Remove ads

To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Linked contents
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
Reader mode
KnightDisciple said:
Vulcans are, by and large, vegetarians. Their food would, of course, reflect this, though it's quite likely they have dairy products or the like. Perhaps things like curries would appeal to them, but my offhand thoughts say they'd be ones favoring subtle spices and flavors, leaning the savory end of the spectrum. That, or super-fresh produce stuff. Vulcans seem like they'd prefer foods you have to sit back and savor and enjoy for a moment, flavors you need to "sit on" to experience the full range of. Again, things that are quick, intense bursts of flavor, or foods that would induce quick energy spikes, are less likely. I could see stuff that uses savory but low-sugar chocolates and the like.
Maybe Vulcans love peanut butter. Sweet, savory, salty, you can't just gulp it down, you've really got to work it, enjoy it. It can go with so many things!
I'd wager they almost universally drink teas and not coffee.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

is there any backing for this? iirc Romulans are not and it would be illogical to alter your food intake due to emphatic concerns (which aren-t logical) at the cost of need more food/gengeniered food/supplements.
I'll grant you, it is one of the BS tropes you do see in fiction from time to time, but, really, plant matter tends to lack the energy density nor do we, for instance, have a digestive track optimized to make most of it either.

Ato said:
I'm in favour. The less militaristic tone fits the Federation better.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It feels equally militaristic to me. perhaps go for "local tour/survey" ? but it sounds silly.
Garrison is fine.
 
Chaos Blade said:
is there any backing for this? iirc Romulans are not and it would be illogical to alter your food intake due to emphatic concerns (which aren-t logical) at the cost of need more food/gengeniered food/supplements.
I'll grant you, it is one of the BS tropes you do see in fiction from time to time, but, really, plant matter tends to lack the energy density nor do we, for instance, have a digestive track optimized to make most of it either.


It feels equally militaristic to me. perhaps go for "local tour/survey" ? but it sounds silly.
Garrison is fine.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think it's from Enterprise, and well, so was the fact that Vulcan dining does not feature finger foods. Potato chips, burritos, anything you have to touch in order to eat, was a big faux pas for T'Pol. She used a knife and fork to eat breadsticks in the first episode-not a soft one, but a hard, crunchy breadstick. And it is logical that if you value ethically the decrease of pain and suffering in animals, because animals aren't P-zombies, you would indeed embrace a vegan lifestyle.
 
Vehrec said:
I think it's from Enterprise, and well, so was the fact that Vulcan dining does not feature finger foods. Potato chips, burritos, anything you have to touch in order to eat, was a big faux pas for T'Pol. She used a knife and fork to eat breadsticks in the first episode-not a soft one, but a hard, crunchy breadstick. And it is logical that if you value ethically the decrease of pain and suffering in animals, because animals aren't P-zombies, you would indeed embrace a vegan lifestyle.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ah, Enterprise, another reason not to watch that silly show.
But, iirc Vulcans are about logic, OTOH, embracing a vegan lifestyle would imply the euthanasia of cattle animals, whom cannot be let loose again, doing anything-else would be expensive and/or cruel.

Additionally, the suffering of cattle animals would be highly dependent on the manner used to butcher them. So... logically, there would be neither an increase nor a decrese in suffering.
Interestingly, if you follow the "logical" argument, you'd need to either eradicate all predators or gengenier them into herbivores.
Sorry, Veganism is simply not logical.
 
Chaos Blade said:
is there any backing for this? iirc Romulans are not and it would be illogical to alter your food intake due to emphatic concerns (which aren-t logical) at the cost of need more food/gengeniered food/supplements.
I'll grant you, it is one of the BS tropes you do see in fiction from time to time, but, really, plant matter tends to lack the energy density nor do we, for instance, have a digestive track optimized to make most of it either.


It feels equally militaristic to me. perhaps go for "local tour/survey" ? but it sounds silly.
Garrison is fine.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Memory Alpha cites the TOS episodes "Journey to Babel" and "All Our Yesterdays", obviously with Spock as the leading example. That's not definitive proof, but it seems a non-unreasonable inference.
Putting aside there are certainly options here on Earth to provide sufficient nutrients that you don't need meat, we can't say there aren't vegetarian-friendly options on Vulcan that have higher energy density, protein content, etc.

Further, Vulcan digestive systems may be better-suited to drawing energy from plant matter.

Beyond that, this seems like a really pointless nitpick on what I was trying to write out....

EDIT: Cattle animal "issues" are only an issue if post-RAGEWAR-Vulcan still had them. If they simply didn't have them, or have many of them, by the time Surak was around, then it's not inconceivable they just didn't breed more, and within a generation or two, bam, they're on a vegetarian diet.
 
