Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Detlef

Member
Turn 119 - Bone to Bone

There are several proposals for what to name the new class.

[]Name
[]Oregon-class Battleship
[]Warspite-class Battleship
[]Nagato-class Battleship
[]Kaiserin-class Battleship
[]Roma-class Battleship
[]<Write-In> (subject to QM approval>

First let me say that this is entirely up to Lord Sunhawk. The author can totally ignore my comment.

If I remember the beginnings of the thread correctly the settlers lost most of the Star League knowledge. It stands to reason that most of their knowledge of pre-FTL Terra / Earth was lost too. So I´d assume they got their knowledge of history, warship classes and names from the Wolverine AI / memory core?

I´m not quite sure why they would name their warship classes after "wet navy" ships from before FTL spaceflight?
Perhaps the first ones when they were trying to re-create a navy. To re-create a sense of tradition.
As in "Prinz Eugen" heavy cruiser class.

But later on what would be their emotional connection to these names? Wouldn´t it make more sense for them to name ship classes after their own famous Kings, Queens, dynasties, Admirals, (space) battles, decorated heroes (who gave their lives to protect civilians or other crew members)? Cities, planets? Or even - gulp - some meritorious politicians? Whatever? Their own struggles, their own heroes?
Something they know and can identify with?

The exception of course are names like Dreadnought, Invincible and the like. Pretty timeless names.
But the proposed battleship class names...
What is their emotional connection to the people of the realm now?

Maybe we can even start a sort of naming convention?
(Which might of course be a problem simply for the number of ships in one class commissioned.)
Something like:

- Battleship and battlecruiser classes:
Named after famous Kings, Queens, Admirals, meritorious politicians, battles...
- Carriers:
Named after famous Commanders of carriers, famous ASF aces
- Heavy and light cruisers:
Named after planets, continents on planets and cities
- Destroyers:
Named after decorated crew members

Feel free to improve my proposal. Or ignore it. ;)
 

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
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First let me say that this is entirely up to Lord Sunhawk. The author can totally ignore my comment.

If I remember the beginnings of the thread correctly the settlers lost most of the Star League knowledge. It stands to reason that most of their knowledge of pre-FTL Terra / Earth was lost too. So I´d assume they got their knowledge of history, warship classes and names from the Wolverine AI / memory core?

I´m not quite sure why they would name their warship classes after "wet navy" ships from before FTL spaceflight?
Perhaps the first ones when they were trying to re-create a navy. To re-create a sense of tradition.
As in "Prinz Eugen" heavy cruiser class.

But later on what would be their emotional connection to these names? Wouldn´t it make more sense for them to name ship classes after their own famous Kings, Queens, dynasties, Admirals, (space) battles, decorated heroes (who gave their lives to protect civilians or other crew members)? Cities, planets? Or even - gulp - some meritorious politicians? Whatever? Their own struggles, their own heroes?
Something they know and can identify with?

The exception of course are names like Dreadnought, Invincible and the like. Pretty timeless names.
But the proposed battleship class names...
What is their emotional connection to the people of the realm now?

Maybe we can even start a sort of naming convention?
(Which might of course be a problem simply for the number of ships in one class commissioned.)
Something like:

- Battleship and battlecruiser classes:
Named after famous Kings, Queens, Admirals, meritorious politicians, battles...
- Carriers:
Named after famous Commanders of carriers, famous ASF aces
- Heavy and light cruisers:
Named after planets, continents on planets and cities
- Destroyers:
Named after decorated crew members

Feel free to improve my proposal. Or ignore it. ;)
You actually have a complete database of Earth history courtesy of SARAH (the AI you found in the Wolverine base). This includes a full listing of historical warship names.
 

KyranKandosa

Well-known member
[X] Approve

I see no reason at all why we can't mine all we can from the planet, if only so that we could warehouse it for later instead of circulating it. But we're already dealing with a war, an economic crisis on top of that is not going to help. I'd rather wait till Black Steel is properly crushed, and we have more colonies able to help absorb the flow of resources when the floodgates are opened. We could also sell to our allies.
 

Havalt300

Well-known member
[x] Approve

[x] Kaiserin-class

What is the armor of an Inner Sphere/Clan ship of the same heaviness compared to our new ship?

