[X] Crew: Ask For Nothing. You will train up your existing personnel on route. (+50 Political Capital, the admiral and captains will be grateful). [X] Marines: Take Them All. Completely fill the marine compliment of every vessel, this would involve ripping apart over two divisions worth of marines and... Actually not impact the number of marines kept at Rimward Fleet Command that much. There are a lot of battleships full of marines here as well as a significant garrison and one of the main training centres. (Refill all marine compliments. (Spend 30 Political Capital, normal cost 120 for this many marines, annoy the admiral.) [X] Ship Repairs: Cannibal Time. You have orders to get these ships to the Throne World for the Empress to see. They need to be pristine, the nodal reserve at Rimward Fleet Command does not need to be pristine. Order maximum priority yard time for two weeks and if parts are not available? They will be made available even if this means stripping vessels undergoing refit or stealing yard workers to fly away aboard your vessels and continue work (+1 Crew Grade, +30% Readiness every vessel. Really antagonise the admiral and other senior officers. Will not make ships Elite grade. -50 Political Capital).
[X] Crew: Heavy Recruitment.
[X] Marines: Take Them All.
[X] Ship Repairs: Cannibal Time.
Contrary to others, I'm actually leaning towards getting everything we can get. As it is, we're already disliked by the Vice-Admiral, and we're never going to earn his friendship. While his officers may have no particular animosity, chances are that they'd have been equally petty in his situation. We can't really win any friends, only the chance that they might be be a bit less enthusiastic about our downfall.
What I think we need to focus is ensuring that we are in the strongest position possible, and I'm absolutely going to jump at the opportunity to get our troops to the highest possible skill-level. As has been made clear, it would take a lot of time to get our crews to that level, and that is simply time we don't have. Given that we are ultimately going to be engaging in a battle that could wipe us out, I'd rather be in the best position possible to ensure our immediate survival, as opposed to being worried about a few ruffled feathers and bruised egos.
While there might be people who'll develop grudges against us, we've demonstrated that we're well able to win over officers who disliked us, as evidenced by interactions with various captains earlier in the quest. Rather than focusing on the goodwill of people who will at best be bystanders in our downfall, and likely active participants anyway, we should be ensuring that we are as strong as possible.
In any case, the person who we need to worry about currying favour with the most is the Empress, and I think we ought to ensure that we impress her. Her patronage will give us power and prestige, whereas the moderately reduced contempt of a single group of officers likely wouldn't change anything.
Adhoc vote count started by Ptolemy on Oct 26, 2018 at 2:04 AM, finished with 5733 posts and 24 votes.
[X] Marines: Take Them All. Completely fill the marine compliment of every vessel, this would involve ripping apart over two divisions worth of marines and... Actually not impact the number of marines kept at Rimward Fleet Command that much. There are a lot of battleships full of marines here as well as a significant garrison and one of the main training centres. (Refill all marine compliments. (Spend 30 Political Capital, normal cost 120 for this many marines, annoy the admiral.)
[X] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time. Put your less than fully ready vessels into the shipyards for two weeks and order absolute priority for their refurbishment. Two weeks would not normally be long enough to significantly impact things but you will have one of the best yards in the empire working triple shifts and Alfheim is able to outright build a heavy cruiser in a year. Also you will load up with parts to continue refits underway. (+20% Readiness to every ship, the admiral will be annoyed but this is the kind of thing your Imperial Priority is supposed to permit).
[X] Crew: Heavy Recruitment. Open the gates to voluntary transfers from Rimward Fleet ships. All of the crew from your recent 'adventures' are now fantastically rich, you can expect tens of thousands of volunteers. Take the best of them but not too many. (+2 Crew Grade to every ship, annoy the admiral and all of the captains as you take their best crew).
-[X] Crew: Heavy Recruitment. Open the gates to voluntary transfers from Rimward Fleet ships. All of the crew from your recent 'adventures' are now fantastically rich, you can expect tens of thousands of volunteers. Take the best of them but not too many. (+2 Crew Grade to every ship, annoy the admiral and all of the captains as you take their best crew).
[X] Crew: Poach Veterans. You will use your priority to pull up service records then take a moderate but significant number of able spacers and mid ranking NCOs along with capable lieutenants (+1 Crew Grade to every ship. This will not please the admiral but he cannot actually blame you, he might even appreciate your restraint. But does he already hate you?).
