Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
Mechanical questions like that are probably better served for the shipbuilding thread, if you dare to enter that place.
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?
Mechanical questions like that are probably better served for the shipbuilding thread, if you dare to enter that place.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
It's not easy to quantify but it comes down to potentially reducing the warp core weight size a little as we need less power and therefore reducing SR and BR costs.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
On the topic of this year's snakepit, I'm wondering something about the budget increase. Since the Federation is now two members larger, it makes sense to assume that the resources available to the Federation Council are larger as well. Might this mean that a budget increase now would be larger than at the beginning? It would also be a good way of scaling the budget as the Federation expands.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes.I was originally considering it being explicitly to the death but then I had doubts you'd even have ten qualified panelists with the turnover that'd generate.
Honestly, the only reason the Amarki made it INTO the Iron Age with a system of scholarship that worked like this... is probably because becoming a qualified journeyman or master in the technical knowledge required to maintain an Iron Age civilization wasn't being handled by dueling with live blades.
At least now we know why the Risans mention the Amarki in the same breath as the Klingons. Klingon science probably STILL works more or less like this.
1.5 million tons was a random throwaway number I pulled out of a hat.
The point being, we CAN build a medium cruiser. But it's either going to be only very slightly better than a Rennie, or it's going to be much more expensive than a Rennie.
The one you describe, for example, costs about 40% more in both categories, and reliability/SR tradeoffs don't necessarily make the overall design 'package' more palatable. Plus the added burden of needing the bigger berth, and this really does not sound like a winning proposition.
I mean, we just saw that the closest the Cardies have to an explorer is their 1.8 million ton battlecruiser, and Enterprise just carved up one of those like a roast. If the battlecruiser had been alone instead of bringing a friend, it would have been very unbalanced in our favor.
Even a bog-standard Excelsior would have had something close to an even chance against one of those. An Excelsior with significant refits, an Explorer Corps crew, or an Ambassador would be a definite step up from these Cardassian battlecruisers, and would be more versatile overall.
25-35 years from now, when we've had time to gradually expand our berthing infrastructure to handle more two-megaton ships, and/or are building four or five megaton berths to accommodate our "after Ambassador" generation of explorer, building a cruiser in the neighborhood of two million tons is giong to make more sense. Right now, it just doesn't give us that much capacity increase over the Rennie, compared to what we have to sacrifice.
People are getting distracted by the stat line of the medium cruiser (which is of course better than that of a light cruiser little more than half the weight) and are forgetting how ships of that type fit into our overall construction, supply, and strategic needs (which is to say, poorly).
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Gahh, I had a fairly decent response to this typed up and it got eaten when I responded to Hearthborn. Bugger.
Right let me try and rewrite what I had more succinctly, my problem with the idea of refits in general is that ultimately they are actually pretty bad cost efficiency wise. Lets take the centaur A refit. We could build a new Centaur A design (same stat block) much more cheaply with tech we had around the same time as the refit became available. Stripping 10~ BR and 35-45 SR off the cost of the design. Alternatively we could just build the New orleans design from scratch which still ends up costing less than building new Centaur As. Now obviously there is an alternative cost in the form of tech teams when designing new ships but when the Excelsior truly becomes more or less obsolete in normative terms rather than mechanical terms we'll generally be better off building a new ship design that fits the berth space and scale spaces available.
Apologies if I've lost track of your what your original argument in all this was in my quest for accuracy.
Not actually true. A bog-standard Excelsior loses significantly more often than not.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm a bit surprised by that result. Not denying it outright, but surprised.
The Excelsior has Combat 6 Hull 4 Shields 5, the Lorgot has Combat 7 Hull 3 Shields 5. Given how combat reductions as a function of damage go, the Excelsior can take six hits before it starts losing firepower, with three hits remaining before 'boom.' The Lorgot can take five, and its combat power drops off more dramatically with each of the three successive hits after that point.
