Post by drakadorchaos on Oct 29, 2021 10:52:33 GMT
[Exalted Network Fleet]
ENV ‘Aszeven’ Command Cruiser; near the Golden Expanse
Stars shone brightly outside, even against the background shimmer of the nearby expanse, the star density so close to the core was considerably higher compared to other places, although they were logically still several lightyears from each other anyways.
Aszeven watched the sensor feed of his ship, whilst evaluating data, wondering what to do.
This new Galaxy was… interesting. There were countless civilisations here, some stranded some not, others native, many still here, countless already fallen.
A treasure trove of observation data.
They had found numerous ominous signs and organisations, the AOTP, Pirates, signs of precursors, the attack in the traverse, the ongoing tensions between ‘native’ and ‘colonial’ nations, a curious distinction though not unlikely to make given the situation and there were likely, many, many others, neither them nor the other known powers had ever met, yet, war was looming over the horizon, as per usual.
Not that it would matter to him particularly, at least not in a way as it mattered to others, he had different tasks to worry about, as the Head Economic AI of the fleet.
He looked at the markets, the rare resource prices, the stock market and various other nations' economies, at least those they had access to, observing news and speculations…
Whilst things were seemingly calm when they arrived and they were able to strike a good deal with Little Light, it seems the future times would be rather turbulent. The looming war made many a faction antsy, trying to secure its own holds and resources, destabilizing the market.
The most prominent example of that, was the ASN and, by extension, the entire Killian Verge.
All it had taken was a simple report, of things that should have already been obvious to most individuals in the galaxy, yet it set loose a chain of economic disasters within the timespan of merely days.
The mortals had many qualities though amongst one of the first and foremost seemed to be an inherent talent for ignorance, for setting the obvious out of sight and out of mind.
Now, he would have to do something which would put the Network in a favourable position.
___
ENV ‘LC-1-07’ Line Cruiser; near Lost Star
Aszeven went through the lists, having taken control of one of the android bodies whilst still being hooked up to the network, he oversaw the movement of the cargo ships, hauling untold amounts of Ancerium Hyperfuel towards destinations unknown to any onlooker, the proverbial lifeline of this galaxy, the base component of any of the elusive Kolleronic materials.
Although researching the Kolleronic materials was technically the task of another compartment of the Network, he took the liberty to fill their own reserves now, whilst the prices were still plummeting, a convenient effect of the market crash for them, but it wouldn’t last forever, on the contrary, the prices were almost guaranteed to rise sky high once the fighting broke out.
A steady Ancerium supply was essential to be able to compete in this galaxy, the sanctioned nations on the news had demonstrated that very obviously.
There were two prominent ways to resolve this.
The first was that they would find a reliable contractor that could keep the prices within a reasonable span, to supply them during the wartime and possibly before and after.
There were however two major issues with that, the first was finding such a supplier, a trustworthy one nonetheless. They had collected very little in terms of debts and favour in this galaxy so far so the search would be quite a difficult one, the second was the fact that, should someone find out, it would make them quite vulnerable, with their Ancerium all coming from the same source.
Which left him with the second option.
Building their own harvesters.
Once more he looked over the list of storage units and cargo ships.
He chuckled internally, he would have to contact the research Sub-proxies and update his ship design routines.
___
ENV ‘Aszeven’ Command Cruiser; somewhere near Little Light
Having received a number of insights about the Kolleronic materials from the research cores, though more specifically about Ancerium and Hyperfuel themselves, Aszeven looked through his plans again.
‘Hyperfuel’ was actually just another state of the Kolleronic plasma, the refining process itself was essentially just doing two things, cleaning the plasma of impurities of other materials and the converting the plasma into a ready-to-use state, with that premise he had idea of something like a magnetic siphon which seemed to prove effective in the initial tests.
To make things efficient, the harvesters would need to have quite the monumental size at least compared to the average civilian or military vessel.
Looking at other nations designs, either through the anc-net or in a few cases life, he did however come to the conclusion that the average Ancerium harvester would likely be not a… particularly desirable design for the Networks purposes.
Reaching 300 kilometres and more they were moving through open space with magnetic sails like fishing nets, gathering the plasma and storing it for cargo ships to deliver it at a later point.
They were, frankly, large unmoving and impractical targets, maybe convenient for a territorial nation, but generally a liability for the Network, they were expensive to maintain, hard to move from location to location, hard to defend and attracted pirates and sometimes even other nations on the regular, not only being targets but also displaying their presence to others.
As such he went for a number of different design choices. Firstly, they had to be mobile.
To achieve that whilst maintaining a reasonable efficiency he originally considered fusion drives but was not quite satisfied with them, instead combining them with laser sails, fed by However, the sails proved an issue by being a huge vulnerable target.
After playing around with some designs, considering options and calculating possibilities he came to the conclusion that the laser sails and the ancerium nets did not have to seperate things at all, whilst one side housed the components for the laser sails assisting the fusion drives once at speed in maneuvering and acceleration, the second, frontal, layer of the sails had magnetic components to attract and catch the ancerium plasma and funnel it to the front of the ship, furthermore, once finished collecting the sails could be folded back into to the ship for easy storage and transportation.
To finish things off and alleviate the pirate issues, the ship was equipped with numerous point defense systems as well as drone hangars, while it was by no means a military ship and shouldn’t be able to make as much as a dent into a dedicated advanced military vessel, it should buy enough time to flee the battlefield or call in reinforcements.
Aszeven pondered some more on the plans, it was time for the prototypes.
___
ENV ‘SC-1.3-073’ Scout Vessel; remote place in the Golden Expanse
Aszeven observed the colossal vessel ahead of the scoutship he was on, it had gotten through ftl without any issues and was now ready for its first test, after he had gotten permission from Custodian Deralith, that is.
Being a good fifty kilometres in length the massive ship stretched it’s metaphorical ‘arms’ and he watched the second most delicate procedure the ship had to offer: The unfolding of the sails.
With concentration he watched every movement, ever wrinkle in the sails both visually and on the sensors simultaneously until, eventually, it was complete, the lasers started, the fusion engines fired and the ship headed off to its maiden voyage.
Aszeven nodded in his android body.
He looked over the data, played around with the controls and tested all values, the point defense turrets and decoy missiles seemed to be all in order, the outputs of the generators and reactors were all within normal levels, the drones stood on the ready.
He nodded again.
He ordered the ship to turn and dive into the stray kolleronic plasma cloud and so it did, the sails shifted, assisted by the fusion engines and turned the ship in, for its size, record speed.
The intake of kolleronic plasma was stable and remained efficient, estimates and calculations stated it would stay that way as well.
Now there was only one thing left to test.
He ordered the ship out of the cloud and back to the by comparison miniscule scoutship where it halted. His personality matrix tensed as he sent the orders, though his AI components remained unfazed, everything should…
The massive arms of the ship started moving once more, the sails being pulled in, folding assisted magnetically, by micro, macro and nano strands, in a carefully calculated dance of fabric…
He watched.
The arms closed.
The sails were retracted.
He sighed in relief, although everything worked as calculated, as the saying goes ‘no plans survives enemy contact’ there was also the premise that rarely any calculation had a hundred percent chance to go as intended when in contact with the raw natural chaos and randomness of reality.
He looked at the massive ship and gave orders to depart, the massive warp drives spun up and the ship disappeared minutes later assisted by his pre calculated values, now there was the task of building more of them and hoping they would be enough to mitigate the effects of the economic chaos..
He stared into the expanse for a while longer and nodded one last time.
He was satisfied with his work.