Starfleet Design Bureau

[Ramble]

Excalibur as of current, is squarely in the CA bracket and does the same job as a CA.
As the ship sizes increase, she'll slip lower in the tonnage brackets, but for now she's solidly a heavy Cruiser.

Also, we need a diplomatic ship. I say we balloon it out to 600 kilotons and slap on engines, guns, and shields until the Klingons start getting hot under the collar.

 

[Schlock]

Size doesn't matter, as long as the ship can throw down with any known opponent with at least a good chance of surviving the fight or winning it.

All the other functions that people like adding on are secondary functions, having them is fine as long as they don't interfere with a ships primary job of defending Federation interests.

Starfleet ships need to be capable of extended combat operations at the bare minimum and building weak ships to follow a pacifistic agenda is just setting the ships crews up to die.

 

[Cold Dust]

at least as soon as RnD is done digesting all the Klingon samples the Empire was so kind to provide.

Click to shrink...

GremlinQuoteYumYumCandy.mp3

I'll be amused if the flavour text for the v4 nacelles says they were developed by studying Klingon warp coils. Don't we have an issue with coil integrity or something? So helpful of our neighbours to donate so many samples for our engineers to study.

I vote we double down on Orb, and even more engineering.

Click to shrink...

I def think there's a place for a warp 8 Archer-class, but I'm gonna shill this again (I know, I know, I have a problem) and say I really think we need a warp 8 Newton v2 with extra weapons (at least 4 fore torps and 2 aft) and better shields, to suppress the sudden surge of piracy and discourage the Klingons, followed by an expensive explorer ship with updated labs and bucketloads of cutting-edge weaponry. Presumably around this time we'll transition to v4 nacelles, and maybe there'll be a quad-nacelle or vertical super-cruise design in there somewhere.

We really desperately need to produce ships that'll replace our antiques (I'm once again giving you stinkeye, Cygnus-class) with full warp 8 designs with covariant or type 2 shields and a lot more weaponry than we traditionally implement. We obviously have great need of an engineering support/courier ship, but that can easily be coupled with lots of firepower. Sayle themself has all but said we need more firepower. Also, remember our warp 7 designs can't be updated with warp 9 drives, we made choices that made it easier to transition to warp 9 drives, so a good staple design now could be around for a lot longer than our older ones.

I was leery of the sheer cost of the rapid-fire torpedo launcher when it came out, but seeing how effective it is in practice, I've been thinking about building an absolute unit of a ship to get hellishly strong shields, and 2 fore and 1 aft rapid-fire launchers. Our thrusters are so good we might be able to make it decently agile, too. Incredibly expensive, but running into something like that would leave a lasting impression on our Klingon neighbours, maybe make them look elsewhere for spoils for a bit. Certainly any of their ships that survive such an encounter would be permanently reclassified as "heavily used" when their House wants to sell them.

 

[Th3Saints]

I would be ok with setting our lower limit mass at 100k until the next impulse tech with the exception of specialist vessels.

Do have any eta on the nacelle tech because that's the only thing holding us back from a 500k mass very high manuverablity "diplomatic" vessel.
The fact it has S+ tactical his a mere coincidence.

 

[Lohjak]

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.

Click to shrink...

My argument is perfectly coherent. We don't need to build heavier ships, especially not right now. We can achieve perfectly respectable combat power on ships in the light cruiser tonnage (as demonstrated by the Excalibur), which will make them if not cheap at least not painful to build.

Because everyone deciding that we should now specialize exclusively in big, expensive ships is ignoring a couple bits here:

That said, the usefulness of the high-cost and high-performance Excalibur-class could not be overstated. 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.

Click to shrink...

The Excalibur was not successful because it was large. It's not; it's lighter than the original NX-explorer, and quite a bit lighter than a Kea. The Excalibur was successful because it integrated new technology which drove up the price but dramatically improved its capabilities. The Attenborough is now one of our most heavily armed ships despite massing under 100,000 tons because it uses the same technology. It also costs something like 75% as much as an Excalibur because all the new technology is just expensive.

At this point I don't think we're even capable of building a cheap light cruiser without using last-gen tech, which I seriously doubt we'll do. An engineering cruiser in the light cruiser range that carries standard covariant shields, a single RFL and a standard phaser complement gets us most of the way to Excalibur combat capability while hopefully being a bit easier to build and should be much more useful as we rebuild from the war.

