I consider crewing the ships with non Homies a positive? Means that we have a more wide recruitment pool and establishes an international component to our interstellar operations
I agree that it is positive. But, ships without Homies on them and just years after the initial contact was made, that is dangerous. Heck, Xyphon includes Xyphon Freedom Front, I think was their name, the guys who rejected the earlier peace deal. Surely, we wouldn't want them on board of HSWS ships?
No? Our decisions about who to favor should be based on what they have to offer us and what we stand to lose by slighting them. The Dynasts have proven less than impressive at deal-making and, especially once we have defensive ships in S'Taxu, the worst thing they can realistically achieve is making us shoot down the orbital nuke platforms.
That is a valid point, but it'll still look bad for us if the shift in policies happens too soon. Remember, there haven't even been five years since the civil war.
I like your plan, but I'm not sure this is practical. We don't have big enough fleets that we can afford to give up the level of tactical flexibility this would require.
For people voting for the Junta option, you do realize it involves effectively placing the ships made on those shipyards to under Junta control? This also gives them access to the Jump Drive tech, which we explicitly did not want to give them previously?
I am not fully opposed to this course of action, but it feels like a massive extension of trust and a total reversal of the cautiosness we have had when dealing with the Junta so far.
I will note that accepting the Junta's offer instantly realigns who our primary allies in S'Taxu are. This could be good or bad depending on opinions, but be aware you're doing it.
I like your plan, but I'm not sure this is practical. We don't have big enough fleets that we can afford to give up the level of tactical flexibility this would require.
I should explain; the idea is that if there was ever a big enough threat to require the two sides to "meet", the SWS would have ships between them. It's not going to purposefully happen unless necessary, therefore I don't believe it'll be a huge resource drain.
I should explain; the idea is that if there was ever a big enough threat to require the two sides to "meet", the SWS would have ships between them. It's not going to purposefully happen unless necessary, therefore I don't believe it'll be a huge resource drain.
If I read the plan right, it'll be impossible to sortie both of them because the proposed Dynast taskforce is stations and in-system vessels with jump-drives. If deployment in S'taxu itself count as a sortie, then the situation becomes a bit more strained, since we'd be expected to station numerous ships of our own in S'taxu to match half their fleet sizes. That said, I appreciate the attempt to integrate their servicemen into our structures.
No reason not to at least try to negotiate with both, as what they're offering doesn't contradict each other. If we can get, it would only further good relations between us and help move us to towards some sort of federation or alliance, which is something I think we should moving towards establish with both of our neighboring systems.
I should explain; the idea is that if there was ever a big enough threat to require the two sides to "meet", the SWS would have ships between them. It's not going to purposefully happen unless necessary, therefore I don't believe it'll be a huge resource drain.
Would you consider going with plan "Negotiate with Them Both"? It's not a million miles from your plan, just without as much detail on the proposed end result. We're not guaranteed to get exactly what you want even if we went with your plan. In both cases it'll be some kind of compromise if it goes through at all. And I think your vote would put it over the top versus "only the Junta".
Would you consider going with plan "Negotiate with Them Both"? It's not a million miles from your plan, just without as much detail on the proposed end result. We're not guaranteed to get exactly what you want even if we went with your plan. In both cases it'll be some kind of compromise if it goes through at all. And I think your vote would put it over the top versus "only the Junta".
My primary problem with "negotiate with both" is that it favors the Dynasts if we have to pick one, which I see as being likely. I'm not enthusiastic about trying to both have and eat our cake in any case, but I'd be willing to compromise on a variant that goes for the Junta as the fallback instead.
[X] Plan Negotiate with Both
-[X] The Dynasts 1,000 tons and a permanent station.
--[X] In addition offer the permanent stationing of an Interstellar Monitor in S'taxu, once it is built.
-[X] The Junta's 4,000 tons and combined fleet.
--[X] Negotiate either for officers and guards to be HSWS or inducting S'taxian sailors into HSWS and putting them through our training and screening process. HSWS is OK with accepting lesser yard space commitment from the Junta, but there must be uniform chain of command.
