Design: Crane Transport
2, 6+1, 5
The Crane Transport is essentially a flying warehouse.
The ITC was an inefficient cargo ship - it was meant to carry basic supplies and people, not a military. The ship is divided into small compartments making storage of actual bulk goods or larger items impossible. But we had an easy way to remedy this, and we removed the compartments.
There are two primary parts to the Crane Transport, the bridge and crew quarters, and the cargo bay. The cargo bay is a huge compartment spanning most of the ship and is a vast empty space with the occasional support structure dotting the chamber. In order to prevent unfeasible stress on the life support and power systems, the cargo bay isn't pressurized. The lack of pressurization means the transport of Units or anything else requiring an atmosphere is impossible.
When the time comes for unloading, the crew suits up in EVA suits to load the cargo onto a larger variant of the shuttle used in the ITC. The shuttles moving goods between the surface and the ship are the bottleneck here, and the Crane Transport can't move anything above 2 CU between itself and the surface. It can carry things bigger than that without a problem, just not move those things to/from the surface.
The Crane Transport uses a series of chemical thrusters and solar panels. Without the draw from the cargo bay, powering the ship is easily accomplished via solar panels. The chemical thrusters intentionally provide just enough thrust with just enough fuel to reasonably move the ship between planets, but the ship doesn't have a high enough acceleration to be able to retreat or perform evasive maneuvers in combat.
The cargo bay, due to its design, can carry 6 CU worth of cargo. It has no individual weight/size restrictions - as long as all the cargo sums up to less than 6 CU and doesn't need an atmosphere, it can carry it. However, the fact that its crew has to perform the loading and unloading by hand in EVA suits means it takes a long time to load and unload. Loading isn't really a problem as long as its from Moerth, but when unloading it can make the vessel vulnerable to attack while it completes its lengthy unloading procedures.
Yet again, we were unable to incorporate the Buckler PD turret into the design. Our engineers have spent most of their time preoccupied with other issues in the design and thus weren't able to ever realize this design goal. We do know it's possible, but we still don't have anything to show for it.
Despite the large nature of the ship, thanks to some smart design decisions as well as the Yggdrasil SS-01A, we can deploy 4x Crane Transports at once. A very impressive number.
Crane Transport: A large ship capable of holding 6 CU with no individual CU limits. Because of its unpressurized cargo bay, it can't carry Units or anything else that may need an atmosphere to be transported. Small docked shuttles are used to transport cargo between the ship and the surface, but the restrictions of the shuttles mean that the Crane Transport cannot load or unload anything above 2 CU. It can still carry things above 2 CU, it just can't load or unload them. The crew manually unloads and loads cargo using EVA suits in the cargo bay, making loading and unloading a very lengthy process during which the ship is vulnerable. Powered by solar panels, and uses chemical thrusters; the ship is slow and performs poorly in this area in combat, but can move between planets without an issue.
Cargo: 6 CU
Expense: 4x
Resources: Metal, Exotics
It is now the Revision Phase of 2211.
Author
Topic: Planetary Arms Race - Moerth, Strategy Phase 2212 (Read 38488 times)