Eh. Most of our borders (that aren't Cardassian space at least) seem relatively calm with not that much action, especially once we actually have some ships beyond our minimal defence requirements available. I mean if we add for example a ConB to the RBZ or KBZ, which seems likely to happen n the near to medium future our explorer ships should easily have the necessary freedom for such deployments.
-
Going forward, links to content from Twitter (now X) will no longer be embedded. Pre-existing links should not be affected.
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?
Eh. Most of our borders (that aren't Cardassian space at least) seem relatively calm with not that much action, especially once we actually have some ships beyond our minimal defence requirements available. I mean if we add for example a ConB to the RBZ or KBZ, which seems likely to happen n the near to medium future our explorer ships should easily have the necessary freedom for such deployments.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
I'm not worried about SR - we're past our SR crunch, and any sort of emergencies that require SR costs (ship repairs) can be handled in a variety of ways. Worst case scenario (and it would have to be pretty bad), we have to spend 25pp for more resources. Also remember that the spreadsheet is conservative on resource income.
It's more crew that I'm worried about. We do have an officer and enlisted crunch starting around 2318 or so (more realistically, in 2320), and two more Connie-Bs instead of refits do cost more crew, but I do think that's sufficiently far away that we can do something about it. Worst case scenario, we sell off a Constellation to free up crew.
Another option is to get another EC recruitment drive or two - this snakepit option is actually really great for crew, since for the cost of 25pp (and probably 30pp later) it nets us +2/2/2 crew, and speeds up EC ship crewing, which tends to be more valuable than standard ship crewing. An Academy expansion, in contrast, costs 40pp and requires 4 years after construction just to get us the same +2/2/2 years later, though it does provide continuing value.
Also no plan that I'm aware of involves building more than two 1mt ships. Centaurs are 800kt and Oberths are 150kt. Only Connie-Bs and Renaissances are 1mt.
Right now, I'm seeing all the following being viable 2312 build plans:
1) 2 Excelsiors, 5 Miranda-A refit, 1 Centaur-A or Oberth (plan currently in spreadsheet)
2) 2 Excelsiors, 4 Miranda-A refit, 2 Centaur-A or Oberth, slightly delay Constellation-A refit
3) 2 Excelsiors, 3 Miranda-A refit, 3 Centaur-A or Oberth, delay Constellation-A refit by at least a year
4) 2 Excelsiors, 1 Connie-B, 5 Miranda-A refit (plan variation you seem to favor)
5) 2 Excelsiors, 1 Connie-B, 4 Miranda-A refit, 1 Centaur-A or Oberth, slightly delay Constellation-A refit (another plan variation you seem to favor)
6) 2 Excelsiors, 1 Connie-B, 3 Miranda-A refit, 2 Centaur-A or Oberth, delay Constellation-A refit by at least a year
7) 2 Excelsiors, 2 Connie-B, 4 Miranda-A refit, delay Constellation-A refit
8) 2 Excelsiors, 2 Connie-B, 3 Miranda-A refit, 1 Centaur-A or Oberth, delay Constellation-A refit by at least a year (my plan)
And more variations...
(On a side note, the shipbuild plan spreadsheet gets really unwieldy when modelling so many alternate plans...)
It's more that I don't want us to be so extremely optimized for Lone Ranger that it becomes just as extremely difficult to switch doctrines when it would become advantageous to do so, even with doctrine switch costs. I don't anticipate us switching doctrines this decade, and likely not next decade either, but it's still worrisome.
Well, we'll likely end up defaulting to escort builds if we're having trouble crewing and we don't have further refits to fill up berth time.
With the bulk of our crew going into 3/5/3 Renaissances (up to 8 simultaneous 3-year builds) and 6/5/5 Excelsiors (up to 7 simultaneous 4-year builds), I expect both our officer and enlisted crew to be about equal bottlenecks in the foreseeable future. The spreadsheet is already assuming a generous amount of enlisted income from the Apiata.
So another alternative that's even better for crew efficiency is more Oberths
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
How many Renaissances can we start in 2314? I think that is the big constraint since any connie bs we start will not be finished when the Renaissance is ready.
