New Dawn in the Sun's (Battletech AU)

[Bofors40mm]

CASE being lost never made sense to me. Or at least the equivalent of the partial CASE we see in HBS

 

[Blade4]

Please add more spaces. At least between paragraphs that is almost wall of text.


Yeah if Hanse people see that he is going to flip. If this is what they can do with shit what can they do if he properly funds them?

 

[Bofors40mm]

Please add more spaces. At least between paragraphs that is almost wall of text.


Yeah if Hanse people see that he is going to flip. If this is what they can do with shit what can they do if he properly funds them?

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Well at this point a major beefing up of the planetary garrison will almost certainly be happening as will putting a lot more counter intel people there

 

[Blade4]

Well at this point a major beefing up of the planetary garrison will almost certainly be happening as will putting a lot more counter intel people there

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Maybe if they can spare the forces and it does not make a delicate situation worse. They might try to hide it at first. Brockton is apparently pretty far out there closer to the bulls than New Avalon. Give funds to help them build faster is a good probability though. And more intel people not just protecting but also trying to figure out how a supposedly ruined world did this?

 

[GSpectre]

More rural then ruined, they only got hit by one nuke after all and that was smuggled in by either a DCMS strike team or a MASK team only hit the local college. totally legit, no one else would have wanted an advanced center of learning gone around that time at all. Totally believable that Corean got permission via HPG to remove their investment right after that, obviously they were vulnerable to infiltration and the first prince needed to protect what remained of the Suns industry by moving it to a safer location.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Man I'd hate to be Corean's Board when the company probably get taken to court over the whole the company basically stole a lot production equipment than they actually legally had to the rights to let alone to move and then use it as their own. Albeit they probably won't be in trouble with the law in a criminal law sense because they won't be the ones who made that call.

 

[Blade4]

Probably will be a criminal trial because they totally looted stuff they had no right to then profited off it. License agreements mean a lot and they totally violated some and will have to pay. Though how is to be decided and if the first prince think it worth it.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Probably will be a criminal trial because they totally looted stuff they had no right to then profited off it. License agreements mean a lot and they totally violated some and will have to pay. Though how is to be decided and if the first prince think it worth it.

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true but its not like anyone in the current board or company made that decision. or hell even knows it was made.

 

[Rougelonewanderer]

true but its not like anyone in the current board or company made that decision. or hell even knows it was made.

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That matters not one single bit. The company did a naughty and if they fail to pull enough leverage, political or economic, then they will be forced to pay.

No company wants the precedent of a competitor or government being allowed to seize their assets without blowback

 

[Bofors40mm]

That matters not one single bit. The company did a naughty and if they fail to pull enough leverage, political or economic, then they will be forced to pay.

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that's a civil not a criminal matter though

 

[Blade4]

Corean may or may not be forced to hand over tooling. Perhaps also licenses and plans for mechs they also have. Hanse would probably love a new site producing centurions for example.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Corean may or may not be forced to hand over tooling. Perhaps also licenses and plans for mechs they also have. Hanse would probably love a new site producing centurions for example.

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Tooling is unlikely to get moved due to causing disruptions in production buy the ownership of said lines might change/the Duke of Brockton gets a decent chunk of the companies total stock. Licenses and being required to providevtechnical aid in expanding Brockton's industry is possibly if not likely

 

[Blade4]

Thing is Brockton makes tooling so if they get specs and licenses they could start low production of stuff. Hanse would consider them invaluable if they can make tooling for repairs and expansion work. And apparently they did it once already.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Thing is Brockton makes tooling so if they get specs and licenses they could start low production of stuff. Hanse would consider them invaluable if they can make tooling for repairs and expansion work. And apparently they did it once already.

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The stuff they need the most help with would be upgrading their chip foundries and make the bulk of their mech production non primitive variants

 

[Blade4]

And if anyone can get them a military grade chip foundry it would be Hanse. More would certainly help but just one open source functional foundry would unchain the Brocktonites. And might go a long way to fixing relations.

