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Candesce said:
It's doing science patrol on the frontier, because the frontier is where we want to land people. Very much not behind the border.

The Federation is currently creating "flag-planting colonies," which has very strong implications regarding the nature of its borders and how they are being extended.
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I mean, the brief doesn't actually mention the border itself, so we are all just guessing the most likely place to find habitable worlds. All we know is that it is specially for said habitable worlds.

The Kea class did short planned trips outside our borders, so that tracks, but the curiosity class specifically found habitable planets in safe regions within Federation space.

I think it can go either way, and will possibly be used however we design it to be used.

But even if it is set up for only outside the borders, I would still argue the .2 difference in maximum sprint speed compared to Canon enterprise is pretty much inconsequential, and we would be going cruise nacelles anyway.
 
I want the Blister Deflector to win because the Inline Deflector is going to take up more internal space. I think it's absolutely worth spending more for bigger and more capable labspace.
Sayle said:
a full-sized deflector with all its attendant equipment and graviton emitters.
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🎵Bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish.🎶
 
Golgotha said:
the brief doesn't actually mention the border itself, so we are all just guessing the most likely place to find habitable worlds.
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I'm not getting this from the brief, correct.

If you'll take a moment to go back and reread the Exalibur's retrospective, you'll find this:
Sayle said:
"Look, Chris, I know this is short notice. Have you heard of Tarsus IV?"

"Small colony," Pike replied. "One of the flag-planting initiatives. No useful resources, but habitable and pleasant enough. I read something about Admiral Sato retiring there so it can't be half-bad. I think about ten thousand people?"
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Sayle said:
"Last night one of our listening posts picked up a weak subspace transmission from Tarsus calling for help. Some sort of fungal outbreak has obliterated their food supply, and they only have enough stored for a couple of weeks."
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Tarsus IV is exactly what the design we're making is intended to prevent. New colony suffering a disaster because of a lacking survey of the local biosphere.

And Tarsus IV is explicitly an example of a pattern of action on the part of the Federation.

By implication, we're going to be sending these ships out of Federation borders to check out worlds that the Federation intends to claim, because the Federation colonies we know about exist for the purpose of expanding Federation borders, not resource extraction.
 
Golgotha said:
But I mean, is it?
I think it's really obvious that the majority are pushing for landing to do science. It's not doing patrol on the border of the frontier, its doing science behind the border in locations we want to land people. It's helping colony worlds and prospective colony worlds. Or random mining/ science sites, but same story. We aren't going to put those on the Klingon border, and the Canon Constitution had a max warp of 7.8 to this things 7.6 (assuming we take inlines) so that hardly seems crippled comparatively.

This means that not only is this almost as fast as the original enterprise, if someone's going to jump this thing, chances are high that it is on a planet and/or away from the most dangerous border regions. If it's on the planet or defending the planet warp speed doesn't matter anyway. And if it's not, I don't think it's that bad being single digit percentage slower than the famous explorer in emergency situations.
0.2 slower for a dedicated science ship hardly feels that bad in those circumstances. It only feels worse compared to our extra speedy extra sprinty Excalibur.
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Flag planting colonies are by their definition at or beyond the presently claimed borders of a power, and given the brief "The second is a science vessel that can take thorough surveys of habitable worlds ... 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." it seems pretty clear to me that this is where the ship is going to be, for the majority of it's missions (whilst the nature of expansion means that some of these surveys will be 'inside' of Federation space that space will be effectivly as border space for all intents and purposes).

As to the Klingon border, well yeah, that's a fairly static place that should be reasonably settled except for at the extreme edges, what I'm talking about is the effectivly open space we have to expand into outside of the hard Klingon and Romulan borders, where we know we'll be running into the Gorn and Tholians to name a few.

It has to be remembered that whilst primarily a biosciences ship this will also be the second warp 8 ship Starfleet will field, and will likely hold the distinction for 9 years at least. Combined with their postings to the edge of our space these ships are probably going to be the ones not only getting into the most trouble but also getting stuff along the borders out of trouble, speed will be essential.
 
Hrm... 🤔 I wonder... would we still get max cruise if we just did cruise secondary hull (with the deflector in the Secondary Hull, instead of as a bottom slung blister) and nacelle config, and anchored them to the top of the saucer instead? Leaving only needing to reinforce the nacelle struts and some landing gear for the saucer and nacelles? @Sayle?
 
