Shepard Quest Mk VII, Age of Revy (ME/MCU)
- Thread starter tri2
- Start date
Like with the last research vote I plan to put forth a couple different research plans, because it is a complex vote and doing so helps people who don't have the time required to get something closer to their desires. Construction VI and Construction Bots will absolutely be part of one, if not more, of the plans.
thanks for the reply and the hard work making things easy for people
- Location
- Lowton
If the batairan totally not reaper code was not locked to a rank programming I would be all over that as it has a non-zero chance of evidence of reapers still exiting that we could use as justification to continue pushing research.
- Location
- Toril
Ok, I dont what what I can do about it. I dont know where that post is anymore.
- Location
- Not here. Maybe on SB.
Your post is here, if you want to edit it.
Although, I found the difference, and that's actually everyone else who voted for that option need to fix their vote, because there's a typo/misspell in it: "addition" instead of 'addiction".
- Location
- UK
How so?
im just more use to the full plan format l usually don't get involved in voting so l only have a few examples and usaly they are smaller quests. so seeing multiple things being voted on can get me confused till l work it why. take Panacea for all! as an example there sub options for it which would make it better but not many people have voted for them. same with mech designed so it just confusing until l caught up with everything and think it over
- Location
- UK
Plan votes work when you have a large number of disparate actions and/or if they are linked together in some way being cost, action synergy etc.
In this case, these are technically multiple different votes, but we're casting them at the same time so that's why plans don't really work especially when we all can't seem to agree much.
As to the disparity of sub-options... Well that's we get when get no restriction write-ins. And a lot people don't really read the discussions, just a few posts after the main and latest page/few posts. That's why tally's are good I guess. Good to see all the different options. Even if there are no explanations behind them.
Oh? What are your intended build items, if I may ask? "More factory IIIs wherever we can put them"?
l believe the last count was build 198 Factory IIIs next quarter ...... so yea
- Location
- UK
Good thing we have the rest of the galaxy if the SA can't keep up.
[X] Panacea for all! Work with Sirta and their developing network of clinics to spread the benefits of this technology far and wide, (-13 Billion Credits)
[X] Decide to sell these drugs
-[X] Do a large-scale clinical trial to study the psychological addition effects of these drugs on humans.
[X] Decide to sell these drugs
-[X] Do a large-scale clinical trial to study the psychological addition effects of these drugs on humans.
I'm still doing some fiddling with the numbers to work out the optimal distribution but currently I'm thinking along the lines of 198 Factory IIIs, 80+ Space Factory Is, and a couple Space Factory IIs.
The long and short of it is that having run the numbers several times Space Factory IIIs aren't actually worthwhile investments as strange as it sounds. They are massive time sinks that have the same cost to production ratio as the smaller and quicker Space Factories. Their only advantage is they concentrate a lot of production into a single facility and even that is a questionable advantage.
One Space Factory III is vastly more vulnerable to attack or sabotage then 10 Space Factory IIs or 100 Space Factory Is after all. The only reason to use Space Factory IIIs is if we are running low on orbital construction slots and as of next turn we'll have 93 slots even if I'm leery about using the 15 above Bekenstein due to it being in Council space. Considering that Factories (ground and space) now can be built two per slot we effectively have 186 spaces for new Space Factories.
So right now I'm planning on filling our space with a mixture of Space Factory Is (4qtrs) and Heavily Armed Space Factory Is (7qtrs) for rapid Production growth while leaving space to fill in with Heavily Armed Space Factory IIs (11qtrs) for more efficient space utilization. The exact blend is still under development though.
- Location
- Florida
Why wouldn't we want to have factories in Council space? After all we sell significant amounts of equipment to the Council militaries and civilian economies and they have a massive consumer base that far exceeds the Alliance economy. We also have been attempting to gain influence in Council space and I can't think of a better way to do so then to be a major employer among the various council races. After all its one thing to ignore the lobbying from a company located in a major ally its something else entirely to ignore them when they have factories in your space and employing your people.
- Location
- Elsewhere
For me personally it's because the Council is an older and larger organization than the Systems Alliance, so as a result, they're harder to influence.
V2 Starship Design System (Make your Ship Designs with this)
I wasn't really happy with how the V2 Starship Design spreadsheet turned out so I decided to redo the whole thing from scratch. Here is a link to the master version of the V3 Starship Design (GM Approved!) spreadsheet which only I can edit. From this you can create your own copies (File -> Make a Copy) to build designs in. For anyone who can't or doesn't want to create copies I've also got a public version of the design sheet anyone with the link can edit. One of the big issues for me was that a lot of the knowledge was assumed or buried in the last thread which made using it annoying after the years long hiatus. My solution was to compile all the relevant information here.
Production Requirements:
So I'll admit I'm cheating here but to make life easier the Production requirements for every component is just 1/320,000 the credit cost. I got this ratio by dividing the cost of the LLP (19.7 billion) by the Production requirements (61.1k) which came out to 322,655 which I then rounded down to 320k. This figure was also roughly halfway between that of the Zama (232,524cr per pr) and the Quadriga Troop Transport (495,495) so it seemed reasonable enough a fit. Perhaps in a future revision I'll go through and assign each component their own ratio but for now it works well enough.
Starship Type:
The first question the sheet asks is whether or not the starship being designed is intended for Civilian or Military purposes. Right now this only really has two effects; first it activates the restrictions on certain components (resulting in an error message if you attempt to use them) and secondly it cuts the price by 90%. The lower price to reflect that military ships are designed for combat and the harshness that comes with that. Everything needs to be hardened, redundant, and top of the line. Civilian ships meanwhile are more concerned with efficiency and thus can cut various corners.
This doesn't really have any mechanical effect (aside from price) on the design but for story telling purposes it means that anything designed for civilian use will not stand up as well to extreme situations (like combat or disaster) as military hardware.
