Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest

[Draz]

@4WheelSword

Q1: What are these two sensor-studded ships like? What tonnage? Any visible weapons or other features?

Q2: Who have the Hermosan's sent this time? Is it Flotilla Admiral Meyers again?

Q3: In the previous update, were we choosing the response of Heimdall Command or HSWS HQ in Home? I interpreted it as us making choices at Home, but in the future I think it might be good if we delegate these kinds of decisions to local commanders because the jump lag is huge. I don't know if that means that we as players still get to make the decisions or whether we pick a commander and you decide what they do.

The Hermosan Spacy local commander at Equus or Sinone apparently made the choice to jump a fleet, plus these two unknown sensor ships into Heimdall before they could have received word from Hermosa.

Q4: Did we get some kind of idea about when the Vargr world or Sinone were conquered?

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I don't think we got much from interrogating the crew. I was hoping that their general policy of no contact with unknown aliens was what we'd get some insight into by asking about that, not the specific reason why the observer ship didn't talk.

No takers for asylum? It would be a hard sell, but my offer would be "You can stay with us in comfort but some isolation and ignorance and we'll send you home if you change your mind, or you can move here and we'll set you up with a generous stipend or job and give you freedom, but you won't be allowed to leave Home-controlled space until things are calmer between us and Hermosa."

Intelligence summary:

- Hermosa has an imperial core and 3 satellite worlds. Equus and the Vargr world were conquered. Sinone maybe not, or conquered much earlier.
- Space-rome vibes intensify: military service conveys citizenship. (Remember Buenos Airies! Service equals Citizenship!)
- Their Navy is the "Hermosan Spacy" (Lol, it's HSWS and the HS)
- The Broadsword class is a "frigate"
- New ship class: some kind of sensor/spotter ship?

[ ] Order the Staging Point reserve to Heimdall and order the Hermosans out of our space.
-[x] Return the crew, unless any seek asylum
-[x] Negotiate joint compensation to the families of the dead crew, the Hermosan Spacy bears primary responsibility for their unsafe jump practice and unauthorised close approaches to HSWS facilities.
-[x] We will try to keep and study the HCP Glaive, but we can pretend to negotiate over that and argue salvage rights, etc. Stall them while we remove samples, scan it, etc, if possible with drones.

 

[KleverKil'Vanya]

I say tell them to fuck off, tired of these chuckle fucks acting like they have the right to freely spy on neighbors with zero consequences

 

[C_Z]

Smh I told you guys


I'm not sure if we CAN keep the Glaive at this point. Doing so will almost certainly escalate this incident into a shooting war. That said, I really, really want to...

 

[Draz]

Cool, so a Mothership, four Glaives, and two EWAR/Intelligence ships. So we might not be able to get the captured Glaive out of Heimdall, but we can certainly make them use ordinance to destroy it.

For future pd ships, is flak a thing? Or are there other systems that can deal damage to groups of missiles in traveller?

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See the info post: Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest Original - Art Quest - Sci-Fi

We currently have frag missiles and turreted "point defence lasers" for shooting down incoming ordnance, "sandcasters" for reducing the effectiveness of beam weapons, and chaff launchers to disrupt targetting of all kinds.

If we had designed interceptor small craft then they could also have shot down incoming ordnance with the same kinds of weapons.

Edit: I think we're using triple turrets with "beam lasers" (different from "point defence lasers") for point defence too. I don't know how those fare at point defence versus shooting other ships.

"sandcasters" have essentially zero range
"point defence lasers" have a n optimum range of "short" (<12,500 km)
"beam lasers" have "medium" (<100,000 km)
missiles in general can go up to "distant" range, but the further they go the more likely they are to fail

I don't know how good we are at spotting incoming ordnance, though, or how much the incoming ordnance can move, so I don't know what our maximum range for effectively engaging incoming ordnance with beam lasers or frag missiles is.

 

[Draz]

Smh I told you guys

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If we were giving orders from Home then we had no choice, the Hermosan fleet would have arrived and made its demands before our response saying to nick it arrived.

If we were playing as Heimdall command then, yes, maybe we made a silly choice, but it wasn't clear who we were playing as.

 

[theajl]

I'm not sure if we CAN keep the Glaive at this point. Doing so will almost certainly escalate this incident into a shooting war.

