On the email, I don't remember that. I do apologize. I do not ever mean to blow people off.

The problem with a "droneless F-111" is that we already have it. It's the A-21F. And ... it's not great.

The problem with direct-fire fighters is that they are basically "one-shot" items. They can't recharge their weapons, and if their only weapon is that heavy weapon, they have nothing else. With an A-20F, it at least has the option to also launch its drones. It has multiple options for its attack, even if its photons are it's primary focus. With an A-21F, it pretty much just has the photons and that's it. (Its CDS system is self-defense and anti-fighter, not anti-ship.)

In contrast, a gunboat can rearm its weapon over and over, as long as it can stay alive. This makes it a continual threat. And, even better, gunboats even have the option to overload, which fighters cannot ever do.

Then, to make matters even worse in this proposal, fighters are restricted to "half-strength" photons. So a fighter photon does a maximum of 4 points of damage. Gunboats get actual photons, meaning 8 points of damage, and they can overload for even more than that.

So, yes, in this proposal I view the use of gunboats as pretty much required. The fighters are admittedly not that great, meaning that the introduction of gunboats is required to bring the punch of their attrition units back up to full force. That is a cost of getting rid of drones.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, May 26, 2022 - 12:38 pm: Edit

Given that the Federation has never been willing to use Gunboats, I'd like to throw out an idea I've had in my twisted noggin for a while now for fighters bristling with phasers.

In the name of honesty, I pictured these as fighters armed with a pair of Nicozian Pulse Phasers (E98.0), but that would be "Tech-Sloshing;" something I don't want to do.

(Short version, a Nicozian Pulse Phaser can be fired as a single Phaser-2 OR as two Phaser-3s.)

To try and keep things legal, I imagined a series of variants on a fighter shuttle; all are identical except for their phaser armaments; they fit the "Galactic Standard for High End Fighters" with twelve damage points, speed of fifteen, DFR of four, two Chaff packs, etcetera, etcetera...

As stated, there are four variants with just their phaser armament to distinguish them. They are...

... Type I: 2xPh-3 FA, 2xPh-3 360
... Type II: 1xPh-2 FA, 2xPh-3 360
... Type III: 2xPh-3 FA, 1xPh-2 360
... Type IV: 1xPh-2 FA, 1xPh-2 360

For deception purposes, those fighters armed with a Ph-2 may be downfire them as a Ph-3 and those armed with paired Ph-3s may leave one unfired during a turn.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, May 26, 2022 - 07:41 pm: Edit

Honestly, you could just replace the photon/CDS on a single space fighter with a normal Ph-2. I doubt that would be a problem. (Two Ph-2 probably isn't happening.) It requires no new technology. But it doesn't solve anything, as it requires the fighter to get to 3 hexes to do anything. At least with the fighter photon it only really needs to get to 8 hexes.

I still think the gunboats are needed.

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Thursday, May 26, 2022 - 11:21 pm: Edit

Mike, where are you getting that Fed fighters only carry 4 pt photons from, an (admittedly quick) look at the rules doesn't appear to indicate that, particularly with full sized photon arming costs.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, May 27, 2022 - 08:22 am: Edit

In *this* proposal, Fed fighters only carry 4 point photons. Directly from the permanent text a the top of the page:

---

Quote:

Fighter photons (phot-4): used only on fighters and bombers. Damage is 4 (2 for prox). Charge for two points on one turn. No overload. Can only work with freezers. All fighter photon tubes carry two charges. Freezers use disruptor freezer rules (with prox rule from photon freezer rules).

---

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, May 27, 2022 - 09:31 pm: Edit

My pardon, I had forgotten that change.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, May 29, 2022 - 05:06 pm: Edit

While working on writing up the background, I am having a thought on ALT4. Originally, I had planned on using gunboats for all of the alternative histories. (Except, of course, ALT5, which doesn't use fighters or gunboats.) However, looking at ALT4, there is no reason they need to use gunboats. If they are going to use drones on their fighters, then they might as well go all the way and not use gunboats, and just use the full "standard" fighter setup.

