ON SHIPS AND SHIPBUILDING
Okay, usually the Excelsior wins but, uh, not always.
Okay, um... I guess my only question is, "is this happening often enough that it devalues high-stat ships?" If not, we're cool. The Little Queenship has 2/3 the Combat of an
Excelsior, but comparable durability, and more of that durability is in its shields which is usually a positive thing.
Also, if your combat engine is resolving 350 or so rounds of exchanging fire in a single-ship duel... just looking at it like a statistician, then while combat is still
probabilistic, it is largely immune to statistical flukes. Anything with a 1% chance of happening in that battle, would have happened
multiple times in that battle. Sure, surprise events with a 0.1% chance of happening are possible, even likely... but basically, the range of "normal" outcomes should be so common that their cumulative effect swamps any one-in-a-thousand flukes. Unless of course your combat engine allows for "golden BB" critical hits, but I kind of doubt it does.
So those "normal" outcomes should include whatever
actually happens, and you should be able to deduce what is normally happening from looking at just about any single battle. If two combatants evade each other's shots over and over for twenty turns, or if the combat engine 'rolls' 0.19 over and over for a long period of time, for instance, that is not a mere statistical fluke- that is far more likely to represent a quirk of the engine's random number generation.
That combat log is way to long to follow, how is it going to be with multiple ships on a side
Well, the main effect of this is that any narrative attempt to describe battles ends up entirely divorced from the blow-by-blow analysis of the combat simulator itself.
Like, if we were resolving this duel in the old engine, or the bastardized pseudo-engine I whipped up when I was thinking about 'That 2235 Game,' ships would be hitting each other most of the time, each ship would only have like nine hit points, and the battle would be resolved within 15-20 turns or so, tops. And each hit could actually represent the ship getting slammed by a torpedo or something, so if you were trying to write an omake describing the battle, you could basically translate each round of action into a paragraph of text, and get a good story.
That's not going to be possible under the new engine because you'd be, like, doing an executive summary of 20-30 turns of action per paragraph.
Not that this wasn't an issue before. You will note that almost nobody has yet tried to write omakes describing the action
during the battles of Kadesh. Considering just how chaotic and complicated the fight was, that's not a surprise.
On the Ambassador: a tech needs to be picked where we go "This point, then prototype"
Otherwise we run into chasing perfection.
Once we have confirmation all the techs are up to date in the spreadsheet from this turn we can produce some designs but we had some good ones using the tech from before this turn so I think we start the project this coming snakepit
The biggest problem we have right now is that the new spreadsheet is still very much under construction, to the point where it's hard to say "this is what the ship will look like."
I don't think we can wait for that tech for the Ambassador. What we have now can give us a ship superior to the excelsior though with a 5 years build time. There may be some changes with new techs but I think we have good designs
A five-year build time, combined with increased crew and resource costs, is actually a serious problem for the
Ambassadors as a concept. At that point, we're likely to end up with a situation where we only have a few
Ambassadors under construction at a given time, going to the Explorer Corps almost exclusively, with most of the explorer berths still turning out
Excelsior-As. Now that's not a bad situation as such and it's very similar to canon, but we should bear that in mind. If we can't get some degree of assurance that the
Ambassador can be done in four years instead of five, we should seriously consider downsizing it until it can.
I'm rather uncertain what we're trying to gain from the next batch of Hull research. We're already tossing around an all 8s except H5 ship. Unless the next research will lower Crew costs I don't see why would we want it so badly. Perfect is the enemy of good after all and such a proposed vessel is more than sufficient for our needs.
That was on the old spreadsheet. There are
no guarantees about what statlines we can achieve right now.
ON INTEL ESTIMATES
Romulan Fleet Strength
3~6 Heavy Warbird
30~38 Bird of Prey
1 Daljera Prototype
3~8 Science Ships
~10 D7 Cruisers
SI Note: Be aware that with the launch of the Daljera prototype, many more light cruisers are now in production.
Assuming that no ships have been retconned to have different stat line... total Romulan combat score we see here would be something like 30+140+30 plus about another 10-15 for the science vessels and
Daljera.
