To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If you're going for a pure combat fleet you want powerful Frigates anyway. Frigates are pound for pound the best investment, since you'll get higher aggregate CHL and you can outnumber the enemy.
It doesn't surprise me that the Amarki don't have cruisers. They like big powerful battleships and to do well in combat, so they built some Rialas as flagships/powerful battlewagons and use Frigates as their primary combatants.
It doesn't surprise me that the Amarki don't have cruisers. They like big powerful battleships and to do well in combat, so they built some Rialas as flagships/powerful battlewagons and use Frigates as their primary combatants.
I would not be surprised to see a new Amarki cruiser design in 2-4 years.
I was just thinking earlier that the Atomic is just the right size and mass for a light cruiser. I think we could build just one as a prototype/proof-of-concept and release the design specs to Member Fleets who want to build their own.
The same goes for the Shooting Star "Comet Emergency Wartime Build." Build one Prototype and let Member Fleets build their own if they so chose.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Probably because they haven't built enough frigates to replace the cruisers, or because the cruisers serve some doctrinal/tactical/operational role not otherwise captured very effectively by our statline system. For example, it might be that their modern combat frigates have minimal command and control facilities, so the cruisers are needed as command ships. Or the cruisers might have spacious cargo bays that make them useful for certain kinds of civilian relief missions, while the frigates have no such capability.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Also, post-isolinear we can build 1500kt cruisers that are flatly superior to Excelsior-As in every way but doctrine bonuses. Hell, we can even do it sooner than that, but isolinear should allow for an extra +1 pretty much across the board in stats.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or, like with our Miranda, there's little to be gained by scrapping it and it's still useful every once in a while.
- Location
- Australia
I'm looking to start an Amarkian General Cruiser prototype a year after the Riala-successor, 2327~2328. Also, the Brieca-A and Calac-A are in phase-out right now after their refits gave them time to get the Anacail/Mielab project up to speed.
Capital ships can be difficult to save up for on most member world budgets, whereas frigates can keep the yards ticking over. You have to be pretty big to casually schedule in a lot of capital ships.
Capital ships can be difficult to save up for on most member world budgets, whereas frigates can keep the yards ticking over. You have to be pretty big to casually schedule in a lot of capital ships.
- Location
- Aotearoa
I want that Atomic. C6/S6/H2/L5/P5/D5 1MT light cruiser that looks like a Kepler? Yes please!
...
I can feel Stesk shaking his head at me in disappointment.
Prototype it for the member fleets seems like a good idea, it's a pretty sweet concept.
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Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
It's almost certain, the Hebrinda-A is less tough than Anacail and only slightly better-armed.
Council will probably mandate that the Atomic is visually distinct from the Kepler in some fashion. Aside from the obvious Science Module.
And I'm ok with that. Otherwise we run into a situation were people are deliberately targeting our Keplers regardless of our intentions. Like in Vietnam where the Vietcong were shooting at medivacs because they weren't visually distinct enough from gunships.
Or is that a myth? I'm not sure.
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Okay, I'll argue this one. The Kepler is not an unarmed hospital ship. It is a frigate with a Combat of 2, which is the same values as a lot of light frigates used by other powers. If you are in any situation where shooting Federation ships is a good idea, you ought to shoot Keplers! They are by no stretch non-combat ships... we even plan to use them as scout ships in fleet battles.
Now that we've established that Keplers are legitimate combatants, the only question is whether it's okay to hide the fact that some of them are packing more firepower than others. What about that is wrong?
- Location
- Aotearoa
Fair point. It's mostly the attractive stat line, though it's perhaps a little fragile for mainline combat at H2. Do the member fleets tend to paint their ships white?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
A moment of devil's advocacy here: consider the advantages of the notional 'Atomic' over the Renaissance-class?
C6 S6 H2 L5 P5 D5, 100/80 resources, 2/4/3 crew, 10qtr build time, versus
C5 S3 H4 L5 P4 D5, 100/80 resources, 3/5/3 crew, 12qtr build time
As a warship, the 'Atomic' has relatively few advantages in direct combat; the class has incrementally more firepower, but this is more than offset by the 'glass jaw' hull weakness. In the Heavy Metal phase, I'd honestly rather have a Rennie; the Rennie won't be so easily nerfed by a shield-penetrating hit and is more likely to survive long enough to warp out if taking hull damage.
In skirmish roles, the 'Atomic' far outperforms simply by virtue of being a frigate that can participate in scouting/skirmishing, but by the same token, scout/skirmisher ships don't pressingly need firepower. They never face the enemy's heavy metal and often pull out of battle before anyone on any side has an opportunity to inflict decisive damage on an opponent. A stock Kepler might well be actively the better choice overall for the skirmish role because of the class's +1S, as might a Comet (S4D8 to the 'Atomic's' S6D5). The Comet is also incrementally cheaper and leaner-crewed.
Now, on event response the advantage goes handily to the more modern frigate with its greatly superior Science and marginally superior Presence, and the 'Atomics' are incrementally faster to build and use two fewer units of crew; they are clearly strictly superior to a Rennie in every way except for the 'glass jaw.' But the gap in performance isn't as overwhelming as we might think in all roles generally speaking, and is quite likely to close when the Renaissances get their refits, because right now we're looking at a class designed with phaser arrays and comparing it to a class without.
