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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Lohjak said:
Shuttlebay seems fine too, but I'm pretty sure expanded cargo will let us turn this into the premiere logistics vessel in Starfleet, which both helps build up our frontier colonies and also means that Starfleet will probably order a ton of these.
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Thats the Archer
Sayle said:
ClassFederationMiranda
Design TeamUtopia PlanitiaSan Francisco
Mass300,000220,000
Cost16980
Single Target Rating5619
Multi-Target Rating3917
Maneuverability Rating150kt134kt
Max Sustained Damage5634
Alpha Strike Damage10558
Coverage100%73%
Engine PowerVery HighHigh
Hull Rating6447
Shield Rating7343
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Excellent

Steven Kodaly said:
[X] Expanded Shuttlebay

I'd love to do a big bulk hauler - in a dedicated design intended to succeed the Archer class. In ten to twenty years, it will absolutely be time to roll out a new platform to fill that role.
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Thirty or forty years Im guessing
No new bulk haulers before the nextgen nacelles, and the Excelsior has first dibs on them anyway
So 2290s
zac1 said:
Here is the thing, there is never going to be a lot of federations, its a big expensive ship. It being able to do cargo doesn't change that.
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We built 12x Sagamarthas and 18x Excaliburs, on a smaller eonomy
I would be very surprised to end up with less than a bare minimum of 20x of these, regardless of our choices

zac1 said:
I... dont think this ship would be capable of replacing the archers can it? the cargo hold is in the secondary section right?
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Its not meant to
The Archers remained in service untl the early 24th century for a reason

Chargone said:
I'm seeing a lot of good arguments for why starfleet needs new/more/better cargo ships. The arguments for using the Federation class in that role are Very weak.
Mind you, the arguments in favour of shuttles aren't much better and the arguments against aren't completely without merit...
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Archduke said:
The Archer is gonna win on volume. The Federation is gonna win on delivery time and survive in riskier areas. These are different niches. The difference between air freight and a cargo ship. They complement each other. There's a reason I keep saying that the Federation is the Express Overnight Shipping.
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This
zac1 said:
If it becomes a cargo hauler (as everyone wants it now) pirates never play fair, the federation class would be a surprise, but surprise only works once or twice, but once word gets out that the feddies have a class of ship that can solo any one of their ships they would go "well then send in a fleet."
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If they had a fleet to send, they would already sent it
Pirates, like you said are under no obligation to fight fair

Strunkriidiisk said:
I'm concerned that cargo-running - i.e. going into the coreward regions of Federation territory to pick up supplies from manufacturing centres, then out to the borders - is at cross purposes with patrol duties, which it feels like people were jonesing really hard for as a peacetime capability (Feds on the borders, Mirandas on internal/secondline duties, is what I seem to recall).
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The key word here is transhipment hub

Other ships, from Mirandas and Archers to even civilians, can move vital cargos to hub worlds and space stations on the inner parts of the border territories and the Feddie will pick them up from there.
I imagine going all the way to the core worlds to pick up cargo will not be routine for Fat Freddie

Derpmind said:


It's too small.

[X] Expanded Shuttlebay
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Thats because its equivalent to air freight, or an Algol-class fast transport
Not a container ship
Besides Im pretty sure they are not to scale
 
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[X] Expanded Cargo Bay

For when you need to ferry around Irish colonists, extra weird rocks, or just whatever anomalous crap happens upon you at any given time.
 
Tinkerer said:
[X] Expanded Cargo Bay

For when you need to ferry around Irish colonists, extra weird rocks, or just whatever anomalous crap happens upon you at any given time.
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It does have the benefits of getting the irish reconstructionists off your ship FASTER...

No but seriously, these are all good things, but this is not the ship for it.
 
darkstarling said:
I'm taking the position that there is always going to be something going wrong. This is the era of Those Old Scientists, when a colony of a million or a billion can just disappear and it's tragic but we can't dwell because we need to keep it from happening again. Straight from incidents a Constitution Excalibur Class was dealing with semi-regularly. And remember, what made the Enterprise so famous wasn't that these things happened to it. What made the Enterprise special was that because of the crew the Enterprise survived.

If that's the high level crises, there have to be a thousand lower level emergencies every day that we simply don't see because we're busy dealing with the Nomads and Doomsday Machines. And while colonies will usually survive they could do it a whole lot better if they knew Starfleet was coming.
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The Federation wouldn't exist if there are thousands of low level emergencies going on all the time, and we would be able to address a lot of those just by improving our infrastructure, which cargo is well-suited to. Trying to use our wildly expensive heavy cruiser to put out all the little fires is probably impractical and better served by just spamming Mirandas.

DecaffeinatedOwl said:
The shuttles help with space search & rescue, and with stabilizing other ships.
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Yes, which we expect to encounter the most after a fight, which is why people keep bringing it up in the context of its tactical role. Of course it'll also be useful if a civilian ship has an accident that a Federation runs across or responds to, but it's not as if the cargo bay replaces all our shuttles and transporters either.

uju32 said:
Thats the Archer
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The Archer ceases production in 2260, about the time that Miranda and Federation enter service. Presumably one or both of them will be used to replace the Archer, especially near the borders or for cargo that needs to be transported faster. I think we'll probably get like two ship designs before the Excelsior, and since the Miranda is coming out neither are going to be engineering-focused ships. This is probably our only opportunity to get an Archer replacement in this generation.
 