Excalibur as of current, is squarely in the CA bracket and does the same job as a CA.
As the ship sizes increase, she'll slip lower in the tonnage brackets, but for now she's solidly a heavy Cruiser.

Click to shrink...

Is it? Of our four formally designated light cruisers, we have the 70,000 ton Stingray, the 180,000 ton Saladin, the 130,000 ton Newton and the 150,000 ton Archer. Discounting the Stingray for being the first ship we ever designed over a hundred years ago, the Excalibur's tonnage is firmly within the range of a light cruiser, if on the higher end. It's not even that far off in terms of weapons loadout to a Saladin, with three torpedo launchers and two phasers to the Saladin's two launchers and three phasers.

Of course in terms of capability they're the single most dangerous combatants we've ever designed, but that's mostly due to the new weapons that we've slapped on. We can't actually build anything with meaningfully more firepower until we get up to something like a Kea that wants to sit in one place with massive shields and blast everything around it using 100% phaser coverage. On the other hand, most of our ships will be in the same ballpark of firepower unless we decide to cheap out on the RFL.

I think a lot of people are making the mistake of attributing the success of the Excalibur to its tonnage when in reality it's successful because its weapons are a monumental leap over what our previous designs were armed with. Like, it weighs as much as a (very heavy) light cruiser, carries the same amount of weapons as a light cruiser, except its weapons do three times as much damage. Even a Newton would probably be able to 1v1 a D7 if you tripled its damage output.

 

[DragoonPreston]

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.

Click to shrink...

We were OUT RIGHT TOLD the Federation is extracting Resorces as fast as possible. End of Story. There is no KNOWN way to pull them out of the planet any faster than is being done. The Only Way to get more is to FIND more.

will handle D6s;

Click to shrink...

D6s are a pointless measuring stick, they were actively being scraped to make more D7s. We will not be going against them in the future only D7s.

The coin that limits us, is warp cores

Click to shrink...

And the nacelles they power, don't forget them, they be spendy too.

 

[KNakamura]

My argument is perfectly coherent. We don't need to build heavier ships, especially not right now. We can achieve perfectly respectable combat power on ships in the light cruiser tonnage (as demonstrated by the Excalibur), which will make them if not cheap at least not painful to build.

Because everyone deciding that we should now specialize exclusively in big, expensive ships is ignoring a couple bits here:

The Excalibur was not successful because it was large. It's not; it's lighter than the original NX-explorer, and quite a bit lighter than a Kea. The Excalibur was successful because it integrated new technology which drove up the price but dramatically improved its capabilities. The Attenborough is now one of our most heavily armed ships despite massing under 100,000 tons because it uses the same technology. It also costs something like 75% as much as an Excalibur because all the new technology is just expensive.

At this point I don't think we're even capable of building a cheap light cruiser without using last-gen tech, which I seriously doubt we'll do. An engineering cruiser in the light cruiser range that carries standard covariant shields, a single RFL and a standard phaser complement gets us most of the way to Excalibur combat capability while hopefully being a bit easier to build and should be much more useful as we rebuild from the war.


Is it? Of our four formally designated light cruisers, we have the 70,000 ton Stingray, the 180,000 ton Saladin, the 130,000 ton Newton and the 150,000 ton Archer. Discounting the Stingray for being the first ship we ever designed over a hundred years ago, the Excalibur's tonnage is firmly within the range of a light cruiser, if on the higher end. It's not even that far off in terms of weapons loadout to a Saladin, with three torpedo launchers and two phasers to the Saladin's two launchers and three phasers.

Of course in terms of capability they're the single most dangerous combatants we've ever designed, but that's mostly due to the new weapons that we've slapped on. We can't actually build anything with meaningfully more firepower until we get up to something like a Kea that wants to sit in one place with massive shields and blast everything around it using 100% phaser coverage. On the other hand, most of our ships will be in the same ballpark of firepower unless we decide to cheap out on the RFL.