 

[Vikteren]

The stuff they need the most help with would be upgrading their chip foundries and make the bulk of their mech production non primitive variants

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We sure they can't build one? Remember Thomas was a foreign head of state who they could not sell a milspec foundry to, and the Bricktonites seem to love having people underestimate their techbade.

 

[Blade4]

Honestly we still have no idea how much of a shell game the Brocktonites are playing. They are being smart though. Scientists, engineers and facilities for both have a bad habit of getting blown up and they have been looted before by the state, or at least think it was the state signing off. Honestly they might be half way out the door and only not gone because they are not in a position to tell their first prince to suck it... yet.

That would be a interesting scenario of one day Hanse wakes up to find most of the out back is succeeding declaring a new government by and for them and not a distant Avalon that only seems to notice them when it is tax time.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Honestly we still have no idea how much of a shell game the Brocktonites are playing. They are being smart though. Scientists, engineers and facilities for both have a bad habit of getting blown up and they have been looted before by the state, or at least think it was the state signing off. Honestly they might be half way out the door and only not gone because they are not in a position to tell their first prince to suck it... yet.

That would be a interesting scenario of one day Hanse wakes up to find most of the out back is succeeding declaring a new government by and for them and not a distant Avalon that only seems to notice them when it is tax time.

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Alas the big problem is that objectively speaking the First Prince and federal government can only do so much for the outback when it's fighting the succession wars and moreover the limits on what the federal Government can do without the planetary government/nobles cooperating since the Federated Suns is indeed a federation with limits on federal powers

 

[GSpectre]

Politically it would be hard for Hanse to pull Brocktons gear, not because of them but because of who theyre allied with. After Michael and Corean the brocktons looked for a way to keep that from happening again politically because there was no way in he'll they could do anything about it any other way. Its why the rescued Trevlu despite it being on the surface an idiotic business decision. Having an outback world complain is one thing, former UHC? That's a whole nother ball of wax, especially since they're fronted by the Garg family who have the political capital to have their complaints heard on new Avalon.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Honestly I really suspect the Broctons are going to be mighty confused when Hanse basically just wants to help develop their industry further. If nothing else worlds that can make any form of high-ish end industrial tooling are rare. Worlds that can do that and make mechs of any kind are rarer still. Worlds that also can do extensive repairs on dropships are maybe in the high double figures across all of known human space. Maybe mid double figures for building even limited numbers of older designs. And for the ability to service jumpships in a fairly decent manner? There's at most maybe 30 Worlds that can do that are known to a Successor Lord. So yeah pushing that industry to grow and keeping it safe will be on Hanse's to do list

 

[Vikteren]

There's at most maybe 30 Worlds that can do that are known to a Successor Lord. So yeah pushing that industry to grow and keeping it safe will be on Hanse's to do list

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If I read the situation right they can build jumpships as well. Even if its a old design its still docking collars. Single digits for worlds in known space that can do what this world can.

 

[Bofors40mm]

If I read the situation right they can build jumpships as well. Even if its a old design its still docking collars. Single digits for worlds in known space that can do what this world can.

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From what I can tell they helped another company buy out Challenge Shipbuilding over Panpour and said company then got one of the old slips or two that got knocked offline in the 1st SW back online if only making liberty class Jumpships

 

[GSpectre]

May 3rd​ 3015
Ducal Palace
Brockton, Federated Suns

"I trust that your visit has been to your liking?" Duke Andrew Brockton asked. Ardan Sortek had to restrain himself from saying something biting and sarcastic back. The duke and his staff had done a hell of a job distracting Ran Felsner and himself, they had a full itinerary from the moment they had stepped off the dropship until now. Admittedly what they were doing was important, but they were soldiers not show dogs to be trotted out to be shown off. It was perhaps the kindest most useful dodge that Ardan had ever seen, but given the lack of access to the duke it clearly had been a dodge.

"It was certainly informative," Ran replied mildly. "I was surprised by the attitude towards the star league I found on world. It seemed to be contrary to what most of inner sphere feels."

