Temporal Affairs Directive 442-B:
Compared to the thin full saucer, the thicker half-saucer has literally twice as much forward-facing space on the edge of the saucer- and, given the maneuverability focus, I'm generally only concerned about forward throw weight, as long as aft is "not zero". The half-saucer will unquestionably be able to fit more forward torpedo tubes, and more of any other specifically-exterior-facing modules.
Thin saucer:
My dream is four forward and one or two aft on the half-saucer, and one or two more forward on a large oversized engineering hull- or perhaps even between the hulls in a thickened "neck"; if we could fit a fore and an aft tube with a shared magazine in the neck, I'd be delighted. I'd vote for rapid-fire only if we were constrained to three or fewer forward-facing tubes, and even then probably just a single, central rapid-fire launcher, flanked by standard launchers. They're just so gosh-durned expensive.
Yes, but the reason we bleed ships is because Klingon battleships completely overmatch us. The D6 is already superior any one of our individual ships, and the D7 is faster and better armed than the D6. In order to stem the bleeding we need to bandage the wound with ships that kill D7's.
If we cheap out on the torpedoes with a single rapid-fire tube, I'm expecting our heavy cruiser to fail, yes. I'm sincerely worried that 3x standard tubes won't cut it either, which is why I've been pushing hard to try to get up to 4x of them.
I believe the point is (or at least should be) that trying to build the canon ship with our divergent tech base and situation would end poorly. The actual canon ship would... Probably do all right? But we can't build that, and won't have time to build as many even if we could, so need to go in a different direction.
The Saladin is a worse combatant than the Newton. And the Newton was severely outmatched by the D7, and even questionable against the D6.
If we bomb this design we will be facing the potential of crippling damage to the Federation. I don't know if Sayle would bad-end us with some Klingon conquest scenario but it was on the table from the temporal noted. So like, there may be no fixing things.
I believe they are talking about the canonical Saladin.
I don't particularly expect fucking this up to bad-end us. Probably.
An important thing to note, the canon Saladin quite literally has the same armament as the Connie. So as long as we actually put decent armaments on the saucer (minimal per canon, so 3x phaser banks and 2x rapid launchers - though we could conceivably go for the same torpedo armament and 6x saucer phaser banks given the size of it) we'll have quite a punchy ship.
We will have 4 years apparently. And I don't find the idea of this design process fun. I don't want to basically circle back to wherever are now only with extra desertion. I don't find that a fun option.
The Saladin concept means losing a bunch of warp speed which command doesn't like. Sure maybe if our plan is a desperate defense of core Federation territory. That is a scenario that represents a failure state. It would be really, really bad if we are sacrificing strategic concerns just to get enough hulls to hold off the Klingons from our core territories. Even if we win they would be almost certain to try again later.
I have no idea why you're characterizing a cheaper, better-armed, equal-mass design with "some gold-plated super-expensive monster". Canon Connie had one rapid-fire torpedo launcher, very strong (if narrow field) phasers, ~10% better shields, and significantly worse maneuverability than my preferred design (covalent shields, four standard thrusters, and as many standard torpedo tubes as we can get). It was also smaller, about as- if not more- expensive, and benefited from multiple additional decades for Starfleet to build up its supporting fleet and its orbital defenses in general.
There's no reason that this ship can't be a competitive combatant. With a pair of the new phasers and 2-3 rapid fire torpedoes we can achieve sustained damage greater than a Pharos and an alpha strike that's equal to 3-4 of our other ships.
The rapid fire launchers aren't just a little bit better, though. Three times the damage gives them the same average damage as a phaser, and the alpha strike of a single tube is equal the alpha of our most heavily armed ships.
It quite clearly had two. As all the diagrams I've posted have shown (2 banks of photon torpedoes), and I believe Sayle has mentioned.
Yeah the current Four Year War scenario is already bad. We are already at large swaths of Federation space are occupied by the Klingons. If we fail to build a good or adequate design, the scenario will get worse. Like probably the Federation will have to make permanent territorial concessions bad, if not massively so. The Klingons are going to push for hard terms or victory outright if they think they can get it.
I think what Candesce is getting at is that 4 - 6 standard launchers have the same DPS as two rapid, but cost substantially less.
