Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kashyyk]

Apparently our Skiffs are quite literally sheets of metal our boarders cling on to. Let's solve that.

An airtight box of hull plating, with an engine at the back and a smaller airtight box full of nav controls at the front. Because of the horizontal layout, the shuttle is fitted with a dozen spartan seats each equipped with a safety harness to keep the occupant in one place. The pilot cabin has a pair of such seats facing a bullet-proof windscreen. Performance wise it should be about the same as a Skiff, but having Hull in all directions as well as seats should ensure the boarders make it to the target and back again.

Also, I'm wondering how difficult a specialist would be.

Some would call this the most exciting job in every team, the Pointman takes the lead when moving through a hostile ship. Armed with a high powered Guassbine, and wearing an uparmoured (with spare kevlar and hull plate scraps) void suit, they're the pride of our new CQB course (really just a paintball free for all in the tight confines of a grounded ship), and thus will take anything waiting to surprise a team of boarders in stride.

[ConscriptFive]

Apparently our Skiffs are quite literally sheets of metal our boarders cling on to. Let's solve that.

Holy crap, good catch.  Here's another solution to that...

Revision: Skiff Roll Cage and Dummy HMG

As cool as surfing a skiff is, sure be nice if everyone had their hands free for other tasks, (namely shooting at things.)  A crude roll cage of bent pipe bolted onto the skiff should provide enough basic structure to keep everything in place.  Throw in extra D-Rings and ratchet straps too, the roll cage tubing provides plenty on tie-down points to secure pirates, gear, and loot.

Of course, porcupining CQB small arms isn't the most effective tactic in ship-to-ship warfare.  Still pretty intimidating against a civvie crew though.  You want to make more seasoned voidfarers slow their roll, you're going to need a .50 cal HMG.  The barrels on those things are long enough you can literally see them from a mile away, and they know the caliber is large enough to do some damage.

...Which would be great if we could keep a MG in stock for longer than a week before somebody overheats it.  (FIVE ROUND BURST MAX!  SERIOUSLY!  THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!)  Hey, but our prey don't know that all the capacitors on the MG are blown out after Knud full-auto'd a 200-round belt trying a draw a giant dick on a glacier.  (Not gonna lie, it was kinda impressive.  I took pics.)  So yeah, we'll install one of our many wrecked .50 machine guns on a pintle.  It'll just be for show now, but a pirate can dream, eh?

[Kashyyk]

Here's a few more ideas I had.

We have the materials necessary now, so we don't need to keep living like squatters in our own ships. Our Patchwork Freighters are now air-tight across the entire ship, and the disparate Hull pieces have been cleaned up a notch, so they instead look like a well-used and refurbished ship instead of jury-rigged frack.

If there's time, we'll also fix up a few more of the systems, so the critical components have a degree of redundancy, and the merely "very useful" ones are now operational. That includes a small ration of actual hot water for your daily ablutions, ladies and gentlemen, so I refuse to accept any more excuses.

The current system is just one big HVAC unit. The easiest way to fix this is by splitting it up into multiple independent loops that feed heat into a central double-piped water-coolant loop that leads to the primary thermal exhaust. This way each section of the ship can be shut off separately, and we can also close off portions of the Central loop and reroute between the exhaust and the heat sink as necessary.

Different businesses ply different markets. Both geographically and economically. By doing some basic space-googling, we can determine if a given transport is operated by a small mining concern or a multistellar nutri-slurry Corp. This should give us a very basic idea of what they're carrying and how much effort they'll put into keeping hold of it.

[Man of Paper]

Voidsuit Field Patch is Trivial. Just needs a little r&d to make sure the duct tape materials are up to the job.

Patchwork Freighter Crew Expansion and Sickbay is Very Easy. A couple small improvements and reassignments is no big issue.

Boarding Shuttles is Hard largely due to the shift of cockpit, honestly.

Pointman is at the upper end of Hard, what with the new weapon and "training" involved.

Skiff Roll Cage and Dummy HMG is also at the upper end of Hard entirely due to the .50. It'd probably see at least Easy without it.

Basic Freighters come up around Very Easy. There's more overall structural change with Basic than the Crew Expansion and there's some system fixing up in this one, but it doesn't actually install any new significant rooms so it doesn't shift the difficulty.

Slow Cooking Heat Management is Easy. The system rework isn't insignificant but it's still only a singular system.

Basic Market Analysis is Trivial. Literacy isn't uncommon among piratey types anymore, and there's plenty of resources out there to do some basic market analysis. All you need to do is find someone who won't get bored into "early retirement".

[Kashyyk]

Cool! Let's see if I've got these at about normal.

An airtight box of hull plating, with another, smaller airtight box at the back to house the engine and a load of nav equipment. Because of the horizontal layout, the shuttle is fitted with a dozen spartan seats each equipped with a safety harness to keep the occupant in one place. The engine cabin has a pair of such seats facing a wall of monitors hooked up to some cameras so that the pilot can see where he's going. Performance wise it should be about the same as a Skiff, but having Hull in all directions as well as seats should ensure the boarders make it to the target and back again.

