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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Sayle said:
Aside from some grumpiness about how Halley-modified phaser emitters are useless on any other design
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Well, the obvious solution is to build more sphere ships!

Sayle said:
[ ] Shuttledeck [8 Engineering, 32 Type-F Shuttlecraft]
[ ] Loading Deck (4 Engineering, 16 Type-F Shuttlecraft, 6 Cargo]
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Damn, the full shuttle deck option is pretty much Galaxy-class tier (if I'm remembering correctly)!

Even a simple loading deck greatly outclasses a later Constitution-class
The 2260s configuration of the Constitution-class carried a standard complement of 4 shuttlecraft, some of which were Class F. (TOS: "The Omega Glory")

The class contained at least five cargo holds. (TAS: "Beyond the Farthest Star")
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How many shuttles will the Newton design be able to operate as standard? That's the thing that's going to swing it for me.
 
Derpmind said:
I know I've advocated for a small amount of internal cargo, but do we really need six points of cargo? And for it to take up the same space as sixteen shuttles?
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Per TAS the Connie had five cargo holds around its flight deck, those were good enough for a five year mission and likely a decent amount of extra capacity in case of emergencies.
 
@Sayle Does Starfleet have any armed shuttles in this era? I ask for the entirely reasonable option of doing an armed merchantman by filling up the shuttledecks with fighters. And maybe the cargo pod, too.
 
NavySeel said:
I don't get what you mean, loading would be faster with more shuttles, not more cargo bays.
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The whole point of a loading bag is that you not only have storage right next to the shuttles so that unloading happens very quickly you also have whatever the trek equivalent to a forklift is to move large amounts of cargo at once.

Rather than having to unload cargo essentially by hand if it doesn't play well with transporters and then having to haul it to internal storage spread into whatever nooks and crannies exist.

The question is "is the loading bay more or less than a x2 multiplier on unloading speed?" If no, then more shuttles are faster. If yes then the loading bay is faster.
 
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Derpmind said:
@Sayle Does Starfleet have any armed shuttles in this era? I ask for the entirely reasonable option of doing an armed merchantman by filling up the shuttledecks with fighters. And maybe the cargo pod, too.
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Per DIS (before it goes all future stuff) we see armed Class F's, though I'm not sure if it was a case of them specifically arming them or them already being armed.
 
Guess we could also theory craft on potential synergies? The next options are Lower Decks (Engineering/Medical) and Subsystems (Antimatter/Auxiliary). Seems this is the last chance for cargo if anyone is up for that. Im personally for more engineering but im open for either option.
 
Tank man said:
Even a simple loading deck greatly outclasses a later Constitution-class
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The Loading Dock option would give Project Halley 4x the shuttle capacity of a Constitution?
Huh.
Yeah, Im having serious trouble seeing why we'd want 32x shuttles.

Hell, even the crew levels to operate 32x shuttles seems iffy.

A Class-F appears to require a crew complement of 7 according to Memory Alpha, which would mean that Starfleet would require 224 dedicated crew just to simultaneously operate all the shuttles on the 32x shuttle option, never mind the operations, loading and support crew for all those additional shuttles.

For a benchmark, a Constitution-class had around 450 crew(Memory Alpha says 200-ish).
Seems excessive.
Derpmind said:
@Sayle Does Starfleet have any armed shuttles in this era? I ask for the entirely reasonable option of doing an armed merchantman by filling up the shuttledecks with fighters. And maybe the cargo pod, too.
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Unlikely.
You would need to significantly rejigger the internals and allocate mass/volume to things like armored weapons lockers, dedicated weapon elevators and the like.

A cargopod module might be doable. Maybe.
But I would visualize that as more of a function for space-to surface operations, not a space-to-space capability.
 
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Endorfinator said:
I'd be surprised if there isn't a demilitarized version of this ship entering the Federation Merchant Marine within 5 years of project completion. Having a Warp 7 bulk cargo hauler when everything else is Warp 4 is going to get a lot of positive attention.
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My gut feeling is that the majority of civilian designs have to run on pure fusion because nobody wants to give unmonitored people a major supply of antimatter. Even on TNG we see civilian ships running at low warp factors. It's like if interstellar travel used Orion drive. Nobody is going to be handing out the nuclear payloads. Civilian traffic would have to use ion drives or something far more difficult to weaponise.

My guess is as tech improves the power:speed ratios that's when you see improvements to civilian warp drives. Or you only give antimatter reactors to larger organisations that be trusted, like planetary cargo services.
 
[ ] Loading Deck (4 Engineering, 16 Type-F Shuttlecraft, 6 Cargo]

Engineering score aside, do we really need 32 Shuttles? Seems excessive,
Heck, I'm fairly certain that this is separate from the standard shuttlebay already in the Engineering Section, so that's already ~20 Shuttles total if we go for the Loading Deck.
 
uju32 said:
The Loading Dock option would give Project Halley 4x the shuttle capacity of a Constitution?
Huh.
Yeah, Im having serious trouble seeing why we'd want 32x shuttles.

Hell, even the crew levels to operate 32x shuttles seems iffy.

