Your and others' arguments are convincing, I will change my vote, even though it probably isn't needed at this time.
Another advantage of no aft phaser is it'll make the cost of a rapid fire launcher less crippling. Pricey but compelling.
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Another advantage of no aft phaser is it'll make the cost of a rapid fire launcher less crippling. Pricey but compelling.
KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
Same here. While I can certainly conceive of circumstances where a phaser would be Very Nice To Have, those are very narrow circumstances where an aft phaser would be superior to an aft torpedo. (Extremely ballsy Bird of Prey rapidly closing to point-blank range where photorp would damage the Darwin also? Strange alien creatures that need special phasering, that sneak up from behind? Firing upwards at an attacker in orbit, if it's a dorsal phaser? All very niche circumstances, to be honest...)
The alpha-damage snapshot of the photorp would be a convenient quick hard hit, that the Darwin can then whirl around and follow up on with her forward teeth if needed.
And since I can't countenance having both the aft phaser AND aft photorp on a cheaper-than-Excalibur light science cruiser, even though my warrior's heart yearns for it (fuck yeah doubletap!)...
[X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
Hmm.
Like really, think about it for a sec. "Times you can't actually shoot them and want to try and fight them anyway". How many of those can there possibly be? If you can't get guns on target consistently, then either
In the second case you should be running away to warp!
Like, s'pose the Darwin gets jumped by a hypothetical next-gen Bird of Prey. Similar loadout plus a generation, even more maneuverable. If you fight it out in realspace you're never going to get the forward weapons to bear, and the aft one only occasionally. You're pitting "their torpedo tube and disruptor cannons against your shields vs occasionally your aft <phaser/torpedo> against their shields"; obviously your shields are going to deplete a lot faster.
If you flee into Warp, yeah, it might be barely quicker than you and you might be fucked eventually when it finally closes enough to merge warp bubbles, but the entire time it's chasing you it's doing so in a straight line dead aft of you. Your torpedo now has a guaranteed shot, instantly, every time it reloads, as fast as you can cycle it. And you're pitting that against its shields vs only their torpedo against your shields, because their disruptor cannons are taken out of the equation too.
At the very worst you're now losing A LOT SLOWER than you would be by trying to stay and fight- and making lightyears toward the nearest reinforcements or sensor-obscuring nebula or whatever while you do so. In the likely case, they realize that despite their tech advantage they're like a fifth of your mass with everything that implies about shield strength, decide not to roll the dice, and break off pursuit. (Obviously in the very best case you blow them out of the space and get to feel very smug at the bar next time you make it back to Starbase Whereverthefuck. But we don't plan around best-case scenarios
)
This is actually an excellent point and I appreciate you pointing out the (painfully obvious, in retrospect) hole in my reasoning. Especially since it supports my position that much better now.
Agreed with that much, yeah.
Hard disagree. I think that "times it can't consistently bring its forward weapons to bear on a long target" and "times it is or should be running away at warp" are virtually identical sets. The Venn diagram is a circle. So when it isn't that phaser is going to be completely useless.
Agreed once again. It should be a far narrower band than previous generations. I still think even that greatly reduced band will be an overwhelmingly broader selection of possible matchups than "encounters the Darwin wants to fight out in realspace despite not being able to bring its forward weapons to bear consistently".
Like really, think about it for a sec. "Times you can't actually shoot them and want to try and fight them anyway". How many of those can there possibly be? If you can't get guns on target consistently, then either
- you outclass them enough that you only need to get lucky or them to screw up once, and you can afford to get your shields attrited a bit while you maneuver for advantage trying to get that one salvo and blow them to atoms (basically how I expect lone Bird of Prey encounters to go)
or
- you're straight fucked because they can hit you and you can't, or at best they can hit you a lot more than you can hit them (basically how I expect getting-mobbed-by-BoPs encounters to go)
In the second case you should be running away to warp!
Eh, not really, actually. The aft torpedo is most useful when fleeing light ships that slightly outspeed us in the Warp (since obviously if we outspeed them we just escape, and if they're too fast to escape, too agile to fight, and too tough for torpedo fire to dissuade pursuit, then we just lose).
