Turn 100 - Hot-Shot, Give Me No Problems
Your favorite events of the Olympics are now at hand, and with your children in tow you make a point of attending all of the races, much to their enjoyment and approval.
However the Hovercraft races start off with a massive controversy, as crew members from one of the Bourbon drivers are caught attempting to sabotage a Team Griffon hovercraft after inspections had been completed. As a result the Bourbon team is completely disqualified, with the offending driver, a particularly obnoxious fellow from Nouvelle Picardie, being particularly foul mouthed in the process.
The races continued, however, and as usual Team Griffon thoroughly dominated in all four disciplines. After the controversy in the Hovercraft race, the Bourbon team, this time led by a Nouvelle Normandie rider, manages to take silver in the Motorcycle race, while in the Hovercraft, Stock, and Formula races the Romans take solid silvers, actually making the racing a bit more exciting than usual for the leaders in a few cases.
You get back to the palace just in time to be ambushed by Admiral Fisher and Admiral Sims carrying large binders containing their latest madness about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world as chaotic thirsting gods laugh and scheme and… OK, they just want to show you some designs and make you do paperwork.
Which is bad enough.
The Battle of Bohren had shown the vulnerability inherent in the relatively fragile parasite carriers, and the dynamic duo had a two pronged plan to address this.
First would require relatively minor modifications to the docking collars of the
Hosho class, minor enough that they can be handled by their own crews once the parts are delivered. They would then each be able to carry 10 of the new
Wright Dockable ASF Platforms, derived from concepts put together for independent ASF stations to thicken jump point defenses. These platforms, unlike dropships, would be semi-permanently installed on the host carrier, each carrying a full wing of ASFs and attendant small craft, while being armed with an array of anti-missile and anti-fighter weapons. An innovative derivative of the standard pressurized repair bay would be used to allow rapid mass launches of the ASF complement. The remaining five collars would still be open for use by
Saipan parasite carriers, as well as the various other parasite designs.
The second is a derivative of the
Dido-class optimized for anti-fighter/anti-missile operations by means of a significant armament swap. The balanced armament of the original vessel would be replaced by an impressive array of naval capital and subcapital lasers, with four of the original ten docking collars given preliminary modifications such that if the
Wright proved viable they would be able to be carried by the new
Guiseppe Garibaldi-class Light Cruiser.
Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
Wright Dockable ASF Platform | $2,759,951.00 | LFA, DHS | 367 | 187 |
- Armored 8
- AMS 20
- Capital AMS 2
- Missile 88
|
Guiseppe Garibaldi-class Light Cruiser | $172,984,820.00 | LFA, DHS | 2453 | 1553 |
- Armored 60
- Capital AMS 312
- Capital
- Command 3
|
It should be noted that despite using warship grade armor, the
Wright is capable of being built in standard dropship yards for a fraction of the cost of the
Saipan-class parasite carrier.
Periphery Studies has gotten up to their usual shenanigans, causing your face and your palm to resume their torrid and forbidden love affair in reaction to the utter insanity.
Somebody who should have known better let them see some ancient cartoons stored in
SARAHs database, and now you have most of the esteemed tenured faculty of the department running around in turtle costumes, demanding pizza, and hitting things with foam rubber ‘ninja weapons’. At least the various pizzerias in Griffsport are doing land sale business this year thanks to this.
And now it is budget time, at last. You still don’t really understand why this is supposedly a time of dread and despair.
General Jenkins starts things off. “Well, Your Majesty, I’m sure you’re getting tired of me constantly harping about logistics, but guess what, I’m going to be harping about logistics and strategic materials. And this time even Admiral Fisher is going to be whining at you about it, which will be different. General?” He turns over the podium to General Bradley.
“Your Majesty, our expansion continues to be constrained by strategic materials rather than by factories, so we will continue to urge for expansion, especially for ferro-fibrous armor. Other than that, our requests will be quite similar to last years.”
She first shows a graph, improved over last years, showing the strategic material situation visually.
“As you can tell, we added the most common form of RCT Division to the comparison to make it more comprehensive.”
She then brings up the desired budget items for the year from the Army.
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Production
- Strategic Materials
- Upgrade all DHS Orbital Factories
- Upgrade all Ferro Fibrous Orbital Factories
- Upgrade all Endo-Steel Orbital Factories
- Procurement
- Conventional
- Battlemech
- Garrison
- 8 Garrison Divisions
- 9 Militia Divisions
General Romanov is up next. “Your Majesty, we are ready to begin procurement of the new patrol bombers, as well as continue to beef up our offensive and defensive ASF forces. We are doing relatively well in terms of strategic materials.” She smiles a bit slyly at that, causing you to laugh as you catch the subtle jest.
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Procurement
- 30 Heavy Carrier Wings
- 30 Patrol Wings
- 30 Naval Patrol Wings
Admiral Fisher is looking grumpier than usual, glaring at General Jenkins, before silently putting up a chart as he begins to speak.
