Reunification War caches

[Colt Ward]

Star League caches from the Aramis war or leading up to Kerensky's Exodus are a staple of the BTU environment, and we can find real life incidences (crated Spitfires!) or stories to match, but . . . what about the Periphery nations doing so as the inevitable conclusion of the Reunification War happens?

We know they were carried out, its part of how they were able to get major weapons systems- including warships! (Dart fluff)- for various rebellion attempts.  It is also quite likely not all of them were ever used for rebellions or even when the Star League collapsed in the 2700s allowing the Periphery states to regain their independence.

Your leader can see the writing on the wall and acknowledges the inevitable . . . and charges YOU to set up a cache for the future.  What sort of equipment from your nation's inventories would you put into the cache?  Would you store any salvaged designs from the Star League & proxies?  Would you put in the prototype equipment the Star League was modifying their designs with later in the Reunification War?  What else might you put in the cache?

How would you design the cache?  Would you put it on a airless moon?  a planet with a hostile atmosphere?  Would it be a single chamber or a series of connected vaults?  Would the cache itself be many smaller caches in individual vaults spread across a valley (think Valley of the Kings)?  Would it just be a series of deep space coordinates with cargo containers?  Maybe rip off SW's Another Chance, use a Dart/Winchester/Concordat with its spaces loaded with equipment, ammo and other war material along with the largest DS you can find docked and also filled.  The ship would be on a large elliptical orbit- something like 50 or more years- around some gravitational body at the edge of a system.  Would any cache be boobytrapped enough to make Indiana Jones worry?

Keep in mind it cannot really be too elaborate because you may only have weeks, likely a few months and if you are really lucky might have had a year to prepare.

Is there anything you would not include in a cache?

[RunandFindOut]

I can tell you one thing I would include in any cache.  All the educational and technical material on how to produce things and the science behind them.  Because I would assume that the League would do its best to sabotage any future ability to produce those things.  Along with the machine tools for manufacturing the most important things.  It's less important to stash away a regiment of battlemechs than to pack up and stash away the tools used in a lesser known production line that MAKES battlemechs.  I'd cannabalize peripheral production lines with low production rates that aren't contributing much to put together enough manufacturing machinery and technical data so that anybody who finds it in the distant future would be able to restart production of the important strategic resources they represent.  Because it's less important to have another hundred mechs than to have a production line.  One gets pissed away in dribs and drabs to losses the other can make good the losses you've already suffered and continue producing more.

[Colt Ward]

Reason I asked about equipment is you have given that sort of answer before . . . problem is THOSE sort of things can be tracked more easily by a conquerer's intelligence service than the occasional mech that fell off the back of a dropship.

Further, you are using knowledge of the event after it happens.  The initial waves tried to preserve the industrial capability of the planets hit- Forlough changed that but during the campaign there were no signs they would strip industry from the TC or any other Periphery realm.  Its also not the Succession Wars- the SLDF was not like opposing Houses or ComStar with a desire to kill off universities and R&D facilities, the encryption sidebar discusses one of the premiere TC universities continuing their math research and one getting the Nobel prize.

Further, for that 'industrial cache' to be useful it would require all the supporting industry to be present and supplying your production, which is a breadcrumb trail to those assets.  Look at Cray's old discussion about the population and infrastructure required to support a single microchip factory.

Finally, while some of that industry being in caches can be useful if the leader needs to get hand on equipment for any purpose after the cessation of hostilities . . . they are not going to have the weapons if needed.  They will not have any troops who could have been secretly been training on that equipment out of sight- think MWDA's Liao mech mountain caches.

[glitterboy2098]

Toro's. and Talos's.
ideally in company sized caches in several locations. since at the time i'd not know that the Concordate would lose them entirely, i'd be working on the assumption that the government will fall if the war is lost, so i'd be pre-positioning caches of mechs and supplies to operate them to support a potential uprising against the Star League a few generations down the line.

so each cache would have a couple lances of Toro's and/or Talos's, spare parts and Missile/AC ammunition, as well as a few basic combat vehicles (say some scout cars or something) and large numbers of basic infantry gear (rifles, basic body armor, ammunition,etc)

i'd also have versions of the same type of caches with Aerospace fighters, and combat vehicles, scattered around on the same worlds.

i'd also be doing smaller caches with just infantry gear.

[wanderer25]

i'd also be doing smaller caches with just infantry gear.

You might want to put an emphasis on heavy/support weapons which would be alot harder for insurgents to come by then basic small arms.
I'm thinking  SRM launchers, mortars and sachel charges/explosives would be ideal.

SRMs let you go after vehicles & mechs, mortars provide highly mobile and concealable artillery and explosive would just be real hard to get  in general.

[glitterboy2098]

I was thinking more body armor, secure radios, NVG, etc. But something like LAW rockets and SRM launchers are a good point.
Though I would also make sure that there are crates of rifles and ammo, just in case.