Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

If it's a video game it goes here.

Moderators: LawBeefaroni, Arcanis, $iljanus

Post Reply
Zenn7
Posts: 4447
Joined: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Zenn7 »

NickAragua wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:55 pm Gbasden settles into the planetary governor's chair and breathes a contented sigh.
He retired to become our planetary governor? Told you he shoulda kept the Atlas! Also, I like this. We have someone competent we can trust to govern the place and who knows how to lead people if we should ever need to defend the place while we're mostly out.
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Zenn7 wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:39 pm I'm sort of thinking we can do that and at least one of these construction projects, possibly more than 1?
We can only manage one of these at a time for now. The dropships would otherwise be bringing in construction materials and personnel from off world.
Hyena wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:01 pm Out of curiosity, how far apart are these buildings scattered across the landscape? Are these individual complexes 100 kilometres apart, or are they part of the layout of a city that can all be easily defended? I'm imagining a large city like New York or something, finding warehouses and docks and buildings within a couple of miles of each other. Or should I be envisioning it like Mechwarrior Mercenaries 5, with a walled factory here, a comm tower in a crater there, all scattered over a 1k square?
Without going into too much detail, the refinery, residential complex and factory that we're re-building are all within a few hours of each other at reasonable mech speeds.
Black Lives Matter
User avatar
El Guapo
Posts: 41243
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by El Guapo »

NickAragua wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:55 pm
El Guapo
[X] accept
[] decline


[X] Leraje
[] Cujo


----------------



[] Keep the Talon in one piece
[] Grasshopper GHR-5H - upgrade LRM/5 to LRM/15, +2 heat sinks
[] Grasshopper GHR-5N - upgrade PPC to ER PPC, + many heat sinks
[] BattleAxe - max armor, extra heat sinks
[] Guillotine - upgraded main gun, a little extra armor, extra heat sinks
[X] Warhammer - max armor, extra heat sinks
[] Archer - extra heat sinks

------------------

[X] Repair Agricultural Complex - A series of nearly intact (only a few minor cracks) "multi-level agricultural production facilities" can be re-activated and staffed with a minimal number of personnel. These will be capable of producing enough food to feed everyone of the several thousand people currently on the planet and then some. Repairs are really just re-attaching wires and re-activating the water pumps. 40k construction cost, 100k/year maintenance.

Black Lives Matter.
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

NickAragua wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:55 pm
[x] Leraje
[] Cujo

----------------

[] Keep the Talon in one piece
[] Grasshopper GHR-5H - upgrade LRM/5 to LRM/15, +2 heat sinks
[] Grasshopper GHR-5N - upgrade PPC to ER PPC, + many heat sinks
[x] BattleAxe - max armor, extra heat sinks
[] Guillotine - upgraded main gun, a little extra armor, extra heat sinks
[] Warhammer - max armor, extra heat sinks
[] Archer - extra heat sinks

------------------

[x] Repair Agricultural Complex - A series of nearly intact (only a few minor cracks) "multi-level agricultural production facilities" can be re-activated and staffed with a minimal number of personnel. These will be capable of producing enough food to feed everyone of the several thousand people currently on the planet and then some. Repairs are really just re-attaching wires and re-activating the water pumps. 40k construction cost, 100k/year maintenance.
Refit Battleax, though if possible still remove the LRMs in favour of another SRM6 (or two) and reposition JJs to the torsos.
User avatar
AWS260
Posts: 12663
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:51 pm
Location: Brooklyn

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by AWS260 »

NickAragua wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:55 pm As for command of Alpha Company, our options are Leraje and Cujo. Leraje is is slightly better at personnel management and has a better grasp of overall strategy, while Cujo has a razor-sharp tactical mind and gets credit for being able to bring Gamma-Probe together from a crew of misfits to a tip-top shape recon lance.

[] Leraje
[X] Cujo
Gamma Probe 4 Life.
Obviously, there's only one 380XL engine, so we can only do one of these things.

[X] Archer - extra heat sinks

Here's a list of projects currently available. Pick one:

[X] Repair Agricultural Complex - A series of nearly intact (only a few minor cracks) "multi-level agricultural production facilities" can be re-activated and staffed with a minimal number of personnel. These will be capable of producing enough food to feed everyone of the several thousand people currently on the planet and then some. Repairs are really just re-attaching wires and re-activating the water pumps. 40k construction cost, 100k/year maintenance.
User avatar
Cylus Maxii
Posts: 3348
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 10:13 pm
Location: Denver, CO
Contact:

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Cylus Maxii »

[X] BattleAxe - max armor, extra heat sinks

[X] Repair Agricultural Complex
My nephew, Jake - "I mean is there really anything more pure? Than sweet zombie monkey love?"
User avatar
xwraith
Posts: 1085
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2005 6:42 pm

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by xwraith »

Zenn7 wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:39 pm I'm sort of thinking we can do that and at least one of these construction projects, possibly more than 1?

Like Agriculture and Housing at the same time.

Then, in order:
Refinery,
Factory,
Lab
+1
I forgot to call it "a box of pure malevolent evil, a purveyor of
insidious insanity, an eldritch manifestation that would make Bill
Gates let out a low whistle of admiration," but it's all those, too.
-- David Gerard, Re: [Mediawiki-l] Wikitext grammar, 2010.08.06
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Vote Results:
Spoiler:
leraje - 2
cujo - 4

grasshopper 5h - 1
battleaxe - 4
warhammer - 4 - tie breaker in owner's favor
archer - 1

agricultural - 5
housing - 5
- tie breaker: do both, housing first, agricultural second.
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

-------

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.

