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[tryrar]

The Mythril perpetrator was Dubley IIRC

[AoshimaMichio]

@ Ao Teleport?

Just sleepy guessing, but the forest area with the UWM troopers around some wreckage might be the source.  Whenever somebody walked too far in any direction, they'd end up walking back to the wreckage.  It stopped when they fried the seed, so it could have been a teleportation thingermajigger.

That hardly counts as teleportation, it's more along the mind fuck and only thing they got out of it was a manipulator.

[Radio Controlled]

On the subject of dealing with battle suits - The best option is almost certainly ' Get the sods in close '. Remember during the Heph assault when those two sods casually leaped behind the battlesuit, jammed its legs with a pair of batons, and popped the hatch to reveal the juicy ARM interior in exactly 1 turn?

That was because flint choose to engage in melee, to spare civilians. You try getting close with a supported battlesuit, all of them shooting at you.


Also, even if we want to use hypothetical new tech for our ships, I think we can still build the skeletons of the ships already, and slot in the various components later on.  Unless all of them require extraordinarily new designs.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The combat ships are literally built around their main guns. There aren't turrets or pylons for weapons to slot into, the main weapon system is usually built right into the superstructure. We can probably build empty shells and install the weapons afterwards, but that would require some handwaving - normally very different weapons would have very different mounting requirements, to say nothing of power requirements. If we were to, say, create a giant PSL for a cruiser, the ammo banks alone would make for an entirely different ship than if we had an upscaled FEL or HEP. Missile systems are probably the only things that can be easily swapped, so we can probably build missile-based ships with impunity.

[Radio Controlled]

The combat ships are literally built around their main guns. There aren't turrets or pylons for weapons to slot into, the main weapon system is usually built right into the superstructure. We can probably build empty shells and install the weapons afterwards, but that would require some handwaving - normally very different weapons would have very different mounting requirements, to say nothing of power requirements. If we were to, say, create a giant PSL for a cruiser, the ammo banks alone would make for an entirely different ship than if we had an upscaled FEL or HEP. Missile systems are probably the only things that can be easily swapped, so we can probably build missile-based ships with impunity.

There's already a lot that we handwave. Besides, even if it turns out that we can't retrofit the shells, we can still turn them into 'regular' ships. And it's better than not using our production capacity. It's not like we're strapped for resources, mostly time.

[syvarris]

Spoiler: For Sean, continuation of discussion in the main Heph thread (click to show/hide)

I meant that "we don't have any improved tech of sufficient caliber to talk about yet". We can talk about things, but in the end what we'll use will be decided by what exists and works. Right now that's just the mass drivers, lasers, and missiles.

We do have improved tech, which I believe is of sufficient caliber.  The hexsand plate, which is basically improved BS plate, which IIRC is basically smaller warship plate.  We also have the sharkmist plate (I'm totally calling the infantry armor "sharksuit"), which is cheaply repairable.

Just on that, I can see two unusual tactics: First, we can make capital ships capable of taking much more of a beating.  It doesn't matter if their weapons can't kill lots of UWM ships quickly, because they can withstand a lot of hits.  Plus, the major part of these ships is their armor, so it'll be easier to swap their weapons out for improved types later.

Second, we can make lighter guerilla ships, which operate alongside stealthy "miner" ships.  Since the sharkmist armor can self-repair, these ships could quickly engage and disengage, and then mine an asteroid to replenish their armor.

My preference would be a mix of advanced kinetic and energy weapons coupled with specialist ships for nonstandard solutions.

Longterm, I agree on the E/KW, although it might be better to go with pure kinetic weapons for our first run.  Since UWM ships are specialized for dealing with both, using just one will reduce their armor's effectiveness.  Since it would only be the first run, they wouldn't have time to adapt their armor, and if they did, our second run would be even more effective since it would use both E&K.  That's just an idea though.

I disagree with the specialists...

