We can sell the Apita a Rennie and/or Rennie-A, they only need to ask. There has to be at least one under construction that we can give them.
Edit: We do have one under construction, NCC-2636.
The thing is, they don't want a stock cruiser of any kind; they want to extensively modify an existing cruiser design so that it can act as a
milk cow to support parasite frigates. There are few compelling reasons why this should be done based off the
Renaissance chassis rather than the
Constitution chassis, and the
Constitution chassis has the major advantage that we've got like a dozen hulls of that class sitting around doing
literally nothing.
On the other hand, the
Renaissance chassis has the advantage that we're building huge numbers of them right now, which is admittedly nothing to sneeze at.
Notably, the Apiata don't actually have any 1-megaton berths. They would be refitting these in 2mt berths, as a faster alternative to more LQNs.
They don't have any 1mt berths, though. They have 0.6 and 2. That's all. It's such a waste for them.
If I were the Apiata, I'd be seriously considering
building at least one or two one-megaton berths, just for the added flexibility and having at least the option of making use of new-generation frigate designs like the
Kepler and
Comet for specialist roles. I mean, practically their entire fleet consists of three designs; they may want the option of branching out a little, while the bulk of the fleet sticks to the existing doctrine.
Also,
this isnt all about the Apiata. The specific short-term advantage of the project is, yes, that we have a few more motherships in the Apiata fleet. But the long-term advantage is that we have a Federation-standard-ish design that can act as a mothership to our Federation-standard-ish parasite frigate. If other Federation members that face considerable military threat and want to try starting up parasite warship production as a way to thicken the ranks of their combat forces (say, the Seyek), this gives them a way to do so without having to design and prototype their own entirely new warship classes.
If we wanted to encourage other members to experiment with the tech, I'm okay with that, but Apiata Connies isn't the right way to do it.
Well yes, a project to design a "Milch Rennie" would have all the same advantages. On the other hand, the Apiata didn't ask for it, and there's no fundamental reason the
Constitution-B hulls should not or cannot be refitted. The original 'foundational' design may date back to the 2230s, but the hulls themselves are no more than fifteen years old, aside from a few reused spares that can be replaced in the normal course of things.
Well, for what you're talking about I can't help but feel that a Rennie would be a better base for the design.
Much as I like the idea of having a Connie-C, I suspect that if it ever comes it will be a cargo ship or an engineering ship.
I'm not opposed to this, but what I'm getting at is that if a new
Constitution-based light tender design were available, it would fill a useful niche and role. This is not to say we couldn't in principle do somewhat better with a
Renaissance-based version, but we could still get most of the benefit from the Connie version.
BTW, do we have any plans to do a large scale mothball of any other vessels in a near future? We can use Priority changes during MWCD to actually guide one of our members into long term plan that includes procurement (and possible refit) of former Federation vessels.
The other ship classes likely to be on the chopping block in the near future are the
Constellations and
Oberths. There really aren't enough
Oberths for us to worry about how we handle their demobilization; Starfleet Intelligence and various civilian research organizations will both be interested. The
Constellations need a second-generation refit program with 2330-era technology if we're going to make them competitive with the much more capable 2320s frigate designs; otherwise it's hard to justify a
Constellation-A's crew cost when a
Centaur-B can fulfill almost the same missions and free up 1O+2E of crew in the process. Or when a
Kepler can perform as well or better in all areas with nearly identical crew cost.
If no such refit is possible, or if the refit isn't good
enough to justify continuing the class in the face of competition from the
Kepler(-A?) at the high end and the
Centaur-B at the low end, we're probably going to be well advised to mothball the
Constellations. Many of the arguments for doing so are actually even better than those for retiring the
Constitution-Bs, in that at least 6-7 of the existing
Constellation hulls now in service are 25-30 years old, probably older.
In real life, less capable ship classes are usually kept in service until they're too feeble to be effective or too old to be safe; here, we are
ONLY retiring the
Constitution-Bs because they are manpower-inefficient compared to other ships we would otherwise be unable to crew readily.
Uh... in terms of narrative, do our officers have the expertise to run those ships without having to do some retraining? I mean, they're purely Betazoid design.
In addition to the correct considerations pointed out above, the
Patrollers were extensively refit with Federation technology during and shortly after the Licori War. The hardware shouldn't be too big of a problem. I suspect the biggest problem with integrating non-Betazoid crews on
Patrollers will be installing a more comprehensive shipboard intercom system and otherwise redesigning the equipment on the assumption that crew
can't communicate with each other telepathically.
