Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 52 - Illuminate The Night

One of the Oligarch’s that you haven't yet gotten anything concrete on is in communication with the lawyers you have under surveillance. It appears that, contrary to the others wanting to fulfil personal vices, he is wanting something more professional, namely he is working with the law firm to try and fabricate blackmail material against various Imperial Broadcasting Corporation journalists, editors, and producers in an effort to exert influence.

Specifically, he is arranging for individuals with identical physical builds, that is height, weight, general musculature, hair color, and skin color to the targets to be taped raping and abusing various of the ‘acquisitions’, then through advanced 3d digital editing techniques which you are told are nearly impossible to detect without knowing in advance that they are present altering the footage to show the targets committing the crimes.

Fortunately for you, knowing in advance allows you to take subtle countermeasures. Each of the targets is discretely contacted by the Special Branch, briefed on the threat, and measures are taken. When the blackmailers arrive and start making threats, the targets go along with it, the entire thing happening on camera. You then arrange for the targets to be ‘randomly’ assigned stories that just happen to take them off the air for extended periods of time as they travel to Nowy Gdansk to report on provincial elections there in one of the Arcologies.

One of the benefits of this is that you are able to identify several more lower level corrupted officials and companies that are supporting the oligarchs and may have escaped notice otherwise.

[]	Strike Now	83% Chance of lawfully convicting all primary perpetrators 40% Chance of also sweeping up the entire support network If Successful (Primary) Ends ‘the Weak’ +15 Approval Change +10 Politics +5 Approval +4 Support Chamber of Delegates +4 Support Imperial Senate If Successful (Secondary) Prevents future “Official Corruption” Meta-Events for 50 rounds Grants “Champion of the Weak” 1 reroll of any negative or neutral meta-event or dynasty luck check One time +2% GDP all planets
[]	Continue Surveillance	Continue ‘the Weak’ through next update
[]	Continue Surveillance while turning loose Intelligence interrogators on captured accessories	Has a chance of accelerating the process of lawfully convicting all targets Has a chance of weakening the case against all targets

Janet is pretty firm in her conviction that you need to remain patient and let the investigation develop. She wants to wipe out everything at once, in the hopes of keeping this from ever happening again.

Each of the Jump Point picket forces send a single unit on a recon run. Imagery developed during the mission shows medium sized modular space stations that appear to be purely for logistics, with large numbers of aerospace fighters and Achilles dropships buzzing about.

This could be catastrophic, if given the ability to mass forces, the Dracs could build up enough to overwhelm any defense you could mount by sheer raw numbers alone.

Thanh has her child transferred to an Iron Womb and boards HMS Ramillies. The other four Royal Sovereigns, the two newly completed Devastations, five Tyrannosauruss, ten Troodons, a pair of Megaraptors and a quartet of humble Defiants form an ad hoc formation and boost for the Zenith force concentration. These are all ships that had been awaiting assignment, so concentrating them this way doesn’t weaken any of your defensive positions.

They are almost halfway there when a second pair of emergence waves are detected, ten Drac Monoliths arrive, carrying swarms of additional Achilles, Avenger and Leopard-CV dropships, along with 5 vessels that look like somebody sawed off the top half of an Overlord and mounted a big ball turret.

Thanh makes the decision to continue to attack, the enemy massively outnumbers her, but she has the mass advantage and she strongly believes that she has the tech and tactical advantage as well. She arranges her forces in a deep formation, with her heaviest hitters to the rear well-screened by the lighter units.

The enemy comes out to meet her, one hundred and thirty dropships and near 600 enemy fighters, the vast majority of which are Sabres. As the forward screen of Defiants get close Thanh discovers what those modified Overlords are… they mount light sub-capital cannons which immediately open fire on the swift little dropships. Their accuracy is abysmal, obviously they haven’t managed to fully crack fire control over these ranges.

As they closed Thanh narrowed her eyes, the enemy formations were… looser than she’d expected from previous engagements. If anything it more closely resembles the formations involved in the attack on the jump point defenses…

Kamikazes…

She orders her formation to prepare for evasive maneuvering and focuses fire away from the enemy aerospace fighters and solely on the enemy dropships, as those were the only actual threat. And she orders nuclear warheads armed for her Piranha and Manta Ray missiles.

Her own sub-cap weapons open fire, her targeting systems far more capable and refined than the Dracs, resulting in multiple hits forcing enemy dropships to fall out of formation, but they continue coming on hard. The first salvoes of nuclear-tipped missiles lance out at the enemy, causing their targets to bloom into debris on impact, but she has only so many missiles, and only so much time. The relative closing velocity is such that there is no way she could extend the engagement and simply pound the enemy, she had too little delta-v in comparison to the enemy, who were slashing in at five and a half gravities.

Still they came… and as the formations started to interpenetrate Thanh forced herself to watch as the four Defiants that made up her outermost picket physically interposed themselves between the incoming Drac Achilles and her far slower ‘capital’ ships… and paid for their courage with their lives as they and the enemy dropships became nothing but brutally brilliant flares of plasma upon impact.

The Dracs numbers were being whittled away, bit by bit by bit… but too slowly. The Troodons that made up her second line of escorts were next in the fire and suffered the same grim fates as the much lighter Defiants, protecting the main force from kamikaze rams.

HMS Basilisk destroyed a pair of Avengers with her final volley, moments later joining them in death as she was rammed by an onrushing Achilles. HMS Nautilus managed to score a kill on one of the modified Overlords, silencing it, as well as an Achilles before dying in a ball of fire when rammed by an Avenger.

HMS Savage died hard, ripping off the wing of one onrushing Avenger before pinwheeling into an enemy Achilles. HMS Harpy managed to flush her Piranha racks into an incoming Avenger, but was unable to reload fast enough to destroy an Achilles that rammed her head on. HMS Acorn accounted for three Leopard-CV before dying to a ram from an Avenger. HMS Alarm briefly led a charmed life, evading three enemy Avengers, killing two of them, before a pair of Achilles pincered her and all three died together.

HMS Brisk managed to cripped two incoming Achilles that had been targeting other ships, before she herself died to an Avenger. HMS Chameleon accounted for one Achilles in addition to the one that rammed her amidships. HMS Comet almost survived the merge, killing three Leopard-CVs and an Avenger before being clipped by a crippled Achilles. She was the only Troodon to manage to launch escape pods. HMS Fury tore into the enemy formation like her namesake, but in the end was ripped apart by a kamikaze Avenger after causing significant damage to multiple enemy dropships.

The Tyrannosaurus-class HMS Wear hammered the remaining forces alongside her sisters before deliberately interposing herself between a damaged Achilles and HMS Pallas, saving the Devastation at the cost of her own life. HMS Ribble managed to intercept one of the two Achilles that were going for HMS Lord Warden, but the other managed to kill the cruiser in a brutal fireball moments after the death of Ribble.

By the time the Dracs reached the main battle line of five Royal Sovereigns they were a broken force. But they were still utter and total fanatics, at least on the dropships. The majority of the Drac aerospace fighter pilots were ejecting from their birds rather than continuing the battle, which made sense since your intelligence is that most of them were conscripts who probably didn’t want to be fighting in the first place.

A broken and defeated force, but the ten surviving Avengers and three surviving Achilles were not about to surrender. Final desperate defensive fire and evasive maneuvers saved four out of the five battleships, but HMS Hood was struck by a single Achilles. For a moment it looked like the massive battleship would survive the impact, but moments later she detonated in a massive fireball, killing all aboard.

Thanh grimly presses forward, marking the ejected Dracs for pickup as POWs and leaving behind small craft to begin recovery operations for any survivors. The modular station is undefended, the jumpships having departed hours before the engagement even started. Thanh signals for the Dracs to surrender, in response, they instead trigger the self-destruct in a final show of defiance.

SARAH detects a force at least as large as this one on an inbound trajectory, with indications that the station itself is being ‘towed’ along with the rest to provide logistical support. It will be over three months before they arrive, and by their trajectory they are bypassing the jump point defenses entirely, heading straight for Griffin’s Roost.

Thanh has already started to boost back towards home, and despite her damage she’ll arrive before the enemy. She brings with almost 500 prisoners, all conscripted residents of Nowa Warszawa. And less than two dozen survivors of her lost vessels.

Admiral Benjamin recommends drawing in the mobile jump point defenses to Griffin’s Roost to boost the number of screening units available in the event of more kamikaze attacks. Right now Home Fleet only has four Troodons and six Tyrannosauruses as screening elements for their Devastations… and that is plainly insufficient.

[]	Approve Partially, either Zenith or Nadir mobile units pulled in
[]	Approve in full, all pickets pulled in
[]	Refuse

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 52 - Illuminates My Soul

As the Drac force burns in from the Nadir, bypassing the Star Fort there, you force yourself to not focus exclusively on the incoming threat.

And instead you read some reports from the Special Branch. They’ve finally cracked the maze of shell companies that obscured the ownership of the law firm that has been coordinating the, well, perversions of the oligarchs, and they discover that it is actually owned and operated by the sixth oligarch, the one who’d been the most slippery fish of them all. It appears the old bastard runs the entire thing as a means of generating endless blackmail on his rivals in the media business, thus ensuring that his firm remains the ‘top dog’ in the market with the single largest market share of them all.

It turns out that the wily old bastard is merely continuing in his father’s footsteps, as the long deceased man had been one of your grandfather’s… agents, using blackmail, bribes, and assassination to eliminate your grandfather’s enemies. His father had served your great-grandfather as a spymaster, but evidently your father and the bastard in question had a falling out, leading to the old man going fully private sector. Now the bastard is sitting in his web, with agents and intrigues spanning the political, economic, and media landscape of Griffin’s Roost.

But webs, and spiders for that matter, are most dangerous in the dark, when they can hide and work their schemes and plans in secret. You now knew about him, and with the final keys to the puzzle in your hand you are in a position to decisively crush this monstrous arachnid (to keep the analogy going as long as you possibly can to keep from screaming in rage).

The good thing is you no longer need to wait. You finally have enough legal evidence and proof to wrap up the entire evil stinking mess and consign it to the trash can of history, where such foulness and evil ultimately belongs. You not only have the direct evidence of the crimes of all of the big fish, but you now have the full financial history of every single account used to pay out bribes, payments to enforcers, thugs, and murderers, all of the blackmail material, all of the communications, everything.

You call in Janet and give the order. The oligarchs fall. Today.

Special Branch, accompanied by the Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police and with the full assistance of the Imperial Guard strike simultaneously across the Griffon system. Over four thousand suspects are arrested in the first fifteen minutes, within the hour that number has been multiplied by ten. By the end of the day over a hundred thousand individuals, most of them ‘little fish’ involved in peripheral corruption, money laundering, and participating as couriers and such, are in custody and the jails are bulging at the seams.

What makes it especially sweet is that you are in a state of martial law and emergency thanks to the incoming attack. That lets you ignore the little niceties and courtesies like ‘timely arraignment’ and ‘bail’, as your garrison forces on Griffin’s Roost prepare for the invasion you keep their construction crews busy building prison camps to hold all of the prisoners, who are being held incommunicado without bail or counsel ‘for the duration of the emergency’.

The best part? There is absolutely no need to cut any plea deals in exchange for testimony. You already have more than sufficient evidence to put every single perpetrator involved away for life… at the minimum. For most of them you have enough for a noose.

That reminds you, you could be really vicious, at least to the big fish… technically you are in a state of war, technically their actions have distracted you from the prosecution of that war, so technically you could charge them with High Treason with a lovely little ‘in time of War’ rider, which would allow you to have those convicted of that cut, drawn, and quartered rather than merely hung by the neck until dead.

[]	The bastards deserve it!	Unknown Effect
[]	Dead is Dead, no need to be excessive about it	Unknown Effect

The planet goes to full lockdown as the enemy armada approaches. SARAH noted that the course of the invaders would pass by a transient pirate point about 6 hours short of orbit, and that the Dracs appear to intend to insert the station they’ve been towing along with them into orbit to support their operations rather than use it as a KEW.

Sure enough, as the Drac forces pass the pirate point it erupts, 20 Monoliths jump in and release 180 dropships, including sufficient Overlords to drop 15 regiments of mechs on the planet, along with 65 of the abominations of technology that are the pirate Stinger dropships. The newcomers detach and accelerate hard, quickly matching velocity profiles with the incoming force.

325 enemy dropships. Yet even with those massive numbers, your defensive forces actually outmass the enemy. 60 dropships, 5 defensive space stations, including 4 of the new Mk 1 Naval Defense Stations, are a frail shield against the horde, but your formation includes Royal Sovereigns, freshly repaired after the battle at the Zenith, HMS Renown, the Devastations… what you lack in quantity, you make up for with quality.

Defensive aerospace fighters soar from their bases, 26 wings strong. Even the training wings from the Aerie take to the skies, piloted by a mix of instructors and the best of the graduating class pilots. On the ground the garrisons are at their posts, all fortifications are fully manned, and the mobile forces are ready to react to wherever the enemy lands. 1st Armored Division, 3rd Armored Division, 1st Rapid Reaction Force, the Imperial Guard… You match the incoming enemy, at least in numbers of regiments, but theirs are battle hardened, and probably all mechs, while yours are a mix of mech and conventional formations who have never heard a shot fired in anger.

The engagement begins.

A swarm of sub-capital missiles, lasers, and cannon erupt from your forces, answered by the 20 modified Overlords of the enemy, each firing a quartet of light cannons in reply. Your forces keep the range open for as long as they can, delaying the engagement to give the long range naval artillery the chance to soften up the enemy. The fighter’s surge forward, beginning their own orbital dance as swarms of Sabre and Swarmer fighters engage your heavier birds. You have SARAH turn off the unit icons for the aerospace fighters, as there were so many they were obscuring the rest of the engagement.

The mass of enemy dropships close inexorably, the light and agile Achilles, Avenger, Leopard-CV and Stinger dropships screening the Overlords, taking hits that would have jeopardized the landing force. It is obvious that as far as the Dragon is concerned their only objective is to get those Mech carriers to the ground, every other dropship in the force is expendable to that goal.

You hold your breath as the first Overlord catches a Piranha missile in the drive and detonates. 2 more of the transports join the first in death, but ultimately the screen was too thick, the Overlords reenter, burning in to land on Castor. Enough transports to carry 14 regiments, and they’re landing. Your ground forces will be facing an extremely stern test.

In orbit the battle continues, freed from the need to defend the transports the enemy assault dropships maneuver aggressively against your forces, which ironically plays to your strengths rather than theirs. The engagement grows fiercer and fiercer. The enemy forces are attriting rapidly, but you are taking losses of your own.

HMS Hardy, the oldest of the Tyrannosaurus class vessels present is swarmed by a quartet of Achilles and left a drifting hulk. HMS Eden is destroyed in a collision with a half-crippled Leopard-CV, while HMS Doon suffered a death of a million cuts from the enemy aerospace fighters. HMS Devastation attracts a disproportionate amount of attention from the modified Overlords carrying the light sub capital cannons and is battered into destruction, although not before taking out the last of the 20 ships focusing fire on her. HMS Repulse had been in the thick of the fighting, seemingly enduring the incoming fire and shrugging it off, before the Devastation-class vessel suddenly detonates in a massive explosion that briefly rivals the brightness of the sun.

Both the 1st and 2nd Planetary Defense Wings of aerospace fighters are utterly devastated in the combat, taking crippling losses and being effectively destroyed as effective formations for now. The 2nd Patrol Wing is likewise rendered hors de combat.

Losses, yes. But ultimately? The Drac forces in orbit are annihilated to the last fighter, and then your remaining forces burn hard for the pirate point and the 20 Monoliths. An hour before they arrive, the Drac jumpships attempt to jump out… and 14 of them disappear, 2 more detonate in massive explosions, but 4 are left behind, drifting without power. By the time your forces arrive they are able to board those four, finding the crews dead and the vessels rather crippled but repairable.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 52 - The Night Is So Much Darker

Sergeant Major Ngo and Willis literally sit on you to keep you from suiting up in your power armor and joining the ground battle. Damnit, you are infantry before anything else. The issue is decided with Sekhmet and Bastet joining the ‘Pin Her Majesty On The Ground And Ignore Her Threats’ brigade.

Traitors.

Your son is out there, in the cockpit of an Empress command mech, and you are stuck here in the bunker contributing nothing of value whatsoever.

The Dracs ground their dropships near an industrial area and an absolute horde of Jenner mechs erupt out of their bays like a plague of locusts. Laser fire rips into civilian structures with no regard whatsoever for non-combatant life.

They quickly run into resistance. Slashing strikes from the Rapid Reaction Force manages to slow them down, but light hovercraft are fragile, and all it takes is a single solid hit to send them crashing in flames. Casualties mount quickly, as Jenners burn from concentrated fire, but the far more fragile hovercraft die in job lots.

But there is absolutely no surrender in any of your troopers, and you weep as you watch displays turning red as unit after unit falls to the enemy to buy just a bit more time for the main defensive forces to concentrate.

Artillery fire starts to smash into the Dracs, inflicting felling blows on multiple enemy mechs, but the sheer speed and agility, combined with the extremely aggressive tactics of the Dracs prevents the heavy guns from being nearly as effective as you’d hoped. You are inflicting attrition on the enemy, it is very obvious, but anything that tries to stand in front of that swirling display of martial mastery gets pulped. Three entire regiments of hovercraft are lost, killing less than battalions worth of enemy mechs. General Dunn is missing, her command company was overrun by a thrust of Jenners and the last image you have shows the Dracs viciously stomping on individual soldiers, even those few who try and surrender. It appears the Dracs have no intention of taking prisoners.

The Rapid Reaction Force died. They died hard. But they died.

They were outnumbered. They were outgunned. They were in fragile sleds armed with sledgehammers. Three regiments…. Facing fourteen, and all fourteen of the enemy were Battlemech units.

They had no chance to win. And they knew it. They had to have known it.

But they never hesitated. They never backed down.

They also held the line long enough for 1st and 3rd Armored to deploy, backed up by the Imperial Guard.

Your forces outmass the enemy, but you only have 10 regiments of mechs, and five of your mech regiments are lighter machines, technically equal to the enemy Jenners, but lacking in the battle hardened skill of the enemy pilots.

The enemy has the mobility advantage in spades. Trying to match them in a cavalry duel would be useless, and Jeremy has absolutely no intention of doing something that stupid. Instead he picks his ground, a long ridge between two mountains with a slightly boggy wetland in front of him, and makes the enemy come to him.

It is time to stand… and deliver. The swarm of enemy mechs, battered a bit by the sacrifice of the Rapid Reaction Force, but still mostly intact, crashes into the wall of steel put up by your son, and falls back repeatedly. It reminds you of nothing so much as an angry ocean attempting to batter a seawall into rubble.

Again… and again… mechs die on both sides, tanks are stepped on by Drac Jenners, missiles arch out at the enemy again, and again, and again.

Friendly aerospace fighters control the skies and conduct strike after strike, but the Dracs are very experienced at handling enemy aerospace dominance, and again your hopes of air power dominating the battlefield and bringing easy victory are dashed.

The Dracs finally commit their assault elements, hulking Stalker and Atlas mechs, forcing Jeremy to concentrate his own heavy elements. Two regiments of Drac assault mechs, along with all nine surviving regiments of Jenners, crash headlong into the three Assault Regiments and two Standard Mech Regiments. And they bring along an unpleasant surprise… battle armor of their own.

There are pirates along, in heavy Roman style power armor, heavier than your own suits and well suited to infantry combat, negating what you’d thought would be a crushing advantage.

The battle is horrific, dust so thick it is impossible to see any details, punctuated with massive explosions as mechs on each side die. And it goes on… and on… soon the entire Drac force is involved in the melee, and on your side tanks pour into the chaos, adding their own firepower before being kicked into silence.

In the midst of it all is Jeremy’s command lance, directly engaging a lance of Drac Atlass. And then his IFF signal cuts out.

For over an hour the battle continues, but when the dust settles 1st and 3rd Armored are simply gone, but only a single lance of badly damaged Jenners remain on the Kuritan side.

Spoiler: The Winged Hussars arrive

Then the final reserves, a unit so fragile and weak that Jeremy had refused to allow it into the main combat… the Winged Hussar ultra-light mechs attached to the Imperial Guard, charged in.

Weak, oh yes, they had tissue paper armor at best and only a single old-style 5cm laser, with a pair of frankly ridiculous swords as their only armament.

But there were 108 of them, and only 4 Jenners, and the Winged Hussars were, if nothing else, fast little buggers.

Air strikes are able to destroy the last of the enemy dropships. No prisoners were taken.

The battle is over.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 52 - The Wind Is So Much Colder

It takes hours for you to calm down after the battle is confirmed over, hours which you spend ranting at your patiently suffering husband, hours in which you threaten to fire your entire General Staff multiple times, hours in which you lash out verbally. Your eldest son is missing.

There is extensive footage of Kuritan mechwarriors deliberately kicking in the cockpits of downed mechs, indeed the last four Drac mechs were engaged in precisely that when the Winged Hussars swooped in, which partially explained why the diminutive little machines managed to be so effective.

It doesn’t surprise you to learn that there have been no Drac prisoners taken. You are quite sure that many of the dead Dracs committed suicide via a pair of gunshots to the back of the head, but considering the atrocities you’ve already seen?

The valley where the final battle took place is swarming with medical personnel escorted by the Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police. There are survivors, although all of the units had been shattered and there’s not a single intact mech left on the battlefield, not to mention the hulks of destroyed tanks in their defensive revetments. Most of the survivors are infantry, and they join in on the search and recovery efforts.

Overall casualty figures are grim, even the preliminary data that you have coming in paints a horrid picture. Castor had become one of the most densely populated continents on Griffin’s Roost, and the fighting had torn through the place like a merciless plague. You’d managed to evacuate the population into the shelters prior to the Dracs landing, thanks to the excellent civil defense system you have in place, but the Dracs seemed to take a cruel and vicious delight in destroying any shelters they found.

Willis finally manages to force you to take some sleep aids and go to bed. You wind up crying yourself to sleep, despite the haze of the medication, and only your beloved husband holding you allows you to finally drift off.

When you awaken, hours later, it is to Sergeant Major Ngo… and the redoubtable old woman is smiling.

They’d found him. And he was alive. A Jenner had indeed kicked in the cockpit of his mech when it finally went down, and his pilot was dead, but the command console provided just enough protection that he’d only been seriously wounded rather than killed.

The fact that he declared himself ‘fine’ has your ‘Mom’ sense tingling. And it turns out your Mom Sense was on the ball. He’s ‘fine’ only insofar as in eight months or so he’ll have freshly cloned legs, and that the doctors were quite certain they could completely eliminate the burn scar tissue using cloned skin grafts.

Fine your well-aged Imperial arse. The damned thing is he insists on going back to work, even confined to a medical chair and with a medical orderly attending him at all times.

You still have to deal with everything else. The fires are out, the rubble is being sorted, and rescue services have done what they can. But the economy of Castor is in rubble, and the casualties are still heavy despite all of your precautions. How bad they could have been if you hadn’t insisted on hardened shelters doesn’t bear thinking about. As it stands, while loss of life is bad enough, at over 2 million killed, tens of millions more are put out of work thanks to the massive destruction, reducing your tax base significantly. In addition the massive economic disruption causes the planetary economy to contract quite significantly.

You are very fortunate that none of the strategic factories were lost or even damaged, Jeremy had planned the final defensive line very well, so at the very least you weren’t going to have to rebuild any of that.

But of the Divisional commanders engaged? Jeremy is the only survivor, none of the other senior officers made it. General Brenda Jackson of 1st Armored had been killed in action, her command tank being stepped on by a Drac Atlas, with the survivors being killed by pirate infantry. General Faye Dunn’s body is found, crushed by a Jenner. General Angel Swannson was found quite literally ripped apart by pirate infantry, pistol still clutched in one hand and a destroyed battle armor at his feet.

So as much as it galls you, you desperately need Jeremy, he’s the most senior surviving ground forces officer you have left, and as much as the mother wants to wrap him in cotton balls and keep him safe, the empress realizes she can’t.

You hate being empress sometimes.

Work crews have managed to clear up most of the orbital debris, so your orbital stations and such will not be risking damage. A small number of Achilles might be salvageable, with a great deal of work. They don’t really fit your force structure, but perhaps you could sell them to the Rasalhaguians or the NRI.

[]	Just scrap them	+$1,000,000
[]	Salvage and sell to New Rasalhague	+1 Trade Route Costs $500,000 Improves Relations with New Rasalhague
[]	Salvage and sell to NRI	+1 Trade Route Costs $500,000 Improves Relations with NRI

It’s too early to be certain, but it appears that you might be able to salvage about a regiment’s worth of Jenners from the battlefield, although all of them would be in pretty sorry shape. The design itself doesn’t fit anywhere within your tactical paradigm, so they’d be pretty much useless to you except, perhaps, as OPFOR mechs for training. On the other hand you could sell them to either the Rasalhaguians or the NRI.