"I blame Louis," Andrew took a sip of his truly excellent wine before continuing. "He might not have been the heir but he was a duke's son and that gave him access to a rather large pile of resources. Given his experience in the periphery he spent pretty much all of it on a personal crusade to blacken the name of the star league. You saw some of his work when you visited the Pitcairn Museum."

"That was interesting," Ran admitted, not letting his true feelings show. Ardan barely contained a shudder as he remembered what had been contained inside. Full color tri vids of SLDF massacres, Blood bowls, and other war crimes, along with testimonials from survivors. It had been a chilling experience, although he could appreciate the emphasis placed on the role that Pitcairn and his legion had played in attempting to restrain the SLDF, they had at least acted like true knights.

"I was surprised to see Gladiators as part of the collection?" Ran continued. "The Talo's made sense, as did the battered remains of the Toro, but Gladiators? I had thought that they were a native Lyran design, expressly for the militia market." The Toro had been particularly disturbing, it was a shattered wreck having been physically beaten into that condition, at least to Ardan's experienced eye. The small plaque which memorialized the mechwarrior who had been trapped in it when that had happened had been particularly chilling.

"They started life as a Drac design, then the dracs screwed up a battle and rather than blaming the commander they naturally blamed the equipment, so they went about rewriting history with their typical brutality. Merriweather Industries in the hegemony, back when it was a going concern, bought the design documents to make a stab at independently developing a modern mech which the HAF turned down after ordering. By the time of the reunification war, they were known as a mercenary ride, so Pitcairn had little trouble getting enough of them to obfuscate the origins of the Legion." Andrew paused and wet his lips yet again. "That plan went out the window when he got a look at what Furlough was actually up to in the outworlds… But Louis kept his throughout the war."

"And the family didn't keep it operational?" Ardan's confusion was evident in his question. Not keeping a working mech going was unthinkable in this time.

"No access to spare parts." Andre replied with a shrug. "The three r was an inferior Dervish, and the four r could be replaced by a Wolverine easily enough. Better for the family to get machines which were still in production with parts available then to try and keep obsolete mechs running. Especially as we would have needed to machine up bespoke parts."

"You could have done it though," Ran jumped on the opportunity to bring up the reason they were out here on the edge of suns space.

"Sure, if we wanted to waste money." Brenda Brockton nee DeBrinion spoke up. She was substantially younger than her husband, and Ardan had thought her to be more a trophy wife than anything else. She seemed to know what she was talking about so he would need to amend his opinion yet again. The entire Brockton family seemed to be like that, more then what they appeared to be. "Better to use them as museum pieces and put the money we would have spent to use. Besides at that time our planetary industry was focused on the life sciences, most of our heavy industry was being shut down as uneconomical in the face of Terran competition."

"You revived your industry though," Ran said before popping a truly divine piece of mutton into his mouth. This curry was one of the best he had ever had outside of the former United Hindu Collective space, probably a subtle demonstration of the Brockton's political connections. He didn't have the time for that sort of political game and so ignored it in favor of the truly excellent food.

"Much later, and even then, it was only through subsidies we kept it going before the league fell." Brenda shrugged as she said that. "Without Takiro's fraud scaring us about our access to Terran exports we would never have spent the money."

"That's not quite accurate," Harry put in from where he had been demolishing his own meal with the steady workmanship of a career soldier. "We did keep up the funding for proper maintenance while it was mothballed back then. Otherwise, we never would have been able to pull it out of storage and start using it again."

"We didn't do it on our own," Andrew admitted with a grin. "Say what you will about the fat man, but he had an eye for dissatisfaction and knew exactly what buttons to push to get people hopping to his tune."

"I do wonder why your family was so open to collaborating with such a… character," Ardan's voice was filled with disgust. Collaborating with the man responsible for the fall of the Star League was in his mind beyond a family working with Satan.

