Dominion War Refit Miranda

[IceGiant]

Well putting stuff together for my Post DS9 game I did up some stats for the refitted miranda. Let me know what you think.

Miranda-Class Specifications

PRODUCTION DATA

Origin: United federation of Planets
Class and Type: Miranda-Class Cruiser
Year Commissioned: 2274; Refit 2370-2375

HULL DATA

Structure: 30
Size/Decks: 6/16
Length/Height/Beam: 278/65/174
Complement: 220

OPERATIONAL DATA

Atmosphere Capable: No
Cargo Units: 50
Life Support: Class 4 (E)
Operations Systems: Class 4 (E)
Sensor Systems: Class 4 (+4/E)
Seperation System: N0
Shuttlebay: 2 av
Shuttlecraft: 10 size worth
Tractor Beams: 1 fv, 1 av
Transporters: 3 standard, 3 cargo, 3 emergency

PROPULSION DATA

Impulse System: FIE-3 (.85) (E)
Warp System: LF-41 (6/7/9.2) (D)

TACTICAL DATA

Phasers: Type VII (x4/C)
Penetration: 6/6/3/0/0
Torpedo Launchers: MK 60 DF (x4/C)
Photon Penetration: 6/6/6/6/6
Deflector Shield: CIDDS-4 (BB)
Protection/Threshold: 16/3

MISCELLANEOUS DATA

Manuever Modifiers: +1C, +1H, +2T
Traits: Pulse

[varin]

Does it have the bar or not-You should have 6 Type VII (6banksx2) and the the pulse phaser cannon for extra punch if needed. (Got the above from Starship spotter).

She makes a good convoy protector or with other ship types with equal weaponry a excellent "Wolf Pack" type of game-to ambush enemy ships and convoys.

[IceGiant]

Varin,
It has the weapon pod roll-bar, that's where the 4 torpedo launchers are. Spotter may say 6 phasers, but starfleet ops manual gave it the same firepower as the refit coniie so I kept with that. I just gave it the pulse trait (as mentioned in the DS9 tech manual) and upgraded some of it's systems.
I'm not sure on it's shields though. I believe they need to be upgraded but miranda's went up like popcorn during the war so I may change them to 16/3. Harder to hit then the movie era but not the toughtness of the DS9 era.

[Tobian]

Yeah I have to agree about the shields, they would probably need beefing up a little, but lowering on the threshold Maybe it's just those movie era effects but the 23rd centiry hulls always looked like brittle glass

Coda weapons numbers are largelly irrelevant, it's more an indication of strength. If we wanted to go that route the Galaxy class would have 11 (or 12) Type X emmitters ! YEOWCH would that hurt by Coda rules


Generally speaking I would say that as a non rules system, but universe model, the shields of the Dominion war craft would probably need to be mid 23rd century design (or early at the least) to have the neccessary adaptive frequency modulation to not be destroyed by the Jem Hadar weapons systems! While it is retrospectivelly implied they probably did this in TOS, i just see the 23rd century shields as being 'new era' and therefore much better at being the handy 'pocket knife' we see the deflector arrays become in the TNG show +.

[IceGiant]

I changed the shields to CIDDS-4.

[Snake_Plissken]

I'm just wandering, with ships like these how come the Federation was almost conquered by the Dominion Good lord, dudes, she could take on a Galaxy-class starship...
If the refitted Miranda was THAT hot why bother building the newer types like the Steamrunner or the Norway? I mean come on...

I've seen here lately nothing but munchkin-style designs. I've stayed silent so far because my philosophy is to stay silent rather than being perceived as anal but this screamed for it. Come on guys...

Oh well this is Star Trek, and ST = IDIC, so ...

[IceGiant]

Because the Dominion could field ship numbers that the feds couldn't match. It's as simple as that. The feds got zerged.

