The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!(Aurora)

[Tellistto]

So wish I could start a conventional start to this game and learn more about the technology that is already given to a TN start.

Still haven't put in the time to figure out how to move a ship from Shipyard TG to available for use to go exploring.

One question. On your shuttle, how do you plan to have passengers on that ship with no spare berths, or 2 spare berths? I was looking at designing a ship as a shuttle after seeing your discussion about geological survey teams, and could not understand how a team could board a ship without spare berths.

I checked the box to not delete extra crew quarters and designed a ship that had 5 spare berths. Is this not required to allow this shuttle class to carry a five person geolical team to another point in the solar system?

Just to say, this game is damn daunting all things considered. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt a tiny bit. I haven't even gotten into the whole designing new systems or ships yet.

Tell

[Brian Swartz]

Good question -- you don't have to have spare crew berths. The team can board any ship so far as I can tell.

As far as the conventional question -- I'd recommend doing a 'TN' start that really isn't. I.e., you can change the starting labs/shipyards and delete all your starting research points(or just a good portion of them) and get most of the same effect. Far from optimal, but probably better than nothing.

The learning curve is very steep. I wish you well with it .

[PilotMan]

Clearly on first look it appears that the volume of minerals, specifically certain types of minerals on Venus means that we need to initiate some progress toward extracting them. However, the cost at our current tech level is much too great to jump in with both feet.

I propose that we spend the money to continue to explore other locations in the Solar System. There are many locations where the cost to extract would be much more manageable than this.

Furthermore, we need to begin to develop the right technologies that would allow us to feasibly extract and possibly colonize the planet of Venus. However, we have only explored 1 inner planet. I will not rush to conclusions that it is the immediate solution.

If I understand correctly, the deposits of Duranium specifically are only just under twice as hard to get at as they are on our own planet? If that's the case then assets should be allocated to getting it whether it be by auto-mining or else, as long as it isn't cost prohibitive. We need to attain what we can at our current level while pushing to explore and open as many options as we can. At the same time we will not tie all resources to a solution that instead, may find us wasting time and money when a simpler solution may be out there.

As for geology teams. At this time we know that the extent of minerals on Venus is great at a minimum. Instead of sending our best men and women there right now, we ask for them to continue to develop technologies that will allow for us to move about the galaxy.

I am authorizing the production of up to 2 more Essex-class ships to explore the system, as well as the beginning of a regular production of line of shuttles that can quickly move our people when our brave and intrepid explorers find another supply of minerals.

If we should find the rest of the solar system to be barren and our only recourse is to transit to Venus we will have the infrastructure built with which to move our people and the technology to make life work there.

{I have no clue if anything I said there works in the aspect of the game, tbh. But hopefully, you get the gist of it, and can work with it within the confines of the writing and playing.}

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by PilotMan/quote

{I have no clue if anything I said there works in the aspect of the game, tbh. But hopefully, you get the gist of it, and can work with it within the confines of the writing and playing.}

Works fine, thanks. Here's a translation which should be roughly decent I hope ...

Executive Order of Director Slick Willie
Ocober 25, 2034

GEV Marc Aaaronson is ordered to proceed with the survey of the inner system, and the P&A Group Shipyard is instructed to immediately retool for the Essex class -- at least one more vessel is to be constructed as soon as possible to facilitate faster surveying of the rest of the system, and possibly a third if warranted.

The Ministry of Research & Development is to prioritize developing technologies to enable faster engines, with the goal of rapid deployment of geology teams at an opportune time when the ship surveys are further along. In view of this, Dr. Grimmett and Dr. Bavaro's projects(Cargo Handling and Cryogenic Transport) have been paused for the moment to allocate their lab space to Dr. Santo Makar, whose work in expanding engine capabilities will take precedence for the time being. His current project is expected now to complete in a few months' time, next January.

The Navy has been instructed to develop the facilities and ship designs required to build vessels to move significant quantities of personnel, colonists, and materials off-world. At least one more shipyard will be necessary, so construction of a new Commercial Shipyard is also ordered.

Finally, the Ministry of Industry is instructed to use a small portion of it's capacity to begin producing infrastructure to be ready to deploy wherever it may be needed in the future.

[Brian Swartz]

November 2034

The ST Vega is finished and re-tooling back to the Essex class begins. Meanwhile the Marc Aaronson reports on the 17th that Mercury is barren and heads for the Mars. The red planet is of extreme interest as the best potential colonization target in the system ...

BI-ANNUAL REPORT

Leota Schnepel(recently promoted to Captain) reports that the Marc Aaronson is just 34 million km out from Mars, and should arrive in less than a week. The journey has been delayed somewhat by the fact that they had to ‘catch’ Mars in it’s orbit, and the planets’ orbital speed is enough to be significant.

Population: 628.7m(68.9m unemployed)
Infrastructure: 13(enough to support about a half-million on Venus)
Economic Conversion: 31.4% completed

Major Construction Projects: Research Lab(80%, spring 2036); Commercial Shipyard(4%, fall 2037); Ground Forces Training Center(27%, Winter 2039)

Mining Report: Duranium is coming up shorter and shorter but not by significant amounts yet and with well over 2k in the existing stockpiles that is not considered a significant concern at this point.

Shipyard Operations: P&A Group retooling for the Essex class is expected to complete in June.

SPACE has now been in operation for 10 years, during which time three ships have been put in operation, orbital shipyard built, the economy is one-third of the way into a complete conversion and of course the leap to TN technology. Future decades look a little brighter than they did before.

Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrive – 48th out of 53
Cmdr. Tell Perj – 7th of 17, could well receive his first command in the next few years
Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen – 14th
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale – 18th

Brig. Gen. Path Twelve – 6th of 6, command unchanged
Brig. Gen Dolph Stallone – 3rd, command unchanged
Maj. Gen. Sterling Silvers – only MG, command unchanged

Slick Willie(5) – Director-Governor, only admin with a job at this point.
Sonny Dean(1) – paper-pusher extraordinaire

Pioneer Deacon Palmer – Researching ways to improve Shipyard Operations, expected to take another 4+ years

[Brian Swartz]

** There's enough things going on now that I've decided to break updates down to annually instead of bi-annual**

2035

Jan. 15th – A vital report as the Marc Aaronson completes it’s survey of Mars. Admiral Wilburn Castilleja orders the ship back to earth as Cpt. Schnepel is to accept a staff position at Fleet HQ. It will refuel there, and then begin the long journey to Jupiter.

More importantly, the survey of Mars revealed – nothing. This confirms that Venus is the only habitable inner-system world with resources.

Two days later, Dr. Makar’s team finishes and he emerges from the study with a deeper understanding of propulsion concepts. With Director Willie’s orders clear, his next project will be the Pressurized Water Reactor, which he believes will lead to a quantam leap in engine technology. Even with four of the five available labs being used, this is expected to take over a year.

March 3rd – The Marc Aaronson departs for Jupiter under it’s new CO, Lt. Cmdr. Waldo Politis, having given the crew a well-earned couple of months for shore leave. The journey will take over four months. Io is the first of four moons that will be surveyed, and the hope is there will be
time to scan the massive planet itself as well before returning to Earth.

June 13th – It’s been a quiet few months after the constant activity that marked the Venus and Mars surveys and the changes at the end of last year. A new Essex-class vessel begins construction, while the Marc Aaronson has passed through the Kuiper Belt but is well over 100 million miles from Io, nearly a month yet of travel.

July – In the first week, the Marc Aaronson passed into the mini-system of the giant red planet. Io was surveyed by the 13th, followed by Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto before the end of the month. The last survey turned up a modest-sized deposit(58k) of Tritanium at 0.5 accessibility, but that was it. It’s a long trip out here, at least at current engine technology, for that.

By the middle of August a report on Jupiter itself was completed. Progress was getting a lot over time, but unfortunately, they had found nothing.

LC Waldo Politis inquired of navigation the possibility of reaching Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and returning to earth in time. Titan would take over six months to reach, then several more back home, but fuel reserves were more than adequate and it would be achievable in less than the two
years the crew had signed up for. Coordinates were locked in and before the end of the day they were under full power heading for the famous rings of Saturn. Since the Cassini Solstice mission in 2016-17(which resulted in nothing since mankind was too busy fighting each other to be bothered with their spacecraft at that point) no human craft had been this far, and of course this was far further than any manned mission had ever hoped to go.

Titan was the last option in the solar system for a permanent human colony. Much would depend on the result of this journey.

October – The Ministry of Industry switches over more capacity from converting factories to converting mines, as the duranium stocks continue to decline(now only 1800 tons). Meanwhile, the first run of 100 Infrastructure is done on Earth, more than enough to begin colonization wherever SPACE might wish in the future.

At year’s end the Marc Aaronson was still a month and a half out from Titan, with a number of other important developments expected in the spring.

[Brian Swartz]

2036

Feb. 18th – The Titan mission was complete and a message sent back to SPACE HQ detailing the findings.

