Starfleet Design Bureau

[Chipsy_21]

The only real gripe i have here is that our ship-roster does feel a bit anemic for a polity the size of the federation.
Thats not really something you can change on short notice, but it would be nice to have some clearer feedback on the impact of our designs in situations like these (something like: "without the archers great engineering assistance in the colonies wed only have the means to build 10 excaliburs instead of 12.")

Maybe im the exception in this but i generally enjoy being directly told these things more than infering it.

Also, completely unrelated, i hope our next project is another station. I really want to see what a tactically focused station can do.

 

[Candesce]

There really was no Option to do make it the Death Orb

Click to shrink...

There were options to not make it an orb. That choice was explicitly called out as ensuring we wouldn't be able to make a capable combatant out of it.

Now, we certainly got a lot of shiny out of that orb, and I'm certainly not saying we should never build orbs. But after the warning that the Kea was incapable of serious fighting and that our new Warp Core had just lead to a much earlier war with the Klingons than otherwise would happen, choosing to build a specialist noncombat ship was a choice we made.

 

[DeltaV11.2]

And what options did we have for that? The Orb of Building Glory was thoroughly laughed out of the room when we asked for Torps to put on it, and they grudgingly let us put a few Phasors on it. There really was no Option to do make it the Death Orb, a lot of people were quite disapoint by that.

Click to shrink...

We could have not made a sphere ship. Which, well, I did vote for Sphere and then the container so maybe not the right call on my part. But we def could have gone for a ship to directly compete with the Newton as a mixed engineering/tactical ship and tried to outdo them as a design. The option with more edge over SF though would have been to try and compete for the long range cruiser. We perceived it as a doomed venture, but maybe we could have done it?

 

[Horologer]

The obvious solution is to just make all our civilian ships have a self destruct button and after a few uses of it the pirates will give up .

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: Starfleet Engineering Demonstrates A Prototype

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Lx3s170iI

 

[uju32]

It's too early in the war to make definitive statements, but I think there's a pretty stark lesson here about the importance of cost.

Click to shrink...

I dont think the lesson you're implying is the one we should be drawing. Certainly not the one Im seeing.

Capability costs money. And there are fixed costs to building a starship that you cannot avoid.
When the photon torpedoes fly, the design compromises of cheap designs tend to end up very expensive.
Existentially expensive, you might say.

This doesnt mean that we should goldplate our designs.
But there is a frankly counterproductive focus by sections of the voter base on cost that actively impedes some designs whenever relations progress from hot air to hot plasma.

EDIT
Hell, the Excalibur isnt even expensive.
This is the list of completed designs since 2190 and their cost rating, for their class of ship:

CLASS NAME	TYPE	MASS	INTRODUCED	BUILT	TACTICAL	INDUSTRY/INFRASTRUCTURE	COST
Selachii-class	Heavy Frigate	45,000 tons	2190	38	A-	B	C-
Pharos-class	Starbase	20,000,000 tons	2200		C-		B-
Saladin-class	Light cruiser	180,000 tons	2210	16	A-	A-	S
Kea-class	Science cruiser	255,000 tons	2210	12	B-	C-	A-
Newton-class	Light cruiser	130,000 tons	2225	30	B-	B	B
Archer-class	Light cruiser	150,000 tons	2225	40	C-		B-
Excalibur-class	Heavy cruiser	180,000 tons	2234	18	S		C+

The Saladin is our cost-king for its class, but the Excalibur is not even the most expensive ship here; that would be the Selachii-class, which we still built 38 of, the most of any class other than the Archer.
Excalibur is just middling cost.

One of the issues on our ToE is that our only Explorer-class, the 290,000 ton Sagmartha-class, is 65 years old, with all the tech obsolesence that implies, while remaining big enough to be a prestigious target.
Thats about it.

The rest is about ship deployment patterns when the war broke out.

 

[Nepcalibur]

Just make better ships bro.

Im loving this by the way.

 

[Skippy]

I suspect anything we designed in the timeframe for Project Halley would have suffered from the fundamental issues that:
(1) It had to be built with a Warp 7 core.
(2) It would need to use entirely last-generation weapons.
(3) At that point in time, voters tended to prefer broader weapons coverage over focussed offensive firepower.

