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KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
Temporal Scanners indicate this is because the Klingons bawl their eyes out about the Excaliburs being too good, and insist as a condition for peace that we never build another one.
Backstab-happy Federation politicians agree to this term in exchange for temporary peace...
... therefore we begin beaming into the Council Chambers in 10 minutes. Phasers on stun, everyone.
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- Location
- California
The hull itself is honestly not ideal. We sacrificed a decent amount in order to give it landing capabilities, which is far more useful for a dedicated biosciences ship but not so much a generalist utility cruiser. Something of the same size as the Darwin but with a full saucer, proper deflector and bigger engineering hull would be better.
0t4n1z3r019
Member of the HAFPTG
- Location
- Philippines
And with the Darwin finishing its construction in a snippet or two, I hope Starfleet orders a substantial amount of them to plug the holes made by this war on our ships.
I just hope that the lessons of this war are never forgotten.
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
Except we know that we never build anymore post war, so what few remain after the war are all we get for some god damn reason.
So yeah, we do not have Excals 'In Reserve' like the canon Federation had the dozens of Connies sitting around.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I dunno, I think being able to land and quickly deploy lots of cargo rather than having to work through transporters/shuttles definitely has a use case in supporting under-developed colonies.
It's true we could probably do better for a utility cruiser, but I think what we have would definitely work well in the role.
Honestly I just want to remake the Cygnus in warp 8. Give it a top rollbar to hide the RFL, give it high coverage to start replacing the Kea, and stuff it with cargo holds and general labs with space we saved via the rollbar.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
A Nacelle upgrade that's incompatible with the Excalibur is a solid reason not to build more of them. But also, like, it's noncombat capabilities are kind of lacking compared to it's high price. Especially since one of it's major noncombat capabilities is 'long range' and the Federation has a distinct lack of a need for a long range ship and has a sharp need for short range ships in the near future.
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KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
That is very very stupid thinking that should be rewarded with a penal colony visit, we already saw what that thinking gets us with this war.
Without a comparable design why wouldnt Starfleet build more Excals in the 10-20 years it will take us to do the nacelle design?
It just doesn't make any damn sense when every world should be SCREAMING for Excals to be available to defend them.
KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
New Federation Garbage Scow just dropped:
It's an Excalibur with every other module ripped out for Cargo Bays!
It's an Excalibur with every other module ripped out for Cargo Bays!
- Location
- England
The problem with this analysis is that we made some truly excellent ships... for peacetime. For wartime, there was the Excalibur (which had only barely gotten out the door by the time the war arrived) and SanFran's designs.
Before the Excal, what does our design record look like?
-The Archer, a best-in-class engineering vessel that could, on a good day, stand up to a single BoP, but forget about fighting a wolfpack of them or a Klingon cruiser.
-The Warp 8 Engine, a cutting-edge revolutionary design which is also directly the reason this war is even happening right now in the first place thanks to its refit incompatibility.
-The Kea, a ship excellent for swatting raiders and BoPs but, again, lacked the ability to seriously combat Klingon cruisers. It got a refit program to fix or at least mitigate that, but said refit happened during the war's opening shots, ensuring that one of the relatively few hulls of the class got sniped while it was still vulnerable.
-The Pharos, a masterclass in logistics stations that had one single step more tactical capability than the literal absolute minimum amount we were physically allowed to put on it.
-The Selachii, which actually was all but a dedicated warship but was equally half a century old at the outbreak of hostilities.
The war going the way it did was the consequence of many decisions made over time (although the Warp 8 Engine is the single biggest factor) to deemphasize tactical capability in favour of utility. The result is a large and prosperous Federation, but we shouldn't complain too much now that the bill's unfortunately come due.
As a reminder, for the purposes of this Quest there were no "dozens of Connies" lying around. There was 14 and no more.
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Driven by Apathy
Formerly known as Brain_Caster
Honestly, all this wailing about the Klingon meanies not being effortlessly defeated the first time they made contact with Starfleet is making me want to roll my eyes.
Being invaded by a militarist imperialist power with a significant headstart on you when it comes to expansion and tech development kinda sucks. Who knew?
I've seen no indication that anything "unfair" is happening in this quest. This isn't an empire-building quest, so what's even the problem? If anything, it's really interesting to see how our designs are doing, and watching the Excaliburs repeatedly kick Klingon ass just like we designed them to is pretty awesome.
Being invaded by a militarist imperialist power with a significant headstart on you when it comes to expansion and tech development kinda sucks. Who knew?
I've seen no indication that anything "unfair" is happening in this quest. This isn't an empire-building quest, so what's even the problem? If anything, it's really interesting to see how our designs are doing, and watching the Excaliburs repeatedly kick Klingon ass just like we designed them to is pretty awesome.
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KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
So... it's just utter and complete gross negligence on the part of the Federation then, that doesn't make it better.
