Turn 45 - A Mind that’s Weak and a Back that’s Strong
You are tired, grumpy, and not at all interested in dealing with the Chamber’s crap, especially when in the middle of negotiations they keep on changing their deals, demanding more and more concessions in return for simply continuing to talk, and generally being incredibly useless.
So you cut off all negotiations and inform the Empire that there will be no deals with the Chamber so long as corporate shills and grifters continue to attempt to loot the people’s purse in pursuit of wealth and power.
That really sets a grifftiger amongst the rabbits, as the Delegates start shrieking like gelded deathapotamusaurus about your characterization of them. That you answer their ‘principled protests’ by simply releasing the tapes of the ‘negotiations’ along with detailed documents highlighting precisely what they were demanding and who amongst their backers benefited the most from it just makes them angrier.
Luckily next year is an election year for those twits, and you hope that this might be the ammunition you need to get the morons turfed out of the Chamber for good.
But it is tiring, and you aren’t that young anymore. You’ve been Queen then Empress for 45 years now. There’s plenty to like about it, true, but then there are years like this one where it seems you get no sleep and no time with your grandkids.
You’d been thinking of stepping down and letting your son take the throne, but so far have refrained since A) you love being Empress and B) he loves piloting his big stompy mech and commanding troops. But you are starting to think it may be time to consider stepping down in order to spend more time with the grandkids and put Jeremy in the Big Chair.
[] | Start 5 Year Transition |
- On Turn 50
- Jeremy will become Emperor
- Lose ‘the Just’ as a tag
- Lose ‘Butterbar’
- Lose ‘Skilled NCO on Board’
- Gain ‘Experienced Soldier’
- Gain ‘Political Scientist’
- Gain 1 reroll of any Parliament support roll
- Gain 5 turns of ‘Honeymoon Period’
- Negates the first negative event rolled to ‘no event’
- Minimum +0 Tax Rate
- Minimum +0% GDP growth
|
[] | Stay the Course | Be like Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth the 2nd and reign forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever... |
Meanwhile you do have some meetings about some replacement mech designs. First to the plate is the replacement for the
Chevalier Command Mech. Submissions were sparse for the contest, with designs being proposed from Majeure Electronique and a smaller firm based out of Castor. All three submitted designs meet the requirements.
[] | Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
[] | Voivode Command Mech | 4406.52 | DHS, Endo | 124 | 31 |
- Armored 1
- Command 1
- Scout
- ECM
- TAG
- AMS 1
|
[] | Voivode-B Command Mech | 3628.12 | DHS, Endo | 120 | 30 |
- Armored 1
- Command 1
- Scout
- ECM
- TAG
- AMS 1
|
[] | Odysseus Heavy Command Mech | 4360.32 | DHS, Endo | 128 | 32 |
- Armored 1
- Command 1
- Scout
- ECM
- TAG
|
Meanwhile there are far more mechs submitted for the
Trooper replacement program. Evidently far more firms feel confident about their chops at designed medium weight class mechs than heavy ones. Several designs had to be eliminated from consideration due to failing to meet the specifications, but there are still several that have been submitted and meet the requirements.
[] | Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
[] | Zolnierz Trooper | 2154.6 | DHS, Endo | 72 | 28 | AMS 1 |
[] | Trooper II Frontline | 2570.6 | DHS, Endo | 84 | 31 | |
[] | Principes Medium Mech | 2907.28 | DHS, Endo | 76 | 29 | Missile 0, AMS 1 |
[] | Nu-Trooper | 2802.6 | DHS, Endo | 88 | 32 | AMS 1 |
[] | Hussar Medium Mech | 2269.92 | DHS, Endo | 72 | 28 | Missile 0, AMS 1 |
Not long after the meetings conclude to decide on these mechs it comes time to work on the budget.
The military is up first, with General Jackson stepping up to the Podium. “Your Majesty, your ground forces have three requests this year, keeping in mind the budgetary and economic situation. We would like to finish out 2nd Brigade of 3rd Armored and bring both 1st and 2nd RRF up to full Brigade strength. To that end, we are requesting the procurement of 1 Standard Mech Regiment, 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment, and 2 Rapid Reaction Regiments. Looking to the future, we would like for the expansion of Mech factories to be considered to permit the construction of multiple Standard Mech Regiments a year.”
No powerpoints? Not even any slides? Just a handout? THEY CAN BE TAUGHT!
Then General Reyes proves that no, not every military type can be taught the evils of Powerpoint, because she has a powerpoint. Oh lord does she have a powerpoint.
- Fleet Starfighter Force
- 2 flights of Griffon Assault ASF for Devastation-class vessels
- Light Carrier Squadrons from Microraptors transferred to Training duties to the new Megaraptors.
- Griffon IV ASF Garrison
- System Patrol Force
- Griffin’s Roost ASF Training
Salvation arrives in the form of Admiral Benjamin who cheerfully tosses the remote to you, pulls out an old-fashioned poster board and pointer, and gets to it that way.
