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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Strunkriidiisk said:
The explorer is the generalist, this is a specialist design. Arguably it's even more specialist than the utility cruiser which is intended for border patrol AND priority cargo AND emergency response, since this project's stated goal is only to go around cataloging weird shit. Anything else we can fit in is secondary.
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I was talking within the context of being told our second build will be the utility cruiser, which pushes the generalist explorer even further away.

I think the healthiest thing is to portion out secondary roles to our ships according to what synergizes better. The utility cruiser will have cargo and more tactical power than this, but I think planning for less military emergencies on this hull makes sense. It's already going to be out there in the outer reaches of our space cataloguing weird shit so responding to more weird shit hitting our dudes seems complementary. The utility cruiser will already have to pack for multiple roles, I think taking something like medical away from it and on this hull will make it much easier to design it.
 
Fundamentally it makes sense to give a bit of capability to respond to emergencies to all Federation starships due to how big space is, and the high liklihood that when a ship gets a distress call, it will be the only one able to respond in a timely fashion. Even in the TNG era, it can still take a considerable amount of time just to get somewhere even within the Federation's borders, and that's doubly true now when cruising speeds are much lower. As a setting, Star Trek's DNA very much derives from the age of sail and subsequent exploration after the Napoleonic Wars, with ships like the HMS Beagle or the modern HMS Endurance being arguably the closest analogues we've had IRL to a Federation starship.

If some colony somewhere is getting shaken down, it's not a bad idea for your survey ship to also be able to chase them off. Plus in a war, a survey ship's highly powerful sensors will make it a natural fleet scout. Intrepid and Nova class ships were used the same way during the Dominion War, and even the Oberth seems to have been intended to pull double duty as a scout. Which is not a role I'd envy with Klingon Birds-of-Prey flying around, frankly, but there you go.

MJ12 Commando said:
[X] Parallel Configuration (+0.2 Cruise/Maximum) (Prototype) [1 Success Check]

The reason I want the parallel configuration is because in the future, a system which provides a noticeable increase to both sustained and emergency speeds without a significant mass premium will be a generally useful tool for a wide variety of craft of all sorts, from warships to explorers to... just about everything else.

Vertical configuration is interesting because it's super-lightweight and could be useful for light patrol craft or small warships, which would presumably have a naturally fairly high maneuverability already and suffer less from the lack of boost to sprint speeds, and it might also be useful if we want to make big ships with underpowered engines that still achieve okay transit speeds, but it might be a bridge too far, especially if more prototype equipment is put on this craft. If there's a chance to design a freighter or other cargo vessel, the big increase to sustained speed might be worth it if it means that you can use cheaper and underpowered warp engines for their size and still achieve adequate interstellar speeds.
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A parallel configuration will certainly look cool, especially as the ship does not have a full secondary hull, kind of giving the class a "flattened" appearance.
 
Yeah, I'm picturing the nacelles tucked right beside the secondary hull. Something like if the Phoenix was blocky and shorter then blended into the back of the saucer. From the front this should look weird, from the side I think it'll look sleek. Low profile kind of like what an S31 ship could have been (before we'd seen any of them).

On an LCARS I think they'd have the nacelle floating above or below like voyager did so it didn't obscure the contents of the secondary hull.
 
[X] Parallel Configuration (+0.2 Cruise/Maximum) (Prototype) [1 Success Check]

Seems like the good choice. Low risk, still improves both categories.
 
[X] Parallel Configuration (+0.2 Cruise/Maximum) (Prototype) [1 Success Check]

Advances the state of the art, gives a shuttle, and is a useful configuration for future ships.

As for secondary systems, depending on the number of slots and the existing science score, I would give the ship a medbay. In the last quest medbays allowed the ships that had them to handle biohazards, which I think would be useful for a survey ship, as well as giving a bit of extra utility. Otherwise I am on team all labs/science.
 
[X] Parallel Configuration (+0.2 Cruise/Maximum) (Prototype) [1 Success Check]

I think given how the blurb on tech advancement indicates we need to test new tech, we want to be almost always picking one prototype option to advance the state of the art.
 
Jack Stargazer said:
I think given how the blurb on tech advancement indicates we need to test new tech, we want to be almost always picking one prototype option to advance the state of the art.
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Because when we rolled for an experimental tech before, we got half results like 'the nacelles worked pretty well' and 'the layout reduced overall warp and sprint speeds by X%'.
 
0t4n1z3r019 said:
Because when we rolled for an experimental tech before, we got half results like 'the nacelles worked pretty well' and 'the layout reduced overall warp and sprint speeds by X%'.
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Yes, but as years went on those faults generally got ironed out. We saw improvement post design as the problems got fixed. Those improvements carried forward into future designs. If we don't push boundaries we won't see incremental improvement.

Peacetime, when there isn't an urgent need to turn out ships that perform exactly to spec, is the best time to push the envelope. We can afford survey ships that are slightly worse for a few years while things get sorted.
 
