Turn 64 - We Draw Our Own Designs
The Men’s Shooting competition at the Olympics is another squeaker, with Team Griffon managing to win by a single point after a shoot off. In the Women’s Event the NRI is completely dominant, winning handily.
The NRI is again dominant in Men’s Wrestling, crushing the Team Griffon men in an impressive show of dominance. The women’s competition is dominated by the Rasalhaguians as they go undefeated throughout the round-robin tournament and win in an impressive fashion.
In both men’s and women’s Fencing the NRI is again completely dominant, crushing the competition and leaving Team Griffon and the Rasalhaguians to swap silver medals. So far in the competition the NRI is proving to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder and something to prove, as they’ve been winning rather handily at many different events.
The trend takes a bit of a hiccup in Archery, but it takes world record levels of performance for Team Griffon to win the Men’s contest, with the NRI a point behind, and the Rasalhaguian Women’s Team manages to shoot a perfect score, beating the NRI by a single point as well.
The Military Pentathlon competitions see the NRR and NRI swapping the gold, with the Team Griffon men managing a close second, while in the women’s competition both the Rasalhaguians and Team Griffon manage to look like utter amateurs compared to the NRI.
In Soccer, Baseball, and Softball the Rasalhaguians put on a show of utter dominance, except in the Men’s Soccer event, where Team Griffon manages to win in a come from behind upset, scoring a pair of goals in the final three minutes of the game to eek out a victory. In softball the Rasalhaguian team gives up only a single base in three games, and that was to a controversial balk call that even Griffon commentators and fans believe was complete garbage.
A second massive pirate assault hits New Capricorn, although this time they hit the less heavily defended Nadir point. Four more Colchesters are destroyed, and the pirate strike force is able to boost into the inner system, albeit significantly depleted. A vicious battle erupts in orbit as the Planetary Defense Wings intercept the landing force and those pirate elements which manage to land are met by the local garrison. In the end minimal damage is suffered by the planet’s civilian population, but losses amongst the garrison were noticeable, especially the Planetary Defense Wing.
A number of prisoners have been taken, but as in the past they are common grunts, and most of them seem to be coerced slaves with shock collars on their necks and symptoms of extended torture and abuse. However this time you are able to recover some data from the computers, although sadly the astrogation data is useless. The band that attacked this time is evidently desperate to get a ‘big score’ to get enough resources and prestige to survive against an unholy alliance of the three largest pirate bands, who appear to have begun preying on their fellow pirates’ holdings and making an already precarious existence untenable. The bulk of the pirate holdings are, based on comments made by the prisoners, most likely to the galactic northeast of the NRI, but that is a very tentative conclusion that may be highly biased by the beliefs of the NRI as to the pirates origin.
Several unfired nuclear-tipped missiles are recovered as salvage. None are of the same design as previously acquired Drac systems, being far cruder in design. Markings on the warheads seem to indicate that they are produced by the pirates themselves. The pirate’s battle armor is of Roman design, but is at least fifty years out of date, with a few surviving manufacturer’s data plates recovered showing they were produced in the 2940s. Inquiries with the NRI indicate that the manufacturer of these particular suits was one that has since been shut down that was affiliated with the Pugnus Deorum. None of the suits had ever been delivered to the NRI military. Ammunition is of local manufacture to the pirates and doesn’t match any known source, including the Dracs.
This particular band possessed a core of Star League ‘Royal’ grade Stingray and Stuka aerospace fighters, and their flagship was a ‘Royal’ grade Achilles. However the builders plates recovered from the wrecks do not match any known Star League factories or companies. The vast majority of the pirates' aerospace gear were the slapdash ‘Hive’, ‘Swarmer’ and ‘Stinger’ types.
From the various examples of heavier battle armor suits you gain a slightly higher understanding of heavy battle armor suits in general for your own development.
And now it is BUDGET TIME! Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that grand?
Please try and muster some enthusiasm here.
General Stewart kicks things off. “Your Majesty, in the near future, although not this year, we will be recommending a general slowdown in ground forces procurement outside of dedicated Garrison units. As it stands our offensive forces outstrip strategic requirements until such time as we have multiple Potemkin type warships in service to support heavier assaults. Strategic materials are still a bottleneck, and once we start surging Mech production in the future we will need as many available factories as we can get.”
