The Monolith-Class Colony Ship, a 1 Million-Ton+ Absurdity

[xenoscepter (OP)]

The Monolith-Class:
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Monolith-Class Colony Ship    1,125,000 tons     2547 Crew     21929.5 BP      TCS 22500  TH 3150  EM 0
140 km/s    JR 2-25(C)     Armour 4-963     Shields 0-0     Sensors 18/18/0/9     Damage Control Rating 100     PPV 0
MSP 1218    Max Repair 7190 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 292   
Troop Capacity: 60.8 Battalions    Cargo 150000    Cryogenic Berths 103000    Habitation Capacity 100,000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 240   
Jump Gate Construction Ship: 360 days
Terraformer: 3 module(s) producing 0.009 atm per annum

Monolith Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 1125000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2
Monolith Internal Fusion Drive (7)    Power 450    Fuel Use 3.89%    Signature 450    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 5,000,000 Litres    Range 20.6 billion km   (1700 days at full power)

Monolith Active Search Sensor [R1] (1)     GPS 36     Range 6.5m km    MCR 706k km    Resolution 1
Monolith Passive Search Sensor [TH] (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km
Monolith Passive Search Sensor [EM] (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  18m km
Advanced Geological Sensors (3)   9 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as an Orbital Habitat for construction purposes


Description:
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 --- The Monolith-Class is a big ship, and I mean a BIG ship. It weighs in at 1,125,000 Tonnes!  The vessel is an Orbital Habitat, however, and so can be built using Construction Factories in addition to being a Commercial Ship, and as such doesn't suffer from issues relating to moral or maintenance. It has four layers of Armor due to the fact that it is slow and unarmed while being very expensive; as such it is an investment worth protecting from raiders, pirates or just general bad guys. Four Small Troop Transport Bays give it the ability to tote four Marine Companies for protection against boarding parties, while sixty [yes... sixty] Troop Transport Bays allow the carriage of twelve Construction Brigades to give a start-up colony the equivalent of one full Construction Factory. Six Standard Cargo Bays and twelve Advanced cargo Handling Systems let it load in just over nine hours, while a Small Jump Gate Constructor and a trio of Terraforming Modules allow the Monolith-Class to create trade routes for Civilian Shipping as well as afford it some ability to cleanse toxic atmospheres.

 --- The twin Orbital Habitat Modules, along with the ten Cryogenic Transport Modules give the Monolith-Class the ability to setup a Colony 100,000 persons strong and help support it with an Orbital Habitat of equal population. Fifteen Emergency Cryogenic Transport Modules enable both the 2,547 crew members of a Monolith-Class as well as anyone occupying it's 292 Spare Berths to enter suspended animation to await rescue in the event of a catastrophic incident. A trio of Advanced Geological Sensors as well as a Resolution 1 Active Sensor allow the Monolith-Class to conduct it's own Orbital Geological Surveys while sweeping for alien ruins, while it's Electromagnetic and Thermal Passive Sensors allow it to locate and / or monitor other NPR colonies in that share a system with it from a good distance, as well as to help spot any would-be hostiles who might be looking for a free lunch. With a power plant consisting of a single Ultra Large Fuel Tank and seven Commercial-Type 2,250 Tonne Internal Fusion Drives. the Monolith-Class Colony Ship is capable of chugging along at an acceptable 140 km/s. The Monolith-Class features a 5,000 ton Engineering Space, and a single Commercial-Type Jump Drive capable of moving it [and two other 1,125,000 if you happen to have any lying around] through Jump Points.

[Cavgunner]

So... what are the actual material costs needed to build this? 

Other than the awesome but admitted impracticality of it, I have one point of contention:  range and speed could be considerably enhanced without adding much more to the vessel's mass, relatively speaking.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

@Cavgunner

 --- Firstly, there is no technology required that is over 40,000 RP in terms of research cost. Now for build costs, the minerals needed are:

 - 8556.75x Duranium

 - 1885x Neutronium

 - 5x Corbomite

 - 1070x Boronide

 - 3561.25x Mercassium

 - 5992x Sorium

 - 672x Uridium

 - 787.5x Gallicite

[ZimRathbone]

Nice from a RP point of view, not so great for usability.  Due to the slow speed it may have problems catching up to orbiting planets, and the Jump Gate constructor will likely not be used very often if it means that the whole ship has to be away from the colony planet for a year.

I suspect that it would be more efficient in this case to use shields rather than armour for protection - 4 layers wont stop much (even though its giving you total damage protection of 3852 if its sandblasted, it wont stop warheads with damage 15 or greater).  Shields will not provide the same absolute protection but will keep protecting until completely worn down. 

As you are using commercial Jump drives, you can only bring one other ship on a standard transit - however since this is unlikely to be going into active combat situations you can use the civillian transits and ferry as much as you like.
 
Several years ago Waresky used to produce big ship designs like this on a regular basis.  The biggest I have seen was a 50 million ton ship, but IIRC it needed database tweaking to allow it, and I suspect that it would run into  MAXINT issues in actual play.

[MarcAFK]

Theres some ways to make mega colony ships work, abusing jump drive mechanics, offloading stuff to more ships, paracites, etc, etc, But I do love the concept.
A bit slow though, and terrible range.

[Bughunter]

Maybe if you pair it with a sorium harvester functioning as a refillable tanker?

Go into a new system, slap down a colony and stay around a while to get it running. The goal is to eventually produce a gravsurvey fighter which will take you into the next system where you repeat the process. Slow but infinite colonization.. until you get eaten by aliens.