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Consider this. How often will our officers say "Redirect power from..."?

Remember, the shields are the guaranteed increase here. But more power has so, so many secondary benefits in future ship design and adapting to emergencies. Impulse engines are useful, no question, I like maneuverability. But I like being able to support whatever ship systems need it at will on the fly even more.

[X] Expanded Main Energiser (+10% Next-Gen Shield Output)
 
Gosh we're gonna have one small warp core here.

Impulse might shrink the ships even more but-well, we can't redirect that energy to shields if it's pumped directly into the impulse engines without EPS paths to the rest of the ship.

[x] Expanded Main Energiser (+10% Next-Gen Shield Output)
 
[x] Expanded Main Energiser (+10% Next-Gen Shield Output)

I worry that we're getting into an era where weapons are getting accurate faster than dodging improves, and there's a lot of stuff out there than shields are needed for that you can't maneuver around.
 
[X] Impulse Shunt (+20% Impulse Engine Output)

Better engines just offers way more benefits than better shields.

Our ships aren't going to get any smaller and as we saw with the Kea the inclusion of just one more thruster so that it could get medium instead of low maneuverability would have plunged the Kea's cost score from an A- to a C+.

Better engines would make it cheaper to achieve a higher maneuverability score and maneuverability rating has a serious impact on a ships tactical score.

Circling back to the Kea again, it's competitor the Saladin despite being a smaller design with significantly worse phaser armaments and coverage (100% vs 54% coverage and 1/3 of the Kea's multi-target capability) was a whole rank higher than the Kea in it's tactical rating (A- vs B-).

The Saladin's tactical score being a whole rank higher than the Kea's can almost certainly be attributed to the combination of the Saladin having torpedoes along with it's superior maneuverability (medium vs the Kea's low) as the Saladin's defense rating was also significantly worse (48 vs 34).

This is also supported by the fact that even with torpedoes the low maneuverability meant that the Kea's tactical score would only get bumped up to the marginally superior A rank over the Saladin's A- in spite of the Kea have nearly twice the Saladin's phaser coverage (100% vs 54%) and 3 times the Saladin's multi-targeting capabilities (12 vs 4).

As for improving ship durability, both a ship's mass and maneuverability influence it's defense rating. A bigger ship is going to have more power to shove into their shields and higher maneuverability reduces the chance of getting hit.

We can see both factors playing their parts when comparing some of our previous designs.

Greater mass has a positive influence as despite the Cygnus being 23 years older than the Selachii and being two whole ranks worse in it's maneuverability score (medium vs VERY high) the Cygnus actually has the higher defense rating (34 vs 25) thanks to being nearly 3 times larger (125kt vs 45kt).

Superior maneuverability meanwhile allows the Skate which has less than half the mass of the Stingray (30kt vs 70kt) and only 1 rank more maneuverability (VERY high vs high) attain an equal defense rating of 12 for each.

Improved Impulse engines will make bigger ships more palatable from a cost perspective given how expensive impulse engines have shown themselves to be and in cases where cost isn't a concern allow for more maneuverable ships in general.

So overall I would argue that having better mass and maneuverability would be more beneficial for ship survivability than just better shields.

TLDR, better engines allow for tougher and more maneuverable ships, better shields only enables tougher ships
 
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When we make the Excelsior 3 million tons she's going to need these engines.

Also, the Skate 3.0 is going to break the light speed barrier on impulse alone with these. Kzin eat your hearts out.

[X] Impulse Shunt (+20% Impulse Engine Output)
 
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[x] Expanded Main Energiser (+10% Next-Gen Shield Output)

This isn't just stronger shields, the text in the update says that it's more power for ship systems in general.
This would have the happy side effect of allowing a higher peak output that would be able to further magnify hypothetical shipwide technologies that might have greater power demands, like new shield generators.
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Derek58 said:
[x] Expanded Main Energiser (+10% Next-Gen Shield Output)

This isn't just stronger shields, the text in the update says that it's more power for ship systems in general.
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It doesn't actually say that, what it says is that hypothetical shipwide technologies that might have greater power demands than present ones would be enhanced by this.

If it was a general power increase that would be included in the description, right next to the shield output increase.
 
Tank man said:
And in this case they can redirect power from the impulse engines if necessary, given they'll have a 20% greater output.
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Doesn't make much sense to me - shunting the warp plasma directly into the impulse drive doesn't make that power available to the rest of the ship

Tank man said:
It doesn't actually say that, what it says is that hypothetical shipwide technologies that might have greater power demands than present ones would be enhanced by this.

If it was a general power increase that would be included in the description, right next to the shield output increase.
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That's the difference between a guaranteed bonus and additional capabilities
 
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Our internal ship components tend to be really capable already. It's our impulse engines that can't keep up with out bigger and bigger ships - ships that are going to have more space for more internal components.

If you want +10% shields, that's the main benefit of the Expanded Main Energiser. But I don't think a boost to hypothetical non-shield components can outweigh just how damn much additional impulse engines can cost. Or how valuable a better maneuverability score for our next gen fleet can be.
 
Tank man said:
Given the original was 2.35 million tonnes I think 3 million is aiming a little low.

Might not need to give the 1701-B run of the class two extra impulse engines, though.
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There's no way we can do more than the original's 2.4 mil, Starfleet command would have us all pushed out the airlock for attempted economic sabotage.
 
darkstarling said:
Doesn't make much sense to me - dumping the warp plasma directly into the impulse drive doesn't make that power available to the rest of the ship
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It makes perfect sense. Impulse engines are powered by impulse reactors and by necessity they will have the same output (in terms of form of energy) as the warp-core, this means that they can provide energy (even if less than a warp-core can) to the rest of the ship*, meaning that with the baseline increase brought about by directly pumping warp-core generated plasma into the engines some of the output of the impulse reactors can be diverted with no major loss in speed/manoeuvrability.

*And we do repeatedly see ships lacking cores going about and still functioning even with far less in the way of available power. Plus the Romulans have an interstellar empire built on the back of impulse power, at least in TOS.

Wootius said:
There's no way we can do more than the original's 2.4 mil, Starfleet command would have us all pushed out the airlock for attempted economic sabotage.
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Perhaps, but if we balloon the sizes enough now that 2.35 million might be high but not right at the edge of acceptable displacement!
 
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[X] Impulse Shunt (+20% Impulse Engine Output)

"what you see is what you get, just a guy who loves adventure" - starfleet design bureau staffer, 2030
 
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