03.471.M39

Hanging out at Accatran so I guess a good place to start would be ships.

From when we left for this little private crusade an additional 20 Starr-Class frigates were completed. Father negotiated for a minimum of 100 more with the option to have more built.

They’re a workhorse and the crews love them. They also have the added benefit of still “looking” like a transport even if the drive signature doesn’t look like it. He’s been assigning them to escort duties.

3 more Accatran-Class battlecruisers have begun being built with an additional 3 behind that. It didn’t take any convincing for my father to place that order. He spent the last nearly 2 decades on one.

The discussions with the Magi shipwrights have been fun. I’m always pleasantly surprised how wrong lore is about the Cult never innovating or being willing to change anything.

As long as you aren’t suggesting heretical extreme levels of change or xenos tech they’re quite open to change. So long as it’s on your dime of course.

Sure there’s a lot of them that simply build things religiously by route. However those at a sufficient rank seem to be decently open minded compared to lore depiction.

First thing I learned. Do. Not. Mention. The. Invincible-Class. They despise the thing. The name has a bit of a stigma I guess. Even if what I’ve proposed and they’re readily working on is damn near the same thing.

How is it the same? Well let’s compare the widespread and loved by all Retribution-Class to the Invincible-Class. Same hull, same weapon placements, same plasma drive… same everything except armor. Drop the extra prow armor and a ~10% armor reduction all around. Tada fast battleship.

So that’s where I started but it’s still not fast enough. Luckily the Magi have suggested a more powerful engine utilizing some of the principles from the Slaughter-Class plasma drive. Between the armor reduction and the new drive it’s expected to hit the speed requirement.

The weapon layout I didn’t even need to say anything. They’ve come up with a terraced dorsal and ventral configuration. 3 dorsal, 3 ventral and 1 keel. It’s ~12.5% less total weapon batteries.

Originally it could only ever bring 2-4 weapon batteries to bear. This updated configuration will allow it to always bring 7 to bear giving it a 40-75% increase in how much hate it can focus on a single threat.

I really want to ask if they have any super secret uber long range energy weapons. I also suspect that if they told me such things they’d have to kill me. Secret agent man… I’m a chicken shit. I didn’t ask.

I thought I had overstayed my welcome when I mentioned trying to run double quad void shields. The power relays on the holo of the ship turned red.

So I asked why we couldn't use a secondary reactor that was near the void arrays. I was just brainstorming really. I don’t know what is actually possible and what’s not but who wouldn’t want 8 void shields + capacitors?

They got back to me later with a neat solution. Some sort of sequential tie-in. It requires the use of some extra power storage and relay tech to make it work but we have our 2 quad void arrays even if the 2nd takes up twice the normal amount of space.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I was also told in no uncertain terms not to ask about trying something on the battlecruisers. It wouldn’t work. They already checked. Heh.. these guys know me so well. Am I really that predictable?

One of the ork battleships was originally a retribution. It will need all the ork crap pulled off, re-sanctified, lots of bits pulled off and replaced. I was curious if it wouldn’t be faster to build one from scratch.

I suspect it actually would be but their whole “reverence” for technology means it’s still worth the effort to them. I suggested having a new one built for us and having them keep the old one. As odd as it sounds, they were actually pleased with the suggestion.

I had also taken the opportunity to discuss the engine principles they had uncovered and asked if they would also be applicable to light cruiser plasma drives. It could generally be applied to drives of most sizes but it increased the cost and difficulty of repairs.

They were curious at what I wanted to use it on. I showed them a roughly re-worked Dauntless-Class light cruiser as the base. It looked decent with a reworked weapon placement 2 dorsal, 1 keel or ventral, increased speed while retaining all its good attributes.

This weapon configuration also makes it easy to drop a weapon battery or two depending on the use case. Dropping down to 1 weapon battery wouldn’t have much impact compared to its standard configuration of 1 weapon on each facing. 2 would still allow it to bring twice as much to bear but free up room for other roles. I like shooting things so neither of those options are my preference but it’s there regardless.

A few of them seemed interested. I pulled up a cost comparison analysis for various roles across multiple hull types in the Heavy Frigate - Light cruiser - Cruiser - Battlecruiser classes.

It’s not that it’s bad. It’s a middle of the road between what a frigate and battlecruiser can do. It doesn’t do either as well as the other nor as cost efficiently. If they’re interested in doing a proper design and build out I’m confident I could talk father into picking up a few.

The lead Magos seemed to think it was a good enough concept to warrant it being worked into a proper design. It would at the least let us get more accurate estimates on cost and performance. I also think he likes designing new things if he knows they’re likely to get built.

Father was pleased on both fronts. The orders for our new battleships (2) were approved. Will only have to wait ~17 years for each.

He was quite excited about the prospect of an updated light cruiser. From the merchant angle I see how it's a nice update.

Speed to outrun or kite most raiders. Coupled with the updated firing arcs it could bring enough firepower to bear to reduce the need for escorts. Just reinforces my opinion that they’re meant to be armed transports not pure warships.

When the Magos got back to us with the Dauntless redesign I was pretty impressed. Moving the weapon batteries and rerouting of the power conduits saw a ~5% increase in available space.

Who would have thought not running all the redundant conduits from one end of the ship to the other would save pace?

Father immediately placed an order for 6. ~5.5 years each unless he decides to utilize building docks currently being used to build frigates. We ended up going to a 3 frigate - 2 light cruiser build ratio. Quite a few moving parts with all the different build times.

Battleship - ~17 years (Current: 0 - Building: 1 - Queue: 1)

Battlecruiser - ~10 years (Current: 3 - Building: 3 Queue: 3)

Light Cruiser - ~5.5 years (Current: 0 - Building: 1>2 Queue: 5)

Heavy Frigate - ~4 years (Current: 32 - Building: 4>3 Queue: 96)

It had finally dawned on me that I forgot to give Felicia a Talisman. I of course remedied that as soon as I remembered. Reading her ‘in on’ what it does and how important it is to keep on her at all times. Yes, shower, sleep, eat, sex, piss, shit, always wear it.

Speaking of sex now that I have several proven successful offspring the “push” to have more has diminished. It’s still there of course but it’s not nearly as much pressure. It’s been nice to spend quality time with Naomi. She’s pretty awesome. So is her name, very fitting! Naomi.. I-moan backwards. Kek..

Father did finally reveal his master plan. Marry into the different knight houses. He plans to use this to expand our trade influence throughout the segmentum. It’s also a decent backdoor way to curry favor with the different forges.

He’s also been in talks with Accatran for permission to set up proper production facilities for armigers and some knights. I don’t know how well that will go over in general.

However if we’re approved for producing them on a ship or just the knight worlds themselves. If we’re able to, it would go a long way to increasing the capabilities of our ground forces.

…

..

.