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Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution

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Okay so the Eyes has asked for some price for things and people are talking about buying ships on markets. First of a warning: This stuff isn't cheap. Even in real life a warship costs 1-8 billion USD. Hell the US's old Iowa-class comes out to about 8 million USD and change once you use today's value and its 270 ish meters IIRC? These suckers are meant to fight kill and travel in the vacuum of space and have devices in them that tell space-time to go make them a sandwich. So pricey. That said if you don't want warship grade stuff you can buy much cheaper civilian hulls, the transports listed are bare bones functional spaceships. Also pretty slow topping out at 5LY/day. Warship costs are for "standard military grade" or basically what you'd see in the SA armed forces. Sale mark up is usually ~20%


     
  Cost Production
100m Frigate (46,300,000,000) 156,250.00
250m Frigate (723,000,000,000) 2,441,400.00
400m Cruiser (2,960,000,000,000) 10,000,000.00
700m Cruiser (15,900,000,000,000) 53,593,750.00
800m Dreadnaught (23,700,000,000,000) 80,000,000.00
1000m Dreadnaught (46,300,000,000,000) 156,250,000.00
Carrier 50% 50%
     
100m Transport (9,260,000) 1,562.50
250m Transport (144,600,000) 24,414.00
400m Transport (592,000,000) 100,000.00
I reserve the right to changes these numbers on discovering I fucked up. Which I'm pretty sure I did, I just haven't figured out how yet.

Warships will flux between 150% to 10% of those numbers on the average depending on quality and flank speed.

So then I got asked what a Wuni (Terminus Frigate/Space AK) costs. You can have one for a cool 18 billion, no questions asked save where's the money and who's picking it up. Less (say up to 50% or so?) if your willing to buy a lower quality one or a used one (with authentic blood stains and battle damage!). The Wuni is rarely a pirate vessel, though "pirates" may have some. More often then not its used by Terminus militaries.

As for a armed space factory (aka ship yard).
Lets see rip out the MA guns for ~50%, down size the core... IDK less 40% base price... Less armor and power needs... A little rounding... Lets say 7.5 billion total for an armed small space factory with a single layer of warship armor plates, warship barriers, a full guardian array and such. It'd basically be a ~300m carrier that can't go fast and has next to no fighters. Using you current tech it could probably delay an actual warship for some time or tangle with 4-5 Terminus raiders.

Q-Ship levels? Meh 500 million extra. Just recall that its not that strong compared to a warship even a Terminus raider*.

*A sort of catch all term I'm using for the "standard" pirate vessel. Usually 100-200m long and mounting a gun only 50% of the length.

I think that's sane. Comments?
 
TheEyes said:
We'll be able to build our own frigate in 2174-Q2. In the meantime, we'll have quite enough to get up to arming our shipyard construction site in case of pirate raiders.
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Tabron89 said:
I would rather get a shipyard built and build a prototype frigate of our own than buy one 'over the net'.

Especially considering the fact that one of the Shadow Broker's agents has contacted Revy.
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We'll be able to start in 2174-Q2. I seem to remember that Hoyr said that it would take the shipyard we'll have completed a year to put together a frigate. That means that from the current turn (2173-Q4) it will take until 2175-Q2 to have a Cabira. That's the better part of 2 years until we'll have any warships worthy of the name. I'm not saying that we should buy from a disreputable seller, nor that we should give up our technology, but having a personal yacht that can actually outfight and outrun what are basically Space Technicals should be a high priority. Hoyr basically demonstrated to us that just about anyone with the money (and there are a lot of people who hate us and have money) can knock us out of the game and there's nothing we can do about it except stay on a planet's surface. Even then, we lack the power to strike back against anyone who holds the high ground. Having a mediocre ship now is far more valuable than a super-ship that won't be around for almost 2 fucking years.
 
Van Ropen said:
If Hoyr gets mad at me for being off topic, disregard this, but...


What do you think should have been done?
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Best way to do it? If you are talking about releasing the actual genophage: Sterlisation plague like Mordin says. Gets rid of the whole 'see massive piles of dead children' at least.

I was more or less commenting on the fact that most of the Salarians as a race don't give it a second thought at all, even after so many centuries....the Salarians didn't seem to try anything else, like get the female Krogan and the male Krogan to work together to bring their own civilisation out of the dumpster, after the genophage.

From my point of view the Salarians basically went 'okay that's good. We just caused their civilisation to implode on itself. Now let's keep it that way/let's see what happens.'

I mean, these are the guys who uplifted the Krogan in the first place. The Krogan Rebellions wouldn't really have happened the way they did if the Salarians left them alone.

