I mentioned in the thread about the Federation starting ships that I felt that perhaps more care could be taken to ensure than ships which are buildable in the same era appear related and have features in common. What the game needs is a consistent progression of technology as time passes, and care taken to ensure that no starship makes it's debut too early or too late. For years I've had an idea in mind of what the perfect Federation shiplist would be, as a topic of discussion I'll present it in this thread.

I do realise that there is already a shiplist in place which may or may not be modified, and this is more of a conversation starter than a proposal to throw at the staff.

Firstly, thought needs to be given to which ships actually are related, I beleive the Fed ships can be split into roughly 6 or 7 eras;



ENTERPRISE











TOS











MOVIES



















PRE-TNG









TNG





















POST TNG















The other thing to bear in mind is how many of each ship you would ideally like to see built. The Excelsior, Miranda etc should be built in high quantities, the Soyuz, Niagra, Ambassador should be built in lower quantities- this reflects how the fleets were generally composed on the shows. Even though in this game the current setup allows you to build a design of the previous generation, despite a newer model being available, I don't believe people generally will. I'd say you'll always build your best option, and if you need a cheap alternative you'll build a lesser ship type from the current era, ( for example, if you can build Excelsiors and Mirandas, you'll never build a TOS Constitution because if you want a cheaper ship you'll just build a Miranda. How long a ship is "top dog" in it's category before being replaced will determine how many are built to some extent.

Anyway, here is my list;



TECH 1

CRUISER 1- NX CLASS

DESTROYER 1 - ICARUS CLASS

SCOUT 1- NEPTUNE CLASS (triangle ship)



TECH 2

SURVEYOR 1- DAEDALUS CLASS



TECH 3

CRUISER 2- CONSTITUTION CLASS

DESTROYER 2- SALADIN CLASS

SCOUT 2- HERMES CLASS (I know these two look alike, any suggestions?)



TECH 4

SURVEYOR 2- OBERTH CLASS



TECH 5

CRUISER 3- CONSTITUTION REFIT

DESTROYER 3- MIRANDA CLASS

SCOUT 3- SOYUZ CLASS



TECH 6

HEAVY CRUISER 1- EXCELSIOR CLASS

CRUISER 4- CONSTELLATION CLASS

SCOUT 4- CENTAUR CLASS



TECH 7

EXPLORER 1- AMBASSADOR CLASS



TECH 8

HEAVY CRUISER 2- NIAGRA CLASS

CRUISER 5- EXCELSIOR REFIT



TECH 9

EXPLORER 2- GALAXY CLASS

HEAVY CRUISER 3- NEBULA CLASS

DESTROYER 4- NEW ORLEANS CLASS

SCOUT 5- FREEDOM CLASS



TECH 10

CRUISER 6- INTREPID CLASS

SURVEYOR 3- NOVA CLASS

ESCORT 1- DEFIANT CLASS



TECH 11

EXPLORER 3- SOVEREIGN CLASS

HEAVY CRUISER 4- AKIRA CLASS

DESTROYER 5- STEAMRUNNER CLASS

SCOUT 6- SABRE CLASS



TECH 12

PROMETHEUS CLASS



If we ignore the issue of being able to build obsolete ships, then at all tech levels your list of buildable ships will be appropriate to the era, for example,

TECH 1 BUILD LIST

NX, ICARUS, NEPTUNE

TECH 6 BUILD LIST

EXCELSIOR, CONSTELLATION, MIRANDA, CENTAUR, OBERTH

TECH 10 BUILD LIST

GALAXY, NEBULA, INTREPID, NEW ORLEANS, FREEDOM, NOVA, DEFIANT

The only thing I don't like is the Excelsior maybe overstays it's welcome slightly... It is the current cruiser besides the Galaxy and Nebula which to be fair is pretty idiotic, but with the absence of another canon cruiser it could be worse.

Thought on this? If something like it was implemented it would require I think 2 new ship models, however it cleans up the ship list massively, in my opinion at least.

The thing people may be thrown by is the fact I've done away with the Heavy Destroyer type. It seems that the amount of buildable ships gets unnecessarily large later in the game with it included. This means the Constellation becomes a cruiser which replaces the Connie refit, this makes sense to me as starfleet classed this as an ollllllld ship type by the time the Excelsior was out there, I guess the Constellation was probably just as capable but a bit cheaper and more basic, allowing the Excelsior to take on the lead ship role.

