Battletech The Taurian Navy Timeline

Adventwolf

Well-known member
If the Amaris family is even still in power. With the TC keeping the SLDF so occupied and then winning it is highly likely that the SL never has the time or resources to move and reinstall the Amaris family in the Rim Worlds Republic. They were very close to being beaten and killed after all before the SLDF came in at the eleventh hour to save their asses. So I am not even sure if a Periphery uprising like what happened to draw the SLDF away from Hegemony space will happen. And even if it does without the TC as a part of the Star League that means the SLDF will not be deployed in as large a force as canon.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
There are so many spoilers I am tempted to respond with. But I can already say that with a peer power to the Terran Hegemony outside the Star League, Kerensky won't have the motivation to wander off into the depths of space. So the clans have been butterflied away, though the Terran hegemony will develop most of the clantech.
 

namar13766

Well-known member
There are so many spoilers I am tempted to respond with. But I can already say that with a peer power to the Terran Hegemony outside the Star League, Kerensky won't have the motivation to wander off into the depths of space. So the clans have been butterflied away, though the Terran hegemony will develop most of the clantech.
Most? Not all? That makes me giggle quite a bit.

I wonder if Comstar will form like they did in OTL, but be distrusted more because people think they're a catspaw for the Terran Hegemony?
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
Most? Not all? That makes me giggle quite a bit.
Because they have to focus on maintaining a high quality navy and use Germanium-carbide in their jump drives, the Taurians have a more robust and advanced carbide production system than the Hegemony. Because they need to use quality to compensate for their numbers compared to the SLDF, the Taurains don't even use standard armor outside of militarized industrial mechs by the end of the Golden century. Advanced armors are already cheaper in Taurian space, and they will eventually get clan armor.
 

namar13766

Well-known member
Because they have to focus on maintaining a high quality navy and use Germanium-carbide in their jump drives, the Taurians have a more robust and advanced carbide production system than the Hegemony. Because they need to use quality to compensate for their numbers compared to the SLDF, the Taurains don't even use standard armor outside of militarized industrial mechs by the end of the Golden century. Advanced armors are already cheaper in Taurian space, and they will eventually get clan armor.
It's my sincere hope that they don't plateau at Clan tech in-universe.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
It's my sincere hope that they don't plateau at Clan tech in-universe.
The Taurians will explore Naval technologies that the clans ignored, The hegemony will get clan tech miniaturization and keep on going. The Fed suns already have Dart missile launchers, and everyone is spending R&D to catchup with our find a coutner for everyone else's technology.
 

namar13766

Well-known member
The Taurians will explore Naval technologies that the clans ignored, The hegemony will get clan tech miniaturization and keep on going. The Fed suns already have Dart missile launchers, and everyone is spending R&D to catchup with our find a coutner for everyone else's technology.
Here’s to hoping the 3025 era is very interesting to look at.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
I've got about half the Ameris civil war chapter written, I think you guys will like how a fleshed out Stephen Ameris. He struck me as the type of guy that would murder his mother and then ask for leniency from the court because he is now an orphan...

and succeed.
 

UltimatePaladin

Well-known member
I've got about half the Ameris civil war chapter written, I think you guys will like how a fleshed out Stephen Ameris. He struck me as the type of guy that would murder his mother and then ask for leniency from the court because he is now an orphan...

and succeed.
He did end up effectively ruling Star League behind Richard Cameron for a time and seized the Terran Hegemony from under the nose of the SLDF.

He's a megalomaniac, but he's also a successful megalomaniac. Curious to see what you have done with him.
 

namar13766

Well-known member
I've got about half the Ameris civil war chapter written, I think you guys will like how a fleshed out Stephen Ameris. He struck me as the type of guy that would murder his mother and then ask for leniency from the court because he is now an orphan...

and succeed.
I wonder what sort of native advances the Rim Worlds made. We’ve seen quite a few novel advances from the other great houses.

Perhaps...Organic Drones?

