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ARIEL - Civilian and corporate sector

Colonization

The colonizing of a planet is inherently a very expensive business. You have to transport the raw materials, enlist payed colonists to set up the place, charter geologists to locate a suitable location, perhaps biologists mineralogists to analyze soil content, not to mention actually purchase the raw materials and structures to create the colony in the first place. As such, you can't just drop a ship down, set a flatpack house there and begin living. You need some assistance.

Governments rarely set up or fund colonies. Its not their way. Sure, the original colonies of the Terran alliance for instance, were funded by governments, but not many nowadays have been created by the government. This is where corporations and the private sector come into play, a operation and business that is worth billions of MAAS (Maasura, the standard credit chip of the galaxy, named in the Caalma language of Caalmit) to the Triumvirate.

When someone wishes to establish a colony on a prospective world, he/she seeks corporate investment. Normally, the corporation has to get something out of it ( an example would be a metal fabrications and research company investing in the colonizing in a volcanic world with numerous metallic resources). Colonies are long term investments, and as such the corporation is actually making quite a short term loss in investing in a colonization. Once the colonists have received funding (often in the hundreds of thousands of MAAS), they will settle down and establish the colony.

Now at first it will be slow going, setting up some basic shelters and some farming equipment, as well as power and such; all the necessary elements of a successful and self-sufficient colony. It can take up to 10 years to start this off. Then it comes down to the real stuff: What the colony was made for.

We'll take the original example: The MFR (metal fabrications and research) company has invested in the colony, and it now has all the equipment and systems to survive on its own. Now that this has been done, the colonists or the corporation itself will go after the goal. Say this particular planet has a type of mineral that has never been seen before, one that seems highly resistant to laser energy. The Corporation will mine or whatever it needs to do to get the material, or set up a laboratory either in the colony itself or just outside it, to research the items. Once it has been researched, it could end up being sold to arm our manufacturers. Finally, after say 20 years of waiting, the colony is returning a profit. Over the years, it will grow to a large mining facility, maybe offering mines and research labs to 2-3 corporations and supporting large populations. Eventually, it may progress further into a true city world. Although that happens rarely.

To get protection from a particular force, a colony must sign a charter to join the Alliance or whichever force it wishes to. The government will deduct a certain amount of profits made from that particular colony, in exchange for providing protection. This is common practice, and often many governments offer protection. It is one of the primary ways of increasing territory.

ARIEL - Corperate and civilian sector

Ship and equipment purchasing

A civilian, provided they have enough money, can by almost anything. If he/she has enough money, he/she could easily purchase a battleship. It might be an older decommissioned model or a specifically designed model by a corporation. You can literally by anything you want to.

But there are certain parameters that are in place. First is the model you wish to get.

Say I had collected the money to by myself a stellar tramp freighter. I have singled out a particular type i want: A Matsuda Zakaru. Now it isnt as simple as that. you will get different models of that Ship. Human names commonly are LX model, GLS model, SE model etc. Different models will come with different basic equipment or comfort levels, perhaps different volumes and such like.

Lets take a look at the Matsuda Zakaru range.

Zakaru Standard LS - Bottom of the range. Comes in a single engine type, a 8 capacitor plasma stream engine configuration (4 positive charge, 4 negative charge). Basic internal quality, basic scanners and electronics.

Zakaru Standard GLS - Middle range. Comes in either an 8 capacitor or a 12 capacitor engine configuration. Higher level of internal trim (optional leather, more comfortable seats), a higher set of standard equipment

Zakaru Standard SE - Top of range. Comes with either an 8 capacitor, 12 capacitor, 16 capacitor, or 20 capacitor engines. Interior leather as standard, high internal trim levels, large amounts of technology. All advanced, little short of military tech.

On top of that, you can have different types of the same model. IE

Zakaru standard - standardized length - composite freighter
- Passenger transport freighter
- Bio-hazard freighter
- Oiler

Zakaru Liner - Specialized passenger ship - Standard accomodation
- Luxury accomodation
- Short range, stay in seat ferrying

Zakaru Chartered survey - Science lab ship - Spacial sensor
- Geographical analysis sensor
- Anomaly sensor


There literally is huge variations in model and price, much like there is in buying a car.

The other thing is that there are no weapons as standard. you have to buy them auxiliary. There will be slots, and power to them, but no weapons there.

Cruise speed

Well, after having some little writing practices i have found out that having to wait some 11 hours to get across a star system at impulse speed, is somewhat impractical and can be rather annoying. So i am going to implement a little alteration to FTL technology to run parallel with the gate system.

Introducing, Cruise speed! Cruise speed is roughly equivalent to warp 3 making it useful for traversing planetary systems (38.9 x c as i am stealing from the trek warp scale to save me complex mathematics that i simply don't understand cause i'm mathematically thick, odd since i'm predicted an A grade) and for pursuing enemy ships, but not for intergalactic space as it would take several days just to travel 5 light years. the Gate system is still far more effective for intergalactic travel.

It works by using a similar system used in the gates, a scaled down and weakened device to open a slipstream. This slipstream effects exactly the same as a node's slipstream, only the forces are not quite as strong meaning the ships maximum velocity is not as great.

Right, basic write up. any problems, suggestions or whatever, then go ahead.

What sort of sublight speed would these ships have?

Thats the difficult part, i cant get my head round working out acceleration and all that stuff.

But it would take probably about 11/12 hours to get from one side of the system to another for most ships, it would go up or down by an hour or so dependent on what class it was.

Don't systems vary in size?

I was working on the example of the Sol system

Try this method:



The graph depicts an object's speed with respect to time, with the area under the line depicting the distance travelled. Therefore, in the above example the object accelerated at 1.25 m/s^2 until it reached 100 m/s, travelled at that speed for 250s, and then decelerated at 1.25 m/s^2, travelling 33km.

It avoids the need for imagining everything in terms of speed and time and reduces it to simple geometry.

what does m/s^2 stand for? how do you determine it?

Metres per second per second, abbreviated to metres per second squared, which is the unit of measurement of acceleration. It's the rate of change of speed - you find the change in speed, divide by the time taken for that change to occur, and voila - acceleration.

So...say we had 1.25 m/s^2.......and it took 60 seconds to reach 100 m/s.

so you devide 100 m/s, the change, by 60 seconds? that would make...acceleration of 1.6?

Exactly. You'll often see acceleration expressed in g, which is the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface - about 10m/s^2, give or take.

so that would make my formula 0.16g, correct?

In your diagram, you said that it travelled 33 km...how did you work that out?

Reliant121 wrote:so that would make my formula 0.16g, correct?

Correct.

In your diagram, you said that it travelled 33 km...how did you work that out?

It's the area under the line - simple geometry.

Captain Seafort wrote:Exactly. You'll often see acceleration expressed in g, which is the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface - about 10m/s^2, give or take.

9.8 m/s squared actually. (I'm taking physics 2 this year )