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Lohjak said:
Sure, but what's the point of going with covariants? The better tech doesn't actually make the output better unless we go heavy, and at that point the cost is pretty extreme. Covariant standard isn't better than type-1 heavy just because the technology is more advanced, and I don't think we're going to be replacing the shields on most of our warp 7 fleet.
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It's the first technical advance in shields in six decades. If nothing else, I want to shove them forward closer to Mature and the cost reduction that comes with it for our next project; you may note however that my preference is actually for the heavy shields, which IIRC about a little over one Rapid Launcher in cost more than the type 1 heavies (IE; not actually that much compared to what we already spent) whilst providing the greatest toughness. but because people look at 99.95 and go "Wow, that's less than 100!" despite the difference being practically negligable people are reluctant to push to three digits of cost. Despite the fact that in practice the difference is maybe two ships at most less in a tranche of like, 15-plus. It's baffling and annoying to me as someone who has repeatedly argued for tactical capabilities and been shot down for cost reasons that now, when doing that put us in a Klingon Empire sized military hole, people are still doing it.
To quote the good Captain Sparrow: "That's the sort of thinking that got us into this mess."
 
Quickshot0 said:
The only cost saving step done in the entire design process was choosing a smaller ship.
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So you didn't actually read my post. Because I definitely also mentioned fewer forward phasers as cost savings.

So let me lay it out for you. We'll ignore the phasers, because those honesty cost peanuts.

Choosin the smaller hull matters. That's "all" we did? That's all we needed to do!

So we chose a smaller hull, twice. I don't mean avoiding the hypothetical huge explorer, I mean that we chose the smallest possible hull variants in both relevant votes.

What we could have chosen: 140 Meter Saucer (200 kt) + Integrated Secondary Hull (additional 20 kt), for a total of 220 kt - 40 kt over what we actually built.

Now, the hull isn't terribly expensive by itself, though it is still some savings. However, the real savings are in the downstream ripples.

With that bigger hull, shields would be intrinsically more expensive (no matter what we choose, it would cost more on a more massive ship). Bigger hull requires more engines - more expense. The inline engineering hull would require our deflector in the nose of the saucer, which caps us at two torpedo launchers, which would have wound up as RFL - more expense. Engines, shields, and weapons are the most expensive parts of the ship! And we chose a small hull, which capped those costs from the get-go.

So yeah, we did take serious cost saving measures; we could be looking at a much more expensive ship right now.


And none of that touches on the fact that this ship is insanely affordable - compared to the costs of getting invaded by the Klingons.

But I think I'm done arguing. Go re-read my first post, I'm done giving a shit about your reading comprehension.
 
Why so many Standard votes? Go heavy.

Before i forget: Can we ban approval vote? Just make it one person, one vote choice! (I am aware that isn't going to happen but think it would be nice.)
 
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Bedpotato said:
Why so many Standard votes? Go heavy.

Before i forget: Can we ban aproval vote? Just make it one person, one vote choice! (I am aware that isn't going to happen but think it would be nice.)
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What is approval vote? Does that mean if I "like" someone else's vote it counts for more or something??

Well, things are certainly getting tense in the comments. If nothing else, Sayle should be pleased they're making a Quest that's getting everyone very engaged.
 
Bedpotato said:
Why so many Standard votes? Go heavy.

Before i forget: Can we ban aproval vote? Just make it one person, one vote choice! (I am aware that isn't going to happen but think it would be nice.)
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Approval voting is generally better than the alternative, because it makes it easier for votes to swing or later votes to come to the top.
 
[X] Heavy Covariant [44 Shields] (Cost 79.25 -> 116.75) [Second Tranche: 73.25 ->103.25]
 
Cold Dust said:
What is approval vote? Does that mean if I "like" someone else's vote it counts for more or something??

Well, things are certainly getting tense in the comments. If nothing else, Sayle should be pleased they're making a Quest that's getting everyone very engaged.
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It means voting for more than one option at a time.
 
[X] Type-1 Heavy [36 Shields] --- (Cost 79.25 -> 97.25) --- [Second Tranche: 73.25 -> 91.25]
[X] Heavy Covariant [44 Shields] --- (Cost 79.25 -> 116.75) --- [Second Tranche: 73.25 -> 103.25]
 
Quickshot0 said:
There is currently also no sign this D7 is stronger the the one seen in series. And some of the combat examples we saw of it were it jumping out 'alone' against the Enterprize, getting in to a fight 'alone' on both side, and then them losing despite firing first.
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I feel comfortable asserting the quest D7 being much scarier, otherwise we never would've gotten the option to have a 5 torp alpha strike on our frontal arcs.
 
Mechanis said:
It's the first technical advance in shields in six decades. If nothing else, I want to shove them forward closer to Mature and the cost reduction that comes with it for our next project; you may note however that my preference is actually for the heavy shields, which IIRC about a little over one Rapid Launcher in cost more than the type 1 heavies (IE; not actually that much compared to what we already spent) whilst providing the greatest toughness. but because people look at 99.95 and go "Wow, that's less than 100!" despite the difference being practically negligable people are reluctant to push to three digits of cost. Despite the fact that in practice the difference is maybe two ships at most less in a tranche of like, 15-plus. It's baffling and annoying to me as someone who has repeatedly argued for tactical capabilities and been shot down for cost reasons that now, when doing that put us in a Klingon Empire sized military hole, people are still doing it.
To quote the good Captain Sparrow: "That's the sort of thinking that got us into this mess."
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The technology is going to advance whether or not we take it. We can make it advance a bit quicker, but I want this ship to have heavy shields one way or the other, and realistically heavy standard is the only way we're going to get that.

