To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- 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?
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Yea it's a big issue, I'm wondering if the Cardassians didn't drop their dreadnought on the enterprise.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I personally favor the wolf pack. Strike where the enemy is weak. Avoid where is enemy is strong.
Ships with high defense would come in handy for this.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Also assuming we want to start the Ambassador project in the snake pit after the next one, then we want to have completed the following..
Early 24th Century Shipboard Computing
All manner of computer technologies come under this banner.
22 / 30 Targeting Computer II (2% weapon weight reduction)
22 / 30 Ship Main Computer Core II (1% Science weight/power savings)
27 / 30 Ship Operating System II (1% warp core power improvement)
This actually does make a fairly decent difference alongside the other tech which would finish by then.
Early 24th Century Shipboard Computing
All manner of computer technologies come under this banner.
22 / 30 Targeting Computer II (2% weapon weight reduction)
22 / 30 Ship Main Computer Core II (1% Science weight/power savings)
27 / 30 Ship Operating System II (1% warp core power improvement)
This actually does make a fairly decent difference alongside the other tech which would finish by then.
Even if the Enterprise made it through, it may well be in a repair berth for one or two turns. Luckily we have the 40 Eriandi berth open, and all those UP berths opening so we can start our new ships as well.
I would say that after the Renaissance prototype is under construction, we should turn our attention to either a new Explorer design or at least some Excelsior refits.
I would say that after the Renaissance prototype is under construction, we should turn our attention to either a new Explorer design or at least some Excelsior refits.
- Location
- somewhere
It makes little sense to start the Ambassador while our best explorer design team is busy with the Renaissance. We should look at starting the design in 2311.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Either the Ambassador or the Excelsior-A.
An almost-Ambassador would suffice too, I think.
Or tinker with the stats to get 6 hull.
Derek58
Rocket Punch is Best Punch
- Location
- Getter Valhalla
Really? I thought that there was more to it than that.
There is also a chance of shield burn-through, that is a hit ignoring the shields and going straight to Hull. And apparently some sort of dodge roll sometimes?
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Speakin of which, I fired up the 'ol STO account and powerleved Nash to Captain on my account:
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Curiously, what does your ship look like?Speakin of which, I fired up the 'ol STO account and powerleved Nash to Captain on my account:
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Due to the way STO mechanics work I went through a Connie-variant, an original type Excelsior, and then into some sort of Defiant variant. (Though at the higher levels I can move her back into an Excelsior of the same type as the Enterprise-B)
STO has everyone shooting at everyone. Even the Federation Council likes to have the exploding portion of the consequences happen to other people.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In STO? The pretty much let you fly anything around. (My main is a Romulan in a Scimitar tho)
This is what I picture the ConnieBee as:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Nash looks very good, AKuz.
...
Clearly some kind of time travel or alternate reality shift or space-warping ship-duplicating whozit was involved.
That said...
For the record, everyone, Enterprises do tend to go out in a blaze of glory, as I mentioned a few days and a few dozen pages ago. Of the six ships of the name whose fate is known to the franchise, four were lost in action, three of them on-screen or just barely off-screen and in heroic fashion. Two of the destroyed four were lost with all or nearly all hands.
So much as we love the Enterprise-B in this timeline, and much as Nash ka'Sharren has made her into a flagship very much worthy of the Name... The odds are high that the ship will eventually go down fighting, hopefully with most of the crew being able to survive the experience.
But on some level, what really matters is that history (and the Cardassians) never forget the Name.
Seriously, if in a given battle, we're outclassed enough, by definition nothing helps. All we can hope is that battles in which we outclass the enemy happen as often as ones in which they outclass us, resulting in the overall score balancing out.
If we're trying to figure out a way for ships to survive when outgunned 2:1 or 3:1, then honestly the only thing that helps us is improvements to "run the hell away" technology, which really ought to be a possibility. I'm not sure how or even if Oneiros handles ships sensibly trying to escape from deadly situations; we've seen ships try to flee before, but only in the first couple of battles. No ship has tried to warp out since the biophage conflict started.
That said, better shield strength would help us survive long enough to run away, which is good in and of itself.
You have to be willing and able to make allowances for incremental improvements in a game like this. No one small change or improvement will be decisive, but if you don't pursue the advantages that are made available to you, you never build up enough of an edge to gain a decisive advantage of any type.
So it's like "XYZ is too expensive, let's do more expensive ABC thing instead." Because if you seriously compare the cost of replacing the Constellations with even comparable ships (like Centaurs), and reflect on how much political will it would cost to obtain those resources...