Like, s'pose the Darwin gets jumped by a hypothetical next-gen Bird of Prey. Similar loadout plus a generation, even more maneuverable. If you fight it out in realspace you're never going to get the forward weapons to bear, and the aft one only occasionally. You're pitting "their torpedo tube and disruptor cannons against your shields vs occasionally your aft <phaser/torpedo> against their shields"; obviously your shields are going to deplete a lot faster.
If you flee into Warp, yeah, it might be barely quicker than you and you might be fucked eventually when it finally closes enough to merge warp bubbles, but the entire time it's chasing you it's doing so in a straight line dead aft of you. Your torpedo now has a guaranteed shot, instantly, every time it reloads, as fast as you can cycle it. And you're pitting that against its shields vs only their torpedo against your shields, because their disruptor cannons are taken out of the equation too.
At the very worst you're now losing A LOT SLOWER than you would be by trying to stay and fight- and making lightyears toward the nearest reinforcements or sensor-obscuring nebula or whatever while you do so. In the likely case, they realize that despite their tech advantage they're like a fifth of your mass with everything that implies about shield strength, decide not to roll the dice, and break off pursuit. (Obviously in the very best case you blow them out of the space and get to feel very smug at the bar next time you make it back to Starbase Whereverthefuck. But we don't plan around best-case scenarios
)
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- Location
- Somewhere and somewhen in time and space
[X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
[X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
[X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
- Location
- USA
[X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
Klingon Empire Design Bureau POV
"So, the Federation learned about our plans to go to war with them, and as expected they rapidly designed a warship in fear of us. Even went ahead and acknowledged it would be a warship by giving it a half-saucer main hull, which to them means it is a warship."
Nods all around.
"They went with a hull material that is noticeably superior to our own, as demonstrated when one decapitated one of our D7s using their half-saucer and the only damage from that action was the D7's bridge hitting the deflector instead of the hull. This lets their Archers be fun to fight instead of just dying too quickly. We expected good fights from their Excaliburs as a result."
More nods.
"Next, they give it Warp 8 capability. Not too bad, we think, our D7s will have to stay and fight instead of having to leave upon completing their assigned mission."
Some chuckles from that.
"Their shields aren't as good as ours, but their greater mass allows them to upscale their shields to compensate. That should've meant that a D7 would be a match for an Excalibur."
Some nods.
"They made their warship able to dance while outmaneuvering our most nimble ships. We thought that would mean that our ships would be in need of target practice to reliably hit them. We didn't realize that this would allow them to make their phasers hit harder by giving up some firing arc. And they added a rapid fire launcher for their photon torpedoes, which also benefits from the extra mobility."
Some laughter, mixed between joyous and desperate.
"Once the design was able to throw down with three D7s and win at least half the time, they then proceeded to make it so it can pretend to not be a warship, because Federation."
More mixed laughter.
"And now they're making a science vessel. We can expect it be a decent combatant. Not to the level of the Excalibur, it's slower and less maneuverable, but it will still fight well."
Heads turning around to look at everyone assembled.
"I'm reminded that the founders of the Federation, with one notable exception, were caught up in wars, admittedly cold wars, before joining together to create the Federation. The one exception fought a war that required one side to get extremely creative to win, and that race has a history of being creative in how they fight. They didn't forget how to fight, they simply turned that creatively towards other kinds of battles. As demonstrated by all of the negative space wedgies they keep coming across."
Klingon Empire Design Bureau POV
"So, the Federation learned about our plans to go to war with them, and as expected they rapidly designed a warship in fear of us. Even went ahead and acknowledged it would be a warship by giving it a half-saucer main hull, which to them means it is a warship."
Nods all around.
"They went with a hull material that is noticeably superior to our own, as demonstrated when one decapitated one of our D7s using their half-saucer and the only damage from that action was the D7's bridge hitting the deflector instead of the hull. This lets their Archers be fun to fight instead of just dying too quickly. We expected good fights from their Excaliburs as a result."
More nods.
"Next, they give it Warp 8 capability. Not too bad, we think, our D7s will have to stay and fight instead of having to leave upon completing their assigned mission."
Some chuckles from that.
