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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Briefvoice said:
Where did you get those stats? He's listed as Diplomacy Medium here and again here.

EDIT: You also got wrong Ainsworth's stats. In the same posts she's listed as this:

EDIT2: In fact, you appear to have switched their stats?!
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Nervos Belli said:
I don't know where you got those statlines from, but the front page says they are wrong. Ainsworth is the Low Diplo Medium Politics, while Lathriss is Medium Diplo Low Politics. So he would be better suited to coordinating the various fleets in the GBZ.

Plus, most of our issues in the GBZ so far have been with the Amarki commander, who is also low diplomacy. Appointing the seniormost Amarki officer in Starfleet to GBZ Commander could help with that.
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Hm.

Yes, I switched the stats. My apologies for discommoding you.

So, maybe I should present a different, and yet substantially equivalent, argument:

If part of the reason we keep wanting to replace a "Low Diplomacy Medium Politics" is her diplomatic goofs, are we sure "Medium Diplomacy Low Politics" is the way to go?

My main argument isn't that Lathriss is better or worse than Ainsworth. It's that insofar as their profile 'stats' tell us anything about their character and likely performance, they are interchangeable. Lathriss will be good at about the same things Ainsworth is. And while he may make different mistakes in dealing with the various other groups and leaders in the GBZ, there isn't much reason to expect him to make fewer mistakes. If we want someone who can handle the internal dynamics of the GBZ command like a smooth mofo, we need someone with "High Diplomacy High Politics," not "Low/Medium" or "Medium/Low." Someone like Gorac Crogan.

Now, Lathriss is still probably a pretty good choice for the job... IF we're comfortable with the job Ainsworth's been doing. On further reflection, I think I am- but others may not be.

Gravitas Hunt said:
Spock: That argument is statistically suspect, and therefore highly illogical.

( :p )
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Uhura: "I'm not surprised, Mister Spock."

lbmaian said:
...Gorac Crogan, yeah he could be good, but I'd also like an able commander in case we decide to contest the Gretarians alongside the Yrillians and the Sydraxians get it into their head that they have to meet our challenge.
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I wouldn't worry about this specific issue. Right now, if the Sydraxians get aggressive in the SBZ we haven't got anything to give Crogan to fight them with, unless we do something like peel off one of T'Lorel's component task forces- and we took considerable pains to give all those units good officers who would be good ready-made combat commanders fighting the Sydraxians.

And if we move Crogan over to the Gabriel Expanse, we'll get a chance to raise up a new sector commander in his place- and we have a fair number of promising candidates for that role.

Briefvoice said:
I mean, you could say the same thing for Federation Science, though. We already have the fleet so packed with Science that any more science bonus is also likely to be minuscule in usefulness.
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As far as I can tell, though, Science checks typically aren't rolled on a fleetwide basis, though- it's either "best ship" or "whichever ship is present" or maybe "average of all the ships in the fleet."

Again, I strongly suspect Courageous, as an explorer with the latest, greatest hardware and one that does not have a specific role in the existing command structure, is going to be our go-to ship for special operations. And by that I don't just mean commando raids, I also mean emergency diplomatic missions and so on. The kind of stuff we'd normally send Enterprise to do, except that Enterprise is tied down serving as a task force flagship.

As such, Courageous is unusually likely to have to roll Presence checks. Or espionage checks Also more likely to be endangered by "Event-type" threats that mandate a Hull check, as opposed to "Combat-type" threats against which the ship's Evasion stat matters.

As for the 5YM, the Courageous is already so good (Excelsior-A and Veteran crew) that it hardly needs Captain stat bonuses to do the job. The Higher the ship's stats, the less an extra +1 is likely to help. That's why I'd like to give Sulu the new ship.
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I'm a bit reluctant to follow that line of reasoning. Remember that we got some damn good results by stacking Nash's bonus (effectively, +1 to all stats) on top of the already Veteran crew of the Enterprise. We know that Hard events (the ones even an Elite-level explorer can struggle with) tend to have the most valuable bonuses (like colony sites).

And as @lbmaian notes, I strongly suspect we may start seeing 'difficulty creep' in Explorer Corps events within the next 5-10 years, if we haven't already.

[X][FYM1] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][FYM2] Captain Samyr Kanil
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Rachel Ainsworth
 
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Simon_Jester said:
And as @lbmaian notes, I strongly suspect we may start seeing 'difficulty creep' in Explorer Corps events within the next 5-10 years, if we haven't already.
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I keep hearing this without any evidence to back it up. A lot of people seem convinced it's necessary for game balance, but on the other hand what's the point of improvement if everything in the universe gets adjusted automatically upwards to match?

