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Starfleet Design Bureau

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The most important thing about a Survey ship isn't an arbitrarily high Science score so it can outscience any negative space wedgie in the West. Its to have enough hulls to actually cover ground. Space is enormous. We have a lot of space to cover, worlds to survey, claims to lay out.

Full capability is missing the point, looking at any singular anomaly scenario is missing the point. The point is seeing the lay of the interstellar land and establishing our frontiers, finding new colony sites, or mining outposts, etc. We were asked to make a survey ship, and while that certainly needs a good science stat, saying this is *the* science ship we've all been waiting for seems to be projecting our own desires onto a design.
 
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Karugus said:
The most important thing about a Survey ship isn't an arbitrarily high Science score so it can outscience any negative space wedgie in the West. Its to have enough hulls to actually cover ground. Space is enormous. We have a lot of space to cover, worlds to survey, claims to lay out.

Full capability is missing the point, looking at any singular anomaly scenario is missing the point. The point is seeing the lay of the interstellar land and establishing our frontiers, finding new colony sites, or mining outposts, etc. We were asked to make a survey ship, and while that certainly needs a good science stat, saying this is *the* science ship we've all been waiting for seems to be projecting our own desires onto a design.
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And you are correct. If we let this turn into an expensive ship we can't build in bulk, we fail.

But this is not the same as having to build the cheapest ship possible. The difference in industry between the orb and full saucer is rather low... Unless we feature creep the full saucer. If we do that, then we won't be able to produce enough.


So instead I argue that we should ensure we have all the space we need then show discipline in how we fill it, not pick the small chassis and have our options limited.
 
LunaMoth said:
Its necessary, somebody has to be the unfortunate crew who get devoured by a giant space protoplasm, how else is Starfleet going to learn about its existence otherwise. :V
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every vote I try to make is for the benefit of the ship and her crew, so they can be the very best they can be, and y'all are bullying them😭/lighthearted
 
Changing my vote, I really think Half-Saucer is the best choice here, but people keep voting for Orb when it genuinely seems to be the worst option. So I'm adding a vote to full saucer.

[X] Full Saucer (Industry: 4)
[X] Half-Saucer (Industry: 3)
 
[X] Sphere (Industry: 2)

I like the cheapness and small size in terms of tonnage.
 
I love the meme but I truly want is to make the best ship possible, orb doesn't accomplish that. It's way too limiting.

We can exercise restraint on other parts of the project to maintain cost but I think the opportunity cost of a Sphere hull is way to high. Even a full saucer design is going to be significantly smaller than an NX people!
 
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Golgotha said:
And you are correct. If we let this turn into an expensive ship we can't build in bulk, we fail.

But this is not the same as having to build the cheapest ship possible. The difference in industry between the orb and full saucer is rather low... Unless we feature creep the full saucer. If we do that, then we won't be able to produce enough.


So instead I argue that we should ensure we have all the space we need then show discipline in how we fill it, not pick the small chassis and have our options limited.
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My argument is that its highly unlikely we don't have the space we need if we show the discipline in the first place. Any scenario where we need all that internal volume is a failure state in and of itself because we will have produced an expensive ship.

I don't see a world where 'we're going to avoid costs with the full saucers by avoiding all the photon torpedoes and the minimum of phasers by investing all that space instead into cutting edge sensors and super computers' creates a cheap, mass producible ship. Realistically, science should not be a cheap stat to triple down on- and given that as others have tried to hammer home so oft- we've never made a ship purely to maximize science, I'm not going to assume its cheap in this system.

For all my arguments to remove the temptation, I understand we can have discipline- the Thunderchild's 2 nacelle configuration for instance- but that doesn't mean we should assume there's no downside from choosing the most massive and expensive hull and presuming we can just make a cheap ship anyways.
 
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Endorfinator said:
I don't see any indication that this needs to be mass producable?
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Its a survey ship. It's job is to go into a star system, see what's there, and give it some kind of cursory examination for problems and value.

Assume hundreds if not thousands of systems to examine and consider how many ships it would take to examine them. Then throw that estimate in the garbage because its an order of magnitude too low. There are about 60,000 stars within a 100 lightyears of earth- even if the Federation only covers a quarter of that volume its an enormous amount of area to cover.
 
Also, full saucer is only 2i more expensive than the orb.

We're not exactly breaking the bank if we vote for it.
 
Karugus said:
My argument is that its highly unlikely we don't have the space we need if we show the discipline in the first place. Any scenario where we need all that internal volume is a failure state in and of itself because we will have produced an expensive ship.

I don't see a world where 'we're going to avoid costs with the full saucers by avoiding all the photon torpedoes and the minimum of phasers by investing all that space instead into cutting edge sensors and super computers' creates a cheap, mass producible ship. Realistically, science should not be a cheap stat to triple down on- and given that as others have tried to hammer home so oft- we've never made a ship purely to maximize science, I'm not going to assume its cheap in this system.

For all my arguments to remove the temptation, I understand we can have discipline- the Thunderchild's 2 nacelle configuration for instance- but that doesn't mean we should assume there's no downside from choosing the most massive and expensive hull and presuming we can just make a cheap ship anyways.
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Computers cost 1 industry (source), and Sayle hasn't added any industry cost for science labs or med bays on our designs so far. Maybe that is too generous but that is how the system currently works.

edit: additional citation on science costs:
BeepSmile said:
And are there more design rounds? Asking because I don't recall seeing a 'science' vote.
[3 is way too little, and 8 is too expensive, especially if we have more design rounds for science/diplo/other]
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Sayle said:
The remaining rounds don't cost industry. Well. They don't have to cost industry. You can elect to spend 1 industry for an extra computer core.
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and this vote:
Sayle said:
[ ] 0: Do not install the secondary computer core.
[ ] 0: Install the secondary computer core. (Industry 45 -> 46)
[ ] 1: Install a small onboard workshop. (Engineering +2)
[ ] 1: Install a second set of science labs. (Science +2)
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