Star Trek: The Quadratic War

[Josh]

I'm sorry to rub salt in the wound. I know how much you were pulling for the Mitt.

[Lys]

Don't we have an in-character thread for this? For that matter, don't we have an edit button for adding things to existing posts?

[Josh]

We like lots of threads for maximum confusion.

[General Havoc]

*Adds Justin Timberlake to Josh's ship*

[Lys]

i meant the last five posts (plus this one) being unnecessary. A character bios thread is eminently reasonable since it saves everyone from having to dig through an OOC thread to find everyone's.

[Josh]

*Adds Justin Timberlake to Josh's ship*

You are such a shit.

[General Havoc]

Lys is right. Let's keep OOC comments to this thread, not to the Character Bio one. I mistakenly crossed windows and posted there by accident, but I'll be asking DS to delete all the unnecessary stuff from it for the sake of ease of location.

[Dark Silver]

DS decided not to delete it, but maintain it for posterity.

Because I hate you three with a fiery passion.

[frigidmagi]

Point of Order: Captain Anderson was told by his crew the code!

here

Back to the Captain

Captain Anderson had leaned back and was about to respond when he saw Malack charging out followed closely by the Gorn Assault Troops out the corner of his eyes. Broshan followed behind the he Horta and cried.

"Captain, Crimson!" Cried the Betazed. Captain Anderson didn't blink but slammed his metal hand into the gut of the Shodar and grabbed at him with his normal hand.

"Menmoth, Kalpov, Cretak back to the ship!" He cried. Boring conversation anyways he thought.

[Josh]

Because I hate you three with a fiery passion.

I take great pride in my ability to stir the passions of even the darkest and deadest of hearts.

[Lys]

Captain Anderson: proven maniac. Almost as funny as Ereshal angrily calling the crew of the Immortal "psychotic excuses for Starfleet officers". You have to feel sorry for the crew of the Argonaut, they're probably the most functional, down to earth, and straightforward group in the entire squadron. They must really be feeling like the only sane men in an insane world.

Anyway, with respect to my ship's armament. Thus far White Heaven thinks heavy missiles are the way to go, since lighter targets can be popped with heavy beam fire, and one of the most common light targets has a tractor net that can catch the things in flight and fling them away, negating their usefulness. (BTW - How long's the range of the tractor net? For that matter, what about normal tractor beams?) my Boyfriend also agrees on the heavy missiles. He said that being able to call yourself a "titan of death and destruction" is obviously the right course of action. He also believes that with a big hammer every problem really is a nail. No surprise there, James is fond of characters that are hyper-competent at what they do, and have few if any secondary skills, because any effort you put into being mediocre at something is effort not put into being awesome at something else.

Anybody have any other input? Personally, my preference would be toward going with with light missiles because, well, i feel paranoid and insecure if i don't have the capability to brutally murder any sort of opponent that might come may way (you see why i'm playing a Romulan). Something in the back of my mind tells me i'm being irrational though, we're part of a squadron, other ships can take care of light combatants. Also it's a Klingon battlecruiser so it's not like it can't dance; on a Romulan warbird the concern may have more weight. Besides, balanced armament is what the 18 disruptors are there for. Still, if anyone else feels like commenting please do so!

[Comrade Tortoise]

Comrade Tortoise rolled 1d100 and got a total of 41:
41

[Josh]

Few things are cooler than being able to hum 'Ride of the Valkyries' while delivering the megaton punch. Go heavy or go home, say I.

[White Haven]

If you want to go multirole while avoiding the 'Exterminators make you gargle your own ordnance' and 'The Borg have deployed more frigates than I have missiles' problems, you could try the reverse of S'harien's energy-weapon refit; give up some heavy forward-angled firepower in exchange for a more capable set of lighter weapons covering other angles and then lean on your heavy missiles to make up the difference against serious assholes.

Just spitballing, of course; any of the above are viable options and it's often more fun dealing with weaknesses and overcoming them.

[Comrade Tortoise]

You have to feel sorry for the crew of the Argonaut, they're probably the most functional, down to earth, and straightforward group in the entire squadron. They must really be feeling like the only sane men in an insane world.

Hey now! The All Vulcan crew is perfectly functional and straightforward. Suuure they have some issues with PTSD from having to glass their own homeworld, but they ruthlessly oppress that outside mandatory therapy sessions very very well. Down to earth however...yeah, no.

(BTW - How long's the range of the tractor net? For that matter, what about normal tractor beams?)

Tractor beams... depends on the size of a target, but for little things, on the order of 10-20 thousand km. For big things, much less.

Anybody have any other input? Personally, my preference would be toward going with with light missiles because, well, i feel paranoid and insecure if i don't have the capability to brutally murder any sort of opponent that might come may way (you see why i'm playing a Romulan). Something in the back of my mind tells me i'm being irrational though, we're part of a squadron, other ships can take care of light combatants. Also it's a Klingon battlecruiser so it's not like it can't dance; on a Romulan warbird the concern may have more weight. Besides, balanced armament is what the 18 disruptors are there for. Still, if anyone else feels like commenting please do so!

Well that is the thing. Smaller ships cant really hope to do you much damage before you beat them to hell with 18 disruptor cannons. I would go with heavy missiles, you can use the lighter guns against things like Exterminator Frigates (or let me rip them apart with !SCIENCE!) but there are benefits to keeping up a stream of anti-ship missiles. Like tying up enemy weapons on missile interception duty. Even if they dont hit, you still win.

[Josh]

Sane crews are boring. Give me the burnouts, psychopaths, and junkies and I'll make you a crew that...

