@Lohjak I've done math on ship sizes. You can build a Single ship over 5X larger for the cost of 2 Small ships. Warp Cores and other strategic ITEMS are the biggest factor in the cost of a Ship. Building lots of small ships is MORE EXPENSIVE than building fewer large ships. Unless Sayle does a massive change in MULTIPLE AREAS this will never change. I get you do not want to accept this but thems the facts as laid out in this quest.
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.... uh... *looks at the 4YW, then you* This is a weird statement to make given current in quest events.
Yes, but the problem is that there are very clearly in-universe limits to that, and it still doesn't address the fact that our weapons technology hits rapidly diminishing returns at lower weight classes. Larger ships are more durable and carry much more modules for the cost, but are barely better in terms of firepower.
If you can convince the QM that we should actually be allowed to build just as many 400,000 ton explorers or 250,000 ton heavy cruisers as 150,000 ton light cruisers, great, but I suspect that's not going to happen. And we're not going to get less overstretched with fewer ships, so that's not going to help our industry recover.
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Again, Starfleet exists to do things beyond fighting navies of peer or superior powers. We cannot achieve the coverage we need by just building a ton of really big ships that bully other regional powers and each carry enough equipment to found a colony. And you might say, well, we can't achieve that coverage anyways, which is a bit like saying that if your jacket isn't warm enough you might as well go nude.
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Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
There's a reason I included that sneaky little "etc." in there. It's not Just cores, but they are one of the more significant limiting factors and thus being used as shorthand.
It's not like any of the other possibilities change the equation: a larger ship uses less hull plating for the same internal volume as two smaller ships as well, as an example.
Yes, in many ways larger ships are more efficient than smaller ones. They are not more efficient in terms of firepower, territory coverage, or production rate, all of which are critically important, especially right now.
The main benefits are durability and more modules, so we definitely want to have some especially large ships to serve as general-purpose explorers and fleet anchors, but we desperately need more ships and we're not going to get that if we only build big ones unless the QM has a change of heart and decides that we're just going all-in on explorers. Cost as a metric doesn't make any sense if the best way to design ships is to make them as expensive as possible.
Um, larger ships have considerably higher carrying capacity for antimatter fuel, though? They absolutely have superior coverage when specced for it. That's the entire basis for the Exploratory Missions.
That doesn't help us when all our territory is within range of a Pharos and we simply don't have enough ships to put out all the fires that pop up. We need the coverage that comes from having a lot of ships that can be spread out across a large area and respond to things quickly and simultaneously, not a few big ships desperately sprinting between all the colonies in their assigned areas.
We were overstretched before we lost half our fleet, and a lot of the remaining ships are obsolescent. Now really doesn't seem like the time to switch from a high-low mix to a fleet composed of fewer, more capable ships.
....What? The Pharos don't exist for the capital ships with long term missions that expand the Federations territory, they exist for literally everything else.
It, by definition, helps by giving them improved capacity for self sufficiency beyond the easy reach of the Pharos network
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- Location
- Australia
Ironically, more ships at all costs isn't the solution to needing more ships. This is all a thought experiment, and I'm pulling the numbers out of my gut. You could easily argue them, but if anything I think I'm being very generous to specialist ships.
Let's say you can build 9 big ships, or 12 small specialised ships. I think that's a fair enough ratio for a thought experiment.
If you go the small ships, of those twelve ships the biggest ratio would be engineering, followed by science and tactical. Let's say 6, 3, 3. Science is traditionally ordered in lesser amounts, and Starfleet doesn't like being heavily military. As these are specialist ships, they are the benchmark we will use for power. However we will assume that even small specialised ships have some weaponry.
Alternatively, we go the bigger generalist ships. They are not as good as the specialist ships at science, or engineering. But they are as good tactically, and have about 2/3rds the score at engineering and science.
Now, in normal operation starfleet has excellent planning capabilities, and all ships are used to full effect. This gives the specialised ships the ability to do twelve tasks at full power, total score of twelve. The generalist ships are less effective here, only hitting ten locations, with the efficiency depending on the actual task. In this situation, the specialised ships are looking pretty good.
