(08-01-2018, 08:28 PM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: Just rereading this while moving threads into the new subforum... I am suddenly looking forward oh so very much to Garrick and gear showing up in Firefly.
Just remembered that you said something about this and I'm only now thinking about it. D'OH!
Anyhow, it's going to be even more interesting because Firefly will be part of the Halcyon Days story arc where Garrick will be the lord and master of Clan Grimm and the battlefortress city ship, SDF-2 Dani California (I'm actually playing with the idea that they wait until they get to Garrick to re-christen the ship so that way we can say that it was his idea).
The organization overall is going to be interesting. For one thing, they're going to do away with that cumbersome Rear Admiral Lower/Upper Half malarkey and instead just have Rear Admiral as the Two-Star rank, and bring back the official rank of Commodore as the One-Star Rank. With this, you can have an actual Admiralty-level flag on an SDF whose position in the chain of command is unmistakable, and additionally have the authority to command the rest of the fleet elements that would nominally accompany an SDF (carriers, landing ships, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, etc).
Also, Garrick won't quite have direct command over everything. That is mostly going to be the job of Commodore Misa Hayase and the duly elected Mayor of 'California City' (rolls off the tongue really nicely). (Also, not sure yet who that person will be, but I'm certain it will fall into place in due time.) Instead, there is going to be a council, very much like the 'Shadow Cabal Council' they had back on the SDF-1, only it's a known and officially acknowledged governing body.
In essence, putting this into terms I best understand, it's like Garrick will have executive powers similar to the President of the United States, except that he is not the Commander-In-Chief of the military.
Instead, Garrick will have his own small personal force - his own House Guards, nominally commanded by Minagi; these are to act as personal guards not only to Garrick, but all of his direct family members. Yes, this is every bit as much of a lifetime commitment as it sounds, which means that Clan Grimm is going to have several Cadet Houses closely interwoven with the Main House. And I mean that literally. Anya Amake Jurai is going to be Garrick's shadow whenever Minagi is not available to do so herself, and yes, that means that she will sometimes be sleeping with him.
(Long term? I'm planning on having it that for a very long time, Clan Amake has no males born to them, and the clan essentially fades out, while Anya's line will carry on the name, but solely as a Cadet House of Clan Grimm. The irony of this will not be lost on her, and she will derive a great deal of schadenfreude from when she introduces her ailing father to her own son, the last male to hold the name of Amake, sired by her master, Lord Grimm.)
Additionally, there will be a small military force for carrying out "The Lord's Whim", and commanded by-and-large by Achika (Naturally). Though 'small' is going to be a rather relative matter in this case. This is not to say that it's an unwieldy force. The Naval portion consists of a Fast Battleship, an Escort Carrier, two Cruisers, a Destroyer Squadron, two Subspace Attack Boats, one Subspace VLS Boat, and one Subspace Landing Assault Boat. For small craft, there is a small squadron of Valkyries consisting of VF-4G Lightning III Valkyries. Additionally, there are a pair of VB-6 Konig Monsters to provide remote artillery support. The Valkyrie squadron and Monsters perform double-duty as ground attack forces, backing up the battalion-strength troop force.
However, there will be a second Valkyrie squadron that will be outside of Achika's direct command. This is Lord Grim's personal squadron and it is a very interesting beast. Pilots are selected by nomination by the current pilots of the squadron. These nominations are then passed up to be reviewed by Garrick's Wives in special Family Council meetings, with the final selection being made by Garrick himself. The pilots have an incredible degree of freedom in managing their ground crew and Valkyries, being able to decide on what sort of Valkyrie they wish to use, how their ground crews are managed, and what types of loadouts they sortie with. This makes Garrick's personal squadron an incredibly unpredictable foe to wrangle with, bearing more in common with a group of pirates.... that is, if pirates had access to only the best equipment and technology known.
In this manner, Garrick's personal forces will be to the Dani California what the SMF is to the Frontier, and fighting against the combined forces will be like trying to take on a force of nature.
And this is not even getting into the SDF-2 itself. It will be a production-model Macross-class ship, meaning that all the issues they had with the original Macross have been resolved with this ship.
And in Firefly? It will completely dwarf a Tohoku-class Cruiser. No, really. I checked. It's true. A Tohoku is about 2500 ft tall (its longest measurement) and weighs in at 5.5 million tons. The SDF-1 Macross? Almost 4,000 ft from bow to stern and a whopping 18 million tons - more than three times heavier than a Tohoku.
And as if that alone won't make the Alliance collectively shit themselves in fear, a Tohoku Cruiser is only a mobile military base and nothing more. It relies entirely on the craft it carries for defense, has relatively few weapons of its own and even less armor, and it's slow as hell.
The SDF-2 Dani California, on the other hand, fulfills all the same functions as a Tohoku, except that it is much larger, much faster, heavily armored, and armed to a fucking ridiculous degree, topped off with a beam cannon that can destroy every Tohoku in their fleet in one go if they happen to all be in the same place. And to this is to say NOTHING of the attendant fleet that's tagging along with them.
The Alliance will never know what the hell hit them until it's all over.
And the crew of the Serenity... while they're gonna be wary at first, they'll take comfort in seeing that there's no sign of Alliance colors anywhere... Though Book might find the slogan a bit daunting: "Ecce et flebitis"