Print

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

[Kashyyk]

Three Strikes for Naturalist Movement

Fourteen people have been charged with assault and other offences after a brawl between members of the Rebuild Alliance and attendees of Point Choi's Naturalist Retreat last tenday.

Bryce Richards - the chairman of Point Choi's Naturalist group - was among them. Mr Richards informed the IS court that they had been within their right to defend themselves after the RA "forced themselves into a private gathering and started insulting and threatening [his] guests."

This is the latest in a string of such incidents at Naturalist Movement events, each one consisting of discussion, advice and presentations on how to follow the "Naturalist Agenda", such as shunning auto-wombs, home-schooling and limited offspring.

Internal Security arrived at the scene following several automated reports of aggressive behaviour and language. According to footage, six members of the RA entered the Retreat where they were quickly confronted by Mr Richards. After a short exchange of words, Mr Richards then struck one of them. The situation quickly devolved into a brawl, which was only resolved after twenty Internal Security enforcers were deployed.

Since the controversial Parental Freedom act was ratified, Naturalist retreats have sprung up across Gaia. Many economists even claim that Generation C are "killing the auto-womb industry", preferring to invest their time in personal childbirth and growth, rather than making use of the well equipped and highly trained Life Centres.

The six RA members received a combined sentence of 2,000 hours community service for assault and destruction of property, whilst the eight Naturalists received a combined sentence of 3,500 hours.

[andrea]

The depths we sink to for survival - fighting a war without men.


Somewhere in the Telarana upper atmosphere, Captain Heng sits in her transport, examining reports from the frontlines.

'Reports like this aren't meant to have a column showing the size of regiments and losses as a percentage of the population' she thought. The numbers were indeed worrying. Emperor augustus of Earth that was had more soldiers than the Gaian entire adult population and he didn't have to fight an interstellar war with them. Casualties so far were modest, with the army only engaged in Oscar in small numbers, but the predictions for deployment and casualties as war ramps up were grim. It wouldn't take long to take a toll on the Gaian industrial and childbearing capabilities, with the risk of a societal collapse even before Alien soldiers set foot on Gaia. A fact of which Jennifer Heng was all too aware of.

"I hope you delivered on your promises, doctor, or we are doomed" she muttered to herself before tossing the reports in the bore disposal system.
"Computer, ETA?"

"We are already entering the lower atmosphere. Arrival on Deucalion base in 5 minutes"


As the transport approaches the ground a patch of jungle opens up, revealing an underground landing pad. Near it, nothing more than vines as far as the eye can see; clearly, a deceptive view, as this was home to a secret research base answering directly, and only, to the captain herself. She often wondered how many such facilities existed, governament backed or independent.
As the vehicle landed and unloaded, the chief researcher Dr. Daniel McAdams greeted the captain himself, accompanied by 2 of his robotic assistants.

"Welcome, captain! I am eager to show you the great progress we have made in the year and half since you, ah, convinced me to move here and start this project. Truly remarkable, and let me thank you again for all the equipment provided. How is the outside anyway? who won the Perch race?"

"No need to sugar coat it, doctor McAdams. You were headed to life long community services and a ban to all scientific  activities because of your illegal experiments when I recruited you. And that is still what will happen if you don't deliver. Still, your latest messages said that you finally started to get the first specimen ready"

"Yes, yes. Well, full grown at least, but they are responding well. The project is ready to enter mass production. Biological parameters nominal, excellent senses and reflexes, we even surpassed expectations on base strength and... Sorry, you are military, you probably don't... Here, enter and see Adam, our first."

They enter a small room full of medical monitoring equipment, a bed and a single drawer for clothes. On one side a large window, everything painted in sterile white and undecorated. Running on a threadmill with ECG equipment attached is a man, 2 meters tall and extremely muscular, he stopped as soon as the door opened and jumped down to face the captain.

"Adam, this is Captain Jennifer Heng, your commanding officer"

"At your orders, ma'am" the man said, saluting the captain.

Captain Heng examined the speciman. Almost unnaturally immobile in his salute, he was certainly imposing. 120 kg at least she estimated, but firm to the touch without trace of undue fat. No hair, that she could see at least. Large bones for sure. And no navel.
"At rest soldier. Doctor, how old is it?"

