NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
I think so. Generally we've leaned into the 'what the hell, how can you claim this isn't a warship with a straight face' end of things.
Linked contents
StarFleet is a bunch of overachieves and what they consider "minimal acceptable" for a starship is by other polities standards a bleeding edge overengineered murder-machine which requires multiple peer-tech ships to match.
We skipped a lot of labs also. The endeavor style saucer is what saved at science score, the thing had cutting edge sensor suites.
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NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
To explore.
Exploration.
The ability to explore.
I hope this has been helpful.
(But nah, more seriously explorers are high-end general-purpose ships; they're out on their own for long periods of time and are going to running into all kinds of unknown and weird shit, so they need to be comfortable and able to science, fight, and negotiate good)
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This all true. So I'll add my own two cents to this.
Explorers are ships that are meant to go on long term exploration missions outside Federation space. So they should be able to move at a decent FTL speed, research whatever interesting thing they run into.
And most importantly of all they need to be able to Survive and Return. Which means they need sufficient mobility to avoid problems they can't handle. A sufficient armament to handle what problems it can. And the ability to repair and maintain the ship so that it keeps working.
They also need the science capacity to handle the more exotic problems. But I think that's kind of common sense in Star Trek. Sooo…
- Location
- America
Primarily, I'd prefer that we stick science labs in a battlecruiser hull and use that for long range, long duration exploration outside the federation's borders. A large hull and a large warp core allows more power and space for advanced equipment. Also in a pinch we also have roving battlecruisers on hand pre-emptively dealing with any external trouble spots.
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I feel pretty vindicated in not choosing torpedoes after seeing how the Saladin turned out and that final science stat on the Kea is straight up monstrous (nearly twice the Sagarmatha's).
The Kea managed to do several times the work of the Saladin's despite having 3/4 of the number of hulls and managed to not just stay in service about 20 more years (~60 vs ~80 years) but spent it's whole service life as a science vessel which itself is more than twice as long as how long the Saladin spent as a science ship (~30 years)
I also do not think that a torpedo-Kea's greater tactical capabilities would have been able to justify Starfleet deciding to produce it solely and in greater numbers since the primary reason for the Saladin's development was due to cost, not because of tactical deficiencies.
If I had to speculate the most likely outcome for a counterpart to the torpedo-Kea would probably be a spammable and underarmed frigate weight science ship (the other science ship option we were given) for internal surveys instead of another cruiser since a more well armed Kea would cover all the tactical needs the frontier demanded (it would probably still have been pulled off of frontier duty at around the same time as the Saladin due to similar tactical scores).
Interestingly, since the Saladin clocks in at 180,000 tons it's hull would actually qualify for this role as the cutoff for the frigate's mass was 200,000 tons. You'd just need to strip off the majority of the weapons the Saladin had to make more space for science facilities since I doubt you'd be able to afford the same armaments given the industry demands of a torpedo-Kea.
I'm doubt however that such a ship would be anywhere near as survivable as the Kea (9/12 of the Kea's managed to survive the Klingon war which is pretty solid majority) which may lead to some longevity issues since I'm pretty certain a spammable underarmed frigate would not have the firepower or durability to ward off even a single BoP (they may just get popped by an ambushing cloaked BoP's alpha) and may not be able to run away at warp as quickly as the Kea could given how much slower the Saladin turned out (can't even hit warp 7 when sprinting) in order to make it even more affordable than the Kea.
Regardless though, a hypothetical torpedo-Kea would have still been retired around the same time as its non-torpedo counterpart since it's science facilities would be the exact same while the additional torpedoes wouldn't change the fact that it would still be woefully obsolete as a combatant at the time of it's retirement (the Saladin by the Klingon war was already obsolescent, much less what another 20 years would entail).
Even if we go with the optimistic route of Starfleet deciding to only build torpedo-Kea's the selling point of its tactical prowess wouldn't have payed off since by the time of the Klingon war it would have been obsolescent and the OTL Kea's which did get refitted with torpedoes in 2240 didn't seem to have distinguished themselves during the war.
On the flipside, I'm not sure if we could even design a ship that would have satisfied all of Starfleet's needs enough to justify building just one class of science ship.
