Because this war has shown that minimal armament is dead. Unless it's a particularly specilised ship (and by specilised I mean basically a new Archer, not a new Newton - which any new engineering ships would probably be, since they got mulched) we need to give it as much gun as we reasonably can.
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But at least there's enough headroom to install the power plant.
UbeOne
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Considering the many, many, many posts complaining about how many of our ships were struggling against the Klingons…
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
So what exactly are you arguing? Small under gunned and underpowered frigates that are still 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the heavy cruiser, or more engineering cruisers that cost 2/3 as much as it while still being a worse choice? Straight from the update "The war had thoroughly discredited a once-popular viewpoint that the future was to be found in light cruisers which could be inexpensively built to carry out the myriad of duties needed in the ever-expanding Federation and then consolidated in the event of warfare."
Have you ever looked at the stats of our ships? The combat power of our ships is bottlenecked by technology and weapons cost, not size. We can fit a few phasers and a couple torpedo launchers on just about anything. We can't keep skimping on tactical to save cost, but we hardly need to be building exclusively Excalibur-tier combatants.
And that's leaving aside the fact that we've deliberately chosen to take a ceasefire instead of continuing into Klingon territory under the belief that we can rebuild faster and better than they can. Which is probably true, but it won't be if we decide that all our ships should be tactical-focused heavy cruisers.
We went for the ceasefire because pushing into the Empire would escalate the war from a failed conquest that could be written off as a dead man's fault to an existential war with a warrior race.
This would instantly end as now the war wouldn't about Duras' enrichment but defending the Empire and themselves.
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No, we expect that we're going to resume this, we'd just prefer to give it a couple decades:
The plan is to rebuild better and faster than they can so when the next war starts we'll be able to win it properly.
My read on the situation is simple.
1- We where right role focused ships are a better solution.
2- Bigger is better.
3- from now on with the exception of specialist ships (ie. Archer) their tactical needs to be at least equal to a peer vessel.
4- Ships need either have max manuverablity or coverage to deal with enemies of at least 1 degree of manuverablity then their ship.
From now on im expecting brief to be of bigger mass, a bigger weight to the tactical rating and role focused.
1- We where right role focused ships are a better solution.
2- Bigger is better.
3- from now on with the exception of specialist ships (ie. Archer) their tactical needs to be at least equal to a peer vessel.
4- Ships need either have max manuverablity or coverage to deal with enemies of at least 1 degree of manuverablity then their ship.
From now on im expecting brief to be of bigger mass, a bigger weight to the tactical rating and role focused.
The problem is, we cannot build 'a bunch of' anything. We're already at capacity (see below). We would love to have a ton of light cruisers; that's not possible, so the next-best option is a smaller handful of extra-capable heavier ships
Because it may/will have to serve as a warship regardless of how much engineering we'd rather have it doing. Look at the Newtons in the war we just got out of: they were intended as engineering ships, but they were the best combatants we had available (until the Excaliburs were ready).
We can't make enough ships to have separate peaceful and military fleets (again, see below), so we need to make all of our ships capable of dual roles - one role for peacetime, one for war.
This is our limiting factor. Every ship needs a warp core, every warp core needs dilithium, and we're already mining as much dilithium as we can get our hands on.
That means that we cannot build ships any faster than we already are. We cannot build extra ships to fill any perceived shortfalls. The only way to to increase our overall capability, is to take the ships that we will/are build/ing anyways, and make each ship more capable individually.
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Yeah, my 24-hour estimate was way too optimistic.
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A chunk of what will be determining things, I suspect, is what has been choking the 'lots of small ships' crew.
Ship construction has proven to be limited by strategic materials, not raw cost. Penny-pinching isn't getting anywhere, economic growth means that now the number of hulls is more limited by how many Warp Cores Starfleet can make from their supply of Dilithium, how many torpedoes are available per hull, and other strategic resource concerns.
Which means that optimal cost-maximizing is actually to maximize the amount of ship mobilized per ton of Warp Core built. Which means bigger ships with more equipment are in, small specialists are out. Fewer, higher-quality ships, rather than bunches of cheap but ineffective Newtons. Raw cost is still some concern, but we want to build every ship out to the full potential of its warp equipment, not trim down the ship to squeeze out a bit of savings. More of a concern is that we can't waste our limited supply of strategics on ships that are too easy to lose, repairing and refitting saves that precious Warp Core.
