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It's in-universe considered a light cruiser. I expect we're going to be building much larger ships for this generation of ship designs.
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Endorfinator
Awkwardly Social
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- California
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So if we went scientific focused light crusier does that mean we can do an engineering focused heavy frigate next? That honestly sounds like a fun and funky design brief.
Why do we need to build something else for that role? The Galileo is still worse than a Sagarmatha as a mainline combatant, and the Selachii are still very competitive. Our last three projects have all been to support offensive operations in wartime. Our internal security, on the other hand, appears to rely mostly on Cygnus, which is at this point over fifty years old. It has comically low average damage, and if we're expecting our convoy escorts to need to fight BoP it's totally screwed.
Starfleet is presumably not going to be putting mainline warship armament onto these things and then deciding that they're not actually going to put them in the fleet. But our fleet is fine. We can't stop building stuff for our fleet; Of our past five projects, three of them were for the fleet, one was a intra-system patrol boat, and the oldest one is the Cygnus:
Cygnus-class Utility Cruiser [2167]
Mass: 125,000 Tons
Single Target Rating: 8
Multi-Target Rating: 3
-Average Damage: 4.6
-Max Sustained Damage: 10.5
-Alpha Strike Damage: 23
-Coverage: 75%
-Maneuverability: Medium
Defense Rating: 32
Engineering: 5 (Shuttles, Transporter, Fabrication, 3 Cargo)
Science: 2
Warp (Efficient Cruise): 5.2 (140.6c)
Warp (Maximum Cruise): 6 (216c)
Warp (Maximum Warp): 6.8 (314.4c)
Operational Range: 70ly
Industrial Cost: 20 (Civilian) + 23 (Starfleet)
The other ship we have for rearline security is the Curiosity, which this is supposed to replace:
Curiosity-class Survey Cruiser [2163]
Mass: 125,000 Tons
Single Target Rating: 5
Multi-Target Rating: 1
-Average Damage: 2
-Max Sustained Damage: 8
-Alpha Strike Damage: 8
-Coverage: 37.5%
-Maneuverability: Medium
Defense Rating: 32
Engineering: 2 (Shuttles, Transporter)
Science: 8 (Research, Astrometrics, Advanced Medicine)
Warp (Cruise): 4.9 (117c)
Warp (Max): 6.9 (328c)
Operational Range: 58ly
Industrial Cost: 19 (Civilian) + 12 (Starfleet)
How are we going to sell this to Starfleet in the next war? Just don't build more of those heavy cruisers, let us design a new dreadnought instead? The problem is not that they're expensive now. They're basically free, right now. Then they will be very not free when we go to war and we have to pump out as many of them as we can. We've already compromised the design with low agility with the understanding that it wouldn't matter in the roles it was intended to fill. Slapping on a warship armament at the last second without being able to guarantee that Starfleet won't just keep pumping them out during wartime seems unnecessary.
I don't hate the torpedoes, and being able to put a bunch of great sensors on the frontlines in a war against the Klingons would be nice, but it runs the risk of Starfleet forcing this ship into a mainline warship role that it was not designed for and leaving our rear lines vulnerable, all to bulk up our fleet which does not need to be bulked up right now.
New Orleans-class moment.
An engineering frigate that could swap out pods for different engineering specialties would be amazing, though.
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[X] 6 Phaser Banks, 2 Forward Torpedo Launchers
[X] 6 Phaser Banks, 2 Forward Torpedo Launchers
I mean, I do kind of expect it to be the next class? It might not be a Thunderchild-style pure murder vessel, but we do tend to make our explorers pretty big and killy, so I would expect it to turn out more massive than what we're working on now and still heavily armed.
As of this turn, it's been 32 years since the Sagarmatha launched. If we say it might take up to another year to finish the Galileo, and then 5-6 years to actually design the next explorer if we pick it immediately after, that will still have the first one leaving the slips almost 4 decades after the last explorer design finished. And we've got a pretty good suite of upgrades in line for the new explorer right now, between the new Nacelles, new phasers, and now new computers. Plus whatever options we're offered and take during it's own design process.
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torps would be useful in fleet fights, but pretty much only fleet fights I think. Throw weight for the initial torp volly seems to matter more in larger fights. To me that makes them tempting but i'm not sure if its worth it.
[X] 6 Phaser Banks
Last time, when we designed our logistics base, we agonized about weaponry, had pages devoted to talking about ambushes and plots, new Klingon raiders and cruisers, fleet actions into our space, and ended up adding additional weapons pods when we could've enhanced its repair capabilities instead. There was lots of doom and gloom, lots of what ifs, ultimately it didn't matter because the station wasn't put anywhere near conflict areas. No such facility was ever lost or significantly damaged by combat.
This ship should not serve as a warship. It's a science ship with enough weapons to deal with anything less than a light warship and to provide limited support in fleet actions. If it's made to fight Klingons in 15 years time, something has already gone terribly wrong.
We've got better armour in the pipeline, and word of QM says better shields. Not everything needs to be able to suplex a D6.
Last time, when we designed our logistics base, we agonized about weaponry, had pages devoted to talking about ambushes and plots, new Klingon raiders and cruisers, fleet actions into our space, and ended up adding additional weapons pods when we could've enhanced its repair capabilities instead. There was lots of doom and gloom, lots of what ifs, ultimately it didn't matter because the station wasn't put anywhere near conflict areas. No such facility was ever lost or significantly damaged by combat.
This ship should not serve as a warship. It's a science ship with enough weapons to deal with anything less than a light warship and to provide limited support in fleet actions. If it's made to fight Klingons in 15 years time, something has already gone terribly wrong.
