[X] Large Scale Soil Enrichment (Helghan): Having developed advanced chemical and biological engineering techniques, it is now possible for the Republic to dramatically improve the soil quality across many parts of Helghan and boost crop yields. [Progress: 0/4]
[] Great Walls of Helghan (Helghan): With a solid understanding of how planetary systems respond to large-scale environmental changes, we can start work on safely disrupting the formation of Helghan's famous (and infamous) nation-sized sandstorms. [Progress: 1/4]

@prometheus110, I think that we had no progress in the Great Walls of Helghan while we had 1 progress on the Large Scale Soil Enrichment.
 
Well I suppose a bunch of reactionary nobles and officers is at a bare minimum no worse than Romano actually being in charge. I'm sure someone somewhere will disagree when I say working with the Maskirovka seems like a no brainer- but even for the cynics out there it would make sense to 'keep our enemies closer' so to speak.

The only real counter proposal I could see is 'we'll help you crack the Mandate and force an ORDI intervention if you commit to fully backing ORDI if the Taurian outback heats up'... that being said, if the situation is seriousness enough that ORDI intervention is a serious possibility on the horizon we should make sure everyone else at least knows this is a possibility. The last thing we want is for the Mandate and the Outback to reach critical points at the exact same time.
 
Well we can't exactly drop a MAWLR on their fortresses now but a few rounds of orbital fire will turn those silos into radioactive craters should invasion become necessary. Also this might be sort a good thing in that the Mandate is far less likely to do anything that will rock the boat.
 
According to the Capellan Confederation, Celestial Empress Romano Liao is no such thing. Though responsible for the Mandate's independence in the first place and empress for several years, Romano Liao was nonetheless the victim of a palace coup by a coalition of nobles over a decade ago. Backed by the Mandate's intelligence service and Mccarron's Armoured Cavalry, the coupists quietly deposed Liao in 3029 and made her a prisoner in her own palace; every public appearance and video message after that point faked, monitored, and/or manipulated to give the appearance that she still ruled the nation --something helped by the Capellan tradition of their ruler rarely being seen in public.
The Big Mac are greedy, but so's every other merc in the Inner Sphere. The Big Mac like to wreck things, but so do most Mechwarriors in the Inner Sphere. The Big Mac has been a pillar of military reliability in the Confederation for decades, that only changed recently.

The Liaos are the perfect employer for the hot-headed, itchy-trigger-fingered hired guns. They don't abuse free reign, they're cunning, they're passionate, they're goddamn lunatics who answer bruises to their pride with fields of dead bodies. In 3022 they spent almost the full year on deep raids that tore the Federated Suns up so badly the Davion opening act of the 4th War was to dogpile them specifically. Romano Liao especially loves these guys, enough to keep them free of purges. Even when some MAC members get antsy, she's kept her hands off them.

So my two cents is this: either Romano Liao did something really bad to get The Big Mac's ire, or the Capellans aren't telling the full story. Because Maccarron does not do backstabbing.
 
The way I see it, the choice on helping Capellan intelligence is a choice on whether we focus on the Outback or on the Mandate. I don't really care but I think we should time it so that they don't explote at the same time and we should try to have some resting time between one intervention and the next so as to avoid any kind of war exhaustion.
 
The points I can think for this turn (3043) are:
  • Second try at getting Snub-Nose PPCs (Star League Nautilus Base + Helm Core tech)
  • Annex 'Tarragona' for the minerals and fissionables - potential for more industry and a nuclear armament facility, because Nuclear Warheads are wonderful Warship-to-Warship weapons.
  • Where is Sun-Tzu Liao?
  • Talk and plan with the Taurians about the Fed-Rat Outback
So my two cents is this: either Romano Liao did something really bad to get The Big Mac's ire, or the Capellans aren't telling the full story. Because Maccarron does not do backstabbing.

So I would say our action for the Capellan Spycraft decision is 'Yes, but we're going to work on getting independent confirmation on Romano (and Sun-Tzu) Liao's status in the Celestial Mandate.'
 
Does he even exist? If he only appeared in-quest in 3033 but Romano was kicked off the throne in 3029 (and all subsequent media appearances faked/manipulated), who's to say he's actually real?

Just because the lady is a 'de jure' (false / figurehead) leader, that doesn't mean their motherhood and child are fake. They said Romano's leadership is fake, not that she's actually dead and those pubic appearances were of a body double/imposter.

Some of the best lies have components of the truth to it...

And the question itself doesn't discount the need / want to make the efforts to confirm all that anyway.
 