Starship Size Class:
Under the old system I let people enter in sizes in meters but honestly that is a level of detail that is straight up unnecessary. Instead I've broken things down into the classes our Tech Tree provides: Frigate, Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Dreadnought, Superdreadnought. The primary effect of this category is on price. The size of a starship sets the base price starting with Frigates at 1 billion and each step up costing 10x as much. The costs for all other parts are derived from this base price via multipliers.
Size class also plays a major role in the functionality of certain Payloads such as Cargo Holds. With larger ships obviously being more capable (at the cost of higher costs) then smaller ships.
Hull Type:
This is our Hypermodularity trigger. We can either build starships with a standard hull type or starships intended for Hypermodularity. Under the older V2 system Hypermodularity cost 10% over the base price of the Hull component. Given the baseline cost here is 1 billion credits and modularity is more of a design consideration rather then hardware I figure the 10% surcharge (100 million credits) is still quite reasonable.
Primary Payload, Secondary Payload, Tertiary Payload:
I've folded all three under the one heading here since they are connected. Under the current system the only differences between the three Payload classes are cost (Primary Payload is baseline, Secondary is 50%, and Tertiary is 10%) but this also represents the size dedicated to each Payload. Primary Payloads are the main purpose of a Starship; this represents the Starship's spinal gun or other such payload that dominates the ship's volume. Secondary Payloads are supplements to the Starship's primary purpose like broadside guns or missile racks. Tertiary Payloads are a minor functionality that adds something useful to the Starship.
Currently I have 14 possible payloads (including none) but more may be added (and will be edited here) over time. When scaling these Payloads across the different size classes I decided that each size category can dedicate 8x (2^3) the volume (which is roughly inline with the 10x cost increase) to each payload. These payloads are:
These are the guns found in basically every Starship across known space. Fire rate is generally around once every two seconds (30 RPM). The Light, Medium, and Heavy indicators are for tuning how powerful the MAC is. Heavy MACs are as powerful as a gun of its size can be but this comes at a high cost. Medium MACs are a more value oriented option providing decent firepower for half the price. Light MACs meanwhile are dirt cheap but basically only intended for defense against pirates and the like not serious combat. Pricing is based off the V2 which pegs the main gun for a Frigate at 2.3 billion credits for a 100m Frigate so to reflect that I set the Heavy MACs at a 2x multiplier which equates to 2 billion credits for your standard Frigate.
Paragon Industry Mass Accelerator Canons:
Basically the same (including price) as Standard MACs except that Revy managed to improve the design to fully take advantage of Paragon Industries various revolutionary technology. This resulted in a 20x increase in the rate of fire bringing them up to ten rounds per second (600 RPM). Currently only available completely for Frigates and as Secondary/Tertiary Payloads for Light Cruisers, Cruisers, and Dreadnoughts although this hasn't been programmed in yet. 500m MAC unlocks Light Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers Primary Payloads while 800m MACs will unlock Dreadnought Primary Payloads.
Missile Launchers:
It might seem weird that this is actually the second most expensive payload but it makes sense. An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has 96 missile tubes and is roughly the size of a Frigate. Our anti-ship missiles (including the Hydra) average 50 million credits in cost so a diverse load of 96 missiles should average 4.8 billion. Factor in the storage area and launching systems and 6 billion seems reasonable enough. Since Frigates have a base cost of 1 billion that gives a multiplier of 6.
Drone Bay:
In this post by Hoyr we were told that 100m transport should have a cargo volume of 7,000m^3. Using that as a baseline I looked at our drones which are 30cm diameter for Accipiter and Sagittarius, 50cm for Aspidai, and a 124cm diameter for Tribulus. If we use a standardized 150cm cubic container for easier storage (and math) then each container would hold 1 Tribulus, 27 Aspidai, or 125 Accipiters/Sagittarius drones. We could fill the hold with 2,074 storage containers and if we say 40% of that is replaced is replaced with access paths (effectively a 200cm gap between double rows of 150cm containers) that drops down to 1,244 containers which I'll further round down (due to inefficiencies and the like) to a simple 1,200 containers.
If we go with an even distribution of container types across the four designs that comes to 300 Tribulus, 8,100 Aspidai, 37,500 Accipiters, and 37,500 Sagittarius for a total of 83,400 Drones. Total cost for that is 30.8 billion which I rounded up to 31 billion to account for whatever associated machinery goes with the drones. That gives a base multiplier of 31x making the Drone Bay the single most expensive system by far.
Low Gigawatt Infrared Lasers:
This represents our first generation of laser weaponry; Gigawatt Lasers. They use the same frequency as normal GARDIAN lasers but simply operate at vastly higher power levels. That upgrade alone was enough to render the LLP the most powerful Frigate in existence and we still have plenty more upgrades to go. For pricing I went off the old V2 sheet which gave a price of 2.5 billion for lasers as a secondary weapon on a Frigate (like the LLP) which under the new system scales up to 5 billion for a Primary Payload thus giving them a 5x multiplier.
Hospital Unit:
This had no equivalent under the old system so I had to go from scratch. I started by looking at real life hospital ships and found the USNS Mercy was converted from an oil tanker into a hospital ship at a cost of $208 million which gave me an idea of the price range for fitting out a hospital. I then figured that with the advances in medicine a hospital load out was likely more expensive, especially with Paragon Industries tech, and considering the relative costs of the other Payloads I bumped it up to a 0.5x multiplier.
Cargo Hold:
Honestly for this one I kinda just picked a number. Cargo Holds are, by their very nature, rather cheap what with being mostly empty and all. So I just used the lowest multiplier (0.1x). As for size in this post by Hoyr we were told that 100m transport should have a cargo volume of 7,000m^3 so that is the number I set for a Cargo Hold as the Primary Payload for a Frigate. Probably a bit on the low end but then Starships have to engulf their payload unlike RL cargo ships which can just stack them higher and higher.
