The same map also highlights the way galactic political development was shaped by the ... shape ... of the galaxy. Between the Primodius asteroids in the central nebula, the vast reaches of empty space at the heart of the galaxy, and the hostile worlds of Yarrow and Dunatis, near to the galactic core but on the opposite side from Silicoid space, it's no wonder that most interspecies meetings occurred far from the galactic center. The importance of the dotomite fuel cells Munchy developed this year should be obvious: With our "short-range" fleets and transports finally able to travel 7 parsecs from our fuel bases (and extended-tank scouts ready to travel 3 parsecs further still) we'll finally be able to protect Romulas with a real defensive fleet, and of course we're finally able to speak with our neighbors. Unfortunately, the importance of actual engines is also manifest, and we don't have any. Even now, Munchy and his M.U.S.C.L.E.-bound cohorts are working merrily away on an Warp Dissipator device to slow down enemy fleets in battle - a device that does nothing in the deeps of interstellar space, where our fleets are slow enough already! Of course we'd be working on an engine if the lab boys could imagine any way to develop one ... but they can't. It's impossible, they tell me.
2413:
It's hard to have a lot of respect for our science teams when a new discovery doesn't even turn on any new lightbulbs in their brains. Supposedly they had to "backtrack" to develop the new improvements to our industrial technology, and supposedly the auto-repair system for which I keep lobbying would mean more "backtracking." As Nero Beare would say, Pfui. At least now they're developing Zortium armor for my cruisers- and dreadnoughts-to-be.
2414:
I think we're in 2414. I hope I didn't oversleep this winter. Anyway, I'm feeling better about Munchencrunch and his boys now; our new Robotic Controls are ready to roll out, and more importantly, they're working on an improved space scanner that should double my scout ships' scanning range and tell us exact destinations and ETAs for every alien ship we can see. This will be enormously helpful for planning and timing the design of the most effective possible fleet. Assuming we ever get good enough engines for the fleet to ever show up at its destination.
2418:
Still a little fuzzy from hibernating. What year is it again? It is 2418, right? Right? Somebody? Well, anyway. It seems a few days before I woke up, Jasana called up the RBO-9 and offered a non-aggression pact! Ha ha, obviously I was napping at the time, and our leaders were more than happy to NAP with her. They were so happy about our new pro-fur relationship, they taught her to use our latest industrial tech improvements in exchange for doubling the potential of our terraforming techniques. She gets a 22-30% discount on factory construction, we get room for an extra ten million bears on each of our worlds. Maybe I'm just in a good mood from a good winter's sleep, but that sounds like a good deal on both sides to me.
2419:
I really need to start setting an alarm. I'm pretty sure this is 2419. I think. Anyway, what woke me up was a major GNN news report. Something's happening in the galaxy.
Must have been five years ago that the droid ranked empire production and put the Klackon bugs first in the galaxy. (We were next to last, ahead of the Silicoids, but that was just before we started building robotic-control factories all over the place.) Now their Selia colony's gone fertile, speeding their growth curve, upping their maximum population, and improving their productivity. These bugs are pretty impressive. But they don't have me designing their fleets!
2422:
Uh-oh. Scanners are picking up an escorted Silicoid colony ship, and I don't need an improved space scanner (good thing, too, since one won't be ready for a while) to tell where it's headed. They're finally going for our (yes, our) Romulas colony-to-be! Thanks to some questionable planning by the RBO, and our continuing miserable lack of engines, we've only managed to get one of my NPG fighters up there to join the original long-range fleet! Just one colony ship and a Morey destroyer escort, but we may be sorry our leaders didn't listen to me ... and build more of the ships I'm designing!
2424:
Here they come! We've got to fight them off, but they're firing on my fleet already! It looks like the Morey's armed with gatling lasers, which are useless against anything with significant shielding, but dangerous for little fighters like the ones in our fleet! The colship's got a laser too, and we have less than two dozen fighters in our fleet!
Got 'em! We only lost the fighter and four Runaways! We really should have sent more fighters though. If they'd come with more than a token escort, we'd never have held the world. Even as it is, we'll eventually lose by attrition unless we can get a real fleet into space. We should have sent something up there the moment we developed Dotomite and it came into standard fighter range. I just hope what we can build at Klystron now won't be too little, too late!
