So, to be clear, two questions:

1) Will building one more Centaur-A now, instead of one Constitution-B, enable us to actually have one more Rennie, total, for all future time? Or will it just mean we get one Rennie one year sooner than would otherwise be possible? If ships are being delayed because we lack the people to crew them all, would the extra two officers and two enlisted enable us to squeeze out an extra Renaissance that would otherwise be impossible? I'm pretty sure the answer is 'no,' more on the reasoning below. *

2) If the answer to the above question is "no," then is getting one more Rennie in (for example) 2320 rather than 2321 actually worth 'downgrading' from a cruiser to an escort in terms of construction we'll have by 2315?
____________________

*I'm not sure I buy the "one more Rennie" argument, because we get enough people to crew multiple new ships every year. Any Rennie we can't lay down in 2318, we'll have a chance to lay down in 2319 with the new crew coming in from that year. We're not losing a ship, we're delaying one.

The Constitution-B will still be performing as well or better than the escorts we'll have at that time, and there are dozens of other ships we'd realistically want to retire before even thinking about retiring a ConnieBee. By the time the ConnieBees are "suffering from the same performance gap that has hit our Constellations," it'll be 2340. And the ship class that performs well enough to make it truly worth replacing the Constitution-Bs isn't going to be the Renaissance-A. It's going to be whatever ship class succeeds the Renaissance as well, when we design our "early TNG-era" cruiser some time around 2340.

So... you don't foresee us having trouble meeting defense requirements AND policing the Syndicate AND potentially reinforcing the Apiata against a Cardassian attack that could be hitting them any time now if they keep attacking Cardassian ships and installations, between now and the year 2318?

That seems pretty optimistic.
Syndicate is one that would need quantity, so two Centaur-As would be better due to being able to be in two spots at once. Defense requirements I think we can manage if we keep up the 2 excelsior a year with the 5 connie b coming online next year. As for the Cardassians hopefully diplomacy works there, but I think we have the ships that we can spare to convince them to back down, consider the explorer corp as a strong elite force we can call on if things turn hot that are generally 7 to 9 Combat each. With soon to be six of them around and one more by 2318 that would be at least seven ships not tied to defense requirements.
 
Separate budgets. They don't actually require much, most auxiliaries use plentifully available material rather than very high grade duranium and tritanium composites, and I've already talked about how civilian-grade warp cores are locked down to nearly black box status. The costs of course, is Warp 5 Cruise, which takes about a month to traverse a subsector (the grid marks, feel free to pick your own size for them, and thus speed for warp 5).

For Starfleet, auxiliaries come out of budgets associated with those commands rather than Operations, and thus aren't tracked with yours. (Truth be told I save myself the bother of tracking them and just rule of thumb it. Sorry if that upsets anyone, but I have to cut corners off somewhere!)
In that case, would modifying my earlier proposal for logistics command make sense?

And because why not, here's an expanded proposal:
Add actions that will gain small (+1/+2) amounts of political will from the various factions.
Examples:
Hawk: build listening posts in border zones
Expansionist: build some outposts outside Federation space
Pacifist: build research outposts, build joint posts, build civvie grade science ships
Development: build starbases, build freighters
 
My suggestion is, let's hold off on complicating the game further. Oneiros is going through a rough patch and I don't want to risk creating any new mechanics that suck the enjoyment out of what he's already doing for him.

EDIT:

So, another chapter of Dreams. These pretty much write themselves, they sort of grab me by the collar and demand that I do it. Hope you like it.

I split the main scene of this one into two parts, because it was just getting too long.
 
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Omake - Dreams Pt 3 - Simon_Jester
DREAMS, Ch. 3

Recommended Listening: Veteran of the Psychic Wars

Ready Room, USS Enterprise
Stardate 22806.4


"Come in!" Nash looked up from her console as the door hissed open, admitting a familiar green face atop a uniform of medical white. "You look worried, Pritya; what's wrong? Outbreak of Levodian flu? Tragic plague of hangnails? Sirian sniffles?"

Pritya Asurva smiled, but didn't- quite- laugh. Maybe Nash needed to practice her delivery a bit more; that would have worked a month ago.