Bulk People Transport:
For this I looked at a variety of WWII troop transports. Eventually I settled on the Haskell-class Attack Transport being the closest to what we're looking for. It is in the right size range (139m), plentiful (which suggests it was successful), and intended to perform hostile landings (albeit using landing craft rather then directly). The Haskell-class Attack Transport carried ~1,500 troops so that is what I used for Bulk People Transport as a Primary Payload.
VIP Transport:
I used two metrics here. First upon discovering the differences between Ocean Liners and Cruise Ships I decided that Ocean Liners are a better fit here since Starships generally have to be fairly tough since they go on long voyages in the harshness of space. Then I compared to extremes; the MV Astoria and the Queen Mary 2. MV Astoria is roughly Frigate size (160m) and originally carried 390 people. Queen Mary 2 is on the high end of the size for a Light Cruiser (345m) and carries 2,695 people which if we scale backwards to Frigate level (1/8) that comes to 336 people. With that in mind I decided to go with the lower end figure and round a bit to 330 people.
Shield Type:
Currently there are four grades of shield available. Cyclonic Barriers are as described in canon and incur a 5% surcharge. Warp Barriers are as described here:
and carry a 15% surcharge. Navigational and Combat barriers are a bit more complicated. Under the old V2 design Military barriers cost 6.25 billion for a 100m Frigate so using the same logic I have been so far should carry a 6.25x multiplier. For Military designs that is fine since there are a lot of expensive components and shields, much like the FTL core, should require a lot of Eezo and unlike the FTL we don't have any strategies for mitigating that. For civilian designs however due to the differing design considering it can easily amount to 50% of the cost which seemed rather limiting. So instead I decided to copy what I did for the V2 and split shielding into low and high quality; aka Navigational and Combat. Combat barriers got the 6.25x multiplier while Navigational barriers went with a lower 1x multiplier that brings it into line with other civilian oriented components.
The way I fluff this difference is that Navigational barriers provide basic shielding more intended to defend against space debris and other misc damage rather then a direct MAC shot. Combat barriers meanwhile are intended to withstand multiple hits from enemy MACs during combat. So significantly larger Eezo nodules are required for both the higher output and higher endurance.
Armor Type:
Right now there isn't really much choice here but I'm hopeful that will change in the future. Standard armor represents the standard level of armoring Starships carry and under the V2 system was dirt cheap at 23 million credits which does make sense considering it is ablative armor literally designed to boil away under damage. That said I felt that was a bit low so I upped the price dramatically to a 1x multiplier. Arcane Blur is an improved design described here:
and carries a 20% surcharge.
Reactor Type:
This is was a rather tough one. While there was a method under the V2 sheet for working out power consumption and calculating the corresponding prices I have no recollection of how that system came about and finding any posts regarding it is nigh impossible. According to the formulas in the V2 sheet Arc Reactors cost 10cr per MW which is easily reverse engineered (50,000cr/5GW (IE: 5,000MW)) while Fusion reactors cost 240,000cr per MW which as far as I can tell comes from nowhere. It isn't an unreasonable figure since IRL fission reactors go for between $5,500,000 and $8,100,000 per MW so 240,000cr would represent a 95% to 97% cost reduction.
Still not that helpful since it doesn't really lead to a multiplier but it does mean that once one is found for either reactor type I can easily use this ratio (24,000:1) to work out the other multiplier. In the end I just went with what the V2 sheet said a standard 100m Frigate (with a normal loadout) should cost (6.6 billion) and used that (6.6x) as the base multiplier for Fusion reactors. Using the ratio that pegs Arc Reactors at 275k for a multiplier of ~0.0003. Which makes Arc Reactors laughably low cost but then there is a reason everyone and their mother are swapping out fusion reactors for Arc Reactors everywhere they can.
Propulsion Systems:
Due to their interconnected nature I am going to be handling all four of these systems under one heading. In the current version of the system there is no way adjust the endurance of a starship other then Multi-Core Drives which set your endurance to unlimited. So regardless of what your load out is it will run for 50 hours.
Eezo Core Purity sets the base speed of the starship when is then modified by the other Propulsion Systems. This is the area with the most cost variability because that is how it worked in the old V2 system and purification does typically grow exponentially more expensive the more pure a substance must be. Under the V2 system drive costs were 1.6 million, 41.3 million, 1 billion, and 24.5 billion for the four speeds of drive available. To more smoothly model the possible ranges I expanded this out to five speeds but matched the pricing quite closely with 0.001x (1 million for Frigates), 0.01x (10 million for Frigates), 0.1x (100 million for Frigates), 1x (1 billion for Frigates), and 10x (10 billion for Frigates). These prices provide speeds of 2LY/day, 4LY/day, 6LY/day, 8LY/day, and 10LY/day. Having even numbers like this was important since I wanted to avoid fractional speeds to keep things simple.
FTL Drive Design is a simple toggle to represent the old 14PSL/28PSL dichotomy which itself was simply a fancy way of justifying our Research into Advanced Mass Effect Theory (aside from the cool Doctorate). Basically this represents that Revy invented an FTL drive design that allowed for double the speed of normal FTL drives all else being equal. For normal drives I just went with a 1x multiplier since these are standard engines. For Paragon Industries' improved engine designs I looked at the V2 sheet and they are consistently 50% more expensive so they got a 1.5x multiplier.
