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We lose some crossfire either way, either fore and we lose two torpedo launchers, or aft with the secondary hull. I think overall the secondary hull is likely the way to go, adds more space for internal systems and rear mounted phasers on the secondary hull, but I could be persuaded otherwise. I was expecting the underslung deflector to be larger, which would have likely advantages in being Starfleet and allowing us to do more tricks with it, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
 
aeiou! said:
what's wrong with standard fed? If it's dumb it's dumb, but if it works it works and in this case it allows for maximum firepower concentration for not-unacceptable tradeoffs

E: the current design patters trend towards maximum arcs of fire anyways…
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Yeah anything else comes with trade offs, just like the saucer...

It's just feeling like the mainline starfleet design doctrine is always going to be the best option, which makes the concept of starting from the beginning before any of that was was mainstream much less interesting to me.
If all we end up doing is retreading old ground because apparently starfleet already made all the possible sensible choices and any alternatives all feature massive drawbacks.
 
The problem is, we're also likely trying to make this ship as cost-effective as possible; the more material we pour into this, the less other vessels of the fleet are going to get it, whether that's in construction or in repairs. In the middle of wartime, when we need as many hulls as we can pump out to cover not only each other, but whatever ship we eventually send over to the shipyards, designing in this fashion might cost us longer building times on this and other vessels.

On the other hand, I can see what the underslung deflector mainly brings to the table; more guns, better ventral coverage, and a greater amount of space to put in modules that can serve the ship. But I do still worry about augmenting an already large profile with a point that might be a significant weakness: the connecting neck of the ship.

Edit: In all, I'd have to see what the secondary hull looks like in order to fully feel satisfied picking it over the other option.
 
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Yeah, I'm going for underslung. I still view the primary goal of this ship being the reliably knocking down of Romulan shields with intense forward firepower, and removing a third of the torpedo launchers and the ability of the ventral bow to have full frontal coverage heavily impacts that.
 
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While putting the Type-2 prototype deflector dish in the front reduces our forward facing firepower, but gives us that unrestricted ventral and aft firing arcs, then the underslung secondary hull will limit our aft and ventral firing arcs whilst keeping our forward facing torpedoes.

If this ship can get the burst damage in the opening moments of a battle, then having that secondary hull is a must.
 
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Lavaflow said:
I was under the impression that the torpedoes don't do much to shields, is that true or is my brain making things up again?
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That is an assumption that some Star Trek games, including Star Trek Online, make for the sake of gameplay. It's not made explicit in other media that energy or particle weapons are more effective than torpedoes against shields, and there is no particular technical reason to believe they would be. Torpedoes are, however, limited-use in a way energy or particle weapons are not, so captains conscientious of their ship's complement will likely not choose to deploy torpedoes unless they are pretty sure they'll do damage.

Of course, before regenerative shielding, shields are basically just armor, and damage to them is effectively damage to a ship even if it doesn't do very much to the internals.
 
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Going inexpensive and faster to build is a must for wartime production. If we want this ship to be fielded in time to make a difference in the war, then ease of construction is one of the most important priorities.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
That is an assumption that some Star Trek games, including Star Trek Online, make for the sake of gameplay. It's not made explicit in other media that energy or particle weapons are more effective than torpedoes against shields, and there is no particular technical reason to believe they would be. Torpedoes are, however, limited-use in a way energy or particle weapons are not, so captains conscientious of their ship's complement will likely not choose to deploy torpedoes unless they are pretty sure they'll do damage.

Of course, before regenerative shielding, shields are basically just armor, and damage to them is effectively damage to a ship even if it doesn't do very much to the internals.
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We also see in Enterprise photonic torpedoes being used very effectively against duras in the last episode of season two and klingon vessels are shielded
 
As I've stated above, both hulls present advantages and drawbacks that would make this a fine vessel, so I could potentially be fine with either. However, supporting the underslung deflector comes with a personal caveat that we try to have the secondary hull as connected to the primary hull as we can. Much as the look of the Constitution and ships of its lineage is iconic, I don't exactly feel comfortable with figuratively presenting our ship's jugular to an enemy vessel or wolfpack and saying 'Here! Target me to cut the ship in half!'.

And that will be all I say on the matter until we vote.
 
NavySeel said:
Yeah clearly not wanting to copy literally everything that's been done before means I just hate Star Trek.

Because all that matters in Star Trek is a saucer an underslung hull and two nacelles. That is Star Trek.
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You say that but I'm planning to vote for the forward saucer dish for full UFO. There are times and places for divergent designs, and by (for me, happy) coincidence, this is simply a place where Starfleet saucer works better for the present situation and enemy.

Frankly I'd have preferred our crash wartime ship to be a cheap, zippy gunbrick of a pure-warship frigate, and triangles would've worked great for that. But we're making a dreadnought, and I can only play the hand we're dealt.
 
