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Ad Astra ex Lutum

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Alright, I've updated the Intel Post to include the two new actions we did, and I'll do a more in depth analysis of what exactly happened and my ideas on what we should do now.

Blackstar said:
Operation Purple Finger: Infiltration operations to the army directly can be conducted using alternative means. Work towards training intelligence agents to pose as curious officer recruits with an accelerated career track to provide more information can be started. Their careers will effectively be a repeat of officer academy before an eventual re-recruitment into the intelligence services ensuring that they are attractive candidates for discovering conspiracies. Discoveries from the program are unlikely to be immediate with the first year of education almost entirely useless from an intelligence perspective but eventually, several conspirators may be found. (15)

The initial training of candidates to push through officer academies has started with several otherwise non-military educated paid to go into the academy. Their technical expertise has generally allowed for a placement into officer tracks but due to the lack of personnel with command experience little has been done. These candidates are expected to finish their academy careers in two years and start to conventionally climb the ranks to obtain military experience and start gathering intelligence on officer groups available at the academy and lower rank level. Results are expected to only come in years but the program has just started, allowing those selected to appear exactly like any other first-time officer candidate.
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Purple Finger has started, but we failed to find suitable candidates within Department Four itself and needed to rely on non-military recruits for the job. This has delayed the program, but arguably made it more secure as at this point our "fake" officer candidates are actually real officer candidates that just happen to be our plants. We need to support this with further operations so that it doesn't go to waste, and it will take some time to pan out, but operation Purple Finger is a go.

Blackstar said:
Operation Luxuriant Hat: Preparing gray and black operation signal groups is effectively as simple as protecting several hackers and placing them on a government payroll. Keeping said hackers from knowing they are on a government payroll will require several shadow groups, but ensuring that large organizations can be at least ostensibly directed will provide a further layer of obfuscation. These groups are uncertain, likely inconsistent, and can cause problems directly but with the numbers of disaffected youth, there is no shortage of experienced cybercriminals that can be productively used. Further, the most capable can be directly recruited, providing legitimate careers and expanding directorate capacity. (nat 1) (crit fail)

Due to what may have been perceived as a provocation against some hacker environmental groups for trying to shift their targets towards more useful means, retaliation has come through a major banking compromise. Several funds responsible for the funding of operations have been publicized on several boards before getting brought down, with an ecological group claiming responsibility. This has not compromised any physical agents but has made much of the funding scheme that was to be used for the program known to those targeted for recruitment, getting sixteen prospective organizational shells to go silent while increasing the number of useless scammers that must be filtered. Anonymization of databases along with further diversions of monetary streams has already been formalized, with several agents regretting the quantum defeat of pre-war crypto-currencies.
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We got absolutely styled on by some environmental hacktivist groups who didn't like what we were doing and fucked us bad. The silver lining is that we weren't compromised in the process. The whole operation is scrubbed for the time being at least. This has far reaching consequences for our plans to attack the PSC, completely fucking my own longer term plans in the area for at least this election cycle and likely the next one as well. The silver lining is that every failure will make our department better organized and improve procedures; this isn't just a narrative effect mind you! We've already seen with the exercises that there are hidden modifiers affecting most things we do, which includes Department Four. Given how fresh it is it almost certainly started with negative modifiers, but these back to back horrific failures are the fastest way to learn. A similar thing happened in the prequel quest for example where our ministries rapidly recovered from every blood-soaked failure. In this case the worst consequences have been bruised pride and scrapped plans, so ultimately it's something we can shrug our shoulders at and move on towards new ventures.

Speaking of, I mentioned it earlier but I think we need to shelve any ambitious jabs at the PSC for the moment and double down on operations against the army. Ultimately while our own guy is telling us the PSC is an immediate threat to democracy, the reason they are so is because of their army connections. Cutting the rot at the roots would've been good, but with the failures of Luxuriant Hat we can't do so safely anymore, and the last thing we want to do is making protecting the PSC from the army an ideological position that the rest of the civilian government will feel the need to stand for. As such, we should double down on rooting out the rot on our own side of the line, which should incidentally also unravel some of the PSC connections. In addition, given this more defensive mindset where we intend to limit what damage fascists inside the army can do, we should jump ahead and start Operation Ethereal Summer next turn. It would've been preferable to have them as part of a larger, offensive plan, but ultimately they will also be our best defensive asset in case the Rogue Commands go kinetic or need to be urgently curbed.
 
