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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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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
@OneirosTheWriter, in addition to the sweeping update we're probably going to need to take this Snakepit, here are my proposals on how to fix the tactical operations turn:

1. Extend the deadline to fill a ship profile or role to ten years instead of five. Five years is too far inside our research envelope to properly guide ship design. With a five year deadline, we need to start from the ship design rather than from the ship intention. That gets things terribly backwards. With a ten year deadline, we can start from the research turn rather than from the ship design, and craft the available parts to role intention.
2. Eliminate all stat and cost requirements. We should be defining ships in terms of what roles we want them to play, not according to stat or costs. Deciding what stat or cost will fill that role should be determined after the designs have been done, not before. Otherwise we're putting the cart before the horse. All your ship designers understand what general stats are needed for a clearly written role, and costs is a matter of debate and willingness to pay.
3. Fill in stat and costs after the fact. These are still needed in order to obsolete or update roles and say "no, this statline isn't cutting it" or "no, this design is too expensive / too restrictive", but they should be used the opposite way they are now, in saying "these stats are what fills this role right now" rather than "this role is defined by this statline". Once a role is voted to be updated, the required stats should be cleared rather than increased until the update ship is designed.
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Supporting all these options.

Though with point 3, I think it would work better if this was actually a mechanism for getting Refits as well as new Ship Classes.

For example we put a moderate change to the statline for combat frigate, and rather then take the option to make a new ship class, we take a Refit option for a Miranda-B. Or for another example you mentioned, we create a new role of an Intelligence corvette, and rather then build a new ship we take an option to create a Oberth intel refit.
 
TyrialFrost said:
Supporting all these options.

Though with point 3, I think it would work better if this was actually a mechanism for getting Refits as well as new Ship Classes.

For example we put a moderate change to the statline for combat frigate, and rather then take the option to make a new ship class, we take a Refit option for a Miranda-B. Or for another example you mentioned, we create a new role of an Intelligence corvette, and rather then build a new ship we take an option to create a Oberth intel refit.
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Yes, I agree that we should roll refits into this same idea. But because we're working towards sheet-based refits, we're likely to take refits as design proposals anyway.
 
I put together an example 2328 Sweeping Tactical Review

Heavy Explorer
Stat Avg: 8+
Scale: 3mt berth
Intention: Five Year Mission capable, conduct high end diplomacy, respond to extreme science anomalies, Fleet Heavy metal.
Filled by: Ambassador-A

Heavy Cruiser
Stat Avg: 6+
Scale: 2mt berth
Intention: Respond to sector events, Fleet Heavy metal.
Filled by: Excelsior-B, Enlightenment project

Light Cruiser
Stat Avg: 4+
Scale: 1mt berth
Intention: Protect federation space and forms the Fleet vanguard
Filled by: Renaissance
Legacy: Constitution-B, Constellation-A

Frigate
Stat Avg: 4+
Scale: 1mt berth
Intention: To protect federation space and screen for fleets. In fleets contribute past the skirmish phase if shields are not depleted.
Filled by: Balanced Frigate
Legacy: Miranda-B, Centaur-B

Science Frigate
Stat Avg: 4+, Science 7+
Scale: 1mt berth
Intention: To investigate science anomalies, Provide visible sector presence, fleet early warning and scouting.
Filled by: Kepler
 
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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
@OneirosTheWriter, in addition to the sweeping update we're probably going to need to take this Snakepit, here are my proposals on how to fix the tactical operations turn:

1. Extend the deadline to fill a ship profile or role to ten years instead of five. Five years is too far inside our research envelope to properly guide ship design. With a five year deadline, we need to start from the ship design rather than from the ship intention. That gets things terribly backwards. With a ten year deadline, we can start from the research turn rather than from the ship design, and craft the available parts to role intention.
2. Eliminate all stat and cost requirements. We should be defining ships in terms of what roles we want them to play, not according to stat or costs. Deciding what stat or cost will fill that role should be determined after the designs have been done, not before. Otherwise we're putting the cart before the horse. All your ship designers understand what general stats are needed for a clearly written role, and costs is a matter of debate and willingness to pay.
3. Fill in stat and costs after the fact. These are still needed in order to obsolete or update roles and say "no, this statline isn't cutting it" or "no, this design is too expensive / too restrictive", but they should be used the opposite way they are now, in saying "these stats are what fills this role right now" rather than "this role is defined by this statline". Once a role is voted to be updated, the required stats should be cleared rather than increased until the update ship is designed.
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How would this handle politically mandated stat requirements like the C<3 requirement on the Kepler? Keep it numeric, switch to fuzzier natural language restrictions or something else?
 
