Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Some ships achieve immortality through their deeds.
UFS Humboldt achieves immortality through not being dead.
Linked contents
Some ships achieve immortality through their deeds.
UFS Humboldt achieves immortality through not being dead.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
As tenacious as its namesake. Though hopefully a little less evil.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Orion pirate: "Oh look, a wimpy Starfleet science vessel, easy prey."
(Attenborough lures them into a trap and then springs the trap on them)
Attenborough: I'm here to study trees and kick ass, and you phasered my trees.
Orion pirate: Run away. RUN AWAY!
Its the second-fastest ship currently on Starfleet's OoB, but it has a range of only 120 LY.
That severely limits how much time it can spend at maximum cruise, and at only a little above 100,000 tons, it doesnt have the mass-volume capacity for much else. Its a very specialized ship.
It will fuck up any single ship that it runs into, but it doesnt really have the endurance or resilience for the sort of extended patrol runs that cruisers are supposed to thrive on.
Excuse my saying so, but that's a dumbass way to use the rating. And, by that metric, it's barely competent at science either with an A+, and it's cost is a B-, which might as well break the bank.
joe6168
Just a humble lurker
- Location
- Michigan, The lower left glove
It's less about the ships being 'memes' and rather that a ship with strong vision and focused purpose in their design tend to be very good at their intended jobs which gives them good longevity.
And for a much smaller and slower ship to begin with that was already worn out and at the end of its service life trying to make the journey home was simply out of the question, so finding a good colony site and setting down one last time was really the only sane option.
Edit: Wait no, Humboldt went missing in 2284, well before it would have reached its 'end of life', but the damage from the displacement still sounds bad so going home was impossible regardless.
Indeed the lander just seemed like such a no-brainer choice to me. The ability to set down on a planet to act as base camp and then spend months or even years if necessary doing extremly thorough survays was just to good an option to pass by.
Last edited:
Ratings are relative. A B+ on a small light science cruiser is not the same thing as a B+ on a heavy tactical cruiser.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
That can't be right. The Newton was the mainline Federation cruiser of the four year war, and only has a B in combat
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
It's more "Every one of our neighboring powers have superior military technology than we do, and will retain that advantage for some time yet." By the time we catch up, it'll even out.
But there's a good reason that a lot of C and B tactical ships weren't even capable of staying afloat against a D6, which was an older ship. They functionally consider all of their ships to have A or A+ tactical rating to be a matter or course (And the D7 was probably S-Ranked, which only got mulched by our own S-Rank that also had better survivability and manueverability, letting it win 2v1), and other roles as a distant secondary concern at best, when they bother to invest in non-tactical purposes at all. It's why the Federation eventually outcompetes all of their neighbors and only gets threatened by superpowers from beyond the Alpha Quadrant, but for now, the "Make all of our ships A or A+ tactical vessels" meta is dominant in the Alpha Quadrant.
And it couldn't even beat a 30, 40 year old Klingon cruiser 1v1. It was the Excaliburs that saved our asses there.
But there's a good reason that a lot of C and B tactical ships weren't even capable of staying afloat against a D6, which was an older ship. They functionally consider all of their ships to have A or A+ tactical rating to be a matter or course (And the D7 was probably S-Ranked, which only got mulched by our own S-Rank that also had better survivability and manueverability, letting it win 2v1), and other roles as a distant secondary concern at best, when they bother to invest in non-tactical purposes at all. It's why the Federation eventually outcompetes all of their neighbors and only gets threatened by superpowers from beyond the Alpha Quadrant, but for now, the "Make all of our ships A or A+ tactical vessels" meta is dominant in the Alpha Quadrant.
And it couldn't even beat a 30, 40 year old Klingon cruiser 1v1. It was the Excaliburs that saved our asses there.
Last edited:
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think this means we actually dodged a bullet by not speccing it as a colony support cargo ship since it would've had trouble landing conveniently for unloading stuff into a developed colony.
Lessons learned might mean a future landing capable cargo ship can work better, though I'd definitely want some confirmation on improvements there before risking it in a future design.
That rating is for its weight class and tech-era.
The Selachii-class frigates were all Tactical A-, which made them excellent warships for their weight class. It didnt mean that they wouldnt get bodied by a Tactical C dreadnought. Or that they didnt get murdered in this war.
Similarly, the Attenborough-class are B+, which makes them excellent warships for their size.
If they run into other ships in their class, they are going to give superior performance.
However, a 200,000 ton heavy cruiser with Tactical C will still crush them underfoot.
Last edited:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
A reminder that the Newton couldn't even reliably beat a D6 in a 1v1 battle, and it was 30-40 years old at the time. And D6s are not exactly giant behemoths either.
