Turn 40 - I Am Young Again
This year the annual children’s day of racing at the Palace is a massive hit, with karting, Pee Wee hover racers, and the now typical mix of ‘serious’ soapbox races for the kids and hilariously over the top ones for the purported adults.
This year you again enter the soapbox race with Willis, this time in a cartoonish ‘Not-Quite-A-Deathapotamusaurus’ soapbox. You hit the first kicker and the entire thing tips over… just as planned, as the ‘real’ racer, looking like a baby Grifftiger, emerges from the wreckage and continues down the track with both you and Willis hanging on for dear life.
Your grandkids love the racing as well, with your eldest grandson actually winning the Kart race to much applause.
Then it’s time to get serious. There are a number of proposals for AA and Artillery mechs that cross your desk. General Potter is personally handling briefing you on the details, although Jeremy is working the powerpoint as his aide for the day.
General Potter takes the podium. “There are two proposals to meet the AFGE’s Artillery Mech requirements. Both have identical armament of a pair of Enhanced Extended-Range PPCs and a single Arrow IV launcher. The first is from Majeure Electronique and shows the greater experience of their design team with meeting requirements, although some of the features, specifically the inclusion of jump jets, are considered questionable by the review staff on the grounds that a mere 60 meters of jump range are insufficient to be truly worth the two tons of mass required. The other is from a new design firm, and it shows in the somewhat more inefficient overall design focusing on increased speed over armor. The ME design has less overall mobility despite the jump jets, the JDS design has incrementally faster ground movement but sacrifices survivability to get it.”
The preliminary designs for each are displayed on the screen. “Regardless of who wins, adjustments will need to be made to the design to meet tactical and doctrinal requirements. What we require is a decision on which path to take. Once we have a winner our own engineers will make what modifications are needed to fit our needs.”
[] | Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
[] | M1 Missile Artillery Walker System | 3753.56 | DHS | 120 | 30 | Armored, Artillery 3 |
[] | Type 1 Artilli-Mek | 3928.72 | ES, DHS | 76 | 29 | Artillery 3 |
“Very well, Your Majesty.” he makes a note of your decision.
“For the Air Defense Mech we have had many more responses. We believe that Nollak Industries spent some time chivvying up various engineering firms as part of their ‘It Flies It Dies’ corporate philosophy.” General Potter continues, drawing chuckles from the room.
“There have been six entries, from major and minor firms alike. I’ll go over them one by one.”
“First up, we have the design entry from the Royal Griffin Battlemechwerks, this could be considered a baseline ‘in-house’ design. The Whirlwind is ruthlessly efficient and is a nearly pure anti-fighter platform. Each arm mounts an LB-5X and Large Pulse Laser in an over-under configuration. Against ordinary targets on the ground this weapon combination would be extremely weak, but against ASFs and other flyers it produces highly efficient results in simulation as the sheer volume of fire has a high probability of damaging control surfaces, resulting in otherwise intact craft crashing into terrain at high speed. In addition the Whirlwind mounts a pair of Laser Anti-Missile Systems, making this design the only one of the proposals to have the ability to degrade enemy missile fire.” he checks his notes. “On the downside, it is the second most expensive design proposed.”
He goes to the next slide. “Next up is the Rifleman IIGR, proposed by a small design house on Castor. This possesses higher firepower in the form of a pair of LB-10X autocannon, paired with Extended Range 5cm lasers and a 20 tube LRM launcher. It sacrifices protection to achieve this firepower, however, but at least has CASE protection for the ammunition stores. It is also the single most expensive design proposed for the competition. This design is very flexible, in that the weaponry it mounts is effective against ground targets as well as airborne targets”
“Next up.” he changes to the next slide. “Are a pair of designs from Nollaks own design teams, both of which are centered around a pair of 10 tube racks of LRMs tied to Artemis targeting systems and advanced targeting computers. They have less raw firepower than other entries, but make up for the lack of punch with high precision.They are also highly mobile designs. The primary flaw for both of them is the lack of CASE protection for the ammunition, which combined with the relatively high ammunition loads makes them vulnerable to penetrating hits.”
He switches to the next slide. “From Majeure Electronique we have a design based around the Ultra AC/10 autocannon. This makes this entry the hardest hitting against ground targets of any of them, however the ultra-series of autocannons are less suited for anti-air work due to the concentrated nature of the damage making it more likely to require the actual destruction of the enemy craft via overwhelming firepower rather than through the degradation of control surfaces. This design also continues ME’s obsession with 60 meter jump capability.”
