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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Phalfpipe said:
Between needing a very specific mindset, being at the top of your class, and passing that psychological torture test that makes for good TV but would probably see like half of every cadet class wash out, you'd think there would be constant staff shortages.
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The thing is they are recruiting millions of people who are the top 1% of 1%... From a population of hundreds of billions. The numbers balance. Starfleet can afford to be EXTREMELY picky.

I mean, we know how many ships we have. Let's do some REALLY rough math, powers of ten math only.

Let's assume
Starfleet has 1000 ships
A ship is crewed by 1000 people
Only 1% of Starfleet serves on a ship, the rest is support for that 1%.

That puts Starfleet's staffing level somewhere around

100,000,000

100 million people, at the very high end.

The Federation has 100,000,000,000s of people. Hundreds of billions.

Starfleet can pick the best .1% of the population. For every person who made it through Starfleet to become a cadette there are 999 people who, through lack of desire, drive, or ability, didn't make the cut.

For every cadette serving on a ship there are 99 cadettes who didn't get a ship posting.

For every captain there are 999 cadettes working under him who never reach captain.

Captains are literally one in a 10 million.

For reference .5% of the US population directly works for the military. This 100 million strong Starfleet is still 1/5th the size of the US military per capita of the population it serves.
 
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Yeah, there is a place for tightly focused, high value frigates, they're not to check other fast moving frigates--the solution for those is something like Fat Freddy, which has a lot of hitscan phasers that can blow your glass cannon out of the void before you can line up an attack run.

They're to punch up with. To be well protected, highly agile craft with a devastatingly powerful punch that can endure hitscan weapons long enough to get their attack run off, and get away from return fire long enough to recharge their shields.

The real problem is that an Escort Frigate is... Uh, not very good at anything other than punching mans, which makes them a hard sell for procurement, which likes ships to have a secondary role when at all possible because we don't generally go looking for fights.

That being said, I'm eagerly waiting to see what the Excelsior will look like in this timeline! It should be something really special.
 
I feel like an escort frigate could be useful if we just gave it a high cruise speed and some decent cargo capacity. Starfleet could have tons of them running all over delivering stuff, and in a crisis they could be grouped in to deal with whatever.

Kinda like what we used to have with the Cygnus but with better tactical abilities. But it would probably be pretty boring to design since there's just not much going on there. Maybe tack on an astrometrics lab or something because they'll constantly be charting the best routes between various places.
 
There's no way in hell you're getting a sub-100k ton design with decent cargo capacities, especially not if it has enough weapons to even theoretically matter in a fight.
 
But, you said you want decent cargo capability. How are you getting that on a sub-100kt design, in combination with classic attack-frigate armament of 2 forward photorps + 1 or 2 banks of forward phasers?

I know we slapped a small cargo bay onto one of the previous iterations, but it didn't get a lot of kudos for that.
 
I still maintain something like a space going version of the Archer-class could be quite useful.

en.wikipedia.org

Archer-class patrol vessel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

It'd probably replace the Constable*, or at least augment it (being Federal rather than state/planet level), being able to conduct patrol and federal policing missions (like say pursuing Harcourt "Harry" Fenton Mudd and other interstellar criminals) as well as also providing a means of training Starfleet's equivalent to reservists (probably mostly enlisted, given how over the top they like their officers to be, rather than generally officer reservists like the actual Archer-class**)

*Perhaps 60,000 tonnes or so given the general growth in capabilities of potential opponents (like the Orion's), though I guess arguments for a ship up to 100,000 tonnes could be made.
**Cadets are recruited from various universities, each boat representing one or more (in this case probably the same but planet scale), they're not actually members of the RNR proper so they've got no call out liability, and whilst there's no obligation to get an actual commission post-university many do (typically in the reserves proper).
 
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Ebiris said:
I mean yeah, but right now the Miranda's a big 220k ton chonk. I was thinking something in the sub 100k ton range for this theoretical design.
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Warp nacelles alone are 40kt and a normal reactor is 25kt. Low power core looks to be free aside from losing .6 Max Warp, but unless you're going to accept 7.0 as Max Warp you need a Blister Deflector at 10kt.

50kt is not enough for more than a few bunks probably. You probably couldn't even put double front torpedoes in that.

Command is probably still going to want at least two phaser arcs as well with two phasers per arc to avoid the burnout issue Excalibur had.
 
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KlavoHunter said:
But, you said you want decent cargo capability. How are you getting that on a sub-100kt design, in combination with classic attack-frigate armament of 2 forward photorps + 1 or 2 banks of forward phasers?

I know we slapped a small cargo bay onto one of the previous iterations, but it didn't get a lot of kudos for that.
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"I have this entire starship that has the cargo capacity of one Honda Civic. Surely this will save my economy."
 
The Attenborough was barely above 100k tons, we can definitely squeeze in something a little smaller than that. Just get rid of the arboretum!
 
Godwinson said:
"I have this entire starship that has the cargo capacity of one Honda Civic. Surely this will save my economy."
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Works for the Klingons!!!

Ebiris said:
The Attenborough was barely above 100k tons, we can definitely squeeze in something a little smaller than that. Just get rid of the arboretum!
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You wake up in the sickbay of the UFS Lorax with dermal regenerators strapped to what remains of your knees...
 
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We really just need to design a ship with a 100 meter saucer and two relatively small secondary hulls to ether side allowing a 12 deck large warp core to straddle the entire ship through both secondary hulls.

One hull is a flight deck hull. The other has the deflector and a big engineering section.

Then mount a large cargo pod between the secondary hulls.

