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Starfleet Design Bureau

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The second-order decision point if we get a half-saucer is either cutting into internal space for things like storage and other internals (inline deflector) or losing manoevrability and increasing cost (offset secondary hull). This thing shouldn't be on its own so it can probably leech off the Enties and Thunderchilds, so the first option is really more of a long-term class longevity problem.
 
[ ] Half-saucer. Aim for a capable medium cruiser. (Industry: 4)

for names I prepose we use historic RN cruiser or destroyer names.

Ideally I'd like the Tribal class to rise again since they had excellent records even with higher than ideal losses in WWII. That or the RN ship names named for mythical things like Leander, Dido, Neptune, ect
 
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First, nifty quest, I love the premise and how the remove of "design ships hoping they will be what is needed" works out.

Also, regarding the battle of Denobula:
Sayle said:
The Battle of Denobula began on October 14th, 2158. The Romulans had erected a trio of defended outposts in high orbit of several of the system's main bodies, one of which was Denobula itself. The Romulans had also accumulated a substantial force of twenty Warp 3 warbirds at this forward operating base. Wary of the potential for cloaked minefields or ships, Admiral Black refrained from immediately engaging while the the dispositions of the Romulan fleet were analysed. Judging that the Romulan access to shield technology favored the enemy in a large and prolonged fleet engagement, the United Earth fleet split into two forces. The first was a squadron of the three NX starships led by Columbia and accompanied by a half-dozen Stingrays, while the other consisted of the Thunderchild and eight Stingrays.
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The NX cruisers had 6 Stingrays with them.

I'm not sure I know which hull-form I favor, but am slightly leaning towards the half-saucer since I'm not certain the arrowhead will be able to have any torpedo tubes, but that's my inexperience with this quest.
 
Skippy said:
Going from previous projects, I believe "underslung" does not actually refer to a secondary hull, but instead a configuration where the deflector is fused to the bottom of the saucer. It would be worth confirming with @Sayle though.
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I'm not sure the distinction matters much with the deflectors we have. Underslinging a three-deck-high deflector on a saucer with, say, five decks (and that's being generous if we're talking about a Stingray-replacement, it's as many decks as a canon NX) is a sixty-percent increase in deck count, at which point you might as well just go for a secondary hull because your warp geometries aren't going to be what a saucer's are in any event and the mass savings are minimal.
 
Iridium Flare said:
Once again, assuming baseline nacelles, it's none if we go for a standard deflector and one if we go for an underslung. Add the experimental nacelles to that, which will alleviate the space issues somewhat, and you can likely expect one or two more depending on how efficient it is.

Granted, the concerns about the experimental nacelles are legitimate, but I am still going to argue in favor of the Arrowhead, because I want an Arrowhead.
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I don't see why the half saucer wouldn't get equal gains from similar choices though so comparing the arrowhead with all the extras to the base option doesn't seem fair. What I see is that it's harder to fit frontal torpedoes and I don't believe this won't be solved without costs. And I really think a good torpedo volley is our solution to the shield problem considering the prototype's success.

Strunkriidiisk said:
The second-order decision point if we get a half-saucer is either cutting into internal space for things like storage and other internals (inline deflector) or losing manoevrability and increasing cost (offset secondary hull). This thing shouldn't be on its own so it can probably leech off the Enties and Thunderchilds, so the first option is really more of a long-term class longevity problem.
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I really like inline deflectors, we've been building our little compact dinner plates and I think it's working out for us in terms of reducing exposed surface and failure points. This might change once we get shields but I'm really not eager to extend hulls until we get that, though I think the gains from compactness remain. And I really like the flying (half) saucer aesthetics. The fact we managed to keep that on a battleship is really funny to me. Guys coming at us with bird shaped nonsense and we're ramming a big disc down their throats.

If it's costing in internals we can just get fatter saucers :V
 
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Lavaflow said:
Do we have any in quest evidence of how well energy weapons without torpedoes take down shields?
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I don't think cannons are particularly worse against shields, it's just that our prototypes for their new generation was disappointing while the torpedoes overperformed. But I don't think we've had a lot of engagements with zero torpedoes either so I guess we lack data.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
I'm not sure the distinction matters much with the deflectors we have. Underslinging a three-deck-high deflector on a saucer with, say, five decks (and that's being generous if we're talking about a Stingray-replacement, it's as many decks as a canon NX) is a sixty-percent increase in deck count, at which point you might as well just go for a secondary hull because your warp geometries aren't going to be what a saucer's are in any event and the mass savings are minimal.
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The distinction matters in terms of how Sayle is actually handling the costs/benefits here, and it is generally more productive to ask about this directly rather than theorising. For one thing, it would be very odd from a vote design perspective to have it increase mass significantly enough to reduce manoeuvrability when the whole point is about reducing mass and greater mobility. An underslung deflector on an arrowhead primary hull may have some tradeoff, or be descriptive and have none whatsoever.

@Sayle could you shed light on whether an underslung deflector with an arrowhead primary hull means a full secondary hull or not, and what if any tradeoff this implies?
 
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Giving up the forward tubes seems like a lot with our better weapon being the photons tubes right now.

Half without a secondary hull might be the play.
 
An idea occurs; if the vessel is very manoeuvrable, perhaps all side-mounted torpedoes (none forward or aft) is the correct choice? It's going to be spending all its time circling anyway, and the sides don't have deflectors or nacelles to compete with.
 
Skippy said:
The distinction matters in terms of how Sayle is actually handling the costs/benefits here, and it is generally more productive to ask about this directly rather than theorising. For one thing, it would be very odd from a vote design perspective to have it increase mass significantly enough to reduce manoeuvrability when the whole point is about reducing mass and greater mobility. An underslung deflector on an arrowhead primary hull may have some tradeoff, or be descriptive and have none whatsoever.