For the latter I specifically want "barrier ships". Ship-to-ship weapons being what they are, they are very hard to defend against, so I'd like to develop some options for cost- and energy-effective defense, especially against kinetic weapons. I have a number of ideas in that regard, but Anton's "secretive inventor" nature is going to get in the way of getting all of those rapidly developed.

See, purely on it's own, this is fine.  Barrier ships are an interesting idea, and would be great to have.

But you're using it to justify not using traditional methods, and waiting.  This is a very bad idea.  From our knowledge of automanipulators, they are almost always more expensive than mundane alternatives, and making an outright barrier that can span areas relevant to space battles is going to be extraordinarily expensive; it's unlikely to work, and therefore doesn't work as a justification for anything.

Also, I understand that you're playing your character, but being secretive is only going to hurt us.  If your projects work, then they can render other people's work pointless, or make people have to seriously re-adjust their ideas to fit with it, with no warning.  If your projects fail, then nobody can help you fix flaws, and good ideas can go to waste.  Also, it makes it look like you're doing nothing and being unhelpful.

Primarily a "workhorse strikeforce" supported by specialists.

What does this mean, exactly?  Lots of bog standard skirmish ships, like we fought in M12, supported by "barrier" ships?

If some of my other ideas pan out, a different kind of specialist ships would be possible, one that could pretty much just waltz right up to the side of any enemy ship and do whatever.

"If some things work the way I think they do, we could have a ship that can go wherever it wants without retaliation."

This is not a useful statement.  What ideas?  By what function would they do this?  Do you mean they're undetectable stealth ships?  Can they paralyze enemies?  Do they only get one shot before the enemies can shoot back?

If we can make teleporter-bombs work on the fleet battle scale, then we won't need any of those - we can just telebomb everything we're up against, including something nasty like accelerated sharkmist bombs to cripple capital ships. The possibilities are endless, but until at least some of the possibilities are certainties, I have nothing to put forward. Therefore, not much to discuss.

Yes, and I am currently examining telebombs.  My guess is that they're too short range to be effective in space battles.

I would lean towards tech-advantage. Throwing numbers at the enemy is how UWM is used to fighting. What exactly the tech-advantage will be, highly depends on what tech we manage to develop.

I think you missed the question.  You're saying we should focus on what falls in our lap.  I'm saying we should focus on making what we want fall in our lap.  But what do we want?  "Better tech"?  Yes, but we probably won't be able to improve every aspect of our ships, all at the same time.

Also, we have to decide what types of ships we're building at this very moment.  We can choose what we want them to good at, even without having a great tech advantage.  My two suggestions are based on what we will need now: Heavily armored ships, using the hexsand armor, which can stay around as targets long enough for ground defenses to kill the ships.  We need these now, to defend Q'baja and possibly Heph.  Then there's troop transports, which we need to actually deploy sods anywhere.  Since these aren't combat ships, and are mainly armed for orbital bombardment, it doesn't matter if they're outdated- they gain little from better tech.

Either a defense advantage or an offense advantage will work, but in either case (or in combination) it would have to be decisive. One our ship taking out five to ten of theirs of the same weight class without suffering critical damage kind of decisive.

Why?  You think the entire UWM fleet will drop on Q'baja immediately upon them severing contact?  If so, we'll probably need a ratio of one to one hundred, rather than one to five.

Regardless, even if our ships are worth about as much as theirs, they're still worth something.  If we don't build any ships, then they're worth nothing.  Building ships now won't hurt our development of improved ships.

Mobility though... eh. I have a /very rough/ idea of what we could do to try for the mobility angle, but just being able to be (or not be) in a given place when we need it won't let us win a fight where everything else is stacked against us.

True, but it'll let us run from that fight.  Guerilla tactics.

Also, please don't just say "I have an idea for this" without saying what the idea is.  C'mon, man, just let us know.  Maybe someone else can develop the idea if you don't have the time/interest.