The term ‘organic drone’ was both intended to dehumanize the whole process to make it more palatable and those involved consider it more accurate term than the alternative and don’t actually care about this humanity thing. Nine year old children are born in an iron womb analogue and subjected to from birth to a rigorous program of mental, physical, and neurochemical conditioning. Though they share genetic makeup of humans, those running the program argue that the comparison isn’t accurate, as the process strips them of any sense of individuality, or any real concept of freewill or creativity. The entirety of their being is subsumed into being a control system for an interface cockpit equipped battlemech or ASF. They wouldn’t even know how to begin to operate outside the confines of their cockpit. They follow the orders of their handlers without question and to the letter, and they can’t even grasp the concept that defiance is an option. They don’t feel pain because of invasive brain surgery and their direct neural interface, tied to the interface cockpit, enhances their otherwise modest piloting and gunnery abilities to the point that one on one they’re equal to a typical clan mechwarrior. The program has proven less successful than hoped, as the vast majority of drones are unable to take the neurological strain of the direct neural interface, or are so damaged by the conditioning that they’re already braindead before they get to that point. They are recycled into the nutrient solutions used in the program used in the growing process. Those that pass muster and enter service have a projected lifespan of only two years, far faster than a typical human with VDNI will degrade. This is all due to their age and conditioning, as their brain and neurological system is not fully developed, thus degrades faster under the immense strain. Buffered VDNI would reduce the issues but would also decrease drone performance. Lengthening the production cycle would increase the numbers and qualities of the drones, but it is already considered prohibitively long. The low numbers of useful drones turned out by the program in 10 year production cycles can’t compete with unmanned inorganic platforms in sheer production volume, but each organic drone system is vastly superior to inorganically controlled counterparts. The fact that these organic drones never last long enough for them to develop individual personalities that kill them from fighting their programming is either a lucky bug or a well-designed feature.
 
The Ameris Plot

Doomsought

Well-known member
To understand how the Ameris Civil war was possible, you must first understand how the colonial venture into the Periphery states functioned.

While the Great houses were not able to annex the periphery states officially, they could nearly do so unofficially. After the Reunification war, the periphery states were in desperate need for capital in order to rebuild their devastated planets. The great houses responded to this with an old trick they used during their expansion prior to the formation of the Star League: predatory loans. The planetary governors of the periphery states knew full well what they were signing on to, but with problems ranging from famine to radioactive fallout, they had no choice.

Initially the great houses used a litany of dirty tricks to extend the loans for as long as possible. However it was not sustainable. As time went on the loans were slowly paid off, sometimes a sponsored pirate raid had the bad luck to run afoul of an SLDF patrol, others a planet was able to smuggle enough good off planet to pay off their debts, however most often it was just a matter of it begin more profitable for the Periphery to recover enough to become a market for great house manufactured goods.

Over the course of the Golden Century, the process of Periphery recovery created links of economic dependency between various periphery states and the Great Houses.

As the Star League became stronger in the inner sphere and attempted to force the Great Houses into peace with each-other, the fighting was only pushed outward. The great houses turned their eyes to their rivals' clients in the periphery and struck them there to escape the persecution of House Cameron. While the initial proxy wars used the old standby of sponsored pirate raids, the Great Houses soon realized they could cause greater disruptions by arming up a native rebellion. While the Periphery states suffered the most from these events, there were many periphery leaders that were able to take advantage of the contradictions, chief among them was Stephen Ameris.

The Periphery remembers Stephen Ameris not as the horrible monster he would later become, but as the most glorious scam artist that ever lived. His favorite scam was to put down periphery rebellions on the behalf of the star league, at least on paper. The salvage reports he turned in to the Star League were universally doctored, and he used paint ammunition as often live ammunition to "put down" rebels. While he could convince SLDF generals to let him try and put down a rebellion, there was no way they would let him take care of the occupation. So his units were replaced with an SLDF garrison, and while the Periphery hated them, and SLDF garrison was preferable to the banditry that would come with a Great House garrison.