[]	Form them into an OPFOR for the Aerie	+5 Procurement Target for regular units Costs $500,000
[]	Salvage and sell to New Rasalhague	+1 Trade Route Costs $500,000 Improves Relations with New Rasalhague
[]	Salvage and sell to NRI	+1 Trade Route Costs $500,000 Improves Relations with NRI

A week later and things have settled down a little. Jeremy is still in the medical chair with a medical orderly hovering over his shoulder, but he’s well enough for the meeting.

“OK, Mom. Let me start with this. I screwed up. I failed to press for more ground forces procurement, I got complacent about our technological superiority, and I had far higher hopes for CAS and orbital bombardment than turned out to be the case. Against fast and agile mechs, air strikes are far more difficult than we expected, as our aerospace fighters were simply moving too fast to provide more than nuisance value. Once the fighting became general, they simply weren’t able to engage effectively, as unlike our simulations and expectations the enemy was able to rapidly close with us despite our theoretical firepower advantage. Once they had done so, our pilots had to abort their runs rather than risk blue on blue casualties. Our artillery was likewise far less effective than we hoped, although it likely was the decisive factor in keeping us from completely failing.” Jeremy looks grim. “One thing none of our training and exercises showed was how vulnerable conventional vehicles are to physical attacks, once the enemy mechs got in amongst our armored forces they were able to destroy vehicles with ease that, on paper, should have been nearly impossible targets.”

He looks at his notes. “Some of the problems that beset us wouldn’t apply to offensive operations, of course. We’d be able to be far more liberal with orbital artillery support, for example, and our aerospace forces would be able to make better use of external ordnance, which was restricted due to the fact that the fighting was taking place within our own populated areas. Likewise long range artillery fire may have been more effective with an enemy unable to use our own citizens as shields, a large number of fire missions had to be aborted due to the fact that civilian shelters would have been within the danger close range.”

“With that being said, we have some preliminary analysis. First, our total losses. 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions are, quite simply, gone. The 1st Rapid Reaction Force is gone. The Imperial Guard is shattered, with only the Winged Hussar regiment remaining. As far as Mech forces go, we are down to our Training Regiments and three Armored Cavalry Regiments of 2nd Armored. Preliminary analysis of recovered BattleROMs show that the Light Horse Regiment concept is fatally flawed, the light and medium mechs of those units were unable to effectively support the armored forces. One of the major factors was the lack of integral infantry support for those units, however due to the design of the mechs assigned to those units there is nothing to be done in that regard. Bipedal light and medium mechs simply cannot support squads of power armor infantry in the same way as our quad designs in those tonnage ranges, let alone our heavy and assault mechs.”

He brings up a graphic, showing side by side a Trooper and the smaller quad Orb Weaver. “The simple truth is, the smaller Orb Weaver can support six power armor troops, her ‘back’ is broad enough for our engineers to build in a sextet of support stations that permit the suits to ‘ride’ the mech into battle. The Trooper is far more vertical, and as such is lacking in suitable attachment points for infantry. They’d have to dangle from the mech by their hands, which might be feasible over short distances at low speeds, but is incredibly dangerous.” An image of the Soldatin comes up. “Our heavy and assault mechs have body forms far more similar to quad mechs, being broad and long, rather than tall, with digitigrade legs beneath and arms attached at the rear corners of a roughly arrowhead shaped body. Even then our engineers had to get creative. On the Soldatin they lengthened the upper arms to bring the enhanced PPCs further away from the body, and mounted the torso enhanced PPC on a high swivel mount inspired by the Marauder design in SARAHs databanks in order to create sufficient clearance for the infantry riders. The upcoming upgrade has had to borrow solutions from our assault mechs, specifically the method of mounting the long range missile racks and the redirection of the exhaust gases upon firing upwards rather than backwards.”

“These solutions simply don’t work well on smaller mechs, or at least not well enough. We’re still researching the issue, but we’ve been doing that for years now with little progress.” he shrugs with a sigh. “So for the time being, as much as I appreciate the old mechs, I recommend ceasing procurement of Light Horse Regiments until such time as we finally crack that problem.”

“Likewise, we need to reconsider the organization of our Standard Armored Regiments. Right now they are deficient in infantry support, have inferior artillery support to our mech units, have too many light vehicles unable to stand up to attack, and are, bluntly, trying too hard to be jacks of all trades. We have too many different tank designs in service, with overlapping roles and capabilities that fail to synergize well together. Before we start procuring new Standard Armored Regiments we will need to reorganize them, and possibly split them into Armored and Mechanized Regiments, the need for APC’s to carry infantry along crippled the overall capability of the regiments. We hope to have proposals on your desk as soon as we can.”

He pauses again. “For our Armored Divisions, We would like to rebuild on the grounds I outlined last year, with modifications. Instead of a Three Brigade configuration I would like to go to four. First brigade would have the same organization, one pathfinder regiment and two armored regiments, although we will be studying replacing those with mechanized regiments instead. Second and Third Brigades would consist of one Armored Cavalry Regiment and two Standard Battlemech Regiments each, while Fourth Brigade would be either three Assault Regiments or a third brigade identical to second and third. In addition, I have asked the Strategic Planning Board to analyze the possibility of adopting an SLDF style Regimental Combat Team approach for smaller, more responsive units, as I am concerned that the Armored Division concept might be becoming too large and unwieldy.”

“Finally, we will need to upgrade our battle armor troops, the light suits we have been using are clearly inadequate, as was shown by the heavy casualties they suffered at the hands of the pirate suits. However, I have asked Mary to investigate the possibility of creating a Mechwarrior power armor suit, optimized for mechwarriors, to increase survivability in the event of a cockpit breach.” he looks very grim at that.

Your son used to be so happy and upbeat. Now he looks like you imagine your grandfather would have looked after a battle. Grim, implacable, like a glacier waiting to crush you if you stood in his way. There’s something just a bit fey about him, like the conquerors of old.

You glance over at Willis, and can tell that he sees it too. It is decided, as soon as he finishes his medical therapy, has new legs, and completes PT, you are conspiring with the twins to stuff your firstborn into a hover racer and forcing him to have fun.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 52 - The World I See Is So Much Bigger

You do get some… interesting news. The Unicorn has returned with detailed system survey data. The Calliope system has seven planets and a single dense asteroid belt. The initial transmission of the data, however, sets off some mental warning bells, especially the bit about wanting to give the full report in person.

But you approve it in the end.

Calliope I is little more than a massively irradiated, alternately baked and broiled, rock in space. It’s barely spherical, at the absolute lower limit for a ‘planet’ body. It’s so close to the star that it is effectively useless, even staying in the shadow of Calliope I isn’t sufficient to deal with the intense radiation environment.

Calliope II is a bit more useful, although not colonizable anytime soon. The atmosphere is incredibly toxic, temperatures are ridiculously high, and the surface has ‘seas’ of molten sulfur. Mining operations may be feasible, as preliminary surveys show concentrations of light and heavy metals easily accessible on the surface, although the work would need to be done via remote controlled robotic systems.

Then Admiral Kirk skips Calliope III, saying he’ll get back to it. You bestow your best quelling Ba look upon him, which rolls off of him like water off a duck’s back.

Calliope IV is a ‘super Earth’, and fully inhabitable with minimal to no terraforming required, beyond the need for prospective colonists to acclimate to a gravity well about one and a half times stronger than ‘normal’. The climate is described as ‘Continental’, with moderate seasons. There are inhabitants already there, survivors of a failed colony that have regressed to steam age levels of technology. There is one massive moon and two smaller ones, the large one actually supports an atmosphere and is habitable, although only barely as there is little water present.

The locals on Calliope IV appear to have embraced steam, from orbit they spotted railroads, steam cars, steam boats, steam tractors, steam everything and everywhere. No electricity, for some reason, they appear to use coal gas for lighting. Admiral Kirk held back from landing, wanting to wait for an official decision on how to proceed.

[]	Prime Directive!	Calliope IV will not be colonized or contacted
[]	Conquistador!	Oh how nice, a ready made population! Now conquer their steam loving backsides
[]	Diplomacy!	Contact the locals, talk to them, find out what happened, what they want, etc, then make a decision on how to proceed.

Calliope V is just outside of the habitable zone and is not quite large enough to support an atmosphere. There are signs that it once had one, long ago, and there may have been liquid water, but that was millions of years ago at best. The planet has little in the way of heavy metals, but initial surveys show it has very large deposits of the base materials for advanced strategic materials, making it a valuable mining resource.

The lone asteroid belt is rather dense, but the initial survey showed that it was nearly completely composed of carboniferous asteroids of nearly no commercial or strategic value.

Calliope VI is rather further out than expected, but that is due to it being a Super Jupiter, albeit one of shockingly low density. The rings are spectacular visually, however, and one of the many moons possesses enormous methane ‘seas’.

Calliope VII is a Saturn-sized gas giant, with a ring system even more spectacular than Calliope VI, but oddly enough only a half dozen or so very small moons.

Then Admiral Kirk smirks. “I promised you I’d get back to Calliope III” he says, his smirk becoming positively devilish.

Spoiler: Calliope III

He plays orbital surveillance video… showing a herd of honest to god dinosaurs, looking like Apatosaurus to your admittedly inexpert eye, moving across a plain, with massive predators that look like T Rexes stalking about. Flights of pterosaurs have been caught by the cameras, and in the oceans there are signs of plesiosaurs and mosasaurs.

There are multiple continents, each with their own distinctive species.

“We can’t prove it, but one of our scientists on board is a bit of a dinosaur geek and tells me that while there is great visual similarity, there are also differences from what paleontologists think Terra’s dinosaurs looked, and he strongly suspects that this is purely a case of convergent evolution in action. But… dinosaurs.” he grins boyishly. “We didn’t land, out of an abundance of caution. After all, I’ve read Jurassic Park, and it’s frightening in the dark.”

You can’t help but laugh at that.

You decide to organize a secret expedition to Calliope III, having Sarah find a number of academics who have studied paleontology on a theoretical basis as well as a mix of xeno-zoologists and xeno-biologists, many from the various zoos. You get them to sign NDAs, assign a number of guards who are due for relatively light duty after the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost, make a point to not tell any of them where they are going or what they’ll find, and convince Admiral Kirk and his exploration people to keep their lips sealed while recording the reactions once the secret is out.

Hey, you need some entertainment too!

And just in time too, because it’s now BUDGET TIME.

General Stewart looks unhappy. She’d tried to resign right after the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost, which you’d rather forcefully declined. “Your Majesty, we are in a hole, but hopefully our enemies are in deeper holes. We will need to improve our production capacity, especially for Battlemechs and strategic materials.” she then turns the podium over to Jeremy in his medical chair.

“Forgive me for not standing.” he says, somehow managing to make light of his wounds, although the smile doesn’t reach his eyes and he looks truly grim and terrible, a wounded war god. “I’m afraid that I’m going to steal a little bit of General Reyes thunder, but following our preliminary analysis of the battle we let out a contract for the first conventional fighter in Griffin’s Roost service in over 50 years. The Thunderbolt Anti-Mech Attack Aircraft masses 50 tons and is equipped with an ultra-type class 20 185mm autocannon with 9 tons of ammunition in addition to an anti-missile system in the tail. It has V/STOVL capability and is as well armored as we can make a conventional air-breathing fighter. Lee Aerospace is prepared to begin construction on an emergency basis at no additional costs to the Crown.”

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Special
Thunderbolt CAS	$284.87	None	10	20	CAS AMS 1

QM NOTE - the new CAS tag denotes a conventional fighter armed with an AC/20 (either Ultra, LB, or regular). Units tagged as CAS can only deploy if the Air Superiority flag is TRUE, and grants units with the tag +10 Attack/Defense

“Now, I’m sure it hasn’t been missed by anybody here, but we are in a devil of a hole in terms of our ground forces. We can either panic and start buying anything available, or be judicious and ensure that we are purchasing the right things. We are planning a complete restructuring of the Standard Armored Regiment, although the current ones will remain as they are for cost and training reasons. There will, in the future, be an Armored Regiment, a Mechanized Regiment, and a Cavalry Scout Regiment rather than trying to combine all roles in a single regiment. We believe that our current equipment will suffice for the Armored Regiment, but the precise organizational chart has not yet been settled. New vehicles will be required for the other two units, however.”

He brings up a graphic on the display. “For now, we recommend the following. The immediate replacement of all three regiments of 1st RRF. There aren’t enough survivors to form a useful cadre, so the formation will effectively be fresh, but will inherit the battle honors and history, and I am certain that they will rise to meet those expectations. This will require the purchase of three Rapid Reaction Regiments to reform the Brigade. I will have candidates for the new CO of the unit on your desk before it stands up, although it will be very difficult to replace General Dunn. I also recommend the immediate purchase of the Thunderbolts. Unlike conventional ASFs they can be carried in regular vehicle bays, according to the engineers, and our plans are to organize them in a Flight/Squadron/Wing/Regiment arrangement. We recommend the immediate purchase of a single regiment for testing purposes.”

“Turning to Mech production. We can immediately produce one Standard Mech Regiment and one Assault Regiment, which we strongly recommend we do. We further recommend upgrading the existing factories, especially Factory 13, 49, 50, and 51. We also strongly urge building additional mech factories on Griffon IV. In the future I’d like to be able to stand here and say ‘We need an additional Brigade’ and have the production capacity to do it.” he manages a thin, almost savage, smile. A smile which then becomes positively… evil.

“And finally, we propose the creation of a dedicated Special Forces Command, dedicated to special operations behind enemy lines. We have no indications that the Dracs have the sort of dedicated sensor suites required to defeat our vehicular stealth armor or our special operations battle armor suits. When we do strike back at them, such an advantage would be devastating.”

For a brief moment your son looks like some of the portraits of your grandfather, and you double your determination to do anything you can to drag him out of that dark place once he’s healed up.

General Reyes is up next with her powerpoints. “Your Majesty, we lost the entire aerospace garrison of Griffin’s Roost in the fighting, a situation which needs to be rectified as soon as possible.” she says, referring to the slides as she speaks. “Two Planetary Defense Wings and a single Patrol Wing, 180 Aerospace Fighters in total. Gone. We will need to replace them, however doing so in one lump will require 62.5% of our total production of Ferro-Aluminium Armor and just over 38% of our double-heat sink production. Combined with the python lump of dropships that will be required this year, this will be unsustainable. Our recommendation is to procure a single Planetary Defense Wing this year, a Patrol Wing next year, and the final Planetary Defense Wing in two years, meanwhile focusing on increasing production of vital strategic resources. Fortunately with only a Newport and a Newport-C commissioning this year we will not need to procure any fighters to fill those flight decks. We recommend upgrading orbital foundry 18, 23, 30 and 31 this year in addition to foundries 26 through 29.”

Admiral Benjamin is in the room, but so is Thanh… and your daughter is the one who comes up next.

She does shoot her older brother a quick glance, but then focuses on you. “Your Majesty, we have a large number of slips available for production this year, so to make this simple I’ve prepared a recommended chart. The recommendations are based on our preliminary combat review.”

And she does, although blessedly she hasn’t been infected with Powerpointitis.

1. 40 standard dropship slips
   1. Light Units
      1. 15 Defiant
      2. 15 Troodon
         1. We will note that we are working on proposals for a Manta Ray armed replacement for the Troodon
   2. Fleet Units
      1. 7 Tyrannosaurus
   3. Transport Units
      1. Long lead items for 3 ‘Project Roadrunner’ Fast Attack Transports

You look at the last and raise an eyebrow. “Project Roadrunner?”

“The Coyote-class Fast Attack Transport lacks the ability to support embarked forces for any length of time. Project Roadrunner is intended to address this situation. The current design is in final detail work, however I do have the current specifications available.”

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
Roadrunner Fast Attack Transport	$106,142.40	FAA, DHS	401	251	Armored 10 Swift Artillery 6 Missile 8 AMS 12 Capital AMS 1

You frown a little as you look at the image of the aerodyne, there is something… “Are all of the Vehicle Bays on the top?” you ask quizzically.

“Indeed, they are designed to act as VTOL landing pads while the Roadrunner hovers, allowing for the rapid deployment of the embarked SpecOps Battalion without the transport needing to land, and likewise facilitating in-flight recovery of the same.” Thanh explains.

You nod, pursing your lips. These are pretty specialized transports, but considering the mission profile they need to be. “Very well.”

Thanh smiles slightly, then continues with the presentation.

1. 15 Large Dropship slips
   1. Fleet Units
      1. 7 Royal Sovereign
   2. Exploration Units
      1. 1 Enterprise-A
      2. 1 Sentinel Scout Cruiser
   3. Transport Units
      1. 5 Newport
      2. 1 Newport-C

“We are currently reevaluating the Devastation design. The Royal Sovereign proved to be an exceptionally potent combatant at all current combat ranges. Building an additional Enterprise-A will boost our survey capability, while the Sentinel would be a superb battle scout for any future raids on the enemy. Finally building 5 Newports and 1 Newport-C will give us lift capacity for 2 entire Brigades of Mech forces.” her smile is almost feral.

You nod, smiling slightly, nice to see that Thanh is thinking of how best to strike back.

Thanh nods back. “We will also be reorganizing our fleet assets. The intention behind the current setup is sound, but lacks agility. Units are trained in large fairly homogeneous fleet formations, making it difficult to shuffle them around on the fly. Therefore, we will be reorganizing into Task Forces and Task Groups, with the individual sub formations forming into Fleets as needed. The exact composition of these units is currently being determined.”

She then takes a deep breath. “And finally we have several new designs for consideration which are preliminary lessons learned. Two different missile ships, one from the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Werks and one from Majeur Electrique. They are complementary designs, and we hope to put them both into production. They would both occupy regular slips, thankfully.”

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
Atlanta Parasite Missile Cruiser	$116,026.40	FAA, DHS	701	351	Armored 30 AMS 48 Capital AMS 4 Missile 20 Capital Missile 8 Capital 3/46 Capital 1/95
Oviraptor Parasite Missile Destroyer	$188,720	FAA, DHS	1073	723	Armored 30 Swift Capital 3/67 Missile 48 AMS 36 Capital AMS 3

With that Thanh sits back down, giving her brother another look as she does so.

General Stewart stands back up. “Your Majesty, I know that all of the recommendations for foundry and factory expansion will be difficult to manage, but we wouldn’t recommend it if it weren’t important.”

Next up is a subdued Bridget, who looks like somebody took away her coffee and replaced it with quaaludes. In other words, she’s talking at a normal pace rather than sounding like an excited chipmunk.

That is very worrisome.

“Your Majesty. To be blunt, Castor is an absolute mess. Rebuilding there is going to take a long time, and we don’t yet even have a firm enough grasp on everything that is lost to make any grand plans for reconstruction. Interior is ready to support any building project needed, my people tell me it won’t be until 1Q of next year that we’ll have enough data to make a reasonable plan otherwise.” she sighs, something she never does. “So I’d recommend putting all of my people who aren’t engaged in the assessment work or DoME projects to work on the factory and foundry upgrades mentioned by the military.”

Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, our salvage teams have managed to repair 3 Drac Achilles enough for it to be viable to dock them to the Unicorn for transport to the New Rasalhaguians, with your permission I would like to accompany them in order to discuss our future relations. Beyond that, I really have nothing for you, the Pan Griffon Games are supposed to take place this year, but due to the attack they have been cancelled, unfortunately all of my cultural affairs people are currently working on untangling that mess.”

And then comes Jake. “Your Majesty, the arrests and the attack have unsettled Parliament something fierce, but in a manner that I believe will ultimately be to our benefit, if I could be permitted to be so crass. In the short term it might be a good time to push for an expansion of Bridget’s department, so as to give us a bit more flexibility in regards to rebuilding projects.” Then he smiles slightly. “And, Your Majesty, could you please stop humming the theme from Jurassic Park? I know you’re hiding something, but I doubt Mary has cloned you some dinosaurs.”

That actually causes you to laugh and releases some of the tension in the room. Good ole Jake.

Mary is up next. “Your Majesty, I’m not going to waste your time with a presentation. There are two obvious projects for us to pursue, in light of what just happened. First, Medium Battle Armor, which will be helped a bit by the salvaged suits from the pirates, and second Heavy Quad Battlemechs or Advanced Communications, the first because of how effective our medium and light quad mechs were in the battle, and the second because I suspect it will help our researchers efforts with the HPG.”

Harry looks exhausted. “Your Majesty, we have been exhaustively canvassing the battlefield, the route taken by the Dracs, and the area around the landing zone. So far we have found no evidence of Drac DEST infiltrators. The local populace has been very helpful in our work and I would like your permission to publicly thank them for their vigilance. As it stands, I am 80% confident that there are no infiltrators left behind from the Dracs.”

[]	Let Harry do it	Increases public tolerance for counter-espionage measures
[]	Do it yourself	+1 Approval

Janet is busy overseeing the trials, so she’s not present, but she did send you a small compilation video of numerous nervous public defenders trying to make plea deals for the oligarchs and their hangers-on, and getting absolutely nowhere. It’s glorious.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 52 - Papa, Can You Hear Me

Spoiler: Meta Event, Dynasty Luck, and Rating Rolls

Meta-Event - 72
Dynasty Luck - 11 - Grandbabies

Imperial Approval - 0
Approval Change - 2
Politics - 0

Economic - 2
Economic Event - 2
Research Event - 0

Griffin’s Roost
Econ - 5
POP - 6
Rating Change - 3

Nowy Gdansk
Econ - 9
POP - 13c
Rating Change - 3

Griffon II Orbitals
Econ - -1
Rating Change - 8

Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt
Econ - 2
Rating Change - 6

Griffon IV
Econ - 6
POP - 6
Rating Change - 5

Spoiler: Action Results

Military [$ 40,919,762.50 ]
Upgrade Defense HQ* [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 91
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Dedicated Upgrade and Refurbishment Facility* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 86 - edcaliban reroll - 62
Result - SUCCESS

Establish Special Forces Command [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 90 - Jarow reroll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 65 (Ferro Aluminum) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 89
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 63 (DHS) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 64 (DHS) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 79
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $5,437,746.78 ]
-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 58
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 73
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 44
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 35
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 96 - Jarow reroll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 30
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 25
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 20
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 80
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 70
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 72
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 13
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 72
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 35
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 20
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 40
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 30
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 91 - Jarow reroll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 79
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 82
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 97 - Decim reroll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

-Troodon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 30
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 76
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 20
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 58
Result - SUCCESS

-Roadrunner [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

-Roadrunner [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 93 ShadowArxxy reroll - 5
Result - SUCCESS

-Roadrunner [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 70
Result - SUCCESS

-Royal Sovereign [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 5
Result - SUCCESS

-Royal Sovereign [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

-Royal Sovereign [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 61
Result - SUCCESS

-Royal Sovereign [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

-Royal Sovereign [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 12
Result - SUCCESS

-Royal Sovereign [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

-Royal Sovereign [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 43
Result - SUCCESS

-Enterprise-A [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 81
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto success next turn)

-Sentinel [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 35
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 12
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 70
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport-C [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 76
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units [$ 470,765.72 ]
-1 Planetary Defense Wing [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Assault Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 66
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Light Garrison Force [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Heavy Garrison Force [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Rapid Reaction Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 100 - ShadowArxxy reroll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Interior [$ 19,152,500.00 ]
Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib GIAB [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib GIAB [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib Nowy Gdansk [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib Griffon IV [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib Griffon II [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 40
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 45 (Ferro-Fib) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Griffons Roost [100]
-Large
Target - 100
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Nowy Gdansk [100]
-Large
Target - 100
Roll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

DOME - Nowy Gdansk Arcology* [auto]

Diplomatic [$ 5000000 ]

Political [$ 10000000 ]
Expand Department of the Interior [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

Research [$ 38,750,000.00 ]
Medium Battle Armor - Basic [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Communications (advanced) Tier 2 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 61
Result - SUCCESS

Full Survey - SLS Morristown* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

Improved PPC* [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Standard Core Theory* [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 7
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Standard Core Design* [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Standard Core Construction* [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-----

The trials are finally over, and not a single one of the defendants managed to evade their guilt. The evidence you had gathered had been ironclad, and at every single point you had ensured that all of the defendants civil rights were respected. Not a single Defense objection was sustained, as your prosecution teams had been absolutely meticulous in their presentations.

Every single defendant was convicted by a jury of their peers, although there were a number of amusing attempts to claim, by the wealthiest and most powerful of the oligarchs, that ‘peasants’ couldn’t be considered their ‘peers’. Arrogant bastards. Then the same jackasses tried to disqualify the jury on the grounds that being referred to as ‘peasants’ would prejudice them against the defendant. Cute, but it didn’t work.