“Finally.” he changes the display again. “We have the one pure laser boat of the proposals, mounting quad extended range 8cm lasers tied to an advanced targeting computer system for high precision. Again, this design philosophy gives strong results against ground targets, allowing the Gram to serve as a sniper mech when not engaging airborne targets, however the mech is very fragile in comparison to the others with the least armor protection of any of the proposed designs. The higher firepower compensates for this, but this design may be better suited for a specialist sniper mech than an Anti-Air design.”
[] | Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Special |
[] | Whirlwind Air Defense Mech | 4004.32 | ES, DHS | 100 | 25 | Armored 1, Anti-Air, AMS 2 |
[] | Rifleman IIGR | 4115.28 | ES, DHS | 64 | 26 | Anti-Air, TAG, Missile 1 |
[] | Nollak’s Second Favorite Mek | 3256.68 | ES, DHS | 100 | 25 | Armored 1, Anti-Air, Missile 1 |
[] | Nollak’s Favorite Valid Mek | 3437.28 | ES, DHS | 96 | 24 | Armored 1, Anti-Air, Missile 1 |
[] | M1 Anti-Aerospace Walker System | 3623 | DHS | 104 | 26 | Armored 1, Anti-Air |
[] | Gram Laser AA | 2952.24 | ES, DHS | 72 | 28 | Anti-Air |
You also receive a briefing on the new
Chevalier command mech from the Royal Griffin Battlemechwerks. The two-man cockpit allows the unit commander to focus on actual command rather than combat and the diverse electronics give the command mech excellent control over the battlefield.
And there’s a political shitstorm on Griffin’s Roost.
Originating in Pollux. Of course. You really are tempted to look into whether or not the legendary Florida Man, Chicago Man, or California Man has congregated down there. A massive scandal has erupted with dueling allegations, counter-allegations, and just plain fecal matter striking the rotary air-impeller at high velocity.
In this corner, agricultural businesses and families are alleging that the environmental protection bureaucrats are demanding bribes in order to approve applications for improvements to the land. The bureaucrats are denying any malfeasance, and investigations are showing no blatantly unusual financial shenanigans, however the number of approvals for things like dikes, dams, roads and the like are trending massively down while fines are skyrocketing, offsetting the reduced income from permits.
That’s bad enough, and it’s producing massive shouting matches in the continental assembly for Pollux as it appears that the problem may be originating ultimately from the political dominance of the few port cities population over the rural populations resulting in enormous disconnects. Most of the bureaucrats now overseeing agriculture on the continent have absolutely no actual background in agriculture.
Well enough, this could be settled by the planetary government. Similar issues had arisen elsewhere and had been taken care of without becoming an Imperial issue in the past. Spleens get vented, bureaucrats get shuffled to areas where they are actually competent, and corrections are made. The planetary government had become quite adept at handling these things.
However things are now escalating rapidly, with a large coalition of farmers becoming increasingly militant.
First there had been a large protest march into the main port city of Castor, a parade of over a thousand tractors and agricultural vehicles completely clogging up the main arteries of the city and bringing it to a grinding halt.
Local law enforcement did not handle this well, as the farmers hadn’t bothered to get any permits or coordinate with anybody. The local citizens also reacted violently, and the protest rapidly degenerated into a massive riot, with both sides engaged in violence against the other.
By the end of the day almost 500 farmers and almost a thousand local residents had been arrested, many of them after being beaten badly by local LEOs and mobs. There were ten deaths, including a pair of police officers which is believed to have led to the forceful response by the rest of the force.
The countryside then erupted, while the Planetary government attempted to restore order and get to the bottom of things. An agricultural permit office was firebombed, several agricultural inspectors have disappeared and are feared dead. A delegation from the planetary government was forced to retreat after being confronted with an armed and extremely angry mob.
The last straw, which caused the planetary government to turn to the Imperial government at last, was the farmers on Pollux declaring that unless there is ‘justice’ from the Empress they will let their harvests rot in the ground this year, which would be devastating. Pollux has become the breadbasket of the Empire, and a disruption to the food supply would cause massive problems.
Elements of the Imperial Guard are deployed to Pollux to control the situation while the Special Branch investigates. After their initial work the following facts have been ascertained.
- The permit approval process has gone from taking approximately three months from application to decision to taking over a year
- ¾ of all permit applications are now denied.
- Environmental Impacts are cited in 90% of all denials, with the regulatory office evidently demanding zero environmental impact before approving anything.
- Less than 10% of the regulators now involved in overseeing agriculture on Pollux have any actual experience in agriculture. The party in power on the continent has their support exclusively based out of the cities and has been accused of aggressively purging rural citizens from bureaucratic positions, generally by raising degree requirements well in excess of the actual requirements for the jobs in question.
- As an example, the minimum degree required to serve in the regulatory office is currently a Master’s degree, but the actual field of study is irrelevant. Of the over 800 employees in the office at this time, only 2 have degrees in agronomy or agricultural sciences. The most common Master’s degree in the office is in English Literature.