Also I really doubt that we're going to get covariant to mature for the next ship either way, unless our shield tech advancement is going to increase exponentially from here on out.

landcollector said:
I feel comfortable asserting the quest D7 being much scarier, otherwise we never would've gotten the option to have a 5 torp alpha strike on our frontal arcs.
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The canon constellation had a 3 torp alpha and better phasers. It doesn't really tell us anything about this version of the D7.
 
Mechanis said:
It's the first technical advance in shields in six decades. If nothing else, I want to shove them forward closer to Mature and the cost reduction that comes with it for our next project; you may note however that my preference is actually for the heavy shields, which IIRC about a little over one Rapid Launcher in cost more than the type 1 heavies (IE; not actually that much compared to what we already spent) whilst providing the greatest toughness. but because people look at 99.95 and go "Wow, that's less than 100!" despite the difference being practically negligable people are reluctant to push to three digits of cost. Despite the fact that in practice the difference is maybe two ships at most less in a tranche of like, 15-plus. It's baffling and annoying to me as someone who has repeatedly argued for tactical capabilities and been shot down for cost reasons that now, when doing that put us in a Klingon Empire sized military hole, people are still doing it.
To quote the good Captain Sparrow: "That's the sort of thinking that got us into this mess."
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"Maybe two ships"? Try definitely two on the first. A 12 ship first tranche would lose two ships and that would represent considerably less resource outlay than the last ship orders. Again we might very reasonably order 18 or 24 ships. And it would still be one ship in every 9 on subsequent tranches.
 
landcollector said:
As has already been said by someone else, I would rather overestimate the D7 and be pleasantly surprised than go with "eh, no better than canon, We Can Take 'Em" and find out "well fuck, we can't"
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It is equally possible to screw ourselves by overestimating the D7, building a ship that is too expensive and therefore cannot be in as many places as necessary. We literally saw that just happen with the Radiant class.
 
[X] Standard Covariant [36 Shields] --- (Cost 79.25 -> 104.75) --- [Second Tranche: 73.25 -> 93.75

[X] Heavy Covariant [44 Shields] --- (Cost 79.25 -> 116.75) --- [Second Tranche: 73.25 -> 103.25]

I think all the covariant sheilds people should probably start doing approval voting otherwise type 1 is gonna win and well that dose not seem to be a very good idea when the type one is apparently not gonna do so well against superior klingon weapons. If anything I am even more scared because we designed a dreadnought that impressed the klingons and they may be holding all there designs up to a s rank ship, speaking of which I wanna build another dreadnought / frigate like the skat, that was fun..
 
I'm in favor of either of the Heavy Shields.
[X] Type-1 Heavy [36 Shields] --- (Cost 79.25 -> 97.25) --- [Second Tranche: 73.25 -> 91.25]
[X] Heavy Covariant [44 Shields] --- (Cost 79.25 -> 116.75) --- [Second Tranche: 73.25 -> 103.25]

While the QM has said that the Klingon's are supposed to have superior tech to us at this point the D7 itself is much smaller so even if the shields and weapons are pound for pound superior they are working on less tonnage, weapons, and probably resources.

The D6 for example only had 3 weapons with 2 Disruptor Beams and a Disruptor cannon afterall.

While the Heavy Covariant's will probably mean fewer initial ships they'll probably be launched before 2240 when the war's actually supposed to start which means they'll mostly be dealing with border skirmishes instead of big fleet actions.

Depending on how the Klingons react to the whiplash of going from clowning on the Federation's ships to having to fight something that is at least as capable as their next generation battlecruisers they may decided to back off and come back in the 2260s like TOS or this spooks them enough that the 2260's justification of the Federation getting to dangerous ends up being their 2240's justification for war.
 
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It's also the best way to handle it when you have times where you want "anything but this one"
landcollector said:
I feel comfortable asserting the quest D7 being much scarier, otherwise we never would've gotten the option to have a 5 torp alpha strike on our frontal arcs.
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Also just, we are in an information vacuum here. the only things we know about the D7 for certain is that they're better than the D6 and roflstomped all over our old fleet in the Four Year War scenario. that's it.

We can infer that they may have torpedoes and probably better shields in addition to the known warp 8 engine.
we can speculate that based on the performance of the class on screen (and Sayle's GM history) that they are not a tactically insurmountable problem.
we can worry about sore loser Romulans (*coughTalShiarcough cough*) suppling them with fancy toys to get back at us over the humiliating drubbing we gave the other major empire in the region.
We can fear temporal meddling to disrupt the timeline or to "correct" it.
We can imagine that there are potential unknown unknowns that Sayle is keeping in reserve.

but we can't know.

And in the face of the unknown, especially in Star Trek, I prefer being a bit over-prepared than the reverse.
It's Star Trek. There's things out there, and not all of them are friendly.
(and even the friendly ones might not be safe.)
 
uju32 said:
1) No it isnt. A 2% increased cost is negligible, compared to the technological benefits.

2) A lot of Standard Covariant voters approval voted Heavy Covariant.I did.
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No its even worse a standard covariant can not be upgraded to heavy in a life extension refit to heavy in the future or in other words? Ship fucked and stuck on standard!
 
Mechanis said:
Otodus class
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You've inspired me to try my own. I may not know how to use Mechworks, but I do have paint.net and Sayle's diagrams to cut apart.


Having stolen ahem, reused the front half of the Connie's engineering hull, a rapid-fire torpedo bay (or two, with the increased thickness) can be fit into the shortened neck; replacing the integrated nacelles with full-scale Type-3s in a linear arrangement allows for ample space in the wingtips for a larger array of impulse thrusters to counteract the greater mass; and having replaced the original torpedo bay allows for the inclusion of a more modern sickbay and leaves room in the bow for an additional compact module.
 
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