Revisting Federation class ships

[cowboy40]

When it comes to unusual and unorthodox Star Fleet vessels, the Federation class has to be one of the best to look at. If you look at all the various back story of this class of ship, you find her to be will a monster built for something the UFP never wants. She is a true warship.

Her back story has been developed along the lines of coming out of the Four Years War to meet the defects that were found in the Heston class battle cruisers of that war. Mainly the Heston was very under-powered, and some would say over gunned, even thought her weapons suite was built around accelerator cannons and lasers.

When the new photon torpedoes and phasers came online the last year of the war, the Heston was taken in hand, and looked at, to see what could be done to remedy her defects. The final decision was to redesign he ship with three nacelles to gain the necessary power to support the weapons load f the class.

The USS Federation, of the Heston, class was brought into spacedock to commence a proof of concept conversion. The conversion centered around replacing the FL-6 lasers with FH-3 phasers and the FAC-4 Accelerator Cannons were replaced by the FP-1 photon torpedo system. The FSL shield generators were left in tact.

Even the minimal conversion of the Federation would have been an improvement over the Heston, but she was still considered under powered, so the design team went to the think tanks and come up with the idea of trying the three nacelle layout again. Previous attempts had shown this to unstable, but it was felt computing power and new software cold overcome these the stability problem, so the Federation was outfitted with the FWF-1 warp nacelles and the FID series impulse drive.

The resulted in the Federation Mk. I class ships having 34 percent more power then the Heston Mk III (59 units opposed to 44) The weapons system showed an increase of 123 percent over the WDF of the Heston. (Heston MK III was 34.4, and the Federation Mk I could deliver 76.8)

A more fair comparison would be to the Constitution MK III class that shared the same systems.

Power was Constitution could dilever 44 units, while the Federation generated 59 units.
WDF was for the Constitution is 43.6 and the Federation had a WDF of 76.8

These trends would be continued with the continuous upgrades in systems

in the end what the upgrades did were turn out ships that were tough and well very combat efficient.

[Deleted]

Nice write-up. Seems like the Federation Class ship would be a bit large for me (I normally use Mirandas on down), but it may be a hoot to try against a bunch Romulan BoP's.

[trynda1701]

@cowboy40

What stats version are you talking about in your write up? I would really like to know, as there are probably quite a few versions of this ship on the interwebs! I know your figures aren't from Brad's Database pages.

I'd only read about the Federation class being adapted from the Heston class in the last couple of years. I know everyone probably has their own version of this class. I might even be temted to type up my versions and post them here on my Federation starships page.

Mark

[trynda1701]

Well, I've typed up my version of the Federation class like I said, cowboy40, so here's a link to the stats for your perusal...

ststcsolda.proboards.com/post/9555/thread

...and there's a little discussion on my design thoughts after the main stats.

Mark

[cowboy40]

Explanation of my Federation class back story and my version of the ship that I hope will seem logical.

Back story is based on the write ups at Vintage starships II. These write ups with some medications try to make the class more believable in my opinion, and that is what it is an opinion.

And no the stats aren't taken from Brad's pages.

I have tried to keep the systems online with what has been shown in the construction manuals, again some logical house rules were applied. I will share those later.

The Mk I Federation was explained above. and i am posting its worksheet, which is in excel below.

I will post the others modifications with an explanation after this one.

there was an error in the text of the Federation SRM that also lead to some of my design choices. The text in the manual lists a Constitution Mk III and a Constitution MK IV (In the manual stats the actually have the Mk. IV listed as Mk. III). My Federation Mk. I is based on the actual Mk. III Constitution as a guide to what tech would have been used on the ship.

So here is the excel worksheet. These are just basic worksheets to work out systems and so on...But they show my thinking on each ship

Attachments:

Federation-Mk1.xls (62 KB)

[cowboy40]

The Federation Mk II here is a logical improvement on the type. Again, its systems are based around what was being fitted to the Constitution Mk IV type of cruisers. Its systems were meant to keep pace with the cruisers but also to deliver an increase in operational characteristics.

Attachments:

Federation-Mk2.xls (62 KB)

[cowboy40]

My last version of the ship, What some have called the Star League class, and what i have labeled on my work sheets at the Federation Mk. III or Federation Refit is based on the tech that was developed for the Enterprise (Constitution Refit) class. In the back story i have listed these ships as practically new dreadnoughts, for which funds was made available by the old trick of conducting an administrative over hall. This is an old navy practice of taking upkeep funds and using them to tear down a hull and use what ever can be placed on the new ship, and recommissioning the new ship under the old name and registry. In my back story this almost costs the Star Fleet of the chance of getting their battleships of the Excelsior and the Indomitable classes. The Federation Council felt that Star Fleet made and end run around the Appropriations Committee, and they cut upkeep and new construction money.

So here is my Federation Refit

Attachments:

Federation refit.xls (62 KB)

[cowboy40]

Where the sources are used to build the ships, I used starship recognition manual and the starship construction manual, both with the second addition versions.

I also used expanded equipment list, with some health rules that made it more realistic such as with the dual computer core there was a penalty in both weight and in some WDF.

this allowed me to keep the ships equipment in the timeframe that was listed.

I personally think it was very logical to use the Heston class as basis for this construction and backstory. it gives the class a reason to be. as I said I chose to keep the systems in line what was being put on the constitutions, that only makes sense because the Constitution Mk. III and the Constitution MK.IV where the leading ships another time, which had the best technologies.

I feel like I took a very logical approach to the class.

[trynda1701]

Thanks for those spreadsheet downloads, cowboy40. Very cool, and I can see your design progression nicely.

It's interesting to compare your versions with mine as well as Brads'. The beam weapons are similar in yours and mine, going from FH-3 to FH-11s. Your torps starts with the FP-1 like Brad, whereas I wanted to start from the FP-5 like the Constitution Mk.III/IV. But we all have different maneuver ratios, with me at 4/1, Brad at 5/1, and yours going from 6/1 to 7/1.

In hindsight, your maneuver ratio makes sense compared to how I designed Tholian ships into the FASA system. As I was looking at the SFB designs to convert them to FASA, I compared the Constitution class in both games, and made it that one power point per speed point for the class in SFB matched the 4/1 ratio. So the DN in SFB, at one and a half power point per speed point would translate to 6/1 ratio! It was just that I wanted to keep the Warp 8/Warp 10 speeds, so I went with 4/1 ratio.

Mark