"It's not the crew, ma'am. It's you."

"Me?"

"Stress. We can tell. Captain, what's wrong? Sam's noticed, Leaniss is worried sick about you..."

"I've- okay. I've been, ah, having nightmares." Nash rubbed the back of her neck. "About 33 Fujit."

The CMO looked honestly surprised at that- and why shouldn't she? She didn't remember the ship getting the hell shot out of it dozens of times! But to her credit the Orion's face turned suddenly, instantly sympathetic.

Ghosts flashed before Nash's eyes, a score of dead faces blurring into each other- some of them Pritya's. Faces she'd failed over, and over, a dozen different ways. Faces that now walked and talked. The ghosts of her twenty-times-over dead crew- her students, her friends, even a onetime lover- now lived. They walked the Enterprise's corridors, smiling and chattering and congratulating her for her brilliance. As if she'd saved them by being some sort of hero, instead of having gotten them all killed over and over and again and again...

Pritya got more and more worried as the seconds ticked by. "Nightmares. That's understandable. I'm no tactics expert, but it could have been pretty bad, couldn't it?"

You have NO IDEA! "Yeah."

"You know what I've told you about getting good rest. If you need to talk to someone about it..."

Inwardly, Nash cursed the message from Temporal Investigations, classifying the whole incident one-triple-A. Yeah, that'd be nice. Someone to talk to about it. Right.

Outwardly, the captain nodded slowly. "If it gets bad enough, I will. And... just in case, mix up another of those Crazy Captain Specials."

Captain's Quarters, USS Enterprise
Stardate 22806.8


Her eyes focused again on the PADD; she stopped for a moment to wonder why the file of poetry seemed so... weird. Some of it was nice, but it was weird.

Okaaaay, I'm reading "Selected Earth Poetry, Northwest European, Transitional Age." In the original pre-atomic English. Brain must be shot if I'm picking stuff from another planet. Time for sleeps.

She laid the PADD aside, and muttered something the ship's computer took as a sign to kill the lights. A fragment from the last piece she'd read flashed through her mind, on its way out of short-term memory and into nothingness:

Perchance to dream...



USS Enterprise
Corridor Outside the Brig
Stardate 22806.9


Huh? I don't remember us taking any prisoners was Nash's thought as the brig door slid open. Behind the glimmering security force field and its grid of reinforcing bars, were Cardassians. Very glum looking Cardassians. She was pretty sure she recognized one of them as the thug who'd told her he was Mila Lang's cousin- then shot her. Another was probably the captain of the big battlecruiser, the Lorgot she thought it was. Some others.

Faces she remembered, not only from the endless battle, but from the dreams after the battle.

Two security men, their faces... oddly bland, forgettable, none she recognized, stood at the back of the brig, facing the containment cell and the door at once. Their hands hovered close to their phasers, in case the Cardies managed some trick to slip loose.

And closer to her, in a red officer's tunic, was the third guard. A tall, blonde-haired human, her back turned. The old rifle held easily in her hands proof that told Nash, instantly, where she was and who she was seeing again. It was the first good thing to happen since the Indorions had called on Enterprise to help sort out their skirmishes with Karnack and Trager.

The vision Nash dearly hoped wasn't just a figment of her overstrained imagination whirled, smiling joyously, the Cherenkov light in her eyes flashing as she set the rifle down on the desk. She paused only to glance back at one of the security men, who nodded back at her. Then she moved, as only the embodiment of a starship could, and Nash found herself swept along in the wake of her dream's long strides.

"How do I look?" Nash's dear, cherished, recurring dream spread her arms. She was gorgeous in the red jacket, gorgeous, especially now. Still...

"Great- but what happened to the miniskirt uniform?"

"It was getting old. So I figured, time to move on, and hung it up with the jumpsuit and the WAVE uniform."

"Since when do waves have uniforms?"

"Don't ask. Anyway, that's not important." The blurring corridors shifted, Nash's dream leading her back to her quarters. "What's important is that you've got Glinn This and and Gul That running around inside your head, and the dream-version of poor Jennifer is spending so much time getting phasered that she's about to file for overtime pay. From your own brain! And out there on the outside of your pretty blue head, half your senior officers are worried sick about you and you can't tell them why. Because temporal paradoxes!"

