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	Archive through February 23, 2006	25		02/24 12:01pm

Being a Mauler is not very forgiving to the systems on the ship. Even the Maulers that survive have seen a lot of abuse due to the shock effect of the Mauler. It would be even worse on the war cruiser hulled Maulers as they had less robust systems to start with.

I would expect that no engineer would waste their time either re-using mauler ship components (even ones that had nothing to do with the Mauler assembly itself) or having to go through the QA testing on them before certifying them as "equivalent-to-new".

By Mark Ermenc (Mermenc) on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 08:20 am: Edit

Dave, it's a fascinating idea, to be sure.

In F&E, the mauler does become obsolete.

In SFB, of course, flying 30 batteries into battle to spearhead a fleet maneuver is never obsolete.


I can see certain races considering it, especially the Lyrans who have a high cash:ship count ratio ... but I think the maulers would be the last ones to go in the case of the Klingons. Yes, I'd rather have a DX than a D6M, but I'd rather have a DX and a D6M than a DX and a D7. In other words, all the vanilla hulls have priority over the maulers when it comes time to upgrade.

Of course, since you're fundamentally right about the mauler's inefficiencies, I can see them being used in battle (a D6M is still a 10) and simply self-killed if crippled. The X-ships would take care of any mauler abilities required. When "retiring" the fleet, I can certainly see them being used for other duties ... I'm sure the ISF would love 'em for piracy patrol. They'd make a great addition to the IWR or mothballs.

(And you know the Klingons would re-establish both.)

Of course, the MD5 can just stay a bloody MD5. We paid money for that. Maybe it doesn't play well with others, but there's a lot of border BATS that would love to have it assigned to their "token" defence force.


The real question is: How much of the fleet can a race afford to X-convert, and at what rate? If you can afford only 5-10%, you need the maulers still in service. Once you get up to 20%, they can be relegated to the rear, and by the time you get to 50%, they can be dismantled at leisure.

So, the Admiralty would no doubt plan to phase out the mauler.


As an aside, the USAF has been trying to phase out both the A-10 Thunderbolt II and the B-52 Stratofortress for a very long time now. Both are ugly workhorses "whose time has past". The A-10 has less sophisticated electronics than the warheads it carries, and the B-52 is meant for carpet-bombing whole cities at a go. US military operations paradigms tell us that neither one is needed anymore.

Yet both survive to this day.

Why? They do their job very well, thank you ... and as much as we may think we don't need that job done, it still presents itself to us.


The mauler is like that. You're not going to put an X-ship on the vanguard of an assault ... they're just too darn expensive and valuable. The mauler is ideal there ... capable of offering a credible threat if ignored and capable of withstanding damage that would blow down a cruiser's forward shield without a scratch. If you decomission the maulers, you end up with vanilla hulls being dropped there as cannon-fodder, and they may not offer enough threat to taunt the enemy into firing on them in preference to the X-cruisers behind them. Maybe a PF-flotilla could do it, but that is NOT cost-effective.

From an SFB-perspective, the mauler is like the A-10 and B-52 ... we want to get rid of them because they're old, and we have many new and better toys, but they fill their niche perfectly.

From an F&E perspective, X-ships are bleeding expensive. We can only have so many per year, and there are a LOT of fleets to fill. Yes, we'd love to phase out the maulers ... and we're not likely to build new ones ... but until we get two or three X-ships per fleet, we can't afford to take them off the line for fear the fighting will resume and we'll need them out there.

We know from experience that maulers died quickly throughout the war, but especially after PFs and X-ships raised the "reach out and touch someone" capability of fleets. If we only have two X-ships in a fleet, we can reasonably only expect to have mauler capacity for two rounds of battle. Wouldn't it be nice to fall back on maulers after that? After all, it's not like they're going to be targeted when the alliance can pick an X-ship for a similar price. They don't shock if they're not called on to maul. So they'll still be there.

Economically, the operations cost of these aging, well-worn hulls may become higher than new, vanilla hulls ... but how much do X-ships cost to maintain? Surely that has to be a fortune, since only the best will do for them. They no doubt require their own supply network, which comes in tuesday.


