I've been trying to follow the conversation you and
@SynchronizedWritersBlock have been having, and neither one of you are totally clear to my reading.
I think it would help if both of you would bottom line the course of action you're trying to have your arguments support.
I mostly wasn't arguing in favor of any particular position because I at no point knew what the argument was actually supposed to be about. SWB just started disagreeing with me but left it to me to guess what exactly he was disagreeing with.
[] I think we need to ask for a new type of frigate ship requirement that is separate from (rather than replacing) the current Combat Frigate requirement. The new role would say XXXXXX to best support YYYYY phase of battle.
I think that
@Nix has been arguing for some variation of the third one and
@SynchronizedWritersBlock for some variation of the second?
I think a frigate with a profile like C4 S4 H3-4 L4-5 P3 D5 would be useful for us to have (that stat line would be pretty expensive at current tech, but in 2323 I think we could get it for something like 80BR 60SR 1O 2E 3T). Let's call this Super-Centaur. It would be deployed in the skirmish line, so that it would act in the minefield, skirmish and vanguard phases. Sometimes it might also need to be deployed in the vanguard and then act in the vanguard phase and main battle, for example if the vanguard ships in its fleet have taken damage in previous battles. In peace time it would act as an event responder, and we would preferably want ships for battle to be bloodied or better, as that helps them do their job, they usually wouldn't face much danger of being destroyed, and if they do it's probably important enough to be worth risking experienced crews. In terms of the battle roles scheme this would fir the two roles of skirmisher/minesweeper and flexible skirmisher. The current class that comes the closest is the Centaur-A.
A design I think does potentially make sense, but not in our current situation, would be a cheap frigate with relatively high C, L and H, other stats irrelevant. Let's call this Super-Miranda. It would ideally always be deployed as vanguard and fight in vanguard and main battle. The primary purpose would be to be expendable. This would be the ship that has done its job well if an enemy capital hits it with a massive crit that does twice as much damage as it had remaining hp. As it would be near useless outside a war it doesn't make sense to build outside war or the immediate run-up to it. Veterancy would be undesirable as that makes the ships less expendable. The current class that comes the closest is the Miranda-A.
Looked at in isolation are at least 3 currently listed possible tAoTO roles that could be argued for the Super-Centaur: Garrison frigate update because it's the Centaur-successor, minesweeper because one of its main responsibilities would be to clear minefields (and as the current battle system has the ships that sweep mines and the skirmish line be identical a minesweeper clearly also needs to be a good skirmisher), and combat frigate update because one of the primary design goals is to be good in combat.
For the Super-Miranda the currently listed possible tAoTO role clearly needs to be combat frigate update. As this would be something genuinely different from the role of the Super-Centaur, and given that we might actually want to use the combat frigate update if circumstances change enough, it could be even argued that an entirely new tAoTO is justified for the Super-Centaur if garrison frigate update and minesweeper are out for some reason.
As for how we might be using the combat frigate update, I was thinking of waiting until we are close to a situation we would actually build them, request the combat frigate upgrade and then use the refit mechanic to implement a Super-Miranda as a variant of the Super-Centaur, by replacing the nacelles with something cheaper, removing some science and presence parts, and perhaps updating some other parts and adding more weapons and shield generators. Precedent would be:
- Constitution-B for refits that lower cost and reduce stats (even though the reduce stat part was later retconned, but only because the pre-refit version was too good, not because there was a problem with allowing such a refit).
- Constellation-A for a refit significantly changing the overall stat profile, and also for developing a refit very rapidly.
- The war Galaxies in the Dominion War for showing that this sort of thing makes sense in Star Trek.
Also one of the main goals of the new design spreadsheet was to allow more control over the refit process. Even if implementing it as a refit is not viable reusing the frame and all subframes should cut development time down to either nothing or doable in a single quarter, and the hospital ship sets the precedent that reusing most of an older design also cuts down on prototype time.
My reasons for wanting to do it that way: It would avoid a design we might never actually use before it becomes outdated, it would avoid antagonizing the pacifist faction in the council (presumably they would be more understanding in a situation where the need is actually clear) and it feels a lot more Star Treky.