The Starfleet dream rolled her eyes, in a silent curse on all panicky bureaucrats, as Nash's door slid open. The two walked through, the captain not thinking to ask why her dream had led her back here.

"Intelligence said-"

"Whatever. You won't tell Sam or Pritya, fine. But you can tell me. And don't you give me any nonsense about getting caught in a time loop being under triple-A classification, captain! I was making time jumps when you were a gleam in your mommies' eyes!"

"You- you remember!?" Nash gasped. Maybe she shouldn't be comforted by the idea that one thing she might be imagining agreed with another thing she thought she might have imagined... and yet. And yet. She sank to sit on the bed.

"What? Of course I do! I was in it with you! Don't you remember?" Her love smiled, stepping across the distance and taking her hand. Nash looked up at the vision in red, wondering. "That whole thing, it was us- together. Remember, we only got caught in the loop if you died... or if I did. I was with you the entire time-" she reached out to touch the captain on the shoulder. "As many times as it took. You did good."

"I stank! I got us killed so many times!" Nash found herself crumbling, sobbing. She'd never do this in front of the crew. Or the public. Hell, she'd probably never even do it alone. Arms made of something rather more- or at least something other- than atoms wrapped around Nash, as her dream sat down on the bed beside her.

Nash shuddered, finally able to admit to someone what had happened. "I don't know how I stood it. I don't know how you stood it!"

The vision nodded. "I understand. I like a good dance as much as the next girl, but that whole thing, taken together? Not an experience I want to repeat." She shivered a little, a counterpoint to her captain.

Nash gulped. "I'm sorry-"

She shook her head, Cherenkov-blue eyes flaring. "No! You were the best part of the whole thing! I was so proud of you by that last time, I'm lucky that didn't make me explode, we'd have had to start all over again again. So you stop apologizing and hush. I said you did good-" and her expression took on a wicked twist at the corner of her mouth. "And I meant it, oh captain my captain. These things happen."

"What things?"

"Boarding. Bad luck. Very bad days. I should tell you about that time with the Klingons. Or those punk kids. Or, oooooh, that other time with the Klingons." She grinned, looking almost cruel as she reminisced. "Nobody knows about that little story except me, but the look on their faces was to die for. Ah... Sorry. Bad joke." The dream flinched a little, and snapped back to herself.

Nash still had to wonder if the woman she saw might be a hallucination, however much she might hope otherwise. But if she wasn't... Under the strain of all those horrible hours, she felt something welling up inside her again. As it had, on her next-to-last run through the time loop. A question she never normally asked herself, let alone anyone else. Had promised herself to never ask, a promise she wouldn't have needed at any other time- and now broke.

"What would Jim Kirk have done?"
 
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Omake - Dreams Pt 3.2 - Simon_Jester
DREAMS, Ch. 3, Pt. 2

"What would Jim Kirk have done?"


USS Enterprise
Captain's Quarters
Stardate 22806.9


And her vision smiled. "What, caught in the vise like that? Probably had Nyota squawk something about corbomite."

Nash blinked, tried to place the reference- oh, right, that after-action report! "Yeah, like that would have worked."

"It got us out of a couple of jams, but never one like that, no. When that didn't work, hm... Something a lot like your first try. Or, hm, your eleventh. Or the thirteenth. Maybe that twenty-second time. If he was at the top of his game that day, your twenty-sixth. He was creative enough, but he didn't have much of an eye for astrographic advantages- Spock and Hikaru usually handled that kind of thing."

"But what got us out was-"

"Nobody would have come up with that one on the first try. Believe me, I've known enough super-geniuses, and enough traps, to know that. If it takes ten minutes with no distractions for a smart guy like Diego to figure something out, no one would come up with it in the first ten seconds of an ambush naturally. And you know it too. So stop pretending you're not at least kind of awesome."

"I used to think so. Then I got us all killed a zillion times."

