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Starfleet Design Bureau

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tenchifew said:
No.
Max cruise is strategic, max is tactical.
Because if you need to concentrate more vessels in a threatened region, you order them to go there at max sustainable speed.
This is max cruise. Max cruise is lowered by choosing longer nacelles.
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By 0.1 or 12c and given max cruise uses significant fuel reserves, standard cruise is still more important because it allows ships to arrive with the fuel to conduct operations, or ships that had already been conducting operations to make the trip even if their bunkers didn't have enough fuel to maintain high cruise.

The only time high cruise is more important than cruise, is if there is a time sensitive emergency somewhere you can't sprint to. If you need to mass a new fleet to deal with an invasion you want as many ships to be able to reach the rally point by the given time under standard cruise. That way they have more fuel, and less wear after the fleet gathers.
 
Kartr_Kana said:
Ah but higher cruise means you can concentrate more vessels into a threatened region, and win the fight instead of running away or dying.

Cruise is strategic, max is tactical.

But it doesn't matter for this vote. Standard length is winning by over 2 to 1.
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Higher *max cruise* dictates force concentration times.

It has now been repeatedly established that the best case for the extended nacelles will not/barely improve max cruise.
 
Kartr_Kana said:
By 0.1 or 12c and given max cruise uses significant fuel reserves, standard cruise is still more important because it allows ships to arrive with the fuel to conduct operations, or ships that had already been conducting operations to make the trip even if their bunkers didn't have enough fuel to maintain high cruise.

The only time high cruise is more important than cruise, is if there is a time sensitive emergency somewhere you can't sprint to. If you need to mass a new fleet to deal with an invasion you want as many ships to be able to reach the rally point by the given time under standard cruise. That way they have more fuel, and less wear after the fleet gathers.
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Ships in Star Trek usually have enough fuel to operate for at least months, if not years.
There is basically no case I remember, neither in the series, movies or books, where a ship has a problem with fuel due to going max cruise.
Max cruise is not used as standard for different reasons: it is taxing on the engine and other ship systems. It forces more frequent maintenance cycles and depending on circumstances faster exchange of certain components. Something that matters a lot to a merchant, a lot less to a military vessel.
 
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Kartr_Kana said:
By 0.1 or 12c and given max cruise uses significant fuel reserves, standard cruise is still more important because it allows ships to arrive with the fuel to conduct operations, or ships that had already been conducting operations to make the trip even if their bunkers didn't have enough fuel to maintain high cruise.

The only time high cruise is more important than cruise, is if there is a time sensitive emergency somewhere you can't sprint to. If you need to mass a new fleet to deal with an invasion you want as many ships to be able to reach the rally point by the given time under standard cruise. That way they have more fuel, and less wear after the fleet gathers.
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If we are frantically concentrating in response to a hostile incursion we will be doing so within the footprint of our own fixed logistics supports.

If we are methodically concentrating for a strategic offensive we will be limited by the speed at which our fleet train can concentrate.

In the former case max cruise is the limiting factor, in the latter combat vessel cruise speeds will almost certainly be faster than the fleet train.
 
@Sayle

Can we assume that someone, somewhere is designing or will design nacelle variants for civilian vessels, presumably using the same sort of spin-off technologies which have in our world been a hallmark output of government naval, aviation, and space flight technology programs?

And if so, are we responsible for designing nacelles and vessels for the fleet logistics arm and fast freighters/tenders, or is that taking place under another team?
 
Kartr_Kana said:
By 0.1 or 12c and given max cruise uses significant fuel reserves, standard cruise is still more important because it allows ships to arrive with the fuel to conduct operations, or ships that had already been conducting operations to make the trip even if their bunkers didn't have enough fuel to maintain high cruise.

The only time high cruise is more important than cruise, is if there is a time sensitive emergency somewhere you can't sprint to. If you need to mass a new fleet to deal with an invasion you want as many ships to be able to reach the rally point by the given time under standard cruise. That way they have more fuel, and less wear after the fleet gathers.
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That speed differential is enough that, over a single light-year, the ship which can cruise at Warp 6 will arrive more than 2 hours before the ship which tops at 5.9. And that time gap gets worse and worse the further a ship has to travel. Feel free to check my math, if you feel like it.

Starting out, we have the "warp factor to multiple of lightspeed conversion" element of the graph - this is a simple slider with a variable, which is then cubed as per the TOS rules for Warp Factor conversion. This is then multiplied by the speed of light in kilometers per second to get an actual speed, with which a light-year, as measured in kilometers, is divided. The result is then fed into the variable T (has to be done manually, because Desmos doesn't support derivative equations unless you're expressly using x and y for some reason), which is divided by the number of seconds in a day to determine how much time it will take a ship to cross a light-year. To determine time taken to cross a given number of light-years, just multiply the result of T/86400 by the number of light-years to cross.

