The Culture Explores 40K III: Just As Planned

[Selrahc]

Taking 2:1 or even worse losses is perfectly fine. The Culture can easily sweep up and reprocess the wreckage afterwards. A single factory ship would outproduce a Forge World by a ridiculous margin, maybe even outproduce an entire sector. (it's considerably bigger than a GSV, but far less capable since its specialized to manufacture crappy ships in huge numbers)

In Surface Details, a fleet of 300000 ships capable of glassing planets was built in three months. This fleet was capable of being smashed by a single GSV and was treated as a minor/local threat, but each one was capable of glassing a planet and travelling and fighting at hyper speeds. Each one of these hopelessly obsolete, minor threat, ships could probably beat an entire Imperial or Chaos fleet.

Ships in 40K are not easy to build. There are probably only a few million ships across the entire Imperium of Man, of which probably around 300000 are warships. With several decades of time needed to build more. Far less in the hands of Chaos, with even less capacity to replace. Sending a disposable fleet in to purge the ships of Chaos could drastically decrease their ability to enact their plans. If it all failed spectacularly and the ships were subverted to Chaos, then any decent Culture warship or larger Contact ship could easily wipe out the disposable fleet.

[Gavinfoxx]

The Nob actually said 'da Panzies', which translates as 'the Eldar'... of course, it does show significant value judgement about Eldar society...

[The Glyphstone]

In Surface Details, a fleet of 300000 ships capable of glassing planets was built in three months. This fleet was capable of being smashed by a single GSV and was treated as a minor/local threat, but each one was capable of glassing a planet and travelling and fighting at hyper speeds. Each one of these hopelessly obsolete, minor threat, ships could probably beat an entire Imperial or Chaos fleet.

Ships in 40K are not easy to build. There are probably only a few million ships across the entire Imperium of Man, of which probably around 300000 are warships. With several decades of time needed to build more. Far less in the hands of Chaos, with even less capacity to replace. Sending a disposable fleet in to purge the ships of Chaos could drastically decrease their ability to enact their plans. If it all failed spectacularly and the ships were subverted to Chaos, then any decent Culture warship or larger Contact ship could easily wipe out the disposable fleet.

Presumably each of those minor threats still has Culture-level tech, though, which this Culture is trying to avoid at all costs on the even slim possibility it'll be subverted and the technology stripped to repurpose.

I think you're overestimating the time it takes to build 40K ships, but the margin of differential between them and Culture ship production is so huge that the mis-estimation is negligible. Chaos may have less capacity, but they can also have more time - inside the Eye, linear time is one of those things that can be reduced from a Law to a Strongly Worded Suggestion. Unfortunately, such things are entirely dependent on plot/writer fiat, so it could take Chaos decades to replace a ship, or they might be able to rebuild an entire fleet in months by realspace reckoning (though subjective decades/centuries).

[jseah]

part 10.5 Rogue Trader

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Week 1
After the fiasco last week, the Rogue Trader was understandbly angry. Although after we explained the situation regarding the warp effect surrounding the woman, he identified the woman as a Slaaneshi. Illogically, relations are still rather cool.

The Rogue Trader has been forced to halt his trading mission as there are allegations that he assassinated the governor during his visit. Nevertheless, he has already received payment for more than three quarters of the food we provided and is already recruiting heavily from the planetary population.

What is more interesting however is his new gambit. He has requested that we provide him with construction plans for servitor cloning vats for him to cut down on crew requirements. We are currently considering this move.

Meanwhile, after his recruitment drive was over, the Rogue Trader has set off to return to the mining bases. During his absence, the mining complexes have increased in size as they built further extensions using the minerals they mined. Courtesy of the nanobots and good working practice. Already, accident rates are down by nearly 60% and death rates have plummeted to below statistical measurement (but is probably somewhere between 1 per two weeks to 1 per month).

Of course, servitors are the perfect answer to manpower shortage problems. And if you place crew in charge of servitors, then you won't lose all that much efficiency but will gain morale as the crew shift towards higher paying lower effort supervisory roles.

[jseah]

or they might be able to rebuild an entire fleet in months by realspace reckoning (though subjective decades/centuries).

Months realspace time is still far too slow however.

Still, I'm planning to have some events happen in early part 11 regarding a Chaos attack before they implement this (if I decide to at all). Spiky gets to give "da panzies" a hard time.

