- Location
- Somewhere in the Ashes
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- She/Her
That's just a Klingon Bird of Prey.
Linked contents
- Location
- USA
Probably drew inspiration from them. I mean, the Mirror Universe does seem to have a lack of imagination.
Trent01
A Fountain of Quest Ideas
Variant: Confederation of Earth- Project Daedelus
[NEGAVERSE] The current impulse thrusters are too bulky and space-inefficient. (Reaction Thruster -> Type 1 Thruster Prototype)
[NEGAVERSE] Focus on a small ship for short-range interception and basic patrol duty. Will require more polarisation relays.
[NEGAVERSE] Arrowhead Hull
[NEGAVERSE] Dorsal-Hugging Nacelles (+0.2 Warp Cruise Factor)
[NEGAVERSE] Midline Type-1 Impulse Thruster
-[NEGAVERSE] Small Cargo Bay
[NEGAVERSE] Six Particle Cannons (Five Ships over 5 Years)
[NEGAVERSE] CSS Watchman
REFIT
[NEGAVERSE] Do not upgrade the Watchman-class engines.
[NEGAVERSE] Do not upgrade the Watchman-class torpedo launcher
[NEGAVERSE] Upgun the Watchman-class with phase cannons
Few things were ever as controversial as a new beginning, and the new Confederacy Interstellar Design Bureau was certainly controversial. That humanity NEEDED to expand to the stars was an absolute, as the planetary enviro-grid and artificial ecosystem remained tenuous and hopes of infusing the fruits of the biospheres of other worlds to preserve Earth was a key driving factor to achieve warp drive to begin with. But the CIDB's first project would nonetheless be a defining moment for Humanity in the face of pressure by the Vulcans and Andorians in their Cold War.
To that end, the CIDB emphasized a patrol ship that would BE a patrol ship. An emphasis on small size and powerful engines, pushing the prototype impulse drive design from schematic to installation within four months, utilizing a compact arrowhead hull configuration, a tight nacelle alignment to boost cruising warp to a sustainable warp 2.4 with option of a warp-3 sprint, a cargo hold intended to set out half-full of antimatter pods to supplement the engine reserve and half of extra spacial torpedoes for the prow launcher. And to capstone the work would be six pulse-particle cannon turrets mounted across the ship for all-around coverage to fend off enemies with quantity of fire instead of weight as the phase-cannon program struggled to develop a working prototype at the time.
The early production run would find the warp core struggling to power all weapons and engines at the same time, resulting in the underpowered spacial torpedo launcher to be the more reliably usable weapon of the craft, though the reduced cost of the class would result in the initial production order of five being expanded to seven. And in terms of BEING a patrol cruiser, it was effective enough. Enduring patrol cruises, keeping piracy and trouble off the extraction lines from the first colonies, and even participating in the first engagements with the Klingons to cover the return of NX-Pathfinder-01 at the start of the Xindi crisis.
The 2152 retrofit program would consider and reject plans to upgrade the Watchman with a Warp 5 engine, citing the fuel expenditure rates of the NX-series being infeasible bunkerage for a smaller hull, and instead opted for a plan to make them a permanent garrison monitor ship by removing the unstable particle cannons for six new phase cannons and a upgraded power grid. Instead of the mobile defense envisioned and dreamed of by the Warp 5 engine, the CIDB pushed and achieved a doctrine of mass-production above all else. Ships dispatched to protect far-flung colonies would be sent on one-way deployments at warp 2.4, to garrison planets until the day they were destroyed in place or form a defensive network across the home system as the planetary enviro-grid shifted from a temporary solution to permanent state of affairs. In every engagement, Watchmen had one simple combat doctrine: close with the enemy and fire until victorious or destroyed. There was no maneuvering power or warp speed or utility room for anything else, not even escape pods.