"Just barely more than 3 months. As you can see, the accelerated training works. What this teaches us regarding how much of growth comes from experience and how much from physical changes to the brain, this is amazing. We can rewrite-" started the doctor, before being interrupted

"Yes, yes. I can see that it worked well. He understands and obeys commands and his physical capabilities are certainly... amazing. How long before it is ready to enter service?"

"Well, as much time as it takes to get through boot camp. He is heavily enhanced also in terms of learning and adapting, so we expect him to be ready for active combat duty in one year, roughly. If, of course, you can take care of your side of things"

"Gaia is a fractured planet. It means it is hard to pull it together toward a single goal, but it is also easy to slip things through the cracks. For once, our weakness will work for us. Some fake IDs here and there, I have people inside who won't question orders. And even the death reports can be redacted to leave no traces. If all goes well, it will take years for anyone to notice that many of the deployed soldiers aren't meant to exist.... and by then, who will want to protest for the right to get sent to the meat grinder?
How soon can you produce significant numbers of them?"

"We have started already. Growing takes time, but in a couple of years you will have your regiments captain. Take a look at the window"

Beyond the window, she could see the growth chambers. Hundreds, thousands of incubators filling it, tended by machines, each of them containing humans at different stages of growth, emrbyo to nearly fully grown. Captain Heng watched satisfied.

"Excellent. It seems that Gaia will, in the end, have an army".

[Tyrant Leviathan]

Black market tech idea.

Scientific Sorcery:

Like Clark’s third law. If science and magic are the same thing, why not label it so? Technology has gotten to the point we can send FTL fleets by punching space time in the face with the bore holes.

So what is so exotic about things, that “could” happen if timed right and right conditions?

That is the idea behind Scientific Sorcery. With free roaming tiny nano machines that scan the area and do all calculations. They make, the unexpect into a reality. The process is shockingly simple. Thanks in part to a missing piece newly acquired by some illegal trade deals. It takes, zero point energy to make it real.

For Energy and mass just do not need volume, but motion to do anything. Zero Point energy, is the fundamental force of particle energy and mass movement to be triggered. As the Nano machines juices in this stuff and blending matter and energy together. It can lead to many things.

Like a ionized Stellar storm “cloud” to dry ships and drain their energy and shields. Or conjure solid rocks pour of Stellar dust as a brief force field or battering ram. Hell with enough time to practice, we could end up tossing tiny stars at the bugs.

It could be useful in ground zone combat as well. Given flesh is matter, which can be pieces together or taken away.

 The uses are nigh Infinity, so why focus on the finite? ( my black market out there Science deal.)

Edit: The Zero Point energy engines were funded in secret, batteries discovered on a ancient wreck. The Nano machines came with it.

[Powder Miner]

The following design, the normal design of the two I am going to propose, seeks to create a spinal-large-mount destroyer, but specialized for a different purpose than Nemonole/Jilladilla's Journey proposal that he placed in the Discord. The Anvil Destroyer is designed to fulfill its name-sake by putting the enemy cruisers into a hammer and anvil situation. With the mechanics that we've evidently had described for bore-chases. As ebbor described it in our Discord:

Basically, each ship emanates bore disruption. This is equal in both ways. (for now)
A bore's terminus can only be detected after a significant part of the bore is already completed
In order to chase a ship that's boring away, you need multiple vessels to surround it. The vessels closest to the enemy ship can then slow their boring process down sufficient long so that a further vessel can bore in towards the terminus.
By iterating that process, you can eventually get close enough

I want the Anvil to be a ship very well-suited to this task, able to get up in a Wrath's face and survive, and additionally with the WMG able to make fleeing from our fighters and Epees a less attractive proposition for the Wraths, lest they move up to the thing planning to shoot em.
"Anvil" Heavy-Armament Destroyer
A destroyer designed from the very ground up to support the kind of weapon usually mounted by cruisers, the "Anvil" Heavy Armament Destroyer is designed to get up in the face of the Wrath Cruiser and help stop it from pulling the fleeing act performed at the Second Battle of Oscar. It has a peculiar shape, somewhat like an extreme lens with a semisphere nestled in it -- the ship has a singular, curved surface which extends from the front to the sides of the ship, with sections of armored hull actually extending slightly beyond the rest of the structure of the ship, supported by multiple structural beams, in order to cover a couple more degrees of angle of enemy fire.

