- Location
- Pennslyvania
- Pronouns
- She/They
[X]Plan (Not) A Failgirl
- Location
- US
[X]Plan Hero of the Seelie Authority
[X]Plan Abnormally Normal Man
[X]Plan Abnormally Normal Man
- Location
- UTC+0
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
I gotta say, failgirl will be hardmode politically. She will be despised by the entire military, being a bunker officer + losing the orbits means not only is she a loser, she is a coward as well. Not helped by her association with the people who tried to sell out the authority at the start of the war. She has little connections due to her background as a war orphan too. The only people who will respect her are like, design bureaus and procurement officials.
She is politically agressive, so we'll probably have options to consolidate the military, but that will probably involve purges, at the cost of capabilities of our officer corps. Also, better hope the PPM isn't out before then.
I can't see her lasting very long ngl, and we do need someone who is well, capable at combat imo. I think normal man is a good compromise, he is decent at procurement due to his background, and is an exceptional commander. Things won't be a piece of cake for him either, as being part of the left will make a change in government potentially cause problems, but at the very least the military will respect him.
She is politically agressive, so we'll probably have options to consolidate the military, but that will probably involve purges, at the cost of capabilities of our officer corps. Also, better hope the PPM isn't out before then.
I can't see her lasting very long ngl, and we do need someone who is well, capable at combat imo. I think normal man is a good compromise, he is decent at procurement due to his background, and is an exceptional commander. Things won't be a piece of cake for him either, as being part of the left will make a change in government potentially cause problems, but at the very least the military will respect him.
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
Normal Man's name is gaelic for Geoffrey Silver (or, colloquially, Geoffrey Money). I don't wanna play Jeff Money.
Admittedly, failgirl's name means "Sweet and Lovely Grace of Bright" if we wanna fully translate it, but like.
Jeff Money.
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
Should have made it clear there, but I was joking in the aftermath of listing off all my other reasons for preferring Failgirl.
Edit: I don't even like Failgirl that much as a plan, it's just that I think all three of the leading plans are abjectly terrible at doing most of what we need from them, and only Suarach and Morgan are comparably bad to Jeff, Sad, and ol' noname. We're stuck with a race between being arguably the worst at procurement (most of the job) out of any of the plans that seemed at all serious, being terrible at politics and combat (also big deals), and being utterly horribly doomed, all for...what, the desire to play a normal person?
Or rather, all of the builds offered for playing a #normalperson are problematic as heck.
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I know it's a long shot at this point given the massive lead and how long the vote has been going on already, but while we're currently dueling over the frontrunner's political viability and whether it's more important to be very good at command over procurement right now or vice versa, I'd like to point out that Love and Lobbying is right down there towards the bottom of the tally.
A PC with connections, who is both good at rapidly procuring new systems with a bias towards technological integration we'd need to make sure our military is competitive, and is an Exceptional Commander who will be great at directing forces during war plus managing her subordinates during peacetime. All without any pesky political issues like being seen as a coward, hidden skeletons in the closet waiting to jump out at an inopportune time, or publicly declaring for a specific party and running into issues if the others take power.
The only thing we'd have to do for it is be willing to sit down and have a few nice chats with the defense enterprises. But even then the whole point of Attentive is that she's great at throwing the corps game right back at them, able to easily keep track of all the different liaisons and lobbyists with a personalized approach developed for each of them that she can swap between. And all that is backed up with implemented organizational practices to compensate for some of the issues that remain, when she's likely already rather good at organization in general.
I feel like people are kind of glossing over the potential of a character who can get down and dirty and knows how to play the game. It's too unlikely to catch up with the front runners close enough I won't ask anyone to swap their current votes, but if this sounds like a character you could get behind playing right now with the skills you want, would you consider dropping an approval vote for []Plan: Power of Love and Lobbying too? At least so the thread can have a better idea of the amount of people who would be fine with that type of PC in later votes?
A PC with connections, who is both good at rapidly procuring new systems with a bias towards technological integration we'd need to make sure our military is competitive, and is an Exceptional Commander who will be great at directing forces during war plus managing her subordinates during peacetime. All without any pesky political issues like being seen as a coward, hidden skeletons in the closet waiting to jump out at an inopportune time, or publicly declaring for a specific party and running into issues if the others take power.
The only thing we'd have to do for it is be willing to sit down and have a few nice chats with the defense enterprises. But even then the whole point of Attentive is that she's great at throwing the corps game right back at them, able to easily keep track of all the different liaisons and lobbyists with a personalized approach developed for each of them that she can swap between. And all that is backed up with implemented organizational practices to compensate for some of the issues that remain, when she's likely already rather good at organization in general.
I feel like people are kind of glossing over the potential of a character who can get down and dirty and knows how to play the game. It's too unlikely to catch up with the front runners close enough I won't ask anyone to swap their current votes, but if this sounds like a character you could get behind playing right now with the skills you want, would you consider dropping an approval vote for []Plan: Power of Love and Lobbying too? At least so the thread can have a better idea of the amount of people who would be fine with that type of PC in later votes?
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I will say, while failgirl certainly has a spicy and difficult political position, I dont think its *that* bad. Ricky would be handing her a strong hand if failgirl is picked, with the frigate program already looking like a huge success + plenty of spare funding to invest into new projects. I dont think she needs to do anything super drastic not to be kicked out; she's 'just' going to have to play defensive when and if politics turns away from the PPM. This might involve playing chicken with the PRLM in order to try and make peope rally on the flag, maybe she's going to have to give ground to the civvies when it comes to space. There's no silver bullet that slays her in politics, just a difficult position she's going to need to be careful with.
As my writing prompt says, she's going to have to make good use out of the 3-4 years she has now. And arguably Ricky has set the stage for her.
I do think I slightly prefer her over abnormally normal man, just for her unique position and how militsrt scientist + her highly relevant experience mixes together. Even if she doesnt last as long as hoped I think she can do some very cool and useful things for us.
As my writing prompt says, she's going to have to make good use out of the 3-4 years she has now. And arguably Ricky has set the stage for her.
I do think I slightly prefer her over abnormally normal man, just for her unique position and how militsrt scientist + her highly relevant experience mixes together. Even if she doesnt last as long as hoped I think she can do some very cool and useful things for us.
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
Fair on the point of her not actually being very bad at combat - she exceeded any realistic expectations and then got dunked on because expectations were abjectly unrealistic instead.
Honestly if I'd been in the mood to make a dedicated Normal Person plan at the start, it probably would've ended up looking like this as an aside.
[] Use Your People Skills
-[] Saiorse MacCollins
-[] Commander of Ground to Orbit Fire
-[] Left Wing (+1 Pts)
-[] Child of the State (+0 Pts) (Mild Disadvantage with Conservatives) (3 Bureau Actions)
-[] Baseline(+0 Pts)
-[] Attentive (-1 Pts)
-[] Incorruptible (-2 Pts)
-[] Genuine War Hero (-2 Pts)
-[] Educationally Incompetent (+1 Pts)
She's not truly exceptional at anything in the world of technical skills, in the strictest sense, not is she super experienced in her role, and her grades weren't great, but her people skills and standards are on another level - she'd give Jeff a run for his money in general organizational ability and run the military as an extremely tight, accountable ship. It's a -3 plan, but it could have been fine.
Honestly if I'd been in the mood to make a dedicated Normal Person plan at the start, it probably would've ended up looking like this as an aside.
[] Use Your People Skills
-[] Saiorse MacCollins
-[] Commander of Ground to Orbit Fire
-[] Left Wing (+1 Pts)
-[] Child of the State (+0 Pts) (Mild Disadvantage with Conservatives) (3 Bureau Actions)
-[] Baseline(+0 Pts)
-[] Attentive (-1 Pts)
-[] Incorruptible (-2 Pts)
-[] Genuine War Hero (-2 Pts)
-[] Educationally Incompetent (+1 Pts)
She's not truly exceptional at anything in the world of technical skills, in the strictest sense, not is she super experienced in her role, and her grades weren't great, but her people skills and standards are on another level - she'd give Jeff a run for his money in general organizational ability and run the military as an extremely tight, accountable ship. It's a -3 plan, but it could have been fine.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Turn is formated and the voting has somewhat slowed down thus, vote called for
[X]Plan (Not) A Failgirl
-[X]Name: Sadhbh Rath na Neamh
-[X]Commander of Orbital Defense Forces
-[X]Accelerationist: (+0)
-[X]Baseline: (+0)
-[X]War Orphan (+1)
-[X]Technical Education (Process Engineering) (-1)
-[X]Well-Known Military Scientist: (-3)
-[X]Bunker Officer: (+1)
So I can write the next turn in her voice vs Ricky's
[X]Plan (Not) A Failgirl
-[X]Name: Sadhbh Rath na Neamh
-[X]Commander of Orbital Defense Forces
-[X]Accelerationist: (+0)
-[X]Baseline: (+0)
-[X]War Orphan (+1)
-[X]Technical Education (Process Engineering) (-1)
-[X]Well-Known Military Scientist: (-3)
-[X]Bunker Officer: (+1)
So I can write the next turn in her voice vs Ricky's
- Pronouns
- he/him
just to let all y'all know, her name is pronounced sai-v ra-h na neev
a general guide for gaelic pronounciation is that dh is usually silent unless it starts a word, bh and mh are pronounced as a hard v and a soft v respectively, th is a breathy h, and if you see three or more vowels together... good luck
richy's full name 'ríchathaoir' was pronounced ree-ha-hear
a general guide for gaelic pronounciation is that dh is usually silent unless it starts a word, bh and mh are pronounced as a hard v and a soft v respectively, th is a breathy h, and if you see three or more vowels together... good luck
richy's full name 'ríchathaoir' was pronounced ree-ha-hear
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Turn 19 (51AE): Restructure and Reform Results
New
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Turn 19 (51AE): Restructure and Reform Results
Budget: 4400B Or
Government Support: 70
Accelerationism, Politics, and Opinions:
There is a fundamental truth that there can not be another exchange, that Dannan itself cannot afford another scouring. Current politics are only somewhat hanging on from the external threats placed on the government driving constant drives to improve the situation at home to avoid external weakness. Internal stability is a mirage at best, misguided at worst as there is no fundamental solution to the questions imposed by new relationships of production. Automation is the future and a bright golden future at that but to reach it we must first discard the primordial suffocating muck. Workers' power is no fundamental solution to a system that cannot provide enough for all to live in luxury while accumulation itself is only a symptom of a system that cannot produce enough to break through the bonds of conventional scarcity.
The Industrial Revolution in the aftermath of the exchange was the hardest work ever done, straining society to the breaking point and at least some academics past it. Reforms towards increasing production immediately shifted the balance towards a low-employment economy one that could provide for the population through increased surplus production. Discontent followed if only due to a consistent dissatisfaction with a partial sequestration of scarcity instead of a total comprehensive solution towards it. Inadequate responses and conventional policies that failed to embrace the rapidly approaching singularity of automatic production machinery which followed, chasing imaginary solutions in distribution rather than the realities of production. Distributionist thinking as a fundamental aspect will never solve the problem, only create a new generation of those who have and those who have not.
