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LunaMoth said:
We need high tech scanners and science stuff on a survey ship though, the sphere feels like it provides the most volume. I mean look at the Antares-type (which is apparently used for literally everything in the TOS era including surveying), not a sphere but it certainly has a bunch of internal space a flat saucer cant provide.
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ORB and Half-Saucer explicitly have the same internal volume at the end of the day. The only difference is that ORB is cheaper because it's a very simple design and gets the same volume at a 20% reduction in total mass. But straightjackets everything that comes afterwards while also fundamentally limiting its ability to maneuver and defend itself by presenting a hilariously easy target profile in all directions and straight up being incapable of firing behind wherever its phasers are mounted.
 
I would note that we are building a Survey ship, not an Explorer. This ship will be following in the wake of explorer ships to study systems that have already been declared safe. So odds of running into negative space wedgies or space orcs are incredibly slim.

The odds of this ship getting into a fight is ridiculously low. They're not cargo ships so they won't have much of value on them to steal and they'll be in systems off the beaten track with nothing in them besides the system itself.

They won't be the target of pirates because they'd be very hard to find and wouldn't be worth all that risk and cost for so little pay off. Neither would they be much of a target for a hostile polity for similar reasons.

So I really don't think we need to consider this ship running into trouble very much at all, and so shouldn't give the possibility over much consideration in its design.

On that note I feel we should either go Full saucer so the ship has plenty of space for plenty of extra equipment or sphere to make a cheaper, more compact and streamlined design.

The half saucer has very few advantages, mostly that it would be better in a fight than the sphere, and I've already said why I see that as essentially a non-issue.
 
Cavalier said:
The war is won, and now the future awaits. Probably little for it for existing designs because the introduction of shields will likely call for entirely new classes across the line. I'd say the Dreadnoughts were cautiously kind of a failure in that their strategic impact likely did not justify the resources they commanded, though the opportunity costs of any new warship are hard to determine. We might have been advised to build something like the Skate-class a lot earlier instead, but what's done is done. And at least in the short term the Skate-class is probably still worth producing solely for intra-system defense and patrol until a new shielded replacement is ready.

I'd say on the whole the most effective ships, pound-for-pound, were probably the NX-class. Aside from suggesting it be retroactively dubbed the Enterprise-class, I'd also fast-track a replacement as the first new Starfleet ship. It can use shields, photonic torpedoes, and the Warp 7 engine with approximately a fit of weapons like the Skate plus an aft stinger cannon or two. Try to keep it to medium maneuverability or higher, and with all of the cargo space, shuttles, machine shops, med bays, and etc needed for extended operations. It'll be the first generalist explorer and patrol vessel to cement the new Starfleet as a presence in local space and provide the tools needed to go forth to seek out strange new worlds and new civilizations.
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Given half of every other ship class we had died i doubt that. Losses across the board were frankly horrendous, and the NXs were noted to have major wounds while the Warspite was more or less fine and the Thunderchild, only had to be scuttled because it ate a critical hit in the second worst place it could have. Otherwise, it'd have walked off the field in decent shape. Because doctrinally our fleet plan was sound, we were just out teched and outnumbered.


Big Heavy Bricks to hold lines and keep the center from collapsing is good sense. Now that the war is over though i don't see much point in trying to keep the class around. It was built and made for wartime and while it can carry a massive amount of supplies, a modernized freighter would work better.

But we shouldn't discount Dreadnoughts/Battleships as a concept simply due to the fact we got into what amounts to a bar room brawl with shotguns with the resident lurker.


Alectai said:
As I clarified, the issue is that two Science Labs doesn't mean your ship now does Double the Science. It means it can do two projects at once (Again, assuming available processing power can keep up). That's an improvement for sure--but not to the rate of "Doubling your Science Score", so is it worth another price hike? I don't think so. Especially since other add-ons are going to be scaled with the Saucer's size in mind. And if Internal Space is that important, then people are going to want even more with the secondary hull.
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In the last quest Two labs allowed each lab to run in stereo verifying actual data much faster than a single lab having to run it all twice. So having two can be a big help in that case.
 