So, should I restrict gunboats to just ALT1 through ALT3 and let ALT4 use F-111s, SWACs, and the Third Way? One nice thing about that is it gives a little more differentiation between the alternatives.

By Eric Silverman (Ericsilverman) on Monday, May 30, 2022 - 11:07 pm: Edit

Personally I'd be in favour of having the Third Way in ALT4 at a minimum. The Federation's whole thing of having a moral centre kind of falls apart if we find that they abandon their principles in virtually every timeline.

Presumably it's beyond the scope of this particular proposal, but I'd be interested to see an alternate vision in which the Fed has neither drones nor gunboats. Maybe the Feds go all-in on megafighters, or develop UAVs that don't need pilots at all, or something else entirely.

By John Pepper (Akula) on Thursday, July 28, 2022 - 05:03 pm: Edit

I think this could probably be achieved a little more simply.

-Ships with B drones, plasma ships(why we have these in the first place) - removed
-G racks only allowed to contain anti-drones until X date when they get replaced by PH-G on a one for one basis. Alternatively, you say the Federation adopted early PH-G in this scenario
- F-101/F-111 bays can mount 1 photon, taking one space (this should be a real rule anyways)
- On a given fighter up to two type-I/III racks can be replaced with fighter photons (obey light photon rules)
-Rest of racks are only allowed to carry ADD or Pods
-Escorts can be used to charge photons

Only removes ships, requires no new systems, no new fighter designations

Power will be an issue on reload of fighters, PH-G works against both drone and Plasma and gives some offensive power back to ships that depend on drones in the mix

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, July 28, 2022 - 09:36 pm: Edit

Can't use Ph-Gs. Such a proposal would be dead on arrival. That takes away from the Hydrans, which makes it a no-go. Plus, you know, giving every Fed ship the equivalent of one (or two!) overloaded photons on offense would not be well received. Again, sticking one (or two or more) Ph-Gs on every Fed ship is a guaranteed rejection.

Adding in Ph-3s instead doesn't work well either. That would add in too many phaser hits, giving too much padding for the Ph-1s.

I could have just used ADDs, but then it adds nothing on the Romulan border. Any replacement has to handle any of their borders.

After going through all of those options, and rejecting them for the above reasons, I settled on the CDS. Do note that the rack is basically just an ADD-only Type-G rack. And the phaser-like damage is directly comparable to a Ph-3 (for a single shot) and a Ph-G (for multiple shots). So, in a large way, the CDS is designed to effectively be comparable to a purely defensive Ph-G.

As for the fighters, the whole point is to make them different. That said, they are still completely based on the historical fighters. (I even identify the base fighter types.). The reason for the 50/50 mix is because a carrier can't reload a full flotilla of photon fighters. Making it 50/50 makes it more manageable and makes deploying the more dynamic. Also, photons on fighters takes more space than you are giving them credit for. They are bigger than a drone. Escorts can NOT be used to reload photons on fighters. That's a hard rule that applies to everyone.

There is no F-111 because there are gunboats. That's the trade-off. The F-101 equivalent doesn't have a bay because it won't help with as small as it is and the lack of drones. Instead I saved the bays for the bombers, which are large enough to make use of them.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 09:20 am: Edit

---

Quote:

I could have just used ADDs, but then it adds nothing on the Romulan border. Any replacement has to handle any of their borders.

---

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 10:40 am: Edit

Here's a thought:

One of the handy features of X-phasers is the ability to rapid-pulse as a less powerful phaser type under (XE2.43). A phaser-1X can rapid-pulse as two phaser-3Xs, for example.

What if, in this "no-drone Feds" setup, a non-X precursor of this was created by the Federation as a "twin phaser", or "phaser-T": two phaser-3s installed into a single phaser-1-sized mount?

This would be a parallel development to the twin laser [(ME1.215)] out in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, which is referred to as being "a straightforward piece of engineering" (as opposed to the complexities involved in constructing a phaser-G).

So, a Fed ship with the equivalent of the "plus" refit could perhaps install ADDs on ships deployed to the Klingon (or Kzinti) borders, or instead place phaser-Ts on ships assigned to the Romulan (or Gorn or Tholian) borders. Perhaps the Home and Second Fleets could be given a mix of both weapon types?

