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[Draignean]

I'll swap my vote to the Warship.

Interplanetary Makeshift Warship (Mk I): (3) NUKE9.13, Shadowclaw777, Detoxicated, Draignean
Military Logistics and Organization Structure: (1) Supernerd
Orbital Shipyard: (2) Nirur Torir,  Yottawhat

[NUKE9.13]

I think the warship is fine for a design. It's mostly about making the missiles and then strapping them to a modified transport, which is pretty much all we need to shoot down transports (and maybe bombard).

This. The missiles are fairly simple, made from tech we should already have. Thrusters, check. Industrial explosives? Presumably check. Computers small enough to steer a missile? Hopefully check. Radio of sufficient range to communicate with said missile to guide it to its target, check.


Posting this here for approval before posting it in the Core thread. Draignean, those posters are amazing, and you should post both of them.

The Moerth Commune: Living in Harmony.
On Old Earth, mankind squandered the gifts of nature. They wasted resources, drove hundreds of species to extinction, and polluted the sky, sea, and land so badly that eventually it became unlivable. On Moerth, we remember the mistakes of the past- and we are driven not to repeat them. Hence, Moerth lives in harmony with the planet. We take only what we need, recycling as much as possible. We spend time studying and cataloguing native flora and fauna, and modify the crops and animals brought from Earth so that they integrate harmlessly into the ecosystem, rather than trying to replace it. From the start, we have made a point of minimising pollution, establishing only renewable power sources, and ensuring no harmful chemicals leach into the soil from our factories.
Our society is built around our principles of harmony and cooperation. No citizen need fear starvation or sickness, for our superior genetically modified crops produce both food and medicine in sufficient quantities. People are encouraged to work together to overcome obstacles, combining their skills in unique ways. 3D-printers are widely available, and are used to produce both mundane items as well as artwork.
Our government is similarly cooperative. Each settlement has a rotating Council of Elders, who gently guide its growth. A member from each council in an area attends the Regional Conclave, where issues affecting the entire region are discussed. Finally, a member from each region attends the Planetary Gathering, which strives to reach a consensus about matters concerning the entire planet, as well as off-world affairs.

On a less optimistic note, I should warn you that we are currently at war. The dastardly computer-worshipping Amoakians have threatened peace with their aggressive actions, forcing us to take up arms to defend ourselves. Our struggle is righteous, and does not affect life on Moerth, but should this disturb you, we can make provisions for you to settle on the uninhabited planet designated B2. Your neutrality would be assured from our end, although we cannot promise that Amoak would allow you to live in peace.

Remember Old Earth. Repeat not its mistakes. Join the Moerth Commune.

Peace and Harmony upon you.

[Supernerd]

All this information seems propagan-tastic!

We may want to wait for the revision phase to unleash our most powerful stuff though. Otherwise Amaok might have enough time to make a good counter.

[Chiefwaffles]

Design: Orbital Shipyard
2, 2, 1

Unfortunately, the orbital shipyard is not currently functional yet.
A design was finalized and production did begin, but it was only late in the process that we discovered an extreme amount of issues.

As of now, the shipyard is merely a skeleton orbiting Moerth. We still have hopes for its abilities once finished, but those hopes won't be realized this year. The unfinished construction is primarily blamed on the misallocation of resources and shuttles. We didn't properly estimate what the construction would take and suffered greatly for it.

Furthermore, the quality of the materials is questionable. Apparently one of the lower staff members made a simple mistake which undermined the whole project. 5th generation Akhsoyrtam printers were accidentally chosen to create most of the construction materials for the shipyard. Normally these printers would be fine for bulk simple construction materials, but the parts they made for the station required fine levels of detail that was butchered by the printers.

As it stands, the shipyard is useless. Construction isn't finished and what's already done is possible not even suitable and we may have to start over. But starting over would be a much easier task thanks to the lessons we've learned. With the extra downtime, we did check the plans for any further possible issues that could appear after completion, and luckily found nothing - if completed it should still fulfill its intended functions. What we do with the skeleton is up to the designers. 


It is now the Revision Phase of 2207.

[NUKE9.13]

So, not that it really matters given the rolls, but we ended up voting for the IMW.

[Draignean]

Err.. Fuck.

I DEMAND RE-ROLLS BECAUSE THE GM MESSED UP WHICH THING WE WANTED!

(And because we need them)

[Chiefwaffles]

Oh, woops.
It'll keep the rolls but I could switch it over to the IMW later today. Both sides' designs were done on my phone and I'd rather not do it again, so redoing it would be a desktop-exclusive task. If people want to do that in the afternoon-ish then I'll make it happen.

[NUKE9.13]

No worries. It would be nice to get the experience with missile systems, but the end product is going to do nothing either way. So it doesn't really affect our decision making.
Anyway. The only unit we can resupply this turn is the one on B2. We could send our two home units to attack A2 and C2. They'll probably do the same to A3 and C3.

How about we revise (improvised) grenades? How hard can they be, right?

