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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Simon_Jester said:
I think I understand now.

I don't feel up to addressing everything that's been said yet, as there are over sixty pages of thread I've yet to read. But I want to say two things:

ONE
Any new cruiser we build will be a class that is seriously intended to replace the Constellation-class and hopefully to eventually replace any refitted or unmodified Constitutions, including Cheron, our one Connie still in service. That 'eventually' may have to await refits and 2320-30 era technology, but we want it to happen.

That almost has to mean a hull of one million tons or less, even if that means sacrificing capability. Because otherwise, the new cruiser class will be in large part competing with Excelsiors for shipyard facilities. That's awkward enough in peacetime, but deeply problematic in wartime. Unless there are a lot of 1.5 or 2 million ton berths I'd forgotten about, we simply cannot afford to go over the million ton limit for this class of cruiser.

TWO
I agree with the logic of NOT putting a starbase on the Cardassian border zone at this time. At the same time, though, we need infrastructure in the area, not just ships. We really, really want to establish chains of outposts in the area. We need the sensor coverage, we need the general increase in information on what's going on "on the ground" in that sector. And...

This is also the beginning of the process of our formally asserting to Cardassia our claim to at least a moderate number of worlds in that region. They're already doing it to us, and if we don't do it to them we risk falling prey to "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine too" reasoning on the part of the Cardassians. The Federation stands for cooperation and understanding between intelligent beings, but it also stands for refusing to allow ourselves to be bullied by militarists, foreign or domestic.
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If we get the option for outposts in the CBZ that would be ideal, more so as I hope to have the races out there join the Federation. As for berths we will soon have 5 3m berths which can be kept for the Excelsior production where as the 2 2.5m berths can be used for large cruiser and the 6 1m berths can build escorts and refit constellations. I do want to start adding some more 2.5m berths once we can spare the PP for it, and with research time and prototype building for any cruiser design we would have the time to expand our 2.5m berths.
 
Because it's easily missed in all the back and forth, we had requests for omake rewards to:
1. Reduce the pp cost for the Constitution-B refit.
2. Reduce the br/sr resource cost to build them, by making a deal where they go into member world Home Fleets after some decades of service.

If both of those are approved, the Constitution-Bs might still be worthwhile to build even if the spreadsheet goes unrevised.
 
Here's why I want a Cardassian border zone starbase:

One: Easy minor repairs. Little things can be done at a base.
Two: It's a strongpoint if things go hot. Starbases are not soft targets.
Three: It's a sigint node. Starbases have massive sensor arrays, which means that all transmissions involving Cardassian mobile assets in a rather large region are exposed to them.
 
UbeOne said:
A 1mt cruiser or a 900kt escort?

I'd go with the escort.
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I'm not opposed to an escort hull of nine hundred thousand tons in place of a million ton cruiser. The catch, though, is that either ship will have to fill the same mission. Namely, it needs high enough stats to be a viable defense/utility/diplomatic workhorse ship, while packing enough punch to be effective and survivable if it goes into battle alongside Excelsiors and refitted Centaur-A. It can't be JUST a murderhobo ship or JUST a lightly armed utility vessel.

I'm not sure how the spreadsheet works and lack the time or inclination to learn. If somehow it's easier to make a 900kt escort do what we need than to make a 1000kt cruiser do it, great- but what matters is the mission, not the formal classification.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I'm not opposed to an escort hull of nine hundred thousand tons in place of a million ton cruiser. The catch, though, is that either ship will have to fill the same mission. Namely, it needs high enough stats to be a viable defense/utility/diplomatic workhorse ship, while packing enough punch to be effective and survivable if it goes into battle alongside Excelsiors and refitted Centaur-A. It can't be JUST a murderhobo ship or JUST a lightly armed utility vessel.

I'm not sure how the spreadsheet works and lack the time or inclination to learn. If somehow it's easier to make a 900kt escort do what we need than to make a 1000kt cruiser do it, great- but what matters is the mission, not the formal classification.
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Have you seen the Ship Design thread? There are several escorts there.
 
I've glanced at it but gotten confused. I'm still getting up to speed here.

My point is, you peoples who've been working on ship designs for weeks, GREAT. I have a ton of respect for what you're doing. If you tell me the most efficient way to get an acceptable "medium multirole" ship of less than one million tons is to use a nine hundred thousand ton escort hull, I believe you.

