A thought on the BOP

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A thought on the BOP

Post by BigJKU316 »

This came up in relation to something else but was a thought that had been kicking around in my head for a while as a way to tie up a lot of loose ends for the Klingons.

Is it possible that the Bird of Prey is mostly a ship built directly by the great houses somewhat outside of the KDF proper?

I think this idea has a lot of validity as it solves a few problems.

1. It explains a lot of what you see during the Civil War and aftermath, with each side seeming to have its own ready made ships and the Duras sisters having their own BOP in the end.

2. It could go a long way towards explaining why you see BOP of so many different sizes. Assuming the KE is an institution with limited scientific and engineering resources it would make sense that they would be concentrated in the KDF managed programs that lead to true new ship designs while the great houses could resort to a simple up-scaling of a design they have been building for years. The B'Rel then makes sense as a ship some of the biggest houses would build to enhance their prestige as it would not necessitate a lot of high level research to build such a thing.

3. From a cultural prespective it makes sense. The houses seem to bicker with one another all the time. It seems logical to me that what you see on a BOP (lots of drinking, honor challenges and almost always a single house for the crew) would fit in with this setup. Then the KDF would be much more like a regular military.

So what do you think?
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Re: A thought on the BOP

Post by Tyyr »

There is no such thing as a "simple" scale up. Not unless you want your warriors walking down corridors 6 meters high.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

Post by eagle_GT »

I like the idea of the Klingons having a regular millitary supported by millitias fielded by the various houses. It could explain some of the BOP scaling issues, as well as the unnaturally long service life of the D7/K'T'inga. If individual houses are fielding their own millitias, then it would make sense if they didn't have the most up to date equipment or fielded their own variations of existing equipment. The more prestigious houses would have the most up to date equipment, while the minor houses would have to make do with ship designs from decades ago.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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Tyyr wrote:There is no such thing as a "simple" scale up. Not unless you want your warriors walking down corridors 6 meters high.
Agreed but that is not really the point. The idea is you have something being built by people that are not really experts in it. While some work would go into a larger version many of the construction basics would remain the same so you would not need a wholesale retraining across the board to make it work. So I would say it is simpler than handing a bunch of regional builders plans for something totally new and having them figure it out.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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BigJKU316 wrote:Agreed but that is not really the point. The idea is you have something being built by people that are not really experts in it. While some work would go into a larger version many of the construction basics would remain the same so you would not need a wholesale retraining across the board to make it work. So I would say it is simpler than handing a bunch of regional builders plans for something totally new and having them figure it out.
It still doesn't work. The basics of ship building are the basics of ship building. You're going to wind up doing things differently if you're building the fighter sized BOP versus the battle cruiser sized one. Scaling doesn't work and has no benefits. Its a really weak excuse for bad SFX.

That said I do like the idea of individual houses maintaining their own militias. I like it a lot actually. It gives them some military backbone in addition to political power.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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Tyyr wrote:That said I do like the idea of individual houses maintaining their own militias. I like it a lot actually. It gives them some military backbone in addition to political power.
I'd go further than simply calling them "militias". From the TNG+ depiction of the Klingons, I get the impression that "the KDF" doesn't exist as a single entity - the entire fleet is probably privately owned in some way, and it operates either feudally, or in a less extreme variation upon feudalism, such as the early British army.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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Tyyr wrote:
BigJKU316 wrote:Agreed but that is not really the point. The idea is you have something being built by people that are not really experts in it. While some work would go into a larger version many of the construction basics would remain the same so you would not need a wholesale retraining across the board to make it work. So I would say it is simpler than handing a bunch of regional builders plans for something totally new and having them figure it out.
It still doesn't work. The basics of ship building are the basics of ship building. You're going to wind up doing things differently if you're building the fighter sized BOP versus the battle cruiser sized one. Scaling doesn't work and has no benefits. Its a really weak excuse for bad SFX.

That said I do like the idea of individual houses maintaining their own militias. I like it a lot actually. It gives them some military backbone in addition to political power.
I agree it is an excuse for bad SFX but I like this one better than others. The regular BOP fits really well into a sort of clan like structure where people can work their way up by acheivement. It has a small crew so basically a family can run the thing and work their way up the chain in the house. Bigger ships necessitate a lot more...discipline and respect of rank than you see on many Klingon ships.

It is a stretch to say that the B'Rel came about when larger houses wished to expand their capability but it is at least plausible I would think. It makes a lot more sense than the KDF doing such a design and the people you have building it would at least know how the wing attachments work and how the landing gear work. The interior and engineering areas would likely be very different, but at least there would be some familiarity with many of the concepts being used.

Anyway, in my view the KDF might have a small group of BOP at its own disposal but would mainly be running the larger cruisers (Vor'Cha, Negh'Var and D-7's) that would necessitate large crews and much more military discipline. That would explain why you saw few of these involved in the Klingon Civil War (none other than the Gowron's ship at the outset from what I recall). The KDF could have just stood apart from that conflict while the houses fought it out.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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To me, I would see the KDF of being a charter of each house's military. Take a house, I shall name this house the house of Kogh just for the heck of it. The house of Kogh has a good sized military, but it doesn't have a member on the council. i'd see the perfect way to get on the Klingon council to be signing up my sizable fleet to the KDF charter, so when a war comes about, my fleet shall be added the the KDF fleet proper during times of war. Meanwhile, I shall continue to go around headbutting everyone, being headbutted by my wife and getting so pissed I can get knocked over by my targ breathing on me. Then when a war happens, I shall RIDE TO WAR IN MY VOR'CHA CLASS CHARIOT!
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Re: A thought on the BOP

