Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest
- Thread starter 4WheelSword
- Start date
- Original Art Quest Sci-Fi
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Plan: Target Identification
I want to see what C_Z can cook up if we give him virtual crew.
I want to see what C_Z can cook up if we give him virtual crew.
0t4n1z3r019
Member of the HAFPTG
- Location
- Philippines
[X] OPLAN: Pin and Kill
12-8: Waiting For Response
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Select two of the following: Electronics and Sensors, Command & Control
Vice-Marshall Omarov requests orders, firm orders, on how to proceed in Menorb: Reach out to Menorb to determine their status as best as possible and ideally prevent their interference. If conditions encourage it, HSWS forces are to conduct a hit-and-run raid targeting the two ships parked in low orbit. Non-lethal methods (decoys, jamming, etc.) are to be used to degrade Menorb's ability to attack us during the raid, with retaliation against Menorb (should they respond) to be primarily concerned with ensuring the HSWS' force survival and proportionate to actions that have been explcitly identified as being perpetrated by Menorb. The purpose of the raid is to either rescue the ships if they are friendly or capture an Unknown Northern Aggressor spacecraft following crippling by ion torpedoes if possible, and if not, destroy or damage the ones that are present. Following the raid, HSWS forces are to depart the system if they are in a state capable of doing so.
Vice-Marshall Amir Adabayo requests a military escort for his Scout Flotilla to enable it to punch through enemy threats and discover exactly where the stealth ships are coming from: Assign a moderate escort to enable the mission.
Available Budget: 1,041.8875MCr
Current Dockyard Usage: 21,400/21,500Dtons + 9,400Dtons in civilian yards
Current Pilot Usage: 85/100
Menorb
Six weeks after the last report, circa 19y04m03w, a shipment of ion torpedoes is delivered to Menorb along with the MAT HSWS Banka-Mundi and the Patrol Carrier HSWS Hadad. It takes several days to unload and reload the magazines of several warships without the benefits of a dockyard, but it's still easily enough done in the depths of space. With the force on high alert, and Vice-Marshall Omarov gripping the arms of her command chair, the task force moves into the inner system. A jump-flash is detected not long after the movement begins, but it will be two weeks before any potential reinforcements can arrive. It can, frankly, be ignored.
There is limited resistance. Two small ships, delicate little things built on technology that hasn't been seen around Home for half a century, are struck by ion torpedoes and disabled before FLF platoons from the Banka-Mundi go aboard to ensure they will not cause further trouble. Casualties are light on both sides, advanced combat armour resilient against the clubs and snub-guns of the defenders.
Communications are had, with dismal consequences. The government of Menorb, though previously friendly to the HSWS, now considers them trespassers and aggressors. Three months occupying the outer edges of the system and interdicting the (non-existent but potential) civilian traffic has apparently poisoned the well and no objection that they have refused prior contact will change that. Requests to relieve the hull in orbit - now identified as the HSWS Apolake - into the custody of the HSWS task force are also ignored. The force enters a combat formation and engages.
The problem with a planet like Menorb, is that a population of multiple-billions can equip a defence force many times the size of any approaching task force. Ion Torpedo strikes, delivered from long range by interstellar cruisers and from short range by the carriers' attack boats, quickly disable hostile stations in orbit before FLF assets are deployed to occupy them. It is only then that the 'enemy' unveils their most dangerous weapon.
Several hundred missile launches are detected on the surface of Menorb, some of them light and slow, some of them heavy and fast, and no less deadly. The Banka-Mundi begins counter-fire against noted launch locations, ortillery missiles slamming down through the atmosphere, taking advantage of being at the top of the gravity well to hammer silos and mobile launchers with kinetic strikes. The task force goes defensive, shooting down scores of missiles, evading others, and spoofing even more. The technological difference between the two opposed forces is obvious as many of the ground-launched missiles simply go wide and do not come anywhere near their target. Nonetheless, several hits are recorded and the MAT is punished particularly hard for being in low-orbit for counter-battery fire. The commander (Colonel Palles Natlatova) waves off the damage and continues firing on ground targets whilst dispatching several additional shuttles to board and occupy enemy facilities.
