Turn 41 - The Sun Goes Down
“Negative. This is an unarmed diplomatic courier. Our orders are to return as soon as possible or Jarl Gustavson will consider Griffin’s Roost to be hostile.” comes the reply from the
Scout. The older captain of the jumpship doesn’t appear bothered in the slightest by the fact that he has an entire squadron of armed dropships on intercept with him.
The hell of it is that technically that jumpship has identified itself as a diplomatic courier, and under the long held principles of diplomacy that should make it inviolate, over and above what you had been told was the new custom in the Inner Sphere of leaving all jumpship’s as sacrosanct.
“As for our bonafides…” another packet is transmitted, this time containing a personal message to you from Gustavson, this time wearing an obviously altered uniform and looking just a bit smug.
“Greetings once again, Your Majesty.” he smiles slightly. “We have a common enemy, stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.” then he smirks. “And in appreciation for the tea ceremony, you are invited to New Ares for a relaxing meeting in one of our fine saunas. Fair, after all, is fair. Gustavson out.”
You should have known forcing the bastard to sit in seiza for several hours would come back to haunt you.
[] | Let the Scout depart with a <write-in> response |
[] | Boarding action! |
On the home front, more of your grandkids are getting into racing, with John moving up to the next highest division in karting while all of his younger siblings are now racing in the entry division for little kids. Sarah’s eldest, meanwhile, is racing in the PeeWee hovercraft racing league now.
Seems all of your grandkids have inherited Willis’ adrenaline junkie gene, because you are certainly not the source of their love of racing and you have the complete lack of traffic tickets to prove it.
Jeremy has taken command of the first full-up Mech Regiment in 1st Armored and is spending much of his time testing doctrine and training with his men.
You have his initial reports on your desk. Mainly they concern the hardware itself, going over the performance in the field and how well everything integrates together. The main thing he stresses over and over is that designs that try to do too much are proving ineffective at any role, rather than the hoped for flexible generalists. He cites the
Shortbow as a design that suffers from this flaw. The mismatched LRM racks are supposed to give flexibility, but instead serve to reduce the concentration of fire that the fire support mission requires while precluding the use of Artemis IV fire control upgrades. Moreover the jump capability, while good in theory, is rarely used as the design is operating in support of non-jump capable mechs and is thus unable to take full advantage of the theoretical advantages of the system. Moreover, as a long-range support platform the addition of TAG is completely superfluous as making use of it requires the mech to expose itself to close range fire which, with its lack of armor, it is not capable of withstanding.
He has pencilled in a design based roughly off of the
Trooper platform, featuring CASE, an Artemis-equipped 20 tube LRM rack, and an Enhanced ER PPC along with a Laser AMS. By his back-of-the-envelope calculations this should be a perfectly viable design, although he hasn’t spent any time doing detail work so this is hardly a completed design.
You also have the field testing reports on the trio of new 55 ton quad mechs. The
Wolf Spider is frightening enough, a quad that can run at almost a hundred kilometers per hour and has a 180 meter jump range armed with a pair of Enhanced ER PPCs is terrifying enough, the fact that it is nearly as survivable on the battlefield as much heavier designs is sobering, evidently having 4 legs is an advantage sometimes.
The other two designs are the
Rittmeister command mech and the
Uhlan Fire Support mech. The former lacks the jump capability, but makes up for it with a potent electronics package that gives the vehicle superb command capacity while the latter carries a 20 tube LRM launcher tied into an Artemis FCS.
General Potter has sent you a memo detailing the proposed ‘armored cavalry regiment’ making use of these nasty designs.
There are also designs to be considered for an urban APC intended for garrison use. Design requirements include being able to accommodate power-armored infantry, with an emphasis on low cost. Several of the design submissions are actually omnivehicles, somewhat to your surprise.
[] | Name | Config | Cost | HP | A/D | Specials |
[] | Gavin WD | N/A | 297.72 | 20 | 5 | AMS 1, APC (Powered Armor) 1 |
[] | Gavin M3 Pod Expeditionary Reconnaissance Vehicle | Base | 451.24 | 64 | 6 | AMS 1, Armored 1, Omni |
| | Burton | 259.68 | 8 | 2 | APC (Powered Armor) 1, TAG |
| | Cardinal | 344.36 | 16 | 4 | Armor-Piercing |
| | FlaK | 261.24 | 12 | 3 | |
| | Godiva | 367.48 | 16 | 4 | |
| | Hetz | 253.28 | 24 | 6 | |
| | Robin | 312.48 | 16 | 4 | Artillery 3 |
[] | Opossum | Base | 393 | 20 | 5 | Omni |
| | Prime | 241.2 | 12 | 3 | AMS 1, APC (Powered Armor) 1 |
| | A | 69 | 4 | 1 | APC (Powered Armor) 1 |
| | B | 237 | 12 | 3 | APC (Powered Armor) 1, Missile 0 |
| | C | 494.08 | 16 | 4 | APC (Powered Armor) 1, Scout, ECM, TAG |
| | D | 231 | 24 | 6 | APC (Powered Armor) 1 |
[] | Schiltron | Base | 178 | 16 | 4 | Omni |
| | Prime | 186.93 | 12 | 3 | APC (Powered Armor) 1 |
| | A | 115.44 | 8 | 2 | APC (Powered Armor) 1 |
It is noted in the documentation that of the three Omni submissions, the Opossum and Shiltron both have ‘non-combat’ configurations for tasks like combat engineering, medical support, and cargo/logistics work. In fact, the Schiltron has more non-combat configurations shown than combat ones, including somehow packing a 7 theater deployable MASH unit into one.
QM NOTE - for Omni vehicles, currently you would procure the base variant first, then the configurations separately. I am still working out the best and simplest way to track this.
In other news, there is a truly spectacular meteor shower over Nowy Gdansk. No threat is posed to any orbital infrastructure as the average size of the ‘meteors’ is approximately a centimeter in diameter, but a combination of an extremely clear night and the meteor tracks being perfectly backlit in the early evening makes for some glorious imagery.