Star Trek: The Quadratic War

[Josh]

How that's meant to be pronounced, I couldn't tell you.

I just invoke Elmer Fudd for all my Klingonese pronunciations.

[Lys]

Thank you both for the help. Ultimately neither source provides a useful name but being able to explore those options allowed my mind to come up with a clever solution. The ship will be named the Khanjar, after the traditional Omani curved dagger. It has a weighty and wicked cool sound to it, has a meaning i like, and looks like a Klingon word. It's perfect! ^_^

Now i just need to finish actually writing the damn thing out. There's a pretty clear idea of what it is and does in my head, but i'm having difficulty putting it to words. Like i said, may take a while. v_v

[rhoenix]

Josh - the one and only reason I didn't "volunteer" two people from my ship is because... my entire crew count of the Gilgamesh, with Captain and XO aboard, is 36 souls.

On the other hand, it does lend a certain credibility to gunboat diplomacy.

Note to GM: My post was meant to be an in-progress post of contacting other ships in the area with that example. I leave it completely to you as to how many ships Solheim managed to persuade into being of some form of assistance; either to help rescue & repair the stranded ships, or to lend resources to repairing the Saehir, but he is attempting to contact and persuade as many as possible within the time alotted.

[Josh]

Yeah, I wasn't figuring on somebody from one of the small ships like mine. But then I decided I didn't need anybody's specific ship anyway. A fleet this size is bound to have a hearty share of boneheaded junior officers.

[LadyTevar]

I know I should post, but I have nothing to say.

[Josh]

No worries, something will offer itself. Shoot at a Klingon ship or something, that always seems to stimulate the conversation.

[frigidmagi]

I know I should post, but I have nothing to say.

Well Tev, you are in charge of going over the other ships we captured. Your main goal is gonna be to figure out what ships are warp worthy, what ships can be made warp worthy and who gets to be on the warp worthy ships.

I'll PM some suggestions, call it a operational guidance document if you like.

[rhoenix]

My post was an "in progress" post, showing basically a scene in microcosm of what my crew is doing. I need to add another post to show what else is happening on my ship (namely, recruiting), but mainly the Gilgamesh is being a "diplomatic envoy". That's one way you can go, Tev.

[LadyTevar]

No, you misunderstand. Kathy is having BAD TIMES, and not feeling like doing jack shit, including posting. They're adjusting my meds again.

[frigidmagi]

Ah I'm sorry Kathy I misunderstood. I hope you feel better soon.

[Josh]

We all love ya, Tev.

[LadyTevar]

If someone wants to post the Spector and/or Kirk doing her job, feel free. I'm going to be in a corner for a while.

[Lys]

Some questions just came up about crew sizes. The internet more or less seems to agree that the Vor'cha has 1900 crew plus flight crew and troops; apparently it's what the DS9 Technical Manual has to say on the matter. This seems wildly out of proportion with pretty much all other ships. For example the Sovereign has 900 crew, the Galaxy 1000, and the K'tinga 800. Hell, fuck-off huge D'deridex only has 1500 crew. It seems more reasonable to me for the Vor'cha to have a crew of 900, but is often fielded carrying 1000 troops even if the Klingons are not planning on invading anyone. Does that make sense?

[Cynical Cat]

Some questions just came up about crew sizes. The internet more or less seems to agree that the Vor'cha has 1900 crew plus flight crew and troops; apparently it's what the DS9 Technical Manual has to say on the matter. This seems wildly out of proportion with pretty much all other ships. For example the Sovereign has 900 crew, the Galaxy 1000, and the K'tinga 800. Hell, fuck-off huge D'deridex only has 1500 crew. It seems more reasonable to me for the Vor'cha to have a crew of 900, but is often fielded carrying 1000 troops even if the Klingons are not planning on invading anyone. Does that make sense?

That's what we've been running with for the Riskadh which is post Dominion War model Vor'cha with some upgrades.. Well actually 800 +1000 troops. There's some conflicting numbers on the Vor'cha class.

