Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 33 - All Around Me Are Familiar Faces

Despite all the garbage going on with the Bratva, some things can still make you smile.

Like Thanh thinking she got one over on you by waiting until after she married her girlfriend in a civil ceremony in a small town on Pollux to tell you she had found somebody. She really thought she’d gotten out of having a proper big wedding.

Poor dear.

You let her keep that illusion for precisely 24 hours, then demonstrated to your darling tomboy of a daughter that old age and treachery beats youth and enthusiasm every time.

She tried to deploy Pout, it utterly failed. You deployed Mom Face, it was Super Effective.

Petra had, evidently, warned Thanh that there was no way they were getting away without a big wedding. Smart girl, you’d already felt quite approving of her, and that just solidified the sense that she had, well, sense.

So now there was a proper wedding on the horizon and Thanh was looking suitably chastened. It’s good to be Mom. And with Iron Wombs you won’t be deprived of grandbabies either.

Jeremy has been placed in command of his own rump company of Trooper Mechs. AFGE command wants to set the unit up as a combined company, rather than an all Trooper unit, with a lance of Ambush II and a lance of Shortbow mechs. To do so, you will need to procure a lance each of those mech types, together they will form a Light Fire Company. You would need to either build a Shortbow factory or convert an existing factory.

[]	Agree	would create a syncretic unit named ‘Light Fire Company’ consisting of 1 Lance Trooper, 1 Lance Ambush II and 1 Lance Shortbow with HP = 176, A/D = 139 and a +3 bonus to Initiative
[]	Disagree	No change

To that end, the population and infrastructure on Nowy Gdansk is now sufficient to support the production of armored fighting vehicles, although not yet sufficient to build more advanced factories for ASFs, Battlemechs, or Dropships.

Neither of the twins won the championship last year, although it was close. Smirky had missed the Chase completely and is still very salty about it. However he is getting a bit of sympathy this year as his younger brother was killed in the line of duty during a Bratva bank robbery. His reaction upon learning of this was caught on camera during an interview.

Needless to say, he might still be seen as a ‘black hat’ racer, but him breaking down and having to cut short an interview resonated strongly. He actually managed to win the first race after this, surprisingly cleanly for him.

The twins are still bouncing from relationship to relationship and do not seem all that inclined to settle down anytime soon. They seem to be following the ‘Aunt Janet’ school of relationships, with all the drama that entails.

Sarah has rather shyly introduced you to her boyfriend from Griffin’s Roost University, a fellow History major who specializes in pre-space military history focusing on the late Middle Ages and Renaissance period. Now you know how she was inspired to come up with that silly Holy Griffin Empress business.

You’ve had a background check discretely run on young Mr Bartalozzi, as he’s so very Italian it makes you taste pasta just being in his vicinity. But he very much seems to be on the up and up.

The Free Folk jumpship appears again rather ahead of schedule with concerning news, evidently the Kuritans have taken over another planet two jumps out from Griffin’s Roost. The jumpship appears to be rather more battered than it had before, according to Sarah. That is indirectly confirmed when they ask if you have any standard aerospace armor plating available in specific sizes for patch work, as well as if you would be willing to sell any ASFs to replace their losses.

You have 6 flights of the old Falcon ASFs still in use by the AeroTraining Wing, they would need to be replaced with newer birds but it would enable you to make the sale and strengthen relations with these wandering folk.

[]	Make the Sale	Lose 1 flight of Falcon ASFs from AeroTraining Wing, gain 2 rolls on the Trade Goods table with a bonus.
[]	Decline	Gain 1 roll on the Trade Goods table with a penalty

On that note, Lee Aerospace and the Royal Griffin AeroSpaceWerk have approached the Crown with some proposals.

From Lee Aerospace a replacement for the venerable Falcon. Avoiding the use of advanced technology, apart from the drive itself, the Falcon II shares the same name and armament layout as the older ASF, but literally nothing else is even remotely the same. It is significantly faster and has twice the fuel load of the older bird, making it a quite capable combatant in its own light.

[]	Name	Cost	Speed	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Falcon II Training ASF	805.6	18	28	7	Swift
[]	Reject Proposal

Meanwhile the Royal Griffin AeroSpaceWerk has completed initial testing of a massive upgrade package for the Roc dubbed the Roc II. This package takes everything that was terrifying about the original Roc and somehow manages to make it scarier. Building upon work carried out at the Aerie the new platform introduces the rather frightening Artemis IV system to help improve the guidance of the LRM-20 rack in the nose, replaces the conventional 185mm autocannon with a longer-barreled LB-20X version, swaps the 8cm lasers for a pair of Enhanced Extended-Range PPCs, and even upgrades the tail 5cm lasers to pulse variants. A half ton more fuel is just a rather small cherry on top of a very sweet cake indeed. The only fly in the ointment is that this upgrade is going to be expensive considering just how many Rocs are in service.

Brace yourself… The upgrade is going to cost 26,460.

[]	Name	Cost	Speed	HP	A/D	Materials	Specials
[]	Roc II	3950	8	156	29	FA, DHS	Armored, Armor-Piercing
[]	No

Then the elephant in the room… the situation with the Bratva.

There has been an enormous amount of progress already this year. The newly reinforced Special Branch in conjunction with aerial overwatch from the SH-1B battalion, the seconded units from Nowy Gdansk, and very aggressive policing has reaped a terrifying toll on the thugs who make up the ‘street’ level of the Bratva.

You’ve only taken down a small number of the lower level ‘thief in law’ types, but they are being interrogated extremely vigorously.

There are still regular attacks, with police and first responders being targeted by snipers and patrols being ambushed with heavy weapons, but the intensity is down significantly as you’ve managed to take a serious portion of their forces down… hard.

The Eldest has come to you requesting permission to lead the Great Hunters on a Grand Hunt against the Bratva. This would be seriously terrifying for the organization, but would place the Eldest and the Great Hunters at serious risk from the heavy weapons that the Bratva have been deploying against tigers.

[]	Cry Havoc! And Let Slip The Tigers Of War!	+2d20 Progress, risk of death of Eldest
[]	War is a Young Tiger’s Game	+1d10 Progress

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 33 - Bright And Early For Their Daily Races

The Special Branch and the Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police manage to make a break in the case against the Bratva, tracking several of the thugs with the help of the Great Hunters back to a large warehouse complex in the roughest section of Griffsport.

Almost before the reports make it back to HQ the Great Hunters, led personally by the Eldest, are assaulting the compound. You’d never considered, even with all your experience with Sekhmet and watching the tigers deal with deathapotamusaurus herds, just how terrifying an entire pack of ancient and gargantuan tigers actually is.

Industrial structures designed to last for centuries are no match for enraged 150 to 200 short ton tigers in a killing rampage. The roofs collapse, crushing the Bratva underneath, while the tigers themselves tear through those thugs who tried to fight back like a scene out of a kaiju movie.

There are no survivors amongst the Bratva in their headquarters. The Eldest had arranged for tanks of inferno gel, somehow doing this under everybody’s collective nose, and the Great Hunters were sufficiently canny and capable to dump out their contents over the wreckage and jump back before getting burned.

The fires burned for a week. Fire crews had all they could handle just holding a fire line against the inferno, no effort was made to enter into the area for rescues. By the time the flames burned out the block of warehouses looked like the aftermath of a nuclear strike.

After a few weeks there is a collective sigh of relief when no further attacks materialize. The Great Hunters and the Eldest require quite a bit of medical care, the Bratva had not gone down quietly and all of them had taken serious hits, but not even an SRM is capable of outright killing a Great Hunter, and the Eldest had tanked multiple SRMs. The wounds look horrifying, but the Eldest writes them off as ‘a less than perfect Hunt, I’ll heal.’

The Free Folk pay for the four obsolete Falcons with a load of exceptionally valuable gemstones along with detailed scans of the system the Dracs had seized, which they had in their catalog as ‘NZ-187b’ since they’d never been in contact with the inhabitants of the lone habitable planet there. All the Free Folk know about it is that it is a rather pleasant looking place dominated by massive rolling grasslands and prairies, but that the colonists had somehow lost all of their technology and had regressed to a near medieval level of subsistence.

They also turn over star charts of the Nowa Warszawa system from their archives. The system is also a jump away. It has one inhabited planet and two habitable planets total, with extensive asteroid belts and a single Super Jupiter. According to the Free Folk there was an abandoned and non-functional Recharge Station at the Zenith point that appeared to have been part of an SLDF outpost, but the Free Folk had never found any actual artifacts or gear, simply an empty and nearly destroyed station that is far beyond being salvageable.

There is further commercial trade with the Free Folk which results in increased economic activity across the system, boosting GDP slightly.

Jeremy is quite pleased with his first command, and sends you a personal note in which he looks forward to testing out the combined company in training exercises once the mech’s are built. You discover from that that this organizational plan was one of his and Alita’s Senior Projects for their Advanced Tactics class and he’s tickled pink that you approved it without knowing he was behind it.

Clever kid, already thinking like that. You approve! Plus… grandbabies!

The twins are 9 races into the season, both have won one race and have finished in the top 5 together in 7 of the 9 races, with the two exceptions seeing one or the other finishing ‘only’ in the top 10. Smirky has also won a race and, while he’s still exceptionally aggressive, he doesn’t seem as prone to deliberate feuding. Most of his crew are still jerks to everybody else in the pit lane, but you can’t have everything.

Thanh continues to pout right up to the moment the wedding itself takes place, at which point she learns just how weddings make most people feel once they actually happen.

At the reception, of course, you have to put up a slide show of Thanh’s greatest Tomboy Hits growing up, leading to an anguished wail of “MOM!” from your darling daughter. Really, try to deprive dear old mom of a wedding and then think you’ll get away without embarrassment? Your daughter is far too optimistic.

Besides, it’s not like you included any of the really embarrassing pictures, now is it.

Sarah and Tony Bartalozzi are still very cute together, although he’s still far too Italian. You forgive him for that when he cooks up some homemade lasagna that is better than anything the Palace cooks had managed in all your years living there.

Of course the two of them are excitedly chattering away about Guelphs and Neo-Guelphs and White Guelphs and Black Guelphs and Ghibellites and… you completely lose track of the entire conversation very early on. You didn’t bore them with economic theory, after all… so why are they torturing you with Renaissance Italian factions that you couldn’t keep straight when you were in school? You passed History!

Parliament comes through with an interesting proposal to address the economic challenges facing the Empire, especially in light of the aftermath of the Bratva situation.

They are proposing the following:

• Empire Wide Tax Rate dropped by 2% for 10 years
• The funds that would have otherwise been raised by the tax rate are invested in the economy
  • +2% GDP on Nowy Gdansk, GIAB, +1% GDP on Griffin’s Roost
  • +10 Imperial Economic Rating
  • +5 Econ Rating Nowy Gdansk, +10 Econ Rating GIAB, +10 Econ Rating Griffin’s Roost
• Extensive Economic Incentive Spending - encourage increased market activity
  • +10000 Interior Upkeep
  • For 10 years
    • +10% GDP Nowy Gdansk
    • +25% GDP GIAB
    • +5% GDP Griffin’s Roost
  • Permanent
    • +10 Economic and Research Event
    • +5 Imperial Economic Rating
    • +5 Econ Rating Nowy Gdansk
    • +25 Econ Rating GIAB
    • +10 Econ Rating Griffin’s Roost

[]	Decision	Effect
[]	Approve	Implement above plan
[]	Disapprove	-10 Support Senate and Chamber of Delegates

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 33 - When People Run In Circles

You rather like it when Parliament actually pulls their weight for a change rather than simply being a pain in your backside. It’s a refreshing change.

The passage and implementation of the new plan has immediate effects, resulting in a surge of economic activity throughout the system. Civilian dropships are hard put to keep up with the surging demand for raw materials from the asteroid belt and it appears that the efforts to boost the economy have fully paid off already, with even better things projected ahead.

The Luxury Airship company that you are a part owner of has put up a proposal to the board of directors, which you sit on, to invest in luxury dropships to begin passenger and tourist service throughout the system. The proposed designs are every bit as opulent as the airships while containing every single safety system that the engineers have been able to devise to make them as safe as possible.

The initial design is for a large Aerodyne based on the files available for the Monarch class vessel. Future plans include building the massive Princess-class ultra luxury dropships. You’ll be able to afford your share of this expansion quite easily just from dividends, but approving this proposal will prevent such dividends until the dropship service begins, at which point they will be twice as valuable.

[] Yes
[] No

Jeremy is a busy little eager beaver, and shows up at your office accompanied by a number of representatives from several Industrialmech concerns with a proposal for you.

You don’t yet have a Shortbow factory, and until the Light Fire Company concept is proved out you may not need one. Jeremy has gotten a number of manufacturers experienced with lesser designs to hand-build a single unit’s worth of the middle-weight fire support mech at a premium. This wouldn’t at all be sustainable, but the primary rights holder has agreed to the proposal as they feel it is their best chance at earning long term profits from series production.

[]	Agree	Cost 3000, gain 1 lance of Shortbow FS Mechs for the Light Fire Company
[]	Disagree

The twins are doing absolutely wonderfully this year, the new aero package rules seem to be working out very much in their favor, especially on the more challenging long tracks. Quan and James have been swapping the 1st and 2nd slot all season now, as they never finish worse than 8th and have 5 wins between them.

There’s a new driver this year who is making one hell of a splash. Nobody knows the guy's name, nobody has seen his face, as he never takes his helmet off in public. He hasn’t won a race, he’s always up there in contention. Sergeant-Major Ngo assures you that he’s been vetted, so somebody does know, but nobody who does is spoiling the mystery.

Some say he is working with a motoring show featuring three old guys who faff about in fast cars and make utter asses of themselves on camera, and that he knows four facts about Grifftigers, all of which are wrong. All we know is, he’s called HoverStig.

Thanh is on leave for her honeymoon, taking an around the world flying cruise on a luxury airship. From the calls and emails you’ve gotten from her she is having a grand time with her wife.

Sarah is going to be presenting a paper at a Historical Research Symposium on ‘Parallels and Divergences Between the Holy Roman Empire and the Star League’. You tried to read it, you really did, but after the fifth page of footnotes you gave up. Your academic days are long behind you, but Sarah seems to enjoy this immensely.

Then it’s that time of year again, budget time.

Say it with me now…. YAY! BUDGET TIME!

Could you at least fake some enthusiasm?

General Jackson kicks things off. “Your Majesty, as the recent events with the Bratva show, you can never have too much scouting capacity. The SH-1B proved itself very useful, along with the jump infantry. However the main drawback of the SH-1B/Jump Infantry combination is that in situations where the infantry is contraindicated, the SH-1B alone is a fairly weak scouting platform. We have plans for an ultra-fast VTOL scout platform that is completely independent of any infantry attachments. Moreover, this unit doesn’t require any strategic materials. The manufacturer is willing to provide us with a battalion set of the AH-2 at a discount in a similar arrangement as we got the Jaguar MBTs. The total cost would be 7200, as opposed to 8316 if we procured them normally, but we would agree to procure a second battalion set for the Rapid Reaction Force.”

[]	Name	Cost	HP	A/D	Special
[]	AH-2	924	36	9	Swift, VTOL, Scout, TAG
[]	No

“In addition, we strongly recommend the procurement of at least a single lance of the Ambush II mech to fill out the Light Fire Company demonstration unit. Further procurement of Trooper, Pathfinder and Ambush II mechs is also recommended to start filling out the mech force for 2nd Brigade. The 1st Aerie Cadre is requesting Cadet mechs to start beefing up their training equipment.”

She starts to step back then pauses “Oh, before I forget, now that there is sufficient production capacity on Nowy Gdansk, it might be a good show of support to produce the start of an urban defense battalion of Verdun UDVs there. We could produce the entire battalion set, or we could spread it out. Also, we might want to consider training several battalions or even a full regiment of Space Marines, now that we have orbital habitats under construction in the Asteroid Belt.”

General Reyes takes the podium then. “We have concluded the contest for the upgrade to the Goshawk. None of the proposals require any strategic materials to produce, allowing the platform to continue to be a viable filler ASF for defensive deployments. One of the designs that stuck out to the committee was the so-called Gausshawk, equipped with a gauss rifle instead of the Class 20 autocannon. While it loses the can opener of the autocannon, the increased overall effectiveness in simulations was noticeable as over time it had a higher damage output ratio.”

