What a legend, if only it was a more just regime.

I think it is less the fault of the regime (not to exculpate them from anything they justly ought to shoulder blame for otherwise) and more the fault of the MIC companies. Without a concerted (and expensive) effort to maintain a strong culture of safety and "doing the right thing", the natural tendency in any large company or organization is towards a mindset of doing the easy, cheap thing rather than the hard, more expensive thing that might be the right thing to do. And then, after a while, you get Boeing.

The Smiling Engineer

He'd gotten the report from a friend and ex-coworker. It was nothing highly classified, and only an excerpt anyways. He sat down on a box and started reading, people passing by in the busy street around him. It was a tight alley, built early during settlement when space under the domes was at a premium. His eyes flickered over the text, impassionately absorbing the information with the practiced air of an intellectual.

The text was an after action report penned by some analyst in Naval Holding, giving him all the details that popular news outlets don't provide. Perhaps more importantly it was free from propaganda and political agenda, providing an objective account of the recent naval engagement. His attention sharpened at the section that dealt with the effect that the kinetic rounds had on the internals of the DDG Elysium Mons after its armor was breached. It was this ships missile systems that he and his coworker had been working on in the past.

He put down the text for a moment and sipped on his coffee-substitute. He thought back to the design project. Early on it was decided to cut the autofire mechanism. He'd been in charge of the magazine failsafes. There was always a specter looming over them, that management would save on safeties too. They didn't in the end, but he clearly remembered the final report noting the magazines having "10% more mass than needed". Perhaps that was already the start of why his friend was still employed and he was not.

The impacts to the internals of the Elysium Mons are described down to the tenth of a second. Including "Failsafe triggered by damage, magazine # ejecting". Three times in total. In the end the ship was not destroyed by the weapons fire, although it was a burned-out husk. But one that allowed for a majority of the crew to reach the escape pods and survive. The corners of his mouth move up, forming a smile. He knows he did good there. 203 people were alive because he didn't half-ass his job and defended the extra mass and expenses against people looking to advance their careers by "finding" extra mass budget in the design.

He did good, he was sure. A few years later his position was eliminated, his skills no longer needed. Life has been hard since, and he was sure his hair was graying faster since he started living in the slums. The society of winners had no need for a reject like him, and his specialized skill set did not seem to be in demand anymore these days. It was hard, but it was worth it, and justified.

He held old-timey beliefs like that.

Time for a reread!!

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on June 13, 2025, 08:03:23 PM

Quote from: Zap0 on June 13, 2025, 06:48:23 PM

Now to go and model the intricate federal democracy of the Interstellar League...

Overly complicated dozen-power AAR that breaks the game in increasingly improbable ways when? 

CALLED IT!!!   

You did! I keep coming back to this game. I've worked on this installment at a couple occasions over the past year or so. I've also got a few more nuggets to put out soon.

Is this piracy something you are actually playing out in-game, or mostly a roleplay conceit?

In this case it's just roleplay. The Terran raiders being stopped by an INL destroyer a few years back was the only piracy scenario I played out, but I do want it to be a thing ingame to provide a reason to expand monitoring and maintenance infrastructure and to have them cooperate on building more patrol ships.

Quote

Terran Forces on Procyon. Each armored brigade consists of 37 tanks, putting the total on Procyon to 148 at the start of fighting. The total tonnage is 50k Terran vs. 35k Mars/INL.
Corps = 25k tons, Division = 10k tons, Brigade = 5k tons

Ask and ye shall receive... 

These are all quite small sizes compared to the usual, which I suppose speaks to the harsh realities of military provisioning out here on the cold, hard frontier. It's a lot harder to support 20 kt brigades and 100 kt divisions when the nearest logistics base is over 20 billion km distant.

I'm imagining my ground forces as a bit bigger in size than most players. I find it weird that planet-spanning wars would be fought with so few soldiers. So in my universe, one infantry unit is not an invidiual soldier, but already several. A 10kt infantry division would represent 10k soldiers, or even more.

I also note the sneaky use of SP and RE positions to limit the scale of conflict, very nice.

The three SP armor brigades were the ones suppressing unrest in the domes. One was quite enough to tear apart the Mars/INL garrisons!

Quote

Oct 10: The Terran squadron arrives near the Salto JP in Wuhan, scanning the busy civilian traffic - unaware of the slow INL troop transport that just slipped by a few days prior

The best laid plans... forgive me for snickering here!

I don't plan such occurrences, they just happen organically and I roll with it. This element of the unexpected happening keeps such action interesting, even if you're just playing against yourself. And this game has a tradition of the unexpected happening during campaigns, all the way back to the first engagement in the Battle of Mars. It does require you to evaluate the situation separately from each side, looking up what information they each have available to them, but it's worth it.

Jump shock basically uses the exact same mechanics as fleet training, which means a ship with 100% fleet training is effectively immune to jump shock. I consider this an unfortunate side effect of the implementation.

The PRL always had plans to build a jump assault cruiser but never put it into action as it doesn't actually seem needed. If it really is just the fleet training then most ships in this game will be immune as they often get to be decades old.
I'm pretty sure the San Rafael in the 2150 installment was just out the docks and could immediately engage after jumping though...

A worthy return to action. I eagerly awat the continuation in December 2028. 

We will see! I hope to play some more, but no promises.