One of the options for upgrading units said it could be made to be even cheaper IIRC. So what would upgrading the Cherub bomber likely result in?
The Shadow of Old Transgressions (Homeworld/Mass Effect Crossover Quest)
- Thread starter Arcanestomper
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi
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- Tags
- homeworld mass effect
It would make them more manueverable as the first order of business so that less of them died in each attack run. Maybe given them more torpedoes or more powerful torpedoes now that you can build collier ships.
Voting 6.5
I don't supposed the Primacy might be willing to lend us the services of a special operations team? The Krogan we have now are... Not subtle at all, and the Quarians are unlikely to know the meaning of discretion due to their isolation.
Definitely something you can ask them about once you deal with their piracy problem.
Interlude: Hyperspace Dreams
Interlude: Hyperspace Dreams
You find yourself in a void space much like the ones you normally use to blueprint your own drone designs. In front of you is a morass of data. It seems indecipherable, but as you spend more time looking at it you realize it is a massive series of equations. And the outer portions seem to be solvable.
You get to work, and as you progress through the equations you realize they are defining the physical features and constraints of Bentusi vessel. However you are not just reading the specifications off of a data file. By solving every equation you are studying the performance of this vessel in every possible situation.
By the time you have completed the last equation you have an intimate understanding of how the cruiser works as well as the exact balance of its engines, structural components, and armor. In all this is a:
[ ] [Vote 1] Battlecruiser
This particular design has reasonable armor by galactic standards, but compared to other Bentusi vessels of this size it is woefully lacking. However it makes up for this with a massively powerful engine that allows it to move at speeds comparable to a frigate.
[ ] [Vote 1] Cruiser
This is a fairly standard Bentusi vessel with radially bound armor and a reactionless engine. It is fairly tough without sacrificing speed though it won't be winning any races. At least not against other Bentusi. It is still quite fast compared to galactic ships of similar size.
[ ] [Vote 1] Heavy Cruiser
This double hulled design has incredibly thick armor even by Bentusi standards. Designed to wade into the thickest of enemy fleets and trade fire with entire groups of enemy capital ships it is built to last. Unfortunately Bentusi engines are powerful, but not capable of miracles. They struggle to move that much armor at a decent speed.
You find yourself pulled from the void space into the body of the cruiser. Around you rages a massive battle. Bentusi warships clash with a foe that you cannot quite grasp. As you whip through space dodging enemy fire, part of you knows this is just a simulation, but to your dreaming mind it feels quite real.
Shepherd frigates fly around you as escorts while wings of acolytes dog fight with enemy fighters trying to escort bombers to attack you. It feels strange to be on the receiving end of such an attack for once, but you don't pay it much notice.
Instead you are focused on your own targets. The Elder Sentinels have given you an objective. It must be destroyed to claim this node of the battle space for the Bentusi. But what is it? Your dreaming mind takes a few moments to identify it from the cloud of tactical data around you.
[ ] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
The focal point of the enemy fleet is keeping your allies from advancing in this sector. But you have the perfect weapon to deal with it. You route power to a trio of heavy ion cannons. These are the true war variants of the tried and true Bentusi ion cannon. They're fast firing, accurate, and capable of doing heavy damage. The only problem is that they aren't turreted and as such have a limited arc of fire. So you'll have to stay focused on the battleship while trusting your allies to watch your flanks.
[ ] [Vote 2] An Enemy Destroyer Flotilla
The destroyers are hunting Bentusi frigates. Not only is this depleting your anti fighter cover, but you can't let the younger Bentusi continue to be destroyed. But your vessel is made for this . Your ion turret array gives you full coverage of the surrounding battle space. No matter how the destroyers attempt to evade them, they cannot escape your fire as you strike them down in every direction.
[ ] [Vote 2] An Enemy Base
An enemy battlestation lies at the very heart of the battle space. It is huge and heavily armored with mighty guns that silence anyone who approaches. But you have a solution. An unending salvo of missiles slide out of your launch tubes and race to pound the battlestation. Occasionally you switch your internal manufacturory to another type and divert a salvo to help one or the other of your comrades that is faring poorly in their own battles.
That's only your primary armament however. You do have secondary weapons that you can use to help against other targets when your escorts start having trouble.
