Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
Yesssssssssssss.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
FUCKING YES PLEASE!
This discussion has gone on long enough with little to nothing to show for it.
You have some Gladii of the C variant around you could use. Any pirate attack would probably end with them getting free armed missile as their consolation prize.
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This quarter we're building our super-expensive, super-awesome Space Yacht/Lab/Fortress, now that we finally have a Space Factory that can build one. Maybe next quarter?
Yes, we do have the ability to have a fighter escort, but we haven't given Revy piloting skills, so we'd be stuck as That Guy in the escort mission; not sure I'm comfortable with that.
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
Schedule says the event in question is this quarter. One per year on this quarter.
I have two others, just wanted to see about a third 'cause it's on the timeline.
Revy has a 1 on Areospace, so she can actually fly... Of course her flying total is a 4, while most SA pilots rock a 8-10.
Design work's not really the problem; I just don't want to ever be caught flying around in something without adequate protection. And by "adequate protection", I mean something that was designed, by us, with enough power to destroy a small fleet of warships.
Eh, that's probably not a good idea either...
Oh, hey! We have three Space Factory Is coming online this quarter, each of which produces 30,000 Production/quarter, or 333/day. So, how about we just have a factory take 3 days out of its schedule and build us a 1,000-Prod, 278-Megacredit four-seater Gladius Type C? We can have Captain Joker pilot it, and plug it into a formation of ParSec-piloted Gladii as an escort.
- Location
- Leeds
Yeah we'd go. Unless whatshisname the head of security said it was way too dangerous.
Hm. We could have a low end Pynda* ready in 10 days* so depending upon when the event is we could make it. It's certainly enough to provide protection to the event and serve as a demonstration model.
*Details:
Base: 3,500pr
+60m Gigawatt Range Laser: 14,173.87
+60m Gigawatt Range Laser: 14,173.87
+Arcane Blur Armor: 3,374.74pr
+Warp Frigate Kinetic Barriers: 2,952.90pr
+Standard GARDIAN: 337.47pr
+Repulsors: 100pr
+Quarter Strength Eezo: 19,531.25pr
Total = 3,500 + 14,173.87 + 14,173.87 + 3,374.74 + 2,952.9 +337.47 + 100 + 19,531.25 = 58,144.1pr
We have three Small Shipyards operational this quarter. If we evenly divide the workload up among them:
Shipyard 1:
+60m Gigawatt Range Laser: 14,173.87
+60m Gigawatt Range Laser: 14,173.87
+Arcane Blur Armor: 3,374.74pr
+Warp Frigate Kinetic Barriers: 2,952.90pr
+Standard GARDIAN: 337.47pr
+Repulsors: 100pr
+Quarter Strength Eezo: 19,531.25pr
Total = 3,500 + 14,173.87 + 14,173.87 + 3,374.74 + 2,952.9 +337.47 + 100 + 19,531.25 = 58,144.1pr
We have three Small Shipyards operational this quarter. If we evenly divide the workload up among them:
Shipyard 1:
Quarter Strength Eezo: 19,531.25pr
Total = 19,531.25pr
Shipyard 2:Total = 19,531.25pr
60m Gigawatt Range Laser: 14,173.87pr
Arcane Blur Armor: 3,374.74pr
Standard GARDIAN: 337.47pr
Repulsors: 100pr
Total = 14,173.87 + 3,374.74 + 337.47 + 100 = 17,986.08pr
Shipyard 3:Arcane Blur Armor: 3,374.74pr
Standard GARDIAN: 337.47pr
Repulsors: 100pr
Total = 14,173.87 + 3,374.74 + 337.47 + 100 = 17,986.08pr
60m Gigawatt Range Laser: 14,173.87pr
Warp Frigate Kinetic Barriers: 2,952.90pr
Base: 3,500pr
Total = 14,173.87 + 2,952.90 + 3,500 = 20,626.77pr
Then we should have everything done within 7 days (20,626.77/3,333.33) throw in a couple more days for installing everything and any misc bits and 10 days seems about right.Warp Frigate Kinetic Barriers: 2,952.90pr
Base: 3,500pr
Total = 14,173.87 + 2,952.90 + 3,500 = 20,626.77pr
Although these numbers are all variable until a solid system has being worked out. I'm actually going try and work out a nice scale-able system for ships and ship parts. Hopefully that will make things nice and simple.
