This. We've upgraded everything except Shields and torpedoes at this point vs the gear on the old Saga. The option for one of those is hopefully in the next ship.
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Linked contents
This. We've upgraded everything except Shields and torpedoes at this point vs the gear on the old Saga. The option for one of those is hopefully in the next ship.
Well to list these various points out
- We've got new hull/armor indeed; but at least replacing hull plating on the exterior is quite possible to do in a refit
- Phasers haven't changed in quite a time, and they should be refittable if it comes to it
- We might have new thrusters, but we still haven't seen if they actually work. Depending on what happens with the actual test run they might need major work or even a redesign... or not. We don't know currently. But as it was a theoretical design, we probably shouldn't assume this one for sure.
- We likely have a new warp core, though for all we know it will be showing up as an experimental or prototype. Rather then a fully read to do system, in which case the risks would be more.
As such the gain against refits might not be that much and we don't know yet if there might be a setback or two we might still need to overcome.
Beyond that the argument of long lead time is a bit flawed in the case of a major transition. As that is an era where highest priority need is also relevant. Does the particular class one is replacing have a great need for a new warp core compared to another class? Not all classes are equal here and thus the benefits one gets from some classes is substantially more here then others. For instance a heavy cruiser being a more independent operating craft would make more use of warp 8 flight then just a bruiser stuck in a fleet.
Lead time matters of course, but not just on ships but also for the general fleet. Replacing large numbers of cruisers so one has fully benefit of it will take substantial time. If one starts on it late then the transition process will not complete over the war and the cruiser arm will operate at greatly reduced efficiency and combat ability.
In the end naval strategy is 'built strategy', if one did not build the cruisers that need the speed most, then the overall strategy will be forced far more on the defensive then otherwise. Meaning more will have to be suffered in Federation territory, because that is the strategy set by the building strategy then. And to change the strategies possible in the field requires long lead times in getting all those ships constructed.
So personally I still think overly focusing on the largest ship classes to the detriment of the merely heavy independent ships just below them is a mistake. Those ships would still be able to handle fighting large craft and would meanwhile be far more capable of making other strategies of war possible for the Federation to undertake. But it's only possible if they've already been under construction for as many years as possible, because that is the only way to get the numbers closer to where one needs them to be. Trying to rush job it mid-war is not really viable, to late to change the overall shape of the war.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
Maybe yes, maybe no. As you might have noticed, I have speculated on several methods by which this may be mitigated. Let's sum up:
• Developing better capacitor systems that don't degrade rapidly during use would mitigate the issue. This is, presumably, technically challenging, since we didn't do that then, but it's been some decades now and that may well have changed.Sagarmatha Retrospective said:
Several possible approachs here, based on this information:Type Two Phaser said:
• Dedicated power feed: Give phasers dedicated feeds rather than running them off the main grid.
Advantages: Doesn't require any new technology.
Disadvantages: Probably expensive, probably complicates maintenance, vulnerable to getting the feed knocked out in a way that the redundant main eps grid isn't.
• Develop higher capacity EPS conduits: Increasing the total thoughput of the EPS grid would naturally solve the power load issue; We're also probably going to have to do this eventually anyway as the load doesn't seem to be getting smaller anytime soon.
Advantages: probably won't be any more maintenance intensive than existing EPS conduits, potential benefits for a wide variety of systems.
Disadvantages: This would be some kind of new technology, with everything that implies, will likely increase manufacturing costs.
• Dedicated Fusion Reactors: Fusion is a mature technology that is compact, reliable, and efficient. adding a dedicated fusion reactor, either to the phaser itself (see below) or to the ship, hooked directly into the phaser as well as the main grid, will offload the power requirements from the main EPS grid to the dedicated reactor.
Advantages: No new technology required, Reactors can provide additional reserve power for the rest of the ship when not powering a Phaser.
Disadvantages: Will require more real estate in the hull, will need more hydrogen fuel, obviously adds some maintenance and cost burden to the ship.
Other Options:
• Develop Type Three Phaser: Development of a type three phaser could allow this issue to be mitigated. Possible approachs on that front:
• More efficient beam generator: Refining the actual beam generator to be more power efficient would naturally reduce the load on the ship's main power grid.
