Author Topic: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!  (Read 101646 times)

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Offline JacenHan

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #15 on: August 08, 2013, 11:16:58 AM »
With that many factories and that amount of mines, you will far outpace your mineral output, leading to some serious shortages. I'd suggest equalizing the amount mines and factories, then give whatever's left to ordnance, fuel, and fighter factories.
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #16 on: August 08, 2013, 11:22:08 AM »
August/Sept. 2028(I lost my specifics on this one -- Sam Baker is commissioned.  Crew Training 50, Fleet Movement Initiative 109, and he's a skilled young man with lots of abilities.  25% Xenology, 15% Fighter Operations, 15% Terraforming, 10% Political Reliability, 10% Fighter Combat, 10% Intelligence.  He also seems to be a bit confused, described variously as Dynamic, Innovative, having many social interests, and having no outside interests.  He ranks up to 2nd among LTC's immediately ...

BI-ANNUAL REPORT, 2029

2029 Election Results: Lena Dungey will be back for another term as Governor of Earth, in a bit of a surprise. It was thought that with the outcry from the manufacturing sector(unemployment there is continuing to climb, now at 49.4%) that a change in leadership might appease them. Nevertheless, Dungey is back for a second term and has made some adjustments to account for this.  

As painful as it is to do, the new research labs have become a lower priority, reduced from 25% to 10% of available factory space.  10% will go to new construction factories, and the final 5% to speed up work on the shipyard.  

At present the economic conversion is set to finish in April 2064(already two-plus years has been chopped off the time) and is just under 1% completed.  Dr. Sabagh’s research into geological sensors is slated to finish in July of 2030, with the new shipyard reaching completion in June 2035.  For at least the next couple of years, Dungey’s main job will be monitoring the situation and making needed adjustments, but no major devolopments seem imminent.

?Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Clark – 21st out of 30 Lieutenant Commanders
Cmdr. Jay Cin – 7th out of 10
Lt. Cmdr. Ling Hu Zhong – 6th of 30
Lt. Cmdr. Ken McKay – 4th, staying just out of range of a promotion consistently ...
Lt. Cmdr. Sam Baker – 2nd

Col. Benjamin Berkeley – 3rd out of 20, he’s been surpassed by some talented recruits
recently, and reassigned to the 2nd Low Tech Infantry Battalion

Karbishi Juishao – Waiting, and waiting, and ...
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #17 on: August 08, 2013, 11:24:44 AM »
Thanks for the suggestion.  There aren't enough resources on earth to really justify more mines on this point, when I reach that kind of problem I'll probably just cut back on the conversions but I'm hoping to have more minerals coming in from off-world to supplement sooner rather than later. 
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #18 on: August 08, 2013, 11:40:32 AM »
August 2029 – A scientist had to retire due to medical problems, following up a training accident and another medical issue costing two naval officers earlier in the year.  Is this just coincidence, or is somebody or something sabotaging the leadership?  

Early March ‘30Sam Baker is promoted to Commander ...

July 11th, 2030Wayne Sabagh’s research team has completed work on the geological survey sensor.

With the shipyard less than four years away from completion, it’s time to work on designing a ship capable of using it.  

Dr. Ignacio Bravo takes a few months, until late September, to complete work on a prototype of a large, fuel-efficient engine, and the design is finalized.  The Essex-class Geological Survey Vessel is the first human starship design and is capable of 68km/s, a similar speed to the Voyager probes from half a century previous which maxed out at 93 km/s.  It is a 3,650-ton vessel requiring 55 crew and possessing a range of 5.5 billion km.  

A little over three years yet remains before the shipyard will be finished and construction can commence(current projections are for January 2034).  
 

Offline Rolepgeek

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #19 on: August 08, 2013, 01:32:02 PM »
A note. You are going to run into a major problem with your current plan; you won't be able to construct wi all your factories, because your mines aren't going to be able to supply the demand.
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #20 on: August 08, 2013, 01:57:06 PM »
JacenHan mentioned that, and when that point starts approaching I'll cut back on converting them(unless I have another source of minerals first). 
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #21 on: August 08, 2013, 02:05:44 PM »
?2031 BI-ANNUAL REPORT

Population: 570m, 58.6m unemployed and rising
Fuel: 6.65m liters
Economic Conversion: 8.2% completed(June 2054)
Shipyard: 40% completed(November 2033)
Research Lab: 17% completed(February 2043)

Mineral Stockpiles: Tritanium is the biggest concern, all of the others continue to rise.  Tritanium is holding steady at just under 500 tons, there’s still 114k tons left to be mined but progress will be slow due to the very low accessibility.  Meanwhile the boronide veins are projected to be depleted in less than five and a half years, though that’s not really as bad as at sounds given that it isn’t being used for anything yet.

