Project ZEUS

I suck at wiki formatting, but here are the posts about ZEUS

serelon posted:

Now, the Saturnian treaty, as you all know, pretty much gives us the Jupiter system. At first glance it seems that we got the short end of the stick since there's barely any natural resources to speak of over there. But, what does it have instead? It has: •One colonizable moon (Io)

•Plenty of other moons

•Privacy

So, what can all this be used for? I say we establish Fortress Jupiter as our primary fleet base. With a 200m no-fly zone it'll be safe from prying eyes, and we can build sensor bases and weaponry on the outer moons to cover the perimeter, and once our future colony on Io is big enough, we relocate the shipyards and most of the ordnance and fighter factories there. We could also build new strategical missile bases there and arm them with something like this:

pre: "Doomstrike" Interplanetary Strategic Missile

Missile Size: 24 MSP (1.2 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 5 Speed: 6700 km/s Endurance: 2411 minutes Range: 969.1m km Cost Per Missile: 10.7082 Second Stage: Size-2 Submunition x5 Second Stage Separation Range: 150,000 km Overall Endurance: 2 days Overall Range: 975.5m km Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 33.5% 3k km/s 10% 5k km/s 6.7% 10k km/s 3.3% Materials Required: 5x Tritanium 4.3332x Gallicite Fuel x22500

Then we could happily negotiate a DMZ around the earth-system, while retaining the ability to nuke those damn commies back to the stoneage at the push of a button.

Now, while They could do this to the Saturn area at this very moment, we have the benefit of have eyes over there, protected by a treaty for the next 15 years, that ought to notice suspicious traffic and give us a decent picture of their activities.

Innocent_Bystander posted:

I'd like to see a feasibility study of the Fortress Jupiter idea, hereby codenamed Project Zeus because Zeus and Jupiter are the same guy and Fortress Jupiter is just too much of a mouthfull. In specific, I want to know how much it would cost to execute Zeus, in terms of freighter and shipyard tug design and construction, how long it would take, and how much of an administrative headache it's going to be to keep both Earth and the Jovian system supplied with minerals. I also want to know how long it will take for us to have Jump Point Theory and, hopefully, interstellar exploration. After all, if we want privacy, another solar system would be far better than Jupiter.

From: UN "Project ZEUS" Exploratory Committee To: Director of Defense Innocent_Bystander, CMDR serelon Re: Project Zeus

As noted, both Io and Callisto are colonizable. They have the same colonization cost (575 units of infrastructure per million population), and Callisto already contains large deposits of strategic minerals. We therefore advise that Callisto be the primary focus of Project ZEUS.

We envision enacting the plan in several phases:

Phase I: Callisto as fleet maintenance and support base. In this phase, we ship our maintenance facilities, ordnance stores, and fuel to Callisto. Ships are still constructed at Earth, but they immediately make for Callisto and are based there permanently. Requirements: ◦Maintenance facilities must be shipped to Callisto. Note that shipping facilities using designs with less than a multiple of 25,000-ton capacity is sort of wonky. Civilians can handle it easily, but when using player-owned ships, things can get messy. NB: The UN does not currently possess enough maintenance facilities to maintain its naval ships, either the Panner-class survey vessels or the proposed Berlin-class cruiser. Without sufficient maintenance facilities, these ships will break down and be destroyed, eventually.

◦Population to operate the maintenance facilities must be transported to Callisto, as well as supporting agricultural/environmental and service population and the infrastructure to support them. Note that for comparison, the Tranquility colony requires 366 infrastructure per million population, and only 55.1% of its populace is available for manufacturing endeavours. This fraction would be lower on Callisto, so the necessary population would be larger. To maintain the Berlin class would require a five-fold expansion of our current maintenance abilities (from 5 to 25 facilities) and involve 250,000 maintenance workers. At a conservative estimate of 40% of the Callistan population able to work on maintenance, that means at least 625,000 colonists. It is likely this would require a state-owned colony ship capability to force the matter. Private colonist transport is fickle and unpredictable. Private shipping lines will transport colonists to the oldest eligible (i.e., has enough infrastructure) colony. This would be fine if we could control infrastructure deliveries, but private infrastructure is shipped regardless. If we could set the population as stable we'd have a solution as well, but we can't do this until there are 25m people on Tranquility, another oversight in the game.