To that end, there is only one solution a rational mind can come to, that production itself is the solution to the problems of societal organization, as any system proposed by Distributionist thinking is little else than a series of nozzles. Sure they may make the flow of resources go in pretty directions with some variation and act as a modifier on sociologic efficiency but they matter little from an optimization perspective. Production is the only constant and the constant that has practically saved the species from itself. It was not some ideological solution that ended the famines but genetically engineered and harnessed organisms. It was not some fantasy of a better world that reconstructed the world but the systematic employment of the atom towards the ends of production. It was not a mirage of a better world that built the technologies capable of developing the economy but concentrated work by tens of thousands of minds. It was not some masterstroke of strategy or understanding that broke the back of the CLP invasion but the forces of production brought to bear through expanding means of industrial-technological organization.
This point is missed by many alongside a focus on petty meaningless debates signifying nothing of scientific and material laws. So much was sacrificed during and before the exchange with so many lost for the mere prospect of a future outside the scope of petty tyrants holding back technological development to maintain petty fiefdoms. It would be the greatest dishonor to ignore the sacrifice of all that came before and all that paid the ultimate price for the world we live in today. For every scientist who dreamed of a future of universal plenty but died from disaster born of obsolescent politics and ignorance before they could live to see it. It is the duty owed to the past generations to build a world unmarred by the imbecilic embrace of scarcity as an absolute law instead of a concept to be fought, scoured, and expunged. Automatization is here at scale allowing machines to do the work of thousands but that is a mere step towards greater things. The Vehen have proven that a society without want was possible, that mass production on an unimaginable scale could provide means of plenty for all.
Dannan itself however cannot pursue the dream of such a future when opposed in all directions by states that are stuck in the ancient mire, too busy with petty struggles to embrace the future. The Xolotlans are consumed in the accumulation of assets that are only limited by the primitivity of their methodologies. The Volnay are chasing a dream of a utopia that was not, self-imagined delusional mirages made worse by incompetent propagandistic record keeping. The only state that has broken the cycle is the Authority and the promise of a perfect future free from want and suffering can only be built by our hands. The full embrace of automation is expected to be instrumental in increasing the scale of economic activity and military production. Further, gains in civilian production despite limitations in population capacity are only expected to accelerate as production increases day by day to match and overtake the states that refuse to consider a future outside of their comfortable mire.
The tragedy inherent are the sacrifices it took to be the first and the sacrifices that will still have to be made to protect that spark of a better future for all. Pressure by the PRLM is only expected to increase and in response domestic industrial and technical production must increase even more strongly. If the light is to grow in strength and burn away the dark mire then automation and the techniques associated with the rapid increase of industrial production must be implemented at the highest possible speed. There cannot be any hesitation when it comes to the defense of Dannan as if it falls then it is entirely possible that a better future for trillions will be forfeit to please those burdened by ideas thirteen millennia superannuated. Once enough strength has been developed and once the question of defense passes, only then can a true rising begin, elevating those burdened and trapped in the same mire as the only remaining force capable and willing to enforce societal progress on a sea of stagnancy.
The State of the Military
Post Ríchathaoir factionalism has been expected after the first hint of a retirement especially with the divisive future offered to the military. The bulk of the structure is deeply traditionalist and represents much of the old guard that was carried over by Galchobar and retained in administrative roles against all sense. Ríchathaoir did make some post-war attempts to increase the dynamism of the structure with many new officers coming into commands during the war but the persistent and deep-seated old guard remains a major issue. A view of warfare as one of state capacity and its neutralization is if anything obsolete for the current period of low-intensity shaping operations. Worse, as a general rule many of the adherents advocate for the slowing of system development alongside the evaluation of only the most conventional approaches instead of new radical tools that can revolutionize warfare.
Conversely, more radical schools are predominant amongst newly promoted officers and those who have seen intensive warfare are willing to embrace new approaches. There is only so much one can believe in the supremacy of simply making another better tank when viewing a field of a hundred burning Type 36s. Change must come quickly and it must come comprehensively as the old ways of warfare have become somewhat outdated compared to standard galactic doctrinal employment. Improvements with domestic techniques further offer some gains relative to the standards in the sector as munitions can be made smarter and with a greater degree of capabilities than any before them. Diplomatically the embrace of a more limited war concept alongside sub-wartime operations remains a radical position but one that must be embraced to properly optimize external attitudes.
Other young officer factions have also steadily continued to rise, especially with the open faucet of new personnel left from the war. Previous doctrinal implementations have focused on the development of sufficient equipment but some have become misguided in that production is in itself the end goal. Prioritization is on the mass production of technologically inadequate goods at a large scale, moving towards a poorly equipped but massive army capable of doing little outside defending the planet on the ground. Such beliefs are misguided and only predominant amongst the army officers who came through rapid necessity promotions during the CLP war. In foreign policy they advocate for an entirely defensive stance, undermining national initiative in preparatory operations for attempts at international delay.
On the civilian government-subsidized end alongside several elements of the orbital command, there is a growing sentiment that naval construction will be the main element of a defense strategy. These have advocated for a reduction of funding to the army in favor of increasing orbital and defensive developments without any focus on further defenses. They are somewhat incorrect in that an entire defensive structure is de-emphasized for an optimistic and impractical offensive one. Those in the fleet are not inherently wrong that power projection will come from naval power but they are also incorrect in several aspects as there is little that naval power can organically do. Diplomatically there is something of a view that as long as the current shaping operations stay a low-intensity low casualty naval war, little will come of them as no state would react to a few thousand dead.
Operation Royal Romeo: Dropping simple sensor platforms into the local volume will be a time-consuming maneuver, but standard routes are standard due to known intelligence of enemy jump drive ranges. Key locations can be surveyed with all jump points watched, providing a degree of warning on when a threat will jump into the system. Securing the one FTL capable craft available will cut the embassy tour short but it is essential for any coordinated defense of the system. (5)
On jump operation six for the placement of buoys in systems located on the spinward, an immediate encounter was made with a PRLM-associated pirate force consisting of two frigates and a destroyer. Jump point contact immediately limited the range to a point-blank engagement with the pirates being mid-drive charge at the point of contact. The fire was staggered with a rapid acceleration away from the point, somewhat limiting impacts. Missile fire from the courier was ordered to little effect against the task force as the old generation of missiles was once again proven tactically insufficient. Counter-fire for all its inaccuracy still disabled the drive from EMP effects as distance was increased, leading to a short chase and the subsequent destruction of the vessel. Without enough escort strength and general awareness, there can be no guarantee that future reconnaissance missions will not suffer the same fate, rendering them impossible until domestic production is adequate.
Operation Magenta Manual: The blunt truth is that no matter how many fancy working groups and technical development organizations are thrown together, domestic technology will be primitive compared to top-of-the-line equipment. Organizing domestic hackers into high-value competitions on known hardware samples will give them something socially productive to do. Extraplanetary operations will start moving to focus on getting long-running student agents into important defense and industrial positions, memorizing and storing critical technical information. (42)
New software divisions have been organized to evaluate foreign hardware for vulnerabilities and achieve significant gains in penetration of known software environments. Current progress has been slow as foreign-instructed programmers have been diverted to practically every possible technical effort with many prioritized for private-sector work. Vulnerabilities have still been found to the extent that ransom-attacks and direct file downloads can be executed on a limited number of machines but they fundamentally depend on the incompetence of end users. A physical approach will have to precede a software one as without local systems capable of conducting attacks anything external is unlikely to reach anything much less produce actionable intelligence.
Operation Shallow Silk: The allotment of intelligence operatives for the transfer of students into the greater Xolotlan Sovereignty can be expanded with several forming an improvised technical section for broader espionage. Most agents will aim to form local networks on several worlds with lower priority university complexes, aiming to attain work in the manufacturing and technical industries outside primary security categories. Infiltration operations will make them seem to be full of defectors with operational lengths taking up much of the decade to gain trust and secure assets. Hand-picked soldiers who had lost family to the CLP invasion and without any psychological blemishes will be chosen with the few inevitable defections compartmentalized sufficiently to avoid damage. (70)
Students sent to the Sovereignty have always been intelligence operatives to some extent but official orders have been somewhat discouraged instead of general approaches of foreign education as a means of reconnaissance. For the best-trained agents sent off, orders have been re-affirmed to embed into Xolotlan society aiming to secure significant technical standards and information from manufacturing methods. Preferred methodologies have involved the sequential memorization of the information available followed by sending it back with a one-time pad. Priority technical areas in manufacturing industries have been told to field agents with approximately twenty thousand of the current student cadre given explicit orders to stay behind to provide further intelligence. Xolotlan hesitance in hiring has been significant, sub-sectioning students to some extent if inadequate to avoid memorization of most technical manuals over one to two weeks of work.
Operation Natural Stone: Of those that have turned against the Authority, the majority are not doing so out of malice but from some misguided and propagandized beliefs that have been imposed by the PRLM. Approaching those believed to be agents and offering them the chance to turncoat can provide a significant opportunity to feed false intelligence and increase familiarity with foreign procedures. If higher-up agents could be turned using the few available domestic assets it could make large parts of the intelligence network irrelevant, or at least so compromised that it would be rendered unreliable. (19)
Reports that have been produced by attempts to turn double agents have gone poorer than expected as the personnel selected have proven more capable. Surveillance operations have caught several of the double agents attempting to immediately shift to triple agents instead of being willing to take the outreach offered. The persistent desire of those converted to die for an ideological line that does not remotely care for them is disappointing but somewhat expected given the circumstances involved. PRLM operations have somewhat shifted towards lower-key espionage especially as conversion attempts have been fed back to off-world commands. Trade with the Xolotlans is the main vector of undermining current defensive measures but there is no practical way to stop it.
Operation Understood Crack: Direct cognitive modification remains a questionable subject and one that cannot be currently implemented without significant ethical and technical concerns. Using volunteers for the program several initial applications can be evaluated for applicability and veracity on willing subjects. If DNI interfacing can be developed to an advanced point then it should be possible to make agents that can become entirely unaware of any commitments even under strong interrogation. Further, cognitive off-loading if it could be demonstrated would allow for rapid briefing and something of an increase in transitional information security. (58)
Crude methods of cognitive conditioning with simplified red-blue approaches have managed to produce results alongside neural scanning to detect an intent to deceive. Adequate training is still expected to easily evade the process through biofeedback mechanisms but it represents something of a start to domestic programs. Attempts to improve the process have produced some more effective hypnotic-deliriant combinations that with correct cognitive approaches can produce a significant dissociative effect adequate to attain information but with little practical accuracy. Current theoretical best practices are going to have to fall towards standardized neural scanning to watch for intent to deceive as very few will be trained on how to avoid similar cognitive patterns. The program has more so than anything wasted billions of Or to confirm exactly what was previously known with only some marginal improvements.
