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Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

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Character Sheet
  • Informational


    • ​
    Stress
    0​
    Office Stress
    0​
    XP
    5​

    Matsura Asuka
    Head Designer for Ohara Airworks
    Age 24 (Legally 25)
    Year 12 AF (After Flight)

    Design Stats
    Aerodynamics Engineering - +2
    Structural Engineering - +2
    Chemical Engineering - +1
    Mechanical Engineering - +1
    Ballistics Engineering - +1
    Electrical Engineering - 0

    Personal/Political Stats
    Social Skills - 0
    Politics Skills - 0
    Importance - 2
    Income - 1
    Investments - Ohara

    Resources
    Power - 0
    Wealth - 2

    Designs
    Type 1 Series - Military Variation (Designated T1M1)
    Type 2 Racer (World Speed Record October 1910-April 1911, 180kph)
    Model 2 Scout (Designated T1M2)
    Navy Scout Prototype (Drowned Rat)
    Dive Bomber B1M1 "Duck"
    Machine Gun Carrier R1A "Dragonfly" (World Speed Record May-July 1911, 200kph)
    Naval Rescue Water-Landing Supply Plane NR1M0 "Dolphin" (World speed record 240kph)
    Rhino Demon Train Hunter
    The world's first airliner
    The world's first pulsejet airplane

    Assets
    Slide Rule
    Computator (1 Reroll per Routine)

    Languages
    Albian
    Gallian

    Familiar Vices
    Drinking
    Prostitutes
    Dancing

    Family Life
    - Engaged to Arita Yachi, formerly the leading Ace in the Imperial Army. Designated #1 Cutest Army Boy, he's having some serious problems with PTSD right now.
    - Taking a second try at dating Mikami Kiho, ex-dockerwork from the south.

    Upgrades
    - 3 XP to upgrade a stat.

    Ohara Airworks
    Start Up, Imperial Capital, Akitsukuni

    Owner
    - Mr. Ohara, Rich. Aircraft Enthusiast. Business guy.

    Engineers

    Kibe Koume, 26, Office Manager
    Tiny & angry, Kibe went to school in Albia, picking up the language, the religion, and a fuckload of swear words. Speaks Albian.
    Mechanical +2, Ballistics +1
    Office Manager: If Kibe is not assigned to a team, the Office Stress is reduced by 1.

    Sakane Jun, 26, Second Team Leader
    A soured patriot, Sakane is married and has a young child being raised gender-neutrally. His two brothers who fought in the war.
    Structural +2, Aerodynamics +1
    Team Leader: If there are any additional projects, Sakane will lead them.
    Joinery: Sakane has training in the traditional Akitsukuni carpentry art of joinery, creating complex self-supporting joints with no fasteners or glue. When working with non-monocoque wooden spars or ribs, +1 Structural.

    Tezuka Kenji, ???
    A stoner with occasional flashes of insight. Nobody really knows what he does, but he's probably useful?
    Aerodynamics +2, Chemical +1
    Flashes of Brilliance: Each natural 10 rolled by any team Tezuka is assigned to gives +1 forward to the next research roll.

    Hasegawa Morio, 26
    A hopeless nerd with a photography habit, mostly on account of developing his own film, Hasegawa seems to do nothing but work and stack card houses, but somehow has an incredible attractive boyfriend. Speaks Gallian.
    Chemical +2, Ballistic +1
    Silent Workhorse: Hasegawa can work on two different projects at once for no cost to Office Stress, providing they use different stats.

    Kawamura Yosai, 25.
    Serially successful womanizer and incredibly attractive, Kawamura doesn't seem to have much of a personality outside of seducing women. Well, except for that time he seduced Asuka, which nobody talks about. Speaks Dyske.
    Structural +2, Electrical +1, Social +1
    Easily Distracted: If Kawamura is working on the same team as a female or non-binary employee, the team is at -1d10.

