Situation Foxtrot (SAO/Foxhole) [COMPLETE]

It was a few days after the battle for Allsight, and you were, for once, almost bored. Key word, almost. Despite the massive heaps of living space you'd gotten once the 62e Infantry had moved out and the 64e had started moving back to their usual haunt in Reaching Trail, you still felt an anemic squish of persons at all hours: mostly because the 9e Sustainment- now unflatteringly known as the Balfour Bitches, for the fact they'd been doing nothing but make 40mm shells for the last few weeks- had ended up dipping on their old haunts to squeeze into your base while the 62e finished pacifying Fort November and the battle lines re-oriented themselves to the reality of owning Allsight.

The horrific losses your regiment had sustained, though, were putting you on the ropes for actually making things operate successfully. You barely had enough manpower to scroop and manufacture your own rations, and had actually done a lot of discussion with the 9e to get them to help cough up G-sups as a form of rent.

So: you needed more manpower. The solution, naturally, was to get out the recruiting posters. A call to Brava in the War Bureau got you a case of them from the enigmatic 58 Intelligence Regiment, based out of Reaching Trail, who were the only ones who actually had a working printing system in this game. Your boys and girls- and there were no small number of girls who hadn't chickened out after Allsight, joining the deluge that had flooded Bathroy's newly-formed 203e Uhlans- were slathering the recruiting posters all across Quietus, The King, and Great Warden Dam as they went about their day.

The result was instantaneous. Not one of the scroop team came back with less than two recruits piled into their trucks, and by the time the posters wore off you were practically back at pre-operation manning: complete with pre-operational cramping. It was hot and shared bunks, and the worst part was with Asuna still managing things in Morgen's Crossing you couldn't really argue about it. There were a lot of 40mm shells tied up in the fieldworks, so it was her, Mihay, and Silica leading a team of your veterans to work with the 62e to slowly and steadily reduce the fortifications of Fort November.

In one of your rare moments of unabridged charity, though, you did get ahold of Bathroy. As cramped as you were here, the fact of the matter was running two bunker bases would be beyond you for the immediate future: therefore, you were giving the one in Morgen's Crossing to Bathroy. It was a double-edged sword, you knew. Making her responsible for the logistics pipeline to Allsight wasn't the best idea, but you had no idea how effectively the War Bureau was doing at breaking through Victor-Tango and Bastards' Block. If they could form a defensive line there, then militia regiments could hold it easily, and there wouldn't be much work for Bathroy. If the War Bureau cheaped out, though, then there'd be leakers all over the place, and she'd be putting her work in.

With that handover completed, a fortnight's worth of recruiting done in three days, and some polite telegrams sent to Basin Sionnach with the implication you'd do The Great Gun Heist all over again if materials weren't coughed up, and you just barely managed to fill your base up by the time Hooker came by for his meeting. The man had brought an entire truckload of staff officers- many of whom tipped their hats to Asuna- before he got a chance to look you in the eye.

When he did, you could feel a slight, incandescent rage pouring off him as he swept his gray hair back, fixing his kepi. "Colonel Orr."

"General Orr," you corrected, smirking lightly, before flicking your black hair back. Asuna coming the night before had been massively helpful, and she'd made sure your raven locks were in a professional French braid you could coif with two seconds and a pin in case you needed your helmet.

It was easy to see his teeth grind, as he nodded. Behind him, the staff were nervous, most trying to make it obvious they were only holding briefcases. It was obvious none of them had even loaded their pistols, versus you and your magnificent sword. Still, letting the greeting lie, you turned to walk into the bunker base. "Come on, then. Let's get this meeting rolling."

Leading your way into the bunker base, you got to the main meeting table, and looked pointedly at Hooker's aides. Soon enough, the map was on the table.



