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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Fouredged Sword said:
Yes, but losing one ship out of 20 you could have prevented for a 5% cost savings doesn't make sense. Economically it evens out, but you then need to factor lost crew and crew experience, so it's net negative.
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The problem is it's not one 5% saving- there are a lot of them in play. To fully proof a ship against literally everything it might encounter you're going to be doubling or tripling the price (or more!).
 
NSMS said:
The problem is it's not one 5% saving- there are a lot of them in play. To fully proof a ship against literally everything it might encounter you're going to be doubling or tripling the price (or more!).
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The thread hasn't proofed ships vs everything though. We generally proof them VS ships we know exist that we anticipate conflict with.

And it's a strange mixed message from the QM when on one of the few times the thread played around with restraint and didn't give a ship torpedoes Starfleet came back and nullified the threads decision rendering a whole vote pointless.
 
Tank man said:
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.
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Maybe, but if those other raiders have even less capability than the Orion pirate then it would still probably work out with just a single RFL and more science
 
Adhoc vote count started by Onionjones on Jan 15, 2025 at 10:07 AM, finished with 418 posts and 117 votes.
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Also - the votes tied again
 
Fouredged Sword said:
The thread hasn't proofed ships vs everything though. We generally proof them VS ships we know exist that we anticipate conflict with.

And it's a strange mixed message from the QM when on one of the few times the thread played around with restraint and didn't give a ship torpedoes Starfleet came back and nullified the threads decision rendering a whole vote pointless.
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I remember people arguing for maximum engines on the basis that a ship might need max maneuverability to evade space anomalies. I don't think it was a compelling argument for the thread, but that and the idea that "if we don't do this the memetic birds of prey will kill all our ships and destroy the Federation" are the sort of thing I'm referring to.

The reverse of that are the arguments that "if you do this, the enemy will just do that so it won't matter", which can be equally silly.
 
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Sayle said:
I remember people arguing for maximum engines on the basis that a ship might need max maneuverability to evade space anomalies. I don't think it was a compelling argument for the thread, but that and the idea that "if we don't do this the memetic birds of prey will kill all our ships" are the sort of thing I'm referring to.
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Bird of prey killed a lot of our ships when we didn't make the Archer maneuverable enough to escape them. The thread wants that to not happen again.

Space anomalies are not presented to the thread as uncommon. We lose ships to them with regularity.

These are not imagined or unavoidable threats to ships we design, not as you have presented outcomes to the thread. The retrospectives are not teaching the thread the lessons you seem to want us to learn.
 
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As I understand the options, it's suggesting that the cargo will allow it to perform high speed runs while the ships offensive/defensive capabilities will ensure it will get there. This will then allow the Archer to concentrate on internal territory- middle speed bulk cargo, with enough capability to defend against pirates- but not hostile enemy ships.
 
You know, I don't think there is a single Warp 8 Starship design that isn't well above average in maneuverability, even the Miranda is. Kind of interesting to think an entire generation of Starships are just all pretty agile.
 
Quickshot0 said:
You know, I don't think there is a single Warp 8 Starship design that isn't well above average in maneuverability, even the Miranda is. Kind of interesting to think an entire generation of Starships are just all pretty agile.
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Well yes, we picked the "all ships get +20% maneuverability" option designing the warp 8 core. All warp 8 ships therefore have a floor of above average maneuverability.

There wasn't even a vote option to give our heavy cruiser less than above average maneuverability.

This is one of the major canon divergence points. Canon Starfleet went for high shields and phaser first armaments. We went for high agility and torpedo first armaments.
 
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Fouredged Sword said:
Yes, but losing one ship out of 20 you could have prevented for a 5% cost savings doesn't make sense. Economically it evens out, but you then need to factor lost crew and crew experience, so it's net negative.
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But does the 5% cost savings actually cost you that ship? Or, to put it the other way around: if you add something to a ship design, is that going to actually save ships?

I'll use a more concrete example. One of the most common things the thread does is go for sprint + aft torpedoes on a ship. The theory is that if the ship gets jumped by a superior opponent, it can use the two to successfully escape. This is a good strategy, but it comes with obvious costs. Pushing sprint makes a ship slower (and more costly to operate), and aft torpedoes eat into the budget and often into module space.

So, okay, our hypothetical ship with high sprint and aft torpedoes is ambushed by enemies. Do those things help? Well, maybe they do, and the ship escapes by the skin of its teeth. Or maybe the ship just gets shredded before it can make it to warp. Or maybe the enemy chases it down and destroys it anyway. Or maybe the ship does get away– but it gets away handily: it didn't need the extra sprint or aft torpedoes to do so. Or...

