Mecha Space Pirate Quest XXIII

Just make here wear a dress and tell everyone how much she loves Richard

You also have some decisions to make, and I'm giving you a few hours to chew it over between plot posts.

You took out three Bluegills, two Pumpkinseeds, and three Pumpkinseed IIs last time. You can keep them, or you can scrap the Pumpkinseeds and Pumpkinseed IIs for CP. In exchange for some sweet talk, good rolls, and money, Red Siren might trade you the three Bluegills, one Pumpkinseed, and two Pumpkinseed IIs she took out.

You also have access to their pilots, among them Gretchen, who you can either ransom back or keep as pilots. Your critical seduce during the news broadcast means they won't protest too hard about the pilot life, although Gretchen herself could be difficult. They're viewing Auditorium and the beach as one big vacation.

Fuck.
She has to paint her harpy bright pink?

I say we keep Gretchen and have her keep doing her show so we can earn some great pr, lets keep the pumpkin seeds and try and get Siren's, and did you ever give us the cp for the Sulieman battles?

I say we keep the mechs and ransom gretchen. Maybe the other pilots as well depending on how much they are worth.

I'd say scrap the Bluegills, the pumpkinseeds, and all but one of the Pumpkinseed IIs for CP and research. The extra pumpkin seed II we try and reverse engineer that shield it has along with the beam weaponry.

We keep gretchin and the rest around as 'hostages', taking a show during the big exchange for Fatima to keep a quite viewing of this event. Multiple viewpoints will work well against double crossing.

No, Richard has to paint her Harpy bright pink.

She has to paint our Harpy. That we only just bought. Just for her to paint. IT'LL BE JUST LIKE OLD TIMES HUH MILES~

Then, Mohammad will disassemble it, piece by piece, organizing and cataloging them in reverse alphabetical order.

Then, Yoritomo will have to attempt to reassemble it.

That's kind of pointlessly humiliating.

"You are both complete and utter idiots. If this happens again, I'm coming up with extremely humiliating punishments for you both. I know you probably will do it again, so as we speak I'm coming up with things. Starting a fight when they came here to negotiate is an awful idea. At least they still think Samantha is a hostage, right?"

"Yes, they do." The Corporal spreads out her towel and lays next to you on the sand, cuddling in close, "I don't think they know I'm here willingly...and to tell the truth, you're being a little too hard on them. Tell me, what would you have done if this had happened when you weren't busy canoodling?"

"I would have gone out there and dealt with it myself, obviously." You grunt, not seeing her point.

"Mhmm. Doesn't that seem like the perfect time for them to set off a trap, if they have one prepared?" She winks at you, "With you and my brother both present?"

You look silently at her, suddenly guessing where she's been for the past while...piloting the S-Betta and making sure nothing went wrong.

"Oda thinks we can trust them." She continues, then frowns, "Roarke, are you thinking about giving me back?"

>[What say?]

Yes. You maxed out the amount of CP you can get from Harpies, and you opted to keep the Morgan II, Warmouth, and Tarrasque, remember? As for their ships, the Rhinehawk is upgraded now, it's officially a Medium Weight Cruiser.

>"Nope. Sorry, but you're stuck here. I... kinda am considering trying to recruit the lot of them, though. I think I might have a problem."

>You said you wanted to go back so you could try and convince your friends to come and join us

Seems sensible enough.

>"Only if you want to go back. Do you?"

Combine these two?
>"Nope, you're stuck with us. Wanna help me recruit the lot of them though?"

I kinda hope Yoritomo makes a Pokemon or Suikoden joke about our need to recruit erryone.

It's a tough situation. Can't push them too far since you being captured is why your brother is free. Don't want them to get reckless, and if this thing is a trap, its a trap for everyone including you.

Could do the negotiations in the form of helping us take down the green skulls with some money thrown in as a way to keep them off their toes. That way, you have time to talk to your brother, we have more people to deal with the skulls, and any fishy business becomes that much tougher if they try anything during a joint mission.

The Green Skulls are most likely in the pocket of Hamon and she will immediately 86 that idea

And thats the point. It's a reasonable enough plan to the others. Deal with a threat as Fairchild said needs to be removed and soften the pirates as well. Not only that, it gives the crew experience.

