That was never an option; this is a cruiser-weight ship, and in current Starfleet doctrine, cruiser-weight ships need to be able to fight.
On the other hand, an extremely civilian useful cargo ship is something that could get Starfleet to keep the warp 7 core production line running even as warp 8 cores come online. Sure they won't be that useful as combat ships anymore but moving cargo has high value.
Something along the lines of the cardassian dreadnought but far less ambitious would be an idea.
Yeah, the only time this ship should be doing anything where success or failure is a difference of minutes is when it's running away from raiders.
It's the most qualified engineering+cargo ship in the entire Federation to get close to a combat zone, and she's got the firepower of a cruiser to punish enemies that linger in the front or aft arcs.
It's also overkill against anything that's not a Borg Cube. Make it a MIRV-like/cluster torpedo of doom. Heck, at that size you could stuff it with cheaper obsolete/obsolescent torpedo tech and replicate the Macross Missile Massacre.
I imagine we're always going to be able to find something more to do that can have a shuttle assigned to it, in much the same way if we take more cargo bays we're always going to be able to find something more to haul even if everything we need can already fit in the cargo pod. They're both pretty generally useful things to have like that, idle capacity is not something I'm worried about.
Explorer, patrol, survey, and pure cargo sure, but the Halley isn't a direct match to any of those roles. The request was for an engineering ship that we then chose to give a significant amount of cargo capacity so it can haul it's own supplies for likely any but the largest projects. Exact words were: "Starfleet wants a ship that can carry more, get there faster, and do more when it is there." The Halley is likely to do the most "sitting at point B" out of any ship we've ever touched.
Within the giant amount of interval volume we got when we voted for the orb? Once again we can assume competence from our design teams, if we're being offered an option for 32 shuttles it's safe to assume they have calculated the Halley can support that amount without crippling it in other ways.
I'm not voting Shuttledeck because I want it to be a carrier on the front lines or whatever. I'm doing it because I want one of these to rock up to an engineering site in the Federation interior and just vomit out a swarm of shuttles to do All The Things.
Or a fully shielded facility, remember the pounding ESD and by extension Earth underwent in the Picard finale.
A significant portion of discussion around the orb was that the compromised firing arcs didn't really matter since this was designed for federation internal use. The weapons were put on to fend off raiders not as something that we'd expect to be in fleet engagements.
It may not actually be slow, especially if it drops the cargo pod knowing it's about to enter a furball. It's not actually that heavy of a ship with the new structural alloy and it may not lack thrust with the new thruster design.
considering the cargo pod carries as much a Skate-class frigate, you could probably stick a ton of stuff in there to give it the best possible chance of getting to the target.
I'm not claiming the Halley needs to be able to fight particularly well. I'm saying it needs to have utility on the front lines, and it needs to be able to survive there.
It's also not bad in a furball per say. It's an extra set of torpedo tubes and an extra set of phasers with a complete 360 degree arc. It can't shoot up and down, but it can roll so that doesn't really matter. It will be able to find something to shoot even if it can't dogfight.
If nothing else, it'll be useful in helping defend the less well protected ships in either convoys or as part of the support force for a combat fleet.
True, there is plenty of reason to hold this sort of ship back if you can get away with it, but especially if you are getting attacked rather than attacking it's not always a choice you get to make.
My vote will depend on what other options we have for that space. I absolutely can see the utility of extra antimatter tanks, but there is a solid chance that there will be an option that tempts me more.
Right.