[Lys]

That's what we've been running with for the Riskadh which is post Dominion War model Vor'cha with some upgrades.. Well actually 800 +1000 troops. There's some conflicting numbers on the Vor'cha class.

Okay, thanks! The Khanjar isn't a Vor'cha, but a derivative design named the Vor'kang (it's prettier!). Slightly bigger and stronger, and slightly less manoeuvrable. The design team meant it a replacement for the Vor'cha, but Klingon High Command decided the two ships were complementary rather than redundant so both remained in production until the shipyards blew up.

Having trouble figuring out the guns on the ship though. Pretty much everyone on the internet agrees the Vor'cha has 18 disruptors as secondary armament, but they seem to be absent from the model and are never seen firing. Best guess is forward bias to supplement the main gun?

[Cynical Cat]

.

Having trouble figuring out the guns on the ship though. Pretty much everyone on the internet agrees the Vor'cha has 18 disruptors as secondary armament, but they seem to be absent from the model and are never seen firing. Best guess is forward bias to supplement the main gun?

That seems to be how the Klingons roll.

[Lys]

Okay! Finished a decent rough draft of the ship. As of yet no backstory on the ship itself, its Captain, or its crew. Those things exist pretty clearly in my mind, they're just not written out yet. However i figured the ship itself could stand to take some criticism while i got to work on said writing. Since it's not a stock ship i've included an overview of the class by way of its design history.


Warship Khanjar


(Different angle)


Class: Vor'kang Battlecruiser
Rated Crew: 900 personnel, up to 1100 soldiers

Current Crew: 1200 personnel, 800 soldiers (40% Klingon, 40% Romulan, 10% Reman, 10% others)

Class Description: Started in the mid-2380s, the Vor'kang was originally intended to be an incremental upgrade the highly successful and effective Vor'cha class. The original drafts were basic technological updates with no outward change to attack cruiser's lines. Included among them were sensor, computer, and avionics updates, enhanced capacitors and power conduits, impact shielding, improved armour plating, and minor internal design alternations. The Vor'cha production lines adopted the updated design, and a number of the changes were refitted into existing ships as they came in for scheduled overhauls.

The Vor'kang was born when the design team began to work on improving the hull structure. A fortuitous combination of ambition, talent, and political connections among them resulted in an entirely new class that sought to implement the lessons learned from the Vor'cha's two decades of service history. To start the hull lines were smoothed out to improve firing arcs and structural integrity, while the modular bow section was dispensed with as unnecessary and largely useless, since the promised flexibility never materialized, and very few Vor'chas ever changed the module they were built with.

In making the new bow section, the design team began to take the ship in a new direction. While the Vor'cha had proven itself a brutally efficient cruiser killer, its performance against other capital ships stood to be improved. They replaced the single heavy disruptor beam with smaller twin heavy disruptors fed by independent power capacitors and conduits, providing redundancy to the ship's main armament. Then they began rearranging and expanding the secondary armament and shielding when they finally ran against the limits of the hull, forcing the team to enlarge it and increase ship mass by 10%. The final Vor'kang is a brawnier than its predecessor, with somewhat diminished manoeuvrability, somewhat increased durability and firepower, and less focus on the forward arc.

While the designers had always intended their work to replace the Vor'cha, the final product was enough of a departure from the original's design principles that the two ships proved complementary rather than redundant. In the view of Klingon High Command, the Vor'kang was perfectly suited to anchor a three ship hunter-killer team with a pair of Vor'chas; serving as the anvil to the attack cruiser's hammer. In light of that the Vor'kang was designated a battlecruiser and put into production with the intent of eventually reaching a 1-2 ratio with the Vor'cha class. Unfortunately, because of the Borg Invasion it was never fielded in adequate numbers.

