I guess I had trouble believing the Federation would struggle, when we saw a Galaxy-class and Nebula-class routinely curbstomp Cardassian warships in that episode where the Federation captain goes rogue. It seems if, without prep or favourable circumstances, one of your cruisers can wade through multiple enemy cruisers and emerge undamaged, it should've been pretty simple to simply send a fleet into Cardassian space and cause utter mayhem and devastation on anything in sensor range (purely military targets, naturally) until the Cardassians kiss the Federation's boots and sign a treaty saying they'll never go near Federation space again. That's what I would've done, if my neighbours were making forays into my space and slaughtering my civilians.
Oh, and I would've suggested that perhaps I might be less... Severe, if they came to me with future requests, if Bajor was immediately evacuated.
The disparity in power between the Federation and Cardassians in those early eps is just too big to even believe a serious military campaign is required. An expeditionary force should be sufficient to force them out.
Ship vs ship isn't the problem. It's that the Federation is not willing to deal with the multigenerational insurgency that the Obsidian Order would do when they think time and diplomacy can resolve the matter.
Remember, Starfleet has a volunteer economy. They cannot and do not compel their population to provide labor. To get a boot on the neck of Cardssia long term they need a long-term consistent drive to make that happen among the citizens.
It's just not something the Federation is capable of doing even if they are physically capable of winning initially. The very nature of the Federation dooms such a plan to failure.
Ship vs ship isn't the problem. It's that the Federation is not willing to deal with the multigenerational insurgency that the Obsidian Order would do when they think time and diplomacy can resolve the matter.
Remember, Starfleet has a volunteer economy. They cannot and do not compel their population to provide labor. To get a boot on the neck of Cardssia long term they need a long-term consistent drive to make that happen among the citizens.
That shouldn't stop the Feds from kicking the Cardassians off Bayor or any other occupied worlds though, nor should it stop them from forcibly disarming and disassembling the Cardassian Union. Or even banning them from space travel altogether.
I'm not sure running over the Cardassians was their intention in the first place, plus the Federation is not the type to pick fights and roll over other polities. That's more of a Dominion thing.
I'm not sure running over the Cardassians was their intention in the first place, plus the Federation is not the type to pick fights and roll over other polities. That's more of a Dominion thing.
I mean, this is sorta what I assume; they don't want to solve their problems by pounding belligerents into the dirt. It sets a dangerous precedent, gives other nations casus belli etc, plus it can be hard to explain to the Federation citizens on Earth etc when they just aren't effected by anything less than orbital bombardment of a core world. It just seems kinda... Limited that they see violence as inherently negative and are OK using their outer colonies as ablative armour against hostile nations. The whole point of a unified fleet was originally for defense against a hostile nation, the Romulans, after all! It isn't inherently bad to use violence, for instance if someone is trying to violently kill you or your fellow planets.
The Federation had been fighting the Cardassians for about 20 years by the time that contentious peace treaty got signed. Complaining about them not achieving total victory is like complaining about America not winning the Vietnam War.
(admittedly the fact the Klingons proceed to roll over the Cardassians over the course of a long weekend or thereabouts during DS9 does undermine the comparison. Maybe there's something to the point about Nebulas/Galaxies easily defeating Galors - the Klingons had Vorchas and Negh'vars as equivalents too, while the Cardassians were a tech level behind where they could fight Ambassadors/Excelsiors which would've been the mainstays of the Federation for most of the war?)
(admittedly the fact the Klingons proceed to roll over the Cardassians over the course of a long weekend or thereabouts during DS9 does undermine the comparison. Maybe there's something to the point about Nebulas/Galaxies easily defeating Galors - the Klingons had Vorchas and Negh'vars as equivalents too, while the Cardassians were a tech level behind where they could fight Ambassadors/Excelsiors which would've been the mainstays of the Federation for most of the war?)
