Starfleet Design Bureau

Unfortunately neither, technically speaking. Nacelles generally attach to the engineering section, which given the relative positioning of the nacelles means four individual struts would look weird as hell. Either way we're probably looking at a spoiler-bar arrangement like the Saga had, with variations on shaping to account for the thruster placement.
We might get a "H" shaped arrangement if we go central engine?

[x] Central Engine [Cost: 91] (Maneuverability: Normal) [120% Standard]
 
Current cost: 83
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Central Drive = Normal Agility = 91 - 83 = 8
Dual Drive = Maximum = 99 - 83 = 16

That means that Sayle essentially put two of the old drives together in one installation
Central Drive = 2x Type-3 thrusters -20% discount
Dual Drive = 4x Type-3 thrusters -20% discount

We already planned to spend 15 points on the Federation's impulse drives for 3x Impulse drives and High Maneuvr
16 points for Max Maneuver is a discount


EDIT
Basically
Central Drive = 2x Type 3 impulse drives
Dual Drive = 4x Type 3 impulse drives

It really is amazing how easy it is for the QM to distract us by just changing what they call things
 
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[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

The only problem is cost but I don't even have a reference for what is too much. So I will plan for the future.
 
[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

While this does cost more, given the fact that the vast majority of the tactical situations this ship will find itself in are going to be single or small scale engagements I think it is worthwhile to give it better maneuverability so that it can perform better in those situations.

The Excalibur Retrospective mentions border tension with the Gorn and Tholians along with piracy, there is no mention of a major conflict that would involve a large fleet action where lower maneuverability would be less detrimental.
After the war the surviving Excalibur-class ships faced an uncertain future. Lacking the facilities to participate in the rebuilding efforts they were assigned to suppressing the surge in piracy caused by the depletion of Starfleet's patrol roster and flying the flag near contested borders with the Tholian Assembly and Gorn Hegemony.
Ditto for the Attenborough Retrospective which mentions the need for hulls to deal with piracy in the Orion stars but no mention of large fleet engagements.
The depletion of Starfleet by the Four Years War instead saw the ship taking up duty as a patrol and anti-piracy vessel in the vicinity of the Orion Stars while the rest of the fleet finished repairs and redeployments after the cessation of hostilities. It proved itself militarily capable in its own right with the destruction of an Orion raider in late 2245, when the Attenborough lured the ship in by concealing its true capabilities with single-torpedo salvoes until the raider approached to close range, accruing in the process the only prestigious honour accrued to the class in its service history - exempting the Ad Astra Memorial Medal issued to the crew of the Humboldt after its disappearance with all hands in 2284.
Finally the "Four Year War" concludes that Starfleet should focus on developing ships suited for long-range deployments and individual scale engagements.
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. While there was still a place for specialist vessels, military theory in the coming years would be more focused on how to deal with the long-range deployments and individual engagements necessitated by deep interstellar warfare.
Note that more maneuverability is explicitly optimal no matter your level of phaser coverage when it comes to the individual engagements that Starfleet's expecting and also future proofs this ship's tactical capabilities.
If the steady inflation in size holds true, the Federation will be punching up on the mass scale in the second half of her service life.

...

If you expect a torpedo ship or one-on-one engagements are the more likely outcome, then you may want to absorb the extra cost of the engines to maximise on-target time.

...

As a rating, higher maneuverability increases a starship's ability to keep its highest damage weapons on target. As statistics are computed with the assumption that peer vessels are at least half the mass of the ship, this increases the single-target damage rating. Against vessels with standard maneuverability but less than half the design's mass, or during formation actions, the multi-target damage rating determines general damage output.
While cost is certainly a serious concern Starfleet approved the construction of 12 Sagarmatha's (D+ cost rating) despite the much greater cost they would have been due to how capable they are.

Given the fact that a more maneuverable Federation class would let it fill in all the tactical requirements Starfleet's asking for as well as being big enough to conveniently take over the now retired Sagarmatha's job I think the investment into more engines is more than justifiable.
 
