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[Jerick]

three would give us the potential to have very very bad equipment if we roll poorly multiple times

Ah I feel you may misunderstand how this system works a little.

Time, Progress, Cost
These are the things we can roll with advantage by adding extra dice. To put it another way by adding extra dice at the start of the project we can have it sooner and have the cost of investing dice cheaper. These are things we do not need if we have an abundance of time like we currently do.
Efficacy is rolled separately and we cannot roll it with advantage. One efficacy roll per project. This means it doesn't matter if we invest 6 dice or 3 to start a project rolling a one on efficacy is equally likely for both. This means that were ever possible it is better to go with more projects than investing more on a single project. Additionally bad tech can be turned into good tech with revisions provided we have the dice. Spending more dice than we need to into projects cuts down the number of revisions we can do.
To put it simply; more dice=faster projects but not better projects.

Also, I am not comfortable with your idea of taking out 3 projects every turn

I suspect I did make myself clear on this and I apologise. I believe we'd be best served by rolling three separate projects this turn. Next turn we'll see what we need in terms of revisions or if we have to scrap anything.

As for moisture suits you'll be glad to hear we've already got some kind of moisture suit even though it's not listed in our tech. This is something I've already asked Draig. It's the reason our regiments cost more compared to other races since our squid dolphin troops need a little help invading ground walker cities.

Finally;

I am still a little confused on the fact of how we would get the bio-reactor too produce power as it stands right now without synthetic particles because it offends my sense of high-school level physics understanding.  The  SDO and Grubbling Seeker both seem a little under detailed for my tastes as well.

I shall respond by quoting this section of the rules:

Soft-Serve Science: You want your reactor to run off the power of a forsaken psionic child channeling the energy of a dark star God? Sounds great, just give me a write-up. This isn't a hard science game- this is a game where one could conceivably get away with SPEHSS MAHRENS and SPEHSS MAGICKS, not one where I'm going to nag you over perfectly reasonable details of science and 'but reality doesn't do that'. I'm not going to make you write a paper on the exact physics that justify a waveforce shield or a mantra powered Buddhism laser- but you do need to beware the golden rule of the universe: 'Shit ain't Free'. Everything, no matter how advanced, has a price. Actions have Consequences.

Projects don't need to be that detailed as long as it's fairly clear generally speaking how it works. That said there is a reason I've gone back and forth on the inclusion or exclusion of synthetics in the Digestive Bio Reactor. We don't want to bake a need for synthetics into everything but at the same token we want the best equipment we can get. We need something to produce us synthetics. The SDO and Grubbling Seeker seem fine to me (though actually on thinking on it, it might be better to start a hull tech and do Grubbling or other weapon later) what would you like me to add to them?

[Rockeater]

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (2)  : Blood_Librarian, Nakéen
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Jerick, Rockeater

[Doomblade187]

The Bio-Fission Chemical Chamber

We live in a world full if biological forms. Let us work with it rather than apart from it.

The core reaction: using cells designed to isolate and tear apart individual thorium salt atoms, we will generate raw energy through nuclear fission. The cells themselves are designed to survive in a specific PH and temperature present only within the reactor chamber. The cells are extremely radiation resistant, and use the energy from the radiation to repair themselves.

Now, to create a proper chemical energy for our ships, we must avoid creating further radioactive molecules. This is accomplished by a thick reactor wall that has cell walls that harden in response to radiation for structural strength, and the cells themselves absorb radiation to sustain themselves. However, these cell walls conduct heat extremely well.

Beyond the reactor wall is the powerhouse of the reactor. Sitting in a thick layer past the reactor wall is a layer of cells that take the heat and convert it into electricity. This charge is passed to the boundary layer by extremely long neuron-like cells.

Beyond the electrical generation layer is a large layer of cells in a heated nutrient slurry that take in heat and use it to turn the nutrients into high-acessibility chemical energy. Any radiation in this slurry is policed further by molecules that both consume radiation and generator cells with critically damaged DNA, though these cells like all interior cells can repair and protect their own DNA. Any excess heat is used by another layer of cells outside the generator cells slurry to make more electricity.

These chemical energy molecules are transmitted throughout the ship via a giant circulatory system running at high pressure. This system also conducts electricity voa embedded neuron  networks and  is shrouded in a layer of clotting cells that also act as insulation.

Any waste from the generator system is passed further into the reactor wall, until the innermost reactor cells cannot extract any more nutrition from them. It is then deposited into a radiation shielded waste area that passively generates further electricity and chemical energy via a similar layout.

