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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest
- Location
- USA
[X]Plan Bodyshop
Magic_Pal
On long term vacations in hell
- Location
- Poland
So if that one world can leave then we have a good chance ourselfs.
[X] Marine Expansion: You have committed to an expansion of the role of your marines to allow them to conduct voidborne operations and support roles in planetary assaults. Time to send Tannuvael his funding and let him at the problem. After the disaster that occurred during the Attican Beta offensive, this has become something of a bigger project, as you're dealing with the loss of institutional veterancy as well and taking lessons learned on board. Time: 2 years. Cost: 30,000 credits. Chance of Success: 70%. Effect: Authorize the agreed-upon expansion of your marine forces into a force capable of offensive operations; marines expand. Replace losses and integrate lessons learned in doctrine and equipment.
[X] Military Outposts: You've identified a few systems in Sentry Omega suitable for the establishment of dedicated military outposts. Setting up a base in one of them would establish extremely thorough ship basing and provide a secure basing point for your military deeper into the cluster. Time: 1 year. Cost: 40,000 credits. Chance of Success: 75%. Effect: Establish a permanent military presence in a system of your choice (sub-vote to follow for which). This provides a secure base within the cluster for your ships to use and provides excellent ship basing quickly. Certain systems will also provide passive benefits to background military reforms. Will provide enough docks to hold the 3rd RWF.
We need Marines and dock space
[X] Start My Own: You disapproved of the Bill of Declaration for many reasons, and chief among them was the lack of official input you would have had regarding the final product. You are not opposed to independence; just to independence on the terms as presented. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: Variable depending on sub-options chosen. Cost: 23,000 credits. Effect: Introduce to the Assembly your version of a Declaration of Independence, and in a sub-vote, determine what that version shall be. For everybody who really wanted to write in, "Pass, but only if-" last year, this is your chance.
We did veto previous declaration to make our version of it. Now is the time.
[X] Investigate the Secessionists: You do not want to commit to a course of action without a full understanding of the situation. These Secessionists have one obvious goal, but there may be more, or creative approaches to solving their problems. It turns your stomach to treat with a political party, but you need information, and you doubt that they would refuse to speak with you; they're not hostile yet. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 72%. Cost: 15,000 credits. Effect: Approach Secessionist party leaders to get a better read on their exact wants and needs, and how your policy decisions might interact with them.
They are organized. We must know who, why, and with whose money.
[X] Colony Equipment: Assilia is as primed as it's going to be, which about means that you won't have to install orbital infrastructure yourself. Unfortunately, that's only one part of building a colony. You need to purchase the first wave of colonists' equipment -- everything needed to start constructing several small cities across the entire planet, and supply the fledgling colony in the years following its founding. Now that you're all ready to go otherwise, you'll want to take this soon. Time: 2 years. Chance of Success: 75%. Cost: 75,000 credits, -30,000 yearly income (income hit imposed at conclusion of option, persisting until Assilia Prime achieves self-sufficiency, a span of time you have no way of reliably estimating).
[X] Rebalance Food Production: Dextro-levo incompatibility is not complete, and honestly it's more a mining canary for a whole host of other issues than the core problem with quarians and levo food. Some -- a very limited some, mind -- of the foods you produce here on Virmire are edible to quarians, and if you scrape deep through the records of last year's yields, you can just barely hit, "nutritionally-complete diet," by some miracle of chance. It would mean one particular arrangement of not-very-well-coordinated foods for every single meal over the entire duration of the quarians' stay. It won't be tasty, and it'll get boring. Morale may very well become an issue eventually, but it'll feed your guests in the short term, and absent a disaster, you know you can do it. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 80%. Cost: 30,000 credits. Effect: Subsidize and reserve yearly batches of crops and animals that the quarians will be able to eat, solving the food crisis at the cost of making them long for the halcyon days of stale MRE's.
