- Location
- Canada
[X] Conventional Secondary Hull (Mass: 220kt) [Cost: 55.5)
Linked contents
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- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Flight Deck (Mass: 220kt) [Cost 55.5] (Maximum Warp: 8 -> 7.6)
Onionjones
とある 科学 の 大学生
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- a swing state
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
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[X] Conventional Secondary Hull (Mass: 220kt) [Cost: 55.5)
avatar11792
Et Sic Incipit
- Location
- Planet Earth, North America
[X] Conventional Secondary Hull (Mass: 220kt) [Cost: 55.5]
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- USA
Just finished back reading, can we please let the argument that sprint is good for disaster relief die? That's what killed the Radiant class as a concept.
Max sprint only matters for a response if you are already very nearby, and for chasing down/running away hostile ships. The former is situational by definition, the later doesn't line up well with the more defensive doctrine of this vessel.
Losing 20% off a speed you can only manage for twelve hours max when your typical journey is measured in weeks is not a huge sacrifice.
Max sprint only matters for a response if you are already very nearby, and for chasing down/running away hostile ships. The former is situational by definition, the later doesn't line up well with the more defensive doctrine of this vessel.
Losing 20% off a speed you can only manage for twelve hours max when your typical journey is measured in weeks is not a huge sacrifice.
This is a bold set of statements given that the mission statement for this ship is a heavy line cruiser "able to weather any conflict it takes part in" and act "as a lynchpin". To me that reads like tactical is the main priority.
We also know there's a strategic materials crunch stopping starfleet from making enough ships which, with the economics of ship construction, means the Miranda won't be able to be made in sufficient numbers. There was a big discussion before we started this design about why starfleet was unable to spam smaller ships and why we weren't able to design one that'd be an effective use of resources. If the future information we have holds there's also going to be a massive rise in piracy some that are technologically advanced.
The only path to get more resources seems to be locating new deposits using science facilities. This would lead me to believe that the science facilities to support that effort should be our second highest priority. Engineering and cargo will never be unwelcome but get selected based on our best judgement as long as we at least have the guns and science to address tactical and scientific priorities.
Eh. Certain baselines should be maintained no matter the design goal. A Warp 8 engine that can't make even 8 is an outright regression in capability. No thank you.
- Location
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[X] Flight Deck (Mass: 220kt) [Cost 55.5] (Maximum Warp: 8 -> 7.6)
[X] Flight Deck (Mass: 220kt) [Cost 55.5] (Maximum Warp: 8 -> 7.6)
Given that the math for travel distance-over-time prefers cruise speed (both casual and max cruise) over sprint for all but the most short-range operations, is "Warp 8" all that valuable for any save the niche tactical cases? I don't think so, and there was a decent case made that strategic speed was the big limiting factor in the recent war over tactical speed.
Certain baselines should be maintained. Those baselines are almost never hard numbers - they are comparative performance datapoints. If 70% or so of use cases benefit more from having a massive flight deck than another .4 Warp Speed, then the flight deck is pretty definitively superior.
We haven't even gotten to the nacelles yet, we'll have at least one other opportunity to reach Warp 8.
Given that the math for travel distance-over-time prefers cruise speed (both casual and max cruise) over sprint for all but the most short-range operations, is "Warp 8" all that valuable for any save the niche tactical cases? I don't think so, and there was a decent case made that strategic speed was the big limiting factor in the recent war over tactical speed.
Certain baselines should be maintained. Those baselines are almost never hard numbers - they are comparative performance datapoints. If 70% or so of use cases benefit more from having a massive flight deck than another .4 Warp Speed, then the flight deck is pretty definitively superior.
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Given the goal/consensus is likely to be Cruise configuation for the nacelles, I disagree.
Tactical is the main design goal, but Starfleet will only order so many ships for the tactical ability, especially when this ship represents a concentration of combat power that's gross overkill against anything short of a peer capital ship. Perhaps if we were anticipating another war soon that would change, but right now we're trying to stabilize post-war, and what they need for that is a lot of smaller ships with good enough tactical and plenty of engineering.
I don't think the problem is that we don't have enough science. I'm fairly certain that the problem is that we have too much science relative to our engineering and tactical, so we're overextended and underbuilt and under patrolled.
Because as far as I can tell, how it works is that science determines how quickly we can expand by discovering suitable sites, engineering determines how quickly we can build up these new colonies, and tactical is, well, tactical. The reason that Starfleet is constantly overstretched is that they have the Sagarmathas and the Curiosity's and the Keas and now the Excaliburs and the Attenboroughs and Atwater's constantly discovering new systems suitable for colonization, and then we have to figure out how to support and protect this new colony with the Archers and Newtons and Cygnus.
I don't think the solution to Starfleet refusing to order large numbers of science ships is to shoehorn more science into our ships, it's to make some really great engineering and tactical ships so that they're not always so overstretched and they actually want to increase our expansion rate.
