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Starfleet Design Bureau

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You know, I'm looking at it, and kind of, I'm thinking-

Are bigger ships just better?

Like, in terms of capability. In terms of cost. In terms of firepower, durability, I think the mechanics are such that a bigger ship is just better in everything bar cost, and even in terms of benefit:cost, the bigger ship is better. There's more room for internal synergy, less chance of wasting thruster output (looking at you, way-ahead-of-timeline Type 3s), Shields scale much better, and you only pay for the Phasers, Torpedoes, Nacelles and Warp Cores once.

Consider: Instead of building a bio-science survey ship, we could in principle build 'Excalibur, but rip out all the internals and fill them in with biolabs'. The Excalibur is like 91.25 Cost, our bioscience ship is already pushing like 60 and isn't nowhere near 2/3 as good as in combat.
 
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Wootius said:
Starfleet just going to have to accept the strategic reality that ships need guns and stop being so stringent on the cost of larger vessels.
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If Starfleet Command complains about cost, just give them spheres with six torpedo launchers aimed ahead and enough impulse thrusters to max out maneuverability. Only being able to slap weapons on the front of the ship is perfectly fine when the ship can spin around like a lunatic pinball.
 
slybrarian said:
and maybe fired everyone at SanFran responsible for the Radiant being so crap.
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this is honestly the one thing I can't blame SanFran for. The Radiant was always going to be crap. It couldn't possibly not have been. If we had made the Radiant it still would have been crap. (It might have been less crap, but it was never going to be good.)

It was supposed to be a long-range, ultra-high-max-cruise-speed design...and they thought that while the next-gen Warp engine is in development, RIGHT before it finishes was the time to do that? Fuck no. It's gonna spend its entire career compared to far-more-efficient, equally-fast, far-cheaper two-nacelle designs on the next-gen engine.

Now don't get me wrong, "supercruise via nacelle cycling alternating pairs" is a hella cool concept with some intriguing potential. It has even more potential when you realizing the limiting factor on the Warp 8 engine's cruise performance is overheating the nacelles.

They could have put the Radiant off, what, nine years?- still probably only gotten to build four of 'em because it's a super specialized ship, but it would have been fucking awesome at what it did- because the cool thing it does also happens to solve the current problem with the Warp 8 engine as a convenient side effect! It would have been untouchable over any kind of distance until the Type 4 nacelles come out several decades later- and easily refittable to the new nacelles on their release. The potential synergy between the nacelle-cycling concept and the nacelle-limited Warp 8 engine is mindblowing.

But no, they wanted to trial the concept ASAP, with the Warp 7 engine on its absolute last gasp. It was fucking stupid. It was easily apparent to the smallest child that it was stupid. It was a [large] [part] [of] [why] [the] [thread] [rejected] doing the design ourselves. I remain astonished that SanFran went for it at all- double-booked it with the Newton, in fact!- when thread consensus was heavily "this idea should wait for warp 8 cores".
 
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The only way that the Radiant would not have been sort of an underperforming lemon was if we managed somehow to fit four photon torpedo launchers into the front of the ship, honestly.

Even then, it would not have been a huge success for the actual thing it was designed to do, which was to be a long-range survey and support cruiser, as its warp cruise performance would still be quickly obsoleted. It just might have been able to punch Klingon ships in the face hard enough to make up for that and lead to a second tranche of hulls getting ordered during the war.
 
Skippy said:
The only way that the Radiant would not have been sort of an underperforming lemon was if we managed somehow to fit four photon torpedo launchers into the front of the ship, honestly.
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Amusingly as per this concept/design art two less than the prime timeline starships got ordered.

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7-8x Mk.I Type 2 phasers and at least 2x photon torpedo launchers by my count (just in front of the deltas), assuming it's mirrored it'd definitely be able to do 4x.
 
It's also pretty likely that the Klingons hit us now, because they knew they had to.
If we saw signs of a massive build up in their territory, chances are they saw the same.