The Saladin compromised a lot on science facilities (science stat of 9 is worse than the 35 year old Sagamartha's 10 and less than half the Kea's rating of 19) since it didn't bother with a separate engineering section so it had less room overall for facilities. This meant not just fewer facilities to boost science and engineering stat overall but also fewer chances for synergistic combos to inflate those stats even further or in the Saladin's case give it a non terrible rating (seriously, the Saladin's science and engineering stats look terrible by comparison as both stat are either half or less than half the Kea's stat and an aggregate of those stats between the total hulls of each class produced would see the Saladin behind by a lot).
To put it into perspective, if we had gone with 2 torpedoes and 4 phasers for the Kea (which would have still costed more industry than the Saladin) which would give it 75% phaser coverage, equal alpha strike, and double the Saladin's multi-target rating (8 vs 4) it would have still been a whole grade worse in tactical rating than the Saladin thanks to the Saladin's medium vs the Kea's low maneuverability.
Basically, it seems like with a cruiser weight science vessel at our current level of tech we have to make compromises and settle for either few and costly but high performance or numerous and cheap but mediocre to outright bad (that 9 science stat is painful even if A- tactical is nice) but Starfleet required both capable and numerous science vessels so they ended up going with two different options at the same time.
Overall though, I think this was the best outcome. The Kea put in a ton of work and it has had one of the longest service lives out of all our designs. It managed to strike a good balance between it's primary role of being a science vessel while remaining survivable enough that the majority of the class endured the Klingon war. While the Saladin's that came about as a counterpart did suffer some serious casualties I'd take Starfleet having all of their science ships be at a bare minimum decent combatants as a good end result.
The Kea managed to do several times the work of the Saladin's despite having 3/4 of the number of hulls and managed to not just stay in service about 20 more years (~60 vs ~80 years) but spent it's whole service life as a science vessel which itself is more than twice as long as how long the Saladin spent as a science ship (~30 years)
Despite that though, the sheer number of Saladin's that were pumped out (a solid 1/3rd more than the Kea) shows that there was a significant appetite for science vessels that even the non-torpedo Kea couldn't fulfil, much less an even more expensive torpedo-Kea.
I also do not think that a torpedo-Kea's greater tactical capabilities would have been able to justify Starfleet deciding to produce it solely and in greater numbers since the primary reason for the Saladin's development was due to cost, not because of tactical deficiencies.
The cost and time (the Kea took twice as long to produce) of pumping out additional torpedo-Kea's to match the Saladin hulls 1 for one (because again, the demand for more science vessels was there) is just too great so it is likely that Starfleet would still need a cheaper science vessel to fill in the gaps left by the now even costlier Kea.
If I had to speculate the most likely outcome for a counterpart to the torpedo-Kea would probably be a spammable and underarmed frigate weight science ship (the other science ship option we were given) for internal surveys instead of another cruiser since a more well armed Kea would cover all the tactical needs the frontier demanded (it would probably still have been pulled off of frontier duty at around the same time as the Saladin due to similar tactical scores).
Interestingly, since the Saladin clocks in at 180,000 tons it's hull would actually qualify for this role as the cutoff for the frigate's mass was 200,000 tons. You'd just need to strip off the majority of the weapons the Saladin had to make more space for science facilities since I doubt you'd be able to afford the same armaments given the industry demands of a torpedo-Kea.
I'm doubt however that such a ship would be anywhere near as survivable as the Kea (9/12 of the Kea's managed to survive the Klingon war which is pretty solid majority) which may lead to some longevity issues since I'm pretty certain a spammable underarmed frigate would not have the firepower or durability to ward off even a single BoP (they may just get popped by an ambushing cloaked BoP's alpha) and may not be able to run away at warp as quickly as the Kea could given how much slower the Saladin turned out (can't even hit warp 7 when sprinting) in order to make it even more affordable than the Kea.
Regardless though, a hypothetical torpedo-Kea would have still been retired around the same time as its non-torpedo counterpart since it's science facilities would be the exact same while the additional torpedoes wouldn't change the fact that it would still be woefully obsolete as a combatant at the time of it's retirement (the Saladin by the Klingon war was already obsolescent, much less what another 20 years would entail).
Even if we go with the optimistic route of Starfleet deciding to only build torpedo-Kea's the selling point of its tactical prowess wouldn't have payed off since by the time of the Klingon war it would have been obsolescent and the OTL Kea's which did get refitted with torpedoes in 2240 didn't seem to have distinguished themselves during the war.
