Starfleet Design Bureau

[X] Standard Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
[X] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]

Since the Rollbar is Torpedoes or bust (unless for aesthetic purposes), I can't support it. Disregarding the cost issue, Star Fleet is not going to make a bunch of Federations if the get handed a dreadnaught that they didn't ask for. Especially since they were already toning down their desire for an increased armament in one of the earlier updates. If you want the Star Fleet to have more fire power I think it would be more effective to keep the heavy cruiser design as that would be something that Star Fleet would be more comfortable producing more of.
 
[X] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]

We have been given a chance to take the interestesting aesthetic option without any downsides, why not take it.

And I would only like to note that the rollbar with additional torpedoes also does not fit the design brief we have been trying to make. This is not a torpedo boat; the heavier choices we've made thus far were all in service of getting this ship in position to intercept incoming ships and use a phaser-heavy armament to slice anything that comes to close to pieces. We dont actually have to make it the Yamato in order for it to do it's job; and while expensive the difference between "expensive and large hull that can be the backbone of an entire sector so they build a dozen" and "expensive hull that's too expensive to make as anything but ships that defend the core worlds so they build three" is what we are being asked to choose between I think.

But also rollbars look nice.
 
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Anyway, this vote is clearly heading one way and I'm going to bow out of the discussion for a sec, but it was fun to step back in for a minute.

So I think you might have missed the part that says, quite explicitly, that adding those extra torpedo mounts fails the design mandate of a Heavy Line Cruiser, which is what we are asked to build, therefore NOT adding the torpedos on the roll bar means we are considered still inside the design mandate. I truly don't know where you are getting the idea that just chucking our assigned design to make a Battleship/Dreadnought is 'better' ?

Please quote the part of the update where it says that we "fail our design mandate". (Hint, this does not exist.) Or reread the two posts where I have broken down in detail what the update says.

We would not be being offered the rollbar launcher as an option if it made the project autofail. That is not how Sayle structures votes. Please reread the update and what it actually says, and like, at the risk of being rude, please try to exercise some basic reading comprehension.
 
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The problem with that there IS actually precedent and historical reference for the hypothetical Rollbar-Torpedo Feddie to be Considered a Dreadnought, especially if they only build a few.

That precedent and historical reference is the Thunderchild, the Dreadnought of the Earth-Romulan War. It wasn't a game changer. What it was was our largest and heaviest armed vessel that was put into limited production for a need, which would match the hypothetical Rollbar!Torpedo Feddie.
That's not what 'dreadnought' means. When HMS Dreadnought hit the water for the first time, every other battleship in the world was instantly rendered obsolete. Thunderchild was a powerful ship, but it did not define shipbuilding efforts for a generation and 'thunderchild' did not become a byword for modern battleships until the term itself lost all meaning because there were no longer any 'pre-thunderchilds'.

'Dreadnought' is a term with distinct meaning. Neither the rollbar'd Federation, or the Thunderchild before it, fulfill the historical criteria, and I'm fucking tired of 'dreadnought' being used all the time.
 
Skippy, I think mathematically you are absolutely correct.
Logically you are correct.
In terms of perception however, it crosses an invisible, nonsensical line.

It's like breaking a silly rule and getting hammered. It's like being an Olympic athlete taking a panadol and losing a gold metal.

As silly as it is, adding the roll bar turns this into an official "thing that isn't acceptably built in large quantities"

And perhaps it doesn't even need to be. Perhaps we should embrace that, as you say, and have lots of Miranda class ships. That would even free this up to be something we can put more limited use modules in. Like diplomacy! We only need a few of those, it would be wasted on having on our most common ship. You are not wrong.

But I admit, I want to keep this socially acceptable and build in large quantities. I want this to be the back bone of a new fleet, with starfleet deciding that hey, actually, let's have everything be this tough at a minimum. It's fast enough to cover huge distance (I disagree that 20% faster is a minor benefit, the dual engines were far less justifiable), tough enough to fight any peer, and all that remains is to make it useful enough with modules.

That's going to be the hard part.
 
We chose incredibly expensive quad nacelles for a marginal cruising speed increase, which for a ship of this size basically only makes sense on primary combatants that can justify that cost by killing more stuff in greater time. We doubled the impulse engines, which you only really makes sense for being better at fighting and running down other ships. There are many incredibly expensive decisions which have pushed this away from being the Kea. Mk II.