More efficient per pound is not the same as having more pounds after all.
I think what we learned is that landing a starship is a very tricky business that takes specialized parts and even in the best case what you're hoping for is "nothing went too badly wrong" not "this was smooth and routine". It's never going to be routine, what with having to deal with unpredictable planetary atmospheres and landing gear that needs nothing to go wrong on touchdown.
Now don't mistake me, I don't regret it at all for the Attenborough. For the function it served, it needed that capability. But it's never going to be a standard capability. Specialized needs only.
Now don't mistake me, I don't regret it at all for the Attenborough. For the function it served, it needed that capability. But it's never going to be a standard capability. Specialized needs only.
The Newton is a light cruiser, the D6 is a cruiser.
The Klingons tend to build specialised combat designs, so the disparity was probably even more pronounced, because while the D6 is all warship, the Newton had to at least devote some mass-volume to being an engineering vessel.
Add to that the Klingon tech advantage in some areas.....
The D6 was/is a better warship, period.
Last edited:
Better we learn from something early on without a disaster than otherwise.
The Newton had 19 shields, and less than a surfeit of hull. The Attenborough has 21 shields and even less hull.
If there was a war on, the Attenborough class would probably have seen significant casualties, because it's just too fragile for a battlefield, even if it has a significant fraction of an Excalibur's punch. There's a reason the Attenborough took out the Orion raider with an ambush, rather than in a straight fight, and it's not because the Attenborough class is short on guns.
Mostly, though, I think this tells us there isn't a war on.
- Location
- Columbus, OH
I love this little ship. I think she might look even better with the refit.
Speaking of which, it's almost that time, isn't it? The first radially new deflector design in Starfleet history, a distinctly-different Bussard collector, and much-enlarged externals for the torpedo launchers. Well, I guess my timeline is off a bit here, since there was an earlier Constitution refit, and the Excaliburs were built earlier than the Connie. I think there's going to be a lot of prototyping in the near future.
Speaking of which, it's almost that time, isn't it? The first radially new deflector design in Starfleet history, a distinctly-different Bussard collector, and much-enlarged externals for the torpedo launchers. Well, I guess my timeline is off a bit here, since there was an earlier Constitution refit, and the Excaliburs were built earlier than the Connie. I think there's going to be a lot of prototyping in the near future.
I think of ratings as being ratings against the expectations of Starfleet.
A "C" is "you hit what we were thinking of as the minimum" and below a C is "you obviously sacrificed some capability here because you wanted to do something else with the design". They're grading on a curve.
For instance, the reason the Archer's Tactical rating is "only" a C- is that they were never expecting much better, whereas it got a D- on Science because they were expecting better.
A "C" is "you hit what we were thinking of as the minimum" and below a C is "you obviously sacrificed some capability here because you wanted to do something else with the design". They're grading on a curve.
For instance, the reason the Archer's Tactical rating is "only" a C- is that they were never expecting much better, whereas it got a D- on Science because they were expecting better.
We already saw that some here. When we repaired a bunch of ships to fully operational in weeks while the Klingons were left using rushed and poor quality ships.
- Location
- Canada
For all its issues, the fact that this class never had any actual accidents that caused the landing starship to be destroyed or crash landing shows how good the pilots were.
As well as how good it was as a lander.
Improvements to the design can improve its capabilities and remove those issues entirely.
I regret pushing for more guns that extra module would had pushed this craft science further. Ah well.
As well as how good it was as a lander.
Improvements to the design can improve its capabilities and remove those issues entirely.
I regret pushing for more guns that extra module would had pushed this craft science further. Ah well.
One of the things commented on was that the engines didn't have much margin on higher gravity worlds leading to needing to use careful landing approaches. So perhaps having very high agility would imply more margin and so would have been more able? Though on the other hand, you wouldn't think they're landing on the impulse engine, or at least not the impulse engine alone. Still whatever exactly the case 105 kton was pushing the limits of what was landable at our tech level I guess. Though honestly a super carrier large craft being able to fly through a planets atmosphere and land is pretty darn amazing already.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A reminder from where? Where are you getting this from?
The closest I could find to a post from our QM about what each rating means is... this post. From last year, in the old thread. I'm not sure any of it even applies anymore.
- Location
- Canada
this rank system is funky, but I figure even the lowest rank can take on modern military of today. So the scaling thing gotta take into account of time and how old something is.
Overtime a A rank would lower to a B and so forth as time goes on. Not to mention this is only for peer powers, more advance factions would scoff at our A rank compared to their A rank.
Overtime a A rank would lower to a B and so forth as time goes on. Not to mention this is only for peer powers, more advance factions would scoff at our A rank compared to their A rank.