This is explicitly the only cargo bay option we're getting, per word of QM.There's also the possibility we could put a small cargo area somewhere else if people are concerned with just having a non-cargo pod cargo area in and of itself. Wouldn't be as convenient for the shuttles, sure, but it would mean going max shuttles and one less lab somewhere.
Quite a lot, and it could range in a lot of things but I think a particularly common one would be additional engineering equipment that would otherwise be put into the pod, meaning it frees up potentially quite a bit of extra space in the pod for the primary cargo/parts.It also means that any time it's running without a pod, for any reason, it still has the flexibility of a cargo bay, which can be used for a lot more things than just being filled with crates. How many times, after all, does one of the various Protagonist Ships go "We'll set up XYZ in a cargo bay" when they need some kind of temporary facility?
The design brief is, and I quote:[X] Shuttledeck [8 Engineering, 32 Type-F Shuttlecraft]
While extra cargo space on a cargo transport would be nice, that's not what this ship's mission is. It's an Engineering ship that can carry cargo, not a cargo ship that can do Engineering things, and as such the cargo pod is probably sufficient. Now it's time to go maximum engineering to make sure it's fit for it's primary mission.
You are probably underestimating how important the cargo part of the brief is. IMO.The Cygnus is getting old, for all that the final ship rolled off the lines only three decades ago. The expanding scope of the Federation and technological advancement means the shuttlepod-equipped ship has gone from being an internal police cruiser and cargo transport to mostly just a cargo transport, and even then its capacity leaves something to be desired. Starfleet wants a ship that can carry more, get there faster, and do more when it is there. You and San Francisco both intend to deliver.
Given the only way of getting that material to the shuttles is a single turbolift we could have 68 shuttles and it wouldn't make much of a difference. Throughput will ultimately be limited by it.Another little point:
Given the material inside the pod 36 shittels are not that much at all.
While we want to avoid that bottleneck, if we build the shuttle capacity I'd imagine we can also make those higher quality with the rest of the cargo handling stuffGiven the only way of getting that material to the shuttles is a single turbolift we could have 68 shuttles and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
Isn't that a rather big assumption to make?While we want to avoid that bottleneck, if we build the shuttle capacity I'd imagine we can also make those higher quality with the rest of the cargo handling stuff
Or if it's running a pod that's doing something other than cargo.It also means that any time it's running without a pod, for any reason, it still has the flexibility of a cargo bay, which can be used for a lot more things than just being filled with crates.
While we want to avoid that bottleneck, if we build the shuttle capacity I'd imagine we can also make those higher quality with the rest of the cargo handling stuff
Based upon what I can see these are exactly the same turbolift as in every ship of the TOS generation that we've made before, if you want to check it out for yourselves just go pixel scaling. At 1px=50cm and being deck height there should be 6 pixels/300cm.Isn't that a rather big assumption to make?
Does anyone with good knowledge on Starfleet ship designs know if that is a realistic possibility?