We should be building atleast another dozen post war, instead we seem to nigh instantly just decide 'Wars done! Time to ignore it like a dirty thing!'
- Location
- USA
I think the Romulans can. And have provided carefully curated intel to the Klingons regarding what we've built.
Swapping the arboretum for a medical bay won't make it less sciency, even if it would lower the Science Score. So in that circumstance, it would still be a science cruiser. It might make it a medical science cruiser instead of a botany science cruiser.
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
Sounds like what we need is the Miranda to our Excalibur's Constitution.
- Location
- England
I mean, that depends on what the Federation's post-war build program actually is, doesn't it? Yes, we know it doesn't include more Excaliburs, but they're presumably not building zero new ships, or even just the Darwin. For all we know, the reason no more Excaliburs get made is that SanFran is about to kick the Miranda design out the door and Starfleet orders approximately nineteen million of the things, as one does with the Miranda. It's too early to make assumptions like this.
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
When would they have designed that? They worked with us on the Excal and we are both doing a Bioscience cruiser project, where/when would they have crammed in another large project that could fulfill all the needed roles? Genuinely wondering that given the effort and scale starship design takes as shown by our ever increasing timeframes to design ships these days.
- Location
- England
I think we're not both doing a Bioscience cruiser. Instead, they picked up the Defense Satellite tender when we grabbed the Bioscience ship, but we know they'd finished it by the outbreak of the war and are now presumably doing something else entirely.
(Also, even if they were doing a Bioscience cruiser, if it was in typical SanFran fashion i.e. comparatively cheap and reasonably armed, it would serve the same role of being a Warp 8 ship with good tactical capability Starfleet could mass produce to fill out the holes the war's punched in its roster.)
They were also doing the Kea refit, but as Keas have been refit, they presumably finished that, too.
Horologer
Incertae sedis
- Location
- a risen sea
Because the Federation also has to build the rest of the Warp 8 fleet, including the light cruiser that we're all pushing for.
It's not our job to decide that the small, well-specialized bioscience cruiser should in fact be a small, generalist utility cruiser. If Starfleet wants that, they can order it, or just strip out equipment from the Darwins to make it better in that role.
And why would Starfleet want to ask us for that? The SFDB regularly makes weird design choices which often produce very nice ships, but I certainly wouldn't describe us as a safe option. If I wanted someone to design a reasonable utility cruiser to bulk out the fleet, I'd go with San Francisco which has a proven track record of designing ships which are affordable and serviceable, and who actually follow design briefs. I bet that San Fran wouldn't take a brief for a small, well specialized science cruiser and consider turning it into a generalist after designing the thing to land on the ground like a shuttle.
And really, if you need an affordable, tactically capable utility cruiser, are you going to ask the Archer guys or the Newton guys?
Behold, Warp 8 Cygnus!
(Going by the short lore blurb STO often provides, this represents the earliest models of Mirandas, dating back to the 2260s, before the more definitive version of the 2270s we all know and love came about).
Archduke
Don't Take Geology Puns For Granite
- Location
- Texas
While the Darwin has a respectable weapons load, I feel that the hull design and the deflector choices we made would have hamstrung it as our general purpose cruiser of the future. If we're gonna design the new Warp 8 utility cruiser, let's do it from the ground up.
On the subject of Starfleet leadership, the Pre-war commander already resigned. We're onto new leadership. How good they are id debatable, since they oversaw the loss of Pharos 4.
Another thing: we're not just going up against the Klingon Empire. We're going up against a Klingon Empire with Romulan support. The Romulans played an important role in the design of the D7, the only ship capable of tangling with a Callie on somewhat even terms. I'd bet they're also feeding intel to the Klingons, though how much and how well it's being utilized is up for debate.
On the subject of Starfleet leadership, the Pre-war commander already resigned. We're onto new leadership. How good they are id debatable, since they oversaw the loss of Pharos 4.
Perhaps we'll get another new Commander after Andoria, but that remains to be seen. I kind of hope we don't end up with a revolving door style of leadership.
Another thing: we're not just going up against the Klingon Empire. We're going up against a Klingon Empire with Romulan support. The Romulans played an important role in the design of the D7, the only ship capable of tangling with a Callie on somewhat even terms. I'd bet they're also feeding intel to the Klingons, though how much and how well it's being utilized is up for debate.
Endorfinator
Awkwardly Social
- Location
- California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Given what Sayle said about the economics of ship building I'd like one of the modules of our 'cheapo light crusier design" to be equipment for strategic resources prospecting. Let's find and exploit those resources so thst we can have an even larger fleet 30 years down the line.
LunaMoth
Wings of Kynareth is my comfort song...
- Pronouns
- He/They
nah, on the next ship we should vote to only fill it with cargo bays and nothing else, and completely cheap out on everything except weapons where we take the biggest armament- that seems abstractly to be what people want to do for the next ship.