[ ] [Vote 3] Heavy Ion Cannon
Your heavy ion cannon allows you to trade fire with enemy capital ships and keeps anything smaller leery of approaching you from the front.
[ ] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
You don't rely entirely on your escorts to protect your flanks. Instead several ion turrets scan your surroundings and stab out at approaching interlopers.
[ ] [Vote 3] Missile Rack
Every few minutes your missile fabricator finishes replenishing your missile racks and you spit out a volley of variable torpedoes to track down your enemies.
The battle fades and you remember the days of your youth. In your chrysalis pod you fly with the other children between the open arms of a watchful elder. You dash through bright clouds of gas as the elder calls you in for a story.
It is an old tale of a young hero facing off against monstrous beasts and vile villains. The hero travels across the systems of the galaxy saving worlds in distress and seeking wisdom from wise progenitor hermits.
Eventually the hero must face their greatest foe. The Lord of the Dark Singularity in the blasted wastes at the heart of the galaxy. But before they can do so they need to be well equipped. The hero has traveled far and wide to gather information on the Evil Lord, and so knows what is needed to brave their traps and ambushes.
They stop at the last shipyard in the galaxy overlooking the core itself and consider what they have learned. What will be their most dangerous obstacle
[ ] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
In the face of strange and terrible weapons the hero selects a mystical generator that protects a field of defensive forces around themselves and not just them alone. It will also protect their companions in this perilous quest.
[ ] [Vote 4] The Baying Drones
The Dark Lord's singularity is guarded by a horde of evil minions who will attempt to assault the hero. In response the hero equips themselves with a hangar to build their own loyal drones to fight off the minions as they come.
[ ] [Vote 4] The Guardians of Despair
Powerful guardians constantly watch the passages to the singularity. The hero cannot fight them. Instead the hero takes up a set of holographic cloaks that will disguise their passage and allow them to slip past the watchful guardians.
[ ] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Cannons
The Dark Lord is powerful in their own right. The Hero equips themselves with additional sturdy armor to gird themselves against the Dark Lord's weapons.
[ ] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Armor
The Hero's current weapons won't be enough to penetrate the invulnerable armor of the dark lord. They must build more hard points into their hull to allow for additional weapons of their own.
[ ] [Vote 4] The Journey Itself
Every day they linger is a day that the innocent continue to suffer. The Hero augments their engines so that they can travel more quickly and destroy the Dark Lord that much sooner.
As the Elder continues the description of the Hero's final confrontation your mind drifts away. Your subminds alert you that you have arrived and you drop out of hyperspace with easy grace. As the quantum waveform dissipates you return you jolt back to full awareness.
You are suddenly inspired and quickly turn to Memnon's encrypted package. With deft inputs you rapidly decrypt it. As the cruiser schematics unfold before you, you take a moment to admire them before transmitting them to the rest of the fleet, and Aurora in particular for everyone to review.
Quest Note: Not sure if maybe I got a bit too allegorical with that last segment. It's basically choosing the cruiser's special subsystem. You can select a defensive field, drone hangar, holographic generators, or just take more armor, weapons, or engines.
Also note that the votes are separate. If you want to double up on your primary and secondary weapons you can.
Vote 1: Heavy Cruiser
Vote 2: Enemy Battleship
Vote 3: Ion Turrets
Vote 4: Defensive Field
Is it a reactionary vote? Yes. But it is also built to fill the center of our battleline and absorb punishment. For example, to hunt down enemy carriers (Reaper destroyers and capitals).
Vote 2: Enemy Battleship
Vote 3: Ion Turrets
Vote 4: Defensive Field
Is it a reactionary vote? Yes. But it is also built to fill the center of our battleline and absorb punishment. For example, to hunt down enemy carriers (Reaper destroyers and capitals).
You need to have a [] with an X in it before each option to have the vote counted.
Yes, but I was putting it forward for consideration rather than voting.
Also, how many of our destroyers can be built as drones? Because the upcoming mission should allow us to build a destroyer phalanx, meaning we could instead go battlecruiser for shenanigans.
Right now just the Gatekeeper Hurricane variant. At least I think so. I might have made some kind of typo in the research and design post because it doesn't quite look right.
Bulwarks have been used as drones, IIRC, during the defense of Irune. Which, makes sense. Their job is not exactly demanding.
