Turn 87 - I Find Out I’m Wrong When I Thought I Was Right
The massive rollout of the new
Sparrowhawk II has begun, with over half of your ASF factories fully dedicated to producing sufficient quantities to fully replace all of your older designs. The
Peregrines and
Gyrfalcons that are being replaced are put in storage for future upgrades, rather than scrapped.
The NRR is likewise procuring large quantities of the new ASF while retiring their older models, giving them a significant boost in capability. They assign the first of their new birds to the units designated as supporting forces in your defense alliance.
And as it happens this is quite fortuitous, as a wing of the new NRR birds are available when a Black Steel
Congress makes an attempted thunder run through the New Phoenix system. Interestingly the enemy warship is deliberately avoiding engagement with the two
Dart and four
Flight I Fletcher in the system, satisfying itself with a long range fighter strike at some of the local orbital infrastructure which is foiled by the NRR pilots before jumping out at a pirate point.
While it is gratifying that no real damage was sustained, it is a mixed bag, as the
Congress is well known to have been used as a recon asset by the SLDF due to the classes highly capable sensor arrays, and that Black Steel ship had no doubt gathered a great deal of intelligence. As a consequence you have your heavy reaction force move to New Phoenix, which proves quite prophetic.
Three weeks after the recon run a pair of Black Steel
Texas class battleships escorting an unidentified battleship design, an outer screen of a quartet of
Essex class vessels completes the attacking force.
The battle is inconclusive, two of the enemy
Essex class vessels are eventually destroyed, with damage inflicted on the three capital ships, in exchange for light damage to the
Exeter, three
Wichitas and two of the escorting
Clevelands and the loss of a pair of
Stiletto class escorts as well as a single
Dart. The Black Steel winds up jumping out, again without having inflicted any significant infrastructure damage.
According to the reports, the
Exeter matched up surprisingly well with the larger enemy capital ships, although not well enough to risk a close in engagement. The
Wichita class continued to impress as well. The
Stiletto was showing its origin as a ‘cheap’ escort and both vessels that had been deployed were constructive losses, although thankfully you were able to get the crews off. Nobody is quite sure how the
Dart was lost, the hits she took shouldn’t have been fatal but she blew up quite spectacularly, it’s believed that there might have been a damage control failure leading to a magazine detonation.
The
Canopus class parasite battleships did a superb job handling the enemy drone
Pentagons, validating the basic operational doctrine. The
Raptor,
Merlin and
Condor ASFs all proved themselves, while the
Eagle in it’s latest iteration continues to prove itself a lethal combatant, especially against enemy ASFs.
Okusawa has nearly completely settled down, with the remaining ‘loyalist’ resistance reduced to shouting angry slogans, drinking far too much sake, and being nothing but public nuisances rather than public threats. The IGMP suffers an enormous amount of teasing and mockery from within Imperial law enforcement circles when it turns out that the two largest ‘resistance’ groups are made up solely of IGMP undercover agents.
Oops.
You take a moment to read the action review and find that about two dozen different squads had gotten approval to infiltrate what had, at the time, been about two dozen different ‘patriot resistance’ groups loyal to the ISF and the Dragon, over time those groups had wound up merging together as the real radicals ran off and did stupid things and won stupid prizes, leaving just the undercover agents who decided to be proactive and merge with other radical groups in order to monitor them, eventually the winnowing of true believer idiots left just two groups left, and a lot of red faces when everybody involved realized that all that were left were about a hundred ICMP undercover agents, an utterly and amusingly incompetent wannabe and his long suffering companion who’d managed to keep him from joining the ‘too stupid to live’ club this entire time.
In twenty years or so, with names changed to protect the guilty, this would make a hilarious comedy movie. For now Justice is keeping things in place to act as honey traps for any more nutcases who remain.
General Romanov comes to you with a concern. The aging
Roc platform, despite upgrades, has been rather thoroughly overshadowed by the
Griffon platform in the assault fighter category. The
Griffon carries a heavier missile battery, leaving the
Roc without much of a niche. With that being the case, the Aerospace Force is proposing reimagining the
Roc away from the current paradigm which favors heavy missile armament. By dropping the LRM racks, they can upgrade the gauss rifle to a class 40 hyper assault gauss weapon like the one carried in the
Condor, with greater ammunition capacity to ensure combat endurance. In simulations, even without missiles, thanks to the heavy AMS installation the proposed
Roc V is capable of enormous destruction due to pure toughness and direct firepower.
Since you have relatively few
Rocs in service the DURF would be able to handle the upgrade, albeit at a cost.
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Roc V | $10,261.50 | FAA, DHS | 60 | 40 | |
[] | Procure and Upgrade |
- Cost - $1,000,000,000.00
- Upgrades all units with the current Roc IV to the Roc V
|
[] | Current birds are fine | |
Another cooperative project between the NRR and the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Werk has resulted in the
Stingray II, a 60 ton reimagining of an old ASF design most famous for its forward swept aerodynamic control surfaces. Ace pilots from the NRR and your own forces were instrumental in the design, resulting in an extremely precise fighter that rewards the most skilled pilots with unparalleled precision at great ranges. Armed with a pair of extended range 8cm lasers, a single enhanced PPC, and with both an AMS and a pair of 5cm extended range lasers guarding the tail, combined with the accuracy provided by a cutting edge targeting computer system, the new design offers pinpoint accuracy, thus making up for the lack of missiles and sheer acceleration.
Flight tests and comparative trials show that the new design is at least as effective as the
Goshawk IVG, despite the reduced speed. The Aerospace Force is not proposing to replace the older patrol fighter, as it possesses greater range and speed, but they would like to procure these new birds into new units.
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Stingray II | $4,747.38 | FA, DHS | 31 | 21 | |