To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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The start of a research project requires us to have the parts tech for that research project completed, which in turn requires us to have done the research turns for those parts, which is done on a 4 to 10 year plan. So no, I have to disagree with you there.
Gear
Set Moon to Ramming Speed!
[X][ROLES] Do Nothing [2.0x Weighting on this vote]
The Kepler fulfills all the roles we need for a lighter ship, from being a great science ship, good garrison ship and event responder, to being a pretty good minesweeper with it's S7.
Light Explorers? With the Ambassador Class starting prototypes soon, this is going to be the Excelsior class, because we're not going to stop making them until at least the Ambassador's enter full production. And even then, we'll probably still be making a few in the two 2.5 mt berths we have.
A new cheap combat escort? Can we make something that is cheaper than the Miranda? Don't we still have to make some rule exceptions to even get it to work in the ship design sheet?
The Kepler fulfills all the roles we need for a lighter ship, from being a great science ship, good garrison ship and event responder, to being a pretty good minesweeper with it's S7.
Light Explorers? With the Ambassador Class starting prototypes soon, this is going to be the Excelsior class, because we're not going to stop making them until at least the Ambassador's enter full production. And even then, we'll probably still be making a few in the two 2.5 mt berths we have.
A new cheap combat escort? Can we make something that is cheaper than the Miranda? Don't we still have to make some rule exceptions to even get it to work in the ship design sheet?
Regarding these designs:
Light Explorer: At the point where the Ambassador prototype is completed, we should certainly be considering a Light Explorer as an Excelsior-A replacement. It is a matter of if and when we want to invest the resources for somewhat marginal gains. My opinion is that within the next 5 to 8 years, a Light Explorer with slightly better stats than the Excelsior-A will be available at slightly lower costs and crew.
Combat Escort: I was able to replicate the Miranda-A at one point, but only just. In any event, we can build an escort frigate within the existing 60 SR requirement which is highly constrained, or we can choose to update the requirement to go to 70 SR. These designs will be available from between now through 2319, depending on exactly what capabilities we want them to have.
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For cost effective combat ships the Miranda-A and Renaissance are not at all easy to beat. What we can do is a new design at a different scale rather than a direct replacement (e. g. a frigate larger than a Miranda and between Miranda and Renaissance in both cost and stats), but that's not obviously a win, there should be advantages to keeping the number of classes down as well. I'd rather wait until the early to mid 2320s for a new combat oriented design, perhaps even wait for Phaser Arrays (should be unlocked around 2330).
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- Mid-Atlantic
Probably a fair amount; hard to estimate how much since we don't know what our event DCs would have been like, and which events would have gotten an Excelsior response as opposed to a Centaur-A.
We're fifty years before the era of Picard and Sisko, technologically. If the Federation didn't have it and use it during the Dominion War, there is basically no way that anyone who even works for Starfleet at the moment is ever going to play any role in its development whatsoever.
A 'moon shot' effort to develop transwarp technology in the present era would be like a 'moon shot' effort to reach the moon in 1860. Even the basic mathematical theories to describe your proposed moon ship would barely exist, and you'd never get to the Moon that way.
I can think of no example of a transporter moving something that large, unless the transporter itself was vastly larger than the ship being moved, built to the scale of a Borg Cube. Furthermore, there is minimal evidence of transporter buffers being 'efficient' or 'easy' ways to store anything whatsoever. If they were efficient enough to store hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo in a stable way, you wouldn't need replicators.
Chaos Blade
Procrastinating Writer
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
Guys, keep in mind that a specialized minesweeper will have something that the Kepler won't be... it will be cheaper and more expendable, should have less crew requirements, so it will be a ship we might want to risk closer to the frontline.
The Kepler might be able to do the job, but in fleet battles it will also need to run EWar among other things.
I am not convinced that waiting till we see how the Kepler performs is a good idea.
if we go with a specialized minesweeper, we might either get a standalone ship, a variant of an existing design or a retrofitted design (and we are about to have a few ships start being long in the tooth, ships we could re-purpose...)
The Kepler might be able to do the job, but in fleet battles it will also need to run EWar among other things.
