This is from the Flower-class Corvette discussion. If the Federation is going to figure out how to covert a saucer ship into a saucer+secondary ship early enough to matter to the Corvette, then I think there should be a complete alternative design to the CA.

Take the DD. Convert the two shuttle boxes to hull. Leave the rest of the DD saucer completely unchanged. Now, add a brand new secondary hull that makes it equivalent to the CA, but reflects the fact that some systems that had been in the rear hull are now in the saucer (e.g. tractors and probe). The new secondary hull will have the same number of boxes as the traditional CA rear hull, but they are different because of the DD's different box arrangement.

The fun part is the refits. Since all of the CA's refits are in the rear hull, and since the DD's refits are (obviously) in the saucer, this alternative CA should now be able to get lots of different refit combinations (including the DD's AWR refit).

The really nice thing is that this would allow the Feds to completely upgrade all of their DD hulls into CA hulls. Given that the saucer is completely unchanged, this means that all of the DD variants would obviously be available for this alternative CA, including the G, L, E/A, E/R and base hulls.

I mean the CA and DD saucers are literally the same. This is completely within the bounds of the background. And it isn't really that different from the Gorns throwing on a bad saucer or the Lyrans going from catamarans to trimarans.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, August 22, 2019 - 08:25 pm: Edit

Note that this doesn't change the exist CA ships. This is an additional and alternative design to upgrade DDs into full CAs with minimal effort and costs.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, August 22, 2019 - 08:55 pm: Edit

I am having a SERIOUS flashback.

I could have sworn this has been proposed... complete with flame war feed back and everything.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 22, 2019 - 10:22 pm: Edit

The conversions of the flower corvettes didn't happen until the General War, not when it was invented.

Doesn't mean you cannot convert a DD to a CAish, but you cannot exceed the size of the CA. And it will take a CA construction slot, and won't be cheap.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, August 22, 2019 - 11:23 pm: Edit

Ah, OK on the Corvette.

The intention of the DD/CA is for it to be visually identical to the traditional CA. As such, yes, it has to use a CA slipway. The unrefitted version would have a handful more boxes than the CA, but that is just because the unrefitted CA has a lot of "future-proof" waste space. The idea is just to get extra CAs by converting DDs.

The abuse comes in with the combination of refits and variants that become possible.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Thursday, August 22, 2019 - 11:45 pm: Edit

I think any such conversion of a DD to CA would have a bad breakdown rating and possibly not as good (so to speak) of a turn mode as a CA.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 08:45 am: Edit

If you convert a DD into a CA using a CA slipway, you do not get more CAs, every conversion costs you a new CA.

Changing the DD saucer to a CA saucer increases the cost for no gain.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 09:14 am: Edit

Iff the goal is to make this hull "something different" from other Fed cruiser designs, one could treat the ship as an extension of the deckhouse destroyer and/or heavy destroyer concept: with the secondary hull section extending directly behind the saucer and with the warp engines mounted above and below it. This would essentially be a Fed homage to a Gorn cruiser design.

On a side note, perhaps an alternate alternate heavy cruiser equivalent could be made out of taking a Ptolemy-class tug and replacing the docking clamp with a hard-welded secondary hull section?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 09:55 am: Edit

No Photons on the tug saucer.

unless you hard weld a light battle pod, all you would get is a weak under armed CA sized ship.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 10:00 am: Edit

I guess you'd get something that looked a lot like a Fed battle tug unless you rebuilt the tug saucer pretty extensively, which seems kind of pointless.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 11:10 am: Edit

Now... if you hard welded a Fed DD saucer to a light battle pod or light carrier pod, and mounted two CA/Tug engines to the DD saucer just like they would mount on a tug saucer, you would really have a scary ship for halloween!

ten photons all with forward firing arcs for the light battle pod.

talk about a klingon nightmare!

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 11:59 am: Edit

Again, I will note that the Fed CA, DD, SC, and Tug saucers are all identical. They all have different internal box arrangements, but they are fundamentally identical.

And, again, converting the DD to a CA doesn't involve changing the DD saucer to a CA saucer. In involves simply adding a CA rear hull to an otherwise unchanged DD. Any actual changes are *optional*, not required. Just swap out the neck, attach the CA rear hull, and off you go.

There shouldn't be any movement/turn mode/breakdown problems because, again I cannot stress this enough, the DD saucer and the CA saucer is fundamentally the same. I mean the neck connection point is identical. Just literally swap out the DD's neck and engine, and add a CA's neck and secondary hull (and engines). It is about as straight-forward as you can get.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 02:03 pm: Edit

Mike West:

You can look at the miniatures and make that claim, but the SSDs make it pretty clear that a DD saucer is not the same as a CA saucer. There are significant structural differences, such as the tractor beams and shuttle bay being in the DD saucer and not in the CA's secondary hull. And if they were identical, then the space for all the things crammed into the DD saucer could have been used to add things to the CA saucer. Also note that while it was possible to convert half the DD's labs to AWRs (or cargo in the case of the DE), and I admit that our refusing to allow such a similar refit to the CA is more a game balance issue than the reality of how easy it would be to just add the shading, label, BPV refit line, and refit explanation to the SSD, the fact that it has not been done also points to there being a significant difference between the two saucers.

