Well, point is, it's nothing like a Miranda or a Renaissance where they're going to build dozens, more than Starfleet by far. We'd be lucky to get half a dozen between all our members, if that, yet it's likely Starfleet is going to want one per sector plus one for every Intel task.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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Well, point is, it's nothing like a Miranda or a Renaissance where they're going to build dozens, more than Starfleet by far. We'd be lucky to get half a dozen between all our members, if that, yet it's likely Starfleet is going to want one per sector plus one for every Intel task.
The Vulcans have exactly one Oberth. No one else has any.
By the way, I think @OneirosTheWriter has been trying to pull back on the idea that science ships are good for Intelligence work. Use of the T'Mir seems to have been retconned to something that was good under very specific circumstances (which have now come to an end) rather than being something that would be useful for any intel task. If he is, I am completely in favor of that decision. Let ships be ships and have Intelligence work be supported by listening outposts and comms technologies.
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That seems entirely speculative to me.
Yeah, maybe a little. It's something that I wish is true and think would be better for the quest if it were true, because I kind of hate the way the lure of guaranteed extra intelligence reports is shaping the science ship debate.
With most science ships, we're lucky if it responds to even one Event a year. It's sector only gets to roll for Events four times a year, the sector might not get any, and if it does the science ship might roll low on its response. Pay off is uncertain. Having each science ship assigned to an intelligence task generate a full extra Intelligence report on whatever it's assigned to every year is way more powerful. It gets to the point where a science ship assigned to that is much more valuable than anywhere else.
If science ships are kept as having the capability to be assigned to Intelligence, I think it should be toned way down. Maybe they could improve the accuracy of existing reports rather than generate an entire extra report. That would be more balanced.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
Or Oneiros just starts ramping up the min science requirement faster, so science ships are necessary for that.
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- Mid-Atlantic
Why do we need to do that, in the foreseeable future?
Late TNG and on have a huge proliferation of "ship classes," mainly caused by the fact that the designers would randomly kitbash ships together whenever they felt like it. I don't think that's a good enough idea to justify us doing it too.
Given that the Oberth itself apparently meets those minimums as of 2300, it doesn't seem reasonable that we would need to worry about this. For that matter, why are we trying to design a "long range exploration vessel?" That's what our explorers are for. Literally, the word 'explorer' is right there in the name.
For one, event DCs are likely to creep upward over time, if only so that our next generation explorers don't become literally invulnerable to bad event outcomes. For another, a 25% failure rate is still a significant opportunity cost compared to a more optimized design. We're losing out on 25% of the resources we could be getting from those events; the only reason it's not a worse problem is that we're in the process of marginalizing our escorts in favor of cruisers. And yet, our new cruisers aren't actually that much better at events than a Centaur-A; the Rennie has the same Science and only +1 Presence. Its main advantages are in the response roll to get to the emergency in the first place, and in combat stats that only matter if the event turns ugly.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
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I don't see any particular reason not to, if the kitbashing is justified in-universe. Maybe AutoCAD 2340 will finally offer powerful enough design tools for Kuznetsova to make a hospital Galaxy variant in an afternoon.
Chaos Blade
Procrastinating Writer
- Location
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A quick question do we want a sole Hospital ship hull type?
Keep in mind that we could use different hull types Hospital Ship for different task and missions, both depending the type and size of the issue.
If SF Medical is pushing for only one hull type, then my vote is:
[x][MEDICAL] Use the Renaissance hull form
But perhaps we could order one Excelsior, 4 Rennies and fill the rest of the run with Constellations or some other mix to get the most out of our buck
Keep in mind that we could use different hull types Hospital Ship for different task and missions, both depending the type and size of the issue.
If SF Medical is pushing for only one hull type, then my vote is:
[x][MEDICAL] Use the Renaissance hull form
But perhaps we could order one Excelsior, 4 Rennies and fill the rest of the run with Constellations or some other mix to get the most out of our buck
It's barely better than the Miranda, and sample size is all that's prevented casualties. It's really not where we want to be for a garrison ship.
We'd need to do three ship design projects, so it wouldn't save us anything.
Event DCs creeping up is irrelevant. If it happens, it'll happen because both generalist and specialist ships are getting better.
Also, you have to ask what the alternate world looks like. Specialists have a lower failure rate, but that's partially because they simply don't show up to some events that a generalist would. Is it better for a ship to show up at 12 events and succeed at 9, or to show up at 9 events and succeed at 8? There's less of of a chance of a bad outcome from a failures, but probably fewer successes overall.
It's where I want to be. It's evidently not where you want to be. I guess we don't have a meeting of minds enough to know where we want to be.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
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Depends on if we have another ship that can more reliably succeed at the remainder. If we do, the latter is better. If we're filling a sector with only science ships then the former is better, at least unless the former gets the ship blown up.
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The problem is that if we have fifty ship classes or however many, we also have an enormous array of different kinds of parts, maintenance requirements, and performance characteristics. Furthermore, many of those classes will be almost indistinguishable from each other in terms of actual performance, representing at best different solutions to the same problem.
