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I wonder if the Andorian Imperial Guard will build some Feddies of their own.

While Starfleet is willing to pull the brakes on military spending to appease the peaceniks, the Andorians are more than happy to triple the defense budget when they see shinnies on the horizon.
 
Ramble said:
I wonder if the Andorian Imperial Guard will build some Feddies of their own.

While Starfleet is willing to pull the brakes on military spending to appease the peaceniks, the Andorians are more than happy to triple the defense budget when they see shinnies on the horizon.
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Not entirely sure, they're range/cruise speed focused so I feel that amongst the Federation members the main parties interested in them will likely be those with significant colonial holdings (Earth if not for Starfleet, Vulcan if not for their own ship designs, Andoria and Tellar most likely).

Though in absence of their own designs and the Callie not being built anymore I could see Arcadia and similar places also getting some, adding to the Mars production lines. Assuming they don't just get the TOS equivalent of the Soyuz-class.
 
Shard said:
The Federation doesn't have a basically static number of Planets. It has increasing numbers. There's a certainty of snubbing that will occur.
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This is less of a concern than you might think. First off, nobody's even remotely proposing naming them after every planet; one per major member species is the goal here- start out with the core/founding members, of which there are four- humans, vulcans, andorians, and tellarites- and even the longshot goal of one for every member species is quite achievable over the next sixty or so years of, y'know, almost totally replacing the entire fleet. And if one of those minor species wants theirs a little sooner, and has the economy, industry, and population base to afford it, and their people are a little extra motivated to contribute their time and effort to Starfleet? Great! They can sponsor one! Or build their own, even, we're not picky! (Andoria probably will anyway, after all.) If not? Eh, we'll get to 'em eventually; there's no snubbing here, just working our way through the list, and if it takes a few ship classes it takes a few classes and if not then great.

I really think it'd be a great point of pride, for a so-called "minor member species", to see one of Starfleet's Finest with their homeworld or their first spacefarer or whoever emblazoned across the saucer, and a great way to encourage (in the gentle social encouragement sense) more interest in and contribution to Starfleet not just from their tax revenue but from their schoolkids and grads. The Federation has benefited all of its member species, some of them enormously, and not all of them have had the population or industry or whatever to benefit the Federation in turn. And that's fine; the Federation is supposed to benefit its members according to their needs, not according to their pocketbook. I don't see how that contradicts the idea that inspiring them to think about if they're able to give back a little more than they have been to the rest of the Federation and the new species that might join in the future could be really cool.

tl;dr hoping to inspire a bit of species pride (specifically, pride in their species as a key contributor to and a good citizen of the Federation we all share) by honouring and expressing how much the Federation in general and Starfleet in particular values their membership and their contribution is a long way from the sort of cynical picking-and-choosing-favorites (or worse, auctioning-off-your-name-on-the-building) scenario you seem to be imagining.

tl;dr of the tl;dr: this is the brighter and shinier future; we can have some brighter and shinier social engineering, too.
 
Ramble said:
I wonder if the Andorian Imperial Guard will build some Feddies of their own.

While Starfleet is willing to pull the brakes on military spending to appease the peaceniks, the Andorians are more than happy to triple the defense budget when they see shinnies on the horizon.
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Tank man said:
Not entirely sure, they're range/cruise speed focused so I feel that amongst the Federation members the main parties interested in them will likely be those with significant colonial holdings (Earth if not for Starfleet, Vulcan if not for their own ship designs, Andoria and Tellar most likely).

Though in absence of their own designs and the Callie not being built anymore I could see Arcadia and similar places also getting some, adding to the Mars production lines. Assuming they don't just get the TOS equivalent of the Soyuz-class.
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The Battle of Andoria saw 40,000 Andorian civilians dead of orbital bombardment as part of a deliberate gambit by a Klingon commander for tactical advantage.
When that happened to Brasilia in the Romulan War, United Earth built the Thunderchild and her sisters as a response

If anyone is incentivized to buy More Gun, the Andorians are.So yeah, Andorian Federations
Im half-expecting them to buy some Kisharas from the Vulcans as well
 
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@Sayle can't recall if we've talked about this before or not, but will we ever get the chance to put in some 'megaphasers' to our designs? Between the Soyuz and the Constellation there's enough evidence for them actually being real, if not quire named as such.

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uju32 said:
The Battle of Andoria saw 40,000 Andorian civilians dead of orbital bombardment as part of a deliberate gambit by a Klingon commander for tactical advantage.
When that happened to Brasilia in the Romulan War, United Earth built the Thunderchild and her sisters as a response

If anyone is incentivized to buy More Gun, the Andorians are.So yeah, Andorian Federations
Im half-expecting them to buy some Kisharas from the Vulcans as well
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Good point, a very good point. They could rather easily justify it too, this is a ship that can race across the Federation as soon as war is declared and stop the enemy in their tracks.

