AMCO
I'm Sorry Dave
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
The Globex Corporation considers the Gaia-class to be its greatest accomplishment. These monstrously large vessels have a volume over thrice that of torpedo spheres, themselves massive weapons designed to assault shielded planets, but none of this space is wasted - within its cavernous halls, a Gaia-class holds the systems required to create an atmosphere from the ground up, vast banks of genetic data and the facilities to clone seeds and animals alike, the massive atomic forges and associated autofactories required to create everything it needs, and an AI to supervise it.
This AI, typically one of Globex's own Synthetic Intelligence Constructs, has access to the processing power needed to create an ecosystem from the ground up without supervision; should such supervision nonetheless be desired, a Control Spire can be attached to the side of the sphere.
Terraforming Spheres are otherwise entirely automated, though sections can have life support to protect cloned lifeforms pre-distribution.
While not a warship by any standard, the monstrous size of the Gaia-class means that its self-defence suite is sufficient to rip apart star destroyers or even carry out a Base Delta Zero operation. Although some dare call this excessive, the inclusion of such weapons cut down on the need for an escort fleet - something that would otherwise be utterly essential for such a herculean investment.
Besides, the massive banks of energy missiles are well-suited to grinding mountains to dust when 'flatter terrain is desirable'.
HISTORY
The project that would culminate in the Gaia-class Terraforming Sphere was commissioned by the Sith Lord known as Darth Prospero as part of his self-aggrandising visions for the future, though it was completed years after his demise. Despite going through several corporate restructurings until it ended up as part of the Globex Corporation, the 'Working Group for the Advancement of Terraforming Technologies' that presided over the project never suffered from a lack of funding, presumably due to the late Prospero's generous financial contributions.
Whatever the case, the final product of the project would be welcomed with open hands by Globex's Board of Directors - while the cost of building such vessels is immense, their operating costs are lower than one would think due to their heavily-automated state, Voidsiphon-derived power, and ability to manufacture their own replacement parts and maintenance droids using locally-available resources.
Due to the costs involved, many terraforming spheres are funded and owned by single-ship stock corporations - other companies, private citizens, and governments have all been known to invest in such ventures, whether in hopes of future profits or in the interest of local development.
Worlds of Our Own Devise: The Gaia-class is fully-equipped to work towards highly diverse objectives. Listed non-exhaustively below are some of the more notable examples. As is to be expected, there is significant internal variance within each 'category'.
- Intent: Reshape entire worlds in accordance with corporate directives.
- Image Source: Worlds Of Our Own Devise by Aaron Rolfe.
- Methods: Landscape... with aliens and Garbage dron [sic] by cyberkolbasa, Terraforming robots by Rashid Qureshi.
- End Results: Mars - Green Mars by Ludovic Celle, Combine Harvester by Thomas du Crest, Harvester by Stas Yurev.
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: Terraforming
- Manufacturer: The Globex Corporation
- Affiliation: The Globex Corporation
- Market Status: Open-Market
- Model: Gaia-class Terraforming Sphere
- Production: Limited
- Material: Hexalloy.
- Classification: Terraformer
- Length: 2880 metres
- Width: 2880 metres
- Height: 2880 metres
- Armament: Low
- [16] Starhammer Batteries
- [400] Miniaturised Starhammers
- Point Defence & Starfighter Interception.
- Defences: Very High
- Hangar Space: Very High | 25
- Hangar Allocations: The Gaia-class is able to hold and maintain up to twenty-five squadrons of Combat and Support Craft; most Gaias hold no more than five squadrons of Starfighters, if any. They typically host entire flotillas of Mule Utility Drones, Mining Drones, etc.
- Manoeuvrability Rating: Average
- Speed Rating: Low
- Hyperdrive: Class 6 (Standard)
- The Gaia-class is equipped with almost every conceivable industrial and terraforming subsystem.
- While the Gaia-class itself is fully-automated, a Control Spire can - and often is - be attached to it, see the art. This superstructure is able to house the thousands (if not tens of thousands) of ecologists, engineers, and miscellaneous scientists involved in a terraforming project. If a Terraforming Sphere has a Data Savant assigned to it, they often prefer isolated quarters near the AI core instead.
- The Gaia-class is equipped with titanic tractor beams designed to rip apart meteors and feed them directly into Atomic Forges, which in turn feed into autofactories fabricating everything from drones to satellites to space station segments ready for assembly.
- In addition to a variety of satellites, the Gaia-class often fabricates ADPs for security and Vulcan-class stations for utility.
- The Gaia-class can fabricate a variety of droids, e.g., Bumblebees for construction and Life Givers for seed dispersal/pollination.
- At the heart of the Gaia-class is a massive Voidsiphon providing the terraforming sphere with endless energy for its projects; this is backed up by four cold fusion reactors, though these are generally kept offline except in combat or other unusually power-intensive operations.
