Sapientarian? We used sophontitarian before but that was meh... animatarian, referring to souls?
Since all the starving people here would be Cardassians, I figured a species-specific term was in order.
I'm talking about waiting for our next cruiser wave.
After the next few months of game time, we don't have any more large waves of cruisers entering production simultaneously until some time in late 2316. It'd be
great if we could just somehow "press pause" on the war for FOUR YEARS while waiting for those ships to be ready... but somehow I don't think we can count on being able to do that.
The Bajorans are probably one of the oldest Starfaring worlds in the quadrant. They probably watched the Old Orion Empire rise and fall and the HurQ blow by.
Thaaat may have changed. Honestly, the idea of Bajorans being ancient starfarers really doesn't fit very well with having the Cardassians totally outclass them not just in numbers and ruthlessness but in
technology, which we were told was the case.
Part of the idea of the Forward Defense doctrine is to fix that by putting such a large portion of our forces in border zones that they are a "real fleet". Though it's hard to say what that even is. What's a "real fleet"? You're probably right that 15-20 isn't enough... is 30? 40? The Cardassians have less territory to defend than we do, but they can't send all their ships. The Apiata would swing around and attack their worlds freely.
Eh, just musing.
I think Combat 30-40 is a good benchmark- about the size of the forces we were slinging around during Grey October. Comparable to the scale of an entire member world fleet, and large enough that you'd
really have to try in order to amass a fleet capable of reliably defeating it without taking heavy damage to some of your ships. Anything much below Combat 30 isn't a "fleet," it's a squadron, and while squadrons can accomplish useful things in warfare, when they go up against one of the enemy's main fleets they go 'splat.'
I mean, it's not that the Cardassians can't "crack" a Combat 40 force parked at Lapycorias. But they can't do it "quick easy cheap;" it'd be at most one out of those three. If they want the victory to be
reliably achieved, they'd need a fleet of Combat much larger than forty, which means they can't do it without massing a lot of forces in the general area around Indorion space. Which gives us more warning that they're coming.
Speaking of wartime applications of escorts. For those who thought the Miranda-A was impressive at:
Miranda-A Now-Now [277m, 655k t]
C3 S2 H2 L3 P1 D2
Cost[60br, 45sr, 2 years], Crew [O-1, E-2, T-1]
then the Wartime Escort SWB came up with in the SDB:
The Dictator's Choice [???m, 437kt]
C3 S1 H3 L3 P1 D3
Cost[45br, 40sr, 0.5 years], Crew [O-1, E-1, T-1]
is amazing. If we loaded up our 1mt bays with them we could have +54C
per year. The downsides being that it would chew through our crew like crazy and is completely useless, to the point of being an active hindrance, in peacetime. Which incidentally means that despite not tripping any of the built in flags this would
definitely give us serious Militarization points.
I am deeply suspicious that we might not be allowed to go with that "six months to build one" timeframe. It doesn't look like anyone else in the galaxy is being allowed to build escorts that fast, even the relatively small, slimmed-down ones. With the possible exception of Klingon Birds-of-Prey, which are extremely tiny and weak.
The
Dictator's Choice-class is cheaper than a
Miranda-A (unsurprisingly), but has very little else going for it. I suspect the +1 Hull doesn't offset the -1 Science, because sensors matter. The increased Defense score may help, and I have no doubt these things could perform in a fleet battle. But on the other hand, they'll be less effective at picket duty and the like.
A
Federation warship really does need a decent science score. Because even in wartime, fighting isn't
literally all a ship does.
I have a design in review for the SDB that beats the pants off the MA in cost and that we could design this Snakepit. Builds a quarter faster, too. We may want to build some MAs in the interim, but they should be considered a soon obsolete design.
Has anyone tried designing a
Miranda-B refit that actually uses the new spreadsheet, by the way?
It's not as good as the Centuar, so I see no point in building more.
I assume you have several hundred free SR hidden under your pillow for us to fund a wave of
Centaur-A production, then.