It's not going to need EIGHT of them, at least in the immediate future, but the two that will actually end up making runs to and from Hephaestus will definitely be useful.

Where does the "eight" figure come from?  I wrote that we have four armed transports on the wiki, because we had four salvageable ships.

[Parisbre56]

Just wanted to mention that barrier ships working with automanipulators alone would be very expensive. And not in a resource that can be found on Hephaestus:

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.

So while it is a feasible idea, it's probably best if it is limited spec-ops carriers, taking out hard targets and for insertion of spec-ops teams. Something like "load the barrier ship with our elite suicide squad, get close enough to the enemy death moon to teleport them to its control room and take it over" (I know a more reasonable plan would be to teleport nukes to its automanipulators to cause it to self-destruct, but who would miss an opportunity to have their own giant asteroid capital ship?)

If you want to construct a large number of hard to kill ships that can protect other ships, it might be better to just create a giant ablative hexsand shield on the front of the ship. That way, other ships can hide behind it and the enemy would have to either score repeated hits, find a way to flank the ship (which is a bit hard to do in space), get closer (again, hard to do in space), use automanipulator-based ammo (possible but probably more easily intercepted by point defense) or be lucky enough to score a hit on the barrel of its main cannon (plausible, if they use some sort of blackshot-like shell or guided lesho-like shell).

Or just construct giant asteroid capital ships and fill them with giant expensive automanipulators like the UWM does, if you think you can afford it. Too bad I can't do that abduction mission I wanted on Hephaestus... That would had made things quicker.

Also, you might want to check how telebombs work first, if they can actually be used so effectively in ship-to-ship combat. If they phase the object like Simus' suit or if they create some sort of field or even if they are a variation of the teleporter design I once proposed, then disrupting that would be trivial for the enemy if they manage to analyse the technology. So it might actually make sense to NOT give the troops that weapon and keep it on our ships, to minimize the chances they'll be able to analyse it and create countermeasures.

Now that I think about it, even if they use automanipulators that instantly teleport the bomb wherever you want with no ability to create countermeasures, then you'd still want the technology kept as secret as possible, since it can be such an advantage.

[Sean Mirrsen]

We do have improved tech, which I believe is of sufficient caliber.  The hexsand plate, which is basically improved BS plate, which IIRC is basically smaller warship plate.  We also have the sharkmist plate (I'm totally calling the infantry armor "sharksuit"), which is cheaply repairable.

Just on that, I can see two unusual tactics: First, we can make capital ships capable of taking much more of a beating.  It doesn't matter if their weapons can't kill lots of UWM ships quickly, because they can withstand a lot of hits.  Plus, the major part of these ships is their armor, so it'll be easier to swap their weapons out for improved types later.

Second, we can make lighter guerilla ships, which operate alongside stealthy "miner" ships.  Since the sharkmist armor can self-repair, these ships could quickly engage and disengage, and then mine an asteroid to replenish their armor.

See, the problem with creating "armor" ships is that, in principle, there is no defending against a battleship gauss slug with any amount of conventional armor. "Kinetic Kill Vehicle" fully applies, because it moves at a decent fraction of c, is the size of a large vehicle, and is almost guaranteed to kill you. The only hope in that regard is for ablative kinetic-absorption armor, the effectiveness of which against attacks of that scale we've yet to test.

The self-repair armor is going to be very good for smaller strikecraft though - being too fast and too small to target for the big guns, they'll only have to deal with PD, and the higher initial cost of the armor is going to be easily offset by the lessened maintenance costs of repairing laser gashes.

Longterm, I agree on the E/KW, although it might be better to go with pure kinetic weapons for our first run.  Since UWM ships are specialized for dealing with both, using just one will reduce their armor's effectiveness.  Since it would only be the first run, they wouldn't have time to adapt their armor, and if they did, our second run would be even more effective since it would use both E&K.  That's just an idea though.

I disagree with the specialists...

