Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
You know, if ever there was a need for a "Thumbs down" rating....
After I finish rechecking the entire archive for things I may have forgotten, have written text for ~3.3 pages of votes, possibly researched a few things, done at least basic editing and then after I've gotten the formatting to not break. Between whatever I may have to do IRL of course.
So Eventually. Hopefully before the week is out. *Crosses fingers*
Also doesn't help that I'm a bit more busy and I have to travel (30min walk, ~5 min drive) for internet right now.
More he doesn't know anything useful you don't (at least that he's admitting*) and you have more details. Details he considers worth something. I was half way expecting people to toss in ideas about what they might ask him for.
*All the paranoia, all of it!
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Well, while we're waiting, what should we do next quarter (2174-Q1)?
I don't know about anyone else here, but after that first impression I'm inclined to insist that "Ribbon" be exceedingly generous before we give him the time of day this time around.
- We need to do an interstellar expansion again, since we've topped out on what we can put down on both Mindoir and Elysium. Well, we don't have any space factories around Elysium, but frankly it might be better if we held off on that for now in favor of spreading to a new world. In fact, given we'll have at least 62 billion credits to spend (note that we'll need to add in sales for Citadel Arc Reactors for 2174-Q1, which should boost that number significantly), we could--and probably should--expand to two different worlds at once.
- Benning might be a good choice. It's close to the seat of Alliance power, and might make a good place to put our Starships Factory III when the time comes for that, if we don't decide to build around Sol instead.
- Demeter is another good candidate. It's Sol-adjacent, but does not have a Mass Relay in the system itself, so it's going to be much better protected than most other colonies. Another reason this might be a good choice is that we should have multi-core eezo drive-equipped freighters in production by 2174-Q3, negating any disadvantage to locating out of the main starlanes.
- On the other hand, I'd rather we stay off of Earth until we have enough money to place factory complexes in essentially every major country at the same time, which at the rate we're going could probably be done sometime in 2175. If we don't, we risk becoming a political football for whatever nation-states we expand to first, and we definitely don't want that kind of headache.
- Dealing with Mordin. Now, we don't have any reason IC to distrust him, other than him being a scheming Salarian (repeating @UberJJK's warning that we need to find better investigators). At the same time, if we do hire/partner with him, I intend to put him straight into the biotech division and never have him leave; there's years worth of work for him to do there, and a lot of good to be done. Heck, we might be able to turn him: Revy is, after all, the kind of idealistic super-researcher that he wishes he was.
- After Advanced Xenobiology, what should we sic him on? Curing the Genophage? Fixing the Drell? Dealing with Quarian immune systems? Eternal youth?
- Then of course there's all our philanthropic ventures:
- Maybe we should toss another 10 billion into the Sirta partnership? How has that project been going, anyway?
- The Post Scarcity Society is going to get a decent number of Arc Reactors from us every quarter once our big Space Factory goes up; I presume they can find uses for those.
I'm a bit unsure we want to act interested in anything he has to offer, after that ridiculous demand of 500 million to find out who ordered a hit on us last quarter. That's an insultingly large amount of money to demand, especially as the "teaser offer" for what was probably only a small amount of what he knew about the attackers, and really only served as notice to us that he'd been bought off by the guys who ambushed us.
I don't know about anyone else here, but after that first impression I'm inclined to insist that "Ribbon" be exceedingly generous before we give him the time of day this time around.
- Location
- America
It is at this point that I would like to point out that as of this quarter, our gross revenue exceeds that of the Dominican Republic.
The Dominican Republic spends approximately 1.1% of their GDP on their military. Should we do this, we would be allocating 682 million credits.
On this kind of budget, the Dominican Republic trains, equips, and maintains 24500 active duty personnel.
Just putting that into perspective.
Just a quick thought. How's Scotland? Did they vote for Independence?
The Dominican Republic spends approximately 1.1% of their GDP on their military. Should we do this, we would be allocating 682 million credits.