◦Maintenance supplies, weapon ordnance, and refined fuel must be shipped to Callisto. This entails a supply ship design and developing a maintenance supply module (€1 billion, 1000 RP), a colllier ship to transport ordnance, and a tanker to transport fuel.

◦Intermittent supplies of the TNEs that Callisto doesn't supply must be shipped there to provide materials for maintenance efforts.

•Phase II: Callisto as naval production base. In this phase, fighter and ordnance factories, as well as perhaps sorium refineries would be shipped to Callisto to provide fleet logistics support. Additionally, several construction factories may be shipped in order to construct maintenance supplies in situ. Requirements: ◦Fighter and ordnance factories must be shipped to Callisto. The same concerns about a state-owned freighter capable of transporting the facilities are present here.

◦Sorium refineries may be transported to Callisto.

◦Construction factories to produce maintenance supplies may be transported to Callisto.

◦Manufacturing and supporting population must be transported to Callisto to operate these facilities.

◦More intensive mineral logistics would be required to keep these industries supplied with raw materials.

•Phase III: Callisto as fully functioning fleet base. In this phase, the UN naval shipyards would be towed to Callisto orbit, out of the prying eyes of Federation sensors. Requirements: ◦Tractor beam technology (€5 billion, 5000 RP) must be developed and implemented in a tug design. This includes tooling a shipyard and producing the ship.

◦The shipyards must be towed to Callisto. They would likely need defended along this journey to avoid Federation interruption.

◦The population required to operate the shipyards must be transported to Callisto. We estimate the UN currently employs 2.82 million people in its void-capable shipyard industries. A significant portion would need to be transported to Callisto, as well as supporting population. Additionally, we assume that the UN's shipbuilding capacity will have increased by the time Phase III is implemented, meaning even more population transport.

◦Optionally, more construction factories could be built on or transported to Callisto in order to pre-build ship components.

We estimate upward of 8 million people would be required by the end of Phase III, or 4600 units of infrastructure. This would put a strain on our current shipping capability, so one of the first steps that must be taken is improving our commercial shipbuilding capability. We need a larger commercial yard capable of producing a 25,000-ton-capable freighter and an equivalent colony ship. We would also advocate investing in increasing our shipbuilding capabilities directly, through efficiency research (€5 billion, 5000 RP) and/or shipyard operations time/cost saving (€2.5 billion, 2500 RP). A common thing to do is design a colony ship that includes a freighter as a secondary design, so both can be built at the same yard.

Alternative strategies include: •Developing automated ship-based maintenance modules (€5 billion, 5000 RP) and building maintenance ships that would orbit Callisto. This would keep colonist needs down, but put a larger strain on our shipbuilding capability. Minerals would still need to be transported there to be used by the maintenance ships.

•Construction and transport of terraforming installations (€600 million, 300 duranium, 300 boronide each) to begin making Callisto more suitable for human habitation (an endeavour we dub Project OLYMPUS) to reduce the population and infrastructure requirements. As has been noted, to increase Callisto's surface temperature to a level tolerable for everyday non-domed existence, about 1.1 atmospheres of gas would need to be added to Callisto's atmosphere. This could consist of 0.1 atm of oxygen (breathable without a filter) and 1 atm of a safe greenhouse gas. Our current estimates as to the UN's terraforming efficiency is 0.0010 atm per installation per year. Thus, to add 1.1 atmospheres to Callisto would take 1100 years divided by the number of installations dedicated to the task. Terraforming installations would also require population. Alternatives include a ship-borned terraforming module (€5 billion, 5000 RP) or increasing the efficiency of our terraforming installations (€3 billion, 3000 RP).

•Finding a more suitable base location in another star system. While we are somewhat skeptical of the so-called "Jump Point Theory," its benefits must be accounted for if it proves to work. Consultations with Dr. Slaan indicate his findings should be presented sometime in mid-summer of next year.

As for the "Doomstrike" missile and its attendant launcher and base, these are trivial concerns compared to the effort required to shift a large portion of the UN's military capability to another world. The missile, launcher, and base could probably all be designed and constructed within a year if enough resources were directed at them.