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Skippy said:
Fundamentally it makes sense to give a bit of capability to respond to emergencies to all Federation starships due to how big space is, and the high liklihood that when a ship gets a distress call, it will be the only one able to respond in a timely fashion. Even in the TNG era, it can still take a considerable amount of time just to get somewhere even within the Federation's borders, and that's doubly true now when cruising speeds are much lower. As a setting, Star Trek's DNA very much derives from the age of sail and subsequent exploration after the Napoleonic Wars, with ships like the HMS Beagle or the modern HMS Endurance being arguably the closest analogues we've had IRL to a Federation starship.

If some colony somewhere is getting shaken down, it's not a bad idea for your survey ship to also be able to chase them off. Plus in a war, a survey ship's highly powerful sensors will make it a natural fleet scout. Intrepid and Nova class ships were used the same way during the Dominion War, and even the Oberth seems to have been intended to pull double duty as a scout. Which is not a role I'd envy with Klingon Birds-of-Prey flying around, frankly, but there you go.
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This is one of the reasons I have been pitching a four phaser+1 torpedo tube design, with the former on the saucer's midline and mirrored vertically. That gives it an energy weapon that can fire into each arc and (assuming the nacelles are indeed parallel to the saucer) allows all four be fired directly fore and aft, with the torpedo for torpedo things. I'd expect that to trade pretty favorably with B'rels or equivalents (the Romulan T'liss comes to mind given we literally just finished the Romulan War), shouldn't overly impact on the amount of Science Toys it carries, and most importantly, lets us stick all the difficult prototype/experimental weapons tech on a platform which isn't going to be as impacted by potential shortcomings in Tactical, because Tactical is a secondary or even tertiary priority.
My preference for things when taking risky prototypes is to use proven tech or the iterative Prototype/1 check stuff for core mission systems, then test riskier things for add-on capabilities in order to have them ready for the next ship.
But yeah, a lot of my personal design paradigm is very much keeping in mind that a lot of the time there's really only one or two ships actually in range to respond to any kind of emergency in time to actually do anything about it, other than clean up after (or, sometimes, poke through the ruins trying to figure out what the heck even happened), so every ship should be as versatile as can be reasonably managed without overly compromising its core competencies. For this ship, my personal priority (past already mentioned "reasonable Tactical score for role") goes Science, Science, Engineering/Medbay with a slight emphasis on the latter, then any other nice to haves. You might note that every design I've pitched seriously has assumed a lab with a dedicated computer core.
 
I think one torpedo launcher (doubling as a probe delivery system, honestly Federation Council, this is entirely scientific we swear), and a basic phase cannon armament is fine, yeah. Essentially if it's armed about as well as a Stingray, then its options expand beyond "Nothing" and "Explode Heroically" if it gets a distress call from a colony or ship menaced by pirates, which realistically is going to happen semi-frequently.

@Sayle, the NX and and Stingray classes are presumably due to retire soon, and the surviving examples of the class should have at least forty two phase cannons by my estimation. As we're still pumping out Skates for defence, could we pull the phase cannons off of NX and Stingray-class ships as they're decommissioned and use them to outfit these vessels? That would let us outfit up to ten ships if they're getting four guns apiece.

Given this is not a frontline combatant and cost savings are important, this seems like a potentially good compromise here.
 
Skippy said:
I think one torpedo launcher (doubling as a probe delivery system, honestly Federation Council, this is entirely scientific we swear), and a basic phase cannon armament is fine, yeah. Essentially if it's armed about as well as a Stingray, then its options expand beyond "Nothing" and "Explode Heroically" if it gets a distress call from a colony or ship menaced by pirates, which realistically is going to happen semi-frequently.

@Sayle, the NX and and Stingray classes are presumably due to retire soon, and the surviving examples of the class should have at least forty two phase cannons by my estimation. As we're still pumping out Skates for defence, could we pull the phase cannons off of NX and Stingray-class ships as they're decommissioned and use them to outfit these vessels? That would let us outfit up to ten ships if they're getting four guns apiece.

Given this is not a frontline combatant and cost savings are important, this seems like a potentially good compromise here.
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Except we don't want to do that, we want to put our newfangled Experimental Phasers on it to iron out the kinks before we put them on the much more expensive utility cruser or much more prestigious Explorer.
 
With phaser banks, at least, we could even see not putting as many as four on, especially if they're going to be an increase in power compared to standard pulsed phase cannons. I could see three, or even two, phaser banks doing this vessel just fine.
 
Mechanis said:
Except we don't want to do that, we want to put our newfangled Experimental Phasers on it to iron out the kinks before we put them on the much more expensive utility cruser or much more prestigious Explorer.
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I think that working out the kinks would require a prototyping roll on a new version of the system, and that seems like quite a lot of investment in armaments for a ship whose mission profile has it fighting only in emergencies. If we feel that we need it to be better-able to defend itself than using older guns would allow, or Sayle vetoes the idea (which is quite likely) then I think we should just use the basic phaser banks we currently have access to.
 
