For our next vessel a patrol/fast cargo light cruiser seems to be the thing most needed.
Whereas I think we need a colony medical ship like we were thinking of turning the Darwin into. Once which also lands and opens up, and unpacks a whole field hospital. Because why should you try to fit everything inside a starship when you've got a whole planet? You can pack equipment much smaller than you can install it.
And I like landers.
Maybe also give it some engineering capacity and cargo, so a general purpose colony support vessel that can also fight pirates. A great hero ship in other words, and our first prototype explorer?
It's a bit excessive to build a hospital ship tbh, I kinda agree when Sayle pointed out it's a niche, as it's a lot cheaper to send prefab modules somewhere and build the hospital facilities you need. A starship can't treat enough people for it to matter for a full-sized colony, what they can do is relieve other starships and small outposts, or bring state-of-the-art
medical research facilities to you, to develop vaccines for plagues etc.
I know I've said this before, but honestly I think our most pressing need that'll sort out most of our current issues is a Newton-class v2, full warp 8 (pretty please let's do cruise optimization for once), equal or greater cargo and fab capacity, new shields (covariant or type 2), the ability to put
at least 4 torpedoes forward and 2 aft, max out the agility, we'll be laughing.
We won't need ships dashing about as much if all our colonies have a solid foundation with their own infrastructure (reactors, hospitals, factories, sentry and orbital defense systems) set up as early as possible, and if we
must dash a warp 8 ship can chew up those lightyears very fast indeed. It can do what the Newton does, helping patch up fleets when it participates in fleet actions if a yard facility or Archer-class isn't available.
It'll also deter pirates if they know we've got a bunch of warp 8(.5) ships prowling around, especially if they're more concentrated towards colonies and outposts that need stuff couriered to them.
Also remember we're not too far away from the v4 nacelles and warp 9 engine, and our warp 8 designs should be able to be retrofitted with warp 9 drives fairly easily. Build some decent designs now, we're investing in our future for a long time indeed. We know at the very least our cruise speed will rise a sizable notch with the new nacelles, it's possible sprint speed will rise too, and refitting nacelles has got to be easier than a full shipwide refit.
Edit: I also recommend, once we've got a new w8 utility cruiser and general science cruiser and/or explorer ship, an Archer v2 would also be a great idea. Think of the massive utility and benefit it's brought to us, strengthening our colonies and economy. If we build an Archer v2 with a w8 drive, really go full ham on max modules and max engineering and logistics once again, it'll be even faster with a v4 nacelle and can be retrofitted with a w9 drive later. Imagine an Archer-class that can sprint at warp 9(.5)! Its cruising speed has gotta be pretty impressive, that sort of thing would be able to tow vast amounts of materials for colonies, outposts, facilities and shipbuilding
very, very fast.
