Quad cruise is better, but not great. Same sprint as dual-cruise, an extra 15.6c cruise velocity, works out to about 7.8% faster emergency response time with the all the same assumptions, which is still a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad trade for having fewer science labs and diplomatic teams and survey scans and powerful fighting ships the rest of the time.
That is 46 days and 9 hours to cross a sector of space (25ly - or 37d and 2h to get to Vulcan from earth), and 30 days and 15 hours to cross a sector of space at maximal cruise (or 24d and 12.5h to get to Vulcan from earth). About the only correct values are the 12 hour sprint.
Vulcan is only about 16 LY from Earth, iirc. Tellar Prime and Andoria are 11.something and 11 flat?
And yeah, I was assuming efficient cruise when max cruise would probably have made more sense for the emergency response time calculations. Fucked if I'm doing all that math again, though, especially when it wouldn't change the outcome at all because they have the same cruising speeds.
Well. Since we aren't going to be able to change the vote winners...
I'm going to huff some copium then!
We generally get told about the mostly obvious effects - like cost - but not the less obvious effects.
For example, we got told the mass of the secondary hull, and it's phaser/aux slots, but not that all that mass would slow warp speeds.
It could go the other way too! There might be some advantage to the quad set up, that we just don't know about because it's not a primary numbers-get-big effect! Original time line might not have considered it important enough to embrace in all ships due to cost, but they did build some!
Perhaps it does less damage to the fabric of space at high warp speeds, or can run on three in an emergency while repairs take place. Perhaps we can extend our warp field around other close ships and escort them at our speeds! Is 4 nacelles the warp equivalent of having high torque but the same top speed? Warp in situations that other ships can't! Perhaps the admittedly cool looks give a diplomacy bonus!
There people decided to math things, I figured I could at least make a very rough guess on what reliability gains a quad might give compared to a dual.
Though it's going to be very rough as there isn't any real data on how many starship are lost because of a nacelle being destroyed. So for now I'll make a guess that say 1 in 10 ships are lost due to nacelle damage. Now obviously that loss could happen anywhere in their lifespan, so we'll average and say that half the useful lifespan is lost that way just so we have something to work with. In which case the quad nacelle setup lets such ships get in 5% more work in total, in particular surviving some more dangerous encounters then they would otherwise which might have some value in and of itself.
So while this does seem to offset the costs some what, it doesn't seem to be the most economical choice on that basis alone. Something that wouldn't change unless loss rates due to nacelles started trending towards 40%, which seems unrealistically high.
Now of course if an all cruise setup had been chosen, top cruise speed might have been some 10% higher as well, and that might have made the trade off a bit better economics wise. As then you'd have 10% less travel time, and that much more time of science on location. Which might have brought it some what close to economic.
In the current setup, I guess the ship instead focuses to be a bit inbetween a military craft and an explorer. With higher sprint speeds allowing faster craft to be intercepted then one could otherwise and the quad setup allowing for an increased chance after battles to allow the craft to get home still. But it does come some what at the cost of the efficiency on the explorer side of things. If this is a reasonable trade off, I do not know, maybe in certain cases. But I can kind of see with these kind of costs why many a Starfleet Craft tended to end up with just two nacelles. It'll in many a case perhaps just be good enough, rather then betting on the gains from say a quad ending up being enough extra gain.
Though I guess some less people ending up dead might be considered worth something to Starfleet as well?
You spend some time weighing up the advantages and disadvantages, eventually deciding on the quad nacelles. But this presents a problem for the nacelle struts, which are always a source of nervousness when they start to get too long. Angling them from the secondary hull up to the midpoint between the twin nacelle mounts represents a worrisome flex problem in the event of high-kinetic weather like particle storms or upper-atmosphere operations. Ideally the Copernicus would never encounter those scenarios, but starships do, and that's the kind of scenario you can imagine. You have to proof against what you can't imagine if at all possible.
Eventually a compromise is reached. Adding a warp field regulator between the two nacelle pairs will help even out the subspace bubble and stabilise any anomalies or differences in power flow. At the same time you can take advantage of the elevated assembly above the engineering hull to run straight and reinforced nacelle mounts. As an added bonus, you might be able to fit an aft launcher in with the regulator, too. At this point the ship weighs nearly four hundred and fifty thousand tons, and while she is theoretically capable of warp speeds that's only half the equation. She needs sublight engines.
To reach the minimum thrust and acceleration factors required, you'll need a minimum of three Type-1 engines. Given that you can only mount a maximum of three engines, that's somewhat alarming. While this would be sufficient, you are aware of new impulse engines designs that promise higher efficiencies and thrust than current designs. You are able to get in touch with the main designers at Avidyne, who caution that the assembly is yet untested. Nonetheless, the Type-2 should have a 50% increase in thrust over the Type-1, albeit at greater expense. That could give the Copernicus some much-needed manoeuvrability, although she'll never be able to dance. But then again, does she need to be particularly agile when you will be able to mount enough phasers to cover every firing arc? Maybe sticking to the safe option would be better.
I'm not even going to try to predict whether the thread will ultimately vote for secondary computer cores or whatnot, but from the things that we know and/or can reasonably assume, 8000 Federation Credits will buy you five 1600-credit dual-nacelle or four 2000-credit quad-nacelle explorers.