@Sayle could you shed light on whether an underslung deflector with an arrowhead primary hull means a full secondary hull or not, and what if any tradeoff this implies?
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Would it be odd for the arrowhead with underslung/secondary to be brought back to the maneovrability of the half saucer without? It's important to compare the comparable, and the half saucer will also have those kind of decisions.

Wootius said:
Giving up the forward tubes seems like a lot with our better weapon being the photons tubes right now.

Half without a secondary hull might be the play.
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All-inline has worked out for us so far and I think it makes a lot of sense to stick to that when we lack shields to cover for more vunerable hull configurations. Later federation designs rely mostly on shields for defense so the hull shape is a lot less of a structural integrity concern.

Takareer said:
An idea occurs; if the vessel is very manoeuvrable, perhaps all side-mounted torpedoes (none forward or aft) is the correct choice? It's going to be spending all its time circling anyway, and the sides don't have deflectors or nacelles to compete with.
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I asked about broadside torpedoes before and was told they're pretty much not a thing because you want to fire parallel to your movement if you want any precision, either towards or away from it. It makes sense so I expect the answer is still no.
 
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Lavaflow said:
Do we have any in quest evidence of how well energy weapons without torpedoes take down shields?
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Thunderchild melted at least one warbird solely using cannons, but note that was with most of her guns concentrating fire.
Sayle said:
The dreadnought responded with her beam weapons, a rapid salvo from a dozen phase cannons over the span of five seconds burning through the shields of one of the lead warbirds and causing a catastrophic hull breach.
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Nyvis said:
Would it be odd for the arrowhead with underslung/secondary to be brought back to the maneovrability of the half saucer without?
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Yes.

Also looking at the Project Bulwark when we were choosing the deflector orientation, "underslung" is used to describe the deflector placement without a secondary hull. (I.E. the one we went for.) So I am fairly confident this is confusion over wording.
 
Well, we're effectively trying to replace either the Stingray or the NX with this design vote, so let's look at it..

Stingray:
- Already more effective than the NX on a cost basis, can we really improve it that much more?
+ More time has passed since the Stingray was first designed (12 vs 7 years), so we have a better chance of improving the design.
- Was already designed mostly for combat, squeezing out extra combat performance kind of hard.

NX:
+ Less effective than the Stingray on a cost basis, so we could potentially make bigger improvements here.
- Less time has passed since the first design compared to the Stingray, less chance of design improvements from that PoV
+ Wasn't fully designed for combat, squeezing out extra combat performance should be way easier.
 
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Even the pulsed phase cannons don't do so great against shields, but the proton torps have been MVPs. I'd say half-saucer for that alone, but on the other hand we are back to "we need as many hulls as we can get, as fast as we can get" and these are just straight up the successor to the Stingray, so arrowhead would be fine too.
 
Depending on how many pulsed phase cannons we can fit on an arrowhead hull, and with the info from the battle of Denobula, I could see that design working if we were willing to go with an underslung secondary hull and manufactured enough to go in packs that would allow a similar amount of phase cannons as the Thunderchild trained on a warbird. On the other hand, you can't beat torpedoes for solid burst damage.

However, I'm still largely partial to the idea of a medium cruiser that can get closer to the warbirds in terms of firepower and hull strength capabilities. That can make it so that Stingrays can be consigned to somewhat safer duties of escort and harassment as part of a task fleet.
 
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Shard said:
Well, we're effectively trying to replace either the Stingray or the NX with this design vote, so let's look at it..
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Ah no we are replacing the Stingray the question is with what we want to replace it. Medium Cruiser using Hlf saucer(Stingrays big brother) or an arrowhead ship only a little bigger than the ship it replaces.
 
Shard said:
Well, we're effectively trying to replace either the Stingray or the NX with this design vote, so let's look at it..
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...No, either way we're most likely replacing (arrowhead) or supplementing/dialing back (half-saucer) the Stingrays; this thing is a medium cruiser at the heaviest and the Enties are extremely capable heavy cruisers.
 
Vulcan observers watching SDB argue over a white board on ship design.

Vulcan 1: What are the Humans doing?
Vulcan 2: I believe the term is cooking.
Vulcan 1: ....Cooking what?

Vulcan 2 gives the equivalent of a shrug as two engineers nearly come to blows again.
 
A 4-to-6 gun arrowhead design will likely function well enough even without torpedos. A dozen pulsed phase cannons fried a warbird in seconds, being able to bring 3-4 on target consistently will do a lot of damage in a consistent manner. It loses the functional knockout of good torpedo tubes, but even a 0 torpedo design may be workable here.
 
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Theunderbolt said:
Vulcan observers watching SDB argue over a white board on ship design.

Vulcan 1: What are the Humans doing?
Vulcan 2: I believe the term is cooking.
Vulcan 1: ....Cooking what?

Vulcan 2 gives the equivalent of a shrug as two engineers nearly come to blows again.
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Madness. Cooking madness.
 
Havocfett said:
A 4-to-6 gun arrowhead design will likely function well enough even without torpedos. Half a dozen pulsed phase cannons fried a warbird in seconds, being able to bring 3-4 on target consistently will do a lot of damage in a consistent manner. It loses the functional knockout of good torpedo tubes, but even a 0 torpedo design may be workable here.
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On the other hand having proton torpedos gives the new project the ability to meaningfully harm heavy installations in the way that dinkum phase cannons wouldn't.
 
Yeah, I think I can get behind that. Speed is Armor, and six Pulsed Phase Cannons should be enough to crack a Warbird.

[ ] Arrowhead. Aim for a cheap light cruiser. (Industry: 2)

These aren't going to be operating alone after all.
 
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