It's wild to see bloodletting in the modern treatment sectiom for a disease. Take care!
Linked contents
0t4n1z3r019
Member of the HAFPTG
- Location
- Philippines
Damn. I hope that your health improves, so take it easy for now.
WilyMachineKing1
Executive Manager of Limbus Company
- Location
- Reno Nevada
Hope you get better! Take your time with this, it sounds serious. At least to me. Anyways, hope you get better!
- Location
- sweden
Perfectly sciencey and cheeky in the future
2211: Project Galileo (Review)
AN: This isn't a revival - I'm still awaiting treatment that will hopefully improve things. However, enough has been thrown together on the narrative front over the last months to post this update, along with some minor brainstorming for refined mechanics in future. For now though, this is just a conclusion to Project Galileo.
Shakedown Report
Commander Yoshiko Sato, Acting-Captain
UFS Kea
Personal Thoughts
Having covered all the engineering reports and technical specifications that will no doubt be of great interest to the teams who will be finishing the shakedown process, I would like to spend a moment on more subjective impressions that may help prepare the incoming command and crew.
The Kea is big. She might not mass the most out of any design in the fleet - that distinction still belongs to the Sagarmatha-class, old giants that they are - but she does have the most usable internal space. Systems upon systems upon systems, many of them substantially more interlinked and complicated than those on other designs. I spent four months buried in the internal schematics before taking her out on shakedown, and if you asked me to tell you where the greatest plasma flow instability in the power system was, I couldn't answer you. I could do that for the Curiosity-class, and I was a chief science officer, not CO. The answer is that on the Kea it varies according to power load, the operating mode of the main plasma bleed junctions, and your honest-to-god warp factor. I'd go so far to say this is the first ship where a captain can't be expected to know how all the systems work and how they interact with each other. You're going to need to rely on your division heads more than ever for their expertise.
The Kea is fast. My grandmother was on the Enterprise when she first broke the Warp 5 barrier. From what she told me, the whole ship was threatening to shake itself apart and fires were breaking out in main engineering. The Kea doesn't shake, but she starts a low whine that comes up through the deckplates the closer you get to the maximum. It's when you push past 7.6 that she starts shaking - at 7.65 it feels like the ship is flying apart at the seams. If your chief can find a way to reduce plasma turbulence when the injectors are running at higher than 100%, you can probably hit 7.7 and start scraping the time-desync barrier. But until then I don't recommend trying to push the envelope. I know it's your first instinct to test the limits, but take it from my experience that the Kea is already pushing that limit out of the packaging and trying to find that extra percent or two performance that the dockyard supposedly leaves off the table for maintenance or endurance reasons is just going to rough things up.
The Kea is smart. The new computer systems are incredibly agile in terms of computational speed and the ease with which they crunch fuzzy data, and the throughput of even the passive sensor systems is substantial. The astrobiology and mineralogy capabilities mean that you can undertake detailed analysis of practically everything on a given planet, while the astrometric systems can readily ferret out systems of interest from ten light-years out. Everything about the ship yearns for long-range exploration, but there is a reason the warp propulsion is so advanced despite the short mission times.
Simply put, the Kea is not designed to fight. Her impulse engines are powerful but having only the center drive really puts a damper on the manoeuvrability. I can understand why given the lacking thruster performance that torpedo systems were eschewed by the design team entirely, and when you look at where it might go you generally find quite a useful system that the scientist in me would regret not having. Her dual phaser banks can hit practically anywhere in the surrounding space, but without torpedoes you will never outfight something in the same mass-class that does have them, which is practically anything of the same size. Running away from those fights is what that warp engine is for. Push her to the red line and you'll leave a Klingon D6 staring at your ion trail and wondering where you disappeared to, no questions asked.
A Brief History of the Kea and Saladin-class Starships
Class Paper, 2340.
…the competency of the Kea-class was not in question, and when the prototype underwent trials in 2211 it was clear that it represented the absolute state-of-the-art in scientific capability. But its sheer size and expense, even with the cost-cutting measures inherent in its design, prompted consideration of other designs by Starfleet Command. While there were several initial proposals, the only true rival was from the Starship Design Bureau itself. While the Utopia Planitia design team had pioneered the Kea, the San Francisco group less than a light-hour away had been at work on their own proposal.