I can think of ways to handle it without arbitrarily adjusting difficulty upwards.
 
Erandil said:
Oh I don't expect it to be constantly shoved in my face but if the Starfleet officers are as special as you describe them and have such a string focus on the peaceful side of things I honestly would expect it to be mentioned a bit more if the fluff/narrative itself. I mean I find it pretty telling that while there is "unrest" on earth in regards to the handling of the Licori there is nearly zero mention of any doubt within Starfleet (except some regret by the Commander herself) about the correctness of the course (and indeed we have the highest support of it). Or take the Orion crisis where our people/officers oversaw a bloody and extremely costly (in terms of civilian life) attack on Cetos on top of an already bloody insurgency (the worst and most problematic of military ) campaigns with once again very little doubt or questioning orders or it having any affect on Starfleet. The actions and behaviour of our leadership (and likely enlisted) are pretty much the same what I would expect to see from a typical trained person in that position and honestly the only example I can think of that even comes remotely near showing some kind of special ethic/creed that is incident during the Biophage. And it honestly seems strange to me to describe Starfleet as this "special" non-military force when its most famous current heroes all boost impressive combat experience and its biggest ongoing operations are purely military and aggressive expansionist in the GBZ and the Licori.
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We also achieved many of our notable successes against the Syndicate by turning telepathic investigators loose and tearing through the checks and balances of our affiliate's law enforcement apparatus. Honestly I kind of felt like we deserved to get a double crisis there and got bailed out by the game mechanics. We've also hit on a sort of loophole where we don't get militarism points if the federation orders us to do militaristic stuff.

None of what we have done strikes me as wrong per se but we're definitely hewing much closer to the TOS ethos of muscular diplomacy than the TNG "talk everything out" philosophy. The Licori war feels aggressive even for Kirk's day and I anticipate some serious internal issues no matter how it goes.
 
Briefvoice said:
I keep hearing this without any evidence to back it up. A lot of people seem convinced it's necessary for game balance, but on the other hand what's the point of improvement if everything in the universe gets adjusted automatically upwards to match?

I can think of ways to handle it without arbitrarily adjusting difficulty upwards.
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What do you mean by "improvement"?

The way I envision event difficulty gradually increasing isn't that the event DCs themselves keep incrementing. That is, the 'easy' and 'hard' DCs for non-FYMs could remain 6 and 11, respectively. But new DC levels can keep being added, say 'very hard' (although eventually the names should be recalibrated to avoid 'very very very very hard'...), and the distribution of DCs can change over time, possibly per sector.

It's not hard to come up with plausible explanations for this:
- Mapping missions: As a sector gets mapped more and more, the less easy pickings there are. As sensors improve more and more, more previously impossible-to-respond-to events are possible.
- Medical missions: As hospital ships become more numerous and improved, the less Starfleet garrison/FYM ships need to be called upon. But the more populated a sector becomes, the higher the chance of a plague or other medical disaster that the locals can't address requires a higher level Starfleet medical response.
- Diplomacy missions: As a sector gets more and more populated, the more member fleets can take over the role of ferrying delegates around. Diplomacy is also one of those things you can imagine are opposed checks against other nations' own improving presence stats, and that can be abstracted with higher levels of DCs.
- And so forth...

Adding additional DC levels and tweaking distributions instead of incrementing existing DCs levels avoids the problem of existing ships getting sudden large nerfs ineffectiveness, and although less useful, they should still always be able to succeed at some DCs somewhere.

edit: typos
 
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jacobk said:
We also achieved many of our notable successes against the Syndicate by turning telepathic investigators loose and tearing through the checks and balances of our affiliate's law enforcement apparatus. Honestly I kind of felt like we deserved to get a double crisis there and got bailed out by the game mechanics. We've also hit on a sort of loophole where we don't get militarism points if the federation orders us to do militaristic stuff.

None of what we have done strikes me as wrong per se but we're definitely hewing much closer to the TOS ethos of muscular diplomacy than the TNG "talk everything out" philosophy. The Licori war feels aggressive even for Kirk's day and I anticipate some serious internal issues no matter how it goes.
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To be fair, in Picard's day nobody was test-firing devices with the potential to trigger supernovae somewhere close enough to Earth, Vulcan, and Betazed to put those worlds in the blast radius...
 
Well, Soren was a single person and one who died by the end of that movie due to the actions of Starfleet officers, not to mention the fact that Generations never happened.

And the other notable time someone chucked nova bombs at stars in canon, the UFP went to war with them too. It was just their luck that that someone was the Dominion.
 
[X][FYM1] Captain Sadek
[X][FYM2] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Rachel Ainsworth
 
[X][FYM1] Captain Samyr Kanil
[X][FYM2] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Rachel Ainsworth

There is nothing left in Betazed but the eternal laughter of Samyr Kanil.
 