“Thanks to the recent attack at the Nadir of New Capricorn, we are recommending that all settled systems receive a White Tower station at the Nadir point in addition to the Zenith. As such, this will require the purchase of at least 10 White Towers in order to provide full coverage to all of the systems that are our responsibility. This, combined with the need to provide air wings to all of them, would be a very expensive outlay, coming out to over half of our discretionary budget this year after ongoing projects are tallied. However it may well be vital to our defenses. Right now the TTP is hanging with its asses collectively exposed, with none of the jump points having any significant defenses beyond dropship patrols, and while there are lesser stations at the Griffon systems Nadir, the only White Towers are all at Zenith points where they serve to protect trade. As such, we will be recommending a minimal dropship purchase this year to make up for the expenses.”
Jeremy then takes the podium. “Alright, Your Majesty. We have several formations that we need to fill out, as well as a new formation arrangement that we believe will allow for leaner, more agile, offensive forces. To that end, we are requesting the procurement of 3 Standard Mech Regiments, 3 Armored Cavalry Regiments, and 3 Armored Regiments to form our first Brigade Combat Team. We are also requesting 1 Assault Regiment to start the next brigade of the Imperial Guard. We are requesting 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment and 2 Light Horse Regiments to comprise the 6th Cavalry Brigade, thus filling out the 2nd Cavalry Division. We are requesting 3 Special Forces Regiments be raised and manned in order to form a second Special Forces Brigade, reinforcing our specops capabilities. We need 3 Rapid Reaction Regiments in order for our Rapid Reaction Division to be at full strength. Finally we are requesting 4 Mechanized Regiments to fill out two Infantry Brigades and bring their associated Division to nearly full strength.”
He shuffles his notes. “On the garrison front, in consideration of the recent attack on New Capricorn we would like to transfer the 1st Garrison Mech Brigade there to shore up their defenses. In addition, if the decision is made to colonize Nowy Śląsk then we recommend stationing a Colonial Infantry Division there as a local garrison, that is, two Colonial Infantry Regiments, two Colonial Cavalry Regiments, two Colonial Mechanized Regiments, and three CAS regiments.”
Joy, General Powerpoint is… not here? Instead her deputy is at the meeting, explaining that General Reyes is currently on Nowa Warszawa attending the graduation of the first full class from the Aerie’s extension on that world.
“Your Majesty, we have 5 Independence class vessels which will be commissioning this year, on top of the possibility of purchasing 10 White Towers and the two Oasis IIs that are completing this year. As such we recommend the purchase of 5 Carrier Wings and 18 Fighter Wings to fill those bays. We have barely sufficient pilots in the training pipeline and reserves to fill the seats, however, and the Aerie is again grumbling about impossible manpower demands. They are requesting that we build a proper annex on Calliope IV in order to expand our ASF pilot training program enough to account for such growth in the future.”
Not a single Powerpoint… blessed relief!
Thanh comes up next, and all she has is a single notebook and a massive cup of coffee. Which she hands to Bridget… “Your Majesty,” she begins, as Bridget practically inhales the Black Bean of Life, “as General Stewart alluded to earlier, due to the need to build sufficient fixed defenses at all of the uncovered jump points to deter pirate, Drac, and any other raids we might suffer, we will not be producing a significant number of dropships this year. Indeed, we are only requesting one of the new Puller class Brigade Command Transports and a pair of Vandegrift class Brigade Transports. On paper we may not appear to have sufficient Ferro Aluminium for this, on top of the ASF purchases, however the salvage from the six lost Colchesters as well as dipping into the storehouses of materials gathered for repairs to now decommissioned classes of dropships will allow us to just barely manage the three vessels. This does, however, stress that our ferro-aluminium production is not keeping up with demand, especially as our future procurement strategy is going to be shifting to a far more carrier-centric model as we expand Independence class procurement to at least 10 a year, possibly more.”
She then looks over her notes. “I will also note that the Aerie is requesting more Ensign class training dropships, we would like to accommodate them with as many as can be afforded in the budget.” she says, frowning slightly. “Crew numbers on the latest generations of dropships are lower than would be expected for their mass, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential bottlenecks. Thankfully, unlike ASFs and mechs, all we need to redress the gap is to purchase additional training vessels.”
General Stewart remains seated, just nodding to you when you glance her way once Thanh sits down.
And then a freshly caffeinated Bridget practically vibrates from her seat to the podium without seeming to stand or walk.
