Joyousmadman
Well-known member
[X] Measured Response. Step up enforcement of existing public intoxication laws and launch a public information campaign encouraging people to be responsible.
Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
Jarow
Well-known member
Mostly because there are a lot of concrete details that need to be included in the plan that I need to know first (also, because reformatting to remove the [X]s is a lot of effort). For example, several actions seem to have been suggested in this post that will need to be included. I'll post my partially filled template in the discord though, if you want to use that as a base for including the important little details. (Who is training, what military to purchase, anything outside of research/interior...)
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
[x] Measured Response. Step up enforcement of existing public intoxication laws and launch a public information campaign encouraging people to be responsible.
Also, power of Jeremy Clarkson compels you.
Also, power of Jeremy Clarkson compels you.
PeaceMaker 03
Well-known member
[X] Convicted drug users get bonus thrill plan, volunteer testing anti-killer penguin technology and thunder hippo technology.
[X] Convicted drug users get bonus thrill plan, volunteer testing anti-killer penguin technology and thunder hippo technology.
This is the closest we can get to having them face the dire penguins and thunder hippos themselves - if they want a high then let them see how they feel about the adrenaline rush for facing a predator in its home territory.
This is the closest we can get to having them face the dire penguins and thunder hippos themselves - if they want a high then let them see how they feel about the adrenaline rush for facing a predator in its home territory.
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
Inserted tally
[X] Measured Response. Step up enforcement of existing public intoxication laws and launch a public information campaign encouraging people to be responsible.
As much as we personally want to go for the Purity! Crusade!, good policy is not born from an angry Queen's snap decisions. On the other hand,
[Write-in Detail] We will personally back that Measured Response as something of a hands-on pet project, starting with a formal address to the nation in which we deploy a ruthlessly calculated fusion of professional image management and sincere personal emotion to project the absolute maximum degree of Royal Displeasure and Stern Motherly Disappointment.
As much as we personally want to go for the Purity! Crusade!, good policy is not born from an angry Queen's snap decisions. On the other hand,
[Write-in Detail] We will personally back that Measured Response as something of a hands-on pet project, starting with a formal address to the nation in which we deploy a ruthlessly calculated fusion of professional image management and sincere personal emotion to project the absolute maximum degree of Royal Displeasure and Stern Motherly Disappointment.
[X] Purity! Crusade! At least on public roadways.
It sounds like the safety systems are in place to treat DUI like the Schlockverse treats MOUI. The hoops the driver had to go through to get a vehicle that he could drive while intoxicated aren't quite as insurmountable, but they're still sufficient that treating any DUI as attempted murder and treating fatal cases as premeditated murder is entirely appropriate.
It sounds like the safety systems are in place to treat DUI like the Schlockverse treats MOUI. The hoops the driver had to go through to get a vehicle that he could drive while intoxicated aren't quite as insurmountable, but they're still sufficient that treating any DUI as attempted murder and treating fatal cases as premeditated murder is entirely appropriate.
Turn 13 - Fluff and Story
Turn 13 Fluff and Story
The new year began with a sneeze.
And a fever.
You got word in early January that the public health authorities were in a quiet panic that was about to get very loud. That year's influenza vaccine had been finalized and distributed, and then the dominant strain in the expected flu outbreak had the very poor taste to mutate at the very last instant into something resistant to the vaccine.
You had a public-health crisis on your hands.
It would take several months to formulate, test, and roll out the new vaccine. In the meantime, the mutated strain of flu would rampage through the population as if there had been no vaccine at all.
This wasn’t unprecedented. In fact, it happened every decade or so, that the vaccine was either for the wrong strain or there was a minor mutation. What made this exceptionally dangerous was that the mutation had made this strain particularly lethal.
In the end there was no choice, regional quarantines were instituted at once, but failed to check the spread. So you pulled the trigger, full lockdown apart from essential services until the new vaccine could be produced.
The economy was hammered. You knew it would be. Unemployment shot through the roof as everything ground to a halt.
And your public health people labored like Hercules, and damn near pulled off a miracle. They’d told you at the beginning that it would take at least three months before a new vaccine would be generally available.
They managed it in a month.
Immediately distribution started, the RRF pulling the turrets from both their Chasseurs and their Foxhounds to give them cargo space so they could race the vaccines from the factories to distribution sites far faster than traditional transport solutions. The soldiers of the RRF massively exceed all safety regulations for operational time and down time, yet there are no significant accidents at all.
