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[evictedSaint]

I'm not a fan of the Quake.

I'd prefer if it had a MIRV-style terminal stage, increasing the number of projectiles enemy PD had to deal with (compared to trying to juke speed-of-light laser PD).
 
I don't like that it's our solution to our missing Point Defense.  Using a nuke to vaporize incoming fire and fighters will result in friendly fire, and I'm concerned about Rate-of-Fire.

It changes the name to Quake rather than using our designation system.

It starts another project, which won't be completed for about 4 more turns.

It's replacing equipment we already have rather than filling out our equipment list - we still need a new destroyer hull, mines, actual dedicated PD, maybe a better borehole generator.

Doing a second design this turn means we will continue to have no new equipment this turn.  The stuff we need - Tidepool, Watchers, etc - are still 4 turns away.  The Gaians had a 2-turn counter to our equipment. The Liir have had 3 turns to build specifically to counter us.  Waiting 4 more turns is going to be game-ending.

[Madman198237]

It does have a MIRV terminal stage for the particle beam warhead, but using the shaped-charge/NEFP device in a MIRV style is not really feasible since it needs a metal plate multiple times the mass and size of the warhead in order to be efficient at directing the blast. On the plus side, after juking to avoid some fire at least, the actual missile is protected by having that massive metal block on the front, and then detonates several kilometers from the target.

I mean, probably not as-is, no. We could also revise the fighter-scale Tremor to have a particle-beam warhead and have fighters deploy them against hostile fighters, to improve fighter performance and thus free them to start making runs on capital ships sooner.

I feel that it's sufficiently different from the first missile. If people disagree, well, that's fine, I can always change it. Not like it's a particularly inspired name anyway.

Replacing equipment that is best described as "pretty bad in the face of what we're fighting" with a relatively fast project due to its similarity to preexisting weapons in order to actually get us a dangerous and lethal weapon that comes in a form smaller than a Large-mounted Sunbeam. Also, one that is substantially more effective against the Liirs' armored bio-cruisers.

The rush die is not likely to finish the Watcher, and the Tidepool still needs one or more revisions before it can be a really useful weapon....assuming we acquire no bugs during rushing both of them, we'd still not likely be deploying anything more than *maybe* the Tidepool if we got lucky. Twice.

It might not be the best idea to try for the new missiles this turn, I honestly don't know. I just think that this could be used to clear up several different problems we're having and that it should, hopefully, be deployable very rapidly. Assuming, of course, that we don't come up with a few wonderful low rolls in Time and Progress.

[NUKE9.13]

Doing a second design this turn means we will continue to have no new equipment this turn.  The stuff we need - Tidepool, Watchers, etc - are still 4 turns away.  The Gaians had a 2-turn counter to our equipment. The Liir have had 3 turns to build specifically to counter us.  Waiting 4 more turns is going to be game-ending.

I mean, we're in an advantageous position, currently. I'm pretty sure we hold more planets than anyone else, and whilst the Gaians and Liir both suffered from rectifiable tactical blunders, it's still a fact that we did remarkably well against forces that outnumbered us. I wouldn't say that delaying the rollout of new equipment would be game-ending.
Still, you have a point. It'll be a long time before those projects auto-complete, so making some progress on them makes sense. We also need to fix Alate's vulnerability to kinetic impacts (relevant versus the Liir), and improve the Tidepool somewhat (although according to the GM, it isn't as bad as it looks), so saving a die (+the di(c)e from scrapping the Hivemine A.1.0) makes sense.

Designs:
(3) Hivemine A.2.0: eS, joha4270, NUKE9.13
(1) <Quake> Gen A.1.0 joha4270
Progress:
(2) Tidepool (1 Die, 1 Rush): eS, NUKE9.13
(2) Watcher 2.0 (1 Die, 1 Rush): eS, NUKE9.13
Scrap:
(2) Scrap the Hivemine 1.0: eS, NUKE9.13
(0) Don't Scrap:
Dice Spending:
(2) Spend 5 of our 6 Dice: eS, NUKE9.13
(1) Make 2 designs joha4270

[evictedSaint]

Fair points all around, but let's consider another point: No Fair Fight comes home for repairs and refits this turn.  While it's possible a rush still wont finish the projects, it *will* put them past 50% - and additional costs are reduced the closer to complete it is.  If we dont get the Tidepool and Watcher mounted this turn, it'll be another two turns (not counting this turn) before it's back home for an upgrade.  We would have a die left over, and we're going to get 1-3 more from scrapping the Hivemine, giving us a revision buffer to patch the Alate/fix bugs/buff the equipment.