Roughly 200 combat, heavily concentrated into cruiser-stat "Bird of Prey" combatants. This is competitive with the Klingons, but there are significant differences in the fleet balance. Basically, both sides get the bulk of their firepower from units that have stats we'd look at and call "cruiser" compared to our current ships- the
K'tinga-class and the Romulan Bird-of-Prey. But whereas the Romulans distribute the rest of their strength among both the relatively weak legacy D7s and a core of explorer-sized warbirds, it
looks as though the Klingons distribute it among a huge swarm of their own light Birds of Prey.
In the event of war, the Romulans have a lot to worry about in the form of Birds of Prey scattering out and trying to wage piracy against random rear area systems. In fact, that may already be a problem for them given how independently a Bird of Prey commander can operate at times (e.g. Kruge in
Star Trek III). Conversely, the Romulans have a 'battleline' that the Klingons cannot match except by concentrating an extremely large share of their total fleet. There's an allusion in the Ship Design thread's front page omnipost to some kind of 'Klingon battleship,' and I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually working on one, though I can't seem to find references to it.
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*(for example, the Romulan Bird-of-Prey has stats compatible with a heavy escort or light cruiser despite its supposedly low tonnage, drastically superior to the D7 cruisers, to a level that suggests that these are NOT actually TOS-era Romulan Birds-of-Prey and almost have to be roughly as large as a D7 in sheer physical size. If the Romulans could really build a 200-kiloton ship that so drastically outperforms a 344-kiloton ship, and for that matter many of our ships that approach one megaton in size, they would have long since built a "double size" or "triple size" one).
Dawiar Diplomatic Posture Report
It is worth understanding off the bat that the Dawiar are not the most deft diplomats in the galaxy. However, they are still developing channels of communication with the Qloath and the Lecarre. The Lecarre is being facilitated, we believe, by the Cardassians, but the Dawiar are not fond of them and their character. We believe there have been a few scandals where the Lecarre have been caught red-handed running ops.
With the Caitians, the Federation Diplomatic Service has been busily at work facilitating border negotiations. It is believed that another accord formalising areas of influence between the two powers should be signed within the next few years.
Beyond that, Dawiar's relationship with Cardassia is, to at least some extent, a little frayed. The Dawiar were less than amused by the way that the clients of the Cardassians were treated during the Kadak-Tor Crisis. However, they have not broken off, feeling that they require some way in which to offset the nearby power of the Federation. They see entering the Federation as the End of Ambition.
I'm a little curious as to what is meant by that. It's not as if the Federation member species haven't had plenty of opportunity for growth. Humans started out roughly as low-tech and disadvantaged as the Dawiar, at the time the Federation was founded, and yet they've managed to wash across a significant chunk of the Alpha Quadrant like a tide of root beer. Right now, we've got things like the Amarki having prospects to colonize an area that they'd never have had a chance of settling otherwise, without Federation influence and military strength smoothing over any territorial disputes with the Apiata and protecting them against outside threats.
So I have to wonder what the Dawiar think they mean by "Ambition" that would be "Ended" by joining the Federation. Maybe we'll learn more some day soon.
Supplementary Report: Bajor and Cardassia
We have reason to believe that the Bajoran armed forces have been nearly disbanded, and their resources folded into their Cardassian patrons. As the Bajorans had only recently acquired a pair of lucrative mining colonies, the influx going to Cardassia Prime is believed to be significant.
Welp, nothing unexpected here. Notably, in canon Bajor was itself a planet with unusually rich mineral deposits, which the Cardassians exploited ruthlessly using large amounts of Bajoran labor if and when that proved necessary. If that's still true in TBG, AND the Bajorans have extra mining colonies on top of that, the Cardassians may well have just blown their 'resource cap' off, or at least greatly increased it. Plus, we can't assume their own prospecting and industrial concerns are sitting idle even as they exploit the Bajoran resources.
Supplementary Report: Economic War Footing, RSE & KE
The Romulan Star Empire and Klingon Empire have started the first steps of reaching a heightened economic mobilisation. Resource generation, production, and research are all expected to progress at a heightened rate.
Honestly surprised they weren't already there. I don't know exactly what war mobilization looks like for Klingons aside from "oh, it must be Tuesday," although realistically it probably just means they're no longer prioritizing the rebuilding of Q'onos at the expense of keeping up ship construction.
That said, the Klingons wouldn't be doing that if they didn't expect to fight a war Real Soon.
The Romulans are also a pretty warlike people, but may well have more of a civilian economy to tap for military resources. If so, though, again that is not a thing they'd do if they weren't planning on war Real Soon.