I am not convinced that waiting till we see how the Kepler performs is a good idea.
if we go with a specialized minesweeper, we might either get a standalone ship, a variant of an existing design or a retrofitted design (and we are about to have a few ships start being long in the tooth, ships we could re-purpose...)
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The only things a mine sweeper design might feasibly sacrifice compared to the Kepler would be presence and defense/reaction, and even defense is a bit iffy (basically all you could do would be to drop the diplomacy parts, pick worse nacelles and maybe drop the sickbays and replace them with labs, and sickbays seem rather desirable for use as impromptu hospital ship after the battle). Most of the expense of the Kepler goes to essential parts and science, and worse science means worse mine detection.
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Honestly, I think that a specialist design like that would have special modifers for its task that go beyond pure stats since that is only way a design like that ever makes any sense, at least according to how I understand teh mechanics.
Edit: Something like for example: "S stat is doubled for Mine checks" seems liek an easy way to deal with that and make ships like that viable.
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- Actually pretty lost
My limited impression from discussion and brief looks at the SBD thread is that SR costs tend to be a pretty big restraint. Are there any techs that mitigate this that we're looking into getting, or any ways to increase our SR income beyond how lucky we get with colonies? I know there's a budget increase option that requires a roll in the Snakepit that we've never taken.
I'm just thinking - if we're worried about our Science ships being too costly for use as minesweepers, the easiest way to fix that is to make them relatively cheaper.
Ship design for this quest is extraordinarily complex, to the point it has its' own thread and design wizards. As far as I'm aware, no such specialist modifiers exist.
- Location
- Germany
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That sounds like it requires research.
AKuz
Been Better
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- A Rising Tide of Horrors
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- She/Her
[X][ROLES] Do Nothing [2.0x Weighting on this vote]
We also need to fit in where the new designs would fit in in our build schedule and between the Ambassador and the upcoming "Kepler" (Will it end up being Kepler or is that just the design project name?) we'll already have our ques filled up on top of our existing Renaissance builds and refits for everything else.
There is simply no room for a new design until well after we've layed down the first runs of the Ambassadors and Keplers.
We also need to fit in where the new designs would fit in in our build schedule and between the Ambassador and the upcoming "Kepler" (Will it end up being Kepler or is that just the design project name?) we'll already have our ques filled up on top of our existing Renaissance builds and refits for everything else.
There is simply no room for a new design until well after we've layed down the first runs of the Ambassadors and Keplers.
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That said, it's probably a good idea to wait until we actually have the R&D team available to work on a new minesweeper before officially declaring our intentions to the Federation Council. Right now, we haven't even start the actual Kepler research project!
[X][ROLES] Do Nothing [2.0x Weighting on this vote]
- Location
- Australia
Even if that were the case, it still takes a while before penalties for an unfulfilled tactical requirement begin to mount up to anything significant. It's kind of like with militarisation, I think sometimes people get too gunshy about costs. I mean, the biggest penalty for an unfulfilled requirement isn't even a mechanical punishment, it's simply that you have a need that you haven't fulfilled yet.
I don't honestly hold that pre-collecting all parts for a perfect possible design is actually a valid requirement. Sometimes you need to just get something punched out and then knock the rough edges off later.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
A new thought: these roles infuence refits too, don't they? I wonder if there's a way to improve the viability of refits with revised roles...
Well, the projected Kepler does fit within our industrial capabilities while meeting all the roles adequately. And primary enemy capabilities that the Kepler is designed to handle are minesweeping/scouting and other sciency things. And diplomacy if other polities are considered "enemies".
Contrast the project Kepler that with the two ships the Kepler is designed to supersede:
Kepler*: C2 S7 H2 L3 P5 D5 ~100br ~80sr ~2yrO-1 E-3 T-2 (* specifics stats and costs subject to change, recent discussion on improving durability)
Centaur-A: C3 S3 H2 L3 P3 D3 80br 70sr 2yr O-1 E-2 T-2
Oberth: C1 S5 H1 L2 P1 D1 15br 60sr 2yr O-1 E-1 T-4
The BR:SR ratio for the Kepler is better than the other two ships, and its stats are so much better at the relevant roles. Now costs do increase some (about 20% more expensive than the Centaur-A), but with the Kepler available, we could consider reducing inefficient Excelsior-A production a bit to allow more Kepler production. The only serious downside is the increased enlisted cost, but crew is turning out to be less of a bottleneck than SR anyway (and tech crew is the opposite of a bottleneck now).
