To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Simon_Jester · Jan 11, 2017

Void Stalker said:
Even with starting an excelsior for them now they will have 4 years of experience with the current one before the new one would be ready for them to take possession.

Also if we are tied up in a war causing both of the Amarkia 2.5mt berths to be busy I would rather have another excelsior.

Would you rather have the start of another Excelsior than a functioning, ready berth in which to repair ships? Because there is a very serious shortage of explorer-sized berths anywhere near the Cardassian border. If one of our ships takes heavy damage, either we have to beg the Apiata or maybe the Indorions to bump a native explorer out of their berths, OR we go to Amarkia, OR we have to tow the ship back across our space for, oh, two months or so just to get it to one of Starfleet's existing shipyards.

If I were more worried about war breaking out in the next two years, I would hesitate to suggest that the Amarki upgrade the berth even now. As it is, I still think the most likely timeframe for war is five to ten years from now.

Void Stalker · Jan 11, 2017

The berth upgrade would finish 2 years before the excelsior so that is the extra time it would be tied up for. As far as berths for repair we would need to spend pp for our own new berths to truly fix the problem.

Simon_Jester · Jan 11, 2017

I think you missed my reasoning.

What worries me is that either:

1) The Amarki will defer the berth expansion indefinitely, because by the time they finish UESPA's explorer they'll be wanting to build more explorers of their own, OR
2) The Amarki will build an explorer, start the berth expansion 5-6 years from now... and then we end up at war with a very severe shortage of repair facilities.

I'd much rather finish the expansion now, and then let the chips fall where they may on a build project. Build projects are much less likely to stop us from using the berth to repair ships in an emergency, compared to a modification of the berth itself.

Put another way, FIRST you expand infrastructure, THEN you build more ships, THEN you use them. The Amarki are in a good time or place to expand infrastructure. Four years from now may not be such a good time for them.

Vehrec · Jan 11, 2017

[X][VULCAN] 2x1000kt
[X][BETA] Swarm Doctrine
[X][AMARKI] Spend two years upgrading it to a 3mt berth
[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow USS Endurance

~~I don't think that the Betazoids have the economy to really make best possible use of swarm doctrine-though they probably don't have the maximum power to make use of everything.~~ OK, okay, it's been made clear that Combined Arms is pretty much crap in the eyes of the thread, so barring major revisions, I can't support it

.

Simon_Jester · Jan 11, 2017

You can have a "swarm" of three ships ganging up on one enemy ship. You don't need dozens of ships like the Apiata have to make use of the doctrine, if all you want to do with it is deal with threats to your own homeworld and the immediately surrounding space.

Or the Betazoids could design one last ship, a very cheap 'cutter' escort that is small enough for them to build in their pair of 400-kiloton berths. Those berths would be useless for Starfleet designs, after all. They could build up a pretty fair number of those, over time.

That's more or less what their "Patroller" is, and why it's so weak- it fits in a four hundred kiloton berth.

OneirosTheWriter · Jan 11, 2017

Itty bitty Patroller, went up the subspace spout! Down came the ion storm and washed the patroller out!

Night · Jan 11, 2017

[X][VULCAN] 2x1000kt
[X][BETA] Combined Arms
[X][AMARKI] Spend two years upgrading it to a 3mt berth
[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow Explorer Corps

Specialization is weakness beyond a certain point. The member fleets are our guard against it.

Void Stalker · Jan 11, 2017

Simon_Jester said:
I think you missed my reasoning.

What worries me is that either:

1) The Amarki will defer the berth expansion indefinitely, because by the time they finish UESPA's explorer they'll be wanting to build more explorers of their own, OR
2) The Amarki will build an explorer, start the berth expansion 5-6 years from now... and then we end up at war with a very severe shortage of repair facilities.

I'd much rather finish the expansion now, and then let the chips fall where they may on a build project. Build projects are much less likely to stop us from using the berth to repair ships in an emergency, compared to a modification of the berth itself.

