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As an aside, I've been considering the upcoming new ship build, and given
The Iron Roads are slow and massively expensive, the Gold Roads are hilariously beyond obsolete, and the Furious Wind refit is shaping up to be a very flexible and capable light warship. In light of the latter, I'm quite comfortable saying we don't need another fighting ship this turn.
So there's three options that spring to mind for a cargo build:
I've been considering options.
The Iron Roads are slow and massively expensive, the Gold Roads are hilariously beyond obsolete, and the Furious Wind refit is shaping up to be a very flexible and capable light warship. In light of the latter, I'm quite comfortable saying we don't need another fighting ship this turn.
So there's three options that spring to mind for a cargo build:
- Something small enough to double-build (two ships to a slip). Given that most of our non-weapon costs are pretty linear, there's surprisingly negligible inefficiencies of scale in sizing down pure cargo ships, and the flexibility of deployment from having the same capacity split across more hulls is a notable advantage- as is the far lower per-ship cost opening up modern interstellar trade to significantly more carriers. I'm thinking ovoid for cruise speed and volume-per-ton is a no-brainer, size to the limits of "two per slip". Single or paired Type 1s tip and tail, Large Transporter for cargo throughput, possibly a single-bay Shuttlebay, and no other fancy stuff at all in the main hull.
- I would like- given we're designing this largely for private industry- to design two or three different small inline secondary hulls that it could be ordered with any (or perhaps even none) of as options from the yard- one with another protium reactor for dual-core speed without tritium's heavy costs and endurance penalties to make a speedy packet boat, one with one or more "crew lounges" and a small medbay to add luxury-liner passenger capability, and one with just a couple more cargo bays for max capacity.
- Note that I'm explicitly not attempting to make modular, swappable ship systems; these variants would be initial-construction options only; attempting to refit one variant into another would be no easier or cheaper than a similar refit in the absence of the other variants' existence.
- I would like- given we're designing this largely for private industry- to design two or three different small inline secondary hulls that it could be ordered with any (or perhaps even none) of as options from the yard- one with another protium reactor for dual-core speed without tritium's heavy costs and endurance penalties to make a speedy packet boat, one with one or more "crew lounges" and a small medbay to add luxury-liner passenger capability, and one with just a couple more cargo bays for max capacity.
- A medium-sized (one build per slip, but not insanely enormous) dedicated freighter, probably dual-core protium, with similarly spartan equipment (Large Transporter, minimal point defense, maybe small shuttle bay), laser-focused on maximizing efficient logistical throughput. Ovoid again, this time without the secondary hull as they're underwhelming-to-terrible volume-per-cost efficiency.
(I do think dual-core is worth enough cruise speed that the extra cargo-lightyears of throughput per calendar year will pay off within the decade, never mind the life of the ship.)
- A supermax bulk carrier that anybody can actually afford: Literally The Exact Post-Modest-Refit Iron Road hull, core systems (except go for the Warp 4 drive), and Type 1 mounts; just leave out the heavier disruptors that replaced the original particle lances and all the lavish secondary equipment. Should be a stupidly cheap, quick, and easy design that the shipyards are already mostly tooled up for and familiar with, and it'll have massive capacity in absolute and per-cost terms... but it'll still be, you know, a big-ass bulk carrier, and still leave the "smaller, more individually affordable" niche unfilled.
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