Right now I'd rather have the Excelsior honestly. Three cruisers is very inefficient when it comes to crew. If we had a severe shortage of cruisers I'd agree, but we can shift ships around to cover any increasing defense costs without much difficulty.
In four years we
will be facing a fairly severe shortage of cruisers. That's four years of diplomatic pushes, which will induct two, three, maybe four new members, four years of rising tensions with the Cardassians, and therefore four years where garrison costs are going to rise. We're at the point where 2 to 3 cruisers out of action will send us over the edge in available flexibility.
Are the two of you deliberately wasting time to annoy me, or did you completely lose track of the thread of discussion?
If I had actually argued FOR position X then not properly addressing problem Y would be an issue (though pretending I hadn't even mentioned it would still be completely inappropriate). But I never did that! I never once argued for a 100% Explorer fleet. I argued for an Explorer per sector, possibly two, and at other times argued for similar numbers of explorers, cruisers and escorts. I mentioned the extreme case to make a point. If you want to actually argue against my position you'd need to not only show problems with the extreme case, you'd need to show that these problems still applied in the case I actually argued for.
Did you read what I wrote? I spent one sentence arguing against your extreme example and 500 words arguing against everything else in support of more Excelsiors, and
you cherry-picked the argument to disagree with. If you're going to pick at me for then responding to a post that contained literally one thing, then get off your high horse and actually engage the discussion.
We're allocating a number of current and future resources. In the present, we're looking at berths and BR and SR, which support two Excelsiors, or one Excelsior and two smaller ships. One more of each if we don't leave a berth free and spend PP. In the future, crews, and active ships to garrison requirements.
In the case of a crisis, sending Excelsiors to the crisis area is probably going to happen. Does that mean we shift cruisers back? Or that we can make that up with excess? In that case, do we actually
have excess?
I don't think the math adds up. I think we need a few more cruisers now, to prevent a shortage in ~3 years and beyond to the conclusion of the Renaissance research program.
You mean the Niagara-class – which comes around in 2349, over four decades from now – and costs more BR than an Excelsior?
It's not very relevant to the present, yes. I was specifically addressing the point about what our 3m berths are going to be for. Right now, Excelsiors. But not forever. They do have future relevance.