It is useful to be able to actually accept reality and face facts. We are here due to our decisions and nothing else. Better a good battleship than an overpriced heavy cruiser.
Strongly disagree
The assertions about ship size basically ignore the Kea, and also the ongoing transitional era of size inflation we are currenty going through, where even the Klingons are building warships that are almost 200kt

Quad Nacelles cost us a premium of 12 points
Thats roughly a quarter of what 8x Prototype Phasers are going to cost us for phasers, and around 8% of the entire ship cost
Dual Drives cost us a premium of 8 points, or ~5% of the ship costs

All of that, in aggregate, cost only as much as the proposed weapons pod with 4x Prototype Torpedos would, and provided all-round boosts in different areas that made this a much better heavy cruiser
And critically stayed within Starfleet's requirements

It is useful to be able to actually accept reality and face facts. We are here due to our decisions and nothing else. Better a good battleship than an overpriced heavy cruiser.
Costs rise with technology and capability; thats a given
This ship will cost around 50 percent more than a Callie

Coincidentally, a K'Tinga will cost around 50% more than a D7, which itself cost around 30% more than a D6
The Ktinga is still a cruiser
Just like how the D7[Cost 60] and D6[Cost 44] were both cruisers, in the same ship class as th Excalibur[Cost 97]

Then we will have the option to mount two less aft launchers on the hull or something I'd imagine. Sayle does not actually structure votes like this, or ever force us into a maximal aft torpedo armament, so this is a moot point.
And at that point we are trying to build a pocket dreadnought on a heavy cruiser hull, and doing it badly
The juice is very much not worth the squeeze

I can't really argue with that, in all fairness, but that is how this Quest approaches every single Project it undertakes.

Designing a ship pretty consistently to be very expensive but very capable, and then suddenly panicking based on misreading the update is even more disorganised, I think. It's likely to produce an inherently compromised design which is neither a good battleship, nor an affordable heavy line cruiser. The quad nacelles and other expensive features have already stopped this ship from being cheap enough to be the Kea Mk. II.

Personally I would personally have preferred to design a cheaper ship from the outset, but like, it's better to recognise where we are and make the best of it, rather than compromising the whole design into something it simply can't be. This will never be cheap enough to be a good cheap heavy line cruiser. That is the simple consequence of the decisions voters have made.
Those are the limitations of a quest format
However, when we make those initial choices, we are stuck with them; we dont get to change them without consequences
Like how more torpedo launchers on this hull mean we auto-lose the cruiser competition


This was never meant to be a cheap ship design; that was the Miranda
If we had wanted to buid a cheaper ship, that woud have been the choice; in picking this one, we prioritized capability as its reason for being while staying within the requirements of Starfleet

This is not something you change at the last minute on a whim
 
We chose incredibly expensive quad nacelles for a marginal cruising speed increase, which for a ship of this size basically only makes sense on primary combatants that can justify that cost by killing more stuff in greater time. We doubled the impulse engines, which you only really makes sense for being better at fighting and running down other ships. There are many incredibly expensive decisions which have pushed this away from being the Kea. Mk II.

It is useful to be able to actually accept reality and face facts. We are here due to our decisions and nothing else. Better a good battleship than an overpriced heavy cruiser.
Just saw their request to bow out of the convo after I had all of this mostly typed up, so I'll drop the ping and direct this more generically to everyone else in the thread who feels like the prior votes have been pushing us to the point where we can't be the cruiser that was originally requested.

I personally didn't vote for either of those options mentioned since I felt they weren't necessary to spend money on, but I can still absolutely see the rationale for why other people wanted to includ them in a ship that's still a heavy line cruiser rather than a battleship.

The quads are definitely a bit on the expensive side, but the numbers we actually had when deciding voting for them were still less than the cost increase from standard to heavy on 300kt. And they're good on everything that needs to get somewhere fast, not only combatants. The big deal is that they can show off their capabilities more the greater the number of ships built, because of the greater likelihood one is nearby to respond. As such, avoiding the roll bar torps and keeping this a cruiser instead of a battleships is even better for letting the quads strut the stuff we paid for.

The second impulse engine only cost 8 more, not even 10% of the total hull price. And it helps the ship in any solo encounters while not harming it when it needs to be the lynchpin. After all, you can have twice the engine power and just throttle down to stay slow, but you can't get double the speed out of half the engines.

If you think prior options have been pushing us in a bad direction to meet what's been asked of us, why double down on taking the wrong heading instead of trying to bring us back on course? It certainly isn't shaping up to be the kind of ship I had personally envisioned when we first picked up the Federation project, but I can still easily imagine a place for a quick-responding heavy cruiser that can flexibly fit into either solo work or formation fighting, and looking at the tech list we've got options to get good damage numbers even with fewer individual torpedo mounts.
 
But I admit, I want to keep this socially acceptable and build in large quantities.
Never going to happen, regardless of how this vote goes. We've been cranking the 'bigger, better, faster, harder' lever this entire plan cycle, and our competition is the Miranda - canonically in service and in numbers for over a century. We're well past 'large quantities,' and 'socially acceptable' is an entirely fluid measurement.
 