Is it possible for the Quake to wait 1 turn?

[Madman198237]

Is it possible for the Quake to wait 1 turn?

Yes. I just worry that in the meantime we'll be deploying more ships to the lovely meatgrinders that are our borders right now, while we could have hammered out just one more project to give them some more teeth than they have as-is. I'm going to edit the proposal slightly so that the missiles remain connected to the firing computer and don't rely on any sort of launch tube or whatever, just a magazine and an armored revolver-style system to load a missile into a drum inside the ship and release it outside the ship.

We're in space, there's very little reason that our ships should NOT have a bunch of missiles strapped to the outer hull and left to float towards the edge of the gravity-manipulation zone as soon as the ship enters a combat zone. The missiles just need to hang out within the ship's gravity wave until they're ready to be launched at targets....which is especially useful for the particle beam nukes which will generally need to act more like point defense.

I can't recall whether the stable binary fuel mixture is solid fuel or liquid, but if it's solid we'd just need to adapt the engines off of our fighters to make the point defense missiles more capable of riding along with our ships, possibly in a wide net, until they need to be deployed...anyway, I'm off on a tangent which won't matter (yet) if we decide to push back the project a bit.

[evictedSaint]

I just worry that in the meantime we'll be deploying more ships to the lovely meatgrinders that are our borders right now...

A new torpedo project will take 4 turns, if the original tremor (which rolled average) is any indication.  I too am worried about throwing our ships into the meat grinder for the next four turns.

[Madman198237]

I just worry that in the meantime we'll be deploying more ships to the lovely meatgrinders that are our borders right now...

A new torpedo project will take 4 turns, if the original tremor (which rolled average) is any indication.  I too am worried about throwing our ships into the meat grinder for the next four turns.

This is fair, but it is also what hoping for less time (since it's not an entirely new tech we're jumping into) and using dice next turn are for. I can see your point but I really would like to be able to start blowing the enemy up sooner, rather than later.

Anyway, I'll be back to think about this maybe later today....but maybe tomorrow. If I survive both exams between now and then, anyway. And if I don't want to prepare better for my last exam.

[evictedSaint]

Judging by the Watchers 1.0 and 2.0 designs, I'm doubtful experience counts for project time.  Watchers 2.0 benefits from not being a new tech itself, and it still takes 5 turns - and that's with some pretty fantastic rolls.  I'm not entirely opposed to a new torpedo design (we certainly do need one), I just want to invest in it next turn.

[Madman198237]

...so experience may or may not be super involved in reducing project times, great. In that case then yes, I suppose we really might as well make the torpedo design next turn, and I'll make it a little more comprehensive and just generally better.

[NUKE9.13]

So, here's my (current) best idea for the black market tech:

Ice-13:
[We] paid through the breathing organ for this sample, and initially believed that we had been ripped off when we discovered that it was merely a small insulated flask containing what appeared to be a piece of frozen water. In a technical sense, this appearance was entirely correct- however, a in a more practical sense, it was entirely wrong. For whilst the substance indeed consisted of solid H2O (with minor impurities), the crystalline structure was entirely unique- and its behaviour nothing short of miraculous. 
The substance, which the accompanying manual referred to as "Ice-13", was alive. When it was introduced to a larger tank of regular water, it began to replicate itself, forming intricate structures, and even divided into several distinct 'entities', which -very slowly- moved around the tank. This behaviour alone would've been intriguing- but once the structures grew large enough, we began to detect (very faint) psionic emissions coming from the tank. Analysis revealed these emissions to be original in nature (not reflections of ambient psionic energy), and the emissions changed based on environmental stimuli. Even still, there were those who doubted that Ice-13 was truly alive. Until it was introduced to a much larger tank of water, with a variety of mineral impurities added, whereupon we observed the entities beginning to compete with each other, 'attacking' other entities and stripping sections of mineral-rich ice and absorbing it into themselves. If there's one sure sign of something being alive, it's competition.
Ice-13 entities have a remarkable ability to 'freeze' water that is considerably above freezing temperatures (and unfreeze ice that is considerably below freezing). This appears to be due to a mastery of endo/exo-thermic chemistry, allowing them to extract heat from the environment and 'store' it in complex ice crystals- bizarrely managing to consume heat in the creation of ice-, as well as reverse the process to generate heat.

