Thanks man and sorry, I missed you message.
Yes, I am thinking about a small patrol vessel that would scout the solar system. I was waiting for the overall notion of what the players will demand of me and your message made an impact. So a smaller “gunboat” type ship will be it.
I will though make it around 2000 tons – several beam weapons, large sensor arrays so that we know what’s cooking and at least 12 months deployment time. It will have new, faster engines too that will take it from Earth to Mars, around the belt and to Jupiter and back in the period of its patrol.
BTW – you were watching the LP. What would you do next? We both agree on many things but you are more experienced than I am. So my future strategy revolves around this:
a) Increase the size of Mars colony and make it mine more basic minerals. I need a stable influx of Duranium that I can count on. While this goes on I would like to get couple of factories there so that it can produce its own infrastructure from the local mineral deposit. Good idea?
b) I want to colonize Luna, get some Neutronium mines there and have a better basic network to start the trade business rockin’. Also due to it’s proximity I might start to use it as a place for the deep space tracking station (might be roleplay worth to transport those there and make it our main radar base for Sol). Good idea?
c) I want to start an automated mine colony on Mercury – that place has some nice minerals. But it will be a secondary project to getting some more comets mined as those have better accessibility -> faster stockpile generation. Good idea?
d) I was fantasizing about making a colony at either Jupiter or Saturn (the moons of course) but Jupiter (much richer) seems like a better idea. The manned colony could be a local outpost with a small shipyard and defense and it could be a local storage for the minerals mined by automated installations here. Maybe even a small production base could be established so I don’t have to haul the goddamn infrastructure all the time. This will be heavy on resources but I think it could be worth it. Good idea?
e) Earth will be the only big manufacturing and research center we will have for Sol with small infrastructure building centers around the place where Duranium is plentiful. That means more fuel, research and manufacturing + another level or two in starbase and academy. After that is finished we should be ok for at least 40 years regarding logistics and personal. Good idea?
f) Finish the Lilian II design (a combined geo/grav survey ship with sensor arrays and better engines that will mean we eventually retire the old Lilian A1 refit ships) and a Snake class patrol gunboat. Good idea?
PS: the troop transports are still on schedule, don’t worry