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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Jensaarai said:
Not completely accurate. The romulan strike on Earth involved phaser and disruptor fire while mid-warp.
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That was only possible because the United Earth ships were faster than the attacking Romulans, and thus able to get close enough to overlap warp bubbles.And its explicitly called out that lack of rear-facing armaments was a critical vulnerability on the Romulan ships that probably won Starfleet that battle.

Horologer said:
Still considering my vote, but I think the aft torpedo launcher isn't worth it. This ship's not going to running away from a fight very often, so the launcher's position isn't very valuable, and the extra alpha strike damage just doesn't seem worth the cost.
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At least twice in the last war, this exact scenario turned up in a fleet action, and the existence, or lack thereof, of rear-armaments turned out to be of critical importance.

KNakamura said:
Like it's a valid vote but I can understand why budget people are yelling at us. So far we've shown ourselves incapable of restraint on explorers, and a few other ships
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They didnt ask for restraint on this design.
They did on Project Khufu/Cygnus

thepsyborg said:
I feel like everyone's forgetting that superlative capabilities can only make up for going overbudget on the civilian side; going overbudget on Starfleet industry will just plain get us reamed.
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Thats not actually true either.
The design brief for Project Copernicus says nothing of the sort; I quote:
With an internal science ship and an internal utility ship completed in the last decade, there's one significant element missing from the newly established Federation Starfleet: explorers. Those are the ships designed with romantic notions to cross the boundaries of known space and see what's out there, uncovering new scientific wonders and making contact with new civilizations. Furthermore, now that resources and ideas are beginning to flow freely between the five Federation member worlds (Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, Andoria, and Denobula), the earlier restrictions that the bureau operated under have been rescinded. Resource limitations still exist, but how much you use will impact the reception and build orders of the design you output, not the design itself.

With that in mind, you will be graded on six metrics: costs incurred by Starfleet to the civilian sector, infrastructural capacity required from the fleetyards, tactical analysis for both single and multiple-target engagements, engineering capabilities, and scientific facilities. In these you will be graded from "D-", representing the lowest possible result, to "A" at the highest. The scores of A+ and S are reserved for breakthroughs in capability thanks to prototype technology or unforeseen design synergies, with a score of "C+" representing an average result. These scores are relative: the Thunderchild-class would always be considered an A in tactical, even if its absolute ratings become less relevant over time.
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You are conflating the requirements for the utility cruiser, with those of the explorer.

Frankly, the design brief for this class as stated incentivizes going all out, not trying to cut corners unless absolutely necessary.
Especially since you need prototype technologies to make A+ or S-class ratings.
KNakamura said:
No. We do not need more DAKKA. This isn't wh40k. Or even Star Wars. Like kinda.. guys.. we can not go top tier on tactical. We make *warships* for that, when we need it.
(ETA: This is, to be clear, a frustrated statement about overestimation of tactical threats that a single ship should be capable of handling.)
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The first explorer we lost, the NX-class UES Discovery, was lost to getting jumped by a flight of Romulan warbirds in peacetime. The wreckage wasnt even discovered for two months.
And then-United Earth wasnt even going to declare war over it.

Thats something that the SDB will have as a known threat scenario when designing an NX successor.

There's certainly a reasonable argument for moderation in armaments and frankly other ship costs when designing mass-production run fleet vessels you expect to operate in and around your borders.
But not on the limited-run ship class you expect to routinely operate solo in peacetime beyond the range of support.
 
My rational for the extra firepower:

Better to have that extra firepower and not need it; not every stranger you meet in the cosmos is going to throw a party after coming in contact with you. Some of them are bound to be viciously territorial. Also Wars do not happen at a time of your convenience.
 