There is the very delicious possibility of a time much much later for when the Culture believe they can channel the Orks to some extent and decide to gift them an entire disposable fleet for an excursion into the Eye. (of course, only to have the Orks radically refit them all)

The Nob actually said 'da Panzies', which translates as 'the Eldar'... of course, it does show significant value judgement about Eldar society...

Will edit post.
Added a short "tl note". Doesn't mention Eldar, but I figured I may as well leave a slight misinterpretation in.

[The Glyphstone]

Months realspace time is still far too slow however.

Still, I'm planning to have some events happen in early part 11 regarding a Chaos attack before they implement this (if I decide to at all).
There is the very delicious possibility of a time much much later for when the Culture believe they can channel the Orks to some extent and decide to gift them an entire disposable fleet for an excursion into the Eye. (of course, only to have the Orks radically refit them all)

Like I said, negligible difference even with the more generous time estimates. Culture manufacturing is unfathomably more effective than anything in this galaxy...they just have to be real careful that they don't lose an actual factory ship. That would be bad.

[jseah]

Like I said, negligible difference even with the more generous time estimates. Culture manufacturing is unfathomably more effective than anything in this galaxy...they just have to be real careful that they don't lose an actual factory ship. That would be bad.

Hmm, a "standard" battle (if there is any such thing) goes roughly as follows:
- Chaos ships will be in the system before the Culture ships are since this is a response system, not an attack fleet.
- The Factory ship and Fleet Transport Carriers arrive at 2 light years distance from the target Chaos fleet
- Tactical Carriers catapult the attacking ships towards them at 0.2c or so, releasing the IoM-grade ships just at the system outskirts; this occurs in waves of 30-50 ships at a time; waves arrive ~30 mins apart and take about 15 hours to reach engagement range
- Attacking ships vector towards the enemy and engage at pointblank range until they or the Chaos ships are destroyed

There appears to be very little chance of losing a Factory ship, less than if a Culture GCU engaged the Chaos fleet directly (scrapcode!). But yes, losing one would generate a situation similar to Rise of Chaos.

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IIRC, warp drives can't get near a star or something. Is this a gravity effect? If so, perhaps a massively souped up Pancaker can create a star-sized gravity well around important targets. Like Factory ships and GSVs. Obviously, there would need to be copious use of forcefields and effectors to cope with the gravity so its probably going to be pretty expensive in terms of ship mass.

A bit like an FTL-disruption field you see in space 4Xs.

[The Glyphstone]

It's never explained why, but considering how common the 'FTL doesn't work inside a gravity well' trope is in science fiction, that's the most likely explanation.

Of course, since it's the Warp GW writers are horribly inconsistent. there are occasional examples of ships entering/exiting the Warp within a gravity well. Sooo.......maybe?

[Misery Esquire]

I think it has more to do with the fact that Warp exits aren't perfectly placed, so if you're exiting near a star and end up 10,000km closer than you thought... Well, it's going to get toasty, wot?

[Gavinfoxx]

A note on Crew... at Imperial level tech, you need a lot of human-sized workers to do a huge amount of basic tasks on a ship. There is very little automation. Those workers could conceivably be robotic, though (though there are major issues with the efficacy of using heretical robots as workers at IoM tech level...).


Anyway, a bit of a note on space-based Servitor creation... that's a bit, um, difficult. Presumably, the Mechanicus has made a very, very thorough attempt to keep a Forge World-side monopoly on complete, large scale, Servitor-From-the-vat creation. Most of the time, ships tend to just have 'Crew Reclamation Facility', which take injured crew and process them into servitors (this tends to cause a morale hit in the crew...). Presumably to create lots and lots of servitors directly from the vat at Imperial-level technology, you would need a large factory, an included medical lab, access to exotic pharmaceutical technologies to encourage rapid growth, various processing plants for the different materials used in servitor creation, and the final assembly facilities. These things are generally quite large, and generally planetside.

Now that doesn't mean that it isn't possible, with scans from a large number of Forge Worlds (including Mars!), to get designs for various facilities that can do space-based Servitor creation; just because it is rare and difficult doesn't mean it is impossible. Presumably some of the larger Explorator fleets have facilities to replace lost Servitor crew, after all (though not necessarily all such fleets have such capabilities). But, in general, doing this sort of thing would require Genetor / Magos Biologis to oversee the production. Again, it's theoretically possible to make such operations more automated, and have the whole thing overseen by advanced cogitator systems and other Servitors, but the more you do this, the more you are putting together systems with ideas and scans and designs taken from half a dozen different forge worlds, and dozens of different research labs from different eccentric Magos'... I'm, again, not saying it's impossible. What I'm saying that if the Mechanicum gets wind of such a thing, even if none of the technologies is, individually, heretical...