Put another way, FIRST you expand infrastructure, THEN you build more ships, THEN you use them. The Amarki are in a good time or place to expand infrastructure. Four years from now may not be such a good time for them.

I fully expect us though to pick up some of the new shipyards over the next few years. I know I will be pushing for it mainly to have repair facilities at more convenient locations but also to make sure starfleet has a presence at each world. Ferasa or amarkia either next year or the following year, after that Rigel then indoria or Apiata.

I think the biggest thing is if we are concerned about berths for repairs is that we need to commission those ourselves.

As it is it does not seem like the Amarkia can run projects in both 2.5mt berths so it is likely one of them will be free. Actually they are asking us since they have a free 2.5mt berth.

Steven Kodaly · Jan 11, 2017

At work, can't make a long post, so:

[X] Simon_Jester

UberJJK · Jan 11, 2017

Vehrec said:
I don't think that the Betazoids have the economy to really make best possible use of swarm doctrine-though they probably don't have the maximum power to make use of everything

They do. The Betazoids can produce a Centaur-A every 2.67 years with their current income. Factor in that they only have 1 shipyard capable of producing them and currently have 155BR, the limiting factor for them, they can produce a Centaur semi-annually for the next 14 years. By that point their long term goal of "improve budget" should have kicked in and they could probably continue producing one every two years forever.

Even putting that aside however the names of doctrines are terrible for determining their usefulness. Swarm actually benefits very little from outnumbering the enemy. Since people keep getting confused here is a full list of what Swarm and Combined Fleet provide:

Swarm Doctrine:
0 / 25 Sting Like a Bee (+5% Fleet Combat when outnumbering)
0 / 25 Multiple Attack Vectors (+4% Shield Burn-Through Chance)
0 / 25 Float Like a Butterfly (Escorts gain +10% Evasion)
0 / 25 Live Another Day (+2 to Defence when attempting to flee)
0 / 25 Quantity is Quality (+2 to Escort Research, -1 Qtr to Escort build times)
0 / 25 Street Patrol (+1 to Escort Response Rolls)
0 / 75 From Many... (+1 responding Ship able to add stats to event rolls)
0 / 75 ...One (+1 to Escort Response Rolls)

Combined Fleet:
0 / 25 Mix and Match (Sector fleets with at least 1 Escort, Cruiser, Explorer count requires -2 D)
0 / 25 Combined Strike (+5% Fleet Combat with at least 1 Escort, Cruiser, Explorer)
0 / 25 Broad Push (+1 to all Ship Design Research)
0 / 25 Diversity (+2 to all new class design projects)
0 / 25 Screening (Explorers in a fleet with more escorts than explorers gain +10% Evasion)
0 / 25 Ablative (Explorers in a fleet with more escorts than explorers gain +1 L)
0 / 100 (Cost of new class design projects reduced by 50%)

Swarm Doctrine is actually all about providing bonuses to Escorts with only one bonus related to fleet size. Combined Fleet meanwhile requires Explorers, which are definitely outside the Betazoid's budget with it taking eight years for them to afford a single Excelsior, for 4/7 bonuses and literally all other bonuses are related to ship design, which is something the Betazoids seem to be abandoning in favor of using Starfleet designs.

Frankly speaking Lone Ranger is better then Combined Fleet for the Betazoids since at least they'd get some benefits out of it without needing an Explorer.

Japanime · Jan 11, 2017

[X][VULCAN] 2x1000kt
[X][BETA] Combined Arms
[X][AMARKI] Spend two years upgrading it to a 3mt berth
[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow Explorer Corps

Simon_Jester · Jan 11, 2017

OneirosTheWriter said:
Itty bitty Patroller, went up the subspace spout! Down came the ion storm and washed the patroller out!

The nice thing about Swarm doctrine is that if you have half a dozen Patroller Mk IIs clustered in a small region of space, there's a good chance that two of them will respond to the same Subspace Temporal Whozit and use that tech you came up with to collaborate on how to solve the problem together. TEAMWORK!

