If so, taking 4 plasma F's wouldn't be any better.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Tuesday, September 17, 2002 - 12:15 pm: Edit

Yeah, but doing it for 4 turns straight from a D-Rack is worse than a Plasma-F that you have to recharge for 5 energy over 3 turns.

By Marc Baluda (Discomaster) on Tuesday, September 17, 2002 - 12:22 pm: Edit

The only time the Plasma D is a better option is against drones. Otherwise, the Plasma F is far superior against ships - it has the crunch power that is needed against ships, and can obliterate squadrons of fighters out to range 12. The Plasma D won't do that.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, September 17, 2002 - 12:24 pm: Edit

And someone would run the gunline of a ISC echelon...why??

To beat the ISC you can't play their game. Either take out the gunline (and/or break it up)or flank them or both if your fleet is large enough. Fs or Ds would make little diference except that if I were using fighters and PF. Which was the point of the exercise. Against ships Fs are better but shouldn't come into play so much if the other guy knows what he's doing.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 01:44 pm: Edit

Well those f torps are going to come into play, but the 'other guy' should be minimizing its impact on the battle certainly.

By Mark Kuyper (Mark_K) on Friday, September 20, 2002 - 12:57 pm: Edit

Loren,
Because you are playing fusion hydrans? :-)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, September 20, 2002 - 01:14 pm: Edit

Tooo sheyyy.

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 01:11 am: Edit

I was looking over the PFT and the CVL today and got to thinking about a mini SCS. The ship would have no special sensors, 5 tractors (3 or 4 being repairable mech links), 8 shuttle (6 with ready racks for SF fighters or 4 SF ready racks/2 TF ready racks), 4 repair, and 6 aft hull. I'm working on the SSD at the moment (4 of them to cover all options).

I can think of possibly two reasons that the ISC could have built a ship like this.

1. SCS's being in demand but not available.
2. An early testing platform for PF's & INT's, without giving up fighter capability.

I'd like to hear opinions of everyone on this; good, bad, or indiferent.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 09:44 am: Edit

3. As a Fi-Con experiment.

Sounds interesting. Lets see the SSD.

By Greg Ernest (Grege) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 10:06 am: Edit

Wanye,

Make sure you take the new carriers in J2 into account. The ISC upgraded the CVL before the Pacification began to carry 12-fighters.

Also, they already have a BCS to partially fill this role.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 11:15 am: Edit

IIRC Fi-Con's cannot carry any assault fighters, only Superiority fighters. (so no plasma-F toting fighters on a Fi-con)

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 05:12 pm: Edit

Here is the SSD for what I call the SCSL-1.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/wcrawford/SSD/ISC_SCSL_1.GIF

I still have a few cosmetic changes to make and need to add the fighters to the SSD, but you should be able to see what my intentions are.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 05:48 pm: Edit

I'm not sure but I think PF usually fly in even numbers (2, 4, or 6) unless you were thinking a PFL and two standards but even then I'm not sure that legal/historical.

Or did I miss something? That's probably the case.

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 06:51 pm: Edit

No, I was thinking of either 3 standard PF's or 3 INT's, depending on the exact time of introduction of the ship. As I said originally, one use of this ship could have been to test the INT/PF platform, while still having the tried and true fighters if there is trouble.

I'm in the process of making a 3rd SSD showing this ship with 4 mech links and 6 SF fighters.

I just added and updated the SSDs. Use the following link to get to the index to view all 3 SSDs. I await your reaction to them.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/wcrawford/SSD/


Also, I was wondering if it might be better to give the ship a total of 6 tractors. Any ideas on that?

By Marc Baluda (Marc) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 07:11 pm: Edit

It should carry at least four PFs (any ship can carry two, so why make one that carries three?). I suggest giving it 6 tractors, but you have to take something off to accomodate the fighter bay and PFs. I don't see that you did that.

Perhaps remove the 360 P-1s, an APR and a BTTY.

