Ultimately these are the results of die rolls. Acting as if this is somehow a choice by the players to screw over the ship is rude and unhelpful. We were hoping to make a top of the line ship with cutting edge tech (reasonable for a warship) unfortunately pretty much every result had complications, which is an outlier result.
Starship Design Bureau
- Thread starter Sayle
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0t4n1z3r019
Member of the HAFPTG
- Location
- Philippines
Agreed to this.
That still presents the problem of watching the supposedly toughest ship in the Fleet fold to a single hit when the shields go down, that would utterly ruin moral and possibly cause a rout. Because "If the battlship went down that fast what chance do we have?".
Also keep in mind I'm unfamiliar with star trek. I have no idea how useful the shields actually are or if there isn't some weapon that can just bypasses it entirely. So I'm approaching this thing like I would any other warship design and the thing that amounts to a glowing weak spot you'd find on a generic boss enemy is a complete deal breaker from my perspective.
I think the deflector vulnerability is being overstated. Is it a problem when shields are down? Yes. It is a major tactical vulnerability. So in a knock-down and drag-out fight it's a problem that needs fixing for the second tranche. But it still has powerful defensive systems and if shields go down that's the point where you start losing parts of the ship anyway.
Starfleet doesn't rout. They got solidly pasted with massive one-shot hits on heavy cruisers at Wolf 359 and they still went down fighting.
Starfleet doesn't rout. They got solidly pasted with massive one-shot hits on heavy cruisers at Wolf 359 and they still went down fighting.
[x] USS Century. In many ways a return to the generalist tactical focus of the Excelsior 100 years ago.
Again, this isn't 'shoot this weak spot and you win'.
It's 'a powerful enough shot here once the shields are down that does enough damage has the possibility it might take out the ship's power if the engineers aren't able to stop the cascade and the ship gets unlucky'
0t4n1z3r019
Member of the HAFPTG
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So in a sudden, 'out-of-Warp' attack maneuver, the ship has no problems. But in a protracted fight is when the deflector becomes a problem.
It seems honestly like people are forgetting that shields exist
I repeat. I have no idea how good the damn shields are in star treck period. For all I know they could pop like a soup bubble if someone shouts at them hard enough. So I have no context for how often the shields would be down in a fight.
Who's going to be able to line up a shot with that deflector anyway? It's not as manuverable as the Defiant, but sounds like it's about as manuverable as the Ushaan.
Star Trek can be a little fuzzy on how much protection shields provide sometime. Do the shields have to come completely down before a "major hit" can be landed on the deflector? Ah... maybe? Not clear, in some combat scenes it seems like you can still get a bit of bleed-through effect even if the shields are still "up". Up to the writers, I guess.
EDIT: Really seems like a "golden bullet" scenario where probably it'll be difficult to target on purpose, but it could turn a dangerous hit into a fight-ending hit.
EDIT: Really seems like a "golden bullet" scenario where probably it'll be difficult to target on purpose, but it could turn a dangerous hit into a fight-ending hit.
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On a ship like this? They're pretty damned good. Frankly if you get to the point where shots are hitting your hull you've got major issues regardless of any potential weak spots.
0t4n1z3r019
Member of the HAFPTG
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- Philippines
What kind of weapons can penetrate through shields? Unless your enemy's armed with those, sheer volume of fire is one reason that I know of that will definitely hit the deflector of our BB.
KlavoHunter
THOU SHALT WORSHIP NO GODS ABOVE ENTERPRISE!
They don't exist whenever the writers feel like it.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
To outright penetrate shields? You need something tricky, like being able to match the shield's harmonic frequency. It's not something that any peer or near-peer opponent can manage without cheating. Without that, you get minor splash damage until the shields fail, followed by the ship coming apart pretty rapidly.
In which case the enemy will have to either build a ship that is powerful enough to take down the shields, well shielded enough to withstand the return fire and maneuverable enough to keep the BB from turning away from it or stick enough ships in front of it to do the same job and just accept that they're going to suffer ruinous casualties taking it down.
As for weapons that pass through shields I can't really think of any other than maybe odd prototype things that turned up for a single episode. There's a reason starfleet uses shields instead of relying on armour and it's because they're effective.
Also, if our shields go down even without this vulnerability then the ships gonna get torn to shreds as they hit nacelles, thrusters, etc that will mission kill it
Okay so this tempremantle ass is starting to sound like it would be more useful as Battlecruiser then a Battleship proper. If paired with proper hit and run tactics it sounds like it would be a devastating ambush predator, which would also minimize the chance of enemies catching it with the shields down. I think, I still haven't the foggiest how the shields are supposed to work, so i could be completely wrong.
- Location
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It honestly depends, but this is supposed to be building a purpose designed battleship using galaxy technology. The warp core is an absolute chonker of a beast which will power shields that are at least a grade above the Galaxy class. The galaxy class, if you did not know, is pretty much able to yolo straight into a Cardassian wall of battle and MURDER AT LEISURE.
And bearing in mind, these shields regenerate, which means you need either a battleship fleet dedicated to grinding away at it, or a scary enough technobabble that your alpha strike can hopefully volley it off the field, at which point you've spent your alpha strike killing one ship.
And not only do you need a golden BB shot to trigger the problem, you need to do it while being shot at.
Bearing in mind that the Type 12 phaser is usually mounted on starbases because they're so scary and powerful.
The Galaxy's torpedo bay can alpha out 10 torpedoes at a time. 10 quantum torpedoes will effectively delete any battleship class vessel in both the alpha and delta quadrant. Our prototype mounts two of them, which means 20 quantum torpedoes alpha and double the sustained fire rate of a Galaxy.
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The shields and firepower on this ship are good enough that in a straight slugging match against basically any ship of its time other than a Borg ship I'd put good money on this one winning.
The fact that it's also maneuverable enough to move like a cruiser is just the cherry on top
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The normal ones don't? What kind of crapy shields are these? Do the projectors just blow up when you get shot at or something?
That weakness still makes me hesitant to have the thing used as a BB proper in a fleet engagement. It honestly sounds like this thing would be more useful put to work hunting down Cruisers and Capitals. Rather then having it stuck in a battle line.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Critical success.
Critical failure.
Mixed success.
Failure.
Success.
Failure.
That's one crit success, one success, one mixed success, two failures, and one critical failure. Overall 3 successes and 3 failures. Personally, the shield and phaser failures don't seem that bad, but the deflector dish turning might have been the worst place for a Critical failure. So I don't think this is our fault for picking so many prototype systems so much as just really bad luck.