To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Leila Hann · Feb 18, 2017

Iron Wolf said:
I was thinking it might be something like the Starbase we see all the time in DS9. Uh, that isn't DS9 itself, obvs.

That's how I've been picturing Outposts. /:

Iron Wolf · Feb 18, 2017

Leila Hann said:
That's how I've been picturing Outposts. /:

What about the orbital office complex?

(this is something of a trick question

)

Night · Feb 18, 2017

First of a series on everyone's favorite Vulcan with an [Old Guard] tag, Seruk.

The Rock

"Lieutenant Commander. Your agitation is unwarranted. Sit down." It was illogical, but he was mildly, very mildly, annoyed. Such displays as pacing disrupted the order of his office, and thus in a small way disrupted the order he had sought to create in Starfleet.

Not in any crude, empire-building, direction-shaping sense. That was within his power but outside his desires. No, Starfleet was an organization, and organizations need to be organized. Early in his career he had decided that the best way to achieve this goal was through the power of Starfleet Personnel, where one could stamp deeper and more permanent marks into Starfleet rather than the more flashy but fleeting marks left by various occupants of the office of Commander, Starfleet. And there was little pressure for the guard to be changed in Personnel, unlike more dynamic positions. Here he could put his Vulcan longevity to use and shape Starfleet for decades to come.

And thus a young Lieutenant Seruk had set out to sit in the chair he now occupied. Any Federation schoolchild could tell you that Vulcans lived a long time, so he had been able to afford a degree of patience some of his contemporaries had not. It had not been easy; while a Vulcan lived long enough that if they desired to reach a particular position in society they often made it just because they had so long to try reaching a lofty position in Starfleet took more than just effort. Now he contemplated the lieutenant commander in front of him and considered whether they would be a fit for this chair. "Lieutenant Commander May, your performance evaluations are satisfactory. You have a citation for bravery under fire from commanding a recon runabout during the Biophage Crisis. Your efforts in Tactical have won you praise. You requested a transfer to a Constitution B during the recent unpleasantness with Cardassia. And yet now I find you seeking to become my aide. What do you desire out of Personnel?"

The human man did not consider his answer; he was decisive in his response which fit what was in his file.. Seruk had made a habit of asking this of all his potential aide de camps, but he also requested they not inform anyone because he considered the answer too valuable in judging an officer. "The one constant in my career, sir, has been the chaos. I have been regarded as something of a clean-up officer, someone sent to bring troublesome commands to heel, back from my taking command of the most troublesome runabout crew in my squadron fresh out of the Academy. And it - It offends me, sir." May continued in a rush. "Not to be thought of that way, but the chaos itself. Starfleet is the finest organization that any of its members have brought forth and worth fighting for, which is why I have requested my previous assignments. But it also deserves better. An organization is only as strong as it has been made. On the front line I can affect only a small part of it. Here I can affect all of it."

Seruk tilted his head three degrees to the left and one degree forward, considering. Different reasoning, and yet the same conclusions. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations. "Personnel is the rock upon which Starfleet is built, and you understand this Commander. You pass, and begin at zero six hundred tomorrow." He touched a button on his desk, approving May's transfer to be his aide. Without personnel to man them, the labs and the starships and the shipyards were all so much useless junk.

aeqnai · Feb 18, 2017

Iron Wolf said:
I think cloaks -- uh, the ship kind -- are actually banned tech, still. So some incident must have replaced Tomed that still led to some form of the Treaty of Algeron. Did we give up cloaks are part of the Biophage stuff?

Easiest thing is to retcon the Tomed Incident to 2299 -- it could be part of the reason why our predecessor left in disgrace (and also why Harriman had to give up Enterprise????).

I am still fully convinced that the cloak 'ban' we have isn't a treaty thing whatsoever. More a Council directive to do with how the Federation wants to present itself to other powers and Starfleet isn't supposed to be overly militarized. I don't think the Romulans would get on as well with us if we retconned Tomed to already have happened, for one thing. And we never actually gave anything up in the Biophage arc, save perhaps the loss of life involved.

Simon_Jester · Feb 18, 2017

OneirosTheWriter said:
It's a sub outpost sized installation, useful for basic replenishment, maintenance facilities for small craft, a hub for intrastellar craft, and a way to mark territory. But it is not really a defensive emplacement.

Pretty much every spot that has Fed civilians on it will have something like this, but it is below your notice in most circumstances.

This sounds to me like the kind of "space station" we saw in The Trouble With Tribbles. Not really armed or equipped to defend itself or even maintain internal security very well without Starfleet assistance, but bigger than a starship and with enough infrastructure that it could do things like store massive amounts of grain and host civilian entertainment facilities.

