Bernard: They’re cutting our resource budgets again?!

Thompson: That’s the word from McKinley. Apparently the politicians are now getting cold feet about the Galaxy line. Something about the new Enterprise being eight times as big as the one a hundred years ago.

Sims: But they’ve spent the past few years telling us that other projects are being cut to make sure that we do have what we need for the galaxy line?

Thompson: Don’t shoot the messenger. This came directly from the Admiralty. Word is that they’re also throwing a fit over the fact that the ‘cheaper’ Nebula class is still bigger than the Ambassador.

Smutko: chuckling maybe they’re finally catching on to our tactics

Thompson: I’d remind you this is all on record.

Rush: If I may? Given the attitudes of the past few years I expected something like this. I’ve been working on a proposal that may help us avoid a lot of these cuts.

Thompson: We’re all ears

Rush: I’ve been a bit nervous for some time that the Galaxy project is putting too many of our eggs in the same basket. As this conversation proves, it’s leaving us very vulnerable to outside interference. We’re engineers, but we’re being restrained by bean counters.

We need to expand the number of active designs we’re working on and building to split their focus. One big project is too easy of a target. No matter how many classes it will technically produce.

Between the Tzenkethi, Cardassians and as always, the Orions. We still have a fair number of powers in the quadrant that will strike if they smell any sign of weakness. The politicians will know that we need to look like we’re prepared for anything. Even if we’re not.

Not to mention the security risks with moving all ship design infrastructure to one platform.

So I pitch to you, the Akira, Parliament, Intrepid, Cheyenne and Springfield.

We’ll pitch them as support ships. Designed to fill the gaps left by the Galaxy line. We’ll try to use some of the newer technologies coming out of that project where we can, while keeping things different enough that if there are any fatal flaws we have some other options that we can churn out of Utopia Planetia and McKinley.

Chess: Do you really think that they’ll give us enough resources for 5 new ship classes?

Rush: It’s all in the framing. The public mood supports searching for new life and new civilisations. Not new shields and torpedo warheads.

Chess: They just don’t realise that we usually need the latter for the former.

Rush: The Akira will be an explorer that doubles as an evac ship. We’ll give it a huge shuttle bay, with a bunch of the latest torpedo tubes for ‘long range probes’.

The Intrepid will be Starfleet’s latest and greatest colony ship. We haven’t done a meaningful update to those in over a century. Given the demands of the current border conflicts if we kit it out right it can also double as a temporary forward operating base. We’ve spoken before about how we want to build a modern ship that can land. This could be our chance.

Brownfield: Well I’m sold, but I’m not exactly who you’re trying to convince

Thompson: This is good work. Lets hash out the finer details, then we can take it to the Admiralty next month.