Warp 6 is 216c, which comes out to an effective velocity of 64,755,170.928 kilometers per second. This means that a ship cruising at Warp 6 will cover one light year in 146,100 seconds, or approximately 1.69 days.

Warp 5.9 is 205.38c, which comes out to an effective velocity of 61,571,075.232 kilometers per second. This means a ship cruising at Warp 5.9 will cover one light year in 153,655 seconds, or approximately 1.78 days - a difference of 0.09 days, or 2.16 hours, from the Warp 6 response time.
 
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Aged_Urbanist said:
Higher *max cruise* dictates force concentration times.

It has now been repeatedly established that the best case for the extended nacelles will not/barely improve max cruise.
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Higher "max cruise" in this case is a 0.1 increase. "Max Cruise" establishes the range at which we can draw forces to a given rally point. A high base cruise increases the range at which ships can respond without straining their systems or resources. Leaving them better prepared, or at least in less need of resupply or maintenance before moving to the engagement.

tenchifew said:
Ships in Star Trek usually have enough fuel to operate for at least months, usually for years.
There is basically no case I remember, neither in the series, movies or books, where a ship has a problem with fuel due to going max cruise.
Max cruise is not used as standard for different reasons: it is taxing on the engine and other ship systems. It forces more frequent maintenance cycles and depending on circumstances faster exchange of certain components. Something that matters a lot to a merchant, a lot less to a military vessel.
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Max cruise is a conceit of this story thread and not something ever used on screen AFAIK or in any source book I am familiar with.

Aged_Urbanist said:
If we are frantically concentrating in response to a hostile incursion we will be doing so within the footprint of our own fixed logistics supports.

If we are methodically concentrating for a strategic offensive we will be limited by the speed at which our fleet train can concentrate.

In the former case max cruise is the limiting factor, in the latter combat vessel cruise speeds will almost certainly be faster than the fleet train.
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And the greater the radius in which vessels can reach the rally point without straining their systems, the less burden there will be on our logistics to handle maintenance casualties or rebunkering.

Ash19256 said:
That speed differential is enough that, over a single light-year, the ship which can cruise at Warp 6 will arrive more than 2 hours before the ship which tops at 5.9. And that time gap gets worse and worse the further a ship has to travel. Feel free to check my math, if you feel like it.
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I understand that, which is why I advocated for the option that would allow our ships to cruise at Warp 5.6 instead of Warp 5.2
 
thepsyborg said:
the time you use them isn't equal; losing .6 for 12 hours in emergency and .1 in crisis- call it, what, a couple weeks a year? is a much small loss than .4 the rest of the time is gain.
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That .1 in a crisis is 2 hours lost for every light-year a responding ship needs to cross. If you can honestly say that even 2 hours in a crisis is a negligible trade-off, I'm dubious whether you're in the right ship design bureau.
Kartr_Kana said:
I understand that, which is why I advocated for the option that would allow our ships to cruise at Warp 5.6 instead of Warp 5.2
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The problem here is that a ship with a Max Cruise of Warp 6 can just as easily step down to Warp 5.6 when maximum speed isn't necessarily required - but a ship that has a maximum cruise setting of 5.9 requires much more effort to accelerate past that velocity when a few hours could be the difference between "successfully completed its objective" and "got there just in time to bury the bodies".
 
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Tough choice. Honestly really is.

If I was going pure warship standard would win instantly on the basis that we would burn money on max cruise wherever we want, but for a civilization in general I would rather have everyone and everything moving 25% faster at all times. That adds up fast.

[X] Extended Length (-0.6 Maximum Warp, +0.4 Cruise)
 
Fouredged Sword said:
But we lose out on tactical in that ships are less flexible to suddenly be somewhere else in an emergency.
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I still firmly believe that the economic and industrial knock-on effects of vastly more efficient shipping and logistics for the next generation of warp drives will increase flexibility by giving the Federation the budget for more ships. And by a far larger factor than 0.1 max cruise.
 
thepsyborg said:
the time you use them isn't equal; losing .6 for 12 hours in emergency and .1 in crisis- call it, what, a couple weeks a year? is a much small loss than .4 the rest of the time is gain.
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We have a "For the want of a nail…" situation here.
I would argue that win of 2 hours per light year in an emergency situation is far more valuable than losses of time during routine operations.
 
thepsyborg said:
I still firmly believe that the economic and industrial knock-on effects of vastly more efficient shipping and logistics for the next generation of warp drives will increase flexibility by giving the Federation the budget for more ships. And by a far larger factor than 0.1 max cruise.
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Ok, so I voted for extended based on this argument, but I want to voice a word of caution about overly modern assumptions here.