"Their shields aren't as good as ours, but their greater mass allows them to upscale their shields to compensate. That should've meant that a D7 would be a match for an Excalibur."
Some nods.
"They made their warship able to dance while outmaneuvering our most nimble ships. We thought that would mean that our ships would be in need of target practice to reliably hit them. We didn't realize that this would allow them to make their phasers hit harder by giving up some firing arc. And they added a rapid fire launcher for their photon torpedoes, which also benefits from the extra mobility."
Some laughter, mixed between joyous and desperate.
"Once the design was able to throw down with three D7s and win at least half the time, they then proceeded to make it so it can pretend to not be a warship, because Federation."
More mixed laughter.
"And now they're making a science vessel. We can expect it be a decent combatant. Not to the level of the Excalibur, it's slower and less maneuverable, but it will still fight well."
Heads turning around to look at everyone assembled.
"I'm reminded that the founders of the Federation, with one notable exception, were caught up in wars, admittedly cold wars, before joining together to create the Federation. The one exception fought a war that required one side to get extremely creative to win, and that race has a history of being creative in how they fight. They didn't forget how to fight, they simply turned that creatively towards other kinds of battles. As demonstrated by all of the negative space wedgies they keep coming across."
- Location
- Canada
Its more likely the kobayashi maru test would instead feature a rogue federation fleet of Excaliburs then klingons D7s.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
- Location
- United States
That will just be one of many scenarios the test can take. But likely one of the hardest. I can't seem to find it at the moment, but there was an official Kobayashi Maru web game out a couple years ago that had a bunch of different crazy shit you could run into.
I could think of one quite easily actually: A lower massing craft with the ability to match/exceed the Darwin's maneuverability to stick behind it.
If our goal it to try and prevent another situation where the Federation looks weak for a period and someone jumps on us like the Klingon's did, a good way to do that is to make sure our ships can't be scared off easily. We've put a lot of work into our boosting our impulse performance, taking the full 20% boost from the Warp 8 core and pushing the next tier of engine into production so early it was still Theoretical. With that in mind I can feel confident saying that most ships that can dance on the Darwin's terms or better is going to be at a mass disadvantage in order to get the nessecary thrust ratio, exactly the kind of thing we wouldn't want to say "Screw it, abort mission warp away" to under that idea. With a statement from Sayle that these are very unlikely to participate in the 4 Year War with all the fleet action that would entail, I expect this kind of encounter to be one of the most likely ones in the time period where the Darwin will be most active. Only really behind "Ship that can't out maneuver the Darwin and gets tagged with forward firepower."
(The exception being any unfortunate enough to end up on the wrong end of an ultra-modern Excalibur equivalent, which would very likely fall under the "you just fucking lose" scenario you brought up later. I expect those to be a much much rarer encounter though, on account of not many likely existing between cost issues, still coming off the lines at the time with not many finished yet, and/or having their numbers already be cut down by the Excaliburs themselves. Either way the large majority of any polity's fleet at any give time is quite likely to not be their most cutting edge vessels, but older classes that were designed a while ago and are still working their way through their decades of service, and that's what we're much more likely to run into.)
Sure we could, as you say, rely on luck or the opponent messing up so we can get into position. But why should we make plans based around the whims of fate or the enemy making a mistake? That sounds like a good way to get burned when neither of those go in our favor. In the time it takes a standard tube to load and fire a single photon torpedo for 18 damage, the single aft phaser bank could plug them for 3x the amount. If we extrapolate that a bit further and assume it will take 2 torpedo impacts to sufficiently "dissuade" one way or another a pursuer of this kind, in the time it would take the standard launcher to clear off 1 tail, the phaser bank could drive away 3. At that point I would start considering the Darwin possibly able to deal with being slightly outnumbered by ships capable of matching it's speed.
No arguments here. You basically hit the nail on the head with what I was roughly envisioning in the second scenario where I though the aft launcher would be superior to the phaser bank.Eh, not really, actually. The aft torpedo is most useful when fleeing light ships that slightly outspeed us in the Warp (since obviously if we outspeed them we just escape, and if they're too fast to escape, too agile to fight, and too tough for torpedo fire to dissuade pursuit, then we just lose).