Last edited:
Chaos Blade said:
But, iirc Vulcans are about logic, OTOH, embracing a vegan lifestyle would imply the euthanasia of cattle animals, whom cannot be let loose again, doing anything-else would be expensive and/or cruel.

Additionally, the suffering of cattle animals would be highly dependent on the manner used to butcher them. So... logically, there would be neither an increase nor a decrese in suffering.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Um, there would be plenty of decrease in suffering if you just practiced improving the quality-of-life for herd-animals, restricted their numbers through birth-control to whatever level is appropriate for a society that isn't breeding them for consumption, and maybe re-wild them. It wouldn't be that much more expensive than breeding millions of cattle or pigs every year for slaughter, would it?
 
KnightDisciple said:
Memory Alpha cites the TOS episodes "Journey to Babel" and "All Our Yesterdays", obviously with Spock as the leading example. That's not definitive proof, but it seems a non-unreasonable inference.
Putting aside there are certainly options here on Earth to provide sufficient nutrients that you don't need meat, we can't say there aren't vegetarian-friendly options on Vulcan that have higher energy density, protein content, etc.

Further, Vulcan digestive systems may be better-suited to drawing energy from plant matter.

Beyond that, this seems like a really pointless nitpick on what I was trying to write out....

EDIT: Cattle animal "issues" are only an issue if post-RAGEWAR-Vulcan still had them. If they simply didn't have them, or have many of them, by the time Surak was around, then it's not inconceivable they just didn't breed more, and within a generation or two, bam, they're on a vegetarian diet.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The problem is twofold: Vulcan is a wasteland, and one of Vulcan making, so given the Romulans possess no similar inclination we can suggest it isnlikely they do have a propensity for the better digestion of vegetable matter.
The other issue is that Vulcan is a Wasteland of Vulcan making.
Let me rephrase that: they screwed themselves, and most plant matter needs a lot of space to grow and carel doubt we'd see much of that in a wasteland.

To be honest, while I doubt the Vulcans do have cattle animals, at least after they were done screwing with Vulcan (the planet), the Vegetarian angle feels off to me, too much like trying to ape the trope, if anything I'd argue that the Vulcans should have a lot of insects in their diet.
 
Chaos Blade, agriculture does not work that way. The low fertility of Vulcan is a concern for ALL possible ways of producing food on Vulcan, not just for plants. Animal products ALSO require a lot of space, in order to grow the plant food that feeds the animals. Huge amounts of land on Earth are devoted to growing grain for cattle feed. There are animals that can live on wasteland space that would otherwise be incapable of supporting human life (e.g. chickens and sheep), but only if they're raised at extremely low densities that wouldn't support large planetary populations.

More generally, I'd bet on the Vulcans being vegetarian, not vegan; those are not the same thing. Assuming there's a Vulcan equivalent of cheese I see no reason to assume the Vulcans have a problem with eating it, or with eating omelettes made from the equivalent of unfertilized chicken eggs, assuming the relevant poultry and dairy animals are cared for in a humane (Vulcane?) fashion.

It's deliberately ending the life of other organisms just for the sake of a meal, when you really don't have to, that Vulcans are likely to oppose.

Chaos Blade said:
is there any backing for this? iirc Romulans are not and it would be illogical to alter your food intake due to emphatic concerns (which aren-t logical) at the cost of need more food/gengeniered food/supplements.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is not how Vulcan logic works. There are certain values that the view as axiomatic (such as respect for all life, which is the root of a lot of things including their pacifism). Their logic is about how they work towards those goals.

Vulcans believe in creating beauty, they believe in being kind to other creatures including non-sentient ones.

They just don't believe in having fun while doing any of those things.

Now, I bet that Mirror Universe Vulcans reason exactly as you say. They're the ones who would be using logic to justify acts of expedient cruelty. This is probably how Mirror Spock used to operate, for instance, before he saw a better way after being exposed to non-mirror people.
I'll grant you, it is one of the BS tropes you do see in fiction from time to time, but, really, plant matter tends to lack the energy density nor do we, for instance, have a digestive track optimized to make most of it either.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Meat was a much smaller fraction of the human diet until fairly recently; we get by. I am not myself a vegetarian but I'm not going to pretend that it's somehow stupid to be one.

Katsuragi said:
The thing is, when it comes down the the grind crunch, even very slight changes in stats are hugely important.

So no, we can't really hammer out anything until we have a sheet that we're told "These are the part stats, section modifiers, etc that we're using for the foreseeable future."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Uh... just for the record, the discussion you entered on this issue was about drawing a picture, not about somehow nailing down every statline or bolt and rivet.

Chaos Blade said:
Just because all the Party Animals left to become Romulas doesn't mean the Vulcans aren't sticks in the mud... oh, wait I was trying to defend their way of enjoying life.
Nope, totally repressed control freaks. (with a few masters of Sarcasm in between)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I suspect the Vulcans spend a lot of economic resources doing very obscure things and funding extremely abstract research projects and so on.

