Starfleet Design Bureau

[MJ12 Commando]

And how much effort does tying up this escort, which you also need to design, build, and crew, babysitting this effectively helpless target tie up, instead of a single ship that can at least shoot back enough to run, thereby getting itself out of trouble, cost?

And you also have to consider the era; this isn't the Picard era, with a literal generation of peace and the Federation as a 300 pound gorilla stabilizing things, this is the wild and wooly pre-Kirk era with the Federation having literally just started out. It's the wild west out there, and going around unarmed, or poorly armed, is asking to get shot. A single torpedo launcher is perfectly reasonable for a ship of this size, role, and era.

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Having escort craft which can be used in peacetime as patrol vessels and in wartime as escorts and pickets in fleet actions is a force multiplier for your larger vessels. So the opportunity cost here is nonexistent, because you need that sort of thing already. Why do you think "shooting back enough to run" is actually viable? Unless you're giving these things oversized engines for their cost and role, they're going to be pretty sluggish, and unless you're giving them excessive defenses for their role, they're going to be pretty fragile. Meanwhile, a dedicated escort can actually tie up an enemy attack long enough that your surveyor might actually be able to use its weak noodle nacelles to run away, while also being small enough and well-defended for its size enough that it might survive even that.

The Skate-Class then? We already made that.

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You do realize that this weakens your argument even further, right? You already have a good-enough escort ship, build more of them.

 

[LazyLayabout]

You do realize that this weakens your argument even further, right? You already have a good-enough escort ship, build more of them.

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I'd LOVE TO! @Sayle is the Skate-Class backwards compatible with the Warp 7 engine?

 

[BungieONI]

Maybe it should be separate, but it very explicitly is not in Star Trek. Torpedo launchers are used to launch probes (as well as caskets) on a regular basis, it's their second use point, and can be seen repeatedly in the show. In any case, I absolutely do not think that an armament that barely exceeds that of the Zheng He is a particularly combative survey ship, just one that is vaguely capable of defending itself against marauders. While perhaps operating in groups with small escorts would be better, Starfleet right now absolutely does not have the ships necessary to do that, so a very limited defensive armament is perfectly reasonable. The Skate is not a good ship to point to, because this craft is going to be something like 3 times faster and several times larger.

As to SFB, which MJ12 brought up, I would honestly argue that the point-defense limited armament of survey ships in that universe is a sign of increased militarization, and not the opposite. It's a war game setting where regular Starfleet vessels aren't doing all the exploring they really do, and where there's a lot more escorts around.

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The Skate is not meant to keep up with it at warp, in the example I was making.

These things are going to be entirely within Federation borders, the regular patrol grounds of the Skates. Therefore Skates should either be within the same system the survey ship is, nearby on a very short patrol route between a couple of nearby systems, or next door in the scenario I was outlining.

 

[Bedpotato]

[X] Inline Deflector (-Internal Space, +no cost)
UFO Look nough said

 

[Strunkriidiisk]

I like the principle of letting our weapons have other use-cases. Quite aside from the self-defence angle, having a single launcher for our various deployables is more space-efficient, and since this thing isn't a warship and the only reason she should ever be using torpedoes is to discourage pursuit while bugging out the design for the assemblage should be smaller - this isn't a warship, we don't need a huge antimatter magazine, and we'd be already allocating space to hold probes regardless.

Of course if the choice somehow comes down to a launcher versus, like, more lab space or medical space or whether we can include a shuttlebay at all it's a no-brainer to axe the launcher.

 

[Jensaarai]

Unless you're giving these things oversized engines for their cost and role, they're going to be pretty sluggish

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The survey ship is likely to include our new warp 7 prototypes to work out any kinks, and given its expected total mass a couple impulse engines should be more than enough to get it up to Medium Maneuverability. By no means "sluggish."

 

[LunaMoth]

The survey ship is likely to include our new warp 7 prototypes to work out any kinks, and given its expected total mass a couple impulse engines should be more than enough to get it up to Medium Maneuverability. By no means "sluggish."

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Not entirely certain but, given by the sheer size and the shapes of some vessels in trek, eventually what the ship looks like becomes somewhat irrelevant to how fast it can go; at least at warp pretty sure impulse still takes mass into account.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

The survey ship is likely to include our new warp 7 prototypes to work out any kinks, and given its expected total mass a couple impulse engines should be more than enough to get it up to Medium Maneuverability. By no means "sluggish."

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So if they're so fast compared to everything else, why do they need guns to be able to run away again? Do guns somehow make your engines faster?

Like, what is even the expected threat profile of the OpFor you're arming this ship to defeat? I haven't seen a single person tell me what they actually expect to be facing and why this is a reasonable assumption.

