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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Simon_Jester said:
@OneirosTheWriter , can we get a formal "yes or no" on a question that's been bugging us for a while:

In theory, Lone Ranger doctrine would let us build vast numbers (as in, dozens and dozens, potentially) of Combat 5 or 6 "pocket explorers" of 1.8 million tons, relatively cheaply, taking advantage of the fact that they would contribute little or no more to our combat cap than an escort would.

This seems to some of us like something of an exploit, and we're kind of worried that we may not be allowed to try.

Is that a thing we can do on a large scale without touching off a rebalancing?
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Potentially a rebalancing, but more likely I'd use the Council to take a long hard look at what you're doing.

If you're making decisions based off of meta-understanding of mechanics limitations rather than in-game understanding, you're always going to be liable for a corrective measure.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
If you're making decisions based off of meta-understanding of mechanics limitations rather than in-game understanding, you're always going to be liable for a corrective measure.
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but those two are the same thing in this instance :<

Also what wound happen if we took forward defence and used it to spam a bunch of science escorts that eat no combat caps?
 
So as long we make any pocket explorers stat equivalent to the Excelsior with the intent of having one per sector to serve as a command ship that would make sense in game. As opposed to making an 'Explorer' with the stats of a Renaissance which would be cheesy.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
Potentially a rebalancing, but more likely I'd use the Council to take a long hard look at what you're doing.

If you're making decisions based off of meta-understanding of mechanics limitations rather than in-game understanding, you're always going to be liable for a corrective measure.
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Thaaat's about what I've been saying all along.

Void Stalker said:
So as long we make any pocket explorers stat equivalent to the Excelsior with the intent of having one per sector to serve as a command ship that would make sense in game. As opposed to making an 'Explorer' with the stats of a Renaissance which would be cheesy.
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The catch is that doing that wouldn't give us much advantage over just building Excelsiors. I doubt we'll save that much crew or resources compared to the 2285 Excelsior design. Furthermore, we're likely to start a refit project for the Excelsiors soon... At which point the performance gap between a light explorer with the 2285 Excelsior stats and the stats of the Excelsior-As we'd be starting from scratch begins to widen again.

Furthermore, if we start building Ambassadors any time soon, we may well reach a point where we start wanting to pull the Explorer Corps crews off our less experienced Excelsiors and put them on the new Ambassadors, which are likely to be higher-performing and more durable. Which, again, frees up Excelsior hulls to act as sector garrison flagships.

I'm really not seeing much of a niche for pocket explorers given the number of Excelsiors we're likely to build, and given that plans to significantly thicken the fleet by doing something like spamming fifty Combat 6 explorers that count as Combat 3 or 4 for cap purposes is likely to run into problems.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
I'm confused as to why we were offered a Light Explorer option at all, then. Because any viable Light Explorer design is going to accidentally trip the same issues.
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I guess its useful if we want to have ten simultaneous 5YM's going, lol.

I would never want to do that to our Explorer Corps, though. When we send our best and brightest out into the unknown, we send them with the sturdiest, strongest, most versatile ships that we can possibly afford to give them. I would rather the EC consist of four 5YM Ambassadors than six 5YM Excelsiors.

As for the garrison escort question...

Meeting all our garrison requirements with just cruisers seems like a tall order, unless we lean heavily on starbases that can't respond to sector events. It also makes our home fleets more brittle, as the loss of any one ship is going to leave a bigger hole in our defenses that takes longer to patch up again. On the other hand, cruisers are likely to outperform escorts by at least a little during event responses.

Hmmm.

I think I would rather design a cheaper successor to the Centaur-A than rely purely on Conniebee/Rennies. Interior sectors lean more escort, exterior sectors lean more cruiser (with combat escorts for backup).

SuperSonicSound said:
It can provide -2 with all the research can't it? I remember that being a thing or am I misremembering?
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If I were Oneiros, I'd rule that you can't lower the effective Combat score of a combat capable ship below 1.
 
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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
I'm confused as to why we were offered a Light Explorer option at all, then. Because any viable Light Explorer design is going to accidentally trip the same issues.
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I'm not opposed to having a ship like that - however I am opposed to it being a vehicle to exploit the system. Different things.

And you'd basically end up with Excelsiors being your light explorer role, and Ambassadors being your heavy explorers.
 
I mean the bonus from Dual mission doesn't come from checking off a box on a sheet, it comes from everyone sort of understanding that the Big ships that we use to explore /are/ for exploring and not warring so the council is less worried about us having a bunch of them.

If we game the system and go "Yes, we have all these "explorers" running a patrol route in explored space" then the council will probably totally revoke the bonus and give us militarization points and have them count as plus one because we clearly intend them for military use and lied about it.
 
Night said:
Actually I've had a terrifying thought.
Oneiros could have someone pull a In The Pale Moonlight on us, and we would never know.
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As I understood it, the Cardassians pulled it on the Sydraxians, framing us.

OneirosTheWriter said:
The new cruiser prototype is more than half-way complete;
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I'd better get a move on, then...