As for it being munchkin, I disagree. The miranda has the same number of saucer phaers with the added roll bar phasers to boot. So I went with SOM's phaser penetration. And Let's face it, they may class the miranda as a cruiser but it has 4 torpedo tubes. It Highly outgunned the connie refit, which makes sense as it is a much later design yet easier to build. The SOM listed torpedo pen at 7, even I thought that was a little much so I toned it down to 6.

ST has always shown that it is single ships patrolling VAST areas of space. I just don't believe that you lightly arm ships when they essentally have no back up.
The new ships are more about smaller ships with smaller crews being able to handle the same jobs as older bigger ships.

Let's face it the Nova is the replacement for the constitution while the Intrepid replaces the Excelsior. Starfleet just doesn't seem to build in numbers (without a war to spur them on). They replace ships as they retire or are lost.

So that's my take on things, take it or leave it. *shrug*

[Tobian]

Hmm I have to agree with Ice Giant here a little. the word **REFIT** kind of figures highly here.. The Miranda is, let's face it somewhat of a kitbash BUT unlike some of the more horrible kitbash designs, her parts are to scale - AKA she can effectivelly be made from a number of old parts from the 23rd century, such as the constitution and even the Excelsior.

With the onset of the Dominion war Starfleet lost more ships than any war they have fought (including Wolf 359) - and While Starfleet will have ramped up production hugelly they would have had a HUGE resuply problem. Ships with the size and sophistication of a galaxy class could take YEARS to build - so instead I can see them instead rifling through their ancient backstock of older ships - in the 23rd century most of the starships were made with readilly interchangeable parts (not just the gubbins, but the external parts!) - the Miranda class represented a great vehicle for rehashing a quick fleet using old ships (I am thinking like that old junkyard they visited in TNG - which had several almost in tact ships) - use the basic saucer module of the constitution and Miranda's - put main enginering at the back (expanding the impulse engine core) put a new warp core in there (or even use the old one for quick jobs) - the Impulse Engine's of the old constitution was and still is one of the best units (one of the fastest acceleration's ever made in Starfleet - STILL) - put in as many new weapon systems in the rollbar unit (which can be custom built and built / replaced / bolted on fairly easilly (with respect to internal systems) - and finally possibly replacing the warp nacelles with upmoded models.

The ship might not have the most up to date systems, may not have a holodeck or anything nice, but it is really very flexible, as with it's older brother the Nebula class - a replaceable module might not look as nice but it's so easy to swap out as new parts become available. - and the point is it would intially be FAR easier and faster to build during the Dominion war - because SO many parts already exist already !

[varin]

The fact of the matter is this; As Tobian and the Dominion War Sourcebook point out-this war cost Starfleet huge amounts of ships (which can be replaced) and people. ONE battle with the Dominion cost Starfleet 90 ships- with the crews aboard.

Snake-if you were a Starfleet Admiral -let say on the Bolarus front and they gave you marching orders to go into the Kalandra sector and if they told you that your fleet would comprise in part a Miranda wing WITH IMPROVEMENTS you would not use them??-

I would LOVE to be at YOUR court-martial and hear you explain that one.

You would use ANY ship you could get your hands to stem the tide of the Dominion

Let's be real here-There were only God knows how many Miranda's and other classes in those ship graveyards and they would have been the easiest to convert.

I am certain in the 24th century industrial capacity is very fast but even with that tech building ships at that rate would have pushed the yards to the wall. Until that point is reached I can promise the Federation Council knowing the surivival of the Federation was at stake gave Starfleet a simple order.

USE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO STOP THE DOMINION and they didn't care where it came from.

Munchkin designs or not.

[Phantom]

Originally posted by Snake_Plissken
I'm just wandering, with ships like these how come the Federation was almost conquered by the Dominion

Becuase it was written in the scripts that the Miranda was to be the "ablative"-class starship. Can't argue with the script writers.

Back to the point, I like it.

[calguard66]

I have to agree with the nay-sayers on this one. If you are building new construction you have to fabricate/ replicate new components anyway... using a pre-existing design is irrelevant. Resources and build time required for a Miranda are likely about equal to an Intrepid, the Intrepid has equal or greater firepower, equal or greater shield capacity, likely greater sensor capability AND requires fewer crew.

