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[Chiefwaffles]

After spending way too long trying to come up with a way of approaching this, I think I have something. I found it a bit hard to elaborate on it, so it's likely subject to modifications so it wouldn't get penalties by bad explanation if picked. May be unfeasible.
Revision: Power Pathing

Wiring is inefficient. It takes up immense amounts of space (as we've seen), it can fail, and it costs time and resources to make. Why not replace it entirely?

By building on our experience in the extremely precise arrangement of objects at the molecular level, something required for Nanoquantum Capacitors, we can hopefully effectively eliminate the usage of wiring. Through methods too complicated (naturally) to explain in this summary, we can hopefully manipulate the path of the electricity through Nanoquantum Cells without using wires.
Of course, most of this breakthrough in regards to the NQ Cells comes from better arrangement of the individual capacitors - a notable focus of this revision. We're not trying to be too ambitious here and paradigm-shift electricity just yet.

TL;DR: Remove wiring in NQ Cells by putting capacitors "close" to each other and using very primitive methods of moving power at this scale without wiring.
(Basically the idea is that we develop the primitive technique of manipulating how power moves at this scale and using it by re-arranging the capacitors. It's a revision because we're not trying to re-do the entire concept of circuitry or something similar with this idea just yet.)

[3_14159]

Power Pathing (1): 3_14159

The chance to increase our power density by another factor of 4 or something? Let's go for it.

[Chiefwaffles]

Power Pathing (2): 3_14159, Chiefwaffles

[Khang36]

Power Pathing (3): 3_14159, Chiefwaffles,khang

[FallacyofUrist]

Y'know, we don't have to go to lasers from hyper-power. All sorts of things use electricity. How about... plasma!

[Blood_Librarian]

We should honestly specify a little bit more about the laser systems, say, the focal width (5 cm, 10 cm etc), the type of laser (Xray, Red, Blue etc) and other such if we are gonna go into lasers so that way we have a clear path of improvement.

Hex Cell
Although they are not the most power dense system ever, mass production and distribution results in these Cells becoming incredibly plentiful due to several improvements in construction resulting in a Fist sized cell of Quantum Capacitors, that hold a similar amount of power to the Laboratory experiments. Not only are they tooled for use in hand-held weapons, they can be linked together (carefully) in bulk to form larger and larger capacitance systems that can be used for more power intensive purposes.  These cells are built with slightly inferior materials then experimental lab systems but are much easier to produce with far less of a resource-intensive footprint.

In short, the Capacitors are put into mass production.

Power Pathing (3): 3_14159, Chiefwaffles,khang
Hex-Cell (1): Blood Librarian

[Khang36]

Y'know, we don't have to go to lasers from hyper-power. All sorts of things use electricity. How about... plasma!

If we go for plasma weapons than we should look into making fusion power to get some experience plasma and electromagnetism which woild be needed to shoot plasma or beam weapons.

[piratejoe]

May as well vote now...

Power Pathing (4): 3_14159, Chiefwaffles, khang, Piratejoe
Hex-Cell (1): Blood Librarian

[NUKE9.13]

Revision: Power Pathing

Wiring is inefficient. It takes up immense amounts of space (as we've seen), it can fail, and it costs time and resources to make. Why not replace it entirely?

By building on our experience in the extremely precise arrangement of objects at the molecular level, something required for Nanoquantum Capacitors, we can hopefully effectively eliminate the usage of wiring. Through methods too complicated (naturally) to explain in this summary, we can hopefully manipulate the path of the electricity through Nanoquantum Cells without using wires.
Of course, most of this breakthrough in regards to the NQ Cells comes from better arrangement of the individual capacitors - a notable focus of this revision. We're not trying to be too ambitious here and paradigm-shift electricity just yet.

TL;DR: Remove wiring in NQ Cells by putting capacitors "close" to each other and using very primitive methods of moving power at this scale without wiring.
(Basically the idea is that we develop the primitive technique of manipulating how power moves at this scale and using it by re-arranging the capacitors. It's a revision because we're not trying to re-do the entire concept of circuitry or something similar with this idea just yet.)

Power Pathing (Hard): (2+2)-1=3: Buggy Mess
"Eliminate wiring". Easier said than done, as it turns out. Sure, we've managed to create intricate nanostructures that allow energy to be transmited without the use of wiring, utilising quantum effects in frankly ground-breaking ways.
These 'nano' structures take up 85% of the space in a cell.
Needless to say, we're sticking with conventional wiring for now. Future work in this field may yield better results... or we can just take our 2.5x increase in power storage and move on.


Another year over. The "D Mission" has been made official; public reception is good. Funding for weapons research continues to come in, which means that it is the Design Phase of SY96, and it is time to get to work.