I'm a little surprised they don't have more Heavy Warbirds. I was under the impression that the Romulans used a Lone Ranger doctrine like our own, and that their warbird production would be along the lines of our Excelsior production.
Maybe they haven't adopted such a doctrine
yet, but will trend that way once they have more heavy berths. It's still roughly fifty years before the TNG era in which we hardly ever see Romulan ships smaller than the
D'Deridex, after all. And other possibilities include:
1) Romulans have trouble finding captains and admirals they trust to be politically reliable when given such a huge ship of disproportionate power.
2) Romulans actually DO have more heavy warbirds, but we just didn't see them or don't know about them. Because Romulans have cloaking devices and are a race of master spies and are probably better at this whole 'intel' thing than we are.
Conversely, the Klingons may have more forces than we think due to the sheer number of individual vessels making it hard to count them all, and due to the semi-anarchic brawling character of their Great Houses meaning that some of the Houses may have significant ship strength of their own.
They drew down, at least a little bit. Three Birds of Prey still outgun the forces we keep there by 12C to 10C, but it's not by as much.
I'm honestly surprised they haven't just put a squadron of D7s on the border. D7s are, like our
Constellations, not necessarily bad ships for a sector you don't expect warfare in, although they're not
good ships for anything else.
I can kind of see their point, honestly. If you dream of your species someday bestriding the Galaxy as a great power in their own right, joining the Federation puts an end to that.
The flip side of that is that the Dawiar are surrounded by older and more established powers (like the Klingons, not just us), AND there are several other species in the area that are just as strong as them. They are not the big fish in this pond, and there isn't a very clear path that leads to them becoming one, even if they never confront the Federation again. All their immediate neighbors are as strong as them, with the possible exception of the Lecarre, and attacking the Lecarre would cause its own problems.
Pretty much exactly what I predicted. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have a post back during the debate where I predicted exactly that, "20 resilience and not much we can do about it".
You do.
The thing is,
now we know. We have a clear picture of how much impact we're having, how much of it sticks, and how much of it matters. This enables us to plan out an end-game and make reasonable projections of just how long this war is going to take. It helps inform us about how important it is for us to commit more ships to the anti-Syndicate task force, or to agitate for more Influence. We have a firm basis to plan and predict, and we can stop angsting about it. The matter is settled.
That's important.
If the Ked Paddah are on the verge of winning the the Licori get desperate, things could get real interesting. Who knows what crazy destructive mad science they have in their toolbox. "This thing eats space! We had it eat the Ked Paddah fleet." "Great, now how do you turn it off?" "Off?"
Yeah, sounds about right. Arguably that's the single biggest reason to try and end the war, because it sounds like the Licori are already futzing around with superweapons that are potentially Genesis-level scary, maybe even Hobus-level scary.
Ayup.
This would probably have happened anyway, unless we had a war with the Cardassians over the Gabriel Expanse Real Soon and then kicked them away from Bajor in the peace settlement. But it definitely seems to have happened
faster on account of us cozying up to the Bajorans. As we predicted.
Maybe we've just been spoiled by the Romulans, but I feel like I've been hearing about these guys a lot more than an espionage-themed race should let themselves get heard about.
Hey, they're new. I bet the Tal Shiar made some adorable Baby's First Galactic Espionage mistakes when
it was first founded, too. Plus the Lecarre have a problem where their
real knack is plastic surgery and impersonation... but that's a high-risk strategy compared to things like intelligence monitoring, because you're at a high risk of being outed as "not really a Dawiar/Andorian/Whatever" sooner or later. You can't avoid medical scans forever.
MISCELLANEOUS
Torgamous said:
"In response to the disaster, we've deployed emergency Dollar Stores to the most affected areas."
By Orion standards this is extremely benevolent and responsible governance.
We need to strike at the Cardassians ASAP. Every year we delay is another year they can drain resources from Bajor and their mining colonies. We'll just tell the Romulans and Klingons to keep their conflict out of our territory.
The problem is that we can't actually "strike at" Cardassia without them being willing to escalate even further against
us. Granted, the very existence of the Gabriel Border Zone is going to provoke them into being inclined to do just that. But if the Cardassians just
sit tight and don't decide to attack us, we may very well end up sucked into a situation where they remain in occupation of Bajor for decades. That's what happened in canon, after all, even when the Cardassians
were actively fighting the Federation now and then.
