Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - This Is War

The outgoing Defiant squadron arcs around, on course to curve in behind the incoming invasion force and follow it in. It’s a superb tactic, as it will force the Drac pilots to either remain on constant alert, thus massively degrading their effectiveness by the time they arrive, or be vulnerable to the much faster assault dropships slashing in on them unprepared.

You are quite proud of yourself.

Until another alert comes in on the deep space surveillance network. Another jump signature has been detected. A quartet of Star Lords have jumped in to the Nadir point and deploy another two dozen dropships which start thrusting in at the same 2g rate. This force has been identified as a mix of Triumphs, Condors, and a mix of previously identified Union-CVs and Unions. This is quite obviously the intended garrison force, intended to occupy the planet after the main strike force, now designated Alpha, reduces your defenses.

You hate competent opponents who split their forces in a rational manner, thus forcing you to choose your poison.

Then Sarah really ruins your day. There are two Monoliths that had been previously identified in the prior raids who have not yet been seen. The enemy still has more reserves, in a worst case scenario.

You are coming to hate that word, reserves.

Then the incoming force broadcasts again, that same damn fully armored and masked Kurita in 100% full samurai get up that is far more accurate than any damn Kuritan has any right to be. “Surrender or your pathetic planet will be crushed beneath the fury and might of the glorious Dragon. You have no chance for victory. Resist, and the Dragon will unleash its wrath upon your worthless people and crush you with no mercy. For the Glory and Honor of House Kurita!”

This is broadcast from every single dropship that is incoming, denying you intelligence on just where their commander is.

[] Stick to the Plan
[] Modify The Plan

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - To The Soldier, The Civilian

The penny drops.

The pair of missing Monoliths appear at the L1 point and promptly launch a strike force consisting of 10 Avenger, 6 Achilles and 2 Vengeance dropships, which likewise launch swarms of what Sarah identifies as RoyalRogues and Thunderbirds.

All ASF assets are scrambled immediately and engage the enemy at once.

Your forces massively outnumber the Kuritan assets, even the Harris and Haskell class dropships join in to add in what firepower they can. And you are steadily degrading the Dragon’s forces.

Until they volley fire Alamo nuclear missiles, and everything goes to hell. Anti-missile systems do their best, but the sudden volley caught the Goshawks out of position and they were unable to adequately defend the formation, and nuclear detonations march through it.

It was shattering. The Rocs weathered the strike rather well, and the Goshawk were far enough away from it to be barely affected, but the Gyrfalcon and Eagle formations take it in the chin, and all three dropships that were deployed are destroyed in nuclear fire.

The defenders rally gamely, but it is clear that the balance has shifted decisively against the defense. One by one the squadrons of defenders are destroyed, some on the ground as massive Asset Management Weapons are deployed against their airbases, the rest to more of the Alamos.

The Dragon also takes enormous losses, in a final mad lunge the surviving Eagle, Goshawk and Roc flights charge in suicidally close and manage to destroy the two Vengeances. The Avengers had already taken heavy losses, as had the Achilles.

In the final analysis it is a mutual kill. The Aerospace Force has been annihilated, but the Dragon’s strike has likewise been exterminated. No strategic factories were even scratched, although evidently crashing Eagles have managed to completely destroy the primary gunpla factory.

Sarah solemnly announces. “Phase One, Exercise Millennium Challenger Completed. Proceeding to Phase Two. Debriefing Of Aerospace Pilots In Briefing One. Debriefing of Dropship Crews in Briefing Two. Debriefing of Command Crews in Briefing Three. Phase Two shall commence at 0530 tomorrow.”

Thanh took off the elaborate kaburo helm she’d been wearing as she had been playing Junko Kurita, ASF commander of the Kuritan force. Jeremy smirked at her from behind his own kaburo helm, as he was still in play as the overall Kurita commander.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - The Martyr, The Victim

Jeremy appreciated the new mechwarrior combat suit that had recently replaced the much bulkier coolant suit that had been the old standard. Based partially on the work done replicating the DEST suits along with records Sarah had concerning SLDF coolant suits, the new suits were far less bulky while providing superior coolant flow in high heat situations.

And sitting in the simulated cockpit of an STK-3Fb Royal Stalker he needed the superior coolant flow. This monster was just that, a monster on the battlefield, but even with the freezers it ran hot. Seventeen freezers struggled with the heat output, especially as the range closed. He was riding the heat curve, keeping it just below the point where it would negatively affect his performance on the field, by carefully bracket firing his weapons, but even so he knew that without the suit he’d be swimming in his own sweat by now.

However it was worth it. He already had ‘killed’ a half dozen Ambush and Trooper mechs, and had reaped a harvest of tanks. The Stalker started out lethal at long range, and just got more terrifying, and an entire company of the terrifying machines was more than anything he’d faced so far could handle.

Especially considering that before he even engaged the defenders in this scenario were having to run the gauntlet of massed LRM fire from CPLT-C1b Royal Catapults all the while dealing with the entire regiment of FLC-4Nb-PP2 Royal Falcons harassing them with laser fire.

It was brutally unfair, but that was the whole point of this exercise, ultimately. To show that the AFGR was not invincible, that too much of their success to this point had really been a matter of luck and a tech advantage rather than ‘skill’. Taking away the tech advantage and preventing the defenders in the exercise from taking advantage of their optimization through sheer force was driving the point home.

And it was kind of fun cosplaying as a blood-crazed Kurita. He’d sat down with Michal, Misha and both the elder and younger Leopold to brainstorm how he’d handle this assignment, and the Poles had fun coming up with suitably braggadocious lines for his faux-Kurita to spew out at the drop of a hat. Thanh had added her own touch to things by proposing wearing full armor and getting in costume, turned out her wife knew people who were involved in theatre and could whip something suitable up in time.

It was a vastly different feeling piloting this slow, plodding beast rather than his far more agile normal mount of a Trooper. In the lighter mech he’d had to dance and maintain maximum mobility in order to get the most out of his machine, in this, though, he simply stood and delivered. There was a sort of grim, primal, almost atavistic determination that seemed part and parcel of a machine like this.

He kind of liked it.

He hosed down a platoon of Weasels that tried to attack him, leaving the little IFVs as simulated flaming wrecks. And of course, as was in character for the psychopath he was playing, he keyed his radio.

“And now you know the utter folly of facing the Glorious Might Of The Dragon!” he made sure to enunciate all the capital letters. “You shall all Fall Before House Kurita!”

OK, this was far too much fun.

----

The after-action reviews were enlightening for everybody involved. Long analysis of battle logs and results had been carried out both by Sarah and teams of specialists.

To summarize. For Aerospace combat, more Defiant would be significantly useful, especially if they were to be upgraded to have more anti-missile firepower. A new large missile-focused ASF was also mooted due to the demonstrated effectiveness of large numbers of LRMs in combat conditions. In addition some means of establishing a defense in depth would be desirable, the current Space Stations served as useful fighter platforms for patrol purposes, but contributed nothing to the actual combat, and even simulating the laser defense satellites showed that they’d not have helped all that much.

For ground forces the main theme was the need for more raw firepower across the board. Once the heavy and assault class mechs had taken the field even the Lion and Jaguar tanks had been rapidly overwhelmed. The Rapid Reaction Force had managed to inflict some damage, but hadn’t been able to sustain itself as it took damage. Within less than an hour of the exercise beginning the entire RRF had been driven off the field.

The light and medium mechs had done their best, but once they were facing their heavier cousins they wilted in the face of overwhelming firepower. The belief that extremely skilled Mechwarriors in fast machines armed with long range weaponry would dominate the battlefield seemed excellent on paper, but in practice it turned out it only worked if the enemy lacked equally long-ranged weapons and equally skilled Mech jockeys. The light machines simply couldn’t take a hit, while the heavies and assaults could.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - This Is War (II)

By pure coincidence, the word in today's Word A Day calendar is ‘Defenestration’.

Which is very appropriate, considering that you are going to defenestrate two of your lovely children and your husband and your grandfather-in-law.

Twice.

Once you manage to actually catch the four of them they are all going through all the windows.

Of course, your lovely twins and husband and grandfather-in-law had arranged for you to discover that the twins had been Pulling A Tyler for FIVE years on you and everybody else from your grandkids, while you were pulling babysitter duty while Jeremy and Alita participated in the big exercise.

Granted, you quite approved of both of your new daughters-in-law, even if they had been going along with the twin’ long-running Tyler-ish behavior. Both were pregnant with twins, so you’d soon have FOUR MORE GRANDBABIES (grandbabies covereth a multitude of sins). Both were involved in the racing industry, Phyllis as an engineer and Lisa as a spotter. And a discrete check with Janet showed both were quite suitable, with no red flags on them from a security perspective.

Of course Thanh and Sarah are quite annoyed with their big brothers for managing to dodge a Proper State Wedding, but the scheming duo had managed it neatly. You are pouting a bit about that. Another reason to defenestrate them both when the time comes.

Bastet is off hunting with Anubis, and Sekhmet is looking quite smug about how that courtship is going. A few more years and you might have kitten grandbabies too!

Or would that be grandkittens? You and Sekhmet spend time laughing about that.

There’s a bit of a breakthrough, as a small private engineering firm patents a system for preventing damage from internal detonations from propagating to other parts of an armored system via blow-out panels and cellular organization, aka a slightly different form of the CASE technology that had been found in the various datacores. Both vehicle and mech designers are looking at the new technology as a means of protecting from internal detonations of ammunition.

There are a pair of proposals for an upgrade to the Defiant dropship, both in light of operational experience, new technology, and the results of the recent exercise. Both fully meet the requirements that the AFGE had put forth.

[]	Name	Cost	Upgrade Cost	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Defiant-2M	23,928.12	23,263.20	244	124	Armored 7, Swift, Missile 6, AMS 20, Armor-Piercing
[]	Defiant Refit 1.1	20,560.32	9,792	269	149	Armored 7, Swift, Missile 5, AMS 12, Armor-Piercing

Your grandson, incidentally, is starting his second season of go-kart racing, and you are making sure to take the time to attend his races. It gives you plenty of excuses to be with your grandkids after all! Your oldest granddaughter has been bugging her parents and you to be allowed to race like ‘big brother’ but she’s still too young according to the league. She certainly gets her pout face from Willis. You regally ignore all insinuations that she gets it from you.

The first of the luxury dropships for the line you are an investor in has been completed and has finished trials. She really is a beautiful machine, and her first trip is a highly profitable and successful one.

There’s a bit of a scandal on Pollux, where a dozen local government officials, almost a hundred teachers including almost the entire leadership of the local teacher’s union, and several dozen others have been indicted as part of a massive bribery and kickback scheme whereby the teachers had blackmailed parents with threats of reduced grades and disciplinary action against students unless said parents ‘contributed’ to various ‘charitable’ organizations that were run by the union and local officials, from which they all drew excess salaries.

Why does that continent and honest schools seem to have a ‘look but don’t touch’ relationship? The planetary government is quite upset about the situation and is threatening to thoroughly clean house of the entire system and replace everybody who even in the most tenuous possible way could have been involved, adjacent to those involved, or adjacent to those adjacent to those involved.

You decide to keep out of this unless it is brought officially to your attention.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - A Moment of Truth and a Moment to Lie

Sarah is in the hospital again. Not in a coma, thankfully, but she’d been caught up in a multi-vehicle accident near the campus of GRU and was transported there for observation and out of an abundance of caution.

There’s absolutely no sign of any foul play involved, a delivery truck had a tire blow out, causing it to swerve into a vehicle that was passing it on the right, the car behind that vehicle had failed to stop in time, and it turned into an epic snarl. Your daughter had managed to stop, but the car behind her driven by her bodyguards hadn’t quite managed it (understandable considering how much heavier it was) and had grazed her bumper just hard enough to trigger the airbags, since unlike on a regular vehicle they were set on a hair trigger to guarantee occupant safety in even the most minor of collisions.

Your daughter is grumbling about overprotective bodyguards and parents and loudly insisting that she is completely fine, and is far more upset about missing the lecture she was planning on attending than anything else.

The doctor’s agree that she seems to be in perfectly good health but ‘out of an abundance of caution’ they want to keep her in for observation ‘to make sure’. Tony had been all set to race to the hospital, but as he was already at the lecture hall Sarah had ordered him to record the lecture and then come to the hospital, or he’d be sleeping on the couch.

Tony, being an exceptionally smart young man, had promptly made one of his assigned bodyguards do the recording while also racing to the hospital to be with his wife.

So he was in there soothing her, you were playing with the grandbabies and keeping them from getting upset that mommy was in ‘twubble’ as little Thomas lisped.

Sarah’s out of the hospital the next morning, still muttering dire imprecations about the entire situation since she evidently wants to have a nice intellectual brawl to the death with the presenter of that lecture she missed ‘because he’s an idiot who mindlessly contradicts any source he feels is too ‘accepted wisdom’ even when it’s a primary source’. Tony fully supports his wife in this, on the grounds that said ‘alleged scholar’ is ‘only capable of impressing undergraduates by baffling them with multiple polysyllabic words strung together in apparently coherent thoughts without any actual substance beneath them’.

You are not touching this one with a thirty three and a half foot pole.

That weekend you have a ton of kids over in the palace, because little John is having a birthday and invited every single go kart racer and their families to the party. And the Imperial Guard has set up a massive karting track on the palace grounds winding around all the fountains and gardens for the kids to race around on.

The karting association has taken full advantage of this and has petitioned you to be allowed to bring extra karts with added safety gear for recruitment and the general public to faff about in. You decide to allow it, if they bring some suitable for adults for you and Willis to make use of.

And you have an absolute blast. The little karts, even the adult-sized ones, are far smaller than anything else you’d ever driven with four wheels and are far lower to the ground than any bike. The entire thing turns into an impromptu holiday, with massive crowds of families crowding the palace and enjoying themselves. It’s almost a pity when it ends, although the cooks don’t disappoint when they manage a huge cookout that feeds every single person there.

So you are flying high when you come into the office the next morning. Only to discover that the Imperial Parliament hadn’t gotten the memo that things were supposed to be wonderful and had dropped a giant steaming turd onto your desk.

You got about an hour warning from the Eldest, but both the Imperial Senate and the Chamber of Delegates are involved in this turd. Legislation is being pushed through by a small but extremely vocal group to eliminate the planetary governments of Griffin’s Roost and Nowy Gdansk and replace them with direct rule from governors appointed by the Imperial Senate and Chamber of Delegates, with no input from the throne.

You check, all of these morons had just barely squeaked in by running incredibly negative campaigns in the last election, and part of their proposal would cancel all future elections. This particular group had been fairly quiet, apart from always voting against every single budget request you’d ever made. And now they evidently have found some dirt on a number of their colleagues, which Jake assures you is pretty much all fabricated anyways when you ask, and are pushing for all they’re worth.

Worse, they have friends in the media who are using the Pollux schools corruption situation as a club with which to beat those who disagree with this group and proclaim that anybody who opposes them is probably just as corrupt as the officials under indictment.

When in fact many of the members of this clique are implicated although not yet indicted in the same mess.