Anyway, this vote is clearly heading one way and I'm going to bow out of the discussion for now, but it was fun to step back in for a minute.



Please quote the part of the update where it says that we "fail our design mandate". (Hint, this does not exist.) Or reread the two posts where I have broken down in detail what the update says.

We would not be being offered the rollbar launcher as an option if it made the project autofail. That is not how Sayle structures votes. Please reread the update and what it actually says, and like, at the risk of being rude, please try to exercise some basic reading comprehension.

The issue is that the addition of another set of torpedo mounts (and fitting extra torpedoes there) in a dedicated weapon package would likely be the final straw in turning the already expensive design into a modern-day dreadnought, and thereby permanently extinguishing any hope for it to become the main line cruiser of the late 23rd century instead of San Francisco's Miranda-class. The choice is yours.

This here, see that?
Just because you have unilaterally decided that it is flat out wrong doesn't mean you're actually correct.
We were directed to make a main line cruiser, your argument that we should instead flagrantly ignore it to make a dreadnought does not mean it somehow still falls inside of said mandate, especially when it explicitly calls out said failure if that option is chosen.

So basically, if we take the torpedo mount with the intention of using it for torpedos, we fail the main line cruiser mandate and are left with a dreadnought design that we have zero guarantees will have more then a single tranche built, if even that.
 
[X] Standard Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
[X] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]

I'm happy with just the CB range. Our Battleship role will likely be filled by the next dedicated Explorer.
 
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[X] Standard Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]

Having more than just a few of these bad boys would be nice, it's like the problem of the Radiant-class ending up with only 4 built...
 
Good idea, see you next update!

update: I lied

Skippy, I think mathematically you are absolutely correct.
Logically you are correct.
In terms of perception however, it crosses an invisible, nonsensical line.

It's like breaking a silly rule and getting hammered. It's like being an Olympic athlete taking a panadol and losing a gold metal.

As silly as it is, adding the roll bar turns this into an official "thing that isn't acceptably built in large quantities"

And perhaps it doesn't even need to be. Perhaps we should embrace that, as you say, and have lots of Miranda class ships. That would even free this up to be something we can put more limited use modules in. Like diplomacy! We only need a few of those, it would be wasted on having on our most common ship. You are not wrong.

But I admit, I want to keep this socially acceptable and build in large quantities. I want this to be the back bone of a new fleet, with starfleet deciding that hey, actually, let's have everything be this tough at a minimum. It's fast enough to cover huge distance (I disagree that 20% faster is a minor benefit, the dual engines were far less justifiable), tough enough to fight any peer, and all that remains is to make it useful enough with modules.

That's going to be the hard part.

Fair enough. Like I think there's an actual debate here, but it's about like, do we want the ship to be punchier (and a bit more expensive) or not, not like, what most of this argument has turned into.

Strongly disagree
The assertions about ship size basically ignore the Kea, and also the ongoing transitional era of size inflation we are currenty going through, where even the Klingons are building warships that are almost 200kt

Quad Nacelles cost us a premium of 12 points
Thats roughly a quarter of what 8x Prototype Phasers are going to cost us for phasers, and around 8% of the entire ship cost
Dual Drives cost us a premium of 8 points, or ~5% of the ship costs

All of that, in aggregate, cost only as much as the proposed weapons pod with 4x Prototype Torpedos would, and provided all-round boosts in different areas that made this a much better heavy cruiser
And critically stayed within Starfleet's requirements

I have not been arguing for four extra launchers and it is disingenuous to suggest I have. The phaser cost is equally a red herring here. The drives and quad nacelles together cost us twice what more torps would, on top of the heavy shields, and generally taking the largest and most expensive option on all but one of the hullform votes IIRC.

The idea that the rollbar is not within our scope is in fact contraindicated by the fact that we are being offered it at all. Let's argue against this under its own merits rather tban based on misreadings of the last part of the last update, which is talking about whether the ship will be able to supplant the Miranda (good luck), and not about what is or is not allowable within our brief. This entire line of discussion is an annoying red herring.

This here, see that?
Just because you have unilaterally decided that it is flat out wrong doesn't mean you're actually correct.
We were directed to make a main line cruiser, your argument that we should instead flagrantly ignore it to make a dreadnought does not mean it somehow still falls inside of said mandate, especially when it explicitly calls out said failure if that option is chosen.

So basically, if we take the torpedo mount with the intention of using it for torpedos, we fail the main line cruiser mandate and are left with a dreadnought design that we have zero guarantees will have more then a single tranche built, if even that.

