- Location
- Central Standard Time
Well...
That's nice?
And also, a good reason to wait for MODULES1!1!1?11?!
(Modules are srsbsns)
(Wait, this isn't Synthehol...)
(Time to start Designing Modules!)
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
Well...
That's nice?
And also, a good reason to wait for MODULES1!1!1?11?!
(Modules are srsbsns)
(Wait, this isn't Synthehol...)
(Time to start Designing Modules!)
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
...Yeah okay, I can see how having the build time hard locked at 3 years could be utilised if refits count.
EDIT: quoted post deleted.
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Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There are a number of ways to make the Excelsior a viable platform for refit, depending on the amount of fudging Oneiros wants to do. The easiest one is probably to fit in that the Excelsior was designed for ease of rapid refit, so it really is possible to replace most systems. Maybe that "ooh, the superstructure is tougher than anticipated so we can possibly fit a 150kt module at the base of the saucer giving you extra space."
Given how awfully expensive phasers are, array tech may allow for reduction in the number of parts and thus cost, too.
Given how awfully expensive phasers are, array tech may allow for reduction in the number of parts and thus cost, too.
Keplers are great... until the other side's combat ships actually manage to pin them down and force them to battle. Which will likely happen sooner or later. When that happens, they go *poof* really quick.
Keep in mind the Kepler isn't a little expendable Bird of Prey. They aren't even an expendable Miranda-A or a questionally expendable Constellation-A. They're going to be as expensive or more expensive as a Renaissance, albeit less crew.
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Matt Jefferies came up with that before Roddenberry came up with the 'Nacelles must always be in pairs' rule. The Saladin even has one nacelle.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
"Salutations sapient! We hear you like Nacelles so we put Nacelles on your Nacelles for ludicrous speeds!"
I didn't know Penny was a starship designer.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm now curious as to what the Yan-Ros's future starships look like.
re: Wolf-Pack Keplers and the issue if the pack is actually caught.
I have no idea currently if the mechanics would allow it, but a Kepler as a flagship and a pair of Miranda-As as the muscle?
I know, Wolf-Pack is not a doctrine we will be following anytime soon, just a thought exercise.
I have no idea currently if the mechanics would allow it, but a Kepler as a flagship and a pair of Miranda-As as the muscle?
I know, Wolf-Pack is not a doctrine we will be following anytime soon, just a thought exercise.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
The hunter thing wasn't working out for her. The stress was tearing her to pieces so she retired to Alphas Quadrants Assembly!
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That is horrible. Have a funny.
That's fairly normal when dealing with raiders. Given that raiders are designed to go after lightly guarded targets at worst and evade retaliation by speed and stealth, if one gets pinned down retaliation cannot be escaped and they cannot deliver a fight against a proper force.
That's why raiders try to avoid getting caught fighting a proper force.
And Keplers are too expensive to send out to certain destruction that way.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
To be fair, if we were up against the Klingons in the Gabriel Expanse, they'd be raiding us left and right. But the Cardassians, even when they go for the throat, are more the "stone-cold calculating murderer" type, and less of the "wild red-handed berserker" type.
I suspect that a lot of this already underlies the technologies we HAVE. I know that in the areas Oneiros subcontracted out to me, I referenced them here and there. "Psychotherapeutic holography" is a thing, for example- using holodecks as therapeutic facilities for the treatment of mental disorders under controlled, entirely artificial, yet lifelike circumstances. Truly advanced hologram tech seems like the province of post-TNG tech, which would be, like, T6 to T8 in this game. Likewise, transporter performance honestly doesn't seem to have changed much from 2265 to 2365- a lot of things clearly have but that's not one of them.
I think that it would be entirely equitable to give the Sydraxians a subsector, or an equivalent volume of space in multiple map subsectors, in exchange for their neutrality and normalization of relations with the Federation.
If the Sydraxians had started out neutral with respect to us in the first place and stayed there, even if they'd resisted all our diplomatic advances and never become affiliates, we'd probably offer them that, or even more than that. Giving them a generous 'peace settlement' that gives them ample resources and opportunities to exploit will send a valuable message to other Ashalla Pact members: Namely that the Federation is not a bad friend to have, and will not take advantage of you if you try to leave the Ashalla Pact.