In keeping with the legal requirement that all capital sentences require a hearing before the Crown, you schedule an entire three weeks to handle this. Your butt goes numb after the first hour, but you remain in your throne, manage to look suitably imperious throughout, and not once do you deviate from the formal phrases and decorum. Much as you wanted to put on your suit of battle armor and celebrate Weasel Stomping Day on their arrogant faces.

Instead you steadily confirm each and every execution order, although you also decline the opportunity to enhance the order by confirming Capital Treason, a charge that only the Crown can apply once guilt is established of ordinary Treason. Given the events of the year, you didn’t feel it would be at all helpful to anybody to turn these executions into a bloody spectacle. A simple rope, the automated gallows, the criminal scum who’d victimized your people for so long, some assembly required. Dead is dead, after all.

You give each of the condemned a quarter hour to plead their case, and you force yourself to actually listen to the bleatings and accusations of ‘tyranny’ without adjusting your expression. And you manage to keep your voice even, calm, and regal. You are quite proud of yourself.

In the evenings you make a point to spend time with the new grandkids, it helps keep you sane and centered. Something you desperately need in order to face another day of convicts and not lose your poise.

If people only realized how hard this job could be, there would be nobody wanting it.

It turns out you only needed two, by the time you finished with the ‘big fish’ in the first several days, a surprising number of the remaining defendants simply used their allotted time to admit their guilt and plead for mercy, before waiving the remainder of their time. That is actually harder for you than the arrogant sots who’d insisted that they had the right to do whatever they wanted because of how rich and important they were.

[]	They at least die with some shred of honor	All prisoners executed Gain “Justice is Served” For 10 turns +1 Approval each turn (total of +10)
[]	Repentance is a virtue, as is mercy. Commute their sentences to life in prison	Prisoners who publicly acknowledged their guilt and begged for mercy are sent to prison for life. Gain “The Sword of Justice is Mercy” For 10 turns +1 Approval each turn (total of +10)

The Grifftiger kittens Sokar and Wadjet are getting bigger, you don’t see them that much since they spend most of their time playing with the grandkids, but lately you’ve seen the two of them keeping close company to Jeremy. Ahhh, kitten therapy, perhaps that will help.

Of course this does mean you wind up having to deal with kitten shenanigans as well. Especially since the pair seem to be ninjas, able to defeat Palace Security at will and infiltrate your bedroom every night, whereupon they promptly become Griffkitten Comforters… although they seem to enjoy nibbling on your toes when it is time to wake up. And those tongues are cold and wet.

They never torment Willis. You pout at your husband over this.

For the first time since the battle you meet with Jeremy and he has a genuine smile on his face, and is repressing laughter. “Mom… remember when we were kids and you kept on referring to the worst of our… play… as reminding you of the Rapid Reaction Force?” he asks.

Your face and your palm engage in a forbidden romance.

“Not again…” is all you can say.

“Yes, they’re at it again.” he actually chuckles at your expression. “It looks like the new recruits to the unit decided that if they were going to be replacing the 1st Rapid Reaction Force, by God they were going to continue their tradition of hijinks and insanity. And they were going to do it with style. So…” he leans back in his medical chair.

“First field exercise, they somehow manage to get completely lost, and instead of practicing maneuvers on the Aerie’s main practice field, they ‘accidently’ wound up at a nude beach on Capricorn, performing a textbook ‘beach assault’ on the local bars and, in the interest of ‘blending in’, doing so while adopting the local dress code. By the time the MPs arrived they’d somehow managed to join the ‘Miss Nude Capricorn 2982’ and ‘Mr Nude Capricorn 2982’ contests, which the MPs noted they won.” he manages to say all of that with a straight face.

“OK, that’s bad enough, but par…”

“I’m not done, Mom. Second field exercise, they again somehow got lost between the hangars and the exercise area. They were finally tracked to the largest brewery on Pollux, where they had evidently signed endorsement deals for the brew on behalf of the winners of Mr and Miss Nude Capricorn 2982. Said ads consisted of the winners ‘dressed’ in strategically placed bottles of beer and, evidently, had already won Griffon Advertising Digest’s ‘Most Creative Ad Campaign’ award.”

You are now managing the world famous Double Facepalm with groaning in resignation action. “I just know that there is more, Jeremy, do go on.”

He laughed, and your heart soared a bit at hearing it. “Well, now we get to the third exercise. The MPs made a point of being right there the entire time, so that nothing could go wrong and they’d actually make it to the exercise area. This seemed to work, until the troops drove right through the exercise area, out the other side, waving cheekily the entire way. The MPs at this point gave chase, but unfortunately even high performance police vehicles are slower than our combat hovercraft. They were heading south, so the MPs called in the Coast Guard and our ASF forces for assistance. Unfortunately, they somehow evaded detection until they turned up outside the Antarctic mining area. Do you remember the one that was ringed by sonic emitters to deal with the Dire Penguins?”

“Oh no….” you manage.

“Oh yes. They show up, right as all of the surveillance systems down there went offline. By the time reaction forces arrived they’d departed, the miner’s all professed complete ignorance as to where they went or why they were there, but the MPs all noted that the miner’s were grinning in a manner that reminded them of 5 year olds who think they’re pulling one over on you.”

“Ooooo kay…..” you reply, lifting an eyebrow behind the world famous Empress Double Face Palm. You right now are regretting that you haven’t been genetically engineered to have three palms, preventing you from upgrading to a Triple Facepalm.

“The next day there’s an unscheduled shipment from Tank X… an entire Regiment set for the Rapid Reaction Force, paid for, according to the representatives, by the collective winnings and royalties of the 1st Rapid Reaction Force trainees. The magnificent bastards had bribed the foundry crews on the Ferro-Fibrous foundries to work triple shifts making just enough of the stuff for the additional regiment, then evidently got the Tank X people drunk and convinced them that it would be in keeping with the proud tradition of Tank X and the Rapid Reaction Force to prank the entire AFGE. We found out later that they’d also fast-talked the training staff at the Aerie to train additional crews ‘in case of drop outs’, which means we have enough trained personnel to man both regiments. The miner’s had been providing extra shipments of raw materials and were ‘paid’ in autographed posters of the beer advertisements along with multiple cases of the stuff.”

“You mean to tell me that a bunch of rookie troopers managed all of that?” you give your son an eye, then your own eyes widen as he nods.

“Yup, it looks like we have a crew in 1st RRF worthy of the unit, that’s for sure. Scoundrels, scroungers, smartarses… just like old times. I’ve threatened the Lieutenant who’d organized the entire thing with being promoted to run the unit, and I have just the senior NCO in mind to ride herd on those brigands.”

“Don’t tell me…”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant Ngo Minh.” he confirms. Behind you you hear Sergeant Major Ngo break out laughing. “Yup, think we’ve finally found somebody your son can’t handle, Auntie?” Jeremy grins at the Sergeant Major with his old impishness. Your heart does another little somersault.

Of course, Murphy being Murphy, and Griffkittens being Griffkittens, Sokar and Wadjet decide to ninja-sneak in, well… more bound in with excessive enthusiasm and many happy Griffkitten noises, and decide that you have been sitting in your office for far too long without being properly pounced.

So you get pounced.

Luckily you had enough time to brace for impact, so you just wind up with a double armful of very happy kittens.

It’s been decided to reserve the names of the ship’s that have been lost in combat for full scale Warships. What to do about the various unnamed Defiant-class vessels that had been lost is being debated, since in most cases nobody knew what nicknames the crews had given them as they had been brand-spanking new when lost. There’s a circular going around the Defiant crews to determine how they’d want to be honored in the event of their own loss, so you’ll see what comes of that.

You do attend one hell of a metric tonne of launching ceremonies. Fifty three of them. Two vessels that were slated to be laid down were delayed, due mainly to material shortfalls from the frantic repairs of the squadron which had fought. The Enterprise-A-class USS Columbia and the Troodon-class HMS Goldfinch will be delayed until next year.

On the other hand, HMS Revenge of the Royal Sovereign class has been the recipient of an enormous amount of media attention, as her sponsor had been the daughter of the captain of HMS Hood, the Royal Sovereign lost in battle. A small salvaged bit of armor from the lost vessel will be mounted inside the ship’s wardroom, a bit that shows the surprisingly intact crest of the Hood. The best dropship crews in the fleet are all fighting over getting assigned to this ship.

The work on the upgraded Defense headquarters has been stalled, not because of any problems per se, but because the workers decided that the exterior of the structure wasn’t good enough, that it had to be grander and incorporate elements to honor the dead of the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost. So instead of the relatively plain facade, there will be large colonnades of doric columns ringing the structure, with elaborate decorations fit properly within the ancient Doric Order, architraves spanning the fluted Doric columns, elaborately carved friezes showing idealized stone representations of soldiers wearing idealized uniforms in suitably heroic poses with a backdrop of lightly inscribed carvings of mechs, tanks, aerospace fighters, and dropships. Above that an ornate cornice rests, supporting the slate roof that fairs into the rest of the structure. Unlike proper Greek architecture there are no pediments. And then comes the kicker, the magnificent bastards had managed for there to be precisely as many ridges on the columns as those soldiers, pilots, and spacers killed in the various actions, each with a name etched into it, the etchings filled with gold leaf, and the entire column sealed in a transparent sealant that will probably outlast the planet itself.

The announcement that the DURF has been completed is almost an anticlimax after that. It’s nice that the facility is done, and it will be incredibly useful, but the critical need for it is just a bit less than before.

The new Special Operations Command, the name had been changed at the last minute, stands up just before Christmas, and you quickly discover that somehow the perfect round pegs had been put in the perfect round holes, because they hit the ground running… hard. You read the training regimen that they have instituted and your knees, back, and arms all whine at you at the mere thought of it. They’ve managed to reserve the single most inhospitable place on the planet for the training facility, and it looks like they are dead serious about forcing trainees to survive there without proper supplies or support.

The two new Assault Regiments complete training, one is assigned to 1st Armored Division and the other to the 3rd. You are given a list of prospective CO’s for 1st Armored Division.

[]	Name	Short Bio
[]	Lorenza Otis	Staff officer, formerly a company CO in 2nd Armored prior to her promotion.
[]	Duilio Asuncion Romagnoli	Battalion commander in the 1st Aerie Cadre
[]	Paul Pilkvist	Battalion commander in the 1st Aerie Cadre
[]	Ulrik Bohn	Regimental commander in 2nd Armored, no staff experience
[]	Ann Whittle	Former deputy Regimental commander in 3rd Armored, currently assigned to the Aerie teaching Military Science
[]	Christopher Tipton	General Staff Officer, previously held company command in 1st Armored, previous assignment as a Mech test pilot
[]	Hamid al-Aziz	Senior surviving officer from 1st Armored (deputy Regiment commander), is currently waiting for a replacement arm.
[]	Adam Brassington	Battalion commander in 2nd Aerie Cadre
[]	Douglas McLeod	Currently assigned to the General Staff’s Logistics area, previously quartermaster for 2nd Armored
[]	Takuma Sato	Formerly a battalion commander in 1st Armored, currently heads the Test Pilot school

Likewise, the two new garrison units are recruited up to strength very quickly.

The new and expanded Ferro-Aluminium and Ferro-Fibrous foundries have been completed, on time and on budget, as have the double heat sink orbital factories. Likewise the shipyards have been expanded, and are getting very close to being ready to support Jumpship production and repair. Once that occurs you’ll be able to bring the crippled Monoliths through for thorough repairs to the cores.

The full survey of SLS Morristown has been completed, and the engineers are rather… giddy. Mary is present for the full report.

“Your Majesty, first of all, it will take a great deal of work to make Morristown ready for action once more. While the KF drive appears intact, we lack sufficient experience to verify that for ourselves, and there has been some degradation over the centuries. That being said, we’ve hit the mother lode.”

The lead briefer takes a deep breath. “Starting from the most basic. We now have samples of Warship grade Ferro-Carbide armor. Likewise, we have working examples of multiple naval weapons. The Kreuss XX Heavy Capital Particle Projection Cannon, the Maxell-45 class 45 naval laser, and the Barracuda missile system with a full load of missiles.” he looks up. “And all the spares, and the manuals... “ he looks like a man who’s found God. “All of the manuals.”

He shakes himself. “We also found two naval portable Hyperpulse Generators, plus spares, operating and maintenance manuals…” his eyes are wide, almost as wide as yours are.

“Most of the rest of the discoveries are, well, trivial in comparison. Armories of late SLDF small arms, about equivalent to our own equipment, rations that somehow are still not expired, that sort of thing.” he takes a deep breath. “We hit the jackpot though.”

Yeah… you’ve hit the jackpot. Somewhere far far away a cold chill creeps up the spine of a certain Primus on Terra…. Somebody else has all the Holy Manuals.

You are presented with the first operational suit of the new Mk III Medium Trooper Battle Armor, custom fitted for you. The new suits are very similar to the older model, but have significantly heavier armor while maintaining the same mobility and weapons fit. Ba likes, Ba likes a lot.

Of course you do complain to Willis that this is purely asskissing, because the last time you tried to suit up for battle you got sat on… literally.

The work on Advanced Communications is completed on time, on budget. Combined with the discovery of the mobile HPGs this will significantly assist in your HPG research efforts.

The work on the Improved PPC is also completed. While the weapon itself isn’t all that impressive, the materials research used for it has some interesting implications. Your metallurgical and materials science will need just a little more improvement to make use of that with the higher power levels of the Enhanced PPC.

R&D into larger and more powerful jumpships has also been concluded, your engineers and designers will now be able to build jumpships up to 200,000 tons, at least once your yards are capable of supporting standard-core Jumpship construction.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 53 - Ever Since I Was A Young Boy

The year starts out with meetings. Assessment of the damage from the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost is complete, and it is a sobering situation. Castor will be years, if not decades, fully recovering from the devastation wrought by the Dracs. It is pointed out that one of the reasons the Rapid Reaction Force lasted as long as they did, giving the main force time to assemble, was that the Dracs seemed to mostly focus on sheer wanton destruction of ‘soft’ civilian targets over actually dealing with the hovercraft.

Planetary authorities, however, have the situation well in hand and have not requested Imperial assistance, indeed there seems to be an almost fierce local pride in handling the rebuilding themselves. ‘You can knock us down, you can’t knock us out’ is how one local business leader put it in an interview on the IBC.

The executions have finally been completed, although there is still one case outstanding that requires a decision from you, and it has you and Janet both rather… flummoxed.

The case itself hasn’t gone to court at all yet. And, honestly, it wouldn't even be a case in the first place if the defendants hadn’t quietly informed the Crown of the situation, as it was something that was completely missed. If the defendants had simply kept their mouths shut nobody would likely have ever found out.

It came down to cybercrime and security. A small outfit on Pollux specialized in ‘white hat’ penetration testing of secure computer systems, and were widely regarded as probably the best in the entire business. In fact, it was some of their gear which the Special Branch had used to gather all of the intelligence on the oligarchs in the first place, and they’d been consulted at multiple points in the investigation by the Justice Ministry.

However, they found in their records that when they were just starting out they’d performed a pen test for one of the major media conglomerates owned by the oligarchs involved in this mess, hired ostensibly for journalistic purposes. They had thought at the time that they had covered their legal bases, in that they had authorization from the ‘target’ of the pen test to perform the work. With the reveal of the criminal activities of the oligarchs, however, they had gone back and out of excessive due diligence determined that this authorization, while on its face was valid, had been issued by one of the ‘inside’ conspirators working with the Oligarchs, and thus it could be argued that they had instead performed a criminal cybercrime by performing the pen test.

It turns out that the security flaws that the pen test had revealed had never been fixed, instead the oligarchs had exploited them to further their own goals.

So, on the one hand, this outfits work had been fairly crucial for the oligarchs corruption to prosper as long as it had, on the other hand, they had no reasonable way of knowing that this was the case, had done their due diligence in getting what they reasonably believed to be lawful authorization to perform the pen testing, and when they had discovered the possibility of an issue with that authorization they’d immediately reported themselves to the authorities rather than try and cover it up.

[]	Proceed with prosecution, let the chips fall where they may
[]	Thank the outfit for their honesty and leave it be, there was no criminal intent after all

Then there are meetings about the response to the attack and the efforts to reorganize and rebuild the ground forces to better handle the situation.

Jeremy is again taking the lead, seeming somewhat more relaxed and less like the grim God Of War he’d looked like right after the battle, with Admiral Benjamin along giving the briefing for the Navy.

“OK, Mom, we have a number of decisions to make.” Jeremy started. “We want to start fielding full mechanized units as soon as possible, and then we will start working out proper force balances for armored units. We put out some emergency requests for proposals and have received a number of responses.”

He brought up the display. “First of all, we’ll start with the command element of the new units. Due to the lessons learned from the battle, we determined that any command elements will need to be as robust and capable as possible, able to provide command and control while mobile, and have their own integrated infantry elements.”

He consulted his notes. “We have four entrants into this phase. First up is actually the command variant of a new Omnivehicle design, the manufacturer is calling it the Gavin II. This vehicle is rather well armed, with multiple anti-personnel gauss rifles, an enhanced particle projection cannon, anti-missile defenses, a 3cm pulse laser, a pair of 5cm extended range lasers, and a Streak-enhanced six-pack of short range missiles. This entry has the heaviest close in defense of any of the four.”

He brings up the next display. “Next up is… an odd one. The designer in question is a small firm on Pollux that, well… as you can see, it does have a turret mounted enhanced particle projection cannon, 5cm pulse laser, and anti-missile system, but for some reason they mounted a 20 rack of long range missiles on the sides as some sort of broadside weapon. Our people are very skeptical about the efficacy of this design choice, even if it means that this platform, on paper, has excellent long range capability.”

Another slide, and your son shuffles his papers. “The next design is the most… conventional… of the four, armed with a laser-based anti-missile system and an enhanced PPC in the turret, and a pair of 20 rack long range missiles firing forward. It is also the least expensive of the three and avoids the use of strategic materials.”

“Finally,” he brings up the last slide. “Is a somewhat more unconventional entry from Nollak, a combination command and anti-aircraft vehicle armed with a pair of turreted LB-10X autocannons, anti-missile systems, an anti-personnel gauss rifle and a 5cm extended range laser. This is the most versatile of the designs, sacrificing raw firepower for enhanced anti-air capability, but still managing to be an effective overall design and the second least expensive proposal, albeit still making use of ferro-fibrous armor.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Gavin II Command Omnitank	1361.94	FF	27	18	Armored 1 Tracked Omni APC 1 Command 1 Scout ECM TAG AMS 1
[]	Challenger 3	1355.23	FF	28	19	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Command 1 Scout ECM TAG AMS 1 Missile 2*
[]	Challenge 3 Command Vehicle	917.04		27	18	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Command 1 Scout ECM TAG AMS 1 Missile 2
[]	Archduke Command Vehicle	1194	FF	28	19	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Command 1 Scout ECM TAG AMS 2 Anti-Air

“Next up on the list are the assault-grade IFVs that will form the primary strike elements of the force. We purposely divided this into conventional and missile designs so that we could build balanced units, however one of the three designs submitted for the conventional category is a missile boat. I’ll get to that in a moment.” Jeremy grimaces slightly.

“First up is the Gavin II based platform, using the Omni capabilities. This one has a single greatest long range punch of all of the proposals, combining an enhanced PPC with twin gauss rifles to punish targets at long range, but lacks missiles entirely.” he brings up the image, showing an identical hull to the command proposal, albeit one with a pair of ‘horns’ projecting from the glacis where the gauss rifles are mounted.

“Second, we have a very odd duck that we almost rejected out of hand, because it flies in the face of our combat experience, doesn’t meet the intent of the ‘conventional’ category, and frankly we seriously doubt its viability. It’s the same designer as the broadside command vehicle, but this time they decided to put a single 20 rack missile launcher on each side, the front, and the back while retaining the same turret.” he grimaces again. “This design would find it utterly impossible to concentrate fire in any particular direction, the provisions for the infantry boarding and debarking seem… a triumph of hope and optimism over the laws of physics, and in general we are very leary of this design, but it does meet the strict letter of the requirements.”

He brings up the next slide, “And finally the proposal from our own internal design staff, the Myrmidon Assault IFV. A turret-mounted Gauss Rifle, 5cm extended range laser, anti-personnel gauss rifle, and anti-missile system, combined with a hull mounted secondary anti-missile system and a 20 rack of long range missiles. It is the most balanced of the three designs, lethal across all ranges.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Gavin II - Cannon	1200.44	FF	32	23	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Omni AMS 1 TAG
[]	Challenger 12	1274.73	FF	32	23	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Missile 4* AMS 1
[]	Myrmidon Assault IFV	1181.53	FF	32	23	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 AMS 2 Missile 1

“Next we have the missile-centric assault weight IFVs, intended to provide support for the conventional forces.” Jeremy smiles slightly. “We again have 3 entries, including another pyramid.”

He brings up the first slide. “We almost rejected this one, as it is slightly more expensive than our RFP specified, but it is also an Omni configuration, which if we purchase the others in this range may be useful. The Gavin II Missile has the most long range punch, as it retains the enhanced PPC of the base model. Four front mounted long-range missile racks give it its primary punch.”

He takes a deep breath. “And now for the next entry in pyramid power. It again fits the requirement, but has the missiles in that same bizarre pyramidal configuration preventing any concentration of fire.” he quickly moves on.

“Finally, we have the Minuteman Assault Missile IFV, the product of our internal team. It is the least expensive of the three options, with a pair of anti-missile systems and a quartet of 20 rack missile launchers in a well armored turret. It is the only one of the three to mount the missiles in a turret, giving it enormous flexibility.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Gavin II Missile	1410.26	FF	33	24	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Missile 4 TAG AMS 2 Omni
[]	Challenger 2	1308.73	FF	32	23	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Missile 4* AMS 1 ECM
[]	Minuteman Assault Missile IFV	1267.83	FF	32	23	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 TAG Missile 4 AMS 2

“Now things start to get interesting. For the more mobile elements we had competitions for both missile and non-missile centered designs. This time we got a pair of omni designs, along with a pair of more conventional designs.”

“First up, we have the Sheridan II Cavalry Fighting Vehicle, one of the two Omni entries. For this one the only fixed equipment is the troop bay itself, everything else is modular. This variant is armed with an enhanced PPC, anti-missile system, and both a 5cm extended range laser and an anti-personnel gauss rifle in the hull.” he grins slightly.

“The pyramid boys are back with another entry, but this time they dispense with the broadsides, mount a single 20 rack on the front, and a quartet of 5cm extended range lasers in the turret.” he shows that slide with a bit of a smirk.

Then he switches to the next one. “Next is the second of the 2 ‘conventional’ designs, that is, non-Omni. This one is armed with a hull-mounted 20 rack of missiles and a combination of an extended range and pulse 3cm laser. It has the least non-missile firepower of any of the entries and our analysis is that it would struggle to fulfil the role we envision for the design due to its, well, trying to be a missile IFV in a non-missile role, but it is the cheapest of the four.”

The next slide comes up on the screen. “And finally the second Omni entry in this contest. The Bobcat ‘Prime’ configuration. The only ‘fixed’ weapon is the anti-missile system in the turret, everything else is modular apart from some electronics and the troop bay. This variant is armed with an enhanced PPC and a 5 rack of long range missiles in the turret, giving it excellent harassment potential without sacrificing punch.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Sheridan II Cavalry Fighting Vehicle	621.16	FF	25	16	Armored 1 Tracked Omni APC 1 AMS 1 TAG ECM Scout
[]	Challenger 5	604.24	FF	25	16	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 TAG ECM Scout Missile 1
[]	Challenge 5 Recon IFV	420.71	FF	22	13	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 TAG ECM Scout Missile 1
[]	Bobcat Prime Cavalry Fighting Vehicle	623.49	FF	24	15	Armored 1 Tracked Omni APC 1 TAG ECM Scout Missile 0 AMS 1

He then brings up the next segment of the presentation, luckily the slides are really more for showing details that he’s not bothering to talk about, so it’s not as boring as General Powerpoints presentations. “Next we have the missile focused IFVs of this size range. Again we have 2 Omni and 2 non-Omni proposals.”

“First up is the first of the two Omni, the Sheridan II Missile Cavalry Fighting Vehicle. This time the primary armament is a pair of 20 rack LRMs, an anti-missile system, and an anti-personnel gauss rifle.” he checks his notes. “It is the most expensive of the four, incidentally”

Next he advances to the next screen. “Next up is the Challenger 6 from, well, the pyramid power people… with the requisite weapon systems, but mounted on the broadsides like an age of sail warship. In its favor it's the second cheapest, so there is that.”

“We have the least expensive of the four options next, and the most straightforward. Just a pair of 20 racks in a turret, no advanced electronics, no frills at all, but it gets the job done.”