• Increase Beam Power: Refining the phaser machinery (including the beam diverter) to allow higher power beams would obviously improve overall firepower even without solving the grid-loading issue.
• Add dedicated fusion reactor: A dedicated reactor could also be added to the phaser itself - Size constraints would likely prevent this from being large enough to fully power the phaser by itself, but otherwise the general pros and cons detailed above apply to this approach.
• Something I haven't even considered: Sayle is perfectly able to produce fully original possible solutions to the issue if they so desire.
In all likelihood, "properly solving" this issue may well require the adoption of more than one option at a time.
I mean, I explicitly want to do a line cruiser immediately after, and recycle the same saucer to save some money and time on development. Ideally, even, we get the "Torpedoes in the neck" thing this generation, so we can leave the phasers completely alone and just add in the deflector and crew spaces for said saucer.
If the war really does start in the early 2040s, then in built strategy terms the same as not having built little to no cruisers at the start of the war.
When one is effectively having to rebuild the entire fleet and a war starts early in to that, what is more essential cruisers that will patrol the overall territory? Or a few battleships scale craft that will for a fair bit be locked in less mobile fleets?
For me the answer is obvious, I'd want as many cruisers with some punch to fill up the most important gap in strategic mobility, scouting, raiding with a fair bit of punch.
If one does not have that, there will be no reply to any Warp 8 Klingon craft really. And thus war strategy will be set completely on the basis that the Federation can not match the Klingon in warp speeds at all. Meaning one is stuck in defensive battles or trying to gather a large attack ball to try and force a battle somewhere else, but with exposed logistical lines if one has to travel to far. Not only that but the highly expensive heavy space stations with out those cruisers might become more exposed to attack as well, thus threatening the entire internal logistics system of the Federation.
The only way this changes is if the war does not start early 2040s or if one actually has a substantial number of craft that are capable of going at those speeds, are designed for such a role.
If my analysis here is some how wrong, I'd like to hear where exactly so I can reevaluate the matter.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
If we're at war with the Klingons in the 40s it's not going to matter which option we go for first, they're going to be strategically irrelevant either way because most of our fleet will still be the one we currently have. I want to go for an Explorer first on the basis that our current ship in that role is the Sagarmatha, which is so old it predates the type three nacelle and the SDB's move to Mars, which, critically, cannot trade with D6s favorably, so I hold that if we have to pick one ship to replace, that's the one to pick, if for no other reason than to get our entire fleet on the Type Three nacelle for logistical reasons; and because I am of the opinion that this will allow us to quickly produce a generalist line cruiser by the simple expediant of lopping off the Explorer's secondary hull, sticking a modest Inline hull on the back, shoehorning in a deflector and some torpedoes along with a jack-of-all-trades configuration of secondary modules, and going from there.
Simply put, I am hoping that building a vessel that can reliably beat the D6 as the first ship in the Warp 8 fleet, which is frankly the minimum standard for heavy metal in the era we are about to enter, will delay things a bit, preferably until the Klingons can develop the D7. Explorers are the face of Starfleet, and right now that face cannot reliably defeat its Klingon equivalent, which is not exactly going to make them not want to get into a war with us.
We absolutely should have a tactical line cruiser on the roadmap, but it is not our most critical need right now. which is a new explorer to replace the aging Sagarmatha class.
That this is also the ship with the highest lead time in our immediate priorities from a military standpoint only makes it more critical to do first.
I do not agree with this conclusion. While the fleet combat power would not change much, that is not the main purpose of cruisers. Instead it is in their ability to freely roam around, something they will do better with a high warp factor. Something which will make them far more effective at scouting and countering logistics raiding. Meaning the fleets could be more easily used in more offensive roles.
Having a number of years to start building up higher speed cruisers would thus make a material difference for overall fleet effectivity.
This is not something a few large ships can do in comparison. You can not expect the heaviest ships to be employed in securing their own logistics train and expect this to not impact overall fleet effectiveness and readiness levels.
I do understand why you want to go for the most economical route, that would be nice if possible. But so far I can tell it will in the short term (10-20 years) come at the cost of a less effective fleet and inability to respond to raiding nearly as well. And thus I posit cause more enormous economic and populous suffering from that conflict.