It would be a simple thing to crush this, simply by directing Janet to push up the indictments and force impeachments through on those implicated, but it would also be a direct interference of the Crown in the judicial system.

Or you could spend some political capital and buck up those members who are wavering in the face of this group's rhetorical assault and their media allies' amplification of the same.

[]	Do nothing, it should die on its own	Unknown effect
[]	Unleash Janet on them	-10 Approval, +5 Politics
[]	They want a fight? Give them a fight they’ll regret forever.	-5 support Senate and Chamber of Delegates, +5 Approval, Triggers event chain

However there’s a separate bill that is most certainly not a steaming pile of feces. Proposed by several of your own supporters in the Senate, the bill would incentivize private shipping firms to build dropships easily capable of conversion to military transports, albeit not combat transports. This is analogous to the many Maritime Shipping Commission subsidies from old Earth’s US history, and going by the notes it looks like your darling historian daughter was involved in the research that led to this.

[]	Support	Immediate cost of 500,000, +1% GDP Griffin’ Roost, +1% GDP Nowy Gdansk, +1% GDP GIAB, +1% GDP G2O, will be able to requisition transports from commercial interests with a 1 turn target 100 military action
[]	Oppose

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - A Moment To Live And A Moment To Die

You decide to indulge Jane and let her do the entire Black Mace thing, although that requires you to first commission an appropriate Mace first. You do require her to wear period correct costume, and manage to intimidate her into behaving herself under threat of you picking her wardrobe for the rest of the year while pointedly having catalogs of the most frumpy outfits available open on your desk.

The joint session of the Imperial Parliament is quite impressed by the sheer pomposity and artistry of the affair, since only the Eldest (who’s the current sitting President of the Senate) knew that you were planning on showing up; it comes as quite a surprise to everybody.

The fact that the Special Branch promptly takes up the same positions at the exits as they did the last time you had purged the planetary Parliament of corrupt nobles and politicians is not lost on anybody.

This time there’s no dramatic retaking of oaths and arrests on the spot. Instead, you simply march up to the podium, which the Eldest cheerfully surrenders to you, turn around, and then simply glare at the guilty parties.

Several of whom you are quite certain had ‘accidents’ in their pants.

All of them were elected, all of them were from Pollux, and all of them were implicated in the massive corruption probe that was sweeping the continent.

And you give it to them with both barrels. Ripping their ludicrous proposal for direct Imperial rule of the planets, tearing into the utter lack of legal standing their proposals even had.

And then rather pointedly stating that you were tempted to assume direct Imperial rule of Pollux, simply for the purpose of giving yourself the legal authority to summarily execute their happy asses without needing to waste time with a trial.

Now you know for certain that all of them just had accidents in their pants, and are probably wishing they’d chosen to wear their brown trousers to Parliament that morning.

You finish up by preemptively declaring that if this ridiculous proposal ever makes it to your desk in any form that Parliament would collectively feel your wrath, and appealing to the ‘good voters’ of Pollux to please replace the morons with somebody with at least one collective brain cell.

It is quite satisfying as you sweep back out of the Parliament chambers.

The proposal to set up a Transportation Commission has been quite successful. With relatively minor changes the basic design of the Haskell class transport is quite readily converted into a civilian freight hauler. With the seed money and the ongoing fees, the commission is able to subsidize purchase of these ‘Imperial C1-Light’ dropships which would be easily converted into base Haskells when needed. There are now a number of private yards building these vessels, which should allow you to convert the Haskell line into a more combat oriented line.

[]	Convert Factory 8 to...
[]	Defiant
[]	Velociraptor
[]	Microraptor
[]	Warrior

Several weeks before budget time there’s a bit of excitement.

A massive volcanic eruption on Griffin II sends a plume of ejecta above the atmosphere. Massive sulfur ‘boulders’ are propelled on extremely high sub-orbital arcs. Enterprising miners in the orbital habitats manage to capture a few of them and accelerate them to orbital velocity, and find that they are nearly pure masses of elemental sulfur.

A few hours later there is another eruption from near the same site, and orbital scanners seem to indicate that these eruptions, while hardly regular, are also not all that rare. Most don’t achieve quite the levels of energy seen in the first one, but even so they are ejecting masses of sulphuric compounds, down to pure sulphur in some cases, into the upper atmosphere and beyond.

The miner’s see a potential market in skimming off these compounds to sell to the chemical industry. It would be extremely dangerous and very expensive to set up, but the potential yields are quite high. Doing so, however, would violate just about every Imperial health and safety rule imaginable.

They want to do it anyway.

[]	Health & Safety is Important!	No change
[]	Health & Safety is Overrated!	Up front cost of 100,000, -5 Approval, -5 Politics, One Time +100% GDP growth Griffin II Orbitals +10% GDP growth Griffin’s Roost +10% GDP growth Nowy Gdansk

Imperial Griffin Aerospace Werks has completed upgrades to the Warrior production line on Nowy Gdansk and are able to deliver HMS Warrior somewhat early. That means you will need to decide how to deploy her.

[]	Form A New Squadron In Home Fleet
[]	Form A New Fleet

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - The Moment to Fight… To Fight… TO FIGHT!

You spend a few hours watching videos of the crazy miners on Griffin II and make two decisions. First, none of your children or grandchildren are ever allowed to do any of that, period, dot, end of line, no appeals allowed. Second… well, Sergeant Major Ngo manages to keep you from taking the Confederate out to try your hand at ejecta wrangling.

It’s obviously Willis’ fault.

He infected you.

That’s your story and you are sticking to it.

And you just know that Tyler is smirking. You make a note to replace the pads on his zimmer frame with whoopie cushions.

The Free Folk have returned, evidently now that they know they have a potential trade partner here they’ve altered their route to more regularly visit. There’s a bit of light trade, nothing spectacular on either side but it does give your budget a bit more cash to play with ((QM Note - Interest Rate to 25% this turn)).

Both the Karting and Pee Wee Hovercraft Racing associations have approached you asking if you’d be willing to make the big race day you’d hosted for your grandson’s birthday a yearly event for the community. They’re willing to foot the bill for the event itself.

[]	Vroom! GO FOR IT	Yearly kid’s race on the Palace grounds. +1 Approval Change, has a chance to trigger minor events each year (nothing serious)
[]	Decline

You are present for the commissioning ceremony for HMS Warrior and you have to say it is an impressive machine. Simply sitting on the pad it looks like it is capable of taking on swarms of enemies and crushing them with a surprisingly sleek set of proportions for a spheroid. Of course, you had to threaten Thanh with being put in command of the ship rather than her beloved ASF, you wouldn’t be Mom if you didn’t.

While you are at the launch the representatives from Imperial Griffin AerospaceWerks buttonhole you again with another proposed design. Considering that the last one was the Warrior-class you are willing to at least listen to them.

It’s called the Lightning class, and it is a fast-attack dropship intended to make enemies truly regret their life choices. It’s the same mass as the Warrior, but the resemblance quickly ends.

Maximum thrust? Six G, faster than many ASFs that are in service. Has one fewer subcapital laser in the nose, no ASF bays, less armor and a less varied secondary armament, but in exchange has far greater missile throw weight and denser active point defense. In some ways it’s a ‘lesson learned’ design, but primarily it is intended to serve as a swift and lethal attack boat in the same vein as the Defiant, just scaled up and made spheroid. Majeure Electronique has proven to be the master of aerodyne dropships, IGAW intends to be the same for spheroids.

You’d need to build a dedicated factory for it, as this particular design is specialized enough that there’s no commercial derivative design that would finance the production line. Production would require Ferro-Aluminium and Double Heat Sinks from the strategic materials stockpile.

[]	Decision	Name	Cost	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Build Factory (10,000)	Lightning	110,968.66	530	300	Armored 18, Missile 20, AMS 24, Capital 27 3, Swift
[]	Don’t Build

Once you get back home, of course, it’s right in time for budget time.

You try very hard but this is still your least favorite time of year. Although Jeremy is sitting in with you this year, since he’s got some leave and agreed to lend a hand.

He’s such a good young man, isn’t he?

General Jackston starts things out. “Your Majesty, Your Highness. The main priority of Ground Forces is continued expansion and preparing for the arrival of heavier mechs once it is decided to build them. To that end, we would like to recommend the purchase of a second Standard Armored Regiment for 2nd Armored, continued procurement of the Orb Weaver mech, procurement of sufficient Shortbow and Ambush mechs to start to convert 1st Mech Battalion, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade into a unit of Light Fire Companies, and procurement of a second space marine regiment to garrison Griffin 2’s orbitals.”

Jeremy takes a few notes on his tablet and sends them to you to look at. “What about the 1st Mech Regiment, 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade? They are currently at full strength on the Ambush, can we transfer some of those to the 2nd Brigade?”

General Jackson nods “We could, however the current plan is to wait until we have heavier mechs, with 1st Battalion being the flagship unit for those designs, at which time the Ambushs they are currently using would be transferred to 2nd Armored to start their mech forces. At this time we are simming out a light recon company made up of two lances of Orb Weaver and one of Ambush mechs, but until we have more production of Orb Weavers this is stuck in virtual simulation only.”

She pauses for a moment. “On that note, we are investigating means of transitioning 1st Armored to the new Standard Armored Regiment format. The most straightforward method would be to simply procure full SAR sets and transition the existing kit to the planetary militias. We recommend holding off on that until 2nd Armored is fully stood up and has proven the SAR model.”

General Reyes then takes over. “The recent exercises have demonstrated both the strength and the weakness of our current ASF forces. Even heavily concentrated our forces were still vulnerable to the enemy and failed to stop the assault cold. While most of this was due to the parameters of the exercise, it is still something for us to work on. To that end, we are recommending opening studies for a new ultra-fast point interceptor suitable for planetary deployment to bolster our defenses. The Gyrfalcon is a powerful light dogfighter, but is too slow for the true interceptor mission. In addition we have opened studies on a new Assault ASF intended to give us a significant firepower advantage over the enemy. To that end, we would recommend a short pause in procurement, other than to fill the flight decks of our dropships, until we have new designs on tap. Right now the maintenance and upkeep costs of the ASF force is starting to become prohibitive. Ultimately we would like to standardize on composite squadrons of the new interceptor, the new assault ASF, and the Eagle, reserving the Goshawk 2G and the Roc to station defense and anti-dropship roles respectively. The Gyrfalcon would operate in conjunction with the new interceptor on planetary defense duties.”

Admiral Benjamin then takes the podium. “With the commissioning of HMS Warrior we’re in a solid position, especially with the upgrades to the yard allowing us to add a new ship of that type every other year if we commit to full scale procurement. Which I think we need to do.” he grins slightly at that. “And having seen the specs for the Lightning I want them, I want as many of them as you can give me. I’ll beg if I have to.” he pauses. “The trials of HMS Argus are going well, I’d like to next procure a trio of the Velociraptor-class dropships to form a squadron with Argus, then procure a second Microraptor to form a 5 ship dropship squadron with a full wing of ASFs. That combination should be most painful for any prospective enemies. I would also like to recommend building one of the new Defense Stations, not at a jump point, but in Griffin’s Roost orbit in order to test the design and enhance our capitals defenses”

General Potter remains seated. “Your Majesty, Your Highness, we will need to upgrade multiple factories this year if we want to boost our procurement to suitable levels. Specifically, we should upgrade the Microraptor/Velociraptor shared facility, the Orb Weaver plant, the Shortbow plant, and the dedicated Velociraptor line. Concurrently we need to upgrade our orbital assets to produce enough Ferro-Aluminium, Endo-Steel, and Double Heat Sinks to support this production. We also should look into improvements in dropship manufacturing that could double our production capacity, and overall industrial streamlining which would do the same for Mechs and ASFs.”

Bridget is cheerful as ever. “Your Majesty! We got so many things on our plate, especially if you want to go on a spree of expanding all the factories! We should totally do that, and also do some focus work on the Inner Asteroid Belt, which would really help the economy there and overall, did you know that they’re starting to produce these really cool showerheads that are super-efficient because of just how precise manufacturing can be in zero-g conditions? They save like 60% on water use, while still feeling like you are getting full flow, it’s awesome! And they have massage modes! Right now they’re really expensive but I’m sure they’ll be a big hit if we can get the cost down! DoME is a bunch of busy little beavers, literally in some cases, I visited one of the tunneling sites on Phoenix and yowzers are they digging up a storm or what. It’s really impressive!”

You think she breathed a few times in all of that. You wouldn’t be willing to place any bets on that, though.

Isoroku is actually meeting with the Free Folk to discuss making their visits regularly scheduled. He promises to report on the results of his meeting when he gets back to Griffin’s Roost. In the meantime he recommends another music festival this year, since next year is another Olympics.

Jake is very Jake-like this year. “Your Majesty, I got good news, bad news, and expensive news. Good news? Almost done dealing with those damn idiots in the Periphery Studies department. Bad news? Got a bunch of parliamentarians who are whining about that entire Black Mace thing you did with Jane. They are grown men and you’d think they were three year olds to hear them whine. Expensive news? We have plans for not only dealing with those entitled little shits but also to expand the DoME by recruiting even more mad engineers to the cause. We got elections soon-ish, and if we work on it we can make sure to weed out the morons and self-centered pricks from the running, we have enough popular support that if we come out against candidates for office they will lose.”

Mary remains seated and triggers the display “Your Majesty, we have no new projects available for you this year, but plenty of old ones.”

• Military
  • Heavy Bipedal Battlemechs
    • This year's exercises have shown just how capable heavier mech designs can be. We have several designs in the theory stage, we just need to actually work out how to make them properly
  • ER Medium and Small Lasers
    • Extended Range 8cm lasers have proven useful, theoretical work on Extended Range 3cm and 5cm weapons appears promising enough that it is something we should strongly consider
  • Aerodyne Dropships (Heavy)
    • I have representatives from Majeure Electronique camping out in my reception area with endless proposals for new aerodyne dropships in this tonnage range. For the sake of my receptionist's sanity...
• Non-Military
  • Terraforming Equipment Lvl 3
    • The survey work on Griffin IV has shown that we will need to improve our understanding of terraforming techniques and equipment if we are to expand to that world, which would more than pay for the expense of the project in the long term
  • Industrial Mechs Tier 3
    • Would make all of our DoME projects easier across the board, making this a highly efficient use of our resources
  • Improved Automation Lvl 5
    • This would bring us to full Star League levels of automation across the board. Highly recommended.

Harry is still busy overseeing the final steps of the Black Site project so is unavailable for this meeting, on the other hand there really isn’t anything for Intel this year.

