Archive through December 18, 2019
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: STELLAR SHADOWS:
Stellar Shadow Journal #3:
Archive through December 18, 2019
Jeff amazing saw many ships disappear to an illegal weapon.
Eddie, I meant separate photon freezer ssd boxes, not reloads used in fighter ready racks inside of the fighter shuttle bay.
Well, moving ahead.
If a CVO were built, to participate in a fly off competition with a DN hull CVA, and this fly off happened in mid year 169 ish... and a further conjecture that the CVA won...
The "Mars" faction and the admirals pulling for the CVA wouldn't want the "also ran" CVO hanging around earth or the home fleet.
My guess is that the second (Exploration fleet) would jump at the chance for a flag ship type ship (which the CVO clearly qualifies.)
What changes would need to be made to the CVO for it to function in a survey role?
For example, instead of retaining its escorts, could you assign a scout as an escort? That way you need not install a special sensor to the CVO.
For the cargo requirement, could you assign a FFT or a NCL/tug variant as the heavy escort?
After all, it's not a combat mission, and in the off map territory you would not expect to see a Klingon heavy carrier group...
You might even off load some fighters and assault shuttles to replace with Admin shuttles or HTS.
Jeff:
I think some in the 2nd fleet what amounts to a survey dreadnought as a prestige item but dreadnoughts are expensive to operate. In peacetime they are kept in reserve due to their operating costs. Would you rather have one dreadnought or 2 or 3 more GSCs? Is the ship more effective in surveying than a GSC? If you assign a scout as an escort and it does not have special sensors it is not a survey ship. It is escorting the scout and even most scouts do not have the range to do survey work so it would have to go with a survey ship. Scouts cannot all function as survey ships in F&E so there must be something lacking in the strategic range of scouts. If the design failed due to the warp engines being out of alignment and lowering its speed it would slow down the survey ship it is escorting. Operating with carrier escorts would be difficult because they are not built with range for surveying either. The 2nd fleet does not really need a flagship as the fleet never operates together to need a high command rating ship.
If it were to be made into a survey ship I would see it as losing some weapons and probably 6 to 10 shuttle boxes to get 4 to 6 special sensors and a plethora of labs and maybe another probe launcher. Downsize to maybe six active fighters to mimic the wartime fighter deployment on the exploration GSCs. Resupply would make running too many fighters on a ship problematic. It would almost certainly have an MRS and still have a ton of shuttles for various kinds of survey work. I also do not see it working if the engines did not work out and it cannot make good strategic speed.
It would scare the hell out of any monster that needs to be examined to be killed assuming the monster is smart enough to realize it but I still think it is too big and expensive to run to be good at the job.
Problem is the war is either imminent or on by the time it is built. Even if it is slow and unliked it would be used on the front line because the Federation is desperate. If it is too slow to operate with a fleet use it like an overpriced monitor guarding a starbase or planet or as a one of a kind escort for very high priority convoys or something like that. It could even be used like an auxiliary carrier to refill the "real" CVAs and has the added bonus of being able to operate them.
One possible use for the ship once the engines get sorted out would be to use it hunt down Andro satbases in a scout carrier configuration but that is assuming it lasted that long.
Of course after the CVA was lost at Remus and devastated the planet the admirals might pack the CVO full of explosives and point it at Romulus. 
Jon, I agree that many of your points are valid, and that I do feel that under "normal peace time" there wouldn't be a question that a substitute dread nought (such as the CVO) is a luxury.
However, the General War period is not peace time, and if you consult the F&E deployment, those DNs in reserve, that you mentioned, are infact already out of mothballs and deployed during the first 7 turns of F&E.
So, let's get down to nuts and bolts, shall we?
A GSC, which is clearly capable of performing the survey mission, has 4 special sensors, 8 admin shuttles, and a cargo hold. (I forget if it is a 8 box hold, or 10 boxes...I will have to go look at the GSC ssd form....) plus specialists including scientists, (xeno biologists, chemists, engineers, and probably a dozen other fields), and personnel to conduct ground surveys.
Does the CVO survey variant need 4 special sensors? Could they be mounted on the exterior of the saucer like the GSC does? Clearly there is room for 8 admin shuttles. And, could some of the shuttle boxes be converted to temporary cargo boxes?
Given the size of the CVO there certainly is room to house the specialists needed to conduct Planetary surveys.
The only real short coming is transporter capacity. Have to check to see how many each ship has (the GSC and CVO) but I wouldn't be surprised if they were close to a similar number of transporter rooms capacity.
Now.... the question of escorts.
The source canon seems to indicate that star fleet operates single ship missions, its in TOS, and other sources that is outside of the license that ADB has.
Infact, early carriers in SFB did not have escorts assigned. That came later.
