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Starfleet Design Bureau

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I think seeing if we can boost the Engineering score a little, it would be good, because then we have an extremely cheap generalist which is both a great science ship, but also good in a pinch at most other jobs. Responding to various crises, helping a colony get their weather control satellites set up, fighting off pirates, being a capable rear-line combatant in wartime, that's a lot of bases covered for an A- cost rating.

Science ships as a rule are kind of pootling around wherever within Federation territory. A science ship which can be a good first responder and do at least okayish at helping out with any kind of emergency is... a pretty amazing thing to have, honestly. Plus we didn't pick the large antimatter stores or shuttle bay, so we should have a decent amount of space. Some kind of cargo bay so we can carry some cargo also helps a "jack of all trades" approach.

The other good pick here would be an improved medical bay. This is because it has synergy with bio-labs; a ship which has both is capable of dealing with the scariest pathogens and biohazards because it can isolate and study them in its own laboratories. As a science ship there's a good case for taking bio-labs anyway, and having the synergy means we have a capable hospital ship and first-responder to medical emergencies and outbreaks. Also synergises well with being in the rear line of a warzone.

If we successfully design one relatively cheap ship which can effectively do the jobs of a Cygnus and a Curiosity, then Starfleet will want more of them than Utopia Planetia can build.
 
I fear we are liable to try to give it to many secondary abilities.
We should focus on science but what secondarily? Combat is handeled but what I mean is general labs, medical, fabrication or storage. I do not think a secondary computer stack will be possible to pair with astro-science...
 
Skippy said:
The other good pick here would be an improved medical bay. This is because it has synergy with bio-labs; a ship which has both is capable of dealing with the scariest pathogens and biohazards because it can isolate and study them in its own laboratories. As a science ship there's a good case for taking bio-labs anyway, and having the synergy means we have a capable hospital ship and first-responder to medical emergencies and outbreaks. Also synergises well with being in the rear line of a warzone.
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yeah, but personally I would rather focus on astrology, since the previous survey ship focused on biology. And astrology/good sensors probably has strategic uses as well.
 
Captainwolf said:
yeah, but personally I would rather focus on astrology, since the previous survey ship focused on biology. And astrology/good sensors probably has strategic uses as well.
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It can take tarot readings from anywhere in the sector!

Mechanis said:
A treat:





Skate class combat frigate












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Very cool. Will probably have to consolidate all these into their own index threadmark at some point. Kinda jealous about how you get the fine resolution to do all that lovely aztecing. Also wow, the Skate. I mean I knew it was small, but it's small. There's also something very nice looking about the multi-tiered rise of the Stingray vs the flat bottom.
 
If we're thinking of putting a noticable amount of engineering into this ship too, I think we should accept using more generic multi-purpose labs to cover more disciplines with fewer auxiliary slots, backed up by just 1-2 specialist labs.

Unlike what happened with the Sagarmatha last time we used this saucer, where we went for just 3 different specialized labs by themselves and got the ship noted for having limited equipment to do anything outside of those specific fields. Only really being offset by us springing for an entire extra computer core which could just let it work through other tasks quicker.
 
No engineering! We should be doing a solid science/tactical split. I already think we're skimping on combat ability. I refuse to either bloat the design or dilute the main focuses by adding engineering.

Also I still feel like people are misinterpreting the design briefing. This isn't supposed to merely replace the Cygnus in the rear line but be capable as a front line combatant! It irks me.
 
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Can we actually please not try to make this a generalist ship.
If we are going minimum thrusters, so be it. If it's only going to have phasers and no torpedoes, so be it.

But if our goal is a cheap science ship, let's make it the most amazing cheap science ship we can.
We have the fancy high tech computer that unlocks highest level labs, lots of space and a newly growing federation to science. We were told that you can only get an S rating from using prototype tech - well we have a prototype computer. Let's get that S science rating!

We have cargo and fabricators everywhere we can, and we just built an amazing logistics base that can pass supplies on from close range. Practically all our ships already have cargo bays, even our dedicated war ships. We don't need to give up science for more engineering or cargo, and we shouldn't.

S rank science. It's within our grasp. All we have to do is reach out and take it.
 
Wootius said:
I'm voting for nothing but labs and medbays, hospital ship hooooo.
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My hope is mostly generalized science for maximum life span, plus advanced sensors. I really want to push the scanning technology as far as we can before Cloaking Klingons become a problem!

If this can't be a decent combat ship, I want it so damned good at science that we start a veritable Renaissance period as all the other races start joining Starfleet.

Who knows, if we do well enough we might even get the Vulcans to join more instead of running their own private science ships like otl.
 
[X] 2 Impulse Thrusters [Maneuverability: Slow] (Final Cost: A-)

I'm happy with this one combat downside in exchange for an economic science ship with superb speed and enough weapons to deter predators. I think we desperately need numbers to flesh out our fleet, the excellent warp speed is a pleasant bonus. I'd be down for a full science suite, not fussed about armaments so long as they're adequate tbh.
 
I kinda love the image of having a low maneuverability peak speed reserve ship. If they join a battle it's going to be more than just metaphorically the cavalry. This ship is about to Joust some fools.
 