The Saladin-class was in many ways the opposite end of the spectrum from the Kea-class. Both shared the recycled Sagarmatha-class saucer section, but while the Utopia Planitia team had elected to add an engineering section and a dual-nacelle design, the Saladin-class instead used a single underslung nacelle with the strut emerging directly from the aft of the saucer section. This produced significant mass savings over the Kea-class, but resulted in a more cramped design.
Prioritising the request from Starfleet to have a solid combatant at a higher level than scientific facilities, the Saladin featured two forward torpedo tubes and an unorthodox phaser layout with one centerline bank supporting the ventrally-launched torpedoes, while a pair of offset banks protected the forward and flanking dorsal arcs. The vulnerability to aft was partially mitigated by the superior engine power, but remained a sticking point for the procurement board.
Without a separate engineering section to increase available space, the Saladin-class was much more limited in scientific terms. While still equipped with general science labs it focused specialist expertise on dilithium detection and analysis rather than the broader spectrum provided by the Kea. While reception was mixed across Starfleet in general, it was preferred by Starfleet Tactical in particular over its larger competitor and was pushed as a favoured design for combined border patrol and prospector missions.
The Kea-class proved more complicated to produce than the Saladin-class, taking two years to produce each against the Saladin's one. The first run of the Kea-class consisted of four ships: the Kea, Kakapo, Cockatiel, and Macaw; all built between 2211 and 2214. The Saladin-class was commissioned in a similar timeframe in eight hulls: the Saladin, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Kublai, Temujin, Lysander, Darius, and Xerxes. There was then a pause in production until 2218, after which the Kea-class was ordered again in two blocks to make twelve ships, while the Saladin was further expanded to a total of sixteen.
No further orders were made of either class as new technology obsoleted their constituent parts. The Kea-class underwent a retrofit in 2240 to install a pair of forward torpedoes and lost its dilithium-analysis suite in favour of an expansion of its antimatter reserves, turning the ship into a budget heavy cruiser. The anticipated hostilities with the Klingons did not materialise as soon as expected, and the nine ships that survived the Federation-Klingon War two decades later continued in service until 2270 when they underwent a full refit as part of the Fleet Modernisation Program.
The refit gave the Kea-class a further two decades of life, but by 2290 it was painfully clear that the ship had been surpassed by its contemporaries in every metric. The decommissioning of the Macaw in 2292 marked the end of their flight. The relative recency of their refit provided some final service, and the ships were kept in their boneyard orbits and scavenged for parts over the next decade. The lack of original structures save for sections of the spaceframe were a disincentive for preservation efforts, and they were finally broken up for scrap in 2310 with no surviving examples of the class.
The Saladin-class was for a time Starfleet's favoured tool on the border, being used to stake a claim on nearby territory and analyse accessible star systems for resources. Unfortunately by 2240 their vulnerability to more maneuverable Klingon designs like the Bird of Prey and outmatched systems against the new D7 cruiser consigned them to a more protected survey and local patrol role in Federation space proper. Their time to shine came in 2267 with the outbreak of the Federation-Klingon War, a full fifty years after the Saladin first left spacedock. Unfortunately the aging armament and defensive systems resulted in their preferred assignment to support positions, and while ships like the Hamilcar and Tamerlane accumulated a notable list of battle honours the class as a whole suffered serious attrition during the conflict. Of the fifteen starships in service when the war began, only six survived to its end two and a half years later. Judging a refit as a poor use of resources, the Saladin-class was instead succeeded by newer designs and decommissioned in 2271.
Of the two, the ultimate irony was that while the Saladin-class was obstensibly a science vessel and there were more of them, it accomplished only a fraction of the work of its larger counterpart. The Kea-class was restricted to short, planned missions on the edges of Federation space, but its impressive scientific suite provided invaluable information about the surrounding systems: there are currently fifteen million colonists living on planets today that were first surveyed by the Kea-class and quickly marked as ideal for future habitation. The Saladin accomplished vital industrial work in its dilithium prospecting missions, very much paying for their own warp engines, but after 2240 the shortcomings of their single-nacelle design and lesser capabilities effectively removed their status as a science ship only three decades after their launch. In the end, the Kea had the last laugh: even if it does hold the dubious honour of being the last non-frigate launched by Starfleet without torpedoes.
