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Starfleet Ship Design Bureau ("To Boldly Go...")

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AKuz said:
Isn't this the one I keep begging people to call the "Athena class"?

> : P
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Wouldnt know, wasnt reading anything that wasnt threadmarked back then.

Athena huh?

Wiki quote:
Athena, also referred to as Athene, is a very important goddess of many things. She is goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill.
She is known most specifically for her strategic skill in warfare and is often portrayed as companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour.

I can see that, though I dont like the strong association with warfare.

Edit: Otherwise perfect though.

Also, what about naming it something in a nonearth language/mythology? Tellarite maybe?
 
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A combat capable ship named for someone that gives the feeling of taking a strategic and careful view of war, in addition to all the other things is good though.

And personally I think Athena has enough brand recognition out of universe that it can be a bit excused because the class name is just as important to communicating to the /readers/ OOC the idea behind the ships. A random xenolonguistic words won't do that as well for a class that we'll be seeing a lot of.

Especially since the class ships can get those xenomythological names, Riala, for instance. The Starfleet Riala could be an Athena class, if we're to want a Riala.
 
Frankly, Athena is painfully, hm, basic. Overplayed, even. Only Artemis for a torpedo heavy ship would be more of an 'obvious' choice.

In particular, it hits three areas that bug me:
  • Humanocentric (We already have a Miranda!)
  • Western Centric (We already have a Constitution!)
  • Drawing from the overplayed well of Greek mythology (We already have a Centaur!)
I mean if we're going to do a dive on human mythology could we at least try to avoid Europe?

I'd be more for something like Wisdom class since that essentially distills what Athena is supposed to be for, which would allow a USS Athena alongside USS [String of syllables that we all accept is an Andorian Mythological figure of wisdom]. Or a USS [Trendy Philosopher], maybe. But I'll admit Wisdom isn't as immediately evocative to most readers of the quest like Athena is. But that's an issue of running through a dictionary or thesaurus.
 
Well I could solve two of those areas with Humanocentric yet non-European deities/beasts.

Guan Yu
Amaterasu
Simurgh :V
 
I mean it's not like we've managed to keep with a consistent naming scheme with any of our classes. Ever.
 
Iron Wolf said:
Frankly, Athena is painfully, hm, basic. Overplayed, even. Only Artemis for a torpedo heavy ship would be more of an 'obvious' choice.

In particular, it hits three areas that bug me:
  • Humanocentric (We already have a Miranda!)
  • Western Centric (We already have a Constitution!)
  • Drawing from the overplayed well of Greek mythology (We already have a Centaur!)
I mean if we're going to do a dive on human mythology could we at least try to avoid Europe?

I'd be more for something like Wisdom class since that essentially distills what Athena is supposed to be for, which would allow a USS Athena alongside USS [String of syllables that we all accept is an Andorian Mythological figure of wisdom]. Or a USS [Trendy Philosopher], maybe. But I'll admit Wisdom isn't as immediately evocative to most readers of the quest like Athena is. But that's an issue of running through a dictionary or thesaurus.
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> : <

How else are we supposed to honour the woman who was the catalyst for SV's formation.

> : P
 
I've been playing around with our old ship proposals with the new phaser array rules.

The big losers are the Renaissance-A (proposed C6 S4) and Shooting Star (Comet war refit, proposed C6 S4). I have however found a way to do both ships without phaser arrays. Forgothrax's Rennie-A design gains +5sr, the Shooting Star gains +5sr and +1E. It may be possible to tune these down. I experimented with using phaser arrays anyway, but even C5 S5 is difficult to achieve without sacrifice, or without taking a hit to build time with the science module.

The Excelsior-B will likely be C8 instead of C9 or C10. In exchange, we can pump the shields score as high as L10, albeit for a horrible cost in SR. The proposed statline in this version is C8 S8 H6 L10 P8 D9, and a new hull will cost us 240br and 200sr. Unsure on the refit cost but while it's expensive, updating our Excelsiors is worth doing. I haven't tuned crew yet but that statline does increase crew to 6/6/6 untuned.

The Ambassador-A doesn't have any issue with C=S phaser array statlines, nor have we really looked at Amby-A refits in detail. I suspect we're going to wait for isolinear for it.

All the designs I'm suggesting above are 2325-2327 tech, so after PA or similar completion rather than isolinear. I would prefer to refit the Excelsior immediately as PA tech is available, that way we avoid a logjam in our berths. There's at least one more refit in the Excelsior hull so it's not like we'll never see isolinear Excelsiors.
 