As far as I can remember we have more armor on all our ships than the Inner Sphere/Clan ships.
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
I'd rather wait till Black Steel is properly crushed, and we have more colonies able to help absorb the flow of resources when the floodgates are opened.
Most empires colonize to get more raw resources. We are going to have to colonize to push all our raw resources on the colonies to avoid collapsing our resource market form oversupply.

Reminds me during the pandemic when oil was so oversupplied that it was a buck fifty in town and we were told to fill up our gas tanks before we left work.
 
Turn 120 - Lightning Strikes

LordSunhawk

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Turn 120 - Lightning Strikes

There’s something a bit odd about sitting in the Imperial Box and watching your own daughter march past as part of the Griffon system team in the Opening Ceremonies of the Pan-Griffon Games. Made a bit odder with the knowledge that in a few weeks she’ll be out on the sand, in her birthday suit, competing in Naked Volleyball in the opening heats which, you reflect, might be a rather unfortunate turn of phrase for the sport.

Not that you aren’t proud of her, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. You didn’t get to do something like this when you were her age, after all! Your grandfather would have blown a gasket years earlier!

You sternly remind yourself to not be a hypocrite over this, even if you are still chafing a bit at the Admiralty deciding to name the latest and greatest class of Battleships the Kaiserin class. You had to smile, nod, and pretend like you were very honored, when in fact you were horribly embarrassed.

At least you have the first of three weddings to look forward to! Your eldest practically begged to go first, and you have a sneaking suspicion that she’s more looking towards the honeymoon than the wedding. But still, this would mean two things… first, grandbabies, and second that your daughter would be on maternity leave and away from the front lines for a time!. So you gravely agreed that it would be most appropriate, and that moreover as the Heir it would be best for the wedding to take place here on Griffon rather than, say, New Port Royal in one of the wedding chapels there.

Thus proving that you definitely still have it, as both your daughter and future son-in-law turn bright red at that, especially when you start discussing appropriate ‘marital aids’. Markus is the perfect foil as you utterly troll your daughter. The piece de resistance began when he silently set a jar of apricot jelly on the desk in front of Tamara. At which point the wails of DAD began and the two of you exchanged a silent agreement to pull the security tapes for proper parental blackmail material.

You greatly enjoyed the opening performance of Cinderella by the Black Pumpernickels. You noticed just how many young kids were in the crowd, and the musical is indeed very family friendly. What’s more it manages to show role models for both the little girls and the little boys and, in a manner that you find quite pleasing, manages to walk the tightrope of making Madame and the ‘evil’ stepsister rather fun, while remaining true to the ancient Rodgers & Hammerstein script. According to the dramaturgical notes, this particular version had been further updated at some point, creating a new character arc for one of the stepsisters as well as adding the character of Jean-Claude.

The gift shop for the performance was making bank selling little tiaras and crowns to the children, although you did notice that many kids from poorer families who’d nonetheless come to the free show were without. So you dipped into the privy purse and quietly paid for several thousand of the things to be distributed to all the kids who wanted one but didn’t have one.

There’s so far been no reaction from the Black Steel to the latest battle, but you are certain that the lull won’t last all that long. You are just hoping to be able to get some system defenses up in the newly surveyed systems and to rebuild the Expeditionary Fleet as quickly as possible.

You direct Admiral John McEvedy, the CO of Home Fleet, to prioritize deployments in the most vulnerable systems. He is fully on board with that, and adds that this would also allow Home Fleet to begin building up valuable combat experience against the most dangerous foe available. According to him, he hopes that this will validate the design philosophy espoused by the Home Fleet against the criticism leveled by Admiral Fisher, namely that they have so many missile heavy designs.

Fighting continues to wind down in the RN region, with Bourbon forces fully taking over clean-up duties on RN 2 and 3, and supplementing your forces on RN 1. RN 4 continues to hold out, but is slowly being ground down. The units engaged in this action continuously need to be rotated out for repairs, as the RN anti-orbital defenses are nothing to laugh at.

In happier news, in general the economy seems to be doing rather well, although mining stocks took a brief hit when some rumors about Blár leaked out, but in the face of official silence and the announcement that the Blár system would not be colonized, but rather would be an ‘Imperial military reservation as part of the Imperial Crown Reserve’ calmed the markets quite readily. You allow rumors of the potentially catastrophic instability inherent to Hvítur and Rauður to spread, justifying the exclusion of Blár from colonization plans. After all, who wants to live on a planet that might have a far too close front row seat to a Type Ia supernova?