Kea-class Science Cruiser
Deck 1: Main Bridge, Conference Room
Deck 2: Main Subspace Transceiver, Command Quarters, Dorsal Phaser Banks
Deck 3: Officers Quarters, Crew Quarters
Deck 4: Crew Quarters, General Laboratories, Astrometrics, Computer Core Access
Deck 5: Impulse Engine Access, Transporter Room One, Sickbay, Biosciences, Forward Lounge
Deck 6: General Maintenance
Deck 7: Transporter Room Two, Geology Lab, Turbolift Maintenance, Ventral Phaser Banks
Deck 8: Ship Systems Monitoring
Deck 9: Liquid Storage
Deck 10: Break Room, Probe Launch Control
Deck 11: Main Energizer Circuit
Deck 12: Shuttlebay Monitoring, Secondary Computer Core Access
Deck 13: Main Engineering
Deck 14: Shuttlebay
Deck 15: Aft Tractor Beam, Shuttle Maintenance
Deck 16: Cargo Bay, Dilithium Analysis, Deflector Control
Deck 17: Matter Injector Monitoring, Arboretum
Deck 18: Liquid Storage, Forward Tractor Beam
Shakedown Report
Commander Yoshiko Sato, Acting-Captain
UFS Kea
Personal Thoughts
Having covered all the engineering reports and technical specifications that will no doubt be of great interest to the teams who will be finishing the shakedown process, I would like to spend a moment on more subjective impressions that may help prepare the incoming command and crew.
The Kea is big. She might not mass the most out of any design in the fleet - that distinction still belongs to the Sagarmatha-class, old giants that they are - but she does have the most usable internal space. Systems upon systems upon systems, many of them substantially more interlinked and complicated than those on other designs. I spent four months buried in the internal schematics before taking her out on shakedown, and if you asked me to tell you where the greatest plasma flow instability in the power system was, I couldn't answer you. I could do that for the Curiosity-class, and I was a chief science officer, not CO. The answer is that on the Kea it varies according to power load, the operating mode of the main plasma bleed junctions, and your honest-to-god warp factor. I'd go so far to say this is the first ship where a captain can't be expected to know how all the systems work and how they interact with each other. You're going to need to rely on your division heads more than ever for their expertise.
The Kea is fast. My grandmother was on the Enterprise when she first broke the Warp 5 barrier. From what she told me, the whole ship was threatening to shake itself apart and fires were breaking out in main engineering. The Kea doesn't shake, but she starts a low whine that comes up through the deckplates the closer you get to the maximum. It's when you push past 7.6 that she starts shaking - at 7.65 it feels like the ship is flying apart at the seams. If your chief can find a way to reduce plasma turbulence when the injectors are running at higher than 100%, you can probably hit 7.7 and start scraping the time-desync barrier. But until then I don't recommend trying to push the envelope. I know it's your first instinct to test the limits, but take it from my experience that the Kea is already pushing that limit out of the packaging and trying to find that extra percent or two performance that the dockyard supposedly leaves off the table for maintenance or endurance reasons is just going to rough things up.
The Kea is smart. The new computer systems are incredibly agile in terms of computational speed and the ease with which they crunch fuzzy data, and the throughput of even the passive sensor systems is substantial. The astrobiology and mineralogy capabilities mean that you can undertake detailed analysis of practically everything on a given planet, while the astrometric systems can readily ferret out systems of interest from ten light-years out. Everything about the ship yearns for long-range exploration, but there is a reason the warp propulsion is so advanced despite the short mission times.
Simply put, the Kea is not designed to fight. Her impulse engines are powerful but having only the center drive really puts a damper on the manoeuvrability. I can understand why given the lacking thruster performance that torpedo systems were eschewed by the design team entirely, and when you look at where it might go you generally find quite a useful system that the scientist in me would regret not having. Her dual phaser banks can hit practically anywhere in the surrounding space, but without torpedoes you will never outfight something in the same mass-class that does have them, which is practically anything of the same size. Running away from those fights is what that warp engine is for. Push her to the red line and you'll leave a Klingon D6 staring at your ion trail and wondering where you disappeared to, no questions asked.
A Brief History of the Kea and Saladin-class Starships
Class Paper, 2340.
…the competency of the Kea-class was not in question, and when the prototype underwent trials in 2211 it was clear that it represented the absolute state-of-the-art in scientific capability. But its sheer size and expense, even with the cost-cutting measures inherent in its design, prompted consideration of other designs by Starfleet Command. While there were several initial proposals, the only true rival was from the Starship Design Bureau itself. While the Utopia Planitia design team had pioneered the Kea, the San Francisco group less than a light-hour away had been at work on their own proposal.