Like, s'pose the Darwin gets jumped by a hypothetical next-gen Bird of Prey. Similar loadout plus a generation, even more maneuverable. If you fight it out in realspace you're never going to get the forward weapons to bear, and the aft one only occasionally. You're pitting "their torpedo tube and disruptor cannons against your shields vs occasionally your aft <phaser/torpedo> against their shields"; obviously your shields are going to deplete a lot faster.
If you flee into Warp, yeah, it might be barely quicker than you and you might be fucked eventually when it finally closes enough to merge warp bubbles, but the entire time it's chasing you it's doing so in a straight line dead aft of you. Your torpedo now has a guaranteed shot, instantly, every time it reloads, as fast as you can cycle it. And you're pitting that against its shields vs only their torpedo against your shields, because their disruptor cannons are taken out of the equation too.
At the very worst you're now losing A LOT SLOWER than you would be by trying to stay and fight- and making lightyears toward the nearest reinforcements or sensor-obscuring nebula or whatever while you do so. In the likely case, they realize that despite their tech advantage they're like a fifth of your mass with everything that implies about shield strength, decide not to roll the dice, and break off pursuit. (Obviously in the very best case you blow them out of the space and get to feel very smug at the bar next time you make it back to Starbase Whereverthefuck. But we don't plan around best-case scenarios
I'd like to re-iterate from my above point though: While the aft launcher would be the better weapon to mount in this kind of white room hypothetical, in the context of the wider galaxy the Darwin will be launched into I think that encounters with the multitude of older classes of ships will be much much more likely than running into one of however few cutting-edge warships with tech a generation beyond our current cutting-edge ship we're designing right now. We would be better off tailoring our votes for our non-primary combatant design, not meant or designed to hunt these next-generation superships down as they launch, to the scenarios they are much more likely to find themselves in.
I think this argument would have much more weight if we were voting on something like designing a refit for the Darwin 20 to 30 years down the line after it first launches, where the likelihood of running into such an tech overmatch not in it's favor is that much greater.
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KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
Trying to imagine the episode Balance of Terror with an Excalibur-class instead of a Constitution; All I can imagine is Mark Lenard's Romulan Captain shitting his pants as Enterprise completely dips around his plasma torpedo, and blankets space with a full spread of photorps set for proximity detonation...
"We cannot defeat the Federation with brute force. This leaves only one path forward to victory for the Romulan Empire."
....
"So, funny message just came in. The Romulans have applied to join the Federation."
Art: D7/Excalibur Meme
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Earth
[X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
darkstarling
Brilliantly Crazed
- Location
- Columbus, Ohio
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The D7 is a budget warship, intended to be produced in large numbers and not needing a huge science and engineering crew. They thought that having, oh, three D7s for every Excalibur would solve the problem.While I'm on Team Aft Phaser(No Aft Torp), I will point out that the Canon Connie was able to manhandle D7s with just the 3 forward/port/starboard phasers + double standard photorp tubes, with Medium maneuverability and no aft weapons of its own...
... the D7 is sorta a lemon
They were wrong.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Per Sayle, the canon Constitution had a rapid fire launcher:While I'm on Team Aft Phaser(No Aft Torp), I will point out that the Canon Connie was able to manhandle D7s with just the 3 forward/port/starboard phasers + double standard photorp tubes, with Medium maneuverability and no aft weapons of its own...
... the D7 is sorta a lemon
In fairness, I've yet to find a species with gonads where they aren't vulnerable to starship-grade phaser fire.
105kt. You forgot the +20% impulse boost from the warp core.
fishsicles
ate a calculator to gain its power
- Location
- Alexander Horned Earth
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I was about to rebut this but then I remembered that canonically, Q is a Ken doll.
Incredible. You've done amazingly!
Is he? Do you have a source?
I mean, it's something I've idly wondered. Not about his junk per se, but about the body he wears. Is it like a hologram that's just surface layers animated by his will but ultimately inert, or is the body him?
Edit: Or is a faux human body that could be scanned and would show you a living human being, or does it scan up anomalous... Now I think about it more I'm rather curious.
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