The main bottleneck is not how many we can start, but how many we can crew two years later. e: This is due to the flexibility refits grant us in berths and resources
Last edited:
I'm disappointed I can only like this once.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We can handle that by mothballing the Constellations if need be. 3 stood-down Constellations crews 2 Rennies with 2 extra enlisted. If we have to mothball every Constellation but Challorn (because the crew veterancy won't transfer, I think) to crew the first wave? So be it. Stock Constellations are trash.
- Location
- USA
If crew is the bottleneck for Renaissance production than going refits/Oberth and Centaur make more sense as each Connie B is about the same crew wise as the Renaissance (Renaissance is 1 more enlisted 1 less tech). Also we have three excelsior berths open next year and 2 the year after that, we would need to use one of the three on refits to get it to 2314 where we have one excelsior berth opening up so we can go the build 2 a year.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's a whole lot easier to hide an Oberth than an Excelsior. Yeah, an Oberth can't hide in quite as many exotic phenomena because it's not got the shields for that, but an Oberth is tiny and will emit a lot less.
@OneirosTheWriter
Starbase Construction hasn't been updated on the research page.
Also, could you double-check T2 Message Networking? I'm like 99% sure the techs were lower last turn and we didn't research it this turn. Unless I'm misunderstanding the overflow mechanic or my memory is tricking me.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
That's +1 to new ship design projects, not +1 to the ship design escort/cruiser/explorers research trees. Confusing, I know.
Keep in mind, the crew bottleneck for even 8 concurrent Renaissance builds is going to be around 2320, to the tune of 10-20 officer and enlisted crew deficits from the second round of Renaissance builds. 10-20 officer and enlisted translates to about 1.5 years of annual crew income.
This is almost regardless of our 2312 build plan, because building more Connie-Bs can involve delaying refits until later*, spacing out Renaissance builds a bit (notice the occasional gaps between Renaissance builds - if expanded by a quarter, we could fit in refits there, or alternatively just get more berths).
2320 is long ways away for us to address it. And that's ignoring much of the expected crew income increases from affiliates, member ratifications, research, snakepit options, and the likely Excelsior-A refits. It's possible that we may not need to mothball or sell any Constellation for crew in 2320.
* Delaying the Constellation-A refits until at least 2313 is something I support, because I want to improve on the refit design for +5 or +6 stat improvement instead of the measly +3 currently. I basically want something like: C4 S3 H3 L3 P3 D4, or failing that, C4 S3 H3 L3 P2 D4, for the Constellation-A.
Last edited:
- Location
- somewhere
You are right, it was at 4/40 and 0/40 last year.
- Location
- Central Standard Time
It still takes a year to retrain a crew
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And? Our position in 2316 will be vastly superior to what it is right now, what with the Connie-B's rolling out, the Miranda-A refits being brought into service, and more Centaur-A's and Excelsiors.
More realistically we might have to mothball one or two for a full wave of Rennies.
And we can just hand those few we mothball off to member fleets, most of whom are limited by raw mats more than crew, and who are frequently using ships inferior to Constellations anyway.
We've also got Rigelian, Apatia and Indorian ratifications by then so we're going to be in a much better place crew wise.
And we've got the upcoming Excelsior-A refit so crew use calcs that don't factor in a slight slowdown in explorer production to cycle on or two Excelsiors back in for upgrades at a time are a tad off.
- Location
- USA
Yes but each berth making a Connie B will not be available for making a Renissance in 2314, I do want as large a wave the first year as we can make. Also we should be adding 40 SR to our income next year, 1 SR colony completing in 2312 and the +5 SR per colony tech also finishing next year and the additional resources from Rigel joining as a member.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
It's more of Constellation-A refit vs Connie-B trade-off. Most plans involve building 5 Renaissances in 2314, and then 2 more in 2315, then another in 2316, and then keep cycling builds with the occasional gap.
- Location
- Patriarchova
I'm actually pretty torn.