You hadn’t authorized that. Nor had General Wolf. But it worked magnificently.
Thanks to the heroic efforts of the public health authorities and the exertions of everybody else involved the new vaccine was ready, distributed, and proved effective by the middle of February.
It was with a gigantic sigh of relief that the lockdown was lifted as soon as vaccination rates his the levels needed to prevent a public health disaster.
The economy would struggle to recover, this year at least was a loss in terms of economic growth, but confidence in the government had risen significantly.
There are some amusing spots as well. With Josh Baldwin having evidently consumed a few too many different hallucinogenic drugs than were probably advised while in quarantine, as soon as the lockdown was lifted he could be seen screeching at the top of his lungs about the danger of ‘robes’ and ranting about ‘doppelgangers’ out to replace all the leaders of everything.
He’s quietly escorted back to campus and given a tenured professorship in Periphery Studies.
You do put in place stricter enforcement of existing laws against manual operation under the influence, while requesting studies into the most effective ways to dissuade young people from doing drugs in the first place.
One of the first things you get back is that the hovercraft racing leagues that are sprouting up after the national league was established have seen quite a few of the at-risk segments of the population getting their adrenaline highs by racing fragile little contraptions at extreme speeds.
Your eldest is as level-headed as ever. Your twins, on the other hand, while still stoutly declaring that they were going to be fighter pilots like daddy, are now also pestering you constantly for hovercraft racers of their own in the Junior League.
You blame Willis for them being adrenaline junkies. Especially after you catch him building his own racer in the family workshop.
Threats of couch-time are met with a ride in the racer. OK, so you are a teeny tiny bit of an adrenaline junky yourself at times. It’s still his fault.
And the twins are not allowed in the Junior League until they are 11, just like the Junior League regulations require.
Nor may they join the Pee-Wee league until they are 8. You are adamant about this.
Then Jeremy betrays you by asking if he could sign up for the Pee-Wee league. You thought you had raised him better than this! Where had you gone wrong! He and Bastet double-teamed you with Big Begging Eyes.
You complain about this to Willis all the way to the registration office. You had said the twins could sign up when they were 8, Jeremy is 8. You backed yourself into a corner with that one.
Sekhmet seems amused by Bastet’s enthusiasm for this sport, joining you on the sidelines as your husband helps your son with his hovercraft.
Compared to the serious racing machines the ones used in the Pee-Wee league are incredibly slow, sporting only a 25 hp engine driving both the lift fans and the ducted propellor. The low performance combined with a meticulous attention to safety makes this about as safe as little league baseball for the kids, but that doesn’t stop you from worrying.
Your son doesn’t come close to winning, but you can tell he’s having a ball based on the gigantic smile on his face. He comes in fifth in a field of twenty, so not a bad showing at all for his first race.
Of course, he did have the unfair advantage of Willis teaching him all sorts of tricks on the practice track that had been built at the palace, but you weren’t going to begrudge him that.
Bastet becomes the unofficial mascot of the local Pee-Wee league during the competition, playing with all the kids and generally having the time of her life.
Sekhmet just lounges with the rest of the parents, enjoying the spring sunshine and you giving her a proper scritching.
Your younger kids are a study in contrasts, the twins are torn between pouting that they have to wait 2 years to join in, and cheering their brother on. Your daughters, on the other hand, are happily playing with the other little kids in the play area set aside for them. And whenever Jeremy and the other competitors are actually busy competing, Bastet can often be found gamboling with them.
You are quite happy to see that the twins are also willing to play with their sisters still, you must not be as big a failure at parenting as you sometimes feared.
Of course, it’s not all fun and games. Back in the office you get a petition from the citizens of Huế mới requesting that the continent be renamed to something more dignified than ‘Wow’. You mutter about this, as you’d not much liked the name in the first place but hadn’t felt it right to overrule the popular vote at the time. You decide to put it up for vote once more in light of the petition.
[] Retain the name ‘Wow’ for the equatorial continent
[] Change the name to
-[] Write-In
((QM reserves the right to veto any name the QM dislikes.))
The new year began with a sneeze.
And a fever.
You got word in early January that the public health authorities were in a quiet panic that was about to get very loud. That year's influenza vaccine had been finalized and distributed, and then the dominant strain in the expected flu outbreak had the very poor taste to mutate at the very last instant into something resistant to the vaccine.
You had a public-health crisis on your hands.
