Pre-SysNES2: Beta-testing and Submission

[Thlayli]

I'd tried and rejected Manifold Drives due to cost; with Rugged Designers I could probably scale that down far enough to be built on planetary surfaces.

Edit: The only real advantages of Burst Drives v. Twist Drives are higher HP and lower tech requirements. Also, what does Atmospheric Streamlining do again? Right now it seems like an expensive boondoggle.

CSS Warden [Opposition Class] Mk-1

1x Twist Drive
8x Deuterium Drive
1x Recyclers
1x Ice Sinks
4x Ion Cannons (Refined) [QUAD-COUPLED]
1x Confinement Field
3x Titanium Armor (Refined)
7x Carbon Armor
1x Heavy Cladding

Cost: 184e (83e) / 32m / 46v / 0a / 0t / 65s
Size: 56 / Mass: 57 / HP: 59 / Power: 10 / Heat: -10
IS: 1 / IP: 3 / Range: 1
Init: 0 / Dodge: -14 / Avoid: 0 / Armor: 36 / Shield: 0
Refine: 280e / 70s

Particle Cannon Damage: 48

Lack of initiative makes it better as an escort ship than a raider. Admittedly, anything that attacks it close-range is going to lose init real fast.

 

[Disenfrancised]

It makes it easier to take off and land in an atmosphere - what else would it do?

 

[Thlayli]

I didn't notice it doing anything in the calculator, but I guess I'm not giving it the right conditions. How much does it relax the restrictions by?

 

[Symphony D.]

I didn't notice it doing anything in the calculator, but I guess I'm not giving it the right conditions. How much does it relax the restrictions by?

It means a 25 Size/25 Mass ship (give or take) can get off an average-sized planet with an atmosphere. Also boosts Dodge by 1 on small vessels, haven't explored the exact cutoff for that yet.

 

[Disenfrancised]

I didn't notice it doing anything in the calculator, but I guess I'm not giving it the right conditions. How much does it relax the restrictions by?

It raises the size limit on atmospheric take-offs by 10, and then 20 when refined. With full (5) refined jets and refined streamlining you have 50+[propulsion tech] worth of size to play around with for standard grav atmosphere take offs

 

[Symphony D.]

If you refine a thing (ship, building, etc.) on a given turn, and build that same something the same turn, you will pay the refined cost, correct?

 

[Disenfrancised]

If you refine a thing (ship, building, etc.) on a given turn, and build that same something the same turn, you will pay the refined cost, correct?

Yes..

 

[Symphony D.]

What are the costs of shifting social policies going to be like? Is there even going to be a transaction cost outside of perhaps social unrest? I had thought at first this might make having taken them as culture picks useless, but they were low cost and avoided the tech requirements, so that's not really the case.

I'm guessing ships can't be used until the turn after they're built, much like building functions (e.g., Space Docks) probably don't come on line until the following turn?

 

[Disenfrancised]

Yes, ships built can't be used until the next turn. They might be usable for defence, if they are completed before the attacking fleets arrival number (i'll probably do a RNG to determine when they come online - to add tension ).

The costs of changing social policies:
a) Some people get unhappy, there may be revolts and lots of stress depending on how out of character the change seems.
b) Its a multi-year thing that will take up most of your attention during the change over, and during the interim you're not going to get the benefits of the old or the new policy. (the exception is Total War, which you can shift into pretty fast, though leaving it is painful). Better not try and get anything else done.
c) It will require expenditures of e and s during the change over or beforehand (and these will be proportional to your s and e rather than absolute). These costs will be a bit ad hoc and unpredictable and based on the narrative of your society.

On the culture picks; taking a social policy at the start gives you a bit of a boost but not a huge one (since changing from the starting zero-policy is less difficult than changing between developed policies), hence their cheap cost. It also gives your society a little innate boost to the culture weightings; for example since alex took free market and republic, his society will have a free market & republic lite boost over the rest of the game.

 

[Symphony D.]

In retrospect I agree with Thlayli's assertion that Advancer, Cyberorganized, and Natural Pilots (and some attendant penalties) would be rather scary, and probably qualify as slightly degenerate Highers.

 

[Thlayli]

CSS Ne'er Do Well [Bucket of Bolts Class] Mk-1

Atmospheric Streamlining (Refined)
11x Burst Drive
3x Deuterium Drive
1x Recyclers
2x Internal Hangars
1x Cargo Bay
1x Scanners
1x Kinetic Lances
5x Maneuvering Jets (Refined)

Cost: 118e (53e) / 21m / 21v / 0a / 0t / 65s
Size: 53 / Mass: 38 / HP: 47 / Power: 1 / Heat: -3
IS: 1 / IP: 1 / Range: 1
Init: 0 / Dodge: -1 / Avoid: 0 / Armor: 0 / Shield: 0
Refine: 171e / 43s

Fast Missile Damage: 6

Rugged Designers active.

For those poor sods without Materials/Computation 3. Can land on standard gravity atmospheric worlds; kinda hard to hit for a transport ship. You can do 3x Cargo Bays if you just want a freighter. Very good for jumpstarting colony development.

If you're less interested in a first-line exploration vessel you can replace the Scanners and Lances with more cargo/hangars.

Slightly less multifunctional option:

Atmospheric Streamlining (Refined)
11x Burst Drive
3x Deuterium Drive
1x Habitat Section
4x Cargo Bay
1x Kinetic Lances
5x Maneuvering Jets (Refined)

 

[Thlayli]

Admittedly that was just an exercise in futility, because the resources used refining those components could just be used to get Materials 3...

