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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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True. Very true. The tiny fleet numbers used here only make sense for a faction like HW:C Somtaaw where every ship capable of independant operation is capable of building an entire warfleet given a weeks notice, or like the Bentusi where merchant ships can stomp all over entire warfleets from the next strongest guy.

Alternately, it's possible that the home fleets made up a massive portion of the Dominon war era fleets, in conjuction with a massive crash build program after Wolf 359, as long as we ignore all the Mirandas and pretend they were more recent escorts. Not Defiants, because if Starfleet could spam Defiants than the Dominion war would have been very, very different.
 
Nix said:
We had 27 ships in 2301, and in canon there were all these situations were the Enterprise was the only ship in range of something, in the fist movie they were even the only ship in range to intercept V'ger on it's way to Earth. 27 ships is probably still too low, but only by a factor of something like 2-3. That would still put Dominion war numbers in the high three or low four digit range.
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Keep in mind that our neighbors ALSO don't have more than a few dozen ships at most. Either we're abstracting the fleet sizes, OR we're ignoring DS9 and having it so that a few dozen ships is as many as an interstellar power can reasonably maintain, OR we should be using bigger numbers.

I would vastly, VASTLY prefer that we don't do the last one.
 
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Leila Hann said:
Keep in mind that our neighbors ALSO don't have more than a few dozen ships at most. Either we're abstracting the fleet sizes, OR we're ignoring DS9 and having it so that a few dozen ships is as many as an interstellar power can reasonably maintain, OR we should be using bigger numbers.

I would vastly, VASTLY prefer that we don't do the last one.
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Is this actually that much of a problem? I mean, beyond the bit where I gloss over a few of the less interesting Captains Logs as FYMs continue to grow.

I had figured that getting the chance to grow Starfleet from the acorn was part of the appeal.

After all, it's less "why is Starfleet so small" and more "Why are the Feds so small?"
 
Even a single starship is a terrifyingly powerful and capable thing. I sort of like the small ship numbers, because it means that every vessel matters. Like how the Cardassians losing their battleship recently was a huge blow to them, because they probably only have a few ships that powerful.

OneirosTheWriter said:
Is this actually that much of a problem? I mean, beyond the bit where I gloss over a few of the less interesting Captains Logs as FYMs continue to grow.

I had figured that getting the chance to grow Starfleet from the acorn was part of the appeal.
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Not a problem for me. I like the way ship numbers and builds have been progressing. I suppose the main worry I see is how decisive battles seem to be. If there aren't many ships and each battle results in a lot of ships destroyed, then it's hard to see how wars can last years unless there's simply a lot of time between battles for some reason.
 
Briefvoice said:
Even a single starship is a terrifyingly powerful and capable thing. I sort of like the small ship numbers, because it means that every vessel matters. Like how the Cardassians losing their battleship recently was a huge blow to them, because they probably only have a few ships that powerful.



Not a problem for me. I like the way ship numbers and builds have been progressing. I suppose the main worry I see is how decisive battles seem to be. If there aren't many ships and each battle results in a lot of ships destroyed, then it's hard to see how wars can last years unless there's simply a lot of time between battles for some reason.
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The destructiveness is actually a bit less than you might think, it's not that hard when you're not in a balls to the wall fight against the Biophage to flee.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
Is this actually that much of a problem? I mean, beyond the bit where I gloss over a few of the less interesting Captains Logs as FYMs continue to grow.

I had figured that getting the chance to grow Starfleet from the acorn was part of the appeal.

After all, it's less "why is Starfleet so small" and more "Why are the Feds so small?"
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Its not a huge problem. My concerns are basically:

1. Barring the second half of DS9, the smaller number of non-tiny ships has always been the norm for Trek. It feels more Trek.

2. Having each ship be somewhat important gives this quest a very different feel from most other strategic ones.

3. It doesn't really make sense for starfleet to have still been an "acorn" in the early 2300's.
 
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I would very strongly prefer ship numbers to be allowed to grow rather than being constrained to these tiny numbers indefinitely by adding even more restraints to the already existing ones. It's not like we have a strong emotional connection to all ships at the moment, and we can continue to have a few favorite ships we care about no matter how many other ships are there to make up the numbers.
 
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I'm fine with growing the numbers. I like the feel of a bustling background, even if we only focus on the most interesting ships.
 
Briefvoice said:
Even a single starship is a terrifyingly powerful and capable thing. I sort of like the small ship numbers, because it means that every vessel matters. Like how the Cardassians losing their battleship recently was a huge blow to them, because they probably only have a few ships that powerful.
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A rule of thumb I saw once and have tried to keep in mind ever since is: You have a starship, they have a planet and it's pretty fair fight.
It doesn't hold directly for ship to ship actions, but it does provide a definite sense of scale.
AKuz said:
I'm fine with growing the numbers. I like the feel of a bustling background, even if we only focus on the most interesting ships.
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Background bustle is fun! And good fodder for omakes.
 
nocarename said:
A rule of thumb I saw once and have tried to keep in mind ever since is: You have a starship, they have a planet and it's pretty fair fight.
It doesn't hold directly for ship to ship actions, but it does provide a definite sense of scale.
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I'm not really all that fond of that rule. Admittedly this may be because my introduction to Star Trek fan work was ATV and Feddie static defenses chew up entire fleets there.

On a more technical level, planetary installations can pour basically arbitrary amounts of power into their shields and phasers, and have basically arbitrarily large numbers of torpedo launchers. Getting a planetary defense grid to have 50 shields and combat is strictly a matter of resources.

Yeah, that still dies to subspace-based RKKV antics, but nobody wants to open that can of worms.
 
Leila Hann said:
Its not a huge problem. My concerns are basically:

1. Barring the second half of DS9, the smaller number of non-tiny ships has always been the norm for Trek. It feels more Trek.