There's also the consideration that the two wars were under different contexts. The Klingons just started beating Spoonhead ass with a relatively modern and aggressive navy. The Border/Cardassian Wars seem to be a collection of varyingly violent border conflicts and at least one atrocity spread over nearly 20 years.
The Federation had been fighting the Cardassians for about 20 years by the time that contentious peace treaty got signed. Complaining about them not achieving total victory is like complaining about America not winning the Vietnam War.
(admittedly the fact the Klingons proceed to roll over the Cardassians over the course of a long weekend or thereabouts during DS9 does undermine the comparison. Maybe there's something to the point about Nebulas/Galaxies easily defeating Galors - the Klingons had Vorchas and Negh'vars as equivalents too, while the Cardassians were a tech level behind where they could fight Ambassadors/Excelsiors which would've been the mainstays of the Federation for most of the war?)
It's been mentioned in a few fanfics - and it does make a worrying amnount of sense, that the Federation polititians never declared that they were "at war" due to a combination of the rising belief that "all species can get along with each other, theres no need for this barbaric violence" and they didn't want to declare a state of war when they were in power as they would be seen as the ones who "failed to maintain the peace". Instead weaslewords such as "state of heightened agression", "conflict of foreign polity core beliefs" and "minor incursion of raiders" were used to maintain an illusion of status quo and to justify only warning the starfleet ships in the area instead of sending in task forces suitable for the tasks. So politians who will to do anything to avoid taking the blame, old ships unsuitable for combat, ship captains who may be unsuitable for combat and all of them without suitable re-inforcement due to it being "during peacetime". Is it any suprise that it took 20 years - the defensive forces were crippled and couldn't rely on any support to back them up. Resulting in the final result which stinks of a lack of unwillingness to let the fleet do it's damn job and has a remarkable parallel to the Aztecs trying to pay off Cortez - The Federation, a first rate power that hasn't even been trying PAYS OFF the Cardassians, a second/third rate power to get them to go away. This also explains why Picard has so much trouble with them - they know that the Federation is unwilling to actually enforce the treaty and they can get away with literally anything. Just imagine if the Federation was the USA and the Cardassians were North Korea but without support from China or Russia. Would they get away with even half of the shit they pulled?
It also explains issues that start to happen with other polities - they see the Cardassians doing all this crap and getting a mere slap on the wrist with no long term concequences - is it any suprise that they decide that they can also get away with doing the same stuff?
Well, a "carrier". The shuttles aren't going to have any combat utility, outside of Engineering and Tactical officers doing something highly unorthodox and against the regulations with them.
I confess I'm a little concerned at how wide the front and rear views already are - I get the feeling that they can only accomodate 200 meters of beam. Guess we'll find out!
Fortunately the next vote doesn't require any physical changes, so that can go ahead while I work on the schematic.
Would it be worth changing it on this/the next project? I think it's likely we'll hit that limit or the length one pretty soon - especiall if the Gen 4 nacelles end up being considerably longer. Here's my suggestion:
Top & sideview widened 150% to 1000pix (500m)
Front/rear & top right greebles moved to above the sideview. Greebles kept at same size, front/rear widened 200% to 630 pix (315m)
(on the canon one; ours has a blister inline deflector) Interesting. Wonder if that has potential in the future, particularly for a supercruise design...deflector placement is the big reason we struggle to utilize inline or no engineering hull, but if by vertically extending an inline engineering space* we could mount paired smaller deflectors above and below, like the small ones that we typically use for non-blister inlines? but with two of them to avoid penalizing our warp speed. Should be a sensible and imo attractive layout for a vertical-nacelle cruise-optimized design.
*the general idea would work equally well for vertically extending an inline engineering hull, or for a pure-saucer design without a secondary hull, to vertically extend the engineering spaces behind the bridge.
