Star Trek: Death of the Federation

[Cynical Cat]

The persistent question for me about your ship is what did your lose to mount those phaser cannons and disruptors. They aren't stock, they require space, cooling apparatus, and significant additions to your power generation system to operate. That space wasn't free and empty. What did you give up, on a no frills escort, to mount those weapons?

Frigid gave up torp tubes for his railgun, Marcao sacrificed regular disruptor mounts for his heavies. Rhoenix has more weapons than a Defiant, but he's flying a Defiant variant that is larger than a Defiant and his weapons are (for that variant) stock.

[Hotfoot]

According to Memory Beta, the Prometheus, which the Hephaestus is based on, has 18 phaser arrays and 3 torpedo tubes. Dropping the 18 to 6 to support more weapons is something that's not entirely unreasonable. Others have dropped stock weapon systems to mount heavier individual guns.

The battle with "Type-12" and such weapons is utterly pointless. The designations are purely fluff since they've never been actually mentioned in the shows, and unless I'm supposed to believe that disruptor tech hasn't advanced a day since TOS I'm going to assume that every stellar nation in the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Quadrants have been upgrading their weapons and such as well since there's been 15 years since the Dominion War.

For the record, I can't support the concept of a Prometheus or any of it's refits as anything other than a Battlecruiser. There's no way a ship over 400m is an "escort", especially since the Vor'Cha is roughly the same size as the Prometheus.

As far as Regenerative Shields, they're an attempt to get Borg tech to work in our favor. They're not as efficient as Borg shields at adapting, but they're good enough for general use. That doesn't make your shields necessarily as powerful as, say, a Sovereigns. Case in point, if you you get say, 30% resistance after you've adapted, but you have only 2,000 hitpoint on the shields, but a Sovereign has 5,000 hitpoints on its shields, well, you get the idea. It's better than normal, but it's not superhuman.

[SirNitram]

After clearing up the situation with Havoc..

USS Einstein

Class: Comet-Class Scientific Vessel

Link to image

Crew Complement: 90 Liberated Borg Drones.

Weaponry:
Overcharged Destroyer Phaser Banks x 4
Quantum Slipstream Spatial Disruption Cannon

Defenses:
Overcharged Deflector
Standard Superstructure

SPecial Systems:

Quantum Slipstream Drive:
Never fully fixed to work for flight, the Einstein's drive has been adjusted to charge the defensive and offensive systems beyond normal levels. With this overcharge, the lowly science vessel can operate somewhat in the dangerous landscape now.

Disruption Cannon:
With the drive non-functional, it was reworked to a more crude manipulation of subspace: Opening unstable portals at fixed points. By using a tight beam, it can smash through a Borg Cube's corner shield, and take some of it's mass away. A wider dispersal creates an area of spatial anomalies that will force any figher/shuttlecraft to back off. The weapon is wildly unconventional, and requires regular maintenence to the deflector dish which projects it.

Assimilated Ship:
When the overcharged cables and failing components would ordinarily spell the death of any other vessel of it's class, the crew can repair and, to a limited degree, salvage, from the enemy. The crew was fully assimilated, and as such enjoy all the benefits of Borg Drones.. Except they have permenantly soldered off the peices connecting them to the Collective.

Weaknesses:
Overtaxed systems:
No matter how well the crew can maintain or scrounge parts, the Einstein is constantly on the edge of systems failure. Any combat encounter must be immediately be followed by maintenence and repairs.

Noisy:
Her Quantum Slipstream drive, due to making massive amounts of energy and never being fully optimized, is a very noticable thing. It can be detected from the same system, even if the crew tries to run silent.

Assimilated Ship:
For however useful a Borg crew and a ship now composed of the same materials used by the enemy might be, it is simultaneously it's biggest problem: The ship is Borg. The crew are Drones. They might be disconnected and liberated, but they look like Borg, and they scan as Borg. Worse, the Collective could theoretically make good use of it if they managed to take the ship enough to restore communications to it.

Acting Commanding Officer:
Primus. A drone from before the recovery of the ship, he has adopted the name after a remarkably democratic arrangement among the crew. A former head scientist of the Einstein, he has become the foremost voice against the Collective in the micro-politics of the ship.