The problem is thus rather obviously, will you get that time to execute the full plan for the economic solution? Or will it basically be ruined by the increased war damages? Also beyond this matter wasn't the original Enterprise a Heavy Cruiser and able to fight against Klingon heavies? So I'm unsure why you'd think a heavy cruiser some how being insufficiently powerful. Especially as in some techs we may well be ahead of the originals tech level. Like the superior warp core, possibly hull/armor and the thrusters.
To me this seems like putting more firepower on the problem then is strictly needed, when one very much needs important other roles filled that actually need the faster warp core to remain effective.
Still... I after this decided to look up some info on the D6 and am now wondering if it was first fielded in 2233 and was actually the first Warp 8 'cruiser'? the Klingons deployed? (Though supposedly due to warp coil flaws maybe effectively 7.3?) Is this timeline still the case with this more advanced Federation? As else maybe the concern on Warp 8 vessels from the Klingon might be less severe then thought.
Anyone have any ideas? Because the best option on what to do is kind of influenced on what the other side is actually capable of doing.
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
I think you answered your own question.
If we do make a big ship next, I assume we're gonna want it to have high combat ability (and fairly good coverage to hit ships before they re-cloak).
But this time, purely for vibes reasons, I like it to have a non-engineering secondary focus.
Maybe Diplomacy, preferably science or medical.
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One thing that history tells us is that when the bullets start to fly, industries hunker down and start building en-masse what has already been designed and is in the production pipelines.
So what we do we really need at the moment?
We need two ship types.
1. We need the new big mainline combatant. Call it a Heavy Cruiser or Heavy Explorer or Diplomatic Cruiser or whatever. These are your ships of Legend, expanding the borders of the Federation in peace and defending those borders in times of war. It is essentially going to be the command ship around which the Federation builds its combat fleets consisting of the other half of the equation.
2. That other half of the equation is your mass production attrition combatant, call it your 'War Destroyer' or 'War Cruiser' or whatever, but it is going to be the ship design that you build in huge numbers that is going to do most the fighting. It is going to be as small as possible and cheap as possible and as easy to build as we can humanly make it. It will have its days of glory on the front lines fighting the good fight, and then it will be relegated to history books and museums. Because it's not designed for a long service life, they're designed to live fast, burn bright and break the backs of the Federations enemies over their knees and then hang up their guns in the reserve fleets, their jobs done but still there in case of 'next time'.
These ships need to be in service or at least the production pipeline before war is declared.
So what we do we really need at the moment?
We need two ship types.
1. We need the new big mainline combatant. Call it a Heavy Cruiser or Heavy Explorer or Diplomatic Cruiser or whatever. These are your ships of Legend, expanding the borders of the Federation in peace and defending those borders in times of war. It is essentially going to be the command ship around which the Federation builds its combat fleets consisting of the other half of the equation.
2. That other half of the equation is your mass production attrition combatant, call it your 'War Destroyer' or 'War Cruiser' or whatever, but it is going to be the ship design that you build in huge numbers that is going to do most the fighting. It is going to be as small as possible and cheap as possible and as easy to build as we can humanly make it. It will have its days of glory on the front lines fighting the good fight, and then it will be relegated to history books and museums. Because it's not designed for a long service life, they're designed to live fast, burn bright and break the backs of the Federations enemies over their knees and then hang up their guns in the reserve fleets, their jobs done but still there in case of 'next time'.
These ships need to be in service or at least the production pipeline before war is declared.
Endorfinator
Awkwardly Social
- Location
- California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd rather not design another Skate class because I want something that will have a life after the war. Look at my NGE and Advanced Patrol Crusier design briefs.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My hope is we get to know what San Francisco is building again and it's one of these, so we can design the other.
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
If we're lucky, if we need to build another 'Skate', the general embggining of ships might result in this new ship being big enough to have a tiny cargo bay.
That and a high cruise and/or high sprint would make it useful for small stuff that needs to be brought somewhere far at a good clip, or a shorter distance at a very good clip.
----
Thinking on it, small ships with less mass and weaker shields are very vulnerable to being picked off by cloaked ships, so a tiny ship might be too fragile to be worth building vs the Kilingons.