21k of decently-accessible duranium(0.6) was found, but that was all. On March 1st, it was found that Saturn itself possesses a nigh-incomprehensible mammoth amount of sorium in it’s atmosphere (45.9mt at 0.7 accessibility) which could potentially be harvested by orbiting ships with the right technology. It was now up to Director Slick Willie to make sense of these findings; the Marc Aaronson set to survey the rest of Saturn’s moons to make use of some more of the remaining mission time, and then make the 8-month return trip to earth. Only Tethys(36.5k Uridium at 0.8) was found to contain anything useful.

March – Pressurized Water Reactor(Dr. Sanko Matar) research completed. Work begins on nuclear thermal engine tech(expected time: 2 years).

March 26 – GEV George Obden Abell completed, Cmdr. Sam Baker takes the helm and sets course for Jupiter to finish off the rest of the moons there. The P&A Group yard sets to work adding another slipway so that two vessels can be built at once.

Early April – Tragedy strikes! Director-Governor Slick Willie is killed in an accident under mysterious and highly classified circumstances. He was 33, nearing the end of his first term. Rumors fly as the public demands but does not get answers, and more than a few largely unjustified accusations are thrown about by various people with an axe to grind.

Emergency appointment 32-year-old Jayson Riese, who has been with SPACE since the beginning along with Lena Dungey and Terrance Forson, vows to continue Slick Willie’s policies until the election which is less than eight months off.

April 27 – Having completed the sweep of Saturn’s moons and finding little, the Marc Aaronson sets course for Earth.

Late July – George Obden Abell begins surveying the remaining Jupiter moons ...

** Carpo – trace amounts of Duranium, Neutronium, Boronide, and Mercassium, only about 420 tons combined.
** Sinope – more trace amounts, 5 minerals and just over 200 tons combined.

In August, Cmdr. Baker sets course for the Kuiper Belt, the asteroid field which provides the last chance for deposits to be found within a reasonable range of Earth.

December – After 20 months on the current tour, the Marc Aaronson arrives back at Earth for shore leave.

[Brian Swartz]

Well, condolences to Slick Willie on being our first casualty. You may sign up a new character if you choose.

[Tellistto]

In my current game, Venus has something millions of tons of 5 different minerals, all at 0.1 accessability.

Sorry to see you go, Slick Willie!

Tell

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

June 13th – It’s been a quiet few months after the constant activity that marked the Venus and Mars surveys and the changes at the end of last year. A new Essex-class vessel begins construction, while the Marc Aaronson has passed through the Kuiper Belt but is well over 100 million miles from Io, nearly a month yet of travel.

I don't know if there's an official name for the asteroid belt but isn't the Kuiper Belt the one past Neptune/Pluto (oh and suck it people who don't think Pluto is a planet )?

SI

[Brian Swartz]

Yeah it is. I feel like an idiot now .

On Pluto being a planet, that's rather interesting actually, because what's the dividing line between planet and asteroid? Eris is lot farther away(and larger), yet nobody wants to call it a planet .

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

On Pluto being a planet, that's rather interesting actually, because what's the dividing line between planet and asteroid? Eris is lot farther away(and larger), yet nobody wants to call it a planet .

It kindof makes sense, not that I'd ever admit it.

Pluto being a planet is two parts "that's how it was when I was growing up" and one part "it's one of Kansas's claims to fame so they still celebrate Clyde (Tombaugh) Day there".

SI

[Brian Swartz]

In my current game, Venus has something millions of tons of 5 different minerals, all at 0.1 accessability.

Hopefully you've had better luck elsewhere then. Yuck!

[PilotMan]

Struck down in his prime! A visionary who prepared the people of earth for their first settlements beyond Earth.

A new voice will rise from among the people. A similar voice, but strong and reassuring on it's own. The voice of James Earl Jones....the V.

James Earl Jones V
Admin
Male

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

A new voice will rise from among the people. A similar voice, but strong and reassuring on it's own. The voice of James Earl Jones....the V.

So it shall be written, so it shall be done! Wait, that's Yul Brynner and Sir Cedrick Hardwicke. Nm. Added though of course.

ANNUAL REPORT – 2037

The 2037 election was the most hotly contested yet for a number of reasons. There were eight candidates, the leading ones being former director Lena Dungey and interim director Jayson Riese. The colonization of Venus was a political hot potato, as was the controversy surrounding
the death of Slick Willie. ‘Earth First’, ‘No Blood for Duranium’, and similarly simplistic slogans could be heard everywhere, while others argued that is was foolhardy not to take the risk of colonization given the potential rewards.

It was the closest election in history, requiring several recounts to finally resolve. Dungey was challenged by Herbert Duling, who was the only candidate more politically adept than her and brilliant when it comes to mining and logistics as well. In the end though Lena Dungey’s experience counted for more and she won a third term by a fraction of a percent.

To ensure the public’s confidence and avoid a serious split, and because he would be darn good at the job and everybody knew it, she put Duling in charge of the newly-formed Ministry of Colonial Affairs.

It was clear to both of them that Venus was central to the long-term economic future of earth. Yet by itself it would be no panacea. All efforts were focused on the job of colonizing Venus as quickly as possible, and being ready for asteroid mining operations if any significant deposits were found in the asteroid belt. Venus would not provide any answer to the need for more accessible tritanium and the lack of corundium virtually anywhere was disturbing. However, it would potentially provide jobs for many who needed it.

Construction of mass drivers for transporting the minerals between planets begins on earth, as well as that of automatic mines. It was hoped that by the end of her term in 2041, mankind would be ready for it’s first off-world colony.

In the shorter term, the Marc Aaronson had a couple more months of shore leave coming before joining the George Obden Abell in sweeping the belt, where absolutely nothing has been found as of yet but only five asteroids have been surveyed. Meanwhile, the best personnel non-
essential to the Venus preparations on earth were organized into a pair of survey teams, one assigned there and the other assigned to the Jupiter and Saturn moons.

The Venus team was led by Lt. Cmdr. Miquel Rater, the JupSat team by scientist Brandon Grimmett.

Mineral Update: Duranium and Neutronium stockpiles continue to slowly decline on earth despite increased effort put into increasing mining capacity. The situation could become critical in the years to come.

Nearly 50% of the conversion from conventional industry is completed ...

Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrie – 52nd out of 61
Cmdr. Tell Perj – 7th out of 20, currently third in line to receive new ship commands
Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen – 18th
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale – 22nd

Brig. Gen. Path Twelve – situation unchanged
Brig. Gen Dolph Stallone – situation unchanged
Maj. Gen. Sterling Silvers – situation unchanged

Sonny Dean(1) – no assignment

Pioneer Deacon Palmer – funding has been yanked for his project in favor of thetechnologies needed for Venus and other colonization efforts, so he is currently unassigned

[Brian Swartz]

February 2037
Navy Purges Officers; 'Budgetary Concerns' Blamed

In reality, Rear Admiral Castilleja doesn't want anybody to think that the youngsters are in charge so he decided to make a point. A BIG, unmistakable point. The junior officers corp was reduced nearly by half, with those he considered useless tossed aside like so much refuse.

Among those who were told their services(ok, their non-services or at best potential services) were no longer required are the following:

Lieutenant Commander Chip Overdrive
Commander Tell Perj
Lieutenant Commander Rob Nielsen
Lieutenant Commander Benton Gale

Consider yourselves pinged, gentlemen. Regens are encouraged, and better luck next time if you choose to do so . In one fell swoop, the Admiral forcibly retired the entire FOFC naval contingent.

Edit: In pure game terms, I should point out this happened because of how severely the number of naval officers was 'surplus to requirements', and only those who had never been given an assignment and had been active for over six years were culled. This is to point out that while it could happen again, it won't indefinitely as eventually the navy will grow large enough to catch up with the number of leaders. Lots of leaders and only a few ships makes things dicey.

[Coffee Warlord]

Commander Nielsen is going pirate!

His heir is not of age yet, but there is one man who can serve the Navy. One man who all shall fear. One man who can stand on the bridge and rule a crew with iron fisted discipline. One man who can destroy enemy ships by merely punching through their hulls...with his dick.

That man?

Erik Flamebeard of the Neither Here Nor There has joined the Naval Academy.

[Brian Swartz]

Feb. 10th – The Venus team is on site and begins the long process of surveying the planet ..

Feb. 18th – The Marc Aaronson has completed it’s allotted shore leave and joins the effort to survey the asteroid(not Kuiper) belt.

Mar. 11th – Second slipway is complete at the P&A Group Shipyard.

April – Construction begins on a third Lexington-class shuttle, while on the 18th the JupSat team led by Brandon Grimmett arrives on Callisto.

May – Minerals found on the asteroid Doris: 2-3k each of highly-accessible Sorium, Mercassium, and Boronide. A very small find to be sure.

June – New commercial shipyard is ready on earth. It is the Tod & MacGregor and immediately sets to work expanding capacity as will likely be needed for large freighters to be built to ship materials to Venus and elsewhere. Work begins on a third shipyard which may or may not be
needed.

July – The ironically named ‘Venus’ shuttle is completed on Earth and will remain in reserve for any needed transport duties.

