The
design of psy shields has to be very, very tightly controlled, because that's something that would give chaos a major leg up in attempting to counter it. Giving it to the imperium in general is right out, they're too endemically penetrated by chaos cultists for that not to backfire even ignoring issues like how they'll misuse its warp sensing capabilities for even more oppression, or to piss in the cheerios of craftworlders who
will blame us for that.
That even applies somewhat to providing it as black box 'archeotech'. Any general distribution to imperial governments means putting it in reach of chaos cultists for espionage, which then comes back to bite us in the form of them making effective countermeasures faster.
This isn't to say that we can't export the technology at all - but this is a critical and ideally
secret military technology. Most of the logic about military exports in real life such as export/usage restrictions, providing export versions of the systems instead of the fully featured one we use, etc. are going to apply.
It'd have also helped with the power armor we made for Cia if we'd done it last turn, and doing it this turn wouldn't be any less important than the stealth techs which won't really come into play until we get back to Denva.
Well yes, that's why my plan does neither.
Last turn, it was a choice between something that would help the power armor for Cia, something that's only going to be used if things go wrong, and upgrading our entire robot force to prevent it from getting that bad in the first place.
I perceived the power armor as a safety net rather than as a military preparation for the immediate concern of xylaris boarding us again same turn basically. Our defensive onion with Cia is basically:
1.
Don't get boarded <- Sensors
2.
Don't let boarders ingress deeply enough for Cia to engage <-
Bots
3.
Don't let Cia get hit <- Improved Articulation (given power armor),
bots for support
4.
Don't let hits injure Cia <-
Power armor
5.
Don't let Cia die or be crippled from injuries <-
bots for evac/cover, med school
Improved articulation acquired in time for power armor would have mostly helped on layer 3 by making her a bit more nimble and killy while using it.
By contrast, upgrades that apply to our bots universally have a much larger impact at layer 2, also impact layers 3 and 5, and are just below not getting boarded in the first place in terms of mitigating the actual threat to the ship as a whole.
I think this was a reasonable choice of trade-off, all told.
Using MS to control and filter sensory data to get more out of it. Another way to make sensors better, basically.
That might help for export sensors, but Vita is going to be better at that step than any machine spirit. If it happens, it'll mostly be for CP reductions I think.