[]	Name	Cost	Upgrade Cost	HP	Fuel	A/D	Specials
[]	Goshawk 2L	1688.4	8506.8	96	5.5	14	Swift, Armored, Armor-Piercing
[]	Gausshawk 2G	1601.6	7031.2	108	6	17	Swift, Armored, AMS 1
[]	Goshawk X2	1751.6	9581.2	96	5	14	Swift, Armored, Armor-Piercing, AMS 1
[]	Support Hawk	1832.4	10954.8	100	6	15	Swift, Armored, Armor Piercing, AMS 3
[]	Warhawk II	1722	9078	100	5.5	15	Swift, Armored, Armor-Piercing

“The only platforms we recommend producing this year are Gyrfalcons to beef up our general interception force and Goshawks of whatever variant is successful in this procurement run to defend the stations in the Asteroid Belt.”

Admiral Benjamin then takes over. “Your Majesty, the next Defiant is well under construction. That being said, we’d like to propose taking advantage of the larger Aerodyne frames available to produce a proper assault ASF carrier. We would like your permission to open up a design contest to industry for this purpose.”

[] Approve
{] Disapprove

General Potter then takes the podium “Your Majesty, it goes without saying that I approve of the recommendations of my subordinates. I would like to especially stress the potential advantages to producing the Verduns on Nowy Gdansk both in terms of the defense of the planet but also in welding the inhabitants closer to the throne.”

Bridget is back to her normal perky Bridget-ness. “Your Majesty! Great news! We may have a lot on our plate right now, with all the surveys and construction that we’ve got going, but we’ve also got lots of great ideas for what we can do next. For starters, more resource surveys would never be a bad idea, and they’re relatively cheap thanks to our buddy Sarah. Finally we have all these imperial resources laying around, we can spend them on really turbocharging development on one of the planets in the system! For example, boosting up Nowy Gdansk would get them another step closer to being able to support full up battlemech and ASF factories, while doing the same on Griffin’s Roost proper would really boost our income next year thanks to all the sweet sweet economic growth!”

Isoroku has vacation, as he just recently got married and is on his honeymoon. He left a memo though, recommending another music festival, along with a note ‘and get us a proper Imperial anthem sometime soon, will you.’.

Jake is ebullient as ever. “Your Majesty, there’s no need to keep on schmoozing with the schmucks in Parliament, but I will if you really want me to. Instead, let’s work on expanding DoME so we can support more than one project at a time and, to keep Isoroku from committing sudoku on us, let’s go ahead and get us an anthem. A proper one this time.”

Mary shows up with her regular array of presentations. “I again won’t waste your time with things we’ve already gone over, Your Majesty. But we have a few new things.”

• Streak SRM (All)
  • The Star League never bothered with expanding Streak to more than 2 packs, there’s no fundamental reason it won’t work
• CASE (Cellular Armor Storage Equipment)
  • When ammunition and fire meet, bad things happen. This stops that.

She quirks her lips as she reads the slides, then comments “And I see I’ll need to supervise my interns a little more closely, my apologies, Your Majesty.” then calls up her recommendations.

• Military
  • Heavy Battlemechs
    • Continuing to strengthen our Mech forces will be exceptionally useful for when we start liberating our neighbors from Drac tyranny, heavier designs are more efficient in terms of capability per mech bay.
  • Laser Anti-Missile System
    • Simplifies logistics by eliminating the need to stock AMS ammunition, in addition the targeting protocols for this system can be used in exo-atmospheric situations to permit any light weapon to act as an anti-missile system.
• Non-Military
  • Thermal Dissipation (Advanced) Tier 1
    • We need to get started on this sometime as we predict a long row to hoe before we see significant results
  • Structural Materials (Advanced) Tier 1
    • For the same reason as above
  • Spheroid Dropships (Medium)
    • There’s no reason that military research should be confined to the Aerie
    • Larger dropships are more efficient as transports, both civil and military

Harry is taking time off, but he also left a memo for you recommending consideration of a true ‘Black Site’ in orbit to hold high value prisoners.

Janet is a bit giddy, she’s got more grandbabies of her own after all, but she’s also professional as always. “I’d like to see some commendations for the Special Branch and Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police for how well they handled the Bratva situation. We’re continuing the investigations, not simply into the Bratva themselves, but also what you might say is the ‘bratva-adjacent’ groups and individuals.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 33 - It’s a Very Very…. Mad World.

Spoiler: Event, Luck and Rating Rolls

Meta Event Roll - 44 - No Event
Dynasty Luck Roll - 4 - Artemis research completed this turn for free

Imperial Approval - 5
Approval Change - -2
Politics - 2

Imperial Economics - 6
Economy Event - -1
Research Event - -1

Griffin’s Roost Econ - 2
Griffin’s Roost POP - 10
Griffin’s Roost Rating Change - 2

Nowy Gdansk Econ - 2
Nowy Gdansk POP - 3
Nowy Gdansk Rating Change - 0

GIAB Econ - 1
GIAB POP - N/A
GIAB Rating Change - 3

Spoiler: Action Rolls

Purchase New Units
-1 Flight of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 60
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Trooper Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Ambush Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Pathfinder Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lances Cadet Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 69
Result - SUCCESS

-5 Platoons Jaguar MBT [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 1
Result - Critical Success

-27 Platoons Space Marines [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

-9 Platoons Verdun UDV [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 44
Result - SUCCESS

-9 Platoons AH-2 [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

Focus Development on Griffin's Roost. [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 46
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for Shortbow [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for Falcon II [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 21
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Asteroid 3 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 2 (Endosteel) [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Benefit Concert [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with Chamber of Delegates [60]
Target - 60
Roll - -82, ShadowArxxy Reroll - -95, Kelgar04 Reroll - 99, Kelgar04 Reroll - 92
Result - FAIL

Strengthen political ties to Nowy Gdansk [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Conduct Referendum on Imperial Anthem [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

Electronics lvl 4 [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 89
Result - FAIL

Power Generation lvl 4 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 90
Result - FAIL

Improved Communications Lvl 4 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 90
Result - FAIL

Advanced Ultra Autocannons* [auto]

Light Quad Mechs [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 94
Result - SUCCESS

Spheroid Dropships (medium) [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 92
Result - FAIL

Clear and Secure Ruins [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

----

Most of the time you think your grandfather and great-grandfather were geniuses in how they set up the Department of Periphery Studies. Sure they cause heartburn sometimes, and their antics can be alarming every so often, but they tend to be comic relief and harmless, and the concept gives the mentally ill far more dignity than any other means of handling the issue.

Then there are times, like now, where you want to systematically strangle every single one of them and curse your ancestors.

The Imperial Parliament is under siege. By the faculty of the Department of Periphery Studies. Who stormed the building wearing giant hot dog costumes and declaring that they are taking over to protest the gross injustice to bratwurst.

It would help if they knew how to spell, but massive banners reading ‘Brat Iives Matert’ are now festooning the building, the Delegates of the Chamber of Delegates are unable to leave their cloakrooms without getting sprayed with mustard and ketchup, the feedback squeals from far too many megaphones in use too close together is painful, and Jake has all but given up trying to accomplish anything in terms of meeting with the Delegates.

The janitorial staff is furious and demanding overtime to clean this mess up, because they can’t even get started without getting squirted by ‘tenured professors of Periphery Studies’ wielding large industrial-sized bottles of ketchup.

And that’s not even the worst part about this new obsession. Only half of the faculty are involved, the rest have ‘occupied’ the research labs at the University in order to conduct ‘war games’ with water pistols, nerf guns, and giant foam swords. The entire engineering and research department has ground to a complete halt while law enforcement tries to figure out how to deal with this strangeness.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get sillier, the second group decided that the first group were heretics and started chanting ‘Deus Vult’ while marching on Parliament, the first group decided the second group was in league with the Axis Of Sausages and boiled out of the Parliament building behind hurled baggies filled with mayonnaise, and everything is being caught on film by the entire media.

You check and discover that thanks to a paperwork snafu the Research Assistants had run out of the appropriate meds to keep their charges reasonably docile.

So now you have a completely trashed Parliament building that is still dripping with ketchup, mustard, and mayo, and the R&D staff is having to reset all of their experimental work and clean everything up before resuming work due to the shenanigans. On the positive side the proper meds have arrived and things have calmed down enough that the RAs were able to get the faculty to return to their own buildings.

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to wake up in the morning. You send a rather pointed memo to the Director of the Department of Periphery Studies rather pithily reminding him that part of his job is to keep things like this from happening and that if there is another failure at this level you will be reconsidering the Crown’s support for his program, or at least for his leadership of the program.

Both of the twins are in the championship hunt again this year, and this time Quan comes home with the trophy by 2 seconds over his brother. The race itself is marred by a nasty brawl, but for a wonder Smirky isn’t involved this time around, rather two other drivers got tangled up on pit road and their crews decided that a bout of fisticuffs was the best way to argue the situation.

Thanh is back on duty, although she is still grumbling about being in a ‘slow lumbering beast’ of a Roc II rather than an Eagle. While she grumbles in private, she’s wise enough to keep her opinion to herself around her unit and is establishing a reputation as a superb pilot for the 100 ton beast.

Speaking of the Eagle, however, near the end of the year you get a refit proposal from the Aerie for an Eagle II making full use of the new technological advances since the original Eagle was designed. The biggest problems you foresee are two fold. One, the new design is shockingly expensive, albeit cheaper than the Roc II, and it requires both Ferro-Aluminium and Double Heat Sinks as strategic materials. The actual upgrade will cost 19,490.40 to upgrade the two existing wings plus Enterprise’s flight.

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	Speed	Fuel	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Eagle II	2882.8	FA, DHS	9	8	184	27	Armored x2
[]	Reject

Sarah is turning out to be quite the scholar, she’s already been accepted into a graduate program in History at GRU, and looks quite like she’ll happily settle into the academic life. Her and Mr Bartalozzi are still dating, and are quite serious about it, but somehow you’d never in your life considered a research library to be a ‘happening’ sort of place for a romantic date. That could just be you, because your daughter and her boyfriend seem to wind up in such places for their dates.

That’s when you get an evil idea and contact Janet, having her assign Jane to bodyguard Sarah with strict instructions to do nothing to reveal her presence to either your daughter, her boyfriend, or any other library patrons. You can already hear the whining and moaning.

Jeremy is happily leading his Light Fire Company around the proving grounds on Nowy Gdansk to test out tactical concepts, and it appears that the mixed company is quite effective in synergizing the capabilities of the various platforms within it.

QM Note - so long as you have 1 factory slot open for 1 Ambush II, 1 Trooper, and 1 Shortbow you can now purchase complete Light Fire Company units using standard procurement actions. See Ground Tracker for costs.

The new Gyrfalcon wing is continuing to grow. It’s currently based on Nowy Gdansk to provide rapid ASF support to the garrison. Meanwhile the new Goshawk flight is now in service on the freshly built station out in the Inner Asteroid Belt along with a full regiment of Space Marines to garrison the stations as they come online.

Your mech forces have grown in strength with the latest procurement, and the Jaguar unit is now at full strength itself. Likewise 2 full Battalion sets of the new AH-2 are now in service and already proving to be quite capable scout platforms.

There is now a full battalion of Verdun UDVs in service on Nowy Gdansk, assembled in local facilities. In combination with the efforts to strengthen ties of trust and comradeship between Nowy Gdansk and the Crown at this point the citizens of the planet can be considered 100% citizens of the Griffin Empire. As a consequence there has been an economic surge alongside a burst of population as ethnic Polish residents of Griffin’s Roost proper are now able to emigrate to Nowy Gdansk, with full internal immigration being opened in several years in an effort to preserve the unique cultural matrix of the planet.

Imperial investment in boosting the local economy on Griffin’s Roost itself has been fairly effective, seeing economic growth in all sectors. This is not something that can be sustained, but certainly investment in other areas will prove useful as well.

Several new factories have been built, and the Endo-Steel foundry in orbit has been expanded.

The benefit concert goes quite well. Featuring a series of classical music reimagined as more ‘epic’ music suitable for trailers and such. Attendance is solid and you rather enjoyed the music.

In terms of the national anthem you’ve been presented with a small menu of choices, more of ‘types’ of music than specific pieces, which will then be worked on to produce a proper anthem.

[] Militaristic
[] Epic and Inspirational
[] Patriotic and Grand
[] Poetic and Aspirational

The new ultra-autocannons are now available, being one of two projects that were completely housed in the Aerie and thus avoiding the mess with the Department of Periphery Studies. The other is the Quad Light Mech.

The initial prototype design from that project is available for production if a factory is built, it’s a 35 ton mech that tops out at almost 130 kph with a jump range of 240 meters. Armed with a single Enhanced ER PPC and equipped with both TAG and a Beagle Probe, the Orb Weaver is a supreme scout platform.

The Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police were fully occupied clearing out and fully securing the ruins, chasing out fairly large numbers of vagrants and squatters who’d slipped in and had been occupying the area. This is their official excuse for not being able to help out with the Periphery Studies situation at Parliament, although you are of the opinion that the real reason is that the ‘tigers had no interest in getting ketchup squirted on them.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 34 - Somebody Once Told Me

Your grandson is a delight, as he’s at that age where he loves sitting on grandma’s lap while you work at your desk. Jeremy was like that as a toddler and you missed that. Your eldest granddaughter was in the playpen your own kids had used when they were little playing intently with some soft toys. John had moved on to blocks when he wasn’t drowsing on your lap.

And you had a third grandbaby on the way. You knew your strategy of giving Jeremy and Alita plenty of free childcare would yield grandbabies. Another little girl, according to the doctors.

You were currently facing a bit of a dilemma. The population of Nowy Gdansk had grown enough that they could staff a single major factory, which would give you some more production capacity, however that wouldn’t be the most efficient use of their energies in regards to growing and sustaining the economy. You have been considering several avenues during consultations with Bridget and representatives of Nowy Gdansk. All of the options are generally decent, and all come with the risk of various challenges in the future no matter which you choose, apart from simply keeping things general and allowing it to happen on it’s own.

[]	Option	Effects
[]	General Economic Focus	+50% GDP Growth Nowy Gdansk
[]	Heavy Industrial Focus	+10,000 Upkeep, +100% GDP Growth Nowy Gdansk, -20 Health Rating Nowy Gdansk, +5 Factory Rating Nowy Gdansk
[]	Commercial Focus	+10,000 Upkeep, +100% GDP Growth Nowy Gdansk, +20 Econ Rating Nowy Gdansk
[]	Military Focus	Gain a free Factory at Rating 1

QM Note - For Heavy Industrial, Commercial, and Military Focus, these decisions will open possible future event chains.

Sarah sends you an alert, albeit an informational one not a priority one. She has completed analysis of ultra high definition scans of the Free Folks jumpship and has discovered something… interesting. Each of the permanently docked dropship’s 'noses’ have been converted into turret structures which house what appear to be significantly oversized lasers. They are much too small to be capital naval lasers, but far larger than your extended range 8cm models.

These appear to be some sort of sub-capital laser, which doesn’t appear in any datacores that Sarah has access to and appears to be something unique to these Free Folk. The AI has already delivered her analysis to the researchers at the Aerie who are looking into the matter and have promised to report once they have any proposals.

This year is the Olympics, with both Winter and Summer events. It’s of little surprise that the residents of Nowy Gdansk do exceptionally well in the Winter events, which are held in early January. The event teams are able to produce sufficient artificial snow for skiing, snowboarding, and other outdoor events, but it is a strain considering that they can’t turn the equipment off even for a minute otherwise they’d fall behind the ridiculous melt rate due to Griffin’s Roost being a tropical planet. And this was with the entire event being held right near the Arctic Circle outside of Five Fingers, which is currently the coldest continuously inhabited city on the planet.

It gets below freezing on rare occasions in the winter… at midnight… rarely. The lowest daily high since they built the place has been 2 degrees Celsius. As far as you are concerned this is frightfully cold, but to the people of Nowy Gdansk this is downright sweltering. You can easily tell if any given competitor is from Griffin’s Roost or Nowy Gdansk, the locals are wrapped up in bulky winter clothing and are shivering, those from Nowy Gdansk are wearing swimsuits.

If you tried that your nipples would freeze off.

Needless to say, the podiums are swept by Poles for the entire Winter Event. You look forward to the Summer, where you are sure things will be a bit different.

The twins have started a charitable program for professional racers in which they mentor and sponsor poor kids in the Pee Wee and Junior leagues. So far the response has been overwhelming, with turnout for Pee Wee and Junior races almost quintupling. With the professional season starting the twins have a bit less time to personally devote to the project, but they make sure that their crews stay fully involved and regularly bring the kids to the professional races with Pit passes and top of the line seats.

You are proud of the boys, even if they haven’t gotten married and given you grandbabies.

Thanh is still flying Roc IIs despite the upgrades given to the Eagle. She’s now a flight leader, in charge of a four-ship flight, and seems to be doing rather well in her chosen career. Her wife is likewise doing well working in the R&D field, in fact she’s on the team that’s reviewing those enlarged lasers that Sarah spotted.