Give it a pair of nacelles in cargo pod configuration.

It has speeds of warp around 6/7/7.6 (E cruise / M cruise / Max warp)

I know. Non orb warp 8 Archer feels wrong, but I feel Starfleet procurement will want to kill me 60% less than if I sent them another orb.

I think it would be a cool looking engineering ship to update the Archer concept for a warp 8 world.
 
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The Attenborough at 105kt had the option for a Medium Cargo bay so you could use that as a basis.

Tallying up all the costs involved in that design:
  • [X] 120 Meter Flat-Bottom Saucer (Mass: 60,000 Tons) (Cost: 36)
  • [X] Inline Deflector (Maximum Warp: -0.4)
  • [X] Standard Warp Core (Mass: +25,000 Tons) (Cost: +4)
  • [X] Central Engine (Cost: 40 -> 45) [Maneuverability: High]
  • [X] Two Ventral Phasers (Cost: 45 -> 53)
  • [X] Forward Rapid Launcher, Two Aft Torpedoes (Cost 53 -> 69.5) [-1 Modules]
If we made a design based on it but with an extra thruster to max out maneuverability for production after 2260 we'd be looking at a 25% discount for all the non-weapon components. That would take the cost from 50 (extra thruster based on pre-2260 costs) and bring it down to 37.5 (just shy of the cost of the original hull).

For weapons you could either go for a hi-low mix of the mature Type-2 Phasers (6 cost for 2) plus 3 Type-4 Launchers (15 cost assuming it doesn't become standard in time) for a total of 21 cost and a grand total of 58-59 per hull or a pure high end of Type-V Phasers (10 for 2) plus 3 Type-4 Launchers (15 for 3) for a grand total of 62-63 cost.

The hi-low gives you 80 alpha (72 torp ~18 phaser = 80) and 42 sustain (24 torp 18 phaser = 42) while the pure high gives you 86 alpha (72 torp ~24 phaser = 86) and 48 sustain (24 torp 24 phaser = 48).

Given the fact that with 2 Thruster's it'll have ~52kt standard thrust it'll be dancing around anything that isn't a BoP so the alpha and sustain are really the only two relevant damage values.

Not sure it'd be worth it though since while this does out-alpha and out-sustain the current version of the Miranda (~80-86 vs 58 alpha and 42- vs 34 sustain) it's got a lot less coverage, internal space, and durability for a ship that's only 15%-8% cheaper and moderately faster at Warp (linear nacelles give it faster efficient cruise and it sprints past Warp 7).

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Even a low-low or low-high weapons mix isn't that much cheaper than a Miranda as it only saves 6 cost (9 for 4 Type-1 torps vs 15 for 3 Type-4's) for a grand total of 52-53 cost with low-low or 56-57 for low-high or 28%-19% cheaper but with the same weaknesses as outlined before.

Damage wise low-low's alpha and sustain becomes worse than the Miranda's at 54vs58 alpha (36 torps 18 phaser = 54) and 30vs34 sustain (12 torp vs 18 phaser = 30) while low-high has marginally better alpha and sustain at 60vs58 alpha (36 torp 24 phaser = 60) and 36vs34 sustain (12 torp 24 phaser = 36).
 
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Type 4 launcher is like 2 decks high, and probably against as much wide, that does kinda limit the size of ship we can stick it in, and not compromise the internals at least.
 
stakenbake said:
Not to get sidetracked, but I'm pretty sure it's a space winnebago, not a freight engine...
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The claw on front is to hold cargo containers. The reason it has such a wildly overpowered hyperdrive is that it's meant to be hauling a few million more tons of cargo than it is when Han uses it to outrun Star Destroyers.

luckless21 said:
That's dumb.
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YMMV. I think it's cool. Like I said, it's meant to the the engine driving giant cargo container chains around. So like a train. And it sure makes more sense than that tiny room being 'cargo capacity'
 
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darkstarling said:
The claw on front is to hold cargo containers. The reason it has such a wildly overpowered hyperdrive is that it's meant to be hauling a few million more tons of cargo than it is when Han uses it to outrun Star Destroyers.



YMMV. I think it's cool. Like I said, it's meant to the the engine driving giant cargo container chains around. So like a train. And it sure makes more sense than that tiny room being 'cargo capacity'
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I see it. It do patch some of (what I thought was) glaring plotholes before. It doesn't look like bullshit.

I don't trust it tho, seems like it's post sequel trilogy post hoc recounting.

What's the source?nvm, that's entirely the wrong setting for this.

I'm definitely leaning to making the Federation a ship posting you can bring your family on (like a winnebago). What are your thoughts on crew space and cargo?
 
Wootius said:
Don't forget command likely doesn't want single phaser arcs anymore, it was proved to be a problem on the Excalibur. So 16 for new phasers.
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You could probably justify the lower coverage by arguing that it is a Selachii successor rather than a light cruiser by pointing out the chonkification of Starfleet's ships (the Miranda as a Newton successor has an extra 90kt of mass on the Newton) or swap the rear Type-4 Launcher with a Phaser.

Either way, I think that little though experiment has established that the Miranda is pretty much the cutoff point for how small we can design a ship that will remain a relevant wartime combatant given the speed in which technology and fleet doctrine has evolved.

I still don't like how painfully slow it is at Warp (maxing out at Warp 7 makes it slower than every Klingon Warship in service during the 4 Year War which was a decade ago) but I can acknowledge that anything short of a modern Klingon battlecruiser or B'rel wolfpack wouldn't want to tangle with one if they were forced to fight one instead of going around it.
 
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