It would be inadvisable for us to build a Combat 9 ship if we can help it. High Combat counts against our cap, and our bonuses to Explorer combat count for rather less as the ships gain more firepower. Combat 8 is good enough to match the opponents we're likely to see in the reasonably near future, and it's okay if one or two ship classes have more guns than the Ambassador. Just as there does exist at least one Combat 7 ship out there that outguns an Excelsior.

Oh, I know that our explorers become less efficient with respect to our combat cap the higher their combat stat is, but that's going to be a problem in the future anyway.

Besides, quite frankly we are unlikely to build many Ambassadors, Excelsiors are better efficiency wise for sector garrison purposes for the next couple of decades. We will probably have to be pretty lucky with both crew recruitment and mining site events to launch more than 10 to 15 of them total in the next couple of decades, with most of them being for the Explorer Corps.

Also worth noting that ships we intend to put into the EC count against our combat cap but do not count towards defense requirements, which further disincentives upping combat too much.

Err.. I thought our Explorer Corps ships weren't counted towards our combat cap? Can someone confirm this? Or am I mistaking an idea that was implemented for one that was only discussed? If so, :oops:.
 
They count towards combat cap. Not sure where you would have heard otherwise.

The front page doesn't seem to take them into account. Maybe it hasn't been updated?

Edit: Maybe I'm just crazy. As for the idea, I think? it came up ages ago back in the first couple of years of game time. Guess I just missed that nothing changed while reading through a couple of weeks back. If I'm wrong of course.
 
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Omake - Busywork - SWB
This one goes in spoiler tags, I think, just because it's not narratively interesting. Had to make up a few names but to my surprise there were enough people I could borrow up the chain (and across several months of message forwarding) to make it work.

Busywork, a.k.a. What the SDB and their research teams do without a ship to design.
From: Vice Admiral Shey ch'Tharvasse, Chief of Staff, Starfleet Command​
To: Admiral Valentina Sousa, Commander, Starfleet Command
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Report 126, ONA

Ship design is the siren song for any flag officer. I've filed this for "in your spare time". If you're reading this, congrats! Also don't bother with the report, it was written by a Vulcan. Just look at the data tables.

Shey ch'Tarvasse

P.S. I also took the liberty of informing the comms division to come up with a better way to indicate a forwarded messages. It is the 24th century. We should not still be stacking forward tags.

>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<

From: Vice Admiral Rinias ch'Vohlet, Commander, Starfleet Design Bureau
To: Vice Admiral Shey ch'Tharvasse, Chief of Staff, Starfleet Command
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Report 126, ONA

Don't know if Sousa has time for this but you probably know what to do.

Rinias ch'Vohlet

>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<

To: Vice Admiral Rinias ch'Vohlet, Commander, Starfleet Design Bureau
From: Commodore Victoria Eaton, Commander, Amarkia Sector Command
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Office of Naval Architecture

Sir, found this clearing out my inbox after the change in command. Take a look if you get a chance.

Victoria Eaton

>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<

From: Commodore Rejuk en Fughut, Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
To: Commodore Victoria Eaton, Chief of Staff, Starfleet Design Bureau
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Office of Naval Architecture

Heard you're being bumped off to space again soon. If you're not too busy for terrestrial affairs, this might interest you. One of my lieutenants pushed this through the DAC on his own initiative. Apparently with the support of your old department, for what little that would be worth.

I'll have to put a word in with Suvek.

-Rejuk

>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<

From: Commander Anne Usha, Assistant Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
To: Commodore Rejuk en Fughut, Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
Subject: Fwd: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Conclusions

For your attention. Looks like the DAC produced something useful for once.

Cmdr Usha

>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<

From: Lieutenant S'kuul, Design Analyst, Office of Naval Architecture
To: Commander Anne Usha, Assistant Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
Subject: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Conclusions

Commander,

The criteria that should be used when designing new Starfleet ships is a long-standing argument in the lower ranks of the Ship Design Bureau. The argument even spills out onto the desks of Commodores, Admirals, or even to the Council. However, in this era, there has yet to be a concerted effort to analyze existing ship performance data and use that analysis to form ship design criteria. The Historical Analytics Subcommittee has produced this report is an attempt to rectify that mistake. We have analyzed all accessible captain's logs from the past ten years for mission assignment, mission type, and resolution method, cross-referenced with ship capabilities.

[Note: Nearest I can tell, the "subcommittee" consists of Lt. S'kuul from the ONA, Ensign Ghoshal from Analytics, and one of their old academy classmates now at the San Fran mainframe.]

Starfleet's mission is wide-ranging; any and every Starfleet ship can be expected to respond to any and every kind of mission, from the Soyuz to the Excelsiors of the Explorer Corps. While this ideal drives the actions of every ship captain, some ships simply do not have the tools to detect, respond to, or reach in time every call or anomaly. Non-response to events or anomalies that go undetected is outside the scope of this report; we have no way of tracking this data. It may also be the case that ships have endured situations that went completely unremarked in the captains' logs. Nor does this report take into account crew quality, sector command quality and methodology, or top-level command decisions or doctrine. These factors will have to be analyzed separately, and are somewhat tangential to requirement-based ship design.

