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Post by zerosnark on Mar 5, 2008 11:45:12 GMT -5
So where I am going with all this is simple:
In the last 100 years, the "makeup" of fleets changed about every 30 years. By the end of the Spanish American war in 1898, every ship in that war was obsolete and being replaced by 1906.
By 1910, you had "Battleships and Battlecruisers".
By 1925, you had "Heavy and Light Cruisers" coming to the fore, supplementing the Battleships. Battlecruisers were basically gone.
By 1941, this new thing called "Aircraft carriers" turned everything on its head.
By 1960, this thing called the "submarine" was king.
By 1970, Missile cruisers and Missile frigates had completely replaced everything with guns.
Since 1980, we have been pretty stable as the Cold War came to conclusion; but the basic concept of "navy" does not really apply any more. Nobody (except the US) has much of anything.
So in terms of Trek. . . I think anything goes. I really think the SFB got too hung up in "what was going on across the border". Honestly. .. I don't think anybody really knew.
The Klingons had their fleets of Battlecruisers (2nd rates), led by Dreadnaughts (1st rates). Lighter duties were carried out by various frigates (4th and 5th rates). I really can't imagine either a D7C or a F5L in a Klingon fleet. What type of ship would lead a pack of D7 battlecruisers? A C8. That is obvious. What would lead a pack of F5's? A D6. DUhhhhh. (Given the choice of simplifying a supply chain by using a F5C, or using a D6, ANY klingon would use a D6 as his flagship).
The Federation had its Starships. Some were designated cruisers. Some were destroyers. Some simply "starships". Starfleet also had some ships used for lighter duties (tugs and police ships)
The Gorn fleet was small. It had a few ships they called "Heavy Cruisers" and "Light Cruisers", with a few smaller ships which were refered to as Destroyers.
And the Mirak/Kzinti: Well. . .that is a different ball of wax. Given their political structure. . I suspect they would have a total hodge podge of ships. DD's, FF's, CL's, and CA's would all have a role. Any Baron would build the biggest ship the Baron could afford. It does beg the question, however, if that would logically result in everyone simply building the biggest ship imaginable. Would a Baron build ONE CA or two FF's? I bet the single CA would win in every case.
If a Duke restricted a Baron to build FF's. . .I bet the Baron would build two FF's openly and a CA in secret-> then go looking to pound the Duke into submission.
I could see the Mirak/Kzinti having a real shortage of FF's. I bet there would be LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of DF's. I really wonder why no-one came up with idea of tacking on DF style "drone pods" onto a CA. I would imagine two weeks after some Baron showed up on a Dukes door step with two DF's, that all the Dukes CA's would have eight drone racks.
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Post by Klingon Fanatic on Mar 5, 2008 19:58:15 GMT -5
;D
I say we go the way the Mechcommander series of PC games did with mechs:
Have a heavily ARMED version of a ship less armor, more speed
Have a standard version of a ship Balance between weapons and armor
Have a heavily ARMOR/Sheilded version with fewer weapons more specialty items and increased survival odds. Maybe this is where marine assualt and carrier units fit in.
In order to do this warp engines, armor, shield systems and weapons have to be given some kind of uniformity within the races. For example, in the Mechwarrior universe an Inner Sphere Extended range laser is going to weigh as much on a 100 ton Atlas as it is on a 65 ton (IIRC) Bushmaster. The same logic could be applied to Trek ships and their corresponding systems. The FASA Chandley Class *cough* Frigate is a kitbash of the Enterprise Class (Connie refit) heavy cruiser and actually uses the same warp engines (yes, in the schematics/miniatures NOT the specs), impulse system and weapon systems (one can swap out the FASA cr*p on its different torpedo type). In this example, I surmise that the Chandley was in process of transitioning from a TOS ship to TMP stats al la the TOS big E but the writers never proofchecked their work regarding the upgrading of other ship classes that would also have occured concurrently.
Just thinking out loud here...
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Post by Atrahasis on Mar 5, 2008 21:29:53 GMT -5
Another parallel with real life I've been pondering is this:
a) American fighter planes all have the F~ designation mwhereas Russian planes are identified by the maker as well as model number, for example MiG-29 or Su-27.
b) On the other hand, when it comes to navy ships, the way to do it for the Americans was the Alphabetical designation followed the ship type, for example BB-63 for the USS New Jersey.