Sarah and Tony are becoming even more serious, at least in their own geeky little way. They’ve co-authored a paper together! Just think, all those hours of romantic time in the library, just him, her, and the Dewey Decimal System.

You look at Willis.

Willis looks at you.

You both nod.

Time for parental intervention.

Everybody else has already accepted that those two are a pair. Those two are completely and totally oblivious.

So after checking and finding that Tony’s parents are just as fondly exasperated with their son’s obliviousness as you are to your daughter’s… talking to Mrs Bartalozzi reveals that he’s been cooking the family-only spaghetti recipe for your daughter, which as far as Mrs Bartalozzi is concerned makes Sarah family… you Take Steps(™).

You handle Sarah, Mrs Bartalozzi is handling Tony. After initial sputtering and nuclear grade blushing you manage to get Sarah to admit that she would totally love to marry Tony, and evidently Mrs Bartalozzi has managed to extract the same confession from her son.

After the most nerdily awkward proposals in the history of ever, you have finally gotten the pair of them to See The Light. The wedding is in three months. They are both barred from the research library until then on the grounds that you don’t want them distracted.

The things you do for grandbabies.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 34 - I Ain’t The Sharpest Tool In The Shed

Spring comes in like, well, spring. It’s nothing special, really, just more… spring like, you guess.

Of course, it also means that you are wearing the single most over the top ornate gown you’ve ever worn, complete with a wig of all things, as your darling daughter has gone so far around the bend in wedding planning that you are shocked.

And kicking yourself.

Because Sarah and Tony had gone so utterly nerdy that they decided to have a full up maximum Baroque wedding with all of the stops pulled out, all the fripperies and frivolities pulled in, and then fine tuning the whole thing up to 11.

Thank God for Air Conditioning, because you are absolutely certain that you would die from heat exhaustion if you so much as thought about going outside. The ruffles have ruffles, the layers have layers, there’s enough lace involved in this thing that you are certain there is now a lace shortage Empire wide.

And the wig, good god the wig. You wear your hair sensibly, not too short, not too long, comfortable. This wig weighs more than your combat helmet and is a frosted confection that is so dizzyingly complicated that you got a headache trying to figure it out.

Willis didn’t escape either, although you must say he really rocks the outfit. It’s just as over the top extravagant, and amusingly he’s having to wear high heeled buckled boots with it. Of course he wears the whole thing with total aplomb. It’s probably his fault anyways.

The bridesmaids are wearing gowns that are only marginally less over the top ornate than yours, with slightly less… exuberant wigs. But evidently Sarah’s friends came into this knowing they’d get stuffed into those monstrosities.

Nerds. All of them.

Tony looks like he just stepped out of a recruiting poster for Condottiere. Complete with a rapier that looks quite suitable for the swashing of many buckles. And still managing to look more Italian than should be allowed by law.

Your daughter’s gown makes yours look drab and plain. As she paces down the aisle to an exceptionally over the top wedding march that you vaguely recognize, even if it’s not the ‘traditional’ one, on Willis’ arm, she looks positively radiant. You are quite certain that you could easily purchase an entire lance of new Troopers with how much that dress cost, as outside the sheer insane baroque complexity of it you can see hundreds of gems glittering from where they decorate the intricate patterns of embroidery and lace. There are pearls, there are garnets, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, diamonds, you name the gem, there’s that gem. And somehow it works. It manages that indescribable balance between too gaudy and gauche, and too ‘try-hard’. It simply works.

OK, you admit it, it’s an absolutely gorgeous wedding. And you want to kick yourself because you are certain that if you hadn’t pushed those two as hard as you did they’d not be torturing you with this extravaganza.

The press and the people seem to be loving it, at least. So there’s that much.

After the sheer torture of the reception (Do people not realize just how hard it is to sit down with a bustle that huge?) the newlyweds head off on their honeymoon.

Maybe you’ll get more grandbabies out of this, would be the silver lining on the entire affair.

Parliament seems determined to be… helpful. Well, mostly so. Apart from the ordinary business of governance that proves quite smooth this year, there are a few proposals and pieces of legislation that you’ll need to consider and sign off on.

First of all, a bill to encourage internal emigration of culturally Polish citizens of Griffin’s Roost to Nowy Gdansk. The Chamber of Delegates points out that the climate alone is a serious barrier to many people, such that incentives would be needed if you want to see any real growth via internal migration. The Senate is less sanguine about this, thinking that time alone would be enough when combined with economic opportunities. It should be noted that the Delegates and Senators from Nowy Gdansk are amenable to either proposal.

[]	Side with Chamber of Delegates	Costs 50,000, transfers 10,000 POP from Griffin’s Roost to Nowy Gdansk, +25% GDP Nowy Gdansk next 5 turns, -1% GDP Griffin’s Roost this turn only. +5 Support Chamber of Delegates, -5 Support Senate
[]	Side With Senate	Transfers 1,000 POP from Griffin’s Roost to Nowy Gdansk, +5% GDP Nowy Gdansk this turn only +5 Support Senate, -5 Support Chamber of Delegates
[]	Side With Neither	-5 Support Senate, -5 Support Chamber of Delegates

Secondly, both the Senate and Chamber of Delegates are proposing to tighten and strengthen environmental protection laws Empire wide. As it stands every planet sets their own environmental policy, this bill would transfer this to the Imperial level and standardize things across all planets, with individual planets being able to set more stringent requirements if required by local conditions.

Business interests are firmly against the bill, then again they’ve opposed every environmental initiative that’s ever come up and have been lobbying hard at the Planetary level to weaken or even eliminate environmental laws you’ve put in place in the past.

[]	Approve	+1 POP Limit all planets. +10 Health all planets, +5 Research Event Rating, -50 Econ Rating, -10 Approval, +5 Politics
[]	Veto	-10 Support Senate, -10 Support Chamber of Delegates, -5 Politics, -5 Research Rating, -1 POP Limit all planets, -5 Health all planets, +10 Econ Rating

Finally there is legislation from the Chamber of Delegates that, to be honest, is a minor power grab but one that really wouldn’t harm you politically. A number of delegates from Griffin’s Roost have pushed through a bill that would mandate that the next two DoME projects be, in order, building water purification systems on the coast of Phoenix and then building a mega-pipeline to transport the water to the interior in order to open the entire continent up for mining and exploitation.

[]	Agree	+1 Influence Chamber of Delegates, +10 Support Chamber of Delegates
[]	Oppose	-10 Support Chamber of Delegates

Shifting away from Parliament, a consortium of racing executives representing various wheeled vehicle racing types have approached the crown. Representatives of endurance racing, stock car racing, Formula racing, off-road racing, and even karting have all gotten together and are requesting an Imperial Imprimatur allowing them to consolidate into a single governing body on the same model as the Hovercraft Racing League.

As it stands, in aggregate the various motorsports are managing to remain solvent, but they are all individually struggling due to the dominance of hovercraft racing thanks to your patronage and the participation of the twins.

Right now, thanks to your Imprimatur and patronage, the Hovercraft Racing League is functionally exempt from antitrust considerations, allowing them to consolidate operations to a degree that is driving the more traditional racing leagues into a severe competitive disadvantage.

You have two different options. First of all, withdraw your patronage of the Hovercraft Racing League, which would force it to split off the various sub-leagues (endurance races, sprint races, formula races, etc) into their own bodies. This would have severe consequences for the HRL, as the massive profitability of the Formula races, which the twins compete in, allows the League to offer substantial purses for endurance, sprint, and the lower level leagues. Severing the sub-leagues apart would quite likely see the quick death of the endurance and sprint leagues, as they’d be unlikely to be immediately viable at the scale they currently are at without the overall League support.

Second you could agree to extend your sponsorship to the more traditional forms of motorsports, allowing them to consolidate and enjoy the same corporate advantages as the HRL. This would allow the two fully profitable series, stock car and Formula, to drive resources and support to the less profitable series and thus permit the whole to become financially sound.

[]	Withdraw HRL patronage	The twins would be unhappy. -10 Approval Change, +5 Economy Event
[]	Extend patronage to traditional motorsports	Opens new event chains, +1% tax rate next year

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 34 - You’ll Never Shine If You Don’t Glow

There are ten general events for the Olympics this year, well for the Summer edition at least. While many of them can be broken down between male and female competitors the only one that was ‘formally’ split was gymnastics, since oddly enough there were two completely different federations responsible for men’s gymnastics and women’s gymnastics. And a third federation for men’s and women’s rhythmic gymnastics.

From what you’ve been able to discover this was very much a case of too many egos and too few willing to compromise. There had been discussions of ways to reunify the sports, but none of them ever got very far before bickering over events decades or even over a century ago would erupt and the various federations would part under even worse terms than before.

The men’s and women’s gymnastics federations refused to use each other's facilities for numerous arcane reasons, and it usually took massive arm twisting to get either to allow the rhythmic gymnasts to use ‘their’ facilities for competitions. It was a mess.

Traditionally, at least on Griffin’s Roost, the Men’s and Women’s Marathon was run on the same course at the same time, timed to conclude in the stadium as part of the grand finale of the Opening Ceremony.

This year there was a bit of an informal competition going on between the athletes from Nowy Gdansk and those from Griffin’s Roost, a sort of competition within the competition. Normally the Games were all about individual performance, so this was somewhat unusual.

Not unwelcome, it added a bit of zest and zing, and gave the commentators things to talk about, which was always welcome from their perspective.

You glared at Jane for the informal competition, since you were certain it was all her fault. Whichever ‘team’, the competitors from Nowy Gdansk or the ones from Griffin’s Roost, who did better at any given event would get to engage in a charity potato sack race against you, Willis, and your kids. With the proceeds from pay-per-view broadcast going to the charity of the winners choice.

You are absolutely certain that you did not agree to this, and the so-called ‘agreement’ that Jane flourished at you appeared to be something completely unrelated, but the damn woman had made the announcement on live TV and it was impossible to back down without looking bad.

Hrmmmm… the Griffsport Zoo did have an opening for a dung removal specialist for their cape buffalo exhibit. You think you just found a volunteer.

Back to the marathon. To the surprise of nearly everybody, the Nowy Gdansk ‘team’ not only took Gold and Bronze in the Men’s Marathon, they took both the Silver and Bronze in the Women’s Marathon. Evidently their tactic of having friends throw chilled water balloons at them every mile or so neatly counteracted the effects of the great heat. Clever when combined with constant proper hydration. Race officials were stymied by the fact that while there were rules about chilled towels, portable fans, portable A/C units, and people running alongside in relays with umbrellas, nobody had ever thought of using coolers filled with water balloons.

The first regular event of the competition was the Decathlon. The Griffin’s Roost ‘team’ wound up taking that one, but it was more closely contested than many had expected.

In Fencing the Nowy Gdansk team had only entered a single fencer and she got beaten in the first round of eliminations, likewise in Martial Arts none of the Nowy Gdansk competitors made it past the second round.

The various swimming and diving competitions were more mixed, with neither the Nowy Gdansk nor the Griffin’s Roost teams coming out decisively the victor, although in the end the Griffin’s Roost athletes edged out their rivals.

Then came the various gymnastics competitions.

In Men’s Gymnastics the Nowy Gdansk competitors got completely smoked. You strongly suspect that the competitors who joined up for it had been fueled more by vodka and bravado than any actual gymnastic training. Personally, you think that some of the young men involved had signed up while drunk and had been too macho to back down once they realized what they’d done, preferring the humiliation of losing horribly to the shame of backing down on a drunken bet.

Men.

In Rhythmic Gymnastics the Griffin’s Roost men utterly dominated again, although in the women’s competition it was surprisingly much closer. The Women’s Silver was, in fact, won by a girl from Nowy Gdansk who looked like she bench pressed tanks for a light workout, yet who moved with a nearly preternatural grace on the mat.

In Women’s Gymnastics, however, the Griffin’s Roost girls were thoroughly humiliated. The worst scoring girl from Nowy Gdansk scored a full point higher than the best scoring girl from Griffin’s Roost. Learning that all of the girls from Nowy Gdansk who’d been competing had been in the Home Army working as couriers and hit and run experts, making use of parkour maneuvers to evade the enemy which they’d managed to translate to actual gymnastics explained some of the surprising results.

The general track and field events, the various distance runs and the sprints, jumps, and the lot, were far more closely matched than anybody had expected, but in the end the sheer number of competitors from Griffin’s Roost overwhelmed the individual performance of those from Nowy Gdansk.

And finally the shooting competition was an utterly humiliating exercise in pure domination by the Home Army veteran snipers of Nowy Gdansk. Somehow target shooting was quite easy when nobody was shooting back at you.

So you wind up having to engage in potato sack races against three ‘teams’ from Nowy Gdansk and 7 from Griffin’s Roost. You put your foot down on Jane’s initial suggestion of a hundred meter potato sack race, by threatening to make her run a potato sack marathon on Nowy Gdansk in her birthday suit. In high winter. During a blizzard.

So you, Willis, and the kids wind up running ten ten meter heats against the various teams, all on camera, all for charity. Even 4 year old John joins in, and of course, being good grown-ups, all of you conspire to let the little guy ‘win’ the one race he’s in before he has to be put down for his nap.

You will never admit this, but you actually had fun with that bit of silliness, and it did raise quite a bit of money.

But it’s all fun and games until it’s time to take care of the budget.

General Jackson gets things started, like always. “Your Majesty, ground forces are in a solid place, about the only pressing requirement would be to procure the ground team for the next Enterprise class ship that will be entering service next year. We’d like to add a second Light Fire Company to the 3rd Mech Battalion, 2nd Regiment, 1st Brigade in order to bring it closer to establishment strength. The concept seems to be sound, from the limited exercises we’ve been able to conduct so far.”

Then Admiral Benjamin takes over. “We have another Defiant commissioning this year, so we strongly advise to lay another down. In addition we are completing work on USS Endeavor as well as HMS Haskell, both of which shall commission next year. In addition we have 2 competing designs for new ASF carriers designed to accompany their ASFs into combat. There is some concern that we may have been overly ambitious on the tonnage, but the designers were able to come up with a pair of designs. They both meet the minimum requirements.”

[]	Name	Cost	Mats	Spd	HP	A/D	Cap	Specials
[]	Microraptor	41372	FA, DHS	6	178	83	ASF (3)	Armored x5, Armor-Piercing, AMS (4)
[]	Near Combatant Carrier Dropship 2	33863	FA, DHS	6	174	64	ASF (3)	Armored x6, AMS (4)

“The Microraptor is the more capable design overall, in terms of raw firepower and capability, however the ‘Near Combatant Carrier Dropship v2’ is nearly as tough, despite the poorer firepower, and is also cheaper. Both would fill the role, however.”

General Reyes looks a bit bemused at her black water colleague ‘stealing’ her normal spot in the rotation. “Your Majesty, apart from continuing construction of Goshawks and Gyrfalcons, we will need a pair of Eagle units to bring the main wing back up to full strength while also providing the flight needed by USS Endeavor.”

General Potter then looks over at you. “Your Majesty, we have one other possible project. Admiral Benjamin has more details on it. Luc?”

The Admiral retakes the podium. “Your Majesty, our engineers believe it should be possible to begin fabrication of a modular station intended for the defense of the Jump Points. It would primarily serve as a base for multiple wings of ASFs, with additional self-defense and point defense weaponry. This would be more complicated than simply building a station or soliciting a private design, orbital forces in that area are extremely weak, so we’d have to make use of constant active station-keeping, plus the nature of the mission is far more involved than anything we’ve yet proposed to do. It will be expensive, but it’s within our means.”

General Potter nods as the Admiral retakes his seat. “Your Majesty, the data from Sarah gives us a possible weapon for this station, our scientists are still investigating if it’s even worth pursuing, but I sense that it may be a good way forward.”

Bridget is bouncy, perky, and showing far too much energy. “Your Majesty! We got stuff! Putting focus on Griffin’s Roost really paid off last year, we think we should do the same for Nowy Gdansk this year to capitalize on the stunning economic growth we’re already seeing as of Q2. We’d like to recommend also continuing to expand our orbital factories and also the stations themselves, especially the ones in the Belt, because that way we can base more ASFs out there and defend them better!”

Isoroku is busy handling the logistics of winding down this year's Olympics, so he’s not present, his deputy is there in case you have any questions but the Foreign Ministry really doesn’t have anything for you this year.

Jake is looking… smug. Then again, from what you hear he made a bundle betting on the Nowy Gdansk gymnasts. On the men to fall flat on their faces and on the women to do shockingly well. “Your Majesty, I’ll be trying to schmooze with some Delegates, hopefully they’ve gotten the ketchup and mustard out of all the upholstery by now. I’d like to strongly recommend expanding the DoME. Parliament will like that we’re showing some initiative in meeting their goals a bit early, and it will put us in a better position once we finish surveying Griffin IV.”