"Right, so the plan is pretty simple, and largely unchanged from how I initially proposed it," Hooker said, starting to lay out regimental markers. "First and foremost, we're going to be working on a three-brigade approach strategy. Each brigade is going to be an independent strategic element: I don't believe, and 99th Engineers agree with me, that we can get long range radio stations built up fast enough to allow for central command and control for this."

You nodded, and started looking things over carefully. It was going to be a tight press, frankly speaking, and the current plan had you going into The Weathering Halls, probably through a boarder fort to get there, then through a needle-tight passage, and then into shelling Port of Rime. If every square inch wasn't filled with bunker bases, you'd eat your rank pins.

"Currently, I have the three brigades organized as so," Hooker continued, pulling out a list. "Tepes will be working as our spoiling force, with two regiments of motor rifles, one regiment of uhlans, one regiment of engineers, and one regiment of cuirassiers. His primary goal will be to cut the enemy logistics lines by capturing Shattered Advance. Current recon courtesy of the 26th Commando regiment places it as being in the process of being concreted. We need to break it before they finish fortifying: concrete AT garrisons will nullify our brief advantage in maneuver warfare."

Turning the concept over in your mind, you nodded briskly. "What is the composition of these regiment types? I've never seen a Motor Rifle regiment, or Cuirassiers."

"Jenkins can explain," Hooker said dismissively, while one of the aides handed you a recognition book.

"Well, ma'am," the aide, who was probably about twelve if you had to hazard a guess and terrified of your rank insignia, spoke with just a trace of a stutter. "Motor Rifle regiments are mounted infantry, like uhlans, and have one armored car per one to two trucks of infantry. Cuirassiers are ultra-light armored cavalry, composed entirely of armored cars."

Your jaw dropped. "This is madness. If there's any set concrete patterns, you'll never be able to punch through it. Armored cars don't have enough firepower for the job!"

"They don't need raw firepower, they need to just engage in suppress-and-engage loops. Get the wheeled machine guns or Ratcatchers up with the infantry, suppress the bunker, and then kill it with the 40mm armored cars. Use the light machine gun cars to keep them clear, and we'll have them right where we want them."

"And when they have competent anti-tank teams?" you snapped. "This game is vaguely balanced, even if it is run by a fucking madman. If everyone's getting armor, then infantry-based anti-tank has to be around the corner."

"I've talked with Tepes, and he doesn't consider it a liable concern."

"Like hell he doesn't, that's going to slaughter his armored car element!" you snapped, glaring at Hooker. "You're not even opening up your stockpiles of artillery for that?"

"No, because that's going to you next," Hooker growled, trying to be menacing. "I've talked to the sixty-second and ninety-ninth regiments: four guns was not enough. Considering the scale of the operation here, I'm giving you twelve so you can be appropriately aggressive with them and cover multiple frontages."

You rocked back on your heels, metaphorically speaking. That was a lot of firepower. That was also a lot of manpower you'd need: call it six bodies per gun, and Hooker wanted you to have thirty-six people on gun duty, rain or shine. You were gonna have to punch your regimental numbers up to do that, much less do that and keep the shells rolling or the bunker base secure or any number of other things.

"No further objections on Tepes' front," you grumbled.

"Good. I'll be managing a naval invasion with one Naval Regiment, two units of Naval Infantry, and one unit of pioneers," Hooker grumbled. "No smart remarks there?"

"You're planning a brigade-scale amphibious landing, I don't need to make smart remarks."

"Hah hah," Hooker growled. "This isn't an excuse for you to putz: we're going to be working on a very tight schedule, and the 122nd Naval Regiment is going to be running nearly entirely on prototype kits. If you're not holding them down in Weathering Halls, I won't be able to keep the gunboats circulating to make it to the underway replenishment point."

"Tight endurance on them?"

"Each boat only holds thirty shells, and each unrep unit only holds sixty more. I'm going to have to dance on a tightrope here, Orr."

"Alright, so bearing in mind your naval invasion habit is going to get a lot of people killed, what am I working with here?" you asked, lips pinched. "You're giving me an ambitious goal, so what's my tools?"