This inner semisphere is what contains most of the ship's components. It is built centrally around a large weapon mount, contains a few smaller mounts (two of which are medium, three of which are integrated small shatterguns), and a few integrated components for its motion -- a NavBore for aiding whatever bore drive is placed in it, 3 Gravity Drives, and five integrated PEBs, as well as computing equipment that allows for the Anvil to have a skeleton crew (large than the Foray's, much smaller than the Expedition's) and to use the same Last Stand protocol as does the Expedition. On the back of this core part of the ship, where the outer "lens" of armor does not cover, as well as the insides of the parts of the "lens" that extend past it, is laminate armor just a little thicker than a Foray's.

The outer surface of the "lens" of the ship is entirely covered in laminate armor that is much thicker than that of the Foray, with the weapon mounts themselves set just behind/within this surface, so that pieces of the thickly-armored surface can be closed over the firing ports to protect them.

Component List:
Spinal Large Mount
2 Medium Mounts
3 Integrated Small Shatterguns
(we will want to manually put on either a bore drive or an ecobore drive, it may actually best to integrate neither)
1 Integrated BoreNav 1.1
3 Integrated Gravity Drives
(ideally enough capacity for a couple of defensive options)
5x Integrated PEB
As for the research project, I'm going for a nod here to Nemonole/Jilladilla's proposal waaay back at the start of the game to take a page from Dwarf Fortress, and also taking a bit of a page from SCP. Now, I understand if people don't appreciate that (though despite the reference this is only inspired by DF's artifacts), but nonetheless:

Objets D'art:

When Gaian scientists first combed through this particular alien race's Watcher-offered offerings, even the kinds of scientists that you find in the Progress Sector had to pause and goggle for a moment. These objects seemed to make absolutely no sense. One of them had far more structural integrity than anything about its material properties should have suggested, one seemed to occupy simultaneously the space of a marble and of something twelve feet tall and two feet wide, one appeared to provide negative gravity, and one actually had a picture of itself on its surface, which contained a picture of itself, which repeated down to the smallest level we could actually observe.

The data we received with the objects from the Watchers, however, gave us a better idea of how exactly these things work. The alien race that created these objects found a way to create things that plainly broke reality -- if not necessarily in predictable ways. Through a combination of a very specific altered form of perception, a spark of ingenuity, and enough raw willpower and dedication to shift the laws of reality around what is being created, enough force of will that reality gave before the fire and fury with which they followed the perfection of their craft beyond physical bounds, the aliens that made these figured out a way to cause reality to give up and buckle a little when confronted with these objets d'art (as our scientists call them), causing the objects themselves to have anomalous properties that are bizarre and unpredictable but powerful.

Our scientists believe that they can induce the state of altered perception that allows for this will-and-inspiration-based destruction of reality, but they admit that they're not quite sure what the exact results of it will be. Maybe it will allow for occasional construction of components or ships with powerful but unpredictable additional effects, maybe they will allow us to start consistently breaking reality when we make designs through this process, maybe it will let us refine our craft in ways that more subtly alter reality around the things we create when we begin to perfect them, or maybe something else will happen.

[Jilladilla]

As Powder posted their competitor design for the role of 'combat spinal mount destroyer', I think I will post my original proposal; the one inspired by Space Battleship Yamato. Come on now everyone, the Official Media Engineering Program hasn't failed us before now! Let's inspire our engineers to new heights by letting them enjoy extended break sessions watching anime allowing them to take inspiration from the cultural treasures of our past!


Please note, this is a second draft. Chances are that it'll be edited at some point. If you see any issues with it, feel free to point them out, or just outright rip this off to create your own slightly different variant.

Journey-class Battledestroyer
Alright, everyone here who doesn't know what this *really* is has lost all credibility as a respectable Gaian. The only reason we don't call it what it is is to soothe the spirits of Lawyers long deceased.... And to actually get this design approved by the Brass, I guess..

Anyway; on to the ship itself. As any proper Space Battle...Destroyer.. it'll possess 3 turret assemblies fit for Medium scale weaponry, but this isn't the main attraction. No, that rests with the Journey's single Spinal Mount for powerful Large Scale Weaponry, ready to bring down even the largest and most stubborn foes. A set of 4 Small Mounts specialized for Shatterguns fulfills the point defense weaponry needs of its armament, although it also sports a Small Hanger intended more for utility capabilities than offensive purposes.