Mary is looking rather more frazzled than you are used to seeing her, but then again she’s been running around trying to make sure the Periphery Studies people hadn’t caused lasting harm to any research projects or facilities.

“Your Majesty, as before I’ll only bring up the new projects.”

Up goes the inevitable charts.

• NARC Beacons
  • Primarily useful for scout vehicles, generally a rather niche technology
• Omnivehicles
  • A fascinating outgrowth of the success seen with all the modular weapon and equipment installations is the ability to create vehicles designed from the start to have flexible loadouts.
    • Currently only Wheeled, Tracked, Hover, Hydrofoil and Displacement Hull Combat Vehicles would be made ‘Omni’ modular.

“As it stands, the Aerie’s labs are open and available. Here are our recommendations for research projects for this year. I will note, starting next year we’ll have a dedicated team for Kearny-Fuchida related research available.”

• Heavy Bipedal Battlemechs
  • Mechs of this size category are the mainstay of Mech forces for a reason. The Kuritans may be eschewing them, but we can punish that hubris with properly designed heavy mechs
• Laser Anti-Missile Systems
  • Removes ammunition dependency from AMS systems, and further will permit conventional 3cm lasers of all current variants to act as emergency AMS systems in space.

Both Harry and Janet are busy handling the aftermath of the Bratva situation and send short memos to the effect that they have nothing to suggest this year.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 34 - All That Glitters Is Gold

Spoiler: Event, Luck, and Rating Rolls

Meta-Event Roll - 51 - no event
Dynasty Luck Roll - 39 - moar grandbabies!

Imperial Approval - 5
Approval Change - -2
Political Event - -2

Imperial Economic Rating - 2
Imperial Economic Event - 3
Research Event - -1

Griffin’s Roost Econ - 3
Griffin’s Roost POP - 8
Griffin’s Roost Change - 3

Nowy Gdansk Econ - 3
Nowy Gdansk POP - 9
Nowy Gdansk Change - 6

GIAB Econ - 3
GIAB - POP - N/A
GIAB Change - 0

Spoiler: Action Results

Establish Advanced Concept Development Bureau* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 30
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase expeditionary team for Enterprise-class Dropships [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 47
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit
-Defiant <HMS Diadem> [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 89
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units
-2 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-2 Flights of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 9
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 69
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Falcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 63
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Light Fire Company [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 62
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lances of Cadet Mech
Target - 70
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

Conduct Environmental Survey of Nowy Gdansk* [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 98, Economist reroll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Asteroid 4 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Asteroid 5 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 21
Result - SUCCESS

Focus Development on Nowy Gdansk [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Factory 10 (Gyrfalcon) [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 29
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for New Carrier Design [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 100, reroll ShadowArxxy Omake Credit - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Infrastructure Development on Nowy Gdansk [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with Chamber of Delegates* [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 88
Result - FAILURE

Expand the Department of Mega Engineering [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Survey And Recover All Artifacts From Ruins* [50]
Target - 50
Roll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Electronics lvl 4* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

Power Generation lvl 4* [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 14
Result - SUCCESS

Improved Communications Lvl 4* [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 86
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Spheroid Dropships (medium)* [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 23
Result - SUCCESS

Laser Anti-Missile System [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

Streak SRM (All) [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 75
Result - SUCCESS

---

Spoiler: Left Turn

Since you were now sponsoring the ‘conventional’ motorsports federation, you felt a bit obligated to go to a race. You’d never actually been to a conventional race, in this case a stock car race, so you weren’t quite sure what to expect.

You didn’t expect this.

You are used to either very large courses that have multiple corners, elevation changes, and differing surfaces (water, sand, concrete, etc) or small courses that are mostly over water with buoys to mark the ‘corners’, the corners are large and sweeping, but level.

Not here.

This track is an oval, about 800 meters in length, with incredibly steep banking all around. It seems that the banking has barely ended on the straights before it starts up again for the next corner, and the corners are, to your eyes, extremely sharp. There’s a pair of short pit lanes, one on each straight, and the stadium, for want of a better word, is a true amphitheatre, completely wrapping around the track and towering above it.

You get to ride around in the pace car, which is an interesting experience in and of itself. The extreme bank angles make it seem like the car you are in is about to tip over at any moment. The driver, a retired racer himself, tells you that any slower than you are going and the car would ‘fall’ off the banking, skidding down and possibly rolling.

That’s a sobering thought.

You are told that this track is a faithful copy of a legendary track from back on Earth, which is rather interesting in and of itself.

The racecars themselves are also interesting. They run fuel-cell engines, but with such small hydrogen tanks that they can only manage 20 to 30 laps before needing to pit for fuel, which is also about how long they can run on a single set of tires before they start failing. In the hovercraft racing you are more familiar with pit stops are more for course management and adjustments rather than fuel, considering that most pro level racers use fusion engines, while the ones used by the youngsters in the Pee Wee and Junior divisions have enough fuel to last an entire race.

Then you have the fact that you have almost twice as many race cars on the track than in the Hovercraft Racing League, a track, moreover, that is a kilometer shorter than the shortest track in hovercraft racing at the professional level and only half as wide… the racing is incredibly intense. In the time between you getting out of the pace car and making it to the luxury box where you’d watch the race itself there’s already been a three car wreck that resulted in a yellow flag.

The officials you are with tell you that before the switch to fuel cells, which evidently was incredibly unpopular in motor racing, you needed to wear ear protection at the track or risk deafness. Even now the shriek of the tires desperately clinging to the track for grip is audible even in the luxury box, and the soft whirring noise of a fuel-cell engine seems to have been amplified to a nearly ear-splitting whine.

You are quite glad to be wearing a headset anyways.

In hovercraft racing it’s incredibly rare for a racer to wind up in the catch fence, and most of the time spinning out just means losing track position. Here, every wreck is a spectacle of vehicular carnage, and cars that go into the wall are thoroughly wrecked. The level of contact and aggression shown on the track makes Smirky look positively tame and civilized, with the victory being decided by what is described as a ‘bump and run’ move by the winner, who spun out the person who had been in the lead coming out of Turn 4.

And unlike in Hovercraft Racing, there’s no stewards inquiry to determine if it was ‘incidental’, ‘deliberate’, or whatnot. Everybody, including the spun out driver, seems to accept that sort of thing as normal.

Evidently this is ‘civilized’ compared to ‘real racing’, which evidently takes place at dirt tracks. This is rather disturbing.

You want to see one of them.

Spoiler: Dirt Track Bandit

Jeremy pulls off some impressive bureaucratic-fu to keep from getting promoted to Major and remains in command of his company for another year by successfully arguing that he hasn’t seen a ‘proper’ full company command deployment as required by regs for promotion.

You are very proud of your boy for that, promotion avoidance right out of mom’s playbook. You’d intervene in order to keep your son from surpassing you at the ‘keep from getting promoted’ record, but then your second granddaughter is born and you’ve got more important things to do.

The twins quite theatrically accuse you of abandoning hovercraft racing after you attend the stock car race, to which you respond in the proper Mom manner and arrange a suitable prank by abusing the Special Branch. The twins are quite surprised to go to their garage the morning of the next big race to find their highly tuned racers replaced with the machines they raced in the Pee Wee league. Their actual racers were hidden on the hauler, and you’d co-opted the crew into the prank, but the expression on their faces was priceless.

Thanh is settling into flight command in her squadron. Promotion is slower at the moment in the ASF community due to the large ‘python’ lump of combat veterans still holding squadron and wing commands. Thanh is a very talented pilot, but she’s not a combat veteran, and that counts for a lot in the ASF community.

Sarah and Tony are still on their honeymoon, evidently they have decided to turn it into an extended grand tour of all of Griffin’s Roosts libraries.

And then they go to Sarahs bunker to conclude their Grand Tour and any worries you might have that the bookworms were so busy being history nerds to actually consummate their marriage are put to rest when the AI congratulates Sarah on her pregnancy.

To your marvelously nerdy daughter’s singular surprise, as she’d not gotten any tests.

One is performed forthwith and indeed she is pregnant. She decides she wants to be surprised by the gender of her child, which you are willing to indulge as this means you get to decorate two baby rooms for more grandbabies.

The ACDB is up and running despite your joking that it should be renamed ‘Alphabet Soup’ and have the ABC song as its theme music. Many of the long-range theoretical work is now being performed there.

Procurement is going quite well. A new Defiant is laid down, the first Haskell and the next Enterprise are shaking down, the battalion your son is in has expanded to ⅔ nominal strength, while the 1st Aerie Cadre has grown by two more lances of training mechs. ASF sustainment procurement is on track with gradual growth and expansion.

The ASF Assault Carrier project has been renamed the Escort Carrier project, as it was discovered that the initial specifications were a bit too overly ambitious. Nevertheless the Majeure Aerospace Microraptor design is chosen for procurement and a large factory is built right next to the new drop port on Phoenix. The factory construction project completed on time and on budget, but it is soon learned that the corporate team working on this had decided to flex a bit and the factory in question has a dropship line more comparable to the Defiant line in shear capacity than to the smaller Enterprise sized line you were expecting.

Of course, at the reveal Majeure Aerospace shows off a derivative design to the Microraptor, the same hull design with downgraded ASF capacity and massively enhanced firepower and raw performance. It’s currently only a mock-up, but it looks… impressive. The procurement team is looking a bit pinched, evidently this wasn’t on the schedule and they are feeling rather peeved about it.

Then comes the coup de grace, the Majeure Aerospace teams reveal that they built the production line for the Microraptor to potentially produce this Velociraptor design with almost trivial reconfiguration between variants.

[]	Approve	Gain access to Velociraptor assault dropship at the cost of 10,000 in R&D next year
[]	Reject

The last two stations have been completed in the Inner Asteroid Belt, giving well spaced coverage to the mining operations there. From here it is highly recommended to continue expanding them in order to support heavier ASF patrols.

The environmental survey is complete on Nowy Gdansk with a number of very interesting conclusions and discoveries.

First of all, the majority of life on the planet is in the large oceans, with a highly complex and robust food web that has at its apex massive cetaceans that have inevitably been dubbed ‘Gdansk Doomwhales’ that resemble ‘roided up Sperm Whales that are surprisingly placid and curious about humans. It’s even more incongruous in some ways than the Grifftigers, in that here you have massively lethal predators, and you’ve seen videos of what they do to the primary prey, that seem to be able to coexist with people. They aren’t nearly as intelligent as the tigers, as far as anybody can tell, but they are quite willing to live and let live, and that’s good enough for you.

There’s one very interesting discovery, however. Oozing from vents on the continental shelf is a jelly like substance that almost instantly hardens into near armor-grade toughness and hardness the moment it is exposed to air, but which remains incredibly malleable and soft and behaves as a non-newtonian fluid when kept from contact with air. Researchers are absolutely fascinated by this substance. Small amounts can be used in power armor to seal breaches and absorb shock, to do the same for larger vehicles would be prohibitive.

Focusing Imperial resources on growing the economy in Nowy Gdansk pays off handsomely, with a nice boost to economic growth that is reflected in the growing commercial and industrial sectors on the planet. Infrastructure continues to be improved with more mining sites being built and transport infrastructure secured to handle the traffic.

When you see Jake he looks like he can’t decide if he’s in a good or bad mood. On the one hand, evidently the shenanigans conducted by the Periphery Studies ‘occupation’ of Parliament are still not fully cleaned up, with Delegates still not able to make proper use of the various lounges and meeting rooms due to the constant discovery of yet more hidden ketchup packets, mustard traps, and even a few Improvised Relish Delivery Systems that send the green stuff everywhere when triggered.

On the other hand, the expansion of the Department of Mega Engineering has been incredibly successful. Jake had been expecting to hire a dozen or so new engineers with the ambitious vision and skill to implement said vision that the Department needed. He got over fifty qualified applicants, and when he tried to pair things down to fit the budget he discovered that some people are so passionate about things that they’re willing to work for well under market rate just for the opportunity to do Big Things.

QM Note - Instead of 1 new DoME action each turn, you get 2

The work to fully survey and clear the ruins has been completed. There have been no ‘Eureka’ moments, no intact artifacts just waiting to be found, but plenty of valuable fragments. Civil engineering teams have stabilized the structures and cleared out dangerous areas, making the old Ruins much safer and allowing them to be opened as a sort of heritage park.

Apart from a rather spectacular failure in the Communications Test Lab, the result of an, and you can’t help but laugh, ‘unexploded water balloon which was undetected until power was applied to the test rig, resulting in said unexploded water balloon rapidly disassembling itself in an uncontrolled fashion with unfortunate consequences to the delicate electronics under test.’, R&D work at both the main labs at Griffin’s Rest University and at the Aerie are quite successful.

Further refinements to data-transmission cabling and interface standards advance general electronics capabilities while similar refinements in long distance power transmission and conditioning have reduced the required number of boosters on high-tension lines in half, greatly simplifying the electric grid.

Research into larger and more robust spheroid dropships have been completed, however the newly renamed Imperial Griffin Aerospace Werks is waiting on the results of some other R&D work before finalizing what they are calling the Warrior project for a ten thousand ton assault ship.

Two new weapon systems have been fully validated by the test ranges. The Laser AMS consists of a modified small pulse laser in a dedicated rapid-tracking mount with specialized sensors, while Streak guidance technology has been applied to the SRM-4 and -6 mounts with great success.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 35 - The Wild Boys Are Calling

It’s only the 2nd of January when Mary and Sarah contact you for a priority meeting.

It takes place in the most secure conference room in the Palace, and you soon learn why.

“Your Majesty, the analysis of the oversized lasers on the Free Folks jumpship has been completed.” Sarah begins. “They are intermediate in size between true capital naval lasers and the extended range 8cm lasers, with an estimated mass of between 100 and 200 tons. Without seeing them in action we cannot estimate performance, but range is expected to be extremely high.”

Mary takes over. “This is game-changing, Your Majesty. If we can develop something similar to arm our Dropships with, we will have a significant advantage. And if they can scale up lasers, there is no reason you cannot scale up autocannons as well to an intermediate stage. The ACDB has already met and have begun preliminary work and they report that both systems are feasible for rapid prototyping. With your approval we can begin.”

[]	Approve	Cost - 150,000, will consume 2 Military Research Slots, Will make available Subcapital Laser/1 and Light Subcapital Cannon this turn
[]	Disapprove	SCL/1 and LSCC will become available in the regular tech tree for 50,000 each with a Difficulty Target of 85 and R&D time of 1 turn

QM Note - You are basically trading greater cost for guaranteed completion during this turn rather than at the end.

Well, that was one of the better starts to the year.

What makes it even better is soon after the new year you discover that your daughter-in-law is pregnant again! You are getting TWO grandbabies this year! Plus, John is finally old enough to properly spoil and send back to his parents on a sugar rush!

Now if only the twins would settle down and find a significant other. But it looks like they have no intention of giving up the playboy lifestyle of a racing driver anytime soon no matter how many hints and disapproving looks you give them.

Jeremy has finally failed to dodge promotion and is now a Major and in command of 3rd Battalion, 2nd Regiment, 1st Brigade. And he’s very grumpy about it, when he isn’t busy being very proud of his unit and extremely busy running it.

Thanh hadn’t mentioned it to you, so you find out from reading the paperwork later on, but she’s taken a transfer to be the flight leader and ASF element commander, on board USS Endeavor as the CO of the Eagles on board. That surprises you a bit, until you learn that Petra has taken a position as one of the on-board analysts. Clever of them both, really, it gets them away from Griffsport and having to deal with your fussing over them, and out of babysitter duty.

There is a less happy situation on Pollux, however. A wildcat teacher’s strike over ‘excessive interference’ in the classroom by local officials. As far as you can tell, the teacher’s union that went on strike is actually upset when the local school boards implemented merit pay and organized greater parental involvement in their children’s schooling. On the one hand it seems like a relatively good idea, and certainly getting parents more involved is something you approve of. But the devil is in the fine details. The merit pay structure is extremely subjective and could be easily abused in that a major part of the evaluation is based on parent feedback on the teacher’s performance. The teacher’s are arguing that they’ve already seen parents abusing this by demanding better grades for their children even when said kids haven’t done the work to earn those grades.

This has rapidly become an extremely thorny issue. The local authorities have appealed to the planetary government, which has proven unable to resolve the issue and has appealed to the throne for a resolution.