Improvised Grenade: Basically just a lump of industrial explosive with a simple fuse. Not the most elegant weapon, but good for flushing Amoakians out of hiding, or destroying their cover.
Depending on the effectiveness of initial prototypes, we may want to include things like a metal shell (I would say printed hard plastic, but I think that plastic shrapnel is a war crime), or a (plastic) handle to make it easier to throw.

Improvised Grenade: (1) NUKE9.13

[Chiefwaffles]

Design: Interplanetary Makeshift Warship
2, 2-1, 1

The makeshift warship is essentially in a proof of concept form right now. We can make the ship but they're effectively useless at the moment due to one particularly worrying flaw.

The conversion of the cargo space into weapons facilities and ammunition storage was the first problem encountered. The weapons took more space than we expected, leaving shockingly little space to store missiles. The ship can only fire roughly one or two volleys before running out of ammunition. The missions also have to be loaded by hand, limiting the rate of fire by a huge amount. But to even get to this level of storage, sacrifices were made. Communications is also impossible as someone decided to remove the radio in favor of missile space. The ship is dispatched with orders and uses couriers for communication. This is particularly challenging given the nature of warfare in space and the need for telemetry, but it's still workable.

Luckily, we've managed to keep the spaces designated for crew fine. A small crew can comfortably (at least for a ship with "makeshift" in its name) live in the ship for its deployments and operate it to its full capabilities, as little as those capabilities may be.

In the avenue of hull reinforcement and armor, we made some headway. It's difficult to put adequate armor on the ship, as each piece of armor costs a lot of resources and time to be added and adds weight to the ship. But ultimately, we improved the armor to the point where small arms fire shouldn't cause too much damage to the ship. Any halfway-competent anti-ship weapon could easily put a hole through the armor. Overall, the ship is less "delicate" and could perhaps "contain" its damage better than its sister class, the ITC. Ideally, in certain scenarios, identical damage to the ITC and IMW would cause a critical hull failure in the ITC while the IMW could continue, albeit still damaged. This scenario is somewhat unlikely, though.

The ship possesses an armament of roughly 16 basic missile tubes located on the front of the ship. The missiles are carefully hand-loaded by the crew before being locked in and fired by controls next to the missile tubes. These missiles are very basic - they have very mild explosives in the warhead and their guiding functions only help to correct for minor degrees of error from the initial projectile course. A single hit with a missile on an unarmored ship like the ITC should result in complete destruction of the target vessel - the extremely thin hull will give away with little effort. The damage of just one missile will nearly always cause a complete critical hull failure on ships of this type. Armor-wise, we're not so sure. Unless Amaok develops specialized armor plating soon, a single missile should still do significant damage to an armored vessel but has a much lower chance of complete hull failure. For example, if the IMW is hit with one of its own missiles from the outside, then the already-explored scenario would occur; large amounts of damage is definite, but depending on the impact site and many other minor variables, the IMW could theoretically remain relatively intact.

There is one critical flaw with the missiles. Simulations and some isolated live tests have revealed that there is an alarming tendency for missiles to detonate inside their tubes. An explosion from this site would likely wipe out the vessel, eliminating the crew (due to the missile tubes' proximity to the crew modules) if not the entire ship. We assume this is due to the primitive arming mechanisms in the missiles. Compounded flaws in the manufacturing of the missiles and the tubing itself somehow results in a missile prematurely arming itself and thus detonating in the tube.
Central Command has banned the use of the IMW until this issue is resolved. Deploying it now would be suicide for the crew, and a waste of resources.


Interplanetary Makeshift Warship
Expense: 1x
Resources: Metal, Exotics

It is now the Revision Phase of 2207.

[Draignean]

Okay, here's the thing. With one decent revision we can launch these suckers. It won't be great, and we'll need to spend revisions like mad later on to make these things into ships of the line, but if we can successfully revise the launch tubes, we'll be in business.

Warship Missiles Mk 1.1
Missiles for use in the IMW have been revisited in order to solve their unfortunate, and explosive, issues. Instead of a raw missile being tube loaded, each missile is now locked into a standardized sabot shell. This shell not only enables the missile to work from a variety of tubes, but also contains the arming action for the missile itself.

Simple magnetic flanges at the exit of the missile tubes pull the Sabot away after launch so that it strips naturally even during non-atmospheric launches. The act of the sabot stripping away from the missile arms the warhead, making in-tube detonation a virtual impossibility. The sabots themselves are launched via a low power thump charge, but further designs could allow for a simple gauss accelerator to launch the sabot.

[NUKE9.13]

Okay, here's the thing. With one decent revision we can launch these suckers. It won't be great, and we'll need to spend revisions like mad later on to make these things into ships of the line, but if we can successfully revise the launch tubes, we'll be in business.

Yeah, alright. Although the thing about using more revisions on them later, I dunno about. They're based off of the incredibly shitty ITC. No amount of revisions is going to make them into top-of-line warships.

Also, regarding propaganda, you should post (in the core thread) those posters you made. And do you think the principles outlined in my propaganda piece work for Moerth?

Improvised Grenade: (0)
Warship Missiles Mk 1.1: (2) Draignean, NUKE9.13

[Draignean]

Also, regarding propaganda, you should post (in the core thread) those posters you made. And do you think the principles outlined in my propaganda piece work for Moerth?