-[X] Marines: Take Them All. Completely fill the marine compliment of every vessel, this would involve ripping apart over two divisions worth of marines and... Actually not impact the number of marines kept at Rimward Fleet Command that much. There are a lot of battleships full of marines here as well as a significant garrison and one of the main training centres. (Refill all marine compliments. (Spend 30 Political Capital, normal cost 120 for this many marines, annoy the admiral.)
-[X] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time. Put your less than fully ready vessels into the shipyards for two weeks and order absolute priority for their refurbishment. Two weeks would not normally be long enough to significantly impact things but you will have one of the best yards in the empire working triple shifts and Alfheim is able to outright build a heavy cruiser in a year. Also you will load up with parts to continue refits underway. (+20% Readiness to every ship, the admiral will be annoyed but this is the kind of thing your Imperial Priority is supposed to permit).
[X] Ship Repairs: Cannibal Time. You have orders to get these ships to the Throne World for the Empress to see. They need to be pristine, the nodal reserve at Rimward Fleet Command does not need to be pristine. Order maximum priority yard time for two weeks and if parts are not available? They will be made available even if this means stripping vessels undergoing refit or stealing yard workers to fly away aboard your vessels and continue work (+1 Crew Grade, +30% Readiness every vessel. Really antagonise the admiral and other senior officers. Will not make ships Elite grade. -50 Political Capital).
[X] Marines: Top Up. Be more moderate, take half that many marines, showing your moderation and restraint. (Raise Battleships to Marines 5, refill the Huitzilopochtli, raise each Light Cruiser to Marines 2. Fail to ruffle any feathers or need to shout at anyone).
ok I gotta say while I disagree with the yard time I REALLY dislike the idea of cannibal time its political suicide and honestly?
our STRENGTH is military and fighting... we don't need the extra boost there. WE DO, however need any advantage we can get politically. Remember guys we chose the build with the highest possible strategy and we are the single greatest admiral in the galaxy! (or at least in the top 5) in terms of our strategy and tactics I highly doubt anyone among the soon to be rebels can match us in tactics let alone strategy and the reality is that means most fights we take, we will have the outmaneuvering advantage letting us always be one step ahead and probs outnumber the enemy capital ships in most fights. we don't need to piss everyone off to win the coming war, we just need enough to ensure we can capture prize ships we want and to not lose too many of our own ships in the process.
ok I gotta say while I disagree with the yard time I REALLY dislike the idea of cannibal time its political suicide and honestly?
our STRENGTH is military and fighting... we don't need the extra boost there. WE DO, however need any advantage we can get politically. Remember guys we chose the build with the highest possible strategy and we are the single greatest admiral in the galaxy! (or at least in the top 5) in terms of our strategy and tactics I highly doubt anyone among the soon to be rebels can match us in tactics let alone strategy and the reality is that means most fights we take, we will have the outmaneuvering advantage letting us always be one step ahead and probs outnumber the enemy capital ships in most fights. we don't need to piss everyone off to win the coming war, we just need enough to ensure we can capture prize ships we want and to not lose too many of our own ships in the process.
ok I gotta say while I disagree with the yard time I REALLY dislike the idea of cannibal time its political suicide and honestly?
our STRENGTH is military and fighting... we don't need the extra boost there. WE DO, however need any advantage we can get politically. Remember guys we chose the build with the highest possible strategy and we are the single greatest admiral in the galaxy! (or at least in the top 5) in terms of our strategy and tactics I highly doubt anyone among the soon to be rebels can match us in tactics let alone strategy and the reality is that means most fights we take, we will have the outmaneuvering advantage letting us always be one step ahead and probs outnumber the enemy capital ships in most fights. we don't need to piss everyone off to win the coming war, we just need enough to ensure we can capture prize ships we want and to not lose too many of our own ships in the process.
The main advantage from Heavy Recruitment/Press Gang and Cannibal Time is that they will lead to improvements in the skill of our crews that would likely take a year to match otherwise, to say nothing of the fact that we could potentially improve further in the meantime. We don't really have the luxury of waiting around that long.
