Well that month did not go so well.
So Rigel sector and Amarkia sector had a lack of responders
Amarkia sector's responder responded just fine, it's just that USS
Vigour failed a Spot check. Probably a Science check.
Maybe a
Centaur-A or a modern cruiser would have passed the check, but it's likely that if we really wanted success in that sector we should have sent an
Excelsior. Or an
Oberth, maybe.
So remember when the complaint about Lone Ranger doctrine was that it didn't allow for any ships to assist when an Excelsior responds? Now it's actually starting to feel like a boon. Keeps too many ships from bunching up on one event so they're free for other events later in the month.
That's only helping us if we actually have an explorer present in the sector, though. A lot of our sector fleets no longer have explorer flagships, or never did.
Perhaps, but even focusing on the "regular" Apiata, the majority of it will fall on their differences. If you were to describe a Queenship bridge, purely visually, it would be an utterly baffling experience, because at least half the conversations carried out and orders being given are pheromonal rather than verbal. To an outsider it would be impenetrable.
Pheromonal orders are
necessarily imprecise and take time to provoke the desired response, because it takes time for a smell to propagate through the air. Furthermore, they're useless for communicating from the bridge to Main Engineering, or for saying whether the ship should turn left or right, or which enemy ship to target.
The fact that the Apiata use spoken language at all strongly suggests that, bee-people or no, they
do rely heavily on spoken language, especially in situations like space travel where precise, clear communication that conveys the maximum information in the minimum time is valued.
The lack of responders is troublesome.
We actually had two separate problems in Q1M2. The first problem was a
Constellation straight-up failing a check, which probably indicates a failed Science roll. Refitting the
Constellations will help a lot with that. The trouble is, most rolls that a stock
Constellation (Science 2) fails, would also be failed by a stock
Centaur-A, Rennie, or Connie-Bee (Science 3). The long term solution to this problem is the
Keplers, but realistically it will be at least ten years before we can get a large fleet of
Keplers deployed across much or all of Federation space.
The second problem was the lack of ships in Rigel sector. They just straight-up had no means to respond to what happened there. Notably,
Rigel is a border sector, which means it gets event rolls that involve our relations with species outside Federation space. We should be garrisoning it like it was a border zone, not trying to do the absolute minimum necessary. But we can't maintain a massive Gabriel Expanse fleet against an anticipated Cardassian attack (still unclear why we anticipate attack there this year), AND have plenty of ships to cover RIgel Sector and so on.
At the moment there are two ships there,
Renaissance and
Selaya, and apparently BOTH of them triggered events in Q1M1, followed by
yet a third event triggering in Q1M2. That's enough to just plain overwhelm us in most sectors; we don't actually have that many sectors with a three-ship fleet.
Now, doing a count... all of Starfleet, not counting the Explorer Corps, is... nine explorers, nine modern cruisers, seven
Constellations, four science vessels, and twenty-three frigates. That's fifty-two ships, not counting ships in repairs or refits. We also have eight normal sectors and
six border zones, counting the Gabriel Expanse as a border zone.
AT BEST that gives us three or four ships per sector, but the very moment we start even trying to maintain a large fleet
anywhere we end up at the "two or three per" level that makes it possible for stuff like this to happen. The only reason we didn't have this happening constantly in the early quest was because it was so gosh-darn rare for events to cluster at a rate of two or three to a sector in a single quarter.
[For the record, we have fifteen ships in the Gabriel Border Zone fleet, mostly modern cruisers and
Miranda-As. If we completely disbanded this fleet it would juuust about give us the numbers to put one more ship in every other sector we control, with a couple left over to watch the fireworks in the Gabriel Expanse.]
Wonder if the Hishmeri Septs plundered the Ittik-Ka on their way through.
I kind of hope so...
Too much trouble, how about we direct them straight through Klingon and Romulan space and see how much chaos they cause for both sides since both side is damaged by the war.
Note: they'll hit the Klingons first, which will heavily distract said Klingons. At the moment the Klingons seem to have a slight upper hand (based on last year's intelligence reports). This may be a good thing or a bad thing. Hard to say.
The Cheron comes through again... but how do we make that final step of being able to talk with the Sydraxians openly? Notice we're still having to sneak around to do it.
I think the Sydraxians themselves would have to openly take that step by denouncing their ties to the Ashalla Pact. That said, if
@AKuz 's post is to be taken at face value, the Greens are actually a
pro-Romulan faction of the existing Hierarchy government, not a bunch of revolutionaries. So basically, this faction is willing to work either with us or with the Romulans... which come to think of it is not so bad. Worst case, I'd rather have a Romulan client on that flank than a Cardassian one, because I think we're less likely to wind up fighting the Romulans.
It's the Sea Peoples! The nomads from the steppes! Etc. My question is, is it worthwhile to try a diplomatic push on them or will it not help?
I
strongly suspect it will help. Especially since unless we radically reposition our fleet, we're not in good shape to stop them. Diplomacy (buying them off, encouraging them to keep their ships to specific systems, getting them to go somewhere else) is the easiest way to keep some semblance of control over the situation.
The Hurq.
...oh, that's a terrible idea. If the Klingons get wind of them...
It is
conceivable that these space nomads are associated with the Hurq. On the other hand, they may not be. As far as we can tell, only the Klingons really know that much about the Hurq.
Of course you realize that as soon as they launch, NX-3902 is going to become NCC-1701-C
Being a loyal vassal state might actually be their best bet for dealing with that.
Also, making big turboenhanced battle monks cry in arm wrestling matches would help.
But as they laid down and completed at nearly identical times, they will forever be argued over as "is this the Ambassador or the Enterprise class", thus defeating the NX-series' attempt to stop this.
Future Enterprise:
[Eyes glowing dangerously]
"
Ambassador. We're
Ambassador-class. Stop dissing my new sister."
It continues to be my personal canon that this used to be the way it was always done. Starfleet ships were built in member world berths, spending political will as needed to get access. Kirk's original Enterprise was probably build at Luna Orbital, or perhaps at a San Francisco Shipyards that was under United Earth control.
This business of 'dedicated Starfleet shipyards' seems routine enough to us today, but the Council argued over it for months and it was hugely controversial.
In my notes for "the 2235 game," I go with the idea that the shipyard facilities used by Starfleet are effectively leased from the respective member worlds, so Starfleet exercises long-term control and operations, but has to make sure the leases don't expire and avoid violating any terms of service.
This strikes me as a much more efficient arrangement than having to constantly find one-off opportunities to build ships on a catch-as-catch-can basis, while being consistent with a reasonable degree of member world sovereignty.
Its better than going near our space or the Fed's peer powers and i'm wary of letting them through the former infection zone.
Yeah. ALL we need is for an independent mining ship to run into a Biophage problem, send out a distress call, and then have a bunch of aggressive space-raider nomads show up and not believe their warnings.