New Manty ship ideas.

Cheopis wrote:My impression was that most verge worlds didn't attract free traders. Either they had their own, home grown merchant fleets from their planet or nearby neighbors that handled their own goods in the best case scenario (free planet), or they were serviced only by trans-stellars that were raping their economy and resources so badly that even going to the planet mostly empty was still profitable the a trans-stellar with a lock on the planet's exports.(OFS protectorate)

Free traders are locked out of those verge markets withthe Cozy transtellar agreements. Everything is SprallMart(TM). The Ships which bring in the products are SprallMart, the big box stores are all SprallMart.

If the people on the planets want nails to fix thieir house, they buy SprallMart brand. If they want Rotini noodles - That's Right, SprallMart has them in Gluten, Gluten Free, and low-cal Whole Wheat.

As for a job, you either strip your planet of natural resources for SprallMart or work in a SprallMart factory.

It's the ultimate "Company Store" scam, but instead of a Company Town - it's entire star systems held in servitude to one corporate master with no outside competition, and virtually no internal competition because of their governmental control.

Yes, the name of the "SprallMart" will change with the Trans-stellar which is your corporate master, but the results are the same.

Theemile wrote:

Cheopis wrote:My impression was that most verge worlds didn't attract free traders. Either they had their own, home grown merchant fleets from their planet or nearby neighbors that handled their own goods in the best case scenario (free planet), or they were serviced only by trans-stellars that were raping their economy and resources so badly that even going to the planet mostly empty was still profitable the a trans-stellar with a lock on the planet's exports.(OFS protectorate)

Free traders are locked out of those verge markets withthe Cozy transtellar agreements. Everything is SprallMart(TM). The Ships which bring in the products are SprallMart, the big box stores are all SprallMart.

If the people on the planets want nails to fix thieir house, they buy SprallMart brand. If they want Rotini noodles - That's Right, SprallMart has them in Gluten, Gluten Free, and low-cal Whole Wheat.

As for a job, you either strip your planet of natural resources for SprallMart or work in a SprallMart factory.

It's the ultimate "Company Store" scam, but instead of a Company Town - it's entire star systems held in servitude to one corporate master with no outside competition, and virtually no internal competition because of their governmental control.

Yes, the name of the "SprallMart" will change with the Trans-stellar which is your corporate master, but the results are the same.

Not only that SprallMart could extend credit against the 'wage slave' paycheck and make sure that 'credit' is a little more than the value of the earnings.

Can streak drive be retofitted or is it a new build.

WebFan47 wrote:Can streak drive be retofitted or is it a new build.

Textev is that it is larger than a normal Hyperdrive installation. What that really means - we don't know. No mention of a refit or custom construction has been made iirc.

WebFan47 wrote:Can streak drive be retofitted or is it a new build.

A streak drive is simply an improved hyper generator that masses about twice(?) as much as conventional ones. Which is proportionately smaller as the vessel volume goes up. Dispatch boats would need to be new builds, but superdreadnoughts might be able to squeeze them in, depending on the internal layouts. Obviously, if the hyper generator is squeezed in between something like a fusion reactor and the core hull, it'll be difficult and time-consuming. If surrounded by personnel quarters or storage compartments, rearrangements are a snap.

Though as we saw at Hancock Station, replacing major internal equipment on a 800kton ship was a pain, but I suppose with a pod-layer the core hull is available as an entry point. Starting to look like the Roland, Sag-C and Nike classes really are transitional!

munroburton wrote:Though as we saw at Hancock Station, replacing major internal equipment on a 800kton ship was a pain, but I suppose with a pod-layer the core hull is available as an entry point. Starting to look like the Roland, Sag-C and Nike classes really are transitional!

Though I think the next-gen DD/CL is going to be much, much larger than a Roland, and the next-gen CA will be much larger than a Sag-C, but the next-gen BC will only be marginally larger than a Nike; I think that class is probably closer to a long-term design than any other hyper-capable warship Manticore's built in the last decade.

munroburton wrote:Though as we saw at Hancock Station, replacing major internal equipment on a 800kton ship was a pain, but I suppose with a pod-layer the core hull is available as an entry point. Starting to look like the Roland, Sag-C and Nike classes really are transitional!

That might work on a Medusa/Harrington-class ship, but on the Invictus-class the pod core is heavily armoured in case of a hit coming through the pod doors.

munroburton wrote:A streak drive is simply an improved hyper generator that masses about twice(?) as much as conventional ones. Which is proportionately smaller as the vessel volume goes up. Dispatch boats would need to be new builds, but superdreadnoughts might be able to squeeze them in, depending on the internal layouts. Obviously, if the hyper generator is squeezed in between something like a fusion reactor and the core hull, it'll be difficult and time-consuming. If surrounded by personnel quarters or storage compartments, rearrangements are a snap.

Though as we saw at Hancock Station, replacing major internal equipment on a 800kton ship was a pain, but I suppose with a pod-layer the core hull is available as an entry point. Starting to look like the Roland, Sag-C and Nike classes really are transitional!

Dafmeister adressed the point I was going to make about 2nd gen (and presumably beyond) SD(P)s having podbay armor, but I had an additional thought.

I wonder what the minimum disassembled dimensions of a hyper generator are. We know the main bottle on a fusion reactor a single casting, so you can't significantly disassemble it for installation, but we've got no details about a hyper generator (at least not that I can recall).

So it's possible we're all over-thinking this; that a streak drive can be dissembled into parts small enough to fit through the ship's passageways. (although I'd guess that's unlikely.) If so that would significantly simplify the task of retrofitting one. You'd still need to carve out more space for it, but wouldn't need to open a large access path through the ship to get it into place.


I'm also wondering, now that Simones has give details on the streak drive, if new designs (or later flights of current designs) will be build with the larger hyper generator rooms to simplify refit once the GA has managed to build streak drives of their own. (Even if R&D finalizes a streak generator before Manticore resumes ship construction there are still the Bolthole produced SD(P) hulls that could have a window of being fitted for, but not with, Streak drive)

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm also wondering, now that Simones has give details on the streak drive, if new designs (or later flights of current designs) will be build with the larger hyper generator rooms to simplify refit once the GA has managed to build streak drives of their own. (Even if R&D finalizes a streak generator before Manticore resumes ship construction there are still the Bolthole produced SD(P) hulls that could have a window of being fitted for, but not with, Streak drive)

This seems likely, even if it takes a major refit to put the new generators in. After all, hyperdrives wear out normally, so you just replace the old one with a streak drive.

Of course, this all assumes that Simoes can tell them how big the streak drive will be, in sufficient detail. It seems like a reasonable assumption though. [Does that mean it's wrong?]

akira.taylor wrote:Of course, this all assumes that Simoes can tell them how big the streak drive will be, in sufficient detail. It seems like a reasonable assumption though. [Does that mean it's wrong?]

It seems likely he can tell how big it would be if the Mesans built it. Manticore's pretty good at miniaturizing things (as much as turning a 120-ton missile into a 100-ton missile could be called that, anyway), though.