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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Adhoc vote count started by Bedpotato on Oct 17, 2024 at 7:57 PM, finished with 330 posts and 128 votes.
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I don't get the hangup off people over the project name? We are in no shape or form In the Original timeline. In fact so much shit has changed that people expecting the canon ship classes somehow miss the point the of the quest. There is no history of the Enterprise being the Federations chief explorer, the Constituten class is about to be designed as a pure warship.

Why do people insist to make a carbon copy of a ship that will not work in the situation we are in right now?
 
Skippy said:
Honestly I was personally voting for the Half-Saucer simply because I want both zoom and internals, and it is a bit more efficient for mounting four impulse engines. I was definitely not intending to cut out on Internals to make a "pure warship" - if we lose too much Engineering then it actually becomes a less effective cruiser. Also were one trying to make a "stripped back" design (although there's little reason to do so because the cost savings are marginal) then actually one might as well go for the canon saucer and three engines, as it's marginally cheaper.

In terms of the Temporal Sword of Damocles is... none of the saucer options can possibly fuck up the design enough to actually matter for that. Like it is simply not that consequential. We could plausibly FUBAR the ship with hilariously bad decisions on armament, or make it much worse if we like, deliberately didn't pick really useful Internals out of contrarianism, but beyond that, it's quite hard to do.

FWIW I asked about this and got the answer that there's not a space difference, just the thruster mounting/contingency on thrusters difference.

Now in fairness, whether that ends up being true in practice when we've actually gotten to the Internals phase... It probably depends on the actual physical number of pixels of the saucer versus half-saucer on the LCARS most of all. Which will depend on how @Sayle chooses to draw them, and also what Internals options get decided on by that point. To have roughly the same useable area area, the half-saucer will need to be a bit fatter. But I think at least the vague intention is similar useable space.

But like, there are enough things that can fudge this in either direction that even though explicitly mechanically speaking, the Half-Saucer is meant to be more space-efficient at including four Type-2s... realistically we could also stick four thrusters on the Connie saucer and like, it's probably not going to have a discrete measurable downside other than meaning we can't include the aft torpedo launcher we were definitely not planning on anyway. Losing/shrinking an Internal slot is possible but not forgone.

Honestly I think voting based on vibes and aesthetics is probably fine here.
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I don't like the thought that the spaceframe vote is completely inconsequential. Like, I think if we pick votes that contradict each other on structure, propulsion, equipment then we can end up with a ship that is suboptimal. If we pick 4 engines on a slim saucer and a small/no engineering hull, I'd expect we would face an unpleasant choice in terms of photon armament.

Most past spaceframe picks have mattered in terms of what sort of ship we get at the end. If we'd picked a half-saucer NX, it wouldn't have had the broad phase cannon coverage that let it play point defense boat over Earth. If we'd picked a bigger Kea hull, we'd have a... thing, but not the thing we have. If we'd picked a saucer/half-saucer on the Selachii, we might not have been able to hit Very High maneuverability.
 
[X] 140 Meter Half-Saucer (140,000 Tons)

Don't worry, we just stick the other half back on and fill it with science labs as a post-war refit! /j
 
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Golgotha said:
Same.
I honestly thought with all the logistical improvements we've done that we would be able to afford something that put the Enterprise to shame. Just bigger, better, everything.
And we probably have the ability!
I just absolutely didn't even consider we were making ourselves into a nice fat goose for the Klingons.
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This, all of this right here. I didn't think we were going to be actively FORCED into a small ship.
 
To reiterate what I said ages ago, I believe this ship will actually have a much more similar role to the canon-Constitution than people are assuming. Probably it will end up having more Engineering and worse Science because it will be difficult for me to trick you guys into putting in more labs. But a Medical Bay is an obvious "gimme", and given its size it will likely include some standard labs anyway, plus computers. Like the brief actually says that Science and Engineering are both "nice to have", and even the lower-end options here on volume will leave us with at least four or five internals slots at the absolute lowest end, quite probably more like nine or ten.

The canonical Constitution was also built in large numbers to be a good cost-effective heavy cruiser to face the rising Klingon thread that was Pretty Okay at Engineering and Science. It is not a coincidence that the project name is the same, it's because they're actually both built to do roughly the same thing, and the explorer/pure warship distinction is a false dichotomy. There's a bit more urgency to our brief because of the refit incompatibility issue, but fundamentally I think the brief we were given and the brief for the canonical Constitution share more similarities than differences, and Sayle has made statements about the TOS Constitution in this thread to that effect.
 
