Civilianized Orion ex-Police cargo ships
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board: New Ships: Processed: Civilianized Orion ex-Police cargo ships
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Archive through March 01, 2011  25   03/01 01:21pm
By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 03:24 pm: Edit

Hmm the Orions get sometimes weld happy (DBR)why not weld a couple odf old POLs together and make a mega cargo cruiser

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 03:26 pm: Edit

Plus the tholians would be willing to buy literally any hull the orions can get to them if only to beef up their defenses

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 04:04 pm: Edit

There's no Tholian market for spare hulls.

Before the General War, the Tholians were near-totally insular, trusting nobody. The total lack of Fed hulls in tholian service is proof of that.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 04:08 pm: Edit

You mean... like Web Tenders?!?

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 04:13 pm: Edit

I wouldn't be too sure that the Tholians would buy one of these. There are two issues, I think. One is whether obtaining such a small hull is worth antagonizing the Feds (who supply the Tholians with their photon torpedoes). But perhaps more importantly, would the price the Tholians would have to pay for the hull be better spent on building/upgrading their own ships? Here's the point about that second issue. The Tholians could adapt that POL's phasers to fire through web. It's not clear that they could adapt the hull itself to be able to move through web. In fact, some comments in the "Brothers of the Anarchist" articles suggest they probably could not. Apparently, the ability to move through web has to be built-in during construction. It can't be retrofitted later on. The TK5 can move through web but that's because the front portion is a Tholian PC hull. Would it be similarly possible to graft part of a Tholian ship onto a POL to allow web-pass capability? Maybe, but the effort would likely considerably increase the cost of the ship, on top of what they already payed the Orions. I'm not sure this would be cost effective for such a small hull, which would have very limited capabilities in any case.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 04:33 pm: Edit

I am not shutting this down, although I personally do not see the point.

First, police ships like other ships have the self-destruct option.

Second, most police ships would be "shot to peices" in a battle, making it difficult to make off with them due to the damage.

Third, if you are taking the time to deplete your boarding party resources (to include the ones you lose in the boarding attempt, not to mention the losses when a police ship self-destructs with them aboard) in attempts to capture police ships (not to mention your own crew resources in transferring prize crews aboard such captured police ships to try to fly them someplace), you are inherently reducing your station time to capture freighters and transfer the juicy parts of their wealth to your cargo holds.

Fourth, I do not see any empire allowing enough of these to operate to justify the logistics (unique spare parts as others have noted) of keeping them in operation (the WYN Star Cluster always being a notable exception, but note that such ships operated by the Cluster are operating in a region of space smaller than a single Federation & Empire hex and are thus never far from a logistics node).

Yes, there are cases where a police boat is captured here and there. But it does not happen often enough to justify this concept, I think. How many of you have done Orion actions where you attacked something that had a police ship and wound up capturing the police ship with its engine systems at least intact enough to disengage by acceleration? Short of that being the defined victory condition, you probably focused on getting it out of the way and getting to the meat (cargo boxes) of the operation.

Again, I am not shutting this down, but I just do not see this as something Orions would waste much effort on. I agree that sometimes police boats are captured, but the numbers are going to be small for the basic reasons I have stated.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 05:13 pm: Edit

Jeff,

You mean... like Web Tenders?!?

You mean Tholians can't build freighters?

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 07:31 pm: Edit

John Trauger: Well, (R7.10) says that the hulls used for Web Tenders were "initially built on hulls provided by the Federation." The Tholians had some problems producing freighters.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 07:40 pm: Edit

Richard,

Interesting. Didn't know/forgot that. I wouldn't have thought the tholians would expose a logistical weakness like that.

I imagine the A/C on those things were rather seriously tinkered with.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 08:31 pm: Edit

Steve Petrick,

Quote: "Second, most police ships would be "shot to peices" in a battle, making it difficult to make off with them due to the damage."

That was actually where I was headed originally.

the proposal does call for reducing armament to 1xPh3 (360 degrees) on a Fed POL, other races hulls whatever comes closer, but shouldnt exceed 2 xph3 with a split arc (say LS vs RS for example)

ideally a hulk that could be made space worthy enough for cargo hauling but not fit to stand in the line of battle.

