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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Mechanis said:
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.


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.
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Okay, I am a little skeptical that shooting a negative space wedgie will do much to one but my main question at that point is if you had to chose between a probe launcher and a warhead launcher which would you prefer and why would you prefer it?
 
I think three or four phasers is a pretty comfortable armament for our emotional support, yeah. A launcher would just be icing on the cake.
 
While i don't want to build a warship, having some point defense is common sense. Warp seven is a big deal and pirates would 100% try to hijack such an engine so they could sell it off, or figure it out so they get the jump on older slower ships which still frequent a large part of Earth's and the federation's sphere. Hell a Warp seven engine and them slapping on some cut rate weapons make it a huge threat to a commerce raider. Thus, our survey ship is going to need some point defense weapons, even if such weapons are last generation jsut to make it so no one gets any funny ideas.

All that being said, we definitely don't need to maximize this ship's armament. Just give it enough to bonk pirates, revolutionaries, saboteurs, etc. with a resounding NO.
 
KnightDisciple said:
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!
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The space cost will also potentially be offset by engineering and design work with nacelles. Its not just the size of the Full Saucer, but also based on the update where it mentions nacelle experimentation is possible to work around the issues of the inline design.
 
Rule 3: Be Civil
MJ12 Commando said:
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.



"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.
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@MJ12 Commando Stop ignoring me you son of a bitch! 2 to 3 phaser banks + 1 torpedo launcher does not an warship make!
 
MJ12 Commando said:
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.



"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.
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Some randomly chosen opfors: Ferengi pirates, Orion pirates (not that there's any not-pirate Orions right now), Naasicaan pirates, ancient automated defense satellites, phaser-resistant rocks, baby Crystalline Lifeforms, assorted other exolife, Klingon warbirds in nebulas that make beam weapons not work or be bad ideas, space-time Anomalies...

Need I go on?

Edit: the point is, your argument basically boils down to "well in ideal conditions..." Which is a Major red flag; you seem to be ignoring basic Starfleet design trends which give everything at least one torpedo launcher, and your basing your assumptions of what's reasonable on a mobile game rather than the actual canon as it obtains, and moreover one set well In the future to this quest and not even given the dubious quasi-canon status STO enjoys, are ignoring the armament of all the Canon ships in this role (which, spoiler alert, is typically greater than even my proposal,) and seem to be totally ignoring that we're arguing for reasonable amounts of gun, which has non-combat utility at that, and treating it like we're trying to make a battleship.

Anyway I am done with this argument because we're clearly going in circles and or not going anywhere, so unless someone wants to talk about nacelle configs I am going to wait for the next vote.
 
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BungieONI said:
The space cost will also potentially be offset by engineering and design work with nacelles. Its not just the size of the Full Saucer, but also based on the update where it mentions nacelle experimentation is possible to work around the issues of the inline design.
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Fair point, and again I do see where the vote choice is coming from. If it wins, no worries.

I'm just explaining why I think the Blister option, at least, is still generally reasonable for the mission profile we're building toward, and the place I'm coming from in voting for it.
 
Mechanis said:
Some randomly chosen opfors: Ferengi pirates, Orion pirates (not that there's any not-pirate Orions right now), Naasicaan pirates, ancient automated defense satellites, phaser-resistant rocks, baby Crystalline Lifeforms, assorted other exolife, Klingon warbirds in nebulas that make beam weapons not work or be bad ideas, space-time Anomalies...

Need I go on?
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Okay, how deeply can they penetrate into federation territory, what sorts of armaments will they be bringing, how realistic is the tactical scenario, and why does arming this ship with this supposedly extremely light and minimalistic armament suddenly inoculate against these threats? Stop dropping names and give me analysis. How often are pirates getting encountered by our current vessels? How well-armed and protected are these pirates? How risk-tolerant are they?

The pro-torpedo clique seems to want to have it both ways - they're simultaneously insisting that a photon torpedo launcher is a trivial investment that is barely above laughable in terms of firepower yet somehow this minimal firepower will be so devastating that it'll suddenly make all these threats less dangerous, while apparently if the ship has no torpedo launcher and relies on, e.g., escorts or (for example) heavily armed dedicated combat shuttles it'll just roll over and instantly die.

Except apparently it can run away from all these threats - but only if it has a missile launcher. If it has escorts then those escorts will just suddenly explode and do nothing, or something.
 
While were talking about probes, apparently in the tng era they can be hollowed out and ridden inside of. Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Emissary (Review) | the m0vie blog
Pictured: K'Ehleyr being a badass.
 
KnightDisciple said:
Fair point, and again I do see where the vote choice is coming from. If it wins, no worries.

I'm just explaining why I think the Blister option, at least, is still generally reasonable for the mission profile we're building toward, and the place I'm coming from in voting for it.
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Given that Blister is probably gonna win my main hope is it doesn't cost the civilian and military side of things too much, since we want a lot of these things swimming around to cover all the space inside Federation borders.
 
BungieONI said:
The space cost will also potentially be offset by engineering and design work with nacelles. Its not just the size of the Full Saucer, but also based on the update where it mentions nacelle experimentation is possible to work around the issues of the inline design.
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Offsetting the Inline deflector space reduction with a inline secondary hull as mentioned in the update is something we can do, yes. However I would like to point out that the same update implies that the more... "unique" nacelle arrangements would come at the cost of that secondary hull, and from what I can tell a good portion of the thread is intending to roll the Yoyodyne dice this design so we can get a more reliable warp system on our subsequent ships.
 