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Please, let's NOT start thinking about under-arming our combat ship.

We just got out of an existential war that came from not having enough gun! There no such thing as cost-savings when the alternative is extinction.

Actually, I think I might have to shout this one.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COST-SAVINGS, WHEN THE ALTERNATIVE IS EXTINCTION.

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I am now looking for a good class name to drive the above point home in-universe to Starfleet Command/Budgeting.

The closest I've found is Lazarus class, from the idea of Lazarus Taxa which survive extinction events, but it doesn't sit quite right.

Would love to hear ideas.

(Considered: Aegis/Shield class. Nice symmetry with the Excaliburs (sword/shield), but not blatant/pointed enough.)

(Maybe the Svalbard class, for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault? A little indirect, but has nice preservation connotations.)

The plan, or at least MY plan, has always been 'spend what it costs and make up with capacity' so we're in the same place. If we weren't building a war ship I'd have cut costs all over the place, but we are. And building a good war ship is just the most expensive thing in this game system. This just raises the pressure on the module votes, which are going to be intense because we need max synergy and a 'yes, and...' philosophy to build on what we choose rather than trying to insist the ship can do everything.

For names, hmm. What about the Errantry class?

[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

The only problem is cost but I don't even have a reference for what is too much. So I will plan for the future.

We need to sell this to Starfleet Command as 'you get what you pay for' and max out the quality. NOT just on battle, though that was our brief. But we need to make this REALLY good at the non-combat stuff too, that's how we justify all this.
 
The Excalibur Retrospective mentions border tension with the Gorn and Tholians along with piracy, there is no mention of a major conflict that would involve a large fleet action where lower maneuverability would be less detrimental.
The Federation-class being able to pull out its skateboard and start doing the quadrant's sickest kickflips in front of an audience of politicians and Romulan Spies (but I'm being redundant!) would deter anyone from wanting to start a war with us.
 
[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

The only problem is cost but I don't even have a reference for what is too much. So I will plan for the future.
Simple: there's no such thing. We have no explicit budget cap, the cost differences aren't enough to matter and the performace differences are massive.

The entire system is built so you can have cheap Or you can have combat effective for its size (and bigger is straight up more combat effective, and also more cost effective the moment the ship is intended to have Any non-combat role, for all that it's more expensive) and there isn't really any meaningful middle ground.
 
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You know after thinking about it for awhile, if spacecraft at twice the weight has half the maneuverability as the current ruling seems to indicate, then there might be a bit of a problem. ie 150 kton ship at 100% is equal in maneuverability to a 300 kton at 200%, so by basic logic this means that a 300 kton ship at 100% is equal to 50% average on a small 150 kton ship. Thus twice the weight, half the maneuverability.

The issue here is that this basically means that no matter how big you make your spacecraft, you never can install more engines on them. After all, the way to get half maneuverability from the same engine is to double the weight. So by this ruling all spacecraft seem to just have the same engine numbers and just rapidly get slower and slower because putting more then two engines on them will make them exceed max maneuverability after all.



This is I think a slightly odd outcome as normally I'd have expected large spacecraft to need more engines, and that maneuverability would instead decline based on its linear size increase over its longest axis. As in, a ship twice as long will be half as maneuverable, because g-force at the edge increases linearly from the center of the ship. And for a ship to be twice as long, it also normally would be twice as tall and twice as wide as else you're building ever skinnier long ships. This would then mean that you'd need to increase a ships mass by 8 times (l*w*h) to halve effective maneuverability. And if indeed you needed to increase the mass by 8 times to lose half of a ships maneuverability, you'd in such a case then still need 4 times more engine power then before at least. In which case bigger ships would actually use more engines, rather then just using the same number at any size.


Still, maybe I'm just not getting something here? Though I can't think of any error in logic I made. Perhaps linear acceleration forward remains the same and ships become incredibly sluggish in turning? Still seems kind of strange to me though.
 
[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

I want the best tactical ship possible, no matter the cost. It doesn't make sense to go maximum on everything else then restrict the ship's maneuverability. Especially since I suspect that Normal maneuverability will not age well.

