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[Cik]

civilian/military is a blurry line when it comes to space ships anyway. was it commissioned by the domain? only alex can answer that. domain probably didn't have total control over every shipyard, though. and "civilian" is just what you call something that isn't actually armed at the moment. nothing's stopping you from putting an M2 on a truck and making an infantry fighting vehicle: space edition

we can infer a few things:

it's a big ship (cruiser)
it has a flight deck (integral hull feature, unlike say, turrets)
it can support a fleet with supplies etc.

this isn't really a "warship" it's too utilitarian. however, that doesn't mean it's a "peaceship"

seems to me like it was constructed, either as a cog in domain state enterprise (if there was such a thing) or as a private venture to supply mining concerns with long-range, semi-defensible fleet bases. it's a very rounded design, moderately capable, cheap, easy to manufacture and presumably maintain. there's nothing terribly warlike about it. obviously it regularly sees fleet action, but that's not necessarily because it's a warship. any cruiser is a good cruiser when you can choose between a utilitarian support ship and nothing.

furthermore, if anything the presence of the venture in the sector at all reinforces this: the sector was likely on the fringes of domain space, which is why venture(s) were there in the first place. for long range exploration and mining stuff. it's likely that had there not been for the exodus of the (geez i can't remember, the hegemony battlegroup with the cool orange highlights) the sector would basically just be a place with junky old mining equipment shooting each other until everything collapses.

[Aeson]

but we do know that there are many ships who were originally purely civilian vessels that have been militarized following the collapse. apparently that is often more cost effective than manufacturing new, purely military ships.

in addition to the small upgrades to various transports you mentioned, Gemini's flight deck was originally meant for small mining drones only

I am somewhat doubtful that the Gemini was originally a "purely civilian" vessel. It's armed roughly as well as the Mule is - arguably better, considering that the drone system means that you don't need to put PD in either of the medium ballistic mounts and you get a flight deck on top of everything else. It has a shield efficiency of 0.8, which is typical for midline warships, whereas a shield efficiency of 1.0 is more typical for midline civilian ships. Unlike the Tarsus/Condor and the Buffalo/Buffalo Mk 2 conversions, you don't see any significant loss of cargo capacity relative to dedicated freighters. The only thing that the Gemini is missing to be a purpose-built light carrier is 1 burn speed. As is, it could easily be a purpose-built escort carrier or the space equivalent of the merchant aircraft carriers used in WWII, neither of which is remotely like a 'purely civilian' vessel.

Granted, some or all of that could very well change with the next patch, and it having just barely more OP than it needs for its armament in the current version suggests that it'll be unable to field the better fighter types without sacrificing at least some of its armament in the next patch, though that would still leave it looking like it's only as "purely civilian" as the Mule is.

its flux stats are awful by cruiser standards, despite the fact that it would've already needed to be able to operate the typical Mining Blaster in an original non-combat role -- which is part of why the other two non-missile mounts are typically only used for the very flux-light single Flaks. so i don't think it got any significant improvements in this aspect.

The absolute values of the Venture's flux stats are low by cruiser standards. However, the Venture also only has three weapon mounts that can actually generate any flux (unless using modded missiles), which means that it has the highest base flux capacity and second-highest base flux dissipation relative to its weapon mounts of any combat cruiser. On top of that, it has a tough enough hull and armor (the second-highest base hull and base armor values in the cruiser class, at that) that it doesn't really need to rely on its shield for much other than soaking high-damage HE shots such as Harpoons and torpedoes. Speaking of its shield, the Venture has a shield efficiency of 1.0, which is typical for low-tech warships whereas a shield efficiency of 1.2 is more common among low-tech civilian ships, and on top of that it's an omni shield, which means it's much easier to catch missiles/torpedoes with the Venture's shield than with, for example, the Dominator's, especially if trying to flicker the shield to avoid significant hard flux buildup.

Also, the primary reason why the two ballistic mounts are often used for flak cannons is because that's the only way to get 360-degree PD coverage on the Venture. However, the Venture doesn't really need full PD coverage since it can use its omni shield to catch missiles and since its armor is tough enough that you need at least a low-grade torpedo or several Harpoons hitting close to the same point to really start hurting it.

it still has the civilian sensor package, just like the Shepherd. and while military grade sensors don't seem to be worth the extra cost/complexity on ships originally designed for civilian functions, i doubt replacing/altering an already present military sensor package to a lower quality one would be worth the additional effort.

