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Starfleet Design Bureau

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[ ] Covariant Standard Shield Grid

In Star Trek Science stuff has a tendency to hit back from time to time so having the shields to survive something unexpected would be nice, I also assume the ship will be smaller than the excalibur so the shield power will be lower (even if it is the same power/ton as the excalibur)
 
Assuming we manage to keep the displacement down (I'd say a ballpark of 80kt-90kt is reasonable) the manoeuverablity should be more than enough to make up for the 5pt/100kt difference.

That cost offset can be spent on more pertinent things.
 
I'm inclined to say we go for a Standard sized Shields.

This ship's either going to be launched during the Klingon War or its going to be launched right after the war where the Federation's borders aren't looking very secure due to Klingon War casualties.
Sayle said:
After the war the surviving Excalibur-class ships faced an uncertain future. Lacking the facilities to participate in the rebuilding efforts they were assigned to suppressing the surge in piracy caused by the depletion of Starfleet's patrol roster and flying the flag near contested borders with the Tholian Assembly and Gorn Hegemony.
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Either situation is one where extra shield strength is going to be very useful since it's likely to be harassed by Klingon raiders or pirates post war if it's too soft of a target.
 
I'm fine with light shielding. Light covalent is as good as the previous medium standard, and this is not a ship that needs to match the Excalibur class in shielding.

Tank man said:
Assuming the ship ends up 1/2 as massive as the Excalibur (90,000 tonnes) the light will net us 13.5/14 shield points and the standard 18 shield points.
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Oh, right. Shielding is proportional to hull mass.

Hmm.
 
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I think light covariant is probably the better option here unless we want this ship to have a significant role in the 4 year war.
 
Light, unless we want to make the ship really small. Light shields get us more shield power per unit cost if we take a larger hull, and we get the extra durability of the larger hull as well. We want at least a reasonable amount of space for science so I don't think we should go down the route of a smaller, more cost-dense ship.
 
I say standard. We don't want to build the second coming of the Oberth, here...
 
Since it's a light ship I'm leaning towards light shields.

I do think it should be capable in a fight so I'll push for a decent weapons layout later, but it doesn't need to match the Excalibur in terms of shielding.
 
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My mind is wandering towards the negative space wedgies and whether or not stronger shields will help.

If they won't, then we should stick with light shielding.
 
Given it's a bioscience ship it's mostly going to be studying alien fauna and flora, not space wedgies.

Heavy shields aren't going to help against this thing.

 
ScyBlade said:
My mind is wandering towards the negative space wedgies and whether or not stronger shields will help.

If they won't, then we should stick with light shielding.
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Some of them, yes. Others, no. I know this isn't very helpful, but the range of phenomena that exists in Star Trek is too vast to give an answer beyond 'sometimes'.
 
Yeah, light shields I think. The only thing shields would help with are if we're studying cosmozoa, and cosmozoa tend to be either solved problems or overwhelmingly powerful.
 
Ebiris said:
Given it's a bioscience ship it's mostly going to be studying alien fauna and flora, not space wedgies.
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Eh, spaceborne lifeforms that eat starships are a thing, from the amoeba that got one of the Excaliburs to the Crystalline Entity to the pitcher plant from Voyager. Being able to not die instantly when one of those looks at you is both good and on-mission (since you can look back).
 
We JUST ran into a problem where we softballed combat capability for a few ship generations and so had to stop and make a combat monster on short order.

On the other hand we JUST made a combat monster.

I am good with light shields, but after this I really want to make a dreadnaught explorer to complement the Excaliburs and give us an actual war fleet for when it's needed.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
We JUST ran into a problem where we softballed combat capability for a few ship generations and so had to stop and make a combat monster on short order.

On the other hand we JUST made a combat monster.

I am good with light shields, but after this I really want to make a dreadnaught explorer to complement the Excaliburs and give us an actual war fleet for when it's needed.
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Excelsior should be soon. With our new warp nacelles/attempt at transwarp drive.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
Eh, spaceborne lifeforms that eat starships are a thing, from the amoeba that got one of the Excaliburs to the Crystalline Entity to the pitcher plant from Voyager. Being able to not die instantly when one of those looks at you is both good and on-mission (since you can look back).
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Assuming the ship ends up 1/2 as massive as the Excalibur (90,000 tonnes) the light will net us 13.5/14 shield points and the standard 18 shield points. Assuming the ship ends up about 120,000 tonnes the light will net us 18 shield points and the standard 24 shield points.

This is in contrast to the 36 of the Excalibur. And as a point of comparison the 22 on the Archer and 19 on the Newton.
 
This ship isn't supposed to be a true warship, so we should be focusing costs on the mission goals rather than getting warship-grade shield strength.
 
I'm thinking standard. It's going to come out around the time of the Four Years War, and that means BoPs. BoPs everywhere. Space just absolutely hopping with BoPs. I'd like these things to be able to survive a BoP ambush at least for long enough to run away, and that means it needs better shields.
 
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