I'm not really sure how nacelle experimentation really 'offsets' losing valuable space for mission modules, personally.

Yes, experimenting with the nacelles and warp system sounds interesting and cool but I'd argue that the better design would be a more traditional setup (i.e. not putting an inline deflector in) because this ship is already our Warp 7 testbed and it's easier to judge how the Warp 7 system performs from a known (or at least comparable) baseline. We can better judge how the new engine functions if it's using the same basic Warp geometry than if we tried some newfangled thing that has a different set of assumptions.

Like, this design has two basic premises in my mind. One, it does lots of Science. Two, it's our technology testbed for the new systems of the era. Cutting out internal space (which is where we put our Science gear) and then creating a whole new warp-geometry profile (which could have unpredictable effects on its warp cruise and sprint speeds aside from any issues with the engine) compromises both premises.
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
Okay, how deeply can they penetrate into federation territory, what sorts of armaments will they be bringing, how realistic is the tactical scenario, and why does arming this ship with this supposedly extremely light and minimalistic armament suddenly inoculate against these threats? Stop dropping names and give me analysis. How often are pirates getting encountered by our current vessels? How well-armed and protected are these pirates? How risk-tolerant are they?

The pro-torpedo clique seems to want to have it both ways - they're simultaneously insisting that a photon torpedo launcher is a trivial investment that is barely above laughable in terms of firepower yet somehow this minimal firepower will be so devastating that it'll suddenly make all these threats less dangerous, while apparently if the ship has no torpedo launcher and relies on, e.g., escorts or (for example) heavily armed dedicated combat shuttles it'll just roll over and instantly die.

Except apparently it can run away from all these threats - but only if it has a missile launcher. If it has escorts then those escorts will just suddenly explode and do nothing, or something.
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You argue in bad faith. 2 to 3 phaser banks + 1 photon launcher do not a warship make.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
I'm not really sure how nacelle experimentation really 'offsets' losing valuable space for mission modules, personally.

Yes, experimenting with the nacelles and warp system sounds interesting and cool but I'd argue that the better design would be a more traditional setup (i.e. not putting an inline deflector in) because this ship is already our Warp 7 testbed and it's easier to judge how the Warp 7 system performs from a known (or at least comparable) baseline. We can better judge how the new engine functions if it's using the same basic Warp geometry than if we tried some newfangled thing that has a different set of assumptions.
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I think it depends on where and how the nacelles get installed, 'cause we know they can also take up internal space like during the design process for the Skate.
 
An explorer pushes out the frontier, the science ship looks in-depth at the interesting write-ups they left behind, the science ship does not have to expect to go out and face the crystalline entity or the dread might of Ferengar. We have other ships to handle interception work, let the science ship do science.

Of course, of a more pressing point, this isn't even the vote for the tactical package to employ on the ship, so why are people talking about how the ship should be ready to be seconded out to the line of battle?
 
7th Hex said:
Offsetting the Inline deflector space reduction with a inline secondary hull as mentioned in the update is something we can do, yes. However I would like to point out that the same update implies that the more... "unique" nacelle arrangements would come at the cost of that secondary hull, and from what I can tell a good portion of the thread is intending to roll the Yoyodyne dice this design so we can get a more reliable warp system on our subsequent ships.
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I read this quote below:
Sayle said:
The deflector itself is the next step, and unlike the Skate there's no way you'll manage to install a smaller variant. The question here is where to put it. The first option is to put it in the front of the saucer section, allowing you to install an inline secondary hull - or even no secondary hull at all, depending on how experimental you feel with the nacelle layout.
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As saying the inline secondary hull would take up internal space and be the cause of that minus, rather than offsetting it.
 
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LazyLayabout said:
You argue in bad faith. 2 to 3 phaser banks + 1 photon launcher do not a warship make.
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This is an excellent example of exactly what I said about having it both ways - you want to claim that the armament you want to give the ship is absolutely token when people talk about its cost, but then when it comes time to talk about the benefit you're acting like it'll be able to beat off so many things that not having these weapons is literally suicidal.

Your argument is inherently self-contradictory and incoherent.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
I'm not really sure how nacelle experimentation really 'offsets' losing valuable space for mission modules, personally.

Yes, experimenting with the nacelles and warp system sounds interesting and cool but I'd argue that the better design would be a more traditional setup (i.e. not putting an inline deflector in) because this ship is already our Warp 7 testbed and it's easier to judge how the Warp 7 system performs from a known (or at least comparable) baseline. We can better judge how the new engine functions if it's using the same basic Warp geometry than if we tried some newfangled thing that has a different set of assumptions.
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The more experimental nacelles wouldn't offset the use of the internal space, which was my point. The less experimental ones would allow us to mount an inline secondary hull, which would implicitly increase the amount of internal space we have. I just think a lot of people are going to be interested in pushing the more experimental nacelles this design so we can have good reliable ones in the future, I certainly am.

Sayle said:
The first option is to put it in the front of the saucer section, allowing you to install an inline secondary hull - or even no secondary hull at all, depending on how experimental you feel with the nacelle layout.
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BungieONI said:
I read this quote below:

As saying the inline secondary hull would take up internal space and be the cause of that minus, rather than offsetting it.
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I don't think the inline secondary hull is going to reduce internal space, to do that it'd have to be something like overlapping or removing part of the saucer, and at that point I think it would be more likely they just don't have a secondary hull and attach the nacelles to the saucer directly. I think the inline secondary hull is going to be something like what we would have gotten with the Sphere hull, or how things worked out with the Thunderchild, and be a strip extending straight back from the rear of the saucer.
 
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