BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Player Boards => BattleTech Roleplaying => Topic started by: Vehrec on 25 October 2015, 12:22:24
-
Your name is Minako Rauito, formerly of the Free Rasalhague Republic, and you think you may be stuck in this spaceport for the rest of your life. You contacts on this periphery planet had assured you that a government representative would be at the spaceport to pick you up when you arrived, but you've been on the ground for four hours and there has been no sign of anyone except for...Manuel. And he didn't know you were coming. All the other refugees and pleasure-seekers have been processed leaving just you and a terminal designed for five thousand people.
All in all, you life has been a impossible downward spiral the past six years. Rack up a massive debt attending the best engineering school in the Republic, majoring in Mech Design and Engineering. Get your diploma and wait while it sinks in that you're not getting any response from any of the firms you've sent your resume to. Run like hell is on your heels when the Wolves invade the planet-and then quit your home nation entirely with little more than the clothes on your back. You'd been surprised when the refugee transport landed and you were immediately accosted by a talent scout for some periphery arms company that just happened to be looking for people with your skill set. Like a fool, you accepted on the spot-you have no experience at all outside six-months apprenticeship at a labor 'Mech plant, but they promised you would be given the fast track to leading a team of your own. Now, thanks the Manuel, the obnoxiously exact customs agent blocking you from entering his country without a official work visa, you're stuck in the duty-free shop, food court, and terminal overlooking the thirty-six separate landing pads. You're tired already-1.3 gs is no party, and the air is thick, the outside hot and muggy. Jungle runs right up to the edge of the spaceport, held at bay by a fence that's probably overgrown with vines and sagging under the weight of greenery. There's a mural behind you, featuring a bunch of armed people striding towards the left under a banner that reads '¡Viva la Revolución y El Presidente!' Funny, but the most prominent figure, who is presumably el presidente, is a woman. Shouldn't that be la presidencia? Your spanish is terrible, but you're pretty sure that's right.
With nothing else to do but wait, you might as well-
[ ] Go pester Manuel, see if there's any way he can get your luggage sent up. Maybe your emergency hundred C-bills will be enough to bribe him into letting you out of the terminal.
[ ] Hit up the bar for some drinks-even if you're completely without local currency. And six C-bills worth of pocket change might not be enough to get you buzzed at spaceport prices.
[ ] Browse the gift Shop. Maybe there's a book or something you can read to kill time, but the money thing applies here as well.
[ ] Shipwatch. There's more than one dropship sitting out there, and it looks like the ground crews are rolling out some sort of mobile structure to service them. That might be of some mild professional interest.
-
- Shipwatch. There's more than one dropship sitting out there, and it looks like the ground crews are rolling out some sort of mobile structure to service them. That might be of some mild professional interest.
-
Go pester Manuel.
-
You decide to split the difference-it’s gonna take that crawler half an hour to get over to the Mule they’re gonna try to service, and at this distance there’s just not much to see until they get to work. That leaves plenty of time to pester Manuel, the bastard in the little security kiosk who is keeping you in here. He’s got body scanners, cameras and shutters set up on that thing, and you wouldn’t be surprised if there are some other surprises for anyone who tries something. You certainly were surprised when begging, crying, pleading and flirting had no effect on this guy. So now you’re gonna try begging combined with rational self interest. “Hey, can you send up my luggage? I’m worried that someone might steal it.”
Manuel looks at you like the gum on the bottom of his sneaker. You’re lower than dirt, and twice as annoying, and he really would rather go back to writing his report than dealing with you (he’s been working on it for hours, ever since he finished processing the last of the group you arrived with. There were several other customs officials here at one point, but they all buggered off for lunch and never came back. “No checked luggage in the terminal area. The rules about cargo and baggage handling are quite clear. You can pick it up from Security when you leave, or we’ll put it on whatever dropship we deport you on, but it’s not getting in here.” Manuel glares at you and focuses on you with a glare that would melt through a battlemech’s armor.
“Well can I go and pick it up?” Press on in hope of victory…
“No, your passport is out of date. This planet isn’t under the control of the Free Raselhauge Republic anymore. You could be a spy with a dead-woman’s papers. I’d need someone to vouch for you.”
“Well can you call the company that hired me?” He’s paranoid and dedicated to the pointless minutia of his job but he’s not unreasonable...you hope. You point behind him. “Look, I can see you have a phone in there.”
He’s unmoved. “That telephone is for government business only. I am to stay off the line in case of emergency or invasion.” He does drop his harsh tone for the next bit. “But if I were to go on break and close the booth I might have time for a phone call. Who hired you anyways?"
You’re sure he knows this already, it was on your work visa, but you respond- “
[ ] Shi-Sem Heavy Metal
[ ] Brasilia National Arsenel
[ ] Mextica Martial Industries
.”
You head over to the window to get some shipwatching in. You can see now that what you had pegged as a Mule is actually one of the fuel-blistered Dromedary class dropships instead-the Hump is fairly distinctive. The mobile structure, having moved into position is erecting a bunch of cranes and swing arms, and you feel fairly confident in declaring that a mobile gantry. You don’t know if it’s weatherpoof or air-conditioned, but you’ll bet it’s a damn sight better for working on minor things than most spaceports in the Periphery have. You can see several figures already climbing the structure to various working stations, while large robotic arms swing out and begin to do something. It looks like they’re getting ready to pull hull plates, and you almost go back to your carry-on bag for your binoculars when Manuel calls you back to the booth.
“Hey chica! I got a call for you!”
-
- Brasilia National Arsenel
-
I'll go with what Warclaw says.
A Brasilian looks good to me.
-
-Brasilia National Arsenal. Heavy-industrial corporation, formerly state owned, government maintains 20% of stock in company. Slightly indebted due to recent industrial expansion and modernization. Good tank design bureau, no mech experience. Manufactures T-1 APCs, T-12 Rocket Artillery, T-15 Medium and T-25 Heavy tanks, along with a clone of the Pike Support Vehicle with the Poor Performance negative design quirk. Factories in Neo Brasilia (HQ), Rio del Plata and Potosi Rico. Difficulty: Medium.
---
Manuel is gesturing for you to come get your call and you get out of the plastic seat that's been bleached almost white from 300 years of tropical sunlight to come and see what the call is about. You notice that he's got a cell phone, probably his own, and he holds it a fair distance from his head, the tiny speaker making a somewhat tinny noise. "It's your new boss." He hands the phone over and you gape at him for a few seconds before putting the phone to it's intended use and saying hello.
What follows is a brief gruff convesation with the head of human resources that can be easily summarized once you identify yourself. 'Why are you stuck in customs', 'because they won't accept my passport', 'I hired a fixer', 'He's not here', 'He's fired, I'll get you a new one', 'how long until they get here?', 'Just sit tight, I'm calling my government contacts to get someone down there to get you out.' And then he hangs up on you, leaving you no choice but to engage in a starring contest with Manuel or go back to the window. You kill one hour shipwatching, then grab the staring contest baton and go 15 rounds, loosing every single one. Manuel is a stone-cold bureaucrat who takes no shits from people asking for forms stamped with 20 years on the job. He's got you beat hands down when it comes to the stare.
It's in the middle of match 83, eyes feeling dry, that you see the figure walking down the hall and you tear your attention away. He's wearing what must be a military uniform...but you've never seen anyone so puffed up. The Social General is supposed to be a Lyran ideal, but the man marching towards you, with his white hair and dyed black mustache who must be at least 60 years old, but he radiates such an air of glormless stupidity that you can't really believe it's real. The uniform he's wearing might look smart on someone else, but on him it just magnifies stupidity tenfold, bringing his vacant eyes and willful determination to get one task done at a time because he's too dumb to multitask into sharp focus. Here, he steps up to the kiosk with a pompus self assurance that lasts all of three seconds as Manuel takes a glance, double-takes, and bellows for everyone else in the local patois before either you or the man can get a word in edgewise.
The locals tear into the man, berating him in a jumbled up mixture of Spanish and Portuguese and Indonesian that you have been told is the dominant local language. You have no idea what's going on, but people are waving tickets and shouting about fútbol, all the while heaping shameful invictives on the man who stands stoicly while tears run down his face, attempting to look manly, but mostly just looking...well, shameful. You manage to pidgeonhole a waitress on the edge of the crowd and she explains what you're missing-this is Raul 'Penultimo' Bambang, the current Minister of Sports, who has taken it upon himself to manage and coach the capital's football team. Since he had previously been the president's good natured but idiotic buffer against people she didn't want to speak to... A term in office of five years has been filled with near endless losses for the beloved Chupacabras, and last night a particularly close game was lost because of his direct orders. Everyone lost money or pride on the game, and are venting their frustrations.
Finally, Penultimo pushes slowly through the crowd, grabs you, and tugs you back to the kiosk, and says that he will be taking you to your hotel for the evening, as an officer of the government. Manuel stares at him for a moment and then digs out his APPROVED stamp and finally lets you go. Hated and reviled he might be by the public, but Penultimo is still a Minister, and has his job because of close connections to the local ruler. You're free to go, and as you walk down the concourse to security to pick up your bags (just two, you are sort of a refugee), you attract a lot of stares and more than one person in the airport side of the building actually spits as your escort passes them.
[ ] Write In, what will you do? You're hungry, tired, and a bit manky from your trip. And how will you get to the hotel-in a taxi, via the Metro, or in 'Penultimo's' ministry car?
-
"Minister, while I am, of course, grateful for your assistance, and kind offer of transportation, I am sure that such an important person as yourself has many demands upon their time, and I would hate to interfere with your doubtless busy schedule. I believe I can manage to find my own way to the Hotel, now that the unfortunate misunderstanding back there has been resolved."
Then if he doesn't insist too strenuously on providing a ride, I look for a decent Taxi. (Assuming my funds permit.)
-
[Rolled 2d6, 5+4= 9, target number 6, FAIL]
The minister blinks at you and then shakes his head. "Absolutely not! I cannot allow a visitor to our beautiful and prosperous nation to wander the streets alone after a cold and unfriendly welcome!" He grabs your hand and pumps it a few times. "No, no, the season is over and I have given the players their vacations. I will show you to your hotel, and see to it that you are put in the best room and given the best service."
You feel a sinking feeling as you are first ushered into a waiting car, and then Minister Bambang refuses to take you to the hotel you have a reservation at, instead getting on his phone and calling 'a more sophisticated and enjoyable institution.' You don't care if the place has joygirls and boys, you just want to get away from this madman at this point. But even a government Minister is having trouble finding a room today-plenty of people have yet to leave the capital after the big game, so the car drives through first fields of sugarcane, then suburbs, and the city's center is in view before the Minister grabs his driver's shoulder and starts shaking the man. (you're amazed and slightly terrified that he takes this as if it happens all the time)
"1012 Havana Avenue! Good news, oh most splendid guest of our nation, for I have got you a room at a hotel which is even acceptable by the standards of my beloved El Presidente! Soon, you shall have only the finest of beds and the warmest of baths to ease you to sleep." Your attempts to convince him that the company won't know where to send your new guide fall on deaf ears. You seem to be trapped by this madman, with very little you can do.
[ ] Accept that you're going to be spending the night in his idea of a good hotel, and deal with the consequences in the morning?
[ ] Play along and ditch him when you get the chance?
[ ] Get away from the madman as soon as you can, with or without your luggage.
[ ] Write in?
-
Take a deep breath, let it out slowly, then smile at the Minister. "Thank you, Minister, for your very kind efforts on my behalf. I am sure my new employers will be very happy to show exactly how they feel about your solicitude in this matter."
Once at the hotel, smile and shrug helplessly at the Concierge in an attempt to convey to him that this fiasco was NOT my idea, and that it is all Minister Bambang's doing. As soon as possible, try to gain access to a telephone, or find some other way to contact my employer and let them know exactly what has happened and beg for rescue from the overdressed idiot.
-
[Target number 8, roll 2d6, 1+6=7, Success!]
The minister swallows it hook, line and sinker, looking both very proud and very unsure what solicitude means. The plan goes relatively smoothly-the Hotel's staff show you and the minister to a suite that is obviously outside your price range, and the minister gives you a few thousand of the local currency to tip the hotel staff with, even though there is a large NO TIPPING sign on the hotel's desk counter. Ten minutes of apologies, polite refusals and handing over the key later, you're checked out and back on the street with a little useful advice and about a hundred and fifty C-bills in-pocket from the whole misadventure.
The hotel you actually had a reservation at is thankfully just a half-hour metro ride away, and you can thankfully get exact change in the local Maravedí. The local currency is fairly weak-almost 20 of them equal a single C-bill. Paying a whole Maraved for a soda strikes you as a little crazy, but on the flipside, you rationalize that at leas there isn't any change smaller than the one maraved coin. The lemon-lime softdrink gets you going over the hump and carries you to the second concierge at a much less over the top hotel. This one is...much less interested and just gives you the key and expects you to find your own room-something you're secretly greatful for.
You are now in a hotel room that has a 2D flatscreen, a bed that's a bit too firm for comfort, a list of takeout restaurants that deliver to rooms, and a shower with tiny bottles of shampoo and slightly flat towels that have probably been washed a couple hundred times. Still, there are no pests as far as you can see, and nothing stopping you from phoning the company to let them know where you are. There's a 26 hour day locally, and you're looking at ten hours until you need to wake up tomorrow.
[ ] Shower and turn in. Work is early tomorrow, and you have to get up at 5:30 to be ready in time for your orientation, tour and to meet the team. We can watch some news maybe, or do some research, and then get a bad night's sleep on a bed that's a bit too hard for you.
[ ] Shower and head to the bar-you need a drink. You hear this planet can actually produce Tequilla-you'd like to try some of that. Rum, you can take or leave, but you get a feeling you'll be taking more than you're normally comfortable with.
[ ] Shower and go clubbing-you haven't been to a nightclub in what feels like months, and you need to party, even if you have work in the morning.
-
- Shower and turn in. Work is early tomorrow, and you have to get up at 5:30 to be ready in time for your orientation, tour and to meet the team. We can watch some news maybe, or do some research, and then get a bad night's sleep on a bed that's a bit too hard for you.[/i]
Tired, hungry, dirty, and still irritated by the whole Bambang Idiocy, if I drink anything alcoholic right now I'll fall asleep on the bar before I get the first one down. I need a shower and something foodlike before falling asleep. (Hard bed or not, staying awake isn't really an option. I will, however, grab a HOT shower, and a few ibuprofen before turning in, to hopefully avoid being TOO stiff in the A.M.)
-
hmm
-
hmm
That's not a choice, it's not even a write-in!
---
You elect to review your situation, your benefits, and your new job before you head to sleep and while you're waiting for your hair to finish air-drying and your take-out delivery to arrive. The planetary government has fairly comprehensive social welfare programs-you're already entitled to a basic ration, free basic health care, and a free, if somewhat dubious apartment. Better housing and food come out of your paycheck-and if you want to eat something other than rice, beans and tortillas, you might want to buy that food. Housing looks similar-if you want six roommates and one bathroom for an entire floor, the free option is fine-everything better is paid for. Thankfully, the medical front actually looks pretty good-you even have a private insurance through the new job that will cover a lot of optional things-even some plastic surgery! You'll need to get a local bank account and other paperwork sorted to actually start claiming some of these things, but eating and living fairly well on your new income should be easy.
You aren't sure exactly what you eat that night, but it has fish, shrimp, tomatoes and coconut. The bed is...well, you're not exactly sleeping comfortably-several times you wake up and attempt to punch it softer, but the mattress remains stubbornly firm. Your friends always did joke about you sleeping on a feather-bed, but you have to admit they had a point. By morning you're not well rested. But at least you're rested, dressed and meeting your fixer-a dull girl, not much of a conversationalist-and ready for the hour-long drive through city traffic to the factory campus. The factory and headquarters is a sprawling compound on the far side of the city, so the drive gives you time to take in the scenery, which you're pretty sure was intended.
The dawn light plays over the skyline, revealing a jumble of new and old. All the tallest buildings are Star league vintage, 'overaw local primitives standard designs'. Most of them are cold and empty frames, their windows and presumeably furnishings looted long ago for other purposes. A few though are refurbished and redone in a new style-certainly, no Star League aesthetic you've ever seen included that eye-searing shades of yellow and green adorning one building, or the red and purple on the next one offset by gold-tinted glass. Color is a thing the locals love though-you scarcely see one building that isn't giving at least one wall to a mural, or painted in a bright primary shade. Even the giant glass pyramid that you drive by has different tints of glass placed on it's surface to create a interesting visual pattern.
The compound itself is surrounded by a 4 meter fence, and has a small display of tanks out front. Most of them are old and obviously primitive designs, but the two at the end look like they have at least standard composite armor instead of the normal mild steel most domestic Periphery designs make do with. Meeting you when you arrive are two men-one young, with a marketing executive's practiced smile, one old and somewhat fat, who looks down his nose at you who is introduced as 'our company's chief designer for 30 years, Domingos Sanjiv'. Mr. Sanjiv explains in his own clipped words starting as a boy running errands for the designers, and working his way up without a day of formal education beyond the sixth grade. The fact that his latest model of tank uses a fusion engine is a sign of his own skill at self-education.
The tour of the production facilities, while not impressive, is encouraging. You eyeball their homegrown fusion plant at a nice round 240, a solid design spec, if not particularly novel. It's also the only model they produce currently, and you get a feeling that at least one of your first jobs will be to make a Mech that can use it. The local autocannon are 40nn and 70mm, unimaginative brutalist designs that are probably over-engineered because of deficiencies in materials. A SRM system also features, as well as some old-fashioned one-shot rocket tubes on their wheeled APC which is apparently still in production to equip militia despite it's being the oldest design they still make. The factory itself is a nice assembly line, but it's less impressive than the one next door. The floor space there is clean and cleared out, a blank cement sheet for new developments. The only clue as to it's purpose is the ten bays along one wall. Ten Mech bays, with robotic arms rigged to a overhead rail system that look designed to move across a production area, pick up components, and assemble them into a Battlemech. It's still unfinished-packing material is shoved into a corner-but the bays at least are solid, very respectable designs. Just 40 years ago, this would have been a start-up operation whose opening would have made headlines across the Inner Sphere, more for implications than for actual production figures.
The offices at the Campus aren't shabby either-R&D department has some sort of laser on a test platform when you meet them at the labs, and they shake your hand all around the labs. You get a promise of more toys to play with than what you saw on the factory floor before you're whisked off to meet the design office. Most of them are working on a medium tank when you arrive, but before you get a good look, computer screens are switched off and you get an enthusiastic welcome. Most of them are suitably impressed by your credentials and you get the feeling that you've got some smart people here-no geniuses, nobody who's exactly Banzai, but good co-workers. The computers look like they're running standard CAD software, no frills, no bells and whistles, but good stuff. While talking to them you expound a bit on your best achievement-
[ ] You helped design a XL engine-a test stand model, but you have hands-on experience with advanced technology.
[ ] You got your hands dirty and rebuilt a Panther that had been written off as scrap-and re-rigged it's power supply to feed a large laser and a pair of mediums.
[ ] Your class got experience moving from concept to test article-though the ultra-light prototype you were working with had neither armor nor weapons.
[ ] You spent your six months 'real world' at an Industrialmech factory re-designing the factory's layout to improve output, and estimated a 20% increase in production.
After that, everyone breaks for lunch-and you get taken asside by the exec. It seems that they're interviewing candidates for the design team you're going to be in charge of-under supervision of course, but you're the only trained Mech-Engineer they have. But they're also holding a meeting on the design specifications the local government is calling for, and if you want to clarify what you're here to do, that's going to be where you'll need to be.
[ ] I need to have a say in who's on my team first.
[ ] I need to know what I need to build first.
-
You got your hands dirty and rebuilt a Panther that had been written off as scrap-and re-rigged it's power supply to feed a large laser and a pair of mediums.
Not glamorous, but showcases the "Waste Nothing" philosophy I prefer, and also shows that I am familiar with the sort of work-arounds and improvisations that a new design often requires during the initial phases of development. It may not have all the bells and whistles, or sport the latest cutting-edge tech, but for a new, periphery based operation, they could do worse than "Solid and reliable".
I need to know what I need to build first.
Design objectives will play a big factor in team selection. For example: If they want a close range brawler-mech, a LRM weapons tech won't be much use.
-
You got your hands dirty and rebuilt a Panther that had been written off as scrap-and re-rigged it's power supply to feed a large laser and a pair of mediums.
Life Path selection Confirmed: add one standard and two bonus character features:
Weapons Maestro: You have an affinity for systems that make things go boom, zap, and pschooo. You can more easily add positive quirks that relate to weapons.
Refit Madness: Existing designs are putty in your hands. You are more likely to succeed at attempts to refit an existing design into a new configuration.
Cool It: You intuitively understand the flow of heat from system to system and through the coolant lines that riddle any good mech.
I need to know what I need to build first.
Design objectives will play a big factor in team selection. For example: If they want a close range brawler-mech, a LRM weapons tech won't be much use.
There's just enough time to take care of some critical business before the meeting-they take your retina, your fingerprints and your picture and print you an ID badge that says "Mech Design Team Leader" on it even though the team doesn't exist yet. You take a moment to wipe lint and dirt off your best clothes, and get your makeup just so-it gets hot here and you sweat hard enough in the trips between buildings to need touch-ups. And then it's showtime-Two generals, the vice presidents of financial, Marketing, production, R&D, sub-assembly (aka the people who make parts), and the COO, with you as one of the two representatives of the design house.
You think you loose consciousness when the general on the left, a younger man than his companion, opens with the phrase "one point six billion Maravedí per year" for a procurement budget-and a generous outlay over and beyond that in the first two years for factory construction and expansion? You somehow manage to take notes (http://pastebin.com/JsvEyxJ3) however, and when you come to, have filled a page with unhelpful comments about how wide-open some of the design requirements are. 'Assault a dropship?' What kind? A union or a Behemoth?
This is definitely a time to ask some pointed questions. But about What? (Select up to three)
[ ] Project 49 Write In.
[ ] Project 54 Write In.
[ ] Project 57 Write In.
[ ] Project 60 Write In.
[ ] Project 61 Write In.
[ ] Project 64 Write In.
-
*snip*
[ ] Project 57 Write In.
OOC: I'm just here for the Blazer Cannons, and I don't want to step on Warclaw, so I'm only going to post one question...
IC:
Idly doodling in the margins of her notes, Minako suddenly looked up at the R&D team. Waiting for an opening in the conversation, she asked, "I see you've almost finished development of an 8cm laser... do you think you could strap two of those cores together into a proper Blazer Cannon? The Lyrans and everyone else have been working on them for years. It would be the perfect centerpiece for a project 57 design I have in mind, and be quite the surprise for any pirates foolish enough to raid us."
-
After a short pause to gather her thoughts, Minako spoke softly. "I have a few questions and comments, both in general and specific to the projects outlined."
"Firstly, I'll need a list of all locally produced components, to include engines, heat sinks, armor, electronics, and structural pieces. I have a preliminary weapons list, but if someone could make sure I get a list of those as well? And to be clear, the list should include items not yet made locally, but which local capacity and capability exists for. For example, I note that you already produce a 240 rated fusion engine. Useful indeed, and likely one which will find use at some point in the mech program. However, is this the only one available locally? Can larger or smaller be constructed here, or would we have to look elsewhere for anything other than that? As well, you make a solid line of standard Autocannons...does the capability exist here to manufacture their slightly more advanced light versions?"
"Secondly, I will also need a list of any and all components for which you have a good supplier available, that you cannot currently construct, especially advanced technologies."
"Thirdly, do you have any contacts in the Inner Sphere salvage and secondary markets? The reason I ask, is that certain older designs, having become surplus to needs as newer units are designed and replace them, are now often available at bargain prices, especially those who have been stripped down to the bare frame and their components reallocated. If we were to acquire a number of those surplus frames, it could speed the project up considerably, as well as cut costs, at least for the initial manufacturing runs."
"As for the specific projects....Would you object to combining projects 57 and 61? A common base unit, varying primarily in weapons load-out, would save quite a bit both in design phase, and after deployment by way of simplifying logistics, and training requirements for the support staff."
"I have a few initial ideas for the project 49 mech, but I'll have a better idea what is possible, once you get me the lists of available components. The only major question I have there is which of the two listed intended uses is to be primary? Anti-Infantry or Anti-vehicle/mech? If it were totally my choice I would suggest anti-vehicular, as the best anti-infantry units still remain other infantry."
"Projects 54 and 60, we might also be able to combine, depending again on available components. I believe an upper end light mech might just be what we need there...the Large Laser that's in development would be VERY helpful for the project 60 side of things, but we'll have to see, once we get into the fine details."
-
((Wow, okay. That's more questions than I asked for, and they're mostly for things that aren't related to the meeting. Nobody is going to bother to list all the structural components available at this sort of thing, primarily because that's not relevant to the roles of the mechs and the subject matter of the meeting. To say nothing of the impossibility of getting Light ACs onto the battlefront when those haven't been developed yet. And you can't steer the R&D department directly-yours is only one of several hands on the tiller there, and while you can make suggestions and politic and campaign for your pet projects, you can't control when those projects get approval for development or how long those projects take.
I'll use your questions as a jumping off point for writing the next bit, but for the big list of parts all I can say is hurry up and wait. As for questions, with four of them on the board to ask about, I'll need a tie-breaker vote as to what questions to use here. If I don't get one by tomorrow, I'll go ahead and pick randomly.))
-
OOC:
Minako didn't expect anyone to have a list handy. She was just hoping someone would forward it to her AFTER the meeting.
As for the Light AC's, sorry, I guess I got the dates mixed up. To be clear in the future, what date are we looking at for in-character interaction?
The other questions...I guess the biggest thing she'd want to know is priorities. With the resources outlined so far, she believes they have the beginnings of a project for ONE of the projects in question. She might not have worded it well, (She's an engineering wonk, not a PR person) but she WAS trying to find a way to let them have more than one project's benefits without too much extra cost.
-
OOC: Campaigning for Blazer Cannon design has to start somewhere, and I figured tying it to a specific project would be the best way. Also, how hard is that 4M C-Bill limit? If it's absolute, I don't see a way for anything beyond Project 57 to come in under budget. Assault mechs start at about 6M minimum.
Warclaw: I like the way you proposed combining projects to save money, and want to make sure your first and third questions are in the three that get answered. As for Project 49, would you rather have that answer, or go for broke on maybe getting Blazer Cannons in? If we make progress there, it might be worth pursuing Artillery Cannons later. I can't think of a better DropShip/fortification cracker than a snub nosed Long Tom (which would also get around the "kiting" issue cited in the design specs for Project 64, the only problem being the 9-10M needed per mech to carry the darn thing).
-
To clarify, this is all set right after the first phase of the clan invasion-the year of Peace is over, the battles of Luthien and Tuyakid have yet to be fought, and this far out in the periphery, without an HPG (even if the planet had one it would be useless since there's no planet within 50 light years with one), the information available on the invaders is very shaky. A few fragmentary battle-ROMs, that's about all the information that has reached this planet intact.
As for the cost limit, that's an average price point. A few lances of light mechs save up enough money to put a true Assault in the field-think of it like this. If you want to build up a mech regiment on a fixed budget, you don't specify weight or speed or weapons. You specify your budget and your target numbers, and you go from there. Dividing the eventual size of a mech regiment by 100+ mechs, you get the 4 million per mech figure. That money is itself spread out over a 5 year period, so you also get a production target-at least 20 mechs per year. Of course, wrinkles crop up immediately when you consider things like serial production efficiency lowering costs, or the inevitable spool up effect that means that the Mechs might actually be delivered in a fashion like 0-5-15-25-55. Excess might be salable on the open market-or you might get an export ban slapped on your top secret military technology. The flipside is that imports are expensive out here in the Periphery-you cannot licence a part without paying royalties to the parent company to the tune of ten to twenty percent cost on average, and you can't import things bought on the open market without a 50% flat mark-up in the cost of everything. Importing a Vlar 300XL is gonna cost 3.6 million C-bills, not 2.4 million-and that's dependant on finding one in the first place. PPCs cross the border with the merchant pocketing a cool 100k extra. And so on. So you can import advanced tech if it's absolutely essential, but the costs spiral out of the military's pocketbook, so an ultra-efficent and high-tech mech might be turned down no matter how impressive it's capabilities are.
-
OOC: Awesome! It looks to me we're perfectly positioned to design mechs like the original 3025 set, (i.e., with half the heat sinks they need on the premise we'll get doubles someday... yet more impetus for Blazer Cannons!).
-
You guys don't need to preface your commentary with OOC you know. It's perfectly obvious what's IC and what's OOC; the only genuine 100% pure IC bits are in my posts, even if I occassionally steal bits from you guys :D
-
Sorry... old habit from gaming online for so long. Honestly, it'll be strange not doing it, but it's your game.
-
[Question triage mode: Random. Questions 2, 3, and 4 selected.]
You hesitantly raise a few points near the end of the discussion. "I've got a few short questions for the generals. Is the emphasis for Project 49 on anti-infantry or anti-vehicle capability? You have both noted, but you don't clarify which one you would prefer..."