Jensaarai said:
Science Labs, if the stat bonuses haven't changed, add +2 to Science. We might also get a chance at another computer core like the NX-class has, so that's additional Science.

This is going to be a mono-focused design, so I don't see any problem with bumping Science up as high as we reasonably can.
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And I believe that assuming Nothing Will Ever Happen to our Survey Cruisers so stack a billion +Science mods on it, cost be damned, is folly when we're still in the Wild West days.

But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here, you've got your opinion, I have mine. I think we've mostly hashed over the details by now.
 
Alectai said:
Still think we'd get the best price to cost rate by having a Half-Saucer at least.
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The half-saucer has sacrifices in internal space, which we would need to fit the laboratories and any other such Science-boosting upgrades that we might get, unless we spend more on a larger secondary hull down the line.
 
Alectai said:
ORB and Half-Saucer explicitly have the same internal volume at the end of the day. The only difference is that ORB is cheaper because it's a very simple design and gets the same volume at a 20% reduction in total mass. But straightjackets everything that comes afterwards while also fundamentally limiting its ability to maneuver and defend itself by presenting a hilariously easy target profile in all directions and straight up being incapable of firing behind wherever its phasers are mounted.
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I guess, ORB is still unique though that's all I care about, my point still stands about science stuff being necessary in a survey ship.
 
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Jensaarai said:
The half-saucer has sacrifices in internal space, which we would need to fit the laboratories and any other such Science-boosting upgrades that we might get, unless we spend more on a larger secondary hull down the line.
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Only compared to the Saucer.

It has the same Internal Volume as the ORB, it's just listed as a downside because otherwise it'd straight up just be "Pro: +Manueverability, Con: Slightly more expensive than the Saucer"
 
Alectai said:
There's diminishing returns!

The one to go absolutely crazy on Science for are our Explorers, which are going to be expected to be beyond the borders while Cost isn't much of an object. Just going "I smash two Science Labs into this saucer" is not going to produce double the Science. The only thing adding another Science Lab would do is let them work another project in parallel--assuming processing power can keep up. Not enable whole new vistas of Science.

We passed on our Utility Cruiser for our first tranche, and there were good reasons for it, but this means that there aren't going to be any regular patrols to call for help. Our ship needs to get itself out of danger, and not cost a small fortune per hull to get there. Half-Saucer is a good balance there.
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We've never actually gone full science before. Even the dedicated Science Explorer was only A out of S.

I'm inclined to go full science this time.
 
Wootius said:
We've never actually gone full science before. Even the dedicated Science Explorer was only A out of S.

I'm inclined to go full science this time.
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And I'm counting beans and screaming at the costs involved.

Look, my argument boils down to this.

A) We're in the Wild West, where even our own territory isn't 100% surveyed, and we don't have the ships or sensors to lock down every square inch of space.
B) We decided to do a Survey Ship for our first postwar design. Which means our patrol ships are wartime and prewar spec. This means we can't count on there being help if we missed something, or something else moved in after the initial survey.
C) We have three surviving NX classes by my reckoning, and they're our only long range frontline survey ships. That's not enough to be certain that we didn't miss a spot in the initial sweep.

Ultimately, I think our Survey Cruiser being capable of escaping trouble while not racking up too high a price point is more important than cramming one more Science Lab in it. We don't have the luxury yet of having a fairly secure border that can identify anyone moving in and out of it and thus can be reasonably certain our Survey Ships won't run into some uncatalogued threat and reduced to atoms.
 
The Full Saucer option is 200,000 tons, which means that if we go small on the secondary hull it is likely to be 2/3 the mass of our NX class (340,000 tons). We had a hard time fitting enough science into that, even with a cargo bay, shuttle bay, and secondary computer core in the secondary hull. It won't be as heavily armed as our NX class, but something about or a little smaller than the size of the canon pre refit NX class (280,000 tons) would be very good for a survey ship in the current era.
 
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The orb is the only true choice. The half-saucer is a mutilation of the roundness of the saucer, and while the saucer is properly round, the orb is a saucer rotated on its axis so rapidly that there is no point that is not round. Roundness squared, were such a statement not nonsensical on its face.
 
