Apologies in advance if this counts as yet another "obvious variant" topic, yet I thought it one worth noting nonetheless.

It's mentioned in the YR-section for the Klingon B4 Early Years battleship that the Empire had been considering a command platform of this size for many decades; several "B-" types had appeared in the drafting computers (and perhaps then put in the Deep Space Fleet academy simulators), eventually leading up to the historical B10 design.

With that in mind, it seems reasonable to picture the Klingons drawing up a "B6" in the Middle Years, akin to the C6 early dreadnought - and, for that matter, for other Alpha Octant empires to consider similar designs of their own.

Such "early battleships" (or BBEs) would presumably have somewhere between six or eight heavy weapon mounts. In this, I consider the eight focused energy beams on the Iridani Man-O-War, which could perhaps be looked at as a kind of "Middle Years battleship" in and of itself.

But what might make this idea more interesting would be those empires which, for various reasons, would not be as simple as working "back" from their Main Era battleship designs.

For example, the Romulans could be given an "Albatross" (for lack of a better bird name) sublight battleship, with no less than 3 plasma-R launchers; a "War" (post-Smarba) version would have a pair of 20-box warp engines, while a "King" upgrade could attempt to install a more powerful set of warp nacelles. The sublight version could itself be considered for Module Y4. Of course, a "KB6R" conversion of whatever the B6 looks like would be an option for an "early Smarba" setup.

Actually, I wonder if there might be grounds for a "Middle Years" forerunner of the Neo-Tholian battleship, which might have fought in some of the Tholians' formative wars of expansion and conquest back in the home galaxy. Although such speculation might have to wait until after Prime Directive Tholians is developed.

For the Lyrans, perhaps an "Imperial Tiger" early battleship could follow the same "filled-in" template of the Royal Tiger early dreadnought and Royal Panther early battlecruiser. If I recall correctly, this would echo the Y-era battleship design they were given in SFB Module Y3.

And for the "lost empire" Paravians in Module C6, one could argue that they have their "early battleship" already: since they use their dreadnought-sized Raid Motherships as their "early dreadnoughts", the battleship Raid Mothership already in print would fit the bill here also.

In short, a selection of "BBEs" might help provide greater options in the Middle Years era - not least over in Federation Commander, where they could complement the Middle Years Ship Cards published in Briefing #2, and where the question of battleship availability is more open than in historical SFB play.


EDIT: Apologies again; this thread was meant to be posted over here. Not sure how I mixed up that one...

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 02:37 am: Edit

Alternatively Gary, the Klingons could have gone the route that they did with the C4: the C4B.

In a nutshell, the engines never got upgraded, but most other systems did, including a doubling of heavy weapons from the base hull.

It's interesting that through most of the Middle Years (right up to the launch of the first C6) the heaviest command units that the Klingons had were limited to speed 25.

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 10:08 am: Edit

This might be a bit of a longshot but I would argue for the Romulans having actually built a sublight battleship. Given their technological backwardness the Romulans may have felt that their only choice was to build bigger since they couldn't build better. Even without warp, a sublight ship of that size might be a credible threat/deterrent to the middle years Gorn.

Would this contradict the background that says the Klingons were the only empire to build a battleship? I would argue no, or it least no more so than Romulan sublight fighters contradicting the history that Hydrans had the first fighters. In both cases sublight units don't "count". Building a warp battleship or fighter is a different technological milestone than building a sublight one.

But wouldn't the Romulans have converted this sublight battleship to Warp? I say no for the same reason that the Romulans later gave up on building a King Condor: they were unable to produce a reliable warp engine large enough to make such a conversion worthwhile.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 08:50 pm: Edit

Douglas:

Just off the top of my head, I present YR6.2 and YR6.10/YR6.10A, the Gorn WBB, WBI and WBL respectively. Then there was the full-on Gorn YBB (YR6.19).

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 08:58 pm: Edit

Also, the Federation, Kzinti and Lyrans have designs (all Y).

A Romulan design isn't far fetched at all.

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Friday, May 15, 2020 - 05:21 pm: Edit

I think the "far fetched" part was my suggestion that the Romulans actually built this ship. The other EY battleships were all "design studies" that were never built (the Gorn WBB generally being acknowledged as not really a battleship).