Regarding this and the Venture's power plant: One of the easiest ways to make a demilitarized or civilian version of a warship is to simply build it using civilian-grade hardware instead of military-grade hardware - which, incidentally, usually makes the demilitarized variant cheaper.

Also, I agree with Embolism that it makes very little sense for the shipyards to be producing military-grade Ventures which are then demilitarized by the operators, or which are demilitarized for sale to the current operators. With production being done by automated factories that work off of heavily-encrypted and possibly hardcoded blueprint chips, it makes much more sense to think that the shipyards are simply working off Venture blueprints that call for civ-spec components, or that the Venture blueprints simply call for older-generation mil-spec components which are comparable in performance to current-generation civ-spec components and have never been upgraded to make use of newer mil-spec components due to the Venture falling out of favor with or use in the Domain military for one reason or another (granted, if this is the case, it'd be more appropriate to call it obsolete than demilitarized, as calling it demilitarized suggests that it's been intentionally downgraded from the military standard).

I can totally see why the Mora exists in spite of the Venture: the Venture doesn't even compare to the Mora as a carrier, at all.

The Venture looks to me a lot like it's an early experiment in carrier design - perhaps contemporary with the Mora, or perhaps even older. It's very similar conceptually to some of the early carrier experiments in the real world, which include cruisers/battleships with flight decks built over some of the turrets, cruisers/battleships with half the turrets removed to fit a flight deck, more or less dedicated carriers that have 6" or 8" guns in casemates under the flight deck, and so on. Aesthetically, the Venture is closer to the Enforcer/Dominator/Onslaught than to the Conquest, which suggests that it's older than the Conquest, and we know that the Conquest slightly predates the popularization of fightercraft. This would suggest that the Venture design is old enough to be an early experiment in carrier design and tactics, one which fell out of favor in military service due to being less effective as a carrier than more dedicated carriers such as the Mora and less effective as a direct combatant than standard cruisers such as the Eagle or a hypothetical (but probably extant at some point in the setting's history) contemporary of the Dominator. Such a vessel would, however, have a certain appeal for civilian use in unsafe regions - it's a single, fairly tough ship which provides light cruiser level firepower for repelling pirates, has a reasonably capacious cargo hold, and has a flight deck which can be used to field fighters for increased protection or other light craft for mining or salvage operations.

"civilian" is just what you call something that isn't actually armed at the moment. nothing's stopping you from putting an M2 on a truck and making an infantry fighting vehicle: space edition

I would not refer to a truck with an M2 strapped to it as a military vehicle unless the truck was already a military-grade truck before you strapped the M2 to it. Militarized or armed civilian vehicle, sure, but not military.

Also, the difference between "civilian" and "military" is not the difference between "unarmed" and "armed." That can be part of the difference, but there are many unarmed military vehicles which do not have direct civilian equivalents, and even when they do have direct civilian equivalents they're usually not identical; the military versions are usually more rugged and more resistant to damage to permit long-term operation with relatively little maintenance in a hazardous environment. There are also armed civilian vehicles which retain their civilian status despite being armed - for example, many merchant vessels in the Age of Sail (and no, armed merchant ships at that point in time were not usually structurally identical to contemporary warships; the warships typically had stronger hulls and framing to resist incoming fire and support the weight and recoil of their armaments, whereas merchant ships were typically more lightly built).