I suppose it does stand to reason that if Samyr Kanil can destroy the Betazed system in an exercise, she can probably also save it outside of one. She'd be a good choice for Courageous.

I still want to give Sulu the ship with the legacy of its own, as opposed to the one hot off the presses, though. And I still think her bonuses are best suited to the kinds of tasks I actually think Courageous will do during the Licori War, as opposed to "what makes Courageous an incrementally better battleship?"

Maybe it's just salt over how overwhelmingly this one guy who we literally never heard of before (Oneiros has just made Sadek up as far as I can tell) is dominating the captaincy vote for Courageous, to the extent of crowding out well-loved candidates like Kanil, purely because his bonus is "make this ship a better battleship."
 
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[X][FYM1] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][FYM2] Captain Samyr Kanil
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Anyth sh'Nathriq
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Maybe it's just salt over how overwhelmingly this one guy who we literally never heard of before (Oneiros has just made Sadek up as far as I can tell) is dominating the captaincy vote for Courageous, to the extent of crowding out well-loved candidates like Kanil, purely because his bonus is "make this ship a better battleship."
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Well, the other thing is, we didn't bring in the experienced EC ships for their fighting qualities. Those are nice, sure, but... Our stated reason was for their ability to handle serious science checks to fight back against Licori superweapons. Samyr does that.
 
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You know, I'd really prefer to hold off on assigning Sulu the Courageous, to instead give her the Enterprise. But somehow I don't think that's going to get much traction right now.
 
Godwinson said:
You know, I'd really prefer to hold off on assigning Sulu the Courageous, to instead give her the Enterprise. But somehow I don't think that's going to get much traction right now.
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Yeah, feeling you. A Captain Sulu on Enterprise would be wonderful. Still though, that bonus. Or bonii, considering it's more of a list.


[X][FYM1] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][FYM2] Captain Samyr Kanil
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Anyth sh'Nathriq
 
[X][FYM1] Captain Samyr Kanil
[X][FYM2] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Rachel Ainsworth

I want Kanil on the Courageous. Her luck is just what that ship needs.

And as for the Enterprise, Leaniss is the one for her, no doubt.
 
[X][FYM1] Captain Samyr Kanil
[X][FYM2] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Rachel Ainsworth

I've come around to Samyr. Having a super-science ship sounds pretty great right about now.
 
Nervos Belli said:
Nah, Sadek still has a lot of votes going for him. Sulu is likely though.
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That's true. it's always difficult to keep track of long term voting like this. especially when some people change their votes through edits and others through new posts.
NOTE that I prefer edits myself but it's a pain to copy paste on my cell so I've been deleting and reposting.
 
buli-buli said:
That's true. it's always difficult to keep track of long term voting like this. especially when some people change their votes through edits and others through new posts.
NOTE that I prefer edits myself but it's a pain to copy paste on my cell so I've been deleting and reposting.
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You don't actually have to delete your old post, you know. The tally program will only take the last post you made formatted like a vote. I prefer to make a new post when I change my mind so I can actually make an argument on the current page, rather than five pages ago where people aren't looking.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Maybe it's just salt over how overwhelmingly this one guy who we literally never heard of before (Oneiros has just made Sadek up as far as I can tell) is dominating the captaincy vote for Courageous, to the extent of crowding out well-loved candidates like Kanil, purely because his bonus is "make this ship a better battleship."
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Yeah, I get the feeling that Sadek is the reactionary choice for the Licori war, without as much consideration for the FYM needs itself.

And even then, he or she is not the best reactionary choice - the marginal improvement of some additional combat bonuses is likely less than that of improved science or presence rolls against high difficulty DCs. Against a nation that is going to try to out-science us, and which our likely exit strategy hinges on diplomancing a noble house.

I suppose it does stand to reason that if Samyr Kanil can destroy the Betazed system in an exercise, she can probably also save it outside of one. She'd be a good choice for Courageous.

I still want to give Sulu the ship with the legacy of its own, as opposed to the one hot off the presses, though. And I still think her bonuses are best suited to the kinds of tasks I actually think Courageous will do during the Licori War, as opposed to "what makes Courageous an incrementally better battleship?"
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On the other hand, Sulu can make a legend of her own unburdened by that of the Courageous. Hasn't Straak done the same with the Sarek?

...yeah, I'm flipping over to Samyr taking command of the Courageous while Sulu can help shepherd the Voshov to greatness.

[X][FYM1] Captain Samyr Kanil
[X][FYM2] Captain Demora Sulu
[X][EC] Rear Admiral Rachel Ainsworth
 
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