I'm just wondering which of these real-life traditions the Klingon ship designations more closely follow. You'd think it was something closer to b) but a) is also a distinct possibility. On that note, I'd say the FASA way is closer to a) whereas the SFB way is closer to b).
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Post by lurker on Mar 16, 2008 20:51:59 GMT -5
SFB Module R8 mentions a LD5 which it says is the original D5 and is not related to the newer D5 war cruiser. Could this ship be the D5 from Enterprise?
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Post by parislordagain on Mar 16, 2008 23:42:45 GMT -5
Per ADB online resource the LD5 designation is merely a light cruiser, the LD4 is the reserve light cruiser. Easily confused as the following entry is LDV reserve light carrier...
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Post by Atrahasis on Mar 16, 2008 23:58:29 GMT -5
Per ADB online resource the LD5 designation is merely a light cruiser, the LD4 is the reserve light cruiser. Easily confused as the following entry is LDV reserve light carrier... The D4, which was what the ship was before it became the LD4, was originally that era's heavy cruiser.
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Post by straightwing on Mar 17, 2008 9:12:37 GMT -5
Actually the historic compositions of fleets since say 1830 (age of steam) is actually very different than what is presented in an earlier post. The primary difference between "cruisers" and everything else was that cruisers were really colonial police ships NOT supposed to fight in the line-of-battle (short-ranged large ships). They were supposed to show-the-flag in distant colonies and occasionally fight pirates or merchant ships or put down rebellions. (Erroll Flynn movie stuff -- the French called this "cruiser war"). To that end, they were primarily designed for strategic RANGE above everything else (in fact the largest "cruisers" often had the smallest guns using their space for fuel, engines, and possibly marines). Most had no armor whatsoever (hence the "protected" cruiser of the 1880s).
Later because of their range, cruisers were brought in to support the battle-line by scouting before and after the battle but they still would not participate in the battle because they were too weak.
"Third world" countries like the Japanese and US messed up this definition in their naval wars as they bought small, armored ships from Europe and used them as surrogates for battleships in their battle-line. (It helped that their opponents typically had no battleships either in this regard). By European standards, however, the battle-line still consisted only of "specialist" battleships and destroyers ("large ocean-going torpedo boat DESTROYERS designed to protect the battleships from small, non-ocean-going torpedo boats"). Later the British and French tried unsuccessfully to introduce "light cruisers" (really "destroyer leaders") and armored cruisers/ battlecruisers ("fast ships with big guns substituting speed for armor but not able to use that speed in the battle line") into the battle-line but they could not really survive in this environment. This is why the US fleet of WWI had only destroyers and battleships -- they didn't need anything else for the battle-line, any battle would be fought close to home, and the US had no real colonial protection responsibilities (they didn't care if they lost them or not and certainly did not want to fight for them).
This only changed when the Washington Conference limited the number of battleships. Now EVERYONE had to use cruisers as surrogate battleships. Cruisers were now split into "heavy" (this type had never officially existed before --> battle-line surrogate battleships) and "light" (non battle-line scout or colonial police ship) classifications. Again, for countries like the US with no colonial commitments, "light" cruisers became the same as heavy cruisers but armed with only 6" guns (a concept copied by the Japanese and British in the late 1930s).
Economics saw to the elimination of the battle-line as a concept (it was too expensive to have 2 fleets -- a "specialist" battle-line and a day-to-day fleet) and WWII really changed ship types into "aircraft carriers", specialist "torpedo/ missile ships" or "shore bombardment ships", "AA ships" and "ASW ships" grouped into general purpose combat arrangements as needed.
Note that submarines are not now, nor were they ever, part of the battle-line (the WWII Japanese wasted their submarine fleet trying to use them this way and the modern US pays lip-service to this concept but it has really never worked).
Modern times has seen the "specialist" types (torpedo/ missile ships and shore bombardment ships) largely go away for economic/staffing reasons so we end up with the SFB model where ship types are largely the same other than in size regardless of what you call them.
SFB, a late 1970s version of AVALON HILL's 1967 JUTLAND game, followed the early Cold War model of small, short-ranged Soviet (Rommie or Klink) "specialist" missile ships fighting large long-ranged US (Fed) general purpose gun offensive/ missile defensive ships. Since SFB came out in a period BEFORE US had offensive missiles, the game was balanced -- Klink Dis2/missile ships vs Fed Ph1/photon ships backed up by aircraft. Once the US/NATO adopted offensive missiles, however, bigger ships would always have the advantage over smaller ships as they can carry more "stuff" (more weapons, more electronics, and stay at sea longer [more range]) -- which is why the Soviets abandoned their "small short-ranged specialist ship" model and ended up producing ships that were more and more US-like as time went on.
