Arimai
Curmudgeon
I love the designs. But I can't help but think it is based on the Honor Harrington universe
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Isn't the Federation founded just after the Earth-Romulan war? Does that mean we get the technology of the member species and possibly start running the Federation design bereau for all of their fleets?
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- west
I would pick one of the patrol escorts of STO simply because they're sleek looking while still being identifiable as Starfleet ships.
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- Lake Wobegon
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- He/Him/His
Not so very quickly. The Coalition of Planets grew out of the wartime military alliance that defended Earth from the Star Empire, and that wouldn't become the Federation until an indeterminate amount of time later.
It really doesn't have a lot of interior space though? The Stingray is 50% bigger than the Zheng-he in displacement, and has a bounding-box of 705,000 cubic meters, compared to the 661,000 of the Zheng-he's own bounding box-and the Zheng-he is cheap because it's a cargo ship, adding lots of scientific extras will drive costs up.
I would estimate that to make the Zheng-he a science ship, you first need to strip out the reaction engines, and replace them with impulse drive. Science is not without risk, after all. Then, you need to fabricate a new computer core, science lab, increased crew space, and more advanced sensors. Call it 2 industry for the impulse drive, 1 for the computer core, 1 for the bunks and other habitations, 1 for the science lab, and 2 for advanced sensors. That's about 6 industry, or 21 industry for a new-build. But I don't think it will be terribly good at its job. Science score of about 2-3 I would guess. 1-2 from the science lab, 1 from the sensors and computer.
And if you want an example of military patrol ship becoming a science vessel, look no further than RV Calypso. Sure, not a famous warship as BYMS-2026, but she served her time.
LunaMoth
Wings of Kynareth is my comfort song...
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Not familiar with Honor Harrington but after looking it up yeah...
Still, the designs do look vaguely starfleet-ish and they manage to not entirely subscribe to the whole Saucer, Secondary hull, Nacelles thing.
Although they do look a bit like blimps, its a inventive take on Star Trek.
...but once the Earth-Romulan War's concluded the next great power conflict is, what, the Klingon Wars that Memory Alpha says is a hundredish years away? That's clearly and obviously a minuscule amount of time, but something tells me can probably fit in ships with more than one science lab in the long peace.
Why are you like this? We build ships according to specifications set from on high, and as of this writing the most choice we've gotten on the sequel quest on picking said specifications were either a cargo ship or patrol craft. None of ships have been rejected by UE, and the NX performed brilliantly doing what seems to me ST stuff. Obviously what we build has an outsized influence, but we don't control foreign policy, we have fleeting power to decide what we want to build, and there is kinda sorta an imperialist power out there trying to crush humanity and co. in a few years time. If powers that be demand a more better science ship, people who want otherwise will have to just deal with it-and much of that opposition's seems to be because the Romulans are coming.
We've only designed three ships (one of them with scientific capability), it's early in UE/Federation history and again, an aggressive power is in fact about to declare war on us on what seems to be Imperialist-European notions of maintaining balance of power and crushing upstarts for crime of being upstarts through unholy power of what seems to me peaceful mediation and diplomacy; why wouldn't we focus on things like weapons, logistics and sustainability in the face of such a threat?
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- Lake Wobegon
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Clearly they may only be pushed back a hundred years by uninterrupted militarism for that entire time.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
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Not quite? The Stingray has most of its internals taken up by the weapons systems, along with design considerations to keep it more maneuverable, like the half-saucer. It weighs more, but there just isn't the internal room that the Merchant offers with its dedicated secondary hull, separate from the crew-orb.
I'm also not sure your guess on the Science stat works out. Things like the already-installed computer core probably wouldn't need replacing, since it's a pretty universal component across all our designs. The computer is also what gives us that +1 to Science that every design has. Maybe include a vote to add an extra core, +1 again. Science Lab might not have an Industry cost beyond the ship hull's cost itself, given the workshop/science lab vote for the NX didn't include such, +2 to Science. We already have sensors, but advanced sensors aren't currently a thing, though a dedicated science ship might include a vote for them, potentially a +1-2, I'd guess +2 given their advanced state, along with a likely Industrial Cost.
So, ballpark estimated Science stat total, based on variations of including an extra computer core, one to two Science Labs, and the hypothetical Advanced Sensors; +4-8.
Ballpark Industrial Cost, including the same considerations, along with new impulse engines and warp nacelles; 5-7 (impulse -2, warp 5 engine -2, extra computer -1, advanced sensors -1-2).
I'm a bit more sure about the Science stat increases, based on the NX votes, but given we haven't yet done any refits or redesigns the Industrial Cost varies wildly from the estimate I had to a bit higher.
I'd price the Warp 5 engine at -6 actually, because you're ripping off the nacelles and the warp core and replacing them entire, and I will insist that you're gonna need to do more than just say 'this is a science lab now' to the cargo bays. So it's more like 12 industry than 5-7 if we're reconstructing to that extent. A +8 to science is absolutely absurd for a ship of this size however. A ship 1/4ththe size of the NX should not have twice the exploratory ability of the NX. You might say there's lots of room in the cargo bay but is there? Is there really enough room to put in specialized exploratory sensors, two laboratories, and a backup computer core without cutting into endurance?
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- Lake Wobegon
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Oh, certainly. You'd need to power the entire section in order to even have life support (which it lacks at the moment), never mind to run functional computation or analysis systems, or storage of specimens, or anything sundry. The power requirements would then be a drain on a warp core that wasn't designed for it, so that would need replacing, as would the spaceframe since its warp field dynamics can't handle higher speeds, making additional power beyond that necessary to run the ship a waste. At which point what of the ship is left, and why not just build a new one?