An engineering team, escorted by a full platoon of FLF infantry, boards the hulk of the HSWS Apolake to assess it for potential rescue. Unfortunately had she not already been beyond repair before her capture, three months in enemy hands has seen her systems torn apart, assessed and barely re-assembled. Wiring spews from freshly-cut orifices, panels have been roughly pulled away from their seams. Even the deck-plating hasn't been allowed the grace of immunity. It is decided that the best option would be to destroy the hull and deny any further use of it to the enemy. Charges are placed and as the engineers and their FLF escorts depart they are detonated. The Apoloke no longer exists.
Vice-Marshall Omarov's task force returns to Home in 19y05m03w, just in time for yard space to open up so that ships can enter for minor repairs and refits and so that the Banka-Mundi can have large parts of her hull plating replaced. At the same time, a new task force is formed out of ships that were not part of the offensive mission, unifying with the Scout Flotilla under Vice-Marshall Adabayo. They will head North in force in order to find out exactly where the enemy is coming from and why. It is expected that the mission will take between two and four months depending on exactly what they find out there. They will also be taking a courier with them to despatch at two months, so that Home knows when this force is actually overdue.
This will also be the first deployment of the larger Multi-Mission Surveyor, the 1,800 ton replacement for both the Interstellar Surveyor and the Deep Space Surveyor. With one ship that can perform both roles, the force will be smaller and no less capable.
Scout Force - Vice Marshall Adabayo
- One ICIII - flagship
- Two FFE
- Two MMS
- One FSS
Also out of the yards is the very first Flotilla Supply Ship flight II. This redesigned platform saves even more space by eliminating several unnecessary features such as armour, and instead uses a unique distribution of load in order to ensure it is optimised for its role.
The flight I FSS next to the flight II FSS. Note the open gantry-style structure that allows for more efficient fuel storage.
In one fell swoop, the yards around Home and Cassalon are halfway emptied. Unfortunately, the money does not currently exist to do any more than send a further three flight II escorts in for refits into fast EWAR platforms.
Available Budget: 882.1375MCr
Current Dockyard Usage: 12,000/21,500Dtons + 7,400Dtons in civilian yards
You have your forces reunited and little in the way of external pressures right now. This would be an ideal time to consider how you will continue to prosecute the war that the HSWS is part of. Please formulate a plan based on the following questions:
Prisoners - The enemy presumably has tens of HSWS personnel captured during battle:
[ ] We should work to find a diplomatic solution to this issue.
[ ] Sadly we must consider them lost to us for now.
[ ] We must recover them by force, using the Military Assault Transport.
Hulls - The enemy has at least one other ship captured intact, and as many as three:
[ ] We should find and destroy these hulls to deny them to our enemies.
[ ] We should recover them through any means necessary, diplomatic or military.
[ ] Sadly we must consider them lost to us for now.
Enemy - The enemy system will be found and their shipyards identified:
[ ] We should plan an operation to strike at the enemy heartland.
[ ] We should plan a containment operation to push back the enemy.
[ ] We should consider the enemy out of reach for now.
As always, please write in as much or as little as you want.
Please present votes as plans. Voting opens at
So we managed to piss off Menorb. That's not good, but it's not the absolute end of the world, I guess.
If we haven't found the enemy homeworld, I am still in favour of a bite-and-hold strategy. We work out way north, establishing well-defended refuelling and resupply stops. Similar defences are used to cover our core systems. We keep pushing northwards until we find the things that the enemy can't hide, like construction yards, and we target that.
I also think we need to conduct immediate diplomacy with the other northern polities. We cannot afford a war against all of them.
This would be a good opportunity to also discuss what our fleet should look like in three-four years. Dealing with a planet with a population 100 times ours will not be quick, and now that we've gotten all this new tech, I think it'd be a good time to revise what we consider "standard". I don't think we can pivot to an entirely new generation, as much as it comes with big savings, but now is a good time for a high-level overlook of what we're planning to build.