If he is real, then I won't be surprised if they murder his mother in a couple years and have him act as a child-emperor puppet of the ruling faction. He seems as much a victim of the Celestial Mandate as the average citizen.
 
@prometheus110, I think that we had no progress in the Great Walls of Helghan while we had 1 progress on the Large Scale Soil Enrichment.
You mis-remember
-[X] Large Scale Soil Enrichment (Helghan): Having developed advanced chemical and biological engineering techniques, it is now possible for the Republic to dramatically improve the soil quality across many parts of Helghan and boost crop yields. [Progress: 0/4]
With alkaline soil, salty oceans, freezing temperatures, little water, and a toxic atmosphere, Helghan was a planet hostile to Terran organisms on almost every level. Despite more than a century of ardour and adaptation, despite backbreaking labour and regular privation, life on Helghan remained locked in a constant struggle; huge expenditures made to cleanse soil and protect crops in exchange for mere bushels and buckets. Bled dry by imperialism and then just plain bled by militarism, the people of Helghan never had a chance to develop the technologies needed to alter their planet... until 3042.

-[X] Planetary Xenofarming (Helghan): Recent breakthroughs in the domestication of alien lifeforms through genetic engineering and other methods will allow the Republic to domesticate certain species of hardy (yet edible and ecologically unthreatening) animals for use on Helghan. [Progress: 0/4]
A harsh world where livestock often ate the wrong things or were themselves eaten by Helghan's wildlife, raising animals for food was a difficult task at the best of times. Though certain species were hardy enough to survive the aridity and temperatures and clever enough to avoid deadly plants, farmers nonetheless had to spend inordinate amounts of effort to ensure their herds' health and the rewards were often minimal. However, with the acquisition of advanced domestication technologies from the Niops Association in late '41, the Republic's Ministry for Biological Development realised that it had an opportunity to transform livestock rearing on Helghan and moved to take full advantage as the seasons changed.
We did Xenofarming and Large Scale Soil Enrichment.

As for what the Capellans told us... well. It's quite the tale, does explain a few things, and I can't see why they'd lie about something like this.

I do believe we should coordinate our efforts. The Mandate and Outback exploding at the same time might even work out favorably. There's a lot of Capellan worlds do there that might decide they don't like being part of the Fedrats and also split off.
[] Military-grade Cybernetics: Previously reserved for repairing or replacing lost organs and limbs, recent developments in cybernetics have resulted in organs and limbs that are superior to the originals in every aspect. Though hesitant to raise the idea, a small but growing collection of people within the Helghan military and government have carefully broached the topic of cybernetically augmented soldiers. Expensive to create, install, and maintain, deployment of these cybernetics would be limited to the Republic's special forces but would dramatically increase their effectiveness in combat.
Just in time for Edgerunners to have broken so many hearts!
 
Some things for the design section.

The Gaia is a 1 million ton space vessel made to assist in colonizing operations.

While there are many planets suitable for human populations, no planet is a point exact copy of Terra. Many pose significant challenges for human habitation, as well as for terran plants and animals brought along. The scale of these challenges also has a range. Some are very minor, slightly higher or lower atmospheric pressures then humans find comfortable, temperatures or the immediate availability of water. Others can be deadly and destructive, extreme geological instability, nutrient poor or dead soil, invasive bacteria or highly aggressive wildlife.

While terraforming technologies exist or are being developed for these more extreme issues, minor issues tend to be ignored or left alone. They rarely develop into a problem that could make or break a colony, and the cost to make these changes is often viewed to be out of scale to the potential benefits. More than that, terraforming equipment has simply been expensive and specialized.

The Gaia is a solution that takes advantage of new technologies, and the extensive experience the Helghast have gained over the years with their many terraforming and colonization projects. A somewhat modular platform, a Gaia is to be preceded by a small team of experts to follow up on initial studies and determine possible slight changes to the planet, or if more extreme terraforming is necessary. Either way an appropriate loadout is set up on a Gaia and the ship is sent to the target planet.

A Gaia can be configured to suit any needs small or light terraforming could have, though some equipment is integrated. It can launch solar mesh to help cool a planet, or deploy mirrors to focus sunlight for warming. It has on-board bioscience labs, with both animal pens and grow beds. This allows for testing local lifeforms and their potential uses for settlers, including potential genetic modifications. It also dedicated cargo space and large maintenance bays for terrain modifications machinery and powerful gravity lifts for use in comet based water seeding. And of course huge cargo holds for anything and everything in between. It also has some manufacturing equipment, though it is assumed the vessel will be supply by a nearby factory ship or a more industrialized planet.

