During times of peace, the various empires explore the far reaches of their domains with warships and warship based survey ships. This is followed up, once those "Wildernesses" are pacified, with the long duration survey missions, often done by exploration freighters.

During times of war, the pressing need for warships on the front lines and for the survey variants of the warships to do various support missions limits their availability.

For this reason, how frequently do Exploration Freighters get sent into "Wilderness" regions of space before they get pacified?

For this reason, I can imagine that the various empires might have "Armed" Exploration Freighters. These are ships that have the forward and drive modules of armed freighters (R1.20 and R1.21) with the middle section (the Pod/s) of Exploration Freighters (R1.26).

Given that the exploration freighter SSDs in the newly released R1 Update do NOT have Skid/Ducktail option spaces (where the Repair freighter, right next to them does) makes me think that these armed exploration freighters would NOT be able to use either of those systems.

Quick thoughts would give them Crew Unit and Boarding Party counts of 30 Crew Units and 10 BP for the large and 16 Crew Units and 6 BP for the small. Also, given that armed freighters are allowed to carry/use T-bombs, so would these armed Exploration Freighters.

Does this idea seem reasonable to y'all, or am I off base (again)?

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 - 08:05 pm: Edit

These ships don't go into the wilderness though. The rules state they are not used for off-map exploration, but for planetary development.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, April 18, 2024 - 12:15 pm: Edit

A reasonable view, Nick, but please remember two things.

First, in time of war, certain measures must be taken. As I blathered about with this proposal, they're taking over the jobs that were normally done by the regular "Warship Survey Variants."

The second thing which, by the way, did not occur to me when I originally got hit with this idea, is that in the Early Years, the Exploration Freighters were armed (where standard Early Years cargo hauling freighters were not), and in the unit description it was said that they did sometimes encounter unfriendly situations.

Naturally the latter situation cooled when more advanced ships made the wildernesses a little smaller, but the imp in me asks if it still might be a little wild at heart.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, April 19, 2024 - 07:45 am: Edit

Well, there very well might be lots survey ships. Take a FFT and drag around a light survey pod...

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Friday, April 19, 2024 - 04:18 pm: Edit

While I like the idea of a FFT dragging a light survey pod, Mike, I would expect that Fleet Logistics Command would undoubtedly have far more "Important" things for their FFTs to be doing.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Saturday, April 20, 2024 - 03:17 am: Edit

In time of war, the warship survey variants are either off in the survey zones looking for easily obtained strategic materials (as shown in F&E off-map survey rules), or on the map doing warshippy things (like the Federation CVLs) at the cost of less survey in the off-map area. If these auxiliary ships existed and could do even part of the job of an actual off-map survey ship, it would reduce the opportunity cost of taking real survey ships out of survey zones and change the balance of F&E, so IMO this proposal really isn't compatible with established canon.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Saturday, April 20, 2024 - 05:48 pm: Edit

IIRC only the Lyrans had a survey pallet (pod) in the early years (which wouldn't fit their FFT anyway) … [don't think they'd redo a Klingon pod for that … ]

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, April 21, 2024 - 01:29 am: Edit

Does not fit established canon. If you sent it to dangerous areas, you would need a lot more than a weapon or two. You'd need a cruiser-sized escort.