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[X] 0: Ten Saucer Type-1 Phasers (Cost++) [Avg Damage: 9]
[X] 1: Two Forward Photon Launchers (Cost++) [Avg Damage: 1.5] [Alpha Strike: 36]
[X] 2: No Aft Torpedoes
[X] 3: Two Engineering Section Type-1 Phasers (Cost+) [Avg Damage: 2]
 
[X] 0: Ten Saucer Type-1 Phasers (Cost++) [Avg Damage: 9]
[X] 1: Two Forward Photon Launchers (Cost++) [Avg Damage: 1.5] [Alpha Strike: 36]
[X] 2: No Aft Torpedoes
[X] 3: Two Engineering Section Type-1 Phasers (Cost+) [Avg Damage: 2]

I don't REALLY see the need for Aft Torpedos at this moment. We're already building quite the beast here.
 
Okay, I'll close the voting here. I kind of agree that the plans ballooned, and I feel like I should have consolidated the torpedoes at least. Maybe the phasers, too. In future I'll try and squeeze things down to 2-3 options, even if that means some of the options have 3-4 voting choices each.
 
So, looks like:
10 Forward Phasers
2 Forward Photon Torps
1 Aft Photon Torp
2 Engineering Phasers

Edit: The MIC is going to be sending us very nice Christmas Cards this year. Everyone else? Noooot so much. :V
 
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Since we're talking about vote options. I think the 'prototype vs. don't prototype' votes often aren't very engaging, since we're heavily encouraged to prototype as often as we can to advance our tech level. Much more interesting are when we have multiple different prototypes to pick from, or we have the choice between a one-roll prototype and a riskier two-roll experimental tech. I'd prefer to see those kinds of choices more often.
 
Given some of the claims here about the usefulness or not of the tactical options available to us, I think its worth reviewing UES engagement history of the last 25 years or so, and the lessons that Starfleet Design Bureau's ship designers will have learned of hard-won combat experience

June 2155
The Stingray-class UES Bullray is ambushed and captured by a task force of 4x Nausicaan raiders.
The ship is rescued by the launch of the NX-class UES Challenger.

October 2155
The NX-class UES Discovery is ambushed and destroyed by a flight of cloaked Romulan warbirds
Wreckage discovered by the Vulcan ship VCS Selak in December, two months later.

Late 2156: First Battle of Earth
12x Romulan warbirds attack Earth, which is defended by 2x NX-class explorers, 8x Stingrays and (eventually)a Vulcan cruiser.
In response the fleet is consolidated at Saturn orbit. Available are Enterprise and Columbia, along with eight Stingrays. Requests are made to a Vulcan ship in Earth orbit for assistance, which are forwarded to the High Command on Vulcan. Captain Hernandez takes command of the fleet from Columbia with the consent of Captain Archer and orders a merging intercept, taking advantage of the higher warp factor of the United Earth forces. The engagement begins just past Uranus, around four minutes from Earth. With minimal rear-facing armaments, the Romulans are only able to engage with aft disruptors, but their shields make up for the deficiency by keeping them in the fight longer than expect. Four of the Romulan ships are disabled before they reach orbit, but the other eight drop out in Earth's gravity well and launch an attack with a salvo of nuclear torpedoes at the surface.
Significant notes
  • The Earth ships being faster allows them to catch up to the Romulans in warp and overlap warp bubbles sufficiently to engage with phasers
  • Minimal rear armaments on the warbirds allows the Earth ships to destroy a third of the Romulan fleet without losses of their own before they even reach Earth orbit. They only start to take losses when the warbirds turn around and bring their forward weapons to bear.

October 2158: Battle of Denobula
1x Thunderchild + 3x NXs + 14x Stingrays vs 20x Warp 3 Warbirds + 3x Outposts
The United Earth fleet set out from Sol in July 2158, intending to strike at Denobula and deny the Romulans a supply route towards Earth. The fleet consisted of fourteen Stingray-class cruisers; the NX-class starships Columbia, Challenger, and Endeavour; and the dreadnought Thunderchild. They were still en route when in August a Romulan strike force destroyed the Proxima Centauri colony, killing six million civilians and destroying the VCS Surak in orbit. This convinced the Vulcans to more proactively take a role in the war, and a fast-response fleet from Vulcan intercepted the Romulans a month later en route to Denobula and destroyed them.

