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Zaodai
May 23, 2009

Death before dishonor?
Your terms are accepted.


I hope we've dramatically over-invested in sensors, because beams and speed are all well and good until you can't actually see where you're going or what you're shooting.

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Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


Our fleet scout was built to see like 300M km, so we actually kinda did.

Zaodai
May 23, 2009

Death before dishonor?
Your terms are accepted.


Crazycryodude posted:

Our fleet scout was built to see like 300M km, so we actually kinda did.

So that gets reduced to 150km in the nebula, which is about the range of our lasers anyway? That doesn't sound too bad without missiles being able to be used to counter it anyway.

Friend Commuter
Nov 3, 2009
SO CLEVER I WANT TO FUCK MY OWN BRAIN.
Smellrose

Zaodai posted:

So that gets reduced to 150km in the nebula, which is about the range of our lasers anyway? That doesn't sound too bad without missiles being able to be used to counter it anyway.

150 million km, which is about 500 times the range of our lasers, and about the radius of Earth's orbit.

Zaodai
May 23, 2009

Death before dishonor?
Your terms are accepted.


So you're saying we need bigger lasers. :thunk:

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


GRAVEYARD

Not Alex
Oct 9, 2012

Cut loose before the god eaters show up.

Zaodai posted:

Especially if you consider that we're working on the theory that for the most part the ruins we've seen aside from the Graveyard were created by the space demons eating whole civilizations. This is very clearly just people vs people, we understand how these guys died. It's entirely possible the people who killed the penguins got eaten by space demons in the last purge and we're near the start of a new cycle rather than the end of a new cycle.

People vs people could very well be the space demon MO. Aside from menacing visions the only time we've been directly threatened was via a corrupted Collaboration AI combat vessel. Space demons could just wait till a critical mass of a species has jumped and then possess as many as they can and turn the species own void navy against the remainder.

StarFyter
Oct 10, 2012

The Pit. Playing Freespace 2 has taught me that wandering blind into a nebula is a bad good idea all around.

Hmm, fighters get kinda messed up by Aurora nebulas, huh. Unless carrying quite a lot of armour for a fighter, that is...

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009

Not Alex posted:

People vs people could very well be the space demon MO. Aside from menacing visions the only time we've been directly threatened was via a corrupted Collaboration AI combat vessel. Space demons could just wait till a critical mass of a species has jumped and then possess as many as they can and turn the species own void navy against the remainder.

Way back when the facility warned us about "incursions" which sounds to me something more direct.

TheWetFish
Mar 30, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

Zaodai posted:

I hope we've dramatically over-invested in sensors, because beams and speed are all well and good until you can't actually see where you're going or what you're shooting.

Our sensor tech is crazy good for all three of active sensors, passive EM sensors and passive thermal sensors

In this latest military block we've starting to move away from having somewhat sensible performance & using our technology to have small components. Instead we are leaning into our advantages more by using sensible sized components, that then have excellent performance. We're pretty good for sensors

Tactical_Torpedo
Feb 26, 2017

When all else fails?

FIRE EVERYTHING!

Then bravely run away.
Grimey Drawer
Coming out of lurk mode to throw my vote behind The Pit.

*resumes lurk*

Nitis
Mar 22, 2003

Amused? I think not.
Nothing bad can happen at a place called The Pit.

Onward, I say.

Nothingtoseehere
Nov 11, 2010


The Pit

Crazyeyes24
Sep 14, 2014

Your good vision is your fatal weakness!
How dare you all turn a blind eye to the Space Penguin genocide. Nothing good will come from that nebula I tell you!

Grizzwold
Jan 27, 2012

Posters off the pork bow!
Calm down, it's not like the space penguins are going anywhere. :v:

Friend Commuter
Nov 3, 2009
SO CLEVER I WANT TO FUCK MY OWN BRAIN.
Smellrose
They've been dead for nigh on a third of a million years, they can wait for another species to develop space travel after we get ourselves wiped out by the terrors between the stars.

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

sniper4625 posted:

So it's not lost to Discord only, re: our infodump:


So we didn't accomplish the desired goal of stalling their colonization efforts, but we did manage to undermine a good faith democratic reformer to the benefit of the reactionary opposition. Excellent work team.
Fanatics +/-

Saros
Dec 29, 2009

Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

The Pit has pulled ahead into a commanding lead, 37 to 26 so get those last votes in quick!

Officer Update

Across the last year these unfortunates have developed some ah, problems.

Ranginui Dig Report

In a stoke of genius Martian Intel has managed to place a high level asset within the Terran expedition to Ranginui V. You will receive updates on everything they dig up there.

Raw dig reports:


Short version?

You dug up a bunch of infrastructure and facilities to kickstart a colony on Ranginui V including a crazy amount of fuel.


