Vote Results:
After some discussion, Scrub calls Cujo into her office and briefly discusses a reorganization of Alpha Company. Both El Guapo and Isgrimnur have accepted their promotions, and will be given free reign to re-form their lances.
Cujo's Sweep Lance will consist of her 6M Wolverine, Stefan Mk IV driving a Trebuchet TBT-5J, Moley Mk II driving a standard Dervish, and an as-yet-to-be-determined fourth mech. Probably a 1S Griffin.
El Guapo will head up the newly-reformed Heavy Lance, which will consist of his Marauder, Fury's Grand Dragon, Gbasden's customized Awesome (driven by Wayne "Thud" McIlwraith) and the Cyclops, driven by a replacement mechwarrior.
Isgrimnur will reform the Urban Lance, leading it from the Hatchetman, while retaining the Blackjack (driven by Gbasden "Bass" Mk II) and Merlin, driven by Paingod Mk II. For now, we'll put the BattleAxe in the fourth slot, but we'll try it out for now.
Delta-Ranger will have a new mechwarrior drive the Quickdraw, Shinko "Freyland Mk III" Mori (a recruit we picked up on Unzmarkt who displays a remarkable affinity for mech maneuvers), while a replacement mechwarrior drives a Griffin GRF-1N.
Beta-Assault will replace Zarathud's Awesome with the Mackie (driven by Siljanus Mk II), while Xwraith Mk IV will drive the Stalker in Beta-Hunter.
One last promotion to make, that Cujo considers - now that she's leaving Gamma-Probe lance to take charge of Alpha company, it's time to figure out who'll be in charge and get a promotion to Lieutenant JG. The two veterans who qualify are Nara "AWS" Cutillar and Nicolas "Akalon" Dvorak. We'll have to put both through "Officer Candidate School" (pretty informal in our organization) regardless, but either could do the job. Akalon has a slightly better natural understanding of tactics, but his normally 'quiet' style isn't really suited to leading a lance of mechwarriors. Meanwhile, AWS has quite good situational awareness but tends to ramble on in run-on sentences with no end in sight unless interrupted by someone else with at least a minimum amount of volume to cut through the non-stop chatter. I think you get the idea. But Cujo thinks either could do the job with a little coaching.
[] Akalon
[] AWS
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We decide to refit Wolf's Warhammer (after some strong advocacy by the aforementioned mechwarrior), and the techs get to work taking the Talon apart. The BattleAxe refit will proceed as discussed previously, removing the twin LRM/5 launchers and ammo to add extra armor and a heat sink. The techs and the mechwarrior both suggest an improvement to the original design - moving the jump jets nozzles from the legs to the torso sections, while relocating the heat sink vents to the legs. This will allow the venerable mech design to hop into water without losing jump capability and stay cool while there (which it sorely needs).
Meanwhile, our aero and mech techs work around the clock to get the refits done. We're probably looking at two or three months overall to get the refits done, by which point our jumpship should be able to rejoin us as well. Thus, we should be back to combat effective status and able to start looking for additional contracts by the start of the coming year.
After reviewing a bunch of our salvage, we're able to put together a spare Grasshopper from a mixture of salvaged parts across three mechs. Pretty good.
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November 9, 3046
Construction Update
The decision on which construction project to undertake was't entirely clear - but the reality is that we'd need both the housing and local food source before we start any major construction projects. So we get our Jumbo emptied out and send it out (with the Seeker and a fighter escort) to get the materials our construction crew needs. Once we set up raw materials extraction, refining and some basic industry, then we won't have to do these supply runs, reducing construction costs a little bit. The housing project gets finished up in October, while the Jumbo makes another supply run and we're able to get the hydroponics facility re-activated by the start of November.
Total investment: 180k in construction costs.
With these things up, our construction crews move out of their pre-fab trailers where the climate control never works right. Our company and employees are obviously living in our very nice compound, but it's nice to have some place for other residents to live. Once we get the agriculture facility up and running, it'll still take a couple of months to actually produce food, so monthly supply runs continue to include food (especially protein, most of us don't want to eat just "plant based protein", aka beans and nuts) for the time being.
Our survey crews finish evaluating a couple more facilities, one which might be useful to put into operation right away, while the other will require significant amounts of support infrastructure to set up, and we'll have to move the actual equipment into another building as its current location is about to collapse. But we've found ourselves a facility for manufacturing medium lasers.
Here's the next set of construction options. Pick one.
