Starfleet Design Bureau

I went back and forth multiple times in the last vote because different numbers kept getting thrown out, but now in the absence of all that I'm defaulting back to the heuristic that half-saucers are for warships.

[X] 140 Meter Half-Saucer (140,000 Tons)
 
...While I know it will live forever in the hearts of much of the Quest, there is nothing In the world I believe in less than the idea that the Klingons care at all about our emotional support dreadnought.

It was a ship from a century ago from, when Earth was a distinctly peripheral power. Furthermore, in terms of is construction the Thunderchild reflects a defensively-focussed design philosophy which the Klingons would view with contempt. The Skate or the Selachii they would probably rate slightly more highly as unambiguously offensive weapons, but still view as somewhat compromised by Federation weakness. But also realistically only the Selachii is going to slightly figure in Klingon imagination as "that old patrol ship we see sometimes".

Probably their equivalent of naval history nerds or hardcore wargamers might recognise the name, but it's fundamentally a piece of historical trivia from a time when Earth was just not on their radar at all. A Vulcan ship of the same time period might elicit slightly more reaction, but only slightly. It would be like the modern People's Army Liberation Navy having a visceral emotional reaction to the the memory of the Royal Hellenic Navy armoured cruiser Georgios Averof.
I mean, Points at Nehg'var the Klingons do Big Tough ships too. And for the current era, the philosophy behind the D6 and D7 is very much "big tough shooty battleship."

and uh. did you forget that the whole reason the NX launched when it did is because people were messing with the Klingons and the guy who had the evidence of whodunnit crashed on earth, and was subsequently ferried back to Qo'nos as the very first mission of the very first NX class ship?
United Earth and the later UFP has very much been on the Klingon Empire's radar---especially given the bloodbath that was Cheron and the frankly moderately humiliating defeat delt to the Romulans, their on-again-off-again "let's have a war" buddies (and uh, that part where we almost had a war with them right after the Romulan War that they backed down from, in this very quest?)

I'm sure there's more than a few Klingon ranking officers at the moment who got their start on old D5s who still have nightmares-slash-nostalgic dreams of getting bushwhacked by a squadron of Sharks or a Sagarmatha (or both) and having a Glorious Battle, every so often.
 
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[X] 140 Meter Half-Saucer (140,000 Tons)
 
[X] 140 Meter Half-Saucer (140,000 Tons)

Four cheap Type 2 impulse thrusters means, even if we slap on an outrageously huge secondary hull, we can still have near maximum maneuverability for less expense than two of the Type 3 thrusters. (And we don't have to pick an outrageously huge secondary hull, now do we?)
 
Modules are important for the sort of warship we're building, for the wartime and for post-war too, with that in mind either the 140 metre thin saucer or the 140 metre saucer are the best picks to ensure these are as highly capable as we can make.
 
I still don't get why people want to go half saucer capital ship.
Because the tired old saw that "half-saucers are for warships" is a thing for good reason.

Or, to repeat my own post from last page:
the initial expectation that we would need 3 drives, rather than 4; the half-saucer is just better if we need 4- it mounts them more space-efficiently, leaves inline deflector and thus inline engineering hull on the table without totally crippling our offense [though it would still impinge on it somehat] for the large handful who want that, and has more space and especially more forward-edge-facing space than the thin saucer so it can probably mount more torpedo tubes period
 
[X] 140 Meter Thin Saucer (140,000 Tons) [Canon: Constitution-class]

Not got strong feelings on this one so I'm going to go with a gut vote for what feels right.
 
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