The Saladin-class was in many ways the opposite end of the spectrum from the Kea-class. Both shared the recycled Sagarmatha-class saucer section, but while the Utopia Planitia team had elected to add an engineering section and a dual-nacelle design, the Saladin-class instead used a single underslung nacelle with the strut emerging directly from the aft of the saucer section. This produced significant mass savings over the Kea-class, but resulted in a more cramped design.
Prioritising the request from Starfleet to have a solid combatant at a higher level than scientific facilities, the Saladin featured two forward torpedo tubes and an unorthodox phaser layout with one centerline bank supporting the ventrally-launched torpedoes, while a pair of offset banks protected the forward and flanking dorsal arcs. The vulnerability to aft was partially mitigated by the superior engine power, but remained a sticking point for the procurement board.
Without a separate engineering section to increase available space, the Saladin-class was much more limited in scientific terms. While still equipped with general science labs it focused specialist expertise on dilithium detection and analysis rather than the broader spectrum provided by the Kea. While reception was mixed across Starfleet in general, it was preferred by Starfleet Tactical in particular over its larger competitor and was pushed as a favoured design for combined border patrol and prospector missions.
The Kea-class proved more complicated to produce than the Saladin-class, taking two years to produce each against the Saladin's one. The first run of the Kea-class consisted of four ships: the Kea, Kakapo, Cockatiel, and Macaw; all built between 2211 and 2214. The Saladin-class was commissioned in a similar timeframe in eight hulls: the Saladin, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Kublai, Temujin, Lysander, Darius, and Xerxes. There was then a pause in production until 2218, after which the Kea-class was ordered again in two blocks to make twelve ships, while the Saladin was further expanded to a total of sixteen.
No further orders were made of either class as new technology obsoleted their constituent parts. The Kea-class underwent a retrofit in 2240 to install a pair of forward torpedoes and lost its dilithium-analysis suite in favour of an expansion of its antimatter reserves, turning the ship into a budget heavy cruiser. The anticipated hostilities with the Klingons did not materialise as soon as expected, and the nine ships that survived the Federation-Klingon War two decades later continued in service until 2270 when they underwent a full refit as part of the Fleet Modernisation Program.
The refit gave the Kea-class a further two decades of life, but by 2290 it was painfully clear that the ship had been surpassed by its contemporaries in every metric. The decommissioning of the Macaw in 2292 marked the end of their flight. The relative recency of their refit provided some final service, and the ships were kept in their boneyard orbits and scavenged for parts over the next decade. The lack of original structures save for sections of the spaceframe were a disincentive for preservation efforts, and they were finally broken up for scrap in 2310 with no surviving examples of the class.
The Saladin-class was for a time Starfleet's favoured tool on the border, being used to stake a claim on nearby territory and analyse accessible star systems for resources. Unfortunately by 2240 their vulnerability to more maneuverable Klingon designs like the Bird of Prey and outmatched systems against the new D7 cruiser consigned them to a more protected survey and local patrol role in Federation space proper. Their time to shine came in 2267 with the outbreak of the Federation-Klingon War, a full fifty years after the Saladin first left spacedock. Unfortunately the aging armament and defensive systems resulted in their preferred assignment to support positions, and while ships like the Hamilcar and Tamerlane accumulated a notable list of battle honours the class as a whole suffered serious attrition during the conflict. Of the fifteen starships in service when the war began, only six survived to its end two and a half years later. Judging a refit as a poor use of resources, the Saladin-class was instead succeeded by newer designs and decommissioned in 2271.
Of the two, the ultimate irony was that while the Saladin-class was obstensibly a science vessel and there were more of them, it accomplished only a fraction of the work of its larger counterpart. The Kea-class was restricted to short, planned missions on the edges of Federation space, but its impressive scientific suite provided invaluable information about the surrounding systems: there are currently fifteen million colonists living on planets today that were first surveyed by the Kea-class and quickly marked as ideal for future habitation. The Saladin accomplished vital industrial work in its dilithium prospecting missions, very much paying for their own warp engines, but after 2240 the shortcomings of their single-nacelle design and lesser capabilities effectively removed their status as a science ship only three decades after their launch. In the end, the Kea had the last laugh: even if it does hold the dubious honour of being the last non-frigate launched by Starfleet without torpedoes.
