Starfleet Design Bureau

[UlseDovThur]

*delurking*
It matters for the conduct of the war.

It means that Starfleet can send NX-class cruisers on scouting missions and deep strike attacks against Romulan logistics bases and supply ships with an escort of Selachiis that can actually keep up with them at maximum cruise, making for bigger raiding forces that the Romulans have to react to in the deployment of their warships, putting them on the defensive.

It means that task forces composed entirely of Project Selachii ships can probe forward into the conflict zone and evade pursuit at will, forcing adverse deployment decisions on the Romulans.

It means that you can cover friendly space and your own logistics lines with fewer Selachii-class patrol ships, freeing up additional forces for offensive operations.
All of this forces strategic changes on a Romulan force that is currently largely composed of Warp 3 ships.

That kind of pressure shaping the enemy response is how you win wars.


Remember, you currently only have one Thunderchild at the moment.
Meantime, Starfleet has been building an NX and five Stingrays every year, a build tempo that is likely to be sustained or increase with the Selachiis.

The Thunderchild matters for major fleet engagements, but in the day to day cut and thrust that makes up the majority of military operations, its the NXs and the frigates that you'll see.


EDIT
Just so its clear, Im advocating that we vote for []External Nacelles
The strategic speed matters.

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Seeing as the NXs are by design meant to operate solo I'm not seeing many scenarios in which they would have an escort at all during scouting. More ships would just mean they would be easier to detect inherently lowering the effectiveness of any scouting mission.

For deep strikes any ships in such a mission won't be operating at cruise, they'll be at Sprint speed so as to strike as quickly as possible, which isn't effected by the Internal Nacells. The same could be said for intercepting Romulan raids and fleets.

And right now we don't exactly have much territory to patrol in the first place. Earth has like 3 colony's? And one just got obliterated. Not exactly a lot of ground to cover.

 

[Alectai]

There is absolutely no circumstance in which these should be operating solo, yeah, they're meant to either accompany fleets or have a nearby base to return to--so system defense ships and fleet actions. 3.6 vs 3.8 is a trade-off for cruise speed, yeah, but both are still faster than Romulan Warbirds so it's not a critical hit either.

I'm actually surprised at how dangerous this is becoming for the price point. Having the survivability of a ship close to twice its size while being extremely agile with an alpha strike well out of its weight class? It's a nice place to be.

 

[Jensaarai]

The Stingray can already put 3 guns on target...

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The advantage I see of the Selachii/Hummingbird (yes, I'm still vibin' with that name) is that it can bring most or all of its cannons, along with the torpedoes, to bear on a target much more easily than the Stingray.

The Stingray has a wider coverage, but it couldn't lock all three ventral cannons as effectively on something while also keeping the tubes' firing lanes on-target. I think it could really only do two cannons with the torpedoes, actually.

 

[NavySeel]

Actually this thing needs higher cruise speed than the Stingray so that it isn't keeping the rest of the fleet at slow warp speeds.

It's smaller and more cramped than the Stingray, so most likely has worse living conditions.

Rear phaser isn't useful anyway so who cares that it has the option.

It's actually more fragile than the Stingray based on the defense rating, unless it takes the internal Nacelles and then it will be barely equal. However since it's smaller, more cramped and more compact, a single hit is going to do more damage overall.

What this thing needed was offense and it didn't get as much of that as it probably should have.


The Stingray can already put 3 guns on target...

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I had a reply to some of these arguments typed out here, but I really don't see any point in posting it.

To be honest at this point I think you're just willing to say nearly anything to make this ship look worse, because you personally dislike it.

 

[Sayle]

Here, a tiny ship somehow costs a quarter of the dreadnought, and is going to be roughly equal in cost to the Stingray despite being much smaller. This already gets people to feel displeased with the Selaachi because they feel like it's a waste of industry, and they're not exactly wrong considering how much more a difference a Thunderchild makes compared to four Stingrays (or four of the Selaachi). For something meant to be efficiently mass-produced, this is just way too high an industry cost for its size.

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If you factor it from the industry "floor" (the absolute minimum a ship can cost), then this ship costs about 8 industry versus the Thunderchild's 66. So 1/8th the cost. The only way I can see to factor that in would be to have some parts cost "special" resources which is kind of beyond the scope of the quest. Or be free, I suppose. I welcome suggestions, in any case.