Think about how the Dawiar will feel about knowing the Federation is willing to cede territory it could have claimed for its own, territory experience has shown it could easily deny to an enemy, simply as a gesture of peaceful coexistence.
Leslie:
"More like, after having to rip the design apart and start over two or three times in the first twenty or thirty years, everyone figured doing it again would be a piece of cake."
[grins]
Hm. Speaking of Leslie...
Omake - Old Soul, New Daughter Pt 2 - Simon_Jester
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Old Soul, New Daughter
Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards
Director's Office
Rear Admiral Leslie beckoned his latest appointment to a seat. "Come in, come in. What's got you down? Progress updates are usually good news, with you."
"I thought I'd tell you in person. We've got a supply problem with Bob's fun-loving twin sister. NCC one-seven- excuse me, three-nine-oh-two." Commodore Rob Henderson rolled his eyes, smiling briefly. "Why did you bother to convince sh'Razah over in D to nickname her Blue Eyes, by the way?"
"Oh, just something I got from an old joke Jim Kirk made once- at a friend's wedding, back in '83. Seemed like the thing to do."
"Right. Anyhow, like I said, it's a supply snarl. Won't be a problem for a few years at least, but I can't see a way around it, and neither can anyone I've talked to." Henderson sighed. "To make those ultra-condensed shield grids work, Ambie uses a five-layer, superconducting damper mesh. The latest spec. Over the whole saucer. Where do we find another eight hundred kilometers of Category Twelve cable? There's only one factory in the whole Federation for the stuff. They already work three shifts, and Olympus Initiative or not, the tooling for the second production line won't be ready for five years!"
Leslie grunted. "You know, Rob, at a time like this, Admiral Chen would rifle through eighteen engineering papers in a few hours, come up with some genius trick to speed up work or do more with less or both? And we'd end up a month ahead of schedule, right?"
"Yeah..." Henderson shook his head. "But we can't go over to Ops just to pester her for her special witchcraft."
"Mm." Leslie nodded, looking contemplative. "She's something. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant, never even considered for mass production. Too good to live, too quick to die."
"Huh. I like that."
"Some old poet I read when I was a kid. Anyhow. I may not be smart like Patty Chen. And I may not be quite as mighty a grand master of the art of not screwing up as Sirvk, either. But what I've got a boatload of is old. Old, and sneaky. I think I know a way to sneaky our way out of this mess." He smiled.
"And what's that?"
"Category Ten cable, left to marinate for fifteen or twenty years, is as good as Twelve."
"...You're joking. Is there a Category Ten?"
"Yep. Special development. It was the only thing Rogers' golden boys would hear of using, for the Ares project."
Henderson scowled. "But the Centaurs use Category Eleven. And the Rennies. Which means nobody's made any Cat-Ten in fifteen years. More!"
"Doesn't matter. I'm telling you, this stuff ages like fine wine. Self-annealing and self-stabilizing. Twenty years to sit and stew is just what the doctor ordered. See?" He tapped his PADD. "Here's the material datasheet."
The shipwright scrutinized the file Leslie handed over. "You signed this sheet in 2302. The Ares Project started in, what, '96? How could you possibly have known how the stuff would behave after twenty years?"
"I'll show you the place we got the samples from. Confidential, but you're a big boy."
Storage Facility Lambda-Alpha-Four
Eighty Degrees South Latitude, Mars
Half an Hour Later
"Okay, so this is my old mechanical watch, the one we ran up for the mission on Ekos. You know it- you trust it."
Leslie deposited the watch on a very elastic conveyor belt that slowly reeled it in through the 'mail slot' that passed part way into the double transparent walls separating the east and west sides of the basement room. Henderson saw it drop down to a second conveyor belt.
"Now, count time on your portable, I'll take it back out in a minute or two." Henderson nodded, pulling up a stopwatch utility. Manipulating the controls, he
"How long was it in the other room?"
"Fifty-eight seconds."
"Check the watch." The commodore did so. He frowned. It was almost five minutes fast...
Looking at Leslie, the younger man frowned harder, squinting suspiciously. "What is this thing, anyway?"
"Quantum paratemporal accelerating whozit. Or something like that. Inside that room, time passes four point seven times faster than it does in the rest of the universe, thanks to the gadget under the big phaser-proof black box that you can't see because it is very, very buried in duracrete."
"Where'd they find a thing like that?"