The Journey itself is, like the Expedition, technically capable of fully autonomous operation, with redundant servers and emergency capacitors to allow it to fight to the very end, heedless of damage. For additional redundancy and troubleshooting purposes though, a small command and maintenance crew is still to be stationed on each ship; although of course this is a significantly smaller crew than what a vessel this size should normally have. Still, most of the ship is not supported by life support, use of space suits is necessary for traversal. The ship also contains a pair of dedicated PEB clusters, each containing two PEBs; as well as a BoreNav and Bore Shield computing cluster. And of course one cannot forget the Gravity drives, of which the Journey has 3 built in. And finally, the Journey itself is protected by a fairly heavy layer of laminate armor as found on the Epee and Foray, just significantly thicker, as well as a thin outer layer of Carbon-Carbon Composite on top of that in order help effectively absorb weaponry that operates primarily via heat such as lasers.

So to recap, the Journey-Class Battledestroyer has:
1 Spinal Large Mount
3 Medium Mounts
4 Small Mounts (with Integrated Small Shatterguns)
1 Small Hanger
4 Integrated PEB generators, arranged in 2 groups of 2
1 BoreNav
1 BoreShield
3 Gravity Drives
Heavy Duty Laminate Armor, as found on the Foray and Epee (thicker than found on the Foray)
Thin layer of Carbon-Carbon Composite armor for anti-laser purposes

I may post my own suggestion for the Event soonish, might not.

[Tyrant Leviathan]

Edit: Screw that. Here is second thing.


Kinetic Matrix Engine: Motion is important in space, as it is how you move. And the very idea of stopping it could make interesting notes. The device is there for the taking and it could led to various things. Kinetic energy weapons, more speed, speed stealing and many tactical advantages.



Resonance Device: Energy is mass broken down and in motion. Vibrations are speed and frequency. Resonance is making different wave energies for different roles. Thanks to the command spite of the Watcher. We have yet to touch the subject of tuning energies from one form to another.


Temporal Alteration Drives: A curious device that is said to alter time. Not time travel or such as that. Rather tampering time as “units” and exploiting these units. In the theory of doing a ton of interesting time switching stuff.

Last one:

Reality Driver:

A material that is Watcher design. Tests with the Artifact result in n brief tampering of reality based on the four fundamental elements of the universe, and to top it off it seems to respond to who is doing the touching in different ways. The possibilities are endless.

[Jilladilla]

So, I said that I was going to do a thing for the event, so here is the thing, as always, feel free to critique it or just outright steal it to make your own slightly different proposal:

Leylines
While browsing through the list technologies and knowledge the Watchers had to offer us, one thing caught our eye: Leylines, the meta-physical conduits of power that course between 'places of significance'. The thought of something so major, so powerful, so significant that has been lying all around us yet has utterly escaped our notice has sent a fervor through our science teams; a handful have already 'joyrided' off to try and discover them on their own!

Sadly, while the mere knowledge of their existence has moved up the timetable for our discovery of Leylines by quite possibly a few orders of magnitude; it'll still likely take many years just to actually find them, let alone complete the preliminary research on them! Forget about exploitation either. The Watchers likely included this only because of our current conflict and constant need for new technology to gain the edge; that we can't afford to spend unthinkable amounts of time and effort just to gain preliminary understanding of a new concept that may or may not yield immediate practical benefits!

Which is why we're seriously considering buying this information to slingshot our understanding of this facet of the universe that we were blind to before now; the possibilities are already churning through the minds of R&D: Power Generation was all too obvious; questioning if they could be used for travel; what esoteric effects does exploiting them have on normal physics?... And sadly, an all too large portion is wondering 'Can we fit a borehole through a Leyline? What would happen if we did?'. Dammit, why are so many of my colleagues bore-obsessed?

[Draignean]

November | Romeo | Kilo | Mike
Boots on the ground have completed their survey work. The greatest strategic sites of the planets in the first colonization wave have been mapped out, and while future colonization will be the work of city and industrial planners, the fragile colony tenders are greenlit to make planetfall.