@TheEyes - Remember when @Hoyr mentioned using variable lenses for our lasers and how it would let us get immense range? Well I have some ideas for how that would actually work using Superalloys and some other applications for Superalloys.
So for the laser lenses and mirrors I figure some kind of jello like material that we can shape using magnetic fields. This would let us solve the majority of problems with lasers simultaneously. First off it prevents degradation since they aren't solid which can warp but instead have their shapes controlled by magnetic fields, secondly it dramatically increases our range by allowing for converging lasers beams, and thirdly any heat building up in them can be dealt with by pumping out hot material to cool down while pumping in cold material from storage tanks.
Now there is still the problem of heat build up within the laser itself, or any of our other weapons for that matter, but Superalloys comes to the rescue again. The ideal coolant here is going to be something with a high heat capacity (absorbs more energy per degree of temperature change), a wide temperature range in which it's liquid, a low viscosity, a high emissivity, a finally a high thermal conductivity.
Now that is a lot of properties. However going by:
creating an ideal coolant shouldn't be much of a problem, it certainly wouldn't be amazing at all of them but it likely be better then existing coolants and basically every category and that is good enough for me.
Given how the primary source of combat heat generation on a PI ship is going to be it's weapons, the engine and reactor both generate effectively zero waste heat, this is going to be a pretty significant boon.
- Location
- Leeds
I've spent the last couple hours assembling some thoughts on starship components and working towards creating a system that makes customizing ship designs relatively straightforward.
Here are some examples of that put into practice:
Unsurprisingly a 250m cutting edge ship is expensive. Still a Laser Patrol Boat should suffice for the upcoming trip and it would only take about a week to construct using all three Shipyards due to it's modular nature.
Depending upon what @Hoyr says on the numbers I should be able to put together a spreadsheet that would automatically calculate all the numbers needed with just a few inputs.
So the first thing I figure needs discussing is simply what sort of note worthy equipment a military grade spaceship should have?
To me I figure the big names are:
Now that we have that out of the way lets look at a 100m Frigate:
Cost: 46,300,000,000cr
Production: 156,250.00pr
We know that of the cost half it goes into the Eezo core. After that I'd say that weapons and shields are going to be the most expensive components because the latter require a lot of Eezo (hundreds/thousands of emitters filled with Eezo) and the former because it covers a lot (Primary, Secondaries, and GARDIAN) and because they have to be reliable (Weapons Fail == Auto Lose) and cutting edge.
Next up is the Reactor and Engines. The first requires Eezo for compressing the fusion fuel and needs to be incredibly reliable since failure means total destruction of the ship. The second uses anti-matter which again requires 100% safety otherwise the ship risks complete destruction.
Finally comes the Armor which has to be designed to limit the ability of hyper velocity projectiles to cripple the ship and the hull which is basically the framework of the entire ship.
Some rough percentages:
Converted to actual numbers that comes out to:
Now that is all well and good however in this case cost and production don't really synch up that well. Take the FTL Drive for example; while it makes up 50% of the total cost it in no way should take up 50% of the production since all that cost comes from the value of Eezo not in the difficulty in actually building an FTL, which actually seems pretty simple.
So for the production value (156,250.00pr) I'm actually going to come up with a different set of percentages.
Production wise I actually figure the Engines and Reactor are the biggest drain. They have to run without interruption constantly with only stops on planets and space stations to cool down. For patrol ships that can easily mean weeks or even months of operation without rest. Considering failure, even relatively minor ones, in either of these two components can doom the ship durability is essential. That is easily going to drive up the production cost.
After those two the weapons and shields would be next. High tech weapons need to be rugged yet have a lot of intricate parts that make failure easy. Shields meanwhile require the production of a lot of small scale parts that need a similiar levels of endurance since failure often means death.
The FTL Drive is relatively straightforward yet the power levels and safety features are going to increase the production value. Similarly Misc gear is simple but there is simply so much that it's production is higher then you'd expect.
Finally the armor and hull are really simple to produce. The first is just slabs of special alloys while the latter is really just a framework designed to connect everything together.