[]
Repair Sanitation Facility - Our survey crews have finished evaluating a sanitation facility connected to the residential complex that we just repaired. With a "minimum" investment of 790k, that facility can be brought back online. Which would be pretty good, as right now the residential complex is basically using the equivalent of a series of septic tanks - we have our trucks haul the waste away weekly and deposit it in a designated disposal area, but what would be nice is if we could go a little "greener", since we live here. The facility is pretty expansive, there's a wastewater treatment plant, a bunch of equipment dedicated to rapid "organic matter decomposition" and a smelter. Anyway, it's really better not to know the details. It'll greatly reduce the waste footprint of our residential facilities. The costs cover running pipes where they need to go and repairing equipment. 790k construction cost, 100k/year maintenance.
[]
Open-Air Farming - Hydroponics are efficient, but there's a large group of people who don't enjoy eating beans and nuts for their protein. There's a significant amount of land (almost unlimited from our perspective, really), where we could set up "animal-based" protein production - we'll just have to import 210k construction cost, 100k/year maintenance.
[]
Raw Material Surveys - Our surveys haven't yet found any mines or boreholes, so, while our fleet is in system, we can get our dropships making detailed ground maps and send some aerospace units or mechs to check out interesting sites and flag them for our on-planet survey crews. No additional cost, but takes time to manage.
Repair Refinery - A slightly beat-up refinery is located nearby that can process the ores into refined materials necessary for the manufacture of standard armor. The equipment is a little rusty, there are no raw materials coming in, we'll need to bring power generators and the roads/rails are completely decayed. But we can get it up and running for when we do need it. The main choice here being whether to have the refining process be manual (like the Capellans had it set up when they abandoned the colony) or if we want to introduce automation - it's considerably more expensive, but then we don't have to hire people to manually taking chunks of metal from one conveyor belt to another.
- []
Semi-Automated 41.25M construction cost, 10.3M/year maintenance
- []
Manual 27.5M construction cost, 6.8M/year maintenance
Repair "Tier II" Factory - Standard Armor This facility needs a little structural reinforcement, the power generator is out, there are no refined materials available to make the finished product, no raw materials available to make the refined materials, no place for the workers to live (and nothing other than money to make them want to live there in the first place), no food for the workers to eat, and nobody to sell all that stuff to anyway. That being said, we can get it ready to go when we get all the support mechanisms set up. As with the refinery, we've got the option to go automated to reduce staffing requirements, or go Capellan-style to reduce costs.
- []
Semi-Automated = 116M C-Bills, 11.6M/year maintenance
- []
Non-Automated = 77.45M C-Bills, 7.7M/year maintenance
Requirements for operation:
- Housing (Done)
- Food (Done)
- Raw Materials
- Refinery
[]
Reactivate Heat Sink Research Lab This facility looks like everything was shut down gracefully, the power got turned off, the doors locked and everybody left with the expectation of coming back the next day. So we could basically just turn it on and all the equipment will still work and the data will still be there. The main issue is that while we've got plenty of mech techs, we've got nobody with the necessary experience in either theoretical or experimental chemistry and high-energy physics. So until we can invite some folks over to work for us, this facility won't be of much use. 15k "construction" costs, 500k/year maintenance (projected based on current academic salaries and available workspace).
Repair "Tier II" Factory - Medium Laser Our survey crews have identified another Capellan factory. The structure is just about to collapse, but the equipment inside is intact and can be moved. What's it used for? Manufacturing medium lasers. At peak capacity, the survey crew estimates it would be able to pump out a thousand of the things per year. In addition to providing us with effectively unlimited replacement parts, we could expand or re-tool the assembly line for other types of laser weaponry (Binary Lasers, anyone? lol), or just crank it up and sell the surplus to manufacturers. The downside is that we'll need to set up a lot of support infrastructure, as the components required to make laser cannons are a little more complex than just refined metals. But we do have the option to activate this facility as well.
- []
Semi-Automated = 48M C-Bills, 27.6M/year maintenance
- []
Non-Automated = 32.65M C-Bills, 17.1M/year maintenance
Requirements for operation:
- Housing (Done)
- Food (Done)
- Raw Materials
- Components
Current budget: 3.95B C-Bills
Current expenditures: 12.7M C-Bills / month
Finally, let's pick a name for our core facility. Suggestions include:
[] The Octagon (+1)
[] The Forum
[] The Thunderdome