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[SirHartley]

We had a discussion about that recently, and it came out that it's not really clear if the Hegemony can actually build new XIV-Type ships or if they run entirely on relics. In gameplay terms, they can, but that is likely just be so they have a proper faction identity.

Are they able to do that, or do they just repair and refit what they have?
Personally, I think it's all ancient material and some normal onslaughts with a new paintjob and some additional armor bolted on.

A secondary question, I think, would be the overall capability that a nanoforge allows for. I suspect it's not able to build entire ships but only parts of them to be assembled, and even then, only with a blueprint and only in original configuration with a lot of failsafes to avoid tampering. That'd at least explain why they are apparently having issues building new ships, considering the Heg has both the biggest population, industrial base, and resource extraction operation in the sector.

We know TT can build new stuff, but they have so little personnel and industry it's gotta be an immense effort to even build one capital (and imagine the office politics in that project, ew).

[Nettle]

Sindrian Diktat is an entirely post-collapse and post-first AI war faction with their own line of ship conversions, but Fourteenth Battlegroup hullmod specifically denotes the ship as "a survivor of the original 14th Domain Battlegroup which founded the Hegemony". So I'm somewhat confident that in-universe you can replicate all the modifications associated with original 14th Battlegroup ships but Hegemony just doesn't do that, for one reason or another. Maybe its not even practical anymore?

[Worldtraveller]

The blueprints are available in game, so I assume yes?

[SirHartley]

The blueprints are available in game, so I assume yes?

That's what I'm referring to as "Gameplay Concession" - yeah, there's a blueprint, but that might just be there so the player can raid for it. The faction can spawn the ship, you can raid for other blueprints, so not being able to get the BP for those specific ships would suck and not conform to the player expectation of "I raid and get what they have". Lore shouldn't dictate gameplay, and this might just be a case of those two diverging, which is why I'm asking.

[Randolf]

The general feel I get from it, from the description of the modification and the use of non-XIV ships, is that they can no longer produce ships of the XIV battlegroup anymore. I mean why would you use a normal onslaught over a XIV one? It's effectively a straight downgrade. Well because in lore they cannot build the special modification onslaughts and have to settle for using the basic version.

Furthermore it isn't only capital ships they use the more basic version of; Eagles, Falcons, and Enforcers all have XIV versions (maybe more but none that I can remember now). The rarity of the modifications makes it feel like they just cannot produce more. Legion in particular makes a good point for this too, cause if they could build more XIV battlegroup ships then they would absolutely build the XIV Legion. In game they do make more XIV because it is a game of course.

The nanoforge doesn't build the ship parts themselves, they build a factory around itself that produces the ship parts. So a corrupted one makes a factory that probably has a lot productions D-mods on it. It is still better than a human built factory but has defects that humans cannot find and fix because the whole factory comes from the nanoforge. A pristine nanoforge just makes the correct factory without any production D-mods! Which means the stuff it produces is based on the size of heavy industry that surrounds it. Doesn't matter how good a factory is if you can only put in so much material at a time and unload it from the factories or fit the pieces it puts out together with a bad weld job(which is actually the lore reason behind D-mods that happen even when using a pristine forge). Otherwise it doesn't say how the ships are built. Piece by piece and shipped up to space? Just outright building in space ala Deathstar 2? Just dump enough materials in the chute and out comes a fully built ship out the other end? Dunno

[Killer of Fate]

No...

I assume they can't. It's either requirant of technology that no one understands in the Persean Sector, or industrial applications that cannot be reconstructed. The equivalent of a Cryoarithmetic engine.

It's very much possible taking a look at XIV ships that most of the ships we see in vanilla aren't really the core what used to form the Domain, and that there were larger, more potent and way less economically practical vessels employed that would cease to exist, because who would be able to make them?

However that sounds like a stretch.

The reasoning why XIV ships can be acquired from the Historian and manufactured at an industry is cause the player is designed to exist above the laws of the game's world for the fun factor. Similarly to how Remnants exist above the rules of the sector in their ridiculous numbers that could easily take down the Core Worlds, for the sake of creating an end game challenge.

However if I wanted to be conspiratory, I'd say Hegemony can make XIV ships, however they are too expensive and the upper management of it made up this dumb story that they can't be built no more, cause they are slowly going bankrupt. And showing weakness is considered in their language a death wish.

[Princess of Evil]

I'd guess it's a tech issue rather than anything else. They have the blueprints and the materials, but actually making them likely requires higher tech materials and parts than Sector can make. At most they can force an orbital pristine forge to make the ships slowly, painstakingly hand-checking parts for quality, and even then they're D-modded.

