Turn 104 - We’ll Try And Fit In With The Crowd
The RRFs harassment campaign against the Duc continues to escalate. Somehow they managed to sneak some of their infantry into the warehouse for the largest brewery on the planet, which is not on the continent where the fighting is taking place, where they cheerfully changed all the labels on every single bottle of liquor in a rather subtle manner, hiding the phrase ‘Le duc couche avec des chèvres’, or The Duc Sleeps With Goats, in the fine print on the label. It takes several weeks for somebody to notice, at which point the Duc flips out and issues orders for the entire brewery staff to be immediately arrested and executed for treason, orders which are ignored as doing so would deprive the entire continent of their beer and booze supply. It’s a rather nice lateral attack on ducal authority.
Meanwhile they’ve taken over a ducal hunting lodge within the occupation zone and, after a little creative remodeling, are broadcasting images purporting to be from the Duc, in which he urges the defenders of the planet to escalate their efforts to screw every sheep in sight and not to spare the goats, but cautions them that the dogs are off limits. Since they’ve managed to get several thousand hours of footage of the Duc to use in their fake announcements, they are able to make them appear very legitimate indeed.
With the Ducal aerospace forces completely eliminated, the RRF even recruited the Air Cavalry units of the Pathfinder Division deployed on the planet for some of their psyops, flying around at high altitude towing banners advertising the Duc’s services in impregnating your pet guinea pigs at reasonable rates. They’ve also bribed some ASF pilots to engage in skywriting campaigns for Ducal Massage Services - Happy Endings Guaranteed.
The Ducal rage has gotten so bad that all the RRF has to do is zoom past in view of any scouts or surveillance systems that the Ducal forces are using and he immediately orders an all out attack on them. Casualties among the defenders are now rising precipitously as the Duc’s temper has more than overridden any semblance of good sense the jackass might have. General Fitzpatrick estimates that at the current rate of advance the continent in question will be secured by the end of the year and they’ll begin operations on the main continent at that time using this one as a secure base.
More minor pirate activity has been occurring around Platzregensburg, but nothing too serious at this time. No attacks have managed to do more than require the expenditure of a few rounds of ammunition or a couple shots of a capital energy weapon. In general the moment the Jolly Roger used by the pirates is destroyed all of the pirate ASFs immediately surrender, as the slave pilots have zero loyalty to the pirates when it isn’t coerced out of them with shock collars.
Trade with the Masters of Ikea is increasing, they are proving to be a rather enthusiastic market for agricultural goods as well as entertainment media. They’ve kept their word regarding pricing as well and are rather scrupulously avoiding dumping goods onto your market. They’ve hired a number of consulting firms within the Empire to advise them on appropriate pricing and marketing, and as a consequence their advertising campaigns are becoming as sophisticated as anything seen with local megacorps.
The Olympics are continuing in the NRI, with Team Griffon continuing to do extremely well. You spend hours watching the recordings of the various motor racing events and are extremely impressed with just how dominant Team Griffon is, but also impressed by the improvements shown by the NRI and NRR over time. While neither ever seriously challenges for gold, their racing is light years ahead of where it was when the Olympics started. The shell of a team that the Bourbons were able to send is thoroughly trounced across the board. Your daughter seems to be having a great deal of fun serving as your representative, if what you see in the videos and her letters to you are any indication.
You decide to put off visiting the school you’d selected for your daughter to attend starting next fall, wanting her to be with you when you do so. For the same reason you make a point of not informing them of your decision, or even that they are in consideration. The information in the brochures looks quite nice, and while you are a bit concerned that it is an all-girls school, such are not unknown, and they do have a ‘brother’ all-boys school next door. Their brochures all note the various benefits that they ascribe to the reduced social stress of a single-gender institution, especially considering that they are primarily a boarding school.
And then it was budget time!
General Jenkins leads off. “Your Majesty, I don’t want to start things on a down note, but I will be retiring next year as I’ve reached the mandatory retirement age for the military. I will have a full listing of prospective replacements on your desk by the end of the year. It’s been a pleasure and an honor serving as your Military Chief of Staff and I hope that I have met or exceeded your expectations during my time.” He then grins. “Well, apart from the bad jokes, do you realize you’ve never once tossed me out the window for them? Your Majesty, I’m hurt!”