It was a unpowered, overgunned tin can. And it would prove itself as the ship it was exactly needed to be with the outbreak of the Romulan War. Against a foe that could strike anywhere without warning, the presence of Watchmen above every Confederate world ensured some level of response was always present. When engaged it could both fight the enemy and intercept atomic missiles aimed at planets with it's aft phase cannons. And more grimly, because of the economical design choices made and the omission of the Warp 5 engine, wartime economics enabled six Watchmen to be hammered out for every NX. The orbits of every one of the First Worlds would be littered with the wreckage of Watchmen crews that fought and died for them. But those worlds would live on celebrating those lost, as the Romulans failed to nuke a single world of the Confederacy because of these watchers on the wall.
None of the Watchman class would survive the Romulan War, as the tide turned and Warp-5 ships became essential for the counteroffensives. The last ship standing- the CSS Ashigaru- would be brought back to Luna shipyards to be dismantled and scrapped, with all usable parts and phase cannons diverted to accelerate the construction of the Confederacy's first battleship CSS Yamato.
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Empress_Boog
Grand Empress
In theory you could triple the saucer if you put it in all three directional axis of x, y, and z.
Well if we are posting our take on Star Trek ships, here's my shitty take on a TOS design, that I made in like twenty minutes. Why not double the saucer!
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Look on the bright side... This is the Terran Empire version of the Curiosity
I think the negaverse players are drinking heavily. (The negaverse is an autocracy. I am the only player!)
finally, definitive proof that god doesn't exist
NexusEye
Aspiring God
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- She/Her
On the contrary, this is proof that god exists and he hates us.
- Location
- Most likely California
Canon: "What does God need with a Starship?"
Mirror: "Why would a Starship need God?"
Checks out.
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- Location
- Somewhere in the Ashes
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- She/Her
Eh, I think it's fine.
Not as a UFP ship, mind you, and perhaps not even a Trek ship, but I could absolutely see a ship designed like this working somewhere else.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
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- She/Her
I admit I actually kinda like these designs more than traditional trek designs, they may be the antithesis of how starfleet ships should look by my own personal standards their layouts are so much more sensible looking than the weirdness than Star Trek ships usually look like which I've always had trouble wrapping my head around, though still pretty weird in absolute terms. I've always liked hard-scifi ship layouts the best and Star Trek's ship designs have always been something where I have to tune out the part of my brain saying "but why?" although I still enjoy trek on the whole, so this kind of relatively compact radial symmetry design is a breath or fresh air. That said these designs do break the rule that nacelles should line of sight with each other for optimal efficiency, for the Mariana the nacelles have vertical LOS but horizontally are blocked by the thick ring and the secondary hulls, for the nega!Curiosity the ring doesn't block their LOS but the edges of the saucers do. Although looking at it again that may be a trick of the camera, it looks like the nacelles are displaced towards the back and the saucers to the front so only the forward tips of the nacelles would be blocked. Kinda hard to tell with only one perspective.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
Sovereigns are longer, but Galaxies are chunkier, basically. I think the Saucer Section on a Galaxy is bigger overall, partly because it's basically a circle, or a much less stretch oval/oblong. Whereas the Sovereign is a more egg-shaped oval design, and I think it's got fewer decks in the Saucer Section. There's also no actual neck to the design; it goes directly from Saucer to Engineering/Primary Hull.
.... And Galaxies are bigger?
Galaxy-class starships were meant, first and foremost, to serve as long term duty stations. Like, "continuing mission", aka you just go out and do stuff and have no specific end date. They carried families because there was no set time you'd be back in port.
Sovereign-class starships are still "flagships", but are much more obviously militarized. I get the sense they're meant much more for shorter-term duty stuff.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A while back there was some discussion about the difference between photon torpedoes and photonic torpedoes given that both use antimatter explosions. Here is my (extremely late) contribution to that discussion. I suspect the difference between the two is that photonic torpedoes use uncontrolled antimatter explosions and photon torpedoes use tuned antimatter explosions. What's the difference? Well...
