To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
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- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
how many colony ships do we have that will be available next snakepit?
Probably more than we actually have colonies to produce, barring something showing up this quarter.
cokerpilot
Here comes the rain.
[X][UES] Build new Miranda-A
I think they have a shortage of hulls could probably be convinced to change this though.
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
As always the Amarki are one of our in case of war break glass fleets .
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
Never let it be said star-fleet doesn't look out for it's members.
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
People who pay more attention to spread sheets then me seem to think this is a good idea and any negatives I can think seem to be outweighed by the pros.
I think they have a shortage of hulls could probably be convinced to change this though.
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
As always the Amarki are one of our in case of war break glass fleets .
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
Never let it be said star-fleet doesn't look out for it's members.
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
People who pay more attention to spread sheets then me seem to think this is a good idea and any negatives I can think seem to be outweighed by the pros.
[X][PRIORITY] Apiata should improve Bulk Cargo shipping in long term
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
So after perusing spreadsheets and the like in a vain effort to determine this question, I require the assistance of some of the original crowd of questgoers so that I may better do the Mottos post.
Which of our ships, particularly Centaurs and Mirandas, were active at the start of the quest?
Which of our ships, particularly Centaurs and Mirandas, were active at the start of the quest?
Fallenblades643
Seeker of the Divine Taste
[X][PRIORITY] Apiata should improve Bulk Cargo shipping in long term
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
Boys! Do the thing! And Amarki baby, bring the muscle~
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
Boys! Do the thing! And Amarki baby, bring the muscle~
For the Mirandas, anything lower than NCC-1662 (the first new Miranda-A we built).
USS Bon Vivant
USS Calypso
USS Dryad
USS Eketha
USS Fidelity
USS Intrepid
USS Lion
USS Shield
USS Svai
USS T'Kumbra
KnightDisciple
Brotherhood. Unity. Peace.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
[X][PRIORITY] Apiata should improve Bulk Cargo shipping in long term
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
- Location
- somewhere
No Centaurs were active (the Yukikaze comes closest but finished construction 1 year after quest start), but quite a lot of Mirandas, a total of 12, though some of them have been lost since then. I remember the Lion, Ekatha, T'Kumbra, Calypso, Shield, Itrepid and Bon Vivant. Probably one or two missing.
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Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
All right. With thanks to you two, I will now go add in some more mottos.
- Location
- Austin, TX
Regarding the external spreadsheets, are they cataloged in the threadmarks? Also, maybe a new one could be created for 'Upcoming Votes', with a tab for proposed plans, like this one from @Void Stalker a few days ago.
Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 2305
Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 2305
- Location
- USA
We have 7 in total now though some are in the GBZ. I do not think we sent one with the Kadeshi.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Colonies offer by far the best return on investment of anything we do. If we could spend 200pp on colonies and nothing on anything else, we would be well advised to do so- but we can't, because it's only possible to build and buy a few colonies per year. Almost every year, all vote plans max out or nearly max out our colony building, precisely because it's so beneficial.
It is grossly unfair to compare other prospective things we could spend political will on to colonies. Much more reasonable to compare it to, say, a resource infusion- is it worth 1/8 the cost it would take to pay for a new Excelsior to buy this freighter?
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Iirc we only have 2 colony sites available at present.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If you add the "Starfleet is financed by the Federation's member worlds and doesn't exist on its own" - does that influence your thinking?
[X][PRIORITY] Apiata should improve Bulk Cargo shipping in long term
They are in the process of developing 100BR worth of mines in the GBZ.
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
Improve their only capital vs build a replacement frigate. From their priority list, which ever one they don't do now, they will do next year/year after.
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
For the uses we see out of them, the obvious choice.
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
I cannot see the harm, and we are told it is affordable.
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
This one is the most contentious of the votes as there is a number questioning it. Even if we do not expand our logistics requirement in the three years that this need to build, to have a 'no pressure' logistics rating requires TWICE minimum shipping.
They are in the process of developing 100BR worth of mines in the GBZ.
[X][UES] Refit the United Earth's Excelsior
Improve their only capital vs build a replacement frigate. From their priority list, which ever one they don't do now, they will do next year/year after.
