GUN Quest - Only YOU can protect the UF (Sonic the Hedgehog Planquest)

Deployment: Station Square Defense

A squadron of Eggman Empire Badniks was detected flying low from the western outskirts of Station Square. Sergeant Parr, the squad commander assigned to the sector, authorized the local drone forces to collapse upon and engage the enemy.

Initial assessments of the attacking force was that it was primarily composed of short to medium range combatants, and was ill-suited to fighting in the environment that the combat initially took place, being the open fields between the tree line and regional suburbs. Additionally, the GUN units in the area were able to successfully collapse on the battlefield and get a numerical advantage over the attacking force.

The armor of the Badniks still proved to be their one decisive advantage, which permitted them to fight on an approximately equal playing field against GUN's drone fleet. Ultimately, however, their poor equipment led to half of the assaulting force being destroyed before retreat. While several GUN units were damaged, few faced catastrophic damage and most were sent to depot for repairs.

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Prison Island Factory Restoration D100 → 30 + 10 - PROJECT COMPLETE, 10 Overflow goes to Prison Island Factory Expansion 1

The finishing touches were made on restoring the Prison Island Factory complex to full functionality, with the Mother Brain of the factory able to produce every standard model of GUN Robot in use today.

The facility isn't completely automated, of course. As powerful as Mother Brains can be at managing complex industrial lines, quality assurance verification is still best handled by onsite crew. But for GUN's purposes, freeing most of the labor that went into replacing and repairing portions of the damaged Robot fleet was well worth the trouble, given the expanded threat from Dr. Robotnik.

While this basic form is completed, the next steps required will be improving the throughput of the factory lines for additional production. While it is not expected to be necessary, Engineers are currently drawing up plans that could be implemented if required.

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Prison Island Hangar Restoration D100 → 25 + 10 - (35/200)

While Dr. Robotnik appears to be content with restricting his operations to the immediate surroundings of Station Square, his ability to deploy large swarms of Aerial Drones may indicate his ability to infiltrate secure locations, with some Badniks already spotted approaching Area 99 from the direction of Station Square. More troubling, they were only identified visually and bypassed the Radar systems monitoring the same airspace.

Visual detection of Badniks, while practical for land bases, cannot be scaled properly to the size of prison island, especially due to the variable oceanic conditions that can surround the island depending on time of year. Due to these difficulties, the best solution arrived at by planners was to modify one of the existing dry storage hangar facilities to serve as a base for a Mother Brain powered intelligence network using stored drones on the island.

While a suitable hangar site has been selected, its existing power facilities could not sustain the full sized Mother Brain that is required. While swapping the facility to operate using the internal island power network is a possibility, more time will be needed before actual implementation can properly start.

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Urban Deployment Plans - D100 → 22 + 10(Omake Bonus) - (32/75)

Most of GUN's crisis plans were developed in mind that United Federation citizens should be evacuated before any boots were put on the ground.

The rapid deployment of Dr. Robotnik's Badniks pressures these plans from both ends, decreasing the time civilians have to evacuate and increasing the pressure to deploy forces as fast as possible. While Robotnik appears to be uninterested in attacking civilian facilities at this current time, whenever combat breaks out it appears this reluctance is overwritten.

Eventually, the plan that was settled upon was a temporary compromise given the limited resources that could be allocated and given what little was known about the Doctor. By having civilians instead take shelter in secure facilities within the city would best target this weakness, there were some issues. While expanding the existing disaster shelter network was the most ideal solution, the resources required would need to be spent by the local government over the course of several years. Additionally, the amount of property that would be required to get enough capacity would take years to acquire that GUN was unlikely to have.

The solution to these restrictions was to instead expand the shelter in place system traditionally used for natural disasters and apply it to Dr. Robotnik's incursions. While traditionally implemented for large-scale natural disasters, treating these incursions in a similar vein would allow transport vehicles to bring non-air forces in range to intercept any Badnik deployments.