 

[LazyLayabout]

So if they're so fast compared to everything else, why do they need guns to be able to run away again? Do guns somehow make your engines faster?

Like, what is even the expected threat profile of the OpFor you're arming this ship to defeat? I haven't seen a single person tell me what they actually expect to be facing and why this is a reasonable assumption.

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My guy, my dude, my bromigo...2 to 3 phaser banks + 1 torpedo launcher do not a warship make.

 

[StriderInCosmos]

Likely small, persistent interstellar organisms and phenomena or opportunistic raiders that corner or surprise it. It's been said before; the Federation's the new kid on the block still, and there's likely going to be more than a few ships that are willing to test that authority in the early days.

That said, it's not going to need a warship's armament by any means. Maybe one or two phasers and a torpedo tube (that might be multi-use for probes) to dissuade any aggressors while she goes and runs for any more heavily armed vessels in the area.

 

[Mechanis]

Having escort craft which can be used in peacetime as patrol vessels and in wartime as escorts and pickets in fleet actions is a force multiplier for your larger vessels. So the opportunity cost here is nonexistent, because you need that sort of thing already. Why do you think "shooting back enough to run" is actually viable? Unless you're giving these things oversized engines for their cost and role, they're going to be pretty sluggish, and unless you're giving them excessive defenses for their role, they're going to be pretty fragile. Meanwhile, a dedicated escort can actually tie up an enemy attack long enough that your surveyor might actually be able to use its weak noodle nacelles to run away, while also being small enough and well-defended for its size enough that it might survive even that.



You do realize that this weakens your argument even further, right? You already have a good-enough escort ship, build more of them.

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They're getting the Warp Seven engines.
These things are going to be FAST for the era.

Remember that almost everyone else is mostly plodding along at warp three right now, and at best Warp 4-5. It's going to be a while before these are considered slow and plodding even if they top out at Warp Six.
Like, the point here is that the thing is easily fitted given the size, has non combat utility relavant to the mission role, and given the environment constitutes a reasonable investment for self defense weaponry. There's also that there are no Star Trek ships in Alpha Canon that do not have torpedoes.
None.
Even the freaking shuttles have (micro-) torpedoes!
Tactical would probably look at it, laugh, and stamp REJECTED on the design proposal with "put at least one torpedo launcher on it" if we even tried!

 

[BungieONI]

I like the principle of letting our weapons have other use-cases. Quite aside from the self-defence angle, having a single launcher for our various deployables is more space-efficient, and since this thing isn't a warship and the only reason she should ever be using torpedoes is to discourage pursuit while bugging out the design for the assemblage should be smaller - this isn't a warship, we don't need a huge antimatter magazine, and we'd be already allocating space to hold probes regardless.

Of course if the choice somehow comes down to a launcher versus, like, more lab space or medical space or whether we can include a shuttlebay at all it's a no-brainer to axe the launcher.

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Multi-purpose does eventually exist, as TNG has been cited, but do they exist now in this era around the time of Archer? I haven't seen enough of the show to know.

 

[Jensaarai]

So if they're so fast compared to everything else, why do they need guns to be able to run away again? Do guns somehow make your engines faster?

Like, what is even the expected threat profile of the OpFor you're arming this ship to defeat? I haven't seen a single person tell me what they actually expect to be facing and why this is a reasonable assumption.

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This is Star Trek. Most every major starship has some phasers, and occasionally torpedoes, because space is dangerous. We don't know exactly what we'll be facing out there, but if we can give the ship a couple weapons for self-defense as it skedaddles out of danger, that's not a bad thing.

I feel like you're overthinking this?

 

[BungieONI]

My guy, my dude, my bromigo...2 to 3 phaser banks + 1 torpedo launcher do not a warship make.

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MJ's point isn't that this is a warship.

Its using the design principle that "if you put weapons on a thing, you need to have in mind what the potential opposition its meant to survive or defeat actually is so that you have a reasonable and effective arrangement of weapons".

I will admit also to some confusion over the argument being used here to justify specifically the torpedo in some cases where it seems to boil down to Star Trek being dangerous, therefore we must have proton torpedoes, else it dies.

 

[Jensaarai]

Not entirely certain but, given by the sheer size and the shapes of some vessels in trek, eventually what the ship looks like becomes somewhat irrelevant to how fast it can go; at least at warp pretty sure impulse still takes mass into account.

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Fair, though I'm not sure what about this relates to my comment about the survey ship's speed?

I will admit also to some confusion over the argument being used here to justify the torpedo in some cases where it seems to boil down to Star Trek being dangerous, therefore we must have proton torpedoes, else it dies.

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Like @Strunkriidiisk said, if a torpedo launcher cuts into the ship's ability to do Science, it's getting cut.