But as it stands for 1/3rd the cost, the Selachii even with its minimum armament is on course to do 60% more single-target damage than the NX and 40% of the single-target damage of the Thunderchild. So still more cost efficient. Just not in the 'shoot everything near it' multi-target metric.

 

[KNakamura]

Lower warp speed that doesn't matter in a fight and that wouldn't be used that much anyway as everything needs to keep pace with the Thunderchild during fleet movements.

Lower firepower that we probably won't pick up anyway as the whole point of this design is for it to be constantly pointed toward the enemy.

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Speed is as important as maneuverability. And kinda honestly as someone pointed out there is a strategic use to it and being able to draw off and fire in rear arcs.

As such I don't know if that +defense is worth it.

 

[Nyvis]

We won a massive battle against the evil of slow ship lifts today

I think compactness is incredibly valuable on pre-shield designs and I'm not really too fussed about losing an aft cannon we would have had to pay for anyway. And if I'm not mistaken 3.6 is what the Thunderchild is outputting so we're not losing fleet top speed. That makes the choice pretty easy for me.

 

[Redhead222]

do like the idea of internal one more then the other.

 

[Kartr_Kana]

It has 2 Forward and 1 Aft gun. How can it put all three of those on the same target?

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Hmmm going back and looking again, you're right. That's a pretty dumb placement. The logical setup is one on each side and one forward, which would have given it two aft and three forward. I had assumed that was how it had been laid out.

Still we've made the same mistake as we did with the Stingray refit. We had the option to go to six phase cannons then and we didn't. Number one rule of warship design, put every gun on it the engineers will allow. Then add 10% more guns because engineers are always overly cautious with their safety margins.

 

[Alectai]

Yeah, I imagine the savings we get from reduced mass are at least partially lost in having to be so tight with our internal tolerances to make it something people can operate in, plus miniaturization being harder.

Even with that, it's more cost effective than a Thunderchild from a pure bean counting perspective, the problem is that the Thunderchild will probably survive a beating, while one of these space triangles will shit itself and die if it takes more than maybe one hit. (The added Defense is because there's no giant glowing weak points that can make it die even more dramatically)

But that Extremely high tactical speed means something. Even the Thunderchild could still evade a quarter of incoming fire as a big chonker, this is a lean, mean ship that moves like greased lightning. Defense 12 might be the difference between "Explodes or gets crippled from the first lucky hit" and "Can shrug off the odd hit that it does take as long as it doesn't take too many unlucky shots"

 

[NavySeel]

Speed is as important as maneuverability. And kinda honestly as someone pointed out there is a strategic use to it and being able to draw off and fire in rear arcs.

As such I don't know if that +defense is worth it.

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This isn't combat speed it's warp speed.

Hmmm going back and looking again, you're right. That's a pretty dumb placement. The logical setup is one on each side and one forward, which would have given it two aft and three forward. I had assumed that was how it had been laid out.

Still we've made the same mistake as we did with the Stingray refit. We had the option to go to six phase cannons then and we didn't. Number one rule of warship design, put every gun on it the engineers will allow. Then add 10% more guns because engineers are always overly cautious with their safety margins.

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You are repeatedly contradicting yourself on gun placement, in what seems to be every post.

First the Stingray was superior because its guns weren't all on the front because it had better coverage.

Next the aft gun would be bad on this ship, so apparently coverage is useless.

Now you are simultaneously saying that the rear gun, which provided coverage, on the stingray was a bad idea, while also saying we should have added the 3 extra guns, that wouldn't have added to the maximum amount on target.

Those guns would have only added coverage.

 

[uju32]

Seeing as the NXs are by design meant to operate solo I'm not seeing many scenarios in which they would have an escort at all during scouting. More ships would just mean they would be easier to detect inherently lowering the effectiveness of any scouting mission.

For deep strikes any ships in such a mission won't be operating at cruise, they'll be at Sprint speed so as to strike as quickly as possible, which isn't effected by the Internal Nacells. The same could be said for intercepting Romulan raids and fleets.

And right now we don't exactly have much territory to patrol in the first place. Earth has like 3 colony's? And one just got obliterated. Not exactly a lot of ground to cover.

Click to shrink...

The NXs are designed to operate solo in peacetime. These are not times of peace.
If we had more NXs, we certainly would not be operating them solo.