“And finally,” he advances to the next screen. “We have the second of the two Omni entries, the Bobcat Alpha Cavalry Fighting Vehicle. This one is a bit interesting as it is a missile design that is also effective in close range combat, while sacrificing a bit in the long range arena to the other designs. Unlike them, it only has a single 20 rack of long range missiles, but that is paired with a 5cm extended range laser and a Streak-equipped twin rank of short range missiles supplied with deep magazines. It has the greatest combat endurance, in terms of ammunition load, of any of the proposals.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Sheridan II Missile Cavalry Fighting Vehicle	599.66	FF	24	15	Armored 1 Tracked Omni APC 1 Missile 2 TAG AMS 1
[]	Challenger 6	545.36	FF	25	16	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Missile 2* AMS 1
[]	Challenge 6 Medium Missile IFV	387	FF	24	15	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 Missile 2
[]	Bobcat Alpha Cavalry Fighting Vehicle	581.44	FF	23	14	Armored 1 Tracked Omni APC 1 Missile 1 TAG AMS 1

“Lastly we have the new self-propelled guns, and with these we faced a bit of a revolt internally, as two of the designs had the cannon-cockers of the Artillery categorically rejecting them despite them technically meeting all requirements. We made a point of paying out the RFP response awards to each of them regardless.” he grimaced. “We don’t like doing that without giving the designs a fair hearing, but according to the artillerists fixed mounts are far too rigid for their needs and would never be acceptable in the field.”

“First up is the Creusot Self Propelled Gun. This design pairs the Long Tom with a dizzying array of lasers, a quartet of conventional 5cm lasers on the flanks and a pair in the turret alongside an anti-personnel gauss rifle and a pair of anti-missile systems.”

“The second is the Bishop Assault SPG. This design also has a single Long Tom, but all of it’s secondary weapons are also turret mounted, consisting of a pair of 5cm extended range lasers, a single anti-personnel gauss rifle, and an anti-missile system. The Bishop has somewhat deeper magazines than the Creusot, with a total of 50 rounds of ammunition carried vrs 40.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Creusot Self Propelled Gun	945.30	FF	30	21	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 AMS 2 Artillery 3
[]	Bishop Assault SPG	888.80		30	21	Armored 1 Tracked APC 1 AMS 1 Artillery 3

“As far as our internal recommendation. For the command vehicle we find the anti-air capability offered by the Archduke to be a significant advantage, as it will save us from having to assign other anti-air assets to the formation. For the heavy IFVs both the Gavin II based Omnivehicle and the Myrmidon satisfactorily fulfil the role, for the missile IFVs the Gavin II based platform would be preferable if we procure the Gavin II for the conventional role, otherwise the Minuteman. For the medium IFVs either of the Omni submissions would be preferred. On a per vehicle basis the Sheridan is superior, but across an entire formation the Bobcat becomes more capable thanks to the harassment potential of the combination of long range missiles and TAG even for those units with fewer than 20 tubes of missiles. Regardless, we recommend choosing either one or the other, not both. For artillery we recommend the Bishop, for the combination of no additional Strategic material usage and cost.”

Then Admiral Jackson takes over. “Your Majesty, we have the preliminary assessment of the captured Monoliths. The four that remained close to Griffin’s Roost just needed some crews to remove the bodies of the former crews, but repairs will still need to be made to the fusion cores, and a full inspection and recertification will be required for the KF cores before they can safely be used. Once the yards are up to the task of building jumpships, which could happen as soon as 4Q this year, we’ll be able to accomplish those tasks and put them into service at minimal expense. The two that were salvaged near the Nadir, on the other hand… I’ve been aboard one of them after she got towed in and… I have never been so creeped out in my life. The entire interior will need to be stripped, and if you know any good exorcists now might be a good time to get on good terms with them, because I could have sworn I was hearing phantom voices everywhere I went on those two ships.”

“On the subject of adjustments to our ships, we have a rough proposal for a complimentary parasite battleship design to the Royal Sovereign class, provisionally dubbed the Majestic-class, but we will need the Barracuda missiles researched before we can finalize the design work.”

He then takes a deep breath. “We also have a somewhat more radical proposal. We currently field several classes of vessels which carry either individual flights of ASFs or squadrons, rather than full wings. It was felt that this would provide a minor self-escorting function to the designs and enhance their ability to screen larger units. Experience, however, has shown that in fleet actions this appears to cause issues of coordination, with the relatively small number of ‘additional’ ASFs to the fleet complement causing command issues. This is not an issue for independent operations, such as those performed by Enterprise-A and Sentinel class vessels, nor for training purposes, but for fleet units it is a problem. Therefore, we are proposing that we withdraw the Devastation, Warrior and Megaraptor designs from consideration for Fleet actions, using them purely as picket vessels until we are able to fully replace them with more optimized designs. The Megaraptors will be reassigned to picket duty on the zenith and nadir points, supplementing the existing forces there, while the Devastation and Warriors will be reassigned to the Inner Asteroid Belt.”

“Won’t this reduce our fleet strength?” you ask, concerned, especially with the loss of the Devastation-class.

“In the short term, yes, and it will slow our growth as we replace at least the Devastation and Warrior class vessels with new builds. But ultimately it will result in a far more cohesive and capable force mix. On that note.” he shuffled his notes a little. “We also intend to halt procurement of the Lightning-class in favor of the Oviraptor, with the first 22 of them replacing the Lightnings on a 1 to 1 basis. The Lightnings currently in service will be redesignated as Parasite Destroyer Escorts, renamed to numbered PDE designations, and will give up their names to the new Oviraptors, which shall be designated as Parasite Destroyers. The Lightnings are decent ships overall, but too small to adequately serve in the role of a fast attack dropship. We will also be halting Tyrannosaurus procurement in favor of additional Oviraptors.”

“Keep me informed.” you reply, pursing your lips in thought. You do have a growing variety of dropship designs in service, and many of them overlap. Consolidating and rationalizing things could only be helpful.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 53 - From Soho Down To Brighton

You get a memo from Jeremy, you have 5 current units that they would like to upgrade to the new Medium Power Armor, specifically the two new Assault Regiments and the 3 remaining Armored Cavalry Regiments, the total cost would be a nice round $72,000. You have to do some digging and determine that this includes the expenses for the DURF facility itself.

[]	Upgrade Now	Will cost $72,000 and tie up the DURF for the rest of this turn on Medium Power Armor Potential DURF upgrades this turn Medium Power Armor
[]	Hold off	No upgrades, leaves the DURF free Potential DURF upgrades this turn Medium Power Armor

You sign off on various designs, leaving the internal design staff grumbling a little as you source everything from Majeure Electrique. You evidently are frustrating them, as when they focus on maximizing performance you always go with cost, and when they focus on cost you go with performance. Good, keeps them on their toes.

Several days later Jeremy comes into your office, now on crutches rather than in the medical chair as he adjusts to his new legs. “Well, I’m still not cleared for piloting, but we have a new mech which has allowed us to reconstitute the Light Horse Regiments as a ‘lighter’ counterpart to the Armored Cavalry Regiments.” he passes a datapad over for you to look at. “Summary, another quad, with a 5 pack LRM launcher in the left torso, an enhanced PPC in the right, extended range 5cm lasers in each torso, and a TAG. Well armored for a light mech, with a good solid turn of speed. We’re calling it the Kavallerie, in keeping with the Soldatin theme of our heavy mechs. We weren’t able to fit an AMS system, but even with CASE the risk of ammunition cook-offs was deemed too high to sacrifice anything for it.”

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
Kavallerie Light Cavalry Mech	415.54	ES, DHS	24	24	Swift TAG Missile 0

“We’re going to be organizing these 3 to 1 with our existing Orb Weaver design. All four are capable of supporting power armored infantry, and our simulations show that the unit should be able to match up with Drac Jenners quite comfortably. The new Light Horse Battalion set would be 2 companies of these mechs in that configuration, and 1 Armored Cavalry Command Company, while the Regiment will be three such battalions.” Jeremy shrugs slightly. “But that brings us to another question.”

“Yes?” you ask, as he takes out a small stack of datapads.

“Simply, we have a total of thirty six surviving Mechwarriors from 1st and 3rd Armored Division who are fit to return to the cockpit… eventually.” he says with a grimace. “This includes myself and al-Aziz, which leaves 34. All of them have indicated that they wish to return to the front lines, but history shows that that may not be the wisest course of action.”

He takes a deep breath. “I spoke with Sarah about this, and she brought me the relevant information. Back in the Second World War on Old Terra, most of the combatants kept their most experienced and effective troops at the front line, reasoning that their skills and abilities gave them an edge in battle. One, however, very pointedly did the opposite. As soon as any of their people got sufficiently experienced, either via kills for fighter pilots, missions for bomber pilots, or time in theater for everybody else, they’d get rotated back to training positions. As a consequence, they were able to pass on their experience to the latest troops heading to the front, increasing their effectiveness. Over time, this proved to be the far wiser course of action.”

He checks his notes. “This won’t be popular among the troops, Mom, I know that, but I would like to institute this here, with us. Take those Mechwarriors, and instead of assigning them to 1st or 3rd Armored send them to the Aerie, not as part of the Cadre, but rather to teach.”

[]	Just do it	-1 successes required to promote a unit from Veteran to Crack -1 successes required to promote a unit from Crack to Elite -5 Approval Change
[]	Don’t do it	No change

Parliament is being very very quiet. Which is a good thing. No actual members of either the Chamber of Delegates or Imperial Senate had been directly involved in the oligarchs criminal activities, but too many had benefited from favorable coverage by the media conglomerates that are now in the process of collapsing, and were rather desperately keeping their heads down in the hopes that the voters will forget about it when elections happen next year.

The Eldest is quite amused at this, and is taking the opportunity to troll the hell out of his colleagues by forcing them to vote on all sorts of measures they’d normally shrug off as unimportant or beneath their dignity.

Ahh, well, it keeps the (very) big guy happy, and means less paperwork for you, so you’re happy.

Isoroku has returned from his trip to New Rasalhague, delivering the three salvaged Achilles. He brings with him a request from the New Rasalhaguians. They have the schematics for the Shilone but lack the facilities to produce them, thus they are offering a rather lucrative production contract for up to 36 Shilones a year.

These ASFs use no strategic materials or advanced equipment and there are a number of commercial operations who are interested in taking the contract.

[]	Arsenal of FREEDOM!	Improves relations with NRR +1 free success on Imperial Economy rolls
[]	Not worth it	Worsens relations with NRR

Unicorn heads back to Calliope with an expanded research and survey team, along with a diplomatic team to make initial contact with the Steam Age settlement on Calliope IV. You have to decide the basic posture of the diplomats, since you won’t have any real way to communicate with them in real time until you’ve developed HPGs.

Isoroku sets several possibilities before you, which will serve as the basic instructions to the ambassadors you send.

Ultimately it all comes down to a simple question: What is your ultimate goal? Assimilation? In which case your diplomats would be working to convince the locals that it is in their best interest to become part of the Griffon Empire, hopefully leading to peaceful integration down the road. Uplift? Your diplomats would focus on building up the locals so that they become a viable trading partner down the road. Isoroku only mentions this one for completeness sake, but Conquest? Your diplomats will be aggressive and the harbingers of a future invasion in which you seize the planet by force.

[]	Assimilation
[]	Uplift
[]	Conquest

There’s one other upgrade that is on the table, the new unit organizations for deployable units means that the Tarawa-class dropships are no longer suitable for transporting an Armored or Mechanized Regiment. A modification stripping out the ASF launch bays allows for the expansion of the infantry compartment, albeit at the cost of a significant increase in, well, cost for procurement. The changes themselves are ridiculously simple to implement, however, and you only have 2 of the transports in service, thus it would be trivially easy to get them converted to this new conversion at the upgrade facility at no net cost to the Treasury.

And last, but certainly not least, a pair of new combat vehicles has been trialled and accepted into service, both fitting niche roles. The Chaparral Arrow-IV Artillery Tank has been in testing for almost a decade now, but only recently have the last of the kinks been worked out of the ambitious weapons system. Paired Arrow-IV launchers and a deep magazine permit the Chaparral to rain down destruction, however the systems ‘party piece’ is the 5 rounds of Surface-to-Air Arrow IV’s tied into a Nollak provided fire control system, giving the platform a nasty anti-ASF punch.

The other design is another Nollak special that has Willis muttering balefully. The Shilka Air Defense Tank pairs two of the lightest LB-X autocannons with a pair of extended range 8cm lasers, all on a lighter and more mobile chassis than the existing Skysweeper.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 53 - But I Ain’t Seen Nothing Like Him

Cleanup efforts continue on Castor, dominating the news cycle day after day. Unexpectedly, you receive reports that employment is surging as corporations compete for reconstruction contracts from the Planetary government. It looks like the ‘rainy day’ fund that they’ve been maintaining is being spent profligately, but it is showing excellent results.

Of more concern on the Imperial level, however, is how to strike back.

To that end, Jeremy has been working with SARAH and the various staffs at Defense HQ.

“OK, here’s what we’ve got so far. Our old plans to maintain purely triangular divisions have gone out the window. We had hoped that a single Armored Division would be sufficient to attack or defend a planet, and we found out to our cost that this is most certainly not yet the case. Therefore we have been working on a new concept for our order of battle. Mark?” he looked over at his adjutant, who passed out datapads containing the proposal.

“Up to the Brigade level things will remain triangular in nature, with three subordinate elements. At the Division level, however, this will change into a Pentagonal structure. We will then insert a triangular Corps level above Division, and a variable Army level above that.” he turns on the display.

“The ‘standard’ Armored Division makeup is shown here.”

• 1st Brigade
  • 1 Pathfinder Regiment
  • 1 SpecOps Regiment
  • 1 Mechanized Regiment
• 2nd Brigade
  • 2 Light Horse Regiments
  • 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment
• 3rd Brigade
  • 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment
  • 2 Standard Mech Regiments
• 4th Brigade
  • 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment
  • 2 Standard Mech Regiments
• 5th Brigade
  • 3 Assault Regiments

“This unit is a mech heavy unit optimized for planetary landings. 1st Brigade would secure the LZ and would also contain special operators intended to engage in harassment, deception, and intelligence missions. 2nd Brigade is the primary screening element of the formation, 3rd and 4th Brigades are the main line units, while 5th Brigade provides the mailed punch once there is a concentration of enemy force worthy of three regiments of assault mechs.” Jeremy explains, referring to his notes a time or two. “I will stress that this formation is optimized for taking ground, not holding it.”

The next formation organizational chart comes up.

• 1st Brigade
  • 2 Armored Regiments
  • 1 Mechanized Regiment
• 2nd Brigade
  • 2 Mechanized Regiment
  • 1 Armored Regiment
• 3rd Brigade
  • 2 Mechanized Regiment
  • 1 Armored Regiment
• 4th Brigade
  • 2 Mechanized Regiments
  • 1 CAS Regiment
• 5th Brigade
  • 2 Light Horse Regiments
  • 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment

“We are designating this an Infantry Division. The only mechs are in 5th Brigade. 1st Brigade is the primary offensive element, in coordination with 5th Brigade, while 2nd and 3rd Brigade are both optimized to hold ground. 4th Brigade trades the Armored regiment of 2nd and 3rd for a CAS regiment to provide close air support for the rest of the formation. This is primarily a defensive formation, intended to hold ground against attackers. The current plan is to include an attached Brigade’s worth of combat engineers in order to build field fortifications and works.”

“The planned Corps organization, at this time, is 2 Infantry Divisions and 1 Armored Division per corps.” Jeremy shrugs. “Each Division would require 15 Dropships to transport, with an additional 5 Logistics ships per Division, for a total requirement of 20 transports each. Scaling up to a Corps would require 60 Dropships. In order to guarantee logistics on an assault 1 jump out, we would need 10 additional Logistics ships per Division, or 30 per Corps, with the collars to support them all. Collars used for the initial landing force would count towards progressive logistics, of course. Each additional jump away from the Griffon system would require another 10 Logistics ships per Division.”

This does leave you with quite a bit to think about as your most favoritest part of the year approaches, the part of the year that always leaves you dancing for joy. BUDGET TIME! Now with kung fu grip!

OK, no kung fu grip, damnit.

General Stewart is up first. “Your Majesty, we continue to stress the need to build up our strategic production as well as our military production facilities, especially for our ground forces. With that, I’ll turn things over to General Griffith.”

Jeremy is on his newly cloned legs, and managing to stand without crutches finally. “OK, let me get this out of the way immediately. We need more production capacity, period, dot, end of line. We have insufficient capacity to build any units smaller than the Standard Mech Regiments, as factories optimized for heavy and assault mechs are unable to build light and medium mechs efficiently. And we badly need those lighter units. This year, we recommend only procuring a single Assault Regiment and a single Standard Mech Regiment, consolidating all of the mechs into 1st Armored, and focusing on getting the 1st fully back up to strength. To that end, we also recommend redesignating 2nd Armored as a permanent part of the Nowy Gdansk garrison to defend our most productive, militarily speaking, planet.”

[]	Agree - 2nd Armored is redesignated the 1st Garrison Division
[]	Disagree

“On to conventional forces, we do not need any additional garrison forces, what we need are a mix of Mechanized and Armored Regiments. However we don’t have the Ferro-Fibrous production capacity to build more than 1 of either. Therefore, we recommend building a Mechanized Regiment and a SpecOps Regiment, both of which would be assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored.”

He sits back down, and General Reyes takes the floor… with her powerpoint of doom, sadly.

“Your Majesty, we have a massive python’s lump of ships coming online this year. For the future, we recommend leaving a number of slips empty next year in order to better space out production. It’s not as bad as it could be, as we don’t need to handle any new Megaraptor or Star Fort wings this year, but we do have to fill the hangars of seven Royal Sovereigns. We barely have enough ferro aluminium production to manage this.” She looks rather grim. “And barely enough ASF factories to actually build the birds in question.”

She sits back down, and you are quite proud that you managed to stay awake through her powerpoints.

Admiral Jackson takes the podium next. “I’m going to somewhat reduce my colleagues' pain, in that the Navy recommends laying down a quartet of Newport-Cs for logistics purposes, rather than anything that will require ASFs to fill their hangars. We also have a pair of new dropship designs, or rather, the first fruits of our programs to replace the Warrior and Devastation classes.”

He nods to his aide, who is using the Admiral Jackson Special Flipchart.

“To start with, the replacement for the Warrior-class, the ten existing ships of which proved lackluster at best in the recent action and which have become increasingly outdated. Even the recent refresh of the design failed to fix the class's greatest flaws, namely the fighter bays and inefficient weapons layouts.” he begins. “To that end we have two possible replacements. A third design was rejected on the basis of having no anti-fighter or point defense armament at all.”

“First up, from our old friends at the Imperial Griffon Dropship Werks and Majeure Electrique, we have the Maiasaura Parasite Destroyer Escort. She is the more expensive of the two options, possesses the greater offensive punch, and despite having less armor overall is nearly as survivable in raw terms, and has far greater anti-missile firepower. Second is from a startup firm in Nowy Gdansk, called the Wojownik Parasite Destroyer Escort. She is smaller, more heavily armored, but lacks in capital firepower as well as AMS… and looks like a pyramid.”

You can’t help laughing at that, as it looks like the Pyramid Power design firm has struck again.

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Maiasaura Parasite Destroyer Escort	214,727.52	FA, DHS	718	418	Armored 25 Capital 3/28 Capital 2/42 Missile 10 AMS 120 Capital AMS 12
[]	Wojownik Parasite Destroyer Escort	169,426.32	FA, DHS	791	361	Armored 38 Capital 3/28 Capital 2/21 Missile 10 AMS 60 Capital AMS 6

“Overall, we recommend procurement of the Maiasaura, which would be designated the Frigate-class and take their names from historical Royal Navy frigates of the Age of Sail. We prefer her on the grounds of greater firepower, both capital and conventional, and heavier AMS, highly desirable for an escort destroyer design.” he consults his notes.

“Next up is the Devastation replacement. This time we had two entries.”

“First up, from the Imperial Griffon Dropship Werks and Majeure Electrique, we have the…” he clears his throat. “Well, we’re not using their internal project name…” his aide whispers in his ear. “You mean we have to use their internal project name?” The aid nods. “OK… well, the cheeky buggers named it the Admiral Graft Spree class, evidently having too much time on their hands to come up with bad jokes. We intend to name these vessels after Royal Navy cruisers regardless. This design has very heavy armament, both at range and up close, combined with a truly unholy barrage of long range missiles that are sure to have your oldest daughter and husband screaming about unholy witchcraft.”

“The other design is another pyramid, although a quite heavily armored one. The Dewastacja is cheaper and better armored, but is overall a more lightly armed design, with significantly less anti-fighter and anti-missile armament.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Admiral Graft Spree Parasite Heavy Cruiser	360,936.24	FA, DHS	1244	944	Armored 25 Capital 2/271 Capital 1/143 Missile 144 AMS 120 Capital Missile 12 Capital AMS 12
[]	Dewastacja Parasite Heavy Cruiser	291,483.16	FA, DHS	1069	709	Armored 31 Capital 2/152 Capital 1/95 Missile 30 Capital Missile 8 Capital AMS 6

“Overall, even though it is quite inappropriately named as a project, we recommend the Majeure Electrique/IGDW design. The greater expense is balanced out by getting a substantially more powerful vessel.”

Once he sits down Bridget doesn’t even wait for General Stewart to do the normal wrap up of the military side of things. She’s bouncier than ever… Did somebody slip her some energy drinks despite the dire threats of Imperial displeasure if such an atrocity against good sense ever took place?

“Your Majesty I know that Karin has lots to say but I think she’d just steal my thunder and I got great news for you and her and the military and everybody else because we’ve got new ways to build lots of new stuff much more efficiently although it will cost a pretty penny to pull off it’ll be the best way to rapidly build up production capacity you see if we combine all of our normal contracting teams together into one giant pool and issue bloc contracts for upgrades across the board we can potentially have many more projects going at the same time although like I said we’d have to pay extra but it would so be worth it from an efficiency standpoint and we can even use the same techniques to upgrade our mech and ASF factories en bloc rather than one by one even if that’ll be even more expensive but we can do it and thus have more teams free to do things like build NEW factories and foundries and other stuff we need!”

She sounds like a chipmunk on meth, and you do not think she took a single breath in that entire eruption.

Isoroku is an island of zen calm in comparison to Bridget. “Your Majesty, at your word we can start work on exchanging a permanent embassy with the New Rasalhaguians.” he says simply, then pauses. “Oh, and my wife has asked me if you would please sponsor another orchestral exhibition.”

Jake is grinning. “Well, Your Majesty, considering our strategy for dealing with those steampunk fellas over on Calliope, we probably should look into establishing a proper Colonial Office to oversee things, since it would be far more difficult for you to look over everything without HPGs.”

Mary is looking almost as excited as Bridget, albeit in her prim and proper way. And she has her custom presentation software all ready to go.

“Your Majesty, I won’t waste your time babbling.” she says simply, then fires up the display.

• New Projects
  • Military
    • Heavy Battle Armor
      • Increases maximum mass of infantry battle armor to 1,500 Kilograms
    • Advanced Naval Combat Doctrine
      • In depth study of historical ‘Black Ocean’ naval combat to improve our naval combat doctrine, will include intensive exercises, simulations, and multidisciplinary research
    • Advanced Ground Combat Doctrine
      • Same as the Naval doctrine work, only focused on land forces
    • Naval Autocannon/20
      • Having built the Class 10 Naval Autocannon our researchers are confident that they will be able to build the Class 20, giving heavier punch and capability.
    • Ferro-Carbide Armor
      • Derived from samples taken from SLS Morristown, Ferro-Carbide Armor is excellent for Warships and Stations.
    • Naval Laser/45
      • Derived from examples dismounted from SLS Morristown
    • Barracuda Capital Missile System
      • Derived from examples taken from SLS Morristown
    • Improved XL Fusion Engine
      • This is theory work, an actual production grade engine would require additional research once we’ve tested the proposed new shielding
    • Subcapital Laser/3
      • The most powerful subcapital energy weapon able to be mounted on dropships
    • Integrated CASE
      • Work on integrating CASE protection into regular armor plating designs, saves internal space compared to traditional CASE
    • Grifftiger Scale Battle Armor
      • Some of our more enthusiastic researchers believe that this is now possible
  • Non-Military
    • Advanced Standard Core Theory II
      • Needed for larger (up to 9 collars) jumpships
    • Advanced Standard Core Design II
      • See above
    • Advanced Standard Core Construction II
      • See above
    • Energy Storage Batteries
      • Allows us to build recharge stations, improving turnaround times for our jumpships.
• Recommendations
  • Military (3)
    • Barracuda Capital Missile System
      • Can be immediately mounted on our largest dropships
    • Improved Large Laser
      • We have a number of designs which mount extended range 8cm lasers, this may be a pathway to improving them
    • Heavy Quad Battlemechs
      • Our light and medium quads did very well, time to see how a heavier design works
  • Non-Military (4)
    • Improved Germanium Refining
      • We need to get more efficient at this as our ability to build jump cores increase, next year we’ll be ready to begin production, after all.
    • Thermal Dissipation (Advanced) Tier 3
    • Structural Materials (Advanced) Tier 3
    • Power Transfer (Advanced) Tier 3
      • All three of these may be required to build more advanced weapons, armor, engines, etc. Basic research is key. Our researchers believe that once we finish the current ‘tier’ of advanced basic R&D work we’ll be able to continue more, well, basic R&D.

