Mike West,

IIRC, SVC has indicated in his discussions on PF ionic charges that these come from the packs and thats why workboats were possible.

As for admin shuttles, tell me how you plan on boarding my freighter that is behaving suspiciously to check its cargo without downing a shield that a pirate/ Qship would shoot through.

A transporter is needed for all kinds of stuff.

A probe is a optional, but I always thought that SFB underemphazed the information gathering because its a darn combat game.

A tractor would surely be nice.

As for cargo, how about a shuttle bay that is often used as a cargo hold or mass prisoner cell. OR a mech linked crate on the tractor beam.

You have to figure that these things/ Police ships are always making emergency runs to somewhereistan with replacement widgets for the life support/ vaccines/ rioters to jail, etc.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 02:13 pm: Edit

A police gunboat does not replace other ships. It augments them. Plus, don't forget the gunboat specialists. If you need to transport that many prisoners, call a cargo gunboat. Supply runs are also made by cargo gunboats. Need to tow something? Call a recovery gunboat. Need investigation beyond your one free lab box? Call in the scout gunboat (or the survey gunboat if you have one).

As for the rest, you make compromises. I have already cut down its weapons to make room for the transporter. Adding a tractor removes either the photon or drone. I wanted to keep its combat capability, so I chose to not use the tractor. (No, you can't just kill the Ph-3. It has to be a real weapon.)

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 02:50 pm: Edit

Mike,

you assume that there are legions of these out there.

I am assuming that these are akin to short range independent patrols.

And YES, lots of raiders and such will result in these running off and just calling for the big boys.

But there are lots of missions one or two of these can do that free up the "real starships" for other duties.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 02:51 pm: Edit

Mike, what PF are you modifying that you have to consider removing a photon? It sounds like a Thunderbolt. Why are you concerned with how you would convert a conjectural PF to a conjectural PF mission? This is post war. Just use the Orion PF. No historical problems to contend with.

Even if you did feel strongly that the Fed need their own PF design, simply create one. There is no need to base your design entirely on a conjectural unit.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 04:22 pm: Edit

Mike,

There *are* legions of these out there. During the General War any base that had gunboats also had an "extra" flotilla of support gunboats. So, if the police gunboat are present, then (by precident) so are the support gunboats.

Tos,

I did make an alternative design. I even give a link to it above. Regardless, let's take the Orion Buccaneer as an example. It already has the tractor; let's assume you can put a shuttle mech link on it for free (NOT a guaranteed assumption). Now, we have three option mounts. One becomes a transporter. One becomes a cargo box. The last one can be a weapon, either a photon or drone; you pick.

Which leaves the gunboat underarmed, even compared to my suggested designs.

My point is that a non-leader gunboat does not have room for a transporter AND a tractor AND cargo AND weapons. You can't have it all, or you would end up with a full ship.

So, you make compromises. What can you cut? Well, the first thing is you want to keep weapons, or you might as well just use skiffs and workboats. Speaking of skiffs and workboats, you can delete the cargo, as you have skiffs and workboats for that cargo. So, the cargo is gone.

Now, with the Buccaneer, you can have a photon and a drone, plus a Ph-1 and 2xPh-3. Not too bad, but I still question if you can add a mech link to that tractor. But then, I don't know that you need the admin anyway, so that would be fine. My design is directly comparible to that, except I delete the tractor to effectively upgrade one of the Ph-3 into a Ph-1.

But, regardless, the point of a police gunboat is not to be a police cutter, or to replace them. It is to provide more coverage to more places. In effect, it is replacing security skiffs, not police ships. As such, it can't do everything; it can only do some things. Pick what your primary mission is (defense, in my case) and build around that.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 04:55 pm: Edit

Mike.

1) Yeah, bases at the front lines.

2) I suggest that the shuttle and cargo box be the same thing. If you need to tote cargo, you leave your admin behind and come and get it later.

3) Legions is so relative. How many PF would a race have? 5 times as many as Police ships? Look at the Klink police strength in PD Klingons. Thats perhaps a couple HUNDRED pfs. FOr how many F&E hexes? With how many planets/ border stations (the small ones, not the BATS)/ mining stations/ etc?

IIRC, SVC said that the average F&E hex has something like 1000 systems in it that are useful in some way. Lets just say there are 100 systems with something the police care about. And they are how many PFs in a hex? 2? 3?