On this kind of budget, the Dominican Republic trains, equips, and maintains 24500 active duty personnel.
Just putting that into perspective.
Just a quick thought. How's Scotland? Did they vote for Independence?
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Benning I can support but Demeter not. Why?
- Communication use the Reley Net work as well. It will be days before we learn of whatever happened there.
- Fuel is a factor. As ME2 had shown it is needed in bulk for the FTL travel between stars. With the amount of material needed to be shipped there to build and maintain operations it will be a cost factor. (Given our income it may seem "small")
- SA defence strategy is to focus fleets at Alpha releys and dispatch them immediatly as needed. Out there we will be extremly vunerable to "pirat raids".
We can be happy that we don't need to defend a large teritory. I see no problem with spending less.
Edit to prevent doubble post:
Inspiration!
Looking into some Sci-Fi gave me the ideas for technology we may find interesting.
1. Crazy material
In the Battlezone game they actually explained how the durability of their tanks is archived: By using an alien alloy that migrates all forces over the entirety of the hull. That effect makes vehicles effectively invincible until the threshold is reached at which the plating could no longer migrate damage and turns to tissue paper.
For some stupid reason they called it "Biometal".
The nice part of this material is the enormous resistance to armor-piercing and the plating is easy to maintain but on the downside is that if maintaining of the plating is needed there will not be much left of whatever used it (the Tiger used for stress-testing had compromised sections that would be needed to repair afterward).
2. Energy generation
Do you know geothermal power stations? Why not build something like that for Spaceships? What I know of the canon ways of solving the heat problem all try to get it out of the ship (heat radiation gear). This might not only extend endurance but reduce fuel use (like the majority of ships in use) as well.
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Well I did have the idea that a material mentioned in a previous post would act a lot like a superconductor but for thermal energy. Effectively making the entire armor plate one mass for sinking thermal energy.
But for kinetics or force in general... eh that's probably a relative of QPL (Quantum Phase Lock) tech... and that's very late game. As in its part of a ??? project. Or maybe something derived from the Unobtainium tech depending on the details.
Once higher levels of material science are researched I'd be open to suggestion for interesting materials. Either as results of the techs or maybe other mat sci projects.
Well you could use the heat to make power, but that won't help with endurance. Would probably make it worse.
This is one of those long science things, but here's the short answer. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says no. Reason being that trying to use the heat to do anything (in a complete cycle engine, aka anything that can run more than once) will just keep it around at best, at worst it'll just make even more heat and that's far more likely. True for thermocouples and boiling water. Anything else is just a cleaver form of heat sink/radiator. Now you could use the heat to make electricity, but frankly you're better off just using an arc reactor its nearly 100% efficient, combined with superconductors and repulsors you've basically made a large amount of the waste heat of a ship go away.
This explains it better. I may also have made a technical science error in the short version. But yes there's a reason the response to heat is get rid of it.
Now there are thermal effecting techs that run on space magic. Thermal Compensator and Thermal Annihilator. The first could vaguely be described as running an arc-reactor backwards, the second involves mass effect trickery*.
*Which probably could be used to break the universe. Oh Yog...
I know I am bad at physics. Thanks for the explanation. I really did not know that. *keep reading*
Next try:
Build better batteries.
The limiting factor is the amount of heat that the hull can absorb and the radiation to get rid of the heat. Build an inverse fusion reactor wich is not used to generate energy but to dump heat in. The light reflecting shield can couse the using ship to cook itself.
This idea is only usefull if it could absorb faster heat than Thermal Compensator can get rid of it and if it has a suitable large maximum charge.
The problem is to convince the heat to travel somewhere were it is hotter (as inside the "battery").
Next step would be to weaponize it to dump heat into enemy ships or something equally crazy.
Ivan the Not-so-Terrible
AH MEW CHEEKI BREEKI I V DAMKE
- Location
- Mikonyan’s USSR
I think there's a plan to make infinite capacity energy storage using TIR. Basically a box of perfect one-way mirrors, so energy goes in and stays in until you open it.