A Class-F appears to require a crew complement of 7 according to Memory Alpha, which would mean that Starfleet would require 224 dedicated crew just to simultaneously operate all the shuttles on the 32x shuttle option, never mind the operations, loading and support crew for all those additional shuttles.
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A class f shuttle has a single pilot, and probably a single co-pilot or mission specialist, so you're actually looking at 32-64 shuttle crew with the loading dock being 16-32

Everyone else is just a passenger, and in cargo focused shuttles most of that space is probably converted to cargo carrying anyways.
 
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Wootius said:
@Sayle Is this the only cargo hold option we'll be getting?
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The only internal cargo hold, yes.
Tank man said:
How many shuttles will the Newton design be able to operate as standard? That's the thing that's going to swing it for me.
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16 shuttles, two extra-large bays.

Thread said:
@Sayle , do you do the pictures and are they 3D models? Do you use CAD or some other 3D program? You don't have to say but I was just woundering about that.
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Paint.

Derpmind said:
@Sayle Does Starfleet have any armed shuttles in this era? I ask for the entirely reasonable option of doing an armed merchantman by filling up the shuttledecks with fighters. And maybe the cargo pod, too.
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I don't think they do, actually. First armed shuttles we see are in TNG.
 
Sayle said:
My gut feeling is that the majority of civilian designs have to run on pure fusion because nobody wants to give unmonitored people a major supply of antimatter. Even on TNG we see civilian ships running at low warp factors. It's like if interstellar travel used Orion drive. Nobody is going to be handing out the nuclear payloads. Civilian traffic would have to use ion drives or something far more difficult to weaponise.

My guess is as tech improves the power:speed ratios that's when you see improvements to civilian warp drives. Or you only give antimatter reactors to larger organisations that be trusted, like planetary cargo services.
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I mean, is it really any worse than giving them access to a ship in the first place.

Jon Souza's Law - Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction.

Anything capable of moving a ship between planets in a reasonable timeframe has enough power to wreck a planet if you fly it into one.

If anything I would assume they use fusion when they can because antimatter isn't cheap. If you can get away with no warp core then you do because warp cores are expensive. Ships themselves are in limited supply.

But plowing a container ship into a city is going to level it. Adding antimatter makes it worse, but not categorically worse.
 
Sayle said:
16 shuttles, two extra-large bays.
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Even with just the loading deck we equal them in shuttle capacity*, and since theirs is just two extra large bays we also have something that they can't offer with it - extra cargo space.

With this in mind I am strongly inclined to go for the loading deck.

*ignoring the 4 we get as a default thanks to the regular rear shuttle bay.
 
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[X] Loading Deck (4 Engineering, 16 Type-F Shuttlecraft, 6 Cargo]

I see no reason not to go with the basic shuttlebay and and some internal storage here. 16 shuttles is still a good number, and we need some non-pod cargo space if only for stuff the ship is going to be making use of itself.
 
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Tank man said:
A class f shuttle has a single pilot, and probably a single co-pilot or mission specialist, so you're actually looking at 32-64 shuttle crew with the loading dock being 16-32

Everyone else is just a passenger, and in cargo focused shuttles most of that space is probably converted to cargo carrying anyways.
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Loading dock is gonna be much more than that.
You always have more support crew than flyers, and you're counting the logistics crew as well.
 
uju32 said:
[ ] Loading Deck (4 Engineering, 16 Type-F Shuttlecraft, 6 Cargo]

Going with the Loading Deck myself.
In an era with working transporters, shuttles are a valuable but secondary tool.
Im not seeing why we'd want the ability to spam 32x shuttles, while cargo capacity always finds a use.

And like someone pointed out up-thread, you keep your wallet on your person, not in your suitcase.
Having space to keep some stuff onboard seems useful.
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Shuttles are NOT a secondary tool. That's deceptive because of the nature of the TV show.

First of all, shuttles are what you need if you're doing any kind of bulk transport. Especially if there's no pad on the receiving end. Transporting the thousand pounds that is a large landing party plus gear is a very different proposition than transporting multiple tons of cargo, and while the engineering is certainly fuzzy problems like this tend to scale exponentially. You don't see things like beaming down entire fabricated facilities until the late 24th, with the Texas Class, and that was a really big deal on a cutting edge design.

Then you add in how many things can mess up transporters, down to lighting storms. So there's a lot of cases where a transporter just won't cut it, and you don't want the transporter to be the bottleneck. Not to mention you can use shuttles while you keep your shields up.

But actually the biggest advantage to the shuttles is the sheer multitasking ability that having a few dozen warp-capable miniature starships gives you. You can be doing work all over a planet, or even over a whole system, with that kind of setup.
 
Derpmind said:
I am now completely, 100% in favor of having more than double the number of shuttles the Newton has.
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Keep in mind with the loading deck we'd have the 16 plus more cargo space than they could even dream of (plus the 4 default shuttles we come with, per the schematics).

uju32 said:
Loading dock is gonna be much more than that.
You always have more support crew than flyers, and you're counting the logistics crew as well.
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You were talking about shuttle crew (224 going by your commentary) I am also talking about shuttle crew, telling you what the actual dedicated shuttle crew count would be.

Logistics and support crew are probably n*3 or something like that, which would be 96 to 192 for the high capacity choice.
 
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