Advances in technology and apparent changes in the understanding of "warp areodynamics" indicate that the Miranda spaceframe is outdated. You could argue that the Miranda shape is the same, but the internal systems are all newer technology... but if that was efficient, there would never be new hull designs. Everything would look like the Connies or older vessels. Why design, test and build an Intrepid if a refit Miranda can do it better?

One of Starfleet's major bottlenecks for several years will be personnel. One Starfleet Academy, and it takes four years to complete (at least). They cannot shorten the time too much, or allow more candidates in else they riskreducing the quality of their officer corps. If it is really possible to train a Starfleet officer in 3 or 2 years, why haven't they been doing it that way all along? More importantly, those officers need seasoning and experience, as do the senior enlisted personnel that would make up the backbone of the force completing the day-to-day work of Starfleet. Some sources state that Starfleet lost 3/4 of it's active hulls in the combination of the Dominion war and recent Borg incursions... we can assume a similar loss of personnel. Today it takes 15 years to season an officer for command at the level equivelent to a Commander in Starfleet... if we even assume that officers of that rank are assigned to command vessels at all. With the exception of Sisko every officer in command of a commissioned Starfleet vessel has been a Captain, even a lowly Nova.

It is fairly clear that Mirandas were held over so long for budgetary reasons. They were almost helpless in modern high-intensity fleet actions. Starfleet got used to fighting technologically inferior foes, and it bit them in the backside. The Excelsior class is in a similar position. Starfleet MUST develop and deploy hulls able to complete similar missions with fewer resourses and personnel than older classes.

I agree that Starfleet will build efficient, no-frills designs for the forseeable future. Why build a Galaxy when a Nebula is more flexible and tactically as or more effective? Why build a Nebula when an Intrepid is almost as effective and you can build and operate 3 Intrepids for every Nebula? I see many Defiant-class vessels patrolling near fixed installations. I see Nova class vessels filling the scientific void, and in my campaign Rhode Island class vessels will pick up much of the tactical slack. Intrepids will fill the light cruiser/ explorer role with Sovreigns being few and far between due to their complexity and long build times. They are essentially propaganda vessels, the Starfleet points to them as examples of Federation technology and defense capability, but can affort to build and crew very few of them. For the resources and personnel required for one Soveriegn they could operate 10 Intrepids covering more area AND having more total firepower when brought together.

I forsee a Starfleet consisting primarily of Nova, (Rhode Island), Defiant, Intrepid, Akira and Sovereign class vessels. No additioan vessel types are needed to cover Starfleet's missions, and building two different classes with the same mision profile and capabilities is pointless. If nothing else the more hull types you have the more problems with crew familiarity and resupply of unique components you have. Constellation, Excelsior, Nebula, Galaxy and other older vessels will be phased our as rapidly as possible, if for no other reason than than crew shortages.

Hard-core canon-ists will have Steamrunner, Norway and Saber classes in there as well, but in my world those are Andorian and Vulcan SDF classes. YMMV.

[Tobian]

Hmm I see your points there but then I can also see the flip side of that. The Dominion war ended with a peaceful resolution - so while i see your point that the Federation is now left with a HUGE legacy of battle ready ships, such as Defiant's, Akira and Sovereigns etc that doesn't mean they will continue to pursue a militaristic bent after the war. Starfleet still needs exploration scientific and diplomatic roles, and I can see them rebuilding their 'family ships' eventually, because there is always going to be a hardline that if the Federation has been made to change it's quality of life and meaning then the enemy HAS won!

Ok going back to the Miranda class - I still dissagree there. There will be a HUGE backlog of such craft in their inventory - a 90% complete decommissioned ship is allot faster to build up again! Where I do agree, and what I always agreed on, is that the speed is silly. It would have taken to o much effort to have uprated their warp engine and nacelle configuration to make them easilly travel at super fast velocities. On average the warp coils represent up to 20% of the mass of a vessel, and almost all Starfleet alloys cannot be replicated - for the same reason they arent easilly damaged by energy weapons! That fact was brought home because the Dominion COULD replicate allot of their ships!

