Aurora 4x

C# Fiction => Gyrfalcon's Fiction => Topic started by: Gyrfalcon on October 10, 2022, 01:34:02 PM

Title: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 10, 2022, 01:34:02 PM
Well, I couldn't hold off on the idea - now watch Steve go ahead and drop the next big patch in the next week. That said, this is going to be slightly less ambitious then Terra Invictus (no early game ground combat) and slightly more focused on the space side of things. I hope that you enjoy the story to come.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: rainyday on October 10, 2022, 02:25:13 PM
This theme is awesome. Now I kind of need a full King Arthur retelling set in the BattleTech universe with mechs.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 10, 2022, 09:31:44 PM
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Yet the Ancients were strong, and it seemed that it was an age that would last forever. But then the Cataclysm came. The Gates were abruptly shut, and could not be reopened. Earth was dependent on its daughter colonies and could no longer survive without them.

oh god it's contagious

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King Arthur did not live to see his dream of uniting the world fulfilled, but his eldest daughter would ascend as Queen of Avalon. Queen Guinevak would unite the last holdouts in the world-spanning Kingdom, once more making true the old claim of the British that the sun never set upon the Kingdom.

It used to be that every Aurora AAR inevitably became Warhammer, now it seems every Aurora AAR inevitably becomes British imperialism. So really nothing has changed then.

Interesting concept here, I'm curious to see how much interest will be derived from Yet Another Conventional Start AAR™ with this roleplay setting.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 11, 2022, 12:18:21 AM
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It used to be that every Aurora AAR inevitably became Warhammer, now it seems every Aurora AAR inevitably becomes British imperialism. So really nothing has changed then.

Mostly in the ratio of grimdark/grimderp in the setting. I didn't want to rehash Romans in Space! yet, so here we are.

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Interesting concept here, I'm curious to see how much interest will be derived from Yet Another Conventional Start AAR™ with this roleplay setting.

The initial years are going to go by quickly, but I just can't rationalize regular starts to myself - why would a civilization build an entire navy and keep it in orbit without surveying and starting to exploit their home system in the meantime?
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Icecoon on October 11, 2022, 01:51:53 AM
What an interresting starting scenario! I hope the kingdom of Avalon can manage to survive the inevitable assault of Space Saxons  ;D
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: El Pip on October 11, 2022, 04:09:03 AM
I do like this concept and I agree that the idea of a fully formed battlefleet being built and then just floating around can be hard to RP. You do need some kind of prompt for it, like "The Ancients" or a violently destroyed ruin in the solar system. I look forward to the Knights of Avalon building the New Camelot in the stars.

It used to be that every Aurora AAR inevitably became Warhammer, now it seems every Aurora AAR inevitably becomes British imperialism.
There definitely has been positive progress on this front.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 11, 2022, 07:25:46 AM
The initial years are going to go by quickly, but I just can't rationalize regular starts to myself - why would a civilization build an entire navy and keep it in orbit without surveying and starting to exploit their home system in the meantime?

For this reason I usually start with the home system surveyed in a full-bore TN start. This and often some SM changes to make the home system a bit more exciting.


There definitely has been positive progress on this front.

It is progress but we need not be too hasty about assigning a plus or minus sign to it.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Garfunkel on October 11, 2022, 10:40:05 PM
Very interesting background for the campaign! Looking forward to more.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 17, 2022, 09:52:39 AM
So! Only a few more things to figure out and then time can start incrementing - mostly once I've figured out my ground unit designs (mostly done) and formations. And made sure that an Academy Commandant is assigned. And there are probably a few other tasks on my plate.

The biggest hurdle to starting an Aurora game for me is the preparation. There are so many background tasks that need to be assigned, configured, built, modified, etc. before you can properly jump into playing.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 17, 2022, 01:15:43 PM
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Code: [Select]
Broadsword class Gunship (P)      3,997 tons

The worst part is the abject refusal to put a few more fuel storages on this so it would be a nice, round tonnage, instead we have his utter atrocity albeit it will probably work okay I guess.