"You told me, once, that we'd beat the Biophage and be normal together, again. And you were right." The spirit looked stern. "So now it's my turn. That fight is over. It was about the worst odds I can remember, and you found a way to cheat the Reaper, and eventually we kicked their asses." She turned, slightly, prodding Nash gently in the chest. "And you wouldn't be Andorian, or much of anything else except an evil robot, if you weren't shook up about it. But you are shook up. And that's okay. Just don't let the shakes lie to you about who you really are underneath it all."

Nash looked down at her hands. She remembered them, wrapped around a phaser as she stood off Cardassian crew in the passages of their own ship. Dragging her as she crawled back-broken across her bridge through rolling smoke and the stink of ozone. Leaniss in her arms just before the Cardassians blew the hatch to main engineering, and that last one flooded her veins with a sense of- almost embarrassment, as she looked up at her dream-love.

Was she a captain first, a woman second? The other way around? Was she a hero or a fool? Was she even the same Andorian who'd gone through the subspace incline at 33 Fujit? Was she just the twenty-seventh copy, one of countless spares who kept somehow popping out of the void after their predecessors had been exploded or murdered?

Nash's hands curled into fists. "Who am I, really?"

"Well, if you're going to ask me..." Nash's dream shuffled her foot, eyes cast down, a silly smile creeping across her face.

Nash felt her antennae twitch, an involuntary tell that she couldn't quite work out the meaning of. "Sure."

"Well- you're the captain I love. That's good enough for me."

That was enough to accomplish the rare social feat of leaving Nash ka'Sharren speechless for a moment. But in the end, there could be only one answer.

"I love you too."

The spirit's embrace clasped Nash tighter. "I know. And you knew about me."

"I'd... hoped."

"Why do you think I put on the red after all these years? We're good for each other, captain."

"Thanks. I'd... very much hoped you'd think so."

"We have the grandest voyages, and the best crew in the Starfleet, and I've got you to thank for it. So from where I'm sitting, things have been pretty good." Her dream wriggled slightly, amused. "Although maaaybe I'm biased. After all, I'm more used to fighting over and over and sometimes getting blown up or sunk and coming back for more."

Nash thought about that for a minute.

"I'm... I hate watching people die. Seeing it happen over and over... it's shaken me up, angel. I don't know if I can keep doing this." She felt the arms around her wriggle again at 'angel,' but... there, she'd said it. She'd said it.

"Mm. I think you care more than any captain I've had in a long time, at that... I love it about you, but it's hard on you. And maybe you need a maintenance cycle to keep your morale up- but you are not done. You've still got way too much ass-kicking left in you!" Her dream sounded mock-stern, affectionate, the backing Nash had been craving, but couldn't seek from her friends.

If this was an illusion, Nash was officially giving up. She'd believe it. She loved her ship. She really, really did.

Consensus reality was overrated anyway.

"I guess we do have to make sure the Cardassians don't think we've turned into some kind of imaginary ghost ship. Normally you only hear about the kind of stunt we pulled in no-shit ghost stories."

"Mhm. We are so real. But first, you get rest. Definitely rest. You took a hit to your main computer back there at 33 Fujit, somewhere in there. You've earned some time to get yourself back in fighting trim."

"I'll have a lot to do..."

The tall near-human stretched back, now holding Nash almost at arm's length, shaking her gently and enunciating her words. "You. Need to. Defragment. Don't let me hear any defeatism OR any victory disease, until you've had a good long rest. Somewhere nice. We're headed for Betazed, that's a nice planet, right? Lots of green. You Andorians need more plants in your lives. Come to think of it, so do I. Maybe in my next life I'll have a proper arboretum again..." Nash's love giggled. "I mean really, they brought me back twice the size, and no garden this time! Do you believe it?"

"Maybe we can figure something out down in the engineering hull. Bazeck hasn't seemed busy enough lately..." Nash snickered.

"No rest for the weary."

"My thoughts exactly!"

"Mhm. Of course... now that you know my true feelings, captain, you have to pay the price." Her dream grinned wickedly.

Nash raised an eyebrow, inquiring.

"You have to... listen to my idea of sappy poetry!"

"What."

"I've been waiting to try this one. Besides, you need something to help you get back in touch with your inner badass."

