We need a patrol craft not a combat engineer, it must be CHEAP (or at least as cheap as possible while still being a patrol craft). Our whole issue rn is that we designed expensive ships which then led to them not getting mass produced which led to everything becoming to stretched out for the size of the fleet we have to effectively protect it. What we really really REALLY need rn is a no fills protection craft like the constable, we don't need engineers we have the archers and the Newtons who while a bit old we know last quite a while. They can wait for the next a design series, what can't wait is a protection ship. We were already having major pirate issues before the conflict and woth our fleet gonna get bodied that gonna give pirates more wiggle room, so we needed to make a anti-pirate ship. Perhaps we can give it some basic cargo so it can act as a currier for important packages.
I guess my point is, in order to be potent under the system here the ship has to be fairly big. Mass is cheap and is a very good way of making our ships a lot more powerful, we just have to slap an extra thruster or 2 on to maintain our agility advantage, and we can even potentially go for cheaper and more efficient shields if it's big enough, and retain durability. If it's big, even if we sacrifice a couple modules for combat utility (a good idea at this point) we'll still have quite a few modules to play with. I'm proposing we kill 3 birds with 1 stone; our engineering support ships have been around for a long time, as you pointed out, so there's obviously a heavy demand for them.
That demand is so great we're keeping antiquated ships around to satisfy it, so we'll phase out our weakest fleet elements that presently cannot participate against peer threats and replace them with new, strong, powerful cruisers, maybe even with more firepower than the Excalibur-class (for all we know new weapons technology is right around the corner. In the past we've been conservative and I've voted that way, I think we should consider pushing forwards, hard, on new technologies. After all, we know we survive the Klingon war, so we've got a bit of breathing room right afterwards to invest in rapid technological advance and come out with a decisive military advantage).
Secondly these new ships will be capable of warp 8, so they'll be fast to respond to threats, able to evade the enemy more often, generally cover a lot of ground very fast, be ideal for anti-piracy operations which is apparently a renewed concern, and that peak speed will enable offensive as opposed to purely defensive action (penetrating enemy territory for raids, attacks against enemy bases or ships and then escaping before the enemy can respond). We don't need to use those offensive capabilities, but it'll make our neighbours think twice if they know we have cruisers that can take on their best warships and can get into their territory, and potentially outrun their fastest combat ships.
Thirdly their supplemental role as engineering support/light transport ships is, again, in high demand. Having a ship able to get to you at a leisurely warp ~6.6 or maybe even higher without strain is vastly superior to the Cygnus' cruise of warp 5.2 or the Newtons' cruise of warp 5.6. They'll do better at providing light transport and colonial support than a pre-Federation antique. This will further increase the speed and strength of our development and maybe even shore up our weak borders.
It's dicey putting the Archer-class near the front lines, this hypothetical engineering support cruiser won't suffer the same issues. It can't replace the Archer-class, but it can supplement it, filling the same role as the Newton-class but better. If it's ambushed while helping set defense satellites, then the Klingons better have brought 3 D7s to the party, because either they're not leaving, or their ships are never going to work the same after we're done wailing on them with torpedo barrages and phaser blasts.
The rewards are manifold.
Naturally we'll sacrifice modules if it yields us more torpedo launchers or other advantages. I'm totally open to a ship that can fire as many as 8 torpedoes forwards and 4 aft, provided the costs aren't excessive (I'm worried about not having enough numbers).