Ship construction has proven to be limited by strategic materials, not raw cost. Penny-pinching isn't getting anywhere, economic growth means that now the number of hulls is more limited by how many Warp Cores Starfleet can make from their supply of Dilithium, how many torpedoes are available per hull, and other strategic resource concerns.
Which means that optimal cost-maximizing is actually to maximize the amount of ship mobilized per ton of Warp Core built. Which means bigger ships with more equipment are in, small specialists are out. Fewer, higher-quality ships, rather than bunches of cheap but ineffective Newtons. Raw cost is still some concern, but we want to build every ship out to the full potential of its warp equipment, not trim down the ship to squeeze out a bit of savings. More of a concern is that we can't waste our limited supply of strategics on ships that are too easy to lose, repairing and refitting saves that precious Warp Core.
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At this point I am tempted to make a prometheus like ship that splits into muitable parts that can act independently just so we can make a small ship while also adhering to the threads idea that bigger is better, probably no each section getting warp core though.
We need more bang per buck, perhaps something like saucer separation but combat focus idk.
Personally I would like to see an option for us to ask the Federation to make more production for warpcores because we seriously need MORE SHIPS
We need more bang per buck, perhaps something like saucer separation but combat focus idk.
Personally I would like to see an option for us to ask the Federation to make more production for warpcores because we seriously need MORE SHIPS
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Our option for this is 'design a Dilithium prospector', since warp core production is choked by Dilithium supplies, and the Design Bureau has no other ability to influence that.
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We're still planning for round two, so unless you think that we're going to go for a purely defensive effort again my point stands.
There's still clearly a difference in production numbers between only expensive, heavy tactical-focused cruisers and light dual-role cruisers. The Excalibur effectively maxes out the combat limits of our technology, and it's barely heavier than a Newton. If you have 2,000 cost worth of resources to build ships, that's 22 Excaliburs or 28 Attenboroughs, and while the Attenboroughs will be worse in a direct conflict against a peer opponent, they'll be better in peacetime while retaining a very respectable armament.
That doesn't hold up to quest mechanics, though. The only thing that scales with ship tonnage is shields, which also scale in cost. The Excalibur is only 180,000 tons and it's the single deadliest ship that we've ever produced because it happens to mount all-new weapons. I'm pretty sure the Attenborough is second, again solely due to weapons tech, and the thing is under 100,000 tons.
We don't have a warp core resource, we just have cost, so in terms of combat strength per cost it's much more efficient to build mid-size ships that carry a full weapons load, respectable shields and high maneuverability while still retaining a strong specialist mission loadout. A modernized Newton would have most of the combat power of the Excalibur while actually being useful in the rebuilding that we need to do.
Sounds like we're too worried about longevity and sustainability of our strategic deposits and not enough with short term extraction volume. That and the federation needs to boost research into dilithium efficiency, artificial growth, and recycling technologies.
Just make a big ship full of small ships, best of both worlds.
I think the Archer is too big to build a second, honestly. We want to do noncombat, we need to absolutely minimize the strategic resources spent; maybe some tiny specialist science frigate or something can use an Orb to give it enough volume to mount useful utilities at all.
HP also scales with tonnage. Which was part of the problem with the Newton; despite last-generation phasers and only two forward tubes, it was quite capable of taking on BoPs in small fights. It was when there were enough of them to swarm the Newtons that they died, and they died a lot more frequently than our heavier ships because they died fast enough the Klingons wouldn't lose too many BoPs swarming them.
But I'd very much agree we don't need to arm everything as heavily as the Excaliburs. Modern forward phasers and 2x tubes murders BoPs, and on a sufficiently sturdy ship will handle D6s; we need more coverage and less maneuverability than we've been spending, which is something of a wash. A rapid launcher and the new phasers is plenty of forward gun for a new generalist ship, the only question is how much we need to invest in HP and shielding - and a bigger ship gets us lots more utility, without costing that much more in strategic resources.
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Actually, it does. Mostly because size is cheap. Like, really cheap.
Our larger ships are not significantly more expensive than smaller ships. The only real cost concern with size is the cost of the shield emitters... which get more powerful as they get bigger faster than they get more expensive, so even then you save on cost. Modules are free, once you have the space for them. Hullmetal barely costs anything compared to the price of a torpedo tube. I suppose mass matters for engine count, but that's about the only real price, and mostly just fixes target hull sizes at specific optimal mobility bands.