Okay, now to analyise the two procurement decisions I think we need to consider in depth:

First, the SSBN, there are two options there I think are relevant, Lunos and GA. Both of them have the chops for this job, with Lunos having delivered a successful ATGM system and General Aerospace being one of the big missile dudes. If we look back at their ATGM pitch:

Blackstar said:
[]General Aerospace: Another confirmed bit is one atypically from some of the teams responsible for making semi-autonomous air-to-ground ordinance. A direct derivative of the Type-32 air-to-ground missile with an improved dual seeker it blows past any reasonable weight requirement in favor of a loiter time and remote designation capability. The almost forty-kilogram system effectively has a mach two-target approach followed by a high acceleration terminal burn outside of the launch phase. The system itself is going to be outside the cost scope of the project considerably but the technology is more than mature and the limitations of solely an electro-optical seeker can be compensated for remote launch and data link capacity if it works. Demonstration examples can be delivered next year with fast scaling promised to the point it could be written into the contract. (50B Or) (Moves to trials, LRP next turn) (Funds Project)
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We didn't pick that option because it was completely unsuited for a portable infantry ATGM, but it shows that they've made big missiles for us before and there is nothing suggesting their proposals are technically troublesome. Lunos however is more of a technological development company that happens to do procurement, and nothing they've given us haven't had some problem or another during development as they go beyond what they can actually handle. I think the Lunos system is likely to be the most resistant to EWAR, but likely less resistant to laser fire than the GA proposal. The GA proposal relies on swarm behaviour and dedicated sensor missiles instead, which seems sound but in theory the whole thing could get disrupted, although Im not sure thats actually likely to happen compared to all the missiles just getting cooked by PDLs. In the end I think GA is still significantly more reliable than Lunos, and I am not sure the Lunos idea is that much better (if better at all) than the GA proposal. As such I think GA is the better one just so we can get the sub program back on schedule without compromising the firepower of our system.

Now, on to the Militarized Frigate.

First, we need to consider what it needs to be able to do: System defense against technologically superior ships. That means several things, first we pull out the FTL drive because the only thing it will do is up costs. If we wanted to "bully primitives" then there would be a reason to have FTL combat ships, but that's not something we intend to do. As such, there is no good reason not to rationalize our design there. We also need to be able to engage the superior enemy ship in the first place, and we already worked towards that by picking the drive that gives us the highest acceleration with an acceptable deltaV. However, that means we really shouldn't compromise that by trying to uparmour our frigates to survive enemy laser weaponry. Its a nice idea, but ultimately our theory of victory in space is about actually intercepting and engaging the enemy in one engagement where we throw everything at the wall. If we can't make the intercept we're shit out of luck, and the faster we go the less time the enemy gets to shoot down our missiles before they get hit. It's a bad trade off to do the armor.

Then we get to the thing that could be good, but could also be a waste. EWAR is very good, but the blurb put it best: We don't actually know how the alien sensor systems work, and if they aren't similar enough to our own systems the whole thing would be a huge waste. HOWEVER, conceptually speaking it's a pretty bad idea to limit ourselves just on maybes. Go with what we do, and do it as well as we can. As such we should do it if we can afford it.

So then we come to the CASP survival system, and I think we should do it. This will both reduce attrition in peace time, especially since we intend to exercise a lot, and also increase crew survivability a lot during wartime. Ultimately we are going to lose a lot of ships in any engagement we have due to the technological difference. In addition, going by the Lirrir experience one of the ways to migate the technological difference is actually redundancies, which this provides. Now a ship that gets its main drive punctured will still be able to dump its missiles, maybe shoot lasers and so on. The longer it takes for our ships to get put down fully the slower the enemy will be able to knock out our fleets.

The recreational thing should be done. Its a simple and clean solution to the problems we are facing with crew morale.

Finally, Automation. We should take it. Assuming we make more than 15 of these frigates it'll have paid for itself. In addition it will help us with automation on future ships and make that simpler. Also, considering the fact that we are suffering from a severe shortage of trained crews I don't think there is any good reason not to go for this.

