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[Chiefwaffles]

Core Thread

Those goddamn saboteurs -- the Consortium destroyed and stole the equivalent of trillions of dollars, and even took a few lives while they were at it. Ark 2 is gone; a Consortium virus unleashed the docking clamps and they took off with the unfinished ship. We just finished essential repairs, but further repair and construction was cancelled so we can catch the murderers and thieves before they steal Eden from under our hands. The same minds behind the Slipdrive threw together a "booster" that should let us catch up with the stolen Ark by the time they make their first stop, but we'll be moving forward at the same speed after that. They probably know that we're going to do this.
You are the best and brightest engineers in the Company (disregarding the inventors of the Slipdrive), and have either been assigned or volunteered to join the crew of Ark 1 in order to continue construction and repairs during flight in order to eliminate or arrest the criminal scum before they get to Eden. You're brought into one of the undamaged rooms, now deemed "R&D", covered in fancy plants and luxury wood paneling that could make you forget you're even in space to begin with.

The Arks were intended to launch with extra supplies at the beginning, so the Navigational Computer states that the next stop is at Jump 3. We'll have three jumps to ourselves before we stop at a proper "stopping point" with resources we can mine - Jump 0 (this one), Jump 1, and Jump 2. The saboteurs stole half of our supplies before we left, so unfortunately we'll be at equilibrium with them resources-wise.


You have your task. In three jumps, we'll encounter the enemy's ark. They'll be hostile, but by then we'll be ready. We'll turn this unfinished Ark into something to behold.

10 Dice
500 Advanced Plastics
500 Noble Gases
500 Uranics
1,000 Hydrogen
1,000 Metals
1,500 Non-Metals

Spoiler: Ark 1 (click to show/hide)

Ark 1
5/12 Power available
2/5 Life Support Capacity available
4/10 Skeleton Space available (500 Metals & 500 Non-Metals required for next +2 expansion)

Modules
(Green integrity indicates the module is working at full effectiveness; Orange indicates partial effectiveness; and Red indicates the Module is offline.)

• [100%] X-05 Auxiliary Fusion Reactor
  +12 Power;   -1 LS Capacity;   -1 Skeleton Space
  Consumes 100 Hydrogen/Jump
  A Tokamak Fusion Reactor. Intended originally to be the auxiliary reactor to the primary power source (which is not installed), the X-05 is specially stable: designed to continue operations despite degradation from wear-and-tear. It can lower output according to damage, translating current integrity directly to current power produce compared to max power possible. Shuts down at 20% integrity.
  50 Advanced Plastics, 100 Uranics, 400 Metal, 200 Non-Metal
• [100%] Emergency Life Support
  -3 Power;   +5 LS Capacity;   -1 Skeleton Space
  When launched, the Ark didn't have its own dedicated Life Support systems and was still relying on an umbilical to the shipyard. The ELS represents the existing small amount of Life Support Equipment hastily put together to keep the ship's atmosphere sustained until it reaches Eden, as long as only a relatively small amount of crew members are thawed at any one time.
  100 Metal, 200 Non-Metal
• [100%] Ion Thrusters
  -1 Power;   -0 LS Capacity;   -1 Skeleton Space
  Thrusters with their own self-contained fuel tanks expected to last the entire trip, using external power for most of the propulsion. Can move the ship, but very slowly.
  10 Advanced Plastics, 100 Noble Gases, 200 Metal, 100 Non-Metal
• [100%] Mining Bay
  -1 Power;   -1 LS Capacity;   -1 Skeleton Space
  Produces 100 Noble Gases, 100 Uranics, 200 Hydrogen, 200 Metals, and 300 Non-Metals / Jump
  A small hangar and a few tiny piloted mining ships to extract resources from only material sources with little to no gravity present.
  50 Uranics, 50 Noble Gases, 400 Metal, 400 Non-Metal
• [100%] Cryovault
  -1 Power;   -1 LS Capacity;   -1 Skeleton Space
  A place where skilled crewmembers are frozen, ready to be thawed when needed; and also where our thawed crewmembers live. If below 50% integrity, we will not be able to man new crew-requiring modules. Due to advanced backups, this module cannot be destroyed.
  500 Metal, 1,000 Non-Metal
• [100%] Cargo Bay
  -1 Power;   0 LS Capacity;   -1 Skeleton Space
  A depressurized large cargo bay with dedicated storage for each resource type and requiring EVA suits to access. Stores 1,500 of each resource.
  400 Metal, 600 Non-Metal

