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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Ebiris said:
There's just no need to buy two engines here, especially when it means they'll only ever run at 80% output. It's wasteful.
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Sayle said:
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.
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For me it's mostly about this part. In this war we had a lot of old ships fighting to the death. When this ship is relegated to combat support rather then anchor it needs to switch to punching up with its torpedoes rather than swatting with its phasers.
At that point the Federation is the smaller, more maneuverable ship.
And while I agree both maneuverability and firing arc are somewhat overhyped, given the success of the original time line ships that had little of both, this is one of the capabilities that I really think are better to have and not need often, than not have when you do need.

That being said, I would have been happy at 140-150%, this is a bit much. I just wasn't happy at 120%. I mostly want to be equal in maneuverability to the equivalent Klingon ship, which tends to be much smaller than ours at the same combat power. If that 180k K'tinga goes maximum and is flying like a 90k ship, i don't want to be lumbering around like a 240k ship.

Sayle said:
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.
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If I understand this correctly, should a ship manage to get below half our effective weight, we lose a big chunk of danage as we switch to multi target damage. How much? Well, I'm not sure. All i know is the Excalibur single target is rated 50, and the multi-target is rated 4. The Kea was 12 for both though, so us going phaser porcupine might mean this doesn't matter for the moment.

But what it does mean is in the future vs those larger ships, anything over 310k effective mass will be down to multi-target danage vs us.


I don't think it's coincidence the K'tinga is the same size as the Excalibur, and I would be surprised immensely if they make unable to keep up with the ship its likely designed to counter. Luckily, if they use the same danage calculations as us, keep up would technically only require slightly above average on their part.
 
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[X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

I am worried about the budget but I think that ship sailed with the nacelles.
 
Ebiris said:
Of course no Keas were built, it's a warp 7 design.

But really, high maneverability is a waste here. We're building a huge ship with the strongest shields possible.

Against a small ship it'll absorb fire and win via phaser coverage.

Against a big ship it'll be a slugging match where they both just fly at each other.

Against lots of small ships that might overwhelm it? Just warp away so they have to fly in a straight line and eat aft torpedoes.

There's just no need to buy two engines here, especially when it means they'll only ever run at 80% output. It's wasteful.
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My apologies
For some reason I thought the Federation was building Newtons during the war as well to replenish combat losses, and was wondering why only Newtons and Excaliburs but no Keas.

As for the rest, no high maneuverability is not a waste; in fact its pretty damn near critical on a combat vessel.
I will point back at the update:
Maneuverability measures the ability of a starship to accelerate and adjust its heading under thrust. The level of performance is still dictated primarily by mass, but a starship with a "maximum" or "very high" maneuverability rating would be considered to have an acceleration curve and turn time equal to the typical performance of a starship half its mass. Ergo, a 300kt starship with "maximum" maneuverability would perform equivalently to a 150kt starship with "standard" maneuverability. As a statistic it is measured as a fractional value between a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 1, with no thresholds determining higher or lower levels of performance. "Standard" is the median and generally expected rating.

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.
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This is one of the things that determines a ship's tactical rating

And as for the suggestion that you can just run away from fights with enemy groups, note how the Feddie is Warp 8 max?
The D7 is Warp 8.2, and the K'tinga will be faster.
I am comfortable asserting that the new Birds of Prey will be faster as well

Nor do we mount many torpedoes aft, and it turns out that your Maneuver also determines how well you can aim them

Any strategy that is based around an assumption of sustained enemy technical inferiority instead of your own strengths is one thats liable to go badly once the enemy rectify that
This is especially pertinent when the enemy is either a technological peer or better

Derpmind said:
The Excalibur-class had three runs of ships: A small initial block of four, a follow-up run of eight ships after the class had proven its tactical usefulness, and an emergency run of six ships during the war. I think 'Excalibur' is a great and evocative name for the class, but the name alone had zero effect on how many were built.
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What @Ebiris said
 
uju32 said:
My apologies
For some reason I thought the Federation was building Newtons during the war as well to replenish combat losses, and was wondering why only Newtons and Excaliburs but no Keas.

As for the rest, no high maneuverability is not a waste; in fact its pretty damn near critical on a combat vessel.
I will point back at the update:
This is one of the things that determines a ship's tactical rating

And as for the suggestion that you can just run away from fights with enemy groups, note how the Feddie is Warp 8 max?
The D7 is Warp 8.2, and the K'tinga will be faster.
I am comfortable asserting that the new Birds of Prey will be faster as well

Nor do we mount many torpedoes aft, and it turns out that your Maneuver also determines how well you can aim them

Any strategy that is based around an assumption of sustained enemy technical inferiority instead of your own strengths is one thats liable to go badly once the enemy rectify that
This is especially pertinent when the enemy is either a technological peer or better


What @Ebiris said
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Yeah, we chose - chose CORRECTLY - to build for sustained high cruise. And that means we've got less ability to choose our fights, so we absolutely must be able to win the fights we have. And that means solo engagements over fleet actions, which means we have to be able to dodge superheavy main weapons we can't match.