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Post by zerosnark on Mar 21, 2008 12:49:22 GMT -5
I think we can debate this till the cows come home. And it would be fun. I tend to disagree with your take on the cold war fleets. . .but the conversation does emphasize the point that fleet composition is a function of the technology being used.
I definately think that SFB became too beholden to the "need" for frigates, cruisers, destroyers and dreadnaughts for every fleet. Plus the need to have "specialist ships" such as minesweepers and commando ships.
If the game was designed today. . .I would wonder what it would look like. Everyone's thinking now is heavily biased.
- - - - - - ---
Numbering and designations, I think, come and go. US Navy aircraft USED to be designated by "function and manufacturer". Think about the F4F (grumman Wildcat), F6F (grumman Hellcat) and the F4U (Vought Corsair). I think the army airforce number sequentially: Think about the P39, P40, and P47 as well as the B17, B24, and B25.
Navy ships were assigned Pennant numbers. . .with the first two letters designating type. There was a numbering system in place through 1975, and then a good fraction of the frontline fleet was redesignated and renumbered (with most of the missle frigates becoming missle cruisers). The Soviet navy renumbered ships routinely.
So I would submit. . .that a "D4" in the Enterprise era could have been redesignated three times before the TOS era. . . and a few more times by the time TNG rolls around.
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Post by MajorRacal on Mar 26, 2008 12:11:21 GMT -5
That's why the debate is good, it challenges the tendency of the gaming community to think in such restrictive terms... Many of the points I've seen raised here echo the contents of an unfinished post I was composing in response to comments left when I previewed the Chance-Vaught - where the bottom line is that historically and internationally there are no hard and fast rules to resolutely state that the mass of a vessel is a necessary reflection of its function, or that its intended designation must remain immutable.
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Post by zerosnark on Apr 3, 2008 19:52:56 GMT -5
When considering changing function. . .there are two WWII examples;
First example: US dreadnaughts. Once the core of the battle fleet, within four years these ships formed the core of the amphibious fleets that meandered across the Pacific.
Second example: Look at the development of U.S. carrier airwings through the war. In 1941, the core airwing was 18 fighters, 36 "scout bombers" and 18 torpedo bombers. By 1945, the typical wing for fleet carriers was more like 72 fighters, 18 dive bombers and 18 torpedo bombers. (I am probably off on those numbers).
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Post by norsehound on Apr 3, 2008 21:14:44 GMT -5
Personally I like the diversification of the SFB fleet. It rounds out the national fleets and makes them seem more powerful than just relying on 12 heavy cruisers alone to protect an entire space-nation from invasion (static installations aside...)
A lighter fleet element would make sense, because I believe no matter how you look at it, someone will always think what you have is too expensive and find a way to make something cheaper and produce the same results. This perhaps makes destroyers, which are cheaper and easier to manufacture but almost basically perform the same operations as a cruiser does (at least in terms of police duties and border patrol). With the reduced scientific facilities, Franz Joseph's Destroyers make sense as cheaper alternatives to CAs (and thus more of them were produced). On the flipside we had the Dreadnoughts, which are "there if needed" ships to bring out the heavy guns if the Klingons ever got serious about war and the Organians weren't there.
Which pretty much makes up the pre GW fleet of the Federation, at least. Frigates entered the picture when we needed a cheaper DD and more of them. DWs are wartime DDs. BBs are hypothetical, and only considered because the Klingons had them. Cruisers diversified as they are the staple element of a fleet. The system just makes sense to me and conveys the feeling of a "space fleet" rather than "a handful of ships".
As to the D-5, it could be as Atra says: the Drell designation is used for cruiser-role starships that are supposed to be staple elements of a fleet and act wherever a cruiser is needed, regardless of design. This accepts both notions that the D-5 may have been a predecessor and successor to the D-7 Design, as both are cruiser-weight vessels.
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Post by Atrahasis on Apr 4, 2008 1:23:17 GMT -5
I wonder if whoever came up with the "B'rel" classification did that on purpose to rhyme with Drell.
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