Out of curiosity, what prevents us from coming up with new designs for each class of ship every ten years, instead of the current period that feels like a minimum of every 18+ years? An approximate one tier per ship generation doesn't seem too bad. I know it costs pp and rp to do each, and that it feels like a waste of the previous generation ship's cost of creation to start early, but when we are generating 441 and 412 pp, 360 and 390 rp to spend last year and this year, what is the appropriate average amount of budget (in pp, rp, and skilled tech team time) per year to spend on designing new variants of our ships of the line?

And yes, I understand that refits can delay this process, but I think that refits could be used to keep older ships active for longer periods, rather than delay launches of newer, better, ship types.
 
[X][ROLES] Do Nothing [2.0x Weighting on this vote]
[X][WG] A 2v2 with any Ships, including member world ships, (a gaeni tech-cruiser vs. two caitian swarmers)

[X][REPORT] Two-front war with the Horizon and the Cardassians​
 
@HearthBorn

The time required for one. Confusion for the second.

A new design needs 1-3 years of design work, then the prototype takes 50% longer more than the designed construction time.
For a new Explorer, the process will easily blows out to 10 years, before you can even begin to carry out serial construction.
For a new Frigate design, it might only take 5 years - so you would get 1-2 waves of construction out before beginning the next version.

The end result is having to track 20+ different designs, and their refits, and it will lead to much confusion - this has to be something that we the posters can comprehend without referring to a database of class and stats all the time.
 
I think we should vote to merge the Combat and Garrison Escorts together into a 'Multirole Frigate'.
 
HearthBorn said:
Out of curiosity, what prevents us from coming up with new designs for each class of ship every ten years, instead of the current period that feels like a minimum of every 18+ years? An approximate one tier per ship generation doesn't seem too bad. I know it costs pp and rp to do each, and that it feels like a waste of the previous generation ship's cost of creation to start early, but when we are generating 441 and 412 pp, 360 and 390 rp to spend last year and this year, what is the appropriate average amount of budget (in pp, rp, and skilled tech team time) per year to spend on designing new variants of our ships of the line?

And yes, I understand that refits can delay this process, but I think that refits could be used to keep older ships active for longer periods, rather than delay launches of newer, better, ship types.
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The difference between tiers isn't great enough.
 
Goat said:
@HearthBorn

The time required for one. Confusion for the second.

A new design needs 1-3 years of design work, then the prototype takes 50% longer more than the designed construction time.
For a new Explorer, the process will easily blows out to 10 years, before you can even begin to carry out serial construction.
For a new Frigate design, it might only take 5 years - so you would get 1-2 waves of construction out before beginning the next version.

The end result is having to track 20+ different designs, and their refits, and it will lead to much confusion - this has to be something that we the posters can comprehend without referring to a database of class and stats all the time.
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And that's certainly fair, just that it feels 'right' to be building, say , a T2 Explorer, building the prototype of a a T3 Explorer, while thinking about what a T4 Explorer might include in the future. The tiers feel like proper thresholds to new ship designs.

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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
The difference between tiers isn't great enough.
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*shrug* okay - I definitely don't follow ship design enough to see what one would be vs another, although ten years of research in dozens of techs seems like quite a lot.
 
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@OneirosTheWriter something to add to SWB's points about TacOps: we need a mechanism to indicate when we want to refit something. While I know this is less useful with the non-sheet designs, I am hopeful that the SDB could come up with a set of rules to cover refits that would allow us to design them in the future, after we have reference sheets for legacy ships. We only really need them for the Rennie and Excelsior really, possibly the Centaur.
 
