- Location
- USA
Also I now want the Qloathi as the next Federation member, this insight into their exploration nature just fits so much
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?
To be fair they might be Whywolves, and thus a valuable potential member species!
...for the Klingons.
Next Wolfe Brief: "By Some Cosmic Joke, I, Aaron Wolfe, Am Going To Write About Werewolves"
I suspect whatever butcher's bill we might hit for this quarter hasn't happened yet.
I would chalk it up to luck. That's not to discount luck, though.
A design project that uses all older parts shouldn't end up a full five years. We're talking 3y prototyping, and actually, I don't know if we'd even have a year of research. In theory, the new design research paradigm is supposed to be for parts we don't have yet, the advantage of reusing existing is supposed to be no new research. That's something else we'd need to understand (and have added to the sheet so our proposals can include their research times) before we go for any design project though.
I would generally agree that there should be a set of guidelines or requirements for any custom ship design vote. Just asking us to produce an escort would result in a massive variety of ships.
I would chalk it up to luck. That's not to discount luck, though.
A design project that uses all older parts shouldn't end up a full five years. We're talking 3y prototyping, and actually, I don't know if we'd even have a year of research. In theory, the new design research paradigm is supposed to be for parts we don't have yet, the advantage of reusing existing is supposed to be no new research. That's something else we'd need to understand (and have added to the sheet so our proposals can include their research times) before we go for any design project though.
I would generally agree that there should be a set of guidelines or requirements for any custom ship design vote. Just asking us to produce an escort would result in a massive variety of ships.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So we can spam prototypes and our enemies will have no idea what to expect!
- Location
- madison
she was running at effectively elite level when nash was running her, the crew just took a little while to figure out how to operate at the level nash drew out of them on their own, kind of poignant really.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Hm.
Personally, I'd prefer it if there was still at least a short period of research to do the detail design on the ship before constructing the prototype. Even if all the components we want to fit into the hull are well understood, making them all fit together properly would still take time and effort, realistically. And you can't even begin the prototyping until you're finished drawing up the detailed blueprints.
Unless we assume that "blueprinting" ships is free and we're only paying political will to get permission to build the prototype...
Yeah. At least with "build the Ambassador," everyone has a pretty good idea of what an Ambassador is supposed to look like- it's supposed to be a three-megaton explorer that's about as good as we can make it in all categories, and needing to be well-rounded like the Excelsiors are.
Luck may play a role, but probabilities influence luck, and Nash's presence aboard the Enterprise meant that Enterprise had significantly higher probabilities of having good things happen, and lower probabilities of bad things happening. The ship underwent about 35 to 40 events and participated in multiple battles under her tenure, after all. We can't know exactly how many times her "+1 to all stats" bonus made the difference between success and failure, but it's likely to have been 'several.'
And of course there's the narrative side of the quest, which is something entirely different and which I for one am inclined to respect. On that side of things, Nash's positive influence on the Enterprise is indisputable.
Samhaya Mrr'shan being really good probably helps with that.
Actually, with Enterprise at Elite, the ship now performs better than it did under Nash's tenure- because Samhaya's Combat and Presence bonuses stack with the +1 from an elite crew. But that's the result of the very talented Captain Sam building on the work of the very talented Captain Nash, who was in turn building on the work of Captain John who turned the Enterprise-B into a Veteran ship in only six or seven years.
If we see far, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants, et cetera.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Pretty sure the Romulans destroyed the Naggorok centuries ago.
- Location
- Central Standard Time
Here's a hypothetical intermediate generation fleet:
Explorers/Pride of the Fleet: Ambassador
Heavy Cruiser/Fleet Flagship: Excelsior-A
Medium Cruiser: TBD 1.5/1.8 mt ship
Light Cruiser: Rennaisance
Patrol Escort: MESS
Garrison Escort: TBD Scale 2 Miranda replacement
Science Escort: Kepler or MESS science variant, or both
Explorers/Pride of the Fleet: Ambassador
Heavy Cruiser/Fleet Flagship: Excelsior-A
Medium Cruiser: TBD 1.5/1.8 mt ship
Light Cruiser: Rennaisance
Patrol Escort: MESS
Garrison Escort: TBD Scale 2 Miranda replacement
Science Escort: Kepler or MESS science variant, or both
- Location
- Patriarchova
Good point.