Operation Magenta Order: Domestic rapid response units on the technical aspects of defense can be further developed and trained to ensure that day-one exploits are minimized through aggressive digital OPFOR. Automated methods are more than adequate for a new generation of penetration testing with all aggressive means allowed to achieve penetrations of domestic software. Most penetrations would be revealed to the involved parties instead of utilized drastically improving the security of all sectors of society. This would bring the department somewhat into the spotlight but politics are unlikely to turn on it for reducing hacking. (76)
Control over domestic software and day zero penetrations are being moderately misused but better that it is used honestly instead of wielded by the state. Department Six should in itself be limited in capabilities outside of military espionage as it has gathered too much power over internal surveillance in several aspects. Penetration testing has already achieved significant results in finding over seven thousand day zero exploits over the current year alone as companies have in general been unprepared for sophisticated penetration tools. Rogue flash drives alone have been a major security concern with proposals for fines due to security failures implemented for any enterprise working with sensitive information.
Second Generation CASP Programs: Radical reform has come to the program with the consolidation of the state technical department for automation into a new Tuatha Systems state concern. Previous standards have had the technical groups operate as effective independent organizations with few connections and significant issues in broad interdisciplinary coordination. This however cannot be used to put them down as significant leaps have been made with general-purpose automation alongside redundant cross-referencing clusters. Automatic local monitoring of the reactor in standard modes has been easy to achieve with some resistance for altered profiles in simulation. Automated life support systems for controlling gas mix have already been developed with integration onto general systems more a matter of technical design than novel application. The largest gains have if anything come from the automation of general maintenance procedures as standards for new systems are built around the optimization of invasive maintenance onto a consolidated overhaul schedule then acute management. (111)
[]Unitary Crew and Combat Section: Confining the crew to an effective forty-meter stack that is at best eight meters wide is considered the technically optimal decision as a dorsal stack under the primary systems of the ship can avoid increasing internal volume. This section would house the entire crew of thirty-five with ample room to spare. Berthing standards are expected to be the same as previous mining ships with an expected shorter duration of operation. Rear areas will be converted to the primary CIC with a midship secondary CIC in case of damage. Faraday shielding will be present where available but only so much can be done to protect the entire section.
[]Separated Pressure Hulls: Dividing crew sections away from the primary CIC and general operations section can enable increasing the protection offered on the primary command. A dorsally mounted lower cylinder will accompany two radially symmetrical ventral cylinders enabling a prioritization of protection on the CIC. A redundant computer system will be placed into each crew quarters enabling some cross-compatibility even if isolation circuits will be focused around those feeding into the CIC as a one-disconnected standard should provide adequate protection. Effective crew spacing will be sufficient for a bunk for the warrant officers and a small cabin shared between two officers each. Common areas will exist at the fore of the ship, providing some room for relaxation amongst ostensibly green starch beds.
Dual Purpose Orbital Frigate: Working on the frigate design has been both illuminating and frustrating as it is easy to see how Ríchathaoir intended the program to go with discrete parts sectioned out to enterprises. This has led to several issues as the systems around the drive are expected to produce high radiation exposures and can likely not be managed by a combination of Vikor and AAS(Allium Advanced Solutions), due to the former existing for all of eight months and the latter being an effective subsidiary of Lunos more than a discrete defense enterprise. The establishment of orbital production infrastructure has been the primary source of delays and technical shuffles as the project teams are only now being organized outside a tangled mess of military bureaucracy that was practically micromanaged by Ríchathaoir. Despite this, both have practically managed technological miracles compared to realistic projections for development timeframes.
Work on the drive has produced middling results with a prototype somewhat tested if found to be underperforming compared to maximum theoretical specifications. Thermal efficiencies of 1.6% are expected without a radical redesign alongside a maximum theoretical impulse of 105ks in normal operating modes due to instability in the pinch. Compared to any drive before it, both of these are radical revolutions and gains in technology with radically improved performance. Questions still somewhat remain on making one of the drives but the program has been given the go-ahead to attempt it with Vikor teams consolidating orbital sciences OKBs to streamline development. Particle beam progress by AAS has been rapid and comprehensive, with direct copies made of the Xitlalnan's beam seven months in through careful replication and x-ray scanning, producing three discrete slightly less capable units from the program. Technological development from that standard proceeded rapidly, cloning feed-chamber components directly alongside strengthened confinement and removal of the neutralization chamber to reduce size. The only question remains on the specifics of the ship design as the two core components are likely to be available on schedule if massively subsidized. (-500B Or)
[]Consolidate on a Single Design: Following the original plan of a universal general chassis with significant modifications is not a fundamentally flawed idea and in many ways represents the cheapest path forward. A drive and particle beam placed into every hull is not going to be negative outside a small mid-range band of engagement profiles for the corvette. To maintain fleet unity the latter will effectively strip side armor and some remass for the mounting of VLS cells, providing kinetic MH missiles for orbital work. The commonality of most components outside a single mission section will keep per hull costs low and avoid raising per unit prices due to duplication of effort. As an added benefit both ships will somewhat be able to mask as 20th-generation Xolotlan frigates, at least until the distinctive DDD-He3 drive spectra are noted. (-150B Or)
[]Seperate the Programs: Entirely separating the Corvette program from the Frigate program is somewhat of an attractive proposition as the beam itself can be avoided in favor of increasing missile mass. The corvette will, in practice, be a ship bristling with laser turrets alongside a significant portion of tonnage allocated to missile systems. Reduced crews and birthing requirements on a non-derivative design will make the ship more capable especially if considerations for the removal of FTL capability are implemented. The corvette will become a designated system defense craft, but that is currently what is needed to protect Dannan especially as current drives offer several disadvantages in deep space engagements. (-500B Or)
[]Front-Optimized Armor Schemes: Any engagement in defense of Dannan is going to inherently have a significant numbers advantage in favor of locally produced frigates if enough yard time is allocated. To that extent, the armored prow can have integral radiation shields as a dual-layer scheme while narrowing side-on protection that would otherwise only protect fuel tanks from front-aspect fire. This would in effect be a slight shifting around of internal components, prioritizing a dual-layer shield capable of protecting the crew from primary exposure. Corvette variations will have neither, trading the mass for the placement of MH kinetic missiles that are currently in development for mines and other orbital defensive systems. (-200B Or)
[]Light Destroyer Concepts: The use of a full-scale light cruiser particle beam is a tempting weapon system for several reasons. Incorporating a powerful MHD harvester is already included in the design and instead of chasing a dedicated corvette a powerful particle beam is nearly just as good. Increasing the scale of the initial injection cavity and radically increasing the power can provide for a system capable of achieving easy mutual kills in orbit without the expenditure of limited missile stocks that may not be reloadable in case of crisis. As long as combat occurs around Dannan orbit local defenses can serve to supply missile strikes on far cheaper platforms and deny any element of surprise in a close-in environment. Armor will have to be compromised but that is a small price to pay for avoiding duplication and unifying components. (-300B Or)
General Purpose Commercial Frame: Compared to the development of the first high-performance fusion drive the techniques involved in building the most upscaled open-ended Z-pinch have been somewhat simpler. The drive itself is a major technical endeavor representing the cooperation of four enterprises and Lunos Electronics but one that has been done. Test cases at lower Q's have already been tested with favorable thermal and neutron properties as it is little more than a shielded ring of superconductors containing a long pinch with a staggered magnetic mirror. Building the nearly five-hundred-meter-long magnetic mirror is currently underway with initial utilization capacity likely to be achieved midway through next year. (63)
Military Software Updates: Code bases from before the exchange has defined conventional military software with the funds entirely deficient to so much as provide them a second look. Operating every system on a programming language older than its operators is a major inhibition on modern understandings especially as the generation that best documented utilities and programs died in the aftermath of the exchange. If replacements are to be made to the combined military comprehensive language base(CMCLB) then it must entirely be rooted out to make way for more advanced developments. Backwards capability will inherently suffer no matter what is done and it's arguable if such a deep overhaul to enable optimal use on optical hardware alongside modern well well-documented integration features can be supported given the immediate defense concerns at play. (19)
[]Focus on Reverse Engineering: Formalization of protocols and creating new databases in similar languages and with similar functions is going to be inherently cheaper than throwing everything out. Optimization features can be funded as their discrete program to create a sequential upgrade while maintaining much of the operational environments previously developed. This will come comparatively cheap but may not fix the fundamental issues and will slow the optimization of programs that can take advantage of high-frequency optical hardware. (100B Or) (Non-Disruptive over 10 years)
[] Cross-Compatible Systems: Avoiding a clean break with legacy software and hardware can be done by mandating backward compatibility on new systems. A limited execution environment built in as standard is not inherently technically ambitious and can be done for little additional cost. A comprehensive suite of software tools can be derived from civilian applications with several improvements made for increased privacy alongside the replication of most design programs in the new standard. Actual development costs are going to be minimal but the adoption of a civilian system is still considered inherently less secure. (50B Or) (Non-Disruptive over 10 years) (Disfavored by Officers)
[]Novel Designs: Throwing out any semblance of the old system and creating an optimized platform to be used for most military applications alongside having a strong compatibility with the most modern machine learning systems. Lessons brought in from foreign code bases will be sanitized and programs cloned over to a new standard with as secure of a code base as possible produced. There is still some likelihood that it can be compromised and a limited civilian release is expected without most software databases as a modernized language optimized for machine learning and optical applications. Keeping work in-house and designing a suite of tools will come at a cost and demand new hardware but nothing that cannot be produced. (300B Or) (Shift Over across 5 years)
Support Tank-Destroyer: Legacy requirements for a new army tank destroyer have come down to three generalizable aspects of doctrinal employment. A light general-use platform will not have the protection to resist fire from contemporary armor and to keep production aspects reasonable there is no reason to try for it. Truisms of first-shot engagement victories still hold for the employment of modern armor with sufficiently high-powered weapon systems, but that can be broken down into three discrete aspects. That impact with a munition must produce a significant disabling or degrading effect on an enemy vehicle. Undetectability is in itself inherently valued both tactically and operationally for its utility in enabling optimal engagement and expanding spotting-detection-engagement advantages. Finally, the expected engagement profile is still focused on a sub-twenty-second time of the fire to optimize for limited windows of fire when fighting typically uses tighter formations. Infantry support capabilities are necessary in at least an automated sense alongside munition defense is necessary due to patterns of typical employment, especially in a vehicle with otherwise negligible direct-fire anti-infantry capability alongside the required strong energy systems. (100)