The Andorians responded to the increased involvement of the Vulcans by likewise strengthening their patrols, but only mobilised to total war conditions when it was discovered that the Rigelian Fever epidemic was linked to a deliberate aerosolisation event in early 2156 by presumed Romulan agents. With the Imperial Guard fully committed to war, the Tellarites and Vulcans likewise began advanced deployments towards the Romulan border.
  • The Vulcan cruiser VCS Surak is mobbed and destroyed by the same Romulan task force that genocides Proxima Centauri
  • Thunderchild broke an enemy Outpost's shielding with its forward armament, but kills it with its aft torpedo launchers
  • All around phaser coverage allows the Thunderchild to rotate weakened sections of the ship's armor away from warbirds while maintaining attacking fire for most of the battle
  • The Thunderchild suffers major combat damage, but its engineering is high enough to put it back into combat service in a week

April 2160: Second Battle of Sol
1x Thunderchild + 6x Skate-class frigates + 2x Tellarite cruisers VS 3x New Model Warbirds/Birds of Prey
That careful but methodical forward momentum ceased when the IGS Kumari came under attack from a new Romulan vessel in February of 2160. While only slightly larger than the existing warbirds with their squat bodies and winged nacelles, this "bird of prey" was clearly designed as a generational leap in capability from the T'liss warbirds that it replaced. Rather than stocking a pair of atomic launchers, it had a single plasma torpedo tube that used diverted warp plasma to fire balls of superheated gas at its target. Their new delivery system not only disrupted shields on impact but also dealt serious thermal damage to the underlying hull.

As if that weren't enough, a pair of forward mounted disruptors doubled the forward energy weapons and sported substantially higher particle densities. But the real problem was that they were capable of cruising at near Warp 5, a performance expected from Vulcan or Andorian ships rather than the existing Romulan fleet. This was thanks to reverse-engineering of wreckage and stolen Vulcan schematics for the main engine, while the nacelles were based off those from Earth starships. It was an unexpected reversal in the strategic picture that left Coalition leaders reeling.

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 Burya 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.
Despite massively outnumbering the Romulans and destroying 1x warbird, the others still blow up a chunk of orbiral infrastructure, torpedo the NX-class Burya while its still in the dock, then flee at Warp 6.

Significant note
  • High sprint warp factor allows the Romulan attackers to take on a superior enemy, accomplish at least part of their mission and get away with most of their attacking force.


November 2160: Battle of Cheron
3x Thunderchilds + 6x NXs + 12x Stingray-classes + 9 Skate-classes VS 36x old model Warbirds
The Battle of Cheron in November 2160 was a strike at the heart of the Empire's forward staging grounds for its Warp 3 fleet. More advanced elements of the Romulan fleet were drawn away by a dozen Vulcan and Andorian ships detaching from the fleet at the edge of the system on a direct course for Romulus, all of them at high warp. This left United Earth against three dozen Romulan warbirds.

In the United Earth battle line were three Thunderchild-class dreadnoughts: the Thunderchild, Polyphemus, and Warspite; the NX-class cruisers Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Endeavour, Atlantis, and Buran; twelve Stingray-class light cruisers, and nine Skate-class frigates. While lesser in numbers, the substantial firepower of the Thunderchild and NX-class starships went a long way to offsetting the lackluster performance of the Stingray, while the Skate-class on paper was on parity with the standard warbird in armament despite the disadvantage of its own fragility.

The battle began with the Romulans moving to engage the United Earth forces, correctly surmising that the intention of the Vulcan and Andorian detachment was to draw the defenders away and then use their superior Warp 7 engines to double back and join the attack. This potential window in which the powerful cruisers would be able to tip the scales in favor of Starfleet would have likely proven devastating and allowed a defeat in detail of the Romulan forces.

