@Sean: Just an idea: Specify that the shipyard works with cradles or similar modules. The module acts as the foundation, the skeleton, the scaffolding of the ship. While in the shipyard, the ship never leaves its module. Instead, the module itself moves around to wherever it needs to be. Once work on a ship is finished, it is moved to a special storage area that is right next to the mass driver's beginning. That way you can have them ready to launch. Then, depending on whether you consider construction speed or launching speed more important you can either reuse the modules or you can leave them around the ship and modify them to allow the ship to survive higher acceleration and be more aerodynamic and more magnetic. The latter option also allows you to reuse the modules, assuming they are not significantly damaged by passing through the atmosphere when going to orbit or during reentry. Don't know if it'll change anything to the numbers piecewise is going to give you but it sounds like an efficient way of doing things to me. Got the idea from automated car factories.
You might also want to make sure to build them near preexisting defensive lasers or build new ones around them to ensure they are more likely to survive bombardment. Or just make sure to build them deep underground.
And you should probably build that manipulator lab soon, since ships depend on them for defense from small arms and micrometeorites, for movement and reaching the right speed for using jump points and for firing their weapons. You might want to ask Ares what the safe distance for a catastrophic event is and if it is absurdly high, you might want to ask if you can simply build it deep below Hephaestus, in some kind of quarantined area. It would probably be safer and easier.
@PyroDesu: Your interdictor ship is a good idea, however, there is a problem. As noted in this tinker post:
Are automanipulator shields in use on larger vessels like Battleships? If not, why? Do they somehow overheat or run out of juice and have to recharge? Or would they need to be as big as the ship to offer proper protection?
They are, but they have limits. Think about the force of a round fired from the sword. Not try and stop that round within a short distance. Thats a fuck ton of force, to use a technical term. So while their automated manip systems provide some degree of protection against smaller weapons (Below a certain size or power you're basically never going to damage one of those ships) they really can't stop a full power round without an automanip of horrendous size and frightening cost; a cost measured not solely in dollars, either.
They are probably going to be expensive, huge and slow, unable to dodge, since they're basically going to be one giant automanipulator and even then they aren't going to last long, since they are going to need time to recharge. They might have some use as stationary defenses or for blocking jump points. Generally situations where you expect you're going to be facing your enemy at close range, where the ability to dodge does not matter or when you just need to put a wall in front of your enemy no matter the cost.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette: OOC and NEW PLAYER INFO (Read 2494415 times)