Anton, still in VR, sends a message to General Miyamoto.
"Greetings, General. I have to say that feels weird to say it out loud.
I'd like to request your telepresence here in our VR session, because I have here a ship with great tactical-technical characteristics, but with a significant cost attached and of questionable strategical value given its purpose.
The ship in question is the Black Death," Anton makes the ship appear beside him in the session. "And it's intended to literally sit the entire battle out until something appears that we need to destroy and either don't have the firepower for, or can't react to in time.
The ship is basically a flying plasma cannon. All of the unnecessary hardware is stripped, there is space for the pilot and his life support, but besides that it's all engines and cannon. It can reach anywhere on the planet in about half an hour, give or take, and anywhere in orbit in less than that because it doesn't need to slow down to fire. The power of the cannon is such that it can shoot down small capital ships that don't have point defense good enough to hit the Black Death before it fires, and it can pummel Avatars of War into dust. But it only carries six shots per flight. It's an emergency interceptor, pure and simple, it's not meant to stay and fight - just get where it needs to be, destroy the target, and hopefully get back to resupply.
And therein lies the problem. It's a ship not meant to fight so much as wait for something bad enough to happen. I keep comparing it to a fire extinguisher - it's like something you spend time and money to acquire, and then hang it on the wall and hope never to have to use it. The question is, should we even have it? We can save a good amount of resources by just leaving it as-is until after the battle, and spend them on strengthening regular defenses.
Since you're the general, Miyamoto, I think you're the one most qualified to say whether we go ahead with it or not.
And as a smaller note, there are two regular ships here that I wanted to equip with a pair of cutting lasers each, in case they need to act as close air support. Whether or not we need those weapons is a good strategic question too."
((Requesting projected RU savings for not converting the Blackship-too into the Black Death, and exactly how much RU will the four Cutting Laser turrets for the two regular shuttles cost))