The two generals look at each other, judging each other. They hesitate a bit before answering. The older one, Federov with his richly mutton-chopped face, goes first. "We... believe that a pair of 20mm machine guns will be useful in either role. As effective as infantry and artillery are at killing men, we believe that at least keeping them pinned down should be worth the investment of weight. We anticipate that it will primarily be used for exploitation missions or as a milita unit. Short range missiles will provide adequate punch on the battlefield, and can use alternative types of ammunition to good effect."
Then general Rodriguez, short-bearded and younger, cuts in. "That said, many military vehicles and even Mechs we face have to make do with inferior armor. Which is why we wish to explore the possibilities of the Large Laser delivering an instant knock-out to such units. We still have to determine our final requirements. Missile launchers may increase upkeep costs-"
"That discussion can be carried out later. You said you had other questions?" The muttonchopped general looks at you and frowns. "Who is this girl in any case? Did you hire one of those Comstar fools to help you? I detest those jumped up water floridators."
You have no idea why he thinks you're from Comstar, but you think he's one of those types who believes the most ridiculous rumors about people adding drugs to the water to keep the populace pacified...though come to think of it the Combine actually did do that in your grandpa's day. "Minako Rauito sir. I'm from the Free Rasselhauge Republic originally." You gather steam for your next question. "How about...consolidation? We can possibly reduce the number of designs. Project 57 and 61 might be compatible enough to use a single engine and chasis for both of them."
The generals share another look, this one much less long. "We have no objections to design commonalities. However, we had envisaged the Project 61 as something like a Catapult or Archer. A Trebuchet-like design would probably not be objectionable, but we wish to discourage allowing the number of tubes to drop below...25."
"Thirty. He means Thirty." The younger general hastens to interject. "The effectiveness of light indirect fire is questionable at best. A strong thrust is needed to defeat the enemy from afar, and the lackluster firepower of a Whitworth or Dervish will not do." His 'friend' glares at him strongly but doesn't contradict him openly.
"Yes, thank you, I think I can see a way forward perhaps..." You hurriedly paper over the obvious fracture in the military and push on. "Lastly, on a related note, can we perhaps also consolidate our light scout and our light-mech hunter? I believe there might be a sweet spot between thirty and forty tons-"
The older general cuts you off with a wave of his hand. "We do not particularly care about the particulars of the scout design so you are free to submit whatever you like so long as it can use our new remote sensor systems and reach a speed of at least 100 kilometers per hour. We do appreciate cost savings however, and look forward to whatever you can present." That seems to be a signal that the meeting is over, and five minutes later you've shaken hands with everyone and left the conference room with your escort.
The day still has a few hours left before your first workday is over. You need to decide how to use it, before someone else decides how to use it for you.
[ ] Head back to the design offices to socialize and make some friends.
[ ] Head down to R&D to talk to them.
[ ] Find your boss Mr. Sanjiv, and find out how the interviews for your own team are going.
[ ] Head to your office and fire up the computer, it's time to review lists and spreadsheets and maybe fire up some CAD programs for a first-pass at one of the projects.
[ ] Write in?
-
I'd still like to ask R&D about the Blazer Cannon idea, but don't see that taking much time, so there should be enough room for whatever else Warclaw wants to do.
-
X Head to your office and fire up the computer, it's time to review lists and spreadsheets and maybe fire up some CAD programs for a first-pass at one of the projects.
Minako barely noted her escort as she headed to her brand new office. Socializing was for off-hours, and R&D would likely be in the middle of their own work at this point. Better to schedule a meeting with them in a day or so and give them time to pull together the information in a coherent presentation. And as for the design team hiring, Mr. Sanjiv seemed to have that well under control for the moment. But she'd have to check in with him tomorrow morning, to see how things were going.
Now however, there was designing to do!
Slipping behind her desk, she absently started her computer and started calling up specs and availability charts. "So let's see...locally sourced components primary...average budget target of four million...ok....I can do this!"
Six hours later she looked up from her work-station to realize that the outside was dark, and she'd worked well past closing time once again. She shrugged, back in school she was infamous for getting lost in a tricky problem and burning the candle at both ends. What was important was that she just MIGHT have a handle on things.
The notes were rough, and would certainly require many hours of refinement to turn them into anything close to reality, but she at least had a starting point!
@Vehrec: I'll send you what I have in mind via PM. No fluff yet, but...
-
You say your good-byes politely and then strike while the iron is hot. the office is so new your chair is still covered in plastic, and you don't even bother to remove the stuff before getting to work. You treachers always told you to go wild in the 'coarse' design phase-if someone asks for a light mech with SRMs, you give them everything between 20 and 40 tons, and as many or as few tubes as you can get on the design. Right now, you start with the low-hanging fruit in the 40 and 60 ton areas. There's a lot of other potential designs, but for something that will take a minimum of work, these seem like good starting points. You don't bother with even the putting of things inside the frames, you just work with weight at first, piling up internal structure, gyros and cockpit, always rounding up, and get several functional 'piles of parts'. There's nothing fine about this, you're just slamming down concept after concept as fast as you can, getting them out of your head so that later triage can tell you what works and what fails.
You're a good three hours into a design fugue when a large hand clamps down on your shoulder and you look up into the face of your boss. "You have ideas, but it's time to go. Come, we're not paying you overtime. It's nearly sundown." You briefly consider telling him to let you stay behind, but you realize that with the offices being closed, you might get locked in for the night. Saving your design...scribbles, you suppose, you follow him out of the office into a nearly deserted street, most of the workers having already gone home.
[ ] Ask for advice? He's got a lot of real-world experience, and knows the local movers and shakers.
[ ] Ask how interviews went? Might be good to know who you'll be working with.
[ ] Ask for advice on where to get coffee and lunch? Lunch breaks are serious, two hour affairs here. Though that might be just to find something to do in the 13th hour of the clock.
[ ] Say nothing, head for the metro and your hotel room.
[ ] Write In?
-
[ ] Ask for advice on where to get coffee and lunch? Lunch breaks are serious, two hour affairs here. Though that might be just to find something to do in the 13th hour of the clock.
-
You decide to try and socialize with the boss. Emphasis on 'try'. He doesn't seem to like to talk in English much, always starting off in the local pidgin of Portuguese and Indonesian, and his answers are kept clipped and short when he does switch to the language he's perfectly conversant in. Still, it's a fifteen minute walk to the parking garrage and your government-sanctioned hand holder, so he can't hold out forever. In between grunts and bursts of the bastard grandchild of Latin and Maylay (You need to put some effort in to become quadlingual it seems), he imparts a few local places that the engineering staff enjoy frequenting. Coffee as well-though it seams that local coffee houses do as much traffic in the pseudo-mayan realm of chili-spiced chocolate beverages. He recommends you try something called Kopi Luack, which you resolve to look up. You do manage to get directions to a sushi place out of him, though the look he gives you suggests that he's one of those types that finds raw fish personally objectionable. Either way, you now have a hard lock on caffeine sources, both in their more refined state, and in a more primal 'navy coffee' fashion.
Overall though, the entire conversation falls heavily on your shoulders. Either he doesn't like you, or your boss is just hard to get to under a tough and cynical shell. You're sort of relieved when you part ways and get into your car to be driven back to your hotel. Though you do put your new expertise to use to get a couple of tacos from a street vendor who is apparently a local legend-the driver slash minder orders as well, and the two of you happily crunch your way through dinner. You are also heavily reminded that while you have a work E-mail account, it will not actually function on a non-secured machine without the appropriate hardware installed, and you aren't allowed to work off-hours because there's security concerns. Still-this puts a crimp in your normal hard-working midnight-oil burning persona. At least, until you get a cot installed in your office.
So without any work left, are you going to look for fun, or do some research?
[ ] Head out on the town-you got a meal, but a few drinks, some dancing, and maybe getting your foot back into the dating scene isn't a bad idea.
[ ] Stay in your room and do some research on your situation-you need a place to live, a more permanent form of transportation, and food that isn't take out.
[ ] Stay in your room and research the regime. Your customers have needs and wants. They are also people with unique personalities, as well as a government. Knowing who is judging the competition may give you an edge on desigining the winning Mech.
[ ] Other? You can surely do lots of things that I haven't mentioned.
-
[ ] Stay in your room and do some research on your situation-you need a place to live, a more permanent form of transportation, and food that isn't take out.
[ ] Stay in your room and research the regime. Your customers have needs and wants. They are also people with unique personalities, as well as a government. Knowing who is judging the competition may give you an edge on designing the winning Mech.
Both.....After finding a halfway decent translation program for the local argot....and a listing of any classes for non-native speakers would be good too, communication is going to be a big issue/necessity. Explaining technical matters to non-engineers is hard enough without language barriers.
-
You grab your noteputer and visit a terminal in the hotel lounge to download the information you need, then head back to your room to consult the biographies, housing listings, used car ads, and other information you need. Still, you can't help but feel a twinge of regret-maybe you should make some time to socialize. It would be bad to not know anyone outside work, and hardly anyone there as well. (+1 Nerd point) On your way back to your room you make sure to ask the desk clerk a few questions in English and he understands you perfectly, confirming in your mind at least that your boss was being difficult. Still, you have the tabs to review the language, you just...haven't had time to use them. If you're being honest, your own English isn't exactly Star League standard anyways, a side effect of being raised in a cabin for the first five years of your life, with no neighbors for 30 kilometers.
You also look up the coffee recommendation and find out what Kopi Luack is. Ew.
Back on topic, you find a wide slice of housing available-but without a lot of time to spare, you'll need to swallow your pride. You're making a lot of money by local standards anyways, 20,000 Maravedí (M-bills?) per month. And that's just your pay as a 'Junior Engineer', which you can expect to rise quickly. Engineers proper get 32,000 a month, Senior Engineers pocket a nice 44,000, and the Ur-designer, the Lead Engineer, should you ever rise that high, takes home 52,000 M per month. That's an annual salary of 31,000 c-bills for your boss, and a still nice 12,000 for you. Add in project completion bonuses, and this is potentially quite lucrative. Even so, some of the local housing and transportation options (http://pastebin.com/ZAkiCCeR) seem out of even your reach.
[ ]Make a decision?
[ ]Hold off for now...
Setting those things aside for now, you turn your attention to a brief history of the realm. Starting at the top. Fifty-two years ago, in the Revolution of '99, the pirate princedom of Cabanagem was overthrown by a bastard daughter of the old prince who killed her father, her half siblings and cousins, and ruthlessly purged the old government down to the quick before having herself declared 'El Presidente' by acclamation of her army and the crowd that gathered around the palace bedecked with gallows. Thus did the name of Mafalda Sandra Goizane Eka Vargas pass into history, and ever since has the planet of Cabanagem been ruled in relative peace from that day to this. Only brief revolution in '09 following land reforms marred the domestic scene until the elections of '36. Then, on televised debate, her chief opponent accused her of endangering their tributary relationship with the priates who dominated the area by building up an illegal army. The debate was cut off and the election canceled, and the brief 'War of Piracy' was fought in 36 and 37, leading to the downfall of all three squabbling pirate powers and the ascendancy of Cabanagem as the foremost world in this part of the periphery. The Elections of 5040 swept El Presidente and her political party 'Union and Revolution' into power with a 70% majority of the vote, a majority that has been maintained in every election since. One gets a picture of a charming woman with delightful habits and an extremely photogenic smile who is also capable of terrifying violence to meet her goals. Most of the pictures of her are from parties, but there are a few from other occasions, like the offical surrender of the pirates. You also find a little bit about her husband, Pablo Moreno, who seems to be a mercenary, bleeding heart, and something of an action hero slash popular legend. The stories about him using a grappling hook to board a Mech and kill it's pilot with nothing but a knife must be mere urban legend, surely.
General Igor Federov and General Raul Rodriguez are both veterans of the War of Piracy-then Colonel Federov was commander of the 'Przemyśl expeditionary force', while Rodriguez was one of the three Mechwarriors who served his nation directly, rather than being a mercenary bought with the promise of 'C-bills Now, Land and Titles Later'. A promise that apparently lead to the privatization of several formerly government controlled companies, including the one you now work for. You also find a series of articles detailing a faux pas comitted by Federov at a party against a Comstar representative, leading to demands for Federov's resignation and El Presidente declaring that as a customer service representative, the Comstar official had taken remarks that he was out to mind-control the population a bit too seriously. Federov's paranoia apparently was the trigger for Comstar shutting off Class D service to this world, but since that's 'one jumpship per year', the uptick in trade from a suddenly pirate-free area really made that a bit of a wash.
It looks like El Pres has a daughter who might be interested in things as well-the Minister of Industry, Maria Antonia Atarah Daniela Febe Moreno-Vargas. Maria is a certified genius with a doctorate from a prestigious Inner-sphere university, and has made her name as a civilian industrialist, unlike most scions of ruling families or indeed her brother Diego. It looks like she won't be able to touch you until time comes to start forming parts, but she's strongly interested in best practices and mass production, so your little factory might not satisfy her proclivities if she starts wishing for a Hephestus-like Mechworks. There are also a lot of photos of her with cake for some reason.
But in any case, it seems the Clans and the recent up-teching in the Inner Sphere have caught the local leadership feeling the pinch. Their tank brigades are now not just obsolete but woefully so, and a flurry of new spending has descended from on high, released from secretive government coffers. It looks, if nothing else, like a seller's market, and that's a happy thought.
It's almost midnight when you tuck in, and you sleep is troubled by dreams of...
[ ] The Clan Invasion.
[ ] Boots with teeth chasing you and also your own teeth falling out of your head.
[ ] Mechs that might be and may have been, the unseen armies and unmade machines.
[ ] Things that aren't suitible for this forum. ;)
-
[ ]Hold off for now...
[ ] Mechs that might be and may have been, the unseen armies and unmade machines.
housing and transport option link broken'
-
Just remove the "%22"s and the extraneous "http" from the url and it works. It should look like this: http://pastebin.com/ZAkiCCeR
-
edited! Boy is my face red. You may now stare longingly at your mansion and personal helicopter as they remain out of reach.
-
Does the Metro connect the arcology to work?
Also, would it be possible to rent two adjoining "mid-range apartments" and make some improvements for 5,000/month? Basically, get near the "hi-rise" quality within walking distance to work.
-
additionally, what is the potential for a roommate or two to split rent with? Getting a larger apartment with two or three bedrooms (And the roommates to go with) can often lead to a lower overall rent payment.
(Might even be able to get the whole floor of a modest apartment building---think brownstone or townhouse...current day's examples often have a small shop or cafe on the ground floor, with apartments above.)
-
Sorry, but you need at least a Level One Social Link to be roomies. And since you've been avoiding the 'go forth and meet people' options to study more, you're pushing poor Minako away from getting any roommates or romance options. If you keep her in on the weekend as well, I may have no choice but to declare the poor girl a terminal nerd, with no hope of ever making friends with anyone.
Now, where were we?
---
You dream of gears and wheels. You dream of myomer and chrome, of gold plated glass and electrical contacts. There are circuits pleasing to the eye, and mechanisms of goldbergian complexity. The mechanisms start simple-a lever or a crankshaft-but they grow in complexity, size and scope and even dimensionality. You only took one class in hyperspace physics, but it all comes flooding back as the things in your dream grow ever more complex and baffling, vast and quasi-organic with a strangely hidden function that seems utterly inscrutable...
You jolt awake with a start as your alarm goes off. You grab a banana for breakfast, shower, makeup, clothes, gather up your things and are out the door to meet the minder as she drives up again. Once again, you have an early morning drive to work-a bit more traffic thanks to a slightly later start today, but nothing serious-nothing like what the roads must be like after 7, certainly. What does slow you down is the military motorcade moving something out of the factory on a truck. It seems like half the planet has stopped to gawk-and you join in to, because it's not just a flatbed truck and a couple of flaggers, or some APCs, or even a tank. Standing tall over the crowd, in muted brown and drab greyish-green, is a Thunderbolt. The drum-shaped LRM launcher on the shoulder has been replaced with a different model, but the head is still offset to the side indicating that the replacement was a bit of a patch and make-do. The large laser on it's arm seems to have been wrapped in an additional layer of fabric protection, though to what end, you can't say. It takes 15 minutes for the large crate to be brought out, transfered to the truck, and then for the truck to move out through the gate, proceeded by two APCs with the hatches open and followed by the Mech. After you see a few other people with cameras you hastily get out your own noteputer and take a few snapshots. Mechs are mechs even if they're not fighting, and for a periphery patch-job, that one is in excellent shape, none of the stuttering or jerky movements you associate with a bad pilot or bad hardware.
You arrive at your office a bit late to find your e-mail already filling up for the day. Already you have several new items to read through, all of which look rather important.
(number these instead of selecting just one if you please.)
[ ] CC:all(Top Secret) R&D has a mass mailing list you just got added to apparently.
[ ] New Hires (see me) Your boss has this ominious letter already waiting for you...wait, this was sent last night before you left.
[ ] Re:Water Cooler. That's from General Federov?
[ ] Production Reminder. Another one from Mr. Sanjiv. This looks technical and related to fusion reactors.
[ ] A very ordinary email from a VP in the finance department. You suspect it might be about how soon you can start turning a profit on the investment in both yourself and Mechs.
-
[5] CC:all(Top Secret) R&D has a mass mailing list you just got added to apparently.
[1] New Hires (see me) Your boss has this ominious letter already waiting for you...wait, this was sent last night before you left.
[2] Re:Water Cooler. That's from General Federov?
[4] Production Reminder. Another one from Mr. Sanjiv. This looks technical and related to fusion reactors.
[3] A very ordinary email from a VP in the finance department. You suspect it might be about how soon you can start turning a profit on the investment in both yourself and Mechs.
After reading through her e-mail, Minako took a minute to set up an off-line archive and an automated rule to move large files to it when they come in. That way her inbox wouldn't be clogged by arbitrary limits (for "good technical reasons") set by IT.
-
I'll agree with Daryk on the order. With the caveat that she first does a quick scan/read of all five, then goes back to re-read/respond to high priority messages.
-
Re: New Hires.
I've reviewed all the perspective canidates for your team and winnowed out the ones who won't be able to cut the mustard. You of course have the right to refuse anyone who won't work outright, but I've found several times the number of prospective assistants you ought to need for this project.
Team 1: University Students. It might shock you to know that there has been more than one school of higher education founded in civilized space in the past 50 years. While we lack a formal Mech-education program, we have some close enough coursework for these to be taken seriously. The prize-winning team from the National Academy of Science's latest robotics competittion submitted their resume as a group. I think they are intelligent enough, but their expertise is not in military hardware.
Team 2: National Science. I'm frankly impressed by these gentlemen's ability to solve problems. The problem with them is that they're used to working for the government, and while they did develop a prototype mech, it was too expensive for mass production. They also may resent taking orders from someone younger than them.
Team 3: Mil-Techs. This batch are a bit surprising. Military technicians who have worked on Mechs and supervised a lot of the modifications and make-does and want to mustang up to an office and get away from the day to day of replacements. I like to have input from the user in the product, but these guys take that to the next level. Their design priorities may be different from what you are used to, and I have my doubts about their design practices.
Team 4: Internal transfers. I have a few people I can afford to loan you of course, if you want some experienced hands who know how things are done here. We know our own equipment inside and out and we know the company. None of them have experience with myomer-driven walking robots admittedly, but they are experts at coming in under-budget.
We can assemble a balanced team with the best of each group, or emphasize the talents of up to two of them. I'll be monitoring your performance, and supervising the project, but ultimately you will be working with these people and I want your opinion on them before we complete our hiring decisions.
...you don't have a degree in management of a design team. And you wound up doing all the work on your last class project. You're gonna have to learn on the job, and this is not an encouraging thought. You have the weekend coming up, but this is the stuff that takes months to learn. You don't know if you're mad or grateful for the hand holding.
COMRADE.
I have taken the liberty of removing the unsecured water-cooler from your office and replacing it with one of my own design that cannot be tampered with and only accepts distilled water. Constant vigilance against sabotage is my gift to you to keep you safe. Agents of the Great Houses or the Terran Alliance will no doubt be attempting to drug you into a stupor or kill you and we must be watchful for any risk.
...Okay, he's more paranoid than you thought. He must either be very good at his job, or have superiors who find this very amusing. You wonder how long before you're going to be under suspicion of being a spy yourself, then remember that he already thinks you're a spy. You hear a couple of soldiers enter the office to haul off your old water cooler and peek out to see an ugly gunmetal thing being installed with a steel drum attached. You decide not to protest right now, but flag that one for later use if this gets unreasonable.
I do not want to put you under too much pressure, but the company needs to get some cash flow going now or we'll be in really serious trouble. You need to produce a design we can sell within six months, before our debt repayments outstrip our sales to the government. We have lost our last two contract bids, and without a winner from either you or our tank department, we're in real trouble.
Notto put too fine a point on it, but you have an uphill struggle ahead of you to be brutally frank. Our competitors at Shi-Sem have installed a very powerful mainframe, a SAL 12000 series computer that can greatly expedite their design process.
Okay, that's a little unsettling. You've never actually seen a SAL 12000 but you've seen them advertised in the Inner Sphere, and they're pretty cutting-edge hardware, even six years after the Supervised Automatic Learning system 12000 debuted. They are kinda spooky if the rumors are right, but they're not actually that smart. Still, if they use it right they could do the design work in days what would take you weeks. Especially the fine-tuning of adjusting individual myomer bundles or calculating cross-sectional loads.
...if they use it right. You can think of five ways off the top of your head that a system that advanced can bite it's users in the ass. It can preform hundreds of thousands of stress load recalculations a second, but it has no intentionality. It can't design for a purpose unless you can express that purpose in ones and zeroes.
I'm forwarding you some technical information on our current Military-purpose fusion reactor. I'm no expert in myomer layout, but if you're willing to accept a higher maintenance cycle and more frequent parts replacement, I believe we can push the current design about 5% higher in output and power a corespondingly larger or faster mech. Likewise, we can trim shielding and confinement coils, and can feed a smaller powertrain using the same reactor tooling.
Our production staff inform me that this will add time and a bit of cost, but I think that expediting a few new options for you is more than worth the added effort of theorycrafting these changes in design.
Okay this is good news. It might push costs up a bit, but if the tokomak is that robust, you might be able to squeeze it a little harder and get a 245 or 250 rating out of it. Or relax it down to 230-though you don't know any mechs of the top of your head that actually use that number. This isn't exactly best practices-you know that the higher-output will wear more heavily on these reactors. But it is a rather elegant looking make-do in the best Periphery traditions.
As you probably noticed this morning, our latest prototype laser has been shipped to final testing. It will be subjected to over 10,000 live firings and shock tested before formal acceptance is issued, but we can be reasonably confident that after six years and four previous attempts, our latest offering will be formally accepted barring any serious flaw as the Series 52 Large Laser for use in future designs.
The size and power requirements for the new prototype are in the attachment to this email.
We're going to take a short holiday from active development pending the results of the test and in the meantime invite suggestions as to our next project. The current leaders are a 210mm autocannon or new armor-forming techniques to increase our production of that vital material, but we are opening the floor to all suggestions.
You blink at that and then get up and do a little happy dance. You check the attachment-okay, it's a bit long and thin compared to other large lasers you've seen, but just a bit and it looks like they made a good choice in terms of surface area optimization for cooling.
You guess you could make a suggestion...but what?
[ ] Write in?
[ ] AC-20?
[ ] New reactor?
[ ] New Armor production methods?
The more detailed your reasoning for your suggestion, the better the chance of it being accepted.
-
Minako sat back and tugged her chin when she finished reading about the new hires. Obviously, she'd want an internal hire to help with budget discipline, but the lack of myomer design experience would limit their contribution otherwise. The university students could work, but submitting themselves as a group was a definite minus. While it showed admirable team work, it left little room for additions. Of course, they could be the cheapest to hire, so maybe she'd have enough room to leaven the mix. Or maybe propose hiring the group as interns under the main design team. Her own recent university experience was getting the better of her here, and she knew it. The military techs definitely had the experience Minako needed, though she wasn't sure she'd be able to channel their obvious individual agendas into what was necessary for the current project. If she could co-opt the senior one, that might help her bring the others along. And one or two from the national science group could help lend some design discipline to the others. She'd have to give some more thought to her team before replying to the boss.
*OK, that's definitely a write in for the team build. The "balance" I'm looking for is one budget expert, one professional scientist from the national side, with the majority from the military techs (perhaps the government can pay their salaries?) and the university team as interns (they sabotaged their salary prospects by submitting as a team, but if they work out, and the project gets selected by the government, there should be enough money to hire them full time).
--------------------------------
Minako blinked as the soldiers removed the old water cooler and put in the new one. "Bottled water... definitely bottled water," she thought to herself. If the general was paranoid enough to think the water cooler could be tampered with, he was crazy enough to tamper with one of his "own design".
--------------------------------
The finance VP's mail made her grimace. "No pressure," she grumbled to herself. With any luck, General Federov would be causing trouble for Shi-Sem and their imported supercomputer. In fact, she started typing a quick e-mail back to finance:
"Ma'am,
Thank you for the warm welcome, and I completely understand the intense need to bring my project in under budget and on time. With regard to Shi-Sem, do you know if General Federov approved the installation of their imported supercomputer? Such things are fiendishly complex, and notoriously easy to subvert. I look forward to working with you!
Respectfully,
Minako Rauito"
------------------------------
Mr. Sanjiv's note was the first genuinely good news her inbox had brought her. She had to thank him:
"Mr. Sanjiv,
Thank you for the wonderful news! This will definitely give my team more options when we set pen to paper. If there's anything my team can do for you, please don't hesitate to ask.
Very Respectfully,
Minako Rauito"
*By the way, you do realize a 60 ton mech with a 240 engine is 3.9M before adding any armor, weapons, or heat sinks, right? A 40 tonner starts at 2.8M, and it's 2.3M at 30 tons. The Blazer Cannon trooper I was looking at comes in just over 5M at 60 tons.
---------------------------
*You HAD to expect this...
After completing her happy dance, Minako sat down with shining eyes. She hit "reply all" and quickly typed her suggestion:
"All,
It strikes me the fastest way to bring a second project to fruition is to leverage the success of your first. In fact, you could probably test a dual core laser (also known as a "Blazer Cannon") based on your existing design during the test firing regime. It would also save money, as the test bench would require minimal modifications, and the firing range itself wouldn't need to change at all. While the weapon would lose some heat efficiency, the increased damage output would make it worthwhile, and your core design appears to maximize heat dissipation, making it an ideal candidate for a dual core design. I may be able to provide some design assistance with this proposed project, depending on how hiring for my own team goes. Please let me know what you think!
Very Respectfully,
Minako Rauito"
*If she can get the university team hired as interns, this sounds like an ideal project for them, and could spread the burden of managing them as well.
-
New Hires:
I'd like to grab the university team if possible. They are obviously bright, and still trainable the way WE want them. Not being initially trained in mech design, they also bring fresh perspective to things, which might allow them to think of things we overlook because "That's never been done."
That being said, I'll also want at least one of the senior mil-techs. Most designs BADLY need the voice of someone who's been a line tech. While a design might be very elegant engineering wise, it's not as helpful if it takes five times as long to maintain it. A healthy dose of practical experience and field knowledge can help us avoid some of those mistakes.
If you could also send us one of the National Science crew as well? A little bit of discipline and experience will help balance the youthful exuberance of the University team.
I will, of course, need a liaison from the company from time to time. Both to remind us of budget constraints, and to guide us through the company internal culture.
The way I envision this working best is to place the University team under the direction of the National Science rep as team leader, with the mil-tech brought in to test the design and critique anything he or she finds that isn't as workable outside the lab.
Water Cooler:
Agree with Daryk
Finance:
We'll expedite things as much as possible, but we don't want to rush things too much, or we run the risk of creating a giant boondoggle that goes nowhere. We have to get this right. Failure of our first product is NOT an option. The only way I can see to shortcut the process to any appreciable extent is if we can modify an existing design. That way, a LOT of the work is done ahead of time, we just need to make it ours.
R&D:
I am VERY pleased to read of your anticipated success! That will be VERY helpful in aiding the designs we envision. As for your next project...well....enhanced heat-sink technology would be quite useful to us if you think it feasible.
Engines:
Thank you! The increased range of engine capabilities will come in handy. I'll just need an upper and lower limit for what you can produce from the base 240 units. And a listingcost/maintenance adjustments of course.
-
ERROR: Insufficient input for determinate progress. Processing available data for compromise solution.
------
You hesitate over a couple of responses. Assuring corporate that you intend to make hast carefully and gently pointing the general at your rivals is easy. Checking your own bottled water supply takes three seconds. A slightly gushy thank you for the reactor notes is dashed off in five minutes, but you wince at the projected 20% maintenance increase married to the 5% output increase. Nobody loves a hanger queen, but you can't deny that the increased power output will wear out components and require more frequent refurbishment. Smaller engines might have less wear, but the cost is nearly the same as the bigger ones, so it's a bit of a wash.
The first one you debate is your response to is the R&D notification. After some debate you narrow it down to two-one idea that seems a quick-fix for the lack of a heavy energy weapon, and one request for the single most revolutionary rediscovery of the past 50 years. You've seen what can be done to energy-heavy hot-running designs with dual-heat sinks. The weight savings alone lets you build a 'clone' of an Awesome on a 60 ton chasis-one of your classmates worked out the math your second year.
I have two suggestions, one for which I have great hopes but am tempering my expectations, and one born of practicality and expedience.