As such, my choices would be:

-[]CASP Safety Systems
-[]Expanded Recreation Areas
-[]EWAR Bridge
-[]Automated Combat Systems
-[]Remove FTL Drives

Which costs us 300B or in development and gives us a ship that costs 90B Or per unit. I think I can just barely fit that into my plan.
 
[X]Plan Rally, Regroup and Reorient
-[X]Debrief the Government
-[X]General Aerospace (100B Or)
-[X]Avalon Industrial Trust (40B Or)
-[X]CASP Safety Systems
-[X]Expanded Recreation Areas
-[X]EWAR Bridge
-[X]Automated Combat Systems
-[X]Remove FTL Drives (summed 300B Or)
-[X]Dedicated EVA Suit
-[X]Orbital Combat Suit
-[X]Terrestrial Suit
-[X]Terrestrial Combat Suit (summed 45B Or)

Total 485/505 B Or, leaving us with 520B Or next turn after we get our per turn injection of cash. Uncomfortable, but workable.
 
Blackstar said:
[]Automated Combat Systems: Increasing the use of automated components promises to reduce internal volumes and more importantly crew sizes. This will cut the total crew down to fifty in ideal circumstances and replace most management systems with a small but flexible crew. The AI systems involved will take up the first-order management of power and sensor systems to allow a single officer to look at problems that are first screened through the automated management system. Further improvements are expected in the integration of automated systems to internal rotations, reducing burdens on the fleet and simplifying the ship itself. (150B Or, -10B Or Per Unit)
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Is it possible to take the automated systems, but to be more conservative with cutting down the crew? For the sake of redundancy - to have more crewmen if some would be KIA or WIA, or to have extra hands for the ship repair in a pinch?

Strong Europe Tank Challenge several years back demostrated that in the situations when one crewmember is WIA, the three-man tank crew become much less capable than 4-men crew.

If yes, then provisionly:

[X]Plan Let's Keep Some Sailors
-[X]Debrief the Government
-[X]General Aerospace (100B Or)
-[X]Avalon Industrial Trust (40B Or)
-[X]CASP Safety Systems
-[X]Expanded Recreation Areas
-[X]EWAR Bridge
-[X]Automated Combat Systems (but with crews still larger than 50)
-[X]Remove FTL Drives (summed 300B Or)
-[X]Dedicated EVA Suit
-[X]Orbital Combat Suit
-[X]Terrestrial Suit
-[X]Terrestrial Combat Suit (summed 45B Or)

[X] Plan: The Consequences of our Financial Actions
 
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Josiah said:
Is it possible to take the automated systems, but to be more conservative with cutting down the crew? For the sake of redundancy - to have more crewmen if some would be KIA or WIA, or to have extra hands for the ship repair in a pinch?
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I imagine that what will determine the extent and quality of automation is the roll.
 
I dont see why we shouldn't do automation, the tech dice gave given us some good auto tech and with our ships as they are I doubt crew redundancy will be a boon as I assume that any alien ship similar to the one invading the owls will not leave enough ship for crew to matter if it gets a hit
 
VonVonson said:
I dont see why we shouldn't do automation, the tech dice gave given us some good auto tech and with our ships as they are I doubt crew redundancy will be a boon as I assume that any alien ship similar to the one invading the owls will not leave enough ship for crew to matter if it gets a hit
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The forces currently invading the owls are equipped with weapons that have major penetration but very little little beyond that, as seen with how the Lirrir armored trains with distributed engines have been doing alright compared to most of their equipment. Maybe not the best to lean so heavily on weapon info gleamed from just one war primarily fought on the ground, but we don't have much else to go on beyond that.

Personally, I'm not sure I want to ride the limit of our budget that tightly this time. Given how we likely still have expensive turns coming up for both our SSBNs and VTOL having a bit more wiggle room for almost inevitable cost overruns sounds good, especially as we know have another surprise ongoing expense in needing to spam military exercises until our modifiers are less shit.

