you are a part owner of has put up a proposal to the board of directors, which you sit on, to invest in luxury dropships to begin passenger and tourist service throughout the system. The proposed designs are every bit as opulent as the airships while containing every single safety system that the engineers have been able to devise to make them as safe as possible.
The initial design is for a large Aerodyne based on the files available for the
Monarch class vessel. Future plans include building the massive
Princess-class ultra luxury dropships. You’ll be able to afford your share of this expansion quite easily just from dividends, but approving this proposal will prevent such dividends until the dropship service begins, at which point they will be twice as valuable.
[] Yes
[] No
Jeremy is a busy little eager beaver, and shows up at your office accompanied by a number of representatives from several Industrialmech concerns with a proposal for you.
You don’t yet have a
Shortbow factory, and until the Light Fire Company concept is proved out you may not need one. Jeremy has gotten a number of manufacturers experienced with lesser designs to hand-build a single unit’s worth of the middle-weight fire support mech at a premium. This wouldn’t at all be sustainable, but the primary rights holder has agreed to the proposal as they feel it is their best chance at earning long term profits from series production.
[] | Agree | Cost 3000, gain 1 lance of Shortbow FS Mechs for the Light Fire Company |
[] | Disagree | |
The twins are doing absolutely wonderfully this year, the new aero package rules seem to be working out very much in their favor, especially on the more challenging long tracks. Quan and James have been swapping the 1st and 2nd slot all season now, as they never finish worse than 8th and have 5 wins between them.
There’s a new driver this year who is making one hell of a splash. Nobody knows the guy's name, nobody has seen his face, as he never takes his helmet off in public. He hasn’t won a race, he’s always up there in contention. Sergeant-Major Ngo assures you that he’s been vetted, so somebody does know, but nobody who does is spoiling the mystery.
Some say he is working with a motoring show featuring three old guys who faff about in fast cars and make utter asses of themselves on camera, and that he knows four facts about Grifftigers, all of which are wrong. All we know is, he’s called HoverStig.
Thanh is on leave for her honeymoon, taking an around the world flying cruise on a luxury airship. From the calls and emails you’ve gotten from her she is having a grand time with her wife.
Sarah is going to be presenting a paper at a Historical Research Symposium on ‘Parallels and Divergences Between the Holy Roman Empire and the Star League’. You tried to read it, you really did, but after the fifth page of footnotes you gave up. Your academic days are long behind you, but Sarah seems to enjoy this immensely.
Then it’s that time of year again, budget time.
Say it with me now…. YAY! BUDGET TIME!
Could you at least fake some enthusiasm?
General Jackson kicks things off. “Your Majesty, as the recent events with the Bratva show, you can never have too much scouting capacity. The SH-1B proved itself very useful, along with the jump infantry. However the main drawback of the SH-1B/Jump Infantry combination is that in situations where the infantry is contraindicated, the SH-1B alone is a fairly weak scouting platform. We have plans for an ultra-fast VTOL scout platform that is completely independent of any infantry attachments. Moreover, this unit doesn’t require any strategic materials. The manufacturer is willing to provide us with a battalion set of the AH-2 at a discount in a similar arrangement as we got the
Jaguar MBTs. The total cost would be 7200, as opposed to 8316 if we procured them normally, but we would agree to procure a second battalion set for the Rapid Reaction Force.”
[] | Name | Cost | HP | A/D | Special |
[] | AH-2 | 924 | 36 | 9 | Swift, VTOL, Scout, TAG |
[] | No | | | | |
“In addition, we strongly recommend the procurement of at least a single lance of the
Ambush II mech to fill out the Light Fire Company demonstration unit. Further procurement of
Trooper,
Pathfinder and
Ambush II mechs is also recommended to start filling out the mech force for 2nd Brigade. The 1st Aerie Cadre is requesting
Cadet mechs to start beefing up their training equipment.”
She starts to step back then pauses “Oh, before I forget, now that there is sufficient production capacity on Nowy Gdansk, it might be a good show of support to produce the start of an urban defense battalion of
Verdun UDVs there. We could produce the entire battalion set, or we could spread it out. Also, we might want to consider training several battalions or even a full regiment of Space Marines, now that we have orbital habitats under construction in the Asteroid Belt.”
General Reyes takes the podium then. “We have concluded the contest for the upgrade to the Goshawk. None of the proposals require any strategic materials to produce, allowing the platform to continue to be a viable filler ASF for defensive deployments. One of the designs that stuck out to the committee was the so-called Gausshawk, equipped with a gauss rifle instead of the Class 20 autocannon. While it loses the can opener of the autocannon, the increased overall effectiveness in simulations was noticeable as over time it had a higher damage output ratio.”
