Aotrs Shipyards August 2023 Release: Merchants and Mercenaries Part Three

[Aotrs Shipyards]

Aotrs Shipyards August 2023 Release: Merchants and Mercenaries Part Three

Before we get to the releases, a few things.

First of all, Only-Games are having a big summer sale, 25% off sitewide and free shipping on orders over £60, which ends on the 30th of August – so now is a good time to binge on all those Aotrs Shipyards models you know you want.

Use code: OGSUMMER23.

Second of all, I will be down at the Hereward Wargames Show in Peterborough on the 3rd of September, putting on a game of Starwing (my own homebrew starfighter system), pitting the Galactic Empire best TIE Defenders and Missileboats against the might of the Aotrs fighter forces. (And the other half of the KB Club will be doing Manoeuvre Group at 72nd.)

There is one more major announcement, but I’ll save that bad news for the wrap up.

Onto the releases, this time the third and final wave of merchant shipping the Coeus Heavy Cruiser and the Xavek-Manfeld !O-2300 Spacetruck! (That’s “Ks-avek,” not “zavek”.) The latter is available at both fleet scale as normal, and in .stl form from Wargames Vault, making it the second product to be so! (Like the starbase from last month, it’s a bit too big to be practical for the webshops, and unlike that, I hadn’t already uploaded it to both befgore I made that decision!)

Coeus Heavy Cruiser (Explorer)

A rare visitor to the fringes of the local galactic region, the Coeus Class Heavy Cruiser hails from far-off Earth-I. The Explorer variant we see traded off some weapon emplacements into order to accommodate sufficient cargo space to be able to make such a long trip.

These are deep range vessels that serve Earth-I’s alliance. As the variant’s name suggests, these vessels are principally for exploration, but they also serve as diplomatic couriers, since there are no relays which would otherwise cross the gap for regular modern FTL communications, and slow-than-light communications would take centuries.

The extreme distance means that other than very cursory acknowledgements, the Earth-I mirror sector has little influence to the local region.

The Coeus is typical of Earth-I’s technological base. Most prominent are the two rotating superstructures which produce artificial gravity (which rotate in opposite directions). The Coeus has no shielding at all, complete reliant on its armour for protection. This is considerable, with an Armour Integrity Rating of 4000TXq, but it puts the vessel at a severe disadvantage in a long fight against shielded foes.

It has otherwise performance that is consistent with military vessels of about a century back. Older drives give it 9.7mc acceleration and manoeuvrability rated and 108 MEUs, which is only a little below the modern average. Sensors and communications too are largely similar to military systems of that period.

Despite its modifications, the Coeus Explorer is still a warship at heart, not a transport – as it must be to undertake the long journey without a massive convoy escort. While these vessels are rare enough to have not been involved in many combats, we have still been able to glean a mostly-accurate picture of their capabilities. Multiple point-defence turrets armed with a mix of particle and plasma weapons provide a combined output of about 1870TXq, over an engagement sphere of 0.85Ym³. Two 350-TXq laser cannons are spinally-mounted, with an accuracy envelope of 330 000km. Secondary laser and plasma batteries have a combined output of about 300TXq and an accuracy envelope of about 285 000km. About half of these original batteries were removed for the additional stowage space, so we can infer a standard Coeus would have approximately twice that output. Finally, four missile racks are mounted behind the forward superstructure module. Each contains twenty 190TXq-yield missiles, with an accuracy envelope of approximately 500 000km.

Despite its technological inferiority, the Coeus is thus by no means a push-over, and comparable to a modern heavy cruiser of one of the minor powers (such as the Tarrainian Federation), with its lack of shields being its single largest drawback. But unlike the similarly unshielded forces of the Eternal Reich or the Orc Fearcrushy, the Coeus is not in a position to dubiously utilise the lower resource cost to field a larger, more disposable fleet. It does not even have the advanced armour composites that those powers utilise. What it does have is more than sufficient to deal with light raiders, however, and the very fact it is not a transport and more vulnerable than a shielded vessel means that it is not a very tempting target for larger pirate forces (or, for example, the Herosine Empire, though to some extent that is a redundant qualification).

Given the distances between Earth-I and the local region, this is likely the only vessel of Earth-I we are likely to see for many decades until hyperdrive speed drastically improves.

Direct price: £3.05

Only-Games: £2.12 Link

Shapeways: £4.45 Link

 

!O-2300 Space Truck

The Xavek-Manfeld (the “x” is pronounced “ks”) !O-2300 is a typical In-System/Orbital Lander – ISOL or, as they are more colloquially known in human space, “space truck”. (The “!” is an alveolar or postalveolar click in Venerian; the proper pronunciation is difficult for humans that do not use clicking languages and has vernacularized into a click of the tongue.)

Space trucks are the basic workforce of in-system transport systems. These vessels are used to transfer cargo from the larger freighters, cargo haulers and orbital docking yards to the surface or between planets and moon and other short-haul trips. While large bulk cargos of the same goods are usually transferred directly to the receiving facility, mixed cargo for intermodal shipping needs to get the varied goods out to all over a globe. Space trucks represent the most efficient way to transfer small loads to the surface, either directly to a company landing pad, or to a road, rail or gravway transport system. While in some more advanced powers, teleportation is used for small loads (like people), in general, it remains too power inefficient for widespread use, as the sheer volume of goods makes it impractical.