While I appreciate that your previous experience has been mostly in designing tanks and tank components, our new Battlemech division has some unique requirements. Tanks require heat sinks for energy weapons only-but in a mech, even the heating of autocannon and missiles must be accounted for, and the heat build up caused from walking and jump jets adds up as well. The use of 'Freezers' is by now the best standard for Battlemechs, even if they are significantly more bulky than their counterparts. Our competition would be swiftly left in the dust if we could get these to market early and with good results.
As for the expedient option, there has been a long tradition of poking at a very large or 'binary' laser in the Inner Sphere, though it has never been as popular as PPCs, it is significantly easier to build since it is basically two Large Lasers feeding the same optics. While less efficient, the raw power offers a significant advantage on the battlefield, and I believe it is actually the most powerful energy weapon outside of the Clans. This may be useful even on tanks, especially for new fusion-powered varieties.
I hope you give both of these options the attention that they warrant, and wish you all the best of luck in your future endeavors.
What do you really want in terms of your workforce and how are you going to manage them, that's the big question. You decide that one will need to be settled face to face, to hash out who will be in charge of the designs, who you answer to, who you can ignore and who you must obey, and how to run this whole team. There are also questions of design priorities. You think that 'Milita Mech' is a licence to print money since they ought to be exportable in largish numbers, but bigger designs are paradoxically easier. The Mackie and other early mechs were huge for good reasons. Most important-should you tackle one design at a time, or break the team up into smaller sub-teams and attempt a hail-marry go at all six, or something in the middle. You kill half an hour by outlining the steps of a good design and block out some estimates of how long this might take. You get about five months if nothing goes wrong. Good design and luck can make that faster-but bad design choices and mistakes will slow you down for sure. You stare glummly at the eighth and last step on your chart, which you have slated six weeks for. You don't want to do that, but there's no way around it-you need to simulate the entire design, moving through it's whole range of motion, the instantaneous changes in loading on the frame, the armor moving over the myomer and other sheets of armor, picking the thing up and dropping it, simulating every possible mishap up to and including subjecting it to multiple DFAs in the simulation and seeing how well it stands up to being goomba-stomped by an 'Atlas with a Jetpack' as your refer to your designated DFA testing mech. With a faster computer...ahh, but you know how to pass the time while the damn computer cuts your mech into thousands of slices and calculates load on each and every one. Every thousandth of a second. It takes a while, is what you're saying. And then you always find something that needs to be tweaked.
You take about three minutes to walk from the mostly vaccent Mech Design Annex to the main design building where your boss' office is. The secretary listens to your woes and agrees to let you see Mr. Sanjiv. Stepping into his office you're immediately struck by how...simple everything is. The single computer terminal in the room is shoved into a corner and connected to a very large printer while Mr. Sanjiv sits...at...a...desk...
With a start, you reorient your point of view. That's not a desk, that's a drafting table, and that's not just a printer, it's also a scanner. Your boss is such a dinosaur he's hand-drawing his designs and scanning them into the computer for someone else to translate into proper diagrams. You're not sure if you should be horrified, or taking off your shoes and asking for lessons from the old man. Well, no time for that now. You came here for a purpose.
[ ] Ask to see the resumes of the applicants and so you can review which ones you might want.
[ ] Ask about the chain of command.
[ ] Ask for advice on management of designers.
[ ] Ask technical questions? Be specific
[ ] Write in?
-
I'm a little confused... "the boss" is Mr. Sanjiv? I thought they were two different people...
Also, PERFECT compromise on the R&D suggestions. I couldn't be happier!
As far as the new hires, I thought WarClaw and I were on the same page (i.e., "emphasizing" the University team and Mil-Techs).
As far as the new response, I want to give WarClaw first crack at this one, since I took first shot at the last.
-
Mr. Sanjiv, no formal degree (Or formal education past the sixth grade), is your direct boss, and the head of the Design division of the company. He's the only thing insulating Minako from direct exposure to Executivium.
I interpreted War-claw as seeing the input of the techs as being about equal to a consultant, while I interpreted your input as largely dismissing the university kids in favor of staffing your key design positions with mustangs.
-
Ah, I see... I do dismiss their ability to earn full salaries right out of the gate, but do want to hire the team. We have no indication how big our team can be, right? Being this looks to be a six month project, intern rates won't hurt them, and shouldn't hurt the company. Besides, consider reduced starting salaries an object lesson in budget discipline. They're trying to impose a cost by applying together. There's a price for that.
-
Combination answer
[ ] Ask to see the resumes of the applicants and so you can review which ones you might want.
That's a quick question and shouldn't take more than a minute of the Boss's time.
[ ] Ask about the chain of command.
Same with that one.
[ ] Ask for advice on management of designers.
This one is the meat of the meeting, if he's willing to discuss things. She knows how to run a student team, and how to lead a maintenance crew, but leading a team of experienced designers not so much.
Other than that, she'd like it if she could get a complete listing of all available tech for the design process...I get that it's approximately 3050, but you've already moved redeployment of rocket pods up a few years, so there might be a few other changes. MRM's? Basically, I'm looking to see exactly what she'll have to work with, as well as any cost multipliers...for example: if PPC's are available, but only at 3X normal price, that's a factor she'll need. Likewise the ready availability of several grades of auto-cannon plays a role....Hmmm...Any chance of Medium or Heavy Rifles? She doesn't expect the Boss to have that at hand right away, it's more a request for him to have someone forward it to her when he gets a moment.
-
I agree with Warclaw's priorities, but would add artillery cannons to the list of weapon systems we're curious about.
-
Internet is being a pain in my rear, so no update today, but I have made up a spreadsheet with color-coded availability.
I think this (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S2f6yO0Cb7r4lc74PudnNdmavBqiVRMbdTU7cuz-luo/edit?usp=sharing) should cover most of the standards, and I've even included fluff on the size of the ACs. Colors will shift over time, so this is just the current state of affairs-pending the approval of that new laser for instance, you might see that Large Laser category shift to blue.
-
Sniper Cannon is blue, woo!
And thank you for giving the BLAZER its deserved capitals... :D
-
You start with the big question, the one that's been bothering you ever since you arrived here. "Why am I the one in charge of this-"
He cuts you off. "Because you are quallified in design of Battlemech. You are only one qualified in design of battlemechs. Well, other than the team that put together project 45." He gestures to a chair and then, at your blank look, gets up and opens a filing cabinet before pulling out a large folder and opening it. "Project 45. Our state's true 'first battlemech', rejected by the government for general service. Too handbuilt. Too expensive. Too...pants on head?" He sets the folder down in front of you and you fight down the urge to recoil in horror. 69.8 tons. A reasonable turn of speed for a mech of that tonnage- 65 kilometers per hour is nothing like the Clan's insane performance, but fairly good. Bulky radiators in the legs and on the shoulders and you can see why because it has twelve medium lasers all bunched up in it's arms. Something on your face must show to Mr. Sanjiv because he laughs. "Not a pretty sight, yes? Believe me, it's uglier in person-they never got the coolant lines and the myomer to play nice and they had to move the coolant outside the body in the elbow joint. That was a factor in the rejection-no way to adequately armor that. He sits down beside you-his huge drafting table would block your views of each other if you were sitting in front of the thing, and you fight off your shock at the thing before you, and avoid thinking of...upgrades. Double heat sinks for a start, and maybe jump jets? The thing is a damned flashbulb for sure, even with 26 heat sinks.
"Why-why does it look like it's got a couple of revolvers?" You just can't help but stare at those in particular. The enormous six-ton six-guns in each hand look like ancient relics, and you can't help but at least admire the style of the things even as you despair for the person who had to-are those supposed to ROTATE?!?
Mr. Sanjiv has another laugh at that, his humor sharp and like a bark. "Hah! Because El Presidente said she wanted something like a Pistolero, a gunman with a six-gun, yes? And El Presidente's word is law to those National Academy types, even when she is talking in her more flowery and artistic way, yes? And then they watch old westerns and see the cowboys with two guns at once and think this is redundancy and suddenly you have this monster. This is what happens when someone without a lick of sense designs one of these things. I have sense, but all I know how to work with is wheels, gears and tracks. Your job is to have a lick of sense and to understand how to make one of these."
You nod slowly comprehension dawning. "So you hire an outside to be your ..." you hope he'll fill you in on your official title-you've been bouncing up and down the rank scale in your correspondence.
"Junior Assistant to the Chief Designer. Which is me, though my only job on this project is to have weekly meetings with you and with your team, and to be the official point of contact for our government liaisons. They go through me to get to you, so your team will have less interference. Your task is to take talent and experience and point it at tasks that it can effectively do, and maintain oversight of the projects. And we probably will wind up throwing your team at two projects at once, so aim to pick a team you can split into two mini-teams. Because again, time is our enemy."
You think it's time to raise a point. "Can I have your interview transcripts and the resumes of the potential team members? I think I know the skills I'll want to have, I just need to figure out who has them. I think that we can probably make a working team from the students and the techs, if we leaven the whole thing with some real experts."
He nods and gets up, gesturing for you to follow him to another filing cabinet where he pulls out a whole rank of folders and shoves them into your arms. "That will probably keep you busy for the rest of the day I'm sure, but we need to move quickly. Pick a team as fast as you can, so that the deadline won't affect the actual work too much. Corporate will fund a single team that's got better than average skills, or two teams that are good but understaffed, so I'll suggest you organize your choices with that in mind." He leans against the filing cabinet, ignoring the way it shifts beneath his elbow. "So, how are you planning to organize the work, hmmm?"
You have to admit, you don't know that yourself. And you admit as such to him. "The last time I had a student project due, I had to redo a quarter of the work overnight and one of the team never turned anything in at all-and that wasn't unusual for my projects."
He grunts. "Well, you'll learn by doing. I recommend breaking your team up into sub-teams, specializing in various areas of the design and holding regular meetings between the teams so everyone's on the same page. They tell me this design software makes it easier, but I'm terrible with computers. You need good information flow though, so that the chasis designers know what your myomer people need. It's faster, but a bit more taxing. Alternatively, you could just work on one part of the design at a time, freeze it when it's satisfactory, and then mash it all together when you're done. You'll probably find that to be slower overall, but there's less chance of someone starting an interdepartmental war if you come down hard and say that this is the way things will be."
Hmmm. That's an interesting way to think about it, to be sure. But is that really how you want to design your first real Mech?
[ ] I like an Agile design style, with small frequently met goals, lots of information sharing, and speeds up the process at a cost of constant revisions and less security.
[ ] A brute force Waterfall design philosophy is better, since it provides large clear goals, little confusion, and keeps things Need To Know while ensuring that there's little backward change.
[ ] I am a engineering nerd and I know about a way to do this that I will now Write In.
-
I like an Agile design style, with small frequently met goals, lots of information sharing, and speeds up the process at a cost of constant revisions and less security.
Which means I'll probably need at least one IT security wonk on team...or at least on tap. The engineers, (Especially the students) will need a reminder lecture on information security...and the consequences/penalties for breaching such.
-
I probably shouldn't admit to this, but my Master's is in Engineering Management. It's been a few years since my last project management class (my books are somewhere... probably in storage about 300 miles away), but from what I've seen of large complex projects, the key is to identify the critical path (the hardest/most time consuming things to do), and lay out everything else in relation to that, with regular meetings to report status of individual tasks and keep everything synchronized (adjusting where necessary... I've seen the critical path change suddenly in the middle of a project). This is similar to the Agile style you outlined, but has elements of the Waterfall too. And I completely agree with Warclaw on INFOSEC. That lecture needs to happen no matter how we approach the design.
As far as being able to divide into two teams, I'd want a senior mil-tech leading the university team plus another mil-tech or two (i.e. not enough to do the work themselves) for one, and the government guy leading the rest of the mil-techs, with the company insider as a direct assistant to cover down on budget. Mixing the government guy with the university team would be a recipe for disaster, judging by that pistolero design. Both team leads would need a serious counseling session up front, probably with Mr. Sanjiv backing Minako up. Essentially, they both need to rein in their egos and listen to their team members, keeping the project goal(s) foremost in their minds.
The mil-techs will also need a talking to about fraternization with the university students. The university students will get a completely different talking to about the same topic. Screwing around with other members of the team is a good way to screw up the project (or projects). When the project is over, it's weapons free, but until then, everyone needs to keep their clothes on, and minds on the work, not each other (the mil-tech version uses language not permissible on this board). Pre-existing relationships are OK, but drama is something we simply can't afford (which is precisely why pre-existing relationships are OK, the drama is theoretically settled).
For projects, if we have to do two, I'd want to do the Trooper and Scout Hunter, as both could make use of the large laser we're developing in house. The Trooper will work with two large lasers until R&D figures out the Blazer Cannon design, and both will go in the same location as a hedge in case the large laser doesn't get tested in time and we have to jam an AC/5 in there, while the Scout Hunter will mount sufficient equipment where the large laser is supposed to go to facilitate replacement with an AC/2 if necessary. Speaking of AC's, I think CASE may be worth it if we have to go that route, even at triple cost (which is only 150,000). As much as I was trying to sound positive on varying the engine size, that's not an option on this compressed timeline, and I think Mr. Sanjiv knows it. The Trooper is going to be a 60 ton 4/6/maybe 4 mech, and the Scout Hunter will be a 40 ton 6/9/maybe 6. I didn't see jump jets on the availability spreadsheet, and if we have to design them from scratch, they go. They're complex, and while ordinarily would be completely worth the effort, not in this quick and dirty design regime. My sense would be to just jam heat sinks in where the jump jets will go later (class C refits for the win, to include the Blazer Cannon someday).
If we start with autocannon designs, I foresee the upgrade path as:
Add jump jets and/or ACs to Large Lasers (whichever gets finished first, then the other)
Dual Large Lasers to Blazer Cannons
Single heat sinks to Doubles
I'd make it clear in outlining the above that I don't think planned obsolescence is an option (i.e., going with ACs even if the large lasers test OK).
-
Agile and Waterfall are software design terms and represent pretty much the far-ends of a spectrum between local optimization and long-term planning. Or to put it differently, we're talking about the difference between Valve software where there are no teams assigned to projects (http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1074301/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf) at all and the Tupelov design bureau. Not that either establishment would use those terms I'll admit. We're gonna be taking a middle road here-Mr. Sanjiv is intentionally a bit of A.N. Tupelov himself, but he's not quite the same character. I'm also drawing some inspiration from this article (http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-035.htm), so maybe you'll get thrown a curveballl at some point and need to redo a lot of work.
And I forgot to include jump jets, but they're GREEN. One of the Pistolero prototypes deleted four heat sinks to include a moderate jump capability, but that one quickly proved to have the Weak Legs quirk and actually crushed one of the 'vertebrae' in it's main support structure while jumping. The jump jets worked fine, they were just coupled to a design that couldn't handle the stress and which was already criminally undersinked.
-
On the jump jets: AWESOME! That's one less thing we have to worry about upgrading later.
That naval design article is amusing. I experienced one dry dock period where we crammed 90,000 man hours into a window built for 45,000. Later, I got to experience the shipyard full force in a different ship. Pure, unadulterated pain. Now I'm in the staff requirements business at the five-sided PowerPoint collider (but not for ships, per se).
As that article outlines, working with physical systems is a little different than software. That's where the critical path method comes in, because it gives the bean counters something to deviate from when estimating manpower costs (e.g., how much overtime is going to be needed to make schedule).
One of my first graduate classes was on software design processes, and was very interesting, but obviously pre-dated Agile and Waterfall as terms of art.
-
"Well, I like the idea of keeping everyone on the same page, but I guess we'll need to worry about security a bit more-"
A storm of emotion passes across Mr. Sanjiv's face and he nods tightly. "Yes. Keep security in mind. Don't get close to anyone, it's bad for relationships to have your date taken away by security for interrogation." Wow. Is that personal experience? You don't know if asking will make things better or worse, but you decide just to nod and go with the flow.
"Anyways, I was wondering if in light of that style of management you might have a bit more advice about hiring and what I should be looking for." You hope that you can stear him away from the sore spot of security safely, without getting into a big lecture. You really hope you can avoid more relationship advice from old dudes-grandpa's lecture when you came out as Pansexual was bad enough.
Thankfully he regains his composure quickly. "Yes. You should be aware that the military types, they all have five or twenty-seven years in the service. Hierarchy is what they are used to, they will expect to be told to do things. Initiative is not something they will be used to exercising. You will need to coach them to use their own judgement-many of them have good educations and practical experience, especially the retired careerists. But by the same token some of them will lie to you and then try to work around you, and we cannot have that. The university students at least, are used to doing things of their own initiative. They also have programmers-very useful I am told, we can probably save some money by programing our own software for the Mechs instead of buying a generic type." That gets a understanding nod from you-software packages for mechs do come in easily-installed pre-designed blocks that are easy enough to buy...but nothing ever competes with good custom software. And if it's even halfway decent? Yeah, you'll save some money with custom programming over the mid-range stuff. For intellectual property that was developed over 300 years ago, those companies sure are reluctant to licence it for less than an arm and a leg. And when they insist on physical installation media instead of transfering orders via Comstar...
"I think I will be able to free up a few people internally, even give you one of my other assistants to help. You can have either Niklos or Mawar. Mawar is our weapons expert, she's familiar with all our local production's little quirks, and knows most of the imports you might need. Niklos is a lucky man, so never gamble against him, but he is very good at catching little errors before they grow. Both of them are good enough at budgeting things and navigating the company, "
Select one in-company transfer:
[ ] Niklos has Edge to spare, and can get you back on track without wasting time.
[ ] Mawar will geek out with you on weapons, and can help install them quickly.
"As for the National academy members... I might suggest a few of them. Professor Dwi specializes in gyro-stabilization systems and controls. He's tenured, so he can afford to take a sabatical from the university to consult here. Doctor Sukarno's name means gentlemanly, and that is a lie, he is evil tempered and foul to work with-but he is undeniably a genius. He will make trouble, so it's up to you to decide if his omnidisciplinary skills are worth the trouble. Doctor Sandoval is our resident armor expert-she has pushed our technology forward 50 years in her career, and will give you some tips to working with her materials. I think we can afford only one of them though-they are all highly in demand for projects.
[ ]Professor Dwi will make certain that all is upright and stable, standing on it's own two feet. He gives -1 to the TN for the design of either Gyros and Articulation, or cockpit and sensors.
[ ]Doctor Sukarno can make work light and easy, or heavy and a chore-he adds 1d3-2 to the TN for each phase of work.
[ ]Doctor Sandoval has a good eye for armor layouts, and will bring her expertise to bear to make certain there are no holes to be found. -1 to the TN for getting armor into place.
-
It's better to be lucky than good, so I'm going with Niklos for the in-company transfer (R&D already has the right team for Blazer Cannon development, and if Mawar is part of it, the last thing I want to do is pull her out).
As for the National Academy member, we're team building here, so Sukarno is right out. I was thinking max armor designs for both the Trooper and Scout Hunter, so I'm leaning toward Dr. Sandoval, but am willing to go with Professor Dwi if Warclaw prefers him.
As far as the military techs, when you say "five or twenty-seven years in service", do you mean "5 to 27" or that they've all either just finished their first terms or are long in the tooth?
I'm thinking the military techs led by the National Academy member will get the Trooper, while the University team led by a tech will get the Scout Hunter.
-
It's better to be lucky than good, so I'm going with Niklos for the in-company transfer (R&D already has the right team for Blazer Cannon development, and if Mawar is part of it, the last thing I want to do is pull her out).
As for the National Academy member, we're team building here, so Sukarno is right out. I was thinking max armor designs for both the Trooper and Scout Hunter, so I'm leaning toward Dr. Sandoval, but am willing to go with Professor Dwi if Warclaw prefers him.
As far as the military techs, when you say "five or twenty-seven years in service", do you mean "5 to 27" or that they've all either just finished their first terms or are long in the tooth?
I'm thinking the military techs led by the National Academy member will get the Trooper, while the University team led by a tech will get the Scout Hunter.
Mawar isn't from R&D, so rest easy there.
The local military formations are divided into Milita, Regulars and Guards. Militia are weekend warriors, local forces, not quite up to snuff but fill out the lines and fight like lions to defend their homes. Regulars and Guards are where the action's at-they're structured High-low, with the regulars still using plenty of primitive Vehicles because it's taking time to replace all of them. Both have a five year term of volunteer service, but troops and NCOs can then re-enlist for another 22 years-going full carreerist like that has a good chance to get you moved into a Guards Regiment, if only because it gives them more time to train you to handle their imported equipment.
Incidentally, if you try to build two designs at the same time and split your team, that will increase the difficulty of making both designs. It will also break up the balanced synergy of having the bright new ideas tempered by hard won experience-you can't get the benefits of balance if the two sides you hope to balance out never work with each other.
-
I wouldn't split the team by choice, but if we're forced to, I don't see how to do it without either splitting up the University team (who might object, given how they applied), or doing it the way I proposed. Although... now that I think about it, the University team might just be willing to "split" up to work on two designs. We could then rely on their natural team work to cross-pollinate between the two (jumping large laser armed machines being relatively similar in the first place).
Budget-wise, I wouldn't expect to be able to hire more than one of the 27-year veterans. Is that correct?
-
My preference would be for Niklos and Sandoval.
As for the first design....I was thinking we should be doing the Trooper mech. The basic unit that every other design will be intended to support or cover weak spots of.
As this is intended to be the first mech design produced domestically, I was thinking that we should first concentrate on the one likely to be produced in the most numbers, as well as being the most generalist. We can look at more specialist designs once the basic unit is ready to go.
-
I agree with Warclaw... if we only have to do one project, the Trooper is the one to go for.
-
I wouldn't split the team by choice, but if we're forced to, I don't see how to do it without either splitting up the University team (who might object, given how they applied), or doing it the way I proposed. Although... now that I think about it, the University team might just be willing to "split" up to work on two designs. We could then rely on their natural team work to cross-pollinate between the two (jumping large laser armed machines being relatively similar in the first place).
Budget-wise, I wouldn't expect to be able to hire more than one of the 27-year veterans. Is that correct?
...I think you can hire more than four people for your battemech design team. You're on a budget and you're under pressure to win a contract, but it's not like the company lacks for assets. The prototype is going to be built on spec after all-and then six more times. Nor is it as if these people are exactly golden gods of the design world. They have lots of experience maintaining Mechs and doing patch jobs and quick fixes, but their actual design experience is 0 days. Many of them have obtained engineering related degrees, but actually using them to create something new instead of making do inside an existing design? They haven't done a lot of that.
Basically, I'm not gonna make you hire 4 named NPCs and call that a 'team'. There's gonna be some faceless design mooks involved. Even the internal transfers and science academy had design mooks sufficent to hire a decent sized team.
-
I'm still not sure exactly how big the team can be, but I'm fairly certain for the price of one 27-year veteran, I can hire at least two who have only finished their five year terms. And honestly, what I'm looking for from the 27-year folks is technical leadership, not necessarily pen to paper design work. How big is the University team that applied together?
-
Another thing I'm looking for is a logistics specialist from the Conventional Armor side of the company.
Why? Well, while Minako is familiar with mech design, when it comes time to actually make the prototype she'll need help with the ins and outs of logistical planning and ordering so that they have what they need on time, but don't either end up waiting for parts, or wondering what to do with a huge pile of armor plates and no frame to mount them on yet.
-
The school team are Big Enough, okay? Don't press me for more specific numbers-it's currently in a state of quantum uncertainty between 5 and 40 people.
As for production engineers, they'll show up when it's getting to be time to move to the prototyping stage. Anyways, let's do this.
----
"I think I'll get a list to you as soon as I can. But if it's not too much trouble, the armor specialist sounds like someone I could really use the help of. Especially if she can do good work cosmetically." That gets a bit of a strange look. "Well, the Atlas was designed to terrify. But I think we might be able to make a Mech look reliable and worthy of respect as well. Doing it without compromising protection will be the real trick. And we would be grateful for a troubleshooter-though I'll have to loan him all my old textbooks so he can get up to speed."
That earns you another barking laugh and after he confirms that you have what you need, Mr. Sanjiv lets you go back to your side of the building and start organizing. Spreading out the resumes, you start to pick your final team, putting them on empty desks to organize where people will be-and wondering if maybe you shouldn't put some wheels on the desks so that people can move them to where they are most needed. Alas, the power setup in the room probably won't allow that, but one can always dream. Stuipd cords getting in the way... you do rearrange a few things, getting the positioning right. The design will ultimately move through many phases, but the first thing that needs to be more or less locked down will be the chassis. So for now you arrange the offices so that basic structural design has pride of place-you'll probably shift that as time goes on. It takes most of the morning to get halfway done-you'll probably be all day at this...but there is one person you can interview yourself. Actually more than one if you're being perfectly honest.
[ ] Find Niklos and grab lunch with him at a curry house?
[ ] Make sure Mawar has no hard feelings over lunch at the tapas bar?
-
I vote for lunch with Niklos, but am amenable to talking to Mawar if Warclaw would rather.
Between 5 and 40? OK... so from "taking a bit of a risk on salary" to "truly insane"... :D
-
Lunch w/ Niklos, and send an e-mail (or equivalent) to Mawar seeing if they are interested in getting Tapas after work. (Tapas is best late evening anyway)
-
I think I will accept the dual-meal gambit!
----
"So. What can we talk about here?" You were able to find Niklos without much trouble-he's fairly well known, and about ten or fifteen years older than you, but more than willing to let you join his group of friends for a lunch out down the street from the compound to a curry joint run by some locals in the indian style, whatever that is. He's a fairly popular guy it seems, but you don't know if you can trust anyone here-or the government not to make people disappear to some temperate gulag if you mention anything specific.
You're regretting not having done more research before you came here. First there was the terrible mid-day heat you've been trying to avoid-forty degrees in the shade if you're not incorrect, and the heat-island effect just makes this area even hotter with parking lots and industrial and service buildings baking in the intense sunlight. You knew that Neo Brasilia was an equatorial city, but you hadn't really realized just what that meant. A girl from a planet without any tropical zone at all, this place has really done a number on you just from walking down the street. You're gonna need to buy new clothes-half your wardrobe has long sleeves and you're not prepared for a long stay in a tropical environment. Worse, the food is strange too. You thought you knew what curry was. It's got some spices in it, but it's basically just a stew poured over rice. This though, purports to be an 'authentic' Curry house, and it's very odd. Flatbread, yogurt, spiced chicken, the menu is a litany of confusion and you wind up just letting Niklos order for you.
Niklos is a big guy. He's tall but also running towards fat, jolly in a rather cultivated way, likes jokes and telling stories-(the one about the landmine and the hovercraft will have you giggling when you think of it for weeks) and you have a sneaking suspicion that he's ordered something hot enough to make a joke of you. At least the flatbread is tasty enough, and you nibble some as he and the others consider your question. "We can speak about...generalities out here. But we try to avoid talking shop too much here until things are public knowledge."
You nod, it's a sensible policy. "So what is public knowledge? I know you guys have a fairly advanced project, can you talk about that."
The guys and gals loosen up. "The T-50, yeah. It's gonna be faster and better armed than the T-15. Not like that's any big trick. The T-15 was designed so that pirates would laugh so hard they wouldn't bother to count them. The first ones didn't even have composite armor-just face-hardened steel plates. The more modern ones are better but they still have terrible 40mm guns. The problem is that the company made it's money building those tanks, so when they got long in the tooth and fell out of favor, our profits kinda went with them. So we've spent the past two years mocking up every turret configuration and armor layout under the sun, from the conventional to the 'quad laser'." The term Quad-laser gets a bit of a laugh around the table and you join in after a beat, the 4 medium turret looking quite comical in your minds eye. Effective at short ranges maybe, an urban fighter, but nothing you'd take seriously. "We even had a PPC turret mocked up, but the numbers on the imports weren't good. The design works been mostly done for a while, we just needed to finally decide on which one we were going to build. After that, well everyone says the Tapir is getting a bit long in the tooth and standard APCs haven't exactly impressed. Or maybe someone might have mentioned a little other project?"
The two of you share a grin before the food arrives-you get some sort of bird slathered in something and take a bite hesitantly. You're not exactly considered tender-mouthed back home, not compared to grandpa with his opinion that pepper and salt are excessive. Still, the sensation of heat nearly overwhelms the juiciness of the meat and while you brave a few more bites you ultimately need to seek the succor of your water to laughter all around.
----
Mawar has a scar running from the corner of her eye to her jawline, and even show's you it's partner on her shoulder. It's an ugly chemical burn from 'An experiment with early laser technology-glad we don't use them anymore, that's for sure.' She could probably aford to have it removed but Talking with her about the quirks of local weapons is enlightening. For instance, you learn that the LRM launchers in 10 and 20 tubes that you can get locally are cosmetically identical from the front. It's the reloading gear that's the difference. And she's enthusiastically giving you the rundown of everything, fond of having found another weapons geek and you're glad to be making a friend.
Still, friendship is a two way street-what kind of interests and hobbies do you have to share with your new friend?
[ ] Grandpa's lessons in marksmanship and skiing left you with a lifelong passion for fresh powder both on the slopes and in your rifles.
[ ] Your eighth grade art teacher let you get hands on with painting and sculpture, and you've never fully given up either.
