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Post by Zholud on Dec 24, 2004 5:58:57 GMT -5
so again we come to the question of warp drives, i'm sure anargo cold have the capacity to be rolling out warships one a day, much like america was during the second world war. Warships are not hot pies… I cannot pick up all numbers at the moment but number of capital ships created by the US was not that high. And when I say ship I mean full-made, finished ship, with drive and chamber and even drinks in the bar they are created in quantities just enough to replace ones destroyed/lost in warp within the Segmentum. Anargo does not have much trouble at the moment, but it supplies Imperial Navy and private contractors (merchant class only).
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Post by Sojourner on Dec 24, 2004 6:28:14 GMT -5
On the contrary, at their height, Germany were pumping out 26 operational U-boats per week. Imperial ships are a fair bit larger and more complex to be fair, but the resources of an entire world shouldn't be too troubled by churning out escorts at a fair rate. A lot of these do remain as system ships, it seems.
Is it plausible that a world would carry on pumping out ships regardless for its own defence and leaving warp drive fitting until a later time, possibly never? Can the standard patterns function happily without one?
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Post by Kage2020 on Dec 27, 2004 19:28:29 GMT -5
I cannot think of any real reason that a ship without a warp drive installed would not be able to function. Indeed, depending on how modular the structure is one could imagine the temporary installation of 'weapons' or 'shields' to up the power of the ship in question. Indeed, 'system defence boats' of this type would be more powerful than a similar ship equipped with a warp drive (extra space and energy dedicated to weapon systems)...
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Post by Sojourner on Dec 28, 2004 11:46:38 GMT -5
Depends how large and power-hungry the warp drive is. The idea that it probably consumes a lot of power is a given, but what about size? There's nothing to suggest that it couldn't fit into a suitcase.
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Post by Kage2020 on Dec 31, 2004 17:08:33 GMT -5
This is a separate discussion, but even before I began to model ships in GURPS Vehicles I always viewed the 'warp drive' as varying as a function of the size of the ship itself. The bigger the ship, the bigger the warp drive. I just find the idea of a 'suit-case' sized warp drive driving a 5km-long ship to be somewhat... inappropriate. Might as well have the suitcase opening up to have a cup of tea in it with some wires sticking out of it... <sigh>
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Post by Sojourner on Jan 1, 2005 8:33:31 GMT -5
Well yes, in terms of imagery it is, but it's really just a widget isn't it? As we have no theories whatsoever on how they work, a piece of paper with 'warp drive' written on it could proxy. It's really a matter of your interpretation and what you think of as 'cool', essentially.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jan 1, 2005 12:38:39 GMT -5
Well, in that case: Thus Sayeth the Law. Warp drives are big b*ggers, the size proportionate to the size of the ship that is being propelled into the warp. It requires huge amounts of energy, mostly in the form of a 'quick burst' to break open the barriers (requiring the use of rechargeable powerbanks) and then a constant 'draw' from powerplants while in the warp to power the Geller Fields, which are used both for 'protection' and 'propulsion'... There you have it. I'll even post the GURPS statistics if you want! And this is about as far OffT as we can get!
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Post by CELS on Jan 1, 2005 12:48:15 GMT -5
LoL!
So where are we on tithes as consumable goods vs tithes as wheat, iron ore and feathers? Personally, I don't have enough knowledge of economy to say which is more profittable, but the imagery seems to suggest the latter. Mining worlds and agriworlds don't actually produce finished products like cars and chocolate pies. Instead, they tithe iron ore and wheat, which is then taken to another world to be processed into cars and pies, which could be transported to another world where the cars and pies are needed. Or, the cars and pies stay on the second world.
I think we figured out that a standard sector will have 700 Imperial non-military transport starships, so this shouldn't be a problem.
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Post by Sojourner on Jan 1, 2005 14:44:50 GMT -5
If you're transporting in bulk, you might as well transport the raw materials to where they're needed. Going larger with shipping doesn't seem to be a problem for the Imperium, so you do have the space to transport bulk goods.
This is not to say that tithing of finished goods or indeed intermediates doesn't occur; indeed it might well be more effective for an agriworld to ship flour rather than the grain required to produce it, but I doubt they'd bake bread in situ and then ship that as it's even more bulky per unit than the flour required to produce it, and will likely spoil on the journey. Add to that the fact that the destination planet may have special dietary needs for example, and there's a good case against shipping finished products.
The same argument applies for ore vs. block steel vs. machinery. It might well be that mining worlds don't ship unprocessed ore unless the local environment is unsuitable for smelting facilities. They're more likely to process the ore into raw metal then ship that - requiring a pretty hefty bulk transporter, no doubt.
It's a case of specialisation. There's a cutoff area where the demands of the economy become too specific to warrant a uniform production base being remote from the consumer. In English, there's only so much pre-processing you can do before sending off to the client planet because you don't have the level of knowledge they have in order to tailor your production to giving them what they want.
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