- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
@Briefvoice, it is likely that one or more of the species that join the Federation in the next few years will have berths for small starships. However, them supplying more crew is less certain, so I think you're definitely right about the Academy expansion.
Meanwhile, the reason there are so many ship classes in Star Trek is because the show designers kept saying "quick, we need a random disposable spaceship" and kitbashing together new models every few months for several decades. This is not an accurate or appropriate role model for us. Designing a new ship has very real costs, starting with the PP expenditure, continuing through the design process that ties up a tech team which COULD be working on something else, and including our OOC expenditure of time spent bickering over which of the many, many ship classes available we choose from.
If we keep designing new ships at anything like the frequency required to have the number of classes shown in the various Star Trek movies, shows, and secondary canon, we're sunk.
We'll have less PP to spend on infrastructure (which we need to have a strong fleet of any ship class).
We'll have inferior overall technology, because our best tech teams spent all their time designing specific new classes and not enough working on general equipment and weapons and tactics technology.
And we won't have a significantly stronger fleet over the long run as a result of all this, compared to limiting ourselves to, oh, 6-8 ship classes in service at any one time.
Moreover, we'll be spending so much time constantly debating and honing our ship designs that it will drown out other types of strategic decision important to our long term success.
As I said a few pages ago, custom shipbuilding is awesome, but we can't afford to let it drown the game. We need the self-discipline to take each design seriously, as something that will be the best we can do for a period of 10-20 in-game years. If people are talking about a cruiser to replace the Renaissance-class before we even draw the in-game blueprints for that class, then something has gone badly wrong with our design process.
A week or two ago people were very excited about the prospect of getting to start building Rennies and use them as a replacement for our aging TOS-era hulls. Now we've lost focus. If this goes on, it's not going to do good things for our outcome in the game.
Remember that the list of options that are even on the menu is determined by what is politically possible. There is not, and realistically will not be for a long time, an option for "Request Start of Defiant project," precisely because no reasonable amount of persuasion would convince the Council to agree to such a thing. Even if we had the technology, we'd need an overarching threat like the Borg to justify building the ships.
Meanwhile, the reason there are so many ship classes in Star Trek is because the show designers kept saying "quick, we need a random disposable spaceship" and kitbashing together new models every few months for several decades. This is not an accurate or appropriate role model for us. Designing a new ship has very real costs, starting with the PP expenditure, continuing through the design process that ties up a tech team which COULD be working on something else, and including our OOC expenditure of time spent bickering over which of the many, many ship classes available we choose from.
If we keep designing new ships at anything like the frequency required to have the number of classes shown in the various Star Trek movies, shows, and secondary canon, we're sunk.
We'll have less PP to spend on infrastructure (which we need to have a strong fleet of any ship class).
We'll have inferior overall technology, because our best tech teams spent all their time designing specific new classes and not enough working on general equipment and weapons and tactics technology.
And we won't have a significantly stronger fleet over the long run as a result of all this, compared to limiting ourselves to, oh, 6-8 ship classes in service at any one time.
Moreover, we'll be spending so much time constantly debating and honing our ship designs that it will drown out other types of strategic decision important to our long term success.
As I said a few pages ago, custom shipbuilding is awesome, but we can't afford to let it drown the game. We need the self-discipline to take each design seriously, as something that will be the best we can do for a period of 10-20 in-game years. If people are talking about a cruiser to replace the Renaissance-class before we even draw the in-game blueprints for that class, then something has gone badly wrong with our design process.
A week or two ago people were very excited about the prospect of getting to start building Rennies and use them as a replacement for our aging TOS-era hulls. Now we've lost focus. If this goes on, it's not going to do good things for our outcome in the game.
