For the civilian ships, I like the starter ships chosen. I also like the Lictor design submitted by BGreman.
However, I'm wondering if we'll want bigger ships as our starting naval vessels than the one I designed. The VICTORIA Gunboat was designed to be mass-produced cheaply, not constitute our capital fleet. To that end, we can probably build them quick enough not to warrant wasting our starting two military vessels on my beauty.
I'd have to know what the limits are to our two starting craft in order to submit a design. I'd imagine that it is either a missile boat or an upgunned version of the VICTORIA.
If we can save the miltary vessel for later, we might want to reserve one slot for when we develop a gravsurvey ship.
Gravsurvey might be a long way off, we're better served settling on a main military design. Aboth Ber has indicated 2 {free} prototype ships of 1,000 tons and 2 of 2,500 at the start.
I disagree about the Victory however - I see it as a potential picket-ship escort with the option of small scale swarm in combat, second only to massed fighters - I'd like twenty over each colony we establish. Also, upscale the Victory, {Victorious?}, to 2,500 tons and that can be our first battle-wagon, another one we can produce for ourselves when we finally get enough production to support it. We need a fighter design and that is made difficult by our low level tech at present, but with the sensor based fighter designed by EuchreJack, it would fill the Reich sensors with lots of blips and that will surely mess them right up. Plus, we might be able to refit them later when we get the techs to make arming them possible.
We should go ahead and start producing the Victory for ourselves, possibly grab one from Northrop-Grumman, {seriously, you can smell the quality right there!}, as a prototype to work from and to have one blip in the sky.
As for our Corundium conundrum, let's hope we secure a cache on one of the Jovian moons, or further out, that was one of the main reasons I designed the Hebrides with extra capacity - to get the job done quicker and go further.
Speaking of colonists - move everything we can to Mars, even our Naval shipyards where possible, but, by the time we have the resources to do that, Earth won't have the resources to do anything other than be a breeding factory for future colonists, and I don't really count on the reliability of that.
{PDC's - I tried but didn't have anything suitable to use as an example. I can't give an honest opinion about any design not having made any before to know their effectiveness. But....French, really?}
Provisional Captain Darkening Kaos;
Survey Division.
A little correction : only 2 military ships up to 2500 tons.
If you want, we can upscale the Victorious to 2500 ton, with additional Plasma Carronade, and a another layer of armor. I'll post the design later since I don't had a copy of Aurora in this comp.
And yes, the bonus 2 ships can be 'stored' for later use. We can just assumed the Defense Contractors provide some prototype to Allied Military.
I don't know, but I think Fighters can't be refitted. But stil if we make a sensor fighter we can build a new fighter without active sensor. The proposed Sensor-Fighter can act a SWACS.
Missile based weapon although powerful is still a little cumbersome at this tech level. If we can get the ship size into 6000 range and more stronger missile that's a different story.
So I think the Survey ships will go to Jupiter and beyond. In the future the ANSEC, ANEA and ANMoT can decide what the Survey Ships should do.
The Meson Armed PDC was built to counter 'possible' MIRV attacks by Reich or other Nations. Don't worry we can think this later. The French can quickly refit their Maginot Fortress into TN-grade PDCs.
A little ramblings:
Since unknown time, French was a very strong land power, only the event of World War that devastate France and hurt their economy, military and national pride that make them lok wimpy to the rest of world, but in our timeline, the war never happens in the West, the war happens in the East, so France was spared economically and their military 'learned a lot' from Middle East and Indo-China combat (the French had the largest military casualties of Allied Nations in Middle East and Indo-China theater may had some part in that)
The French in this timeline are way beyond adept in building fortifications, they after all spend the last 40 years facing Reich and Italy border. They turned the wimpy Maginot Line into conjoined Wall of Concrete and Metal with Spiked of Masterful 155mm Guns and SAMs spanned from Belgium into Italy, the whole Eastern French Border. Even combined airstrikes or artillery barrage only deal minimal damage. Most major city had fortified underground shelter, heck they even turned the Paris catacombs into a nuclear bunker that can hold whole French Army division. The French even turned the Holland and Belgium into some kind of Fortress Nations (the ony things that prevent the French from doing some takeover was Britain and US protests). They also make an expansive elaborate underground tunnels network than span from Atlantic coast to Mediterranean beaches, Vietcong Style (bonus: They use the excavated dirt from these tunnels to used on Holland land reclamation, so part of Holland are French Soil, pun intended). They are way beyond crazy prepared in the event a war with Reich.
The Reich also fortified their side of border, turning Siegfried Line into maze of Landmines, Big Caliber Guns, Machine Gun Nest, and more. 'Luckily' with TN opened other world to fought for, the war hardy happens now, hardly.