Harry is looking, well, smug. “Your Majesty, if you decide to open full diplomatic relations with the FRR, well, they were fighting us not all that long ago, so it would be wise for us to make sure that they’re not going to stab us in the back while we are facing the Dracs.”

Janet is on vacation, her grandkids all got together and bought her and her husband an all-expenses paid trip to the finest resort on Capricorn, but forgot to check the date and it conflicted. Her deputy is present and has nothing of particular note to report budget wise.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 53 - Sure Plays A Mean Pinball

Spoiler: Meta Event, Dynasty Luck, and Rating Rolls

Meta Event Roll - 14

Dynasty Luck Roll - 10 (combined permitted early research of Clan CASE and target reduction research of Clan XL Fusion)

Imperial Approval - 7
Approval Change - 5
Political Event - 4

Economy - 5
Economic Event - -1
Research - 3

Griffin’s Roost
Economy - 3
Population - 6
Rating Change - 2

Nowy Gdansk
Economy - 10
Population - 11
Rating Change - 8

Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt
Economy - 4
Rating Change - 2

Griffon II Orbitals
Economy - 5
Rating Change - 3

Griffon IV
Economy - 5
Population - 1
Rating Change - 5

Spoiler: Action Results

Military [$ 30015000 ]
Upgrade Defense HQ* [auto]

Expand Orbital Factory 69 (Ferro-Fib) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 45
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade All DHS Foundries [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 98 - Jarow Reroll - 76 - Drunken Dwarf reroll - 65
Result - SUCCESS
10/18 successfully upgraded

Expand Orbital Factory 66 (Ferro-Aluminum) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 73
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 67 (Ferro-Aluminum) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 68 (Ferro-Aluminum) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 95
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $964,565.43 ]
-Troodon* [auto]

-Enterprise-A* [auto]

-Newport-C [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 71
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport-C [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport-C [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport-C [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 3
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units [$ 701678.07 ]
-7 Standard Carrier Wing [75]
Target -75
Roll - 92, ShadowArxxy reroll - 96, Gurk reroll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Assault Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Standard Mech Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Mechanized Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 87 - Jarow Reroll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

-1 SpecOps Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 87 - ShadowArxxy Reroll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Interior [$ 20338750 ]
Focus Development on Griffin's Roost [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 14
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Factory 13 (Mech) [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 72
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Factory 49 (Mech) [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Factory 50 (Mech) [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 14
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Factory 51 (Mech) [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Endosteel Nowy Gdansk [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Endosteel Nowy Gdansk [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 82
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Griffons Roost [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 33
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Nowy Gdansk [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Diplomatic [$ 15010000 ]
CULTURE - Benefit Concert [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

Political [$ 10000000 ]
Establish Colonial Office [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

Research [$ 62,750,000.00 ]
Thermal Dissipation (advanced) Tier 3 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 62
Result - SUCCESS

Structural Materials (advanced) Tier 3 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 16
Result - SUCCESS

Power Transfer (advanced) Tier 3 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS

Heavy Quad Battlemechs [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

Barracuda Capital Missile [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

Intelligence [$ 10000000 ]
Begin infiltration of Free Rasalhague Republic [35]
Target - 35
Roll - 94 - Jarow reroll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

-----

A message is couriered to you from the NRI, their teams are en-route for next year's Olympics, but neither Consul will be accompanying them, there is a political crisis occurring on Nova Roma which is completely occupying their attention. According to the report from your embassy there is a non-zero chance of actual civil war breaking out, although this appears to be something that simply happens in the NRI every twenty years or so.

This time it appears to be Tarentum demanding that the dual-consul system be replaced by a triumvirate with one member from each of the three systems that make up the NRI. And once again everybody else is pointing out that the Consulate exists to balance the interests of the populares and optimates, not to balance the planetary representation, which is balanced in the Senate itself.

Your ambassador promises to monitor the situation.

Closer to home, Nowy Gdansk has completed preparations for the Olympics, with a new sporting complex outside the main arcology.

Your grandson John has just graduated from the Aerie on the Mechwarrior track, following in the footsteps of his father. He wasn’t quite the honor graduate, but came in the top five of his class. His first assignment is with the freshly redesignated 1st Garrison Division piloting a Wolf Spider.

It doesn’t take long for you to get word from your grandson that a number of veterans now in the 1st Garrison Division are unhappy with the redesignation from 2nd Armored, feeling that they are being relegated to ‘second-class’ status simply because 1st and 3rd Armored participated in the Battle of Griffin’s Roost and they didn’t. It’s nothing all that serious, just grumbling at this point, but it is what it is.

You check with Jeremy and he shrugs it off. You know as well as he does that a soldier with nothing to complain about is probably a soldier who’s up to no good, after all.

“They’ll probably grumble even more, briefly, when we reorganize the unit completely. With the new heavy quad designs we’ll be able to build resource-efficient mechs for garrison roles, taking full advantage of the heavier protection quad platforms allow.” he tells you, with a bit of a lurking smile. “John will likely wind up transferred to 1st Armored along with the Armored Cavalry Regiment he’s assigned to as soon as we start procuring dedicated Garrison Mech Regiments.”

He shows you the data on the new designs, and you are rather impressed that the designers had already come up with four different mech designs for the newly researched platform. You then realize that three of the four are the same basic chassis, with only the armament differing.

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
Sarissa Heavy Garrison Mech	779.8	DHS	30	30	Armored 1 Missile 1 AMS 1 TAG
Peltast Heavy Garrison Missile Mech	799.05	DHS	30	30	Armored 1 Missile 2 AMS 1 TAG
Hoplos Heavy Garrison Air-Defense Mech	730.91	DHS	25	25	Armored 1 AMS 1 Anti-Air
Hetairoi Heavy Garrison Scout Mech	1185.63	DHS	31	31	Armored 1 AMS 2 Scout ECM TAG

“The only non-quad design in the unit would be the current Ballista Artillery Mech, which actually fits in quite well as it too doesn’t use any Endo-Steel.” Jeremy points out. “This gives us a powerful unit that only uses double heat sinks for construction and all but the Hetairoi and Ballista also avoid using expensive XL engines. These are exceptionally survivable mechs as a consequence, able to take far more punishment than the raw armor suggests, as even if the ammunition detonates it likely won’t ‘kill’ the mech. Granted, the mechwarrior in question is having a very bad day and is likely regretting their choices that got their ammo bins to explode, but they aren’t dead yet.”

You also get a report about a new parasite battleship design, now that the Barracuda capital missile has been successfully reverse-engineered and is ready for production. The Majestic-class is on a similar hull to the Royal Sovereign, but has a smaller transit drive, slightly less armor, but in exchange mounts a truly terrifying weapons battery. The Barracuda missiles are the longest range weapons in your inventory, and the Majestic just gets nastier the closer the enemy gets. The Majestic doesn’t carry the wing of fighters that the Royal Sovereign does, but is also somewhat less expensive.

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
Majestic	532,218.40	DHS, FAA	1331	1121	Armored 16 Capital 4/42 3/63 2/684 1/190 Missile 60 AMS 120 Capital Missile 40 Capital AMS 12 Command 1

You blink at some of the projections, the Barracuda gives that much of a range advantage? Regardless, it looks like going forward you have a ‘standard’ parasite battleship, with the Royal Sovereigns being retained as flagships.

The newly expanded, and gorgeously decorated, military HQ has been completed, with the opening ceremony being combined with a massive patriotic music concert by just about every major musical group in the system. It is the single most watched event all year, and you rather enjoy the quite eclectic mix of musical acts.

You get the reports from Interior about the various construction projects, which are mostly completed on time and on budget. But then you get to the entry about the expansion of Endo Steel production around Nowy Gdansk and suffer a palm-face interaction fault. The same orbital construction crew that seems to only bid on projects once in a blue moon bid on one of the Endo Steel foundries… and then proceeded to build two instead of one, and the first one they built was double size.

Too bad that they turned down a long term contract to take over all construction projects of that type, citing a need to ‘refill our positive vibes’ and ‘generate positive waves’. Maybe the tie dye spacesuits were a clue?

All military procurement appears to have been on schedule and on budget, with none of the shenanigans associated with the 1st RRF. On the one hand, this is wonderful for military discipline, on the other it does reduce the entertainment quotient measurably.

Factory expansion has gone rather well, at this point you have sufficient capacity to build a third mech regiment a year, so long as you have sufficient strategic materials. The new Garrison Mech Regiments should help in this regard.

You are very excited to see the plans for the first home-grown jumpship design, the Caravel class. The most notable thing about it is that they are designed to be able to carry an entire Brigade at once, complete with logistics support, thus having four dropcollars. Although they are armed solely with anti-missile systems for self defense, they still are quite capable designs for your purposes, especially since they’ll be carrying armed units.

Now that your yards are ready to support Jumpship construction you have several decisions to make. Further expansion can be oriented in several ways, do you want to focus on racing towards theoretical compact core construction? That would require the next ten discrete upgrades of the yards to be focused on ‘enclosing’ the Jumpship construction bay, creating a structure capable of handling small Warships and ready expandable. The new upgrades would not, however, be capable of producing Dropships due to their structural design. Alternatively, you can start a second Jumpship slip, which will also allow for continued increases in Dropship construction capacity. Of course, once the second Jumpship slip is completed you’d be able to switch to enclosing them for Warship construction, or vice versa once the Warship slip is completed you’d be able to start construction on a second Jumpship slip in the yard.

Griffin’s Roost Yard
[]	Warship Yard Expansion	The next 10 Shipyard Upgrades for this yard will be focused on upgrading the yard to handle Warships No new Dropship construction slips will be available Once completed the ability to construct Warships up to 250,000 tons (if the appropriate research has been completed)
[]	2nd Jumpship Slip	The next 10 Shipyard Upgrades for this yard will be focused on building a second Jumpship slip These upgrades will function as currently, adding either 1 Large Dropship or 2 normal Dropship slips Once completed the yard will be able to build an additional standard-core Jumpship
Nowy Gdansk Yard
[]	Warship Yard Expansion	The next 10 Shipyard Upgrades for this yard will be focused on upgrading the yard to handle Warships No new Dropship construction slips will be available Once completed the ability to construct Warships up to 250,000 tons (if the appropriate research has been completed)
[]	2nd Jumpship Slip	The next 10 Shipyard Upgrades for this yard will be focused on building a second Jumpship slip These upgrades will function as currently, adding either 1 Large Dropship or 2 normal Dropship slips Once completed the yard will be able to build an additional standard-core Jumpship

The new Colonial Office has been established and is starting to recruit staff. The current plans are for the new office to coordinate the administration of out-system colonies, once they are established. This will reduce your overall workload and hopefully improve the administration of an interstellar empire, especially until HPG communication becomes possible. The office is already making plans to procure a number of high-speed courier dropships and has already put in a pleading request for at least one dedicated Jumpship per administered system.

You let them know that you’ll put them on the list, since everybody wants Jumpships and you currently have 1 fully functional one. You have the four captured Monoliths, but those will require extensive repairs and refurbishment in your two Jumpship-capable yards before they can be used for anything.

The pure science types at the various universities and institutes that make up your primary research base are extremely excited by the latest breakthroughs in advanced materials, power transmission, and thermal dissipation. The improved understanding has had knock on effects, reducing the expense and difficulty of a number of other projects.

When Unicorn makes a trip to deliver the promised wing’s worth of commercially produced Shilone fighters, your Intelligence agency is able to slip a number of infiltrators into the tech reps accompanying the shipment. Establishing the covert network on New Rasalhague will take some time, but once they are established you’ll be able to start operations.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 54 - It Was A Night Like This

In early January two issues remaining from the Drac invasion became, well, relevant. Of far lesser importance, the attack occurred during the build-up to the Pan Griffon Games and, unfortunately, many of the athletes had been in shelters on Castor during the attack, several of which came under attack by the Dracs.

You’ve lost many of your top talents in athletics and civilian marksmanship, along with the whole Griffin’s Roost Fencing Team. Recruitment had brought both teams up in numbers, but sports commentators are pretty certain that the NRI is going to skunk you during the upcoming Olympics.

The twins, of course, are bending over backwards to ensure that all motor racing events are scrupulously clean and fair, free of even the faintest suspicion of shenanigans. Luckily most of the top drivers in the various racing series had been at an event on Nowy Gdansk when the attack came, and the twins have assembled a veritable ‘Dream Team’ of motorsports aces.

The other lingering issue is more problematic than simple embarrassment on the sports field.

The original colonists had managed to bring several cultivars of banana trees to Griffin’s Roost, which had taken to the climate and soil quite well indeed. In fact, the only continent which didn’t have extensive banana groves was, ironically, Castor, if you exclude the completely desolate Phoenix, of course.

One of the biggest threats to the banana crop, however, is blight. As all banana trees are clones of each other, a blight risks completely wiping out an entire species. This had happened several times on Earth prior to the invention of the Kearny-Fuchida Drive and was always rather devastating to the banana industry when it happened.

As such, they spent a great deal of R&D into preventing and curing blights. The primary research center was privately operated on Castor, where the various potential blights were studied and cures developed for them in order to safeguard the industry. Since the soil on Castor didn’t support banana trees well, it made sense to do the research in an area where any accidental releases would wither and die on the vine, as it were, rather than infecting healthy plants.

You look over the security measures that the facility took for safety and are quite seriously impressed by just how serious they take it. Indeed, looking at some of the processes and procedures they use has you making notes to ensure that your own biological research facilities have at least this level of protection.

But all the measures in the world don’t stand up well to an entire company of Drac assault mechs stomping straight through the facility, blowing up anything intact that they saw, and using containment tanks filled with blight samples as kickballs. As a consequence, all of said mechs had been massively contaminated by the blight.

The blight wasn’t dangerous to humans, and didn’t trip any CBW sensors, so when the wreckage was salvaged and sent for reclamation and study nobody noticed the presence of blight spores.

And now your favorite Blue Java bananas were under threat, as blight had been detected on Pollux, traced to the salvage yards where those specific mechs had been broken down for scrap metal.

Your favorite ‘ice cream’ bananas could go away! Leaving you without their deliciousness, and risking a rather robust industry on the planet.

Luckily the research lab had been in the final phases of testing a cure for this particular blight. Indeed, the relevant authorities have already cleared that cure for use, but the lab hadn’t yet labeled research as complete on the grounds that their own internal standards had not yet been fully satisfied.

You check, and it indeed looks like the lab's internal standards are higher than the general standards for human medications and medical procedures. Much higher. The lab is adamant, however, that even with a blight raging it would be irresponsible to release the cure until it had completed all internal checks. Dealing with monoclonal species like bananas, any mistake, no matter how trivial, could be disastrous, any unanticipated reaction could be catastrophic.

[]	Release it anyways	The cure for the blight meets or exceeds every single government standard for the purpose and has cleared bars higher than even human-oriented drugs. Ends event Small chance of issues with the cure triggering a new event
[]	Defer to the lab	The experts have spoken, like it or not Risk of -1% GDP on Griffin’s Roost

In other business, you decide that the Nowy Gdansk shipyard will currently focus on expanding to support a second Jumpship slip, while the Griffin’s Roost one will focus on preparing for Warship production. You do get word that Griffon IV is now capable of supporting an orbital yard of their own.

On the issue of orbital yards, several engineers have come up with a proposal to build a yard complex in orbit of Griffon VI. It would require the construction of an O’Neill Cylinder there, but they have designed a DoME based yard setup that would, in effect, produce an entire Warship slip at once. It would be far more expensive than simply building up the modular shipyards like you have been, and would lack the ability to mass produce Dropships, but the proposal would have yard space for Jumpships and Warships available much more quickly. You get a note from The Perky One that she’s generally in support of such a project, but that it would require more research to ensure that it will work, rather than wasting money on a possible boondoggle.

You send a memo over to Mary about it, and she informs you that the teams that have been working on validating proposed DoME projects fall under the general category of ‘terraforming’, which has been expanded to mean more things than simply making places habitable. You’d have to fund that area in order for this concept to be proofed.

Just before you head out to Nowy Gdansk for the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympiad a diplomatic delegation from the New Rasalhague Republic arrives, bringing with them credentials stating that they’ve been ordered to meet with your government in order to reciprocate your efforts at establishing full diplomatic relations. They also have a message of thanks for the shipment of Shilones.

You invite the delegation to accompany you to the Opening Ceremony, both because you don’t want to miss it, but also so as to impress them with more than the Griffon Empire’s martial prowess.

The ceremony itself is quite impressive, lasting three hours from beginning to end with plenty of spectacular entertainment. The highlight, as far as you and probably 99.9999% of the viewing audience was concerned, was the lighting of the cauldron. You’d wondered how they’d pull off lighting it, when it was suspended by four cables high above the stadium. While you were certain that at least one of said cables had a gas supply for it, there were no connections by which the thing could be lit.

Until, that is, the Eldest padded into the stadium carrying the final torch of the relay in a holder fixed to his tail, which he simply lifted up and used to light the cauldron while looking insufferably smug about the entire thing.

You sometimes forgot just how big the Eldest was, until he did something to draw attention to it.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 54 - 20 Million Years Ago

Jeremy is laughing when he comes into the ‘office’ of your hotel suite. “OK, Mom, if I didn’t know that the person behind this is a confirmed practical jokester I’d be asking for referral information to the Department of Periphery Studies, which I might still do to prank the bastard back, but look at this.” he tosses a datapad on the desk as he collapses, still laughing, into the chair on the other side.

You take a look, and at first it looks like a Completely Serious Military Procurement Proposal… until you realize that the reason you are thinking in caps like that is because it is titled ‘Completely Serious Military Procurement Proposal’ and you start snickering. Reading further, whoever this ‘Captain Jenkins’ is has managed to put together what, on the surface, looks serious, until you think about it.

An entire regiment of ‘special purpose artillery mechs’ with no armor, no secondary weapons, a top speed under 20 kilometers an hour… sure that would be a lot of Arrow IV, but there’s an asterisk noting that simply firing its own weapons would result in the mech’s destruction. This is actually spun as a benefit in terms of ‘reducing long term maintenance requirements and thus eliminating cost-of-ownership expenses over the platforms lifespan’. Then you see the other asterisk noting that simply moving the thing would result in it collapsing under its own mass, which is likewise billed as ‘reducing required training time’ by ‘eliminating redundant operator skill requirements’.

The last page is where you completely lose it yourself, as it gives a ‘desired operator profile’ for these ‘wonder mechs’ being ‘anybody who thinks this is a good idea, and all members of Parliament who aren’t the Eldest, unless the Empress likes them.’.

You manage a straight face for a second, intending to jokingly order Jeremy to approve this proposal, but can’t get it out before you start howling with laughter again.

“Look at the last page.” Jeremy manages from where he’s still fighting a futile rear-guard action against laughter.

You advance to the indicated page, then come dangerously close to falling off your chair. ‘This proposal authored by Totally Not Coordinator Kurita’s Magic Bushido Hands’ with an animated image of ‘jazz hands’.

This Jenkins fellow has a future in comedy, that’s for certain.

“I do have some serious business though, now that that’s out of the way.” Jeremy says as he finally gets under control, allowing you to refocus and nod. “We have a number of light and medium mech designs which are, well, functionally obsolete with our new organizational setup for light and medium mechs. We would like to halt procurement of spare parts and look into recycling existing spares stockpiles of the unused designs.”

[]	Scrap ‘em	Next procurement that requires Endosteel requires 9 less resources (next procurement only) Next procurement that requires Double Heat Sinks require 9 less resources (next procurement only) The following designs will be removed Ambush Pathfinder Skirmisher Trooper Shortbow Crossbow
[]	We might someday need them	No changes

The Griffon teams aren’t doing very well at the moment, although you’d kind of expected that. They’d been almost uniformly crushed in athletics competitions, squeaking out bronze medals at best but generally looking utterly and totally outclassed by the NRI competitors. You expected that as you have High School and lower end Collegiate athletes on your team, versus the best that the NRI has to offer.

The Men’s Gymnastics competition is even more lopsided, as the entire men’s gymnastics team had been trapped in one of the shelters destroyed by the Dracs, along with their coaches and training staff, leaving a group of high school kids to compete who’d never before competed above the club level. The kids were game enough, but you had no truly qualified coaches for them, and none of them had anywhere close to the level of training that would make them competitive. The NRI team showed some incredible sportsmanship, however, as they realized this and took the time to help the youngsters out, even asking the judges at a few points for delays while they gave some valuable coaching to the kids. In the end, while the NRI team handily won every single medal available in men’s gymnastics, even the Griffon fans were cheering them for their exemplary conduct.

Then comes the first shock of the games. Most of the women’s team had also been lost in the attack, but the star of the 2980 Olympics had been recovering from an injury on Nowy Gdansk when the attack happened. She and her personal coach had managed to put together a decent squad, but up until the morning of the competition it was unclear if she’d be medically cleared to compete.

But she did… and she showed just why she’d been so dangerous four years ago. It was obvious that every step she took was painful, but she powered through it to put on a jaw-dropping display, and in the process she took home the Gold. She had to be carried to the medal stand by her coach, but she managed to lead the Griffon women’s team to victory. After the competition she announces that she’s retiring from competition, but that the very young team had agreed to stay together, with her and her coach training them, for the next Olympics.

The Team event? Well, the less said about that the better, you’re not even able to field a complete team, and the NRI utterly crushes you.

The New Rasalhaguian ambassador requests a meeting with you, which you grant. When he is ushered into your presence he wastes no time. He is asking your opinion on whether or not the New Rasalhague Republic would be welcome to compete in the next Olympiad, although he does say that it is unlikely that they’d be able to safely host one of their own and might need to hire one of your jumpships to carry their team to Nova Roma for the competition.

[]	Better to compete on the sporting field than the battlefield	Next Olympiad will feature three competitors Improves NRR opinion
[]	They may no longer be serving the Dragon, but they aren’t your friends and you still don’t trust them	No changes in next Olympiad Harms NRR opinion

Even while you are on the planet of Nowy Gdansk for the Olympics, you still need to deal with Parliament.

There’s an election coming up this year for the Chamber of Delegates, and those politicians who had been backed by the media conglomerates in year’s past are desperate. They also are not the sharpest tools in the shed, but still quite talented in the field of political combat.

They push forward a bill that they must know you’ll oppose, simply to give themselves soundbites that will sound good to low information voters and congenital idiots and, hopefully, land them gigs on broadcast news shows as ‘principled activists’ for years to come.

On the surface the bill looks OK, at least if you go by the flowery summary and description and the speeches that they give. Improved animal welfare and food safety, and linking things to preventing the abuse of ‘the helpless’ at the hands of ‘moneyed interests’.

It’s when you read the actual bill that you want to bang your head on the desk. It not only defines slaughtering herd animals for their meat as capital murder, the language is so loose that technically a farmer harvesting grain is ‘murdering’ the plants. The section banning ‘inhumane forced reproduction’ would not only effectively ban nearly every form of animal husbandry, it would also, technically, ban the use of any sort of mechanized seed planters. It would effectively ban weed control methods of any kind whatsoever, including simply picking the weeds by hand (felony murder!). But they word it in such convoluted and absurd ways that it is impossible for anybody who isn’t a lawyer AND isn’t familiar with highly technical terms to realize what it is saying without it being explained to them.

There’s no way this is going to pass, and there’s no way you’d support it even if it did. It’ll not even make it out of committee. But those backing it don’t care about that, all they want is to have soundbites and the ability to posture about their opponents ‘supporting rape and murder of the innocent!’. You get word from some of their staffers that they even intend to use any attempt by the Crown to set the record straight as ‘Crown tyranny against free expression’.

You are feeling rather vindictive here, this truly is pissing you off, to use the vernacular, and simply ignoring their idiocy might not be the best move.

[]	Ignore them anyways	-5 Politics +1 Support - Chamber of Delegates
[]	Use the IBC to broadcast the details of their plan, using mockery to illustrate just how absurd it is	+5 Politics +2 Support - Chamber of Delegates -1 Influence - Chamber of Delegates
[]	These knuckleheads are obviously prime candidates for tenured lifetime appointments to the Department of Periphery Studies	-10 Politics +5 Approval Change -2 Support - Chamber of Delegates -2 Influence - Chamber of Delegates Unlocks (amusing) Department of Periphery Studies events

The Imperial Senate, on the other hand, under the leadership of the Eldest has proposed some very useful legislation.