Some rough percentages:
Converted to numbers:
Now that we have figures for both cost and production we can work out conversion ratios for those parts:
Most of those numbers are pretty well within the general range we see except for Armor, expensive materials cheap production, and FTL Drive, really expensive materials but cheap production. With that handled we don't really have to worry about production numbers and can just focus on cost, deriving production later on.
Now most of these things will scale straight with with ship size. So lets see how cost scales with ship size:
100m = 46,300,000,000
250m = 723,000,000,000
400m = 2,960,000,000,000
700m = 15,900,000,000,000
800m = 23,700,000,000,000
1000m = 46,300,000,000,000
Some messing around in Excel reveals that the pricing follows a relatively simply formula:
Substituting this in gets:
100m = 46,233 * 100^3 = 46,233,000,000
250m = 46,233 * 250^3 = 722,390,625,000
400m = 46,233 * 400^3 = 2,958,912,000,000
700m = 46,233 * 700^3 = 15,857,919,000,000
800m = 46,233 * 800^3 =23,671,296,000,000
1000m = 46,233 * 1000^3 = 46,233,000,000,000
all of which pretty easily round to the given figures so I'd say the formula is accurate.
So all that is left is working out figures for the three main subsections of weapons. Now earlier @Hoyr mentioned using the formula:
If we got with 1 90m MAC and 2 60m MACs then the weapons breakdown for a 100m Frigate is:
90m MAC = 700*(90/0.6) = 2,362,500,000cr
60m MAC = 700*(60/0.6) = 700,000,000cr
60m MAC = 700*(60/0.6) = 700,000,000cr
GARDIAN = 5,787,500,000 - (2,362,500,000 + 700,000,000 + 700,000,000) = 2,025,000,000
However 2 billion for GARDIANs just seems ridiculously expensive. They don't involve any Eezo and aren't really that far beyond what we can do today. I mean it would make sense if the ship was covered in separate lasers. However @Hoyr has repeatedly mentioned GARDIANs working with a single larger laser internal to the ship with beam splitters to spread the beam out across the many turrets dotting the ship's hull. Especially given that a ground based tower only cost 100m.
Instead if we adjust the formula slightly:
90m MAC = 1000*(90/0.6) = 3,375,000,000cr
60m MAC = 1000*(60/0.6) = 1,000,000,000cr
60m MAC = 1000*(60/0.6) = 1,000,000,000cr
GARDIAN = 5,787,500,000 - (3,375,000,000 + 1,000,000,000 + 1,000,000,000) = 412,500,000cr
Which I think is far more realistic. The increase compared to the ground turret can easily be explained by the beam splitting, turrets, problems with heat in space, and of course higher power requirements.
If we scale up to a 250m Frigate then weapons equals:
722,390,625,000 * 0.125 = 90,298,828,125cr
225m MAC = 1000*(225/0.6) = 52,734,375,000cr
150m MAC = 1000*(150/0.6) = 15,625,000,000cr
150m MAC = 1000*(150/0.6) = 15,625,000,000cr
GARDIAN = 90,298,828,125 - (52,734,375,000 + 15,625,000,000 + 15,625,000,000) = 6,314,453,125
A problem becomes apparent. GARDIANs are suddenly fifteen times more expensive. Which is pretty hard to justify since the surface area the cover has only gone up by 6.25x at most (assumes the ship scales up simultaneously in all three dimensions). So instead of leaving GARDIANs simply be the left over I think it needs a fixed formula:
Now this does mean that 225m MAC + 2x 150m MAC + GARDIANs does not equal 12.5% of a 250m Frigate's cost. But that just means that it either has longer secondary MACs or more of them.
With all the regular gear sorted out it's time to start looking at what PI gear costs in comparison.
The simplest to discuss is the Repulsor and Arc Reactors. The power, price, and volume of Arc Reactor scale linearly, so doubling the power doubles the cost and doubling the volume doubles the power. Repulsors meanwhile scale with surface area. Double the surface area doubles the thrust, the power required, and the cost. However @Hoyr has suggested simply making it based upon volume instead for simplicity. So that is what I'll be using from now on.