I think a lot of people are making the mistake of attributing the success of the Excalibur to its tonnage when in reality it's successful because its weapons are a monumental leap over what our previous designs were armed with. Like, it weighs as much as a (very heavy) light cruiser, carries the same amount of weapons as a light cruiser, except its weapons do three times as much damage. Even a Newton would probably be able to 1v1 a D7 if you tripled its damage output.

Click to shrink...

Uh... you .. do know more tones means more firepower? You miss the point where it explicitly states that low-tonnage ships are not going to be great?

Like I try my hardest not to comment anymore, because frankly, it's not worth it, but you're twisting something that clearly states 'medium to heavy tonnage is fine as long as it's high performance' into arguing for light tonnage, which is clearly marked out as probably not going to be able to match the performance requirements.

 

[Golgotha]

It's success was also due to the fact it was lightning fast in every way with that weapon load out. The high speed maneuvers, fly by attacks, adding rear weapons to a pseudo alpha strike.
The fact we can hit warp instantly, compared to the otl that needed charge time to accelerate...

Fleet battles restrain them, but they still do wonderfully in them. It's when they are let off their leesh to do maximum hit and run they become terrifying. Honestly, given we saw a full salvo taking down ships I'm surprised they didn't get even more kills while hunting down supply colonies.

Honestly more experience coordinating high speed maneuvers in a fleet will help. We had surprisingly few times in those flashbacks with multiple Excaliburs working together.

All that being said, I'm absolutely down for making a ship twice the size and building my dream Explorer.

 

[Lohjak]

Uh... you .. do know more tones means more firepower? You miss the point where it explicitly states that low-tonnage ships are not going to be great?

Click to shrink...

Where do heavier ships get more firepower? Did phasers get reworked so we can fire more than two at a time? Are we going to start spending 30-50 cost on RFLs?

Like I try my hardest not to comment anymore, because frankly, it's not worth it, but you're twisting something that clearly states 'medium to heavy tonnage is fine as long as it's high performance' into arguing for light tonnage, which is clearly marked out as probably not going to be able to match the performance requirements.

Click to shrink...

The Excalibur is not actually much heavier than a Newton or an Archer, and masses the same as a Saladin. The problem is not with light cruisers, the problem is with light cruisers that cheap out on tactical, which I don't think we're even capable of doing right now.

All that being said, I'm absolutely down for making a ship twice the size and building my dream Explorer.

Click to shrink...

That'd be fun, and I'm pretty sure San Fran can design an engineering cruiser without us, but we probably only have like 70 ships right now. Anything big, heavy and slow to build is probably not ideal at the moment.

 

[KleverKil'Vanya]

It's success was also due to the fact it was lightning fast in every way with that weapon load out. The high speed maneuvers, fly by attacks, adding rear weapons to a pseudo alpha strike.
The fact we can hit warp instantly, compared to the otl that needed charge time to accelerate...

Fleet battles restrain them, but they still do wonderfully in them. It's when they are let off their leesh to do maximum hit and run they become terrifying. Honestly, given we saw a full salvo taking down ships I'm surprised they didn't get even more kills while hunting down supply colonies.

Honestly more experience coordinating high speed maneuvers in a fleet will help. We had surprisingly few times in those flashbacks with multiple Excaliburs working together.

All that being said, I'm absolutely down for making a ship twice the size and building my dream Explorer.

Click to shrink...

Big beefy 250kt+ Thick Saucer with 150kt+ Engineering hull with maximum overdrive Cruise Nacelles

 

[Hot co co]

Big beefy 250kt+ Thick Saucer with 150kt+ Engineering hull with maximum overdrive Cruise Nacelles

Click to shrink...

So... dreadnought..

 

[TehChron]

Nothing wrong with a good Dreadnought to serve as a symbol of advancement, deterrence, and an anchor in fleet battles to give Excaliburs room to breathe as they start to grow long in the tooth

They're just not meant to be the new Sagamartha. They're the D7 killers and proto-Explorers.

 

[KNakamura]

Where do heavier ships get more firepower? Did phasers get reworked so we can fire more than two at a time? Are we going to start spending 30-50 cost on RFLs?


The Excalibur is not actually much heavier than a Newton or an Archer, and masses the same as a Saladin. The problem is not with light cruisers, the problem is with light cruisers that cheap out on tactical, which I don't think we're even capable of doing right now.

Click to shrink...