[X] Plan: The Consequences of our Financial Actions
-[X]Debrief the Government
-[X]Lunos Industries (100B)
-[X]Avalon Industrial Trust (40B)
-[X]CASP Safety Systems (50B)
-[X]Expanded Recreation Areas (50B)
-[X]EWAR Bridge (100B)
-[X]Remove FTL Drives (-50B)
-[X]Dedicated EVA Suit (15B)
-[X]Terrestrial Suit (10B)
-[X]Terrestrial Combat Suit (5B)

This should total up to just 320/505B Or, giving us just over 150B more space to breathe. While I stated my desire for crew redundancy to also be a priority above, Automation getting axed was mostly just that it was easily the most expensive upfront cost. Yeah it'll pay itself off in just 15 ships once they start being launched, but unfortunately for it we're in a budget crunch right now. I don't really consider any kind of ship to ship space boarding action to be likely in either direction, us going after them or someone jumping into our system to run down a ship rather than anything else. Defense of our stations is a much more probable scenario, but given our willingness to nuke ourselves to hurt them I doubt we'll have any issues with just evacuating and then denying to the aliens any station we think we can't keep them away from.
 
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Josiah said:
Is it possible to take the automated systems, but to be more conservative with cutting down the crew? For the sake of redundancy - to have more crewmen if some would be KIA or WIA, or to have extra hands for the ship repair in a pinch?
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Bluntly, that doesn't matter. If they're hit and suffer casualties they're completely fucked anyway and are unlikely to have time to worry about overworking the remaining crew. More importantly by automating away crew, we have that many more people to put in ships, and being able to crew more ships is way more important than maybe having them slightly better able to continue operating after a hit if they manage to even live.

[X]Plan Rally, Regroup and Reorient
 
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Illusion of Eris said:
Bluntly, that doesn't matter. If they're hit and suffer casualties they're completely fucked anyway and are unlikely to have time to worry about overworking the remaining crew. More importantly by automating away crew, we have that many more people to put in ships, and being able to crew more ships is way more important than maybe having them slightly better able to continue operating after a hit if they manage to even live.
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Well, then what is the point of taking CASP Safety Systems, in this logic? It's also a redundancy measure.
 
CASP is mainly to prevent non-war attrition. It's also adding redundancy to the single main drive, as compared to having I dunno, 100 crewmen instead of 50 crewmen. One crewmen getting drilled by a laser is not particularly impactful either way, if our main drive gets hit then having the CASP safety measure matters a lot.
 
Pls may the politics roll not be low.

Edit: Forgot I actually voted. Thought it didnt get posted cause of shitty internet.
 
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Josiah said:
Is it possible to take the automated systems, but to be more conservative with cutting down the crew? For the sake of redundancy - to have more crewmen if some would be KIA or WIA, or to have extra hands for the ship repair in a pinch?
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Well, kinda, it's an explicit balance of if you want to develop automatic control systems or not, there is a range technically but the issue comes down with each crew having a massive logistical overhead. The crew section needs oxygen/provisions/everything else and that is not small. The issue with keeping so to say spare crew on the vessel is that your stuck paying for them and the support assets they involve (orbital launch capacity/habitation/crew support in orbit/hauling the crew around/etc). To that end the point of automated systems is to cut down the crew as much as possible. Yes it will make damage control worse and reduce on hand personel but those are considered acceptable losses in the face of a significantly smaller and easier to maintain crew section. It's to an extent the logic behind some families of submarines irl increasing their portion of automation. If you don't expect to need an extra 40 men to damage control the boat/don't expect them to be decisive between success and failure in most damcon situations, you don't take them.
 
Blackstar said:
Well, kinda, it's an explicit balance of if you want to develop automatic control systems or not, there is a range technically but the issue comes down with each crew having a massive logistical overhead. The crew section needs oxygen/provisions/everything else and that is not small. The issue with keeping so to say spare crew on the vessel is that your stuck paying for them and the support assets they involve (orbital launch capacity/habitation/crew support in orbit/hauling the crew around/etc). To that end the point of automated systems is to cut down the crew as much as possible.
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I see. Well, I guess in is not that important for the non-FTL capable ship, that can in a pinch rely on the other ships in system to come to its rescue.

