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[helmacon]

"L'Épée des Astres" Anti-Capital Corvette: (5) Powder Miner, TFF, Happerry, Twinwolf, SamSpeeds
Cosmic Calamity Shield: ()
Wave motion gun : (3) 10ebbor10, Kashyyk, Jilladilla
Quantum Locked Hard Shield "Testudo": (3) Jilladilla, Kashyyk, 10ebbor10
       This, but call it the Sunspot: (1) helmacon

[Draignean]

L'Épée des Astres
[Time: 5 Progress: 4 Cost: 5]
The idea behind the Épée is one of... singular quality. In the era of interstellar space travel, where teleport fired death beams and swarms of drone beams race across the void to do battle, the Épée is a design that dares to say 'Fly closer and let me hit them with my sword! Actually, fuck it, nevermind, make my entire ship into a sword and let me fly THAT into the enemy!'. That is to say, it's batshit crazy  on the surface, and that endears it greatly to the Gaian engineers. Aside from a few scuffles involving reenactments of the Count of Monte Cristo with the scale model, the project gets off to a fantastic start.

L'Épée des Astres: 0/10 [3] | 5T + 100M+ 50E +5S | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested

Prototype
[Efficacy: 5]
L'Épée des Astres is a design of smooth and deadly beauty, unmarred by such trivial features as crew entrances, turret hardpoints, or resupply ports.

Her drive system comes together surprisingly well. While there were some doubts over whether the quintet of fighter drives could be adapted to run the corvette, careful spacial distortion layering and precise calculations in optimal drive layout let her accelerate at around 20m/s² when traveling along the ship's long axis. One of the sub-drives was successfully upgraded to be able to teleport the Épée, however there are limitations. The upgrades to be able to teleport the significant transport mass aren't really compatible with the with the dramatically increased power needs to open the bore diameter wider- so the Épée is limited to boring along its narrowest dimension. Considering she's generally going to be pointing that way anyway, it's not too much of an issue.

The armored blade of the Épée, however, is where the magic is. She's basically a kinetic penetrator, and anything short of a medium mounted weapon will likely inflict minimal damage when striking point on. The laminate armor is exceedingly tough and remarkably sharp, allowing for the theoretical slashing maneuver as well as greatly facilitating her intended stab. The only issue with the blade is with the design of her thrusters. Blade mounted and retractable, the mechanical systems are tough enough to often (>85%) survive an impact, but the sharpness of the blade, the mass of the ship, and the speed needed to evade point defense systems leads to frequent over-penetration. In such a state, the retracted thrusters cannot extract, and the Épée must rely on the action of the gravity drives in order to tug the ship free.

Her weapons payload of modestly upgraded Hornet torpedo warheads is highly effective in simulations, but to be placed effectively the Épée has to extract- which is iffy due to the engine blockage issue. If the Épée fails to extract, she will perform a suicide detonation- which is ironically somewhat more effective since the Épée itself blocks the hole that would help channel the explosion into space. While the Épée is designed to withstand impacting a capital ship directly, she's still frequently damaged by it. If an Epee managed to successfully extract (which happens four times out of five, though sometimes substantially more slowly), her next impact is 50% more likely to fail than the last. (30/40/60/90).
.
L'Épée des Astres (Corvette):  | 10T 20O 475M 125E 20S | A shortsword on the scale of a corvette. Designed to accelerate into an enemy vessel, stab the blade deep within, inject nukes from a limited internal magazine, and use retractable chemical thrusters to hard burn out. Covered in sharp, strong armor, with an especially heavy reinforcement of the blade, she's capable of surviving the impact to fight again at the following percentages of failure (20/30/45/67/100). Her sheer effectiveness in penetration and enormous impact velocity, however, frequently means that her blade overpenetrations and she's forced to use her internal gravity drives to extract, rather than her chemical thrusters.


Revision Phase of Year 2
Resources
Dice: 2
T: 10490 + 2500
O: 44714 + 7500
M: 11663 + 7500
E: 10213 + 5000
S: 628 + 500

Spoiler: Active Projects (click to show/hide)

Bioplastic Armor: 7/8 [1] | 150O + 150E | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
Garrotte: 6/8 [3] | 70O  85M+ 70E | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested
L'Épée des Astres: 0/10 [3] | 5T + 100M+ 50E | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested

Gaian Technology List
Gaian Empire Planner

Spoiler:  Current Deployments (click to show/hide)

Oscar
Fleets
-Fleet Rao - At system edge
1 C&C expedition
1 Budget transport
1 Rapid escort
Overall Issues: Missing 132 Hornet Fighters from overall loadout. System contains enemy fleet.