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 11:23 am: Edit

>> I think it might be called the "D5F" but am not sure

It is. KMSSB R5.32, page 34, and R3 SSD Book Page 15.

--Mike

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 02:35 pm: Edit

Two separate topics here ...

1) Having a split fleet.
There is only one split fleet in the main setting, that being the Hydrans. Even they know it is a bad idea, but they do it anyway because of their broken political system. The Feds don't have a broken political system (or at least not broken enough), so they would not make that mistake.

Even the example of the D5F shows this. The D5F is a variant ship produced in not that many numbers that was used for a specific set of purposes. It was not a general ship that made up half of the "default" D5 numbers. Having specialist ships is fine and dandy. Splitting your regular production forces between two designs is not.

You have no idea where an individual ship is going to end up. Through the randomness of "made sense at the time", ships that were intended for one border will end up at the other border and it has to be fully effective at either of them. Sure, the Federation made both NAC and NAR escorts, with the NAR intended for the Romulan border. But, if an NAR ended up on the Klingon border, it was still fully effective. That's fine. But putting a ship that is dependent on ADDs on the Romulan border is NOT fully effective as it has a weapon system that is just there to absorb internals.

Getting back to the D5F, it IS effective on all of the Klingon borders, as it still is effective against the Hydrans, who always have fighters. (OK, so maybe not the Tholians, but that doesn't really constitute a "border".)

2) Use "half-a-gatling" phaser.
OK, yes, it is possible to use a half-a-gatling phaser. (I'll just use your Ph-T designation instead of making a new one.) It is a single box that holds two Ph-3s that are both destroyed on a single DAC hit. Cool. But, now think of what its implementation would mean.

First, there would be no ADD variant. Doing so would be silly as the ADD variant is only useful on half the borders, but the Ph-T variant is useful on ALL of the borders. Ergo, only the Ph-T variant would be built. The Federation would never end up using the ADD, as it is unnecessary, would require a lot of extra logistics that the Ph-T negates, and just needlessly complicates things. They'd take that Ph-T with both hands and NOT let go.

Second, the changes to their ships would be very far reaching. The base refit would not be 2xPh-3 and 1xDrone, but instead would just be 2xPh-T. The FFG (which would need a new name) would instead upgrade its two Ph-3s into Ph-Ts as the refit. Most SC4 and SC3 ships would just add in the 2xPh-Ts (plus whatever power they would have normally gained).

But it would do more than that. Basically, any ship that started with Ph-3s would replace them with Ph-Ts in some form. Basically, once Ph-Ts are introduced, no Fed ship would ever use Ph-3s. Not even the Pol.

Also, the big ships would also significantly change. In the proposal in the header, the drones are easily replaced with CDS and the occasional phaser. When using Ph-Ts, that isn't an option. The weapons arrangements would have to be carefully thought through as they would otherwise become monster phaser-boats, and I do not know what that would do for balance. It would not be as simple as it is with the CDS.

And, let's not forget the Ph-Gs. Honestly, if Ph-Ts are developed, Ph-Gs are gone. By your description, Ph-Ts are easy to design and make, and are presumably easy to maintain. Ph-Gs are difficult to make and requite significant effort and expense to keep working. I'd have to look at the ships to see how the drones/Ph-Gs on escorts would be replaced with Ph-Ts and Ph-1s, but I doubt their effectiveness would drop past what the Lyran and Tholian escorts can do. Ph-Ts just eliminate the justification for using Ph-Gs.

As for the fighters, in a Ph-T environment, I'd still keep the 50/50 attack/superiority fighter split. (For the reason I stated in my previous post.) The attack fighters work as above (but obviously they would not have CDSS/RALADs), and the superiority fighters would be phaser fighters with some number of Ph-3s. (Probably 2xPh-T, so they'd be Stinger-Fs, for all intents.) The heavy fighters and bombers would have to be redone from scratch.