Now, suddenly a big problem occurs! It's engineering related! Specialised ships instantly sent, up to 6 specialised ships for a score of 6. Generalised ships can send up to 10 ships for a total score of 6, or 5 groups at 1.2 So total score is the same, but there are more ships to tackle more hot spots depending on how we group it.
Big problem! Science related! Specialised ships are sent, 3 specialised science ships for a score of 1 in 3 locations! Or, generalised ships are sent. Up to 10! To compensate for their lower score, they put them in groups of 2. This gives us five groups at a score of 1.2, allowing more locations and a higher total score. More importantly, because any ship can respond, response time is greatly shortened.
Big problem! Combat related! Specialised ships have 3 combat ships for a total score of 3, and 9 half strength that pair up to equal a standard tactically. Rounding, that's 7 groups of 1 power.
Generalist ships are fully tactically capable, and give 10 ships at 1 power. Not only are the generalist ships higher total score, but they are much less vulnerable individually.
tldr, if we assume that you can build 1/3rd more specialised ships, and that generalist ships are only 2/3rds as good as them at science and engineering, we can see that during normal operations, specialised ships are indeed better, assuming prefect planning and no travel time.
However, during emergency engineering needs they are equal, during science emergency specialised are worse, and during tactical specialised is much worse and vulnerable.
Edit: my maths is terrible because I swapped to 10 generalist ships half way through. I'm going to go sleep
Let's say you can build 9 big ships, or 12 small specialised ships. I think that's a fair enough ratio for a thought experiment.
If you go the small ships, of those twelve ships the biggest ratio would be engineering, followed by science and tactical. Let's say 6, 3, 3. Science is traditionally ordered in lesser amounts, and Starfleet doesn't like being heavily military. As these are specialist ships, they are the benchmark we will use for power. However we will assume that even small specialised ships have some weaponry.
Alternatively, we go the bigger generalist ships. They are not as good as the specialist ships at science, or engineering. But they are as good tactically, and have about 2/3rds the score at engineering and science.
Now, in normal operation starfleet has excellent planning capabilities, and all ships are used to full effect. This gives the specialised ships the ability to do twelve tasks at full power, total score of twelve. The generalist ships are less effective here, only hitting ten locations, with the efficiency depending on the actual task. In this situation, the specialised ships are looking pretty good.
Now, suddenly a big problem occurs! It's engineering related! Specialised ships instantly sent, up to 6 specialised ships for a score of 6. Generalised ships can send up to 10 ships for a total score of 6, or 5 groups at 1.2 So total score is the same, but there are more ships to tackle more hot spots depending on how we group it.
Big problem! Science related! Specialised ships are sent, 3 specialised science ships for a score of 1 in 3 locations! Or, generalised ships are sent. Up to 10! To compensate for their lower score, they put them in groups of 2. This gives us five groups at a score of 1.2, allowing more locations and a higher total score. More importantly, because any ship can respond, response time is greatly shortened.
Big problem! Combat related! Specialised ships have 3 combat ships for a total score of 3, and 9 half strength that pair up to equal a standard tactically. Rounding, that's 7 groups of 1 power.
Generalist ships are fully tactically capable, and give 10 ships at 1 power. Not only are the generalist ships higher total score, but they are much less vulnerable individually.
tldr, if we assume that you can build 1/3rd more specialised ships, and that generalist ships are only 2/3rds as good as them at science and engineering, we can see that during normal operations, specialised ships are indeed better, assuming prefect planning and no travel time.
However, during emergency engineering needs they are equal, during science emergency specialised are worse, and during tactical specialised is much worse and vulnerable.
Edit: my maths is terrible because I swapped to 10 generalist ships half way through. I'm going to go sleep
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Bringing up Yet Another point, something that was mathed out by MULTIPLE people now. You can have 9 ships at say 200Ktons or 10 ships at say 100Ktons, BUT the 10 ships will ALL have about 40% less capability in All Areas. Do you really think that 1 extra ship is worth ALL ships having almost HALF the capabilities? With the current mechanics this is how it is. Smaller ships are not worth building. About HALF the cost is just in the Warp Core, Nacelles, Computer, and other expensive items you NEED for all large ships.