[]Generalist Specification: Designing a thirty-five-ton vehicle on a long-tracked or wheeled basis with a limited traverse turret is the current general model expected to be developed further. A consensus amongst the technical department and enterprises can be reached on the exact specification, incorporating a primary ten-ton SMES into a vehicle with a sixteen-meter bottom-fed rail capable of limited traverse through a rear turret. Weight balance is somewhat simplified as the crew is located under the turret with the inert armatures, putting both the engine and SMES into the frontal compartment. Infantry defensive measures are required but left up to the discretion of the manufacturers with passive-operational thermal signature reductions of at least five-fold with active reductions of fiftyfold required when in a battery-traversal mode. (100B Development Costs for Prototypes)
[]High Stealth Utilization: Favoring lower emissions thresholds will require several fundamental compromises in the design alongside limits placed on the integral power systems. Requirements for a passive eight-fold reduction in thermal emissivity alongside an active dissipation reduction of at least one hundred-fold are required to fully evade estimated Xolotlan sensor capabilities. None of these will apply once the firing starts but developing a vehicle as a combination of stealth concepts can serve as a proof of concept, advance the technologies involved, and develop new lessons in the design. Limits on tonnage compared to baseline specifications will be raised alongside a more complex engine section but the demands placed on the railgun will not fundamentally change. (150B Development Costs for Prototypes)
[]Expand Anti-Armor Capabilities: Practical wartime engagements have seen fights against pairs of tanks with the tight spacing of platoons on the attack somewhat demanding simultaneous engagement. The SMES can in practice supply a steady stream of power for several railgun armatures with the limits on fire rate primarily coming from a mixture of thermal and loading concerns. A driven clip-fed system through the lower rails can enable a refire rate of approximately two seconds by most estimations and thermal limits are unlikely to be reached before three to six armatures are fired. Developing a targeting system that allows for formalized multiple target engagement alongside an improved feed system can provide a significant capabilities edge when firing from stealth but would be at the edge of current estimations of railgun wear tolerances. (150B Development Costs for Prototypes)
[]Technologies Demonstrator Program: Nothing fundamentally prevents the incorporation of an improved firing system, improved stealth capabilities, and further gains in general performance as an ambitious series of program requirements. A reduction to a two-man crew will be perfunctory as automated systems can shoulder the burden of anti-infantry fire especially as targeting can be handled autonomously across both systems. Commander roles will be limited to the designation of targets to be engaged providing more room in the hull for cooling and thermal management systems. This would be technologically ambitious and force the production of new techniques but there is little to say that it is fundamentally impossible. (250B Development Costs for Prototypes)
Planetary Defensive Modernization: Committing to doubling the fleet of Type 44 submarines and increasing the density of the laser grid significantly will not be cheap but it represents the best current approach for planetary defense. The new boats will be built with new MH using missiles to increase the strike range, using the spare payload fraction to place a thicker armored cap on the lasers, enabling them to achieve penetrations against typical PD fire. Nothing exceptional is expected as a result of the modernizations but increasing hit rates against a poorly conducted landing can blunt much of an enemy offensive. Terrestrial orbital laser batteries have proven themselves and a new generation that does not overheat can significantly improve domestic capabilities. (-1200B Or) (108) (Large Political Support Increase)
Expansions according to the proposed scheme focusing on defensive batteries over orbital have been the primary priority in new construction due to wartime experiences, but this is somewhat of an incorrect approach. Anti-Orbital fire proved the most effective but that was only because of a complete lack of support assets capable of potentiating the minefields laid in orbit and the desperate lack of technology available. Re-allocating the entire allotment of funding towards a mixed purpose has not been possible but setting standards for the development of several defensive mine belts has still been authorized. Low visibility techniques are only going to somewhat improve attrition but MH missiles and kinetic heads are expected to radically expand no-escape and full commitment zones, ensuring that a meeting or jousting engagement can be flexibly forced.
Request Funding: There are enemy warships in the system and the military cannot perform a miracle with what it has available to it. Committing the current year's growth-added budgets to fund critical defense programs is the least the government could do. The other areas of government are going to somewhat protest but the threat is currently too great to afford much disunity and the funding is certain to be authorized quickly. Approximately 4000B Or is to be requested, accelerating defensive programs and increasing the rate of procurement. (Immediate 4000B Or) (Small Political Support Cost) (22)
The perfunctory funding request that the PPM disapproved of for the goals of long-term economic growth was in itself a poor decision, but that was only evident in hindsight. Re-allocations towards the defense industry are going to be inherently poor for growth but growth itself is irrelevant without a guarantee of survival. Reasonable heads somewhat prevailed with the acceptance of the funding as a product of backroom deals and threats from the BFP-PPP coalition. To give the government something, partial control was offered for the selection of a new defense minister ensuring that the civilians could point to having a degree of control over an internal army process. Allocated funding has been immediately poured into programs to increase domestic defenses with a far less constrained time frame than those before the war.
Retire: The torch can now be comfortably passed as the ministry has done enough to secure the defense of Dannan. The planet frankly needs a younger and more capable hand that is less mired in past developments and one that can focus on the new war without looking so much at an age long passed. Orbital assets will decide the course of the next war for good or bad and their construction and procurement needs to be prioritized above all else. (41)
Ríchathaoir was not long for the office and had little desire to hold into a position that he believed was better deserved by a younger and more vigorous cadre. This has left the ministry weakened in many ways as the old opponents of the military both on the civilian ends and the internal conservative movements have come to a head. Fighting for the succession has been bureaucratic with several contenders coming from proper and correct backgrounds, advanced for their merit of having connections to go towards the absolute best schools instead of capability. Factionalism in the command started at the first hint of the man planning on retiring early last year but with the current situation and desperate needs placed on the defense industry factionalism, especially disagreements on application and approach are going to be key issues for the next decade.
12-Hour Moratorium Vote by Plan
Budget: 4400B Or
Government Support: 70
[X]Plan Juliet's Jagdpanzer
-[X]Department 4
--[X]Operation Royal Romeo
--[X]Operation Magenta Manual
--[X]Operation Shallow Silk
-[X]Department 6
--[X]Operation Natural Stone
--[X]Operation Understood Crack
--[X]Operation Magenta Order
-[X]Procurement
--[X]Military Software Updates
--[X]Support Tank-Destroyer
-[X]Politics
--[X]Planetary Defensive Modernization
--[X]Request Funding
--[X]Retire
And
[X]Plan (Not) A Failgirl
-[X]Name: Sadhbh Rath na Neamh
-[X]Commander of Orbital Defense Forces
-[X]Accelerationist: (+0)
-[X]Baseline: (+0)
-[X]War Orphan (+1)
-[X]Technical Education (Process Engineering) (-1)
-[X]Well-Known Military Scientist: (-3)
-[X]Bunker Officer: (+1)
-[X]Department 4
--[X]Operation Royal Romeo
--[X]Operation Magenta Manual
--[X]Operation Shallow Silk
-[X]Department 6
--[X]Operation Natural Stone
--[X]Operation Understood Crack
--[X]Operation Magenta Order
-[X]Procurement
--[X]Military Software Updates
--[X]Support Tank-Destroyer
-[X]Politics
--[X]Planetary Defensive Modernization
--[X]Request Funding
--[X]Retire
And
[X]Plan (Not) A Failgirl
-[X]Name: Sadhbh Rath na Neamh
-[X]Commander of Orbital Defense Forces
-[X]Accelerationist: (+0)
-[X]Baseline: (+0)
-[X]War Orphan (+1)
-[X]Technical Education (Process Engineering) (-1)
-[X]Well-Known Military Scientist: (-3)
-[X]Bunker Officer: (+1)
Accelerationism, Politics, and Opinions:
There is a fundamental truth that there can not be another exchange, that Dannan itself cannot afford another scouring. Current politics are only somewhat hanging on from the external threats placed on the government driving constant drives to improve the situation at home to avoid external weakness. Internal stability is a mirage at best, misguided at worst as there is no fundamental solution to the questions imposed by new relationships of production. Automation is the future and a bright golden future at that but to reach it we must first discard the primordial suffocating muck. Workers' power is no fundamental solution to a system that cannot provide enough for all to live in luxury while accumulation itself is only a symptom of a system that cannot produce enough to break through the bonds of conventional scarcity.
The Industrial Revolution in the aftermath of the exchange was the hardest work ever done, straining society to the breaking point and at least some academics past it. Reforms towards increasing production immediately shifted the balance towards a low-employment economy one that could provide for the population through increased surplus production. Discontent followed if only due to a consistent dissatisfaction with a partial sequestration of scarcity instead of a total comprehensive solution towards it. Inadequate responses and conventional policies that failed to embrace the rapidly approaching singularity of automatic production machinery which followed, chasing imaginary solutions in distribution rather than the realities of production. Distributionist thinking as a fundamental aspect will never solve the problem, only create a new generation of those who have and those who have not.
To that end, there is only one solution a rational mind can come to, that production itself is the solution to the problems of societal organization, as any system proposed by Distributionist thinking is little else than a series of nozzles. Sure they may make the flow of resources go in pretty directions with some variation and act as a modifier on sociologic efficiency but they matter little from an optimization perspective. Production is the only constant and the constant that has practically saved the species from itself. It was not some ideological solution that ended the famines but genetically engineered and harnessed organisms. It was not some fantasy of a better world that reconstructed the world but the systematic employment of the atom towards the ends of production. It was not a mirage of a better world that built the technologies capable of developing the economy but concentrated work by tens of thousands of minds. It was not some masterstroke of strategy or understanding that broke the back of the CLP invasion but the forces of production brought to bear through expanding means of industrial-technological organization.
This point is missed by many alongside a focus on petty meaningless debates signifying nothing of scientific and material laws. So much was sacrificed during and before the exchange with so many lost for the mere prospect of a future outside the scope of petty tyrants holding back technological development to maintain petty fiefdoms. It would be the greatest dishonor to ignore the sacrifice of all that came before and all that paid the ultimate price for the world we live in today. For every scientist who dreamed of a future of universal plenty but died from disaster born of obsolescent politics and ignorance before they could live to see it. It is the duty owed to the past generations to build a world unmarred by the imbecilic embrace of scarcity as an absolute law instead of a concept to be fought, scoured, and expunged. Automatization is here at scale allowing machines to do the work of thousands but that is a mere step towards greater things. The Vehen have proven that a society without want was possible, that mass production on an unimaginable scale could provide means of plenty for all.
Dannan itself however cannot pursue the dream of such a future when opposed in all directions by states that are stuck in the ancient mire, too busy with petty struggles to embrace the future. The Xolotlans are consumed in the accumulation of assets that are only limited by the primitivity of their methodologies. The Volnay are chasing a dream of a utopia that was not, self-imagined delusional mirages made worse by incompetent propagandistic record keeping. The only state that has broken the cycle is the Authority and the promise of a perfect future free from want and suffering can only be built by our hands. The full embrace of automation is expected to be instrumental in increasing the scale of economic activity and military production. Further, gains in civilian production despite limitations in population capacity are only expected to accelerate as production increases day by day to match and overtake the states that refuse to consider a future outside of their comfortable mire.