So, assuming that we go one size above "really tiny", for the sake of saving on build costs during the war, what if we could just leave some space as "intended to be refit for later function"?
I can see such a ship eventually falling into a patrol/anti-pirate role, with some small scale courier function, but it'd be really cool if with a day's(/few hours?) work, such a ship could have a low-end fabrication setup (or some other fucntion) installed.
And of course, when it's not transporting cargo, that space can be a rec area, with foldaway furnishings.
That and a high cruise and/or high sprint would make it useful for small stuff that needs to be brought somewhere far at a good clip, or a shorter distance at a very good clip.
----
Thinking on it, small ships with less mass and weaker shields are very vulnerable to being picked off by cloaked ships, so a tiny ship might be too fragile to be worth building vs the Kilingons.
So, assuming that we go one size above "really tiny", for the sake of saving on build costs during the war, what if we could just leave some space as "intended to be refit for later function"?
I can see such a ship eventually falling into a patrol/anti-pirate role, with some small scale courier function, but it'd be really cool if with a day's(/few hours?) work, such a ship could have a low-end fabrication setup (or some other fucntion) installed.
And of course, when it's not transporting cargo, that space can be a rec area, with foldaway furnishings.
Its also worth keeping in mind that Federation ethos does not favor an attrition strategy.
Ships are expensive, but crews are even more so, and some crew qualities and experiences are literally priceless.
Yes, they can and will build mobilization frigates/cruisers at times of significant need. However, they are not Klingons or Romulans; they do not favor designing or building tincans with crews that are sent out to die because its the economically optimal strategy from the PoV of a Total War strategy player.
Nor do the crews favor that, for that matter, and crew quality is a significant factor helping explain for Starfleet's eventual dominance of the Alpha Quadrant. Crews surviving and passing on experience and institutional knowledge is critical in how navies win wars.
That said, an additional consideration that just occurred to me is that with the OOC discussion about Klingon deep strikes, we might actually see infrastructure damage to Federation civilian and Starfleet military yards.
Something to keep in mind.
Ships are expensive, but crews are even more so, and some crew qualities and experiences are literally priceless.
Yes, they can and will build mobilization frigates/cruisers at times of significant need. However, they are not Klingons or Romulans; they do not favor designing or building tincans with crews that are sent out to die because its the economically optimal strategy from the PoV of a Total War strategy player.
Nor do the crews favor that, for that matter, and crew quality is a significant factor helping explain for Starfleet's eventual dominance of the Alpha Quadrant. Crews surviving and passing on experience and institutional knowledge is critical in how navies win wars.
That said, an additional consideration that just occurred to me is that with the OOC discussion about Klingon deep strikes, we might actually see infrastructure damage to Federation civilian and Starfleet military yards.
Something to keep in mind.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
... I think we're talking past eachother.
In SDB, an Explorer is generally a "Heavy Cruiser" or "Battlecruiser" in doctrinal role, and regular "Cruisers" are line ships produced in bulk, whilst "Frigates" tend to be small pure combat ships.
I am saying "We need the heavy cruiser/Battlecruiser first, then a cruiser, frigates can wait until either war actually happens or we have free space from other, more important (for Starfleet) designs"
What I have been hearing you say is "We don't need a Battlecruiser/heavy cruiser, we need a mass production line cruiser" which. no, we don't. Or at least, not as much as the heavy metal role, because again, right now that's the Sagarmatha and those are shortly going to be the oldest ships in inventory.
If what you mean that we should be building a heavy cruiser slash Battlecruiser, then yes, we are in agreement, because that's what an Explorer is during wartime. Explorers are our heavy metal.
- Location
- EcksEcksEcksEcks
Perhaps we should wait until the QM tells us what contracts starfleet is offering? Until then, have an Omake.
A Harvest Ball
The Halley class should not exist, by all accounts of the DTI. A backline engineering vessel that could fabricate a small station all by itself, intended to industrialize federation space to an unprecedented degree, should not be possible especially this early in the timeline. Nevermind one capable of beating off small pirate attacks, assuming they were pirates and not "pirates". And yet, the Halley clearly existed. It was no silver bullet to the coming problems the federation would face, but a single orb wasn't that hard to build and could probably build a small shipyard and the mining bases to support it without returning to civilization. It wouldn't be fast or efficient, but it was possible which was concerning. Did Engineer Smith mention it was concerning? Because these schematics were exactly that. They also weren't the coffee he ordered.