[Blood_Librarian]

Right, Yes. I get that this is a soft-science universe, but like I said earlier, I don't like the design because it doesn't quite correspond to our ability to ignore physics for our technological advancements in tandem  with what we have now. The problem I have with utterly ignoring the scientific fact of today is that we lose meaning of advancement and scale. This is our very first power generation, and if we use it to literally break apart matter directly into energy, what would we do to improve? We'd have to use terms and methods of improvement that have no bearing on us, no meaning or any type of satisfaction of utilizing. Additionally, the GM might not have a scale of how hard the actual design is to construct.

If we use the very easy^tm method of fission to power our ships, we have a very obvious and assumed method of advancement, that is from fission to fusion (Maybe even fusion assisted fission!), then Fusion to Antimatter based fusion and from antimatter to something progressively more fantastic, and at any point we can slide off this railway into something Fun. However, if we go to the Digestive Bio-Reactor, I can't really think of any track to jump off of for improvement besides a Daft Punk Song.

The Thorium Reactor is what we want; It includes the manipulation of biomass and a method of fission, while giving us the option of using electricity or not because the process by which the generation of elecricity is not integeral to the reactor, but an add-on to the machine, That takes an output of the reactor rather then being the reactors output.

I thought it was very clearly stated that the Reactor itself had organic parts, from the quote I had below.

These salted Thorium packets emit the particles and material by which the rest of the biosphere of our ship will harvest, utilize and if need be expel to our propulsion systems, providing heat against the cold, electricity for our thirsty bio-capacitors and ultimately a path too greater power generation.

My imagination of it was that things like the reactor shielding, parts that control/sputter the reaction or other systems where we don't quite have the organic manipulation required to manufacture into creatures just yet. Parts that we could make, the the parts that handle non-radioactive cooling/heat movement,  the utilization of the reactors output into electricity or chemical products required for the function of the reactor and other systems would be organic, living components of the reactor.

To that end, I have proposed an alternative design plan that puts 3 dice to Propulsion, Reactors, and armor plates for our hull.

The Flagellum

Five million tons of fuel to bring five thousand tons of payload is a thing of the past. No more, we are free.
--Rocket Physicist Yuruck DenToresthix

Large internalized sacks of fuel-hydrogen are stored, near the back of the ship. Once the fuel is needed for propulsion, it is gassified from its solid stand and sent to an "combustion" chamber made up of solid artificial material, where the material is heated and charged by the ships reactor. This is a crude semi-chemical propulsion who's only saving grace is the fact that the propellant is directly heated by the fiery heat of the reactor, allowing it to travel at greater speeds and to farther distances then previous methods of post-rebellion propulsion.

The Anion Hull

Just as life flourishes in the sea, soo too does it flourish in the sky.
--Unknown

The hull of our starships had not lived and breathed until very recently, today infact.

This hull consists of of metal plates, capillaries and veins and then internal reservoirs of a frothy foamy solution that upon exposure to the void, hardens into a solid metal foam, that should hold in the vital life fluids and gasses of the ship from the merciless void. The idea is that once a plate is breached, it would froth up entirely as the internal reservoirs ruptured into the veins, "compromising" the plate with and causing both intenral and external space to be instantly pushed in/out with the metal-foam.

The metal plates has been adjusted as well, so that although they collapse easily from impacts on the inside, they are more durable from a hit form the outside.

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (2)  : Blood_Librarian, Nakéen
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Jerick, Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian

[Doomblade187]

Oh, I saw that your thorium reactor had bio-components in it. I just wanted to expand on the biological components and generation. And for the record, my goal wasn't to convert thorium to energy, but to flesh out the generator systems surrounding the fission chamber and to include chemical energy.

That said, I also prefer the thorium reactor to the bio-digestor.

EDIT: Blood_Librarian, could you please add an option to refuel from chemical making bacteria within the ship? It would be a useful addition, and give us a good base on bacterial chemistry.

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (2)  : Blood_Librarian, Nakéen
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Jerick, Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (2)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thrium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) : Doomblade

[Jerick]

Right, Yes. I get that this is a soft-science universe, but like I said earlier, I don't like the design because it doesn't quite correspond to our ability to ignore physics for our technological advancements in tandem  with what we have now. The problem I have with utterly ignoring the scientific fact of today is that we lose meaning of advancement and scale. This is our very first power generation, and if we use it to literally break apart matter directly into energy, what would we do to improve? We'd have to use terms and methods of improvement that have no bearing on us, no meaning or any type of satisfaction of utilizing. Additionally, the GM might not have a scale of how hard the actual design is to construct.

If we use the very easytm method of fission to power our ships, we have a very obvious and assumed method of advancement, that is from fission to fusion (Maybe even fusion assisted fission!), then Fusion to Antimatter based fusion and from antimatter to something progressively more fantastic, and at any point we can slide off this railway into something Fun. However, if we go to the Digestive Bio-Reactor, I can't really think of any track to jump off of for improvement besides a Daft Punk Song.