And if you plan on defense being the raison d'etre of your PF, just use a regular combat PF and call it a day. Personally, I would suspect that defense is mostly a BOMBER thing. And PFs are for patrolling/ strikes and stuff the bombers can't do.

By Andrew Harding (Warlock) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 05:09 pm: Edit

My take on a Police PF: just remove the packs from a PF Leader. That leaves plenty of combat power for handling unruly freighters and skiffs, allows cargo inspection and uses an existing design that's in production It also keeps the combat power of Police formations down because only one leader is allowed per squadron.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 05:21 pm: Edit

Andrew, you have compared the Economic and Combat BPVs of a plain Police ship and a PFL right?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 06:53 pm: Edit

PF leaders without packs would be too expensive to use as police boats. If you could build that many leaders, you would have every flotilla composed of five leaders and a scout.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 07:22 pm: Edit

Whilst most races will have a few specialist PFs kicking around to help the Pol PF, the Feds won't because they don't have any PFs at all. And unless they start manufacturing their own gunboats, they'll just have to hope that there's a convenient imported workboat or skiff kicking about.

Which suggests that the same yard that makes the Pol PF will have a market for a backup boat (essentially, a FLG-PFL) that does have a trac, trans, cargo, specsen, shuttle, etc but fewer weapons. Or it bodges some of this stuff onto the regular Pol PF.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 10:40 pm: Edit

The issue with Federation built PFs is not that the Federation couldn't build them, they could, it was certainly with in their cababilities.

As I under stand it, the Federation decided against building PFs for philosophical concerns.

IF a civilian police PF design is cheaper and more effective than more skiffs or POLs, and (assuming peace time mortality of such police PFs to be better than comparable wartime PF crew life expectancy rates were) then it might be reasonable for the Federation police to have some civilian PFs.

I may be alone on this, but I'd guess that most such Civilian police PF designs would tend to be non combat types that are not expected to participate in combat at all.

sort of a general rule, if its normal revenue or customs tasks, a police PF is OK, but if trouble is expected, send for a POL or navy cruiser.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 10:48 pm: Edit

My theory on a Fed-built police gunboat is that it *is* combat capable (otherwise it doesn't really provide any reason to be built instead of generic workboats), but not full military capable. So, no booster packs. That alone will cripple the police gunboat from a military perspective, but also provide it with enough power to shoot its weapons and run its systems as necessary.

Note this is just for a Fed-built police gunboat. No one else has to have this restriction.

What my original proposal was for (and why it included booster packs) was as a national guard unit. They are a last line of defense, and will either see no action, or will die in droves no matter what they are in. (Sorry, but whether you are in a fighter, bomber, gunboat, police cutter, or auxiliary unit, your live is pretty much forfeit.) So, in the service of the national guard, using gunboats shouldn't trigger the "Fed philosophical barrier". As a bonus, they can also while away the time assisting the police (thus the transporter).

But we all know that idea is DOA ...

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, July 12, 2009 - 11:14 pm: Edit

Well, I think that the Fed PF should START with a comparison to the Skiff.

And then go from there...

And SVC has already ruled out the Feds BUILDING PFs. But purchasing them from the ORIONS? Dunno

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:17 am: Edit

We should make a distinction, I think.

the history is clear that the Federation never built PFs... what needs to be verified is if the Federation Police used civilian built PFs... and that source could be Orion, Klingon, Kzinti, or even Federation member worlds.

It might even be possible that the Cygnians and the Skelosians built their own style civilian PFs and sold them to the Police and various planetary governments.

Heck, In the "Real World" police departments have used many different cars and truck manufactured by many different sources.

I have heard of police vehicles that had originally been confiscated, and then put into service.

that includes helicopters, small boats and yachts as well as cars of all kinds and makes.

is it really all that unlikely that the Federation Police (as are many such organizations) might be underfunded, and desperate to acquire the ships and units needed to carry out their duties?

Using that thought as justification, it just might be that there are no standard civilian police PF designs... just a odd collection of many different PFs from various sources.

just not a variant of the Federation Thunderbolt conjectural PF type.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:33 am: Edit

Feds did not build any kind of PFs.

Feds did not purchase foreign PFs until after the war (during the prospecting period, and even then, it was not the fed government, but private prospectors, and the boats were de-militarized).

I am not going to let people back door a fed combat PF by claiming it's just for the police.

Remmber that 97% of patrol boats will be SKIFFs and that police PFs will be used only by a few planets. Workboat PFs won't come into common usage until after the General War.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 11:50 am: Edit

Even if it's just one event, I'd like to see a story about Fed Police is a refurbished Buccaneer trying to pull over a freighter that flat out refuses because they MUST really be pirates!