[Selrahc]

Presumably each of those minor threats still has Culture-level tech, though, which this Culture is trying to avoid at all costs on the even slim possibility it'll be subverted and the technology stripped to repurpose.

Well no, not Culture level. The 300000 ships were made by a lower level involved and could be smashed by a single Culture ship. Not even a Culture warship, just a GSV.

But they'd give Chaos ultimate supremacy in the 40kverse. While giving them no potential to threaten the Culture directly any more than they already do.

So the risk profile for the mission:

Outcome Alpha- Complete destruction of Chaos space assets. Substantial destruction of mortal followers. Crippling of Chaos ability to act outside the warp.

Outcome Beta- Unexpected resistance. Fleet is destroyed with negligible damage to enemy. Self destruct triggers.

Outcome Delta- Fleet subverted in whole or in part. Chaos has a new warfleet, giving them total superiority over all non-Culture military forces. Culture will have to picket the Eye to prevent widespread collateral damage.

I think you're overestimating the time it takes to build 40K ships,

The only statement I know about ship build times directly was about a Lunar cruiser, which took 11 years to build. Seems a little low if anything.

[The Glyphstone]

The only statement I know about ship build times directly was about a Lunar cruiser, which took 11 years to build. Seems a little low if anything.

That's what I was talking about...that Lunar Cruiser was built in orbit of a Feral World. So in a little over a decade, with the industrial base and training of a Stone Age/Bronze Age population, they managed to build a functional five kilometer-long space cruiser. Presumably, an Industrial or Forge World would be able to build said Lunar Cruiser much more quickly.

[Selrahc]

That's what I was talking about...that Lunar Cruiser was built in orbit of a Feral World. So in a little over a decade, with the industrial base and training of a Stone Age/Bronze Age population, they managed to build a functional five kilometer-long space cruiser. Presumably, an Industrial or Forge World would be able to build said Lunar Cruiser much more quickly.

Well... no. With the materials of a Feral World being sent to an orbital spacedock. I don't think we have much reason to believe that it was a crappy orbital spacedock, just because it was drifting close to a bunch of yokel feral worlders.

[The Glyphstone]

Well... no. With the materials of a Feral World being sent to an orbital spacedock. I don't think we have much reason to believe that it was a crappy orbital spacedock, just because it was drifting close to a bunch of yokel feral worlders.

I didn't say the feral worlders were building it themselves/on the surface, but they were supplying all of the materials. That'd include rare stuff like platinum, gold, babysoulinium, or whatever the Imperium uses in its circuitry, and it's likely the work crews were recruited from the planet as well (why import grunt labor when you can get it next door?). The point is that the lowest class of technically inhabited planet in the Imperium was able to produce a ship in ten years, a more developed planet with actual modern infrastructure would be more efficient. It'd have to be, otherwise the Imperium couldn't even make up its canon ship losses.

[Selrahc]

I didn't say the feral worlders were building it themselves/on the surface, but they were supplying all of the materials.

We don't even really know they were doing that.

All we know is that feral worlders supplied materials to an offworld base for ten years, after which a Lunar Class cruiser departed. For all we really know directly from the anecdote, that could just be repair materials for a damaged vessel forced to dock there.

Given that it takes the Imperium over a century to build an Imperator Titan, I'd be shocked if they can knock out a Lunar in much less than a decade. For comparison, it takes us around 11 years to go from first materials work, to launching an aircraft carrier.

I'd imagine where a forge world might win out is in simultaneous construction. Making lots of Spacecraft at the same time.

[The Glyphstone]

There is that possibility, yeah.

[jseah]

I think it has more to do with the fact that Warp exits aren't perfectly placed, so if you're exiting near a star and end up 10,000km closer than you thought... Well, it's going to get toasty, wot?

How close can IoM ships warp in to a planet? Say if some pilgrim ship was trying to get to Earth, could it drop out of warp at Saturn? Mars? The Moon?

A note on Crew... at Imperial level tech, you need a lot of human-sized workers to do a huge amount of basic tasks on a ship. There is very little automation. Those workers could conceivably be robotic, though (though there are major issues with the efficacy of using heretical robots as workers at IoM tech level...).

The disposable fleet will use robots. When I said IoM tech level, I did not mean using IoM tech, I just meant "close to something that exists in 40k already". In this case, its similar to Tau drones.

