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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Mechanis said:
it's more that vectary's texturing support is suuuuuuper primitive and does not support multi-materials or UVW unwrapping. So, there's pretty harsh limits on how fancy I can get with the texturing.
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Have you considered making the jump to Blender? There's a learning curve, I'm sure, but I imagine the general work flow looks about the same, and you can get a much more fine control on materials to really make some fine looking starships (as much time as that adds to the whole process, surely).
 
luckless21 said:
How many pods would it take to make an underground bunker?
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Probably just the one, or perhaps two---someone upthread calc'd out that it has about the same volume as an OG Panamax container ship; IE a lot.
The bigger question would be "would it be structurally sound under gravity" because most ST ships at this size are pure blackfish that can't really operate in atmosphere very well, if at all.
StriderInCosmos said:
Have you considered making the jump to Blender? There's a learning curve, I'm sure, but I imagine the general work flow looks about the same, and you can get a much more fine control on materials to really make some fine looking starships (as much time as that adds to the whole process, surely).
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oh I would love to use... something else... but I lack a computer, so am limited to "what will run in browser on the local library's machines, that doesn't cost money to like. save."
 
Mechanis said:
Probably just the one, or perhaps two---someone upthread calc'd out that it has about the same volume as an OG Panamax container ship; IE a lot.
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Well, not to toot my own horn but here's the original post with the calculation. Might be a bit rough/slightly off because I just assumed it was a pure cylinder and not a capsule but even then it'll be the right ballpark.

Tank man said:
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A cylinder with a telescoping artificial gravity section that's highly modular and meant to serve as the core for a further much larger base, and with a height of 35.5m and a length of about 136m (height of the cylinder is 71 pixels, which corresponds to 10 decks, assuming that the measure is taken between each deck there is 6 pixels per deck and approximately 50cm per pixel, the length of the cylinder is 272 pixels) we've got a hell of a lot more space to play with here.

Incidentally that means the volume of the cargo pod is about 134,612.53281734 meters3 or the equivalent of 4,054.59 twenty foot equivalent units. Roughly corresponding to an old Panamax container ship.

Note that there may be some inaccuracies there, I've never been the best at maths and my pixel scaling is a bit rusty. Edit: checked my working against the main sphere, it's 200 pixels tall (actually 201 but that might be for artistic purposes/shading) so 1px=50cm is valid.
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And keep in mind this is the small cargo pod.
 
Derpmind said:
If you don't mind, could you please tell us... everything about the Newton so far? Or is that too much to ask?
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Sayle said:
You can have a look at the canon nuTrek design. Half saucer, two impulse engines, two detached engineering sections with shuttlebays and two nacelles.
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Fouredged Sword said:
Canonically the Newton was classified as a strike cruiser, so I think this version should be at least pretty solid as a lightweight combatant. It's maneuverable enough to keep an enemy in the forward arc and pound it with phasers and photons.

Basically low weight and two thrusters means the Newton can't be that awful of a combatant. Maneuverability covers a lot of sins.
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Ash19256 said:
For those wondering what San Fran's competitor to the Halley is going to look like, according to previous word of Sale: Newton-type. Also worth noting is a TOS Comic which features a USS Nelson from the 2250s with a similar-ish hull configuration, minus the overhead roll-bar between the nacelles.

Obviously, running tech closer to what we've developed rather than nuTrek/Kelvin Timeline designs, but it's at least enough to get an idea of what it might be good at. Which, from my analysis, would likely be that it's almost guaranteed to be faster and more maneuverable at sub-light speeds than the Halley (due to lower mass and a possibly similarly sized impulse engine), and might have a higher cruising velocity due to not hauling a cargo pod and a more favorable nacelle placement for cruise. On the flipside, it can't carry anywhere near as much bulk cargo, and if it's got half the internal volume we'll have after tactical systems are installed I'd be very surprised.

My expectation is that the Newton is likely to be a bit of a do-everything ship - less specialized for engineering, utility, and cargo transportation than the Halley, but reasonably solid as a tactical combatant assuming similar weapons loadouts. Especially as, due to not having to worry about a cargo container being in the way, a four phaser loadout from the Newton can have two phasers covering the forward arc, and then another set covering the dorsal and ventral arcs mounted on the twinned engineering hulls (which also cover the aft arc).
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Sayle said:
It's a flying shuttle hub with a little bit of cargo, a single science lab Just In Case, and nothing else. Very much a support ship that can deal with minor emergencies and play a basic support role. About the only extra expense on the Newton is the second shuttlebay/cargo section and the extra engines so its weapons are viable. It's all-in on forward weapons and has nothing covering the aft quarter.

