The ship entry for the NLF establishes they were a dud, unable to raid behind enemy lines like fast ships were supposed to, and were under-gunned for main combat.

The ship entry for the CFS establishes it was a success thanks to all the available power, but the admirals wanted ships available for raiding, so were unwilling to give up any other CF hulls.

So. Take the NLFs, which you can't use for raids anyway. Replace the two photons on the SSD with a pair of drone racks and the four FH phasers with special sensors, the same as the CF-to-CFS changes. Now you've traded some poor combat ships for some excellent scouts (the same shields and total power as the Federation's NHS new heavy scout cruisers, and substantially more power available after paying for movement).

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Monday, October 26, 2015 - 07:47 pm: Edit

I would think that the same rationale for nixing the NAF conjectural variant of the NLF would also apply here.

What would be this ship's mission?

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Monday, October 26, 2015 - 11:58 pm: Edit

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Quote:

What would be this ship's mission?

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By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - 12:16 pm: Edit

"...would get in fist fights ...", that might happen in the Klingon Deep Space fleet, you would have to ask Ketrick about that. In the federation is more likely whole forests of trees would have to die to provide the paper for the memo wars! (Oh, excuse me, electrons in near infinity quantity to illuminate the monitor screens displaying the huge number of email memos suporting and refuting the idea... it after all, being the Federation!)

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Thursday, October 29, 2015 - 06:11 pm: Edit

I like this ship; my only concern is that it's so good that everyone would want them. I guess there is no reason that couldn't be the case. Fast ships and scout channels go together like peanut butter and jelly.

You would need some sort of techno-mumbo-jumbo as to why they remained relatively uncommon rather than, basically, replacing all CA-hulled scouts across the galaxy. Maybe since the fast ships were an unusual technology and had been passed over as standard warships, that there just wasn't the will to build more fast ships as scouts when CWs and NCAs were so much easier to build. Later, X-ships came along and were just plain better. There was always room for a few of these fast scouts, but while there were never as many as the admirals wanted, there were always more than the shipbuilders wanted.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Thursday, October 29, 2015 - 07:43 pm: Edit

Keep in mind, the Achilles Heel of all the fast ships was the maintenance intensive high cost specialty engines and fuel. This was the big reason they were built in limited numbers in the first place. Converting existing ships to scouts may be worth the money, building lots of them, not so much.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 06:56 pm: Edit

I would think having your fast scout down for maintenance far more often then regular scouts would be a big issue with the fleet admirals. Not being able to service it with the fleet would also be a issue as the need for a more refined fuel. So I think David above is right.

As a ship builder i would not want the headache and extra cost of building it. The Admiralty would hate the extra cost to build as well as the extra cost of maintenance and time spent down for such said maintenance.