In addition, a ship's performance in large-scale combat is also outside the scope of this report. Tactical performs an post-battle analysis, which has become increasingly difficult to obtain in recent years due to classification.

  System Used Total Percentage

In Response or Detection
LR Comms 38 40.43%
  LR Sensors 31 32.98%
  SR Sensors 5 5.32%
In Mission Resolution Sensors 42 32.56%
  Sickbay 7 5.43%
  Engineering and Related 27 20.93%
  Nav Deflector 5 3.88%
  Labs 10 7.75%
  Diplomatic Facilities 19 14.73%
  Weapons or Threat of Weapons 13 10.08%
  Manufacturing 1 0.78%
  Shield 1 0.78%
  Hull 1 0.78%
As you can see, the speed of a ship's response depends on its long range comms systems, its long range sensors, and of course, its emergency warp speed, which is not in the data the subcommittee could access. However, the successful resolution of a ship's mission depends much more greatly on the ship's onboard equipment, be they sensors, laboratories, diplomatic facilities, sickbays, or weaponry. In the event that this equipment is inadequate, the ship will fail to resolve her mission, and depending on the mission her fate may hang on the quality of her defensive systems.

It is the opinion of this subcommittee, therefore, that ships that are able to respond quickly must have adequate facilities to deal with every crisis they may respond to. Ships that are easily able to respond should have the sensors, laboratories, sickbays, and diplomatic facilities they need to deal with a wide array of problems. One cannot sacrifice any one area, as the fast-responding ship will respond to emergencies it is not equipped to handle. In particular, scientific facilities and equipment are of particularly great value.

On the other hand, ships that are not easily able to respond must instead have facilities to deal with a more severe degree of problems within their specialty, like the current Oberth, but risk missing certain time-critical emergencies and must deal with these emergencies after they have escalated. There is no evidence that low ability to respond places these ships at risk, rather, they simply fail to detect events needing a response. This is good for the ship, but bad for Starfleet's mission. However, a massively increased set of capabilities may enable specialist ships to respond to emergencies within their scope without bothering to increase speed or communications.

Shield and hull strength affects the survivability when things go wrong. However, it is the opinion of this subcommittee that is is better to design ships without the premise of failure. Likewise, armament is relevant in the event of an armed conflict, and the burden of combat often goes to generalist ships like cruisers, explorers, or even the Explorer Corps. It may also be possible for combat-focused ships like the Miranda, Miranda-A, Constellation, or Constellation-A to be held in reserve if Starfleet's sectors are adequately garrisoned by ships better suited to crisis response. To put it bluntly, these ships have a 25 to 30% chance of failing any given garrison mission. The jury is still out on the Centaur-A, but it may simply not have the facilities to be suited to its generalist role.

A full listing of data is available in Appendix A. Ship-specific data is available in Appendix B. Please refer to Appendix C for a list of SDB file designs that fit this report's criteria. The full report will be filed with the DAC in our first meeting of 2312.

End Message
 
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Yeah, the front page is VERY off, we have 180ish combat, but it only shows 144. We have 31 24 combat taken up by EC ships, so somethings not right here. The Kearsage is still listed as not repaired there for one.

so with the way things are going, they should be showing up about the time the syndicate is winding down.

I hope not but it would be par for the course at this point wouldn't it.
 
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"It was agreed in the House Subcommittee of Youth Relations that an effective lobbying strategy..."

"God damn it Spren just say 'my brother and I decided we were going to ask to our parents to stay up an hour later.'"
 
We could always just build the prototype and let the member worlds build them. Make the 'warships' purely defensive in nature.
We're talking about explorers. Very few of the member worlds are going to want to pay for three-megaton space battleships.

so with the way things are going, they should be showing up about the time the syndicate is winding down.
Assuming we can keep up the tempo of operations we've been keeping up, we'll probably have the Syndicate hammered down within about another ten years, really. Getting the job done in five would probably be too much to ask.
 
We're talking about explorers. Very few of the member worlds are going to want to pay for three-megaton space battleships.

Assuming we can keep up the tempo of operations we've been keeping up, we'll probably have the Syndicate hammered down within about another ten years, really. Getting the job done in five would probably be too much to ask.

It's going to feel so good when we finally reached that point though. It's really feeling like we'll have earned it.
 
Well a short check via google showed me nothing in particular so I guess I'm slightly crazy. Well, not like I didn't already note how impractical the number of hoops we would have to jump through to make 3.1mt ships would make it.

The front page does need to be updated with our new combat total though, @OneirosTheWriter, and the Kearsage needs to be put in the completed repairs spoiler.