However, adding a new weapons system to an old craft IS allot more cost effective - and in the case of a miranda very easy because it has a swapout module!

Having a think about it, I have changed my mind about the shields. The way I see it the design for the Miranda would be old - hence easier to hit BUT what I suspect that starfleet engineers would do would be to beef up their toughness, adding some old generators from fully decommissioned ships (constitutions etc) - so basically you would have a low protection, but a higher threshold. Generaly speaking I suspect allot of ships would have their 'threshold' increased in the build up to the war - in a game mechanic it's a strengthening of the shields without replacing the whole thing - which is basically a MASSIVE job (aka shield emmitters cover the hull and are HUGE) - whereas overhauling the generators / coolant loops / frequency modulators etc would be allot easier.

[varin]

calguard- You have some good points- But consider this-Starfleet Command lost according to the Dominion War Soucrebook-which you can get from Memory Icon-55% of the active Fleet in the War=Pearl Harbor was a twiddly-wink compared some of the battles.

You had ENTIRE fleets wiped out- The 7th and the 10th Fleets come to mind. The death figures in Starfleet ALONE approached over 1,000,000 officers and men.

As for replacements- SFA did accelerate the program a lot-with the losses they were suffering there would not have been a lot of choice in the matter. You forget one rule-the Academy does not make officers-they prepare them. When they get to the Fleet that is when the REAL work begins and if they have a good Section Head and a great CPO and ask the RIGHT questions + PAY ATTENTION they will make it. Also I have a strong feeling that Starfleet promoted a lot of Mustangs to fill the gaps

I have in my fan-fiction a character who is a vet of the Dominion War-she had 7 years in Starfleet Security pre-war with no intent to go to the Command track-she was a Lt. In my story she is a Commander and the XO of my ship and from people I know very well in the military-whom I have asked questions of in the wake of such a war officers like her would the RULE not the EXPECTION.

The same goes with ships-Until those ships you mention go fully on line in enough numbers I beleive Starfleet Engineers and Starfleet R&D would find a way to improve designs like the Miranda.

BTW- My main ship is an Akira-but my fleet is composed of Nova, Intrepids, Akiras, Nebulas and Mirandas-I use the Mirandas and the Intrepids to hunt pirates since my story is set post-war.

[Snake_Plissken]

Because the Dominion could field ship numbers that the feds couldn't match. It's as simple as that. The feds got zerged.

Yes that is probably the main reason why the Dominion was such a threat, combined with their technological sophistication. A huge fleet that outnumbers Starfleet 5:1 with Cardassian tech is bad enough but when the tech level is comparable (or slightly superior) to what Starfleet has then the situation is even grimmer.

But my argument is that if we saw older ships/"kitbashed" ships in the fleet was precisely because Starfleet needed every ship at its disposal, no matter how old or obsolete it was. Now the real reason in the 'TNG' we got to see a lot of the older ships (like the Excelsior or the Miranda) was simply because it was cheaper to use the already existing studio models. But I'll present my argument from a "realistic" perspective within the ST universe.

Now the thing with ST (or other franchises) is that unless the info is cannon (and then again...) everyone can be right and everyone can be wrong. If they were still making TNG-era shows who knows what they could come up with. You could end up with a bit of dialogue that says "we'll put the Miranda squadron in front of the formation because of their firepower" than you'd know you're on to something.

Snake-if you were a Starfleet Admiral -let say on the Bolarus front and they gave you marching orders to go into the Kalandra sector and if they told you that your fleet would comprise in part a Miranda wing WITH IMPROVEMENTS you would not use them??-

Obviously I would If I could get 1,000 Sovereign class vessels I'd use them. The only thing is there probably aren't 1,000 such ships.