But remembering the first FTL test and how easily ~20 crewpeople went down (mostly temporary, yes. but still), I think this would be a much more salient thing for the FTL boats. I mean, having both the large crew AND automation, for the triple-quadruple redundancy ("we've down 50% of crew? Bad, but since we have a backup automation we can still function ok")
 
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Cannon Omake: The Imperial Sailor
  • Sidestory
    • The Imperial Sailor

    The Seelie are not natural swimmers, which is somewhat ironic considering that the vast majority of Dannan's surface is the ocean. Too dense to float, drowning is and has throughout history been one of the leading causes of non-violent deaths. Children are especially vulnerable, with many careless parents having lost their progeny to the cruel waves, surprised at how quietly the young will sink under the waves. Despite this biological disadvantage, history is filled with Seelie who've mastered the waves, becoming great swimmers. Tales of natives living on islands too small to feed them, who instead lived most of their lives out on sea, harvesting the bounties of the ocean with their bare hands. Tales of accomplished athletes that swam across the whole world just to prove that they could.

    The Imperial Sailor was no such tale. As the Empire of Mouran was spreading across the globe, the navy struggled to find enough men to crew all the ships that were needed to fight Mouran's wars, protect her shipping lines and spreading 'the glory of the nation' everywhere the sun touched. Underhanded recruitment tactics, press ganging and so on followed, and more than one Seelie who had no business being anywhere near a body of water larger than a small puddle suddenly, and often violently, found themselves on one of His Majesties resplendent ships.

    As one might imagine, it did not take too long for them to find themselves off said ship and in the ocean instead. Many of them simply drowned, disappearing under the waves, never to be seen again. Some were rescued in time, a good crew watchful for their more vulnerable members. Some, however, simply kept swimming. Not because they were any good at it. In fact, for many of these Imperial Sailors this was their first time. No, the only thing that separated them from their more unfortunate compatriots was their will to live. They'd spend their first couple hours floundering, struggling to keep their heads above water. Eventually they'd be comfortable enough to swim in a direction, towards land if they were lucky to fall overboard close enough to see any. If not, the only thing they could do was pick a direction anyway and swim.

    And swim they did, for days on end. Whether they actually reached land eventually or were picked up by a passing ship, these men were universally exhausted, often emaciated, closer to death than life in some cases. And they all gave more or less the same answer as to how they managed to survive their ordeal:

    They refused to give up, no matter how dire their situation was. No matter how impossible the odds seemed. No matter how much their body screamed at them to give in, to stop struggling. Willpower was the deciding factor, not skill or talent or anything else. In fact, most of these people remained lousy swimmers even after their ordeal, as despite what some might believe extreme pressure does not always result in the best environment for learning.

    The Imperial Sailor was one of the tales Ríchathaoir recited in his head over and over. It had gotten him through school, even when his history teacher had made him want to flee the room from sheer boredom. It had gotten him through the academy, even as he dreaded the day he'd actually receive his command. It had gotten him through the war, even as his commanding officer was killed by a missile strike, forcing him to take command. It had gotten him through the early days after the war, even as the famines grew more and more dire.

    It would get him through today, too.

    Ríchathaoir knew he didn't have much time left before his self-mandated "meditation" session was over. An excellent sense of time was one of the many privileges of his birth, the heritage of his noble, and wealthy, family name. He didn't really need the alarm he'd set on a timer to tell him when his time was up, but it removed the impulse to lie to himself, to drag his break past what is proper. Honestly, he usually got a little antsy near the end; Ríchathaoir did not particularly like sitting around doing nothing when so much work needed to be done. However, despite his many biological advantages, even he could get exhausted from overwork. His thoughts started to run in circles, chasing each other, generally being disruptive to productive work. Better to remove himself mentally at that point, let his mind settle so that work could continue as normal.

    Speaking of... five, four, three, two, one-

    The shrill sound of a cheap electronic alarm rang out in the office for half a second before it was deftly silenced, and Ríchathaoir opened his eyes.

    There was work to be done.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • 7th Hex said:
    The forces currently invading the owls are equipped with weapons that have major penetration but very little little beyond that, as seen with how the Lirrir armored trains with distributed engines have been doing alright compared to most of their equipment. Maybe not the best to lean so heavily on weapon info gleamed from just one war primarily fought on the ground, but we don't have much else to go on beyond that.
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    Enemy weapons have garbo post-penetration effects? Sounds like an excuse to bring back some large surface combatants for shore bombardment! C-:<

    [X] Plan: The Consequences of our Financial Actions
     
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