"Boss, if i have one more thing shoved in my face that isn't coffee as black as your soul I refuse to be held responsible for what happens next."
The Cretin shoving the tablet in front of his face scowled, and somehow smacked it's two braincells together to growl out a threat.
"Smith, I swear to God if you don't do your job I will drown you in literal paperwork. Made from woodpulp. And a fountain pen to do it with."
The badly sleep deprived engineer could only laugh at that threat.
"Smith, don't test me. I will do it! Someone has to handle that and it will be you if you don't ship up!"
"Boss, you could force me to carve it on clay tablets with a chisel and I'd find it an improvement since I'd get my blessed bean-juice. You dragged me out of my bunk by the ear at three in the morning. Over schematics that are already finalized-"
"Smith, what do you mean finalized!?"
...Apparently The Cretin was in over his head. Oh well, its not his job at risk.
"Boss, this isn't the theoretical blueprints. Or even the ones used for prototyping. This one includes manufacturing details, from production runs. See this note about micro-fractures in the hulls? It compares two different shipyards. They are trying to identify the source by contrasting results from different shipyards"
Oh that was a wonderful sight. The Cretin was pale as a ghost!
"Honestly, she's not a bad ship. Spheres get a bad rap these days, because borg, but if you aren't getting into a fight the sheer interior volume makes for a stubborn workhorse. Honestly, you could fit a small space station into those cargo pods and set up a small self-sufficient station in the middle of nowhere."
Now how to cap it off...
"Hm... If I grabbed four of them I could probably stuff enough starbase modules inside to make a mining, refining, and shipbuilding station that could produce more Halleys." Three. Two. One.
*Thud*
Maybe the next Cretin won't get between an engineer and his coffee.
A Harvest Ball
The Halley class should not exist, by all accounts of the DTI. A backline engineering vessel that could fabricate a small station all by itself, intended to industrialize federation space to an unprecedented degree, should not be possible especially this early in the timeline. Nevermind one capable of beating off small pirate attacks, assuming they were pirates and not "pirates". And yet, the Halley clearly existed. It was no silver bullet to the coming problems the federation would face, but a single orb wasn't that hard to build and could probably build a small shipyard and the mining bases to support it without returning to civilization. It wouldn't be fast or efficient, but it was possible which was concerning. Did Engineer Smith mention it was concerning? Because these schematics were exactly that. They also weren't the coffee he ordered.
"Boss, if i have one more thing shoved in my face that isn't coffee as black as your soul I refuse to be held responsible for what happens next."
The Cretin shoving the tablet in front of his face scowled, and somehow smacked it's two braincells together to growl out a threat.
"Smith, I swear to God if you don't do your job I will drown you in literal paperwork. Made from woodpulp. And a fountain pen to do it with."
The badly sleep deprived engineer could only laugh at that threat.
"Smith, don't test me. I will do it! Someone has to handle that and it will be you if you don't ship up!"
"Boss, you could force me to carve it on clay tablets with a chisel and I'd find it an improvement since I'd get my blessed bean-juice. You dragged me out of my bunk by the ear at three in the morning. Over schematics that are already finalized-"
"Smith, what do you mean finalized!?"
...Apparently The Cretin was in over his head. Oh well, its not his job at risk.
"Boss, this isn't the theoretical blueprints. Or even the ones used for prototyping. This one includes manufacturing details, from production runs. See this note about micro-fractures in the hulls? It compares two different shipyards. They are trying to identify the source by contrasting results from different shipyards"
Oh that was a wonderful sight. The Cretin was pale as a ghost!
"Honestly, she's not a bad ship. Spheres get a bad rap these days, because borg, but if you aren't getting into a fight the sheer interior volume makes for a stubborn workhorse. Honestly, you could fit a small space station into those cargo pods and set up a small self-sufficient station in the middle of nowhere."
Now how to cap it off...