[X] Dietary Supplements: You cannot make dextro food from samples that don't exist. The quarians did not bring plants or breeding pairs of livestock with them. If you worked at it, you could rejigger your crop and slaughterhouse yields to get them a nutritionally-complete diet, but that would see them eating the same exact thing for every meal they eat during their stay here. A lot of foods Virmire produces are simply inert to quarians, or contain some but not all of the things they need to survive. Feed them that, and then produce the dietary supplements that will make that stuff nutritionally-complete. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 70% Cost: 40,000 credits. Effect: Produce, with the quarian medics' aid, dietary supplements to turn the varieties of food the quarians can safely eat into actual meals, solving the food crisis without forcing them to eat the same things for literally every meal.
[X] Emergency Response: The 3rd RWF is critically low on crucial medical supplies. With many crew members still in need of urgent medical attention, the MotS absolutely needs to divert all available resources to the matter of figuring out how to synthesize those medicines using only materials from an incompatible biosphere. This is...not going to be fun. Time: 1 year. Chance of Success: 50%. Cost: 50,000 credits. Effect: Divert medical funding to make a brand-new branch of your pharmaceuticals industry appear overnight; address quarian medical problems.
[X] Personal Attention: [ ] Emergency Response
[X] Personal Attention: [ ] Start My Own
[X] Personal Attention: [ ] Marine Expansion
Do we vore for whole plans or individually? Is there a plan that do have all above?
- Location
- Austria
I think we are going to go indep, but on our terms and after investigating motives of Assembly.
And hopefully after pushing through a law against "bill to pass a pill" bullshit, because seriously just no.
- Location
- USA
It's always plan for year votes. It wouldn't make sense otherwise
It's a lot easier to build multiple cruisers compared to one Dreadnought.
You also have a lot more power projection with multiple cruisers compared to just one Dreadnought.
Dreadnoughts represents a -lot- of firepower in one ship that's barely twice the size of a light cruiser (light cruisers =300~450 meters long, dreadnoughts 800~1.2KM).
Problem is, you cannot use it for anything else other than shooting other Dreadnaughts because you cannot build a lot of them.
That is what makes Battlecruisers special.
We have a cruiser that mounts a dreadnought class gun, so it's cheaper, so it can be mass produced compared to an actual Dreadnaughts, but can be used as an anti-capital ship.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It sat there for ten years without being selected and without any moves being made towards taking it, and then you had other options. It's gone now.
- Location
- Austria
It's probably several dozen lightyears away at least; more likely several hundreds.
Rachni wars might be over by the time lightspeed signal reached Quarians.
- Location
- Aotearoa
It (was) apparently a faster-than-light signal of some kind.
I assume the Reapers perform maintenance every fifty thousand years or so.
Wake up from sleep, dust themselves off, kill off all the organics underfoot, reshuffle the
Y'know, regular housekeeping.
Inaccurate sir.
The quarians, by Malan's own admission, have almost lost the Far Rim several times. They are not going to weaken the defenses of several billion people in order to go in search of several hundred thousand, any more than we would have to look for survivors of First Fleet after the initial military disaster.
Will they come looking? Probably. Eventually.
When they rebuild their losses.
Do you actually have any idea what happened at Dunkirk? The whole reason it was feasible was because they didn't have to fight their way through marine or land opposition to retrieve the evacuees.
Home Fleet did not go to Dunkirk; it stayed at it's home base at Scapa Flow.
Fighter Command kept it's best fighters home in anticipation of Operation Sealion.
The British deployed a little under 700 ships and boats, ~100 of them warships , the vast majority of which were old destroyers and minesweepers, and actually withdrew the more modern destroyers to keep them for home defense. One cruiser.