Secondus A and B: The XOs of the ship. THe position is shared due to a desire for redundancy, and the naming scheme continues down. The naming scheme breaks down in the equivalent of non-com officers, who, after much debate, just began sticking names they liked next to Quintus.

No one has yet had the courage to ask the Klingdon drone Quintus Sarah if he knows it's a ladies name.

[Hadrianvs]

For the record, I can't support the concept of a Prometheus or any of it's refits as anything other than a Battlecruiser. There's no way a ship over 400m is an "escort", especially since the Vor'Cha is roughly the same size as the Prometheus.

On the other hand, the actual Federation battlecruiser is called the Sovereign class and is nearly 700 metres long. Certainly the Prometheus is no escort - the term is often Federation speak for a destroyer - but classifying it as a battlecruiser goes too far in the other direction. I'd call it a heavy cruiser, which would put it in the same category as a Galaxy.

[Hotfoot]

I'm sorry Nitram, but you should rename your ship the USS Kill-On-Sight, because regardless if the design passes muster or not, that is the exact stance most of us are going to do just exactly that.

[Charon]

And if there's more than one?

try to outrun them in Warp.

I prefer "Refer to Point Blank Range".

[Cynical Cat]

So Borg piloting Borgified ship that could be recollectivized at almost any moment in the company of people who have lost almost everything to the Borg. On top of that we have ruthless Romulan and Klingon characters and the ship is a giant signal emitter?

Never mind not ending well, it won't have a chance to start.

[SirNitram]

Alright, it's scrapped.

[Dark Silver]

I only listed the ship as a escort because according to STO, that's what it is listed as a "Advanced Escort". I always thought the Prometheus was more akin to a Heavy Cruiser (like the Akira and Galaxy Classes before them), but I was going for the current and considered Canon nomenclature.

-shrugs-

If the ship is objectionable, I'll just withdraw it. No issues.

[Dark Silver]

The persistent question for me about your ship is what did your lose to mount those phaser cannons and disruptors. They aren't stock, they require space, cooling apparatus, and significant additions to your power generation system to operate. That space wasn't free and empty. What did you give up, on a no frills escort, to mount those weapons?

Frigid gave up torp tubes for his railgun, Marcao sacrificed regular disruptor mounts for his heavies. Rhoenix has more weapons than a Defiant, but he's flying a Defiant variant that is larger than a Defiant and his weapons are (for that variant) stock.

I gutted 2/3 of the standard compliment of Phaser arrays, lost half of it's torpedo tubes, infact, even gave up 2/3 of it's standard torpedo load out, addressed the power generation issue.....I even gave the ship glaring weaknesses in just about everything else I could think of.

What more do you want me to do? Rip out all of it's weapons aside from the disruptors and phaser cannons? If that's the case, why don't I just keep the ship as a stock Hephaestus and just steal a Romulan Cloaking device?

[Agent Fisher]

IO have no objections based on what was removed and the damages placed in.

[General Havoc]

I've looked the ships over that have been proposed, and here is my position thereupon:

DS: Prometheus and its attendant variants is a class that I've never been able to wrap my head around properly, as it seems to want to be a Destroyer but has the firepower of a battlecruiser and mass of a light cruiser. However, on reflection, and considering the weaknesses you built into the design, I don't see a problem with the ship as it stands. I therefore accept it under two provisos:

First, the ship is smaller than a normal cruiser and heavily armed, but it's not a destroyer, and so I'll be treating it as a lightish cruiser (with big guns), more or less, for purposes of my own diseased mindset for how ships will function and fight. What this means in practice is more or less dependant on circumstances, and how many filthy drugs I have consumed on the day in question. Business as usual, thus.

Second, if you ever make a South Park reference with your ship's nickname again, I will kill you with Borg. And Fire. And then more Borg.

Anyway, DS, your ship is approved, and you are clear to post an arrival in Nivoch at your discretion.

[Hadrianvs]

This is from all the way back in the first page, but I think it needs to be addressed.

Remember, as of this time, Cardassia still hasn't been hit. Bajor is between them and the borg.