If you want to go for killing power, then you have to go full kinetic, especially if you want to do it with current tech. There is no armor that protects against kinetics well enough. Yet. The reason I want to have a mix of kinetics and energy weapons (hopefully advanced energy weapons, not mere lasers), is exactly long-term. Gauss ammunition is not exactly hard to come by, but any fleet fighting away from supply bases is going to run out eventually, plus energy weapons are easier to aim (marginally, at the distances and target speeds/sizes involved) and are generally more flexible.

For the latter I specifically want "barrier ships". Ship-to-ship weapons being what they are, they are very hard to defend against, so I'd like to develop some options for cost- and energy-effective defense, especially against kinetic weapons. I have a number of ideas in that regard, but Anton's "secretive inventor" nature is going to get in the way of getting all of those rapidly developed.

See, purely on it's own, this is fine.  Barrier ships are an interesting idea, and would be great to have.

But you're using it to justify not using traditional methods, and waiting.  This is a very bad idea.  From our knowledge of automanipulators, they are almost always more expensive than mundane alternatives, and making an outright barrier that can span areas relevant to space battles is going to be extraordinarily expensive; it's unlikely to work, and therefore doesn't work as a justification for anything.

I'm not using barrier ships as justification for waiting. I know that we won't have them at least until we can dissect and make new manipulators, and waiting that long probably won't do. I'm using our low production capacity as justification for waiting, bizarrely. We can build things besides warships for the moment, and I'd like even the first batch of our ships to have some tech advantage. Which means focusing on and making new warship designs in VR, and Anton's been locked away in a secret lab working on a prototype that may or may not work for the past week, so he's going to get to making those ships first thing after testing. Deal?

Also, I understand that you're playing your character, but being secretive is only going to hurt us.  If your projects work, then they can render other people's work pointless, or make people have to seriously re-adjust their ideas to fit with it, with no warning.  If your projects fail, then nobody can help you fix flaws, and good ideas can go to waste.  Also, it makes it look like you're doing nothing and being unhelpful.

Well, see above.

See, the problem I have is that I have nothing but vague ideas to work off. For instance, my idea of making barrier ships is basically looking into space-warping manipulators and active threat detection systems to maybe replicate the LDA "shields" from Edge of Chaos. I've no idea if any part of that is going to work, so I need to make an action asking for specifics, preferably at a time when we're actually equipped to act on receiving a positive answer, which means waiting for the space magic facility. If I ask the questions now, I might forget to ask them later, and since PW doesn't have any of this set in stone, by the time we actually get to act on the answers, the answers may have retroactively changed due to reasons, and any plans we made will be rendered useless. By not asking the questions I prevent the plans from being prematurely formed, thus avoiding the hassle of having to deal with it until we actually can deal with it.

Until I have an actual positive answer on the viability of something vital to a plan I want to have, I'd rather not have the plan known. (yes, I'm basically invoking Unspoken Plan Guarantee Best part about unspoken plans is that nobody notices when they fail, and everyone is pleasantly (or unpleasantly, if it's the enemy) surprised when they succeed.) And while that means that I basically have nothing to show for it, and Anton is acting all cryptic while seemingly doing nothing at all, that's not quite the case. Not entirely, at least, and not entirely intentionally. He'll get to publicly helping the war effort as soon as he thinks he has something that can make a difference.

Primarily a "workhorse strikeforce" supported by specialists.

What does this mean, exactly?  Lots of bog standard skirmish ships, like we fought in M12, supported by "barrier" ships?

Almost, yes. Not bog standard skirmish ships, but a group of standardized general-purpose ARM combat ships - "workhorses", with whatever advanced armor and weapons they will have, supported by special-purpose ships. Barrier ships, strikecraft carrier ships, pursuit, electronic warfare and interdiction, boarding and infiltration, repair, artillery, what have you. A "workhorse strikeforce", with specialists. The workhorse ships draw fire and do the heavy fighting, while specialists are designed to excel at their specific task, so would probably hang back during actual combat (unless they're barrier ships), and either do their thing from behind the fleet, or move in as needed when the circumstances allow.