Ground - 1/10 - 4/10 [We]
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
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Sierra
Fleets
-Fleet Telerana
1 C&C expedition
1 Galactica -> Crippled Bore Drive, Heavy overall damage, 20% vessel cost* to fix
1 Budget transport
1 Rapid escort
Overall Issues: Missing 195 Hornet Fighters from overall loadout.

Ground - 4/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
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November
Fleets
-Fleet Aphelion
1 Budget Transport
1 Rapid escort

Ground - 4/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Juliet
Fleets
-Fleet Iris-Hong
1 C&C expedition
1 Galactica
1 Budget transport
1 Rapid escort

Ground - 4/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Romeo
Fleets
-Fleet Nautilus
1 C&C expedition
1 Budget transport
1 Rapid escort

Ground - 4/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Kilo
Fleets
-Fleet Khumalo
1 Cargomaster

Ground - 4/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Mike
Fleets
-Fleet Progress
1 Cargomaster

Ground - 4/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

[Powder Miner]

Something to solve our most pressing ground performance issue temporarily, and to generally provide an anti-heavy option wherever we're not dropping a fucking mecha-kraken in the future

The Rumble Drone
The Rumble Drone is the more vicious cousin of the Bumble Drone. Whereas the Bumble Drone is built for repair and construction first and laser murder second, the priorities of the Rumble Drone are the precise opposite way around. There are two changes made primarily, to the Rumble Drone: The adorableness of the Bumble has tragically been sacrificed, as instead the Rumble's more angular outer shell is made of depleted uranium, is painted in a solid brown color, and is built to be sturdier. Their legs are modified to be stronger, allowing them both to maintain better leverage when wrestling down Alpha Drones, and to stride forward even more quickly than before, and their cargo bays have been removed, this combination making the Rumble Drone slimmer and even faster in exchange for basically completely getting rid of the repair capacity of the Rumble. The front two legs of the Rumble Drone are sharpened -- they're not meant to compete with its plasma cutter, instead just adding an extra bit of melee capacity and allowing the Rumble to more quickly murder lighter targets.

Essentially, the Rumble Drone is a Bumble Drone with DU armor and sturdier build that moves faster, and simply MURDERS instead of repairs.

[helmacon]

Ant Drone

Something to solve our most pressing ground performance issue temporarily, and to generally provide an anti-heavy option wherever we're not dropping a fucking mecha-kraken in the future

The Rumble Drone Ant Drone
The Rumble Drone is the more vicious cousin of the Bumble Drone. Whereas the Bumble Drone is built for repair and construction first and laser murder second, the priorities of the Rumble Drone are the precise opposite way around. There are two changes made primarily, to the Rumble Drone: The adorableness of the Bumble has tragically been sacrificed, as instead the Rumble's more angular outer shell is made of depleted uranium, is painted in a solid brown color, and is built to be sturdier. Their legs are modified to be stronger, allowing them both to maintain better leverage when wrestling down Alpha Drones, and to stride forward even more quickly than before, and their cargo bays have been removed, this combination making the Rumble Drone slimmer and even faster in exchange for basically completely getting rid of the repair capacity of the Rumble. The front two legs of the Rumble Drone are sharpened -- they're not meant to compete with its plasma cutter, instead just adding an extra bit of melee capacity and allowing the Rumble to more quickly murder lighter targets.

Essentially, the Rumble Drone is a Bumble Drone with DU armor and sturdier build that moves faster, and simply MURDERS instead of repairs.

Ant Drone
 Ant Drone

[Powder Miner]

rumble is a punnier name
also cooler

[10ebbor10]

Eclipse Protocol

The enemy Sunbeam is a devastingly effective high energy weapon, which our current armor technology can not withstand.  The weapon relies on firing a coupled Muon-Particle beam, which is highly troubling for our defenses. So, we've decided to utilize the beam's strength against itself.

Once a Sunbeam launch is detected, multiple death rays are fired at varying points along the Sunbeam's path. The interaction between the death's ray particle beam and the muon beam results in a high energy explosion, rendering the space around it opaque to the accompagnying gamma rays. Once such an explosion has been started, it persists for some time on it's own, as new muon particles crash into the old and slow down themselves.

Super Hornet

Combining lessons from recent combat and the Epee has shown us a few shortcoming in the original Hornet. It's survivability is lacking, especially compared to the far more numerous enemy fighters. As such, we've made some interesting design changes. Most of the internal metallic structure has been replaced by low density bioplastic. This has freed up the metal budget to replace the Hornet's original hull with a thin Epee style laminate metalic shell. Internal components have been rearranged to make sure that even if the craft is hit, it can limp back home to be repaired/recycled, or at least go out in glory by crashing into the enemy.

[Powder Miner]

Here's something I would like for us to vote on this phase so we don't run out of time in the strategy phase to do so. This isn't a formal game item vote so much as  vote if I should start talking to Doomblade about something to negotiate with the Liir.

