Five years isn't so much longer than four years that it 'should' present major problems with production. We end up making four
Ambassadors in the time it takes to make five
Excelsiors, and we're already quite capable of turning out two
Excelsiors a year (on average). Two of our berths may prove too small to build
Ambassadors, of course- but that would still leave six, permitting us to average one
Ambassador a year while using the Lor'Vela and Ana Font 2.5-megaton berths to refit or build
Excelsiors.
But seriously, this is just
not that big of a problem, and arguably the five-year construction time would help defray the higher crew/resource cost by amortizing it over longer periods anyway. We could easily turn out, instead of an average of "about two"
Excelsiors a year, an average of one
Ambassador and slightly less than one
Excelsior. If we commission literally just
one or two more three-megaton berths, we have just as much ability to turn out five-year
Ambassadors as we did
Excelsiors, assuming we don't run out of crew or resources.
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I'm out of the house atm so I'll have to respond to the various doctrine questions when I get home.
Suffice to say, your doctrine is the one that involves independently operating explorers. They're not supposed to get drawn to the same destination together. That's why they get bonuses to responding and to completing events. It's supposed to advantage running with the biggest, baddest heavy explorers you can.
[looks around at various people]
Itoldthemso.
It does seem logical, thinking about it, that a doctrine which focuses on mighty explorers that necessarily exist only in small numbers would NOT encourage those explorers to 'bunch up' in any one place responding to a single event. After all, a sector garrison fleet might well consist of only two explorers, even with a fairly high Defense requirement. If both explorers show up to the same event, that means there is literally no one else to do anything about any problem elsewhere in the sector for some time afterwards.
It's one thing to have two ships respond to the same event when there are four or five ships in the sector fleet. It's another matter entirely to have two ships double up on an event when they're the only ones around. Too much of that and you get the classic Star Trek "It's headed for Earth! We're the only ship in the sector..." nonsense.