Void Stalker said:
I fully expect us though to pick up some of the new shipyards over the next few years. I know I will be pushing for it mainly to have repair facilities at more convenient locations but also to make sure starfleet has a presence at each world. Ferasa or amarkia either next year or the following year, after that Rigel then indoria or Apiata.

Rigel isn't helpful for this purpose because it's literally on the opposite side of the Federation from a war against Cardassia. If the problem is that our repair facilities are a hundred light-years from the war zone, "Build them at Rigel" is not the answer.

Ferasa is some help, though it is a LOT farther from the front than Amarkia if we end up fighting up near Apiata space.

Speaking of which, yards in Apiata or Indorion space might be nice, BUT... there's a big catch. Those yards would be so far forward the Cardassians would have incentive to try to raid them to destroy the ships in drydock. And a war with Cardassia would almost certainly involve Cardassian attacks hitting one or both of those affiliates. If we build shipyards up there, but the war is going poorly in the opening weeks, we may not have those shipyards anymore.

What it comes down to is that if we have to fight Cardassia, the Apiata and (especially) Indorions are too close, and Rigel and the four core member worlds are too far, to make good secure locations for repair of heavy starships.

Amarkia is almost perfectly situated to serve as our main "deep" fleet base during such a war. It's roughly equidistant from all four major theaters of operations, it's far enough back that it can be easily defended and reinforced against a threat. And it has a strong 'native' defense force that can secure it no matter what happens. There's a reason I had the Amarki navy pencilled in as our reserve force during my plan for the emergency mobilization we did during Gray October.

Similar reasons make it the ideal place to position a repair yard, and I hope we build berths there- but the Amarki's own berths may be a critical addition to our repair capability in an emergency.

I think the biggest thing is if we are concerned about berths for repairs is that we need to commission those ourselves.

We can allocate one or two heavy berths for repair work, but there is no realistic way we'll ever have enough such berths handy, in the relevant region, to repair all the explorers we might need to work on. Especially with the sheer number of Federation and member world explorers proliferating so rapidly.

As it is it does not seem like the Amarkia can run projects in both 2.5mt berths so it is likely one of them will be free. Actually they are asking us since they have a free 2.5mt berth.

They're asking us now. Four years from now they may change their minds and have another project going. Or they may decide to, oh, build an explorer for the Vulcans without asking us permission first. Who knows?

Hurrying to build yet another UESPA explorer seems to me like a project of doubtful benefit to either the Amarki or the Federation, compared to getting the expansion of that berth out of the way now when it won't be so urgently needed, so that it will be fully available in case it suddenly is needed.

Void Stalker · Jan 11, 2017

Rigel since that is on another Frontier that we are moving out towards so having support facilities such as berths to support our explorers seem like a good idea.

Putting one in Apiata or indoria would not be good during a war scenario but would be useful during skirmishing of a cold war. Apiata is a bit more interior, has a stronger member fleet and a starbase so it may be the preferred spot.

I am thinking more and more we want at least one shipyard per home sector to act as a repair station. Honestly though I am kind of wishing we had put the civilian yard at Ferasa that way it would be easier to put a major yard at Amarkia

KnightDisciple · Jan 11, 2017

[X][PRIORITY] Rigel Mid-Term: Change from "Improve Tech Recruitment" to "Improve Budget"
[X][VULCAN] 2x1000kt
[X][BETA] Combined Arms
[X][AMARKI] Spend two years upgrading it to a 3mt berth
[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow USS Endurance

lbmaian · Jan 11, 2017

Interesting thing about this overall vote is that the decision with the longest-lasting impact is the Betazed doctrine vote, yet because Betazed is so small, it also doesn't matter much.

Void Stalker said:
I am thinking more and more we want at least one shipyard per home sector to act as a repair station. Honestly though I am kind of wishing we had put the civilian yard at Ferasa that way it would be easier to put a major yard at Amarkia

If you're that worried about repair facilities, we can concentrate more on starbase repair research. That will help a lot of escort and cruiser repair, but we'll still need some actual berths for explorer repair. We're also unfortunately pretty far behind on starbase research, even behind weapons research.

