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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Nix said:
Unless the description here is very misleading this change doesn't help ships with high combat at all. Currently expected damage is 1/2 (bonus * C), variance is 1/12 (bonus * C)^2, not accounting for overkill (which disadvantages ship with high combat). If you take the max of two rolls expected damage is 2/3 (bonus * C), variance is 4/45 (bonus * C)^2. That means average damage is increased significantly, but proportionally for all ships, while variance only increases slightly. Increasing damage has the effect of making combat a bit faster, which nerfs shield regeneration and increases the rate of overkill, and thereby slightly nerfs ships with high combat. It also makes combat a little bit smoother since variance does not keep pace with expected damage.

If you actually want to help ships with high combat I suggest doing away with overkill at least on shields (i. e. hits that knock out the shields deal the remaining damage to hull).
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Huh, I misread/ignored the specifics of the change, but you're right. It does increase the potency of combat, but since it's all about who knocks out who faster, all that matters is the relative potency between opposing combat stats. In the Connie-B vs Jaldun example, C5 vs C4 used to mean Connie-B has 5/4 the damage of the Jaldun. Now, it's still the same.

One direct way to solve this is with to make damage scale non-linearly with combat stat like the 1.x combat engine. For ex, Connie-B could have 5^1.15 / 4^1.15 relative combat power over the Jaldun. And Jaldun would have 4^1.15 / 3^1.115 relative combat power over Miranda/Centaur, etc.

Less direct ways does include increase damage spikiness (increased damage variability, critical hits and its variants), but as Nix points out, that is in turn mitigated by overkill.

Eliminating shield overkill, or substantially reducing it, would be a good idea regardless of the solution used to get "ships with higher combat benefit", because of the shield regen problem, where even recovering a single point (or 0<x<=1) of shield means your hull is completely protected by even a 100 damage blast, unless shield burn-through triggers.

Alternatively, shield burn-through could scale with shield integrity (% max shields), which should have the same net effect at low shield integrity. As I've argued earlier, something like this may be necessary to keep Apiata shield-heavy frigate designs from becoming obsolete (or else, shield burn-through limits viable H vs L ratios in ship design). edit: To elaborate a bit on this, if both damage spikiness and shield burn-through rate keep increasing, than eggshell designs like the Apiata favors become more and more severely disadvantaged, even if they later produce something like a H2 L4 design. If shield burn-through rate is really low at max shield integrity (100% max shields), then that provides more guarantee that such a frigate will survive a hit and still be significantly combat functional.
 
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I've never really understood the hate the CA has garnered. Sure, it's SR-heavy, bit it's actually useful outside a fight. In an ideal world this wouldn't matter because the Excelsiors, Rennies/Connies, and soon Keplers would do the event response, but as we've seen with the Licori war sometimes we don't have the luxury of staffing every sector with good response ships. Hell, we tolerate the Constie that sucks so hard it needs a refit just to make it the equal of a CA at double the crew cost.
 
Centaur-As don't fill a niche as well as Miranda-As, Renaissances, and Excelsiors. They're jack-of-all-trades - and even that is a bit of a generous description - but their SR cost efficiency is prohibitive.

If SR was less of a bottleneck (which we projected but then all the repair costs started streaming in), I'd be comfortable building more Centaur-As. If the escort role is made more prevalent somehow, which theoretically the Centaur-A should excel in for their costs, along with just being more generally useful in combat as indicated by the combat engine changes, then I'd be much more inclined to build them.
 
Theunderbolt said:
And on the third appendage Samyr Kanil is now the scariest Captain in the quadrant.
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UberJJK said:
I don't know; I'm fairly sure she already was the scariest Captain in the quadrant after Exercise Silent Fury.
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My OC is a memetic badass. Yay!

Funny part is that when I originally wrote her she was supposed to be an EWAR/IWAR specialist in her bullshit, and not the soft sci kind. Specialities were meant to be at most jamming, stealth, compromising comms and countering the same. And her first showing was supposed to be combined efforts with a pretty bullshit helmsman and EWAR specialist, not all her.

So the extent of her special threat would be making say Enterprise outdodge especially dodgy escorts, not going full STO.
 