If we haven't found the enemy homeworld, I am still in favour of a bite-and-hold strategy. We work out way north, establishing well-defended refuelling and resupply stops. Similar defences are used to cover our core systems. We keep pushing northwards until we find the things that the enemy can't hide, like construction yards, and we target that.
I also think we need to conduct immediate diplomacy with the other northern polities. We cannot afford a war against all of them.
This would be a good opportunity to also discuss what our fleet should look like in three-four years. Dealing with a planet with a population 100 times ours will not be quick, and now that we've gotten all this new tech, I think it'd be a good time to revise what we consider "standard". I don't think we can pivot to an entirely new generation, as much as it comes with big savings, but now is a good time for a high-level overlook of what we're planning to build.
Thanks for the update!
I guess that didn't go so well as hoped, and we have now deployed ortillery on another world that had not attacked us, which isn't a great look, imo. At least these ones have been holding our crews hostage, maybe?
@4WheelSword, how much did we try to talk to the planet-dwellers on Menorb? Did they refuse our messages or were they maybe jammed or what?
Did we establish any intelligence on:
- who runs Menorb?
- their knowledge of or relation to stealthy enemy?
- their relations with the other two nearby worlds?
- the utility of their system for our own resupply, refit and resource extraction purposes?
- the ability of the locals or stealthy enemy to deny us those purposes?
Going forward, I think we need to get answers and to properly defend our people and assets.
And in the long run I think we need to either become friends with the people of Menorb or treat them as a big threat because they have a grudge with us, a huge population and they've had the gift of two pretty advanced ships to learn from.
I guess that didn't go so well as hoped, and we have now deployed ortillery on another world that had not attacked us, which isn't a great look, imo. At least these ones have been holding our crews hostage, maybe?
@4WheelSword, how much did we try to talk to the planet-dwellers on Menorb? Did they refuse our messages or were they maybe jammed or what?
Did we establish any intelligence on:
- who runs Menorb?
- their knowledge of or relation to stealthy enemy?
- their relations with the other two nearby worlds?
- the utility of their system for our own resupply, refit and resource extraction purposes?
- the ability of the locals or stealthy enemy to deny us those purposes?
Going forward, I think we need to get answers and to properly defend our people and assets.
And in the long run I think we need to either become friends with the people of Menorb or treat them as a big threat because they have a grudge with us, a huge population and they've had the gift of two pretty advanced ships to learn from.
@4WheelSword
In the vote options above does "the enemy" who is holding our lost ships and crew refer to the government of Menorb or to the Stealth Ship operators?
In the vote options above does "the enemy" who is holding our lost ships and crew refer to the government of Menorb or to the Stealth Ship operators?
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Well someone must have them and they weren't in orbit around Menorb.
Whether the 'stealth ship faction' and Menorb are one and the same or two separate factions is something we need to determine.
From the references to Menorb having much less advanced tech than us it seems unlikely that they are the same faction.
Why then was one of our ship's which was captured, in orbit of their world and being gutted and stripped of it's technology?
Menorb must answer these questions to our satisfaction or be deemend an enemy combatant and continue to suffer our wrath.
Once we have more budget I think we should lay down a further Patrol Carrier and additional Cruisers, Fast Attack to replace our aging Interstellar Cruiser force.
When it comes to using our current remaining budget, is there anything practical we could do with it? Laying down an MDS, a smaller defence platform, or refits?
I'd like to keep hardening Home to incursion as much as possible.
From the references to Menorb having much less advanced tech than us it seems unlikely that they are the same faction.
Why then was one of our ship's which was captured, in orbit of their world and being gutted and stripped of it's technology?
Menorb must answer these questions to our satisfaction or be deemend an enemy combatant and continue to suffer our wrath.
Once we have more budget I think we should lay down a further Patrol Carrier and additional Cruisers, Fast Attack to replace our aging Interstellar Cruiser force.