"You've got Brava with 46 Sustainment, and 11 Infantry," Hooker grumbled, "and that's it."

"That's it?"

"That's all I have left."

"So, what, I need to drag up the rest of a brigade on my lonesome?" you asked, starting to get more than a little ticked. "Is that really the support I can expect?"

"I'm getting you guns, and frankly you've done it before," Hooker said, before sighing deeply. "I've already had to build a brigade out of whole cloth myself, getting the Naval Infantry and Pioneers trained, and the Navy still isn't up to snuff- that's what they've been doing these last few weeks."

"So that's why Bastard's Block hasn't gone down yet."

"Pretty much. It's a good training yard, but we've got Fort Victor pierced, and it's down to just getting the artillery tables figured."

"Is that a problem?"

"Yes, because as it turns out the naval howitzers were made by a lier. The system assist says they max out at a hundred meters-"

"-but the reality is about five to ten times that," you finished for him, smirking slightly. "Just like my guns."

"Quite."

"Sounds like you needed to ask an artillery regiment about that," you continued, driving the knife home.

"Yes, I understand you have some experience at this, but consider I can't send a naval gunboat squadron to a landlocked target."

You could tell the aides were getting nervous, and Hooker was patently fuming. Still, it was rather obvious that you'd won the fight- and being practicable about things, there wasn't much you could expect to drag out of Hooker. The War Bureau was reputable, they were tearing a hex out of the Colonial's cold hands, but they were not large. Only nine regiments, for an assault that was going to take fifteen or more.

Pride might come before the fall, but there was a reason nobody wanted to tell the emperor he was naked. "You're going to need to expand the War Bureau after this," you noted.

"I'm trying, but the Navy is made of old fuckwits who don't want a damn thing to do with us," Hooker ranted, "and most of the independent regiments won't talk to me anymore after the Logistics Union started threatening to cut off garrison supplies."

"Great, feuds with the core of the Warden supply network," you said, rolling your eyes. "You'll have to deal with it, because I know how I'd do it."

"With guns blazing, yes," Hooker muttered, droll. "Either way, what's your unit's preferred secondary languages?"

"French or Japanese, but I wouldn't say no to Ukrainian."

"I can do Japanese. Mikon, you're with Orr."

A pale-faced aide looked at Hooker, then at you. "Permission to bring Jenkins with?"

"Granted, subject to Orr's approval."

You looked over the two, before nodding. "Welcome to the 15e Flying Artillery Regiment. Silica, one of my sergeants, will show you to your bunking."

As the two aides were led away, Hooker looked at you darkly. "We're springing the assault once I have Bastard's Block done and some supplies built back up. It should be a month."

"I'll be waiting warmly," you replied, before watching the man leave your bunker base in a huff.

///

Aside from some other insignificant issues, such as prying as much information out of Jenkins and Mikon, you got to work with other social activities like getting in touch with water transport teams. Unfortunately though, if it floated then the Navy had its teeth in it, and through them Hooker. What you did get access to, though, was something that was in some ways better: a rail construction regiment, the 142 Locomotive, part of a new… brigade? Was that what the language was standardizing for multi-regimental organizations?

You didn't know, though, and you didn't care much either. 142 Locomotive was part of the Great Warden Railroad, made of Logistics Union outcasts who'd dedicated themselves to building railroads. Now, while trains themselves hadn't been unlocked yet- that was next tier, apparently- they had figured out a neat trick. By stripping the standard tires off the wheels of a Dunne, it could be 'converted' to a ghetto railroad car. Flatbeds couldn't do this, since they were powered through an airborne drive gear for their treads, but on rails a Dunne could get up to nearly 200 kph- at full load. A standard Dunne struggled to hit 60kph under a full bed, but the magic of rails fixed this issue handily.

