Corporate Conflict timeline

This is a timeline for the Corporate Conflict, a series of militarized labor conflicts that eventually escalated into a corporate vs House "unrecognized conflict".

Main timeline

 * 3050: The Clan Invasion drives up exreme demand for military hardware across the Inner Sphere. Labor protection provisions are suspended, increased hours of work for reduced pay due to "emergency situation". As the prospects of the war look dire, profits for military manufacturers however skyrocket.


 * 3052: Truce of Tukayyid reduces the increased reliance of Inner Sphere powers on secondary contractors. Employees seek realignement of policies to pre-invasion levels. Many industries don't relent, pointing to reduced demand. Strikes commence against employers for work-related grievances. Salum Secundus Strike muffled with extreme prejudice by Janus Metalworks with employment of New Pinkerton mercenaries. Silent Pact drafted, an inter-industry agreement to not divulgue of forceful ways to deal with employee insurrections. First internal Server's Brigades stablished, the Content Lunch Division.


 * 3053: Silent Pact expands across the Inner Sphere. However, a leaked recording of the Salum Secundus Massacre is divulgued. Justice Movement informally founded. Consortium secretly stablished. Joint research and manufacturing of anti-revolt weapons begins in earnest. Fairness Initiative begins, but is partially infiltrated by Consortium agents. New Pinkerton receives many contracts and is reinforced to full Regiment strenght.


 * 3054: Justice Movement operations intensified, numerous factory takeovers. Cooperatives stablished on several sites. Fight for legal recognition rages on along with militarized labor conflicts. Gray Man Corps secret army organized, under joint Consortium command.


 * 3058: Consortium formally "stablished" four years after existing de facto, with founding of the reborn Second Star League. Many previously secret Consortium activities become legal. Labor movement mostly quashed, but corporations vie for more.


 * 3059: Acquisition of aerospace assets for Gray Man Corps accelerates. SLDF is absent due to the operations against Clan Smoke Jaguar. FedCom civil war weakens the largest Successor States. Numerous clashes with local militias and garrison forces as corporations "privatize" moons and planets; most surrender or are steamrolled.


 * 3060: Emboldened by the lack of decisive oppossition, actions against House units intensify. Blockades proliferate with the demand of allowing corporations to field essentially private armies and use them without oversight.


 * 3061: End of Operation BULLDOG, unexpectedly rapid return of SLDF to the Inner Sphere. Consortium is outlawed by Star League, counterstrike operations commence. Comstar involved in Consortium supression since they are considered potential competition.


 * 3062: End of FedCom civil war. Consortium desperate defensive operations (extensively featuring Server's Brigades) dismantled. Corporations partially demilitarized, corporate mercenaries demobilized or drafted for official State forces. The Board of Directors flees to the Periphery.


 * 3063: IndustrialMechs have measures put into them to prevent them being potentially used in further installation takeovers. Remnants of the Consortium Board of Directors settle near the Deep Periphery. Originally they call themselves the "Consortium in Exile", but by the great houses they are not recognized and called only "Board Remnants", treated as rogue elements.


 * 3064: The Board Remnants settle the so-called "Eleven-Seven": Eleven planets controlled by seven corporations. These corporations had been forcedly dissolved in the IS (though their control is patchwork according to their specialty) and brought their remaning assets in the exile.


 * 3065: Piracy and black market activities increase around "Consortium in Exile" worlds.


 * 3068: With the last of their Inner Sphere holdings given as lost, the Consortium in Exile hopes for recognition by renaming itself as the Corporate Culture and claims to be an independent nation. The rebranding is partially sucessful as some Great Houses recognize the Corporate Culture albeit only as a "non-state actor". This was in return to delibering "fugitives and wanted criminals". Usually older executives and some of them semi-retired from their actions up to fifteen years ago, they in turn felt betrayed by their "family in profit" and publicized many unsavory facts about the emerging "culture".


 * 3078: Last of the "Big Seven" corporations is merged as a wholly owned subsidiary, turning the Corporate Culture in a monopoly even de jure.


 * 3081: Near Terra, the progressive disarming of planetary militias and mercenary companies and the demobilizing of irregulars by Devlin Stone's Republic of the Sphere convinces the Corporate Culture board of directors that a swift-strike assault on core systems by a stealth army is tenable.


 * 3096: With the local economy in collapse due to the imposition of sanctions and blockades, and pirate raids to their corporate luxuries being more and more common, and with the meager natural resources of the planets rapidly depleting from overexploitation, and their biospheres collapsing from exertion (except on the garden residential moon Mansion One), the Board of Directors decides they would be safer on Earth - asphixiating it with their stealth-capable aerospace assets, then controlling it. It was a tenous plan but the alternative was already extinction. "High Risk, High Reward", as they said. They also hoped populations would side with them due to the "oppressive socialistic" nature of the Republic of the Sphere.


 * 3097: Not only did this the assault fail spectacularly, but in the ensuing counterattack the aerospace assets and their accompanied armies were completely decimated and surrendered en masse. Corporate culture partial recognition revoked by all major actors, counterattack by Republic forces begins.


 * 3099: The Corporate Culture is finished off for good in the Eleven Planets after a considerably harsh campaign with particularly high losses, where the Knights of the Sphere tested their mettle. The defeat and dissolution of the Corporate Culture and the shame of having associated with them is one of the catalysts that drives Clan Diamond Shark to rename themselves to Clan Sea Fox.

Development Milestones

 * 3052: Enforcer-0 prototype rushed in; a corporate SecurityMech version of the popular Davion Enforcer.
 * 3053: Heatclaw prototyped. Obedience Manufacturers introduces the advanced Taskmaster and Taskslave industrialmechs.
 * 3054: MachineMan Interface prototyped and immediately abandoned.
 * 3061: First Mook prototyped by the Consortium; the design is deemed not necessary in current circumstances.
 * 3063: Overlord battlemech prototype completed by the Board Remnants, soon to be complemented by its spotter companion, the Minion.
 * 3098: Stepper prototype operational. Only a single one is completed.