HearthBorn said:
*shrug* okay - I definitely don't follow ship design enough to see what one would be vs another, although ten years of research in dozens of techs seems like quite a lot.
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A lot of the techs make a new version that is slightly better. But (figures are made up) a 5% better medical centre probably won't increase your P score by 1.
There are some techs that will have massive effects though.
Production Phaser Arrays
Burst Torpedo Launchers
Production Isolinear Computers (assumed, I believe it's effects are not yet modelled on the sheet)

People are already looking forward to potential refits for pretty much everything except the Kepler once the two weapon techs are available, as they will allow us to either boost C by a couple of points, or keep C where it is and actually remove weapons to fit other components in.
 
Vebyast said:
Um. Having only been seriously following the quest for the last eight months or so, what do we know about Cardassian war tactics, is that knowledge still relevant, and how are you so sure that we won't get anything new?
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Cardassian tactics reports provide a modest, but real, numerical bonus during combat encounters with that power.

[X][ROLES] Do Nothing [2.0x Weighting on this vote]

[X][WG] A 2v2 with any Ships, including member world ships, (a gaeni tech-cruiser vs. two caitian swarmers)

[X][REPORT] A different possible War Scenario: Limited warfare with Harmony of Horizon attempting to reclaim to Tauni.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
@OneirosTheWriter, in addition to the sweeping update we're probably going to need to take this Snakepit, here are my proposals on how to fix the tactical operations turn:

1. Extend the deadline to fill a ship profile or role to ten years instead of five. Five years is too far inside our research envelope to properly guide ship design. With a five year deadline, we need to start from the ship design rather than from the ship intention. That gets things terribly backwards. With a ten year deadline, we can start from the research turn rather than from the ship design, and craft the available parts to role intention.
2. Eliminate all stat and cost requirements. We should be defining ships in terms of what roles we want them to play, not according to stat or costs. Deciding what stat or cost will fill that role should be determined after the designs have been done, not before. Otherwise we're putting the cart before the horse. All your ship designers understand what general stats are needed for a clearly written role, and costs is a matter of debate and willingness to pay.
3. Fill in stat and costs after the fact. These are still needed in order to obsolete or update roles and say "no, this statline isn't cutting it" or "no, this design is too expensive / too restrictive", but they should be used the opposite way they are now, in saying "these stats are what fills this role right now" rather than "this role is defined by this statline". Once a role is voted to be updated, the required stats should be cleared rather than increased until the update ship is designed.
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Theunderbolt said:
You know at times I forget that we're playing a game with the level of background work being done....
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I suppose one other positive from stripping out the stat requirements is that it does streamline the roles process and make it less work like...
 
Steven Kodaly said:
Cardassian tactics reports provide a modest, but real, numerical bonus during combat encounters with that power.
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I'm pretty sure the question was about why we should ask Starfleet Tactical to provide a more detailed analysis of probable battlefronts and useful ways to prepare for a war with Cardassia, NOT for the intelligence report option "tell us what tactics the Cardassians are using in battle this year."

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
@OneirosTheWriter, in addition to the sweeping update we're probably going to need to take this Snakepit, here are my proposals on how to fix the tactical operations turn:

1. Extend the deadline to fill a ship profile or role to ten years instead of five. Five years is too far inside our research envelope to properly guide ship design. With a five year deadline, we need to start from the ship design rather than from the ship intention. That gets things terribly backwards. With a ten year deadline, we can start from the research turn rather than from the ship design, and craft the available parts to role intention.
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(1) sounds good. Techs take more than five years to finish consistently, unless I badly misunderstand the way things work and am forgetting a LOT. Given our inability to consistently predict what parts will be available well in advance, or rather what those parts will actually do,

2. Eliminate all stat and cost requirements. We should be defining ships in terms of what roles we want them to play, not according to stat or costs. Deciding what stat or cost will fill that role should be determined after the designs have been done, not before. Otherwise we're putting the cart before the horse. All your ship designers understand what general stats are needed for a clearly written role, and costs is a matter of debate and willingness to pay.
3. Fill in stat and costs after the fact. These are still needed in order to obsolete or update roles and say "no, this statline isn't cutting it" or "no, this design is too expensive / too restrictive", but they should be used the opposite way they are now, in saying "these stats are what fills this role right now" rather than "this role is defined by this statline". Once a role is voted to be updated, the required stats should be cleared rather than increased until the update ship is designed.
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I'm not sure I'm happy with (2) and (3).