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WCSII said:
Hrm... 🤔 I wonder... would we still get max cruise if we just did cruise secondary hull (with the deflector in the Secondary Hull, instead of as a bottom slung blister) and nacelle config, and anchored them to the top of the saucer instead? Leaving only needing to reinforce the nacelle struts and some landing gear for the saucer and nacelles? @Sayle?
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I don't know what you mean by "still get max cruise" when nothing so far has impacted max cruise. Artistically speaking the nacelles will go where-ever seems like viable places to produce a decent looking ship.
 
Sayle said:
I don't know what you mean by "still get max cruise" when nothing so far has impacted max cruise. Artistically speaking the nacelles will go where-ever seems like viable places to produce a decent looking ship.
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So~ An Engineering hull positioned top side of the saucer section, and catamaran styled nacelles in a cruise configuration (and the deflector in the Engineering Hull) wouldn't affect max cruise at all? Given that this is both the easiest and oddest/hardest method of maintaining the planet lander intent to this build?
 
WCSII said:
So~ An Engineering hull positioned top side of the saucer section, and catamaran styled nacelles in a cruise configuration (and the deflector in the Engineering Hull) wouldn't affect max cruise at all? Given that this is both the easiest and oddest/hardest method of maintaining the planet lander intent to this build?
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No, because nothing affects max cruise unless your maximum warp is lower than 7.
 
Golgotha said:
I was worried about this too, so I asked last update. My guess is that the struts are going to be fairly different depending on the general design choices we made, especially when we could have chosen no engineering hull, an integrated engineering hull or a separate hull.
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Well fair enough then, between you, and the earlier posts by @Candesce and @Derpmind, I'm convinced. We'll probably need two Impulse Engines if we want to hit Manoeuvrability: Very High anyway.

LIBERAL GOLDEN RETRIEVER OWNED BY FACTS AND LOGIC

[X] Blister Deflector (Mass: +10,000 Tons) (Cost: +2)
[X] Standard Warp Core (Mass: +25,000 Tons) (Cost: +4)
 
And the deflector options are tied.

I remember that the last time this happened it was decided by a vote going missing through formatting. Sooooo, coin flip?
 
I wonder, could we do a intrepid class voyager? I rather like its smoothness, its a ship with no neck, which always seems flimsy to me. Its once of the reasons why voyager was such a great ship in my eyes.
 
[X] Blister Deflector (Mass: +10,000 Tons) (Cost: +2)
[X] Standard Warp Core (Mass: +25,000 Tons) (Cost: +4)
 
Skippy said:
Well fair enough then, between you, and the earlier posts by @Candesce and @Derpmind, I'm convinced. We'll probably need two Impulse Engines if we want to hit Manoeuvrability: Very High anyway.

LIBERAL GOLDEN RETRIEVER OWNED BY FACTS AND LOGIC

[X] Blister Deflector (Mass: +10,000 Tons) (Cost: +2)
[X] Standard Warp Core (Mass: +25,000 Tons) (Cost: +4)
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I mean I would argue why is Very High desirable? Like its just fine of this has Medium-High this is a survey ship that needs a bit of teeth just in case not a dedicated escort frigate.
 
Golgotha said:
I mean, the brief doesn't actually mention the border itself, so we are all just guessing the most likely place to find habitable worlds. All we know is that it is specially for said habitable worlds.

The Kea class did short planned trips outside our borders, so that tracks, but the curiosity class specifically found habitable planets in safe regions within Federation space.

I think it can go either way, and will possibly be used however we design it to be used.

But even if it is set up for only outside the borders, I would still argue the .2 difference in maximum sprint speed compared to Canon enterprise is pretty much inconsequential, and we would be going cruise nacelles anyway.
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The Darwin is being designed in a very different situation from the Curiosity.

The Curiosity was launched a year after the formation of the Federation where you have a ton of effectively "Safe" space because the area between Federation Member worlds was now included in the Federation's sphere of influence.
Sayle said:
The second request is for a survey ship. With the addition of Denobula the borders of the Federation have expanded beyond those mapped by the Vulcan explorator ships of old, and plenty of examination and investigation remains to be done in areas of space that are now firmly within the Federation sphere of influence. It should be a (relatively) safe assignment, primarily focused on scientific discovery.
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The Federation is now closer to a century old than it is a half century old and thanks to our prior ship designs is much more heavily surveyed (thanks to the Kea) and developed (Pharos and Archer).