(Vertical engineering would let us use a very thin saucer without running out of decks for the vertical warp core, too, though it certainly wouldn't obligate us to go thin-saucer, and for a given diameter I would tend to favor thick saucer for module space on a hypothetical long-range explorer...if given the opportunity for an equal-tonnage, much-larger-diameter thin-saucer though I might take it, especially if it was just a touch oval [lengthwise orientation]; the vast, sleek hull would be amazingly elegant.)
Edit: lol, here I go getting all excited about dual deflectors just in time for them to get denounced as "deranged"...I guess that makes me an "absolute madman", doesn't it? 🤪
But I had forgotten- I suspect we had all forgotten- that we've actually done a dual-deflector design already, all the way back on the Zheng He-class freighter:
But part of the team sees an opportunity to increase performance. Rather than extending out the barrel-shaped cargo section directly behind the forward section a slight vertical offset so that part of it protrudes "beneath" the sphere could allow mounting a second deflector.
But why stop there? Pulling the nacelle struts forward could synergize with the second deflector by increasing their length. There's a good reason this isn't standard practice, as it reduces plasma temperature by diffusion and therefore maximum warp speeds. But it would produce a small gain in the efficient cruise velocity. All told the deflector and longer nacelles might give the Zheng He point three of a warp factor extra cruise, pushing it up to around fifteen times the speed of light instead of ten. But the weapons haven't even been fitted yet - is it worth driving up the cost even before that (potentially expensive) part of the process?
[ ] Adjust the design for a second deflector and longer nacelles. (Industry 9 -> Industry 11)
[ ] Keep the design as is rather than driving up production costs.
So- while there's not really a huge call for it- dual deflectors are at least possible, and even something we have...not institutional experience with, by this point so many years later, but at least schematics and records of.
Well, we know the consequences of undersized deflectors (i.e. inlines), which reduce Maximum Warp with no impact on Cruise. Extrapolating that the other way, additional deflector power (whether from a single oversized deflector or from multiples) would increase the Maximum Warp the ship could safely travel at (currently irrelevant as current standard deflectors are more than sufficient for the maximum warp our drives are capable of), also with no impact on cruise.
The big intriguing possibility that dual deflectors present is duplicating the standard deflector's total output without needing a single massive chunk of frontal area. Hopefully this can translate into inline engineering hulls sucking less.
A more speculative possibility is that of slightly increased power- and more-significantly-increased volume-efficiency see also distributed aperture telescopes (at the cost of construction and maintenance for twice as many deflectors, of course).
Where volume-efficiency is concerned, I imagine just going from one to two deflectors is only a very modest savings once you add in the extra EPS conduits to power and sensors, control circuits, and compute capacity to sync them. Less than a module's worth for sure. (While the theoretical space savings of dozens or hundreds of super-tiny deflectors are considerable, they would also be highly impractical if not impossible to build, install, maintain, and keep synchronized during use.)
I doubt the power-efficiency will ever matter significantly to Starfleet- antimatter-powered warp cores already give ready access to more power than they can possibly deliver and utilize. It could be huge for civilian designs, which are heavily power-limited due to their fusion powerplants. Every watt they can save from the deflector is an extra watt they can pour into the nacelles, so an extra .1-.2 Warp Factor could be on the table for them, in theory. Maybe even double that with efficient modern nacelles, although those would be an absurd extravagance for a civvy ship that can't even fully utilize last-gen nacelles.
The most distant longshot possibility I can see is that the otherwise-marginal power-efficiency advantage of dual deflectors might also be much more significant in the case of highly-asymmetrical warp bubbles. Imbalanced warp fields tend to be associated with high Maximum Warp, so dual deflectors might permit more extreme warp geometries than would otherwise be practical. This would allow sprint-biased configurations to be biased harder in that direction, favoring sprint at the cost of cruise by even more than they currently do.
So my initial reaction to this was "double deflectors, wat- but also neat, how can we use this?"