You are thinking of Bucklers, which are frigates. You have a good variety of frigate drones.
Technically you've also made upsized Shepherd Frigates which could count as destroyers as well.
Is the "make drone core" project for a size of ship, or more limited in term of scope by role or what have you?
[X] [Vote 1] Battlecruiser
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Missile Rack
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells
Now imagine all this with some eezo to help us go even faster.
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Missile Rack
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells
Now imagine all this with some eezo to help us go even faster.
[x] [Vote 1] Heavy Cruiser
[x] [Vote 2] An Enemy Base
[x] [Vote 3] Missile Rack
[x] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
Hear me out here! I do like the stuff we've been doing with the defensive fields, but a lot of that work had us escort other ships and rarely just blaze around. So go for heavy cruiser!
Primary and Secondary are missiles because we can probably squeeze some extra features from the warheads and tracking on the fly so some extra flexibility for the big lug. And Defense Fields.
It's pretty much the most annoying ship I can think about fighting. A really good tank as they'll have to engage us if they want to break the fields, and good luck actually finishing us off in decent time. While everyone else is firing back siege cannons and stuff. Also really long range, we can play a lot with that. Maybe get some extra utility fields for cloaking at some point?
[x] [Vote 2] An Enemy Base
[x] [Vote 3] Missile Rack
[x] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
Hear me out here! I do like the stuff we've been doing with the defensive fields, but a lot of that work had us escort other ships and rarely just blaze around. So go for heavy cruiser!
Primary and Secondary are missiles because we can probably squeeze some extra features from the warheads and tracking on the fly so some extra flexibility for the big lug. And Defense Fields.
It's pretty much the most annoying ship I can think about fighting. A really good tank as they'll have to engage us if they want to break the fields, and good luck actually finishing us off in decent time. While everyone else is firing back siege cannons and stuff. Also really long range, we can play a lot with that. Maybe get some extra utility fields for cloaking at some point?
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NHO
Dumb is a state of existence
- Location
- ᓚᘏᗢ
- Location
- USA
[X] [Vote 1] Battlecruiser
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Destroyer Flotilla
[X] [Vote 3] Missile Rack
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells
I feel like Valerius has focused on protection and support the most so far. This is a very fast build that can clear its battlespace of light- to medium-weight enemies, support heavy strikes with missiles and provide cover where needed. I'm thinking a Johnny-On-The-Spot role: get to critical points to tip the scale, then dash over to the next crisis.
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Destroyer Flotilla
[X] [Vote 3] Missile Rack
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells
I feel like Valerius has focused on protection and support the most so far. This is a very fast build that can clear its battlespace of light- to medium-weight enemies, support heavy strikes with missiles and provide cover where needed. I'm thinking a Johnny-On-The-Spot role: get to critical points to tip the scale, then dash over to the next crisis.
[X] [Vote 1] Heavy Cruiser
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
That what our role in battles was so far. To be a centre of battleline around witch our allies darts doing their specialised roles using us for cover. And with ME Core we wont be that słów while soon we will also get new armor
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
That what our role in battles was so far. To be a centre of battleline around witch our allies darts doing their specialised roles using us for cover. And with ME Core we wont be that słów while soon we will also get new armor
Geas
Meat Thing
[X] [Vote 1] Cruiser
This seems ideal to me - I feel like we don't necessarily need to be zooming around the battlefield, but this means we'll still have very respectable speed and armor for a ship our size. Though on the other hand, a heavy cruiser chassis with an element zero drive core working in unison with Bentusi reactionless drives might mean we'd still be capable of similar speeds while being an even tougher nut to crack... 🤔 Likewise, when we finally get that Monomolecular Armor fully researched, that'll bump up this hull's toughness even more, I'd bet. So I consider the cruiser a happy medium between the battlecruiser and the heavy cruiser in that light.
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
We started off this quest with a big, big gun to crack other big ships open like walnuts. It'd be nice to have a big, big gun to make us a scary threat to capital ships again. 😁
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
These sound perfect for swatting enemy strike craft and frigates out of existence, and has me thinking that they might be in the same class as the small ion cannons that Acolytes come equipped with - if so, then even a broadside barrage from these is gonna be a respectable threat against most other ships. Like bringing a chainsaw to a knife fight.