So, using Ph-Ts would end up eliminating the use of ADDs and ship-based Ph-Gs entirely, and require some significant redesigns of escorts and big ships. And, yes, I did think of some form of what we are calling the Ph-T. But, it breaks the general weapon setup of "phasers+heavy+secondary" and risks converting the Federation into phaser-boats with a big first punch. I liked the CDS approach better, because it avoided those dangers while still keeping the general weapon structure. So that is what I chose to use.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 02:55 pm: Edit

Honestly, if you don't like the CDS, and I am not convinced the Ph-T would be allowed, then you do have one last alternative that I also considered and rejected: Just delete the drone racks and reduce the ships' BPVs.

In this case we'd do the following:
- The pre-refit MS and GSC would replace their drone/ADD racks with some assortment of phasers.
- The various refits would delete the drone rack and have the cost reduced.
- Any later ships that include drone racks as a base part of the ship (e.g. NCL) would eliminate the drone rack and reduce the BPV by the appropriate amount.
- A few exceptions (e.g. BC and escorts) would have to be adjusted one-by-one. For example, on the BC, the "neck" weapons would just be either phasers or photons, but the drone racks in the saucer would be eliminated and the BPV reduced.
- The big ships would be a mess because of their heavy reliance on drone racks. Even so, most of the drone racks would be eliminated with no compensation other than the BPV reduction.
- Fighters would likely look like what I said for the Ph-T fighters.

By John Pepper (Akula) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 03:07 pm: Edit

This is stellar shadows so I don't know why the PH-G replacement wouldn't be allowed. On the larger ships removing the drone racks will require offset with offensive weapons anyways. I never viewed the PH-G as a Hydran only weapon as much as a natural evolution of what heavy phaser using races might accomplish.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 04:05 pm: Edit

For comparison's sake, one could unpack how the twin laser is (or is not) used out in the LMC relative to the Module C5 empires' nearest equivalent of the phaser-1: the medium laser [(ME1.212)].

Of the three Magellanic Powers (Baduvai, Eneen, Maghadim), only the Maghadim dabble with the use of twin lasers - and even then, only in the laser option mounts of the "collars" on larger Maghadim ships. And even then, they only used them instead of medium lasers when expecting to deal with mass drivers being launched at them by Baduvai warships; against the Eneen, medium lasers were preferred.

Both the Uthiki and the Jumokian pirates make use of twin lasers. The Uthiki use them as a matter of course. The pirates typically have a pair of TLs on their base hulls (one on each wing), plus the choice of installing them in their weapon option mounts.

Each TL mount takes up the same amount of space on a ship as a medium laser. So there is no blanket upgrading of light lasers to twin (or medium) lasers. Nor is there any installing of twin lasers on Eneen or Maghadim fighters (or on Baduvai PFs) either.

It should be noted that one key difference between phasers and warp-tuned lasers is that the latter cannot be down-fired. Which makes the choice between a TL and a ML more of a pressing one for a given empire (or pirate) to consider.

----

To look at the Federation: if a ship cannot upgrade a certain phaser-3 to a phaser-1 (short of installing first-generation X-technology), then they should not, in my view, be able to install a phaser-T in that same phaser-3 slot either. So, for example, a Galactic Survey Cruiser would still have its four phaser-3s in the secondary hull.

Indeed, given the location of the drone (or ADD) racks being swapped out for phaser-Ts in this proposal, there would likely be the issue of firing arcs. If going by the drone rack locations on the GSC miniature on Shapeways, the drone rack on the secondary hull might need to be replaced by an RH phaser-T. As for those racks on the primary hull, they appear to be at an angle that is blocked by the sensor dishes on the saucer and can only just barely fire "past" the lower part of the saucer itself; so perhaps one would be LF and the other RF?

Or, since I don't see the Feds as necessarily giving up anti-drone racks (or RALADs) entirely, perhaps they'd split the difference by installing a pair of ADDs in the saucer and an RH phaser-T in the secondary hull.

If the historical Feds can go through the trouble of burdening their logistical network with phasers, photons, drones of various sizes and shapes, ADDs/RALADs, and Gorn-sourced plasma-Fs, I don't see an issue with letting them keep both ADDs and phaser-Ts in a "no-drone" timeline.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 04:08 pm: Edit

This is an alternative history. It needs to be plausible. Watching the responses of both Steves over the years to various proposals tells me that giving literally every ship in the Federation at least one Ph-G does not count as "plausible". Seriously, that's one of the two best ways to ensure this is dismissed out of hand. (The other best way is to increase the number of photons on the ships.)

