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[Maxinum McDreich]

Yeah, sheet's in. As for voting, Nirur was the one that updated the votebox with my vote to cosmic trade winds, so I assume it's acceptable if others vote. (Also don't mind at all if he changes/adds something spicy if he wanted).

By the by: If someone else voted for cosmic trade winds, would you vote for it or against it? Like, if you'd prefer something that isn't that, I'm perfectly fine with it being taken out as an option (I'd just vote nodespace rippers in that case).

Also meant to say the high tide and low tide was freakin' genius. Atleast to my small minded brain! I imagine blackholes as kind of tidal whirlpools or hurricanes to work with that.

[TricMagic]

Want to add it to your proposal?

[Maxinum McDreich]

oh uhh… yeah I should do that! xD (durr) Ok so! Revised:

Cosmic Trade Winds: The Galaxy is infused with dark energy, and humanity are only beginning to sense this more and more clearly. What they've started to discover is dark energy, or cosmic energy, moves all the time. These create winds and currents of literally astronomical energy. A ship made with Cosmic sails can catch these winds and reach FTL. People sense these winds and currents through their skin, the strength of goosebumps telling them the strength and direction of the current, even inside the ship. However, Cosmic storms can destroy ships as energy sweeps in every direction, often creating small nebula as the energy converts itself to matter. Other times, the routes can change, leaving systems without FTL travel until the fickle winds turn to them at another point.

Additionally, there are tides, both high and low. Crew members hate the feeling of either when it gets too much one way or another. Each tide also has a breaking point, where physics start doing weird things. Low tide is when the dark energy becomes very still, slowing ships. When it hits the breaking point, the energy is so still that time and space slowly ceases to exist. This super void leads to those caught in to simply cease to exist, person by person disappearing in quantum shift if no one is there to observe, including ships themselves.

High tide is when the dark energy is so active and violent that it begins to tear at the fabric of time and space. Ships/captains that know how to survive these turbulent currents can make good speed, but the breaking point is something to avoid. The breaking point literally opens a tear in said fabric, revealing a graveyard of broken nodespace, shattered hyperspace, even dead galaxies untold light years away. This tear drags in some of the dark energy currents, dragging ships to places they were not designed in physics to exist in, driving the crew mad. Whether ALL those galaxies are dead is speculation.

Star systems gravitational pulls anchors reality and dark energy, preventing break points from either side of the tides. The islands and shores of space sail travel. Black Holes end up being whirlpools of constant hyper high tide, but with such gravitational pull that it's anchored to reality, so instead the energy pools so strongly it becomes visible to the naked eye as... well... black holes.


(hoping not to make it too verbose to match the other ones, but, yeah. Left it more open for something to be on the other side of high tide. A giant space whale would be dumb AND great! )

[TricMagic]

A) Immaterium travel (0):
B) Nodespace Rippers (0):
C) R'lyeh Drives (2): 0cra_tr0per, Chaoskl21
WI) Psionic Jump (1): Dustan Hache
WI) Universal Leylines ():
WI) Cosmic Trade Winds (1): Maxinum McDreich
Re:WI) Cosmic Trade Winds (1): TricMagic

K~, changed my vote to the new one. And yes, it would.

[Maxinum McDreich]

I forgot:

A) Immaterium travel (0):
B) Nodespace Rippers (0):
C) R'lyeh Drives (2): 0cra_tr0per, Chaoskl21
WI) Psionic Jump (1): Dustan Hache
WI) Universal Leylines ():
WI) Cosmic Trade Winds ():
Re:WI) Cosmic Trade Winds (2): TricMagic, Maxinum McDreich

[Nirur Torir]

I'll give it a few more hours. If nothing changes, I'll throw in a tiebreaker favoring Re:WI and post the finalized starting designs.

[IronyOwl]

A) Immaterium travel (0):
B) Nodespace Rippers (0):
C) R'lyeh Drives (3): 0cra_tr0per, Chaoskl21, IronyOwl
WI) Psionic Jump (1): Dustan Hache
WI) Universal Leylines ():
WI) Cosmic Trade Winds ():
Re:WI) Cosmic Trade Winds (2): TricMagic, Maxinum McDreich

Ia Ia and such!


Name: Alaric Ven

[TricMagic]

Workbreaker, thy name is Irony.

No age of cosmic sailing then, just confusion of something with no understanding. Can we understand it? Or is it simply incomprehensible?

Me being slightly wondering about something that has no explanation, but simply is, apparently.

[Nirur Torir]

And we're full. I had a scout written up, name genned by SeventhSanctum. Here it is, since I won't be posting it with the rest:

Portalrider Class Experimental Light Special Strategic Macro-Explorer Frigate.

