As an outgrowth of the Maker research I did a while back, I ran across
wiki.travellerrpg.com
and the associated other drones.
These made sense. I did a sketch using T5 build rules, and checked the Baronet's finances for 1107, and had him pick up a Legionary on payments
wiki.travellerrpg.com
The goal was to crank up Carmel's industry by exploiting the various trojan belts.
The concern was that cranking it up too much would attract the attention of the MegaCorps and then things would get ugly. He builds the swarm up in a set of trojans in the outer system, where nobody hangs out, and keeps the whole thing quiet. There's originally not much of a long term plan on how to crank the mainworld up without attracting the ire of MegaCorps, but having the industrial capability in hand seems worth while and it would be years before the swarm matured and surely during that time he'd think of something.
So the timeline I'm working with has Legionary purchase in 1107, and a mature swarm in 1111/1112, with some of the production diverted along the way to producing a few 10-ton launches for sale to cover the payments on the Legionary and pay for the work crews
1111 also sees hiring some naval architects, construction of a space station for them to live and work on, and building a type-A a year, selling them, and paying off the Legionary by 1114ish
1114 to 1117 see selling a Type-A a year for expenses and banking most of it.. and by "banking" we're talking about half of it being buying stocks in planet-side businesses and helping them expand. Figure pumping about 15Mcr/year into business growth, and avoiding inflation by selling needed expansion goods from a shell company the Baronet owns that's actually the Swarm making stuff.
Early 1117 there's a player adventure we're in the middle of running: A Vargr courier gets word to the pirate clans that the Emperor was assasinated before word gets to Carmel. A Vargr pirate chieftan decides to raid the planet - and the Baronet's swarm is way and gone out system and can't arrive in time. (The players don't even know the swarm exists.) This adventure is an introduction for the players to the Assemblage of 1116
After such a dramatic method of finding out the Imperium is in dire straits, and finding out his fief is vulnerable, the Baronet goes nuts on making sure this never happens again. He also suspects that his liege lords are going to want ships, and that the MegaCorps are going to be either distracted by the madness or wanting to make huge profits building ships and want to squish his operation if it becomes a competitor.
In the short term, he build a lot of SDBs in different variations on the theme, and plays around with various starship designs. He sees his main priority as making Carmel safe for his people. He doesn't want to rely on being left out of the loop again, and builds some couriers of his own, and a few mini-swarms to support them, sort of a mini X-boat network that he puts at the disposal of the subsector and sector nobles. He figures if he keeps it low key, nobody will do the math to add up what the investment was and nobody's going to ask questions that bring the MegaCorp hammer down on him.
In 1132, the Assemblage sends to scouts as part of the planning for what eventually becomes the Battle of Ashes.... and this is where the sanity check is way off the rails. Industrial capacity and a "Invasion will never happen again" has about 1,000,000 dtons of SDBs/monitors/etc stacked up. This would explain why the Battle of Ashes does not mention any Vargr hitting Carmel.
Anything glaringly out of sync above? It all seems to hang together for me, but it feels like there's something I'm missing.
Is the worry about MegaCorps too strong? What's the threshold there for getting noticed?
Would building starships to go help the rest of the Domain make more sense?
Quarter Hammer class Construction Drone - Traveller
These made sense. I did a sketch using T5 build rules, and checked the Baronet's finances for 1107, and had him pick up a Legionary on payments
Legionary class Corvette - Traveller
The goal was to crank up Carmel's industry by exploiting the various trojan belts.
The concern was that cranking it up too much would attract the attention of the MegaCorps and then things would get ugly. He builds the swarm up in a set of trojans in the outer system, where nobody hangs out, and keeps the whole thing quiet. There's originally not much of a long term plan on how to crank the mainworld up without attracting the ire of MegaCorps, but having the industrial capability in hand seems worth while and it would be years before the swarm matured and surely during that time he'd think of something.
So the timeline I'm working with has Legionary purchase in 1107, and a mature swarm in 1111/1112, with some of the production diverted along the way to producing a few 10-ton launches for sale to cover the payments on the Legionary and pay for the work crews
1111 also sees hiring some naval architects, construction of a space station for them to live and work on, and building a type-A a year, selling them, and paying off the Legionary by 1114ish
1114 to 1117 see selling a Type-A a year for expenses and banking most of it.. and by "banking" we're talking about half of it being buying stocks in planet-side businesses and helping them expand. Figure pumping about 15Mcr/year into business growth, and avoiding inflation by selling needed expansion goods from a shell company the Baronet owns that's actually the Swarm making stuff.
Early 1117 there's a player adventure we're in the middle of running: A Vargr courier gets word to the pirate clans that the Emperor was assasinated before word gets to Carmel. A Vargr pirate chieftan decides to raid the planet - and the Baronet's swarm is way and gone out system and can't arrive in time. (The players don't even know the swarm exists.) This adventure is an introduction for the players to the Assemblage of 1116
After such a dramatic method of finding out the Imperium is in dire straits, and finding out his fief is vulnerable, the Baronet goes nuts on making sure this never happens again. He also suspects that his liege lords are going to want ships, and that the MegaCorps are going to be either distracted by the madness or wanting to make huge profits building ships and want to squish his operation if it becomes a competitor.
In the short term, he build a lot of SDBs in different variations on the theme, and plays around with various starship designs. He sees his main priority as making Carmel safe for his people. He doesn't want to rely on being left out of the loop again, and builds some couriers of his own, and a few mini-swarms to support them, sort of a mini X-boat network that he puts at the disposal of the subsector and sector nobles. He figures if he keeps it low key, nobody will do the math to add up what the investment was and nobody's going to ask questions that bring the MegaCorp hammer down on him.
In 1132, the Assemblage sends to scouts as part of the planning for what eventually becomes the Battle of Ashes.... and this is where the sanity check is way off the rails. Industrial capacity and a "Invasion will never happen again" has about 1,000,000 dtons of SDBs/monitors/etc stacked up. This would explain why the Battle of Ashes does not mention any Vargr hitting Carmel.
Anything glaringly out of sync above? It all seems to hang together for me, but it feels like there's something I'm missing.
Is the worry about MegaCorps too strong? What's the threshold there for getting noticed?
Would building starships to go help the rest of the Domain make more sense?