Janet is busy with the legal review, but not so busy that she doesn’t ply you with wonderful coffee and spend hours kibitzing about grandkids.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 37 - The War Is Won

Spoiler: Events, Luck, and Ratings

Meta Event Roll - 1
Dynasty Luck Roll - 39

Imperial Approval - 9
Approval Change - -3
Politics Event - -1

Imperial Economic Rating - 3
Imperial Economic Event - 4
Research Event - 2

Griffin’s Roost Economy - 8
Griffin’s Roost Health - 7
Griffin’s Roost Change - -1

Nowy Gdansk Economy - 3
Nowy Gdansk Health - 10
Nowy Gdansk Change - 0

GIAB Economy - 1
GIAB Change - -2

G2O Economy - -2
G2O Change - -3

Spoiler: Action Results

Enhance Shipbuilding [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Improved MIC lvl 2 [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit
-Velociraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

-Microraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 40
Result - SUCCESS

-Warrior [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 61
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units
-1 Flight of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 99, ShadowArxxy Reroll 31
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Falcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 33
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flights of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Cadet Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance Orb Weaver [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 60
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lance Ambush Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 45
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lance Shortbow Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Standard Armored Regiment [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 47
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Griffin II L1 [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 46
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 11 (DHS) [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 40
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 18 (Ferro-Aluminum) [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 58
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Aluminum Griffin II L4 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 12
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Griffin II L4 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 89
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Griffin II L5 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 33
Result - SUCCESS

Have Exploration Fleet Survey Griffin's Roost Moon [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Benefit Concert [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

Increase Funding to the Department of Periphery Studies* [auto]

Build Relations with Senate [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 3
Result - SUCCESS

Set up campaign offices to coordinate support for friendly Senators and Delegates to the Imperial Parliament [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 58
Result - SUCCESS

Genetic Editing* [auto]

LOSTECH - Terraforming Equipment Lvl 3 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 98, Kelgar04 Reroll 86
Result - Bare FAILURE, Auto next turn

Nuclear Munitions [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 89, Kelgar04 Reroll 8
Result - SUCCESS

Heavy Bipedal Battlemechs [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

Aerodyne Dropships (Heavy) [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

Construct secure 'Black Site'* [auto]

Intensive Investigation of Bratva* [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 72
Result - Bare FAILURE, Auto next turn

-----

You make the announcement about the yearly kids race on the Palace grounds flanked by the heads of both the Karting Association and the Pee Wee Hovercraft Race League. At the same press conference the head of the Karting Association lets slip that they are working with the planetary government on Nowy Gdansk to establish a kids snowmobile race there, making use of kart bodies on appropriately sized snowmobile chassis, although the bodies would have to be fully enclosed for safety. The Pee Wee Hovercraft league also announces an expansion to Nowy Gdansk, although they don’t believe they’ll need any modifications to the standard for racing over snow.

QM Note - +2 Rating Change on Nowy Gdansk, 1 time +10% GDP Nowy Gdansk

You still haven’t properly defenestrated Tyler, but Jane helpfully procured one of the special effects windows the movie industry uses so you have tossed both of your twins out an appropriate window into one of the Palace swimming pools. While they were wearing their Sunday best. And got it all on film, including them sputtering about things as they stood there dripping wet and getting lectured for their cruel cruel deprivation of their loving and suffering mother by not allowing her to have proper weddings for all of her boys.

Of course, you now have four more grandbabies than you did before, so you finally relent and forgive them.

Jeremy has been moved over to a staff position in charge of Mech organizational plans, and is in line to command the first Standard Mech Regiment when it is stood up.

You’ve gotten to see the three new designs of Heavy mechs on the testing field and they are extremely impressive. The Crusader looks quite impressive, with a massive gauss rifle in one arm and an Enhanced PPC in the other, coupled with a pair of 10 racks of LRMs tied into an advanced fire control system. The Cuirassier is on a similar chassis, only with a more powerful fusion plant, and sports a pair of the enhanced PPCs plus an anti-missile system all tied into a highly sophisticated targeting computer and an array of advanced electronics. The Archer is on a slightly lighter chassis, but sports a pair of 20 racks of LRMs with advanced fire control along with a number of 5cm lasers.

Sarah is busy being a mom herself, but also working on finishing up her first post-doc. She had you read her dissertation, which is a formal history of the Griffith Dynasty from primary family sources, and it is an interesting read. Although the language is very academic and dry.

Thanh is rather disgruntled as she finds herself flying a desk herself, having been transferred to the Dropship Command School due to her performance in the exercise showing her clear suitability to command advanced high performance assault dropships. Unfortunately for her, this posting doesn’t actually require staff school, nor any of the qualifications that she avoided getting while in the Academy.

Then to her utter horror she learns that Command School counts as Staff School so she’d now be qualified for any command posting. Her clever plan is no more.

You and General Potter exchange high fives. The twins try to prank their little sister by drawing pictures of her being dragged away, kicking and screaming, from her precious Eagle but promptly wind up with egg on their face as she retaliates effectively with cartoons of them dripping in the swimming pool begging for mercy from Mom.

Your kids, even all grown up.

Procurement goes very well this year, with all units desired procured.

But that isn’t the big news. The big news is that the work on enhancing shipbuilding and improving the military industrial complex has yielded highly unexpected synergies as the very techniques and methods used to enhance production in the surface factories translate to greatly increased production efficiency in the orbital forges and foundries used to produce strategic materials.

Moreover, the new space station is completed and manned in the Griffin 2 Orbitals, with even more skimming for bolides occurring. You swear there will probably be a reality TV series about that insanity eventually.

New orbital forges and foundries come online in the Griffin 2 Orbitals as well, and others are expanded significantly.

USS Enterprise completes another survey of the moon around Griffin’s Roost itself, and this time they hit pay dirt. Buried in the regolith they discover a few scattered bits of wreckage that have been tentatively identified as being hull plating from an ancient Terran Hegemony Cruiser class vessel. The wreckage is completely destroyed and melted, as if the vessel had exploded while close to the moon with scattered bits being driven into the regolith.

Recovery of the wreckage yields very little useful data, as you already possess superior alloys for armor and materials and the damage is so great that it took Sarah and an enormous amount of guesswork to tentatively identify the origin of the material. However it does increase interest in the moon.

With the successful development of the underlying theoretical framework for larger aerodyne dropships the Majeure Electronique team besieging Mary’s office have raced back to their own offices and have immediately rolled out a trio of designs optimized for multiple roles.

The Tyrannosaurus-class Escort Dropship is the pure gunship of the trio, sporting the heaviest armor of the three and the biggest guns. The Utahraptor-class Aviation Gunship and the Megaraptor-class Light Carrier are sister designs, much like the Velociraptor and Microraptor.

The benefit concert this year is quite amusing. Fitting, since it’s a concert of comedy artists who spend the entire show one-upping each other with mixed stand-up and parody music routines that leave the audience laughing in their seats.

Of course, the newly enlarged Department of Periphery Studies cannot allow this to go on, and put on their own show which mercifully is confined to campus and seems to consist primarily of a live action recreation of ancient Terran comedy shows. You do find one of the routines absolutely hilarious, however. It was… very interesting.

Jake spends a few weeks meeting with various Senators, at least the ones who aren’t corrupt morons, and it seems to have an effect in shoring up your support in that body. More importantly, you’ve setup campaign offices across the Empire to make sure that the most corrupt and idiotic candidates get plenty of opposition during the elections, which should hopefully reduce the worst of the Parliamentary shenanigans in the future.

The work on Genetic Editing has been completed, with the final proof of concept being some minor genetic tweaks to a local species of ursine like creatures that are generally harmless, changing their fur color to a different pattern.

One of the experimental rigs overloads and catches fire in the labs working on improving terraforming technology, resulting in a partial loss of progress and pushing back completion of the project until next year.

Work on the Alamo missile has been completed.

The Black Site is up and running for the next time you have prisoners to interrogate.

Investigative work on the Bratva is somewhat slowed by the fact that there are so very few surviving Bratva members to interrogate, which is delaying completion of the investigation slightly. They expect results by Q2 next year.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 38 - You’re Wondering Who I Am

This year the Winter Games are being held on Nowy Gdansk, to the slight grumbling of the few Griffin’s Roost athletes who actually compete in the various winter sports. However you arrange for the Griffin’s Roost team to be transported on the new ultra-luxurious Empress-class dropship at the Crown’s expense (you get a discount since you are part owner!).

The competition itself goes pretty much how everybody expected it to, until the figure skating competition. In the skiing, the sledding, the speed skating, and the snowboarding the people of Nowy Gdansk utterly dominated the competition, in several cases sweeping the podium.

But the figure skating competition is a whole different kettle of fish, as the Men’s, Women’s, and Team competitions are all won by a pair of incredibly talented young skaters from a small community that supports the oil rigs near Five Fingers. The pair were just barely above the age cut-off to compete, but utterly smoke the far more experienced skaters on the ice.

Needless to say they are the darling of the Griffin’s Roost sports media, and even the locals seem quite enchanted by them.

All in all it is an incredibly successful Winter Games, showing good signs for the upcoming summer events back on Griffin’s Roost.

While you are on Nowy Gdansk, however, the local planetary leadership asks you to attend a business meeting.

They reveal a large complex of massive and stable underground caverns in a nearby mountain range that are of truly gargantuan proportions. The thick stone and the geology of the area made it so they only stumbled upon them by accident as all of the surveys had completely missed them.

They are proposing using them to host a truly epic scaled Mech, Dropship and ASF factory complex. It would be an extremely expensive undertaking, but in the end you’d have a complex comparable to the legendary Hesperus II complex of Defiance Industries.

[]	Agree	For next 5 years, 1,000,000 a year cost While active +10% GDP Nowy Gdansk +1% GDP Griffin’s Roost +1% GDP GIAB +1% GDP G2O +1% Tax Rate Upon Conclusion Receive 3 Rating 5 Mech Factories Receive 3 Rating 5 ASF Factories Receive 1 Rating 4 Dropship Factory +10 Infrastructure Nowy Gdansk +100% GDP Nowy Gdansk
[]	Disagree

You look over the plans. They weren’t kidding when they said it would be expensive, but the upsides are tremendous. Thirty lances worth of mechs a year, thirty flights of ASFs a year, and a new dropship every year? A massive boost to your military production, and the economic growth that the proposal would generate during construction would defray a significant portion of the expenses.

And that is assuming that ongoing improvements to the organization of the military-Industrial complex doesn’t boost production numbers even higher.

In more personal news, you now have two grandkids racing around in Karts as little Tien has joined her big brother racing. You make a point to attend the races, both because they are fun to watch but also to support your grandkids (and get to play with all of them!). These excursions turn into complete family holidays and you couldn’t be happier, especially since Sarah is pregnant again.

The twins are a bit frantic, as they are dealing with an apparent obsessed stalker. You, on the other hand, know full well that this is Thanh getting her revenge on the twins for attempting to prank her over her transfer to Command School. It’s… glorious.

You really shouldn’t encourage your children in their pranks now that they are all grown up.

Honestly.

You will anyways, because it’s funny, but you shouldn’t.

Bastet and Anubis are back from their series of hunts and are evidently in the ‘sit together and watch the sunsets’ phase of grifftiger courtship. Or at least that’s your view of the situation, Sekhmet refuses to comment beyond that Anubis is proving worthy of her daughter.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 38 - Machine or Mannequin

The Palace is opened up again for the annual children's Kart and Hovercraft race day, and just like last year it is an enormous success. This year there’s the addition of a soapbox derby track that is proving quite popular as well, and not just with the kids. The finale of the day is the adults soapbox race, with the entries judged not simply on who gets across the finish line first, but who does it with the most style.

There are three stages to the judging. First, a panel gives a score based on how creative the basic soapbox racer is. Second, a group of kids picked from the crowd gives their own creativity score of the entire zaniness of the racer. Then finally those scores are combined with the time it takes to complete the track to create the final score.

It’s hilarious. Willis actually entered the two of you in a soapbox made to look like a paper-mache grifftiger complete with glowing stripes. And he talked Sekhmet into pushing it for the initial off (which did give you quite a bit of speed starting off, you were hanging on the brakes in order to make the first turn).

You wipe out on the final berm and cross the finish line on your side, laughing the entire way.

Construction has started on the massive factory complex on Nowy Gdansk. Thanks to the hundreds of meters of extremely dense rock the complex will be nearly as perfectly defensible as the underground factory on Capricorn, just much, much larger.

You spend some time imagining just how badly the Dracs would react if they knew you were building your own version of Hesperus II right in their backyard. The thought gives you some warm fuzzies.

With the elections and your efforts to promote candidates who pass certain minimal requirements in terms of honesty and integrity the makeup of Parliament has shifted, favorably in your opinion. Fewer ‘old time’ political dinosaurs and more civic minded ordinary citizens. You approve of that.

And it does prove useful, Parliament off the gate gets down to business, with less of the posturing and preening of the past.

One of the first moves that Parliament makes is one that you hadn’t actually expected, but which you probably should have given how much of an anti-corruption and anti-backroom deal stance you’d been encouraging. They vote to make all proceedings, except those closed on national security grounds, fully open to the public. It’s a good look for Parliament and increases their general popularity with the public.

They also pass some quite interesting bits of legislation that head to your desk for approval. Unlike in the past, there’s not even a hint of power-grab in any of them, and each is refreshingly straightforward.

First, there’s a bill more clearly delineating the boundaries of authority for Imperial and Planetary governments, including provisions for how potential conflicts between planetary governments are to be adjudicated by the Imperial government. In the past it was pretty much ‘Imperial Step On Planet Who Make Trouble’ by default, but Parliament actually establishes set procedures for how to adjudicate things without requiring direct Imperial intervention except as a last resort.

[]	Approve Bill 1	-5 Politics, +1 Approval Change, -5 Economic Event, prevents certain events
[]	Veto Bill 1	-1 Influence Senate, Chamber of Delegates, -10 Support Senate, Chamber of Delegates

The second proposal has to do with formally settling several issues of future concern about the apportionment of representation within Parliament itself when the Empire goes multi-stellar. Specifically, it codifies the model in use now within the Griffin system as being the standard, in that each system will get a number of Senators and Delegates related to the population, but how they are apportioned within the system would be a matter of local concern with the only requirement being that the method is approved by the Imperial government.

[]	Approve Bill 2	Prevents certain events
[]	Veto Bill 2	-1 Influence Senate, Chamber of Delegates, -10 Support Senate, Chamber of Delegates

Finally there is a bill that you strongly want to support, although many traditionalists are looking positively dyspeptic over it. A proposal to create a new uniform for the AFGE that is distinct from that of the AFGR so as to more clearly distinguish Imperial and Planetary level forces. This would finally be your chance to get rid of the pointy bit of the uniform! On the other hand… this would be handled by a committee… and they might come up with something worse

[]	Risks Must Be Taken!	New Imperial Uniform! (decided by QM)
[]	Pointy Bit Isn’t THAT Bad!	Keep the pointy bit, avoid THIS being a possibility

You get to hold your latest granddaughter, and she’s named after you which makes you feel all gooey inside. Some things just make everything else worthwhile.

You totally understand ba now. You’ve become ba. And you couldn’t be happier about it.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 38 - With Parts Made In Japan

The Free Folk return once more to the Zenith point, now that Griffin’s Roost is a known ‘safe harbor’ they seem to be coming far more often.

And they are in rough shape, leaking atmosphere and with obvious battle damage. You receive a transmission urgently requesting assistance. They had been attacked by Drac ASFs in a previously empty system and had suffered serious damage and needed to completely SCRAM their reactors before they suffered overloads, plus they were surviving in emergency pressure suits due to the extensive damage suffered. In addition there were Drac marines holed up in one of the sections of the vessel and intermittent fighting was continuing.