The initial idea was just, like I said before, that Starfleet probes use the same launcher as their torpedoes, so maybe we could fit one in for long-range or dangerous investigative work. Same as how people are thinking we could use shuttles for surveys and science, so maybe we want a shuttlebay as well.

 

[Strunkriidiisk]

Multi-purpose does eventually exist, as TNG has been cited, but do they exist now in this era around the time of Archer? I haven't seen enough of the show to know.

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Well, we are the Starfleet Design Bureau. No better time than the present!

 

[7th Hex]

I'm entirely fine with sending these things out without a torpedo launcher, unless we're either locked into one regardless or it's explicitly mentioned in the update that the ones during this period in the quest can also be used as a probe launcher, in which case I'll consider taking one, more as a probe launch tube than a torpedo launch tube.

I get the reasons why people would like his to have a basic self defense armament, but I imagine that's going to be covered by the phasers already. I know I've said I'm going to go for the minimum number of phasers on this, but really I expect that minimum to not being something like a single phaser mounted somewhere, and if it is I'll admit I won't vote for that. More likely I imagine we're going to get another low-high option again like we have with a number of previous designs, and that low number is likely to be enough to constitute basic self defense for a science focused survey ship explicitly called out as being for "relatively safe assignments" IMO.

As for how many phasers that's going to be? This is looking like it's roughly going to be twice the mass of Stingray, which had 3 low/6 high for it's vote. Except the Stingray was designed from conception as an anti-piracy patrol ship, while this is a safer assignment survey craft, so this is probably going to have a lower mass to phaser ratio. So my guess for the phaser count vote would be 4 low/8 high, probably mounted in a way that allows for maximum coverage. 4 phasers sounds like a decent protective armament to me for a ship of this size not really meant to see combat.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

They're getting the Warp Seven engines.
These things are going to be FAST for the era.

Remember that almost everyone else is mostly plodding along at warp three right now, and at best Warp 4-5. It's going to be a while before these are considered slow and plodding even if they top out at Warp Six.
Like, the point here is that the thing is easily fitted given the size, has non combat utility relavant to the mission role, and given the environment constitutes a reasonable investment for self defense weaponry. There's also that there are no Star Trek ships in Alpha Canon that do not have torpedoes.
None.
Even the freaking shuttles have (micro-) torpedoes!
Tactical would probably look at it, laugh, and stamp REJECTED on the design proposal with "put at least one torpedo launcher on it" if we even tried!

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You keep insisting "reasonable self-defense weaponry" and yet literally nobody has given me an expected OpFor composition, capability set, and armaments mix to show why this is reasonable. For all I know, your "reasonable self-defense weaponry" might render the ship underarmed because the actual reasonable OpFor expectation is significantly above what you're doing. Presumably tactical is also made out of intelligent people, who are aware there is this thing called "roles," and a ship designed to operate in friendly territory close to friendly bases for scientific purposes doesn't need significant armament. To say nothing about the fact that tactical would probably hate it even more if their hard-charging naval captains are forced to spend tours of duty scanning space rocks.

And sure, there are no Star Trek ships in Alpha Canon that do not have torpedoes - the same Alpha Canon where the Federation is the dominant peer power in its sector, with significant industrial and technological advantages over everyone else, such that they can build exploration vessels that, despite the tradeoffs made to become multirole explorers, can 1v1 dedicated warships of comparable size or mass. @BungieONI mentioned the fact that there isn't any reason to believe current era torpedo launchers are multirole, again because the current era Federation isn't the same as the Picard-era one and may not have invested enough into making those tradeoffs hurt less.

Finally, people keep talking about how we need resources to design and build escorts and that's bad but don't recognize that this sort of resource crunch generally makes specialists more desirable than generalists because you need to marshal resources effectively and that means not wasting industrial capacity on things that exist solely as emotional support.

This is Star Trek. Most every major starship has some phasers, and occasionally torpedoes, because space is dangerous. We don't know exactly what we'll be facing out there, but if we can give the ship a couple weapons for self-defense as it skedaddles out of danger, that's not a bad thing.

I feel like you're overthinking this?

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"Space is dangerous" is not a valid reason for putting emotional support guns on a survey ship. If "this is Star Trek" was enough justification for design decisions, this quest would be over because the ideal option would to be to crib from a Star Trek technical manual every single time.

 

[Mechanis]

And there's also resources to consider. We can only build so many ships, and can crew only so many ships; at this point in time a single role specialist just isn't a thing we really have the fleet size to support.

MJ's point isn't that this is a warship.

Its using the design principle that "if you put weapons on a thing, you need to have in mind what the potential opposition its meant to survive or defeat actually is so that you have a reasonable and effective arrangement of weapons".

I will admit also to some confusion over the argument being used here to justify specifically the torpedo in some cases where it seems to boil down to Star Trek being dangerous, therefore we must have proton torpedoes, else it dies.

