Pegasus Fleet Forums

Please see the link below for the proposed B'Rel class bird of prey specifications:

B'Rel Class

My only question is about the burst fire torpedo launcher.

- From Wrath of Khan (the real one) and Undiscovered Country, I gathered that the BOP fired single heavy torpedoes which were "packing quite a wallop!", according to Scotty.

- The torpedo storage looks inadequate to feed a burstfire launcher. Brrrrriip!! You're empty.

- Quantums? I suppose that by 2090 that our barbaric neighbors would've gotten their mitts on them. Probably a good idea for a smaller ship to carry.

Otherwise, it looks nicely balanced.

- PSF

I can't get to the wiki right now to really change anything, but you make a good point. While burst fire launchers are pretty standard on Starfleet ships, they might not be for Klingon ships. However, it's tough using Undiscovered Country as a reference since all of the ships probably fired more slowly. The Enterprise didn't exactly go through a lot of torpedoes either. That BoP was probably a D12 (per ST: Generations), and not a B'Rel, even if they look pretty much identical. Still, the B'Rels have been around for a while, though maybe not quite as long as Mirandas and Excelsiors.

Anyway, back on topic. You may be right that the torpedo launcher hasn't been updated to be a burst launcher. Then again, BoPs aren't really meant for long sustained combat. They are raiders, used for hit and run tactics. I could see a battle progressing like this: decloak, soften them up with disruptor fire, pop a few torpedoes into the target quickly (maybe three shots, but a longer reload?), recloak, and repeat as necessary. Putting a lot of firepower on a target at once is useful for a ship like that. I mean, look at the Defiant. That little ship could fire six torpedo bursts! A B'Rel firing off three in quick succession before having to reload the magazine is probably not that unreasonable. I could probably go either way on that since I think the argument could be made either way.

That's another good point about the quantums. I hadn't really considered them being a Federation only weapon. Then again, they've existed for a couple of decades now, and the Federation and the Klingons did fight alongside each other against the Dominion. Then again, they did fight against each other not long before, but that was orchestrated by the Dominion so it might not count. I could see Starfleet being hesitant to give up the secrets to quantum torpedoes that easily, so maybe this is one we should take off. We could always replace them with more photons.

Alternatively, we get rid of both photon and quantum torpedoes, and just assume that the Klingons have something of their own that work in a similar manner. We know that photon torpedoes are anti-matter warheads, but I don't think we ever established what makes quantum torpedoes different. They may just be higher yield photons, but I don't know. It's probably a good topic to visit though.