Really, maybe the problem is that the Kepler is too good
edit: Kepler crew costs are off - they should be around O-2 E-3 T-4 as pointed out in this post, so above analysis is wrong. Still, the crew costs are about halfway between a current frigate and a current cruiser, so it's not that bad.
Furthermore, we have to consider the "one-time" costs of new ship design: the cost and timing of new ship classes. We have limited pp, limited rp, and more importantly, limited experienced research teams available to produce new/refit designs. There's good reason we're not churning out new ship classes and refits every year!
That does incline me to vote for a minesweeping role, since a Kepler should be able to fill it. But that begets the question: what benefit does this provide us? It's not like starting the Kepler project is going to be that expensive in terms of pp, so another role that it fills isn't going to be that helpful to use wrt pp costs.
IIRC, the Renaissance is still actually impossible at our tech level, let alone the T0/T1 mix it should be. That 1000kt upper tonnage limit is really limiting. It does indicate that we don't need any new light cruiser for a very long time, and I'm not sure about the refit prospects of the Renaissance.
Well, the projected Kepler does fit within our industrial capabilities while meeting all the roles adequately. And primary enemy capabilities that the Kepler is designed to handle are minesweeping/scouting and other sciency things. And diplomacy if other polities are considered "enemies".
Contrast the project Kepler that with the two ships the Kepler is designed to supersede:
Kepler*: C2 S7 H2 L3 P5 D5 ~100br ~80sr ~2yr
Centaur-A: C3 S3 H2 L3 P3 D3 80br 70sr 2yr O-1 E-2 T-2
Oberth: C1 S5 H1 L2 P1 D1 15br 60sr 2yr O-1 E-1 T-4
The BR:SR ratio for the Kepler is better than the other two ships, and its stats are so much better at the relevant roles. Now costs do increase some (about 20% more expensive than the Centaur-A), but with the Kepler available, we could consider reducing inefficient Excelsior-A production a bit to allow more Kepler production. The only serious downside is the increased enlisted cost, but crew is turning out to be less of a bottleneck than SR anyway (and tech crew is the opposite of a bottleneck now).
Really, maybe the problem is that the Kepler is too good
edit: Kepler crew costs are off - they should be around O-2 E-3 T-4 as pointed out in this post, so above analysis is wrong. Still, the crew costs are about halfway between a current frigate and a current cruiser, so it's not that bad.
Furthermore, we have to consider the "one-time" costs of new ship design: the cost and timing of new ship classes. We have limited pp, limited rp, and more importantly, limited experienced research teams available to produce new/refit designs. There's good reason we're not churning out new ship classes and refits every year!
That does incline me to vote for a minesweeping role, since a Kepler should be able to fill it. But that begets the question: what benefit does this provide us? It's not like starting the Kepler project is going to be that expensive in terms of pp, so another role that it fills isn't going to be that helpful to use wrt pp costs.
IIRC, the Renaissance is still actually impossible at our tech level, let alone the T0/T1 mix it should be. That 1000kt upper tonnage limit is really limiting. It does indicate that we don't need any new light cruiser for a very long time, and I'm not sure about the refit prospects of the Renaissance.
... did you even read over the existing roles?
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- somewhere
There are various techs for SR mining which are all high priority to research and some of which we have already completed, and there are techs to reduce the SR cost of shield emitters, but unfortunately they are rather ineffective so I'm not sure they are worth bothering with.
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Oneiros, it seems the majority of the thread currently does not see the necessity to define a new role, whereas your way to argue looks like you do see one. If that perception is correct, perhaps most of us are not aware of information we should process in a certain context?
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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No such modifiers exist, and last I looked on the tech tree there was nothing that suggested there ever would be. If @OneirosTheWriter wanted to add a special minesweeper part, he could, but right now the minesweeper is basically interchangeable with a science vessel. All of our proposed combat frigates have C=S anyway so they can double as minesweepers.
Does anyone want to make a pitch about wargaming?
I, kind of vaguely, wonder if the Indorians have anything worth taking a turn on the floor with.
I, kind of vaguely, wonder if the Indorians have anything worth taking a turn on the floor with.