Aurora 4x
Fiction => Aurora Community Game => Detjen's Fiction => Aurora => News => Topic started by: ardem on May 31, 2011, 05:54:15 PM
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The ministry of Survey is in the market for blueprints of the following ship:
-A small geosurvey design for solar system use, economic civilian drives and a range of atleast 50b km
-A small transport, for the Ministry to land survey teams on orbital bodies
All proposals will be judged on costs, speed and ease of construction. The designs will be reviewed by the Ministry staff who will take the final decisions. Naming rights to the model will be with the civilian contract design selected, although ship naming rights will be reserved to the ministry.
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Starion Heavy Industries, a Starion Foundation subsidiary, would like to put forward the following design for a geo-survey vessel.
This vessel is designed to be very simple and quick to manufacture and still provide a reasonably fast survey.
Columbus class Surveyor 2,000 tons 96 Crew 272.4 BP TCS 40 TH 62 EM 0
1550 km/s Armour 1-14 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/2 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Capacity 85 MSP Max Repair 100 MSP
DaZmar Nova E1 (1) Power 62.5 Fuel Use 10% Signature 62.5 Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 40,000 Litres Range 360.0 billion km (2688 days at full power)
AVT Electronics Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
Please note that this class has only a basic navigational array in order to reduce complexity and cost.
This class could easily be built now in our current naval shipyard.
--Orion Starion
CEO Starion Foundation, Senator for the Central North American Region
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Mr Starion
We are glad to see your design and believe it to be what our world and survey service need. However we here at the ministry are unable to model your design using any known material for the hull structure. Our analysis indicates that the hull of your design requires only 1.8 tons, while the best our engineers can do is approximately 2.8 tons. Please advise us if we are in error with the complete specs for your ship, of course we would be most eager if you do indeed have a material over 150% stronger than that of which we are aware.
Sahsa Gagarin, Deputy Minister
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[ooc]Oh my goodness, that was one very spectacular piece of comedy there Senator Gagarin, very funny, no offense to Starion. On a more serious note, new designs for ships should really go in the topic MINISTRY OF SURVEY #1 as that was where Senator Winston wanted them to go.[/ooc]
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[ooc] No if you see I made the first post here, Contracts I thought were news items so I thought it was in the right place [/ooc]
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[ooc]Crap. That's what I get for trying to throw a design together quickly in an existing DB. Please assume this was the original entry. :)[/ooc]
Columbus class Surveyor 2,050 tons 98 Crew 268.5 BP TCS 41 TH 62 EM 0
1512 km/s Armour 1-14 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/2 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 0
Maint Capacity 123 MSP Max Repair 100 MSP
DaZmar Nova E1 (1) Power 62.5 Fuel Use 10% Signature 62.5 Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres Range 87.8 billion km (672 days at full power)
AVT Electronics Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
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Minister Winston and Mr Starion
We have evlauated your design and find it acceptable, but a curious situation arose. Over the weekend, one of our young engineers ran some simulations and the results surpised us all this morning. The 'competing' designs were the one you have submitted and a varient similar in most respects, but with only a single geological sensor. This change did 2 things, it allowed for a modestly higher speed (~1700 km/s) and allowed 3 ships to be built for less that the cost of 2 of the standard 2 GeoS design. Still we thought is was a useless exercise until he reviewed a simulation in which the 3 single GeoS ships surveyed all the planets and moons in our solar system 1.5 months FASTER. This was about a 17% improvement. This was also from a standing start where all surveying commenced at the same instant. If build times are also considered (at least if all 3 ships can be built in parallel) the single GeoS designs will have an even larger advantage. If all need to built in a single slipway, the advantage would probably be less (but that simulation has not been run).
In addition, the base simulation was extended to cover the full survey of the solar system including the asteroid belt, ort cloud and commets. Again 3 single GeoS ships won over 2 dual GeoS ships - by approx 1.5 years over a 5 year period.
Mr Starion - we request you submit a bid for a single GeoS design in quick order so we might determine if a real vessel is a close match to the one used in the sims.
Minister Winston - If our procurement budget allowed us to afford 2 of Mr Starion's designs, I urge you to consider 3 of the alternate 1 sensor design. It will both save credits and be more efficient - at least in our initial survey of Sol.