If she outright goes against it, it would seem off.

It wouldn't seem that off since she would probably justify it by saying if they did it would only make the Kestrel's stronger and harder to crush later

Yes. Go back and this time instead of you, send best girl.

I say send Sam back, if only to prevent unessesary conflict arising from misunderstandings.

Is it too late to hope for as punishment we dress up Oda as Sam and trade him instead?

Things we still have to do

Talk to Clemmy about the other girls

Get another mixtape

Have Karen and Avi research possible opponents on space Veeky Forums

Figure out who slept with us

Train

That seems like it might needlessly antagonize the people with the battleship capable of wrecking our faces.

Most likely but I can't help but want to see how funny it would be for Oda to impersonate Sam.

Keep that for extra content the girls would put in a comedy doujin. Speakin of, think Caeser's girl is squealing over 1 half of her favorite doujin being in her hands?

Could be, think she might start grilling poor Mohammad to see if any of it is true?

You're still wondering about who cuddled with you the other night. You asked Karen, but she says she fell asleep working on some new schematics. She's trying to adapt the Tarrasque's shield somewhat to the Knuckle Kaiser. You asked Samantha, and she said you would have known it was her, implied lewd things without saying them, and then told you that she spent the night reading in her room.

"Nope, you're stuck with us. Want to help me recruit the lot of them, though?" You wink at her.

She covers her mouth to hide her smile, "Yes. At least temporarily. I'm not going back, so any negotiations are just a sham...although if it comes to it and you think it's safe, I could always go back and then blow my cover by running off with the S-Betta again. Only if you think it's safe, though. Even if I wasn't...even if I didn't..." She blushes, "Even if I didn't have feelings for a certain charming and handsome Admiral, the UJCIDF isn't a safe place for someone who knows too much right now. And even with that aside...without me, do you know how bad the civil war between Red Siren and Karen would be? I shudder to think of the terror of Mecha-Karen stomping around Auditorium, shooting beam cannons from her eyes and threatening to throw Red Siren into the sun. I shudder more to think of what Red Siren would do to cause this catastrophe in the first place." She shudders intentionally, then frowns, "Roarke! You don't have sunscreen on!"

"I don't burn and the sunlight is artificial!" You insist.

She takes out a tube of lotion anyway, "Yes you do, and it doesn't matter, a sunburn is a sunburn. Hold still."

"The genki ojou-sama futanari is right, aniki." Yoritomo nods.

Samantha gives him a very harsh look, "Futanari?" It's an even harsher look coming from her. She starts gathering cupped sand in her palms and dumping it onto his little holographic image until it's buried. Her voice is as sweet and polite as always as she continues speaking to you.

[Continued]

Perhaps, but it's definitely less now than it was before she captured Caesar.

>even now Mohammad is enduring pointed questions from half of the crew about his and his Admiral's sexualities
Truly a vile and heinous torture.

True, until she starts grilling him in that sort of way and he simply blushes and goes "B-but that's haram.."

>do you know how bad the civil war between Red Siren and Karen would be?
That Civil War will be nothing when Clemmy finds out that there are other girls and begins her quest for dominance of the pack.
I'm fairly sure she'll murder people with her best girl mug if she has to.

I get the feeling moe isnt the kind of guy who stutters.

>tfw he can't hold out and yells out THE ADMIRAL LOVES SAMANTHA AND THEY DO IT EVERY NIGHT.
>tfw the entire crew of the Jaburo is snickering when Roarke goes to negotiate
>tfw Caesar asks if Samantha needs a cushion to sit down on and Pierre punches him

You did this to him user. You could've stopped it.

We should probably try and talk to her since she did see the recording with Siren and Gretchen

This isn't 100% impossible.

Rolled 7 (1d10)

Moe truly is the shittiest of shits.

We need to teach Moe how to keep his mouth shut he already sort of told Caesar

Setsuna gives no fucks unless you're teaching him how to be a gundam.

What's so bad about that? Are you embarrassed about engaging in the sacred pasttime of trap-springing?

He's giving in to torture.

That's the sign of a shit-tier comrade, friend.

No, that's the sign of a human. Everyone breaks under torture.