[X][RIALA] Gain C2 S1 H1 L2
For the uses we see out of them, the obvious choice.
[X][SR] Invest (-40rp, 1 year project)
I cannot see the harm, and we are told it is affordable.
[X][RIGEL] Build Freighter (5pp)
This one is the most contentious of the votes as there is a number questioning it. Even if we do not expand our logistics requirement in the three years that this need to build, to have a 'no pressure' logistics rating requires TWICE minimum shipping.
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Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
IF we only have those two colony sites available than We can use PP on them during the next snakepit and focus on Academy and Shipyard expansion. We should also avoid any more Diplo pushes and focus on using the PP Expenses elsewhere. I Thought of this the other day but forgot due to my being busy with work at that time but. Why couldn't we build a regular shipyard and have it focus only on Auxiliary ships like the Freighters and Hospital ships and so on.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
... Why would we avoid pushes? Affiliating a species gets us an extra 0.15 recruitment and a small drip of other resources. Just affiliating other species won't hurt us expansion wise, given that it would take 20 IC years to get one to membership unless we pushed them further.
And yes, we can do that. No reason not to I guess. Aux yard will likely be cheaper for political reasons though.
The new yard at Apinae is just about to come on line and it's initial builds are now logistics ships.
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
I didn't know that. That's very interesting so Go ahead and ignore my last post.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
No. Should it?
I mean, we use political will to ensure that we get a share of the resources and funds freed up by new colonies. That's fine. Presumably the colonies would get built eventually, whether we pushed for them or not. But what it comes down to is that it takes us very little political effort to get resource trickles out of colonies, and the cost-benefit ratio is extremely favorable.
For this reason, we are strongly incentivized to discover new colony sites for the Federation... which is kind of the point! If colonies were expensive in the Snakepit, we would be less incentivized to find them, less incentivized to operate a large and capable Explorer Corps, et cetera.
However, I think what's going on is that colonies are in effect "subsidized," they are the game's way of rewarding us for exploring, by expanding our budget. Rather than argue with the government for a bigger slice of the Federation's existing economic pie, we simply expand the pie via exploration.
Thing is, because they're subsidized, colonies pay off at an extremely favorable rate. The pp trickle alone we get from a colony that costs 8pp up front and rewards us with +1pp/year is equivalent to buying a perpetuity that pays off at 12.5% annual interest, the kind of "you must be kidding" return on investment usually only seen in very high-risk ventures or in Ponzi schemes. It would ALWAYS make sense for us to buy colonies if they were available, if there were no other limits on their availability such as:
1) Not having enough colony or engineering ships to build them.
2) Not having prospective sites to put them on.
3) Not having enough freighters to haul away the goods we extract from them, and even then it might be worth doing for the RP/PP rewards alone.
Again, colonies are such a great return on investment we'd be stupid not to buy them. I'm pretty sure that's "working as intended."
...
The problem is, again, that makes it very unfair to compare the cost of the colonies to any other random thing that we might buy.
Like, a colony that costs 8pp is mechanically more rewarding than a diplomatic push that costs 20pp, or even 10pp like they used to. It takes several diplomatic pushes to bring a species into Federation membership; I'm going to casually estimate seven or eight. For that kind of political investment we could get like ten colonies at the old price, or like twenty at the new one. That's much more beneficial than having a new member join the Federation, in every way except the crew and tech team we get from new members.
Does that mean we should stop doing diplomatic pushes? No, obviously it does not.
A colony is mechanically more rewarding than a starbase. Does that mean we should stop building starbases? No, obviously it does not.
Having five colonies (40pp) is arguably more rewarding than one Academy expansion. Does that mean we should stop expanding the Academy? No, obviously it does not.
NOTHING looks good when compared to its weight in colonies, because each colony provides a major ongoing BR/SR/RP trickle plus associated RP/PP trickle. If we had unlimited ability to spend political will on anything we want, we would be well-advised to spend all of it on colonies, if only so that the cumulative pp trickles from all those colonies would give us nigh-unlimited political will in the future. It'd be the equivalent of "wishing for more wishes;" you ALWAYS wish for more wishes if the genie will let you get away with it, at least until you have more wishes than you could possibly ever use.