Specifically in recognition of the recent fighting, and as a means of increasing the strength of the Griffon Empire’s production capabilities, they are proposing an Empire-wide bond campaign to specifically bankroll a Megafactory on Griffon IV as well as a new orbital shipyard above the same planet. As part of the scheme, every holder of a certain value in said bonds would be able to trade their bonds for a plaque on either the Megafactory or the shipyard honoring themselves or the organization or person of their choice.

They are even quite ingenious in how they propose to repay the bonds, specifically assigning a portion of the Senate’s own discretionary budget to the task to repay them over thirty years. The Senate has hired private industrial teams to spearhead the project, much to the mild disgruntlement of DoME, but it does mean that it won’t impact your flexibility in terms of getting things done yourself.

Of course, if the Senate is paying for the whole project, they’d have extra control over the project, so there’s that. Of course, if you supplement the funding, you’d have more control of things, and it wouldn’t actually irritate the Senate as they are just wanting to support the Empire, not gather power or prestige to themselves.

[]	Support the Plan	On Turn 59 receive a Mech-focused Megafactory on Griffon IV Each turn until Turn 64 receive a free Orbital Shipyard module orbiting Griffon IV Will focus on Large Dropships After Turn 64 must be turned into a Warship yard
[]	Subsidize the Plan	Costs 2,000,000 a turn until Turn 59, then 100,000 a turn until Turn 64 Allows players to choose ASF or Mech for the Megafactory, and likewise Large or Normal Dropships for the Orbital Shipyard and whether or not to continue expanding for more Jumpship production

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 54 - The Sun Was Spitting Fire

You get the first reports back from Calliope, specifically from the expedition to the Steam Age settlement on Calliope IV. When Enterprise landed the locals fled to obviously prepared bunkers and military forces had assembled, making use of pretty sophisticated tactics for their deployment and showing a propensity to use a great deal of, sadly primitive, artillery, as if they knew in advance they would be outmatched in a fight.

Fortunately peaceful contact is made as your envoy took an enormous risk, disembarked alone and unarmed, and permitted himself to be taken prisoner by the locals. Fortunately they spoke somewhat accented English, making communication easy enough, and once it became clear that you weren’t pirates the locals relaxed a great deal.

According to the report, the locals were descendents of another Inner Sphere refugee colony, this time from the Sarna Pact, which had fled in the early days of the Age of War and wound up out here. They’d more or less lived peacefully until pirates started raiding the place and stealing anything technological that they could, along with taking numerous slaves.

The locals had resisted as best they could, but were thoroughly outmatched by the pirates, who by the descriptions given appear to be the same sorts of pirate bands that plague the NRI. About two hundred years ago, they altered their approach, the entire settlement hid in the forests and mountains, abandoning their technology. The pirates raided once more, again stole everything, then left. They waited a decade, and while passive sensors picked up the pirates returning a few times there were no attacks. Eventually the pirates stopped showing up, as there was nothing here any longer to interest them, at which point the locals deliberately rebuilt at a lower tech level, using steam and such for everything rather than electricity, since hopefully the pirates wouldn’t be able to detect steam in use from the jump points.

Then you showed up and utterly terrified them. Lovely. But by the same token, when shown imagery of HMS Renown utterly obliterating a pirate flotilla, along with recordings from the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost and the Defense of Castor, the locals become quite cheerful. After all, seeing that these new folks, who profess to want to be friends and trading partners rather than conquerors or pirates, are quite able to stomp their enemies asses? Make them quite willing to be your friends and trading partners in hope that you’ll protect them from said enemies.

The ambassador relays a request for defensive support, and indicates that given time doing so may well incline the locals to join the Empire on their own initiative. It would significantly slow down doing anything with Calliope III while transporting such assets, and a reasonable argument could be made that those assets are needed at home, but sometimes risks need to be taken in order to gain rewards, and there are over 10 million people on this planet, according to the locals there are plenty of resources, and the ambassador sends along some samples of local food stuffs… including some of the finest beer you’ve ever had the distinct pleasure of tasting.

Admiral Benjamin informs you that it shouldn’t be a serious issue, as they can deploy the Warrior class dropships to form a defensive squadron for Calliope IV without significantly impacting your own defenses, especially considering just how many Royal Sovereigns you now have in service and the upcoming Majestics. In fact, he believes it may be useful to send both the Warriors and the Devastations there, to give the defenses some serious punch and keep everybody else out.

Jeremy, meanwhile, proposes sending the 2nd Rapid Reaction Force out to provide a ground based cadre, noting that the terrain on Nowy Gdansk, where they are currently deployed, is less than ideal for their purposes. Plus General Gabinski, the CO of 2nd RRF, has evidently heard about the possibility and has declared that it is is solemn and sworn duty as a son of the Nowa Warszawa Home Guard, to bring the wonders of proper Polish vodka to the beer swilling heathens of Calliope IV.

Apparently Gabinski got even more excited when he found out that the inhabitants of Calliope IV had two recipes for alcohol that Nowy Gdansk had lost, Goldwasser and Krupnik. Oh, they had approximations, but evidently the folks on Calliope IV had the real thing. Within minutes of finding this out, you start getting besieged with emails and messages begging you to get those recipes from just about every Polish descended dignitary in the Empire.

[]	Send the desired forces	The following military forces will be dispatched The following Dropships will form the Calliope Defense Squadron Warrior Class (10 units) HMS Warrior HMS Black Prince HMS Defense HMS Resistance HMS Hector HMS Achilles HMS Minotaur HMS Agincourt HMS Royal Oak HMS Prince Consort Devastation Class (8 Units) HMS Inflexible HMS Northumberland HMS Caledonia HMS Ocean HMS Favorite HMS Zealous HMS Lord Clyde HMS Pallas The following unit will form the ground based Calliope IV Garrison 2nd Rapid Reaction Force Opinion of Calliope IV towards the Griffon Empire significantly improved +1 Trade Route
[]	We need them at home	No changes

Meanwhile you agree to discuss including the Rasalhaguians in the next Olympiad with the NRI. The representatives from the NRI are generally amenable and will send the proposal back with the next courier.

In the Olympics themselves, the NRI men scored decisive wins in swimming, thoroughly trouncing what should have been a top flight team, as they were one of the few non-racing teams not affected at all by the battle. As it stands, they manage to look terrible, giving the Romans 9 out of 10 medals in all men’s swimming events.

The Griffon women, on the other hand, redeem the men’s poor performance and are dominant across the board, managing complete sweeps in all but one event. The star of the women’s team is a 21 year old swimmer from Griffsport that you realize you recognize, as you’d seen her at the palace… with your eldest grandson… the brat of a grandchild had never mentioned… and there he is, kissing her on system wide HD… he’s got a girlfriend he’s not told you about! This must not… Jeremy puts the brakes on incipient ba freakout by diverting it to himself, he’s known about his son's girlfriend for a few years and never saw fit to expose the poor kids to your most likely reactions. You give him the glare of ba, and insist on meeting the girl.

Willis then completely ruins it by cutting in with a ‘when it’s convenient to the two of them.’, revealing that the treacherous cad also knew and hadn’t seen fit to inform you of this vital family intelligence.

OK, perhaps they all have a point and you’d likely have scared the girl off, but the principle of the thing!

The two decathlon competitions are remarkably close, but the Griffon team manages to earn hard-fought victories in both the men’s and women’s competitions, the men bringing home a gold medal, the women managing gold and bronze. For both the standings came down to the very last event, making for some gripping action.

In the shooting events the NRI manages a pair of impressive wins. Granted several of your best shooter’s aren’t able to compete in the pure shooting contests due to their entry in the later Modern Military Pentathlon events, but the competition is still fierce and quite impressive.

Speaking of which, the Military Pentathlon events are a near mirror image of the pure shooting contests, with your teams coming out ahead after some hard fought contests of skill and endurance. You do notice that the NRI ambassador is a bit glum over the results, and over a few beers manage to get out of him that the NRI team was made up of the top people from their Praetorian Guard, and your teams came from the militia. You manage not to gloat. In public.

There is some debate over how to reform the Imperial Guard. Some are arguing that the old setup as an assault-weight conventional vehicle unit with about a battalion’s worth of infantry was good enough, even if the unit got wiped out in the defense of Castor. Others are proposing organizing it with 3 Assault Regiments. Since you are both the nominal CO and the Empress, the decision is yours.

[]	Current Imperial Guard Regiment	Maintain the same conventional Imperial Guard Regiment as seen in unit record sheet
[]	Assault Regiment	Retire the current Imperial Guard Regiment Use Assault Regiments to fill out unit

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 54 - I Watched Miami Vice

You cut the orders dispatching the old Warriors and the surviving Devastations to Calliope IV, along with 2nd RRF. About two months later you get a thank you package from the local residents on Calliope IV, over a hundred cases of mixed high grade beer and some truly tasty spiced mead, along with over a thousand bottles of krupnik.

And it appears that you have a leak in your security named Willis, because a day after you caught him letting the cat out of the bag concerning the krupnik you find yourself again deluged with pleading dignitaries from Nowy Gdansk begging for bottles. According to a laughing Sergeant Major Ngo the line is now wrapped twice around the hotel, there have been a few fist fights but is generally orderly, with the remaining survivors of the actual refugees from Nowa Warszawa being passed through to the front, a gesture that is quite touching, actually.

As for the Olympics themselves, well… the losses from the battle are painfully obvious here.

The wrestling matches, both men’s and women’s, are surprisingly close, even though the best your teams can manage is a single bronze medal between them. Thanks to the losses you’d taken, the surviving coaches had just headhunted for the strongest young men and women they could find, gave them a crash course in wrestling, and prayed. It worked much better than it should have, but not nearly well enough to earn any victories.

The fencing matches are even more lopsided. The badly short-handed men’s team manages to scrape together a single bronze in saber, but it is brutally obvious that many of the competitors are competing in disciplines outside of their specialty. The women’s team? The less said about that one the better, as not a single one of the girls manages a single touch. Considering that the team is made up of mostly high-school level fencers, with two old retirees who’d last taken up a foil twenty years ago being the only available women’s coaches, since the entire training facility for professional level fencing in the Griffon Empire had been leveled during the fighting? The team is just happy not to have suffered any serious injuries.

The women’s archery contest is more of the same, a bunch of teenagers struggling to compete against professional archers. Here again the NRI shows some superb sportsmanship, as directly after the competition is over the NRI team is working with the youngsters on their form.

The men’s competition, however, is both the one bright spot lately in the litany of woe and defeat, and a stunning upset. All thanks to one young archer who is only a freshman in High School who, in your humble opinion, is shooting the bow like Robin Hood reborn. Every single arrow hits the bullseye, even though the kid’s technique is wildly at variance to ‘professional’. He doesn’t seem to aim in the conventional sense, he holds the bow at his side, then simultaneously brings it up to a firing position while drawing it back, and then releases the moment the arrow is fully drawn. He doesn’t bother with the sights or anything, and he hits the bullseye… every… single… time… you are relieved to note that he isn’t named William Tell or Robin Hood but rather a rather boring Billy Smith.

And then suffer a moment of angst when you see Jeremy’s expression, as young Billy Smith is the son of the deceased pilot of his Empress command mech. You’d hoped the God Of War look would be left in the past, but it clears away soon enough.

Even though you are on Nowy Gdansk for the Olympiad you can’t escape paperwork, and budget time. Yay.

General Stewart is up first. “Your Majesty, I cannot stress enough how badly we need rapid expansion of our strategic materials production capacity. Right now that, along with Mech Factories, is our biggest and most critical bottleneck. That being said, General Griffith?”

Jeremy comes forward, accompanied by his aide de camp. “Before I get into procurement, Your Majesty, there are several organizational notes. The Imperial Griffon Armorworks in conjunction with Lee Industries has released a pair of new armored fighting vehicles with which we currently intend to replace the Jaguar and the Arbalest.”

He brings up a graphic, showing a rather interesting tank design. Unlike the Jaguar, this Patton shifts the gauss rifle to a hull mount, has a different pattern 20 tube LRM rack that seems to be split on the rear deck, obviously designed for VLS fire forward. The most interesting thing about is the addition of a trio of moulded seats on each track guard flanking the missile launcher and the fact that the covers for the missile tubes themselves seem to be reinforced.

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
Patton MBT	801.8	FF	31	22	Armored 1 Missile 1 TAG AMS 1 APC 1

“This tank is slightly less powerful on a per-unit basis, but it is about 20% faster, plus the split nature of the main armament allows it to engage multiple targets at once. Moreover, as you probably noticed, the hull has been designed to readily permit battle armored infantry to ‘ride along’ on top. While it doesn’t give the infantry as much protection as a true APC, this still allows for infantry to be attached to the unit itself.” he consults his notes. “About a quarter of the losses of Jaguars in the battle were due to them not being able to fall back quickly enough, and another 20% were due to them not being able to traverse their turrets rapidly enough to reengage a second target, when neither required both the enhanced PPC and the gauss to destroy.”

He changes to the next graphic, which shows a similar hull. “This is the Stahlregen MLRS system, which will be replacing the Arbalest II in providing missile support to the Patton MBT. This does have an enclosed infantry bay, so is even better suited for transporting supporting infantry. It has the same armament as the Arbalest, on twenty more tons, with greater mobility and armor.”

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
Stahlregen MLRS	817.08	FF	31	22	Armored 1 Missile 3 TAG AMS 2 APC 1

“That out of the way, Your Majesty, here are the recommended procurements for this year. First of all, for mech procurement, we do not have enough endo-steel production for more than 2 regiments even with the recycled spares from the decommissioned mechs, unless we purchase more training mechs that we, honestly, do not currently need. Therefore, I recommend finishing out the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, that is, 1 Armored Cavalry regiment and 1 Standard Mech Regiment while holding on to the stockpiles for next year when, hopefully, we’ll have more production of endo-steel.” He checks his notes. “We’re also able to procure a pair of conventional regiments, again due to the lack of strategic material production, in this case Ferro Fibrous armor. Therefore, we recommend procuring a Rapid Reaction Regiment to finish filling out the 1st Rapid Reaction Force along with a Mechanized Regiment and SpecOps Regiment to begin reforming 3rd Armored, which will be redesignated as 2nd Armored.”

He takes another deep breath. “And, again, I cannot stress enough, we desperately need more Endo-Steel and Ferro-Fibrous production if we want to get our ground forces production up to par.”

He sits back down, and Major General Powerpoint herself steps back up. General Reyes promptly fires up her signature Powerpoint presentation. On the screen is something you’ve not seen for a while, a proposal for a new ASF.

“Your Majesty, combat analysis has shown that while the Gyrfalcon is a lethally armed combatant, with the enhanced particle projection cannon combined with extended range 5cm lasers, it consistently suffered higher loss rates than heavier designs, primarily due to the thin armor. Therefore our design staff came up with this…” she gestures towards the screen, which is showing a rather sharp looking design. “Armed with a total of 5 5cm extended range lasers, two in the nose, one in each wing, and one in the tail, tied into an enhanced targeting computer. The performance and fuel profiles are the same as the Gyrfalcon, with enhanced armor protection.”

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Speed	Fuel	Specials
Peregrine Light Dogfighter	306.87	FA, DHS	25	15	15	5	Armored 1 Swift

“We intend to only procure these for future carrier platforms, rather than replacing existing Gyrfalcons completely. The Gyrfalcon is still a perfectly viable design, and the increased firepower is very valuable situationally.” she changes to the next slide.

“As we do not have the need to staff any new dropships this year, Your Majesty, we would like to focus on increasing our general ASF forces. To that end, we are requesting the procurement of as many Fighter Wings as possible, we would like to send one to help defend Calliope IV, and base the rest on Griffin’s Roost itself to augment our home defenses. Ideally, we would procure 7 such wings.” She steps back and returns to her seat.

Admiral Benjamin then bounces up, despite how old he looks he’s still spry as ever. “Well, Your Majesty…” he gestures to his aide, with the flip chart. “For all of our collective sanity, and to reduce the strain on Ferro-Aluminium and Double Heat Sinks, we are not proposing using every single possible dropship production slip. Minion?” The poor aide, with a look of long-suffering, takes out a pair of cymbals and crashes them together. “Yes, shocking, I know. Minion?” and the aid does it again, not looking very happy with being reduced to a sound effect generator for her Admiral. “So for this year, we recommend laying down all 17 large dropships, but holding off on laying down regular dropships until next year, this way we can start staggering production more. So for this year we recommend the following. Minion, the FLIP CHART…” the poor poor aide crashes the cymbals one more time, then flips the top sheet of the flip chart.

1. 7 Majestic-class Parasite Battleships
2. 10 Shannon-class Parasite Armored Cruisers

He sits down, as his aide shuffles out of the conference room. “She’s a good kid, next assignment is going to be as a Defiant CO.” he comments once she’s gone.

General Stewart takes the podium again. “Your Majesty, I will once again stress the vital importance of boosting endo-steel and ferro-fibrous production. While we can always use more double heat sinks, we are badly behind the eight-ball when it comes to the others, especially endo-steel. We would need to produce almost 13 more endo-steel a year before we can reliably bring a third mech regiment online each year, and in a few years we will have additional Mech production facilities coming online which will require even more. I hate to see idle mech factories.”

Bridget has obviously been kept far away from the caffeine. It hasn’t helped noticeably. “Your Majesty we are going to be able to maybe help the military guys and gals with more strategic material production if you want because I’ve got people all ready to do it so we can do it Oh and I recommend focusing on Nowy Gdansk’s economy this year, and Admiral Benjamin just sent me a note to remind you that we can cycle the Monoliths through the shipyards in order to get them fit for duty, although those two creepy ones need exorcists still because they are totally creepy one of my assistants went on board one and I never saw him so pale and shaking afterwards so like totally CREEPY And expanding the shipyards of course and remember we now have three of them but only have to pay for two so remember that because that will change sooner than you’d think ok?”

One breath… god in his heaven… one breath.

Isoroku is off engaged in discussions with the New Rasalhagians, although he does send a memo to remind you of the speech you’ll need to give to close the Games, cheeky….

Jake, meanwhile, is busily handling the aftermath of a seismic shift in the Chamber of Delegates, as every single politician associated with the media cartels has been handily defeated. He sends you a note stating that he’s been working to ensure that the newcomers will support the Crown as they promised in their election materials and speeches.

Mary is then up. “Your Majesty, in light of the need to ramp up materials production, my staff and I thought it prudent to be budget conscious this year in recommending new research projects.” She fires up her presentation program.

• Military R&D (2 Available)
  • Improved Autocannons
    • Not very useful in and of themselves, but could lead to some valuable insights for existing Ultra and LB-X class autocannons
  • A-Pods
    • Having experienced enemy battle armor it might be prudent to develop these. They are essentially large Mech scale claymore mines, mounted on the exterior of a mech, to blast infantry that get too close.
• Non Military (3 Available)
  • These will all be military related, but not using Aerie facilities
    • MASC
      • Myomer Accelerated Signal Circuitry
      • Gives a situational boost in speed, could be valuable for light mech units
    • Supercharger
      • Boost fusion engine performance at the cost of damage to the reactors, could be valuable data for other projects, but likely to be operationally a dead end
    • Thumper Cannon
      • A short-barreled direct-fire only variant of the Thumper artillery piece

“There’s nothing that will be of immediate use, except perhaps the MASC, but it will only cost three point two million, on top of our existing R&D expenditures, saving money for expanding strategic production.” Mary concludes.

Harry is busy dealing with last minute details regarding the infiltration efforts in the New Rasalhague Republic, while Janet is busy keeping Jane from harassing Harry while Harry deals with the last minute details on the infiltration efforts.

QM NOTE - The Imperial Guard is the personal bodyguard unit for the Queen

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 54 - Open The Door, Get On The Floor, Everybody Walk The Dinosaur

Spoiler: Event, Luck and Rating Rolls

Meta Event Roll - 34
Dynasty Luck Roll - 33

Imperial Approval - 1
Approval Change - 1
Political Event - 0

Economy - 6
Economy Event - 0
Research Event - 4

Griffin’s Roost
Economy - 8
Population - 5
Rating Change - 2

Nowy Gdansk
Economy - 11
Population - 13
Rating Change - 7

Griffon II Orbitals
Economy - 2
Rating Change - 9

Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt
Economy - 2
Rating Change - 0

Griffon IV
Economy - 9
Population - 9
Rating Change - 8

Spoiler: Action Results

Military [$ 35,414,345.19 ]
Refurbish captured Monolith-class Jumpships [55]
Target - 55
Roll - 75 - Bear Ribs reroll - 92 - ShadowArxxy reroll - 15
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade All DHS Foundries [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 85 - ShadowArxxy reroll - 5
Result - SUCCESS (8/18 upgrade)

Build Orbital Factory DHS Griffin's Roost [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 87
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Endosteel Griffon IV [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Endosteel Griffon II [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 62
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Endosteel Griffon II [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 93
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Endosteel Griffin's Roost [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 77
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $7,708,832.32 ]
-Majestic [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 91 - Jarow reroll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

-Majestic [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 15
Result - SUCCESS

-Majestic [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 100, DrunkenDwarf reroll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

-Majestic [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

-Majestic [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

-Majestic [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 78
Result - SUCCESS

-Majestic [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 94, Gurk reroll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 22
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 62
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 76
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 78
Result - SUCCESS

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 81
Result - Bare FAILURE (autosucceed next turn)

-Shannon [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 90
Result - Bare FAILURE (autosucceed next turn)

-Roadrunner [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

-Roadrunner [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 87
Result - Bare FAILURE (autosucceed next turn)

-Roadrunner [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units [$ 680,513 ]
-4 Fighter Wings [75]
<Automatic (Eagles)

-1 Patrol Wing [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 78
Result - Bare FAILURE (autosucceed next turn)

-1 Planetary Defense Wing [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 86 - lordmcdeath reroll - 75
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Armored Cavalry Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

-1 Standard Mech Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 20
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Mechanized Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 94, charclone reroll - 52
Result - SUCCESS

-1 SpecOps Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 91, ShadowArxxy reroll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Rapid Reaction Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 94, Knowledgeispower reroll - 37
Result - SUCCESS

Interior [$ 45,432,500.00 ]
Focus Development on Nowy Gdansk [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 86, Jarow reroll - 94
Result - FAILURE

Build Orbital Factory Ferro Aluminum GIAB [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 43
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro Aluminum GIAB [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 96
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro Aluminum Griffin's Roost [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 86
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro Aluminum Griffon II [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 93
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade All Ferro Aluminium Foundries [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 14
Result - SUCCESS (5/13)

Expand Refit and Repair Yard [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Griffons Roost [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Nowy Gdansk [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

Diplomatic [$ 15010000 ]
Open Permanent Embassy for NRR* [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

Research [$ 42650000 ]
Advanced Electronics (advanced) Tier 3 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 40
Result - SUCCESS

High Energy Physics (advanced) Tier 3 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Communications (advanced) Tier 3 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 13
Result - SUCCESS

A-Pods [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 46
Result - SUCCESS

Improved Large Laser* [50]
Target - 50
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

-----

The motor racing events are among the last to be run during this Olympiad for a very simple reason, the twins prevailed upon the organizers to bend over backwards to be scrupulously generous and fair towards the Romans, to the point of allowing over six months of practice time on the tracks for the Roman teams, while the Griffon teams competed in their regularly scheduled seasons.

Indeed, the organizers go above and beyond in that regard, being utterly meticulous in ensuring that absolutely everything humanly possible is done to ensure a truly fair sporting event, without even the slightest hint of shenanigans by the Griffon side. Nothing is ever said, but it is an incredibly eloquent ‘take that’ to the Romans, who’d needed to outright cheat like mad to have the results they did the last time.

Your granddaughter Tien is actually competing in the Hovercraft racing, taking time off from her studies at the Aerie to race. Considering that she’s on the hovercraft track at the Aerie, with the intention of joining the 1st RRF… you shudder. You are continually tempted to finesse the paperwork to have her assigned to something nice and safe upon graduation, but that would be undue use of royal influence and… bad Empress… but ba wants… argggggg.

Regardless, she is damn good, and if it weren’t for her determination to join the fabled 1st RRF she’d be a championship grade hovercraft racer… and proves it by leading the Griffon team to a 1-2-3-4-5 sweep of the hovercraft race, with every single one of your entered hovercraft beating the entirety of the Roman’s.

The Motorcycle racing is nearly as lopsided, with the Roman’s managing to eek out a bronze medal by a hair, requiring photometric analysis to conclusively determine the 3rd place finisher.

Stock car racing is much closer, but a Griffon driver still takes the top spot, with a Roman in distant second. It’s the second longest of the four races, over a thousand kilometers in total distance, but the racing was superb.

The formula race is in the full-endurance format and is a true 24 hour race. The twins had ‘unretired’ in order to run in the race as part of the same car team, trading off driver duties throughout the race. In the end it’s not even close, not a single one of the Roman cars actually makes it to the end of the race, and while the twin’s only earn a silver, it’s a true podium sweep, and a sweep of all of the motorsports events.