Bedpotato said:
Adhoc vote count started by Bedpotato on Oct 17, 2024 at 7:57 PM, finished with 330 posts and 128 votes.
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I don't get the hangup off people over the project name? We are in no shape or form In the Original timeline. In fact so much shit has changed that people expecting the canon ship classes somehow miss the point the of the quest. There is no history of the Enterprise being the Federations chief explorer, the Constituten class is about to be designed as a pure warship.

Why do people insist to make a carbon copy of a ship that will not work in the situation we are in right now?
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Look. I don't yell at the thread over it's rapid herding to assumptions that have historically only been half right.

I may actually just like the way the Connie looks and feel we can still make a good warship with it.
 
Skippy said:
To reiterate what I said ages ago, I believe this ship will actually have a much more similar role to the canon-Constitution than people are assuming. Probably it will end up having more Engineering and worse Science because it will be difficult for me to trick you guys into putting in more labs. But a Medical Bay is an obvious "gimme", and given its size it will likely include some standard labs anyway, plus computers. Like the brief actually says that Science and Engineering are both "nice to have", and even the lower-end options here on volume will leave us with at least four or five internals slots at the absolute lowest end, quite probably more like nine or ten.

The canonical Constitution was also built in large numbers to be a good cost-effective heavy cruiser to face the rising Klingon thread that was Pretty Okay at Engineering and Science. It is not a coincidence that the project name is the same, it's because they're actually both built to do roughly the same thing, and the explorer/pure warship distinction is a false dichotomy. There's a bit more urgency to our brief because of the refit incompatibility issue, but fundamentally I think the brief we were given and the brief for the canonical Constitution share more similarities than differences, and Sayle has made statements about the TOS Constitution in this thread to that effect.
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Yes but you know what's technically also useful for exploration (because it lets you avoid being seen while on long observation missions), and also has some tactical benefits?

I am reminded, yet again, that this Federation did not sign the no-cloaking-devices treaty and rapid photon torpedoes are, in fact, a very funny weapon with cloak.

@Sayle please let us do it please give us a chance to vote for a prototype cloaking device it'll be funny and nothing will go wrong I swear
 
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KNakamura said:
Look. I don't yell at the thread over it's rapid herding to assumptions that have historically only been half right.

I may actually just like the way the Connie looks and feel we can still make a good warship with it.
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??? The Enterprise was a generalist exploration cruiser. And we where asked to build a small heavy armed and defendet ship with no other roles. These are fundamental incompatible, so why not do the demanded design brief?
 
Bedpotato said:
??? The Enterprise was a generalist exploration cruiser. And we where asked to build a small heavy armed and defendet ship with no other roles. These are fundamental incompatible, so why not do the demanded design brief?
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The Enterprise is a warship. At least in TOS it pretty much is. It's worth remembering that Kirk was also a solider. So yes, this *is* doing the design brief.
 
Saying that "this is an alternate timeline" feels like a cop-out since every post on this ship has evoked canon. Right down to the project name. If Sayle didn't want us to build a variation on the Connie they should've called it something else.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Yes but you know what's technically also useful for exploration (because it lets you avoid being seen while on long observation missions), and also has some tactical benefits?

I am reminded, yet again, that this Federation did not sign the no-cloaking-devices treaty and rapid photon torpedoes are, in fact, a very funny weapon with cloak.

@Sayle please let us do it please give us a chance to vote for a prototype cloaking device it'll be funny and nothing will go wrong I swear
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There was an earlier response that indicated that the Federation doesn't really want cloaks because it is perceived as likely to raise tensions with neighbors and just be generally provocative. Also it's sort of a "if we don't have them no one can be naughty" thing that recognizes that the existence of cloaked ships is a temptation.

I think we'd only get serious cloaking development if things were going very, very badly for the Federation, to the point that these were considered lesser concerns than the military utility. That would feel like a soft fail state for the quest if the Federation got to that point.

Also the no-cloak treaty isn't until 2311. It was part of the actual peace treaty with the Romulans, and isn't happening because we whupped the Romulans so hard that instead of just informally ceasing hostilities they actually cried uncle and offered serious concessions in a formal treaty.
 
Honestly, the frustrating thing right now for me is that we got the implication that the Canon Approach was the Objectively Correct one and diverging from it can only get us worse outcomes.

Like, so far, we've had three bits in a row where we found out that because we didn't do things exactly like the canon Federation did, we're in a worse position. Like how we delayed the Warp 8 engine and now the Klingons are going to get into our core territories in a much earlier war. We picked to go with the large arc phasers and found out they're Objectively inferior to the high focus ones they went with in canon in every respect, like how in theory it should have made the ORB at least reasonably capable in a scrap, but they still got barely-passable Tactical scores compared to a ship with only one additional torpedo tube (Which got more than a full letter rank higher)

Now we have a chance to do the Canon choice again, or do something else, but I guess we're going to find out that any version but the canon Connie saucer is going to make it an objectively inferior ship T_T

It's irritating because the first era was kind of a wild west where anything could happen, we could do Weird Things, and it even got us a better outcome than canon in that we pressured the Romulans harder before they went to war! But it seems the closer we get to ToS, the more we're being straitjacketed, and I'm not sure I'm fond of that implication, even if it was unintentional.
 
