[x] Arrowhead
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[X] Half-Saucer
[X] Arrowhead
[X] Arrowhead
Thing is we'll lose fighting multiple combatants at once. Full stop. Romulan shields will make it so if we don't focus them down one or two at a time we lose. Because they can take a LOT more abuse than we can due to tech differences. We don't need able to fight 4 ships at once. the Nx can do that even now. They'll lose horribly but they have the coverage for it. What we need is something to pop Sheilds fast so everyone else can tear the rather fragile Romulan ships underneath into particulate matter.
As for rapid response? Oh good! You get one or two small hits in before your ship is blasted into dust. Good job. Great investment. Cloaking isn't relevant in warp related combat, and any Romulan that wants to keep up with us won't be cloaked unless they lay a trap ahead of time. Which is what a DN having escorts are for.
We're faster at warp than these guys. They otherwise have the edge with everything else, ESPECIALLY durability. We don't want some massive super expensive no weakness but little strengths ship, we want something that can threaten a warbird with a TKO from opening salvo from focused firepower.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
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lol, 'small hits.' Coverage directly contributes to firepower, because ships don't stay still. If we wanted to make a ship with a hyper-focused firing lane for all its phase cannons, we should've gone for the cruisers so it'd at least have a good maneuverability, like how the Stingray balances out.
We chose a chonker ship, and it will need a comparatively large weapons coverage to cover all its angles.
[X] Full Saucer
Arrowhead has the biggest most powerful engines and a more focused firepower because instead of trying to force 360 coverage to limited effect at best it has 270 and melts anything in that window. Full saucer is the slowest options bar none, and while it has the best coverage it needs it because it's slower and less maneuverable than the other two options by a lot.
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Neither are phasers or any other energy or particle weapons - these are all limited by, or to, the speed of light. If you want to fight at warp, you can only do it with warp-capable torpedoes.
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Or shooting particle weapons at extreme close range(Inside your own warp field)... Risky but possible.
True, but you're rather missing the point. Cloaking and uncloaking takes time. It's great for prepared ambushes and wolfpacking enemies. it's not great for playing catch up when you're behind. Romulans won't come out of warp into a fight cloaked. They can't. If they could we'd have lost Earth entirely in that strike. Because we'd never have seen it coming in until far too late. Thus, if we can dictate the speed, we can dictate terms of engagement. However, while we can dictate whether cloaking is effective or not with mobility, we really can't do that with enemy shields. Which is right now the Romulan's one insurmountable advantage.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
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We haven't picked out the engines yet. The arrowhead hull has space for engine placements, along with cargo bay access, but there's nothing said that it would include oversized engines. Full saucer could have engines too, same as the NX, they'd just be sticking out the back a little. The main aspect of that hull is the forward/side coverage for the phase cannons. "Biggest most powerful engines" isn't anywhere in the listed options.
The NX-class also proves that a full 360° coverage works really damn well, and isn't some 'minimal firepower everywhere' like you seem to be implying.
cokerpilot
Here comes the rain.
[X] Full Saucer
[X] Half-Saucer
The full coverage was used for flyswatting. Which fair, it's great at it. Full coverage is IDEAL for point defense which was necessary to keep Earth habitable. But neither the NX nor the fireband focused but lighter Stingrays could strip the Sheild fast enough to keep them from rotating about and vastly prolonging Warbird longevity. To do that we'd need focused firepower, which the Arrowhead has and the Half saucer kinda has.
As for engine placement, room for the engines already means you can commit more without needing padding room for them. Which means an overall more agile ship. if you have more ready room for a thing, it means you can handle the thing better than a design that lacks it. We've seen this in other ships in this and previous quest, where if you build a design with X in mind it does X far better than a design not built with it in mind. Given the Engines are explicitly called out, it's far far more likely than not to have better engines than the Full Saucer.
