I'd honestly vote to take a resource infusion every time we are starting an Excelsior if I thought I could get votes for it. I feel it's an incredibly efficient use of PP.
Compared to budget increases it isn't efficient in the very long run, but it has a lot of advantages in the short run. What it comes down to is that "burning" PP on a one time basis to turn them into resources
only sometimes makes sense, but not always. This is one of those times for me, because...
I'm okay with the resource request, based on those two build boards. Seems a reasonable expense of 20pp.
I want my Connies. Lots of them. I will support the budget request to make that happen.
[hugs million ton starships]
Don't get me wrong, I love the Rennies too, and I even love the
Constellations in their own way even if nobody else appreciates them properly. But I want my Connies. For
totally valid reasons.
[glares at others, daring them to prove otherwise]
Obviously we can't set a build order in Q1 for prototypes we haven't even requested, let alone started designing yet. That doesn't mean we can't do so for prototypes that have significant design work done, a known cost and a known due date for the design.
Logically, we can
leave a berth empty any time we want. We can set aside resources for a prototype we plan to request any time we want. Now, we can't say "start building USS
Renaissance in that berth at that time," but that's not what Briefvoice seems to be suggesting. I think he's just suggesting we leave a berth at Utopia Planitia open so that,
in a year or two, we have a place to build USS
Renaissance, that isn't full of Connie and that doesn't compete with an
Excelsior for berthing space in the 2310-2315 timeframe.
The problem with reclassifying Excelsiors is that we currently (and with mid term building plans) have too few home fleet Explorers even for Combined Fleet Doctrine, let alone Lone Ranger Doctrine. If we reclassify all of our existing Explorers we will never see a reasonable proportion of Explorers. There is no real advantage for reclassification either assuming we keep up Explorer tech which we need to anyway.
When we started talking about reclassifying the Connies as cruisers, they were a sixty year old design. If we do the same thing for the
Excelsiors it'll be the year 2345 or so before we get around to that. By that time, we may well have enough
Ambassadors that it has ceased to be a serious problem.
I will also note that our declaring the
Constitution-Bs to be cruisers does not appear to have 'demoted' our sole surviving
Constitution-A to cruiser status. Nor did it rob the USS
Cheron of any benefits it may enjoy by virtue of being an explorer.
I would think mass producing excelsiors would be too time and resource heavy when we can build smaller ships of comparable performance.
I would actually be made happy, on some level, if some time in the 2340s we build a 2.3 million ton "cruiser" with the best stats we can manage, point to it, and say, "I dub thee an
Excelsior-B!" This honestly seems to be what Starfleet actually DID in canon, given that we see
Excelsiors all over the place in Federation territory carrying out 'cruiser' roles.
There would be a lot of advantages to our doing exactly that, and it would probably be a better option than building the canon
Niagara-class, which is a bloated, worthless tub that gives us 2310-era cruiser performance on a 2330-era explorer sized hull... in 2350.
[In short, the Federation's canon 2320-era cruiser is clearly as good or better than a reclassified version of its 2250-era explorer. But the Federations 2350-era cruiser is NOT clearly good or better than a reclassified version of its 2280-era explorer.]
