Solarian Military Industrial Expansion

[Pope Dave The 3th]

Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Medium

Team Purview: Human, Loremasters

Short Description: Greatly elaborates on the Alliance's military-industrial complex, and ensures that the Alliance's nationalization campaigns both weren't complete jokes and had reasonable consequences. Also elaborates on a few Solarian state defense companies.

How will this be reflected on-station?: The SCC may now bitch about the Alliance with much more clarity and zeal.

Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yep. Current lore regarding the SCA and IRM make it seem like they were both absolute jokes when it came to anyone not Nanotrasen. This makes the Alliance's anti-corporate stance far clearer, while still offering opportunities for players to come from these areas.

Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Yep.

Long Description:

Base Lore

Spoiler

Much of the infrastructure and productive capacity for the Alliance’s newfound military-industrial complex comes from the (unwilling) courtesy of Hephaestus Industries, Zavodskoi Interstellar, and Orion Express, nationalized under the Industrial Reclamation Mandate and distributed piecemeal among the Alliance’s now-vibrant defense landscape. Innumerable factory complexes, industrial parks, office buildings, and other facilities under the authority of the Solarian Corporate Authority were provided to both Alliance SOEs and private business, forming the foundations for future Alliance investment. The crown jewels of these acquisitions were, and remain, the dozen Hephaestus Industries Superfactories secured under the IRM, if in a somewhat diminished state. While the loss of the Hephaestus AIs and control systems proved crippling in the immediate aftermath of the Mandate, several years of experimentation, jury-rigging, and study have restored the massive stations to operation, though at significantly reduced capacity than their fully-equipped cousins. 

 

Built up from these nationalized assets are the Alliance’s new generation of state-owned and state-backed businesses intended to be the vanguard of an Alliance freed from megacorporate meddling. The most well-known of these entities are the Alliance’s State-Owned Enterprises, or SOEs. Comprising entities such as the Solarian National Armory, Solarian State Shipbuilding Corporation, and Solarian State Construction Company, these national businesses provide the Solarian government with far greater control over its defense infrastructure, if at the expense of free-market flexibility. Outside of its state-owned enterprises, the Department of Defense is also quite willing to render heavy support to private Solarian corporations, provided they prove loyal to the Alliance and unaffiliated with the SCC. Companies such as San Colette’s CAISC, the Visegrad Armaments Cooperative, and the (only very recently reactivated) Lycoris United Shipyards form this latter group, supporting local economies and diversifying the Alliance’s supply networks.

 

On the other hand, divesting from the largest economic entities in the Orion Spur carried its own consequences. While the switch to smaller, often state-owned companies provided massive boons for both national security and the Solarian worker, it also removed the sheer efficiency of scale only achievable by the long-established megacorps, leading to noticeably increased expenses compared to the monopolies of Zavodskoi and Hephaestus. The loss of skilled labor and industrial knowledge means that several vital components and systems are simply beyond the ability for Sol to produce at scale, for the time being, requiring them to be acquired from those very same SCC megacorps. This issue is compounded by the severe enmity held by every SCC corporation save Idris towards the Alliance, resulting in such goods often being purchased at notable markups. The sudden switch also forced the Alliance to divest from centuries-old logistical networks and supply chains, a factor which nearly caused a second collapse of the Solarian military, prevented only by the extensive contingencies drafted prior to the execution of the IRM.

 

Solarian State Owned/Backed Companies (likely to be expanded)

Solarian National Armory

Spoiler

Originally founded as the Solarian State Armory during the Alliance’s Hegemonic Era, the Armory was one of the many independent arms companies absorbed into Zavodskoi Interstellar during the Crash of 2260 and subsequent Interstellar War. There, the brand would languish for over two centuries before being abruptly restored to the Alliance by the Industrial Reclamation Mandate of 2463. Renamed to the Solarian National Armory, the now state-owned enterprise would experience an ironic twist of its former history, being granted a large quantity of manufacturing assets seized from Zavodskoi by the Solarian Corporate Authority, along with a small number of Hephaestus installations. As an official SOE of the Alliance, the SNA has seen its portfolio rapidly expand from its Hegemonic incarnation, and is now responsible for producing small arms for all Alliance service branches, manufacturing everything from standard assault rifles to vehicle-mounted heavy weapons.

Much of the SNA’s production comes courtesy of its partially-reactivated Hephaestus Superfactory, seized by the SCA in the opening months of its mandate. Renamed to the Kasen National Munitions Foundry, the station now serves as both company headquarters and primary manufacturing site for the arms producer. As with all of the Superfactories now under Solarian control, the Kasen Foundry remains at a significantly reduced productive capacity compared to its fully-equipped Hephaestus peers, but even in its lessened state, the massive facility remains capable of outfitting multiple divisions to full combat strength in under a month.

 

Alliance Technology Group Corporation

Spoiler

An atypical entity dedicated solely to militarily-relevant research and development, the Alliance Technology Group Corporation, or ATGC, is one of the Alliance’s leading defense research companies. Operating out of nationalized research campuses primarily taken from Zavodskoi, (along with a handful of Hephaestus sites), the ATGC is at the forefront of the Alliance’s efforts to secure technological parity with the corporations of the SCC, both through independent development and less-publicized reverse engineering. The company would also prove crucial to the Alliance’s partial reactivation of the Hephaestus Superfactories, working with Army cyberwarfare specialists to develop workarounds for the missing proprietary control systems which previously managed the stations.

