The hull itself is honestly not ideal. We sacrificed a decent amount in order to give it landing capabilities, which is far more useful for a dedicated biosciences ship but not so much a generalist utility cruiser. Something of the same size as the Darwin but with a full saucer, proper deflector and bigger engineering hull would be better.
The hull doesnt have to be ideal, just good enough.
We will have a pressing need, and cant afford to wait a decade for some new design to get out of
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Swapping the arboretum for a medical bay won't make it less sciency, even if it would lower the Science Score. So in that circumstance, it would still be a science cruiser. It might make it a medical science cruiser instead of a botany science cruiser.
But it will give it sufficient ancillary capabilities to fill that role regardless.
The Selachii was a tactical frigate that still had a cargo bay to help move small amounts of cargo.
Do note how much of a gamechanger that Warp 8 capability is for logistics. It substantially cuts transit times for cargo across the Federation, and allows widely dispersed ships to concentrate much faster, resulting in functionally greater available firepower in the event of major military threat.
Starfleet has every motive to get most of its fleet converted to Warp 8 yesterday.
Especially in the aftermath of a war with an enemy with Warp 8 drives entering broad service.
It's not our job to decide that the small, well-specialized bioscience cruiser should in fact be a small, generalist utility cruiser. If Starfleet wants that, they can order it, or just strip out equipment from the Darwins to make it better in that role.
And why would Starfleet want to ask us for that? The SFDB regularly makes weird design choices which often produce very nice ships, but I certainly wouldn't describe us as a safe option. If I wanted someone to design a reasonable utility cruiser to bulk out the fleet, I'd go with San Francisco which has a proven track record of designing ships which are affordable and serviceable, and who actually follow design briefs. I bet that San Fran wouldn't take a brief for a small, well specialized science cruiser and consider turning it into a generalist after designing the thing to land on the ground like a shuttle.
And really, if you need an affordable, tactically capable utility cruiser, are you going to ask the Archer guys or the Newton guys?
It is very much our job.Thats the point of the quest.
We have been doing much the same thing since the quest started; the entire configuration of the Pharos-class starbase design was us looking at then extant geopolitical situation and deciding what capabilities to emphasise.
Starfleet has always given us a pretty free hand with defining ship secondary capabilities.
Starfleet would ask us because we have a track record of successful Warp 8 designs; we built their first Warp 8 ship, and already have an almost-complete second Warp 8 design for mass production when the war ends.
A design thats ready to go right now is vastly superior to one that will be ready in a decade's time.
I genuinely dont know where you are getting the impression that our ships are more broadly expensive than those from the other bureau(s); as far as Im aware, thats never been implied.
Besides, the QM has made it clear that the primary bottleneck on ship construction isnt cost but strategic materials.
Given what Sayle said about the economics of ship building I'd like one of the modules of our 'cheapo light crusier design" to be equipment for strategic resources prospecting. Let's find and exploit those resources so thst we can have an even larger fleet 30 years down the line.
Yeah, science modules that allow for prospecting strategic materials, whether its astrography for likely star systems or physical prospecting just went up in priority on most of our future designs.
