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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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Klingon or Romulan Border zone. They're beat to hell, so buffing their boarder forces as much as both plans suggest might actually cause serious political problems.
 
I disagree. Anything that happens on those borders might be hella important. It's not that we're likely to be attacked, it's that having an explorer flagship present if something weird or nasty happens is important.

Briefvoice said:
If I'm getting this again, at least this time people have to say THISLOCATION doesn't need an Excelsior... take it from there! What's THISLOCATION?
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The one I'd be least reluctant to pull would be Task Force Adazzi's flagship, swapping the Excalibur out for the Kearsarge and letting Straak fly his flag from the blooded Constellation-A, at least for now. S5 instead of S6, but manageable at least in the short run.

Exploring the Adazzi Gulf is a long term mission, after all, we can afford to be patient.
 
I mean, I refuse to write a plan that does it on principle unless the recommendation we're supposed to get requires posting an Excelsior in Tellar sector. But someone else can do it, I guess and I'll just be prepared to lose the vote.

But isn't this a small potatoes side issue next to the big choice I allude to? Do you guys want to buff tasks forces, or buff home sectors?
 
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Regarding Tellar - at least wait to see if the investigation recommends putting an Excelsior there before jumping the gun.
 
Briefvoice said:
I mean, I refuse to write a plan that does it on principle unless the recommendation we're supposed to get requires posting an Excelsior in Tellar sector. But someone else can do it, I guess and I'll just be prepared to lose the vote.
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Well, I'm proposing it as a least-bad way to accomplish the goal, so no need for us to go all Qloathi about it.

But isn't this a small potatoes side issue next to the big choice I allude to? Do you guys want to buff tasks forces, or buff home sectors?
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Well, I think I'd favor buffing task forces. My one suggestion is that we might want to swap out the Rennies you've parked on the Klingon and Romulan borders for Constitution-Bs on sensitive interior sectors.

I feel like the Rennies' higher Presence score is more likely to pay off if they're primary event responder, or a secondary responder to many sectors. And the KBZ and RBZ only border two interior sectors each, and you have rightfully allocated those border zones an Excelsior flagship that can cover key tasks.

I'd advocate doing the same in other border zones, except that the ones facing the Horizon (LBZ/HBZ) need all the high-Presence ships they can get, while the ones facing the Cardassians (CBZ/TBZ/GBZ) need all the tanky durable ships they can get. Renaissances fill both those needs better than Constitution-Bs.

Besides, we've already taught the Klingons and Romulans to respect a Connie, so they're hopefully more likely to show them some courtesy than our newer neighbors. :p

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I particularly feel like we should do this for the Hood, swapping her out for the Epiphany or the Reason. She's had some bad luck lately as I recall, and Alukk Sector seems, on a gut level, to be a place we're likely to have some interesting Presence challenges with interesting consequences for failure.

We MIGHT also want to switch out Seleya in Themis Sector for the other Rennie, and see if a new captain in a shinier, more capable ship can cope better with the troubles that the Seleya has been having. On the other hand, Seleya is S5P4D4 to a Rennie's S3P4D5, so that might not be such a great idea.
 
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I still would like a Task force helping the Yizgisi clean their continent of goo, ideally headed by Kepler. Maybe pay for some more member ships and split the Adrazzi gulf task force, using member ships to make up the numbers? Also it might be worth getting some personal combat assets for TF Handshake, given the increased Obsidian Order presence we're likely to see.
 
I am all for having an Excelsior in the Tellar sector but not at the expense of our borders and the task forces.
 
Furthermore I think it's definitely necessary for us to make a Task Force dealing with the Gorn than mapping the Adrazzi Gulf. If the Gorn go for the Cardassians we are going to be in trouble. We have the chance to cut that off at the pass.
 
Glassware said:
Furthermore I think it's definitely necessary for us to make a Task Force dealing with the Gorn than mapping the Adrazzi Gulf. If the Gorn go for the Cardassians we are going to be in trouble. We have the chance to cut that off at the pass.
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Worse trouble than if an unknown species in the Adazzi Gulf goes for the Cardassians?

I don't know; I'd like to do something with the Gorn, but I just think that we may have too much on our table in 2322. I don't see the Cardassians making progress all that fast given the immense distances involved. If we could let it slide until 2323, then Task Force Handshake and/or Shield would be finished, plus of course we'd have built more ships, and we could send a serious force to deal with it. To me the Cardassians romancing the Gorn is a medium-term issue, not a short term issue.

The Adazzi Gulf used to be a medium-term issue as well, but we've been hearing about it for years so our grace period to do something may be running out.
 
Yeah I'll vote for, might even have to write, a better deployment. Not only should Tellar get an Excelsior, but you're using Mirandas as second sector ships when they should be third at best. That's really not acceptable in a post Gabriel environment.
 
I'd be very surprised if there was a warp capable species in the Gulf, but then even a prewarp species or a near-prewarp species like the Lamarck could be problematic, especially if they declare for Cardassia having been quietly encouraged and 'uplifted' by them on the sly.

SWB, exactly where do you propose to put all the Mirandas as third-line ships? There's like fourteen or fifteen of them, and our more capable ships get spread pretty thin trying to double up on everything. You can shovel the Mirandas into border zones, but by doing so you eliminate the possibility of those ships providing any support for the interior sectors they border.
 