To be fair, Yorimoto DID send him over there to tell them shit.
It's not Moe's fault Yorimoto didn't specify.

"Roarke, I could always go back, free Mohammed, and get the two of us out of there if things break down completely...but hopefully it won't come to that. I'm not a strategist or anything, but I just want to talk to my brother and let him know what's happening and see if he's willing to join us. The reason I helped these idiots out is because I believe that if you had openly gone to meet with my brother, something bad would have happened. Weird problems happened even without you showing up, after all, and we know someone is being sneaky behind the scenes. Killing both you and Pierre would be the perfect way to guarantee a war between the Iron Kestrels and UJCIDF. So I gave Mohammed a message for my brother in case he lost. Hopefully he delivers it when they're alone. If he'd won, I could have talked to my apparent replacement in person, convinced him, and had him go back to Pierre to do the same thing." She sighs heavily, "They had to have Rudolph Merrow's son on the squad? This is terrible, I feel like I've been replaced by someone better." She pouts as she rubs lotion onto your back, humming 'Killer Queen'.

"Not true." You reply. "That's just the best they could do to make up for not having you around."

>[So, what do you want to do now that you're Roarke again and back in command?]

To be fair, its only been like a couple hours.

A couple of hours of kycilla SQUEEEing all over him. If he's still sane he's superman.

Sing a few lines of Killer Queen with Sam before getting shit together for Sam to go back and shit. After a last minute fucking.

Not that Sam isn't our hostage and this is all a shame to scam the government

Enjoy a little time on the beach until we go to the negotiation maybe buy a new mixtape at one of the music stores

Fly up there and see what the deal is.
We have a crew member captured by the fuzz, we really shouldnt be dicking about. Especially when we think someone is trying to double cross both sides.

Well, make sure any tech we have has been looked at. Its obvious that they are starting to pull out the good stuff. Any connections should keep their ears open for green skulls. Prepare for negotiations and also Fatima's exchange in case of complications.

Fuck your mix tapes. It was fine the first time but it's getting annoying now.

amen

Dont you make mixtapes rather than buy them anyway?

Alright, I was only suggesting it since people had been asking for a mixtape. If it really is bothering people then I'll stop bring it up

It'd be fine if you didn't bring them up for every character it seems. Oh new antagonist need a mixtape for them. New female who might join the harem need a mixtape. Not everyone needs a fucking mixtape.

The details of how, precisely, you want to do the negotiations are entirely up to you. The UJCIDF made its first sally, and by rights the second is up to you. The more you plan it out, the less wriggle room I have to make things go terribly, awfully, hilariously wrong, after all~

It is good to play with fa/tg/uys, people who don't just buy a ten-foot pole to take into the dungeon with them but buy a ladder because it can be broken down into two ten-foot poles. You fellows play back, and that's splendid.

I was only going to do it for Roarke but then people wanted one for Caesar since he was a pc and then they wanted to give them as gifts to other people

You're making me want to do a Metal Gear Mohammed interlude.

For the negotiations lets ask for something really unrealistic to start off and then work our way down

Well, in general we could go for neutral ground and a open calling. Make a show of it to grab attentin but also to show we have nothing to hide. Then escort them to the ground and allow the Brother to see his sister while we chat with the ship captain and pilot. Be civil, but play the dashing rogue. Being TOO nice would make them suspect too much. Barter, banter, play it up, but always look reasonable.

Best outcome for darth fairy would probably be the Jaburo, all pirate ships and auditorium destroyed in an orgy of violence, with a few ujcidf survivors left to tell the tale.

Things she has to accomplish that:stealth tech, some sort of supercannon that can gut colonies, the green skulls, whatever unit is so far gone that they follow her genocidal orders.

Is there interdictor tech which stops ships from jumping out?

For the actual negotiations, the biggest threat would be stealth units dropping off high yield weapons on ships and mechs to kill them from surprise. I honestly can't think of a counter to that with our available forces. Is it possible to set up a cloud of smoke or metal particles or something in a large enough area to give warning of a stealth unit approaching?

The best idea i can come up with is to host the talks in the colony, but to set up a spray system at the hanger which dumps out some sort of easy to clean foam whenever the doors are opened. If you see two mech silouettes when there should only be one, there's your infiltrator.