Iron Wolf said:
I think cloaks -- uh, the ship kind -- are actually banned tech, still. So some incident must have replaced Tomed that still led to some form of the Treaty of Algeron. Did we give up cloaks are part of the Biophage stuff?

No. The Council was telling us not to research that before the Biophage. Apparently the decision was made at a political level.

Easiest thing is to retcon the Tomed Incident to 2299 -- it could be part of the reason why our predecessor left in disgrace (and also why Harriman had to give up Enterprise????).

We've got sufficient explanations for why that happened already:
1) The explorer Excalibur was lost to unknown circumstances, placing Admiral Rogers under a cloud.
2) Rogers spent an excessive amount of resources on the Miranda force, ramping up Starfleet's combat force.
3) At the same time, Rogers was presumably retiring the Constitution-class explorers, which were more versatile and could do science/presence/exploration missions.
4) On top of all this, Rogers was working on the Ares-class heavy cruiser, built to almost the same scale as the Excelsior but heavily optimized for combat.

This combination of factors led to the Council sacking Rogers as an incompetent militarist loony; the combination of (2) and (4) in particular did not go over at a time only about 5-6 years after the Khitomer Accords with the Federation trying to reap the peace dividend of not having to fight the Klingons all the time anymore.

Leila Hann said:
That's how I've been picturing Outposts. /:

I figure an outpost basically takes this level of space station and uprates it with shield generators, a weapons suite, and a docking bay with enough equipment to perform significant maintenance work on starships.

It's not so much that it's a lot bigger, as that it represents Starfleet being willing to invest some real effort turning the space station into a base, as opposed to just a 'port of call.'

Iron Wolf · Feb 18, 2017

Simon_Jester said:
We've got sufficient explanations for why that happened already:
1) The explorer Excalibur was lost to unknown circumstances, placing Admiral Rogers under a cloud.
2) Rogers spent an excessive amount of resources on the Miranda force, ramping up Starfleet's combat force.
3) At the same time, Rogers was presumably retiring the Constitution-class explorers, which were more versatile and could do science/presence/exploration missions.
4) On top of all this, Rogers was working on the Ares-class heavy cruiser, built to almost the same scale as the Excelsior but heavily optimized for combat.

This combination of factors led to the Council sacking Rogers as an incompetent militarist loony; the combination of (2) and (4) in particular did not go over at a time only about 5-6 years after the Khitomer Accords with the Federation trying to reap the peace dividend of not having to fight the Klingons all the time anymore.

See I'd just slot in 5) Tomed Incident But Earlier; since the Federation ban on cloaks comes explicitly from the Treaty of Algeron which itself stems from that incident, and we started the game with a cloak ban.

aeqnai · Feb 18, 2017

Iron Wolf said:
See I'd just slot in 5) Tomed Incident But Earlier; since the Federation ban on cloaks comes explicitly from the Treaty of Algeron which itself stems from that incident, and we started the game with a cloak ban.

It doesn't need to be a treaty. In fact I'm p sure that in our hypothetical OTL, the reason that the cloak proviso of the treaty was accepted, despite being frankly ridiculous on the face of it, is that the Council felt it was a 'cheap' concession given that they had already directed Starfleet less formally to focus on counter-cloak instead of cloaking devices.

Leila Hann · Feb 18, 2017

Night said:
First of a series on everyone's favorite Vulcan with an [Old Guard] tag, Seruk.

lbmaian · Feb 18, 2017

Briefvoice said:
Maybe amending the anti-Syndicate legislation needn't be such a big priority after all.

I'm actually wondering if that 5 influence we got is going to be internally spent warding off the pending political crisis from our >100 cost at 2312 EOY.

Artemis1992 said:
The career-political guy, whose bonus always was extra-pp and similar.

Kaze said:
As Commodore of Sol sector, she gives a evasion bonus and a re-roll for failed shield DC's to all ships.

FYI, while collaborating with Oneiros on the 2312 EOY, I can confirm that we've lost Revak's 4pp/yr commodore bonus and all other commodore bonuses in the transition to the commodore attribute system (aggression, nerve, politics, etc.)

Speaking of which, @OneirosTheWriter, sorry if I'm harping on this, but when are you gonna get around to fixing the BR/SR/impact/cost/relations?