In September the research teams of Dr. Brandon Grimmett(a larger fuel tank module) and Dr. Santo Makar(increased fuel efficiency techniques) are due to present their reports, with the other two ongoing projects still three or more years away.

Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Clark – 26th out of 36
Cmdr. Jay Cin – 8th out of 12
Lt. Cmdr. Ling Hu Zhong – 7th
Cmdr. Ken McKay – 12th
Cmdr. Sam Baker – 3rd

Col. Benjamin Berkeley – 2nd out of 5, CO 3rd Low Tech Infantry Battalion

Karabishi Juishao – still waiting ... 
 

Offline OAM47

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #22 on: August 08, 2013, 04:33:29 PM »
What is the other site you're posting on btw, if you don't mind me asking?
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #23 on: August 09, 2013, 01:23:26 AM »
Nope I don't mind.  It's FOFC(Front Office Football Central), which is part of the Operation Sports community.  Long story but basically I used to be an amateur programmer/semi-volunteer customer service & moderator for a company making sports simulations which, despite good intentions, never went much of anywhere(Wolverine Studios).  I got involved in the FOFC as part of my work with Wolverine promoting the products I was involved in, and the rest is sort of history. 
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #24 on: August 09, 2013, 11:13:50 AM »
?September 16th, 2031 – Dr. Grimmett’s research team completes a prototype for a large fuel storage tank.  The space is given to Dr. Palmer’s team(construction speed) to accelerate their progress.

September 25th – Dr. Matar’s team announces new techniques have been discovered which permit a 10% increase in fuel efficiency across the board.  His team gets to work on a new engine prototype incorporating these ideas.

November – Tritanium stockpiles have gradually declined, only by a few tons this year but it seems to be increasing.  Some(4%) of the industrial capacity is switched from factory conversion to mine conversion to begin addressing this shortfall. 

November 6th – The new engine is ready and is incorporated into the Essex and Lexington designs.  The range of the Essex class ships is now 6.2b km.  Dr. Makar begins work on increasing engine power, and Dr. Grimmett starts a new project aimed at improving the storage capacity for maintenance supplies on starships.

Jan 2032 – Another review of the mineral situation shows the tritanium stockpile has stabilized again, so the new allocations will hold for the time being. 

May 2032 – Tritanium is beginning to decline again, so a new larger adjustment is made.

?December 2032Sam Baker develops a significant long-term health problem

2033 BI-ANNUAL REPORT

Space has a new Director as the by-laws require Lena Dungey to step down for at least one term after two consecutive tours, and it probably would have happened anyway due to her declining health.  29-year-old Slick Willie was the landslide choice to replace her.  He is expected to focus more on factory production and population growth, less on shipbuilding efficiency and mining, in general.

Population:  595.1m(63.5m unemployed)
Economic Conversion:  16.1% completed, which has been enough to well over double production.
Shipyard:  almost 90% completed
Research Lab:  one-third completed

Mining Report -- All mineral stockpiles are increasing at least marginally.  Deposits of boronide(just over 4 years) as well as neutronium and corundium(a little under 7 years each) are becoming critical.  With sorium production still significantly outpacing our ability to refine it and 1.27m liters being refined each year(9m now in storage and rising), fuel is not expected to become a concern anytime soon. 


Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Clark -- 36th out of 46
Cmdr. Jay Cin -- 10th out of 15
Lt. Cmdr. Ling Hu Zhong -- 8th
Cmdr. Ken McKay -- 14th
Cmdr. Sam Baker -- 5th

Col. Benjamin Berkeley -- 3rd out of 27, CO 4th Low Tech Infantry Battalion

Karabishi Juishao -- you know the drill
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #25 on: August 10, 2013, 09:10:53 AM »
?May 21st, 2033 – Another historic day for humanity as the orbital shipyard P&A Group is completed.  It can build vessels of up to 10,000 tons, well over twice the size of the Essex and Lexington class ships.  The slipway is prepped and construction begins on the GEV Marc Aaronson immediately, to be completed sometime in late February of 2034.  

Some of the newly-freed-up factory capacity is used to begin a Ground Forces Training Facility, some goes to speed up work on the research lab.