On the flipside, I'm not sure if we could even design a ship that would have satisfied all of Starfleet's needs enough to justify building just one class of science ship.
The Saladin compromised a lot on science facilities (science stat of 9 is worse than the 35 year old Sagamartha's 10 and less than half the Kea's rating of 19) since it didn't bother with a separate engineering section so it had less room overall for facilities. This meant not just fewer facilities to boost science and engineering stat overall but also fewer chances for synergistic combos to inflate those stats even further or in the Saladin's case give it a non terrible rating (seriously, the Saladin's science and engineering stats look terrible by comparison as both stat are either half or less than half the Kea's stat and an aggregate of those stats between the total hulls of each class produced would see the Saladin behind by a lot).
Sacrificing the engineering section did however give it medium maneuverability without needing to break the bank and without that medium maneuverability the benefits of the torpedo launchers would have been way lower.
To put it into perspective, if we had gone with 2 torpedoes and 4 phasers for the Kea (which would have still costed more industry than the Saladin) which would give it 75% phaser coverage, equal alpha strike, and double the Saladin's multi-target rating (8 vs 4) it would have still been a whole grade worse in tactical rating than the Saladin thanks to the Saladin's medium vs the Kea's low maneuverability.
Basically, it seems like with a cruiser weight science vessel at our current level of tech we have to make compromises and settle for either few and costly but high performance or numerous and cheap but mediocre to outright bad (that 9 science stat is painful even if A- tactical is nice) but Starfleet required both capable and numerous science vessels so they ended up going with two different options at the same time.
Overall though, I think this was the best outcome. The Kea put in a ton of work and it has had one of the longest service lives out of all our designs. It managed to strike a good balance between it's primary role of being a science vessel while remaining survivable enough that the majority of the class endured the Klingon war. While the Saladin's that came about as a counterpart did suffer some serious casualties I'd take Starfleet having all of their science ships be at a bare minimum decent combatants as a good end result.
Sorry to hear you are having health issues, Sayle.
Hope things get better expeditiously.
Will keep you in thoughts.
And thanks for the update.
- Location
- Montana
I like the idea. It adds some tension and gives us a yardstick to judge designs against.
TheShadowDeamon
Mighty Dragon
I think what we need to remember is that the ship was designed with the expectation that the Klingons were likely to kick off fairly soon - maybe within a decade. If the war had started then, they would've faired much better. Instead it took the Klingons 40 years to invade - thats about 2 generations of ships, It's no wonder that even with the refits that they had to be relegated to rearguard by this point. Although I would argue that the only reason why they were still usable by that point is the quality of the original design. They were designed for last generations war, not the war they got.
Starfleet seems to operate on the basis of multi-puprose ships with enough offensive and defensive capabilities that they can be used in peer-to-peer combat. By focusing on higher quality designs they are able to do quite well.
If we want dedicated warships then we need to accept that if they're not being used for combat, patrolling or customs/inspection - they are a money and resource sink. We would therefore have 2 options:
1. Continue focusing on multi-purpose ships, but have a design team focus on creating designs to refit existing ships for combat as much as possible. They would also create designs for combat varients of ships currently in production. As these would be made from scratch instead of pulling labs out to stuff more guns in, these will function better. Finally they will create pure warship designs using parts that are already stocked/manufactured and are a known performance.
Apart from the occasional prototype, these will remain "on paper" designs, but can easily be actualised rapidly.
2. Accept the cost of having a dedicated warfleet, these will have to have regular refits to keep up to date and when they get too old, replace them with new designs. The old ships could be religated to rear defense, sold to Federation members for system defence craft or used as an enticement to get new species to join:
Imagine that your species has only been FTL capable for a few years and are becoming aware of the threats from other species. You might have found out through information trading, or you might have had a run-in with the Orion Syndicate, Naussicans or Klingons. However one day you make contact with the Federation; a multi species polity aimed at cooperation and mutual defence and they are open to new species joining them. The terms offered aren't even that bad; certain laws to be applied, use of measurement and interface standards and your people will only be a junior member (voting and tech access) until certain milestones are reached. However in return they offer immediate protection from hostiles out there, teachers to begin educating your people to reach those milestones, offers for your best scientists and fleet officers to go to Starfleet Academy for learning and... a warship. Yes it's one of their old throwaways, but it's capabilities are far beyond anything your people could dream of creating now and it'll be yours to act as a system defence and pratical training craft for your people.