And then the scenario after where it has been established that the Fed Police are in fact using Buccaneers and the pirates start having a field day "legally" pulling over freighters all over.

Then a third where the Fed Police, joined by Star Fleet, hunt down a pirate PFT loaded with Buccaneers with Fed Police paint jobs! (Ending in a historical note that Fed Police were forever banned from opperating Orion Buccaneers.)

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 01:08 pm: Edit

It seems to me that the only reason various Empires would adopt PFs as police units is to soak up the excess supply of PFs after the war.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 01:18 pm: Edit

Other than the Feds, I'd say the various empires used PFs for patrol duty because the devestated zones were in such a state of disarray that they found that the ecconomy of force allowed by PFs was useful. It was probably never a perminant solution but allowed more units to cover more area until trade routes and other things stabilized.

They were probably REALLY worried about pirate activity increasing in those zones. No one could have guessed that the pirates would sieze the oppertunity to go legit and pirate activity would drop slightly. (SVC mentioned something like this way back in the X-Files thread. I do't know if that still holds true.)

As for dealing with extra supplies, I would think PFs would lend themselves well to being mothballed since they can land. How much space in a desert does twenty squadrons of PFs take up?

By George Duffy (Sentinal) on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 02:54 pm: Edit

I think everyone is forgetting something about the PFs. They are HIGH (emphisis) maintenence vehicles. Even without the warp packs, they require plenty of downtime between missions to flush the engines of plasma(ion?) build up, life support systems, etc.

For the cost of a PF squadron it may be economically cheaper to have just three police ships for the long haul.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, July 13, 2009 - 03:33 pm: Edit

George, I think the current canon is that workboats (PFs without packs) had their engines so they weren't so maintence intensive.

By Marc Baluda (Marc) on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 12:01 am: Edit

Or they had some of the service booster packs proposed above to purge/stabilize/service the engines.....

By George Duffy (Sentinal) on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 01:37 am: Edit

Mike,

I wasn't refering to workboats, rather to police PFs. Granted, the workboats will probably be more durable because their engines will not be taxed in the way that a police PF's will be.

It's like comparing a utility pick-up truck to a state police cruiser. One will be in the garage more often for tune-ups and repairs than the other.

In what aspect will a police PF will be better off than a security skiff?

Missions that will require a police PF will be those that are far away from a planetary system. this will mean some kind of support system set-up be required on long trips; while not always a tender ship, but something more than just a ducktail on a freighter.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 10:08 am: Edit

George,

If I understand correctly, the proposed Police PFs (I suppose for all races except the Federation) will still have the normal limitations on PF operations.

That means either a tender or a base, and Endurance on the order of 48 hour missions.

On the plus side, PFs are tactically much faster than Skiffs while both have (I'm guessing) simmilar strategic ranges.

SVC seems to be concerned that a Fed Civilian designed PF will "back door" access to the Federation to have PF squadrons... which might well indicate that police PF ssquadrons could operate at full strength flotillas when and where needed... and frankly, other than anti piracy operations, most races won't need to build, maintain and operate full strength police Flotillas in every province and F&E hex in their empire.

The cost could be phonomenally high.

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 02:31 pm: Edit

Knowing the Federation, post GW they will be willing to help out some of their allies who got pretty well smacked around in the war. Therefore it is not too big of a stretch of imagination that they would buy some surplus PFs from either the Kzinti, Hydrians or the Gorn.

All three could be a possible source for a fed Police PF.

As for logistics there will probably be a few left over carrier pods from tugs laying about which could be easily converted to be a stationary PF tender which when needed could be towed about to different areas if needed for better security.

Actually a POL pod would be something handy to design to be connected to a civilian base for local missions.

Just my 2 cents

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 02:58 pm: Edit

Depends on SVCs ruling either Police PFs use packs or not...

SVC wrote "Remember that 97% of patrol boats will be SKIFFs and that police PFs will be used only by a few planets."

The thorny issues are: are there police workboat/ PFs in other empires? What did the Feds do?

My answer would be 1) Yes and 2) The Feds used an upgraded skiff, using much of the knowledge that PF tech had engendered to achieve much the same result. The Fed Police skiff was basically a mixture of the new PF tech and the proven skiff design with some extra features (admin and trac and Trans) and a few less weapons than a PF leader would have...