Sept. – Another small asteroid deposit: 600+ Uridium on Asia. Also, James Earl Jones V graduates the Academy. He appears quite capable with an admin rating of 4, 30% Shipbuilding bonus, and 10% Ground Unit Construction Speed. He is also resourceful and highly educated.

December – A major development on earth as research into Nuclear Thermal Engines is completed. All available lab space is switched over to Dr. Bavaro’s work on cyro transport which should finish in February.

Compared to our conventional engines, nuclear thermal engines cost two and a half times as much – but produce a ridiculous 25 times the power! On lab is diverted for work on the CNT-25-4 engine, which is half the size of the ones used on the Lexington and Essex class ships while providing a huge boost in power and actually being slightly more fuel efficient due to the advances the last few years.

By next April, we should be ready to design a new line of ships utilizing this technology.

[Breeze]

Benton Gale II is signing up to join the Naval Academy as well...

[Grover]

Joe Tycho, Male, Scientist

[Tellistto]

Tell Perj Jr, at your service. Naval again, male.

Maybe this time a ship will open up. Do you put people into all the fleet staff positions so that some get assigned to something?

Other option is to put them all into team's so that they are assigned to something.

I had a Brigadier get cashiered in my last game. What the heck do I do with those guys? They don't get auto assigned to units, and there aren't any staff positions for ground units it seems. Perhaps it's something I have to research to get that?

Tell

[Brian Swartz]

I do fill staff positions, but at the moment I'm only doing that with Captains and up(the recommended level). All of the Fleet HQ positions have a Captain now, but there's no extras, and between the ships and teams only a couple Commanders are jobless as well at the moment(a year ahead of what's here, I'll post the next years events a bit later).

On the army leaders, I don't know if there is research later(but I think there is) to have higher structures above the individual units. I've just got all my top guys assigned to units, so the MG, BGs, and top colonels are the ones who get commands. I figure it's better both from gameplay and rp standpoint to lose the lower-level unacheivers.

There might be another naval purge in the works but I do think it will happen less and less as time goes on and more jobs become available.

Thanks for the signups, they are added as of the beginning of 2039.

[Brian Swartz]

2038

Early Feb. – The JupSat team completes it’s survey of Callisto. They found a major Uridium deposit(2.53mt) but only 0.1 accessible. The team heads to Carpo next. No word yet from the Venus team.

Small asteroid deposits continue to be found, but nothing significant yet.

Feb 26th – Ignacio Bravo’s team completes work on Cryogenic Transport.

March 3rd – The final piece of the puzzle clicks into place as the CNT-25-4 engine prototype is approved for production. Soon afterward, the engineers come up with four new blueprints ...

Essex II - class Geological Survey Vessel
Speed: 1136 km/s(16.7 times faster than the current Essex)
Range: 35.9 billion km(5.8 times further, the entirety of the system is now within it’s reach)
Size: 2200 tons(40% smaller)
Cost: 185(8% cheaper)

Lexington II - class Shuttle Transport
Speed: 1388(17.8 times faster)
Range: 43.9 billion(6.2 times farther)
Size: 1800(43.8% smaller)
Cost: 64.2(6.1% cheaper)

Spruance - class Colony Ship
Twin CNT-25-4 Engines and capacity for 50,000 colonists in cryostasis.
Speed: 295 km/s – Saturn is a 5-6 week trip each way, approximately.
Range: 4.7 billion(there’s nothing habitable that far away, so more fuel would be redundant at this point).
Cost: 654.6, takes nearly two years to build
Size: 16,850

Fletcher-class Freighter
15,000 tons of cargo space for carrying ... whatever, twin engines
Speed: 257
Range: 2.7 bkm – enough to go to Saturn and back nearly twice.
Cost: 180.4
Size: 19,400

The Fletcher was the one that really got debated a lot here. It would be nice to design one that could reach the outer edges of the system but to do that in a reasonable time frame, even quad engines wasn't enough and the cost etc. really started going through the roof ... it was decided that a freighter going that far really needs to wait until the next generation. Crawl before we can walk.

They also wanted to call it the Enterprise. Really, a freighter? No. Just no.

March – Nothing found on Carpo or Sinope. Jupiter is pretty much a dead planet to us, resource-wise.

April – Tod & MacGregor has expanded to 20k capacity.

June – Boronide deposits are depleted on Earth. It’s not being used much right now, and with almost 10k in reserve, it’s not something to get concerned about. Yet.

MG Silvers decides not to rest on his laurels, and makes some important friends. Political reliability is up to 5%.

Late August – FT Victoria, first ship in the Fletcher class, completed. Retooling begins for the Spruance class(this would later turn out to be a miscalculation, more freighters should have been built first. I underestimated how much infrastrucure was needed for Venus. Apparently it's not 1 per colony cost per million, but 100 per. A rather, ahem, large miscalculation, but appropriate as infrastructure is darn cheap. The long and the short of it is that at the accessibility levels of duranium on venus and the colony cost, it will take 50 years for a million citizens working in a mine -- and only a fraction of them actually can -- to pay back the duranium the infrastructure to support them will cost. Hello automines -- though we can't afford many -- and of course they'll be mining a lot more than duranium there as well).

Oct. 20 – Ouellet Shipping lauches Ouellet small class 1 freighter ... Here's a new, and cool, Aurora feature to introduce. Your civilians produce shipping firms(on their own). You can subsidize or not(not in my case), but we do make money taxing their shipping routes. They will ship colonists and infrastructure(though you have to watch them, they may ship too many colonists and end up with some of them dying). They design and build their own ships based on your existing commercial tech. It is also possible for them to build their own mining complexes on uncolonized bodies, which you can either buy the output from or tax the profits. Here's our first shipping line and they've built a small freighter(faster than ours, as well ).

Meanwhile, Erik Flamebeard graduates, and appears at first to be fairly unimpressive. 25 Crew Training, Fleet Movement Initiative 127, 15% Terraforming. Terraforming? For a naval officer? And conscientious. Indeed, it would seem that it would be impossible for him to be more contrary to his desired persona. Only at FOFC would a Flamebeard be good at terraforming, the tree-hugging git. Just sayin'

Nov – ST Wayne sets course for Titan as the JupSat team will next complete work on the Saturn moons, hoping for a better result than was found in Jupiter. Incredibly, this journey is expected to last only 11 days. They arrive on the 22nd.

Mid-December – The Venus team completes it’s survey, and finds nothing new. This is disappointing, but rather expected. They are sent back to Earth, and from there they will work on surveying the several asteroid finds that the survey vessels have pinpointed so far.

As the year ends, P&A Group Shipyard reports it is ready for the Essex II vessels to begin to be built. Two will be constructed concurrently, the Amerigo Vespucci and the Lief Ericson.

** OOC: At this point the updates will slow down in pace a bit. Partly because the next week or so is heavy on work for me, partly because as more and more things are going on it will take a little longer and I need to be methodical and make sure all the ships and production orders are doing what they need to be doing. I'm also going to change the reporting a bit starting with the next one to make it easier to follow what all is happening on an annual basis.

[Brian Swartz]

Char. updates will be next, but I wanted to add a pair of screens here to demonstrate a couple of things.



This you've seen before with just the planets, asteroids, comets, and so on. But now it's got all of our ships out there, a couple of Oullet(civilian) ships, etc, different speeds and tasks -- it'll get more crowded over time but the real-time location of anything we're doing is updated on the system view here.



This is task groups and specifically where we set orders -- I can't show them all here but wanted to demonstrate the fact that once you get used to it, you can plan ahead almost as far as you feel like in terms of giving orders. Obscenely complicated trade routes can be set up to repeat almost infinitely(you do have to give the crew shore leave from time to time) but there's a huge variety of orders that can be given which vary with the equipment the ship carries(i.e, without a cargo hold all of the load this, load that stuff doesn't exist).

[Tellistto]

I originally had the auto assign officers, think I'll have to ditch that since I'm not happy with the results of it.

Anyways, make sure you manage to get that whole mass driver to Venus. And yeah, it's 2500 to 1 to get a million pop on that planet.

Tell

[Coffee Warlord]

Erik Flamebeard will terraform the FUCK out of planets, till they scream for mercy.

[Brian Swartz]

Mass driver's already there(second trip for the rest of it) and a dozen infrastructure with more coming as fast as the Victoria can ship it(i.e., not very). There'll be more freighters eventually to speed up the process.

[Brian Swartz]

Lt. Cmdr. Erik Flamebeard -- 42nd out of 42, no assignment

Benton Gale II and Tell Perj Jr. are on the waiting list

Brig. Gen. Path Twelve -- 7th out of 7, still with the 1st Low Tech Infantry
Brig. Gen. Dolph Stallone -- 3rd, 13th Low Tech Armour
Mag. Gen. Sterling Silvers -- only MG, 11th Low Tech Armour

Sonny Dean(1) -- no assignment
James Earl Jones V(4) -- no assignment

Pioneer Deacon Palmer -- Researching improved Shipyard Operations(2042)

Joe Tycho is on the waiting list

[Grover]

Hopefully Joe isn't being dropped down flights of stairs like his distant cousin Chip Overdrive.