The update is saying that the torpedoes (again, two Type IVs are 10 Cost on a 100+ Cost Project), will be the "final straw" in turning the "already expensive design" into a full-fledged dreadnought. This means, in plain terms, that it is already very expensive, and this is the final straw, not that the ship is completely affordable for a heavy line cruiser. It goes on to say that this puts paid to any last hope of supplanting the Miranda, which like, yes, okay, that should be blindingly obvious at this point, but it's certainly the last nail in the coffin.

What the update emphatically not saying is that choosing the rollbar means "we fail our design mandate", as you wrongly asserted. If the update had wanted to say that, it would have (a) not presented the option in the first place and (b) said that choosing the rollbar would make us fail our design mandate. Like, I genuinely apologise if English is a second language for you, because I know we're an international forum and I think on reflection my last post may have been a bit rudely worded. But it's honestly fairly clear?



You know what, because I can already tell this will get interminable and I don't want people to keep quoting me, @Sayle, just to remove any confusion, was the last update actually a coded message that if we choose the rollbar module, eagles will peck out our livers, scorpions and poisonous snakes will come into our houses, and Starfleet will seal us in the deepest darkest dungeon? Or were you saying, in clear English, that it represents a trade-off between cost, capability and assumed mission profile, like the hundreds of other votes that have appeared in this Quest?
 
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Never going to happen, regardless of how this vote goes. We've been cranking the 'bigger, better, faster, harder' lever this entire plan cycle, and our competition is the Miranda - canonically in service and in numbers for over a century. We're well past 'large quantities,' and 'socially acceptable' is an entirely fluid measurement.
Disagree hard
Not when the Klingons have D7s in general service, are building K'tingas and the peace treaty expires in the 2260s

I think I need to repeat a previous post:
You underestimate the need.
We have to replace, over the next forty years(2045-2085), the following ships

Cygnus-class cruiser: 28 built. Decommissioned 2255.
Selachii-class frigate: 38 built. Decommissioned 2245
Sagmartha-class explorer: 12 built. Decommissioned 2245.
Saladin-class cruiser: 16 built. Decommissioned 2271.
Newton-class cruiser: 30 built. Decommissioned 2282.

The Keas are not there, because they are decommed in the 2290s.
12 explorers.
112 cruisers.
Thats replacement, not expansion.

Even assuming that we dont build a new explorer until we begin work on the Excelsior project in the 2270s, and if you discount the Newtons entirely, we need to maintain an average build tempo of around 6 ships a year to replace all those ships with new hulls in the next decade and a half.

I would be surprised if we built fewer than 20.
Note that the numbers above omits the eight or nine Excaliburs that we lost in the war and the 2250s explorer missions
Or the need to expand as the Federation expands

Both the Miranda and the Federation will enter service in the mid-2250s
Even if the Miranda is acquired at a ratio of four Mirandas to every Federation to replace the retiring ships, you're still looking at around twenty-two Federations to eighty eight Mirandas, not counting replacement for dead Excaliburs

And an even marginally more even procurement rate of two Mirandas per Federation is looking at Archer procurement numbers for the Federation
Which is why I refuse to default fail the cruiser competition
 
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It seems impossible to me to justify why, on our 100+ Cost ship, the option to pay 10 Cost to increase our Alpha Strike and Single Target Damage by some significant double digit percentage is a bad cost-value proposition.
20. It increases our Cost by 20 points, not 10. The option gives us +2 Fore and +2 Aft Torpedo Mounts, and the incoming prototype Type-4 Photon Launcher costs 5 points each. So filling it out means spending 20 extra Cost on additional torpedoes, on top of whatever we'd spend for a normal loadout. Even as a fan of big chonk and someone happy to spend extra, that's just way too much Cost.

[X] Standard Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
[X] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
 
20. It increases our Cost by 20 points, not 10. The option gives us +2 Fore and +2 Aft Torpedo Mounts, and the incoming prototype Type-4 Photon Launcher costs 5 points each. So filling it out means spending 20 extra Cost on additional torpedoes. Even as a fan of big chonk and someone happy to spend extra, that's just way too much Cost.

[X] Standard Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
[X] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]

If it necessitated putting in two Aft torps then I would be more inclined to agree with you, but I am like 99% certain we will either get the option to not have aft launchers in the hull to compensate, or to build the rollbar with only forward launchers, if we expressly choose. (We're the designers after all.) Like we've never been arm-twisted into a maximal aft torpedo launcher layout before?

Someone should check with Sayle though, I've been 99% certain and been wrong plenty of times before lol
 
"We're already building up to a dreadnought, might as well go all the way" doesn't feel like a good hill to die on.

There's a world of difference between a heavy cruiser and a light dreadnought.
 
Can't the rollbars always be added in a potential future retrofit/B Block if the Federation likes the heavy cruisers performance and wants to add more fire power/stuff to their heavy cruisers?

No need to break the budget...unless we will be needing heavy cruisers but really dreadnoughts ASAP.
 
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