We've got better armour in the pipeline, and word of QM says better shields. Not everything needs to be able to suplex a D6.
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It doesn't matter what it's designed for. It matters what it can do. Choosing not to take options for fear of future use isn't particularly logical, and frankly, kinda silly. Giving ships more options gives Starfleet more flexibility in deployment.
KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
Understandable, who doesn't love being able to photorp a pursuer? But I would prefer being able to double-tap forward targets.
[X] 6 Phaser Banks, 2 Forward Torpedo Launchers
[] 6 Phaser Banks, 2 Forward Torpedo Launchers
[X] 6 Phaser Banks
We saved those guys so much on those lightly armed stations we built. Fork it over guys (this is a mugging).
Naa we're comitted to the porcipine. To torpedo on a science ship, or not to torpedo on a science ship, that is the question.
Edit: Ya know saying it out loud kind of answered it for me, and the answer was "YES".
Edit2: I'm waffling today. its 4 steps in cost, for 3 steps in power. I just think for a Science ship its unnecessary, especially as its mono-directional and these guys are intentionally poor maneuver for the cost. It feels like counter-synergy.
[X] 6 Phaser Banks
We saved those guys so much on those lightly armed stations we built. Fork it over guys (this is a mugging).
Naa we're comitted to the porcipine. To torpedo on a science ship, or not to torpedo on a science ship, that is the question.
Edit: Ya know saying it out loud kind of answered it for me, and the answer was "YES".
Edit2: I'm waffling today. its 4 steps in cost, for 3 steps in power. I just think for a Science ship its unnecessary, especially as its mono-directional and these guys are intentionally poor maneuver for the cost. It feels like counter-synergy.
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Thank you. It felt a bit like I was just posting into a void and annoying everyone for a minute.
I do get that it's sorta counterintuitive, and I was initially assuming I'd vote for six phasers and just doing my due diligence here but... this is a very exceptional set of circumstances we're in.
And again, unless we're doing it for our next design, which would be deeply silly a new battleship without new tech is unlikely to offer a significant firepower/cost improvement on our existing warships and we're currently at peace, this is not relevant.
Building a Thunderchild Mk. II for our next project is called out as technically-possible but kind of unlikely scenario by the QM. So it's silly to suddenly mid-argument discover that we had deep-seated conviction for doing it all along. Like, no we aren't lmao.
Like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't find this very convincing? It's also just like, very obviously a bad proposition right now.
So fair enough, but I don't think we're doing our next explorer until we have some more technology ready for it first. Like I am 99% sure that was never on the cards, which is why Sayle said "Thunderchild Mk. II" as an example of a conflict in terms of weapons production, not "next explorer".
We have been told we will probably be designing a new nacelle soon, for one thing; and that would be a logical prerequisite to our next explorer design. We also want the new hull, and the new shields, and we will probably want to amortise that tech risk over at least one intermediate design, even assuming we get the option for the explorer, which is not going to happen.
Like if it helps, we could ask.
Hey @Sayle, is the next generation of explorer on the cards to be our next project?
Star Trek online has exactly that and it is one of my favorite designs and concepts. I would love to build a Patrol Frigate/Light Cruiser that goes heavy on speed agility and firepower, with secondary role of engineering to provide assistance to ships in distress and just all round day to day Patrol duties.
Hermes Patrol Escort
Release date: February 2, 2010The Hermes-class Patrol Escort is a Tier 5 (Level 40) Escort which may be flown by Starfleet characters, including Federation-aligned Romulan Republic and Dominion characters. All faction restrictions of this starship can be removed by having a level 65 KDF...
sto.fandom.com
It's like a cartoon where you cock the hammer of your revolver and a smaller revolver comes out of the gap.
I mean you could. I was thinking more a utility/engineering or diplomatic vessel. But since there's no pressing "oh god capability gap" issue after the Curiosity is replaced I was planning to give you a vote on it.
I'm sorry, I missed this post! I'm afraid I'm a bit confused by your meaning here?. Of course we'd be building the Galileo for Starfleet, it's a design for a Federation starship.
The point is... it does not have a meaningful cost to us now, because of the situation we're in, the precise timframe, and the lack of other stuff eating lots of torpedo launcher production. That may not be true in five years, it wouldn't be true five years ago, but it is true now.
It's a 50% boost to our Single Target Damage, which factors in the manoeuvrability penalty, basically for free given our current lack of other things requiring photon torpedo launcher production. Average Damage and Multi-Target Damage also improve, although less dramatically.
Even if you think we wouldn't get to use our Alpha Strike or Max Sustained Damage very often outside big fleet battles - and to be fair I think you're basically right there - it's a big upgrade for something which does not cost us very much right now. Also the Tactical Rating overall is a decent yardstick which factors in manoeuvrability along with everything else, and also benefits a lot.
If it reduced the primary build cost or we were still building Selachiis, it would be much more arguable as a value proposition, but as things stand...
Ooh, diplomatic vessel. Don't think we've done one of those yet.
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The STO Patrol Escorts are nice looking ships and I want us to build a version.
Yes, unless all our designs are frontline combatants. Right now, our frigates are all dedicated warships, our explorers double as battlecruisers, and our science ships and utility frigates "secure" the rear, although they're realistically going to struggle to protect anything. My point is that our frontline is fine, but our rear line is not. We need to start bulking up our currently nonexistent fleet of not deathtrap second line ships, not buy even more frontline ships.
Of course we could hope that Starfleet admirals will go into a war and decide that they want to use frontline warships to protect convoys, but I'm not betting on that.