| Class | Kea-class | Saladin-class |
| Design Team | Utopia Planitia | San Francisco |
| Mass | 255000 | 180000 |
| Single Target Rating | 12 | 17 |
| Multi-Target Rating | 12 | 4 |
| Average Damage | 12 | 8.3 |
| Max Sustained Damage | 12 | 24 |
| Alpha Strike Damage | 12 | 48 |
| Coverage | 100% | 54% |
| Maneuverability | Low | Medium |
| Defense Rating | 48 | 34 |
| Engineering | 4 | 2 |
| Science | 19 | 9 |
| Efficient Cruise | 5.2 | 4.8 |
| Maximum Cruise | 6.4 | 5.8 |
| Maximum Warp | 7.6 | 6.8 |
| Operational Range | 70ly | 55ly |
| Ratings | ||
| Cost | A- | S |
| Infrastructure | C- | A- |
| Tactical Rating | B- | A- |
| Engineering Rating | C- | D+ |
| Science Rating | S | C- |
| Ordered | 12 | 16 |
| Refit | 2270 | --- |
| Decommissioned | 2292 | 2271 |
Kea-class Science Cruiser
Deck 1: Main Bridge, Conference Room
Deck 2: Main Subspace Transceiver, Command Quarters, Dorsal Phaser Banks
Deck 3: Officers Quarters, Crew Quarters
Deck 4: Crew Quarters, General Laboratories, Astrometrics, Computer Core Access
Deck 5: Impulse Engine Access, Transporter Room One, Sickbay, Biosciences, Forward Lounge
Deck 6: General Maintenance
Deck 7: Transporter Room Two, Geology Lab, Turbolift Maintenance, Ventral Phaser Banks
Deck 8: Ship Systems Monitoring
Deck 9: Liquid Storage
Deck 10: Break Room, Probe Launch Control
Deck 11: Main Energizer Circuit
Deck 12: Shuttlebay Monitoring, Secondary Computer Core Access
Deck 13: Main Engineering
Deck 14: Shuttlebay
Deck 15: Aft Tractor Beam, Shuttle Maintenance
Deck 16: Cargo Bay, Dilithium Analysis, Deflector Control
Deck 17: Matter Injector Monitoring, Arboretum
Deck 18: Liquid Storage, Forward Tractor Beam
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Glad to see you still kicking, Sayle.
It's also extremely important for us to note as a baseline in the future - a B- Tactical rating means a ship can't be expected to consistently win a fight against a peer opponent, judging by the engineer's evaluation in the first half. A useful reference for later.
EDIT: Although our model did have a longer lifespan than our competitor, so that was cool.
It's also extremely important for us to note as a baseline in the future - a B- Tactical rating means a ship can't be expected to consistently win a fight against a peer opponent, judging by the engineer's evaluation in the first half. A useful reference for later.
EDIT: Although our model did have a longer lifespan than our competitor, so that was cool.
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TheShadowDeamon
Mighty Dragon
Welcome back, I like the schematic artwork with the Phaser arcs. Really helps to visualise what it can do.
I ended up adding another paragraph at the end elaborating on the Saladin's mission life. I'd say the Kea won that fight. The Saladin cut too many corners to really get the longevity needed for its stated role, while the Kea maybe cut too few corners in the name of Science. It's a difficult balancing act, but sometimes big and shiny will win the race in the end against the alternative. Vimes Boots Paradox and so forth.
I am thinking of having the competitor angle when things kick off again, though. You're still competing against your own decision-making, but there's a parallel design in the work trying to do the same thing with slightly different emphasis. Also lets some canon designs show up.
Edit: it's the lack of spike damage. But as said, torpedoes will come as standard in future. It will more be a matter of how many torpedoes, if you include aft, etc.
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- Location
- SEAsia
- Pronouns
- Thou
Probas more along the lines of our potential rivals and opponents aiming for an A and S as a minimum on their combat deducated hulls.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Well!
In the long run, the birb did good. Even though not as many were commissioned, it lasted almost a full century, while the Bargain Basement El Cheapo Tactical Cruiser was phased out after 60 years, and wasn't even great at its intended role because the compromises it took to get that insane cost effectiveness meant it couldn't really do much against a BoP, while the Kea at least had Full Coverage and Maximum Speedy Gonzales mode going for it. And it wasn't hard for it to be refit into an actually decent tactical cruiser at need.
In the long run, the birb did good. Even though not as many were commissioned, it lasted almost a full century, while the Bargain Basement El Cheapo Tactical Cruiser was phased out after 60 years, and wasn't even great at its intended role because the compromises it took to get that insane cost effectiveness meant it couldn't really do much against a BoP, while the Kea at least had Full Coverage and Maximum Speedy Gonzales mode going for it. And it wasn't hard for it to be refit into an actually decent tactical cruiser at need.