It would take several months to formulate, test, and roll out the new vaccine. In the meantime, the mutated strain of flu would rampage through the population as if there had been no vaccine at all.
This wasn’t unprecedented. In fact, it happened every decade or so, that the vaccine was either for the wrong strain or there was a minor mutation. What made this exceptionally dangerous was that the mutation had made this strain particularly lethal.
In the end there was no choice, regional quarantines were instituted at once, but failed to check the spread. So you pulled the trigger, full lockdown apart from essential services until the new vaccine could be produced.
The economy was hammered. You knew it would be. Unemployment shot through the roof as everything ground to a halt.
And your public health people labored like Hercules, and damn near pulled off a miracle. They’d told you at the beginning that it would take at least three months before a new vaccine would be generally available.
They managed it in a month.
Immediately distribution started, the RRF pulling the turrets from both their Chasseurs and their Foxhounds to give them cargo space so they could race the vaccines from the factories to distribution sites far faster than traditional transport solutions. The soldiers of the RRF massively exceed all safety regulations for operational time and down time, yet there are no significant accidents at all.
You hadn’t authorized that. Nor had General Wolf. But it worked magnificently.
Thanks to the heroic efforts of the public health authorities and the exertions of everybody else involved the new vaccine was ready, distributed, and proved effective by the middle of February.
It was with a gigantic sigh of relief that the lockdown was lifted as soon as vaccination rates his the levels needed to prevent a public health disaster.
The economy would struggle to recover, this year at least was a loss in terms of economic growth, but confidence in the government had risen significantly.
There are some amusing spots as well. With Josh Baldwin having evidently consumed a few too many different hallucinogenic drugs than were probably advised while in quarantine, as soon as the lockdown was lifted he could be seen screeching at the top of his lungs about the danger of ‘robes’ and ranting about ‘doppelgangers’ out to replace all the leaders of everything.
He’s quietly escorted back to campus and given a tenured professorship in Periphery Studies.
You do put in place stricter enforcement of existing laws against manual operation under the influence, while requesting studies into the most effective ways to dissuade young people from doing drugs in the first place.
One of the first things you get back is that the hovercraft racing leagues that are sprouting up after the national league was established have seen quite a few of the at-risk segments of the population getting their adrenaline highs by racing fragile little contraptions at extreme speeds.
Your eldest is as level-headed as ever. Your twins, on the other hand, while still stoutly declaring that they were going to be fighter pilots like daddy, are now also pestering you constantly for hovercraft racers of their own in the Junior League.
You blame Willis for them being adrenaline junkies. Especially after you catch him building his own racer in the family workshop.
Threats of couch-time are met with a ride in the racer. OK, so you are a teeny tiny bit of an adrenaline junky yourself at times. It’s still his fault.
And the twins are not allowed in the Junior League until they are 11, just like the Junior League regulations require.
Nor may they join the Pee-Wee league until they are 8. You are adamant about this.
Then Jeremy betrays you by asking if he could sign up for the Pee-Wee league. You thought you had raised him better than this! Where had you gone wrong! He and Bastet double-teamed you with Big Begging Eyes.
You complain about this to Willis all the way to the registration office. You had said the twins could sign up when they were 8, Jeremy is 8. You backed yourself into a corner with that one.
Sekhmet seems amused by Bastet’s enthusiasm for this sport, joining you on the sidelines as your husband helps your son with his hovercraft.
Compared to the serious racing machines the ones used in the Pee-Wee league are incredibly slow, sporting only a 25 hp engine driving both the lift fans and the ducted propellor. The low performance combined with a meticulous attention to safety makes this about as safe as little league baseball for the kids, but that doesn’t stop you from worrying.
Your son doesn’t come close to winning, but you can tell he’s having a ball based on the gigantic smile on his face. He comes in fifth in a field of twenty, so not a bad showing at all for his first race.
Of course, he did have the unfair advantage of Willis teaching him all sorts of tricks on the practice track that had been built at the palace, but you weren’t going to begrudge him that.
Bastet becomes the unofficial mascot of the local Pee-Wee league during the competition, playing with all the kids and generally having the time of her life.
Sekhmet just lounges with the rest of the parents, enjoying the spring sunshine and you giving her a proper scritching.
Your younger kids are a study in contrasts, the twins are torn between pouting that they have to wait 2 years to join in, and cheering their brother on. Your daughters, on the other hand, are happily playing with the other little kids in the play area set aside for them. And whenever Jeremy and the other competitors are actually busy competing, Bastet can often be found gamboling with them.