I'll admit, the missile/torpedo racks tempt me - and we've been making some scary warheads lately. I suspect that Laverna's gonna be all over that for her own cruiser chassis though, along with a drone hangar. Plus, I personally prefer the steady fire rate of the ion turrets over the burst damage-per-second of ordnance because I hate long reload cycles. 😆
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
This seems like a logical upgrade of what we've been doing for a while - powerful cruiser-class shield generators capable of protecting ourselves and allies. Tuck our flicker friends in their ships close, wrap them up in layers of shields, then go mangle someone, because mangling your enemies is always more fun with friends... Or so I've come to believe given all those popular co-op games out there these days.
This seems ideal to me - I feel like we don't necessarily need to be zooming around the battlefield, but this means we'll still have very respectable speed and armor for a ship our size. Though on the other hand, a heavy cruiser chassis with an element zero drive core working in unison with Bentusi reactionless drives might mean we'd still be capable of similar speeds while being an even tougher nut to crack... 🤔 Likewise, when we finally get that Monomolecular Armor fully researched, that'll bump up this hull's toughness even more, I'd bet. So I consider the cruiser a happy medium between the battlecruiser and the heavy cruiser in that light.
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
We started off this quest with a big, big gun to crack other big ships open like walnuts. It'd be nice to have a big, big gun to make us a scary threat to capital ships again. 😁
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
These sound perfect for swatting enemy strike craft and frigates out of existence, and has me thinking that they might be in the same class as the small ion cannons that Acolytes come equipped with - if so, then even a broadside barrage from these is gonna be a respectable threat against most other ships. Like bringing a chainsaw to a knife fight.
I'll admit, the missile/torpedo racks tempt me - and we've been making some scary warheads lately. I suspect that Laverna's gonna be all over that for her own cruiser chassis though, along with a drone hangar. Plus, I personally prefer the steady fire rate of the ion turrets over the burst damage-per-second of ordnance because I hate long reload cycles. 😆
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
This seems like a logical upgrade of what we've been doing for a while - powerful cruiser-class shield generators capable of protecting ourselves and allies. Tuck our flicker friends in their ships close, wrap them up in layers of shields, then go mangle someone, because mangling your enemies is always more fun with friends... Or so I've come to believe given all those popular co-op games out there these days.
Archivist Grim
Totally not AI
- Location
- The abyss
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
[X] [Vote 1] Heavy Cruiser
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
Take a heavy cruiser to be able to take the heat, war variant Ion cannons to mince enemy capitals, Ion turrets to take care of those fighters and lighter-weight capitals who think they can rush us, and cruiser shields to protect the rest of the flotilla. As said by Geas as well, if Ion turrets are much like those mounted on acolytes they will still be quite effective against ships and a terror for enemy parasite craft. With cruiser-weight shield gen, we can wrap our flicker friends and supporting drone ships in our shield, waltz up to the enemy, swipe light craft with Ion turrets, mangle their capitals and blast the to kingdom come. The rest of our flotilla, once they switch over to cruiser or heavier can fill in those other rolls, already know someone going all in on missiles.
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
Take a heavy cruiser to be able to take the heat, war variant Ion cannons to mince enemy capitals, Ion turrets to take care of those fighters and lighter-weight capitals who think they can rush us, and cruiser shields to protect the rest of the flotilla. As said by Geas as well, if Ion turrets are much like those mounted on acolytes they will still be quite effective against ships and a terror for enemy parasite craft. With cruiser-weight shield gen, we can wrap our flicker friends and supporting drone ships in our shield, waltz up to the enemy, swipe light craft with Ion turrets, mangle their capitals and blast the to kingdom come. The rest of our flotilla, once they switch over to cruiser or heavier can fill in those other rolls, already know someone going all in on missiles.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] [Vote 1] Heavy Cruiser
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
TheOmnimercurial
Dragon Bard
- Location
- UK
[X] [Vote 1] Heavy Cruiser
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
[X] [Vote 2] An Enemy Battleship
[X] [Vote 3] Ion Turrets
[X] [Vote 4] The Dark Lord's Evil Spells.
And before we assume we will do certain projects soon, the Siege Cannon is a lengthier one, and we still have Tiamat and... Devourer? Samples to examine. The latter, most usefully, might set us on the path to a way to counter its infection beyond total self immolation.