In practice though, making the proper inroads with the community so this plan can be followed has been difficult, especially with the limited damage that Dr. Robotnik has caused so far. Getting full compliance with the public will likely take more time and resources to accomplish.

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Organize Strike Force - D100 → 67 - (67/150)

The selection process to find suitable candidates for the "Paladin" team intended to manage the larger, stronger Badniks that may be required for direct action against Dr. Robotnik's bases.

The first difficulty in this was how unusual the required skill sets are. Traditionally, GUN's disaster response units are the only forces with proper demolition experience. This contrasts with the combat experience that is expected to be required to overcome any existing defenses that may get in the way of target missions, including the most vital goal to capture Dr. Robotnik. What composition of skill sets

As for equipment, tests are ongoing for what will be required to destroy Dr. Robotnik's drones. Current estimates appear to indicate that high power rifles armed with armor piercing munitions are capable of basic penetration of individual Badnik's armor, but stopping power is currently unknown given only laboratory testing of Badnik wrecks have been performed so far, though additional testing of newly retrieved wrecks should provide the answers required.

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Investigate Interference Signal - 2D100 → 93(35 +58) + 10(Omake Bonus) - (145/200)

While producing a proper detector to locate the origin of the signal is ongoing, a promising lead was found for shielding devices from the signal.

With the growth in signal intensity now being detectable on less precise instrumentation, manual searches with submersibles were being performed in the hopes to better isolate it from mainland laboratories. When their equipment was submerged underwater, however, the signal was undetectable at a depth below five meters.

While the specific interaction that prevents the signal from passing through water but freely passes through solid rock is currently unknown, it provides a basis to move forward on producing protections for sensor equipment for the signal.

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Modernizing the Fleet - Intelligence: AUTOCOMPLETE
Modernizing the Fleet: Air - 2D100 → 83(67 +16) - PROJECT COMPLETE

After a long and strenuous set of trials and tribulations, the Beetle modernization package is now complete.

While many of the improvements are incremental in nature, improvements in propulsion technology within the last two decades have considerably improved the robot's ability to maintain close visual contact with speedy targets, when combined with the enhanced sensor suite, allow for long-range tracking of even the fastest opponents.

Dr. Ackermann took the opportunity to arrange for the delivery of the first production models to individual bases so they can begin utilizing them for enhanced operations, and in the coming months the rest of the Beetle fleet should receive the same upgrades once the retrofit package is completed.

More surprising to Redd was the announcement of a modernization package for the Hawk and Hornet. Both were only authorized after the first attack from Dr. Robotnik, and Redd's assumption was that even with the minor duplication that would be possible from the Beetle project, it would take months before a basic modernization package could be made available.

However, that assumption was made on the assumption that both of the competing teams working on the Beetle modernization, apparently embracing their rivalry, were not working on prototype proposals to 'prove' that they were better equipped to take these contracts in the future.

The team responsible for the propulsion system of the Beetle took upon the task to modernize the Hawk. As the primary close air support platform used by GUN, the Hawk's proportionate weaknesses was its out of date propulsion system that was unable to account for the recoil of its armaments completely, reducing accuracy when moving at high speeds.

While this flaw did not matter when the Hawk was fighting low-mobility targets, the additional speed that has been observed on Badniks has made it a bad fit. The team focused on this flaw, improving the overall stability of armaments while also eking out some gains in propulsion speed. While the Hawk is still likely going to be slower than other aerial drones in the fleet, these improvements should allow it to maintain some parity with its expected opposition.

The Hornet, on the other hand, was managed by the sensor team. As the Hornet's primary function was to act as a hybrid loitering munition system, their focus was to modernize the sensor package to identify the difference between active targets and mostly intact wrecks that may result from combat.

The resulting work on the virtual intelligence inside the Hornet, as well as the stronger sensor package, should prove to be more consistent at this role, especially as additional combat data of Badniks in combat are obtained and processed.

Unfortunately, Dr. Ackermann has reported that the rivalry between the teams has finally calmed after both upgrades were approved, so both are unlikely to put in the extra work on other in-development modernization packages.