From the Federations point of view this could be a good long term investment stratagey. After a few decades the species capabilities will have raised enough that they will will no longer be a drain on them, will be used to Federation Standards, have sent many officers to Starfleet Academy and will owe it all to them, thus instilling great loyalty and a desire to be fully invested in the system.
Starfleet seems to operate on the basis of multi-puprose ships with enough offensive and defensive capabilities that they can be used in peer-to-peer combat. By focusing on higher quality designs they are able to do quite well.
If we want dedicated warships then we need to accept that if they're not being used for combat, patrolling or customs/inspection - they are a money and resource sink. We would therefore have 2 options:
1. Continue focusing on multi-purpose ships, but have a design team focus on creating designs to refit existing ships for combat as much as possible. They would also create designs for combat varients of ships currently in production. As these would be made from scratch instead of pulling labs out to stuff more guns in, these will function better. Finally they will create pure warship designs using parts that are already stocked/manufactured and are a known performance.
Apart from the occasional prototype, these will remain "on paper" designs, but can easily be actualised rapidly.
2. Accept the cost of having a dedicated warfleet, these will have to have regular refits to keep up to date and when they get too old, replace them with new designs. The old ships could be religated to rear defense, sold to Federation members for system defence craft or used as an enticement to get new species to join:
Imagine that your species has only been FTL capable for a few years and are becoming aware of the threats from other species. You might have found out through information trading, or you might have had a run-in with the Orion Syndicate, Naussicans or Klingons. However one day you make contact with the Federation; a multi species polity aimed at cooperation and mutual defence and they are open to new species joining them. The terms offered aren't even that bad; certain laws to be applied, use of measurement and interface standards and your people will only be a junior member (voting and tech access) until certain milestones are reached. However in return they offer immediate protection from hostiles out there, teachers to begin educating your people to reach those milestones, offers for your best scientists and fleet officers to go to Starfleet Academy for learning and... a warship. Yes it's one of their old throwaways, but it's capabilities are far beyond anything your people could dream of creating now and it'll be yours to act as a system defence and pratical training craft for your people.
From the Federations point of view this could be a good long term investment stratagey. After a few decades the species capabilities will have raised enough that they will will no longer be a drain on them, will be used to Federation Standards, have sent many officers to Starfleet Academy and will owe it all to them, thus instilling great loyalty and a desire to be fully invested in the system.
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0t4n1z3r019
Member of the HAFPTG
- Location
- Philippines
- Location
- America
Essentially if we want a boat that can do war, utility, and science equally well, we need to scale the hull all the way up to BC or BB. Otherwise we need to play the tradeoff game of "what capability are we cutting so the other ones can excel."
A CA is probably as cheap as it gets for two aspects to excel and just be "good" at the third.
That comes with a note that if you're looking to make a CA "cheap" you're building the wrong boat.
A CA is probably as cheap as it gets for two aspects to excel and just be "good" at the third.
That comes with a note that if you're looking to make a CA "cheap" you're building the wrong boat.
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Fundamentally, we were asked for a scientific ship that could fight. We delivered an absolute banger of a scientific ship that could outrun anything it couldn't outfight.
Its major competitor was a cheap, effective combat ship that could do some science.
Given that our ship had almost twice the service life and is spoken quite well of in the history books as, again, an absolute banger of a science ship, I'm going to count this as a win.
Its major competitor was a cheap, effective combat ship that could do some science.
Given that our ship had almost twice the service life and is spoken quite well of in the history books as, again, an absolute banger of a science ship, I'm going to count this as a win.
Mgunh1
Not an AI, honest!
- Location
- Northern Luna Base, Module 5, Sublevel 15
B's across the board at minimum with little to no consideration to cost. Basically, they're supposed to be able to do most things well, have long range, the speed and firepower to avoid being eaten by the monster of the week, and the engineering to fix the bites it took out of the hull. Because of that, having a C or D in cost is generally acceptable so long as the investment pays off, and so far they generally have.
Due to the cost not really being an issue, they're also a great test bed for our more experimental features.
