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[X] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
Rollbars are cool, I'll give you that much.
(Or, conceivably, if you're actually expecting a lot of all-out wars and expect to actually need the damn thing to anchor fleet engagements against enemy capital fleets [as per its design role] frequently- and most of us, while recognizing that that is the requested role and we do need to be competent at it, don't expect the design to actually find itself anchoring major fleet engagements at all.)
Otherwise, having 10% more hulls will mean getting 10% more patrolling and 10% more science and 10% more emergency-response and 10% more diplomacy and 10% more pirate-hunting done over the course of the next century- and also increases the odds that the fleet will be large enough to be worth designing and implementing a refit for, when the Warp 9 core and the next-gen torpedoes and phasers and shields and nacelles are all available, and maybe even again with the Warp 9.5 core.
(Also, I kinda think "enough to beat current- and next-gen enemy heavy cruisers" really is enough, because there just...aren't any enemy battleships that we're aware of.)
Rollbars are cool, I'll give you that much.
This is, broadly at least, the same position I believe in. If I really wanted to split hairs, I think I'd say something along the lines of "I don't think a battleship would outright fail at being useful the rest of the time...but it would definitely be less useful than the cruiser"...but for all intents and purposes, yeah, I agree.Fhndamentally, the goal is a ship specifically designed for the combat role the Kea was forced into in fleet battles, that is also a good and useful cruiser the rest of the time.
When Starfleet starts classifying it as a dreadnaught, it's definitely failing at the latter and May, for lack of numbers, be starting to get a bit iffy on the former.
I agree with (B), but not (A); the Keas were so useful as line anchors for two reasons: beefy shields, and great phaser coverage for swarm-swatting. So I kinda think swarm-swatting is this thing's job- if the formation can maneuver to engage the enemy cruisers without enemy light combatants nipping at their heels, because the Feddie's phaser envelope is an all-round-or-close-to zone of death for said raider types, then it's doing its job correctly.The way a hypothetical Federation with more torpedoes deals with swarming is (A) it's not its job because I think very larger capital ships are not the best platforms for dealing with BoP swarms, and (B) basically exactly how it would if it had less torpedoes.
Basically, because (it is a popular opinion that) double-digit percentage increase in ST and α doesn't actually translate to a double-digit percentage in how much work the class will get done over the course of its service life. Pushing it from- pulling some numbers out of my ass here- "peer opponent for two K'Tingas" to "peer opponent for three K'Tingas" is only worth more than getting 10% more ships built if you expect to get jumped by three K'Tingas more than 10% of the time.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.
(Or, conceivably, if you're actually expecting a lot of all-out wars and expect to actually need the damn thing to anchor fleet engagements against enemy capital fleets [as per its design role] frequently- and most of us, while recognizing that that is the requested role and we do need to be competent at it, don't expect the design to actually find itself anchoring major fleet engagements at all.)
Otherwise, having 10% more hulls will mean getting 10% more patrolling and 10% more science and 10% more emergency-response and 10% more diplomacy and 10% more pirate-hunting done over the course of the next century- and also increases the odds that the fleet will be large enough to be worth designing and implementing a refit for, when the Warp 9 core and the next-gen torpedoes and phasers and shields and nacelles are all available, and maybe even again with the Warp 9.5 core.
(Also, I kinda think "enough to beat current- and next-gen enemy heavy cruisers" really is enough, because there just...aren't any enemy battleships that we're aware of.)
...I forget what specifically I was going to say when I added this to multiquote and so I'm just gonna say "I generally agree" and leave it at that.My contention isn't that single-target damage is useless- it's that there is no equivalent weight capital ship that needs the Federation to double down on single-target damage, and that we have capable single-target damage from other ships as a matter of course.
This is an insightful and genuinely interesting line of argument, and might well be compelling if I didn't already agree for slightly different reasons.In terms of combat effectiveness for total ship cost as an added percentage, nothing can compete. Nothing.
That being said, I'm still going to go without.
Hang on, I know that's weird.
But [reasons snipped]
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