I wouldn't presume to tell you what works when you've spent weeks doing something I don't know how to do at all.

What I do feel qualified to comment on is strategy and the logic that drives ship design, as opposed to the design itself. Whatever design best fits that underlying strategy and logic, in the context of a given mission, is of necessity the best design for that mission.

EDIT:
In regards to the berthing issue, the problem isn't just building the ships, it's repairing the ships after a fleet action, without massively disrupting construction. We may actually have enough berths for 2-3 million ton ships that this isn't a problem any more, and I'm prepared to accept that... but it would still be strongly desirable to keep our next multirole ship to one million tons or below, so that it competes with Centaurs, Mirandas, and Constellations for shipyard space, rather than competing with Excelsiors.

EDIT MK II:
To clarify, one scenario I'm envisioning is that we have to throw a lot of ships at an emergency analogous to the biophage, suffer damage to several explorers and cruisers, and then have the Cardassians up and kick us somewhere tender. Or vice versa. As it was, we had a breather to repair our ships after Kadesh because everyone else was in as bad a shape as us, and/or had reason to be grateful to us for helping beat the biophage.

But imagine if the biophage flared up now, instead of having happened a few in-game years ago. Getting our strongest ships (explorers and new-build cruisers) turned around in a hurry, with the minimum possible bottlenecks in our repair infrastructure, would have been really important to us with the Cardies breathing down our necks.

A situation where cruisers can only be repaired in the berths that were originally dedicated for Excelsiors is... problematic... in that context.
 
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pheonix89 said:
Here's why I want a Cardassian border zone starbase:

One: Easy minor repairs. Little things can be done at a base.
Two: It's a strongpoint if things go hot. Starbases are not soft targets.
Three: It's a sigint node. Starbases have massive sensor arrays, which means that all transmissions involving Cardassian mobile assets in a rather large region are exposed to them.
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Given how tightly the fleet is stretched, though, that might need to be a 2308 request. I'm not saying never do it, but it would be good to get Defense somewhere else that would free up ships.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I've glanced at it but gotten confused. I'm still getting up to speed here.

My point is, you peoples who've been working on ship designs for weeks, GREAT. I have a ton of respect for what you're doing. If you tell me the most efficient way to get an acceptable "medium multirole" ship of less than one million tons is to use a nine hundred thousand ton escort hull, I believe you.

I wouldn't presume to tell you what works when you've spent weeks doing something I don't know how to do at all.

What I do feel qualified to comment on is strategy and the logic that drives ship design, as opposed to the design itself. Whatever design best fits that underlying strategy and logic, in the context of a given mission, is of necessity the best design for that mission.

EDIT:
In regards to the berthing issue, the problem isn't just building the ships, it's repairing the ships after a fleet action, without massively disrupting construction. We may actually have enough berths for 2-3 million ton ships that this isn't a problem any more, and I'm prepared to accept that... but it would still be strongly desirable to keep our next multirole ship to one million tons or below, so that it competes with Centaurs, Mirandas, and Constellations for shipyard space, rather than competing with Excelsiors.
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I think we can expand our berths by the time we are ready to start pumping out the next gen cruiser given time needed for research and then prototype. Also one of the starbase techs allows them to repair Cruisers, currently they can repair Escorts. Another tech allows outposts to repair Escorts so there is a way to also free up berths. In addition we have some access to the Amarkia berths for repair work..
 
Okay. I trust you guys if you think that berthing will be less of an issue in '10 than it was in 2300-05. I am, in effect, an old warhorse saying "hey remember when..." without a clear picture of what constraints the fleet may be acting under in the near to mid-term future.

In that case, it just might be worthwhile to design a 1.2 to 1.5 million ton cruiser with capability comparable to what the Rennie was SUPPOSED to have on one million tons.

Although I still think Oneiros will want to tweak his spreadsheet so that it permits canon designs to actually exist. What's going to happen if we have similar troubles designing the Galaxy-class?
 