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And letting the expansionist imperial power push us around won't lead to an invasion? They've repeatedly intruded on our sovereign space, ignored/rebuffed attempts at diplomacy, made escalating threatening manoeuvres, and now their fucking around has killed five of our servicemen. That's not the kind of thing a nation can just let go if it wants to still be a nation, long-term.

Damage control, at this point, seems to me to be making sure they're clearly the ones who start the war, rather than avoiding it.

[ ] DRAFT OPLAN We Didn't Start The Fire
-[ ] Return the crew, unless any seek asylum
-[ ] Negotiate joint compensation to the families of the dead crew - including our dead crew - but the Hermosan Spacy bears primary responsibility for their unsafe jump practice and unauthorised close approaches to HSWS facilities.
-[ ] The Glaive was lost performing an unsafe jump after making aggressive manoeuvres while intruding on Home Space and not responding to contact attempts. It is our rightful salvage.
--[ ] Use any have blackbox/sensor/bridge recordings we have that show this?
--[ ] Keep working on the Glaive (with volunteer personnel, given the risk of missiles) and see if we can find and disable that scuttling system they mentioned, or rule it out as a ruse.
-[ ] Put Home Space on war footing, and contact the Aslan to invite their participation if this does turn into a shooting war.
-[ ] Order the Staging Point reserve to Heimdall, but don't shoot first. Continue attempts at diplomacy (and getting reliable records of it if at all possible) until and unless Hermosa starts a shooting war.

About ten twenty edits later, I think I have the rough shape worked out Suggestions welcome!

I don't know what deepfake/deepfake detection tech looks like under our current rules, so I don't know how useful those recordings would be, but it's in there as an option (@4WheelSword?)

 

[KNakamura]

At this point the shooting war is inevitable. But do you really think now is a good time to start it with their ships in your territory?

 

[Night]

I'm perfectly willing to give the ship back, but they warned us, and we warned them, that flights into our respective space were not safe, and there will be no compensation.

EDIT: Look, every last thing on that ship that transmits, lases, computes, shoots, launches, or provides thrust has been examined or measured or downloaded or all of the above in two weeks, or we should fire the entire MIC. No it's not an analysis of the hull materials, but we should have known to a ten percent error bar what that ship is capable of within the first week, or at least been able to derive it.

 

[theajl]

At this point the shooting war is inevitable. But do you really think now is a good time to start it with their ships in your territory?

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I'm not sure there's any good time to start it, really. I suppose we could pretend to give the Glaive back and then jump after them and start the war ourselves with an ambush, but I don't feel like that's in-character for a Navy who chose to recommend banning our primary naval armament on ethical grounds. I want to try taking the high road, even if it's not the optimal game choice.

Though that being said, "jumped in our fleet to regain parity against the aggressor fleet that jumped into our space on the heels of an intrusion that killed five of our servicemen, and then they starting shooting at us" is a huge difference in optics from "duplicitously pretended to come to a diplomatic agreement and then immediately started a war to avoid fulfilling it" or however else they could spin it. That could make a real serious difference when it comes time to make peace.

 

[4WheelSword]

Q1: What are these two sensor-studded ships like? What tonnage? Any visible weapons or other features?

Q2: Who have the Hermosan's sent this time? Is it Flotilla Admiral Meyers again?

Q3: In the previous update, were we choosing the response of Heimdall Command or HSWS HQ in Home? I interpreted it as us making choices at Home, but in the future I think it might be good if we delegate these kinds of decisions to local commanders because the jump lag is huge. I don't know if that means that we as players still get to make the decisions or whether we pick a commander and you decide what they do.

Q4: Did we get some kind of idea about when the Vargr world or Sinone were conquered?

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1) Sub-2k, not overly visibly armed (some small turrets), very clearly sensor platforms.
2) It is not Meyers.
3) Home. You're always making decisions for home. There has not been a doctrine of commander initiative thus far. If you would like that, I would welcome it but it needs to be stated.
4) It's not clear that they were. Sinone is certainly a colony founded by Hermosa, not conquered. Meanwhile, the Vargr world is... well no ones been particularly clear.

I don't know what deepfake/deepfake detection tech looks like under our current rules, so I don't know how useful those recordings would be, but it's in there as an option (@4WheelSword?)

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Sorry, could you clarify the question?