Like the Newton is actually at least reasonably close to the optimum in terms of what we might expect to design, which is why it's going to be our workhorse for this conflict. It's not a terrible ship by any means, but we aren't necessarily going to do amazingly better when we're so behind in weaponry and shields. Perhaps if there was some magical hull configuration for the Engineering Cruiser or the Long Range Cruiser which let us squeeze in a third or fourth frontal torpedo launcher, and by some miracle you could convince voters to go for it, we'd have a somewhat better (but still Warp 7) workhorse combatant now?

Really what has hamstrung us is that our only modern warship is the Excalibur, and we didn't design the Selachii Mk. II or something in time before the war broke out. That was not a choice we had any direct control over. Going for the Darwin over the weapons satellites did mean we had qualitatively worse (but also cheaper) weapons satellites at the outset of the war. But fundamentally the Federation's strategic vulnerabilities were much deeper and not likely to be significantly altered by somewhat better static defences.

 

[Cold Dust]

I mean, I do disagree with the potential rationale and have made no secret about it at any point, but that hardly disqualifies me from discussing it. If I wanted to continue the argument I would simply continue it. I think we both know I am quite capable of being forceful and direct in my arguments when I wish to be.

And please kindly stop with this "subvert the process". I asked in a completely public forum for the decision to be changed, some players spoke up in support and more against the proposed change, and now it won't be changed. I am just as entitled to my opinions and to express them in the thread as you are.



Don't be facetious. This isn't how Starfleet works. By that standard we would not have refitted the Kea and would not be building the Newton during the war. It's simply not a good explanation for the delay.

Click to shrink...

Kindly stop the sniping and misrepresenting our arguments. My answer was not facetious.

Starfleet asked us to design a bio-survey ship. We are presently designing that class of ship. Meanwhile a war is blowing up. Naturally the expectation is our ship will be more heavily armed and protected. However, this ship was intended to be deployed after hostilities have ended. We have decided to give it heavier shielding and maximum torpedo armament, after having made choices earlier in its development that reduce its max speed, chose not to go with max sublight thrust or after phasers etc.

Someone in Starfleet will be assigning yards to build new ships. They are unlikely to be asking to build a prototype bio-survey ship years into a major interstellar conflict, they'll probably be asking for Excalibur and Newton-class ships that prioritize combat. Once the war is over, it is possible they'll ask for more of our ship class, quite possibly because it's so well protected if the votes proceed as they are that it'll mean our science ships can start pulling more of their weight in combat.

Refitting an existing ship design bears no meaningful relationship to the design and production plan for our bio-survey ship in the context of this war and bringing it up is facetious.

 

[Skippy]

Kindly stop the sniping and misrepresenting our arguments. My answer was not facetious.

Starfleet asked us to design a bio-survey ship. We are presently designing that class of ship. Meanwhile a war is blowing up. Naturally the expectation is our ship will be more heavily armed and protected. However, this ship was intended to be deployed after hostilities have ended.

Someone in Starfleet will be assigning yards to build new ships. They are unlikely to be asking to build a prototype bio-survey ship years into a major interstellar conflict, they'll probably be asking for Excalibur and Newton-class ships that prioritize combat. Once the war is over, it is possible they'll ask for more of our ship class, quite possibly because it's so well protected if the votes proceed as they are that it'll mean our science ships can start pulling more of their weight in combat.

Refitting an existing ship design bears no meaningful relationship to the design and production plan for our bio-survey ship in the context of this war and bringing it up is facetious.

Click to shrink...

Based on the argument you have presented, we would not be using the Newton as a combat vessel or building more of them during the war, as it is also a "non-combat" vessel via its official designation, and we demonstrably are. It is entirely normal for Starfleet vessels to have multiple roles, and that role has to be informed by their actual capabilities. This "bio-survey" ship if it were be built without the labs and would be the second most heavily assault cruiser Starfleet has ever fielded in her history, which is both amusing and also very in-keeping with Starfleet.

We are simply repeating ourselves here at this point, so I don't think there is a great deal of value in continuing this.

 

[Vehrec]

[X] Two Forward Torpedoes (Cost: 53 -> 57.5)

 

[DragoonPreston]

@Skippy Please stop, You have been going on for over TEN PAGES about this topic. You opened your topic in a rather insulting way and everyone has responded with an overwhelming No, your opinion is not shared by a majority. You have been told over and over again, that its not what people want. LET IT GO already. Please. You're a 'Group Leader' you should be better than this.