/facepalm

 

[Thlayli]

More playing off of Symph's suggestion:

CSS Outrider [Opposition Class] Mk-3

1x Twist Drive
8x Deuterium Drive
1x Recyclers
1x Ice Sinks
5x Ion Cannon (Refined) [TRI-COUPLED] [DUAL-COUPLED]
1x Confinement Field
8x Carbon Armor

Cost: 189e (85e) / 21m / 48v / 0a / 0t / 66s
Size: 57 / Mass: 43 / HP: 52 / Power: 7 / Heat: -8
IS Rating: 1 / IP Speed: 3 / Range (years): 1
Init: 0 / Dodge: -13 / Avoid: 0 / Armor: 13 / Shield: 0
Refine: 286e / 72s

Particle Cannon Damage: 60

T3, Rugged Designers.

 

[qoou]

Those components are giving me a completely different ship Thlayli. I don't personally like using ammo on anything vulnerable, because ammo is so very expensive.



Anyway, what I imagine the Yanii will start out with, based on their background.
Some of these:

Spoiler :

1 Deuterium Drive
1 Cargo Bay

________

10e (5e) / 2m / 2v / 0a / 0t

Size: 5 / Mass: 5 / HP: 5
IS: 0 / IP: 4

Surplus Power: 3 / Heat: 2

Int: 0 / Dodge: 4 / Avoid: 0 / Armour: -4 / Shield: 0

Cargo Space: 4

EW attacks: NO / EW score: 7 / EW vulnerability: 4
Boarding: NO / 2

A few of these if they have overseas interests:

Spoiler :

3 Burst Drives
1 Deuterium Drive

1 Recyclers
2 Cargo Bay

1 Heavy Cladding

________

29e (13e) / 11m / 5v / 0a / 0t

Size: 14 / Mass: 13 / HP: 14
IS: 1 / IP: 1 / Range: 1

Surplus Power: 3 / Heat: -5

Int: 0 / Dodge: -4 / Avoid: 0 / Armour: 5 / Shield: 0

Cargo Space: 8

EW attacks: NO / EW score: 7 / EW vulnerability: 4
Boarding: NO / -1

And designs for, but only 2-3 of, these:

Spoiler :

Stationary Orbiter

1 Basic Fusion Core

2 Computer Module
1 Scanners

2 Fusion Busters

1 Titanium Armour
1 Heavy Cladding

________

52e (23e) / 20m / 7v / 0a / 0t

Size: 17 / Mass: 25 / HP: 22
IS: 0 / IP: 0

Surplus Power: 2 / Heat: -1

Int: 3 / Dodge: -100 / Avoid: 0 / Armour: 2 / Shield: 0

#Busters: 2 / Busters TD: 48

EW attacks: NO / EW score: 10 / EW vulnerability: 11
Boarding: NO / 0

The Yanii basically only need ships to exchange goods/information. They haven't had to wage interplanetary war yet, and they more or less pay tribute to local pirates so they don't have to worry about defense very much either. Hence the first design, a quick nimble transport ship. 4 IP / 4 dodge is enough to run away from anything not very dedicated.

The second design is basically just an IS-capable version of the first. It travels over to a neighbor system, haggles over cost a bit, enjoys some exotic beverages, then flies on back home. It is far more fragile however, and other systems may hold unfamiliar pirates that haven't been paid off yet. I don't see the Yanii being spread out over multiple systems at game-start though (except perhaps for small trading outposts), so IS trips wouldn't be nearly as common. It makes sense that traders would be lobbying for a real defence fleet if these are the kinds of ships Yan sends into other systems.

The third design is the token defensive fleet. Does some damage for its price but will definitely not stop any dedicated foe.


All of these designs can be built on a planetary surface, because the Yanii would much rather build data centres than shipyards. They're all also T2, except for the Heavy Cladding which can be easily removed if Yan doesn't start with Constr 3.
Now outdated/irrelevant/something.

 

[Symphony D.]

Those components are giving me a completely different ship Thlayli.

Yeah, I see something that costs like 280e. Did you have a bunch of things refined but not listed as such?

 

[qoou]

Yeah, refined Ion Cannons is the difference.

Edit: This post was originally longer. But then I cut most of it out. Just to clarify, for any who were wondering about my one-sentence response.

Edit2:

How exactly do Charm Drives work.

- You have an IS-capable charm drive ship with commlinks. Can it drag along other ships with commlinks, even though they don't have charm drives themselves?
- You have a charm drive ship with commlinks, but without enough computational power. Can other ships with commlinks, but without charm drives, give the charm drive ship computational power?
- If the first and second scenarios are allowed, can the helper ships in the second scenario choose whether to tag along or not?
- You have two charm drive ships, each can drag along an extra 50 mass. Can they drag along a 100-mass ship together?

 

[Disenfrancised]

@qoou: no, no, no, and no

 

[Symphony D.]

Why would you put Hangars on a big Charm command ship anyway? It's way cheaper to just throw a slaved Charm on whatever you want tagging along. (Though ironically mass carried in a single Charm ships Hangars would not appear to impact it's ability to jump because the system doesn't take that into account!)

 

[Disenfrancised]

I'll just make it so stuff in hangers can't be brought along via slaved charm drive (which fits with how the technobabble of the charm drive works).

Incidently I have completed populating the world data fields, all ~580 regions are added and named. World traits occur at these percentages:

Spoiler :

All the starting positions and NPCs have been mapped out. Observed this network map totally stolen from SymD's good work:

All that remains is the actual system and starting ship graphics, so the eta is still very up in the air.

 

[Thlayli]

Very nice. For those with multiple systems, does the big dot represent either an ad hoc 'capital' or the largest p concentration?