Part of the reasoning behind putting the phaser banks on this ship was making sure we didn't have to risk a prototype roll on a ship design that would depend on having stronger weapons. If the roll fails here, it's not as big of a deal, and more likely than not, their kinks are worked out by the time we get to the next design.
 
StriderInCosmos said:
With phaser banks, at least, we could even see not putting as many as four on, especially if they're going to be an increase in power compared to standard pulsed phase cannons. I could see three, or even two, phaser banks doing this vessel just fine.
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The calculus for four energy mounts is more about arc coverage than firepower unfortunately, with the surprising firepower being a happy side effect of the ship's overall geometry vs optimum placement for maximum per mount fire arc.

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StriderInCosmos said:
Part of the reasoning behind putting the phaser banks on this ship was making sure we didn't have to risk a prototype roll on a ship design that would depend on having stronger weapons. If the roll fails here, it's not as big of a deal, and more likely than not, their kinks are worked out by the time we get to the next design.
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Also this. We want to test risky prototypes on platforms where the prototype not living up to the hype isn't going to massively impact its core competencies. If the phasers and or new torpedoes don't work out on the Brahe, well oh darn; at worst they'll drop to Prototype tech if not standard tech for the next ship, with Real Life showing what the flaws are in practice.
 
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Slightly silly thing on most startrek ships: the bridge being on the top. They don't have windows in the thing Anyway and it occupies precisely the point where the primary dorsal phaser mount Should be. (Maximum firing arc).
At least the thing getting in the way on the ventral side is something that needs to be there (to my understanding).
 
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Chargone said:
Slightly silly thing on most startrek ships: the bridge being on the top. They don't have windows in the thing Anyway and it occupies precisely the point where the primary dorsal phaser mount Should be. (Maximum firing arc).
At least the thing getting in the way on the ventral side is something that needs to be there (to my understanding).
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Yes, but they are riding on a giant anti-matter bomb who's ejection system has been known to fail. The ability to get at a moment's notice is critical. The entire bridge of various starships has been shown to be a break away escape craft and therefore it makes sense to position such a craft on the exterior of the ship.
 
Add to that, there are plenty of ships that do, in fact, put an energy mouth there.
 
StriderInCosmos said:
Part of the reasoning behind putting the phaser banks on this ship was making sure we didn't have to risk a prototype roll on a ship design that would depend on having stronger weapons. If the roll fails here, it's not as big of a deal, and more likely than not, their kinks are worked out by the time we get to the next design.
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My assumption was that the systems listed in the "Birth of the Federation" update reflect what we currently have access to, and don't require prototyping rolls. This seems supported by the fact that in the case of the shields and phasers, it mentions that there are still probable improvements and adjustments to make as Starfleet gets to grip with the technology. That makes me think that we'll be offered prototyping rolls to develop the Type-2 phaser and shields and so on, rather than needing one to get access to the Type-1 systems.

It might be worth checking this in case I've misread, although it should become obvious when we move onto the Tactical part of the design. Personally, I think that trying to push beyond the current state of the art in phasers does not make a lot of sense for this ship, but stronger shielding might? A science vessel does often need to get close to interstellar anomalies, after all, and stronger shields can be useful there.
 
Skippy said:
My assumption was that the systems listed in the "Birth of the Federation" update reflect what we currently have access to, and don't require prototyping rolls. This seems supported by the fact that in the case of the shields and phasers, it mentions that there are still probable improvements and adjustments to make as Starfleet gets to grip with the technology. That makes me think that we'll be offered prototyping rolls to develop the Type-2 phaser and shields and so on, rather than needing one for these systems.

It might be worth checking this in case I've misread, although it should become obvious when we move onto the Tactical part of the design. Personally, I think that trying to push beyond the current state of the art in phasers does not make a lot of sense for this ship, but stronger shielding might? A science vessel does often need to get close to interstellar anomalies, after all, and stronger shields can be useful there.
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I think we should go for both. We are going to do a workhorse next and having both those ironed out will make the workhorse a LOT easier to design.
 
Frankly put the only reason I didn't go for the vertical nacelle design is because that would make it harder to cram shuttles into the thing and still have room for much else past a lab and all the other bibs and bobs the ship will need. Other than the Science Toys I'm inclined to push the envelope as far as possible; shoot for Jupiter but settle for Mars or even just the Moon if that turns out to be unmanageable.

We're the Federation. We should dream big!
 
When it's not Yoyodyne I'm more open to risk somehow.

The example that sprang to mind (when reading only threadmarks to catch up) was when they sold the thread on shorter chonky nacelles that then (IIRC) didn't work out as planned and then shortly after tried to convince the team that the new longer elegance was the correct paradigm worth prototype money.
 
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