- The Agricultural Oversight offices appear to have become sinecures for party supporters, nevertheless all employees do meet all required qualifications that have been listed, and Human Resources has shown no signs of actual patronage or corruption in hiring.
- The justification for the requirement for advanced degrees appears to be valid on its face, the positions require a great deal of critical thinking skills that it can be argued be best demonstrated by attaining an advanced degree in any field.
- However this has the effect of purging rural inhabitants, who are far less likely to pursue post-secondary education. Thus these offices are staffed by people with very high education levels, but zero practical experience in the fields they are overseeing.
- The requirements for field personnel (enforcement officers, clerical staff, etc) are fully in line with those positions and consist of a much higher percentage of rural inhabitants. The disparity exists at the managerial and discretionary levels.
- Enforcement actions against farmers are up 76% over the last three years, and the rate of increase is growing.
- At this time less than 5% of all farms on Pollux have not been subjected to fines and enforcement actions for environmental violations.
- 85% of all violations are trifling and technical, mostly involving paperwork discrepancies that in the past would have simply been corrected.
- Fines for even the most minor violations are up 200% in the past three years. Failing to file yearly environmental impact reports, for example, now carries a fine of $2,000. 70% of all violations are for failure to file these reports, and in 90% of such cases the ‘failure’ is due to the report being rejected, oftentimes for ‘failure to properly follow all formatting requirements’, which appears to mainly be code for ‘not up to academic writing standards’.
- Jane brings your attention to over a hundred fines issued over simple grammatical errors, the most egregious being a report rejected for including a split infinitive.
- Jane notes that this rejection itself included a comma splice
- Actual violations that are substantive are trending sharply downward.
- This appears to be an artifact of the shifting priorities of the Oversight offices towards more bureaucratic concerns. Front-line inspection personnel now spend the vast majority of their time handling paperwork rather than being out in the field doing their jobs.
- In addition, many of the front-line personnel are highly sympathetic with the farmers and are simply turning a blind eye to violations that they do spot, rather than reporting them and, in the words of one inspector ‘having to destroy a family over a leaking holding tank that can be fixed with a $5 tube of caulking and isn’t causing any trouble anyways beyond technically making a patch of ground a ‘wetland’.’
- Permits for activities benefiting the cities are routinely approved in an almost rote fashion.
- 98% of all permits for recreational trails, city expansion, industrial expansion, or residential expansion are approved.
- Major projects, defined as those determined to have significant economic and/or environmental projects, including large recreational areas, wilderness set asides, and major transportation projects, are likewise approved at 96% rates.
- In every case where a project was denied the opposition came from city dwelling interests. In no cases where rural opposition to a project was primary was it rejected.
- There is no sign of actual corruption, malfeasance, or violation of ethics laws on the part of the Pollux government, despite the self-evident hostility towards rural interests. Thanks to population imbalances, it is completely possible for the continental government to have no support whatsoever outside the cities and still dominate in elections.
- Rural interests have no actual voice in Pollux governance at this point, the latest amendments to the continental governing documents have made all representatives ‘at-large’ elected by the entire populace, which has resulted in rural areas having no representation at all in the regional government.
- The planetary government is already in the process of forcing the continental administration to change this, no imperial action is required.
- This is extremely unpopular amongst the urban population, who feel that the rural concerns are a case of the tail wagging the dog and that rural people should simply deal with it.
- It should be noted that previous decisions made had designated Pollux as a primarily agricultural hub. In addition the designation of most of the surface area of Capricorn as environmental preserves for Deathapotamusaurus and Grifftigers has meant that agricultural activity is highly concentrated on Pollux, however actual modern agriculture doesn’t require large numbers of people actually growing food. The few cities on Pollux are actually completely dependent on agricultural trade, however this is at a sufficient remove from the actual agriculture that it appears that the urban dwellers have discounted this.
This is an incredibly thorny issue. Normally you’d be able to trust the planetary government, and to be fair they are already doing all of the things you’d normally do to resolve this situation. The urban/rural divide is being handled, with the urban parties being forced to back down and let the rurals have a say in their own governance. There’s little substantive that you could do to deal with this that isn’t already being done.
[] | Give a strong speech castigating all involved.
The rurals for escalating to violence when the planetary government was already moving in to handle things peacefully, the urbans for creating the entire mess in the first place with their short-sighted pursuit of power. | -5 Approval Change
-5 Politics
Ends event chain |
[] | Let the Planetary government handle the situation
Make it plain that you are aware of the situation and are keeping an eye on things and will intervene if needed, but also that the planetary government has your full support in this affair. | -1% Tax Rate
+1 Politics
+1 Economy
Continues event chain |