When designing the Stingray you have the choice between a Warp Delta style hull and an Intrepid-style hull. You picked the Intrepid.
Also no, you can't reactivate the Daedalus class because it doesn't exist. There's so much conflicting (equally beta) canon regarding it. It was built before the war, it was built during, it was old, it was new, etc.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
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- They/Them
Again, we don't know what refitting a ship will cost. Though I'm still not sure how you're figuring on a 21 Industrial Cost for a new-build science Merchant, or some of your other assumptions.
But, is it just as ridiculous that the Merchant should have an Engineering stat of +6 in comparison to the NX's +7, while being so much smaller? The size of a ship isn't the primary factor in its stats, just what all it can fit inside, which the Merchant was designed with in mind. The NX has more to consider than just boosting Science as much as possible, which is why it's got such a chonky stat-spread of +8, +7, +4. And "exploratory ability" isn't a stat, at least on our end. Science probably isn't the only thing that affects it.
The +8 Science was a maximum estimate if one fit the extra computer core, two Science Labs, and Advanced Sensors, with no consideration for anything else. More likely, if you want to keep some of the cargo space, it'd be something like +4-6 Science instead. It's also uncertain if the, again hypothetical, Advanced Sensors would need their own space, or if they would be an upgrade to something like the navigational array.
The Merchant's secondary hull has life-support, it's just turned off most of the time since the crew quarters are in the Orb section.
And I don't think the QM would put a trap-option of refitting a ship, only for us to need to design a completely new one after complications arise. Starfleet ships are usually pretty good at being refit to new purposes.
Trent01
A Fountain of Quest Ideas
DELETE ROMULAN
If we get a choice in next ship design for Romulan War, I'd go for a Warp Delta alike patrol boat. A emergency crash-build design to pad out the fleet numbers and do sensor sweeps for Romulans so the NX's can be the killing blow. Cram it full of phase cannons, atomic torpedoes, and a Warp 5 engine and we'd do pretty good.
But Starfleet Museum has dopey Romulan warpships!
That looks like gamesworkshop tried to make a Space Marine spaceship... a primaris primaris marine.
- Location
- alphen aan den rijn
It coming up how did our mission to the empire go? Better/worse then otl?
Worth noting that the Andorians, Vulcans and Tellarites may not have joined in immediately.
Sources are vague at best but a strong implication/interpretation seems to be that Earth was fighting heroically but on the back foot, and then Earth's alien friends collectively had a moment similar to when you see a mountain lion attacking your stupid but rather loveable dog and feel a red mist clouding over your vision.
Most 23rd and 24th century vessels kinda do. Polarised hull plating sort of merges with the gravimetric deck plating in use on Federation starships into the catch-all category of "structural integrity fields" I think.
Or at least that's a fanon interpretation I've seen before and it makes sense to me.
This is sort backed up when we see the USS Defiant, a Constitution class starship in the Mirror-verse episodes of ENT, and even without shields, its duranium hull and SIF seem seem sufficient to resist 22nd century Tholian weaponry.
Iridium Flare
Cyborg Commando
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- AC-130 Gunship circling overhead
I think by the time you can reliably make shields, polarized armor is obsoleted by dint of being generally unable to fit the equipment for both on the same ship, and by the time that stops being a concern, polarized hulls just don't grant a measurable increase in survivability. Likely due to being abandoned technology, possibly due to being a technological dead-end.
As I say, structural integrity fields are a thing, and make ships much more resilient than they would otherwise be. Given that polarised hull plating uses energy to make matter harder than it otherwise be, and a SIF also makes matter more resilient, they seem strongly related.
There are armour technologies we see later on, like the ablative armour used on the Sovereign and Defiant classes among others, or the armour Voyager used against the Borg. But these also take power from the ship's main reactor to deploy, and the future armour can even regenerate when more power is supplied. So neither of them are precisely "armour" in the sense we might use it today.
It seems like Star Trek weaponry is really devastatingly powerful, and most conventional matter simply can't cut it as armour without a lot of added help.
The duranium hull of a starship with its SIF fields at full does seem pretty resilient in its own right, though. Given the quantities of energy involved in even a single phaser/torpedo blast, the fact that ships aren't always vapourised in one hit implies they must be pretty damn tough.
There are armour technologies we see later on, like the ablative armour used on the Sovereign and Defiant classes among others, or the armour Voyager used against the Borg. But these also take power from the ship's main reactor to deploy, and the future armour can even regenerate when more power is supplied. So neither of them are precisely "armour" in the sense we might use it today.
It seems like Star Trek weaponry is really devastatingly powerful, and most conventional matter simply can't cut it as armour without a lot of added help.
The duranium hull of a starship with its SIF fields at full does seem pretty resilient in its own right, though. Given the quantities of energy involved in even a single phaser/torpedo blast, the fact that ships aren't always vapourised in one hit implies they must be pretty damn tough.
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- in between
One thing I'd like is if we could get pulsed phase weapons sooner. Everyone but Starfleet seems to have energy bolt versions of their weapons just... as standard, but the Federation doesn't get any until the Defiant. Even then, most of their ships don't use them and I always wondered why.
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- Australia
That's because pretty much everyone else in Star Trek primarily uses disruptor weapons. If they do use phasers, it's as a secondary armament.