Turn 66 - Monopoly, Twenty-One, Checkers and Chess
Turn 66 - Monopoly, Twenty-One, Checkers and Chess
QM Note - I apologize for the slower pace, with classes and everything I have far less time
While you wait for the Kilburrough dropship to transit to Griffin’s Roost, you take the time to go over some other matters.
With the recent development of more compact extra-light fusion engines a full raft of upgrade proposals are now sitting on your desk. They’ve all been approved already, as they are straightforward upgrades of the existing platforms, but you’ll need to sign off on the actual refit orders. The DURF will be at full capacity, and the plan is to complete the upgrade cycle by the end of the year. It will mean no Mech procurement this year, however.
Nearly all of your battlemech designs, apart from the assault, training, and garrison designs, are affected by the upgrade process, which is more than simply replacing the engines. The new integrated CASE technology is also added, which has seriously boosted survivability of all of them.
In one case you are actually reducing the cost of the platform. The old Orb Weaver mech has found itself increasingly irrelevant on the battlefield as heavier platforms are able to carry the same sensors that the swift little spider mech can. The great speed is still an advantage, but the thin armor is a serious flaw and many of the speedy little mechs are lost in every engagement due to this. Dropping the sensor suite down to the standard equipment freed up enough tonnage to thicken the mech’s hide, making them more survivable and saving money as well.
The overall net benefit is a roughly 10% increase in raw combat power, with significantly more flexible and resilient units due to a rough doubling of anti-missile capacity along with increased long range firepower. Going forward costs actually on average will go down, saving on maintenance costs as well.
Thanks to a number of immigrants from the NRI who had been heavily involved in their battle armor programs, your scientists are able to achieve a significant breakthrough on heavy battle armor. You are now able to design suits up to 1,500 kilograms in mass, although such suits would be unsuitable for swarming tactics. A prototype suit in the mass range has been produced and is in testing, and so far is looking exceptionally dangerous, if rather more ponderous than its lighter counterparts.
The new suits are equipped with a pair of anti-personnel gauss rifles, a pair of anti-personnel mounts fitted with the standard pulse laser rifle of your conventional infantry, and a twin-tube launcher for short-ranged missiles fitted to the shoulders of the suit.
New Capricorn and Nowa Warszawa split the gold medals in the shooting events. In general performances are solid across the board with the contests quite close and competitive. In men’s fencing the Nowa Warszawa team utterly dominates, sweeping the podium in foil, saber, and epee. In the women’s event the tiny Nowy Śląsk team likewise sweeps the event… with a single fencer in each of the three classes who at 16 was only barely old enough to compete and yet outpointed women twice her age with over a decade of top level competitive experience.
In the two wrestling events the TTP and Calliope IV split the medals, showing a high standard of competitive ability and giving commentators hope that Team Griffon might finally reverse the long string of defeats on the mat. Likewise in the Archery events the same two teams once more split the gold medals.
The delegation from Kilburrough arrives on Griffin’s Roost, cutting into your sports watching time.
When the Monarch class liner lands the first group out are a sextet of rather… daunting guards. They are black, not the dark skin tones of somebody descended from African people, but pure, unalloyed, light-drinking black. They’re wearing mirrored sunglasses, so it is impossible to tell the color of their eyes, but the only thing that isn’t black about them is the white dress shirt they wear under their perfectly fitted and tailored black formal jackets. The suits are carbon-black… and you are absolutely certain that their skin is even darker than that.
The emissary is… flamboyant beyond the limits of flamboyance. You honestly cannot tell if the figure is male or female, and the outfit they are wearing looks like somebody took 18th century court dress, decided it was far too plain and boring, added more jewels, crystals, LEDs, and metallic wires to the ensemble, painted it in the most extreme day-glo colors, a mix of neon strip lighting and blacklights make it even more outre. And somehow it manages to actually be a coherent whole, much to your enormous surprise.
Even when the emissary speaks it is still utterly impossible to get a read on if it is a very effeminate man or a very masculine woman, the tones utterly and totally androgynous. The standard greetings are… stilted, however the emissary doesn’t seem to notice just how hostile everybody is towards… them?