You laugh and promise to correct this manifest injustice at the earliest opportunity, drawing more laughs in the process.
“Regardless, we will be continuing to request increased material production across the board, and the Aerospace Force will finally be requesting additional production lines as well. The Navy does what the Navy does best and spends your money, while the Army is still evaluating and monitoring the Nouvelle Picardie operation. I’ll toss this over to General Bradley first, as always.”
General Bradley takes the podium. “I will admit to being pleasantly surprised by the RRF, Your Majesty, when their incredibly annoying behavior is targeted at an actual enemy it is surprisingly effective. If you can keep them targeting our enemies rather than their own chain of command in the future with their shenanigans my blood pressure will thank you enormously. We have some preliminary data from Nouvelle Picardie on improving our mech forces, centered around giving them the same modular capability seen in our conventional forces. We understand that the R&D people are ready to begin work on that. Meanwhile, our strategic materials situation is showing some improvement, but we have a long way to go for it to be ideal.”
She brings up the chart showing strategic material usage versus production.
“Our production and procurement requests are similar to last years, Your Majesty.” she says after waiting for you to review the chart shown.
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Production
- Strategic Materials
- New Orbital Factories (5 each)
- Double Heat Sinks
- Ferro Fibrous Armor
- Endo Steel
- Expand Strategic Materials Factories
- Double Heat Sinks
- Ferro Fibrous Armor
- Endo Steel
- Logistics Factories (5 each)
- New Castor
- Chuma
- Pinball
- Awha
- Olej
- Procurement
- 4 Infantry Divisions
- 12 Garrison Divisions
- 12 Militia Divisions
General Romanov comes up next. “As General Jenkins intimated, Your Majesty, we do indeed intend to increase production of ASFs this year if possible, as well as expand strategic materials production to ensure we continue to have sufficient margin for maximum rate production.”
She brings up the chart.
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Production
- Strategic Materials
- New Orbital Factories (5 each)
- Expand Orbital Factories
- ASF Production Facilities
- New Production Lines
- Glorreich
- Pryyemnyy
- Shin Tōkyō
- Novalar
- Bellaterra
- Landprettig
- Platzregensburg
- Awha
- Bāṛi
- Pustina
- Procurement
Admiral Fisher comes up next. “We can finally start laying down proper capital ships, so we should definitely do so. We need to continue building up our fleet in a balanced manner, plus continue expanding our production capabilities. It’ll be a few years before we see any of the big iron in service, but I am very confident in the designs that we’ll be building. I’ll not bother with any pretty graphs since we don’t need any increases in strategic materials at the moment, we’ve got a buffer of over 150 cores, and almost 600 units of lamellar ferro carbide armor. Spend the money on ships, not expansion that we don’t need yet.”
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- Orbital Shipyards
- New Orbital Shipyards
- Landprettig
- Bellaterra
- Nubifragio
- Platszregensburg
- Expand all Orbital Shipyards
- Refit & Repair Yards
- Expand All Refit & Repair Yards
- Escort Yards
- Landprettig
- Bellaterra
- Nubifragio
- Platzregensburg
- Kurortas
- Olej
- Pinball
- Pustina
- Raj
- Steingarten
- Small Warship Yard
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Kainga
- Okusawa
- New Castor
- New Pollux
- Edelsteine
- New Capricorn
- Nowy Wrocław
- New Port Royal
- Procurement
- Standard Dropships
- 100 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
- 50 Long Beach-class Parasite Destroyers
- 90 Wright-class Dockable ASF Platforms
- 29 Trenton-class Transports
- Large Dropships
- 20 Meteor-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 40 Aetna-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 30 Saipan-class Parasite Carriers
- 46 Mikasa-class Parasite Battleships
- Jumpships
- 9 Windjammer-class Jumpships
- Escorts
- 30 Fubuki-class Destroyers
- 20 England-class Frigates
- 40 Lyr-class Corvettes
- Small Warships
- 20 Dido-class Light Cruisers
- 10 Guiseppe Garibaldi-class Light Cruisers
- 8 Hosho-class Light Carriers
- Medium Warships
- 20 Prinz Eugen-class Heavy Cruisers
- Heavy Warships
- 2 Dreadnought-class Battleships
- 2 Jean Bart-class Battlecruisers
- Fortress Command
- Black Tower
- Kuroisora
- Sukaishi
- New Phoenix
- Okusawa
- Catachan
Once the admiral departs the podium Elizabeth Lee takes it over. “Your Majesty, needless to say we’re ready to build any facilities that the military needs us to build. On the civil side, our economic teams have the following recommendations to begin with.”