While the Lorgot has superior combat power, its hit probability (all else being equal) SHOULD only be 7/13. To win the battle, the Lorgot basically needs to land seven hits faster than the Excelsior can land six, because whichever ship crosses that line of diminished combat power has greatly reduced odds of survival... ah. I begin to see, though I can't clearly articulate the issue.
What percentage did you actually arrive at?
@SuperSonicSound
Put this way. Your argument regarding the Centaur-As makes sense in the context of our decision to do the refits. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's coherent. It's coherent because there weren't very many Centaurs around. But for ship classes where we've already built a dozen of them, the argument breaks down.
Look at Excelsiors. Right now we're building them in large numbers because they are literally the best we've got, and the best we are going to have for some years to come, and we have good mechanical synergies that make them even better. We're not going to be changing that decision- realistically we will lay down at least one Excelsior a year until a superior replacement becomes widely available, which won't be for quite a few years to come. By the time it happens, we will probably have something like 15-20 Excelsiors lying around. Maybe even more.
So what happens when the proposal comes around in 2325 or so to refit the Excelsiors?
If you say "no, it would be better to build new Ambassadors than refitted Excelsiors," you're right... But that doesn't actually answer the question "what about those Excelsiors?" It would be idiotic to scrap each Excelsior and build an Ambassador replacement one-for-one, because then we'd wind up with a fleet roughly half the size it could have been, and a lot of functional, useful ships would be going on the garbage heap.
So the old Excelsiors will still be around in 2330 and 2340- just like the old Mirandas are still around right now, and are unlikely to be replaced by new escorts of any type for the foreseeable future.
In that case, refitting Excelsiors makes a heck of a lot of sense... because it extends their useful life, and increases the probability that they will survive and succeed when sent into difficult situations.
...
Now, if you look VERY far forward, say to 2350, maybe by then it will be very easy for us to build a 2.1 (or 2.4) megaton cruiser hull that effortlessly outpoints any plausible Excelsior refit.
By that point I'm all in favor of a new design as opposed to a refit, because by that point the original Excelsiors will be old ships and we'll have gotten our money's worth out of them. Retiring them in favor of sleeker, more powerful ships will start to make sense, just as it now makes sense to retire Constellations in order to crew Renaissance-class cruisers once we actually have enough Rennies to start filling the Constellations' role.
At that point, by all means let us build a 2.1 to 2.4 megaton cruiser of high performance. We can call it... the Lakota-class!
- Location
- somewhere
That's true to the first approximation, though fleet combat is raised to the power of 1.15 (IIRC) first for some reason, so higher combat leads to very slightly better chances than you'd expect based on the simple summary of the combat system.
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Jenny
anonymous user
- Location
- maryland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I might try to put something together centered on Lord Gaela, because space.
Omake - Mission Failed - Leila Hann
- Location
- Patriarchova
Omake: Mission Failed
He thrashed and choked his way through the briny foam, wishing like never before that he still had his fins. He poked his head above water and managed to suck down half a breath before another mighty wave crashed into him, sending him tumbling through the sand and saltwater. He needed to get back to shore. He could die in battle, or from an equipment failure, or by his own hand, but Oul wouldn't let it end like this. Not a lonely, forgotten drowning in this alien sea not one hundred paces from shore.
He grasped at the sand, making sure he knew which way was up and which was down, and dragged himself back toward the beach. He hadn't quite blinked the salt out of his eyes (WHY DIDN'T THE NATIVES HAVE NICTITATING MEMBRANES?) when the next swell hit, but this time he was prepared for it and let it push him further into the shallows before digging into the sand again to avoid the backflow. Still coughing, Oul crawled out into the sunlight, and, blinking, got back up to his feet. The twin suns beat down on his soft, nakedly brown skin. Somewhere off in the distance, birdlike creatures sang.
He was alone.
"Chuvul!" he hissed into the vocaster implant embedded in his wrist, "Chuvul, are you reading now? Chuvul? Gola? Anyone?" Nothing. He was either out of range, or the other two were dead or captured.