Thrust Source allows for picking between the three canonical thrust sources (Ion, Fusion, Anti-matter) and our own Repulsors. The three canon thrust types are described here but in short Ion drives are slow but cheap and used for unmanned cargo ships, Fusion drives are the standard commercial engine, and Anti-Matter is the fast but expensive military engine. Repulsors meanwhile are the cheapest (requiring only electricity as befitting their status as reactionless drives) to operate and also the fastest. To reflect this Ion Drives provide a 0.5x modifier to your speed, Fusion a 1x modifier, Anti-Matter a 1.5x modifier, and Repulsors a 3x modifier. Cost wise according to the V2 sheet Anti-Matter thrusters are 4.2 billion for a 100m Frigate while Repulsors are 0.5 billion thus they received multipliers of 4.2x and 0.5x respectively. Fusion Torch and Ion Drives didn't have existing numbers so I pegged Fusion Torch as a 1x multiplier to reflect it's status as the standard commercial drive and Ion Drives at 0.1x to reflect their ultra-cheapness.
Multiple Cores is another simple toggle. No means no cost and a maximum endurance of 50 hours of flight (2.08x speed). Yes means unlimited endurance and the cost is equal to the combined price of the Eezo Core Purity and FTL Drive Design. That is to reflect the fact there is a second core and presumably both cores would need to be identical in both purity and design.
Existing Designs:
Here are the three designs that were built under the V2 system:
Using the new V3 system here are my best attempts at replicating these designs:
The new V3 designs are generally more capable for roughly similar costs so I don't see much of a problem in transitioning to the new system. The only issue would be the LLPs of which we have made a ton and thus would have serious ripple effects. That said there is the simple solution of using the V3 designs but reconning the cost and Production requirements to the V2 design. Not the most elegant solution but it is simple and it works.
For the QTT the big issue was that the new Missile Launcher system is designed under the assumption that the missiles were anti-ship. Still I think the Drone Bay works as a replacement both for transporting drones to combat, since we use a lot of them, and for direct use by the ship itself since it still achieves the objective of effective enemy personnel suppression.
Production Requirements:
So I'll admit I'm cheating here but to make life easier the Production requirements for every component is just 1/320,000 the credit cost. I got this ratio by dividing the cost of the LLP (19.7 billion) by the Production requirements (61.1k) which came out to 322,655 which I then rounded down to 320k. This figure was also roughly halfway between that of the Zama (232,524cr per pr) and the Quadriga Troop Transport (495,495) so it seemed reasonable enough a fit. Perhaps in a future revision I'll go through and assign each component their own ratio but for now it works well enough.
Starship Type:
The first question the sheet asks is whether or not the starship being designed is intended for Civilian or Military purposes. Right now this only really has two effects; first it activates the restrictions on certain components (resulting in an error message if you attempt to use them) and secondly it cuts the price by 90%. The lower price to reflect that military ships are designed for combat and the harshness that comes with that. Everything needs to be hardened, redundant, and top of the line. Civilian ships meanwhile are more concerned with efficiency and thus can cut various corners.
This doesn't really have any mechanical effect (aside from price) on the design but for story telling purposes it means that anything designed for civilian use will not stand up as well to extreme situations (like combat or disaster) as military hardware.
Starship Size Class:
Under the old system I let people enter in sizes in meters but honestly that is a level of detail that is straight up unnecessary. Instead I've broken things down into the classes our Tech Tree provides: Frigate, Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Dreadnought, Superdreadnought. The primary effect of this category is on price. The size of a starship sets the base price starting with Frigates at 1 billion and each step up costing 10x as much. The costs for all other parts are derived from this base price via multipliers.
Size class also plays a major role in the functionality of certain Payloads such as Cargo Holds. With larger ships obviously being more capable (at the cost of higher costs) then smaller ships.
Hull Type:
This is our Hypermodularity trigger. We can either build starships with a standard hull type or starships intended for Hypermodularity. Under the older V2 system Hypermodularity cost 10% over the base price of the Hull component. Given the baseline cost here is 1 billion credits and modularity is more of a design consideration rather then hardware I figure the 10% surcharge (100 million credits) is still quite reasonable.
Primary Payload, Secondary Payload, Tertiary Payload:
I've folded all three under the one heading here since they are connected. Under the current system the only differences between the three Payload classes are cost (Primary Payload is baseline, Secondary is 50%, and Tertiary is 10%) but this also represents the size dedicated to each Payload. Primary Payloads are the main purpose of a Starship; this represents the Starship's spinal gun or other such payload that dominates the ship's volume. Secondary Payloads are supplements to the Starship's primary purpose like broadside guns or missile racks. Tertiary Payloads are a minor functionality that adds something useful to the Starship.
Currently I have 14 possible payloads (including none) but more may be added (and will be edited here) over time. When scaling these Payloads across the different size classes I decided that each size category can dedicate 8x (2^3) the volume (which is roughly inline with the 10x cost increase) to each payload. These payloads are:
- Light/Medium/Heavy Standard Mass Accelerator Cannons
- Light/Medium/Heavy Paragon Industry Mass Accelerator Cannons
- Missile Launchers
- Drone Bay
- Low Gigawatt Infrared Lasers
- Hospital Unit
- Cargo Hold
- Bulk People Transport
- VIP Transport
These are the guns found in basically every Starship across known space. Fire rate is generally around once every two seconds (30 RPM). The Light, Medium, and Heavy indicators are for tuning how powerful the MAC is. Heavy MACs are as powerful as a gun of its size can be but this comes at a high cost. Medium MACs are a more value oriented option providing decent firepower for half the price. Light MACs meanwhile are dirt cheap but basically only intended for defense against pirates and the like not serious combat. Pricing is based off the V2 which pegs the main gun for a Frigate at 2.3 billion credits for a 100m Frigate so to reflect that I set the Heavy MACs at a 2x multiplier which equates to 2 billion credits for your standard Frigate.