"Because from our perspective the league wasn't delivering on its promises," Andrew's response was swift, his words a warning that even Ardan could understand. "We were promised economic prosperity, and that there would be funds available to upgrade our industry. It's why the family was initially so in favor of joining. Unfortunately, those benefits failed to materialize, and we were steadily marginalized and pushed out of what industries we retained in favor of Terran firms. Louis's tantrums didn't help matters, but we were hardly the only planet who didn't benefit. Several of our contemporaries experienced the same thing, and they didn't have nobles who were actively trying to assassinate hegemony 'heroes'. It didn't help that all of the veterans who returned from the Reunification war backed up Louis's version of events, which were rather different from what we got from the official news services. By the time of Takiro's fraud we were more than ready to have done with the whole thing."

"You expected the Star League to fall?" Ardan's voice was horrified.

"No, we expected that the Terran's would be distracted enough by the periphery that we could benefit the way Panpour had. The thinking was that we were in a perfect position to snag an SLN transport command contract, which would come with modern upgrades for our refit yard, possibly all the way up to a production facility. Being in safe space about halfway between the two perspective battle grounds? That seemed like a sure bet to the family back then. Of course, we were wrong but…" Andrew shrugged his shoulders. "No one thought that Amaris was that crazy. Still, you work with who you can, not who you want too."

"Like the heir to the Taurian Concordat?" Ran's question was mild but Ardan could almost feel the tension rachet up around the room.

"I presume that's what brought you all the way out here from New Avalon?" Brenda kept up a façade of normalcy but then tension around her eyes was obvious.

"As you say."

"That's why you asked me to resign and head home?" Harry's voice was mild, but there was anger lurking in it.

"No, I asked you to do that long before Thomas showed up unexpectedly," Andrew reassured his son. "Collin had a breakthrough before his untimely passing and I needed someone I could trust to get it in front of the first prince. Given how many of our confidential communications have ended up on New Syrtis instead of New Avalon I wanted it to be done in person by someone who both sides could trust. Given your position in the Heavy Guards that put you in the hot seat."

"It's gotten that bad?" Harry asked, his anger forgotten as concern filled his frame.

"Trevlu has been getting a lot of unofficial pressure from New Syrtis, so much so that Prakash Azad had to suspend operations in the Capellan March." Andrew's casual name drop of the CEO of Trevlu Mechworks was enough to make both Ran and Ardan sit up just a little bit straighter. "Ajeet isn't nearly as affected but that's because they are newer and less well known. I know that Kirsh Singh, Roger Garg, and several of the other dukes in the former collective worlds have been monopolizing Basantapur's production for the past year or so. Given they are closer to the situation then I am I'm not inclined to second guess their instincts."

"Given Max recently announced that the Home guard would be getting a new militia mech, it's no surprise that Michael is beefing up his march. Especially with Candace Liao announcing the Firebee will be back in production shortly," Ran put delicately, he clearly didn't believe Candace's announcement any more than his listeners, but he was aware enough of the strategic situation to know it was an outside possibility that the Liao's had gotten access to the Kurita's seemingly endless stockpile of machine tools.

"After a century and a half, the Liao's finally are going to admit that Ilsa's display of brilliance wasn't enough on its own." Andrew's response was derisive. "Everyone's known for more then fifty years that the CCAF needed to either up production of the Vindicator or start acquiring militia mechs. The only reason they haven't before now was that it was politically impossible for the Liao family to admit that their propaganda about how the CCAF and home guards had proper mechs as opposed to the FWLM and AFFS due to the impressive foresight of Ilsa Liao was so much shit."

"Dad…" Harry tried to interrupt his father, but the older man was on a roll.

"We could have done that, the Swordsman is a better all rounder then the Vindicator, but between the history and the fucking Corean marketing department paying to keep the mech in disrepute, the AFFS and march militias have been hamstrung by politics."

"If the Swordsman is so easy to produce why isn't the Icarus more common?"

"Corean again, they pretend to hold that license almost exclusively and the last time we tried to expand production away from Brockton… let's just say that the legal fees were daunting."

"Not to mention the battalion of mercs who showed up on Tsamma after it started looking like Corean's claims were going to be laughed out of court as they should have been to begin with," Brenda reminded her husband.

