[Abe Sargent]

July 9, 3066 – Lillie offered to stay and garrison the planet and keep the remnants of the 5th under watch, but there aren’t that many that surrendered.

We turned over the captured mechs from the Hussars to the local guard, as well as the 75 salvaged tanks.


Over the next few months, salvage operations are in full force, as well as tech outfits and security requirements and more. Taverns, restaurants, trading bazaars, and more are all heavily used, and the Small World economy is healthier than ever. In fact, the lingering benefits of this travel and economic growth will be felt for some time. Duke Small uses the temporary benefits to invest in additional mining expeditions and equipment, in order to flesh out their economy a bit more with the radioactive mining.


In the meantime, we have salvaged Mech’s and tanks from our hot drop, as well as those DropShips:


Conquistador, DropShip – Ready September 15, 3066
Triumph, Upgraded, DropShip – Ready December 1, 3066
Excalibur, Upgraded, DropShip – Ready September 15, 3066
Leopard CV, Upgraded, DropShip – Ready October 15, 3066

Not sure we need another Leopard CV but the Triumph is a sign we need to push our tanks more.

Here’s why:

The Upgraded Triumph can carry 36 vehicles, and 4 mechs, or cargo. Basically, it can carry an entire battalion of tanks. That’s a pretty useful transport DropShip.


As was mentioned, that Conquistador was the prize. It’s the most expensive DropShip. Ever. It’s 1.42 billion C-Bills in value (according to MegaMek, 1.6 billion according to Heavy Metal), and roughly 15 of them have been made in the last 6 years or so.

They are designed to be the ideal command DropShip for an entire RCT. First of all, they carry a lot of troops:

Fighters? 18 aerospace fighters
Vehicles? 12 tanks
Mechs? 24 mechs
Battle Armor? 20 squads of battle armor
Infantry? 16 platoons of infantry
Cargo? 877 tons of additional cargo space

That clearly has a huge ability to bring a lot of stuff to the table.

In other news, the Conquistador has all of the latest, most up-to-date electronics, including two decks of computing, electronics, scanning equipment, and more. The general can use it to keep abreast of all of the major changes. Meanwhile, after it lands, it has a huge, spacious medical bay that opens up the ship and is turned into a full service combat hospital. It juts requires a skeleton crew to run (so killing a few helped us considerably). It’s designed to be smooth, and luxurious. And it’s expensive. The next most-expensive DropShip is the recently released Nekohono’o, at 873 million. The only ship, clan, IS, or Star league, that is more expensive is the spyship the Pueblo, and it costs more than some WarShips, and was designed in the Star League era to copy the roles of espionage WarShips like the BugEye.

What do to with the Conquistador? There’s going to be a limited market for them, since they were designed with a specific purpose in mind. You have to have a unit which has Mechs, Tanks, Power Armor, infantry, and fighters. And you have to need the pimped up communications, electronics, and all of that. It’s not a typical DropShip.

On the other hand, large units in the Free Worlds League, Capellan Confederation, Draconis Combine, or even Word of Blake/ComStar might find it exceedingly valuable. Merchants and mercenaries aren’t going to be too interested in it.

But a major player might be willing to shell out the dough.

On the third hand, we could fix it up, pick up some power armored troops, and then use it exactly as intended ourselves. It’s a pretty useful thing.

I go ahead and sell the Leopard and use it to fix, and repair, and stock our battle losses and salvage that won’t be coming out of the Celestial Coalition budget. We have about 65 million left after that, which will hit our general budget.