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Like, for example, those Romulan plasma torpedoes that can blast through miles of pure iron asteroid. We're tanky, but we're not THAT tanky. For weapons like that we need to be able to make them miss because we can't afford to block it with our face.
 
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darkstarling said:
Yeah, we chose - chose CORRECTLY - to build for sustained high cruise. And that means we've got less ability to choose our fights, so we absolutely must be able to win the fights we have. And that means solo engagements over fleet actions, which means we have to be able to dodge superheavy main weapons we can't match.

edit:

Like, for example, those Romulan plasma torpedoes that can blast through miles of pure iron asteroid. We're tanky, but we're not THAT tanky. For weapons like that we need to be able to make them miss because we can't afford to block it with our face.
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Yeah

Like I said, we built the Feddie as a human-style endurance predator
A human is not going to match a deer, or a big cat in sprint speed over short distances; thats just not possible.
But a fit human will run any of those creatures into the ground over the course of half a day on flat ground

Same with the Feddie
I expect that the D7 and the K'tinga and the Excalibur will all outrun it handily
But start a running fight over several hours, and the Federation will run you down and kick your head in
 
Lohjak said:
If you want this to be the case then you have to vote for dual. This ship is so fucking big that a D7 will be twice as maneuverable if we take a single thruster.
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Being twice as maneuverable doesn't mean being able to dance around with impunity, only far smaller ships like birds of prey will be able to actually fly around like fighter jets and get their guns on target. Something as big as a cruiser might be able to evade the Federation's front arc by flying evasively, but doing so surrenders the ability to put their own front arcs on target.
 
Ebiris said:
Being twice as maneuverable doesn't mean being able to dance around with impunity, only far smaller ships like birds of prey will be able to actually fly around like fighter jets and get their guns on target. Something as big as a cruiser might be able to evade the Federation's front arc by flying evasively, but doing so surrenders the ability to put their own front arcs on target.
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Its pretty explicitly stated that aiming the highest damage weapons in your weapons suite is a function of your Maneuver rating
While the Feddies cannot achieve impunity(even the Callies didnt), a higher Maneuver rating affects both their ability to bring their highest damage weapons to bear on their targets, and to get out of the killbox of the enemy's strongest weapons

The fact that we cant achieve some ideal state doesnt mean that its a bad idea to try

Thats like saying that because you arent a marathon runner, that its useless to learn how to run away from trouble
Or that because you arent a doctor, spending effort in learning first aid and basic medical care is a wasteful investment of time and effort.
 
I've been giving some thought to how the ship Maneourvability lavels has been re-worked and I think it might work better if it's split into 2 catagories - Acceleration and Turn rate:

Ship A is 100KT, has 1 impulse engine @ 180KT thrust and is 100m long
Ship B is 200KT, has 2 impulse engines @ 360KT thrust and is 150m long
The impulse engines can rotate the ship at 20m/s measured at the ships outer edge (this bit is made up for the purpose of this example)

As both ships have a Thrust/Weight ratio of 0.556 (3dp) the can both accelerate at the same rate. However while they have the same rate of turn, they have different distances along their circumference to rotate.
Ship A turn ratio: 0.556 * 1/1 = 0.556
Ship B turn ratio: 0.556 * 1/1.5 = 0.371 (3dp)
As you can see Ship B has only 66.7% the turn rate of ship B

If however Ship B has 3 engines @ 540Kt thrust it will now have a T/W ratio of 2.7 and a turn ratio of 2.7 * 1/1.5 = 1.8. It can now accelerate at 485.6% faster than the others and turn 323.7% faster than ship A.

Ship​
Mass​
Thrust​
Size​
Thrust/Weight​
Turn Rate​
A​
100KT​
180KT​
100m​
0.556​
0.556​
B​
200KT​
360KT​
150m​
0.556​
0.371​
B2​
200KT​
540KT​
150m​
2.7​
1.8​
 
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Current tally:
Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on Jan 6, 2025 at 1:30 PM, finished with 438 posts and 141 votes.
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uju32 said:
Its pretty explicitly stated that aiming the highest damage weapons in your weapons suite is a function of your Maneuver rating
While the Feddies cannot achieve impunity(even the Callies didnt), a higher Maneuver rating affects both their ability to bring their highest damage weapons to bear on their targets, and to get out of the killbox of the enemy's strongest weapons

The fact that we cant achieve some ideal state doesnt mean that its a bad idea to try

Thats like saying that because you arent a marathon runner, that its useless to learn how to run away from trouble
Or that because you arent a doctor, spending effort in learning first aid and basic medical care is a wasteful investment of time and effort.
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Sure it helps, but it's extremely 'nice to have' territory rather than providing serious value to the ship.