Thats what I mean!
- Location
- America
PI-CSD-1
Role - Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Expensive toy for the idle wealthy, covertly looking at babes/beefcake
Weaponry
Production - 0.15
Description:
Made out of sturdy plastic, and ceramic construction, the Paragon Industries PI-CSD-1 is a lightweight inexpensive small scale drone capable of being deployed anywhere there is an atmosphere and occasionally also in places where there isn't one. Its large wingspan allows it to get away with a smaller and quieter propulsion unit while also flying far above the usual range of personal and non-dedicated vehicle mounted motion trackers.
It is also low cost and can be fitted with numerous modules provided by paragon industries at low cost or by an open source community.
Role - Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Expensive toy for the idle wealthy, covertly looking at babes/beefcake
Weaponry
- If you want, you can stick an airsoft gun on it or something.
- 1x Paragon Industries Arc Reactor (1MW)
- 1x Repulsor (exo-atmosphere)
- Paragon Industries RCS module
- Paragon Industries VI for autopilot (software modules available on Paragon Industries website)
- Remote Controllable out to 20km (controllers available for out to 2000 kilometers and everywhere in between)
- GoPro 39000 GVX Extreme camera with real time feed and broadcast capability (visual only)
- Compressor for RCS module
Production - 0.15
Description:
Made out of sturdy plastic, and ceramic construction, the Paragon Industries PI-CSD-1 is a lightweight inexpensive small scale drone capable of being deployed anywhere there is an atmosphere and occasionally also in places where there isn't one. Its large wingspan allows it to get away with a smaller and quieter propulsion unit while also flying far above the usual range of personal and non-dedicated vehicle mounted motion trackers.
It is also low cost and can be fitted with numerous modules provided by paragon industries at low cost or by an open source community.
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- Location
- the Netherworld Dood
okay so i read all the updates is there something i missed?
Ivan the Not-so-Terrible
AH MEW CHEEKI BREEKI I V DAMKE
- Location
- Mikonyan’s USSR
Did you read Yog's plan to wipe out most/all life in the galaxy?
Hey, it has peaceful applications too! Like scientific research. And mining.
- Location
- the Netherworld Dood
no i must have missed that is there a list of the plans somewhere?
and I'm not sure if this option has been addressed or not yet but Im inspired by our neural interface. why don't we make a telepresence War platform that we can control. Basically think something along the lines of Harbenger possessing a collector onl in our case " possessing" an upgraded droan. basicly a Mark 2 that's been modified to use the extra space to make it even stronger and quantum entanglement communication (they have that IIRC) to counter any jamming
This way Sheapard can get some combat experience and continue to work in the labs at the same time and it gives her something unique to bring to the battle field
and I'm not sure if this option has been addressed or not yet but Im inspired by our neural interface. why don't we make a telepresence War platform that we can control. Basically think something along the lines of Harbenger possessing a collector onl in our case " possessing" an upgraded droan. basicly a Mark 2 that's been modified to use the extra space to make it even stronger and quantum entanglement communication (they have that IIRC) to counter any jamming
This way Sheapard can get some combat experience and continue to work in the labs at the same time and it gives her something unique to bring to the battle field
Basically that's the plan behind the thermal Annihilator, but because a TIR containment system will leak* (if the light impacts at close to a right angle with the TIR field) the device also use eezo space magic to alter the type of light and "destroy" the heat. In addition to get heat into a TIR field you use a radator, you just can put it inside the ship, which is a bonus. But yeah that's one of the techs.
*The Leaking of a TIR field is one of those complicated things that depends on several factors. However, assuming that a TIR field uses an FTL grade field (expensive) and the heat in the form of infrared radiation is bouncing around inside at an evenly distributed set of angles (big assumption), the TIR will leak energy about six orders of magnitude less than the energy of the stored heat.
Second post of the first page there should be a link to the tech plans in there. (Or here link) As for voting plans those got voted on (winner), right now we're waiting on that darn GM to update. Oh wait that's me now... get to work me!