Yes, politics is important, but that won't make a difference if we get destroyed in the coming boss-battle against a ducal battlefleet. As it is, we can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. In any case, the biggest possible political advantage we can get is the favour and patronage of the Empress. As has already been demonstrated, given that we can already requisition this stuff. We benefit from that political advantage by ensuring we make the best possible impression, and by ensuring that we are in a position to not merely survive but triumph against a nest of traitors who'd like to see her dead. If we do that, then the opinion of one Vice-Admiral and all his officers will be moot. On the other hand, the mild disdain he had for us, which already saw him screw us over on principal, isn't exactly going to make him an ally. We could bend over backwards to please him and he'd still happily join the aristocratic lynch mob to put us in our place.
Really pissing off one of six people in the Imperium with that rank, who commands a fifth of the Imperium's mobile assets, is definitely a problem. It's not "just" a vice admiral and his staff.
Just to put things into perspective about 1 in 5 of Imperial Navy capital ship captains are in the Rimward Fleet. So if you annoy them I will be applying penalties to a random subset of battleship captain loyalties in future.
in other words we take penalties to many of our future officers loyalty.... and we will be getting an opponent with a fair amount of influence in the navy as an admiral.... which means someone who can sabotage our PC gains and likely will do so.
EDIT: this may very well just be -1 loyalty for 1 in 5 of our future officers... or it could mean 1 in 5 of all our future officers get their loyalty halved....
it also may result in worse than that if we get transferred to any kind of command in the rimward fleet after this.... like say if the war starts up again perhaps? which it will eventually....
That will likely result in most of our future officers at that point having low loyalty resulting in more than a bit of hardship for us.
so please guys... think LONG term here.... and don't keep on pissing powerful people off. All it does is screw us over again and again.
You are all playing as if we are the imperial son with max diplomacy, and subterfuge rather than max strategy and tactics.
we do NOT NEED to be maxed out in troops and readiness and everything and perfect. We just need to be 'good enough' as we are BETTER than anyone else is.
in other words we take penalties to many of our future officers loyalty.... and we will be getting an opponent with a fair amount of influence in the navy as an admiral.... which means someone who can sabotage our PC gains and likely will do so.
EDIT: this may very well just be -1 loyalty for 1 in 5 of our future officers... or it could mean 1 in 5 of all our future officers get their loyalty halved....
it also may result in worse than that if we get transferred to any kind of command in the rimward fleet after this.... like say if the war starts up again perhaps? which it will eventually....
That will likely result in most of our future officers at that point having low loyalty resulting in more than a bit of hardship for us.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out - I confess that I missed that. Still, weighing the future political fallout versus the immediate risk of death, I still think that Cannibal Time et al are well worth the risk.
in other words we take penalties to many of our future officers loyalty.... and we will be getting an opponent with a fair amount of influence in the navy as an admiral.... which means someone who can sabotage our PC gains and likely will do so.
EDIT: this may very well just be -1 loyalty for 1 in 5 of our future officers... or it could mean 1 in 5 of all our future officers get their loyalty halved....
it also may result in worse than that if we get transferred to any kind of command in the rimward fleet after this.... like say if the war starts up again perhaps? which it will eventually....
That will likely result in most of our future officers at that point having low loyalty resulting in more than a bit of hardship for us.
[] Ship Repairs: Cannibal Time. You have orders to get these ships to the Throne World for the Empress to see. They need to be pristine, the nodal reserve at Rimward Fleet Command does not need to be pristine. Order maximum priority yard time for two weeks and if parts are not available? They will be made available even if this means stripping vessels undergoing refit or stealing yard workers to fly away aboard your vessels and continue work (+1 Crew Grade, +30% Readiness every vessel. Really antagonise the admiral and other senior officers. Will not make ships Elite grade. -50 Political Capital).
@Packrat For the sake of pedantry, and what's being discussed by @Heavenly Body and @san , do captains count amongst the fleet officers who'll be antagonised by Cannibal Time? And could you please go into further detail on the potential loyalty penalties? What is the maximum cap? Is it true, as @san suggests, that it could halve a captain's loyalty, or would it be a much smaller malus?
The implication is that we're stripping ships at anchor for spares. Battleships spend all their time at anchor unless they're in active service for a reason, and most aren't because of the cost. Congrats, "senior officers" includes all of said captains with their ships in reserve.
