Victoria Regina, Setup and OOC

[Konisforce (OP)]

Victoria Regina - Steampunk AAR.

Hi all!  I had this idea when I was reading the technobabble on the wiki about Trans-Newtonian Elements and it referred to space as a fluid instead of vacuum.  That reminded me of the concepts of the Aether like the Greeks thought, and like you found in Space 1889 and things.

So I'm giving this one a shot - what if the British Empire consolidated its power on Earth through the discovery of Transnewtonian / Aether dynamics and British sailors started bobbing around the stars.  Sort of a Patrick O'brian writes Honor Harrington thing.

Setup

I started a Conventional Start in 1837 with no missile bases and a population of 1 billion, since a couple sources seemed to say that the world pop hit 1 billion in the 1830s.  I SM'd ruins onto Mars and to 2 random locations in the solar system.  I also SM'd Trans-Newtonian concepts and Mobile Infantry Battalion, to fit with the explanation of British conquest, and added 2 GFTFs then got cracking on 5 MI Battalions.  I upped the training level to 3 and added 3 Naval Academies to represent Britain's dominance of the oceans, and also made a couple dozen tiny PDCs named "Sea Frigate" just to give all those captains something to do.  Lastly, I added 10% unrest on Earth, for the 'somewhat recently conquered' aspect.

Oh, and a note on the Naval ranks.  Since you start with 8 ranks and the top 4 basically aren't filled, I didn't want to have a bunch of Commodores bumping around giving out all the orders and running the admiralty.  So I am keeping the ranks cut down so that there's always an empty "Lords of the Admiralty" at the top.  Then Admiral, Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, and Captain.  At some point, I got enough captains that everyone bumped up and my top commander became Lord of the Admiralty.  So I added another rank on top, moved everybody up one, and added "Commander" at the bottom.  So if there are any odd jumps in rank, that explains it.  And I'm not using commodore because historically it was a position more than a rank, or so says Patrick O'Brian, anyway.

I've been playing Aurora for about 3 weeks now and I've had one (1) engagement between fleets, so I'm expecting to fail horribly!  And while I've bumped into Precursors before I haven't seen any other spoilers.  Invaders are off for now because they'll eat up all my CPU for turns, but I may turn them on later if things need to get more 'interesting'.  So, come watch my dismal, abject, and glorious failure, all with a stiff upper lip!

Any questions, comment, concerns are welcome.  Happy reading!

Also, just in case things get confusing:

Story Roadmap

Prologue 1: The Fifth Element
Prologue 2: The Empire War
Part 1: The Teenaged Queen
Part 2: The Trials of Empire
Part 3: Consolidation
         -> Optional Interlude: Mars
Part 4: The Great Void
Part 5: The Wallis Incident
Part 6: A Darkening Hour

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I hope you didn't turn on any NPRs? You can always add them later, once you can actually leave your system, heh.

[Konisforce (OP)]

Yup!  Started with one.  Dismal, abject, and glorious!

[Konisforce (OP)]

If anybody wants a cameo in the story, drop a line here.

Let me know what you'd like to be (and a name for your character, if you need one). 

I reserve the right to kill you off in horrible ways and to give you bad teeth and facial hair.

[Erik L]

If anybody wants a cameo in the story, drop a line here.

Let me know what you'd like to be (and a name for your character, if you need one). 

I reserve the right to kill you off in horrible ways and to give you bad teeth and facial hair.

But I already have facial hair.

[Konisforce (OP)]

I reserve the right to change the status of your facial hair for purposes of the narrative.  Teeth will only be worsened, however.

[Beersatron]

I would like to be Sir Reginald Barclay, Earl or Ulster, 6ft2, red hair with a sharp goatee.

[Konisforce (OP)]

Oh, dear.  I'll have to invent a holodeck first for you to get lost on . . .

[Konisforce (OP)]

Beers - which would you prefer, die a glorious death or participate in a hard-boiled murder investigation?

[Beersatron]

Beers - which would you prefer, die a glorious death or participate in a hard-boiled murder investigation?

Glorious Death (with the option of cloning at a later date, or being reanimated like the steam punk soldiers in Sucker Punch!)

[Beersatron]

Poor Reginald ... charging to his death 

[Konisforce (OP)]

Couldn't decide, actually.  The real commander in the Charge of the Light Brigade survived and then went to have a champagne dinner after getting 1/3 of his men killed.  Left it open.

[IanD]

Great new episode, but what are these things called kilometers? This is the British Empire after all, surely they would use miles?  Imperial weights and measures!
Regards
Ian

Edit. If you go into F9 Systems Information screen and open the options tab you can change to miles and Fahrenheit.

[Konisforce (OP)]

Ah, good point!  Here I was trying to avoid being a Yankee Imperialist, when I should've been an Imperialist Yank.

I'll rectify it forthwith.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

In 1863, the House of Commons passed a bill by 110 votes to 75 which would have mandated the use of the metric system throughout the British Empire, but due to lack of parliamentary time the bill was not debated in the House of Lords and so did not become law. The following year, after pressure from the astronomers George Airy and Sir John Herschel, the bill was watered down to merely legalise the use of the metric system in contracts. It was presented and passed as a Private Member's Bill.[13] However, ambiguous wording in the 1864 Act meant that traders who possessed metric weights and measures were still liable to arrest under Act 5 and 6 William IV c63.

You could easily argue that the Royal Society was using Metric so it became the system of space. It would make a lot of things simpler, heh.