The manual we were provided was mostly untranslated, and low on details, but after intense effort, we managed to extract some background information. Apparently, Ice-13 was found on a 'rogue planet'; a planet without a star. With no sun to warm the surface and only a limited amount of geothermal energy, one would not expect to find life, yet somehow life found a way- and entities emerged that could propagate their being through solid ice, by manipulating the state of water to freeze and unfreeze on demand, even with very limited amounts of energy available.

This was all extremely interesting, but some of [Us] still felt cheated, as this appeared to have no real military applications. Others, however, with less constrained imaginations, posited that Ice-13's unique heat-handling abilities could be used to manage waste heat more efficiently than ever before, coming perilously close to actually reversing entropy by converting heat into other forms of energy at a better than 1:1 ratio; another suggestion was using living ice as armour- incredibly cheap, self-regenerating armour; more ambitiously, raising an Ice-13 entity's intelligence level could allow for autonomous operation by what enemy sensors could only ever recognise as a lump of ice.

I'm not sure it has enough applications, though.

Anyway, since the deadline for the contest has been pushed back, we should get our design phase votes locked in. If we can get a decent consensus today, we might even get an update.

[evictedSaint]

Research: 4th Dimensional Parasites

Though we never met the Watchers directly during the dead-drop, we were provided with a word of warning regarding our recent purchase.

<Be careful! Much fire. Such wow. Many danger.>

Suitably, [We] sent a quarantined Drone tender to perform the pickup.  After observing how the technology breached containment and how the tender was lost with all hands, [We] were able to devise more thorough containment procedures.

The technology picked from the catalogue was initially believed to be (due to some translation errors) a powerful, compact, highly-efficient reactor.  While the drop did contain a small reactor, analysis revealed it to be nothing more than a simple low-tech Heavy Elements fusion battery.  It was only after the tenders Queen's Glory began to suffer diminished power capacity did the true nature of our purchase become apparent.

No larger than a simple chitin louse, a 4th Dimensional Parasite seems like a horror straight out of a Liirian playbook.  When directly observed, the parasite will shift between all colors in the visible (and some parts of the non-visible) spectrum and writhe in difficult-to-track patterns.  They are shaped similarly to maggots, with numerous antenna of varying lengths and blunted mandibles.  Unlike traditional organic creatures, these parasites do not gain energy through sunlight, thermal activity, or the breakdown of organic material, but rather through leeching it off of higher-order power generators.  Fusion, fission, electrical batteries, even (surprisingly) simple Stirling engines are not safe from the parasites powerful appetites.

While the idea of infecting enemy systems with these parasites seems like a difficult and unworthwhile prospect (difficult containment, long incubation period, "why not just shoot them", etc), these parasites have another more-remarkable property.  It was discovered almost entirely by accident, but it appears that these parasites exist on a higher plane of reality.  These parasites are able to view reality around themselves regardless of relativity, placing them on a 4th Dimensional Plane of Existance.  While this does not allow matter to travel faster than light, it does allow FTL information. 

And I have run out of steam for this idea, and the more I write the less I like it.  Garbleabglrblegble.