That isn't a good idea in real life. There are a lot of advantages to mass production, and very few advantages to having your entire force consist of hand-built prototypes for classes you aren't prepared to commit for mass production.
Even if we could design ships by snapping our fingers, that doesn't mean we would want to have a huge number of closely similar designs, as opposed to a single consensus design.
Harder event DCs punish a generalist ship with low overall stats much more harshly than they punish a specialist ship. An Oberth is still competitive at the one thing it even tries to do- science, because its specialist stat is so good that it can accomplish that particular mission even as the mission gets more difficult. In the context of being a 2260-era ship, it was admirably "future-proofed" in its intended mission. That future-proofing is only now starting to wear off, fifty years later, and in canon the ships were still doing their job fifty years after our time.
By contrast, an escort with 'balanced' stats but comparable total stat values (say, 2/2/1/1/2/2) would be an utter dog of a ship that we'd be desperate to get rid of. The Mirandas, for instance, are actually close to being this bad. And if it weren't for the potential to upgrade their durability to make them into solid combat escorts, we'd be seriously considering retiring them so we could put the crews into more capable ships. Just like we did with the Soyuzes.
The trick is that every time one of our ships shows up to the 'wrong' event and gets blown to Fiddlers' Green, we lose the potential to have that ship show up to future events.
Yeah, uh, that's an awfully flawed way at looking at it.
We applies to enough people that I'm comfortable using it.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Because conversion, even at the blueprint stage, is rarely a match for purposed-designed capabilities. It's impractical now. It's impractical for, as you say, the foreseeable future. But by TNG if we can't throw around 40-ship fleets we're apparently doing something wrong. At some point we will in fact have the resources to start building specialist classes (if for no other reason than hitting combat cap) and our choice to go wide rather than tall in the start pays off.
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- Mid-Atlantic
The real question then is, why would an optimized hospital ship need a totally different hullform and engineering section, compared to the ships we already have? Why can't we just design a hospital saucer and mate it to a (slightly modified) engineering hull to get a satisfactory ship?
You can make a better case for custom designs as opposed to repurposed ones for things like engineering ships and fleet supply ships, because they're going to have specialist requirements that affect the shape of the hull. Say, a cargo bay large enough to fit a complete warp nacelle inside, or a repair facility large enough to work on same.
But in real life, hospital ships are basically the same shape as all sorts of other cargo/passenger ships. Hospital buildings are basically the same shape as other buildings. Why does that change when we put the hospital ship IN SPAAACE?
You can make a better case for custom designs as opposed to repurposed ones for things like engineering ships and fleet supply ships, because they're going to have specialist requirements that affect the shape of the hull. Say, a cargo bay large enough to fit a complete warp nacelle inside, or a repair facility large enough to work on same.
But in real life, hospital ships are basically the same shape as all sorts of other cargo/passenger ships. Hospital buildings are basically the same shape as other buildings. Why does that change when we put the hospital ship IN SPAAACE?
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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Moreover, Starfleet Medical should be sufficiently well regarded that if they really wanted a unique ship there would be an option to basically trade. RP for PP.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
[X][MEDICAL] Use the Renaissance hull form.
Good amount of modern ships with decent science and response, won't take too long to make, doesn't cost any immediate resources or non-auxiliary berth time.
If there aren't enough ships, I'm sure we can allocate more spare resources over to Medical Command. They are part of Starfleet after all, and even if the Council is controlling division-level budget, I'm sure most of them (the non-Hawks) would be fine with diverting more budget from exploration/defense/general duties over to medical duties.
Good amount of modern ships with decent science and response, won't take too long to make, doesn't cost any immediate resources or non-auxiliary berth time.
If there aren't enough ships, I'm sure we can allocate more spare resources over to Medical Command. They are part of Starfleet after all, and even if the Council is controlling division-level budget, I'm sure most of them (the non-Hawks) would be fine with diverting more budget from exploration/defense/general duties over to medical duties.
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- USA
For me specialists classes start and end with our science ships like the Oberth and its replacements. For one, our combat cap should increase as we hit the science targets set by the council. Also I do expect an increase at some point based off the members we have added. Third our defensive and fleet doctrine expands our cap, since Explorers will be -2 and any ships in the border zones (which is where most will be) will count as -1.
For me a Kepler should have C2 S7-9, H2, L2/3, P2, D2/3 on an escort frame. Long term I see us having 4 classes at any given time,
1mt Escort Class-Generalist, biggest size that is still 2 years
1mt Science Class-Our Oberths and Keplers, 1mt as the cap on size to keep it at 2 years, can be smaller
2mt Cruisers-Good Combat ships like the Renaissance, though hopefully keeping Science and Presence close to Combat
3mt Explorers-As we get construction time reduction techs I can see this creeping up to 4mt, All around ship, should be our best ship with all stats relatively even.
The class with the oldest ship is likely to be the next to get a new design, with older ones being kept but no longer made. Much like what will happen to Connie-B production once the Renaissance prototype finishes. This reduces the time we need to spend on researching the actual ship itself and the number of projects for new ship designs we need to request at snakepits.