Manufacturing stocks are up across the board, as a bit of a ‘war’ has broken out between two extremely popular brands of automobile, with both releasing new sports models and declaring that their model is the Best of the Best and Far Better Than Those Poseurs Over There. Frankly, none of them really strike your fancy, being rather ridiculous in your opinion. Both are far too low slung, both have ridiculously fancy tires that cost more than some economy cars, both are two-seaters with barely enough storage space for a six-pack of soda, both have massively tuned and lightened fusion plants for power, both have ridiculous gimmicks that, in your opinion, are utterly useless in any real scenario beyond ‘looking badass’. But enthusiasts for the two brands are eating the controversy up, and buying more reasonable vehicles to ‘show brand loyalty’. So you guess it’s working out.

To your amusement Calliope Motors is capitalizing on this entire fracas by releasing their ‘Hypercar for the Common Man’, which costs precisely $1 more than the previous top model, which buys you a faux-pretentious ‘Hyper Speed!’ badge and paint scheme along with a numbered and signed certificate stating that you are the proud owner of a Hypercar For The Common Man. Whenever a woman buys one, the ever helpful staff takes a magic marker to ‘Man’ and replaces it with ‘Woman’, to everybody's amusement. The advertising campaign for this is utterly hilarious.
 

Yacovo

Occasionally spouting nonsense
In happier news, in general the economy seems to be doing rather well, although mining stocks took a brief hit when some rumors about Blár leaked out, but in the face of official silence and the announcement that the Blár system would not be colonized, but rather would be an ‘Imperial military reservation as part of the Imperial Crown Reserve’ calmed the markets quite readily. You allow rumors of the potentially catastrophic instability inherent to Hvítur and Rauður to spread, justifying the exclusion of Blár from colonization plans. After all, who wants to live on a planet that might have a far too close front row seat to a Type Ia supernova?
Ok, we have managed to kick the can down the road. We should probably reorient our economy in preparation for when Blár will be colonized, and it will be colonized once a wildcat settler eventually gets through and blows our cover story whether we like it or not.

We can probably begin building up factories and other manufacturing to use the incoming minerals while artificially encouraging transfers out of other competing mining concerns. It will artificially inflate prices in the mineral market for a bit, but it will be worth it to have a buffer for the flood of new minerals and ensure a lot of former miners will still have jobs.
 
Turn 120 - Bitch's Brew

LordSunhawk

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Turn 120 - Bitch’s Brew

Your eldest daughter is absolutely radiant in her wedding dress, bringing a tear to your eye. Your little girl is all grown up, and you know your husband is just as emotional as you are over this. She’d tried to argue for getting married in her dress uniform, even offered to wear full mess dress, but you had rather ruthlessly insisted on her wearing the same gown you’d worn for your wedding. Sure, you could easily afford a totally new one which would have likely set off a feeding frenzy among the local dressmakers, but your great grandmother had worn this dress, your grandmother had worn this dress, your mother had worn this dress, and you’d worn this dress. You think it more than appropriate for your eldest daughter to wear this dress.

All of your kids are present as well as a full slate of bridesmaids, including all of the female members of your daughter’s company which you find rather touching. The ceremony itself is taking place in the central cathedral of Griffsport, followed by a reception for the great and the good in the Palace while on the palace grounds a massive party was organized for anybody who couldn’t score an invite to the reception itself.

You’d actually rather be at the party, to be honest, the reception promises to be boring and formal.

The ceremony goes off without a hitch, despite you having to blink quite a bit to keep the tears out of your eyes during it. You honestly can’t remember much of the ceremony, nor the sermon, but you are sure it’s a good one given that you know the priest quite well and he has a history of really good homilies. Moments of your daughter’s life just keep flashing before you as you watch your little girl become a wife.

On the other hand… future grandbabies for you to get all sugared up and then return to your loving daughter!

The wedding reception is as mind-numbingly formal as you’d expected, complete with a seemingly endless receiving line, multiple rounds of oh so formal toasts from people whom you are certain spent the last twenty years polishing their remarks, and dreary protocol and formality. You are more or less on autopilot, your long experience with such affairs standing you in excellent stead as you are able to nod, smile, and look both interested and appreciative as appropriate while mouthing the proper platitudes.

