I regret to inform you that, on October 22nd, 1973, the Geological Survey Vessel Nicholas Baudin was destroyed by missile fire from an unknown adversary in the V1054 Ophiuchi system. Unfortunately, onboard sensors provided no information on the assailant, and the missiles were not detected before impact. Some of the crew survived, but their capsule has only 14 days of life support, and none of our vessels are in a position to assist, even if they could be risked.
V1054 Ophiuchi is only six jumps from Sol, but several of those lack jump gates. Still, this should give impetus to an upgrade of our naval forces. We will be completing development of an improved nuclear pulse technology in four months, giving 25% more power in a given weight, and it will likely be very useful for new ships to counter this threat. Our own designers have a few sketches for your apprasial, taking advantage not only of the new engines, but also of improved sensor technologies developed since 1960. More radical designs can also be entertained, if any of you would like to suggest them.
Database can be found here.
Toulouse Mk II class Destroyer Escort (P) 8,000 tons 287 Crew 900 BP TCS 160 TH 500 EM 0
3125 km/s Armour 2-35 Shields 0-0 HTK 60 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 4 PPV 57
Maint Life 2.53 Years MSP 281 AFR 128% IFR 1.8% 1YR 61 5YR 918 Max Repair 125.00 MSP
Capitaine de frégate Control Rating 2 BRG AUX
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
Improved Nuclear Pulse Engine EP250.00 (2) Power 500.0 Fuel Use 50.60% Signature 250.00 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 419,000 Litres Range 18.6 billion km (69 days at full power)
10cm Railgun V10/C3 (19x4) Range 10,000km TS: 3,125 km/s Power 3-3 RM 10,000 km ROF 5
Beam Fire Control R48-TS6000 (2) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 6,000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Improved Pebble Bed Reactor R12 (5) Total Power Output 61 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor AS11-R1 (1) GPS 48 Range 11.1m km MCR 995k km Resolution 1
Saphir Mk II class Scout (P) 3,000 tons 71 Crew 297.9 BP TCS 60 TH 250 EM 0
4166 km/s JR 1-50 Armour 1-18 Shields 0-0 HTK 19 Sensors 12/16/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
Maint Life 2.78 Years MSP 222 AFR 72% IFR 1.0% 1YR 42 5YR 625 Max Repair 125.00 MSP
Capitaine de frégate Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Morale Check Required
J3000(1-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 3000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 1
Improved Nuclear Pulse Engine EP250.00 (1) Power 250.0 Fuel Use 50.60% Signature 250.00 Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 449,000 Litres Range 53.2 billion km (147 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor AS36-R100 (1) GPS 2400 Range 36.3m km Resolution 100
EM Sensor EM2-16 (1) Sensitivity 16 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 31.6m km
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 27.4m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The biggest incident of 1974 was the discovery of a second hostile power, who destroyed the survey ship Jacques Cartier. As before, we were unable to retrive the crew. However, telemetry showed she was destroyed by energy weapons, and given that she was in orbit of a planet, they might well have been ground based, reducing the threat substantially. We have finished three Saphir IIs, and dispatched one to each system. The first should arrive in a few days. Three more Saphir IIs are under construction, wrapping up in April and May. We don't have any plans for immediate follow-ons to those, although that could change based on the information our scouts bring back.
1975 database can be found here.
Comments
That's one reason I'm always a fan of 5 ton pd sensors on survey ships. doesn't help the crew much, but it's lovely to know what killed them.
That railgun escort should be pretty handy. Any way to get a slightly higher range on the bfc for better FDF acc?
I don't think a 5-ton sensor would have helped. We started with baseline sensor tech, so I'm not sure anything below 10 tons would have seen anything, and the range on a strength 1 sensor is very low.
I can obviously raise the range on the FC, but those are x1 range x2 speed already, and if I raise the range more, they're going to get expensive.
Whoops, my rules of thumb are kinda messed up for ships under 10k; going to 1.5x range would only add 5.4 extra hits at base acc (+~9%) On bigger ships the bonus is worthwhile until past 90kkms, but less so here.
And of course I forgot you like redundancy, vs my usual "if missiles are leaking, we're dead anyway"
V1054 Ophiuchi is a bit out of our reach for the moment, so we're going to need to build jumpgates and either more supply ships or longer-ranged warships to take the fight to the enemy. But the Saphir Mk II looks pretty good for taking a quick peek at what we're up against. It looks like the hostiles opened fire at a range of 15-25 million km, so the A36-R100 sensor should be able to spot them before they can fire, and we can hope that 4,166 km/s will be enough to keep out of their range.
Let's get started on stabilizing the jump points from Luhman 16 to HH Andromedae and Alpha Centauri
Short term, if we're worried about them (or anyone else) breaking out into our space, here's a jumpgate monitor designed around a cheap commercial engine to sit on a jump point for 2-3 years and spam anything that comes through with short-range missiles. 750 build points for the ship and a full load of missiles.
Montcalm class Monitor (P) 5,000 tons 22 Crew 392.5 BP TCS 100 TH 100 EM 0 1000 km/s Armour 3-26 Shields 0-0 HTK 11 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 57.6 Maint Life 3.61 Years MSP 129 AFR 200% IFR 2.8% 1YR 15 5YR 229 Max Repair 25 MSP Magazine 384
Capitaine de frégate Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months Morale Check Required
Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine EP100.0 Mk II (1) Power 100 Fuel Use 10.06% Signature 100 Explosion 5% Fuel Capacity 166,000 Litres Range 59.4 billion km (687 days at full power)
Size 2 Box Launcher (192) Missile Size: 2.0 Hangar Reload 70 minutes MF Reload 11 hours Missile Fire Control FC2-R1 (4) Range 2.5m km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor AS1-R1 (1) GPS 1 Range 1.3m km MCR 113.5k km Resolution 1 Thermal Sensor TH0.1-0.5 (1) Sensitivity 0.5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 5.6m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Cacafonix Short-Range Missile Missile Size: 2.00 MSP (5.000 Tons) Warhead: 4 Radiation Damage: 4 Manoeuvre Rating: 18 Speed: 9,600 km/s Fuel: 125 Flight Time: 3 minutes Range: 1.93m km Cost Per Missile: 1.816 Development Cost: 182 Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 172.8% 3k km/s 57.6% 5k km/s 34.6% 10k km/s 17.3%
Per discussion in the meetup, I've got the various new systems for the Saphir II queued up for research, so it should be ready to build as soon as the new engines are available, probably mid-year. Other ships can follow at lower priority, although I do think that more tankers should be fairly high on that list.
That's a lovely SRM, very practical for this engine tech.
Some general purpose tugs would be handy for towing both jump point forts and forward fueling stations.
(a 100ml gas balloon with a refueling system pulled by a small tug is the most efficient way I've discovered to make a tanker. And it's a factory-buildable station, so no shipyard tooling)
We have a tug, and I can churn out a few more before we retool for other tasks.
Also, WRT jump point defense, we could consider using mines. Slap a sensor (EM or Thermal) on a missile like that, bundle about four up with another sensor to make something size 10 or so, and then when danger threatens we have a minelayer drop a bunch of them on the jump point. If we go for EM sensors, I think we can even avoid shooting at civilian/non-hostile craft, as the IFF isn't great. Plus, the minelayer can also be used to lay surveillance buoys, which are cheaper than keeping a ship on station.
1975 database is now up. We lost another geosurvey ship in NN 3659. We think it may have been a different race from last time, as this one was to energy weapons.