Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
We still need to get a force heading to the inner sphere really really badly. If nothing else we need to figure out what the fedcom is like because we really need to know in story if they're the sort to do warcrimes with a Aegis far from home.
Winter_Wind45
Well-known member
[X] Approve expansion of the Department of Periphery Studies
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
[X] Approve expansion of the Department of Periphery Studies
Joyousmadman
Well-known member
[X] Approve expansion of the Department of Periphery Studies
Turn 137 - Miracle of Miracles
Turn 137 - Miracle of Miracles
You realize you’d gotten so distracted by that pernicious holo of that wedding and the ‘ten minute war’ that you’d not actually read the survey reports yet. Better late than never…
((qm note - qm forgot, qm sorry, qm fix))
GX-F39 is a Red Giant, within about 2% of diameter and mass to being a Red SuperGiant. Unfortunately for any hope of exploiting the system as anything more than a recharge point there is a tiny, highly energetic, white dwarf in very close orbit around the primary, creating extremely hazardous radiation conditions and making it dangerous to approach much closer than the KF limit.
The other three worlds are rather more habitable, if only barely. GX-G37 has a number of asteroid belts, but unfortunately they are all the sort of asteroids that are effectively valueless for industrial purposes as they are extremely poor in metals. There is a marginally habitable planet in the system which, to its credit, possesses some spectacular views thanks to the massive planetary ring surrounding it. The survey teams have dubbed the system Nuova Basilicata.
GX-G38 is another red dwarf, and while it would never be accused of being a valuable system, nor would it ever be mistaken for a paradise, it does possess multiple terraformable planets and adequate resources for local development. On one of the worlds you do find something a bit odd, a single, lone wooden cabin on a planet completely devoid of wood. There are no signs of habitation in said cabin, but there is a cabin. The survey leader is of Romanian descent and decided to name the place ‘Estate’ in his native tongue as a sort of tongue-in-cheek reference to that cabin, hence it being named Imobiliar.
Finally, GX-H38 is a quite lovely orange main-sequence star, and while the planet is just a bit unpleasant owing to horrific weather and extremely jagged terrain, the system is absolutely lousy with iron deposits along with a significant amount of strategic minerals and, crucially, germanium. Considering the raw mineral wealth of the system, the survey crews have dubbed it Acélbánya.
Your anti-piracy patrols have gotten a direct sighting of the ‘Federated Commonwealth’ Aegis, although it managed to evade combat and escape. Unfortunately before it did so it fired a rather crude dirty bomb at the planet it was extorting, causing significant damage.
The ship is in awful condition, missing multiple armor plates and showing evidence of not having been in for any maintenance for decades. The paint job is extremely shoddy, with evidence of a totally different paint scheme that seems to feature a plaid pattern peeking out from underneath the primer coat, and the ‘Federated Commonwealth’ insignia is very amateurishly applied. Your comm-scanners were able to pick up some radio chatter as the ship's dropships hastily returned.
The voices were speaking with fairly thick Scots-Irish brogues and, in between panicking over spotting your destroyer flotilla burning in to intercept them, mentioned that ‘nonetheless the Duke would be pleased’.
Following standing orders the flotilla provided extensive humanitarian assistance upon reaching orbit, to the gratitude of the natives of the planet. They report a similar story to what you’ve heard before about this ship, namely demands for slaves and threats ‘in the name of the Federated Commonwealth and the Archon-Prince!’. Indeed, from the recordings of said threats you’ve received from the locals it appears that they inserted the phrase ‘in the name of the Federated Commonwealth’ or ‘for the Archon-Prince of the Federated Commonwealth’ over and over and over and over, almost every single phrase and transmission included one or the other phrase, and commonly both.
In short, somebody really wants you to associate what this ship is doing with the Federated Commonwealth.
Strangely that phrase never appears in ‘private’ communication between the dropships and the warship, funny that.
Parliament is in session. If it weren’t for the fact that the Eldest has assured you that they are being cooperative and helpful you’d be more worried about the structural integrity of your forehead from banging it on the wall due to their shenanigans.
This year the big proposal is the ‘Administration Act of 3067’. Which seems like such a benign name that it makes you immediately suspicious.
But it actually is a pretty straightforward piece of legislation, enough so that you suspect that the Eldest actually wrote it himself, because he’s a straightforward sort of giant cat. The short and simple explanation is that it would boost the Imperial subsidy for system governments by a relatively modest amount each year in order to account for cost inflation in the decades since the last increase to the subsidy. You check and, on a relative inflation-adjusted basis, the ‘new’ subsidy would be substantively identical to what the subsidy used to be a quarter of a century ago.
That is literally it. But the Eldest wants you to publicly support it, on the grounds that it would ‘allow your supporters in Parliament to associate themselves publicly with the Crown and thus improve their chances for reelection.’. It’s politics, but you do see the point.
| [] | Action | Argument | Result |
| [] | Publicly support the Administration Act of 3067 | As nice as it might seem to keep Parliament completely cowed, having an active and supportive Parliament that is willing to give you good advice is preferable to a beaten dog of a Parliament that just whimpers and begs for a milkbone. Spending a few hours at a photo op supporting the Delegates and Senators who already support you is a useful use of your time. It must be stressed, these men and women are your supporters, they ran for office on the platform of supporting the Crown and have consistently put the interests of the Crown first. They are genuine patriots who support your dynasty. But loyalty must go down as well as up, and simply supporting them in this would be an excellent way of showing that. |
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| [] | They can pass this without you, no photo ops for you! | Bah, politicians, whether or not they support you, are pond scum and should be treated as such, not given any fig leaf of respectability. There are days when it is so tempting to completely dissolve Parliament and rule directly. Giving any of them, even your so-called supporters, any semblance of attention and support, let alone approval, is wasted on such creatures as politicians. Ignore them, they’ll whine, they’ll cry, they’ll make angry noises, but they are all sound and fury, signifying nothing. |
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Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
[X] Publicly support the Administration Act of 3067
darkcloudt2
Well-known member
[X] Publicly support the Administration Act of 3067
Winter_Wind45
Well-known member
[X] Publicly support the Administration Act of 3067
AlphaOmega
Well-known member
[X] Publicly support the Administration Act of 3067
Orangeduke38
Well-known member
Will we get a chance to sell basic military equipment to the various statelets in the north? Or push through a law on what technology our corporations can export to foreign nations?