    Koide Hatsu, 24.
    One of the few female graduates of an Akitsukuni engineering school, Koide is brilliant and incredibly driven, but her first job at Akibara was both humiliating and exposed her to an abusive coworker. Her father is a rich businessman with factories in Joseon, and she's engaged to Ken from Castles of Steel. Speaks Joseon.
    Mechanical +2, Structural +1
    No Sleep: If you let her, Koide will work herself to death. She can work a second project for no Office Stress, but all her stats will be reduced to 1 for the routine.

    Kobayashi Ayao, ???
    Disowned heiress of the Kobayashi family, all Kobayashi wanted was a career and to be a modern woman. For her trouble, a cousin threw acid on her, scarring her face, neck, much of her torso, and her left arm. Despite appearing serene and above it all, she's actually an avowed communist activist and baseball player.
    Aerodynamics +2, Social +2

    Adachi Ren, 24
    Adachi learned chemistry from her father, one of the most famous chemical engineers in the country, rather than through formal schooling. She's married, has a kid, and takes spirituality very seriously. Yes, you did the math right, she had Yuki when she was 17. It's 1912, folks.
    Chemical +2, Electrical +1
    Young Mother: Adachi will cause double Office Stress if she has to work multiple tasks.

    Uyeno Sei, Ballistics Engineer, 31.
    The oldest member of the crew, this is Uyeno's second career. Her first was as an officer in the Imperial Navy with specialized technical training: her very promising career was cut short by her transition. Her work in a naval arsenal on machine-guns landed her the job here. Briefly dated Satomi (the age range is a bit creepy but again, 1912), she's missing a piece of her ear and is deaf on that side, from an exploding cannon. Recently returned from Varnmark from experimental surgery, she's known for her skill navigating gendered bureaucracy.
    Ballistic +3

    Mi Kyung-Jae, 23
    A recent graduate of the Imperial College of Heijo, Mi is from the recently annexed territory of Joseon. For those keeping track at home, that means he's a Korean national living in Imperial Japan in 1912. We haven't seen much of his personality because he's rightfully terrified of everything around him. He has a specialty in endurance engine design and modification. Speaks Joseon.
    Mechanical +1, Chemical +1
    Endurance Engines: Mi has an excellent understanding of metallurgy and tolerances. Any engine he works on gains +1 Reliability if a 16+ is rolled.
    Pulsejet Wizard: Mi is now one of the world's leading experts on the pulsejet engine. He can be given his own project to custom-craft pulsejet engines, and he gives +1 to any pulsejet-related project.
    Joseon National: Mi does not have security clearance to work on any top-secret projects.

    Miyoshi Shigeri, 23.
    A non-binary person and admirer of Asuka's work, they were in an support role in the Army before joining the company.
    Structural +1, Mechanical +1, Aerodynamic +1
    Mechanic: Miyoshi has some experience repairing and refurbishing aircraft. They get +1 if assigned on the clean-up phase.


    Other Employees
    - Ohara Satomi, 22, Mr. Ohara's niece and the company test pilot, Ohara is a general lesbian disaster. She's good at flying planes, driving cars, and kissing girls. She's bad at being patient, being respectable, and sticking to literally anyones conceptions of gender roles. Deeply in lesbians with Coralie D'Amboise.
    - Fujkikawa Sotatsu, old, modelmaker. He's an old man and toymaker and we don't see much of him because he locks himself in his workshop a lot. He's friends with Kawamura?

    Assets
    - Engine Test Rig (Allows engine tweaking and optimization.
    - Wind Tunnel (+1 Aerodynamics)
    - Rapid Prototype Lab (+1 Clean Up)
    Expanded Cast

    Akitsukuni Industry
    - Homura Mohoko: Head Engine Designer for Kobayashi. First female engineer in the country. A lot of sex appeal.
    - Okumura: Head of Akibara aircraft design.
    - Yamanaka Hajime: Kobayashi engineer. Young and eager.
    - Igarashi Masazumi: Kobayashi engineer. Reserved and experienced.
    - Admiral Akibara Toru: Imperial Navy Admiral. Maximum nepotism. Maximum douchebag.
    - Lt.Cmnd Akibara Shinzo: The above's son. A hottie but very forward.