The tragedy inherent are the sacrifices it took to be the first and the sacrifices that will still have to be made to protect that spark of a better future for all. Pressure by the PRLM is only expected to increase and in response domestic industrial and technical production must increase even more strongly. If the light is to grow in strength and burn away the dark mire then automation and the techniques associated with the rapid increase of industrial production must be implemented at the highest possible speed. There cannot be any hesitation when it comes to the defense of Dannan as if it falls then it is entirely possible that a better future for trillions will be forfeit to please those burdened by ideas thirteen millennia superannuated. Once enough strength has been developed and once the question of defense passes, only then can a true rising begin, elevating those burdened and trapped in the same mire as the only remaining force capable and willing to enforce societal progress on a sea of stagnancy.
The State of the Military
Post Ríchathaoir factionalism has been expected after the first hint of a retirement especially with the divisive future offered to the military. The bulk of the structure is deeply traditionalist and represents much of the old guard that was carried over by Galchobar and retained in administrative roles against all sense. Ríchathaoir did make some post-war attempts to increase the dynamism of the structure with many new officers coming into commands during the war but the persistent and deep-seated old guard remains a major issue. A view of warfare as one of state capacity and its neutralization is if anything obsolete for the current period of low-intensity shaping operations. Worse, as a general rule many of the adherents advocate for the slowing of system development alongside the evaluation of only the most conventional approaches instead of new radical tools that can revolutionize warfare.
Conversely, more radical schools are predominant amongst newly promoted officers and those who have seen intensive warfare are willing to embrace new approaches. There is only so much one can believe in the supremacy of simply making another better tank when viewing a field of a hundred burning Type 36s. Change must come quickly and it must come comprehensively as the old ways of warfare have become somewhat outdated compared to standard galactic doctrinal employment. Improvements with domestic techniques further offer some gains relative to the standards in the sector as munitions can be made smarter and with a greater degree of capabilities than any before them. Diplomatically the embrace of a more limited war concept alongside sub-wartime operations remains a radical position but one that must be embraced to properly optimize external attitudes.
Other young officer factions have also steadily continued to rise, especially with the open faucet of new personnel left from the war. Previous doctrinal implementations have focused on the development of sufficient equipment but some have become misguided in that production is in itself the end goal. Prioritization is on the mass production of technologically inadequate goods at a large scale, moving towards a poorly equipped but massive army capable of doing little outside defending the planet on the ground. Such beliefs are misguided and only predominant amongst the army officers who came through rapid necessity promotions during the CLP war. In foreign policy they advocate for an entirely defensive stance, undermining national initiative in preparatory operations for attempts at international delay.
On the civilian government-subsidized end alongside several elements of the orbital command, there is a growing sentiment that naval construction will be the main element of a defense strategy. These have advocated for a reduction of funding to the army in favor of increasing orbital and defensive developments without any focus on further defenses. They are somewhat incorrect in that an entire defensive structure is de-emphasized for an optimistic and impractical offensive one. Those in the fleet are not inherently wrong that power projection will come from naval power but they are also incorrect in several aspects as there is little that naval power can organically do. Diplomatically there is something of a view that as long as the current shaping operations stay a low-intensity low casualty naval war, little will come of them as no state would react to a few thousand dead.
Department Four:
Operation Royal Romeo: Dropping simple sensor platforms into the local volume will be a time-consuming maneuver, but standard routes are standard due to known intelligence of enemy jump drive ranges. Key locations can be surveyed with all jump points watched, providing a degree of warning on when a threat will jump into the system. Securing the one FTL capable craft available will cut the embassy tour short but it is essential for any coordinated defense of the system. (5)
On jump operation six for the placement of buoys in systems located on the spinward, an immediate encounter was made with a PRLM-associated pirate force consisting of two frigates and a destroyer. Jump point contact immediately limited the range to a point-blank engagement with the pirates being mid-drive charge at the point of contact. The fire was staggered with a rapid acceleration away from the point, somewhat limiting impacts. Missile fire from the courier was ordered to little effect against the task force as the old generation of missiles was once again proven tactically insufficient. Counter-fire for all its inaccuracy still disabled the drive from EMP effects as distance was increased, leading to a short chase and the subsequent destruction of the vessel. Without enough escort strength and general awareness, there can be no guarantee that future reconnaissance missions will not suffer the same fate, rendering them impossible until domestic production is adequate.
Operation Magenta Manual: The blunt truth is that no matter how many fancy working groups and technical development organizations are thrown together, domestic technology will be primitive compared to top-of-the-line equipment. Organizing domestic hackers into high-value competitions on known hardware samples will give them something socially productive to do. Extraplanetary operations will start moving to focus on getting long-running student agents into important defense and industrial positions, memorizing and storing critical technical information. (42)
New software divisions have been organized to evaluate foreign hardware for vulnerabilities and achieve significant gains in penetration of known software environments. Current progress has been slow as foreign-instructed programmers have been diverted to practically every possible technical effort with many prioritized for private-sector work. Vulnerabilities have still been found to the extent that ransom-attacks and direct file downloads can be executed on a limited number of machines but they fundamentally depend on the incompetence of end users. A physical approach will have to precede a software one as without local systems capable of conducting attacks anything external is unlikely to reach anything much less produce actionable intelligence.
Operation Shallow Silk: The allotment of intelligence operatives for the transfer of students into the greater Xolotlan Sovereignty can be expanded with several forming an improvised technical section for broader espionage. Most agents will aim to form local networks on several worlds with lower priority university complexes, aiming to attain work in the manufacturing and technical industries outside primary security categories. Infiltration operations will make them seem to be full of defectors with operational lengths taking up much of the decade to gain trust and secure assets. Hand-picked soldiers who had lost family to the CLP invasion and without any psychological blemishes will be chosen with the few inevitable defections compartmentalized sufficiently to avoid damage. (70)
Students sent to the Sovereignty have always been intelligence operatives to some extent but official orders have been somewhat discouraged instead of general approaches of foreign education as a means of reconnaissance. For the best-trained agents sent off, orders have been re-affirmed to embed into Xolotlan society aiming to secure significant technical standards and information from manufacturing methods. Preferred methodologies have involved the sequential memorization of the information available followed by sending it back with a one-time pad. Priority technical areas in manufacturing industries have been told to field agents with approximately twenty thousand of the current student cadre given explicit orders to stay behind to provide further intelligence. Xolotlan hesitance in hiring has been significant, sub-sectioning students to some extent if inadequate to avoid memorization of most technical manuals over one to two weeks of work.
Department Six:
Operation Natural Stone: Of those that have turned against the Authority, the majority are not doing so out of malice but from some misguided and propagandized beliefs that have been imposed by the PRLM. Approaching those believed to be agents and offering them the chance to turncoat can provide a significant opportunity to feed false intelligence and increase familiarity with foreign procedures. If higher-up agents could be turned using the few available domestic assets it could make large parts of the intelligence network irrelevant, or at least so compromised that it would be rendered unreliable. (19)
Reports that have been produced by attempts to turn double agents have gone poorer than expected as the personnel selected have proven more capable. Surveillance operations have caught several of the double agents attempting to immediately shift to triple agents instead of being willing to take the outreach offered. The persistent desire of those converted to die for an ideological line that does not remotely care for them is disappointing but somewhat expected given the circumstances involved. PRLM operations have somewhat shifted towards lower-key espionage especially as conversion attempts have been fed back to off-world commands. Trade with the Xolotlans is the main vector of undermining current defensive measures but there is no practical way to stop it.
Operation Understood Crack: Direct cognitive modification remains a questionable subject and one that cannot be currently implemented without significant ethical and technical concerns. Using volunteers for the program several initial applications can be evaluated for applicability and veracity on willing subjects. If DNI interfacing can be developed to an advanced point then it should be possible to make agents that can become entirely unaware of any commitments even under strong interrogation. Further, cognitive off-loading if it could be demonstrated would allow for rapid briefing and something of an increase in transitional information security. (58)
Crude methods of cognitive conditioning with simplified red-blue approaches have managed to produce results alongside neural scanning to detect an intent to deceive. Adequate training is still expected to easily evade the process through biofeedback mechanisms but it represents something of a start to domestic programs. Attempts to improve the process have produced some more effective hypnotic-deliriant combinations that with correct cognitive approaches can produce a significant dissociative effect adequate to attain information but with little practical accuracy. Current theoretical best practices are going to have to fall towards standardized neural scanning to watch for intent to deceive as very few will be trained on how to avoid similar cognitive patterns. The program has more so than anything wasted billions of Or to confirm exactly what was previously known with only some marginal improvements.
Operation Magenta Order: Domestic rapid response units on the technical aspects of defense can be further developed and trained to ensure that day-one exploits are minimized through aggressive digital OPFOR. Automated methods are more than adequate for a new generation of penetration testing with all aggressive means allowed to achieve penetrations of domestic software. Most penetrations would be revealed to the involved parties instead of utilized drastically improving the security of all sectors of society. This would bring the department somewhat into the spotlight but politics are unlikely to turn on it for reducing hacking. (76)
Control over domestic software and day zero penetrations are being moderately misused but better that it is used honestly instead of wielded by the state. Department Six should in itself be limited in capabilities outside of military espionage as it has gathered too much power over internal surveillance in several aspects. Penetration testing has already achieved significant results in finding over seven thousand day zero exploits over the current year alone as companies have in general been unprepared for sophisticated penetration tools. Rogue flash drives alone have been a major security concern with proposals for fines due to security failures implemented for any enterprise working with sensitive information.
Programs
Second Generation CASP Programs: Radical reform has come to the program with the consolidation of the state technical department for automation into a new Tuatha Systems state concern. Previous standards have had the technical groups operate as effective independent organizations with few connections and significant issues in broad interdisciplinary coordination. This however cannot be used to put them down as significant leaps have been made with general-purpose automation alongside redundant cross-referencing clusters. Automatic local monitoring of the reactor in standard modes has been easy to achieve with some resistance for altered profiles in simulation. Automated life support systems for controlling gas mix have already been developed with integration onto general systems more a matter of technical design than novel application. The largest gains have if anything come from the automation of general maintenance procedures as standards for new systems are built around the optimization of invasive maintenance onto a consolidated overhaul schedule then acute management. (111)
[]Unitary Crew and Combat Section: Confining the crew to an effective forty-meter stack that is at best eight meters wide is considered the technically optimal decision as a dorsal stack under the primary systems of the ship can avoid increasing internal volume. This section would house the entire crew of thirty-five with ample room to spare. Berthing standards are expected to be the same as previous mining ships with an expected shorter duration of operation. Rear areas will be converted to the primary CIC with a midship secondary CIC in case of damage. Faraday shielding will be present where available but only so much can be done to protect the entire section.