Instead the Battle of Cheron was a bloodbath. The first exchange of fire was to the advantage of United Earth, which had anchored its formation around the three equally-spaced Thunderchild dreadnoughts. These received the body blow of the first enemy contact, the Romulans launching a massive salvo of atomic torpedoes. This was blunted somewhat by the defensive fire of the NX-class starships, which used their phase cannons to eliminate nearly twenty of the incoming warheads. The Stingrays had likewise been instructed to set their first torpedoes to manual detonation, and when the fleet returned fire with their own salvo their warheads underwent fusion along the forward wave of the Romulan barrage and simultaneously destroyed the leading torpedoes by both thermal ablation and by disrupting guidance systems.

By contrast the photonic torpedoes fired by the dreadnoughts and the Skate-class frigates survived the nuclear conflagration unscathed, protected by their unstable graviton fields. While the Romulan opening attack disabled the Polyphemus and left the dreadnought dead in space, the rest of the fleet remained combat capable after the first exchange. By contrast the Romulans lost five warbirds to the photonics, while a number of other ships were left with shields fluctuating on the edge of coherence. These were rapidly penetrated by phase cannon fire, leaving three more warbirds dead in space.

Subsequent to the first moments of the engagement, however, the battle degenerated into dozens of duels between the Romulan warbirds and the more agile United Earth ships. The Battle of Cheron represented the highest losses of the war for Earth's 'heavyweight' starships thanks to United Earth's application of the linchpin doctrine, which dictated that the NX-class cruisers and the Thunderchild-class dreadnoughts should remain at low thrust to preserve their relative positioning to the rest of the fleet, refusing to allow the Romulans to harry them away from fire support. This hypothetically would allow them to use their capable all-axis weapons to assist nearby ships that were being singled out by Romulan wolfpack tactics, responding to keep the more vulnerable members of the fleet intact over a longer time.

This was certainly the case, as during the battle the Enterprise forced no less than four disengagements by Romulan forces from the aft quarter of Earth's smaller starships, and the other NX-class ships likewise disrupted the warbird commanders from engaging in their usual chase-and-fire tactics. There were losses to this tactic despite the best efforts of the larger vessels, though the Skate-class in particular proved itself able to juke and evade Romulans attempting to insert themselves behind its flightpath. In one case the Thornback not only evaded the effort of a Romulan warbird to do so but when the enemy disengaged to pick another target managed to come about and destroy the ship with a pair of photonic torpedoes fired directly into its dorsal hull.

The linchpin strategy did however expose the larger ships to more concentrated fire. The Buran was destroyed in the opening minutes of the battle, followed by Challenger and then Endeavour. The Thunderchild found herself missing a nacelle after a nuclear contact detonation against her starboard strut, and spent the remainder of the engagement at all stop and firing her cannons. The drifting Polyphemus was further damaged in the crossfire and then destroyed in the final stages of the battle as the melee turned against the Romulans and the warbirds began taking opportunistic shots against disabled ships.

Six minutes after the battle began, it ended with the Romulans executing a complete withdrawal from the system. In total, the Empire lost twenty two warbirds with just over a dozen successfully disengaging. Of these survivors, a further four were destroyed by the Vulcan and Andorian detachment on their way out of the system before the new Birds of Prey likewise managed to return and join up with the beleaguered retreat. The Romulan repair yards and supply depots over Cheron were subsequently destroyed in a number of smaller engagements with static defenses resulting in no losses for the Coalition.
The advanced Romulan Birds of Prey are drawn off by 12x Andorian and Vulcan ships that sprint deeper into Romulan space, forcing the Romulans to honor the threat and follow.
The Andorian and Vulcan ships later double back.

