Turn 37 - The Moment to Fight… To Fight… TO FIGHT!
You spend a few hours watching videos of the crazy miners on Griffin II and make two decisions. First, none of your children or grandchildren are ever allowed to do any of that, period, dot, end of line, no appeals allowed. Second… well, Sergeant Major Ngo manages to keep you from taking the
Confederate out to try your hand at ejecta wrangling.
It’s obviously Willis’ fault.
He infected you.
That’s your story and you are sticking to it.
And you just know that Tyler is smirking. You make a note to replace the pads on his zimmer frame with whoopie cushions.
The Free Folk have returned, evidently now that they know they have a potential trade partner here they’ve altered their route to more regularly visit. There’s a bit of light trade, nothing spectacular on either side but it does give your budget a bit more cash to play with ((QM Note - Interest Rate to 25% this turn)).
Both the Karting and Pee Wee Hovercraft Racing associations have approached you asking if you’d be willing to make the big race day you’d hosted for your grandson’s birthday a yearly event for the community. They’re willing to foot the bill for the event itself.
[] | Vroom! GO FOR IT | Yearly kid’s race on the Palace grounds. +1 Approval Change, has a chance to trigger minor events each year (nothing serious) |
[] | Decline | |
You are present for the commissioning ceremony for HMS Warrior and you have to say it is an impressive machine. Simply sitting on the pad it looks like it is capable of taking on swarms of enemies and crushing them with a surprisingly sleek set of proportions for a spheroid. Of course, you had to threaten Thanh with being put in command of the ship rather than her beloved ASF, you wouldn’t be Mom if you didn’t.
While you are at the launch the representatives from Imperial Griffin AerospaceWerks buttonhole you again with another proposed design. Considering that the last one was the
Warrior-class you are willing to at least listen to them.
It’s called the
Lightning class, and it is a fast-attack dropship intended to make enemies truly regret their life choices. It’s the same mass as the
Warrior, but the resemblance quickly ends.
Maximum thrust? Six G, faster than many ASFs that are in service. Has one fewer subcapital laser in the nose, no ASF bays, less armor and a less varied secondary armament, but in exchange has far greater missile throw weight and denser active point defense. In some ways it’s a ‘lesson learned’ design, but primarily it is intended to serve as a swift and lethal attack boat in the same vein as the
Defiant, just scaled up and made spheroid. Majeure Electronique has proven to be the master of aerodyne dropships, IGAW intends to be the same for spheroids.
You’d need to build a dedicated factory for it, as this particular design is specialized enough that there’s no commercial derivative design that would finance the production line. Production would require Ferro-Aluminium and Double Heat Sinks from the strategic materials stockpile.
[] | Decision | Name | Cost | HP | A/D | Specials |
[] | Build Factory (10,000) | Lightning | 110,968.66 | 530 | 300 | Armored 18, Missile 20, AMS 24, Capital 27 3, Swift |
[] | Don’t Build | | | | | |
Once you get back home, of course, it’s right in time for budget time.
You try very hard but this is still your least favorite time of year. Although Jeremy is sitting in with you this year, since he’s got some leave and agreed to lend a hand.
He’s such a good young man, isn’t he?
General Jackston starts things out. “Your Majesty, Your Highness. The main priority of Ground Forces is continued expansion and preparing for the arrival of heavier mechs once it is decided to build them. To that end, we would like to recommend the purchase of a second Standard Armored Regiment for 2nd Armored, continued procurement of the
Orb Weaver mech, procurement of sufficient
Shortbow and
Ambush mechs to start to convert 1st Mech Battalion, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade into a unit of Light Fire Companies, and procurement of a second space marine regiment to garrison Griffin 2’s orbitals.”
Jeremy takes a few notes on his tablet and sends them to you to look at. “What about the 1st Mech Regiment, 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade? They are currently at full strength on the
Ambush, can we transfer some of those to the 2nd Brigade?”
General Jackson nods “We could, however the current plan is to wait until we have heavier mechs, with 1st Battalion being the flagship unit for those designs, at which time the
Ambushs they are currently using would be transferred to 2nd Armored to start their mech forces. At this time we are simming out a light recon company made up of two lances of
Orb Weaver and one of
Ambush mechs, but until we have more production of
Orb Weavers this is stuck in virtual simulation only.”
She pauses for a moment. “On that note, we are investigating means of transitioning 1st Armored to the new Standard Armored Regiment format. The most straightforward method would be to simply procure full SAR sets and transition the existing kit to the planetary militias. We recommend holding off on that until 2nd Armored is fully stood up and has proven the SAR model.”