The entire discussion is disquieting, the Kilburroughans have this twisted black and grey morality, they are merely businessmen, after all. They simply provide products to sovereign governments to the requirements and standards specified by said government. When you take the bull by the horns and confront them with the inhumane treatment of those slaves rescued from the Dracs the emissary simply sighs and informs you that they had warned the Dracs that their proposed training and conditioning regimen would be ineffective and inefficient, and that by engaging in such they had voided the usual warranties on the purchased products. You realize that the point had sailed right over the emissaries head.
When you press them on it they seem to continue to completely miss the point, agreeing with you; after all, the Dracs had violated the terms of service and end-user licensing agreement and thus Kilburrough had terminated product support, there being no other lawful remedy.
When you try to press them on that point the emissary then drops a bombshell, blandly stating that, in contrast to the Dracs immoral violations of the terms of service and EULA, your grandfather had adhered to them with the genetic treatments for his son, that is your father, that enabled him to sire children.
You freeze at that.
What.
There are no records whatsoever of any such thing, but a traitorous voice in your head whispers that most of the records from that period have been lost. Meanwhile he is continuing, not seeming to notice your reaction as he extols the virtues of the augmented fertility treatments that are among their most popular and profitable business services.
You end talks at this point, at least for now. There is absolutely no way, at this late date, to confirm anything that the emissary is saying. You certainly don’t remember anything from your childhood that would even hint at that, there are no records of dropships coming to the planet prior to the big Drac attack, but again, records are unreliable, and if they’d used a shuttle they might have been able to slip in and out.
QM Note - I apologize for the slower pace, with classes and everything I have far less time
While you wait for the Kilburrough dropship to transit to Griffin’s Roost, you take the time to go over some other matters.
With the recent development of more compact extra-light fusion engines a full raft of upgrade proposals are now sitting on your desk. They’ve all been approved already, as they are straightforward upgrades of the existing platforms, but you’ll need to sign off on the actual refit orders. The DURF will be at full capacity, and the plan is to complete the upgrade cycle by the end of the year. It will mean no Mech procurement this year, however.
Nearly all of your battlemech designs, apart from the assault, training, and garrison designs, are affected by the upgrade process, which is more than simply replacing the engines. The new integrated CASE technology is also added, which has seriously boosted survivability of all of them.
In one case you are actually reducing the cost of the platform. The old Orb Weaver mech has found itself increasingly irrelevant on the battlefield as heavier platforms are able to carry the same sensors that the swift little spider mech can. The great speed is still an advantage, but the thin armor is a serious flaw and many of the speedy little mechs are lost in every engagement due to this. Dropping the sensor suite down to the standard equipment freed up enough tonnage to thicken the mech’s hide, making them more survivable and saving money as well.
Light Mechs | |||||
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Orb Weaver II | $454.73 | Endo, DHS | 14 | 24 |
|
Kavallerie II | $420.75 | Endo, DHS | 15 | 25 |
|
Medium Mechs | |||||
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Wolf Spider II | $770.35 | Endo, DHS | 32 | 32 |
|
Uhlan II | $799.65 | Endo, DHS | 29 | 29 |
|
Rittmeister III | $885.83 | Endo, DHS | 26 | 26 |
|
Horse Archer II | $852.04 | Endo, DHS | 26 | 26 |
|
Heavy Mechs | |||||
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Soldatin III | $1,054.64 | Endo, DHS | 36 | 36 |
|
Archer IV | $1,098.91 | Endo, DHS | 34 | 34 |
|
Chevalier III | $1,189.74 | Endo, DHS | 34 | 34 |
|
Whirlwind III | $988.14 | Endo, DHS | 26 | 26 |
|
Ballista II | $1,019.99 | Endo, DHS | 32 | 32 |
|
The overall net benefit is a roughly 10% increase in raw combat power, with significantly more flexible and resilient units due to a rough doubling of anti-missile capacity along with increased long range firepower. Going forward costs actually on average will go down, saving on maintenance costs as well.