No, thats not true.
Sprint mode is limited. You cannot sprint tens of lightyears, or several weeks of travel time. Certainly not with current gen tech.
Thats like saying that you should sprint a marathon.

We are an alliance, not Earth alone. Our first offensive mission was to dislodge Romulan control of another species.
And we have a bunch of supply ships and trading vessels that the Romulans explicitly were trying to raid.
Those supply lines matter to our wartime economy.

 

[UlseDovThur]

Speed is as important as maneuverability. And kinda honestly as someone pointed out there is a strategic use to it and being able to draw off and fire in rear arcs.

As such I don't know if that +defense is worth it.

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As I pointed out above, the strategic benefit is extremely minimal. At most it would slightly help when shuffling ship postings.

As for firing in a rear arc? Yes, I suppose it would be able to fire at enemy ships, with a single Phase Cannon, in the very brief window of time it would take for it to peel away and turn around so it do another attack run.

No. At most the aft phase cannon would be most used for defense against enemy torps that this extremely nimble ships would be able to jus avoid outright. So it's a choice of adding to the defense rating with no extra industrial cost with internal nacells, or with extra cost in the form of an extra cannon.

 

[Legion0047]

Yeah, this is essentially a torpedo boat - the 20th century version - and as such the rear gun is pretty useless imo.

 

[CubicAppalac]

As others have no-doubt pointed out... either way the ship will still have the same warp-speed as the slowest ship in the fleet, which are the Thunderchilds. Personally, I'd rather have this have a similar defense to the Stingray rather than... just being worse defensively.

As such, I'll personally be voting for internal Nacelles. There is also the design aspect that I want to see in regards to this specific design, but that's neither here nor there. I also don't care about the optional Aft Cannon, which we could go without or add, depending on what others want. I'm merely voting for the defense rating.

 

[LawsOfRobotics]

[X] Internal Nacelles (-Optional Aft Cannon, Defense Rating 10 -> 12) [Warp 3.6 Cruise]

22nd century Defiant let's go!

 

[NavySeel]

Yeah, this is essentially a torpedo boat - the 20th century version - and as such the rear gun is pretty useless imo.

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I wouldn't mind it, but its not worth the defense hit.

It would be kind of nice to be able to shoot during every part of its hit and run attacks, causing more chaos in the romulan fleets, but for 2 less defence and 2 more industry it's just inferior.

 

[Zimmerwald1915]

I could have sworn the cannon we lost from internal nacelles was ventral, not aft, and that losing it would have meant losing a whole hemisphere of coverage. I also see that the latest update was edited 40 minutes ago. Coincidence?

 

[SaltyWaffles]

Hmmm going back and looking again, you're right. That's a pretty dumb placement. The logical setup is one on each side and one forward, which would have given it two aft and three forward. I had assumed that was how it had been laid out.

Still we've made the same mistake as we did with the Stingray refit. We had the option to go to six phase cannons then and we didn't. Number one rule of warship design, put every gun on it the engineers will allow. Then add 10% more guns because engineers are always overly cautious with their safety margins.

Click to shrink...

Actually, that is very much not a rule for warship design. Quite the opposite. Many an example throughout even the past century of warships that tried to cram as much firepower as possible onto the smallest hull resulted in disaster and impracticality. As it turns out, there are plenty of other considerations that have to be made, such as freeboard, weight distribution, fire control, hull integrity, space/weight for future upgrades or equipment, and increased vulnerability from having more explosives exposed to enemy fire.

There are good reasons why battleships stopped putting torpedoes on their decks--they were unlikely to make good use of them, added a bunch of weight, and created a huge liability in the form of very powerful explosives directly exposed to enemy fire.

Even in the age of sail, this was the case. Putting maximum cannon on your ship was impractical because it made your ship slower, more sluggish, and more prone to structural damage if it was more than the structure could handle.

===

The Stingray's weapons placement was intended as an antipiracy/anti-raider role. Weapons coverage meant more than burst damage, because the expectation was making it harder to ambush or overwhelm with numbers from pirates. Having no weapons aft might have seemed fine if you assumed that no pirates would field ships fast enough or numerous enough to exploit that weakness, but the Stingrays were meant to operate alone, so you can't make that assumption.