Part of me wants at least one ship to accompany the CVO, but again, I have to admit that if the CVO is assigned to the exploration fleet, then it too should be able to fill in for completing the GSC mission.
The GSC is clearly a good design, in high demand by survey command as well as star fleet (carrier sub type CVL), marines (commando variant) and though it's never been talked about, logistics and transport requirements mean the 8 (or what ever the correct number is) cargo boxes are in demand as well.
Come to it, the CVO could be gutted of weapons and shuttles and converted into a high speed fleet supply ship... cruising along at warp 3.2 trans porting cargo in a under way resupply mission practically on the front line....
Gee, I have to think that one over carefully. What a FCR it could be...
You should have seen it when jump racks were still a thing...
Jeff:
I did not mean to imply that the dreadnoughts are in mothballs. They are not. They are docked at a starbase and not routinely going out on missions. They are kept at a much higher state of readiness than the mothball fleet and you may even need them in peacetime on rare occasions (a Jindarian caravan spotted in open space enroute to an asteroid field with a critical mining operation currently ongoing for example). I envision it as the dreadnought being docked with its crew serving on the starbase. If something comes up the Admiral and his crew load up and head out. If the admiral has a lower threat situation where he needs to be in the field it is more likely he would just move his flag to the local command cruiser and leave the dreadnought behind.
While the GSC is fun to fly I am not sure I would call it a good design. It was a compromise between the military and exploration agendas of Starfleet. The military arm probably would have preferred more cruisers. The exploration arm probably did not want the emergency wartime CVL and COV. While the CVL and COV are functional ships they are also sub-optimal in many ways. The CVL carries very few fighters and the COV is short of transporters for a cruiser scale commando ship. When using it in a scenario you have a little of everything. Two fighters, scout channels, and photons but you cannot use most of the firepower without blinding channels and the ship runs short on power quickly if you try to use everything.
While that supply ship would be impressive I still think the idea would be smacked down by high operating costs. The biggest warships converted to priority cargo operations are generally frigates. Tugs can do that but also perform a lot of other fleet functions. If no one builds even cruiser scaled supply ships I cannot see running a dreadnought. It also raises the question of what kind of operation would need that much cargo delivered to one place at one time at such a high priority?
As a thought experiment though I generally agree with your conversion breakdown. It almost certainly needs cargo. I would lean towards 12-14 shuttle boxes with it operating 6 fighters in wartime. Covert the rest to cargo storage. I think the sensors could be mounted like the GSC but I would take off weapons. Knock it down to 2 photons. It also needs more labs. I think even 2 transporter rooms are enough though 3 or 4 would be better. Surveys would not generally involve time critical mass transports.
A DN hull is too expensive to use for survey and gross overkill for the mission. Still, for an SSJ ship, it's not something I'd reject. But you start with the survey mission, not with the DN mission.
But is it a Dreadnought hull, I mean, really?
It has just two warp engine nacelles, not the three a DN has.
Even in terms of total warp power, it's more than a CA, but a long way short of DN power levels. (CVO has 2 * 18 point warp engines for a total of 36 warp power points. The vanilla DN has 3 * 15 point warp engines for a total of 45 power points.). That comparison isa 36:45 ratio. (Reduced fraction is 12/15 or 4/5.)
It's clearly better than a CA (even a fully refitted one.) but it's not in the same class as a DN in terms of total power or weapons. It's the fighter group that makes the CVA a force to contend with.
Has any one looked at the SSD for the CVO? Is it size class 2. Or is it size class 3?
It's size class 2 on the Stellar Shadows SSD.
Interesting: it's only 20% more powerful than a CA, but a DN is a full 50% more warp power.
Still, it's a 1 Movement cost hull, just like a CA.
The original design was a size class 3. Looking at the different ships it would seem to fall in the Heavy BC class which are SC3. It would seem not to be a DN class based on warp power, which would mean it was a 1.5 mvt class. The old CVA has 132 boxes, the BCF 125 and the DN+ has 158 so all points would seem to point to SC3.
Eddie:
Facts are one thing, Game balance, another. I know the steves have to balance known data in the process, but sometimes game balance has to include intangible factors.
I do not remember hearing about, or reading about the process that caused the CVO to be reclassified to SC 2. It's been enough years that there seems little justification for trying for an appeal at this late date.
Pity, because we have already brought up several reasons why a lesser MC rate of 1 1/5=1.2 would have been a valid alternative. Especially with the example of the DNL hulls with a MC rate of 1 1/4 and size class 3.
SSJ could build a survey ship on a CVO hull, on a DN hull, on a DN+ hull, on a DNG hull, or on a DNH hull. Or a BB hull.
The CVO is an odd duck, not fish, not fowl, not frog, not BCH. But it is what it is, and my comments were not limited to a CVO based SR.