[ ] You are an inveterate Fangirl, obsessed with drama and high romance, theater and books and holo-dramas.
[ ] A great singing voice, a good attitude at parties, and a love of karaoke... you have two of those things.
-
I'm going to have to go with option one, though I'm sure skiing on this planet is hard to come by...
-
Option Jade Harley selected: "No grandpa this is a perfectly deadly gun that shoots perfectly deadly Bullets!"
---
When you were four, your family left your home in Albany on New Oslo to go live with your maternal grandfather. Grandpa lived in a strange place, on a different continent far from Albany, and you grew up in a rather simple and severe community, where it felt like half of every year was spent burried in snow and the other half spent chopping wood, fishing and hunting for food for the winter. You Grandpa taught you to ski your first winter, and when you were eight, bought you your first rifle. Just a tiny thing, barely more than an airgun. Your dad wasn't very happy though about the old man's lessons in sharpshooting and skiing, the classic nordic biathalon, but you absorbed both skills. You learned how to conceal yourself in snowy terrain, how to shoot without giving away your position, even how to hide your breath.
It wasn't, you explain, until you were about 15 that your learned the truth about your Grandpa. Because when the Combine gave up New Oslo, they sent your grandpa a parting gift in the form of six DEST ninjas who snuck into his house and tried to kill him. Grandpa Simo proved that night that his nickname was not inaccurate, for the White Death who had killed over 700 men took six more lives that night. Several of his hunting buddies found him the next morning, bleeding quietly and sipping vodka while the corpses cooled in the snow outside. The old men at the hospital during visiting hours told you the whole story-how your grandfather had been a guerrilla and assassin who took the lives of those who oppressed the people-though your Grandpa simply said that he had shot a lot of innocent men as well as evil ones. You had to evacuate New Oslo in a hurry when the Claners landed...but grandpa is still there. You hope he's not having to shoot anyone, but in your heart, you suspect the White Death once more has taken to the slopes with his rifle.
Your rifle is still at the spacepot, waiting for the licence to clear and for you to be allowed to pick it up. You're not as good a shot as your grandpa. After all, the best you can shoot at is only about 800 meters with you G-160. Grandpa once shot a man at a kilometer and a half with such a rifle, or so the story goes.
"So what you're telling me...is that you're some sort of mech-designing sniper badass trained by an even more badass old man who secretly trained you?" The question makes you giggle-snort into your drink and when you recover, the two of you hoist a glass to grandpa.
...wherever he is. The joy of telling stories behind you, you're feeling down when you get back to your hotel room. Not much time for research or work tonight just... maybe something to make you feel better and blunt the homesickness. Or maybe that's just calamari.
[ ] Write in a suggestion for something to do before heading to bed to cheer you up. Or just write in about how Minako feels right now.
-
Perhaps it was the alcohol. Perhaps the stories of home. Might even have been the heat and humidity, so unlike New Oslo. Whatever it was, Minako was feeling homesick and mildly depressed as she collapsed onto the small couch in her hotel room.
And, just like when she was in college and couldn't concentrate, she pulled out her sketch pad and began to draw. Flowers, dragons, intricate knot-work, nothing spectacular just a little bit of flash for her portfolio.
One of the other things she'd learned from Grandpa that Mom and Dad hadn't approved of was how to tattoo. Grandpa had insisted she learn a number of portable and common skill sets that would allow her to survive and find a place wherever she ended up. If the mech design gig didn't work out, she'd still be able to follow a number of paths. Bartending, Tattooing, light carpentry...she even had an EMT license kicking around somewhere in her bags. It wasn't local of course, but it should be enough to at least let her take a competency exam to get a ticket here if she needed to.
-
Sounds good to me! O0
-
I'm gonna take this idea and run with it in a slightly different direction. :D
------------
Your mom had been the one to insist that you have backup skills. Grandpa was nice, but as far as he was concerned, you were going to be a high-tech engineer, a guerrilla commando, or a trapper and herder, and there wasn't really another option. Mom had a bit more sensible outlook, figuring that you might not be able to make it as a Mech designer or a nuclear engineer. She figured, all else being equal, bartender was a skill you could use in any non-Muslim community. Grandpa, being sensible about the skills he wanted you to have, decided that medic training was appropriate, while dad kept you busy more than one summer with his construction and repair projects. And you picked up a few more things as your teenage and college years ticked by-your master's thesis was the only thing that forced you to drop other work and totally concentrate your attention.
In any case, you added a few new skills in the year on the run. Tattooing is one-you picked it up on the refugee ships fleeing New Oslo, putting your existing art skills to new use. Illustrating your own mech concepts has been a hobby more than a skill, but you've always wanted to paint your first real Mech before it's realized in metal and myomer. Mostly you are on the 'drawing' rather than the actual ink-on-skin part of the discipline, but you're pretty sure you have a steady hand and can stay within your own lines. You certainly didn't mess up that "MOM" tat you gave the guy on the trip out here. You add a new knot-pattern, a ryu in it's long an sinuous form wrapped around a Dragon-mech, and a pair of crossed rifles with a wreath around them to your portfolio of designs before you hit the hay.
You wake up early, and have a decision to make. You don't have any of your new hires just yet, they won't arrive until the middle of next week from what you were told. And you have been putting off some of the local bureaucratic tasks, like getting registered fro the full spectrum of social programs and such. Someone with more paranoia than sense might want to keep off government registers, but you know you're being watched anyways, and having a ration book and medical insurance won't intensify that scrutiny. You're a valuable foreigner, and they'd have to be complete idiots not to have some protection for you-in fact, that sedan that always follows you to work seems pretty suspicious. On the other hand, getting a jump on work and handling the other stuff on the weekend is probably do-able, though government offices are closed on Sundays, and only have half-days on Saturday.
[ ] A good work-ethic is essential-no taking a personal day so early in your new job! We're in 'throw mechs at the wall mode', maybe look at an alternative engine from those performance tweaks?
[ ] Unless there's an unexpected problem, I can't actually do much today. Let's get the basics done and maybe look into the housing situation and transportation. Drivers are nice, but the minder goes away after the first month.
-
Definitely option one here, though we know an alternate engine isn't realistic. I'm sure there are more useful things to work through (as Warclaw and I have been discussing). Housing and transportation can wait for Saturday, and the government offices are open for a half day then too...
-
agreed...one question though:
On the weapons and equipment availability chart you gave us, you list "Rocket artillery".
I can't find the listing for that on Sarna.net nor in SSW. Can we get some stats?
-
Glad to know it wasn't just me on the rocket artillery... I thought maybe it was a book I didn't have.
-
'Rocket Artillery' are the longer-range and less accurate cousins of your standard rocket launchers, meant to replicate massed artillery rockets used by the soviets and germans in WW2 in appearance-they are correspondingly very cheap (only 90,000 C-bills) and very disposeable being one-use only. I cooked them up for a very cheap and dirty system that was throwing around a lot of retro-tech.
A single one-use pod and mounting brackets for it weighs five tons and takes up five crits on a mech. Because they spray burning solid fuel propellant all over the insides of their launcher when ignited, they generate 20 heat on launch, but only do ten/five damage. The main use of them is to throw one or two on a flatbed truck, tack on a basic targeting system, and rain down a solid barrage from four mapsheets away from the target, which should ideally be stopped or immobile like a Dropship. For mechs, they're both the lightest and most dubiousy useful artillery option-they're a bit less than one-third the size of an Arrow IV with one ton of arrow, but that can launch 5 missiles that each do 50% more damage.
-
Cool... Katyushas FTW!
-
You head into work again and get there a little late-traffic is killer this morning, and your driver has to spend half an hour in a jam. The office is still as dead as a corpse, though now there is an email waiting for you that says that the in-house transfers will be ready to begin their briefing on monday of next week. Far more alarming is an email to you from the HR VP who was all smiles the day you started work.
Several of our major shareholders have requested a private meeting with you. While none of them have a controlling interest in the company, I can see no reason to deny them a chance to meet you. They do control 20% of the stock, and want to see that their dividends will be going up. A personal meeting where they get to ask you a few questions to calm their worries is the least we can do. The meeting is scheduled for 3:30, so please arrive at least a half hour beforehand so we can slot your presentation into
Fair warning though: this bunch is a lot of ex-mercenaries who got paid with a combination of C-bills, land grants, and stock in newly privatized companies. Some of them haven't adjusted to civilian life well. One of them is an addict. All of them have Opinions about Battlemechs. Bring something to show them-anything at all. I don't expect you to wow them out of the gate, but we need to keep these people at least marginally happy.
You don't like the sound of this. Being shown off to a bunch of mercs is one thing, but being show off to a bunch of washed up ex-mercs sounds even worse. Mercs are the most impossible to satisfy and difficult to be paid by customers according to your teachers. Anyone with decent mechs out here would have been even worse. Paid off with enough to retire on, it seems the allowed their baser instincts to rule the day. You don't have a connection to outside networks, but you can imagine what some of them are like-the junkie is probably pretty cool if you can get them while they are sufficiently high and happy.
Still, you have until 3PM to knock together something to impress them. If you have to participate in this dog and pony show though, you guess you can...
[ ] Mock up a new design concept to wow them-either an Assault to show off something big and stompy, a light to make something fast, or a Found-Tech design utilizing the
latest tech that you can't hope to build, but is sure to impress.
[ ]You have a tablet and some drawing software, there's time to illustrate a single piece of concept art for one of your existing design concepts.
[ ]Crunch some numbers, call production, see if you can't get an estimate for how many of these the 'factory' can make. They want profits, well let's think about selling mechs.
-
Crunch some numbers, call production, see if you can't get an estimate for how many of these the 'factory' can make. They want profits, well let's think about selling mechs.
-
As tempting as it is to throw together an assault with a Long Tom Cannon ([drool]), I think over-promising at this point, especially with that crowd, is a bad idea. I'm with Warclaw.
-
After several hours of discussion, you have a few rules of thumb in hand. The key to an efficent assembly operation is scale-one mech at a time is very slow to produce, since each part requires it's own tooling which can only be operated by skilled workers. Since the machinery then sits idle until it is needed again, building one mech at a time can take a long time-a single Atlas, assembled from scratch in the best-equipped machine shop with all the dies and jigs already in place and highly skilled assembly workers, would take two months.
Four Atlases, building in parallel but not perfectly in synch, would be done in one month. Nine fabrication bays working in harmony, spreading out the completion and need for each part, achieves a rate of 13 or 14 Atlases a month. The rule of thumb with these smaller-scale factories seems to be 'take the number in construction at once, and the square-root of that will multiply by your production.' Of course, there are complicating issues. Your design is one of them-it might be easy to assemble or hard. Supplies of subcomponents is another-with the new Large Laser for instance, you're looking at a design that isn't in production yet and can't be used for mass production for at least a year. Someone needs to build a assembly line for those components first. However, since the design will need to move through a prototype stage first, it seems likely that a ready laser will be ready by the time things go Seria.
Serial production is another thing-as time goes on, the amount of time and resources spent making the design shrinks, if investment is made to simplify it. Most of the big factories did this years ago, and it does have diminishing returns, but after five years of full production, some assembly lines cut the time required by a factor of three-fourths. Getting good serial production figures depends more than anything else on numbers though, and you doubt the local government can absorb a thousand mechs. It would be neat if they could! But the high production levels that justify Hephestus-style production lines and high efficiency production aren't justified out in the periphery. The capital to invest just isn't there 98% of the time.
The upshot of all this is that if you can compress four roles into two basic frames and configurations, differing only by the minimum, you can realize savings and efficiency that would otherwise be out of reach. You choose to emphasize the ability to make a slight profit on the government contract, with the future sales-be they to Cabanagem regiments or mercenaries or the Great Houses-being mostly profit.
Still, which do you think is better to put emphasis on?
[ ] A mixed Energy/balistic/missile heavy trooper and a missile support trooper? Margins are a little bigger here.
[ ] The Light hunter/scout pair of designs? Suitable for export without worrying too much about selling state secrets or powerful tech.
[ ] Sell them on your research alone, and go in with shakey estimates backed by stronger production figures.
-
Coincidentally enough, Warclaw and I have been discussing option one almost exactly as you describe it. I still want to keep the door open for my initial flashbulb design (4/6/4, two large lasers, four mediums, 16 HS, max armor), but the concept we've been working on is outlined below.
First, a base chassis with a mix of secondary weapons (that we're close to agreeing on):
60 tons
4/6
Max Armor (12.5 tons)
SRM-2 (Head)
2 MGs (CT)
Medium Laser (LT)
One ton SRM ammo and 1/2 ton of MG Ammo in the RT with CASE (at triple cost)
11 HS
This leaves 18 tons for primary armament and cooling/ammo.
Cost is around 4.3M at this point (due to tripling the cost of the CASE), and everything but the RT and RA is the same between the two designs.
For the mixed armament trooper, we were talking about:
AC/10 (RA) and two tons of ammo (in the CASE protected RT)
Two additional SRM-2s in the RT, drawing from the same bin as the launcher in the Head
Two more HS
For a total cost around 4.7M
For the missile support version:
Two LRM-15s (RA/RT) with four tons of ammo in the RT
For a total cost just under 5M.
We avoided jump jets on cost and design complexity grounds, though for comparison my flashbulb comes in just over 5M with them.
-
Coincidentally enough, Warclaw and I have been discussing option one almost exactly as you describe it. I still want to keep the door open for my initial flashbulb design (4/6/4, two large lasers, four mediums, 16 HS, max armor), but the concept we've been working on is outlined below.
First, a base chassis with a mix of secondary weapons (that we're close to agreeing on):
60 tons
4/6
Max Armor (12.5 tons)
SRM-2 (Head)
2 MGs (CT)
Medium Laser (LT)
One ton SRM ammo and 1/2 ton of MG Ammo in the RT with CASE (at triple cost)
11 HS
This leaves 18 tons for primary armament and cooling/ammo.
Cost is around 4.3M at this point (due to tripling the cost of the CASE), and everything but the RT and RA is the same between the two designs.
For the mixed armament trooper, we were talking about:
AC/10 (RA) and two tons of ammo (in the CASE protected RT)
Two additional SRM-2s in the RT, drawing from the same bin as the launcher in the Head
Two more HS
For a total cost around 4.7M
For the missile support version:
Two LRM-15s (RA/RT) with four tons of ammo in the RT
For a total cost just under 5M.
We avoided jump jets on cost and design complexity grounds, though for comparison my flashbulb comes in just over 5M with them.
Fun fact, he showed me one of his earlier prototypes. So I knew what you were aiming for already.
If you wanted to know, the Pistolero was a 4/6/4 70 tonner with 12 medium lasers all bunched up in the arms, and a bunch of negative quirks that make it not very fun to pilot. On the other hand, it does mean that there is a perfectly good 280 rated engine design just waiting for the bugs to be worked out on the market :D
-
There's a functioning 280 engine design on planet? [drool]
-
I've added to the existing spreadsheet a page of engines developed on spec by the local Academy of Science-a few of them are for speculative future designs, made on the assumption that something will use them, and others are deliberate copies of successful designs. Anything marked Prototype should still in bench-testing, while 'serial production' denotes an engine nearly ready for prime time. Two further ratings can be not found on this list-Design, which only exists on paper, and Mass Production, which denotes a mature design that has extensive production. That said, since the 280 is the only one that has been installed in a Mech, it's also the only one with an explicit upside or downside-the poor performance quirk.
As before, Green is bought from another vendor, though this time it would be licencing the production.
-
Cool... with regard to the 25 rated engine, I had set up a whole line of vehicles for my non-canon unit a few years back: 5 ton jeep (9/14), 9 ton light truck (5/8), 15 ton medium truck (3/5), and 45 ton mech recovery vehicle (1/2). The base chassis all had half a ton of armor, with an optional armor package throwing an extra two tons on for 10 points on each side. Fractional accounting made them work best, but they were functional even under TW rules (aside from the 9 ton, of course).
That 160 engine could also give us a very cheap trooper at 40 tons...
-
Indeed it would...
In fact, I have a couple designs that just MIGHT be what we need for a starting unit.
One down-teched version meant for export to other periphery realms: Quite capable against the lower tech opponents seen out here, but limited against more modern designs. Styling includes a small armor shield on the left arm, meant to evoke thoughts of knights, and the Medium Rifle's housing is specifically sculpted to resemble a short Lance. In short, it LOOKS quite impressive....
trooper-40 (Periphery Export Version) T-40 PX
Mass: 40 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Chassis Config: Biped
Rules Level: Experimental Tech
Era: All Eras (non-canon)
Tech Rating/Era Availability: D/X-X-X-A
Production Year: 0
Cost: 2,673,113 C-Bills
Battle Value: 764
Chassis: Unknown Standard
Power Plant: Unknown 160 Fusion Engine
Walking Speed: 43.2 km/h
Maximum Speed: 64.8 km/h
Jump Jets: Unknown
Jump Capacity: 120 meters
Armor: Unknown Standard Armor
Armament:
1 Medium Rifle
1 SRM-4
3 Machine Guns
1 Small Shield
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communications System: Unknown
Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown
================================================================================
Equipment Type Rating Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Standard 67 points 4.00
Engine: Fusion Engine 160 6.00
Walking MP: 4
Running MP: 6
Jumping MP: 4 Standard
Jump Jet Locations: 2 LT, 2 RT 2.00
Heat Sinks: Single Heat Sink 10 0.00
Heat Sink Locations: 1 LT, 2 RT, 1 RA
Gyro: Standard 2.00
Cockpit: Standard 3.00
Actuators: L: SH+UA+LA+H R: SH+UA+LA
Armor: Standard Armor AV - 136 8.50
Internal Armor
Structure Factor
Head 3 9
Center Torso 12 17
Center Torso (rear) 6
L/R Torso 10 15
L/R Torso (rear) 5
L/R Arm 6 12
L/R Leg 10 20
================================================================================
Equipment Location Heat Critical Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SRM-4 RT 3 1 2.00
3 Machine Guns LT 0 3 1.50
Medium Rifle RA 2 2 5.00
Small Shield LA - 3 2.00
@Medium Rifle (18) RT - 2 2.00
@SRM-4 (25) RT - 1 1.00
@MG (200) LT - 1 1.00
Free Critical Slots: 27
BattleForce Statistics
MV S (+0) M (+2) L (+4) E (+6) Wt. Ov Armor: 5 Points: 8
4j 2 2 0 0 2 0 Structure: 3
Special Abilities: MEL, SHLD, SRCH, ES, SEAL, SOA
And now the version meant for use by the home guard and more trusted buyers.
Hits harder, meant for staying power on the battlefield. The lower-end medium version of an assault mech. (Inspired by the Panther) CASE and an AMS system drive the costs up a bit, but I think the increase in survivability is worth it.
trooper-40 (Home Guard Version) T-40 HG
Mass: 40 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Chassis Config: Biped
Rules Level: Experimental Tech
Era: All Eras (non-canon)
Tech Rating/Era Availability: E/E-F-D-A
Production Year: 0
Cost: 2,874,013 C-Bills
Battle Value: 932
Chassis: Unknown Standard
Power Plant: Unknown 160 Fusion Engine
Walking Speed: 43.2 km/h
Maximum Speed: 64.8 km/h
Jump Jets: Unknown
Jump Capacity: 120 meters
Armor: Unknown Standard Armor w/ CASE
Armament:
1 Large Laser
1 SRM-6
2 Machine Guns
1 Anti-Missile System
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communications System: Unknown
Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown
================================================================================
Equipment Type Rating Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Standard 67 points 4.00
Engine: Fusion Engine 160 6.00
Walking MP: 4
Running MP: 6
Jumping MP: 4 Standard
Jump Jet Locations: 2 LT, 2 RT 2.00
Heat Sinks: Single Heat Sink 12 2.00
Heat Sink Locations: 1 CT, 4 LT, 1 RA
Gyro: Standard 2.00
Cockpit: Standard 3.00
Actuators: L: SH+UA+LA+H R: SH+UA+LA
Armor: Standard Armor AV - 136 8.50
CASE Locations: 1 LT 0.50
Internal Armor
Structure Factor
Head 3 9
Center Torso 12 17
Center Torso (rear) 6
L/R Torso 10 15
L/R Torso (rear) 5
L/R Arm 6 12
L/R Leg 10 20
================================================================================
Equipment Location Heat Critical Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anti-Missile System HD 1 1 0.50
SRM-6 LT 4 2 3.00
Large Laser RA 8 2 5.00
2 Machine Guns LA 0 2 1.00
@SRM-6 (15) LT - 1 1.00
@MG (1/2) (100) LT - 1 0.50
@Anti-Missile System (12) LT - 1 1.00
Free Critical Slots: 27
BattleForce Statistics
MV S (+0) M (+2) L (+4) E (+6) Wt. Ov Armor: 5 Points: 9
4j 2 2 0 0 2 0 Structure: 3
Special Abilities: AMS, CASE, SRCH, ES, SEAL, SOA
-
Nice! That second one could have a variant that's a cross between a Valkyrie and a Griffin by exchanging the SRM, MGs and AMS for an LRM-10 and a couple of tons of ammo.
-
Okay, I'll let you retro-actively add that one to your concepts. Once.
----
The presentation doesn't go well. Which is not to say that it goes over worse than you thought it would. But your presentation is being made to a group which includes a man with blown pupils and a joygirl in his lap, and a faux-Generalisimo complete with bemedaled sash who demands to know where you have hidden your assault designs with the big bucks price tags. Then there's the Capellan pauper turned-princess who has gone all silk fans and High Liao Court madness, and the very epitome of a monkey-model Lyran social general in her evening gown. There's even one guy who is decked out like a Comstar Adept, but with some obvious flaws in his robe's mathematical figures. He seems to know technical matters somewhat, but they're all eccentric, and they all have apparently gone somewhat mad with the sheer amount of money that El Prez spent to buy them out.
Their comments were... unhelpful. "Call that a Trooper? More like live bait!" greeted your first 40 ton treatment. "Too Slow and Too Vulnerable." judged another, while you bit your tongue to keep from pointing out that this was a perfectly traditional speed. A third opined that it was 'A bit too much of a spreadsheet, could you give us some pictures of what it would actually look like?' You showed off a proposed militia mech and scout combo, showing off their comonality of design and the estimates that you would be able to roll out six a month. from three cubicles "Six useless pieces of hunk!" Opined one. "Machine guns are useless on a mech." protested another. You point out that the machine guns are a requirement and are rewarded with an extrended rant about how the tank-mad locals kept him on a leash for four months rather than assault a fortress built out of crippled dropships head-on. A third asked about putting on eight more machine guns and dropping the SRM and it's ammo. You point out that that is also a requirement. She nodded and then asked about stripping out the large laser for machine guns and a couple of flamers. The pseudo-Comstar dude asked what you could do to put ten large lasers on a single machine like the Clans and you looked at him like he had two heads, which prompted a vehement back and forth about Clan technology and what it could and could not do.
When you walk out of the meeting you feel like you've been savaged by wolves, and to no constructive benefit. Those guys never were the best mercs in all likelyhood, and now they're telling you how to do your job, something that Mechwarriors with rare exception, aren't very good at.
Well, at least you have the weekend to look forward to. The tourism board supplied pamphlets in the hotel assure you that there are plenty of ways to have fun in this city-or a few nearby ones. Once you get the bare necessities out of the way, you have half a day saturday and a full day on sunday to yourself...
[ ] See if you can work your way onto the National Academy campus to see the Pistolero up close and
look at what the eggheads in the white coats are developing.
[ ] Get a ride to the nearby coastal city of Puerto Grande and do some sunbathing and other beach-things. And maybe get a one-night stand-
a party town like Puerto Grande sounds like a great place to unwind.
[ ] Personal affairs that go beyond the mere need to eat and not be sick might be a good idea.
Go house-hunting, and maybe review the local language learning program.
[ ] Write in or combo of the above?
-
I wouldn't expect trying to see the Pistolero at this point would be met with anything other than raving paranoia on the part of the government. I'm for option three, and seeing if we can't get our earlier questions about housing answered.
-
Agreed.
But before she goes, she pops off a quick note to her boss referencing the designs she showcased earlier, and making a small note in the margins saying. "Forgot to mention this in the meeting, but it might be noteworthy that since WE will be the only source of many parts and/or proprietary ammunition designs, the profitability of any exports wouldn't end with the initial sale."
-
You spend the first half of your Saturday being shuttled around from government agency to government agency. You get your local ID, and take a driver's test. Other than a few local quirks, the rules of the road are familiar enough. The ration book is a quaint little thing, and you find it hard to imagine ever needing it, though you suppose you can't hunt reindeer in a tropical climate. You get a physical at a hospital, your health-records having been left on New Oslo, and get a clean bill of health. You also get some extra vaccinations against things that people might try to kill you with, courtesy of the local secret police. You don't know if anyone will actually try to use Anthrax or the black death to kill you, but at least you're protected. Your licence to have a firearm is still pending, but you're fairly sure it will come through soon.
Choose a licence category:
[ ] Hunting/sporting licence. Used for range-practice and hunting only. Must have weapon locked at all other times,
keys are kept by park rangers and range-managers.
[ ] Self-defense licence. Must pass a handgun course-only applies to pistols.
[ ] Militia Licence. A large-capacity magazine and rifle is provided by the government, but it must remain secured (yearly inspection) except in times of war.
Two weeks of milita training with a local regiment are also required to remain in possession of the licence.
[ ] Spooky licence. You've got special permission to use your rifle anytime you like as a favor from the local spy agency.
They can take it back whenever you displease them, or don't do them a favor.
Unfortunately your plan to score a roommate hits a early snag. "Wait, you're saying I can't live with anyone unless they have security clearance?" The street-side cafe where you've snagged a sandwich while you look at apartment listings is not the place you would have picked, but you have a minder, and she looks a bit contrite at least when she shrugs.
"You have important work. Spies could be anywhere. The importance of the task is paramount. So your living spaces need to be secured-"
"I'm in a third-floor hotel room "
"And we have bought out all rooms on both sides within five of you."
You snort in disgust. "No, you haven't. I hear the same couple having ..." you realize what's going on. "Wait, you have that many people in the security detail?"
Your minder sips her iced green tea and shrugs. "You are important. Two of our agents are having a love affair. It was not hard to get them to pretend to be madly in love because they are madly in love. And the maids ignore the assault rifles under the bed."
You don't know if you're prepared for this level of spooky bullshit. "Well, I can still get a roomie from the new hires, I mean some of them are my-" You're cut off by a headshake and frown. "Why not? Same project, right?"
"Different clearance. You have been assigned the unique clearance level A-113. Finding someone with a clearance level sufficient to stay with you who you are cleared to know all the details of their work will be impossible. Background checks to approve random strangers would take months. Even your co-workers cannot have access to you outside of work because of the need to compartmentalize information. Even a spousal exemption would take months."
...
At least the Metro has a station connected to the Arcology.
---
Write in a choice on the Transportation and Housing (http://pastebin.com/ZAkiCCeR), or put it off for another week?
-
[ ] Hunting/sporting licence. Used for range-practice and hunting only. Must have weapon locked at all other times,
keys are kept by park rangers and range-managers.
[ ] Self-defense licence. Must pass a handgun course-only applies to pistols.
"A" AND "B"...The two are not mutually exclusive. And if I ever desperately need to, gun-locks aren't exactly bank vault standard. ::)
As for housing and transportation:
For now, I think she'll go with a mid-ranged apartment. (And she'll ask her minder if there's a particular apartment complex he/she would be able to recommend? Might as well keep on security's good side for the moment.)
Transportation...I think a scooter. Once things settle out, she can consider upgrading, but until she gets a feel for the city/planet/how her job is working out, she doesn't want to over-commit.
-
Hi not sure if ok for me jump in, if so thanks.
The first option, the hunting lincense is the one I suggest which could lead to the spooky lincense though not sure if the character well have time or mental fortitude for certain requirements by the local spooks.
On the housing I suggest the mid-house since its only double the monthly cost also removes the loud and ubnouxous agents in the room next door. Including the the Mark II leg transport option.
For my final suggestion on transport maybe the taxi since its cheap, price vary as need or use so can get cheap or expensive depending on if the character decides to become a social butterfly.
Thanks if ya are ok with me joining in.
-
More are always welcome-the quest format works better with more players in my experience, though I doubt you guys will have as volitile a turnover as the Anons on /tg. Getting enough random players to form a bandwagon who will do stupid things is essential for a proper quest experience though :D
-
Welcome! At least we shouldn't have any more ties... ::)
If she's going to have to put up with this many spooks, she might as well go for the spooky license, but I also agree with Warclaw that A and B aren't mutually exclusive with each other, and neither is B with the spooky license.
As for housing, I'm leaning toward the arcology angle to stick it to the government for being so paranoid, but would still like to know if it's possible to rent two adjoining apartments in the mid-rise building (since one of them would be rented by the government anyway) to achieve something close to high-rise living within walking distance to work. Walking provides an excellent excuse for long hours (waiting for the sun to go down in an equatorial city) and the self-defense license.
Also, a quick side note about the room mate thing... that talk I mentioned being given to the university team and mil-techs applies (in spades) to the leader of the project. Intra-team drama is extra damaging if it involves the lead.