You are quite happy to see that the twins are also willing to play with their sisters still, you must not be as big a failure at parenting as you sometimes feared.
Of course, it’s not all fun and games. Back in the office you get a petition from the citizens of Huế mới requesting that the continent be renamed to something more dignified than ‘Wow’. You mutter about this, as you’d not much liked the name in the first place but hadn’t felt it right to overrule the popular vote at the time. You decide to put it up for vote once more in light of the petition.
[] Retain the name ‘Wow’ for the equatorial continent
[] Change the name to
-[] Write-In
((QM reserves the right to veto any name the QM dislikes.))
Thors_Alumni
Well-known member
[X] Change the name to
-[X] Phoenix
Phoenix after the Mythological Bird and a nod to the Periphery Phoenix in Bruce Quest.
-[X] Phoenix
Phoenix after the Mythological Bird and a nod to the Periphery Phoenix in Bruce Quest.
edofthesquid
Well-known member
[X] Change the name to
-[X] Phoenix
Yeah this is more dignified and it appropriate with the recovering from invasion aspect
-[X] Phoenix
Yeah this is more dignified and it appropriate with the recovering from invasion aspect
Lightwhispers
Well-known member
[x] Absolutely refuse to rename the continent "Birb", "Hey, you", or "Australia's evil twin".
-[x] Phoenix sounds good, though.
Because this seems like the sort of shenanigans we have to put up with.
-[x] Phoenix sounds good, though.
Because this seems like the sort of shenanigans we have to put up with.
[X] Change the name to
-[X] Capricorn
-[X] Capricorn
Turn 13 - Advisor and Story
QM Note - You guys have been great with voting and such, would love to see more people get involved! Remember, omakes are welcome and even if not made canon will result in bonuses to rolls.
Turn 13 Advisors and Story
Looking over the lists of names submitted for consideration to rename ‘Wow’ to something less, well, ‘Wow’ shakes your faith in humanity.
‘There’, ‘Here’, ‘SuperAustralia’, ‘Runaway’... you groan, shaking your head, then have one of the interns in the office clear out all the drek. It’s nice having interns these days, you are too busy doing actual work to bother with the sort of things that they handle.
So you get the abridged and trimmed list. There are a good number of names on it still, all of them far more acceptable to your mind. Sorting through them it comes down to two, Phoenix ‘symbolizing our rebirth from the ashes of the raid’ and Capricorn ‘fitting in with the names of Castor and Pollux’.
You can work with this.
In the end you decide to take advantage of having two acceptable names, one unnamed continent and one badly named one, and kill multiple birds with a single pen stroke. The continent formerly known as Wow would now be known as Capricorn, while the still unnamed northern continent would be called Phoenix.
You love it when you can deal with multiple issues so easily!
The economy is still in the depths of recession. Simply reopening things now that the vaccine is out helped keep it from being a total crash, but it’s still bad. You are very happy that you expanded the social safety net before this had happened, otherwise you shudder to think just how bad it could have been.
For their intensive efforts in assisting with relief work during the flu crisis, the Rapid Reaction Force has been recognized with being upgraded to a more veteran unit. The Foxhounds aren’t quite up to the same level as the Chasseurs, but it is nice to see that their hijinks and inability to successfully train doesn’t seem to transfer to inability to handle crisis situations.
It is rather fun to be able to chat with Sekhmet via the machine interface. The linguistics and computer science folks have put together a ‘symbolic logic to human’ translator that smooths out some of the conceptual difficulties involved in communicating with the Grifftigers.
You spend quite a bit of time talking about motherhood and the kids, and simply sharing stories. Sekhmet doesn’t quite seem to grasp ‘history’ as you think of it, but she is happy to talk about her life before she joined you.
One thing that somewhat concerns you is her references to the ‘Old Ones’, evidently the eldest of the Grifftigers on Capricorn. From what she says, you get the idea that it is quite possible that the eldest of them may have been alive when the initial colonists landed on the planet, what with her telling stories passed down to her from her own mother when she was a cub about ‘great eggs flying through the sky on pillars of fire’.