Size: 5
T: 2240 | 20%
O: 6675 | 6%
M: 6275 | 12%
E: 2540 | 17%
S: 500 | 0%

Size: 3
T: 1100 | 15%
O: 2405 | 11%
M: 3150 | 11%
E: 2770 | 21%
S: 300 | 0%

Size: 6
T: 1565 | 1%
O: 5210 | 2%
M: 8940 | 18%
E: 3732 | 6%
S: 600 | 0%

Size: 1
T: 475 | 18%
O: 945 | 20%
M: 1495 | 1%
E: 700 | 22%
S: 100 |  0%


Juliett
The Liiran creatures display a marked change in behavior this cycle- enacting clear search patterns for GREAT members and displaying greatly increased aggression. Scouts are able to keep ahead of the search parties of laser fleshipedes, vanishing like ghosts as the swarms pour out of every crevice, but it's a near thing sometimes. It's not exactly clear how the creatures are consistently detecting the Gaians enough to come for them, but it's clear that the method is rather unreliable at providing an exact location.

Everyone on the ground would REALLY appreciate a way out right about now.


Tango

Tango continues to bewilder the men and women sent to investigate her. The glasslike 'surface' of the planet seems to display more and more peculiar properties as scientists take various readings. The readings themselves are still uniformly impossible, but more than one Gaian reports seeing shapes moving within the glass - like detached shadows or blurred reflections curiously crouched around whatever sensor the science team chose to embed. Such visions are never exactly the same between observers and playback of mechanical soldiers stationed on watch duty while such events transpired show not the slightest trace of motion.

Long range readings have detected a curious echo along the planet's equatorial region, and the expeditionary troops will likely begin making their way there soon to see whatever can be seen.


Design Phase of Year 4
Resources
Dice: 6
T: 14665+ 3215
O: 56449 + 8460
M: 12563 + 10225
E: 11526 + 6393
S: 533 + 500

Spoiler: Active Projects (click to show/hide)

Testudo: 4/8 [4] | 80T + 10M + 30E | Rushed 0 Times | Nothing Invested

Gaian Technology List
Gaian Empire Planner

Spoiler:  Current Deployments (click to show/hide)

Oscar
Fleets
-Fleet Gaia
2 C&C Expedition  Light overall damage, 10% vessel cost* to fix
1 Galactica Expedition Light overall damage, 10% vessel cost* to fix
1 Bore PD Foray
1 Strike Foray
1 Budget transport
3 Rapid escort
2 Cargomaster
Overall Issues: Missing 382 Hornet Fighters from overall loadout

Ground - 3/10 [We] 7/10
9x GREAT - 3x Bumble Attached - 6x GREAT-ER Attached
----
Sierra

Fleets


Ground - 6/10  [We] 4/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

November
Fleets

Ground - 10/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Juliet

Ground - 2/10
1x GREAT
----

Romeo

Fleets
-Fleet Iris-Hong
2 C&C expedition
1 Galactica
1 Budget transport
2 Rapid escort

-Fleet Nautilus
1 Budget transport

Ground - 10/10
2x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Kilo
Fleets
-Fleet Webway
1 Galactica Expedition

Ground - 10/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Mike
Fleets

-Fleet Loner
1 Budget Transport

Ground - 10/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Tango

Fleets
-Fleet Nautilus
1 Budget transport

Ground - 2/10
3x GREAT - 1x Bumble Attached
----

Gaia

-Fleet Reindeer
1 Galactica -> Crippled Bore Drive, Heavy overall damage, 20% vessel cost* to fix
1 Galactica Expedition
1 Budget transport
Overall Issues: Missing 327 Hornet Fighters from overall loadout | Missing 4 bumble drones from overall loadout.

Ground - 10/10

[Kashyyk]

I'm gonna mention these again. I know we have a billion things to think about, but a non-stock bore drive should be substantially cheaper, both un terms of resources and power. The bore drive and nav computer cost  25% of the Galactica's power by itself, which results in 10% of the production cost.

Combine these with a revision for larger PEBs and we should be able to cut a lot of cost from our Expeditions

Bore Drive 2nd gen. "Eclipse Drive"
The current bore drive is fat, power hungry and required a whole bunch of exotic particles. But it does find a way around  the lightspeed barrier, so at least there's that. We have made vast leaps in bore drive technology since, from PEBs and Death Rays to Gravity Drives and Blink.

