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Starfleet Design Bureau

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I'm genuinely curious, has anyone every asked Sayle what the optimal choices for one of our previous projects would've been? That could inform future votes, or at least give us some more insight into the QM's thinking process.

@Sayle , apologies for bothering you. If it is acceptable to you, could you tell us what the optimal outcome, or at the least the divergent outcomes, would've been for a previous project? I don't know if that gets too meta, or it might cause other issues, if for those or other reasons feel free not to answer. That being said, I am curious.
 
Cold Dust said:
I'm genuinely curious, has anyone every asked Sayle what the optimal choices for one of our previous projects would've been? That could inform future votes, or at least give us some more insight into the QM's thinking process.

@Sayle , apologies for bothering you. If it is acceptable to you, could you tell us what the optimal outcome, or at the least the divergent outcomes, would've been for a previous project? I don't know if that gets too meta, or it might cause other issues, if for those or other reasons feel free not to answer. That being said, I am curious.
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Answering what's optimal is impossible, because there is no single one 'optimal' design. If you design a ship to be the best it can be in one area, it'll come at the cost of sacrifices in other areas. And our design briefs always have some wiggle room in what we're supposed to do- essentially, there's at minimum going to be two or three 'optimal' designs, and probably more in most cases.

Even if you design a ship to be perfect at everything it'll still come with a sacrifice- namely, extreme cost.
 
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Sayle is Thanos confirmed. This vote is and remains perfectly balanced.

That said, if we do go with shuttlebays I think our next ship NEEDS to be an engineering cargo ship. I want to make it a dreadnaught too. Imagine it, huge workabee specific bays, the ability to haul a large cargo pod, enough fabrication to make an Archer blush.

Make it armed enough to punch anything's teeth in, but optimize it purely for cruise. It's not an offensive ship. It's designed to bite and hold or otherwise sit ina system and throw up enough static defenses that the system becomes a fortress. Make it something that can solo build space stations.

A real weapon of mass construction.
 
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I am a bit worried that if we go for the shuttlebay here we're going to go with a cargo bay in the forward saucer. Not only would it be of lesser capability compared to a stardrive cargo bay it does really turn the ship into a Miranda duplicate (given the choices it made were an extra shuttlebay, a cargo bay* and basic scientific labs)

*which like the forward saucer bay is constrained by its placement.
 
Godwinson said:
Y'know, I definitely regret going for the quad-nacelle option now. Quad nacelle brought Max Cruise from 343c to 405c, an 18% improvement in emergencies, but if we'd gone with the dual nacelles in cruise configuration, we'd be at 343c for regular missions, which would put us at a whopping 58% faster than the Miranda during routine missions, and put our efficient cruise at the Miranda's maximum.
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If we'd gone for cruise nacelles, I'd be voting for the cargo bay right now. But we didn't, so I'd rather lean further into the emergency response role.
 
Wootius said:
iirc we don't do modules like that because it makes choice meaningless, sayle wants distinct and "take enough mass for 3 multi-module slots and the cargo to hold a swap" takes all the character out of outfitting a ship.

The cheap everyman design that's outfitted(or can be outfited) for every situation is the Miranda in TNG and everyone makes fun of it. 👀
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Fair, that would make sense from a worldbuilding and engineering standpoint, but maybe not so much from a quest balance/fun one
... though OTOH, I think it refocus us on more specialized and/or high-performance hulls. Not just combat ships, but also things like that pre-settlement planetary survey ship we made (optimized for endurance, range, and planetary science) etc.

Still, I get why that might not be the direction Sayle wants to take, since we could easily fall into that no-fun trap.
 
[X] Expanded Shuttlebay

Cargo is very tempting because of our high cruise, but the utility of the shuttlebay is just too good for me to pass up. The fleet support is particularly nice, because it ties into this ship's role as the leader of a small task force.
 
Godwinson said:
Y'know, I definitely regret going for the quad-nacelle option now. Quad nacelle brought Max Cruise from 343c to 405c, an 18% improvement in emergencies, but if we'd gone with the dual nacelles in cruise configuration, we'd be at 343c for regular missions, which would put us at a whopping 58% faster than the Miranda during routine missions, and put our efficient cruise at the Miranda's maximum.
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Sorry but that's incorrect, the Miranda can do 6/7/7 (216/343/343) while the Federation will do 6.8/7.4/8 (314.4/405.2/512). So the Miranda going at max speed will overtake the Federation at E-cruise, but will be left far behind once it goes up to M-cruise.

