As some of you are aware, my most recent group of posts have been about a frigate I called ‘Mikasa’.  I took the name from the real Mikasa, a Japanese warship that is now a museum, which I visited a few weeks ago.  I love real-world naval history as much as I do Star Wars, and mix my knowledge of both in my writing for the Vast Empire Navy.

Anyway, the real life Mikasa was commanded by Admiral Togo, a man hailed as one of the finest naval leaders of his time.  As I studied the man, I discovered that he learned about engineering and ship design by doing work experience at a shipyard.

I wonder if the Vast Empire navy should do the same?  From reading our wiki page, I see that the Vast Empire gets a great deal of its war materiel from the Imperial Centre company, which has shipyards at Etchik, Vectra System, and Pribe, Rheagent System.

I propose that, for the higher levels of our Engineering Certification (possibly Starfighter Engineer and certainly Naval Engineer) a character’s story should be a week or two placement at the shipyards.  The VE would no doubt benefit from the military and military industrial complex having close ties, and it makes sense for our officers to be given vital ship-building experience.  They can study ships as they are built, and lend a hand in construction both basic and advanced.

This serves the added benefit of giving writers a wide array of problems to deal with for their cert story, rather than relying on their actual ship breaking down for the umpteenth time.  (Oh, the hyperdrive on the fleet’s flagship has broken down AGAIN, guess someone is doing their cert).

Of course, for this to work we’d need to flesh out details of the Imperial Centre shipyards a bit, but I’d be happy to do that.

Just an idea to make the certs a little more interesting and realistic.  What do you think?

I like this. Go ahead with it- also note that the Belgaroth Shipyards are open to members of 2nd Fleet and are more convenient considering that's the fleet's home base.

Sometime or other I'll put up a one-off post introducing the company that runs the shipyards at Belgaroth...when I get time, lol.

-Drac

Okay Drac, I'll get going on this.  Just to be clear, I'm going to create wiki pages for the two shipyards we have so far (and at some point we'll add Belgaroth as a third).  Then I intend to link them to the Engineering Certification page, updating it to reflect the 'shipyard placement scheme'.  That sound okay?

Also, I will want to change the locations of the shipyards to bring them in line with the existing information on the Vast Empire’s worlds (the VE main homepage).  Etchik in the Vectra System is a barren world of no interest, so I want to move that shipyard to the VE Navy’s main base world of Abrae.  As for Pribe in the Rheagent System, it is described as a century from colliding with the sun, and so not exactly suitable for the long term investment of a shipyard!  I want to move that yard to Mongol, the moon orbiting the VE capital planet of Lotaith.

Both shipyards would still be in the systems originally listed on the Imperial Centre wiki page, but would now be in better locations, closer to the Navy bases and so easier to defend.

Understood!  I'll PM them before I do anything.  Thanks for the support Drac!

We have the U-505 here at the Museum of Science and Industry here in Chicago, and it has to be one of the most impressive weapons of war that I've seen in person from the 20th century. Just thought I should share that here because of the Mikasa.