Spoiler: Other Designs (click to show/hide)

Array

Spoiler: Projects (click to show/hide)

Array

The Design Phase of Jump 0 has begun. Due to extra supplies and motivation, we will have 10 dice per turn (but cannot bank any of these 10 dice) for Jumps 0, 1, and 2.
You may also vote on a new name for your Ark, and a name for the Company (or branch of the Company in charge of the Arks).

[TricMagic]

Checking in on The Ark.

[Talion]

Lots to do, optimistically we might want an extra cargo bay.

[TricMagic]

Technically, my first race. And it's late for me too.

How do we go about this?


Our first Priority should likely be Armor of some sort. An Energy Shield Perhaps..

Second is an Upgrade to our Mining ability.

These two are important for our first stop. Being able to stop an attack, even if it's only one keeps us from needing to repair.


Assuming these two projects are completed quickly, an Energy Upgrade and Railgun would be next. Life Support as well.

[Talion]

We have 10 dice, 3 dice per design mean 3 designs to get the ball rolling and cover all our bases.

If we're building a shield, we'll need an explanation for how it works. For example, we could build an electromagnetic shield that protects against ammunition with enough metal in it. We could try for something higher tech like a gravity shield. We could also try for a shield analog, like an armoured drone that flies between our ark and the enemy's to absorb weapon impacts.

We could do with a better thruster and there are a number of options there. A fusion torch, as fusion power is already a thing or we could go with a gravity impulse drive.

Now is also the best time to pick up improvements to the Mining Bay to get more resources in. Even as is it would be worth building an extra Mining Bay for the extra mining income.

[TricMagic]

I'm up for building the extra Mining Bay. More Modules means less chance of more important Modules taking a hit.

50 Uranics, 50 Noble Gases, 400 Metal, 400 Non-Metal

Apparent cost.


I was thinking a Reflective Field.

Basing it off gravity fields seems doable.

• First Plane is a square/Rectangle{Circle Format}
• Secondary Plains form the Oval. Anything that approaches the First Plane gets pulled around, splashing it like water against a slant.

-> |
{Attack approaches FP}

    /
> |
    \

> /^-

{Attack is pulled North(up)}

> /
   |
    \

{Attack glances off the Shield.(or outright misses)}


If we can base the whole thing off Hexagonal Patterns, so much the better.



Note, just the two of us here.

[Happerry]

While Gravity control is a technological area that could be useful, I highly doubt we'll be able to just whip up a gravity based shield in our first actions.

The setting is Medium Sci-Fi. You can get pretty crazy with tech, but you have to remain grounded. For example, if pursued, Psionics could theoretically be possible, but only with large amounts of internally rational explanations and effort. Designs should be based in reality, or have some great logic supporting them if not based in our reality.

If we want gravity whatevers, we'll need to build a supporting structure of self consistent technobabble first.

Personally I think our first defensive thing should be a point defense laser that can shoot down or deflect enemy missiles and projectiles, because that gets us Laser EXP. We also might want to look into a Ramscoop, both for increased speed (thus letting us get to places first), and for hopefully being able to 'strain out' and collect some useful resources while we are traveling.

Speaking of resource gathering, we might also want to design a better mining module to collect more resources, perhaps using actual mining drones instead of piloted shuttles. Which would also give us drone experience, making it easier for us to make attack drones later on.

[TricMagic]

Well, an erergy defensive system is what I thout first. But shooting down attacks isn't likely to work well.

The basic idea of blocking it is in my mind.