Leslie thought for a moment. "Well, you're not cleared to know what the crew of the, uh, Lexington ran into back in '73, and come to think of it I'm not either, but they flew deep into the crazy, out the other side, and came back with a few of these things by accident."
Henderson grunted. "If I'm not cleared to know about it, why'd you tell me it was Lexington?"
"Because it wasn't." The new-old admiral grinned back at him.
"Let me guess, Kongo. That must have been the repair job old Dmitri used to complain about."
Leslie said nothing, then smiled more narrowly, and nodded approvingly. "Anyway, everyone who's anyone decided we'd be better off not poking the thing's guts to find out how they work, but they don't turn off and we had to store them somewhere. Now, I was just a junior paper-pusher in those days, but what used to be the Office of Material Safety, before they got folded into Quality Assurance, won the paper-pushing war for this one."
Henderson stood silent for a moment. "This is a time warping black box that runs on evil space magic. Why would you EVER want to win one? Does having to handle this para-temporal hot potato even count as winning?"
Leslie nodded firmly. "Sure! Because then we could put it under the basement of this side of this shiny new warehouse! Well, shiny back in '75. Back then we used waldoes to move things in and out of the fast-time field, but it hasn't so much as rippled in all that time. Forty years for us, almost two hundred for it."
"We're backing over to the other side of the room." Henderson didn't wait, he just started walking. Leslie, chuckling, came behind him.
"Anyway, It saves a lot of time sitting around waiting to find out whether your hull-metal samples will crumble into dust when you leave them out in the cold for a few years, if you can get a few years to go by before Christmas."
"...You are shitting me."
"Rob, think. When have I lied to you?"
"In at least one no-shit story a month since the day we first met?"
"...True. But that's not the point. See, the really outrageous stories? Remember me telling you about the time I socked Captain Kirk one in the jaw, tore his sleeve, and got a commendation for it? A commendation signed by Kirk? Did I have security camera footage of that or didn't I?"
"The next twenty seconds of that footage were of Kirk wiping the bulkheads, using you for a mop."
"...Also true." Leslie grimaced, rubbing his right hand. "But what about the kids who hijacked the Enterprise by summoning an evil ghost? Did I have footage of that, or didn't I?"
"...You did."
"And the giant green glowing hand that grabbed us off Pollux IV? Was I lying about that, or did Spock mention it in the after-action report?"
"...He did." Henderson gritted his teeth.
"And the time a space wizard made a voodoo doll of the Enterprise? Was I lying about that one?"
"NO, dammit!"
"Has there ever been a time I told you a story that you thought couldn't possibly be true, and it wasn't? Rob, I only ever embellish the yarns about the believable stuff. When it comes to the deep dark crazy, I'm honest as the day is long." Leslie folded his arms, smiling triumphantly.
"I'm... pretty sure there's a hole in your reasoning, admiral."
"And yet, the datasheet. You asked where it came from? Now you know. That's how I knew enough to sign off the material data sheets for 'aged Category Ten conduit' back in '02. Authorized under Code 84.7, you'll find."
"A Code Eighty-Four. You're sure."
"Tell you what. I'll get a team to pull some salvaged cable from the hulk of the Ares and compare against modern samples of Cat Twelve, and you tell me if it's good enough to do the job."
"You're not kidding about this?"
"No, and if it makes you happy we'll put it all in Blue Eyes, and none of it in the good old USS Bob."
"You're serious!"
"As a Klingon after you insult his momma. Come on, let's beam back to the yard and arrange the salvage team."
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Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Their destruction is hardly certain at S7/S8 for avoiding detection and D5 for choosing their battles, especially with the tech that would boost it to D7 for purposes of disengaging from a fight.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
No armaments to speak of, just a two hundred thousand ton transporter pattern-enhancer array designed to punch boarding parties through other people's shields. If you can keep twirling your shields around well enough to keep them out, you win the battle. If you don't, you're looking down the wrong end of a Swiss Army bazooka.
- Location
- Central Standard Time
I swear I've seen these designs before.Modules are coming back!
... Remember when D2 and C1 were considered controversial in the SDB?
I do.
Wolfpack Keplers sound great.
Also, Environmental Research Ship Keplers.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wolf Pack would almost certainly be composed of Kelplers and Rennies, for the high S and D with a bit of a punch.
