The offensive doctrines have some things that are useful in a battle, but that's mostly in the highest tier, a long way away, and nothing so amazing that It's an obvious thing to beeline for. We still don't have the actual techs and their costs, just the draft from the Ship Design thread, but without admiral bonus getting any of the T3 projects is probably going to take at least 15 years even if we put the Games & Theory division on it next year. We haven't decided
Perhaps, but a newbie team is going to progress slower, even if they start earlier. I expect the Games & Theory Division to complete tier 2 of Cardassian research about 2315 (I'm assuming some significant event bonuses, but that seems fairly safe). Alternatively if we don't want to pause Cardassian research even for a moment the Tiger team is going to be free by 2318 even without further event bonuses (I'm expecting 2317). So a new team next year would gain us at most four years head start, probably just two, and if they are skill 2 they would finish the initial tech in 2319 without boosts, just like G&TD starting in 2316 would.
Sure, more doctrine teams would be useful for researching multiple branches concurrently, but we can worry about that in 2320, it shouldn't be urgent now.
On a vaguely related note, what do people think about shifting Generic Team 5 from Klingon Research to one of the SIGINT/COMSEC projects in Communications (probably 2320s Signal Intercepts) next year? Currently they'd be set to become Foreign Analysis/Fleet Design Doctrine specialists, which would make them exact duplicates of the Tiger Team and fairly similar to the Games & Theory division, but if they switch and become Foreign Analysis/Communications instead they'd obviously be a Starfleet Intelligence SIGINT/COMSEC specialist team, which sounds a lot more appealing narratively than a third team belonging to Starfleet Tactical Command.
Mechanically one of the main reasons for setting them on Klingon Research in the first place was to benefit from the previous Admiral bonus, which is in Communications now. At their current rate they'd probably need until the early/mid 2320s to complete the first tier of Klingon Research. Not only is that a long time to wait, it would also be too late to earn a different second specialization than Fleet Design, which is likely not going to be very valuable (we might choose to research the other Fleet Design doctrines as well for some reason or other later, but not for quite a while and we already have 3 other qualified teams anyway). If Uhura stays on as VADM long enough 2320s Signal Intercepts would be done in 2321, and if they go back to Klingon Research as a graduated team they should wrap up the tier 1 techs by 2325, so not even all that much later, assuming no other team stepped in in the mean time.