Using the Ph-T is actually a much, much more plausible scenario. Though there are still issues with it, in addition to what I mentioned above. But that doesn't work if you insist on "no new rules".

If you really want a setup with absolutely no new rules, then your only real option is the "just delete them and make the ships cheaper" option. It can work, of sorts, but I still like the CDS proposal better. Despite the new weapon system, it still fits the overall game better than the other options.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 05:01 pm: Edit

I'm not particularly worried about the LMC. It's empires developed and followed their own paths forward. I'm not seeing how it necessarily applies to what is going on here. So, moving on ...

The MS and GSC are always going to be the flies in the ointment for a no-drone Federation. However, if you are going to have a no-drone Federation, they don't get drone racks. That means the divergence has to happen no later than Y140. So be it. As such, I'd use the same basis used for the CDS solution: The MS and GSC simply don't have drones (or ADDs). Because, again, if they *do* have drones, then we don't have a no-drone Federation anymore, right? No-drone means no-drone. It doesn't mean, kinda had drones, but doesn't now. So, however it is required, the MS and GSC don't have drones at any point in this alternative history.

Now, given that they don't have drones, the Federation seems pretty content with this until medium speed drones appear. At that point they start getting pressure on how to better deal with them. In the scenario where they develop the Ph-T, that alleviates the need to do more research on drones at all. And since ADDs don't help on the Romulan front, they are pretty much tossed, too. There is no *need* driving them to develop and use ADDs if they are now using the Ph-T. The Ph-T gives them the drone defense they need, while also giving some offensive potential. The ADD is purely defensive and useless on half their border. There is just no point in wasting the time, effort, and money to develop an incomplete solution when they have a perfectly good one with the Ph-T.

Yes, the historical Federation used lots of stuff. However, you'll notice that all of the extra stuff they primarily used (drones and Pl-F) work against all of their enemies. The only reason they use ADDs is because they decided to spend a bit more for the versatile G-racks. If they had stayed with A-racks and B-racks, they wouldn't have bothered with ADDs because they don't help at least half the time. In a situation where they don't have drone racks and don't have G-racks, why would they bother with ADDs? Without having a Ph-T, it is still highly dubious if the Fed bothers with ADDs and ADD racks. Add in the Ph-T, and ADDs become pointless. They are just too limited. Every time you use an ADD rack instead of a Ph-T, you are hurting yourself. They would just use the Ph-T and not worry about ADDs.

Looking at the GSC, OK, maybe it does keep its Ph-3s. It can still be an outlier in the Ph-T alternative history, like it is in the main history, but with a different odd feature. Fine. But most Ph-3 are still going away. (Like with the FFG and Pol in my examples.) New stuff is definitely going to be built to use Ph-Ts and not Ph-3s, though. But my overall point still remains: Ph-3s kinda go away (even if not entirely) and Ph-Gs just aren't developed.

And, since we are talking about the Ph-T again, let me point out other issue. The Ph-T is really just a cut-rate Ph-G. The core of the plus refit in the main history is a pair of Ph-3s and a G-rack. If we replace that with a core of two Ph-T, that works out box-wise and (roughly) utility-wise. But, really, how is two Ph-T all that different that a single Ph-G? Sure, it is different because of 2 vs 1 damage and 2 vs 1 power, but really, two Ph-T is just a sneaky way to stick a Ph-G on virtually every Federation ship. Is that something that will pass muster?

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 05:56 pm: Edit

Stellar Shadows doesn't mean that it's just 100% open season all the time. Sure, completely OOT impossible tech is part of SS, but so is "possible by the established standards of the setting, just not what historically happened" - which is what the project is aiming for.

The LDR already has a bit of a rep of "Lyrans, but for munchkins" due to their use of ph-G - I don't see Feds with fleet-wide ph-G being any better received by anyone. And as Mike points out, "Take ship X, add ph-G" is, if not officially on the auto-reject list, is the next best thing.