On a similar note the Excelsior steps down from the Heavy Cruiser role around the time the Niagra can be built. I could have had it as a cruiser from day 1 but I like the Excelsior being the biggest and baddest for a while. I also wanted it to coexist with the Connie refit and later the Constellation before being downgraded in status.

Certain ships get replaced only a tech level after being launched, this is to reflect the very limited numbers of certain ships we see in the shows, bear in mind getting through a whole tech level cn take a while, and a fair few would be built in that time, also bear in mind this doesn't account for half tech levels, so in reality the ships which get replaced after 1 tech level would most likely last closer to 2 levels due to some of the tech fields being different.

One thing is clear to me. We can not build six or seven designs of ships for each ship type we intend to us. It is too much work. We will never be able to do it. It is too much to download if we could. The types of ships would have to be cut or the time line reduced.

Apologies for double post, but I was just thinking it might be worth thinking of whether the other races ship lists need to mirror the Federation's as closely as they currently do. For example the Klingons get a Cruiser, Destroyer, Scout etc same as the Feds... But in reality the Klingons have a Bird of Prey type, which is stronger and meaner than a Scout but performs a lot of scout- like functions. In many ways it is more like a destroyer, and the Klingons have never really used destroyer types on the shows.

Example of what I'm thinking;

Federation

Cruiser- Good shields, good weapons, fast, decent scanners, some science- EXPENSIVE
Destroyer- Good shields, good weapons, decent speed, average scanners, no science- CHEAPER
Scout- Average shields, poor weapons, fast, outstanding scanners, some science- CHEAPER

Klingons

Battlecruiser- Good shields, good weapons, fast, decent scanners, some science- EXPENSIVE
Bird of Prey- Poor shields, good weapons, fast, average scanners, no science- VERY CHEAP

That way the Klingon fleet is a lot less like that of the Federation. They don't really have a Scout but also don't really have a Destroyer, the BoP is a completely different ship type which means the Klingons will play very differently.

This has the added benefit of cutting back the number of models needed.

Given that we intend to rebuild the models at some point reworking the list is, at this time, acceptable to me. Once we start building though only minor changes would be doable. Once built we would not want to go back.

The Federation has the most bloated list of ships of all the races. Cutting the number of ship types, ( scout, heavy destroyer, cruiser) would allow for some more room in the number of ship designs, (Daedalus, Constitution, Freedom.)

Keep in mind that Mike's next update is base on the shiplist as published. Any changes now will have to go past him.

Well as I said initially, this was only really intended to demonstrate how I would organise this shiplists. I'm aware that the current list is not likely to change at least in the short term. As the game will have a high level of moddability I think it is safe to say that we can all edit things to match our preferences anyway.

Personally I'd hate to lose any of the Fed ships and would prefer the other majors to reuse certain models, (eg the Klingons have a new Battlecruiser to replace the old one but exactly the same external design), but that's just me.

It seems to me, in that all the branches of the tech tree are quickly and easily modable, the priority is playability. I would be very happy to download a release-version with only as many in-game ships as the original BotF1.0 --modifying from there, either with my own or someone elses mods. (Hell! I'll even reinstall windows to play it! That's really saying something!) As long as it's playable *as is* and (again) easily modable in its entirety, I thing this will be universally true.

As to the specifics outlined here-in... I could argue with them but I would also enjoy playing such a game. And I have to agree that too many ships in the list will certainly make the game less likely to come out in a timely fashion. So, again, a small shiplist, such as the one prescribed above --as much as I disagree with it from a trek canon aspect-- is DEFINITELY the way to go from a practical point of view.

My ha'penny's worth of thought.

There were some broken tags in my post above. It reads correctly now.

With Dafedz's database, one class of ship is left out, although they are alluded to in one of the comments that I hilighted in yellow - freighters. Freighters were going to be a part of any station construction by carrying the necessary raw materials. Due to the simplicity arguments though, we're almost certainly going to drop this idea, so you should be pleased by that, ZDarby.

Also note the roles of the stations aren't defined above, although they will do everything you would expect.