Significant notes:
  • Repeated rear engagements by Romulan ships are called out as a thing; UES Enterprise alone forces 4x different warbirds to break off from the aft of UES ships with no rear armament
  • High warp allows the Vulcan and Andoran element to pull the advanced Birds of Prey out of position, then double back to help crush the slower warbirds


CONCLUSIONS​
  1. Solo engagements against enemy squadrons are an ongoing significant concern for Starfleet vessels and crews, and you cannot always run away. Sometimes a planet must be defended, at other times they are just superior to you
  2. Enemy technological advantages in stealth, in speed or firepower did happen regularly
  3. High warp factor at sprint can and does win battles in the face of overwhelming enemy force
  4. High warp factor at cruise can be a crushing strategic advantage
  5. Rear aft weaknesses in armament coverage have been demonstrated to be ruthlessly exploited by a competent enemy; Starfleet did it to the Romulans at 1st Sol, and the Romulans did it to Starfleet at Cheron.
 
uju32 said:
Rear aft weaknesses in armament coverage have been demonstrated to be ruthlessly exploited by a competent enemy; Starfleet did it to the Romulans at 1st Sol, and the Romulans did it to Starfleet at Cheron.
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I think a missing component in the analysis is the successful defense of other ships' aft in group engagements like Cheron. It's not relevant for a ship likely to fight solo like an explorer but it's why I don't really care about aft firepower on smaller fleet ships. The romulans at 1st sol were doing a suicide run, which was a deliberate strategic choice we're unlikely to copy either.

Aft firepower and all angles coverage is something for our biggest ships or for multipurpose ships likely to be hit when alone on missions. Frontal concentration is something for fleet ships that can overlap angles or do opportunistic attack runs in a wider battle.
 
Nyvis' take is my view of things as well - there are cutouts for things like the Skates or Defiant class, where they're theoretically maneuverable enough to keep opponents out of their rear arc, but notably even the Defiant still had phaser array and torpedo coverage in the aft arc (despite its high maneuverability).

I will acknowledge, though, that having to split fire to play rearguard for other ships in a fleet engagement isn't great - so if we can put aft coverage on a ship for a reasonable cost, there's not much reason not to.
 
Derpmind said:
Since we're talking about vote options. I think the 'prototype vs. don't prototype' votes often aren't very engaging, since we're heavily encouraged to prototype as often as we can to advance our tech level. Much more interesting are when we have multiple different prototypes to pick from, or we have the choice between a one-roll prototype and a riskier two-roll experimental tech. I'd prefer to see those kinds of choices more often.
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I have to echo this sentiment. If prototyping is needed to advance our technological level, then we pretty much have to prototype every ship design option. The long term benefits (technology) are too important to give up on unless the short term calculus is extremely important (ex: war). Plus, different prototype options could be very interesting.
 
I still think my concept of a large ship FOCUSED on aft fire power is viable. The geometry works better once the furball has started for aft than it does forward, as "swing away" opens more space the opposition must overcome than "swing towards".
 
Nyvis said:
I think a missing component in the analysis is the successful defense of other ships' aft in group engagements like Cheron. It's not relevant for a ship likely to fight solo like an explorer but it's why I don't really care about aft firepower on smaller fleet ships. The romulans at 1st sol were doing a suicide run, which was a deliberate strategic choice we're unlikely to copy either.

Aft firepower and all angles coverage is something for our biggest ships or for multipurpose ships likely to be hit when alone on missions. Frontal concentration is something for fleet ships that can overlap angles or do opportunistic attack runs in a wider battle.
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Not particularly successful.
Cheron was explicitly a bloodbath for Starfleet despite the fact they were facing only lastgen Warp 3 Romulan warbirds at near numerical parity, 36 Romulan to 30 Earth.

United Earth lost 1 out of 3x Thunderchilds outright, and had to scuttle a 2nd after the battle.
Half the 6x NXs were destroyed, as were half of the 9x Skates, and two thirds of the 12x Stingrays.
All the survivors appear to have suffered significant damage.

