That basically restricts us to either using our high level of technology to build really efficient ships that let us have more Combat/Shields per unit cost in materials and crew (Miranda model) or simply having the biggest, bad-ass vessels we have as the largest percentage of our fleet (Lone Ranger model).
This isn't strictly true. An Excelsior may lose against the equivalent of resources in Centaur-As, especially in crew, assuming there's no severe focus firing. A lot of analysis on this at least a hundred pages ago.
In my estimation, Lone Ranger excels during peacetime and exploration, is passable at short-term conflicts, and suffers in long-term conflicts due to eventual attrition of our big expensive vessels compared to the other doctrines.
It's a good thing that we are the diplomacy faction, given that the Klingons are coming out with the B'rel in a few years and that thing basically smacks the Rennie good in almost every category (-1 S/L in exchange for +4H, and costs 20BR and 1O/E/T less, too!)
Keep in mind that Klingon and Romulan "canon" stat lines are getting revised. The existing K'tinga and Romulan BoP are definitely getting the nerf bat. And now that future canon stat lines are only being used as very tentative targets, with far future ones likely being very inaccurate, we shouldn't assume the B'rel is going to have that stat line.
Just thought are fighters going to turn up in this?
Because they very much become a thing in canon by the 2360-2370s, albeit never really focused on much.
Because this is of course the Federation it appears that the small craft were obtained for different roles, but despite being orginally a small courier, and a heavy long range shuttle respectively, the Peregrine and Danube seem to fill out the roles of strike fighter and bomber/gunship very well.
Perhaps the technology to make viable combat small craft only turns up in the 2350s (when the Peregrine is presumably made). In fact it seems like a lot of military designs by stealth were implemented around then, just look at the Ju'Day, which is bascially a Federation bird of prey. And it would have been around then that they started the programs to design the Saber and Akiras.
Hah, I remember this was almost my first question when I started participating in this quest back in page 100 or so.
I figure that fighters in Star Trek do require some requisite tech to make them viable.
Consider why fighters are a thing: Looking at how fighters are used in WW2 and sci-fi in general, fighters provide tactical range and first strike capability. The downsides of fighters are the lack of long-term staying power (requiring carriers or bases) and attritional cost. But that attritional cost is a bit misleading - it mostly weighs in within a battle, where losing fighters means losing combat capability during the battle, instead of in attritional production costs, since the total combat capability of fighters is likely much easier to produce than the equivalent non-carrier capital ship.
Now in Star Trek, it's that "first strike capability" that's thrown into doubt. ST's warp FTL is more similar to Mass Effect's real-space FTL, in that it provides tactical speed and agility, and there's no correlation between smaller ships and faster speed in Star Trek. Excelsiors are currently considered one of the fastest, if not the fastest, ships in the known galaxy right now.
Viable fighters need to have sufficiently minitiaturized warp cores and engines and "burst" FTL capability to be faster than larger ships during battle to actually have that first strike capability. And that's all likely to require further tech.
Also, fighters typically aren't needed for sensor purposes, because a) FTL sensors exist, and apparently larger ships can have better such sensors; and b) you could use drones or runabouts for that anyway.
I've considered that I might want to use the same app I wrote to handle the shuttle swarm attack to handle fighter attacks as a precursor phase to a battle. I might put some thought and effort into rewriting the full combat app, give it a more thought out approach, implement some changes I've been looking to add.
As a bonus, it'll invalidate lots of our fleet combat analysis
Uncertainty FTW?
