Turn 84 - Here Comes The World
According to reports, negotiations with the Space Bourbons continue to be on track, with no serious surprises or items of note. They are extremely stubborn folk, and very elitist. Locals on New Port Royal are complaining a bit about just how picky the delegation is, and the sneering condescension is getting on many people’s nerves. But so far the locals are bearing it, mostly by cheating the delegation outrageously in the casinos and shops, admittedly, but bearing it.
You spend some time reading reports from Okusawa in between events at the Olympics. This particular batch has you almost falling off your chair, as it describes the incredibly bumbling effort of a pair that reminds you irresistibly of characters straight out of Wodehouse, the bumbling, overly enthusiastic and not particularly bright Ryo and his overly loyal yet long-suffering sidekick Arata. The pair apparently didn’t realize that the Special Branch had managed to implant listening devices in them, were mostly harmless, and the efforts that the Special Branch is having to go to to keep them from getting their asses kicked by the locals is becoming almost farcical. Considering that thanks to them over two dozen ‘revolutionary’ ISF cells had been busted up ‘by sheer unlucky happenstance, don’t you know’ you wonder if when the mess is over on Okusawa whether or not you should give the two a medal for services rendered.
Would probably break both of them, but the expressions on their faces would be priceless.
In the Olympics things are looking particularly bleak for Team Griffon, as in the next dozen events they only manage a pair of golds, both in naked volleyball which your granddaughter is STILL competing in, damnit. Five silvers and five bronzes is well below the performance you’d come to expect from your athletes, and is rather embarrassing as it is happening here at home. Of particular note is the utterly dreadful performance put in by the men’s soccer team, who managed to go the entire tournament without scoring a single goal, and gave up at least three goals in every single match that they played. It was humiliating.
OK, so you dominated naked volleyball, that’s something at least. You must be getting old, as you’d really rather they at least wore bikinis or something. OK, you are muttering that because of your granddaughter Ann, but still. You are almost certain that your great-grandfather Tyler is laughing at you from beyond the grave.
General Bradley has sent you some briefing materials as well, specifically an analysis on the long-term performance of the
Chasseur hover ‘tank’, although calling something that lightly armored a ‘tank’ is rather farcical. It is a pretty damning report, overall. In every engagement that the
Chasseur has been involved in it has taken over 50% casualties, and when hit by nearly anything, including infantry weapons, it almost inevitably was destroyed. The installation of ejection seats in the
Chasseur II had almost tripled pilot survivability, by considering that only 6% of pilots whose
Chasseur II is destroyed survive even with the ejection seats, which isn’t saying much.
The IGA has three proposed solutions. All three replace the
Chasseur, to the loud whining of their pilots and pouting from Thanh.
The first would replace them with a mix of the new
Fuchs and
Wiesel light hovertanks intended as the scouting element in the new Heavy Armored Regiments. These are 25 and 35 ton vehicles respectively, well armed with a mix of 5cm extended range lasers, five tube LRM racks, an anti-missile system and a TAG in the case of the
Fuchs, and an Enhanced PPC, LRM rack, AMS and TAG on the
Wiesel. By leaving out the even smaller
Ferret scout tank, a 4 vehicle lance of these hovertanks would be able to carry a platoon of your
Mk 2 Standard Light Battle Armor into battle, and give you a potent, if expensive, strike force to replace the overly fragile
Chasseur II
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Fuchs | $1,846.75 | FF | 10 | 10 |
- Swift
- Missile 0
- AMS 1
- TAG
|
Wiesel | $2,952.33 | FF | 15 | 15 |
- Swift
- AMS 1
- Missile 0
- TAG
|
The second proposal is to replace the
Chasseur by one of two variants on what is being called the
Duma, or Cheetah in Swahili, Fast Attack Vehicle. Both variants are slightly slower than the
Chasseur, mass twice as much, have actual armor rather than a few token roll bars and pious hope, yet are somewhat more expensive as a consequence and require a crew of 2 rather than 1. The first version has identical armament, but has a tiny infantry bay suitable for a single squad of anti-mech trained Jump Infantry, with provisions for rapid deployment while at full speed. The second replaces the tiny infantry bay with a second 5cm extended range laser.