Based upon previous math a Repulsor outputting 250MN will give 4x the speed of a 15LY/day Frigate. In the old system that was a 10m Repuslor. In the new system however 250MN translates to a ~2.15m diameter Repulsor. That however doesn't change the cost (500,000,000cr) or the power requirements (7,000GW).
Dealing with Armor and Shields however is a lot more complicated. Currently Arcane Blur increases the cost and production of a unit by twenty percent while Warp Barriers add an additional fifteen percent. Even assuming they don't stack that still means a 46,300,000,000cr Frigate suddenly costs 62,505,000,000cr. Or put another way Arcane Blur costs 11,575,000,000 credits while Warp Barriers cost 12,732,500,000 credits.
That means Warp Barriers literally doubles the cost of Kinetic Barriers while Arcane Blur quintuples the price of regular armor. That strikes me as quite insane. I think that was done without really considering just how obscene the costs of starships are.
I mean think about it Warp Barriers are literally an alteration to Kinetic Barrier code and some additional sensors. I mean you could argue a notable cost increase by saying the emitters and sensors are being made sufficiently rugged to survive the additional stresses, a problem with canon CBTs, but that doesn't justify a literal doubling in cost.
Similarly Arcane Blur is just a material slapped atop normal armor. There is nothing to suggest that it should be anywhere near 11.5 billion credits. Hell we only paid 150 million credits to buy the technology.
A far more reasonable approach would be to make it 20% and 15% of the armor and shield's costs respectively. That puts Arcane Blur at 2,778,000,000cr and Warp Barriers at 6,655,625,000cr which seems more appropriate to me.
All that's left is working out figures for our Gigawatt Lasers. They are probably the hardest of PIs products to place because there is just so little to go on here. The problem is that they just don't fit the paradigm used for scaling other gear. A 5GW laser is going to cost the same and be just as effect no matter if it's on a 100m Frigate or a 1,000m Dreadnought. The only thing that matters is frequency and power output, both of which are limited by our research not by size.
So instead I'm going to say that secondary (and tertiary) Lasers come in 10m turreted blocks. So a 60m Secondary weapon can fit six separate laser turrets providing either increased ROF or increased endurance depending upon the ship's needs. Each Low-Gigawatt block would cost slightly more then a GARDIAN system at 500,000,000cr, and each step up in either power or frequency doubles the price.
To me I figure the big names are:
- Weapons
- Engines
- FTL Drive
- Shields
- Armor
- Hull
- Reactor
Now that we have that out of the way lets look at a 100m Frigate:
Cost: 46,300,000,000cr
Production: 156,250.00pr
We know that of the cost half it goes into the Eezo core. After that I'd say that weapons and shields are going to be the most expensive components because the latter require a lot of Eezo (hundreds/thousands of emitters filled with Eezo) and the former because it covers a lot (Primary, Secondaries, and GARDIAN) and because they have to be reliable (Weapons Fail == Auto Lose) and cutting edge.
Next up is the Reactor and Engines. The first requires Eezo for compressing the fusion fuel and needs to be incredibly reliable since failure means total destruction of the ship. The second uses anti-matter which again requires 100% safety otherwise the ship risks complete destruction.
Finally comes the Armor which has to be designed to limit the ability of hyper velocity projectiles to cripple the ship and the hull which is basically the framework of the entire ship.
Some rough percentages:
FTL Drive = 50%
Weapons = 12.5%
Shields = 12.5%
Engines = 9%
Reactor = 9%
Armor = 5%
Hull = 1%
Misc = 1%
Weapons = 12.5%
Shields = 12.5%
Engines = 9%
Reactor = 9%
Armor = 5%
Hull = 1%
Misc = 1%
Converted to actual numbers that comes out to:
FTL Drive = 23,150,000,000cr
Weapons = 5,787,500,000cr
Shields = 5,787,500,000cr
Engines = 4,167,000,000cr
Reactor = 4,167,000,000cr
Armor = 2,315,000,000cr
Hull = 463,000,000cr
Misc = 463,000,000cr
Weapons = 5,787,500,000cr
Shields = 5,787,500,000cr
Engines = 4,167,000,000cr
Reactor = 4,167,000,000cr
Armor = 2,315,000,000cr
Hull = 463,000,000cr
Misc = 463,000,000cr
Now that is all well and good however in this case cost and production don't really synch up that well. Take the FTL Drive for example; while it makes up 50% of the total cost it in no way should take up 50% of the production since all that cost comes from the value of Eezo not in the difficulty in actually building an FTL, which actually seems pretty simple.