[X] Full Saucer
[X] Half-Saucer
I like either of these - mostly because, while they're less optimized for concentrated firepower, they would allow the ship to compensate for potentially limited maneuverability, and also to continue to do their job while shielding a colony or other strategic target from Romulan atomic torpedoes. Because bluntly, I don't think the Romulans are going to go "welp, we tried" when it comes to nuking Earth or the Colonies - and that means any design we build needs to be at least as good as the NX class at point defense, which in turn means as much coverage with phase cannons as we can get away with. Honestly, my vote is going to be for something akin to a more compact and smaller Constitution-class/a bigger version of the NX-class. That design allows for extensive firepower in all directions - and, with careful placement of phase cannons on the primary and secondary hull, would also allow for substantial focusing of firepower in forward arcs.
Does this design seem potentially a bit lazy? Maybe - but we know that later in the timeline the Constitution-class is nearly 1,000,000 tons, so having it be an upscaled version of a Romulan War era Dreadnought ITTL would honestly seem kind of appropriate (the whole "turning swords into plowshares" thing).
[X] Half-Saucer
I like either of these - mostly because, while they're less optimized for concentrated firepower, they would allow the ship to compensate for potentially limited maneuverability, and also to continue to do their job while shielding a colony or other strategic target from Romulan atomic torpedoes. Because bluntly, I don't think the Romulans are going to go "welp, we tried" when it comes to nuking Earth or the Colonies - and that means any design we build needs to be at least as good as the NX class at point defense, which in turn means as much coverage with phase cannons as we can get away with. Honestly, my vote is going to be for something akin to a more compact and smaller Constitution-class/a bigger version of the NX-class. That design allows for extensive firepower in all directions - and, with careful placement of phase cannons on the primary and secondary hull, would also allow for substantial focusing of firepower in forward arcs.
Does this design seem potentially a bit lazy? Maybe - but we know that later in the timeline the Constitution-class is nearly 1,000,000 tons, so having it be an upscaled version of a Romulan War era Dreadnought ITTL would honestly seem kind of appropriate (the whole "turning swords into plowshares" thing).
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
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"Flyswatting" isn't what I'd call the NX's Tactical rating of 8, nor the fact that the battle group they were in managed to knock down four warbirds, which I'd note also had very forward-heavy weapons with little covering their aft... I might guess the cloaking device helps them balance that disadvantage out.
The half-saucer also doesn't mention that it's more forward-focused, but that it keeps most of the advantages of the full saucer while having space set aside for engines and cargo. Advantages like wider phase cannon coverage, and internal room.
I'll be genuinely shocked if this dreadnought manages to get to High Maneuverability, and surprised if it gets Medium, even with a dedicated section on the main hull set aside for engines. We know that the original Stingray's Medium Maneuverability directly impacted it's ability to bring its limited coverage of weapons to bear at any one time. How do you think a 500k+ ton dreadnought is going to do, in that regard, if these oversized engines don't come to fruition?
Enthusiast#117
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What we need to deal with romulan shields, is focused firepower.
I'm realizing though, that we aren't going to get it.
The description of the Half Saucer is that it is "a middle ground" between the two options.
What I missed earlier - and what should have been obvious - is that the first thing the Half-Saucer loses in comparison to the Arrowhead is the Arrowhead's forward&side weapon focusing advantages. But what they actually do have in common is the engines being mounted on the main hull.
The Half Saucer is essentially a more maneuverable full saucer with a secondary hull.
Somehow I got it in my head that because the half-saucer was a "middle ground", some of the Arrowhead's weapon concentration topography was present in the half-saucer design, but that's not actually stated, and I think it's probably not true.
It's the shape of the hull that gives it those properties, and the front half of the half saucer design is the same as that of the Full Saucer, not the Arrowhead. Hence the name "Half Saucer"
The big advantage the half saucer gets for not being the full saucer is those engines.
But the thing is... manueverability is kind of wasted on the saucers. It would make a big difference for the Arrowhead, but for the full saucer one firing arc is largely the same as any other. Why would it need to maneuver?
Yes there's still reasons to maneuver, but is the exposed secondary hull worth those reasons?
