Changed my vote to not refit Sarek right now - I want to have the option to give Mrr'shan another FYM.
We're sending
Sarek out as a weaker ship, in that case.
Planners, any particular reason for refitting Sappho over Docana or Vigour? Docana and Vigour are blooded, Sappho isn't.
Maybe deployment issues again? Some ships can be spared from their duties earlier rather than later.
The question I have is how big we actually want the Explorer Corps to get.
Well, at 3-4 EC crew of each type per year, realistically we're never going to be adding more than about one ship per two years. Is there a point at which we stop and say "thus far, no farther?"
Where have we deployed sensor networks? And - where is that information located? Frontpage somewhere?
I don't think we can answer that, but we do HAVE sensors covering the border region. Remember how during the Grey October crisis, we were able to track and monitor Cardassian fleet movements well outside our space? Yeah, that was sensors. Some of them on starbases, some on outposts, maybe some on little 'quantum outposts' of the kind that don't have heavy fortifications.
Small enough that Oneiros doesn't explode trying to create events.
Oneiros has said that if the Corps ever got unmanageably big, he'd probably just start writing stories for the adventures of SOME of the ships and just tell us the outcomes for the others.
Roughly 1/2 or 1/3 of our Explorer-class ships. That's what we've held to throughout the game.
Although, with the Ambassadors coming to fruition, it's time to stop adding Excelsiors to the Explorer Corps.
I'd say it'll be time to do that around 2319 or so, after which point we need to hoard Explorer Corps crew to have enough people to crew
Ambassador and
Enterprise as Explorer Corps ships.
I'd prefer putting the +1 crew ratings on 3 green ships.
I don't agree. Reason being, it's a lot harder to get a ship from Veteran to Elite, and takes a lot longer. Being Blooded might slightly increase the (favorable) odds of ship survival... But so far,
all our new-built Corps ships made it to Blooded on their first five year mission. Yes, Green ships have run into trouble on a number of occasions, but so have Blooded and occasionally Veteran ships. And putting the crew on a Green ship involves us giving up the free +1 bonus in exchange for a thing we could have gotten more easily and more cheaply.
Moreover, it's physically impossible for us to do that within the Explorer Corps even if we wanted to.
Right now we have six Corps ships (not counting
Stargazer):
Sarek, Courageous, S'harien, Odyssey, Atuin, and
Voshov. The first two of those ships are Veteran, the next three Blooded, and the last one Green.
Our options are:
1) Give +1's to
Courageous and
Sarek to get two Elite ships, then give the third +1 to a Blooded ship, upgrading her to Veteran.
2) Give +1's to
Courageous and
Sarek to get two Elite ships, then give the third +1 to
Voshov, upgrading her to Blooded.
3) Upgrade
Courageous OR
Sarek to get one Elite ship, upgrade two Blooded ships to Veteran.
4) Upgrade
Courageous OR
Sarek to get one Elite ship, upgrade a Blooded ship to Veteran, and
Voshov to Blooded.
5) Upgrade all three Blooded ships (
S'harien, Odyssey, Atuin) to Veteran, giving us five (!) Veteran explorers.
6) Upgrade two Blooded ships to Veteran, and
Voshov to Blooded.
I oppose giving the +1 to
Voshov because, based on past experience, she's already 40-50% of the way to Blooded status, and Captain Sulu shows every sign of being able to keep her ship alive to that point in time.
Now, new options appear if we leave part of the
Enterprise crew inactive for 2316 so that they can be assigned to the new explorer (probably named
Tarrak) coming out in 2317. But that seems like a bit of a stretch.