For his actions the Ameris build a reputation in the SLDF and later the whole Star League as a charismatic negotiator and military genius second only to Aleksandr Kerensky. Stephen Ameris was able to put down periphery uprisings with fewer casualties than anyone else and was some times even able to talk down the and get them to surrender their military equipment without firing a shot. From this point of view, it is no wounder that Ameris was able to be invited to Earth and even become a trusted adviser to Richard Cameron

While Stephen Ameris scammed his way into becoming the rising star of the Innere Sphere, the Taurian Concordat found themselves becoming the Inner Sphere's favorite scapegoat. When the Great Houses decided to arm up a rebellion in their rival's back yard, they used Taurian arms exports as often as possible. Also the Taurian Concordat was a monument against the Pollux Proclamation. As the Periphery uprising became more common and hotter, more and more fingers got pointed at Concordat. The High council could not appear to be doing nothing about the uprisings, but they could not provoke the Concordat into a hot war either, as it would be political suicide to start escalate that far. So the high council turned to economic sanctions and embargoes.

The Concordat responded with cheek and whit by creating the one-Star League policy: any embargo or sanction that the council applied to the Star League as a whole. When the council banned the Concordat from exporting industrial pulse lasers to Canopus, House Stiener found the Heavy Point Defense lasers for their Block II Commonwealth class cruisers stuck in customs. When the Out Worlds Alliance was banned from importing "Taurian Propaganda" the citizens of of the Federated Suns found out that they were no longer able to watch the latest Taurian sop operas. The common civilians of the Star League barely knew much less cared about periphery uprisings, but they could not live without Taurian soap operas. Through the one-star league policy, the Taurian Concordat was able to get the vast majority of sanctions placed on their trade by the High Council of the Star League repealed in short order.

As much as the civilians of the Star Leguage didn't care about the Periphery uprisings, much of the people who were obligated to care also knew that the rising tensions with the Concordat were a farce. Even the Camerons did not seem to acknowledge the tensions any more than was needed for the political circus as evidenced by Judeth Cameron III deciding to go on vacation to Beta Salandor. The daughter of William Cameron was the black sheep of the Cameron dynasty after having gotten pregnant with an illegitimate child while studying art at Berlin University... twice. When Judeth Cameron exiled herself to the farthest edge of civilized space with both of her bastards in 2760, most of the Camerons sighed in relief.

However what they forgot was that Richard Cameron was growing up to be a bigger idiot than his aunt. No one bothered to let the child lord in on the secret that the tensions with the Concordat were a farce and Stephen Ameris egging him on certainly didn't help. By 2765 the tensions were starting to turn real, the One Star League Policy was starting to fail, and Judeth Cameron had delayed her return the Earth three times with most of her communications being notes scribbled onto the back of the canvases she painted on. Judith's infamous unreliability helped Stephen Ameris convince Richard Cameron that his aunt was actually being held hostage by the Taurian Concordat.

When Richard Cameron gave a deadline for the return of Judith Cameron, it was far less than the year long trip by standard jump drive the distant star system. Once it became clear that Richard Cameron could not be moved by logical arguments based on the facts of interstellar navigation, the Taurian Concordat scrambled the Panama to retrieve her. Even the fasted jumpship ever by man kind was not able to return with the Cameron exile in time to meet the First Lord's deadline.

War, not border skirmishes and raiding, but true interstellar war had returned.

The initial skirmishes were cautions on both sides. While the SLDF had numerical superiority on the Concordat, the majority of their forces were tied down occupying the rest of the Periphery. The concordat knowing they would never have numerical parity, had focused on the quality of their ships. By this point the Concordat navy was universally clad in Lemerllar Ferrocarbide. While the inner sphere countered point defense weapons with the Federated Sun's Dart Missile system, the concordat instead turned to using nuclear shaped charges as the warheads of the capital missiles. The Orion and Casaba Howitzer missiles were effectively single use PPCs with the strength of an entire PPC battery.

Further complicating the matter for was that the Great Houses were unwilling the donate any of their ships to the meat grinder they were expecting. Aleksandr Kerensky entered the war with all due caution, and his caution only grew as the initial stalemate dragged on. The bulls were not charging into the fray like they should and the Kerensky felt like he was walking into a trap. It was only months into the Taurian's offensive that anyone learned just how right the great general was. While the Kurita were able to discover that the Taurians were diving into electronic warfare, they far underestimated the witches brew that the bulls were preparing in the dark corner of the universe known as Aurigae.

