Difference between revisions of "Faction:Hephaestus Industries"

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About

Hephaestus Industries (HPI) deals primarily in construction contracts for small ships, large ships, stations, and even metropolis-class mobile cities. HPI has expanded their focus to include their entire supply chain - allowing them to control all aspects of their supply chain, including resource acquisition (via both mining and salvage operations), transport, construction, defense, and delivery.

Hephaestus Industries is named for Hephaestus - the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes.

History

Founded in 2024, HPI was initially conceived as a manufacturer and provider of reusable satellite delivery systems and relatively inexpensive passenger transportation vehicles to support the new space tourism industry. HPI's unique decision to handle their engineering operations as science-driven ventures (as opposed to the business-driven models adopted by many companies at the time) led to many unique innovations that allowed them to quickly become both innovators and leaders in the industry. Their flagship product, the HPI-UCD Chariot satellite delivery system, which could deploy a satellite to an extremely precise orbit via a reusable, unmanned craft, became the industry standard before and during the early years of the Second Space Race of 2029. Many credit this stance as an industry front-runner as a significant contributing factor to the numerous Government contracts that the company received from the United States, Canada, and other NATO nations (now known as the United Atlantic Empire, or U.A.E.).

The largest, and most important of these contracts was geared towards the development of a process to economically and efficiently produce carbon super-nanotubes. With their roots in science-driven development, HPI was able to complete the contract by 2031, and developed the materials that would be instrumental in the construction of the U.A.E.'s first significant victory in the Second Space Race, their lunar base. Further development of these materials enabled the U.A.E. to construct humanity's first true gateway to the stars, the Pará Space Elevator, which effectively led to the U.A.E's victory in the Second Space Race in 2034.

Since then, HPI has cemented it's status as a leader in space construction, engineering, and scientific enterprises. Their carbon super-nanotubes made space engineering possible as we know it, and new scientific uses are still being found for this super-material (the most recent of which was it's use in the Boson Suppression Matrix of modern gravity generators). HPI has expanded it's construction division to include various military, industrial, commercial, and civilian craft, while its scientific branch continues to lead the way in development of bleeding-edge weapons, communications, and processing systems.

Current Operations

The majority of HPI's current business contracts involve the design and construction of large ships of various sizes, ranging from small exploration craft to capital ship-class military platforms. Construction of these crafts is often completed in one of their many known dry dock locations, though secretive militarized projects are sometimes handled at their well-hidden stealth mobile construction yards. When the need arises, HPI also maintains several mobile construction platforms, which are capable of resource collection, refinement, and assembly of on-site projects, such as asteroid stations and orbital platforms.

HPI's largest revenue stream comes from it's military construction branch, which services many factions, from interstellar empires (the U.A.E. remains one of their largest customers) to small mercenary flotillas. While HPI offers some of the most cutting-edge military technology on it's line of militarized vessels, they always reserve the most effective means of defense and detection for their corporate armada, the Forgeguard.

The Forgeguard is not only tasked with the defense of all HPI installations and crafts, but also acts as Hephaestus Industries' standing naval and army forces. Though they have been deployed to several armed conflicts since their creation (again, typically finding themselves as allies to the U.A.E., if only to protect their business interests), HPI typically prefers to take a stance of neutrality in all armed conflicts. Their continued production and sale of military platforms to various parties, along with their typical stance of neutrality in armed conflicts, has (to some) earned them the reputation of a war-mongering arms dealer on an inter-stellar scale. HPI denies these claims, and states that "We [HPI] are simply providing parties with the strategic and defensive armaments that they already desire, not creating that desire in the first place. We are in the business of building ships, not wars."

Current Members

Bases of Operation

Hephaestus Industries is currently completing construction on our stellar headquarters and primary salvage station, Lemnos. Exact locations of our bases are highly classified in an effort to protect the resources, infrastructure, and strategic dominance of both ourselves and our clients.

Ship Class Designations

Hephaestus Industries uses specific naming conventions for all ships based on their block size, role, and class in addition to a revision and unit number. While early ships will most likely be referred to by their class designations, the naming of individual units is at the discretion of each ship's captain.

Block Size Designations

Classification and Class Designations

Naming Rules

Hephaestus Industries ship designations are derived from various entities from Greek mythology and history - mostly gods, titans, heroes and beasts. Ship designations should closely match the design and function of the ship itself. For example, our Athena Command Ship class is named for Athena, the Greek goddess of strategy, courage, strength, law and justice.

To determine the correct name of your ship, use the following template:

HPI-<Block Size Letter><Classification Letter><Class Letters>-<Model Number><Revision Number> <Designation Name> <Ship Number>

Let's look at our Cerberus-class heavy fighter as an example. As always, we start with our faction callsign followed by a dash:

HPI-

The Cerberus class heavy fighter is a small ship, which we use an "S" to designate:

HPI-S

Since we're dealing with a military craft, we follow with an "M". You can determine the classification and class of a ship by reading the descriptions in the Classification and Class Designations table above:

HPI-SM

It's a fighter craft, so we'll use the "FI" to signify this:

HPI-SMFI-

Next, we add on the model number:

HPI-SMFI-20

Following that, we include the revision that the ship was created under. Note that it's possible for multiple Cerberus-class fighters to be in operation with different classes, but we'll still consider them to have the same designation:

HPI-SMFI-2002

Next, we'll add a space and the class designation name for east identification:

HPI-SMFI-2002 Cerberus

Finally, we'll add a ship number, which allows multiple ships to exist with the same designation while maintaining unique identities for each:

HPI-SMFI-2002 Cerberus 01

Ship Naming Designations

Experimental Ship Designations

• Stealth mobile construction yard
• Mobile construction platform
• Stealth bomber
• Stealth fighter

Current Ships