Weapon Systems:

Twin Heavy Disruptor Cannons - The ship's main armament. With individual energy outputs comparable to three disruptor cannons, they provide devastating fire against anything foolish enough to fly in their sights. The heavy disruptors can be set to beam mode for accuracy and precision at range, or pulse mode for raw power close in.

18 Disruptor Cannons - Modern Klingon and Romulan disruptors arranged throughout the ship to provide all round fire. There are 8 covering the forward quadrant, 12 covering the port and starboard quadrants, 11 covering the dorsal and ventral quadrants, and 6 covering the aft quadrant.

48 Missile Launch Cells - The ship's three torpedo tubes have been replaced by a missile vertical launch system salvaged from a derelict. On launch the missiles are cold ejected and ignite outside the ship, rapidly accelerating in whichever direction the firing solution directs them. The missiles are very fast and agile, but cannot be used at warp. Launch cells are arranged into six modules of eight cells each. Four modules are installed ventrally just aft of the ship's neck, and two more are is installed aft on upper superstructure above the engines. The forward magazine has a capacity of 128 missiles, and the aft magazine 64 missiles.

[Note: General Havoc probably wants to know how strong the missiles are. Not sure really, but i think half as strong as a photon torpedo works? That gives me a 24 P-torp equivalent alpha strike. A stock Sovereign can hit with the equivalent of a 32 torpedo alpha strike (5 forward photon launchers, 1 forward quantum launcher, four shots per launcher, 20 P-torps and 4 Q-torps, 1 Q-torp = 3 P-torps, total is equivalent to 32 P-torps). The Sovereign's is 33% stronger than mine, but i have more beam armament so it balances out?]

Special Systems and other Acquisitions:

High-G Seats and Harnesses: Thanks to the Dominion War the Imperialum finally caught on to the fact that ship crew tend to be tossed about like rag dolls while under fire. To address this, their greatest minds came together and invented a revolutionary new type of seat. It uses a combination of restraints and ergonomics to protect crew at their tactical stations from unexpected acceleration. All such seats that could be salvaged from the Imperatrix Ael t'Rllaillieu are now installed on the Khanjar.

A platoon of berserk Klingon Dahar masters who live only to shed the blood of the Borg. More details when i write the section on notable crew members.

Impact Shielding: The Dominion War taught some ugly lessons about the effectiveness of ramming. Tying in navigational deflectors and tractor emitters to main shields allows the Khanjar to have a good chance of deflecting ramming attacks by smaller ships instead of suffering a direct impact. [Copy pasted from Cynicat >.>]

Munitions Plant: Salvaged industrial machinery has been installed in one of the ship's cargo bays. It is primarily tooled for munitions manufacture, making both APHE rounds for defence against boarders and the missiles fired by Khanjar. It can also produce some parts that are too large or complicated for the onboard machine shop, but is very slow at it and must reduce other production to do so. If focused solely on munitions manufacture, it can produce up to 16 missiles per day.

Valdore-class Cloaking Device: Salvaged from the Imperatrix Ael t'Rllaillieu, Rihannsu cloaking systems may very well be the best in the galaxy, and the ones installed aboard their newest designs are always the best of the lot. Consequently the Khanjar's cloaking capabilities are better than those of other Klingon ships, and because the device was designed for a considerably larger ship, it can cloak with shields at 50% just as well as it can with shields down. Weapons fire will, however, not just bring the cloak down as normal, but burn it out and take it out of commission for days.

[Note: Someone in the battle with the Borg cube had their ship cloak with shields one third up, noting that the only disadvantage was slightly increased detection chance, and neither the Cube nor its escorts detected them. Figured that if this is true, then being able to have shields partially up without increased detection chance is kosher as an advantage.]

Ship's Weakness:

The recreational facilities are malfunctioning, and the Captain has been lost to pity by her traumatic experiences. It's horrifying, i know, but i can handle such crippling weaknesses and make them work.