When matter and antimatter react there are two types of annihilation reaction, electron-positron and baryon-antibaryon. When electrons and positrons annihilate they produce two 511 kiloelectronvolt gamma rays, simple. When two baryons annihilate the result is considerably more complicated. They produce two type of particles, neutral pions and charged pions. Neutral pions are produced when an up quark and up antiquark or down quark and down antiquark combine into a quantum mechanical mix of both possible combinations (look it's complicated and quantum and I don't fully understand it myself so let's just skip over the details) and decays in about 84 attoseconds which is pretty much instantaneous and decays into two gamma rays much like electrons and positrons. Charged pions are more complicated. A negatively charged pion will last about 26 nanoseconds and decay into a muon, a gamma ray, and a harmless muon antineutrino. The muon will in turn decay into an electron, another gamma ray, and an electron antineutrino. The decay of positively charged pions is much the same, swapping antimuons for muons, positrons for electrons, and neutrinos for antineutrinos. To skip over a lot of complicated math approximately 50% of the energy from a matter-antimatter reaction is lost to harmless neutrino radiation. Which means if you could find a way to make an antimatter reaction produce only neutral pions you could double the effective energy from a torpedo.
Thus I propose that via *mumble mumble* quantum field technobabble *mumble mumble* zero-point virtual dilithium *mumble mumble* bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish *mumble mumble* photon torpedos are able to convert 100% of their antimatter into useful gamma rays with negligible neutrino radiation, doubling yield. As an added bonus, if the method used can be inverted to produce only charged pions with no neutral pions, those charged pions could be deflected with a magnetic field to produce a high thrust, high specific impulse antimatter torch drive which will only siphon a relatively small amount of antimatter from the main warhead but produce an incredibly maneuverable torpedo. Whether @Sayle chooses to use this explanation is up to them but that's my headcanon for the difference between photon and photonic torpedoes and their difference in performance.
When matter and antimatter react there are two types of annihilation reaction, electron-positron and baryon-antibaryon. When electrons and positrons annihilate they produce two 511 kiloelectronvolt gamma rays, simple. When two baryons annihilate the result is considerably more complicated. They produce two type of particles, neutral pions and charged pions. Neutral pions are produced when an up quark and up antiquark or down quark and down antiquark combine into a quantum mechanical mix of both possible combinations (look it's complicated and quantum and I don't fully understand it myself so let's just skip over the details) and decays in about 84 attoseconds which is pretty much instantaneous and decays into two gamma rays much like electrons and positrons. Charged pions are more complicated. A negatively charged pion will last about 26 nanoseconds and decay into a muon, a gamma ray, and a harmless muon antineutrino. The muon will in turn decay into an electron, another gamma ray, and an electron antineutrino. The decay of positively charged pions is much the same, swapping antimuons for muons, positrons for electrons, and neutrinos for antineutrinos. To skip over a lot of complicated math approximately 50% of the energy from a matter-antimatter reaction is lost to harmless neutrino radiation. Which means if you could find a way to make an antimatter reaction produce only neutral pions you could double the effective energy from a torpedo.
Thus I propose that via *mumble mumble* quantum field technobabble *mumble mumble* zero-point virtual dilithium *mumble mumble* bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish *mumble mumble* photon torpedos are able to convert 100% of their antimatter into useful gamma rays with negligible neutrino radiation, doubling yield. As an added bonus, if the method used can be inverted to produce only charged pions with no neutral pions, those charged pions could be deflected with a magnetic field to produce a high thrust, high specific impulse antimatter torch drive which will only siphon a relatively small amount of antimatter from the main warhead but produce an incredibly maneuverable torpedo. Whether @Sayle chooses to use this explanation is up to them but that's my headcanon for the difference between photon and photonic torpedoes and their difference in performance.
Horologer
Incertae sedis
- Location
- a risen sea
"I don't have my glasses– you'll have to speak up."
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
My personal guess is that a "photonic torpedo" basically slams together a glob of matter and a glob of antimatter to make the boom.
Whereas a "photon torpedo" uses an ever-improving set of technologies to "mix" the two before they touch. The Technical Manual for the Enterprise-D described the torpedoes as basically holding the matter and antimatter in a mixed suspension until impact, when it just drops the forcefield.
So my suspicion is that we're basically going to be fine-tuning how "perfect" the energy conversion is until it's, like, 99.99% or something, as well as eventually giving them mini warp engines and shields.