While not able to handle large scale terraforming projects by itself, it can provide invaluable aid to such projects by making adjustments during the process and quickly compensating for unforeseen consequences during such enormous works.
As the Helghan Republic grew, the demand for off world colonies grew with it. While the demand has tapered with so many inhabitable and long settled worlds having joined the Republic, and Helghan itself undergoing long overdue terraforming, many are still seeking their personal greener pastures.

Rare is the Helghan seeking the rural lifestyle however, and rarer is a colony for which that alone would be worthwhile. Helghast colonies are rugged, but also technologically sophisticated. Many colony buildings require specialized and expensive components. And even basic structures require huge amounts of raw materials to turn into buildings and roads, basic ground vehicles and specialized industry mechs, farming equipment and everything in between. And of course, every single one of these things needs its own tools and components for when they break.

Enter the Prometheus-class. At over a million tons and fed by Panner-class asteroid miners, the Prometheus class is capable of producing everything a colony needs to become self-sustaining, though somewhat indirectly. While it can create a variety of prefabricated buildings and colony equipment, it is only in small numbers, and most of that capacity will, by design, be taken up producing replacement parts and repair tools. The vast majority of its industrial output is instead focused on creating new lines for production on the colony itself. Instead of building agriculture mechs, it builds a mech line. Instead of deploying road layers, it builds a small road layer factory. Instead of supplying tools and die, it builds a tool and die machine shop. Instead of simply providing tools, it makes tools to make tools.

While hailed as a very forward thinking design, many colonists that have relied on one during the early days of settlement have issues with its small initial production capacity, necessitating the buying and transporting of many essential vehicles and machines from off world. While glad to be given the means to become self-sufficient, many feel that it is slower at doing so then it should be, given it's size and power. There is also an issue of long term support, as once the groundside industry has begun the Prometheus-class quickly lags behind.

However, many are glad to have one in orbit regardless, and the quick standing up of local industries makes its redundancy a minor issue, solved by sending it to a new planet to support a new colony.
New colonies have many requirements. No worthwhile nation in the 31 century undertakes such an endeavor lightly. Even on the distant Terra of long ago, colonization was not done by simply dropping off some hundred men and women with a sack of potatoes and a herd of cattle. They came with tools, building materials, many food supplies and what medicines were known. Carpenters, masons, hunters and administrators, people skilled in one form or another. As it has been, so shall it be.

Hyperions are built with such thoughts in mind. The class is based on a ship owned by the Murkem's Marauders, a Periphery based mercenary group. Helghan engineers had a great deal of time to study the old dropship during their employment by the Republic. Much of the design for the Hyperion is the same, though much of the machinery meant to service Battlemechs has been repurposed its intended work, and has Helghan conveniences such as on board gravity and gravity lifts. The Hyperion is also armed, mostly with an assortment of medium to large lasers, as well as a few gauss cannons. The lasers are detachable, and are usually set up around the colony site after landing.

While the hundred thousand ton dropship does not bring a great deal of people, it does bring a foundation. Brought to colony worlds by Jumpship or Warptrader, a Hyperion will land on a future colony site and begin to unload and set up the necessary infrastructure. Water sources logged by previous expeditions are tapped and water and sewer systems are installed. Electrical lines are buried along with fiber optic cable. Lots for homes and businesses are designed and roads are paved. The beginnings of a future planned city, or even merely a town, are laid.

From there the Hyperion's manufacturing bays will produce building supplies and tools. While not capable of building a full colony by itself, it provides the heavy equipment and industrial mechs to build everything from houses, apartments, shops, office buildings and other homing and commercial buildings. Typically they are supplied by the much larger transport vessel bringing the colony's future inhabitants.

The men and women of the Hyperions typically do not live in the colony, nor are they intended as colonists themselves. A small number stay onboard, living and working in the ship itself. The majority usually live in a collection of self sufficient prefabricated structures that were brought along. These have their own closed power and water systems, though they are typically connected to the colony's systems later. They are not meant to become part of the colony, and are either packed back up when the ship leaves, or are left behind to be cannibalized.

When the town or city is deemed to have progressed enough the ship is no longer necessary, they move on to the next site somewhere else on the planet, if not to a new world.
Colonies require massive amounts of raw materials. They need iron, copper, water, sand, and gravel. They need basic materials to make less basic materials to eventually make advanced materials, to feed into construction projects and foundries and machine shops and chemical laboratories. And simply acquiring these basic materials is difficult, polluting and expensive, more so in the earliest days of a colony when everything is ramping up.