-------

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
Black Lives Matter
User avatar
AWS260
Posts: 12663
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:51 pm
Location: Brooklyn

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by AWS260 »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:47 pm [X] Akalon
[] AWS
You can't make me grow up!
User avatar
El Guapo
Posts: 41243
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by El Guapo »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:47 pm

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.
Ah, yes - the legendary mechwarrior TBD. I have high hopes for him / her / it.
Black Lives Matter.
User avatar
El Guapo
Posts: 41243
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by El Guapo »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:47 pm

[X] 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.


Finally, let's pick a name for our core facility. Suggestions include:
[X] The Octagon (+1)
[] The Forum
[] The Thunderdome
Black Lives Matter.
Zenn7
Posts: 4447
Joined: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Zenn7 »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:47 pm [x] Akalon
[] AWS

-------
Finally, let's pick a name for our core facility. Suggestions include:
[x] The Octagon (+1)
[] The Forum
[] The Thunderdome
All these options for construction require our dropships to stay here, so we can't do anything to earn money (not that we would before all our refits are done and our jumpship is back), correct? Otherwise, I'm assuming we would have to pay more for someone else to transport stuff for us.

How long do we want to spend setting up shop here before we get back to our primary business - mercenaries?
What can we really get done while we're out making money?

Without knowing the above, going with this priority for now:
Repair Sanitation Facility (errr... this seems like a no-brainer?)
Raw Material Survey (we need to see what's going on here to see what our options/needs are for most other stuff; can do the open-air farm while we figure out what's next)
Open-Air Farming
(Hoping we have some raw material survey results that will work with our refinery and provide stuff we need for the factories - getting these up and running would likely go here)
Repair Refinery
Repair Armor factory (easier to get up and running, more generically useful for us)
Repair Medium laser factory
Reactivate Heat Sink research lab

EDIT: to clean up/remove quoted stuff.
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

Zenn7 wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 5:54 pm
NickAragua wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:47 pm [x] Akalon
[] AWS

-------
Finally, let's pick a name for our core facility. Suggestions include:
[x] The Octagon (+1)
[] The Forum
[] The Thunderdome
All these options for construction require our dropships to stay here, so we can't do anything to earn money (not that we would before all our refits are done and our jumpship is back), correct? Otherwise, I'm assuming we would have to pay more for someone else to transport stuff for us.

How long do we want to spend setting up shop here before we get back to our primary business - mercenaries?
What can we really get done while we're out making money?

Without knowing the above, going with this priority for now:
Repair Sanitation Facility (errr... this seems like a no-brainer?)
Raw Material Survey (we need to see what's going on here to see what our options/needs are for most other stuff; can do the open-air farm while we figure out what's next)
Open-Air Farming
(Hoping we have some raw material survey results that will work with our refinery and provide stuff we need for the factories - getting these up and running would likely go here)
Repair Refinery
Repair Armor factory (easier to get up and running, more generically useful for us)
Repair Medium laser factory
Reactivate Heat Sink research lab

EDIT: to clean up/remove quoted stuff.
+1
User avatar
$iljanus
Forum Moderator
Posts: 13676
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 3:46 pm
Location: New England...or under your bed

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by $iljanus »

Well yeah,I choose The Octogon!

And I also choose a working sewage system. The greatest civilizations had working sewers.
Black lives matter!

Wise words of warning from Smoove B: Oh, how you all laughed when I warned you about the semen. Well, who's laughing now?
User avatar
gbasden
Posts: 7664
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:57 am
Location: Sacramento, CA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by gbasden »

Zenn7 wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 5:54 pm
NickAragua wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:47 pm [x] Akalon
[] AWS

-------
Finally, let's pick a name for our core facility. Suggestions include:
[x] The Octagon (+1)
[] The Forum
[] The Thunderdome
All these options for construction require our dropships to stay here, so we can't do anything to earn money (not that we would before all our refits are done and our jumpship is back), correct? Otherwise, I'm assuming we would have to pay more for someone else to transport stuff for us.

How long do we want to spend setting up shop here before we get back to our primary business - mercenaries?
What can we really get done while we're out making money?

Without knowing the above, going with this priority for now:
Repair Sanitation Facility (errr... this seems like a no-brainer?)
Raw Material Survey (we need to see what's going on here to see what our options/needs are for most other stuff; can do the open-air farm while we figure out what's next)
Open-Air Farming
(Hoping we have some raw material survey results that will work with our refinery and provide stuff we need for the factories - getting these up and running would likely go here)
Repair Refinery
Repair Armor factory (easier to get up and running, more generically useful for us)
Repair Medium laser factory
Reactivate Heat Sink research lab

EDIT: to clean up/remove quoted stuff.
Good with all of this except I would move the Heat Sink research above Repair Refinery. The sooner we figure out how to make our own improved heat sinks, the happier we will be. We can buy armor and medium lasers without much trouble currently.
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Zenn7 wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 5:54 pm All these options for construction require our dropships to stay here, so we can't do anything to earn money (not that we would before all our refits are done and our jumpship is back), correct? Otherwise, I'm assuming we would have to pay more for someone else to transport stuff for us.

How long do we want to spend setting up shop here before we get back to our primary business - mercenaries?
What can we really get done while we're out making money?
Right now, we're actually just waiting for our mech and aerospace refits to finish up, upgrading heat sinks and swapping engines out is a months-long process even under the best conditions. Once we finish up the refits, we'll start taking contracts again. While out on contract, we can pay someone else to do supply runs for us - it'll probably take longer and cost more as a result, but it's practical for low-cost projects.
Black Lives Matter
Zenn7
Posts: 4447
Joined: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Zenn7 »

gbasden wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:36 pm
Zenn7 wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 5:54 pm
NickAragua wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:47 pm [x] Akalon
[] AWS

-------
Finally, let's pick a name for our core facility. Suggestions include:
[x] The Octagon (+1)
[] The Forum
[] The Thunderdome
All these options for construction require our dropships to stay here, so we can't do anything to earn money (not that we would before all our refits are done and our jumpship is back), correct? Otherwise, I'm assuming we would have to pay more for someone else to transport stuff for us.