I thought the secondary hull was a small price to pay for forward firepower that was more like the Arrowhead, but I don't think that was ever on the table.
[X] Arrowhead
Tldr:
I thought the half-saucer was at least an improvement over the full, but on review I think it's actually just as bad, maybe even worse weaponry-wise.
For my last thoughts on this vote, from a cost perspective, I suspect that the Arrowhead will be the cheapest option, as it is the least massive.
If we'd like to be able to produce these dreadnoughts in any kind of numbers, I believe that the Arrowhead is our best bet.
I'm realizing though, that we aren't going to get it.
The description of the Half Saucer is that it is "a middle ground" between the two options.
What I missed earlier - and what should have been obvious - is that the first thing the Half-Saucer loses in comparison to the Arrowhead is the Arrowhead's forward&side weapon focusing advantages. But what they actually do have in common is the engines being mounted on the main hull.
The Half Saucer is essentially a more maneuverable full saucer with a secondary hull.
Somehow I got it in my head that because the half-saucer was a "middle ground", some of the Arrowhead's weapon concentration topography was present in the half-saucer design, but that's not actually stated, and I think it's probably not true.
It's the shape of the hull that gives it those properties, and the front half of the half saucer design is the same as that of the Full Saucer, not the Arrowhead. Hence the name "Half Saucer"
The big advantage the half saucer gets for not being the full saucer is those engines.
But the thing is... manueverability is kind of wasted on the saucers. It would make a big difference for the Arrowhead, but for the full saucer one firing arc is largely the same as any other. Why would it need to maneuver?
Yes there's still reasons to maneuver, but is the exposed secondary hull worth those reasons?
I thought the secondary hull was a small price to pay for forward firepower that was more like the Arrowhead, but I don't think that was ever on the table.
[X] Arrowhead
Tldr:
I thought the half-saucer was at least an improvement over the full, but on review I think it's actually just as bad, maybe even worse weaponry-wise.
For my last thoughts on this vote, from a cost perspective, I suspect that the Arrowhead will be the cheapest option, as it is the least massive.
If we'd like to be able to produce these dreadnoughts in any kind of numbers, I believe that the Arrowhead is our best bet.
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If you have torps facing all directions then not really.
If you're not voting Half saucer than could I convince you to go full saucer?
I'd very much prefer the arrowhead as well, but it just ain't happening so… yeah.
Flyswatting for the nuke counter was what they were doing most of the conflict and given that the warbirds were on a collision course with Earth it's not out of lien to assume the Warbirds were only paying tangential attention to our fleet and focusing mostly on getting to earth to end it. Else they'd have not broken through in the fight, instead ofcusing on fleet supremacy first and then we'd be hosed.
The half saucer is likely to have better engines to keep on target more easily if nothing else, but frankly it's the compromise options and my second choice. It'd not have nearly as much focused firepower, but at least it'd have some legs under it compared to the likely incredibly slow and janky full saucer.
As for maneuverability, on the arrowhead that's far less of a concern as it's got immense firepower in everything but the rear arc. The Rear arc which should be covered by Escorts. The only way for an enemy to really harm it under a prolong time is to run doughnuts around the thing to stay in the rear arc and given this is explicitly designed to be the most mobile of the bunch that's unlikely. Saying it'll have the same issue as the stingray which has frankly a forward focused loadout ignoring side and rear arcs for the most part when this design explicitly covers the sides as well as the front and will be armed past the teeth as a matter of course is disingenuous.
Enthusiast#117
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I'm largely ambivalent.
What would decide it for me is which one is more durable, as durability is the second reason we're going for a dreadnought.
I honestly have no idea which one that would be though, so I'm going to keep my oar out of the water and see where this goes.
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In the Stingray post, it was mentioned an arrowhead hull would help immensely with limiting the profile and minimizing the necessary hull polarization relays, so you'd think that would be the one, but the specific benefits listed here are just far more focused firepower. I believe that having a narrower profile and increased maneuverability would increase survivability, but a lot of the specifics are up in the air.
[X] Full Saucer