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[joha4270]

ESC-FS 1A Xaser
The A1 attempts to upgrade the upscaled Rider lasers to a more effective xaser (X-ray laser).

The new xaser, based on the experience from attempting escher lasers, looks somewhat esoteric with the focusing mirrors outside the hull, almost half as wide as the ship itself, housed in bubble turrets.
A series of dielectic mirrors connect the focusing mirror with the lasing engine inside the hull. It consists of a pair of frequency doublers and a laser just on the edge of ultraviolet. By choosing a lasing medium whose transmission rate increases with light intensity, the laser emits very powerful bursts tens of nanoseconds long, hundred times a second. This vaporizes part of the target instead of slowly melting through. (Please have mercy, this is how passive Q-Switching works as far as i can read)

The design goal is for the laser to use one third of the full power output of the cuttlefish, but Ertex engineers are unsure if they can reach this goal without unacceptable losses in efficiency and Mē.


Reason it uses a ultraviolet laser is that those are easier to generate. Even if it is mostly arbitrary semantics that divide them.

ESC-FS 1B Usability upgrade
The A1 attempts to upgrade the Cuttlefish to a design actually usable in combat. It does this by improving its 2 weak areas.

First it provides a general upgrade of its lasers. Its mirrors are increased in size, its frequency increased and the power consumption is increased.

The other upgrade it provides is focused on the engines. By optimizing the shape of the magnetic field, the reactor is running more effecient, both when directing plasma to the engine and when not. At the same time, the water injection system has been overhauled, leading to much greater water flow and corresponding higher thrust.

Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (2): Chiefwaffles, khang
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (1): joha4270

[andrea]

I would keep it simple

Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (2): Chiefwaffles, khang
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (2): joha4270, Andrea

[Chiefwaffles]

TheFantasticFox on Discord asked me to add his vote to the tally for Picasso.

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (3): Chiefwaffles, khang, TheFantasticFox
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (2): joha4270, Andrea

And I don't see how the Cuttlefish general upgrade is simple - it upgrades the lasers' mirrors, lasers' frequency, lasers' power consumption, it optimizes the engine, and it overhauls the water injection system. Each individual component may be simple, but NUKE has made it very clear how harshly he judges trying to do a lot of things at once.

[Detoxicated]

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (4): Chiefwaffles, khang, TheFantasticFox, Detoxicated
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (2): joha4270, Andrea

[Supreme Commander Nutcase]

Hm.. You know what? I'll go leave a missile here.


ER-IRGM-10X "Sagitta" Homing Missile



     Ah. Missiles. Things that were reputedly the bread and butter of naval combat on Old Earth and may be the bread and butter of space combat as well. Sadly, Ertex lacks such weapons, and pretty much everyone else is bent on building lasers, a far less tested technology., so one of the engineers set off to build one. The result? The ER-IRGM-10X homing missile.


   It's a simple weapon. A very, very simple one for a (barely) spacefaring race. It's a rocket with infrared sensors and a control system and explosives on one end, one very large vectored rocket engine on the other, and loads and loads of fuel in the rest, allowing it to go very far before running out of fuel. First two components do what they do, but the IR sensors have been selected over RADAR for one, one, very important reason: enemy craft are expected to have massive heat signatures, and such things are easy to detect in space. Having them will hopefully allow the Sagitta to acquire targets from a long range, which is vital for the thing to be an effective weapon.


   The weapon's to be made large enough to both have a respectable range for a missile and pack enough punch for just one to cripple all known vessels with a single hit, yet small enough for something the size of an ITC to carry at least a couple dozen of. Its guidance system is to be fitted with a computer smart enough to not be deceived by most countermeasures and if possible, and if in groups, surround the target and attack it from multiple directions.


Target cost is to have it available for all units to use.

[Detoxicated]

Generally a good idea commander, but it is very complex so hard to achieve. Also we are in revision phase...
as a design I would vote for your missile

[3_14159]

Since Nuke mentioned the Picasso would be VH, here's a conventional upgrade.

EAC-HLC-3 Heavy Laser Cannon: Spear

We have highly efficient nanopatterns which defy physics as we knew it a decade ago. We have a spacecraft with three heavy laser cannons. We have fusion reactors for practically-unlimited power. Why did the attempt to combine all of these fail, and how can we do better?
Engineering. Simple, conventional engineering.
The original EAC-HLC-1 suffered from our lack of experience. The EAC-HLC-2 never got out of a prototype state, but used nanocapacitors and nanostructures to efficiently create a laser beam. It was elegant, one might say. It was also unnecessary.
The E-HLC-3 development starts by paying for a trip for Moira Libum, somewhere far away from the laser laboratory. Secondly, we ripped out almost all of the nanostructures. We rebuilt the laser cavity, which now looks much more like the Ranger's, i.e. conventional. This is where the nanostructures are used, allowing us to transport and store power for the laser cavity much more efficiently and precisely. The original three laser cavities themselves are replaced by one big cavity operating in the ultraviolet range in the centre of the spacecraft, with fibres connecting it to the three focusing mirrors on the hull (for legacy purposes, the central cavity is called Donald).