Not so much on that ground, though, with them going for Excaliburs and then potentially Federations it's clear that they're plugging themselves into the Utopia Planitia/SanFran ship design pipeline, and the Vulcan ships are divergent enough from that they'd represent a bit of a bump in fleet logistics.
If the Vulcans could offer a UP/SF style ship design that combined their ability for sheer mass with our technology I could see it, however.
 
We might, amusingly, see some of the wealthier and/or more fearful individual polity fleets ordering two-nacelle Federation variants, although probably not until the tech hits maturity and the new nacelles are out. Planetary defense doesn't need nearly the cruising speed, after all, unless you've got a lot of colonies to cover.

I kinda hope not, though; it's one thing if the species that already maintain significant combat-capable forces are modernizing or even upgrading, but for more worlds to create or enormously increase their own navies would indicate a critical loss of confidence in Starfleet.
 
thepsyborg said:
I kinda hope not, though; it's one thing if the species that already maintain significant combat-capable forces are modernizing or even upgrading, but for more worlds to create or enormously increase their own navies would indicate a critical loss of confidence in Starfleet.
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Immediately prior to/after Andoria I feel like such a sentiment would be common, we lost a member world and were pushed back to a founding world. But seeing Starfleet rebound, making the Miranda (which outdoes most of our ore-war fleet combat wise, individual ships equaling two or even three of their predecessors) and the Federation class (which even if not as powerful as I'd thought it would be is still as good as or better than the Excalibur in a number of areas) is probably going to restore that faith.
 
Sayle said:
The Shran-class heavy cruiser was a fully modernised Andorian design focused around a pair of supercooled phaser coils that were able to outstrip the Mark II in use by Starfleet by a fair margin: the Guard had five of them. More immediately recognisable to the Klingons were the three Ushaan-type Excalibur-class starships that had been constructed at the Andorian Naval Yards and modified for Andorian-only use.
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Interestingly the Andorians did actually have another relatively modern heavy cruiser design during the 4 year war besides the Ushaan.

I wouldn't be surprised if they end up tinkering around with a modified Federation class that hosts oversized supercooled phaser coils similar to the Shran to squeeze out even more phaser damage given the fact that we chose an oversized Warp Core for the Federation.
 
Ok, now that I've gotten over my first reactions towards the Miranda, it's a design that Starfleet needs. It's great for puttering around and taking care of problems, and has (or will have) a fairly solid tactical capability. It's cheap, it'll deal well with the odd lone raider, and if we go to war, there's gonna be a ton of them to round out our fleets.

Onto the vote!
I like the idea of having 2 zones of Immediate death on top of our all-around zone of imminent death. We have the maneuverability to make use of the torpedoes.
[X] Two Forward, Two Aft (Mark IV) [24/72 Damage] [Cost: 169]

I see that the name debate is back. I lean towards Federation member worlds as the name because I'm kind of tired of all the names being human in origin. We're not the only members of the Federation. (I'd also be ok with Sayle making up names from other cultures to fit naming conventions)
 
Archduke said:
I see that the name debate is back. I lean towards Federation member worlds as the name because I'm kind of tired of all the names being human in origin. We're not the only members of the Federation. (I'd also be ok with Sayle making up names from other cultures to fit naming conventions)
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I do see this sentiment come up a lot in the thread, but I can't get behind it. It's the same reason no one in Star Trek makes 22nd century cultural references, they mean nothing to the audience.

I don't give a shit about the USS Piutang of the Nulwangle class, even if those terms might mean a great deal to our Tellarite colleagues. It's just a meaningless arrangement of letters.

At best we could squeeze in some famous Vulcan thing like Lirpa or Surak, but it's a very dry well.
 
Ebiris said:
I do see this sentiment come up a lot in the thread, but I can't get behind it. It's the same reason no one in Star Trek makes 22nd century cultural references, they mean nothing to the audience.

I don't give a shit about the USS Piutang of the Nulwangle class, even if those terms might mean a great deal to our Tellarite colleagues. It's just a meaningless arrangement of letters.

At best we could squeeze in some famous Vulcan thing like Lirpa or Surak, but it's a very dry well.
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My personal theory is that starships are being given a name for every language and the universal translators are simply filling in the correct proper noun for whatever language the listener is most proficient in. For example the Vulcans hear all the ship names translated into Vulcan words.
 
This kinda debate is why I honestly favor digging into our In-Universe history for names a bit.

Like we could legit name this the Warsprite-Class, and use an idea someone had earlier about naming ships of the class after historical vessels from OUR Starfleet.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
The issue there is that even if we go with that naming scheme, that's playing politics and someone's going to get angry. Unless the Fed happens to prove insanely attractive to Command, we're not getting a full set of those. And then who does Starfleet snub? Even if we get the full complement, there's (pettier but still extant) bickering to be had over which ones come first and which ones have to wait.
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You know this is good idea to do when we absolutely want to politically preassure Starfleet. so lets leave that one as our pocket skulldugery.
 
I'm still torn because I want rapid fire new torpedoes but I also think we need at least one rear Torpedo because we're slower so we mightnhave to do cutbacks. And we already got the super-expensive weapon system we really needed, namely the phasers.

