The next construction project completes in 19 days. I advance time accordingly:
These are our new, shiny colony vessels.
Since we only have one colony (mars), I proceed with ordering them to start shipping out colonists .. and run into a snag.
You see, apparently, back when I created these designs, I made a small error. Instead of copying the freighter design, and changing the cargo holds into an equivalent amount of cryogenic transport holds, I just copied the freighter design.
So no cryogenic storage .. right.
Fixing this is not hard, though: Simply unlock the design, change the components, and our three ships magically change their colours.
Code:
Mayflower 2025 class Colony Ship 39300 tons 353 Crew 1593 BP TCS 786 TH 1500 EM 0
1908 km/s Armour 1-102 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control 1 PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 25 MSP
Colonists 100000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 25
Orbital Sciences "Taurus 5" C Ion Engine E0.7 2025 (10) Power 150 Fuel Use 7% Armour 0 Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 32.7 billion km (198 days at full power)
This ship is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposes
This does, however, have some consequences. This hold type is a tad more expensive than a simple cargo hold, and that in turns means that the retool from Xorn to Mayflower gets too expensive for yards tooled for Xorns to build Mayflowers.
The retool the other way around is not affected however, and we have no yards tooled for xorns - just for mayflowers. We do however have one yard tooled for San Andreas class Troop Transport ships - and that one IS affected, as it now cannot build Mayflowers anymore.
The other consequence is that build times of these Mayflowers and the build costs have changed somewhat. I'm not going to jump through hoops to retroactively apply that to the freshly build vessels; But new vessels (should we desire to build any) will use the new costs:
As a result of building these the Pacific Shipyards yard (56000 ton) falls idle; All three slipways are now free for further construction, but as per earlier council decisions I am not queueing up more ships.
However, these ships require naval officers to command them; Looking at officers with the requisite Logistics bonus, we get the following list:
Going through these, Catherine Faulkner has a 20% survey bonus, and is intended to command one of the new Columbus class vessels. The others I have gone through by hand to choose those officers
least suited to do something else.
The results of that process is two officers are absolutely useless for anything else:
Oscar Noble: Fleet Movement Initiative 144, Logistics 10%.
Jason wood: Fleet Movement Initiative 177, Logistics 10%.
For the third ship, we have some alternatives - in order of my personal preference:
Harry Connor: Fleet Movement Initiative 156, Survey 15%, Logistics 10%. (There are 4 officers with 15% survey bonus currently unassigned, plenty to cover the three almost completed Columbus class survey vessels.)
Stephany Abbott: Crew Training 25, Fleet Movement Initiative 178, Logistics 10%. (Crew training rating is important to get combat vessel crews to a level where they are fully combat-ready. But we have a lot of officers with better ratings than this.)
Madeleine Parsons: Fleet Movement Initiative 123, Factory Production 10%, Fighter Operations 10%, Logistics 10% (She might make a decent fighter commander, though. And once we start building fighters we need lots of those.)