If you are going to uplift a race whose uplifting backfires on you, you either do two things: You wipe them out (if uplifting as backfired horribly, then it's an indication that the society you chose to uplift couldn't handle what you did, which can mean massive negative side effects for either the galaxy or the race in question.) or you stick with them, try to fix your own goddamned mistake and hopefully the both of you learn from it, while also leaving some kind of 'idiot tax' for either one of you to make sure you remember what you did.

Uplifting is not something you can half ass.

No wonder why Star Trek has the 'prime directive' - it may seem calous, with the whole 'not interferring with a pre-warp civilisation' thing, but there was a couple of episodes which proves why they have it = Picard got called a god because he happened to be in Sick Bay when Dr Beverly revived someone and Captain Janeway came across a race that pretty much nuked themselves back to the stone age thanks to a probe that carried information on how to make matter-antimatter reactors.

Uplifting is probably usually more trouble than it's worth.
 
Aranfan said:
That's what Wrex is for.
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That's what Wrex galvanized by the ludicrous protagonist powers of Shepard and granted author fiat in terms of success in overhauling the culture of an entire planet is for, yes. Until that point, the cured Krogan are a plague.


But we can probably greatly aid that cultural conversion by modifying the genophage, which is why we are discussing it.
 
Forgothrax said:
We'll be able to start in 2174-Q2. I seem to remember that Hoyr said that it would take the shipyard we'll have completed a year to put together a frigate.
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Well it depends on how big the ship is A dinky 100m could be done in half a quarter or so. A larger 250m would take ~2 years in a shipyard with current planned numbers. Around a ship per year for the class it was mean to build was sort of the target for a single yard. Mind I have zero issues with shipyards working together or using other factories to supply components.
 
Tabron89 said:
Best way to do it? If you are talking about releasing the actual genophage: Sterlisation plague like Mordin says. Gets rid of the whole 'see massive piles of dead children' at least.

I was more or less commenting on the fact that most of the Salarians as a race don't give it a second thought at all, even after so many centuries....the Salarians didn't seem to try anything else, like get the female Krogan and the male Krogan to work together to bring their own civilisation out of the dumpster, after the genophage.

From my point of view the Salarians basically went 'okay that's good. We just caused their civilisation to implode on itself. Now let's keep it that way/let's see what happens.'

I mean, these are the guys who uplifted the Krogan in the first place. The Krogan Rebellions wouldn't really have happened the way they did if the Salarians left them alone.

If you are going to uplift a race whose uplifting backfires on you, you either do two things: You wipe them out (if uplifting as backfired horribly, then it's an indication that the society you chose to uplift couldn't handle what you did, which can mean massive negative side effects for either the galaxy or the race in question.) or you stick with them, try to fix your own goddamned mistake and hopefully the both of you learn from it, while also leaving some kind of 'idiot tax' for either one of you to make sure you remember what you did.

Uplifting is not something you can half ass.

No wonder why Star Trek has the 'prime directive' - it may seem calous, with the whole 'not interferring with a pre-warp civilisation' thing, but there was a couple of episodes which proves why they have it = Picard got called a god because he happened to be in Sick Bay when Dr Beverly revived someone and Captain Janeway came across a race that pretty much nuked themselves back to the stone age thanks to a probe that carried information on how to make matter-antimatter reactors.

Uplifting is probably usually more trouble than it's worth.
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Yeah, that's a nice sentiment. I agree. It's also irrelevant. I asked what they should have done at the end of the Krogan Rebellions, when the Krogan Horde was destroying the galaxy. You're saying they should have just killed them all? The Genophage was better than that.


Uplifting...yeah, very problematic. But keep in mind that they would have been destroyed by the Rachni/Reapers otherwise. I kinda question how effective any attempts at rehabilitation could have been, given how much every Krogan seems to hate Salarians (assuming none were made - Malon couldn't have been the only one feeling pity).
 
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Aranfan said:
Frankly extermination is more morally defensible than what the Salarians did.
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Right, I'm sure Charr and the thousands if not millions of other Krogan like him are better off dead.


Basically...It's hard to weigh all their lives against the emotional hurt to the Krogan psych, and as such I don't think we can make these blanket condemnations.
 
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Regarding the Genophage, I think that it would have been best to simply slow down their reproductive systems, IE, instead of popping out 2-3 eggs every day, they pop out 1 egg every 6 months. No massive piles of dead children, and the krogans have a much slower growing population. Does this seem reasonable?
 
IF and I say it again If we give the Turians a discount would they do the same for us? Ship wise?
Or just steal/salvage a ship from one of the pirates. Batarian...
 