At least, that seems to have been the consensus of the thread so far. Now that we have competition, cost might be a greater concern going forward, but we'll see.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Go wherever they want, and have the means to solve or escape from any problem they encounter.
Trent01
A Fountain of Quest Ideas
Meanwhile in the Negaverse quest, Starfleet Command is having conniptions that the SF ship design bureau is seemingly obsessed with making every single ship design they got a single-nacelle configuration and making ships as cheap as possible while technically hitting target parameters as-given. On paper excellent, in practice they are getting a lot of angry messages from the captains and crews riding the things and that single-nacelle is a single point of failure. Perhaps project Oberth can redeem them for the next contract.
It's certainly a lot easier to cram new tech in a ship when we completely write off relative cost as something to try and keep down, yeah.
There's definitely an undercurrent of "experiment on safe ships" too though. IIRC a good part of the Curiosity was the desire to prototype new tech on a ship that wouldn't be far from Federation borders or in the middle of combat if it was tempermental. And that wasn't exactly a class we said "screw Cost" on.
Mgunh1
Not an AI, honest!
- Location
- Northern Luna Base, Module 5, Sublevel 15
True, a tendency for doesn't rule out outliers and exceptions. But when an exploration ship is queued up for production, the thread gets much more excited, lets be honest
LunaMoth
Wings of Kynareth is my comfort song...
- Pronouns
- He/They
True, a tendency for doesn't rule out outliers and exceptions. But when an exploration ship is queued up for production, the thread gets much more excited, lets be honest
Exploration ship means we absolutely should go crazy bonkers with the ship design, just put the most experimental weirdest layout possible to the test.
One thing I think being overlooked as a benefit here is the sheer mount that the SDB learns in the short term about complicated engineering systems load shifting. It's flat out stated that it needs a dedicated engineer overlooking it as the CO can't do it and the rest of the work needing done at the same time.
In addition they're learning more practical lessons about causes of and long term frame stress and the injectors issues when a Kea has to punch to maximum warp. As well as that given the complicated shifting loads their likely to learn more about reinforcing power systems so that can be better handled in future.
Further given the shear capability, variety and range of the labs they'll have learned alot about overlapping capability and synergies meaning in future a lot of redundancy can be saved reducing costs*. Something that will continue throughout it's active life as minor refits replace outdated analysis equipment and sensors. Something that come to think about it will probably have an effect on the load balancing and thus what's learned there.
There may as well come to be more multi and cross discipline science training done when area's overlap or extra hands are needed Right Now on a problem meaning who know's what insights could be gained on that front that would otherwise be missed or come later.
Edit: * and the attendent improvements in more generalised labs.
The power loading issues and the lessons learned from them should also be a massive boon to weapons loadouts as weapons draw a lot of power quickly which I believe was a potential issue for a previous ship design. Similarly shifting loads to secondary and tertiary conduits to bypass battle damage and reduce strain enduced blowouts from surges caused by the same or other phenomena will keeping paths open to shield and other critical systems will save lives and keep ships either fighting longer or allow escape, recovery or at least keeping the crew from freezing and suffocating when they might be otherwise dead in space.
In addition they're learning more practical lessons about causes of and long term frame stress and the injectors issues when a Kea has to punch to maximum warp. As well as that given the complicated shifting loads their likely to learn more about reinforcing power systems so that can be better handled in future.
Further given the shear capability, variety and range of the labs they'll have learned alot about overlapping capability and synergies meaning in future a lot of redundancy can be saved reducing costs*. Something that will continue throughout it's active life as minor refits replace outdated analysis equipment and sensors. Something that come to think about it will probably have an effect on the load balancing and thus what's learned there.
There may as well come to be more multi and cross discipline science training done when area's overlap or extra hands are needed Right Now on a problem meaning who know's what insights could be gained on that front that would otherwise be missed or come later.
Edit: * and the attendent improvements in more generalised labs.
The power loading issues and the lessons learned from them should also be a massive boon to weapons loadouts as weapons draw a lot of power quickly which I believe was a potential issue for a previous ship design. Similarly shifting loads to secondary and tertiary conduits to bypass battle damage and reduce strain enduced blowouts from surges caused by the same or other phenomena will keeping paths open to shield and other critical systems will save lives and keep ships either fighting longer or allow escape, recovery or at least keeping the crew from freezing and suffocating when they might be otherwise dead in space.
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