Forces jumping out to just blow everyone up without stealth can be handled by just running away, so i don't think that's the bad guy's plan.

Sam orr Karen might have an idea of how to detect stealth units or at least some of the kinks in the system we can try and exploit

>Say, that's a mighty fine Wels-class Battleship you have there? Did the UJCIDF really gift this for Sam's release? You shouldn't have.

Lets have Gretchen do a piece on the negotiations and some interviews of key people so that if anything happens she'll get some recording of things which make make Hamon decide to not attack

The following are just questions for clarification, not criticism of your fine plans.

>Fly up there and see what the deal is.

You would need to decide who to bring with you.

Ah, classic Art of the Deal. Very good, I can work with this. The Jaburo itself is quite ludicrous and fits well with the joke you made on QTPI News (to the user who went I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE with that name, Gretchen herself chose it and is inordinately proud of it) about wanting a Wels-class Battleship in trade. Such a mighty machine would truly be worthy of a pirate admiral.

What would you consider neutral ground? Would you be chatting in person, via vidcomm from the Knuckle Kaiser, or via vidcomm from the Rhinehawk?

Your logic is very good. Unfortunately, interdictor technology doesn't exist...mostly. You see, a gate can only open onto void. If something is already there, even something like gas or chaff, it will simply fail to work. This is why you don't have superweapons based around creating massive gates and teleporting asteroids right into the hearts of colonies and starships. The spray system is quite clever, although according to Samantha the S-Betta is unique and the user in the last thread who said it would take time to make another stealth mech whose protection was so absurdly thorough was quite correct going off Roarke's mech knowledge (see, Mecha Tech IS useful even when you aren't using it to make things). The S-Betta itself can't be detected even with an ASP or Spotting Radar, which is the only reason why Caesar's ASP wasn't picking up the heat trails left in its wake.

The real question is, will a UJCIDF Colonel agree to talks away from her heavily armed and armored battleship in what is most definitely, for her, enemy territory?

Yes. Bringing Gretchen along is good.

>Captcha text: Thru Abbie

Oh Roarke, despoiling Abbie too? Poor girl, she was a loyal UJCIDF pilot such a short time ago.

I would rather we did it in the Kaiser so were a little more protected then we would be if we did it in person

Can we relocate to california station for negotiations? Or are there ujcidf forces still around?

Make it a show if it's a viable neutral ground. Have gretchen constantly streaming video about it, have a stream of your own and tell the military guys they should have one as well. Shining a spotlight on it is probably our best defense.

Neutral ground would be a spot of relative safety. The Kaiser would work for the initial discussion. Any desire to see Sam is healthy can be done by inviting a small number of people to auditorium with some people checking in on Moe to make sure he's ok.

Either side trying to take the other side hostage would just make things awkward and difficult for everyone and add nothing to the negotiations. Could even do a video com with the captain.

Of course, if such a thing doesn't work, video feed between the two groups using some of the video equipment could also work. Would provide both video evidence and a means to talk comfortably for everyone without worrying about the other mess ups.

Roarke doesn't know that, but Caesar is aware that, yes, there are. Lysa's concert is over by now, but the Cincinnatus is still docked.

If we take the negotiation we should bring Siren and her crew with us since I have the feeling their going to get attacked if we leave them alone

The entire population of her colony? Red Siren has upwards of a thousand people on her crew. However, the vast majority of them aren't pilots or even proper pirates, just S-Pop fans who say she did nothing wrong and work on Auditorium. This isn't counting visiting fans and hostages.

I was thinking more the mech pilots but that would just leave the colony undefended

How long does it take before a ship that's just completed a jump can fire weapons? How accurate can jumps be? What's the smallest platform that can mount a FTL transmitter?

So, unless I'm reading this wrong, the general view of the options that wouldn't hilariously unbalance one side or another is that you want to meet in space, in mecha, with vidfeed going both ways so that you can see Mohammed and Colonel Hatsheput and Soul A can see Samantha?

Tell me if you wholeheartedly object to this.

If they're unlikely to mount stealth as good as the Betta, then the biggest threat would be haman jumping out her colony killer weapon that's already primed and ready to fire, aimed at our starships. Probably coupled with some sort of sabotage on the Jaburo so it's neutralized. After that it's just a cleanup operation, since no one can jump away. And we really don't have a counter to that, so that plan seems as good as any.