How long do we want to spend setting up shop here before we get back to our primary business - mercenaries?
What can we really get done while we're out making money?

Without knowing the above, going with this priority for now:
Repair Sanitation Facility (errr... this seems like a no-brainer?)
Raw Material Survey (we need to see what's going on here to see what our options/needs are for most other stuff; can do the open-air farm while we figure out what's next)
Open-Air Farming
(Hoping we have some raw material survey results that will work with our refinery and provide stuff we need for the factories - getting these up and running would likely go here)
Repair Refinery
Repair Armor factory (easier to get up and running, more generically useful for us)
Repair Medium laser factory
Reactivate Heat Sink research lab

EDIT: to clean up/remove quoted stuff.
Good with all of this except I would move the Heat Sink research above Repair Refinery. The sooner we figure out how to make our own improved heat sinks, the happier we will be. We can buy armor and medium lasers without much trouble currently.
I could see a compromise - get the armor factory, the lab, then the medium laser factory. Let's get some income or at least the armor to offset our expenses some. We're blowing through a large amount of cash and rapidly running up our monthly costs.
User avatar
gbasden
Posts: 7664
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:57 am
Location: Sacramento, CA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by gbasden »

Zenn7 wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 11:52 pm
I could see a compromise - get the armor factory, the lab, then the medium laser factory. Let's get some income or at least the armor to offset our expenses some. We're blowing through a large amount of cash and rapidly running up our monthly costs.
As I recall, we are still pretty flush after that last contract. I know we are spending money but I don't think we are in danger of going broke, and we shall shortly be taking more contracts.
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Vote Results:
Spoiler:
The Octagon - unanimous

repair sanitation facility - almost unanimous

Akalon - 5
AWS - 1
player override - neither
"The Octagon" it is.

---

We decide to "go green", or at least less brown (some of our mechwarriors don't really get it, though - "I can just crap in the fusion engine, it burns right up", which prompts a company-wide rant by Scrub about proper sanitation procedures in the field). Our construction guys do a "little" digging (having to run kilometer after kilometer of pipes is easy when there's nobody around) and soon enough, instead of making weekly trips to the dump, the trash trucks make weekly trips to the sanitation center, and we retire the "tanker" trucks as liquid waste now moves through underground pipes.

---

Neither Akalon nor AWS express a particular desire for a promotion when Cujo brings it up. She shrugs ("Are you sure? You're giving up a good amount of money."), understanding that pushing someone into a role they don't want is just asking for disaster (especially in this case) and offers the job to Drazzil Mk II.

---

Construction and Survey Update, December 3046:

Our survey crews don't find anything good this month, all the buildings they examine in December are decayed beyond repair. The other development is that, now that people have been here for a little while, there's literally nothing to do other than hiking, mech simulator games, beating the crap out of each other (we've had a few incidents) or drinking "samogon" (a Russian term for self-brewed alcohol) to the point of blackout (there is no other point with most of that stuff). A few people have suggested investing some funds into some kind of entertainment, maybe build a couple of bars or something.

Our Jumbo crew also suggests constructing a nice, big, secure warehouse within our main compound to keep the excess stuff that we do not need to carry into a combat zone (how many legged Griffins do we really need to bring?).

Available Construction Options:
Spoiler:
[] Subsidize Entertainment Facilities - Make available a fund to help subsidize travel, construction and supply costs for "enterpreneurs" who want to run one of the two or three bars and/or dance clubs or whatever else on a planet with several thousand people with nothing to do and no HPG. Doing this will give our construction/survey crews/idle mechwarriors a way of blowing off steam other than watching month-old trid shows, beating the crap out of each other or drinking hooch from the dropship engine room. 1M "construction" cost, 100k/year "maintenance".

[] Build Secure Warehouse Capability - Right now, we're either storing all our supplies in the Jumbo or across the many mech hangars. It would be useful to not have to haul every piece of mech hardware we have with us every time we go anywhere, and just bring what we need. Construction of a properly-secured warehouse with an associated inventory system within the Octagon would allow us to keep the Jumbo less full when sending it out with our forces on contracts. We could also use this warehouse capability to store excess production from any factories we re-activate. 2M construction cost, 200k/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
Requirements for operation:
- Housing (done)
- Food (done)
- Raw Materials

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
- Components

[] 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: 3.895B C-Bills
Current expenditures: 12.6M C-Bills / month


---

While out on supply runs, our dropships come back with a few contract options. They're ok, although all three have downsides.

A Federated Commonwealth liaison reaches out to one of our dropship crews with a contract offer to "relieve" some forces that have gotten themselves stranded on Waldheim. Further details will be provided upon contract acceptance, but the information provided indicates that this is a "search and rescue and complete objective" operation - we'll be expected to drop in, find and rescue (if necessary) the FedCom-hired mercs, then complete their objective, which was to conduct a full survey of a bunch of facilities, which will, again, be designated upon contract acceptance. Opposition is expected to be a mix of planetary militia and regulars, although this is in the eastern butthole of the Inner Sphere, so we're not expecting to see any fancy high tech toys or elite forces (this is further reinforced by the fact that salvage rights are 100%). The contract terms require a commitment of three companies.

Nitty-gritty details:
4 months expected duration, plus 8 months travel time (two ways)
100% salvage rights
Regular/D-rated allied forces
Regular/F-rated estimated opposition
100% transport coverage
100% battle loss compensation
86M expected profit
Standard Terran environment

Looks pretty good, although it'll require a year-long time commitment of most of the company for a relatively low profit, unless we happen to get exceptionally good salvage. Which we might, but there's no guarantee of that so we can't really plan around it.

