I did Math below. Tl;dr:
We need to capture the agriworld freighters or else spend ~25 actions building food transports. But we only need about 2-3 actions worth of passenger freighters to evacuate Voxx over 2-3 turns. If we capture the agriworld freighters & the special design action turns into a special build action then we'll need about 5-6 actions worth of freighter building.
There's also the question of making separate passenger and cargo ships or just a single design that's both, so it carries food in and people out. The problem is that food production isn't always at the same place that people can be dropped off at. So we'd be stuck doing an awkward triangle-like route that would leave both holds empty. Not to mention that it wouldn't let us balance if we needed more food transport or people transport later - we'd be stuck building both capacities just to get more of the one we needed. With that being said, let's run some numbers.
I'm going to say we can jam 4 Titanic Passenger/Cargo Holds into a single heavy freighter. Not sure what compromises need to be made for that, but they should be. In that case, the cargo freighters can feed 4 billion for a month per trip, while the passenger freighters can move 400 million per trip. Let's assume we make some rustbuckets to keep these things moving quickly, so that each round-trip takes ~2 weeks? I don't know if that's reasonable (@HeroCooky ?), but it gives us order-of-magnitude estimates. I'm going to ignore the agriworlds for now and then factor them back in at the end.
With those assumptions, each cargo freighter can feed ~8 billion. We probably want to aim for feeding about 400 billion total, since not only will the war kill a lot of them but we won't be responsible for feeding people while they're fighting us. That means we need 50 cargo freighters, which is.... 1250 build points, or approximately 25 actions worth of building. Hmm. Well shoot. Looks like we need to really prioritize taking those three agriworld freighters intact. Let's make a stealth boarding vessel and do a write-in action to make sure that happens. They can apparently feed the entire planet on their own, so it's just a no-brainer on how how much more efficient capturing them is as opposed to building our own ships. We should still build a smaller number of cargo vessels, but maybe only 8? That's 4ish actions? Less if the special action lets us build freighters more efficiently, maybe 3 per action instead of 2 - then 3 actions would probably cover it the food transport needs.
As for passenger vessels, if we built 10 of them then we'd be moving 4 billion people every ~2 weeks. Roughly 40 billion every year. 400 billion in one turn. That number is probably off by a factor of 2 (likely we'd 'only' move 200 billion in a turn.)
Which is all to say that we need a lot fewer passenger haulers than we need cargo haulers. We could probably get away with 6 passenger haulers and still be able to depopulate Voxx over 2-3 turns, though we'd need to keep everybody waiting on the Hive fed for that time. That's 3 actions worth of normal build actions, 2 actions if the special action develops to build 3 freighters per turn.
We need to capture the agriworld freighters or else spend ~25 actions building food transports. But we only need about 2-3 actions worth of passenger freighters to evacuate Voxx over 2-3 turns. If we capture the agriworld freighters & the special design action turns into a special build action then we'll need about 5-6 actions worth of freighter building.
It's like a big, grown up version of the Cassiopeia! But you know, actually properly sized and stuff. Let's make a dozen. They should help us avoid an infrastructure hit every time we need to integrate a planet. Literally spending one normal on them will get us ~18, and that should really help buffer stuff out.
There's also the question of making separate passenger and cargo ships or just a single design that's both, so it carries food in and people out. The problem is that food production isn't always at the same place that people can be dropped off at. So we'd be stuck doing an awkward triangle-like route that would leave both holds empty. Not to mention that it wouldn't let us balance if we needed more food transport or people transport later - we'd be stuck building both capacities just to get more of the one we needed. With that being said, let's run some numbers.
I'm going to say we can jam 4 Titanic Passenger/Cargo Holds into a single heavy freighter. Not sure what compromises need to be made for that, but they should be. In that case, the cargo freighters can feed 4 billion for a month per trip, while the passenger freighters can move 400 million per trip. Let's assume we make some rustbuckets to keep these things moving quickly, so that each round-trip takes ~2 weeks? I don't know if that's reasonable (@HeroCooky ?), but it gives us order-of-magnitude estimates. I'm going to ignore the agriworlds for now and then factor them back in at the end.
With those assumptions, each cargo freighter can feed ~8 billion. We probably want to aim for feeding about 400 billion total, since not only will the war kill a lot of them but we won't be responsible for feeding people while they're fighting us. That means we need 50 cargo freighters, which is.... 1250 build points, or approximately 25 actions worth of building. Hmm. Well shoot. Looks like we need to really prioritize taking those three agriworld freighters intact. Let's make a stealth boarding vessel and do a write-in action to make sure that happens. They can apparently feed the entire planet on their own, so it's just a no-brainer on how how much more efficient capturing them is as opposed to building our own ships. We should still build a smaller number of cargo vessels, but maybe only 8? That's 4ish actions? Less if the special action lets us build freighters more efficiently, maybe 3 per action instead of 2 - then 3 actions would probably cover it the food transport needs.
As for passenger vessels, if we built 10 of them then we'd be moving 4 billion people every ~2 weeks. Roughly 40 billion every year. 400 billion in one turn. That number is probably off by a factor of 2 (likely we'd 'only' move 200 billion in a turn.)
Which is all to say that we need a lot fewer passenger haulers than we need cargo haulers. We could probably get away with 6 passenger haulers and still be able to depopulate Voxx over 2-3 turns, though we'd need to keep everybody waiting on the Hive fed for that time. That's 3 actions worth of normal build actions, 2 actions if the special action develops to build 3 freighters per turn.