This same scaling goes all the way up and down the size charts. Building bigger has a better Cost Benefit Ratio. If you can support building a larger ship it is always more worth building a larger ship. Except where limitations prevent you from doing so, like shuttles and other craft you carry on larger craft.
Ex The Hull and other items cost 45 on this ship, the weapons cost 44.5, Total 89.5
We could have picked a hull 100Ktons larger for only 14 cost more. Less than 1/3 the cost of the Weapons, if we didn't add more to a larger hull. Which likely would have been done. And I'm ignoring the science, that would be higher as well.
And oh, hey looky looky, the Excalibur had a cost of 97.25/91.25 Almost the same cost as this TINY ship. With Much better weapons.
This same scaling goes all the way up and down the size charts. Building bigger has a better Cost Benefit Ratio. If you can support building a larger ship it is always more worth building a larger ship. Except where limitations prevent you from doing so, like shuttles and other craft you carry on larger craft.
Ex The Hull and other items cost 45 on this ship, the weapons cost 44.5, Total 89.5
We could have picked a hull 100Ktons larger for only 14 cost more. Less than 1/3 the cost of the Weapons, if we didn't add more to a larger hull. Which likely would have been done. And I'm ignoring the science, that would be higher as well.
And oh, hey looky looky, the Excalibur had a cost of 97.25/91.25 Almost the same cost as this TINY ship. With Much better weapons.
We won't be concerned with what goes on behind the Pharos network for a decade yet:
Our problem is that our fleet is a shadow of what it used to be. Starfleet constructed 68 ships between 2225 and 2240, so combined with the better effective range of warp 8 ships the 2250's seem about right for when Starfleet manages to reach prewar capability. We can't expect to hit that kind of ship output if we're churning out 250,000 ton monsters, though.
That's not how our tactical works out. Being bigger makes you more durable, but doesn't do much for your firepower and makes being maneuverable harder. Our specialists end up tactically questionable when we design them that way to cut cost, not because their mission loadout takes up space that could've been weapons. The Excalibur easily could've been a respectable engineering cruiser had we made different module choices.
And why are you only concerned about emergency response? We're not bigger than OTL Federation because of our emergency response capability, we're bigger because we kept building engineering and science ships that help us build up during normal operations. The vast majority of a ship's time is spent in routine operations, which is why we have (had) so damn many engineering cruisers.
We've also seen the difference between order quantities of small, cheap specialist-ish ships and large generalists in the Cygnus and Sagarmatha, which we respectively got 28 and 12 of. The Sagarmatha is certainly much more capable, but they have the same warp speed so the 28 Cygnus in practice covered vastly more territory than the 12 Sagarmathas.
Yeah, and that would be great if this quest was being run by an algorithm and not a human person who presumably doesn't want the quest to exclusively churn out dreadnoughts to maximize modules and durability per cost. I suspect that we won't be allowed to simply keep tacking on weight for optimal cost spend, though.
Every ship we've built at 200,000 tons or greater has been noted as being expensive, even the Kea with a B- in cost. The current cost system doesn't model it, but the intent is clearly that larger ships do actually require significantly more to build.
And how does the Excalibur carry better weapons than this ship which is somehow spending 45 cost on weapons? 45 cost of weapons is what, two phaser banks and three RFLs? This tiny ship has nearly double the alpha strike of an Excalibur?
The idea that we'll be able to get by with a smaller number of large generalists servicing our territory when we previously operated 78 engineering cruisers (more engineering cruisers than we likely have ships in total post-war) doesn't hold up to even cursory scrutiny. If that were the case we wouldn't have built fifty engineering cruisers in fifteen years, and we certainly wouldn't be overstretched with a 150 ships. At best you could argue that the new warp core and upcoming nacelle dramatically increase the effective range of each ship, but I'm pretty sure that also means that we're going to expand even farther.