This is a task the Stripper-Class was designed around. Rather than use fast and cheap but environmentally damaging mining techniques, Stripper-Class ships instead set up on utterly uninhabitable worlds in the same system as future colonying. Worlds far too close or too far from their sun, with weak or excessive gravity, tidally locked rotations. Worlds that do not support life of their own and never could.

The Stripper-Class settles down on these worlds and begins tearing at the planet's easily exploited resources. Ore deposits are marked and ripped from the ground in massive amounts, ore processing techniques using cheap but dangerous chemicals leave a toxic sludge in its wake. The Stripper-Class is not meant for sustainable mining operations, nor is it meant to be clean. It is meant to extract and refine useful metal and minerals as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Safety is also a minimal concern. Most of the work is handled by cheap and easily replaced drones. Drones do the digging, the loading, and prospecting. Drones also transport the refined raw materials to the destination colony, mostly using gravity slingshots at optimal transfer windows. Once it reaches the destination planet, the drone hauler puts itself into orbit to be retrieved by ship from the colony, usually a Prometheus-class.

Anything that requires a human is done inside the ship. The ship itself has a proportionally small crew, and while cramped at times does have a few luxuries.

Stripper-Class ships are not meant to work on a world with a planned permanent population, nor are they legally allowed to. While the ships themselves are reasonably priced, the way they work can be described as cheap and wasteful, which is of little concern to a colony looking to quickly get on its feet and won't be concerned about how it happens.
 
[] Construct two Hasta-class cruiser Squadrons: Task your shipyards with constructing Six Hasta Cruisers. [Can be taken multiple times a turn]
How does it work if/when we want to retrofit ships instead of building new ones? Ie, upgrading our current Hastas into... I think it's Hasta-IIIs?

Also, some general questions:
- How are the refuges that decide to join the Republic roughly spread out amongst our worlds?
- How are things looking in regards to our current Republic-internal politics? Any particular issues that crop up with some regularity but don't make it into the main turn-updates for some reason or another?
- How are the various worlds who joined us - particularly the ones that have been with us for a while, like Portland or Independence - doing in terms of technological sophistication and industrial capacity, when compared to Helghan itself? I know there's the index with the letter-evaluation on the frontpage, but that's a bit vague overall.
 
So, I was thinking about all that free real state between us and the Celestial Mandate. Are we planning to colonize the whole of it? Because if not I would suggest that instead of integrating the Trinity League we shape them into an independent republic to be used as a buffer between us and the IS (we would obviously also add them to ORDI).
 
So, I was thinking about all that free real state between us and the Celestial Mandate. Are we planning to colonize the whole of it? Because if not I would suggest that instead of integrating the Trinity League we shape them into an independent republic to be used as a buffer between us and the IS (we would obviously also add them to ORDI).
IIRC the general plan is to nomnom as many of those worlds as possible, TL included, because we need that population, territory, and resources if we want to stay relevant in the long term considering the size-disparity between us and the other ORDI members.
 
I don't know if it is just me but every time i see the McEvans's ice ball i always go thinking that exist there a super high securited facilitie that study state secret tecnologies, like biological weapons, more powerfull nukes or just a big fuck you anti-air system to protect the planet to not be nuked, my crazy theory aside we could very well use those planets that don't have any value to try and test our weapons and ships, like trainament for orbital bombardment,how to dropship your mech right those kind of things like its not like anyone will need them may as well give the military their little playground.
 
Plan incoming...

I do want to counter-offer the Capellans by saying that we'll cooperate, but the propaganda will follow our artistic direction. Meaning that we'll be working on creating a revolution from within that will not want to just rejoin a dictatorial regime, but... will have terms and conditions apply.
 
I believe a counter offer is the best course of action due to the fact that we just started a massive ideological movement within the mandate and if the people overthrow the nobles they don't want to go back to the Capellans that would just cause instability and the Capellans would not agree for a nation of worlds that were rightfully part of their territory to be independent from their control so a Compromise IS NEED to provide stability in the region
 
@prometheus110 I thought expanding the WCC to cover all the Marian worlds, as well as all the unaligned worlds that were willing, added +4 and +8 respectively to the WCC Progress. Will they just be separate projects that the WCC will embark on after finishing their current project?

Also, can we add +2 progress per AP on top of the WCC's base progress if we divert an action to it?
 
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