Considering that the zoologists have confirmed that Grifftigers never stop growing throughout their lives, and that it is extremely likely that the older they get the smarter they get… the idea that somewhere on Capricorn there are tigers that old, and likely that large and intelligent…
You get on the comm with Tyler and Janet and discuss the issue. They both agree with you, care needs to be taken to ensure that there are no conflicts with the Tigers. You know there will be resistance to it, but you are certain that it would probably be a good idea to expand the environmental protection laws you’ve already established to include significant habitat protection, especially on Capricorn.
Talking a bit with Sekhmet you find that the Grifftigers tend to avoid ‘bad-tasting water’ which after some clarification appears to be their term for the ocean, so coastal settlements would probably be fine.
Your son wins his first race in the pee-wee league, which leads to you jumping with excitement like any other mom.
The next day he has his first big crash in a race, his hovercraft spinning out when transitioning from land to water and hitting the buoy marking the course. He manages to hang on and get the hovercraft going again, but your heart was in your throat and it took Willis almost physically restraining you to keep you from charging down to make sure your son was fine. Then you had to force yourself to not immediately withdraw him from further races.
And later that day you are again jumping up and down with excitement when he wins another race!
Emotional whiplashes, the bane of mother’s everywhere.
Sekhmet at least agrees with you, as she bestows the big slobbering lick of approval on your son for his triumph, then picks him up by the back of his racing suit to deposit him in front of you to the good-natured laughter of the crowd.
While your boy crossed his arms and pouted adorably.
But then it is time to get back to work.
General Wolf comes in with a stack of papers and a grim expression. “We have multiple things to handle, and only a limited budget. I’d love to expand our military more, but we have other draws and most of what I want will need to wait a bit. To begin with though, it is critical that we expand the Aerie. Adding an Advanced Tactical Training Annex will allow us to begin actually training mechwarriors. Not only that, but doing so would allow us to start upgrading the facilities to make our overall training regimen more effective. We also should get started on establishing the deep water coast guard. We are seeing enough nautical traffic that not having one is a greater risk to us than the expense of establishing one.”
“We also,” he continues, “should continue with training. Getting as many of our forces as possible up to veteran levels of skill is crucial.”
Tyler then joins him. “Now that we have a battlemech design we’ve got a whole new kettle of problems for production.” the old lech says seriously. You worry about him sometimes, he’s not been hitting on pretty girls as much as he used to… a most un-Tylerish sort of behavior. “Battlemech factories are giant factory-shaped holes in the ground that consume money, according to all the documentation we’ve been able to find, and we can find no real indications to the contrary. Unlike combat vehicle factories there are nearly no civilian uses for the tooling or equipment of a Mech factory, even workmechs and industrialmechs are too different from battlemechs for the tooling to be cross-compatible. Moreover, output is limited at best. The basic factory design that we’re considering would only be capable of producing a platoon of four battlemechs each year, moreover the resource and manpower requirements for a factory means it would be impractical to have more than one major production facility per continent.”
He grimaces. “In the future we’ll need to bite that bullet, but not this year. This year there are two things we should do. First, now that the survey force is ready to go, we send them out to get started on their work. This is going to take years to complete. They’re first priority will be to find suitable sites for initial ports, so if we get started now we’ll be able to get started on putting in the port complex for Castor by next year, and one for Pollux the year after. Secondly we need to implement what we discussed concerning land-use restrictions and habitat protection. It will be unpopular with those who simply want to expand willy-nilly, but the long-term benefits far outweigh that. Pull that trigger now and simply get it down before things happen which we’ll regret.”
Dr Young shows up for her scheduled meeting with a small folder or proposals. “I’ve got two different proposals to support your anti-drug efforts. One, a straightforward ‘Drugs are bad for you’ campaign aimed at the youth. The other something a bit more subtle, a promotional campaign for the Hovercraft Racing League showing the most thrilling highlights, and displayed in such a way as to make it obvious what a real thrill-seeker would aspire to do. I prefer the latter approach, but either is viable.”
Professor Chapman sends you a memo, noting that for now there’s really nothing from the political office, as Parliament is still in recess following the flu outbreak and has decided to defer their sessions this year. A decision that is surprisingly popular, but doesn’t really affect their relative influence.
Dr Palmer, on the other hand, shows up with stacks upon stacks of paperwork and proposals. “This is going to take a while.” she announces as she swoops in, looking inordinately cheerful. “We’ve got a full slate of research teams read to go, so…”
She slaps the first folder down. “First things first, the power generation project is ripe for study. The teams for that one are eager to get going and have ideas for improved power transmission in high-stress environments that would be very useful for other areas. I strongly urge you to back that study.”