Edit: :confused: Or maybe I'm not crazy, the front page combat cap total makes sense if you add 1 Oberth to the ship total slightly up the page then calculate it while not adding our 4 EC ships and the Kadesh mission one and treating the Constitution-A as a 5 combat ship.
 
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We could always just build the prototype and let the member worlds build them. Make the 'warships' purely defensive in nature.

This would be more acceptable for a combat-cruiser or a combat-escort. With a large Battleship, many member worlds may simply decide against building such large and expensive vessels.

So, what about Megatortoises and Riala class ships? As I recall, more of these are being built right now.
 
Well a short check via google showed me nothing in particular so I guess I'm slightly crazy. Well, not like I didn't already note how impractical the number of hoops we would have to jump through to make 3.1mt ships would make it.

The front page does need to be updated with our new combat total though, @OneirosTheWriter, and the Kearsage needs to be put in the completed repairs spoiler.

Edit: :confused: Or maybe I'm not crazy, the front page combat cap total makes sense if you add 1 Oberth to the ship total slightly up the page then calculate it while not adding our 4 EC ships and the Kadesh mission one and treating the Constitution-A as a 5 combat ship.
Combat cap does include the EC but does not include any veteran bon uses or captain bonuses.

Also all of our Explorer class ships currently count as 1 less for cap purposes
 
Combat cap does include the EC but does not include any veteran bon uses or captain bonuses.

Also all of our Explorer class ships currently count as 1 less for cap purposes

That still doesn't work.

11 Excelsiors = 11 x (6-1) = 55
1 Constitution-A = 1 x (5?-1) = 4?
5 Constitution-B = 5 x 5 = 25
7 Constellation = 7 x 3 = 21
6 Oberth = 1 x 6 = 6
10 Miranda = 10 x 3 = 30 (ship refit is off, we have some A's already, but both have combat 3)
7 Centaur-A = 7 x 3 = 21

55+4?+25+21+6+30+21=162 which doesn't match the stated total of 144.

On the other hand

11-5 = 6 Excelsiors = 6 x (6-1) = 30
1 Constitution-A = 1 x (5?-1) = 4?
5 Constitution-B = 5 x 5 = 25
7 Constellation = 7 x 3 = 21
6 Oberth = 1 x 6 = 6
10 Miranda = 10 x 3 = 30
7 Centaur-A = 7 x 3 = 21

30+4?+25+21+6+30+21=137 which is closer, but still not it.

However, remove the -1 for explorers bonus and you get..

11-5 = 6 Excelsiors = 6 x 6 = 36
1 Constitution-A = 1 x 5? = 5?
5 Constitution-B = 5 x 5 = 25
7 Constellation = 7 x 3 = 21
6 Oberth = 1 x 6 = 6
10 Miranda = 10 x 3 = 30
7 Centaur-A = 7 x 3 = 21

36+5?+25+21+6+30+21=144 which matches. So, obviously somethings off here.
 
Given that our ship count is changing every couple of quarters up and/or down, and that we aren't really close to the combat cap in any event... I can totally understand if Oneiros is choosing NOT to make updating it one of his top priorities. I think he's right to do so.

So, what about Megatortoises and Riala class ships? As I recall, more of these are being built right now.
It's not that NONE of the member worlds will voluntarily construct battleships. But the ones who do will want those battleships to be designed, maintained, and used according to their own priorities. They won't just agree to build new battleships for Starfleet as an accounting gimmick. Not given the extreme cost of maintaining the ships. Furthermore, we'd have to make sure that our battleship design could even fit in their battleship-sized berths, which probably means designing a 2500-kiloton ship, not a 3000 or 3100-kiloton ship.
 
Front page combat total might be unadjusted due to the fact we need to hit our current C goal, iirc.

Given that our ship count is changing every couple of quarters up and/or down, and that we aren't really close to the combat cap in any event... I can totally understand if Oneiros is choosing NOT to make updating it one of his top priorities. I think he's right to do so.

As I show above, it seems like he's not counting our EC ships in our total which is why I was under the impression they didn't count.

Of course, he also doesn't seem to count our bonus either.
 
Thing is, we've built like 30 Combat worth of cruisers plus multiple explorers in the past few years. "The total hasn't been updated in the extremely recent past" is at least as plausible an explanation as "he's deliberately ignoring all Explorer Corps ships from the total."
 
Front page total combat has been up to date for maybe 10% of the time during this quest. Total combat cap hasn't been up to date for something like 8 in-game years (50 base + 30 Oberth reward + 100 biophage reward + 20 Amarki + 13*10 threat = 330). Due to how far we are still away from the cap keeping either of those stats up to date has been a very low priority.
 
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As I show above, it seems like he's not counting our EC ships in our total which is why I was under the impression they didn't count.

Of course, he also doesn't seem to count our bonus either.
Not all of the values on the front page get updated all the time, the Combat cap and our science and defense goals might be done every other in game year.
 
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