"...Okay."

Her love paused, a hand at the nape of her neck for a moment, then began reciting, radiant blue eyes dancing.

"Strangers drawn from the ends of the world, jewelled and plumed were we;
She a knight of the winter race, and I was Queen of the Sea.
Under the stars beyond our stars where the new-forged meteors glow,
Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago!

Ever 'neath high Valhalla Hall the well-tuned horns begin,
When the swords are out in the underworld, and the weary Gods come in.
Ever through high Valhalla Gate the Patient Angel goes
He opens the eyes that are blind with hate— he joins the hands of foes.

Dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above—
Wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we spurned and we strove.
Worlds upon worlds we tossed aside, and scattered them to and fro,
The night that we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago!

They are forgiven as they forgive all those dark wounds and deep,
Their beds are made on the lap of Time and they lie down and sleep.
They are forgiven as they forgive all those old wounds that bleed.
They shut their eyes from their worshippers; they sleep till the world has need.

I with the star she had marked for her own— she with her set desire—
Lost in the loom of the Night of Nights— lighted by worlds afire—
Met in a war against the Gods where the headlong meteors glow,
Hewing our way to Valhalla, a million years ago!

She will come back— come back again, as long as the blue worlds roll.
He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would waste a soul?


Nash paused. "That's... that's... pretty good." Even making allowances for how much her love's literally glowing delivery had added to the work. But the spirit looked sheepish.

"I really, really can't take credit. It's Old Terran. I just... switched a few things around, and changed one or two lines." The spirit smiled, her cheeks slightly flushed.

"It's okay. You were great. I have to ask, though..."

"Yes?"

"What's a Valhalla?"

"...Um."

"No, seriously."

"Ah... okay. Human thing. From the Iron Age, from the peninsula at the northwest corner of Eurasia. It's like the Klingon version of paradise, only with better ventilation and prettier wait staff. Eternal drinking and feasting, and fighting where nobody ever really gets hurt. The serving-girls were called 'valkyries,' who double as messengers to transport the souls of dead warriors to the afterlife."

That sounded familiar from secondary school. The last part. Not from some random bunch of Iron Age aliens, either. And they'd laughed at her for taking 'Pre-Unification Andorian Culture and Mythology!'

"They sound like air-maidens."

"Air-maidens are, um. A bit more violent- buuuut they don't spend as much time shuttling cargo. I guess they get to set their own hours better." Nash's dream laughed softly. "I think I'd rather be an air-maiden."

"But if you're an air-maiden instead of a valkyrie, how do we sneak into Valhalla for the booze?"

"We'll just have to hew our way in. Especially if it's guarded by Cardies. You know, even if nobody remembers except you and me, I'm pretty sure we've technically blown up more of their ships than they actually have. And remember the look on Gul Whatsisname's face? We're the Queen of the Sleet to them now, come to swoop down out of the white whenever they turn their backs, and kick them halfway to Andromeda."

Nash laughed. "You won't get to my head with that kind of flattery. I'm a lover, not a fighter."

"Oh come on, we have too much in common for you to give me that. We can be both."

"...Spaceship or not, I love you."

"Love you too."

Her words were balm.
 
You know, it's too bad we aren't still doing omake bonuses because this series might well be worth getting Enterprise to Elite.
 
I don't think @OneirosTheWriter ever actually said that we're NOT doing omake bonuses, unless I'm misremembering.

Basically the problem is that we can't go back and allocate awards for all the dozens of omakes that already exist, there's no sane way to do it that wouldn't ludicrously unbalance the quest.

He never said he'll never do such awards again, it's just that the idea of rewarding all the back omakes is borderline impossible.
 
It wouldn't stop me from writing, but I'm certainly hoping that I can send in enough boxtops to get Orion Privateers.
And maybe a few other things around the edges.

If I can get enough time.
I don't think He never said he'll never do such awards again, it's just that the idea of rewarding all the back omakes is borderline impossible.
Mass production is a great thing. Terrible, but great.

EDIT: Hoo boy, weird things with tagging/links here. Fixed now.
 