General Reyes then takes over. “The recent exercises have demonstrated both the strength and the weakness of our current ASF forces. Even heavily concentrated our forces were still vulnerable to the enemy and failed to stop the assault cold. While most of this was due to the parameters of the exercise, it is still something for us to work on. To that end, we are recommending opening studies for a new ultra-fast point interceptor suitable for planetary deployment to bolster our defenses. The
Gyrfalcon is a powerful light dogfighter, but is too slow for the true interceptor mission. In addition we have opened studies on a new Assault ASF intended to give us a significant firepower advantage over the enemy. To that end, we would recommend a short pause in procurement, other than to fill the flight decks of our dropships, until we have new designs on tap. Right now the maintenance and upkeep costs of the ASF force is starting to become prohibitive. Ultimately we would like to standardize on composite squadrons of the new interceptor, the new assault ASF, and the
Eagle, reserving the
Goshawk 2G and the
Roc to station defense and anti-dropship roles respectively. The
Gyrfalcon would operate in conjunction with the new interceptor on planetary defense duties.”
Admiral Benjamin then takes the podium. “With the commissioning of HMS Warrior we’re in a solid position, especially with the upgrades to the yard allowing us to add a new ship of that type every other year if we commit to full scale procurement. Which I think we need to do.” he grins slightly at that. “And having seen the specs for the
Lightning I want them, I want as many of them as you can give me. I’ll beg if I have to.” he pauses. “The trials of HMS Argus are going well, I’d like to next procure a trio of the
Velociraptor-class dropships to form a squadron with Argus, then procure a second
Microraptor to form a 5 ship dropship squadron with a full wing of ASFs. That combination should be most painful for any prospective enemies. I would also like to recommend building one of the new Defense Stations, not at a jump point, but in Griffin’s Roost orbit in order to test the design and enhance our capitals defenses”
General Potter remains seated. “Your Majesty, Your Highness, we will need to upgrade multiple factories this year if we want to boost our procurement to suitable levels. Specifically, we should upgrade the
Microraptor/Velociraptor shared facility, the
Orb Weaver plant, the
Shortbow plant, and the dedicated
Velociraptor line. Concurrently we need to upgrade our orbital assets to produce enough Ferro-Aluminium, Endo-Steel, and Double Heat Sinks to support this production. We also should look into improvements in dropship manufacturing that could double our production capacity, and overall industrial streamlining which would do the same for Mechs and ASFs.”
Bridget is cheerful as ever. “Your Majesty! We got so many things on our plate, especially if you want to go on a spree of expanding all the factories! We should totally do that, and also do some focus work on the Inner Asteroid Belt, which would really help the economy there and overall, did you know that they’re starting to produce these really cool showerheads that are super-efficient because of just how precise manufacturing can be in zero-g conditions? They save like 60% on water use, while still feeling like you are getting full flow, it’s awesome! And they have massage modes! Right now they’re really expensive but I’m sure they’ll be a big hit if we can get the cost down! DoME is a bunch of busy little beavers, literally in some cases, I visited one of the tunneling sites on Phoenix and yowzers are they digging up a storm or what. It’s really impressive!”
You think she breathed a few times in all of that. You wouldn’t be willing to place any bets on that, though.
Isoroku is actually meeting with the Free Folk to discuss making their visits regularly scheduled. He promises to report on the results of his meeting when he gets back to Griffin’s Roost. In the meantime he recommends another music festival this year, since next year is another Olympics.
Jake is very Jake-like this year. “Your Majesty, I got good news, bad news, and expensive news. Good news? Almost done dealing with those damn idiots in the Periphery Studies department. Bad news? Got a bunch of parliamentarians who are whining about that entire Black Mace thing you did with Jane. They are grown men and you’d think they were three year olds to hear them whine. Expensive news? We have plans for not only dealing with those entitled little shits but also to expand the DoME by recruiting even more mad engineers to the cause. We got elections soon-ish, and if we work on it we can make sure to weed out the morons and self-centered pricks from the running, we have enough popular support that if we come out against candidates for office they will lose.”
Mary remains seated and triggers the display “Your Majesty, we have no new projects available for you this year, but plenty of old ones.”
- Military
- Heavy Bipedal Battlemechs
- This year's exercises have shown just how capable heavier mech designs can be. We have several designs in the theory stage, we just need to actually work out how to make them properly
- ER Medium and Small Lasers
- Extended Range 8cm lasers have proven useful, theoretical work on Extended Range 3cm and 5cm weapons appears promising enough that it is something we should strongly consider
- Aerodyne Dropships (Heavy)
- I have representatives from Majeure Electronique camping out in my reception area with endless proposals for new aerodyne dropships in this tonnage range. For the sake of my receptionist's sanity...
- Non-Military
- Terraforming Equipment Lvl 3
- The survey work on Griffin IV has shown that we will need to improve our understanding of terraforming techniques and equipment if we are to expand to that world, which would more than pay for the expense of the project in the long term
- Industrial Mechs Tier 3
- Would make all of our DoME projects easier across the board, making this a highly efficient use of our resources
- Improved Automation Lvl 5
- This would bring us to full Star League levels of automation across the board. Highly recommended.
Harry is still busy overseeing the final steps of the Black Site project so is unavailable for this meeting, on the other hand there really isn’t anything for Intel this year.
Janet is busy with the legal review, but not so busy that she doesn’t ply you with wonderful coffee and spend hours kibitzing about grandkids.