 

[Rat King]

I'd like to avoid shooting but also really wanna keep the ship lol.

On the other hand, cooling border tensions would be nice.

 

[Draz]

Thanks for those replies!

Draft plan:

[ ] OPLAN: Initiative
-[x] Write-in: Give Heimdall Command more autonomy. The fleets in Heimdall and Staging point will report to them. Their missions are: 1 to prevent or deter an invasion of HSWS-controlled space; 2 to bloody the enemy if they invade and retreat in good order if overwhelmed; 3 to gather intelligence on the Hermosan Spacy. They are not authorised to start the war on their own initiative, but they may invade or raid any of Hermosan space on their own initiative if they have beeen attacked.
--[x] OOC: it could be cool and thematic if we had a few character descriptions to pick between for the commander.
--[x] Order the Staging Point reserve to Heimdall, they report to Heimdall Command now
-[x] Heimdall command is responsible for negotiations. These are our suggestions.
--[x] Return the crew, unless any seek asylum
--[x] We want and offer joint compensation to the families of the dead crew from both services, the Hermosan Spacy bears primary responsibility for their unsafe jump practice and unauthorised close approaches to HSWS facilities.
--[x] Try to keep and study the HCP Glaive, but you can pretend to negotiate over that and argue salvage rights, etc. to stall them while removing samples, etc.

 

[Josiah]

Sorry, could you clarify the question?

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How likely under our tech level is to fake the " blackbox/sensor/bridge recordings"? Not that we want to fake them, but that we are concerned that Hermosans would decide that we've faked them.

 

[Rat King]

[ ] OPLAN: Open Hand
-[ ] Reinforce Heimdall from the Staging Point Reserve. Heimdall Sector Command is authorized to take initiative and autonomy to defend themselves and gather intelligence, but should not start a war.
-[ ] Return the crew.
-[ ] Indicate we are open to returning the vessel, provided their government meet with us to discuss how to solve the ongoing border tensions. Remind them that we asked them to stop intruding into our space and that the Glaive was repeatedly warned and hailed. If they want assurances that we are not going to attack them (and their ship back), we also want assurances that they are not building up to attack us.
--[ ] Allow them to send personnel to examine the ship and their crew.
-[ ] Refuse compensation for damage to the ship, but offer compensation for the dead, provided the Hermosans pay for the dead on our side. The deaths are a tragedy, but they were in our system, after all and we should not pay to repair their vessel after it intruded into protected space.

 

[Josiah]

Things to consider in future

1) We have a case of misjump, which could be turned into a case study. It could be useful if we and SIS conducted a series of experiments on misjumps and jump stabiity/accuracy. At the very least we should have the black boxes and the various recordings. OOC: We would not gain jump tech tl from this (don't think so), but I think we could gain something.
1.1) consider establishing training space station at Home. We need to keep our crews and officers sharp and support (preferably raise) their skills. In light of current events, our senior officers would benefit from politics/diplomacy training - but generally there are a lot of skills to train, any crewmember can benefit
1.2) research stations could be built too? Though at the moment there are not THAT many things to research. Aside from maybe Shambala which we are already researching sorta? (OOC: I WANT A REPORT ON SHAMBALA LOL)
2) consider creating a doctrine for command autonomy. At our distances, with our jump capability the time lag between Home and Heimdall is ridiculous. And there is a Hexos, which is even further! Also 1.1 and politcs/diplomacy training for senior officers.
3) Propaganda event - we should not forget that this event should be spinned and turned to our purposes. We can show it to Citizen Council, we can show it to Plenty to maybe convince them that we are good reliable guys while Hermosans are not really. We should show it to Nova Refugio and Hexos too, and even to Cassalon/Xyri governments.
4) I thought of some other point and forgot it lol

 

[Fireiy]

I see no reason to give the ship back. If they want to start shooting with a good chunk of their fleet in range of a MDS when they have allegedly been doing purely defensive scouting missions, then that is a rather significant leap of escalation from them. They can have footage from us and their ship, but the ship itself is not going back to them. Their U-2 has crashed and they have been repeatedly refused to communicate, why should we agree to their demands? Because we want to appease them in the face of force? That will not get us any guarantees of peace.