Alectai said:
And I believe that assuming Nothing Will Ever Happen to our Survey Cruisers so stack a billion +Science mods on it, cost be damned, is folly when we're still in the Wild West days.

But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here, you've got your opinion, I have mine. I think we've mostly hashed over the details by now.
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I'm not saying that though? Obviously we'll need to keep a close eye on the total cost, I just think if we're making a Survey Ship we should probably give some priority to its ability to do Science.

And we'll be prototyping the type-1 phasers, along with the now-standardized shields, so it should hopefully have enough teeth to scare off most aggressive ships.
Alectai said:
Only compared to the Saucer.

It has the same Internal Volume as the ORB, it's just listed as a downside because otherwise it'd straight up just be "Pro: +Manueverability, Con: Slightly more expensive than the Saucer"
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I'm not sure I see your point here? I have similar concerns about internal space with the Orb as well, along with it also potentially needing a larger secondary hull.
 
Alectai said:
And I'm counting beans and screaming at the costs involved.

Look, my argument boils down to this.

A) We're in the Wild West, where even our own territory isn't 100% surveyed, and we don't have the ships or sensors to lock down every square inch of space.
B) We decided to do a Survey Ship for our first postwar design. Which means our patrol ships are wartime and prewar spec. This means we can't count on there being help if we missed something, or something else moved in after the initial survey.
C) We have three surviving NX classes by my reckoning, and they're our only long range frontline survey ships. That's not enough to be certain that we didn't miss a spot in the initial sweep.

Ultimately, I think our Survey Cruiser being capable of escaping trouble while not racking up too high a price point is more important than cramming one more Science Lab in it. We don't have the luxury yet of having a fairly secure border that can identify anyone moving in and out of it and thus can be reasonably certain our Survey Ships won't run into some uncatalogued threat and reduced to atoms.
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I believe escaping trouble is mostly a matter of warp sprint speed and was under the impression that Really Good (hopefully) warp drives were part of the plan for this class?.
 
LawsOfRobotics said:
The Full Saucer option is 200,000 tons, which means that if we go small on the secondary hull it is likely to be 2/3 the mass of our NX class (340,000 tons). We had a hard time fitting enough science into that, even with a cargo bay, shuttle bay, and secondary computer core in the secondary hull. It won't be as heavily armed as our NX class, but something the size of the cannon pre refit NX class would be very good for a survey ship.
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Was size a factor in why our science ship in the previous quest got an A instead of S?

I guess you wouldn't realistically need size to put scanners and computers on a ship, but I'm unsure how much space survey stuff takes up in star trek.

Also I think we should prioritize speed as well, if we can but focus on good science.
 
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BeepSmile said:
I'd like to actually do that someday. Tbh, but regardless I am feeling the half-saucer a bit more after your posts.
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Thanks, even if I lose, it'll help my anxiety if people at least thought my arguments were okay :)

Still, I think I've said all there is to say on the matter from my perspective, and at this point pushing further would just be intransigence, so let the argument fall as it may I guess?
 
LunaMoth said:
Was size a factor in why our science ship in the previous quest got an A instead of S?

I guess you wouldn't realistically need size to put scanners and computers on a ship, but I'm unsure how much space survey stuff takes up in star trek.
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No, that was cause we went for an industrial replicator instead of larger science labs. Which I think Sayle has said would've bumped the Endeavour into S-tier Science?
 
Jensaarai said:
No, that was cause we went for an industrial replicator instead of larger science labs. Which I think Sayle has said would've bumped the Endeavour into S-tier Science?
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On the other hand, the Industrial Replicator meant that Voyager had a much easier trip home, so I'd still call it the better choice.

(Endeavour project was the one that spat out Voyager, wasn't it?)
 
Alectai said:
On the other hand, the Industrial Replicator meant that Voyager had a much easier trip home, so I'd still call it the better choice.

(Endeavour project was the one that spat out Voyager, wasn't it?)
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Yeah, Voyager was an Endeavour-class. And true, I still think the industrial replicator was a good choice for a extreme-range explorer ship like that.

Voyager just pushed the definitions of "extreme-range" a bit further than the designers probably thought lol.
 
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