 

[Candesce]

Like the Newton is actually at least reasonably close to the optimum in terms of what we might expect to design, which is why it's going to be our workhorse for this conflict.

Click to shrink...

It is, as far as I can tell, a decent enough light cruiser (for the previous era). It'd be better if our first pass on the Type 2 Phaser had had actual firepower. That is, after all, why I've been using it as a point of comparison for the Darwin.

The problem is that pre-Excalibur we didn't have a line cruiser for it to hide behind and maneuver around. I think the casualties we're seeing from Pharos 7 among the Newtons demonstrate that agility just is not sufficient a defense in fleet actions, and that means its low shields and hull hurt. We still don't have many Excaliburs, and we're only going to get so many refit Keas, but when we made the Archer we could have gone with a big, chonky saucer and a big, chonky secondary hull and gotten a ship that might not have been very agile but would have had a lot of hull and shields because it had a lot of sheer mass. Not like lower agility would hurt what we ended up doing with the Archer in the end; the only way the Archer could ever win fights involved rendering agility a nonfactor.

 

[Horologer]

I dont think the lesson you're implying is the one we should be drawing. Certainly not the one Im seeing.

Capability costs money. And there are fixed costs to building a starship that you cannot avoid.
When the photon torpedoes fly, the design compromises of cheap designs tend to end up very expensive.
Existentially expensive, you might say.

This doesnt mean that we should goldplate our designs.
But there is a frankly counterproductive focus by sections of the voter base on cost that actively impedes some designs whenever relations progress from hot air to hot plasma.

Click to shrink...

Overbuilt designs are also expensive. No ship is invincible, and the more expensive each ship is the more each loss hurts. There's also a fundamental limit to how much a single ship can do. It can't be in two places at once, for one, which is extremely relevant when you're trying to patrol a lot of space, or defend against several smaller forces.

I also don't buy that there's a dedicated bloc of voters who want to keep costs down. I tend to vote for low costs, and when I do I tend to be on the losing side.

EDIT
Hell, the Excalibur isnt even expensive.
This is the list of completed designs since 2190 and their cost rating, for their class of ship:

CLASS NAME	TYPE	MASS	INTRODUCED	BUILT	TACTICAL	INDUSTRY/INFRASTRUCTURE	COST
Selachii-class	Heavy Frigate	45,000 tons	2190	38	A-	B	C-
Pharos-class	Starbase	20,000,000 tons	2200		C-		B-
Saladin-class	Light cruiser	180,000 tons	2210	16	A-	A-	S
Kea-class	Science cruiser	255,000 tons	2210	12	B-	C-	A-
Newton-class	Light cruiser	130,000 tons	2225	30	B-	B	B
Archer-class	Light cruiser	150,000 tons	2225	40	C-		B-
Excalibur-class	Heavy cruiser	180,000 tons	2234	18	S		C+

The Saladin is our cost-king for its class, but the Excalibur is not even the most expensive ship here; that would be the Selachii-class, which we still built 38 of, the most of any class other than the Archer.
Excalibur is just middling cost.

One of the issues on our ToE is that our only Explorer-class, the 290,000 ton Sagmartha-class, is 65 years old, with all the tech obsolesence that implies, while remaining big enough to be a prestigious target.
Thats about it.

The rest is about ship deployment patterns when the war broke out.

Click to shrink...

The Excalibur has the second-worst Cost score of all the ships on that list. If you average the Selachii's Industry and Cost, it's actually tied for last place.

 

[Wootius]

It is, as far as I can tell, a decent enough light cruiser. It'd be better if our first pass on the Type 2 Phaser had had actual firepower. That is, after all, why I've been using it as a point of comparison for the Darwin.

The problem is that pre-Excalibur we didn't have a line cruiser for it to hide behind and maneuver around. I think the casualties we're seeing from Pharos 7 among the Newtons demonstrate that agility just is not sufficient a defense in fleet actions, and that means its low shields and hull hurt. We still don't have many Excaliburs, and we're only going to get so many refit Keas, but when we made the Archer we could have gone with a big, chonky saucer and a big, chonky secondary hull and gotten a ship that might not have been very agile but would have had a lot of hull and shields because it had a lot of sheer mass. Not like lower agility would hurt what we ended up doing with the Archer in the end; the only way the Archer could ever win fights involved rendering agility a nonfactor.