“Your Majesty we have a ton of new projects that we can do especially related to colonizing Nowy Śląsk and the marginally habitable moons in the New Capricorn system and next year we can start terraforming Nowa Warszawa III and building mining colonies in Griff’s Leap and maybe filtering the air on Nowy Śląsk to make it less noxious and unpleasant smelling because I’m told it smells like dirty underwear and socks all the time just really strong and overwhelming and you need a gas mask just to keep from puking it’s so bad but I’ve not smelt it so I don’t know for sure but I believe the people who told me anyways unfortunately all of our DoME teams are either tasked with projects or are taking a well deserved vacation after crash-building the Griffon IV Olympics venue which is really amazing and did you know that all of the buildings not only meet but exceed code and could survive big earthquakes if they needed to which is pretty awesome now that I think of it considering how quickly they were built since DoME does really good work anyways we can also upgrade production capacity especially of ferro aluminium and double heat sinks and ferro fibrous and all the rest and maybe even build some more factories if you really want us to because my people are ready for everything.”
That was one incredibly long sentence… and she never once even paused to breathe, even as she vibrates her overly energetic self back to her seat.
Isoroku is overseeing the diplomatic side of the games, so isn’t available The memo from the Foreign Ministry recommends potentially promoting immigration to one of the peripheral systems.
Jake is up next. “Your Majesty,” he begins, folding his massive gnarled hands together. “Our relationship with Parliament is still rocky, I strongly recommend that we continue working to shore that up. In addition, if we have the funds left over my office has been preparing an initiative to promote healthy living throughout the Empire. We’d really like to fund that program if possible.”
Dr Bryant takes the podium after Jake sits back down. “Your Majesty, there is only one new project that I would strongly recommend, and that is fully decoding and internalizing the Dart class plans that we received. We have idle Warship yards, and the perfect design with which to fill them. Otherwise if the funding is available we would recommend funding the teams working on the final sub capital laser variant, the SCL/3.”
Harry is looking about as excited as you’d ever seen him. “Your Majesty, while the prisoners we’ve taken have so far been unusually cooperative, most likely because all of them were slaves kept in line with shock collars with no actual loyalty to the pirates, we still feel that by applying full POW interrogation techniques to them we may tease out more data that they may not even know that they know. We have teams of interrogators standing by. And before anybody objects, they’ve all been trained both on interrogation techniques as well as fully briefed on the ethical use of the same, with strict instructions not to try and break any of the former slaves.”
Janet subsides a bit in her seat, then chuckles. “He knows me so well, Your Majesty. On our end, if we do decide to go ahead with colonizing Nowy Śląsk, I’ve got a few legal teams all set and ready to go in to get the legal and governmental systems organized. Just give me the word.”
The Men’s Shooting competition at the Olympics is another squeaker, with Team Griffon managing to win by a single point after a shoot off. In the Women’s Event the NRI is completely dominant, winning handily.
The NRI is again dominant in Men’s Wrestling, crushing the Team Griffon men in an impressive show of dominance. The women’s competition is dominated by the Rasalhaguians as they go undefeated throughout the round-robin tournament and win in an impressive fashion.
In both men’s and women’s Fencing the NRI is again completely dominant, crushing the competition and leaving Team Griffon and the Rasalhaguians to swap silver medals. So far in the competition the NRI is proving to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder and something to prove, as they’ve been winning rather handily at many different events.
The trend takes a bit of a hiccup in Archery, but it takes world record levels of performance for Team Griffon to win the Men’s contest, with the NRI a point behind, and the Rasalhaguian Women’s Team manages to shoot a perfect score, beating the NRI by a single point as well.
The Military Pentathlon competitions see the NRR and NRI swapping the gold, with the Team Griffon men managing a close second, while in the women’s competition both the Rasalhaguians and Team Griffon manage to look like utter amateurs compared to the NRI.
In Soccer, Baseball, and Softball the Rasalhaguians put on a show of utter dominance, except in the Men’s Soccer event, where Team Griffon manages to win in a come from behind upset, scoring a pair of goals in the final three minutes of the game to eek out a victory. In softball the Rasalhaguian team gives up only a single base in three games, and that was to a controversial balk call that even Griffon commentators and fans believe was complete garbage.
A second massive pirate assault hits New Capricorn, although this time they hit the less heavily defended Nadir point. Four more Colchesters are destroyed, and the pirate strike force is able to boost into the inner system, albeit significantly depleted. A vicious battle erupts in orbit as the Planetary Defense Wings intercept the landing force and those pirate elements which manage to land are met by the local garrison. In the end minimal damage is suffered by the planet’s civilian population, but losses amongst the garrison were noticeable, especially the Planetary Defense Wing.