TBH, having the +5 Loyalty from PC makes Loyalty penalties fairly marginal. I'd be much more concerned about making a senior officer who is almost certainly either a member of the Imperial House or a very well trusted retainer out for our head.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out - I confess that I missed that. Still, given the political fallout versus the immediate risk of death, I still think that Cannibal Time et al are well worth the risk.
even the 10% repair bring us well into the green, the 20% bring every capital ship we have (which are the only ships that matter in pitched battles which is the only place we can die in)
We do not need to worry about dying WE ARE THE BEST COMMANDER IN THE GALAXY (or at least top 5, or top 3 if not including earth)
We don't need maximum everything we beat an enemy 10 times our strength in a year without any real effort on our part.... in this case they will only be 1.5 times our strength. There is no real risk or problem here.
are you KIDDING me? I literally just quoted @Packrat who SPECIFICALLY stated we will be taking loyalty hits in the future if we anger the admiral and officers... Captains are literally the primary officers under an Admiral OF COURSE they are the senior officers....
Just to put things into perspective about 1 in 5 of Imperial Navy capital ship captains are in the Rimward Fleet. So if you annoy them I will be applying penalties to a random subset of battleship captain loyalties in future.
are you KIDDING me? I literally just quoted @Packrat who SPECIFICALLY stated we will be taking loyalty hits in the future if we anger the admiral and officers... Captains are literally the primary officers under an Admiral OF COURSE they are the senior officers....
The them refers to the Imperial Navy capital ship captains not to Rimward fleet Command senior officers which I think are staff officers and capital ship squadron leaders though I will concede the point if @Packrat corrects me.
[x] Crew: Poach Veterans.
[x] Marines: Take Them All.
[x] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time.
We don't need to antagonize our colleagues. People already hate us enough, don't need to make that hate a burning desire. We need enough resources to keep our fleet alive and performing well- but we do not need to loot everything not bolted down
[] Crew: Poach Veterans.
[] Marines: Take Them All.
[] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time.
This is enough for our needs. With the training we should be in a decent position when we arrive at the Capital. This place is a major training location for marines they can spare them. The priority authorization we got was meant for this.
Edit: Changing my vote to heavy recruitment we can handle the fallout.
[X] Crew: Heavy Recruitment. Open the gates to voluntary transfers from Rimward Fleet ships. All of the crew from your recent 'adventures' are now fantastically rich, you can expect tens of thousands of volunteers. Take the best of them but not too many. (+2 Crew Grade to every ship, annoy the admiral and all of the captains as you take their best crew). [X] Marines: Take Them All. Completely fill the marine compliment of every vessel, this would involve ripping apart over two divisions worth of marines and... Actually not impact the number of marines kept at Rimward Fleet Command that much. There are a lot of battleships full of marines here as well as a significant garrison and one of the main training centres. (Refill all marine compliments. (Spend 30 Political Capital, normal cost 120 for this many marines, annoy the admiral.) [X] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time. Put your less than fully ready vessels into the shipyards for two weeks and order absolute priority for their refurbishment. Two weeks would not normally be long enough to significantly impact things but you will have one of the best yards in the empire working triple shifts and Alfheim is able to outright build a heavy cruiser in a year. Also you will load up with parts to continue refits underway. (+20% Readiness to every ship, the admiral will be annoyed but this is the kind of thing your Imperial Priority is supposed to permit).
[X] Crew: Heavy Recruitment.
[X] Marines: Take Them All.
[X] Ship Repairs: Cannibal Time.
I think this is the best option for what we need.
By the way @Packrat, I think [] Crew: Press Gang The Fleet i think sould have a +3 crew improvement, as it is it has a huge cost for the same inpovmint as heavy recutmint.
Ugh. The loyalty hit isn't even that painful considering we can have +5 Loyalty for all our captains as it is. Having Battleships with -1 to all their rolls hurts a lot more.