 

The vast majority of the ATGC’s current effort is dedicated towards two particular fields. Firstly, devising reliable production methods for the few Armed Forces staples still primarily purchased from megacorporations, primarily in the field of artificial intelligence. Progress here remains slow, as the cutting-edge techniques used by the corporations of the SCC prove difficult to replicate with Sol’s available talent base. The second, and perhaps far more pressing, project is a joint effort with Einstein Engines and Taipei Engineering Industrial to develop feasible large-scale solutions to the Phoron Crisis. While this project has borne some fruit in Taipei’s cryogenic superconducting systems, even these partial solutions are beyond reach for anyone outside the Jewel Worlds.

 

Alliance Exotech

Spoiler

Specializing in hardsuits, exosuits, and other forms of powered armor, Alliance Exotech is a comparatively small corporation in the Alliance’s expanding catalog of SOEs. Originally the small-time robotics startup Corsair Exotech, the company would be earmarked by Alliance planners for its repeated attempts to sell to the Solarian Armed Forces and steadfast refusal to accept a buyout by Zavodskoi. Earning a positive appraisal by the Solarian junta post-Reclamation Mandate, the rechristened Alliance Exotech would join the Alliance’s ranks of state-backed corporations, and would receive a significant quantity of nationalized Zavodskoi assets to rapidly increase its production footprint.

 

Having been awarded several high-profile orders from all branches of the Armed Forces, Alliance Exotech has picked up where Zavodskoi left off, producing the very same Basilisk exosuits and Gargoyle powered armor systems that have served the Alliance for decades. Though the company has initiated development on potential replacements to the venerable armor systems, the Alliance’s current technological state makes it likely that the frames will continue to see production for the foreseeable future.

 

Zavodskoi-Sol Relations Blurb

Spoiler

Prior to the Solarian Corporate Authority's establishment and the mass nationalisation of corporate assets, Necropolis Industries was one of the primary weapon suppliers to the Solarian Armed Forces. In the SCA’s wake, however, Zavodskoi saw its Solarian holdings massively reduced by an Alliance seeking to secure strategic autonomy in its weapons production. The vast majority of Zavodskoi’s Alliance assets have since been transferred to Solarian-controlled or backed companies, such as the Solarian National Armory, the San Colette Interstellar Arms Company, and the Solarian Alliance Aviation Industry Corporation, among many others. Zavodskoi’s influence is far from totally removed, however, as the Alliance still relies on the corporation to produce several cutting-edge goods and components for the armed forces, most notably positronics, which are now often sold at a significant markup.

 

Heph-Sol Relations Blurb

Spoiler

As with its fierce rival, Zavodskoi Interstellar, Hephaestus Industries and the Solarian Alliance previously held a special relationship going back to the founding of the megacorporation on Earth. Hephaestus was considered so integrated, and so vital to the Solarian shipbuilding and civilian manufacturing sector that analysts were quoted as saying that, “Any attempt to curb Hephaestus would be tantamount to de-industrializing the nation.” Such sentiments would, however, prove somewhat premature, as the Solarian junta’s Industrial Reclamation Mandate of 2462 saw the Alliance dispense with typical formalities of nationalization in favor of simply marching troops into the facilities they wished to acquire. While such tactics irrevocably soured the relationship between the Alliance and Hephaestus, they also proved highly effective, seeing nearly all of Hephaestus's Alliance shipyards and military construction holdings acquired by the state, to be parceled out to Alliance corporations in a mirror of Zavodskoi’s fate. Only rapid negotiations by Hephaestus representatives managed to prevent the acquisition of their assets in New Hai Phong and on Mars, which remain the company’s only strongholds within the Alliance. Despite this on-paper success, though, the Alliance was unable to fully sever its relationship with Hephaestus. As again with Zavodskoi, the acquisition of Hephaestus's infrastructure did not include the organizational knowledge or talent needed to effectively operate it, while the New Hai Phong deal also allowed Hephaestus to keep its massive influence within the Alliance's civilian manufacturing and consumer goods sector, to the consternation of the IRM's more hardline proponents.

Edited Saturday at 12:04 by Pope Dave The 3th
Trio changes

[triogenix]

Hi again - firstly - thank you for taking the time to change your original proposal and expand it due to my feedback last time. This proposal is far better - and all I really have are nitpicks about the way certain things are phrased in this draft - rather than large-scale issues. Obviously since my remit is focused around the corporations I'll be focusing my attention there.

1. For the ATCG - I think I'd change it so that they're "...working out of nationalized research campuses, primarily taken from Zavodskoi, with a few from Hephaestus..." as this seems to be sorta like a skunkworks esque R&D department for the military, something that Zavodskoi would have focused on FAR more than Hephaestus.

2. Okay I just spent way to long trying to phrase something I'll just talk about over discord - but I think some of the Hephaestus stuff needs to change - given a few facts, but we can go over that elsewhere.

3. Lastly, "...cryogenic superconducting systems, a phoron alternative for those outside the Jewel Worlds remains out of reach." I'd like this to say something that shows TEI's systems aren't a full on viable replacement to phoron - I might have phrased it poorly on the EE page - but there is no viable, practical replacement to phoron; it's like one of my few hard rules of something I won't allow. could literally just be "...cryogenic superconducting systems, and even these far less advanced systems are, for those outside the Jewel Worlds, out of reach." or smth similar.

That's all I had for now.