Finally, also with regard to the room mate thing... are her bodyguards fair game? One would think they're at least as cleared as she is, or are at least covered by something like a communicator's oath. That could even save the government money in the long run, and they seem to at least wink at that sort of thing. Of course, it'll take a while to pick one (or more)...
-
You resolve to have a look at a couple of options personally before you make a decision.
-
You're pretty sure that the apartment block you're being shown is fairly high end for this development For one thing, the trees around it are taller than it is, rising over the four story building before the palms spread their leaves. You notice the cars and the
Inside, things are clean, but plain. Brown carpet and brown vinyl on the floors. White walls, which there is to be absolutely no nails pounded in. A kitchen with a refrigerator and an old-fashioned electric stove that looks like it uses resistance instead of induction. That's seamlessly connected to a space that might be a dining area and a entertainment set up all in one. The only door leads to a tiny hallway that has both the bedrooms and the bathroom. (you might need some sort of office, or get a future roommate or romantic partner after all, and the cost increase for two bedrooms over one is comfortably within your budget.) More brown in there, with the tile being cracked in a few minor places. The bedrooms are not particularly big, but there's enough room. It's all very functional, and the walls and ceiling are again stark white in contrast to the brown carpet.
Buying up enough rooms to get some quiet and extra space seems unlikely though, and you're sure that the main reason to get this place would be to save money-it's very much lower-middle class, and while you're not uncomfortable with the lifestyle you would have here, you're a bit uncertain about what you should do with your pay checks other than stick them in the bank and quietly pocket big piles of dosh. And you're not about to let the spies into your rooms with an invitation, just like you're smart enough to avoid the bait of them getting you a special licence for your guns.
--
It's getting towards nightfall when you take the tour of the demo apartment at the arcology. This-this is definately more upscale. For all that it's a 'core' apartment with no windows on the outside, it has plenty of floorspace. The kitchen here isn't just bigger and more lavishly finished, it's better laid out for actually cooking and the fridge doesn't bang into the wall when it's opened all the way. There's actually enough counter space to have more than one thing out-and the bathroom has fixtures that are much the same. Even the bedrooms (two beds, one multi-purpose room.) are each nearly half the size of the whole apartment you saw earlier.
It rubs you the wrong way really. It's too big a space-you would definitely need a house-wife or house-husband or something of that sort of thing. It's a bit ostentatious, and slightly more than a third of your current budget. And it seems too permanent for a first place on this planet. You veg out for a couple of minutes on the couch, but then make your decision. You're going to go for the mid-range apartment, at least for a few months, and build up your funds.
Getting a scooter for longer trips around town on your own power proves little hassle-the damn things are everywhere in town, and you only have one obstacle to getting one-your minder. Or rather, she objects to you getting one without a helmet, which strikes you as fairly silly because you'll be the only person on planet with a helmet by your estimations.
Still, with Saturday fairly well spent when you wheel your new scooter into the hotel for safe keeping, you just need to think about tommorow's tasks as well.
[ ] Get some shopping done-you'll need a bed and other furniture for sure, and rebuilding your wardrobe also needs to be your priority.
You have very little baggage, and can stand to splurge a bit now on correcting that.
[ ] According to your studies, the city has a Cathedral, a Mosque, and a Stupa. When it comes to religion you
are spoiled for choice of spiritual fulfillment if that's how you recharge.
[ ] Religious the locals might be, but they won't let that get in the way of a good bar crawl. Why should you?
[ ] You're new here-play the tourist role, see the museums, monuments, and government buildings up close.
[ ] Nose back to the grindstone-you have work and studies to do.
[ ] Write in?
-
I'm for shopping with a little sight-seeing on the way. There's no guarantee the office will be open on the weekend.
-
Work and Studies does not include mech-designing by default. But you do have a lot of other things to bother with.
-
Eh... I'm still for shopping and a little sight-seeing...
-
Shopping and tourist
-
I'm for shopping with a little sight-seeing on the way. There's no guarantee the office will be open on the weekend.
I agree here since who says sight seeing is about seeing stuffy buildings only the tourist form the other continent will come to see. Going to what passes as local hotspots, the mall, social seens, maybe meet a few people, whatch a movie, have fun annoying the minders as you weave through the crowds.
We need some close to fit the weather and a bed that allows for a proper good night rest, also maybe a coffee maker since the locals like to throw ghost peppers in the coffee.(though I personally love ghost peppers, yes I use them in my coffee great way to wake up at 5am after a night of bar crawling)
-
Shopping wins by a landslide, with some sight-seeing on the side.
---
The locals only embraced the concept of the 'mall' fairly late in their history, but that still means that the one you visit is just 20 years old. You wish you could have gotten throug customs faster your first day-this place is right on a direct line from the spaceport to the city proper, and seems designed to cater to those with exotic tastes by local standards-imported technology, clothes, and music vie for space with the best local products. And there's a difference, but you need to look to see it, which is a damn sight better than most periphery worlds. One might even wonder if it's allowed to exist on purpose so visitors like yourself can feel superior about their high society. Certainly, they're playing catch up, but it can't be hard to make some of these things...
But you have less time for wool-gathering and more time for shopping. You start with the basics-two more pairs of heels-one with stilletos, and three new pairs of flats. After that, the morning is a whirlwind of things snatched off racks, ducking into changing rooms, and seeing what actually fits. You haven't worn a sundress in years, but one feels right for something casual right now. Miniskirts, A-lines, pencil skirts, all go on the pile as you rebuild the variety you need for every situation. Khaki trousers and a pair of loose flowing Palazzo pants-no jeans, you wouldn't be able to stand them in the heat. You can't cover every possible eventuality, but you do grab the basics and a few non-basic things.
Add to your wardrobe up to three of the following.
[ ] A evening gown suitable for parties and formal affairs.
[ ] A black-tie outfit if you feel like putting your hair up and playing the Bifauxnen.
[ ] A series of Layered kimonos for a very high-class ladylike look. Black teeth optional.
[ ] Quasi-Star League Robes for looking like a complete ******.
[ ] A faux dress-uniform in the style of your choice for impersonating an officer.
[ ] Fancy undergarments. You know what for.
[ ] A set of new ski clothes, though you won't be able to use them unless you take a trip to the poles.
[ ] A selection of swimwear, including both one and two-piece items.
[ ] A 'cooling suit' that may or may not work since you can't test it. Might just be a catsuit with tubes.
[ ] Giant Shoulderpads (It is the space 80s).
[ ] Explorer/ big game hunter gear. Apparently, they have elephants on this planet.
[ ] A color-shifting synth-silk garment that can be reprogrammed for new patterns.
You also find the furniture you were looking for, a-
[ ] King Sized bed.
[ ] Kotatsu, though you think you won't need the heater.
[ ] antique desk with lots of hidden compartments. This one will be for the office. Getting it shipped will take some time, but the apartment won't be ready for a week anyways.
Once you dispatch the agents who you conscripted as bag carriers to take all that stuff back, you decide to have a little fun. Grabbing a few tips from people you meet at the mall, you prepare for an evening of fun. Wine, women and song, that's how the saying goes, right? Men are okay too you suppose, even if they're not mentioned in that saying. Still, the emphasis there can be shifted around significantly. This might be a transport and administration focused town, but there's still a wide enough range of options to tailor your specific experience. Before that though, you head back towards town and the normal tourist destinations-you haven't really seen much of the city, and this is a good chance to see it up close.
You ultimately settle on a walk in the park-literally joining the huge crowds on the open fields and shaded walkways that lie between the presidential palace and the 'Hall of the People', the local parliament. The surrounding buildings are a mish-mash of old Star League construction from the original city and more recent designs, though some of those are over 100 years old, and a sign in the park informs you, once you work your way through the local language, that the park was a farm tended by sharecroppers just 50 years ago. Right now though, the primary activity seems to be youth football, as you see no less than three games in progress. Some games are surrounded by cheering crowds on the grass, while others bounce the ball through the woods with excited youths screaming after it, the goals defined by large trees and architecture. The park itself is huge, with several small lakes or large ponds, a number of tightly winding bicycle and footpaths, and even a petting zoo where a llama, upset you did not purchase grass pellets to feed him, spits at you. That one incident aside, you have a pleasant wander though the park, enjoying the sculpted tropical landscape, and even kicking a rogue ball back into play.
Still it's just the prelude for tonight.
-
Yes: A evening gown suitable for parties and formal affairs.
Minako expects at some point to have to play nice with what passes for upper-crust on this planet, and looking the part will help.
No: A black-tie outfit if you feel like putting your hair up and playing the Bifauxnen.
Minako's...Eclectic tastes in bed-partners aside, she doesn't like Tux's as she feels then too restrictive and uncomfortable.
No: A series of Layered kimonos for a very high-class ladylike look. Black teeth optional.
This isn't the Combine.
No: Quasi-Star League Robes for looking like a complete ******.
Do I really have to explain this one?
No: A faux dress-uniform in the style of your choice for impersonating an officer.
While quasi-military garb might be in fashion here, she doesn't want the locals to think she might be mocking them.
Yes: Fancy undergarments. You know what for.
Just because she hasn't settled on a target yet, doesn't mean she can't get her hunting gear together. ;D
No: A set of new ski clothes, though you won't be able to use them unless you take a trip to the poles.
Unlikely to be of use anytime soon, and when they are, she can get some then.
No: A selection of swimwear, including both one and two-piece items.
She plans to wait a bit on these. Recreational swimming isn't one of her favorite hobbies, and before she goes to the beach, she wants a bit more time to study local mores and cultural foibles. What she considers perfectly acceptable might be considered borderline pornography on some planets.
No: A 'cooling suit' that may or may not work since you can't test it. Might just be a catsuit with tubes.
No test, no buy.
No: Giant Shoulderpads (It is the space 80s).
Ugh!
Yes: Explorer/ big game hunter gear. Apparently, they have elephants on this planet.
Goes along with that Hunting license she has applied for.
No: A color-shifting synth-silk garment that can be reprogrammed for new patterns. Likely to make her stand out as an off-worlder even more than she normally does. IF someone does decide to come after her for whatever reason, why make it too easy? (Who knows? the Security guys MIGHT know something.)
Furniture:
Antique desk with lots of hidden compartments. This one will be for the office.
Beds are much more easily obtained than a good antique desk. Plus, given her boss's predilection for older styles/methods, it may go some ways towards breaking the ice.
-
Yes: A evening gown suitable for parties and formal affairs.
Minako expects at some point to have to play nice with what passes for upper-crust on this planet, and looking the part will help.
No: A black-tie outfit if you feel like putting your hair up and playing the Bifauxnen.
Minako's...Eclectic tastes in bed-partners aside, she doesn't like Tux's as she feels then too restrictive and uncomfortable.
No: A series of Layered kimonos for a very high-class ladylike look. Black teeth optional.
This isn't the Combine.
No: Quasi-Star League Robes for looking like a complete ******.
Do I really have to explain this one?
No: A faux dress-uniform in the style of your choice for impersonating an officer.
While quasi-military garb might be in fashion here, she doesn't want the locals to think she might be mocking them.
Yes: Fancy undergarments. You know what for.
Just because she hasn't settled on a target yet, doesn't mean she can't get her hunting gear together. ;D
No: A set of new ski clothes, though you won't be able to use them unless you take a trip to the poles.
Unlikely to be of use anytime soon, and when they are, she can get some then.
No: A selection of swimwear, including both one and two-piece items.
She plans to wait a bit on these. Recreational swimming isn't one of her favorite hobbies, and before she goes to the beach, she wants a bit more time to study local mores and cultural foibles. What she considers perfectly acceptable might be considered borderline pornography on some planets.
No: A 'cooling suit' that may or may not work since you can't test it. Might just be a catsuit with tubes.
No test, no buy.
No: Giant Shoulderpads (It is the space 80s).
Ugh!
Yes: Explorer/ big game hunter gear. Apparently, they have elephants on this planet.
Goes along with that Hunting license she has applied for.
No: A color-shifting synth-silk garment that can be reprogrammed for new patterns. Likely to make her stand out as an off-worlder even more than she normally does. IF someone does decide to come after her for whatever reason, why make it too easy? (Who knows? the Security guys MIGHT know something.)
Furniture:
Antique desk with lots of hidden compartments. This one will be for the office.
Beds are much more easily obtained than a good antique desk. Plus, given her boss's predilection for older styles/methods, it may go some ways towards breaking the ice.
I agree with all except one, the kimono since she is from the combine held territory and well nomatter how bad the combine goverment lackeys, are the culture is appealing even if its a ********ize version of Japanese culture.
-
The 'wear 12 kimonos all at once' thing is more Heian Japanese, meaning it's actually further from modern japan than the Combine is. Why there is a display of 9th century Japanese high-court fashion on this list? Because it signifies that Minako appreciates both sides of her heritage deeply.
Every choice you've made helps determine personality as well as preferences~
-
I agree with all except one, the kimono since she is from the combine held territory and well nomatter how bad the combine goverment lackeys, are the culture is appealing even if its a ********ize version of Japanese culture.
She is proud of her heritage, but not only do the kimonos share the same disadvantages as the high tech synth-silk, they are most likely VERY expensive out here, and she doesn't expect to have need of them any time soon. If that looks likely to change, she can revisit things.
-
I agree with what Warclaw wrote except for the undergarments. I'd put those in exactly the same category as the swimwear. That reprogrammable synth-silk might come in handy if she has to brief the mercs again, and could be used for other things (like shifting to all black in a hurry if she has to duck quick).
So: Evening wear, hunting gear, synth-silk and the antique desk.
-
First: Happy Thanksgiving!
Second, a random thought provoked by the General that was looking for an assault design:
For around 6.8M C-Bills, you can get an 80 ton, 3/5/3 mech with max armor armed with a Sniper, Large Laser, Medium Laser, 2 MGs and 14 HS (with four tons of ammo for the Sniper, and a half ton for the MGs protected by CASE). The double heat sink upgrade adds about 200,000 C-Bills, and drops the heat sink in the head for another Medium Laser (i.e., 13 DHS). The upgrade is critical space limited, and amusingly drives the MGs into the legs. As much as the government wants to avoid artillery tubes, they're some of the best dropship and fortification crackers around. The other advantage of the design is that a Long Tom Artillery Cannon can be dropped in to replace the Sniper when (if) they become available.
-
First: Happy Thanksgiving!
Second, a random thought provoked by the General that was looking for an assault design:
For around 6.8M C-Bills, you can get an 80 ton, 3/5/3 mech with max armor armed with a Sniper, Large Laser, Medium Laser, 2 MGs and 14 HS (with four tons of ammo for the Sniper, and a half ton for the MGs protected by CASE). The double heat sink upgrade adds about 200,000 C-Bills, and drops the heat sink in the head for another Medium Laser (i.e., 13 DHS). The upgrade is critical space limited, and amusingly drives the MGs into the legs. As much as the government wants to avoid artillery tubes, they're some of the best dropship and fortification crackers around. The other advantage of the design is that a Long Tom Artillery Cannon can be dropped in to replace the Sniper when (if) they become available.
Umm.... This is a prephery planet self building heaviest and assualts are going to be speciality builds not assembly jobs like light mechs or the mediums on the lighte end of the medium scale. I think the two light mech designs we have worked a bit on would be the best since its like 20 M-bills to 1 C-Bill.
This proves that even though this planet is maybe building itself up and might be at an economic advantage over its nearby neighbours. But this not mean you can Willy nilly build a horde of mechs (by horde of mech I mean a battalion or more mechs) when you already building a horde of different vees and are in the process of upgrading them to boot.
This does not mean heavies or assualts cannot be built but the budget needed for each one would be more than any of the generals, retired mercs, or el presidente will most likely agree to. But the mech suggested maybe over ambitious for the cost and what's on but I haven't gone through what's listed for it.
Useing the tech manual I have not maybe you have if so I assuming the tech manual is basing cost on resonable cost variances for building form design up with a design crew, manufacture crew, and tech they know works, and not using either feild testing or not fully developed yet equipment.
Just my two c-bills or is it m-bills, not sure.
I hope everyone enjoys their thanksgiving.
-
I'm just using Solaris Skunk Werks... it makes throwing designs together ridiculously easy and does all the normal cost calculations for you (it won't do Vehrec's house rule costs of course, hence my cost estimates). I don't expect us to be building assault mechs any time soon, but wanted to get my thoughts on it out there.
-
That's cool I understand, we could do one as test of concept as a side project if the mechs desired pan out. Use it to bust some rebels base or pirates holdout as the test for it proving to the generals and others that a lance of these bad boys can make a huge difference when needed.
-
At this point, if they want an assault mech, it is by FAR more efficient of them to just go to the Inner Sphere and BUY one. Down the road, that'll most likely change, but for now...
-
Oh sure... mechs for this planet are almost pure vanity projects. If they were willing to go with artillery tubes, it's much more efficient to put them on tank chassis.
-
Vanity projects to a point.
In my experience, when you are talking specialist and/or purely DEFENSIVE units, conventional armor is vastly more efficient. Less capable/tough on an individual scale, but on an overall scale they just plain beat the mechs on a cost vs effectiveness basis.
The equation changes, however, when you start looking at more generalist designs, and/or designs meant for OFFENSIVE operations, especially ones on somebody else's planet where the number of units you have is not limited so much by C-Bills as by drop-ship capacity. Under those circumstances, you need each unit to be as individually tough/effective as they can be. That's where mechs come in. They are the ones meant to be the point of the spear.
Put at it's most basic: You don't build mechs for any reason other than to have the capability to project power into someone else's territory.
-
Agreed, they're best used as shock troops for a planetary invasion. Perhaps we're seeing a planet with ambitions at its beginning...
-
Perhaps we're seeing a planet with ambitions at its beginning...
I don't think there's much doubt about it. The planet is the equivalent of a mid-20th century banana-republic. How many of those didn't have designs upon their neighbors?
-
A textbook banana-republic would actually be mostly run by an Inner-sphere megacorp which had close ties to an intelligence agency, and be more concerned about stable business environments for it's masters than annexing parts of it's neighbors.
Anyways, I've rolled dice to break the tie-Warclaw, Daryk, give me a number between 2 and 12, the person who's closest wins and gets their choice.
-
9
-
8... odds are the number is lower than 9, and taking anything lower than 8 runs the risk of creating another tie or being farther away than 9.
-
Well I rolled a 7, so it looks like Daryk pulls this one out of their hat. Koren-Gagin could have played kingmaker or made this a three way tie if they had included an option he would have preferred to drop when he suggested 'no, get fancy old fashioned stuff.'
---
Cabanagem was never the most obedient world when the Star League pacified it. In practice, such pacification had consisted of landing a dropship and erecting a flagpole and flag, and then demanding the entire population pay taxes in Star League dollars for the erection of the flag. Since such money was unavailable, those who couldn't pay were rounded up and sent to newly built factories where they were forced to work for wages to make exportable goods. Understandably, the chaos of the Amaris coup and the collapse of the League government on the planet had seen most of those factory workers throw down their tools and run back to the jungle, and thousands of tons of unshipped goods left in moldering factories. Since one of the major exports back then and now was tropical hardwood furniture, it ought not to be a surprise to find this in one of the stores, still emptying out the three-hundred year old stock of the last production run of desks, tables, chairs and other beautiful items.
The desk, upon closer inspection, seems to have never had the computer it was designed to hold installed, but it might hold any design of monitor or terminal with only slight modification. The fact that it has numerous secret compartments skillfully worked into it more than compensates for the lack of anything like gold leaf that looters might have scraped off before it was restored. There are at least 30 different places to stash anything from a pen to a pistol. And thankfully, unlike the worst excesses of the period, it's rather tasteful and restrained.
Your evening gown, on the other hand, which you are getting in anticipation of a gala following the unveiling of your designs, is anything but restrained, even if it is tasteful. Slit high up to the hip and showing off a generous decolletage, it might not be the most modest outfit you've ever owned, but it is certainly striking with it's scarlet color and flattering cut. It needs a few alterations, but once the fit is corrected, you'll certainly be able to turn some heads.
More practical are the outdoors clothes you purchase for any trips out into the countryside. Designed to wick sweat away from your body and keep BO under control, they also feature a bit of camouflage designed for a tropical backdrop. It seems the local megafauna include everything from big cats and elephants to giant fish, and a huntress like yourself could be quite busy taking all the trophies that she might want. You also score some camping gear to go along with it-if you're gonna take a trip into the dark heart of the continent, a bedroll and mosquito net will be a must.
You're a bit conflicted by the choice of your final purchase, but ultimately settle on something very rare indeed. Smart fabrics were a Star League technology, and seeing a dress that shimmers, shifts color and even glows is very eye-catching. It's also expensive, and only in the last couple of years have new ones begun appearing. The thing comes with an extensive instruction manual and a note about the synthetic fabric it's made of. The fact that each fiber can shift color and even glow according to a very precise program is the key of the entire charm of the dress. The thing needs batteries, but the tiny amount of charge needed to shift colors means that the built-in 'paper batteries' in the seams and hems can power it for an entire day, or several hours on the softly luminescent setting. And it can be keyed to a microcomputer that can be hidden in your jewelry or purse to wirelessly control it-up to 30 settings can be pre-loaded and swapped between in a fairly simple way. The only downside is that it's actually pretty terrible for sneaking around in by virtue of it's cut-the expense of the fabric means that it's in 'little black dress' size only, and barely reaches mid-thigh while leaving your back exposed fairly far down.
But buying one dress that can be an infinite number of colors does seem like a cost-cutting measure that you can get behind, even if the up-front investment is fairly high.
As night falls though, it's up to you to decide where to head to enjoy your last night of the weekend, before work begins tommorow. With dusk around 6 PM, and full night enveloping the city soon after, you have plenty of time to get a little party time under your belt-but where?
[ ] Bars, Nighclubs, and Cantinas! We drink to forget and then forget to stop drinking! Even if it means a hangover,
cut loose and indulge in the famous products of the vine and the field. Maybe get some fun on the side?
[ ] Kareoke! Find some other people your age, grab a booth, and sing badly together! The latest hit 'Taking over midnight'
really sounds good when sung in perfect drunken three-part harmony.
[ ] Block party! It looks like someone's got something to celebrate as the people are getting out for a BBQ and street music.
[ ] VR Arcade! Neurohelmets and Tri-D videogames are way to cumbersome for home users, but the experience is worth going out.
[ ] Art Gallery! Artists can be fun to talk to, you can get some intellectual stimulation, and maybe pick up a companion for a single night.
[ ] Coffee shop! The home of people in turtlenecks with computers. Another place where young singles hang out,
but watch out for those just looking for coffee and free wi-fi.
[ ] Head Back to the room. The responsible/boring option for fun-haters.
-
It's Saturday isn't it? So work is the day after tomorrow, right?
The VR arcade might give a better idea of the level of technology the world has available, but I'm actually for a bottle of grain alcohol (no, not the whole bottle at once) and some mixers back at the apartment. The time to start making the handler's life miserable isn't the first week on planet.
And as far as hangovers, as long as you keep the water to drink ratio even or in favor of the water, no hangover. At least that's been my experience, which has included serious pub crawls in various places around the world (Hong Kong is the best so far... look up Lan Kwai Fong if you find yourself there, though Split Croatia has a very nice area down by the port).
-
It's Saturday isn't it? So work is the day after tomorrow, right?
The VR arcade might give a better idea of the level of technology the world has available, but I'm actually for a bottle of grain alcohol (no, not the whole bottle at once) and some mixers back at the apartment. The time to start making the handler's life miserable isn't the first week on planet.
And as far as hangovers, as long as you keep the water to drink ratio even or in favor of the water, no hangover. At least that's been my experience, which has included serious pub crawls in various places around the world (Hong Kong is the best so far... look up Lan Kwai Fong if you find yourself there, though Split Croatia has a very nice area down by the port).
Sunday. We're speeding through the weekend, and she spent Saturday looking at apartments.
-
Ah, got it...
-
I should also remind you that you're setting the character's personality with choices still, but I'll be closing that window soon and locking down her personality. So if you want to be able to ever give your handler fits, you should do so now, or stay home every weekend from now until eternity. You're spent too much time focused on doing your job to dodge 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' Now that doesn't mean that shenanigans won't happen in this quest-you'll just be the target, not a participant.
-
I'm for a local bar or two, but go easy on the booze until we get the lay of the land. This trip is more in the lines of a scouting expedition. Look for the best ambiance, the best hunting ground, the best DJ, ETC....
(The first trip into the woods isn't meant to bring home any game. Rather it's to locate game trails, watering holes, and rut-scrapes ahead of the actual season. Saves time and effort in the long run when you know where the game is most easily found. >:D )
-
I'm for a local bar or two, but go easy on the booze until we get the lay of the land. This trip is more in the lines of a scouting expedition. Look for the best ambiance, the best hunting ground, the best DJ, ETC....
(The first trip into the woods isn't meant to bring home any game. Rather it's to locate game trails, watering holes, and rut-scrapes ahead of the actual season. Saves time and effort in the long run when you know where the game is most easily found. >:D )
Are we hunting big game or hunting men i confused a bit. If the plan is to bar hop i all for this if not ill get back with ya.
-
Men, women, transexuals, intersex, or genderqueer, Minako doesn't care, she's pansexual.
---
You don't know many details about the local economy, but you've read that it's three main exports are electronics, fancy jewelry, and Atlas Black Rum. You've never actually had any of that fabled liquor, but it has a brand recognition that penetrates deep into the Inner Sphere, and a single bottle commands a high price. You've been able to read the labels though, and you know that the stuff is aged for five years (which is like aging whiskey for 25 years, thanks to the high heat around here) in a barrel made from alien wood that grows nowhere else in human space, then carefully blended to bring forward it's best qualities. It is said to taste like allspice, caramel, and a bunch of other flavors depending on who is being paid to have snobish opinions about it. Mechwarriors take it straight, while most other people have to make do with having it in mixers, not being paid enough to afford it.
You find to your annoyance that the famed Atlas Black brand is almost completely absent from local bars because it all gets exported and thus one must pay interstellar import prices even on it's world of origin. There are other drinks though, and you sip your way through a variety of Cachaça, Rum, and Tequilla based drinks. You sample Pulque in a street bar and decide that it is a definitely acquired taste with it's milky color and syrupy texture. You find a sushi bar where the fish is good but the rice is somewhat off and you are served Baiju instead of Souchu. You hit up a discotheque, and spend a good half hour on the dance floor dancing with guys and ladies. You work on the local language as well, trying to avoid English entirely and attempting to translate even as you get steadily more and more drunk. You preform a drunkards walk from bar to bar, the establishments getting more and more lower class as you leave the center of town and worm your way back towards the hotel, before finally cutting it short just before 13 o'clock and heading back to your hotel room.
You don't feel so hot once you stop drinking for about half an hour. It's a quirk of genetics and despite several centuries of genetic engineering, you have somehow inherited a non-functional copy of a gene that codes for mitochondrial isozyme. You like drinking-but the hangover is literally killer as your cells simply can't deal with the toxic by-products of your drinking. Despite plenty of water, you know that there's gonna be a steep price to pay for your drinking. And it makes you a lightweight, so you've never been able to put away beer after beer without consequences. You have medication for this though, so you pop pills, relieve you bladder, and get into bed. As a result, you feel only slightly like an elephant is standing on your head the next morning.
Getting into work, you're pleasantly surprised to find you're no longer alone in the office-and less pleasantly surprised to find that you have a meeting scheduled with the Lead Designer first thing. You and the five transfers head to the the meeting room and sit down for your briefing. Mr. Sanjiv wastes little time on minutes or other prefunctory standards. "Right. We're bringing in the new hires for this department this week-your task will be to bring them up to speed, brief them on their responsibilities, and work out the worst of the kinks. I want you to also decide on what design you're going to be working on to start them off. Don't pick anything too complex, or you'll be spending months debugging and fixing problems." (Status effect: Green Designers. +2 to all TNs to design mechs until you complete either two designs or one design with more positive than negative quirks.)
Mister Sanjiv also has something to show you. The tiny ingot is shaped a bit like a lower case l, thinned in the middle and thick at the ends, which indicates to you that it's one of those ones you get cast to test an alloy's quality in tension and compression. Picking it up off the table though, you're shocked by it's lightness-it's small, yess, but it feels like it's barely there at all, and certainly not solid. "Endo-steel. Our friends at the national academy have been working on a production process for some time now, and they assure me they are close to a breakthough. Some asteroid-base in the inner belt, they've had mining operations there for decades but always just test runs and experimental production. They still have some bugs to work out though." You give the piece a flex in your hands and it pops alarmingly after a few moments straining that makes your arms shake-you drop it to the table and grimace at the crack, but your boss just sighs.
"That's not supposed to happen. But they're having trouble with brittleness? I don't think we can use it if they're having that much." You tap a fingernail on the cracked ingot and then slide it down the table to the next engineer for their inspection. "Why bring this up now?"
The boss grunts and fidgets. "There is a...suggestion that there might be an order to use advanced metalurgy if it becomes available. Especially on lighter designs-and I know, this isn't ideal, but if it can squeeze out a little extra performance, General Rodriguez is hot on it. It will be easier to design for it in such an eventuality, but I cannot say if the material will actually be available."
You seem caught on the horns of a dilemma here. Not only do you need to decide which of your prospective designs to move forward on realizing in metal and myomer, but you need to decide if you want to do so with expensive materials that seem to only theoretically be in production right now. You're reminded of the original Mackie, which went into production with it's armor so new that production of the armor had been the limiting factor, and a six month delay had ensued when half the first company saluted and plates fell off. And that was a good example of immature technology being used in a design!