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So, just to get some hard numbers, I'm always hearing about how short we are on defense, but the front page never looks that way to me. How much defense are we looking for? And if you don't want to count non-mobile starbases and outposts, or prefer to have specific defense ratings of those as well, state it, please. So, for instance, at least all star systems in the sector total defense in star ships, plus half that in starbases. I realize that isn't the official defense, because @OneirosTheWriter's totals on the front page doesn't reflect that, but I wanted to follow the thinking of the community here. Also, please include approximates for projects like the Syndicate fight.

Another point? Say the Seyek creates a new sector, and that sector requires a D12. We are putting down the frames of at least two Excelsior's a year these days, which would cover that requirement for the short term, until things settled down.
 
It is extremely unlikely that a new-build Centaur-A will remain useful to Starfleet for longer than an equally new Constitution-B. Remember that Constitution-Bs aren't refits of tired old ships; they are entirely new (or nearly so, with nothing more significant than the dining room chairs and such getting reused).

Even if the Centaur-B refit becomes available some time in, oh, 2325 or 2330 (likely), it will probably not grant the Centaur-B higher average stats than a Constitution-B.

Furthermore, I don't see how refitting Mirandas competes with building a Constitution-B in a particular berth. A Constitution-B adds a new ship to our fleet. Refitting Mirandas makes existing ships stronger, but doesn't increase the size of the fleet. Ultimately we should refit all our Mirandas (and in my opinion our Constellations), but the need to do so isn't so urgent that we need to devote ALL our one-megaton berths to doing so. We can spare one or two to build ships like Oberths, Centaur-As, and Constitution-Bs.

...because we're not about to replace the Miranda with a categorically better ship that costs the same amount, but we are about to do that to the conniebee?
 
...because we're not about to replace the Miranda with a categorically better ship that costs the same amount, but we are about to do that to the conniebee?
What I'm getting at is that comparing a Miranda refit to a Constitution-B is apples and oranges.

The Constitution-B represents a significant addition to our overall capability- a new ship. We can make trade-offs in what new ships we obtain when, but basically it comes down to "new ship."

The Miranda refit does not represent a new ship, it represents an incremental but desirable boost to an existing one.

Remember that my suggestion is "Let's get a ConnieBee now, instead of getting a Centaur-A now and maybe getting one Rennie one year earlier." The Constitution-B isn't competing with a Renaissance, it's competing with a Centaur-A. And even with another round of refits the Centaur-A isn't likely to be an obviously better ship.

So, just to get some hard numbers, I'm always hearing about how short we are on defense, but the front page never looks that way to me. How much defense are we looking for? And if you don't want to count non-mobile starbases and outposts, or prefer to have specific defense ratings of those as well, state it, please. So, for instance, at least all star systems in the sector total defense in star ships, plus half that in starbases. I realize that isn't the official defense, because @OneirosTheWriter's totals on the front page doesn't reflect that, but I wanted to follow the thinking of the community here. Also, please include approximates for projects like the Syndicate fight.

Another point? Say the Seyek creates a new sector, and that sector requires a D12. We are putting down the frames of at least two Excelsior's a year these days, which would cover that requirement for the short term, until things settled down.
The heart of the problem is that (at least until now) we weren't getting new ships fast enough to have a reserve. We've always had enough ships that we can parcel them out and shuffle them around to meet all our defense requirements somehow. We kept ahead of increasing defense requirements. But when we wanted to pry loose ships, we always had limits. We had to scrape a ship from one place, a ship from another, switch out a Defense 3 ship for a Defense 2 ship somewhere else.

There's no central reserve of normal Starfleet ships that is free to be redeployed.

That's why the anti-Syndicate task force has no science vessels or Excelsiors with high-end sensor suites that let them sweep Orion space with maximum effectiveness.

That's why we really don't have the flexibility to just pull four or five Excelsiors into a task force and roll into Sydraxian space to demand that they negotiate an end to the raids or face the consequences, even if we want to.

The only really 'flexible' reserve force we have is the Explorer Corps, and that's important enough to our economy (and troublesome to rebuild if we lose a ship) that we can't always use it the way we'd like.