----

A representative from Federated Industries offers us a contract on Novaya Zemlya (which translates to "New Earth" from Russian, which prompts Scrub to ask exactly how many "New Earths" there are in the Inner Sphere). It's "straight forward", a request for a reinforced company of mechs (12 lances) to suppress "subversive elements engaging in disruptive activities detrimental to production". Reading up on the relevant news, basically, the workers at the mech parts and personal weapons factories, probably riled up by Capellan agents, started up some strikes protesting labor conditions. Usual deal. Seems pretty straightforward, maybe consider reducing working hours from 16 to 15 and give them a Hawaiian Shirt day or something. Instead, the company bungled the negotiations and called the local contracted militia (a company-stored unit called Cunningham's Commandos) in to "help". A couple of machinegunned crowds later, the riots have turned into a full uprising with Fed-Ind losing control of most of its production facilities. It's gotten bad to the point where the situation has come to the attention of Duke Morgan Hasek-Davion, who's bluntly told Fed-Ind leadership that if they can't fulfill their contractual obligations to the Capellan March Militia, he will find someone else who can.

The opposition is going to be a mixture of 'irregular forces' and seized planetary militia equipment, operated by people who probably have never climbed into a mech or a tank in their life. But, based on our evaluation of the situation, they might be getting backing from external agencies. The main difficulty will be that the contract stipulates us as being liable for property damage inflicted by our forces, and features a "strong preference" for avoiding civilian casualties.

Nitty-gritty details:
6 months expected duration, plus 2 months travel time (two ways, it's only four jumps away)
40% salvage rights
Regular/D-rated allied forces ("Cunningham's Commandos")
Green/D-rated estimated opposition
100% transport cost coverage
60% battle loss compensation
142M expected profit
Standard Terran environment

Looks easy on paper, but, well, you know. Salvage is kind of crap, but it's likely to be nothing we want anyway.

----

The last contract offer is by Defiance Industries to carry out a little bit of industrial sabotage. They'd like to contract a lance of our mechs to pay a visit to the world of Griffith, all the way out in the western boonies of the Inner Sphere, where one of their competitors ("I can't say who exactly, but it starts with an 'E' and ends with a 'rthwerks'", the rep says with a chuckle) has apparently set up some kind of research/prototyping facility. It's a straightforward objective raid - locate the designated facilities, destroy them. Expected force commitment is one lance. Opposition is expected to be backwoods planetary militia and well-equipped but inexperienced corporate security.

4 months expected duration, plus 10 months travel time (two ways)
30% salvage rights
Green/C-rated allied forces (a lance of mechs from a second merc company "to help keep us honest")
Green/B-rated estimated opposition
100% transport cost coverage
60% battle loss compensation
103M expected profit
Extreme High-G environment (1.88g)

The chance to snag some potentially high-tech loot from Marik space while blowing things up sounds great, but the constant crushing gravity is going to be a major downer. How the hell would those guys get anything done with that many Gs, is the facility in orbit?

We have 12 mech and 4 aerospace units available. Let's pick one or more of these contracts or pass on all of them and hang out for another month. We'll be able to have construction on-going while our combat units are gone, but it'll be a little more expensive as we'll have to hire dropships and jumpships to carry cargo and personnel in and out of the system.

[] Waldheim relief duty for recon raid (9 units)
[] Novaya Zemlya riot duty (12 units)
[] Griffith objective raid (1 unit)
[] Pass, chill for a month, do a little more construction work at a discount
Black Lives Matter
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm The other development is that, now that people have been here for a little while, there's literally nothing to do other than hiking, mech simulator games, beating the crap out of each other (we've had a few incidents) or drinking "samogon" (a Russian term for self-brewed alcohol) to the point of blackout (there is no other point with most of that stuff).
Still, it's much preferable to the coolant liquid. :obscene-drinkingdrunk:
NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm [x] Subsidize Entertainment Facilities - Make available a fund to help subsidize travel, construction and supply costs for "enterpreneurs" who want to run one of the two or three bars and/or dance clubs or whatever else on a planet with several thousand people with nothing to do and no HPG. Doing this will give our construction/survey crews/idle mechwarriors a way of blowing off steam other than watching month-old trid shows, beating the crap out of each other or drinking hooch from the dropship engine room. 1M "construction" cost, 100k/year "maintenance".

[x] Build Secure Warehouse Capability - Right now, we're either storing all our supplies in the Jumbo or across the many mech hangars. It would be useful to not have to haul every piece of mech hardware we have with us every time we go anywhere, and just bring what we need. Construction of a properly-secured warehouse with an associated inventory system within the Octagon would allow us to keep the Jumbo less full when sending it out with our forces on contracts. We could also use this warehouse capability to store excess production from any factories we re-activate. 2M construction cost, 200k/year maintenance.

[x] 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.
Amenities and survey. It'll be somewhat pointless to restore manufacturing without raw resources available unless we want to import them.

NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm [] Waldheim relief duty for recon raid (9 units)
[x] Novaya Zemlya riot duty (12 units)
[] Griffith objective raid (1 unit)
[] Pass, chill for a month, do a little more construction work at a discount
Riot duty seems like the best money/time ratio, but we can always wait another month.
User avatar
gbasden
Posts: 7664
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:57 am
Location: Sacramento, CA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by gbasden »

NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm
[X] Subsidize Entertainment Facilities - Make available a fund to help subsidize travel, construction and supply costs for "enterpreneurs" who want to run one of the two or three bars and/or dance clubs or whatever else on a planet with several thousand people with nothing to do and no HPG. Doing this will give our construction/survey crews/idle mechwarriors a way of blowing off steam other than watching month-old trid shows, beating the crap out of each other or drinking hooch from the dropship engine room. 1M "construction" cost, 100k/year "maintenance".

