Starfleet Design Bureau

In terms of what we do next, an explorer of some sort (potentially an equivalent to EC Henry's Starship Pacific) seems like a logical pick - both to go out and explore just for the sake of it, and also to testbed shields and other advanced systems.
 
Huh, since the Thunderchild was scuttled not destroyed, I wonder what happened to the hull in the long term. Did Starfleet come to recover it after the War ended? Did someone eccentric collector find it and its now in some archive of historical artifacts?

For some reason, I'm imaging some new TOS episode where the Enterprise has to track down rumors of some ghost ship that turns out to be the Thunderchild. No sure what the plot twist would be: some top-secret doomsday protocol causing the ship to automate and seek to destroy Romulus, some group using it to conduct false flag operations, or maybe it ending up on some Pre/Early-Warp planet and causing the native culture to be militarized either due to worshiping it or seeing it as proof of some dark forest hypothesis. Actually, that last one sounds interesting, gives a good chance for a Kirk Speech.
 
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Did we get any sweet sweet Romulan warp nacelles, shield emitters, or cloak parts to reverse-engineer? Feels like all of those would be pretty high-priority.
If I read that right, their warp nacelles were basically just Earth's combined with some vulcan tech they stole, so the results should be easily replicable for the federation.
 
Important strategic targets had just gone from over a year away at warp to a few months. There was serious concern that the willingness of the Romulans to engage scouting starships meant that a reserve of these new ships had already been assembled behind enemy lines and was ready for deployment. This fear was confirmed at the Second Battle of Sol in April of 2160, when the Thunderchild-class Warspite and a half-dozen Skate-class frigates were forced to launch without their torpedo payloads from the San Francisco fleetyards to assist a pair of Tellarite cruisers with engaging a trio of the new Romulan Birds of Prey, during which the under-construction NX Orion was torpedoed in dock and many of the orbital manufacturing facilities likewise destroyed. While one of the Romulan attackers was disabled and subsequently self-destructed, the other two disengaged at Warp 6 and fled the system. Nowhere was safe.

@Sayle, What do you think about swapping the name of the NX Orion to NX Ptichka?
I feel it would tie in more with the Shuttle naming scheme?
 
@Sayle, What do you think about swapping the name of the NX Orion to NX Ptichka?
I feel it would tie in more with the Shuttle naming scheme?
IMO better would be Burya - noted in that same article as being the more likely official name for the second Buran-class orbiter, whereas Ptichka was a generalized "nickname" for all three of the orbiters. If the nickname needs to be used for an extra NX-class, I'd instead suggest it be used for the one which vaguely corresponds to the third Buran-class orbiter (GRAU serial number 11F35 3K), which never even had an official name planned for it before the Buran program was canceled.
 
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I'll just point out that the UFP did form this update so we're now likely to be the full Federation Starfleet Design Bureau. I wonder if that will have any gameplay mechanics impact.
 
IMO better would be Burya - noted in that same article as being the more likely official name for the second Buran-class orbiter, whereas Ptichka was a generalized "nickname" for all three of the orbiters.
Ugh, Serves me right for copying the name from the title of Wiki article than the Actual Name.

NX - Burya would indeed be better for a name.
 
The war is won, and now the future awaits. Probably little for it for existing designs because the introduction of shields will likely call for entirely new classes across the line. I'd say the Dreadnoughts were cautiously kind of a failure in that their strategic impact likely did not justify the resources they commanded, though the opportunity costs of any new warship are hard to determine. We might have been advised to build something like the Skate-class a lot earlier instead, but what's done is done. And at least in the short term the Skate-class is probably still worth producing solely for intra-system defense and patrol until a new shielded replacement is ready.

I'd say on the whole the most effective ships, pound-for-pound, were probably the NX-class. Aside from suggesting it be retroactively dubbed the Enterprise-class, I'd also fast-track a replacement as the first new Starfleet ship. It can use shields, photonic torpedoes, and the Warp 7 engine with approximately a fit of weapons like the Skate plus an aft stinger cannon or two. Try to keep it to medium maneuverability or higher, and with all of the cargo space, shuttles, machine shops, med bays, and etc needed for extended operations. It'll be the first generalist explorer and patrol vessel to cement the new Starfleet as a presence in local space and provide the tools needed to go forth to seek out strange new worlds and new civilizations.
 
Thunderchild ABSOLUTELY deserves an -A down the line. Godspeed you glorious ship. Damn shame we had to scuttle her, but we had no way to haul her home for repairs.

Skates did what we expected, but we simply didnt have enough of them fast enough to replace the Stingrays, and they are sadly likely to be quickly outmoded since we have shields, Warp 7, and goddamn CLOAKING to add to newer patrol vessels. Fuck yes.

Dont think cloaks should be standard issue, but excellent for vessels meant for recon and system defense.