You found a lot of internal fusion engines and reactors you can scrap for tech research or fit to ships to make crazy super-ships. A few very high tech Gauss weapons. Oh and three Twenty thousand ton, high tech military jump drives. You could probably refit a Dreadnought design with one and have jump capable Dreadnoughts.



You got a facility and the related technology to genetically engineer creatures to resist extreme heat. This discovery is rapidly bringing the question of adapting humans to hostile environments to the fore.

However Terra, despite having a smaller dig presence has outdone themselves.




Absorption shields, limited Gravity manipulation technology, advanced geological scanning technology!


Oh, and this. :getin:

I'll let the Aurora veterans begin freaking out now.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
Ahhh... there goes the neighborhood.

habituallyred
Feb 6, 2015
I would prefer analysis to use for almost all of our technological discoveries. I could make an exception for the jump drives, those seem pretty specific. I don't like the sound of those shields, especially since UT was basically without shields beforehand. Sounds like the sort of thing that absorbs attacks and refunds some of the damage with more shielding. Which would wreck most of our small craft designs. Woudn't be a question about Martian gene-engineering if we found -15 C technology.

Not Alex
Oct 9, 2012

Cut loose before the god eaters show up.
Wait they said... crush the Terrans later they said... try diplomacy they said.

:colbert:

Zaodai
May 23, 2009

Death before dishonor?
Your terms are accepted.


So we got a few moderately spicy baubles and they got a bunch of advanced tech from our system.

We really can't catch a break. :negative:

HiHo ChiRho
Oct 23, 2010

Well we also got a bunch of infra that allows Mars to put Mars First again while we play with some new toys. It's not the last of the ruins so far, so we got time to play catchup in grabbing tech. Given the destruction from the last war, the mines/dsts/civvies shipyard is a boon for us, especially being extrasolar.

TheWetFish
Mar 30, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

habituallyred posted:

I would prefer analysis to use for almost all of our technological discoveries

Now hold on there hoss, these are internal fusion drives

There's a degree of long term or short term gain in either disassembling or using salvaged components and frankly the disassembly option almost always wins hands down. Long term advantage is a solid argument but do consider the short term advantage here. This is about two generations of engine types higher that we're using so the short term argument is surprise internal combustion engines in the age of horse & buggy

Keeping in mind that we're likely heading into a nebulae and our armour is already quite good; we may well want to use a lot of those military drives for the very next block of ships. Nebulae specific designs with our excellent armour in an ultra thick configuration, these salvaged military drives providing an extreme speed advantage and our usual resplendent laser armament. We'd get there eventually with the tech boost and our own home grown engine designs but the components could smooth that transition for our very next military block

Do disassemble the civilian internal fusion drives we scored for technological insights but let's take a closer look at the exact specifications on those military drives before we disassemble those

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

If we're going to use the jump drives in something I would probably suggest putting some of the fancy engines and reactors in it too, because that way we can pack more armour onto it to make it more survivable and protect both our fancy new jump drives and our fancy new engines.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Nov 4, 2017

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface
Oh my god thats amazing.

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


I'd still dissect all the fusion engines we got. They will at the bare minimum get us up to the next engine tier which is ~33% faster, and probably get us a decent chunk of the way towards the tier beyond that. We can have a handful of super-ships with ~80% better engines that we can't reproduce, or we can have every single thing in our entire inventory from dreadnaughts to missiles and everything in between go 33% faster.

TheWetFish
Mar 30, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

Zaodai posted:

So we got a few moderately spicy baubles and they got a bunch of advanced tech from our system.

We really can't catch a break. :negative:

Yeah Terra got better railguns, one half of the Absorption Shields puzzle piece, some crunchy Corundium and that does sting a bit. Terra is digging through a partially intact colony with 165 T3 ruins while we are digging through a deserted intact city with 1200 T5 ruinsWe're all digging on Ranganui V, we are also digging faster than they are and we certainly aren't empty handed so far

We got a whole bunch of :dance: Internal Confinement Fusion :dance: stuff which is going to be insane once we eventually get it online, one way or the other. Our Ranganui V colony is now also sporting recovered & operational facilities including 59 automated mines

Normally colony development follows a fairly harsh cycle of more infrastructure to support more population -> mines to dig up duranium & more construction factories to turn duranium into infrastructure -> repeat. We also get a trickle feed of infrastructure coming in via civilian shipping

Automines are double the cost of conventional mines to build in a regular fashion but require zero population to work them. This shortcuts the usual colony development timeline by quite a lot; we're talking 3 million population worth of regular mine productivity for free on a colony that is currently barely 3.7 million population total, or in other words 600 infrastructure worth of population productivity. Hell of a shortcut. Net result being the colony develops into an economic powerhouse in potentially quite a short time. Once Mars finishes terraforming then we might ship those terraforming assets over to Ranganui V, which would now have the population to support them and we're well on our way to two Martian Colonial Federation Earth-like planets

Edit:
Ranganui V has some nice minerals for those automines


Although if we're really bitter about that Corundium and want to cockblock Terra / provoke a war then we could do worse than moving some of them to a colony of ours next to Terra's on Ranganui IV's moon and grab some of that sweet 1 accessibility Corundium, among other things


Thanks HiHi ChiRho!