[] Waldheim relief duty for recon raid (9 units)
[] Novaya Zemlya riot duty (12 units)
[X] Griffith objective raid (1 unit)
[] Pass, chill for a month, do a little more construction work at a discount
It seems like keeping our people happy (or at least content) has to go to the top of our priority list. Sending a small group off to make money and potentially get high tech salvage also seems like a good choice.
Zenn7
Posts: 4447
Joined: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Zenn7 »

gbasden wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 3:18 pm
NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm
[X] Subsidize Entertainment Facilities - Make available a fund to help subsidize travel, construction and supply costs for "enterpreneurs" who want to run one of the two or three bars and/or dance clubs or whatever else on a planet with several thousand people with nothing to do and no HPG. Doing this will give our construction/survey crews/idle mechwarriors a way of blowing off steam other than watching month-old trid shows, beating the crap out of each other or drinking hooch from the dropship engine room. 1M "construction" cost, 100k/year "maintenance".

[] Waldheim relief duty for recon raid (9 units)
[] Novaya Zemlya riot duty (12 units)
[X] Griffith objective raid (1 unit)
[] Pass, chill for a month, do a little more construction work at a discount
It seems like keeping our people happy (or at least content) has to go to the top of our priority list. Sending a small group off to make money and potentially get high tech salvage also seems like a good choice.
Agreed. Since they''re covering 100% transport cost and it's only 1 lance, this shouldn't tie up all our dropships and stuff - we shoudn't lose our discount (or not the full discount at least) right?

Also - if we're building the stuff for these entertainment establishments and setting them up - why do we have so much maintenance? We giving the entertainment away? Can't we charge rent, taxes, something on these enterpreneurs?
User avatar
$iljanus
Forum Moderator
Posts: 13676
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 3:46 pm
Location: New England...or under your bed

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by $iljanus »

In order of preference:
NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm [x] Subsidize Entertainment Facilities - Make available a fund to help subsidize travel, construction and supply costs for "enterpreneurs" who want to run one of the two or three bars and/or dance clubs or whatever else on a planet with several thousand people with nothing to do and no HPG. Doing this will give our construction/survey crews/idle mechwarriors a way of blowing off steam other than watching month-old trid shows, beating the crap out of each other or drinking hooch from the dropship engine room. 1M "construction" cost, 100k/year "maintenance".

[x] Build Secure Warehouse Capability - Right now, we're either storing all our supplies in the Jumbo or across the many mech hangars. It would be useful to not have to haul every piece of mech hardware we have with us every time we go anywhere, and just bring what we need. Construction of a properly-secured warehouse with an associated inventory system within the Octagon would allow us to keep the Jumbo less full when sending it out with our forces on contracts. We could also use this warehouse capability to store excess production from any factories we re-activate. 2M construction cost, 200k/year maintenance.

[x] 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.

NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm [] Waldheim relief duty for recon raid (9 units)
[]Novaya Zemlya riot duty (12 units)
[X] Griffith objective raid (1 unit)
[] Pass, chill for a month, do a little more construction work at a discount
Happy employees make for better shooters! The warehouse will contribute towards a more efficient operation and we should start surveying for raw materials soon since the reopening of manufacturing on the planet depends on having raw materials to work with.

The objective raid is a tough environment but I like the possibility of high tech salvage and free transportation.
Black lives matter!

Wise words of warning from Smoove B: Oh, how you all laughed when I warned you about the semen. Well, who's laughing now?
User avatar
AWS260
Posts: 12663
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:51 pm
Location: Brooklyn

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by AWS260 »

NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:34 pm Neither Akalon nor AWS express a particular desire for a promotion when Cujo brings it up. She shrugs ("Are you sure? You're giving up a good amount of money."), understanding that pushing someone into a role they don't want is just asking for disaster (especially in this case) and offers the job to Drazzil Mk II.
Hahahahaha. Good luck, Drazzil!
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Zenn7 wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 6:30 pm Agreed. Since they''re covering 100% transport cost and it's only 1 lance, this shouldn't tie up all our dropships and stuff - we shoudn't lose our discount (or not the full discount at least) right?

Also - if we're building the stuff for these entertainment establishments and setting them up - why do we have so much maintenance? We giving the entertainment away? Can't we charge rent, taxes, something on these enterpreneurs?
Correct, we'll still have the bulk of our transport capability.

As for the maintenance, it's a bit of an abstraction, but it also covers the cost of "organic" expansion in the future for things that will require more construction as the population grows. And yes, once people start moving here, we'll be able to charge them taxes to offset that, but the bulk of the money to be made is through selling manufactured military supplies. The more efficient that process (via happier workers, extra infrastructure, good trade deals, etc), the more money we make.
Black Lives Matter
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

NickAragua wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 8:35 pm As for the maintenance, it's a bit of an abstraction, but it also covers the cost of "organic" expansion in the future for things that will require more construction as the population grows. And yes, once people start moving here, we'll be able to charge them taxes to offset that, but the bulk of the money to be made is through selling manufactured military supplies. The more efficient that process (via happier workers, extra infrastructure, good trade deals, etc), the more money we make.
Anno 3042. Booze and coffee are that which keeps the gears of industry spinning. :)
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Vote Results:
Spoiler:
Secure Warehouse - 4
Entertainment - 5
Raw Materials - 1

pass, chill - 3
waldheim - 1
novaya zemlya - 1
griffith - 3
tie-breaker - half our mechs and aerospace fighters are still being refitted. We're chilling.
Our next "supply run" involves shipping over a bunch of people (and their equipment and construction materials) who want to set up relatively low volume breweries, distilleries and bars. Important things first, eh? There's a guy that sets up a trid theater (although he bitches about having to wait for the jumpship pony express). All in all, we wind up with a fairly thriving commercial district. And some, uh, problems that go along with it.

We also get started constructing a warehouse complex within the Octagon, though that won't be done for a couple of months - we're building these warehouses pretty tough, well-armored, with cellular storage, authentication systems, the works. It's not just a corrugated metal box, in other words.