| Type of vessel | Total engaged | Sunk | Damaged |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cruisers | 1 | 1 | |
| Destroyers | 39 | 6 | 19 |
| Sloops, corvettes and gunboats | 9 | 1 | 1 |
| Minesweepers | 36 | 5 | 7 |
| Trawlers and drifters | 113 | 17 | 2 |
| Special service vessels | 3 | 1 | |
| Ocean boarding vessels | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| Torpedo boats and anti-submarine boats | 13 | ||
| Former Dutch schuyts with naval crews | 40 | 4 | Unknown |
| Yachts with naval crews | 26 | 3 | Unknown |
| Personnel ships | 45 | 8 | 8 |
| Hospital carriers | 8 | 1 | 5 |
| Naval motor boats | 12 | 6 | Unknown |
| Tugboats | 34 | 3 | Unknown |
| Other small craft[note 1] | 311 | 170 | Unknown |
| Total British ships | 693 | 226 | |
|
| Type of vessel | Total engaged | Sunk | Damaged |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warships (all types) | 49 | 8 | Unknown |
| Other vessels | 119 | 9 | Unknown |
| Total Allied ships | 168 | 17 | |
| Grand total | 861 | 243 |
The Brits literally did what I'm telling you the quarians will: they prioritized keeping home base safe.
To paraphrase an African proverb used to console ladies who miscarry, better the water spills than the pot breaks.
Yes.
Genengineering is increasingly straigthtforward these days with CRISPR and all, let alone for a several billion man planet with a human resource base capable of building and maintaining multiple fleets.
Furthermore, the quarians know exactly how much food the 3RWF has available, and that they'd be talking a couple months with extreme rationing.
By the time you'd be able to get a relief fleet across two Rachni clusters and through their combat fleets, they'd be out of supplies.
Either their hosts have figured out how to feed them by then, or they're dead of starvation.
They can read a map.
We had the resources to not only survive Rachni assaults on our home cluster, but to advance and capture two more as a buffer, while capturing and cracking the encoding on Rachni comm buoys.
That sort of achievement implies an educational level and techbase for whom this is well within their capabilities; we're talking feeding a couple hundred thousand people here, not stellar engineering.
EDIT
As an aside, this is the writeup for one of the military outpost planets (SO13, I think) from Turn 9
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Actually, that is far from the worst idea. Our military has toughened enough such that we have less cause to worry about any potential lurking enemies in the Sentry Omega jumping us. And just saying "Hi everyone! Still alive, yes, we're doing fine out here, and we saved X of the quarians in the Third Fleet, who say hi and to give their families a hug!" might actually be a good idea.
Since we now have a specific message we might want to send, would you be open to making that option available at some future time, or should we expect it to remain gone?
It might never get through at all. Mass Effect ships can only go so far without discharging their drive cores in a suitable gas giant, which means they have a maximum range they can 'hop' between gas giants. Traveling through uncharted space, they'd have no guarantee of finding a suitable gas giant in any particular system. Thus, they could easily encounter 'desert' regions they can't cross because they don't have the range.
Plus, the trip would almost certainly take years, which means there is a high risk of the ship simply breaking down and being lost for good on the way there.
I'd bet on the mission almost certainly failing, either because the ship reaches a 'desert' region and turns back, or keeps poking and probing across the unexplored reaches of interstellar space far from the relay network until it suffers a mechanical breakdown it can't fix and the crew dies.
Very few if any people are specifically anti-independence. Personally I'm lukewarm on the idea and could be readily talked out of it by a cushy enough offer from the Council, and I'm about as anti-independence as anyone else on the thread. Few if any Mass Effect fans are that big a bunch of Council fans.
The votes to veto the declaration came from both desire to know what's going on in the larger galaxy, AND because the specific legislative details of the "declaration of independence bill" were such that they effectively set a precedent for the legislature to override Mira's veto by 'passing a bill committing to write a law' and then being able to draft the new law however they wanted.
Right now we're moving a bit slowly, but there still seems to be a solid player base of support for declaring independence within the next few years. The debate is more over ways and means.
Except that we may want to act on what we learn about the Secessionists. Not just political dirty secrets, but also more general stuff like "Okay, three quarters of our population is pro-independence, and they break down into three major factions that want X, Y, and Z for reasons as follows, who will want or not want the following features in our declaration."
And, again, there really isn't much of a disadvantage to having Virmire's declaration of independence pass eighteen months from now rather than six.