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UbeOne said:
Our most powerful weapon in our arsenal is the deflector dish. :V
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You mean the variable exotic physics projector.

Edit: I've called it a cannon before. That was incorrect. Cannons shoot and kill. You can't generate a bubble with a cannon. You can't heal people with a cannon.

The Deflector Dish is a starship scale multitool.
 
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lbmaian said:
Care to elaborate on that? Why don't you want the Centaur-A to be competitive? It'll mess with our build plans, but having another option out of the paltry few we have is hardly a bad thing.

If science turns out to be pretty important in combat, then Centaur-As could be our most crew-efficient general combat ship. The SR cost still makes it compete with the Miranda-A (lower cost) and Renaissance (more capable), but it's now a closer trade-off.
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It's not a matter of competitive, because the Centaur-A is already a much better garrison ship. If the Centaur-A is more efficient in combat despite having only +1 science and despite being 33% bigger then that's a combat system I want no part in, because it trivializes the combat frigate role that tactical has set. That's a terrible thing for game balance.

Like, you see the issue with building a C2 S7 Kepler that outshoots/outdodges the Centaur-A? Because if +1S makes the difference between the C-A and M-A, then +4S should utterly stomp on the difference between the C-A and Kepler.
 
lbmaian said:
My tally of Starfleet designed ships in the Federation as of start of 2315.Q1 but before any builds have commenced this quarter (we won't know until shipyard ops results):

<ship class>: <total #>[<total Starfleet #>] (...)
Oberth: 5[4] (0[0] under construction)
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I didn't check the others, but this jumped out at me. You're missing an Oberth somewhere. Starfleet has the Suvek, the Torbriel, the Hawking, the Inspire, and the T'Mir. That's five and then the Vulcans also have an Oberth.
 
lbmaian said:
Huh, there actually are a decent number of Centaur-As in the Federation right now: 26. Though no one is building them anymore from what I can tell, but we could just be between builds. Amarki may start up another batch, Betazed should have the resources to start another one this year, and who knows what Human, Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar will build.

My tally of Starfleet designed ships in the Federation as of start of 2315.Q1 but before any builds have commenced this quarter (we won't know until shipyard ops results):

<ship class>: <total #>[<total Starfleet #>] (...)
Oberth: 5[4] (0[0] under construction)
Soyuz: 2[0] (can no longer be built)
Miranda: 6[4] (can no longer be built)
Miranda-A: 25[7] (3[3] under construction, 3[2] Miranda under refit)
Centaur-A: 26[9] (0[0] under construction, all Centaur refit)
Constellation: 18[7] (0[0] under construction)
Constitution-B: 11[8] (2[1] under construction)
Renaissance: 1[1] (13[4] under construction)
Constitution-A: 1[1] (can no longer be built)
Excelsior: 16[13] (5[4] under construction)
Excelsior-A: 0[0] (0[0] under construction, 1[1] under refit)

Fun facts: including ships being constructed/refitted, 40% of our cruiser mass is under construction, and our total explorer mass more a bit greater than that of either our frigates or cruisers (but not both combined).

@Void Stalker, your spreadsheet is showing Starfleet having 9 Connie-Bs and 2 under construction, but we only have 8 Connie-Bs and 1 under construction (to be finished at end of this quarter).
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Thanks, I think that got messed up when futzing with ships active vs in repairs, and I forgot to remove 1 from construction last quarter.

Also we have not seen what the members are starting for builds this quarter, but the Amarkia just finished a Centaur-A and are likely to build more. Betazed likes them as well.


Forgothrax said:
I've never really understood the hate the CA has garnered. Sure, it's SR-heavy, bit it's actually useful outside a fight. In an ideal world this wouldn't matter because the Excelsiors, Rennies/Connies, and soon Keplers would do the event response, but as we've seen with the Licori war sometimes we don't have the luxury of staffing every sector with good response ships. Hell, we tolerate the Constie that sucks so hard it needs a refit just to make it the equal of a CA at double the crew cost.
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I actually am a big fan of the Centaur-A since in comparison with the Miranda it wins in peace. However since we have had an SR bottleneck we needed to move to the cheaper Miranda to boost our numbers. And really the big thing is that two Explorer ships can't double up on an event but a Centaur-A can be an assisting ship to some events.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
It's not a matter of competitive, because the Centaur-A is already a much better garrison ship. If the Centaur-A is more efficient in combat despite having only +1 science and despite being 33% bigger then that's a combat system I want no part in, because it trivializes the combat frigate role that tactical has set. That's a terrible thing for game balance.