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Yeah I think the extra industry cost for a secondary hull means that regardless of what's perfectly optimal, we kinda have to take the Forward Saucer Deflector. The largest warship we've ever built is going to have a lot of teething issues with production even before adding a secondary hull to make it larger still, and we need this thing off the slips as fast as humanly possible.

Trading off forward crossfire and a torpedo flat isn't ideal, but it's the price in capabilities we have to pay to save the price in industry. Especially since my understanding is that a full saucer design was selected to maximize firepower in all directions except forward to better counter cloaked ambushes? So then deciding that our full saucer needs to maximize forward firepower seems pretty wishy-washy for a state of total war.
 
Losing firepower is definitely an issue against the stronger Romulan shields, but so is extending the space our own weaker defense have to cover against their swarm. The full saucer offer compactness by letting us cram all internal systems in the saucer rather than an extended secondary hull and I'm really not happy to surrender that advantage.

It's also worth thinking about what we're fighting, again. This big brick is likely to be swarmed by a lot of smaller ships. Does it really mind shooting in all directions once surrounded? Does it really need full focus on a single target when it outmasses its enemies so much?

I don't really mind having to split its fire into two broadsides because of the front deflector if its role is to ram through an enemy formation and shoot in all directions. This is always going to be outnumbered so it'll have plenty of targets on either side.
 
StriderInCosmos said:
I don't exactly feel comfortable with figuratively presenting our ship's jugular to an enemy vessel or wolfpack and saying 'Here! Target me to cut the ship in half!'.
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Presenting a "neck" to the enemy, without shields, is surely a bad idea. The NXs have a minimal neck for this reason.

However, "underslung secondary hull" doesn't mean "neck," it might mean something closer to the Endeavour or Century with an inline secondary hull, and I'm pretty sure it was called such in a previous update.
 
Much a fan as I am for the classic ST designs... I must side with those calling for the saucer deflector.

Reduced industry cost to produce means greater ship number output, and the "loss" of forward attack potential is compensated (as has been mentioned) by the fact that the Romulans do try to get into the more vulnerable vectors to launch attacks from when they decloak.

An additional point is that by not dropping a big ventral secondary hull we're more than likely going to see improved agility as well, allowing for both quick snapshot defense when the Romulans drop cloak aft of our ship, as well as quickly about-facing and getting rapid-fire blasts from the cannon mounts along the saucer as we pass through their firing arcs until the forward torpedo tubes are lined up.

... we also may be able to get a stinger - a single tube aft torpedo launcher as seen on the Galaxy class.
 
Hmmm, from Zheng He Investment
On one shoulder is the more military arm of Starfleet development, which has been embarrassed by the lacking performance of the spatial torpedoes. While perfectly adequate against unshielded targets anything with shields proves practically impervious to the explosives that were supposed to penetrate the hull and cause internal damage. With that in mind they are pushing for a new munition that uses the same tubes but carries atomic warheads, which will hopefully prove effective against shields as well as bare hulls. It's a somewhat controversial proposal, but if you throw your weight on their side you might be able to expedite the approval process.
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And in the next update
The prototype atomic torpedoes have substantially higher yields than the spatial torpedoes, utilizing a very compact warhead that nonetheless delivers quite a pop of radiation when it detonates, evaporating armor and hull plating alike.
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So the spatials basically bounced against shields, and while atomics were hoped to be useful against shields we obviouosly couldn't test it then.

During the battle
The Romulan fleet is reduced to five vessels in the ensuing melee, the Stingray, Whiptail, and Skate collaborating with a simultaneous nuclear launch that overwhelms a warbird's shields.
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Pretty sure those are all Stingray's which have two launchers fore, for a volley of 6 torpedoes. Assuming they all were more or less a direct hit and assuming the warbird's shields were at full and assuming other Romulan ships will have roughly the same shield strength then this ship having a 6 torpedo volley could be critical.
That's a lot of assumptions, though.
 
0t4n1z3r019 said:
While putting the Type-2 prototype deflector dish in the front reduces our forward facing firepower, but gives us that unrestricted ventral and aft firing arcs, then the underslung secondary hull will limit our aft and ventral firing arcs whilst keeping our forward facing torpedoes.

If this ship can get the burst damage in the opening moments of a battle, then having that secondary hull is a must.
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Unfortunately, with the nature of Romulans and cloaks, my sense of things is that we reliably won't have the bow facing the right direction during the opening of battles, with Romulan ships using their cloaks to dictate the starting positions of each engagement. Opening moments burst damage capability isn't of high value for this war for a cumbersome dreadnought, not against the Romulans.
 
[ ] Forward Saucer Deflector

One of the big concerns people had with making a larger ship was how hard it would be to produce a bunch of them for the war. This option seems like it would help ease that concern.
 
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Wondering if the Saucer Deflector will result in a tail-like smaller secondary hull, much like the Pyotr Velikyy someone linked on an earlier page. A little hard to imagine getting up to 400,000 tons with no secondary hull at all, but maybe I'm underestimating overall saucer size.
 
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