-15br
-20sr
+4 impact
+4 cost (halved to 2 cost)
151 Yrillian (not 139)
125 Licori (not 105)

Nix said:
None of these is something an escort is actually better at, except possibly intentionally tripping ambushes, which is going to be extremely rare. Some of them are possibly risky in a way stats don't help with and therefore a bit wasteful to use explorers on, but we easily have enough escorts to perform those, and if we had enough explorers to perform all other tasks that would be perfectly fine. We have too few ships, not too few escorts. If you were arguing that escorts are the fastest and cheapest way to get more ships you would be right, but that has nothing at all to do with the escort:cruiser and escort:explorer ratio. We specifically have too few explorers because we can't afford to put one in every sector (for events and as sector flag ship) and still flood the GBZ with them to the degree we'd like, and this is not something we could make up for with more escorts, but if we somehow got all those explorers that wouldn't make our need to escorts more dire as you'd expect if the escort:explorer ratio was a problem. No, it would actually free up escorts from other sectors. So saying that we could use more escorts is right, saying that we need more escorts due to the number of cruisers and explorers we have is wrong.

Well there is one other benefit of escorts that I haven't seen in this discussion yet: they are cheaper to maintain.

The GBZ status post shows that they're 4 times cheaper to supply than the explorers. Granted, it's not a huge expense. On the demand side, explorers cost 2 cargo, cruisers cost 1 cargo, and escorts cost 0.5 cargo. The supply side, from the recent MWCO post's fleet image, cargo ships provide 8 cargo (and 2 bulk), freighters provide 4 cargo (and 10 bulk), passenger/engineering/prospector/colony ships provide 2 cargo, and even hospital ships provide 1 cargo.

Nervos Belli said:
Except that the Connie-Bees and Renaissance are explicitly light cruisers, with our Explorers being the equivalent of a heavy cruiser. The terminology is kind of arbitrary, but Constellations are technically classified as light cruisers, while being used in a role identical to our escorts. Oneiros was debating at one point officially swapping them over to escorts, but he hasn't yet. But in terms of how we use them, they are escorts.

I'm pretty sure it's inevitable that Constellations are going to be classified as escorts in terms of ship roles (which I expect doctrines will operate on) sooner than later, given the recent "The Art of Tactical Operations" update:

OneirosTheWriter said:
General Cruiser
Component Needs: Cruiser Frame
Stat Needs: 4+ stat average, minimum 4 Defence
Scale Needs: 1-1.5mt,
Intention: To form the backbone of the fleet when in battle, and to be the first-line of response to sector events.

OneirosTheWriter said:
Constellations are, well, Constellations, underpowered for what you really need in a cruiser.

They'll technically still have a cruiser frame, are pretty good armored transports, and can function in a pinch in situations that demand cruiser-level facilities as shown in the ASTF, but I'm expecting we'll lose out on that +1 response bonus in the LR doctrine.

lbmaian · Feb 18, 2017

OneirosTheWriter said:
Btw, any preference from the thread as to where the officers should set their flags? On the station at Collie or even back at the Apinae High Comb is an option.

Collie might be closer, but I really don't want to have to waste a ship or so guarding it because the local high command is there. I'm okay with sticking the RADM with the bees for now (and wow does that sound wrong). Also gives us incentive to find a place to construct a GBZ starbase ASAP.

OneirosTheWriter said:
Vote closed, tally please!

Vote Tally : Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 1208 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.9

Task: FLEET

[X][FLEET] Rear Admiral Rachel Ainsworth
No. of Votes: 31

[X][FLEET] Rear Admiral John Harriman
No. of Votes: 12

NHO
AKuz
ClawClawBite
Erandil
Gingganz
Iron Wolf
Japanime
Muer'ci
Night
SynchronizedWritersBlock
Vehrec
Void Stalker

[X][FLEET] Rear Admiral Waafrinch Iorin Skef
No. of Votes: 4

Happerry
Aeondrac
aledeth
HearthBorn

Task: TF1

[X][TF1] Commodore Jessica Rivers
No. of Votes: 38

[X][TF1] Commodore Thraan th'Marlaas
No. of Votes: 6

lbmaian
Blackshard
Erandil
Narutosramen
NullVoid
Vehrec

[x][TF1] Commodore Michel Thuir
No. of Votes: 1

pheonix89

Task: TF2

[X][TF2] Commodore Revak
No. of Votes: 25

[X][TF2] Commodore Michel Thuir
No. of Votes: 16

Artemis1992
aeqnai
Blackshard
Briefvoice
Chaos Blade
Derek58
Gadjo
HearthBorn
Japanime
MS-21H 'Hawke'
Nervos Belli
Night_stalker
Questara
Random Member
SuperSonicSound
UberJJK