The problem was, there were only two rail lines right now: the first, from Basin Sionnach to Speaking Woods in order to connect the rivers. The second, meanwhile, was a branch line down into Reaching Trail, designed to hit the Relic Bases and towns on the west side of the hex, before crossing the boarder into Callahan's Passage- even if it was only finished down to Brodytown at the moment.

If you were willing to find a way to get your hands on the comps, though, the 142 were willing to cut you a deal: the GWRR plan was, at present moment, to eventually build a rail link from Port Tabasco to Foxcatcher in order to relieve pressure on the refinery at Great Warden Dam and get B-mats to the factories in Kirknell- all six of them. It wasn't a Mass Production Factory, but damn- if it wasn't close.

Either way, this meant conquering Weathered Expanse. After your work in getting Allsight and your excellent hat, they were willing to talk to you- and more importantly, to tender an offer.

While the Basin Sionnach/Callahan's Passage rail line was important for a number of reasons, it wasn't a massively busy line, and wouldn't be critical for quite a while yet. It would move mostly people, not war materiel, and this bothered the GWRR, who wanted this all to end already. To that end, they were willing to tend you an offer.

If you could scrounge up the Components to make the concrete with for the Signaling Stations, they'd send a team out to The King, and run a rail straight down to the border for the low price of one hundred and thirty-five C-mats. Once you got your heart palpitations under control- since an average bunker pattern was maybe twenty C-mats!- you said you'd look into it and radio them back.

It wasn't real rail supply, but if you had it, you could probably double the throughput for Brava or some other logistics regiment that you put on the rails. The question was, though, if you could finish it in time.

A question for another day, though: you had to get ready to go, now.

///

Game Mechanic: Primitive Rail- With some modification, a standard Dunne or a Dune Hauler may be retrofitted to operate on rails as a diesel-powered locomotive with standard storage for the vehicle and improved speeds.

Quest Mechanic: Rail Logistics- If suitable infrastructure is provided, any Logistics Regiment can customize their vehicles to serve as light rail vehicles, allowing them to support 1 extra regiment in the operation and to receive a +1 to their roll. The number of units that may use this is not linear with the number of rail lines however, but quadratic as per 2^X+1, where X is the number of rail lines constructed. For the purposes of using Light Rail and Dedicated Rail on the same set of tracks, calculate having Light Rail as a spot value of 1, versus a Dedicated Rail as a spot value of 3, as compared to the result of the rail lines traffic equation above. Note that a Dedicated Rail regiment may run on only a single line, but it will not gain the +1 to its Supply Roll.

///

GWRR Request: Mine components to build a rail link between The King and the Weathered Expanse/Clanshead Valley Boarder.

Famous for: 1 turns

BUNKER
(Choose One)
[] Expand your bunker base with additional infrastructure to sustain larger troop numbers.
[] Expand your bunker base with Defensive Patterns (Requires techniques, vote to begin development)
-[] With small patterns
-[] With medium patterns
-[] With heavy patterns
-[] With artillery firing positions
-[] With infantry fighting positions.
-[] With Modernist patterns
-[] With Utility Patterns
[] Begin developing Concrete (Write-in base to begin concrete development on)
[] Develop a new bunker base in a better location
-[] Write in hex and town/Relic, as well as distance to front line or intended purpose.
[] Get your builders to stop expanding the base for now.
[] Gift, Assign, or Abandon a bunker base.
-[] Write-in base by location.