UberJJK · Jan 11, 2017

Vote Tally : Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 906 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.8

Task: AMARKI

[X][AMARKI] Spend two years upgrading it to a 3mt berth
No. of Votes: 18

ClawClawBite
10ebbor10
aledeth
AlphaDelta
Happerry
Japanime
KnightDisciple
lbmaian
Leila Hann
Night
Night_stalker
pheonix89
Simon_Jester
Steven Kodaly
tryrar
UbeOne
UberJJK
Vehrec

[X][AMARKI] Loan the berth to United Earth for a 2nd Excelsior
No. of Votes: 15

HearthBorn
Aeondrac
aeqnai
Ato
Briefvoice
cast2007
Derek58
JesseJ
Nervos Belli
NHO
Nix
Random Member
SynchronizedWritersBlock
Thebigpieman
Void Stalker

——————————————————————————————————————————————
Task: BETA

[X][BETA] Combined Arms
No. of Votes: 17

SynchronizedWritersBlock
Aeondrac
AlphaDelta
Ato
Briefvoice
cast2007
Derek58
Happerry
Japanime
KnightDisciple
Leila Hann
Nervos Belli
Night
Random Member
Thebigpieman
tryrar
Vehrec

[X][BETA] Swarm
No. of Votes: 14

HearthBorn
10ebbor10
aeqnai
aledeth
JesseJ
lbmaian
NHO
Night_stalker
pheonix89
Simon_Jester
Steven Kodaly
UbeOne
UberJJK
Void Stalker

[X][BETA] Lone Ranger
No. of Votes: 1

ClawClawBite

——————————————————————————————————————————————
Task: PRIORITY

[X][PRIORITY] Rigel Mid-Term: Change from "Improve Tech Recruitment" to "Improve Budget"
No. of Votes: 9

lbmaian
Aeondrac
aledeth
Briefvoice
KnightDisciple
Night_stalker
Random Member
UberJJK
Void Stalker

[X][PRIORITY] Rigel Mid-Term: Change from "Improve Tech Recruitment" to "Improve Officer Recruitment."
No. of Votes: 2

Simon_Jester
Steven Kodaly

——————————————————————————————————————————————
Task: RIGEL

[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow USS Endurance
No. of Votes: 20

[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow Explorer Corps
No. of Votes: 5

ClawClawBite
HearthBorn
Japanime
Leila Hann
Night

[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow USS Cheron
No. of Votes: 4

SynchronizedWritersBlock
Aeondrac
Briefvoice
Thebigpieman

[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow Explorer Corps ship S'harien
No. of Votes: 3

Happerry
AlphaDelta
tryrar

——————————————————————————————————————————————
Task: VULCAN

[X][VULCAN] 2x1000kt
No. of Votes: 32

Total No. of Voters: 33

I must admit to being somewhat distressed by the number of people who want to screw over poor Betazed by sticking them with a completely useless (for them) doctrine.

lbmaian · Jan 11, 2017

UberJJK said:
Task: PRIORITY

[X][PRIORITY] Rigel Mid-Term
No. of Votes: 11

Er, this is truncating that vote, and I know some are voting for improved officers rather than improved budget. My NetTally version is showing this separation correctly on any partitioning setting.

I must admit to being somewhat distressed by the number of people who want to screw over poor Betazed by sticking them with a completely useless (for them) doctrine.

Yeah, I get the feeling that the naming of the "swarm" doctrine is pretty unfortunate and makes people think "peaceful Betazed" + "aggressive insects" = bad

10ebbor10 · Jan 11, 2017

[X][AMARKI] Spend two years upgrading it to a 3mt berth
[X][BETA] Swarm
[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow USS Endurance
[X][VULCAN] 2x1000kt

lbmaian said:
Yeah, I get the feeling that the naming of the "swarm" doctrine is pretty unfortunate and makes people think "peaceful Betazed" + "aggressive insects" = bad

Can confirm. On first glance, I would have picked the Combined Arms doctrine, but it really doesn't work that way.