It's unlikely that there are many if any unsurveyed habitable worlds left in the Federation interior and given the Excalibur retrospective does mention the Tarsus IV colony being a fairly new one on the outskirts of the Federation that's likely an example of the sort of planet the Darwin will be surveying.
Sayle said:
"Shame." April remarked before pivoting to a new subject. "Look, Chris, I know this is short notice. Have you heard of Tarsus IV?"

"Small colony," Pike replied. "One of the flag-planting initiatives. No useful resources, but habitable and pleasant enough. I read something about Admiral Sato retiring there so it can't be half-bad. I think about ten thousand people?"

"Closer to fifteen now," April corrected. "It's on the other side of the Federation from the Klingon border so there was some migration going on." He gestured Pike into the turbolift and took hold of the handle. "Bridge." The background began to whirr. "Last night one of our listening posts picked up a weak subspace transmission from Tarsus calling for help. Some sort of fungal outbreak has obliterated their food supply, and they only have enough stored for a couple of weeks."
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We're talking about a survey ship, it's going to have two states of being:
- In orbit around worlds that, effectively, are within the bubble of the explorers but outside of the settled zone and thus not in sprint range anyway
- At cruise warp in between systems with prospective colonies

What this calls for is something with long endurance, good survey packages, and cost-efficiency. Anything else is masturbatory and we shouldn't be in that game.

[X] Inline Deflector (Maximum Warp: -0.4)
[X] Low-Power Warp Core (Maximum Warp: -0.6)
 
Sarpedon said:
I mean I would argue why is Very High desirable? Like its just fine of this has Medium-High this is a survey ship that needs a bit of teeth just in case not a dedicated escort frigate.
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If it isn't hugely expensive I think that making this ship a better combatant is desirable in itself, brief be damned. This thing will come into service whilst we're in a cold war with the Klingon Empire and have fifteen or so modern combatants across the entirety of Starfleet. An extra 5 Cost which upgrades the ship from an average combatant to something which can kill D7s is a no-brainer in terms of cost/benefit.


EDIT: Going for both low-cost options does put us in the place where Manoeuvrability: Very High is achievable with a single thruster which is attractive... but knowing how voters here tend to reason, I worry this will make voters deliberately not arm the ship properly.
 
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OneirosTheWriter said:
We're talking about a survey ship, it's going to have two states of being:
- In orbit around worlds that, effectively, are within the bubble of the explorers but outside of the settled zone and thus not in sprint range anyway
- At cruise warp in between systems with prospective colonies

What this calls for is something with long endurance, good survey packages, and cost-efficiency. Anything else is masturbatory and we shouldn't be in that game.

[X] Inline Deflector (Maximum Warp: -0.4)
[X] Low-Power Warp Core (Maximum Warp: -0.6)
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While some might be voting because speed, I vote for an Engineering hull, and "blister" deflector because of internal space to cram as many bio labs as we can for its stated bio science purpose. Speed, is just a welcomed gift.
 
zac1 said:
I wonder, could we do a intrepid class voyager? I rather like its smoothness, its a ship with no neck, which always seems flimsy to me. Its once of the reasons why voyager was such a great ship in my eyes.
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I also love the Intrepid. I'm thinking we'll probably wind up with one like that except a bit less streamlined, because it's older. But I love the streamlined design.
 
Sayle said:
I don't know what you mean by "still get max cruise" when nothing so far has impacted max cruise. Artistically speaking the nacelles will go where-ever seems like viable places to produce a decent looking ship.
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And you underestimate how good of a job you do.

Like the only vessel that looks odd, not even bad, is the Archer. And we can firmly plant that in the 'Orb Cult won a vote' category, though I'm not complaining because it does it's job well, though I would enjoy some improved defense capabilities.
 
Just wait a century till we get the movable nacelles, so we can switch between Cruise and Sprint configuration for... I'm guessing it's a cost increase mostly?

Which reminds me. While the disconnected nacelles of the 31st century are a bit silly looking, that is at least a solid justification for the design paradigm. And it's not like Starfleet ships aren't practically built out of forcefields anyway.
 
I realize there are very good Doylist reasons for it, but Sayle's Starfleet really goes about the ship design process ass backwards. Hull shape decisions should come closer to last than first. Instead, start by optimizing the relative locations of the nacelles, warp core, and deflector dish. Only once those are settled is it time to define the hull within the constraints of "what volume of space is protected by the deflector dish, inside the warp envelope, and doesn't impinge on the throughline between the nacelles?"
 
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