Paragon Industry Mass Accelerator Canons:
Basically the same (including price) as Standard MACs except that Revy managed to improve the design to fully take advantage of Paragon Industries various revolutionary technology. This resulted in a 20x increase in the rate of fire bringing them up to ten rounds per second (600 RPM). Currently only available completely for Frigates and as Secondary/Tertiary Payloads for Light Cruisers, Cruisers, and Dreadnoughts although this hasn't been programmed in yet. 500m MAC unlocks Light Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers Primary Payloads while 800m MACs will unlock Dreadnought Primary Payloads.
Missile Launchers:
It might seem weird that this is actually the second most expensive payload but it makes sense. An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has 96 missile tubes and is roughly the size of a Frigate. Our anti-ship missiles (including the Hydra) average 50 million credits in cost so a diverse load of 96 missiles should average 4.8 billion. Factor in the storage area and launching systems and 6 billion seems reasonable enough. Since Frigates have a base cost of 1 billion that gives a multiplier of 6.
Drone Bay:
In this post by Hoyr we were told that 100m transport should have a cargo volume of 7,000m^3. Using that as a baseline I looked at our drones which are 30cm diameter for Accipiter and Sagittarius, 50cm for Aspidai, and a 124cm diameter for Tribulus. If we use a standardized 150cm cubic container for easier storage (and math) then each container would hold 1 Tribulus, 27 Aspidai, or 125 Accipiters/Sagittarius drones. We could fill the hold with 2,074 storage containers and if we say 40% of that is replaced is replaced with access paths (effectively a 200cm gap between double rows of 150cm containers) that drops down to 1,244 containers which I'll further round down (due to inefficiencies and the like) to a simple 1,200 containers.
If we go with an even distribution of container types across the four designs that comes to 300 Tribulus, 8,100 Aspidai, 37,500 Accipiters, and 37,500 Sagittarius for a total of 83,400 Drones. Total cost for that is 30.8 billion which I rounded up to 31 billion to account for whatever associated machinery goes with the drones. That gives a base multiplier of 31x making the Drone Bay the single most expensive system by far.
Low Gigawatt Infrared Lasers:
This represents our first generation of laser weaponry; Gigawatt Lasers. They use the same frequency as normal GARDIAN lasers but simply operate at vastly higher power levels. That upgrade alone was enough to render the LLP the most powerful Frigate in existence and we still have plenty more upgrades to go. For pricing I went off the old V2 sheet which gave a price of 2.5 billion for lasers as a secondary weapon on a Frigate (like the LLP) which under the new system scales up to 5 billion for a Primary Payload thus giving them a 5x multiplier.
Hospital Unit:
This had no equivalent under the old system so I had to go from scratch. I started by looking at real life hospital ships and found the USNS Mercy was converted from an oil tanker into a hospital ship at a cost of $208 million which gave me an idea of the price range for fitting out a hospital. I then figured that with the advances in medicine a hospital load out was likely more expensive, especially with Paragon Industries tech, and considering the relative costs of the other Payloads I bumped it up to a 0.5x multiplier.
Cargo Hold:
Honestly for this one I kinda just picked a number. Cargo Holds are, by their very nature, rather cheap what with being mostly empty and all. So I just used the lowest multiplier (0.1x). As for size in this post by Hoyr we were told that 100m transport should have a cargo volume of 7,000m^3 so that is the number I set for a Cargo Hold as the Primary Payload for a Frigate. Probably a bit on the low end but then Starships have to engulf their payload unlike RL cargo ships which can just stack them higher and higher.
Bulk People Transport:
For this I looked at a variety of WWII troop transports. Eventually I settled on the Haskell-class Attack Transport being the closest to what we're looking for. It is in the right size range (139m), plentiful (which suggests it was successful), and intended to perform hostile landings (albeit using landing craft rather then directly). The Haskell-class Attack Transport carried ~1,500 troops so that is what I used for Bulk People Transport as a Primary Payload.
VIP Transport:
I used two metrics here. First upon discovering the differences between Ocean Liners and Cruise Ships I decided that Ocean Liners are a better fit here since Starships generally have to be fairly tough since they go on long voyages in the harshness of space. Then I compared to extremes; the MV Astoria and the Queen Mary 2. MV Astoria is roughly Frigate size (160m) and originally carried 390 people. Queen Mary 2 is on the high end of the size for a Light Cruiser (345m) and carries 2,695 people which if we scale backwards to Frigate level (1/8) that comes to 336 people. With that in mind I decided to go with the lower end figure and round a bit to 330 people.
Shield Type:
Currently there are four grades of shield available. Cyclonic Barriers are as described in canon and incur a 5% surcharge. Warp Barriers are as described here:
and carry a 15% surcharge. Navigational and Combat barriers are a bit more complicated. Under the old V2 design Military barriers cost 6.25 billion for a 100m Frigate so using the same logic I have been so far should carry a 6.25x multiplier. For Military designs that is fine since there are a lot of expensive components and shields, much like the FTL core, should require a lot of Eezo and unlike the FTL we don't have any strategies for mitigating that. For civilian designs however due to the differing design considering it can easily amount to 50% of the cost which seemed rather limiting. So instead I decided to copy what I did for the V2 and split shielding into low and high quality; aka Navigational and Combat. Combat barriers got the 6.25x multiplier while Navigational barriers went with a lower 1x multiplier that brings it into line with other civilian oriented components.
The way I fluff this difference is that Navigational barriers provide basic shielding more intended to defend against space debris and other misc damage rather then a direct MAC shot. Combat barriers meanwhile are intended to withstand multiple hits from enemy MACs during combat. So significantly larger Eezo nodules are required for both the higher output and higher endurance.