[Ironhead]

Naval Officer Hannah Shepard, female reporting for duty.

[Coffee Warlord]

The Flamebeard ain't so great, I see.

He will make up for his shortcomings through sheer stabbing.

[Brian Swartz]

** The new format is a shameless ripoff, and I think it will work better as it makes it easier to organize events now that we are gradually getting more and more happen each year. For now I'm going to stick with annual updates**

2039 IN REVIEW

Sol Survey Efforts

The Rater team(Miquel Rater, formerly known as the Venus team) departs on the ST Marengo(Cmdr. Pitianello) in late January. They first make for Apollo in their tour on inner-system asteroids with confirmed deposits by orbital scans. With the new engines in place, it takes only 20 hours ...

A decent find was discovered in April on the asteroid Chernykh, with 40k vendarite and 20k+ gallicite. Unfortunately not what we need right now. In June, several minerals were discovered on the Whipple comet, including 11k Duranium and 16k Mercassium. No corundium or neutronium yet.

Sept. 13th – The Leif Ericson and Amerigo Vespucci are christened. Commander Lucas Marini, the brightest young star in the navy at this point, takes the first and head to Uranus to survey that system. The previously unreachable(for a manned mission) seventh planet would take less than a month to approach. Un-freaking-believable. The latter vessel goes to Jon McElveen(previously on the Valencia, which LTC Besler will take over) and heads to Neptune.

Oct. 16th – The report from Uranus is in: 18.2mt of Sorium at 1.0. We won’t lack for fuel in the near future, that’s for sure – though that isn’t our problem at the moment. A search of the moons followed ... a small amount of Gallicite was found on Stephano, and that was it. Sigh. The Lief Ericson went in search of more targets in the outer system ...

November – More Sorium, only 1.5mt at half accessibility, found on Neptune. It’s very unlikely we’ll develop that as Uranus and Saturn seem much better long-term targets. On the 10th, the Neptune moons’ surveys were completed, and there was some much better news. Triton contains 475k duranium(0.8 ), 553k corbomite at 0.9, and lesser amounts of some others. The corbomite find is worth noting because, while it’s not a need right now, we haven’t found it anywhere else in quantity off of earth. It’s not worth the extreme cost of developing right now – but it certainly could be in the near future.

At the same time, a report came in from the comet Borrelly – good-accessibility Duranium(18k at 0.9) and even better Neutronium(44k at 0.8 ) was found along with several others. Borrelly gives us a short-to-medium range solution to the problem of neutronium for shipyard operations etc. Since there’s duranium there as well, moving automated mines from Venus(though not all of them) seems productive. Orders were immediately sent for a new mass driver and for automines to be split between Venus and Borrelly as soon as a team could be deployed there.

December — Less than a month after it's discovery, the Borrelly deposits got downgraded in importance as the Schaumasse comet yielded ... a number of things, but most importantly 19k corundium at 1.0! Everything else on earth stopped. A mass driver and as many automines as could be hauled by the Victoria were sent immediately.

Commissioned Officers

Feb – Another purge sees two dozen more officers get canned. This time the majority are from the army.

May – LTC Benton Gale II commissioned.
Fleet Movement Initiative: 214
Bonuses: Fighter Combat 30%, Terraforming 15%, Espionage 15%, Diplomacy 10%
Personality Traits: Focused, Honest, Impatient, and Results-oriented

Anybody good at fighter combat and diplomacy scares me.

July – Tell Perj Jr. graduates.
Fleet Movement Initiative: 152
Bonsuses: Fighter Ops 30%, Training 50, Mining 20%, Fight Op 15,
Personality Traits: Dispassionate, Psychological Problems

Sept. – Erik Flamebeard’s political reliability is up to 10% as he continue to defy even his own classifications. Also ...

LTC Hanna Shepard commissioned
Fleet Movement Initiative: 100
Bonuses: Training 100, 10% each for Factory Production, Logistics, Political Reliability, and Survey

Venus Colonization

The first automated mine arrives on March 20th. In July, the mass driver starts shipping back very small amounts to Earth. By the end of the year, Venus sits at 6 automated mines, allowing annual production of a little under 200 tons combined. A very paltry contribution, but we've just started. It has 24 infrastructure, as the freighter has been busy hauling mines(and will be even more so with the new discoveries).

Venus has been shuffled to the back burner, probably for quite some time.

Earth Industry

April 25 – Ground Force Training Facility Completed(Earth)

July – Conventional Industry conversions halted. Still over 27% remains, but it is clear that right now mining will not keep up with industry as it is due to lack of good deposits. Work on the third commercial shipyard has also been paused for the same reason. Rapidly we are running out of things to usefully do. Director Dungey orders an independent review over the last months of the year to evaluate options.

September – Earth inches over 700m total population.

Research

Sep. 25 – Sanko Matar’s team completes marginally useful research on increasing power plant output – while also making the things more likely to blow up if they ever get him in combat. I’m not so sure about that one. Meanwhile, a seventh research lab is completed, allowing Clint Wyche to begin a study on improving fuel efficiency further.

Special Update

As it impacts on multiple areas ...

December -- Following the Borrelly and Schaumasse finds, an interesting factoid is discovered: every single comet surveyed so far(five of them) has yielded results. Most asteroids have not, and those that have were in much smaller amounts. Therefore the scheduled review is delayed and the survey ships(Essex and Essex II's) have been order to expend every possible effort to survey the remaining comets as soon as possible. When their initial scans are complete, SPACE will have some decisions to make, decisions that are likely to be highly painful.

As of now, 5 of 25 comets have been surveyed. Of the remaining twenty, four(Ikeya-Zang, Hale-Bopp, McNaught-Russell, and Brooks) are at an obscene range(15b km or more) but the others should be able to be 'caught' or are incoming. Thirteen of the twenty spend most or all of their orbit within range of the Fletcher-class freighters, so if more mineral deposits are found, it is likely we will be able to act on them.

[Tellistto]

I tried putting people on venus too. Believe me, it's not worth it. Even if you get a few million people there, most of them will be stuck doing agriculture work and nothing else.

It's truly a harsh place. Auto mines all the way, no people.

Tell

edit: corrected planet.

[Brian Swartz]

Unforunately, at least so far, we don't have that option, since we can't make enough automated mines to just dump a bunch of them there.

[Brian Swartz]

2041, Part One

Comet Surveys

Jan 3rd – Rater geology time lands on Schaumasse.

Late Feb – Swift-Tuttle surveyed and found to contain 8 minerals at high accessibility(all 0.7 or better), though only a total of 70k altogether. A very good yet fairly small discovery. Six for six ... where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

March 3rd – Wild has 5 minerals, most notably 35k Gallicite and 12.5k Neutronium. A little over 60k altogether.

March 14th – Faye makes it 8 for 8. Safe to call it a pattern, I’d say. 6 more at 0.7 or better, including over 7.5k of the rare corundium. A little over 50k in total.

April 3rd – Herschel-Rigollet is one of the best finds yet, but unfortunately it’s almost to the Kuiper Belt and has another 3b+ km to go before it turns around, so it’ll be some time before we can make use of it. Over 40k of several minerals, and 10k corundium is there.

Just about now, I’m wondering what in the heck is taking the team on Titan so long? I mean, Venus didn’t even take this long and it’s much larger. We can only hope that what it means is that they are verifying in triplicate the size of some enormous discovery ...

May 5th – Enke has about 35k and none of the key minerals are there. 11 more ‘catchable’ comets to survey.

May 17th – Halley’s Comet has about 90k, most notably Neutronium at 18k+. It’s another long-term project as it’s heading out past the Kuiper Belt soon. It’s also the last of the highly distant comets – the rest are inside Uranus orbit – and hopes are high they can be tagged by the end of
the year ...

June 9th – Reinmuth survey complete. Enough mines on there and neutronium would be an ex-issue for a very long time. 164k at 0.7, 350k total a very considerable discovery, most of the rest being corbomite.

June 13th – Tempel-1 is found to contain less than 30k, and the Rater team finishes on Schaumasse, having found no additional deposits.

June 18th – Stephan-Oterma has 25k Duranium, about 105-110k total.

June 22nd – 8 minerals on Crommelin, 16k duranium, 3.2k corundium, a total of about 150k the majority of which is tritanium.

June 25th – Rater geology team arrives on Borrelly.

July 2nd – Neujmin has primarily Neutronium(90k) and Tritanium, about 185k total.

July 3rd – Temple-Tuttle yields a little under 70k, including 5k corundium and about half of it Tritanium.

July 10th – Comas Sola results in 75k or so, including all three key minerals. The Rater team finds nothing more on Borrelly. Comas Sola has the best balance of the three most-essential minerals to be found so far, and the Rater team heads there next.

July 17th – The Rater team finds nothing more on Comas Sola. Wolf-Harrington has no duranium, but some of just about everything else and a total pushing 150k.