I like it, though I admit I fell a bit odd about being a commune.

I'm thinking of writing a bit more Anti Amaok stuff to go along with the second poster, and redesigning the first poster to be a bit... better.

I'll post it here when I'm ready.

[Draignean]

One might be driven to wonder why we two colonies fight- why we spend precious resources and lives struggling instead of cooperating. While those at Amaok would seriously punish anyone who had the audacity to ask this question aloud, we at Moerth value open engagement of ideas, and not the pseudo-logical echo chamber that the citizens of Amaok have become imprisoned in.

Our fight against Amaok is one not of ideology, greed for territory, or petty personal squabbles. For in bluntest truth our struggle against Amaok is a struggle for survival, not merely for Moerth, but for all mankind.

Amaok quests for superior machine. A machine capable of doing everything a human can do, except better and faster. In small degrees this is a laudable ambition, and one that has driven human progress forward through the centuries. Yet, as the saying goes, 'A little poison now and then: that makes pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.'

Amaok does not wish to augment the man so that man can become more, they wish to replace the man with the machine. They want a machine that can worker harder, plan better, and think faster than any human. They would tell you that this will free you, give you and your progeny the ultimate ability to do as you wish, but this is but gilding on rotted wood- the least touch of truth will destroy it and show you the rotting mold they've sold you.

When machine is raised above man, man will no longer work. He will live off the machines he has made, a base parasite. Machines will design better machines, and man will fall ever deeper into his hole. He will know nothing but self-gratification and consumption, a pig at trough - bloated upon filth and lies, without the basest sense of purpose. And pig for slaughter he will be, for the machine he makes will have no need of him. It has his desires, his lusts, his wants, and it knows the wretched parasite for what it is.

We are all from apes born, and yet we do not hold apes in places of esteemed right and sanctimonious office. So shall Amaok, and all those that follow them, become in the eyes of their own creation. Fit at best for amusing pets, and seen only as painful embarrassments at worst.

We of Moerth see a different path. The world evolves, becoming more complex with each passing day, and this process seems exponential. Instead of giving up on matching that complexity and building a machine to understand that complexity for us, we shall elevate and augment man. We shall not hide from progress, we will meet it head on. The children of Amaok inherit servitude and ashes from their parents, but to our children we will gift the helm of the world.

Do not flee from work. Do not let the machine think for you.  Do not join Amaok in leading the human race to slaughter.

Join Moerth, and build a better world. All of them, better worlds.

[Nirur Torir]

Warship Missiles Mk 1.1: (3) Draignean, NUKE9.13, Nirur Torir

I can guess on the bombardment rules! 1d100, DC 99. On a hit, it deals minor morale damage to unarmored infantry. Only usable on airless worlds.

Thoughts on the strategy phase? Not much to do with the warships but send them to B2. That does free up our units, unless we really want to blitz through to their homeworld.
It seems a waste to claim the metal worlds and give up on the exotics without a fight. We could hit both A2 and C2 and hope to out-attrit them before they break our cut-off forces, or drop two units on one world and hope to quickly annihilate them.

I'm in favor of trying to overwhelm them with two units on one world - The probably actually invented something, and can beat our guys before we beat theirs.

It's very tempting to pull back from a far world to make an assault go even faster. If they invented a killy thing, they'll probably destroy at least one (Possibly two. That would be pretty unfortunate, since they only retrain at 1/turn) of our forward units this turn anyway, and the blockade has already paid off in my mind. We have the initiative now, and should use it.

Idea for consideration: They might withdraw as well. If we have enough warships, sending some to blockade A2/C2 might do some good. B2 might not need a large blockade, being less interesting than keeping us from getting both exotics.

C2 chosen because orbital superiority might just help on an ocean world.

Spoiler: Plan Overwhelm (click to show/hide)

Unit 1:
Equipped: Kevlar Armor, Printed Pistol Mk 1.1
Location: B2

Unit 2:
Equipped X112 Spacesuit, Printed Pistol Mk 1.1
Location: A3

Unit 3:
Equipped: X112 Spacesuit, Printed Pistol Mk 1.1
Transport to C2 on ITC 3

Unit 4:
Equipped: X112 Spacesuit, Printed Pistol Mk 1.1
Transport to C2 on ITC 1

Unit 5:
Equipped: X112 Spacesuit, Printed Pistol Mk 1.1
Transport to C2 on ITC 2

All Warships:
Travel to B2

Plan Overwhelm (1): Nirur Torir

[Supernerd]

Here is my proposal for a revision.

Interplanetary Makeshift Bomber

Our actual missile launcher system is close to non functional. By simply removing it altogether, we can simply drop our volatile explosive payload out of a hatch at the bottom of ship in orbit around a planet and let gravity do the work for us. The Bomber will be useless as an interceptor, but capable of devastating enemy ground troops; especially on a planet where we have no military presence of our own. This also prevents the issues of missiles detonating within tubes, as we can just sort of chuck them out of the ship. I don't envy the guy who gets stuck with that job.