Posted by James Sinclair in Discussion - Modern Navy Plan

Posted by Robert Archer in Discussion - Modern Navy Plan

Posted by Captain Philip Graham (Engineering Director) in Discussion - Modern Navy Plan
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
I would like to open the discussion on the Modern Navy Plan. The stated goals and questions to be asked are below.

1. Does the Community believe that the Modern Navy Plan currently provides adequate guidance for ship builders.

After reviewing the MNP I see a few holes in the system, There are Cannon Tech that are not included into the charts. I believe that for new Ship Builders the Guidance does not provide adequate guidance.

1. Does the Modern Navy Plan need to be updated?

I believe that the MNP could at a minimum utilize a Update with Equipment from sensor’s to Phaser Cannon’s (USS. Defiant utilized them) I believe there is a overall longer conversation on these.

Cannons are covered under descriptions of the phaser section fyi you just then apply it to the phaser type numbers.

I think that there should be some effort put in to make the data more accessible. Small explanations of Milli-Cochrane Ratings, Graviton Load and Dissipation rates, for example.

1. What are the Specific Issues you view with the Modern Navy Plan

We describe “Large Ships” By crew member’s. But if you were to build a cargo vessel which only required 10 crew members, but that was the size of the Mythology it would under the current plan still be a “Small” ship. Several Cannon ships could not be built under the current MNP. It should be noted that the MNP is approaching 20 years old.

To clarify no MNP is not approaching 20 years old its less then 7 or so at most, new navy plan before that was in use since around 2004ish i think and before that was only SSSF someone still around in those dark ages can further clarify if they feel the need.

I think classifying ships by crew is problematic. Gross tonnage would be more accurate.

Back in the “dark ages” it was the Milwaukee plan - so named because of an IRL meet between some of the EDept folks who hashed it out. And yes, they based it on crew size, but crew size was always intended (to my knowledge) as a proxy for gross tonnage. And therefore a 10 crew cargo vessel would be appropriate as a large vessel, despite the low crew count.

The basic Milwaukee plan was to classify ships on two axes (and yes, that is the correct plural of axis). Ship size (small, medium, large) and Ship function (Science/explorer, General purpose, and Warship). It’s not a complete classification system (a ship like, say, McCoy class Medical Frigate, fits awkwardly in it, as a Medical ship should have the light armament of a science ship, but also NOT have the extensive scanner facilities of a science ship, since you don’t send your hospital ship to explore the unknown frontier), but it’s at least a decent start. At the time, STF did not have ships set in other eras, nor did it have really any single consistent set of standards for design approval. A lot of the designs from that era were to create both some fleet diversity, and to fill in some of the empty Milwaukee Plan boxes (for example, Darwin fit the Small Science box, comparable to the canon Oberth, but which we did not have anything close to at the time.) It was intended to allow some apple-to-apple type comparisons between ship designs (the science ship should not be militarily stronger than the similar sized warship, for example) but was never meant as a straitjacket.

Ok. Back into the dark ages for me :D

1. Do you have a solution for the problems that you see in the Modern Navy Plan.

As we look at the vessels we need to be thinking in the right terms. Warp Drives are not just for propulsion but actually create the power for the entire vessel. Warp drives are not limited by the “weight” of the vessel as in a zero G setting there is no weight specifically, instead we are discussing the “mass” and power consumption. A solution for this would be

A. Revamp the system to look at mass for ship size, each piece of equipment would be assigned a certain mass.
B. List for each piece of equipment the energy consumption (in simple terms), list the total energy output for each warp drive.
C. List mass for crew quarters & other departments,

While I agree a new system is needed personally i’m a little hesitant to drawing up power requirements as there is little information on how much energy draw various systems work at. It also creates more work for the designer in making it ‘non tech friendly’. I do think basing it on the size of the ship equating to crew except in special cases like cargo ships etc might be more viable.

For all of the above issues it would require a programmed Spreadsheet or equivalent that would be able to add these up for designers. Therby making the entier process easier.
5. Does the Modern Navy Plan allow for the creation of Cannon like Vessels.

As stated above I do not believe that it does.

As an old geezer suggestion… what if we set up some sort of point system on the EDept backend? For example, as a baseline, a large ship might be 50 points, medium ship 45 points, and small ship 40 points. (These are just starting figures, the exact figures might change, but I don’t think it should scale like 50-30-20, because even though a big ship can hold more stuff it also has to devote more of its interior to structural integrity, life support, etc., so just because the ship is 2x bigger doesn’t mean you get to slap 3x more torpedoes aboard).

Then you take the different things that might be worth points.
Warp speed capacity (with each incremental improvement costing more. A Warp 5 Ent-era engine might be 1 point, something like the Intrepid’s engine might cost 10 or more.) - speed is good for ALL types of ship; warships and science ships both want to get there faster.
* Impulse capacity (this is more about maneouverability than flat straight-line speed - a bigger engine is requires to move a big ship as agilely as a small one - Defiant can run rings around the Big-E at sublight, for example) - more critical for warships
* Ship’s hull (A science ship might have a relatively thin hull, and be an Oberth-brand coffin, while a warship like Defiant has some extra strength there even when the shields fail)
* Shielding power
* Phasers
* Torpedoes
* Scanning systems (this is where you spend your points as a science ship. Not so much on warships. Subtypes like Medical scanners (for better sickbays), Planetary scanners (for explorers), long range scanners (for mapping sectors, stellar cartography, anomolies) and short range scanners (tactical systems mainly).
Evacuation capacity - another science-explorer type focus… warships wouldn’t carry much more past their normal complement, but science ships also double as diplomatic, colonization assistance, etc. So this becomes a point sink for them to have comfortable empty quarters for guests, and large cargobays for rescuing people from doomed planets.

There might be some tinkering there with what things cost and where they go, but start with mapping a Galaxy (large explorer), Intrepid (medium general purpose?) and Defiant (small warship) into the system, that way you know canon ships can be made across the board.

For different eras, they get less points:
Pre-TNG but post-Movies: 80% (this is where the Ent-C would fit)
Movie era: 60% (Excelsior-type)
TOS era: 40% (Constitution-type)
Enterprise-era: 20% (NX-type)

Points shouldn’t necessarily be a straitjacket either, but they’d be a guideline for looking at whether a ship is reasonable or not.

Philip Graham
EDir

Just some input from the former EDir Phillip I felt would be useful.

Robert Archer

James Sinclair

-Mike B, from the dark ages :D