You barely even hesitate to think about it and send your flotilla of Defiants along with a HMS Argus transporting a group of power armor infantry wielding anti-boarding weaponry. They’re having to somewhat improvise the carriage of the power armor, setting up the field charging systems in one of the ASF bays and leaving that Eagle behind.

The small formation makes excellent time out to the drop point by boosting as hard as possible for long duration flight, and the Power Armor forces make… a strong impression on the Dracs. You have a few prisoners, but not too many.

The Free Folk jumpship is in very bad shape, HMS Argus had gone up without any of her flight crews on board and with most of her bays cleared, so she was able to take aboard most of the Folk until HMS Haskell arrived a day later. Several small craft ferry the prisoners to the Black Site for interrogation.

Engineers from both the Free Folk and your own survey the jumpship, the core itself is intact, along with all ancillary systems, but the reactors are badly damaged, the life support system is nearly completely shot, and very little of the vessel is capable of holding atmosphere. For the time being the Free Folk are likely to be your guests until repairs can be completed.

They share with you some of their charts, showing that the Drac expedition has occupied six nearby systems, although only three of them have fully habitable planets. The others simply have outposts constructed and appear to be mainly used for resource collection. All but two of them are to the galactic ‘east’ of you, with the medieval world and the apparent new outpost being to the galactic north and south respectively. Based on the charts, it looks like the Dracs are seeking to englobe you.

You do learn more about the history and background of the Free Folk. They were originally Jarnfolk, however political conflicts and an escalating series of feuds and assassinations led the ancestors of the Free Folk to leave Jarnfolk space, the original three Jumpships that they’d brought with them had slowly been cannibalized down to this one and they’d developed the heavy lasers they used to deter attacks from various pirate groups.

You do discover something else that is very worrying. The ‘pirates’ that you had faced several years earlier were a known threat in the region. According to the Free Folk, they are descendents of Amaris Empire forces who had broken contact with the SLDF and now occupied a region well to the Galactic South of you.

And they had multiple functional Warships. If it weren’t for the fact that they fought each other so much they’d have already started pushing towards the Inner Sphere to take revenge upon the Great Houses for failing to submit to Stefan Amaris.

And the incredibly suicidal tactics you’d seen? According to the Free Folk, the Amaris Remnant had brought with them advanced drone technology, which they used extensively.

Somehow you keep from peeing your panties at that news. The only good thing is that this group is about two dozen jumps away at their closest and only on extremely rare occasions do one or more of the ‘Brigades’ venture this far away from their central fastness.

With that in mind, it’s budget time. Which somehow seems a wee bit more important. Jeremy is again at the meeting with you.

General Jackson kicks off proceedings. “Your Majesty, we need 2 lances each of Shortbow and Ambush II mechs to finish converting 1st Mech Battalion, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade of 1st Armored to all Light Fire Companies. In addition, the Aerie would like a second battalion of Cadet mechs for the Nowy Gdansk annex’s training unit for winter training and training local recruits. We recommend holding off on worrying about the various heavier options, several weaknesses have been identified in simulated wargames and we will soon be issuing requirements for at least one and possibly a pair of specialist mech designs to fill those weaknesses. For conventional forces, we would recommend procuring the first elements of 2nd Brigade, 2nd Armored with a full Standard Armored Regiment.”

Jeremy pipes up, after getting a nod from the General. “The issue is specialist artillery and anti-air assets. With the development of Arrow IV missiles it is possible to potentially build an artillery mech, and a mech formation would be well served to have something to truly counter enemy ASFs in the event of our aerospace forces failing to maintain complete air supremacy.” He pauses. “Don’t tell Thanh I said that, she’ll kick my shins.” he mock whines with a grin.

General Reyes chuckles at that. “We’ll do our best, Colonel.” she says, eyes sparkling a little. “Meanwhile, Your Majesty, we have several Dropships commissioning next year that will require their air wings. We recommend equipping HMS Black Prince with interceptors to back up HMS Warrior’s Roc wing. We recommend equipping HMS Eagle with, well, Eagles, and HMS Havock with a flight of Rocs. If we begin construction of Star Fort defense stations I would recommend building out mixed ASF groups of Goshawk IIG, Eagle and Gyrfalcon wings. I would honestly recommend that for the first Star Fort that we simply assign the existing 1st Interceptor, 1st Dogfighting, and 1st Attack Wings to the station.”

Admiral Benjamin nods. “Your Majesty, we will have five dropships commissioning next year and one this year. HMS Destiny is the sixth Defiant-class vessel in commission. Next year we’ll have HMS Black Prince of the Warrior class, HMS Lightning of the Lightning class, HMS Eagle of the Microraptor class, and HMS Havock of the Velociraptor class, as well as USS Discovery of the Enterprise class.” he checks his notes. “Once HMS Argus and HMS Havock commission, I’d recommend filling both of those lines with Velociraptors to fill out the proposed squadron organization. I’d also recommend that HMS Warrior, HMS Black Prince, and HMS Lightning be squadroned together. For the former, I’d recommend that they be posted to primarily patrol the Zenith jump point, and the latter the Nadir jump point.”

General Potter then speaks up. “Your Majesty, a major focus for us will need to be increasing our strategic resource production capacity as well as building out Star Forts. However, and I believe Jake will be bringing this up later, there has been a proposal to significantly increase the size of the central staff of the AFGE, which would allow us to both do more, and also be more proactive in industrial affairs if related to military areas. I would urge you to consider that, although I do dread the increase in paperwork.”

Bridget is bouncy bouncy bouncy… and forgot to wear a bra again so it is very noticeable. “Your Majesty! We can build stuff, I mean stuff like bigger orbital factories and more orbital factories and better orbital factories, we should build as many as we can, and then maybe try and build some more. I put in a request with your politics people to authorize an expansion of my staff so we can build even more stuff to speed up our growth, but Jake’ll tell you about that, right, Jakey?” she grins at the Polish Political advisor, who rolls his eyes at her antics. “And if we’re not building things, we should focus some on the Asteroid Belts economy, get even more money coming in for building stuff!”

Isoroku isn’t present, as he’s working on the Olympics which is fully occupying his cultural affairs staff. He has arranged invitations to the Free Folk to attend in quarantined seats to ensure against any possible disease vectors (at Mary’s advice), which they’ve accepted.

Jake is sitting next to Bridget, and you’ve heard from a little birdie (named Jane) that he and Bridget have been seen going out to dinner together, could there be wedding bells in the future?

Wait, that would mean that Bridget would have babies… hrmmmm, there might be something to this, it may even calm her down a bit.

But back to the meeting. “Your Majesty, as both General Potter and Bridget have already spoiled for you, we’ve been working on proposals to increase the staff sizes for the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior. Doing so would be expensive up front as well as adding to ongoing upkeep expenses, but would allow us to accomplish more in a given unit time.”

Mary is there, smirking just a little, and fires up her ubiquitous presentation.

• New Technologies
  • Military
    • Assault Bipedal Battlemechs
      • Between 80 and 100 tons
      • Simulations show that these monsters are the deadliest and most capable platforms on the battlefield.
      • Thanks to the realities of limited transport bays, the most efficient means of packing the most potential combat power in the fewest transports is via assault-class mechs.
    • Subcapital Missile - Piranha
      • Building upon work with Arrow-IV and Alamo, the Piranha is a theoretical design for a missile capable of easily tracking enemy ASFs while also being a threat to dropships.
      • Unfortunately the targeting and tracking systems required for this weapon system are incompatible with those we are currently using for subcapital lasers and cannons, meaning that designs which mount those systems are not able to be refit to mount these missiles
  • Non-Military
    • Iron Womb
      • This is an umbrella term for a family of medical equipment related to fertility and gestation
      • This includes the ability to combine genetic material to create viable embryos which can either be brought to term in artificial wombs or ‘naturally’ in the genetic donors own womb.
    • Genetic Engineering Lvl 1
      • Builds upon the knowledge gained via Genetic Editing to move beyond simple edits to more complex challenges.
• Recommendations
  • Military
    • ER Medium and Small Lasers
      • Extended Range 3cm and 5cm laser weapons show promise in simulations. The 5cm laser especially is a very common weapon in our service, an extended range variant of it may well prove decisive
    • Spheroid Dropships (Heavy)
      • Larger and more powerful dropships could be a serious benefit, especially with the revelation of the Amaris Empire remnants in our stellar neighborhood.
    • Power Armor (Light) - Improved
      • With experience with the basic suits, improvements would be welcome. Leaving aside ECM and stealth systems, the addition of jump jets to the design would open up multiple avenues of deployment and use
  • Non-Military
    • Improved Automation Lvl 5
      • This will bring us to the pinnacle of Star League automation technology, with significant benefits to our economy

Harry is looking positively enthusiastic “Your Majesty, we have prisoners in the Black Site.” he grins, a rather disturbing grin. “May we play with them?”

Janet gives her colleague a… look. “Your Majesty, our review of regulations and laws is on track, and we hope to have a full after-action review of the Bratva situation very soon.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 38 - I Am The Modren Man

Spoiler: Event, Luck, and Rating Rolls

Meta Event - 18 (+10 GDP Nowy Gdansk)
Dynasty Luck - 5 (+1 Orbital Factory Ratings)

Imperial Approval - 8
Approval Change - 1
Politics Event - -3

Imperial Economics - -2
Economic Event - -1
Research Event - 0

Griffin’s Roost Economy - 7
Griffin’s Roost Population - 8
Griffin’s Roost Change - 2

Nowy Gdansk Economy - 7
Nowy Gdansk Population - 9
Nowy Gdansk Change - 4

GIAB Economy - 9
GIAB Change - 0

G2O Economy - -3
G2O Change - 1

Spoiler: Action Results

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $169139.61]
-Velociraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

-Velociraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 74
Result - SUCCESS

-Warrior [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 70
Result - SUCCESS

-Warrior [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

-Defiant [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 12
Result - SUCCESS

-Enterprise [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

-Lightning [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 9
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units [$82607.44]
-3 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-3 Flights of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 9
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flights of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 5
Result - SUCCESS

-4 Lance of Cadet Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lance Orb Weaver [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 61
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lance Ambush Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lance Shortbow Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Standard Armored Regiment [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 9
Result - SUCCESS

-27 Companies Space Marines [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

Focus Development on Griffin Inner Asteroid Belt [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 66
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Build Orbital Factory Endosteel Nowy Gdansk L4 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 19
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Nowy Gdansk L4 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Nowy Gdansk L5 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 46
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Griffin II L4 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 3
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Nowy Gdansk L1 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Military Bureaucracy [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

LOSTECH - Terraforming Equipment Lvl 3* [auto]

LOSTECH - Orbital Construction Yard* [45]
Target - 45
Roll - 50
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Industrial Mechs Tier 3* [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 100 ShadowArxxy Reroll - 71
Result - SUCCESS

Improved Automation lvl 5 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 91
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Power Armor (Light) - Improved [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS

ER Medium and Small Lasers [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 90 ShadowArxxy Reroll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Spheroid Dropships (Heavy) [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 30
Result - SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 100 Kelgar04 Reroll - 43
Result - SUCCESS

Intensive Investigation of Bratva* [auto]

-----

The bulk of the surviving Free Folk are staying at the Inner Asteroid Belt habitats while repairs are underway on their ship, while the KF engineers are at the research center you’d established for KF physics. According to the scientists there the engineers had proven incredibly useful, even if they had, according to one of the eggheads, a ‘mechanics eye view of things’.

Meanwhile your grandkids have been having far too much fun karting, if too much fun includes many spectacular wipe outs and winning a few races and generally having a good time. John has started racing what are called ‘micro sprint’ cars, which have more power and are optimized for dirt tracks with a very odd appearance to your eyes. When it's broken down for you it makes far more sense, but seeing massively lopsided aerodynamic wings on top of the roll cage just looks odd to you.

Tien is still in the smaller kart, but is having just as much fun as her big brother. You wish you’d known about this sport when you were a kid, because you’d have shown just how safe a driver you could be with it, but your parents obviously weren’t nearly as fun as you are.

Funny how looking back you find less and less to admire about your own father. You regret it in some ways, and feel bad that you don’t feel so bad about him dying in the Kurita attack.

Jeremy is hard at work in his office engaged in studies and simulations on future mech unit organizations and requirements.

Thanh is still grumbling a great deal about being stuck flying a desk rather than out engaging in flight ops in her beloved bird. You, on the other hand, are quite smug about this.

You’d even playfully forwarded her flight test results from HMS Lightning, on the grounds that it ‘handles like a big fighter, you’ll love it!’

Your daughter is not amused by this, then gets proper revenge by buying herself a civilian stunt plane, much to your horror. It’s even more fragile than an ASF!

On the note of the Lightning class, you are in a bit of a quandary. The AFGE Navy proposes to name her first sister ship HMS Cricket, to keep to the theme of historical torpedo boat names. On the other hand, you see a nice opportunity to encourage some more recruitment in the Navy from Nowy Gdansk by naming the next two Lightnings Grom and Blyskawica.

[]	Stick with the Navy naming
[]	Overrule the Navy

Either way, the Navy is growing quickly, with multiple new dropships laid down this year. In addition the first Star Fort was under construction in Griffin’s Roost orbit.

Imperial Griffin AerospaceWerks has approached you with another new design, now that the researchers have fully cracked heavy spheroid dropship design and construction. They are calling it the Devastation-class, and looking at the specs it more than justifies the name. The sheer raw firepower this monster brings to the table is well beyond anything else in service or proposed.

The only thing more terrifying than the raw power of this design, however, is the incredible cost. It’s more expensive than a Star Fort to start with, although a production line would bring that cost down somewhat. IGAW and AFGE officials are both very interested in seeing this design in service, and you are pretty sure that if you manage to field a few of them it would make the next group to try attacking you truly regret their life choices.

Willis earns a howled ‘DAD!’ from Thanh when he proposes in her hearing to make her the first CO of a Devastation class as a condition for procurement. You are totally wearing the red stiletto heels tonight…

Which of course would have the benefit of having all your kids yell ‘MOM’, but that’s totally worth it.

Overall, procurement has gone very well this year, according to the quartermasters reports that cross your desk. So well, in fact, that the crew quality of HMS Black Prince is rated as ‘Crack’ thanks to so many top performers from the Aerie combining with a fortuitous mix of top NCOs from other ships transferring over. Likewise, HMS Havock’s plankowner crew will also be rated as ‘Crack’ for many of the same reasons.

The construction crews working on Orbital Foundries and Factories have become extremely expert at their work, showing the ability to reliably construct the facilities in timely and efficient manners. All of the new stations constructed for the purpose are in operation by the end of the year, easing somewhat the strain on strategic material production.

On the other hand, the work on focusing development efforts in the Inner Asteroid Belt hit an unexpected snag. The planning teams had plenty of experience operating on a planetary scale, but they underestimated the sheer amount of time it would take to operate across an entire asteroid belt. As such the project will complete a bit late and over budget.

