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- USA
That is why ideally we would only have two or three at most, load them up for the ones that need the biggest hauling capacity on routes and let the other ships take the other less intensive routes.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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- 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?
Numerical narrative analysis.
That is to say, I'm guessing that we can only stuff superfreighters into the Industrial Loop, because everything else is either feeding to a wide range of outposts, starbases and individual ships (Supply) or from a wide range of tiny colonies (Feeder).
From the Tactical report, we have currently 5 freighters on Industrial duty. So, two for sure, maybe three depending on how fast we grow over the 4-8 years for the two superfreighters.
- Location
- somewhere
We can use one superfreighter per engineering team on top of whatever we can use for logistics.
That sounds nice in theory, but it's quite possible that 1 freighter worth of transport capacity needs to be 'on station' for optimal efficiency, as then you've got a cargo manifest and automated systems ready to drop whatever the engineering crews need to work with right now while keeping local space from being cluttered by floating containers. The other freighter will be traveling to the nearest starbase or manufacturing hub to fetch the next load of supplies and arrive when the freighter on station is almost empty, at which point they swap.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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- He/Him
Eh... Yes and no. Nacelles only generate about half of a ship's D, +/-. Like, the Rennie concept I was playing with generates only 2.66 of it's D from parts that are expressly used to generate D (Nacelles, manufacturing). The rest is from mandatory parts like fuel tanks, the deflector dish, OS, computers, impulse drive, etc. And Nacelles have gotten significantly more efficient over time. Even the Soyuz had 45kt Nacelles. I would expect even a Stinger 2370 to have D4 minimum just from all it's ancillary parts and some (likely very efficient) small Nacelles. It's really damn hard to get less than D3 these days on anything unless you intentionally pick bad parts that offer you no benefit over parts that don't cost any more but offer you more benefit. I suspect that with Isolinear computers and T5 techs it will be impossible to drop below D4 on almost anything.
D is a very very easy/cheap stat to raise. The Amby used only ~200 of internal weight on parts that primarily raise D. The rest was Nacelles (mostly external weight) and secondary parts.
When I build a ship, optimizing the D score is usually the last thing I do. It's the easiest.
- Location
- Australia
Do note the implication there that Def/Reaction is about much more than just speed - it's actually mostly related to endurance, ability to self-maintain, avoid visits to starbases, etc.
Basically, to respond to events, you have to be out and about. You can't be the only ship in the subsector if you aren't out and about!
Basically, to respond to events, you have to be out and about. You can't be the only ship in the subsector if you aren't out and about!
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Look at the actual loops of transportation we have. How many of them are accommodating three or four existing freighters? Superfreighters could take the place of about two of them. Unless I'm misremembering, that includes some supply routes fairly interior and secure in our space.
EDIT: Two more points:
1) We may be able to arrange a 'quid pro quo' where Starfleet superfreighters haul bulky goods for member worlds along with our own supplies, reducing the strain on their transport assets and easing resentment if we conscript one of their smaller, lighter freighters to resupply remote outposts that the superfreighter would be wasted on.
2) The superfreighters will be very helpful in carting massive quantities of supplies and spares to forward depot locations in the event of a war mobilization when we suddenly have a lot more supplies to move around, and very large fleets that individually consume exceptional amounts of supplies. Remember that we're not just concerned about making up the immediate shortfall in Starfleet transport assets, the one we cover by drafting member world transports. We're also worried about wartime issues. Remember how we needed like... I don't remember exactly, a dozen freighters and cargo ships to supply the fleet we were using to fight the Licori War? A superfreighter or two would have been very handy right then.
That latter issue doesn't seem to be a problem for us. And honestly, a competently designed freighter built to the same scale as a Constitution-class starship should be able to carry a nacelle for any ship we have or are planning, including an Ambassador.
This sounds like a concern that the engineering team might run out of space to put things in... in space.
Space is made of space. The one thing you're not going to run out of in space is big empty places to put things.
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- Location
- somewhere
This isn't "theory", we know that the Gaeni, Caitians and Rigellians all choose to use superfreighters for their engineering teams, despite having more than enough spare freighters to use instead. If anything there seems to be a slight preference towards it, of 5 member teams that could use superfreighters 3 actually do.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
Out of curiosity for you ship designers how would the Sovereign-class look stat wise?
No, the concern is that the engineering team might run out of organised space. Having half a million tons of nuts and bolts floating around in man sized bins without rhyme or reason and nothing husbanding the orbits is asking to lose track of what you've got available and on hand. Freighters, especially freighters with build in cargo handling systems and a computer that can tell you exactly in which hold, section and shelf in a several hundred thousand tons vessel a part you need is is much easier, and it means you don't have to build a (temporary) warehouse with all that stuff and then log everything that goes into it.
The idea is that the engineering teams simply use their supply ships as warehouses and skip the intermediate 'construct a warehouse' step.
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Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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Unable to predict, insufficient parts available to analyze. Also don't have Isolinear let alone positronic computers on the sheet, an understanding of what LW phasers do, or quantum torpedoes. At a guess, significantly better than Oneiros' statline on the front page, probably by +2-3 in all categories, although it's unlikely to sacrifice response for Combat like his does. Our Amby is almost his Galaxy after all... The "early refit" likely available around 2328 will likely be C9 S10 H7 L10 P10 D8 at minimum.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
A lot of the relevant parts aren't statted out, so there's no way to know.