But we can't do that. The number of colonies we can build in any given year is limited, we nearly always max them out and buy as many as we can and have vast amounts of political will left over for other things. Having already bought the supremely valuable and cost-effective colonies, the rest of the debate centers on what else we will do, not on how all those other options compete with colony options.
...
Therefore, all arguments of the form "we should not spend X pp on Y because that political will could get us Z colonies" are fundamentally flawed. There is no either/or choice that forces us to sacrifice Z colonies in order to get Y. It is basically a given that we'll get Z colonies, or as many as we possible can. The debate is about what to do with the rest of our political will, which we cannot spend on colonies even if we want to.
What about diplomatic pushes on species we're worried about? The Ashidi may become Cardassian vassals if we don't build a strong relationship with them, and the Tauni are threatened by a powerful, unknown alien empire and need all the help they can get.
Remember, our yearly political willpower budget is like 200-300 points or so. We can afford to spend on a lot of different things, without ignoring other things.
Yes. Many others have thought of this. Starfleet Medical already has a plan to use the auxiliary yard at Amarkia to build all the hospital ships they want, and it's a good plan. Hospital ships are taken care of. We don't need to worry about them.
What we need is engineering ships and transports. Starfleet Engineering Command builds the engineering ships; we don't know what their budget looks like. Starfleet Logistics Command is in charge of paying for transports; they seem to have the budget to start a few new ones every year. There's already been a LOT of discussion of starting some new berths and letting Logistics Command build transports in them, and the general consensus is in favor of doing that. It's gonna happen.
- Location
- Central Standard Time
Fair enough.
But is a freighter worth 1/4 of a diplopush? I think not.
Pushes are valuable since they are progress towards expansion.
Let's keep expanding.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Debateable. If we extend the reasoning, and based on the idea that it takes about eight diplomatic pushes to bring in a new Federation member...
That's saying that one new member is worth 32 freighters. Now, I might well be happy to sacrifice 32 freighters to 'buy' a new member, so I see where you're coming from.
But if we keep recruiting members indefinitely, and don't build any more freighters, the Federation will start to run into serious problems for lack of freighters. It may well be that we are better off purchasing 32 freighters and two new members, than if we purchase three new members.
It may also be that we're better off with 32 freighters and two new members, as opposed to spending all the political capital on 96 freighters. But we cannot capture the entire picture just by saying "which do you want more, X or Y?" We need both.
...
It's like, suppose buying a house costs three hundred thousand dollars, and buying a car costs fifteen thousand dollars. You would be a fool to refrain from buying one house, in order to buy twenty cars. But you would also be a fool to buy zero cars, in order to save money for a house. Because having a certain minimum number of cars is important and desirable, enough so that it's worth compromising on buying a house to some extent.
Fallenblades643
Seeker of the Divine Taste
PP must not be spent on a cost to cost based analyse, but rather on a need basis. What do we need right now?
More colonies? Always.
More berths? Wouldn't hurt.
More resources? We're stable here.
More diplo? Feds baby~
Focused diplo? Go fuck yourself ya cards, these are our peeps.
More crew? We're on the tight side.
Starbases? We're logistically locked here.
New Ship classes? We're waiting.
Tech teams? Dump stat ho!
Special assets? If we can budget them!
Intel assets? Every now and then.
Cargoships? On the cheap buds. We're in need.
Dynamic systems require dynamic responses. And right now, there is an immediate and serious need for more logistics and infrastructure, so we should act accordingly.
More colonies? Always.
More berths? Wouldn't hurt.
More resources? We're stable here.
More diplo? Feds baby~
Focused diplo? Go fuck yourself ya cards, these are our peeps.
More crew? We're on the tight side.
Starbases? We're logistically locked here.
New Ship classes? We're waiting.
Tech teams? Dump stat ho!
Special assets? If we can budget them!
Intel assets? Every now and then.
Cargoships? On the cheap buds. We're in need.
Dynamic systems require dynamic responses. And right now, there is an immediate and serious need for more logistics and infrastructure, so we should act accordingly.