Task Force Indian was composed of El Cadejo class stealth reconnaissance ships. The El Cadejo was used a specialized sub-compact core. Jump filed extenders built into the hull allowed the maximum utilization of jump field, thus minimizing the jump signature of the ship relative to its hull. Heat baffles minimized its signature afterwords, allowing it to hide among the noise of background stars and unmapped asteroids. The first warning the the Star League ever had of the El Cadejo was the greatest time on target attack ever attempted. Over the course of ten hours, SLDF logistics stations across the corridor between the Terran Hegemony and the Taurian Concordat were subjected to sudden and unexpected nuclear detonations. From a few crashed duds, the Star League would learn that the Taurians had developed a stealth nuclear missile that could be launched on a programmed course to their installations, with some of the recovered missiles even showing signs of being launched months in advanced.

The El Cadejo by this time was nearly fifty years old and the technology developed for it to spy on the star league had been forwarded to other purposes. Since the SDS project began Taurian Concordat had known that they would need to create countermeasures for the robotic warships. While the stealth systems of the El Cadejo could not make warship invisible in combat, when combined with five hundred tons of active ECM equipment it made the Knight Rider stealth destroyer deadly difficult to hit even before factoring in how the ECM degrading communications channels would hamper the Artificial Intelligence. While Taurians could not scale the naval signature masking technology up to cover a battleship, they could give the Hunnu class battleship over a thousand tons of naval electronic warfare equipment. The Hunnu was also the reason the Concordat divested their Gauss technology development program from the Capellan Confederation. The concordat wanted to scale up, not down, and fitted the Hunnu with an experimental spinal Gauss riffle.

The latter two classes made up the bulk of Task Force Mongol. Starting as soon as Task Force Indian's work came to fruition, Task Force Mongol began to rampage into the heart of the Star League. Having taken to lessen how powerful the appearance of invincibility could be from the end of the Reunification war, Task Force Mongol chose their battles carefully. The primarily engaged in extreme range bombardment using the spinal gauss cannons of the Hunnu battleships and stealth nuclear missiles and only engaged with the Caspar drones when they expected overwhelming victory. More often than not they used their triple jump capability to disengage like ghosts before the local defense could engage them. The riskiest engagement was the Intrusion of Sol, where they targeted ship yards, SDS facilities, and finally two SDS formation before retreating back to the Concordat in order to re-arm and repair. Hours after the battle ended, a trio of stealth missile with their warhead replaced by a broadcast system let themselves be known in the orbit of Earth with a simple message “We can touch you.” The Taurians tactics worked very well to hide the flaws of Task Force Mongol, such as how the terminal guidance system for their spinal Gauss slugs had a nearly 40% failure rate. .

Aleksandr Kerensky was able to understand the purpose behind the Taurian's tactics. Everyone else panicked. The Camerons and other nobility across the Terran hegemony needed the Taurians to be bottled up in the Periphery, never mind the realities of interstellar travel. This was the perfect opportunity for Stephen Ameris to make his play. He could provide them with forces to hold the heartland and free up SLDF forces to deal with the concordat. Kerensky had already put out a dragnet to try and find task force Mongol, he knew such advanced ships could not be replaced easily. His tactical genius was proven by spooking El Cadejo scouting missions into early retreats. However before he could make any major changes, the Panama arrived on the front lines under a diplomatic flag.

Moments later, Judeth Cameron appeared on his communications console, calling Jessica Drillson a whore, Simon Cameron a mentally retarded mutant, and cussing the rest of her family for letting little Richard stupid things up to this degree and drag her away from the planet with the best light pollution laws she has ever heard of. A recording of the venomous rant would later be displayed at the Calderon Museum of art next to a replica of Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto.

With Judith back to the inner sphere and the Causus Belli in doubt, Stephen Ameris had no time left. And so, with his life's work coming to fruition, he flipped the board. While Stephen Ameris claimed to be usurping the Cameron throne, many, including his own forces, suspected his only goal was to destroy the Star League.

