Starfleet Design Bureau

Golgotha · Nov 13, 2024

The Darwin has also been compromised design wise in order to have the ability to land on a planet.

Had we done the same design but with two thrusters and four more decks under the saucer, we would have easily had two more modules or not a reduced deflector or perhaps both.

But instead we can land on a planet, and that is honestly awesome.

But we can't pretend it came without compromise, and when you already cut away capability for one thing it gets harder to cut away more for another thing.

Going from 4 to 3 modules for two aft torpedoes is a much bigger ask than going from 6 to 5, or 7 to 6.

Candesce · Nov 13, 2024

DeltaV11.2 said:
I think that the Darwin is already getting to pretty significant diminishing returns.

Not to mention there's big breakpoints on efficiency. Having enough gun to beat a D6 1v1 without a heroic captain might be more expensive than having just slightly less, but in practice it's going to make a big difference in how our polities interact.

Same with being capable of defending from a Bird of Prey versus not being capable.

DragoonPreston · Nov 13, 2024

Another thing supporting member fleets making Excaliburs, it's our first warp 8 ship with the New warpcore in it. Building a number of an existing design to get a good feel for how to use the tech is a great way to gain capacity to build and design new ships with the new tech.

Skippy · Nov 13, 2024

DeltaV11.2 said:
There is, point of order, no way to produce such a ship with the current cost math. This actually changed significantly from the Newton generation. We have a flat, baseline cost of ~28-32. This is before we build a ship capable of doing literally anything.

The Darwin is currently hitting a cost point around 2/3 that of the Excalibur, but is less than 2/3 the capability. It is less maneuverable, is smaller than 2/3 with the same durability per ton, and has less than 2/3 the firepower even with the heaviest weapons fit- at which point its cost would be more like 3/4 that of an Excalibur.

It is a good point to note that despite not being cutting edge in any way, the Newton is certainly a lot cheaper, arguably moreso in terms of cost/benefit, and that may be a reason we're using it as the mainstay of our fighting ships and production through the war. It is a very Thoroughly Adequate ship, and that is important for fighting wars.

I would quibble on some of those figures fort the Darwin and suspect the "real" cost is a bit less because there are costs to do with tonnage that our system does not fully capture in the nominal costs. But it's somewhat academic since we can neither choose to build more Excaliburs or build Darwins. Really the most cost-effective option utilising cutting edge tech would be to build a modern version of the Selachii but with a RFL and phasers and nothing else - you could probably hit half the cost of an Excalibur in nominal terms. But we can't do that, so.

uju32 said:
As part of a balanced peacetime fleet.
This isnt peacetime. Wartime just tends to max out industrial capacity as budgets balloon. The fact that we see fewer Excaliburs commissioned into Starfleet during wartime than in peacetime is very much the dog that didnt bark IMO

Especially since the Excalibur is the only mature Warp 8 ship design in the Starfleet roll to face the D7s.

I mean I would agree to the extent that I think it's very odd Starfleet is not rushing some kind of Warp 8 design into larger production numbers, but I think this idea of a some kind of shadow fleet of Excaliburs being built that we are completely unaware of is pretty fanciful. If the Andorians are building some it is going to be a handful.

Even in wartime, we have always built more bread-and-butter combatants than our premier battleships - you can look at the Earth-Romulan War or any other conflict in the quest for that so I am disinclined to argue further that water is wet.

Tank man · Nov 13, 2024

DragoonPreston said:
Another thing supporting member fleets making Excaliburs, it's our first warp 8 ship with the New warpcore in it. Building a number of an existing design to get a good feel for how to use the tech is a great way to gain capacity to build and design new ships with the new tech.

Another factor there, typically with this sort of thing you also get one built in the original designers yards to see how it works/get your own guys up to speed on things, meaning there could be quite a few member navy ships building in our yards.

TeaMug · Nov 13, 2024

Dang the thread moves fast sometimes.

Skippy said:
and even the players loudly claiming they're okay with it because they want to argue with me are not actually going to enjoy it in reality when it happens.

Hang the fuck on, and please stop claiming that you know what I think. I quite enjoyed the last update. I think seeing the results of our long-term build policies play out is very interesting, and additionally I think interspersing the war writeup with our ongoing build is a great way for sayle to keep updates rolling without exhausting themselves on any one facet of the quest.

If I didn't enjoy this quest, I wouldn't be here.

What I don't enjoy, is when people try to derail the established flow of the quest mid-process. I'd rather work to do better from where we are (either mechanically or in-story) than cry for a retcon of facts which we have already built several updates upon.

Skippy said:
We're the Design Bureau, we don't run the Federation but we do absolutely get A Vote in these kinds of decisions.

We got a vote. We made our choice repeatedly, as we undergunned everything we built for decades. Then we got a chance to claw things back from the worst-case scenario with the Excalibur (and we did so successfully).

