Remove ads

Starfleet Design Bureau

Linked contents
Starship Design Bureau Starfleet Design Bureau
Reader mode
Tank man said:
Ambassador-class? Excelsior is a bit too multirole/mass produced to be anything other than the F-35 (it even comes in three major variations!)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Timeline's wrong for it. If anything, I'd expect our version of Raptor to be the Mark 1 Excelsior, considering the USAF had intended to mass produce the Raptor if the Cold War hadn't ended (and even if we end the Cold War with the Klingons there's still the Romulans and other powers to justify continued production of Excelsior-class explorers) - with our version of F-35 likely being TTL's equivalent to the Centaur-class, taking technology from the Excelsior and toning it to a more utilitarian/multirole platform.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
God help me.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The best part is, given that we lost zero Excaliburs against the Klingons despite it being our primary combatant against them, this meme is hilariously close to true (the D7 is a formidable warship, it just got outclassed by the Excalibur, rather than being a hyper-specialized interceptor proclaimed to be a super-fighter).

Feels like a perfect setup for a "Damn, the Federation got hands" meme.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
The best part is, given that we lost zero Excaliburs against the Klingons despite it being our primary combatant against them, this meme is hilariously close to true (the D7 is a formidable warship, it just got outclassed by the Excalibur, rather than being a hyper-specialized interceptor proclaimed to be a super-fighter).

Feels like a perfect setup for a "Damn, the Federation got hands" meme.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Fouredged Sword said:
Klingons - I'ma fight the Federation

Also Klingons - Damn, Federation's got hands.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Sayle said:
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sorry, I may have communicated poorly...isn't the thrust from the Type-3 Impulse Thruster (including the boost) 180kT?

At any rate, neat! A proper light cruiser to sit alongside the Excalibur!
 
7th Hex said:
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.
[...]
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Poor phrasing on my part, sorry. To clarify: there's an enormous gulf between "an enemy which generally outmaneuvers you, which you will not be able to keep your prow on consistently every time your guns cycle over the course of an extended maneuver duel" and "an enemy which outmaneuvers you to such a vast degree that you will never be able to bring your fore armament to bear over the course of an extended maneuver duel".

Your example of "a lower massing craft with the ability to match/exceed the Darwin's maneuverability" is pretty much the classic Bird of Prey scenario. It will generally outmaneuver the Darwin, but the Darwin is still a very maneuverable ship- it won't be a sitting duck. The BoP might get two or three or four salvos to our one, but it's not going to be able to keep out of our fore arc indefinitely. On the other hand, the Darwin can tank several hits from the BoP, but a full salvo from the Darwin will probably cripple or kill the BoP. As long as there's only one BoP, then, the encounter favors the Darwin despite the maneuverability advantage; it can afford to get its shields attrited a bit while it maneuvers to get that one salvo, and the BoP doesn't outclass its agility by the sort of absurd margin that would render it untouchable.

This is the scenario that I was thinking of when I referred to "waiting to get lucky or for them to make a mistake", which was a poor choice of words. You're going to get a shot off eventually without an insane maneuver advantage, and virtually nothing (maybe Kzinti Interceptors? nothing else though) should have that level of advantage over the objectively-very-maneuverable Darwin.

7th Hex said:
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh, yeah, absolutely. The Darwin should be generally nimble, dangerous, and tough enough that most plausible foes don't want to try their luck. I really don't want the Fed to look quite so strategically vulnerable again if I can help it.
7th Hex said:
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yup. I think we should still be able to take lone BoPs confidently despite their modest maneuver advantage, as previously discussed, and getting jumped by multiple BoPs is likely good reason to warp away- or possibly engage briefly to try and swat one of them before warping away from the remainder.
7th Hex said:
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."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Agreed.
7th Hex said:
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 [...] much much rarer encounter though
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
baaaaaaasically lol. If we run into somebody actively taking swings at us with ships that deadly, well, hopefully we've got Callie-Bs or Excelsiors on call, we're gonna need 'em, but no point worrying about it for the Darwin.

tl;dr:
  1. Ships that can't outmaneuver the Darwin will be consistently targetable by its fore armament.
    1. Thus its aft armament is largely irrelevant.
    2. This is probably the most common encounter type.
  2. Ships that can outmaneuver the Darwin (a) will be light enough to be seriously damaged by a single salvo, (b) will be light enough to take several salvoes to seriously damage us, and (c) won't outmaneuver the Darwin by such a vast degree as to avoid its fore arc indefinitely.
    1. Thus its far-more-dangerous fore armament is already quite sufficient to win these encounters.
    2. The aft phaser is unlikely to achieve an outright kill before the helm manages to get a single firing pass from the fore batteries, and (given the very light agile vessels we're talking about here) the fore batteries will probably outright destroy anything of the current gen and mission-kill the vast majority of the next gen in a single salvo, making the accumulated chip damage from the aft phaser irrelevant.
    3. This is probably the second-most-common encounter type.
  3. Ships, or groups of ships, that (while not totally untouchable) can match or generally outmaneuver the Darwin andare deadly enough rapidly enough to make "take a few hits to get the fore battery on target" untenable (such as multiple BoPs, or next-next-gen BoPs, or whatever) are cause to flee to Warp.
    1. Thus making the aft torpedo superior to the phaser.
    2. This is probably the third-most-common encounter type, though it may become more common over the next half-century or so if one or more of our foes react to the Excalibur class by pivoting their naval construction and eventually their fleet towards a "vast BoP swarm" archetype.
  4. Ships that can outmaneuver the Darwin by such a degree as to be truly untouchable (should they even exist) are cause to flee to Warp.
    1. Thus making the aft torpedo superior to the phaser.
    2. This is the least common encounter type, and may well not happen ever.
 
Last edited:
I remember watching star trek beyond and I rather enjoy a swarm ship, kinda want to see how starfleet can have something similar. Just starfleet style
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top