    Character Families
    - Matsura(?) Mizuko: Asuka's sister. Was paralyzed in an accident in Asuka's first flight. Lives Elsewhere and is married now. Can't forgive Asuka, even though she's tried.
    - Adachi Motoki: Adachi's husband, an accountant. Legally blind.
    - Adachi Yuki: Adachi's 7 year old daughter and wannabe pilot. Very adorable.
    - Yachi's Brother: Exists.
    - Sakane's Wife: Exists. Drives him a bit crazy, but he loves her.
    - Yachi's Brother's Wife: Exists. Is statistically likely to be pregnant.
    - Lt. Coralie D'Amboise: Gallian pilot in exile. Satomi's girlfriend. 25. Accomplished bisexual duelist. She flew in the war for a single day, and for her troubles got a hole blown in her cheek and had her left arm paralyzed.

    Akisukuni Army & Ex-Army
    - Lt. Torio Tanaka: Yachi's former observer as an enlisted man. Was jumped up to fly Ducks and lost a leg on his first mission. A trained painter, married to Torio Saya.
    - Captain Amari Shiro: A Dragonfly pilot who ended up flying as Yachi's partner. Kind of delightfully twinky. They sorta slept together at one point, which wasn't great. He lost his previous boyfriend in the April Offensive and turned his plane into a shrine. He was shot in the gut and is still recovering.
    - Major Izuhara: Logistics officer, Imperial Army, this bespectled officer stood up to the Caspian Crown Prince and accidentally kicked off the Akitsikuni-Caspian War. The guilt was so much that, after almost a year of running Army procurement, he shot himself in a phone both.
    - Captain Nakai Sekien: Army scout pilot. First person to drop a bomb from an airplane, later head of the Duck Squadrons.
    - Captain Teshima: A Desk pilot that fought with Yachi. Lost an arm in the process, took over for Major Izuhara after his death. Seems cheery despite it all.
    - Captain Nashio: A real piece of shit dude and probably a rapist, he's also a war hero as the second-highest scoring ace on the Akitsukuni side. He was a young shitty kid in way over his head but it's no excuse.
    - Lt. Kinjo: Kind of a dumb lump and Nashio's friend, one of the desk pilots. Dead at 19.
    - Lt. Okazaki: Yachi's friend from before the war and pilot, he died in a spin in his dragonfly. His death probably hit Yachi the hardest.

    Westerners
    - Rose & Antoinette Sears: Pioneers of flight. Sisters. Black in 1910s not!America. Yikes.
    - Timina Guasti: Famous aircraft designer from Otrusia. Likes big planes and green.
    - Prince Protasov Vasilyevich: Crown Prince of Great Caspia. Real dick. You gotta hand it to him though, a decent flier.
    - Count von Zeppelin: Invented rigid airships. Runs a successful airline business. Damned impressive.
    - Bennhold: Aircraft Engineer. Experimenting with metal aircraft.
    - Aileen Middlemiss: Albian reporter for the Artimis Times. Well meaning and oblivious.
    Available Tech
    • Materials: Wood, Duralumin, Molded Wood, Wood & Silk Composite, etc
    • All engine mounts
    • All wing types
    • Basic reinforcement
    • Wing warping and ailerons
    • Basic water radiators
    • Flying Wings
    • Semi-Monocoque design (requires at least half the slots have frame pieces)
    • Valved pulsejets
    • Basic weapon mounts and turrets
    Tech not Yet Developed
    • Custom engines
    • Monocoque construction
    • Cantilever Wings and associated tech
    • V and T tails
    • Tailless designs
    • Aluminum and titanium
    • Cellulose surfacing
    • Any kind of radar
    • Weapon accessability mods
    • Interruptor gear
    • Geared propellers
    • And Maybe Other Stuff
    Akitsukuni
    Island Nation

    Government
    Constitutional Monarchy
    - The democratic portions of the government are dubiously legitimate.
    - The head of state is the Empress of Akitsukuni. She gives her blessing to newly formed governments.
    - The Navy and a small number of families have undue influence on politics.