2425:
This is amazing! Munchy's brand-new Radiation Control bases actually work! We can convert the giant placeholder ship right here on Ursa into three colony ships to carry them by next year - and while I'm not all that excited about Munchy's new project to advance our ecology restoration techniques, I am excited about the merculite missiles he keeps promising will be ready any year now! It's enough to make me forget about the high council vote, where half the galaxy voted for Ssithra (not including the RBO-9 this time) and caused endless pointless hand-wringing by people more interested in politics than the coolest new starships. Me, I'm sending designs to Klystron for a brand-new fighter, with a stabilizer to help it gain initiative, close rapidly, and evade enemy attack, and our most advanced battle computer for NPG targeting. (Thanks to the miniaturization afforded by robotic controls, our most advanced battle computer is now reasonably cheap.) No real trade-offs needed on this one; it might actually have made sense to fit them with duralloy armor since the enemy is still fielding lasers (gatling or otherwise) and the increase in cost would be small, but I'm going with titanium anyway. True, with their warp one engines, these ships are likely to be scrapped before the duralloy would start to look silly ... but old habits die hard, I guess.
2426:
Another Silicoid colony ship showed up at Romulas today, unescorted. It took out three more of my Runaways before it burned under their fire. At this rate, my fighters will never get there in time! People are still talking about the Klackon courtesy call, where they thanked us for trading with them and talked about relaxing tensions, but I don't see the point of that, personally. What good did diplomacy ever do for our fleet?
2427:
So ... Grok "Face-Masher" Horgis (607 Knockdowns, 73 Assists, just 3 Confirmed Kills, but 43 Crippling Blows) paid me a visit on behalf of the rest of our RBO-9, to present me with "a little something we picked up from Ssithra."
I'm kind of speechless. The Inertial Stabilizer we taught them to use is in theory a more advanced and nearly-unique technology, but we got plans for Nuclear Engines in exchange: An actual engine, that actually moves ships above half-thawed molasses speeds! It's almost too good to be true!
All right; time to get down to some serious designing. We'll get a warp-2 radiated colony ship started, obviously ... and get Klystron producing Cub 2.0 fighters immediately!
First thing I do when I'm designing a new starship is to plan its engines in. I always use the state of the art, except in the most extreme case of ultra-specialized single-mission emergencies for which they don't fit and aren't needed. In theory, that can sometimes happen, but it's about as common as a blue-necked unicorn, so as a rule, engines go on first. Next up is the neutron pellet gun. This is an NPG fighter, so it has no reason for existence without one. We could consider downgrading to a laser if it were a special-purpose design meant just for fighting in a nebula, but with the only star in the galaxy's lone nebula empty of planets, there's no reason to even consider it.
There's only room for one weapon on this fighter no matter what we do, and it has no need for reserve tanks, so that brings us to the Eternal Fighter Question: Speed vs. Accuracy. The more maneuverable a fighter is, the more easily it can dodge enemy weapons, up to a point - but the better its battle computer, the better it can hit things with its weapons, which is the entire point. All other things being equal, I'd take a superior battle computer over better maneuverability ... but all other things are rarely equal. If it were just a question of Mark 2 computer at Maneuver Class 2 or a Mark 1 at Manuever Class 3, the advanced computer would be the better option ... but that's not the question here. With a stabilizer in place, we can instead go to Maneuver Class 4, which not only improves the ship's chance to evade, it adds more to the ship's initiative, and allows it to close with its target half again as quickly as at maneuver 2 or 3. This is useful for dodging missiles, and critical for defending colonies against bombers or spore ships, and for controlling the course of the battle: With high enough initiative and maneuverability, our pilots can choose which ships they fight when, and at what range, relying on reactive fire when necessary. If we can someday push them up to class six, our fighters can even swing "cutting out" missions, striking locally-overmatched alien vessels before they can even retreat! Tactical combat speed is a big part of the reason I love maneuverability. It's almost as much fun as strategic speed!
So, here's our new Cub 2.0: A NPG fighter with nuclear engines, inertial stabilizer, and a mark-1 computer, and maximum maneuverability. What's the mission of this fighter? To defeat Silicoid colony ships and gatling-laser escorts? No. For that, I'd have considered a shield and even duralloy armor. When I consider a starship's mission, I mean its mission in existence, not just the emergency for which it's originally built. Sometimes a desperate need or the luxury of enormous production might allow the design of a special-purpose ship, but much more often, a long-term mission has to be considered. These fighters are meant to be mobile defenders, holding uncolonized worlds and immature colonies against incoming enemy starships until they're superceded by a superior fleet. I assume the Silicoids have other designs flying around with heavy weapons or NPGs, and they're known to have Death Spore technology. These ships are meant to hit the enemy as soon as possible, as hard as possible, and let the chips fall where they may.
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Next: The Chips Fall
