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Design: Venture-Class Combat Transport
3, 4-2, 6-1
The Venture-Class Combat Transport is a... different ship than what we first intended.
We've never designed something this large before. The A-ASF-8 may have been a spacecraft, but it was tiny and designed solely for combat. The Venture is an entirely different beast.
The Venture-Class Combat Transport had to sacrifice the intended missiles and larger cargo hold. At first, the design was planned to be larger than the ITC to fit an improved cargo hold and small craft launch bays, but we couldn't seem to build something that big. In simulations, the ship would collapse under the load of its thrust, be generally unstable, or we couldn't construct such a project. So ultimately, we made something smaller than the ITC. But this isn't doom for the project, it just means we can't fulfill every design specification.
Two launch bays are placed on both starboard and port sides of the ship. These aren't hangars, but rather, a launch bay is a relatively small "tube" extending from a portion of the cargo bay to the outside of the ship. Compatible small craft are attached to rails and rapidly accelerated through the launch bay and emerge out of the ship quickly and with speed. The interior ends of the launch bays are connected to the cargo bay and automated railing can quickly "load" the launch bay.
However, this as well as the smaller hull means that the Venture can only hold 2 CU.
The Venture-class uses a single large chemical thruster on the back of its hull, along with the obligatory reaction thrusters. A small chemical reactor is fit in the rear of the ship (we would use the center, but that's the location of the cargo bay) and provides power to the rest of the ship. The ship has a notably poor speed roughly matching an ITC.
Armor-wise, the Venture-class is still quite lacking. A reinforced skeleton means the ship may not blow up due to one missile hit, but even small-arms fire can still pierce the armor.
An integrated radio provides contact with planetary forces, but isn't anywhere near enough to reach planets other than the one the Venture-class is orbiting. Unfortunately, it can't locate enemies based on radio transmissions. Problems with the complexity and weight of such a radio suite required us to strip that feature in order to get the radio in at all.
The ship is currently built in orbit by hand, which really limits our construction capabilities. As such, we can only field 1x Venture-class Combat Transport at a time. Each part has to be built, shipped to Amaok's orbit, then be put into place by workers in X112 suits.
Venture-Class Combat Transport: A somewhat small vessel fitted with two launch bays capable of quickly launching stored small craft. Has a basic radio suite allowing for communication with local radio-equipped ships or planetary ground forces, but not interplanetary communication. The Venture-class uses one large chemical thruster to obtain relatively poor speeds, and a reinforced skeleton can possibly keep the ship intact with some damage.
Cargo: 2 CU
Expense: 1x
Resources: Metal, Exotics
It is now the Revision Phase of 2209.
Author
Topic: Planetary Arms Race - Amaok, Strategy Phase 2212 (Read 34728 times)