Yes and?
None of that changes or detracts from anything I've said?
Denva could put 46 Caltrops in orbit using just the VBP they were able to spare for us and exactly 0 destroyers because trying to build the latter runs into a hard logistical block that they're unlikely to overcome for at least another turn or two. If we were to research and design larger platforms they could build those just as easily and they would be similarly incapable of building larger ships.
You say that needing to build a shipyard first isn't a significant obstacle, I say that if it wasn't they'd have one built by now and we wouldn't be having this discussion. If spontaneously hiring thousands of people trained in a dangerous technical profession for which every living worker with any actual experience is dead were a routine task for a government, then the subject of OMC training time would have never come up in the thread. If finding the BP to make it happen were the only thing holding them back, they could have built 88 ship construction slots worth of yards last turn rather than only having some in progress now.
I'm not saying it's not a niche situation, and I never said it was a huge advantage, but not needing shipyards is absolutely an advantage that makes defense platforms worth considering, especially in the current situation.
Yeah, but I think the logistical block doesn't exist. They haven't built a shipyard yet because they haven't dedicated the BP, not because running shipyards is hard and requires decades of HR work. The same BP that would build the shipyard would be the ones spent to build a largely useless number of defense platforms.
1000 BP for a small shipyard is way better than spending the same BP on 2-3 rubbish defense platforms.
Hence wanting to research Medium platforms. Those can be larger! And they don't need to move if they're defending stationary places, like a planet or station. Plus, the CP reduction is very significant since Denva relies on OMC.
It is if you want to get a bunch of them online at once (since you'll need more shipyarss for more slots).
My bet's on medium platforms being just as worthless, because the underlying problem is the core build mechanic. For static defenses to be worth buying they need to be bought at a
large discount compared to an equivalent fighting strength of mobile elements, and that's simply not how our rules work. (This can take the form of discounts or of capability boosts or both, but we don't really have
either.)
I don't think Denva has a CP shortage, and ships won't be a significant CP draw until they actually have a significant number of them. A destroyer pulls the same CP as a single non-MS manufactory. They've got a
lot of manufactories. By the time that's relevant, they'll hopefully have MS destroyers, too, which may not take much CP at all.
And yes, if you were going to spend, say, 10,000 BP on defenses in one turn, you might need...a 3000 BP shipyard instead of a 1000 BP shipyard. But that's not a big problem and not actually the situation. If it was, well, I'd be pretty happy with them building either 4 ships with a small shipyard and some fixed defenses, or a medium shipyard and 4-5 ships but having the shipyard.
And, actually, moving is an enormous advantage
even for defending a fixed location. Especially a big fixed location like a planet. Fixed defenses either cluster together to cover each other, but not cover the objective well, or spread out and are exposed to defeat in detail. It's an even more enormous advantage when you have more than one fixed location, which we do, because it means all your defense can be where it is needed instead of being trapped where it isn't.
