[X] Inline Deflector (Maximum Warp: -0.4)
[X] Low-Power Warp Core (Maximum Warp: -0.6)
[X] Low-Power Warp Core (Maximum Warp: -0.6)
I'd say it's a perfectly reasonable cost for the only other warp 8 engine design the Federation is going to be building in the short term (unless SanFran makes the satellite in like one or two years and then gets cranking on a warp 8 engine design the next time they'll be able to start on one is 2244). This ship will probably be the only warp 8 design other than the Excalibur until 2253!
Would make landing easier atleastSo what exactly is stopping us mounting the engineering hull and deflector above the saucer rather than below?
After the war the surviving Excalibur-class ships faced an uncertain future. Lacking the facilities to participate in the rebuilding efforts they were assigned to suppressing the surge in piracy caused by the depletion of Starfleet's patrol roster and flying the flag near contested borders with the Tholian Assembly and Gorn Hegemony.
These were not the profit-focused and criminal enterprises of the Orion Syndicate that would necessarily come to characterise piracy in the 23rd century against the proactive response of Starfleet, and precisely because of this opportunistic and squatting lifestyle they proved unable to mount a real resistance.
Yeah, people seem to be aggressively disregarding the request:[X] Inline Deflector (Maximum Warp: -0.4)
[X] Low-Power Warp Core (Maximum Warp: -0.6)
I want to see if we can get a Vulcan style warp ring, so we can have a true flying saucer.
Aside from that jokish reason, I also think that keeping costs low is more important than flexibility. In fact, flexibility is explicitly against our design brief. The fewer and more capable these ships are, the more likely they'll be tapped for missions beyond just cataloging biospheres, and the whole point is that cataloging biospheres is a mission that can take a really long time, so having a multi-mission capable ship doing it is wasting potential (thus the need for a cheap and highly specialized ship). So I want to limit both the cost (because a more costly ship needs to do more in order to justify that cost) and the extra space so that we're not tempted to turn the ship into another generalist down the line. I do support giving the ship some tactical functions, as they'd probably make good patrol ships in a full-on war scenario where new colonies aren't being founded anyway, but anything beyond that, or anything that might tempt us into giving it more beyond that should be out of the question.
For it's main mission where it's spending most of its time orbiting (or even landing) on planets, max warp isn't important. For wartime scenarios this is going to be more of a patrol ship, maybe a hospital ship, not a front-line combatant that needs to keep up with the battlefleet.
The second is a science vessel that can take thorough surveys of habitable worlds. While the Kea has plenty of facilities for general cartography and geological sciences, the biological side of that has been somewhat neglected. Several colonies have had to deal with novel pathogens or had to implement crude solutions to the activities of local flora and fauna that could have been prepared for more efficiently given forewarning. Cataloguing an entire biosphere is no small task, and a ship dedicated to that could go a long way towards making safe colonies before the first boot touches soil. Such a vessel would ideally be small and well-specialised.
Small and well specialized seems at cross purposes. Small ship means little room for enough Bioscience related modules to make this hull worth the expense and time needed to design and build it.Yeah, people seem to be aggressively disregarding the request:
Ideally is the key word here.Yeah, people seem to be aggressively disregarding the request:
Probably, yeah. But given the Excalibur is filling all the yards that can build 180kt ships, "big" means "doesn't get built."
I would consider 'slightly more than half the mass of the heavy cruiser we just built' to be plenty small. The heaviest options here would push us up to a maximum of like ~115kt, if the nacelles haven't been accounted for in the mass calculation yet*. That's smaller than the Newtons are.Yeah, people seem to be aggressively disregarding the request:
Also nets us 23 shield points, 4 more than the Newton and 1 less than the Archer!I would consider 'slightly more than half the mass of the heavy cruiser we just built' to be plenty small. The heaviest options here would push us up to a maximum of like ~115kt