Remove ads

Starfleet Design Bureau

Linked contents
Starship Design Bureau Starfleet Design Bureau
Reader mode
Honestly hard to evaluate this one other than one number being bigger. Like +10% could be huge or not a big deal depending on the margins that shields run on and how much they tend to deteriorate in combat.

Ultimately we chose a phaser with better coverage but less firepower. That means we gain slightly less from extra manoeuvrability, relative to the canon TL phaser setup. That may not actually be significant TBF, but absent any other objective criteria for this, why not:

[X] Expanded Main Energiser (+10% Next-Gen Shield Output)
 
Skippy said:
Honestly hard to evaluate this one other than one number being bigger. Like +10% could be huge or not a big deal depending on the margins that shields run on and how much they tend to deteriorate in combat.

Ultimately we chose a phaser with better coverage but less firepower. That means we gain slightly less from extra manoeuvrability, relative to the canon TL phaser setup. That may not actually be significant TBF, but absent any other objective criteria for this, why not:

[X] Expanded Main Energiser (+10% Next-Gen Shield Output)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd say better coverage gives us more from maneuverability actually, since we can duck dodge and roll like crazy while still keeping the enemy targeted. Still think the Main Energizer is the way to go though, for different reasons.
 
I think there is definitely an argument to be made that we should go for the shield bonus because in general we have fewer options for raising shield strength than we do speed/maneuverability. As I said earlier though, both options are good and I'm comfortable with my previous engine vote for my expectation of versatility that comes with it.
 
The main argument for Energizer(for me) is that it's free stats period. Impulse Thrusters might technically be free stats, but it is going to encourage us to add tonnage when we don't need it because we'll be able to hit medium maneuverability a lot more easily.
 
darkstarling said:
I'd say better coverage gives us more from maneuverability actually, since we can duck dodge and roll like crazy while still keeping the enemy targeted.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's an interesting idea, but not mechanically how it works from what we've head before. Manoeuvrability can increase or lower a ship's Tactical Rating, and higher manoeuvrability can compensate for lower coverage in a given weapons system in terms of the tactical and I believe also the average damage rating; but AFAIK there's no mechanical way for higher weapon coverage to boost evasion in the way you're suggesting.

Honestly though I don't want to accidentally imply this is like, the biggest deal in the world or anything. The potential synergy or anti-synergy in this case is pretty small at the end of the day.
 
Wootius said:
The main argument for Energizer(for me) is that it's free stats period. Impulse Thrusters might technically be free stats, but it is going to encourage us to add tonnage when we don't need it because we'll be able to hit medium maneuverability a lot more easily.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I know I personally have been harping on about how better thrusters allows us to justify increased tonnage but our last design straight up settled for medium tonnage and low maneuverability because of how cheap the design would be without the extra mass or thrust.

In situations where we want to field a lot of ships we are going to want to keep costs low and thrusters have shown themselves to be quite expensive so keeping those to the bare minimum while retaining good cost and maneuverability will be critical if we want a ton of ships that have a decent tactical rank (we absolutely want this given the looming Klingon war).

Ironically, you could more easily justify slapping extra thrusters onto your bleeding edge exploration-battleships vs your cheap workhorses as you aren't expected to build a lot of them anyways and as such the cost of individual hulls is much less of a concern compared to a ship you need to pump out a ton of.

I've brought this up in previous posts before but maneuverability has a huge influence on how much a ships torpedoes contribute to the ship's overall tactical rank.
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is also supported by the fact that even with torpedoes the low maneuverability meant that the Kea's tactical score would only get bumped up to the marginally superior A rank over the Saladin's A- in spite of the Kea have nearly twice the Saladin's phaser coverage (100% vs 54%) and 3 times the Saladin's multi-targeting capabilities (12 vs 4).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And also to ship survivability.
Superior maneuverability meanwhile allows the Skate which has less than half the mass of the Stingray (30kt vs 70kt) and only 1 rank more maneuverability (VERY high vs high) attain an equal defense rating of 12 for each.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If the Kea for example had had medium or medium-low instead of low maneuverability it would have made fitting torpedoes from the get go massively more justifiable and probably would have yielded an A+ or S for tactical rank at launch if we kept the phaser loadout the same (alternatively the better maneuverability would justify less phasers and thus less industry cost). That would have undercut a major reason (Saladin is shootier than torpedo-less Kea) for building the Saladin which may prevent it's design and lead to more Keas which would give Starfleet a lot more viable long term science vessels since the Saladins did not last very long as a science ship (30 years vs 81 years).

