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Starfleet Design Bureau

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darkstarling said:
If I were Starfleet I'd have minimized the problems from Multivector Assault Mode by having the systems for the many-ships-in-one support each other when they're linked. So deploying like that is basically switching between Tank and DPS mode. When connected it has triple redundant shields, life support, warp core, and so on - basically impossible to drop. When separated it increases maneuver, action economy, tactical options, and so on at the expense of losing that backup capacity.
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The trouble with a split ship, is you need 3 outer hulls, 3 complete life-support systems, 3 warp drives, 3 impulse drives, 3 RCS systems, 3 inertial dampening systems, 3 SIF systems, 3 computer systems, 3 turbolift systems and you've got extremely complicated interconnects and clamps between all of them that are gonna be very maintenance-heavy, and labour-intensive to fix if something goes wrong, which it will do at many times the normal rate and with more severe consequences because of all the unnecessary redundancy and extra interconnections.

Your "DPS" will be higher with a combined ship because it can pool all those resources instead of running multiple support systems at the same time, and your defense will be higher because you're not splitting your power and shield generating capacity to make 3 shield bubbles and run 3 structural integrity and inertial dampening fields.

You may as well build 3 war frigates and fly them separately. If you wanna apply even soft realism to it, the Prometheus class would have half the usable internal volume of any other ship, 1.5x to double the build cost and triple the maintenance. Bleurgh. They even said with the Galaxy-class they were reluctant to use the separation feature because then you lose the phaser banks, shield generators and impulse drives of the saucer section, and the saucer was never intended to function long-term as an independent starship, just a lifeboat. Your problems multiple drastically with the... Er, I can't bring myself to mention the name.
 
Cold Dust said:
The trouble with a split ship, is you need 3 outer hulls, 3 complete life-support systems, 3 warp drives, 3 impulse drives, 3 RCS systems, 3 inertial dampening systems, 3 SIF systems, 3 computer systems, 3 turbolift systems and you've got extremely complicated interconnects and clamps between all of them that are gonna be very maintenance-heavy, and labour-intensive to fix if something goes wrong, which it will do at many times the normal rate and with more severe consequences because of all the unnecessary redundancy and extra interconnections.

*SNIP*

You may as well build 3 war frigates and fly them separately. If you wanna apply even soft realism to it, the Prometheus class would have half the usable internal volume of any other ship, 1.5x to double the build cost and triple the maintenance. Bleurgh. They even said with the Galaxy-class they were reluctant to use the separation feature because then you lose the phaser banks, shield generators and impulse drives of the saucer section, and the saucer was never intended to function long-term as an independent starship, just a lifeboat. Your problems multiple drastically with the... Er, I can't bring myself to mention the name.
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In a vacuum the negative would all be accurate.

But all those redundant systems, they give combine together to give excellent capabilities. In any fight, the redundancies would make any one system difficult to take out. We also have canon statements from the onboard EMH says that it only 4 people were trained to run the prototype means that it was designed with minimal crew requirements and lots of automation. While the Galaxy was not designed to separate often, the Prometheus definitely was. In one episode it self-separates and recombines twice with no issues.

Plus have evidence that the Prometheus-class is built in numerous amounts and stays in service for over a hundred years. If it wasn't an effective platform and be the expected boondoggle, it wouldn't have stayed in service that long. What I think is they removed the multi-vector assault mode and kept all the remaining capabilities.
 
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Cold Dust said:
The trouble with a split ship, is you need 3 outer hulls, 3 complete life-support systems, 3 warp drives, 3 impulse drives, 3 RCS systems, 3 inertial dampening systems, 3 SIF systems, 3 computer systems, 3 turbolift systems and you've got extremely complicated interconnects and clamps between all of them that are gonna be very maintenance-heavy, and labour-intensive to fix if something goes wrong, which it will do at many times the normal rate and with more severe consequences because of all the unnecessary redundancy and extra interconnections.

Your "DPS" will be higher with a combined ship because it can pool all those resources instead of running multiple support systems at the same time, and your defense will be higher because you're not splitting your power and shield generating capacity to make 3 shield bubbles and run 3 structural integrity and inertial dampening fields.

