Battletech Welcome to the Jungle

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Comguard’s Mech forces so green in this era that they lost over 1-1 against pirates while using top tier royal lostech mechs?
Yeah, the Comguards at this point are your basic pay-to-win characters who have no idea what they're doing but are swinging around better gear than anybody else.

However they also tend to send, as noted, a couple hundred units at a time and even amateurs are dangerous with those kinds of numbers.
 

Wargamer08

Well-known member
Yeah, the Comguards at this point are your basic pay-to-win characters who have no idea what they're doing but are swinging around better gear than anybody else.

However they also tend to send, as noted, a couple hundred units at a time and even amateurs are dangerous with those kinds of numbers.
Up against elite rated mercenaries in better or comparable gear, having to push into at best a semi-fortress? With the current state of the Comguard, pirates might have a better showing. They at least would be well practiced at raids.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Up against elite rated mercenaries in better or comparable gear, having to push into at best a semi-fortress? With the current state of the Comguard, pirates might have a better showing. They at least would be well practiced at raids.
The 1st Division has 216 fighters. Weber's Warriors have about 30. At the space level at least that's going to be ugly.

On the ground it's going to be much fairer (This is presuming the Comguard bring a single level III), but copious amounts of air support from their level III of ASF are going to help them get ahead again.

I still wouldn't bet on the Comguards but I think they would inflict some serious hurt.
 

Wargamer08

Well-known member
The 1st Division has 216 fighters. Weber's Warriors have about 30. At the space level at least that's going to be ugly.

On the ground it's going to be much fairer (This is presuming the Comguard bring a single level III), but copious amounts of air support from their level III of ASF are going to help them get ahead again.

I still wouldn't bet on the Comguards but I think they would inflict some serious hurt.
Considering that’s what they sent against a warship I would be shocked if they brought that many ASF. At that point you might as well load them with tacnukes and pave the mountain because no one is going to buy a “pirate” with 216 ASF fighters. Likewise that many ASF would be basically impossible for a successor state to hide the deployment of. The Comguard might as well paint little Comstars on their fighters.
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
I will note that Comstar is exceedingly unlikely to have the transportation resources readily available to move a whole division to basically the middle of nowhere in basically a month at best without any prior warning and even more importantly do so covertly.
 

Satorious

Active member
Stupid question but does com star know the theat catachan represents? New ppc and feeder factories don't merit rom intervention unless they are rnd. That and com star did not know until very recently the LC was building los tec in any number. My money is pirates or DC. Unless com star got very lucky not enough time to really scout the area.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Stupid question but does com star know the theat catachan represents? New ppc and feeder factories don't merit rom intervention unless they are rnd. That and com star did not know until very recently the LC was building los tec in any number. My money is pirates or DC. Unless com star got very lucky not enough time to really scout the area.
If anybody was dumb enough to talk about the new lostech factory in a message, ComStar probably read it as much of their intelligence depends on intercepting and reading everybody's "Secure" HPG transmissions.

Unfortunately Weber's not been in a position to do anything about that and given he's been hobnobbing with industrial titans and royalty, the odds that none of them needed to send an email to another planet to discuss it are fairly high.
 
A Proper Reward for Services Rendered V

Yellowhammer

Well-known member
A Matter of Proper Reward for Services Rendered V

(A Welcome to the Jungle canon sidestory)

En Route to Jump Point, Tharkad System,
District of Donegal, Protectorate of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
March 13th, 3016


Julia Steiner smiled in relief as Sarah passed Alistair in the hatch as he left. The conversation with Alistair that she had hoped to get -- and had feared having -- had gone reasonably well. Another hurdle passed in her quest to marry a good and suitable man whom she might be able to love one day, it seemed.

However, there was a rather large fly in the ointment.

Catachan.

She hadn't actually been there -- yet -- and his discussion of its governance had just revealed a major blind spot in her assumptions of life with Alistair.

She had been thinking in conventional terms. Once she married him, she would slide into the existing power structure of the planet that he ruled, identify the keys to his power such as the head of the civil government, his Estates-General representative, the planetary militia commander, business leaders, clergy, and so on, and work with them for the maximum good of all as she had been trained to do from the moment that she realized what it was to be a Steiner.

But Catachan had none of what she was expected to work within.

No existing framework of law, culture and custom developed over generations, save those which the colonists had been bringing with themselves from their varied home worlds. All it had was Alistair as Duke, but nothing else, and he would have to build institutions from scratch that would outlive him, her, and their children without creating massive problems for their children's children to have to deal with.