“Yes, get it out of your systems, we’re starting to run up against limits in jump cores. We had hoped to have finished the latest round of systemic upgrades via R&D by now, but growth in production capacity, while otherwise excellent, has resulted in us bumping up against the limit. So yes, we need more germanium refining capacity to maintain a margin for the next couple years before the major improvements roll out.”
He glares around, daring anybody to comment, before continuing. “That being said, we intend to investigate the potential for the
Wright platforms, if they prove viable we’ll begin mass production. We’ll be taking one of our
Hoshos in hand to act as the testbed mothership, build a block of 10 of the platforms, and see how it goes. We’re also requesting a tranche of the new cruisers, I’m not going to try to pronounce that name, some of the designers are apparently Italian and bored me to death arguing for it. And, of course, we’ll be continuing to grow our production capacity and our fleet.”
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- Strategic Materials
- New Germanium Refinery
- Upgrade all Germanium Refineries
- Orbital Shipyards
- Upgrade all Orbital Shipyards
- Refit & Repair Yards
- Upgrade all Refit & Repair Yards
- Escort Yards
- Construct new Escort Yards
- Bohren
- Iskra
- Stahlfurt
- Skala
- Chuma
- Bari
- Glorreich
- Pryymenyy
- Novolar
- Grand View
- Small Warship Yards
- Construct new Small Warship Yards
- New Phoenix
- New Castor
- New Pollux
- Edelsteine
- Kainga
- Large Warship Yards
- Nowa Warszawa
- Okusawa
- New Port Royal
- Nya Kopenhamn
- New Capricorn
- Procurement
- Standard Dropships
- 200 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
- 10 Wright-class Dockable ASF Platforms
- Large Dropships
- 30 Saipan-class Parasite Carriers
- 17 Meteor-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 34 Aetna-class Parasite Missile Battleships
- 26 Canopus-class Parasite Battleships
- Jumpships
- Escorts
- 40 Fubuki-class Destroyers
- 40 Lyr-class Corvettes
- Small Warships
- 20 Dido-class Light Cruisers
- 10 Guiseppe Garibaldi-class Light Cruisers
- Medium Warships
- 20 Prinz Eugen-class Heavy Cruisers
- Fortress Command
- Construct Black Towers
- Grand View
- Novolar
- Bauernparadis
- Pinball
- Feurstem
The Admiral sits down and Elizabeth Lee takes his place.
“Your Majesty, we have a rather comprehensive economic improvement program lined up for your approval this year, which should hopefully lead to more rapid advancement in our economic growth across the board, but especially in the Periphery.”
She consults her notes. “To begin with, we have reworked the programs intended to encourage the development of infrastructure and industrial zones within the Peripheral colonies, as such we would like to make the following recommendations.”
She brings up a small chart.
- Construct Infrastructure & Industrial Zones
- Nowy Wrocław
- Glorreich
- Iskra
- Awha
- Pieklo
- Nowy Slask
“We are primarily targeting the most minerally productive systems first, and the one closest to becoming a Core World and thus ineligible for the program.”
She then brings up a somewhat more familiar chart. “Next, Your Majesty, our economic development and investment teams have the following recommendations.”
- Economic Focu & Investment
- Focus
- Massive Investment
- Investment
“In terms of survey work, we have three firm recommendations and one that is a bit risky.” She smiles a bit. “In a very British understatement sort of way.”
- Survey Targets
- GX-E28
- An Orange main sequence star, astronomers predict several terrestrial worlds in the system along with at least one large gas giant. Modeling seems to indicate more than one might be in the habitable zone
- GX-C26
- A Yellow main sequence star, and the most likely source of the HPG interference we have been experiencing. Astronomers are quite confused by the system and caution that the dust levels around it make it very hard to know what is there. The only reason we are recommending sending a survey fleet and not a battle fleet is that your great-grandmother seemed to find whatever was here to be something to be amused by, rather than threatened by.
- GX-N19
- A Red Dwarf, at the high end for size and luminosity of the spectral class. Astronomers predict at least one habitable planet in the system based on their observations.
- GX-L17
- A highly stable Red Sub Giant with a companion Brown Dwarf, expectations are of at least one and potentially several habitable planets in the system, although astrophysicists caution that it is highly unlikely to have significant metal resources
“Finally, we only have a single DoME team available, the one dedicated to Planetary Optimization. This year we are recommending the Pinball system.”
Interestingly, all of the rest of your advisors have sent notes indicating that they have no pressing budget requests this year. Tiberius is vacationing with his family, General Messerschmidt is meeting with officials from the NRR about future intelligence cooperation, your Foriegn Minister is personally overseeing the final establishment of the Kilburroughan embassy, and your Justice Minister is off with her new grandson.