The Eclipse Drive is a culmination of this knowledge into a truly next generation technology. Thanks to our tremendous experience we are able to reduce inefficiencies, streamline production and fine tune tolerances, making it smaller, lighter, less energy intensive and more resource efficient than the current model without any loss of effectiveness.

The Eclipse Drive is innately speed 2, and comes in varying sizes, one for each ship class.

Bore Drive 2nd gen. "Skip Drive"
The current bore drive is fat, power hungry and required a whole bunch of exotic particles. But it does find a way around  the lightspeed barrier, so at least there's that. We have made vast leaps in bore drive technology since, from PEBs and Death Rays to Gravity Drives and Blink.

Doubling down on our predictive algorithms and parallel processing, the Skip Drive is optimised for rapid short range bores. By leveraging our extensive bore experience, we can produce a drive that is fantastically efficient at producing short range bores, giving us unprecendented maneuverability in the tactical theater. These short range bores can also be chained together,  allowing the ship to travel interstellar distances in a series of short hops rather than one long bore.

The Skip Drive is innately speed 2, and comes in varying sizes, one for each ship class.

[Tyrant Leviathan]

Skip Drive sounds like a winner to me, the other reminds me of the rpg. The one with transhumsns.

[helmacon]

Hmmmmnm

Watcher design incoming tonight.

[Kashyyk]

Reminiscent of our smallest weapons (used by our GREAT infantry) the Inferno is also a coilgun. However, it is by no means small. Designed to fit into a Large mount, the Inferno launches huge projectiles at very high velocity.

These projectiles are predominantly transplutonic, with a sturdy, ionised metallic casing to ensure it is suitable magnetic. To increase penetration power even in cases where a kinetic impact is not enough, the projectile is also heated to 1000'C. Combining this thermal energy with the nuclear radiation inherent in transplutonics should ensure that even a non-penetrating hit should pose a severe threat to delicate equipment and crew as energy is radiated into the ship. This weapon is expected to carry a high power cost, due to the heating of the projectile and the momentum that it must transfer.

Whislt this weapon does not use nor require bores and synthetics, it is fully designed to make use of bore-assisted targeting if another module can provide it.

[TheFantasticMsFox]

Plasma Inductor Cannon "Solus"
A large magnetic accelerator barrel connected to a magnetically isolated chamber where a slightly larger than a hornet brick of armor, thermal insulation and a mid sized nuclear warhead is enclosed. Inside this weapon brick are a series of magnetic and gravity field emitters, geared towards the containment and conservation of plasma. This brick is quantum locked in the center of the chamber.

Studded around the chamber are a series of plasma generators drawing energy from a built in PEB to supply the massive power draw. When activated, the generators begin ting great quantities of nuclear plasma which is formed around the main weapon brick. Compassed via gravity and magnetic fields of the brick as well as the chamber itself, its growing payload of plasma is held in place until the radius of the high energy orb is almost that of the magnetic barrel. At this point, the payload is accelerated out of the chamber and down the barrel of the weapon. After leaving the barrel, the weaponbrick is able to guide itself through use of gravity field emitters, though somewhat slowly due to the need to keep the plasma coherent.

The end result is a short range but extremely energy dense plasma bomb that will be able to burn through armor and then detonate, causing greater damage after the plasma has dissipated.

[Happerry]

Cascade Bore
A proposed second generation Bore Drive inspired by the Gravity Drive, or to be precise a certain fail-state condition of the Gravity Drive. When the Gravity Drive pushes too hard, it stops making gravity and starts making bores as all the microbores merge and melt together and then melt a hole in reality. But relevantly, what this means is that that a collection of small bores can be fused, or at least cascade into, a bigger bore. Smaller bores are easier to make then larger bores, so the application this has is obvious. Taking all this into account, the Cascade Bore drive combined quantum computing with a bank of micro-bore generators to calculate where and what small bores have to be created to metastasis into a larger bore that leads where we want it to lead. Thus we can get to places with only the expenditures of small bores instead of big bores, and if the calculations are hard... well, that's what the quantum computers are for.
(TLDR : A bore drive that works faster by smashing smaller boreholes into each other to make a bigger borehole so it only has to make the smaller boreholes instead of spending the time on making a bigger borehole.)