If we dont build more Thunderchilds going forwards, Warspite needs to be a museum ship
 
@Sayle Did we actually get cloaking technology, or did the Romulans merely tell us how to detect their cloaked ships?

The war is won, and now the future awaits. Probably little for it for existing designs because the introduction of shields will likely call for entirely new classes across the line. I'd say the Dreadnoughts were cautiously kind of a failure in that their strategic impact likely did not justify the resources they commanded, though the opportunity costs of any new warship are hard to determine. We might have been advised to build something like the Skate-class a lot earlier instead, but what's done is done. And at least in the short term the Skate-class is probably still worth producing solely for intra-system defense and patrol until a new shielded replacement is ready.

I'd say on the whole the most effective ships, pound-for-pound, were probably the NX-class. Aside from suggesting it be retroactively dubbed the Enterprise-class, I'd also fast-track a replacement as the first new Starfleet ship. It can use shields, photonic torpedoes, and the Warp 7 engine with approximately a fit of weapons like the Skate plus an aft stinger cannon or two. Try to keep it to medium maneuverability or higher, and with all of the cargo space, shuttles, machine shops, med bays, and etc needed for extended operations. It'll be the first generalist explorer and patrol vessel to cement the new Starfleet as a presence in local space and provide the tools needed to go forth to seek out strange new worlds and new civilizations.
This I agree with entirely, the successor heavy cruiser should be the first real exploration ship we produce in this timeline.
 
That or a new Cargo Ship. If shields aren't yet on the table I'd say armed Merchantman, if they are then NX replacement.
I'd agree with this course of action.
I'd say on the whole the most effective ships, pound-for-pound, were probably the NX-class. Aside from suggesting it be retroactively dubbed the Enterprise-class, I'd also fast-track a replacement as the first new Starfleet ship. It can use shields, photonic torpedoes, and the Warp 7 engine with approximately a fit of weapons like the Skate plus an aft stinger cannon or two. Try to keep it to medium maneuverability or higher, and with all of the cargo space, shuttles, machine shops, med bays, and etc needed for extended operations. It'll be the first generalist explorer and patrol vessel to cement the new Starfleet as a presence in local space and provide the tools needed to go forth to seek out strange new worlds and new civilizations.

It also kinda depends on exact the timing of when we get access to a Warp 7 drive:
But given the Warp 7 engine is expected in half a decade and there are memorandums of understanding for technological exchange between members of the Coalition at an unspecified future date, is the cost now worth it when the Bulwark might not even have much of a future after the war?

There's no point building an explorer if we get a Warp 7 drive only two years later, given how important cruising speed is for explorers. Hopefully the Vulcans are willing to share.

Can we refit the stingray into a Cargo hauler?

Not a lot of internal space, the original design was always quite a minimalistic patrol ship.

Better to use it for its designed purpose until we retire it IMO. It's still perfectly adequate against pirates, and we are going to have a lot of space to patrol as Earth founds new colonies post-war.
 
War's over, the ships we built succeeded. I'm excited to build a new explorer with a new engine, to boldly go. Might also be time for some smaller refit projects, maybe we could add a secondary hull to the Thunderchild.
 
So the obvious pick for our next design is an exploration cruiser packed with tech from all the founding members of the UFP. Warp 7 from, if I remember correctly, the Andorians, shields from the Vulcans, I think the Tellerites have advanced phasers, and of course build it all on an Earth spaceframe, give it a mixed crew to keep the symbolism going, and then, for a name, I'm thinking the USS Opportunity, named for the rover that just wouldn't quit.
 
I'd be interested in something light with a small budget unless there's a faster way to increase industrial capacity. Small run of Light explorers or medium one of freighters might do the trick.

Edit: An explorer that would be searching for local things and as a platform for some crew and captain to get experience doing odd stuff as far as earth experience but not necessarily new for the federation.
 
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Personally I quite like the idea of the Ranger class if we're going for naming a new explorer. Contains the dual ideas of a watchful scout and protector, but also an explorer going into uncharted territory. Feels appropriate for the Federation as we're coming out of an age of total war into a more prosperous new dawn.

Timing depends on when we can actually build Warp 7 drives. Vulcan technology should help, if they're happy to share.
 
Yeah, they didn't give us cloaks, they just told us how to identify them, which means they're no longer effectively an "I Win" button when it comes to launching First Strikes.

Yeah though, if we get a full new generation of tech, it'll be time for a proper Starfleet Explorer, and Ranger-class looks like a good name to me. If we don't get a new generation, then yeah, a logistics vessel would be a good one to go with.

I have to say though, it'll be very exciting to play through the actual period between the Earth-Romulan war and the Federation-Klingon one!
 
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Well, not quite the Coalition's overwhelming military victories causing an uprising in the Star Empire leading to it collapsing and a new peace-loving and xenophilic faction taking over followed by it joining the burgeoning Federation, but I think we can still call this a win. :V
 
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