Yog's idea to kill everything (link) is one of the omakes, they should be hiding under a spoiler.
This is one of those "The Death Star was meant to be a mining tool!" dodges, isn't it?
Heh, not bad, although you still need 4-6 thrusters to be able to move in three dimensions.
We tend to do a lot of rambling around here, in particular planning for the future. Currently our big plan in the short term (3-6 months) is to build ourselves a decently-protected space yacht, which is going to be extremely expensive given @Hoyr's cost ballparks for frigates and similar ships.
In the medium term (9-12 months) we need to rack up an intimidating 500 billion credits (probably going to need another corporate loan, which should be easy to get when our Arc Reactor factory comes online in 2174-Q3) in order to build ourselves a Specialized (Starships) Space Factory III; we want to have that done by 2175-Q3 or Q4, because...
In the long term (18-24 months) we want to have the techs and means developed to mass-produce the Cabira: a super-frigate that fires ravening beams of death, stealth past enemies if it wants to, move faster than anything currently available in the galaxy, and generally replace an entire Alliance cruiser wolfpack for a fraction of the manpower cost. We want to start pumping these out before the end of 2175 because the Skylian Blitz is scheduled for sometime in 2176; I'm thinking that this time it'll be aimed at Mindoir instead of Elysium, but either way it'll cement our name in the history books. Here are some links:
Cabira basic idea
Variable wavelength lasers and death by microwaves
Cabira speed
Cabira economics
Possible fighter escort.
After that? Well, plans are vague, but my vote for 2176:
- Eternal Youth and Conrad's Black F*cking Gun+Dark Energy warheads 2176-H1, so we can shoot black hole missiles if lasers aren't good enough
- Quarian Immune System Restoration, to save Tali's mom from the flu, and Advanced Ship Ammo mods 2176-H2, so we can fire black hole bullets out of our light cruisers' 500m MACs.
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- Location
- America
Glad you like it.
It actually just uses one thruster because the only direction it needs to move in is forward. Adding additional arc reactors or repulsors would jack up cost and make it very much louder so it just uses control surfaces instead. If it needs to be deployed outside temporarily like from a space station, it simply uses an RCS module.
It's mostly intended for low intensity conflicts and law enforcement as well as for budding enthusiasts.
In fact, I kinda mean for its general shape to look something like
- Location
- the Netherworld Dood
This is one of those "The Death Star was meant to be a mining tool!" dodges, isn't it?
Heh, not bad, although you still need 4-6 thrusters to be able to move in three dimensions.
We tend to do a lot of rambling around here, in particular planning for the future. Currently our big plan in the short term (3-6 months) is to build ourselves a decently-protected space yacht, which is going to be extremely expensive given @Hoyr's cost ballparks for frigates and similar ships.
In the medium term (9-12 months) we need to rack up an intimidating 500 billion credits (probably going to need another corporate loan, which should be easy to get when our Arc Reactor factory comes online in 2174-Q3) in order to build ourselves a Specialized (Starships) Space Factory III; we want to have that done by 2175-Q3 or Q4, because...
In the long term (18-24 months) we want to have the techs and means developed to mass-produce the Cabira: a super-frigate that fires ravening beams of death, stealth past enemies if it wants to, move faster than anything currently available in the galaxy, and generally replace an entire Alliance cruiser wolfpack for a fraction of the manpower cost. We want to start pumping these out before the end of 2175 because the Skylian Blitz is scheduled for sometime in 2176; I'm thinking that this time it'll be aimed at Mindoir instead of Elysium, but either way it'll cement our name in the history books. Here are some links:
Cabira basic idea
Variable wavelength lasers and death by microwaves
Cabira speed
Cabira economics
Possible fighter escort.
After that? Well, plans are vague, but my vote for 2176:
- Eternal Youth and Conrad's Black F*cking Gun+Dark Energy warheads 2176-H1, so we can shoot black hole missiles if lasers aren't good enough
- Quarian Immune System Restoration, to save Tali's mom from the flu, and Advanced Ship Ammo mods 2176-H2, so we can fire black hole bullets out of our light cruisers' 500m MACs.