The !O series is a long-standing mainstay of the space truck industry and they are often known informally as “exmans” or “xmans.”

Introduced in 2298, the !O-2300 quickly achieved a reputation for being rugged, reliable, power-efficient and adaptable, and the brand has continued to the present with annual or bi-annual models with incremental improvements.

The !O-2300 has only modest acceleration of 24mc, which is more than sufficient for in-system flights. While slow, it is quite agile, rated up to 350 MEUs, quite sufficient for even difficult docking or landing gaps. This is one of the reasons for its popularity.

The base !O-2300 model comes fitted with a small civilian hyperdrive, suited for in-system hops or short interstellar jaunts. Models used only for local transport usually remove the system for a little more storage space or just to reduce weight and power-consumption. The space truck’s crew compartment is quite spacious. Conventional usage is handled by a single crewperson, but there is seating for two additional people as standard. A tiny fold-out bunk, kitchenette and toilet facility provision for longer flights.

To protect the crew and cargo against atmospheric mishaps, weather and other hostile environments – as well as some protection from raiders, the !O-2300 has an integral shield array that is rated to a respectable 150TXq.

So from these basic design, the !O-2300 and its descendants have been adapted for almost every purpose, including passenger transport, ambulance, search-and-rescue, fire-fighter and exploration. Some models that work exclusively at docking yards remove the entire cargo bay and add larger engines at the rear, replacing the cargo bay area with towing arrays or tractor beams for moving containers around – even those much larger than the space truck itself.

Fleet Scale
Direct price: £2.60

Only-Games: £2.12 Link

Shapeways: £3.58 Link

1:300th (6mm) Scale

Direct price: £4.20

.Stl File: £4.20 Link

_______________________________________________________________

Photos, as always, of Prusa versions.

Next month… Is very, very up in the air.

Tomorrow, I have an appointment with Universal Credit (as I am translated off from Working Tax Credit), and with the country in the state that it is, I have a very real fear that they will say “you’re not making enough money, naff off!” (As this has been tried once before.) It also does not help that this is coming on a year which has been overall quite low, at a time of year in which sales are generally low anyway.

So, quite what I do if they say that… I don’t know. I would likely at least have to accelerate adding .stls to Wargames Vault, and I could potentially set up a kofi… Patreon is a possibility, but I genuinely can’t think of what I could do more for the required higher tiers than I already do. So this might have significant ramifications. I will not, at the very least, be immediately packing in the Shipyards; when I took it full-time, it was after ten years of unemployment and in desperation that I could ground out at least a full year by exhausting what savings I had before I had to sign back on and I have a little more now than then. But down the line; I genuinely don’t know.

This, as you might imagine, put a significant damper on my holiday which delayed this release a week.

In theory, though, the Royal Elven Army is slated for a release (finally!) around October for Other Partizan… But we will just have to see, I’m afraid. (And for once you can read that sentiment quite literally.)

[Aotrs Shipyards]

Update:

So, bad news. Sorry, I don’t have any pictures or anything to leaven this up.

My fears about today’s Universal Credit appointment were 100% justified.

In a very real sense, they are not so much moving people from Working Tax credit to Universal credit as just obviating Working Tax credit entirely, especially if you are self-employed.

Universal Credit is basically set-up such that if you are self-employed, you are tacitly told by the system “either Get A Proper Job Loser, make enough money you can’t claim it anyway or get knotted, mate.”

To whit: If you are self-employed, if you are not making enough to qualify for “gainful employment” (whose gain? Certainly not mine.) you have to be looking for work and sign-on every week. Identically, in fact to if you are NOT self-employed and signing-on, though apparently we don’t call it that now.

If you ARE making enough to qualify for “gainful employment” – you are about 50% past the break-point at which the 45% of your income they reduce the benefit by is larger than the benefit you qualify for anyway.

(Or at least if you are single and don’t have children. The children – and presumably, but I may be reaching, since Mum doesn’t count apparently – dependants is fair enough; that I am single because I Don’t Significant Other (and thus Don’t Marriage) also feels a bit punitive, to be honest.)

That “gainful employment” threshold is – are you ready for this? £1400 a month.

(Twice what is if you are getting paid employment, apparently.)

I have, basically, taken the final option of the three (got knotted), and spent the last few hours composing a letter to my MP (because that nonsense is not something I will tolerate without issue, and that is about the only thing I CAN do about it).

So, what are the ramifications for the Shipyards?

It’s still going be here, for at least as long as my savings last and I HAVE to functionally sign-on. I am not in any immediate danger of going short of food or anything like that. Long-term, what it does mean is that what saving I have gathered which were, basically a buffer for what happens when my parents die will be being whittled away .

In the shorter term: An acceleration of the process of getting the .stl files up, and maybe setting up of a kofi account (just as SOMETHING) and using that as an indicator as to whether it is even worth trying to set up a Patreon.

I have also been idly considering compiling Bleakbane’s Galaxy Guide to a first edition PDF release for a while as essentially a mechanics-less sourcebook, but that is still a ways off yet; under the circumstances, I may well put that as a “pay what you want” on Wargames Vault.

[Author]

Posts