 

[Driven by Apathy]

Uju32's argument about strategic speed does have some merit... but I don't think it's enough to be decisive. For short-term missions it's not cruise speed that makes the difference, it's sprint speed, which isn't affected by this. For long term deployments, it can keep up with the Thunderchild, meaning it doesn't slow down our fleets.

On the other side of the equation, when it comes to the ship's core competency of kicking Romulan butt, the rear-mounted cannon is arguably surplus to requirement - this ship is optimized to do one thing very, very, very well: Point it's front-mounted weaponry at the target, deliver the pain, and then survive any return fire before doing it all again. Adding a rear-mounted phase cannon won't help with that one thing, but making the ship slightly more durable will. And we'll have to pay for one less cannon, meaning the ship will be slightly cheaper as well.

 

[7th Hex]

I think I'm leaning towards External right now. Not for the extra gun, but just so that it can match the NX's cruise speed over long distances.

Right now if we discount the Stingray we're replacing, the current slowest ship is the Thunderchild. So any group with one of those in it is limited to warp 3.6 if they don't want to leave it behind. However, because we built the dreadnought it's going to be very much a minority of our total fleet composition overall.

If we make our cheap spammed light cruisers match that speed, suddenly every group with a Selachii in it is going to be restricted to warp 3.6. And that's going it be a lot more of our fleet proportionally than the number of groups that include a Thunderchild.

Even if that extra .2 cruise speed is not being used whenever these escorts one of our dreadnoughts, I think the ability to have what is likely to be the much more common groups of Selachii escorting NXs or just groups of Selachii alone get that extra strategic maneuverability is worth it.

 

[NavySeel]

I really just don't want to make this ship less survivable than a stingray.

Sure it might be better at dodging hits, but that increase means less if when it does take a hit it's even more likely to kill everyone aboard.

I want max survivability. Taking the internal ones probably make it better at avoiding fire too with as a smaller target.

 

[Driven by Apathy]

If we make our cheap spammed light cruisers match that speed, suddenly every group with a Selachii in it is going to be restricted to warp 3.6. And that's going it be a lot more of our fleet proportionally than the number of groups that include a Thunderchild.

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Hmm... I'm not so sure it's going to work out that way.

The NX has neither the durability nor the firepower to be the center of a fleet. That's what the Thunderchild is for. I suspect if we try to use the NX in that role, all it will gain us is having to maintain fewer NXs.

 

[Zimmerwald1915]

Hmm... I'm not so sure it's going to work out that way.

The NX has neither the durability nor the firepower to be the center of a fleet. That's what the Thunderchild is for. I suspect if we try to use the NX in that role, all it will gain us is having to maintain fewer NXs.

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Perhaps not on its own, but a group of two or three NXs could do so.

I doubt we're going to have more than three Thunderchilds at any one time given their exorbitant cost, so we are likely to have more independent fleets than Thunderchilds.

 

[UlseDovThur]

The NXs are designed to operate solo in peacetime. These are not times of peace.
If we had more NXs, we certainly would not be operating them solo.

No, thats not true.
Sprint mode is limited. You cannot sprint tens of lightyears, or several weeks of travel time. Certainly not with current gen tech.
Thats like saying that you should sprint a marathon.

We are an alliance, not Earth alone. Our first offensive mission was to dislodge Romulan control of another species.
And we have a bunch of supply ships and trading vessels that the Romulans explicitly were trying to raid.
Those supply lines matter to our wartime economy.

Click to shrink...

No, the NX is very much designed as a solo ship in general. But regardless as I said escorts wouldn't help in a scouting mission anyway even if it wasn't. More ships just means the entire group would be easier to see coming and severely hamper the effectiveness of the mission.

At Full Sprint maybe, but the difference between Cruise and Sprint is gradual, not binary. The ships in deep strike or raiding missions can crank it up a few 1/10ths to get there a bit faster than go full sprint in the final leg, then full spring out and slow it down as they get away.

As for patrol duty, yes, we are an alliance, and I'd like to think our ally's can pull their own weight. Moreover, I'm not saying protecting our logistics isn't important, it very much is. It's just that we don't have much to protect in the first place and thus we won't need that many ships to protect those supply lines. At least not until they start expanding but by that point we'll have more ships as well.

Plus we still have our existing Stingrays. it's not like they'll just be scrapped and they were, by design, a patrol and anti-piracy vessel.