Whether we do designs or denva does depends on how quickly we want to move on plans that involve delegating stuff to warp-capable Denvan ships, I think. I'd like to send off
something to Caldereth and Vorthryn same turn, even if just to provide for defence, but depending on the numbers there are far more ambitious plans that are possible.
On specifics, I'm
pretty sure that cargo ships filled with ready-to-assemble manufactories will be way better for getting scaling going at Vorthryn or Caldereth than manufactory ships, especially after cramming tech is researched. If we make and send out scouting ships to other systems in Zantris that same turn, even without warp comms some of the first reports would have come back to Denva by the time the cargo ships come back filled with excess food from Caldereth.
And even after that delivery or any hypothetical food aid to scouted worlds afterwards, they'd be useful for inter-subsector trade.
We have material for a lot of boons, and that means flexibility for things like who does the manufacturing of what and how many factories are leased to us if we're doing it - I say "if" because there are a lot of research priorities we can choose from that greatly enhance any sallying out of scouts and/or transports; Improved Abacuses, Cramming, stealth, sensors, and warp comms come to mind.
While fitting things in is a challenge, we do have some advantages:
- Per my earlier analysis, 3 cargo ships would be enough to drop supplies off at Caldereth, pick up food, and then visit every other system in Zantris to drop some of that food off over the course of a single turn.
- That same analysis tried to estimate cargo capacity by food-years of seaweed, and found that 3 max-sized light cruisers (2000 BP for base chassis each, real cost will be higher) could carry enough dried seaweed to meet average caloric needs for around 11 billion people for a year - or ~2.2 billion people for 5 years. The real figures aren't going to be that, but Neablis said the conclusions weren't "too crazy" so I figure it's decent for ballparking.
- We'd also want armed escorts for the cargo ships, of course.
- My earlier spitballing about making 12 of NightLord's 500BP "hermes" scout ships to check every system at once is well in excess of what would actually be needed to put eyes on each system and report back before cargo ships departing same-turn reach those systems, but even that naieve overspend would come out to just 6000 BP.
- I haven't tried planning a route that would minimize the needed scouting craft, but in practice we'd also be using a different design that had better stealth and sensors for safety and reliable recon.
- Neablis indicated a while back (before boons were even a mechanic, IIRC) that if Denva would already like to research something we're researching, we wouldn't have to pay them to cooperate with us on researching it, so we can expect a decent boost to our RP budget even before boons come into the picture.
- Reality simulations and design interfaces push that contribution even higher - diminishing returns, meet "population of billions". Har.
- As for what they'd want - well, they'll want warp comms. Wow, would they really really want warp comms, and that's 525 RP assuming no followup research is needed. We're not running out of things they'd love to help us give them. If that's not their speed, improved warp abacuses to go fast surely would be!
- It'll be up to rolls, but Denva may have done industrial buildout on Primus - the locals there are inclined towards trade enough that they reached out to us despite a history of imperial genocide, and we spent a boon specifically on making the Stellar Ascendency take ethical contact and uplift seriously.
- Ascalon's diplomatic service was top notch back in our day, so good odds Denva has been reaping that 50% productivity bonus to the benefit of their scale-up for some time now.
That... was mostly stream of consciousness. I'll probably do some harder planning on Friday, particularly to figure out scouting routes that could reduce the number of ships we'd need for a "moneyhat Denva to sweep, feed, and bring adventure hooks back from the whole subsector" plan.