[Sy]

And yet I wouldn't consider the Shepherd without its drones any more effective than a Kite or an armed passenger transport. I'd put it in their category in terms of improvements.

i'm not following here.. why does the fact that its drones are an integral part of its usefulness in combat somehow mean it couldn't have gotten noteworthy improvements over the original, purely civilian version? we know that it got weapon mounts, armor and engine upgrades.

the fact that it doesn't have good enough combat stats to go toe-to-toe against pure combat ships without using its drones as support doesn't mean it didn't get significant military upgrades, because we do not know what kind of combat stats it had before said upgrades. a Condor without its flight deck(s) would be almost completely useless as well. and yet its alterations were so extensive that it doesn't even have the original shape anymore. not that i believe Shepherd's upgrades were as extensive as Condor's total conversion, these are obviously on a entirely different level, but i don't understand how the reliance on drones proves that Shepherd barely got any upgrades at all?

and again, in the case of the Kite, i don't think adding three weapon mounts to a ship of that size is insignificant either. but maybe we just have different ideas of what we consider significant. ^^

I think terrible flux stats is a point towards it's not really militarised.

uhm, yes...? exactly. i agree. that was my point.

this is what i've been arguing the whole time: Venture does not seem to have extensive military specs. i feel you've kinda flipped sides in this discussion now. ^^

my overall point was that i don't see how Venture having originally been a civilian ship that got a couple military upgrades is unlikely, because 1) civilian-to-military conversions do not seem to consume "significant resources" (at least not to the point where they wouldn't be cost-efficient), and even if they did, Venture does not seem to have gotten far-reaching military hardware additions/alterations. you argued the opposite, earlier:

I think the Venture being a militarised civilian vessel is less likely than the opposite because militarisation of a cruiser requires significant resources.

[..] as resource-intensive as redesigning a cruiser-sized hull to include multiple extra medium weapon mountings, a military-grade power core, hull and armour reinforcements... and whatever's necessary to upgrade a civilian cruiser to be combat-capable.

...and yet now you are explaining to me how Venture is still almost entirely a civilian ship, with barely any military hardware at all?

as i already said before, it is of course possible that the very first Venture blueprint was for a military version and later got changed to a civilian one, before the collapse. but other than "well, we don't for certain either way, so it could be true!" there doesn't really seem to be much reason to assume that was the case. and considering we know of many examples of civilian-to-military upgrades and even total conversions done in the sector, yet only of one single ship that went back-and-forth, with both an original military version and a later civilian version existing pre-collapse, i do not see how the later being true for the Venture is somehow the most likely one -- especially since, as i mentioned, this back-and-forth seemed to be a new idea David came up with specifically for the Mora:

Spoiler

Alex: How is this going to be substantially different from the Heron? Could go with either 1 deck + heavy armament (more in line with Hegemony doctrine? but also kind of the Venture, but stronger and with less useful out-of-combat stats) or 3 decks and almost no armament (which could also fit in with the Hegemony doctrine, if looked at as greater specialization…)

D: Ooh, I’ve got this: So given that Hegemony doctrine inherits the ‘traditional’ doctrine of the Domain at the time of collapse – of heavy line battleships, though at the start of a transition back to cruiser/carrier doctrine – this specialized lowtech cruiser carrier could be a holdover from the previous wave of Domain doctrine that had a larger role for fighters.

So why are these in the field? The Domain navy decommissioned them from military service, so they were de-militarized and sold to budget-minded civilian enterprises in development on the Domain’s frontier, as having some former carriers with big handling/construction bays can be a very useful thing. Once the Collapse comes around, these former construction/mine drone handlers slash ersatz mobile drydocks are re-militarized (thus less useful out-of-combat stats than one might expect). Used perhaps more by pirates, independents, and the Luddic Church more than by the Hegemony or TriTachyon, so that the big carrier fleets of these guys can be supported by something better than Condors but not so good as the Heron or Gemini.

A: That sounds good

[close]

not that it really matters. even if the original blueprint was for a military ship, by the time of the collapse these would've been rewritten to a civilian version. which means either the Venture did get a few military upgrades after the collapse, or it has always been in its current, semi-civilian form throughout the sector's history.

I am somewhat doubtful that the Gemini was originally a "purely civilian" vessel.

right, yeah. i included Gemini in the list as one of the ships that we know for certain got some military upgrades over the original design, but i agree it might never have been an exclusively civilian vessel without any combat potential at all. although, as you mentioned, 0.8 will turn it into a proper freighter-hybrid, sort of the carrier version of the Mule: not a pure combat ship, but still useful enough to be deployed into battles that don't just involve running away.