And how did we swing from "curse those useless bureaucrats, risking the federation by withholding the funds necessary to construct a glorious fleet" to "actually less ships is better, and in fact our current fleet composition is too focused on numbers instead of explorers"? Do people just latch on to whatever happened in the most recent story post and determine their build strategy off of it?
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
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This is robbing Peter to pay Paul. You want us to waste 10+ years of build time designing a ship that is worse in every way to what? Fill space while we make something more capable? We've seen what focusing on economy of construction gets us and it results in a fleet that might as well be made of tissue paper when a peer opponent rolls up. The Klingons are still going to be a problem, the Romulans have fully recovered from the bloody nose we gave them, and the Cardassians are looming on the horizon. We don't have the time or the strategic resources to waste on budget designs that can't hold up in a fight, and building those first is going to hamstring our fleet numbers in the long term far more than just going for the larger and more capable designs right off the bat.
Have you ever heard the phrase "there's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution?" Because a mediocre ship is still going to suck up (broadly) the same amount of vital limited resources, and Starfleet is likely to want to keep those running for as long as is viable rather than scrap them early for a better replacement because that's just how military procurement works.
Like I said earlier, the Excalibur did not crush D7's because we did an especially good job designing it or because it was a notably large ship. It's a very reasonable long-range cruiser that's at the upper end of a light cruiser or the low end of a heavy cruiser. The Excalibur was so revolutionary because it's the first ship we've built that has access to weapons with three times the damage output. The tiny 95,000 it Attenborough is the second most heavily armed ship we have because it mounts just two of the new phasers and a rapid launcher in the forward arc. If you stripped off every weapon on all our last gen ships and replaced them with the Attenborough's, the Klingons wouldn't have dared to so much as breathe too close to our border.
We are at this point effectively incapable of designing inexpensive ships with mediocre tactical capability. Any ship we design will be incredibly well-armed, and also cost most of an Excalibur. The only mistakes we can make are building small ships that aren't maneuverable enough or large ships without phaser coverage to anchor, but I doubt we'll be doing that.
But at the same time, we do need to build more ships, and since we're hardly going to cut weapons the only way we can realistically improve order sizes is to reduce the size of the ships, saving cost on shields, hull and thrusters, and while unmodeled likely build time. Unless Sayle wants this generation of ships to be as a whole significantly larger than the last one, we're not going to get to build as many 250,000kt ships than 180,000kt ones.
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I mean... I honestly think we did. We could have done better theoretically if we knew each step before we had to make any decisions but then it wouldn't be a design quest, it would be a "vote on someone's premade whole ship plan" quest.
If we reduce our entire success down to "it was only effective because tech came out that time period" how are we meant to get engaged and enjoy the design process? It's got to be impacting and meaningful, or what's the point?
That's... how every single ship ever has been designed?
I can't think of a single ship where we took every single possible +cost option. You're literally just describing the design process here.
We definitely made some weird choices, like how we chose the hull that let us save cost on thrusters by mounting an uneven number of them and then for some reason elected to spend extra on new thrusters anyways. Regardless, it's certainly a good design, but the reason it's so good is because our new weapons are so vastly superior.
Sure, we cut costs in places where it wouldn't matter much and spent as much as possible on the main requirement, but if we didn't have access to weapons with triple damage the Excalibur would at best be able to fight on even terms with D6. Then again, based on the Sagarmatha probably not even that. We basically just barely caught up to the Klingons in terms of weapons technology (or at least got close enough) that we managed to get out a ship that could actually fight the D7, and we made it cheap enough that we had a meaningful number of them.
As a design bureau our choices never really have huge short-term impacts regardless, so even though it might feel kind of bad that our cool new ship is cool in large part due to the new toys, it's kind of expected? I enjoy the process and reading about the AU Federation, which we nudge towards certain directions by choosing our projects and what to do with them, but we're not in charge here. I think that our technology choices might even be more individually impactful than the ships themselves, since it's not like we're ever going to design something completely terrible. Making the warp 8 core non-backwards compatible pushed the war with the Klingons forwards and made it harder for us, but instead of an army of D7's and updated BoP against a bunch of our next-gen vessels undoubtedly supported by masses of Newtons, we had two fleets of last-gen ships with small groups of cutting edge next-gen superships dueling for supremacy. That's pretty neat, even if we'd probably have done better with more time to build up.