    Economy
    Developing Mixed Market
    - Most industry is controlled by a small number of wealthy, family-owned companies.
    - The state provides most contracts to industry. Consumer good market is anemic.
    - Exports are few, mostly cultural.
    - Imports are raw minerals, food, oil, and expertise.
    - Currently suffering an economic crash after the last war.

    Politics
    The Diet is currently ruled by a Constitutional Nationalist government. It has a system of nonlocal proportional representation, with representatives appointed by the party in accordance to their share of the vote.
    - Constitutional Nationalists: 50%
    - Purity Club: 9%
    - New Independents: 26%
    - Fairness Association: 11%
    - United Communist League: 2%
    - Monarchists: 1%
    - Assorted Fringe Parties: 5%

    Demographics
    Akitsukuni is mostly very ethnically homogeneous. Around 5% of the population are various minorities, most from nearby countries. Roughly .1% are westerners here for business or in advisory positions.
    - Population: 55 Million
    - Religion: Mostly Kodo. Roughly 2% of the population follows western religions.
    - Wealth: Most wealth is concentrated in the top 5% of the country. Nearly 20% of the population lives in conditions indistinguishable from peasantry.
    - Urbanization: Heavily urbanized for a small economy: 35% and rapidly growing.

    Military
    At Peace
    - Imperial Akitsukuni Navy (IAN): The 6th largest in the world, and the most experienced.
    - Imperial Akitsukuni Army (IAA): 150,000 highly experienced soldiers, and a considerable reserve.

    Aspects
    - Poor Resources: Aluminum costs +1.
    - Damn Akitsukuni Engines!: Engines have -1 Reliability.



    The Main Character Of This Quest Is Nonbinary And Uses They/Them Pronouns.

    I Am Putting This Here Because The Next Person To Misgender Them Is Getting Yeeted Into The Trash

    Also here's the Gayaverse TV Tropes page, because why not.​
     
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  • Informational
    • Crasian01 said:
    Well...
    Stormtrooper - Wikipedia

    They are in fact where George Lucas got the name of the Empire's soldiers from.

    Now in terms of how much they were actually used, I'm not sure. I've not read the wikipedia article yet, I just know that they existed.
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    Due to the way battles worked in the era storm formations weren't deployed in platoon strength nor was there raiding except for intelligence in the next trench over. It was IIRC more common for such formations to be infiltrated ahead of the line or directly trailing artillery barrages along relatively broad fronts to force the defenders from the first line of trenches, to be backed up by more troops ASAP.

    Force densities and the difficulties of maneuver simply made it impossible along the trenches for what we'd call commando tactics. You need to be able to move and coordinate forces with heavy weight of fire, preferably with heavy gun support available on call because of the way trench defenses work.
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    They were quite prevalent, but calling commandos isn't quite accurate. The Stormtroopers were just dedicated units intended to break through trenchlines via newly developped infiltration techniques.



    There's a war going on. I'm quite certain aircraft engines are on the list of rationed equipment.
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    Should donate our seaplane to the CRS any ways? If we are lucky enough the CRS will use it to save someone important enough to expand the service and but more planes?
     
    To be honest, I'm surprised that something as pedestrian as "money" is preventing aircraft acquisition in the midst of a major war. That seems like something thatd get papered over with IOUs and nationalizing raw material production.

    I was expecting something along the lines of "this aircraft is a suboptimal use of our limited manufacturing capability/raw resources/trained pilots."
     
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    [X] Give a rousing speech to restore your team's spirits and get to work designing a plane to END THIS DAMN WAR.

    I feel like this would be a good outlet for Asuka's frustration.
     
    Oksbad said:
    To be honest, I'm surprised that something as pedestrian as "money" is preventing aircraft acquisition in the midst of a major war. That seems like something thatd get papered over with IOUs and nationalizing raw material production.