After some discussion, Scrub decides to have us hang out for another month as the tech crews are still working on a lot of the mechs and aerospace fighters. We *could* send some people over to Griffith, but our older veterans (Isgrimnur, Scrub, El Guapo and Zenn7, among others) remember our experience at Grand Base, and that place was only 1.1g. Our faster mechs were popping leg actuators left and right. 1.8g would be absolutely horrible (imagine a standard 4/6 mech being reduced to 2/3).

Our survey crews continue their work, finding a small abandoned military outpost. When they crack the hangars open, they unexpectedly find a lance of (mostly) heavy tanks. Standard low-tech units, but about 6.5M C-Bills' worth: a Hetzer, two LRM Carriers and a Manticore. We don't particularly have any need of any of that stuff for now, so we can keep it mothballed and brush the dust off occasionally until we do need it.

Construction Options - January, 3046
Pick one
Spoiler:
[] Establish Civilian Law Enforcement - The commercial district is getting a little unruly. We don't have any unemployment currently, so it's not like people are going around stealing things, but the survey and construction crews occasionally get into it, and the brig in the Octagon isn't really the right place to cool off drunk civilians who've beat each other up. And our infantry aren't really trained or equipped for civilian law enforcement work. So, the proposal is to hire and equip an appropriately sized group of people to break up bar fights and arbitrate disputes. Maybe not the same people for both, but you get the point. 1M "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 all the stuff involved, first. 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
Requirements for operation:
- Housing (done)
- Food (done)
- Raw Materials

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
- Components

[] 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: 3.878B C-Bills
Current expenditures: 12.8M C-Bills / month

Next batch of contracts:
Apparently, the pharmaceuticals sector is a rough business. Our negotiators have a chat with a rep from Vinson Pharmaceuticals. They're in competition with Lustrix Commodities and want a specific manufacturing centre on Wright (over in the Capellan Confederation) taken out. The wrinkle is that they've apparently already hired a group of mercs to do it (A Regular/D-rated outfit called "Noutel's Narrators"). They got it done, but their dropship got shot down so now they're stuck out in the hinterlands. Our job would to locate and either rescue or eliminate the mercs, depending on the feasibility of the former, or at least distract the local defenders long enough for the mercs to fix their dropship and depart. A little bit of general chaos would also not go amiss, with bonuses for engaging the enemy. The opposition, according to reports, is a mixture of veteran planetary militia and corporate security forces - no warrior houses or regulars, thankfully. The estimate for required forces is three companies.

Nitty-gritty details:
6 months expected duration, plus 3 months travel time (two ways)
"Liaison" command (we're expected to keep the Narrators alive)
40% salvage rights (split with the Narrators)
Regular/D-rated allied forces
Veteran/D-rated estimated opposition
100% transport coverage
40% battle loss compensation
145M expected profit
Standard Terran environment (.88G)

A pretty straightforward contract, pays reasonably well and is pretty close.

---

The second contract offer we get is from some representative from the "Federated Commonwealth" who wants us to undertake an "Extraction Raid" on Capella "using every mech and mechwarrior we've got". Our negotiator blinks and lets the "FedCom" rep keep talking. Once he gets to the salvage clause (which is, apparently 10% "exchange", meaning we only get 10% of the salvage and we don't actually keep the loot), our guy politely excuses himself and walks away. What a stupid scam.

---

The third contract offer is from a man representing a Free Worlds League mining concern. Apparently, some of their surveyors have been eyeing some mineral deposits on the world of Loric, on the former Lyran Commonwealth/FWL border, and ran afoul of the local regulations regarding heavy industry and pollution or something. Long story short, they got into a fight with the planetary militia and need someone to bail them out after they got themselves stuck in a stalemate. Once we bail them out, we are expected to put ourselves at their disposal for the remainder of our contract term. The expected opposition is probably local planetary militia and elements of the Seventh Lyran Regulars. Our estimated force requirements are two companies.

5 months expected duration, plus 8 months travel time (two ways)
Liaison command
20% salvage rights
Green/D-rated allied forces
Regular/C-rated estimated opposition
100% transport coverage
60% battle loss compensation
128M expected profit
Standard Terran environment

A decent contract, although the travel time and fighting against FedCom forces make it a little less desirable than some of the other ones.

---

The last contract offer is from the governor of Victoria, a couple of jumps southwest from New Avalon. Victoria is a pretty unpleasant place to live, and apparently, when you squeeze the peasants (or, in this case, miners and factory workers) too hard, they take their industrial mechs and take over a bunch of military bases. The governor has been told, in no uncertain terms, that if he does not get the situation under control one way or the other, that he will be getting replaced. Never let it be said that House Davion lets incompetents stay on the job. Once they screw up royally, anyway. We'll be working alongside the battle-hardened (how?) planetary militia to put down people who've never operated a piece of military equipment in their life, but it sounds like everyone's equipment is rear-echelon crap. As usual for this type of "riot duty" contract, we will be on the hook for any property damage that occurs as a direct result of our actions, and we are "expected to make the utmost effort to minimize civilian casualties." Which I guess means we probably will have to avoid dropping thermobaric explosives on major population centers. Our estimated force commitment is our entire combat force.

6 months expected duration, plus 3 months travel time (two ways)
Liaison command
40% salvage rights
Veteran/F-rated allied forces
Green/F-rated estimated opposition
30% transport coverage
60% battle loss compensation
138M expected profit
High-G environment, high-heat environment (1.17g, 44C average temperature)

In military terms, this should be easy, although the high gravity combined with high temperature will make this a slog.