ClassFederationMiranda
Design TeamUtopia PlanitiaSan Francisco
Mass300,000220,000
Cost--80
Single Target Rating3227
Multi-Target Rating3214
Maneuverability Rating150kt134kt
Max Sustained Damage3234
Alpha Strike Damage3258
Coverage100%73%
Engine PowerVery HighHigh
Hull Rating6447
Shield Rating7343
Engineering
Science
Efficient Cruise6.86
Maximum Cruise7.47
Maximum Warp87
Operational Range314216

Edit - never mind, I needed coffee and I misread what you posted.
 
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Cold Dust said:
@Sayle , apologies for bothering you. If it is acceptable to you, could you tell us what the optimal outcome, or at the least the divergent outcomes, would've been for a previous project? I don't know if that gets too meta, or it might cause other issues, if for those or other reasons feel free not to answer. That being said, I am curious.
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I feel like the Attenborough came out pretty solid. About the only one I would have gone for instead would be light shields for a cheaper cost metric. But otherwise the thread restrained itself pretty well by only going for a central engine.

Generally speaking I feel like the consistent flaw the voterbase has is the feeling that if they skimp on something, the ship will die if very rare X happens. In military procurement I think the answer is often "then they die, because it's too expensive to add for such a niche case" which doesn't really happen here.
 
Sayle said:
In military procurement I think the answer is often "then they die, because it's too expensive to add for such a niche case" which doesn't really happen here
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I mean, even if there can be only one Enterprise going about at a time there's still a lot of weird shit that Starfleet ships are gonna run into, more and more of it as we expand outwards.

Niche is going to be substantially more common for a Starfleet ship than it ever has been for a surface earth ship for a few centuries.
 
Tank man said:
I mean, even if there can be only one Enterprise going about at a time there's still a lot of weird shit that Starfleet ships are gonna run into, more and more of it as we expand outwards.

Niche is going to be substantially more common for a Starfleet ship than it ever has been for a surface earth ship for a few centuries.
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you are arguing with the op, literally telling you to your face it's ok to not cover everything and you're arguing with them 😭

TheShadowDeamon said:
Edit - never mind, I needed coffee and I misread what you posted.
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yeah, [ ] Cruise Nacelles (Efficient Cruise: Warp 6.8 -> 7) (Mass: 220kt -> 260kt) [Cost: 67] would have been nice. I think I would have been ok with either but the cost saving would have been grand.
 
I feel like we could have made the Attenborough even better at it's core role (S science) by leaving out the aft torpedo and using the space to extend it's biological capability even further.
 
Shard said:
I feel like we could have made the Attenborough even better at it's core role (S science) by leaving out the aft torpedo and using the space to extend it's biological capability even further.
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Perhaps, but I feel that the lack of that torpedo launcher would have compromised its ability to operate in the border regions/alone. If we were making an Attenborough for solely internal duties I'd have given it up.
 
Sayle said:
I feel like the Attenborough came out pretty solid. About the only one I would have gone for instead would be light shields for a cheaper cost metric. But otherwise the thread restrained itself pretty well by only going for a central engine.

Generally speaking I feel like the consistent flaw the voterbase has is the feeling that if they skimp on something, the ship will die if very rare X happens. In military procurement I think the answer is often "then they die, because it's too expensive to add for such a niche case" which doesn't really happen here.
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I feel this is a really strange sentiment for Starfleet to have. Starships are monstrously expensive and ship crews are a treasure trove of experience and knowledge.
 
Shard said:
I feel like we could have made the Attenborough even better at it's core role (S science) by leaving out the aft torpedo and using the space to extend it's biological capability even further.
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Yeah - that was mostly people panicking about how the war was going I think (including me)
The Attenborough only ended up killing an Orion pirate (if I remember correctly) so that could probably have been skipped
 
Onionjones said:
Yeah - that was mostly people panicking about how the war was going I think (including me)
The Attenborough only ended up killing an Orion pirate (if I remember correctly) so that could probably have been skipped
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Keep in mind, we don't get the whole story (as it'd take Sayle too long for something too minor) about the service history of a class, just the greatest (and worst) hits.
Given the capabilities of an Orion pirate ship it'd make sense to emphasise killing one over the more mundane battles with regular raiders and other such ships that don't necessarily result in a clean kill.
 
Tank man said:
Simply getting my two fed cents in.

Starfleet's job is to seek out and analyse the unexpected. Therefore it is something we can expect.
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You are "did you know space is dangerous Sayle?"ing when they made the very poignant point that the budget is finite and while command would love to have a Galaxy class for every crew of Starfleet they have a endless amount of territory to cover with innumerable citizens of the Federation to protect. Which means overspending on one class of ships impoverishes and endangers the crews of the others or worse leads to fewer ships, weaking the core mission of Starfleet: protecting the aforementioned citizens.

Horologer said:
Or, less glibly: you can't possibly cover all your bases.
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+1
 
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