Hi.


This was an idea that popped up in the middle of someone else's thread - and so, rather than continue to hijack derail inconvenience said thread, I figured I'd put the concept into one of its own.


Basically, I was imagining whether or not there could be a (most likely conjectural) medium cruiser type which would look something like the later Strike Cruiser, at least in general hull design.


The main idea is to create a saucer-nacelle ship which may have competed with the TL12 Terran CL for a place in the post-Y120 Star Fleet - kind of the reverse of the contest that went on between the Constitution-class and the OCA.


The thinking behind the designers in this case would be to create a ship which would share certain common components with the CA (the saucer and engines) and couple this with a shorter engineering hull that would be cheaper to construct than that on the full-sized CA.

Unlike the CS design, however, the idea I had for this ship was that it was intended, firepower-wise, to have the same loadout as the CL - 2 photons and 6 Ph-1s. (The flat nacelle struts would help retain the LS/RS arcs the Terran ship has.)

In place of these, the ship would have an increased set of labs than the CS has - 6, the same as the CL. Coming from an era which would be, ostensibly, less battle-intensive than the mid-Y160s, the ship would have been intended to serve the more well-rounded mission-wise than the CS was intended to be.


As it would turn out, the ship might have had a set of issues which prevented it from taking the CL's place in the fleet - maybe due to the cost of the secondary hull being more than expected, or an expected lack of worth in re-tooling the supply network established for CL production and servicing to the new hull, or maybe the ship as a whole was too expensive for the Council to forego a tried and true hull design for.


Eventually, a design team might take the blueprints from this ship, modify it into a more combat-oriented vessel (the CS) and thus lead to the design and construction of the Prometheus we already know.


Would even a conjectural CSM (or whatever term might be better to describe it - CSE? A(lternate)CL? Or something else?) sound like it might be worth pursuing?

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Tuesday, June 09, 2009 - 12:53 am: Edit

*looks at his Federation Modern Light Cruiser proposal*

Ahem.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, June 09, 2009 - 01:21 am: Edit

Okay, I won't go for the ACL designation idea, then.


However, that design you refer to looks more like the spiritual forerunner to the NCL than the CS, as I recall.


(There may have been several design teams trying to work on various options for Star Fleet to choose from at the time.)

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, June 09, 2009 - 01:47 pm: Edit

Use a CF saucer and a CA+ (?)/ CC engineering hull.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, June 09, 2009 - 02:06 pm: Edit

"Use a CF saucer and a CA+ (?)/ CC engineering hull."

Nope.

Still won't work, the YIS date of the CF was year 167, while Gary posted earlier that the CSM was supposed to be an middle years design (circa year 120).

I think thats why Gary started by following up on the DDM saucer from the CM proposal.

IMO (for what its worth), the way to go is stick with the DDM saucer (and its 2 photons) and amend the ships movement cost based on a smaller engineering hull.

the "Stock" CA/CC rear hulls are 16 SSD boxes, the "vanilla" CS hull had what?!? a 12 box secondary/engineering hull and it resulted in a 5/6 movement cost.

just using the CS rear hull would get Gary close to 90% of what he wants in the CSM... I just don't know if it will "fly" with the steves, though.