If they kill two engines, probably they get killed on the same side and our maneuverability drops a lot lower than just Medium.
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You are way late, my dude. Current vote is for sublight engine layout.
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- Outside the Box
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You're an update behind. We're voting on something different now. Edit: Second time today I've been
'd. Oof.
4x setups can still maneuver like a 2x setup. Actually better if the disabled engine is an inboard engine, because they can cut thrust on the opposing outboard engine and maintain full power on the opposing inboard engine. Star Trek ships also maneuver in ways that don't 100% align with Newtonian physics, so there may be some sort of aetheric rudder deal that allows for counteracting asymmetric thrust.
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- America
Well, if you have a 4 engine setup and one of the engines is killed, you just throttle up the remaining engine on that side and still retain full nominal Maneuverability. You just tremove the option to WEP around onto the enemy's tail.
3 engines means that if one engine on the sides is killed, you either turn off the other engine and fly only on the middle one, or you do some kind of thrust vectoring stuff. Either way, the hit is much worse than just a 1/3rd maneuver hit.
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If it really becomes an issue, Starfleet just recommends that the ship fly on two engines at any given time.
Redundancy is part of the selling point here, that you can keep flying even with catastrophic multi-engine failure. (Two is still multi)
If the engines need maintenance, you can shut one down without compromising flight characteristics. Repair it while still underway, then shut it down and do maintenance on the others. And by nature of them not needing to use their full thrust pretty much ever, will suffer less wear and tear.
Any strike that takes out a single 4x engine will take out its counterpart. They're far, far too close to not suffer terrible damage if their paired up engine is taken out, with a three engine setup there's enough spacing that you'd need to basically kill the ship to disable all of them.
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Nah. If you've got a 3x and lose one, you've got a 1/3 chance (if you lost the central one) of still having Medium-High maneuverability on the side pair, but a 2/3 chance (if you lose either side) of only having...Low or Medium-Low on just the central one.
If you've got 2x and lose one, yes, you just spin around (or more likely you can only manage four or five percent thrust using your maneuvering thrusters for countertorque).
If you've got 4x and lose one- any one- then you've still got Medium-High on the remaining intact pair.
Edit: I should point out that I'm more concerned with an engine being out for mechanical reasons- whether from malfunction or sabotage or tribble infestation or doing scheduled maintenance downtime while still underway- rather than enemy fire damage; if you're taking unshielded hits directly to your aft hull then you're probably fucked anyway.
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These updates are too damn fast!
[X] Two Type-3 Thrusters (33 -> 45.5 Cost) [Very High Manoeuvrability]
This. Impulse engines aren't that heavily used by starships anyways. You drop out of warp to do a parking job, maybe to poke around somewhere interesting. Then its back to a monthlong journey at warp speed, where the impulse engines are cold and dark.
This is totally conjectural. We don't know what the 3 and 4 engine setups actually look like.
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God, I shoulda just kept my mouth shut
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[ ] Two Type-3 Thrusters (33 -> 45.5 Cost) [Very High Maneuverability]
[X] Four Type-2 Thrusters (33 -> 42 Cost) [Very High Maneuverability]
I feel the need for speed.
[X] Four Type-2 Thrusters (33 -> 42 Cost) [Very High Maneuverability]
I feel the need for speed.
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- Location
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It's better to lose a vote fairly than to win through underhanded tactics. In this case, you would've had to psychically ascertain Lord Necromancer's likely future vote before advising him to check the latest update - this violates privacy laws and could get you in serious trouble with the psychic police. And it's moot regardless, since I also advised Lord Necromancer.God, I shoulda just kept my mouth shut
CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
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- the Netherlands, apparently
[X] Four Type-2 Thrusters (33 -> 42 Cost) [Very High Maneuverability]
darkstarling
Brilliantly Crazed
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- Columbus, Ohio
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If it helps, for all I'm passionately advocating for the paired Type 3s I think the 4 type 2s will be fine too. To me this is a 'different selling points' vote not a 'good vs suck' vote.
edit:
Specifically, I do genuinely see the benefits of redundant engines and durability. And I agree that it's worth investing in speed. But I still think that four engines being harder to maintain than two, and having faith in our infamously good engineers to adapt to new technology, is by no means the equivalent of the Klingon admiralty doing a ballet in bikinis as was so recently put.
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I can see it now:
Starfleet Budget Committee said:
The Thrusters are kinda small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, it's the Tactical Section that are going to be a bloodbath for our budget.
Each Rapid Fire Torpedo Launcher costs 15, if we fitted all 3 Torpedo Launcher spots with Rapid Fire Launchers we'd double our costs, even just 2 would be a more than 50% increase in costs and that's all before factoring in Shields and Phasers.
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Chargone
Invisable operator
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- New Zealand
Well, other options vs two type 2s is good vs suck, but the other three are very much "which flavour of good do you want?".
Yeah, there's a reason everyone latched onto one rapid/2 regular the moment it was found to be a valid choice. Most of the actual debate when we get to voting on weapons is probably going to be about what, if anything, to point rearward and the number and placement of the phasers.
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Agreed. But the whole ship is in this funny state where if we can micromanage for a few points of cost that in its entirety across the whole ship, will pay for a single prototype. I like the new system, but 50% cost difference plus higher base costs really makes it hard to balance. I think it would honestly work better if we had some technology at standard and some at mature, rather than the huge gulf between the costs.
And I think our only three choices for torpedoes, not counting aft, is
Three standard.
Two standard, one rapid fire.
Three rapid fire.
I don't believe two rf and one standard are options.
That being said, the difference in thrusters for the initial run is basically an entire phaser, which is reasonably significant.
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[X] Two Type-3 Thrusters (33 -> 45.5 Cost) [Very High Manoeuvrability]
That would be more than a little eyebrow raising though since SanFran is by far the junior partner in this project.