I think cost requirements are working out very badly, mainly because the current requirements are written in ways that don't align with what's actually physically possible on the new spreadsheet. For example, it's virtually impossible to design a really ambitious next-generation combat frigate for 55 SR or less, even if we want to. It's challenging to design any useful generalist frigate that costs 75 SR or less, too. I get that and agree with you.

At the same time... Oneiros needs some way of saying "this is what the politics and the bureaucracy restrict you to when you say "we want to build a new generalist frigate." " He can't do that without some kind of way to communicate what the numbers are going to have to be like. Like, maybe the reason the Council doesn't thwack us with militarization for updating garrison frigate requirements is because they think of the ship as an event responder, not just a warship... But by that same token, we're then stuck keeping Presence high even though it's useless in combat. Some requirement like "S+P must be within two points of C+L" would be useful for defining what does and does not constitute a 'generalist' ship in the eyes of the Council or of Starfleet bureaucracy.

[This is a hypothetical example, but you see what I mean, I hope]

Goat said:
It is extremely likely that the Combat Frigate and Garrison Frigate roles will need to be rolled into one unified role - possibly in this stage next game year. Whether that will cost Militirization or not, is up to @OneirosTheWriter.

The idea then being that a new design replaces both of the Miranda-A and Centaur-A designs, designed as a better combatant than either as well as having adequate S/P/D scores for garrison work.

As such, wait until next year's Tactical Operation post before pulling the trigger, at least.

Depending on how the role is statted out (that is purely Oneiros, isn't it?) the Centaur-A may no longer match it, the Miranda-A certainly will not. While we can still deploy ships that no longer match roles, I don't know if that will affect whether a refit option for these vessels will become an option in a decade or so - so pulling the roles out from under them may dead-end these designs altogether.
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I would think that "pulling the rug out from under" an old ship class would if anything make it MORE likely that refits continue to be developed- in hopes of making the ships viable in a new role.

For example, if a new generalist frigate requirement turns out to be something like, oh... "Frigate frame, Defense of 4+, Combat+Shields within 2 points of Science+Presence, no stat below 3..." Then clearly the Centaur-A and Miranda-A don't qualify. The Miranda-A loses its role entirely, while the Centaur-A is merely obsolete. BUT at some point in the 2320s, it will probably become possible to refit Mirandas into, say, 4/3/3/3/3/4 hulls, or Centaurs into 3/5/3/4/4/4 hulls, or something like that. And once this point is reached, we immediately have a very strong case for saying "this is the job that we need a modern frigate to do, and our ships can't do it, but they COULD do it with a refit."

HearthBorn said:
Out of curiosity, what prevents us from coming up with new designs for each class of ship every ten years, instead of the current period that feels like a minimum of every 18+ years? An approximate one tier per ship generation doesn't seem too bad.
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It increases the overhead associated with tracking what our ships are capable of during gameplay, and in general becomes a kind of purposeless 'churn.' Except during times of extremely rapid technological change and arms races (e.g. 1860-1960 in naval warfare), it is very rare for new classes of military hardware to truly supplant old ones in less than twenty years.
 
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Fleet Design Document 2318-028408(S)<D>
An Excelsior Future (Summary) <Draft>
A Feasibility Study and Analysis of Proposed Excelsior Refits.
Fleet Design, Fleet 2330, Excelsior, Project Excalibur, Refit, [12 Additional Tags]

Commander William Solberg, Group 15 "Lathriss Analysis"
[7 Additional Contributors]

SECRET // NEPTUNE-BLUE // NOFORN
––––––––––––––––

With the serial construction of the Ambassador and Enterprise in Utopia Planitia, the Excelsior class's forty year reign as the Federation's flagship Explorer is over. However, the Excelsior platform, suitably upgraded and modified, can continue to serve the Federation for at least another fifty years.

