USS Obstreperous

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - 05:37 pm: Edit

How on Terra is the CVo MC1!?

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - 05:51 pm: Edit

A question I've had as well, Mike.

Closest thing I've ever had to an answer is to, in my games, bump her movement cost up to 1+1/4; a movement cost that prevents her from being able to reach Speed 30 on Warp power alone (37.5 needed and only 36 Warp available ).

This, if adopted, might also serve as a(nother?) reason for why the Federation chose to go with a DN hulled CVA (as the other major powers had done) instead of this ship.

By Joe Carlson (Jrc) on Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - 06:45 pm: Edit

The CVO was published or republished in Stellar Shadows 1 (SS-1). The write up is on page 11.

SS-1 states the CVO was in the game prior to Doomsday and had photon reload boxes.

It is a cool looking ship and will be veru cool Shapeways mini

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - 07:19 pm: Edit

The original version of the ship was published in (and is the cover girl for) the ancient "Supplement #1" for Designer's Edition SFB.

When it went away with the "Doomsday" Captain's Edition, there was much lamenting. ADB brought the metal mini back and it kept selling, despite not being in the games anymore.

There have been several conjectural ships that use this hull form. The SSD above is the version from SFB Stellar Shadows Journal #1 (Jessica Orsini's take on it, IIRC).

Like many, I love Richard Kerr's sculpt for the original metal mini. However, it does have some issues that only became apparent to me during the modeling for the 3-engine CVA for ADB Shapeways, such as the missing sixth balcony shuttlebay door on each side.

Also of-note is the *very* thick saucer rim. This was probably to try and avoid deformation during mold-making. It was only partially successful. The contemporary (small engines) NCL mini also had the thick saucer, probably for the same reasons - that extra thickness was abandoned when the NCL was re-sculpted for Starline 2300 (as a one-piece, with correct engines). I'll be following suit, with the Shapeways CVo.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - 07:34 pm: Edit

Feel free to add a sixth door.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - 09:00 pm: Edit

Will, that is some seriously good work on an old favorite. I look forward to seeing it with the correct number of balcony shuttlebay doors on each side.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 08:23 am: Edit

Nice to see the CVO happening.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 09:11 am: Edit

As an aside, the CVo presented above is significantly "up-fightered". The base CVO should have a fighter group identical to the CVA: 12xF-14 and 12xA-10s. This has instead 24xF-14 (or 12xF-14, 12xF-18) and 6xA-20. Fundamentally, this specific version is based on the SCS, not the CVA.

I would have expected the CVO to be based on the CVA, not the SCS.

By Mark Hutton (Trynda1701) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 09:27 am: Edit

The one thing that I'm looking forward to, is that because of the lighter material of a one piece Shapeways mini, I won't have the problems my old SL2200 mini had. Not only were they a pain to keep the nacelles on, the nacelle struts on mine broke!

Even at that, I would like to see those struts be a bit wider and more substantial looking, just for estethic reasons.

Looking forward to seeing more, Will.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 11:21 am: Edit

I can not believe that I am saying this...but I agree with Mike West. (Grin.)

Historically, the CVo was THE CVA.

The Dreadnought hull version was (I think) because of game balance issues in F&E.

Do not misunderstand, please. I am happy to see the CVo return to the game. I just think there should be a refit SSD showing an earlier variant CVo before the A-20 assault fighters became available.

It would be challenging. Just carrying a half squadron of A-10s is not a good option as historically the CVo did indeed carry a full squadron of A-10s. And IMO the CVO does need the six tractors / mech links holding the A-20s. It’s a huge fighter/shuttle group. Cutting 6 out of the 8 tractors would both weaken anti drone defense, it also makes recovery operations more time consuming and tedious (polite way of saying it would be less fun to play!)

The simplest solution would be an early two space assault shuttle, but anything useful would likely make both the A10 and A20 obsolete.

Pity.

But still, great job on the mini!

By Joe Carlson (Jrc) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 12:57 pm: Edit

The fighter load-out in SSJ-1 is 12xF-18s, 12xF-14s, and 6xF-111s.

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 01:03 pm: Edit

To the best of my knowledge, there is no current, ADB-published, SSD for the CVA in a 2-engine flatbed configuration. As far as I know, the only current SSD for this hull-form is the CVo in Stellar Shadows Journal, as-shown.

If you are going to design a new ship and SSD for a (Captain's Edition SFB) 2-engine flatbed CVA, please take that to the topics where that is done. (No, the old Designer's and Commander's Edition SSD do not count [see below]). It is helpful to me to keep this topic focused on feedback on the model, not new ship/fighter-group proposals for the game systems.

Unless I am directed to start looking back to Commander's Edition game-data (or earlier), I'm operating under pre-existing direction that the results of the modeling should always have a ship in the games that it can be played as (even if conjectural).

I think there is an odd variant of this hull, as a CVN, that sticks a third engine on top, but it's not listed in the master ship chart in G3, nor in the MSSB, so I have no idea where it was published (maybe CL28, which was a defacto SSJ#2).