“Your Majesty, we’ve got a ton of slips open and ready for construction, so allow me to take it.” he grins wickedly “From. The. Top!” He gestures with his pointer and his aide actually presses play on a
boombox of all things to give the Admiral some musical accompaniment.
“Starting with the ground based factories. We got us 2 Large Dropship Facilities all set and ready to lay down some more of those sweet sweet
Devastation-class ships with all their big honking space guns. Can we pretty please have ‘em both? Then we got 2
Troodon lines all ready to be fired up. Fire ‘em up!” classic sound effect, you can’t help but to laugh. “Then over here, we got us some
Defiant lines, a pair of the littlest bad boys in the fleet.
Defiants be sexy, yo. Then over here we’ve got a pair of
Megaraptor lines just waiting for business. FEED ‘EM BUSINESS!” he makes a flourish with his pointer. “Then we got these 4
Lightning lines, the
Lightning is fast as greased itself, and we need all we can get. And then, we get into choices. We’d like to convert the old
Velociraptor lines into something more useful, like, say,
Tyrannosaurus lines. If we do that Majeure Electronique assures me they’ll be able to lay down and launch the dropships this year, with commissioning next year like normal. And now... “ he nods to the aide with the boombox, who promptly presses a button and a drumroll sounds. “We come to our brand spanking new pretty as a postcard and still with the new car smell, although you can’t smell anything since they’re in vacuum, orbital shipyards. We’d like to lay down a single
Langley and a pair of
Troodons to escort her bad self. For the foreseeable future we’d like that to be a pattern.”
With that he gives you a florid bow and takes his seat, making you ponder if, through some divine intervention, Tyler managed to have a black grandson who was flamboyant without being a complete lech.
General Potter then takes the stage. “Your Majesty, this will be my last budget meeting with you as your Chief MIlitary Advisor, as I am stepping down at the end of the year. My staff will have a list of replacements on your desk soon.” he looks grim and gray, and you realize with a pang that he’s much closer to 100 than you are. “Regardless, I do endorse all of these suggestions, and do recommend continuing orbital shipyard expansion despite the economic hardships we are experiencing right now.”
You nod sadly as the old warhorse takes his seat once more.
Bridget is up next, and while at first she tries to be slower and more decorous in respect to the mood in the room after that announcement, she can’t help herself and is soon babbling. “Your Majesty, your Interior Ministry is very busy as it stands, but we stand ready to assist with expanding our orbital assets and are getting ready for the next phase of the colonization program which will give us a large number of new things to build especially once the terraforming research finishes up because I’ve seen some of the things they’re talking about already and it would be so awesome to build some of that stuff but we’d need more DoME types and a bigger Interior ministry but that’s a bit off.”
Isoroku is away from the meeting handling preliminary work for next year's Olympics, especially in regards to setting up appropriate housing and such for the visiting Romans. His aid has a short memo from him recommending that this year's cultural event be a benefit concert benefiting economic relief efforts.
Jake is looking as frustrated and irritated as you know you feel about the ongoing debacle that is the Chamber of Delegates. “Your Majesty, I know we’ve been approaching the Chamber with a relatively light hand during elections, preferring to allow the people to decide, but frankly it has become clear that money is talking and the good of the Empire is walking. We can intervene by actively campaigning for Delegates who are willing to put the good of the Empire over their own bank accounts. It will irritate those who are feeding at the trough, but it may be the only way to temper the influence of the ultra-wealthy on the Chamber.”
Mary is uncharacteristically absent from this meeting, although she sent her apologies as all of her teams are hard at work and she’s doing her best to… motivate things along and keep the sort of insanity that happened last year from repeating itself.
Harry Owens is looking serious as ever. “Your Majesty, we will need a decision from you. Our new COINTEL department is seeking guidance over how, well, ruthless you want them to be. Nothing that would actually violate the civil liberties of our citizens, but there is plenty that is unethical while still being, well, legal.”
[] | Low Ruthless | Will unlock the following projects for COINTEL
- Public education about COINTEL
- Basic Security Screening
|
[] | Medium Ruthless | Will unlock the following projects for COINTEL in addition to those above
- Enhanced Security Screening
- Automated keyword-based communications surveillance
- Security Screening for Public Employees
|
[] | High Ruthless | Will unlock the following projects for COINTEL in addition to those above
- Establish a Honey Trap School (volunteer ONLY)
- Pervasive Security Screening
- Security Monitoring of all Public Employees
- Security Screening of all citizens involved in government related work
|
Janet gives Harry a bit of a stink-eye over the ‘High Ruthless’ proposals, but does grudgingly concede that within the limits he gives they would pass legal muster. She herself has nothing new for you, however, as work continues on searching for corruption in the military industrial complex.