- Location
- Patriarchova
That's...exactly how we do things.
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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
That's...exactly how we do things.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
Apiata was already at 5rp - membership didn't increase it. 156 RP income should be correct.
My tally for Syndicate cost and annual pp income:
Syndicate cost: 121/2 (2312 EOY, halved) + 8 (Q2) + 15 (Q3) + 10 (Q4) = 94 (rounded)
Resilience to Syndicate cost: 10 (2312 EOY) + 17 (last year) + 5 (legislation amendment) = 32
Pre-cost annual PP income: 85 (2312 EOY) + 2 (Sulu FYM) + 5 (Apinae) + 3 (Indoria) + 2 (Uhura) = 97
Post-cost annual PP income: 97 * (1 - (94 - 32)/100) = 37 (rounded)
Details differ a bit, but we end up with the same result. Also agree with 197pp EOY.
We could make a perfectly fine 5YM explorer ship aimed at the EC without going to the maximum we can get. I find the implication that we aren't delivering an excellent and capable ship if we make it 2400kt instead of 2800kt abhorrent. We can build 3400kt hulls today, and I don't see anyone pushing to make those. Frankly, I would refuse to produce such a design for consideration, even if it could have 9 and 10 stats.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
...Then what's the problem with creating smaller EC ships for that duty? It would be their explicit role! It would be safer than using non-EC ships for it, and we could make them 5YMs!
- Location
- Earth
No we can't, we can only build 3mt berths. (unless your talking about a design part, in which case your point means little)
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
My argument is to make each individual unit as strong as possible. And this goes double for ships whose entire Business is risk.
I don't like the idea of "Pocket Explorers" on 5YMs because it's this corporate penny pinching mindset that uses phrases like "Acceptable losses" and "return on investment" to spend as little as possible and then is surprised when it gets back as little as possible. And then not realising that you end up spending three time as much as before to make up for the losses in cured because of less capable units.
I want our units that by definition will be operating without support as much as possible to be as individually capable as possible.
When we push a crew out into vast unknown stars as distant from the Core as any Federation citizen has ever been I want our crews to have as many tools as possible at their disposal. I don't want to come up short because some Desk bound corporate drone decided to keep quarterly expenditures down as casualties aren't his problem.
Like I see those little points of crew as people and I don't like risking them more than there is any need to and using "Pocket Explorers" to bulk up 5YMs is letting our people down out of some misguided sense of thriftiness.
Edit: Like yes I understand not eeking out every last point of state. That's fine. But deliberately underbuilding the ships that go into danger to save $$$ is monstrous.
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We know that the canon 3.1mt Ambassador would have gotten a berth expansion project, and in any case we could have 3.3mt berths before a build is necessary.
I'm not going to fill the hull to 3mt anyway for a big Ambassador, so I'm pretty sure people are just going to have to deal with a lighter ship than the absolute heaviest we can make.
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- Location
- Patriarchova
The Explorer Corps is meant for going out into the unknown. It also isn't big enough to crew that many ships, assuming some of them are capital sized.
Mapping out the holes in our own space isn't necessarily a job for the EC. Its a job they do sometimes, just like they can be called on to deliver medicine or ferry ambassadors around, but it falls into the purview of normal starfleet.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The thing is, there doesn't seem to be a close-to-home poke-stuff department.
- Location
- Earth
While I can understand us getting a special project to create a 3.1mt berth for the Ambassador, I very much doubt we can go any higher than that.
Otherwise what's the point of the 4000kt Shipyard Berth research project if we can slowly increase berth size anyway?
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pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think we've got two very different arguments going on here, and people are getting mixed up between them.
On one hand, we have people arguing hat we shouldn't use a new explorer(capital) design that is exorbitantly expensive even if it has ridiculous stats. There's a good reason for this, while the design is good, arguably we would be able to build more of a design with just slightly lower stats. Having just one super good ship is fairly useless.
On the other hand we have a group advocating for us to have multiple poorer designs for different purposes. 'Little' explorers for work within our borders and 'large' for work on the frontier. This makes some sense, but the logic is a little wonky, seeing as our regular patrol vessels do just fine on events in our space. Having to complicate everything with extra designs and roles is a good way of making this get out of hand and having our poor GM get burnt out.
Of course, I could be wrong about these arguments entirely.
On one hand, we have people arguing hat we shouldn't use a new explorer(capital) design that is exorbitantly expensive even if it has ridiculous stats. There's a good reason for this, while the design is good, arguably we would be able to build more of a design with just slightly lower stats. Having just one super good ship is fairly useless.
On the other hand we have a group advocating for us to have multiple poorer designs for different purposes. 'Little' explorers for work within our borders and 'large' for work on the frontier. This makes some sense, but the logic is a little wonky, seeing as our regular patrol vessels do just fine on events in our space. Having to complicate everything with extra designs and roles is a good way of making this get out of hand and having our poor GM get burnt out.
Of course, I could be wrong about these arguments entirely.
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I strongly disagree with you. The purpose of the 5YM is ultimately to protect and develop the Federation and her citizens. If we are not doing that to the best of our ability, we are failing in our duty, and Federation citizens or, indeed, other innocents of the galaxy are the ones who suffer and die. More EC missions means we reach farther, have more time to prepare for threats, and are stronger when we have to confront them with our full strength. Your attitude is close to shirking that duty in a misguided sense of overresponsibility to the volunteers of Starfleet. Their needs are important, but the needs and safety of the Federation's citizens are more important. Every individual who signs up to Starfleet knows and accepts this. So if we can make 1.5x the ships at a -1 to some stats? I'll take that trade because if I didn't I would be far more irresponsible than otherwise.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I'm not suggesting we send them into known danger zones like space near the Cardassians, or the far reaches of unknown space where we might find a new race with potentially hostile intentions and dangerous capabilities.