[X][TF2] Commodore Constance Lecras
No. of Votes: 5

Simon_Jester
Erandil
Night
Nix
NullVoid

Task: AUX

[X][AUX] Commodore Alejandro Suarez - Expanded Field Repair capacity
No. of Votes: 29

[X][AUX] Captain Maeth th'Irnyar - 10% Discount off required Logistics level
No. of Votes: 9

NHO
Artemis1992
HearthBorn
Japanime
MS-21H 'Hawke'
Narutosramen
Nervos Belli
Night_stalker
Vehrec

[X][AUX] Commodore Charlotte O'Dea - 1 Free GBZ Intel Report
No. of Votes: 8

Happerry
Aeondrac
aledeth
Erandil
Mr Tebbs
pheonix89
SynchronizedWritersBlock
Void Stalker

Total No. of Voters: 49

BTW, @Kaze, I don't know if it's intentional, but you clobbered your vote when listing the currently winning votes in your post.

OneirosTheWriter · Feb 18, 2017

Okay, time to get things moving along again.

People may notice that on the GBZ status post, there are a series of policies set for your sector command to follow. I've tried to keep them to a simple Red/Yellow/Green light system. These will be a big part of your levers for controlling the pace.

People who want to suggest omake characters of theirs to place into the GBZ ships or staff, please let me know and I'll update the rat race posts.

Goat · Feb 18, 2017

If I am reading that right, we have asked our members not to enter yet, we can build mines but not civilian colonies, we are allowed to harass Carrie and Syn forces and bases, but targeting the newer affiliate and everyone's logistics trunk is forbidden.

And above all expand.

If this goes to full war those logistics lines have to go.

DarknessSmiles · Feb 18, 2017

OneirosTheWriter said:
GBZ status post

can you put that threadmark on the top of the list so it does not get buried like the syndicate one did?

Leila Hann · Feb 18, 2017

Are the apiata an exception to the "no members" rule? They haven't been ratified yet, and as I recall they were the ones who wanted to expand into Gabriel in the first place.

Random Member · Feb 18, 2017

Leila Hann said:
Are the apiata an exception to the "no members" rule? They haven't been ratified yet, and as I recall they were the ones who wanted to expand into Gabriel in the first place.

I also seem to remember the Amarki wanting to expand there as well. But that might be after Starfleet has laid the groundwork?

lbmaian · Feb 18, 2017

Hrm, it should be open to Apiata and Amarki expansion unless policies have changed more recently than the Apinae Foxtrot, and I don't see why they would, since Starfleet needs all the help it can get to claim this vast territory:

OneirosTheWriter said:
President sh'Arrath nods as she continues to walk on. "That's right. Starting in '13, Starfleet, the Amarki, and the Apiata will begin to claim as much of the Gabriel expanse as possible."

JesseJ · Feb 18, 2017

I'd guess that the Amarki have switched focus to heavy Anti-Syndicate actions because of the bomb. Once the Syndicate is dealt with I'm sure they'll join in on the expanse, if we're still carving out territory when that happens in a few years.

I'm sure the Apatia are either coming or already there but not unified with our forces. Question is who else should we add in. I'd kind of like to invite the Caitians for 3 reasons. They're strong enough to send a Fathership and some escorts, they deserve some more territory in exchange for their guard units helping (and dieing) with the Syndicate and we can publicize it to the Dawiar putting another nail in the coffin of their End of Ambition foolishness.

Leila Hann · Feb 18, 2017

If the Apiata are also expanding into Gabriel, we should advise them to press coreward as far as possible and leave the spinward expansion to us.

They can easily handle anything the Sydraxians throw at them, and that'll free up the Starfleet force to focus entirely on the Cardassians.

lbmaian · Feb 18, 2017

lbmaian said:
Well there is one other benefit of escorts that I haven't seen in this discussion yet: they are cheaper to maintain.

The GBZ status post shows that they're 4 times cheaper to supply than the explorers. Granted, it's not a huge expense. On the demand side, explorers cost 2 cargo, cruisers cost 1 cargo, and escorts cost 0.5 cargo. The supply side, from the recent MWCO post's fleet image, cargo ships provide 8 cargo (and 2 bulk), freighters provide 4 cargo (and 10 bulk), passenger/engineering/prospector/colony ships provide 2 cargo, and even hospital ships provide 1 cargo.

Just to put this in perspective. Assuming that logistics are planned intelligently so that ships can coordinate their resupply without needing extra cargo ships:

In Q1, we'll have 2 explorers, 4 cruisers, and 1 escort, totaling 9 cargo maintenance. That requires just 2 cargo ships (or 1 cargo ship + 1 freighter, or 3 freighters). If Constellation is classified as an escort for this purposes, then that's 2 explorers, 3 cruisers, and 2 escorts, totaling 8 cargo. Which requires just 1 cargo ship or 2 freighters.