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Eventually, the debate was solved by dividing them by size - weapons smaller than 10t in displacement were missiles, while anything larger was a torpedo. It was a solution that pleased no one, which probably meant that it was the best solution possible.

This is clearly unassailable logic. (https://i.imgur.com/Z3wSg01.gif)

Nomenclature aside, all of these missile or torpedo designs are of course horrifying and atrocious, as is only fitting for the conventional era of gameplay.

Hopefully those maintenance facilities will go up sooner than later, otherwise our shiny new navy will immediately fall apart.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 17, 2022, 02:21:05 PM
The initial designs are there to highlight how much better TN designs are - and because with a high xenophobia score, the Kingdom wants to be able to defend itself.

It also gives them practical building experience for the next designs.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 17, 2022, 02:40:27 PM
The initial designs are there to highlight how much better TN designs are

You heard it here first, folks, round tonnage is a TN technology!  :P
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: El Pip on October 17, 2022, 03:19:01 PM
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King Eliwlod was an old man, and in poor health. It was well known that he was transferring more and more of his duties and responsibilities to his son, Crown Prince Kyduan
It appears Avalon still practices the ancient naming system - drop the baby on the keyboard and write down whatever appears on screen.

The naming schemes for the weapons just about makes sense (still not sure on Avalon using the name of ancient oriental swords) but why then call the gunship Broadsword when the missiles are all named after swords. Perhaps it is a cunning plan to confuse the enemy?

In any event the catfish bomber is a bold choice. Even if one chose to use fish for light aether craft there are surely better choices before one gets to that? Off the top of my head one has the Swordfish, Shark, Orca, Sarcastic Fringehead, Bastard Mullet.

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Lord Gringgolet Brinon was assigned as the Governor of Earth
There was very little else you could do with someone who had such an extraordinary name.

Hopefully those maintenance facilities will go up sooner than later, otherwise our shiny new navy will immediately fall apart.
It may be for the best if the maintenance facilities aren't built and these designs are put out of their misery by exploding.

You heard it here first, folks, round tonnage is a TN technology!  :P
Newton famously despised round numbers. Possibly. (https://i.imgur.com/DYAEiOu.gif)
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 18, 2022, 01:23:03 AM
It appears Avalon still practices the ancient naming system - drop the baby on the keyboard and write down whatever appears on screen.

You can blame ancient Arthurian Welsh legends for those. When I went looking for more names to add to the family tree, they contributed extensively.

Names of rulers were chosen by random number generator from the following lists:

Male names: Constantine, Madog, Gormant, Eliwlod, Kyduan, Amr, Gwydre, Llacheau, Duran, Loholt, Mordred, Aristes, Adeluf, Morgan, Patrick, Tom, Arthur, Uther

Female names: Gwyar, Eigyr, Gwenhwyfach, Guinevere, Eleirch, Morgan, Morgause, Elaine, Amy, Igraine, Hilde

The ruling line has followed this route:

Arthur (m) -> Guinevak (f) -> Eigyr (f) -> Llacheau (m) -> Morgan (f) -> Duran (m) -> Gwyar (f) -> Tom (m) -> Kyduan (m) -> Gormant (m) -> (current) Eliwlod (m)

Yes, there was a King Tom.

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The naming schemes for the weapons just about makes sense (still not sure on Avalon using the name of ancient oriental swords) but why then call the gunship Broadsword when the missiles are all named after swords. Perhaps it is a cunning plan to confuse the enemy?

Ship names will be changed to match the lead ship of the class, which is why its initially project BROADSWORD, as that isn't the final name for the ship.

The Kingdom is inclusive of the mythology and history of all its subjects, and won't force an exclusively English/French culture on its subjects.

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In any event the catfish bomber is a bold choice. Even if one chose to use fish for light aether craft there are surely better choices before one gets to that? Off the top of my head one has the Swordfish, Shark, Orca, Sarcastic Fringehead, Bastard Mullet.