A new wing has been added to the AFGE central HQ, housing expanded staff space for acquisitions and industrial relations. As such the military is now in a position to oversee the construction of many logistics facilities without needing to pass the effort over to Interior.

R&D work on the Orbital Construction Yards experienced a hiccup when several key people were called away from the work to help survey the damage to the Free Folk jumpship, resulting in delays that will push back completion of the project to next year.

The Automation team is very embarrassed and is the object of much mockery, teasing, and horrible jokes. Your personal favorite is ‘Jesus Saves, the Improved Automation Team Doesn’t.’. There’s a major power outage in the building that they are working out of caused by an accident, and evidently a number of critical project files hadn’t been properly saved or backed up and were thus lost as the computers crashed. The autosave function had been turned off to reduce processor load and speed up their work. Oops.

The Industrial Mechs team almost managed an even more humiliating failure, but turned it around and managed to complete their research on time and on budget. No thanks to whoever thought it was a good idea to horse around with the prototypes in a lame attempt to make a viral video and nearly wrecking the lot of them. The idiot responsible for this was threatened with getting sacked, but as no harm had actually been done and the project completed anyways, well. He’ll learn. Maybe.

The team working on improved terraforming techniques comes to you with a bonkers presentation.

“Your Majesty, let’s say you decide you really are a big fan of prairies and would love to have a nice big one, but unfortunately there’s a bunch of inconsiderate mountains where you want the prairies. Well, who says Nature knows best? We can change that, the Department of Mega Engineering can reduce any mountain range you don’t like anymore to plains. But, I think you’re going to ask next, what if you just happen to really feel like skiing and mountain climbing, but there aren’t any mountains. We’ve got that covered too! DoME can now bring the Mountain to Mohammed, to badly mess up the saying. Apropos to Griffin IV, let’s say you’d really like an ocean, but there’s no ocean to be seen. We can do you an ocean to order, just add water, like, for example, from a convenient ice comet being deorbited. Think an ocean is too big? We can do you a lake! Want a lovely river view? We got you covered!”

The entire time the entire team was grinning maniacally. Considering some of the stories in the history files about the Star League’s Department of Mega Engineering’s antics, you actually aren’t all that tempted to relegate them to Periphery Studies.

You have seen a presentation on the new Improved Power Armor (Light) and… are impressed. The jump jets give great mobility, even if the running speed is reduced, but the cost… you can get entire platoons of tanks for the cost of a single platoon of these things. According to the engineers this is almost purely because of the expense of the stealth armor, but still.

You get to watch firing demonstrations of extended range 3cm and 5cm lasers, and they are quite impressive to watch.

One of the small number of prisoners actually manages to briefly get loose during transfer to the Black Site but is subdued without issue. The guard in question is never going to hear the end of it, though. Interrogation has begun.

The investigative work on the Bratva has been concluded. The main conclusions are that the current system of enforcement against organized crime threats is somewhat inadequate, mostly due to the sheer variety of threats out there. Methods and techniques effective against the Mafia are nearly useless against the Triads, for example, and the Bratva had fallen through the cracks due to the sheer difficulty in infiltrating confidential informants into their ranks. Dividing up Org Crimes squads into specialized teams for the various flavors has been mooted as one solution, familiarizing prison guards with the signs of ‘thief in law’ behavior in order to isolate such individuals from the general population is another.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 39 - Step By Step

The New Years celebrations are a rousing success, especially as you are reading the economic predictions for the year from your staff which look extremely positive across the board.

A series of major storms batter Castor and Griffsport, but nothing too outside the usual for a winter storm in the northern hemisphere of Griffin’s Roost. The damage is fairly minimal and repairs are well underway. At the same time a new undersea volcano is discovered to be a few years from breaching the surface off the northwest coast of Griffsport, well away from the shipping lanes but the views should be spectacular from the existing observatories on Mt Griffsport.

With all of the infrastructure now safely buried the annual migration of the deathapotamusaurus is more an object of tourist and scientific interest than any actual threat. A new startup company has built airships designed to cruise high enough off the ground to be safe from the big creatures while allowing passengers to view them as they rumble from their winter to summer ranges.

Considering that this is the time of year where deathapotamusaurus bulls fight for dominance and mates? The tourist potential is incredibly high, as the big nasty things look utterly spectacular in full frenzy.

Meanwhile ‘Diving For Bolides’ has become a reality TV show filmed on the actual small craft engaged in the dangerous business of wrangling ejecta from the incredibly tectonically active Griffin II. The most daring of them all actually skim the upper atmosphere for the gases present, which is extremely high risk as there are pockets of sulphuric acid which would cause severe damage to the skimmers. More than a few are lost to upwellings of gaseous acid.

At the same time in the Inner Asteroid Belt a new sport has taken off, rover racing on the few planetoids that are large enough to have a substantial gravity field without having any atmosphere. People race around little rovers at what look like ludicrous speed until you get some perspective and realize they’re actually barely breaking 40 kph. It just looks far faster in the low gravity judging by the massive jumps that they make.

Last year's winter olympics has excited interest in skiing, and a proper ski resort has opened on Nowy Gdansk near the planetary capital. You spend a few weeks there learning how to ski and falling down on your backside quite a bit. Eventually you manage the beginner slopes, although you much prefer your time in the lodge in the evenings sitting in front of the massive hearths and drinking excellent beer.

You mix business with pleasure while you are there, meeting with the local planetary leadership and touring several of the new industrial and commercial projects. In fact the planetary government is working with Imperial Griffin AerospaceWerks on a massive dual-use dropship construction yard that should be ready next year. That yard will have a massive set of parallel lines to permit them to build military and civilian dropships simultaneously and they are planning to offer the new Devastation class from the new military lines. It appears that the locals have decided to go all in on dropship construction, judging by the number of civilian dropship yards you tour that are supplying the voracious appetites of civilian shipping lines for lift capacity.

You also tour the massive facility being built underneath the mountain range which will house the single greatest industrial complex in the entire Empire. Things are looking, well, like a massive underground construction site at the moment. However they tell you that they’ve found more caverns in other parts of the range where they are planning future expansions.

When you return to Griffin’s Roost proper you take a tour of a new facility being built on Phoenix which is intended to be a future high-output ASF facility. While there, you are shown the prototypes for the proposed ‘Griffon’ Assault ASF.

[]	Name	Cost	Speed	Fuel	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	Imperial Griffin Mk II	3977.4	8	5	208	33	Armored 2, AMS 2, Missile 2
[]	Really Antimissile Assault FIghter	3817.84	8	5.5	164	32/31	Armored 1, AMS 6
[]	Mockingbird	3203	6	5	164	31	Armored 1, AMS 2
[]	Antimissile Assault	3756.64	8	5.5	172	32/33	Armored 1, AMS 2

You are also shown the progress that is being made on the pipeline and water purification works, which again looks like a massive amount of construction work on a large scale construction site. It’s when you realize that this construction site covers hundreds of miles of distance…

It’s impressive.

You are taken to see a project that the planetary government has undertaken at sea. A large underwater crater had been found to possess extremely valuable mineral deposits, so a massive undersea mining project was underway making use of a large transparent armored dome using the same materials used in the transparencies on BattleMechs. According to the planners this facility will allow ‘shirtsleeve’ mining of the sea bed. The ocean here is less than thirty meters deep at the deepest, so the top of the dome would be above water.

A number of businessmen have evidently decided to try and turn around Pollux's poor reputation as a place filled either with corruption, crime, or farmland that was probably involved in corruption or crime. A massive series of commercial, residential, and recreational projects are now lining the northern coast of Pollux, taking advantage of the glorious views and terrain.

Amazingly enough, by Pollux standards, things seem to be going very well indeed. By everywhere else's standards it’s a bit of a cockup, but by local standards it’s corruption free, moving ahead smoothly, and looking wonderful.

From what you’ve heard from Jane, the ‘honest businessmen’ are only skimming 1% and are actually adhering to proper safety standards, and are only taking ‘small’ kickbacks from contractors.

You shake your head. Pollux.

[]	Crack Down	Corruption is corruption. -1% GDP Griffin’s Roost, +1 Approval
[]	Leave it Be	By Pollux Standards this is completely honest. -1 Economy Event

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 39 - Heart to Heart

You have Janet engage in some extensive investigations on Pollux into the goings on with that business group and the results actually irritates you far more than it would have if the businessmen had actually been corrupt bastards.

Well, they were, but to such a minimal degree as to be irrelevant, the ‘takes two of the restaurant mints from the ‘take one’ bowl because they stuck together’ degree of corruption. It’s the people reporting the so-called corruption who are engaged in far more corrupt practices, as the businessmen in question had declined to bribe them to leave them alone.

The ‘kickbacks’? When the businessmen and the contractors went to lunch to hammer out contracts the contractors covered the tip. Not the tab, mind you, the tip. The ‘1% off the top’? They had set the executive compensation structure to be, combined, 1% of the gross revenue, which is actually lower than most ventures of this nature and sees the executives actually taking home less pay currently than their highest paid employees.

And the anti-corruption watchdog groups that were now quite endemic to Pollux had demanded ‘donations’ and ‘contributions’ from this group, with the unspoken quid-pro-quo that if they made those donations the anti-corruption groups would declare them non-corrupt… even if they were. And on the flip side, if they failed to make those donations the same groups would use their status as ‘anti-corruption watchdogs’ to declare the businessmen corrupt and bring the full force of the law down on them.

If you had simply lowered the boom, as you’d been prepared to do, you’d have once again been played by corrupt elements who were counting on your zeal for anti-corruption to goad you into intemperate action.

As it is, the heads of five separate non-governmental ‘watchdog’ groups are currently residing at Your Majesty's Pleasure in maximum security, while the local heads of the government regulatory bodies which should have been monitoring for this very scenario are cooling their heels counting dire penguin droppings down at the titanium mine in the Antarctic while you decide if they were simply incompetent or corrupt in their own right.

(QM Note - A combination of ‘crack down’ and ‘investigate first’ was tied when I started writing this post. +1 GDP Griffin’s Roost, +1 Approval, +1 Approval Change, +5 Politics)

Maybe, just maybe, people on Pollux might finally start getting it through their heads that trying to emulate the Florida Man of myth and legend is NOT actually a good idea?

You receive a solicitation from Majeure Electronique concerning Imperial assistance in constructing a dual-use factory for the Tyrannosaurus, Utahraptor, and Megaraptor dropships. It would only be able to accommodate one hull at a time, as the rest of the facility would be used for civilian production, but it would be effectively rating 2 from the start. It would be somewhat expensive to set up, but it would be available rather quickly as they are prepared for rapid construction.

[]	Back Them	Cost - 500,000, gains 1 Rank 2 factory that can be used for the three large aerodyne designs. +1% GDP Nowy Gdansk
[]	Refuse For Now

The Nowy Gdansk Planetary Government and Imperial Griffin AerospaceWerks meanwhile approaches you with finalized construction plans for the Devastation plant. Like the Majeure Electronique proposal this would only be capable of a single ship at a time, in this case primarily because of the sheer size of the dropship in question.

[]	Build It	Cost - 500,000, gains 1 Rank 4 Factory for the Devastation
[]	Don’t Build It

The Navy does forward a proposal to your desk which seems to be quite optimistic and hopeful, pointing out that in the future you will have a force mixture of Dropships, Jumpships, and Warships, and that it is time to start planning for this. Specifically, as the starting point they would like to redesignate all dropships with the prefix HMDS (Her Majesty’s DropShip), have all future Jumpships designated as HMJS (Her Majesty’s JumpShip) and all future Warships as HMWS (Her Majesty’s WarShip).

[]	Approve
[]	Disapprove

The new Griffon ASF is now approved, and is a quite nasty little design. A rather graceful flying wing with the main direct fire armament clustered in the nose and large missile racks in the wing leading edges, it looks quite dangerous to your untrained eye. Thanh considers it far too slow and clunky, even if it’s only 1g lower in acceleration at maximum thrust than her beloved Eagle.

The Aerospace Force HQ at the Ministry of Defense has released tentative plans for a number of integrated squadrons on similar models to the Army. The main takeaway from them is the need to boost production, especially of the Goshawk IIG, as both the proposed Star Fort wing and the Planetary Defense Wing make extensive use of them thanks to their avoidance of strategic materials.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 39 - Left Right Left

The still thoroughly humiliated and often mocked Automation Team takes their humiliation in stride and uses it for motivation, managing to finish up their work and getting it ready and in use before budget time comes, saving you a pretty chunk of change. It also results in some massive improvements to production capabilities, especially in regards to Dropships, as this final generation of automation improvements involves macro-scale methods of production that translate well to the dropship yards.

In more personal news, your grandkids are having an enormous amount of fun racing around in their little karts. You are still making a point to attend every race, not only of your grandkids, but also the twins as they are again in the championship hunt in the top Hovercraft Racing League.

This year the annual open day at the Palace for the races is even more popular than ever, with over a hundred kids actually racing in the kart and pee wee races requiring multiple heats. In the end it turns into an open weekend rather than an open day.

There is also another soapbox race, both a straight one for the little kids and an obstacle strewn ‘creative’ one for adults. Both you and Willis again compete in the creative race, this time racing a soapbox made to look like a model of the palace itself, and you manage to not crash, even if most of the racer winds up left in pieces on the track as it fell apart on the way down leaving you on the bare chassis.

Parliament is being unusually, in your experience, helpful again this year. One of the bills being advanced would establish a semi-military Star Guard modeled on the Coast Guard, to take over various tasks related to navigation and SAR in space. It would be a significant up front cost as well as fairly high maintenance, but it would allow the military to focus on actual military operations without having to worry about the tasks that historically fell to Coast Guards in the oceans.

[]	Approve	Cost - 1,000,000, Upkeep of 250,000. Prevents certain events
[]	Disapprove	-10 support Senate, Chamber of Delegates

Parliament is also debating a bill creating a Customs and Excise Service with future multi-system trade in mind. For now it would do little but plan and prepare, while collecting small fees from intra-system trade to fund its own operations. In the future it would be a valuable gateway through which foreign trade could be regulated.

[]	Create	Up front cost of 100,000. Upkeep of 1,000. Domestic Trade Increases Base Interest Rate by 1% Foreign Trade - Permits the formal establishment of Foreign Trade Routes For each Foreign Trade Route Increases Base Tax Rate by 1%
[]	Veto	-10 support Senate, Chamber of Delegates

Once the Free Folks jumpship is fully repaired, which should be sometime next year according to the engineers, they would be willing to facilitate a trade route with the closest non-Drac advanced planet.

According to the Free Folk, about 4 jumps away from you is a small two-system polity that calls itself the Optimate. According to the Free Folk they appear to specialize in massive and extremely well trained and disciplined infantry and conventional armor formations, and possess a few ancient jumpships and dropshps which they primarily use for internal trade. They are very highly militarized, but not all that aggressive so long as you don’t try and poke them. They supposedly have a relatively solid ASF force, but evidently of old fashioned designs that aren’t even up to non-Royal Star League levels.