-[X] Negotiate to harmonize both offers. If the Dynast and Junta position turn out to be mutually exclusive, lean towards the Dynasts.
What would the Navy prefer? The Junta's 4,000 tons and combined fleet.
A Narrow dodge of the dark timeline where you get nothing.
Return to Armistice Station
All parties - bar the uninvited Chambrestrong Dynasty and the protesting Xyphon Freedom League but including the local representatives of the Daughters of the People - assemble at the still maintained Armistice Station, deep in the belts between the inner and outer sections of the S'Taxu system. They spend six weeks hashing out exactly how the offer is going to work and what it means to both the HSWS and the government of Home proper, and the answer is determined to be relatively simple.
The Home Space Warfare Service will expand. New ships will be built in Peoples Military Council space, under the eyes of Home corporations and the HSWS and named by local forces but they will be completely under the command and responsibility of the HSWS proper. Recruitment will be expanded to the PMC, and the Cassalonese, though Xyphonites cannot currently be recruited due to the ongoing occupation and low-intensity conflict that is occuring in those domes. It will be expected that the S'Taxu-built ships will be primarily crewed by S'Taxu-recruited sailors, but fundamentally this is an academic question of logistics. Sailors will, as they have always done, go to their stations as ordered.
It will take several months to re-fit the Peoples Military Council's yards to the standards expected of Home's military construction yards, however once they are ready they will be capable of building entire ships or even of developing components for far larger ships to be transported for assembly elsewhere. Once the Dynasts learn what is happening, they will surely protest, but what are they going to do? We crew their nuclear defence satellites after all.
Completed Construction, New Builds HSWS Uenuku arrives into commission on 06y01m02w, coming out of the yards and into sailors hands for a month of testing and readiness training before she will be available for operations. At the same time, the last module of the Deep Hope mining station is completed and packed aboard a merchant transport to be shipped into position in deep space.
The yards are immediately set to their new task; the construction of the diplomatic ship HSLS Bá Kim. Flagged as a logistics ship purely as a functional measure, this ship (as preciously detailed) will be fully capable of operating as a flying embassy ship. However, it also wont be ready for service until mid way through our eighth year of operations. Hopefully nothing pressing arises before then.
Yard space for the Interstellar Surveyors will not be available to refit them until the 7th month of this year unless we are willing to have them refit in the yards in S'Taxu - an unlikely proposition. This is the second delay to refitting these small, aging but still useful ships, but it will surely happen before too long.
Expeditionary Results
In the third month of our sixth year, our ships return from their southern research expedition with a significant amount of new information and data. First, and perhaps most important, is a close orbital study of the people of -01,02-7, the unnamed habitable planet with a population in the millions. Long distance assessments were correct - this population is pre-industrialisation to the point that we saw now evidence of major factories or centralisation of industry. Living high on the slopes of mountains, in cities carved into the sheer rock faces, an initial estimate of about four million people seems to factor in at least the vast majority of this population.
They are religious. We see clear evidence of what seem to be holy buildings and ground penetrating radar suggests a kind of catacomb system that digs deep into the mountain beneath each of these buildings. An anthropologist brought aboard specifically for this mission is arguing that we should return, land and introduce ourselves to these people, but we think she just wants a better look at their religious buildings, as they do not match the styles of many of those known to us.
There is a large population of low technology human or human-adjacent people living on a habitable planet very nearby to us. What should we do?
[ ] Part-fund an SIS orbital platform to conduct long-term studies of the planet.
[ ] Leave them to it. We can't interfere without causing some sort of crisis, presumably.
[ ] Something else - write-in.
The other survey is fundamentally much more exciting and far more consequential. Excerpts from the post-mission report follow:
"Initial surveys indicated several structures that may have been related to a star port. We decided to make our landing amongst these structures, a series of stone and steel ruins that have been scoured by the wind for possibly millennia. Initial scans indicated a breathable atmosphere, but we maintained quarantine procedures and only ventured out in full suits."