So, no, it is not "straight-forward," the saucers are different even if you cannot (again) see the difference in the miniature.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 02:20 pm: Edit

RE Scary Ship based on the Fed DD: I took the Heavy DD and the Deck-house DD and combined them to make the HDDH, and the Command version of the same. Not sure if it's a 3/4 or 5/6 move-cost ship. Last time I posted it, Petrick said it was "almost too good".


Garth L. Getgen

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 02:49 pm: Edit

My "head canon" has always been that all the "Class One" starship (as Franz Joseph called them) saucers (the CA, DD/Sc, and TT) *start out* as identical spaceframes. The basic, underlying core and framework.

However, the changes that SPP notes would involve major changes to how those initial frames were finished-out and especially how they were fitted out. The shuttlebay for the DD/Sc/TT alone is a gigantic hole in the structure and would involve a lot of shifting of loads to other portions of the framework, likely involving changed elements not seen in the CA.

The noted similarity in connection point of the neck is superficial. The underlying framework is probably similar, but probably modified due to the different engineering systems needing to route through and the different loads. This goes double for the TT's engine mounts, which undoubtedly added structure not there on the CA, or the DD/Sc.

I'll point to the modern-day F-35 fighter jet. The conventional F-35A and C are *vastly* different under the skin than the STOL/VTOL F-35B. Just looking at the exterior, the average person would not be able to note the differences though as their "exterior mold line" shapes are identical in the fuselage.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 05:08 pm: Edit

For the record, I was looking at the SF Technical Manual, not the miniatures to make the claim, but, OK, I stand corrected.

I suppose that means SVC can now delete this topic at his leisure.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 07:11 pm: Edit

No using pods.

You said if I was going to just tack stuff onto a VT you wanted to tack stuff onto a DD then you started rearranging the DD's boxes.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Saturday, August 24, 2019 - 12:25 am: Edit

The only change I made was to convert the shuttle to hull, mimicking the change you said for the Corvette. I thought that one detail was fair game because of that. I did want to change boxes in the rear hull, though.

However, I did also say that I was willing to just take a completely unmodified DD and an unmodified CA rear hull and play with that. So, again, I thought I was playing within the same "rules" established with the Corvette.

Regardless, Petrick and others pointed out why the whole idea was stupid, so I'm been show the foolishness of my assumptions. Thus, i suggested toasting the topic.

By Eddie Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Saturday, August 24, 2019 - 01:18 am: Edit

The primary problem with the CA was and is power. Years ago the myself and the people I played with came up with what we called the B refit or battle refit for the CA.CC classes. the CA has always had an abundance of lab boxes. The new ship designs NCL/NCA all reduced those to increase either power or weapons. What we did was give the CA/CC classes a similar to the DD. 4 of the labs in the saucer were exchanged for APR/AWR leaving 4 labs in the saucer, then to keep the players happy that liked labs, we replaced the APR/AWR in the rear hull with labs. giving a net gain of 2 power, which brings it up to par with the new CA. You have 30 warp 4 AWR/APR 4 impulse and 4 batteries, not an over powering ship, but a much more capable one. You would still have to use a CA dock probably, unless DD docks could be used with the Saucer and hull docked separately

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, August 24, 2019 - 01:42 am: Edit

I did not change the VT saucer; I was only counting boxes and noted that the rear hull and saucer were box by box identical except the rear hull had no shuttles, replacing them with hull. You changed the saucer. Tsk tsk!

Obviously we could do drone, escort, commando, scout variants. The key word is obvious.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, March 09, 2020 - 07:42 am: Edit

Just a thought... since combining a vanilla DD saucer with a vanilla CA rear hull results in a ship superior to a vanilla CA, why not design a smaller rear hull?

I know we went thru all of this in the DDM topic that refitted a DDM to a series of CA variants (liteCA, CA and a CC option) but what has not been discussed is a Strike cruiser option using a smaller rear hull and a modified movement cost.

Just my opinion, (so take it with suitable amounts of salt,), but if the resulting design ends with a Federation variant that compares well to a Klingon D-6 cruiser, it might be worth adding to the game.

Particularly if the YIS matches the D-6 YIS. It would be a natural for D-6 duels.

(Note:Gary Carney did start a topic for a DDM strike cruiser thingy, but there were some serious issues that were never resolved, not least of which was The YIS. IIRCGary wanted a YIS date of 171 I think, and the DDM YIS was closer to year 130.)