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DeltaV11.2 said:
I don't like the thought that the spaceframe vote is completely inconsequential. Like, I think if we pick votes that contradict each other on structure, propulsion, equipment then we can end up with a ship that is suboptimal. If we pick 4 engines on a slim saucer and a small/no engineering hull, I'd expect we would face an unpleasant choice in terms of photon armament.

Most past spaceframe picks have mattered in terms of what sort of ship we get at the end. If we'd picked a half-saucer NX, it wouldn't have had the broad phase cannon coverage that let it play point defense boat over Earth. If we'd picked a bigger Kea hull, we'd have a... thing, but not the thing we have. If we'd picked a saucer/half-saucer on the Selachii, we might not have been able to hit Very High maneuverability.
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To be clear, I'm not saying I think it's completely inconsequential; what I'm saying is that the difference between the Half-Saucer and the Thin Saucer across all possible permutations of stuff we do with engines definitely exists, but is also like, it's let's say on the order of +/-15-20% space/efficiency/whatever. It's worth optimising on if you care about min-maxing (which is why I'm sort of guiltily voting Half-Saucer) but also it's not the literal end of the world. At the peak of the argument before we were verging on acting as if it was the end of the world; that's not helpful. . b

In terms of hullform, I think that what we pick in terms of the secondary hull + deflector has a lot more opportunity to alter the ship than the choice between two 140kT saucers. Like, the difference between Thin/Half does exist, and there's an even bigger difference between either of them and the big saucer. But the difference between "has a decent-sized secondary hull" and "no secondary hull" or "shrunken secondary hull fused into the saucer with a deflector squished in" is much bigger in terms of slots.

There is also definitely some ways that hullform and deflector placement will effect where we can put weapon. I'm just not actually 100% convinced we know for certain what that will be in advance, although I think there's been some fairly good guesses made.
 
DeltaV11.2 said:
There was an earlier response that indicated that the Federation doesn't really want cloaks because it is perceived as likely to raise tensions with neighbors and just be generally provocative. Also it's sort of a "if we don't have them no one can be naughty" thing that recognizes that the existence of cloaked ships is a temptation.

I think we'd only get serious cloaking development if things were going very, very badly for the Federation, to the point that these were considered lesser concerns than the military utility. That would feel like a soft fail state for the quest if the Federation got to that point.

Also the no-cloak treaty isn't until 2311. It was part of the actual peace treaty with the Romulans, and isn't happening because we whupped the Romulans so hard that instead of just informally ceasing hostilities they actually cried uncle and offered serious concessions in a formal treaty.
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Well right now, tensions are rising already, time to dust off the cloaking systems and shove 'em in!

out of character I genuinely want this to happen because it'd be the first sort of big "we're not in kansas anymore" moment, where you know that this timeline has diverged notably from the original. The relatively faster increase in tensions and combat power disadvantage justifies dusting off all these sorts of weird technologies and seeing if any of them can improve our situation significantly, so it feels organic, and it's a neat and significant canon divergence which is nonetheless justifiable given the circumstances.
 
Skippy said:
I'm not saying I think it's completely inconsequential; what I'm saying is that the difference between the Half-Saucer and the Thin Saucer across all possible permutations of stuff we do with engines definitely exists, but is also like, it's let's say on the order of +/-15-20% space/efficiency/whatever. It's worth optimising on if you care about min-maxing (which is why I'm sort of guiltily voting Half-Saucer) but also it's not the literal end of the world.
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's why I haven't really been saying that much on the saucer arguments. It might make a difference, it might not, we might be able to make everything work out with any of them as a starting option in various different ways.

I'm liable to have much stronger opinions on the secondary hull. Or the nacelles; I'd agree that cruise would usually be the right call for a cruiser, but this one is going to have the specific role of dealing with Klingon D7s, and there's something to be said for denying them the option of running away and attacking somewhere where a Constitution isn't.
 