Blame Steve for including the humble Catfish in the carnivorous fish naming scheme, and the random number generator for selecting it.

In universe, the reason for the name is because the B-1/A is so ugly only its builders can love it.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 22, 2022, 11:25:14 AM
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The Royal Army Reactivated

Infantry Regiment
Transport Size: 14,967 tons

I am pleased to finally see ground forces of a proper size have become increasingly standard since the 2.0 release, at least in AARs.

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Reconquista class Troop Transport (P)      45,900 tons

This is an incredibly frightening design, notably you've got only 15,000 tons of troop capacity and 8,750 tons of engines, and yet somehow have a >45,000-ton ship. Truly the conventional-era ship modules are a fright to behold.

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Someone in the Ship Bureau sneakily added a few small fuel tanks to round its tonnage to the nearest hundred tons.

Excellent, promote this person immediately.

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Medium Regimental Combat Team
[...]
42x WSP-1 Wasp
24x TR-A-1 Toro
18x FRB-1E Firebee
48x ICR-1X Icarus
24x KY2-D-01 Kyudo
24x NH-1A Rook

In a shocking twist we have left Warhammer and veered into the neighboring universe of BattleTech. This can only mean good things and/or Michael A. Stackpole things, which shall it be? More importantly, when will Davion Avalon run up against Steiner Teutonica and be smashed aside by invincible heavy armor somehow pull out a win by sheer narrative contrivance?

Now that the TN era has begun hopefully it will not take the Kingdom too long to get up to some excitement. Ideally of the shooting and smashing varieties I think.

Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 24, 2022, 01:44:56 AM
Honestly, I'd prefer if battalion-sized units were viable - but with the sheer mass of units and micro needed to move and update them all, its simply not worth the effort - not to mention that mechanically you're penalized for using smaller units.

On the Reconquista - yeah, the conventional troop transport module is 2,000t for 1,000t transport capacity, so that thing is literally 30,000t of transport modules with a few engines stapled on. Once the TN troop transport module is ready, that will make a big difference in the final model's design.

I see Avalon more as the Terran Hegemony pre Star League. There are human NPRs active, so now I feal morally obligated to roll 1d5 and choose which House theme to use when I meet one and then DB edit so they're named appropriately. So it isn't out of the bounds of possibility to get into a shooting war with the Lyran Commonwealth.

That said, I doubt the NPRs are willing to deploy Steiner Scout Lances Regiments.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 24, 2022, 08:39:49 PM
The only other option is that Avalon must become Steiner.  8)
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Garfunkel on October 28, 2022, 10:50:01 PM
Interesting developments! I assume these Tomb Guardians we're manually created by you?
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 29, 2022, 01:25:11 AM
Yeah, no crazy fun spoilers around ruins. To no one’s surprise, the Terran Federation had heavily colonized Sol before the gate network breakdown and everything went to smeg. Let’s just say they left behind more than ruins.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 29, 2022, 03:40:11 PM
This hasn’t been without its own pain - the Kingdom experienced a financial crash as the breakneck pace of spending on research, ground unit construction, shipbuilding and shipyard expansions outpaced its income.
[...]
Within the 5 year plan, the following technologies are slated to be researched:
CP - Research Rate 240 RP

The Kingdom is likely to compound its difficulties if the King cannot be bothered to prioritize and fund research to improve wealth generation. In the modern Trans-Newtonian era we cannot just rely on sending out the knights to effect a local tax rate increase whenever the treasury runs short.

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producing Armature on par with the Ancients

I am unsure why the Army is so obsessed with creating high-quality electrical dynamo coils, though I certainly approve of the effort in any case.

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The Aleph shipyards are currently busy ... The  Admiralty also hopes to win the King’s favor for a third shipyard

It sounds like the Navy will not be happy until they have Aleph-Null shipyards.  :P

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Missile NameSpeed (km/sYield
FUM-5A ‘Flyssa’ Heavy Missile6,2003 MT
MIM-7A ‘Tekko’ Anti-Torpedo Missile4,8001 MT
SGT-6A ‘Mughal’ Light Torpedo5,8334 MT

The utterly useless and astoundingly terrible, being so much slower than its targets, Tekko ATM amuses me greatly and to no end.