Also, the primary reason why the two ballistic mounts are often used for flak cannons is because that's the only way to get 360-degree PD coverage on the Venture.

i was mainly talking about why they are just normal single Flaks, rather than the much more powerful Dual Flaks: because the Venture would have trouble supporting the high flux and OP costs of the later.

Also, I agree with Embolism that it makes very little sense for the shipyards to be producing military-grade Ventures which are then demilitarized by the operators

yes, i agree. the Venture has almost certainly either been in its current form for a long time (from before the collapse, even if possibly not from its original inception) or has gotten a couple military upgrades to a previously purely civilian hull since, most likely done manually after the automated manufacturing process, just like with the Shepherd and various other low-tech ships.

[Aeson]

as i already said before, it is of course possible that the very first Venture blueprint was for a military version and later got changed to a civilian one, before the collapse. but other than "well, we don't for certain either way, so it could be true!" there doesn't really seem to be much reason to assume that was the case. and considering we know of many examples of civilian-to-military upgrades and even total conversions done in the sector, yet only of one single ship that went back-and-forth, with both an original military version and a later civilian version existing pre-collapse, i do not see how the later being true for the Venture is somehow the most likely one -- especially since, as i mentioned, this back-and-forth seemed to be a new idea David came up with specifically for the Mora:

Said back-and-forth makes it explicitly clear that David envisions there as having been a period when the Domain made relatively heavy use of fighters, followed by a period when the Domain did not make heavy use of fighters when existing Domain carriers were demilitarized for civilian use. How is this a case against the same thing happening to the Venture, either at the same time or in some earlier period? No two ships can have similar design histories or be affected by the same event in the backstory? Sure, it's an idea that David came up with recently, but it's not like Codex entries are set in stone or cover the entire history of the design or anything like that; they're there to give a little background information and maybe hint at how it's supposed to be used in the 'present-day' Sector.

Also, hybrid designs generally do several things adequately but don't do any one thing particularly well, which can make them decent options while you're unable to support many ships or as interim options while waiting for the specialists to become available, but also means that they become less and less attractive the more ships you can afford to operate. The Venture isn't anything special in this regard - it does a decent job of being an Enforcer+Condor+Buffalo or something like that in a single-ship package, but two Ventures don't really fill any combat role other than perhaps 'damage sponge' any better than an Eagle and a Heron would (and probably wouldn't even with better flux stats), and with greater numbers of ships you could probably fit in a few Buffaloes or Tarsuses to make up the difference in cargo capacity without losing out on combat performance, especially once you run into the officer limit or if we ignore the ship cap and instead go by operating costs.

[Dri]

There really needs to be an (A) version of the Venture that is brought up to military standards (no civilian-grade hull) and comes with a burn of 8! It's base of burn 7 is just such a downer...

[Midnight Kitsune]

There really needs to be an (A) version of the Venture that is brought up to military standards (no civilian-grade hull) and comes with a burn of 8! It's base of burn 7 is just such a downer...

Already coming in .8

[Embolism]

I don't think of the Venture's "downgrading to civilian use" as meaning "it got turned into a Buffalo", nothing that extreme.

I would guess that the original Venture was a offensive support vessel with 2x fighter bays, 4x medium missile mounts and mil-spec equipment in general (power core, engines, armour, etc.). After its obsolescence it was released for civilians and became used in much the same way it is now, to underpin operations in unstable Sectors. As it's now fighting pirate marauders rather than, I don't know, rebellious Domain system fleets, its missile-boat firepower was somewhat excessive. To save construction and maintenance costs, its military grade hardware was downgraded (losing 2x medium missiles and fighter support) and utility systems installed to better serve civilian interests.

.....

I guess we should also think about how ships are built in the Sector, namely autofacs and apparently unhackable blueprint chips (or whatever they are called).

Adding to a blueprint is extra cost. Taking stuff away from a blueprint... is also extra cost, because the autofac is going to build the original blueprint whether you like it or not. You'd be spending more to get rid of it, so unless whatever you're trying to get rid of costs a lot to maintain you probably won't bother.