July 22nd – Macholz has the big three and a total of 8 minerals, 80k-plus.

July 24th – Wolf has suprisingly little, about 30k and only the Neutronium is particularly needed.

That’s all for the comets except the four extremely distant ones, none of which we need concern ourselves with for many years.

Earth

Feb. 15th – Retooling complete, construction of the CS Antonio Abetti(Spruance-class colony ship) commences at the Tod & MacGregor. It is no longer vitally needed, and will likely see some sitting around after it completes a year from August.

April 22nd – Earth has built all the automated mines we can afford without running corundium reserves too low. All that’s left is to ship them to the best places we can find. A side effect is the only thing being worked on is building more research lab complexes( this will have a huge long-term effect as long as the mineral crisis endures)

May – Corundium and neutronium are now exhausted on earth. We knew it was coming, but it’s still depressing.

Commissioned Officers

Deacon Palmer’s Political Reliability improves to 10% -- which for a scientist means next to nothing.



The SPACE Executive Board has drawn up a review of the present knowledge of the Sol system geologically speaking, and will be presenting it momentarily.

[Brian Swartz]

SOL STRATEGIC GEOLOGICAL REVIEW

A. MINERALS & THEIR USES

Duranium – We use duranium in everything we build, as it is an essential fundamental to the construction process. Four to five kilotons a year is the current need: Earth produces 3.3kt, and will only be able to sustain that level for about another five years, maybe six. When it begins to fall(or possibly even sooner), many factories on earth will fall silent for extended periods of time if the supply cannot be replaced. Extreme rationing will result.

Neutronium – Primarily used as a key element in all shipyard perations(building them, retooling, expanding) though not in shipbuilding itself, neutronium is also used for ground force training facilities, mass drivers, and maintenance facilities. Earth’s deposits have been exhausted, and less than 4.5k remains, resulting in all neutronium usage requiring the personal authorization of Director Dungey and only approved in cases of the most urgent need.

Corbomite – Not many traditional industrial concerns use it: financial centres, spaceports, and military academies. A small amount(5 tons) is used in each ship we construct. Earth still has over 16k left at low accessibility, and over 5k stockpiled which would last us for the forseeable future at current expenditures by itself. Corbomite is not a short-term concern.

Tritanium – Required for building construction and ordnance factories as well as military academies. Quite a bit was used initially for the economic conversion, but it is expected to see extremely limited use. It is earth’s richest deposit with over 110k left at low accessibility, and we presently have 2.5k with none being used. As there will be no need for new factories for some time, tritanium is also not a short or medium-range issue.

Boronide – was the first mineral to be exhausted on earth: thankfully we didn’t need much of it. There is 9.5k in the stockpile and a huge reserve of 1.0 accessible on Venus whenever we want more. Mass drivers, spaceports, and terraforming installations require it, as well as a very small(1.5 to 5 tons) on each of our spaceships. Boronide is as close to a complete non-issue as anything could be.

Mercassium – The most essential use is a considerable amount required for research labs, and some also for spaceports. It also sees considerable use in starship construction, with all of our current designs requiring 20-25 tons, with the exception of the Spruance-class colony ships which require over 400 tons each! Fortunately, mercassium is fairly plentiful and accessible on earth. We have 15k in the stockpile with over 20k left to mine. We need to make sure we don’t run low on it if possible, but for the next several years at least there would be no way for us to spend more than we have.

Vendarite – Used in construction and fighter factories only, Vendarite is not expected to be needed for quite some time. There are 6kt in the stockpile, and another 63k available to be mined on earth, the most plenteous mineral aside from tritanium. It’s only 0.3 accessible, but as it isn’t being used at all right now the stockpile should grow gradually for the forseeable future.

Sorium – Sorium’s sole use is a very important one: it is refined into fuel for our starships. Run out, and our fleet will cease to function, so running out is not an option. At present the stockpile is at 7.6kt and growing – the refineries are only using up around half of each year’s yield. Earth has only 7.3k left though, and accessibility is at 0.45 and shrinking. We have time, but not more than a decade probably, to find additional sources.

Uridium – Used in deep space tracking stations, financial centres, military academies, spaceports, and small amounts in starships, uridium is a versatile mineral that is required in small amounts for several different purposes. It is currently our largest stockpile with nearly 21k on hand and another 17 left at pretty good but declining accessibility(0.72).

Corundium – Required mostly for mines, but also used in military academies. Corundium is in dire straits, exhausted on earth and 5k in the stockpile.

Gallicite – Used in modest amount for starships(5-20t each for current designs), but that’s it. With a 20kt stockpile, we’re not all that worried that there’s less than 5k left to mine.

SUMMARY

Clearly our top concerns are duranium(so the economy doesn’t grind to a halt) and corundium(the more we have, the more of everything, duranium included, we can extract). Neutronium, and after that sorium also have to be concerns because we have limited amounts of them and because they are essential to what passes as the fleet. Mercassium is a long-range concern, the rest are just icing on the cake in terms of immediate mining.

[Brian Swartz]

Bah -- I screwed up and intended to post this yesterday ...

B. SURVEY RESULTS TO DATE

Planets(Habitable)

Mercury – Nearly as hot and inhospitable as Venus, the smallish sun-blasted planet is completely barren of useful resources. It’s a useless ball of rock, and likely to remain useless.

Venus – Though the infrastructure cost is massive, the resources there demand some investment. A mine on Venus will result in 24 tons per year. Unfortunately, only 7 tons of that will be the minerals we presently need, part of the calculus which is resulting in a steady downgrading of it’s importance.

Mars – The best terraforming candidate in the system has nothing to avail it except space to live on. Given the current state of affairs, that isn’t even close to being good enough, though it may be worth investing it far down the road simply as another place for our people to live.

Planets(Other)

Jupiter – The huge red planet has nothing to offer, there is literally no way to make use of it.

Saturn – Our best potential source of sorium in the system, at over 45mt it would make fuel issues go away with sufficient investment. That’s a long-term goal, both because we have more pressing issues at the moment and because the technology does not exist to harvest it. If we can find a way in the future however, it would be most lucrative.

Uranus – Another good source of sorium, more accessible but more distant. ‘Only’ 18mt, but when talking about those kinds of amounts the size of the deposit seems virtually irrelevant.

Neptune – More sorium was found here, but only a bit under 1.5mt and at 0.5 accessibility. Saturn and Uranus are much better choices.

Dwarf Planets(1 of 8 surveyed)

Ceres was found to be barren, with the others all located in the Kuiper Belt region.

Habitable Moons(6 of 6 surveyed)

Luna is barren but could be settled if desired. Titan has a small cache of duranium(21k at 0.6) and at 7.0 colony cost is a reasonable place for a refining colony for sorium harvested from Saturn’s atmosphere in the future. Callisto(58k tritanium at 0.5, 2.5mt Uridium at 0.1) was the only other moon to show results and is clearly not worth the price of a colony.

Asteroids(283 of 528 surveyed)

With 53.5% completed, just 17 have been found to contain minerals, or just about 6% of the asteroids so far. Of those 17, just two – both small outer-system moons – have been found to contain 10k or more. Triton is the exception that breaks the rule -- the Neptunian moon boasts over a million tons including almost a half-million duranium.

It has also proved true that the outer-system asteroids have slightly more likelihood of containing resources, and at higher concentrations.

Comets(21 of 25 surveyed)

All of them have had something, and most of them enough to be worth investing in.

SUMMARY

While it remains possible that the 5 dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt and the 245 asteroids there and elsewhere will contain more deposits, it is reasonably likely that all the significant deposits have been found, and highly unlikely that what more might be found will make a difference given the size of the rocks left to survey and the distance to reach them. It is therefore recommended that SPACE operate under the assumption that the currently known minerals are the full extent of what exists in our system.

ANALYSIS

It appears that there are enough resources on the comets that, in time, we will be able to dig ourselves out of the current mineral shortages. 75-80k of high-accessibility corundium is potentially available, enough to give us several hundred automated mines. Known sorium is over 100mt, duranium over 600kt plus the 14mt at 0.5 on Venus, neutronium in the 350-400k range and Reinmuth alone(160kt) could satisfy our needs for generations.

This scenario allows for continued progression and hegemony of human civilization. It also would require decades of hard work and hardship to achieve, with nothing but mostly continued hardship on the horizon as more and more miners get thrown out of work. The unemployment rate is already 11.5% and continuing to rise. There is only one hope for a better economic future for our people – another planet in another star system elsewhere in the galaxy.

The best of our long-range telescopes cannot tell us with any confidence the habitability conditions for planets that distant, or even in most cases if the systems even have any, much less what we might find there(if we could reach them). Alpha Centauri, the closest system at 4.24ly away, would take our fastest ships(the Lexington-II class transports) nearly 25,000 years to reach – assuming they didn’t use any fuel of course, the need for which would make such a journey completely impossible. Even quantam leaps in fuel storage, refining, usage, and engine power would not scratch the surface of making such a trip doable.