Plus, a large fraction of their population choosing to live 'the simple life' or fully engage in art forms that don't result in economic production.

Plus Vulcan being what a planet looks like after multiple rounds of nuclear warfare a few thousand years ago, so it's not in very good shape.

OneirosTheWriter said:
I swear the Cheron must have a plush Excelsior in a gimp suit hanging up in their officer's wardroom. They just make a career out of showing up their "replacements".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
She's just being Connie Awesome. :) Or maybe... I'll steal Leila Hann Iron Wolf's joke for this one.

Eddie Leslie, to the Cheron:

"Okay, welcome to Ana Font, time for your regular three thousand light year maintenance checkup... Brinsc Cheg, get the paint stripper, we've got work to do."

[peel peel dissolve peel de-paint-ify]

"Okay, we've got the top coat off... Wait, what does it say on the top of the saucer... NCC... 1...7...0...1...A... Rogers you crafty son of a gun you pulled a switcheroo on us!"
 
Last edited:
Ato said:
Really?

Compare 'Harbour Patrol' with 'Harbour Garrison". One sounds far more militaristic than the other.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Dunno, both sounds militaristic to me, sorry, not seeing the difference, or rather it is such a slight difference it offers no real difference or make it worth it.
Garrison is fine, it is a descriptor of the role and works
 
Iron Wolf said:
Reading this after @KnightDisciple 's musings on the subtleties of Vulcan society was one hell of a mental transition
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sooth yourself with the thought of a Vulcan cooking show whose mood is more like an episode of "The Joy of Painting" with Bob Ross.

"For today's dish we shall be utilizing Terran root vegetables known as 'sweet potatoes', Tellarite peppers, roasted Andorian fire-tomatoes, this mixture of Vulcan herbs, and creamy peanut butter, along with several secondary oils and other ingredients along the way. Our goal is to produce a dish combining savor and spice, and for those wishing it, it may be considered what Terrans call 'comfort food'. Logically, we begin with-"

Just calm, soothing tones walking you through simple, tasty, nutritional dishes.

Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations.
All inside our tummies.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Uh... just for the record, the discussion you entered on this issue was about drawing a picture, not about somehow nailing down every statline or bolt and rivet.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The point I think they were getting at is that minor rebalances can change the obvious outer details of the ship--say, by making a different nacelle design more efficient, or penalizing a single impulse engine, or (as SWB noted before) removing the saucer-based deflector in favor of a secondary hull one.
 
Simon_Jester said:
She's just being Connie Awesome. :) Or maybe... I'll steal Leila Hann's joke for this one.

Eddie Leslie, to the Cheron:

"Okay, welcome to Ana Font, time for your regular three thousand light year maintenance checkup... Brinsc Cheg, get the paint stripper, we've got work to do."

[peel peel dissolve peel de-paint-ify]

"Okay, we've got the top coat off... Wait, what does it say on the top of the saucer... NCC... 1...7...0...1...A... Rogers you crafty son of a gun you pulled a switcheroo on us!"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You know, with all the decommissioning of vessels that occurred under his tenure due to council demands, it wouldn't be surprising that it is possible to use the surplus of starship parts to build an entirely new ship, or to put it another way, Ares was built from the ground up at a shipyard while the Cheron is Roger's version of
 
lbmaian said:
Well I don't see Starfleet ever building more Constellations. But our member fleets...

I can imagine Vulcans building some, since their incomes are skewed so heavily toward crew rather than BR/SR. Betazoids are in a similar situation, but less so, particularly since they also have long-term priority to increase their budget. Andor have a large crew surplus and small BR/SR reserve, while only building a single Renaissance, so they may choose to build a Constie or two just to get garrison ships ASAP to free up their combat frigates for the expected upcoming Cardassian conflict. See prior analysis.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Goat said:
I am going to have to agree here with Ibmaian.

The Constie-Refit is cheaper than a Centaur-A in materials cost, more expensive in Crew. If you have a high Crew budget but not a lot of materials, then the Constie gets you more bang for your construction budget. Even the longer build time factors in because if you have low materials, you cannot afford to keep pushing out 2 year build-time more expensive hulls anyway. If you have the materials, you would build Centaur-As because of the lower crew and the shorter construction time.

