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Starship Design Bureau

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[X] Variable Coil Nacelles (Prototype) (Experimental)

What's the worst that could happen, the entire thing massively fails and blows up destroying the ship and killing the crew? We need it to go faster!
 
Look at it this way.

A flagship-type vessel like the Sovereign will never be as cheap as a workhorse heavy cruiser like the Akira class. But it does make a fantastic testbed for new technologies. These nacelles promise to upgrade almost every aspect of our ship's mobility, both on the strategic level (greater warp efficiency) and the tactical level (warp sprint and impulse). Imagine the next generation of Federation cruisers and frigates using them. That's the benefit here. The risk is obviously the roll of the dice.

We know from the Ambassador and Galaxy projects that even bleeding-edge flagships can start to be built in larger numbers as the technologies become cheaper to produce. Going with the existing nacelles may mean this class can be built in slightly greater volume for the Dominion War - or not, given we already have that new deflector and are definitely going to stick prototype weapons in there as well. But the variable nacelles could help this ship to secure the Federation victory and peace in the decades to come, expanding the borders of the Federation and reaching new horizons.
 
Look at it this way - Yoyodyne's level of success with their prototype nacelles has actually been getting better each time! From 'nearly blew up the ship and dock on first being powered' all the way to, over multiple designs (and in-universe decades) 'cruise speed is substantially better than expected, sprint speed worse'. These engineers have been sweating bullets over their prototypes and have so nearly gotten what they aim for, trending closer and closer each time, let's let them have one last bite at the apple, let them, in the words of their fellow con-artist great man of the 21st Century, 'just do it and be legends, man'!

[X] Variable Coil Nacelles (Prototype) (Experimental)
 
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[X] Endeavour-type Nacelles. (Prototype)

It is kind of surprising how many votes this quest is getting. I feel like this is the better option fkr the Nacelles since it should hopefully help making a larger production run of this ship class.
 
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Imagine we had gone with the other Saucer...

Would be:
Saucer - +impulse, +torpedoes
Engineering hull - +warp
Deflector - +Torpedoes
Nacelles - +impulse, +warp

A battleship that moved like the Ushaan and hit like 3.
 
Skippy said:
Look at it this way.

A flagship-type vessel like the Sovereign will never be as cheap as a workhorse heavy cruiser like the Akira class. But it does make a fantastic testbed for new technologies. These nacelles promise to upgrade almost every aspect of our ship's mobility, both on the strategic level (greater warp efficiency) and the tactical level (warp sprint and impulse). Imagine the next generation of Federation cruisers and frigates using them. That's the benefit here. The risk is obviously the roll of the dice.

We know from the Ambassador and Galaxy projects that even bleeding-edge flagships can start to be built in larger numbers as the technologies become cheaper to produce. Going with the existing nacelles may mean this class can be built in slightly greater volume for the Dominion War - or not, given we already have that new deflector and are definitely going to stick prototype weapons in there as well. But the variable nacelles could help this ship to secure the Federation victory and peace in the decades to come, expanding the borders of the Federation and reaching new horizons.
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On the other hand, there's certainly something to be said about just having more capital ships. Three ships that are not quite as good can still be in more places at once than two ships that are really good.

It's not like the Federation doesn't like to make lots of big ships either. The Excelsior is a lot smaller than the Ambassador but it's still a big ship (numbers I've seen putting it at north of 2 Mt) and Starfleet still produced almost as many of them as it did 300kt Ushaans. The ratings are relative to the class remember. That D+ in Manufacturing we got from shoving all those prototypes into the Ambassador-class isn't just the cost of it being a capital ship and so being harder to produce than something smaller, it's saying the Ambassador is a disaster to produce for a capital ship. If we put a bit less prototypes in it I think we could have gotten another 6-12 ships produced. I'd rather avoid getting a disaster score on the Sovereign.
 
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On the one hand, I cheerfully threw shade at Yoyodyne due to the memorable results of their experimental designs. On the other hand, even with the issues she had with her transwarp drive, Excelsior became the premier design of Starfleet for decades.

On the gripping hand, Yoyodyne heard we liked speed, so they offered to add impulse engines to our warp drive so we can vroom while we zoom.

[X] Variable Coil Nacelles (Prototype) (Experimental)
 
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