Now, the Constitution-Bs are going to help with this, but we've got at least three sectors likely to start adding to our defense requirements in the near future. Excelsior flagships for our remaining sector garrisons will help, but we're still pushing to get those out there, and until the past few years most of our sectors simply didn't have one.

By 2315 we MAY not have problems with sector defense requirements... as long as the totals in the existing sectors don't rise.
 
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So we want what - say somewhere between one to three task forces on standby, made up of, say, an Oberth or equiv, an Excelsior or Ambassador, a decent cruiser, and two escorts? Plus the standard defenses as listed?

Edit: I just noticed - your example was 4-5 Excelsiors as a fleet, rather than a mix of ships. Whew, okay, that's a fair amount right there. Maybe only one or two task forces at that level of strength.
 
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In that case, would modifying my earlier proposal for logistics command make sense?

And because why not, here's an expanded proposal:
Add actions that will gain small (+1/+2) amounts of political will from the various factions.
Examples:
Hawk: build listening posts in border zones
Expansionist: build some outposts outside Federation space
Pacifist: build research outposts, build joint posts, build civvie grade science ships
Development: build starbases, build freighters
Well, there actually is a Logistics Command, tucked beneath the central Starfleet Command (i.e., it answers to your office via your Chief of Staff). I've been considering, in light of the new developments, allowing it to be raised to an independent command that is interacted with directly.
 
I love it!

I have one minor suggestion for amendment. ;)

Cherenkov-blue is this color:



In real life you see it in the water around a nuclear reactor core; particles coming off the reactor hit the surrounding water and go "wait, the speed of light in water is, uh [checks speedometer]... HIT THE BRAKES OH SHIT!"

The energy they shed in the process of hitting the brakes is emitted in the form of a very distinctive kind of light that looks like nothing else. It's more of an electric-blue than a medium-dark blue, as you see. Although it's subtly different than any electric arc I've ever seen.
 
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So we want what - say somewhere between one to three task forces on standby, made up of, say, an Oberth or equiv, an Excelsior or Ambassador, a decent cruiser, and two escorts? Plus the standard defenses as listed?

Edit: I just noticed - your example was 4-5 Excelsiors as a fleet, rather than a mix of ships. Whew, okay, that's a fair amount right there. Maybe only one or two task forces at that level of strength.
Well, us pulling together a squadron of Excelsiors is just an example. It's something that's been suggested but never tried, except for the attack on Kadesh. On the other hand, four Excelsiors is Defense 24, whereas an Excelsior, an Oberth, a modern cruiser, and two Centaurs is Defense 18. So there's not that big of a gap in terms of how far over our defense requirements we need to be, in order to do one versus the other.
 
Well, us pulling together a squadron of Excelsiors is just an example. It's something that's been suggested but never tried, except for the attack on Kadesh. On the other hand, four Excelsiors is Defense 24, whereas an Excelsior, an Oberth, a modern cruiser, and two Centaurs is Defense 18. So there's not that big of a gap in terms of how far over our defense requirements we need to be, in order to do one versus the other.

As our crew and resource pool gradually increase, I suspect we'll see the excelsior reclassified as a "heavy cruiser" that serves alongside the rennie's "light cruiser." Having a couple excelsiors in each sector will be the norm pretty soon at our current build rate. Mixed excelsior/rennie squadrons likewise.

Conniebees have almost the same crew and statline as rennies, so they should fit in more or less seamlessly among the latter until the rennie-A comes along, at which point they'll likely start to underperform.
 
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Underperform, yes, but honestly? They won't be an embarrassment (the way people think of the Constellations as being, or the way the Soyuzes were). Not until we start seeing Ambassadors as regular sector garrison flagships, Excelsiors as the 'common cruiser' that bulks out the defense requirements, and whatever smaller-scale cruiser replaces the Rennie is on the way.

The ConnieBee isn't going to have much trouble holding its own against next-gen escorts, and that's the really critical thing. What calls into doubt the value of a Constellation is the danger that one might lose a fight to a Takaaki or a Hasque or some such thing.
 