Spoiler: show

Frankenstein's Monster: The Khanjar is an abomination cobbled together from parts of three different ships, belonging to three different races. Forget about different standardization practices, the crew had to make three entire technological bases somehow play well with each other under the stresses of combat. The fact that it works at all is impressive, that it manages to work well is nothing short of a miracle, but not even a miracle can make the jury-rigged systems work seamlessly. Minor failures are a routine part of every day, and parts of the ship threaten to catch fire if you look at them funny. Yet for all its inconveniences the crew manages to avoid major failures or cascading systems crashes even under fire. What they cannot avoid is an increased susceptibility to power draining weapons, including the Borg's use of tractor beams to drain shields. Additionally, Khanjar requires an oversized engineering department to keep everything running, which means it cannot carry as many soldiers.

Unprotected Forward Magazine: The ventral missile launchers were installed over the broken ruins of the Khanjar's forward torpedo tubes, so that section of the ship is lightly armoured at best. A direct hit on the launchers from an enemy torpedo would likely penetrate right to the magazine, setting off the munitions stored in there, and gutting or destroying the whole ship. Consequently the Commander is understandably reluctant to expose her ventral shield in combat, and tries to keep it away from enemy fire.

[General Havoc]

Oooooookay, here we go.

So Lys, we've got a few issues we're gonna have to iron out here.

1: If there was someone who managed to cloak with their shields up during the first Borg engagement, then they did so either due to highly special circumstances I no longer recall, or simply slipped one past me. In either case, I do not wish to set a precedent for people to be able to cloak shielded as a matter of course. A fifty percent shield is a hell of a thing on a Battlecruiser, particularly if your cloaking device is state of the art. I acceded to Josh' request for a Phase Cloak in part because he was in a Bird of Prey that could well have been on loan from a museum, but a shielded cloak on a battlecruiser this powerful requires something in the way of compensation.

If you want a cloak that can support partial shields, my proposition would be that while the shields are up, the cloak is actually easier to detect than most everyone else's cloaks, being possessed of a larger power gradient/tachyon trace/technobabble thing due to the vast amounts of power that must be masked. This will actually make it something of a dilemma as to whether or not to employ the shields under cloak, as it risks giving away the entire fleet. And I do so enjoy such dilemmas.

2: Klingon battlecruisers are likely to be well armed of course, and so I will not object to the disruptors in all their myriad types. The missile launchers, however, I am concerned about. While I appreciate that you framed them in the proper context of photon-torpedo-equivelants (believe me, I appreciate that), even at the scale of half a photon torpedo per missile, this is still a hell of a lot of omnidirectional firepower (homing firepower, no less), on a ship already well supplied with omnidirectional firepower of the most lethal sort. Yes, your missiles comparable to the theoretical throw-weight of a Sovereign-class Battlecruiser, but you are deploying vertically-launched homing missiles that can track in any direction you wish, including hordes of light targets, and which I believe I'm being led to assume are more agile than standard torpedoes (if this is not so, please point it out). I'm not so much concerned about your ship's capacity to deliver raw fire into a big target (such as a Cube), but with your ship's capacity to utterly negate a large formation of lighter ships that might afflict it. Being able to simply shoot down eight or nine Exterminators at once coming from all directions is a heck of a capability, and one not shared, I don't believe, with any other ship.

Now, don't get me wrong, Battlecruisers must have mighty weapons with which to chastise their enemies. I get that. But the way I see it, I can't let the ship both have the Alpha-strike throw capacity of the heaviest battlecruisers and also have pinpoint homing accuracy with a barrage-style weapon of near-photon caliber. As such, I'd like you to scale back the missiles in some respect. You can reduce their payload, worsen their flight characteristics, augment the sympathetic detonation issues, or just focus them more on one type of job as opposed to another, but I can't allow the same weapon system to serve as interdiction/squadron-annihilation duties as well as massive alpha strike power. The missiles will be useful at shooting at anything of course, but I'd rather they were aimed more towards either large ship-breaking, or interdiction and mass-frigate nullification, not both.