And I was far from the only one
But I had forgotten- I suspect we had all forgotten- that we've actually done a dual-deflector design already, all the way back on the Zheng He-class freighter:
So- while there's not really a huge call for it- dual deflectors are at least possible, and even something we have...not institutional experience with, by this point so many years later, but at least schematics and records of.
Well, we know the consequences of undersized deflectors (i.e. inlines), which reduce Maximum Warp with no impact on Cruise. Extrapolating that the other way, additional deflector power (whether from a single oversized deflector or from multiples) would increase the Maximum Warp the ship could safely travel at (currently irrelevant as current standard deflectors are more than sufficient for the maximum warp our drives are capable of), also with no impact on cruise.
The big intriguing possibility that dual deflectors present is duplicating the standard deflector's total output without needing a single massive chunk of frontal area. Hopefully this can translate into inline engineering hulls sucking less.
A more speculative possibility is that of slightly increased power- and more-significantly-increased volume-efficiency see also distributed aperture telescopes (at the cost of construction and maintenance for twice as many deflectors, of course).
Where volume-efficiency is concerned, I imagine just going from one to two deflectors is only a very modest savings once you add in the extra EPS conduits to power and sensors, control circuits, and compute capacity to sync them. Less than a module's worth for sure. (While the theoretical space savings of dozens or hundreds of super-tiny deflectors are considerable, they would also be highly impractical if not impossible to build, install, maintain, and keep synchronized during use.)
I doubt the power-efficiency will ever matter significantly to Starfleet- antimatter-powered warp cores already give ready access to more power than they can possibly deliver and utilize. It could be huge for civilian designs, which are heavily power-limited due to their fusion powerplants. Every watt they can save from the deflector is an extra watt they can pour into the nacelles, so an extra .1-.2 Warp Factor could be on the table for them, in theory. Maybe even double that with efficient modern nacelles, although those would be an absurd extravagance for a civvy ship that can't even fully utilize last-gen nacelles.
The most distant longshot possibility I can see is that the otherwise-marginal power-efficiency advantage of dual deflectors might also be much more significant in the case of highly-asymmetrical warp bubbles. Imbalanced warp fields tend to be associated with high Maximum Warp, so dual deflectors might permit more extreme warp geometries than would otherwise be practical. This would allow sprint-biased configurations to be biased harder in that direction, favoring sprint at the cost of cruise by even more than they currently do.
You do need to consider the alternate side of efficiency. A system that is efficient needs to deal with less waste energy kicking around inside the system. Sure, you can just throw more power into a system but you run into problems where the system overheats or otherwise explodes due to waste energy buildup. Sure, you can build in heat management systems, but you are then adding mass and volume into the system when you could just make the system more efficient.
I know we're gonna want maximum weapons, but what about our Thrust options? Maximum Thrust/Maneuverabilty as well? A high Medium or (pardon my oxymoron) a low High?
Considering it's intended role to hold the center of a battleline, a Very High might not be necessary. How much does our much larger mass change our thruster requirements anyway? I doubt going for a single type-3 mainline thruster would give as much thrust as it gave the Attenborough, though idk what the Newton it's replacing had for maneuvering in the first place.
I'm thinking for torpedoes, maybe we can swing three rapid torpedo launchers in the front, and two rapids in the back? Just say "fuck klingon d7 wolfpacks, all my homies hate d7s" with a healthy torpedo spam? Just saying, if our aft weaponry is powerful enough, we don't need excessive maneuverabilty.
Connie got by on medium, and unlike the Excalibur this isn't going to be a dancer. Medium would probably be fine, though personally I'd aim for high, it should be decent insurance when it's out alone and has to fight.
Yeah, I'd be fine with high or medium really. See what two engines gets us? The Kea with two type 2 engines without the impulse shunt was low, two type 3s with the shunt should get us something decent but we don't really need to prioritise it for the ship's role.
Connie got by on medium, and unlike the Excalibur this isn't going to be a dancer. Medium would probably be fine, though personally I'd aim for high, it should be decent insurance when it's out alone and has to fight.