[]Separated Pressure Hulls: Dividing crew sections away from the primary CIC and general operations section can enable increasing the protection offered on the primary command. A dorsally mounted lower cylinder will accompany two radially symmetrical ventral cylinders enabling a prioritization of protection on the CIC. A redundant computer system will be placed into each crew quarters enabling some cross-compatibility even if isolation circuits will be focused around those feeding into the CIC as a one-disconnected standard should provide adequate protection. Effective crew spacing will be sufficient for a bunk for the warrant officers and a small cabin shared between two officers each. Common areas will exist at the fore of the ship, providing some room for relaxation amongst ostensibly green starch beds.
Dual Purpose Orbital Frigate: Working on the frigate design has been both illuminating and frustrating as it is easy to see how Ríchathaoir intended the program to go with discrete parts sectioned out to enterprises. This has led to several issues as the systems around the drive are expected to produce high radiation exposures and can likely not be managed by a combination of Vikor and AAS(Allium Advanced Solutions), due to the former existing for all of eight months and the latter being an effective subsidiary of Lunos more than a discrete defense enterprise. The establishment of orbital production infrastructure has been the primary source of delays and technical shuffles as the project teams are only now being organized outside a tangled mess of military bureaucracy that was practically micromanaged by Ríchathaoir. Despite this, both have practically managed technological miracles compared to realistic projections for development timeframes.
Work on the drive has produced middling results with a prototype somewhat tested if found to be underperforming compared to maximum theoretical specifications. Thermal efficiencies of 1.6% are expected without a radical redesign alongside a maximum theoretical impulse of 105ks in normal operating modes due to instability in the pinch. Compared to any drive before it, both of these are radical revolutions and gains in technology with radically improved performance. Questions still somewhat remain on making one of the drives but the program has been given the go-ahead to attempt it with Vikor teams consolidating orbital sciences OKBs to streamline development. Particle beam progress by AAS has been rapid and comprehensive, with direct copies made of the Xitlalnan's beam seven months in through careful replication and x-ray scanning, producing three discrete slightly less capable units from the program. Technological development from that standard proceeded rapidly, cloning feed-chamber components directly alongside strengthened confinement and removal of the neutralization chamber to reduce size. The only question remains on the specifics of the ship design as the two core components are likely to be available on schedule if massively subsidized. (-500B Or)
[]Consolidate on a Single Design: Following the original plan of a universal general chassis with significant modifications is not a fundamentally flawed idea and in many ways represents the cheapest path forward. A drive and particle beam placed into every hull is not going to be negative outside a small mid-range band of engagement profiles for the corvette. To maintain fleet unity the latter will effectively strip side armor and some remass for the mounting of VLS cells, providing kinetic MH missiles for orbital work. The commonality of most components outside a single mission section will keep per hull costs low and avoid raising per unit prices due to duplication of effort. As an added benefit both ships will somewhat be able to mask as 20th-generation Xolotlan frigates, at least until the distinctive DDD-He3 drive spectra are noted. (-150B Or)
[]Seperate the Programs: Entirely separating the Corvette program from the Frigate program is somewhat of an attractive proposition as the beam itself can be avoided in favor of increasing missile mass. The corvette will, in practice, be a ship bristling with laser turrets alongside a significant portion of tonnage allocated to missile systems. Reduced crews and birthing requirements on a non-derivative design will make the ship more capable especially if considerations for the removal of FTL capability are implemented. The corvette will become a designated system defense craft, but that is currently what is needed to protect Dannan especially as current drives offer several disadvantages in deep space engagements. (-500B Or)
[]Front-Optimized Armor Schemes: Any engagement in defense of Dannan is going to inherently have a significant numbers advantage in favor of locally produced frigates if enough yard time is allocated. To that extent, the armored prow can have integral radiation shields as a dual-layer scheme while narrowing side-on protection that would otherwise only protect fuel tanks from front-aspect fire. This would in effect be a slight shifting around of internal components, prioritizing a dual-layer shield capable of protecting the crew from primary exposure. Corvette variations will have neither, trading the mass for the placement of MH kinetic missiles that are currently in development for mines and other orbital defensive systems. (-200B Or)
[]Light Destroyer Concepts: The use of a full-scale light cruiser particle beam is a tempting weapon system for several reasons. Incorporating a powerful MHD harvester is already included in the design and instead of chasing a dedicated corvette a powerful particle beam is nearly just as good. Increasing the scale of the initial injection cavity and radically increasing the power can provide for a system capable of achieving easy mutual kills in orbit without the expenditure of limited missile stocks that may not be reloadable in case of crisis. As long as combat occurs around Dannan orbit local defenses can serve to supply missile strikes on far cheaper platforms and deny any element of surprise in a close-in environment. Armor will have to be compromised but that is a small price to pay for avoiding duplication and unifying components. (-300B Or)
General Purpose Commercial Frame: Compared to the development of the first high-performance fusion drive the techniques involved in building the most upscaled open-ended Z-pinch have been somewhat simpler. The drive itself is a major technical endeavor representing the cooperation of four enterprises and Lunos Electronics but one that has been done. Test cases at lower Q's have already been tested with favorable thermal and neutron properties as it is little more than a shielded ring of superconductors containing a long pinch with a staggered magnetic mirror. Building the nearly five-hundred-meter-long magnetic mirror is currently underway with initial utilization capacity likely to be achieved midway through next year. (63)
Military Software Updates: Code bases from before the exchange has defined conventional military software with the funds entirely deficient to so much as provide them a second look. Operating every system on a programming language older than its operators is a major inhibition on modern understandings especially as the generation that best documented utilities and programs died in the aftermath of the exchange. If replacements are to be made to the combined military comprehensive language base(CMCLB) then it must entirely be rooted out to make way for more advanced developments. Backwards capability will inherently suffer no matter what is done and it's arguable if such a deep overhaul to enable optimal use on optical hardware alongside modern well well-documented integration features can be supported given the immediate defense concerns at play. (19)
[]Focus on Reverse Engineering: Formalization of protocols and creating new databases in similar languages and with similar functions is going to be inherently cheaper than throwing everything out. Optimization features can be funded as their discrete program to create a sequential upgrade while maintaining much of the operational environments previously developed. This will come comparatively cheap but may not fix the fundamental issues and will slow the optimization of programs that can take advantage of high-frequency optical hardware. (100B Or) (Non-Disruptive over 10 years)
[] Cross-Compatible Systems: Avoiding a clean break with legacy software and hardware can be done by mandating backward compatibility on new systems. A limited execution environment built in as standard is not inherently technically ambitious and can be done for little additional cost. A comprehensive suite of software tools can be derived from civilian applications with several improvements made for increased privacy alongside the replication of most design programs in the new standard. Actual development costs are going to be minimal but the adoption of a civilian system is still considered inherently less secure. (50B Or) (Non-Disruptive over 10 years) (Disfavored by Officers)
[]Novel Designs: Throwing out any semblance of the old system and creating an optimized platform to be used for most military applications alongside having a strong compatibility with the most modern machine learning systems. Lessons brought in from foreign code bases will be sanitized and programs cloned over to a new standard with as secure of a code base as possible produced. There is still some likelihood that it can be compromised and a limited civilian release is expected without most software databases as a modernized language optimized for machine learning and optical applications. Keeping work in-house and designing a suite of tools will come at a cost and demand new hardware but nothing that cannot be produced. (300B Or) (Shift Over across 5 years)
Support Tank-Destroyer: Legacy requirements for a new army tank destroyer have come down to three generalizable aspects of doctrinal employment. A light general-use platform will not have the protection to resist fire from contemporary armor and to keep production aspects reasonable there is no reason to try for it. Truisms of first-shot engagement victories still hold for the employment of modern armor with sufficiently high-powered weapon systems, but that can be broken down into three discrete aspects. That impact with a munition must produce a significant disabling or degrading effect on an enemy vehicle. Undetectability is in itself inherently valued both tactically and operationally for its utility in enabling optimal engagement and expanding spotting-detection-engagement advantages. Finally, the expected engagement profile is still focused on a sub-twenty-second time of the fire to optimize for limited windows of fire when fighting typically uses tighter formations. Infantry support capabilities are necessary in at least an automated sense alongside munition defense is necessary due to patterns of typical employment, especially in a vehicle with otherwise negligible direct-fire anti-infantry capability alongside the required strong energy systems. (100)
[]Generalist Specification: Designing a thirty-five-ton vehicle on a long-tracked or wheeled basis with a limited traverse turret is the current general model expected to be developed further. A consensus amongst the technical department and enterprises can be reached on the exact specification, incorporating a primary ten-ton SMES into a vehicle with a sixteen-meter bottom-fed rail capable of limited traverse through a rear turret. Weight balance is somewhat simplified as the crew is located under the turret with the inert armatures, putting both the engine and SMES into the frontal compartment. Infantry defensive measures are required but left up to the discretion of the manufacturers with passive-operational thermal signature reductions of at least five-fold with active reductions of fiftyfold required when in a battery-traversal mode. (100B Development Costs for Prototypes)
[]High Stealth Utilization: Favoring lower emissions thresholds will require several fundamental compromises in the design alongside limits placed on the integral power systems. Requirements for a passive eight-fold reduction in thermal emissivity alongside an active dissipation reduction of at least one hundred-fold are required to fully evade estimated Xolotlan sensor capabilities. None of these will apply once the firing starts but developing a vehicle as a combination of stealth concepts can serve as a proof of concept, advance the technologies involved, and develop new lessons in the design. Limits on tonnage compared to baseline specifications will be raised alongside a more complex engine section but the demands placed on the railgun will not fundamentally change. (150B Development Costs for Prototypes)
[]Expand Anti-Armor Capabilities: Practical wartime engagements have seen fights against pairs of tanks with the tight spacing of platoons on the attack somewhat demanding simultaneous engagement. The SMES can in practice supply a steady stream of power for several railgun armatures with the limits on fire rate primarily coming from a mixture of thermal and loading concerns. A driven clip-fed system through the lower rails can enable a refire rate of approximately two seconds by most estimations and thermal limits are unlikely to be reached before three to six armatures are fired. Developing a targeting system that allows for formalized multiple target engagement alongside an improved feed system can provide a significant capabilities edge when firing from stealth but would be at the edge of current estimations of railgun wear tolerances. (150B Development Costs for Prototypes)
[]Technologies Demonstrator Program: Nothing fundamentally prevents the incorporation of an improved firing system, improved stealth capabilities, and further gains in general performance as an ambitious series of program requirements. A reduction to a two-man crew will be perfunctory as automated systems can shoulder the burden of anti-infantry fire especially as targeting can be handled autonomously across both systems. Commander roles will be limited to the designation of targets to be engaged providing more room in the hull for cooling and thermal management systems. This would be technologically ambitious and force the production of new techniques but there is little to say that it is fundamentally impossible. (250B Development Costs for Prototypes)
Politics:
Planetary Defensive Modernization: Committing to doubling the fleet of Type 44 submarines and increasing the density of the laser grid significantly will not be cheap but it represents the best current approach for planetary defense. The new boats will be built with new MH using missiles to increase the strike range, using the spare payload fraction to place a thicker armored cap on the lasers, enabling them to achieve penetrations against typical PD fire. Nothing exceptional is expected as a result of the modernizations but increasing hit rates against a poorly conducted landing can blunt much of an enemy offensive. Terrestrial orbital laser batteries have proven themselves and a new generation that does not overheat can significantly improve domestic capabilities. (-1200B Or) (108) (Large Political Support Increase)
Expansions according to the proposed scheme focusing on defensive batteries over orbital have been the primary priority in new construction due to wartime experiences, but this is somewhat of an incorrect approach. Anti-Orbital fire proved the most effective but that was only because of a complete lack of support assets capable of potentiating the minefields laid in orbit and the desperate lack of technology available. Re-allocating the entire allotment of funding towards a mixed purpose has not been possible but setting standards for the development of several defensive mine belts has still been authorized. Low visibility techniques are only going to somewhat improve attrition but MH missiles and kinetic heads are expected to radically expand no-escape and full commitment zones, ensuring that a meeting or jousting engagement can be flexibly forced.