If we're reposting drives again even if they were last posted on the last page, here's my repost.

[Jilladilla]

Are we seriously doing this?... Huff. Alright, here's my Mk 2 Bore Drive proposal....

Cluster Bore Drive
Our work on our Gravity Drive, and more importantly, the Wave Motion Cannon has given us plenty of experience in the field of Bore Harmonics. While the systems aren't translatable due to the fact that neither system was intended to generate an actual bore, they should provide an excellent starting point for our first true step into the field.
The Cluster Bore Drive, as the name implies, isn't one large drive: it is a cluster of several to many smaller drives linked together, with accompanying synchronizing and harmonizing equipment. When the drive is engaged, not only are the standard bore calculations performed, but so is another set of calculations, in order to optimize bore placement and harmonics engagement; so that when the bores are generated, instead of the exceedingly close geneses and termini interfering and tearing each other apart, they instead produce a harmonic resonance, reinforcing each other and causing them to merge into a larger bore.
This resonance is in fact the main virtue of the Cluster Bore project; as we posit that a sufficiently well calculated Cluster-Bore's Resonance should be able to shield it from sudden shifts in external interaction, allowing it to stay strong in conditions that would see a lesser bore collapse. This being said, we can't simply accept taking a step back in bore calculation speed as it is both one of our major military assets and more importantly a point of pride for Gaia as a whole! As such we've dedicated an entire second quantum supercomputer to handle the synchronization and harmonics.
Oh right, we also had the drive hooked up to a mechanical device similar to the Hornet's Blink 'Drive', so that we can generate the bore with movement relative to the creating vessel. While it certainly isn't capable of the speeds to swallow an entire warship in a second like the Blink is with the Hornet (it is delicate equipment after all), it should still mark a vast improvement in how fast a ship can transit through its bore in emergency situations.
(TL;DR: Uses our experience with the Gravity Drive and (possibly, if we do it) Wave Motion Gun to create a more durable bore.)

Anyway, onto what I actually wanted to post:

Honeycomb Heavy Strike Craft
The Hornet is a good fighter that has served us well, but alas it is a number of contradictions...
It's a small and light craft with an engine that cares not for mass.
It's engine gives it the possibility of infinite combat endurance yet its payload is so very limited.
It's a swarm fighter carrying an engine that requires expensive compounds in order to build!

As such, it is time to design a successor for the Hornet, a strike craft that isn't a mess of contradictions..
Enter the Honeycomb; this strike craft is much larger than the hornet, larger than the Honey Drone even; though its hexagonal form from which it derives its name from should allow it a measure of storage efficiency. (We have a target goal of being able to fit 3 or 4 of these craft in a Small Hanger) The Honeycomb seeks to correct the pitfalls that have befallen the Hornet; and as such packs an actual armor layer consisting of depleted uranium below a layer of carbon-carbon composite; a defensive addition that renders the craft much heavier than it otherwise would be, but the Gravity Drives cares not for weight. With its greatly increased size relative to the Hornet, the Honeycomb sports two Gravity Drives, each equipped with a Blink Mechanism.

Armament wise, the Honeycomb has a choice between a pair of fighter scale Shattergun Turrets, or a pair of the Long Range Missile pods as found on the Hornet, only now with some magazine space. But these are not the Honeycomb's primary weapon: That lies with the centrally mounted Stinger Missile. The Stinger is a very large long range missile relative to the craft that carries it, and both its front and rear protrude from the craft. The Stinger is a heavily armored missile, designed to attempt to penetrate its target before detonating; and boasts a maneuvering thruster arrangement designed so that it can utilize them for extra acceleration at the expense of range. Of particular note, the thruster of the Stinger does stick out of the rear of the Honeycomb, and we intend for it to be secured well enough so that the Honeycomb can use its missile as an impromptu booster, which is in fact the reasoning for its central mounting (the Honeycomb expands and 'opens up' slightly in order to fire it, in case you were thinking this was another suicide craft).
In the off chance that anti-ship firepower and a booster are not necessary, the Honeycomb can mount a quite large rack of anti-fighter missiles or a much larger Shattergun in place of its Stinger.