    I was expecting something along the lines of "this aircraft is a suboptimal use of our limited manufacturing capability/raw resources/trained pilots."
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    We have a way of summarizing and aggregating that IRL. It's called money.

    It can be exchanged for goods and services.

    SaltyWaffles said:
    Bullshit. Unless the war goes on for a long time, this plane is bleeding edge and well designed, while being affordable.
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    In WW1 aircraft design, planes were often fully obsolete within a month of arriving at the front. Some planes, like some of the 1917 Fokker rotaries, were so obsolete by the time they reached the front that they got shitcanned mid-way through frontline pilot training on them.

    In four years we went from planes that were lucky to do 110kph to planes that could do 250kph, planes with so much thrust they could briefly hang on their prop in mid-air, planes that could climb 6 meters per second or better, and planes that could carry bombs hundreds of miles at night to bomb cities. It was a wild time.

    (Seriously there is less than three years separating the 100hp Fokker Eindeckers and the Fokker D.VIIF, a plane so immensely powerful that the Treaty specifically mandated they all be destroyed.)
     
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    Miner238 said:
    Experiment with rolls.

    Edit: Rolling good rolls doesn't seem that hard.
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    That's because those rolls didn't matter.

    [x] Have Mr. Ohara ask several Generals down for a demonstration, proceed to fly them across the fucking country with some reporters, and demonstrate that the Navy is actively a sack of fucking assholes who need to unfuck their heads from their asses.
    [x] Sell the plane as a fucking troop transport or something, peaceful use is nice, but a great plane going to waste is just a crying shame
    [x] Go fucking drinking, because fuck this shit.

    We are become salt.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    We have a way of summarizing and aggregating that IRL. It's called money.

    It can be exchanged for goods and services.
    Click to expand...
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    I feel like I'm not making my point as well as I could be.

    Like we have an aircraft factory, aircraft are a strategically vital resource, but we are not cranking out aircraft as fast as we can. The capacity which would have been utilized for the Dolphin is not being used for anything.

    Like, in either of the World Wars, I don't think any of the powers left any military manufacturing capability run idle because they couldn't afford to be pay them. So long as there were raw materials and men to run them, they ran. Of course this has an effect on the post-war economic situation, but that's life. Even when the currency of, say, Nazi Germany or the CSA was worth dog shit, their factories still ran.

    There are caveats, of course. If a factory is reliant on imports, they actually have to pay for them (or rely on an ally).

    Capability or resources can still be a limit where money isn't though, like if our factory can produce 100 dragonflies a month or 50 Dragon flies and 20 Dolphins, the military may go for no Dolphins. Or if the country is out of fuel they may not see the point in having us make more planes. Or it may have to cut back production because the limited numbers of engines are needed somewhere else.

    Just to be clear, I'm not knocking them cancelling the contract, the dice hath spoketh, but I feel like money shouldn't be as big of a deal in a wartime economy.

    REGARDLESS, I think we are all being a bit too salty. Remember the racer? There are still avenues to make sure this plane is used. We could try to sell it to a coast guard equivalent. We could try to sell it as a passenger/cargo plane outside of its humanitarian origins. There were calcs done on how this could potentially work as a torpedo bomber, we could try that.

    Let's see how it shakes out!
     
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    To my knowledge, I am the only one voting to try to sell it to the Coastal Rescue Service. That seems like a natural first approach, and a way of subtly weakening the dickish parts of the navy without harming the war effort. I suggest that others change their votes to include it as an option.
     
    [X] Approach the Coastal Rescue Service with the dolphin. Offer it for sale for its intended purpose, explain what we built it for and why the Navy doesn't want it, and cautiously suggest that if they took over that role they could get some significant prestige out of it and have less trouble competing for funding during the war.
    [x] Go fucking drinking, because fuck this shit.
     
    [X] Approach the Coastal Rescue Service with the dolphin. Offer it for sale for its intended purpose, explain what we built it for and why the Navy doesn't want it, and cautiously suggest that if they took over that role they could get some significant prestige out of it and have less trouble competing for funding during the war.
     