No, I meant sending them out a square or two (or three at most) into unclaimed space - where we aren't going to stumble across any technologically advanced empires, because the ground will have been briefly covered by the Capital ships on their way out to the further reaches of unknown space (we've had Explorers go out 5-6 squares, and further!) The only source of "increasing" danger in space is foreign empires improving their capabilities, and under this system only Capital ships will find them.
EDIT: This has gotten entirely out of hand from a tangent regarding renaming the Explorer Explorers to Capital Explorers. The fact that it's up for debate at all is a point in the name-change's favour, but even if you double down and say "no, there's no way the thread will ever vote to make non-Capital-size Explorers" we should change the name anyway, because right now they're technically classified as Explorer Explorers, which is ridiculous.
DOUBLE EDIT: And, of course, it's not entirely out of the question we'll end up building non-Explorer-role Capital ships, the possibility of which is again a point in favour of changing the name.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
That is an entirely valid approach, but it's not the only approach. The Cardassian Union, here in this game, uses cheaper, less capable platforms for its exploration. Given that they rival the Federation, I would hesitate to call their choices entirely wrong; for a similar investment, they can conduct more operations simultaneously than we can.
While we aren't there yet, in a few decades, I would love to dispatch Intrepids on exploration missions, alongside larger Galaxies and Sovereigns and any other class we set up to handle long-term deployment.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You're going to fail your mission that way.
Reduced stats are going to starting giving us massive opportunity penalties. If we were running around with Connie-As ten years ago we'do be penned back towards our Core members after Cardassia just flipped Indoria with a coup because our stats were too low. How many close calls and near misses have we had with our current mindset? S'harien would be gone for one. Miracht might never have made it out of Sydraxian space at all after her disaster. Enterprise would have died at Fujit. Everytime we'very thrown danger back it's been on the back of our high stats.
It doesn't matter if we have 1.5x the ships if we 3x as many.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What I'd want a pocket explorer (or a cruiser scale armed science ship) for is second wave and third wave exploration. That is, following up behind EC ships, scouting border/frontier zones, and poke-stuff duty within the federation.
It's probable we'll never actually design a ship for this role, because refitted previous gen explorers are serviceable for it.
It's probable we'll never actually design a ship for this role, because refitted previous gen explorers are serviceable for it.
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pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You're now talking about the prefab designs, not original ones for which we can make these calcs.
Take a look at the design thread sometime. There are Amby versions ranging from 7-all to 8-all with spikes to nine. If the 7-all with spikes to eight were so much cheaper than the 8-all with spikes to nine that we could get 50% more it would be a tricky decision.
Also, the Connie-A was built with older tech, this discussion is about going maximum size or not.
- Location
- Cyberspace
I suppose this has already been posted a time or two in this thread, but with all them affiliate-gathering and full-membership-bringing in this quest, this scene seems... appropriate 
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I don't know what your last line means.
And the more ships we have out there, the more likely it is that we can catch problems before they snowball into larger, more dangerous problems - and it's also more likely that multiple ships can respond to the same event, in which case it's actually safer to build larger numbers of cheaper ships.
But this is, again, a tangent from the issue at hand: that this is up for debate at all means that being able to differentiate between hypothetical Explorers by size is useful, that the possibility of non-Explorer Capital ships also makes the name change useful, and that having our flagships be technically named "Explorer Explorers" is dumb.
The Cardassians use lesser platforms, but more of them, for Exploration purposes; and they have historically been rather unsuccessful in finding the goodies. The only reason they are in shouting range of our ship building capability is because of the recent gains of several resource rich affiliates - their own mines are not numerous.
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One stat doesn't make a difference nearly as much as you think. If we had elite or veteran Connie-As, as we should if they had been in service that long, then we would have passed every single check you refer to except 33 Fujit. We aren't likely to replace our existing Excelsiors either as the net effect would be a drop. Putting out a 7 and 8 ship rather than a 8 and 9 one, if the crew was reduced, would not have nearly the effect you claim on event passes. And especially more ships would be a huge benefit in crisis situations, where the stakes are much higher anyway.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
I'd rather have fewer, more successful 5YM than more plentiful but ill-equipped ones. The flipside of the rewards for 5YM being so great is that the cost of failure is extremely high.
Plus, our crew pool for EC grows extremely slowly. We can't afford to be regularly replenishing losses and crewing many new ships. Fewer, stronger ships seems the smart way to go.
Plus, our crew pool for EC grows extremely slowly. We can't afford to be regularly replenishing losses and crewing many new ships. Fewer, stronger ships seems the smart way to go.
When we get closer to the end of the Ambassador design phase, we will likely have a vote on several designs. You can see if the majority of readers prefer a cheaper, but slightly less capable hull, or damn the expense, give me everything then, or whatever options in-between that might be presented.
As a dedicated Explorer design, I'm inclined to go 'give me everything you can fit in', but I am also assuming that the majority of Ambassadors will go to the EC, while Excelsior-As remain the majority of the heavy Regular fleet for the next decade or two at least.
As a dedicated Explorer design, I'm inclined to go 'give me everything you can fit in', but I am also assuming that the majority of Ambassadors will go to the EC, while Excelsior-As remain the majority of the heavy Regular fleet for the next decade or two at least.