I'm not saying there'd be no demand for this, but I think that the demand for the design would mainly be as a 'war emergency refit' to the Keplers, intended to assuage any concerns that some of our member states with more pressing military requirements might otherwise have about the obviously peacetime-focused Kepler-class that would discourage them from building the class.
EDIT: Again, the 'Atomic' is clearly better in almost all respects (except a slamming, battering Heavy Metal combat), and slightly but perceptibly cheaper on two of the most important metrics our fleets use (crew and build time). But it's not a revolutionary advance in military affairs compared to the ships we already have except for bringing to the table a much higher Science score than any previous generalist cruiser or frigate.
And I suspect that a lot of designs will become available that have very high Science, once phaser array technology becomes widespread.
You're entirely right to point this out. Keplers are not "peaceful" ships in the sense of being unarmed; they fight as well as many turn-of-the-century frigates or light cruisers could have done.
If a rogue time-traveling Kepler appeared in front of our 2308 fleet, we would have no ship capable of reliably defeating it one-on-one except for our explorers. At that time, our best light combat ships were the C3H2L3 Centaur-As, and they were just coming into service; the bulk of the light fleet consisted of C3H1L2 Mirandas and C3H2L2 Constellations. I wouldn't bet on either class reliably beating a C2L2H4 ship in a fight, though it would be close.
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And the Rennie-A would probably have +1 or +2 in every stat except for hull.
C6 ...S6 ...H2 L5 ....P5 ...D5, ...100/80 resources, ....2/4/3 crew, ......10qtr build time,
C6-7 S4-5 H4 L6-7 P5-6 D6-7, 100+/80+ resources, 3?/5?/3? crew, 12qtr build time
I don't know what I was thinking advocating the Atomic as a light cruiser.
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- Location
- Aotearoa
Reasonable. However, many of those arguments seem to fall in support of prototyping the design (as a frigate or light cruiser??) and making it available- if only as a refit option. Assuming we ever get the time, PP etc.
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Eventually, we will have to get a break.
Worst case scenario, the Pact takes the Gorn and then aid them to take the Ittick-ka; the HoH take all the feuding polities in between us; the Klingons/Romulans go xenophobic and close their borders; the ISC expands just enough to cut us on that vector.
End result, we are completely encased in rival polities, so while we will need to maintain a strong outer shell, we won't have to spend on diplomatic pushes, intervening in the wars of others, or many other drains on our resources. Gives us a chance to consolidate and really layer in the industrial complexes. Say an Argus array in every Theatre, a Heavy Industrial Park in every system with more than a light ship yard, way stations so thick along trade lines that you can just about walk ....
Is this an ideal situation - no. But it does let us get all those Development tasks dealt with.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I don't disagree with doing so in principle, I just want to make sure the class doesn't get pitched as an obvious winner compared to, in particular, a probable Renaissance-A refit.
What about a C6 S6 H4 L5 P3 D5 Atomic?
Rennaisance-A (2327), C6 S4 H5 L6 P4 D7, 115/90, 2/5/3, 12q
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
In that situation, the chance that the Pact, the Harmony, or both at once don't attack us is basically nil.
And then we go to work developing the far side of the Space Gate's (because the tauni are really not going to go with the Harmony) iconian gateway to the point it can support Explorer production.
The Federation is like a gas, which expands to fill all available space...
Himmelhand
Giant Sinkhole 2020
- Location
- Midwestern US
To me, this just fundamentally says we need to up the mass of our cruisers. That may be a decent upgrade for existing hulls, but I would definitely pick that Atomic over the Rennie-A in that scenario for a new build. That would basically relegate our Rennies to being command and control platforms for task forces while the frigates do the work. Perhaps a P/D-specialist refit for cruisers might make a complementary set of ships? I know that cruisers' combat role goes against that sort of build though.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Hm. As I suspected, that comes a lot closer to closing the gap between the two designs. The Atomic is up +2S, but the Renaissance-A is up +1H +1L +1P +2D, providing a variety of combat and event response advantages. The crew cost is almost even between the two designs (+1 point of Enlisted for the Rennie), though the Rennie now costs incrementally more resources in addition to taking longer to build.
Plus, I can start building Rennies now and refit them later. Whereas if I want one of these Atomics I probably have to wait a decade or so- a few more years for phaser arrays to be invented, then more years for the designing and prototyping.
Dunno, it's kind of a marginal choice. The Renaissance has a major advantage of +2D for event response, a slight advantage in pitched battles (+20 HP of durability), and its event roll capability is almost as good (-2S +1P). It's more expensive, but it's very little more expensive. Plus, by the time we actually get to make this choice it's going to be 2330 or later and we'll have an enormous pile of Rennies already sitting around waiting to be refitted.
I'm not saying categorically that we shouldn't pursue this new design, but it's at most the same order of incremental improvement that we got from building Rennies instead of Constitution-Bs, arguably not even that much, especially since the Renaissance-A will still be good for at least one more refit on top of that one, while the Constitution-B very explicitly isn't.
...
EDIT:
That said, a 1.5-megaton-or-so cruiser wouldn't go at all amiss under these conditions, I agree on that point. Something that clearly differentiates the cruiser category from the light-cruiser-sized "frigates" we've taken to building.
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