And human history, even the limited and incomplete summary of the history that she knew about the First Exodus off Terra which had established the daughter colonies of the Inner Sphere, showed how badly he and she could get it wrong in their one chance to establish Catachan. Just the ugly Neo-Calvinism of New Capetown with the preaching of hate against those of a different race than their forefathers was enough to make her somewhat sick to her stomach from the rumored stories of terrorist attacks on non-white LCAF students at the military academy there.

Silently, she spared a prayer for her distant cousin Leutnant-General Nils Steiner-Davis who was being sent there to head the academy and clean it up in yet another of Aunt Katrina's initiatives, according to the family gossip HPG channel.

But that underscored what she had learned in the instant that Alistair had let slip the great task before him and her.

She had instinctively clamped down hard on her initial reaction to shoot holes in his proposals, since while she thought that he was wrong with some of his too idealistic ideas about the civilian governance, she didn't know that he was.

It was far better to do nothing while thinking things over and researching a subject than go immediately and risk a disaster, especially when the subject was not time-critical. It wasn't like they would be going anywhere for the next few months, and any decisions he took would necessarily have to wait until their arrival on Catachan. Plenty of time to work through all the angles, ponder them, and raise her concerns in private conversations before the final decisions had to be made.

If he was the one that was wrong in her judgement of his proposals.

She could as fallible as Alistair would be, after all. And she knew that she didn't have enough data yet to make a firm final judgement.

And 'With Great Power came both Great Responsibilities and Great Fuckups filling the history books and Steiner family diaries if you got it wrong!' to quote Mother's lessons that had been drummed into her.


She had known that since being messily sick to her stomach after reading the true stories of Archon Claudius the Cruel's misrule that had been preserved as a cautionary tale to protect against hubris among her House.

Her leadership training as a Steiner heiress was clearly inadequate to make that decision affecting the government that must be formed for Catachan. She knew that she didn't know enough to make a good judgement, and she didn't have the tools on hand nor the training right now to tackle what they would be facing together as they built a planet from nothing.

But she had the time and opportunity to acquire what she needed to have so they could get it right with the only shot that they would have.

"Mistress Julia?"

Sarah's voice returned her to the here and now from her inward contemplation. "What is it, Sarah?"

"You look quite troubled. The talk went poorly?" Her valet, bodyguard, confidante, and surrogate big sister gave her one of those penetrating looks that made Julia feel like she was made of spun glass.

"Actually, our talk went quite well, Sarah. He asked me about personal compatibility with a clear eye toward marriage suitability." Sarah smiled while Julia grinned happily. "No serious disagreements came up. Nothing we can't work through, I think, although obviously we're coming from different places in this particular remake of The Princess and the Pauper."

Julia giggled at her joke, joined by Sarah.

Then Julia's smile faded and her voice grew serious. "I just realized that I should have done something critically important to our future while I was on Tharkad, so I need to scramble to make it good." Julia swigged the last of her electrolyte-filled sports drink as introspection visibly turned to decision and determination. "I'll be on the bridge once I get a shower and change; I need to do some long-distance delegation to fix my fuckup."

Sarah gave her mistress a fond smile as they headed out of the ship's gym. Inwardly, she spoke to herself. 'Ahh, you might be thinking that you're just faking rulership and narrowly dodging disaster, Julia. Yet you're going to be one of the good rulers for us before all is said and done, and I'm honored to stand in your shadow.'

----------------------------------------------------​

Julia, now cleaned up and in a blue LCAF jumpsuit, strapped herself into the communications station on the Dropship's bridge, then punched in a communication code. "Well here we go." She looked into the small camera and spoke. "Can whoever is on duty please get my father for this call? It's somewhat urgent."

She patiently waited for the screen in front of her to change as her signal sped across the millions of miles between her dropship burning for the waiting jumpship recharging at the Zenith, and the planet that she had left.

Finally, eight minutes later, the test pattern changed to a familiar face in the foyer of her family's Tharkad City mansion. "Julia? You just caught us about to go out the door to the theater. The Archon's Theater Company is doing a Shakespeare revival this month and it's Antony and Cleopatra tonight. What's wrong with my little Viking this time?"

