Preparing for the Journey

I could see that! Maybe with the alternate spheroid, though. I get a feeling that there's a lot more stuff for us to buy after this, so I'm being a little stingy. :P

That's a good question for Azzorak: what's the rest of our purchasing schedule look like? Do we have another like 200m C-bills of equipment that we'll have to be getting?

As for getting the second dropship, is it possible to transfer Mechs and Aeros from one dropship to another? Aeros seem like you could uncouple and just fly them from one to the other, but mechs and tanks would be different. If we start off with the pair of dropships and only stick with our crew, we can customize our drop to the specific situation/mission.

EDIT:
Meant to add a "Yes, I agree" regarding using the spheroid alternate.

If we splurged for the 2nd collar of mechs with the Merchant jumpship, I assume we'll have to hire more mechs/pilots, too, and pay those salaries.

As far as drop ships I am pretty much find with anything. While I usually prefer faster, lighter ships. I think having a bulky, armed dropship might just as well be good for tight spots.

Lots of posts since I was last online.

The cheaper dropship:

Manatee - Small Spheroid - 110,460,000 C-bills (Thrust 4/6, 6x Laser Bays, 280 Standard Armor, Mech Bay [4 Doors, 4 Mechs], Cargo bay [1 Door, 396 tons]

For Comparison:

Confederate - Small Spheroid - 147,084,000 C-bills (Thrust 4/6, 6x Laser Bays, 616 Standard Armor, Fighter Bay [2 Doors, 2 Fighters], Mech Bay [4 Doors, 4 Mechs], Cargo bay [1 Door, 64 tons]


As to Dramasailors question about further purchases, dropships are the last of the big purchases. After dropships you have

Required:
Crew: 10,000+ (This assumes a full compliment for the jumpship and 2 dropships, this will vary but not by much)
Life Support (Food/Water/etc): 20,000+ (120 Day Supply for a crew of about 30, this will vary but again not by much)

Optional:
Mercenary Pilots: 1500 each
Aerospace Fighters: Light (2,000,000) Medium (3,500,000) Heavy (8,000,000) These numbers are averages it varies based on model
Battlemechs: Light (2,000,0000) Medium (4,000,000) Heavy (9,000,000) Assault (10,000,000+) Again averages
Small Craft:
Passenger Shuttles: 3,000,000
Armed Passenger Shuttles 5,000,000
Infantry Shuttles: 9,000,000
Escape Pods/Life Boats: 800,000
Combat Escorts: 13,000,000

Awesome. So to MoMo's point from earlier, do we need to outfit our vessel with things like mining/excavation equipment or trucks and the like to haul any lostech from where we find it back to the dropship for shuttling up to the jumpship?

Excavation and science equipment is already owned by the institute, however, I failed to mention ground vehicles like trucks. You may or may not want such things but they are all less than 100k.

Here's my compiled thoughts (Now with tallied cash!):

Starting Funds 750,000,000.00
Current Cost 746,780,150.00
Available Funds 3,219,850.00

Item Cost
Merchant Class Jumpship 384,618,750.00
Leopard Dropship (4 Mechs, 2 Fighters) 171,302,400.00
Confederate Dropship (4 Mechs, 2 Fighters) 147,084,000.00
Light Fighter 2,000,000.00
Light Fighter 2,000,000.00
Light Fighter 2,000,000.00
Light Mech 2,000,000.00
Light Mech 2,000,000.00
Heavy Mech 9,000,000.00
Assault Mech 13,000,000.00
Armed Passenger Shuttle 5,000,000.00
Passenger Shuttle 3,000,000.00
Crew 25,000.00
Life Support 50,000.00
Escape Pod 800,000.00
Escape Pod 800,000.00
Escape Pod 800,000.00
Escape Pod 800,000.00
Ground Vehicles (5) 500,000.00

Any more input in this? Once this is finished I will post the first thread. I have largely written it up at this point, just need a few more details from this thread. Also bear in mind the jumpship comes with a few escape pods. Additional ones take up space in the small craft bay. Each one fits 7 people

If the ship comes with the escape pods, I'd pull them off the req sheet.

The list looks fine to me. Nice work, Dramasailor.

I concur, well done. I do have a question though. Why do we need so many spare mechs? Will we have that many people with us?

That fully outfits the two dropships. PC mechs account for 4, the other 4 are NPC mechs for the second lance.

Seems OK to me. I reckon as long as we have a couple of lances, one combat one recon, we should be good and this seems to fit the bill given the info we have currently

OK I will setup the last bits of the campaign on my tracking software using this and post the first game post and some other info tonight or tomorrow.

just now sent in my dude, forgot I hadn't done that yet. Submitted!