Parliament is in recess, but this is time critical. You’ve been able to read all the documents and material from all sides in this, and frankly it is a mess. The potential for abuse is there, but there’s no actual evidence of it happening beyond ‘he said she said’ sort of anecdote. Pollux’s education system has lagged behind the rest of the planets, despite having a slightly higher per-student budget than any other region on the planet. On the other hand, students are far more spread out on Pollux than anywhere else on Griffin’s Roost so it is far more expensive to simply reach all of them. Teacher’s blame the administrators and local government for wasting resources and failing to properly support the classroom, administrators and local government blame teachers for failing to make use of the resources they have in an efficient manner and not involving parents enough. Parents blame teachers, administrators, and local government for being feckless about education, teachers, administrators, and the local government point out that parents on Pollux are far less, on average, involved in their children’s education than anywhere else and blame them for not making their kids put in the effort to learn.

Any solution is going to consume quite a bit of political capital, unfortunately.

[]	Action
[]	Side with the teachers, while the intentions are good with this plan the implementation is poor and needs to be reworked. There need to be more resources available in the classroom, more consideration given to distance-learning to handle the remote and spread out nature of the highly agricultural communities on the continent, and strict oversight of administrators and school boards. -25 Politics Cost - 25,000 -1% GDP Griffin’s Roost +1% POP Growth Griffin’s Roost +5 Econ Rating - Griffin’s Roost +1 Rating Change - Griffin’s Roost --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[]	Side with the parents. There is no evidence beyond the claims of the teachers involved that anything inappropriate has occurred. The schools have more than enough budget after the increased expenses involved in having a larger number of smaller schools that their kids should be receiving the same quality of basic instruction as anywhere else. The teacher’s need to be held accountable for their performance but the administration does not need any additional funds to waste and should be closely audited. -25 Politics Cost -25,000 -1% GDP Griffin’s Roost +5 Econ Rating - Griffin’s Roost +5 Health Rating - Griffin’s Roost +1 Rating Change - Griffin’s Roost ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[]	Side with the administration. The teacher’s are given plenty of resources, they just are too busy agitating for higher pay and benefits to actually do their job. With the highly decentralized and spread out nature of the education system on Pollux there naturally is a requirement for a larger number of administrators in the Pollux education system, this is purely a consequence of the fact that each individual school has the same administrative overhead, but there are far more schools. Both the teachers and the parents are using the comparatively high administrative costs as a red herring to distract from their own culpability in the situation. The teachers need to focus on actually teaching, the parents need to focus on being positively involved in their kids' education as partners, not adversaries. -25 Politics Cost - 25,000 -1% GDP Griffin’s Roost +10 Econ Rating - Griffin’s Roost +1 Rating Change - Griffin’s Roost ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 35 - Wild Boys Are Far From Glory

One of the definitions of a good compromise is that it leaves nobody completely happy, but nobody completely angry either. This one was a good compromise, by your lights. People should know better than to bring things that really should be handled at the local or planetary level up to the Empress by now.

You directed that the budget for distance learning be seriously increased, pleasing the teachers and administrators but annoying the parents. You’d then mused that since this made it so that teachers on Pollux would only have about 80% of the workload of teachers elsewhere on the planet, that it was only equitable that they be required to spend approximately 20% of their time on the clock traveling from homestead to homestead to assist parents and students directly in dealing with the distance learning solutions. That pleased the administrators and parents, but annoyed the teachers. You then idly noted that with the decreased class sizes and thus reduced need for facilities that the administrative budget would obviously have less stress upon it, and thus could be trimmed to help finance the increased use of distance learning tools. This pleased the teachers and parents, and cheesed off the administrators.

You then gave the representatives from all three groups a smile that Sekhmet would consider a good intimidating grin and thanked them for bringing this to your attention, and that if they had any other thorny dilemmas that should be handled at a more local level, do please give you a call and you’d be happy to impose a solution.

You put a teeny tiny stress on ‘impose’ and you are certain that all three of them were in need of changing their underwear.

That should be that.

You then have a much more pleasant meeting with representatives from the Imperial Aerospace Werks, formerly known as the Royal Aerospace Werks and the people behind the Eagle and Roc ASF designs.

And they have a proposal for you. They have designed a dropship that mostly meets the specifications for the Assault Carrier competition that had closed, apart from being twice as massive and a spheroid design. You take a look, then have to take a second look. Clustered in the bow is a group of six of a rather more refined looking analogue to the oversized lasers on the Free Folks ship. Moreover in four massive single casemented mounts on the sides of the dropship are cannons that make the gauss rifles the design is carrying look puny.

“Your Majesty, we are calling this design the Warrior project, and what you see here is a rendering of the lead unit, HMS Warrior. Ten thousand tons in wet mass, Six 10cm subcapital lasers, a quartet of 204mm Subcapital Cannon, a secondary battery of Enhanced ER PPCs, Extended Range 8cm Lasers, Gauss Rifles, LRM 20 racks with Artemis fire control systems, and providing close-in defense a suite of Laser AMS systems. It lacks a Class 20 autocannon, but the presence of the new subcapital class weapons seemed to render that requirement somewhat moot. She would carry a full squadron of ASFs and a pair of Small Craft and is designed for extended patrol operations. We are currently working on a sub-variant of this design which would replace the fighter bays with several more small craft and a full battalion of space marines for boarding actions.”

You nod, looking at the rather ferocious looking image.

“Moreover, we have already built at corporate expense a facility suitable for mass production of this design on Nowy Gdansk. The local government there provided us with some economic incentives, so when not occupied with the production of military craft for the AFGE the facility will produce civilian dropships in this mass range. This does open the possibility that the assembly hall may be in use for a civilian hull when the order for a new Warrior is placed, but upon completion of the civilian hull the military order would take priority.”

He pauses, looking at you. “The construction hall is available now, if you’d like to have us lay down the lead ship of the class as the inaugural build for the facility we would be pleased to do so immediately.”

[]	Agree	Lays down 1 Warrior class dropship in Factory 16, will cost 46,494.81 this year and again next year.
[]	Disagree	Design will not be available for construction until Turn 37

QM Note - Warrior-class Assault Carrier is now available. This takes up 1 factory space on Nowy Gdansk, however it will start at Lvl 2 and further upgrades may be financed by the company or the planet in addition to normal upgrade availability. If there is a gap in orders for Warrior class ships, a civilian hull that takes 2 turns will be laid down and take up the slot. Players will be notified when the building slot is available.

Meanwhile, Parliament happens.

You hate that that’s a thing.

A group of very loud Senators is demanding that the Olympics be permanently cancelled and that all Cultural Affairs programming cease forthwith, as an ‘obvious waste of taxpayer money’. They are insisting that the money instead be spent on raising the basic living allowance cap for taxation. You note that the bill they put forth would shut down all Imperial supported initiatives regarding culture, society, education, legal aid, welfare, and law enforcement.

There’s no chance of this passing. Those backing it are seen as fringe elements at best and obviously put this forward intending for it to fail to burnish their credentials as ‘crusaders for moral governance’ or some such rot.

Your supporters in the Senate and Chamber of Delegates are asking you to step on this proposal so that they don’t have to even bring it to a vote. A preemptive veto is a power you possess, after all.

On one hand, this would spare both chambers the need to deal with this, depriving the fringe of talking points against them in the next election. On the other hand, those same fringe Senators have been loyal supporters of your military initiatives and stepping on them like this may offend them enough to put them in opposition there.

[]	Preemptive Veto	-5 Support Senate, -5 Approval Change, -5 Politics
[]	Do not intervene	-5 Support Senate, -2 Approval

In more substantive matters, the Free Folk have returned to the system, appearing no worse for the wear. They transmit a thank you for the sale of the old Falcon ASFs and helpfully include pilot and maintainer commentary for the use of your design teams. They have some minor trade goods for sale, including a few casks of exotic alcoholic beverages that they present to you as a gift to show their appreciation.

They are trading for fresh food supplies, and request permission to send a fuel skimming small craft to harvest some hydrogen from the gas supergiant in the system.

[]	Approve	+1% Interest Rate this turn, +.01% GDP all planets, Improves relations with Free Folk
[]	Disapprove	+.01% GDP all planets, worsens relations with Free Folk

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 35 - Wild Boys Wonder Where Is Glory

The Free Folk are in the system for a few months this time while they gather fuel from Griffin VI and perform some maintenance work on their home.

And they evidently are quite good at noticing things.

You get a com call from the leader of the Free Folk. They’ve evidently noticed the K-F Research Station that has just been completed and would like to make an offer.

Specifically, one of the engineering apprentices who basically grew up in the drive room of their modified jumpship is wishing to expand her knowledge base to include the new fusion tech, and the Free Folk offer to trade her expertise and knowledge of K-F Drives in exchange for allowing her to attend your ‘mud side’ school.

[]	Yes	+5 Target Number for K-F Theory Tier 1, Improves Relations with Free Folk, Opens potential event chain
[]	No	No changes

Of course, now that news of said ‘secret’ K-F research facility has gotten out, the result is a great big fat nothingburger of epic proportions as the vast majority of the population just goes ‘meh’ with a side of ‘bleh’. Then go back to arguing about the weather.

Well, that vast majority excludes Periphery Studies, who promptly start panicking and running around claiming that aliens will now be able to read everybody’s minds and hold classes on ‘Basic Tin Foil Hat Construction’.

They send you a sample to ‘protect your brain from being probed by little grey aliens’, it’s a rather fetching silver, and would probably fit if you deigned to wear it. Evidently it was paint day at the Department because somebody painted a rather fetching crown on the foil.

Of course they also want to have their latest ‘lesson plan’ on ‘Aliens And You’ to be included in the K-12 curricula. You happily ignore that.

There was a severe storm on Nowy Gdansk, but thankfully the improved infrastructure and precautions against just that prove more than adequate to handle it. In the aftermath the locals describe the skiing as ‘quite good’. A number of grifftigers petition to visit the planet, which is duly granted, and there are now lovely videos of ‘tigers in the snow’ of young adult tigers romping in the deep snow drifts.

In somewhat related tiger news, Bastet evidently has found a boyfriend. A slightly larger, although he’s a year or two younger, tiger who’s taken the name ‘Anubis’, evidently because he found it amusing. Sekhmet has informed you that courtship rituals among tigers can last up to a decade, and will likely involve a number of paired hunts back on Capricorn ‘since only there can we find a good challenge’.

There is a disaster at one of the major vacation spots on Castor, however. A pair of large passenger smallcraft collided on the runway, resulting in almost a thousand dead. One of the two began its takeoff roll and, just as it rotated, the second encroached on the runway and was struck by the main landing gear of the first, resulting in a massive crash and the deaths of everybody onboard both craft. The planetary government is investigating the tragedy.

You have two new grandbabies. In fact, you now have as many grandbabies as you have kids. Which is very nice, but you are a greedy greedy ba and want more, and three of your kids have so far failed to provide you with any.

Thanh has promised that as soon as it is possible she’ll be happy to give you grandbabies, and she does have the very valid excuse that she’s waiting on the advance of biomedical technology, thank you very much. The twins, however, have no excuses whatsoever, the little playboys. You really wish they’d settle down!

But they’re racing, and still doing quite well. They’re not quite as dominant this year, but that is primarily due to a new rules package that the various teams are still getting used to.

Jeremy has written a memo that he copies to you recommending the gradual retirement and replacement of the Pathfinder mech and its replacement with Orb Weaver mechs in the scouting role. He points towards the lack of flexibility in the design, the highly cramped internal layout, the poor combat efficiency combined with the heavy drain on strategic materials for construction, and pilot reports of lack of stability at high speed.

He specifically cites the fact that the Orb Weaver has a superior electronics fit, is faster, has significant jump capability, is very stable even at full speed, and would only require Double Heat Sinks from the strategic materials pool, rather than Endo-Steel and Ferro-Fibrous. He also notes that as capable as the Orb Weaver is as a Scout, it would be equally capable as a Scout Hunter, the speed, probe, and long range primary weapon make for a lethal combination.

The memo then goes into some speculation about whether or not the design of the Orb Weaver may permit squads of power armored infantry to ride on top safely, although he notes that this would require jump jet equipped suits to be practical in combat.

This is evidently part of the work he is doing for post-graduate studies in Military Science.

You pass the memo on to General Potter, who is quite intrigued by it and promises to look into this. A few weeks later you get a memo from his office verifying some of the statements made about the Pathfinder itself.

[]	Retire the Pathfinder	Existing Pathfinder factory converted to Orb Weaver, existing Pathfinders transferred to 1st Aerie Cadre for training.
[]	Retain the Pathfinder	No change

And now it’s that most boring time of year, budget time.

Not boring, wonderful. Wonderful.

If you tell yourself that often enough you might even believe it.

General Jackson starts things off. “Your Majesty, we have a few priorities. First of all, we would like to procure a full regiment set of Power Armor. More specifically, we’d like to convert the Imperial Guard Regiment to a power armor regiment. This would require us to purchase 81 platoons of Power Armor (Light) to fully equip the regiment, the projected cost would be 3,732.58.” she pauses and gets a bit of a grin. “This would mean that you’d be issued your own suit, Your Majesty, as the regimental CO.”

“Second, right now we are very thin on ground forces on Nowy Gdansk. We would like to start to address this by procuring a full battalion of Chasseur hovercraft to form the core of a 2nd RRF Division to be based on Nowy Gdansk. We would be able to build all of them on the planet, with corresponding benefits to the planetary economy.”

“Finally, we would like to finish off the Light Fire Battalion, so far it appears to be a fully viable force composition and we’d like to continue work on such composite units in the future.”

General Reyes then takes over. “Right now the only units not at 100% Establishment strength are the 2nd Interceptor Wing for Gyrfalcons and the 1st Training Wing for Falcon IIs. Other than that we are at full strength, Your Majesty.”

Admiral Benjamin then takes the podium. “We have HMS Warrior under construction and are working on HMS Diadem. We would like to start production of either a Microraptor or a Velociraptor this year, along with a third Enterprise and a second [/i]Haskell[/i]. Other than that, we’re good to go, we are hoping for results from Enterprise’s survey of Griffin IV by the end of the year.”

General Potter then takes over in his gravelly voice. “Your Majesty, I endorse my subordinates' proposals, and also remind you that we can procure special operations troops. Moreover, the General Staff would like to propose standing up a 2nd Armored Division to be based on Nowy Gdansk. I know our defensive plans are to beat back Drac attacks in space, but a robust ground defense would protect from surprises as well as form the nucleus for any offensive operations against the Dragon. 2nd Armored will also allow us to test out several organizational concepts based on work carried out by 1st Armored.”

Bridget is Bridget. Which is rather appropriate, since she’s Bridget. Which means that whatever Bridget does is Bridget. That sounded better in your head.

“Your Majesty we’ve got some great ideas although we’re kinda stuck in some ways with those DoME projects but we’ve got so much else we can do like expanding our orbital assets even more like space stations and factories especially double heat sinks and armor and structure and we can now do some more planet surveys with the new exploration ship I’d recommend Griffin II because it’s close even though it’s not habitable or maybe Griffin VI since we don’t have good eyes on it from Sarah or even doing a more thorough survey of the Inner Asteroid Belt in conjunction with the commercial interests which might be profitable.”

One. Breath. Only.

Isoroku is back from overseeing the Olympics last year. “Your Majesty, while Foreign Affairs doesn’t have much to do, Cultural Affairs is open for business, may I recommend a benefits concert for the families of the victims of the Castor runway disaster?”

Jake is looking a bit disgruntled “Your Majesty, everytime I try to arrange a meeting with the Chamber of Delegates they cancel on me on the grounds that they are afraid I’ll be bringing the Department of Periphery Studies down upon them again. I’ll keep trying, but seriously this is getting old.”

Mary doesn’t even bother with her usual introduction, instead firing up the old projector and getting started on the new projects that are available.

• HarJel
  • We are calling it this due to it being a rapidly hardening jelly that has mild antiseptic qualities that are being investigated.
  • It appears this would be highly useful as a sealant and impact absorber on power armor, as well as a hull sealant on any space based asset.
• Subcapital Laser/2
  • Shorter ranged than the current subcapital laser weapon
  • Makes up for the shorter range by possessing a wider beam guide of 11cm, allowing for more powerful shots
• Medium Subcapital Cannon
  • Likewise shorter range than the 204mm variant, this 220mm weapon uses the same propellant charge as the smaller weapon but fires a larger and more potent shell
• K-F Drive Theory Tier 1
  • Would establish a solid baseline of knowledge about K-F mechanics and theory, permitting further research into developing usable hardware

She then puts up the charts for her recommendations.