Whereas a "photon torpedo" uses an ever-improving set of technologies to "mix" the two before they touch. The Technical Manual for the Enterprise-D described the torpedoes as basically holding the matter and antimatter in a mixed suspension until impact, when it just drops the forcefield.
So my suspicion is that we're basically going to be fine-tuning how "perfect" the energy conversion is until it's, like, 99.99% or something, as well as eventually giving them mini warp engines and shields.
It actually looks like a really good villain ship. Like if Cave Johnson or GLADOS had gotten to space. Definitely could be a season's/arc's main villain vessels.
Bilateral symmetry good. Radial symmetry bad. This we know because cnidarians are radial and all men know deep in their bones that nothing good comes from the depts. Better to explore space than the oceans. Some things are better left to sleep.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
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- She/Her
That still doesn't really explain the progression from the word photonic to the word photon. My hypothesis explains it as photonic referring to an explosion that produces photons while photon refers to an explosion the produces only photons. Your explanation would increase the reaction rate and peak power output but the net energy would remain the same. Any antimatter ejected by the energy from the initial annihilation would impact the matter of the torpedo that surrounds it and annihilate anyway, the total amount of antimatter escaping unannihilated would be negligible even without pre-mixing.
It should be noted that photonic torpedoes also had a ready mixture of antimatter and matter, see:
Memory Alpha suggests two theories:
1. Photon torpedoes are mere refinements, but ones that seriously increased the explosive yield
2. Photonic torpedoes got shortened to Photon torpedoes, much as Cellular Phones became cell phones.
Both seem plausible.
IamtooSleepy
I came here to be an ant
Look on the bright side... This is the Terran Empire version of the Curiosity
I, ummmm, think this is actually pretty adorable?
Am I the only one?
This is the one thing I really disliked ENT for doing, but... yeah I think this is the most plausible.
"Phase Cannons" and "Photonic Torpedoes" are just... "Phasers" and "Photon Torpedoes". All that changed were refinements and nomenclature.
It's not all that ridiculous in the long run. There is something a point of a singularity and weapons tech doesn't really need to change all that much. Once you figure out antimatter weapons and particle weapons, isn't anything just basically going to be a refinement of the technology?
Pretty sure Trek has at least a couple more plateaus that we get glimpses of but don't really see much. One of the things in Trek is that species all exist sorta on a continuum between stone tools and Q. There seems to be segments, like warp drive and time travel, that reaching puts you into another universal context. Within those contexts civilizations can oppose one another and even if one is technologically superior it's not entirely one sided.
But the Federation is not at the top of that scale.
I think it is hinted that the next big plateau for Humanity, after warp travel became a thing, is reliable time travel and this eventually necessitates the temporal prime directive.
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- Location
- Most likely California
Honestly, my thought was 'biblically accurate starship'.
But it would be a lot more tolerable if we didn't know it was a Star Trek ship, and just thought it was an oddly design retro atompunk rocketship. Partly because those commonly had the gravity be "nose to thruster", while Star Trek had it be parallel to that direction, so the perpendicular saucers really affect how you think of it.
Yeah, but if you get to pick where gravity sits you almost always want wide rather than tall. The infrastructure to get from one room to another on a flat plane is a door. To access a higher room requires stairs and elevators, or at least a ladder. You are inevitably going to end up with some verticality, but purely from a "space spent connecting things" standpoint flat is going to be more efficient.
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- She/Her
It should also be noted that:It should be noted that photonic torpedoes also had a ready mixture of antimatter and matter, see:
Memory Alpha suggests two theories:
1. Photon torpedoes are mere refinements, but ones that seriously increased the explosive yield
2. Photonic torpedoes got shortened to Photon torpedoes, much as Cellular Phones became cell phones.
Both seem plausible.
1: Photon torpedo yields seem to exceed E=MC2.
2: Photon Torpedoes have been used in warp speed combat.
This implies that the weapons have some sort of warp effect going on. Considering that means warping space, you could easily create a gravitational compression effect for the EM radiation from the explosion, increasing energy. A photonic torpedo has a crude version of this system but still relies heavily on the conventional explosion, while the more advanced photon torpedo is doing nearly all of its damage with the compressed EM radiation.