Given these ships are more necessary for supporting our trade networks and colonies then they are for exploration I think having the workshop capability is more important than the bonus to science.
I'm sorry, what?
Like, I think there's a valid argument for going for the workshop here. A long-range exploration vessel having more ability to perform repairs and come up with jury-rigged solutions on the fly is obviously helpful. It might mean that our
Enterprise does not have to spend a year half-crippled by battle damage like the canonical one did. But the idea that these ships are more for supporting our (frankly pretty pitiful at this point) trade networks and colonies than for exploration is a bit bizarre to me, where are you getting this from?
This ship is an explorer, meant to be an ambassador for Earth in contacting new species, and getting the established Alpha Quadrant powers to take us more seriously, and make scientific discoveries. Both for the pure joy of discovery, and to help us close the still-significant technological gap with those powers. This is what the canonical
Enterprise did. Unlike TNG or TOS where it's a fairly common plot device, there are relatively few episodes where the NX-
Enterprise went to deliver things to colonies, because Earth has very few colonies at this point and
Enterprise was travelling far beyond them.
There is absolutely no reason for us to be building this ship this expensive and powerful if it were just for supporting our trade networks and colonies. We could build a deluxe version of the
Zheng He class to do that job, and save twenty Industry per hull.
(After the Earth-Romulan war, there is a very good argument that we
should do this, but we aren't quite there yet.)