• Military
  • Heavy Battlemechs
    • We currently have a relatively light Mech force, Heavy mechs would massively increase our tactical options
  • CASE
    • Significantly improves the survivability of any unit equipped with explosive weaponry and ammunition.
  • ER Medium and Small Lasers
    • Analysis indicates that extended range variants of the 3cm and 5cm laser would be tactically highly useful
• Non-Military
  • K-F Drive Theory Tier 1
    • For obvious reasons, this will eventually allow us to strike back at the Dragon
  • Terraforming Equipment Lvl 3
    • With the increase in scope of DoME, having a broader range of available projects would be a fundamental advantage going forward
  • Industrial Mechs Tier 3
    • Synergises well with the above by making it easier to complete DoME projects on time and on budget

Harry is at this meeting. “Your Majesty, your Intelligence service’s only request at this time is for funding to produce an orbiting black site to handle POW interrogations and holding.”

Janet has also made it, along with some of her fantastic coffee that helps keep you going. She’s also got baby pictures, and you spend a few hours comparing grandkid pictures and cooing over them. You’ve both become ba. She does find time for some serious talk, however. “Your Majesty, it’s been 35 years since you’ve taken the throne, and in that time hundreds if not thousands of new laws and regulations and rulings have been made, likewise for your father, your grandfather, etc. The law books at this point are titanic messes. We did some work early in your reign rationalizing things, I’d like to do that again, on a more systematic basis, and fully audit the entire corpus of law and precedent in our legal system.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 35 - Wild Boys Always Shine

Spoiler: Event, Luck, and Rating rolls

Meta-Event Roll - 53
Dynasty Luck - 30

Approval - 7
Approval Change - 6
Politics - 4

Econ Rating - -2
Econ Event - 4
Research Event - -2

Griffin’s Roost Econ - 2
Griffin’s Roost Health - 6
Griffin’s Roost Rating Change - 0

Nowy Gdansk Econ - 2
Nowy Gdansk Health - 7
Nowy Gdansk Rating Change - 5

GIAB Econ - 8
GIAB Rating Change - -3

Spoiler: Action Results

Harden Factory 16 (Microraptor) [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

Harden Factory 17 (Warrior) [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

Harden Factory 14 (Shortbow) [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 30
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $82694.76]
-Microraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

-Enterprise [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-Haskell [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units [$22799.28]
-2 Flight of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Flights of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Falcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Light Fire Company [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lances of Cadet Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

-81 Platoons Power Armor (Light) [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

-9 Platoons Chasseur [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

-18 Companies Special Operations [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance Orb Weaver Battlemech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Griffins Roost L5 Ferro-Aluminum [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 76
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Nowy Gdansk L5 Ferro-Aluminum [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Factory 14 (Shortbow) [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 94
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Build Space Station Nowy Gansk L5 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 18
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Griffin's Roost L5 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Pre-colonization Survey of Griffin IV* [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 74
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Infrastructure Development on Nowy Gdansk [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 89
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Have Exploration Fleet Survey Griffin 2 [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 13
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Benefits Concert [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with Chamber of Delegates* [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 13
Result - SUCCESS

Increase Funding to the Department of Periphery Studies [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 81
Result - FAILURE

Genetic Editing* [45]
Target - 45
Roll - 82
Result - FAILURE

Improved Communications Lvl 4* [auto]

Orbital Survey [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 1
Result - CRITICAL SUCCESS

Arrow IV [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS

Guardian ECM [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

Construct secure 'Black Site' [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 85
Result - FAILURE

-----

You are awakened one fine December morning by your security detail, although it is immediately obvious that they are struggling hard not to laugh.

The Imperial Palace is in the process of being TPed. By the Periphery Studies tenured faculty. Who are chanting what they no doubt think are extremely clever and punchy anti-alien slogans that include references to anal probing, cattle mutiliations, and crop circles.

While they TP the palace.

With enough TP that you are quite certain there will be shortages at the big stores come the morning.

According to the guards the fine professors are convinced that this is the only way they can save the Empire from the pernicious influence of Dread Cthulhu and the Tau.

By TPing the Palace.

Your palm meets your face in a loving yet forbidden romance.

Neither of the twins are in serious title contention this year, even if by the end of the season they’d both won a single race. The new rules package has proven extremely hard to adapt to for everybody, but a few smaller teams get lucky and manage to eek out their first victories, making the championship hunt this year rather chaotic.

In an odd twist, the twins and Smirky both condemn the new rule package, on the grounds that the new regulations make the actual racing more a matter of luck than skill. The new rules make the hovercraft so dynamically unstable that spins and crashes are excessively common, mostly due to bans on most of the common types of aerodynamic stabilizers that had been in common use.

The League has announced changes for next season, so hopefully things go better.

Of course, you’d be happiest if the twins would settle down and find girlfriends or, better yet, wives, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Jeremy is now in command of a full battalion and, if his letter to you is anything to go by, enjoying himself immensely. So far it appears that the composite unit structure is working extremely well in practical terms. So well in fact that he’s proposed several new variants for consideration.

First, for armored units, 2 Jaguar platoons supported by a Mechanized Infantry company mounted in a platoon of Weasel IFVs. This ensures closer coordination between the AFVs and the infantry, improving the effectiveness of both.

Second, he proposes a combined arms unit for artillery. Specifically, a pair of Paladin SPG platoons teamed up with a lance of Orb Weaver mechs. The mechs would provide forward spotting for the big guns, while the big guns would be on call to punish anything the mechs designate.

His final proposal is more theorycrafting, as you don’t yet have the hardware to make it work, but he proposes mating a company of jump-capable power armor to a company of Orb Weaver mechs to form a unit capable of rapidly taking and holding ground.

Procurement in general has gone extremely well, with all of the new units fully stood up and in service before the end of the year. Two in particular stand out.

In contrast to all the shenanigans the Rapid Reaction Force suffered, the 2nd RRF starts off with a splash, the initial cadre for the Chasseur battalion prove incredibly skilled.

In addition, the first lance of Orb Weaver mechs are a revelation, the raw agility and speed they demonstrate is eye-opening, especially combined with 4 of the finest pilots to have graduated from the Aerie in a number of years.

HMS Diadem has left the construction hall and will be commissioning next year, making the factory available for new construction at that time. In addition, you attended the keel laying ceremonies for HMS Argus, HMS Hendry, and USS Discovery.

More factories have been hardened, strengthening your defenses against any sudden raid or act of sabotage.

In orbit, four total stations have been built, 2 orbital Ferro-Aluminium forges and 2 space stations, which have already been put in operation.

However, the expansion project for the Shortbow line has run into a few snags, with a mix of labor issues and a key subcontractor going out of business due to the owners having been on one of the small craft involved in the Castor runway disaster. They hope to complete the project by Q2 of next year.

On Griffin IV the survey has run into a teeny tiny itty bitty snag. Just a small thing, really. But, well. The captain of USS Enterprise apparently decided to join the exploration team on the surface, which was all well and good. Until the team got attacked by some of the local wildlife.

Large multi legged segmented lizard-like creatures that burrow under the sand and ambush prey around one of the few meager streams that provided water in the area decided that said captain looked tasty. So one of them tried to attack him. And in the process tore his shirt, as he fought it off.

This got caught on camera and is now a meme.

Which was very predictable.

What wasn’t was that the same creatures attacked the base camp and managed to cause enough damage to the equipment that the survey results will not be available until Q1 next year.

Infrastructure development on Nowy Gdansk has likewise hit a snag, in this case a tunnel being dug for expanding the rail net ran into a previously undetected cavern. The tunneling machine itself was a loss, but the crews were able to salvage parts of it and are building an underground bridge to carry the rails through the massive cavern while investigating uses the area could be put to.

The basic survey of Griffin II was far more successful. The planet is completely lifeless and a pure hothouse, any attempt to colonize it would need to handle surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, surface pressures high enough to crush anything not heavily reinforced, and a sulfuric acid atmosphere that is tailor made to really wreck things. The debris ring around the planet appears to have once been a moon which got torn apart in some long ago incident. There are large concentrations of extremely valuable ores in the ring which would be very viable to develop commercially, enough so that when the results of the survey are published you get multiple requests for permission to start mining operations.

[]	Approve	Would require the construction of 3 Space Stations at Griffin II (1 at L4, 1 at L5, and 1 at L1), would establish Griffin II Orbitals as a separate planet, with initial fixed population of 1,000 and GDP of 100,000, Econ Rating 65, Health Rating 65, Rating Change of 60
[]	Disapprove

The concert is a great success, with enormous outpouring of generous contributions to the surviving family members of the victims of the Castor runway disaster.

Jake is finally able to meet with the Chamber of Delegates and manages to secure agreements amongst them to more strongly support the Crown.

On the other hand, thanks to the recent Periphery Studies shenanigans, finding people willing to work with the faculty there is far more difficult than anticipated. They are unable to find nearly enough qualified personnel to make any real difference. Perhaps next year they’ll have more luck.

The work on genetic editing has proven far more difficult to complete than expected, especially considering the ethical implications of the research and the desire to make sure not to violate any ethical norms. Research is continuing.

The work on improving communications technology has finally born fruit, with improvements to cutting through interference and noise.

Instead of performing an orbital survey of Griffin’s Roost itself, you have one done of Nowy Gdansk, and discover something incredibly valuable. A suspiciously symmetrical pile of snow and ice on a large island is found to be artificial in origin. Initial exploration shows it to be a crashed K-1 Dropshuttle in Star League markings that appears to date from the initial colonization of the system.

The R&D labs are able to complete work on both Arrow IV and Guardian ECM, making both systems available for construction.

On the other hand, the construction work on the Black Site has had to be restarted after serious flaws were discovered in the life support systems. It appears to have been a simple case of overly ambitious specifications for overly segmenting the system to enable the injection of crowd control gases into the prisoner spaces. This led to so many cut outs and extraneous valves that it proved impossible to properly seal the system. Redesign work is in progress.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 36 - Yoo-hoo. I'll make you famous

January is rather quiet for a change.

The racing season starts, and your grandson is actually taking up go-karting. The family of one of the stock car racers you’d met has partnered with your son and daughter-in-law to sponsor and teach John how to drive a kart at decently high speed around a dirt track.

Granted, these little things have far less power than even the Pee-Wee hovercraft racers, but unlike the hovercraft they have full roll cages and the young drivers are properly strapped in with kid-sized variations of the adult racing fire suits. According to the organizers this is even safer than the Pee-Wee league, with the little karts topping out at around 45 kph. They just look like they are going far faster because of how short the tracks are and how small the karts are.

Your grandson absolutely loves it, and you make a point of attending as many of his races as you can. Besides, Alita needs a babysitter for the rest of your grandkids while she is helping her oldest, which gives you more grandbabies time.

February, on the other hand, is not all that quiet at all.

Sarahs lack of surveillance data on the outer gas and ice giants comes around to lightly nip at your backside. She picks up drive plumes from five Leopard-CVs incoming from somewhere near Griffin VII. None of the drives match up with anything seen from the Kuritans, and Sarah is able to discern with long range optics that none of them have any Kurita markings.

You are able to deploy the Defiants alongside the Goshawk IIG and the Gyrfalcon squadrons to intercept. You are somewhat nervous, the numbers seem to be in your favor but still…

You probably wasted some good proper nerves. The incoming craft, tentatively identified as a pirate band calling itself ‘Brann’s Bloodthirsters’, are annihilated during the initial merge. The pilots show a great deal of skill, but the sheer disparity of force on display is mind-boggling. Not a single ASF or dropship survived the initial exchange and the worst damage any of your units took was a single hit on HMS Defiant that did nothing more than scorch the paint.

Unfortunately you have no living pirates to interrogate, and by the time USS Endeavor, escorted by the Defiants, is able to reach Griffin VII and start searching for the jumpship they are just in time to see it jumping out from a pirate point.

That part is very frustrating indeed.

Exploration of the cavern found while tunneling on Nowy Gdansk finds that it is very stable, geologically speaking, and possesses spectacular crystal formations lit by softly glowing bioluminescent mosses. Faint sunlight is channeled into the cave via the crystalline formations that evidently reach to the surface. The beauty is awe inspiring.

There is a proposal to build a resort within the cave to take maximum advantage of the sheer beauty, and investors have approached the crown to see if you’d be interested in investing in your personal capacity.

[]	Yes	Nowy Gdansk Rating Change +1, consumes the next dividend roll, 1 time +25% GDP Nowy Gdansk
[]	No	Nowy Gdansk Rating Change +1, 1 time +10% GDP Nowy Gdansk

The investigation into the Castor runway disaster is complete, with primary fault being assigned to the pilots involved. The pilot of one of the craft had initiated his takeoff roll without proper clearance from the tower, while the pilot of the other failed to stop when told to by the tower. The controller had properly informed the first pilot to line up and wait and had gotten a readback, then authorized the second to cross the runway. Two seconds after getting the readback on the runway crossing, the first pilot completed lining up and, instead of waiting, initiated the takeoff roll. The controller immediately cancelled the clearance for the second pilot and instructed him to hold short immediately, the second pilot never acknowledged the call and continued. Then disaster.

The controller was actually commended for how quickly they reacted when they saw what was happening, if the second pilot had complied there would have been no disaster, and if the first pilot had followed controller orders the whole thing would have never been an issue in the first place. The controller properly followed all safety procedures properly.

Didn’t stop the poor man from killing himself three months later, though.

There is an extensive list of recommendations resulting from the disaster. Some of which have the air transit companies a bit… peeved. Others have the controller’s unions peeved. All of them have the pilots somewhat peeved.

But everybody involved fully understands just why they are needed, and all had been able to provide input into the recommendations during the drafting process. The planetary government is implementing them, but has requested that the Throne provide some economic support to the industry to cushion the expenses of adding the additional new safety equipment to all airfields and transport aerospacecraft.

[]	Provide Support	While important, these new rules will incur a massive disruption in air traffic while the new equipment mandated by them is installed and tested. 1 time cost of 500,000 1 time +15% GDP on Griffin’s Roost and Nowy Gdansk
[]	Don’t Provide Support	This is purely the job of the planetary government, and the industry needs to stand up on their own two feet. -5% GDP on Griffin’s Roost

Investigation of the crashed K-1 reveals that it is completely trashed, it hit the ground at very high speed and it’s a minor miracle that the hull survived as well as it did. The drive itself is completely fried and the resulting power surges destroyed the on board computers. The markings, however, are legible, SLS Morristown, which Sarah is able to identify from records as having been a Potemkin-class troop cruiser which evidently was part of the original expedition that created Griffin’s Roost.

There is also a fragmentary log contained on a personal data device. Only about a quarter of the device physically survived, and so only a tiny bit of data is recoverable. The body is evidently that of Commander Allen Barnes, the Chief Engineer of SLS Morristown. The log entries that survive indicate that Barnes was evidently highly disgruntled about the entire ‘Griffin Project’. Any reasons why are not indicated. Based on the bit of index that survives, evidently he’d been keeping this log for a very long time, and some of the titles refer to ‘disgrace’ and ‘plan’.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 36 - You Brought A Knife Out To A Gunfight

Sometimes fragments of information are the most frustrating.

Your forces never got a visual or sensor read on the pirate jumpship, just a very large jump signature from one of the pirate points in Griffin VII. Even that was only a partial signature as it was highly obscured and massively distorted by the background noise around the ice giant, according to Sarah it could have been anything from a low of 400,000 tons to a high of 2 million tons, and the floor is only there due to the number of dropships observed making it nearly impossible for it to have been much smaller.

None of the enemy ASFs have been recoverable as they’d all been utterly shattered, however battle analysis shows that they were hitting at the range of an extended-range 8cm laser, not the ‘normal’ all 5cm laser configuration you’d been facing from the Dracs. Running the data past Sarah makes it obvious that the Sabres at least were likely Royal birds, with XL drives, double heat sinks, and improved lasers.

The Leopard-CVs were thoroughly wrecked, but at least some of the damage was from self-destruct charges in obvious electronics bays. There are no surviving computers or prisoners, and the dropships are good only for scrapping.

You want to feel reassured that this was either just a pirate raid that got stupidly overconfident, or that this was a false flag attack from the Dracs that, well, got stupidly overconfident, but there’s something in the back of your mind saying it’s something more than that.

You do get some good news, however. Sarah is pregnant with twins!

Of course, your own twins still haven’t settled down, although they are racing quite well this year with the reversion to the older rules package.

Well, you can’t force them to settle down and get married, for all the hints and nudges you’ve given them that you’d like to see them do that. They evidently are bound and determined to live life day to day in the fast lane.

Bastet and Anubis are off hunting together, with Sekhmet looking properly smug after she evidently delivered the ‘tiger equivalent of the shovel-speech to the younger male.

There’s another bright spot, prospecting teams on Nowy Gdansk have discovered a large deposit of rare earth minerals that could potentially be a serious boost to the economy. It’s on a different continent than the main settlement, however, so exploiting the find could get expensive.