[X] Crew: Heavy Recruitment. Open the gates to voluntary transfers from Rimward Fleet ships. All of the crew from your recent 'adventures' are now fantastically rich, you can expect tens of thousands of volunteers. Take the best of them but not too many. (+2 Crew Grade to every ship, annoy the admiral and all of the captains as you take their best crew)
[X] Marines: Top Up. Be more moderate, take half that many marines, showing your moderation and restraint. (Raise Battleships to Marines 5, refill the Huitzilopochtli, raise each Light Cruiser to Marines 2. Fail to ruffle any feathers or need to shout at anyone).
[X] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time. Put your less than fully ready vessels into the shipyards for two weeks and order absolute priority for their refurbishment. Two weeks would not normally be long enough to significantly impact things but you will have one of the best yards in the empire working triple shifts and Alfheim is able to outright build a heavy cruiser in a year. Also you will load up with parts to continue refits underway. (+20% Readiness to every ship, the admiral will be annoyed but this is the kind of thing your Imperial Priority is supposed to permit).
Ugh. The loyalty hit isn't even that painful considering we can have +5 Loyalty for all our captains as it is. Having Battleships with -1 to all their rolls hurts a lot more.
ya if it is by plan and not by line I will be switching to the 20% repair option. I don't like it but better that than having -1 or getting worse penalties from the cannibalism.
[X] Marines: Top Up. Be more moderate, take half that many marines, showing your moderation and restraint. (Raise Battleships to Marines 5, refill the Huitzilopochtli, raise each Light Cruiser to Marines 2. Fail to ruffle any feathers or need to shout at anyone).
This is really, really bad. Marines are both hitpoints AND firepower in boarding actions. So if an Arslan BB with full compliment (Marines 10) grappled one of our BBs, it not only has double the hitpoints, it rolls at a +5 advantage. Full Marines are 100% not optional here.
[X] Crew: Poach Veterans. You will use your priority to pull up service records then take a moderate but significant number of able spacers and mid ranking NCOs along with capable lieutenants (+1 Crew Grade to every ship. This will not please the admiral but he cannot actually blame you, he might even appreciate your restraint. But does he already hate you?). [X] Marines: Take Them All. Completely fill the marine compliment of every vessel, this would involve ripping apart over two divisions worth of marines and... Actually not impact the number of marines kept at Rimward Fleet Command that much. There are a lot of battleships full of marines here as well as a significant garrison and one of the main training centres. (Refill all marine compliments. (Spend 30 Political Capital, normal cost 120 for this many marines, annoy the admiral.) [X] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time. Put your less than fully ready vessels into the shipyards for two weeks and order absolute priority for their refurbishment. Two weeks would not normally be long enough to significantly impact things but you will have one of the best yards in the empire working triple shifts and Alfheim is able to outright build a heavy cruiser in a year. Also you will load up with parts to continue refits underway. (+20% Readiness to every ship, the admiral will be annoyed but this is the kind of thing your Imperial Priority is supposed to permit).
[X] Crew: Poach Veterans. You will use your priority to pull up service records then take a moderate but significant number of able spacers and mid ranking NCOs along with capable lieutenants (+1 Crew Grade to every ship. This will not please the admiral but he cannot actually blame you, he might even appreciate your restraint. But does he already hate you?). [X] Marines: Take Them All. Completely fill the marine compliment of every vessel, this would involve ripping apart over two divisions worth of marines and... Actually not impact the number of marines kept at Rimward Fleet Command that much. There are a lot of battleships full of marines here as well as a significant garrison and one of the main training centres. (Refill all marine compliments. (Spend 30 Political Capital, normal cost 120 for this many marines, annoy the admiral.) [X] Ship Repairs: Priority Yard Time. Put your less than fully ready vessels into the shipyards for two weeks and order absolute priority for their refurbishment. Two weeks would not normally be long enough to significantly impact things but you will have one of the best yards in the empire working triple shifts and Alfheim is able to outright build a heavy cruiser in a year. Also you will load up with parts to continue refits underway. (+20% Readiness to every ship, the admiral will be annoyed but this is the kind of thing your Imperial Priority is supposed to permit).
We can't afford to ignore political consequences here.
Taking anything beyond the bare minimum isn't going to make us extremely popular but if we actively make life hard for a fifth of the nobles in active service (and thus make them actively angry instead of just somewhat disdainful) our long term perspectives are going to be pretty damn bleak.
Playing nice within the current power structure is mandatory since we've got practically zero backing outside it.