[] | Authorize the upgrades |
|
[] | Not yet |
|
Thanks to a number of immigrants from the NRI who had been heavily involved in their battle armor programs, your scientists are able to achieve a significant breakthrough on heavy battle armor. You are now able to design suits up to 1,500 kilograms in mass, although such suits would be unsuitable for swarming tactics. A prototype suit in the mass range has been produced and is in testing, and so far is looking exceptionally dangerous, if rather more ponderous than its lighter counterparts.
The new suits are equipped with a pair of anti-personnel gauss rifles, a pair of anti-personnel mounts fitted with the standard pulse laser rifle of your conventional infantry, and a twin-tube launcher for short-ranged missiles fitted to the shoulders of the suit.
New Capricorn and Nowa Warszawa split the gold medals in the shooting events. In general performances are solid across the board with the contests quite close and competitive. In men’s fencing the Nowa Warszawa team utterly dominates, sweeping the podium in foil, saber, and epee. In the women’s event the tiny Nowy Śląsk team likewise sweeps the event… with a single fencer in each of the three classes who at 16 was only barely old enough to compete and yet outpointed women twice her age with over a decade of top level competitive experience.
In the two wrestling events the TTP and Calliope IV split the medals, showing a high standard of competitive ability and giving commentators hope that Team Griffon might finally reverse the long string of defeats on the mat. Likewise in the Archery events the same two teams once more split the gold medals.
The delegation from Kilburrough arrives on Griffin’s Roost, cutting into your sports watching time.
When the Monarch class liner lands the first group out are a sextet of rather… daunting guards. They are black, not the dark skin tones of somebody descended from African people, but pure, unalloyed, light-drinking black. They’re wearing mirrored sunglasses, so it is impossible to tell the color of their eyes, but the only thing that isn’t black about them is the white dress shirt they wear under their perfectly fitted and tailored black formal jackets. The suits are carbon-black… and you are absolutely certain that their skin is even darker than that.
The emissary is… flamboyant beyond the limits of flamboyance. You honestly cannot tell if the figure is male or female, and the outfit they are wearing looks like somebody took 18th century court dress, decided it was far too plain and boring, added more jewels, crystals, LEDs, and metallic wires to the ensemble, painted it in the most extreme day-glo colors, a mix of neon strip lighting and blacklights make it even more outre. And somehow it manages to actually be a coherent whole, much to your enormous surprise.
Even when the emissary speaks it is still utterly impossible to get a read on if it is a very effeminate man or a very masculine woman, the tones utterly and totally androgynous. The standard greetings are… stilted, however the emissary doesn’t seem to notice just how hostile everybody is towards… them?
The entire discussion is disquieting, the Kilburroughans have this twisted black and grey morality, they are merely businessmen, after all. They simply provide products to sovereign governments to the requirements and standards specified by said government. When you take the bull by the horns and confront them with the inhumane treatment of those slaves rescued from the Dracs the emissary simply sighs and informs you that they had warned the Dracs that their proposed training and conditioning regimen would be ineffective and inefficient, and that by engaging in such they had voided the usual warranties on the purchased products. You realize that the point had sailed right over the emissaries head.
When you press them on it they seem to continue to completely miss the point, agreeing with you; after all, the Dracs had violated the terms of service and end-user licensing agreement and thus Kilburrough had terminated product support, there being no other lawful remedy.
When you try to press them on that point the emissary then drops a bombshell, blandly stating that, in contrast to the Dracs immoral violations of the terms of service and EULA, your grandfather had adhered to them with the genetic treatments for his son, that is your father, that enabled him to sire children.
You freeze at that.
What.
There are no records whatsoever of any such thing, but a traitorous voice in your head whispers that most of the records from that period have been lost. Meanwhile he is continuing, not seeming to notice your reaction as he extols the virtues of the augmented fertility treatments that are among their most popular and profitable business services.
You end talks at this point, at least for now. There is absolutely no way, at this late date, to confirm anything that the emissary is saying. You certainly don’t remember anything from your childhood that would even hint at that, there are no records of dropships coming to the planet prior to the big Drac attack, but again, records are unreliable, and if they’d used a shuttle they might have been able to slip in and out.