[-] Key Points
  • The Excelsior possesses a unprecedented capacity for upgrades, due to its large frame and warp core
  • New builds of the hypothetical Excelsior-B refit will be cost ineffective relative to the Ambassador and other proposed ship designs
  • The Project Excalibur subclass is cost-effective for new builds, and will fill the critical superheavy cruiser gap, countering Cardassian and Horizon heavy cruisers
  • The Excelsior is a suitable platform for new high-capacity auxiliary classes
[-] Introduction

Starfleet faces many challenges in planning ship building - interstellar high-capability ships are expensive, requiring substantial amounts of berth time, crew, and strategic resources. Although Starfleet's strategic resource allocation has significantly increased since the start of the 2300s as a result of a large expansion campaign, and increased member resource contribution, responsibilities have also increased, stretching fleet resources thin. Current Starfleet doctrine and fleet composition planning relies on a core of heavy explorers handling diplomatic, scientific, and medical tasks, a role currently fulfilled by the Excelsiors.

In 2274, the USS Enterprise-B finished construction with the conventional Excelsior Block Ib warp core. Since then, nearly two dozen more have been completed, despite the expense. Each Excelsior-A requires 800 highly trained crew members, four years of build time, 230 units of Bulk Strategic Resources, and 160 units of Special Strategic Resources. Although further refits with new and updated technology will increase capabilities, new design capabilities will also increase, making further construction to this standard uneconomical.

[+] Excelsior-B

[-] Project Excalibur

The original intended role for the Excelsior was to serve exclusively as Explorer Corps exploration ships. As a result, the Excelsior is equipped with an extensive scientific, medical, and diplomatic suite. The Excelsior 2315 refit improved all three of those, as well as updating the phaser emitters, torpedo launchers, and shield emitters. However, with increasing tensions with the Cardassian Union, and with a potential conflict with the Horizon brewing, it is logical and prudent to prepare a new superheavy cruiser to counter both the Kaldar-bis and any Horizon cruiser designs.

Project Excalibur is a proposed Excelsior subclass utilizing modern technology and elimination of the now-unnecessary Five Year Mission capability to reduce the Excelsior's cost, in terms of crew and resources, and to provide an answer to modern cruisers. This standard will not be applied to existing ships; instead, it will exist in parallel with the proposed Excelsior-B refit.

Under the SDB-ONE capability rating system, it has a score of C8 S6 H5 L7 P5 D6, with a build time of three years, a reduced crew complement of 200 officers, 200 enlisted, and 200 technicians, and a reduced Strategic Resource cost of 230 Bulk and 130 Special. This cost reduction is in line with the Constitution-B's reduced cost relative to the Constitution-A.

[Detailed Specifications are located in Ship Specifications Document SDB-2317-024400]

Although it retains much of the expense of the Excelsior frame, it also retains its high upgradability. Using current technological advancement projections, Project Excalibur will be an economical build option for at least another generation, and remain a viable deployment option until the 2370s.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I think cost requirements are working out very badly, mainly because the current requirements are written in ways that don't align with what's actually physically possible on the new spreadsheet. For example, it's virtually impossible to design a really ambitious next-generation combat frigate for 55 SR or less, even if we want to. It's challenging to design any useful generalist frigate that costs 75 SR or less, too. I get that and agree with you.
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... Uh...

This is false. Totally so. There are C4 S3 H4 L5P1 D4 combat designs for 80/50 on the sheet, and the current generalist base design is 90/60 C4 S4 H3 L5 P4 D4. The former is +1 C/S +2 H/L/D over it's predecessor, the latter is +1 everything except +2L. Both are definitely useful and significant upgrades. Whether we would want a combat ship is quite another matter...
 
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Forgothrax said:
... Uh...

This is false. Totally so. There are C4 S3 H4 L5P1 D4 combat designs for 80/50 on the sheet, and the current generalist base design is 90/60 C4 S4 H3 L5 P4 D4. The former is +1 C/S +2 H/L/D over it's predecessor, the latter is +1 everything except +2L. Both are definitely useful and significant upgrades. Whether we would want a combat ship is quite another matter...
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[sighs]

Look, this is what I get for trying to listen to you guys. I've heard more than a few complaints about the restrictiveness of those SR requirements.

Sorry to bother you.
 
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