Bottom Line: yeah ... I can see them intending to phase out the maulers, but only as the final step in post-war restructuring, and only once a convincing alternative has been decided on.

The Lyrans would get there first, as they have a lot of money to play with, the fewest ships to spend it on, and the smallest borders to defend.

The Romulans would get there second, as their entire "three fleet" ISSUE needs to be addressed, assuming the grand admiral of Romulan forces (the player) hasn't dealt with it himself during the war. You can almost hear the order: "All Klingon hull ships, attempt forced docking with the starbase. All old-series ships, you're next!" Whatever survives the general war that isn't new series is getting phased out one way or another. The rest is just there as stop-gaps and leftovers. They're getting so mothballed it's not funny. (Once production catches up). The Romulans, of course, were in no shape to enter the general war, and their fleet is a conglomeration born of desperation. Once they get it all in one sock, there'll be X-ships, all right. Oh, yes, will there be X-ships. They don't need the mauler niche as much as other fleets, since they have cloak.

The Klingons are never getting there. Oh, sure, they'll put it in their wishlist, but you know darn well it's never happening. They have way too many hulls to convert and that's not going to change, really. They'll keep a massive navy, they're surrounded by hostile forces with superior ship designs. Their only hope is in force of numbers. Yeah, they'd love to scrap a few ships to make up the cost of more DXs, but we all know the maulers are the last ones on a very long list, behind more E4s than the galaxy shudders to think of.

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 11:01 am: Edit

I mentally place ships into catagories; I have one catagory I call my "SUD's Ships". A SUD's ship is one that Serves Until Destroyed.

I don't see it taking all that long, 5 years after production of maulers ends, perhaps, before the last of the SUD'sy maulers meets their glorious end somewhere.

By John Doucette (Jkd) on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 11:21 am: Edit

I could see phasing out the baby maulers, but Mark's point about not having the luxury of 8 bazillion X-ships per fleet is a good one. The maulers might not be super spiffy, but they get the job done. I see the Lyrans keeping the STL; a 12-point mauler is better than anything an X-ship can do. The Klingons and Roms might still keep the D6M and FAL production lines going, if only to allow them to maintain a force of maulers without diverting hulls from the good ships.

About the only race that I could see junking maulers altogether is the Feds (if they had any, which they don't), because they seem to be infected with the "bleeding edge" syndrome, unlike most, if not all, of the other races.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 12:01 pm: Edit

One general point on post-war OOBs.

Vanilla non-X Heavy cruiser hulls will be either very rare or non-existant. They are simply outdated by NCAs or the more powerful variants. Those remaining will mainly be BCHs.

Even Vanilla NCLs DWs and FFs won't be as common as one may think. Many will have been converted. Many NCLs/DWs will be decommisioned right after the war as they weren't designed to be pernament fleet elements. Carriers,PFTs and escort varients will be prioritised for retention as they have expendable fighters/PFs.

Command cruisers will be possibly almost extinct entirely, having been superceeded by carrier command ships (e.g. CVB), BCHs, and NCCs.

There will still be heavy cruiser scouts, drone ships, commando ships, carriers, etc, as these serve well right up to the end of the war.

By Mark Ermenc (Mermenc) on Friday, February 24, 2006 - 03:35 pm: Edit

DS, I think you're right that the fleet will be heavy in specialty hulls, but I think that'll more be a matter of self-killing rather than conversion. In early and mid-war, I can't really think of a single race who produces "mostly or exclusively" specialty hulls. There's simply too much to do with not enough budget. By late war, exhaustion bites into that hard, and X doesn't give you enough refund. Everyone's still producing and using vanilla hulls, but once exhaustion takes its toll and repair comes only out of salvage, the vanilla hulls get blown to make the cash needed to repair the specialty hulls.

Or at least, that's my guess. I've never played a general war game all the way through.

So, while I can see fleets being specialty-heavy, I assume there will always be some vanilla hulls floating around, especially in the battle group level. Yeah, vanilla cruisers may be nearly extinct, but that depends on the race in question. Coalition forces probably will have some left:

Lyran ... do you call a BC a vanilla hull? I see plenty of those. How about a DN?