PERSONNEL
(Choose One)
[] Go and recruit more personnel
-[] Mass recruitment: whatever you can get, get more of it! (Recruits 4d10+4 White personnel)
-[] Selective recruitment: Look for people who aren't clueless. The Logistics Union has a lot of folks. (Recruits 3d10+3 Green personnel)
-[] Picky recruitment: Get people who are at least as skilled as you are! (Recruits 2d10+2 Yellow personnel)
-[] Frontline recruitment: Go to the front and snag some blueberries! (Recruits 1d10+1 Orange personnel)
-[] Elite recruitment: Go find a group of lunatics, and shanghai them. (Recruits 1d10 Red personnel)
(You cannot recruit units of higher rating than yourself.)
[] Commit training!
-[] Vehicle training: Teach everyone drive good. Car goes on right hand side of road, revolutionary concept. Might as well also learn to drive a flatbed, or your Drummond if you're feeling nice.
-[] Rifle training: Everyone will spend time practicing the fine art of "bullet go plink"
-[] Administration Training: At some point, you're going to figure out the fine art of delegation. Some point.
-[] Infantry Training: You've spent some time on the front, it sucks. Get better so it sucks less.
-[] Mobile Warfare Training: You know how to fight out of a truck bed. Now it's time to get good at that.
-[] Artillery Training: It is time to actually learn what the limitations of these guns are. It'll be expensive, but you need to know to keep mistakes from happening. (
[] Extra work shifts
-[] More Scroop: Get everyone to do more rounds of scrooping at the scrap fields. You do your part, and more importantly, can use the B-mats to get useful stuff like more trucks or dedicated equipment.
-[] More Mines: Get everyone to do more rounds on the component mines and oil wells. Components mean R-mats, R-mats mean flatbeds, and more importantly: trains (Begins work on GWR Request)
-[] More Building: Put everyone to work on getting your bunker upgrades planned. If you don't have some planned, the bunker will get what the troops think it needs.
-[] More Logistics: Put everyone to work on hauling more truckloads of stuff from point A to point B. Whoever's manning the bunker base at the border to Weathered Expanse will be very happy to get more gear for the inevitable offensive.
-[] Frontline Support: Put your people in the trenches on secondary duties: terminal logistics, machine guns, fortification, and other 'mostly safe' jobs to stiffen them up.
[] Begin operational planning for Something Big
-[] Write-in Something Big. May generate Billets.
[] Begin Operation Planning (+1 to all rolls when the next operation starts)


UPGRADES
(Choose One Two!)
[] Go out and get yourself a lieutenant! (You may have one per twenty Regiment members, minimum one)
-[] Teach them the way of the builder, as much as you know how that works. (Adds one action to Bunker)
-[] Teach them the way of the talker, so you don't have to do that crap! (Adds one action to Personnel)
-[] Teach them the way of the organizer, so you have more time to put out more fires (Adds one action to Upgrades)
[] Find a, uh, techmaid, and get some prototype kits by hook or by crook.
-[] Cremani Mortar: a 60mm field mortar, man portable and heavy enough to throw out your back with. Theoretically there's a uniform to make this less ass...
-[] Aalto Storm Rifle: a 7.92mm semiautomatic and fully automatic assault rifle persecuer. It's accurate, shoots easily, but has the mild devil of a time to keep it ballanced.
-[] O'Brien V.112 Highlander: A tracked variant of armored cars, with the same double-7.92mm light machine guns. Slightly more armor, actual off-road mobility, but definitely not a tank.
-[] 74b-1 Ronan Gunship: A naval fire support platform, with a short-barrel 120mm howitzer and a pair of twin heavy machine guns in a turret.
[] Requisition Material
-[] Logistics Support: Flatbeds, Fuel, and other nicities.
-[] Artillery Systems: 40mm guns, and 'soft' upgrades.
-[] Base Support: More concrete, more faster.
[] Get in touch with another regiment that does something you need (Discovers and improves relations with one random regiment inside the search group)
-[] Logistics
-[] Production
-[] Frontline Combat
-[] QRF
-[] Water Logistics
-[] Techmaids
-[] Partisans
-[] War Bureau
-[] Great Warden Railroad (GWR)
[] Find a way to get your guys some quality of life upgrades so things suck less out here.
[] Go talk to someone specific
-[] Write in named character

(After next turn, Hooker starts rolling to see when he can attack. Better choose your time investments wisely!)