It's a light cruiser with some proactive engineering capabilities, essentially.
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CanYouMeme said:
Wait a minute, are these alternate designs just you stealing some of the sillier conversations in your quests and posting them as designs, @Sayle ?
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StriderInCosmos said:
The Newton is just a design seen in the Kelvin timeline in the first movie's big fleet jump sequence. We've had discussions of, quite frankly, some far stranger ship designs (for the time period, at least).
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Sayle said:
The orb mafia got what they wanted, but the ring nacelle mafia never will.
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So I kinda missed the discussion of the Newton before, and I think there's been a really good discussion of its capabilities already. It seems like we and San Francisco have taken different aspects of the Cygnus and emphasised them, leading to two ships which can function well independently, but also complement each other quite well. But that's not what I want to talk about, what I want to talk about is the hullform.

Or more precisely, just are they smoking over in the Bay Area? They're on that Warp 10 Mirroverse Evil Q Pack. Nefarious Emerald Orion Shadow-Grass. Every bud tended by Organian sages and watered with blood of star-dragons. Transwarp levels of sour that could stop Picard's artificial heart in one puff. Diamonds on it like the Crystalline Entity.

The ship has two engineering pods, both of which are on separate pylons as if they are nacelles. Every single piece of cargo, every nut and bolt, everyone bound for a shuttle, etc, has to transit through one of two narrow diagonal plyons. With nacelles this is due to warp geometry, and because you are generally just moving power and plasma through the pylons, with maybe a Jefferies tube at most, not a constant throughput of people, cargo and equipment. But this? What sane mind could imagine such a thing?

Presumably this is an effort to increase shuttle space, but why not one single larger bay in a centralised location with easier access to the saucer? Do the two bays somehow aid in manoeuvring or with the warp geometry? Do they have auxiliary retro-thrusters mounted on them or something? The mind boggles.
 
StriderInCosmos said:
That's not to say we won't have any options forwarded to us due to the nature of our ship. Geology was for the Cygnus, which was partly a geological surveyor as I recall, and the others were on vessels that were specifically slotted for exploration. I wouldn't be shocked if we had something like a small-scale prototyping facility or material stress test labs to choose from.

Edit: It's been a minute and details may be wrong, but the point stands.
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Geology was the Sagarmatha and Kea, but fair. If we end up getting some never-before-seen labs specifically made for ships like the Halley, I'll walk my words back and not dismiss them out of hand.

But of everything we've seen so far as options both in this thread, I don't think there's any science-boosting modules the Halley could use more than better engineering tools beyond a (possibly-enlarged) generic science lab and maybe a second computer core. I could imagine engineering work could benefit from having a bunch of extra number crunching capability too, for 3d modeling or whatever.
 
Skippy said:
So I kinda missed the discussion of the Newton before, and I think there's been a really good discussion of its capabilities already. It seems like we and San Francisco have taken different aspects of the Cygnus and emphasised them, leading to two ships which can function well independently, but also complement each other quite well. But that's not what I want to talk about, what I want to talk about is the hullform.

Or more precisely, just are they smoking over in the Bay Area? They're on that Warp 10 Mirroverse Evil Q Pack. Nefarious Emerald Orion Shadow-Grass. Every bud tended by Organian sages and watered with blood of star-dragons. Transwarp levels of sour that could stop Picard's artificial heart in one puff. Diamonds on it like the Crystalline Entity.

The ship has two engineering pods, both of which are on separate pylons as if they are nacelles. Every single piece of cargo, every nut and bolt, everyone bound for a shuttle, etc, has to transit through one of two narrow diagonal plyons. With nacelles this is due to warp geometry, and because you are generally just moving power and plasma through the pylons, with maybe a Jefferies tube at most, not a constant throughput of people, cargo and equipment. But this? What sane mind could imagine such a thing?

Presumably this is an effort to increase shuttle space, but why not one single larger bay in a centralised location with easier access to the saucer? Do the two bays somehow aid in manoeuvring or with the warp geometry? Do they have auxiliary retro-thrusters mounted on them or something? The mind boggles.
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worse is that even with the 5000 extra structural integrity fields they need to hold that thing together they're under our budget 😭
 
Skippy said:
Or more precisely, just are they smoking over in the Bay Area? They're on that Warp 10 Mirroverse Evil Q Pack. Nefarious Emerald Orion Shadow-Grass. Every bud tended by Organian sages and watered with blood of star-dragons. Transwarp levels of sour that could stop Picard's artificial heart in one puff. Diamonds on it like the Crystalline Entity.
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The same stuff they will smoke to eventually deliver to the universe the explosive science underslung magnificence of the Oberth-class!
 