[ ] Suggest a design that will use standard structure.
[ ] Suggest a design that will use Endo-Steel Structure.
[ ] Suggest a design that will use ...you're not sure, you need time to crunch numbers.
-
Oh hell no... standard structure for the first design. It's easy enough to make sure there's room for endo-steel later, but we're not betting our first design's success on the team that produced the Pistolero.
-
At least for the time being, I would suggest a standard structure unit for our first mech.
I suggest this for a number of reasons:
1) We don't know for sure IF the endo-steel will be available.
1A: If so, in what quantity?
2) Price. IF it's available, given that our people are just now bringing it forward, we are still looking at a cutting edge technology for this region. Cutting edge tech is ALWAYS more expensive than a mature technology.
2A: That being the case, most production is likely to be slow, very expensive, and fraught with mistakes/bad runs. Again, driving up the cost per unit. Not a good plan for a design meant to stay under budget.
3) Familiarity: Endo-steel is quirky stuff. It has some very useful, but very finicky special qualities. Minako has studied it in school, but she cannot honestly say she's had enough experience with it to be comfortable using it on a new design. Refits? Sure, but not a new unit.
3A: This also applies to the techs intended to maintain/repair the mechs in the field. Are we prepared in this regard? End0-steel requires special equipment and techniques to repair, how many techs do we have that are certified in this? Do we even have the special equipment?
3B: Limited experience on Minako's part, and likely ZERO experience on the part of the lead designer, as well as the local transfers, means that mistakes are a near certainty, again driving up cost, as well as slowing the release schedule.
No, Minako would recommend a more conservative approach for this first design. Let's get our feet wet first, and give everyone time to settle in and develop a good team before throwing them into deep water.
-
Overall i agree standard way to go but as the project comes to a finish. Testing on the endo before next project could be a possibility that should not be overlooked. Besides we got vees comin out of the wood work, let the guys in the tank area work with it before any mech even gets near it.
Oh whats the status on that laser weilding monstrosities engine, any word if there is a chance to replicate it?
-
You glance at your fellow designers and then shake your head. "Probably best not to jump into that particular pirahna infested river right away. We need more experience before I'm comfortable with using those materials. It would just make an already difficult project even more so. We need to lock down the internal structure before anything else anyways, so it would be the part that we would have the least experience with."
Mr. Sanjiv leans back in his chair. "Are you certain? By the same token, you will be ripping out the very skeleton of your design if you attempt to retrofit this. It will probably take nearly as long to design a proper refit as it does to do the whole thing from scratch."
You shake your head. "No, it won't, for three reasons. First, the team will have more experience, more confidence, and a working design under their belts to start from. If we try this now, they will have no practical experience desigining the internal structure, and we'll waste a lot of time trying to come to grips with everything at once. Second, I'll have gotten a firmer grasp on the quirks of locally produced Endo-steel. I'm betting that there will still be some issues and oddities when we finally get finished product. We need to be aware of those to make proper designs. And third, we can design with an eye on the future and leave enough space for the bigger actuators and 'bones' of an Endo-steel design." You think about it and wince. "It's still gonna be a pain to design a refit, but we can do better later than we can now."
Refits: It may sometimes save time to take an existing design and refit it into a new role. However, much like Refit Kits, refit designs are divided into 6 levels of difficulty. Because Minako has Refit Madness, all refit checks are modified by -1.
Type A Refit: Because of the extreme simplicity of this type of refit takes only one check and one week of work.
Type B Refit: A more complex refit, this class requires two checks (weapons and controls) and two weeks of work.
Type C Refit: This refit requires three checks (Weapons, controls and armor), and a month to complete. Adding heat sinks requires an additional check, but does not extend the time required.
Type D Refit: This refit grade requires a variable number of checks to deal with the installation of new components, alteration of heat sinks etc, and will be assessed on a case-by-case basis..
Type E Refit: To remove a negative quirk or add a new quirk, a Type E Refit is required. Only such a comprehensive re-working can enable the alteration of the complex interactions that create quirks, and as a result the refit design is an abbreviated full-up design, with all parts not up for revision tested at -3, and no step taking more than a week except for two weeks of final check-outs.
Type F Refit: At this level, you are practically designing a new mech that shares a few similarities to the existing design. You must entirely repeat the design process, but get a -2 to any design step that is not altered. IE: to refit a XL engine, you must widen the chasis somewhat to support this and rearrange armor, but since you are not actually changing the types used, these checks are somewhat easier.
"And have you got any suggestions as to what the first design should be if you're going to be breaking the team in on it?"
[ ] Write In.
-
Minako thinks a moment. "Well, I have a few ideas, but before I get ahead of myself, I think one of the first questions that would be helpful if answered is: "What military doctrine is the design intended to support?"."
She paused, "You see, if the doctrine is one of mobility and fast moving maneuver warfare, like the Draconis Combine and to some extent the Federated Suns, a lighter, more mobile design would probably be a good place to start. But, if the doctrine envisioned is a slower, more armor and raw firepower oriented line-of-battle doctrine like the Lyrans, a heavier, slower design makes the most sense in terms of a basic trooper design."
She chuckled slightly, "I am sure you see where designing for the wrong doctrine could have somewhat less than ideal results. Aside from the obvious tactical issues, such machines are often quite unpopular with the Command structure, as well as the troops, who tend to view assignment to them as punishment detail. Something about driving a mech that your commanders don't really like, or know how to assign properly tends to do that."
She smiled cynically. "For some odd reason, light and medium mech drivers don't like being assigned tasks more suited to a heavy mech, nor do heavy or assault mech drivers especially enjoy playing catch up as the rest of their unit leaves them in the dust."
-
No need to reinvent the wheel, by using a known mech design as basis is the way to go. Sure since we cant replicate a mech 100% is an ok comprise. Since we can use any current design pending on the combat operations the military wish to use it for. Of course this need and desire for operation well decide all factors.
-
I like Warclaw's write-in, but my read of the situation is the generals want the 60 ton Trooper design we were discussing. It's less likely to be misused tactically, employs an engine and weapons we already know how to make, is easily converted to a support variant they want (Class C refit at worst), and won't be too hard to redesign into the flashbulb I really want to build (Class D refit for the jump jets, Class C for everything else, I think).
-
So one person wants a discussion of doctrine, one wants to licence an Inner sphere design and mod it, and one wants doctrine but also wants to force a 60-ton trooper down the throat of the doctrine that they get. Hooo boy.
---
A couple of the other designers scoff at you. "Oh yes, doctrine. When you find out about doctrine, tell us as well, please." "We have twelve mechs of twelve designs in our military, what doctrine do you think we have beyond throwing Mechs at a wall?" Niklos stands up and walks over to a whiteboard. "I think I can explain our current trouble with a little visual aid." He divides the board into thirds, then bisects them with a line to produce six squares. "Right now, our military has twelve mechs assigned to an attached company of the First Armored Guards. The first and currently only Guards Armored regiment. We also have five Guards Infantry regiments and two Guards Artillery regiments. All of these are combined arms regiments in truth, but the proportions are skewed heavily in the directions you might expect." All this goes into one square. "Below that, we have our Regulars, who are organized into Brigades instead of regiments. Continental system, six to eight battalions per brigade. There are no mechs there, but a lot of light tanks and APCs and towed artillery. Below that-" and he shifts squares again. "We have regional militias. Each is assigned to defend a district until heavier forces can arrive-they need to make do with whatever hand-me-downs can be spared from the Regulars, local know-how, and somewhat generous allocations of shoulder-launched missiles in the event of a Pirate attack." He pauses and then draws a stick figure with a missile launcher. "Somewhat generous."
He shifts to the other trio of squares and starts drawing again, much more densely. "That is now. The future is...uncertain. General Rodriguez wants to add two Regiments of Mechs to the Guards. He is in favor of speed and a high operational tempo. He is also in favor of attaching a lance of mechs to select Militia regiments, to act as hole-pluggers and troubleshooters as well as suppressing potential rebellion. Such a design would need to cover a large area but maintain some striking edge. General Federov is older-school. He favors an expansion of the tank corp to Five regiments of guards, each with an attached Battalion of mechs for flanking, reserves, and that indefinable little extra something. He also wants new Guards Artillery regiments, since he is firmly in favor of never making an attack unsupported by artillery, and never defending a position without sufficient long range guns and rockets. He is willing to spare some attention for the regular tank brigades- a few Mech battalions here and there, but he thinks that spreading them around the the militia one lance at a time is a mistake."
He looks at his work and shrugs. "And of course, neither general can overrule the other, and our great leader has yet to make her decision. All that is on her mind is the thought of what might happen if Hanse Davion decides that the Territorial States of the old Star League were a good idea and thinks we might be a interesting acquisition. The Piranha principle is all very well and good-but we need some teeth to bite with, and while twelve mechs might have been enough twenty years ago, they don't go very far today. Or maybe these Clans will attempt a flanking maneuver right through us-to be somewhat less of a speedbump, that is the purpose of this program."
-
It's beginning to sound like they want a 6/9 Trooper on a world without XL engines. The best I've been able to do so far in SSW is 6/9/0, 8.5 tons of armor, a Large Laser, an SRM-2, and 4 MGs with the ammo protected by CASE for 3,215,860 C-Bills plus the premium on the CASE, so call it 3.4M for round figures. If it's that light and that fast, it's crying out for jump jets, which you can get by dropping the SRM-2 and two of the Machine Guns for about 3.7M. So that's one way to do the Scout Hunter and Trooper at 40 tons, though I still think 60 is the better way to go for the Trooper.
-
(cont. because not enough responses)
You let your head drop to the table with a bang and then looked up after a beat. "So what you're saying is that there's two schools of thought at work here. Or more, but two big schools, neither of who has the actual purse strings or can overrule the other? And the person who does control the money and the decisions is refraining from actually giving us guidelines because..."
Mr. Sanjiv cuts in. "I do not pretend to know El Presidente's mind on this matter. She had very good relations with Katrina Steiner, but has been unable to maintain the same standards with the current Archon. Still, no real risk there. We are on speaking terms with the Free World's League and their Captain-General as well, even if he probably has aides to respond to our diplomatic missives. But either one has the power to crush us like an ant, and that no doubt wears at her mind. She is however...frugal when it comes to military expenditures. This revolution in military technology we hear so much about these days, perhaps she has been thinking 'another year or two, and we can have the weapons we truly need'. Why spend a billion this year in procurement of a thing which will be obsolete next year? And I can see the appeal but... well, a decision must be made at some point."
He frowns and looks reflective. "Both sides will want a fire-support mech I believe, and something to fill out lower priority formations. Neither is particularly glamorous, but either project could be made to serve. A main-line combatant however...that is a little harder to predict what will be accepted and rejected." He gives you a hard look. "I know our competition in this well. They have made their name with hovercraft and jets and things that are quick-they will no doubt be working on something that would look sharp and quick and not out of place in a Draconis Combine formation. They will probably ignore the assault option, but unless you can make something special there, I think it will be the first thing dropped from the contest."
Well, that's some more info-but you still have to put forward your opinion on what's the best thing to start with.
[ ] Write in a proposal for a mech design to go in on?
[ ] Or request orders on what to make first?
-
OK, so cheap, fast, and heavily armed. What I'd really like to say is "pick two", but that's not the option I want to choose. La Jefa seems to be trying to hold out on spending a lot of money until advanced technology is available, so whatever we go with will need to be easily upgraded and cheap. I think that's driving us to the 40 ton designs. 4/6 will drive us away from our own engine, but give us enough tonnage to do both the Trooper and Fire Support designs at minimum cost. If we win the initial competition, that could give us a leg up in the 6/9 competition later.
Fire Support at 40 tons looks like a Large Laser, LRM-15, and two tons of ammo protected by CASE for right around 3M even, unless we want to do a Whitworth clone.
The 40 ton Trooper looks something like Warclaw's initial swag, but I'm pretty sure the AMS has to go (since I don't even see it on the list of available equipment, and the government would likely have to continue smuggling in ammo on a recurring basis). Maybe jam a medium in there and CASE instead. Or a few RL/10s since we make those too.
-
My read is also that we are looking initially at a 40 ton unit.
I think 6/9 though, instead of a 4/6 or 5/8 movement profile.
I say this because we want to keep as much of the production, (and profits) in house as possible. Keeping it in house, also allows us a greater control over supply chain, and avoids some possible snags.
I do realize that this choice will limit our weapons load somewhat, but I believe that the greater mobility will offset this.
Dropping the AMS isn't a big problem.
As far as designs....at 40 tons and 6/9, you pretty much have to decide if you want direct fire support or indirect/long range, not both. Of course, we have the option of putting forward a semi-modular design, with alternate load-outs. Not an Omni, per-se, but a line of mechs with a common frame/engine/movement profile/armor layout, differing only in weapons selection. For example, two mechs, each carrying an over-the-shoulder weapons pod. On the Fire-support version, it holds an LRM 15, but on the version intended for close work it carries a pair of SRM-6 racks and a Medium laser.
-
If we drop the CASE, the fire support version could have two tons of ammo and a medium laser for zero heat at a run. LRM-5 spam would be cheaper, but slightly more heat.
For direct fire, I think we'd be crazy to ignore the in house large laser. Of course, that only leaves 5 tons for secondary weapons and heat sinks. If we had DHS, that could be two large lasers...
-
well, yes, the generalist design would most likely carry a large laser. However I was looking at two possible missile based weapons pods.
Granted, the dual SRM-6 pod is rather specialized for in-fighting, but would YOU want to dig a lance of them out of an urban area?
What I am proposing is at least a pair of designs, possibly a trio, all sharing 80% plus common elements, with the only differences being in the right arm/torso.
All 6/9 movement, 40 ton designs.
All with 8.5 tons of armor (Efficient Maximum)
All w/10 heatsinks
All w/ CASE in the right torso
All w/ 2 locally produced MG's in the left arm.
Design #1: Large Laser, SRM-4, 2 MG's, 1 ton SRM ammo, 1/2 ton MG ammo,
3.24 million C-Bills/Unit by SSW's calculations
Design #2: 3X LRM-5, 2 Mg's, 1/2 ton MG ammo, 2 tons LRM ammo,
3.14 million C-Bills/Unit by SSW's calculations
Design #3: 2X SRM-6, 2MG's, 1/2 ton MG ammo, 2 tons SRM ammo
3.24 million C-Bills/Unit by SSW's calculations
AND, Design #4 (The Militia/export model, AKA the bastard stepchild)
Medium Rifle, 2 MG's, 2 RL-10's, 1/2 ton MG ammo, 2 tons Rifle ammo
3.16 million C-Bills/Unit by SSW's calculations
-
Hmmm... my SSW has slightly different numbers, though I think the premium for CASE makes that a wash. If we're shooting for cheap, a pair of SRM-2s would be about 50K less than the SRM-4 (after the final multiplier is factored in), and provides one more non-ammo critical hit in that torso. With no medium laser secondary weapon, an ammo explosion is a mission kill, but I'm not sure how to fit one in on designs two or three (one is just dropping to one SRM-2 and four we're not worried about).
-
You make your case eloquently, but you get the feeling that you've put a foot wrong from the get go-forty tons and a sixty five kilometer cruising speed makes the table glance at each other uneasily. Still, they listen without any interuptions until they finish at which point two objections are raised. "This Cellular Ammunion rack...we'd need to ship partially constructed components to somewhere in the Inner Sphere, get them to add it, and then ship it back, without the government of said somewhere noticing. That will take a lot of bribes-and we're looking at adding three to four months, round trip."
"Which isn't to say it's impossible-it just...requires we export and then re-import our own half-finished Mech torsos." The poor engineer who's having to point this out looks really uncomfortable. "I'm aware that it adds considerable survivablity for the pilot, but our supply chain's always been fairly short. And I don't know if it will be worth it to extend it that far."
"The bigger issue-" Nikos bumps in at this point, frowning and tenting his hands. "The bigger issue is that we already have a tank with a large laser and a four-tube SRM launcher that weighs 40 tons and moves at the same speed you picked. If we go with this and spin it wrong, someone will see the designs as competing rather than complimentary, and one will get the axe. And the T-50 is shaping up to be a real nice tank, so while normally people might go for the Mech, I don't know if our freshmen effort will be up to it."
They aren't allowed to show you the full design for the new tank, but they can describe it in enough detail for you to work out a fairly good picture in your head...
T-50
Mass: 40 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Motive Type: Tracked
Rules Level: Experimental Tech
Era: Age of War/Star League
Tech Rating/Era Availability: D/C-E-D-A
Production Year: 3052
Cost: 1,309,000 C-Bills
Battle Value: 628
Power Plant: BN Fusion Systems 240 Fusion Engine
Cruise Speed: 64.8 km/h
Flanking Speed: 97.2 km/h
Armor: Guard-Plate 20 Standard Armor
Armament:
1 Series 52 Large Laser
1 SRM-4
1 Series 00 Machine Gun
Manufacturer: Brasillia National Armory
Primary Factory: New Brasillia, Cabanagem
Communications System: Tierra del Sol 35
Targeting and Tracking System: BNA Acu-Trax
Overview:
Constructed by Brasillia Nationa Armory, the T-50 is a light-Medium tank intended to
compete directly with the 50% larger Bulldog. Mounting similar armaments, the
T-50 has a lower profile, uses an easy-to-maintain fusion powerplant with
robust torsion bar suspension, and is more accurate at long range. Armor is
comparable, and while the tank is less durrable thanks to smaller size and
carries a smaller weapons load, it has a significantly higher turn of speed.
================================================================================
Equipment Type Rating Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Standard 20 points 4.00
Engine: Fusion Engine 240 17.50
Cruise MP: 6
Flank MP: 9
Heat Sinks: Single Heat Sink 10 0.00
Control Equipment: 2.00
Lift Equipment: 0.00
Turret: 1.00
Armor: Standard Armor AV - 104 6.50
Armor
Factor
Front 26
Left/Right 20/20
Turret 21
Rear 17
================================================================================
Equipment Location Heat Spaces Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Machine Gun FR 0 1 0.50
Large Laser T 8 1 5.00
SRM-4 T 3 1 2.00
@SRM-4 (25) BD - 0 1.00
@MG (1/2) (100) BD - 0 0.50
BattleForce Statistics
MV S (+0) M (+2) L (+4) E (+6) Wt. Ov Armor: 3 Points: 6
6t 2 2 0 0 2 0 Structure: 2
Special Abilities: TUR(2/2/0)
It's hardly a great tank, but for what it's role is-a cheap and quicker light tank with some punch-it seems to get the job done. And it is pretty close to the cost of a Bulldog, which is the slightly-tarnished copper standard of energy-weapon tanks. You can see how you might need to consider how to spin this to executives and to military buyers alike to convince them not to cut one program or the other...
[ ] I think I can see a way forward with my suggestions.
[ ] I think it might be time to back off and come at this again from a different angle.
[ ] I think I need to write in?
-
Nice of them to finally tell us they were already building a tank to meet the firepower/speed requirement. In that case, I think we're back to the 60 ton range, unless we want to go for broke with an Assault.
We already know both factions want a fire support mech, and that works best at 60 tons (see our earlier dual LRM-15 design, which could lead to the Trooper in the future).
For pure innovation, I vote for my flashbulb. It's nothing like any of the tanks we could build, and two large lasers would be a quantum leap in fire power. Even if it loses that arm, it'll still have the four mediums. When we some day get DHS and/or Blazer Cannons, it's an easy refit.
If we go for broke, the Assault I outlined earlier meets the requirements for a dropship/fortification cracker, and has enough lasers to be dangerous when it runs out of ammo.
If we want to try sticking to the 40 ton 6/9 design, the way to differentiate from a tank is to go crazy with lasers. Two larges are something a tank can't do economically. Alternatively, one large, four mediums and a heat sink will perfectly upgrade with DHS to no heat at a run.
-
Minako rubs the bridge of her nose. "Lovely...and I suppose that was not considered when the specs for the Project 49 mech were listed? I mean, it asks right in the design request for SRM's, a large laser, and machine guns."
She shook her head and sighed. "Right then...Ok, the CASE isn't absolutely critical to the design, but as you noted, it would increase unit and pilot survive-ability significantly. Turning a mech destroying ammo explosion into one that does significant damage, but allows the mech to withdraw under its own power and be repaired." She smiled wryly, "Not to mention the pilot morale and confidence boosts inherent in a design that maximizes pilot safety and survivability."
Thinking a moment, she took a deep breath before speaking. "So...the differences between the proposed mech designs and the new tank..."
"Well, for one, the mech only requires one trained pilot, as opposed to three tank crewmen. And historically, tank crew survival rates are somewhat less than that of mech pilots, once they hit combat, so there is that to consider."
Rubbing her eyes, Minako continues. "As well, while the movement profiles are similar on paper, in practice the mech is actually significantly more mobile, as it can operate in terrain that a tracked unit is unable to traverse."
"I also think looking at this as a competition between the two designs is the wrong way to approach things. Instead, we should be looking at how the two units COMPLEMENT each other. For one thing, they could share a number of weapons components, as well as ammunition and fusion engines, simplifying supply concerns. For another, their roles could mesh very neatly. Tanks, especially low profile, reasonably well armored ones like the T-50, are quite good in a defensive role, and even better when allowed time to set up defensive works or fighting positions. On the other hand, a mech unit like the ones we are proposing, lends itself more readily to offensive operations and counter attacks. In other words, the Tanks are the shield and the mechs the sword. Both valuable, both with an important role."
-
...Okay, I'm drawing a blank on how to square you two again. I could just run with Warclaw's, but he has Minako basically repeating the same 'coordination not competition' thing back at the guys that they just mentioned-they clearly know that the two designs could be used in harmony, they just think that their customers might not see it that way.
-
I think the customer angle is exactly right. Why would they pay for a tank and a 'mech with essentially the same capabilities? Warclaw's point about the specs for project 49 is right, but doesn't account for the size of the local bureaucracy, i.e., it's entirely possible the team putting those specs together wasn't aware of the almost identical tank specs. The farther you are from the one actually stroking the check, the less cross talk and coordination you're likely to see (trust me on this one... I'm living that nightmare on a daily basis right now). And yes, this puts the contractors trying to land government business in a very hard place.
All that said, ultimately we don't make money unless we can sell a design to the government. Knowing now that another part of the company is fulfilling the speed/firepower requirement at a far more reasonable price, I think we need to focus on something different. As much as I like the Trooper we were working on, the tank fills that role for a mere 1.3M C-Bills, meaning the bean counters in the government are likely to go for the three to one quantity advantage at the 4M C-Bill price point. Yes, the personnel costs will be higher, but that's a different account.
So, as I said initially, we know both factions want a fire support mech, even though tanks are better for that role too. We've done that math, so why not try to sell that? We'll have to drop the CASE of course, but that's easily replaced by an extra machine gun.
-
Right then, fire support it is. Question is: Direct fire support (Large Lasers and/or AC's) or Indirect? (LRM's) Or a Combo?
And are we staying at 40 tons? Or saying screw it and jumping up to 60? Because fire support would be much more effective on a larger frame.
With the 6/9 medium tank effectively taking the trooper role, at least for the time being, it looks like we have an almost Capellan doctrine shaping up, with the Tanks leading the way, and the Mechs acting as the heavy hammer and/or for exploitation of breakthroughs. Hard on the tankers, but "Blood greases the treads" you know.
-
Well, we worked out how to do an LRM version before, but tanks do that better since they don't take heat for them. I think we should go for a multiple large laser design, since that's something tanks can't do as efficiently.
My initial flashbulb (just over 5M C-Bills) could work, but it's more of a brawler with all of those mediums, though that might appeal to at least one of the factions. If we drop the jump jets and two of the mediums for heat sinks, we'd have a design that only builds movement heat and costs less than 4.6M. If we also rip out the hands and lower arm actuators, it could flip the arms, and save us a little design complexity. Exchanging the two mediums for four smalls makes it heat neutral and closer to 4.5M.
Another off the wall idea: a mini-Awesome. Three larges and 19 HS comes in at 4.6M C-Bills. Standing in water, it would only build one heat per turn.
Speaking of Awesomes... you can fit 4 larges and 29 heat sinks on one for about 6.2M C-Bills.
-
Sorry guys, been away work ya know how it just consumes all your time and whatever time you get you just like whatever get some sleep.
Guys what we can do is split the desicsion here ok. Allow the the least experinced people on the team work on the mech version of the T-50. As already been listed the economical, logistical, and ease on need for advance tech allows for a quicker production rates.
Than on the 60 tonner well lets go fire support, since one general wants fire support for all occasions, so going with what a pair of LRM 10s since (possibly 15s, but risk reduced armor or weapons for them) and a quatro of MLs or a pair of Large Lasers. Either allows for blazers in the future.
So yes it seems im combining and not helping but look we can scrap the 60 and just hailmary and go assualt mode and just go all lasers and missiles and armor screw that thing called speed. So yeah i recommend the T-50 mech and the assualt realy since this well hopefully appeal to el presindente. (Dont have much of an ideal on how to sell the assualt mech, help here guys)
-
I just double checked the requirements, and it looks like the SRM/Machine Gun thing only applied to the light back stabber. The Trooper spec said:
Project-57 Trooper
Medium Mech-possibly a light Heavy.
Emphasis on firepower and survival.
Speed may be allowed to slip. A 'Mech of the Line'.
Costs to be kept down as much as possible.
Use of purely domestic components is smiled upon.
And the fire support requirements were:
Project-61 Support
Long-range fire-support.
LRM firepower for indirect bombardment required.
Direct-fire may also be useful.
Artillery missiles and tubes to be avoided.
Avoid directly cloning an existing design-lawsuits cost money, and mercenaries cost more.
Tweaking in SSW, it looks like we could jam a pair of large lasers in with two LRM-5s, but that's about it unless we really want to overheat. If we go the Battle Axe route (i.e., 4/6/4), it's 15 HS. And it comes in around 4.6M C-Bills without jump jets, 4.8M with them.
The main problem we have with a 60 ton design is that a stripped chassis with max armor (12.5 tons, with 24 tons for weapons) is already over the 4M C-Bill mark. For comparison, I just threw a 4/6 tank into SAW (SSW for tanks), and with 6.5 tons of armor, 2 LRM-15s, a large laser and a medium laser, it came in under 2.6M.
This is where I wish we had a 200 rated engine. Things are much cheaper at 50 tons.
-
For the umpteenth time, the 4M per chasis mark is averaged over the whole fleet (Five Battalions or two Regiments). If you sell two mechs at 2M, and one at 8, that's an average of 4. If you sell a company of 20 ton millita backstabbers at 1.5 million each, then a lance of Atlas-likes can become available. You can of course sell a fleet of aproximately 4-million 40-50 tonners, if you wish to hew as close to the average value as possible, but offering something over or under that won't get you sent to a gulag.
And if you really want a 200 rated engine, there's one currently in bench tests. It's not company-made, but if you want it it's available for design considerations.
-
I get the average over the fleet thing, and that's why I've proposed designs above that price. The problem is we haven't discussed anything viable much below 4M yet. The slow 40 tonners could get us there, but they were just blown out of the water by the company's own tank.
The one design we haven't talked about yet is the scout. At 30 tons and 8/12, max armor gives us 3 tons to work with. The spec says "long range skirmish" only, and that works with an LRM-5 for about 2.5M. Dropping a ton of armor for a medium laser keeps it right around the same price.
Dropping to 20 tons, a Locust clone with 3 RL-10s and a medium laser comes in around 1.6M. It can build 4 heat, once.
-
Issue i see with the Locust clone is that well "the powers that be" may see a 30 tonner as going backwards we could get resistance or flat out no to the design. Sure we could sell the massed horde of light mechs. Though i have a feelin the horde of tanks covers this. Light mechs serve a good purpose yet if they do not have heavier support the losses would be extreme or at least unacceptable to a military mind.
I still believe the 40 ton design is a good compromise that still meets the wants and desires of the generals a good bit. It is not perfect but even generals can not make reality change to fit there perfect world they want. If we win the contract then we can work on the next mech but we have limitations on this design that all our well b if we do this, and this.
We are the issue that many military designers have had, the people in the military want this but only so much. Many designs in RL history that meet the requirements perfectly were never put massed production since th3 cost was too much.
For example look at the P-38 lightning during WWII, the U.S. Army wanted a fighter that could go on long range fighter escorts over europe with the daylight bombing raids. But because of just how it looked, and since previouse dual enigne heavy fighter designs failed to preform as desired. Thus the P38 was regulated to the Pacific front were it preformed great.
Want im trying to say is guys play it safe use the cost saving measures provided by the 40 tonner, trust me it wont please everybody but the complaints angainst it well be mostly nullified. Not perfect world but hey to try and squeeze as much as possible on a budget mech i think is foolhardy for the first design we do.
-
well...if we are willing to accept the risk of an unproven engine and go with the 200 that's on bench testing right now, I have a 50 tonner that I think works well as a support mech:
bracket fire is somewhat necessary, but fairly simple, as when the LRM's drop under minimum range, the medium lasers are just starting to come into their mid-range.
The Rocket Launchers are there as a last resort defense weapon, and/or a final finisher for those targets that just need a little extra push.