[X] Suggest something else- Change the Heavy Explorer requirement to Medium OR Large Operations Frame.
I'm not fully following the discussion in the Design Bureau, but this makes sense as explained.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
And you'd basically end up with Excelsiors being your light explorer role, and Ambassadors being your heavy explorers.
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Well, we're sort of already headed there unless we take the extreme route of never building anything heavier than an Excelsior. It makes sense that we might try to get Excelsior-level performance out of a smaller, cheaper ship. After all, the Excelsior itself really only gives us a +1 to the statline when compared to a Rennie, which is just not very impressive. But with the Excelsior refit being an option like you said, it probably isn't a good idea for us to try that until we've at least seen what we can accomplish with the Excelsior-A hull. It may turn out to be worth an extra 40/40 resources and a couple more crew to get the extra performance that comes with the bigger hull.

AKuz said:
I mean the bonus from Dual mission doesn't come from checking off a box on a sheet, it comes from everyone sort of understanding that the Big ships that we use to explore /are/ for exploring and not warring so the council is less worried about us having a bunch of them.

If we game the system and go "Yes, we have all these "explorers" running a patrol route in explored space" then the council will probably totally revoke the bonus and give us militarization points and have them count as plus one because we clearly intend them for military use and lied about it.
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This. Very much this.

If it becomes obvious that we're using our "explorers" to build up a 'line of battle,' we lose credibility and political advantage. That kind of stuff might have flown back in the 2200s when Starfleet was presumably building lots of Connies in order to counter the Klingons. It won't fly now.

AKuz said:
No, they mean that one of our officers pulls a "In The Pale Moonlight"
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Well yeah, but frankly a lot of Star Trek episodes have "and then Starfleet Command never found out" or "they wouldn't believe us if they heard us" attached. So... [shrug]
 
Simon_Jester said:
Well yeah, but frankly a lot of Star Trek episodes have "and then Starfleet Command never found out" or "they wouldn't believe us if they heard us" attached. So... [shrug]
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No they don't? I mean, textually, they absolutely do not. In The Pale Moonlight and Inter Arma are essentially alone in this being stated. I suppose you could argue other episodes obviously weren't for whatever reason, but it is exceedingly rare this is something that happens as part of the onscreen story.

EDIT: I suppose there's Clues from TNG as well, but that was even erased from the participating officers' memories for the most part.
 
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AKuz said:
I mean the bonus from Dual mission doesn't come from checking off a box on a sheet, it comes from everyone sort of understanding that the Big ships that we use to explore /are/ for exploring and not warring so the council is less worried about us having a bunch of them.

If we game the system and go "Yes, we have all these "explorers" running a patrol route in explored space" then the council will probably totally revoke the bonus and give us militarization points and have them count as plus one because we clearly intend them for military use and lied about it.
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Our ships in 'explored space' do a fair amount of exploring still. The purpose of these hypothetical light explorers would be to be fast, flexible ships capable of going anywhere and doing anything that's needed.
 
Night said:
No they don't? I mean, textually, they absolutely do not. In The Pale Moonlight and Inter Arma are essentially alone in this being stated. I suppose you could argue other episodes obviously weren't for whatever reason, but it is exceedingly rare this is something that happens as part of the onscreen story.

EDIT: I suppose there's Clues from TNG as well, but that was even erased from the participating officers' memories for the most part.
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Okay, I may be exaggerating or thinking of incidents where it seems likely that at best the version Starfleet Command finds out about is a tailored version of events. I can't provide specifics so I'll let the matter rest.

Briefvoice said:
Our ships in 'explored space' do a fair amount of exploring still. The purpose of these hypothetical light explorers would be to be fast, flexible ships capable of going anywhere and doing anything that's needed.
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Yes, but at that point they're not really doing anything a cruiser wouldn't, and the cruiser doesn't get special reduced cost against the combat cap.

I think Excelsiors get this reduction when Rennies don't because the Council still thinks of Excelsiors as "the ships that push the frontiers and challenge the unknown," while Renaissances are "the ships that patrol our space and keep us safe from day to day intrusions and hazards." If we spam pocket explorers, they'll start getting treated more like the latter and less like the former.
 
Briefvoice said:
Our ships in 'explored space' do a fair amount of exploring still. The purpose of these hypothetical light explorers would be to be fast, flexible ships capable of going anywhere and doing anything that's needed.
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But it'll be obvious to everyone and the Pakleds that we're using these to build up a battle line. The council isn't stupid. Rather the opposite of that in fact
 
Leila Hann said:
As for the garrison escort question...

Meeting all our garrison requirements with just cruisers seems like a tall order, unless we lean heavily on starbases that can't respond to sector events. It also makes our home fleets more brittle, as the loss of any one ship is going to leave a bigger hole in our defenses that takes longer to patch up again. On the other hand, cruisers are likely to outperform escorts by at least a little during event responses.

Hmmm.

I think I would rather design a cheaper successor to the Centaur-A than rely purely on Conniebee/Rennies. Interior sectors lean more escort, exterior sectors lean more cruiser (with combat escorts for backup).
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I'm going to say outright: don't make these judgments until you see exactly what ships are offered in a role with the tech at the time of offering. Chances are pretty good that none of your expectations as to what is good for what will be correct. The "Garrison Escort" doesn't slot to defense requirements, and neither would a hypothetical "Garrison Cruiser". Unless you force it to be, which isn't really the role given in the mission statement. A Garrison Cruiser would not really resemble a Connibee/Rennie either.
 
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