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 01:20 pm: Edit

For a bit of history on this thing:

If you *really* want to set the Way-Back Machine for 1982, the original Fed CV (before it was called a CVA) as presented in Expansion #2 had a fighter wing of 12xF14 and 10xF10, with 2xSWAC and 4xAdmin. The A10s were in the third-through-eights shuttle boxes from the front on each side -- corresponding with the old (and removed by later errata) "Photon Freezer" assembly.

The shuttle bay itself was shown as a single "U"-shaped thing, 28 boxes in total. Separate bays, along with the balcony-and-track system, were added in Expansion #3; this established the long fighter bays at 11 boxes each, and the aft bay as six. Back then, there were an equal number of balcony positions as there were fighter boxes: 11 per side. It stayed that way right up until the Captain's Edition replaced the ship with the DN-based CVA (which reduced it to six balcony positions per bay).

By Mark Hutton (Trynda1701) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 01:26 pm: Edit

Was going to say maybe we should just be discussing how the mini looks, but Will beat me to it!

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 02:44 pm: Edit

As I said before, this thing is so vague and so re-designed/published/addendad that if Petrick wants to declare a specific fighter group he can. (I am good with 12 F14, 12 F14/F18/Something, 6 heavies.) And if Will wants to add a sixth door he can/should feel free to do so.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 02:49 pm: Edit

I do think the one thing we should not do is ask Will to create multiple versions (five doors, six doors, CVAo and SCSo, whatever) beyond the current 3799/3125/grid/smooth (and I think three of those need to go but that starship sailed long ago). Really, I don't think the fighter group's exact organization matters for this purpose, The existing mini (with perhaps a sixth door) works for all of them.

As for how this monstrosity is MC=1, well, they vent the hot air from the pilot's lounge out the engine exhaust which gives you free thrust.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 03:34 pm: Edit

To be clear: I was not arguing for any particular interpretation in the mini. I just find the history of this beast to be fascinating.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 03:53 pm: Edit

Indeed.

Jessica is correct.

The CVo miniature:back from the dead.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 08:32 pm: Edit

"As for how this monstrosity is MC=1, well, they vent the hot air from the pilot's lounge out the engine exhaust which gives you free thrust"

Had a laugh at that one.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 12:18 pm: Edit

I am not asking for multiple versions of the mini or the design. I am simply saying that if you make a miniature for a MC1 SCS equivalent, then you are legitimizing a MC1 SCS equivalent in the game and I want to make sure that is pointed out.

If it is OK, then so be it.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 01:21 pm: Edit

It has the appearance of being a “Grandfather” exception. As in “grandfathered in“.

I would hope that would spare us a deluge of “me too” proposals for other empires.

You want to hear cries of true anguish? Wait until the CVo is published in F&E as another “Unique Hull”. First one or two (in the mothball reserve) are cheap to activate (just a couple of points to activate like a DN or a OCL). The real expensive part is the flight group! (Not to mention a SWAC or two...)

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, April 10, 2020 - 01:50 pm: Edit

I have taken Will's request and place my proposal to deal with all of this in the SFB->Proposals->Ships->Feds area. Any non-mini discussion should probably go there or somewhere equivalent.

On the miniature, it looks good so far and I hope you add the sixth door per side.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Saturday, April 11, 2020 - 12:29 pm: Edit

The current SSD in Stellar Shadows Journal #1 has a set of six heavy fighter mech-links, so as to deploy a squadron of F-111s. While it remains to be seen what may happen due to this discussion thread, I was wondering: if whatever SSD is to be used as the basis for this Shapeways miniature retains those mech-links, should the miniature itself display these externally-linked F-111s, akin to how other empires' PF tenders tend to display their respective gunboat flotillas?

Also, name-wise, I should note that the CVO on the SSJ1 cover art is marked as NCC-2204 USS George Washington; which historically was used for a Federation SCS, as marked here.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, April 11, 2020 - 02:48 pm: Edit

Trying “to paint between the lines” was hard enough.

Now that Gary (very kindly?!?) reminds us that SSJ#1 proclaims that NCC2004 is a flatbed SCS.

That only makes sense if there was a “fly off” competition between the DN/CVA design and the CVo. That would explain why the George Washington received a registry number NCC2004.

it also casts a bit of a shadow on Mike West’s version that the two designs were indistinguishable at the F&E level. If that were so, there would have been no clear winner.

Given that SSJ#1 documents a flatbed SCS that apparently did not enter combat in the General war until very late In the war, one has to ask where the CVo was during the early GW years.

Also, looking at Wills comments about the CVo warp engines, it occurs to me that both issues could be used to resolve our little dilemma.

The CVo engines failed to function properly. The DN/CVo wins the fly off by default. And the CVo (perhaps both of them if two were built) quietly takes up residence in the mothball fleet under an assumed name.)

A decade later, a bright engineering intern “discovers” the flaw in the CVo engines and proposes a cheap fix. Suddenly the Federation has a SCS available, practically unused, ready for service.

Sounds like a fairytale.