Combined Arms is more an Explorer-Support Doctrine, with ships being used to to support Explorers.

UberJJK · Jan 11, 2017

lbmaian said:
Er, this is truncating that vote, and I know some are voting for improved officers rather than improved budget. My NetTally version is showing this separation correctly on any partitioning setting.

It's because I had "Trim extended vote descriptions" on. I'm guessing it uses the ":" as a sign that the vote name is finished. I've updated the tally.

10ebbor10 said:
Can confirm. On first glance, I would have picked the Combined Arms doctrine, but it really doesn't work that way.

Combined Arms is more an Explorer-Support Doctrine, with ships being used to to support Explorers.

Yeah. In reality the three doctrines are:

~~Lone Ranger~~ Explorer Doctrine
~~Swarm~~ Escort Doctrine
~~Combined Fleet~~ Explorer-Support Doctrine

Forgothrax · Jan 11, 2017

[X][AMARKI] Spend two years upgrading it to a 3mt berth
[X][BETA] Swarm
[X][RIGEL] Assign to follow USS Endurance
[X][VULCAN] 2x1000kt

cokerpilot · Jan 11, 2017

So I'm a little late to the vote and I doubt it will get much traction but on the off chance it does. Perhaps we should suggest that one of our member worlds designs a new Long-range Explorer ship. One of our constant worries with our current long rang explorers is if they ever run into anything that is not directly science related and they are alone they are pretty much toast. Which kind of makes using them in their intended purpose difficult. Perhaps some like the Vulcans who have a lot of experience with designing that kind of ship.

AlphaDelta · Jan 11, 2017

cokerpilot said:
So I'm a little late to the vote and I doubt it will get much traction but on the off chance it does. Perhaps we should suggest that one of our member worlds designs a new Long-range Explorer ship. One of our constant worries with our current long rang explorers is if they ever run into anything that is not directly science related and they are alone they are pretty much toast. Which kind of makes using them in their intended purpose difficult. Perhaps some like the Vulcans who have a lot of experience with designing that kind of ship.

So... An escort sized explorer.

Leila Hann · Jan 11, 2017

cokerpilot said:
So I'm a little late to the vote and I doubt it will get much traction but on the off chance it does. Perhaps we should suggest that one of our member worlds designs a new Long-range Explorer ship. One of our constant worries with our current long rang explorers is if they ever run into anything that is not directly science related and they are alone they are pretty much toast. Which kind of makes using them in their intended purpose difficult. Perhaps some like the Vulcans who have a lot of experience with designing that kind of ship.

I think that's something we should do ourselves. The ship design thread has been playing with new science ships for a long time.

I actually have an omake in mind that might help us make a more survivable oberth-replacement.

pheonix89 · Jan 11, 2017

cokerpilot said:
So I'm a little late to the vote and I doubt it will get much traction but on the off chance it does. Perhaps we should suggest that one of our member worlds designs a new Long-range Explorer ship. One of our constant worries with our current long rang explorers is if they ever run into anything that is not directly science related and they are alone they are pretty much toast. Which kind of makes using them in their intended purpose difficult. Perhaps some like the Vulcans who have a lot of experience with designing that kind of ship.

I'm not sure why people are calling science ships Long Range Explorers. Of the canon vessels that aren't full up capital ships only the Interpid is actually meant for that and even it's really more of a scout or science cruiser. You want long range exploration, send an actual cap ship.

UbeOne · Jan 11, 2017

pheonix89 said:
I'm not sure why people are calling science ships Long Range Explorers. Of the canon vessels that aren't full up capital ships only the Interpid is actually meant for that and even it's really more of a scout or science cruiser. You want long range exploration, send an actual cap ship.

See the first page where the types of ships are. Long-range explorers like the Oberth are one such type.

To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Cabal Core Commander

Widow Null

Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.

a thirsty squirrel

a thirsty squirrel

DON'T PANIC

Not Going Gently

Here comes the rain.

Wants to be Seven Of Nine

Daydreaming CPU