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Duma APC | $366.60 | FF | 4 | 4 | |
Duma ML | $462.60 | FF | 6 | 6 | |
Chasseur | $167.75 | | 3 | 4 | |
The outcry from the current
Chasseur pilots in the various Rapid Reaction Regiments has been enough that the General Staff is kicking this decision up to you. They argue that the statistics on loss rates are deceptive, that in absolute terms the number of pilots killed is actually lower than the casualties suffered by ‘conventional’ units, in that less than a tenth as many people are actually at risk in
Chasseur units, that it takes 50% loss rates to cause equal casualties to a 5% loss rate in a unit equipped with
Patton III tanks. Those units average around a 10% loss rate in combat, meaning that in absolute terms more armored tanker crewmen die in combat than
Chasseur pilots.
The mixed
Fuchs/
Wiesel and APC option would increase the number of potential casualties by an order of magnitude per vehicle, according to the current pilots, while the ML option would double them. All for, in their telling, marginal increases in protection, the need for strategic materials in construction, increased costs, and loss of elan and esprit de corps.
[] | Option | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
[] | Keep Chasseur II | $670.80 | None | 12 | 4 | |
[] | Mixed Fuchs/Wiesel | $19,964.58 | FF | 79 | 25 |
- Swift
- Missile 1
- AMS 1
- TAG
- APC 1
|
[] | Duma APC | $5,400.60 | FF | 25 | 9 | |
[] | Duma ML | $1,850.40 | FF | 24 | 6 | |
And now it is your favorite time of the year, even while on Calliope attending the Olympics. Yes, it’s BUDGET TIME.
Since you are not at the palace you aren’t having the traditional big meeting, instead you have piles of briefing documents to read through and a few aides to help you make sense of things. You know intellectually that this is actually taking less time than the usual meetings, but it’s traditional, damnit.
The military is pointing out that they are slowly becoming bottlenecked once more on double heat sinks and are strongly advocating increasing production of them, along with endo-steel and ferro-fibrous. The growing production capacity is, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, putting more strain on your strategic reserves.
The Imperial Griffon Army is wanting to deploy a large number of new Combat Teams, both the Light Brigade Combat Teams and a new Heavy Brigade Combat Team concept that they believe would be an excellent supplement for the existing divisions. As such they are requesting the following.
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Production
- 1 Megafactory - Calliope
- Conventional Vehicle Factories
- 5 - New Port Royal
- 5 - Nowy Wrocław
- Procurement
- Heavy/Assault Mechs
- 9 Heavy Combat Team Regiments
- Light/Medium Mechs
- 12 Medium Scout Regiments
- 12 Medium Mech Regiments
- Conventional Units
- 12 Air Cavalry Regiments
- 9 Heavy Armored Regiments
- 9 Mechanized Regiments
- 4 Light Armored Regiments
- 2 Light Mechanized Regiments
- Militia
- Add 14 Militia rating across the Empire, concentrated in Peripheral worlds
The Aerospace Force is making a significant production expansion request. They are hoping to replace as many of the current Fighter Wings with Heavy Fighter Wings as possible, rotating the older birds back to planetary defense roles while using the newer and more capable ones to replace them in the various fortifications throughout the Empire.
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Production
- 10 ASF Factories
- New Pollux
- Okusawa
- New Phoenix
- Edelsteine
- Chuma
- New Capricorn
- New Castor
- Calliope
- Nowa Warszawa
- Griffon
- Procurement
- 30 Heavy Carrier Wings
- 10 Heavy Fighter Wings
Unlike the others, Thanh is with you at the Olympics. “OK, we have a wishlist a mile long, and yes, double heat sinks are the big obstacle right now, and if you boost production of ASFs like Romanov wants we’ll need more Ferro Aluminum as well. So I would say put those in the ‘approved’ list right away. We’re still trying to get a solid handle on these French bâtards.” She grins as she deliberately mangles the French. “I’m pretty sure their logistics people are either insane or truly hating their lives, because so far we’ve identified at least six different ‘styles’ of weapons, which vary from ship to ship, indicating multiple producers building their own proprietary designs without any consideration whatsoever for standardization. This is making my people’s lives very complicated indeed. That being said, all we can do is build up and try and outguess those crétins.” More exaggeratedly bad French, causing you both to break up in laughter remembering your high school French lessons.