As before, we have four companies available. No doubling up on these, so let's pick one:
[] Relief/Diversion Duty - Wright - 9 months, 3 companies
[NOPE] "Extraction Raid" - Capella (haha, no)
[] Relief/Extraction Duty - Loric - 13 months, 2 companies
[] Riot Duty - Victoria - 9 months, 4 companies
[] Wait another month
Black Lives Matter
User avatar
Isgrimnur
Posts: 82085
Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2006 12:29 am
Location: Chookity pok
Contact:

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Isgrimnur »

Relief/Diversion Duty - Wright - 9 months, 3 companies

NO 👏 HIGH 👏 G 👏 DEPLOYMENTS 👏
It's almost as if people are the problem.
Zenn7
Posts: 4447
Joined: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Zenn7 »

Isgrimnur wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:16 pm Relief/Diversion Duty - Wright - 9 months, 3 companies

NO 👏 HIGH 👏 G 👏 DEPLOYMENTS 👏
Are we still refitting? Is chilling another month maybe a good idea?

If not, then sure, Wright sounds right.
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

NickAragua wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:10 pm [x] 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.

As before, we have four companies available. No doubling up on these, so let's pick one:
[x] Relief/Diversion Duty - Wright - 9 months, 3 companies
[NOPE] "Extraction Raid" - Capella (haha, no)
[] Relief/Extraction Duty - Loric - 13 months, 2 companies
[] Riot Duty - Victoria - 9 months, 4 companies
[] Wait another month
Offer the "FedCom" rep a bridge on Luthien for sale. Only today! 90% off! Just because we really like him. :)
User avatar
El Guapo
Posts: 41243
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by El Guapo »

Zenn7 wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:34 pm
Isgrimnur wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:16 pm Relief/Diversion Duty - Wright - 9 months, 3 companies

NO 👏 HIGH 👏 G 👏 DEPLOYMENTS 👏
Are we still refitting? Is chilling another month maybe a good idea?

If not, then sure, Wright sounds right.
Agreed.
Black Lives Matter.
User avatar
$iljanus
Forum Moderator
Posts: 13676
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 3:46 pm
Location: New England...or under your bed

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by $iljanus »

[x] Establish Civilian Law Enforcement - The commercial district is getting a little unruly. We don't have any unemployment currently, so it's not like people are going around stealing things, but the survey and construction crews occasionally get into it, and the brig in the Octagon isn't really the right place to cool off drunk civilians who've beat each other up. And our infantry aren't really trained or equipped for civilian law enforcement work. So, the proposal is to hire and equip an appropriately sized group of people to break up bar fights and arbitrate disputes. Maybe not the same people for both, but you get the point. 1M "construction" cost, 100k/year maintenance.

It’s either hire some star cops or begin executing criminals as examples but I think that would be bad for morale...unless we tie it into the entertainment project. (GLADIATOR GAMES!)
Apparently, the pharmaceuticals sector is a rough business. Our negotiators have a chat with a rep from Vinson Pharmaceuticals. They're in competition with Lustrix Commodities and want a specific manufacturing centre on Wright (over in the Capellan Confederation) taken out. The wrinkle is that they've apparently already hired a group of mercs to do it (A Regular/D-rated outfit called "Noutel's Narrators"). They got it done, but their dropship got shot down so now they're stuck out in the hinterlands. Our job would to locate and either rescue or eliminate the mercs, depending on the feasibility of the former, or at least distract the local defenders long enough for the mercs to fix their dropship and depart. A little bit of general chaos would also not go amiss, with bonuses for engaging the enemy. The opposition, according to reports, is a mixture of veteran planetary militia and corporate security forces - no warrior houses or regulars, thankfully. The estimate for required forces is three companies.

Nitty-gritty details:
6 months expected duration, plus 3 months travel time (two ways)
"Liaison" command (we're expected to keep the Narrators alive)
40% salvage rights (split with the Narrators)
Regular/D-rated allied forces
Veteran/D-rated estimated opposition
100% transport coverage
40% battle loss compensation
145M expected profit
Standard Terran environment (.88G)

A pretty straightforward contract, pays reasonably well and is pretty close.
Big pharma has deep pockets and it’s not on a high grav hell planet so I pick the AstraZenica contract!
Black lives matter!

Wise words of warning from Smoove B: Oh, how you all laughed when I warned you about the semen. Well, who's laughing now?
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Vote Results:
Spoiler:
Civilian Law Enforcement - 4
Raw Materials - 1

Wright - unanimous
Scrub and the rest of the command staff conclude without much argument that Wright is the best option for contracts. We pass on the High-G offers and the various offers involving stomping FedCom civilians. But a little medical industry "skullduggery" is right up our alley.

---

"So what happened over on Hechnar, anyway, Captain?" Scrub asks Cpt. Moring of Epsilon company.

"I don't want to talk about it." The Captain replies.

"Sure you do, I'm your commanding officer. I can read the report myself, but I'd like to hear it from you."

"Right, well, so, we were guarding a bunch of surveyors." Cpt. Moring begins, sighing. "Started out ok, but then two companies of raider mechs and tank backup landed, guarding a competing survey team - we spent a month getting our asses kicked. Lost one of the aerospace fighters, one of our lances got shot up and put out of action for about a month. We had to abandon three survey sites."

"So how come the contract is listed as a victory in the employer's report?" Scrub asks, curious.

"Yeah, funny thing, a tornado ripped through their base camp, killed all their command and support staff, and basically anyone that wasn't in a mech or a fighter at the time." Cpt. Moring reports, shaking her head.

"You're kidding."

"Whoosh." the Captain confirms, circling her hand around for added emphasis.

Epsilon company was able to wrap up the Hechnar survey contract that we deployed them on. After all the repair and transport costs, and the costs of keeping their units active on Dowles afterwards providing local security, the total costs of operating that company have been ~18M C-Bills to date.

---

Construction Update:

We decide to bring in some professional civilian law enforcement for our civilians. It works out pretty well. The number of bar fights doesn't really decrease, but the drunks can cool off in the local hoosegow instead of in our military brig or an "improvised" brig and we no longer have to worry about our infantry accidentally (or "accidentally") shooting people during police actions. So far, nobody's actually gotten killed, but it'll happen eventually as our population grows. At that point, we'll need to either adopt some standard set of laws from another world, or come up with our own. We'll also eventually need "serious" medical care facilities eventually for when someone gets seriously hurt - there are some "medical conditions" where you can't really wait the three weeks it takes to get to the nearest proper hospital a jump or two over.