I wouldn't assume tactical is the only important bit. And larger ships have more module space, so.. you know.

 

[KleverKil'Vanya]

So... dreadnought..

Click to shrink...

If you want to be provocative about it, sure call them that like the Klingons and Romulans will.
I like big ships since we can stuff a buncha shit into them and still have room for tertiary priorities without having to dedicate an entire other ship class to fulfilling them.

 

[Lohjak]

I wouldn't assume tactical is the only important bit. And larger ships have more module space, so.. you know.

Click to shrink...

But you said that more tons gets more firepower?

Aside from being worth physically putting more phasers on so it can shoot in more directions, I don't believe that the maximum output firepower actually increases beyond two phasers?

More module space is great, but sometimes you just need more ships, and it's not like lighter ships can't be well specialized. The Archer carries a ton of useful modules, and is again a light cruiser. As an orb it's not a great comparison, but even the Attenborough is a great bioscience ship and it's not even 100,000kt.

In terms of utility, being able to send one giant explorer to go solve any problem is great, but if you can only build ten of them and they're all out on five-year missions when you could've covered way more space with a couple dozen engineering cruisers that you don't have to send out beyond your borders, well. I don't think we're going to escape the high-low mix paradigm anytime soon, even if our "low" can probably 1v1 a D7 with decent odds.

 

[Chargone]

The line between explorer and dreadnought is mostly a matter of range and what they do when they're Not smashing heads. It's rather fuzzy otherwise.

 

[TeaMug]

My argument is perfectly coherent. We don't need to build heavier ships, especially not right now. We can achieve perfectly respectable combat power on ships in the light cruiser tonnage (as demonstrated by the Excalibur), which will make them if not cheap at least not painful to build.

Click to shrink...

The Excalibur is a competent combatant at its current weight, true. It is also merely adequate at science and engineering. If all we wanted was excellent combat ships, we could be happy at this weight.

With the Attenboroughs, we focused on something else - biology. We made a truly excellent bio-sci ship. We even managed to squeeze in a ... sufficient ... armament. I'm not sure it'll have enough punch as time goes on, but it's good enough for now.

The problem is, we're not building enough ships to get by with specialist single-taskers. Now that we've finished with the war, we know the minimum firepower we must include on every single ship we build going forward.

Roughly, every ship from now on needs to be able to throw down with a D7, for at least long enough to go to warp and escape, but preferentially able to chase the D7 away from whatever colony it's raiding.

And Sayle has made it pretty clear, we're not going to be building enough ships to blanket the Federation. So any ship that responds to a problem is likely to be the only ship in range.

However, there are more problems than just Klingons.

We want our lone responder to be able to confidently respond to plagues, blights, natural disasters, reactor failures, salt vampires, whatever. Which means we want higher science and engineering scores (and maybe cargo space. and an ice cream machine). Which means we need more modules, which means we need more space, which means we need bigger heavier ships.

And if we want more than a solid generalist? If we want a showpiece Cream-of-the-Federation Explorer? We need to go even bigger.

..or we could keep building cruiser-weight specialists, I suppose. Just hope that the Attenborough shows up for the cranky Ents and the Excalibur for the planet-eating cosmozoa, and not the other way around.

---

Where do heavier ships get more firepower? Did phasers get reworked so we can fire more than two at a time? Are we going to start spending 30-50 cost on RFLs?

Click to shrink...

Bigger ship, more room to mount torpedos. Also, they get more shields, which means they survive longer, which means they can keep shooting for longer.

And the more they get used, the sooner RFLs become standardized and affordable. I'm personally hoping that 2 RFL forward + 1 RFL back becomes standard.

---

sometimes you just need more ships

Click to shrink...

Except we can't get more ships. Warp core production places a hard upper limit on the number of ships we can build.

Which is why folks are talking about making better ships instead. We've come full circle!

 

[Chargone]

But you said that more tons gets more firepower?

Aside from being worth physically putting more phasers on so it can shoot in more directions, I don't believe that the maximum output firepower actually increases beyond two phasers?

More module space is great, but sometimes you just need more ships, and it's not like lighter ships can't be well specialized. The Archer carries a ton of useful modules, and is again a light cruiser. As an orb it's not a great comparison, but even the Attenborough is a great bioscience ship and it's not even 100,000kt.