TL; DR: It's a conventional laser upgrade - no X-Ray, no nanostructures (except for a few where we already have experience with).

We could build elegantly, or brute-force. This is brute-force. But so's war.

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (4): Chiefwaffles, khang, TheFantasticFox, Detoxicated
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (2): joha4270, Andrea
EAC-HLC-3 Heavy Laser Cannon: Spear (1): 3_14159

[Chiefwaffles]

So we should be getting an extra design.

The problem right now is the Laser.
It's fairly useless.

Our infantry will still mostly use the crappy kinetic pistols. The Ranger, our infantry weapon, is worse than kinetics in many ways and is only really good for kinda-sniping and anti-armor.
The Cuttlefish uses glorified laser pointers.

The Picasso revision will likely be difficult (according to Nuke, "hard Hard or easy VH") even if it'd accomplish a lot on a success. The Cuttlefish General Upgrade revision will likely be also be difficult because even if it does a lot of simple things, it does a lot of simple things.

We need to focus on the laser. If we can get another design on the laser, it should go well. Attempting to do the Picasso on a design will be much easier and will likely have better results even on the same roll. It'll drastically improve all our weapons. The Cuttlefish will become super useful, and our infantry will become super useful as their weapons drastically improve.
I like Picasso and think it can revolutionize our offensive weaponry, but I think it needs more than a revision to succeed. So let's focus on non-weaponry things this revision, then use next design to upgrade our lasers.

Revision: ESC-PTT2 "Hermes" Plasma Torch Thruster

This revision revises the Cuttlefish's thruster to be more than a glorified hole in the Cuttlefish's Helios reactor and formalizes it as an actual independent module so we can refer to it as "the Hermes" rather than "The Cuttlefish's plasma torch thruster" all the time. (The "independent module" just means we're giving the thruster a name basically.)

By revising the plasma torch thruster to use Libum-265k superconductors in order to much more skillfully conduct magnetic extraction of plasma from the reactor and through the thruster. The more controlled extraction should allow the Helios to continue being effective during thrusting, and should allow for just a general better acceleration.

If time allows ((i.e. doesn't increase difficulty), then the Hermes also brings some mild improvements to the water feed system as well to make it a bit more effective at bringing the thrust to where we want it to be. As the water feed is extremely simple engineering and physics, this shouldn't be a problem.

TL;DR: Use Libum-265k to more carefully and skillfully extract the plasma from the Helios in our plasma torch; better acceleration and hopefully the Helios remains effective during thrusting (due to more careful/refined/exact extraction of plasma).

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (3): khang, TheFantasticFox, Detoxicated
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (2): joha4270, Andrea
EAC-HLC-3 Heavy Laser Cannon: Spear (1): 3_14159
ESC-PTT2 "Hermes" Plasma Torch Thruster (1): Chiefwaffles

I still think Picasso is our second-best choice, though.

[joha4270]

Seeing we most likely will have an extra turn, i'm fine with upgrading the cuttlefish engine.

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (3): khang, TheFantasticFox, Detoxicated
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (1): Andrea
EAC-HLC-3 Heavy Laser Cannon: Spear (1): 3_14159
ESC-PTT2 "Hermes" Plasma Torch Thruster (2): Chiefwaffles, joha4270

[Khang36]

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (2):TheFantasticFox, Detoxicated
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (1): Andrea
EAC-HLC-3 Heavy Laser Cannon: Spear (1): 3_14159
ESC-PTT2 "Hermes" Plasma Torch Thruster (3): Chiefwaffles, joha4270,khang

[3_14159]

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (2):TheFantasticFox, Detoxicated
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (1): Andrea
EAC-HLC-3 Heavy Laser Cannon: Spear (0):
ESC-PTT2 "Hermes" Plasma Torch Thruster (4): Chiefwaffles, joha4270,khang, 3_14159

Getting a design action for the laser is an acceptable alternative.

[sprinkled chariot]

I don't get point of excellent thrusters for ship with inefficient weaponry

[Detoxicated]

Not getting hit is more important than hitting as long as we do not have proper hull or shielding

[Chiefwaffles]

I don't get point of excellent thrusters for ship with inefficient weaponry

We're going to do the laser as our next design. The laser is too important to try fixing/improving in a revision.

[Blood_Librarian]

"Picasso" Nanostructure Pattern (2):TheFantasticFox, Detoxicated
Cuttlefish Laser upgrade (0):
Cuttlefish general upgrade (1): Andrea
EAC-HLC-3 Heavy Laser Cannon: Spear (0):
ESC-PTT2 "Hermes" Plasma Torch Thruster (): Chiefwaffles, joha4270,khang, 3_14159, Blood Librarian