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On the issue of buffing home sectors, we need to keep in mind that we recently lost Chen's bonus, which means there is a lot more need for responders and far less capability to respond to multiple events in a sector. IIRC there was only one year between the event system being shifted to major worlds and Chen taking over Ops, a year in which we missed quite a lot of events, and this year after Chen left we also missed several events so far. We really shouldn't think we can get away with the sort of garrison fleets we mostly got away with during Chen's tenure in Ops.
A second big issue is that we were told several times that the consequences of missing an event depend on the circumstances and in particular whether a) the ships available to respond are seen as adequate and b) whether the Council understands and accepts why we couldn't station more ships there. Now that the GBZ is resolved the Council is going to be a lot less understanding.

Also Task force ships don't actually seem to earn more xp on average than sector ships, we know that every ship that responds earns XP and currently two ships can respond per event. We haven't seen a lot of task force ships level up so they probably don't all earn XP every quarter (not even just the Starfleet ships). If someone would go back and track the XP every ship should have had before being deployed we could potentially say more, but it looks like either similar or slower xp gain rate to me. Nor have the rewards of task forces earned been all that great so far, if you factor in all of the costs. Task forces only really make sense for things we need done, can't wait for and can't do any other way. The overall effect probably scales sub-linearly with extra ships considering that the advantages given by task force commander and attachments don't scale at all and how most of the similar systems work.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Yeah I'll vote for, might even have to write, a better deployment. Not only should Tellar get an Excelsior, but you're using Mirandas as second sector ships when they should be third at best. That's really not acceptable in a post Gabriel environment.
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You're aware there's two plans, right? One uses the Mirandas as third sector ships only, but in return there are few ships available to increase task forces. The other plan allows them to be second sector ships in return for reinforcing all our task forces.

You don't have to write a "better" deployment if you pick the one that already has Mirandas as third sector ships.

As for an Excelsior to "fix" Tellar sector, maybe we can just wait and see what the recommendation says? If it doesn't recommend an Excelsior, do you plan to put one there anyway?
 
Briefvoice said:
But isn't this a small potatoes side issue next to the big choice I allude to? Do you guys want to buff tasks forces, or buff home sectors?
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My preference would be to buff the main two task forces for the Horizon and the Dawiar, and buff only the Tellar interior sector.

Buffing the Horizon TF is because we are already being nearly stalemated, and the HoH seems to be just warming up. I am guessing that the events for this TF is actually down to opposing rolls of us vs the HoH rather than straight up rolls against DC. Thus, we need to prioritize ships with decent P scores here, possibly by drawing on member ships that have high P (from Orion, Risa, Betazed).

Buffing the Dawiar TF is because, without having to sink resources into the GBZ, the Cardassians are likely to move more ships into the area to counter us. It's possible that we'll have to end up making opposing rolls for combat or espionage. I'd actually like to assign some kind of intel attachment to the TF, if that's feasible, even more than just ship count though...

Other home sectors don't need to be buffed, because even if we miss an event there, the local politicians are not as likely to kick up a stink since it can be put down as a fluke rather than a pattern (as what the Tellarites are accusing us of).

I don't think other TF's aside from the above two need an Excelsior. The Hishmeri one is more combat oriented, and can be led by a Rennie, escorted by as many Mirandas as we can dump there, where they'll be much more useful than in event sectors.

As for our 12 available Excelsiors, we have one for each of our 8 BZ, 2 for the two Task Forces mentioned above, and 2 left over - one for Sol sector which has the most homeworlds and one for Tellar sector to get the Tellarite government off our back.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I'd be very surprised if there was a warp capable species in the Gulf, but then even a prewarp species or a near-prewarp species like the Lamarck could be problematic, especially if they declare for Cardassia having been quietly encouraged and 'uplifted' by them on the sly.
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Don't forget the Sotaw and the Kedeshi. They were in the RNZ completely unknown to either of us before the Biophage crisis. For all we know the Cardassians could be just as ignorant of any prewar races in the gulf as we are.
 
@charysa , since we don't know the upper bound of how bad an event failure can get, it behooves us not to gamble, especially with Chen's bonus out of the picture as Nix pointed out. This year may well have NOT been an unlucky year, it may have been a lucky one for all we know.

Also, the task force dealing with the Hishmeri will do better if it CAN do science and presence with at least the flagship, and if the flagship is large enough to impress the Hishmeri the way our cruisers will not.
 
charysa said:
As for our 12 available Excelsiors, we have one for each of our 8 BZ, 2 for the two Task Forces mentioned above, and 2 left over - one for Sol sector which has the most homeworlds and one for Tellar sector to get the Tellarite government off our back.
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If we put an Excelsior in the Tellar sector. Would a green one be better than a veteran or better one?
 
We might want to consider reassigning the spare Oberths to the Gulf Task Force. They're kinda bad at everything but S checks, and the Gulf Task Force will be making nothing but s checks.
 
Honestly I'd be willing to attempt to buy up another level of member world ships. Failures can be incredibly PP costly, so keeping our home fleets buffed and using member world ships to buff our TFs seems like it may be a wise expenditure.
 
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