Turn 97 - We Laid Rubber
You are having a perfectly lovely spring day when Admiral Fisher and Admiral Sims show up in your office. And Fisher is smiling.
You have a feeling of dread that he’s about to reveal something else that will infuriate the rest of the Navy and you are not disappointed.
“OK, our logistics trail is better but still shit, and we are still getting outnumbered by way too many to one in terms of fighters. I had the design teams try and solve this problem, and while some old timers are whining even louder than usual and declaring that we’re utterly mad, we’ve decided to ignore the old farts and actually do something useful. Admiral?” he turns to Admiral Sims who gives you an apologetic look before taking over.
“Your Majesty, the main result of our work is the
Hosho-class light carrier. At three quarters of a million tons, this ship matches the
Dido-class in terms of mass, while being somewhat more lightly armored and much more lightly armed. They have 15 drop collars, can carry two wings of ASFs, and have over thirty thousand tons of cargo space. They also possess significant flag facilities, a robust marine detachment, and are well-armed for self-defense with 160 3.5 meter naval lasers mounted in rapid action mounts permitting anti-fighter and anti-missile active defense.” She smiles a bit. “The vessel is designed to be able to either operate as part of the fleet, providing enhanced fighter support to the formation while supporting her dual fighter wings, or to act as part of the logistics tail of the formation, protecting the transports with her weaponry and fighters. There are plans as well for what would be for lack of a better term a throwback to the ancient wet navy ‘gators’, with her fighter complement replaced with barracks for infantry allowing each ship to carry a full Infantry Brigade into a contested warzone and provide logistics support while there.”
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Hosho-class CVL | $25,244,260.00 | DHS, LFA | 1810 | 1060 |
- Armored 46
- Capital AMS 480
- Capital Rating
- Command 6
|
OK, that’s good enough to keep him from being tossed out the Window at least.
Both Intelligence and Justice are still investigating the Skala situation. Interestingly, there is absolutely no evidence of any attempts to communicate back to the Rouges Noir by the suspected agents, nor do they seem to be communicating with each other. This lack of communication allowed them to slip under the radar, as your counterintelligence methods are geared towards preventing espionage rather than this sort of thing.
You are getting scattered reports across the Empire of anarchist activity rising, generally among relatively upper class young people who are for some reason radicalizing a bit. The IGMP has noted that all of these clusters seem to be in regions where asylum seekers from the Bourbon empire who fit the profile of the Rouges Noir were settled, but again there are no signs of any attempts at communication or coordination.
Something is not right here.
And then budget time rolls around. You still don’t really get why your grandfather always got grouchy about this, although you have heard stories of the legendary General Powerpoint and how she could bore a marble statue to tears.
General Jenkins is up first. “OK, boss lady. We’re still going to be focusing on making our big bad navy ever bigger and ever badder, although Admiral Fisher refuses to moonwalk. Aerospace forces will continue to grow, General Bradley will continue to wrestle with preparations for the big Army reorganization, and you will grumble about having to authorize upgrading strategic material factories again.” He grins at you. “So let’s get started, shall we? General?”
General Bradley gives her boss a moderately severe look. “Your Majesty, our reorganization plans are nearly completed. Next year we will be requesting a significant budget for retooling our Mech factories to fit the new paradigm, but that is for the future. This year we will simply be requesting additional production of strategic materials.” She brings up the chart, which is rather short, simple, and to the point.
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Production
- Strategic Materials
- Upgrade all DHS factories
- Upgrade all Ferro Fibrous factories
- Upgrade all Endo Steel factories
- Procurement
- 30 Garrison Regiments
- 30 Militia Rating
General Romanov is up next. “Your Majesty, our ASF procurement priorities remain relatively similar, with 90 total wings being purchased. We are filling in some gaps in our capabilities this year, in preparation for next year focusing heavily on carrier wings.”
The charts she brings up are also quite simple this year.
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Procurement
- 30 Heavy Carrier Wing
- 30 Attack Wing
- 30 Light Fighter Wing
Admiral Fisher looks like the cat who caught the canary, drank all the cream, knocked over all of the vases, and managed to blame it all on the dog. “OK, unlike those two, we’ve got a big building program so buckle up. We’ll be building the first of the new carriers, building masses of new dropships, finally getting reasonable numbers of destroyers in production at the same time considering our requirements, and turning the corner on churning out all of the big iron we can. We’ll hopefully soon be able to build even larger ships, and our liaisons with the R&D community indicate that we might be able to start initial preparation for this as early as next year, although actual hardware is several years out.”