When it comes to using our current remaining budget, is there anything practical we could do with it? Laying down an MDS, a smaller defence platform, or refits?
I'd like to keep hardening Home to incursion as much as possible.
Last edited:
we can call them... Stealthy Poople
- Location
- SEAsia
- Pronouns
- Thou
So, just to be clear, relations with Menorb have soured due to boarding visitors in their system, yeah?
Seems like, whether they are 'visitors' or have a closer relationship is unclear.
They also attacked us with ground-based missile systems, and so we retaliated with orbital strikes.
One of our ships voluntarily went in-system to surrender from our initial ambushed diplomatic visit. And I think the ba-kim surrendered too and was towed in-system by the stealth ships?
IMO, we kinda know why Menorb is gutting and stripping our ship. In their mind, we showed up, fought somebody, and some of our casualties sought refuge there. Then, a few weeks later, our fleet shows up and enacts a distant blockade of their world without bothering to talk to them first about it, and they are understandably pissed. They're now tearing the ship apart in a desperate hope that they can defend against furhter aggression by us.
I don't think they're the same faction as the northern aggressor, but I think they could join together. I think we need to try and prevent the same thing from happening in the other systems, and try and force Menorb back to being a neutral before they can close the tech disparity.
Lots of things!
- Additional defence installations and minelayers along existing patterns to free up the CFAs we have parked around the southern worlds.
- Right now, we have very limited ability to operate in the North. Crews start taking fatigue penalties after a few weeks, yet deployments to Menorb take months. Similarly, bringing fuel and weapons all the way from Home is slow and takes lots of fuel. I'd suggest we look into:
- R&R stations that we can deploy further north, to reduce crew fatigue.
- Autonomous ramscoop tenders, now that we have Virtual Crew. A ~1000 ton spacecraft with a ramscoop should be able to refuel a CFA for two jumps every week.
- Fuel and materiel dumps, for obvious reasons.
- Autonomous mining and manufacturing stations, capable of taking material from asteroids and rogue planetoids and turning them into spare parts, ammunition, and the like. This untethers us from Home.
- Repair facilities, again for obvious reasons.
- If we intend to take Menorb, we probably want a more capable orbital bombardment system. LMDCs are useful as both anti-ship and anti-surface weapons, and an unmanned LMDC "station" is very cheap. We could load ten on each Modular Conveyor, along with enough fuel to take them to Menorb. They'd be vulnerable to attack, but they're also so cheap that it doesn't really matter, and I think we can place them in the outer system. They'd also be useful as a way to increase the firepower of defensive installations.
- A lot of our ships were built to older standards. We could do upgrades on them.
I find the behaviour of the menorbians mystifying. They were friendly with us a few years ago, but now refuse all contact until we get close and then refuse to talk about repatriating our crews (please tell me we asked about these...) or ships.
And then they take the kinda insane risk of trying to shoot us down when we could presumably reduce their population to just so much ash if we wanted to.
And the only concrete gripe they have with us before we approach is that we potentially interdicted civilian traffic that we have not seen?? Very weird behaviour.
And then they take the kinda insane risk of trying to shoot us down when we could presumably reduce their population to just so much ash if we wanted to.
And the only concrete gripe they have with us before we approach is that we potentially interdicted civilian traffic that we have not seen?? Very weird behaviour.
- Location
- SEAsia
- Pronouns
- Thou
Tbf the latter does largely stem somewhat from the former. If you squint, we're kind of putting their system into a blockade of sorts.
@4WheelSword, any answers available for these? Pinging you again because I tagged you in two messages and maybe the first one was lost
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
1) The government of menorb runs menorb.
2) They have not given any indication of being associated with Inthe or Natoko.
3)
4. Menorb can't stop you doing anything outside of the inner system, really. Even there they're mostly limited to reaction drive powered ships of ~the 1980's. The stealth enemy has the potential ability to attack your ships in Menorb.