Request Funding: There are enemy warships in the system and the military cannot perform a miracle with what it has available to it. Committing the current year's growth-added budgets to fund critical defense programs is the least the government could do. The other areas of government are going to somewhat protest but the threat is currently too great to afford much disunity and the funding is certain to be authorized quickly. Approximately 4000B Or is to be requested, accelerating defensive programs and increasing the rate of procurement. (Immediate 4000B Or) (Small Political Support Cost) (22)
The perfunctory funding request that the PPM disapproved of for the goals of long-term economic growth was in itself a poor decision, but that was only evident in hindsight. Re-allocations towards the defense industry are going to be inherently poor for growth but growth itself is irrelevant without a guarantee of survival. Reasonable heads somewhat prevailed with the acceptance of the funding as a product of backroom deals and threats from the BFP-PPP coalition. To give the government something, partial control was offered for the selection of a new defense minister ensuring that the civilians could point to having a degree of control over an internal army process. Allocated funding has been immediately poured into programs to increase domestic defenses with a far less constrained time frame than those before the war.
Retire: The torch can now be comfortably passed as the ministry has done enough to secure the defense of Dannan. The planet frankly needs a younger and more capable hand that is less mired in past developments and one that can focus on the new war without looking so much at an age long passed. Orbital assets will decide the course of the next war for good or bad and their construction and procurement needs to be prioritized above all else. (41)
Ríchathaoir was not long for the office and had little desire to hold into a position that he believed was better deserved by a younger and more vigorous cadre. This has left the ministry weakened in many ways as the old opponents of the military both on the civilian ends and the internal conservative movements have come to a head. Fighting for the succession has been bureaucratic with several contenders coming from proper and correct backgrounds, advanced for their merit of having connections to go towards the absolute best schools instead of capability. Factionalism in the command started at the first hint of the man planning on retiring early last year but with the current situation and desperate needs placed on the defense industry factionalism, especially disagreements on application and approach are going to be key issues for the next decade.
12-Hour Moratorium Vote by Plan
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
These are all extremely normal opinions to have on modern Danaan - not even that esoteric, 1/4 of the parliament is roughly as or more devoted to this philosophy right now. The only thing about Sadhbh's politics that's really abnormal is the amount of power and willingness she has with which to pursue it.
She's a very normal example of a PPM voter - a war orphan whose worldview forming experience was the horrors of the domain and deliverance from the edge of death by the transformative miracles of science.
Edit:
These plans are based on some prior discussions, and mostly use insights that came from other folks than me lol.
[] Plan Moderated Ambitions
-[]Separated Pressure Hulls
-[]Consolidate on a Single Design (-150B Or)
-[]Focus on Reverse Engineering (100B Or) (Non-Disruptive over 10 years)
-[]Expand Anti-Armor Capabilities (150B Development Costs for Prototypes)
Total expected costs: 900B Or (including fixed expenditures)
Probably the most sensible procurement plan, focusing on things we're 99% sure we can get out there in volume and on time and won't cause disruptions without going for the least ambitious option in every case. The rapidfire TD has like, 2/3 of the stealth of the stealthy one and three times the short-term lethality, and it shouldn't be hard to give up on the rapidfire later if it doesn't work out. The consolidated design isn't the most efficient per unit of hull tonnage, but it's extremely efficient in terms of engineering time and manufacturing resources - and like, the original plan. The separated pressure hulls are more livable and provide better combat survivability.
[] Plan Technically Aggressive Maximum Do Not Do This
-[]Separated Pressure Hulls
-[]Light Destroyer Concepts (-300B Or)
-[]Novel Designs(300B Or) (Shift Over across 5 years)
-[]Technologies Demonstrator Program (250B Development Costs for Prototypes)
Total expected costs: 1350B Or (but realistically more than that.)
This is the funniest plan, where we forget that we were trying to get usable result out there sometime soon and monofocus on the most aggressive, 'theoretically' possible options. Give our frigates a somewhat anemic modern frigate cannon? Sure! Totally redesign our whole computing system internally to the military based on the vibes of a woman who knows a little bit about every kind of STEM work except coding and expect that to work out well? Sure! Risk the beautiful start we've gotten off to trying to engineer an invisible full auto tank destroyer that might not work out? Sure!
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Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
I think the stealth TD is worth considering. We had two stealth related precursor techs added last turn, and developing that ability seems useful. As long as we can trade one TD for one alien tank, it'll be very hard for any alien invader to occupy us.
- Pronouns
- He
I'd say either of these two, really. We got two very nice stealth techs off of the drone and it would be a shame not to develop along paths that the wider sphere doesn't seem to be so good at.
When we picked the politically active trait for our species during the prequel quest we thought it meant an engaged populace. This was right but unfortunately it means the majority is a radical of some stripe. This also applies to the moderates given Ros
- Location
- Canada
This is amazing.
Xolotlan Counterespionage: It seems the Seelie "students" have successfully transferred all of the technical manuals provided to them, back to Danaan.
Xolotlan Politican: How?! I thought you said you had it handled!
XC: We thought we did, but we didn't expect them to memorize the manuals, transcribe them, and send them back.
XP: What- Memorize?! How-
CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
- Location
- the Netherlands, apparently
All the designs incorporate the stealth techs which is why even the most basic model calls for a general 5x reduction of thermal emissions with a 50x reduction in battery mode, those two choices just are a lot more ambitious in going for 8x and 100x reductions respectively. To be honest I'd rather play it safe for this vehicle and go with either of the other two options *because* the stealth techs are extremely new, so we have zero experience with actually implementing them and pushing too hard right now is likely to lead to overruns and delays.
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
Rapidfire capability is more likely to increase our KDR than pushing marginally harder on the stealth tech, yeah. The stealth tech just makes it marginally less likely that the TD gets spotted before it starts shooting. The rapidfire makes it likely that it can kill an entire pack of enemy tanks in a few seconds once it starts firing.
In the long run we'll want to engineer the peak stealth, but for now most of the benefits are already in hand with the base design models and the stealth model is expected to have more tradeoffs than the rapidfire one.
In the long run we'll want to engineer the peak stealth, but for now most of the benefits are already in hand with the base design models and the stealth model is expected to have more tradeoffs than the rapidfire one.
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Well as other people have said I imagine she's gonna play great with the other species.
Tho I do think that better we have the acelerationist now, compounding growth and all that(also while they still underestimate us). Plus with the next mod we can pick a "moderate" and they can "walk back" some polices to reassure folks.
On a different note, here's a plan
This plan is based on some prior conversation/somewhat other peoples insights and is mostly similar to Plotvitals but with a few I think important differences.
Edited
[] Plan Specialization
-[]Separated Pressure Hulls
-[]Separate the Programs (-500b Or)
-[]Focus on Reverse Engineering (-100b) (Non-Disruptive over 10 years)
-[]Expand Anti-Armor Capabilities (-150b)
Costs this turn 1050B Or
Going down it point by point
Separated Pressure Hulls because it provides safer conditions for the crew when in combat and means we have to cycle out the crews less often. Also because just in general space is big, in nearly every conceivable combat scenario the crew will have time to leave the crew quarters and get to the more heavily armoured CIC sections.
Remember in the Invasion it took days for ships to reach Dannan orbit. The only conceivable time I could see crews getting ambushed while they're primarily in the less armoured crew section is when they are sitting on jumpoint defence and even then they probably have some time to get into the more heavily armoured section.
[]Separate the Programs/[]Light Destroyers Concepts because this frigate/corvette program isn't about building one ship it's about building a navy. Trying to take 2 ship roles that have been almost universally kept to by the broader galactic community and combining them in 1 ship seems like a road to cost overruns and a ship that can do everything but is not good at anything.
If we build a dedicated Corvette, it can play to the Corvettes strengths. It'll be something amazing at area control. A ship "bristling with laser turrets" and able to deal with missile interception for its battlegroup. It'll also be able to dedicate a "significant portion of tonnage to allocated missile systems" meaning that it should be able to spew out enough missile to overwhelm enemy point defences, something which a tepid noncommittal approach to missile saturation might not be able to do.
Following on from that if we build a dedicated Corvette design I believe we should leverage the amazing rolls we got on particle beam technology and build a dedicated frigate plus design with the light destroyer concept. It's ability to almost fully utilise it's scaled down cruiser particle beam without wasting space on a nominal missile load (a missile payload that in the consolidated design would require having to "effectively strip side amor" to accommodate). Means it's a ship that would be able to effectively punch well above its weight class and be very good at its role.
Now yes individually each of these ships would have blind spots that would make them worse 1 on 1 against equivalent ships, but we not designing around 1 on 1 ship battles. We are designing around duelling fleets. If instead of viewing each ship as a single unit we view small battlegroups or even fleets as a single unit, two specialised ships classes supporting each other would have advantages that a fleet made out of a single compromise design wouldn't have.
Alongside the inherent strengths of specialisation, it allows for a greater amount of strategic variability you have different tools for different roles. For defending the jump points and orbitals you can send a fleet with numbers favouring the specialised corvette ships were there high missile count and better area control will let them play to their strengths (of course with some of the dedicated frigates, particle beam warfare is still integral in this setting after all). For more deep space patrol missions, you can have a more heavy particle beam frigate taskgroup as in this situation range and "jousting" engagements are more prominent (of course with some of the specialised corvettes with them to provide point defence/area control).
Specialised ship designs while more expensive in the development phase will form a more solid basis for a robust space navy.
Oh one more point on the specialised ships, specifically on their cost. While they do have a higher initial cost, by specialising the designs I strongly believe that there will be a smaller chance of cost overruns. As the manufacturers won't be trying to combine separate design philosophies and cramming 2 sets of equipment into the 1 ship. Making integration of components easier and allowing for costs to be cut where they are not needed. For example, a specialised corvette won't need to have components as heavily rad shielded as a ship with a particle beam.