[evictedSaint]

Designs:
(4) <Hivemine> A.2.0: eS, joha4270, NUKE9.13, Madman
(1) <Quake> Gen A.1.0 joha4270
Progress:
(3) Tidepool (1 Die, 1 Rush): eS, NUKE9.13, Madman
(3) Watcher 2.0 (1 Die, 1 Rush): eS, NUKE9.13, Madman
Scrap:
(3) Scrap the Hivemine 1.0: eS, NUKE9.13, Madman
(0) Don't Scrap:
Dice Spending:
(3) Spend 5 of our 6 Dice: eS, NUKE9.13, Madman
(1) Make 2 designs joha4270

[Madman198237]

[OUR] (NAST) <Quake> Gen A.1.0:
I [ERROR: Subject terminated for <deviancy>] [We] don't know what our present nuclear weapons are. So we're going to make them substantially more awesome. First off, the delivery system. The Tremor is....well, bad. This new torpedo is given a two-stage propulsion assembly. The first stage is nothing more than an extremely large and powerful rocket engine with no maneuvering ability, accelerating the torpedo to intercept velocity quite rapidly, before being ditched. Once the torpedo has attained maximum velocity and the first stage is out of its high-performance Stable Binary Fuel Mixture, the stage is jettisoned.

The second stage is all about maneuvering, instead of adding velocity. High-performance SBFM rocket engines face roughly equally in every direction except forwards, giving it improved ability to try and not get shot down, while retaining some ability to increase its towards-the-target velocity in random bursts to further throw off targeting. During the first stage burn, the second stage's engines are responsible for aiming it at the target. Afterwards, the engines are used to make the projectile follow a random path towards the target. This stage houses the control system, which is itself in constant communication with the launching vessel, which is of course in communication with the rest of the fleet. At the cost of some space in the magazines, a computer system is added to every <Quake>-carrying vessel, to allow it to direct its missiles or aid the fleetwide computer system in directing all the missiles in a coordinated fashion to overwhelm enemy PD with focused attacks.

This new missile system comes with two slightly different warheads. Both are a two-stage thermonuclear weapon, refined from our crude Tremor warheads, contained with a thick reflecting shell of depleted uranium. On one side, there is an opening, with a cone-shaped container of a chemical which converts the reflected and emitted x-rays into a thermal expansion shockwave. On top of this sits the cap, which converts the hot, expanding material into a highly directed weapon, much more efficient than brute-forcing your way through life with absolutely plebian spherical explosion patterns.

The first variant is capped with an incredibly heavy and somewhat thick tungsten plate. When the nuke detonates, the converter chemical is heated by the x-rays and heats and pushes the tungsten plate with immense force, partially melting it and accelerating it, adding multiple kilometers per second to its velocity, like a shaped charge. The difference between this and a shaped charge is that while a shaped charge penetrator is stretched out during the explosion and fragments into uselessness after some distance, this penetrator is entirely ejected by the blast, and thus remains a viable penetrator for an infinite distance...oh, and it's also been accelerated by both its rocket engine and the blast. And may be up to several meters wide. This device can be detonated a large distance from its target, making it nigh impossible to shoot down using short-ranged defenses. And did we mention that it's literally just a solid metal plate? The projectile has no maneuvering capability on its own, of course, but is moving very fast. This version, due to the very heavy tungsten plate, is fired with only one warhead per torpedo, and thus has a single large second stage, and no armor. After all, the entire top of the warhead is literally just a gigantic plate of thick metal. Adding armor to protect your giant metal plate is somewhat...redundant.

The second variant instead has a thick conical cap of extremely light molecules --- water ice works well enough, though effort will be made to find a better compound which absorbs less heat energy before becoming a fast-moving plasma, since the less heat it takes the more plasma we can make and the faster it will be moving --- which when heated and pressurized by the rapid expansion of the converter is turned into a cone-shaped jet of particles. A thin cone with additional reflecting material can create a hotter, faster, more focused blast to do serious damage to things in a relatively small area at ranges up to a few thousand kilometers from the weapon (I'm not even kidding, this is possible with modern-day nuclear tech). If the cone is widened, it can be used to cover a larger area with what amounts to a particle-accelerator barrage, vaporing the surfaces of anything caught in the blast, at the cost of less energy per unit area and thus less effective range. This wider cone is our defensive weapon of choice, used to do damage to fightercraft and also eliminate things like enemy missiles and those pesky Gaian wires and shattergun blasts. The much-reduced weight of these projectiles allow many more of them, with correspondingly smaller second stages, to be mounted to a single torpedo first stage in a MIRV configuration. These can be launched one at a time or all at once, depending on the needs of the launching vessel.