You may as well build 3 war frigates and fly them separately. If you wanna apply even soft realism to it, the Prometheus class would have half the usable internal volume of any other ship, 1.5x to double the build cost and triple the maintenance. Bleurgh. They even said with the Galaxy-class they were reluctant to use the separation feature because then you lose the phaser banks, shield generators and impulse drives of the saucer section, and the saucer was never intended to function long-term as an independent starship, just a lifeboat. Your problems multiple drastically with the... Er, I can't bring myself to mention the name.
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You're assuming you can't get synergies. I'd be surprised if you can't do very cool stuff with multiple field generators interacting so the whole is greater than the sum of their parts. If nothing else overlapping frequencies should make a much more complex continually shifting waveform that's much harder to penetrate by frequency matching.

Again, multiple redundant shield generators that you can redistribute power through, or cycle for regeneration, as needed. Three pressurized hull sections with redundant command centers in case someone blows up the bridge again. At least three times the standard structural integrity field, that kind of thing.

But why you split up? Think of it like this. It can either fight as three ships in a miniature fleet action or combine into an even tougher whole. There are going to be times when you'll want to do both, and with the Prometheus you don't have to choose. Multiple attack angles means your enemy can't focus power on their shield grip, it's easier to set up combo attacks and target multiple enemy systems at once, that sort of thing. And it means your enemy also has to split their focus to attack you.

AntiSanity said:
In a vacuum the negative would all be accurate.

But all those redundant systems, they give combine together to give excellent capabilities. In any fight, the redundancies would make any one system difficult to take out. We also have canon statements from the onboard EMH says that it only 4 people were trained to run the prototype means that it was designed with minimal crew requirements and lots of automation. While the Galaxy was not designed to separate often, the Prometheus definitely was. In one episode it self-separates and recombines twice with no issues.

Plus have evidence that the Prometheus-class is built in numerous amounts and stays in service for over a hundred years. If it wasn't an effective platform and be the expected boondoggle, it wouldn't have stayed in service that long.
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Exactly. So since that's what happened, we justify it and make the 'bugs' into features rather than plug our ears and hum. If nothing else it's more fun.
 
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AntiSanity said:
But all those redundant systems, they give combine together to give excellent capabilities. In any fight, the redundancies would make any one system difficult to take out.
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Then just install the redundant systems on a regular ship and be done with it.

darkstarling said:
You're assuming you can't get synergies. I'd be surprised if you can't do very cool stuff with multiple field generators interacting so the whole is greater than the sum of their parts. If nothing else overlapping frequencies should make a much more complex continually shifting waveform that's much harder to penetrate by frequency matching.

Again, multiple redundant shield generators that you can redistribute power through, or cycle for regeneration, as needed. Three pressurized hull sections with redundant command centers in case someone blows up the bridge again. At least three times the standard structural integrity field, that kind of thing.
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Then install 3 shield systems on a regular ship, or 3 bridges or whatever. Since one generally doesn't, maybe there's a reason why...


I'm not saying it doesn't work on screen, I'm saying it can't work and it really is an awful idea.

I'll stop now, if you wanna reply and have the last word I'll leave it as is. I know I'm skirting the rules for courtesy, and thanks for being patient up until now, but it really is just such a terrible, awful, horrific idea and I see it brought up with such tiresome repetition it's become a source of instant irritation over the years.
 
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Cold Dust said:
I'm not saying it doesn't work on screen, I'm saying it can't work and it really is an awful idea.

I'll stop now, if you wanna reply and have the last word I'll leave it as is. I know I'm skirting the rules for courtesy, and thanks for being patient up until now, but it really is just such a terrible, awful, horrific idea and I see it brought up with such tiresome repetition it's become a source of instant irritation over the years.
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You saying it doesn't work on screen but then it can't work is entirely contradictory. The ship stays in service and is mass produced. That's final, it's canon. We should work backwards from that data point to extrapolate how it works. The multi-vector assault mode is never used again outside of that one Voy episode. We can compromise and say they took out all the boondoggles and made it a working, traditional combat ship. Don't let hate blind you to how in-universe engineers can make things work.

Which goes back to the initial conversation which got derailed: the canon Federation doesn't only design small, compact, dedicated combat ships. They also design regular-sized (similar weight class to an Intrepid) dedicated combat ships.
 
The Sovereign was also designed first and foremost as a warship, specifically as part of the general suite of anti-Borg projects. The Federation was really just trying everything around then.
 
[X] Linear Configuration (Efficient Cruise: 6 -> 6.2, Maximum Warp: 7.6 -> 7.8) [Range: +10%]

Still want to name this little guy the Fram Class
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
Everyone knows the best kind of splitting/combining vehicle has the component parts transform, preferably into giant robots.
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NOOOOO! The only correct answer is, if the ship transforms into an orb.

orb, Orb, ORB!