On the downside they openly practice a very Roman form of slavery, insofar as ‘slaves’ are convicts who are enslaved for the terms of their sentences then released. According to the Free Folk, however, this system is massively abused in that the very poor are regularly convicted of process crimes that are, quite honestly, incredibly petty and almost ridiculous (ten years slavery for allowing your shadow to touch the threshold of a Patricians mansion without permission, for example). On the plus side, ‘slaves’ in the Optimate are guaranteed medical care, food, and shelter plus it is quite against social mores for a Patrician to abuse a slave in any way.

From what the Free Folk can tell, about 10% of the population are Patricians, a further 15% are wealthy Plebeians, a quarter of the population are active or retired military, with many of the retired soldiers raising families on farmland nominally owned by the Patricians but which is granted to the retired soldier as part of their pension, and the rest are slaves. Only Patricians are allowed to own slaves, however they commonly lease them out to the Plebeians and retired military as cheap labor.

You aren’t sure. On the one hand, it could be just a way to handle the problem of poverty and crime, on the other… you really would like to introduce these Patricians to 1st Armored and the concept of ‘liberty and justice for all’.

On the gripping hand, they aren’t a threat to you, and could be a valuable trading partner and possible ally against the Dracs.

You hate it when things are complicated. But that’s life in the big chair.

Sekhmet quite smugly informs you that Bastet and Anubis are, by Grifftiger standards, now officially mated. You hadn’t realized that them roaring in chorus at the moon was some sort of wedding ceremony.

Of course, you then decide that that simply would not do. Bastet deserves a proper wedding, since she’s part of the family. Sekhmet figures out what you are up to and gets even more smug.

Several days later a very confused Anubis is all freshly groomed to the nines, while Bastet is still pouting at you at the ridiculous ‘cat outfit you gleefully presented to her. The Eldest is looking very bemused at the whole thing, while the other Great Hunters are finding it quite hilarious.

You had to improvise a bit on the venue, but the main dining hall of the Palace has been hastily converted into a ‘cat wedding chapel.

An hour later the whole thing is finished, with Bastet and Anubis chivvied off to go practice giving Sekhmet grandbabies. Followed by you and Sekhmet high-fiving much to the younger cats dismay. The Eldest is laughing hard, and has decided that this is a truly wonderful custom to import for Cats.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 39 - We All Fall Down

You hadn’t heard much from the Department of Periphery Studies ever since the expansion of their staff.

Well, the best you can say is that this time they’re being purely amusing and not interrupting anything important.

There are long lines of brown-robed ‘professors’ from the Department marching slowly through the main park of Griffsport while banging what you’ve been assured are empty cardboard boxes painted to look like ancient tomes of wisdom on their foreheads while chanting in terrible Latin completely nonsensical phrases. And then the tenured faculty are wearing bright red robes and jumping out of the line to accost random people with large cushions while declaring that they are the Spanish Inquisition.

Evidently the soft cushions are supposed to be a terrible threat, and if that doesn’t work they’ll inflict the comfy chair on people.

You wonder who showed them Monty Python, and resolve to first congratulate them on their comedic prowess and taste before turning them over to Jane for appropriate punishment. Unless, of course, it was Jane, in which case you are quite certain that there will be a period of undercover work as a kindergarten teacher in Jane’s future.

The existing planetary coastguards are folded into the new Star Guard Service as a natural extension of their work. The new service is already working on procuring appropriate equipment to do its job properly and appears to be in good hands.

The planetary government of Nowy Gdansk has opened the planet to general immigration, which has resulted in a small surge of population moving from Griffin’s Roost to the arctic planet.

Jeremy is still hard at work engaged in war-planning and administrative work at the AFGE HQ. His latest project is to combine the jump capability of the proposed special ops power armor suits with cheaper non-stealth armor. One of the things that is quickly discovered is that the original basic power armor has a glaring flaw compared to the new suits, which is part of why they are so cheap in comparison to the new suits. Specifically they are completely unsealed and almost incapable of being made sealed, with substantial gaps in the shell due to the nature of their articulation. A sufficiently skilled sniper would be able to take advantage of those gaps. The newer suits solve that issue but at a substantially increased cost in production time and materials.

QM Note - this is due to a math error on my part, you are paying about 1/10 what you should be for basic power armor suits.

The new suits combine the machine gun armament of the original suits with a small set of jump jets and an LRM launcher, giving the suits a nice bit of long range punch.

Unfortunately, upgrading from the old suits to the new ones that correct the flaws in the original design will be prohibitively expensive. However the manufacturers have offered to make the switch for existing units gratis in exchange for being able to shut down the original lines completely and focus solely on the new units for the future. That is honestly a far better deal than you’d expected, especially considering how much more capable the refined suits are. Checking into it, you find that the companies in question would receive a nice tax break for it, but it wouldn’t affect your budgeting and the benefits to the government would far exceed the costs of the breaks.

So you approve it. The only changes will be in maintenance costs going forward, and that the basic power armor suits will be replaced with the improved versions and will no longer be available.

With the new suits, Jeremy is working on tactics for combining mechs and power armored infantry into single units. It’s not yet complete, and there appear to be significant challenges involved due to the fact that carrying shifting masses on the exterior of the mech presents challenges to stability.

Thanh is extremely grumpy about being out of the cockpit of her beloved fighters, but is doing rather well in her staff position. You did put your foot down and kept the twins from sending holos of Thanh being grumpy to Nollak as promotional material for their AA systems.

Jeremy is again joining you for the best time of the year. BUDGET TIME!

Please, stop snickering at attempts at making this actually exciting. It’s demoralizing.

Jeremy has actually been tasked with preparing the military brief portion of the budget meetings, allowing General Jackson and General Reyes to sit back and criticize. Admiral Benjamin is still handling his own portion of it.

Jeremy starts off with a bit of a grin. “I’m reliably informed that I will get points off for every time I refer to you as Mom instead of Your Majesty, therefore.” his expression is perfectly innocent while General Potter does a horrible job of smothering a snicker. “I think it is safe to dispense with honorifics for the purposes of this briefing.”

“To start with, for ground forces we are in relatively solid shape, pending the completion of the factory complex on Nowy Gdansk. We have three specific procurement recommendations, one for active forces and two for the training cadre. In addition we have several general procurement recommendations. First, for the active forces, 2nd Brigade, 2nd Armored is at half-strength for armored forces, we recommend procuring a standard armored regiment to bring the unit to full strength in that regard. For mech forces for 2nd Armored we still recommend holding off until we can equip them with our proposed standard mech regiments.”

He switches to a new slide on the presentation. The fact that the background is basically a mother’s day card causes more difficulties for the senior officers present to keep straight faces. “For the Aerie Cadre, they are requesting more Cadet mechs, as well as a battalion strength set of the new Evolved Power Armor to facilitate power armor training for the cadets. This would be 27 platoons worth of the suits.”

Another slide, this time with a background of a family vacation to Capricorn with the entire family posing in front of Sekhmet. “We also recommend continuing full rate procurement of Orb Weaver mechs. Finally, we recommend strengthening the garrison of Nowy Gdansk by procuring additional Winged Hussar and Verdun battalions along with a battalion of Evolved Power Armor.”

A fresh slide, this time with a background pic of Thanh receiving her wings at her graduation ceremony. “For our ASF forces, we are mainly concerned with boosting our production capabilities. Highest priority would go to the Goshawk 2G, thanks to the lack of strategic materials we intend for these birds to form the core of any defensive formations. In addition, we recommend building up production capability for all other types, with a minor focus on the new Griffon assault fighter.”

He brings up a chart. “We have multiple carrier dropships commissioning this year, many of which are in need of air wings. We can transfer birds from existing squadrons if needed. We will have 3 Velociraptors, 1 Microraptor, 2 Warriors, and an Enterprise, all requiring air wings.”

The chart is broken down by type, with recommendations.

Dropship Class	ASF Type	Number
Velociraptor	Roc	3
Microraptor	Gyrfalcon	3
Warrior	Eagle	6
Enterprise	Goshawk 2G	1

“This will take up nearly all of the available production lines for the various types if implemented.” Jeremy points out. “Hence why we strongly recommend making factory expansion for all ASF types a very high priority.”

He takes a seat, smirking just slightly.

Admiral Benjamin then takes the podium. “That young whippersnapper stole some of my thunder, Your Majesty. May I recommend sending him to his room without supper?” There is general laughter in the room at that. “Seriously. We will have the Defiant class vessels HMDS Lynx and HMDS Decoy, the Velociraptor-class vessels HMDS Havock, HMDS Hornet, and HMDS Ferret, the Microraptor-class vessel HMDS Eagle, the Warrior-class vessels HMDS Defense and HMDS Resistance, and the Lightning-class vessels HMDS Lightning and HMDS Tempest all commissioning this year. In addition USS Discovery is commissioning and once she has her exploration team will be available for survey work. We recommend laying down HMDS Devastation, the first of the proposed Devastation-class, as well as continue full construction of all other types. For the new large aerodynes, we recommend laying down a Tyrannosaurus class initially.”

He brings up a chart of his own. “In addition, we are proposing the following system of designations to better organize our forces.”

Designation	Abbreviation	Examples
Patrol Gunboat - Light	PGL	Defiant
Patrol Gunboat - Fast	PGF	Lightning
Patrol Gunboat - Aviation	PGV	Velociraptor, Utahraptor
Patrol Gunboat - Heavy	PGH	Warrior, Tyrannosaurus
Escort Carrier	CVE	Microraptor, Megaraptor
Patrol Gunboat - Assault	PGA	Devastation

“In addition to their name, each unit would have a designation, for example, HMDS Defiant would be PGL-1. This is mainly useful for organizational charts.”

General Potter has managed to assume a suitably serious expression on his face. “Your Majesty, and Colonel Griffith, please note that this is how you are supposed to do this.” the room loses it, starting with you. “I would like to reiterate the point about needing to rapidly boost our production capacities. Not just of our aerospace fighters, but of our mech designs as well. Better to have the capacity and not require it, than desperately require it and not have it.”

All in all, the military briefing has been far more enjoyable than usual.

Bridget bounces in for the civilian side of things just barely in time, slides into her seat, and starts talking almost before she stops moving.

“Your Majesty! I heard the soldiers want to build lots of stuff and we’re ready to build lots of stuff too and next year we’ll have all sorts of DoME projects available and this is incredibly exciting because that’s a ton of growth potential all around I would recommend primarily focusing on production line factories this year rather than strategic materials factories but expanding a few of them might be a good idea too.”

One… breath… for… all… of… that. You need coffee, stat.

Isoroku is as serene as ever. “Your Majesty, I have spoken with the Free Folk and they would be willing to transport a delegation from our Ministry to the Optimates to open diplomatic relations. In addition, our Ministry of Cultural Affairs would like to propose a monumental statue commemorating forty years on the throne, to be unveiled on the first of January.”

You are certain he is smirking at that. Absolutely certain, even if there’s no expression at all on his face.

Jake is chuckling. “Your Majesty, we in the Politics sphere have a few areas where we can help out, primarily in facilitating the expansion of Bridget’s ministry so she can, as she loves to say, build more stuff.” Bridget is laughing at that. “Or even expand the DoME so she can build more crazy stuff.”

Mary shows up with her inevitable charts and presentations. “Your Majesty, we have a few new areas of inquiry, and many idle labs to tackle them. Let’s get started, yes?”

• New Research Areas
  • MASC
    • Advanced myomer control circuits which would permit a significant increase in speed for a relatively modest increase in mass and volume, however there is a risk of overloading the actuators.
  • Advanced Electronics (advanced) Tier 1
    • Recent developments will allow us to focus on far more intricate and esoteric applications of existing technology, this may open up many new research areas in the future.
  • High-Energy Physics (advanced) Tier 1
    • With the latest advancements in automation our scientists would like to put the word ‘mad’ back into ‘mad science’ while keeping Health & Safety off their backs. This may open up new opportunities in weapon development and refinement.
• Military Research
  • Subcapital Missile - Piranha
    • All indications show that this will be a devastating weapons system despite its inability to be retrofitted to existing designs.
  • Harjel
    • This will give minor but important enhancements to our power armor units, while unlocking future research
  • Omnivehicle
    • Probably not immediately useful, but has potential down the road
• Non Military Research
  • Improved Agriculture Lvl 3
    • Griffin’s Roost is coming closer and closer to population limits, improving food yields would delay this further into the future.
  • Iron Womb
    • There is significant demand for this from infertile couples, as well as the inhabitants of our orbital habitats due to concerns with radiation resulting in reduced fertility
  • Life-Extension Therapy Lvl 2
    • Self-explanatory, really.

Harry is busy overseeing the interrogations, however he sends a short memo highlighting the potential to infiltrate agents of our own into the diplomatic mission to the Optimates in order to potentially discover things they might not want to willingly tell us.

Janet is also very busy wrapping up the work of the commission charged with auditing all existing laws and regulations. So she only drops by briefly to drop off some of the Black Bean Of Life before getting back to work.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 39 - Like Toy Soldiers

Spoiler: Event, Luck, Rating Rolls

Meta Event Roll - 8
Dynasty Luck Roll - 53

Imperial Approval - 8
Approval Change - -2
Political Event - -2

Economics - -4
Economic Event - 2
Research Event - -1

Griffin’s Roost Econ - 3
Griffin’s Roost Pop - 3
Griffin’s Roost Change - -2

Nowy Gdansk Econ - 10
Nowy Gdansk Pop - 7
Nowy Gdansk Change - 2

GIAB Econ - 2
GIAB Change - -2

G2O Econ - 3
G2O Change - 2

Spoiler: Action Results

Upgrade Factory 2 (Goshawk) [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade Factory 7 (Roc) [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 89
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade Factory 10 (Gyrfalcon) [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade Factory 6 (Orb Weaver) [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 89
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit [Construction - $800315.31]
-Velociraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

-Velociraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

-Velociraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

-Microraptor [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

-Warrior [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

-Warrior [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 19
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

-Defiant [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 71
Result - SUCCESS

-Enterprise [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

-Lightning [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 26
Result - SUCCESS

-Lightning [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

-Tyrannosaurus [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 22
Result - SUCCESS

-Devastation [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units [$138767.24]
-6 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-3 Flights of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 45
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

-3 Flights of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 86 Star Guard Reroll 1 - 55
Result - SUCCESS

-4 Lance of Cadet Mech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 78 Star Guard Reroll 2 - 90 Star Guard Reroll 3 - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lance Orb Weaver [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 52
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Standard Armored Regiment [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 81 Star Guard Reroll 4 - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-54 Platoons Evolved Power Armor [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 90 Star Guard Reroll 5 - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-9 Platoons Verdun UDV [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 82 Star Guard Reroll 6 - 17
Result - SUCCESS

-Purchase expeditionary team for Enterprise-class Dropships [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

Focus Development on Griffin Inner Asteroid Belt [auto]

Build Factories for Griffon Assault ASF (Nowy Gdansk) [110]
Target - 110
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Aluminum (Nowy Gdansk L4) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 81
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Aluminum (Nowy Gdansk L1) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade Orbital Factory 26 (DHS) [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 60
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade Orbital Factory 27 (DHS) [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 96 Star Guard Reroll 7 - 5
Result - SUCCESS

Have Exploration Fleet Survey Griffin I* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 23
Result - SUCCESS

Prepare Diplomatic Mission to the Optimates [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 91 Star Guard Reroll 8 - 51
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Monuments Ho! [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

K-F Drive Theory Tier 1* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 40
Result - SUCCESS

LOSTECH - Orbital Construction Yard* [auto]

Improved Agriculture lvl 3 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

Thermal Dissipation (advanced) Tier 1 [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

Subcapital Missile - Piranha [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 66
Result - SUCCESS

Omnivehicles [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

HarJel [45]
Target - 45
Roll - 72
Result - FAILURE

Interrogate POWs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 20 (5 degrees)
Result - SUCCESS

Train undercover agents to join diplomatic mission to the Optimates [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 46
Result - SUCCESS

Audit of Laws and Regulations* [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

-----

There is dead silence in the briefing room. You could have heard a particularly imprudent fly buzzing with ease, if there had been any flies with such daring imprudence present.