The men’s and women’s marathon’s turn out to be split, with the Griffon team winning gold in the men’s, and the Roman team winning it in the women’s.

At the end of the day, the Roman’s managed to edge you out in terms of overall medal count. The competition itself shows enormous sportsmanship and certainly contributes to increased good will with the NRI.

The four Monoliths which had been captured close to Griffin’s Roost have been repaired, inspected, and certified operational, massively boosting your space lift. On the other hand the two which had to be towed in from outsystem after catastrophic misjumps are a different story. Both will require extensive repairs, and considering the ‘spacer stories’ spreading from the salvage crews, you’ll need as many exorcists as possible just to keep the superstitious spacers from outright refusing to ever crew them.

Many of your DHS and Ferro-Aluminium orbital factories have been upgraded, but well under half, as work crews were somewhat short handed thanks to the massive new construction of orbital facilities competing for skilled hands. Regardless, your strategic materials production has been boosted significantly, both with new and upgraded facilities.

There are a number of unfortunate delays when it comes to the production of new dropships, one of the new Shannon-class vessels suffers a minor industrial accident that requires a portion of the new construction to be completely redone, pushing back completion by a year, while HMS Colchester requires serious rework after it is found that one of the industrial robots had been misprogrammed. HMS McKean’s building dock had to be temporarily evacuated following a chemical spill, then after multiple attempts to clean up the dimethyl telluride had failed, leaving the entire place smelling like garlic, construction was suspended, the completed sections scrapped, the entire dock opened to vacuum in the hope of clearing the stench, and a different building dock took over the project.

The poor dumb bastard who dropped a vial of the stuff is probably never going to live it down.

The Eagle production lines hum along like well-oiled machines, churning out the four ordered wings with ease. It’s a different story for the Patrol Wing, with numerous annoying delays, including an infestation of skunks at one facility, meaning that the project will not be completed until next year. The Planetary Defense Wing is also successfully formed, boosting the defenses of Griffin’s Roost.

In a slightly controversial move the best mechwarriors from the 1st Garrison Division are transferred en bloc to 1st Armored to meet up with the new Armored Cavalry Regiment equipment. Your grandson barely made the highly competitive cut, but as a consequence you now have an elite Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1st Armored.

Third Brigade of 1st Armored is now fully equipped, and 2nd Armored finally has actual combat units assigned to it.

Then you get to what you had been dreading, the growth of the 1st Rapid Reaction Force… and they don’t disappoint. The new 3rd Regiment, which includes your granddaughter, damnit, evidently decided that the best way to celebrate graduation was to visit every single strip club, nude biker bar, adult bookstore, and legal brothel on Pollux. In their assigned vehicles… sans uniforms. Please note, your beloved granddaughter was evidently not only involved but has been fingered as one of the planners of this debacle. Thankfully this took place after the Olympics, or she’d have been so thoroughly grounded… as it is, the entire Regiment spends a week in the stockade sobering up. But on the plus side, it fits with the traditions of the 1st, and they managed to pull the entire thing off without a single casualty, either mechanical or human, so there IS that.

The economic development work on Nowy Gdansk has run head first into the stone wall that is the Olympics, as all the work flounders on the minor detail that all of the workers have taken off in order to watch the games. Better luck next year.

Work on upgrading all of the orbital shipyards continue, with the Griffin’s Roost orbital yard being expanded into a warship yard, while the Nowy Gdansk one is starting a second slip for Jumpships. The Refit and Repair Yard is also growing, although it is still only rated for dropship work. SLS Morristown has been towed to the Yard, however, and is currently moored next to it waiting for it to be ready for the big Warship.

A proper formal embassy has now been established with the New Rasalhague Republic. You appoint a reliable retired Senator who came highly recommended by the Eldest as the first Ambassador. Among the embassy staff are a number of undercover agents, who will begin building networks as soon as they arrive.

R&D has gone exceptionally well, work has been completed on both A-Pods and Improved Large Lasers, giving you a lighter mass, albeit shorter ranged, 8cm laser. The A-Pods are interesting, but so far are not mounted on anything beyond a few test rigs.

Work on advanced electronics, high energy physics, and communications technology has been completed, advancing basic understanding in these fields. As a consequence, Mary informs you that industrial collaboration to advance basic technology should now once again be possible thanks to the greater fundamental understanding.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 55 - That Mister MacArthur’s Looked All Over Town

Unicorn returns from her latest supply trip to Calliope… but she doesn’t return alone. Two additional Tramp jumpships, still in the markings of the DCMS, are in company, each with a pair of Mammoth dropships on two of their three collars.

By the time you reach the command center after you are awakened their reports have arrived. HMS Warrior had been posted as a picket at Calliope’s zenith jump point, and had been able to catch three DCMS Tramps as they jumped in, two were carrying a mix of Mammoths and Achilles, the third had a Union-CV and a pair of Leopard-CVs.

The commander of HMS Warrior had fought his ship brilliantly, and while she was badly damaged in the fighting, she was able to destroy all of the enemy combat dropships.

You get to watch the recordings of the battle. HMS Warrior was near the Zenith when she detected incoming KF signatures, she boosted towards them, as there were no scheduled arrivals. The three signatures resolved themselves into a trio of Tramps, all in Drac markings.

The CO of HMS Warrior promptly demanded that the enemy power down and surrender, while launching the on board ASF squadron. The Union-CV then started to detach themselves, prompting him to immediately open fire, destroying that Jumpship along with the three attached dropships en-passant with long range capital fire. The two Achilles managed to launch in the meantime, and HMS Warrior and the two swift aerodynes got into a brutal brawl, which resulted in two destroyed Drac dropships and a badly damaged HMS Warrior.

The two remaining Tramps promptly surrendered and boarding parties were dispatched. Upon boarding the two jumpships they found signs of mutiny on board each. The captains and several ISF agents on the two captured jumpships had… committed suicide with small caliber pistol shots to the back of the head. The surviving crews are all natives of Nowa Warszawa and were requesting political asylum. The CO was bumping that over to you.
[/I][/I]

[]	Grant asylum, these people are victims of the Dracs, not the Dracs themselves
[]	Hold them as POWs for now, in order to ensure against sleeper agents. We can’t be too careful

It is what is in the Mammoths that is of greater interest, the cargo holds are packed to the bulkheads with crate after crate of NRI-grade gauss rifles, all in their original packaging, and all evidently originating from a major arms manufacturer… on Tarentum. According to the crews, on the outbound journey the DCMS had shipped Mammoth loads of freshly manufactured Stinger battlemechs, and had been paid in these gauss rifles. According to documents recovered from the captain’s computers and the personal papers of the ISF agents, there was a brewing rebellion on Tarentum, supported by the Dracs.

[]	Summon the NRI ambassador and turn over this intelligence. They are our friends, and friends warn friends of pending betrayals. Something Lord Palmerston said in the 19th century shouldn’t be binding in the 30th.
[]	Chaos could be an opportunity, if the NRI is engulfed in a civil war we can take advantage of the situation. We may be friendly, but nations do not have friends, they have interests, and it may be in our interest to unsettle the NRI.

HMS Warrior will require several months in the repair dock. Casualties were relatively light, considering the brutal nature of the battle, with only seven dead and a dozen seriously injured. You lost three ASFs in the fighting, the other 9 had to remain behind with the garrison due to the destruction of HMS Warrior’s ASF bays making it impossible for her to support them herself.

One consequence of this battle is that the Navy is proposing the construction and deployment of a fully modular space station to Calliope. Unlike the integrated Star Fort design, the proposed White Tower is fully modular and thus can be built much faster, albeit at a substantial price premium. In fact, the White Tower is almost 28 times more expensive than a Star Fort, but can be transported in sections by Jumpship to other systems.

Inspired by the White Tower, the same design team has designed an integrated non-modular station that they are calling the Silver Tower for construction within the Griffon system that is almost ten times cheaper, but far more deadly.

The White Tower supports a single Wing of fighters, while the Silver Tower supports three wings of fighters.

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
White Tower System Defense Fortress	6,528,515	DHS	1133	583	Armored 35 Command 3 AMS 60 Missile 60 Capital AMS 6 Capital Missile 90 Capital Rating 4/157 3/351 2/114
Silver Tower System Defense Fortress	687,874	DHS	1491	991	Armored 35 Command 3 AMS 120 Missile 120 Capital AMS 12 Capital Missile 150 Capital Rating 4/261 3/803

(QM Note - making a station Modular so it can be broken down and transported by Jumpship is ridiculously expensive, but is balanced in that you don’t have to develop the target systems industry before building the thing in situ)

Spoiler: Yes, I Went There

https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2021-01/83f5fe90-5f19-11eb-b7c7-6cfa2c948c86

The Navy is also proposing to completely replace the Defiant class Parasite Light Gunboats with the PGL-50 class, a highly efficient design that masses over twice as much as the Defiant while providing a far more lethal platform. Unlike the earlier design, the PGL-50 would be able to serve as the basis for a SAR and Customs platform for the Space Guard once suitably modified with surgical theaters and a naval tug adaptor.

Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
PGL-50	69,128.64	FA, DHS	462	312	Armored 10 Swift Missile 12 AMS 12 Capital AMS 1

The Colonial Office has put in an emergency request for the deployment of a White Tower to Calliope, on the basis that now that it is known that the Dracs are using the system, our interests there require us to be ready to defend it robustly.

[]	Agree with emergency request	Cost 6,528,515 Immediately procure 1 White Tower System Defense Fortress for Calliope. Improve relations with Calliope IV
[]	Deny emergency request	No effect

The request is included along with their initial report. Calliope IV does possess a unified government on the old ‘federal republic’ model, which seems stable enough considering the relatively small and concentrated population. Their steam-derived technology is actually surprisingly sophisticated. For example, they have steam powered dirigibles, steam cars, surprisingly capable factories driven by steam, gears, cogs and belts, a solid understanding of pneumatics and hydraulics with extensive use of both.

They have a large list of exports that Calliope IV is in a solid position to provide, mostly luxury goods ranging from the products of their amazing breweries and distilleries, to luxury goods like ultra-precision clockwork timepieces and gadgets. They wish to import military equipment, mostly infantry gear, along with simple tanks and conventional aircraft that their industry can support. They also wish to import medicines and educational materials.

According to the reports, the locals view you very favorably indeed, and 2nd RRF is making an exceptional impression on the locals as well, setting up outreach events with local communities. Of particular mention is the organization of a steam bike racing league that the 2nd has set up to great enthusiasm. The news of HMS Warrior’s actions at the Zenith has been shared with the locals, the pilots of the 9 ASFs which are now operating out of ground bases while they wait for HMS Warrior to return have been getting all the free booze that they can drink.

There is a proposal for a single Monolith raid on the Drac held system ‘Atarashi’. The raiding force would consist of HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Barfleur, and HMS Centurion of the Royal Sovereign class, HMS Sentinel of the Sentinel class to gather intel, HMS Gary, HMS Derwent, and HMS Itchen of the Tyrannosaurus-class to act as a screen for the Monolith herself, and AKA-01 to carry any captured loot back from any orbital facilities.

[]	Approve Operation Twister
[]	Deny Operation Twister

Another proposal is for a three Monolith raid on New Sekigahara (Nowa Warszawa). The raiding force would consist of HMS Empress of Nowy Gdansk, HMS Ramillies, HMS Resolution, HMS Revenge, HMS Magnificent and HMS Penelope of the Royal Sovereign class, HMS Langley, HMS Saratoga, and HMS Lexington of the Langley class, HMS HMS Porcupine, HMS Waveney, HMS Boyne, HMS Erne, HMS Ettrick, HMS Exe, HMS Cherwell, HMS Vistula, and HMS Dee of the Tyrannosaur class, HMS Conflict, HMS Wizard, and HMS Fervent of the Troodon class to act as Jumpship defense, and AKA-02, AKA-03, and AKA-04 to serve to carry any captured material back.

[]	Approve Operation Full Throttle
[]	Deny Operation Full Throttle

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 55 - Now Mister MacArthur Has Very Poor Eyes

Combat Report - Operation Twister

There were minimal defenses found in the system. A single barely habitable world supported extensive asteroid mining operations throughout the system. A single pass from maximum capital range destroyed Drac forces present in the Operational Area. AKA-01 wound up carrying mostly refugees, however, as it was discovered that the Dracs made use of slave labor to operate an orbital Sabre factory. The factory itself was destroyed, attached Marines interrupted DCMS forces in the process of massacring slaves, and were able to rescue less than ten thousand from criminally appalling conditions. The CO of Operation Twister is urgently requesting permission to directly transport the freed slaves to Nowy Gdansk and the assignment of counselors, including a disturbing number of rape counselors for survivors of the ‘garrison support personnel’ as she tactfully puts it.

A large amount of cargo shipping was destroyed. There was a Mule yard present, however the defenders destroyed the habitation module rather than allow our forces to rescue any of the enslaved workers. The yard itself was mostly intact but several volleys of sub-capital laser fire thoroughly wrecked the facility and denied it to the enemy.

[]	Resettle the refugees on Nowy Gdansk immediately
[]	Keep them aboard AKA-01 until counter-intel can vet them, then resettle them

Atarashi System Report

HMS Sentinel reports the detection of a bioweapons development center on Atarashi II. The planet itself is only marginally habitable, requiring supplemental oxygen due to the thin atmosphere if one is to be at all active. It appears to primarily be an agricultural world, and preliminary analysis is that the workers are native to the planet, as there are settlements on the planet with fairly refined architecture that would be unlikely to be present in slave labor camps or military garrisons. There are obvious military bases on the planet, indicative of a powerful ground garrison, along with a number of relatively small apparent factories buried into the low mountain ranges of the main continent. Relative humidity is exceptionally high on the planet, even though it appears that the plant life consists either of crops or low grasses. Temperatures are also rather scorching hot.

Otherwise the overall system composition consists of an orange main sequence star that appears to be slightly variable, with significant flare activity noted although the intensity was well within tolerances.

The innermost planet is a giant scorched rocky ball that is half lava on the ‘day’ side; it appears to be tidally locked to the star. There is a massive set of mobile structures on the ‘night’ side of the planet, taking advantage of the nearly glass smooth surface to keep pace with the planets rotation. There are signs of very intense mining.

There is an extensive asteroid field, notably riddled with mining operations. A fairly small gas giant with anemic rings is next, with about a dozen large moons at least one of which appears to have ammonia oceans. Two icy terrestrial planets follow, both are extremely small and very heavily cratered. Finally a pair of extremely small gas giants round out the system, neither with anything of note.

Combat Report - Operation Full Throttle

Losses were significantly higher with this force. HMS Magnificent was lost with all hands following a suicide strike by an enemy Achilles, HMS Langley caught a golden BB when a Drac subcapital cannon shell managed to catch her in the midst of launching fighters, causing an internal detonation and destroying the carrier. HMS Conflict and Fervent were lost in the course of the melee around the jump point, while HMS Porcupine, HMS Waveney, HMS Dee, HMS Vistula and HMS Erne were too badly damaged to be salvageable.

In exchange for these losses, however, the Dracs took near total losses of their jump point defenses. The raid came in as the Dracs were evidently assembling a fresh attack force. Over a hundred enemy dropships were destroyed, along with nearly 300 enemy ASFs. A lightly armed recharge station at the jump point itself was destroyed, along with hundreds of cargo Mules. Unfortunately you were unable to capture any jumpships, as all of the ones at the jump point were able to jump away cleanly.

You were only able to get very basic astrographical information from the system, which mostly confirms what you’ve been told by the old timers on Nowy Gdansk. However the planet itself is heavily polluted rather than the blue-green marble that they describe.

You were able to loot portions of an Energy Storage Battery from the recharge station, reducing the challenges you would face in replicating the technology. In addition, a high speed ‘thunder run’ in system allowed your Royal Sovereigns to get in range of a shipyard complex, several volleys later and you have delivered a brutal hammer blow to Drac production. Unfortunately your sensors did pick up at least 3 other such complexes in the system.

The raiding force withdrew before Drac reinforcements from elsewhere in the system could concentrate and strike back, returning home after ensuring that the wreckage left behind was thoroughly sanitized.

Not a flawless victory, by any means, but you’ve now kicked the Dragon in the teeth and degraded its capabilities, which is a significant victory in and of itself.

Spoiler: The Zen of Rage

The Lotus Room was usually a place of great tranquility. A meticulously cared for stone garden dominated the space, with artfully placed boulders and carefully sculpted sand. A cunningly wrought artificial stream trickled through the center of the room, the water splashing happily over smoothed stones.

Tranquility, peace, a place of meditation and relaxation.

Normally.

Not today.

Today the lord and master of this space was… seething. There was no peace. There was no tranquility. There was an iron will barely holding back seething rage.

The Dragon never raised his voice. But the Dragon’s silence was terrifying. A vein throbbed on the Dragon’s forehead as he glared at the prostrate form of one of his Warlords who had the dual misfortune of delivering this news and having been one of the most confident that the gaijin who’d defied the Dragon had been suitably dealt with.

This was a zen garden.

Today it bore witness to the greatest example of zen it had ever hosted.

The zen of pure rage.

Meanwhile, Admiral Benjamin stops by with some procurement decisions for you to make relating to a pair of design tenders that went out recently.

First up is a contest for a small point defense dropship, intended to serve as a parasite aboard the two Tower type Orbital Defense Fortresses. The desired craft is so small that it can be built in ordinary factories. The design brief required an ‘aerodyne’ layout, but none of the designs are capable of operating in atmosphere. To the maximum extent possible curved surfaces were completely avoided in order to simplify production.

“Well, Your Majesty, we had five proposals initially, but two of them got tossed out and one will require some reworking before going into production if it is selected. First for the eliminated designs, since we’re almost certain we’re going to hear protests about it. One was from our own internal design team, but in the end was rejected for being too heavy. The other was from Majeure Electrique and was likewise rejected for mass considerations, as both designs would have required regular dropship yards, civilian or otherwise, for production.” Admiral Benjamin explains.

“In the end, we have three designs. First of all, we have one that comes from our friends obsessed with pyramids.” you can’t help chuckling. “Surprisingly, it’s not actually a pyramid. It is the cheapest and lightest of the three and the only one that doesn’t use ferro-aluminium armor. However their inexperience shows in that the designers forgot to include escape pods for the crew. This isn’t an unsurmountable difficulty, but be aware that if selected the final product will likely be slightly heavier and more expensive.” he checks his notes.

“Next we have the internal submission, the Bee Point Defense Gunboat. It is the most expensive of the three as well as the largest, but is also the most capable. It is well armored for the size, with a potent long range missile battery and solid point defense capabilities.” he switches to the last page on the flipchart. “And finally the surviving entry from Majeure Electrique, the Cobra Point Defense Gunboat. This design is somewhat larger than the Mastaba design, but significantly more capable, albeit not as potent as the Bee. It is cheaper than the Bee, while more expensive than the Mastaba, making it a solid middle ground performer.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Mastaba Gunboat	23,893.92	DHS	145	55	Armored 4 Swift Missile 2 AMS 12 Capital AMS 1
[]	Bee Point Defense Gunboat	39,413.88	DHS, FAA	245	115	Armored 8 Swift Missile 6 AMS 18 Capital AMS 1
[]	Cobra Point Defense Gunboat	27,205.92	DHS, FAA	202	102	Armored 5 Swift Missile 3 AMS 12 Capital AMS 1

The Admiral pauses a moment, then continues. “Secondly, we have the designs submitted for the Parasite Destroyer RFP. These ships are intended as outer screen units for our heavier vessels, a requirement made even more obvious by the situation in Operation Full Throttle. We have a quite diverse set of responses to the RFP.”

“First up is the cheapest and smallest of the four, the Wawel class. This design has a similar tonnage profile to the current Lightning-class. It is also, unfortunately, also the least survivable, with a very thin hull.” he checks his notes. “It is also one of two Aerodynes in the competition.”

“Second we have the second cheapest, and one of two Spheroid designs entered. This comes to us courtesy of Lee Aerospace in collaboration with the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Werk. The Clemson class offers an appealing mix of speed, being the fastest in the offering, firepower, armor, and value for money.”

“The second most expensive, and the second lightest overall, design is the Cholula, from our good friends the Pyramid builders, although again they are offering an Aerodyne instead. At this rate we may need to retire the Pyramid joke, although considering that the executive who hand delivered the proposal paperwork was dressed as an Egyptian and came into the office to the strains of Walk Like An Egyptian, I have a feeling that they’re owning it. But I digress. The Cholula is only barely less expensive than the most expensive design, while having less firepower and armor than either the Clemson or the next design.”

“And finally, the design from Majeure Electrique is another of their dinosaurs. The Oviraptor is both the most expensive and is also significantly more powerful than any of the others. This is a spheroid, and is very missile heavy. It has less armor than the Clemson, and it is slightly slower at a maximum of 5.5g of acceleration compared to the 6g of the Clemson, but has massively more firepower on the same tonnage, albeit at a price premium.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Wawel Parasite Destroyer	158,839.20	FAA, DHS	547	447	Armored 5 Swift Missile 16 AMS 60 Capital Missile 6 Capital AMS 6 Capital 4/10
[]	Clemson Parasite Destroyer	160,996.64	FAA, DHS	901	551	Armored 30 Swift Missile 16 AMS 68 Capital Missile 6 Capital AMS 6 Capital 4/10 Capital 2/38
[]	Cholula Parasite Destroyer	194,965.20	FAA, DHS	672	442	Armored 18 Swift Missile 40 AMS 60 Capital Missile 6 Capital AMS 6 Capital 4/10
[]	Oviraptor Parasite Destroyer	198,522.80	FAA, DHS	965	815	Armored 10 Swift Missile 72 AMS 60 Capital Missile 6 Capital AMS 6 Capital 4/10 Capital 3/54

While you are finishing up with the Admiral, Jeremy pops his head into your office and tosses a datapad on your desk before vanishing before you can say anything. You shake your head and take a look at the pad. On it is a proposal from the Colonial Office that they sent first to the AFGE for review.

You still have massive stockpiles of rifles, machine guns, and such from before you began upgrading your infantry all those years ago. Not even your militia forces are still using such obsolete gear, but military bureaucracy, and quartermasters, being what they were, still have warehouses full of the stuff.

What is being proposed is to transfer all this obsolete kit to Calliope IV along with several incredibly basic armored vehicles, although your lips do quirk a bit at seeing the new ‘Improved’ class 5 autocannon listed as the main armament for the tank, the reasoning is quite sound. The differences are in materials, not function, maintenance, or use and getting your own industry used to those materials is worth the marginally higher cost of the tanks in question.

[]	You still have your old rifle, but it’s time to let the rest go.	-1% Interest Rate this turn Improved Relations with Calliope IV
[]	Are they nuts? You never know when you’ll need them!	No change

Parliament is up to well, Parliament things. The Chamber of Delegates has voted to publicly commemorate the success of Operation Twister and Operation Full Throttle by having commemorative gold medals struck for every officer involved in the two operations. They’ve asked you for your approval, which was pretty foregone as the medals are quite tasteful and well deserved, but the Chamber does quietly ask that you not participate in the actual awards ceremony.

[]	Let them have their time in the spotlight	+1 Politics +1 Support Chamber of Delegates +1 Influence - Chamber of Delegates
[]	I’m the Empress, them cameras are on ME	+1 Politics -1 Support Chamber of Delegates

The Imperial Senate, meanwhile, has requested permission to send a small delegation, made up almost exclusively of your supporters… including the Eldest’s granddaughter, to Calliope IV to see the situation on the ground for themselves. The move is widely seen in the press as the first political step towards integrating Calliope into the Empire.

[]	Approve	+1 Politics +1 Support - Imperial Senate You get licked by the Eldest, and he promises not to slobber
[]	Disapprove	-1 Politics -1 Support - Imperial Senate -1 Influence - Imperial Senate You suffer the Gaze Of Disapproval from the Eldest

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 55 - Now Mister MacArthur’s Got Blood On His Hands

You have a medical dilemma on your hands, at least policy wise. The small number of Atarashian natives among the freed slaves are in very poor physical shape, mostly due to their own physiology in combination with the harsh treatment of the Dracs.

They are light-worlders, their planet that their ancestors have called home for over five hundred years has very low gravity and a thin atmosphere. The oxygen levels in the atmosphere are just barely enough to support human life. Anybody who wants to engage in strenuous activities in that atmosphere needs an O2 tank or has to be in a pressurized environment.

As a consequence, the Atarashian natives tend to be very short and very slender, to minimize O2 needs while still being able to subsist. In normal pressures, Ataroshians act, well, drunk. The higher O2 concentrations act like a drug on them, making them rather loopy. In addition, they struggle to move in normal gravity, and even after acclimating to the air and coming down from their O2 high they still are limited in their mobility.

Medically, all of the refugees require an enormous amount of care, they suffered under extremely brutal conditions and none of them are in anything you’d consider ‘healthy’ shape. However the Atarashians require special consideration.