An unofficial cease fire was in place since the arrival of Judith Cameron waiting on a political decision from the heart of the Star League, the very request for orders that let Stephen Ameris know that it was time. However this cease fire was able to become official far more quickly than Stephen Ameris planned. While he was able to cease control of all the standard HPGs as planned, he was not aware of the prototype extended range HPG that the Cappelans had donated for Earth's use. Partially because the project was officially a failure, and partially because they space station was never used since its arrival. However the coup was exactly the sort of emergency that Jerome Blake believed warranted depleting the limited endurance of the prototype. With a single burned out HPG, the Cappellans were sent off running to inform both Aleksandr Kerensky and Nicoletta Calderon know of the coup. Ironically Taurus got the message first as the Barbara Liao agreed with Blake that this message was worth burning out one of the prototypes.

With the mastermind behind the war revealed, Kerensky and Judith Cameron signed a cease fire with the Taurian Concordat without delay. The Taurian counteroffensive ended up being a blessing in disguise. With the SDS system in the southern quarter of the Terran Hegemony heavily damaged Kerensky was able to re-take much of the compromised territory before Ameris could solidify his defenses. It was not an easy task. Stephen Ameris was not the equal to Kerensky in military tactics, but he had spent most of his life manipulating the SLDF making him Kerensky's match in grand strategy if nothing else. Where his tactics were inferior, Armeris simply compensated with madness and war crimes. Nuclear weapons became more common with each planet that Kerensky recovered and the first few bio-weapons were unleashed as Kerensky halted his advance.

Stephen Ameris's ground forces primarily used older Royal battlements extracted from stockpiles. These units did not support ad many missile defenses as more modern ones and used Arrow IV missile artillery rather than Dart Missiles. His aerospace assets were not so obsolete, like his neighbors in the Draconis combine he responded to the danger of Dart Missile launchers by creating Dropship escorts for his warships. Where house Kurita armed their escort dropships with sub-capital canon Stephen Ameris instead tried to emulate some of the Early prototypes for capital pulse lasers that the Taurian Concordat demonstrated by developing sub-capital lasers. Both the Draconis Combine and the Rim World's Republic copied one last naval innovation from the Taurians: improved drop-shuttle bays. The formula was fairly simple, taking the docking arms and jump field extenders from a Newgrange and combine them with several internal docking collars. While the Taurians only fielded a few Jumpship tenders prior to the war, Combine produced dozens.

With the systems around him supported by intact SDS system and the Great Houses still not willing to reinforce him, Kerensky knew that he needed to weaken Ameris before he could make any more advances into Hegemony space. Leaving most of his command in place to protect the world he liberated, Kerensky himself retreated and collected the SLDF forces in the periphery to launch an assault on the Rim World's itself. It did not draw Ameris out from his defensive position, but it did cut Stephen Ameris off from any reinforcements. More importantly, it gave Kerensky's most elite forces time to repair themselves and prepare for fighting the SDS system using liberated Terran Hegemony factories. While not as mass efficient as the electronic warfare equipment that the Taurains had spent decades developing, the Hegemony's general computer technology was still more advanced allowing them to catch up quickly.

With nothing left he could do, Kerensky dived in to what he expected to be be the most brutal fight of his life. Ameris did not disappoint. His forces were fanatics with no room in their hearts for anything but a near demonic hatred for the Star League. Both defeat and well ordered retreats where accompanied by a scorched earth policy. Factories were scuttled with nuclear explosive and population centers struck with bio-weapons. Many planets were only saved by luck with a bio weapon turning out to be a dud and no more deadly than a common cold.

This barbarous cruelty was finally enough for the great houses to act. Even the Taurian Concordat could not simply stand aside any longer. With the approval of Judeth Cameron the Taurian's colonization fleet was given approval to render humanitarian aid to Hegemony worlds. The Panama could evacuate some of the worst off planets all on its own. The Chihuahuas were able to build prefabricated habitats and space stations to temporarily shelter other worlds. With the VMI star crane, prefabs could be destroyed cities in minutes and when a world was written off as a lost cause corporations and their employees could often get their factories evacuated along side them. While in most cases these factories would be moved to intact Terran Hegemony worlds or worlds belonging to the Great Houses, more than a few made their way back to Concordat planets.

