How about a "War Mobilization Corvette", basically an enlarged Prime Corvette with a third engine, more hull boxes, a few more weapons and other systems, intended as an escort that could be rapidly built in civilian yards, useful for convoy defense and interior patrols.

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Monday, August 12, 2019 - 03:55 pm: Edit

I almost hate to say this, John, but if a nation/empire wants to relieve its front line ships from the convoy defense/interior patrol missions, why not nationalize Auxiliary Cruisers or National Guard ships, or have Police Ships do that assignment?

Maybe I'm misthinking your idea (as I often do), but if a nation/empire has just gone to war, I don't think they're going to have much time to develop and test a new hull to do that sort of job. I also suspect that civilian yards are going to be rather busy building freighters (and tug pods) for their respective empires, along with the auxiliaries (auxiliary carriers, troop ships, oilers), and probably won't have the manpower or resources to initiate this sort of project.

Sorry.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, September 06, 2019 - 04:55 pm: Edit

John Sickels:

You might consider something less controversial than an expanded Prime Trader with a third engine.

Your idea, but, I would suggest looking at various existing refit's and see if one or more of them might get you most of the way to where you want to go to.

For example, start with a vanilla prime trader, and list a selection of refits.

For example, you might start with:

1. Phaser refit. Replace the two 360 phaser 3 with 2 phaser 1's. Might not fit, but if it could be done, you suddenly have a good start for a light combat variant.

2. photon refit. Replace the two option boxes with a pair of photon torpedos.

3. Shield refit. Add 6 boxes to each shield facing. That would bring each shield up to 18 boxes compared to the original 12 shield boxes.

4. power refit. Convert the 6 cargo box cargo hold on not a 6 box APR or AWR.

5. Give it a "plus" refit option. Say the 4 refits listed above could have been done as early as the 2nd fed kzinti war, (year 141?!?. I forget the year.). A plus refit after year 165 might add 2 phaser 3's, a one Drone G rack, and a singl APR/AWR.

6. Command refit. Needs a Emergency Bridge, and a Aux Con, its intended to be a warship, it needs to have enough command boxes to provide vide redundancy.

I know there isn't room for everything, but I am only trying to illustrate the kinds of things you might want to consider as part of the schedule of refits.

Additional things to consider is doubling the tractor and transporter boxes. Not sure why you would want to, but it's something that might be doable.

For something to make people's head explode, what about converting the phaser 3's, and both option boxes to drone B type racks. Convert the Lab boxes to type B drone racks as well, and leave the cargo boxes intact to allow it to carry up to 300 spaces of bombardment drones.

You would need a scout to provide targeting information, and a escort for any such bombardment squadron would be a really really good idea, but technically, six drone B racks and some 300 drone spaces for bombardment drones would be able to perform the mission.