And to be honest, I think if they had delayed even six months it would have gone very differently. Not that first fight, that always would have got us. But we were trying to drop loads of defence satellites under combat conditions and failing. If we had just that little more time it would have been Archer loads already set up, not failed Cygnus combat drops.

I bet an Archer (now considered a unit of measurement) of satellites at Pharos 7 would have changed that from a pyyric victory to an actual.

I'm not even going to mention if we had managed a second run of Excalibur. I don't think they would ever have waited that long, but if they had...
 
Tank man said:
This is in spite of the fact that when observed objectively, and with future knowledge, we know the enemy has no hope of winning, that whilst we will get even bloodier ultimately they cannot finish us off and are on a timer. Yet even with that knowledge it's still seen as a dark and hopeless time even to us today.
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It's odd because of how much it felt the thread banked on foreknowledge to choose which projects we had time to prioritize. I too liked delaying combat ships so they'd be less outdated when a war was planned to begin. That said if this reaction lets us be less confident in timeline foreknowledge I'm a fan.

While we're designing a ship it's comforting to know if it'll be ready in time for a war but if we were in setting we'd have no idea. Not knowing if that extra cost or complexity will be what stops these from making it out of the yards in time (or are we just hamstringing the class unnecessarily) can also be fun (if more stressful).
 
thepsyborg said:
"Launched 2268" when ours was launched 2225? 🤔

Does look like a neat ship tho, thanks for posting it. I didn't realize there was a canon Radiant-class.
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Your guess is as good as mine. I figure @Sayle is just going for ships we know have canon/effectively canon appearances for SanFran/any other designer and the Radiant was good enough to fit in here (certainly more canon compliant than the Newton design).

No problem. Basically every ship SanFran has built thus far has been derived from a canon one, probably makes it easier to just throw together on a spreadsheet (since dimensions are usually known, and weapons can be counted easily enough from a visual inspection).
 
The Radiant is a classic example of anti-timing, really. It's like designing a ship to maximize the potential of phaser 1.0 when you know that phasers 2.0 are about to be released and will be incompatible with the mounts of phasers 1.0.
 
I suspect the Radiant played out the way it did because we picked Sprint nacelle options back-to-back a few times. So Starfleet decided they needed something with high Cruise to tide them over until the Warp 8 core rolled out, even if that meant creating a ship that would quickly become obsolete.
 
Steven Kodaly said:
If Starfleet Command complains about cost, just give them spheres with six torpedo launchers aimed ahead and enough impulse thrusters to max out maneuverability. Only being able to slap weapons on the front of the ship is perfectly fine when the ship can spin around like a lunatic pinball.
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See?! The orb can't be ignored, for the orb is the one true form of a spaceship. We need to build more orbs!

orb, Orb, ORB!
 
landcollector said:
Shoot tubs of ice cream out an RFL toward target. They are overwhelmed by the Goodness Incarnate that is Ice Cream and surrender. Flawless tactics, works 110% of the time. :V
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"Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us ice cream is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold… in space."
-Khan
 
Does anyone remember what buffs a third nacelle is supposed to offer? Was it straight up better warp speed with the chance it may not work properly, or only cruise?

That could be an interesting idea for a next-gen utility or science cruiser. If we're going to bung in a minimum of 1 RFL launcher going forwards on our cruiser designs (not a bad idea, the cost makes me scratch my chin but if it's necessary it's necessary), then a warp 8 engine paired with a speed buff would be formidable, especially with maxed out agility, medium/heavy covariant/type 2 shields, and a meaty selection of fore and aft launchers.
 
Sayle said:
The unfortunate reality being that the Federation adding more colonies, more resource extraction, more trade compared to OTL...also means adding more space to defend, longer transit times, a more diffused military presence.
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So rather than better developing as we expanded, as had previously been indicated, our choices over the quest instead resulted more expansion and less development, while maintaining about the same fleet roster?
 