Oul turned around and stared across the wave-washed cove at the sparkling alien city he had just fled. They had known it was a trap from the beginning, of course. It simply had to be. It was just about the most obvious bait, the most transparent play at innocence, the most amateurish attempt at making them let their guard down that he could imagine. They had been so stupid. By setting up such a pathetic charade, the Federation's affiliate species had tricked the Lecarre into underestimating them. Himself, Gola, and Chuvul thought they had blended in perfectly. Like the natives around them, they had taken the little stone statuettes and displayed them by their seats along the waterfront. It seemed like the normal thing to do on this planet.
And then, a crowd of burly natives had surrounded them with those gleaming, predatory smiles, and the three of them had all realized that they'd somehow been caught out.
"Hey, you alright?"
Oul turned around with a start. An alien male had come along the beach, his oiled brown skin glimmering in the suns. He looked concerned, but Oul wasn't about to be fooled again this quickly.
"I'm fine," the Lecarre said tersely, "just...had a tiring swim."
The native smiled. "The water can be rough this time of day." His eyes wandered down, and then slowly up again. "Even with those muscles."
He felt a phantom pain where his hackles should have risen. A little tingle throughout his body. "Ah. Um...thank you."
The newcomer stepped toward him. "What's mine is yours, should you wish it."
From what Oul gathered, that was a polite greeting among these creatures. "What's mine is yours."
The Risan stepped closer still, so that Oul felt the heat of his svelt body against his own. The alien was grinning, that predatory, toothy grin again. "I was hoping you'd say that." He reached out a slippery-skinned hand and ran one fingernail down Oul's chest.
"FUUUUUUUUUCK!"
The Lecarre leaped back, turning around and running back toward the sea before the startled man could react. "YOU'LL NEVER GET MY PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS! NEVER! NEEEEEEVEEEEEEERRRR!!!!!"
He thrashed and choked his way through the briny foam, wishing like never before that he still had his fins. He poked his head above water and managed to suck down half a breath before another mighty wave crashed into him, sending him tumbling through the sand and saltwater. He needed to get back to shore. He could die in battle, or from an equipment failure, or by his own hand, but Oul wouldn't let it end like this. Not a lonely, forgotten drowning in this alien sea not one hundred paces from shore.
He grasped at the sand, making sure he knew which way was up and which was down, and dragged himself back toward the beach. He hadn't quite blinked the salt out of his eyes (WHY DIDN'T THE NATIVES HAVE NICTITATING MEMBRANES?) when the next swell hit, but this time he was prepared for it and let it push him further into the shallows before digging into the sand again to avoid the backflow. Still coughing, Oul crawled out into the sunlight, and, blinking, got back up to his feet. The twin suns beat down on his soft, nakedly brown skin. Somewhere off in the distance, birdlike creatures sang.
He was alone.
"Chuvul!" he hissed into the vocaster implant embedded in his wrist, "Chuvul, are you reading now? Chuvul? Gola? Anyone?" Nothing. He was either out of range, or the other two were dead or captured.
Oul turned around and stared across the wave-washed cove at the sparkling alien city he had just fled. They had known it was a trap from the beginning, of course. It simply had to be. It was just about the most obvious bait, the most transparent play at innocence, the most amateurish attempt at making them let their guard down that he could imagine. They had been so stupid. By setting up such a pathetic charade, the Federation's affiliate species had tricked the Lecarre into underestimating them. Himself, Gola, and Chuvul thought they had blended in perfectly. Like the natives around them, they had taken the little stone statuettes and displayed them by their seats along the waterfront. It seemed like the normal thing to do on this planet.
And then, a crowd of burly natives had surrounded them with those gleaming, predatory smiles, and the three of them had all realized that they'd somehow been caught out.
"Hey, you alright?"