Edit 2: Everyone is digging through Ranganui V first and we shipped a whole bunch of automines from Mars, as opposed to digging them all up. Everything I thought I knew was a lie

TheWetFish fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Nov 4, 2017

Anta
Mar 5, 2007

What a nice day for a gassing
Inertial. Unless the game is doing a weird thing it's inertial confinement fusion.

edit: I have been informed that the game is indeed doing a weird thing. There is both an internal and an inertial confinement fusion engine tech in the game. :psyduck:

Anta fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Nov 4, 2017

RA Rx
Mar 24, 2016

Can we crush the Terrans now? They got more stuff that we want.

TheWetFish
Mar 30, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

RA Rx posted:

Can we crush the Terrans now? They got more stuff that we want.

What stuff that we want? 122 Massive Spinal Death Lasers worth of Corundium?
I don't know what you're talking about, I just have some grit in my eye

Hessi
Oct 28, 2010
We definitely should use those 20000 tons jump engines to create a jump dread or a jump tender to jump our dreads with, especially if it allows us to jump out at a good distance from the jump point. Being able to jump in dreadnaughts would be a nasty suprise if we ever have to attack a jump point.
For the vote: Either dogmocracy or in case of a lack of dog, Graveyard.

Hessi fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Nov 4, 2017

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009

Anta posted:

Inertial. Unless the game is doing a weird thing it's inertial confinement fusion.

edit: I have been informed that the game is indeed doing a weird thing. There is both an internal and an inertial confinement fusion engine tech in the game. :psyduck:

Any confinement tech that isn't internal seems pretty suspect to me.

Also, loving told you so, can we have a war now? Or are we going to wait until Terra has leveraged everything it finds in those ruins.

Dance Officer
May 4, 2017

It would be awesome if we could dance!
How about we build some dreadnoughts with those super engines, and then retrofit their weapons/fcs for one or two ship generations? They'll be really fast battleships now, probably still decent one development cycle from now, and might serve as battlecruisers or colonial forces after that.

Z the IVth
Jan 28, 2009

The trouble with your "expendable machines"
Fun Shoe
If we have 3 of the drives couldn't we turn 1 into a jump tender, 1 into a jump battleship and disassemble the last one?

We don't need all of our big ships to be able to jump, one to push/pull them through the network is sufficient, and we can keep a second around as a backup. This of course assumes that there is significant benefit to be gained from disassembling just one of the drives.

HiHo ChiRho
Oct 23, 2010

If disassembling gets us a guaranteed start into a higher tech of research, we should totally do it.

GunnerJ
Aug 1, 2005

Do you think this is funny?
What are absorption shields?

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
Adds a percent of damage dealt back into the integrity of the shield, I think. So major bad news.

GunnerJ
Aug 1, 2005

Do you think this is funny?
I'm trying to figure out how this works mathematically and what it sounds like is: X% damage done to the shield is restored, effectively meaning that so long as the shield is operational, it reduces damage dealt by X%.

Is this right?

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Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


No, what absorption shields do is have a much higher shield strength per hull space than normal shields of similar tech tier. For reference, the dinky first tier a-shields Earth just pulled are as thick as tier 5 normal shields, which is already superior to us, and they will rapidly research that higher. Earth is gonna have much thicker shields than we do.

The tradeoff, and where they get their name, is that instead of dissipating incoming damage out into the ether like normal shields do, a-shields... well, absorb it. All damage that hits a-shields gets stored inside the shield components, and is slowly trickled out over time (this is represented by shield recharge, which is much slower on a-shields than normal shields). The meaningful gameplay effect is that if you destroy a shield component, it releases the damage it has stored inside it as an internal explosion. So instead of a pile of shield components acting as an inert HTK sponge like on the IC zombie ships at Second Titan, a-shields tend to spectacularly gut the ship they're on.

TL;DR a-shields make enemy ships much tougher while their shields are up by virtue of being incredibly, bullshit levels of thick, but once you down the shields (or bypass them with mesons hint hint) they're much easier to kill. The enemy ship does remain fully operational up until that spectacular final explosion, though, so crippling/capturing becomes nearly impossible and you want to make drat sure you kill them so they can't recharge.

Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Nov 4, 2017

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