2. Having each ship be somewhat important gives this quest a very different feel from most other strategic ones.

3. It doesn't really make sense for starfleet to have still been an "acorn" in the early 2300's.
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That's because the Trek series have focused primarily on explorers that range far and on their own. Starfleet has to have had a massive fleet by the time of TNG purely due the number of member worlds. Otherwise the major powers would have crushed the federation under their jack boots.
 
pheonix89 said:
I'm not really all that fond of that rule. Admittedly this may be because my introduction to Star Trek fan work was ATV and Feddie static defenses chew up entire fleets there.

On a more technical level, planetary installations can pour basically arbitrary amounts of power into their shields and phasers, and have basically arbitrarily large numbers of torpedo launchers. Getting a planetary defense grid to have 50 shields and combat is strictly a matter of resources.

Yeah, that still dies to subspace-based RKKV antics, but nobody wants to open that can of worms.
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Not just energy budgets and torpedoes to the face, but versatility, experience and social leverage. The Captain of an Explorer style ship - especially one of the ones on a 5YM, has the kind of social heft we don't see in single people much anymore.
The scene where Picard blackmails the Klingon Empire into borrowing a couple of starships? That's the far end of the scale. Regular starship Captains get to talk to planetary governors as equals, and 5YM Captains get to treat with mid/low-level powers on a somewhat level playing field.

Part of it is the abilities of their ships and crews. Part of it is that if they haven't gone off the deep end the rest of Starfleet and the Federation will probably back their plays.

A fair fight doesn't mean exactly equivalent. It means the odds are fairly even.
 
I do freely admit I made the starting point well under power, but then fleet size has always been weird. Part of why I made the member fleets use Starfleet ships, to kind of explain the vast jump in scale we see between TNG and Dominion War.

Now, I certainly don't want this to be like some quests were it takes three turns to triple your power. One recruiting action doubles the army, etc etc.

Behind the four-year build times of the Excelsiors is an attempt to show that these are big ships, to make them an emotional investment. I want the fleet to grow but I want to make it feel like an investment and a payoff. Also to show that every ship is valuable, to you and the enemy.

Behind the choice of time periods is two things: one is that this is probably the least explored part of the timeline, so we have a great opportunity to have convincingly butterflied things by time we hit the start of TNG. Two is that the post Khitomer period is clearly a golden age for the Federation, a real boom time.

So I agree that I don't want the numbers to grow to silly extremes. But at the same time, we are in a period where the Federation really begins to blossom. Naming explorers and giving them such huge build times (I doubt many quests will put a 16 turn build time on an option) is to make sure they stay special, even as their numbers grow.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
I do freely admit I made the starting point well under power, but then fleet size has always been weird. Part of why I made the member fleets use Starfleet ships, to kind of explain the vast jump in scale we see between TNG and Dominion War.

Now, I certainly don't want this to be like some quests were it takes three turns to triple your power. One recruiting action doubles the army, etc etc.

Behind the four-year build times of the Excelsiors is an attempt to show that these are big ships, to make them an emotional investment. I want the fleet to grow but I want to make it feel like an investment and a payoff. Also to show that every ship is valuable, to you and the enemy.

Behind the choice of time periods is two things: one is that this is probably the least explored part of the timeline, so we have a great opportunity to have convincingly butterflied things by time we hit the start of TNG. Two is that the post Khitomer period is clearly a golden age for the Federation, a real boom time.

So I agree that I don't want the numbers to grow to silly extremes. But at the same time, we are in a period where the Federation really begins to blossom. Naming explorers and giving them such huge build times (I doubt many quests will put a 16 turn build time on an option) is to make sure they stay special, even as their numbers grow.
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They do feel special. Ticking up from 3 to 4 5YM felt good, and the anticipation of going to 5 5YM is delicious.
 
Fingers crossed Mbeki is still around for possible explorer captain position. Also I decided to create an STO account and try the game. No guesses as to what I've named my character. :p
 
Muer'ci said:
So what's left for poor Tellarites?
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Well, let's look at Starfleet Research Teams Register again:
Tellar Prime Academy of Mineral Science
Preference: Minerals, Personal Tech
Skill 3
Principally: Tellarite
XP: 0 / 5
"Mineral science". That's all.
It's fully possible that Tellarites were the first race subjugated by the Federation, even before it was created!
Just look how low number of prominent Tellarites scientists and officers! Telllar was transformed into raw materials supplier for other races!

Think about it. Everyone knows Humans and Vulcans. Many people knows Andorians. But Tellarites? Everyone always forget about Tellarites!
Even I forgot about them!
It's because they are not equal member of the Federation but just the first of its client race.
Or they are the most cunning race, ruling the Federation from the shadows.
 
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I would prefer to treat the Dominion War as the outlier. TNG was still in the lonely ship off in space. Treat the Dominion War ship numbers as their propaganda of why they were not stomping on everyone else (those other races have too many ships, we must conserve to build too).
 
Leila Hann said:
On the topic of ships, I've been playing with designs some more. Can't wait to interact more with the other minor species so I can get a feel for their starships.

Roughly to scale:

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Interesting, what made you pick that sort of design for the Riala?

I must admit, when I envisaged it in my head, the Queenships were a little less emphasising the classical stinging hornet image and more a kind of lozenge-shape base, reminiscent of a Queen Bee's elongated abdomen.

Nix said:
The heavy warbird looks a bit to small to be to the Excelsior what the D'deridex is to the Galaxy.
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It's actually more that the Heavy Warbird is to the D'Deridex what the Ambassador is to the Galaxy!
 
Minerals Science also encompasses at least some of MatSci. The rest of MatSci as far as the quest is concerned being under Starship Construction. MatSci is kind of a huge deal for military purposes.
 
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