Do we have any idea what that mothership is armed with? And exactly how many ships of our own do we have in Heimdall right now? I'm not entirely sure we need to scramble reinforcements there and doing so will definitely escalate tensions, we may have enough to see off the Hermosan forces there already especially with the MDS being there.

[ ] We cannot give them the Glaive, it is an intelligence boon.

 

[Rat King]

Do we have any idea what that mothership is armed with? And exactly how many ships of our own do we have in Heimdall right now? I'm not entirely sure we need to scramble reinforcements there and doing so will definitely escalate tensions, we may have enough to see off the Hermosan forces there already especially with the MDS being there.

[ ] We cannot give them the Glaive, it is an intelligence boon.

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Heimdall should have:

2xCFA or 1xCFA and 1xMMV, 4xIC-III, 3xFrigates, 1xMDS, 1xstrike squadron (currently FB 40-tonners).

Total tonnage of 12k; Hermosans have 4xBroadswords and 1xMothership, plus the two EWAR/scout vessels for total tonnage of ~16k with the caveat that we do not know what weapons the Mothership carries.

Maybe send another cruiser group (1xCFA, 2xIC, 1 or 2xFrigate) but not the whole reserve force.

 

[C_Z]

We should also send our minelayer to Heimdall. This is the ideal situation for it - defending a point target that the other side wants to get to.

 

[Draz]

I don't really want us to get into the details of building research stations, training officers etc. I think it was kind of a drag when we did the whole articles of war stuff.

I'd like it if we could just trust that the obvious stuff is being done properly and we can focus on the top level stuff: doctrine; ship design; exploration; and managing various conflicts or disasters imposed on us by our bosses, allies, subordinates and enemies. And if we do actually do some major ops then it might be fun to micromanage the plan a bit, idk.

 

[Draz]

We should also send our minelayer to Heimdall. This is the ideal situation for it - defending a point target that the other side wants to get to.

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Do we have one? In 9-8 we ordered a modular conveyor that we could use as an auxiliary mine layer, but we haven't done any design work on that or the mines, nor has the GM commented on it at all.

 

[theajl]

Sorry, could you clarify the question?

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If we go "here's all our sensor/blackbox/bridge/cockpit recordings of the relevant bits of the incident (sensitive military information redacted)", how credibly would we expect they could dismiss it as fake? Are we able to create fake footage/audio good enough we can't tell it's fake, or is doctored footage still detectable with Home's techbase?

 

[Rat King]

We should also send our minelayer to Heimdall. This is the ideal situation for it - defending a point target that the other side wants to get to.

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It's still under construction, unfortunately.

 

[4WheelSword]

If we go "here's all our sensor/blackbox/bridge/cockpit recordings of the relevant bits of the incident (sensitive military information redacted)", how credibly would we expect they could dismiss it as fake? Are we able to create fake footage/audio good enough we can't tell it's fake, or is doctored footage still detectable with Home's techbase?

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Is that something you are capable of? Probably yes.
Is it possible in the time period? Not really.
Do you think that they think that is something you are capable of? Yes.
Does it matter whether or not they believe you can if they accuse you of it to manufacture a casus belli? Not really.

 

[Josiah]

I don't really want us to get into the details of building research stations, training officers etc. I think it was kind of a drag when we did the whole articles of war stuff.

I'd like it if we could just trust that the obvious stuff is being done properly and we can focus on the top level stuff: doctrine; ship design; exploration; and managing various conflicts or disasters imposed on us by our bosses, allies, subordinates and enemies. And if we do actually do some major ops then it might be fun to micromanage the plan a bit, idk.

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I don't want the training station to be a drag either, we can generally decide some options, allocate a yardspace to it and be done with it in one post (I think about it more in fleet action terms, maybe our crews would have better skill and therefore fight/evade/whatever better in future).

I am really more interested in multi-post (mis)Jump research event with automated test ship(s) jumping, being recovered, us making decisions on it. I think it could be neat. Rewards are nice to have too, but I kinda want some scoyence events, once in a while. And this could be a good one.

research stations - well, there is nothing really to research for now. Maybe we can build one in future, if we find something cool.

 

[4WheelSword]

Do we have one? In 9-8 we ordered a modular conveyor that we could use as an auxiliary mine layer, but we haven't done any design work on that or the mines, nor has the GM commented on it at all.

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I may have never mentioned it outside of the HSWS info post but it's been under construction ever since