The Venture, to my mind, is a bit more hard-hitting than I would expect from an armed civ: particularly the 2x medium missiles with fast loaders which, to my mind, seem to fit fleet operations better than pirate deterrence. If I were a civilian operator I'd probably be more inclined to make the Venture stronger against smaller threats (note the Venture has no small ballistic/energy mounts) rather than focusing on firepower against larger ships.

It makes more sense to me that the Venture was originally meant to fight larger ships, and this persisted despite its downgrading. Since the blueprint's gonna build it anyway, civilian operators just kept it going.

[Cik]

true. thing is, there is no "military grade" what was military grade 50 years ago is civilian now. the same could be said for power cores; it's reactor/capacitor/conduit system could just be old; at any point in the domain's history the design could have been easily sold, traded, or stolen and reproduced elsewhere which is likely what happened. for all we know, the venture could be from the dawn of the midtech era (fits the theme, i'd guess) and centuries later it went from a missile support ship to a fleet anchor (still with missiles though)

i agree about the buffalo thing, there's no real reason you would actually disarm something, especially a cruiser. you don't HAVE to mount weapons in the provided hardpoints if you don't want to, but in the anarchy of the collapse it's rarely a good idea to present yourself as an easy target.

[Sy]

Said back-and-forth makes it explicitly clear that David envisions there as having been a period when the Domain made relatively heavy use of fighters, followed by a period when the Domain did not make heavy use of fighters when existing Domain carriers were demilitarized for civilian use. How is this a case against the same thing happening to the Venture, either at the same time or in some earlier period? No two ships can have similar design histories or be affected by the same event in the backstory? Sure, it's an idea that David came up with recently, but it's not like Codex entries are set in stone or cover the entire history of the design or anything like that; they're there to give a little background information and maybe hint at how it's supposed to be used in the 'present-day' Sector.

i didn't mean that the existence of the Mora means the Venture can't have a similar background, but that said background having been a new idea at the time of the Mora's implementation makes this unlikely. i agree that even though it rather clearly was not the case initially, it's entirely possible that Venture's background lore got changed/expanded to one similar to the Mora's.

but i just do not see anything convincing that is pointing to that possibility being particularly likely. there are many ships in the sector with various forms and degrees of military upgrades/conversions of originally civilian hulls, but only a single one that we know for certain went back-and-forth between military and civilian specs. so unless there is any concrete evidence that the Venture got a new origin story somewhat recently, it having been either in its current form since the original blueprint, or it having gotten a few recent military upgrades to an originally civilian hull, seems a lot more likely.

anyway, i sent a PM to David to ask for his opinion on the matter:

hey, is it alright to ask a lore question here? i saw there was a general lore thread for some time, but it doesn't really seem to be in use anymore. and i know you're not the only lore person, but Ivaylo doesn't seem active anymore, and i don't wanna distract Alex from his important work, if i can avoid it.

i'd like to know some stuff about the Venture's origins: was it...
a) designed in its current form (or rather v0.8 form, with built-in Mining Pod wings replacing the modular flight deck, and built-in Surveying Equipment hullmod) right from its inception, as semi-civilian mining/industry ship with basic combat capabilities?
b) originally primarily a civilian ship without noteworthy military hardware, that recently got a few upgrades/alterations due to the sector's ever-present threats and demand for cheap combat ships, like in the case of the Shepherd?
c) originally primarily a military ship without built-in mining/industry hardware, that then got demilitarized for civilian use when the Domain military's focus shifted away from strike craft, like in the case of the Mora?

i understand the official answer to specific lore details is often just "who knows?", but i'm curious if there is any canonical answer -- or, if there isn't, which of the above you would think to be the most likely/fitting one.

So I went back and read the description of the Venture, which I'm pretty sure I didn't write.

It seems pretty that it's a civilian ship design at its heart, not military, and receives up-arming as appropriate for the user for the dangerous post-Collapse era. I think the baked-in mining drone wing really clinches the civilian argument in the latest patch.

so that's not 100% conclusive, but he also seems to find the Mora-like backstory less probable or suitable than the more common one of a civilian ship with basic military upgrades.

[Morrokain]

I classified the Venture as "Combat Freighter" in my mod. Militarized heavy industrial mining/logistics cruiser. Its color is very industry utilitarian to me and the design scheme just reminds me too much of the Nostromo.