Regardless of any of that, an SR built on any hull above needs all of the SR bells and whistles. Then you need to use more boxes for the self defense capabilities of an SR. That leaves a few unclaimed boxes you could use to make it an even better SR or to make it a better armed SR.
Back during the heady days of the Commander's Edition, I did a crayon-and-graph-paper merge of the front half of the GSC saucer in place of the front half of (what we now call) the CVO. It would have been "Perfect" if it weren't for the fact that I was SUCH a lousy player...
I think a BB - SR would be... amusing. Suggest it keeps two Photons FA in the saucer, one that is FA in the secondary and one RA in the aft (being half the torpedoes of the normal BB) and give it 8 special sensors. It loses phaser ones as well (obviously) but would keep the PH-G and g-racks. A lot of shuttles, 6 are F-14s in 'wartime'. 20 labs (some in secondary hull)?.
For when you really need to REALLY survey something. Also good for killing Andro sat bases.
Give it more cargo. You know... for the FIFTEEN year mission instead of the 5!
Well you build 1 Giant survey cruiser, it still only covers 1 area at a time, build 2 or 3 for the same price and survey 3 times the area. Is it really cost effective.
If I were building a Survey Cruiser on a bigger hull, I'd start with a DNL. That gives me a speed advantage so I cover a bit more ground than the normal survey craft and can make a fast response to something unusual happening that calls for a survey ship (assuming such things ever happen).
If I were building a survey force in starfleet universe and had a very large budget, I might start with the DNL based hull (call it a DNLQ) and add a bunch of HDWQ or something similar sized/cost. The destroyers look for something interesting, and if they find it they can call the DNLQ for backup and help.
I see no indication that anyone ever gave survey the kind of budget required to put such a force in the field.
NAW you build the DN survey ship. Build survey escorts and large cargo transports. Then go explore another Galaxy
SSJ idea (probably already proposed and rejected, but hey): The Klingon B-12.
Certain Klingon admirals, obsessed with having the biggest ship in the galaxy, upon obtaining secret Federation preliminary design plans for the Mars class battleship, briefly toyed with the idea of the B-12 "Ultra Battleship." A design committee was formed, but the idea was laughed at and dismissed after just one meeting. The engineers and shipwrights of the B-10 merely said "DuHbe'" (impossible) and went back to work on the B-10 Invincible.
The B-12 Impossible: As the B-10 (not B-11), but 50% bigger. In everything, including a third SFG and larger shields. Move cost 3.
Just for the fun of it. For when you want to play SFB while drunk.
Maybe I don't remember correctly, but assuming the CVO is a SSJ ship, no variant of that ship or ship using that rear hull can be published as a real ship.
The B12 should carry F5s as PFs.
I sent in a proposal (many years ago) for a Large Survey Ship for the Kzinti.
Back story: Hull was already built (and 3 more were in progress), but before the interior was finished the Patriarch decided to make it a test bed for the new fighter concepts...
Hence why the Kzinti get 4 CVs in one year. They already had the hulls all ready for interior fitment...
Base design. Kzinti CV. Replace Disruptors with Special Sensors, 6 Shuttle with cargo, 3 Shuttle with hull (for those extra science labs). Convert 3 fighter shuttles to admin/ MRS/ HTS/ whatever kind you like.
Add a few BPs and such. Shazam!
Sadly, my graph paper design sent into ADB has been lost. I blame the USPS.
Well, if we've shifted over to the MOST outrageous ships...
Back in my "Munchkin" days (which I am duly embarrased by ), I took the rear hull of the SCS version of (what we now call) the CVO and doubled it. With TWO of those hulls, the ship carries no fewer than SIXTY fighters (YIKES)!!
Because the CVO was a "Movement Cost 1" ship, this "Super-Duper Carrier" had a movement cost of one and a half. For the extra power needed, the ship had two Frigate engines along the centerline, both outside of the aft hulls (one above the top, the other below the bottom), mounted at the very aft end of the ship.
The Saucer section has two necks; one reaching up to the (inverted?) top rear hull, the other reaching down (as is normal for DN and CA type ships) to the lower rear hull.
The main (Left and Right) Warp Engines were on the same plane as the saucer section and had two struts connecting them to BOTH of the rear hulls.
This... ABOMINATION only existed on graph paper in a folder that I NEVER sent to anyone.
(Ladies and Gentlemen, please don't judge me by this. Yes, it was BAD (no, an Ed Wood Film Festival is bad; this is truly HORRID!!), but I still wanted to share it with you. Why? Well, mostly so some of you might be encouraged to share some of the ideas for things you may have imagineered in the past. After all, regardless of what you may think of them, there's no way they're the worst. )