    [X] Approach the Coastal Rescue Service with the dolphin. Offer it for sale for its intended purpose, explain what we built it for and why the Navy doesn't want it, and cautiously suggest that if they took over that role they could get some significant prestige out of it and have less trouble competing for funding during the war.
    [x] Go fucking drinking, because fuck this shit.
    [x] Sell the plane as a fucking troop transport or something, peaceful use is nice, but a great plane going to waste is just a crying shame
     
    Only problem with selling it to the CRS is that they got nommed by the navy.

    [x] Have Mr. Ohara ask several Generals down for a demonstration, proceed to fly them across the fucking country with some reporters, and demonstrate that the Navy is actively a sack of fucking assholes who need to unfuck their heads from their asses.
    [x] Sell the plane as a fucking troop transport or something, peaceful use is nice, but a great plane going to waste is just a crying shame
    [x] Go fucking drinking, because fuck this shit.
    [x] Try and sell the plane as a utility vehicle to salt miners.
     
    Night_stalker said:
    Yeah right. THEY asked us to design the damn thing, then just as we're about to go to trial, it gets shitcanned?
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    Remember, at least two of the army projects were obviously stupid. One being an airliftable bunker that could land behind enemy lines with 100 people and act as a fort like, I dunno, a Terran building from Starcraft, and the other being a bomber capable of hitting the Kremlin. But some general was willing to accept bids anyway on the off chance anyone could pull it off. Even though it's pretty obvious they're not counting on either of those planes to win the war.

    The naval situation is ugly enough that the Navy may very well honestly prefer to spend resources on torpedo boats or submarines or whatever than on flying boats for maritime rescue. Which is more valuable to them, a capability they already have, but could afford more of, or a speculative capability?

    open_sketchbook said:
    We have a way of summarizing and aggregating that IRL. It's called money.

    It can be exchanged for goods and services.
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    I mean yes, but IRL when you get into war production this tend to get unraveled into its component goods and services again because the first thing a serious nation does about war production is effectively institute a command economy in the relevant sectors.

    Like, there are only a handful of firms in Akitsukuni that are capable of manufacturing powerful internal combustion engines. Kobayashi, Akibara, and so on. These engines are used for aircraft, but also may be used for high-powered vehicles such as trucks or certain kinds of motorboats. Assuming for the sake of argument that Kobayashi et al are working their engine production lines flat out at top speed, that presents a "cap" on the number of high-performance vehicles that can be built, including airplanes, heavy trucks, the aforementioned motorboats, and so on.

    Throwing more money at the problem won't help, unless it enables Kobayashi et al to expand their production lines, which may or may not be possible depending on, say, the availability of skilled machinists. Since the machinists in question are already working for someone doing something, just giving the engine-maker more money won't help unless they are able to 'rob Peter to pay Paul' and hire away some of the finite pool of relevant labor and resources to make engines instead of something else.

    ...

    Now, if there are still relevant machinists, engine-making tools, and so on being used in fields irrelevant to the war effort (say, manufacturing civilian automobiles), then throwing more money at the makers of aero engines helps the war effort. But sooner or later you 'max out' and hit a physical bottleneck in production capacity, and THAT is where you start to see tradeoffs that can't be expressed merely in terms of money.

    For example, the Sherman tank was designed to have both diesel and gasoline engine variants. Diesel is less flammable and arguably a better choice, but overwhelmingly it was gasoline-engined tanks that got produced. Why? Because of a bottleneck. The US only had so many production lines for diesel engines and so many refineries for diesel fuel, whereas we had copious facilities for making gasoline engines and gasoline. Even though diesel tanks were made, they were mostly exported to other countries, rather than complicate US military logistics by having different Sherman units in the same area needing shipments of different kinds of fuel.

    Just throwing more money at the problem wouldn't have enabled the US to upgrade the thousands of Shermans used by its own army to diesel. It would have taken a commitment of time, skilled labor, and tools to build new factorie to make the diesel engines, and it was decided that those resources would be better spent elsewhere.

