Take the Pelican. Give it the 4 phaser-1s, 6 impulse, and two 7-box warp engines that are on every other Hawk-class variant (see the Battlehawk, Warhawk, Chickenhawk, FCR, escort, and police flagship).

While you're at it, you might also beef up the #1 shield from 25 to 36 boxes, to match the FLG.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, June 27, 2016 - 06:57 pm: Edit

I will have to admit that at this juncture the Pelican is a "minelayer" that happens to have the facilities to sweep mines. Its slow speed (due to the weaker engines) means that if you are going to attack something with a minefield you are going to be giving them more time to see your attack coming while waiting for the Pelican to get there.

The engines on this ship are at this juncture "unique." I do not think the Romulans have another ship that uses a five box engine (Snipes use a three box engine, Snipe-Bs use a four box engine, and as noted by the proposer, virtually every other BattleHawk variant uses a seven box engine).

Prior to the "R" refit, it can (not counting the minesweeping shuttles) sweep a maximum of two small mines or one large mine in any give turn. After the "R" refit it can sweep a maximum of two small mines, or two large mines, or one large and one small mine per turn. (Requires facing to use the RA+R and RA+L phaser-3s to support the FA+R and FA+L phaser-1s).

It is, however, very questionable if the Romulans would have tried to upgrade the ships. The F5M is on a par with the Pelican in its ability to sweep mines. The SparrowHawk-D and SkyHawk-D Modules were available pretty quickly and the Romulans do not seem to have considered minesweeping as important as minelaying (A SkyHawk-D can sweep four mines, but the SparrowHawk-D can only sweep five).

More likely to me the Romulans initially use the K5Ms for offensive mine warfare and supplemented them with the SkyHawk-D and SparrowHawk-D, while the Pelicans were kept basically to perform the defensive minelaying mission where minelaying freighters could not get there fast enough to patch holes in defensive minefields.

The above does not mean I am saying "no," but just that I am looking at it.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Monday, June 27, 2016 - 07:35 pm: Edit

I agree that it's questionable if they would try to upgrade any existing Pelicans, except for maybe heavily-damaged ones dragged in for major repairs in any case.

However, it's stated somewhere that the Romulans learned in the General War that it was logistically useful to group ships of the same generation together. And we know know (from R4.210 in X1R) that new BattleHawk hulls remained in production well into the General War.

So it seems likely to me that:

1) The Romulans would (after learning the logistical lesson) want an Old Series minesweeper to group with their other Old Series ships rather than deal with the logistics of including a Kestrel or New Series minesweeper;

2) The Pelicans aren't particularly suited to the sweeper job and would see unusually high losses if pressed into it; and

3) It would actually be easier to make new Old Series minesweepers or convert existing BattleHawks to minsweepers to the "Cormorant" pattern rather than produce more Pelicans with their weird-sized engines.

So, Pelicans would be made before the General War from sublight conversions, generally remain Pelicans until they were scrapped, and used for the emergency minelaying job. Cormorants would be made during the General War, either new in the still-producing BattleHawk shipyard or as conversions from existing BattleHawks, and be used in Old Series fleets as real minesweepers.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 12:55 pm: Edit

Steven E. Ehrbar:

The problem is that you are assuming that a force of Eagles would be assembled for such an operation.

King Eagles, perhaps, because they are fast enough, but War Eagles, Battle Hawks, and Snipes (even the Snipe-B cannot make Speed 31 without using battery power) are slower than KRs and HAWKs.

So it is questionable if there is anything to gain by refitting (or building as new) Pelicans as Cormorants.

And pretty much large scale fleet actions and base assaults do tend (at least in the Early period of Romulan involvement in the General War) to be mixed bags (of Eagles, KRs, and Hawks) rather purely one generation or another.

Which gets you back to it probably not being worth upgrading (or building as new) Pelicans to Cormorants just so there might be a Cormorant available for the job of "Assault Sweeping."

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 05:37 pm: Edit

Hmm. Fair enough.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 06:26 pm: Edit

I will add that the additional phasers of the Cormorant design would give it more absolute firepower, but would not allow it to sweep mines any faster. It is a "direct-fire" minesweeper, which requires that the mine be held in a tractor beam (M8.11), and the ship has only two tractor beams.

Note that this is the same reason why the K5M is no better than the Pelican at the minesweeping job (only two tractor beams, despite two phaser-1s and three phaser-2s).

Note for below:
1xphaser-1 will destroy a small mine.
2xphaser-3s, will destroy a large mine.
Phaser-1s (and phaser-2s) can be fired as phaser-3s.

The SkyHawk-D has four tractor beams, and could sweep four small mines (two with one phaser-1 each, two with two phaser-3s each), or two large mines and two small mines (two large mines destroyed by two phaser-3s each, two small mines destroyed by one phaser-1 each), or three large mines (firing the phaser-1s as two phaser-3s to destroy one large mine, and destroying the other two large mines with two phaser-3s each). (In a pinch, it could sweep two additional mines without needing tractors using the plasma-Fs, but it would take time to rearm those.)

The SparrowHawk-D has six tractors, but can only sweep (with phasers) five small mines (three with the phaser-1s, two with two phaser-3s each) safely in a turn. Or three large mines (one with phaser-1s fired as phaser-3s, and two by two phaser-3s each). Or two large mines (using two phaser-3s each) and three small mines (using one phaser-1 each). Like the SkyHawk-D it could use its plasma torpedoes to sweep additional mines without using tractors (up to three), but again those take time to rearm (although the plasma-G/S could use two-turn-Fs to be 33% faster than the normal plasma-F launchers in this role).

The SkyHawk-D is just so much more efficient than the Pelican (or the Cormorant upgrade of the Pelican being proposed) that it seems more likely it would phase that ship out of front line service pretty quickly (except as noted as a "minefield repair ship"), and probably lead to the K5Ms being converted to other variants (K5Ds?).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, October 07, 2019 - 03:42 pm: Edit

PETRICK ANALYSIS
Romulan Cormorant minesweeper, upgrade of Pelican essentially. As noted in the discussion, in the end this design is not a much more effective minesweeper than the baseline Pelican. It does address the oddity that the Pelican’s engines have become an anachronism, being the only ship that uses them (five boxes when every other BattleHawk variant , except the BattleHawk-B and the BattleHawk-X, uses seven boxes). I just do not think that fixing that anachronism is a reason to do a new SSD when its only other significant difference is the strengthening of the forward shield. It cannot sweep any more mines than a Pelican, so what is the real point?

SVC ANALYSIS: Tell people that the Pelican was only built in tiny numbers by one house trying to get a warp ship contract and that the real Romulan minesweeper all along with the Cormorant. Ignore the proposed design and have Steve Petrick create a proper design.

FINAL ANALYSIS
A totally new Cormorant design is very likely to be in R13.