Sayle said:
The sprint particularly, yes. As part of the stats revamp I'm going to have to end up writing specifically what each stat improves. I'm also considering a warp offense/warp defense stat of some sort to represent forward/aft torpedoes, but I'm more ambivalent about that.



Yeah but the Romulan Plasma Torpedo from Balance of Terror seems to have been a specific weapon system that it generates in front of the ship before firing like some sort of DBZ charge up attack. Very weird.
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Going woth my headcanon that the Romulans were aware and terrified of the Borg, that overcharged very slow plasma bomb was their attempt at a weapon to one-shot a cube before it could adapt.
 
Yeah, the new type 4s are better than type 3s, but not three times better and we don't have a rapid launcher for them yet.

So a type 3 rapid launcher is more powerful still, it's just expensive and a torpedo hog.
 
That's like saying that Windows XP is a technological dead end to Windows 10, even if the computer with XP has a better processor. Yes, the newest one should be able to do greater things, but as is the throughput of the lower tech launcher is somewhat superior.
 
LOLROFL said:
You are comparing a ship which would likely need multiple of the Klingon's most modern capital ship to drive off to a ship whose only response to a K'tinga is to die because it's just that much weaker and slower.

Even just assuming the K'tinga is a carbon copy of the Excalibur outside of durability where we know it's superior paints an absolutely awful picture if a Miranda ran into one.

Heck the Saladin Vs D6 is a much closer fight than the K'tinga vs Miranda as the Saladin at least had a notable durability advantage (27 shields vs 20) whereas the Miranda is inferior in every metric.
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Yeah, and the Saladin gets absolute destroyed by the D6 too, so what's your point?

You say that it's a closer fight, but on closer inspection that's obviously untrue. The Saladin has 180kt maneuverability against the D6 with 60kt, so it's stuck using multi-target damage, which is four. 4.

FOUR.

The Saladin stands absolutely no chance against a ship that's roughly on par with a Sagarmatha, and it still worked perfectly fine as a frontier surveyor until the next generation of starships rendered it tactically obsolete.

LOLROFL said:
Not to mention that Starfleet thinking that the Saladin Vs D6 and Newton Vs D6 situation was acceptable ended up with the Klingons rolling across the Federation's border, capturing a member world, and performing orbital bombardment on a founding member's world, not to mention all the ships Starfleet lost in order to push them back.
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And this is just rewriting history. The Saladin was considered perfectly acceptable at the time, and in fact was favored by Starfleet Tactical because their other option was a heavy cruiser that couldn't fight anything bigger than a frigate. The next set of designs had the same issue, where there was again no high end tactical cruiser available. It wasn't until Starfleet told both design bureaus to design a real heavy tactical cruiser that they got one.

We seem to have gotten over skimping on tactical to save cost, so that's not going to be an issue either way. The Miranda is still something like the fourth most heavily armed design so far.

uju32 said:
There are many fewer K'tingas than there are BoPs and BoP wolfpacks
A Miranda is way more likely to run into one threat category than the other, unless someone made the administrative decision to put one on a high-risk solo mission profile
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Yes, a Miranda is way more likely to run into a BoP or a group of BoPs, but what's your point? If the Klingons want to destroy a random ship that's going to be stuck surveying a planet for the next month or so, they're perfectly capable of it. A Miranda is well armed enough that it won't die to random raiders, and the Federation will die if the Klingons want it to.

uju32 said:
Just like we sent our fast, expensive Excalibur tactical cruisers out of the Federation to go do science and first contact shit because they were the most likely to survive and return
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No, we sent the Excaliburs to do that because they can't do anything else. Their only useful peacetime modules are a science lab and a stellar dynamics lab.

uju32 said:
And as has been pointed out, this role is too high risk for a Miranda; we dont treat our ships or crews as consumables.
Like asking a man to go pan for gold in bandit infested territory armed with only a sword and riding a donkey; he may be a good swordsman, and it might be a great donkey but it doesnt matter if everyone else is carrying guns and riding horses
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The Miranda is a 220kt "light" cruiser with seven phaser mounts and four torpedo tubes, it's hardly going to explode because a klingon looked at it funny. It is almost certainly going to be the bulk of our fleet in the next war, and it should do quite well at it seeing as how it's more durable than a Kea.

uju32 said:
This is not a theoretical issue either; the whole reason the Saladin got withdrawn from dilithium prospecting on the Federation's frontiers was because of their increasing vulnerability to Klingon attack during and after it.
And the 180kt Saladins were Tactical A- for their time
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Do people just not look at the ship stats? The Saladin had an A- in tactical because it was presented as a light science cruiser. Its actual tactical capabilities were unimpressive, with inferior firepower and maneuverability than even a Selachii heavy frigate. The Miranda has slightly better multi and single target rating than the Sagarmatha, is much more maneuverable, and will see a refit to better weapons in a couple decades.

The Miranda is more than fine serving as a frontier survey ship.
 
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