I suppose if
@OneirosTheWriter is planning to revise combat mechanics, here are some of the ways this could be done:
1) focus firing attack patterns (already in)
2) ships with sufficient combat allowing more than 1 damage to be dealt per turn to target ship (e.g. C6 ship could deal 2 damage per shot, or generalized to ceiling(C/5) damage)
3) area of effect weaponry where a ship could deal damage to multiple ships at once
Another option that addresses your concerns (by creating a useful reason for combat-focused explorer-sized ships to exist) would be if larger ships get bonuses to shield regeneration once we get higher in the tech tree, due to greater total power generation capability.
Combat mechanics might weigh ship with more combat higher.
For all we know, a ship with 4 Combat outshoots 2 ships with 2 combat each. (Say, if it's Combat^1.5 or something.)
It appears that the engine takes the combat of every ship in a fleet, adds them all up, and then raises to the 1.15 power. Then it compares the "raised to 1.15" numbers for both fleets and rolls randomly to see who hits.
This tends to slightly exaggerate the Combat advantage of the side with bigger guns. However, it also means that the engine does not discriminate between two Combat 5 ships and five Combat 2 ships, in terms of the effect on hit probability.
No, though response rolls for events are defense plus appropriate stat vs the response DC so a science ship is more likely to respond to a science event thanks to the higher science score. As for escorts generalist is more in line with the federation it seems and due to the combat cap something we need to consider. Right now with our yards working full out we could likely have around 18 C a year maybe more, that is 9 years to the current combat cap (though doctrine research extends this) and as we get more colonies and improve crew supply that number of C per year is likely to increase, more so with refits to the excelsiors. Still until the design sheet gets firmed up it is hard to say, if we can get a Centaur-A with all stats but combat improved for the same cost(including crew).
I do like Combat 3 Escorts since deploying the in border zones they count as Combat 2 vs the cap but can be built tough and good event responders.
Also I do not like the idea of pocket explorers, but I prefer cruisers capped at 2mt to keep build time to 3 years. 1mt escorts for 2 years of build time, 2mt cruisers for 3 years of build time and 3mt explorers for 4 years of build time. Only way to go bigger is once we get the construction time reduction techs because waiting 5 years for an explorer makes it hard to respond to changes in situations.
I agree with almost everything you said, except the part about it being unacceptable to have explorers take five years.
Over time, you still end up with a steady trickle of one or two explorers coming out each year. Since under Lone Ranger it almost never makes sense for us to stop building explorers, if we're willing to build a few extra berths so that we can keep up the same rate of new construction, the extra build time doesn't matter much.
Long build time is more of a handicap for ships we might want to 'rush build' in reaction to an immediately foreseeable crisis. We've done that with the ConnieBees and Rennies, but we aren't doing that with
Excelsiors, and I doubt we'd ever want that for our explorers.
Flexible doctrine research?
I think Oneiros wants to discourage us from easy doctrine-switching, in part to avoid us being able to quickly exchange one set of lasting bonuses for another. Logically, Combined Arms ought to be the most 'flexible' of the doctrine trees, but it is also a rather weak doctrine tree on the whole.
While I suspect that Bajor may well have occured without our intervention, I believe the appropriate quote in regard to the situation is: 'Never interrupt your opponent when he/she is making a mistake.'
As with Tasoli, I remember thinking along those very lines when we decided to push Bajor.
We went and interrupted the Cardassians while they were purging each other. It would have ended sooner or later, and the Cardassians would have moved on Bajor sooner or later, but we definitely precipitated this result to happen faster.
Hopefully, we can atone for this by either making the Occupation less bad, or by bringing about an end to it sooner. If the Occupation runs from 2312-2350 instead of 2319-2367, I'm going to count that as a victory, albeit a rather flawed one.