I was/am hoping that the result would be a thread-wide understanding that "times have changed, all our ships need to be a bit more heavily armed" more than "game's busted plz fix mechanics". (We've had hints we needed more gun since the Kea retrospective talked about torpedos)

Wootius said:
If you wanted aft dps, you should have voted for the phaser.

Hey now, I've been advocating for a rear RFL for a while now. I've had my somewhat-ridiculous priorities straight since before the phaser vote.

Model DC.14F · Nov 13, 2024

[X] Two Forward Torpedoes, Two Aft (Cost: 53 -> 62) [-1 Modules]

Zimmerwald1915 · Nov 13, 2024

Skippy said:
I mean I would agree to the extent that I think it's very odd Starfleet is not rushing some kind of Warp 8 design into larger production numbers, but I think this idea of a some kind of shadow fleet of Excaliburs being built that we are completely unaware of is pretty fanciful.

This is a polite way of saying "based off of little more than tea-leaf-reading and cope" (an assessment which is broadly correct).

Golgotha · Nov 13, 2024

I feel like that we are almost over the hump here with our fleet design - it was mentioned that the Excalibur's losses are what officially codify the need for an Explorer class. Our do-everything-and-have-big-guns ships will become a staple soon, and that goes a long way towards always having a big stick to call upon.

At that stage we can really justify having the minimum combat power of everything else at "defeat d6 equivalent reliably" rather then needing specific ships to mass produce, or go the other path and have dedicated cheaper "defeat d7" patrol ships with undergunned specialist ships.

We've jumped between both those two ideas and the awkward transition between them is the primary problem, not which doctrine is better.

jjffjhjf · Nov 13, 2024

Zimmerwald1915 said:
This is a polite way of saying "based off of little more than tea-leaf-reading and cope" (an assessment which is broadly correct).

I thought the idea was based off the certainty that we win this war, given we've gotten federation histories about stuff that happens after this? Like, whatever method we use, we clearly do plenty well enough.

Bedpotato · Nov 13, 2024

random_npc said:
The entire premise of the quest falls apart if the things we make are not notably more effective than what gets made in the background by NPCs.

yes and no, we had the context clues to deduce it was going to be a bad time if not how much of a bad time, nor how impactful the Excalibur's would be in the war. Unless figuring out what is needed based on those context clues is an intended part of this game, then the consequences of the war should have been spelled out before we started the next project.

To be clear, I'm not annoyed at how the war went, I'm annoyed that we are finding out how the war went midway though the next ship we're building rather than before we picked what to build next. Like I said, the details of the wars course would absolutely have impacted what we would want to build and how we would build it.

I rather like it this way, We only get to finish the Darwin design and look at the updates as we get told how others die en masse because of the threads past choices. I hope its a stark remainder to never neglect military ability.

Sayle said:
I'm not seeing the wholehearted support for that idea or the sense of grievance from people that justify that kind of change, especially when decisions on the Darwin were driven by the thesis that it wouldn't affect the war. How would the people who predicated their choices for impulse drives and phasers (and torpedoes, for that matter) feel if suddenly actually it was relevant. That sort of thing.

The reality is that the Klingons could have been 1/5th the size of Starfleet and the battle of K-5 and most of the territorial losses would have happened identically. It's just the nature of a widely diffused military being subjected to schwerpunkt before being able to assemble its own forces. The Klingons are in fact a peer/superior power to the Federation militarily, so things are going to get worse before they get better, but there are methods to fighting a stronger enemy, especially when they're the ones who have to come to you.

I like it this way Sayle, this is awesome! Keep up the good work!

Skippy said:
If this is how you're committed to treating it then I'd actually agree with @Wootius and ask that we try and skim/timeskip over it. Three more updates of watching Starfleet get chewed up whilst we're impotent is not fun, and even the players loudly claiming they're okay with it because they want to argue with me are not actually going to enjoy it in reality when it happens.

I rather enjoped reading the last update, i would therefore ask you to onlytalk about yourself and not trying to speak for me! This is Vindication

landcollector said:
Takes all kinds I guess. Personally not a fan of "you're getting curbstomped" parts 2, 3, and 4 though.

Oh? Then perhaps you'll vote for more warships and millitary equipment on other ships in the future?

Sayle said:
lalalala Discovery isn't reaaaaaal

I didn't watch it, and yes its a cheap knockoff with people trying to make money off Star treks name same as Picard. There is ENT, TOS, TMP; TNG, and DS9 no ther star trek exists.

KnightDisciple said:
We literally just made a "warship"! It was the Excalibur-class! The Excaliburs are warships!