I am not sure how much of the industrial power of the Federation is based on trade at this time. From what I can tell the economy of the federation relies on several extremely well developed super planets like Earth and Vulcan and a number of colonies that are basically only marginally productive. The actually industrially productive planets seem to be more or less economically self sufficient and don't rely on imports to get stuff done. There simply isn't enough shipping to support an federation sized planet's economy. The numbers of large cargo capable ships currently in the federation is likely measured in the hundreds, not thousands.

Quite frankly I suspect that industrially useful colonies are more like resource extraction outposts than urban centers, and the outputs from them tend to be things like rare minerals and such that while vitally important are not actually that physically hard to transport.

I mean, seriously. We are building ships that are 200 meters long and are mostly spindly nacelles. There just isn't much room for cargo. Cargo carry capacity is likely not the critical factor in economic output. I wouldn't say it has no value, but I hesitate to draw a direct parallel between the modern capitalist economy and the future star trek economy. When you have all the resources of an entire star system and all the star systems within a reasonable warp travel window at your fingertips the limiting factor is people to man ships to go out and harvest them, not travel time.
 
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[X] Extended Length (-0.6 Maximum Warp, +0.4 Cruise)
Cruise is more important than sprint. Though this is near the limits of that I think it's still worth it, if only barely. The reduction of 0.1 max cruise is about as important as the 0.6 sprint speed, both of those combined almost beats out the value of the bonus cruise but not quite, at least in my mind.
 
thepsyborg said:
I still firmly believe that the economic and industrial knock-on effects of vastly more efficient shipping and logistics for the next generation of warp drives will increase flexibility by giving the Federation the budget for more ships. And by a far larger factor than 0.1 max cruise.
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There is no sane world in which we, as a government/military design bureau, are designing every engine type in the whole Federation!

It makes no sense at all! The civilian shipping world has completely different cost constraints, maintenance capabilities, longevity and depreciation concerns… this is not the USSR, we are not a command economy.
 
tenchifew said:
We have a "For the want of a nail…" situation here.
I would argue that win of 2 hours per light year in an emergency situation is far more valuable than losses of time during routine operations.
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Firmly agree with this - routine operations, by their very nature, are routine, and thus planned. It's always possible to plan for taking a longer time to get somewhere when cruising.

You cannot plan for emergencies to happen when you're nearby. And that means that being able to get to an emergency is inherently going to mean going at maximum cruise, and then likely sprinting the remaining distance to close the gap as fast as possible - and that ability to sprint to close a distance in an emergency is also important, because warp drive endurance at sprint is a function of time spent at sprint velocities, not how fast the drive lets a ship sprint. Which means that a faster drive will inherently be able to cover a greater distance while sprinting than a slower one.

I would have to go back through the thread to find the breakdowns of actual sprint speeds for each of the options, but it's worth noting that a loss of even 0.1 Warp Factor maximum sprint shaves 0.02 LY off of the distance that can be covered in a single sprint period (going from 0.55 LY per sprint at Warp 7.4 to 0.53 LY per sprint at Warp 7.4) - so a loss of 0.5 Warp Factor reduces the distance covered when sprinting by a tenth of a light-year.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
Ok, so I voted for extended based on this argument, but I want to voice a word of caution about overly modern assumptions here.

I am not sure how much of the industrial power of the Federation is based on trade at this time. From what I can tell the economy of the federation relies on several extremely well developed super planets like Earth and Vulcan and a number of colonies that are basically only marginally productive. The actually industrially productive planets seem to be more or less economically self sufficient and don't rely on imports to get stuff done. There simply isn't enough shipping to support an federation sized planet's economy. The numbers of large cargo capable ships currently in the federation is likely measured in the hundreds, not thousands.

Quite frankly I suspect that industrially useful colonies are more like resource extraction outposts than urban centers, and the outputs from them tend to be things like rare minerals and such that while vitally important are not actually that physically hard to transport.

I mean, seriously. We are building ships that are 200 meters long and are mostly spindly nacelles. There just isn't much room for cargo. Cargo carry capacity is likely not the critical factor in economic output. I wouldn't say it has no value, but I hesitate to draw a direct parallel between the modern capitalist economy and the future star trek economy. When you have all the resources of an entire star system and all the star systems within a reasonable warp travel window at your fingertips the limiting factor is people to man ships to go out and harvest them, not travel time.
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This is great and I appreciate you pointing it out. I think in the back of my head I treat these designs like I'm playing Space Empires V, or whatever your 4x game of choice is, but it isn't the same situation.
 
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