...is entertaining.

[White Haven]

I have one word for you, Josh.

Fusionpunk.

[Josh]

[youtube][/youtube]

Now we're talkin'.

[General Havoc]

As the GM, I'm somewhat biased, and so I do not really want to engage in too much pushing one way or the other, but I want to point this out:

Well that is the thing. Smaller ships cant really hope to do you much damage before you beat them to hell with 18 disruptor cannons. I would go with heavy missiles, you can use the lighter guns against things like Exterminator Frigates (or let me rip them apart with !SCIENCE!) but there are benefits to keeping up a stream of anti-ship missiles. Like tying up enemy weapons on missile interception duty. Even if they dont hit, you still win.

This is dangerously untrue. Exterminator Frigates are not heavy vessels, and a battlecruiser does outmatch them on largely every regard, but they are very capable of inflicting serious damage on even a heavy ship if left alone for the secondary armament to defeat. Like all Borg ships, Exterminators can adapt to different energy weapon types, and their shields are tougher than their size would normally warrant. The tractor net (the precise characteristics of you will not have good data on) can be used for more than just ordinance capture after all. Exterminators have been known to use their tractor nets to scoop up loose asteroids, rubble piles, or even pieces of ship wreckage, and hurl them into a target like ersatz mass drivers. They carry heavy disruptor cannons which, while not capable of breaking a Battlecruiser alone, can certainly inflict terrible destruction in combination with other Exterminators, and torpedo launchers whereby the standard Borg Heavy plasma torpedo can be deployed, as well as other, more exotic weapons. Frigates though they are, these are capital ships, easily as lethal as a Jem'Hadar attack ship or Klingon Bird of Prey if not moreso. Though a Battlecruiser can generally swat one aside without overmuch difficulty, that does not mean that they are mere nuisances to be left to the lighter ships, particularly when they attack in packs (as they most often will).

I am not saying that it is a bad decision to concentrate on heavy torpedo ordinance, nor that doing so will render you unable to deal with Exterminator Frigates. After all, a photon torpedo is not exactly a lumbering, unguided rocket. But there is definitely a role to be played for lighter, more focused swarm-munitions in a fleet such as this, and while such weapons will be less effective at hammering down the shields of a Borg Tactical Cube (yes, those are coming), they will make life significantly more difficult for the formations of escort vessels that the Cubes tend to carry along with them.

After all, if the Exterminators were mere chaff, why would the Borg see fit to deploy them?

[General Havoc]

Point of Order: Captain Anderson was told by his crew the code!

here

Back to the Captain

Captain Anderson had leaned back and was about to respond when he saw Malack charging out followed closely by the Gorn Assault Troops out the corner of his eyes. Broshan followed behind the he Horta and cried.

"Captain, Crimson!" Cried the Betazed. Captain Anderson didn't blink but slammed his metal hand into the gut of the Shodar and grabbed at him with his normal hand.

"Menmoth, Kalpov, Cretak back to the ship!" He cried. Boring conversation anyways he thought.

You are, of course, quite right, Frigid, but do consider that Kalpov's rendition of events is colored by his own perspective on what happened. As he saw it, your crew made a sudden, united effort to attack the pirate, effectively coterminous with your captain stepping forward and trying to seize him. The rest of the crew was behind him when they made their move, Anderson in front. He therefore was unlikely to appreciate any discernible difference in terms of which one of your crew started the music, especially as you all appeared to be acting in concert with the receipt of pre-aranged codewords. He made an assumption that said codewords were triggered either by you, the commander of these men, or by some pre-set contingency that you were waiting for, which amounts to the same thing. The notion that your XO would effectively order you to attack the pirate against your will or without your knowledge, and then open fire on his own accord with a battlecruiser's armaments against a fleet you were standing within, has not occurred to him. I cannot fathom why it would ever occur to him. He has no context to assume that anything like this could possibly have been started except by your direct orders. He is wrong, but he does not know that.

Moreover, in Kalpov's defense, do bear in mind the circumstances he was subjected to in the five minutes following that attack, a period of time in which he was violently and explosively decompressed twice, had his eyes literally boiled out of his head by an unfiltered tricobalt detonation, and was then vented directly into an interstellar plasma storm. You will have to forgive him if his recollection of the split-second reactions of people he was not looking at is a bit inaccurate.

[Marcao]

I wanted to apologize for the delay. My mother recently left to the Dominican Republic for her vacation and she needed a lot of help in getting ready for it. My summer employment kicked up a bit and I had to put finishing touches on my applications for September, track my passport and that of my wife as we prepared four our own trip to the Dominican Republic on the 6th of August. I have caught up now and I will endeavor to stay caught up. Also, welcome to the party Lys.

[frigidmagi]

I'm sorry I'm gonna need a day. Things haven't gone well on this end.

[Josh]

No worries brother, we'll just play with ourselves.

[Agent Fisher]

To be honest, not sure if I'll have enough time to play. I work 12 hour shifts on the weekends, so I might be only able post on the weekdays. But I submit the USS Sammy B Roberts, a mean little Defiant. I'm open to suggestions on the weakness though, not really sure if it works.

[Josh]

Well think about what you want to work around, specifically with regards to your ship model. Defiants are all about the speed and punch (and can take some amount of a beating.)

So you have the potential for wonky weapons systems, targeting, speed issues (probably not recommended unless you're up for hard mode), shield/armor issues (we have on example of missing ablative armor already.)

Then you have potential crew issues (not enough, untrained), computer systems, sensors (no long range sensor capability, for example.)