    ...

    Or as another example, the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp engine was used in a wide variety of aircraft including but not limited to the F4F Wildcat, Douglas Devastator torpedo bomber, the Catalina flying boat, the B-24 Liberator, and the DC-3 and its military cousin the C-47. Pratt & Whitney made a LOT of Twin Wasps.

    But at any given moment in time they could only make so many R-1830s so quickly. Every B-24 made took up four of those engines, which meant two C-47s or Catalinas that couldn't be built, for lack of engines, or four Wildcats or Devastators. The converse was also true. You could build other kinds of planes that used other engines, sure, but all those specific models were in direct competition with one another for engines.

    And even if you threw more money at the problem of building more Twin Wasps, well, now you're paying Pratt & Whitney to open more production lines for the Twin Wasp, and their suppliers to make more parts for it. When they could instead be used other engines in the Wasp line for other planes (like the P-47, F6F, and A-26), or to make production lines for a different company like Wright whose engines, again, powered other planes.

    So at some point you couldn't just spend more money and get more C-47s; you'd have to also resign yourself to getting LESS of some other plane, specifically, in a tradeoff that might or might not seem worth it.

    ...

    Anyway, this isn't me saying "you're wrong to say they want to save money," but usually in a wartime mobilization situation, a given 'lack of money' problem can be traced back to a shortage of key forms of labor and supplies. In this case the most probable thing is the supply of aero engines, since that's usually the biggest bottleneck for a plane.
     
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    Naval Procurement Bureau Quest
  • Apocrypha
    • Anyway, I don't think we've seen one of these.

    Closed Notepad said:
    Naval Procurement Bureau : An Ayag Quest
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    You were hard at work when Admiral Akibara barged into your office. You hastily stans to greet him, but can barely start to bow before he slams a big file on your desk, and leaves with a single command "Fix This".

    You wonder what new disaster has transpired. The admiral's been in a faul mood since the start of the war, when his favored armored cruisers got trounced by the Caspian Battlefleet. The performance of the navy hadn't gotten any better since then, and the only reason the fleet hadn't been decimated during the Shell crisis was because the Caspian were even worse with logistics. Their fleet actually ran out of coal and had to be confined to port.

    Recent events haven't improved his mood(or yours, for that matter). The Caspians have constructed a ship that crawls across the Polar ice, and suddenly shifted their entire logistics northwards, leaving your coastal raiders and submarines fishing in a rapidly depleting net. To make matters worse, the army is being it's usually incompetent self, and coal transports have intensified. If they don't turn the tide soon, your newest innovations may be tested sooner than you'd like.

    After a moment to calm yourself, you put aside the report you were reading - a 50 pages long document best summarized as "the repair yards are full and everything will be delayed" and looked at the Admiral's urgent file. You're a bit suprised when you find it's a financial document. You're not accounting, you plan and organise trials. Paying for them is someone else's job. Then again, the admiral wouldn't make such a stupid mistake. Also, you really don't want to tell him that he made a mistake.

    The file is complex, but you get the gist soon enough. You're not getting the money. The Constitutional Nationalists seem to be thinking the war will be won on land and in the air, and have rejected the admiral's budgetary request. While there's still a considerable increase in funding, it's less than even your conservative projections. You need to cut expenses.

    You put the report aside, and grab the lost of outstanding trials, comprtitions and procurement. Most of these are essential (you'd be shot if you suggest to stop production on the new 16 inch battlecruiser guns) but there are many places where you can fiddle in the margins.
    Still, in the end you come short a considerable amount. You will need to cancel a trial.

    The first option is to cut the order of the Raimeiko class Torpedo Ram. Construction on several new vessels of the class hasn't started yet, but has already been budgetted. Even reducing the order by a single ship would save a considerable amount of money, without overtly disrupting anything. On the other hand, this would be politically implacable. The Raimeko and it's crew went down as heroes, damaging a Caspian battleship and nearly sinking another. Cancelling the vessels so soon after their sacrifice may be construed as an insult.