Picking through the Terran Hegemony's pockets for spare factories while administering first aid wasn't the Concordat's only mission while in the core of Star League space. While many historians would claim that it was Stephan Ameris that murdered the Star League, it was the Taurain Concordat that nailed the coffin shut. The Star League was already buckling under the strain of maintaining its empire before the coup. There was little support from the common people of the Inner Sphere for SLDF occupation missions into the periphery. This is why the tax increases needed to support the SLDF became such a hot issue and the High Council ended up trying to push the tax burden onto the Periphery states. After the Star League was manipulated into a purposeless war with the Concordat the Star League was humiliated on a foundational level. The charm offensive the Concordat engaged in with their humanitarian efforts only increased the anger that the public had over the entire affair. The Taurians barely needed to seed any provocateurs to get large scale protests demanding that the Star League leave the Periphery. With the Terran Hegemony in shambles, it was barely needed. The budget didn't exist to both rebuild the Hegemony and keep control of the Periphery. So one by one the Periphery states were granted independence, with the only Exception being the Rim World's Republic.

It would be over a decade after Ameris's death before the last Chihuahua finished its relief efforts and returned to Taurian space. The devastation of the Terran Hegemony, combined with its technology leaking out into the great houses with the Taurian's help and the near extinction of the Cameron line meant that the Star League would never recover the central authority it had before the reign of Richard Cameron the fool.
 
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namar13766

Well-known member
The free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Since it appears the Taurians don’t wipe their asses with the idea of ‘Consent of the Governed’ , will there be an age of revolutions in the IS?
 

UltimatePaladin

Well-known member
Cappelans
Capellans

Amaris

Other than that, pretty interesting. Less destructive Amaris Coup here, plus a quicker response by Kerensky might have saved the League... if left it forever changed.

Since it appears the Taurians don’t wipe their asses with the idea of ‘Consent of the Governed’
What do you mean by that? Consent of the Governed didn't seem to be a big issue here in the text?
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I wonder what sort of native advances the Rim Worlds made. We’ve seen quite a few novel advances from the other great houses.

Perhaps...Organic Drones?

The term ‘organic drone’ was both intended to dehumanize the whole process to make it more palatable and those involved consider it more accurate term than the alternative and don’t actually care about this humanity thing. Nine year old children are born in an iron womb analogue and subjected to from birth to a rigorous program of mental, physical, and neurochemical conditioning. Though they share genetic makeup of humans, those running the program argue that the comparison isn’t accurate, as the process strips them of any sense of individuality, or any real concept of freewill or creativity. The entirety of their being is subsumed into being a control system for an interface cockpit equipped battlemech or ASF. They wouldn’t even know how to begin to operate outside the confines of their cockpit. They follow the orders of their handlers without question and to the letter, and they can’t even grasp the concept that defiance is an option. They don’t feel pain because of invasive brain surgery and their direct neural interface, tied to the interface cockpit, enhances their otherwise modest piloting and gunnery abilities to the point that one on one they’re equal to a typical clan mechwarrior. The program has proven less successful than hoped, as the vast majority of drones are unable to take the neurological strain of the direct neural interface, or are so damaged by the conditioning that they’re already braindead before they get to that point. They are recycled into the nutrient solutions used in the program used in the growing process. Those that pass muster and enter service have a projected lifespan of only two years, far faster than a typical human with VDNI will degrade. This is all due to their age and conditioning, as their brain and neurological system is not fully developed, thus degrades faster under the immense strain. Buffered VDNI would reduce the issues but would also decrease drone performance. Lengthening the production cycle would increase the numbers and qualities of the drones, but it is already considered prohibitively long. The low numbers of useful drones turned out by the program in 10 year production cycles can’t compete with unmanned inorganic platforms in sheer production volume, but each organic drone system is vastly superior to inorganically controlled counterparts. The fact that these organic drones never last long enough for them to develop individual personalities that kill them from fighting their programming is either a lucky bug or a well-designed feature.
Holy @#$%. You just made. Manei Domini. Seem. Reasonable in comparison. I did not expect to get up, read something, and then then say "You know, these guys would really benefit from Word of Blake hitting them."
 

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