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Starfleet Design Bureau

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It's actually a rather simple equation. When you need defense, you need defense. In the Trek verse, especially TOS era. And Science is the second most likely ship to need defense frequently. Be it because of raiders/The Enemy, or because of the latest space 'noid anomaly. And, if we make it big enough, it'll likely also pull double duty as a hospital ship in outbreak crises. Which, if you think there aren't some punks, even in Trek, that wouldn't try to destroy or disable a hospital vessel during one; then you haven't paid attention to the Trek verse.

While yes, it's supposed to be traveling within Federated space boarders, there's enough critical missions, and odd phenomena, that defense is absolutely a necessity. The grander question is if we'd need an offensive stat to match for defense.... and there I'm a little iffy at least. Maybe two forward torps, and top/bottom phasors. Could go heavier... but if it's something needs something heavier, then the vessel has no right studying it alone anyways.

So, really its a question of how expendable are our science teams? Do we just pray whatever's out there doesn't eat them? Just to save some credits. Or do we try and make sure that they make it back with the data?
 
For me, we want speed and defense, with firepower and any mass that doesn't add to module space being where we cut things away. This ship should be running and surviving if it gets into a fight, rather than trying to fight it out.
 
Let's go standard. This should have some basic level of combat ability, sure it's not a dedicated combatant, but starfleet has always had mixed role ships, this'll be the only thing able to keep up with the Excaliburs as a first responder if there's a real emergency.
 
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This is a Warp 8 ship, and that means in the future it'll be eligible for refit with the eventual Warp 9 engine. In light of that long potential service time, I'm more than willing to spend extra for a more capable ship.
 
Do we have to have this discussion everytime? We just had to design a warship because THIS thread neclecteded combat/survivability on the last few ships. We did that now some want to neclegt necessary defensive equipment? AGAIN? Did we not see to where that leads?


[] Covariant Standard Shield Grid
 
Ebiris said:
Given it's a bioscience ship it's mostly going to be studying alien fauna and flora, not space wedgies.

Heavy shields aren't going to help against this thing.
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There is still quite a bit of bioscience in space and that can get troubling very quickly. Plus a bioscience ship is the perfect target for pirates since it likely has some valuable materials it is bringing back so for this I would rather go more in on shields with a lower weapon loadout to let it take a hit and run away or modulate the shields to deal with organism in space, or organism coming out from an asteroid it is parked near and is investigating.
 
Tank man said:
It's also "ideally small and well-specialised".
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The only part in either of Sayle's previous two posts about the project is "specialized in biological sciences, especially geared toward outbreaks." Nowhere does it mention small about the ship. Also, a bio-science ship that can double as a hospital ship, is anything, but small.
Bedpotato said:
Do we have to have this discussion everytime? We just had to design a warship because THIS thread neclecteded combat/survivability on the last few ships. We did that now some want to neclegt necessary defensive equipment? AGAIN? Did we not see to where that leads?

[] Covariant Standard Shield Grid
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Yes, yes we do. Because Sayle keeps bringing up a budget and the costs cutters insist that "defense is meaningless, and do we really need that many torps/phasers. SCIENCE/ENGINER baby."

{Edit} As long as we can keep the costs per above C, then it'll get decent production, and service out of them... But for some reason there are just some voters wanting to chase that A to S ranked costs. And are wholly unsatisfied if it's anything less than a B+ on costs.
 
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You know what, I've come around. Standard really should be the minimum for any Starfleet ship, save Light for civilian designs. Don't want this to be like the Kea's torpedo launcher.

[X] Covariant Standard Shield Grid
 
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WCSII said:
The only part in either of Sayle's previous two posts about the project is "specialized in biological sciences, especially geared toward outbreaks." Nowhere does it mention small about the ship. Also, a bio-science ship that can double as a hospital ship, is anything, but small.
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Read the post again. Emphasis mine.

Sayle said:
The second is a science vessel that can take thorough surveys of habitable worlds. While the Kea has plenty of facilities for general cartography and geological sciences, the biological side of that has been somewhat neglected. Several colonies have had to deal with novel pathogens or had to implement crude solutions to the activities of local flora and fauna that could have been prepared for more efficiently given forewarning. Cataloguing an entire biosphere is no small task, and a ship dedicated to that could go a long way towards making safe colonies before the first boot touches soil. Such a vessel would ideally be small and well-specialised.
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There's also no mention of it doubling as a hospital ship, sure we can probably put expanded medical capacity on the ship, but a hospital ship is a dedicated vessel, not a biological survey/biosciences ship with a 500 bed hospital bolted on.
 
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WCSII said:
Yes, yes we do. Because Sayle keeps bringing up a budget and the costs cutters insist that "defense is meaningless, and do we really need that many torps/phasers. SCIENCE/ENGINER baby."
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Building a ship that is a competent combatant and affordable doesn't mean just blowing the budget on whatever shiny things are in front of us. Light shields give more defense per cost, and this ship wants to have a decent amount of space for the science mission.
Ebiris said:
You know what, I've come around. Standard really should be the minimum for any Starfleet ship, save Light for civilian designs. Don't want this to be like the Kea's torpedo launcher.
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The Kea's issues boil down to cost-cutting wrongly, not the idea of cutting costs.
SeaTheTree said:
Maybe we can spend more on the shields and less on the weapons to balance the cost?
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This is the part that gets me. If we go for expensive shields, then shrink the ship and weapons fit to accomodate that, we haven't really designed a good biosciences ship or a good combatant.
 
Part of the reason I'd like to cut costs somewhere is because I intend to insist on a three-torpedo forward salvo, and I think (for space reasons) that's best achieved with a single Rapid Launcher.