Wootius said:
worse is that even with the 5000 extra structural integrity fields they need to hold that thing together they're under our budget 😭
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Tank man said:
The same stuff they will smoke to eventually deliver to the universe the explosive science underslung magnificence of the Oberth-class!
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POV: You're a San Francisco Design Bureau engineer brainstorming how you can still build a quad-ship after Budget vetoed more than two warp nacelles.
 
[X] +2 Phaser Banks (1 Fore, 1 Aft) [4 Phaser Banks, 2 Launchers] [Cost: 14]
[X] Type-1 Covariant Shield System [Prototype] [+25% Cost] [Cost: 8]
 
I'd be interested in seeing a few different fabrication bays. Without a replicator something like a clean room option, maybe one that can handle medium sized high temperature, hazardous environment, or altered gravity fabrication, and one that is sized to build a shuttlepod.

Something a bit odd would be if there's a bay that has external doors and some coordinated tractor beams/robot arms on the exterior. Maybe the top of the secondary hull has the emitters, support arms, and containment fields. With shuttles and transporters this is less useful but it could be the sort of thing that lets the ship assemble really big structures without as much risk as a normal spacewalk.

Other splurge possibilities:
- A dedicated worker bee bay
- Small Surveying Labs (Geo/Minerals) or some more capable sensors. Seems useful if the ship can build refineries, site geothermal facilities, general "large" infrastructure projects identify weird stellar conditions initial surveys missed, or needs to do some reverse engineering. Under the measure twice and verify the guy before you didn't miscommunicate mindset.
- VR / AR / Drafting Lab. No holodeck but helps with refining designs and communicating planned results.
- Small Cargobay that is outfitted as a Coating/Paint and curing room. Temp goes really high or low, improved filtration and airflow control, etc.
- Greenhouse. Space engineers might need to touch grass or have some passive air recyclers. (Or finicky bio components).

We've got a ton of space so who knows what kind of stuff we could get.
 
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I have to admit, I kinda want to go hard engineering and fabrication on this one, rather than mixing many roles with specific fields of science.

I want it to be carry all the supplies, and build it quickly and effectively into anything required for any situation. I want a couple of these dudes setting up refineries and space stations and colonies and and and... Just taking federation space from empty to thriving.
 
[X] +2 Phaser Banks (1 Fore, 1 Aft) [4 Phaser Banks, 2 Launchers] [Cost: 14]
[X] Type-1 Shield System [Mature] [-25% Cost] [Cost: 9]
 
Manowl said:
What to put a lot of manufacturing ability in the orb so much that how they are decommissioned is to ground them on some important frontier worlds to jump start there industry.
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Like an insect metamorphosing in a chrysalis, the Ponderosa-class's final act as a spaceship will be to remove her own nacelles as donor parts for some other lucky ship, replacing them with massive reinforced landing struts so it can do exactly what you've described.
 
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Yeah, we have an excellent Science ship with the Kea, I want this thing to be such a fucking good Engineering ship they're still using it 60 years from now and hopefully hits our first centenarian in active service.
 
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Alectai said:
Yeah, we have an excellent Science ship with the Kea, I want this thing to be such a fucking good Engineering ship they're still using it 60 years from now and hopefully hits our first centenarian in active service.
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Probably won't. Warp Eight is going to strangle that pretty strongly, since it's the last ship still on the Warp Seven engine and, like everything else on that standard, can't be refit to the Warp Eight core design. We might get 40-50 years out of it; the role is such that being up to date on speed is not super important, but the warp core design change puts a very hard limit on service life for the entire Warp Seven fleet, as they can no longer be refit to keep pace with new engine development.
 
Mmm.

So, we going to go with our take on the Connie as our first Warp 8 Starship, or do we think we'll need our new Frigate for then?
 
Mechanis said:
Probably won't. Warp Eight is going to strangle that pretty strongly, since it's the last ship still on the Warp Seven engine and, like everything else on that standard, can't be refit to the Warp Eight core design. We might get 40-50 years out of it; the role is such that being up to date on speed is not super important, but the warp core design change puts a very hard limit on service life for the entire Warp Seven fleet, as they can no longer be refit to keep pace with new engine development.
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I think 50 years is plausible. The Kea said it served until a full refit in the 2270 fleet modernization program and then some. If we assume that's a now butterflied away warp 8 overhaul, since none of the other retrofits mentioned a warp core swap, that's still 50 years from now. Maybe without that overhaul the Halley is only kept 5 or so years beyond that point instead of 20, but that'd still be enough to cover it taking 5 more years from now to launch the first order. Could maybe even get 10 more years depending on how fast engineering equipment gets obsoleted compared to scientific.
 
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