So for the production value (156,250.00pr) I'm actually going to come up with a different set of percentages.
Production wise I actually figure the Engines and Reactor are the biggest drain. They have to run without interruption constantly with only stops on planets and space stations to cool down. For patrol ships that can easily mean weeks or even months of operation without rest. Considering failure, even relatively minor ones, in either of these two components can doom the ship durability is essential. That is easily going to drive up the production cost.
After those two the weapons and shields would be next. High tech weapons need to be rugged yet have a lot of intricate parts that make failure easy. Shields meanwhile require the production of a lot of small scale parts that need a similiar levels of endurance since failure often means death.
The FTL Drive is relatively straightforward yet the power levels and safety features are going to increase the production value. Similarly Misc gear is simple but there is simply so much that it's production is higher then you'd expect.
Finally the armor and hull are really simple to produce. The first is just slabs of special alloys while the latter is really just a framework designed to connect everything together.
Some rough percentages:
Engines = 25%
Reactor = 25%
Weapons = 20%
Shields =20%
FTL Drive =4%
Misc = 4%
Armor = 1%
Hull = 1%
Reactor = 25%
Weapons = 20%
Shields =20%
FTL Drive =4%
Misc = 4%
Armor = 1%
Hull = 1%
Converted to numbers:
Engines = 39,062.5pr
Reactor = 39,062.5pr
Weapons = 31,250pr
Shields = 31,250pr
FTL Drive = 6,250pr
Misc = 6,250pr
Armor = 1,562.5pr
Hull = 1,562.5pr
Reactor = 39,062.5pr
Weapons = 31,250pr
Shields = 31,250pr
FTL Drive = 6,250pr
Misc = 6,250pr
Armor = 1,562.5pr
Hull = 1,562.5pr
Now that we have figures for both cost and production we can work out conversion ratios for those parts:
FTL Drive = 23,150,000,000cr / 6,250pr = 3,704,000cr per 1pr
Weapons = 5,787,500,000cr / 31,250pr = 185,200cr per 1pr
Shields = 5,787,500,000cr / 31,250pr = 185,200cr per 1pr
Engines = 4,167,000,000cr / 39,062.5pr = 106,675.2cr per 1pr
Reactor = 4,167,000,000cr / 39,062.5pr = 106,675.2cr per 1pr
Armor = 2,315,000,000cr / 1,562.5pr = 1,481,600cr per 1pr
Hull = 463,000,000cr / 1,562.5pr = 296,320cr per 1pr
Misc = 463,000,000cr / 6,250pr = 74,080cr per 1pr
Weapons = 5,787,500,000cr / 31,250pr = 185,200cr per 1pr
Shields = 5,787,500,000cr / 31,250pr = 185,200cr per 1pr
Engines = 4,167,000,000cr / 39,062.5pr = 106,675.2cr per 1pr
Reactor = 4,167,000,000cr / 39,062.5pr = 106,675.2cr per 1pr
Armor = 2,315,000,000cr / 1,562.5pr = 1,481,600cr per 1pr
Hull = 463,000,000cr / 1,562.5pr = 296,320cr per 1pr
Misc = 463,000,000cr / 6,250pr = 74,080cr per 1pr
Most of those numbers are pretty well within the general range we see except for Armor, expensive materials cheap production, and FTL Drive, really expensive materials but cheap production. With that handled we don't really have to worry about production numbers and can just focus on cost, deriving production later on.
