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Starfleet Design Bureau

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Duzzit said:
I mean, as an idea (in that this is a fanon thing for us to design alternative/funky vessels), pushing for some specialised ships isn't that out there. The problem is more to do with the messenger.
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Fair. Limited-role ships are indeed not inherently bad or undesirable (certainly we made two such with the Curiosity and Cygnus, albeit not single-role), I just take issue with bedpotato's implication of "multirole ships are bad."

Helher said:
Well that Lore has been repudiated with the vulcan ship we see in Lower Decks as that has a Coleoptric Warp drive as well as the Unnamed Future Vulcan ship daniels shows which shows three Coleoptric drives being used to mitigate the manueverability issues.

Edit: Albeit the Sh'vhal uses a Hybrid System where they have both a warp ring and nacelles mounted to the sides of the ring
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Coleoptric drives presumably have some sort of tradeoff that the Vulcans consider a sufficiently valuable function that it's worth the lower viability of high warp, at least in limited production. For example, perhaps higher stability in their subspace fields, or less strain on the warp coils.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
Fair. Limited-role ships are indeed not inherently bad or undesirable (certainly we made two such with the Curiosity and Cygnus, albeit not single-role), I just take issue with bedpotato's implication of "multirole ships are bad."


Coleoptric drives presumably have some sort of tradeoff that the Vulcans consider a sufficiently valuable function that it's worth the lower viability of high warp, at least in limited production. For example, perhaps higher stability in their subspace fields, or less strain on the warp coils.
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Or you can just get away with a single ring nacelle to get performance roughly in line with two linear warp nacelles. I could imagine coleoptric nacelles being something like 1.5 times as expensive as linear nacelles, but one single coleoptric nacelle giving you +0/-.4 to your warp cruise/sprint and double coleoptric giving you +.4/+0.

It would be a cost effective ship that can't sprint well (single coleoptric nacelle) or a fast cruising ship that is expensive (double coleoptric nacelle).

The idea is that you have a divergence in design philosophy where some cultures develop warp by adding more warp nacelles and stick with linear nacelles. Some instead focus on getting as much performance as possible out of each nacelle and instead move towards single coleoptric nacelle ships as their next step beyond single linear nacelles.
 
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An additional disadvantage for coleoptric warp drives is that it is difficult to integrate them into Saucer based designs with it being limited to either tube/needle and arrowlike hulls which probably scared off the Earth dominated Design groups from trying it more
 
Helher said:
An additional disadvantage for coleoptric warp drives is that it is difficult to integrate them into Saucer based designs with it being limited to either tube/needle and arrowlike hulls which probably scared off the Earth dominated Design groups from trying it more
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Yeah from looking at the Vulcan designs this seem to favour arrow shapes that fit in the field generated by the nacelle. Probably structurally better because it results in quite compact designs but you lose a lot of the openings for utility, engine and torpedo launchers of saucers and secondary hull combos.

It's probably better if you're going for streamlined designs but worse for our multirole and capital ship focus.
 
Helher said:
An additional disadvantage for coleoptric warp drives is that it is difficult to integrate them into Saucer based designs with it being limited to either tube/needle and arrowlike hulls which probably scared off the Earth dominated Design groups from trying it more
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Maybe. I wonder if you could have a ring off the back of a secondary hull with an elongated saucer section extending forward from it.
 
KarmaA said:
I'm imagining a flattened teardrop with the tip at the back surrounded by a ring. It made me think of a nerf vortex football for some reason.
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I wonder if you could do an oblong ring. I could imagine a narrow long saucer no secondary hull at all, instead the thickest point of the saucer is wrapped with an offset oblong ring nacelle. In essence a vertically flattened football passing through a ring.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
I wonder if you could do an oblong ring. I could imagine a narrow long saucer no secondary hull at all, instead the thickest point of the saucer is wrapped with an offset oblong ring nacelle. In essence a vertically flattened football passing through a ring.
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At that point it just feels like keeping the saucer shape more for brand affinity reasons and at the cost of practicality, so you might as well just return to an ovoid and get more usable internal space back.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
At that point it just feels like keeping the saucer shape more for brand affinity reasons and at the cost of practicality, so you might as well just return to an ovoid and get more usable internal space back.
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The flattened shape gives a lot more surface to work on for weapon hardpoints though so it kinda makes sense to be attached to it. This will become even more relevant with phaser strips later.
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
At that point it just feels like keeping the saucer shape more for brand affinity reasons and at the cost of practicality, so you might as well just return to an ovoid and get more usable internal space back.
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Yes, but maybe internal space is not the goal. If what you want is to maximize external surface area then it would have virtually zero blind spots for it's phasors and a very simply feed from it's centralized (and thus protected) engineering section to it's torpedo bays. It could be the essence of "Engines+Guns+Warp drive" small combat ship. If a single ring nacelle IS a cost savings over 2 linear nacelles you could end up with something cheap that can cruise fast enough to be militarily useful even if it couldn't sprint well.