Armor Type:
Right now there isn't really much choice here but I'm hopeful that will change in the future. Standard armor represents the standard level of armoring Starships carry and under the V2 system was dirt cheap at 23 million credits which does make sense considering it is ablative armor literally designed to boil away under damage. That said I felt that was a bit low so I upped the price dramatically to a 1x multiplier. Arcane Blur is an improved design described here:
and carries a 20% surcharge.
Reactor Type:
This is was a rather tough one. While there was a method under the V2 sheet for working out power consumption and calculating the corresponding prices I have no recollection of how that system came about and finding any posts regarding it is nigh impossible. According to the formulas in the V2 sheet Arc Reactors cost 10cr per MW which is easily reverse engineered (50,000cr/5GW (IE: 5,000MW)) while Fusion reactors cost 240,000cr per MW which as far as I can tell comes from nowhere. It isn't an unreasonable figure since IRL fission reactors go for between $5,500,000 and $8,100,000 per MW so 240,000cr would represent a 95% to 97% cost reduction.
Still not that helpful since it doesn't really lead to a multiplier but it does mean that once one is found for either reactor type I can easily use this ratio (24,000:1) to work out the other multiplier. In the end I just went with what the V2 sheet said a standard 100m Frigate (with a normal loadout) should cost (6.6 billion) and used that (6.6x) as the base multiplier for Fusion reactors. Using the ratio that pegs Arc Reactors at 275k for a multiplier of ~0.0003. Which makes Arc Reactors laughably low cost but then there is a reason everyone and their mother are swapping out fusion reactors for Arc Reactors everywhere they can.
Propulsion Systems:
Due to their interconnected nature I am going to be handling all four of these systems under one heading. In the current version of the system there is no way adjust the endurance of a starship other then Multi-Core Drives which set your endurance to unlimited. So regardless of what your load out is it will run for 50 hours.
Eezo Core Purity sets the base speed of the starship when is then modified by the other Propulsion Systems. This is the area with the most cost variability because that is how it worked in the old V2 system and purification does typically grow exponentially more expensive the more pure a substance must be. Under the V2 system drive costs were 1.6 million, 41.3 million, 1 billion, and 24.5 billion for the four speeds of drive available. To more smoothly model the possible ranges I expanded this out to five speeds but matched the pricing quite closely with 0.001x (1 million for Frigates), 0.01x (10 million for Frigates), 0.1x (100 million for Frigates), 1x (1 billion for Frigates), and 10x (10 billion for Frigates). These prices provide speeds of 2LY/day, 4LY/day, 6LY/day, 8LY/day, and 10LY/day. Having even numbers like this was important since I wanted to avoid fractional speeds to keep things simple.
FTL Drive Design is a simple toggle to represent the old 14PSL/28PSL dichotomy which itself was simply a fancy way of justifying our Research into Advanced Mass Effect Theory (aside from the cool Doctorate). Basically this represents that Revy invented an FTL drive design that allowed for double the speed of normal FTL drives all else being equal. For normal drives I just went with a 1x multiplier since these are standard engines. For Paragon Industries' improved engine designs I looked at the V2 sheet and they are consistently 50% more expensive so they got a 1.5x multiplier.
Thrust Source allows for picking between the three canonical thrust sources (Ion, Fusion, Anti-matter) and our own Repulsors. The three canon thrust types are described here but in short Ion drives are slow but cheap and used for unmanned cargo ships, Fusion drives are the standard commercial engine, and Anti-Matter is the fast but expensive military engine. Repulsors meanwhile are the cheapest (requiring only electricity as befitting their status as reactionless drives) to operate and also the fastest. To reflect this Ion Drives provide a 0.5x modifier to your speed, Fusion a 1x modifier, Anti-Matter a 1.5x modifier, and Repulsors a 3x modifier. Cost wise according to the V2 sheet Anti-Matter thrusters are 4.2 billion for a 100m Frigate while Repulsors are 0.5 billion thus they received multipliers of 4.2x and 0.5x respectively. Fusion Torch and Ion Drives didn't have existing numbers so I pegged Fusion Torch as a 1x multiplier to reflect it's status as the standard commercial drive and Ion Drives at 0.1x to reflect their ultra-cheapness.
Multiple Cores is another simple toggle. No means no cost and a maximum endurance of 50 hours of flight (2.08x speed). Yes means unlimited endurance and the cost is equal to the combined price of the Eezo Core Purity and FTL Drive Design. That is to reflect the fact there is a second core and presumably both cores would need to be identical in both purity and design.