Also, the Qloathi have at least one explorer-class ship. Good to know.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
Explorer class is more of a role than a statement of capability. I don't remember what tech level the Qloathi are at, so their explorer could be anything from an Excelsior level to a Ranger. It's probably closer to the former than the latter, but you never know.
Boldly Go Other Species lists their tech level as "2300's" which could easily be above Federation level.
Thebigpieman
I've got this, I think.
- Location
- United States
Well...
From the sounds of it? They didn't destroy it, of course they may have said so in a later post but I didn't find anything.
So after that round of logs we still have: the SBZ, the RBZ, Ferasa, Amarkia, the Courageous, the Sarek, and the Miracht. All of the remaining sector events are places with an Excelsior assigned, which will hopefully mean a good chance of success.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The medium cruiser is probably redundant given that we'll have a large force of Excelsior-As. We have eleven Excelsiors right now; five more will be done by the end of 2314, and another twelve or so can be completed between then and 2321.*
Even if we lose a few explorers in the next decade, we're looking at a force of something in the neighborhood of 25 Excelsiors, and that's assuming we don't build any more heavy berths and turn out any more ships in those. This leaves us with more than enough explorers to have an Excelsior flagship in every sector of our space. Including all the sectors that we have now, and any that we are likely to acquire in the next ten years (say, a Risa sector). And Excelsiors do a great job responding to events when they're available. The Excelsior-A refit will probably make them even better, although it's unclear which stats the refit will improve.
Given that during the mid- to late 2320s, we'll be transitioning the Ambassadors into the Explorer Corps role and pushing the Excelsiors back into the regular fleet, there simply won't be much point in building 1.5 or 1.8 megaton cruisers that are unlikely to be much more capable than the huge number of 'legacy' Excelsior-As. Especially since we don't have a big pile of two-megaton berths around; any berth we could use to build these hypothetical medium cruisers is a berth we could also be using to build Ambassadors or refit Excelsiors. That's not good, given that it'd probably take five heavy berths a total of about ten years just to finish that job, at two years refit time per ship.
I'm also not sure there's going to be much demand for "patrol" and "garrison" escorts that are sharply different. Could you elaborate on what differences we're likely to need, that make it worthwhile to build two different classes of escort rather than a single compromise design?
____________________
*2321 is the last year that Briefvoice's spreadsheet lists Excelsior completions; by that time we'll be able to start Ambassadors in our three-megaton berths and will be building those instead.
The "25 Excelsiors" rough estimate may prove to be an overestimate, especially if we decide to slow production of new explorers in order to refit the old ones. Given that we have to sacrifice the opportunity to build one new ship in four years in order to refit two old ones in two years each, that could leave us building more like ten new explorers, winding up with about twenty- but many of those twenty ships will be refitted by the early 2320s.
If we keep building at maximum rate we get more ships- but refits to them will compete with Ambassador production, except for the 2.5-megaton berths at Andor and Tellar Prime, which can't handle an Ambassador without modification and CAN handle Excelsior refits.
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Chaos Blade
Procrastinating Writer
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
true, but it is setting up the precedent and since this is the Commanding Admiral's last year, we could set it up as a tradition, alternatively, we can push for the development of the prototype to be greenlighted only to give it up in the political tit for tat.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
As long as we're fighting the Syndicate, political will is going to be at a premium. I would rather we not spend it on any projects we don't seriously expect to get significant benefit from. That certainly includes not setting up any new ship projects we're not planning to put into mass production.
And I certainly don't want Starfleet's admiral of 2320 being told "hey, you already HAVE a 2310-vintage fighting escort design, why do you need a new one?" and being stuck with a design that is hardly better than the Miranda-A, with a significantly higher price tag. Especially in officers; we're likely to be short of officers for the next several years.
I'd rather make do with the Miranda-A for a while longer so that when we do get a gunship, it's actually a good one. Instead of buying a relatively bad gunship now and being stuck with it for twenty years.