[Josh]

I acceded to Josh' request for a Phase Cloak in part because he was in a Bird of Prey that could well have been on loan from a museum

The other part being that I get special favors because we're best friends IRL and text each other every day.

ETA: Mostly concerning cheese. He's obsessed with the stuff.

[Lys]

Man Havoc, i was bracing myself for really being in for it, but for an "Oooooookay, here we go," that was pretty damn light criticism. At least compared to what several other people got in the other thread! Admittedly i might have gotten a bit carried away because the ship wound up with two major weaknesses (Seriously, lost to pity and no entertainment), so i was like "Cool more shiny toys in compensation!" Apparently they're just too shiny, though. Oh well! ^_^;

With respect to the cloak, this is the post in question. i thought your silence on the matter meant you accepted it, guess it actually means you didn't notice. All right, in that case i take your recommendation: The ship can sustain up to 50% shields while cloaked, but this decreases cloak effectiveness, with the understanding that this isn't something ships can do at all under normal circumstances.

The missiles present a bit of a dilemma, though. Not inasmuch as i'm unwilling to scale back their capabilities, but rather indecision with respect to how exactly to do so. If they're less manoeuvrable the ship focuses more on its area of specialization, making it into a titan of death and destruction, but if they're less powerful then the ship shores up its weaknesses, making it into an dangerous and vicious all rounder that can take all comers. Both prospects are appealing! Question is which to pick. Since we're meant to be a functional squadron... or at least make a show of trying to be one, i'm willing to take some input as to which one would fit better with the ships we already have. Though, "augment the sympathetic detonation issues," sounds intriguing as a potential third option, and would fit with my conception of the missiles. The threat of a magazine explosion exists because the warheads aren't shock insensitive. However i'm not sure what exactly that would entail in terms of their capabilities in combat, so some clarification would be helpful!

[General Havoc]

Dilemnas are our bread and butter here, Lys. But you do understand that while I can let you shore up the weaknesses, or let you hone your specialization, I am at loathe to let you do both, at least for an initial ship. My expectation is that everyone will be upgrading their capabilities as we go on.

I'll let the actual players come up with suggestions as to what would complement the fleet as they see it, but what I meant by sympathetic detonation issues, and the augmentation thereof, is a difficulty that afflicts all missile-heavy craft, specifically the fact that missiles explode, and in exploding, often destroy the other missiles in their own volley. Even if the missile's warhead is something conventionally explosive (like Antimatter), the result is that the succeeding warheads are either completely ineffective or only partially so. As a result, mass-missile work tends to involve saturating the target from multiple different directions with warheads, which reduces the odds of sympathetic detonation, but also eliminates the ability to target all your ordnance on one spot and maximizes the quantity of point defense weapons can be deployed.

Either way, however, I just need some form of focus for these missiles. They can be alpha-striking heavy warheads intended to cripple enemy cruisers in one volley, or agile omnidirectional missiles designed to deflect multiple lightweight threats at once. They can even be passable in both roles. But they can't be the be all and end all of every measure of warfare.

[White Haven]

This war has been going on long enough that I don't think it's at all unreasonable for a captain with a missile-heavy modified armament to have learned how...tragically unwise it can be to throw explosive projectiles at the notably tractor-net-equipped Exterminator frigates, and thus tweak their loadout to optimize them against other targets. Heavier targets. More...geometric targets, shall we say. That's my feeling, at any rate. Save the munitions for heavy targets, leave the lighter stuff to energy weapons. That has the added bonus of not blazing through your magazines every time you meet a dinky-ass frigate squadron, which is also a consideration that any experienced captain would have run across.

[General Havoc]

Josh, you are insane. I think I have to post now before you turn my IC thread into a soap opera...

[White Haven]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the real crew of our adorable little D-12 runabout:

[youtube][/youtube]

[Josh]

Justin Timberlake will never serve on any vessel I'm in command of.

The 'Hoff is coming in the Baywatch Reunion episode, though.