Now most of these things will scale straight with with ship size. So lets see how cost scales with ship size:
100m = 46,300,000,000
250m = 723,000,000,000
400m = 2,960,000,000,000
700m = 15,900,000,000,000
800m = 23,700,000,000,000
1000m = 46,300,000,000,000
Some messing around in Excel reveals that the pricing follows a relatively simply formula:
46,233 * x^3
where x is the length of the ship.Substituting this in gets:
100m = 46,233 * 100^3 = 46,233,000,000
250m = 46,233 * 250^3 = 722,390,625,000
400m = 46,233 * 400^3 = 2,958,912,000,000
700m = 46,233 * 700^3 = 15,857,919,000,000
800m = 46,233 * 800^3 =23,671,296,000,000
1000m = 46,233 * 1000^3 = 46,233,000,000,000
all of which pretty easily round to the given figures so I'd say the formula is accurate.
So all that is left is working out figures for the three main subsections of weapons. Now earlier @Hoyr mentioned using the formula:
700*(X/0.6)3
where x is length for the price of MACs.If we got with 1 90m MAC and 2 60m MACs then the weapons breakdown for a 100m Frigate is:
90m MAC = 700*(90/0.6) = 2,362,500,000cr
60m MAC = 700*(60/0.6) = 700,000,000cr
60m MAC = 700*(60/0.6) = 700,000,000cr
GARDIAN = 5,787,500,000 - (2,362,500,000 + 700,000,000 + 700,000,000) = 2,025,000,000
However 2 billion for GARDIANs just seems ridiculously expensive. They don't involve any Eezo and aren't really that far beyond what we can do today. I mean it would make sense if the ship was covered in separate lasers. However @Hoyr has repeatedly mentioned GARDIANs working with a single larger laser internal to the ship with beam splitters to spread the beam out across the many turrets dotting the ship's hull. Especially given that a ground based tower only cost 100m.
Instead if we adjust the formula slightly:
90m MAC = 1000*(90/0.6) = 3,375,000,000cr
60m MAC = 1000*(60/0.6) = 1,000,000,000cr
60m MAC = 1000*(60/0.6) = 1,000,000,000cr
GARDIAN = 5,787,500,000 - (3,375,000,000 + 1,000,000,000 + 1,000,000,000) = 412,500,000cr
Which I think is far more realistic. The increase compared to the ground turret can easily be explained by the beam splitting, turrets, problems with heat in space, and of course higher power requirements.
If we scale up to a 250m Frigate then weapons equals:
722,390,625,000 * 0.125 = 90,298,828,125cr
225m MAC = 1000*(225/0.6) = 52,734,375,000cr
150m MAC = 1000*(150/0.6) = 15,625,000,000cr
150m MAC = 1000*(150/0.6) = 15,625,000,000cr
GARDIAN = 90,298,828,125 - (52,734,375,000 + 15,625,000,000 + 15,625,000,000) = 6,314,453,125
A problem becomes apparent. GARDIANs are suddenly fifteen times more expensive. Which is pretty hard to justify since the surface area the cover has only gone up by 6.25x at most (assumes the ship scales up simultaneously in all three dimensions). So instead of leaving GARDIANs simply be the left over I think it needs a fixed formula:
412.5*(X/0.1)^2
where X is the ship's length.Now this does mean that 225m MAC + 2x 150m MAC + GARDIANs does not equal 12.5% of a 250m Frigate's cost. But that just means that it either has longer secondary MACs or more of them.
With all the regular gear sorted out it's time to start looking at what PI gear costs in comparison.
The simplest to discuss is the Repulsor and Arc Reactors. The power, price, and volume of Arc Reactor scale linearly, so doubling the power doubles the cost and doubling the volume doubles the power. Repulsors meanwhile scale with surface area. Double the surface area doubles the thrust, the power required, and the cost. However @Hoyr has suggested simply making it based upon volume instead for simplicity. So that is what I'll be using from now on.
Based upon previous math a Repulsor outputting 250MN will give 4x the speed of a 15LY/day Frigate. In the old system that was a 10m Repuslor. In the new system however 250MN translates to a ~2.15m diameter Repulsor. That however doesn't change the cost (500,000,000cr) or the power requirements (7,000GW).
Dealing with Armor and Shields however is a lot more complicated. Currently Arcane Blur increases the cost and production of a unit by twenty percent while Warp Barriers add an additional fifteen percent. Even assuming they don't stack that still means a 46,300,000,000cr Frigate suddenly costs 62,505,000,000cr. Or put another way Arcane Blur costs 11,575,000,000 credits while Warp Barriers cost 12,732,500,000 credits.