Aranfan said:
Frankly extermination is more morally defensible than what the Salarians did.
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Worth noting that the Salarians did nothing save maintain the genophage to keep the peace. It was the Turians that deployed the Genophage. The Salarians didn't want to IIRC... for all we know they were aiming for a better version and couldn't figure it out, Krogan biology is tough and fertility drugs are pretty potent. A lot of the genophage's power comes from how incurable it seems, tweaking it may be all that's needed to send things to hell.

In general you'll find that the Asari, Salarians and Turian all will make fairly large sacrifices for peace. The Pax Asari/Citadel is not kind, but looking at the thousands of dead civilizations and races that litter the galaxy it's better then a galactic war and it has worked for nearly a thousand years.
 
Van Ropen said:
Yeah, that's a nice sentiment. I agree. It's also irrelevant. I asked what they should have done at the end of the Krogan Rebellions, when the Krogan Horde was destroying the galaxy. You're saying they should have just killed them all?


Uplifting...yeah, problematic. But keep in mind that they would have been destroyed by the Rachni/Reapers otherwise.
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Either kill them all or try to fix your mistake, yes.

Uplifting an entire race beyond its means is like....the closest things I can think of is: transporting one animal from it's natural environment and putting it in another just because it can act as a predator to another species with complete disregard for the native species or what the Allies did to Germany after World War 1, with near total destruction of their economy.

We humans still have trouble from doing stuff like that on our own planet. Trying to do something similar on a galatic scale?

Let me put it this way: If you killed all the Krogan, then you won't have any Krogan angry at you. Krogans are wiped out, rebellions have stopped, you learn that uplifting is incredibly dangerous. No chance of Krogans making a come back and deciding to wage 'Krogan Rebellions 2' on your doorstep.

Help them out, even a little bit, throughout centuries? millienia? To encourage them enough to learn for themselves? Or just to make the side effects that little bit bearable? Sure, the first few generations of Krogans would probably hate your guts, but the next generation or two? They would probably get used to it, they will see your support for what it is, earnest effort to fix your mistake.

Depends if you can be bothered with setting stuff up for future generations though.

Aranfan said:
If the Krogan are such an existential threat, then end it instead of torturing them forever. Give them the dignity of a good quick death, rather than slowly torturing them for the rest of eternity.
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Isn't this what most Krogans in the Blood Pack are looking for? Mainly because they cannot die from old age (and disease is pretty much a non-factor for them due to a highly robust physiology.) so they just go round shooting up the place?

ReaperofInterest said:
Regarding the Genophage, I think that it would have been best to simply slow down their reproductive systems, IE, instead of popping out 2-3 eggs every day, they pop out 1 egg every 6 months. No massive piles of dead children, and the krogans have a much slower growing population. Does this seem reasonable?
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Actually....yeah. I mean from a 'human' point of view, it does......maybe we should set it to 1-2 eggs a month? I mean, we humans more or less have that as our breeding system and it's worked fine for us so far.

But the question is...can we get the Krogan to go for it?
 
ReaperofInterest said:
Regarding the Genophage, I think that it would have been best to simply slow down their reproductive systems, IE, instead of popping out 2-3 eggs every day, they pop out 1 egg every 6 months. No massive piles of dead children, and the krogans have a much slower growing population. Does this seem reasonable?
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Van Ropen said:
It was pointed out earlier that a better solution then would be to make the Krogan female only have a single egg instead of having all those stillbirths. Do we think that's possible for non-Revy science working around the Krogan regenerative abilities and with the mandate to affect the entire population in such a way that can't be worked around? Because I thought we were operating on the assumption that they didn't do so in the first place because it wasn't. They went with the method they did for a reason. Or was everyone who worked on the genophage project, considered it before the Rebellions even happened, and modified it later when necessary cartoonishly evil?
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Aranfan said:
If the Krogan are such an existential threat, then end it instead of torturing them forever. Give them the dignity of a good quick death, rather than slowly torturing them for the rest of eternity.
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There is no question, they were an existential threat.

Now they aren't, and are alive. Weighing that life against the hurt to their psych is another matter...but personally, I'd prefer the living. Plenty are living pretty productive lives.


It's still a nasty situation but...luckily, one Revy can do something about.
 
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@Hoyr would the SA be interested in leasing us one of their older frigates, possibly one they're taking off the line anyway? Methinks they would be highly incentivized to do so.
 
@Hoyr I think you need to take into account the tech level when talking about those ship costs. The higher the tech level, the easier and cheaper it is to make the same thing. Making an Allen M. Sumner class may have cost them 105 million (accounting for inflation) then, but now it would be very much less than 105 million for us because we simply have better shipbuilding tech and better infrastructure. This is going to apply to space as well. Sure, the price is definitely going to be a bit higher, but it's not going to be that much higher.

If you want a more accurate comparison, look to submarines, not ships. Those would give better figures because a lot of the components should be similar.
 
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