But honestley, I think for what the Prometheus was designed, fighting Borg, it makes sense. Besides that, it isn't really useable in most scenarios if you don't suddenly need three instead of one ship.
 
Consider: Which nacelle configuration has the best aerodynamics in-atmosphere? I believe the answer is clear. We must go FLAT.

[X] Linear Configuration (Efficient Cruise: 6 -> 6.2, Maximum Warp: 7.6 -> 7.8) [Range: +10%]
 
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thepsyborg said:
We're never going to build another dreadnought. Dreadnoughts are bad. In order for a dreadnought to make sense, very large ships would need to be offensively deadlier than medium to medium-large ships. With the two-phasers-at-a-time limitation, they are not, can not be, and never* will be.

If our weapons were tremendously advanced and our thrusters and shields far behind, a dreadnought might make sense. Were we fighting an opponent whose ships tended toward horrifyingly-deadly glass cannons, such that we needed every scrap of durability we could muster, dreadnoughts might make sense. Presently, and for the even-remotely-foreseeable future, they do not.

The Thunderchild was an extraordinary moment in history, when we were outclassed in every technological way by an opponent whose own technology was still low enough that its weapons could be soaked by sufficient tens of meters of polarized plating, and when our own weapons were still primitive enough that we could power a weapon firing in every direction at once. We're past that point; even should we find ourselves so outclassed in the future, there is no concievable quantity of hullmetal that will not be effortless transmuted to an expanding vapor cloud by weapons as comparatively powerful to us now as the Romulans were then.

We're never making a dreadnought.

We're never making a very large ship that devotes every inch of its being to making war. Even if the vast majority of the thread didn't find the very idea sad, bad, or thematically-inappropriate-for-Trek, our techbase doesn't support it, our in-setting culture doesn't approve of it, our superiors will neither ask for it nor- if presented with the plans- build it, and our foes don't call for it.

We're never building a dreadnought.

*Larger ships do eventually become deadlier than small ones again when phaser strips come out in...I forget, a few centuries? But that's just about having sufficient linear meters of exterior surface for a very long phaser strip, and that means an even bigger saucer to fill with even more multirole noncombat capabilities.

We're never, ever, ever, ever building a dreadnought.
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Ok, well there are a few reasons why a dreadnaught makes sense.

First, shield HP scales with size in an advantageous way for bigger ships.

Second, you don't buy more of many of the components, and so volume and cost are somewhat more efficient per Kton of mass.

Third actual HP goes up as the ship is tougher.

Fourth there is talk of phase damage scaling with size.

Fifth you get a lot of module slots so we can build something complex like an explorer where science is needed, but so is self sufficiency and range.

Six, most of our damage comes from torpedoes and a dreadnaught can mount 2 rapid launchers and still have room to throw in aft non-rapid launchers without compromising it's non-combat volume.

Tldr - we can and should build an explorer that is two Excaliburs in a trenchcoat, cruise nacelles, and a wide spread of capability.

Basically it is perfectly viable to build a 400kton ship that is slightly worse than 2 Excaliburs in combat, slightly cheaper than 2 Excaliburs, and with more civilian capability than 2 Excaliburs.

Perfect for a long range explorer that needs to be able to outfight God and do anything and everything it needs to do, but that we only need to build like 4 of them.
 
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Pretty much what Candesce said, IMO. Getting towards the Ambassador or Galaxy-class early would be a good thing, I think, and those are pretty much what Fouredged Sword is describing - big chunky ships that pack a lot of exploration and utility functions in alongside substantial combat capability.
 
Exactly what Candesce said. A dreadnought (in my view, at least) is a large ship that
  1. devotes, if not all, then certainly the vast majority of its mass and volume to warfighting potential, and
  2. is capable of simultaneously engaging multiple targets in different directions, preferably many different directions.
I agree; future heavy explorers should absolutely be able to open up the biggest can of whoop-ass we can manage, but that's still going to occupy far less of their volume (if not their cost) than noncombat functions, and at least for the immediate future they're unlikely to have the off-axis or multi-target engagement potential of the Thunderchild or its hypothetical ilk, so I wouldn't consider them dreadnoughts.

(Granted, this definition is almost entirely based on "does it have Thunderchild-class vibes?")

And so I stand by
thepsyborg said:
We're never, ever, ever, ever building a dreadnought.
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Yeah but the same canon thinks the Constitution is a million tons so, you know. Take it with a grain of salt. The Galaxy-class massing only 2.5 times as much an Excelsior is unlikely.
 
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