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What about the Reason class? And Wisdom is nice.

Also, ouch. I dont like the PA changes much. Tying them to S makes sense, but forcing them to be equal? Pacifists might love, but it forces our... (almost) everything combat capable to be a generalist.

Granted, we already design our ships that way, but it can get tiresome for everything to be more or less the same, just stronger/weaker, and being forced into it stings (me at least).

We already build our combat ships with C=S+2, which I dont think many do. I would prefer that for PAs then C=S.
 
Enerael said:
What about the Reason class?
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We've already got a USS Reason (Renaissance), so that's a no-go for now.

If we're OK with non-Western but still Earth-based names, I quite like Maat:
Article:
Maat or Ma'at refers to the ancient Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also the goddess who personified these concepts, and regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of mortals and the deities who had brought order from chaos at the moment of creation.

Seems like basically the patron goddess of the Federation…
 
The PA rules is mostly to prevent us breaking the ship designer over our knees - it is a deliberate handicap.

As I understand it, the rule to use Starfleet PA version is going to be S >= C.

The ISC already has PA deployed on their capitals and cruisers - only the GMs know if they are also subject to this rule.

Other polities will have their own version with their own rules - certainly the Cardassian equivalent (Spiral Disruptor?) won't need a high S score but there will be some kind of requirement.
 
Or the officer class named after famous starfleet officers, but that might cause a bit of debate on what officers get used for ship names.
 
Goat said:
As I understand it, the rule to use Starfleet PA version is going to be S >= C.
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S>C makes a techship. We really should get some S based doctrine bonuses soon, S magic is a big part of Starfleet operations, and it would compliment the PA changes very well.

I hope that we will unlock some other weapon tech in the future. Maybe phaser cannons? PAs are perfect for generalists, but I really dont want all of our ships (barring some frigates) to be that. Monotonous, and a vaste of the game mechanics potential.
 
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Enerael said:
Also, ouch. I dont like the PA changes much. Tying them to S makes sense, but forcing them to be equal? Pacifists might love, but it forces our... (almost) everything combat capable to be a generalist.

Granted, we already design our ships that way, but it can get tiresome for everything to be more or less the same, just stronger/weaker, and being forced into it stings (me at least).

We already build our combat ships with C=S+2, which I dont think many do. I would prefer that for PAs then C=S.
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Not exactly. In ship design, C generally trades off with L (since their primary components are both in the tactical subframe), which is why SWB could pump up shields to compensate. But shields are SR-expensive, so it bumped up the SR costs. So it doesn't necessarily make the ships more generalist - it just typically makes them tankier and more SR-expensive.

It's really the Amarki and STO that get screwed over by the phaser array changes though. With their C>S battleships, they can't take advantage of phaser arrays. That said, clearly the STO has some special sauce for their photon lances. They're definitely not as efficient as phaser arrays, at least in terms of crew, but it also doesn't share the C=S restriction. I imagine that the next-gen Amarki and STO battleships (and refits) will use the photon lance line of weaponry.
 
lbmaian said:
Not exactly. In ship design, C generally trades off with L (since their primary components are both in the tactical subframe), which is why SWB could pump up shields to compensate. But shields are SR-expensive, so it bumped up the SR costs. So it doesn't necessarily make the ships more generalist - it just typically makes them tankier and more SR-expensive.

It's really the Amarki and STO that get screwed over by the phaser array changes though. With their C>S battleships, they can't take advantage of phaser arrays. That said, clearly the STO has some special sauce for their photon lances. They're definitely not as efficient as phaser arrays, at least in terms of crew, but it also doesn't share the C=S restriction. I imagine that the next-gen Amarki and STO battleships (and refits) will use the photon lance line of weaponry.
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Are we replacing the existing shields during the excelsior refit or adding more shields of the same tier?
If we are replacing the shields we could research 2330s Emitter Materials and do the refit with the low SR shield variant unlocked by that tech(2 40 point parts).
 
What techs do we need and when to keep on track? The main thread could use that list, people are trying to build research votes without Nix.
 
fasquardon said:
But they aren't actually something we can do with a refit, I thought?
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Just noticed this and that I didnt answer you. Better late then never!

We cant, but its a tiny thing and a wartime design, so it shouldnt take too long to put into production. Yes, a refit would still be ready faster, but considering its costs and the hideous militarization penalties after war forcing us to mothball them or derefit somehow, it is still the better option in my mind, unless we really need it soonest, no matter the cost.

Ofc with the Jaffa project neither will happen.
 
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