- The Gaia-class is operated by an advanced artificial intelligence housed within an AI core that makes a BRT supercomputer seem primitive. Its superhuman cognition is well-suited to the herculean task of reshaping worlds and artificially engineering entire ecosystems.
- Devising Worlds: The Gaia-class Terraforming Sphere is capable of singlehandedly reshaping an ecosystem, establishing an industrial hub, or bringing life to barren worlds. Its host of subsystems covers every need imaginable, from the fabrication of the armies of drones needed to carry out the task to the altering of genetic sequences if preexisting species prove insufficient for the goals at hand.
- Corporate Hubris: The Gaia-class is capable of bringing life to barren worlds, but doing so is notably more time-consuming than taking an already inhabitable world and improving it. Sometimes, the validity of this 'improvement' is a matter of some contention.
The Globex Corporation considers the Gaia-class to be its greatest accomplishment. These monstrously large vessels have a volume over thrice that of torpedo spheres, themselves massive weapons designed to assault shielded planets, but none of this space is wasted - within its cavernous halls, a Gaia-class holds the systems required to create an atmosphere from the ground up, vast banks of genetic data and the facilities to clone seeds and animals alike, the massive atomic forges and associated autofactories required to create everything it needs, and an AI to supervise it.
This AI, typically one of Globex's own Synthetic Intelligence Constructs, has access to the processing power needed to create an ecosystem from the ground up without supervision; should such supervision nonetheless be desired, a Control Spire can be attached to the side of the sphere.
Terraforming Spheres are otherwise entirely automated, though sections can have life support to protect cloned lifeforms pre-distribution.
While not a warship by any standard, the monstrous size of the Gaia-class means that its self-defence suite is sufficient to rip apart star destroyers or even carry out a Base Delta Zero operation. Although some dare call this excessive, the inclusion of such weapons cut down on the need for an escort fleet - something that would otherwise be utterly essential for such a herculean investment.
Besides, the massive banks of energy missiles are well-suited to grinding mountains to dust when 'flatter terrain is desirable'.
HISTORY
The project that would culminate in the Gaia-class Terraforming Sphere was commissioned by the Sith Lord known as Darth Prospero as part of his self-aggrandising visions for the future, though it was completed years after his demise. Despite going through several corporate restructurings until it ended up as part of the Globex Corporation, the 'Working Group for the Advancement of Terraforming Technologies' that presided over the project never suffered from a lack of funding, presumably due to the late Prospero's generous financial contributions.
Whatever the case, the final product of the project would be welcomed with open hands by Globex's Board of Directors - while the cost of building such vessels is immense, their operating costs are lower than one would think due to their heavily-automated state, Voidsiphon-derived power, and ability to manufacture their own replacement parts and maintenance droids using locally-available resources.
Due to the costs involved, many terraforming spheres are funded and owned by single-ship stock corporations - other companies, private citizens, and governments have all been known to invest in such ventures, whether in hopes of future profits or in the interest of local development.
Worlds of Our Own Devise: The Gaia-class is fully-equipped to work towards highly diverse objectives. Listed non-exhaustively below are some of the more notable examples. As is to be expected, there is significant internal variance within each 'category'.
- Biorestoration is an admirable goal, to most; with its host of terraforming systems, the Gaia-class is fully capable of restoring an overpolluted atmosphere, cleaning up entire seas of radioactive sludge, and recycling mountains of garbage. Whether this is profitable is another matter.
- Even more impressively, barren worlds can be transformed into lush paradises by altering the atmosphere (or providing one by transporting the requisite matter from elsewhere), melting ice / tractoring ice comets into the planet, and constructing an ecosystem; this latter part is the most time-consuming, requiring every step of the ecological ladder to be pulled from genetic archives and cloned for distribution.
- Inhabitable desert worlds are a favourite for further development; add water and cloned flora/fauna and productivity skyrockets! This is, of course, contingent on the planet not being home to natural resources that are better exploited without biomass in the way.
- Such efforts are not strictly speaking necessary if an agriworld is desired; little more than an atmosphere, appropriate terrain (levelling entire mountain chains is doable, with time and firepower), and profitable biological monocultures are required. Generally, both the lands and seas alike are exploited to the highest possible degree - the lands produce crops or livestock and the seas algae, sea crops, and/or sealife.
- Globex-developed agriworlds are not filled with small family farms and similar nonsense; instead, monocultures farmed by autonomous vehicles stretch from horizon to horizon and local weather patterns are altered to provide an even distribution of hydration.
- Sometimes, even monocultures are less profitable than the extraction of material wealth; instead of bothering to create an ecosystem (... or preserving the preexisting one), these 'extraction worlds' tend to focus on massive mines, mantle bores, continent-spanning railroads, titanic refineries to purify local resources, massive autofactories to create various products, and shuttle ports or a space elevator for exports.
- On the flip side, a Gaia-class could be assigned to Biopreservation; its cavernous form is able to assemble on-site the army of drones needed to sample an entire ecosystem for posterity - or transplanting it onto a terraformed world.
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