The fact that the capital ships had to devote so much effort to covering for the weaknesses of the Skates and Stingrays was explicitly called out as a significant contributor to the combat losses on our side.
The Battle of Cheron represented the highest losses of the war for Earth's 'heavyweight' starships thanks to United Earth's application of the linchpin doctrine, which dictated that the NX-class cruisers and the Thunderchild-class dreadnoughts should remain at low thrust to preserve their relative positioning to the rest of the fleet, refusing to allow the Romulans to harry them away from fire support. This hypothetically would allow them to use their capable all-axis weapons to assist nearby ships that were being singled out by Romulan wolfpack tactics, responding to keep the more vulnerable members of the fleet intact over a longer time.

This was certainly the case, as during the battle the Enterprise forced no less than four disengagements by Romulan forces from the aft quarter of Earth's smaller starships, and the other NX-class ships likewise disrupted the warbird commanders from engaging in their usual chase-and-fire tactics. There were losses to this tactic despite the best efforts of the larger vessels, though the Skate-class in particular proved itself able to juke and evade Romulans attempting to insert themselves behind its flightpath. In one case the Thornback not only evaded the effort of a Romulan warbird to do so but when the enemy disengaged to pick another target managed to come about and destroy the ship with a pair of photonic torpedoes fired directly into its dorsal hull.

The linchpin strategy did however expose the larger ships to more concentrated fire. The Buran was destroyed in the opening minutes of the battle, followed by Challenger and then Endeavour. The Thunderchild found herself missing a nacelle after a nuclear contact detonation against her starboard strut, and spent the remainder of the engagement at all stop and firing her cannons. The drifting Polyphemus was further damaged in the crossfire and then destroyed in the final stages of the battle as the melee turned against the Romulans and the warbirds began taking opportunistic shots against disabled ships.
 
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Fouredged Sword said:
I still think my concept of a large ship FOCUSED on aft fire power is viable. The geometry works better once the furball has started for aft than it does forward, as "swing away" opens more space the opposition must overcome than "swing towards".
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I mean, broadside coverage does the same thing and lets you hit two sides at once. It meshes better with the Big Ship, little ship strategy we favored. It's the hyperfast little ships that want the aft focus I'd feel.
 
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uju32 said:
Not particularly successful.
Cheron was explicitly a bloodbath for Starfleet despite the fact they were facing only lastgen Warp 3 Romulan warbirds at near numerical parity, 36 Romulan to 30 Earth.

United Earth lost 1 out of 3x Thunderchilds outright, and had to scuttle a 2nd after the battle.
Half the 6x NXs were destroyed, as were half of the 9x Skates, and two thirds of the 12x Stingrays.
All the survivors appear to have suffered significant damage.

The fact that the capital ships had to devote so much effort to covering for the weaknesses of the Skates and Stingrays was explicitly called out as a significant contributor to the combat losses on our side.
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Cheron was explicitly a bloodbath because Starfleet was behind in tech and industrially outmatched. The Romulans (believed they) had enough ships to cover both the Earth forces and the allied breakaway forces due to Earth ships being lower tech in weapons(on the non wartime ships) and not having shields at all.

Despite this, the big ship, little ship anchor strategy allow us to fight the Romulans on equal footing pound for pound even with their tech advantage and forced the Romulans to accept a better than canon peace for the Federation. It was a vindication that we could win through exploiting their overall poor fleet composition rather than having to reach tech parity to win.
 
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Wootius said:
I mean, broadside coverage does the same thing and lets you hit two sides at once. It meshes better with the Big Ship, little ship strategy we favored, It's the hyperfast little ships that want the aft focus I'd feel.
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Broadside is definitionally twice as expensive because you need to duplicate everything on each side, and does not allow you to turn away still, merely parallel.

It's about how far an enemy needs to move to get out of an arc and how easy it is to move so that enemy is put back into it.

Forward is good because 90% of the time that's where enemies start and so it's your initial alpha, but definitionally you are closing with the enemy in your forward and once theu escape your forward arc you need to turn around to catch them again. They cut inside your turn arc and escape if they are faster.

Broadside is good because once the furball starts SOMETHING is going to be in your broadside, but your broadside is more or less impossible to concentrate more than 50%, half of it being on each side of the ship.

