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Aurora III (v 6.21) - The Final Frontier - Hosted by Blue Emu

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To BuOrd:

I've come up with a quick-and-dirty formula for predicting the speed of any planned spacecraft. It seems to give the correct speed in km/sec to three (and sometimes four) significant figures.

V = 1000 E P / H

Where:

V is the ship's velocity in km/sec
E is the number of engines
P is the power output of one engine
H is the ship's total displacement in Hull Squares (rounded up)

Eg: our planned Expedition class Troop Transports use five engines rated at 200 power each and displace 542.4 Hull Squares (27,120 tons) in total. The above formula predicts a speed of 1841 km/sec, and that's exactly what the Ship Design window gives them.

The fourth significant figure is sometimes off, so there seems to be some sort of rounding going on somewhere... but the formula is still better than 99% accurate.

October 16th, 1954. Our squadron of five Donkey class mini-Freighters under Captains Coombes, RepBentley, Verenti, ETTAR and TheExecuter have begun shipping 200 tons of life-support Infrastructure out to Mars in preparation for the founding of Humanity's first interplanetary colony. The colonists cannot arrive until the first Plymouth Rock class Colony Ship rolls off the ways roughly three months from now.
 
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@Blue emu - is it possible to design a troop transport holding a full division with the same hull displacement as one of our standard size mule freighters?
If so, would a yard tooled to this design also be capable of building said freighter?

In an old game of mine I had a setup just like this. The troop transport had less engines (and was thus, slower) than the freighter design but it was still possible to build both ships in the same yard.
That kind of surprised me.
However, with the new engine designs of this version I have no idea if it's still possible.
 
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randakar said:
@Blue emu - is it possible to design a troop transport holding a full division with the same hull displacement as one of our standard size mule freighters?
If so, would a yard tooled to this design also be capable of building said freighter?
Click to expand...

Not possible. Even with no engines at all, the full-Division design is already 12,000 tons over the limit. It would be possible to design a new Venture class of troop-ship that carried two Brigades (ie: eight Battalions and two HQs) on exactly the same displacement as the Mule. Same engines, same speed. A yard tooled for Ventures could build Mules, but not vice-versa.

October 26th, 1954. Commodore Hyme has taken command of our first Mule class five-hold Freighter, and after transferring 40 tons of life support Infrastructure to Mars he has re-loaded with 1000 tons each of Duranium, Neutronium, Corbomite, Boronide, Uridium, Tritanium, Mercassium, Sorium, Gallicite, Vendarite and Corundium and is shipping them to the Red Planet to form a small stockpile of Trans-Newtonian minerals on-site to support future Martian industrial construction and Planetary Defense Complex assembly. Following that, he will act as an ersatz Tanker, using his on-board fuel tanks to transfer part of Earth's fuel stock to Mars. By the time the first colonists arrive early next year, the planet will be ready for them.
 
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Yeah, I didn't realize how bloody large those shipyards and ship designs had gotten.

However, it may be possible in the far future of this game .. maybe.

Here are the (old!) designs:

Code: 
Trooper Starship 2109 class Troop Transport    99,800 tons     1473 Crew     4831.5 BP      TCS 1996  TH 9000  EM 0
4509 km/s     Armour 1-191     Shields 0-0     Sensors 11/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 30    Max Repair 62 MSP
Troop Capacity: 20 Battalions    Cargo Handling Multiplier 500    

Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E0.5-C 2109 (36)    Power 250    Fuel Use 5%    Signature 250    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 900,000 Litres    Range 324.6 billion km   (833 days at full power)

CIWS-250 2109 (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 25000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Thermal Sensor TH1-11 2102 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 2102 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Shipyards tooled to the above design can build the Ming class, below, AND the Ox 2109 class, also below:

Code: 
Ming class Troop Transport    101,900 tons     1312 Crew     4494.4 BP      TCS 2038  TH 7000  EM 0
3434 km/s     Armour 1-194     Shields 0-0     Sensors 11/14/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 28    Max Repair 62 MSP
Troop Capacity: 25 Battalions    Cargo Handling Multiplier 500    

Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E0.5-C 2109 (28)    Power 250    Fuel Use 5%    Signature 250    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 900,000 Litres    Range 317.9 billion km   (1071 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH1-11 2102 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-14 (70%) 2112 (1)     Sensitivity 14     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  14m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

and:

Code: 
Ox 2109 class Freighter    99,750 tons     1320 Crew     4126.5 BP      TCS 1995  TH 9000  EM 0
4511 km/s     Armour 1-191     Shields 0-0     Sensors 11/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 26    Max Repair 62 MSP
Cargo 50000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 500    

Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E0.5-C 2109 (36)    Power 250    Fuel Use 5%    Signature 250    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 900,000 Litres    Range 324.8 billion km   (833 days at full power)

CIWS-250 2109 (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 25000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Thermal Sensor TH1-11 2102 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-11 2102 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Note that yards tooled to the Ox cannot build the Ming, and yards tooled to the Ming cannot build the Ox.
But yards tooled to the Starship Trooper can build both!

I also have this:

Code: 
Promised Land class Colony Ship    99,800 tons     1473 Crew     6038.5 BP      TCS 1996  TH 9000  EM 0
4509 km/s     Armour 1-191     Shields 0-0     Sensors 11/14/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 38    Max Repair 62 MSP
Colonists 200000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 500    

Internal Confinement Fusion Drive E0.5-C 2109 (36)    Power 250    Fuel Use 5%    Signature 250    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 900,000 Litres    Range 324.6 billion km   (833 days at full power)

CIWS-250 2109 (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 25000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Thermal Sensor TH1-11 2102 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-14 (70%) 2112 (1)     Sensitivity 14     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  14m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Yards designed to build the Promised Land colony ship can *also* build the Ox 2109 class freighter.

However, all of these designs are substantially larger, much higher tech, and from an older version of the game..



edit: The most salient point here is that it's possible to design a ship you would never actually build, just so you can build two different ships in the same yard that aren't normally retool-compatible.
 
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@emu - is it possible to put a zipfile with the .mdb file somewhere on, say, dropbox, so that we can download it and fiddle with ship designs ourselves? :)
 
Sirce said:
Any mining/factory focus Civvy Administrator? I think I'll take over Mars operation! :D
Click to expand...

Sounds good. How about this one?

FF_006_zpsd71df637.jpg


Factory Production, Mining, Logistics and Wealth... and the Terraforming and Pop-growth bonus will also be useful on Mars.

January 1st, 1955. Seven years since the dawn of the space age. In less than a month Mankind will be establishing their first interplanetary colony. Waiting patiently on Mars is enough life-support Infrastructure to support a million people, with an equal amount already under construction on Earth. Thousands of tons of minerals and 1.4 million liters of rocket fuel have been stockpiled on the Red Planet. Administrator Sirce has been appointed to oversee the project on-site... aside from the Surface Geology field teams that have already inspected Mars, Titan, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, he will be the first human being to set foot on another world.

In the seven years since the space age began, we have constructed ten spacecraft (four Geologist class Geo-scouts, five Donkey class mini-Freighters, and one Mule class Freighter) with two more ships currently on the ways (a second Mule and a Plymouth Rock class Colony Ship). In line with the Industry Minister's recommendations, we have converted 450 of our Conventional Industries to TN Factories, 150 of them to TN Mines, and 50 of them to TN Automated Mines, as well as building 20 new Fuel Refineries, two Mag Catapults, enough Infrastructure to support the Mars colony and enough pre-fab ship components to speed-up our spaceship construction significantly. Our robot mining operation on Comet Faye is producing and catapulting home roughly 350 tons of refined TN ores each month. Our stockpile of rocket fuel has reached 34 million liters on Earth, with a further 1.4 million liters on Mars. Earth has 272 million unemployed, but the new Mars colony offers them a chance at a new life on the frontier of human progress.

... Space... the final frontier...
 
January 6th, 1955. Our first Plymouth Rock class colony ship has been launched, and Commodore Billy Bob has taken command and is headed out to Mars with the first load of colonists. Our Freighters and mini-Freighters have started transferring Construction Factories to Mars, so that the colonists can begin expanding their own life support systems.
 
Download not available
Download permission denied by uploader. (0b67c2f5)
 
randakar said:
Download not available
Download permission denied by uploader. (0b67c2f5)
Click to expand...

