There was a shipyard related limitation on the Excalibur, because the need to build them Quickly meant they had to be built in Existing shipyards, and keeping the size down to increase the number of existing shipyards that could build them was part of the brief.
If the basic requirements of the needed ships results in hulls too big for some yards, than its the yards that need to change, not the ships. The jobs we ask our ships to do isn't going to get any less demanding any time soon, and trying to split the load across multiple ships currently does not work (as determined by Starfleet Command), so bigger ships are the only option. This will inevitably result in higher non-Engineering costs, but that's something that will need to be accepted.
If we managed to get a ship's efficient cruise high enough before sorting out the nacelle issue I'm pretty sure that would cap at 7 as well for the same reason, but it's unlikely to come up.
Is that before or after the mass numbers were rebalanced?
Karhammur stalled out while trying to invade the Federation's core worlds because they weren't in range. One reason Andoria was so decisive was because the Klingons literally didn't have the fuel for a return trip. Fuel consumption and ship range are a critical strategic consideration, and dismissing them as bookkeeping is frankly bizarre.
Thats the current weight on the info tab; the Sagmartha is 290 kilotons.
Karhammur stalled out because the Klingons did not invest in logistics infrastructure pre-war and predicated their entire invasion exercise on their ability to capture Federation infrastructure intact to support themselves.
After, but if you're worried about it the Kea is entirely post-retcon and has a mass of 255k and could have gone higher.
The Excalibur was just a bit short on internal room to put things, not underweight. Its relatively high cost proved that the resources needed to reach the new baseline requirements had also gone up more than anything else.
And the entire reason Karhammur had to rely on capturing Federation infrastructure is because his ships didn't have the range to make it to Federation core worlds. Investing in Klingon logistics would have been wise, but it wouldn't have changed his strategic limitations. It's not like he could have built a forward operating base deep in Federation territory before the war.
Antimatter is not like gas. You can buy gas in bulk pretty much everywhere, and it's (relatively) cheap. Antimatter, on the other hand, is a critical strategic resource you can only get at dedicated installations, all of which are expensive and well-guarded. It's not something you can pick up the next planet over. That's why our support infrastructure is so important.
i can really tell how badly you want this discussion to end with how you pinged me five hours and a page after my last post to start arguing again. I don't mind, but it is rather sanctimonious to make a show of wanting it to end before spewing out some oddly emotional arguments about a fictional ship in this internet quest.
Since you're styling yourself as an expert on the subject, enlighten us with an "optimal" design then, hm?
I've already stated a preference? ~270,000kt to achieve VH maneuverability with 3 impulse thrusters, the Excalibur's armament with an additional phaser on each flank to improve coverage, standard shields and a generalist module loadout. An explorer-battlecruiser that should cost around 25 more than an Excalibur: 10 cost on shields, 8 cost on phasers and 5 on an impulse.
"UP. UP. Stop. This is illogical."
I dunno, some quite successful civilizations have Giant Doom Brick as their staple ship.
A fair point, but it's also worth remembering that 'smaller' is relative. Like, the size of the Attenborough hull was such that we either had to scale it up to a minimum viable size in at least one vector or deal with unacceptable handicapping of the ship's Warp capacity. I suggest we consider somewhere around 150kt as our practical floor for modern ship size - that's the tonnage of the Archer, and despite (in all likelihood) losing out on the Archer's sheer volume efficiency since spherical hulls are not viable in the current strategic environment, I'm confident we can get to a fairly similar number of auxiliary modules, since the Archer was technically only playing with a 120kt spaceframe to fit things into.
Given the various 'dry'docks are frames floating in the void (well, starfleet ones at least, the other members might have their built into big stations) they'd be pretty easy to scale up all the way to Odyssey-class size, the main problem is the attendant infrastructure like the Pharos', which due to its more so,I'd nature is harder to upgrade to fit in much larger designs.
The opposite actually. Stations benefit from going HUEG.
Probably not our job.
And stations don't (currently) get shields, and if you're willing to scale up equipment, you can probably reduce strategic resource requirements of weapons by building bigger than they really need to be.