Like, you see the issue with building a C2 S7 Kepler that outshoots/outdodges the Centaur-A? Because if +1S makes the difference between the C-A and M-A, then +4S should utterly stomp on the difference between the C-A and Kepler.
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Centaur is a newer design than the Miranda. Also the Miranda is cheaper by far which with budget constraints has lead to us building them over the Centaur. Of course the lower price comes with lower science and presence and defense so trade offs.
 
So a 1S difference is modelled as 1% evasion, correct? Whether plus or minus depending on who has the higher S score.

So T'Mir, with 7S would only have a 4% evasion benefit over a typical 3S design.
 
Well, that's not so badly overpowered as one might fear. Science checks for scouting and minesweeping make perfect sense, of course; I honestly figured they'd exist anyway.

Goat said:
So a 1S difference is modelled as 1% evasion, correct? Whether plus or minus depending on who has the higher S score.
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Well, gaining +1 Science means you have +1% evasion AND they have -1% evasion- either because you gained a point, or because you claw a point back (say, by raising Science from 1 to 2 against an opponent with Science 4- decreasing your malus is as good as increasing your bonus).

It's a pretty significant bonus, but there are (for instance) a lot of techs that have much greater effects.
 
The kicker is that our Explorers now have some evasion. Before, they had little to none. Some of the possible Amby designs have 9S, though, allowing them to have as much as 6% Evasion against some enemies.

If we can fit more S on our Frigates, too, we're going to want that.
 
So basically having higher science in a fight represents being able to establish a measure of EWAR superiority against your opponent.
 
@OneirosTheWriter a comment to make sure everyone is on the same page with regards to upcoming repairs.

Unless there's some kind of drastic last minute vote change, we're leaving three 3m-t berths and one 2.5 m-t berth open for repairs on damaged capital ships in the upcoming year of fighting. These are there not just for Starfleet ships, but also if any of the member world capital ships like the Liberty or the Yagad-Tich (or the Tellarite Excelsior when it arrives) gets damaged. But that means we're prefer not to fill those berths up with 1mt or smaller ships that get damaged first. I know the general practice seems to be to send a Starfleet ship to a Starfleet berth for repair if one is open and only borrow a Member World berth if none are, but I hope there can be a little coordination on trying to keep the big berths open for the ships that really need them for repairs.
 
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Briefvoice said:
I don't think 10% evasion would be enough to keep that Galaxy from being chewed into bite-sized chunks.
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-10% to the evasion of the KBoPs, though? Also, +10% evasion means a lot more when you have a horde of smaller ships, because the law of averages means you're actually taking 10% less damage, while with lone big ships, the battles will tend to be shorter, so the evasion is more of a swing factor in any single battle.
 
Briefvoice said:
@OneirosTheWriter a comment to make sure everyone is on the same page with regards to upcoming repairs.

Unless there's some kind of drastic last minute vote change, we're leaving three 3m-t berths and one 2.5 m-t berth open for repairs on damaged capital ships in the upcoming year of fighting. These are there not just for Starfleet ships, but also if any of the member world capital ships like the Liberty or the Yagad-Tich (or the Tellarite Excelsior when it arrives) gets damaged. But that means we're prefer not to fill those berths up with 1mt or smaller ships that get damaged first. I know the general practice seems to be to send a Starfleet ship to a Starfleet berth for repair if one is open and only borrow a Member World berth if none are, but I hope there can be a little coordination on trying to keep the big berths open for the ships that really need them for repairs.
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Definately agree.

During earlier years, we had both a smaller fleet, and less events likely to incur severe damages. So we could manage quite well with all berths (or as close as we could manage) producing new ships.

Now, we have I-don't-even-remember-how-many Excelsiors and Mirandas and Connies and whatnot, and not just one but TWO active conflicts.