Now I would like the design thread to keep some combat variants once we can design refits in case of a Dominion War situation, also some combat focused ships in case Starfleet feels the need to push the council to authorize their design and constriction (Borg, Dominion War).
For me a Kepler should have C2 S7-9, H2, L2/3, P2, D2/3 on an escort frame. Long term I see us having 4 classes at any given time,
1mt Escort Class-Generalist, biggest size that is still 2 years
1mt Science Class-Our Oberths and Keplers, 1mt as the cap on size to keep it at 2 years, can be smaller
2mt Cruisers-Good Combat ships like the Renaissance, though hopefully keeping Science and Presence close to Combat
3mt Explorers-As we get construction time reduction techs I can see this creeping up to 4mt, All around ship, should be our best ship with all stats relatively even.
The class with the oldest ship is likely to be the next to get a new design, with older ones being kept but no longer made. Much like what will happen to Connie-B production once the Renaissance prototype finishes. This reduces the time we need to spend on researching the actual ship itself and the number of projects for new ship designs we need to request at snakepits.
Now I would like the design thread to keep some combat variants once we can design refits in case of a Dominion War situation, also some combat focused ships in case Starfleet feels the need to push the council to authorize their design and constriction (Borg, Dominion War).
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We should actually have our hospital ships based off of a freighter design, as well as our engineering ships, quartermaster corps ships, and other auxiliaires. Even if we have to make a new design, it would help in clearly marking the noncombat ships from the fighters.
Think about it. No one nowadays adapts AEGIS cruisers into hospital ships, because being a good warship, carrying a lot of stuff and people, and not being horrendously expensive doesn't often happen together.
Think about it. No one nowadays adapts AEGIS cruisers into hospital ships, because being a good warship, carrying a lot of stuff and people, and not being horrendously expensive doesn't often happen together.
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- Mid-Atlantic
The thing is, Starfleet's big ships seem to be the largest the Federation has. There's not a lot of evidence for big freighters, and if there are big freighters they're probably slow. Hospital ships do need to be fast, because it takes a starship weeks to cross Federation space even at high speed. If they're slow, by the time they get there the plague has already blown out of control.
So while you're certainly not wrong to suggest that we design auxiliary ships around freighter designs... there may honestly be no such designs available. Furthermore, our existing ships are nowhere near as optimized for combat as an AEGIS cruiser, so they probably lend themselves more readily to "civilian conversion" auxiliary ships.
Basically, generalist escorts fall pretty heavily into the "master of none" downside of trying to be "jack of all trades."
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*For example, taking three Miranda-As against two Rennies is a reasonably even fight that might work out for us, but taking three Centaur-As wouldn't go any better and would cost more.
So while you're certainly not wrong to suggest that we design auxiliary ships around freighter designs... there may honestly be no such designs available. Furthermore, our existing ships are nowhere near as optimized for combat as an AEGIS cruiser, so they probably lend themselves more readily to "civilian conversion" auxiliary ships.
The real open question here is whether a one-megaton generalist escort makes sense. They'll never be able to compete with two-megaton cruisers or the dozen or so Excelsiors we'll have lying around as event response ships. They likely won't be competitive in a fight because the other powers tend to build combat-optimized escorts. And they won't have that Defiant-esque ability to take a handful of cheap ships and punch out an explorer-sized enemy that cost the same amount to build*.
Basically, generalist escorts fall pretty heavily into the "master of none" downside of trying to be "jack of all trades."
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*For example, taking three Miranda-As against two Rennies is a reasonably even fight that might work out for us, but taking three Centaur-As wouldn't go any better and would cost more.
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AKuz
Been Better
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On the other hand we really don't want our medical ships to accidentally themselves on a negative space wedgie. Which isn't something that a freighter operating on a direct line course between points has to worry overmuch about. A lot of the internal structure from computer cores to the deflector dish is wrapped up in that purpose.
Once those things are added on we'd have to put enough support and change the frame enough that we'd be designing a new class that looks like a freighter anyway... except the warp fields seem to rely on ship shape and nacelle placement and we'd probably want our designs to be as fast as possible. Freighters are designed for endurance and reliability -not speed.
Simply put it's easier and more effective to modify an existing cruiser design than to modify a civilian build.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
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The hospital ship needs Starfleet grade drive systems, sensors, comms and a whole bunch of other thing.
RL hospital ships don't need to have the mobility of a supercarrier or the sensor systems of an Aegis. This does.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
One idea that might get some traction is to mate a fundamentally different saucer, heavily hospital-optimized, onto the engineering hull and nacelles of an existing design. That might actually be what this design project is going to be doing, although the resulting ship may look a lot like the original ship it's based on. It depends on exactly why Star Trek ships look the way they do, and we don't really know the answer to that, aside from Roddenberry's design rules regarding nacelle placement (which have sometimes been ignored, but not often, and usually not with good-looking or good-in-setting results).
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So, when are the Engineering ships getting a similar replacement?
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
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I assume that if there was a reason for ships to look a particular way they'd all look pretty much like that. Certainly you don't see real life navies with designs as divergent as the Cardassians, Federation, Romulans, and Borg.