A number of prisoners have been taken, but as in the past they are common grunts, and most of them seem to be coerced slaves with shock collars on their necks and symptoms of extended torture and abuse. However this time you are able to recover some data from the computers, although sadly the astrogation data is useless. The band that attacked this time is evidently desperate to get a ‘big score’ to get enough resources and prestige to survive against an unholy alliance of the three largest pirate bands, who appear to have begun preying on their fellow pirates’ holdings and making an already precarious existence untenable. The bulk of the pirate holdings are, based on comments made by the prisoners, most likely to the galactic northeast of the NRI, but that is a very tentative conclusion that may be highly biased by the beliefs of the NRI as to the pirates origin.
Several unfired nuclear-tipped missiles are recovered as salvage. None are of the same design as previously acquired Drac systems, being far cruder in design. Markings on the warheads seem to indicate that they are produced by the pirates themselves. The pirate’s battle armor is of Roman design, but is at least fifty years out of date, with a few surviving manufacturer’s data plates recovered showing they were produced in the 2940s. Inquiries with the NRI indicate that the manufacturer of these particular suits was one that has since been shut down that was affiliated with the Pugnus Deorum. None of the suits had ever been delivered to the NRI military. Ammunition is of local manufacture to the pirates and doesn’t match any known source, including the Dracs.
This particular band possessed a core of Star League ‘Royal’ grade Stingray and Stuka aerospace fighters, and their flagship was a ‘Royal’ grade Achilles. However the builders plates recovered from the wrecks do not match any known Star League factories or companies. The vast majority of the pirates' aerospace gear were the slapdash ‘Hive’, ‘Swarmer’ and ‘Stinger’ types.
From the various examples of heavier battle armor suits you gain a slightly higher understanding of heavy battle armor suits in general for your own development.
And now it is BUDGET TIME! Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that grand?
Please try and muster some enthusiasm here.
General Stewart kicks things off. “Your Majesty, in the near future, although not this year, we will be recommending a general slowdown in ground forces procurement outside of dedicated Garrison units. As it stands our offensive forces outstrip strategic requirements until such time as we have multiple Potemkin type warships in service to support heavier assaults. Strategic materials are still a bottleneck, and once we start surging Mech production in the future we will need as many available factories as we can get.”
“Thanks to the recent attack at the Nadir of New Capricorn, we are recommending that all settled systems receive a White Tower station at the Nadir point in addition to the Zenith. As such, this will require the purchase of at least 10 White Towers in order to provide full coverage to all of the systems that are our responsibility. This, combined with the need to provide air wings to all of them, would be a very expensive outlay, coming out to over half of our discretionary budget this year after ongoing projects are tallied. However it may well be vital to our defenses. Right now the TTP is hanging with its asses collectively exposed, with none of the jump points having any significant defenses beyond dropship patrols, and while there are lesser stations at the Griffon systems Nadir, the only White Towers are all at Zenith points where they serve to protect trade. As such, we will be recommending a minimal dropship purchase this year to make up for the expenses.”
Jeremy then takes the podium. “Alright, Your Majesty. We have several formations that we need to fill out, as well as a new formation arrangement that we believe will allow for leaner, more agile, offensive forces. To that end, we are requesting the procurement of 3 Standard Mech Regiments, 3 Armored Cavalry Regiments, and 3 Armored Regiments to form our first Brigade Combat Team. We are also requesting 1 Assault Regiment to start the next brigade of the Imperial Guard. We are requesting 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment and 2 Light Horse Regiments to comprise the 6th Cavalry Brigade, thus filling out the 2nd Cavalry Division. We are requesting 3 Special Forces Regiments be raised and manned in order to form a second Special Forces Brigade, reinforcing our specops capabilities. We need 3 Rapid Reaction Regiments in order for our Rapid Reaction Division to be at full strength. Finally we are requesting 4 Mechanized Regiments to fill out two Infantry Brigades and bring their associated Division to nearly full strength.”
He shuffles his notes. “On the garrison front, in consideration of the recent attack on New Capricorn we would like to transfer the 1st Garrison Mech Brigade there to shore up their defenses. In addition, if the decision is made to colonize Nowy Śląsk then we recommend stationing a Colonial Infantry Division there as a local garrison, that is, two Colonial Infantry Regiments, two Colonial Cavalry Regiments, two Colonial Mechanized Regiments, and three CAS regiments.”
Joy, General Powerpoint is… not here? Instead her deputy is at the meeting, explaining that General Reyes is currently on Nowa Warszawa attending the graduation of the first full class from the Aerie’s extension on that world.
“Your Majesty, we have 5 Independence class vessels which will be commissioning this year, on top of the possibility of purchasing 10 White Towers and the two Oasis IIs that are completing this year. As such we recommend the purchase of 5 Carrier Wings and 18 Fighter Wings to fill those bays. We have barely sufficient pilots in the training pipeline and reserves to fill the seats, however, and the Aerie is again grumbling about impossible manpower demands. They are requesting that we build a proper annex on Calliope IV in order to expand our ASF pilot training program enough to account for such growth in the future.”