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 07:39 pm: Edit

Marc: If you compare the SCSL-3 to the PFT, I removed the 2 special sensors, 2 mech links, and 4 repair. I added 4 shuttle, 2 aft hull, and the ready racks for the fighters.

Compared to the CVL, I removed 4 shuttle (including the ready racks for the TFs) and 2 aft hull. I added 2 tractors (including 4 mech links) and 4 repair.

I don't see any reason that the ISC would have this ship with less APR, batteries and phasers than the PFT or CVL. I would consider removing some aft hull and/or repair.

Take another look at the CL, CVL, PFT and my SCSL-3. Oh, and don't forget that R13.9 specifically mentions that the CL was designed with extra space to make conversions easier.

Oh, and if anyone has a better name or the ship, please let me know.

BTW, I think the SCSL-3 is probably the better way to go, but do look at the SCSL-1/2 as well.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 07:44 pm: Edit

A minor SSD nit, but when putting 6 special boxes in a set of 8 in a 2 row configuration, its standard to put 4 in the top row and 2 in center of the bottom row. I'd suggest a same thing with the 4 mech links in the 6 tractors. It is odd to see a ship with only some of its tractors having mech links (except on BB sized ships and casual links, its usually all). And 6 tractors seems to be pushing the number for this ship.

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 07:56 pm: Edit

Dkass: SSD nit fixed on SCSL-3. Also, do you prefer the 5 tractor versions, or would you think 4 tractors appropriate (still with 4 mech links in both cases)?

By David Kass (Dkass) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 08:04 pm: Edit

I'm thinking 4 tractors total. Probably best in a single line.

By Mark Kuyper (Mark_K) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 08:36 pm: Edit

Wayne,
In the ISC fleet, what role is this ship supposed to fill? The advantage a SCS has over a PFT+CV is command and control. As a test bed, they'd simply build a PTF and have a carrier escort it.

A couple years ago I proposed a 3 PF PFT (of sorts). It was intended to provide attrition support to Klingon frigate squadrons. It was intended to replace the E4V/F5V's as a light attrition platform. The design was simply an F5 with its rear phasers replaced with mech linked tractor beams.

This easy to do conversion would be less expensive than building a carrier while giving more firepower to a frigate squadron than converting the F5 to an F5L or F5W. As I knew what mission the ship would do and I knew the motivation for the conversion, making the SSD was straightforward.

I've found that building the ship to support a mission is often easier than designing a cool ship then trying to figure out what to do with it.

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 08:40 pm: Edit

Ok, I added the SCSL-4, taking Dkass' suggestions of keeping 4 tracs only. I also added the fighter info boxes. So tell me which ship you like, how you think it will work, ect. It will be about 2 weeks before I can play test any of them, so if anyone decides to try one out, I'd love to hear how it works.

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 09:52 pm: Edit

Mark K: Excelent points. I understand you reasoning for the SCS, but other than command and control, the added benifit of a flotilla of PF's and a squadron of fighters is an asset, else noone would have built anything but dreadnaughts.

First, I want to state that I envision this ship having 1 escort standard, either a FE or a DE.

I see this ship having many possible roles, some depending on the year.

1. Two of these in a standard echelon would would allow the much needed SCS to be deployed elsewhere.

2. Used as an early INT/PF platorm. Before dedicated PFT's were built.

3. This ship could replace CA's in areas where the fire power of the CA is more than needed and the CL is not quite up to the challenge.

These are just my initial uses for the ship. I'm sure others may occur to me.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 10:28 pm: Edit

I liked #4 but would prefer the repair next to the tractors. I didn't like 1-3 due to the tractor arangements.

By Wayne Crawford (Darkelf) on Thursday, October 03, 2002 - 11:41 pm: Edit

I've made cosmetic changes to all 4 SSD's. I hope that these look better.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/wcrawford/SSD/

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Friday, October 04, 2002 - 12:14 pm: Edit

What's the difference between 1 and 2 and between 3 and 4? I can't tell.

Then, of course, there are the PPD versions...