That means Warp Barriers literally doubles the cost of Kinetic Barriers while Arcane Blur quintuples the price of regular armor. That strikes me as quite insane. I think that was done without really considering just how obscene the costs of starships are.
I mean think about it Warp Barriers are literally an alteration to Kinetic Barrier code and some additional sensors. I mean you could argue a notable cost increase by saying the emitters and sensors are being made sufficiently rugged to survive the additional stresses, a problem with canon CBTs, but that doesn't justify a literal doubling in cost.
Similarly Arcane Blur is just a material slapped atop normal armor. There is nothing to suggest that it should be anywhere near 11.5 billion credits. Hell we only paid 150 million credits to buy the technology.
A far more reasonable approach would be to make it 20% and 15% of the armor and shield's costs respectively. That puts Arcane Blur at 2,778,000,000cr and Warp Barriers at 6,655,625,000cr which seems more appropriate to me.
All that's left is working out figures for our Gigawatt Lasers. They are probably the hardest of PIs products to place because there is just so little to go on here. The problem is that they just don't fit the paradigm used for scaling other gear. A 5GW laser is going to cost the same and be just as effect no matter if it's on a 100m Frigate or a 1,000m Dreadnought. The only thing that matters is frequency and power output, both of which are limited by our research not by size.
So instead I'm going to say that secondary (and tertiary) Lasers come in 10m turreted blocks. So a 60m Secondary weapon can fit six separate laser turrets providing either increased ROF or increased endurance depending upon the ship's needs. Each Low-Gigawatt block would cost slightly more then a GARDIAN system at 500,000,000cr, and each step up in either power or frequency doubles the price.
Here are some examples of that put into practice:
PI-VRF-100-A
Hull Type: 100m Frigate
Role: System Patrol and Anti-Raider Combat
Weaponry:
Power Systems:
Other Systems:
Hull Type: 100m Frigate
Role: System Patrol and Anti-Raider Combat
Weaponry:
- Spinal Mount
- None
- Inner Wing
- None
- Outer Wing
- 2x Low End IR Gigawatt Lasers
- Arcane Blur Armor
- Warp Barriers
- Standard GARDIANs
Power Systems:
- 1x 7000GW Arc Reactor
- 10x 5GW Arc Reactors
- 1x 250MN Repulsor
- Quarter Strength FTL Drive
Other Systems:
- Neural Interface
- Advanced Paragon Industries VI
- Superalloy Frame
- Credits:
- Weapons: 1,000,000,000
- Arcane Blur: 2,778,000,000
- Warp Barriers: 6,655,625,000
- GARDIANs: 412,500,000
- 1x 7000GW Arc Reactor: 70,000,000
- 10x 5GW Arc Reactors: 500,000
- 250MN Repulsor: 500,000,000
- Quarter Strength FTL Drive: 5,787,500,000
- Hull: 463,000,000
- Misc: 463,000,000
- Total = 1,000,000,000 + 2,778,000,000 + 6,655,625,000 + 412,500,000 + 70,000,000 + 500,000 + 500,000,000 + 5,787,500,000 + 463,000,000 + 463,000,000 = 18,130,125,000cr
- Production:
- Weapons: 5,399.57
- Arcane Blur: 1,875
- Warp Barriers: 35,937.5
- GARDIANs: 2,227.32
- 1x 7000GW Arc Reactor: 420
- 10x 5GW Arc Reactors: 3
- 250MN Repulsor: 3,000
- Quarter Strength FTL Drive: 1,562.50
- Hull: 1,562.50
- Misc: 6,250.00
- Total = 5,399.57 + 1,875 + 35,937.5 + 2,227.32 + 420 + 3 + 3,000 + 1,562.50 + 1,562.50 + 6,250.00 = 58,237.39
PI-VRF-250-A
Hull Type: 250m Frigate
Role: VIP Protection
Weaponry:
Hull Type: 250m Frigate
Role: VIP Protection
Weaponry:
- Spinal Mount
- 225m MAC
- Inner Wing
- 30x Low End IR Gigawatt Lasers
- Outer Wing
- None
- Arcane Blur Armor
- Warp Barriers
- Standard GARDIANs
- 1x 112,000GW Arc Reactor
- 10x 50GW Arc Reactors
- 1x 4000MN Repulsor
- Full Strength FTL Drive
- Neural Interface
- Advanced Paragon Industries VI
- Superalloy Frame
- Credits:
- Weapons: 67,734,375,000
- Arcane Blur: 43,380,000,000