The tableau could have been a freeze frame, nobody moved, nobody seemed to dare even breathe.

Until the first snorts of laughter erupted from Jeremy, followed moments later by everybody else in the room, including you.

On the display is the results of the first ever unofficial Battlemech Football game.

Evidently the cadets of the 1st Aerie Cadre and the Mechwarriors of 1st Armored had gotten bored.

And decided it would be a wonderful idea to commission oversized jerseys for their mechs, a massive ball tough enough to be handled by mechs, and found an out of the way training field that they could… appropriate… as the football field.

And then played full-contact mech football.

The maintenance crews were screaming bloody murder, there were multiple junior officers on report and having to reply by endorsement on why they thought this was a good idea. Due to all the shenanigans training activities had been delayed, although they had in the end been completed.

And all of the senior officers in the briefing room now can’t stop laughing.

There hadn’t been any actual injuries, thankfully, but none of the mechs had escaped unscathed.

But the image of a sprinting Ambush getting dive tackled by a Cadet was epic. That some of the mechwarriors had sufficiently mastered their rides to the point of being able to play quarterback, receivers, and even kickers. The 180 yard field goal attempt (it was good, incidentally) was truly impressive.

“OK, there are two ways we can handle this.” You finally manage between laughs. “KP duty for everybody involved, then turn them over to the alleged tender mercies of their crew chiefs, before setting them enough ‘interesting’ training that nobody will ever think of doing this again.”

Jeremy then pipes up “Or strip down some mechs and make it an official sport and sell tickets!”

More gales of uproarious laughter follow at that.

[]	Hammertime!	Discipline is important, and mech sports are nuts. -5 Politics, +1 Interest Rate this year
[]	Mecha Football GO!	It’s AWESOME. Discipline them, yes, but this is so obviously a great idea for a sport, maybe played with Winged Hussar variants! +5 Economy Rating

Your grandson doesn’t win the karting championship, but he had an enormous amount of fun and came in third in the championship race, so he’s very happy and can’t wait for next year. Tien can’t wait for her little sister to join her racing, she won a single race this year and also had far too much fun.

Sarah, meanwhile, has finally finished her post-doc, and now Tony has started his. She’s published her dissertation as a book detailing the history and stories of the survivors of Clan Wolverine, which has become a bestseller in its own right.

Thanks to all the ruckus with Mech Football, procurement was a bit of a hot mess, but in the end everything worked out just fine.

The Goshawk, Roc, Gyrfalcon and Orb Weaver factories have all been upgraded, although in some cases this was after negotiating minor labor disputes and such that delayed things until the very end of the year, but again they are all ready for increased production. The first Griffon factory has also been completed and the production lines are ready to start production.

You lay down a large number of combat dropships, and several representatives of shipping lines have approached you along with Admiral Benjamin. The Harris and Haskell-class are not combat vessels, and are currently primarily sitting idle with very little to do. Neither are well suited for hot dropping forces, so training for that is rather nonsensical. The shipping lines and Navy would like to demilitarize them and transfer them to civilian control, subject to being called back up like the rest of the merchant marine funding by the Space Shipping Commission. This will save you some money in military upkeep.

[]	Agree	All Harris and Haskell class ships in service will be decommissioned, subject to recall via the Military action
[]	Disagree

The Inner Asteroid belt has seen some serious economic growth thanks to focused development work. Exports of raw and partially processed materials has grown and several new civilian smelting stations have been constructed to take advantage of particularly valuable deposits.

Orbital foundries and forges around Nowy Gdansk have been built and/or upgraded to increase output of Ferro-Aluminium and Double Heat Sinks, increasing the availability of both for your projects.

The survey of Griffin I shows a planet of extremes, the sunward side is blasted so hot that it nearly melts during the long days, the side facing away from the sun is a frozen wasteland once the heat of the day radiates away. There is almost no atmosphere at all. The single orbiting moon closely resembles a badly overcooked potato. There may be some valuable ores on the planet, but they are nearly inaccessible due to the extreme conditions. The survey crew is able to perform some required maintenance on Sarahs sensor arrays that orbit the planet, ensuring that the heat shield remains fully functional.

Your Foreign Affairs and Intelligence people work together to prepare a delegation to the Optimate, not without plenty of friction and sharp elbows being thrown between the two groups. The initial choice for ambassador had to be replaced when he rather huffily declared that he would not cooperate with ‘spies, thieves, and assassins’.

So he got replaced, and nobody seems to miss the supercilious jackass. He’d probably have turned out to be a total disaster anyways, but on paper his qualifications were as good as anybodies since you have exactly zero experience in doing things like this.

You have been kept away from the monument they are building for your 40th year on the throne. Your husband has likewise been kept away, as have your kids. Even Sekhmet has been blocked from spying on it by the Eldest, who seems particularly amused. You are very certain that it is likely extremely embarrassing, but you won’t see it until January 1st.

Why do none of your subordinates ever believe you when you threaten them with defenestration for keeping surprises from you? You have the trick window now, you could totally do it! In fact you demonstrate by throwing Isoroku through it when he refuses to show you the monument early, and the damn man just smiles and asks for a towel after emerging from the swimming pool.

Your scientists have had a very good year indeed.

Work on figuring out the ins and outs of orbital construction yards has been completed, giving a solid basic understanding of them. They are not yet quite up to military construction standards, but the civilian sector embraces the technology immediately yielding some major economic growth system-wide as new yards are built to service the carrying trade.

Thanks to the help from the Jump Engineers of the Free Folk you are able to complete basic research into K-F Theory. Now that you have a fairly solid understanding of the basics, it is now possible to start putting things into practice. Research into three related areas is now available, specifically Standard Core Theory, Standard Core Design, and Standard Core Construction.

Advanced research into thermal dissipation has been fruitful, although the actual results are more in the deeper understanding of the processes involved than any actual usable hardware. Progress has been made, and new avenues of research have been proposed.

You got to watch the test launch of the new Piranha missile and it is… impressive. Large, fast, and extremely maneuverable, the missile will require a dedicated launch platform for now as the targeting and guidance systems are completely incompatible with existing hardware. Luckily, Majeure Electronique has stepped up with a proposal for the Z-1 Torpedo Boat, armed with a pair of Piranha’s. At only 2,000 tons, the Z-1 is very small, very fast, and quite dangerous.

Work on Omnivehicle tech has been completed, although there are not, as of yet, any actual designs the hardware interface and software problems have been solved.

The team working with Harjel, however, has run into difficulties synthesizing the material. New techniques are being tried but it will be some time before they have anything useable.

POW interrogations have gone extremely well this year, with all of the prisoners having started singing like birds. The Rasalhagian Tai-Sa you’d been dealing with is evidently out of favor and has been assigned a number of shit details garrisoning the resource outposts. Evidently the Kuritan in charge takes your very existence as a personal insult to his honor and the Dragon and is determined to crush you into submission, even at the cost of Bakkustabbu.

None of these prisoners have actually committed any war crimes, now that the interrogation is over what will you do with them.

[]	Hold them in secure camps	Cost 100,000 plus 1,000 upkeep
[]	Eliminate them	-1 Approval Change

You have a very happy Janet. Her and her people have completed the first comprehensive audit of every single law, regulation, precedent, ruling, finding, judgement, you name it she’s reviewed it. She says that by next year her people will have a full set of suggestions to completely rationalize everything into a coherent whole once more while eliminating contradictory precedents, regulations, etc.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 40 - I Am Home Again

One of the downsides of having such wonderful children… and Willis… is that they loved to surprise you on your birthday sometimes. Worse, because the Palace staff and, sadly, your entire advisory council know how much they love to surprise you you generally don’t get any forewarning about such surprises until they happen because everybody conspires against you, conspiratorially.

Technically hiding secrets from the Crown is certainly a capital offense, but since this involves birthday presents and surprises, no jury would ever convict and you’d look right silly. And it’s not like you haven’t made appropriate use of your own authority as Queen to arrange birthday surprises for your husband and offspring. Appropriate use, mind you. That’s your story and you are sticking to it.

And this is one you should have spotted years ago! You’d never even questioned why, if the manifests for all but two of the grounded dropships in the old Landing site were so detailed and complete in the reports, those two were left out. You’d not noticed.

It turns out they had been fully catalogued, just that your eldest had backstopped that particular report from reaching your desk with the full connivance of Willis and the rest of your brood.

You knew your ancient history. The Terran Alliance had been an absolute snakepit, especially in the last years before the Terran Hegemony. And you’d also known that a good number of the politicians of that era were obsessed with ‘Year Zero’ schemes involving destroying anything that could possibly memorialize the past in order to replace ‘history’ with their own narratives.

Sadly, many irreplaceable historical treasures had been lost to these various Year Zero schemes over the centuries.

Only, evidently, some of them had not. Been lost that is.

They’d been disassembled and hidden instead, and evidently whoever had been part of organizing the original colonial expedition out here had feared that the Star League might decide to try their hand at a little Year Zero BS themselves and had shipped out at least a portion of those treasures out with your ancestors.

Two Mammoth’s had been heavily modified for the task and had been filled to the deckheads with disassembled historical artifacts. One of them had been filled with just one single massive artifact that completely filled it, and even then some items from it had to be carried on the second.

So when you learned that your birthday celebration was going to be held at sea, you figured that it would be on one of the cruise ships that had taken to plying routes from Griffsport to Castor and Pollux to take advantage of the incredible landscapes and scenic views along the Throat.

You hadn’t expected to be on board a ship that had been new over a millennium ago and which had, somehow, defying all the odds, survived neglect, disinterest, and the hostility of crazed Year Zero fanatics to wind up here, reassembled, restored, and in a condition that can only be described as like-new.

There was just something insane about stepping foot on the decks of SS United States, the last true Blue Riband winner… and feeling the incredible power of her steam turbines driving the vessel at almost 40 knots. This wasn’t some towering floating hotel, this was a true ocean liner. Luxury was assumed, but the focus was speed, and the ancient warhorse was still up to the challenge, crashing through the waves at a speed that would leave all her modern descendents in the dust.

And because the entire restoration had been financed out of your kid’s own personal allocations from the privy purse, SS United States was now technically the Griffith Family Yacht.

You could get used to this.

Your lovely children, ungrateful creatures that they are, have also presented you with a cheerful ‘May You Rule Forever’ card, which Jeremy had cheerfully presented to you along with a comment that Queens can’t retire, so he’s safe from the Royal Paperwork for at least another sixty years.

Sekhmet knocks him into the swimming pool for that one on a nod from you. He’s still laughing as Bastet and Anubis promptly tag team Sekhmet and knock her in as well, which results in the entire family getting soaked.

Totally worth it.

Of course, now there’s what to do with her going forward. Keep her as the family yacht or open her up for the public.

[]	Best Royal Yacht EVER!	Keep SS United States as your personal yacht. Would make for an amazing setting for diplomatic meetings! Adds 100 to upkeep
[]	Can be a royal yacht and also open to the public!	Opening her up to the public would significantly increase maintenance costs, but would be quite popular. 1000 to upkeep +1 Approval Change

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 40 - I Am Whole Again

You’d been dreading finding out what the ‘commemoration of 40 years of rule’ art installation would be, especially since everybody was conspiring to keep you away from it until it was opened. Knowing some of the people involved, including your children, and Willis, you were expecting something totally embarrassing, at least at first.

To your pleasant surprise, however, it is extremely tasteful. A large art gallery dedicated to the entire dynasty, with areas dedicated to each of your ancestors and a central gallery dedicated to your reign. When Jeremy takes over the family business your display would be moved to a dedicated gallery and one for him would take over the central gallery.

Of course there was the comedic image of the ‘evolution of the Imperial uniform’ showing concept art of just how ridiculously long the swoopy point would be for Empress. Any piece of clothing that requires counterweights and scaffolding to support is too big. One that requires you to be followed around by one of the Ultra-Light Mechs to hold it up is just too much. The point had to be a good thirty meters long!

From the smirks you are almost certain that Sarah and Willis are to blame for that particular piece of art. So you cheerfully start speculating on appointing your darling daughter as the official Imperial Historian and requiring her to wear an official Imperial Historian Uniform based on the most outre and downright over the top Baroque looniness you’d ever seen in any fashion history book.

You shouldn’t have been surprised when Jane suddenly piped up “Great idea, boss, I’ll get right on it’ and ran off before you could stop her, accompanied by the horrified groans of Sarah.

Oh well, you wouldn’t have to wear it.

In your opinion the nicest thing about the gallery was that each exhibit wasn’t simply of artwork and photographs, but there was also historical information and displays including related artifacts and listings of other museums and historical sites of interest. Whoever had designed this place had done an extremely good and thorough job.

Ever since internal immigration to Nowy Gdansk had been opened up a steady stream of people had headed there despite the horrific weather conditions. As a consequence economic activity had picked up tremendously, showing the great benefit of having more markets for commercial purposes. However there is a downside, the people on Nowy Gdansk are demanding more dedicated defensive forces to be assigned there.

[]	Agree	Commit to producing either 1 Planetary Defense Wing to be stationed on Nowy Gdansk or 3 Standard Armored Regiments to be stationed on Nowy Gdansk or the construction of a Star Fort in Nowy Gdansk orbit within 5 turns. If successfully completed within that time: +10 POP growth on Nowy Gdansk for 5 turns +10 GDP growth on Nowy Gdansk for 5 turns
[]	Disagree	-10 Politics -10 Stability -10 Stability Change

With the completion of the surveys on Griffin IV and the pending completion of the various ongoing DoME projects you attend a meeting where representatives of DoME and the nascent Bureau of Colonization go over the possibilities and requirements for colonizing Griffin IV.

Before starting, efforts would be made to gather specimens of surviving life forms of the planet and transporting them to controlled environments in order to preserve the various species, although it is feared that in the short years since you’ve first landed there several of them have gone extinct as they were so close to the edge.

Then the actual process of colonization would begin.

First order of business would be deorbiting the ice comet so that it impacts on the surface. Within a year the various after-effects of the impact would have calmed enough for a proper colonial expedition to be landed and colonization to officially begin.