Which, given that hopefully our fleets keep growing, means we really need more dedicated repair capabilities to maintain an operational tempo. A large fleet is not at all useful, if half of them are damaged and waiting for a free slipway for repairs.
In the short term, this means leaving berths free. In the long term, this means investing into more shipbuilding/repair facility capacity.
 
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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
It's not a matter of competitive, because the Centaur-A is already a much better garrison ship. If the Centaur-A is more efficient in combat despite having only +1 science and despite being 33% bigger then that's a combat system I want no part in, because it trivializes the combat frigate role that tactical has set. That's a terrible thing for game balance.

Like, you see the issue with building a C2 S7 Kepler that outshoots/outdodges the Centaur-A? Because if +1S makes the difference between the C-A and M-A, then +4S should utterly stomp on the difference between the C-A and Kepler.
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That's a huge exaggeration, and you should know this since you've been messing around with the ship design spreadsheet.

Using existing evasion formulas I was estimating around a 22.5% evasion rate for the Centaur-A and a 24.5% evasion rate for the Miranda-A, assuming 800kt frame for Centaur-A, 450kt+150kt frame+module for the Miranda-A, and comparable impulse engines. That's only a ~2% difference. You don't need +1 S to do much to evasion rate to tip the scales in favor of the Centaur-A, and I don't think anyone thought it would be a massive change.

That's an estimate: It gets worse if you try to module the Miranda-A as actually around 650kt according to the listed tonnage, which requires a 600kt+150kt frame+module since there's no T-1 500kt or so frame, resulting in around 23% evasion rate. Or if the Centaur-A has significantly more impulse engine power than the Miranda-A to help reach D3 - double impulse engine worth of reaction stat amounts to about an extra 0.5% evasion rate at this scale. Worse case, the Centaur-A and Miranda-A already have about the same evasion rate.

So knowing about the "(defending S - attacking S) / 100" modifier, the Centaur-A essentially has a 2% advantage over the Miranda-A in this modifier. If that modifier acts as a multiplier, then that's about a 0.5% evasion rate increase for the Centaur-A relative to the Miranda-A. If it's acting as an addition, then that's a straight 2% evasion rate increase instead. So if it's the latter interpretation, the Centaur-A does edge out the Miranda-A in raw combat.

edit: oops fixed numbers

Briefvoice said:
I didn't check the others, but this jumped out at me. You're missing an Oberth somewhere. Starfleet has the Suvek, the Torbriel, the Hawking, the Inspire, and the T'Mir. That's five and then the Vulcans also have an Oberth.
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Thanks, fixed. I accidentally counted Starfleet total as Federation total, and "subtracted" 1 for the Vulcan Oberth.
 
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SakSak said:
Definately agree.

During earlier years, we had both a smaller fleet, and less events likely to incur severe damages. So we could manage quite well with all berths (or as close as we could manage) producing new ships.

Now, we have I-don't-even-remember-how-many Excelsiors and Mirandas and Connies and whatnot, and not just one but TWO active conflicts.

Which, given that hopefully our fleets keep growing, means we really need more dedicated repair capabilities to maintain an operational tempo. A large fleet is not at all useful, if half of them are damaged and waiting for a free slipway for repairs.
In the short term, this means leaving berths free. In the long term, this means investing into more shipbuilding/repair facility capacity.
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The good news is, we are building dedicated repair yards in the areas we're most likely to need them, and those yards won't just evaporate when the conflicts they're responding to are over. We're also starting a significant number of one-megaton berths at Betazed and Apinae, and the Apinae yard is to a large extent specifically planned as a repair facility (incidentally this means we probably should NOT start any parallel builds there, since we may have to 'bump' one of the builds at any time).

Now, we have one weakness that this doesn't address, which is repair facilities for explorers. Given that we're in the age of parallel builds, the singleton 2.5-megaton berths at Ana Font and Lor'Vela are in effect our designated berths for refits and repairs of Excelsiors, specifically, for the indefinite future. We may want to build a three-megaton berth at Apinae, while we're at it.
 