At a little over 3.4 Million C-bills, it comes under budget comfortably, even allowing for adjustments due to purchasing some components out of house.
Trooper-50 Mk-1
Mass: 50 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Chassis Config: Biped
Rules Level: Experimental Tech
Era: All Eras (non-canon)
Tech Rating/Era Availability: D/X-X-D-A
Production Year: 0
Cost: 3,429,250 C-Bills
Battle Value: 1,155
Chassis: Unknown Standard
Power Plant: Unknown 200 Fusion Engine
Walking Speed: 43.2 km/h
Maximum Speed: 64.8 km/h
Jump Jets: None
Jump Capacity: 0 meters
Armor: Unknown Standard Armor
Armament:
1 LRM-15
1 Large Laser
2 Medium Lasers
2 Rocket Launcher 10s
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communications System: Unknown
Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown
================================================================================
Equipment Type Rating Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Standard 83 points 5.00
Engine: Fusion Engine 200 8.50
Walking MP: 4
Running MP: 6
Jumping MP: 0
Heat Sinks: Single Heat Sink 14 4.00
Heat Sink Locations: 1 HD, 1 LT, 2 RA, 1 LL, 1 RL
Gyro: Standard 2.00
Cockpit: Standard 3.00
Actuators: L: SH+UA+LA+H R: SH+UA
Armor: Standard Armor AV - 168 10.50
Internal Armor
Structure Factor
Head 3 9
Center Torso 16 24
Center Torso (rear) 7
L/R Torso 12 18
L/R Torso (rear) 6
L/R Arm 8 16
L/R Leg 12 24
================================================================================
Equipment Location Heat Critical Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Medium Laser CT 3 1 1.00
2 Rocket Launcher 10s RT 6 2 1.00
LRM-15 LT 5 3 7.00
Large Laser RA 8 2 5.00
Medium Laser LA 3 1 1.00
@LRM-15 (16) LT - 2 2.00
Free Critical Slots: 32
BattleForce Statistics
MV S (+0) M (+2) L (+4) E (+6) Wt. Ov Armor: 6 Points: 12
4 2 3 1 0 2 0 Structure: 4
Special Abilities: SRCH, ES, SEAL, SOA, IF 1
-
I like everything except the risk of the engine being bench tested, but I don't think that should stop us from proposing it.
-
Ok i can get behind the MK I easly could we also provide a variant using the 240 since it is already in production. (Just suggesting another way to reduce long term cost per mech.) Also the 240 would prorvide a slightly faster varient could make what 1|12 ratio and possibly removing the rockets for two more MLs.
But yeah the MK I that was suggested gets a big fat approval from me.
-
I have to say the 60-tonner makes more sense to me. Dual LLs, some SRM tubes, and a couple of MLs, and it should make a good trooper. Jump jets if we've got 'em.
-
-Consensus Failure.
-Multiplicity of options.
-Delay, Delay, Delay.
---------------------------
You groan and let your head drop into your hands. "Great, this is just...fantastic. Why didn't I hear about this earlier? Why didn't they mention it at the meeting?"
The others look at each other and shrug. "Need to Know. The consensus probably was you didn't need to know about a weapon system that hadn't been accepted yet, even if it's been on the drawing boards and in testing for two years. We've had to use imported and dummy lasers, so if we can finally get our domestic one approved, we'll be ready for a full-up test and a decision from the military by the end of the month. Shi-Sem Heavy Metal are pushing a faster design with comparable armor and weapons, but it's another damn hovercraft and they'll never get it over the required obstacles without a set of jump jets. Actually, you should probably get briefed on their designs too-They have a couple of little Hovercraft, the T-37 and the T-41, that are good for open ground but really cannot take a hit worth a damn." Another person you haven't caught the name of cuts in. "Be fair, we aren't exactly long on durable designs ourselves. Aside from our Big Iron, there just hasn't been a call for heavy vehicles." The first person pulls up a picture of a hovercraft that's been blown up on his note-puter and spins it around to show the room. "That's fair, that's fair, but remind me when we stuffed twelve tons of weapons into a thirty ton box, and then wrapped it with less than four tons of armor?"
You give your head a tired shake. "Look I really don't know what will be easy to sell, what stands a chance of winning the competition... I need to go back and take a look at my notes, I've got a bunch of mid-weight trooper designs sketched out but this was the one I had the most work done on."
Niklos thumps the table with his fist. "I have an idea. We switch the order of the modifications. We do the short or long range missile design first, and then throw in the main-line one as a variant. That changes the focus of the primary design and gets us some extra breathing room for variety. And we can definitely stand to have a more mobile LRM launcher. The military never stops complaining about how limited the terrain traversal on the T-41 is whenever they take it out of flat ground. Extra armor is a bonus. What do you think, huh?"
Mr. Sanjiv looks at you and shifts. "I can see this matter requires more reflection. I'll move that we table it until next week, but you had better have a good decision by then. You can use this discussion to get some input from your team members. We're expecting them to arrive by Thursday at the latest once the last of the background checks and security arrangements are complete. Use the time to work the problem, build some camaraderie, but I will expect a hard answer first thing next week, and a plan to actually implement the design you come up with.
Without a decision about that, the meeting breaks up afterwards and you all adjourn back to your side of the building to get to work. Your new underlings glance at you expectantly, waiting for orders...
[ ] Distribute your old Mech design projects, textbooks, and see what they know and what they don't know.
[ ] Ask about the competition- you've picked up that Shi-Sem are fond of hovercraft, but will they make
ultra-fast lights for as many roles as possible or try and make a LAM?
[ ] Grab a ball and head out to the courtyard to kick a few ideas around about the design concepts you have.
[ ] Give them a warm-up project and retire to your office to brood and think this over.
-
I'm for option two... clearly people around here know more than they've told Minako so far.
-
Option 3 if it is a group thing but if not option 2
-
option 2
-
You take a seat on the edge of a table-several are scattered around the office, along with a few whiteboards and look at the others. Four men, three women, counting yourself, most of them young and locally educated-but their instructors at least went to the best schools in the Inner Sphere. All professionals with experience under their belts-and probably also insiders with a view of how the local procurements process will shake out.
You spend a while pumping them for information and engaging in some speculation. Shi-Sem Heavy Metal is a younger, more diversified company. While their precursor, Shika-Kama Motors, made mostly civilian trucks, Shi-Sem sells a far broader spectrum of products-everything from cars to hovecraft to helicopters, tilt-rotors and jets. Not terribly great jets mind, but something. They picked up all the artisianal Battlemech part production that had kept the local pirates afloat, and built that up into actual component production facilities on the planets Yama (fusion reactor parts and electronics) Ogun (Armor) and New Mali (chasis/internal structure) and adapted them to their existing lines of products and new hovercraft to patrol the huge areas of newly conquered territory that came with the jump from one planet to five. While the pirates had been rooted out quickly, their traditional power structures in some cases ran much deeper-someone mentions Steel Buddhists, which is you first introduction to what is apparently a violently militant sect dedicated to the principle of Might Makes Right-and if overt might is insufficient, they aren't shy about assassination either.
In any case, the need for high-mobility patrol vehicles and abundant investment funds had allowed them to grow rapidly and obtain several lucrative contracts-though not without consequence. They had apparently been caught attempting to steal several designs from Inner Sphere companies, and were now persona non-grata among the major arms manufacturers. Nonetheless, they have a sizable reserve of assets, even after investing in a new semi-automated production facility for Battlemechs. In terms of both capacity and production efficiency, they'll have a demonstrable advantage over your company. And of course, there was their investment in design hardware and staff. Their staff is probably comparable to what your talent-scouts have managed to get-but their computer systems, as previously mentioned are near top of the line.
As for what designs they'll put forward-well, that depends. They'll definitely low-ball the Militia design, aiming to undercut your price point and secure a big contract. They might favor jump jets. They will certainly favor endo-steel if it is available, and might even gamble on getting a design ready before the problems are ironed out of the testing samples. Weapons are a mixed bag-they can't licence anything from the Inner Sphere without some serious under the table deals, so there won't be any surprises there, but they only make LRMs in house. They will need to buy from a subcontractor their lasers, autocannon and SRMs, and that subcontractor will probably be under the BNA umbrella, so there might be some advance warning if they go for those things. Their opinion on heavy designs is unknown-heck, they've never made anything heavier than a 35 ton fighter.
A couple of your engineers offer to draw up some speculative designs based on their known proclivities, but a few others think that it would be better to get their hands in if you can suggest some problems to work. Niklos meanwhile, thinks that if he gets to poking his contacts and friends, he might get some warning before Monday on whether or not the new large laser type will be accepted-once the basic range and firepower benchmarks are down and they carry out some basic shock and vibration testing, they'll just point it out to sea and test it to destruction by firing until it melts or the lenses crack or something breaks.
[ ] Approve speculative competitive design studies-think like your rivals. You'll be able to exploit their weaknesses.
[ ] Class is in session, start teaching these guys something about designing battlemechs.
[ ] Networking is essential-let Niklos get on the phone and start talking to his friends.
-
Well option option 3 and while Niklos is out about how about a little bit of option 2 getting everyone a little battlemech design 101 course. Like doing a theoretical design giving the team a chance to start working together and see how putting their knowledge into a single design will work while Minako thinks on the final choice for the design to go with.
So definitely option 3.
-
I'm in favor of all of the above, and don't see why we can't do all three: let Niklos kite off to poke his contacts, give a little design 101, then assign the competitive design studies as homework.
-
I'm in favor of all of the above, and don't see why we can't do all three: let Niklos kite off to poke his contacts, give a little design 101, then assign the competitive design studies as homework.
Agreed
-
I'm in favor of all of the above, and don't see why we can't do all three: let Niklos kite off to poke his contacts, give a little design 101, then assign the competitive design studies as homework.
Have you ever heard the saying 'have your cake and eat it too?'
-
Indeed, and have even pulled it off on occasion. I seriously don't see how letting Niklos kite off to make calls interferes with the other two. If those two are mutually exclusive, then I'm for the competitive design studies over battlemech design 101.
-
...Okay I think I can spin this.
---
You know some people, thanks to the success of various Battlemech simulation games, think that designing a new Mech is about as simple as picking a weight class and speed, filling a blocky set of body parts with components that occupy 'criticals' and coating lovingly with armor. They think that, for instance, that you can redesign an existing chasis easily, that replacing a small laser with a medium just means shaving half a ton of armor off somewhere. They think that making a hundred tons of myomer, ceramics, metal and artifical diamond composite stand up and walk is easy.
Those people are, in your opinion, idiots who have allowed themselves to be seduced by the variability of Mechs in service, who don't realize how easy it is to screw things up at step one. And you set up to teach these dudes just how untrue that is when you ask them if the Shi-Sem design will be Dynamic or Static. And when they flounder on their explanations for why (it would have to be dynamic if they're using Endo-steel because endo-steel has a lower cross-sectional strength per centimeter), you hound them around the room a couple of times. Every time they crank out a new 'speculative' design, you barrage them with questions about how exactly it will be executed-should the SRM launchers be firmly bolted to the frame, or allowed to float in cradles of shock-absorbing myomer? Do you leave space behind the armor for the Mech to move, or fit it as tightly as you dare and hope that nothing chafes? How, exactly, do you fit the myomers for a mech that will clock in at over 120 kilometers per hour at a run? Niklos is too distracted by this to get his phone calls to accomplish much and his wheeling and dealing turns up only a 'it looks good so far' by the time you're packing up to head back to the hotel. Everyone else is tired, worn out-and contemplative, reminded of how much of a learning experience this is going to be.
Still, you got some interesting desgins, to be sure.
Spec-1
Mass: 25 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Chassis Config: Biped
Rules Level: Tournament Legal
Era: Age of War/Star League
Tech Rating/Era Availability: E/E-X-E-A
Production Year: 2750
Cost: 1,821,667 C-Bills
Battle Value: 502
Chassis: Unknown Endo-Steel
Power Plant: Unknown 200 Fusion Engine
Walking Speed: 86.4 km/h
Maximum Speed: 129.6 km/h
Jump Jets: None
Jump Capacity: 0 meters
Armor: Unknown Standard Armor
Armament:
1 Medium Laser
1 SRM-2
2 Machine Guns
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communications System: Unknown
Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown
================================================================================
Equipment Type Rating Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Endo-Steel 43 points 1.50
Internal Locations: 1 HD, 1 CT, 3 LT, 3 RT, 3 LA, 3 RA
Engine: Fusion Engine 200 8.50
Walking MP: 8
Running MP: 12
Jumping MP: 0
Heat Sinks: Single Heat Sink 10 0.00
Heat Sink Locations: 1 LL, 1 RL
Gyro: Standard 2.00
Cockpit: Standard 3.00
Actuators: L: SH+UA+LA+H R: SH+UA+LA+H
Armor: Standard Armor AV - 72 4.50
Internal Armor
Structure Factor
Head 3 9
Center Torso 8 10
Center Torso (rear) 3
L/R Torso 6 9
L/R Torso (rear) 2
L/R Arm 4 6
L/R Leg 6 8
================================================================================
Equipment Location Heat Critical Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SRM-2 CT 2 1 1.00
Machine Gun RT 0 1 0.50
Medium Laser LT 3 1 1.00
Machine Gun RA 0 1 0.50
@MG (1/2) (100) RT - 1 0.50
@SRM-2 (Frag) (50) RT - 1 1.00
@SRM-2 (50) RT - 1 1.00
Free Critical Slots: 24
Spec-2
Mass: 60 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Chassis Config: Biped
Rules Level: Tournament Legal
Era: Age of War/Star League
Tech Rating/Era Availability: E/D-F-E-A
Production Year: 2750
Cost: 4,581,760 C-Bills
Battle Value: 1,301
Chassis: Unknown Endo-Steel
Power Plant: Unknown 180 Fusion Engine
Walking Speed: 32.4 km/h
Maximum Speed: 54.0 km/h
Jump Jets: Unknown
Jump Capacity: 90 meters
Armor: Unknown Standard Armor
Armament:
2 LRM-20s
2 LRM-10s
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communications System: Unknown
Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown
================================================================================
Equipment Type Rating Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Endo-Steel 99 points 3.00
Internal Locations: 1 CT, 3 LT, 3 RT, 3 LA, 3 RA, 1 LL
Engine: Fusion Engine 180 7.00
Walking MP: 3
Running MP: 5
Jumping MP: 3 Standard
Jump Jet Locations: 1 CT, 1 LT, 1 RT 3.00
Heat Sinks: Single Heat Sink 10 0.00
Heat Sink Locations: 1 LT, 1 RT, 1 RL
Gyro: Standard 2.00
Cockpit: Standard 3.00
Actuators: L: SH+UA+LA+H R: SH+UA+LA+H
Armor: Standard Armor AV - 128 8.00
Internal Armor
Structure Factor
Head 3 9
Center Torso 20 18
Center Torso (rear) 5
L/R Torso 14 17
L/R Torso (rear) 4
L/R Arm 10 12
L/R Leg 14 15
================================================================================
Equipment Location Heat Critical Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LRM-20 RT 6 5 10.00
LRM-20 LT 6 5 10.00
LRM-10 RA 4 2 5.00
LRM-10 LA 4 2 5.00
@LRM-10 (12) RT - 1 1.00
@LRM-20 (6) RT - 1 1.00
@LRM-10 (12) LT - 1 1.00
@LRM-20 (6) LT - 1 1.00
Free Critical Slots: 9
Spec-3
Mass: 45 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Chassis Config: Biped
Rules Level: Tournament Legal
Era: Age of War/Star League
Tech Rating/Era Availability: E/D-F-E-A
Production Year: 2750
Cost: 3,426,640 C-Bills
Battle Value: 1,186
Chassis: Unknown Endo-Steel
Power Plant: Unknown 180 Fusion Engine
Walking Speed: 43.2 km/h
Maximum Speed: 64.8 km/h
Jump Jets: Unknown
Jump Capacity: 120 meters
Armor: Unknown Standard Armor
Armament:
1 LRM-20
1 Large Laser
2 Medium Lasers
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communications System: Unknown
Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown
================================================================================
Equipment Type Rating Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Endo-Steel 75 points 2.50
Internal Locations: 3 LT, 3 RT, 3 LA, 3 RA, 1 LL, 1 RL
Engine: Fusion Engine 180 7.00
Walking MP: 4
Running MP: 6
Jumping MP: 4 Standard
Jump Jet Locations: 2 CT, 1 LT, 1 RT 2.00
Heat Sinks: Single Heat Sink 10 0.00
Heat Sink Locations: 1 LT, 1 RT, 1 RL
Gyro: Standard 2.00
Cockpit: Standard 3.00
Actuators: L: SH+UA+LA+H R: SH+UA+LA+H
Armor: Standard Armor AV - 152 9.50
Internal Armor
Structure Factor
Head 3 9
Center Torso 14 21
Center Torso (rear) 6
L/R Torso 11 16
L/R Torso (rear) 6
L/R Arm 7 14
L/R Leg 11 22
================================================================================
Equipment Location Heat Critical Mass
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Medium Laser HD 3 1 1.00
LRM-20 RT 6 5 10.00
Large Laser RA 8 2 5.00
Medium Laser LA 3 1 1.00
@LRM-20 (12) RT - 2 2.00
Free Critical Slots: 15
One more, you have an evening all to yourself-the question is how to spend it. After you finally pick up your rifle that is.
[ ] Early to bed, Early to Rise, you've got an exhaustive week ahead of you-and an NAIS graduate to welcome in the morn.
[ ] Spend some time and scratch out a design that you can use to teach your co-workers a thing or two with, even if it might come in behind on some of the requirements.
[ ] You heard people mention Yama as if it were a curse today, but also as if it were a planet...
Just what kind of environments are your designs going to have to operate in?
[ ] Weekends are all well and good, but let's find some write-in entertainment.
-
Ok Spec 1 looks like a Locust clone to me which is all good but at 25 tons and just under 1.9 mill C-Bills which with us having a price ceiling of 4 million M-Bills (which, correct me if I'm wrong was said to have a 1 to 20 exchange rate to the C-Bill) thus bringing this the closes to the budget per mech; yet still over budget but we can fiat that a bit if needed.
Spec 2 as designed is no go for me since only having LRMs seems like just asking for trouble if it gets seperated from armor and infantry support. Which means this design would be regulated to defense or tactical offensive support role. Which if you have other mechs on the feild having a mech or two like this one also along is great but not the primary.
But Spec 2 due to its weight, does allow for modification since we should be able to make variations alot easier than if we went with Spec 1 or 3. Thus we could get more 3 longevity out of Spec 2.
Spec 3 what can i say i have advocated for it already, its the design that lokks best and could get the contract the quickest and without much issue. Since its the T-50 mech version the feild commanders will have easiest time of all three to learning it capabilities since its weapons are already in use. Also logistical side makes this the preferred designed to me.
So after all that its Spec 3 that gets my vote total focus with a maybe to the Locust clone followed by spec 2 with a only if they ask for it by name.
For the weekend will Minako has been working her *** off thus She needs a drink and should invite Niklos along, letim get lose but stop a hour before final call (that if this backwater banana republic planet's, bars have a final call) if not maybe midnight or 1 o'clock should be the lastest.
Also is Niklos married? If not maybe Minako could try for some after bar hopin "fun time" ;)
-
If these are the competitive design studies I think they are, we're in luck. The locust clone, while the most efficient tonnage, apparently missed the "long range skirmish only" specification. The LRM machine is too slow for anything I understand the government to want. Spec-3 looks dangerous to us on the surface, but relies on three pieces of prototype technology that still need work (endo-steel, the 180 engine, and the large laser). That said, technological readiness is a harder sell than battlefield capability, so AdS looks to be our toughest competition.
As far as what to do tonight, I'd think Minako would be a little taken aback by the mistakes made by the team doing the competitive design studies. I vote for scratching out a design to teach them a bit more about what they're really up against (option 2).
-
I thought the budget was in C-Bills, Not M-Bills. Clarification please?
As for the competitive designs....
#1: If the Locals wanted a Locust, they could buy them cheaper on the open market, EVERYBODY makes Locusts...and there's a reason for that. They die almost as fast as you build them. While the speed is nice, the minimal armor and mediocre armament relegate this to a scouting role. All well and good if that's what you want, but pretty poor for anything else.
#2: 60 LRMs is a good throw weight. Too bad to do it they had to skimp on mobility, armor, defensive armament, and endurance....assuming they can get the Endo Steel AND the prototype engine working properly and available in sufficient numbers. Plus, anything that gets inside 6 hexes of this steaming pile will eat it alive. It won't be able to effectively defend itself even against a Wasp or Stinger, so it WILL require a decent escort/bodyguard unit.
#3: The best of the three, but still lacking. Armor is good for its size, but at the end of the day, its still a 45 ton mech...there are limits to how much it can carry. Unfortunately, its mobility is insufficient to compensate. Weapons load is pretty good for a 45 tonner...too bad if it tries to use it any where near to capacity it'll quickly overheat and either shut down or cook off the ammo. Endurance ammo-wise is barely adequate. Decent enough for a skirmisher, but not sufficient for a line-of-battle mech. They'd have done better to drop the 20-rack to a 15 and accepted the lower throw weight in exchange for a significantly deeper ammo bay.
As for the evening's activities, I vote #2, with the design be the Trooper Mk-1 (Post #158).
Does also depend on two components that are still being tested, but are looking good so far. Compared to the 45 tonner its faster, more heavily armored, comparably armed, can maintain a better battle-tempo, and has deeper ammo bins....for only about 3,000 more C-bills a mech.
-
Yes, the budget is in C-bills-and don't mistake local 'weak' currency for a week economy. A single Maravedí might buy less, but that can play to your advantage as an exporter. And it's still enough to buy a cheap sandwich or a drink from a vending machine. This isn't Zimbabwe, plagued by hyperinflation, but they're not about to deflate the currency to get it closer to a 1:1 exchange rate with the major house bills. :P
And yes, the designs have obvious flaws-they're off the cuff concepts made by people who aren't used to considering the heat loads of missiles for one thing. This is the 'throwing stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks' phase of things. What sticks might smell.
-
Ok so the money thing is done, and we know what stage we are at designing our first mech.
So lets look into this a bit while Spec 3 seems the most promising at first and most likely to get a vote of confidence. But whats our budget for a build prototype this well surely be the most important to what we well design and display as what we will go for.
Now unless my i understanding of RL military contract bids work is faulty usually there is a cost bid and practical application bid. Usually said company well build the prototype at cost to the company. Then when testing it well have military and civilian personal (aka yhose on some appropriations committee or the leader "El Presidente" well be there if its of great significance)
So next day Minako when she has a chance to speak with the boss she go about finding these things out. Since having a mech that lokks perfect on paper but when built has many issues like the myomer tension is off or the slab of armor is chafing the skeleton and possibly causing micro fractures. At prototype build this is where those military techs well most usefull.
Also why are we going with a material gor the frame we cannot be sure will be ready. Why not presume to use standard for now and if the endo becomes viable than we use it. Look i know endo comes with own set of issues when building a mech but if what supply we have is unreliable i sorry but the 180 engine is still being tested, the LL is being tested, we got a team of guys not well practiced. If we were to row the dice right now we would need a like a pair of 20 sided dice to make the need number.
Guys it great to go for the fancy stuff but endo is new on block in the Inner Sphere come one it has to reasonable to assume if the power houses of technology reaearch being done by the successor states took time. It should be a miracle our endo steel gets completed and ready to use quickly.
Of course these are my opinions and just dont want us to get a little munchkin on the tech development side than we already have done and are expecting to do so.
-
If these are the competitive design studies I think they are, we're in luck. The locust clone, while the most efficient tonnage, apparently missed the "long range skirmish only" specification. The LRM machine is too slow for anything I understand the government to want. Spec-3 looks dangerous to us on the surface, but relies on three pieces of prototype technology that still need work (endo-steel, the 180 engine, and the large laser). That said, technological readiness is a harder sell than battlefield capability, so AdS looks to be our toughest competition.
As far as what to do tonight, I'd think Minako would be a little taken aback by the mistakes made by the team doing the competitive design studies. I vote for scratching out a design to teach them a bit more about what they're really up against (option 2).
Bump the Spec-3 to a 50-tonner using the 200 fusion engine keeping the loadout the same and increasing armor, heat sinks or ammo if there is tonnage available (at work so no SSW). An interested reader's perspective.
-
Bump the Spec-3 to a 50-tonner using the 200 fusion engine keeping the loadout the same and increasing armor, heat sinks or ammo if there is tonnage available (at work so no SSW). An interested reader's perspective.
Far as i know we dont have a 200 rated engine on hand, unless i missed it.
-
I must have misread it, then sorry.
-
No worries! The 200 engine is in the same phase of development as the 180 (and by the same company, no less). That's one of the reasons I said AdS looks to be the most dangerous competitor. If our study is accurate, they're going to try to undercut our bid by 3,000 C-Bills and up the LRM launcher to a 20-rack, albeit with fewer shots, and fewer heat sinks. In fact, that might be a reason to drop our two RL-10s for a third ton of LRM ammo (i.e., so we can advertise "twice the ammo").
And as far as being an interested reader, that's exactly how I started here too, so don't feel compelled to limit your participation because you're joining the party late.
-
AdS is short for Acadamy of Science, (Academia das Ciências is modern portugese, but hey, a few centuries of Star League 'spelling bees' do wonders for 'rationalizing' spelling towards English.) so they're not really a competitor company. They're doing design work on speculation, rationalizing that it will be needed at some point by someone.
And yes, feel free to join in-Quest format encourages people to drop in whenever (and if they drop out, hopefully it won't damage things too much.)
-
They're doing design work on speculation, rationalizing that it will be needed at some point by someone.
So, what you are saying is that they intend to put forth mech design proposals...maybe contract a prototype or two...but aren't specifically going after any particular contract? And if they do manage to come out on top, either sub-contract the construction or outright license/Sell the design to a manufacturing concern?
-
So, what you are saying is that they intend to put forth mech design proposals...maybe contract a prototype or two...but aren't specifically going after any particular contract? And if they do manage to come out on top, either sub-contract the construction or outright license/Sell the design to a manufacturing concern?
No, the AdS is developing components only right now, and don't even build them. They licence their designs out for a nominal fee to be built by other companies. Since they're a government-owned think-tank, this makes sense-NAIS doesn't manufacture Mechs. They're responsible for the Pistolero because that was a prototype and a proof that the capability existed, and that's all they've done. The actual manufacture was spread out among several companies. Shi-Sem is the primary rival armsmaker, but they are keeping a tight lid on what they've developed in house for fusion engines and will only sell sub-sub-components. Mextica is another sub-component manufacturer, but their ambitions to break out and design something of their own and break into the big leagues is foundering since you decided that Minako wasn't going their way.
AdS is more a source for advanced technology to enter the market than a compettitor. Like the in-house R&D department, they will work quietly through the game to develop new technology and give it to you. The trade off is that you have no control at all over the Academy's next project, but they are better at developing cutting edge stuff like DHS and XL engines. R&D will generally give you longer-term advance warning of their projects though, while the Academy may spring fully-ready stuff on you without much warning. Nothing like getting a assembly line set up for your new export flashbulb and then getting the word that DHS are ready for mass production a week after production begins.
-
That sounds like we should be designing for DHS from the beginning...
-
Do you enjoy saying 'Hit Me' when you've got a 19 in blackjack?
-
Depends on the card count... ^-^
-
KISS is the watchword here. Nothing fancy, nothing overly complex, a few object lessons in how things are arranged perhaps. You're not sure if the 40 ton think you've sketched out in your notes or this 50 tonner are better suited for that, but you come up with some personal notes about the designs and think it all over. Energy, balistic and missile weapons all have their unique requirements, so getting all three onto one design might be a good idea-both to train you engineers and to train the Mechwarriors and technicians. On the other hand, maybe it's a good idea to just work with what makes Mechs different-that will help keep things simple.
While the fact of the matter is that every part of the design influences every other part, there is also a need to fix certain parts of the design earlier than others. This means that, for all intents and purposes, you can design the Mech design process into eight phases, each one with it's own special questions to answer and direct the shape of the next phase.
- Internal Structure
- Weapons and heat-sink pre-fitting
- Engines and myomers.
- Gyro and Articulation
- Controls and sensors
- Weapons integration and coolant systems
- Armor
- Final check out and simulation.
The Mech first needs to stand. Then the weapons must intrude deep into it's structre and it's major arteries and veins for coolant laid out. It's heart must beat and it's strength build, before it finally begins to walk and turn. It must be able to see and be controlled, and then the weapons must talk to those controls, while ammo feeds and coolant loops reach a final configuration. Then and only then can a final shell take form and the whole thing be checked for flaws that may have arisen through emergent complexity. Emergence is a huge problem for Battlemech designers-you remember horror stories about tripple-strength myomer that snapped structural elements like wishbones, or about ammo feeds that fired normally at elevations below 15 degrees but when you raised the arms the myomers twisted just so and wound up snarled in the feed mechanisms. And that's ignoring the computer systems, often one of the more fiendishly complex parts of the whole system. The Man-Machine interface is also notorious for causing problems that must also be debugged. But if those eight steps are complete, you'll have something worth prototyping.
[ ] Confirm 50-ton trooper from post 158?