Tank man said:
They should be, roughly, but the side comparison ignores the cargo bay is going to be about as wide (if not slightly more so) than the cargo pod, by my reckoning.
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Cant be
The Archer is a 100m diameter, 150,000 tons, and the small cargo pod is 30,000 tons of that
Fat Feddie is 180m diameter, 300,000 tons, with the extra nacelles constituting only 20,000 tons of its mass

The mass aint mathing if you're assuming they are to scale
 
Lohjak said:
The Archer ceases production in 2260, about the time that Miranda and Federation enter service. Presumably one or both of them will be used to replace the Archer, especially near the borders or for cargo that needs to be transported faster. I think we'll probably get like two ship designs before the Excelsior, and since the Miranda is coming out neither are going to be engineering-focused ships. This is probably our only opportunity to get an Archer replacement in this generation.
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I don't see why either would replace the archer - the archer is decommissioned in 2310 - so presumably one of the designs after this would replace the archer
 
uju32 said:
Cant be
The Archer is a 100m diameter, 150,000 tons, and the small cargo pod is 30,000 tons of that
Fat Feddie is 180m diameter, 300,000 tons, with the extra nacelles constituting only 20,000 tons of its mass

The mass aint mathing if you're assuming they are to scale
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Mass and size have not had more than a passing relationship in this quest. Density per m^3 has been all over the place for ships.
 
Lohjak said:
The Federation is hardly getting smaller, so something is filling in the blanks when they cease Archer production. If it's not this, it'll be Mirandas.
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But still that's not really a full replacement - it's more of both designs being used in the same role - having more than one design to do something isn't a replacement

Ships don't really count as replaced until they are decommissioned
For example the Skipjack class came out in the early Cold War - by your logic it would be replaced by the Thresher/Permit class because those classes serve the same role (fast attack)
but they were in commission until the 90s and it's really more accurate to say that they were replaced by the 688 flights
 
[X] Expanded Cargo Bay

Both capabilities are undoubtedly useful, but the Miranda largely has the extra shuttlebay stuff covered.
 
[X] Expanded Cargo Bay

I've come back around to Expanded Cargo Bay because the idea of adding diplomatic facilities to this ship meaning that the Project Federation ship can head over to handle a negotiation and then just immediately have infrastructure-scale cargo it can hand over, all in a ship that can wipe the floor with a small fleet of minor-power warships is itself a hell of a synergy.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
Considering that this threadmark just says 'engineering section' full stop, I would not be surprised if whichever option wins fills the entire volume of the secondary hull. Still much smaller, but not quite as egregious.
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The description of the cargo bay does specifically note the use of a large ventral bay door, so that option at least should extend all the way to the bottom of the engineering hull.

EDIT: The shuttlebay description is more ambiguous however, and only directly mentions extending the landing area.
 
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Lohjak said:
The Archer ceases production in 2260, about the time that Miranda and Federation enter service. Presumably one or both of them will be used to replace the Archer, especially near the borders or for cargo that needs to be transported faster. I think we'll probably get like two ship designs before the Excelsior, and since the Miranda is coming out neither are going to be engineering-focused ships. This is probably our only opportunity to get an Archer replacement in this generation.
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The Archer remains in service for another fifty years, and when its decommissioned in 2310 for being too slow, there were still 15 ships left, 4 of which went to the civilian sector
We are not due for an Archer replacement before the turn of the century

As for the order of ships? My opinion?

Feddie should enter service in 2255. A new space station, taking advantage of new tech to supplement or replace the Pharos after its lackluster performance in wartime will take us from then to 2265, then the new nacelles will probably take us another 5 years to 2270. Excelsior, if it begins design in 2271, enters service around 2280

Only then do we start work on the Archer replacement, with commissioning starting around 2290
Tank man said:
Oh, the answer there is rather simple. As I understand it Sayle mostly just goes off of what they feel fits best for the size of the ship.

Plus, I'd imagine being built with combat and high manouverable in mind the Federation probably has more in the way of internal structure the Archer cut out.
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Sure
But that means the images arent to scale, and using the apparent compartments as a 1:1 comparison will mislead you
Lohjak said:
The Federation is hardly getting smaller, so something is filling in the blanks when they cease Archer production. If it's not this, it'll be Mirandas.
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Ships do not stay in production all their service lives
Navies build as many as they think they will forseeably need, then stop
Fouredged Sword said:
Mass and size have not had more than a passing relationship in this quest. Density per m^3 has been all over the place for ships.
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Oh sure
Im just saying that comparing compartment sizes on the side view is wrong, because the ships arent portrayed to scale
 
uju32 said:
Other ships, from Mirandas and Archers to even civilians, can move vital cargos to hub worlds and space stations on the inner parts of the border territories and the Feddie will pick them up from there.
I imagine going all the way to the core worlds to pick up cargo will not be routine for Fat Freddie
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Archers could, but Mirandas specifically can not fit the prefab items that the Feddie could. But turning them into cargo haulers so the Feddie can pick up their cargo a little further out from the core is wasteful. Especially on the Archers, who should be on their own transport schedule for the bulk cargo they do that should be preplanned years out for the largest of Star Fleet projects.

Even the Archer might not be able to handle worker bee specific items which leaves the Feddie still transitioning from the core and back regularly.

If the fear of piracy is that great, going defensive and trying to use the Federation as a treasure galleon is the wrong play. You proactively use the Federation to stem them coming in and to burn them out when the scouts, like the Excailbers, locate their hubs out in unclaimed or otherwise reachable but non Federation territory.
 
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