I shall avoid being deliberately flippant in my answer to this... Just off the top of my head:
1) We could proclaim sovereignty over the planet Virmire and its orbitals alone. Or over Hoc system alone, including the mass relays which are traditionally administered solely by the Council. Or we could claim sovereignty over all of Sentry Omega. Or over all of Sentry Omega and Attican Beta. Or over all clusters under our military control as of Year X inasmuch as the abandonment of this region of the galaxy to the rachni means that all these clusters are astra nullius and prior Council claims are considered void. Some of these options would be more likely to promote conflict with the Council than others, either before or after the war.
2) We could cite grievances or not cite grievances, and the grievances could be ones that might plausibly be addressed and satisfied to bring us back into the fold, or not.
3) We could use rhetoric very hostile to, or relatively conciliatory to, the Council. Hostile rhetoric would please certain factions of our citizenry, I suspect, but might make our lives much harder in the postwar galaxy.
4) We could explicitly acknowledge certain principles the Council is likely to want to ensure that we respect as an independent power (freedom of navigation, normalization of diplomatic protocols, not doing anything reckless that could destroy galactic civliization). Or we could not, again possibly creating conflict.
All that was just off the top of my head. Suffice to say that declarations of independence are by definition the founding documents of nations and which tend to involve some rather adverse interactions with the nation from which the new one sprang. They are weighty and complex, with far-reaching implications, even if they don't happen to double as a constitution.
Why not? I mean, this was one of the first things they did, why wouldn't they try at least one or two ambitious power grabs to see if we were content to be something of a figurehead or if we planned to actually assert the primacy of the executive.
Me neither; I suspect it's encouraged the Lystheni to run wild, among other things. I imagine Mira deciding that the dreadnoughts and heavies of the Third Fleet (which are the most expensive to operate in any case) will be parked in Hoc most of the time as an emergency reserve, while quarian cruisers, frigates, and corvettes are encouraged to patrol the surrounding space once they start being fit to do so?
I'm not sure it's a smart move to give the quarians primacy on a naval base away from the Hoc system that is primarily occupied by quarians with minimal Virmire presence; do you think it likely MIra would do that?
I think that maybe at some future date we might want to move the quarians' base of operations to Attican Beta and create a new defensive force for the Sentry Omega cluster, as per @Versharl 's thoughts, but that would be a matter to consider in the future. Three to five years out on the planning horizon, far enough that we'll worry about it later.
Having only the Lystheni be capable of moving around the cluster in armed starships is probably not a good thing for us. Especially not as we spread out more colonies and merchants. I don't know what they might decide, but having literally no counter in place for when they do sounds bad.
Plus, some of our own citizens might turn to piracy sooner or later, now that people have more freedom to travel the cluster.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh, naturally. I simply doubt that they deliberately invite such maintenance being a constant affair.
Since people are now expressing interest, yes. It'll be one of a few, "re-establish contact," options next year, once the immediate crisis is handled.
The quarians don't have a great abundance of spare personnel. Some, yes, but not a lot. Thus, Virmire would have to provide that. The base staff and commander would be Virmirean. So, quarian fleet operating out of a Virmirean facility.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Good point, shoulda thunka that.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
[X] Plan Bodyshop
- Location
- Asia
We need to secure the other planets in our systems. Colonizable planets, planets with ancient tech lying around and resource rich systems are not something we want the Citadel, or the Larians having easy access to.
Also, I think the Larian warships beat us in terms of tech now, if their lucky rolls have been holding.
Also, I think the Larian warships beat us in terms of tech now, if their lucky rolls have been holding.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Who are Larians?
If you mean 'quarians,' they are not much of a risk of colonizing our cluster, because all the quarians we have around are the survivors of a single battlefleet. They have no civilians or manufacturing experts or any of the specialists they'd need to found colonies.
Also, we are already working on what you say, it just takes time to colonize planets while fighting a major war.
If you mean 'quarians,' they are not much of a risk of colonizing our cluster, because all the quarians we have around are the survivors of a single battlefleet. They have no civilians or manufacturing experts or any of the specialists they'd need to found colonies.
Also, we are already working on what you say, it just takes time to colonize planets while fighting a major war.
- Location
- California
I think they mean the Lystheni.