- Economic
- Focus
- Core - Nowy Wrocław
- Periphery - Olej
- Major Investment
- Core - New Pollux
- Periphery - Steingarten
- Investment
- Infrastructure & Industrial Zones
- Bohren
- Kurortas
- Landprettig
- Skala
- Raj
“Next, we have survey teams ready to go, we have the following targets that we recommend for this year's survey activity.”
- GX-I35
- The system primary is a red dwarf, scans are inconclusive for planets due to the presence of a small nebula distorting emissions from the system.
- GX-J36
- Within the same small nebula as I35, the system primary is a red subgiant that is only barely smaller than a true red giant. There are some minor indications of objects in the system but nothing definitive.
- GX-O17
- The system primary is a yellow main-sequence star very similar to the Griffon system primary in terms of spectral output. There are indications of at least one terrestrial planet and multiple gas giants in the system.
- GX-K16
- Another red dwarf primary, in this case we have strong evidence for a planetary system.
“We have three free DoME teams. One is required for planetary optimization, with the other two being free for other projects. We have the following recommendations.” She says, bringing up another slide.
- DoME
- Planetary Optimization - Calliope IV
- Terraforming
- Expand Shin Tōkyō Arcologies
Leila is off in the NRI with your daughter at the Olympics, so Tiberius is up next… dressed in a costume store quality ‘toga’... you roll your eyes at that, bracing for antics. “Your Majesty, can we please increase the Parks & Recreation Budget this year? It’ll improve overall morale and civil engagement, boost your image to the public, and in general make life easier, plus I’ll not be whining at you to increase the budget next year, I promise!”
You can’t help laughing at that as he over-acts and generally clowns around. “Also, we’d like to expand the Colonial Office this year to stay well ahead of the curve in terms of administering the Empire.”
Grace is up next, and she’s got a couple massive binders with her, which she sets on the lectern before beginning her briefing. “Your Majesty, we’ve got a large number of R&D projects available for us to undertake this year, with six free teams and plenty of lab space. Most of our recommendations fall under the areas of general science rather than engineering, but should lay the groundwork for future engineering R&D.”
She consults her notes for a moment. “To start with, we have two specific instances of engineering R&D for this cycle. First, in accordance with the requests from the Army, we have teams available to investigate implementing Omni technology on our battlemechs. We do not foresee this being an exceptionally long project, although that is, of course, subject to change. In addition, we recommend investigating improvements to industrial mechs, which should have significant benefits to DoME and general construction projects overall.”
She glances down at her notes again. “For the rest we are recommending general science research, with some applied benefits. First of all, improving our overall knowledge of Genetic Engineering should have significant effects on agriculture and medicine across the Empire. Next, we recommend investing in investigating advanced structural materials, thermal dissipation, and improving our overall communications technology in general.”
General Messerschmid is up next. “Your Majesty, thanks to the RRF and other forces on Nouvelle Picardie we’ve been able to backtrack a number of Nouvelle Picardie intelligence operations within the Empire, those cells have been rounded up and are being interrogated as we speak. We managed to intercept orders from the Duc to these cells to initiate terror attacks within the Empire, thankfully we have high confidence that we managed to intercept all of the cells and keep this from happening. Cooperation with the Royal forces in Bourbon space has been very beneficial, we’ve had to deal with some pro forma attempts at creative quartermastering of our gear, but they were so formulaic to be more amusing than anything else. In return we’ve developed some strong intelligence on both the Rouges Noir and on the Duc de Nouvelle Picardie.”
Martina is up after the General sits back down. “Your Majesty, I strongly recommend that we expand the IGMP, it isn’t critical yet, but better to keep in front of the issue than have to play catchup. The Empire is getting large enough that the current force size is becoming inadequate.”