Void Stalker said:
I think we can expand our berths by the time we are ready to start pumping out the next gen cruiser given time needed for research and then prototype. Also one of the starbase techs allows them to repair Cruisers, currently they can repair Escorts. Another tech allows outposts to repair Escorts so there is a way to also free up berths.
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Starbases can also do minor repairs on all classes of ships. Nix's observations from the Biophage crisis:
Nix said:
There seem to be at least 4 types of repairs with different requirements (words used to describe the severity chosen ad hoc):
  1. Very light, doesn't require any facilities.
  2. Light, just requires a friendly star port (Sarek at the Caitian colony Harper's Mane), about 1 month?
  3. Moderate, requires a Starbase or similar (Courageous at Starbase 3), 3 months
  4. Extensive, requires an appropriately sized shipyard berth (Cheron, Sarek at 40 Eridiani), 6 months+
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Void Stalker said:
In addition we have some access to the Amarkia berths for repair work..
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The Amarkian Arsenal shipyard definitely has a lot of emergency repair capacity: 2 x 2.5mt berths and 2 x 1mt berths. And it's right next door to the CBZ.

A CBZ starbase is still useful for its scanning capabilities, and yet closer repair options.

On the other hand, I don't recall starbases ever appearing in events or combat yet, so I don't know the game mechanics behind them. Also don't know how much the proximity of starbases or shipyards matter for repairs.
 
I think we'll want such a starbase soon. But we need a few more turns of exploration to get a clue who and what's out there. For example, it might be a lot more economical to build it in the backyard of some warp-capable culture that's being bullied by the Cardassians and actively requests our assistance, than to build it in the middle of nowhere. And it might well serve our purposes better to locate it there, too.

Right now, we need a distributed, relatively "light" network of ships and positions throughout that region of space, enough that we can monitor communications and traffic and get some semblance of a clue what we're dealing with. Right now, practically everything we know is the result of the Enterprise toodling around the border zone at random for a couple of years, and that's dangerously little astrographic information for purposes of setting up a major fortification.
 
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pheonix89 said:
Here's why I want a Cardassian border zone starbase:

One: Easy minor repairs. Little things can be done at a base.
Two: It's a strongpoint if things go hot. Starbases are not soft targets.
Three: It's a sigint node. Starbases have massive sensor arrays, which means that all transmissions involving Cardassian mobile assets in a rather large region are exposed to them.
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To add to this:

It would also act as a supply based and staging area for all our operations, both overt and covert, in the CBZ, shortening our supply lines and increasing effectiveness. Captains would be less worried about blowing their wad of photon torpedos or sensor probes.

It also gives a secure places for crews and their families lies to go for r&r, improving morale. Ideally, they'd get leave planet side with one of our affiliates, but that's not always practical. Especially with differing climate preferences among our diverse crews.

Finally, and most importantly, it's a symbol of our commitment to the region. It let's all the species in the region know that we're invested in them. That we will protect them. Excelsiors are impressive, but they can bugger off. A top of the line starbase is there to stay.
 
I think everything you said is 100% true. We'll definitely want all of that soon.

But there's a catch. That entire region is a huge strategic vacuum right now, we can only expand in that direction so quickly. Right now, the Amarkians represent the 'frontier' of Federation influence- a race we literally just met less than ten years ago, who are now Federation members with a strong self-defense force, a dedicated shipyard, and plenty of willingness to cooperate with us.

So far, so good.

But going out beyond that into the "Cardassian Border Zone" is going to take time and exploration. Think in terms of 4X games: First you explore, then you expand. Building a starbase in that region is going to be one of the first things we do in the 'expansion' phase, along with obtaining a few affiliate species in the zone.

If we build a huge isolated fortress in the middle of this sparsely populated and effectively uncontrolled territory, the Cardassians are going to be tempted to fight a "colonial war" with us in which they surround that starbase and chop it off. We need multiple, mutually supporting assets in the area, advancing across a front as we recruit affiliates and build numerous outposts. Even if no one of those assets is strong, the cumulative effect is to present a strong defense.

This basic formula has been highly successful along the Neutral Zone for both us and the Romulans, for instance.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
I think everything you said is 100% true. We'll definitely want all of that soon.

But there's a catch. That entire region is a huge strategic vacuum right now, we can only expand in that direction so quickly. Right now, the Amarkians represent the 'frontier' of Federation influence- a race we literally just met less than ten years ago, who are now Federation members with a strong self-defense force, a dedicated shipyard, and plenty of willingness to cooperate with us.

So far, so good.