Moving onto []Focus on Reverse Engineering. Going down the possible options. Cross compatible systems seems both horribly insecure and also incredibly inefficient (even if it would allow for some more novel galactic techniques to be ported across). Novel designs seems nice but also seems like it will be an expensive long process which will have little actual effects in combat and would have a difficult transition. (IMHO I reckon we should just let the civilians do it then transition to it when it's stable in like 20 elf years. That leaves reverse engineering the cheap boring option that will have lower peaks but also higher valleys s and which allow us to spend more money on more immediately impactful areas (which we kinda need to do with that massive war looming on the horizon).(This opinion is very heavily informed by MordredRaal analysis)
Finally []Expand Anti-Armor Capabilities. I think 2 important facts to remember when talking about this is every option has stealth by default (other options just focus on improving beyond that default) and the gun will be noticed once it starts firing no matter how good it's stealth is. With those in mind and with that leaning the tank destroyers into a more shoot and scoot role. I believe that making the most of the time they can pop out and increasing the mission kills during that time is important.
On a final note with the 1600 billion Or we got for base funding and with the extra 4000 Or billion we got from request additional funds minus what we spent on the first stage of the dual frigate program and on Planetary defence mobilisation. As of this turn pre plan we should have 3900 billion Or left, that is a lot. I'm not saying we should rush through spending it on anything (I went cheap with software and cheapish with the tank destroyer after all) but I think it's enough that we can spend a decent amount on ensuring the designs for what are probably going to be the most built ships in our fleet for the next 30 elf years are decent.
Again this plan is not cheap but it is not prohibitively expensive, the total cost of the plan is 1050 billion Or. That leaves us 2850 billion Or for the next 4 years.
edit
Ok according to blackstar due to technical limitations if the -[]Separate the Programs option is taken the frigate specialized option cannot be the light destroyer concept. Since most of the plan was built around heavily specialized ships (and these would still be specialised just the frigate would be less particle beam heavy). I don't think splitting the designs would be worth it.
So instead I'll make my plan legal by removing the light destroyer option for those who want it, but I'm just gonna vote [] Plan Moderated Ambitions
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MordredRaal
Agitating
- Pronouns
- She/They
Since I am a programmer I have some analysis on the Software vote and I feel pretty confident on this. I already posted these on the discord, but I'll port it over here with light reformatting:
Focus on Reverse Engineering:
Upgrading our old coding language to use modern concepts and basically reworking it so it doesn't suck as. Aka making C++
It's actually a good idea. C++ ultimately is a modern coding language. And while it's a pain to work with sometimes, it's stuck around for a reason.
Making this kind of upgrade wouldn't make a fundamentally worse system than the other two options most likely. And it wouldn't just mean that we don't have to revamp all our equipment. It also means that we can keep most of our coding experiences and lessons.
It wouldn't be fully optimized. But tbh, that's a bit of a pipe dream with software always. Optimization™️ isn't really something you can force on a language level. Unless your language is built shit from the start, optimization is almost entirely the job of the programmer actually writing the code. So I don't expect massive losses in performance from this.
And while I don't deny that this thing will be jank, it will be the "sigh dammit. Need to spend another 12 hours on this shit" kind of jank. Not the "shit. Everything broke overnight" kind of jank. Or well. It won't be more of the latter than any programming inherently is.
So to summarize. It will be less disruptive. It will be less error prone at least in the medium term cause we don't lose all of our experience. And it will be easier to implement.
It is my favorite option for sure
Cross compatible Systems:
The Good Idea™️ aka "Let's make these code bases kiss" aka "We have to maintain the same code base in two different languages sounds of programmers self immolation"
Yeah. It's… certainly an approach. Uh, I think this is our PCs lack of experience with the field showing itself.
She is right that making an environment where the two languages meet isn't itself super technically challenging. But it is also an absolute dog shit solution.
It will be absolute hell to develop, maintain and use. Genuinely the kind of thing that makes you curse the person who came up with it.
It being sourced from civilian systems is a bit of a mixed bag. There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages. So overall I'd say that's maybe a slight positive? But not enough to outweigh the political costs. And certainly not enough to make it a good option.
So yeah. I would suggest staying away from this option at all costs. It's the worst one by a long shot. At least that's what my experience tells me
Novel designs:
Making a new code base from scratch aka "Just one more standard bro, just one more standard and we'll have a clean code base"
I'm being a bit flippant. But it's not a bad idea. A modern, well designed coding language is a blessing and it would make stuff prettier and more readable for sure. And it'll be better optimized for optical computing in theory and eventually in practice. But I think it's a bit overly optimistic
It would involve overhauling our whole system for once. Which not only is expensive, but also creates so many errors, you wouldn't believe. It's one thing to do it when it's just one system and you can just port everything. But doing it with literally millions of pieces of equipment all over the globe and in fucking space? Lmao
It's possible. But it's a hell of a job in a way that 300B and five years doesn't really cover. Maybe we could do it in that time frame. Maybe. But that doesn't take care of my second concern.
Namely that a whole new language means a whole new set of programming skills. I guess I don't know how much it's main stream knowledge. But learning a whole new languages is hard. Not so hard.
But getting it to the level of the stuff you've been doing for 20 years? 20 Elf years no less? That is gonna take half a decade at least. Maybe just half a human decade, but still. It will be a massive institutional loss of experience.
So I think you can probably just assume that to get the full benefits of this option it would take a full elf decade, just like the other options. And that's assuming that the switch over and integration into all our systems goes smoothly.
It's not a bad option. It will eventually be a real benefit for us. But we won't see the benefits for a long while. So with the war looming over us, I would consider it a definite gamble. Admittedly it wouldn't be a huge risk, we would probably compromise before we do truly stupid stuff to our equipment. But the benefits are also pretty minor.
In Summary:
I would recommend focusing on Reverse Engineering, it's easiest by far and only a minor loss of performance in the long term. Novel Designs is decent, though questionably worth the cost and risk. Cross Compatibility is dog shit, don't pick it
Focus on Reverse Engineering:
Upgrading our old coding language to use modern concepts and basically reworking it so it doesn't suck as. Aka making C++
It's actually a good idea. C++ ultimately is a modern coding language. And while it's a pain to work with sometimes, it's stuck around for a reason.
Making this kind of upgrade wouldn't make a fundamentally worse system than the other two options most likely. And it wouldn't just mean that we don't have to revamp all our equipment. It also means that we can keep most of our coding experiences and lessons.
It wouldn't be fully optimized. But tbh, that's a bit of a pipe dream with software always. Optimization™️ isn't really something you can force on a language level. Unless your language is built shit from the start, optimization is almost entirely the job of the programmer actually writing the code. So I don't expect massive losses in performance from this.
And while I don't deny that this thing will be jank, it will be the "sigh dammit. Need to spend another 12 hours on this shit" kind of jank. Not the "shit. Everything broke overnight" kind of jank. Or well. It won't be more of the latter than any programming inherently is.
So to summarize. It will be less disruptive. It will be less error prone at least in the medium term cause we don't lose all of our experience. And it will be easier to implement.
It is my favorite option for sure
Cross compatible Systems:
The Good Idea™️ aka "Let's make these code bases kiss" aka "We have to maintain the same code base in two different languages sounds of programmers self immolation"
Yeah. It's… certainly an approach. Uh, I think this is our PCs lack of experience with the field showing itself.
She is right that making an environment where the two languages meet isn't itself super technically challenging. But it is also an absolute dog shit solution.
It will be absolute hell to develop, maintain and use. Genuinely the kind of thing that makes you curse the person who came up with it.
It being sourced from civilian systems is a bit of a mixed bag. There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages. So overall I'd say that's maybe a slight positive? But not enough to outweigh the political costs. And certainly not enough to make it a good option.
So yeah. I would suggest staying away from this option at all costs. It's the worst one by a long shot. At least that's what my experience tells me
Novel designs:
Making a new code base from scratch aka "Just one more standard bro, just one more standard and we'll have a clean code base"
I'm being a bit flippant. But it's not a bad idea. A modern, well designed coding language is a blessing and it would make stuff prettier and more readable for sure. And it'll be better optimized for optical computing in theory and eventually in practice. But I think it's a bit overly optimistic
It would involve overhauling our whole system for once. Which not only is expensive, but also creates so many errors, you wouldn't believe. It's one thing to do it when it's just one system and you can just port everything. But doing it with literally millions of pieces of equipment all over the globe and in fucking space? Lmao
It's possible. But it's a hell of a job in a way that 300B and five years doesn't really cover. Maybe we could do it in that time frame. Maybe. But that doesn't take care of my second concern.
Namely that a whole new language means a whole new set of programming skills. I guess I don't know how much it's main stream knowledge. But learning a whole new languages is hard. Not so hard.
But getting it to the level of the stuff you've been doing for 20 years? 20 Elf years no less? That is gonna take half a decade at least. Maybe just half a human decade, but still. It will be a massive institutional loss of experience.
So I think you can probably just assume that to get the full benefits of this option it would take a full elf decade, just like the other options. And that's assuming that the switch over and integration into all our systems goes smoothly.
It's not a bad option. It will eventually be a real benefit for us. But we won't see the benefits for a long while. So with the war looming over us, I would consider it a definite gamble. Admittedly it wouldn't be a huge risk, we would probably compromise before we do truly stupid stuff to our equipment. But the benefits are also pretty minor.
In Summary:
I would recommend focusing on Reverse Engineering, it's easiest by far and only a minor loss of performance in the long term. Novel Designs is decent, though questionably worth the cost and risk. Cross Compatibility is dog shit, don't pick it
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- Pronouns
- He/They
I think these options together would be the best choice - both point towards an 'all or nothing' protection scheme, with more protection for the most combat-critical spaces. Since these will be produced en masse, and deployed in groups, I don't think the higher risks of losing secondary systems or fuel tanks is that bad if the crew and combat stations are doubly protected. Slightly better crew conditions will also help performance and our attempts to build up experienced crews.
As the option says, these frigates are going to be fighting with a numbers advantage if they are going to have a chance in the first place, which means that they're more able to keep their nose on the biggest threat in most engagements. They also have much less armor to work with from the start, and are likely to be fighting bigger ships, so they need to prioritize it. While the front-optimized armor scheme makes some design changes that could delay the design, I don't think it's much of a risk compared to the other 'advanced' options. It looks like much of the change to the armor scheme would already need to be implemented in the corvette variant anyway.
This plan is very similar to Moderated Ambitions, just with that one change made.
[] Plan Focused Ambitions
-[]Separated Pressure Hulls
-[]Front-Optimized Armor Schemes (200B Or)
-[]Focus on Reverse Engineering (100B Or) (Non-Disruptive over 10 years)
-[]Expand Anti-Armor Capabilities (150B Development Costs for Prototypes)