Rapid Launchers aren't cheap. If Light Covariant Shielding is sufficient for a light combatant, something that shouldn't be picking fights when it doesn't have backup but can fight in company, that's 4+ points of cost we can shave to use elsewhere. If it isn't sufficient for that, it's false economy.
 
SeaTheTree said:
Maybe we can spend more on the shields and less on the weapons to balance the cost?
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That's absolutely the wrong approach to defense. If you want to defend yourself you want to be proactive and shields are entirely a passive option.

Either not skipping weapons like the Kea so it can fight back well making it a less tempting target or the engines to run from the fight.
 
Tank man said:
Read the post again. Emphasis mine.
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Huh... weird, I had literally just went back to double check that very post, and honestly did not see that last sentence blurb... my bad.
Tank man said:
There's also no mention of it doubling as a hospital ship, sure we can probably put expanded medical capacity on the ship, but a hospital ship is a dedicated vessel, not a biological survey ship.
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:eyebrow: You just quoted the portion that talked about novel viral outbreaks in the colonies... what did you think such a ship was going to do? Scan them from orbit and let the infected suffer below?

Also, this would be full bore bio-science ship, if we're not stuffing it with every bio lab we can, it's not going to be doing it's job. Which necessitates bio-hazard capable medical suites, and at least enough to handle the crew, which would be expanded medical at the least. And since it'll be handling outbreaks, that's going to be a minimum of a small hospital suite, backed by all the bio-science labs. I.E. it's not going to be a small ship

{Edit}Basically it comes down to this, Either it's going to be insanely good at it's job, and be a little bloated, or it's only going to be good at cataloging and maintaining it's own crew's health, and thus be a meager thing. Either big, and needs the defense, or small and not able to help the colonies beyond figuring out vaccines and cures as quickly as mortally possible. With likely death tolls on the crews minds, necessitating frequent rotation and therapy.
 
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Wootius said:
That's absolutely the wrong approach to defense. If you want to defend yourself you want to be proactive and shields are entirely a passive option.

Either not skipping weapons like the Kea so it can fight back well making it a less tempting target or the engines to run from the fight.
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If we're focused on running, better shields can buy us the time for our engines to get us out of range.
 
WCSII said:
You just quoted the portion that talked about novel viral outbreaks in the colonies... what did you think such a ship was going to do? Scan them from orbit and let the infected suffer below?
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In practice?
Basically yes.
Well, maybe not from orbit, depending, but it's not really going to have the capacity to help meaningfully as a hospital on a planetary (oor even significant city) scale. Not unless it's something on the scale of a galaxy class, anyway.
Researching and producing a cure, treatment, or preventative of some sort, on the other hand, is entirely doable.
 
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[X] Covariant Standard Shield Grid

Inclined to go standard on shields, because unless something weird comes up I don't think we're likely to get a prototype option for hull plating. For a lightweight science ship like this, I'm honestly fine spending more on defenses and maneuverability and going lighter on armaments - if it's getting jumped, the crew are better off leveraging their Warp 8 engine to get the hell out of dodge than they are trying to stick around and slug it out with a D7 or something, and if we manage High/Very High maneuverability having only forward facing weapons should be viable against anything they'd have a reason to stick around and fight instead of running for help.

And even then, in terms of armament I'm thinking going for a pair of ventral phaser banks fore and a single aft bank, with single photorp tubes fore and aft for encouraging anyone trying to chase them down to go home and rethink their life + giving them a forward alpha strike that's at least usable if forced into a fleet engagement. EDIT: Heck, if we get high/very high maneuverability, I could probably be talked into dropping one of the phaser banks - either knocking it down to a single fore bank, considering it'll be agile enough to keep that on target if needed, or doing away with the aft phaser bank under the logic of it not being super useful in the "discourage pursuit" role outside of sublight maneuvering.
 
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Emitter TypeSizeShield Power/100ktCost/100kt
Type-1 CovariantLight157.5
Type-1 CovariantStandard2011.4

To better visualize how the costs and shield strength scale up depending on the ship mass I've made a table using the above data for ship mass up to 180kt (doubt we're going past 180kt):
MassType-1 Covariant Light CostType-1 Covariant Light StrengthType-1 Covariant Standard CostCostType-1 Covariant Standard Strength
80kt6129.1216
90kt6.7513.510.2618
100kt7.51511.420
110kt8.2516.512.5422
120kt91813.6824
130kt9.7519.514.8226
140kt10.52115.9628
150kt11.2522.517.130
160kt122418.2432
170kt12.7525.519.3834
180kt13.52720.5236

Overall you're looking at a ~50% cost increase for a ~33% increase in shield power.

For reference here are the shield stats for the Newton and Archer which were on the older shields (probably used Standard sized shields).
Newton-class Light Cruiser [2225] [San Francisco Fleetyards]
Mass: 130,000 Tons
Shield Rating: 19

Archer-class Light Cruiser [2225]
Mass: 150,000 Tons
Shield Rating: 22
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Using a Standard Covariant would give us Shield Strength comparable to the Archer's on a 110kt hull which is quite significant if we're angling for a small ship.

Given the fact that the Archer just dies against anything more powerful than a lone BoP between it's limited armaments and medium maneuverability we should try to do better than that.
Sayle said:
Those that did manage to repel the Klingons were those accosted by individual Birds-of-Prey which could be drawn into warp and then dissuaded by aft torpedoes. Encounters with heavier-weight vessels were universally fatal.
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Edit:
Aiming for maxing out Maneuverability isn't going to be cheap either as Type 3's should be 5 cost apiece. Unless we go for a sub 100kt hull we're looking at 10 cost for 2 Type 3's.
 
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