[]	Finance Mining Settlement	Cost - 500,000 One Time +50% GDP Nowy Gdansk +2% Tax Rate
[]	That’s the Planetary Government’s Job	One Time +10% GDP Nowy Gdansk +1% Interest Rate

With the increase in economic activity, both with the Inner Asteroid Belt and Nowy Gdansk, Lee Aerospace has completed a second mega freighter to further boost bulk transport. This one is specifically optimized for ore transport and is even slower than the original, but is capable of shifting massive amounts of bulk ore.

They are, however, requesting subsidies to build bulk cargo handling stations around Nowy Gdansk, the Inner Asteroid Belt, Griffin II Orbitals, and Griffin’s Roost itself.

[]	Subsidize the Stations	Cost - 400,000 One Time +25% GDP Nowy Gdansk +25% GDP GIAB +25% GDP Griffin II Orbitals +10% GDP Griffin’s Roost
[]	Decline	One Time +1% Tax Rate +1% Interest Rate

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 36 - Tell My Guns I’m Coming Home

You wince a bit at how much things are costing, and it’s not even budget time yet, but on the other hand the massive economic activity that results from the subsidies makes it seem rather more worthwhile.

Even though she’s pregnant, Sarah is still working on monographs and historical research. You are treated to a several hour exegesis on what she discovered about your great-grandfather and the initial Wolverine refugees.

One thing that strikes you as particularly interesting is that the initial batch of refugees were not all former Wolverines, a good two thirds of them had actually been refugees from the Draconis Combine. In fact, most of your Japanese citizens are descendents of those refugees.

She’d actually interviewed a number of the oldest descendents of those refugees, and none of them had been aware of that history, as it had been from those oldsters parents time and they’d never spoken of that.

However one of them did have a sealed safe that nobody knew the combination to that had been passed down from mother to daughter. They’d in fact tried to deliver it to the palace years ago when the news about the Wolverines had first gotten out but that had unfortunately coincided with the assasination attempt so they’d been turned away.

You decided to turn the safe over to Jane for the Special Branch to work with to get open.

There’s a minor snag with some regulators on Griffin’s Roost. The environmental survey had discovered that the most common schooling fish on Nowy Gdansk was absolutely delicious and had no negative health effects on humans, however by the strictest possible interpretation of health regulations it was illegal to import said fish to Griffin’s Roost since they ‘technically’ would be an invasive species… if they weren’t being shipped flash frozen and vacuum packed.

You check and the local fishing industry isn’t involved in this at all, it’s just a petty bureaucrat flexing their petty bureaucratic muscles.

[]	Imperial Frown Of Disapproval for the bureaucrat, approve importation over his officious little head	-1 Approval Change -1 Politics One time +10% GDP Nowy Gdansk +1% GDP Griffin’s Roost +2% Tax Rate
[]	Let the bureaucracy do it’s bureaucratic thing, he’ll get overruled eventually.	+1 Politics +1 Interest Rate

Also in economic news the asteroid miners in the Inner Asteroid Belt have found an asteroid that appears to be primarily composed of extremely large jewel-quality gemstones. They announce this find by presenting you with a new set of Imperial Crown Jewels, on the grounds that merely Royal Crown Jewels were insufficient.

You give them a very level look. But you must admit that the new jewels are truly gorgeous.

QM Note - +2% tax rate this turn, +2% interest rate this turn, +25% GDP GIAB

Parliament is actually being somewhat useful for a change, which you always are happy to see on the rare occasions that it happens. They are backing an effort by a consortium of major manufacturers to build an industrial outpost on Griffin’s Roost’s moon. Normally this would be a DoME project if it were government run, but the consortium intends to finance this privately, they just require changes to several regulations concerning lunar development and colonization to make the project viable.

[]	Approve	-2% Interest Rate next 5 turns On turn 41 the Lunar Base project will be deemed completed with the effects listed in the DoME project description On Turn 41 One Time +25% GDP Griffin’s Roost Until Turn 41 +1% GDP Each Turn on Griffin’s Roost +10% GDP Each Turn on GIAB +10% GDP Each Turn on Nowy Gdansk +10% GDP Each Turn on Griffin II Orbitals
[]	Veto	+5 Politics +5 Research Event +2% Tax Rate this turn -15 Support Chamber of Delegates -15 Support Senate

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 36 - I’ll Die Without Regret For The Wars That I Have Fought

QM Note - Last event post prior to planning post (which will be the NEXT post)

So far this year has been… eventful, but you guess there are going to be years like that where many things just come together.

Just when you think you can settle into your normal routine of the spring, before budget time but after Parliament meets for the year, there’s another alert from Sarah.

This one is not the best of news. There’s a long period comet that in two years will intersect the orbit of Nowy Gdansk with a high probability of impact (above 20%, in astronomical terms that is enormous). This is calculated based on the expected effects of the gravity of Griffin VI upon the comet in question. Interestingly enough, if the comet does miss Nowy Gdansk Sarah indicates a 15% chance that it will see its orbit bent enough to be on a near collision course with Griffin IV…

And the comet appears, according to Sarah’s analysis, to be 90%+ frozen water.

This appears to be a classic Chinese ‘character for opportunity’ situation. If you can manage to deflect the comet and guide it, you might have a ready source for water on the world that most closely resembles Tatooine. On the other hand, if you fail, it might go splat into Nowy Gdansk with very unfortunate consequences for the people there.

Time to make a plan…

You have sufficient dropship assets to attempt to redirect the comet, either to Griffin IV orbit or simply away from Nowy Gdansk. The latter would be easier than the former. Your aerospace assets also have more than sufficient firepower to destroy the comet. Finally, it may be possible to build robust enough shelters on Nowy Gdansk to survive an impact event.

[] Write-In, QM will determine effects of winning vote.

Meanwhile there is an unsolicited design proposal for a new tracked self-propelled gun based on the Long Tom artillery weapon. A small start-up on Nowy Gdansk has combined open data about the older Paladin and their own work and have come up with the Excalibre Self Propelled Gun.

Name	Cost	HP	A/D	Specials
Excalibre SPG	1668.6	100	16	Tracked, Armored 1, Artillery 3

They are available for production starting this year if the AFGE desires.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 36 - There’s Justice In The Barrel Of A Loaded Gun

QM Note - Compositing the vote results

USS Enterprise has delivered the results of her survey work, and while it is still being analyzed fully several things stand out strongly.

One, there may be a massive amount of water on the planet, but it is all bound up in a half dozen extraordinarily deep seas. The water itself is incredibly caustic and alkaline, utterly unfit for drinking and almost impossible to process economically due to the sheer havoc it would wreak on any piping and desalinization gear. There is no life whatsoever in the seas of Griffin IV, not even microbial.

Two, the few life forms that are clinging to survival on the planet cluster around the tiny number of springs and seeps that are fed from seepage from the seas, filtered by the planet's crust itself. All of them are very fragile and any attempt to colonize the planet would very likely see their extinction. None of them have any economic value and it is estimated that within a century or two even these last survivors will be extinct anyways even if you completely left the planet alone. In terms of preservation the best that could be hoped for would be artificial habitats to mimic the conditions of those seeps and hope for the best. Even the large segmented lizards are nearly extinct, the few specimens found all show enormous genetic damage consistent with tiny, incredibly inbred, populations.

Three, the planet has incredibly rich mineral deposits, with multiple different motherlodes of nearly every conceivable industrial metal and ore of such immense value that the planet could easily become an industrial monster. There are signs of a large number of impact craters, supporting the hypothesis that the incredibly deep oceans are the result of dense impactors creating deep holes in the crust.

And finally, the atmospheric composition is marginal for supporting human life as it stands, but if the carbon and water cycles can somehow be restarted that would be solved very quickly.

Therefore it seems quite fortuitous that there is a source of water in the form of this ice comet. USS Enterprise and USS Endeavor work together to adjust the comet's orbit through the simple expedient of landing upon it carefully, securing themselves to the comet itself, then using carefully timed and planned burns of their main thrusters to adjust the comet's trajectory. They’ll have to return in 3 years or so to finish the process, with the intention being to leave the comet in orbit of Griffin IV while it is determined what to do with it in the long term.

Close analysis of the comet shows that it probably originated in the Griffin VII moon system countless millennia ago and is very nearly pure water ice, with a ‘crust’ of carbon and silica dust that it had picked up over the millions of years of its journeys around the solar system.

Sarah has completed a sky survey of Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt objects, there are no other large impactors on any collision orbits for at least the next century.

There is a population boom on Nowy Gdansk, leading to a land-sale business in baby goods and services.

In other news from Nowy Gdansk, Jeremy has been on a training deployment on the planet with his unit, working with the Aerie Annex and the local garrison forces. And evidently he’s also been putting his engineering degree to good use in conjunction with a few of the local military types.

Several new vehicles have been developed by a start-up that your son is financially backing out of his personal funds. The construction of the factories and the hiring of locals with engineering backgrounds has seen a sharp improvement in the local job market, but more importantly to the Empire, perhaps, is that the designs are quite interesting.

Two of them eschew turrets and fusion engines completely, being relatively simple, tough, and hard-hitting weapons that do not use any strategic materials whatsoever. They actually share a completely common hull and chassis, one armed with a gauss rifle, a 3cm and 5cm laser, and had already demonstrated that it has excellent stability when traversing and aiming the main weapon. The other has a pair of 15 racks of LRMs tied to an Artemis targeting system combined with an adapted Nollak targeting module and an anti-missile system built around a 20mm gatling.

Another is a new APC optimized for power armor troops, with the ability to provide full support for a squad of these specialized infantry on each vehicle for extended combat and non-combat operations. It is heavily armored and possesses superior firepower thanks to its Enhanced ER PPC. It even carries improved medical facilities on each track to increase the survivability of the troops it carries.

Finally there is a new dedicated scout tank. Although significantly slower than the hovercraft and VTOL platforms normally used, this one is equipped with a full suite of advanced electronics combined with an extended range 8cm laser.

Name	Cost	HP	A/D	Special
Lynx Scout Tank	500	24	7	Tracked, Scout, ECM, TAG
STuG G Hetzer	603.12	92	14	Tracked, Armored 1
Arbalest II	869.20	88	12	Tracked, Anti-Air, Armored 1, Missile 4, AMS 1
Bear IFV	1314.56	92	14	Tracked, APC (PA) 1, Armored 1, AMS 1, MASH

The Arbalest II had replaced the current Arbalest in service as a sort of ‘proof of concept’, with funding provided by the Nowy Gdansk planetary government and, again, your son’s pockets.

Three tactical formations have been proposed, both of which make use of the new designs. An Armored Fist Company consists of a single platoon of STuG G Hetzer tanks, a platoon of Bear IFVs with attached Power Armor (Light) - Basic platoon, and a platoon of Arbalest IIs. An Standard Armored Battalion consists of two full companies of Jaguar MBTs, a platoon of Lynx Scout Tanks, a platoon of Arbalest IIs, and a platoon of the new Excalibre SPGs. Finally a Standard Mechanized Battalion consists of two full companies of Bear IFVs with attached PA infantry, and a platoon each of Lynx, Arbalest II and Excalibre vehicles.

You do get a good chuckle out of Jeremy complaining about the military bureaucrats ‘changing the perfectly good names we came up with for our designs!’. Granted, you kind of liked the names your son had come up with, but they didn’t ‘fit’ the established naming schemes, evidently, and you aren’t all that inclined to go to the mat over it.

In racing news, both the twins and your grandson are having fun in their respective racing series.

The twins are in championship contention again, although not in the lead. The racing has been particularly furious this year in part to prove to the League that the older ruleset is perfectly capable of producing exciting races. The League, meanwhile, still wants to make things more ‘pure’ by limiting or eliminating aerodynamic aids as much as possible.

In the youth karting series John is racing in, he’s having a grand old time. He’s not winning all that much, although he is finishing every race he enters, but he’s having so much fun that it feels like he’s winning anyways considering the huge smile he has after every race, practice session, or qualifying session.

He’s had his first big crash as well, and that truly frightened you. He came in too hot into a turn, clipped another kid when he wasn’t able to keep it tight enough, and wound up cartwheeling and flipping over. You were terrified until you noticed that none of the other mom’s and grandma’s seemed all that worried, likewise the race officials didn’t seem to consider it a big deal. Two of them with a medic checked on your grandson, got a thumbs up, they rolled the kart back onto its wheels, and he merrily got back to racing.

You ask Alita and she tells you that she’d been shown a safety video and demonstration before she’d allowed her son to race, in which a borrowed Lion had driven over a pair of the little karts with no actual damage to either of them. The roll cages were as strong as the ones fitted to a Chasseur hovertank, the chassis was rated to support far more weight than would ever be placed on it, and no kart was permitted to race until it had passed an extremely detailed safety certification process.

You check later on and find that the Pee Wee Hovercraft Racing League has nearly identical safety standards nowadays, evidently all of the youth racing associations had gotten together and cross-fertilized best practices for maximum safety for the kids.

If you were a grifftiger, this would definitely earn a Lick Of Approval.

Speaking of grifftigers, you asked Sekhmet about why no tigers had ever expressed any interest in sports.

Turns out they had, just not sports you really were aware of.

Apparently there’s this sport called ‘Tiger Soccer’ played between teams of tigers, with the only rule you are able to figure out is that they’re only allowed to touch the ball with their noses and front paws, no biting, no back paws, no tail. Other than that, it apparently has no rules, with the objective to get a large, extremely tough ball through a goal post that only appears at random intervals, being otherwise retracted underneath the field. As far as you can tell, the point goes to whichever tiger touches it last before it goes into said goal.

It seems rather popular with the tigers at least. You can’t figure it out, to be honest, since much of it seems to involve tigers tapping the ball around in a circle while they wait for the goal to appear then a mad dash to get the ball into the goal when it finally appears.

Sekhmet is able to explain a few more of the ‘rules’, evidently there’s a rule that no tiger may ‘hold’ the ball for more than a second, and any pass must be at least two tiger lengths away. Evidently this is considered ‘extremely good hunting training’.

This apparently is an evolution of what goes on in the wild where young tigers will bat around a particular species of large, heavily shelled, turtle that, weirdly, doesn’t seem to mind all that much being used as a living ball. It’s posited by animal behaviorists that the concussion of the impacts and the movement of the water through the shell dislodges small parasites on the turtle's skin, but the tiger’s certainly don’t attempt to eat the turtles.

The tiger’s claim that the turtles ‘love it’ and will come up to them to get batted, so there’s that since it’s kind of difficult to ask the turtles their opinion on the matter.

Sarah is heavily pregnant now, but is still writing. Tony is being run ragged fetching all sorts of exotic foodstuffs for his wife, which you honestly approve of. And you get plenty of time with the grandkids, so you approve of that even more.

Thanh is enjoying her assignment on the exploration missions, especially since she gets to spend most of her off-duty time with her wife. The comet redirect mission was challenging, according to her, mostly for the extremely finicky and precise piloting that was required. She’d actually piloted the shuttle that was used for the initial preparation phase of the mission, stabilizing the tumbling of the comet so that the big dropships could land and attach themselves.

And now for the main event, in this corner, an Empress who would rather be with her grandkids. And in the other corner… the budget.

Round one… FIGHT.

General Jackson is the first contestant… errrr briefer. “Your Majesty, we in ground forces have several requests. First of all, to get 2nd Armored started on Nowy Gdansk. The initial force organization for 1st Regiment should be on your pad now. We are ultimately planning on 2 Standard Armored Battalions and a single Standard Mechanized Battalion as the initial composition of each of the armored regiments of the Division. We are requesting the purchase of one complete regiment set to the exclusion of all but Cadet and Orb Weaver mech procurement. We have just sufficient Ferro-Fibrous production for all of the required Jaguar tanks, and enough general AFV production to build out the entire unit. In the future we intend to fully reorganize 1st Armored along the same lines, but starting this off with 2nd Armored will allow us to properly field test the organizational structure first.”

Next up to present you with dreaded paperwork is General Reyes. “The ASF forces are in a good place, the recent pirate raid was handled smoothly enough. We would recommend continuing to expand the stations in the Inner Asteroid Belt so we can base even heavier forces of Goshawk 2Gs for those situations where we might not get enough warning to shift other forces in. In addition, we would like an air wing of 3 Eagles for HMS Argus. Considering her mission profile, we would recommend procuring Rocs for HMS Warrior, although we can only build 2 squadrons this year and would need to procure the third next year unless you expand the factory”

Admiral Benjamin doesn’t bother standing up. “Your Majesty, the Defiants performed splendidly, we are looking forward to HMS Argus, HMS Hendry and HMS Warrior beginning their shakedown cruises next year. Other than that.” he grinned, showing blindingly white teeth, “We good.”