Thats why the our massive fleet of warships is currently curbstomping its way to Quonos right? Right? Oh no it isn't the last update is clearly demonstrating we need more than one warship. Like perhaps a Battleship line that just sits on our starbases to act as fleet anchors? You know my ideas from far earlier in the quest that got shot down and derided as useless and overmilitarised?

Skippy said:
Honestly if the concern is no one thought we were designing a ship for the war, a simple solution would be to just put it to a vote. That way no player won't have been given a choice of whether to press the Darwin into service as it stands, or put it on the backburner live with watching the Newton explode on loop for four years.

We're the Design Bureau, we don't run the Federation but we do absolutely get A Vote in these kinds of decisions.

Or, we just keep designing the Darwin and watch was happens in the war? How about that?

Deltamaster said:
We will survive this. Whats annoyed me is the fact that this can summerized as a mix of "I told you so" and "dropkicked in the face!"

The I told you so is because we were told by the QM we are behind canon in weapons and warships/tactical (which the quest has neglected so damn much the Pharos has come to haunt us for being a terrible defensive platform from literally February)

I mean i was screeching since the first thread about building dedicated warships that only hang around our bases to beat any invader bloddy, something like that would have been rather usefull right about now right?

Zimmerwald1915 · Nov 13, 2024

jjffjhjf said:
I thought the idea was based off the certainty that we win this war, given we've gotten federation histories about stuff that happens after this? Like, whatever method we use, we clearly do plenty well enough.

"We win the war for reasons" is a meaningfully different prediction than "we win the war because of an unaccounted for member-world shadow fleet." Notably it is far less specific.

landcollector · Nov 13, 2024

Bedpotato said:
Oh? Then perhaps you'll vote for more warships and millitary equipment on other ships in the future?

I've usually been for appropriate weapons payloads on ships. One of the few instances I can recall wanting to go relatively light was the all phaser hull (I think that was the Kea?) since I didn't consider it a good candidate for a torp launcher due to the (imo) unacceptably low maneuverability it had.

Golgotha · Nov 13, 2024

Bedpotato said:
I mean i was screeching since the first thread about building dedicated warships that only hang around our bases to beat any invader bloddy, something like that would have been rather usefull right about now right?

If they are locked to base defence, I think I would rather design a base defence station tbh.
I think they can go a lot longer without needing updates

Sayle said:
Finally, you could link a Scanning and Targeting Anti-Reconnaissance System directly into the station's main fusion reactor. This would allow the starbase to project rays of highly concentrated subspace interference towards enemy ships, rendering automatic targeting systems nearly useless and forcing any attackers to switch to manual targeting. The array would be capable of actively disrupting the systems of dozens of starships, making any offensive actions against the base that much more difficult.

Like this was the lowest level tactical ability. Complete ECM domination. Imagine the Klingons trying to target an Excalibur doing high speed maneuvering.
One would destroy their entire fleet.

If that's the lowest ability, imagine the high level abilities...

jjffjhjf · Nov 13, 2024

Zimmerwald1915 said:
"We win the war for reasons" is a meaningfully different prediction than "we win the war because of an unaccounted for member-world shadow fleet." Notably it is far less specific.

I'm not really sure there is a meaningful difference here when we have no control of how we might win this war, we don't control how many ships we make, or what types, or how often. We just design ships and let however those decisions get made happen. Any method of victory is effectively equivalent to any other, they all lead to the previous retrospectives being made.

Skippy · Nov 13, 2024

TeaMug said:
What I don't enjoy, is when people try to derail the established flow of the quest mid-process. I'd rather work to do better from where we are (either mechanically or in-story) than cry for a retcon of facts which we have already built several updates upon.

The thing is that it's only 2240 and the ship is mostly complete. I had actually expected Project Darwin to line up differently with the start of the and be less complete by now, and I suspect Sayle may have also. Even if we were going through the normal process, with the internal module votes taking at most two more updates (and assuming both don't take a single year) the ship should be finished and entering production in 2242 or 2243.

It's if anything kind of arbitrary that it isn't coming into service during the war, as it would normally do if this was any other ship we've ever designed. Perhaps the Project will simply get shelved during the last two years of the war or something to deal with the discrepancy.

Cold Dust · Nov 13, 2024

Golgotha said:
If they are locked to base defence, I think I would rather design a base defence station tbh.
I think they can go a lot longer without needing updates

Like this was the lowest level tactical ability. Complete ECM domination. Imagine the Klingons trying to target an Excalibur doing high speed maneuvering.
One would destroy their entire fleet.

If that's the lowest ability, imagine the high level abilities...

Once again, picking the heaviest guns all the time isn't the optimal choice or we wouldn't be asked. We chose a station to be far within our borders, it had something like 8 super-heavy phasers. It was intended to be a logistics and resupply, except (if memory serves) at the last second we voted against letting it do full refits so lost on half the point of the space station, enabling us to have a bigger fleet kept up-to-date. We also made our fleet weaker when we chose that the warp 8 drive would be better but not backwards-compatible.