This is an unarmed science and passive reconnaissance vessel, designed for long missions. It has an expanded cargobay to carry more supplies, a compliment of re-usable sensor buoys, and has an external mount for a single planetary shuttle or fightercraft. It carries extra radiators and heatsinks as a cheap cloaking solution. Together, its expanded sensor array and buoys can be used as a very basic sensor and comms net in a foreign system.

Quality: 2! cost: 4

Weapons: Unarmed
Defenses: Light armor
Fast engine rating, poor maneuverability
Riders: 1 light fighter, external. 1 set of sensor buoys.
Perks: Very basic command and control, negligible cloaking, long range
Flaws: Low morale, low command infosec
Costs: Moderate build costs, moderate maintenance.

Notes: Our scout was sadly over-ambitious. The heatsinks were poorly designed, and the crew quickly gets uncomfortable when the ship goes dark. Worse, they crowd out the cargobay and crew space, limiting range to only moderately further than a standard ship. Getting enough buoys to cover a system required stripping them to a smaller size, leaving them quite obvious and easy to listen in on. It remains capable of coordinating a fleet in foreign systems, barely, and is capable of carrying a Silver Fox.

We have: A light fighter, a biological sapper drone, a line corvette, a missile corvette, a repair ship that works on prayer, and a basic carrier. Rolls later.

[TricMagic]

Of those two descriptions, two stick out huh.

[Screech9791]

I'm assuming the Portalrider-class is our carrier.

I submitted the missile boat.

[IronyOwl]

Portalrider was a placeholder we no longer have. Our carrier is most likely a hunk of junk auto-genned to give our fighters something to launch from.

I did the bio sapper drone. :3

[Nirur Torir]

R'lyeh Drives win.

Rolls are 2d4.
Sizes are: Strikecraft < Gunship < Corvette < Frigate < Destroyer < Cruiser < Battleship < Dreadnaught.I'm not going to be very consistent on scale, but assume each size is about 2-3 times longer and wider than the previous category.
Ratings are relative to the size category. A very cheap corvette will still be more expensive than an expensive fighter, and light corvette armor is heavier than heavy fighter armor. Speed is the exception.
Build costs are partially abstracted away, and affect how many ships get built per turn (or how many turns it takes to build larger ships). Maintenance affects how many total ships you can support. Infrastructure to build and maintain more will improve over time, or with actions.

Spoiler: Kyvk-class Missile Boat (click to show/hide)

Name: Screech XIII
Primary specialty: Weapon Designing
Secondary specialty: Sublight Propulsion

Kyvk-class Missile Boat:
A small corvette (about a hundred yards long) equipped with two turrets on the top; one is a light 75mm HEAT cannon, and the other is a medium MRLS turret; carrying eight small (~5 yards long) guided space-to-space nuclear missiles, with the turret containing an onboard targeting computer that identifies and locks onto targets.

Inside, there's three main rooms; which are (in order from front to back): a control room containing informational displays and 3 terminals (one for the pilot, one for the cannon operator, and one for the MRLS operator), a hallway with storage rooms and crew quarters at the sides, and last but not least, a room for maintaining the ship's sublight engines and FTL drive, as well as other important stuff, such as life support systems, the ship's reactor control panel, and an artificial gravity generator.

Defensively, the armor is made of a combination of steel and titanium, with a thickness of two feet at the minimum, with 5 feet at the maximum. A small deflector screen generator is present in the maintenance room, which can provide noticable protection when activated, which can help avoid unnecessary armor dents and hull breaches.

Quality: 3, cost: 4

Kyvk-class Missile Boat, Light Corvette
Weapons: Light anti-armor cannon, medium StS nuclear missile launcher with ship-based guidance and 8 missiles.
Defenses: Heavy frontal armor that's lighter elsewhere, small deflector screen.
Average engine rating. Limited range and independence. Minimal crew. Carries a single missile reload, which requires a space walk to arm.
Perks: Strong missile alpha strike of all 8 missiles.
Flaws: STL. Missile turret and exposed magazine are vulnerable from side attacks. Extremely slow reload.
Costs: Cheap to build, moderate-expensive maintenance.

Tactical notes: The Kyvk's missiles are rated against frigates, with a full volley of hits expected to leave a frigate combat-killed 75% of the time. 1-2 missiles should be sufficient up to a corvette, if they can break through PD fire. They may have trouble hitting gunships, and are ineffective against fightercraft. The cannon is only expected to be effective up to corvette-grade defenses. Suggestion is to saturate the enemy fleet with an alpha strike before falling back to support larger ships or other screens.

Spoiler: Crystal Assembly Repair Ship (click to show/hide)

Name: Mana Drasil

Bio: Mostly considered a crack-fiction designer for their designs, belief in magic and supernatural phenomena, and study of ancient lost civilizations. Most would be correct, but in this time and the coincidences of previous FTL failure, would that really be wrong? Gathers a team of likewise freethinkers, so their designs are not orthodox at all. On the other hand, they're adaptable. On another, they really don't do well with orthodox designs other than a method to their madness.