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- Upgrade All Orbital Shipyards
- Upgrade All Refit & Repair Yards
- Construct Escort Yards
- Bari
- Chuma
- New Castor
- Nowy Slask
- Nowy Wrocław
- Pieklo
- Iskra
- Bohren
- Stahlfurt
- Griff’s Leap
- Construct Small Warship Yards
- Construct Medium Warship Yards
- Calliope IV
- Edelsteine
- Griffon
- New Capricorn
- New Pollux
- New Port Royal
- Nowa Warszawa
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Okusawa
- New Phoenix
- Defense Stations
- Black Towers
- Edelsteine
- Nowy Wrocław
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Griff’s Leap
- New Castor
- Procurement
- Regular Dropships
- 100 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
- 40 Trenton-class transports
- 30 Long Beach-class Parasite Missile Destroyers
- Large Dropships
- 30 Saipan-class Parasite Carriers
- 17 Meteor-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 34 Aetna-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 1 Canopus-class Parasite Battleship
- Jumpships
- Escorts
- 30 Fubuki-class Destroyers
- 30 Lyr-class Corvettes
- Small Warships
- 20 Dido-class Light Cruisers
- 7 Hosho-class Light Carriers
- Medium Warships
- 20 Prinz Eugen-class Heavy Cruisers
Elizabeth Lee is up next. “I’d like to start by thanking you for authorizing the buildout of the commercial stations, Your Majesty, this will have significantly positive effects for our economy overall in the long term.”
She consults her notes. “For economic investment and foci we have the following recommendations based on the work of our in-house analysts and staff.”
- Economic Focus and Investment
- Focus
- Massive Investment
- Investment
“We would also recommend recommencing survey work to our northern and northwestern flanks. The four targets that we recommend are as follows.”
- GX-M18
- An Orange main-sequence star that is believed to possess terrestrial planets within the habitable zone
- GX-J18
- A comparatively bright Red Dwarf star, astronomers believe that there are certainly gas giants in the system, and potentially habitable planets as well
- GX-H19
- The primary of this system is a red dwarf, however we have already detected a brown dwarf companion, and there is every reason to expect at least some habitable planets here
- GX-E26
- A yellow primary slightly cooler than Sol, multiple planets have been detected by our astronomers in remote surveys
“We have a single DoME team available and a request from the Kaiyo system for them to be deployed building the system up as a logistics hub for our growth in that sector of space. A logistics hub in this location would provide excellent support for our New Phoenix fleet base on top of the significant local benefits to the economy.”
Once Elizabeth sits down Leila takes the podium for the Foreign Ministry. “We have sent discreet inquiries to the Bourbons concerning our Rouges Noir problem at the request of Justice and Intelligence, Your Majesty, we will report when we get a response. Closer to home, in light of the various issues we are facing, we would like to recommend the construction of a monument celebrating the victory in the Raj system.”
Tiberius is, for once, dressed sensibly in a business suit, and is looking quite serious. “I don’t want to steal General Messerschmidt’s thunder on this, Your Majesty, but parliament is getting a bit big for their britches and the Eldest is concerned that some of the hotheads might start making trouble. We really need to nip that in the bud and take steps to deal with them. In addition, we would like to continue the public relations blitz we started last year, as well as expanding the Colonial Office to support the growing number of colonies within the Empire. That office is getting perilously close to capacity.”
Grace is up next. “Your Majesty, We have three R&D teams ready to go. We’d like to have two of them focus themselves on advanced fundamental research into Communications and Electronics, while the third works on improving the existing Anti-Aging treatments to further boost their efficacy.”
General Messerschmidt looks a bit grim. “Your Majesty, we are prepared to go dig up dirt on some deserving politicians at your say-so. I’m waiting for confirmation from our contacts within Bourbon space, as well as whatever Leila discovers, to finalize our report on the anarchist situation. I will warn you, it’s not looking good.”
Martina nods from her seat. “Indeed, Your Majesty, I do not think it would be at all presumptuous of me to recommend that you prepare yourself to confirm a very large number of death sentences handed down to some exceptionally slick and plausible individuals.”