Tank man said:
This is a Star Trek quest, and this is at least drawing from the name that started it all. It'd be weird if it wasn't doing this.
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So if i make the Evil Mass Murder quest, any voter that votes against Killing people to try and get the MC Caught/killed/help, is wrong because the quest tittle has given what should happen away? (This is a extreme example and in no way meant to offend people. Just a more extreme comparison)

KNakamura said:
The Enterprise is a warship. At least in TOS it pretty much is. It's worth remembering that Kirk was also a solider. So yes, this *is* doing the design brief.
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They were designed for long duration exploration and patrol missions with minimal outside support and were best known for their celebrated missions of galactic exploration and diplomacy and were capable of operating on five-year mission cycles, with an operating endurance of eighteen years.

Right from the Memory Alpha page, just because the ship could fight well didn't mean it is a good idea to try this in an explicit cheap warship design.
 
Bedpotato said:
So if i make the Evil Mass Murder quest, any voter that votes against Killing people to try and get the MC Caught/killed/help, is wrong because the quest tittle has given what should happen away? (This is a extreme example and in no way meant to offend people. Just a more extreme comparison)
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I'm pretty sure that making such a quest would go against the rules.

Your comparison is as extreme as it is stupid.
 
KleverKil'Vanya said:
Same question on why people want to build a boring overly specialised combat cruiser who will just sit at star bases for the next 20-30 years being useless at anything but shooting stuff.
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Given a clear problem to address with clearly defined limitations on how we can achieve that goal produces much more interesting decisions than trying to design a ship that needs to be just alright at everything.

Like, here we're arguing about how we can maximize tactical capabilities at a reasonable cost. With a mass-produced generalist those options become a lot harder to make interesting, especially as our ships become larger and larger. How much can you spend on it? Well, not too much, but it doesn't need to be too cheap. What capabilities should it have? A bit of everything, but it doesn't need to be great at anything.

This wasn't so much of an issue back when our ships were smaller and we had to decide what we really needed, but at this point we can probably fit a reasonable amount of science and engineering in a hull with reasonable mobility and tactical for a decent price. We're not going to be trying to get a spherical hull or six torpedo tubes or maximum maneuverability, and at that point why not let San Francisco do it?

Alectai said:
Honestly, the frustrating thing right now for me is that we got the implication that the Canon Approach was the Objectively Correct one and diverging from it can only get us worse outcomes.

Like, so far, we've had three bits in a row where we found out that because we didn't do things exactly like the canon Federation did, we're in a worse position. Like how we delayed the Warp 8 engine and now the Klingons are going to get into our core territories in a much earlier war. We picked to go with the large arc phasers and found out they're Objectively inferior to the high focus ones they went with in canon in every respect.

Now we have a chance to do the Canon choice again, or do something else, but I guess we're going to find out that any version but the canon Connie saucer is going to make it an objectively inferior ship T_T

It's irritating because the first era was kind of a wild west where anything could happen, we could do Weird Things, and it even got us a better outcome than canon in that we pressured the Romulans harder before they went to war! But it seems the closer we get to ToS, the more we're being straitjacketed, and I'm not sure I'm fond of that implication, even if it was unintentional.
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I mean, we also very much neglected tactical for the past few ships. The last time we focused on tactical was 30 years ago, and the Selachii was just a very solid heavy frigate for the time period. It seems pretty natural that we're much worse at deterring conflict and that we're going to do worse.
 
Tank man said:
I'm pretty sure that making such a quest would go against the rules.

Your comparison is as extreme as it is stupid.
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Voldemort, Orichimaru, anything in wh40k a few other places, hell there is a hellgan in Battletech quest right now! I think all these quest should by the definition of it's in the Name so we ape it! do as the name suggests!
 
Alectai said:
Honestly, the frustrating thing right now for me is that we got the implication that the Canon Approach was the Objectively Correct one and diverging from it can only get us worse outcomes.

Like, so far, we've had three bits in a row where we found out that because we didn't do things exactly like the canon Federation did, we're in a worse position. Like how we delayed the Warp 8 engine and now the Klingons are going to get into our core territories in a much earlier war. We picked to go with the large arc phasers and found out they're Objectively inferior to the high focus ones they went with in canon in every respect, like how in theory it should have made the ORB at least reasonably capable in a scrap, but they still got barely-passable Tactical scores compared to a ship with only one additional torpedo tube (Which got more than a full letter rank higher)

Now we have a chance to do the Canon choice again, or do something else, but I guess we're going to find out that any version but the canon Connie saucer is going to make it an objectively inferior ship T_T

It's irritating because the first era was kind of a wild west where anything could happen, we could do Weird Things, and it even got us a better outcome than canon in that we pressured the Romulans harder before they went to war! But it seems the closer we get to ToS, the more we're being straitjacketed, and I'm not sure I'm fond of that implication, even if it was unintentional.
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I agree with every word here, and only haven't mentioned anything about Cargo Pods due to not wanting to make a 5 page rant about it... not even a single line about using the mount for anything but cargo...
 
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