The launcher system is completely updated. The particle beam MIRV missiles are mounted to the warship's hull, stored until battle is joined when they are deployed and the first stage's fuel is used to keep them in formation around the launching ship. The ship's computers direct its cloud of missiles to shoot down whatever needs to be shot down. The NEFP missiles can't really be kept in a cloud around a launching warship since they need all the delta-V they have to increase their projectile's damage and the likelihood that it will hit the target, so instead they are kept ready in a magazine in the ship, and fired through a Tremor launcher modified to fit these new torpedoes.

OK, this is updated to be a space-age missile, now with additional maneuvering, computer power, and more damage. Since eS has continually requested it, in the hopes of getting enough dice back, I'm going to update the nuclear x-ray laser proposal to be a little better.

[OUR] (NAST) <Tremor> Gen B.1.0:
This  By redirecting the initial wave of x-rays from a nuclear detonation using an arrangement of copper rods, we can produce a single shot x-ray laser of immense power. By using such a system combined with a very large multi-stage nuclear bomb, we can refine the blast to be much more efficient, burning a large hole straight through an enemy warship's hull plating by heating it with high-energy radiation.

This updated version of the Tremor is rigged to detonate outside the deadliest stretches of enemy point defense, relying on the much greater energy of the laser compared to ship-mounted (i.e., weapons that can't blow up a nuclear bomb to power them) weapons to make it still deal sufficient damage at that range.

This version of the Tremor doesn't come with bombardment caps, as they'd be mostly useless. Atmospheres are not friends of x-ray lasers, and firing laser nukes at the surface is not really likely to accomplish anything other than fry a few enemies at a time. Certainly not anything worthy of the deployment of an entire torpedo to accomplish.

[Draignean]

[OUR] (DMN) <Hivemine> Gen A.2.0
[Time: 4 Progress: 4 Cost: 3]
As the original Hivemine project is quietly liquidated, along with the worst and most flagrant belligerents, plans for the second are slid into place. Where the previous plans attempted too much, too soon, the queens going forward will have more... realistic expectations of their pale sisters. A dash of power, balanced against a hardened barrier against the toxic ambition that poisoned the last attempts at unification.

Hivemine 2.0: 0/7 [3] | 0T + 175O + 100M + 50E +0S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested

Prototype
[Efficacy: 2]
The [Deep] are truly thankless creatures. While the princes and princesses of the [High] have spared no effort in careful cataloging their various failings and inadequacies, so that a government system may be designed for them that best enables their more limited individual intellects, they continue to reach for more. Though they do not commit as open acts of aggression against their peers as they once did, they seem to chafe at the power structures the [High] have designed for them, and have had the audacity to use their roles in the [Council] to speak outside their yearly allotted time for the issuance of grievances.

Among the [High] queens, there is some talk of [Pogrom] to remind the [Deep] that they were placed in their position for a reason. However, such talk remains mostly idle thought, as the [Deep] have at least managed to show baseline compliance. How long that will last after the bodies of their executed princesses and queens are recycled, however, remains to be seen.

<Hivemine> 2.0 | 0T 100O 75M 10E 0S * Planet Size per rank. 3 Ranks | A mining hive, populated by a caste of [Deep] workers kept in apartheid from the rest of [We]. Such workers are long adapted to working in the pitch darkness of the far far underground. While the [Deep] to contribute, lingering social issues, including chafing at the government structure forced upon them by higher castes, greatly diminishes their efficacy. Increases Metal output by 2%. Increases Transplutonic Output by 1%.


Progress
Tidepool: 12/12 (6+2) - Clean rush! Project complete!
Watcher 2.0: 9/14 (3+3) - Bug Added!


Watcher 2.0 Bug: Particle Bleed
While Watcher will, as part of its normal functionality, lose a certain portion of its working volume due to random chance, high-energy bleed off to disperse energy impacts, and stripping from solar forces, a significant error in the calibration of the psionic controls results in much higher losses than anticipated originally. While the shield works as anticipated in a resting state, any utilization of her crew guided functions (frequency matching, shield focusing, shield shaping, etc) will result in rapid bleeding of charged particles and greatly accelerated shield decay. This bleed not only saps the shield, but also significantly impacts our own sensors.