Klingon ... Too many D7s, not enough cash to upgrade them all, and frankly a fair need for D7s and D7Cs to bulk up the lines. A war on three fronts means you don't get alpha lines, but by golly do you have lots of lines.

Romulan ... Having three fleets, only one of whom you truly care about means that there are plenty of ships that either can't upgrade usefully, or seem a poor investment compared to doing a similar upgrade to a "real" hull. Hence, they have cannon fodder that's too good to pop, but not good enough to upgrade.


Kzinti: Every BC becomes one of four things: CVS, BCV, BCS, Salvage. All are upgrades.

Hydrans: Every cruiser hull has been mauled out of existance by the coalition, except for the carriers, otherwise they'd still have some, since their cruisers rock.

Federation: Had enough money and conversion capacity to upgrade their CAs into carriers, and felt no guilt in doing so.

Gorn: Do you consider the CCH a specialty hull, because they had nothing better to do with their BCs. Then again, do you consider their BCs to be their "heavy cruisers", or their CLs (the 8/4 unit)?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 27, 2006 - 06:20 pm: Edit

David Slatters post from last friday had a couple interesting concepts (atleast to me...)

And Mark E, echoed it some what with "Federation: Had enough money and conversion capacity to upgrade their CAs into carriers, and felt no guilt in doing so."

I wonder, if the CC's are obsolete by the 184-185 period, would the Federation "want" to substitute a CVB carrier group for each of the "pre-war" CC's? with the escorts it is a good combat squadron, and any reinforcement at all gives it the nucleast of a battle force... losses in the CVS and CVB classes are documented, but having a need for 6 survivable flagships might be worth while.

Same thing with the Kzinti, I suspect. the carriers and SCS's defended the Hegemony... would they scrap all the carrier groups at the end of the war and go back to a homegenous fleet of direct combat class ships?

By Mark Ermenc (Mermenc) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 04:57 am: Edit

It's tough to call a 9/5 unit "obsolete", because it repairs so well ... salvages nicely and isn't really worth directing on in a specialty-hull fleet.

9 damage for 4 repair points isn't a bad ratio.

I can see a fair number of CCs surviving to become the new CA ... at least until time and economy provided the means to upgrade them to CXs.

So, with ships like that to form the spine, NCLs galore (high production, low attrition until the very late war when the alliance has pushed the coalition back onto their starbases and capitols) to form bulk up the fleets and enough small hulls to make comfortable battle groups ... what indeed forms the command core?

Obviously, you'd like CR10 ships, since you've made so many DN hulls (2/year) that you should be able to spread them out a bit.

A CVA/CVB CVBG with SWACS to permit the extra fighters to be fielded makes a very secure location for an admiral to command from. Other CVs act as FCRs that pin nicely.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that the CC still has a role in the fleet, it's just not commanding it anymore. CR9 command has become obsolete. The CC is the line hull that takes one for the team because it repairs decently. The CVA has taken over the command role, and "secondary" fleets get DNs instead.


As for the Kzinti ... would they give up a homogenous all-carrier fleet for a homogeneous no-carrier fleet?

No, sir.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 05:09 am: Edit

From various posts by SVC, I am under the impression that the introduction of X-ships did not kill off carriers immediately. They have roughly the effect we see in F&E - they are simply very effective against fighters. Sure, an X-ship fleet will wipe out 12 fighters or so, but many late war carrier lines can put out 30 fighter (defence) factors with little difficulty, and the Hydrans and Feds can far exceed that. The fighter damage absorption is still useful even when X-ships are wiping out your fighters fast, and full X-fleets are very, very rare. And a full X-fleet, while enjoying a big compot superiority over a carrier fleet, will tend to lose 1 X-ship per round while only killing a carrier escort or NCA in exchange as long as the fighter replacements hold out.

So there is a reasonable justification for the Feds and Hydrans at least to replace their sector command ships (CCs) with carriers, particularly if there are supporting carriers in the fleet. In any case, I suspect that most fleets will be led by a DN,BCH or their carrier variants.

One shot for a border fleet may be something like.. (NB many carriers now will be the EW variants).