For a given industrial and economic capacity devoted to the explorer program, we're gonna end up with about 4/5ths of the number of quads as we would duals.
Maybe a bit higher as a fraction, but a bit lower in actual quantity, if we go really ham spending on antimatter pods and computer cores and whatever else shows up, as that would reduce the proportional difference between their costs while, you know. Getting us fewer of them in general.
Also, maybe a bit lower as a fraction, if the prototype rolls go anything other than perfectly and the class is seen as an overcost overlarge overambitious wunderwaffen and gets a negative or even just mixed reception from the authorities, leading them to devote less resources to its production because they feel they're clearly not getting as much out of them as they hoped they would.
The Stingray-class refit cost 12 military Industrial Capacity to build.
The NX-class explorer cost 35 military Industrial Capacity to build.
The Cygnus-class utility cruiser, our current-gen workhorse design costs almost 23 military Industrial capacity.
Thats almost 2x the industrial capacity cost of the Stingray-class refit, and two thirds the industrial capacity cost of the NX-class explorer design.
For reference, we only had a planned NX-class run of the prototype and 3 new ships over 5 years.
If we can afford to mass produce Cygnus-class cruisers that cost almost twice the military industry that a Stingray refit used to cost, and planning to do so in Stingray numbers or greater? I think its safe to assume that you are making industrial base arguments that apparently have no relevance to the capacities of the post-Romulan War Federation.
PS
Just for curiosity, the Thunderchild-class cost 70 military Industrial Capacity. 2x the military IC cost of the NX-class.
And we built 3 of them.
Anyway, I'm uncertain if I want to try our luck with another Experimental right now. We got lucky with the hull material, but there's a lot of ways for this to go wrong--even if getting it right would be a tremendous boon in the future.
I do hope the quad nacelle setup works though, this is a very cool profile we're putting together, and I don't want it to be useless.
Naturally we're gonna have to go with the Type 2 thrusters. She's not just gonna be cursing about from point to point at warp after all. Even if they don't pan out for this class the great advantages they'll bring for all future ones is simply too much to overlook.
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The design looks wonderful, though imo the nacelles look a bit stubby for her proportions. But I'm sure it'll grow on me.
There's no way this thing gets produced in large numbers given how heavily the cost is ballooning. Expensive nacelles, expensive engines, more phasers to cover everything…we couldn't make a more expensive ship even if we tried.
The war mobilization against the Romulans is over, and we shouldn't assume the same industrial output. That's not to say this is a bad design, but it's incredibly expensive and experimental- there's no getting around that.
There's no way this thing gets produced in large numbers given how heavily the cost is ballooning. Expensive nacelles, expensive engines, more phasers to cover everything…we couldn't make a more expensive ship even if we tried.
The war mobilization against the Romulans is over, and we shouldn't assume the same industrial output. That's not to say this is a bad design, but it's incredibly expensive and experimental- there's no getting around that.
If we can afford to mass produce Cygnus-class cruisers that cost almost twice the military industry that a Stingray refit used to cost, and planning to do so in Stingray numbers or greater? I think its safe to assume that you are making industrial base arguments that apparently have no relevance to the capacities of the post-Romulan War Federation.
Assuming they're strictly double the cost of the Cygnus then in a decade we should be able to commission 7 of them. Enough for a 1:1 replacement of both the NX-class and the Thunderchild-class as built.
The war mobilization against the Romulans is over, and we shouldn't assume the same industrial output. That's not to say this is a bad design, but it's incredibly expensive and experimental- there's no getting around that.
And at the same time, we now have the resources of the Federation to pull from instead of just the output of a single planet like we had during the Earth-Romulan war.
That doesn't mean cost is no object, the Thunderchild was deliberately left slower for instance to save on costs and because it was a fleet combatant. Throw strawman in the fire all you want, but that doesn't change the fact this is a ship that has ignored any and all budgetary concerns so far. It's fitting for ship architects to do so, but expecting that not to impact the amount of hulls produced is past optimism and into naivety.
From a Doylist perspective alone, this would be a less interesting quest mechanically if there was 0 trade off for going maximum expenditure all the time because suddenly there's false choices.
This objectively an expensive ship, even by the context of other possible Explorer designs we could have gone with- there's no point arguing or pretending otherwise.
And at the same time, we now have the resources of the Federation to pull from instead of just the output of a single planet like we had during the Earth-Romulan war.
Most of whom are still building their own ships at this point. We're undoubtedly wealthier now, but assuming we have the full potential of the Federation at our fingertips already is probably premature
Sayle said at the beginning of the thread that technology does not advance unless we take prototype designs, so we will have to vote for this eventually. Even if this was not the case I would still vote for this, because the ABSOLUTE lowest I would ever want to send a ship out is medium-low.
More importantly, unless the following technology is considered vital (ie, Warp Technology, Shields, or Hull), no further advancements will be made in that technology until the prototype has been tested. Science is an iterative process. While simply using it on a testbed may suffice to unlock the 'next step' after a few years, having a new component fitting across a number of commissioned starships and accumulating many years of use may accelerate further developments in that technological sphere.
And with any luck, this class of ships will be bringing many more members into the fold, and scouting out space and new worlds for those existing members to colonise. It could be that by the time the final ship flies out of the docks the Federation will have doubled in size.
I assure you I went through several much more hideous designs before surrendering to the least-bad option. And that's just the struts, not even the nacelle placement.
