Posted by: Michael Sandy
« on: November 13, 2006, 12:40:43 AM »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.
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.