Adding secondary capabilities whilst still hitting our design goals in primary capabilities does not somehow make the ship worse, because it's less "focussed". It simply makes the ship better, and means it will spend a higher percentage of its lifetime in-service being able to do useful jobs, because the chances of there being a useful job for the ship are higher. This is a road we've been down before with previous designs, and versatility has basically always been the right call for future-proofing our designs and getting more hulls built. Lack of versatility has limited otherwise good designs like the Reliant when we didn't have it, and turbocharged great designs like the Ushaan when we included it.
 
Skippy said:
Adding secondary capabilities whilst still hitting our design goals in primary capabilities does not somehow make the ship worse, because it's less "focussed". It simply makes the ship better, and means it will spend a higher percentage of its lifetime in-service being able to do useful jobs as there will always be a job nearby that it can help out with. This is a road we've been down before with previous designs, and versatility has basically always been the right call for future-proofing our designs and getting more hulls built. Lack of versatility has limited otherwise good designs like the Reliant when we didn't have it, and turbocharged great designs like the Ushaan when we included it.
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Our first priority needs to be significantly surpassing the Curiosity's Science score of 8. It's been 43 years, and 8 Science just isn't good enough anymore. Everything else has to come after doing that first. Also, the Curisoity may have 'only' had 12 ships built in total, but it was a very successful design, finding 30 habitable planets (some of which were eventually colonized) and stopping a major epidemic. Specialization can make great designs, too.

> Ushaan

Looking that up... I think you must be thinking of a different ship? The Ushaan was a (relatively) tiny combat-focused ship that barely had the extra space left over to put in a basic Science lab. It did really well fighting the Borg, but I can't say it had significant versatility.
 
Skippy said:
Adding secondary capabilities whilst still hitting our design goals in primary capabilities does not somehow make the ship worse, because it's less "focussed". It simply makes the ship better, and means it will spend a higher percentage of its lifetime in-service being able to do useful jobs, because the chances of there being a useful job for the ship are higher. This is a road we've been down before with previous designs, and versatility has basically always been the right call for future-proofing our designs and getting more hulls built. Lack of versatility has limited otherwise good designs like the Reliant when we didn't have it, and turbocharged great designs like the Ushaan when we included it.
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There's a fundamental clash between quester brain and the federation's design principles. Unsurprisingly, the in universe choices are correct by in universe logic, and if the canon federation succeeded so hard on the back of multirole everything, we should at least be open to the idea that it has benefits..
 
Derpmind said:
Our first priority needs to be significantly surpassing the Curiosity's Science score of 8. It's been 43 years, and 8 Science just isn't good enough anymore. Everything else has to come after doing that first. Also, the Curisoity may have 'only' had 12 ships built in total, but it was a very successful design, finding 30 habitable planets (some of which were eventually colonized) and stopping a major epidemic. Specialization can make great designs, too.
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We do want to ideally surpass it. Ideally we should aim for a little above whatever the design goal is for the project, in terms of Science Rating. In terms of the numerical scores, we have a lot more ship to play with than we did for the curiosity, almost a Sagarmartha's worth, plus access to better modules given both technological progress and the computer core opening up explicitly better options.

Specialisation has its merits; the Skate and Selachii are incredible examples of that. But I think the classic profile of almost all Federation starships in the shows should also tell us something.

Derpmind said:
> Ushaan

Looking that up... I think you must be thinking of a different ship? The Ushaan was a (relatively) tiny combat-focused ship that barely had the extra space left over to put in a basic Science lab. It did really well fighting the Borg, but I can't say it had significant versatility.
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So fair play there; I'd remembered a stronger statement than actually existed in the update. The Certification update notes that the science labs were there with the rationale of giving it a longer service life if a full-scale war with the Borg did not ensue, as it could have a more useful role while patrolling in peacetime. Given we got thirty orders, and apparently further orders were made in between the time of the Battle of Sector 001 and the start of the Dominion War, I think this definitely was the case. But it's not a knock-down statement to the effect I remembered, and I can't say it definitively proves it. The Dominion War itself definitely also played a role.

In any case I think it's hard to say that if we get say an A in Science, a B in Tactical, and let's say a C in Engineering, along with maybe one other feature like being especially good at astrometrics, or a cargo bay, or the medical synergy, or something, we won't have built a ship that Starfleet wants to build as many of as it can.
 
Skippy said:
almost a Sagarmartha's worth
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I'm pretty sure that once the secondary hull is factored into things there's going to be quite a bit more volume to play around with, it's got 7/8 decks (depending on how you count them) verses the 5 of the Sagarmartha's secondary hull, and the warp core seems to take up proportionally less space as well as being one intermix(?) chamber shorter. There was room for two auxiliary slots in that secondary hull, so I imagine it'll be around three for the Galileo secondary.
 
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Sayle said:
Very cool. Will probably have to consolidate all these into their own index threadmark at some point. Kinda jealous about how you get the fine resolution to do all that lovely aztecing. Also wow, the Skate. I mean I knew it was small, but it's small. There's also something very nice looking about the multi-tiered rise of the Stingray vs the flat bottom.
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I mean, that's mostly "a little texture goes a long way"; I just nabbed an appropriate set of tillable panel textures off one of the free sources I'm aware of and smacked it on there. Didn't even really get fancy and mess about what the UV maps (not that Vectary can even really do that outside the extremely basic "texture projection" tool, harrumph.)
 
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