General Potter shakes his head slightly. “Your Majesty, I strongly recommend procuring the first regiment for 2nd Armored this year. Just because we keep on being able to stop threats in orbit doesn’t guarantee that trend will continue, no matter what the flyboys and girls say. The Aerospace Forces are a bit behind Ground Forces in preparing amalgamated wings, so far there is a great deal of institutional inertia behind homologous unit organizations. But we’re working on it.”

Bridget is bouncy as ever, although she evidently finally learned to bring you a big mug of Janet’s coffee before briefing you. She can be taught! “Your Majesty we’ve got a bunch of things but the main thing is build build build factories and orbital facilities and stations and foundries and all the rest the rest will take care of itself we’d like to start surveying Griffin I and VI as well if that’s no trouble because who knows what goodies we’ll find.” She pauses for a second “Or do more surveys of the moon, I don’t know why but I’ve got a feeling there’s something up there, there always is in all the stories at least and a thousand writers can’t all be wrong right?”

Isoroku is out on Nowy Gdansk for meetings with several people concerning cultural affairs there. He left a memo recommending either holding another Polish Cultural Festival to promote Nowy Gdansk or building more monumental architecture, this year there’s a proposal that he’d forwarded to you to build a large horticultural park on Castor.

Jake is looking a bit tired from having to deal with Parliament lately. “Your Majesty, we’ve got a few ideas still being worked on, but honestly I can’t recommend moving forward with any serious projects in my department this year. Parliamentary relations are good, our public image is solid, we’re in a good place so maintaining what we have shouldn’t require any excess spending.”

Mary is looking a bit grim. “Your Majesty, the only new area of research that we can handle is into nuclear anti-shipping missiles, effectively recreating the old Alamo system. We can foresee several non-nuclear based applications for the basic missile body, but we’d first have to validate the system.”

She then puts up the dreaded charts with recommendations.

• Military Research
  • Heavy Battlemechs
    • Heavy mechs in the 60 to 75 ton range should be the basic building block of our mech forces. The sooner we get started the sooner we’ll have a solid overmatching counter to potential enemy formations
  • ER Medium and Small Lasers
    • Extended Range 3cm and 5cm lasers look like they would be highly efficient and capable weapon systems.
  • Targeting Computer
    • An extremely interesting system that could yield superb results in terms of boosting precision and accuracy.
• Non-Military Research
  • Improved Education
    • Boosting the capabilities of our educational system is always important for boosting our research capabilities
  • Improved Automation
    • Expensive but the economic boost and reduction in maintenance costs is worthwhile even if it puts us temporarily into a deficit situation.
  • Terraforming Equipment
    • The survey of Griffin IV shows that we will require more capabilities in terms of high impact terraforming if we wish to successfully colonize the planet.

Both Harry and Janet are absent from the meetings, Harry due to further meetings with Home Army specialists and personally overseeing the redesign of the Black Site station, and Janet is personally overseeing the final stages of the in depth investigation of any Bratva adjacent groups that hadn’t yet been rounded up.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 36 - Call Me Young Gun

Spoiler: Event, Luck, and Rating Rolls

Meta Event Roll - 64
Dynasty Luck Roll - 40

Approval - 3
Approval Change - 1
Political Event - -3

Economic Rating - -1
Economic Change - -1
Research Event - 5

Griffin’s Roost Economy - 9
Griffin’s Roost Population - 10
Griffin’s Roost Change - 6

Nowy Gdansk Economy - 6
Nowy Gdansk Population - 11
Nowy Gdansk Change - 5

GIAB Economy - 9
GIAB Change - 1

Griffin II Orbitals Economy - N/A
Griffin II Orbitals Change - N/A

Spoiler: Action Results

Begin Advanced Design Work on Jump Point Defense Stations* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $82694.76]
-Defiant

Purchase New Units [$74277.24]
-3 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-2 Flight of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Flights of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Falcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Flights of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 52
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lances of Cadet Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 44
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance Orb Weaver [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 39
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Standard Armored Regiment [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

Ruins Stabilization and Clearing* [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 78
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Factory 14 (Shortbow)* [auto]

Build Space Station Griffin II L4 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 18
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Griffin II L5 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 17 (Ferro-Aluminum) [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 74
Result - SUCCESS

Planetary Resource Survey - Nowy Gdansk [45]
Target - 45
Roll - 15
Result - SUCCESS

Pre-colonization Survey of Griffin IV* [auto]

Infrastructure Development on Nowy Gdansk* [auto]

Have Exploration Fleet Survey Griffin's Roost Moon [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Monuments Ho! [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 43
Result - SUCCESS

Increase Funding to the Department of Periphery Studies* [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 72
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Genetic Editing* [45]
Target - 45
Roll - 52
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Orbital Survey [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 100, confirm 92
Result - SUCCESS

Improved Education lvl 5 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 45
Result - SUCCESS

Targeting Computer [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 26
Result - SUCCESS

Construct secure 'Black Site'* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 82
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

-----

One of the things that had somewhat surprised you was that every single track for the kids karting series had actual trophies for winners and runners-up, and certificates for all the kids who finished. The Pee Wee league had had only the certificates from the league itself.

And the trophies weren’t cheap plastic chatchka. Granted, bronze wasn’t exactly a precious metal, but it made for a beautiful and long-lasting little trophy, and they weren’t generic. Every track had a completely unique design with only a few common elements.

Your grandson had won two races in his first year racing. He’d kept the first trophy, but insisted on giving ‘nana’ the second. So you had put it in your office, alongside all the far more ornate and fancy decor. At first glance it stood out like a sore thumb, but to you it is one of the nicest things in the room.

Of course what made it better was that you were thinking about one grandson while holding two more. The twins had been born slightly prematurely, but were already at a healthy weight and were doing wonderfully.

Sometimes you wished you could just retire from all of this Empress business and just spend your time being Ba.

Fat chance of that happening anytime soon. You wouldn’t inflict the crown on your eldest like that, he might not let you play with the grandkids!

Neither of the twins have won the championship this year, but they both had wonderful seasons. And they’re still single and seemingly intent on sleeping with every single groupie and race girl in the League. At least it seems that way to you, considering that they seem to have new girlfriends every week.

[]	Confront them	They may not be the direct heirs, but they still represent the family and by extension the Empire. Sleeping around may be fun for them, but so far it seems that only pure chance has prevented them from impregnating women out of wedlock.
[]	Let it go	Let them live their own lives, and let the consequences for their behavior fall upon them as well. They are adults now with all that entails.

Sarah is going for a full up postdoc, while Tony is teaching history at GRU. Once Sarah finishes her postdoc, John is going to start his, and they intend to trade off teaching and study. It’s so nerdy it makes your brain hurt just thinking about it.

The safe has been opened, and to your profound amusement you discover that all it contained was a set of Lat/Long coordinates that would have led you directly to the 331st bunker. You can’t stop giggling about that for weeks.

On the other hand, your nerdy historian of a daughter has written a monograph already about the ‘Minnesota Tribe’ and the atrocities of the Dragon on Svelvick, Trondheim, Jarett, and most importantly, Richmond. Wonder of wonders, she actually managed to write it in such a way that ordinary folks could easily grasp it without any special academic training, so you order it published by the Throne’s publishing house.

Good propaganda is always a good thing, especially when it’s got the ineffable benefit of actually being true and documentable.

Jeremy is back on Griffin’s Roost after a highly successful training rotation on Nowy Gdansk. He’s been promoted again, to Lt Colonel, and is now the regimental XO for 2nd Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored.

He also is teasing his little sister and dad with a photo of himself wearing a Nollak Industries baseball cap and posing next to a new AAA tank he helped develop. Willis promptly asks if it would be possible to write him out of the succession and replace him with Thanh, on the grounds that his time in a mech cockpit has obviously caused brain damage.

However the design itself is pretty solid. A pair of LB-10X autocannon join a pair of LB-2X autocannons to form the primary armament, backed up with an ECM and Beagle unit to ensure electronic superiority. Almost as an afterthought they added a Laser AMS unit to the package and then upped the armor. They managed all of this without requiring any strategic materials too.

To fully upgrade your existing battalion of Skysweepers to the new configuration would be a bit pricey, but would not put you over the budget cap.

[]	Approve	Upgrade Cost	Cost	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Yes	15999.48	2981.72	92	14	Tracked, Armored 1, AMS 1, Anti-Air, Scout, ECM
[]	No

Procurement has gone quite well, with all new units now in service. The Standard Armored Regiment model appears to be a hit with the troops, as it is allowing integrated combined arms operations with less duplication of staff positions and specialist battalions. Some of the REMFs who’ve been denied sinecures are a lot less happy, but you are an old infantrywoman. In the immortal words of Sergeant Major Ngo… Screw the FOBits.

You’ve also gotten a chance to look over the plans for the Star Fort Jump Point Defense Station. And… you realize it is both insanely expensive, and also insanely lethal while being a figurative eggshell. One of these at a jump point would, against regular JumpShips and DropShips, be an effective ‘permission to exist in our space DENIED’ card. But they also cost almost a quarter million each with corresponding maintenance costs.

HMS Diadem is now in service, giving you a squadron of 5 Defiants, which earlier this year proved just how lethal the nasty little things are. HMS Destiny has been laid down this year.

The Shortbow factory has finally been expanded, a pair of space stations have been emplaced around Griffin II, and one of your Ferro-Aluminium foundries has been expanded as well.

A planetary resource survey has been successfully concluded on Nowy Gdansk, discovering more deposits of valuable ores for future exploitation. The planetary government is already taking advantage of the data generated in this survey.

The pre-colonization survey of Griffin IV has been completed and analyzed. No more shirts have been ripped in the making of this survey. The single biggest obstacle to colonization is that the current water supplies are worse than useless, even the water purification systems that you currently possess would be thoroughly inadequate to the task. Some of the options proposed by the survey teams are to try to fill in the oceans as much as possible, using airships to carry massive cargos of sand and rocks dug up from the shore lines and dumping them in the middle of the oceans. Dump in enough, you’d both neutralize the worst of the alkalinity as well as increase the water level by forcing the water to spread out from the deep holes as they are filled in. Another option is to combine that work with de-orbiting the ice comet to add a massive boost of fresh water to the planet. This would cut down on the amount of time the first option would take but would be immensely destructive. Both options, unfortunately, are somewhat beyond the current state of the art in terraforming technology that you possess.

Any option taken would be an extinction level event for the few life forms that cling on on the planet. The survey teams have already taken extensive DNA samples, but they do recommend creating isolated stable artificial ecosystems that would be suitable for the life forms and preserve them for the future. This would also be an enormous undertaking, and somewhat beyond your current state of the art.

Significant infrastructure development has been completed on Nowy Gdansk, making the cavern system that had been accidentally discovered into a true mecca of tourism and commerce. Further infrastructure work on the planet would be purely the province of the planetary government.

Both USS Enterprise and USS Endeavor spend most of the year, once they’ve redirected the ice comet, surveying Griffin’s Roost’s moon. Neither have detected anything spectacular, but they’ve still only comprehensively surveyed maybe a quarter of the surface. One thing they have noticed is that the regolith is somewhat more compacted and dense in the southern hemisphere of the moon than the northern and that the craters in the northern hemisphere look almost sand-blasted.

You are present at the ribbon cutting for the large nature park on Castor. The horticultural gardens and natural history museum are very nicely done.

Jake is still struggling to find suitable people to fill the staff positions for Periphery Studies. This is not helped by the tenured faculty catching wind that they’ll be getting new research assistants soon and deciding to ‘help’, with ‘help’ being defined in a truly… Periphery Studies way. The only thing Jake is willing to put on paper or speak of is that he’ll never think of ducks in quite the same way ever again.

You decide it would be wiser not to press him on this point.

The initial trials for the genetic editing experiments are being extended to ensure against any unforeseen side effects before moving to human testing on volunteers. The scientists involved estimate that they’ll have completed their work fully by this time next year.

The team responsible for sacking the orbital survey team which took the nudie pictures of you and your daughters at the nude beach has been sacked. The new team which has taken over has also been sacked. The net result of this year's orbital survey is two sacked orbital survey research teams and several terabytes of not particularly interesting images of the middle of the ocean.

Work has been completed on a network of colleges across Griffin’s Roost, Nowy Gdansk, and the orbitals intended to increase the educational opportunities afforded to all of your citizens, as a result the high end R&D labs have seen an influx of new talent.

Work on the targeting computer module for mechs and ground vehicles has concluded satisfactorily. Unfortunately the system provides minimal benefit to ASFs or Dropships as their fire control systems already incorporate many of the features of these modules, but for ground vehicles and mechs the system shows promise in permitting extreme levels of accuracy.

The redesign on the Black Site project took somewhat longer than hoped to complete, but construction is now fully on track and will be completed next year.

Finally, the old ruins have been fully stabilized and opened to the public as a massive memorial park. The area surrounding them which had previously been a buffer zone to discourage access has become a thriving commercial sector serving a tourist trade to see the site of the ancient catastrophe that so affected the course of history on the planet.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - A Warning To The People

Alarms were blaring. Sarah has detected a massive jump signature at the Zenith jump point that is soon resolved into a dozen Jumpships. A pair of Monoliths, 4 Star Lords, 4 Tramps, and 2 Invaders are soon identified, with a number of them being positively identified as belonging to House Kurita and having participated in the previous attacks on the system.

Eight Overlords form the core of the dropships, escorted by a swarm of Leopard-CVs and a single Aqueduct. All are burning hard for a zero-zero intercept with Griffin’s Roost at 2g. Total count is as follows.

Overlord	8
Aqueduct	1
Leopard-CV	41

They will arrive in 5 days at this acceleration.

As they burn in you receive a communication from the Dragon demanding that you surrender or your planet will burn. It is from Saburo Kurita himself and he sounds extremely full of himself, wearing full samurai armor with the traditional daisho prominently displayed at his hip.

[]	We’ll take you with us. Come and fight, if you think you are hard enough.
[]	Ignore the transmission
[]	Write-In

All of your forces are available to intercept.

Format your intercept orders in the following format

[] Plan Name
-[] Dropships
--[] List participating dropships
-[] ASF Units
--[] List of ASF units
-[] High Speed Intercept then burn for the Jumpships
-[] Prolonged intercept, attrite the enemy
--[] Focus on Overlords
--[] Focus on Leopards
--[] Focus on Aqueduct

QM Notes - Several rules for this. Due to complaints about lack of player interaction in previous combats, this time we are going to allow player participation in the planning. All rolls will still be done by myself and my trusty assistants. Due to their playing the Dragon, @Decim, @ShadowArxxy, and @Jarow will not be participating in the player planning. Each set of player votes will last a minimum of an hour, a maximum of 12 hours, or until a minimum of 5 votes with a delta of 2 votes is achieved.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - The Good And The Evil

You are overseeing the engagement, while allowing those who specialize in ASF and Space Navy operations run things, as they are the specialists in those fields.

ASF forces are being held back at Griffin’s Roost in a strong defensive shell, while the Defiants thrust towards the incoming attack force in a forlorn hope, intending to deal as much damage as possible during interpenetration as they can in the hope of reducing the incoming force to a more manageable size. The Enterprise class ships are arcing around and will reach the jumpships in 6 days, well before they’ll be able to jump out without hotloading their drives.

On the ground preparations are ongoing to deal with any forces that make it past the aerospace defenses. Reserves have been called up, the fortifications are fully manned and ready. All units have checked in. You will need to decide how to distribute your ground forces.

[]	Deployment Plan
[]	Balanced - Spread forces across all continents and rely on surface transportation assets to adjust deployments as Drac intentions become clear
[]	Focus on Griffsport - if the capital falls, we fall, all else is secondary
[]	Focus on defending the factories - With them in play we can recover from any harm the enemy inflicts on us
[]	Concentrate all mobile forces into a single strike force and try to anticipate where the enemy will land.

Your Naval commander informs you that the Aqueduct is unlikely to be strategically or tactically useful in this engagement and may be present as a distraction, it is recommended to adjust targeting priority of the Defiants to Overlords, Leopard-CV then and only then Aqueduct.

[] Approve
[] Disapprove

The Drac commander has not responded yet to your taunt, instead the entire formation of incoming dropships is transmitting Kuritan propaganda about how they’ll crush everything in their path unless we bow down and submit to the Dragon.

It’s been less than 24 hours since the Dracs arrived in the system. One day down, four until arrival. At their current course and trajectory your Assault Squadron won’t intercept for another 36 hours. Is there anything else you’d like to do now?

[] Optional Write-In