... Explain plz.
... Explain plz.
Ok, so the Romulons are busy with newish designs.
I know the front page tends to lag on ship designs, but is the Heavy Warbird there the Devoras class? Or that entry obselete?
Heavy Warbird 2301-2360 [500m, 2.7m t]
C6 S3 H3 L6 P5 D6 Cloak Yes
Cost[270br, 220sr, 4 Years], Crew [O-7, E-7, T-5]
I don't remember the name of the Romulon Cruiser, but from memory it was slightly more expensive than a Connie-B, with a weaker Hull but Cloak Yes.
So, the new Romulon Escort?
Given they have a war going on, I assume it is a Combat Frigate design. Is it an adequate, but cheap design like the Miranda-A? A screw the cost, give me everything we can cram in like the design the Amkarians are working on? Something middling in cost like a Centaur-A?
How does it stack up to our current designs?
From the way that update reads, the prototype on this new Frigate is flying free and there is 2-3 more under construction. The Klingons know about it - because they have already faced the prototype? Or are their intelligence services doing better than expected?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes, the 'heavy warbird' class is the Devoras-class. The new Romulan cruiser is the Daljerra-class- which has identical stats to the Constitution-B, except for -1 Defense and a cloak.
I suspect the new combat frigate design is designed to replace the somewhat... oddly balanced... ROS-era ships Oneiros gave the Romulans at game start:
Bird-of-Prey 2266-2310 [192m 200k t]
However, the brute fact that this is what Romulan ships mostly looked like for the first few years of the quest suggests that the Romulans actually do have the economy to support SR-heavy designs. If so, there is little reason for them to economize on a design like the Miranda-A, especially if they don't actually have the bulk resources to mass-produce such (comparatively) BR-heavy ships. They may well have designed a Centaur-A analogue simply because they don't actually care if their ships have a 1:1 BR:SR cost ratio, and because higher Science gives them better chances of detecting cloaked Klingon ships.
On the other hand, it bears remembering that we probably shouldn't assume we know the 'rules' of Romulan ship design all that well; they use a lot of technologies that differ from ours, and their entire design architecture is different. So I could be wrong.
I suspect the new combat frigate design is designed to replace the somewhat... oddly balanced... ROS-era ships Oneiros gave the Romulans at game start:
Bird-of-Prey 2266-2310 [192m 200k t]
C4 S2 H5 L3 P3 D4
Cost [20br, 120sr, 2 Years], Crew[O-1, E-3, T-1]
D7 Cruiser 2245-Now [228m 344k t]Cost [20br, 120sr, 2 Years], Crew[O-1, E-3, T-1]
C3 S1 H2 L2 P2 D3
Cost[35br, 50sr, 4 Years], Crew[O-2, E-3, T-1]
Now, aside from the strangeness of the heavier D7s being significantly less capable in all categories, which could be explained by their extreme obsolescence, and the comparatively tiny Birds-of-Prey having Hull as their highest stat... We notice that both these classes are pretty clearly inferior to a good modern combat frigate. The D7 is obviously inferior in all respects; the Bird-of-Prey can hold its own but has a staggering SR cost. Assuming that Oneiros hasn't quietly updated these stats and assuming the Romulans don't have unlimited SR reserves, maintaining a large fleet of Birds-of-Prey must be a nightmare for the Romulans.Cost[35br, 50sr, 4 Years], Crew[O-2, E-3, T-1]
However, the brute fact that this is what Romulan ships mostly looked like for the first few years of the quest suggests that the Romulans actually do have the economy to support SR-heavy designs. If so, there is little reason for them to economize on a design like the Miranda-A, especially if they don't actually have the bulk resources to mass-produce such (comparatively) BR-heavy ships. They may well have designed a Centaur-A analogue simply because they don't actually care if their ships have a 1:1 BR:SR cost ratio, and because higher Science gives them better chances of detecting cloaked Klingon ships.
On the other hand, it bears remembering that we probably shouldn't assume we know the 'rules' of Romulan ship design all that well; they use a lot of technologies that differ from ours, and their entire design architecture is different. So I could be wrong.
aledeth
The Flesh is Weak
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If you are still poking at the research tree, the SDB team has been wondering what techs actually unlock new levels of Onboard Industry. We can't find any mention of the parts until T5 Precision Replicators in Starship Construction.