In terms of utility, being able to send one giant explorer to go solve any problem is great, but if you can only build ten of them and they're all out on five-year missions when you could've covered way more space with a couple dozen engineering cruisers that you don't have to send out beyond your borders, well. I don't think we're going to escape the high-low mix paradigm anytime soon, even if our "low" can probably 1v1 a D7 with decent odds.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, where your line of thinking is failing (edit: to convince /edit) is the assumption that there would be a couple of dozen engineering cruisers rather than 10. Because smaller doesn't magically make more cores etc. available... Though it does reduce build time and allow more yards to build them.

 

[KleverKil'Vanya]

Yeah, where your line of thinking is failing (edit: to convince /edit) is the assumption that there would be a couple of dozen engineering cruisers rather than 10. Because smaller doesn't magically make more cores etc. available... Though it does reduce build time and allow more yards to build them.

Click to shrink...

At this point I recommend just not engaging with them, they are determined to ignore all evidence and Words of God to push their prefered interpretation of the quest, where they can make ships cheap enough to make dozens of instead of 10.

 

[Hot co co]

Except we can't get more ships. Warp core production places a hard upper limit on the number of ships we can build.

Which is why folks are talking about making better ships instead. We've come full circle!

Click to shrink...

The logic loop is a nasty one. We can't build to tools to fixe the problem because the tools are to expansive, but we need the tools in order to get more money... repeat except it's not tools in this case it's the key compent that we can't build enough of because we can't find the materials but in order to find the materials needed for the components we need to use alot of key compents but those are also needed to prevent the place that creates those compents from blowing up so we can't use alot of them... continue repeating from there

 

[Lavaflow]

Starfleet is not a military.

With the pithy statement that I know people argue against out of the way, let me elaborate. Starfleet, by necessity, fulfills the functions of a military. It's also structured like a military, but I'll note that even IRL non-military organizations are sometimes structured like ones. However, being a military is not the primary purpose of Starfleet. It's primary purposes are exploration, science, and supporting the worlds of the Federation, arguably in that order. If we sacrifice those on the altar of warfighting capabilities, we are doing a disservice to the very ideals of Starfleet and the Federation itself.
I'm not saying we should ignore combat capability by any means. That's certainly included in "supporting the worlds of the Federation". But, in my opinion, putting tactical as the primary goal for all (or almost all) future designs is, in itself, a failure state.

[Note, I'm writing this in response to the general vibe of the thread, not to any person in particular]

 

[Lohjak]

The Excalibur is a competent combatant at its current weight, true. It is also merely adequate at science and engineering. If all we wanted was excellent combat ships, we could be happy at this weight.

Click to shrink...

The Archer, the best engineering ship we have ever built, is lighter than the Excalibur. It is also an orb so it's a tad unfair, but even the Excalibur had a total of six module selections. Had we decided to build an engineering cruiser for some reason, we could've ended up with a shuttle cargo bay, a fabrication workshop, an extra shuttle bay, a main cargo bay, another cargo bay, and then another module for whatever. This would've completely cleared the Newton's engineering capability.

With the Attenboroughs, we focused on something else - biology. We made a truly excellent bio-sci ship. We even managed to squeeze in a ... sufficient ... armament. I'm not sure it'll have enough punch as time goes on, but it's good enough for now.

Click to shrink...

???
It literally just drops two standard torpedo launchers from an Excalibur. If the Attenborough's armament is ever insufficient, the Excalibur will barely be better.

Bigger ship, more room to mount torpedos. Also, they get more shields, which means they survive longer, which means they can keep shooting for longer.

And the more they get used, the sooner RFLs become standardized and affordable. I'm personally hoping that 2 RFL forward + 1 RFL back becomes standard.

Click to shrink...

Our limitation on torpedo firepower is not ship size, it's the fact that RFL's are so damn expensive. Two RFL's is 24 cost for firepower marginally better than an Excalibur. And I'm sure we'll be putting at least one on every ship we design from here on out that gets the option.

Except we can't get more ships. Warp core production places a hard upper limit on the number of ships we can build.

Which is why folks are talking about making better ships instead. We've come full circle!

Click to shrink...