We did not search for survivors of the First Fleet because we had no word there might have been any, much less that most of the fleet and its people had been rescued (and a enemy fleet shattered to do it) by a power interested in fighting alongside us. I must ask, do you not grasp the difference between the two situations, or you being purposely obtuse?
Furthermore, given that Phoenix Massing is currently in the hands of allies, and that the Rachni would have to take that before they had any chance of taking the Far Rim - which they are unlikely to be able to, if the current offensive continues, they have every reason to continue to push, especially if they know their fleet is intact.
I'm aware of what happened, so don't feel you need to copy and paste a wikipedia article for my convenience. In short, they scraped together a force that was not their home fleet to make a rescue effort, sent it out, and succeeded in rescuing a great many of their people, despite a number of losses.
The Quarians will pull back and prioritize defense for the moment, yes, because they believe their fleet is lost. Do I really have to refer you to where Fleet Admiral Malan says this in his report? As well as how different it would be if they knew the fleet was there?
I am not contesting what they will do at present, and I hope you will not contest what Malan explicitly stated that they would have done had the situation had been different.
Having the ability to build and maintain multiple fleets does not necessarily mean that you have the ability to do excellent genengineering. While the fact is that we do, these technologies are not, and should not be considered to be equivalent.
Two months can be a very short time or a very long time, depending on how exactly one is inclined to approach an offensive. Two months would be too short to secure complete control of a cluster, certainly, but simply to break through? That may not take as long as you think, if a decisive fleet battle can be fought.
You are being flippant, I hope?
That sort of achievement implies a good military-industrial complex and that we have individuals or teams who are well trained at this sort of thing. And while yes, it may suggest we have a rather high educational level, I would caution you to not assume that because people can build warships and can code, they absolutely must have a mastery of genetic engineering.
And please, don't underestimate the difficulty of feeding a couple hundred thousand people. It is by no means a small feat to not only create something they can survive off of, but grow enough of it to feed them. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have to dedicate an entire learning action to it.
...
On a side note, I'm rather looking forward to what the Lysenthi will think of heavily armed Quarian warships patrolling about, when they've had free run of the cluster for such a long time.
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Canon Omake: Meanwhile, In the Systems Alliance, Part 2
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Now, it has come to my attention that one Galactic Standard year is actually 1.06 Earth years, so since quest start we've had about one extra year on Earth. To keep up the pace of my occasional updates...
This Last Year in the Systems Alliance!
Among the Romans, this is known as the "Year of the Consulship of Augustus (that is, Caligula) without colleague," or "Year 793 since the founding of the City." To a later era in Europe it will be known as 40 A.D.
Emperor Caligula begins a campaign to conquer Britain, which ended in farce after he massed an army on the French coast to conquer the island off the coast of Europe. For reasons historians do not agree on, he gives up. Then he orders his legions to attack Neptune, the god of the ocean, and tells them to bring back seashells as trophies of their victory. He then declares the campaign a brilliant success.
The emperor distributes distinctions, honors, and titles widely and indiscriminately, including the unusual act of making his favorite horse, Incitatus, a Roman senator.
In keeping with some of the customs of Hellenistic autocracy, Caligula declares himself to be a god, and appears in public dressed as various deities, including Hercules, god of the strength, Mars, god of war, and surprisingly Venus, goddess of love. He orders that busts of his own head be placed atop the statues of gods in many temples throughout the empire.
Caligula orders the Jewish synagogues in the city of Alexandria emptied out and turned into temples of Caligula. While this is going on, a new messianic cult quietly spreads its first satellite church among disaffected Alexandria Jews. This one is unusual in that they're still in the running despite their messiah having been executed by the Romans several years previously. They say he's coming back.
Also in the Jewish quarter of Alexandria, the philosopher Philo is working on perfecting his syncretic blend of Platonic and Jewish philosophy; he is widely respected and in fact ends up going as part of an embassy from the Jews to Caligula to explain events in Israel. To wit, the riots.