It ups the odds, but there are no guarantees, and there's an upfront cost. Fewer ships, fewer crew, less experience.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
Bird of prey killed a lot of our ships when we didn't make the Archer maneuverable enough to escape them. The thread wants that to not happen again.

Space anomalies are not presented to the thread as uncommon. We lose ships to them with regularity.

These are not imagined or unavoidable threats to ships we design, not as you have presented outcomes to the thread. The retrospectives are not teaching the thread the lessons you seem to want us to learn.
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I feel you're somehow reading what I'm saying as if the comment about the Federation being destroyed if we don't pick this option or we need expensive engines to dodge space anomalies was somehow hyperbolic when those have been actual arguments for adopting specific loadouts.
 
Sayle said:
I feel you're somehow reading what I'm saying as if the comment about the Federation being destroyed if we don't pick this option or we need expensive engines to dodge space anomalies was somehow hyperbolic when those have been actual arguments for adopting specific loadouts.
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I am saying that if you think the arguments are not correct then you should consider adjusting the feedback you give in your retrospectives. The thread is not hearing "preventable ship losses are OK to save costs" in retrospectives.

They are hearing "Ships are getting lost to anomalies they fail to evade" and "Birds of prey savage your ships that can't escape" and are reacting to that.

Those are being presented as problems to overcome, not unavoidable facts of reality. The thread tries to overcome them.
 
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Fouredged Sword said:
I am saying that if you think the arguments are not correct then you should consider adjusting the feedback you give in your retrospectives. The thread is not hearing "preventable ship losses are OK to save costs" in retrospectives.

They are hearing "Ships are getting lost to anomalies the fail to evade" and "Birds of prey savages your ships that can't escape" and are reacting to that.

Those are being presented as problems to overcome, not unavoidable facts of reality. The thread tries to overcome them.
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But why would we hear about ship losses being ok if we don't learn how many ships we could have gotten otherwise, with lower cost options
 
Generally, every ship loss mentioned in a retrospective is viewed as a failing of the design and something to iterate on and improve on. Even if it was something we realistically had no way to avoid.
Onionjones said:
But why would we hear about ship losses being ok if we don't learn how many ships we could have gotten otherwise, with lower cost options
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Worth noting that sometimes going for the more expensive option will give us more ships; a cheap ship that can't do its intended job well might be produced in fewer numbers than a more expensive one that can.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
Well yes, we picked the "all ships get +20% maneuverability" option designing the warp 8 core. All warp 8 ships therefore have a floor of above average maneuverability.

There wasn't even a vote option to give our heavy cruiser less than above average maneuverability.

This is one of the major canon divergence points. Canon Starfleet went for high shields and phaser first armaments. We went for high agility and torpedo first armaments.
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Well I was aware of that, though even if we add 20% to the floor I think all the ships are above that as well. But I guess once you focus in a specific direction it can make sense to put even more in to it, as that's what you're good at now. Though I imagine the early adoption of Mk3 Impulse right before the Warp 8 engine came out also played in to this trend, speculatively with out that I'd think those might still be at prototype stage now and thus probably wouldn't have been in the Miranda due to expense.

I guess it's also because so far all ships in the end have also leaned a bit towards the same sizes or not to much bigger then the previous generation, making it kind of inevitable that maneuverability would massively go up.
 
Quickshot0 said:
Well I was aware of that, though even if we add 20% to the floor I think all the ships are above that as well. But I guess once you focus in a specific direction it can make sense to put even more in to it, as that's what you're good at now. Though I imagine the early adoption of Mk3 Impulse right before the Warp 8 engine came out also played in to this trend, speculatively with out that I'd think those might still be at prototype stage now and thus probably wouldn't have been in the Miranda due to expense.

I guess it's also because so far all ships in the end have also leaned a bit towards the same sizes or not to much bigger then the previous generation, making it kind of inevitable that maneuverability would massively go up.
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It helps that we've actively pushed for high/max maneuverability in most ships, due to the direct impact it has on combat effectiveness generally and torpedoes (our main offensive weapon) specifically.
 
I wonder if pushing thruster design along with also picking superior thrusters with our warp core option have been.. nonsynergistic. I mean in the sense of 'more maneuverability than is usable'. Which is unique among the parts in that one can't have 'wasted' hull durability or shield strength or whatnot, but we can have 'wasted' thruster output.
 
If things tie again I'd like to petition Sayle to make a mass/bulk increasing decision. We can get both, both it adds another 20k to the ship and bulges out the engineering hull in such a way that refits are going to be more difficult (to accommodate both parts).
 
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