The purpose of this topic is to answer four questions:

1) Is it technically feasible to weld a POL to any other Tholian hull?

2) Is it economically reasonable for the Tholians to use POLs in this way?

3) If the answer to 1 is yes then what could the Tholians have done?

4) If the answer to 1 & 2 is yes then what did the Tholians do?

By James Hallmark (Jhallmark) on Friday, April 18, 2008 - 03:56 am: Edit

2) I do wonder if the Tholians ever had enough ships to seal the border. If they did then perhaps they would have had extra POLs to start welding to each other or to other hulls.

By James Hallmark (Jhallmark) on Friday, April 18, 2008 - 03:58 am: Edit

1) How big is a POL really? Is it 3/4 of a PC or is it less?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, April 18, 2008 - 10:25 am: Edit

To answer you questions in a "I'm not SVC but I've got a pretty good handle on it" sort of way.

Building Pols does reduce PC production capacity but the PC production capacity was not reduced from where it was previously understood (i.e., F&E build rates were not changed) but the Pol production capacity was added. This can be explained by over production which produced two Pols per PC hull.

In the Pol description it stated it is aproximately half the size of a PC. The whole concept is that there be enough ships to seal the border with only a very minor surplus of units. Ecconomically, sealing the border was worth the extra cost to produce the numbers of units needed to secure the Holdfast. About the time enough Pols were built the Tholians ran out of extra "cash" and production returned to normal. The end result is Tholian production is what it always was with the added Pols that make the Holdfast possible with very few "extra" Police Cutters in the mix (and extra is not really an accurate word).

Technically, I can see no limitation for the Tholians to weld a Pol to a PC in some way for some design IF the design itself makes sense but you have to answer two questions first.
Will the Pol serve better used this way? Is the resulting ship better than what is already being produced?

In a way, the concept of adding half a PC to another PC is already done except that a Pol is the front half while on the CW it is the aft half that is added. It is hard to imagine how you would get a better unit.

I have also worked out the physical design for the Pol and it is NOT just the forward half of the tri-wedge hull but has a section added to house the engine. This would NOT be compatable with welding onto a from end of a PC, so any such design should lose the engine.

Eventually, PF's took up the mission of the Pol but really the mission had expanded rather than remain static since the enemy had increased in both numbers and effectiveness of ships (both speed and weapons) so PF's didn't replace Pols but rather the supplemented them.

By James Hallmark (Jhallmark) on Friday, April 18, 2008 - 11:57 am: Edit

So if we want a full speed ship the POLs need to either go in the rear or be welded side by side.

I am imagining a PC + 2 pol being welded side by side. But instead of keeping the POLs flat rotate them 180 in order to make a more compact design.

By James Hallmark (Jhallmark) on Friday, April 18, 2008 - 11:58 am: Edit

If they are closer to 1/2 of a PC then it makes less sense (IMO) to attach them to things. Why bother when 2PC = 1PC + 2POL

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, April 18, 2008 - 01:02 pm: Edit

I have submitted a side by side Pol design and SVC said any such thing is an obvious variant and he would do the design.

While I pointed out the need for the Pol to ADB and wrote the general background (what you read is edited for accuracy) SVC did the actual ship design. I think he might have let me take a stab at the design but time was short back then as the module was near completion. That's not to say we wouldn't still see the same ship we have today. I probably would not have designed the ship exactly like that and we'd see SVC's design anyway... which is better.

From the physical design I have submitted a Pol is roughly 1/2 of a PC with an engine added to the underside so the final Pol is slightly larger that 1/2 a PC. I intend to make a mini master.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, July 19, 2019 - 04:13 am: Edit

The problem is that welding a POL to the front of a PC is actually reducing the firepower.

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Friday, July 19, 2019 - 03:42 pm: Edit

There may be the option of mounting disruptors in the wing grooves, but the power requirements are going to climb dramatically.

(The Tholian SC does upgrade its wing phasers to phaser-1's after losing its nose phasers, but it's still going to be a quantitative net loss.)

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, July 19, 2019 - 04:50 pm: Edit

We'll, if you can't put the Pol on the front, could you attach a Pol to each side of a PC? Kind of a mini-D configuration. I figure that should be somewhere in power between a CW and a CA.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, July 19, 2019 - 05:06 pm: Edit

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Quote:

... somewhere in power between a CW and a CA.

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By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Friday, July 19, 2019 - 10:05 pm: Edit

The C-hulls used to be 3/4 MC ships. The gap between them and the CWs really narrowed when they got bumped down.

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, July 20, 2019 - 12:07 am: Edit

Perhaps at a suitable date, the Tholian automated factory was modified to make SLIGHTLY larger "base hulls?"

That's what all the Tholian Legendary Engineers were doing all that time that they weren't on ships?