Then don't do that- organize a supply dump area, with indexes that would presumably fit on an iPad or its futuristic equivalent. You can even have the first thing deployed from the freighter be a prefabricated framework full of tethers and so on, to hold the supplies in a three-dimensional array in zero gravity.
Well, the advantage is that the ship is a flying warehouse. The disadvantages are twofold:
One, you have the operating expenses of multiple ships to deal with. You save on time and labor, but you burn up more antimatter.
Two, that is an inefficient way to store cargo. It's a lot more efficient to pack things tightly into shipping containers than to have the ship be the equivalent of a Wal-Mart with goods separated out onto racks and shelves. Unless your cargo is starkly mass-limited and not volume-limited, you're going to end up needing multiple ships full of items to handle what could have all been fitted into a single ship with a proper containerization scheme and some advance planning about which items you'd want to unpack during which phases of construction.
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Oh God no. Tell me we're not doing the same thing we did to the Centaur, turning a ship into an overpriced boondoggle within a decade of entering service!
If we do an 'early refit' on the Ambassador, it will be because we have Production Phaser Arrays, Isolinear Computers and Burst Torpedo Launchers - all of which will allow for either boosting C (and probably others as well) cheaply, or keeping similar C, and actually remove weapons to fit in more other things.
Huh. Well that's good to hear! I missed that until you pointed it out.
Superfreighters are harder to shuffle between assignments to balance things, but being assigned to an engineering team on an ongoing basis negates that particular problem.
Slightly more juggling to make the team finish at the same time across a limited number of berths, but who really cares about that?
I like it! Three engineering superfreighters, another two or three in the Industrial loop and we're going to grow yet more in that length of time...
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The solution is obvious:
More slipways. More production. Feed the fiery furnaces of Mars!
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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... The Centaur-A turned a ship that was almost worthless (barely better than the Miranda, much more expensive) into a decent generalist.
Furthermore, I doubt the price of the Amby will increase beyond 10% of what they are at present. Maybe an extra crew point. And it will buy us likely +2C/L (if we want the ship to have C10, which I doubt), and +1 S/P/D. That is a stupendous bargain for 30br, 20sr or so. For reference, it would have twice the stats in almost all categories as the original Excelsior (not C/D, but S5 vs S10, H4 vs H7, L5 vs L10-11, P5 vs P10).
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
MORE BERTHS! MORE BERTHS! MORE BERTHS!
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Steven, the Centaur-As have performed admirably in a wide variety of roles. They've been very successful event responders; there's a reason so many of the early production run have made Blooded. And they have some major advantages, such as low crew costs, which was very much on our minds for several years even if we seem to be worrying about it less now.
The Kepler (which post-dates the availability of the Centaur-A design by about fifteen years, is larger, and requires nearly double the crew) can certainly outperform it in all categories. The Renaissance-class (which likewise postdates the Centaur-A considerably, is larger, and requires over double the crew) can outperform it in combat and to a limited extent in event response.
But I really don't think it's justified to call the ship a 'boondoggle' given that it's done quite well for us. The resource cost is high, but during the period we were building the things, we were a lot more worried about crew availability than about resources.
- Location
- the Moon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Only missed this by a few hours.. and about as many pages... hmmm..
Anywho, I was under the impression that the Antares Fleet Yard was about the size of UP and built at a conflux of trade routes/in the Antares nebula to make it defensible. I'm not a huge trek buff, but it was built kinda close to bajor, albeit a bit to the 'north' on our map.. so maybe we could build it somewhere between the amarki and appiata, or between the apiata and the gabriel expanse?
Truth be told, we mostly built Centaur-As for lack of any other worthwhile ship to build besides Excelsiors.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Arguably yes- but consider if we'd had the option of building Rennies or ConnieBees in the early phase of the quest prior to around 2309 or so, instead of Centaurs and Centaur-As. We'd have run out of warm bodies to crew them.
After all, we already did in 2315-16; we'd just have hit our limit sooner and run out earlier.
Constellation-As? Same problem, to a lesser degree. For a crew-limited fleet that needs good event responders, the Centaur-A really is a good choice, though if we'd had the presently available Constellation refit we might have preferred that for the role, accepting the crew-related tradeoff.
EDIT: I mean, we COULD have worked harder, earlier and faster, to keep up a good supply of officers and enlisted- but that would have had tradeoff costs. We might not have had the starbase at Lapycorias in time for the Celos incident, for instance, or we might have put off some projects until 'later' back in 2308 or so only to watch our options go down the drain as the Orion crisis ate up our political will.
After all, we already did in 2315-16; we'd just have hit our limit sooner and run out earlier.
Constellation-As? Same problem, to a lesser degree. For a crew-limited fleet that needs good event responders, the Centaur-A really is a good choice, though if we'd had the presently available Constellation refit we might have preferred that for the role, accepting the crew-related tradeoff.
EDIT: I mean, we COULD have worked harder, earlier and faster, to keep up a good supply of officers and enlisted- but that would have had tradeoff costs. We might not have had the starbase at Lapycorias in time for the Celos incident, for instance, or we might have put off some projects until 'later' back in 2308 or so only to watch our options go down the drain as the Orion crisis ate up our political will.
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Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
How are we doing on Crew surplus right now?
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
Thanks, fixed. (I knew those BR/SR numbers looked fishy...)
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
It looks like from your list that we need to build a couple of research colonies or better to increase our RP. If we get the chance we should do exactly that along side the Berths and Academy expansions.
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