in the event that we ever get into a war where That's relevant.
Amusingly, it's happened already; we had boots-on-the-ground on
several planets back in the Kzin War
It was asking for a ship that they can produce as cheaply as possible while being able to complete bio-science missions.
Oh, granted. The problem is that due to the relatively large fixed costs and in most cases fixed volume requirements of "a torpedo launcher, a pair of phasers, a warp core, a pair of nacelles, and a computing core" (as well as other miscellaneous components that are required per-ship rather than per-mass),
making the ship smaller reduces its available volume and mass for labs and noncombat modules by far, far, FAR more than it reduces its cost. This means that smaller ships add MUCH less capability per cost to the fleet.
A frigate biosciences ship saves, in the most generous case, 9 Cost over the current light cruiser
4 cost from the standard warp engine, 5 cost from needing one less thruster- the smallest hull would have saved 4 cost but spent it in turn on a much larger engineering hull, on a ship that will likely cost 60.25-75- a savings of 9-12%. Even totally disregarding the
general multirole capability added by the shuttle and cargo bay, it will have
a lot more than 9-12% more Science capability.
The light cruiser will- despite 9-12% fewer hulls on the same construction budget- allow roughly the same number of ship crew
assuming crew requirements of slightly fewer, larger hulls with the same core components maybe plus one impulse thruster approximately balances out to carry easily twice as many dedicated scientific personnel and twice as much equipment. Consequently, it will survey more planets in more detail in less time for the same or perhaps even less cost than the frigate would.
I think the awkward part is that a lot of the people who wanted a frigate thought they'd get a bunch of science capability for giving up weapons and combat ability, when that's explicitly not the tradeoff presented in this quest.
I didn't see many calling for a vicious little combat frigate that might manage to be as good as the Excalibur at surveying planets by means of specialization. And that's what the small end would have provided.
Basically this, yes. (See also the preceding screed.)
I think we'll always struggle not to include generalist features though just due to transit times and relatively limited hull quantities.
Largely true, yeah. Given more expensive hulls and/or much less expensive weapons and warp drives, small specialized ships become much more attractive. Presently they don't make sense
except as warships.
careful with that word; I got
no end of shit for using it in reference to the Sagarmatha's quad nacelles.
honestly not a bad argument
I don't generally vote on aesthetic considerations, but I agree, the linear nacelles
will look cool and I won't be mad when they inevitably win
Starfleet is not sending these on interior missions. They will be used to science the shit out of potntial colony sites all over the borders and just beyond said borders as the Federation expands! And no escorting them isn't going to happen because the only ships that can do so are the Excaliburs and they are busy allready!
I mean, I agree; the "it's just a science ship, it just needs to be able to science" folks are very silly. My thoughts on keeping these alive are more or less as follows:
- Re:fight
- assuming you'd have at least a torpedo launcher and a pair of phasers in the worst case, and given the relative cost and power of thrusters and weapons atm, you get more combat effectiveness per cost from a second thruster to juke enemy weapons and keep yours on target than you do from adding additional weapons.
- given that our thrusters are strong enough for two of them to let our flagship battlecruiser dance like a hummingbird, you get more toughness out of additional mass than you get evasiveness out of less mass.
- Therefore, to say the light cruiser will cost us way more to render adequately defensible is...overstating things a bit. It's not like we'd have to add piles of expensive extra weapons for it to be a competent combatant, just an extra thruster and the cost of the bigger hull in the first place.
- Re:fight or flight
- If it gets jumped on the ground it's probably just dead regardless, honestly. Disregarding this, though...
- I'm not suuuuuuuper worried about it, because:
- I think these are going to be perfectly adequate combatants regardless; they're not going to singlehandedly beat up D7+multi-BoP task forces and take their lunch money like the Excaliburs, but they should absolutely spank BoPs and be dangerous enough for a D7 captain to have a fair degree of caution about.
- During the war- if they even launch in time- I don't expect these things to be fighting solo anyway.
- After the war, during the cold-war era? D7s are capital ships, and aggression from them is a lot harder for the Klingon Empire to shrug off as the actions of a single "hot-blooded young patriot" than civvy ships or Archers getting harassed by a couple Birds of Prey. (And as previously established, I expect this ship to spank BoPs unless caught totally napping.) It looks a lot more like a straight-up treaty violation; the political consequences are a lot higher. I don't think it's likely to be a common problem unless we make this ship a lot more vulnerable than I think is actually in danger of happening.
- Re: flight
- We don't know enough about the combat power or Warp sprint speeds of the Tholians, Gorn, etc to make any reasonable judgements.
- We don't have explicit WoG, but I think the currently-leading linear nacelles are probably enough to outsprint D7s, if narrowly. (I think in saying this I've persuaded myself that linears are the superior option, here, despite my general preference for cruise speed, because I don't think the cruise nacelles will outrun a D7.)
- Not even the sprint configuration with the full deflector would be fast enough to outsprint whatever Klingon ship debuts their next-gen warp engine, whenever that happens.
[X] Linear Configuration (Efficient Cruise: 6 -> 6.2, Maximum Warp: 7.6 -> 7.8) [Range: +10%]
Bah. I talked myself into it.
(Edit: corrected D8>D7; I had my numbers mixed up.)