The only realistic option is a concept which is as of yet only a theory, though one that scientists believe as probably valid though unproven. The extreme forces involved in the formation of star systems are believed to both weaken and warp certain space-time locations to the extent that it may be possible with to open a singularity(i.e. wormhole) at these locations. This is known as Jump Point Theory, wherein it may be possible for a ship to transit from one such point to another nearly instanteously. Many scientists have even gone so far as to theorize that the number, location, and geographic arrangements of these ‘jump points’ in a given system is a mathematically predictable element.

Mankind is then presented with a choice: is it worth the price of investment to research this possibility now, with no guarantee it will be worth it even if ‘success’ is achieved? Director-Governor Dungey wishes to consider advice from all who may wish to give it before making a decision on this matter. The mineral crisis, and these issues surrounding it, is certain to dominate the upcoming 2041 election ...

[Brian Swartz]

2040, Part Two

It was obvious that the Abetti would no longer be needed – Venus was no longer a priority and there’d be nowhere to send colonists. The ship was less than a third finished and construction was cancelled, a tacit admission of years of wasted resources, time and effort, but far better than trying to defend a near-useless ship in the upcoming election.

Lena Dungey also decided not to build new freighters, as improvements in cargo handling techniques were expected to be ready at the end of the year. A new variant could be designed at that time, and a decision made on jump theory. For now, the Victoria would continue to ship as many mines as possible to Schaumasse. The only other major change that was made was the decision to get another mass driver built and prioritize using the remaining corundium to convert as many mines as possible to the automated variety. At the moment, that meant 67 could be ordered. Work on new research labs was prioritized down to 25% capacity as before. Meanwhile the four geosurvey vessels(both variants) would continue to work on sweeping the
remainder of the asteroids, and the surface teams would continue following up on any finds as quickly as they could. A third team, considerably inferior in skill and therefore speed as well, was formed to aid in the process, led by LTC Kathy Wheatley. Among its members was LTC Hannah Shepard. There weren’t enough qualified officers to field any more teams, at least without crippling Fleet Headquarters of it’s best ...

Sol Survey Efforts

Aug. 15th – Wheatly team arrives on Whipple, their first assignment ...

Six more asteroids were found to contain insignificant deposits. There are now 49 bodies with resources of some kind in the system. 14, less than 30%, have had their ground team surveys completed. Still nothing from the JupSat team on Titan. Concern and frustration are growing.

The asteroid belt between Mars and Saturn orbits has been virtually exhausted, and the original Essex survey ships, lacking the range to push further out into the system, will become obsolete very soon.

Commissioned Officers

October 30th – Benton Gale II increases Political Reliability to 10%. Also, Tell Perj Jr. has been promoted to Commander!

Late Dec. – Joe Tycho is commissioned as a scientist. He’s in the crowded and unneeded field of Energy Weapons(15%), capable of overseeing up to 10 labs(more than we currently have) and with a 10% Xenology bonus. He’s roughly average in the community of top scientists, meaning that he may see a job from time to time or may be just unimpressive enough to merely be an observer. Time will tell.

Research

Dec. 8th – Ignacio Bravo’s team completes research into Cargo Handling system. In order to have the most efficient(in terms of time, not fuel) freighter possible, his team begins work on a new engine prototype, the CNT-25-5, which is 25% faster and 80% less fuel efficient than the current
Fletcher’s design. It will be another three months delay now for that work to complete.

Earth

In December, the last of the original Lexingtons, the Venus – which literally never left earth orbit – is ordered to be scrapped at the P&A Group Shipyard.
At year's end the duranium deposits begin to become more difficult to access -- the economic crunch has officially begun. A mine on earth once produced 68 tons -- that's down now to 37.3 tons, or just over half. Many of the comets are more lucrative than that.

There are now a dozen automated mines ready to be shipped off world with 61 more being converted. Even at that, there will still be 230+ standard human-operated mines on earth. Work on new research labs is ongoing but slow, another should be ready sometime in the summer.

Remote Mining Colonies

Schaumasse has a mass driver and almost two operational mines, Venus has one and six operational mines, and Reinmuth will have an operational mass driver soon.

2041 Election

Politics can be a brutal business. The colonization of Venus was abandoned before it rightly could be said to have begun, as the comets have been found to clearly be a much better source of needed resources. Combined with the wasted effort put into the Spruance design, this was a death sentence for the career aspirations of Director-Governor Lena Dungey. She chose to retire from public life rather than accept the ironic assignment to run the automated mining colony with 24 tons of infrastructure accomplishing absolutely nothing that Venus has become. SPACE's first director, Dungey served three terms and is only 37. Hers is a mixed record -- there were many successes, but her failure to detect the comet resources earlier will unfortunately be her most enduring legacy.

There were only two serious candidates for her replacement: Herbert Duling, the current Governor of Venus who narrowly lost in '37, and India Rakes, an incredibly talented young woman who has just about every skill you could ask for and a good amount of political acumen to go with it. Despite being only three years older(27 to 24), Duling's main advantadge is the experience from last year's election and his time on Venus, along with his superlative political skills. These proved to be more than enough as he won a landslide victory with a surprising 59.8% of the vote.

Rakes takes over on Venus, and Duling tapped the best mining mines available for other appointments: Herman Fox is the new governor of the mining colony on the comet Schaumasse, Jarrett Hugh at Reinmuth, and others will be needed soon.

Duling has named Comas Sola and Machholz as the primary targets for investment after the new engines are ready and the Fletcher II freighter design is complete. As short-period comets with several kt deposits of all three essential minerals(duranium, neutronium, and corundium), these are to be the centerpiece of the effort to minimize the coming economic struggles.

His inaugural speech also emphasized the need to pursue all possible options, indicating that Jump Theory is very much on the table though no immediate investment in research was announced.

Lt. Cmdr. Erik Flamebeard -- 29th out of 45
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale II -- 7th
Cmdr. Tell Perj Jr. -- 7th out of 15 -- currently first in line to receive a new command. An assignment to one of the new freighters is considered extremely likely.
Lt. Cmdr. Hannah Shepard -- 5th, currently on board the ST Vega with the rest of the Wheatly GeoSurvey Team, en route to the comet Wolf-Harrington. Thus far her team has failed to discover a single additional deposit in several attempts.

Brig. Gen Path Twelve -- 7th out of 7, going nowhere and gettin' there fast :P
Brig. Gen. Dolph Stallone -- 3rd
Maj. Gen. Sterling Silvers -- The periodic firings ensure that he will remain the lone MG for quite some time.

Sonny Dean(1) -- no assignment, but with jobs starting to open up there is some hope for admins now.
James Earl Jones(4) -- no assignment

Pioneer Deacon Palmer -- Work continues on Shipyard Operations(est. Aug. '42)
Joe Tycho -- no assignment

[Tellistto]

Heh, I hadn't noticed that my dude was looking pretty nice in regards to a warship type commander.

Do you rotate people through your ships that you have now? I've noticed that it helps to pick the guys you really want and rotate them through available ships, freighters and shuttles and colony ships for Lt. Commanders works I would think. Maybe every year or so put someone else in command of those non essential to skill's.

Not sure if your geo ships are required to have Commanders or not, or the other ships either, for that matter.

Also, learned yesterday how to make the geosurvey/gravsurvey ships automatic. Just hadn't noticed those boxes until I did some reading.

[sterlingice]

I'm not at all familiar with the game but unless I'm missing my mark, you have to go for the jump point technology or we're never making it out of our corner of the solar system, right?

The only thing that looks like it has minerals at this point are comets. Is there some "origin" point for comets that we could head towards that might have bigger deposits?

Also, I'm thinking Sterling will enjoy retiring as the only Major General in the history of earth as there won't be any need for ground troops for a couple of generations.

SI

[Brian Swartz]

@SI: From a game point of view you're absolutely right re: jump theory. It's really not a question of 'if', but 'when'. Some of my commentary is just trying to bridge the gap between game and reality -- I roleplay a lot of stuff.

Also, comets do have the best but not the 'only' strictly speaking -- the comets we have are only comets we will get(in our system, anyway). New comets aren't generated over time.

@ Tellissto: I use the 'next five system bodies' quite a bit(assuming that's what you mean by automatic). I rotate some but not very much, I usually keep people at their command until there's something more important for them to do, then they get replaced by the 'next in line'.

[Tellistto]

Well, in my TN start with Ion engines, I can create a commercial GeoSurvey Ship that can go for over 5000 days on 300k fuel. So basically, it's not the fastest ship in the world but it gets the job done.

It's just that I was just going down the list and saying go here and geo that over and over. Finding that 5 system bodies thing was gold.

Ship designing is my next thing, I suppose. Knowing what are good ship systems.

On rotating...I guess in some way I take the 2 year terms to mean naval officers should move around some.

Also, I know that staff positions are meant for Captains on up, but you CAN put LtC in those slots if you wanted to. It certainly gives those LtC's some skills quicker than anything else would.

Tell

[Brian Swartz]

2042

Sol Survey Efforts

March -- The JupSat team finally finishes on Titan after well over two years, and finds – nothing. They’ll head to Tethys next.