[X] Flight Deck (Mass: 220kt) [Cost 55.5] (Maximum Warp: 8 -> 7.6)
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- Canada
Then we should develop a tactical/science vessel, with the gear to detect resources, instead of something to find colonies we instead find resources we can exploit. More resources, less colonies, more mining spots.
[X] Flight Deck (Mass: 220kt) [Cost 55.5] (Maximum Warp: 8 -> 7.6)
[X] Conventional Secondary Hull (Mass: 220kt) [Cost: 55.5)
darkstarling
Brilliantly Crazed
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It is not and never was for fighters. I don't know why people don't understand this!
KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
Except in the skimpy-clothes-and-knife-fights episodes. There we have attack craft, mainly for precision bombing on rebellious ground targets...
Imagine being the poor bastard who has to go in front of a procurement board and explain to them that, for the third design in a row, the Starfleet Design Bureau has elected to design a ship which in peacetime will be dedicated to science. How they'll cringe as the procurement officers remind them that the light science cruiser that the bureau just designed is currently being tasked with anti-piracy patrols instead of colony site investigation, and that the Excaliburs are expected to be used as surveyors once San Francisco's very practical Miranda class are able to free them from patrol duty, and that the Keas were recently refit and anticipated to remain in service for decades further.
Don't do that to our poor presenter. Give them something to show off that Starfleet will want to order.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
The Archer is an excellent Engineering vessel, but it's S-class Engineering capabilities are represented by it's cargo capabilities. Just like how the Darwin project yielded an A+ Science, but it is represented in the form of superb biosciences - An Attenborough isn't finding any new mineral deposits or examining matters outside the scope of 'biology'. It's why we build it even though the Kea with an S-class science capability exists.
Similarly, this ship could be S-Rank in Engineering from a different angle to that of the Archer - We could for example make it an actual dedicated fabrication workshop ship. Not like, one module worth of extra repair shops that makes Sayle frustrated, but like entire lengths of the ship dedicated to manufacturing or somesuch.
If we dont have to compromise other functions to get it
San Francisco is designing the Miranda to fit that role for cheaper, and we also have the Archerswarm in service in ever-increasing numbers. Project Federation is not going to justify itself by duplicating what the Mirandas are going to be doing for cheaper, and what the Archers can do better
Im not saying we dont want Engineering if we can get it
Just that we arent selling this vessel on its engineering
Yes we do
The Attenboroughs are planetary survey and bioscience specialized, the Atwaters geophysics
Neither of them do the general space science job very well as we see with the Humboldt getting Voyager'd by a space anomaly and getting no sensor records worth the name
We only had 9x Keas survive the war, of 12 built
As the war just demonstrated, even with two torpedo tubes hastily shoehorned in the Keas are too comprehensively outgunned to operate near the frontiers where most of the new science is happening, and too slow to run away if things get kinetic
The Keas will still do good science but near the heartlands, where its safe[r]
The 2275 Refits are three decades away at this point and Starfleet cant afford to gimp its science mission for that long
The Federation had twenty two Archers with Engineering A+ before the war broke out
We dont know how many were wrecked in the war, but assuming half the Kea's 25% loss rate because they avoided combat, we'd still have 18-19 Archer cruisers in service
The Federation then constructed another eighteen Archers between 2245 and 2260, a rate of around 1.2 a year
By the time this ship enters service in the mid-2250s, there will be more than 30 Archers in active service
Thats like 20 percent of pre-war Starfleet; I dont use the term Archerswarm lightly
Thats in addition to the Newtons that are still in service, and Project Miranda which San Fran is working on to help replace them
We definitely arent short of Engineering resources, just raw warship numbers
While there is a strong argument for giving the Federation-class cargo bays to take advantage of its speed for high speed emergency cargo near the frontiers, our current Engineering needs are pretty comprehensively met for the foreseeable future
The Excaliburs are Science C+, which is objectively terrible at the job for their class; science vessels they are not, and the main reason they appear to have the job at present is because they are the only current design with the guns and the speed to survive wandering around poking dangerous shit
Their science is pretty trash for their weight class; it wasnt a focus of the design
No, thats inaccurate
Starfleet pointedly makes minimum Science and Tactical demands on both the Miranda and the Federation
Note that in the Archer, Starfleet already has a great dedicated engineering ship they are already pumping out in series production for the next decade and half in addition to their design work on the Miranda class
Instructions to the Project Miranda crew to prioritize engineering and tactical on that design
That appears to be why Engineering is the one area that doesnt get a comment on the Federation
Tactical gets a minimum requirement; Science gets a minimum requirement
Engineering does not
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KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
Sir, you are wrong, we voted for [ ] Fabrication Workshops (+12 Engineering) [Fabrication] as the huge Lower-Decks module of the Halley/Archer.
Sir, you are wrong, the Archer is S-rank Engineering. 😎
Though I do agree (specific module dependent) that Science should be a lower priority to Engineering this time around. I mean, between a third small cargo hold and advanced sensors, I'm picking sensors 9/10 times!
Imo ideally we should be prioritizing like this:
Speed/Operating Distance -> Tactical -> Engineering -> Science
Edit: lmao nvm got my dates mixed up
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