Existing Designs:
Here are the three designs that were built under the V2 system:
Length: 100m
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Weapon: 90m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon I: 5GW 400nm Laser
Secondary Weapon II: 5GW 400nm Laser
Propulsion System: Repulsor
FTL Drive Type: 11.25LY/28PSl
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Credit Cost: 19,739,329,000.00cr
Production Cost: 61,177.81pr
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Weapon: 90m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon I: 5GW 400nm Laser
Secondary Weapon II: 5GW 400nm Laser
Propulsion System: Repulsor
FTL Drive Type: 11.25LY/28PSl
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Credit Cost: 19,739,329,000.00cr
Production Cost: 61,177.81pr
Length: 100m
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Weapon: 90m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon I: 60m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon II: 60m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon III: 60m Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon IV: 60m Missile Launcher
Propulsion System: Anti-Matter
FTL Drive Type:15LY/28PSl 11.25LY/28PSI (I double checked my posts from when I designed this and 15LY is an error)
Shield Type: Cyclonic
Armor Type: Standard
Credit Cost: 18,047,610,000.00cr
Production Cost: 77,616.28pr
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Weapon: 90m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon I: 60m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon II: 60m Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Weapon III: 60m Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon IV: 60m Missile Launcher
Propulsion System: Anti-Matter
FTL Drive Type:
Shield Type: Cyclonic
Armor Type: Standard
Credit Cost: 18,047,610,000.00cr
Production Cost: 77,616.28pr
Length: 150m
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Secondary Weapon I: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon II: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon III: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon IV: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Propulsion System: Repulsor
FTL Drive Type: 3.75LY/28PSL
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Credit Cost: 27,367,329,000.00cr
Production Cost: 55,139.71pr
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Secondary Weapon I: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon II: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon III: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Secondary Weapon IV: Sagittarius Missile Launcher
Propulsion System: Repulsor
FTL Drive Type: 3.75LY/28PSL
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Credit Cost: 27,367,329,000.00cr
Production Cost: 55,139.71pr
Starship Type: Military
Starship Size Class: Frigate
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Payload: Heavy Paragon Industries Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Payload: Low Gigawatt Infrared Laser
Tertiary Payload: Missile Launchers
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Reactor Type: Arc Reactor
Eezo Core Purity: High (8LY/day)
FTL Drive Design: Paragon Industries (2x)
Thrust Source: Repulsors (3x)
Multiple Cores?: No
Credit Cost: 18,212,800,000 cr
Production Cost: 56,915.00 pr
Starship Size Class: Frigate
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Payload: Heavy Paragon Industries Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Payload: Low Gigawatt Infrared Laser
Tertiary Payload: Missile Launchers
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Reactor Type: Arc Reactor
Eezo Core Purity: High (8LY/day)
FTL Drive Design: Paragon Industries (2x)
Thrust Source: Repulsors (3x)
Multiple Cores?: No
Credit Cost: 18,212,800,000 cr
Production Cost: 56,915.00 pr
Starship Type: Military
Starship Size Class: Frigate
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Payload: Heavy Paragon Industries Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Payload: Medium Paragon Industries Mass Accelerator Cannon
Tertiary Payload: Missile Launchers
Shield Type: Cyclonic
Armor Type: Standard
Reactor Type: Arc Reactor
Eezo Core Purity: High (8LY/day)
FTL Drive Design: Paragon Industries (2x)
Thrust Source: Anti-matter (1.5x)
Multiple Cores?: No
Credit Cost: 18,462,800,000cr
Production Cost: 57,696.25pr
Starship Size Class: Frigate
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Payload: Heavy Paragon Industries Mass Accelerator Cannon
Secondary Payload: Medium Paragon Industries Mass Accelerator Cannon
Tertiary Payload: Missile Launchers
Shield Type: Cyclonic
Armor Type: Standard
Reactor Type: Arc Reactor
Eezo Core Purity: High (8LY/day)
FTL Drive Design: Paragon Industries (2x)
Thrust Source: Anti-matter (1.5x)
Multiple Cores?: No
Credit Cost: 18,462,800,000cr
Production Cost: 57,696.25pr
Starship Type: Military
Starship Size Class: Frigate
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Payload: Bulk People Transport (1,500 People)
Secondary Payload: Drone Bay (41,700 Drones)
Tertiary Payload: Cargo Hold (700m^3)
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Reactor Type: Arc Reactor
Eezo Core Purity: High (8LY/day)
FTL Drive Design: Paragon Industries (2x)
Thrust Source: Repulsors (3x)
Multiple Cores?: No
Credit Cost: 28,822,800,000 cr
Production Cost: 90,071.25 pr
Starship Size Class: Frigate
Hull Type: Hyper-Modular
Primary Payload: Bulk People Transport (1,500 People)
Secondary Payload: Drone Bay (41,700 Drones)
Tertiary Payload: Cargo Hold (700m^3)
Shield Type: Warp
Armor Type: Arcane Blur
Reactor Type: Arc Reactor
Eezo Core Purity: High (8LY/day)
FTL Drive Design: Paragon Industries (2x)
Thrust Source: Repulsors (3x)
Multiple Cores?: No
Credit Cost: 28,822,800,000 cr
Production Cost: 90,071.25 pr
For the QTT the big issue was that the new Missile Launcher system is designed under the assumption that the missiles were anti-ship. Still I think the Drone Bay works as a replacement both for transporting drones to combat, since we use a lot of them, and for direct use by the ship itself since it still achieves the objective of effective enemy personnel suppression.
Alternate solution: Paragon did a reorganization and optimized some things. New price takes effect from now on but does not apply retroactively.
Honestly it is probably just paranoia. Factories are a weakpoint for our security even with Flawless Black Boxing preventing reverse engineering and Flawless Fabrication Rights Management (the FRM from the tech title) presumably preventing non-approved factories from producing products. Because you can always just seize a PI factory and use the FRM'd blueprints with the factory itself. Similarly theft of finished goods from infiltrators like the STG or Spectres is another vulnerability. All of which are significantly more likely outside of Alliance space where we can count on the government to come down on our side.
Now admittedly I do plan on building Factory IIIs on Bekenstein so regardless the vulnerability is going to be there. However the Factory IIIs there are enough to cover our explicit sales to the Citadel market (378k Production in Arc Reactors). This is because our Production is abstracted into a single value regardless of location (because doing otherwise would be a nightmare to track). So if we have a bunch of spare Production at Bekenstein we will start producing things we may not want to be producing there.
I suppose we could pass a vote to only use Bekenstein for Citadel Arc Reactors + General Sales which would provide a floor for General Sales. However I don't se the point in building factories only to restrict them like that when we can spend the money building factories elsewhere.
- Location
- Florida
Except we are already hiring Citadel personnel including those we know are intelligence agents like Mordin Solus so that paranoia is absolutely worthless at its explicit goal of keeping our tech secret. That being the case the benefits of being able to say we employ a significant fraction of their species or at least our factories are important parts of their economy far outweigh the concern that our technology will leak. Honestly it might even be a good thing if Paragon Industry tech leaks considering the fact that it makes the Citadel races better able to stand up to the Reapers.