[Happerry]

Why wouldn't shooting down attacks work well? It's one of the most basic active defense measures that exists in space combat. Missiles can be fried and even solid projectiles knocked out of their trajectory and into a missing path, and a defense laser also gives us laser experience for designing a 'fry the other ship' laser.

If you just want to block stuff, look at armor first. Probably a combination of normal ablative armor and whipple shielding for these first turns. Something like...

"Sanctuary" Layered Defense Armor
The "Sanctuary" defensive armor scheme exists as a solid and decently thick layer of the best ablative armor mixture (no advanced plastics used because we can't afford to use the stuff up to repair the armor every round) the designers could design, with several thinner layers suspended above the armor with around an inch's worth of separation, designed to absorb explosive and laser impacts and prevent them from effecting the rest of the armor. The zones between each layer of armor alternate between being filled with vacuum to prevent the transmission of force between lasers, and being filled with heat resistant insulation to provide extra resistance against explosive radiation and enemy laser and or particle beams.

Or here's a defensive laser design.

Cherubim Interceptor Laser Array
The Cherubim Interceptor Laser Array is a collection of Free Electron Laser emitters paired with a single Free-Electron laser generator which can split its output between the different emitters to effect multiple enemy targets at once or to effect targets of which some of the emitters do not have line of fire to. As it is a Free-Electron laser it can 'tune' it's output between microwave blasts and more traditional laser wavelengths, allowing it to switch between frying the electronics of enemy guided projectiles to using thermal pulses to cause either total target vaporization to remove a targeted projectile from the battlefield or the explosive bursts of partial target vaporization to knock enemy projectiles, even enemy solid state projectiles (like railgun slugs) off target to where they won't hit a friendly ship or drone. The Laser Array also has an attached radar, which is uses for targeting purposes and which is hooked into the rest of the ship's systems if for some reason it needs to share its targeting information with other components of the vessel.

[TricMagic]

Bedtime for me. But we do have 10 die, so we can use 6 to get both of those started and see which one we can finish quickly enough.

[Shadowclaw777]

We don't just need a energy electromagnetic defense system as a form of defense, a reinforced hull of armor seems effective since its the generalist approach and can defend against a variety of attacks; especially since titanium-gold alloys, or yes can be built of the magical steel and common metal known as mangalloy. I also think of doing the railgun and coilguns are especially deadly, as MAC (magnetic accelerator cannons) when applied properly can barely be defended against and are extremely deadly, while weaponized Red and UV lasers are extremely energy-hogs to have a decent effect for their speed-of-light velocity.

We can do mining drones, a reinforced alloy hull of mangalloy or fancy gold-titanium to give us a generalist and defensive strength when the enemy starts striking against us, and a form of advanced magnetic energy confinement that improves upon it like the Stellerator or the spheromak, or we can even go for a further jump of cold fusion for others.

As well we can do renaming of our company, maybe the Void Conglomerate, or Project Centauri, or some such fancy word-play

We also should utilize our three designs most efficiency and not attempt to create redundancy...

[TricMagic]

Some level of redundancy is useful. Only 2 layers at this point, though armor is my choice.

Lasers grid for extra defense on top of the base armor plan.(armor first)

[Shadowclaw777]

I don't think you understand that this is an action usage game, and that we should spread out our designs to three different areas, and that the ablative armor is good for our first defensive design and I think in investing in the area of autonomous/remote-control mining drones based on a radar signal, and a improved fusion reactor to power up the future weapon and other utility systems that are conceived.

"Itinerant" RC Mining Drones
The Itinerant is our first conceived advanced computer program and wiring we applied to the piloted mining ships with an autonomous program that can allow the ships to be remotely controlled from our Ark through an advanced active radar signal we transmit, that allows the mining drones to more efficiently and more resistance to the gravitational and environmental concerns of our drones. Therefore, allowing the drones to collect more material as we don't have to worry about the needs of the personnel and as mechanical drones can perform automated work more continuously without wear-and-tear and fatigue. The new mining drones that are an altered form of our current piloted ships, follow a basic autonomous mining program when a radar signal can't be picked up or collected; so that we can still retrieve the minerals the ships has when we go back to it.

