Re: [GZG] [OFFICIAL] New stuff info and New Offer! :-)

They might build ships designed for different requirements. For
example, lower operating costs would suggest ships with smaller crews,
fewer consumables and larger operating areas (via longer range and
higher thrust ratings). For example, a FSE-aligned company might build
designs without the salvo missiles.

Similarly, the equivalent of an East India company might build
state-supported colony fleets, consisting of a few pre-fab colony
ships, a couple couriers, a scout and some military ships. The colony
ships would be designed to be disassembled for use in building the
colony. The scout and couriers would stick around for the colonists to
use. The combat ships would be low-tech, low-maintenance, multi-role
garrison designs. Maybe throw in an industrial ship to kick start the
space-based economy.

Actually the more I think of it, the more likely that the fragmented
tuffleyverse would have semi-independent corporations operating in
deep space with their own fleets and quite possibly their own designs.
The great powers have been locked in wars for decades; there are lots
of independent, minor and piratical powers crawling around. Even in
the best of times, help is weeks away by courier, if it comes at all.

Flexible manufacturing is in its early stages in our own time, but
it's already having a profound effect on business strategy.

A smart corp probably has major ship-building facilities in the core
systems that it uses for government contracting. But they're likely to
have small facilities in the outer systems also, just because if
you're going to have a colony you might as well have a couple mining
ships and some kind of industrial ship to maintain the ships you can't
have a colony without. And since you've got the infrastructure anyway,
you might as well build ships in your spare time. Not state of the
art, perhaps, and not very fast, but I mean why not? Keep in mind that
if Lockheed's private fleet included any Excalibur class ships, they'd
have long since been appropriate to fight in one of the Solar Wars (or
the xeno war). So there's another reason to have different designs
built in facilities ill-suited for line-of-battle ships and which are
themselves not really worth alienating your contractors to confiscate.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Oerjan Ariander
<orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:
> F.P.Kiesche III wrote:
>
>>Would mega-corps really have a separate set of ship designs? Since
they
>>build them...wouldn't they just adopt their own production line to the
>>occasional "private" vessel?
>
> What ships do you think they use for PR purposes, to show off all
those new
> gadgets the want to sell to their military customers...? :-)
>

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