Star Fleet has a Crew shortage - we'd be stupid to build more Consties. But if something happened to all our resource mines, then the situation would change ...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And on that note:

Starfleet
Constellation-P 2284-2370 [310m 700k t]
C3 S4 H2 L3 P3 D4
Cost [70br, 50sr, 3? years] Crew [O-2?, E-4?, T-2?]
25br/25sr/1yr to refit

Miranda-A Now-Now [277m, 655k t]
C3 S2 H2 L3 P1 D2
Cost[60br, 45sr, 2 years], Crew [O-1, E-2, T-1]

Centaur-A 2308-Now [315m 800k t]
C3 S3 H2 L3 P3 D3
Cost[80br, 70sr, 2 years], Crew [O-1, E-2, T-2]


Rigellian
Turtleship ???-Now [???m, 1.5m t]
C4 S4 H5 L5 P4 D3
Cost [150br, 95sr, 3 Years], Crew [O-3, E-5, T-4]

Cutter Mark 2 ???-Now [???m, 679k t]
C2 S4 H1 L2 P4 D2
Cost [70br, 50sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-1, E-3, T-4]


Caitian
Swarmer Mark 2 ???-Now [???m, 509k t]
C3 S3 H1 L4 P2 D3
Cost [52br, 60sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]

Fathership ???-Now [???m, 2.5m t]
C5 S6 H3 L7 P4 D5
Cost [250br, 200sr, 4 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]


Caldonian
Science Cruiser 2299-Now [???m, 939k t]
C3 S4 H3 L3 P3 D2
Cost [100br, 65sr, 3 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]

Escort 2268-Now [???m, 391k t]
C2 S2 H1 L2 P1 D1
Cost [40br, 35sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]


Gaeni
Tech-Cruiser ???-Now [???m, 1.5m t]
C4 S5 H3 L6 P3 D3
Cost [150br, 150sr, 3 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]

Tech-Skiff 2270-Now [???m, 424k t]
C2 S2 H1 L2 P2 D2
Cost 45br, 80sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]

Tech-Frigate 2298-Now [???m, 559k t]
C2 S3 H2 L3 P1 D2
Cost [60br, 70sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]


Betazoid
Cruiser ???-Now [???m, 968k t]
C3 S2 H3 L3 P5 D3
Cost [100br, 65sr, 3 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]

Patroller 2289-Now [???m, 371k t]
C2 S1 H1 L2 P2 D2
Cost [40br, 40sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]


Risan
Heavy Corvette ???-Now [???m, 990k t]
C2 S2 H2 L4 P4 D4
Cost [100br, 75sr, 3 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]

Light Corvette ???-Now [???m, 370k t]
C1 S1 H1 L1 P3 D3
Cost [40br, 30sr, 2 Years], Crew [O-?, E-?, T-?]

And we already know some of our new members are phasing out their older escorts for Centaur-As.

aeqnai said:
Oh, just don't ask for the Oberth. Jesus Christ the Oberth. The S5 comes from the spatial anomalies involved in its construction, you know.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Godwinson said:
I'm telling you, the warp core is in the saucer, and the secondary hull is just one massive sensor array that runs off of warp-plasma, but the designs for the sensors were censored by the Organians, because of plot.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
OneirosTheWriter said:
Hey, you know, I can always just reduce Oberths to S2 if it will make people stop complaining about them <.<
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
lbmaian said:
*pipes up with old proposal*

Well...we could retcon the Oberth so that it could feasibly fit. At least double the tonnage, put some massive BR savings due to paper-thin hull (and/or Council partially subsidizing some BR cost), decrease tech crew cost to at most T-3, and then we could balance out some science module and older tech parts that fills in the gaps.

I wouldn't even mind the "wasted" 5 tech crew we spent on our 5 built Oberths if the tech crew got retconned down, since by my reckoning, accumulated crew errors much earlier in the quest have amounted to about 9 extra officers/enlisted/techs that we shouldn't have.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I am in favor of retconing the Oberth from 120 meters to 300.

Ex Astris Scientia - Size of the Oberth Class
 
Truthfully, I kind of expect the so-called "Pacifist Constellation" to be withdrawn as a mistake of the QM in accidentally offering a refit that was too attractive. Turns out the Pacifists were bluffing and it wasn't technically possible after all!
 
Briefvoice said:
Truthfully, I kind of expect the so-called "Pacifist Constellation" to be withdrawn as a mistake of the QM in accidentally offering a refit that was too attractive. Turns out the Pacifists were bluffing and it wasn't technically possible after all!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't know, what made it attractive was allowing constellations to do science and diplomacy instead of boosting their combat capability like the current refit. Different focus
 
Yeah. I'm not sure it's really better than the "cruiser refit" option we were already offered, just more tightly focused to turn the Constellation into a specialist ship.

Plus, everyone has been dumping on how BAD the Constellations are for literally the entire game. Giving them an overpowered refit isn't actually a bad thing as such because it won't make the ships overpowered. It merely makes them competitive-ish.

Iron Wolf said:
Not to be a Dylaarian about this but

i'll see you in SPACE COURT.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Let the record state that the defendant made a good faith attempt to attribute proper credit for the joke, but made a mistake regarding its point of origin. A correction will be issued.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top