Scrapping Hivemine: 1 die



Revision Phase of Year 4
Resources
Dice: 2
T: 11218 + 3416
O: 32036 + 9077
M: 10387 + 10368
E: 7904 + 7227
S: 2671 + 500

Alate has auto-completed!

Spoiler: Projects (click to show/hide)

Belief Engine: 14/16 [2] | 150O  + 100M + 75E + 20S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Queen's Freedom: 6/14 [1] | 30T + 150M + 50E +15S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Amplified Credulity Lab: 10/16 [2] |  80O +80M + 40 Synthetic | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Queen's Whisper: 6/16 [2] | 50T  + 125O + 60M+ 75E | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Hivemine 2.0: 0/7 [3] | 0T + 175O + 100M + 50E +0S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Watcher Gen 2.0: 9/14 [3] | 120T + 70O + 100M + 150E | Rushed 1 Times | 1 Die + 120T + 70O + 100M + 150E
Cinder Spires: 3/12 [3] |  220O +150M + 25E| Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested

[We] Technology List
[We] Empire Planner

Spoiler: Current Deployment (click to show/hide)

Echo
Fleets
- Fleet 1
3x Heavy Fighter Destroyer
1x Boreless Heavy Fighter Destroyer
1x Command Cruiser ("No Fair Fight") Very Heavily Damaged, 25% of ship cost to repair
Overall Issues: 22 Relentless Fighters over fleet capacity. Excess fighters will be destroyed at the end of this round. You can use these to reduce the cost of a new wing if brought home.

Ground - 10/10
8x Takers
-----

Oscar
Fleets
- Fleet 6
1x Boreless Heavy Fighter Destroyer  Heavily Damaged, 20% of ship cost to repair
1x Heavy Fighter Destroyer  Very Heavily Damaged, 25% of ship cost to repair

-Transport Fleet 3
1 Transport Destroyer [+2 Tremor Mount with bombardment caps]

Ground - 7/10 - 3/10 Gaian Regime
16x Takers
-----
Quebec
Fleets
- Fleet 5
3x Boreless Heavy Fighter Destroyer
3x Heavy Fighter Destroyer
1x Command Cruiser 

-Transport Fleet 1
1 Transport Destroyer [+2 Tremor Mount with bombardment caps]
Ground - 10/10
8x Takers
------
Sierra
Fleets
- Fleet 3
4x Heavy Fighter Destroyer
2x Boreless Heavy Fighter Destroyer
1x Command Cruiser [+5 Alate Sections, + Belief Engine,  -All Small Tremors]
1x Combat Cruiser ('Pulsar')

-Transport Fleet 4
3 Transport Destroyer [+2 Tremor Mount with bombardment caps]

Ground - 4/10 Gaian Regime 6/10
12x Takers
------
Bravo
Fleets

- Transport Fleet 2 [All Transports]
3 Transport Destroyer - 12x Takers

Ground - 10/10
3x Takers
------
Charlie
Fleets

Ground - 10/10
3x Takers
------
Papa
Fleets

Ground - 10/10
3x Takers
------
Alpha
Fleets

- Fleet 2 [All Transports]
1 Transport Destroyer

Ground - 10/10
------

[evictedSaint]

[OUR] (CCL) <Alate> Gen A.1.1

The sheering issue with layered Alate armor was an unexpected side effect, but one that [We] are eager to take advantage of.  By increasing the length of the synthetic protein chains in the armor, we can force the sheets to cross-bind to one another.  This cross-binding occurs despite the sheering stress that the armor exhibits when hit with sufficiently high-velocity impacts, but that stress does not go away.  Instead, the outer layers will "erupt" outward when this stress reaches critical levels, such as when struck by a ship-killing kinetic weapon.  This eruption decreases the velocity of the kinetic object and artificially inflates the amount of material it must penetrate to get through to the hull.  Because the synthetic protein chains are cross-bound throughout the entire surface of armor, this "eruption" is localized to the damaged area.  This eruption should be particularly useful against Hate Spines, forcing them out and away from the ship before they can psionically implode.

Essentially, we turn the Alate armor into Explosive Reactive Armor to take advantage of this natural sheering phenomenon.

"Why fix the problem when we can just make it better?" -eS_did_nothing_wrong.emoji