Small ships aren't viable because they aren't actually noticably less expensive until the size disparity gets severe enough that the small ship is barely a gunboat. Because something like 50-70% of the cost of the ship hull is fixed expenses in the Warp Core and Nacelles.
Everything else that raises cost is tactical equipment.
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A lot of that sounds good. However, we're not in charge of research or mining; we just design ships. Like @Razzocnor said, all we can really do is 'design a Dilithium prospector' to hopefully increase input on that end.
I think we're both looking at cost differently. As far as I'm concerned, the Federations ability to provide generic resources isn't 2000 cost (or however much), it's "yes". The coin that limits us, is warp cores. The biggest reason for limiting production of Excaliburs, is to instead spend those cores on replacing lost Newtons, or building new Attenboroughs, or reserving cores for whatever ship we design next
The Excalibur isn't a good comparison with any of our previous designs, since it took both heavy shields and a new hull plating. It's still closer in mass to a Newton than a Sagarmatha or even a Kea. The Excalibur gains nearly as much defense over the Saladin from new technology as the Saladin has over the Newton from raw mass. A light cruiser with both the new hull plating and the covariant shields that come as standard isn't going to be that much less durable than an Excalibur.
They definitely don't get more powerful faster than they get more expensive; they grow logarithmically in power and linearly in cost. We're not actually building ships at a size where that matters yet, though.
Making ships bigger only improves their tactical capability in terms of durability, while increasing the cost of shields, hull and impulse thrusters. They're not going to be much better at killing other ships unless we also give them maximum phaser coverage and use them as anchors, and if we want something like that we're talking explorer-sized ships. The main benefit of larger ships is the modules which cost effectively nothing, but also contribute nothing to combat power. A smaller engineering cruiser, maybe Excalibur-sized or a bit smaller, would both carry a useful noncombat mission loadout while being a very dangerous combat ship.
There's pretty evidently limitations beyond warp cores. San Fran was split off from the main design bureau specifically because the 255,000 ton Kea-class cost too much to build despite having a good cost rating, so the 180,000 ton Saladin was adopted alongside it. They have similar cost ratings, but the Kea was considered to be much more expensive and even took twice as long to build. The Excalibur also only masses 180,000 tons despite technically being a heavy cruiser because Starfleet wanted to maximize the number of vessels that could be produced.
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
I find it funny that you literally cannot accept your ideal ship is not currently viable, like really we get it, you desperately want hordes of light cruisers running around to cover everything, but on the other hand you also wish to disregard the entire lesson we just learned about how that approach does not work with our technology and resource limits.
If I go back to previous votes, will I find you lambasting the people who wanted larger ships about how 'inefficient' or 'pointless' they are in comparison to your light cruiser spam idea?
If I go back to previous votes, will I find you lambasting the people who wanted larger ships about how 'inefficient' or 'pointless' they are in comparison to your light cruiser spam idea?
The Excalibur is literally light cruiser mass. It's classified as a heavy cruiser, but in fact masses the same as previous light cruiser designs.
Like, what, do you think the Excalibur isn't enough ship? Shall we adopt Vulcan Explorators? Do you think that we'll rebuild more effectively with our tattered remnants of our pre-war fleet and like, a dozen ginormous dreadnoughts that can each found a colony on their own, or with many times that number in light cruisers that carry a reasonable amount of engineering modules?
We'll need to build real heavy cruisers at some point, instead of the glorified light cruisers that the Excaliburs are, but first we need to rebuild half our fleet and repair all the infrastructure that we lost.
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If your talking to me, I never really put down other people's ideas and tend try to find ways that would agreeable to both parties.
I just dislike the whole "never" again gonna build ships like the frigates we have made that where really good. Usually I vote for the middling option when the size thing comes up or if something interesting is in the hull/saucer vote I go for that. For the most part I like fallowing the design brief to a t and don't like using meta comments to say something shouldn't be done.
That's just me though, your free to have your opinions on what ship size we should build.
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
Hi strawman, would you like to make coherent arguments?
Arguing for light cruisers while referring to the Excalibur as a heavy cruiser until you flip and declare it light cruiser tonnage, while then latching on to us deciding to build massive dreadnoughts as the only other possible option if we want ships larger than it instead of your prefered size.