Click to shrink...

God as my witness I'm voting for the fattest Excelsior the multiverse has ever seen. It's gonna have negative speed but a warp core per phaser bank. 😤

 

[Horologer]

God as my witness I'm voting for the fattest Excelsior the multiverse has ever seen. It's gonna have negative speed but a warp core per phaser bank. 😤

Click to shrink...

if it has negative speed we can just fly it backwards

 

[Tank man]

Being able to not be hit is good, but we will never be good enough to never take a hit. They say float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, but we must also be able to take a hit like a diabolical ironclad beetle.

God as my witness I'm voting for the fattest Excelsior the multiverse has ever seen. It's gonna have negative speed but a warp core per phaser bank. 😤

Click to shrink...

And naturally to propel her through the stars at incredible velocities, at least eight nacelles (2x quads)!

 

[jjffjhjf]

I do really want to build another proper Dreadnaught. Weapons facing every direction, bigger and meaner than anything else in the fleet, able to tank its way through a small enemy fleet on its own. Even more terrifying with backup. Would be a beautiful thing...

 

[Wootius]

if it has negative speed we can just fly it backwards

Click to shrink...

Shit, I knew we put something on backwards. 👀

 

[Endorfinator]

I do really want to build another proper Dreadnaught. Weapons facing every direction, bigger and meaner than anything else in the fleet, able to tank its way through a small enemy fleet on its own. Even more terrifying with backup. Would be a beautiful thing...

Click to shrink...

I think you'll have to wait for the Dominion war for that. I think our Century class counted, didn't it kill like half a dozen bugs, a galore, and 2 or 3 Dominion battleships before dying?

 

[jjffjhjf]

I think you'll have to wait for the Dominion war for that. I think our Century class counted, didn't it kill like half a dozen bugs, a galore, and 2 or 3 Dominion battleships before dying?

Click to shrink...

What's a Century class? I'm not seeing it in our list of finished stuff?

 

[Tank man]

I do really want to build another proper Dreadnaught. Weapons facing every direction, bigger and meaner than anything else in the fleet, able to tank its way through a small enemy fleet on its own. Even more terrifying with backup. Would be a beautiful thing...

Click to shrink...

I mean, that's basically what an explorer does (see the Excelsior-class, or any after it baring the neo-Connie), just with a more violent typing.

Though I'd like to point out that it's spelt dreadnought, dreadnaught is a misspelling that thankfully only Star Wars seems to have cemented.

 

[Skippy]

@Skippy Please stop, You have been going on for over TEN PAGES about this topic. You opened your topic in a rather insulting way and everyone has responded with an overwhelming No, your opinion is not shared by a majority. You have been told over and over again, that its not what people want. LET IT GO already. Please. You're a 'Group Leader' you should be better than this.

Click to shrink...

Why are you continuing this then? I have as much of a right to reply to Cold Dust as you do to yell at me right now, or as any other poster does to state their opinion on anything. The post you are referring to is one where I said we should probably drop the discussion because it wasn't going anywhere, in fact.

It is, as far as I can tell, a decent enough light cruiser (for the previous era). It'd be better if our first pass on the Type 2 Phaser had had actual firepower. That is, after all, why I've been using it as a point of comparison for the Darwin.

The problem is that pre-Excalibur we didn't have a line cruiser for it to hide behind and maneuver around. I think the casualties we're seeing from Pharos 7 among the Newtons demonstrate that agility just is not sufficient a defense in fleet actions, and that means its low shields and hull hurt. We still don't have many Excaliburs, and we're only going to get so many refit Keas, but when we made the Archer we could have gone with a big, chonky saucer and a big, chonky secondary hull and gotten a ship that might not have been very agile but would have had a lot of hull and shields because it had a lot of sheer mass. Not like lower agility would hurt what we ended up doing with the Archer in the end; the only way the Archer could ever win fights involved rendering agility a nonfactor.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure? If we look at the write-up for the Newton during the battle:

The Newtons took heavy losses for their role in anchoring the static part of the defensive formation, but the steady barrage of focused phaser fire and dual torpedo launches slowly whittled through the Klingon's own cruiser complement.

Click to shrink...

