1 July 3057
Mackolla
The AFFC response had arrived and once again, Scott had personally brought the fax to Shipyard One to discuss with the Boss. Scott had read the fax and they did not provide much detail from the previous message, to him it read as a "tell us what to do" type of message. He handed the fax to Boss and awaited his answer.
To: Mitchell Aerospace and Shipyards
From: AFFC Naval Board
Request for proposal for new Corvette to replace Fox Class Corvette. Mission is front line combat, patrol, rapid response, escort duties. Ability to deploy solo or work in conjunction with other warships. Needs to be cost effective, must have LF batteries.
"Well, that tells me squat. They have no clue what they want at all. Okay then, I don't have the exact design specs on the Fox Corvette, but I know enough to get by on. Stupid people inhabit the AFFC Naval Board. But it did not say a word about dropship collars, so give me about an hour to work this up. Go bug someone else Scott until I am done, I need to focus on this since I have to work the numbers some from what I know about the Fox." Boss said
Scott left Boss's office and headed for the Shipyards mess hall to kill some time. At an hour he headed back to Boss's office. When he entered he was greeted with "What took you? I have been finished for almost 20 minutes. Here, send this back to them. Tell them we can build them at a rate of 1 every 2 months time or they can pass the specs off to Fed-Boeing or Iota or someone else." Boss said as he handed Scott the quick specs.
Fox II Corvette
Leave everything alone except following, remove the dropships collars, rip out the NAC/10 from the Nose, Forward Left and Forward Right arcs, install 2 Medium NPPC in Forward Left and Forward Right arcs, install 3 Medium NPPC in Nose Arc, boost double heat sink count to 754. Anything left put in cargo. 7,386,619,360 C-Bills. Warships fight, transports transport. KISS.
"You want me to send it just like this too don't you?" Scott said, wondering if the Admirals knew what KISS stood for.
"Exactly like that Scott. Maybe they will get the message that I am not their design bureau. There, now they have a Corvette that can fight in almost anything either alone or with others. I would prefer to focus on bigger ships than Corvettes, but if they want me to build them, I damn sure will." Boss said
"Okay, I will send it just like you wrote it. At least for the next year I don't have to worry about them cutting us off. I guess that is about how long it will take for the first ship to be started from the mass release of these shipyards." Scott said
"Closer to 2 years by my estimates. They have to develop all the support structure. Some already have it in place, but my estimates say using the older tech jump core factories will slow stuff down big time, most will do a mass conversion to our advanced facilities and that will take time. Same as we did here, it took us a year just to get on firm footing, but once you get 3-4 small yards going, you can grow big time and quick." Boss said "Now, go send that message."
"On my way Boss, oh, how if the Farragut Battleship coming?" Scott asked
"I estimate 4 months for all repairs to be completed on her. We keeping her or selling her?" Boss asked
"Not sure, she is big though." Scott said
"That she is, I was just wondering, either way, her damage control computers had complete specs for her. Enough that I can figure out the rest if you actually want to build some to sell. I also snagged the specs off the Black Lion and Aegis while they were here." Boss said
"Roger that. I might pass that on to the AFFC, maybe they will buy some from us." Scott said as he left the office
12 July 3057
Crofton
Harry and his LF Monolith had one more day to complete the ships recharge when a message from the Comstar station advised them that their requested cargo would arrive at Crofton on 1 August on 2 Mammoth Dropships and 1 Mule Dropship. Since they had room to transport the dropships, Harry decided to wait. He had already ben notified of the expected ETA for the Black Lion and Aegis Cruiser to Crofton as 27 July. He could also take on the care taker crews after turning them over to Comstar and transport them back to Mackolla.
They had already taken on the converted Mule transporting the AFFC fleet crews along with all the new MDF personnel. Plus they had taken on 1000 of the Ailette Exoskeletons he had purchased a year a go. He had the remaining 800 sent to Demeter. Since Harry had nothing better to do, he began planning the expansion of the Demeter facility. It might not rival Mackolla, but it would be close. Demeter had a huge industry and population size to handle the yards.
New Avalon
It took a few days for the response from Mitchell Aerospace and Shipyards to finally emerge from the Admirals in charge of figuring out what the AFFC Navy actually needed, and be brought to the attention of everyone during the weekly meeting of the High Command.
"Highness, the response from MAS is not what we wanted. This fax basically tells us we have no clue what we are doing or want. It is just a redesign of the Fox Corvette, nothing really new."
Field Marshal Jessup Winston, commander Department of the Army and Navy, just smiled at the announcement. A quick glance confirmed that both Marshal of the Armies Morgan Hasek Davion and Field Marshal Field Marshal Lisa Steiner of the Dept. of Quartermaster were smiling also. Winston had long dealt with MDF requests, he looked at Field Marshal Toni Reynolds, commander of Dept. of Military Education and saw the wince. Winston knew MAS was a sore spot for Reynolds because he had been raked across the coals for not being able to keep up with MAS's production of ships.
Archon Prince Victor Steiner Davion smile as he took the offered fax from MAS. A quick read enlarged his smile some. "Well, you asked them for a proposal, they sent you one. I don't see the problem. Looks like a huge money saver along with time saver. Federated Boeing and Iota Galactic will not even have to retool their stuff to put them into production, just make a few simple changes."
"Sir, the tone in the message is clearly, "Leave us alone and quit wasting our time. I would be surprised if they spent 2 days on this proposal."
"I bet MAS's chief engineer did not spend more than 2 hours on it. And in those 2 hours he delivered EXACTLY what you requested." Victor said, his tone ended any further complaint on the matter
Demeter
Luval, ex-Clan scientist was busy as a beaver building HIS production facility. He was a Weapons Specialist, but had always been fascinated with Warships and had spent years studying them in his spare time in Clan space. When given the chance to actually go to Mackolla's orbital yards to work he had jumped at the chance. Now here he was on another world but fully in charge of this production facility. He had heard of this Wolf's Dragoons and had even met a few actual people that were from Clan Wolf among the technicians sent to assist in the construction of this facility and would also remain to assist in performing maintenance on the Dragoon warships as they arrived.
He had been briefed by Boss on the best way to rapidly grow the orbital facility and had followed Boss's instructions to the letter. In orbit he now had:
4 250k Pressurized Shipyards
4 Jump Core Factories
2 Small Orbital Habitats
4 Germanium Processing Factories
2 Engine Factories (2 more in construction)
2 500k Pressurized Shipyards (under construction)
He had the all the design specs for the Patrol Corvette, Invader Q-Ship, Buford Corvette, Saratoga Carrier, Carrack Transport, LF Monolith and Halsey Destroyer but he had not loaded the programs yet. For security, he would only load whatever ship he was ordered to build on a as needed basis and would then dump the program once construction order was complete. At least he had 2 MDF Patrol Corvettes here to safeguard his growing facility. His first Germanium order was not due to arrive for another month from Mitchell Interstellar and then he could see about actually producing something.
Broken Wheel
The pirates hit Broken Wheel hard and quickly pushed the green troops of the 1st Albion Training Cadre away from the Quickcell factory. Over 4 days of fighting, the 1st Albion Training Cadre suffered 27% casualties. In the end, the pirates managed to make off with 55 completed Pegasus that were awaiting shipment to their buyer. Word was sent to New Avalon.