If some of my other ideas pan out, a different kind of specialist ships would be possible, one that could pretty much just waltz right up to the side of any enemy ship and do whatever.

"If some things work the way I think they do, we could have a ship that can go wherever it wants without retaliation."

This is not a useful statement.  What ideas?  By what function would they do this?  Do you mean they're undetectable stealth ships?  Can they paralyze enemies?  Do they only get one shot before the enemies can shoot back?

See, I've no idea which it will be. I have plans in mind, but I only know that some things are theoretically possible, to some extent. There are simple plans (in concept), involving making phasing ships using tech from Simus's phasesuit. There are more complex plans involving ships that can short-range-teleport themselves for boarding action or attack evasion. Then there's the idea of "Solar Stealth", rendering the enemy blind to the presence of the ship using targeted hallucinations by combining a long-ranged mindfuck gun with a specially made biochemistry overrider to induce a VR-like suggestibility state. Yes, basically shouting "I AM NOT HERE" so loudly that their brains agree despite all evidence to the contrary. A lot of things are possible, but we can't even really research most of those things until we can make new manipulators.

Yes, and I am currently examining telebombs.  My guess is that they're too short range to be effective in space battles.

A guess is not good enough. Can they be made long-ranged enough? It needs research.

I think you missed the question.  You're saying we should focus on what falls in our lap.  I'm saying we should focus on making what we want fall in our lap.  But what do we want?  "Better tech"?  Yes, but we probably won't be able to improve every aspect of our ships, all at the same time.

Whichever aspect of the ships we can improve, we should. We want better armor, better weapons, better everything. We can be choosy about what we add once we have things to choose from. Right now I'm looking into improving the weapons, because I have ideas that are actually short-term viable in that direction.

Also, we have to decide what types of ships we're building at this very moment.  We can choose what we want them to good at, even without having a great tech advantage.  My two suggestions are based on what we will need now: Heavily armored ships, using the hexsand armor, which can stay around as targets long enough for ground defenses to kill the ships.  We need these now, to defend Q'baja and possibly Heph.  Then there's troop transports, which we need to actually deploy sods anywhere.  Since these aren't combat ships, and are mainly armed for orbital bombardment, it doesn't matter if they're outdated- they gain little from better tech.

Hexsand armor is good if we can mass-produce it, though we still don't know how it stands up to spaceship combat. If you want to build something now, before any testing is done or any new weapons are made, start on a standard gauss-cannon battleship with hexsand armor. Building it should take long enough for some new tech to pop up and get tested.

Either a defense advantage or an offense advantage will work, but in either case (or in combination) it would have to be decisive. One our ship taking out five to ten of theirs of the same weight class without suffering critical damage kind of decisive.

Why?  You think the entire UWM fleet will drop on Q'baja immediately upon them severing contact?  If so, we'll probably need a ratio of one to one hundred, rather than one to five.

Not the entire fleet, no. But we wasted Heph's defense fleet. Even for UWM commanders it shouldn't be that hard to put two and two together, and once the bureaucratic machine sets off, I'm expecting a fleet of at least thrice to five times that size at minimum - both to deal with Q'baja, and to put the pressure on Hephaestus - to arrive within a few years. Well, sooner now. Our production capacity means that we can expect to be outnumbered three to one by then, and we only have one Hammer.

Regardless, even if our ships are worth about as much as theirs, they're still worth something.  If we don't build any ships, then they're worth nothing.  Building ships now won't hurt our development of improved ships.

"Yeah, yeah, alright. Waste of resources if you ask me, but if it makes ye sleep better..."

True, but it'll let us run from that fight.  Guerilla tactics.

What I mean is, if we have to fight a fight. Like if we need to defend something or break the defenses of something. Running from a fight is a great way to keep yourself from harm, true, and might be a way of winning wars in the long run, but not a great way of winning battles.