"Those were pirates dear, ask anyone." Andrew's voice was filled with sarcasm. "Despite the targeted nature of the raid, taking out only the refit yard and associated industry, along with the standard mercenary transmission DMI and MIIO both agreed that it was a pirate action. Not that the finding stopped complaints when we hung the bastards."

"That was because you hired them on a garrison contract and then captured and executed them years after they had performed their raid on Tsamma." Brenda's voice was filled with disapproval. "That was a mistake."

"It got the message across to the rest of the mercenary community."

"Because not being able to hire mercenaries is a good thing." Brenda rolled her eyes. "Prakash and the rest of the board are still pissed with you for that stunt. The only reason the backlash was as mild as it was is that they had been reduced in size to a company."

"As interesting as this history is, perhaps we can bring the conversation back around to what the Heir to the Taurian Concordat was doing here?" Ardan asked in exasperation, interrupting what was looking to be a massive family fight that he did not want to have front row seats to.

"Oh, that…" Brenda settled down a bit before continuing. "VMI got a new weapon out of Coventry due to an engineering snafu on their Commando lines which required Coventry to transmit some additional data. Coventry screwed up and put too much into the transmission, giving the Taurians a first look at the new model Commando set to be released next year. Thomas was hoping we could sell him the machine tooling he needed to put it into production."

"Seeing as he needed to let us see the blue prints in order to get him the needed machine tools I was inclined to agree." Andrew grinned as he said that. "We put it into full production a month after he left for home and have been playing with refits since he told us what he wanted. Combined with Collins breakthrough… I think we might finally have a Swordsman the AFFS will accept."

"What sort of system is it?" Ardan found himself leaning forward with interest. "The one Thomas wanted you to duplicate I mean."

"It's a production model of the old multi missile launcher idea," Andrew said with a grin. "We have a demonstration set up tomorrow for you both to look at everything we have… I think you'll like it."

 

[Bofors40mm]

Ah the Gladiator a mech that should be a classic 5/8/5 55 ton mech. If they have the specs for it Brockton should make them. If nothing else the IS RATs show that at least a few hundred are still in service in the IS and Periphery(other than in the combine) so the demand for at least parts production ought to there are. On another note methinks Corean has some explanations to give pretty soon. I'm pretty sure arranging for mercs to blow arms production capacity inside your own nation falls under high treason

 

[GSpectre]

Unfortunately for Brockton the Gladiator has become one of the quintessential Lyran mechs, at least in its primitive form, and arguing with Lyran corpos is a losing proposition. If they're Lawyers don't get you the army of mercs they just hired will.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Unfortunately for Brockton the Gladiator has become one of the quintessential Lyran mechs, at least in its primitive form, and arguing with Lyran corpos is a losing proposition. If they're Lawyers don't get you the army of mercs they just hired will.

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Huh I wonder how that happened. The Gladiator tooling got shipped to a TH world in otl when the combine dropped it. Then it failed to sell so the company retooled to industrial mechs and the place got nuked in either the 1st SW or ACW. And post being TH it's a FWL world to boot

 

[Blade4]

The biggest argument? Do the Lyrans still produce it? If they dont have a working line but Brockton can knock one together then the Lyrans can get pissy but the FedSuns can produce it and the Lyrans can get it at a discount or something. Though if/when the FedCom becomes a thing it becomes kinda irrelevant because then they become one big family. And the lyrans might ask for tooling to set up production somewhere if they want it that bad.


Though yeah better to stay with their own stuff and rather want to see this new swordman looks like and perhaps Ardan might take one back to Hanse to look at and start asking some more troubling questions.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Sort of surprised the lyrans went for the Gladiator and not the native 55 ton design out of production in lyran space in this era the dervish

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

Sort of surprised the lyrans went for the Gladiator and not the native 55 ton design out of production in lyran space in this era the dervish

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I believed that the Griffin took it role as the medium fire support mech. Also the Gladiator is more of a brawler and has different role to the Dervish.

 

[Blade4]

Dervish is very ammo dependant. Griffin can poke with it's ppc at range and harass or crit seek with lrms.