Looking at our current roster of ships we are almost certainly going to be designing a replacement for the 50+ year old Cygnus soon which given that the Cygnus was our generalist workhorse is going to mean we will need to build a ton of replacement ships and that is definitely a ship where I would want to squeeze as much performance out of a limited number of thrusters as possible.

While the Klingon war, if it does happen at the specified time from the Kea update is still some +50 years away that same review noted that both Kea and Saladin class ships are still active during the war so any future designs we make will want to either be able to run away or have a decent tactical rank capabilities for when that war happens, both of which better thrusters would contribute a ton to.
 
LOLROFL said:
I know I personally have been harping on about how better thrusters allows us to justify increased tonnage but our last design straight up settled for medium tonnage and low maneuverability because of how cheap the design would be without the extra mass or thrust.

In situations where we want to field a lot of ships we are going to want to keep costs low and thrusters have shown themselves to be quite expensive so keeping those to the bare minimum while retaining good cost and maneuverability will be critical if we want a ton of ships that have a decent tactical rank (we absolutely want this given the looming Klingon war).

Ironically, you could more easily justify slapping extra thrusters onto your bleeding edge exploration-battleships vs your cheap workhorses as you aren't expected to build a lot of them anyways and as such the cost of individual hulls is much less of a concern compared to a ship you need to pump out a ton of.

I've brought this up in previous posts before but maneuverability has a huge influence on how much a ships torpedoes contribute to the ship's overall tactical rank.


And also to ship survivability.


If the Kea for example had had medium or medium-low instead of low maneuverability it would have made fitting torpedoes from the get go massively more justifiable and probably would have yielded an A+ or S for tactical rank at launch if we kept the phaser loadout the same (alternatively the better maneuverability would justify less phasers and thus less industry cost). That would have undercut a major reason (Saladin is shootier than torpedo-less Kea) for building the Saladin which may prevent it's design and lead to more Keas which would give Starfleet a lot more viable long term science vessels since the Saladins did not last very long as a science ship (30 years vs 81 years).

Looking at our current roster of ships we are almost certainly going to be designing a replacement for the 50+ year old Cygnus soon which given that the Cygnus was our generalist workhorse is going to mean we will need to build a ton of replacement ships and that is definitely a ship where I would want to squeeze as much performance out of a limited number of thrusters as possible.

While the Klingon war, if it does happen at the specified time from the Kea update is still some +50 years away that same review noted that both Kea and Saladin class ships are still active during the war so any future designs we make will want to either be able to run away or have a decent tactical rank capabilities for when that war happens, both of which better thrusters would contribute a ton to.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm currently voting for thrusters, I was just pointing out the positive I found in voting for shields given our tendencies to design capable but pricey ships. : p
 
Wootius said:
I'm currently voting for thrusters, I was just pointing out the positive I found in voting for shields given our tendencies to design capable but pricey ships. : p
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Fair enough, though I actually think better shields are more beneficial to small ships compared to medium or large ones.

Smaller ships don't seem to need as much investment in order to increase thrust as the Selachii only needed a 6% cost increase (30 vs 35 cost) when enhancing it's two thrusters to bump it's maneuverability from high to very high compared to the Kea going down by over a grade level for an extra thruster (A- to C+).

Meanwhile, several people have brought up that outside of prototyping which isn't always available we don't really have a mechanical way to influence improvements to shields so this seems like a clear cut way to improve ship survivability without resorting to chonkifying our ships (which leads back to arguments for thruster improvements instead).
 
[X] Impulse Shunt (+20% Impulse Engine Output)

The extra boost to ship-wide systems is an interesting choice, but I can't really think of any other systems it would be useful for. Phasers, maybe, since I'm pretty sure those tap into EPS. But I feel like the update would have mentioned that if it was relevant.
 
Skippy said:
Thrusters being expensive because the fucking contractors work two hour days and insist on champagne breakfasts of essential installation and component costs is a good reason to want to squeeze more juice out of each individual thruster, TBF.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We've got food synthesizers, champaign breakfasts don't cost us much :p
 
French and Italian ships come equipped with wine cellars, would a theoretical Federation/Starfleet diplomatic ship come equipped similarly, but expanded to include every member species?
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top