And I certainly don't want Starfleet's admiral of 2320 being told "hey, you already HAVE a 2310-vintage fighting escort design, why do you need a new one?" and being stuck with a design that is hardly better than the Miranda-A, with a significantly higher price tag. Especially in officers; we're likely to be short of officers for the next several years.
I'd rather make do with the Miranda-A for a while longer so that when we do get a gunship, it's actually a good one. Instead of buying a relatively bad gunship now and being stuck with it for twenty years.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Constellations say "Hi"
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sorry, The Constellations are likely a result of the sort of thinking that you were talking about. The Constellations were likely built as too little too soon and we are left with underwhelming failboats that I would like to replace as soon as possible.
Akuz's post indicates a Constellation-class Vessel is currently greeting you.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Ah.
[waves at the four-stacker]
Is this a critique of my position, or of a brand-new fighting escort design that is, as you say, "too little too soon?"
My view is that the Miranda-A isn't a powerful fighting escort, but is at least cheap, considerably more cost-effective in combat than any other ship we have. If we actually needed a bunch of fighting escorts in a hurry, building more Miranda-As wouldn't be as painful as a lot of the other things we could build to bulk up our combat potential. Furthermore, just by refitting the Mirandas we already have, we get a sizeable fighting escort force, almost for free.
But to start a totally new fighting escort design that is drastically more expensive and only a little more capable than the Miranda-A, this soon after the refit escorts became available, would be folly. We wouldn't benefit from the new ships at all, unless we chose to spend a lot of resources building up a strong force of them. And those ships would then be unsatisfactory 'dogs' of our fleet in the 2330s and on, because of their extremely weak event response and unimpressive firepower. We would spend much and gain little.
Which, I gather, is what you were getting at, @AKuz, I just wasn't sure because my sarcasm-o-meter has been on the fritz all day.
...
[To be fair to the Constellations they're built to the same scale as our escorts, so it's no surprise they're not more effective than those escorts.]
[waves at the four-stacker]
Is this a critique of my position, or of a brand-new fighting escort design that is, as you say, "too little too soon?"
My view is that the Miranda-A isn't a powerful fighting escort, but is at least cheap, considerably more cost-effective in combat than any other ship we have. If we actually needed a bunch of fighting escorts in a hurry, building more Miranda-As wouldn't be as painful as a lot of the other things we could build to bulk up our combat potential. Furthermore, just by refitting the Mirandas we already have, we get a sizeable fighting escort force, almost for free.
But to start a totally new fighting escort design that is drastically more expensive and only a little more capable than the Miranda-A, this soon after the refit escorts became available, would be folly. We wouldn't benefit from the new ships at all, unless we chose to spend a lot of resources building up a strong force of them. And those ships would then be unsatisfactory 'dogs' of our fleet in the 2330s and on, because of their extremely weak event response and unimpressive firepower. We would spend much and gain little.
Which, I gather, is what you were getting at, @AKuz, I just wasn't sure because my sarcasm-o-meter has been on the fritz all day.
...
[To be fair to the Constellations they're built to the same scale as our escorts, so it's no surprise they're not more effective than those escorts.]
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Constellation class says: "Hello, Yes. I am an adorable and cute Constellation class with a chipper attitude towards life. My Best friend is the USS Sappho; she is good at volley-phasertag. I like to explore and run fast. Fighting makes me sad and I hope Enterprise-senpai notices me someday!"
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''''''''''\\''''''
~~~====[[[[[[( : D )]]]]]]
,,,,,,,,,//,,,,,
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I've got a paragraph or two of love letter to the poor neglected Constellations tucked away for an Eddie Leslie omake scheduled for 2314 when Renaissance comes out. 
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
I honestly got a bit of a sadface when I saw that the current plans are to name the next Excelsior Stargazer. Since in my mind that's the Constellation that Picard commands....it'd be what, another 20 years from now? At least?
*Checks Memory Alpha for quick-and-dirty dating*
Huh, 2333 when he served on the bridge, call it 2330 when he started on her?
So yeah about 20 years?