?Feb. 2034Karabishi Juishao is commissioned(finally!!) – Admin rating of 4, 10% bonus in Missiles &
Kinetic Weapons(a low priority field right now, but we have no skilled scientists there so she should be able to get some work from time to time).  Personality traits are Innovative and Problem-Solver, which seems quite appropriate.

March 1st, 2034 – The GEV Marc Aaronson is another first for mankind, a vessel built in an orbital shipyard and intended for extended manned missions in space.  The honor of the first command goes to Commander Leota Schnepel who is something of a prodigy.  Schnepel was commissioned just over two years ago in Dec. 2031, and her innovative approaches to training have seen her rise through the ranks quickly.  

Her orders are to take the Marc Aaronson on something of a shakedown cruise, testing the geosensor suites on the dozen known asteroids in the inner system(Mars orbit or closer to the Sun).  If all goes well there, the moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars will be the next phase.  

The closest target was Itokawa, a very typical ball of rock 2km wide, and the Marc Aaronson soon set a course for it.  Meanwhile, the P&A Group shipyard began retooling to build a pair of Lexington-class shuttle transports.  It would take almost two months.

The journey to Itokawa was about 53m km, and the Marc Aaronson arrived on station just after midnight on the 10th of March – it had taken a week and a half.  Finding nothing there, they moved on to Apollo, and on the 6th of April reached Apollo and reported back – minerals found!

It was a small deposit, a few hundred tons of Corbomite and Tritanium, both easily accessible.

There wasn’t anything we could do with this information – we don’t have the technology to mine asteroids yet, which requires a specialized ship and module designed just for that purpose.  But this was evidence that the Marc Aaronson’s sensors were working.  On it continued its mission to the other ten asteroids.

April 2034Ling Hu Zhong’s political connections have improved(10%)


April 20 – Retooling at the P&A Group yard is complete and the first Lexington-class is begun. It is expected to take just over three months.

June – Dr. Ignacio Bravo’s team has completed work on a lower-power, higher-fuel efficiency technology for engines.  He begins work on a new project for Cryogenic Transport.  Clearly it will be necessary at some point to exploit whatever resources we find with off-world colonies, and we need some way to effectively transport significant number of colonists over extended distances.

July – Dr. Grimmett’s team has completed maintenance storage research.  They move on to the equal boring cargo handling systems.  Later in the month, Dr. Palmer’s team completes work on construction techniques, and finds an impressive 20% increase in speed of production!  He gets back to work immediately, this time working on Shipyard Operations.

July 28th – The ST Valencia, first of the Lexington class, is completed.  A second Lexington is begun, and Commander Claudio Offutt is assigned to the Valencia.

Sep. 9th – The asteroid survey is complete.  The Marc Aaronson has been in operation for six months, and used up only about a sixth of it’s fuel.  Cmdr. Schnepel also reports a 3% increase in crew operating efficiency in that time.  Only the small deposits on Apollo were found, which is not encouraging – but there is no reason to believe that the sensors are malfunctioning at all.  

Now it is time for the acid test.  Governor-Director Willie makes a personal appeal to Cmdr. Schnepel, making it clear that she WILL find significant deposits on the moon or the inner planets ... or else.  Off to Luna first.

From roughly Mars orbit it was almost a two-week journey if the earth stood still, which in fact it was already moving away from them.  The asteroids had taken hours at most to scan, but none of them were larger than 6km diameter – the moon is hundreds of times that size, and took over a week for the Marc Aaronson to get complete readouts.  

In the middle of the afternoon on September 30th came the news – Luna was barren.  SPACE was not amused.  They had to begin considering the fact that perhaps the Earth was nearly unique. What if they couldn’t find significant deposits of TN minerals anywhere else?  Humanity could be stuck on a ravaged world with no real future, the technology to advance into space but not the supplies to do it with.  Such a thing was terrifying – but very possible.  

Venus was up next.  The Marc Aaronson arrived on station on October 12th, and the sensors churned out an estimate of over three weeks to survey the planet which is nearly the size of earth itself(though much less inviting to humans).  On the morning of the 25th came back the full report:

Several TN minerals present!

This was received to much rejoicing.  Director Willie congratulated the Marc Aaronson and her commander on their fine work – though he swallowed hard when he saw some of the details.

The size of the finds were simply astonishing ... millions of tons each!  But approximately 2 million tons of sorium, similar amounts of corundium, 13 million neutronium, and an obscene nearly thirty million tons of vendarite were extremely inaccessible and extracting significant amounts of them from such an inhospitable world would be virtually impossible.  It wasn’t all bad news though – 50% accessible Duranium was available to the tune of nearly 15 million tons ... that alone made it worth the effort as Earth held just over 40k.  Almost 22m of boronide, which by now would be completely gone in three years on earth, was a darn nice kicker as well.