- Warp Barriers: 103,931,250,000
- GARDIANs: 2,578,125,000
- 1x 112,000GW Arc Reactor: 1,120,000,000
- 10x 50GW Arc Reactors: 5,000,000
- 4000MN Repulsor: 8,000,000,000
- Full Strength FTL Drive: 361,500,000,000
- Hull: 7,230,000,000
- Misc: 7,230,000,000
- Total = 67,734,375,000 + 43,380,000,000 + 103,931,250,000 + 2,578,125,000 + 1,120,000,000 + 5,000,000 + 8,000,000,000 + 361,500,000,000 + 7,230,000,000 + 7,230,000,000 = 602,708,750,000
- Production:
- Weapons: 365,736.37
- Arcane Blur: 29,279.16
- Warp Barriers: 561,183.86
- GARDIANs: 13,920.76
- 1x 112,000GW Arc Reactor: 6,720
- 10x 50GW Arc Reactors: 30
- 4000MN Repulsor: 48,000
- Full Strength FTL Drive: 97,597.2
- Hull: 24,399.3
- Misc: 97,597.19
- Total = 365,736.37 + 29,279.16 + 561,183.86 + 13,920.76 + 6,720 + 30 + 48,000 + 97,597.2 + 24,399.3 + 97,597.19 = 1,244,463.84PR
Unsurprisingly a 250m cutting edge ship is expensive. Still a Laser Patrol Boat should suffice for the upcoming trip and it would only take about a week to construct using all three Shipyards due to it's modular nature.
Depending upon what @Hoyr says on the numbers I should be able to put together a spreadsheet that would automatically calculate all the numbers needed with just a few inputs.
- Location
- South of North
So if, hypothetically, we were to sell the ship upgrade plans to the Earth-based companies...
...could we sell the designs for the smaller 'patrol boat' style ships to the colony worlds with smaller ship-building industries? Pending Alliance approval, of course.
Also, can the patrol boats carry any of the new missiles? I ask because I have no sense of scale about many of these things. Just seems like, if we only arm them with lasers, pretty soon pirates are going to get some kind of ablative cheap-o workaround. It also is always nice to have a backup.
...could we sell the designs for the smaller 'patrol boat' style ships to the colony worlds with smaller ship-building industries? Pending Alliance approval, of course.
Also, can the patrol boats carry any of the new missiles? I ask because I have no sense of scale about many of these things. Just seems like, if we only arm them with lasers, pretty soon pirates are going to get some kind of ablative cheap-o workaround. It also is always nice to have a backup.
We could certainly license it out to them. With a third the production cost of a normal ship even a small shipyard could produce 20 per year.
Not sure we'd want to since a lot of proprietary technology goes into making them and blackboxing doesn't really matter when you give the plans out.
The fundamental design point of the Pynda is for it be fully and rapidly customizable. Refitting it with missile launchers would probably only take a couple hours.
As for pirates pulling off a work around; it doesn't really matter. Engagement range is far enough that the ship will burn through a pirate's ablative armor before it can enter MAC range. Which incidentally it can't because every Pynda has four times the acceleration of the next fastest ship in the galaxy, which pirates are unlikely to have.
The great thing about turreted lasers is that they can fire in almost any direction. So Pyndas equipped with lasers have the weapons range and engine capability to kite anything out there.
Of course the pirates could always chose to run away. But they can do that anyway so it doesn't really change things there.
- Location
- United States
How much power output have we determined the GARDIAN lasers to have?
Hm. By default a 100m Transport costs 9,260,000cr. A 20MN Repulsor would cost 40,000,000 while the Arc Reactor would add an additional 6,000,000cr.
So taking out the price for the engines and reactor I figure somewhere in the 52 to 55 million credit range sounds about right.
@Hoyr mentioned them having 200MW at once point. Who knows if that is still accurate however.
