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[X] Full Saucer (Industry: 4)
[X] Half-Saucer (Industry: 3)

Slight adjustment to my vote. Don't like what the sphere has to offer here.
 
Reminder that this will not be a full-blown explorer--it will not be venturing out into the great unknown without any backup or infrastructure to fall back on.

While we may have to worry about pirates, I kind of doubt that pirates will be willing to attack a clearly-Federation vessel that won't have any valuable cargo nor a powerful weapons loadout to make the prospect of capture worth it. If it gets attacked by Romulans it's probably toast, but that carries extremely heavy consequences for the Romulans to even try.

For the Klingons, they think better of us than they did at this point OTL, and for them, attacking a weak science ship outside your own boarders is probably too pathetic a move for them to even consider.

If this ship were intended to be a true explorer or perform major science tasks beyond our own borders, I'd go with a full-saucer layout. But this ship won't be doing Enterprise-type stuff, so better to save the industry so that it can be reinvested into growing up our industry for later.

[X] Sphere (Industry: 2)
 
[X] Sphere (Industry: 2)

We haven't built a sphere design before, so this will be interesting. And also I think quite well suited to a pure science project?
 
[X] Half-Saucer (Industry: 3)
[X] Sphere (Industry: 2)

It's just a survey ship, and it's going to be full of untested prototype tech, I don't see why it needs to have a saucer full of optional features and add-ons.
 
Phalfpipe said:
[X] Half-Saucer (Industry: 3)
[X] Sphere (Industry: 2)

It's just a survey ship, and it's going to be full of untested prototype tech, I don't see why it needs to have a saucer full of optional features and add-ons.
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Only prototype tech it might have is the new type-1 phasers. Everything else has started moving into mass production.
 
[X] Half-Saucer (Industry: 3)
[X] Full Saucer (Industry: 4)
 
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Takareer said:
The ship may not only get "up to things" on its own, but its far-roaming mission means it may be the first responder for any number of things.
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It's not an explorer. It isn't going to be 'far-roaming', in fact it is quite the opposite. It will never be more than a week or two away from resupply and a few days from a patrol ship.

If a survey ship is a first responder to anything things have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Seriously, if a survey ship answers a distress call, its first response is to forward the call to the nearest patrol ship and then go about its business. Said business is parking its fat sciency arse in orbit of a planet and staying there. If danger approaches, its answer is to bug the fuck out at maximum warp to the nearest star base.

It doesn't need guns. It doesn't need the best impulse engines. Its defences are, ultimately, the best warp factor we can give it and not much else because, by hell and high water, it ain't getting involved.
 
I'm going for the Full Saucer because I want to shove as much science into this thing as possible. This ship is revenge for the Endeavor having that industrial capacity. :V
 
Mgunh1 said:
It's not an explorer. It isn't going to be 'far-roaming', in fact it is quite the opposite. It will never be more than a week or two away from resupply and a few days from a patrol ship.

If a survey ship is a first responder to anything things have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Seriously, if a survey ship answers a distress call, its first response is to forward the call to the nearest patrol ship and then go about its business. Said business is parking its fat sciency arse in orbit of a planet and staying there. If danger approaches, its answer is to bug the fuck out at maximum warp to the nearest star base.

It doesn't need guns. It doesn't need the best impulse engines. Its defences are, ultimately, the best warp factor we can give it and not much else because, by hell and high water, it ain't getting involved.
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That is an unsafe assumption for Starfleet ships. A lot of science ships usually are the reason for distress calls..
 
Mgunh1 said:
It doesn't need guns. It doesn't need the best impulse engines. Its defences are, ultimately, the best warp factor we can give it and not much else because, by hell and high water, it ain't getting involved.
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The point of the saucer isn't necessarily to fit as many guns or impulse engines as possible -- it's to fit the best sensors and as many computers as possible.
 
[X] Full Saucer (Industry: 4)

The extra flexibility is not expensive in terms of industry. At worst, we get extra cargo and use it for endurance.
 
Mgunh1 said:
It's not an explorer. It isn't going to be 'far-roaming', in fact it is quite the opposite. It will never be more than a week or two away from resupply and a few days from a patrol ship.

If a survey ship is a first responder to anything things have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Seriously, if a survey ship answers a distress call, its first response is to forward the call to the nearest patrol ship and then go about its business. Said business is parking its fat sciency arse in orbit of a planet and staying there. If danger approaches, its answer is to bug the fuck out at maximum warp to the nearest star base.

It doesn't need guns. It doesn't need the best impulse engines. Its defences are, ultimately, the best warp factor we can give it and not much else because, by hell and high water, it ain't getting involved.
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This is not how Star Trek goes. You don't get to let people die because you were waiting on a patrol ship to answer the call in your place. You don't get to choose that the science anomaly you're investigating is peaceful. You don't get to carefully curate your disasters so there's always better ships to answer them.

Sure, this isn't a large exploration cruiser and this will limit how multipurpose it can be, and it definitely should be weighted towards its primary function. But the idea that it will never answer a distress call is totally out of touch with the crap the galaxy throw at us and need us to react to.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
The point of the saucer isn't necessarily to fit as many guns or impulse engines as possible -- it's to fit the best sensors and as many computers as possible.
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I know. My last post pointed that out. I just want people to know that, if you're voting for a full saucer it is to go full SCIENCE! and not for anything else.

My vote for a sphere was because, if we maximise science as much as possible while keeping costs down, you can simply field two sphere survey ships for the cost of one full saucer and get equal or better results.
 
Full saucer being better for basically everything capability-wise irritates my aesthetic sense. I don't want to constantly ape the most basic Fed aesthetic.
 
Mgunh1 said:
My vote for a sphere was because, if we maximise science as much as possible while keeping costs down, you can simply field two sphere survey ships for the cost of one full saucer and get equal or better results.
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I'm not sure it works that way, simply because "maximizing science" while minimizing internal space isn't actually maximizing science, and the synergies available to integrated sensors and computers on one ship aren't available to computers separated by thousands of kilometers (even if you might get a nice parallax effect from such separated sensors). The cost differences between the hull shapes seems minimal, too (each is one industry step up from the last, the smallest possible difference), while the gains from internal space seem to grow faster than the cost of it.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
Full saucer being better for basically everything capability-wise irritates my aesthetic sense. I don't want to constantly ape the most basic Fed aesthetic.
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It's inferior at mobility, and it's rather costly. But science ships with some flexibility is what it does best so I expect our surveyors and explorers to go back to the design even if we diverge from it on war ships.
 
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