The Rogue Trader got the idea and requested it. He has access to obsolete Culture tech and the plan on his side is to use him as a social testing bed for technology introduction to the IoM.

[Johel]

Given that it takes the Imperium over a century to build an Imperator Titan, I'd be shocked if they can knock out a Lunar in much less than a decade. For comparison, it takes us around 11 years to go from first materials work, to launching an aircraft carrier.

I'd imagine where a forge world might win out is in simultaneous construction. Making lots of Spacecraft at the same time.

It will take the british between 7 and 11 years to build two small modern aircraft carriers in peace time.
This is a limited project, for which all dedicated infrastructure is either not specially adapted or has to be built from scratch.

To compare, the first Nimitz-class supercarrier took 7 years to build.
The next two others took also 5 to 7 years to build.
Then, as the infrastructure was now steamrolling and technology improved, it took around 3 years for each of the following seven supercarriers.
The last one, the USS George Bush, was launched and officially commissioned after 3 years.

All of this was built in peace time.
Sure, there was the Cold War.
But this wasn't a race against the clock to replace losses in a large scale conflict of annihilation.
So there were other priorities than defense spendings.

To compare, it took barely 2 weeks to produce an escort carrier during World War II.
Because nearly all the industrial output was geared toward defense.
Escort carriers might have been only subpart carriers but they could be produced quickly enough to win the war.
Better 10 bad weapons available when needed than 10 good weapons available when they are not.

-------------------------------------------------

So it's not unreasonable to assume that, with very little automation, the IoM could produce most small warships in very little time.
The Lunar cruiser is the main workhorse, used for patrols and small local engagements and therefore needed in huge number.

[Fan]

We don't even really know they were doing that.

All we know is that feral worlders supplied materials to an offworld base for ten years, after which a Lunar Class cruiser departed. For all we really know directly from the anecdote, that could just be repair materials for a damaged vessel forced to dock there.

Given that it takes the Imperium over a century to build an Imperator Titan, I'd be shocked if they can knock out a Lunar in much less than a decade. For comparison, it takes us around 11 years to go from first materials work, to launching an aircraft carrier.

I'd imagine where a forge world might win out is in simultaneous construction. Making lots of Spacecraft at the same time.

Correction, in The Dark Angels Omnibus Horus has a set of traitor Titans built in 2 decades along with some insanely high powered artillery cannons.

But this was "Pre Heresy", so I'd double that to 40 years for an Imperator Titan.

[Gavinfoxx]

The Rogue Trader got the idea and requested it. He has access to obsolete Culture tech and the plan on his side is to use him as a social testing bed for technology introduction to the IoM.

Ahhh.... Well I can give you some broad outlines for how that will go!

Let's see here... If you want people who work with tech in the IoM to accept your tech, than it has to follow a LOT of rules... mostly, it has to seem like IoM tech and can't --seem-- like Xenotech. This *must* be done in several, several ways! For example, Imperial Macrocannons do use both Gravitic and Magnetic acceleration. But Tau voidship torpedo launchers and railguns, which canonically use gravitic and magnetic acceleration (depending on the case), are seen as dimly understood Xenostech...

Everything must take design cues from Imperial standards. Access points should be scaled to humans. Bits to be worked on must fit human hands, and Imperial tools, and Mechadendrites of various sorts. Languages used in technology should be Low Gothic, High Gothic, Techna-Lingua, and the various other binary languages, like Explorator Binary. Various access points that work with different styles of MIUs and Electro-grafts should be prevalent. Drones and things which act like Servitors should respond well to the variants of Techna-Lingua that are focused on Servitor control. The place should have a Noosphere for data sharing, and maybe internal data linkages to facilitate communication. The design language of 'looking like a cathedral' should be used; however there have been other architectural influences -- a bit more clean Roman looking, even some Soviet bloc stuff is used in some places. Remember, if you can lower the efficiency of, say, a heat radiator on the outside of a ship by 30% and make it look like a Cathedral Buttress, than you should most definitely make it look like that!

Skull motifs are used because they symbolize Humanity. The human form is used in machines wherever possible because of religious connotations of human / biped / omnissiah / divine form. Ships should vibrate, you should hear the life support system, the hums, the noises, the sounds; this lets people know that the ship is working, and if the sound changes, it lets people know that something needs to be fixed and improved and worked on. A reactor, even if it is built as a different type of reactor, should have things like large power conduits going to some sort of central reactor core, and very obvious backups and safties and failsafes and places for actual human interaction and intervention and control should abound everywhere. The fact that Tau voidship reactors DIDN'T very obviouslyhave this sort of stuff, and was monitored by like five engineers, was profoundly disturbing to the humans who saw it...