That's strange... it's never happened to me. Is Rapidshare blocked in your location? Did you try copying the link into the address line of your browser instead of just clicking on it?
 
blue emu said:
That's strange... it's never happened to me. Is Rapidshare blocked in your location? Did you try copying the link into the address line of your browser instead of just clicking on it?
Click to expand...

I got the same error message. A quick Google search brought me to this forum post on their forums:

That's because as of this morning Rapidshare changed the default folder settings from public to private. If you haven't specifically made them public in the permissions they now are locked down. You will need to adjust the permissions for every folder.
Click to expand...

So, ball in your court Avian Overlord.
 
Dropbox works fine here.
As for rapidshare - possibly it's something to do with my Firefox + set of addons + proxy server combo. Using IE seems to work. Sort of.
Actually, the link now works fine ..


At any rate - thanks for sharing this. :)
 
randakar said:
Dropbox works fine here.
As for rapidshare - possibly it's something to do with my Firefox + set of addons + proxy server combo. Using IE seems to work. Sort of.
Actually, the new link works fine ..


At any rate - thanks for sharing this. :)
Click to expand...

:rofl: it's still the same link (compare them). Rapidshare just crossed me up by changing the default stats of newly-created folders... they're now private instead of public, until the permissions are explicitly changed.
 
blue emu said:
To BuOrd:

I've come up with a quick-and-dirty formula for predicting the speed of any planned spacecraft. It seems to give the correct speed in km/sec to three (and sometimes four) significant figures.

V = 1000 E P / H
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the formula I used:

V = (P*3,600,000)/(EN+F+M)

Except I adjusted units to kilometres per hour in line with the fuel consumption equation, included the number of engines into an overall power value, and seperated out the different components of mass since I knew it would allow me to make statements about the proportion of total mass given over to engines or fuel more easily. Any differences in the fourth digit I saw were explainable by simple rounding, eg 7273 km/s from 7272.7... It's possible other rounding may take place somewhere, but I was satisfied that was correct.
 
Myeah. I understand.
I have the file, and created an updated installation for this V6 game.

So, shipyards tooled for the Mayflower colony ship or the Venture class Troop Transport can also build the Mules. Good to see that that at least hasn't changed. :)
Don't think it's worth it to try and create more designs that are easily interchangeable. In theory it should be possible to create a 10k ton tiny colony ship but I can't seem to get it to the point where it would be shipyard-interchangeable with the donkey .. never mind that I don't really see much point to such a thing in the first place right now to begin with.
Hm.
 
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Capt. Kiwi said:
Yep, that's the formula I used...
Click to expand...

Cool. We're on the same page, then.

January 11th, 1955. Our first interplanetary colony has been established on the Red Planet. Twenty Construction Factories will be transferred from Earth to Mars, and the colonists will focus on building life-support until we have weaponized and pre-fabbed some Planetary Defense Complexes for them to assemble. Transfers of volunteer colonists to Mars will continue into the summer.

Now we have a decision to make:

Should we colonize the Earth's Moon as well? It has the same colonization potential as Mars... colony class 2, eventually terraformable to a class-0 world. This plan has both advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages: It will offer another destination for civilian (NPC) freighters and colony ships, thus stimulating growth in the civilian sector and providing a bit of increased tax revenue. It eventually give us another class-0 world, with a high initial population growth rate (over 10% per year, compared to Earth's 1.5% per year) and no population cap.

Disadvantages: In order to terraform it up to class-0, we must give it an Earth-like atmosphere, which means that we can no longer base Laser defenses there. As long as we keep the Moon in vacuum, we can stack it with Planetary Defense Complexes armed with high-capacity Lasers. It will only require a decade or so of weapons development to produce high-capacity Lasers capable of hitting anything in Earth orbit from the Moon's surface, 384,000 km away. But these Laser bases will only function in vacuum.

So, the question is: do we use the Moon for civilian purposes (establish a colony and terraform it) or for military purposes (build a crap-load of Laser bases on it)?
 
The moon must have laser beams. It is too awesome a possibility to dismiss. There will be other worlds to colonise, and Mars with it's resources is a good start.
 
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