Post by Deepcrush »

I like the idea that the KDF and the Great Houses are separate groups. Explains a lot in how the Empire works. Only Noble born personnel can become officers without approval. Martok is a great case of this. He wanted to serve one of the Great Houses as an officer but was turned down by Kor for his birth status. So he enlisted as a grunt in the KDF.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

Post by Atekimogus »

Now I might be wrong but - altough not canon - I think in the novel Enterprises First Mission from Vonda N'Mcyntire the villain ship is a brand new developed Bird of Prey which got captured by a female Klingon just by virture of killing the enemy commander and the crew swearing loyalty to her. Now I can't remember if this was explicitly mentioned but one did get the feeling that those ships are supposed to be the shiny new toys for individuals and houses influential enough to have them and for operation outside the klingon juristiction (raiding borderworlds etc) giving them plausible deniabilty.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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On that note. Certain houses should have their own scientist or engineer. Whether they are just on par with the rest of Empire or not. These Houses that have the wealth and pretige to have their own fleet should have these scientists or engineers. Now a truly good engineer could design a totally new class for their House so we'll call it BoP Mk. 2. More advanced than the original, so this House builds more of them. The Council is impressed, and later on that House sells/gives/barters that design to other worthy Houses of note.

Perhaps instead of a singular Klingon design team, perhaps all the ships designs are from those Houses with exceptional engineers and designers. Maybe even Houses specifically for that. May not be a Warrior class House but just as honorable nevertheless. Can't go to war in a space-rowboat.

On the other hand, if this is true then we should see much more Klingon designs than even the Federation. Which suggests the opposite.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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McAvoy wrote:On that note. Certain houses should have their own scientist or engineer. Whether they are just on par with the rest of Empire or not. These Houses that have the wealth and pretige to have their own fleet should have these scientists or engineers. Now a truly good engineer could design a totally new class for their House so we'll call it BoP Mk. 2. More advanced than the original, so this House builds more of them. The Council is impressed, and later on that House sells/gives/barters that design to other worthy Houses of note.

Perhaps instead of a singular Klingon design team, perhaps all the ships designs are from those Houses with exceptional engineers and designers. Maybe even Houses specifically for that. May not be a Warrior class House but just as honorable nevertheless. Can't go to war in a space-rowboat.

On the other hand, if this is true then we should see much more Klingon designs than even the Federation. Which suggests the opposite.
The other option is you have two Houses with competing new BoP (or larger hull) designs trying to get the Klingon Empire to use their design. So the Klingons decide to have a battle between the two ships, and that decides the winner. This satisfies the need for combat, while also testing the two ships in actual performance. Of course, if one House has better training than the other, this can hide flaws in the new ship design, meaning the Klingon Empire gets stuck with a fleet of second rate warships. I'd like to think the Klingon Empire has developed ways to detect and avoid this issue.

Once the new BoP enters production, the older ones are steadily retired from the main fleets, and newer versions are built. The smaller Houses then take the cast-off BoP vessels, and use them as combat ships. One of those Houses makes up a set of upgrades, and those versions fight each other. By using slightly lower technology, the other Houses can maintain a fairly dangerous force, even though it is not up to the same technology as the front-line Houses. Since the smaller Houses are using proven technology, they have no R&D costs to worry about, and the original factories in the larger Houses get to keep on churning out weapons and bringing in resources for the owning House.

So in a Klingon fleet, you'd have a core of high-tech ships, ranging from BB all the way down to small BoP sized vessels. These are the most advanced ships in the fleet. They are the line breakers, the shield smashers, the killers. Behind them, you have clusters of CA and BoP sized vessels, whose job is to watch the flanks of the main force, and ganging up on isolated enemy ships. They are given a sector or flank of the fleet to guard or attack along, and handle the specific details themselves. This frees up the main fleet commander to fight his ships, knowing that he will not get hit with small probes.

Klingon aggression means that any enemy that turns out to be tougher than one group can handle, will be quickly be attacked by other flanking groups, so the fleet commander merely has to note that his flanks took more damage than expected, and reassign appropriately. The flanking forces would note that an enemy is particularly dangerous, and redo their tactics on the fly. Again, the fleet commander never has to issue the orders, his subordinates are handling it automatically.

If the enemy doesn't try to perform flanking attacks, then the main fleet takes the damage, and when they are in range the flanking forces stream out from behind, and turn the whole ordered enemy line into a brawl.

For after-battle cleanup, the smaller Houses know that they need certain materials, and will try to scavenge the stuff from the destroyed enemy ships. The main fleet takes a certain trophy, and carves the names of the warriors that died in battle on it.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

Post by McAvoy »

Makes sense.

Again there has to be something else for the Klingongs wanting to maintain practically the same designs for 250 years.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

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I think it must be like the Miranda. For the purpose the Klingons intended, the Bird of Preys are excellent ships. The BoP is one of the most powerful vessels of its size, yes its all angled forward but thats why it's faster than almost anything else its size as well. The Klingons, as shown in the ST III and ST IV, have a habit of giving their BoP targets a sort of Privateer status, of government funded piracy. The BoP sneaks in and makes a lightning strike on a transport/sensor post/small science ship etc. etc. and then slips away. The BoP is perfectly designed. Small, fast, and powerful. plus it has a cloaking device which is even better.

The K'Tinga, is hard to equate and determine. We have hardly ever seen her in true combat. of the times I can remember, she was pit against a nebula producing supercomputer and Voyager...If anyone else has any occasions we see her in combat, feel free.
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Re: A thought on the BOP

Post by Tsukiyumi »

Reliant121 wrote:...If anyone else has any occasions we see her in combat, feel free.
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