The various unguents, rites of maintenance and Technomat rituals should work, and when something else is needed to be done, it should display and provide the appropriately needed rituals. There should be places to venerate the Emperor, the Saints and Primarchs, and slightly separate places to venerate the Omnissiah; but places for charms and small shrines and places to burn candles and do other such ritual things should be everywhere.


Basically, I would posit that any Mind and Culture engineers and ship designers and stuff would find the design and engineering patterns and language of the Imperium a fascinating set of restrictions to work under. If you are limiting yourself to Iom / IoM Archeotech / Tau levels of technology (roughly), but requiring to make something with the design language and several of the patterns of IoM tech so that normal humans don't freak out in using it... it presents an interesting puzzle in how one builds or designs any piece of technology. An even further puzzle would be how to, say, sneak in some compatibility with Tau systems and methods without anyone noticing, or sneaking in Xenos-friendly habitat controls into the hab areas without the wrong humans noticing (which some Rogue Traders try to do that last one anyway...)

[jseah]

part 10.5 Rogue Trader

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Week 2
We have decided to design for him a set of incubation plants.

The moral objection to allowing the Rogue Trader to grow full fledged humans simply to decerebrate them is obvious, we have shared this objection with him. After some discussion, we have agreed to try to alter the process to grow servitors in a fashion that never achieves sentience, thus avoiding the moral objection.

Additionally, our incubation process will include a number of crucial corrections to IoM cloning technology. These servitors will not be true clones, but it will be close to it.

These changes, and the requirement that the plant be ship-mountable, means that the technology is not recognizably IoM-based anymore. The Rogue Trader has submitted a list of changes that would make it more acceptable and we are working on finalizing the design.
Much of the needed modifications are cultural objections that would not make the device perform better. Rather, quite a number of them make the device perform worse. The Gothic aesthetic has intrigued a number of our citizens and we have various designs for IoM-imitation ships floating around the 'net.

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Using the mineral production of his two mining platforms, as well as some of his profits, the Rogue Trader has begun to build a plasma refinery around the star he is based in. He will be going around the nearby systems in search of more crew.

Re servitor vats: Rare stuff is good though. With his own mining platforms, the nanobots and crucially, the hyperspace drive, the Rogue Trader is well within "you're dead" territory.

Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a goose.

[Selrahc]

Let's see here... If you want people who work with tech in the IoM to accept your tech, than it has to follow a LOT of rules

This once again gets into the notion that literally everybody in the IoM is a dogmatic zealot. They aren't. The control of the IoM isn't iron hard, and entire planets, sectors and subsectors revolt on a regular basis. Minor treasons are overlooked on a regular basis in most regional areas. Powerful local crime-syndicates, megacorps and noble houses will be looking for any advantage they can get.

People will be willing to use technology, even if doing so is technically treasonous.

Basically, I think you're advising him like he's pitching to the High Ecclesiarch, the Fabricator General the head of the Inquisition, and Sebastian Thor's Mum. Instead he just wants Scumbag Tyrannicus, slumlord of planet Dirtrock 3 to use this stuff as a way to make himself filthy rich(but also improving living standards for the populace).

Nobody outside the AdMech *really* cares about adhering to STC technology. They just want things that work. Unfortunately for them, if you don't give in and go along with the Cogboys mumbo jumbo, they won't give you any tech.

[Gavinfoxx]

What I was saying is that anyone who has to work in or with any tech at all in the IoM would get really freaked out due to the foreign-ness of technology that doesn't seem to fit certain patterns. The Last Chancers Kill Team book shows this quite thoroughly. It's only actual Rogue Traders and certain types of abberant xenophile types that tend to like things different seeming than what they know. It's not that everyone is a zealot, its that everyone is indoctrinated to take comfort on the Imperial way of doing things, and be afraid of other ways...

[jseah]

You know, the Rogue Trader could also get the Culture to design ships from scratch for him. It's not like using the aesthetic is difficult and they can certainly do strange stuff like make a Cruiser-sized biodome/park/farm to recycle organics into food for his crew and for a massive boost to crew morale throughout the fleet.

Hell, you could probably turn it into a kind of city or mobile spaceport. It might not be all that bad of an idea.