We've made sup-optimal choices in regards to weaponry and I think we definitely need to up our arsenal a couple notches going forwards, but picking all weaponry all the time would probably be a terrible choice.

We could do a new space station, something designed as a base defense facility. Either medium or small, for our mid or outer rim, the small ones intended to be deployed in groups on a faster timetable. That'd make us a lot less tasty. Admittedly I would be curious just how nasty the defenses would be on a pure military facility (burst-fire torpedo turrets anyone?).

I'd be curious to see what issues turn up if we go down that route. <Shrugs> And I'd be intrigued if it turns out my entire thinking process is wrong.

landcollector · Nov 13, 2024

Cold Dust said:
Admittedly I would be curious just how nasty the defenses would be on a pure military facility (burst-fire torpedo turrets anyone?).

Hear me out here:
Quad RFL turrets

KNakamura · Nov 13, 2024

landcollector said:
Hear me out here:
Quad RFL turrets

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Io0OQ2zPS4

Bedpotato · Nov 13, 2024

Skippy said:
The thing is that it's only 2240 and the ship is mostly complete. I had actually expected Project Darwin to line up differently with the start of the and be less complete by now, and I suspect Sayle may have also. Even if we were going through the normal process, with the internal module votes taking at most two more updates (and assuming both don't take a single year) the ship should be finished and entering production in 2242 or 2243.

It's if anything kind of arbitrary that it isn't coming into service during the war, as it would normally do if this was any other ship we've ever designed. Perhaps the Project will simply get shelved during the last two years of the war or something to deal with the discrepancy.

Can you please stop? Darwin isn't going to be build during the war. Because all non warship builds are stopped in favor of said warships! Just give it a rest.

Cold Dust · Nov 13, 2024

landcollector said:
Hear me out here:
Quad RFL turrets

<Fans self vigorously> Please, please, talk like this gets my Pon'Farr going early.

On a more serious note, something with 6 or 8 long-range heavy phaser turrets with full all-around coverage, and a pair of rapid-fire torpedo turrets, one above one below, heavy covariant shielding or equivalent and double layers of armour would be nice as a small defense station. Add a side of at least basic ECM to foul enemy targeting systems, and/or a long-range subspace scanner to give us extra warning on incoming ships (even if it's just 2 hours vs 30 minutes) and that'd be sweet.

Put a few of those puppies in orbit, wham, sure the Klingons can take it, but not without a bloody nose. With a defending fleet, they'd be very, very sorry for having come to that party.

As for a medium station, 16 long-range heavy phaser turrets, 16 more standard phaser turrets, 6x evenly-space RFL torpedo turrets, full-theater ECM, enhanced comms suite, triple-layer armour. Also thinking about something like 3x super-heavy extra long-range phaser cannons to snipe incoming ships, soften them up or even one-hit-kill BoPs outright before they get close.

Or, what about, give the station enhanced RCS thrusters and give it an array of 12, 16 or even 24 regular torpedo launchers in standard configuration aligned along a single firing cone. Have it able to point at enemy fleets and snipe them with torpedo barrages as they come in. Fleets could anchor around the station and try to force them to stay in the station's firing cone, and the pair coordinate to either sandblast the enemy away with sheer torpedo power or have the fleet outmaneuver and flank them while they're trying to avoid the death swarm. Bonus points if it has at least a less-potent form of that theater ECM to foul enemy targeting.

Edit: I reckon we could do it with regular type 1 photorp launchers, my fridge math says such a station might potentially be only slightly more expensive than an Excalibur-class. Put 3 of those on an important world, and attacking fleets like we've seen so far would be pasted, even if they've only got a dozen mediocre defending ships.

landcollector · Nov 13, 2024

KNakamura said:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Io0OQ2zPS4

Unironically yes, but hopefully with targeting systems that aren't drunk.

Tank man · Nov 13, 2024

Iirc the Kelvin had what seemed to be rapid fire torpedo/micro torpedo turrets, or something. They were blue and didn't behave like the beams.

Skippy · Nov 13, 2024

Bedpotato said:
Can you please stop? Darwin isn't going to be build during the war. Because all non warship builds are stopped in favor of said warships! Just give it a rest.

What?

I'm talking about the timeline being odd and whether the project will be shelved for the last bit of the war or not. There has to be some in-universe explanation. Please calm down.

Cold Dust · Nov 13, 2024

Skippy said:
What?

I'm talking about the timeline being odd and whether the project will be shelved or not. There has to be some in-universe explanation. Please calm down.

Sayle said non-combat ships wouldn't be produced until after the war, if memory serves. Presumably if this is deemed a scientific vessel, or at least started as a survey vessel project, it won't be produced until after hostilities cease.

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