Dual engines is on course to win and I'm not really broken up about it, but it is inefficient and wasteful.

Also now I kind of wish we'd gone for a chonkier saucer now if only so we'd be able to run those engines at full power rather than leaving them in first gear all the time.
 
Ebiris said:
Being twice as maneuverable doesn't mean being able to dance around with impunity, only far smaller ships like birds of prey will be able to actually fly around like fighter jets and get their guns on target. Something as big as a cruiser might be able to evade the Federation's front arc by flying evasively, but doing so surrenders the ability to put their own front arcs on target.
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The idea that somehow being twice as maneuverable as your opponent, nebulous a metric as it may be, would not confer a significant tactical advantage, is ridiculous.

Being as maneuverable as your opponent instead of half as much is clearly much better. There's no situation in which giving your opponent the ability to dictate the terms of the engagement is a good thing.
 
Lohjak said:
The idea that somehow being twice as maneuverable as your opponent, nebulous a metric as it may be, would not confer a significant tactical advantage, is ridiculous.
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It's an advantage that's significantly offset by the ships design in other regards though - being a large heavily shielded ship with all around phaser coverage. It would be a very strong advantage for a ship with the Excalibur's loadout, but for this it's considerably less valuable. A nice to have rather than a game changer.
 
uju32 said:
We have done the cutting costs on combat ability thing
Id like to think we dont need to re-learn that lesson so soon after the consequences were demonstrated in the war
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I'd like to think so too. Unfortunately, it seems we're both wrong.

uju32 said:
Im personally sticking with Federation class, where the member ships are named after member planets

Quite aside from the thematic resonance of doing this after the Federation survived and won an existential war?
Its a cheap way of incentivizing Starfleet to name one ship for every full Member Planet
Which would ensure a run of at least twenty or twenty one ships
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This is brilliant. Federation class now has my vote.
 
Ebiris said:
It's an advantage that's significantly offset by the ships design in other regards though - being a large heavily shielded ship with all around phaser coverage. It would be a very strong advantage for a ship with the Excalibur's loadout, but for this it's considerably less valuable. A nice to have rather than a game changer.
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Being sluggish compared to our enemies might not matter so much in larger fleet actions, but if we're just sending like, a Federation and some Mirandas then we really want the Federation to be able to fight enemy capital ships on even terms. Phasers alone are probably not going to be enough to win a fight against whatever the Klingons are cooking up to fight Excaliburs.
 
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2250: Project Federation (Nacelle Supports) New
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    • [X] Dual Engines [Cost: 99] (Maneuverability: Maximum) [200% Standard]

    Having decided on the dual engines you carve out a section of hull at the aft of decks 4 and 5 for the main assemblies. The primary saucer thereby provides some cover for the main thrusters and any efforts to disable them, although the primary reason is to keep the main energizer conduits running from the warp core to the fusion generators as far from the outer hull as possible.

    But with the thruster placement finalised, you now consider the nacelle supports. While most standard struts have no problems with weathering any errant engine venting, the addition of two more nacelles means the extra reinforcement needed can present enough of a cross-section to be concerning. With that in mind you plot a shallow incline from the secondary hull that avoids most of the engine wash.

    Still, there is an alternative. By adding a rollbar-like structure between the upper nacelles and a similar shape linking the lower nacelles to the secondary hull, you can provide mounting space for more systems. In this case the center of the upper rollbar can be used to install a weapons package capable of containing both forward and aft torpedo launchers, which would then take priority when kitting out the ship's main armament.

    The issue is that the addition of another set of torpedo mounts (and fitting extra torpedoes there) in a dedicated weapon package would likely be the final straw in turning the already expensive design into a modern-day dreadnought, and thereby permanently extinguishing any hope for it to become the main line cruiser of the late 23rd century instead of San Francisco's Miranda-class. The choice is yours.

    [ ] Standard Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
    [ ] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (Aesthetic) [No Bonus/Malus]
    [ ] Rollbar Nacelle Supports (+2 Fore/Aft Torpedo Mounts)

    Two Hour Moratorium, Please

     
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    • Lohjak said:
    Being sluggish compared to our enemies might not matter so much in larger fleet actions, but if we're just sending like, a Federation and some Mirandas then we really want the Federation to be able to fight enemy capital ships on even terms. Phasers alone are probably not going to be enough to win a fight against whatever the Klingons are cooking up to fight Excaliburs.
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    I don't know... If we continue to hammer the high maneuverability button on future ship designs we could see a line of battle where ALL the ships have high maneuverability and the entire battle line has a degree of flexibility that gives options.

    The line ship doesn't need to be MORE maneuverable compared to the rest of the formation, but that just suggests we make the rest of the formation highly maneuverable.
     
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