"Hm... If I grabbed four of them I could probably stuff enough starbase modules inside to make a mining, refining, and shipbuilding station that could produce more Halleys." Three. Two. One.
*Thud*
Maybe the next Cretin won't get between an engineer and his coffee.
I like it. I would like to know more about the assumptions dictating why the Haley shouldn't exist (yet), and why its appearance is so concerning.
And why you have to wake someone up at 3AM, when you're part of an organization that uses time travel.
Im hoping for Sanfran to pull out for us for the small craft since they showed the ability to work on two cruiser size design at the same time, how good the design are we need to see. If so we can focus larger vessels.
@Sayle can we have info on Sanfran long distance cruiser they where working on? Also will the new warp core production be a ship bottleneck?
@Sayle can we have info on Sanfran long distance cruiser they where working on? Also will the new warp core production be a ship bottleneck?
- Location
- sweden
What if we mount a big weapon on the spinning section or several so it works like a davinci tank
I mean a big reason we don't get to shoot all the phasers at once is that the ships in the shows only shoot one or two phasers at once and everything south of that fact is an in universe reasoning for why that aesthetic is still reality. I don't think we can logic our way out of a style problem.
We are going to be stuck at 2 phasers at a time for this entire quest I suspect.
- Location
- west
Why wouldn't you put all the energy you could into singular blasts? Phasers are the dual purpose guns of Trek useful for point defense and taking on other ships, not to mention all of the non combat purposes that they get modified for to solve problems of the week.
Aesthetics.
I think we shouldn't worry about it. Phasers have X power and adding more phasers just ups coverage. That's how the quest works.
I don't think the overwhelming single ship is a viable tactic against specifically the Klingons.
We are not going to be at war with a single polity who is going to send a massive fleet to fight us in a pivotal battle. We are going to face the great houses all moving in generally the same direction of war with us, but all trying to one up the others and acting in a generally disunified manner.
Normally this would be an advantage, but with the Klingon strategy of raiding it's a problem. There won't just be one raid and no matter how hard we slap one raid down the others are just going to laugh about how the house backing that raid was a bunch of weaklings.
So I think we need a significant number of hulls even if that means building somewhat smaller ships. Specifically I think we need to be very sparing on secondary hull size. Primary hull dictates most offensive options and so we should go with a good sized primary saucer and no or a very small secondary hull.
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My concern is mostly that the explorers often get designed more towards being Battleships, being some of the biggest and extremely heavily armed ships out there. Going a notch or two down in size, maybe pushing maneuverability a deal more and putting some more forward firepower in would also already suffice. And you'd still have plenty of space for various other functions still as well.
Basically I'm thinking they don't have to be as big as this design bureau has been making them. And there I in a way doubt they'll change their goals on Explorers, I figured maybe it's just better to call it differently so as to make a distinction. But I still mean a pretty large craft with many abilities, yes.
I'm still catching up but this gives me an idea for a wholly new ship design to consider: pencil shaped.
A long, thin, design focused entirely on presenting as narrow a head-on profile as possible so that the entire thing lines up with the warp coils. Probably reprising the idea of extra-length warp coils
- A single coil in the back would probably be the least experimental but also the least efficient
- Maybe the a single coil is in front of the crew compartment and any ejecta form it is basically magnetically piped around the crew compartment and out the back.
- maybe its two coils, one ahead, one behind.
- Or there's the experimental approach where the crew compartment is outright wrapped up inside the warp coil with very elaborate heat management
The result would be undergunned, submarine levels of cramped, and probably finicky to build. But it'd also be very light and have a VERY compact warp field. So it should have a fast as hell cruise speed. Which would be its main form of defense: run away faster than it can be chased
Purpose: A high speed courier for getting messages and critical deliveries from point A to point B as fast as safely possible. Also small scale rapid medical response
- Location
- USA
I dont know that a needle shape would be the way to do it, but I can see the appeal of designing a ship from the ground up expressly to be as fast as possible.
But we dont really need courier ships for messages when we have the subspace relay network allowing real time interplanetary video calls.
But we dont really need courier ships for messages when we have the subspace relay network allowing real time interplanetary video calls.
darkstarling
Brilliantly Crazed
- Location
- Columbus, Ohio
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Proton's ALIVE???