Not a single Powerpoint… blessed relief!
Thanh comes up next, and all she has is a single notebook and a massive cup of coffee. Which she hands to Bridget… “Your Majesty,” she begins, as Bridget practically inhales the Black Bean of Life, “as General Stewart alluded to earlier, due to the need to build sufficient fixed defenses at all of the uncovered jump points to deter pirate, Drac, and any other raids we might suffer, we will not be producing a significant number of dropships this year. Indeed, we are only requesting one of the new Puller class Brigade Command Transports and a pair of Vandegrift class Brigade Transports. On paper we may not appear to have sufficient Ferro Aluminium for this, on top of the ASF purchases, however the salvage from the six lost Colchesters as well as dipping into the storehouses of materials gathered for repairs to now decommissioned classes of dropships will allow us to just barely manage the three vessels. This does, however, stress that our ferro-aluminium production is not keeping up with demand, especially as our future procurement strategy is going to be shifting to a far more carrier-centric model as we expand Independence class procurement to at least 10 a year, possibly more.”
She then looks over her notes. “I will also note that the Aerie is requesting more Ensign class training dropships, we would like to accommodate them with as many as can be afforded in the budget.” she says, frowning slightly. “Crew numbers on the latest generations of dropships are lower than would be expected for their mass, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential bottlenecks. Thankfully, unlike ASFs and mechs, all we need to redress the gap is to purchase additional training vessels.”
General Stewart remains seated, just nodding to you when you glance her way once Thanh sits down.
And then a freshly caffeinated Bridget practically vibrates from her seat to the podium without seeming to stand or walk.
“Your Majesty we have a ton of new projects that we can do especially related to colonizing Nowy Śląsk and the marginally habitable moons in the New Capricorn system and next year we can start terraforming Nowa Warszawa III and building mining colonies in Griff’s Leap and maybe filtering the air on Nowy Śląsk to make it less noxious and unpleasant smelling because I’m told it smells like dirty underwear and socks all the time just really strong and overwhelming and you need a gas mask just to keep from puking it’s so bad but I’ve not smelt it so I don’t know for sure but I believe the people who told me anyways unfortunately all of our DoME teams are either tasked with projects or are taking a well deserved vacation after crash-building the Griffon IV Olympics venue which is really amazing and did you know that all of the buildings not only meet but exceed code and could survive big earthquakes if they needed to which is pretty awesome now that I think of it considering how quickly they were built since DoME does really good work anyways we can also upgrade production capacity especially of ferro aluminium and double heat sinks and ferro fibrous and all the rest and maybe even build some more factories if you really want us to because my people are ready for everything.”
That was one incredibly long sentence… and she never once even paused to breathe, even as she vibrates her overly energetic self back to her seat.
Isoroku is overseeing the diplomatic side of the games, so isn’t available The memo from the Foreign Ministry recommends potentially promoting immigration to one of the peripheral systems.
Jake is up next. “Your Majesty,” he begins, folding his massive gnarled hands together. “Our relationship with Parliament is still rocky, I strongly recommend that we continue working to shore that up. In addition, if we have the funds left over my office has been preparing an initiative to promote healthy living throughout the Empire. We’d really like to fund that program if possible.”
Dr Bryant takes the podium after Jake sits back down. “Your Majesty, there is only one new project that I would strongly recommend, and that is fully decoding and internalizing the Dart class plans that we received. We have idle Warship yards, and the perfect design with which to fill them. Otherwise if the funding is available we would recommend funding the teams working on the final sub capital laser variant, the SCL/3.”
Harry is looking about as excited as you’d ever seen him. “Your Majesty, while the prisoners we’ve taken have so far been unusually cooperative, most likely because all of them were slaves kept in line with shock collars with no actual loyalty to the pirates, we still feel that by applying full POW interrogation techniques to them we may tease out more data that they may not even know that they know. We have teams of interrogators standing by. And before anybody objects, they’ve all been trained both on interrogation techniques as well as fully briefed on the ethical use of the same, with strict instructions not to try and break any of the former slaves.”
Janet subsides a bit in her seat, then chuckles. “He knows me so well, Your Majesty. On our end, if we do decide to go ahead with colonizing Nowy Śląsk, I’ve got a few legal teams all set and ready to go in to get the legal and governmental systems organized. Just give me the word.”