    The second option is to cancel the Naval Rescue Plane Competition. The design bureau's are unlikely to appreciate a cancellation so close to the trial date, but such thing happen in war. The cancellation itself would only barely cover the deficit, but that would be an isdue for accounting to solve.

    The last option would be not to start any new trials for a while. Unfortunately, Admiral Akibara scribbled a note on the back of tge financial documents demanding you organise a trial for a new long range submarine, to hunt the Caspian's Northern supply routes. Still, with nothing filed all you'd need to do is tell the admiral there's no money.

    [] Curtail Raimeko class construction
    [] Cancel the Naval Rescue Plane Competition
    [] Tell the Admiral you can't run his new Submarine Project


    Commenter 1 said:
    Well, first thing first. We can not cancel the submarine project. We're at 7 stress already, and while I still maintain that project was worth it, we need to take it easy now. Being chewed out by the admiral is a great way to raise stress, so let's avoid that.
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    Commenter 2 said:
    @ClosedNotepad, do we know who's competing for the Rescue Competition? We should know, and we don't want to cancel an Akibara design.
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    Closed Notepad said:
    The most promising entry comes from Ohara Airworks. Rumors say it's revolutionary. Akibara is working on other things, though they're supplying engines to some competitors.
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    Commenter 1 said:
    Ohara is working on the rescue craft.

    Well, that solves it for me. These guys thought they were clever to make their boat out of canvas last time. If they've designed something "revolutionary" then it'll be another overengineered plane that only looks marvellous on paper. Great if you only need it to last one race, terrible if you need something rugged.

    Besides, the admiral dislikes them, and as I said, his faul mood is spiking our stress.
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    Last edited:
  • Apocrypha
    • [x] Go fucking drinking, because fuck this shit.
    [x] Have Mr. Ohara ask several Generals down for a demonstration, proceed to fly them across the fucking country with some reporters, and demonstrate that the Navy is actively a sack of fucking assholes who need to unfuck their heads from their asses.
    -[x] Sell the plane as a fucking troop transport or something, peaceful use is nice, but a great plane going to waste is just a crying shame

    Okay let's basically reroll the trial for the Army. They haven't requested anything like this, but they trust you guys so they might take it anyway!

    If this doesn't go through, there's no major buyers for now. They might end up in some people's hands but that's the end of your interaction with it.

    Success Checklist
    - Matches client's requirements.
    - Exceeds client's expectations for performance.
    - Added features that appeal to the client. ✓
    - Good reputation with the client. ✓
    - Panders to the client. ✗
    - Features cutting-edge technology. ✓
    - Is Literally The Fastest Plane In The World. Again. ✓
    - Under cost. ✗

    Penalty Checklist
    - Is notably unreliable. ✗
    - Is obsolete on the world stage. ✗
    - Over budget.
    - Has obvious or glaring flaw. ✗
    - Bad reputation with client. ✗
    - Insulting to client. ✗
    - Hard to fly. ✗

    Roll 2d10+4.
    ​
     
    Rolling

    EDIT: Oh wow, ignore this, accidentally threw 6 sided die and was ninja'd anyway.
    Oksbad threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Second chance! Total: 9
    3 3 6 6
     
    Last edited:
    Cue the capabilities of the Dolphin getting out after we sell it to the Army and the quest finds they've been fired/reassigned/stuck with a major long term penalty.

    And the QM when asked 'What the hell?' mentions that never said there wouldn't be a cost to any of the options...

    The Ram being sacrificing political favours/the like and gaining stress but in exchange not funding something that is obsolete already.

    The trials cancellation giving a long term penalty to the war rolls.

    The Rescue Plane? Massive egg in the face of the Navy. Like, oh god that's not a moon sized egg.
     
    <thinks>

    ...+11 is the breakpoint for a partial in this ruleset, right? And I want to say that 18+ is full success?
     
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