[ ] Go with something else...
Before you go to bed, you check you email one last time and get an update from Niklos-nothing definite just yet, but he indicates that the testing has moved on to the 'test to destruction' phase and they're just gonna fire that poor test laser until it explodes from thousands of cycles without any maintenance. No obvious flaws then-that's a positive.
The drive in to work is fairly uneventful-right up until a car accelerates out of a gas station towards your own, aiming to T-bone your car, and is only stopped by being knocked asside by the security team's car accelerating faster and slamming it away mere inches from your car.
Then the car bomb goes off, a high explosive WHUMP that scatters the inferno gel covering the road, the cars, the gas station, and the screaming pedestrians. You have your new pistol, the one you haven't got any range time on, the one with 18 rounds. Your attackers just used a car bomb, and there may be others-but some of your security detail is burning right now.
[ ]GET OUT OF THE CAR! PEOPLE NEED HELP!
[ ]DUCK AND COVER! SNIPERS MIGHT BE OUT THERE!
[ ]DRIVE ME OUT OF HERE! ESCAPE THE AMBUSH ASAP!
-
#1: Confirm 50 ton design from post #158 as an initial design proposal.
#2: Get the hell out of dodge! Getting out and helping is a temptation, but with only a pistol that she hasn't practiced with, (Against an unknown potential attacker), it seems best to remove herself from the target zone ASAP. Hunkering down might sound like a good idea, but all it does in reality is give any attackers an immobile target. Best way to break an ambush, if you can't counter-attack, is to get out of the ambush zone.
-
#1: Confirm 50 ton design from post #158 as an initial design proposal.
#2: Get the hell out of dodge! Getting out and helping is a temptation, but with only a pistol that she hasn't practiced with, (Against an unknown potential attacker), it seems best to remove herself from the target zone ASAP. Hunkering down might sound like a good idea, but all it does in reality is give any attackers an immobile target. Best way to break an ambush, if you can't counter-attack, is to get out of the ambush zone.
I agree funny since thats standard practice for counter ambush tactics,.
-
I agree funny since thats standard practice for counter ambush tactics,.
It was when I was in service.
-
Concur on the 50 ton design from post 158, and getting out of dodge. Aside from being good tactics, it's very clear she's the target. While getting away, cinch the seatbelt, draw the weapon, and make sure it's loaded. This may become a running gun battle, and her handler is a little busy driving. She can feel sorry for the security detail later. They did their jobs, and successfully to boot. Later, it's also time to revisit those housing options, and start packing the rifle to work. If the spooks have any self defense training, it's time to take them up on it too.
-
It was when I was in service.
Same when i was in too
-
Is everyone here ex or current military except for me? Anyways, I'll get something up in the morning my-time.
-
At least three of us are. It's something I've noticed on the board in general.
-
The minder wants to put the pedal to the metal-and you're screaming at her to do so-but the street is awash with fire-there's even a glob of Inferno gel on the hood burning through the cosmetic outer hood and dripping into the armored box around the engine. The people-and there are a lot of people on the street-are running, honking, screaming. The drivers on the road are stunned from the bomb or already working on a nine-car pileup at the next intersection, so nobody can simply hit the gas and floor it out of the ambush zone.
And then you hear bullets hitting the windows. You risk a glance and see the pair of gunmen leaning out of yet another car, but the added chaos of their riles hitting battle-glass is enough to finally clear the streets enough for your driver to scoot between two parked cars, duck down an alley, and then out into another street, honking furiously. You spend five minutes waiting for the two gunmen to catch up to you in their own car, only realizing that you've lost them when your driver pulls into an underground garage and ushers you into a underground safe-house.
That was an hour ago-you've been assured that your work has been informed of the attack and resultant delay, but you've been sitting in this 'living room' for over an hour, and the industrial grey concrete walls and floors and ceiling of the bunker are starting to drive you stir crazy. There's a week's supply of protein shakes in cans, but you hope it won't come to that. Especially since they're all Durian flavored. It seems that now you're out of immediate danger, the government goons are going to sit on you until the non-immediate all-clear is sounded.
You're shaking still. You thought this was going to be an job that while challenging and demanding all of your skill, would not demand those skills. You were hoping to maybe hunt jaguar, crocodiles and other wild animals, not have a shoot-out in a crowded street. You certainly were not expecting the car-bomb. That was at least one person who was willing to kill themselves, and do so in a horrible way, in order to see you dead. The other two had almost certain death unless some mercenaries with a battalion of battlemechs are drooping into the city right now. And if your snoop-provided car had been less of a secret tank on wheels you'd probably be dead-you saw how much of the paint and plastic had burned off when you got out of the thing-one of the doors wouldn't even open properly. Someone just tried to kill you-you personally, and that's the frightening thing. Was that a rival company? Domestic terrorists? Some periphery intelligence agency?
[ ] Knock on the door out of here-it's locked, but you can ask for a phone call, right?
[ ] Play solitaire on your noteputer.
Or bubble-blaster, or candy crush, or whatever 31st century busy game you have.
[ ] Sulk/cry it out until you get debriefed.
-
What I'd really like to do is ask for a threat briefing now, so I suppose knocking it is.
-
What I'd really like to do is ask for a threat briefing now, so I suppose knocking it is.
I concur even though I have doubts that any substantial information well be given. Since the purpose of using a safe house for a VIP angainst attacks. Is to limit out going and incoming transmissions or any other indications of occupancy by said VIP. But since she is the priority of the minders i hope that assumes mental and physical. So some hopefully good roll of persuasive arguing may get the security in suits to spill something.
-
I'm thinking field-strip, clean, and reassemble her new pistol. Then find a nice unobtrusive place to watch the door with the pistol close to hand and a good book if one can be found.
And, since the threat has now been proven real, it's probably time to consider some discrete body armor for daily wear, at least for the near future, as well as possible upgrades to her personal armament.
My own personal thoughts are running towards a number of items such as:
1: Skorpion machine pistol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0korpion_vz._61
2: a nice set of hair-stick daggers
http://www.licataknives.com/steam1.jpg
http://data.whicdn.com/images/178398424/large.jpg
3: Bear-mace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_spray
and others
-
It takes longer than you would like for the security goons to open the door to your repeated knocking but they finally do so. Their uniforms aren't regulars or milita, but you don't know the local regimental patches well enough to decipher what Guards regiment you've got bodyguards detached from today. All you're sure of is that they're not the Presidential Guards or the local special forces operatives. And the amount of information you get from them is annoyingly small. No, you can't go out yet. No, they don't know what's going on, and they wouldn't tell you anyways. No, they can't brief you, that's the responsibility of someone else. Yes, alright, you can have one phone call, two if the first one doesn't pick up, but with one of them watching and don't mention where you are.
The land-line is very old fashioned, but they assure you it's secure all the way to the telephone exchange-any wiretaps are gonna be on whoever you call, not their fault. At least it's push-button, and not a rotary. You manage to remember the office phone number (you have to look up the extension) and dial in to your boss' office. The phone rings for nearly twenty seconds before someone picks up-not Mr. Sanjiv. "I am sorry, but the Chief Designer is out of his office. Due to the current difficulties in the city, we are cancelling all apointments and apologize for any inconvenience."
You cut in. "My name is Minako Raiuto, and I'm an employee. I'm trying to reach someone responsible to let them know I'm all right, but I don't think I'll be able to get in today-what do you mean current difficulties? Where's the Chief designer?"
The line goes dead for several seconds, as a low rumble rises and falls. "He's driving around in a tank because of the attacks. He was very upset, talking about his dead wife. Then he pulled a tank off the production line and fired it up. Look, I can't talk right now, and I can't take your employee number over the phone, so goodbye, things are crazy enough here as it is." The line goes dead and you blink before hanging up the receiver and getting hustled back into the safe house's bunker. You try to kill some time by cleaning the pistol-but it's already clean, and you don't have a field-kit with you so all you can do is disassmble it and uselessly wipe it down with toilet paper from the bathroom before putting it back together.
Another hour ticks by.
And another.
[ ] Play the waiting game. Someone will come eventually.
[ ] Ask the guards if you can get lunch that isn't durian flavored.
[ ] Demand that they call someone-you can't remain down here forever.
-
There's clearly more going on than just an assassination attempt against Minako, but she did merit special attention. At this point, I'm for lunch that's not durian flavored, but if that can't be had, Minako can just hold her nose.
-
How about option 2 while you wait for option 3 to pan out. Does not hurt to demand something like let me out and food also.
-
It's been long enough to make another appeal to the soldiers-and since they aren't getting a lunch break officially, they've had to make their own unofficial arrangements. One arranges for you to get some of what they're having as well-it seems the safehouse is in the basement of some place that offers hot meals and soft beds to the unfortunate, so it only takes calling someone in the know upstairs to have three bowls of pork stew over rice delivered. All three get a once over from what you're guessing is some sort of poison detector, a tiny palm sized computer that is stuck repeatedly into each bowl and flashes a green light after several seconds. One of them even joins you while you eat, to make sure that you don't choke and get them both fired. You're grateful that it's the woman though-being alone with a guy who probably casually overpower you might mean you would need to eat with one hand on the gun.
And then it's back to waiting. This time however, the door unlocks without any preamble after an hour and an icy looking blonde woman comes in with two new guards. She has a noteputer of her own, a stylus and a very formal looking uniform with no badges or rank that looks freshly pressed. "Good afternoon. You can call me Agent Sasha-I am from the Interior Ministry, and I'm here to debrief you about the incident this morning." Incident. She's cold this one, but beautiful, like a winter's day with sunlight glistening off snow. On the other hand, probably a honeypot or the kind who doesn't take kindly to flirting.
Best to be professional and go about this in a straightforward way.
Recount the story in your own words and then...
[ ] Ask how long you're going to have to stay here and when you can return to normal.
[ ] Ask about how they're going to improve security around you.
[ ] Ask about the agents in the car that intercepted the suicide bomber.
[ ] Ask about something else or say nothing (Write in option)
-
Option 1 is right out... there is no "normal" after this. Option 3 is only a salve for her conscience, and not likely to get an answer from the ice queen. That leaves option 2, but I wouldn't phrase it that way. Something more like:
"So, Agent Sasha, what now? Aside from attending the funerals for those who died protecting me, I need to get back to work. Obviously my current living arrangements, as temporary as they were, will not be sufficient, and I can't imagine the Interior Ministry will let me choose my own."
-
Are we allowed to ask all options in a certain order.
Option 3 first than option 1 than 2 phrased the way Daryk did it.
To me option 3 is more than a "Salve" for minakos' conscience also it human to worry about those that put their lives on the line for you. We haven't got t ok know our minders well so far but an interest here could be a good thing.
-
Are we allowed to ask all options in a certain order.
Option 3 first than option 1 than 2 phrased the way Daryk did it.
To me option 3 is more than a "Salve" for minakos' conscience also it human to worry about those that put their lives on the line for you. We haven't got to know our minders well so far but an interest here could be a good thing.
Agreed,, with the caveat that Minako should also ask to be notified, if a collection is taken up for the families of the deceased security team.
-
Let's get this rolling again now that the holidays are over for the most part. :D
---
You nod and recount what you saw-the attempted attack, the crash, the explosion, the gunmen, the chase... it takes a lot longer to recount, but even with all the details laid out, you don't remember much that you think will be useful. Sasha is annoyingly vague about questions you offer in exchange, invoking 'need to know' almost constantly. You don't need to know what happened to the guys who were shooting at you. You don't need to know what's going on at your workplace. What you do need to know apparently could fit on an index card in 24 point font. She's even cagey about the dead-though she does offer to give you a number to call to order flowers.
Her response to your last question leaves you flummoxed though. "So...When can I leave?"
She looks up at you and then nods to the door. "Well, now. Or as soon as this debriefing is over."
The sheer rediculousness of that leaves you stunned for several seconds. "W-wait, i just almost got killed this morning and..."
Sasha smiles at you like you're a child. "Da. There will be others. If we put you in a bunker in a hidden worker town, they will find it and stomp the roof in with Mechs. If we surround you with guards, a sniper will wait for you to walk out for some fresh air. Our neighbors believe in the Crab Bucket principle-any crabs that try to escape should be merceilessly dragged back down into the bucket. And our big neighbors, the great Houses of the old Star League? They have no use for Periphery upstarts. Indeed, a successful state outside their control is dangerous to their order. So we could send you away with the best security, leaving absolutely no holes uncovered...and wait for our enemies to find new holes or simply use terrific overkill. We do not have nuclear weapons because attempting to get them is an invitation for everyone to come running and kick your head in for attempting to reach for the atomic cookie-jar. Putting additional security on you would be like ringing the dinner bell for mercenaries and assassins." She laughs a bit. "These ones were a bit more than we were expecting, but you were just their...hmm, well you were a target of opportunity. Their true efforts were far more widespread."
----
You are El Presidente of the Cabanagem Presidium, and you're an old woman. Your back hurts constantly despite the attention of the best doctors. But at least you still have your looks-you look twenty years younger than most of your contemporaries, beautiful even if you've aged. Beauty and charisma allowed you access to the seats of power-and treachery and a skill for lying that transcend expertise solidified your grip on that seat and helped you to topple your rivals. You listen to your assistants natter on while you look out the armor-crystal windows of your palace and out across the city, watching the last curls of smoke and steam from the bombings and attacks fade away. The briefings are more for their benefits than for yours-but you feel it best to summarize when you swivel your chair back around.
"So. More than twenty attackers, directed at five different locations. All of them with false teeth so we cannot trace their world of origin with isotope mapping. Our adversary is well funded to have such lavish budgets to obscure the origins of their suicide troopers. And equally foolish to tip their hands in such a way as to their true size and resources." You nod to your spymistress. "Director. Could we have done such a thing?"
The director, even colder than her daughter, nods. "Yes, artificial teeth are relatively easy. But what would be the point? We have terrorist cells and counter-revolutionaries within our borders. Any attacks I order can be pinned on such groups with a little misdirection. Others may suspect, but nothing may be proved. And while it is within our capabilities, I may remind everyone that we are...exceptional in our acquisition of such technologies. Our local rivals would be hard pressed to assemble such a team, and I do not see why they would bother with such misdirection. It is only effective if, for instance, these were all foreigners from many points of origin as our immigration records show."
General Federov leans forward, cross. "Do you mean to tell me that these men were admitted legally? What kind of failure is this that you admit to it so casually?"
You compose yourself and interject. "The kind that is unavoidable, so long as we allow people to enter our nation with thoughts of their own. And since Alpha Cache is invasive and ultimately destructive, we cannot police the thoughts and motives of our foreign guests. These were all model guests before they struck. The weapons were apparently smuggled in months ago and hidden in caches by another group who already left. Their paperwork was only the finest in forgeries, and every one died in their attacks or took fast-acting poison. So they were probably from the Inner Sphere-more than that it is impossible to say with certainty. So thank God for small mercies-it will be at least three months before anyone who sent them receives a report on their status. We have, if nothing else, time to prepare to intercept this report or any new orders."
Federov is not put at ease-and he won't be until he's had a chance to rant. He thumps the table. "ComStar! It must have been ComStar! They can make forgeries as good as the real thing because they make the real things! I have told you all again and again that they are the true secret masters."
Sasha the elder interjects. "We are considering that-but of course, the LIC would have reason to hate us as well. Or SAFE. Our very existence and success makes us an attractive target. It is the interest of 'civilization' not to allow the barbarians to grow too strong. And we cannot retaliate openly, lest they crush us with open force." She steeples her fingers. "Do not fret General. These men drank water and ate food at some point in the past five years. The isotopes of each world are like a fingerprint. We can trace them back to their point of origin-it will simply take time." That you're less certain about...but it seems like the obvious course of action.
Now you just need to figure out how to spin this to the public at tonight's press conference.
---
You're apparently free to go-you'll be staying in a different hotel for the next week, since apparently the aversion to overt security doesn't rule out installing more passive and hidden measures around and in your new apartment. The shift will take a while though, so you've been told not to head there until 10 PM. Work is nearly over, but you get the feeling that something's going down that's bigger than you. At least they've sent a new car around, one with a curiously heavy door and thick glass.
[ ] Find some news about what's happened-consult public sources, TVs, newspapers, things like that.
[ ] Work's gossip channels are more reliable than mass media-maybe you can get there if you leave now.
[ ] Panic time-are you being strung out as bait? Maybe look into illegal weapons and personal protection?
[ ] Other/Write in?
-
I like option two at this point... if the boss was involved some how, it's better to know as soon as possible what that means for the project.
-
Option 2 for right now. In a day or so, start looking into upgrading her personal protection.
Step one: Personal body armor
Step two: Investigate just what the limits of legal personal protective weaponry are on this planet.
2A: Shotgun? Maybe something like the VEPR 12 if it is legal, possibly a standard pump-action if it is not. http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/01/foghorn/gun-review-vepr-12-shotgun/
2B: Machine pistol? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0korpion_vz._61
-
I like that VEPR, and think the automatic or combat shotguns from AToW page 268 might fill that role. And page 265 has a range of machine pistols (though most are listed as SMGs). In both cases, if the weapon has a recoil modifier, it's worth paying the extra 10% for recoil compensation (p. 286, there are some other nifty accessories there too).
As for armor, I think we should look at a concealed flak vest and combat boots for day to day wear, and a ballistic plate vest and advanced combat helmet for those days we know it's going to be bad.
-
I like option two at this point... if the boss was involved some how, it's better to know as soon as possible what that means for the project.
I agrre
-
*makes notes about arming the nest batch of assassins with Inferno SRMs, sniper rifles and vibrokatanas. 'If you pull a knife they pull a gun' sort of deal...* Anyways, not satisfied with this, but it will get the job done.
---
The car pulls in the back entrance to the industrial park, the service entrance that the trucks use, because the front entrance is still blocked by the wreckage of a van and the two tanks that were moved off their plinths to block the entrance. One of them has it's turret pointed directly at the gate. A third tank-assault weight-rolls past as you exit the car, moving at a fast jog as it cruises by with it's dual-autocannon and lasers turret tracking to allow it to slip between warehouses. A ton of police cars fill the lot-a lot of workers went home early apparently, for there to be so many, and there's even an industrial mech with a metropolitan police paintjob standing by at the edge of what looks like a crime scene. Some factory workers have opened a window and set up a machine gun nest in the corner of their building, and R&D's smaller laser prototypes have been set up in mobile cradles on the lawn, long cables dragging behind them. Everyone's on edge, but also getting bored-even the actual scrap metal of the demolished van stopped burning some time ago. Getting in means your ID gets a longer than normal scrutiny, but you're cleared through and two of the soldiers camped out on the lawn take the opportunity to get you inside and down a secret passage through the basement. Where you find your co-workers hanging out at the top of the staircase and tunnel that leads to the bunker.
The fact that there's a bunker on the property shouldn't surprise you really-though the fact that you need to go down three flights of stairs to get to it is probably a bit much-still, no Mech can stomp it's way through six meters of reinforced concrete, clay, gravel and sand. What is surprising is the story of what happened here. Apparently, just after you were attacked, a van full of gunmen with a bomb inside broke through the gate and drove around, shooting up the buildings and trying to pen everyone up inside, and get the bomb into position. Since there were armed guards and soldiers in all the buildings, that was a bit tricky-they had the advantage of surprise, but were outnumbered from the start. The Chief designer used one of the underground tunnels to get into the factory and borrow the latest T-25 H model that was almost ready for delivery, apparently crewing it with production line staff. Loading the ammo had proven impossible for anything but the machine gun-but when the doors of the factory slid open and that monster drove off the line with lasers firing, the fact that it's autocannon and missile launchers had been so much dead weight didn't really comfort the gunmen much. There had been about five minutes of black comedy as the tank caught two of them by surprise and then chased down the van and the others in slow motion, but three of them had gotten inside a building and a stalemate had ensued until the army had a helicopter fly in and drop a platoon of jump infantry on the roof.
The boss was still driving around in the tank, probably because he liked it more than because the place needed the extra protection. He'd parked it around lunchtime, but only to wrestle several ammo cassettes in through the loading hatches, so he had missiles and AC shells to fire now.
There have been other attacks on other companies and schools. Nothing really bad at the other rival company, they'd run into a pop up barrier and detonated their bomb 30 meters from the target, breaking a lot of glass but not much else. The university on the other hand, had seen one team go into an undergraduate engineering lecture and just...unload on the whole class. There, the dead and wounded were in the hundreds. That's clearly bothering some of the new hires-Doctor Sandoval is worried about her former co-workers and you have to poke her to get her to notice you and give you her...very impressive list of accomplishments. She went to NAIS, for starters, and getting a foreign national into that school is almost unheard of. She's in her early 40s and has a doctorate in radiation based alterations to material structure, and is rather withdrawn and reserved, but apparently has dipped her hands in nearly every single metallurgical project in the past decade.
[ ]Doctor Sandoval needs some comforting after this disaster.
[ ] Stop your boss before he goes mad with tank-given power.
[ ] Other?
-
Comforting? Minako doesn't strike me as the comforting kind. What she can do is distract Doctor Sandoval with more work related questions, like her opinion of the endo-steel project's prospects...
I kind of like the idea of the boss having some tank-given power for a little while. It'll give him some additional authority around here (not that he needs it), and definite credit with the military techs.
-
I disagree. I think Minako would be quite comforting and sympathetic. Get Sandoval to talk about pretty much anything the woman wants to, be a kind shoulder to cry on if she needs it. If talking about metallurgy seems to be the way to go, once she gets going, so be it. But if all she wants to do is cry and vent, that's ok too. In private of course, maybe a side office. Once all this dies down, Snadoval wont want to have been seen to have broken down in front of her subordinates and co-workers. For pride's sake, if nothing else.
-
(Okay, so I burned out on this pretty hard around the turn of the year, but if you guys are still willing, I'll stoke up the boilers once again and restart it. It may be tricky to do-I completely blanked on how to write the next segment, so I may have to just skip to the next decision point and move on towards the meat of the quest-actually designing a Mech. We'll go from the inside out-internal structure first, then actuators, then myomer and engine, you get the idea. I'm diverging from the Tech manual in one fairly major way though-armor goes on last, because you can't skin the Mech until you have all the internals located and roughtly bolted down.)
-
I'm game... My schedule hasn't changed much.
-
I'm up for it.
-
Hey guys o/ Sure I m up for whatever you are up for just glad to be back.
-
I just stumbled over this. I think it is fun. :) Would be cool.
What are the prerequisites? O:-)
-
Seeing the design process play out is rather interesting. I too would have liked to have noticed this sooner. I will however continue to follow this with interest.
-
Whoa...Okay, I just...felt the urge to come back. Weird, huh? Well, let's see if anyone's still interested in our Quest. Even if I have no idea if I still have my notes on 'how to build battlemech...
Odds, you head out to talk to your boss, evens you talk to the doctor....EVEN.
Doctor Sandoval, you decide, after a solid half-hour of talking to her, is a *genius*. There's no other word for it. Emotionally delicate, deeply affected by the events of the day. That, you cannot deny. But you can't deny the other side of her, the fact that she lights up and talks to you for *ten minutes straight* about ferro-polymer mixing and foaming. She talks your ear off about Beta and Gamma annealing, Transmutation Minimization, and a hundred other factors that you will admit, you never went *this* in depth on. You also briefly have a cry yourself when you realize that the lack of local PPC production also means the local industry has to rad harden it's armor using giant nuclear reactors for about a month instead of precise and accurate particle beams doing the job in about 15 minutes. On the other hand, she's rock-hard certain that the Endosteel production problems will pan out for serial production in 6 months, a year, tops! She knows her stuff about esoteric materials science, you've got to give her that-she even asks you questions about Clan Harjel, stuff you've never heard of before. More's a pitty.
It occurs to you though, that there's an important early choice to make coming up. A Battlemech's skeleton supports ten or twenty times it's own weight-and not just static weight either, but running, jumping, and dropped-from-orbit onto a 1.5g Superearth weight. And traditionally, there are two ways to deal with that. There are Static chassis designs-big solid chunky boys with metal bones that can take all that force with room to spare, but that comes with risks of performance issues, bulky, oversized forms, and being generally less efficent than they could optimally be. It's more often found on assaults, but you can also find it in some mediums and lights. Then there are Dynamic chassis designs. Ones where the actuators and the skeleton guide the stress of movement through other parts of the design as well-where myomer and armor provide extra structure and strength. Designs, in other words, were a miscalculation means a broken hip, or a delicate shoulder joint that requires an ammo-feed be mounted external to some crucial armor. It's a good way to build a BattleMech though. Marauders are Dynamic, and so are Locusts and Wolverines. And crucially if you're building in Endosteel, you have to build Dynamic. So it might be a good choice if you want to use that material, or future-proof your designs for it.
Buuuut, you really should make that decision when your team are all here and all in their right minds. People are distracted, distraught, and in need of help. What can you do to help them?
[ ] We all mourn in our own ways-tell everyone to go home and be with their loved ones. And maybe request a delay to the start of the project.
[ ] In times of crisis, we come together-and we go out together tonight. Drinks, food, and bad singing together to wash away the pain. And maybe request a delay to the start of the project.
[ ] Circle the wagons-and put up some cots. Keep people here, check on the defenses, and call in anyone who's gone home. You've got to keep your team safe-even if you can't hope to protect them all alone. You're keeping your options open about asking for a stay on the project.
[ ] Write-in/Other
Today's vote-coping strategies.
-
I'm definitely still in!
I like part of A, but don't want to delay the project. In fact, I'd release everyone to go home (or to their coping mechanism of choice), and then go back to the office and so some basic calculations on the static vs. dynamic chassis issue. If some stay with me to work on that, more power to them. When those calculations yield something close to a result, then use strategy B with any that stayed, but not too much drinking! There's still work to be done tomorrow...
And as far as the static vs. dynamic thing, I'm definitely leaning toward dynamic. You had me at "future-proof"...
-
I wish there was more than one response to this but...well, I'll produce content for a little while longer, and we'll see if anyone comes in to Quest.
TN 9 Test to convince people to stay and work: 6+3=9 NARROW SUCCESS
TN 7 Test to not loose your cool from the assassination attempt: 2+2=4 FAIL
There's not much of a team here yet-but you figure that given the lateness of the day, and the little work that can be done before you're chased out, but you decide to make a go of it. You tell the team that you can find that anyone who wants to go home to their family is welcome to-more than welcome-but you're going to stay and do a little work before your time is up today. And a few of them do stay behind-older people mostly, but they call families before reporting in, but they decide to stay because you want to stay-you want to get something done, to stick a flag in the ground and proclaim that you won't be silenced that easily!
But when you grip the stylus and try to draft something, you hand just won't stay still. You've got the shakes, like you've never had before-you shake like an alcoholic who needs their fix, you shake like a leaf on a tree next to a dropship landing, and you just. Can't. Draw a line! A few false passes are all you manage before someone puts a hand on your shoulder and then the facade crumbles, and you wet your terminal with tears. You pour it all out-the fear, the frustration, the anger, and above all the powerlessness of your situation. Designer? What a joke-a bad joke, a parody of a job title! You can't even design your own life, you're never going to see any of your family again, you're a refugee in a nation where you don't speak the language and someone's trying to kill you just for having a degree in engineering! The stress and the strain pour out of you, and you hardly care at all that you're doing it in public. You cling to...someone, you're not even sure who, but you desperately crave human contact, if not love than sympathy.
You're not a trivid heroine, or an action-movie bad-ass who machine guns people down and drives away. You're an engineer-you know a bit about sport shooting from your grandfather, and about guerrilla warfare from his stories but that is it. And your breakdown pretty much puts the breaks on any hope of getting work done today, so you all clock out and head to a coffee shop-not a bar, you insist on that-and get something to drink. You keep having to wipe your face and mop up the tears that won't stop flowing but...dammit, now you feel guilty about failing at this hurdle-failing to put a shape to your plans.
...You wake up the next morning, tired despite your rest, but...well, after a shower, and passing a brush through your hair, you feel more like yourself again. You let go yesterday and frankly, it felt much better afterwards, to have reached your limit and then refused to go on, to cry for help-and just to have had a cry. You feel like you can go back to work, and appologize for your breakdown and get some *real* work done today-nothing earth shattering, nothing grand, but the simple things...
But once you get dressed and ready to go out the door, you notice a note someone shoved under the door that says:
[ ] Minister of Productivity Maria Antonia to visit the factory this morning-be prepared.
[ ] Colonel of Guards Santiago Armando to visit the factory this morning-be prepared.
...SHIT you gotta put on something better than this!
-
Hmmm... I think the Colonel might have less actual authority over anything resembling real work, so I'll go for him.
-
I mean...they're equivalent people to choose from, that's why you're getting a choice here-it might not be fully obvious what the choice is, but I do intend for them to have equalish weight.
Also you can flirt with both of them.
-
Given the emotional break down the previous night, flirting isn't even remotely on the agenda. Anyway, I'll stick with the Colonel. I'd rather deal with someone with a battlefield requirement than an accounting one.
-
I'd take the Ministry, reason being I can see what { they } really want from me, the Engineer... I can always schedule a meeting with the Colonel later to see what the military wants...
Now if it was a military check paying this, opposite first.
So recap, whoever is paying me in cash is my current immediate boss... after all I gots to be paid, emotions aside...
TT