“Secondly,” another folder is slapped down. “Rockets, unguided, dumbfire, box-launched rockets. Right now our long-range missiles have an arming distance, our short range missiles are utterly lacking in range… These rocket pods would be light, cheap, and while single-shot give a potent punch for that shot.”
Another folder. “More orbital surveys.”
Another folder. “Improving agriculture.”
Another folder. And another… soon all of the folders have migrated from her to your desk for you to read through. Joy.
Juanita looks tired, but she reports that there still have been no signs of infiltrator-like behavior on the part of the watched groups. They’re still watching, just in case.
Janet is bubbly and perky as always, and the two of you spend most of the time allotted for your meeting just talking about your kids, sharing pictures, and generally being moms with each other. Sekhmet joins in the conversation, although she needs to prompt you to show photos of Bastet being insufferably cute. Janet doesn’t really have any business to report on, beyond some amusing stories about various shenanigans out there.
Turn 13 Advisors and Story
Looking over the lists of names submitted for consideration to rename ‘Wow’ to something less, well, ‘Wow’ shakes your faith in humanity.
‘There’, ‘Here’, ‘SuperAustralia’, ‘Runaway’... you groan, shaking your head, then have one of the interns in the office clear out all the drek. It’s nice having interns these days, you are too busy doing actual work to bother with the sort of things that they handle.
So you get the abridged and trimmed list. There are a good number of names on it still, all of them far more acceptable to your mind. Sorting through them it comes down to two, Phoenix ‘symbolizing our rebirth from the ashes of the raid’ and Capricorn ‘fitting in with the names of Castor and Pollux’.
You can work with this.
In the end you decide to take advantage of having two acceptable names, one unnamed continent and one badly named one, and kill multiple birds with a single pen stroke. The continent formerly known as Wow would now be known as Capricorn, while the still unnamed northern continent would be called Phoenix.
You love it when you can deal with multiple issues so easily!
The economy is still in the depths of recession. Simply reopening things now that the vaccine is out helped keep it from being a total crash, but it’s still bad. You are very happy that you expanded the social safety net before this had happened, otherwise you shudder to think just how bad it could have been.
For their intensive efforts in assisting with relief work during the flu crisis, the Rapid Reaction Force has been recognized with being upgraded to a more veteran unit. The Foxhounds aren’t quite up to the same level as the Chasseurs, but it is nice to see that their hijinks and inability to successfully train doesn’t seem to transfer to inability to handle crisis situations.
It is rather fun to be able to chat with Sekhmet via the machine interface. The linguistics and computer science folks have put together a ‘symbolic logic to human’ translator that smooths out some of the conceptual difficulties involved in communicating with the Grifftigers.
You spend quite a bit of time talking about motherhood and the kids, and simply sharing stories. Sekhmet doesn’t quite seem to grasp ‘history’ as you think of it, but she is happy to talk about her life before she joined you.
One thing that somewhat concerns you is her references to the ‘Old Ones’, evidently the eldest of the Grifftigers on Capricorn. From what she says, you get the idea that it is quite possible that the eldest of them may have been alive when the initial colonists landed on the planet, what with her telling stories passed down to her from her own mother when she was a cub about ‘great eggs flying through the sky on pillars of fire’.
Considering that the zoologists have confirmed that Grifftigers never stop growing throughout their lives, and that it is extremely likely that the older they get the smarter they get… the idea that somewhere on Capricorn there are tigers that old, and likely that large and intelligent…
You get on the comm with Tyler and Janet and discuss the issue. They both agree with you, care needs to be taken to ensure that there are no conflicts with the Tigers. You know there will be resistance to it, but you are certain that it would probably be a good idea to expand the environmental protection laws you’ve already established to include significant habitat protection, especially on Capricorn.
Talking a bit with Sekhmet you find that the Grifftigers tend to avoid ‘bad-tasting water’ which after some clarification appears to be their term for the ocean, so coastal settlements would probably be fine.
Your son wins his first race in the pee-wee league, which leads to you jumping with excitement like any other mom.
The next day he has his first big crash in a race, his hovercraft spinning out when transitioning from land to water and hitting the buoy marking the course. He manages to hang on and get the hovercraft going again, but your heart was in your throat and it took Willis almost physically restraining you to keep you from charging down to make sure your son was fine. Then you had to force yourself to not immediately withdraw him from further races.
And later that day you are again jumping up and down with excitement when he wins another race!
