Stats for Orbital Factories?

[The_Livewire]

Ok, working on some fluff/stats for stuff for the Rim Federation and have hit a wall.

I thought in one of the old TROs they had information abouy orbital factories/satellites, but I can't find it.  Anyone else remember what I'm talking about?

[Matti]

Did you check TRO2750?

[The_Livewire]

Did you check TRO2750?

No, but no joy.  I checked my original 3025 and 3026 too, came up blank.

[CVB]

Ok, working on some fluff/stats for stuff for the Rim Federation and have hit a wall.

I thought in one of the old TROs they had information abouy orbital factories/satellites, but I can't find it.  Anyone else remember what I'm talking about?

TRO3057 (the original, unrevised version), p.199ff.
TRO3057Rev, p. 174ff.

[AlphaMirage]

Factory stats are deliberately vague there is however a fan PDF made but I don't remember what it was called

[CVB]

Maybe Revanche's Industrial Tycoon's Handbook?
https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=19307.msg434230#msg434230

[AlphaMirage]

Maybe Revanche's Industrial Tycoon's Handbook?
https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=19307.msg434230#msg434230

Yeah thats the one

[The_Livewire]

Thanks Gentlemen, not what I was remembering, but definitely usable.

Long story short, I'm looking at designing Factory Dropships/Warships for the EA AU.  Specifically, the Rim Federation seems to lack planets with known manufacturing abilities, so them having a mobile 'factory ship' or two made sense to me.  :-)

[Colt Ward]

Remember, some materials have to be made in zero/micro G- Endosteel being the big one.  And we do know of at least one modular/mobile station that was set up quickly to churn out large amounts of Endo for planetside factories.

[CVB]

And we do know of at least one modular/mobile station that was set up quickly to churn out large amounts of Endo for planetside factories.

Interesting. Do you have any more info like time, location, source?
Thanks in advance!

[Colt Ward]

The Warden Wolves' Lupus Majoris came to the IS by the Potemkin Ulric ordered to haul in a slice of Clan society.  The station is also where you can assume they did their upkeep on the fleet in the 60s and repaired the two Aegis they captured.  Later it was the production site for the Isegrim, or at least part of it as I read the fluff.

Probably the same class, or close anyway, as the Dragoon Hephasteus that was destroyed over An Ting by Drac 'rebels.'

[Korzon77]

Note that the tycoons hand book has a problem similar to any attempts to rationalize production methodologies beyond "we said so."

IE, it's very easy to within a few decades find yourself churning out WWII Sherman tank levels of production.

[idea weenie]

Long story short, I'm looking at designing Factory Dropships/Warships for the EA AU.  Specifically, the Rim Federation seems to lack planets with known manufacturing abilities, so them having a mobile 'factory ship' or two made sense to me.  :-)

Just note that building fancy stuff requires a lot of more basic stuff being built beneath it.

For example, regular Mech armor plate requires smelting titanium and steel, creating diamond fiber mixed into a ceramic, more titanium but this time in a honeycomb structure, and finally a polymer sealant.

All that for something that costs 10,000 C-Bills per ton before modifiers.

Now what you might try for is dedicated assembly ships that produce ultra high-tech equipment, using local materials.  For example, you might have a computer chip factory Dropship that gets a load of ultra pure polished silicon wafers from one colony, clean room apparatii from another world, various chemicals/acids needed from a third colony, aso.  The Dropship chip factory makes a circuit where it picks up the refined materials, and makes them into computer chips.  The fun question should be why that Dropship factory isn't on a planet, where you have steady gravity, and can expand as far as you need.  Perhaps the worlds are too specialized, or they don't trust any one world to have the critical chip manufacturing facility?

Source

[The_Livewire]

Just note that building fancy stuff requires a lot of more basic stuff being built beneath it.

<snippage>

Now what you might try for is dedicated assembly ships that produce ultra high-tech equipment, using local materials. 

<more snippage>

Source

Very good points.  Thank you for bringing them up. 

One thing I noticed about the Succession Wars in general, was orbital stuff gets blown up, a lot.  Basically just like it's easier to sink a ship than an island, it's easier to blow up an orbital factory than a planet.

And the orbital factory can't even sail somewhere else! 

So it occurred to me, with the Supremacy helping the periphery states, especially the Rim Federation, but not wanting anyone too strong militarily, helping convert old warships into factory ships benefits both parties.

a) it gives the Federation a 'harder to catch' mobile factory.  Rather than a factory that will get shot up, and lose all its production, the factory ship can run, both on standard engines and jump if given enough warning.  The capital scale armor will also buy it some time.  Sure, securing for a jump might ruin whatever's in construction. (I can't picture endo steel being formed reacts well to high G turns) but better that than the whole factory.

b) The Supremacy benefits from the FWL and LC having to guess where this factory might be to try to raid/capture/destroy it.  This ties up more resources that won't be used against the Supremacy. Also they benefit because the resources the Federation spends in maintaining this 'warship-turned-factory' is less they can spend on their warships.

As to trade routes.  I'd expect that the factory likely uses a mix of common jump points and prepared pirate points. the supplying (and delivering) dropships are waiting to deliver the raw materials/pick up the finished goods. Will need to put more thought into it.

[Daryk]

The safest place for a jump-capable factory?  Interstellar space.  Yes, it will need to be resupplied periodically, but if it's not in a charted system (even an uninhabited one), it's essentially unfindable.

[idea weenie]

The safest place for a jump-capable factory?  Interstellar space.  Yes, it will need to be resupplied periodically, but if it's not in a charted system (even an uninhabited one), it's essentially unfindable.

I'll bet there were a few like that, but the loss of Jumpships meant that supply missions to them eventually tapered off.  Hope they got the crew of those stations off in time, otherwise some of the crew would wind up being humanitarians, until the loss of hydrogen fuel made the station go dark permanently.


Note to self, when designing a station to be in the dark, make sure it has something that can serve as an escape craft to avoid the crew being stranded there.  Either enough hydrogen to accelerate the station at .001G towards a nearby star system (preferably habitable), or a compact core passenger ship with slightly excess capacity.  Preferably both.

(In case of complete disaster, you would evacuate the crew, and set the station's autopilot.  Assuming 1 light-year out, that .001G acceleration will take ~63 years to accelerate/decelerate to be in orbit at the target system.  This was just a basic distance vs acceleration equation, I did not take relativity into account since it only got up to 3% speed of light.  The nice part is that if you quadruple the distance, you only double the time needed to make the transit.)

[Daryk]

I thought they were talking about a factory with a jump core, so if food runs short, it should be able to get to a habitable system before things get too dire.

[idea weenie]

I thought they were talking about a factory with a jump core, so if food runs short, it should be able to get to a habitable system before things get too dire.

For the size, I was going with a space station.  No KF cost increase, and more internal structure available.

The real fun with a jumpable factory is making it FTL jump very so often so anyone trying to find it has to start over every few months.  Of course, that means your supply chain has to be able to handle new locations every X weeks.  If designed right, it can do so, and might even jump a light-day or few away from the rendezvous to make sure nobody hostile is waiting there.