It takes a turn for it to exit the gate and can fire on the next turn. Jumps are, generally, quite accurate and the biggest hindrance to tactical jump use is the twenty-four hour cooldown (the same for big ships with more power but requiring a larger gate and little ships with less power and less mass to move therefore not needing such a large gate). The smallest platform currently capable of gate projection is a Superlight personnel transport ship. You're not technically moving faster than light, though, you're creating a portal essentially.

Probably the best option for the initial encounter. If there was any funny business, both sides would be cautious to begin with when it comes to personnel. Likewise it would allow quick action incase someone wants to interrupt.

By FTL transmitter I was talking about their communications system. But yeah, scry and die seems to be a valid tactic in this universe, so i'm not sure how anyone ever feels safe.

It's a hit and miss thing from my perspective. Yes, you COULD ambush the enemy, but if they haven't teleported, they could nope out of there and leave you stranded. Spending a day or two out of range to move into range of the target position to keep that EVAC button ready is a good idea.

Oh. That. Actually, it's not as bad as all that. Colonies have an ansible for FTL transmission, generally, and there are free-floating armored ansible satellites scattered around parts of the Belt where ships commonly stop to recharge before their next jump so that they can call for help if necessary. A ship on its own generally doesn't have the power required for a personal ansible, which is big enough to take up at least one space on a starship. An Arapaima would have one, but an Arapaima is essentially a huge, slow-moving floating base of a starship.

You could, indeed, open up a gate and just peek through it rather than traveling through, to get an idea of what's on the other side. However, this would be easy for a colony, ship, or even a mech with an ASP to detect and you would have to wait 24 hours to open the gate again if you decided you wanted to go through.

Yeah, but imagine like 3 wels class ships all jumping in on a single target. EIther that target jumps within 10 seconds of that event, or the target dies. Even if they do jump, they then strand whoever they had outside the ship, which in a case like we have here, would be almost perfect for haman. She kills the captain she hates, his ship is still out there to point to as a threat, auditorium gets blowd up and everyone thinks pirates are a Clear and Present Danger to the solar system.

unrelated question: are there any other player in the solar system besides earth, luna, Mars, and the Jovien's ?

Ah, so the jaburo can't send back the tactical situation to the rest of the military.

Why don't they have AWACS ships? Equip them with an ansible, lots of sensors and comms, and send them along with any sufficiently large independent fleet to be a comms relay?

If something really nasty shows up to kill that fleet, you can get reinforcements popping out in perfect firing positions in a very short timeframe.

There are mining colonies on the outer planets, but they're mostly in the Jovian sphere of influence or owned by Lunar or Martian corporations. Venus is something of a vacation world

How would they know where that target is, though? It works well on a stationary target, but a stationary target can't run away in the first place. General Fairchild can't see what's going on unless she opens a gate to Auditorium and looks through it, in which case you would know about it. Such an ambush would have to be done blind.

A non-micro gate, one of the big ones used to transport fleets to other systems, has to be opened far away from anything else because the ripples it creates when you send mass through it are both hugely obvious and can damage things like nearby ships and satellites.

I had assumed the jaburo could send back real-time data on the positions of everything nearby, which would allow other ships to set their gate-out coordinates appropriately.

That's one of the functions of an Arapaima, which is also large enough that it can't just be targeted first and quickly brought down by an enemy fleet.

There's also a propaganda reason. A Wels-class is a flying castle equipped with massive weapons batteries. One is considered more than sufficient to quell a colony revolt, a handful of them are generally enough to conquer a planet via bombarding major population centers with the Superheavy battery. If you send more than one somewhere, you have to justify it.

So, hypothetically, a Wels could gut a colony with its main guns?

But if an ansible only takes one starship module, why don't they make small ships to mount them and act as escorts for something as expensive as a wels? A dedicated communications vessel to keep command up to date on what's happening with their golden turkeys.

Wait, how come conventional radio transmissions arent a thing? Sure they might not be instatnt but they'll be a few hours behind at worst. Its still the inside of the solar system we:re talking about.

Or did I miss something?