Sounds like a good idea If i can trow some suggestions into this
maybe take a look at VI combat droans ( both the disposable kind use by engineers and Loki and fenris mechs) as well as heavy infantry support suits ( basicly an Atlas suit combined with the first MCU iron man's villan armor) for more variety ( and the added benefit of a possible Hulk busterlike suit for Shepard) .
and im not sure if this has been covered or not but maybe reinvent the Fighter as SA war doctrin uses a lot of them creating a new fighter would drastically increase the performance of carrer ships.
and something else to consider we really do need to start cultivating some favor in the citatel depending on what prothainm artifact is found by the archolagey team we might want to donate it as a sign of good will
also since a war with the terminus system seems likely at this point we might want to look into the current leaders over there and see what we can do to turn them against one another or at the very least minamize the damage .
Now it might be prememtrue but we really shoulld think about how we can lay the ground work for defeating the reapers because we are going to need every day to prepare for that
An RC plane instead of an RC (quad)copter? That'd make the camera option much less useful. In fact, the killer app for this surveillance drone is the fact that it has basically infinite fuel: it can sit in one place basically indefinitely collecting footage and sending it back to base. That dovetails nicely with the copter-type drone, as it doesn't need to move around, and has enough stability to use zoom lenses to pick up details from very far away, something you can't do as easily with an airplane-type drone.
Larger drones/automated mechs/fighters are a good idea, but personally I'd rather wait until we have Flawless Blackboxing and QE Comms, to make our drones much, much harder to hack, before I'll be willing to put so much firepower into a single mobile frame.
From what I understand, Liara's dig results on Altahe, including our little tech trick for reactivating Prothean tech, are all going to be published openly. The Prothean artifact on Intai'sei will likely also be made publicly available; we just want first crack at it, both to see if any useful tech is inside for us to
We're certainly not going to war with the entire Terminus; we're just going to blow the hell out of any a-holes who think enslaving humans is an enjoyable pastime.
In fact, on that note I wonder if we should consider a billion-credit PR campaign against slavery, something that we can work to put into Batarian hands. Something that says, in the most diplomatic way possible, "Look, we don't want to step on your culture, or mess with your political or religious beliefs, but if you go around enslaving humans we reserve the right to blow up all your sh*t. All of it: your soldiers, your 'pirates', your businesses, your planets. All your sh*t. Blown up. Think about it."
Already working on it. This far in the past, not really knowing anything specific about the Reapers, the most productive steps we can take to ready the galaxy for the Reapers will look a lot like trying to start a decade-long economic boom and military buildup. The former we accomplish by making energy and biotech cheap and freely available, and starting a resource rush by revolutionizing mining, and the later we accomplish by introducing a revolution in military tech once or twice a year or so, and force the rest of the galaxy to catch up.
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- Location
- America
PI-Cs-SD-1
Role - Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Expensive toy for the idle wealthy, covertly looking at babes/beefcake
Weaponry
Production - 0.15
Description:
Made out of sturdy plastic, and ceramic construction, the Paragon Industries PI-CS-SD-1 is a lightweight inexpensive small scale drone capable of being deployed anywhere there is an atmosphere and occasionally also in places where there isn't one. Its large wingspan allows it to get away with a smaller and quieter propulsion unit while also flying far above the usual range of personal and non-dedicated vehicle mounted motion trackers. Advanced construction means that while the drone's wingspan is almost 2 meters across, it produces a skin return akin to that of a small Terran Robin. Unlike the R-SD-2, the CS-SD-1 is capable of operating in vacuum due to its repulsor's thrust vectoring while also having much greater maneuverability because of its more powerful RCS module.
It is also low cost and can be fitted with numerous modules provided by paragon industries at low cost or by an open source community.