[] | Name | Cost | Upgrade Cost | HP | Fuel | A/D | Specials |
[] | Goshawk 2L | 1688.4 | 8506.8 | 96 | 5.5 | 14 | Swift, Armored, Armor-Piercing |
[] | Gausshawk 2G | 1601.6 | 7031.2 | 108 | 6 | 17 | Swift, Armored, AMS 1 |
[] | Goshawk X2 | 1751.6 | 9581.2 | 96 | 5 | 14 | Swift, Armored, Armor-Piercing, AMS 1 |
[] | Support Hawk | 1832.4 | 10954.8 | 100 | 6 | 15 | Swift, Armored, Armor Piercing, AMS 3 |
[] | Warhawk II | 1722 | 9078 | 100 | 5.5 | 15 | Swift, Armored, Armor-Piercing |
“The only platforms we recommend producing this year are Gyrfalcons to beef up our general interception force and Goshawks of whatever variant is successful in this procurement run to defend the stations in the Asteroid Belt.”
Admiral Benjamin then takes over. “Your Majesty, the next
Defiant is well under construction. That being said, we’d like to propose taking advantage of the larger Aerodyne frames available to produce a proper assault ASF carrier. We would like your permission to open up a design contest to industry for this purpose.”
[] Approve
{] Disapprove
General Potter then takes the podium “Your Majesty, it goes without saying that I approve of the recommendations of my subordinates. I would like to especially stress the potential advantages to producing the
Verduns on Nowy Gdansk both in terms of the defense of the planet but also in welding the inhabitants closer to the throne.”
Bridget is back to her normal perky Bridget-ness. “Your Majesty! Great news! We may have a lot on our plate right now, with all the surveys and construction that we’ve got going, but we’ve also got lots of great ideas for what we can do next. For starters, more resource surveys would never be a bad idea, and they’re relatively cheap thanks to our buddy
Sarah. Finally we have all these imperial resources laying around, we can spend them on really turbocharging development on one of the planets in the system! For example, boosting up Nowy Gdansk would get them another step closer to being able to support full up battlemech and ASF factories, while doing the same on Griffin’s Roost proper would really boost our income next year thanks to all the sweet sweet economic growth!”
Isoroku has vacation, as he just recently got married and is on his honeymoon. He left a memo though, recommending another music festival, along with a note ‘and get us a proper Imperial anthem sometime soon, will you.’.
Jake is ebullient as ever. “Your Majesty, there’s no need to keep on schmoozing with the schmucks in Parliament, but I will if you really want me to. Instead, let’s work on expanding DoME so we can support more than one project at a time and, to keep Isoroku from committing sudoku on us, let’s go ahead and get us an anthem. A proper one this time.”
Mary shows up with her regular array of presentations. “I again won’t waste your time with things we’ve already gone over, Your Majesty. But we have a few new things.”
- Streak SRM (All)
- The Star League never bothered with expanding Streak to more than 2 packs, there’s no fundamental reason it won’t work
- CASE (Cellular Armor Storage Equipment)
- When ammunition and fire meet, bad things happen. This stops that.
She quirks her lips as she reads the slides, then comments “And I see I’ll need to supervise my interns a little more closely, my apologies, Your Majesty.” then calls up her recommendations.
- Military
- Heavy Battlemechs
- Continuing to strengthen our Mech forces will be exceptionally useful for when we start liberating our neighbors from Drac tyranny, heavier designs are more efficient in terms of capability per mech bay.
- Laser Anti-Missile System
- Simplifies logistics by eliminating the need to stock AMS ammunition, in addition the targeting protocols for this system can be used in exo-atmospheric situations to permit any light weapon to act as an anti-missile system.
- Non-Military
- Thermal Dissipation (Advanced) Tier 1
- We need to get started on this sometime as we predict a long row to hoe before we see significant results
- Structural Materials (Advanced) Tier 1
- For the same reason as above
- Spheroid Dropships (Medium)
- There’s no reason that military research should be confined to the Aerie
- Larger dropships are more efficient as transports, both civil and military
Harry is taking time off, but he also left a memo for you recommending consideration of a true ‘Black Site’ in orbit to hold high value prisoners.
Janet is a bit giddy, she’s got more grandbabies of her own after all, but she’s also professional as always. “I’d like to see some commendations for the Special Branch and Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police for how well they handled the Bratva situation. We’re continuing the investigations, not simply into the Bratva themselves, but also what you might say is the ‘bratva-adjacent’ groups and individuals.”