So you can't think of anyway to use particle manipulating micro organisms to preform more advanced forms of energy generation or other extremely useful tasks? That my friend is a failure of imagination I most definitely can think of ways to step up from that. Especially if you can make them something that mess with gravitons then the possibilities get fun. Ways to step up from Digestive Bio Reactor include but are not limited to; containing and drawing power from a singularity using particle control to limit it's gravitational influence, creating a version of the Digester that disassembles the very fabric of space time to produce colossal amounts of energy at the cost of slowly destroying the universe, from the contained singularity we can move on to using contained pocket realities to generate power. The possibilities are endless.

With all that said however the reason I proposed the Bio Reactor was we needed a power system and none where being proposed. While I would prefer a fully bio power source I do agree that the Thorium reactor is perhaps a better place to start than something as complicated as disassembling matter.

I'm not sure I like either The Flagellum or The Anion Hull. The Flagellum because other than the name there doesn't seem to be anything biological about it. That's not a big problem but the second issue is much bigger "propellant is directly heated by the fiery heat of the reactor". The gas is ejected out of the combustion chamber and into space as exhaust in order to push the ship forward. In other words there's an exterior opening that leads directly to our ship's reactor. The nature of ship engines spewing hot exhaust gases make hiding our engines impossible and with this design our engines become a shoot here to insta-kill weak-point.

The Anion hull (what I meant by hull was more some kind of chassis to mount everything on but we need armour as well) it's not bad but I think we can do better. Shouldn't be too hard to come up with something chitinous that is tough, heat resistant, functions as ablative armour and is replenished by the organic tissue beneath it. Gimme a bit and I'll come back with

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (2)  : Blood_Librarian, Nakéen
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Doomblade, Jerick

[Rockeater]

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (2)  : Blood_Librarian, Nakéen
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (3) : Doomblade, Jerick, Rockeater

[Blood_Librarian]

@doomblade

I'm not sure how that relates to the Thorium Reactor. Do you want some type of chemical process that bacteria commit to fuel the same systems that reactors commit too or what? We don't have to refuel anything, just replace nuclear material. Besides, Bacterial Chemistry is just one part of the wide ranging project of "Biomodification", "High energy organic integration" and other processes I could name, don't sweat it.

also, I edited The Thorium Reactor so that it includes how power becomes manifest from the energy-producing item.

[Nakéen]

Grubbling Seeker:
While I understand this won't be our sole weapon system, I'm a little bit put off by our inability to reliably control its targets. Their behavior will also definitely lead to overkill.

Anion Hull:
I'm actually surprised our first hull suggestion was not an organic one, haha.

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (1)  : Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (3) : Doomblade, Jerick, Rockeater

[Doomblade187]

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (1)  : Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Jerick, Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Anion Hull, hold one dice for revisions (1) : Doomblade

So I think I actually prefer the hole to the seeker. It's a good balance between organic and artificial.

[Draignean]

Remember that you don't get the full experience for a project until it reaches 50% completion. So if you're starting the SDO this round, you have no bonus or understanding of the SDO to make a micro-scale version for the grubblings.

[Nakéen]

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (1)  : Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Jerick, Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Anion Hull, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Doomblade, Nakéen

[Rockeater]

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (1)  : Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) : Jerick
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Anion Hull, hold one dice for revisions (3) : Doomblade, Nakéen, Rockeater

[Jerick]

The question of how best to protect our ships is a pressing one. We sing this possible answer so it may be woven. We propose a layer of soft tissue that is fed nutrients from the ship systems. These tissue cells divide normally and will replace damaged cells quickly thus filling in any hole put into the ships hull. However the main purpose of this layer of soft tissue is to deposit chitin in tight interconnected structures. The speed at which these cells produce Chitin is determined by how much nutrients they are being given allowing the ship's crew fine control of the rate of regeneration of Chitin. The Chitin outer hull is tough, flexible and is heat and kinetic impact resistant. It can also grow to considerable thickness and functions as ablative armour requiring the enemy to pound their way through it as it regenerates before reaching vulnerable ship systems

Here's my hull plating proposal. It's biological so it should benefit from our bonus.

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (1)  : Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Anion Hull, hold one dice for revisions (3) : Doomblade, Nakéen, Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Regenerating Chitinous Hull Plating, hold one dice for revisions (1) : Jerick

[Rockeater]

Design Plan
6 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 4 to Telepathic Organ  (1)  : Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Digestive Bio reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Grubbling Seeker, hold one dice for revisions (1) :  Rockeater
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to the Flagellum, 3 Dice to the Anion Hull, 1 Dice to revision  (1)  :Blood_Librarian
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Anion Hull, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Doomblade, Nakéen
3 Dice to Thorium Reactor, 3 Dice to Sublight Drive Organ, 3 Dice to Regenerating Chitinous Hull Plating, hold one dice for revisions (2) : Jerick, Rockeater

I do prefer we go bio