Seraph Stellarator Fusion Reactor
An improvement to our current Tokamok fusion reactor, of modifying the process so that the hot plasma goes through twisted rings to alleviate our return of energy-efficiency by also reducing the inherent qualities of the leakage of plasma due to the instability of our previous design.  The Seraph reactor attempts to create a its natural twist plasma path, using external magnets to increase the amount of energy that can be collected, while tokamaks create those magnetic fields using an internal current, reducing the amount of power you can get from it. The method we utilize is in which a helical coil is used to confine the plasma, together with a pair of poloidal field coils to provide a vertical field.

Designs:
"Sanctuary" Layered Defense Armor: (1) SC
Cherubim Interceptor Laser Array
"Itinerant" RC Mining Drones: (1) SC
Seraph Stellarator Fusion Reactor: (1) SC
Company Title
Void Conglomerate: (1) SC

[Happerry]

Defense is definitely something we want to have redundancy on (though so is offense). But Redundancy is generally a good thing, we don't want to lose our only anything because then we stop being able to do stuff, from losing our only mining module meaning we don't get any more resources to losing life support meaning... well, we've lost life support.

Anyway with ten dice we probably want to do three projects right now, we've got a whole two turns to do any needed revisions or replacements if they roll poorly for how good they are. Personally I feel our third project should be mining drones because it'll give us more resources (which we are definitely going to need), and gives us more experience with drones which should be useful for both fighter drones and/or missiles (not that there's a lot of difference between those two sometimes).

I'm against the Itinerant because if we're going to do a mining drone we should do a better design then 'cram a control computer in where the cockpit used to be' of another design.

"Harvester" Automatic Mining Probes
The Harvester Mining Probe system functions with three specialized drone designs, given overall guidance and control by communication uplink to the mothership. Their are four kinds of automated vessels associated with the Harvester system. The first, the so called 'Tender' is a larger craft, given a larger computer cluster and reinforced com gear to serve as a hardened control node in the system, as well as extra fuel tanks to refuel and otherwise upkeep the smaller drones,. The second kind is the 'Pickaxe' small drone, which uses an assortment of drills, mining lasers, and other such tools to break apart space rocks and harvest anything useful inside of them. The third, the so called 'Honeycomb', is a cargo drone that the Pickaxe loads its spoils onto so that they may be transported back to the ship and used by the engineers. The fourth, last, and least numerous is the 'Finder' drone which uses advanced radar and other sensor systems to survey areas and determine which space rocks have tasty materials inside of them and which ones are just made out of rock.

I don't think you understand that this is an action usage game, and that we should spread out our designs to three different areas, and that the ablative armor is good for our first defensive design and I think in investing in the area of autonomous/remote-control mining drones based on a radar signal, and a improved fusion reactor to power up the future weapon and other utility systems that are conceived.

Personally I don't think you fully understand that the other side is going to be shooting at us, and it is totally worth doubling up on actions that keep our stuff from being blown up because then we have to spend less resources and actions repairing all the damage they're going to give us. This isn't only an action usage game, we also have to balance our production and repair abilities, as well as our resources used to repair instead of gaining ground, and the other side gets to blow us up too. Armor is good, but it's a back up system 100% of the way because every time it's called into use it'll take damage, and then we'll have to spend resources repairing it instead of making new death guns or whatever. We want it because no active defense system is ever perfect, but we also want it used the least amount possible.

Designs:
"Sanctuary" Layered Defense Armor: (2) SC, Happerry
Cherubim Interceptor Laser Array: (1) Happerry
"Itinerant" RC Mining Drones: (1) SC
Seraph Stellarator Fusion Reactor: (1) SC
"Harvester" Automatic Mining Probes: (1) Happerry

Company Title
Void Conglomerate: (1) SC
"The Company" is perfectly fine: (1) Happerry

[Rockeater]

Long live capitalism