In Q2, we'll have 2 explorers, 5 cruisers, and 4 escorts, totaling 11 cargo. If Constellation is classified as an escort here, it's still 11 cargo. So still just need 2 cargo ships (or equivalents).

On the supply side, we have 4 cargo ships and 2 freighters, totaling 40 cargo and 28 bulk.

We currently only have a single station in the GBZ, and I expect to see a starbase, some outposts, and a station per colony. Probably will total up to about 20 cargo and bulk within the next few years, but next year will probably only be 10 cargo and bulk at most, and that depends on the upcoming snakepit. In terms of ships, the most we can add to the GBZ next year (making the simplifying assumption of only new ships) is 1 Rennie, 1 Connie-B, 2 Cent-A, 3 Mir-A (excluding the refits for obvious reasons), which would bring the total ship cargo reqs to 15 or 16. I doubt we'd send them all to the GBZ though.

So Starfleet military assets next year will probably have maintenance reqs that total ~20 cargo and ~10 bulk, which our logistics fleet can easily handle.

But that's ignoring all the conventional demands of cargo ships and supplies. According to Oneiros's Starfleet Economy spreadsheet (not linking here since not sure he wants it exposed), BR colonies export 20 bulk, SR colonies export 20 cargo, and BR+SR colonies (like Beta Corridan) export both, and each colony generally imports 1 bulk and 8 cargo (though it depends on the species and I'm not sure why). Assuming that's all still accurate, the colonies are going to require more cargo ship and freighters than the GBZ auxiliaries can supply. I'm also excluding the other auxiliary ship types, since I'm assuming they're going to be busy building/colonizing/repairing/etc.

Hopefully Apiata's 25 cargo ships and 38 engineering ships (since they lack actual freighters) can make up the slack. Starfleet itself has only 12 cargo ships and 4 freighters, and I suspect Starfleet's logistics are already stretched thin.

Aeondrac · Feb 18, 2017

Iron Wolf said:
See I'd just slot in 5) Tomed Incident But Earlier; since the Federation ban on cloaks comes explicitly from the Treaty of Algeron which itself stems from that incident, and we started the game with a cloak ban.

I actually asked Onieros about this way back. The ban on Starfleet using cloaking technology is a long standing Federation Council policy, as they regard the use of cloaks to be counter to the UFP's diplomatic goals.

The Tomed Incident was manufactured by John Harriman to avert war with the Romulans by assassinating a Romulan pro-war Admiral and framing him for a (fake) atrocity. Our diplomatic situation with the Romulans is different enough that there was no reason for that to happen.

ClawClawBite · Feb 18, 2017

I would say base command out of Apine until we get at least a real outpost built.

For now, I would request that member wiped fleets stay within one grid zone away from our entry grid zone so we can support them better. As we expand, this will change.

NHO · Feb 18, 2017

Hm. Reading Department of Temporal Investigation books.

What's Federation policy regarding all that time travel thingy and what organs manage it in this timeline?

SynchronizedWritersBlock · Feb 18, 2017

OneirosTheWriter said:
People may notice that on the GBZ status post, there are a series of policies set for your sector command to follow. I've tried to keep them to a simple Red/Yellow/Green light system. These will be a big part of your levers for controlling the pace.

Did the original legislation not authorize the Apiata and Amarki to send ships? It's strange especially to have the Apiata at red light when they've been operating in the expanse for years.

Simon_Jester · Feb 18, 2017

NHO said:
Hm. Reading Department of Temporal Investigation books.

What's Federation policy regarding all that time travel thingy and what organs manage it in this timeline?

We know from Linderley that Starfleet Intelligence knows that time travel is a thing (and super-duper-ultra-tightly classifies all information about it, sensibly). I'm sure there's a Temporal Affairs or Temporal Investigations or some such organization in existence; its exact name is kind of irrelevant.

OneirosTheWriter · Feb 18, 2017

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Did the original legislation not authorize the Apiata and Amarki to send ships? It's strange especially to have the Apiata at red light when they've been operating in the expanse for years.

Was waiting to see what came of the staff picks before I decided on any approvals. Will be processing that as soon as I finish doing something stupid*.

* = Code-related.

To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Widow Null

Nerdy Homu

Nerdy Homu

a thirsty squirrel

a thirsty squirrel

Cabal Core Commander

Gardener of Human Happiness

a thirsty squirrel

a thirsty squirrel

Mad Engineering!

Dumb is a state of existence

Cabal Core Commander