Federation Commander

So, I gather from the "New" on the NCA and NCL (And the fact that folks talk about them being "mass-produced") that this was a mid to late-General War development. What is the history behind this ship? What year (In FC years) did they first start showing up on the lines?

We are starting a campaign and I want to center my battle lines with NCA's and NCL's (And FFW's/DDW's), and I wanted to know what year that would start in.

Also, is there an official list of ship names (Save the obvious 13 original CAs), or is it normal for people to make up all kinds of names for ships?

Obviously I know that there is no restrictions like this for normal game-play, but I like to be accurate when I can, it's much more interesting

Here's the link to the NCC list for your ship names.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents ... umbers.pdf

As to when, I'll let others with more knowledge answer that.

Far as NCLs:

There was a Galaxy wide building program that started several years before the General War ----

The story "Snap Count" in CL33 I believe has the NCL Kearsarge (the class ship) out on a shakedown cruiser with the Fast Cruiser Eagle. That is set in the year Y169, so in FC terms that is 2569. Module G2 has a date of Y170, which is when I would imagine they were more common and mass-produced.

The NCA wasn't for a while later, in Y175 (2575) according to my copy of Module G2.

Real quick explanations:

The Federation created the NCL design in the late 2560s (Y160s). Prototypes showed up in 2569 (Y169) and it was put into general production in 2570 (Y170). The design was based on the unbuilt (and as of yet unseen) NDD design. The advantage of the design over other competitors (e.g. the CS) was that it could be made in the DD slipways, meaning that it would not impact CA production in any way. The result of this, of course, was that DD production almost instantly ceased when NCL production started. All DD variants were replaced with NCL based designs over time.

Note that the NCL was a "war cruiser" design that took production shortcuts so as to decrease production costs and increase speed of construction. The result of this is that its service lifetime was significantly shorter than ships built "normally". This was considered acceptable, since the ships were not expected to survive that long anyway, as a result of frequent combat.

As the war dragged on, the Federation saw a significant decline in the number of combat CA hulls, as too much of the production schedule was devoted to making CA variants (CVS, Tug, etc.). In order to increase the number of CA-class warships, the NCA design was created as a modification of the NCL. This ship was introduced into general production in 2575 (Y175), which means that there was a couple prototypes a year or so earlier than that.

The Federation initially intended to not create variants of the NCA, and purely use production for the base combat hull, but they saw need to make a handful of variants over time.

Finally, note that the Federation produced both of these classes at roughly the same time as their contemporaries made similar ship classes. So, the NCL was added to the Federation fleet at about the same time as the other empires created their own war cruisers (e.g. D5, SPH, Kzinti CM, Jaguar, etc.). Likewise, the NCA was introduced at about the same time as the other empires introduced their own new heavy cruiser hulls.

Hope this helps!

That was exactly what I was looking for! Thank you! So to place our games at late 2576, early 2577 would be far enough along that there would be a few NCL/NCA hulls. Certainly it could be a squadron of "new hulls" being deployed.

Hmmmm. I can't tell what someone's favorite ship is at all...

OGOPTIMUS wrote:Hmmmm. I can't tell what someone's favorite ship is at all...

Just because I did that from memory?