Political will is valuable but it's not infinitely valuable. Spending some extra political will is enough
If I were them, and I really didn't mind risking war with the Federation, I might try exactly that: assemble a task force around one of my own battleship-weight combatants, try to lure the Enterprise or another ship of the same class in, and capture her. By doing so, they'd significantly weaken our defenses if we went to war in reaction, they'd learn a huge amount about our technology, and if we didn't go to war it would give them immediate confirmation of just how roughshod they can afford to run over us.
If we're going to be on a war footing, though, we DO need to seriously consider assigning light escorts to our heavy units. That makes it a lot harder to just casually swarm our heavies by hitting them with 2-3 cruisers or an equivalent cruiser/escort force simultaneously. It also gives us more time for Supreme High Grandmaster Ship Dispatcher Uhura to vector in reinforcements to bail out the threatened unit(s), as we saw recently when the Cardies tried to pull something like this against Cheron.
We're not just one tech short of where I'd like to be before starting the Ambassadors. We're ten to fifteen years of ongoing technological development short.
Another issue is that nothing we can presently do to an explorer will give the baseline explorers stats comparable to what the Enterprise-B already has. They might not be able to ambush our flagship with two cruisers and an escort and win reliably... but they'd still be able to do it to other ships of the same class.
In terms of the ship's combat power, your fighting power decays as a function of how many hits to hull you take like this, starting from full hull:
HULL 5
100%, 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, (boom)
(this corresponds to being at 5/5, 4/5, and so on down to 0/5)
I ran the same numbers for other Hull values, but I'm snipping that for now. The practical conclusion is this:
In general, going from an even hull up to an odd hull seems to be better, because it tends to confer extra time spent fighting at high health. Which is important, since your firepower scales with your remaining health bar.
So going from even hull up to odd will significantly increase its odds of surviving a nearly-equal battle where the enemy is on their last legs just as much as our ship is. Going from odd up to even matters less.
...
I can think of multiple Star Trek episodes that would look a lot like that from Q's point of view.
Clearly some kind of time travel or alternate reality shift or space-warping ship-duplicating whozit was involved.
That said...
For the record, everyone, Enterprises do tend to go out in a blaze of glory, as I mentioned a few days and a few dozen pages ago. Of the six ships of the name whose fate is known to the franchise, four were lost in action, three of them on-screen or just barely off-screen and in heroic fashion. Two of the destroyed four were lost with all or nearly all hands.
So much as we love the Enterprise-B in this timeline, and much as Nash ka'Sharren has made her into a flagship very much worthy of the Name... The odds are high that the ship will eventually go down fighting, hopefully with most of the crew being able to survive the experience.
But on some level, what really matters is that history (and the Cardassians) never forget the Name.
"In the long run, we're all dead."
Seriously, if in a given battle, we're outclassed enough, by definition nothing helps. All we can hope is that battles in which we outclass the enemy happen as often as ones in which they outclass us, resulting in the overall score balancing out.
If we're trying to figure out a way for ships to survive when outgunned 2:1 or 3:1, then honestly the only thing that helps us is improvements to "run the hell away" technology, which really ought to be a possibility. I'm not sure how or even if Oneiros handles ships sensibly trying to escape from deadly situations; we've seen ships try to flee before, but only in the first couple of battles. No ship has tried to warp out since the biophage conflict started.
That said, better shield strength would help us survive long enough to run away, which is good in and of itself.
You have to be willing and able to make allowances for incremental improvements in a game like this. No one small change or improvement will be decisive, but if you don't pursue the advantages that are made available to you, you never build up enough of an edge to gain a decisive advantage of any type.
Yes, but doing this will cost much, much MORE resources than refitting a Constellation, and MORE shipyard time, and it's unlikely to give us a much better ship than a refit Constellation would be.
So it's like "XYZ is too expensive, let's do more expensive ABC thing instead." Because if you seriously compare the cost of replacing the Constellations with even comparable ships (like Centaurs), and reflect on how much political will it would cost to obtain those resources...
Political will is valuable but it's not infinitely valuable. Spending some extra political will is enough
Except that replacement is vastly more expensive than refit. And scrapping ships that are still serviceable as second-line rear area vessels is unlikely to come without political cost. Which is the same thing that has you so terribly, terribly opposed to ever putting resources into improving the Constellations again- the political cost.
Yes, and both these states of affairs will remain in play for a decade or more. Possibly much, much more. We may never build up to our combat limit at this rate.
We have omakes reflecting on the fact that we send our explorers out alone into the border region is a weakness. We know they have enough ships to assemble a task force capable of hunting down any single capital ship; the Enterprise is tough, but she's not a Borg cube.