Pick one of the following options. Note that, due to all of our dropships and the jump ship being gone on contract, construction costs are doubled from what is listed.
Spoiler:
[] Establish Medical Care Facilities - While the medical facilities in our dropships and compound are sufficient for most minor problems, we'll eventually start running into issues that we can't fix and can't wait the two weeks it would take to travel to neighboring St. Ives. And sometimes our dropships have to leave. We haven't located any facilities that can be reclaimed for this purpose, so we'll have to build a hospital from scratch, in addition to hiring all the personnel. 1.9M 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 the "raw materials". 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
Requirements for operation:
- Housing (done)
- Food (done)
- Raw Materials

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
- Components

[] 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: 3.75B C-Bills
Current expenditures: 13.7M C-Bills / month

---

We're being paid for three companies, but we'll be bringing along four - we'll want a solid force protecting our dropships and to be able to rotate troops out as necessary. This leaves Epsilon company and a reinforced heavy lance back at Dowles for garrison duty.

We don't get the Mackie refit finished quite in time, so it'll be shipping out with an AC/20 instead of a gauss rifle. But no worries, our techs can finish the refit en route. The only annoying thing is that the CASE system is an integral part of the mech structure for the right torso, so we basically have a half-ton of wasted mass protecting the mech from ammo explosions caused by inert ammo. But on the other hand, we have a gauss rifle with 24 shots.

There's also a bit of a time/cost overrun on refitting Wolf's Warhammer with the XL engine to the tune of an extra 2 million C-Bills - apparently, there's some power adapter cables and structural reinforcement needed because the Talon's XL engine doesn't fit into the Warhammer "as is". Which, from a layman's perspective, makes sense: the power output specs are the same, but because the Warhammer draws more power by default, we need to re-tool the engine shielding to add extra heat sinks. A pain in the ass to be sure, but XL engines don't grow on trees. We'll see how it goes.

We finish our re-organization as well - updated TO&E coming in the next couple of updates.

Nothing else of note happens as our force is en route to Wright.
Spoiler:
Image
February 11, 3047
Wright System
Capellan Confederation

Operation Swamp Gate begins with a whoosh as our jumpship (as well as the hird one) materializes at the zenith jump point. Our approach to the planet is unchallenged, until we're about to hit atmo, at which point we detect a Union-class dropship approaching our formation, escorted by a swarm of light and conventional fighters.

We can either send out two squadrons of heavy fighters to intercept (that's all the fighters that we have ready to go in our aerospace hangars), or let our dropship crews exercise their guns a little bit. The latter option runs the risk of our dropships getting damaged in the process, but gives us greater available firepower.

[] Intercept
[] Let them come in
Black Lives Matter
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:36 pm [] Intercept
[] Let them come in
Can we combine both options? Let ASFs soften the hostiles and then mop up (hopefully) with dropships?
User avatar
NickAragua
Posts: 6100
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:20 pm
Location: Boston, MA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by NickAragua »

Leraje wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:46 pm
NickAragua wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:36 pm [] Intercept
[] Let them come in
Can we combine both options? Let ASFs soften the hostiles and then mop up (hopefully) with dropships?
We can deploy our fighters from our dropships and engage with everything at once, but that's basically the second option.

At our rate of descent, if we intercept, they won't have enough time to engage our fighters *and* the dropships before the dropships hit the ground (at which point we rapidly deploy two companies of mechs from our Unions and they'll need a lot more aircraft).
Black Lives Matter
User avatar
El Guapo
Posts: 41243
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:01 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by El Guapo »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:36 pm
[X] Raw Material surveys

[X] Intercept
[] Let them come in
Seems like the raw material is the next big thing we need to get this battlestation to be fully operational, so let's get started on that already, before we wind up building a resort instead of a mercenary base.

On the dropship, seems like the dropship is more important than the aerospace fighters, so let's send them out to intercept. If things go badly, then the dropship itself can engage.
Black Lives Matter.
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:50 pm
Leraje wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:46 pm
NickAragua wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:36 pm [] Intercept
[] Let them come in
Can we combine both options? Let ASFs soften the hostiles and then mop up (hopefully) with dropships?
We can deploy our fighters from our dropships and engage with everything at once, but that's basically the second option.

At our rate of descent, if we intercept, they won't have enough time to engage our fighters *and* the dropships before the dropships hit the ground (at which point we rapidly deploy two companies of mechs from our Unions and they'll need a lot more aircraft).
In that case - intercept.
User avatar
Leraje
Posts: 608
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:27 am
Location: NYC

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by Leraje »

El Guapo wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:55 pm
NickAragua wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:36 pm
[X] Raw Material surveys

[X] Intercept
[] Let them come in
Seems like the raw material is the next big thing we need to get this battlestation to be fully operational, so let's get started on that already, before we wind up building a resort instead of a mercenary base.
+1
User avatar
gbasden
Posts: 7664
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:57 am
Location: Sacramento, CA

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by gbasden »

El Guapo wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:55 pm
NickAragua wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:36 pm
[X] Raw Material surveys

[X] Intercept
[] Let them come in
Seems like the raw material is the next big thing we need to get this battlestation to be fully operational, so let's get started on that already, before we wind up building a resort instead of a mercenary base.

On the dropship, seems like the dropship is more important than the aerospace fighters, so let's send them out to intercept. If things go badly, then the dropship itself can engage.
Agreed!
User avatar
AWS260
Posts: 12663
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:51 pm
Location: Brooklyn

Re: Let's play: Battletech via MegaMek

Post by AWS260 »

[X] Establish Medical Care Facilities

[X] Let them come in
Post Reply