Either we should refit all our consties as quickly as possible, or we should forget all about the refit and just mothball the lot of them as soon as the rennies start coming out. I'm honestly not sure which option I favor.
aeqnai
Nerdy Homu
- Location
- Laniakea Supercluster
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm definitely for the latter option myself.
- Location
- Central Standard Time
Remember, mothballing means that the crew needs to be retrained.
Thus there will be a 1 year gap between mothballing a constie and having a Rennie.
Do we have the reserves for a gap?
Also, I think we should hold off on deploying Rennies to border zones or to the Syndicate border systems so that we can keep their capabilities relatively hidden.
Once wave one hits, lets shock everyone with cruiser spam by deploying all to the CBZ
Thus there will be a 1 year gap between mothballing a constie and having a Rennie.
Do we have the reserves for a gap?
Also, I think we should hold off on deploying Rennies to border zones or to the Syndicate border systems so that we can keep their capabilities relatively hidden.
Once wave one hits, lets shock everyone with cruiser spam by deploying all to the CBZ
Last edited:
- Location
- Patriarchova
The Constellation-A is a pretty good ship if you think of it as a heavy escort instead of a light cruiser.
The problems are that 1) they take up more crew than you'd expect from a heavy escort, 2) the refit process - while relatively cheap - still does cost something, and 3) we only have seven of them. Are seven heavy escorts worth more than the extra rennies we could build and crew with those resources?
EDIT:
Crew deducts happen one year in advance of a new ship being finished, normally. I'm assuming that the reason for that is that the crew needs to be trained, so the one year mothball retrain and the one year crew deduct retrain can overlap (ie, we can mothball a constie, and then a year later those crew will be all trained up and ready to serve on a rennie).
If that's correct, then the plan is simple. We use the conniebees to fill out all our defense requirements as they come out, and then mothball all the consties a year before our first flight of rennies are finished.
Again, I'm not saying that this neccessarily is what we should do. Having constie-A's along with the rennies might be the better choice. But if we do decide to replace them, this is how we'd do it.
The problems are that 1) they take up more crew than you'd expect from a heavy escort, 2) the refit process - while relatively cheap - still does cost something, and 3) we only have seven of them. Are seven heavy escorts worth more than the extra rennies we could build and crew with those resources?
EDIT:
Crew deducts happen one year in advance of a new ship being finished, normally. I'm assuming that the reason for that is that the crew needs to be trained, so the one year mothball retrain and the one year crew deduct retrain can overlap (ie, we can mothball a constie, and then a year later those crew will be all trained up and ready to serve on a rennie).
If that's correct, then the plan is simple. We use the conniebees to fill out all our defense requirements as they come out, and then mothball all the consties a year before our first flight of rennies are finished.
Again, I'm not saying that this neccessarily is what we should do. Having constie-A's along with the rennies might be the better choice. But if we do decide to replace them, this is how we'd do it.
Last edited:
We need all the ships we can get at any one time over the next decade. The Federation has huge swathes of territory to cover. I'm really reluctant to mothball/sell any ship if we can arrange it so we don't have to simply by staggering our build schedule with useful refits.
- Location
- USA
What does the bottleneck look like in construction currently? I was browsing through the tech trees and medical has a line of techs that give .25 to all three crew types with some of them applying to explorer as well, xenoppsych has some boosts to affiliate crew recruiting and mineral science can increase our SR and BR gains. There may have been a few more as well, also academy expansion if we are running into a crew crunch. More so what do we need to do one mass build of Renaissance in 2314
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
I dispute the label of useful refit for the Constellation-A. I'd rather have docks working on nothing at all than spend resources and 18 months turning a trash ship into a slightly less trash ship. Or we could build a whole bunch of Centaur-A's instead if we've got the SR for it.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Over the next decade, sure. No one is talking about retiring the consties until our first wave of rennies is ready.
The question is whether we're going to STILL need the consties after then. If not, refitting them is probably a waste.
Last edited:
- Location
- Central Standard Time
Well, personnel will throw a fit if we don't have enough clunkers to train captains.
- Location
- Patriarchova
We have more than enough escorts for that.