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- Escort Yards
- New Capricorn
- Nowy Slask
- Nowy Wrocław
- Griff’s Leap
- New Phoenix
- New Port Royal
- Okusawa
- Small Warship Yards
- Medium Warship Yards
- Continue expansion of Refit and Repair Yards
- Procurement
- Regular Dropships
- 60 Bainbridge Parasite DD
- 6 Lancer Parasite AA Destroyer
- Large Dropships
- 30 Saipan Parasite Carrier
- 8 Canopus Parasite Battleship
- Jumpships
- Escorts
- 10 Haida Destroyer Escort
- 10 Fletcher Flight II Destroyer
- Small Warships
- 2 Wichita Heavy Cruiser
- 1 Brooklyn Command Cruiser
- 1 Erebus Missile Cruiser
- Medium Warships
- EITHER
- OR
- 1 Furious Large Light Cruiser
- Miscellaneous
The paperwork and briefings from Elizabeth Lee are rather detailed, coming down to a statement that they are ready to support all required military production projects if needed. She notes that she has two available DoME teams, one of which would be needed for the Megafactory project, the other of which she recommends either a terraforming project in the Chuma system, to make it more suitable for habitation for the miners there, or constructing clusters of O’Neill Cylinders in the Stahlfurt system similar to the ones in Griff’s Leap.
In terms of investments and such, she is recommending that you approve economic focuses on the Griffon and Okusawa systems, with investments being made into the Nowy Wroclaw system in hopes of boosting the flagging economy there. She notes that unemployment in the latter system is reaching unacceptably high levels due to several local factors, the economy having been in a long term slump there despite the industrial potential of the system. She is recommending that you authorize the upgrade of local industrial infrastructure and establish industrial zones in the system, as well as expand the military industrial infrastructure there.
Leila sends you several memos, mostly updates on the negotiations (they are progressing slowly but surely, and she is rather proud of herself for not reacting to some of the more sexist comments made by the lead Bourbon negotiator, noting that she later learned that several female members of their delegation had expressed their disgust with him at the hotel where the delegation is staying. Said disgust evidently included him being rather embarrassingly whittled on with a rapier by one rather impressive female ‘noble’ in the delegation. And Leila has holos… such a big codpiece to cover so little.
She does recommend beginning planning for establishing a future embassy to the Bourbons, stating that she has the sense that such a measure may well help with the negotiations themselves. She does point out that they are incredibly touchy in terms of pride and position, so she recommends that we take care not to poke them in those areas without good cause.
Despite the ongoing Olympics, or perhaps because of them, she is recommending that the organizers on Calliope be prompted to incorporate a celebration of the indigenous culture of the Kainga system into the event as a separate cultural festival.
Vinh sends you a memo advising that the only recommendation that she has at this time is to authorize further expansion of the Colonial Office and another Civil Service expansion, although she rates both as a rather low priority.
General Messerschmidt is with you on Calliope. “Your Majesty, with the delegation from the Bourbons remaining on New Port Royal, we have an opportunity to attempt to engage in some espionage against them, both electronic and in person. The former has relatively little risk, beyond expense and time, but I must warn you that the latter is a high-risk, high-potential reward scenario. If we manage to subvert some of their delegation we could stand to gain some critical insight into them, but if we fail that would be a seriously hostile act.”
Martina sends you a memo from the Ministry of Justice indicating that she has no specific budget requests for you at this time, although she does include a few more amusing recordings from the Ryo and Arata show. You needed the laugh.