I don't think it reasonable to assume that Cardassia hasn't been hit because Bajor still stands. The border between Cardassia and the Federation consists of way more than just Bajor. During the Dominion War the Dominion and its allies were still able to conduct large offensive operations against Federation even after losing control of Deep Space 9 and Bajor. They took Betazed, which was stated to threaten Alpha Centauri, and the Breen raided Earth itself. So obviously Bajor can be bypassed, and bypassed with such a margin that the fleets stationed there were not able to intercept. Not to mention that the fact that there was a Cardassian-Klingon War before the Dominion War implies that the Borg could invade Cardassia without passing through Federation space at all.

There are six gigantic Borg fleets, but only two of them participated in the Battle of Earth. I doubt the other four were just jerking off in the sidelines. Certainly the Federation is big enough that one or two of the other fleets could have been devastating parts of it at the same time that there was a titanic multi-week battle in the Solar System, but all four? Not when there are other powers in need of borging and burning.

Then there are also the words of our GM, "the Federation burned to ashes alongside allies and enemies alike". That rather implies that the entire Alpha Quadrant has been fucked over. So I doubt the Cardassians are in much better shape than the Federation is.

[frigidmagi]

Havoc has stated that the Cardassians have not been hit. The Borg seem to be targeting major powers with intact militaries first, which the Cardassians are not. Neither have the Breen been hit, that we know of.

[Hotfoot]

Except that in the words of our GM, Cardassia still stands, so, yes, it is in better shape. The Borg came in and screwed over the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, and everyone in between with their main forces. Bajor and Cardassia are on the other side of that fight, and while they may have had to deal with some advance forces, Cardassia Prime and all of their shipyards, military facilities, and so forth still stand, which is more than can be said for anything else in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

[Hadrianvs]

Where exactly did he say this? Every post in this thread seems to point toward everything having gotten worked over. Now I can see it if Cardassia Prime still stands, taking it would be a major operation. But still having their home planet and not having been hit at all are different things entirely.

[frigidmagi]

If they were hit they wouldn't have their homeplanet and he told me over AIM, I'll admit you can't be expected to read our minds and know this.

[Cynical Cat]

Where exactly did he say this? Every post in this thread seems to point toward everything having gotten worked over. Now I can see it if Cardassia Prime still stands, taking it would be a major operation. But still having their home planet and not having been hit at all are different things entirely.

Its implied in the early posts and directly stated to be the case in chat. Cardassia's fleet has been nearly annihilated, but its worlds have been mostly free from attack.

[Hotfoot]

Consider that Bajor itself isn't exactly a major military stronghold without the Federation, and that it's at the very edge of Federation space. It, and the smaller worlds around it, have been pretty much untouched by the Borg as they focused entirely on the major war-making sections of the Alpha and Beta Quadrant. Bajor and Cardassia are way off to the side, and Cardassia has never had much military might compared to the Klingons, Romulans, and Federation.

That Bajor still stands means the Borg haven't been there yet, and the fleet on the way there now is just that, on the way. It's coming from the rest of the ruined Federation to mop up. You don't get to Maine without going through Vermont and New Hampshire, and that's exactly what's happening. There are likely similar stories in the Beta Quadrant on the other side of the Romulan Star Empire, smaller interstellar nations that were generally ignored so that the Borg could simply wipe out the Romulans. Keep in mind that while the Alpha and Beta Quadrants are in flames, untold Borg ships were destroyed in the process. They knew what they were getting into and brought enough force to overwhelm the biggest threats on this side of the Galaxy, and they did, but not without heavy losses on their own side. If they were to split their forces up by trying to gobble up every little thing on the side, the Feds, Klingons, and Romulans would have torn them apart piecemeal.

[General Havoc]

I suppose I should have been more clear about this.

Cardassia, alone among the Alpha Quadrant Powers, has not yet been overrun by the Borg. The reason for this is simple galactic geography. Cardassia is physically located on the far side of the Alpha Quadrant, away from where the Borg first invaded. The Borg simply have not gotten to them yet.

Cardassia never really recovered from the Dominion War and the turmoils that followed, and what fleets they had were sent to Earth, from which they did not return, leaving them more or less unprotected. What little forces Cardassia still controls have been now sent to Bajor to draw the line, but nobody expects they will stop the Borg. After all, the Federation was unable to do so.