It seems to be stated that the reason the Newton's casualties were high is because they were not manoeuvring evasively to their upmost due to wanting to maintain a defensive static formation. Presumably there's some reason they were doing this, but I'm not sure it's strong directional evidence that agility isn't worthwhile for survivability given the context. Obviously in a perfect world we'd have both.

It may be evidence that we need both offensive and agile strikey ships, and more robust "anchors" for our fleet formation, for whatever reason. The latter just often tend to be quite expensive, both due to the shield cost scaling, and also the temptation to put more guns on bigger ships.

 

[VicSage]

[X] Forward Rapid Launcher, Two Aft Torpedoes (Cost 53 -> 69.5) [-1 Modules]

 

[ScyBlade]

Guys, guys, guys.

The Collegiate Football Player just punched the Oddly Friendly Collegiate Nerd in the face expecting an easy win that leaves the Nerd too terrified to make the Football Player pay for their crimes.

Only to realize that the Nerd lifts. Not Lifts as in lifts dumbbells and barbells, but lifts as in picks up heavy equipment to move it to a better spot for doing Science!

And that the Nerd practices a martial art for health reasons. And is now sizing the Football Player up.

The Federation isn't vicious, merely pragmatic. And none of the Founding Members have forgotten how to be vicious, merely placed it under a Thin Veneer of Civility.

Click to shrink...

I love this mental image <3 thank you for existing, please continue to do so

Click to shrink...

Thank you. Also,

I'm happy with the current state of affairs.

I'm happy with the performance of our recent designs.

I'm happy with the performance of our less-recent designs! Look, all that Science and Engineering focus that we went in on at the cost of firepower, all those lighter vessels that were cheaply rendered immune to casual piracy, all those colonies that got founded, got their biospheres analyzed and their infrastructure built out decades ahead of schedule, all those new minor species that joined the Federation instead of getting wiped out by disasters or enslaved by Klingons or Romulans or whoever and all the members of those species that got a little bit less oppressed when the Federation was sternly disapproving about certain socially discriminatory laws on their books, all those plagues and disasters that got responded to days or weeks faster because we had antimatter generation dozens of lightyears closer and the Cygnuses and Newtons could afford to max-cruise instead of efficient-cruise-

look, I'm seeing a lot of people real salty about "well I guess we fucked up and we were asking for it"-

No! You know what? The Cygnus, the Kea, the Archer, the Pharos? All that build-out-the-frontier, help-our-fucking-people feel-good shit?

IT FUCKING WORKED

It was the right call. It was better than canon. We have made a stronger Federation.

Like, sure, yes, it made the Klingon War inevitable- and it made it happen earlier, and made it more dangerous. Okay, whatever. Do you honestly think more people are going to die in the Four Years' War than would have died to plagues and disasters and Nausicaans and assorted miscellaneous pirates and raiders over the course of the last eight or ten decades, plus would have died in a 2260s Federation-Klingon War scenario?

*SNIP*

I am absolutely fucking thrilled with the overall outcome of all our choices up until this point, and with the exception of the Sagarmatha's quad nacelles🧂🧂🧂 I would make all of them again in a heartbeat.

Edit: 😳thanks <3

Click to shrink...

Continuing my idea.

The Oddly Friendly Nerd calmly gets up. He gives himself a quick assessment and checks that his expensive looking multi-tool is still in place. The expensive looking multi-tool that appears to include a blade in it. (Vulcan)
He also assesses both how he took that blow, and how the Football Player threw that punch. And considers if he'll need to 'collect a sample' from the Football Player. (Andorian pt 1)
He wonders if the Football Player is like his Uncle George who just likes a good fight, like his Uncle Roger who likes physically dominating others, or just having a bad day. (Human)
He also wonders how good the Football Player is at debates. (Tellarite pt 1) "My wife throws better punches than that!" (Tellarite pt 2 + Andorian pt 2)

 

[Wootius]

I think you'll have to wait for the Dominion war for that. I think our Century class counted, didn't it kill like half a dozen bugs, a galore, and 2 or 3 Dominion battleships before dying?

Click to shrink...

Do you think I'm joking.

8 Type 3 Phasers(we better have T3 by 2280) for ⅚ coverage
2 RFL forward, two tubes back.
And an ice cream parlor. Don't think I forgot about that. Morale will be improved.