If the Enterprise could have been destroyed, what more, the other Excelsiors, let alone the smaller ships?
Cardassians OP please nerf.
If I were them, and I really didn't mind risking war with the Federation, I might try exactly that: assemble a task force around one of my own battleship-weight combatants, try to lure the Enterprise or another ship of the same class in, and capture her. By doing so, they'd significantly weaken our defenses if we went to war in reaction, they'd learn a huge amount about our technology, and if we didn't go to war it would give them immediate confirmation of just how roughshod they can afford to run over us.
I suspect that would improve the "evade the enemy" abilities of smaller ships more than big ones, since it's a doctrine intended for coordinated groups of smaller raiders (e.g. U-boat wolfpacks).
If we're going to be on a war footing, though, we DO need to seriously consider assigning light escorts to our heavy units. That makes it a lot harder to just casually swarm our heavies by hitting them with 2-3 cruisers or an equivalent cruiser/escort force simultaneously. It also gives us more time for Supreme High Grandmaster Ship Dispatcher Uhura to vector in reinforcements to bail out the threatened unit(s), as we saw recently when the Cardies tried to pull something like this against Cheron.
It is rather premature to start the Ambassador project. A design for a refitted/uprated Excelsior-A would make more sense. And it might actually be something we could hope to do DURING a protracted war with Cardassia- as ships are damaged we rotate them back for repairs AND refits).
We're not just one tech short of where I'd like to be before starting the Ambassadors. We're ten to fifteen years of ongoing technological development short.
Another issue is that nothing we can presently do to an explorer will give the baseline explorers stats comparable to what the Enterprise-B already has. They might not be able to ambush our flagship with two cruisers and an escort and win reliably... but they'd still be able to do it to other ships of the same class.
6 hull isn't as big an advantage over 5 hull as you might think.
In terms of the ship's combat power, your fighting power decays as a function of how many hits to hull you take like this, starting from full hull:
HULL 5
100%, 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, (boom)
(this corresponds to being at 5/5, 4/5, and so on down to 0/5)
I ran the same numbers for other Hull values, but I'm snipping that for now. The practical conclusion is this:
In general, going from an even hull up to an odd hull seems to be better, because it tends to confer extra time spent fighting at high health. Which is important, since your firepower scales with your remaining health bar.
So going from even hull up to odd will significantly increase its odds of surviving a nearly-equal battle where the enemy is on their last legs just as much as our ship is. Going from odd up to even matters less.
Let me add something to the Constellation discussion. In about ten years we are looking at a major crew crunch. Adding more members and Academy expansions will help alleviate that, but there is still going to come a point where we are building ships faster than we can crew them, if not in ten years then in 15. We may well reach the point where it makes sense to mothball the Constellations in order to move their crews over to Renaissances. Just FYI.
- Location
- somewhere
Mothballed Constellation refits are still a pretty good way to make the combat limit less of an issue in preparation for future wars/crises. Speaking of that, getting the Constellation refit would also make it available to the member fleets and we know they have a significant number of Constellations, my guess would be around 20.
Last edited:
That sort of things is what the Fleet Coordination Office we are being offered in the Snakepit is for. It will (probably, given the omakes the option was awarded for) allow a far greater flow of ship designs, berth space, and refit designs between the Home Fleets and Starfleet, even allowing us to "retire" ships to the Home Fleets rather than mothball them.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Can you post any ship design tips you have like the one about the odd-numbered hull in the Ship Design thread? I can threadmark it afterwards for reference.
- Location
- somewhere
Why are you calling the member fleets home fleets anyway? You did that in the omake as well, but I don't think anyone else does it (or usage is mixed at least)? It could lead to confusion because the home sector fleets could also be called home fleets. Probably best to just avoid the term home fleet and always use member fleet or sector fleet instead.
As for the office, we'll hopefully get around to it one of the next few years.
Last edited:
Except that it actually *isn't* more expensive.
A 1mt berth costs 10 PP in the Andorian or Tellarite systems, and a budget increase of 60 BR and 30 SR per year costs 30 PP at this point. That is less PP than the refit, and provides us with the space and resources that we can churn out a Centaur every 2 years, while having some BR left over, even. On top of that we're saving the BR and SR that the refits would cost, which is nothing to sneeze at, either.
And unlike the Constellation refit, the berths and budget increase would be useful for the entirety of the game, since they would be just as useful for building Renaissance, or Sabers, or Steamrunners, or any other sort of vessel we want to produce. Whereas the PP spent on the Constellation refit do just that.
We certainly aren't going to if we keep throwing PP out of the window in order to make a bad vessel slightly less bad, rather than using those PP in order to build up our capabilities as much as possible.