Oul turned around with a start. An alien male had come along the beach, his oiled brown skin glimmering in the suns. He looked concerned, but Oul wasn't about to be fooled again this quickly.
"I'm fine," the Lecarre said tersely, "just...had a tiring swim."
The native smiled. "The water can be rough this time of day." His eyes wandered down, and then slowly up again. "Even with those muscles."
He felt a phantom pain where his hackles should have risen. A little tingle throughout his body. "Ah. Um...thank you."
The newcomer stepped toward him. "What's mine is yours, should you wish it."
From what Oul gathered, that was a polite greeting among these creatures. "What's mine is yours."
The Risan stepped closer still, so that Oul felt the heat of his svelt body against his own. The alien was grinning, that predatory, toothy grin again. "I was hoping you'd say that." He reached out a slippery-skinned hand and ran one fingernail down Oul's chest.
"FUUUUUUUUUCK!"
The Lecarre leaped back, turning around and running back toward the sea before the startled man could react. "YOU'LL NEVER GET MY PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS! NEVER! NEEEEEEVEEEEEEERRRR!!!!!"
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Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
General Ripper approves.
ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
Drat, I was expecting it to be crew members of the USS Sapho looking for people for a pickup game of beach volleyball.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Would have fit, but I don't think they're anywhere near Risa.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Besides, the crew of Sappho don't strike me as the kind to turn down a chance for exercise.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Don't look at me, I suggested Abriel last time and got overruled by Aelin.
The problem is that ch'Tharvasse already provides a +2 to diplomacy results in his present position. We get roughly the same number of diplomacy boosts from our rolled "diplomatic push" checks (which ch'Tharvasse now benefits) as we do from random events. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but the point is, ch'Tharvasse will go from providing a +2 to relations several times a year... to providing a +2 to relations several times a year.
For example, THIS year, we rolled the diplomatic push dice, um... six or seven times, I think. We got nine events. But if we'd rolled the push dice with more of our existing affiliates (as in, two of them), then it'd be nine or ten times that we profited from ch'Tharvasse's bonus, and the situation would be a tie.
So the real benefit to us, mechanically, from promoting ch'Tharvasse is that we get to pick a new chief of staff with a different bonus... and a diplomacy-focused chief of staff may not be available.
By contrast, Sulu provides us with a straight up +10 political will a year. Even if he's only in office for a limited period of time, that's going to have fairly dramatic payoffs.
If any of those people get even one omake worth of content to flesh them out, or something, I will consider them very strong contenders.
An excellent point, I have amended my vote.
The thrust and parry of modern academia has never been so literal.
Well played, I have amended my vote from Aelin to Seras.
As the old Amarki saying goes, "Publish and Perish."
- Location
- Patriarchova
Remind me, have we gotten an Amarki research team yet?
- Location
- somewhere
Admiral Lathriss.Remind me, have we gotten an Amarki research team yet?
Am I the only one who gets the feeling that this whole process will be a whole lot easier once we get some decades into this game? Like we can start naming ships after legends and things that we encounter/create in the game itself.
Like if/after Nash dies, we name the next explorer built the Ka'Sharren and send it to the CBZ.
Like if/after Nash dies, we name the next explorer built the Ka'Sharren and send it to the CBZ.
- Location
- Patriarchova
I meant scientific research.
The reason I ask is because I'm worried about attrition now.
We also need an orbital bombardment weapon called the T'Lorel Cannon.
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- Location
- somewhere
We know there is the Amarkian High Energy Lab and had the opportunity to recruit them.
DannyboyZero
Has a GIF for that
- Location
- United Kingdom
I'm honestly surprised that we haven't named a ship after Kirk yet.
I wouldn't worry about Attrition, we have explorers meant to do long range missions, and a few of them could probably support a long range offensive.
ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
We need a mobile station with a culminated utility nadion emission array called the T'Lorel mobile mining outpost. I imagine it would be roughly spherical, the size of a small moon, and have a utility trench around its circumference.