PI-R-SD-2
Role - Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Expensive toy for the idle wealthy, covertly looking at babes/beefcake
Weaponry
Production - 0.16
Description:
Made out of sturdy plastic, and ceramic construction, the Paragon Industries PI-R-SD-2 (Paragon Industries Rotor Small Drone 2) is a hexacopter type drone no more than 1.5 meters across. Advanced aerofoil ducted rotor blades and advanced construction means that this drone produces a skin return akin to that of a hummingbird while being capable of flying far above the usual range of personal and non-dedicated vehicle mounted motion trackers. Additionally, due to its hexacopter design, it trades off the ability to operate in vacuum for the ability to hover in one place almost indefinitely.
For extra speed or maneuverability, the drone is equipped with a very powerful RCS module that also allows it to operate in vaccum for short periods of time.
It is also low cost and can be fitted with numerous modules provided by paragon industries at low cost or by an open source community.
Role - Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Expensive toy for the idle wealthy, covertly looking at babes/beefcake
Weaponry
- If you want, you can stick an airsoft gun on it or something.
- 1x Paragon Industries Arc Reactor (2MW)
- 1x Repulsor (exo-atmosphere)
- Paragon Industries RCS module
- Paragon Industries VI for autopilot (software modules available on Paragon Industries website)
- Remote Controllable out to 20km (controllers available for out to 3000 kilometers and everywhere in between)
- GoPro 39000 GVX Extreme camera with real time feed and broadcast capability (visual only)
- Compressor for RCS module
Production - 0.15
Description:
Made out of sturdy plastic, and ceramic construction, the Paragon Industries PI-CS-SD-1 is a lightweight inexpensive small scale drone capable of being deployed anywhere there is an atmosphere and occasionally also in places where there isn't one. Its large wingspan allows it to get away with a smaller and quieter propulsion unit while also flying far above the usual range of personal and non-dedicated vehicle mounted motion trackers. Advanced construction means that while the drone's wingspan is almost 2 meters across, it produces a skin return akin to that of a small Terran Robin. Unlike the R-SD-2, the CS-SD-1 is capable of operating in vacuum due to its repulsor's thrust vectoring while also having much greater maneuverability because of its more powerful RCS module.
It is also low cost and can be fitted with numerous modules provided by paragon industries at low cost or by an open source community.
PI-R-SD-2
Role - Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Expensive toy for the idle wealthy, covertly looking at babes/beefcake
Weaponry
- None!
- 1x Paragon Industries Arc Reactor (3MW)
- 6x Ducted rotors
- Paragon Industries RCS module
- Paragon Industries VI for autopilot (software modules available on Paragon Industries website)
- Remote Controllable out to 20km (controllers available for out to 3000 kilometers and everywhere in between)
- GoPro 39000 GVX Extreme camera with real time feed and broadcast capability (visual only)
- Compressor for RCS module
Production - 0.16
Description:
Made out of sturdy plastic, and ceramic construction, the Paragon Industries PI-R-SD-2 (Paragon Industries Rotor Small Drone 2) is a hexacopter type drone no more than 1.5 meters across. Advanced aerofoil ducted rotor blades and advanced construction means that this drone produces a skin return akin to that of a hummingbird while being capable of flying far above the usual range of personal and non-dedicated vehicle mounted motion trackers. Additionally, due to its hexacopter design, it trades off the ability to operate in vacuum for the ability to hover in one place almost indefinitely.
For extra speed or maneuverability, the drone is equipped with a very powerful RCS module that also allows it to operate in vaccum for short periods of time.
It is also low cost and can be fitted with numerous modules provided by paragon industries at low cost or by an open source community.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
lacks Greco-roman name.
EDIT: now that's i've read it, Single repulsor? so it's a rocket?
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- Location
- America
Huzzah! Now there are two drones, one is a Hexacopter (for design redundancy) and the other one looks more like a miniature predator.
You can come up with one yourself. I couldn't think up a fitting one.lacks Greco-roman name.
EDIT: now that's i've read it, Single repulsor? so it's a rocket?
And no. Didn't you read it? It has a wingspan of 2 meters.