May 25th – Tethys survey is complete, yielding nothing: this confirms that there is nothing left to be found on the Saturn moons.

July – It has been discovered that an error was made when designing the Essex II – they don’t have enough fuel for a full tour, a fact that has been made obvious during their surveying expeditions into the outer system. Engineers have looked into the possibilities of increasing their fuel storage, and found that a longer-range vessel would be the same size and require just a 2.2% increase in cost of building from scratch. Refitting the GEV Amerigo Vespucci(which returned from it’s recent tour with less than 3% fuel left) and Lief Ericson(which has been cut off just 10 months in and has just enough to make it back itself) would require only three weeks and less than 6% of the cost of a new vessel. The decision was also made at the same time to return and retire the original Essex class vessels, the Marc Aaronson and George Ogden Abell. They served well, but lack the range and espescially the speed to be useful now. Refitting them would cost almost as much as a new ship, as replacing the huge engines completely would be required.

September – Refit to the IIx class and shore leave completed, the Amerigo Vespucci resumes scanning the asteroids.

0October 3rd, 8:30 AM – The Leif Ericson makes it back to earth ... barely ... with less than 200 litres of fuel remaining, about 0.5% of it’s normal capacity. That was too close, and had the earth been on the opposite side of the sun instead of in a neutral position at the time, a rescue operation would have been required.

Oct. 15th – George Ogden Abdell returns to earth, and is scrapped at the P&A Group Shipyards.

Dec. 17th – A rare potentially useful asteroid in the outer system has been found: 1998 SN165, cerca Neptune orbit, contains nearly 80kt of high-accessibility minerals. Some is duranium, but most is unneeded gallicite and boronide.

Ground surveys are quickly being caught up: 28 of 54 are now completed. The closest remaining orbital survey is 3.9b km, with only 97(18.4%) remaining to be scanned. In the next few years the job should be completed, and everything being looked at now is a long-term target at the very best, since they are well beyond the operational range of our freighters with current propulsion technology. Only four asteroids with deposits were found this year, a significant decrease from the current rate but the Essex IIx refits did have an impact on this.

Commissioned Officers

February – It’s that time of the year again: 8 army and 7 naval officers are dismissed.

Research & Development

March 6 – Dr. Ignacio Bravo’s research into the new engine is complete, and the engineers finish the design for the Fletcher II freighter. The requirements are that it be able to reach Saturn(in the event of colonizing Titan), utilize some of the new cargo-handling systems for faster unloading, and be as fast as reasonably possible with a 25kt cargo hold, two-thirds larger than the existing Fletcher.

The new design has six engines instead of the standard two, has the two-thirds increase in cargo space and nearly twice the speed at 524 km/s. It costs a little over twice as much as well, but should achieve more than three times the shipping of the original Fletcher with somewhat reduced fuel efficiency. It’s not a massive improvement, but it is an improvement and will be the ship responsible for the shipping duties until significant technological advances become available. It will have a crew of 117, compared to the meager 41 required to man the Victoria.

The P&A Group Shipyard sets to work expanding to the required size of 35,750 tons, nearly twice the size of the original Fletcher as well. As of now we do not expect any of these to be able to be completed until late 2042 at the very soonest.

Concurrently, Director Herbert Duling announced that Dr. Ignacio Bavaro, by far the most skilled scientist SPACE has, would be beginning investigations into Jump Theory. Duling stressed that other fields would not be abandoned, with the majority space going to general research in different fields, but that this was to be the top single priority going forward. Bavaro’s team will have the use of two compounds and a third when it is completed later this year. This is expected to take several years to yield any substantive results, but anything coming from it will be classified at the highest levels. Accordingly, construction began on a secret shipyard to be used only for classified designs. It’s existence could hardly be kept secret – all one has to do is look up from the proper hemisphere to see the materials being assembled – but the details of the work there were kept in the strictest secrecy.

May – Dr. Everette Snuggs’ team completes research into Flag Bridge, a speculative project to be sure but one that shows the general belief in jump theory. It’s a specific type of command bridge intended as a ship-mounted command staff for the task groups in a remote system, which
obviously wouldn’t be useful unless significant numbers of ships were able to get to such a location.

He was chosen again to lead a team researching Replacement Battalion, as it was decided to get a couple of very basic combat research tasks out of the way.

July -- Deacon Palmer has increased his skill in C&P to 25%, making him the second-best scientist alive today behind Dr. Bavaro(far behind, as Bavaro has a 60% skill bonus).

July 21 – An eighth research lab is built, and assigned to the Jump Point Theory team. Much could change, but it estimated the project will take another five years until the summer of 2046.

[Brian Swartz]

Lt. Cmdr. Erik Flamebeard – 33rd out of 51
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale II – 7th
Cmdr. Tell Perj Jr. – 7th out of 17, presently third in line to command due to the ships that have been scrapped.
Lt. Cmdr. Hannah Shepard – 3rd, still serving on the Wheatly Geology Team, which has been on the asteroid Gyptis since mid-April.

Brig. Gen. Path Twelve – 7th out of 7, situation has remained unchanged for several years now.
Brig. Gen. Dolph Stallone – 3rd
Maj. Gen. Sterling Silvers – 1st. BG Abel Rosinski is actually generally considered to have far surpassed Silvers in terms of ability, but is three years younger(33) and must simply wait his opportunity due to the numbers and beauracracy of the situation.

Sonny Dean(1) – Having patiently bided his time, Sonny is now the governor of Comas Sola these past 14 months, one of the most important assignments in SPACE given the need for minerals. He is still lacking the skill required to be considered for governor of Earth, however.
James Earl Jones V(4) – Lacking any skill in mining(he’s great at overseeing shipbuilding, which nobody much cares about right now relatively speaking), he remains a glorified beauracrat.

Pioneer Deacon Palmer – Recently finished a long project on improving Shipyard Operations. At the moment Palmer remains the top expert in construction & production, guaranteeing him fairly regular work. He has no current assignment due to other priorities being paramount at the moment.
Joe Tycho – Capable, but behind two excellent minds in the Energy Weapons department. Joe may be doomed to obscurity.

[Grover]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz


Joe Tycho – Capable, but behind two excellent minds in the Energy Weapons department. Joe may be doomed to obscurity.

Story of my life.

[Brian Swartz]

2043

Commissioned Officers

February – 12 naval and three army officers fired. Among them are two who most definitely were given assignments(even though the game thinks they weren’t). I’ll need to watch this – my best guess as to the reason is that when the ships were scrapped, it also scrapped the assignment from their ‘history’? This is suggested by the fact that both Essex commanders are the ones who were prematurely ‘retired’. In this case I can just wait to scrap the ships until reassignment in the future, if I remember.

August – Erik Flamebeard develops a medical problem affecting his long-term health. Maybe, I dunno, lighting his beard on fire wasn’t such a great idea?!

Earth

April – A ninth research laboratory is completed on Earth. A record seventh concurrent project is begun, this one under Dr. Edward Groat(his first assignment) is the final in the recent series of basic combat projects, Duranium Armor for use on starships as a better defensive material.

April 20th – Construction of the first in the Fletcher II freighter class begins at the Tod & Macgregor Shipyard. It is expected to be finished around Christmas.

December 25 – Two days late, the FT Venus is christened on Christmas Day. Commander Chong Vaugh, a new star on the horizon, is named her commander – he was just promoted from LTC in the past week, knocking Tell Perj Jr. a peg down the order of seniority. Rumor has it Perj is not taking it well, to put it mildly.

The Venus gets to work immediately assisting the Victoria in the task of hauling mines to Machholz. The Tod & Macgregor Shipyard gets to work immediately building another, but this will immediately multiply the speed of mining expansion ...

Immediately the effect of the new cargo handling systems are obvious, as what takes the Victoria almost a week to unload is done in less than a day.

Off-World Mining

May – The final delivery has been made to Comas Sola, leaving the comet with 10 operational mines. A mass driver and follow-up mines will be sent to Machholz for the rest of the year’s shipping activity via the Victoria. Comas Sola is expected to deliver 700 tons a year overall, and the corundium it produces will be enough to convert one new mine annually. It’s a start, though a thoroughly modest one at best. In August, the mass driver on Machholz became operational, and another mining colony was officially up and running.

November – A new civilian shipping firm has been formed(to do what, I have no idea): Jensrud Transport and Trading.

Research & Development

December 11th – Dr. Wayne Sabagh’s team completes research on Infrared Lasers. Pioneer Deacon Palmer takes on a most important project, one which more labs will be allocated to over time but he’ll begin with just one. He’s been tasked with finding ways to improve the production of our mines. Nothing could be of more immediate value. Meaningful results will take over seven years without further support though, by which time the usefulness of it will have been somewhat diminished.

SUMMARY

It was a quiet year in surveys with the work nearly done. Another four ground team surveys were completed, bringing the total to 40 with 22 remaining. Both of the Essex Iix’s are en route to super-distant asteroids(12b km and up) with 6.5b now the limit at which everything has been scanned. Only eight asteroids, the four longest-period comets, and the two most remote dwarf planets remain. Their results are more of a scientific curiosity than anything else at this point.