Yeah, where your line of thinking is failing (edit: to convince /edit) is the assumption that there would be a couple of dozen engineering cruisers rather than 10. Because smaller doesn't magically make more cores etc. available... Though it does reduce build time and allow more yards to build them.

Click to shrink...

How did you take Sayle's many, many posts about the Federation's shipbuilding capacity is limited by the supply of various strategic materials and conclude that all we care about is the number of warp cores we can build?

As for this idea that if Starfleet just had more budget? It's not about budget. You can't just dig up some iron and coal for your steel manufacturing. It's all about strategic resources. The SDB Federation has greater resource-flows than the OTL Federation, so can build more ships. Duranium, tritanium, dilithium, parsteel, all these things are limited by extractive industry and natural supply, not money.

Click to shrink...

They don't need dilithium for antimatter reactors or tritanium for super-alloys

Click to shrink...

We're not just limited by the number of warp cores we can build. Larger ships require greater quantities of limited materials, which is why there's a cost associated with them. We're even limited by the number of shipyards we have and the time it takes to put ships together, which is naturally longer for larger, more complex ships. We will factually be able to produce greater numbers of smaller ships with lower cost, because they require fewer strategic resources to construct, can be constructed at a greater number of yards, and can be constructed faster.

And like, the QM doesn't want us to just build large explorers either:

So having a mull over the smaller ships issue. I do think that mass-inflation is something that Just Happens as tech improves, but the current system does kind of incentivise building the largest possible ships because of the flat costs involved massively outpace mass-based cost. There needs to be a reason to build light cruisers. Having a look at the sort of 'generations' of ships, you see a fairly clear size gradient, and that's only counting ships that look the same/reuse components or clear design philosophies, not the post-Wolf 359 shipbuilding burst.

For the Excelsior-generation, you have the Centaur (Light Cruiser/Heavy Frigate)/Resolute (Science Ship) and the Excelsior (Explorer/Heavy Cruiser).

For the Galaxy-generation you have the Niagara (Light Cruiser), Nebula (Heavy Cruiser), Galaxy (Explorer/Dreadnought).

The problem is those flat costs means you have no reason to build the Niagara rather than the Galaxy. Looking at the components some are dialed to mass (hull/shields), others relate to mass (thrusters), others are just the same across all sizes (standard nacelles). But that leaves the deflector, computer, and warp core. The deflector and computer I feel like are probably no longer relevant as cost, being pretty cheap. I'm inclined to reduce nacelle costs as well, as the previous cost-logic was largely based around increasing flat costs with advancement rather than increasing mass. Also allowing different sizes of deflectors allows interesting capability choices. So really the place to adjust things is the warp core.

So my thinking is the easiest way to fix that is scaling the warp core, with larger cores having higher sprint speeds and smaller cores becoming increasingly slower until they can barely make their efficient cruise. This creates a dynamic where powerful/larger ships can run places very fast ("you're the only ship in range"), medium sized ships can run at their maximum cruise (good for combatants/cruisers), while the cheapest specialist ships are effectively useless in maneuver warfare.

Current-system minimum 100k ship cost: 30
Alternate-system minimum 100k ship cost: 15

Comments or criticism welcomed, obviously.

Click to shrink...

I have no idea how "the federation can't build more ships, you're maxed out on resource extraction" turned into "there's literally a hard unit cap on the number of ships you can build, cost doesn't matter".

 

[UbeOne]

Let's make a maxed out ship design next time and see how it shakes out

 

[landcollector]

It literally just drops two standard torpedo launchers from an Excalibur. If the Attenborough's armament is ever insufficient, the Excalibur will barely be better.

Click to shrink...

It certainly is an argument to make that dropping 40% torp throw weight between an Excalibur and an Attenborough warrants "just" and "barely" as if that isn't huge cuts. I do not get your logic.

 

[Lohjak]

It certainly is an argument to make that dropping 40% torp throw weight between an Excalibur and an Attenborough warrants "just" and "barely" as if that isn't huge cuts. I do not get your logic.

Click to shrink...

It's a reduction of 36 burst/12 sustain, from the Excalibur's frontal damage of 126 burst/66 sustain. The Attenborough will have 90 burst/54 sustain, and if that won't kill something the Excalibur won't either. I mean, unless it just takes a bit longer and the Attenborough would die first, but you get the point.