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Investigate Robbery Reports - D100 → 74 - (161/200)

With the escalation of jewelry thefts in Station Square, it was hoped that more physical evidence would be left behind that would provide some explanation on the thief's mysterious capabilities.

All it has clarified was that their capabilities were going mostly unused when robbing the low grade jewelry stores. High security exhibits across a museum were all tripped within a few minutes, bypassing several active patrols that were there at the time. Several camera systems that should have at least been able to spot the intruder got blurry images that couldn't identify anyone, as if the target was moving several times faster than what humans were capable of. Once again no exit camera picked up the thief's escape.

Given the essentially impossible physical capabilities on display, it seems most likely that another Mobian is at play, one who, at least on the surface, has less scruples and more of an opportunistic attitude after being transported to our world.

One that, with proper planning, should be captured in a proper GUN operation.

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Investigate Robotnik Background - D100 → 45 - (45/50) , Autocompletes next turn.

The investigation into the background of Dr. Ivo Robotnik was mostly successful.

Most of the records from his childhood were recovered intact and tell the story that was expected. Showing signs of his vast intelligence at a young age, he completed an accelerated secondary course at the age of 10, and was in line for his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering at the age of 15.

The trouble began when agents attempted to look into the details of this thesis. Public thesis archives had all of their digital copies deleted. Physical copies that were at the university had apparently gone missing, with sections of archives from those years being the only ones destroyed.

If it wasn't for GUN's existing intelligence about the residences owned by the Robotnik family, it would have likely been impossible to make any progress at all. The last known residence of Ivo Robotnik was a small estate located in the rural countryside of Empire City. Agents penetrated the residence and, after disarming several boobytraps that appeared to be intended to destroy the residence along with the trespasser, eventually reached the interior hangar that likely served as Ivo Robotnik's workshop.

The hangar was essentially stripped of parts, but some remnants of the computer network remained. When the files were accessed, however, it was found that all of them had been corrupted.

While some of the forensic computer analysts state that they should be able to restore the files to get some idea behind what was done, it will take more time to completely recover.

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No incidents were detected this month.

Redd hated the politics around GUN.

The most unpleasant part of the directorship at GUN was dealing with the civilian government. GUN worked best when it could focus solely on its mission to serve the public good, and was indeed separated from any special interests. This was often at odds with the interests of the civilian leadership, who in an era of peace were more invested in the optics of what GUN did, and how it reflected on the civilian government, more than what GUN needed to do.

The worst cases were when civilian leadership skirted the boundary of the unethical in their demands, knowing that GUN traditionally would avoid making a scandal to present a front of unity to the general public.

President Michael Redway, tragically, fell more into the second category. During the pandemic two years ago, his first request to GUN was to focus on suppressing news of the outbreak to prevent widespread panic, attending the meeting in person rather than the representative that was usually used. Unfortunately, with the sudden arrival of Dr. Robotnik, and so close to an election year, Redway had demanded to once again have one-on-one discussion with Redd about the resources that would be allocated to GUN.

A meeting that would almost certainly be demanding that all of GUN's resources be allocated to Eggman, at the expense of monitoring the growing problem of the ghost signal. Redd was thankful that GUN had a peaceful contact with the Mobians, or likely Redway would also be demanding they deal with them as well.

Redd had only been left waiting for thirty minutes before Redway arrived, his entourage in tow with several folders of documents, all likely pertaining to the multiple intelligence reports and incidents that had occurred in the previous months.

It took ten more minutes for Redway to be arranged at the other end of the conference table, his Aides departing at the President's request. Redd, likewise, signaled the officers assigned for notetaking to leave the room.

Redway was unlikely to start until they were gone regardless.

"Director Max! So sorry for making you wait, unfortunately, my office needed to take extra precautions given the threat we are currently facing. You understand that in these trying times we can't be too careful."

Given that his entourage had arrived twenty minutes before his appearance in the conference room, Redd was fairly confident that President Redway wasn't actually too concerned about the current issues faced.