She smiled. "I love you too, Daddy. Nothing wrong with me personally. I just had a long and productive personal chat with Alistair and things are going well on that front. But I just realized that Catachan's got no existing governmental structure to speak of and I'm not really trained to build one rather than work inside an existing structure since no one to the best of my knowledge has sucessfully set up any colonies anytime between now and the Star League's fall. I know that historically some colonies had major problems getting a stable framework in place, though. So I desperately need some expert advice on the pitfalls of setting up a stable society and government from scratch. What other people did right, how things can go wrong, basically the lessons learned. So I'd like to ask you for a big favor."

His expression changed to a thoughtful look. "I see. I'll sound some of my colleagues out, or are you thinking about actual ruling advisors?"

"Advisors, please. Tap my personal funds and pay whatever it takes to get the best experts that kroner can buy to prevent Alistair and me from making a real mess of Catachan for my grandchildren to have to deal with if we hit one of the known pitfalls. Then ship them out to Catachan on a fast jumpship with whatever databases and the like that they need to help us get this right once you hire them for me." Julia breathed a sigh of relief at his nod before he looked at his watch. "I owe you big for this one, Daddy."

"I'll collect that IOU from you next time I see you in person, Viking. Now I really do need to go before Iris comes looking for me, but I'll make it happen for you. I'll just HPG you when they are en-route. Love you, Julia!"

"I love you too, Daddy!" Julia replied before the transmission ended.

She then punched in the comm code for the next item on her to-do list and waited for the home page of Dobless Information Services' Tharkad office to form on the screen so she could log into their services with her account information.

----------------------------------------------------​

Finally Julia leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair after paying through the nose for Dobless to priority transmit a curated selection of research papers, political science analysis, and academic studies on the successes and failures of the First Exodus' colony development from their datastores as a rush order for their archivists. She sighed at the long list of her 'new bedtime reading' for the next few months while her PDA plugged into the console began to fill up with the first of the purchased data that she had bought.

"Now, how best do I talk Alistair into waiting for our expert advisors to arrive along with reading up on colony development before we set anything irrevocable in stone on Catachan?"
 
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Yellowhammer

Well-known member
Nice. That's something you don't see in many stories and must exist indeed.

Thank you, thank you! I'm glad that worked and hopefully that explains her reactions to Alistair dropping the 'let's talk' bomb on her.

A darn solid addition to the story @Yellowhammer

I try (especially when the discussion about the politics of Catachan got so durn toxic on SB).

Julia sets a high standard for spheroid nobility.

Well, there's a reason that the Steiners have held an iron grip on power in the Commonwelth for 600 years without coups or popular discontent shifting executive political power out of their family line (unlike the Kuritas).

While they have produced some real stinkers as Archons (Robert II, Claudius, Alessandro) before Julia got out of diapers, the Steiners are also are incredibly popular to the point that the LC state insignia everyone knows is actually that of House Steiner (the actual LC state insignia is a three stringed lyre, but everyone uses the Steiner Fist willingly instead). That kind of track record must mean that the Steiners must be getting it right more often than not to stay on the throne, especially in what amounts to a semi-democracy with a side of feudalism. That in turn means they have to do pretty well in training the next generation to produce egenrally competent and sane leaders that prevent a serious run of bad/corrupt/venal Steiners that would bring the dynasty down in favor of new blood after they disqualified themselves to much in the public eye and among the nobility/LCAF.

Julia possesses something very few people have...an ability to look at themselves honestly and admit their weakness.

Well yes, that's one reason that she does well. Admittedly thatw as trained by her reading the diaries of a few ancestors who lived through Claudius the Cruel*, who very much thought that his shit didn't stink and as a result nearly wrecked the LC midway through the Second Succession War. After losing her dinner over what he was like, she resolved to do better and admitted that she doesn't have all the answers. But that's what the big bank account is for, since you can hire the answers if you need them.

*Plus other historical examples like Wilhelm II who was doing decently well until her fired his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to replace him with someone more pliable, cue WWI for Germany. Or Daddy's lectures over the dinner table on the Julio-Claudian Roman Emperors and how they relied on advisors for better and worse. Etc, etc, etc.

Honestly, I generally don't expect such levels of introspection by nobility, nicely done.

Well she knows in her bones and gut that she has to get it right or her people will suffer. So she is making sure that she gets it right and she's honest to admit that she doesn't know what she doesn't know, and she needs to correct ASAP that before Weber and her build Catachan.

Are Freidrichs involved?

Probably. It's not like Shakespeare hasn't withstood the test of time very well, considering. And of course Daddy-the-Roman-historian would enjoy the hell out of Shakespeare's take on the collapse of the Republic.
 

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