That, plus the mining platforms and the plasma refinery and you have the start of a nomadic fleet that can base out of absolutely anywhere with a few asteroids.

[Gavinfoxx]

I would say that he'd be loathe to make stuff that is very obviously heretical to a simple low resolution long range scan... putting arboretums with extra food growing facilities in every ship? Yes. Giant Cruiser size ship farms? Not so much. He might slowly grow into it, though.

Edit: There ARE IoM (well, Mechanicus) ships that are huge omg gigantic mobile spacepoelrts, though.

[jseah]

I would say that he'd be loathe to make stuff that is very obviously heretical to a simple low resolution long range scan... putting arboretums with extra food growing facilities in every ship? Yes. Giant Cruiser size ship farms? Not so much. He might slowly grow into it, though.

Come again, what counts as heretical?

After all, the cruiser sized ship farms can also be made by taking a Lunar and ripping out every single weapon/non-support facility and replacing them with Arboretums.

Or is it that a novel ship hull is considered heretical?

[Forrestfire]

Come again, what counts as heretical?

After all, the cruiser sized ship farms can also be made by taking a Lunar and ripping out every single weapon/non-support facility and replacing them with Arboretums.

Or is it that a novel ship hull is considered heretical?

"Heretical" is basically anything that infringes on the Admech's monopoly on innovation.

[jseah]

That's going to be a problem. Breaking the Ad Mech monopoly is one of the not-strictly-necessary-but-would-be-very-nice "quests" the Culture have set themselves.

So, what is the nature of the relationship between the Ad Mech and the rest of the IoM? Are there any other groups that resent the Ad Mech monopoly and might support getting rid of it that the Culture could aid and leverage on?

[Selrahc]

What I was saying is that anyone who has to work in or with any tech at all in the IoM would get really freaked out due to the foreign-ness of technology that doesn't seem to fit certain patterns. The Last Chancers Kill Team book shows this quite thoroughly. It's only actual Rogue Traders and certain types of abberant xenophile types that tend to like things different seeming than what they know. It's not that everyone is a zealot, its that everyone is indoctrinated to take comfort on the Imperial way of doing things, and be afraid of other ways...

But not if the other ways drastically make their lives easier. There is *already* an extensive black market in alien technology. And alien technology is rubbish. It's expensive, hard to use and carries a lot of risk, while offering benefits only slightly above what Imperium tech can provide. But it doesn't make people puke in revulsion unless they're properly doctrinaire or zealous. Which is a distinct(albeit substantial) minority.

"Heretical" is basically anything that infringes on the Admech's monopoly on innovation.

But honestly, who cares about the Admech? If the Admech can't deliver the goods, who really wants those weird machine botherers around any more?

[Gavinfoxx]

Come again, what counts as heretical?

After all, the cruiser sized ship farms can also be made by taking a Lunar and ripping out every single weapon/non-support facility and replacing them with Arboretums.

Or is it that a novel ship hull is considered heretical?

That's... a good question, actually. Taking a Lunar and putting Arboretums in everything. Hmmm. That might actually not be heretical. But I definitely think that the Rogue Trader will be thinking of the long term, and the sort of, "I want as much self-sustainable production and creation and profit- and resource- generating tech as possible, so that if these Culture people are gone in a few hundred years, than me and my heirs will have access to the best of Imperial tech, or things that they will think are Imperial tech, and can be passed on as 'recovered' Imperial tech, so that my Dynasty will remain powerful and profitable for thousands of years."

This might include things like:

-Goliath Factory ships. These would be the plasma refining ones (and plasma diving from blue-giant stars!)
-A Universe-Class Mass Conveyer (huuuuuge honking 12 km (!) cargo ship) set up as a starport, repair ship, component-producing ship, etc. etc. This could also have lots of and ore refining and other production methods, and various other types of factories and such. Also, if there is any ship that is big enough to contain un-miniaturized IoM Servitor Vat creation methods and such, it is something like this... in fact, it's theoretically possible to put a huge variety of production, repair, and such tech into something like this, and have something close to a ghetto GSV... it might even have enough place for the arboretums and stuff too. Though it would still need to be supported by smaller specialist ships!
-Ships capable of diving into comets, upper atmospheres of gas giants, etc. to mine materials
-Ships with extra Arboretums, like you mentioned before (either components of the Universe, or something else like an outfitted Lunar...)


Of course, sufficient military assets to defend all of the above...