Remove ads

Starfleet Design Bureau

Linked contents
Starship Design Bureau Starfleet Design Bureau
Reader mode
[X] Inverse Slope Configuration (Mass: 170kt) [Cost: 33.5]
[X] Rising Slope Configuration (Mass: 190kt) [Cost: 37.5]

I said it earlier i don't like approval voting, BUT everything about this was said, choosing maximum size and then immediatly balking because gm makes a nebulous commment about mass being bad and overcorrecting into the other direction just ends with a over engineered bondoogle. And that is what pisses me off, If sayle hadn't said that sentence we would all probably make jokes about maximum size and how close the vote is! So please why?
 
Last edited:
MS-21H 'Hawke' said:
I do have a question:

If this thing is only going to be a bit bigger than the Excalibur, what's the point?

I mean, unless we pull insane shit, how does this thing justify itself? Other than the fact that the Federation is oddly allergic to continued production of the Excalibur for some reason(one that I may have missed).

I mean, we can't really putt THAT much more OOMPH onto a frame not even 50Kt bigger than the Excalibur, so what's the point in doing anything other than what we did with the 'Callies' and make 'em VERY FAST? At that point, it's just an Excalibur. Have the Federation build more of THEM.

Yeah but we can put more weapons on it! At the cost of Module Space, and that's going to cause drama and likely cost us a few Torpedo Launchers and Phasers,. Then there's the issue of us maybe skimping on modules, that leads into the issue of this thing loosing out on lifespan and capability, and again: risks this thing just us spinning our wheels on designing a Second Excalibur.

And yes, maybe we can stuff more guns and shields on this thing than the Excalibur had, on a similar Speed Profile. It's not really going to be enough to justify itself against the Excalibur: Who's design is RIGHT THERE, who has a Successful War Record, and who's CHEAPER.

Maybe we can justify it with a different mission profile and loadout? Maybe? *Shrugs* I just worry that this thing won't have the hutzpah to be a real Fleet Anchor if we don't give it a bit more mass.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What makes this different is we build it for long distance cruise over sprint, and dial down the maneuver a little in favor of module space. Drop the science capacity for medical and engineering and shuttles and cargo. This is a big, powerful, long range knight to the Excalibur's medium, powerful, mid range bladedancer. And it doesn't do science, it gets other work done.

Derpmind said:
The thing about this section that bugs me is that while I believe its intention is to tell us to be aware of costs, the feel of it is telling us that we chose wrong. Like the prose is scolding us the players for going too big. The rest of the update comparing the different options almost doesn't matter after what feels like being directly told by the QM that we screwed up.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I didn't take it as 'you screwed up' so much as saying all the people arguing that a serious combatant must be MAXIMUM SIZE for that reason and no other are wrong.
 
Last edited:
[X] Inverse Slope Configuration (Mass: 170kt) [Cost: 33.5]
[X] Rising Slope Configuration (Mass: 190kt) [Cost: 37.5]

darkstarling said:
What makes this different is we build it for long distance cruise over sprint, and dial down the maneuver a little in favor of module space. Drop the science capacity for medical and engineering and shuttles and cargo. This is a big, powerful, long range knight to the Excalibur's medium, powerful, mid range bladedancer. And it doesn't do science, it gets other work done.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Except we won't. Because every single Q-damned time anything even vaguely resembling a combat ship is being discussed, the Gotta Go Fast crowd comes screaming out of the woodwork demanding a sprint configuration.

Bloody hell I can't recall when, if ever, we've done a long-distance cruise config. Maybe that one and only orb cargo ship?

So as much as I would like the command option, I'm voting for the bigger ones now because Hawke made a good point.
 
Last edited:
CanYouMeme said:
[X] Inverse Slope Configuration (Mass: 170kt) [Cost: 33.5]
[X] Rising Slope Configuration (Mass: 190kt) [Cost: 37.5]


Except we won't. Because every single Q-damned time anything even vaguely resembling a combat ship is being discussed, the Gotta Go Fast crowd comes screaming out of the woodwork demanding a sprint configuration.

Bloody hell I can't recall when, if ever, we've done a long-distance cruise config. Maybe that one and only orb cargo ship?

So as much as I would like the command option, I'm voting for the bigger ones now because Hawke made a good point.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Even with the Archer class we didn't. We went with "balanced" for a ship that'd spend 99.99% of its time at efficient cruise, and had options for balanced and cruise, when our enemy was deploying next gen warp drives.

I made a list a way back and pointed out this pattern, it was something like 4 sprint, 3 balanced 2 cruise, and some that were kinda n/a, people got really defensive like it was a criticism, when it was just an observation.

It is a dilemma though, if your ship needs to eat up max light-years over lifespan cruise is the way to go. If it's doing attack or defend as a primary and seconds could count, I'd say sprint. Edit but that's all distorted by things like coil and core limitations, which will be different when we roll out better warp tech. Hidden virtues or maluses emerge from our choices.

And I think it's legit to go with a quad config and say it'll play nice with new nacelles, after all compatibility with w9 cores was a choice we made, if we can keep our fleet up to date we can increase our numbers, which is a weakness at the moment we could work on.
 
Last edited:
MS-21H 'Hawke' said:
Other than the fact that the Federation is oddly allergic to continued production of the Excalibur for some reason(one that I may have missed).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The only thing I can think of is just that the Callie isn't good enough at anything other than fighting to justify continued production significantly past a war. Its science and engineering scores are C and C-.

Which, to be clear, is a problem that an undersized Fed is likely to have as well. If it's too small then it can only get good at one of those things by specializing, and Starfleet isn't going to want a giant expensive specialist when that paradigm can be fit by smaller and cheaper designs.
 
I'm very impressed. Not often you get a near reversal of votes. Command is still in the lead, but only barely.

I'm really wanting the extra space for teleporters, even if there are not extra modules on the line. Post battle and emergency situations, those things are gold. More can only be a good thing.
 
CanYouMeme said:
[X] Inverse Slope Configuration (Mass: 170kt) [Cost: 33.5]
[X] Rising Slope Configuration (Mass: 190kt) [Cost: 37.5]


Except we won't. Because every single Q-damned time anything even vaguely resembling a combat ship is being discussed, the Gotta Go Fast crowd comes screaming out of the woodwork demanding a sprint configuration.

Bloody hell I can't recall when, if ever, we've done a long-distance cruise config. Maybe that one and only orb cargo ship?

So as much as I would like the command option, I'm voting for the bigger ones now because Hawke made a good point.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This one is specifically a fleet anchor. Maneuver matters, but not as much as weapons coverage and shields. Sprint matters, but not as much as cruise. And essentially protest voting against what you assume is a foregone conclusion isn't going to get what makes you happy.
 
I have to agree that anyone assuming we'll get a gigantic secondary hull is kidding themselves. The last three designs we made certainly didn't.

The Attenborough didn't strictly have a vote on a secondary hull, but the one it got was 42% of the main hull.

The Excalibur's secondary options were 43, 36, and 29 percent.

The Archer's secondary hull functionally only had the option for 12 percent of the main hull mass, discounting the cargo pod since that's not a fully integrated part.

I could have gone back further but the Kea didn't list mass for the secondary hull, just the primary. I could have sort of backtraced if from the total but that's more work than I have the spoons for right now.
 
Last edited:
In my case, I chose the command configuration for the slimmer target profile and the nicer phaser mounts
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top