This could even be stretched to a concept Reid Hupach has mentioned from time to time... a prison hulk for housing prisoners, orion slaves or even just a cargo lighter for moving Cartel supplies from place to place as needed.

Honestly, I never envisioned the grandious schemes some people have posted here about dummy IFF transponders or bogus ships documents etc.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 10:12 pm: Edit

Quote:

No, Not accurate at all.

You need to review the tactical Intelligence rules in SFBs (I don't have my books with me, but I beleive its rule D17.0).



Jeff, it doesn't require any detailed tactical intelligence for a pirate to figure out that if a ship with a Fed POL hull is operating alone in Klingon space, it isn't a real Fed POL. All one needs to know to reach that conclusion is knowing that Federation police don't patrol Klingon space.

But, here, let's break it down by the relevant TacIntel levels for you:

At TacIntel level S4, the pirate knows that it's an MC 1/3 ship, like some ungodly high percentage of pirate targets, that being the MC on a small freighter.

At level A, the pirate knows it's SC4. Which, frankly, we already knew from the MC.

At level B, the pirate knows it's a Federation-built ship. Here, in Klingon space, unescorted. Huh. So, is it an easy-target OPOL, or a frigate on a special penetration mission? You know, there's probably a standing reward for reporting an enemy ship incursion to the Klingon authorities, which is even easier money than piracy. Let's close in to 40 hexes to check.

40 hexes, Level C, we can see it's a Fed police hull. The Fed police don't patrol in Klingon space, so we know it isn't a Fed POL. Which, by process of elimination, means it's an OPOL. Since those are expensive to operate and poorly armed, it means valuable cargo, weakly defended! Wooo! Everybody gets a bonus share of loot!

The only place in the entire galaxy where looking like a Fed POL is a benefit is in places where real Fed POLs operate on legitimate business, such that somebody might actually believe the ship is a POL. And you've defined your proposed OPOL as never operating in those places. Therefore, looking like a POL at TacIntel Level C is never a benefit to the OPOL you proposed.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, March 02, 2011 - 01:24 pm: Edit

Steven,

Go back and look at the actual proposal, it would presumably BE the Orions operating the OPOL (or people affiliated with the Orions in some manner.)

What I dont understand is why you insist an Orion Pirate would be attacking an Orion civilianized Police ship(be it a Fed, Kzinti or what ever).

The orions would already know what it is.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, March 02, 2011 - 02:56 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

When you are talking empires spread across the spiral arms of a galaxy, "prison hulks" are simply not cost effective. You still have to keep power systems operating to keep life support going at a minimum.

It is just way more efficient to find marginal planets to dump your prisoners on. The risk of rescue by someone (whether Orion, Orion contracted for the task, or friendly forces) is no greater, and the maintenance costs are much less, plus the size of your inmate population is much less restricted.

Prison barges (already published) make sense for transporting prisoners between such holding facilities. Hulks are more useful for salvage.

Note the background of the Drone Ranger.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, March 02, 2011 - 04:48 pm: Edit

Steve Petrick,

understood.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Thursday, March 03, 2011 - 12:00 am: Edit

Jeff, you're the one who wrote, in this thread

Quote:

Actually, a cargo variant POL would be relatively immune to pirate raids.

What Pirate would willingly attack a POL? little cargo, a POL arguably has weapons and speed and is nimble to boot, a Light Raider would not (under normal circumstances) be able to overwhelm the POL and could be seriously damaged by a POL.



Silly us, the other people on the thread thought you were, you know, talking about the cargo-carrying POL variant mentioned in the original proposal when you said that in this thread, without clearly marking that it didn't actually have anything to do with the OPOL.

And it makes your complaints that others should "atleast have the decency to acknowledge that you are changing the basic premise of the proposal" pretty hypocritical; you're the one who introduced the idea into the thread without marking it as distinct, thus causing the confusion you attributed to others.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, March 03, 2011 - 09:12 am: Edit

Steven,

Thats alright.

I'm sure every one here will forgive you for being "silly"

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