Given the time constraints, Redd chose to bypass the pleasantries and move on.

"President Redway, thank you for agreeing to meet in person. I hope you've had the chance to look at the expanded resources that GUN is requesting."

"Please Redd, call me Michael, no need for formalities when the cameras are off. Now, we both know that the public is somewhat… wary about the actions of Dr. Robotnik. Why, even Empire City can't help but discuss the apparent danger that he represents to the UF. Given that the public is mostly concerned with that problem at the moment, I hope you understand why it would be difficult to divert resources to your requests that fall… outside of the public interest."

Redd countered immediately.

"Mr. President, please understand that at present Dr. Robotnik and his forces haven't presented a clear threat to any proper GUN response. Our leadership is still focused on expanding our capabilities broadly so we can remain flexible in light of current-"

Redway interrupted Redd.

"Please understand, I'm not trying to diminish the work GUN has done to address the threat. However, if you declare Eggman your greatest priority, it would be simple to obtain the full range of aid that you require, given how worried the general public is. Even a broader declaration that lets you manage the signal you seem so worried about would simplify securing some of the additional resources you require, though it would be difficult to give you everything you ask for with a less defined goal to accomplish."

Both options, while on paper would give some room to work around the current issues, would curtail GUN's ability to restore capabilities on Prison Island. They also reeked of the politicking that Redway had a habit of injecting into their discussions.

Redway's preferred proposal was to focus entirely on Eggman. This would impair GUN's ability to react to any other threat, but would assist in netting GUN a victory against the crisis that could be resolved, which would act as a public opinion win for both GUN and the civilian government.

The second proposal was a compromise that still gave Redway a win, while keeping GUN flexible enough to deal with developments on the still unexplained signal. The cost, of course, was sacrificing the extra resources that could be invested into Prison Island.

"Mr. President, please understand that when GUN made the request for a broad set of resources, it was with the understanding that all evidence points to long term issues that we won't be able to fix with a short term infusion of resources. Bringing the Prison Island complex back to full capacity is an investment in long term stability for GUN."

Redway appeared lost in thought. If Redd hadn't seen a similar look before he would assume that it was a genuine reaction rather than rehearsed.

"I understand your position, Redd. With how successful GUN has been, giving you some additional discretionary resources may appear to be simple. At the same time, you have to understand that whatever plan you give me has to be sold to other representatives before we can send resources. With how broad your request is, getting you more than the basic expansion of resources would be exceptionally difficult."

The third option, if you could call it that, was to accept the token support that GUN would always have been able to demand, with the expectation that Redway would stonewall any additional resources. This kept the most flexibility in GUN's hands, but would be the smallest increase of resources.

It was going to be a long meeting to reach an agreement. Redd felt that the public was on his side enough to fight for either of the three proposals, so he just had to decide which plan would be the best for what GUN needed.

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Due to High Morale (>50), You have the full range of Mandate choices. Below the thresholds of 50/100 morale and 25/100 morale, your range of options will be more limited.

Choose One:

[] Request a Massive Increase in Resources to deal with the most obvious threat, that of Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Working to combat him will look the best for Redway, and he will glady sign off on anything needed to achieve that goal, at the cost of blocking all others.
Mandate Die: 4(+3)
Mandate: Eliminate the Threat of the Eggman Empire. (Mandate Die can only be used on projects related to the Eggman Empire.)

[] Request a Substantial increase in Resources. In exchange, all additional resources will be focused on resolving the two remaining crises rather than expanding the Prison Island Complex.
Mandate Die: 3 (+2)
Mandate: Resolve the Current Crises related to the Ghost Signal and Eggman Empire, while fulfilling existing duties. (Mandate Die can only be used on projects related to the Ghost Signal and Eggman Empire.)

[] A Moderate increase in resources is all that is needed to manage the threat.
Mandate Die: 2 (+1)
Mandate: "Maintain Operational Readiness and Investigate Potential Threats" (No Restrictions)