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I'm a day out from Risa in some no-name system to test my mining drones, my original idea of three separate drones fell through, the scanning drone, and transport drone went fine but striping back transporter tech to fit such a small frame was non-practical. Now that's not to say it did not work but transporters are power hogs, the physical power systems to run a transporter was three times bigger than a transporter system I had worked out.
I had to do a complete redesign based on the physical limitations of the tech on hand, I went with a micro-fusion reactor from a shuttle design. Given the size of the reactor and no need for any type of life support I would have the power to run everything, it could move, find resources, mine them and bring them back to me.
Type: 001 experimental mining drone
Dimensions: Length, 4 meters; Beam, 1.25 meters; Draft, 1.25 meters
Mass: 2.35 tonnes unloaded, (6.35 mT loaded)
Accommodation: none
Power Plant: Class-3 micro-fusion reactors
Performance: none
Armament: none
Defenses: none
The drone is shaped like a Galor class Cardassian ship, the mined resources are placed behind the wing-like sections un-till it has two, two-tone blocs to drop off in my holds. As for gasses or liquids, a container would first be made from on-site materials to contain them.
I'm waiting for the first five I sent out to return or signal for help, each one has been sent to do one run on a different resource. Magnesite, Duranium, Hydrazine Gas, Trionium Gas, and raw latinum. I know the last one is a crap shot but you never know.
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All five drones came back at their twenty-four-hour time limit, I now have four tonnes of Magnesite and Duranium, one full two-tonne container of Hydrazine Gas, and a half-filled container of Trionium Gas, surprisingly I also have half a kilogram of raw latinum.
I have decided to stay in this system until two of my cargo holds are full with whatever the drones can find, it should speed up as the drones return to add the scanning data to the ship resourcing map.
I'm not comfortable staying here with so little ability to defend myself, but I need something to sell so I can buy better weapons for my ship. I'm also thinking of doing some defense drones too, but they would be very different from my dumb mining drones, the risk of them being hacked is not zero after all.
I'm going to go to bed and leave the drones to it, ill check tomorrow to get a better idea of how long this will take.
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Risa is stunning, it's like Hawaii and the Mediterranean had a baby named Risa, Warm tropical breezes, exotic foods, nothing to do but sit around all day, Paradise. I tell you two point five kilotonnes of mixed resources is good money, and it only took my drones six days to fill just two of the four cargo pods my ship got.
In two days a Ferengi trader is coming to talk weapons with me, I'm hoping for some hand weapons, but I'm mostly interested in ship weapons. I hope to get four turrets and a pair of phaser strips. I want two turrets front and aft of my ship, one above and one below. As for the phasor strips, I want them mirrored on either side of the R&D section of my ship, starting from the top, down the side, and then under. Two strips should be mirroring each other should give me a lot of coverage.
I got to get back down, got a date with a nice Eco-engineer with….great assets.
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Trading with a Ferengi is an experience, it almost felt like I was back in my first life, I got the basics for the last of my mined resources. It all went pear shape when I showed I had raw liquid latinum, the Ferengi went nuts and just kept beaming stuff in while muttering to himself that 'it's not enough. I now have examples of the phasor, disruptors, and plasma, weapons and they came in beam arrays, cannons, turrets, and handheld.
I also got over three hundred data pads of information from combat programs to civilian construction plans for my industrial replicator. The best I got was a massive boost to my navigation charts, political landscape, and the resources needed by all of them. By the time the Ferengi left I think he was on some kind of natural high.
I'm going to spend the next few days in orbit around Risa while I dive into the hardware of the weapon I want for the ship, while I do that I'm letting my computer go thou all the data to check for any unwanted surprises. All the hand help weapons will for now be stored away except for a hand phasor I will keep.
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I'm back in that no-name system I mined in to install the first phasor turret I built and re-designed, I still have the 360-degree coverage, but now they are double-barrelled. Why I did this is simple, I could and it was challenging, it came down to timing, recharge, and cooling. The charging of the capacitors for each barrel is done separately so Each barrel fires in an offset pulse one after the other. I have increased the cooling period between shots to offset the boost to damage output. What this boils down to is that each barrel hits harder but fires slower, that's also the reason I built it as a double-barrel design, while the ones firing the other are cooling and charging.
My weapons system is running debug and diagnostic for the first turret, should all come back good I will do a live-fire test and if that goes well I will install the other three. As for the beam array, I decided not to mess with it and do the installation after the turrets.
Once the turrets are in I'm going to take a swing at a maintenance and repair drone, I'm thinking of a spider-like design in two sizes, small for the Jeffries tubes and a bigger stronger version. Both should be vacuum capable and meant to work together.
'Alpha turret ready for live-fire test captain'
T hats me, the captain, I need to get back to it
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