Heavy carrier or SCS (DN or BCH hull) + 3 escorts.
(Add heavy + megafighters, swacs, as applicable)
Medium carrier (CA or CC-hull) + 2 escorts.
Light carrier (CL or DW-hull) + escort
1-3 PFTs, no escorts for them.
1 FCR (mainly for the heavy carrier).
1 troopship
1 droneship (if appropriate race)
1 heavy scout (either NCA-based or D6S type -4 EW)
The tug will frequently be a second scout if there is a big battle. These will probably take up the formation and scout slots.
1 light scout (probably on a DW-hull)
1 mauler (if appropriate race) These will not be
built any more, but they would still be kept as
active ships as many are on long-lasting CA-hulls.
1 Tug
possibly 1 X-scout.

And then we finally get to vanilla hulls...

1-6 X-ships.
1 DNH only in home fleet
(possibly elsewhere if Fed/Klink/ISC).
0-1 BCH.
0-1 CCH.
0-2 NCA
~3 NCL
~3-6 FF/DW
+ the odd DD/CL that survives and that cannot be converted into an X-ship (long-term hull).

And that's roughly what I would expect for a major border fleet post-war. Most fleets would probably get smaller than this over time, probably replacing the vanilla hulls with X-ships first on a 2:1 basis. This is not what you would build from scratch - it is the cream that you would keep from your bloated war fleet.

This can respond to almost anything. It has plenty of small elements to respond alone as necessary to minor incidents (FFs, NCLs, PFTs, light carrier) in littoral space. It is also a significant defence for a border.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 10:06 am: Edit

You go to war with what you have, not what you want. A carrier fleet facing an X-fleet does not have the option to say "go away and come back in five years when I've replace these carriers with X-ships".

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 10:29 am: Edit

I see the CC/D7C whathaveyou as the baseline heavy crusier during the postwar period. I agree with Mark fully on that.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 11:00 am: Edit

the thread was started as a discussion of what the "post General War" fleets would be made up of.

We know from Star Fleet History that specified ships did survive the war and served in the post war fleets. We know that the SCS classes survived to fight the Andromedans, and we know that some X ships fought battles supported by Non X ships.

Beyond that, we do not know what ships the Admirals would have ordered (no doubt in consultation with political leadership) in to the Moth ball reserve Fleets, which would have gone to the established fleets, or if new fleets to address specified threats would have been created.

given the existance of the Andromedan RTN and the ISC pacification campaign... would the Federation have needed to establish a new fleet based at the Starbase "coreward" of the Federation Capital hex? What about a combat fleet in the Off map area of the Federation? given that the GSC's would be needed to track down the RTN system, there would be a need for combat hulls in the off map area to replace the GSC's divertede to other areas of responsibility.

Al of the major races would be stressed by the ISC/Andromedan threats. the planning stages for how and what that response would be had to begun in the end stages of the General War.

Now if that means all surviving D7 and CA class ships become CC or D7C, I don't know. Maybe what we need is a CA/D7 refit increasing the combat power of those ships is needed. giving every CA and D7 a CR of '9' seems wasted given that a Command Rating of '9' is obsolete.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 11:24 am: Edit

Problem is that CAs and D7s have their max refit before the war is over, and there just is not anything else you can do and still have it a CA/D7.

In any case, I don't think you would see a downsizing of the fleets until a year or two had past from the end of the war....and then the ISC are already there, and THEN the Andros come in full force.

So, perhaps a better discussion point would be what are the fleets made up of during the Trade Wars period...course that then gets into the X2 period as well, and we just don't know enough about that to guess.

Makes sense that the best of the best would be kept in the fleet, the cheap but effective would be kept, some mothballed, and the stuff in between would be scrapped to help rebuild a crushed economy.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 01:43 pm: Edit

Its not a problem to the extent that CA's and D7's are still in service (and according to the history), at least some were converted to 'X-ships'.

The ISC invasion isnt really that much of an invasion (atleast to the extent of having to defend the Home world hexes form the ISC...

That means the Home Fleets of the various major races would have 2-3 years to "rebuild" while the border fleets would have the responsibility to maintain the borders of the empire(or federation, Hegemony, Holdfast etc)

Also given that the economies of the major races need to be recover from the war... the ability of the races to build lots of new ships would be compromised.

