the escort that wants to be a frigate....

[cowboy40]

I have been revisiting some of the content of the FASA supplement #2012 The Next Generation Officers Manual and well some of the confusion of part of the content.

One of those areas of confusion is the Paine class frigate. When you look at her in terms of the frigates in the SRM, you realize she becomes very underwhelming as a ship, but once you read the blurb in #2012, you discover the Paine class ships are in reality equivalent to the Escorts in the SRM.

Apparently, Star Fleet did something similar to the USN did, in 1975. At hat point the USN redesignated its "frigates" either as cruises or destroyers, and their Ocean Escorts as frigates. Here in #2012, the writers did something similar. They re-classed escorts as frigates. The Paine class falls very well into the role of escorts and as fleet scouts. Once you see this, its light armament starts to make since. I do think a mistake in the cargo capacity was made at 10 SCU with only 500 metric tons of cargo. This would make her useless for long range missions. Given her hull size i am betting this is suppose to be similar to the SRM escorts at 50 SCU with 2,500mt. This would make more since.

Beside that point, the Paine plays well as an escort and scout.

That is just my conclusion for the confusion of this class...

[SITZKRIEG!]

Yeah, I recently watched a video on youtube that was explaining the various ship classes (not in FASA but in real naval terms) and their origins and the one that differed most from the FASAverse was definitely the frigate. I'm ok with that variance as I don't expect Starfleet to match Age of Sail or even WW2 naval classifications but frigates seemed a bit odd for me even back in the day.

[tinker]

Frigates in general have had wildly different roles and capabilities depending on the time period and country of origin.

It seems this is one class of ship no one could ever agree on - even its role.

[cowboy40]

Well in the 1950's, when the US first designed the Norfolk class hunter killer cruiser, the designation and her name, would have placed her as a light ASW cruiser to work as lead escort in and ASW carrier groups that were being formed in that decade. The thought was sort of the same that went into the construction of the Atlanta type ships of World War II. USS Norfolk would have been a very large destroyer leading other destroyers, the the designation in her hull number was changed from CLK-1 to DL-1.

So this made USS Norfolk a "very large destroyer", but the USN felt that calling her a Destroyer Leader was also not a good name, because she was still larger then most other nations DLs, so they decided to use the term of "frigate" to distinguish her from those other ships. These frigates, like both Destroyers (DD, DDG)and ocean escorts (DE, DEG), these ships were all generally listed as fleet escort vessels on the USN lists.

In many ways the frigates, in the FASAverse, seem to draw their inspirations from the USS Norfolk (DL-1). This ship would be followed by several other ships in the DL,DLG,DLGn type ships.

Norfolk class, one ship (DL-1) the size of a light cruiser.

Mitscher class, four ships (DL-2 to DL-5) that were rather large destroyers...these were actually the first ships that were designed as the USN "frigate" type.

Farragut/Coontz class, ten ships, (DLG-6 to DLG-15) that were the first group of Terrier armed "frigates".

Leahy class, nine ships (DLG-16 to DLG-24) of double ended Terrier armed "frigates"

Bainbridge class, one ship (DLGN-25) nuclear powered Terrier armed "frigate".

Belknap class, nine ships (DLG-26 to DLG-34) Terrier armed "frigates"

Truxtun class, one ship (DLGN-35) nuclear powered Tarrier armed "frigate".

California class, two ships (DLGN-36 to DLGN-37)nuclear powered Tarter armed "frigates"

Virginia class, four ships (DLGN-38 to DLG-41) nuclear powered Tarter armed "frigates".

In 1975, due to a proceaved cruiser gap most of the DLG/DLGN type ships were re-designated as Guided Missile Cruisers (CG/CGN) type ships, but the Farragut class, due to endurance, were re-designated as Guided Missile Destroyers (DDG).

Under the same re-designation scheme, the Ocean Escorts (DE) and Guided Missile Ocean Escorts (DEG) were re-designated as Frigate (FF) or Guided Missile Frigate (FFG) to bring these type of ships more in line with the NATO designation of a smaller ASW escort vessel.

I hope that helps people to understand a little more of the USN "Frigates" of the 1950s and 60s, and to some point maybe even to the FASAverse?

[starcruiser]

In truth - the idea of Frigates in the FASA-verse had already been somewhat established by the fans with some blueprint sets. When Star Trek came out, a set of (inaccurate but, still cool) prints came out for the "Avenger Class Frigates".

Nonetheless, it's very clear that these - not quite destroyers/not quite cruisers - were inspired by the US Navy's late 50's to 60's frigates.

[walrusguy]

I think what happened was the the folks at FASA in the early 80's may not have had a whole lot of info about what a classic USN frigate WAS or how large they were... they saw them as troop carrying cruisers - perhaps not delving too much in Jane's Ship of the Line or what ever source they used to create their general guidelines. (Remember - this was WELL before the internet and in-depth research meant checking out a bunch of books at the library or borrowing books from your navy buddy!) With time crunches and publishing deadlines - I can't blame them too much for being just a bit off.

In-game - we explain it this way: it's the Andorian version of a term that is equivalent to "frigate"...which is indeed a cruiser sized ships with a complement of troops. That helps explain why the Chandley is so damn big!

As for the Paine (and all the OTHER ships from the TNG Manual) IT'S CRAP! I mean really crap! It's supposed to be 50-80 years in the future and has less firepower than a D-20c?! Brads upgrades at least give the damn thing some teeth. We retconned ours with replacement pages to make it fit a whole lot better...

Anyways - that by 2 cents.

[cowboy40]

Jul 22, 2021 6:28:25 GMT -7 walrusguy said:

I think what happened was the the folks at FASA in the early 80's may not have had a whole lot of info about what a classic USN frigate WAS or how large they were... they saw them as troop carrying cruisers - perhaps not delving too much in Jane's Ship of the Line or what ever source they used to create their general guidelines. (Remember - this was WELL before the internet and in-depth research meant checking out a bunch of books at the library or borrowing books from your navy buddy!) With time crunches and publishing deadlines - I can't blame them too much for being just a bit off.

In-game - we explain it this way: it's the Andorian version of a term that is equivalent to "frigate"...which is indeed a cruiser sized ships with a complement of troops. That helps explain why the Chandley is so damn big!

As for the Paine (and all the OTHER ships from the TNG Manual) IT'S CRAP! I mean really crap! It's supposed to be 50-80 years in the future and has less firepower than a D-20c?! Brads upgrades at least give the damn thing some teeth. We retconned ours with replacement pages to make it fit a whole lot better...

Anyways - that by 2 cents.

Nah, I think the ship plays well when you treat her the way as if she was an escort that was also used for a recon role for the fleet. She just didn't fit into what we all think of a frigate in the FASAverse, and that is because she just ain't a "frigate"! It was a blunder to call her that. When you treat her as an "escort" the original stats actually work with her.

Besides, a great part of the challenge, is to play these ships as designed and how to pilot and fight each one of the various types of ships FASA gave us back in the day.