Main Specialty: Supernatural.
Sub-Specialty: Unorthodox Design.

Crystal Assembly Repair Ship

A Ship that uses a specialized crystal powered by Faith to produce a crystalline material on nearby ships. This material is flexible in production, meaning it can be used to repair the structure of ships so long as a blueprint is available. And sometimes even when one isn't. Repairs down by it without blueprints can be said to be running on faith alone that it will work, and it does. Each ship has a dedicated priestess to maintain morale, faith, and pray when needed to repair other ships. It's an Unorthodox Prayer that requires the Priestess have some idea of how the repairs being done need to act in order to work, so said priestess has a wide variety of basic structural knowledge. The ship also has a really good communication system, which can communicate with even the most broken of systems thanks to being able to repair that system if needed. It's own engines and structure is effectively a reused ship though, if one of the smaller ones since it doesn't need much size to repair ships well enough to survive the trip into atmosphere and/or home through whatever FTL method is being used.

Have faith in your works, and it will work. No matter what anyone else says.

Quality: 6, cost: 4

Crystal Assembly Light Repair Frigate
Weapons: Light vulcan cannon PD
Defenses: Moderate armor, moderate deflector screen. Generally starts battles with extra crystal armor.
Special: Faith Repair Crystal. Short ranged, works better on well-known designs, limited duration. Can be used for limited pre-battle engineering projects.
Fast engine rating. Faith is heavily based on morale, and repair quality will suffer during difficult battles.
Perks: Tiny hospital bay
Flaws: STL
Costs: Moderate to build, Moderate Maintenance. Requires 1 faith crystal. We've recovered 9.

Faith Crystal Notes: We're not sure how it works, or why. It might be a variant of psionics, but we lack such expertise and can only theorize. Created crystals degrade over time, starting after about a day. They're a temporary construct that leaves no matter or behind.
We only have a limited supply of faith crystals, and need more study to fabricate more.

Spoiler: Silver Fox Light Fighter (click to show/hide)

Name:The Silver Fox
A slender fighter able to maneuver around enemies, and fire off its extremely fast lasers.

Primary specialty: Fast weaponry
Secondary specialty: Maneuverable
Ry'leh Drives

Quality: 8! cost: 6

Silver Fox Class Light Fighter

Weapons: Pulse lasers
Defenses: Unarmored. Turret has a PD mode.
Very fast engine rating, excellent maneuver, short ranged fighter
Perks: Gravity distortion boosters allow sudden movement in any direction. Skilled pilot buffs greatly enhanced.
Flaws: Tricky maintenance
Costs: Moderate-expensive to build, Cheap to maintain.

Notes: The Silver Fox is a variant of our signature atmospheric fighter, with an experimental gravity distortion device replacing the copilot. It's difficult to build, but our simulations show it as having very high potential against fightercraft or lightly armored gunships, and capable against missiles. Additional space in its carrier will be needed to keep the device working properly, and the range is short enough that its parent ship will practically need to be in combat range.
The Silver Fox will still be effective if used on an external hangar mount, but the gravity boosters would only be safely usable a few times.

Spoiler: Thaddean Corvette (click to show/hide)

Name: Grigor Hoth

Fluff: A space war history enthusiast who's always loved the tales of the huge ships trading massive ordnance over vast distances, named singular ships making the big difference at a pivotal moment of a battle. He studied them extensively as a hobby, leading him to a career as a space engineer for ships in the solar system. When the announcement from Thaddeus came, Grigor was happy to respond in the hopes of revitalising the large ships of old, starting with a ship that's designed to take on the fighters that became prevalent during the last FTL method.

Major Specialisation: Ship Hulls
Minor Specialisation: Capital Ships

(Kind of the person that's good at putting all the pieces together in well designed hulls is kind of the idea for the major specialisation)
(No idea on the scale we start with, so started conservative)

First Design: Thaddean Corvette
15 to 20 crew small ship. Armed with multiple gatling-coilguns turrets that are effective at targeting fighters/bombers. Includes one forward facing Rail-gun for dealing with bigger targets. Said Railgun consumes a decent amount of power though, which limits it's use in longer engagements. Hull is designed to be sturdy and reliable, leading to a ok manouvreable ship and ok speed, designed to escort non-combatants such as mining ships. Armour is designed in such a way to try and deflect mass drivers, with some reflective qualities for lasers and heat absorption for plasma. Small laser turrets dot the ship, designed to shoot down missiles. The gatling-coilguns are fast enough to shoot down larger torpedoes. Lacks shields, relying on the armour of the hull and their subsequent repairs, as escort ships.