I will point out that ADDs do still have utility on the Romulan front, since you can engage shuttles with them. I'm not saying they are great to have there, but they do still have at least some use.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 07:24 pm: Edit

Perhaps one "no-drone Fed" timeline could be based on an "Imperial Klingon Marches" setup, in which the Romulan Star Empire was conquered and replaced with the IKM.

With Klingons on both flanks, perhaps those ADDs and RALADs might be doubly useful...

-----

But if we are sticking with "yes, the Romulans still exist as an Empire" timelines, this would have two aspects: how to upgrade "Middle Years" Fed ships with something other than drones, and how to construct "war" hulls which historically had one (or more) drone rack(s) as standard.

Going by Shapeways, the drone rack on the Federation CAR+ is at the same location as the aft-most rack is on the GSC+: underneath the shuttle bay. If an ADD is installed, it doesn't matter either way; if a phaser-T mount goes in, it would be restricted to an RH weapon arc.

In the case of the Federation NCL, it's a bit more awkward of a positioning, since it's at somewhat of a "slope" compared to the drone rack on the CAR+. But still, a phaser-T installed there could be said to have an RH arc - or even an RA arc, if the engineering required it - keeping it removed from the LS and RS phaser-3s elsewhere on the saucer. (And, once again, an ADD rack there would have no issues.)

In both cases, the only arcs in which the phaser-T overlaps with these ships' phaser-3s is facing backwards. Which, if one is presumably running away from incoming plasma, might be a reasonable place for this to be so...

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 08:46 pm: Edit

Reading over the posts, it occurs to me that the issue (one of them, anyway! :-) with ALT4, comes down to the absence of Drone G racks on Federation warships.

I may be off base here, but all of the talk of phaser gatlings, increased phaser 3 ssd boxes etc... ultimately is about improving drone defenses on regular (non-carrier or escort ) type ships.

Three possible options:
A. Update admin shuttles with a modified (two or three drone space) add launcher. Limit the ammunition to add rounds. Adds nothing to the offensive use of admin shuttles, but increases the ships anti drone and (limited) ability to damage enemy shuttles and fighters.
B. Invent a new type transporter bomb with a add capacity. Again, doesn’t increase the ships offensive capacity to increase damage to enemy ships, but would help protect the ship from enemy drones.
C. This might be an auto reject issue, but early 20th century naval warships (prior to and early war period WW1) had added “anti torpedo” defenses to major warships (dreadnoughts) as I understand it, these were nets (various materials were tried, Manila ropes, chain mesh, wire nets etc...) if you look at old photos of British and German ships, on many of them you can see booms fitted along the sides with the nets rolled up and stored well above the waterline.

Not very effective, and useless at any kind of speed above 3 knots.

I guess, what i am suggesting is a star castle doohickey that is a mechanical shield to be used with existing shields.

Something like a wild weasel that might help improve drone defenses, but at a cost of using high speed, and possibly a maneuver cost.

Might not work, but at least its a different approach, and it again, does not increase a starships ability todamage enemy ships.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, July 29, 2022 - 10:43 pm: Edit

I forgot to mention this in my last post: if comparisons with non-Alpha empires are an issue here, I might instead refer to a "lost" Alpha Octant empire: Module C6's Paravians. (Yes, there are also Paravians in Omega, but anyway...)

A Paravian war cruiser is armed with 4 quantum wave torpedoes, six phaser-1s, and 4 phaser-3s. If one compares this to the proposed phaser-T variant of the Fed NCL+, that would be four photons, 6 phaser-1s, 2 phaser-3s, and 1 phaser-T (equivalent to 2 more phaser-3s). In fact, the weapon arcs are almost identical, save for the proposed RH (or RA) arc for the NCL's phaser-T relative to the L+RA and RA+R arcs on the CW's tail-mounted phaser-3s.

I mention the "lost empire" Paravians since their ships are designed to fight Gorn and ISC ships, so would have phaser suites intended to help deal with incoming plasma in a similar manner to these proposed Fed variants.

