It's self-indulgent because it's not "our ship" to give away. It belongs to the Federation and was made to help the Federation. I view it as an abdication of responsibility, being generous with something that was entrusted to us for another purpose entirely. The member worlds all chip in to fund these ships. Hell, even non-member worlds add resources. The ships should be used to make their lives better, not sent off on a cool-sounding mission far away.
They gave us a mandate for exploration.
We are fulfilling that mandate.
This is, or ought to be, up to the Council. If they think it's a 'good exploration,' they can approve it. If they think it's a 'bad exploration,' they can deny it. If they're on the fence and we have to convince people, that will be reflected in a proportionate PP cost. We can make our decisions then. If the Council thinks 'wasting' an explorer on spending five years with the Kadeshi, or 'wasting' an
Oberth on spending twenty years with them, or anything else of that nature, is unwise... they can say so.
I for one will listen to them.
This is one of those moments where I can't really give you the Trek experience. Because if this were setting up as a Star Trek movie moment, this would almost certainly be the time when Nash essentially steals the Stargazer (no doubt in a deranged plot-hole laden manner) and heads off to follow the Kadesh, leaving whoever is in charge of Starfleet, plus the Council, in apoplectic, but ultimately impotent, rage.
Possibly. But in that case, I think I like it better our way- any ships we send will be supplied, prepared, lunchboxes packed and care packages assembled, to do exploration
right.
I don't want to half-ass exploration. Any expeditions *I* send out will be fully assed.
Guys, I've been thinking and... I want to build a Miranda-A.
When the universe destroys one of your ships, you pick yourself off the ground and build a new one. It's a rule. We lost a Miranda and we should build a Miranda-A to replace it. Would could start it next next year after one of the Connies pops out of its dock. It won't be very expensive in crew or materials. We can name it the Tiger.
Am I crazy?
No, that is actually a lovely idea and I support it 100% if we can fit it in. Also,
Miranda-As are cost-effective fighting ships that cost minimal crew- about as close to a
Defiant as we can get with the current combination of technology and political will. We're fairly likely to need those some time in the next 5-10 years.
I don't see the point. I've already expressed the opinion that a modernized escort can be Miranda-size, Miranda-or-better resource cost, and Miranda-crew. That would be everything we want from a new Miranda-A build and more, and would only cost us a year extra build time and a handful of resources we have anyway. If we have a hankering to build a cheap, low crew, efficient stat ship, we should look into a custom escort project, it will be better for us in the mid-term (next decade or so).
e: that said, if you just want to do a one off and never again, yes, I'd be fine with a M-A. At most a flight of two or three. Three would be creeping into the should have prototyped instead territory.
I don't think we have time or berth space to do more than build 1-3
Miranda-As right now. If we build a custom escort, the political will may not be there this year or for another year or two to come (due to the Syndicate), design would take a few years, and prototyping would take three. So for serial production of a numerous new escort class, we're talking about a thing that takes place some time in 2320 or later. We may already be needing the ships by then. So I'm glad you're agreeable to a few more
Mirandas; I conversely am quite ready for a new escort project as soon as we get
Ambassador underway and we know the design spreadsheet has settled down.
Right now, if we want escorts we should be building Centaur-As, as our fleets are small enough that escorts are still event responce ships. There is no acute military crisis that makes us want combat over all else. In particular, given cloaks, low science ships dealing with Klingon Romulans conflict is a bad idea. In general, no low science ships without a strong reason because sciencing the heck out of things is how we role.
Basically, the idea
SHOULD be that
Centaur-As fill out our defense requirements in ordinary sectors, but that we can rush our
Miranda-As to threatened frontier sectors to thicken the ranks of combat-effective ships. At the moment, we have the Sydraxian and Cardassian border zones, the Apiata home sector which could become heavily involved in a war that would punch right through the border zone.
Also,
Centaur-As cost a lot more special resources and an extra tech... Hm. We have plenty of techs. If we're not bottlenecked on special resources anymore then I guess I could get behind building a
Centaur-A in lieu of a
Miranda-A.
Still, I believe that the sheet needs some reworking. The other question is if we want to pay for a new class.
We'd have to do that anyway; it's really just a question of whether there's enough sense of urgency to do it now in the early 2310s, or if we should wait until the late 2310s.
About the trip I think we should expand the territory of the Federation as far as possible from the area where they leave our main territory until the Kadeshi fleet meets an alien claimed territory before there we install an major supply outpost on the nearest planet.
That way we can reduce the distance needed to get back, of course we would be creating a thin stripe of our space into the unknown which needs be quickly explored.
Uh... there's some catches to that idea. The biggest one is that we don't actually control the extent of 'our' borders. They're sort of informally determined by who we're affiliated with- that seems to be the biggest single factor; whenever we get an affiliate our borders tend to 'push up' toward the edge of their space, then their immediate surroundings become a sector (or part of an existing sector) if they join the Federation.
Since it takes several years
at least to get from first contact to bringing in an affiliate, there's not really anything we can do to expand our territory quickly. We COULD build a resupply depot further forward... but realistically, no depot we build is going to be more than a few weeks' travel from our space, which means it isn't doing a lot of good to help our returning ship. Plus, we'd want to position that supply depot shortly before the returning ship gets back, so that it isn't randomly plundered or threatened.