Then the next priority would be resculpting the terrain around the existing oceans. There is plenty of water there, it is just far too alkaline and ‘dead’. Massive dredging operations of the land surrounding the deep oceans and dumping the fill into the oceans would simultaneously allow the water to spread out, encouraging evaporation and contributing further to the water cycle of the planet while slowly filling in the depths and, hopefully, buffering the alkalinity of the water with far more acidic sediment.

It is expected that the chemical reactions from this process may produce poisonous fogs of chlorine gas and other, equally unpleasant, chemicals. Therefore large air filtration systems based off of those used in dropship life support systems would be deployed to scrub the atmosphere.

Agronomists would then begin introducing hardy grass species that are capable of surviving with minimal water in an effort to prevent excessive soil erosion. Specially modified small craft and aerodyne dropships would be used to broadcast the seed and spray fertilizer and mist water during this process.

Once the pH levels of the oceans reach levels where water purification equipment can be used for more than 5 minutes before corroding into uselessness, said equipment will be installed.

When the initial tranche of ocean widening projects are complete an evaluation will occur to determine the best steps forward at that point. It is believed that several iterations of terrain modification will be required to produce a healthy water cycle on the planet, including the potential for at least one and possibly two more ice-comet bombardments.

So, at minimum, it would be at least 5 years before we started to see the first minimal return on investment from the colonization project, returns would be very small for the next decade or so, certainly beneath the costs required for the project, but by year 20 or so the project should begin paying for itself and become a net positive for the Imperial economy.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 40 - I Am Young Again

This year the annual children’s day of racing at the Palace is a massive hit, with karting, Pee Wee hover racers, and the now typical mix of ‘serious’ soapbox races for the kids and hilariously over the top ones for the purported adults.

This year you again enter the soapbox race with Willis, this time in a cartoonish ‘Not-Quite-A-Deathapotamusaurus’ soapbox. You hit the first kicker and the entire thing tips over… just as planned, as the ‘real’ racer, looking like a baby Grifftiger, emerges from the wreckage and continues down the track with both you and Willis hanging on for dear life.

Your grandkids love the racing as well, with your eldest grandson actually winning the Kart race to much applause.

Then it’s time to get serious. There are a number of proposals for AA and Artillery mechs that cross your desk. General Potter is personally handling briefing you on the details, although Jeremy is working the powerpoint as his aide for the day.

General Potter takes the podium. “There are two proposals to meet the AFGE’s Artillery Mech requirements. Both have identical armament of a pair of Enhanced Extended-Range PPCs and a single Arrow IV launcher. The first is from Majeure Electronique and shows the greater experience of their design team with meeting requirements, although some of the features, specifically the inclusion of jump jets, are considered questionable by the review staff on the grounds that a mere 60 meters of jump range are insufficient to be truly worth the two tons of mass required. The other is from a new design firm, and it shows in the somewhat more inefficient overall design focusing on increased speed over armor. The ME design has less overall mobility despite the jump jets, the JDS design has incrementally faster ground movement but sacrifices survivability to get it.”

The preliminary designs for each are displayed on the screen. “Regardless of who wins, adjustments will need to be made to the design to meet tactical and doctrinal requirements. What we require is a decision on which path to take. Once we have a winner our own engineers will make what modifications are needed to fit our needs.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	M1 Missile Artillery Walker System	3753.56	DHS	120	30	Armored, Artillery 3
[]	Type 1 Artilli-Mek	3928.72	ES, DHS	76	29	Artillery 3

“Very well, Your Majesty.” he makes a note of your decision.

“For the Air Defense Mech we have had many more responses. We believe that Nollak Industries spent some time chivvying up various engineering firms as part of their ‘It Flies It Dies’ corporate philosophy.” General Potter continues, drawing chuckles from the room.

“There have been six entries, from major and minor firms alike. I’ll go over them one by one.”

“First up, we have the design entry from the Royal Griffin Battlemechwerks, this could be considered a baseline ‘in-house’ design. The Whirlwind is ruthlessly efficient and is a nearly pure anti-fighter platform. Each arm mounts an LB-5X and Large Pulse Laser in an over-under configuration. Against ordinary targets on the ground this weapon combination would be extremely weak, but against ASFs and other flyers it produces highly efficient results in simulation as the sheer volume of fire has a high probability of damaging control surfaces, resulting in otherwise intact craft crashing into terrain at high speed. In addition the Whirlwind mounts a pair of Laser Anti-Missile Systems, making this design the only one of the proposals to have the ability to degrade enemy missile fire.” he checks his notes. “On the downside, it is the second most expensive design proposed.”

He goes to the next slide. “Next up is the Rifleman IIGR, proposed by a small design house on Castor. This possesses higher firepower in the form of a pair of LB-10X autocannon, paired with Extended Range 5cm lasers and a 20 tube LRM launcher. It sacrifices protection to achieve this firepower, however, but at least has CASE protection for the ammunition stores. It is also the single most expensive design proposed for the competition. This design is very flexible, in that the weaponry it mounts is effective against ground targets as well as airborne targets”

“Next up.” he changes to the next slide. “Are a pair of designs from Nollaks own design teams, both of which are centered around a pair of 10 tube racks of LRMs tied to Artemis targeting systems and advanced targeting computers. They have less raw firepower than other entries, but make up for the lack of punch with high precision.They are also highly mobile designs. The primary flaw for both of them is the lack of CASE protection for the ammunition, which combined with the relatively high ammunition loads makes them vulnerable to penetrating hits.”

He switches to the next slide. “From Majeure Electronique we have a design based around the Ultra AC/10 autocannon. This makes this entry the hardest hitting against ground targets of any of them, however the ultra-series of autocannons are less suited for anti-air work due to the concentrated nature of the damage making it more likely to require the actual destruction of the enemy craft via overwhelming firepower rather than through the degradation of control surfaces. This design also continues ME’s obsession with 60 meter jump capability.”

“Finally.” he changes the display again. “We have the one pure laser boat of the proposals, mounting quad extended range 8cm lasers tied to an advanced targeting computer system for high precision. Again, this design philosophy gives strong results against ground targets, allowing the Gram to serve as a sniper mech when not engaging airborne targets, however the mech is very fragile in comparison to the others with the least armor protection of any of the proposed designs. The higher firepower compensates for this, but this design may be better suited for a specialist sniper mech than an Anti-Air design.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Special
[]	Whirlwind Air Defense Mech	4004.32	ES, DHS	100	25	Armored 1, Anti-Air, AMS 2
[]	Rifleman IIGR	4115.28	ES, DHS	64	26	Anti-Air, TAG, Missile 1
[]	Nollak’s Second Favorite Mek	3256.68	ES, DHS	100	25	Armored 1, Anti-Air, Missile 1
[]	Nollak’s Favorite Valid Mek	3437.28	ES, DHS	96	24	Armored 1, Anti-Air, Missile 1
[]	M1 Anti-Aerospace Walker System	3623	DHS	104	26	Armored 1, Anti-Air
[]	Gram Laser AA	2952.24	ES, DHS	72	28	Anti-Air

You also receive a briefing on the new Chevalier command mech from the Royal Griffin Battlemechwerks. The two-man cockpit allows the unit commander to focus on actual command rather than combat and the diverse electronics give the command mech excellent control over the battlefield.

And there’s a political shitstorm on Griffin’s Roost.

Originating in Pollux. Of course. You really are tempted to look into whether or not the legendary Florida Man, Chicago Man, or California Man has congregated down there. A massive scandal has erupted with dueling allegations, counter-allegations, and just plain fecal matter striking the rotary air-impeller at high velocity.

In this corner, agricultural businesses and families are alleging that the environmental protection bureaucrats are demanding bribes in order to approve applications for improvements to the land. The bureaucrats are denying any malfeasance, and investigations are showing no blatantly unusual financial shenanigans, however the number of approvals for things like dikes, dams, roads and the like are trending massively down while fines are skyrocketing, offsetting the reduced income from permits.

That’s bad enough, and it’s producing massive shouting matches in the continental assembly for Pollux as it appears that the problem may be originating ultimately from the political dominance of the few port cities population over the rural populations resulting in enormous disconnects. Most of the bureaucrats now overseeing agriculture on the continent have absolutely no actual background in agriculture.

Well enough, this could be settled by the planetary government. Similar issues had arisen elsewhere and had been taken care of without becoming an Imperial issue in the past. Spleens get vented, bureaucrats get shuffled to areas where they are actually competent, and corrections are made. The planetary government had become quite adept at handling these things.

However things are now escalating rapidly, with a large coalition of farmers becoming increasingly militant.

First there had been a large protest march into the main port city of Castor, a parade of over a thousand tractors and agricultural vehicles completely clogging up the main arteries of the city and bringing it to a grinding halt.

Local law enforcement did not handle this well, as the farmers hadn’t bothered to get any permits or coordinate with anybody. The local citizens also reacted violently, and the protest rapidly degenerated into a massive riot, with both sides engaged in violence against the other.

By the end of the day almost 500 farmers and almost a thousand local residents had been arrested, many of them after being beaten badly by local LEOs and mobs. There were ten deaths, including a pair of police officers which is believed to have led to the forceful response by the rest of the force.

The countryside then erupted, while the Planetary government attempted to restore order and get to the bottom of things. An agricultural permit office was firebombed, several agricultural inspectors have disappeared and are feared dead. A delegation from the planetary government was forced to retreat after being confronted with an armed and extremely angry mob.

The last straw, which caused the planetary government to turn to the Imperial government at last, was the farmers on Pollux declaring that unless there is ‘justice’ from the Empress they will let their harvests rot in the ground this year, which would be devastating. Pollux has become the breadbasket of the Empire, and a disruption to the food supply would cause massive problems.

Elements of the Imperial Guard are deployed to Pollux to control the situation while the Special Branch investigates. After their initial work the following facts have been ascertained.

• The permit approval process has gone from taking approximately three months from application to decision to taking over a year
  • ¾ of all permit applications are now denied.
  • Environmental Impacts are cited in 90% of all denials, with the regulatory office evidently demanding zero environmental impact before approving anything.
• Less than 10% of the regulators now involved in overseeing agriculture on Pollux have any actual experience in agriculture. The party in power on the continent has their support exclusively based out of the cities and has been accused of aggressively purging rural citizens from bureaucratic positions, generally by raising degree requirements well in excess of the actual requirements for the jobs in question.
  • As an example, the minimum degree required to serve in the regulatory office is currently a Master’s degree, but the actual field of study is irrelevant. Of the over 800 employees in the office at this time, only 2 have degrees in agronomy or agricultural sciences. The most common Master’s degree in the office is in English Literature.
  • The Agricultural Oversight offices appear to have become sinecures for party supporters, nevertheless all employees do meet all required qualifications that have been listed, and Human Resources has shown no signs of actual patronage or corruption in hiring.
    • The justification for the requirement for advanced degrees appears to be valid on its face, the positions require a great deal of critical thinking skills that it can be argued be best demonstrated by attaining an advanced degree in any field.
      • However this has the effect of purging rural inhabitants, who are far less likely to pursue post-secondary education. Thus these offices are staffed by people with very high education levels, but zero practical experience in the fields they are overseeing.
    • The requirements for field personnel (enforcement officers, clerical staff, etc) are fully in line with those positions and consist of a much higher percentage of rural inhabitants. The disparity exists at the managerial and discretionary levels.
• Enforcement actions against farmers are up 76% over the last three years, and the rate of increase is growing.
  • At this time less than 5% of all farms on Pollux have not been subjected to fines and enforcement actions for environmental violations.
  • 85% of all violations are trifling and technical, mostly involving paperwork discrepancies that in the past would have simply been corrected.
    • Fines for even the most minor violations are up 200% in the past three years. Failing to file yearly environmental impact reports, for example, now carries a fine of $2,000. 70% of all violations are for failure to file these reports, and in 90% of such cases the ‘failure’ is due to the report being rejected, oftentimes for ‘failure to properly follow all formatting requirements’, which appears to mainly be code for ‘not up to academic writing standards’.
      • Jane brings your attention to over a hundred fines issued over simple grammatical errors, the most egregious being a report rejected for including a split infinitive.
        • Jane notes that this rejection itself included a comma splice
    • Actual violations that are substantive are trending sharply downward.
      • This appears to be an artifact of the shifting priorities of the Oversight offices towards more bureaucratic concerns. Front-line inspection personnel now spend the vast majority of their time handling paperwork rather than being out in the field doing their jobs.
      • In addition, many of the front-line personnel are highly sympathetic with the farmers and are simply turning a blind eye to violations that they do spot, rather than reporting them and, in the words of one inspector ‘having to destroy a family over a leaking holding tank that can be fixed with a $5 tube of caulking and isn’t causing any trouble anyways beyond technically making a patch of ground a ‘wetland’.’
• Permits for activities benefiting the cities are routinely approved in an almost rote fashion.
  • 98% of all permits for recreational trails, city expansion, industrial expansion, or residential expansion are approved.
  • Major projects, defined as those determined to have significant economic and/or environmental projects, including large recreational areas, wilderness set asides, and major transportation projects, are likewise approved at 96% rates.
    • In every case where a project was denied the opposition came from city dwelling interests. In no cases where rural opposition to a project was primary was it rejected.
• There is no sign of actual corruption, malfeasance, or violation of ethics laws on the part of the Pollux government, despite the self-evident hostility towards rural interests. Thanks to population imbalances, it is completely possible for the continental government to have no support whatsoever outside the cities and still dominate in elections.
• Rural interests have no actual voice in Pollux governance at this point, the latest amendments to the continental governing documents have made all representatives ‘at-large’ elected by the entire populace, which has resulted in rural areas having no representation at all in the regional government.
  • The planetary government is already in the process of forcing the continental administration to change this, no imperial action is required.
    • This is extremely unpopular amongst the urban population, who feel that the rural concerns are a case of the tail wagging the dog and that rural people should simply deal with it.
• It should be noted that previous decisions made had designated Pollux as a primarily agricultural hub. In addition the designation of most of the surface area of Capricorn as environmental preserves for Deathapotamusaurus and Grifftigers has meant that agricultural activity is highly concentrated on Pollux, however actual modern agriculture doesn’t require large numbers of people actually growing food. The few cities on Pollux are actually completely dependent on agricultural trade, however this is at a sufficient remove from the actual agriculture that it appears that the urban dwellers have discounted this.

This is an incredibly thorny issue. Normally you’d be able to trust the planetary government, and to be fair they are already doing all of the things you’d normally do to resolve this situation. The urban/rural divide is being handled, with the urban parties being forced to back down and let the rurals have a say in their own governance. There’s little substantive that you could do to deal with this that isn’t already being done.

[]	Give a strong speech castigating all involved. The rurals for escalating to violence when the planetary government was already moving in to handle things peacefully, the urbans for creating the entire mess in the first place with their short-sighted pursuit of power.	-5 Approval Change -5 Politics Ends event chain
[]	Let the Planetary government handle the situation Make it plain that you are aware of the situation and are keeping an eye on things and will intervene if needed, but also that the planetary government has your full support in this affair.	-1% Tax Rate +1 Politics +1 Economy Continues event chain