That said, since most Paravian ships have certain design compromises baked in to them due to their being designed to land on planets, it might be worth bearing this factor in mind when comparing and contrasting them to equivalent hull types from empires who intend their ships to operate solely in open space.

-----

For what it's worth, I would prefer any "no-drone Feds" to be presented in a manner that made it easy to convert them over to Federation Commander.

So while any new (or modified) rules that were readily transferable would be welcome, I would be wary of anything that requires certain SFB concepts, such as "starcastling", "armed admin shuttles", and "transporter bombs", which were made redundant in the process of developing the FC game system.

But then, given that plasma in FC is perhaps less effective than it is in SFB, and that drone-armed empires are much more successful over there by comparison, perhaps the ADDs are all that would be needed to make "no-drone Feds" work over in that game system - though it should be relatively simple to implement a would-be phaser-T there also.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Saturday, July 30, 2022 - 02:20 am: Edit

I am not going to respond to everything because I am starting to repeat myself. Let me hit the high points.

Half-a-gatling
The more I think about the Ph-T, the less I think it works. I see two super-huge problems with it that are meta-game issues:
1) If it is relatively easy to do, then once they were introduced, everyone would copy it instantly. Or, more properly, everyone could copy it instantly if they wanted to (but they wouldn't; see the next point). This means that we would be creating a new technology for everyone, not just the Federation. One of the design parameters for the effort was to not affect other empires (or do it as little as possible). This heavily violates that.
2) The Ph-T is utterly pointless. No one, including the Federation, would ever use it because it is a bad idea. A Ph-3 takes up half of an SSD box and takes a 1/2 point of power to fire. A Ph-T takes up a full SSD box and takes a full point of power to fire. However, it takes two damage points to destroy two Ph-3s, but only a single point of damage to destroy a Ph-T. At least with a Ph-G each Ph-3 shot only takes 1/4 point of power to fire to compensate for the increased vulnerability. With a Ph-T there is no compensation; it is just a flat out worse choice. It is not more space efficient, it is not more power efficient, but it dies twice as fast. That means it is always better to use two Ph-3 and it is always worse to use one Ph-T.

So, the more I think them through, I really don't see what they add. I just don't see them as being an option. They don't work.

(I was going to make a few other points on the miniatures comments and such, but given the above, there isn't any point.)

Jeff's suggestions
A. Any updates to admin shuttles are available to all empires, not just the Feds. Besides, you don't need anything new, as the F-7 and MRS already exist. However, I don't see the opportunity cost of using the F-7 with a pair of RALADs instead of having a normal admin shuttle is worth the cost, and the MRS is expensive and has very limited availability.
B. Not going to happen. If the Feds can carry more T-bombs, then everyone can carry more T-bombs. Alternatively, are you proposing that all Fed ships are equipped with a mine rack instead of a drone rack? I suppose that could work, but I don't see the Steves allowing that at any point, and I'm honestly not really interested in even thinking about that direction.
C. I didn't even fully understand this. But that's OK, as anything that depends on WW-level speed limits or star-castling isn't going to happen. (And WWs already exist, so there's that.)

Remaining Options
This leaves two options left:
1) Stick with the CDS, or something very similar to it.
2) Kill the drones and live with the cheaper (and weaker) ships.

I don't like the second option that much because it is, to be honest, very boring. It really doesn't add anything new to the game. Plus, it would just be perceived as a gimp of the Federation and would probably be unsellable as a result. Yes, the CDS adds a new weapon system, but, really, that's the point. To make it interesting or worth doing requires some fresh wrinkles and something new to it. The CDS does that without causing any big imbalance. And the CDS translates to FC just fine.

By Jamey Johnston (Totino) on Saturday, July 30, 2022 - 04:28 am: Edit

Apologies if this has already been said, but for drone-less Feds why not just replace each G rack with 2x Ph-3? For smaller saucer ships with single racks you could make them both RH or do 1 each RS/LS (I would probably do RH to avoid adding forward centerline offense on the little ships) and then bigger ships with 2/4 G racks add them in LS/RS banks (and if there's a ship with 3 G-racks just do a pair each LS/RH/RS).

For fighters, I actually kinda like the mini-photon, but increasing phaser power also works.