[Hotfoot]

Something I ran across as I was trolling Wil Wheaton's blog today.

Link

The choice excerpt:

The second panel was the TNG reunion panel with Frakes and LeVar, which filled the room almost to capacity. We started out with moderated questions, which I felt veered way too close to "hey, let's dish a bunch of gossip" territory. I thought we were all pretty funny, though, and I did my best to keep things moving without bogarting the entire panel. It was pretty awesome when Jonathan said "it's not often that I'm the third-funniest guy on the panel!" after I'd made him laugh about something.

I think the audience had a good time, and I did my best to balance entertaining them with speaking frankly and honestly about the few very serious questions we were asked. When the hour was up, I wished that we'd been scheduled for 90 minutes, because there were at least a dozen people waiting, and I was enjoying the whole thing.

On the way back to the vendor's hall (which, to give you a sense of how the con has grown, could have held the entire convention last year) I was able to thank LeVar for giving me an incredible gift that he never even knew about.

We stood on this loading dock behind the convention center, protected from the direct heat of the sun by growing afternoon shadows. "I have to tell you something," I said to LeVar.

He looked at me with what I hoped wasn't apprehension.

"Years ago, you asked me if I was going to be in Nemesis, and I told you that I hadn't been asked. You told me that you'd talk to Rick, because I was part of the family and I should be in the movie."

"You are family, Wil," he said.

"Well, you ended up doing something really important for me that was much more than just being in a movie," I said. "When we all worked together on the series, I couldn't appreciate it, because I was a stupid teenager. It wasn't until years later that I realized how lucky I was, and how much I missed all of you guys. It made me so sad that I took that for granted.

"When I worked on Nemesis, I was able to fully appreciate it, and I really needed that, so I could get over the incredible regret that I fuh-" A lump started to grow in my throat, and I took a breath that hoped would let me talk around it. "The incredible regret that I felt because I didn't know how much you all meant to me until I was gone."

I felt a tear spill down my cheek. I didn't care. "So I just wanted to say thank you, for that. I wouldn't have ever been able to move past that and have the life I have today if you hadn't made a phone call that you didn't need to make. Thank you for caring about me, LeVar."

I glanced at Jonathan, and I think I saw his eyes shining just a little bit. Before I realized it, LeVar was hugging me tightly. I forget what he said, because I was trying so hard not to cry. I'm pretty sure that it was the final, unwritten (until now) coda to the Journey I took in Just A Geek.

[rhoenix]

That's great. Wil Wheaton seriously is awesome.

[Hadrianvs]

Question for Lady Tevar. How many torpedoes are carried by Akira-class warships in general and the Spector in particular?

[Cynical Cat]

Question for Lady Tevar. How many torpedoes are carried by Akira-class warships in general and the Spector in particular?

There are no official numbers that I've seen, but several hundred is the typical loadout of a cruiser its size. Because the Akira is a missile boat, I would double that.

And Hadri, we've already got missile boats and the Akira is pretty much the king of missile boats. Trying to one up it isn't the way to go.

[Hotfoot]

Question for Lady Tevar. How many torpedoes are carried by Akira-class warships in general and the Spector in particular?

If you have a ship concept to post, why not post it or start a discussion on what you're shooting for, rather than beating around the bush? We all know you want a crazy anime missile boat that fires hundreds of missiles at once or that has fighters that do the same, but that frankly isn't going to happen. Whatever your feelings on Star Trek combat are, this is a Star Trek game, and so you really need to make a choice, either suck it up and deal with the fact that we're going to be using Star Trek styled combat, or just decide that it's too much of a hassle and you don't want to put up with it.

I mean it's like if I walked in to a game of 3.5 D&D and said, "Hey, I like the game you have going here, but I really hate D&D combat, so can I have a character that does combat more like (totally different system X that would absolutely break D&D)? No reasonable GM would do that (unless it's his SO, in which case abandon ship), and no reasonable player should really expect it.

If you really do want to play within the confines of Star Trek, hey, by all means, let's work out some sort of plan. Yeah, there are a lot of ships, and yeah, duplication on some level is going to happen, but there are plenty of ways still for unique twists to occur and individual niches to fill.