Meanwhile aft weapons are useless during closing, but once you HAVE closed you target an enemy by turning away from them. This means to escape your back arc they need to fly further than if you turned towards. Worse for the other side to get them back in your aft arc you just continue turning away and the radius YOU are traversing the cut arc and THEY have to swing around.

A faster ship that wants to evade combat simply can. A faster ship that wants to engage can stay out of the enemy forward arc once combat closes. A faster ship that wants to fight cannot fully evade the aft arc of a ship that keeps turning away unless it is a LOT faster.
 
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[X] 0: Ten Saucer Type-1 Phasers (Infra++) [Avg Damage: 9]
[X] 1: Two Forward Photonic Launchers (Infra+) [Avg Damage: 0.6] [Alpha Strike: 15]
[X] 2: No Aft Torpedoes
[X] 3: Two Engineering Section Type-1 Phasers (Infra+) [Avg Damage: 2]
 
uju32 said:
Not particularly successful.
Cheron was explicitly a bloodbath for Starfleet despite the fact they were facing only lastgen Warp 3 Romulan warbirds at near numerical parity, 36 Romulan to 30 Earth.

United Earth lost 1 out of 3x Thunderchilds outright, and had to scuttle a 2nd after the battle.
Half the 6x NXs were destroyed, as were half of the 9x Skates, and two thirds of the 12x Stingrays.
All the survivors appear to have suffered significant damage.

The fact that the capital ships had to devote so much effort to covering for the weaknesses of the Skates and Stingrays was explicitly called out as a significant contributor to the combat losses on our side.
The Battle of Cheron represented the highest losses of the war for Earth's 'heavyweight' starships thanks to United Earth's application of the linchpin doctrine, which dictated that the NX-class cruisers and the Thunderchild-class dreadnoughts should remain at low thrust to preserve their relative positioning to the rest of the fleet, refusing to allow the Romulans to harry them away from fire support. This hypothetically would allow them to use their capable all-axis weapons to assist nearby ships that were being singled out by Romulan wolfpack tactics, responding to keep the more vulnerable members of the fleet intact over a longer time.

This was certainly the case, as during the battle the Enterprise forced no less than four disengagements by Romulan forces from the aft quarter of Earth's smaller starships, and the other NX-class ships likewise disrupted the warbird commanders from engaging in their usual chase-and-fire tactics. There were losses to this tactic despite the best efforts of the larger vessels, though the Skate-class in particular proved itself able to juke and evade Romulans attempting to insert themselves behind its flightpath. In one case the Thornback not only evaded the effort of a Romulan warbird to do so but when the enemy disengaged to pick another target managed to come about and destroy the ship with a pair of photonic torpedoes fired directly into its dorsal hull.

The linchpin strategy did however expose the larger ships to more concentrated fire. The Buran was destroyed in the opening minutes of the battle, followed by Challenger and then Endeavour. The Thunderchild found herself missing a nacelle after a nuclear contact detonation against her starboard strut, and spent the remainder of the engagement at all stop and firing her cannons. The drifting Polyphemus was further damaged in the crossfire and then destroyed in the final stages of the battle as the melee turned against the Romulans and the warbirds began taking opportunistic shots against disabled ships.
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Well yes but that's what happens when you fight a peer fleet. I don't really think our smaller ships having weaker frontal firepower and stronger aft firepower would have resulted in better considering how much firepower concentration we needed to break shielded birds of prey.
 
Nyvis said:
Well yes but that's what happens when you fight a peer fleet. I don't really think our smaller ships having weaker frontal firepower and stronger aft firepower would have resulted in better considering how much firepower concentration we needed to break shielded birds of prey.
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This isn't a small ship strat. It is explicitly for large low maneuverability ships to minimize the advantage smaller, faster, ships have over them. It allows a large slow ship to force a smaller, faster ship into it's alpha strike zone.

If you are fast enough to keep the enemy in your forward arc then forward arc is simply better.
 
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