[Chiefwaffles]

Okay. Not great, but we've made solid progress in the field of power pathing and can potentially revisit it later. We have the theory down, we just need to use another revision to apply it. Or a design to apply it here and make it much larger-scale.
Design: EAF-X1 "Ranger" Laser Rifle

The Ranger is a very versatile weapon, based off of integrating the fairly well-known laser technology from Earth with the GROUNDBREAKING ERTEX INNOVATION Nanoquantum Cells, which work 100% as planned no question there don't ask about it because they work amazingly thank you.
Thanks to Nanoquantum Cells, we can easily ensure the Ranger is roughly average-sized for a gun and easily usable by all infantry. It fires in a pulse beam configuration - kind of like a semiautomatic kinetic gun. There is a switch to turn off the limiters and make it actually a beam weapon: our troops are only advised to use this in situations where the standard pulse can't melt through the structure or armor. An example usage of this would be if they develop armor resistant to the pulses, or armored vehicles.
The Ranger can be equipped with a scope or bipod (again - we should just have these lying around) if needed, allowing it to function effectively as a marksman/sniper rifle.

We believe the Ranger will be extraordinarily effective. In addition to doing more damage than kinetics, it doesn't suffer from bullet drop, is extremely accurate, is silent, and its beam is invisible to the naked eye. Allowing our soldiers (and snipers) to use their weapons while still being extremely stealthy. Furthermore, the use of Nanoquantum Cells should assure a non-awful magazine situation.
TL;DR: A non-bulky laser rifle for standard use by our infantry. Has optional scope/bipod for sniping, has a beam mode for concentrated fire on armored targets, and is 100% silent+invisible laser+no drop+super accurate. All while hopefully being "Normal" difficulty!

This one is just a potential for the future.
Design: "Venture" Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster

The Venture thruster is, well, a thruster. It's based off of the principles of the identically named MPD thrusters from Earth. Luckily, most of the research has already been done for us. One of the primary problems with MPD technology was power consumption, something that's already been fixed before we were thawed. There are some other minor problems, but based on precursory readings of Archives, most if not all of them already had theorized fixes we can implement.
Ertex's current fission reactors used for craft such as the ITC should easily generate enough power for MPD thrusters. It may be a much more significant strain than chemical thrusters, but we can make up for the loss with integrated NQ Cells that very gradually charge when the Venture isn't making any active burns, and are used first by the Venture. Thus allowing our ships to make effective power-hungry maneuvers without losing power to other systems. And the much greater fuel efficiency means that a vessel equipped with Venture thrusters should weigh notably less than one with chemical propulsion.

Ships equipped with Venture thruster should be faster and lighter than their chemical counterparts, increasing their effectiveness in combat and everywhere else.
TL;DR: More powerful and fuel efficient thrusters for our ships. They use a lot of power - their main problem on Earth - but that should have already been solved with our fission reactors, and we can use NQ Cells charging slowly constantly to provide most/all of the power during most burns.

EAF-X1 "Ranger" Laser Rifle (1): Chiefwaffles

Just as a note: I'm not touching plasma weaponry now or in the future for various reasons (not that I wouldn't vote for it). So if anyone wants that, please write the design. And lemme know if there are any modifications to the Ranger or Venture that should be made.

[Detoxicated]

Would you rule out psionics and cybernetics, or could it be done if proper research was put inro it.

[Khang36]

EAF-X1 "Ranger" Laser Rifle (2): Chiefwaffles,khang

[piratejoe]

EAF-X1 "Ranger" Laser Rifle (3): Chiefwaffles, khang, Piratejoe

[Blood_Librarian]

Cybernetics sound like something possible. Psionics les so.

@Nuke, what is the Dice out of, 20? or 6?

Also, we really should've focused our revision on the capacitors for industrial use instead of working for it to be more of a laboratory piece.

EAF-X1 "Ranger" Laser Rifle (4): Chiefwaffles, khang, Piratejoe Blood_Librarian

What are we gonna be doing in our revision? I am thinking that in the next turn, we should focus on armor. Either we build a set of exo-skeletons for carrying big bulky things or just a set of "simple" Ceramic plates, we need to be super soldiers we deserve to be. For our revision, I think we should put it to the laser rifle for either the capacitors if the laser comes out well.

[Chiefwaffles]

Personally I think we should try Power Pathing again. It's grounds for a huge breakthrough and it should be easier since we already got the basics - the actual methodology for doing so - down, and just need to refine it to make it work. Only if the Ranger works as expected, of course.

The problem with revising our armor is that our "armor" is a gigantic very bulky unarmored spacesuit.
If we revise the bulkiness, it'll probably be near impossible to completely remove the bulk. Leaving us with "slightly/moderately bulky unarmored spacesuit."
If we revise armor, then we'll get "armored gigantic very bulky spacesuit."
Then there's the fact that we don't use these suits on certain planets - like D, a critical objective. So if we revise armor, our troops still wouldn't wear it because the bulk would make it near unusable and wouldn't be worth a revision's worth of extra armor. If we revise bulkiness, then nothing changes because it'd be the choice between "no armor and no bulkiness" or "no armor and some bulkiness".

Basic power armor in a design could work, on the other hand.


Also, I'm fairly certain NQ Capacitors are ready for widespread military (and maybe civilian!) use. Nuke doesn't mention difficult manufacturing anywhere and generally speaking, if there's a huge flaw in a design (like not being able to practically use it due to the cost of manufacturing), the GM mentions it in the design.