No idea if I'm being too conservative, but hopefully it'll be a reliable workhorse, I guess

Quality: 5, cost: 2!

Weapons: Spinal-mount railgun, gatling-coilgun turrets, and PD laser turrets.
Defenses: Heavy armor, hull and system redundancy
Average engine rating, low maneuverability.
Perks: High post-battle recovery
Flaws: Under-performing power grid, STL
Costs: Expensive to build, Very Expensive to maintain

Notes: The Thaddean Corvette is a durable vessel which will serve as an effective line ship until we can build larger ships, and will then serve as a screen capable in either a PD or offensive role, or as a convoy escort. The redundant systems make it difficult to totally kill the ship, but necessitate a total overhaul to properly repair or maintain. If full power is diverted to the railguns, a handful of Thaddean Corvettes is expected to be capable of delivering a fatal blow against a distracted cruiser, but the railgun is relatively fragile and power hungry. The ship lacks the power to fire all turrets and fully power the engine. Fully charging the railgun takes a few minutes with minimal turret fire or engine use, making it a specialized weapon.

Spoiler: Fox Ferry Light Escort Carrier (click to show/hide)

Fox Ferry Light Escort Carrier, Heavy Corvette

A hangar with engines, and just enough space to carry, repair, and crew 4 Silver Foxes.

Weapons: Unarmed
Defenses: Light Armor
Slow engine rating, poor maneuverability
Riders: 4 fighters or bio-fighters
Perks: None
Flaws: Flimsy, poor flight control, STL
Costs: Cheap to build, cheap to maintain

Spoiler: VK-III Leech (click to show/hide)

Major Specialty: Living Ships
Minor Specialty: Energy-Draining Weapons

Starting Design:
The VK-III Leech is a peculiar design halfway between a fighter drone and a torpedo. Officially classified as organic autonomous fighters, the tube-shaped craft possess only rudimentary senses and decisionmaking ability, and its only form of attack is to latch into victims with its ring of purple tentacles and begin siphoning off power. Accordingly, they function somewhat more like smart missiles than fighter craft in battle, and more like sabotage devices than weapon strikes on contact.

Quality: 5 cost: 6

Weapons: Energy leech, burrowing acid
Defenses: Light Hide
Fast speed rating, poor maneuverability, short ranged fighter
Perks: Difficult target locking
Flaws: "IFF" is limited to pre-combat programming. Can only be re-used if it attaches to a ship and survives the battle, as any disabling signals could be spoofed.
Costs: Cheap to build, cheap to maintain

Notes: Activated VK-IIIs will fly towards EM-signatures they don't recognize, and can be programmed before battle with target priorities. It may get agitated and attack the wrong target if it its orders are too complex or become impossible. If one reaches an EM-source, it will latch on, and try to burrow until it finds power conduits, which it will then feed from. Each VK-III has chemical boosters lovingly hand-grafted on for propulsion.

I'm assuming the Portalrider-class is our carrier.

The Portalrider was a scout, given as the fifth design if I had to start before getting a fifth player. It no longer exists.

No age of cosmic sailing then, just confusion of something with no understanding. Can we understand it? Or is it simply incomprehensible?

Me being slightly wondering about something that has no explanation, but simply is, apparently.

You'll have to either design sensors to study it, or wait for some other faction to do so. Then you can weaponize it. Or whatever else you want to do, I guess you could use it for cheap and clean civilian power generation.

First design phase starts now. Remember that you each have your own action, and it's slightly more powerful than the standardized revision action. You may work together for more of an effect, and to mix your specialties.

[TricMagic]

Prayer Temple

It is noted that the Faith Crystals form something like itself when prayed to. What if we use the Faith generated in specialized structures to grow new crystals from the old? Based on notes, it would be viable, and potentially allow new types of crystals to be formed in the future. For now, being able to make new Repair Crystals is key to continuing operation.

Main issue would be that such a structure would require fully dedicated priests and priestesses, and a lot of space. A holy atmosphere is needed to facilitate the creation of such crystals through another.

[Maxinum McDreich]

Damn, that cost roll!

Spoiler: Grigor Hoth (click to show/hide)

Maj Specialisation: Ship Hulls
Min Specialisation: Capital Ships

Thaddean Line Corvette Revision:
Seeing the ship performance is about up to par, Grigor's seen the need to try and make it more cost-efficient. Taking the chance to rename the ship a little to better reflect it's role now that all the other designs have been seen aswell.

Every redundant system is checked to see if it really helps the ship survive, getting rid of ones that don't. The whole interior is redesigned so everything is significantly easier to access and maintain. Taking the opportunity, the power grid is also overhauled to be more streamlined and, hopefully, be a bit more efficient. Finally, investigate and see after all has been moved around if this chassis can support the Ry'leh Drives, and if so, pursue.