With the Hiver threat as large as it is, we don't want to focus on the Liir in combat, especially since doing so would likely not be all that profitable to us -- we'd basically just get Juliet, and Juliet's resource focus really isn't all that great for us, all considered, considering its organics count. Instead, if we hold Romeo, despite its being a smaller planet, we get a fairly secure route to Tango. So I want to make a deal with the Liir to move roughly all of our forces to Romeo, and for them to deploy mostly solely to Romeo. This should give us a turn or two of breathing room to do an entirely different kind of dealing with the buggybois. This way we don't get Juliet, but we do get much better chances at Tango.

Yes: (1) Powder Miner
No: (0)

[andrea]

It should be noted that if they settle on juliet, they threaten our metal powerhouse in kilo.. That said, I see no harm in having a talk, as long as the deal is limited in time. Alliances are a bad thing for the game, and we would still have to be worried about inevitable betrayal every turn.

Yes: (2) Powder Miner, Andrea
No: (0)

[TheFantasticMsFox]

Id really rather not give up Juliette to the Liir, especially with the organics bounty there, and generally really good resources across the board. We need Resources to feed the war against the hivers too, and right now I fear if we give away land we will become resource starved.

[Powder Miner]

This DOES let us at Tango, which is a better world.

[andrea]

Death ray Sequential firing pattern
In a large mount, currently we have several barrels working independently, each accelerating its own stream until the bore collapses, and then making its own separate shot against the enemy ship. Which is good for small ships, but against the larger ships it simply results in an ineffectual spread of underpowered shots.

However, we can improve the situation by better utilizing the already available equipment. By calculating new boring solution, we can make each barrel feeding in the nearby one as an alternative firing mode.
(as in: we have barrels A through C. Beam starts in A, accelerates. At the end of barrel bores to B, where it accelerates and bores to C, then finally returns to A)

This sacrifices the advantage in firing rate comapred to the medium mount to instead gain a power advantage, for more penetrating shots.
Best part is, most of the change is simply to the software of the weapon so that with just a little effort it can be fit to all our existing vessels on the field.

Death Ray Sequential Firing Pattern (1) - Andrea

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Spend 1 die (1) - Andrea

[Kashyyk]

Death Ray Sequential Firing Pattern (2) - Andrea, Kashyyk

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Spend 1 die (2) - Andrea, Kashyyk

[10ebbor10]

Variable Fuel Injection

The basic mechanism of the doom ray is derived from our PEB. While a sound technological base, the designs heritage has caused certain drawbacks, specifically a tendency to avoid things that explode.

In the original PEB, particles were chosen for their stability and benign impact characteristics, a quality that is not as appreciated in a weapon.

The VFI mechanism resolves these drawbacks. The original stable fuel is replaced by a mixture of light fusionable particles and heavier fissionable particles. While being accelerates, both groups are kept in their own separate flight path, close together but not colliding thanks to magnetics.

When fired however, the two groups segregate due to the different velocities. This causes the light particles to impact a fraction of a second before the heavier particles. As a result, the light particles find themselves squished between the hull upon which they impact, causing a prompt fusion detonation. The neutrons produced induce a fission reaction in the heavier particles, causing a second detonation that forces the inwards into the hull rather than out into space.

Lazarus Protocol

The expedition class is great at operating with severe damage, but it can do better. The Lazarus protocol is a set of operating procedures that allows the vessel to continue operating beyond the point where other ships would long be considered destroyed.

It centres on multi-use equipment. All computing infrastructure, from targeting computers to navigation to drone control are currently seen as separate, but in an emergency situation systems can now appropriate resources of one system to accomplish tasks of the other.

Weapon capacitors can be used to power damaged sections of the ship, death troopers can run emergency repair protocols.

The ultimate end goal of this project is to fight on(bravely retreating is fighting on) even if you lost half the ship.

[10ebbor10]

Death Ray Sequential Firing Pattern (2) - Andrea, Kashyyk
VFI : 10ebbor10
Lazarus : 10ebbor10
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Spend 1 die (2) - Andrea, Kashyyk
2 die : 10ebbor10

[

[Powder Miner]

Death Ray Sequential Firing Pattern (2) - Andrea, Kashyyk
Doom Ray: (0)
VFI: (2) 10ebbor10, Powder Miner
Lazarus: (1) 10ebbor10
Rumble Drone: (1) Powder Miner
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Spend 1 die (2) - Andrea, Kashyyk
2 die : 10ebbor10, Powder Miner

I’m a bit skeptical that the SFP will work and not damage our chambers, and additionally I do actually prefer a sidegrade — it seems likely that what won’t be a sidegrade will be a replacement. Also I want a quick investment in ground forces and I worry that pushing it off to later may mean it doesn’t get done.

Edit: Having read the VFI, it actually seems like a good idea.