Are we though? Because while we've hired a handful of aliens for ParSec there has never been a mention of hiring non-humans for any Paragon Industries facilities. The exceptions being Mordin Solus and Shatom Vivuvian both of which are researchers and have only worked on safe projects that we don't particularly care about leaking.
Mordin has worked on Bioforming, Advanced Xenobiology, and Peak Salarian. Shatom has worked on Heavy Cruisers. Mordin's tech is either his project (Bioforming) or stuff we were already planning on exporting. Heavy Cruisers is just a generic starship class unlocking tech that everyone else already has.
On the topic of factories across; Elysium, Benning, Demeter, Terra Nova, and Eden Prime we have 56.5 (113 factories) slots. Space Factory Is take 4 quarters, Heavily Armed Space Factory Is 7 quarters, and Heavily Armed Space Factory IIs 11 quarters. I figure we can afford to spend between 1,000 and 2,000 billion credits per quarter on construction which is equal to between 5 and 10 Heavily Armed Space Factory IIs.
A Space Factory I pays for itself in a single quarter (76 billion vs. 10 construction cost) so there is no issue with dismantling one immediately after it completes its first run. Therefore to keep tempo we need to reserve between 10 and 20 slots for Heavily Armed Space Factory IIs. That leaves us with 36.5 to 46.5 slots for the smaller Space Factories.
Heavily Armed Space Factory Is pay for themselves in a single quarter (76 billion vs. 20 construction cost) so like with regular Space Factory Is there is no issue deconstructing them after a single quarter. Since we are going to start disassembling the Space Factory Is ASAP we need a large enough reserve that our Heavily Armed Space Factory Is get a chance to pay for themselves. Three quarters worth of Space Factory Is come to between 15 and 30. That leaves us with between 21.5 and 39 slots for Heavily Armed Space Factory Is.
So if we think we can maintain 2,000 billion credits of construction per quarter we should go with:
- 20 slots reserved
- 30 x Space Factory Is
- 38 x Heavily Armed Space Factory Is
- 5 x Heavily Armed Space Factory IIs
If instead we think we can manage just 1,000 billion credits per quarter then we should go with:
- 10 slots reserved
- 15 x Space Factory Is
- 76 x Heavily Armed Space Factory Is
- 2 x Heavily Armed Space Factory IIs
Quarter 21: (Initial Construction)
Quarter 22: (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 23: (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 24: (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 25: +9,000,000pr (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 26: +6,000,000pr (-10 SF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 27: +3,000,000pr (-10 SF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 28: +11,400,000pr (-10 SF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 29: +8,400,000pr (-10 HASF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 30: +5,400,000pr (-10 HASF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 31: +2,400,000pr (-10 HASF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 32: +15,000,000pr (-8 HASF I + 8 HASF II)
Quarter 33: +45,000,000pr
Quarter 34: +75,000,000pr
Quarter 35: +105,000,000pr
Quarter 36: +135,000,000pr
Quarter 37: +165,000,000pr
Quarter 38: +195,000,000pr
Quarter 39: +225,000,000pr
Quarter 40: +255,000,000pr
Quarter 41: +285,000,000pr
Quarter 42: +315,000,000pr
Quarter 43: +339,000,000pr (Construction Complete)
Quarter 44: +339,000,000pr
Quarter 45: +339,000,000pr
Quarter 22: (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 23: (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 24: (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 25: +9,000,000pr (+10 HASF II)
Quarter 26: +6,000,000pr (-10 SF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 27: +3,000,000pr (-10 SF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 28: +11,400,000pr (-10 SF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 29: +8,400,000pr (-10 HASF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 30: +5,400,000pr (-10 HASF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 31: +2,400,000pr (-10 HASF I + 10 HASF II)
Quarter 32: +15,000,000pr (-8 HASF I + 8 HASF II)
Quarter 33: +45,000,000pr
Quarter 34: +75,000,000pr
Quarter 35: +105,000,000pr
Quarter 36: +135,000,000pr
Quarter 37: +165,000,000pr
Quarter 38: +195,000,000pr
Quarter 39: +225,000,000pr
Quarter 40: +255,000,000pr
Quarter 41: +285,000,000pr
Quarter 42: +315,000,000pr
Quarter 43: +339,000,000pr (Construction Complete)
Quarter 44: +339,000,000pr
Quarter 45: +339,000,000pr
Quarter 21: (Initial Construction)
Quarter 22: (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 23: (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 24: (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 25: +4,500,000pr (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 26: +3,000,000pr (-5 SF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 27: +1,500,000pr (-5 SF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 28: +22,800,000pr (-5 SF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 29: +21,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 30: +19,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 31: +18,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 32: +22,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 33: +36,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 34: +49,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 35: +63,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 36: 76,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 37: 90,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 38: 103,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 39: 117,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 40: 130,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 41: 144,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 42: 157,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 43: 171,000,000pr (-6 HASF I + 6 HASF II)
Quarter 44: 186,000,000pr
Quarter 45: 201,000,000pr
Quarter 22: (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 23: (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 24: (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 25: +4,500,000pr (+5 HASF II)
Quarter 26: +3,000,000pr (-5 SF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 27: +1,500,000pr (-5 SF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 28: +22,800,000pr (-5 SF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 29: +21,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 30: +19,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 31: +18,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 32: +22,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 33: +36,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 34: +49,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 35: +63,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 36: 76,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 37: 90,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 38: 103,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 39: 117,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 40: 130,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 41: 144,300,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 42: 157,800,000pr (-5 HASF I + 5 HASF II)
Quarter 43: 171,000,000pr (-6 HASF I + 6 HASF II)
Quarter 44: 186,000,000pr
Quarter 45: 201,000,000pr