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Briefvoice said:
Unless there's some kind of drastic last minute vote change, we're leaving three 3m-t berths and one 2.5 m-t berth open for repairs on damaged capital ships in the upcoming year of fighting. These are there not just for Starfleet ships, but also if any of the member world capital ships like the Liberty or the Yagad-Tich (or the Tellarite Excelsior when it arrives) gets damaged. But that means we're prefer not to fill those berths up with 1mt or smaller ships that get damaged first. I know the general practice seems to be to send a Starfleet ship to a Starfleet berth for repair if one is open and only borrow a Member World berth if none are, but I hope there can be a little coordination on trying to keep the big berths open for the ships that really need them for repairs.
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There's been at least 2 cases now where an existing build got bumped to make room for repairs (2304 Sarek and 2314 Kumari), and some more cases where a scheduled build was no longer possible for either repairing musical chairs or repair cost reasons.

If these start happening more frequently, I wonder if Oneiros will start penalizing us. If not out of reasonable in-game political reasons but out of pure frustration playing said musical chairs :V

Best not to risk his wrath :p

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Simon_Jester said:
The good news is, we are building dedicated repair yards in the areas we're most likely to need them, and those yards won't just evaporate when the conflicts they're responding to are over. We're also starting a significant number of one-megaton berths at Betazed and Apinae, and the Apinae yard is to a large extent specifically planned as a repair facility (incidentally this means we probably should NOT start any parallel builds there, since we may have to 'bump' one of the builds at any time).

Now, we have one weakness that this doesn't address, which is repair facilities for explorers. Given that we're in the age of parallel builds, the singleton 2.5-megaton berths at Ana Font and Lor'Vela are in effect our designated berths for refits and repairs of Excelsiors, specifically, for the indefinite future. We may want to build a three-megaton berth at Apinae, while we're at it.
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One of the berths at the Apinae shipyard is going to be a 3mt berth.

The problem with building more 3mt berths is that there are one of: too far (UP expansions), too costly (single 3mt berth expansions), or too slow (new shipyards). Would love it if we got a snakepit option to build a cheaper & faster 3mt repair berth as opposed to a shipyard berth somewhere close to our spinward border.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
The good news is, we are building dedicated repair yards in the areas we're most likely to need them, and those yards won't just evaporate when the conflicts they're responding to are over. We're also starting a significant number of one-megaton berths at Betazed and Apinae, and the Apinae yard is to a large extent specifically planned as a repair facility (incidentally this means we probably should NOT start any parallel builds there, since we may have to 'bump' one of the builds at any time).

Now, we have one weakness that this doesn't address, which is repair facilities for explorers. Given that we're in the age of parallel builds, the singleton 2.5-megaton berths at Ana Font and Lor'Vela are in effect our designated berths for refits and repairs of Excelsiors, specifically, for the indefinite future. We may want to build a three-megaton berth at Apinae, while we're at it.
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The Apinae yard will have one 3-mt berth and one 1-mt berth. Maybe you already knew that, but your phrasing suggested you thought it was two 1-mt berths?

The cheapest and fastest way to expand repair capacity would be to do a couple of expansions at Utopia Planitia.
 
lbmaian said:
One of the berths at the Apinae shipyard is going to be a 3mt berth.
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Huh. Sorry, I got mixed up; I was busy writing Devas and Asuras and somehow misremembered the Apinae yard as a double one-megaton yard like Betazed.

The problem with building more 3mt berths is that there are one of: too far (UP expansions), too costly (single 3mt berth expansions), or too slow (new shipyards). Would love it we got a snakepit option to build a cheaper & faster 3mt repair berth as opposed to a shipyard berth somewhere close to our spinward border.
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Given the increased attention we've seen to repair facilities in the last few years of gameplay, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the option. Or maybe the auxiliary yard at Amarkia could be expanded to include repair facilities.

EDIT:

[Expansions at Utopia Planitia are good, but specifically for repairs Utopia Planitia has drawbacks. While it's always possible for something to blow up on the trailward frontier, we're more likely to need repair capability close to Cardassian space. The sheer distance ships have to travel to undergo repairs at Utopia Planitia is a disadvantage]

Hmm... I suppose we COULD view building more berths at Utopia Planitia as a way to reduce the pressure on yards elsewhere in Federation space (e.g. turning Ana Font into a de facto repair yard because it's more efficient to do actual shipbuilding at Mars). However, we've already gone pretty far in that direction, and most of our other shipyard facilities are no more convenient to the Cardassian front than Sol is.
 
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