Back at SPACE HQ, Director-Governor Willie and his assistants pondered what to do next ...

** OOC:  This is the first 'player-character' decision, the current director is a sign-up char from the other forums.  I posted a technical briefing on potential options and the costs of colonizing Venus etc. over there:  he had 48 hours to reply, almost half of which has now passed.  **
« Last Edit: August 10, 2013, 09:26:44 AM by Bryan Swartz »
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #26 on: August 10, 2013, 11:40:33 AM »
Executive Order of Director Slick Willie
Ocober 25, 2034


GEV Marc Aaaronson is ordered to proceed with the survey of the inner system, and the P&A Group Shipyard is instructed to immediately retool for the Essex class -- at least one more vessel is to be constructed as soon as possible to facilitate faster surveying of the rest of the system, and possibly a third if warranted.

The Ministry of Research & Development is to prioritize developing technologies to enable faster engines, with the goal of rapid deployment of geology teams at an opportune time when the ship surveys are further along.  In view of this, Dr. Grimmett and Dr. Bavaro's projects(Cargo Handling and Cryogenic Transport) have been paused for the moment to allocate their lab space to Dr. Santo Makar, whose work in expanding engine capabilities will take precedence for the time being.  His current project is expected now to complete in a few months' time, next January.

The Navy has been instructed to develop the facilities and ship designs required to build vessels to move significant quantities of personnel, colonists, and materials off-world.  At least one more shipyard will be necessary, so construction of a new Commercial Shipyard is also ordered.

Finally, the Ministry of Industry is instructed to use a small portion of it's capacity to begin producing infrastructure to be ready to deploy wherever it may be needed in the future. 
 

Offline Rolepgeek

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #27 on: August 10, 2013, 11:47:20 AM »
The other forums?

Also, FINAL-frakkING-LY

YES

And, since I came in late, I should survive long enough for her to end up researching M&K when you go up against NPRs.
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #28 on: August 10, 2013, 12:36:10 PM »
Quote from: Rolepgeek
The other forums?

Yes this game started as an idea for another forum I post on(partly as a way of exposing them to the game), then I decided it would be good to do it here as well(not the least of which is that most of you in this thread know a lot more about it than I do).  As of now we have 7 participants here and 10 there, so it's going well I'd say. 

?November 2034

The ST Vega is finished and re-tooling back to the Essex class begins.  Meanwhile the Marc Aaronson reports on the 17th that Mercury is barren and heads for the Mars.  The red planet is of extreme interest as the best potential colonization target in the system ...

BI-ANNUAL REPORT

Leota Schnepel(recently promoted to Captain) reports that the Marc Aaronson is just 34 million km out from Mars, and should arrive in less than a week.  The journey has been delayed somewhat by the fact that they had to ‘catch’ Mars in it’s orbit, and the planets’ orbital speed is enough to be significant.

Population: 628.7m(68.9m unemployed)
Infrastructure: 13(enough to support about a half-million on Venus)
Economic Conversion: 31.4% completed

Major Construction Projects: Research Lab(80%, spring 2036); Commercial Shipyard(4%, fall 2037); Ground Forces Training Center(27%, Winter 2039)

Mining Report: Duranium is coming up shorter and shorter but not by significant amounts yet and with well over 2k in the existing stockpiles that is not considered a significant concern at this point.

Shipyard Operations: P&A Group retooling for the Essex class is expected to complete in June. 

SPACE has now been in operation for 10 years, during which time three ships have been put in operation, orbital shipyard built, the economy is one-third of the way into a complete conversion and of course the leap to TN technology.  Future decades look a little brighter than they did before. 

Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Clark -- 39th out of 53
Cmdr. Jay Cin -- 13th out of 17
Cmdr. Ken McKay -- 16th
Cmdr. Sam Baker -- 5th, looking like a strong candidate to receive his first command in the next couple of years.

Col. Benjamin Berkeley -- 3rd of 28, command unchanged

Karabishi Juishao -- No assignment as of yet
 

Offline Bryan Swartz (OP)

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Re: The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!
« Reply #29 on: August 10, 2013, 01:13:32 PM »
Ping OAM47:  Sam Baker is to be the CO of the newest Essex-class survey ship.  As the first commander of the ship, you may have the name changed if you desire.  The temporary name pending your response in the next 48 hours is the GEV George Ogden Abdell.