Shard
One and Many
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- Malaysia
AFAIK Project Copernicus was the last project where we selected the largest possible hull for our ship. Honestly it'd be nice to make a supergiant ship sometime soon.
Another Orb ship would also be nice in the future but I don't think the thread is willing to remotely contemplate the idea.
Another Orb ship would also be nice in the future but I don't think the thread is willing to remotely contemplate the idea.
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In short we were USA fielding reliable and fast versions of King Tiger and keeping them up via sheer logistical balls.
The Sheman-Tiger of space.
Once we get to Dominion War we are building another Thunderchild.
Then why even bring it up as if it were a relevant factor for this discussion to begin with?
@Lohjak you saw the posts that phasers and shield scale with size now right?
Only the torps don't scale but you can fit more on a larger ship.
The last design was literally on the edge of viability due to mass we had to take a lot compromises with module and warp core placement. If we had 50k more mass the ship would be a lot better due to the 2 more modules we would fit.
We have been following our briefs for most part even if in some cases we have been creative in interpretation, the last time we had almost a blank check we build the Sarga.
Only the torps don't scale but you can fit more on a larger ship.
The last design was literally on the edge of viability due to mass we had to take a lot compromises with module and warp core placement. If we had 50k more mass the ship would be a lot better due to the 2 more modules we would fit.
We have been following our briefs for most part even if in some cases we have been creative in interpretation, the last time we had almost a blank check we build the Sarga.
Nah when we get the new nacelle the first thing we are pumping out is a ship for the new dedicated explorers role, the 2nd is going to be a "diplomatic" vessel basically a embassy in space the fact that it will mass at least 500k and a S tactical will be coincidences. Waiting for the next major conflict bit us in the ass let's just have a design around and current so we don't have to beg to the Vulcan explorer corps for ships.
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This is an insane statement. It's one of our largest ships designed, especially in the present era, and we managed to squeeze both a lot of torpedo firepower (plus engine power/manoeuvrability) and decent selection of modules into the ship, which we know has and will serve it well in both war and peace - the very definition of a good design.
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
When we design the Type-4 Nacelles we should honestly max it out performance wise, goldplate it and all. In a large ship paradigm, fixed costs like Nacelles don't matter quite as much as variable costs.
Honestly we haven't made a goldplated design in quite a while.
E: A Vulkan Orb-Ring Nacelle Science Ship sounds very appealing, honestly. Practical? Idk, but I want to design one.
Honestly we haven't made a goldplated design in quite a while.
E: A Vulkan Orb-Ring Nacelle Science Ship sounds very appealing, honestly. Practical? Idk, but I want to design one.
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So far I can recall, wasn't it recently decided that phase power was going to scale with ship mass? This was because of exactly this problem where you couldn't get more firepower in larger ships except by putting more torpedoes on them.
So larger ships should actually have more firepower and be tankier. It doesn't even take much more firepower to be able to leverage a far tankier ship in taking out twice as many ships as before.
Guess we'll have to over time scale up to ever larger ships then, one can fit a lot of equipment in 1Mton after all.
If one lets maneuverability drop to average or so, I guess 5-6 of the current impulse engines would be enough to move such a colossus around at a reasonable rate as well. Though I suspect by the time we manage to scale that far a new impulse engine will be available, we're 3 ship designs in to the current one now after all and it's starting to reach mature.
Still, might be interesting to aim for increasingly large ships for awhile then. Though I imagine we'll be capped a bit in how quickly we'll be allowed to scale sizes, if for no other reason then that the design teams need to build up experience and sufficient people to handle designing such large ships at a reasonable rate.
So based on that, for next design we might not be allowed to go much further then 400-500 kt I guess? A size where 4 impulse engines would still get you max agility I guess.