The size of a small satchel bag, this PEVSK is stuffed full of tools and supplies to survive the unwanted presence of a foreign object in your innards. In Space. The standard First Aid kit items are here, including dressings, tourniquet, antiseptic spray, and fentanyl pain relief, both in lollipop and slap patch form. In addition is a roll of duct tape Suit Patch Fabric (for small holes), a larger sheet of suit fabric (for larger holes) and an umbilical to share your air supply with a friend.

We have the materials necessary now, so we don't need to keep living like squatters in our own ships. Our Patchwork Freighters are now air-tight across the entire ship (except for the cargo bays), and the disparate Hull pieces have been cleaned up and repainted to look cohesive, so they look like a merely "experienced" ship instead of jury-rigged frack.

Having atmo throughout the ship now means we can refit some of those unused sections as additional crew quarters and even have a basic medbay so when someone inevitably gets shot were not left without a critical skill.

Speaking of critical, all critical components also have redundancies now, and a bunch of "nice to have" services have been restored.

Larry knows a guy, who knows a guy that owns a space truck this crate fell out the back of. Its full of spare parts and mods for weapons that are similar enough to our Submachine guass to be viable candidates. High yield capacitors, laser scopes, extended magazines, you name it, it's in here somewhere. (It's a big crate okay) The only thing missing is a comprehensive manual on what's best to use, or a sense of cohesion in a boarding party. Having a bunch of flashy firearms aimed at you still gets the point across though

[NUKE9.13]

Boarding Skiff Mk2:
Like a Boarding Skiff, but better.

Okay fine. It has a frame with (relatively thin) armour plating around it, offering a modicum of protection to the boarding party (and the engine). The plating has slots, allowing for potshots to be taken at rival skiffs or fragile external systems. The pilot has a bunch of cameras hooked up to screens to provide reasonable situational awareness despite the armour obstructing the view. The exterior has attachment points for storage crates, and several space-bungee cords for more awkwardly shaped loot (this is to reduce the number of trips needed when transferring cargo). There is also proper seating within, and a basic suit-patching kit.

Decent Freighters: (1) NUKE9.13
Boarding Skiff Mk2: (1) NUKE9.13

[Kashyyk]

Revisions:
Decent Freighters: (2) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk
Boarding Skiff Mk2: (2) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk

---
Backstory:
Fuel: ()
Money: (1) Kashyyk
Suits: ()

[NUKE9.13]

Oh, right, I forgot about the other thing. Obviously money.

Revisions:
Decent Freighters: (2) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk
Boarding Skiff Mk2: (2) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk

---
Backstory:
Fuel: ()
Money: (2) Kashyyk, NUKE9.13
Suits: ()

[Doomblade187]

Revisions:
Decent Freighters: (3) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk, Doomblade
Boarding Skiff Mk2: (3) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk, Doomblade

---
Backstory:
Fuel: ()
Money: (3) Kashyyk, NUKE9.13
Suits: ()

[Man of Paper]

Boarding Shuttles (B) is Normal. That's a pretty solid average upgrade at your current capabilities.

The PEVSK is Theoretical. This is a shift from "revising the voidsuit to be slightly more reliable" to "medic" with no real source for any of the "medic" part of the revision. Now, if you were to revise something like that onto a specific unit to give them a medic it would probably be a Normal endeavor. Infantry-scale equipment is heavily impacted by how widespread it is intended to be. This can be offset, as in real life, with money!

Decent Freighters is Easy, since while there's a nice little bit of overhaul going on, a little expansion of crew quarters and the addition of a bootleg medbay does pair well with increasing pressurized areas of the ship. It might get a little cramped, but that'd largely be up to the roll. Keeping the cargo bay unpressurized also helps a lot in simplifying the work being done.

Aftermarket Gun Mods is invalid for a revision. It's too deep of a bag of tricks you could pull out of to be anything other than a design.

Boarding Skiff Mk.2 is Normal. It feels like it's close to the Hard line for some reason, but really bungee cords and holes in the walls aren't, like, actually difficult things at all.

[ConscriptFive]

Looks like we bracketed the difficulty right on these two.

Revisions:
Decent Freighters: (4) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk, Doomblade, ConscriptFive
Boarding Skiff Mk2: (4) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk, Doomblade, ConscriptFive

---
Backstory:
Fuel: ()
Money: (4) Kashyyk, NUKE9.13, Doomblade, ConscriptFive
Suits: ()

[Happerry]

Revisions:
Decent Freighters: (5) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk, Doomblade, ConscriptFive, Happerry
Boarding Skiff Mk2: (5) NUKE9.13, Kashyyk, Doomblade, ConscriptFive, Happerry

---
Backstory:
Fuel: ()
Money: (5) Kashyyk, NUKE9.13, Doomblade, ConscriptFive, Happerry
Suits: ()