[Megas]

XIV ships are more expensive to build or buy than standard.  If I have access to both standard and XIV blueprints, but not at the point when I have too much money or sufficiently high production per month, I may build the standard version instead of the XIV.

I imagine Hegemony mixes normal and XIV to simulate limited funds.

[Doctorhealsgood]

The XIV variant is probably a luxury compared to the standard variant so i assume they are fabricated in lower quantities. Hegemony does sell (to trusted entities) and fields XIV variants on their fleets.

[SteelHeart]

As some people have pointed out, its likely a logistical difficulty when you already need to produce loads of ships to protect the sector. If the hull mod increased production time by any meaningful amount, and it probably does, then then the heg as it stands might simply chose to not spend that and crank out a few extra ships which probably means more in the long run anyway.

[Sleet]

So, let's take the actual in-game text:

"Built to the specifications of the 14th Domain Battlegroup which founded the Hegemony, this vessel is a prime example of the Domain Navy's 'decisive battle' doctrine, particularly exhibited by a series of radical structural modifications performed using pre-Collapse industrial technology."

First and foremost, it does not necessarily imply that the XIV Battlegroup ships we see in-game are from the 14th Battlegroup itself. What we know is that a lot of XIV Battlegroup materiel - described as irreplaceable - was destroyed in the First AI War, let alone the second. But I'd like to look at a specific part of the way the description is writen: "built to the specifications". At no point is it directly stated that the XIV hulls we find are leftovers from the XIV Battlegroup -- and gameplay-wise, they'd certainly be a lot rarer if that were the case. Currently it's "hand out in military surplus to commissioned auxiliaries at a slight premium price", which implies at the very least they can continue to be produced. This could, however, be a gameplay thing, because the XIV buff, while powerful, wouldn't be mechanically justified with the price & rarity increase that would be expected of the lore-accurate irreplaceable hulls.

Let's consider how ships are actually built in the first place:

1. Producing any kind of quality warship requires an industrial-scale nanoforge. Nanoforges are giant engineering nanite-powered factories that, via a very complicated human-assisted process, assemble raw materials into functioning starship components that can then be put together -- they must be integrated with the appropriate heavy industry in order to function. In order for a faction to express any kind of conventional power projection, access to such a nanoforge is fairly crucial -- the Hegemony and League both have pristine, state-of-the-art nanoforges, whereas the Diktat, Tri-Tachyon, and even the Luddic Church have damaged, 'corrupted' nanoforges that, while powerful, will wind up often producing components with substantial, but manageable, defects.

2. Nanoforges need instructions on how to build things. These instructions come in the form of 'blueprints' -- copy-protected, presumably encrypted data that includes the essential instructions on how a nanoforge could assemble functioning starship components. Blueprints are a prerequisite for the construction of a given starship.

As for what a XIV Battlegroup ship is, most of the adjustments are likely internal -- different 'structural modifications' that enable the mounting of heavier armour with surprisingly minor drawbacks on mobility. In the process, it marginally improves the base flux grid.

Manufacturing a XIV Battlegroup starship therefore requires access to an industrial-grade nanoforge, an appropriate XIV blueprint, the prerequisite raw materials, and maybe a specialist team skilled enough to put the components together. We know that raw industrial output is not a problem for the Hegemony: it has Chicomoztoc, a world with hundreds of millions of people equipped with a vast base of heavy industry and one of the sector's only 'pristine' nanoforges. Likewise, as a major faction with a large stake in the markets for ores and refining, it should at the very least be economically feasible to provide this nanoforge the material it needs to produce XIV starships.

The only issue, then, is whether the Hegemony has the blueprints and expertise to produce XIV starships. We can find XIV blueprints out in the wild, so I'm sure the Hegemony still has some lying around; likewise, it's difficult to believe that the literal descendants of the original 14th Battlegroup, under junta-based martial law, are clueless as to how stick XIV components together in the right ways.

As such, it's quite likely that the Hegemony can produce authentic XIV hulls. As others have pointed out, however, this process is clearly more costly and it's more economically viable to mass produce other ships to fill out the ranks. This would explain why XIV hulls are rarer and more expensive, yet also explain their relative proliferation throughout Hegemony markets despite so much time having passed since the collapse.

[Nettle]

First and foremost, it does not necessarily imply that the XIV Battlegroup ships we see in-game are from the 14th Battlegroup itself.

