Actually, their fleet design doesn't seem a great choice for wolf pack. When you're raiding, the speed of your raiding group is only as fast as your slowest ship. Having to move only as fast as their stingers would logically make it harder to rush through gaps in enemy patrols, avoid battles, and that sort of thing.
Out of all the ship designs we know and in each ship classification, Apiata have the highest defense stats. D4 escorts, D7 cruisers, D7 explorer.
And those stinger escorts are designed to work with a parent queenship (as they lack queens themselves, which may limit independent action), so the part of the defense stat that's not related to speed isn't as relevant for the escorts, so those stingers are likely pretty damn fast for their defense rating.
The Apiata wolf pack of little queenship + swarmers should have no more trouble operating as a wolf pack than a dedicated cruiser wolf pack, which you seem to be advocating (since all other escorts are going to be slower).
Realized I haven't voted yet.
[jk][RIGEL] Sarek
Clearly, Straak loves politics and could use another ratification under his belt
[X][RIGEL] Courageous
For reasons stated by others, McAdam's Courageous is the best and safest option here.
[X][TMIR] Get a report on Cardassian political in-fighting
The main alternative of Cardassian fleet distribution isn't as appealing to me. We already have a recent fleet strength and infrastructure report via the
Ghosts & Whispers epilogue, and if this is just a way to indirectly find out where their priorities are, we can get that through a diplomatic posture report. Also, if we can't even get information on unknown nations, whether client states or threats, via diplomatic posture reports, then I doubt we can get them this way either.
So getting a report on Cardassian political in-fighting is kinda like getting a diplomatic posture report, in that it would help inform us when it starts getting riskier to keep diplo pushing their client states, and if/when they're more open for direct diplomatic contact. There's the option of going to a straightforward diplomatic posture report, and it's less risky if the in-fighting is in its final stages, but this is a novel non-write-in option, and I'm curious to see what comes out of it. And although OOC we know lots of details about Cardassian political structure, and Starfleet now knows more from the Kadak-Tor defection, I think IC, the Federation would love to know more about Cardassian politics for future diplomatic outreach.
[X][CARD] Cardassian Tactics Report (Gain +5% combat vs Cardassian fleets for the next 12 months)
I'd love to vote for another one of the options that T'Mir apparently has access to, like Cardassian Fleet Distribution or Infrastructure, or even Diplomatic Posture, but that doesn't look like an option for the CARD task. Only ship analysis write-ins are accepted here.
The closest option to Infrastructure is the Shipbuilding Report, but we already requested this just
two years ago, and as pointed above, we already have an infrastructure report from last year's Ghost & Whispers crisis. Two years isn't a full round of construction for any of ships being constructed then except the escort. If we delay a shipbuilding report until next year, the most we'll miss out on would be 2-year escort builds.
So although I don't think we'll be having a war with Cardassia next year, Cardassia is already proving that they're open to skirmishing with the Apiata, so a combat bonus is still relevant.
[X][ROM] Romulan Daljerra Cruiser Report
For Romulans, getting a fleet strength report or just finding out about their shipyard infrastructure is nice, but it probably won't guide our actions next year. I do want to see what their new ship is like, to see if our upcoming Renaissance is a match for it. Out of all these non-urgent options, I'll choose the one the piques my curiosity the most.
As Briefvoice pointed out, we've never gotten a Romulan or Klingon fleet strength report throughout our decade-long tenure, so even if it's not urgent, we should get at least one of them, and out of the Romulans vs Klingons, I'll choose the Klingons because we get
2 1 Romulan report a year, and
only 1 none for Klingons, so that we can more easily allocate a fleet strength report next year for the Romulans than the Klingons.
edit: actually just 1 free Romulan report, none for Klingons.
[X][REPORT] Klingon Fleet Strength Report
As just noted above, want at least one Klingon or Romulan fleet strength report.
[X][REPORT] Syndicate strength and how much Impact do we need?
We might be de facto allocating one anti-Syndicate intel report for our monthly reports, but allocating the equivalent of two intel reports to our current highest priority threat is just prudent. This is something we've wanted to know since we started the campaign. From the corruption levels of the Orion planets, it looks like it's going to take at least a couple years, so there's no excuse to think that a "how much impact is needed" report would be wasted on a conflict about to end. We need to know a clearer timeline, so that we can calibrate further resources, whether ships or pp, to this effort next year.
I'm also assuming that all the variations of this particular vote are basically the same thing, and just quibbling on wording: "Syndicate Resilience and necessary Impact to win the conflict", "Orion Syndicate Impact Endurance and Asset HP Estimates", "Syndicate Operations". Doesn't matter much since "Syndicate strength and how much Impact do we need?" is currently in the lead anyway.
[X][REPORT] The relationship between the Sydraxians and the Gretarians.
The final intel report choice boiled down to Gretarians (and Sydraxians) vs Yrillians (and implicitly Cardassians). Both are important, and I judge them to be both as urgent as each other. But I feel a bit bad for not voting to diplo push the Gretarians (when we did diplo push the Yrillians), and we know very little about what their situation is like (we do have a
canon-ish omake on Yrillians), so I'm favoring an intel report on Gretarians this year.