Later you get reports that the big general party outside had been a quite boisterous affair, especially in comparison to the rather staid reception. Despite some worries, the dedicated staff at the Department of Periphery Studies was able to successfully distract the tenured faculty therein from the festivities, which made things far more sane for everybody else.

There still hasn’t been any significant response from the Black Steel, although scout flotillas have been chased off from several systems as the Black Steel seems to be escalating their recon efforts. Analysts lack sufficient data to accurately predict where the Black Steel might strike next.

The fighting in the Rouges Noir systems continues to slowly wind down. RN 1 and 4 continue to hold out, but Bourbon forces are increasingly shouldering a greater and greater share of the burden of burning out those forces. The number of deployed units has dropped significantly.

Parliament is rather subdued after the bollocking they’ve taken over the last few years. The new crop of Delegates in the Chamber are far more supportive than those they’ve replaced, and the Eldest has his paw firmly on the collective throats in the Senate.

They have, however, managed to pass a major piece of legislation, with the Eldest’s full support. The Colonial Governance Act of 3050 increases the budget allocation for Imperial support of colonial governance, clarifies a number of gray areas within the laws related to colonial governmental organization, implements much needed improvements in lines of communication between local, system, region, and Imperial law enforcement bodies, clarifies a number of ambiguous jurisdictional conflicts among the same, and in general manages to gather together in one bill all of the minor, yet needed, reforms that Parliament is needed to pass.

The largest part of it is the budget allocation increase, which strikes you as rather reasonable, especially considering the increasing distance between the most distant colonies and the Griffon system. While HPG communication reduces the time lag, it doesn’t eliminate it, so additional layers of sector governance have become more important. Currently the sectors draw their budgets from those of their constituent worlds, however sectors with a large number of new colonies, like the Steel March and the Scarlet March, are consistently suffering from budget shortfalls compared to their wealthier neighbors due to the comparatively low tax revenues of those systems. Compounding the issue, these two marches are also the largest ones, further increasing their expenses. Increasing the budget allocation would help ease this situation, and is highly popular in both marches, while not being all that unpopular elsewhere.

In addition, it is highly probable that a new march or even two will soon need to be formed, in order to prevent any of the existing marches from becoming too unwieldy. The current proposal involves splitting off the northernmost seven systems of the Empire to form the Diamond March, however there are concerns that those systems are so new that none are Core worlds, and thus the Diamond March would suffer from low economic growth. On the flip side, the prospective residents of such a March are quite enthusiastic about it, and the increased subsidies from the CGA would help offset some of those issues.


[]ActionArgumentEffect
[]Approve the Colonial Governance Act of 3050These are changes that have been long overdue. We expect system and sector governments to stand on their own, yes, but especially in the newest sectors this is inordinately difficult and results in great disparities between the wealth of the inner marches and the poverty of the outer ones.

The budget changes are the least of it, however. The clarification of certain legal gray areas related to a variety of minor areas will be exceptionally helpful. These are areas that don’t rise to the level of Imperial regulation, and thus are not affected by the regular rationalizations and clean ups. Rather they are the result of slightly different legal precedents and regulations at the March level bumping up against each other and against Imperial regulations. This legislation resolves this situation by establishing clear guidelines to guide future decisions in this area.

The changes to law enforcement is also highly welcome in that it formalizes what has long been an informal norm that was understood among all the various agencies. By putting it in writing, we ensure that such best practices remain even in the face of possible attempts to subvert them. Thankfully this has not yet happened, but it is better to act now to ensure it never does.
  • Increase System Government level from 2 to 3
  • If a new March is formed without any Core worlds, +1 Econ Rating to all systems in said March
  • +1 Econ Event
  • -1 Politics
[]Veto the Colonial Governance Act of 3050The colonies can stand up on their own two damn feet, they don’t need any further help from the Empire. All of these ‘adjustments’ and such are useless, just dictate to them how it will be and that is that, there is absolutely no need to do anything else.

As for the new Marches, sink or swim, if they can’t hack it on the same terms as everybody else, screw ‘em. We already waste far too much money on useless feeders who just drain resources, why should we waste a single cent more? If they don’t like it, screw ‘em.

The Core Worlds are what drives our economy, not the new holes full of dirt and poverty. If they can’t pick themselves up like the Core already did, then they deserve to suffer.
  • -1 Approval Change
  • +1 Politics
 

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