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In my case, the argument is more "this is going to be sticking its nose into Star Trek Anomalies, having the ability to shoot a probe-or a few grams of antimatter-at the Negative Space Wedgie of the week is good sense"
And if it winds up in a fight at some point-and this is pre Kirk so that's far more likely than it would be later down the timeline-it has enough to at least make someone pause and perhaps decide it's no easy prey after all.

 

[LunaMoth]

So if they're so fast compared to everything else, why do they need guns to be able to run away again? Do guns somehow make your engines faster?

Like, what is even the expected threat profile of the OpFor you're arming this ship to defeat? I haven't seen a single person tell me what they actually expect to be facing and why this is a reasonable assumption.

Click to shrink...

In the shows one premise that's used a fair bit is this, the crew comes across a derelict vessel and are then plagued themselves by whatever wiped out that ship.

The threats vary but not all are physical.


In one tos episode the crew of a ship that I am assuming to be a survey ship is crystalized by some strange virus.

In another tos episode the crew of a ship called the USS. Defiant (not the protagonist ship) is caught in some sort of Tholian space anomaly that results in insanity, causes the crew to kill each other, and then causes the ship to 'phase' out of reality.

Then theres stuff like this The Naked Now - Wikipedia , which I will just let speak for itself.

Still though nothing wrong with giving this ship a few weapons, Photon torpedo's are a standard armament, but we probably don't need more than like three phasers and one launcher; as these ships will probably encounter more conventional threats occasionally. The ship also needs to be able to shoot out a probe, and the solution that comes up in cannon is duel purpose photon tubes, which is why people are saying add a torpedo launcher.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[MJ12 Commando]

In the shows one premise that's used a fair bit is this, the crew comes across a derelict vessel and are then plagued themselves by whatever wiped out that ship.

The threats vary but not all are physical.


In one tos episode the crew of a ship that I am assuming to be a survey ship is crystalized by some strange virus.

In another tos episode the crew of a ship called the USS. Defiant (not the protagonist ship) is caught in some sort of Tholian space anomaly that results in insanity, causes the crew to kill each other, and then causes the ship to 'phase' out of reality.

Then theres stuff like this The Naked Now - Wikipedia , which I will just let speak for itself.

Still though nothing wrong with giving this ship a few weapons, Photon torpedo's are a standard armament, but we probably don't need more than like three phasers and one launcher; as these ships will probably encounter more conventional threats occasionally.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I didn't know that photon torpedoes could not only cure diseases, but mental illness as well. But I guess if they can, we should put more photon torpedoes on everything.

 

[Cornuthaum]

In the shows one premise that's used a fair bit is this, the crew comes across a derelict vessel and are then plagued themselves by whatever wiped out that ship.

The threats vary but not all are physical.


In one tos episode the crew of a ship that I am assuming to be a survey ship is crystalized by some strange virus.

In another tos episode the crew of a ship called the USS. Defiant (not the protagonist ship) is caught in some sort of Tholian space anomaly that results in insanity, causes the crew to kill each other, and then causes the ship to 'phase' out of reality.

Then theres stuff like this The Naked Now - Wikipedia , which I will just let speak for itself.

Still though nothing wrong with giving this ship a few weapons, Photon torpedo's are a standard armament, but we probably don't need more than like three phasers and one launcher; as these ships will probably encounter more conventional threats occasionally. The ship also needs to be able to shoot out a probe, and the solution that comes up in cannon is duel purpose photon tubes, which is why people are saying add a torpedo launcher.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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photon torpedos are not good for solving pandemics

unless you have a pandemic of romulan warships

 

[StriderInCosmos]

Alright, this is getting out of hand. Perhaps it's time to step away from this argument until the time comes to make a decision on it.

 

[KnightDisciple]

Broadly, from my understanding the Inline Deflector argument is that it keeps our material costs way down, and is rooted in the thought that, while the Inline will cost us space inside the saucer section, that space usage will still be offset, for a net gain, by the choice of Full Saucer. I can definitely see where that thought process is coming from, and it's honestly solid reasoning!

I chose the Blister because my personal perspective/concern, based on the description of the bulk/size of the deflector systems, is that Inline will cost as much, or more, space as what was gained with Full Saucer. Which is to say, that the space advantage over Half-Saucer or Sphere will be essentially negated, or even lost (aka less space than other Primary Hull choices). Meanwhile, the Blister preserves the essence of a smaller, lower-profile ship with an inline or integrated Engineering Hull/Secondary Hull, while ensuring that the greater amount of space inside the Saucer is preserved for Science Labs, Sensors, and so on.

 

[Copperhawk]

[X] Engineering Section (200,000 -> 260,000 Tons, +Internal Space)