The focus of SPACE leadership has switched firmly to the mining efforts. Crommelin and Stephan-Oterma are still outside Saturn orbit, making Machholz still the target for now. It has nearly two mines operational and is just about to clear the asteroid belt. With the Venus now in service, it will not be long before that increases dramatically.

Corundium production is the most important economic indicator right now. It stands at 117 tons annually, enough to convert about 1.5 mines to their automated variants. Two thirds of this comes from Comas Sola. It will still be three-to-four years before Earth’s supply of corundium runs out, so that’s the window we have to get a bigger flow going. Right now, the stockpile of automated mines is at 28 and has gradually grown, but the Venus is expected to reverse that situation.

It has not yet been fully decided if the lastest freighter under construction will be the last or if more will be immediately required(likely).

Money is not an issue, as it is increasing faster than we have the resources to spend it. About 60% goes into the treasury each year at this point. There is less than 2.4kt corundium and 2.7kt neutronium remaining, and those remain the crucial factors in the expansion.

[Brian Swartz]

2044

Research and Development

January 8th -- Dr. Cedrick Wormack announced that a smaller
Engineering Section ship module had been built, allowing more efficient designs particularly of smaller-end vessels. The lab was re-allocated to Palmer’s work on increasing mining output.

Feb. 16th – Dr. Sanko Matar’s team produced results detailing the possibility of engines with an additional 25% power, up to 150% possible now with new techniques. Dr. Cedrick Wormack takes the space and begins research into larger fuel storage tanks.

April 20 – Magazine Ejection System research completed by the Dr. Harlan Welle and his team. The space is transferred to the Very Large Fuel Storage module project.

Earth

January 28th -- The top-secret shipyard was completed, named the Wartsila A/B & O/Y. I’m assuming that was merely an attempt to confuse. It has a capacity for only 1000 tons, and begins expansion immediately to allow for a reasonably-sized ship should something be required.

April 1 – Voliva Carrier Company founded(commercial shipping line). Civilians are coming out of the woodwork in a clear vote of confidence for the expansion efforts, but as yet there is really nothing for them to do so it’s a bit premature.

July 27th – A 10th research lab is completed on earth. The Jump Point Theory team gets a fourth complex to use, the most that has been devoted to any one project since Trans-Newtonian Technology nearly two decades ago. Revised estimates indicate a final report can be accelerated a few months, due now in January of 2046.

August 29 – The FT Hercules is completed at the Tod & MacGregor Shipyards, the second andfor now final in the Fletcher II class. Cmdr. Jung Besler, who has commanded the ST Vega for nearly eight years, is assigned as the best available experienced CO.

t has also been determined that a significant flaw exists in the Hercules and Venus as currently constituted. Namely, they are very short of fuel storage with the Venus having to refuel monthly. A new design, unoriginally dubbed the Fletcher II-x, will have one less cargo handling system – only one is needed to achieve loading within two days, a perfectly reasonable timeframe – and increase fuel storage 16 times over to 800,000 litres.

The new smaller engineering spaces will also be made use of to save on maintenance supply space. The resulting ship is just a hair larger, actually requires 12 less crew(105 compared to 117), loses less than 2% of it’s speed and has a range of over 33b km, effectively putting the entirety of the system within it’s range.

The Venus is the first to undergo the refitting process, which will be set to begin next year.

Commissioned Officers

January -- Cmdr. Tell Perj Jr. was named the new CO of the ST Marengo(responsible for shuttling the top geology team, the Rater team, to their mission sites). It’s much less glamorous than the Venus freighter, but it’s something.

Mar. 16th – Pioneer Deacon Palmer irrelevantly has a 20% Political Reliability bonus now.

June – Sonny Dean’s Admin. rating is up to 2. Earth now requires a 3 for governor, so he’s still not a candidate for that post yet.

Off-World Mining

May – Just under a year after the mining outpost was founded, Machholz has surpassed Comas Sola as the largest off-world venture with 10+ mines operational.

Early August – With over two dozen in place, mine transfers to Machholz are cut off prematurely, in an effort to preserve some to spread out to the other useful comets.

Sol Survey Efforts

Eight bodies remain now, three asteroids, Sedna, and the four comets. No new deposits were discovered this year, with eight more ground surveys bringing the total to 48 completed, 14 remaining on that front.

Mining Report

Off-world operations are significant enough now that it’s worth presenting an annual report on the state of things. Each location will list the number of mines and type(standard or automated), the total yield, efficiency(minerals per mine per year), and the amount of corundium since that’s the most critical need right now.

Earth(249 standard/17 automated) – 8.44kt annual yield, 24t efficiency, 0 corundium
Machholz(0S/27.6A) – 1.92 kt yield, 63t eff, 213 corundium
Comas Sola(0S/10.2A) – 696t yield, 65t eff, 75 corundium
Venus(0S/6A) – 177t yield, 24t efficiency, 7 corundium
Schaumasse(0S/1.8A) – 80t yield, 36t efficiency, 22 corundium
Reinmuth(0S/1.8A) – 101t yield, 47t efficiency, 0 corundium

From this it is clear that getting mines off of Earth and Venus as much as possible and to higher-efficiency mining outposts will continue to be a productive endeavor. New mine conversions can be queued up now at a little over four per year, and Earth still has 20 in the pipeline to be converted at this point, a year and a half worth.

The top untapped known sources, in terms of mining efficiency(min. 50t) are:

Swift-Tuttle(71t, 4.36kt corundium) – A long-period comet that won’t be within reasonable range for decades.
Wolf-Harrington(67t, 6.49kt corundium) – Previously overlooked because it lacks duranium, but this was probably short-sighted. Wolf-Harrington is in position to be exploited immediately(280m km, well inside the asteroid belt) and will be added to the short-period comet list along with Comas Sola and Machholz.
Crommelin(66t, 3.18kt corundium) – This incoming comet will be exploited in the next few years.
Neujmin(59t, 1.42kt corundium) – Incoming on a similar vector and distance to Crommelin, it will be exploited as well. Both are about 1.6b km out at this point.
Borrelly(58t, 0 corundium)
Van Biesbroeck(55t, 0 corundium) – We’ll keep an eye on it, but for now are focusing soley on corundium sources.
Herschel-Rigolet(54t, 9.88kt corundium) – Another long-period comet that can’t be reached efficiently.
Halley’s Comet(51t, 0 corundium) – Very long-range, and has only neutronium out of the big three.

[Brian Swartz]

2045 Election

11 of the 18 career politicians were able to stand for the Director of Space/Governor of Earth combo, but it pretty much came down the same as four years ago with incumbent Herbert Duling a slight favorite over India Rakes(Governor of Venus). There was a wild card this time around with long-shot Herman Fox(Governor of Schaumasse) also making it to the final ballot. It was closer than in 2041, but Duling again wins with 40.7% of the vote, 36.2% chose Rakes, and a respectable showing by Fox with the remaining 23.1% in a distant third.

The remaining posts were chosen by mining ability:

Machholz – India Rakes
Comas Sola – Herman Fox
Venus – Jarrett Hugh
Schaumasse – Damian Ackley
Reinmuth -- Larry Steckel

Lt. Cmdr. Erik Flamebeard – 30th out of 51
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale II – 8th
Cmdr. Tell Perj Jr. – 9th out of 17 -- CO, ST Marengo(Lexington II-class transport shuttle)
Lt. Cmdr. Hannah Shepard – 2nd, member of the Wheatly Geology Team, currently taking an absurd amount of time to survey the asteroid Gyptis.

Brig. Gen. Path Twelve – 7th out of 7
Brig. Gen. Dolph Stallone – 3rd
Mag. Gen Sterling Silver – only

Sonny Dean(2) – is currently without an assignment, but expected to be named governor to one of the new comet-based mining posts in the next few years
James Earl Jones V(4) – essentially useless in the current environment and unassigned

Pioneer Deacon Palmer – Researching ways to improve mining output, a critical priority assignment
Joe Tycho – doing nothing

[Tellistto]

Yay for an assignment! My guy won't get canned!

Might want to consider designing a FAC and OWP to give you some defense and ships for your naval officers. I know it's mineral crunch time and everything is going into auto mines and getting them out.

For the record, Brigade Headquarters(Logistics and unimportant for sure now) is the ground unit that requires a Brigadier to command it. Beyond that is divisional command which I haven't bothered to research.

On a side note, I had an AMAZING LtCom who would have made it to the top of the tier get killed in an accident. I was so bummed, caused it happened in like 6 months after she graduated.

Tell

[Brian Swartz]

Good idea on designing the ships, except we quite literally can't right now. Not because of the minerals, but because we can't.

We don't have the technology to design an active sensor or fire control right now. Designing a ship -- even a bad one -- for combat is beyond our capability at the moment.

That will change in time.

Thanks for the other info also, that's useful to know. Since Slick Willie, we really haven't lost much in terms of accidents, gotten really lucky with that the last few years.