Start up colony on a budget

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I was trying to design a troop transport for carrying Engineers, but it seems the troop transport bay is 25 HS.  That is not very flexible.

An engineering division is 30 HS, right?

So a single ship colony starter could be:
Troop Transport Bay, 30 HS
1 Cargo Hold (full of duranium for construction of Infrastructure
1 tractor
Several Engineering systems to transport Supply

A 2 ship colony starter would be a troop transport, and freighter carrying an automated factory.

A 4 ship colony starter would be 3 freighters, one carrying infrastructure, one an automated mine, one a construction factory.

How efficient at construction are Engineering Divisions?  They are more expensive than Construction factories, if I understand the costs correctly, and take longer to train than Construction factories take to build.

A troop transport with its own cargo hold can also engage in classic piracy, raiding a settlement or mining outpost for its resources.

What is involved in taking resources from an enemy automated mine?

I figure that if a mining outpost has at least _some_ military force then they can at least threaten to blow up the installations, to deter excessively greedy pirates.

Or maybe I watched too many Firefly episodes...

Still, I think a Troop transport with a cargo hold would serve a decent niche in Aurora.

[Steve Walmsley]

Troop Transport Bays should be 10 HS. Are you using version 0.2?

Steve

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I am using whatever version the current link installs, which is 0.2  And troop transports are 25 HS on it.  There is no "rating" on it to indicate capacity like there is for cryotanks and cargo holds either.

Nor could I find a place under ground troops where it said how much room they took up.

A related question:
Creating ground troops requires training points, but it also requires materials, right?  How many and of what type?  And the support they consume depends on what they are doing, right?

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I have been corrected, you can load up a cargo hold with Supply as well as ore.

So a one ship colony starter could be:
Higgins class Troop Transport    4800 tons     315 Crew     540 BP      Signature 96-441
4593 km/s     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/0/0/0     Damage Control 0-0
Troop Capacity 30   Cargo 5000   Tractor 5   Supply 200  
Ion Engine IB-5 (7)    Armour 0    Exp 8%

Passive Sensor S2-6 (1)     Strength 6     Detect Signature 10: 0.6m km     Detect Signature 100: 6m km

Bringing 180 Tons of Duranium and 200 Supply in the hold, that would give an Engineer-3 a bit over 6 years of supply and materials to work with.  Enough for 90 units of Infrastructure.

More likely, a colony starter would have several freighters carrying automated mines as well.  The purpose of the Higgins is to tailor the cargo load to the expected work load.

Another design that I considered was a Jump Cruiser with a size 30 Troop Bay.  It would be the same speed as a freighter, needing an additional crew quarters but not needing a tractor.

Higgins J variant class Troop Transport    5000 tons     375 Crew     596 BP      Signature 100-378
3780 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 6/0/0/0     Damage Control 0-0
Troop Capacity 30   Supply 200  
Ion Engine IB-5 (6)    Armour 0    Exp 8%

Passive Sensor S2-6 (1)     Strength 6     Detect Signature 10: 0.6m km     Detect Signature 100: 6m km

I waffled a bit between not having the sensors and having 2 more Engineering Systems.  Having extra supply is real handy on a Jump Cruiser because it is usually going to be a long way from home.  And if you have a philosophy of never sending out a convoy without some sensor capability you could simply build a dedicated scout ship and it can easily keep up with the convoy and investigate contacts on its own.

The Jump variant has an additional attraction to me that it can be used fairly aggressively.  Instead of having to round up or reactivate troop transports for an invasion, you can use this Jump Cruiser for your military vessels and always have some ground troops that can land and occupy a colony.

Building military Jump Cruisers as troop transports means the jump cruisers which naturally hang back from the space battle can come forward after the battle with the ground troops.  Large Jump Cruisers tend to be inefficient warships, but they need something to bulk themselves out, it is a decent compromise, I think.

Of course, if everybody is emplanting engineers on their colonies then no colony will be a trivial matter to take with ground troops.  For some reason, engineer units always seem to have access to an inordinate quantity of blasting material.

If you have slave populations, having lots of reserve ability to dump security troops on them is a good thing.

The Troop Transport Jump Transport isn't ideal for Survey fleets, because it would likely slow the survey fleet done, but carrying an infantry unit along to claim a tasty colony site would be a bit more economical than dropping off an engineer.  60 Supply would last an infantry unit for 5 years.