Intergalactic Summit

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I'm quite impressed by your assessment, actually.

A fine, clear and detailed analysis of the Republic's ships. If something could be added was, maybe, a small lineup of their strongest and weakest models.

Good material here.

The Minmatar bought their original shield technology to the Caldari ?

Actually, I've heard rumblings that engineers are considering removing the Typhoon's turret mounts. But yes, I can just imagine Drake-class shielding coupled to Rupture-class speed and versatility...

My apologies for the belated reply here, but this, more in-depth, discussion of Matari ship design from my perspective was prompted by my reply to Vikarion's piece on Amarrian vessels.

As I mentioned in that reply, Matari reactor technology has serious MW/m3 issues compared to the rest of the cluster, leading to the auxiliary power systems and limits on hotel power demand you see on Matari ships. (For the uninitiated, hotel power is used for crew and passenger comfort functions such as food preparation, non-essential lighting, and portable appliances such as say one's shaver, hairdryer, or alarm clock.) Some ships are able to sacrifice the space needed in order to achieve ample power output (the Maelstrom is a good example of this in action), but this is somewhat troublesome for older designs, which rely more on manual crew and thus need more crew spaces.

In contrast, while nanomechanical processors do not have great absolute performance compared to the rest of the cluster, their TFlop/Watt ratio is unsurpassed cluster-wide, and only approached by the very best low-power photonic processors and some highly nonconventional nanoelectrical designs that are occasionally seen in use by the Ammatar as retrofit gear for Matari ships. Neither traditional Amarrian nanoelectrical designs nor any of the quantum processors in original equipment service can come close to the low-power and low-thermal-budget capabilities of nanomechanical processors, which was essential to compensate for the limited power budgets and strained cooling systems of Matari ships. Early units had poor service reliability though; HOWEVER, this has long since been overcome.

Another note is that while Matari superstructures are lightweight, they are typically stiff and strong under normal flying conditions (they are more vulnerable to battle damage, though). This, along with the ready availability of post-deployment support from Matari shipbuilders, helps when post-deployment modifications need to be made, to an extent that the Amarr only approximate (the ship designs lend themselves to extensive modification, but the design and engineering support is simply not there to go with it), and the Caldari and Gallente abhor (I'll talk about this in more detail in my replies to those postings).

Matari armor is indeed mostly ceramic, usually with metallic reinforcements woven into the armor composite in the form of a "mat" in modern plating. This has since become the standard for all Tech Two and Tech Three shipboard armor systems, and is used frequently in Tech One builds as well. The matrix material, of course, varies depending on whose ship you are dealing with.

Another note has to do with crewing. While the Republic Fleet and space-borne Matari paramilitaries have traditionally relied on large crew complements, this is by no means mandatory. Minor mechanical modifications to most Matari ships do allow significant crew complement reductions; further automation is possible as well at the cost of crew space and further hotel power diversion to power auxiliary processing and automation elements. It is a significant integration chore, though, which is what prevents it from being deployed fleet-wide. (I have to do many automation retrofits myself on Matari and Caldari vessels as the nature of Anoikis ops forces me to run with skeleton crews.)

There is plenty of trade between the State and the Republic, just as there is trade between the Empire and the Federation. Their relations are not as cold as their militia propagandists would like to believe. The political map is actually pretty simple to understand.

Open a map of New Eden and pick any nation. Got one? Good. The people across the table from them are their allies. If it's a liberal nation, they neutral to the one on the right and hostile to the one on the left. If it's a conservation nation the they're neutral to the one on the left and hostile to one on the right.

I'm sure a political scientist could see some sort of hidden meaning or pattern buried in there, too.