Starfleet Design Bureau

This is genuinely a hard one. But ultimately quantity has a quality all its own, and one we're going to be completely lacking if we go with the no-refit option. Bleeding edge new rollouts are what we want for hero ships doing hero things, not for a stable space nation.

If we keep up the bleeding edge philosophy we'll wind up like the Romulans - flying around in ships powered by artificial black holes only to be forced to drop the whole tech tree when they find out extradimensional aliens like to lay eggs in them. Star Trek is a WEIRD PLACE, stuff just happens sometimes.
What we know is that Klingons are rolling out warp 7 ship that are marginally better than our current designs, these are probably their newest generation.

our best response is to show they are a generation and half behind in warp tech than holding back advances to refresh old designs that where designed to have a focus to prolong their active service.
 
.... But ultimately quantity has a quality all its own, and one we're going to be completely lacking if we go with the no-refit option. ....

I used to think that. And no, it doesn't. The supply chain for *more* is much more than you think.

Take the ur-example for this, the T-34 tank. It was objectively terrible, and inferior to any other tank on the field. Fielding as many as they did required cutting corners, needing a lot more supply chain and trail, and additional supplies to keep it going.
The sheer astrography redeems this a bit, but if your enemies can defeat your ships in say 2:1, then they can attempt more easily a defeat-in-detail approach. Whereas, if you are working with peer or better ships, your enemy has to commit more ships to defeat them, and they will always be a threat where they can be deployed, letting you retain the ability to use them strategically.

Therefore:

[X] High-Performance Injector System (Size Reduction) (Type-4 Nacelle: +Max Warp) (Refit -> Incompatible)
 
[X] High-Performance Injector System (Size Reduction) (Type-4 Nacelle: +Max Warp) (Refit -> Incompatible)
 
I would be more concerned about retrofit capability if the speed gap was larger, but the inciting incident mentioned was the Klingons having rough parity with our ships. A slight advantage, yes, but not overwhelming.
 
[X] High-Performance Injector System (Size Reduction) (Type-4 Nacelle: +Max Warp) (Refit -> Incompatible)
 
So I just realized something.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the High-Performance Injector has requirements that appears to render the nacelles incompatible with ship built for the old Warp 7 Nacelles, completely going straight to incompatible if I'm reading it correctly. So if we do go with the High-Performance Injector, it would've made the Horizontal Core a pointless choice.

Welp, I'm glad I voted for, and that most voted for, the Vertical Core.
 
So I just realized something.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the High-Performance Injector has requirements that appears to render the nacelles incompatible with ship built for the old Warp 7 Nacelles, completely going straight to incompatible if I'm reading it correctly. So if we do go with the High-Performance Injector, it would've made the Horizontal Core a pointless choice.

Welp, I'm glad I voted for, and that most voted for, the Vertical Core.

Most likely we wouldn't have the choice of HPI if we went for Horizontal Core.
 
[X] High-Performance Injector System (Size Reduction) (Type-4 Nacelle: +Max Warp) (Refit -> Incompatible)
 
Present total stands at 56 for high performance injector system and 17 for high flow injector system.

 
[x] High-Performance Injector System (Size Reduction) (Type-4 Nacelle: +Max Warp) (Refit -> Incompatible)

It's obvious that the Vertical type warp core is the way of future progress, so the Fleet might as well bite the bullet and commit early on in the game to it. It'll mean a bit of pain up front with a younger and more capable fleet being the end result.
 
Last edited:
Given that the next design will be being worked on while there has been significant design time already applied to this new engine there should be able to build it to support the specs of the new engine's energy output.
That in itself is probably worth doing as it will allow a number of live test bed for new systems to be run for those components before the first designs that their essential for hit the drawing boards.

If it's not possible to future proof the next design to allow a refit however it just means not doing it now will have the problem just be shifted a generation down the line and the refits will still be needed but possibly on larger ships as materials sciences and integrity sciences advance further.

With the size of the Federation growing though I think the extra speed on some vessels will absolutely be required for maintaining response times for emergencies.

It might be possible for a faster ship to extend it's warpfield around older slower ships to bring them along at least for smaller ones providing at least some tactical flexability for fleet actions.
 
Back
Top