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[Powder Miner]

No, I don’t think we do. By jumping the gun here we risk being less effective when we actually start combat (in regards to armor), especially seeing as we cannot really afford the expense in the first combat jump or two anyway, and we gain more from generally increasing our capacities to get resources and get out than we actually do by taking potshots at them — the same arguments applied for a lack of need for armor apply in reverse. The number of things they’re going to have are going to be pretty low, and a singular basic weapon isn’t going to be doing a ton of damage to them; it will cost us far more to set up the weapon than it will to actually repair their shit for them.

That said, the cargo bay doesn’t need a design. A revision, at most. We can revise in some of that 3d storage space I’ve been proposing and pump our bays up without having to build a full expensive bay.

[10ebbor10]

The important thing to note is that the fusion reactor uses impossible to repair materials. I'm kind of wary of losing those.

Secondly, whether we can outproduce damage depends entirely on how much damage the typical weapon does. We need to design one to know that.

[TricMagic]

We can always create a simple railgun. Not like it's beyond Rocket science.

2 Rails are connected to the power supply. +/- charge is built up, then it fires a mass of Metal at the enemy ship.

Railgun basics

To be fair, I kinda like my Thor design better. But railguns aren't that complicated. We could also do a Coilgun.

[Powder Miner]

For the armor we’re only talking a delay of a couple of turns, as resources are scarce enough we can’t really afford to use our dice to rush anyway, and we’re not going to be able to afford the armor immediately anyway, at least if we want to put up the mining bay and LS to allow us to be making the kinds of upgrades and installations we will want to be making in the first turns. Armor we design now has a potential to be worse than armor we design later, and since the resource crunch will keep our expenditures tight early on anyway I think we don’t gain a bunch more from starting an armor design now instead of after the first combat turn, and we may even lose out.

It may actually be worth designing a weapon though, you make a good point about the idea of getting information from firing a basic weapon, but it should be a cheapo basic gun rather than something with a ton of investment if we want to do that. It’s my opinion that our priorities for the first couple of turns should be to gather resources, build up a capacity for heavier duty work, and get information on the enemy.

It’s also my opinion that if we build the cheap weapon it should be in a attack type we don’t actually intend to invest heavily in — if we can color Consortium defenses in a direction that we don’t intend to follow, that’d be fantastic, and if we go cheap and low-investment the short term loss of advancement of our own may well be worth it.

[Nirur Torir]

I'm with Ebbor, we should try to conserve those plastics. I'm a little wary of even building the new reactor without trying to strip those out of it.

Armoring a single module shouldn't cost too much, should be cheap to design, and basic armor shouldn't be too outclassed by any particular weapon they'll have in the next few turns.

[10ebbor10]

We need two. I just realized our thrusters use plastic too.

[Madman198237]

I mean, if you want to try being REALLY ridiculous, there's always the "can't see me, can't shoot me" approach. We could attempt to do something or several somethings that just makes it harder to detect and shoot our Ark.

As for weaponry, making a laser would be an EXCELLENT first step. Lasers can be used for defense as well as attack, and if they think we're going to use lasers and put, say, a ceramic layer of armor on their vessels, we can just show up to the next fight with a coil or railgun to mess up their day.

[Powder Miner]

We need two. I just realized our thrusters use plastic too.

The ion thrusters are really bad and something we should be gunning to replace soon anyway — armoring them isn’t worth it because even if their integrity gets dinged ideally they won’t be there very long anyway.

[Nirur Torir]

The engine's less critical. The engine caps out at 2% of our reserves to repair, but the 10% from the power generator would hurt. And if we start an engine on jump 1 and have it almost ready to go by the time that gets hit, we might not need to repair it at all.

As for weaponry, making a laser would be an EXCELLENT first step. Lasers can be used for defense as well as attack, and if they think we're going to use lasers and put, say, a ceramic layer of armor on their vessels, we can just show up to the next fight with a coil or railgun to mess up their day.

We don't really have the power for it, and it should be relatively harder to design.

[10ebbor10]

How about a nuclear suicide mining drone? Literally just a drone with a nuke attached.

[Powder Miner]

If we want to bypass armor we might want to consider trying to get modules like their reactor and mining to damage themselves through cyber warfare.

[10ebbor10]

That's a neat idea.

Destructive Override Codes

The Syndicate has forgotten one thing. They're flying a Company ship. With our intimate knowledge of the cyberarchitecture, a simple supercomputer to override security passcodes, and a small transmitter array, we can easily take over the ship. Once we're in, the process is simple. Override safety protocols, spike power voltages, and watch as power convertors through the entire ship blow up in spectacular chain detonation.

[TricMagic]

I do not want to get into that right now.


New engine designs anyone?

EM should be the base. Equal and opposite force..

EMC Engine

A number of Electromagnetic rings stored with a closed compartment with a single exit.
|_|
(_)
|_|
(_)

A massive charge is built within the Engine, and Pushed out. This reaction sustains itself, and creates force from Power to these Rings.

This is the first part. The second is an outer shell which connects to space. The EM waves push against a Solar Sail, Before being redirected out the back towards open space.

We essentially create EM waves with Power, and then use that power to push against an attached sail. This gives us control, and greater speed over distance. It also has the advantage of not needing plastics, just specialized metal crafting and non-metals.

[Nirur Torir]

I was thinking a fusion/plasma engine. By spending hydrogen, it should be pretty cheap to power, and we have some knowledge of fusion from the power plant.

[Powder Miner]

A fusion engine is likely to be pretty goddamn expensive I think, much as the reactor.