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The first revision of the design was nearly 4,000 tons in displacement, but after a few rounds of redesign, the Naval Board managed to trim 1,100t from the design while retaining nearly the same capacity.

This entire design process is surely worth an Appendix update on its own!

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To the designers' frustration, they couldn’t round the design’s weight satisfactorily on paper.
Code: [Select]
Stronghold class Destroyer (P)      8,999 tons

Well, that's annoying. Not even the 1/2 ton maintenance bay could do it? That usually works for me.  :'(

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Alongside Project STRONGHOLD, the designers made use of some of the technology developed for the project to produce a space superiority design, the F-3/A ‘Heron’. The design is as fast as the B-2 design and carries a single 10cm railgun with a rate of fire of one round every 5 seconds

A rather disappointing specification, but you cannot fault the designers for trying. Still, at 500 tons one would hope to see more than a single-shot railgun for firepower.


The sensors aboard HMS Iridium detected a series of intact, deserted cities scattered in locations all across Mars… as well as over half a million tons of ground forces defending them.

Given the lore being built up, and assuming I've not crossed my streams with some other AAR again, it sounds like these as well as the findings in the moons of Jupiter are likely leftover artifacts of the Ancients. Perhaps this story's equivalent to the Castles Brian?

Hopefully it does not take too long to build up the multiple million tons of ground forces to properly deal with these installations. I wouldn't want the narrative to drag to a halt for want of ground forces.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on October 30, 2022, 02:33:01 AM
The wealth issue is currently under control through both research into better TN wealth generation, more TN industry (which is taxable, unlike conventional), and appointing a governor who improves wealth generation.

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Armature

... son of a <naughty word>. No, while the army likes its electrical dynamo coils, it mostly focuses on production of Armigers... because its damn hard to find a word for a big stompy 'Mech that isn't already used somewhere else. (And I know Armiger is also used by WH40K, but at least its a sub-class of a type of stompy robot instead of being a catchall like BattleMech, Wanzer, Titan, Mobile Suit, Gundam, etc.)

Updated all references that I could catch.

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Shipyards

Well, in the eternal struggle between the army and navy for who gets the most funding, they were cashing in on the threat of aliens descending unchecked on Earth. Well, there have been no aliens in nearly two decades, but that doesn't stop the Navy from planning light escorts and dreaming of cruiser classes.

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The Tekko is terrible

Agreed - its simply a sad reality of size-1 missiles that if you need half the weight to generate a usable explosion, its going to be slow. The Kingdom is working on fixing the issue - which has the happy benefit of making its offensive missiles and torpedos better as well.

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The Ruins of Sol

The Kingdom will be able to begin clearing some of the ruins in the coming years. Mars is the biggest prize, but also the biggest struggle.  Luckily the smaller ruins aren't as heavily defended.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Garfunkel on February 21, 2023, 09:03:16 AM
That was a fine RP way to justify sweeping reorganization of the armed forces! And we're taking the first steps towards WH40k, it seems.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on February 22, 2023, 02:14:14 AM
It was coming up on time for the ruler to transition (Each ruler has a random number of years before they die of natural causes/retire/fall out a window), and with the ground invasions I wanted easier ground templates to repair to full strength.

The Commissars are more of a blip then a constant - a King who comes to power in a coup is paranoid that others will get the same idea.
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Warer on March 12, 2023, 02:27:44 PM
How did you setup this Sol? Specifically, the guardian units did you add those in manually?
Title: Re: The Kingdom of Avalon - Comments Thread
Post by: Gyrfalcon on March 13, 2023, 05:24:35 AM
Guardians were added manually as a player-controlled race. I placed them on every world capable of supporting human populations and then generated random ruins on each world.

Depending on the extent of the ruins, I added greater or lesser numbers of defending units.

The only one I rerolled the ruins on were for were Mars and Titan.