Emotional whiplashes, the bane of mother’s everywhere.
Sekhmet at least agrees with you, as she bestows the big slobbering lick of approval on your son for his triumph, then picks him up by the back of his racing suit to deposit him in front of you to the good-natured laughter of the crowd.
While your boy crossed his arms and pouted adorably.
But then it is time to get back to work.
General Wolf comes in with a stack of papers and a grim expression. “We have multiple things to handle, and only a limited budget. I’d love to expand our military more, but we have other draws and most of what I want will need to wait a bit. To begin with though, it is critical that we expand the Aerie. Adding an Advanced Tactical Training Annex will allow us to begin actually training mechwarriors. Not only that, but doing so would allow us to start upgrading the facilities to make our overall training regimen more effective. We also should get started on establishing the deep water coast guard. We are seeing enough nautical traffic that not having one is a greater risk to us than the expense of establishing one.”
“We also,” he continues, “should continue with training. Getting as many of our forces as possible up to veteran levels of skill is crucial.”
Tyler then joins him. “Now that we have a battlemech design we’ve got a whole new kettle of problems for production.” the old lech says seriously. You worry about him sometimes, he’s not been hitting on pretty girls as much as he used to… a most un-Tylerish sort of behavior. “Battlemech factories are giant factory-shaped holes in the ground that consume money, according to all the documentation we’ve been able to find, and we can find no real indications to the contrary. Unlike combat vehicle factories there are nearly no civilian uses for the tooling or equipment of a Mech factory, even workmechs and industrialmechs are too different from battlemechs for the tooling to be cross-compatible. Moreover, output is limited at best. The basic factory design that we’re considering would only be capable of producing a platoon of four battlemechs each year, moreover the resource and manpower requirements for a factory means it would be impractical to have more than one major production facility per continent.”
He grimaces. “In the future we’ll need to bite that bullet, but not this year. This year there are two things we should do. First, now that the survey force is ready to go, we send them out to get started on their work. This is going to take years to complete. They’re first priority will be to find suitable sites for initial ports, so if we get started now we’ll be able to get started on putting in the port complex for Castor by next year, and one for Pollux the year after. Secondly we need to implement what we discussed concerning land-use restrictions and habitat protection. It will be unpopular with those who simply want to expand willy-nilly, but the long-term benefits far outweigh that. Pull that trigger now and simply get it down before things happen which we’ll regret.”
Dr Young shows up for her scheduled meeting with a small folder or proposals. “I’ve got two different proposals to support your anti-drug efforts. One, a straightforward ‘Drugs are bad for you’ campaign aimed at the youth. The other something a bit more subtle, a promotional campaign for the Hovercraft Racing League showing the most thrilling highlights, and displayed in such a way as to make it obvious what a real thrill-seeker would aspire to do. I prefer the latter approach, but either is viable.”
Professor Chapman sends you a memo, noting that for now there’s really nothing from the political office, as Parliament is still in recess following the flu outbreak and has decided to defer their sessions this year. A decision that is surprisingly popular, but doesn’t really affect their relative influence.
Dr Palmer, on the other hand, shows up with stacks upon stacks of paperwork and proposals. “This is going to take a while.” she announces as she swoops in, looking inordinately cheerful. “We’ve got a full slate of research teams read to go, so…”
She slaps the first folder down. “First things first, the power generation project is ripe for study. The teams for that one are eager to get going and have ideas for improved power transmission in high-stress environments that would be very useful for other areas. I strongly urge you to back that study.”
“Secondly,” another folder is slapped down. “Rockets, unguided, dumbfire, box-launched rockets. Right now our long-range missiles have an arming distance, our short range missiles are utterly lacking in range… These rocket pods would be light, cheap, and while single-shot give a potent punch for that shot.”
Another folder. “More orbital surveys.”
Another folder. “Improving agriculture.”
Another folder. And another… soon all of the folders have migrated from her to your desk for you to read through. Joy.
Juanita looks tired, but she reports that there still have been no signs of infiltrator-like behavior on the part of the watched groups. They’re still watching, just in case.
Janet is bubbly and perky as always, and the two of you spend most of the time allotted for your meeting just talking about your kids, sharing pictures, and generally being moms with each other. Sekhmet joins in the conversation, although she needs to prompt you to show photos of Bastet being insufferably cute. Janet doesn’t really have any business to report on, beyond some amusing stories about various shenanigans out there.