I don't see how it makes sense to build a Connie-B instead of a Cenatur-A or an Oberth unless we intend to never build more of those. If we are expecting to build more Centaur-As we can pull up one of them and effectively replace the Connie-B with a Renaissance. Let's say we'd otherwise build the next Cenatur-A in 2318, and shift Renaissance builds around until then. Starting a Centaur-A in 2312, compared to starting a Connie-B: 2314: Centaur-A vs nothing. 2315-2316: Centaur-A vs Connie-B. 2317: Centaur-A + Renaissance vs Connie-B. 2318-2319: Centaur-A vs Connie-B. 2320+ : Renaissance vs Connie-B.

Long term costs are exactly the same (except one point of crew type difference), and we are clearly better off with the first version, especially once refits for the Renaissance become available. In the short term there are 2 years where we are significantly better off, and two years where we are worse of. If we are approximating the value of a ship with (sum of stats)^1.5 then we get:
2314: 70.1 vs 0
2315-16, 2318-19: 70.1 vs 110.3
2317: 195.1 vs 110.3

The average over those 6 years:
90.9 vs 91.9

So building a Centaur-A now instead of a Connie-B is essentially indistinguishable in the mid term and clearly better in the long term.
 
I don't see how it makes sense to build a Connie-B instead of a Cenatur-A or an Oberth unless we intend to never build more of those. If we are expecting to build more Centaur-As we can pull up one of them and effectively replace the Connie-B with a Renaissance. Let's say we'd otherwise build the next Cenatur-A in 2318, and shift Renaissance builds around until then. Starting a Centaur-A in 2312, compared to starting a Connie-B: 2314: Centaur-A vs nothing. 2315-2316: Centaur-A vs Connie-B. 2317: Centaur-A + Renaissance vs Connie-B. 2318-2319: Centaur-A vs Connie-B. 2320+ : Renaissance vs Connie-B.

Long term costs are exactly the same (except one point of crew type difference), and we are clearly better off with the first version, especially once refits for the Renaissance become available. In the short term there are 2 years where we are significantly better off, and two years where we are worse of. If we are approximating the value of a ship with (sum of stats)^1.5 then we get:
2314: 70.1 vs 0
2315-16, 2318-19: 70.1 vs 110.3
2317: 195.1 vs 110.3

The average over those 6 years:
90.9 vs 91.9

So building a Centaur-A now instead of a Connie-B is essentially indistinguishable in the mid term and clearly better in the long term.
The "value of a ship is the sum of the stats raised to the three halves power" formula seems extremely arbitrary, but that's largely beside the point because your argument is at least worthy of respect on its own merits, without the "70 versus 0" numbers and so forth.

Engaging on that level, I question your argument that we will be starting a Renaissance in this berth in 2314 if we DON'T start a Constitution-B there this year. That isn't in Briefvoice's planned spreadsheet; the proposed 'next job' for that berth would be a Constellation refit. That is the job we'd be deferring until some time later in the decade.

How does that impact your calculation?

You appear to be assuming we'll start a massive Rennie wave on all our one-megaton berths in 2314, when it's not clear that we'd be able to fund one or crew it when it 'arrives' in 2317.
 
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The "value of a ship is the sum of the stats raised to the three halves power" formula seems extremely arbitrary,
I proposed it something like 700 pages ago, long before any of the builds discussed here were a consideration in any form. It's arbitrary, but not made up specifically for this discussion, and it's closer to the real values than something simpler like stat sum, and stat sum would actually put the Centaur-A version ahead significantly.

Engaging on that level, I question your argument that we will be starting a Renaissance in this berth in 2314 if we DON'T start a Constitution-B there this year. That isn't in Briefvoice's planned spreadsheet; the proposed 'next job' for that berth would be a Constellation refit. That is the job we'd be deferring until some time later in the decade.
I'm losing respect for you here for even making such a ridiculous argument. The identity of a particular berth is just out the leas relevant thing in this discussion you could imagine. A Connie-B costs significantly more crew and resources than a Centaur-A (more than twice as much crew, even!), and Renaissance ramp up is mostly limited by crew. I was being generous to your side of the argument by assuming building a Connie-B only sacrifices a Rennie about a third of the time, rather than about half of the time as crew costs would suggest.
 
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