"Underneath the complex were a series of tunnels. Access paths, maybe, or some sort of bunkers perhaps? We will likely never know, but the whole area is honeycombed with these tunnels. We set good protocols and began exploring the tunnels as they were clearly artificially made and would likely give us the closest thing to an answer of what we were looking at."
"There were a set of... plagues? Coins? set into the wall in the deepest chamber we came to. Each held a symbol - a star, a cross, a triangle. Others we couldn't read, they'd been worn down of scratched off or something. They didn't seem to indicate anything or chart anything. Not sure what happened, but at some point Nefise touched them or went near them or did something and a hatch opened in the wall. Most of whatever had been in there was dust and lost dreams, but we found a set of data-wafers in there as well."
Explorers have found some sort of data cache. Contained on them are details of:
[ ] Advanced Drive Layouts
[ ] Improved Plant Efficiencies
[ ] Quality Hull Construction
[ ] High-Density Metals
[ ] Electronics and Sensors
[ ] Command and Control systems
[ ] Enhanced Starship-grade Weapons
'Operation Eastern View' is a far shorter, far less long-range operation than OSV was, to the point that the crews involved don't even get an official patch. They do, however, bring home information on three new potential systems including our first locally discovered Brown Dwarf, a proto-star that never quite got big enough to ignite. The following information is gathered:
03,-01 - Type F (Yellow-White Star) with distant binary companion
03, 00 - Type K (Orange Star) with distant binary companion
03, 01 - Brown Dwarf
An updated map that includes the newest discovered star systems
With the return of the last dispatched task force, the Interstellar Surveyors are placed into ordinary with a view to refitting them as soon as possible. However, the HSWS now has 4,200 Dtons with which to continue construction. How should we proceed? Select up to 4,200 tons worth.
[ ] A finalised variant of the Multi Mission Vehicle taking onboard all criticism and using modernised technology (3,000 tons)
[ ] Modernised 'block II' Interstellar cruisers (1,000 tons each)
[ ] Something else entirely
Please present any votes as a plan. Voting opens at
Question: Is the data cache something we can implement in our designs in the next update, or is it something that our scientists would be pouring over for years?
As for making use of the Junta yards, 4K is the exact size of our Flotilla Support Ship. We'd benefit from building one and not having all our eggs in one basket.
Question: Is the data cache something we can implement in our designs in the next update, or is it something that our scientists would be pouring over for years?
I'm guessing that depends on which technology we pull from our goody hut. Speaking of which, I'm partial to taking Advanced Drive Layouts, but I'm not sure whethere these are J-2 Drives or just smaller J-1 drives. If not drives, then Quality Hull Construction sounds universally useful.
I'm guessing that depends on which technology we pull from our goody hut. Speaking of which, I'm partial to taking Advanced Drive Layouts, but I'm not sure whethere these are J-2 Drives or just smaller J-1 drives. If not drives, then Quality Hull Construction sounds universally useful.
Not too sure about that, because the refits for our Surveyors say updating them with modern tech, and they were designed just before the Cruisers. That said, of the options;
[ ] Advanced Drive Layouts-Better, though don't know how, Jump or Maneuver Drives
[ ] Improved Plant Efficiencies-Better, once again unknown how, power plants
[ ] Quality Hull Construction-Better tonnage usage?
[ ] High-Density Metals-This seriously looks like an upgrade for our ship armoring. Huge if it is.
[ ] Electronics and Sensors-Better Electronics/ECM/ECCM?
[ ] Command and Control systems-Better computers? More computer options?
[ ] Enhanced Starship-grade Weapons-More pew-pew options
Of these, Enhanced weapons honestly seem the weakest. Particle beams are still deadly no matter what tech level opponent we face.
Quality Hull construction might get us something nice as an exploration or combat option, or I could seriously be misreading it.
Drive layouts could shrink or cheapen our current drives, or they could get us J-2 drives.
Plant Efficiencies would be nice to have, but again, not a necessity with the fact that we already have Fusion.
High-Density metals, if it's what I think it is, would be very nice to get.
Electronics and Sensors would be a nice buff, but aren't the very top compared to the rest.
Command and control systems, depending on what we get, would probably be a very nice boon for our explorers, less so for combat ships.