Every 14th Battlegroup variant has a note in codex identifying it as "A survivor of the original 14th Domain Battlegroup which founded the Hegemony".

Manufacturing a XIV Battlegroup starship therefore requires access to an industrial-grade nanoforge, an appropriate XIV blueprint, the prerequisite raw materials, and maybe a specialist team skilled enough to put the components together.

There are no XIV blueprints in universe, a lot of blueprints, like LP and pirate ship conversions, are just gameplay concessions that do not exist lore wise. Pirates don't put an Atlas MK2 blueprint into a nanoforge to print it. They just salvage an Atlas out in the wild and modify it.

It is likely that "series of radical structural modifications performed using pre-Collapse industrial technology" refers to whatever tweaks the base variants underwent after they were produced. It might even specifically refer to using nanoforges to print the necessary parts, so recreating 14th variants might not be out of the question in present time, but seeing how all XIV variants are said to be original survivors it seems nobody does this anymore.

[Killer of Fate]

Spoiler

First and foremost, it does not necessarily imply that the XIV Battlegroup ships we see in-game are from the 14th Battlegroup itself.

Every 14th Battlegroup variant has a note in codex identifying it as "A survivor of the original 14th Domain Battlegroup which founded the Hegemony".

Manufacturing a XIV Battlegroup starship therefore requires access to an industrial-grade nanoforge, an appropriate XIV blueprint, the prerequisite raw materials, and maybe a specialist team skilled enough to put the components together.

There are no XIV blueprints in universe, a lot of blueprints, like LP and pirate ship conversions, are just gameplay concessions that do not exist lore wise. Pirates don't put an Atlas MK2 blueprint into a nanoforge to print it. They just salvage an Atlas out in the wild and modify it.

It is likely that "series of radical structural modifications performed using pre-Collapse industrial technology" refers to whatever tweaks the base variants underwent after they were produced. It might even specifically refer to using nanoforges to print the necessary parts, so recreating 14th variants might not be out of the question in present time, but seeing how all XIV variants are said to be original survivors it seems nobody does this anymore.

[close]

It could however imply that none of these things could be performed without access to an orbital assembly or at least heavy industry and a functional nanoforge.

The thing about XIV though is that it is most likely far more complex than average constructs. Its effect is just kinda underwhelming. It's obvious that the Domain were just a bunch of pretentious doofs who fooled around with god technology only to make something like just more competent machines of war, sometimes not even that much more competent due to their ridiculous lobbying.

So, XIV could be extensively more complex to just strengthen slightly an already functional design for the sake of some stupid military doctrine argument. It's funny how Starsector explores this theme. Of how a lot of militaries' bad habits stem from sticking to conservative worldviews about combat and just economical rambling.

Tri-Tachyon would probably be a million times more effective if they were focused on making actually viable fleets that implement all kinds of vessels rather than just colour coding their armadas.

[Princess of Evil]

Frankly i suspect the reason skins having "built to the specifications", and the hullmod saying "survivor of the original", is just a bug and Alex forgetting to change one of those with continuity drift.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

First and foremost, it does not necessarily imply that the XIV Battlegroup ships we see in-game are from the 14th Battlegroup itself.

Every 14th Battlegroup variant has a note in codex identifying it as "A survivor of the original 14th Domain Battlegroup which founded the Hegemony".

Manufacturing a XIV Battlegroup starship therefore requires access to an industrial-grade nanoforge, an appropriate XIV blueprint, the prerequisite raw materials, and maybe a specialist team skilled enough to put the components together.

There are no XIV blueprints in universe, a lot of blueprints, like LP and pirate ship conversions, are just gameplay concessions that do not exist lore wise. Pirates don't put an Atlas MK2 blueprint into a nanoforge to print it. They just salvage an Atlas out in the wild and modify it.

It is likely that "series of radical structural modifications performed using pre-Collapse industrial technology" refers to whatever tweaks the base variants underwent after they were produced. It might even specifically refer to using nanoforges to print the necessary parts, so recreating 14th variants might not be out of the question in present time, but seeing how all XIV variants are said to be original survivors it seems nobody does this anymore.

It could be the design specifications are the "survivor", not the ships themselves. The Heg, at a minimum, lost the ability to produce XIV Legions.
This of course assumes the blueprints exist in universe, and are like hullmods. As in they are massive data slates with functional examples of how to produce ships under various conditions, to ensure they are consistent enough to meet Domain quality standards, but modular enough to enable a host of hull modifications, and differing weapon systems.
The only issue with this theory is that blueprints disappear on use, although that can be explained as the Domain applying DRM.