DepMin Gagarin
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I like that idea, the more ships we have the more crew we can train
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Gentleman, as a deadline for design finalization seems to be upon us, I have asked our young engineer to
create formal specifications for the ship he used in the simulations. He produced the following
Erikson class Geosurvey Ship 1,800 tons 70 Crew 169 BP TCS 36 TH 62 EM 0
1722 km/s Armour 1-13 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/1 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Capacity 59 MSP Max Repair 100 MSP
DaZmar Nova E1 (1) Power 62.5 Fuel Use 10% Signature 62.5 Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 499.9 billion km (3360 days at full power)
AVT Electronics Geological Survey Sensors (1) 1 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This ship is based on the original Columbus class ship designed by Mr Station and his corp., but
removes 1 Geo sensor array. Also missing is some engineering equipment deemed superfluous which was
replaced by increased fuel tankage. The result is a ship almost 14% faster, considerably greater range
but with only half the sensor capacity.
It also costs only 62.9% as much. Three could be funded for 30 MCr less than 2 of the Columbus class.
In addition each one will only take 9.5 months to build vs. 14 2/3 months for the larger surveyor.
Secondly there have been no proposals for a small, fast courier ship so we have designed one in-house.
Hermes class Courier 1,500 tons 43 Crew 60.5 BP TCS 30 TH 62 EM 0
2066 km/s Armour 1-11 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Capacity 25 MSP Max Repair 16 MSP
DaZmar Nova E1 (1) Power 62.5 Fuel Use 10% Signature 62.5 Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 25,000 Litres Range 299.9 billion km (1680 days at full power)
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
While this class is extremely cheap and quick to build it has no other function than to ferry teams around,
a task that can be done by any ship. An alternate version that could double as a tanker was envisioned, but
while capable of refueling an Erickson 5 times, it was no faster than the survey ship and cost almost twice
as much as the pure courier design, even if it was only 300 tons larger.
DepMinSurv Gagarin
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Columbus class Surveyor 1,750 tons 67 Crew 158.5 BP TCS 35 TH 62 EM 0
1771 km/s Armour 1-12 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/1 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Capacity 57 MSP Max Repair 100 MSP
DaZmar Nova E1 (1) Power 62.5 Fuel Use 10% Signature 62.5 Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres Range 51.4 billion km (336 days at full power)
AVT Electronics Geological Survey Sensors (1) 1 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
After reworking the design for maximum minimalisation, this is what our engineers have come up with.
Full component list is as follows:
2.6x Chemicals Unlimited! Duranium Durasteel Armor
1x DaZmar Nova E1 commercial engine
1x Life Systems Crew Quarters - Small
1x Arkayan Command Module
1x Sori Fuel Storage - Tiny
1x General Dynamics Engineering Spaces
1x AVT Electronics Bridge
The design required about 60% the building capacity of the original, is 13% faster and 15% lighter. It also required about 2/3rds of the crew.
We formally submit this design for final approval and look forward to working with our diverse subcontractors to bring this design to reality.
--Orion Starion
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Deputy Minister we should go with commercial designs if submitted it, as it encourages future development and designs, our ministry is a selection committee first we are not ship builders unless we have to be. But this is your call.
Due to the defense not ready to go with a design, I believe we could manage to get our design in production on the Military Shipyards and 3 ships built. But I would like you to formally select a design now. As long as it meet the required specification I have set, I do not mind, but I would like to minimize build time and resources to the edge if possible.
The Courier currently is on hold, since the Ministry of Infrastructure does not wish to start two design at this stage, but looking at the research required for the Military design we may be able to sneak it in.
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We have picked a military design, however component research and missile production will be a lengthy process I think, we likely have time to build the courier too.
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The only significant difference between the modified Columbus design and the in-house Erikson is the range. The Columbus does meet your minimum specs for range, but it still seems short. Still a year of full thrust is likely to give 1.5 - 2 years of survey. While the ships themselves are projected to be very reliable, the crew may need and deserve a return to earth every 18 to 24 months. I do expect that if we manage to find a way to another star system the range will be wholly inadequate, but I guess we can cross that bridge when we come to it. It is the absolute most inexpensive design I could contemplate. I recommend it, but with a bit of reservation. If you have the same concerns we may need to revisit, but otherwise lets push forward with what we have now and let the future dictate any course change.
DepMinSurv Gagarin
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Should it be desired, a 50 ton full sized fuel storage system could be added to the design. This would increase the range to an astounding 549.9 billion kilometers or 3696 days at full power. It reduces speed to 1722 km/s and increased size to 1800 tons and crew requirement to 70.
For the current time I would recommend the currently proposed Columbus design and in the future upgrade to the extended range version. Hopefully by the time the extended range version is required we would have more advanced sensors available and could swap those in as well.
--Orion
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There is a request made for Grav Survey, I would be open to all designs and if you can state why your design is best, choice will be decided on who has the most convincing arguement.
Only guideline is Grav Survey Craft should be no more then 6000 tonnes