In cycle 182, Tri-Tachion engineer Mark Stanlor discovered a way to fine tune shields emitters so that they could filter dangerous radiations while letting the light pass through. This could finally allow space culture to become a viable solution for non terraformed worlds by preventing the degeneration of the crops.
At that time, a bottleneck in Paragon class power-plants production left several unfinished hulls taking space dust in shipyards. Nobody know exactly how he managed to get several execs to support his project, but Mark was allowed to buy one of those for one symbolic credit. He then sold back the fortress shield emitter to finance a general reconversion of this hull into a massive mobile space farm. Using several loopholes in private armed ship legislation, he managed to keep 2 of the large turrets mounts, but the rest was removed to accommodate a vast flight deck for shuttle loading. The large central space was floored, closed by a dome on each side, covered with earth, watered, fertilized and connected to a massive environmental system to keep the conditions perfect for the cultures.
The domes had their own shield system tuned for filtering radiation, but in case of an attack or an asteroid shower, Mark wanted to be able to deploy a normal combat shield. The problem was, both couldn't be activated at the same time. As close to a sun as the ship was expected to sit, the few seconds of exposition during combat shield raising would suffice to burn the crops to a crisp. To avoid that he managed to create a jump-start system that would allow an the shield to raise almost instantly, at the cost of large flux production.
The ship was named Demeter and launched in 185 for it's test flight. Thanks to it's on-board genetic labs and the ideal conditions for growth, the first harvest occurred 2 months later. It was a tremendous success, the fruits and vegetables where sold in a mater of hours to the greatest restaurants and chefs for more than 10 times their price. That's when Mark revealed his true objective: having proved the viability of the concept, the ship was now for all intents and purpose his! And the sudden surge in his supportive execs wealth raised suspicion on how he managed to negotiate such a generous contract. Then, instead of selling rights to build other farm ships, he jealously kept his prize and now sell high quality product to the most luxurious establishments. in the sector.
As it had been pointed out, I didn't consciously took inspiration from
this but I can't deny a resemblance...
[EDIT]
This is the previous version without the two secondary greenhouses, but I'm not sure witch one I prefer...
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Topic: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed] (Read 2226929 times)