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I think you should. Knowing that we might actually come out second-best in a design submission would be amazingly useful for keeping us on task, as does this little demonstration of how close the race was.
Engineers usually need someone to kick their asses out of the chair and into the workshop whenever the Good Idea Fairy pokes her head in.
No, it was not. The Saladin was "Trustworthy Al's Bargain-Bin Warship" as demonstrated by the S-rank Cost and A- Infrastructure. They could have made a probably-exponentially better warship/science cruiser hybrid if they hadn't focused on that.
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NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Amounts to the same thing here. It was able to do science, patrols, and combat, just none of them particularly well.
It had a high tactical score and was dirt cheap. Nothing lower than a A- on combat and production metrics. Frankly if the Klingons HAD gone to war? It'd have been a Stingray or Skate analogue easily. Problem is that means is suffers everywhere else, including in its ostensible role. C- on science in a science ship? Not a great look.I think you should. Knowing that we might actually come out second-best in a design submission would be amazingly useful for keeping us on task, as does this little demonstration of how close the race was.
Engineers usually need someone to kick their asses out of the chair and into the workshop whenever the Good Idea Fairy pokes her head in.
No, it was not. The Saladin was "Trustworthy Al's Bargain-Bin Warship" as demonstrated by the S-rank Cost and A- Infrastructure. They could have made a probably-exponentially better warship/science cruiser hybrid if they hadn't focused on that.
In short it was a "Weapon built for now," as opposed to the Kea's "Science ship built for the next half century and beyond with the ability to support actual combat ships in a pinch."
Trent01
A Fountain of Quest Ideas
I support this too when you get back in the saddle. Sounding like Klingon conflict is coming up soon, so makes sense for multiple shipbuilding programs to pop up simultaneously now.
Not really - see below.
I don't disagree, which is why I described it how I did. They chose a focus which didn't really match the mission objective we were given, and not enough effort was put into the primary purpose handed down by the customer or making the product long-lasting.
The only thing that saved the Saladine from outright rejection was a combination of torpedoes and how cheap it was. If either of those were different, it's entirely possible the Kea would have been the majority production and Saladine the secondary.
The difference between a science ship that can be a fleet combatant and a fleet combatant that can be a science ship. Not surprising which one Starfleet Tactical wanted (and got), but also not surprising which one had the most productive service life, either. Technically the Kea got 3M tons of ship produced and the Saladin got 2.8M. Pretty close, admittedly. But then the Kea got a mid-life retrofit and a late full refit to the Enterprise-A era, even if it was just delaying the inevitable. That probably adds a solid 1M to the total tonnage invested.
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NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
I think I'm interpretting the scores differently to you? I read them as 'can fight, but isn't a match for a dedicated warship' (the Kea beats it in a number of areas), 'can do science and engineering, but only a bit of them', and 'can get around a bit at reasonable speeds, but is nothing to write home about'. A ship that can fulfil a range of roles, but doesn't excel at any of them.
In other words, they created a ship based on what they wanted - cheap and good in a fight - and did the absolute rock-bottom bare-minimum of what the customer wanted.
That's either "We know better than the customer" or "We're appeasing somebody who's not the customer" or "We're appeasing one faction of the customer's support base and not really concerning ourselves with another". That latter one is what the Saladine did.
None of that is "Jack of all trades".
Keep in mind. C is average, a design with straight c's is the expected average for a ship of its size/class. With that in mind, the Saladin is AMAZINGLY easy to produce, cheap and a good fighter (for its time and size) but below average in science and almost incapable in Engineering work. It's also notably slower than the Kea by a substantial margin in warp, curtailing its ability to move and patrol greatly. It's essentially a shiv made to shank Klingon in a fight for RIGHT NOW. As the fight failed to materialize until many decades later, it aged poorly.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
The two aren't mutually exclusive, you know? A ship can be built to be cheap and with the mindset of 'we're focusing on just one faction of the customer support base', and still end up as a ship which does a bunch of stuff, none of them especially well. The intent might not have been jack of all trades, but that seems to be what they got.
I think it's because I'm comparing the sub-scores (coverage, defense, sustained damage, etc) to the Kea that it's not coming across as an especially good fighter- being beaten out in multiple areas by a ship that's essentially a flying slug which happens to mount phasers isn't especially impressive.
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