Also, please don't just say "I have an idea for this" without saying what the idea is.  C'mon, man, just let us know.  Maybe someone else can develop the idea if you don't have the time/interest.

We can't really do much about these things. Can't investigate manipulators in VR (I mean 'can't', not 'not allowed to'). Can't build new manipulators without the amp factory. Some of them just need time spent working and researching, and Saint already has projects of his own that he's working on. And really, you know most of my projects are so outlandish that only Anton will ever even attempt to work on them. I haven't even gotten to the mechanized flying bear cavalry yet.

Where does the "eight" figure come from?  I wrote that we have four armed transports on the wiki, because we had four salvageable ships.

Four armed transports, yes. But Anton is requesting permission to build a batch of eight Scabbard class ships from Simus.

((can we add "The return of Simus's higher brain functions" to the "List of things we're waiting on" to the Wiki?))

[Radio Controlled]

Yeah, in the race between ship weapons and armor, I'm afraid weapons will come out on top and then some. Still, if we can turn a hit from 'reduced to space dust' into 'dead but salvageable' that would be a nice gain.

The self-repair armor is going to be very good for smaller strikecraft though - being too fast and too small to target for the big guns, they'll only have to deal with PD, and the higher initial cost of the armor is going to be easily offset by the lessened maintenance costs of repairing laser gashes.

They'll have to get there, still not a trivial matter.

Hmm. Maybe we should fire them from a special rail cannon to give them the speed needed to get there. And an automanip to slow down once there, heh.

Really though, pw has said we don't really need to mind resource expendature as long as it isn't extremely big. So building a few outdated ships this week doesn't compromise our ability to built better ones next week once the tech is there. So really, the only wrong answer to the question of what ships we want, is not building any at any given time. And even then, pw said we can just set those things to 'build' for now, and we can decide what they were building later on. Maybe he'll let us say they where building the new kind of ships retroactively.

A guess is not good enough. Can they be made long-ranged enough? It needs research.

Indeed, which is why he's looking into it, no? That was just his a priori guess, so as long as he doesn't let that guess guide his decisions before actual research, that's not a problem. And even if that doesn't work, remember you've got another teleportng artifact coming in.

Not the entire fleet, no. But we wasted Heph's defense fleet. Even for UWM commanders it shouldn't be that hard to put two and two together, and once the bureaucratic machine sets off, I'm expecting a fleet of at least thrice to five times that size at minimum - both to deal with Q'baja, and to put the pressure on Hephaestus - to arrive within a few years. Well, sooner now. Our production capacity means that we can expect to be outnumbered three to one by then, and we only have one Hammer.

Then build more, and upgrade those jump point defenses. Only need work crews for that, and that doesn't require any extra research.

 
One thing you could try for active defense is making an automanip that, in a radius of x meter at a distance of y, changes the vector of all moving particles with a few degrees. That would affectively make them miss their target, and you could set the automanip on a very precise gimbal inside the ship to target stuff.

[Sean Mirrsen]

One thing you could try for active defense is making an automanip that, in a radius of x meter at a distance of y, changes the vector of all moving particles with a few degrees. That would affectively make them miss their target, and you could set the automanip on a very precise gimbal inside the ship to target stuff.

Crank that up to unreasonable levels of efficiency, and you've basically described the LDA shields I'm trying to emulate. The LDA, or Linear Displacement Array shields utilize the same principle that universe uses for fast travel (LDS) to defend against anything. The LDA system is an active threat tracking system combined with a very precise "random deflector" that generates a spatial distortion that converts any object entering the effect area into a large cloud of dissociated particles that still have the same total energy, but lack any kind of penetrating power. (For obvious reasons this has little effect on antimatter weapons) The distortion is timed and positioned precisely to intercept an incoming projectile so as to make the energy requirements sane (thus the need for threat tracking).