You might even see a move to more upgrades and specialist variants as the conversion facilities of the races are still available and little money available for new construction.

even 2 or 3 years (between fall 184 and spring 186 or 187) would make a difference.

By Trent Telenko (Ttelenko) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 06:37 pm: Edit

Bear in mind that the most likely ships to be disposed of post-General War are the YCA/YDD/YFF national guard ships as well as armed auxiluaries.

These will be replaced with surviving CL/DD/FF classes followed closely by older CW/DW/Battle Frigates.

Police forces will receive cascaded FFs and CVE.

I don't know if the YCV and YPFT will go as well, but I expect that the YPFT will be kept in national guard service as the Regular Navy will keep the full up PFTs in service or in its reserves.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 07:00 pm: Edit

Jeff, the part of rebuilding does conflict with the history we are give then, as ships build are said to have increased steadily after the GW.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 07:31 pm: Edit

Trent,

At a guess, between 1/3rd and 1/2 of all the YCA/YDD/YFF hulls that started the General war will have been destroyed during the Klingon and Romulan invasions in the early part of the war. the Y tech ships, even with GW upgrades and refits are still too slow to run away effectively from the more modern coalition ships.

No doubt some survived, but casualites of those ships would have been substantial, IWT.

Add to that 13+ years of active warfare verses the Coalition, Orion Pirates, ISC(eventually) and the Andies would have cut the YCA/YDD/YFF classes down significantly.

Some planets might elect to keep their "national guard ships" due to local pride and heritage concerns, but a realistic assessment of the combat ability of the Y types in the post general war era would leave the YCA/YDD/YFF as a lowest cost lowest potential defense assets.

If you look at the earlier posts in this thread, I think several people expressed the opinion that the new National guard forces might well be composed of NCL and FFG types. (IIRC SVC had posted an opinion on that subject down in the F&E proposals section on national guard ships.)

Given how many CL variants exist, and the need for specialist hulls, there might not be enough CL types to fill the National guard rosters given how many minor and major worlds there are in the Federation.

I suspect that SVC will tell us if the CL is a part of that, but I wonder just how many CL's would have survived the war given the facts as presented in various Star Fleet History records.

I actually could see the Police forces getting assigned surplus Frigates to replace the wornout underpowered POL's. The challenge is going to be how fast the change over will be given the numbers of POL's and FLG's there are in service.

You might be correct about the YCV and YPFT.

Chris, Like trent, you might be correct, we simply don't know enough detail to determine to what extent the total building program is affected by the war shattered economy following the GW.

I would think the numbers of ships built would be down from the highs of the general war, (espcially if were talking the 50% hit to the economic income that a collapsed economy has).

Is it at the (imo) artificially low levels of the pre GW period when chairman Buckner was afraid that rearming the Federation would invite a Klingon invasion? or will it be at the higher rate, but at "peace time" capacity that is less than full war production?

don't know, but It would appear to be clear that some ships were built, some ships were retired (for museum service IIRC in some cases) and some continued to serve the Federation in different roles.

The amount of economic income available to the Fefderation is going to be significantly less than the full war rates allow, and we will need to remember that some provinces and planets will not be accesssable due to the ISC, Andromedans and opposing races engaged in economic warfare (from time to time, IWT.)

I just don't think that every fleet is going to have the best possible mix of ships assigned to it.

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Wednesday, March 01, 2006 - 04:29 am: Edit

You guys have given me an idea that I think that I want to take to a new topic here and also explore in the X history sections.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Wednesday, March 01, 2006 - 05:39 am: Edit

I dunno about post war fleets with a lot of CCs. By mid-war, I probably won't be even building heavy cruisers (any race), and will be converting those that I do have. I might still build the odd CC direct for 9EP, but not often.

CCs have a bad habit of being targeted in my battles. Not as much as BCs and CA-varients, but they will normally be hit if there are a lot of fighters around and they are in the line.

Remaining CAs at war end will not be comverted into CCs, rather into CXs. And some may be deliberatly held back from a CC conversion in anticipation of the new CX conversion.

The bottom line is that towards the war end, there are better command ships than CCs around.
The CC then gets shunted into the main battleline (not form bonus) where it is too expensive a ship to deploy and risk, and too easy to kill.