I think your list is a great starting point
@LightLan. As a thought experiment, let's break it down into 500 RP bites and prioritize from there. Since we need to get Abacus manufacturing no matter what, let's assume that's a given and exclude it from the list.
My first 500 would be:
- Efficient Equipment Distribution (100 RP) Let's see if you can apply the benefits from weapon packing to equipment (Equipment costs count as 0.9x for ship capacity packing. Especially effective for cargo holds.)
- Large-scale Machine spirits (75 RP) As it stands, you can integrate machine spirits into small things. Expanding that to military installations and ships is going to require designing even more complex networks and figuring out how to make them work. With Anexa's insights you think it's eminently possible thought (Unlocks machine-spirit equipped versions of frigate-sized or smaller ships and platforms, as well as most defensive installations. Unlocks more research for machine spirits for larger ships & platforms.)
- Machine Spirit Void Tactics (125 RP) Fighting a ship is a very different thing from fighting on the ground, but many of the principles are similar. Adapt them. (Improved combat performance of machine-spirit imbued ships and void fighters. May unlock technology for improved strategic coordination. If you want to point your fleet at a system and say "Conquer it, spare the civilians" this is a good tech to have.) Requires Large-Scale machine spirits
- Gravity Weapons (200 RP) You know it's possible to use gravity as a weapon, though it sounds a bit crazy. But still, it might be worth trying? (Unlocks basic graviton weapons for infantry, vehicles and warships, as well as research for more advanced graviton weapons. Half of the research necessary for Nova Cannons)
I think this is very feasible to complete before our return to Denva, makes our ships smarter, and unlocks a new class of weapons.
If we had time after that, then I would grab:
- Machine Spirit Ship Design Improvements (200 RP) By encouraging creative and complex solutions to problems you can use the design-specialized machine spirits to improve your ship designs in exciting new ways. (Allows you to cram more things into void ships, depending on rolls. May unlock further research to further optimize cramming, as well as discount the absolute cost of various categories of ship components).
- The Biggest Boom (150 RP) So. There's no actual upper limit for how big a fusion warhead can get. But it does get more complicated to build bigger and bigger bombs. Let's figure that out. (Unlocks bigger, exterminatus-grade warheads for nukes. The other half of the research necessary for Nova Cannons)
- Streamlined ship design (150 RP) You can improve your tools for ship design to make it easier to design ships in the future. That might be nice (Halves the RP cost to design new ships, may unlock other ship design improvements)
This would increase our cramming across the board, unlock the nova cannon research, and heavily discount the RP cost of designing the ships. If we had another 50 RP wiggle room I'd swap Streamlined ship design for -
- Human Design Interfaces (200 RP) You've adapted your simulation software to work with advanced neural implants, but what about your design software? If humans could play with your auto-cad as well as you can then that would help you design or even entirely farm out the design of things. (Discounts design options, may unlock technology to improve the RP generated from humans with simulation implants, either per-person or simply raising the cap.)
- Since that discounts all of our design options.
Just my $0.02
Kind of disagree. There are things we
have to research.
-[] Abacus Manufacturing (100 RP) is
absolutely essential, not only to stick them in our ships, but also so Denva has safeish Warp travel.
-
Extremely Efficient Weapon Distribution (200 RP) is a 15% shrink to weapons for 200, and iirc they use a lot of our space,
-[] Efficient Equipment Distribution (100 RP) the is also imperative for those reason. Keep in mind with a repair bay we can snap new miltech on our ships easily on-the-go, but we can't do as much with our entire distribution and layout.
-[] Streamlined ship design (150 RP) You can improve your tools for ship design to make it easier to design ships in the future. That might be nice (Halves the RP cost to design new ships, may unlock other ship design improvements)
Will pay for itself with a mere couple BPs, which we will wind up making. Should be a very high priority.
-[] Improved Engine Designs (150 RP)
Our ship is hilariously slow, anything to shore that up is a +.
-[] Boarding Capabilities (100 RP)
Probably really useful, but we can do much the same with a teleporter.
New branches like gravity weapons I'm much less keen on right now, since we've neglected these techs for so long due to the immaterium tech obsessionk and have a
huge ship tech deficit to make up for already.
-[] Grand Cruisers (400 RP) is necessary if we want to upship too, it really depends on how it's going in Denva.
-[] Advanced Materials (250 RP) (Unlocks improved armor, as well as research to unlock megastructures. Also required for battleships and larger walkers) also necessary for battleships (might not need for our main ship).
-[] Heavy Void shields (150 RP)
if we want something better than a run-of-the-mill below average Imperial grand cruiser. Not that important, though.
-[] Large-scale Machine spirits (75 RP)
-[] Machine Spirit Void Tactics (125 RP)
Cheap, and important to maximize our CP and be able to control a fleet proper. Must-get.
On a different topic, this is the list of researches that'd improve our odds/results on scanning the
Nowhere near even a priority when we're going back to Denva and building stuff. Full military, ships, and construction tech.