While replicating the "random deflector" would probably be insanely difficult and prohibitively expensive in this universe, simply finding a way to displace an incoming projectile regardless of its total energy (without changing its velocity) so that it flies past the ship would already be a great means of defense. But if it's possible to create "warp noise" that could tear any physical object into constituent elementary particles, then I would definitely like to use that, as then the problem merely becomes one of engineering a good enough solution for tracking the incoming projectiles.

And let's not forget possible uses for ramming. :evilgrin:

[Nikitian]

On topic of Heph shipyard usage:
Let me propose another option: why not build more fabrication ships/expand the shipyard/etc.? Basically, anything that would later increase our production capacity of churning out whatever warships we decide to build. At the moment, I dare hope, we can spare some time not having military fleet at all.

Butter, not guns. For now.

[Radio Controlled]

On topic of Heph shipyard usage:
Let me propose another option: why not build more fabrication ships/expand the shipyard/etc.? Basically, anything that would later increase our production capacity of churning out whatever warships we decide to build. At the moment, I dare hope, we can spare some time not having military fleet at all.

Butter, not guns. For now.

I could get behind this, if not for three little problems at the top of my head:

1) We need to ship stuff to Q'baja as soon as we can. After all, that was part of our agreement, and we'll need to look like a strong and reliable ally, to help convince future parties. So at the very least, we should construct a Hammer cannon and ship it over there asap.

2) we run the risk of getting into a 'just one more upgrade, then we'll start building' kind of mindset. It might not sound like a real danger, but you better believe this is a real pitfall we must be vigilant about, if only by how sneaky it is. Ask any rts player to get an idea of what this entails. An overseer with a good list of priorities and who keeps an eye on the bigger picture helps against this, but pyro's been rather absent lately, ad who knows when that stops being the case.

3) we have no intell on our surrounding systems. The enemy could be amassing a fleet one jump away right now, and we wouldn't have a clue. So we really do also need to put up a sensor net sooner rather than later. But since this probably wouldn't need more research, we can start with this for the moment.

[Nikitian]

Ah, didn't connect the Q'Baja agreement and transport ships construction. Sure.
Oh, I know full well that poisonous snake of a mindset. There is another way around it, I think, and that is setting large enough milestones so it is easier to spot it and avoid. For example, if we could simply double its manufacturing output somewhere between the next mission batch start and end, I think it'd be a fine time investment and the shiptinkerers would have enough time to finish the designs - and it would be a gamble of but a single 'turn'.

[Radio Controlled]

Ah, didn't connect the Q'Baja agreement and transport ships construction. Sure.
Oh, I know full well that poisonous snake of a mindset. There is another way around it, I think, and that is setting large enough milestones so it is easier to spot it and avoid. For example, if we could simply double its manufacturing output somewhere between the next mission batch start and end, I think it'd be a fine time investment and the shiptinkerers would have enough time to finish the designs - and it would be a gamble of but a single 'turn'.

Yes, but then you still need someone to concretely set these milestones, keep an eye out whether they'll make their goals on time (and adjust course if not), maybe need to set penalties or rewards for (not) making it on time (otherwise it's kind of an empty promise), need to enforce these rules, etc.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The reason I don't want to just start cranking out ships and switch to better ones as tech improves is because the same thing annoyed me to no end in Sword of the Stars. If you're building up a fleet while rapidly advancing tech, you end up with a mishmash of different designs arranged together with near no rhyme or reason, which makes it hard to use them tactically.

In the situation we have... I guess the big difference is that the UWM is not going to advance nearly as rapidly at least in the near future. The same thing as usually happens in SotS where your old ships are just torn apart by an enemy as advanced as you currently are, isn't as likely to happen. So... alright.

If it means less resources used and slightly faster construction, let's build up a bunch of standard ships. Then when we get to put them on remote control, and send them out front and center to draw enemy fire away from any more advanced ships we might be fielding (spacing?), at the same time not allowing the enemy to just ignore them in favor of the more advanced ships because they're still very dangerous.