The Jews remain firmly opposed to Caligula's insistence that a statue of himself be placed in their high temple in Jerusalem. The Roman governor of Israel, knowing the locals and not being a complete moron, hems and haws, delaying implementation of Caligula's order.
Meanwhile, attempting to consolidate power and get away from the Roman aristocracy who disapproved of his behavior, Caligula announces plans to relocate the capital to a more salubrious southerly location, with a culture more consistent with ruling as a god-king. Namely, Alexandria. These plans proceed in between rounds of Caligula's public mockery of senators, and his hobby of coming up with humiliating insults for the Praetorian prefect who commands his own legion of bodyguards.
Probably some time around the time we were busy bailing out the quarians, the Senate began having quiet conversations. The head of the Praetorians found these conversations very interesting.
...
So if you think our political problems are bad...
...
Elsewhere in the world:
-Conflict is ongoing within the Persian Empire, with two brothers struggling for dominance; Vardanes I has the upper hand for now.
-The Trung Sisters are still practicing guerilla warfare as only the Vietnamese, against a Han Chinese army of occupation.
Among the Romans, this is known as the "Year of the Consulship of Augustus (that is, Caligula) without colleague," or "Year 793 since the founding of the City." To a later era in Europe it will be known as 40 A.D.
Emperor Caligula begins a campaign to conquer Britain, which ended in farce after he massed an army on the French coast to conquer the island off the coast of Europe. For reasons historians do not agree on, he gives up. Then he orders his legions to attack Neptune, the god of the ocean, and tells them to bring back seashells as trophies of their victory. He then declares the campaign a brilliant success.
The emperor distributes distinctions, honors, and titles widely and indiscriminately, including the unusual act of making his favorite horse, Incitatus, a Roman senator.
In keeping with some of the customs of Hellenistic autocracy, Caligula declares himself to be a god, and appears in public dressed as various deities, including Hercules, god of the strength, Mars, god of war, and surprisingly Venus, goddess of love. He orders that busts of his own head be placed atop the statues of gods in many temples throughout the empire.
Caligula orders the Jewish synagogues in the city of Alexandria emptied out and turned into temples of Caligula. While this is going on, a new messianic cult quietly spreads its first satellite church among disaffected Alexandria Jews. This one is unusual in that they're still in the running despite their messiah having been executed by the Romans several years previously. They say he's coming back.
Also in the Jewish quarter of Alexandria, the philosopher Philo is working on perfecting his syncretic blend of Platonic and Jewish philosophy; he is widely respected and in fact ends up going as part of an embassy from the Jews to Caligula to explain events in Israel. To wit, the riots.
The Jews remain firmly opposed to Caligula's insistence that a statue of himself be placed in their high temple in Jerusalem. The Roman governor of Israel, knowing the locals and not being a complete moron, hems and haws, delaying implementation of Caligula's order.
Meanwhile, attempting to consolidate power and get away from the Roman aristocracy who disapproved of his behavior, Caligula announces plans to relocate the capital to a more salubrious southerly location, with a culture more consistent with ruling as a god-king. Namely, Alexandria. These plans proceed in between rounds of Caligula's public mockery of senators, and his hobby of coming up with humiliating insults for the Praetorian prefect who commands his own legion of bodyguards.
Probably some time around the time we were busy bailing out the quarians, the Senate began having quiet conversations. The head of the Praetorians found these conversations very interesting.
...
So if you think our political problems are bad...
...
Elsewhere in the world:
-Conflict is ongoing within the Persian Empire, with two brothers struggling for dominance; Vardanes I has the upper hand for now.
-The Trung Sisters are still practicing guerilla warfare as only the Vietnamese, against a Han Chinese army of occupation.
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Hah, this bit always gets a laugh out of me.
...especially when I remember the immortal horse event in CK II.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
All hail the immortal God-Emperor Glitterhoof.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
*Scratches chin, waggles hand*
I mean, Alexandria was one of the first sites, yes, but I don't recall that it was necessarily a linear progression, not to mention all the home churches springing up in the local area in Israel/Judea.
And more accurately, they were saying He came back to life, and that He would be coming back to the world in full force one day.