Also a single small saucer with no subhulls and one single warp nacelle's worth of mass with two thrusters sticking off the back would be agile as hell. Stick 2-4 phasors and 2 torpedo bays in the front and it would make an interesting Skate replacement.

I imagine with the mass so centralized you could thrust forward with one thruster and back with the other and do tank turns in a space ship.
 
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Fouredged Sword said:
Yes, but maybe internal space is not the goal. If what you want is to maximize external surface area then it would have virtually zero blind spots for it's phasors and a very simply feed from it's centralized (and thus protected) engineering section to it's torpedo bays. It could be the essence of "Engines+Guns+Warp drive" small combat ship. If a single ring nacelle IS a cost savings over 2 linear nacelles you could end up with something cheap that can cruise fast enough to be militarily useful even if it couldn't sprint well.

Also a single small saucer with no subhulls and one single warp nacelle's worth of mass with two thrusters sticking off the back would be agile as hell. Stick 2-4 phasors and 2 torpedo bays in the front and 1 phasors in the back to cover it's rear and it would make an interesting Skate replacement.
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I think one issue could be that the round nacelle obscures a lot of the possible positions for lateral engines that would grant you manoeuvrability rather than just forward speed if you put them in the center.
 
Yep, if your phaser array runs from ahead of the ring to behind the ring it should eliminate most of the coverage gap.

Edit: Ninja'd. Having your pylons also hold impulse engines might do the trick (where pylons are used to support the ring instead of having the ring directly connected to the primary hull)
 
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random_npc said:
Ok, I just had a weird idea. Given the abundance of multirole ships, building a small dedicated warship might actually in effect mean we have more multirole ships. It only does murder, but by doing the jobs where that's the only needed skill, like garision duty or maybe convoy escorts, the more expensive ships that can do other things can be freed up. A multirole ship guarding sol is wasting a lot of it's capabilities, a dedicated murder machine is not. Plus, if it's built in such a way that the design, if not the ships themselves can be easily kept up to date it would also mean in the event of a war there is moderately up to date dedicated warship design that can be built en mass. Ideally it would almost never by the only ship class in a system, since having a swiss army knife on hand is useful, but instead of having 3 swiss army knifes this would let you have 1 swiss army knife and 2 k-bars.

Essentially the skate V2.
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Counterargument: rotating ships between duty stations has advantages. Use Home Fleet as a repair, recovery, and training berth that ships stay at for a bit before getting rotated out to other duties. It keeps the crews sharp and well rounded while also giving them a chance for shore leave at home.

Such a system doesn't really favor murder ships, but does play well with Star Fleet's multirole ships.
 
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I think it might look a little better with an inline hull and the ring mounted on that, but otherwise, it's an interesting idea.
 
StriderInCosmos said:
I think it might look a little better with an inline hull and the ring mounted on that, but otherwise, it's an interesting idea.
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Yeah. I think there's a technobabble reason why the nacelles are behind the hull in our designs rather than on its sides that should probably apply to rings too, so attaching it to an inline secondary hull makes sense.
 
Nyvis said:
Yeah. I think there's a technobabble reason why the nacelles are behind the hull in our designs rather than on its sides that should probably apply to rings too, so attaching it to an inline secondary hull makes sense.
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I think that probably goes back to the original Roddenberry design reasoning, the implication that the nacelles were in some way hazardous to the crew and needed to be kept far away from the places with people in them i.e. the hull - the obvious conclusion is to then displace the nacelles in some vector, and there seems to be a natural Doylist inclination to put the 'engine' at the back that's probably related to thinking of these as ships in space analogous to watercraft (and people seem to prefer 'long' vehicle designs over 'wide' or 'tall' ones).
 
StriderInCosmos said:
Which is a right shame, as sci-fi really does offer up the chance to play around with what a 'ship' looks like. Our wide and tall fellows need some more representation in fiction, methinks.
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Long and tapered makes sense if you want to put as many forward facing weapons as you can on a shape and weapons need a certain physical gap between them. More boxy or round shapes are more useful for maximizing internal volume.
 
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