Cold Dust said:
Does anyone remember what buffs a third nacelle is supposed to offer? Was it straight up better warp speed with the chance it may not work properly, or only cruise?
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The only time three nacelles was offered that I remember offhand was for the Thunderchild-class:
Sayle said:
Then there's the unconventional option. Theoretically, a third nacelle mounted higher than the normal pair could be used as a kind of artificial pusher to imbalance the warp field, allowing higher sprint speeds. It would also be useful for reinforcing the existing field, albeit at a reduced efficiency.
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So I think it amounts to "++Sprint, +Cruise, (–Range?)"; it definitely increases Sprint speed, and it sounds like it increases both efficient Cruise and max Cruise speeds, albeit definitely by less than the Sprint boost and perhaps not by quite as much as it increases antimatter consumption? (Note that it still wouldn't get around the Warp 7 max cruise cap of the Type 3 nacelles, so if built right now it wouldn't actually get a max cruise increase.)

And yeah, there's a chance it doesn't work out as well in practice, but that's all experimental techs.
 
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thepsyborg said:
The only time three nacelles was offered that I remember offhand was for the Thunderchild-class:

So I think it amounts to "++Sprint, +Cruise, (–Range?)"; it definitely increases Sprint speed, and it sounds like it increases both efficient Cruise and max Cruise speeds, albeit definitely by less than the Sprint boost and perhaps not by quite as much as it increases antimatter consumption? (Note that it still wouldn't get around the Warp 7 max cruise cap of the Type 3 nacelles, so if built right now it wouldn't actually get a max cruise increase.)

And yeah, there's a chance it doesn't work out as well in practice, but that's all experimental techs.
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Cheers. Sounds like the third nacelle was more to compensate for some early technical deficiencies.

That being said, I'd love to see some more experimental options. Warp drives, impulse drives, armour, unusual weapon configs.
 
TheShadowDeamon said:
But imagine if instead of an Efficient cruise of 6.0 it was 6.4 - or even more
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Well that's what I've voted and argued for a few times. This group tends to favour sprint speed. Not exclusively, but sometimes I've really thought cruise was a better option. The Archer-class, for instance.

Vertically-oriented "super cruise" nacelles also sound interesting, especially for a patrol ship.
 
0t4n1z3r019 said:
Man, what's wrong with an ice cream parlor? It still is something the crew can enjoy and give out to the people they'll respond to in an event of a crisis or two.
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Can you imagine leading a ship into battle or coming up with a solution to magic space particles when you're digesting a bowl of chocolate ice cream? What if you get the midnight munchies and go stupid with it, and then have to do space stuff? Lurching around the ship with a belly full of condensed dairy. ;P
 
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Shard said:
You know, I'm looking at it, and kind of, I'm thinking-

Are bigger ships just better?

Like, in terms of capability. In terms of cost. In terms of firepower, durability, I think the mechanics are such that a bigger ship is just better in everything bar cost, and even in terms of benefit:cost, the bigger ship is better. There's more room for internal synergy, less chance of wasting thruster output (looking at you, way-ahead-of-timeline Type 3s), Shields scale much better, and you only pay for the Phasers, Torpedoes, Nacelles and Warp Cores once.

Consider: Instead of building a bio-science survey ship, we could in principle build 'Excalibur, but rip out all the internals and fill them in with biolabs'. The Excalibur is like 91.25 Cost, our bioscience ship is already pushing like 60 and isn't nowhere near 2/3 as good as in combat.
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Low cost does mean more ships in total, though. Having 50% more ships may be better than having an Excalibur-tier ship, since Federation space is big and ships are stretched thin as it is. This is especially true for internal ships like the Archer.

But yeah, for combat ships I think bigger is nonlinearly better. That's probably why the TNG ships look like flying cruise liners - if your engines can lift that much tonnage then you might as well make use of it.
 
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