ALL Redesigning the Classic Monitor
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: New Product Development: Module R14: Ships not published earlier : ALL Redesigning the Classic Monitor
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Archive through September 30, 2011  26   09/30 01:22pm
Archive through October 01, 2011  25   10/01 11:08am
By Robert Cole (Zathras) on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 03:42 pm: Edit

Quote:

Mike Strain: Well, you could drop the Tholian down to a speed of 15-18. That would work, and still be plausible as 'failed D design'.

It would be a very simple process to reduce the engines to 3 boxes each (speed 18) but then the ship doesn't balance from overall power. ANOTHER option would be to replace the Center Warp with another APR bank. This does nothing to the ship's overall power, but reduces its speed to 15+1. I hesitate to do this, though, as it takes away from the idea of 3xPOL being wielded together.

Quote:

Randy Blair: The Romulan Buzzard has 18 impulse engines????


I actually did this intentionally to operate from the idea that the original ship was sublight (with massive engines), AND to address the fact that Eagle-era Romulan ships simply didn't use APR. Since (other than use for movement) Impulse and APR are effectively identical in the SFB game setting, I thought it added a little different character to the ship.

Quote:

Alan Trevor: Tholians use Federation MON hull.


This does hold some appeal as it adds a little more to the Federation / Tholian interaction. As far as I can remember the Federation has shared technology, but never a ship hull (maybe some freighters?). Giving a Monitor or two to the Tholians would be a nice way of showing goodwill without giving them something they could use to take over Federation space.

Quote:

Alan Trevor: An alternate CAN


I don't like it. ADB seems hesitant to give the Tholians a pure phaser ship outside of the CPA. I get the impression that the thought is that such a ship would be too "one dimensional" (IE - amazing when fighting behind web, but less awesome when fighting anywhere else). For a race that is limited in their hull production they should be making as versatile fleet as possible.

Quote:

Lawrence Bergen and Mike Strain: Captain's Log article.


Again, I'm probably over thinking this, but the reason I don't see that working is the number of SSDs. ADB tries to spread out the SSD love in CapLog, but this particular article would require pretty much every SSD in the Log.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 07:01 pm: Edit

Robert,

You have every right to dislike my alternate CAN proposal. But the notion of the proposed ship not being versatile enough does raise the question - why did the Tholians build the CAN in the first place? They took a versatile war cruiser design and turned it into a more heavily armed but less versatile defensive ship.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 07:11 pm: Edit

They could put a few in the Log, and the rest in the supplementary file

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 09:12 pm: Edit

Just an observation about using a CW-shape as a "base hull" for an alternate Tholian monitor. The Tholians couldn't build CW-hulls until the 312th arrived.

So I would suggest a CA-hull shape/style.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 09:57 pm: Edit

Scott,

There may be a misunderstanding here. My suggesting regarding an "all-phaser" CAN was not a suggestion that this would be an "alternate monitor". Rather, it was a suggestion for something the Tholians get instead of a new monitor. That's what I meant when I used the phrase "alternate suggestion" but I guess I didn't make that sufficiently clear in my earlier post. I was proposing an additional CAN variant that the Tholians would get while other empires got new monitors. By definition, the ship wouldn't be available until the Tholians start producing CANs.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Sunday, October 02, 2011 - 12:55 pm: Edit

The Tholian monitor can be welded together hulls without combining all the hulls warp.

Maybe what would be the center warp overlapped and some had to be removed, maybe the warp field couldn't be ballanced if those engines were used for movement power and they become AWR instead.

Making a big ship presumably isn't simply a matter of taking small ships and a welding torch, those engines simply don't work in the combined hull and you have a combined hull with low movement.

By Robert Cole (Zathras) on Tuesday, October 04, 2011 - 03:29 pm: Edit

Quote:

Alan Trevor:

Robert,

You have every right to dislike my alternate CAN proposal. But the notion of the proposed ship not being versatile enough does raise the question - why did the Tholians build the CAN in the first place? They took a versatile war cruiser design and turned it into a more heavily armed but less versatile defensive ship.

A valid question. The difference is that the CAN will be useful in defense of planets, bases, convoys, etc. whether there is a ring of web or not. Your proposal, though, really only shines when that web is present.

There are some, though, that would prefer a phaser-armed ship in ALL situations due to their cheap power costs and reliable damage. I'm avoiding that argument totally. :)

Quote:

Douglas Lampert:

The Tholian monitor can be welded together hulls without combining all the hulls warp.

Maybe what would be the center warp overlapped and some had to be removed, maybe the warp field couldn't be ballanced if those engines were used for movement power and they become AWR instead.

Making a big ship presumably isn't simply a matter of taking small ships and a welding torch, those engines simply don't work in the combined hull and you have a combined hull with low movement.

Just swapping the existing C Warp on my AMN for impulse does make sense if we consider this a precursor to the D-class. Perhaps the Tholians were still trying to figure out the engineering required to balance the engines in this configuration. I dunno.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - 12:11 am: Edit

Robert Cole proposed to redesign the ubiquitous monitor, giving every empire its own unique design. Unfortunately, his designs were all over the map, with some being twice as fast as others, some twice as big as other, and some have nearly twice the firepower of others. To be acceptable the designs would have to be as nearly equivalent to each other as the various generic monitors are to each other. If Steve Petrick decides to proceed wirh the idea (which did not seem to be a priority for players) he would have to create his own nearly equivalent designs. While you could argue that this smacks of cookie-cutterism, if you're replacing a series of equivalent ships, you cannot play favorites and give some empires a good one and others a useless one.

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