But going out beyond that into the "Cardassian Border Zone" is going to take time and exploration. Think in terms of 4X games: First you explore, then you expand. Building a starbase in that region is going to be one of the first things we do in the 'expansion' phase, along with obtaining a few affiliate species in the zone.

If we build a huge isolated fortress in the middle of this sparsely populated and effectively uncontrolled territory, the Cardassians are going to be tempted to fight a "colonial war" with us in which they surround that starbase and chop it off. We need multiple, mutually supporting assets in the area, advancing across a front as we recruit affiliates and build numerous outposts. Even if no one of those assets is strong, the cumulative effect is to present a strong defense.

This basic formula has been highly successful along the Neutral Zone for both us and the Romulans, for instance.
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I think that the sort of base we'd want to put in the CBZ, if we had that sort of base, is the Deep Space option. Tucked between Outpost II and Macro Sensors II in Starbase Design.
We haven't researched that as of yet, and for very good reason given the constraints we were, and are, under.
But that's what we'll want, and that's where it is in the tech tree. So.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Although I still think Oneiros will want to tweak his spreadsheet so that it permits canon designs to actually exist. What's going to happen if we have similar troubles designing the Galaxy-class?
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The most likely answer? Canon compliance. The Galaxy-class was a right asshole to design and build in canon-- It took 20 years to design, according to the TNG Technical Manual.
 
Oh trust me, we're nowhere NEAR the Galaxy yet. You can have fudge factors of 5 in just about every category, and you'd still be 465kt overweight. Trust me, I statted it up for fun just to see if I could :rofl:
 
aeqnai said:
The most likely answer? Canon compliance. The Galaxy-class was a right asshole to design and build in canon-- It took 20 years to design, according to the TNG Technical Manual.
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Yup and with anything that takes so long it had designers rotate out during it's planning and as such had massive design flaws cause as it turns out you should believe everything the guy before you did was right and that your and his designs line up, plus since it took so long Starfleet and the council had time to force a ridiculous amount of mission creep. In the end the Galaxy could do everything by costing a fortune and have glaring weaknesses in things like endurance and reliability, but it was a "peaceful ship for a peaceful federation so it could afford such minor tradeoffs "god the engineer in me wants to strangle everyone on startrek as soon as they start to talk about design, it's so bad!
 
Simon_Jester said:
I think everything you said is 100% true. We'll definitely want all of that soon.

But there's a catch. That entire region is a huge strategic vacuum right now, we can only expand in that direction so quickly. Right now, the Amarkians represent the 'frontier' of Federation influence- a race we literally just met less than ten years ago, who are now Federation members with a strong self-defense force, a dedicated shipyard, and plenty of willingness to cooperate with us.

So far, so good.

But going out beyond that into the "Cardassian Border Zone" is going to take time and exploration. Think in terms of 4X games: First you explore, then you expand. Building a starbase in that region is going to be one of the first things we do in the 'expansion' phase, along with obtaining a few affiliate species in the zone.

If we build a huge isolated fortress in the middle of this sparsely populated and effectively uncontrolled territory, the Cardassians are going to be tempted to fight a "colonial war" with us in which they surround that starbase and chop it off. We need multiple, mutually supporting assets in the area, advancing across a front as we recruit affiliates and build numerous outposts. Even if no one of those assets is strong, the cumulative effect is to present a strong defense.

This basic formula has been highly successful along the Neutral Zone for both us and the Romulans, for instance.
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Ok, that true. But we don't have the tech for a Deep Space Station anyway. Any starbase we make would be in support range of Amarkia. Too close to cut off, but still far enough out to make a statement.
 
Personally, I'd rather keep explorers at 3mt at the most, since any heavier would mean taking five years to produce.
 
I know about the 'historical' problems with the Galaxy-class. What I'm getting at is that if the spreadsheet is making it impossible for us to duplicate canon designs, then either exaggerated stats are being attributed to the canon designs, or the spreadsheet is being too harsh. I think we can agree on that.
 
Okay, for the time-being, I'm removing the additional STOC penalty for cruisers/explorers. I'll come up with a different to prevent mass overstatting of Shields.

In the interim, to avoid further deepening this headache that I currently have, Renaissance as a canon ship will be available for arbitrary 98% reliability and research values, since it is a special case.
 
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