Let's be real here-There were only God knows how many Miranda's and other classes in those ship graveyards and they would have been the easiest to convert.

That's the point. I'm not saying that they wouldn' convert or upgrade them. Doing so is certainly logical. My point of contention is to what extent they would be upgarded. I just don't think that a 90-yr old starship shouldn't magically have the capabilities of the lastest crop of starships, especially the ones that were designed to fight the Borg. Come to think of it, why bother designing ships like the Steamrunner, the Norway or the Saber when you can simply reconvert a whole bunch of old Mirandas ???

I just don't believe that you lightly arm ships when they essentally have no back up.

Then in that case EVERY ships from EVERY race would have stats similar to what you posted. You have to think in terms of cost-effectiveness and finite resources.

It Highly outgunned the connie refit, which makes sense as it is a much later design yet easier to build.

Hold on here! Which cannon source states that the Miranda is a much newer design than the refit Connie? Also I don't belive that the ST2 fight is a good indication of both ships' capabilities. For one thing Khan caught Kirk with his pants down and he got a whole free round to cripple the Enterprise. Later on Kirk pulled a trick he couldn't possibly pull on an enemy ship (well then again the Kirkmeister is capable of anything!) by have the Reliant lower her shields because of her code. That's like saying a Klingon Bird-of-Prey is stronger than the Galaxy class because the Enterprise-D got beat up in 'Generations'. The Klingon BOP had an unusual advantage which in the end nulled the Enterprise's shields (no small advantage that was).

The miranda has the same number of saucer phaers with the added roll bar phasers to boot. So I went with SOM's phaser penetration. And Let's face it, they may class the miranda as a cruiser but it has 4 torpedo tubes

Right of the bat, I'll say that the starship section of the SOM was very baddly put together; it seemed like a hasty job done with very little thought. Do a search on these boards on the subject and you'll see what I mean. So I wouldn't put too much stock in it. As for the number of phaser arrays I don't know. I think actual model has 6 pairs of phasers on the saucer yet the DS9 Tech Manual (which is also not highly regarded) says a total of "6 Type-7 phasers". By the same token it says '2 torpedo launchers', although there are clearly 4 launcher 'exits' on the model. At any rate there are 2 things to consider: 1- the CODA system is abstract. The end effect is more important than the actual # of arrays, launchers, etc. and 2- not all arrays or launchers must be equal. 11 Type-10 phaser arrays should be more powerful than 12 TOS-era Type-7 arrays. Take as an example the comparison between the Vor'Cha and the D'Deridex. According to the DS9TM the Vor'Cha has a large disruptor cannon, 18 disruptors and 3 torpedo launchers. The D'Deridex "only" has 6 disruptors and 2 torpedo launchers. Now conventional wisdom would say that this does not mean that the Vor'Cha outguns the D'Deridex 10:1 but that the D'Deridex must have fewer arrays which are more powerful.

Lastly, I could understand at least if only the firepower had been increased instead of all of the conceivable system. I have a wargamer's background and when a wargamer assembles a fleet or an army he must consider the element of balance. So if you had designed beefed-up Miranda regarding firepower, than you could have at least give it some disadvantages (like weaker shields, 'B' or 'C, systems, etc) to compensate and make the design both more "realistic" and interesting. I this is case EVERYTHING has been boosted, I find, unreasonably (ie 'E' ratings across the board, strong shields, etc). Hence, a munchkin design.

As a side complaint, I also see that many designers are quick to use the advantageous traits (like battle tested or nimble) but slow to use the disadvantageous ones (like design defect)

[IceGiant]

Ok maybe I should clear something up. My base movie era miranda has the following.

Ops/Life Support: CLass 4
Sensors: CLass 3
Phasers: (4xType VII) 5/5/4/0/0
Torpedoes: (4 xMark 6) 5/5/5/5/5
Shields: 14/3

So I added pulse, upgrgaded the launchers, improved the sensors and improved shields.