It is determined that the Guardian will carry only two torpedo launchers, both within the ventral substructure. Next is the matter of power and computer systems and here it becomes obvious that you will need to experiment somewhat—fortunately, there are more than a few projects available to support these new weapons and their high demands.
The first proposal for power is quite radical, but seemingly simple: mount a second warp core. This could be combined with any other option, and would obviously double all costs and generation of the ship's primary reactor. The increase in high load power generation to this level should also have a noticeable effect on the ship's warp performance as well, though to what degree is not yet known.
Second is increasing the size of the reactor-while more expensive than the minimum size on account of design efficiency issues, this is still slightly more space efficient than an equivalent increase in smaller reactors. Estimates suggest that up to 66% increase is practical without potentially facing issues, though if you intend to also fit a second core it would be likely be wise to avoid exceeding 40% as a diplomatic concession to Finance. Alternatively, a prototype ultra-high-pressure fusion bottle design could potentially increase power generation by 20 to 50%, but would require high-precision military grade industry to produce, which has previously prevented adoption.
Lastly, you
could change from your current Protium design to a Deturium or Tritium reactor, which have higher output, but this would require specialized equipment to refine protium be added to the ship, as otherwise it would require impractically large storage tanks for the much more rare isotopes—and the constraints of size would restrict this to high performance systems that require highly precise, military grade industry to produce.
The situation with computational systems is if anything even more dire, though amusingly one of the proposals is of similar mind to the power team, namely, "mount a second core". The difference between power generation and computer systems means that this won't be a direct doubling, but there are ideas being thrown around about distributed computing that may result in a system that is more than the sum of its parts… or possibly not worth the expense, if the more pessimistic projections are right. At worst, however, this will simply fail to deliver a significant improvement worth the extra cost. The second option at this point is to crash develop a prototype secondary computer core—this would be expensive, and likely result in a less effective design (at least initially) than a normal development program, but would significantly impact the following phases of design.
Main Power
[ ] Mount a second Warp Core
Doubles cost and size taken up by Warp Core, as there's a whole second reactor assembly. Also doubles power output. May be taken with other options.
[ ] Increase Warp Core Size
Power Generation: 7.5→ 8.5/9.5/10.5/11.5/12.5
Cost: 15 CI → 17/21/27/35/45 CI
Size: 3×4 →3×5/3×6/3×7/3×8/3×9
If taking second warp core, you are advised to not exceed 10.5 power generation.
[ ] Prototype High Pressure Stellarator
Cost: 15 CI → 18 CI & 6-12 MI
Power generation multiplied by 1.2-1.5, increments of .1
Size: 3×4-3×6
[ ] Deuterium Reactor
Power generation multiplied by 1.75. Requires a 3×2 Deuterium Refinery, which requires 12 MI to construct. Increase to 3×3 and 16 MI for twin reactor.
[ ] Tritium Reactor
Power generation multiplied by 2.5. Requires a 3×3 Tritium Refinery, which costs 20 MI. Increase to 3×4 & 24 MI for twin reactor.
You may combine a twin warp core with any option. Larger reactors are mutually exclusive with the Prototype High Pressure Stellarator, and Deuterium reactors mutually exclusive with Tritium Reactors, but may otherwise be combined (so yes you can, for example, mount a twin high pressure tritium reactor if you really want to.) All these systems are optional, but it is recommended to take at least one, given the power demand.
Computing
[ ] Prototype Dual Core Duotronics
Double the cost, size and Runtime generation of the main computer core. Requires 10-40% (increments of 5%) of main core Runtime in overhead.
Potential additional effects:
- Multiply core Runtime by 1.05-1.2 (increments of 0.05)
- Add 5-10 Runtime for each additional computing system (Increments of 1)
- Multiply Runtime of secondary systems by 1.1-1.5, rounded up (increments of 0.1)
- Multiply total Runtime by 1+(0.025-0.05 per additional computer system), (Increments of 0.025)
- Add +1-3 Runtime to each computer system for each extra computer system added, exclusive/inclusive to mass. (Increments of 0.5)
[ ] Prototype Secondary Duotronic Computer Core
Rush production of Secondary Computer Core.
Stats:
Size: 1×2-2×2, +1×2 (Flat) per 100-150 KT
Cost: 1.5-3 CI per 80 Kilotons
Runtime: 2.5-6 per 50 Kilotons
Development cost of Secondary Core reduced to 20-13
Prototype becomes available next phase)
You may select either or neither option for computing enhancement.
Please Vote By Plan
One Hour Moratorium