If we go max now then these can be our mainline battleships for 50 years, if we skimp here they're only good for 20.
 
[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

I assume that increased maneuverability will allow entire ship formations to turn more rapidly. It also means the ship can threaten a larger arc with torpedoes in a given span of time. Any amount of torpedo launchers will therefore be more useful. Furthermore, our current phasers have a reduced firing arc compared to last-gen equipment; increased maneuverability would allow the ship to bring those phaser banks to bear more easily.
 
[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

[Sigh] Fuck it. The time for conservatism was before we slapped four nacelles on this ogre.
 
Unfortunately neither, technically speaking. Nacelles generally attach to the engineering section, which given the relative positioning of the nacelles means four individual struts would look weird as hell. Either way we're probably looking at a spoiler-bar arrangement like the Saga had, with variations on shaping to account for the thruster placement.

I'm also considering Miranda-style rollbar wings between the nacelles, but that's a bit unorthodox so I expect once the engine choice rules some configurations out you'll get a vote on how you want the nacelles mounted.
 
Impulse engines have always taken internal space. The exception is in half-saucers, like the Excalibur. But I might as well ask:

@Sayle Will Dual Engines take more internal space than the Central Engine?

In terms of MSD? No. In terms of point-value for nearby modules? Potentially, but I wouldn't make it the major factor in a yes/no situation of whether a module goes somewhere. Without a top-down module system, multiple copies along a 2d (invisible) plane can't really be modelled.
 
Still, maybe I'm just not getting something here? Though I can't think of any error in logic I made. Perhaps linear acceleration forward remains the same and ships become incredibly sluggish in turning? Still seems kind of strange to me though.

My logic was that the main limiter on acceleration is inertial dampers, so strictly speaking even the largest ships should be able to match a frigate in straight line speeds if they have the same thrust/mass ratio, because the upper acceleration is fixed. But thrusters aren't as strong, and the more mass there is the more force you need to redirect to adjust course, so the same RCS system can produce much faster changes in attitude and course on a smaller ship than a larger one.

But yeah that mass is outscaling the costs for engines and whatnot probably means that in the TMP transition there needs to be some consideration given in regards to building an engine calculation based on inertial damper maximums and RCS power from first principles, not just caveman bonk rock number on other rock number. Which describes a lot of systems under the hood, frankly, but I've always been doing this on the fly and this initially just started as a kitbash/art quest. Feature creep is definitely at play.

Fortunately in about 70 years phasers can be converted to a length-based/power system, which I expect will deal with a great deal of angst.

Funfact, this initially started as an idea for a Stargate Prometheus design quest.
 
My logic was that the main limiter on acceleration is inertial dampers, so strictly speaking even the largest ships should be able to match a frigate in straight line speeds if they have the same thrust/mass ratio, because the upper acceleration is fixed. But thrusters aren't as strong, and the more mass there is the more force you need to redirect to adjust course, so the same RCS system can produce much faster changes in attitude and course on a smaller ship than a larger one.

But yeah that mass is outscaling the costs for engines and whatnot probably means that in the TMP transition there needs to be some consideration given in regards to building an engine calculation based on inertial damper maximums and RCS power from first principles, not just caveman bonk rock number on other rock number. Which describes a lot of systems under the hood, frankly, but I've always been doing this on the fly and this initially just started as a kitbash/art quest. Feature creep is definitely at play.

Fortunately in about 70 years phasers can be converted to a length-based/power system, which I expect will deal with a great deal of angst.

Funfact, this initially started as an idea for a Stargate Prometheus design quest.
The biggest limit would be angular momentum. In a straight line all ships would accelerate the same, but a bigger ship would have the edges further from the axis of rotation and this would limit big ships turning as quickly as small ships.

Turning is not a matter of linear acceleration, but rather angular. The furthest edge of the ship needs to accelerate through a longer path to turn. The further your edge is from the center of rotation means the same inertial dampeners need to work harder to survive a turn.
 
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