The simplest solution might be to simply keep them in the various orbital habitats. The downside there is that those habitats tend to be dedicated to supporting industrial activities, making it risky to house refugees there, plus every Ataroshian housed there displaces a worker needed for maintaining production.

A longer term solution would be to settle them on Griffon IV. Of the three inhabited planets, Griffon IV has the lowest gravity, although still higher than Atarashi II. They wouldn’t be totally comfortable, the higher gravity would be difficult for them, but it would have the lowest cost for you and isn’t truly harmful to the refugees.

Finally, if you are feeling extravagant, you can build a dedicated orbital habitat just for the refugees. It would be expensive, and would need to be regularly expanded, but it would give the Atarashians a comfortable place to live as well as permitting them to become productive members of society.

[]	Existing Orbital Habitats	-5 Economy Rating - Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt -5 Economy Rating - Griffon II Orbitals +10 Pop Adjust per year Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt +10 Pop Adjust per year Griffon II Orbitals
[]	Griffon IV	+1000 POP
[]	Dedicated Orbital Habitats	Up front cost - 10,000,000 200,000 upkeep +1% GDP Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt for 10 years +1% GDP Griffon II Orbitals for 10 years

You receive a proposed operation from the Navy. Three Monoliths would be assigned, jumping to a non-standard point that is still well outside the jump limit. HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Barfleur and HMS Centurion would remain with the jumpships, All 22 Lightning-class ships would then commence a ‘Thunder Run’ at one of the remaining Drac shipyards. The Monoliths and escorts would then jump to the opposite side of the system to pick up the raiders, before returning home.

The raiders would borrow a page from the Dracs playbook, jumping in so far out that hopefully they won’t be seen, then accelerating hard before coasting the rest of the way in. The planners are optimistic, as they doubt that the Dracs have anything like SARAH coordinating their orbital surveillance. It is, however, a high risk operation.

[]	Approve Operation Barrage
[]	Deny Operation Barrage

And then it is your favorite time of year again… bu bu bu BUDGET TIME!

General Stewart leads things off “Your Majesty, as last year I must stress the need to build up our strategic materials production across the board. We also need to continue to grow our ground forces production facilities, especially if we wish to build up expeditionary capability to start actively liberating worlds from the Dracs.”

Jeremy now takes over the podium. “Well, I’m going to get right into it. We have the ability to produce at most three regiments of Mechs, 2 Assault or Heavy, and 1 up to Medium. Therefore, for Mech production this year we recommend two Garrison Mech Regiments, which will be assigned to the 1st Garrison Division, with their Armored Cavalry Regiments moving to First Armored’s 2nd and 4th Brigades. In addition, we recommend procuring a Pathfinder Regiment to round out 1st Armored’s 1st Brigade.”

He checks his notes for a moment. “In terms of conventional forces, we recommend starting to work up 1st Infantry Division, as such we recommend the procurement of a pair of Mechanized Regiments and a single CAS regiment in order to fill out 4th Brigade. I will note that ferro fibrous armor production is a serious bottleneck in terms of expanding our conventional forces, just as endo steel is for our Mech forces.”

He then takes his seat as General Reyes, Miss Powerpoint Herself, takes the podium… with a Powerpoint… luckily it’s a brief one.

“Your Majesty, none of the new Dropship’s coming online this year require air groups, however the new White Tower does, therefore we recommend procuring 3 Carrier Wings for service on the White Tower.”

If you thought that was all…

“However, Your Majesty, one of my staff has proposed sending a Training Wing to be based on Calliope IV, with the intention of providing the locals the opportunity to learn how to operate aerospace fighters while also supplementing their defenses. The Falcon trainer requires relatively little in the way of maintenance, making it deal for such a duty.”

Considering that ‘one of her staff’ also correlates to ‘your beloved daughter who obviously wishes to spread the ASF cult to new fertile ground’...

Before you get sidetracked with that thought Admiral Benjamin bounces up to the podium, trailed by his latest Loyal Minion with the flipchart and… yup, the bell.

“Your Majesty! Great News!” he beams, then winks at Bridget and does his best Bridget impersonation. “We can build lots and lots of dropships this year so we totally should fill up all the building slips and then any extra ferro aluminium and double heat sinks should totally go towards building the new micro dropships that don’t require dedicated yards to be built so we can have even more forces available.” he then coughs, while Bridget laughs louder than the rest of the table combined.

“Seriously, we have 6 large dropship and 36 regular dropship yards available to us this year. We recommend build four Newport and 2 Newport-C transports in the large yards. For the regular yards our recommendations are as follows. Minion?” His poor abused aide flips the chart and rings the bell on command.

1. 9 Colchester-class Parasite Destroyer Escorts
2. 20 PGL-50 class gunboats
3. 7 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers

“Our current intention is to assign the new PGL-50’s to the Zenith and Nadir squadrons, transferring the Defiants to the defense squadron for Calliope. I will also note that we should have sufficient capacity to produce 42 PPG-01’s this year, if desired, for assignment to the White Tower in Calliope.”

“Minion?” he commands, and his aide again rings the bell and flips to the next page on the flipchart. “That brings us to the Silver Tower, and we want at least four of them as soon as possible, Your Majesty. One for the Zenith, one for the Nadir, and one each for Griffin’s Roost and Nowy Gdansk. We should be able to afford building all four, and it will give us an extreme boost to our system defenses.” he then grins. “Minion!” he barks, and his poor poor aide sighs, looking much put upon, then closes the flipchart, picks it up, and walks out of the conference room while dolorously ringing the bell.

“You do realize that your aide has the patience of a saint to put up with you, right?” you comment as the Admiral takes his seat, causing him to laugh.

“I know, Your Majesty, but they just have to put up with me for a year, and if they manage to keep up with my effectively going out of my way to drive them nuts without, you know, going nuts, I know they’ll be able to handle the antics of the junior enlisted when I give them their first actual command in the field.” he replies, eyes dancing.

Bridget is up next, and she’s still chuckling about the Admirals' antics. “Your Majesty! We would like to build a trio of Mech factories on Griffon IV so we have a second light and medium mech complex coming online Soontm” She says with a laugh. “Plus building more production capacity for Endo Steel and Ferro Fibrous. We’ll have a DoME project ending soon, so we should start thinking about the next one, so keep that in mind. And, of course, continuing to build shipyards and repair facilities!”

Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, my staff is ready to start working towards assimilating the people of Calliope IV, primarily by promoting the benefits of citizenship in the Griffon Empire. We expect it to be a fairly easy sale, as the locals are very positively inclined towards us already. We’ve not yet heard back from the NRI about the rebellion situation, nor has there been much activity on the NRR front, although we’re expecting a number of meetings with representatives there on trade normalization in the near future.”

Jake is looking, well, very Jake-like today, leaning back in his seat and grinning. “Your Majesty, may I recommend earplugs?” he says, tossing a set of ear protection plugs to you. You lift an eyebrow but put them in. “We’re in a position to help Bridget make more things.” he says completely deadpan, and sure enough Bridget’s squeal of glee would likely have caused hearing damage without protection.

Mary is up next, she doesn’t make any fancy opening statement this time, merely firing up her presentation software.

1. New R&D Opportunities
   1. Materials Research Lvl 6
   2. Electronics Lvl 6
   3. Power Generation Lvl 6
   4. Orbital Infrastructure Lvl 6
   5. Improved Communications Lvl 6
   6. Improved Education Lvl 6
2. Recommendations
   1. Military - 2 teams available from the Aerie
      1. Heavy Naval PPC
      2. Naval Laser 45
   2. Non Military - 3 teams available
      1. Improved Education Lvl 6
      2. KF Drive Theory Tier 2
      3. Ferro-Carbide Armor

“Your Majesty, we are getting close to being able to start refitting the Morristown, as such, we need to get ready for this. It will take 5 years to research all the underlying technologies, and if we keep to the schedule in 6 years we’ll be able to start the refit. Heavy Naval PPC, Naval Laser 45, and Ferro Carbide Armor are required to repair those components, while improving our understanding of KF Drive Theory will allow us to certify the compact core, while giving us a basis to research compact core design and construction of our own.”

Harry makes it to this budget meeting. “Your Majesty, we have two projects that we’d like to engage in. First, we are currently having to improvise mightily in terms of rapidly clearing refugees through counter-intelligence screening. We’d like to set up small processing stations at the Zenith and Nadir to facilitate this process and speed things along. Likewise, our POW arrangements are… sufficient… but with the prospect of far higher battle tempo we’ll need to expand in the near future, we’d like to get ahead of the curve in that regard.”

Janet is also present “Your Majesty, I’ve spoken with the Senate delegation that visited Calliope IV and they were generally positive, enough so that I would like to initiate a review of Calliope laws with an eye towards easing them into integration with our own law codes.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 55 - It’s All Worked Out Like Clockwork

Spoiler: Events, Luck, and Ratings

Meta Event - 38
Dynasty Luck - 45

Imperial Approval - 6
Approval Change - -2
Political Event - 0

Imperial Economy - 5
Economic Event - 0
Research Event - 0

Griffin’s Roost
Econ - 10
Pop - 2
Rating Change - 5

Nowy Gdansk
Econ - 8
Pop - 4
Rating Change - 0

Griffon Inner Asteroid Belt
Econ - 6
Rating Change - 5

Griffon II Orbitals
Econ - 2
Rating Change - 4

Griffon IV
Econ - 5
Pop - 3
Rating Change - 5

Spoiler: Action Results

Military [$ 8104563.48 ]
Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib GIAB [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 79
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib GIAB [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 74
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fib Griffon IV [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $6,703,933.04 ]
-Shannon* [auto]

-Colchester* [auto]

-Roadrunner* [auto]

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 100, DrunkenDwarf reroll - 82
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 91, Jarow reroll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 92, Gurk reroll - 84
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

-Newport [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 23
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport-C [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 98, Knowledgeispower reroll - 45
Result - SUCCESS

-Newport-C [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 15
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 44
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 86
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 97, Jarow reroll - 26
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 25
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 66
Result - SUCCESS

-Colchester [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 75
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 69
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 12
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 13
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 39
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 73
Result - SUCCESS

-PGL-50 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

-Bainbridge [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 52
Result - SUCCESS

-Bainbridge [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 45
Result - SUCCESS

-Bainbridge [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-Bainbridge [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

-Bainbridge [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 78
Result - SUCCESS

-Bainbridge [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 74
Result - SUCCESS

-Bainbridge [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

-48x PPG-01 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 84
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Purchase New Units [$ 712,756 ]
1 Carrier Wings [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 23
Result - SUCCESS

1 Training Wing [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 49
Result - SUCCESS

1 Pathfinder Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 29
Result - SUCCESS

2 Garrison Mech Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 71
Result - SUCCESS

2 Mechanized Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 98, Gurk reroll - 37
Result - SUCCESS

1 CAS Regiment [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

Interior [$ 70540000 ]
Focus Development on Nowy Gdansk* [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 68
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Upgrade All DHS Foundries [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 99, ShadowArxxy reroll - 25
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade All Endosteel Foundries [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 78, ShadowArxxy reroll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for Mechs Griffon IV [120]
Target - 120
Roll - 100, confirm roll - fail, Jarow reroll - 97
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for Mechs Griffon IV [120]
Target - 120
Roll - 77
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for Mechs Griffon IV [120]
Target - 120
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Refit and Repair Yard [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Griffons Roost [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 20
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Shipyard Nowy Gdansk [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 97
Result - SUCCESS

DOME - Plant Temperate Forests* [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 92
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto succeed next turn)

Diplomatic [$ 7010000 ]

Open talks with NRI for military alliance* [55]
Target - 55
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Benefit Concert [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 75
Result - SUCCESS

Political [$ 10000000 ]

Expand Department of the Interior [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 35
Result - SUCCESS

Research [$ 87500000 ]
Improved Education lvl 6 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 60
Result - SUCCESS

Improved AC 2/5/10/20* [50]
Target - 50
Roll - 61, HereticNep reroll - 14
Result - SUCCESS

-----

Combat Report - Operation Barrage

Combat Losses - 0
Enemy Military Dropships Destroyed - 0
Enemy Aerospace Fighters Destroyed - 0

The target of the raid was adjusted once initial scan data was analyzed. All three remaining shipyards had exceptionally potent defense forces present which would have been prohibitively difficult to handle. A judgement call was made to adjust the target on the fly, and instead of targeting a shipyard the raid blitzed through the orbitals of Nowa Warszawa itself, as minimal orbital defenses were detected.

The Dracs declined to engage the raiding force, most likely due to not detecting it until it was too late to get forces into position. The raid inflicted heavy damage to Drac orbital infrastructure, and agitprop was transmitted to the surface with the intent of raising the morale of the remaining resistance forces while attacking the morale of the Dracs.

Ensign Mary Withers is to be especially commended for the latter, as she put together a three minute cartoon that we judge may have been particularly effective at the latter, judging by the howls of outrage over all channels after it was transmitted. It is recommended that future agitprop include this cartoon, or at least images of a cowardly dragon getting chased off by dancing hamsters.

-----

You are quite pleased with the results, damage done, both materially and morally, to the Dragon for no losses? You can sleep well with that.

What does bother you is that so far every single one of your grandchildren who has come of age has decided to attend the Aerie and pursue a military career. Elizabeth, at least, is on the Dropship command track, so she’ll be in school for at least four more years where she’ll be safe, but her younger brother is going into Mech’s like his oldest brother and father. Then of Sarah’s progeny Thomas has gone Mech track and the eldest of their twins are both piloting track.

You are all for establishing a tradition of service, but couldn’t some of your grandkids take after Sarah and pursue something peaceful?

You read interview notes from the freed slaves from the Atarashi raid. It turns out that both Atarashi natives and Nowa Warszawa natives are a distinct minority amongst the liberated slaves. The vast majority come from Kilborough or Kilburrogh or something similar to that, getting that spelling information is made nearly impossible since none of them are literate.

If what little your people have patched together about that place turns out to be accurate… well, you throw up a bit in your mouth. It’s horrific. The freed slaves do not believe that they are free, seemingly incapable of grasping the concept at all. They are all males and are completely apathetic, they will do what they are ordered to do, and seem to expect the lash at all times. They seem almost pathetically grateful simply to be fed.

Apparently they are enslaved from birth on their homeworld, raised in creches, and any child who so much as asks a question is taken away and never seen again. They start working as soon as they can walk, and are only fed if they meet their work quota. If they exceed their work quota they are allowed to go into the ‘Reproduction Chamber’ where, well, evidently that’s where the females are kept.

You read the rest of the report with mounting horror.

There’s actually somebody worse than the Dracs out here, and of course they are doing business with the Dragon.

You spend several hours on the firing range demolishing targets after this.

You then have the rather… delightful… experience of the Commandant of the Aerie storming into your office. “What do you mean I need to graduate 96 watch qualified officers for those micro dropships in less than 6 months?” is about the only non-expletive filled sentence in the tirade. Evidently the good General had come up from the ranks and had a sergeants gift for invective.

OK, it might have been completely unfair to drop that on the poor man all at once. By the end of the meeting you agree to delay putting the new PPG-01’s into service until next year, giving the Aerie time to widen the pipeline for watch qualified dropship officers.

There are some other issues, a snafu in supply deliveries affects two Newports and one Colchester, delaying completion excessively and pushing back their service date by a year. The rest of the new construction is progressing very well indeed. In fact, one slip is able to clear it’s previous tenant fast enough to lay down an eighth Bainbridge.

Procurement of new aerospace and ground units also goes rather well. There are some minor issues with getting 1st Infantry Division stood up with their 4th Brigade, but they are worked out in time so that both Mechanized units and the CAS unit are formed up on schedule.

Your eldest grandson is now with 1st Armored, along with the rest of his unit, serving as a Mechwarrior in 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade. They are stationed near 1st RRF, which has led to some amusing incidents of sibling rivalry during exercises between the two units. The most amusing, in your opinion, was your eldest granddaughter managing to drive her Chasseur between the legs of John’s Wolf Spider, only to be ruled to have been administratively mule kicked by the quad. Tien, as befits a little sister, gleefully plays the video of the incident, John, as the elder brother, then kindly displays the exercise results.

Frustratingly, it appears that wires got crossed with the Nowy Gdansk economic stimulus plans, the staff who were supposed to implement it never got the memo until literally the last minute and have been scrambling like mad ever since. They now estimate that the program will complete in Q1 of next year.

Engineers are able to complete the upgrades of multiple endo steel and double heat sink orbital factories on schedule, giving a welcome boost to production. The new ferro fibrous foundries are also online, although you still lack sufficient production for 3 regiments of production.

All three new mech factories have come online, despite some drama with one of them due to an unexpected requirement to shift the location in order to avoid some poor underlying geology.

The shipyards have been expanded once more, including progress on the new yard over Griffon IV that is being funded by Parliament. The refit facility likewise is continuing to grow.

In late December you receive a rather sheepish letter from DoME concerning the forestry project on Griffon IV. Evidently the engineers in charge of the project hadn’t paid quite enough attention to the agronomists, as a result the actual certification of completion of the project will be delayed four to six months… until after winter is over and most of the trees come out of their winter quiescence. They promise to do better next time in terms of timing of things. The engineers are quite willing to certify it as finished, but everybody else has pointed out that it would be quite irresponsible to do so until they can verify that the trees are, in fact, healthy and doing well, to which the engineers retort that this is the trees fault, not theirs.

Your negotiations with the NRI about a military alliance against the Dracs and Pirates bears fruit, mostly in reaction to the revelations about the budding rebellion on Tarentum. Fighting has broken out and things are looking rather harsh, as things have bogged down into grinding city fighting on the planet with massive collateral damage. For now the NRI is requesting logistical support. This will tie down the two ‘haunted’ Monolith’s that have just returned to service, but will allow for the shipment of arms and support to the NRI to put down the Drac-inspired rebellion.

The expansion of the Department of Interior has finished on schedule and on budget, with the staff expansion allowing for additional simultaneous projects starting next year.

A benefit concert is held to raise funds and awareness of the plight of the Atarashians who have been liberated. It goes quite well, in the main, with a number of prominent and popular musical acts participating.

A massive upgrade to the educational system is completed. The primary result is the provision of ultra-sophisticated expert systems to every school to help guide each student's individual progress, customizing curricula on an individual basis on the fly via constant analysis of performance and understanding while ensuring greater student engagement with the educational process.

Teachers seem to be, in the main, quite supportive of this, while many administrators seem to take the opposite view as the new system tends to downgrade their involvement. But in general the rollout goes quite smoothly and is well received by those who matter the most, the students.

The application of advanced materials to all autocannons has shown decent results. While the end products aren’t anything you’d deploy into front line units they are quite useful for militia vehicles. The first products of this development are being provided to the locals on Calliope IV, for example.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 56 - From Far Away

In early January you have a meeting with Admiral Benjamin and Jeremy. They are bringing to you a proposal for the next raid on the Dracs. And this one is a doozy, with multiple objectives.

To start with, it will require all of your current lift capacity, except for the 1 Tramp supporting efforts in Calliope and the two Monoliths running supplies to the NRI. So, 4 Monoliths and 2 Tramps, for a total of 42 collars. Moreover, there would be multiple jumps involved in the attack.

Every single major dropship combatant would be committed to this attack, all of the Royal Sovereigns, all of the new Majestics, all of the new Shannons, even HMS Renown would be involved. Plus it would involve a landing on Nowa Warszawa itself.

The total TO&E for the operation is as follows

• Wave One
  • Dropships
    • Renown Class (1)
      • HMS Renown
    • Royal Sovereign Class (10)
      • HMS Royal Sovereign
      • HMS Empress of Nowy Gdansk
      • HMS Ramillies
      • HMS Resolution
      • HMS Repulse
      • HMS Revenge
      • HMS Centurion
      • HMS Barfleur
      • HMS Bellerophon
      • HMS Penelope
    • Majestic (7)
      • HMS Majestic
      • HMS Prince George
      • HMS Victorious
      • HMS Prince Jeremy
      • HMS Jupiter
      • HMS Mars
      • HMS Caesar
    • Shannon Class (9)
      • HMS Shannon
      • HMS Northampton
      • HMS Imperieuse
      • HMS Orlando
      • HMS Australia
      • HMS Undaunted
      • HMS Narcissus
      • HMS Galatea
      • HMS Aurora
    • Roadrunner Class (5)
      • HMS Manley
      • HMS Colhoun
      • HMS Gregory
      • HMS Little
      • HMS Stringham
    • Lightning Class (10)
      • HMS Lightning
      • HMS Tempest
      • HMS Grom
      • HMS Błyskawica
      • HMS Sturm
      • HMS Vihar
      • HMS Stuhi
      • HMS Tufan
      • HMS Bura
      • HMS Jara
  • ASF Formations
    • 10 Standard Carrier Wings
  • Ground Forces
    • 1st Rapid Reaction Force
    • 1st SpecOps Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored
    • 1st SpecOps Regiment, 1st Brigade, 2nd Armored
• Wave Two
  • Empty

The actual OPLAN is divided into multiple phases.

• Phase One
  • Jump to Zenith point
    • Engage any forces present and scan the inner system to ascertain enemy force disposition.
    • Wait for Jumpships to complete a safe charge cycle and jump out
  • Strike orbital shipyard complex
    • Precise target to be chosen based on scan data
    • If possible target is to be destroyed en passant
    • Roadrunner class vessels are to act as if they are combat logistics ships during this period.
  • Raid Nowa Warszawa
    • Strike force is to proceed to Nowa Warszawa orbit and drop Roadrunner class vessels.
    • 1st RRF and the 2 SpecOps Regiments are to be dropped off, with the Roadrunners returning to orbit
      • 1st RRF and both SpecOps Regiments are to remain mobile, evade enemy units, and strike targets of opportunity for 24 hours
      • 1st RRF will regroup for pickup by the Roadrunners at this time
      • If contact has been made with the Home Army, both SpecOps Regiments will remain on planet to engage in harassment operations in coordination with the local resistance. Otherwise on scene command will decide whether or not to withdraw them.
    • Orbital Forces are to secure the L5 region and sanitize planetary orbit of any hostile infrastructure.
• Phase Two
  • Second Wave will jump in at the L5 pirate point to pick up Strike Force

This is a high risk, high reward operation with the potential to seriously disrupt Drac operations. The NRR has indicated a willingness to launch a raid of their own at the Nadir point to further distract and disrupt the Dracs.

The downside is that your daughter and two of your grandchildren will be at risk in this operation, and you can tell that Jeremy is fully aware that he is proposing a plan that puts two of his kids at direct risk, not to mention his little sister who will be in overall command of the operations naval side.

[]	Approve Operation Golden Devil
[]	Deny Operation Golden Devil

The volcanic eruption which has been bubbling away outside of Griffsport has entered a new, far more active phase as the geochemistry of the lava shifts, indicating that the mantle currents have brought different materials into the hot spot. The eruption is now characterized by highly energetic streamers of lava shooting into the sky, interspersed with the more typical oozing flow. The nearest observation points are briefly closed out of an abundance of caution, but geologists quickly are able to quantify the new behavior and report that the existing volcano defenses are more than adequate. You bring in teams of scientists from other institutions to verify these findings, and they all concur that while visually spectacular there is actually no actual elevated risk, and the existing defenses are quite capable of handling even a several magnitude greater surge in activity without blinking an eye.

This does result in a surge of tourism to view the volcano, which sees some nice economic effects in Griffsport.

Of course, this also inspires the Department of Periphery Studies to renew their protests for Volcano Privacy Rights. You draw the line at allowing them to build another diet soda volcano outside the Palace, however. You remember the last time they tried that. Instead you quietly encourage schools in the area to have students make small mentos volcanoes, which they then deliver to the Department of Periphery Studies to make the protestors happy to have volcanoes to play with.

You do get welcome news from Calliope, the defense forces posted there have managed to capture another Drac supply convoy en route to Tarentum, this time loaded with Drac mechs, almost all Stingers. Nine entire Mule loads full. Completely useless, from your point of view, being small, relatively slow, lightly armored and lightly armed bug mechs, but it is over a regiment’s worth of machines, complete with spare parts.

Of the three Tramps involved, unfortunately two were constructive losses, the jump cores being slagged by self-destruct systems triggered by fanatical ISF agents. The third was captured intact, the mostly civilian crew managing to overpower the ISF agents and their officers before the self-destruct could be triggered.

You took no losses in the engagement, HMS Warrior being essentially unopposed. She is now responsible for 3 jumpship captures on her own, a rather impressive result for a comparatively obsolete vessel.

Unfortunately you do receive word from the NRI that terrorist attacks in support of the revolt on Tarentum have begun to occur on Ravenna and Nova Roma itself. Pirate activity has also picked up, making it impossible for the NRI to send any forces to aid in your operations, indeed your analysts believe it is only a matter of time before they start begging for the deployment of ground forces to aid them in putting down the rebels.