Design starships from Enterprise onwards, dealing with production capabilities and internal layouts to meet the demands of Starfleet as Earth takes the galactic stage. With art!
The Starship Design Bureau has a problem: they've been too damn good at their jobs. The Excelsior-class was a once-in-a-century design, integrating advanced propulsion, science, and tactical systems into a spaceframe so robust and serviceable it borders on perfection. Initially it was meant to be the ship that broke the transwarp barrier, but the failure of the Great Experiment didn't stop it becoming the backbone of Starfleet. While the impulse engine and deflector enhancements in the Enterprise-B subclass proved too expensive and maintenance intensive to justify rolling out to the rest of the fleet, it nonetheless established that the ships could be easily retrofit with more advanced technology.
So 40 years later, whenever Starfleet Headquarters wants to provide coverage across the expanding Federation, the question is not what specifications they want in a new design but whether newer systems can be installed in the latest tranche of Excelsior-class starships coming out of the yards. It's logical, prudent, even eminently reasonable. It's a proven design, relatively inexpensive, and provides incredible value for resource expenditure. It's just…seeing "Block F" attached to the latest internal documents borders on the depressing for a designer.
So the order for a new class of Starship with a capital S is greeted with great enthusiasm. Not a cargo hauler, not a short-range supply ship, not a bulk transport. No, an honest-to-god Starship to fly the Federation flag across known space.
Of course it isn't that simple. Starfleet Command wants a ship that demonstrates the Federation's technological capabilities and pushes the boundaries of science. The Federation Council wants a ship that can act as a vehicle of state and host entire diplomatic conferences. Daystrom Institute wants their new isolinear processors tested, Yoyodyne is pushing their latest impulse engines and compact warp nacelles, and Starfleet Tactical wants to finally put their new phaser arrays through a trial by fire.
Still, some requests are more urgent than others. There are also a lot of competing interests, which means that you haven't been handed specific ratings to meet other than those needed to conform to the mission profile of the resulting starship. As a result you have been asked to draw up the designs for…
[ ] A replacement for the ageing Miranda-class, able to conduct missions safely in the Federation interior. (Frigate)
[ ] A replacement for the Constellation-class, which acts in an exploratory and anti-piracy role. (Light Cruiser)
[ ] A new flagship vessel for exploration and diplomacy. (Capital)
Order -> Spaceframe -> Warp Core/Nacelles -> Tactical -> Scientific -> Internals -> Prototyping -> Certification -> Final Review
Order -> Spaceframe -> Warp Core/Nacelles -> Tactical -> Scientific -> Internals -> Prototyping -> Certification -> Final Review
[X] A replacement for the Constellation-class, which acts in an exploratory and anti-piracy role. (Light Cruiser)
The Constellation was thrown together in a hurry, and it shows. Four-fifths of the primary hull used the same components as the Miranda-class, meaning it could be constructed with minimal changes to existing production facilities. The torpedo launchers were reclaimed from Constitution-class starships undergoing decommissioning, and the phaser banks were the first fielding of the type-8 phaser bank that would be used in the Excelsior-class. The primary innovation was the use of four nacelles, which allow the ship to travel at Warp 9 in short bursts and provide a very respectable cruise speed of Warp 6.
Unfortunately it was hamstrung by its other issues. It used the same warp core as the Miranda-class, but it simply wasn't up to the task of providing power to all its systems simultaneously. Most infamous was that captains could elect to travel at Warp 7 or have shields, but not both. The Type-8 phasers were an upgrade from the Type-7 on the Miranda, to be sure, but the high power demands meant that power-flow irregularities could shut the weapon banks down entirely. The four-nacelle configuration was also sensitive to upsets or misalignment, which put them in drydock twice as often as standard duel-nacelle designs for warp coil replacements. The crew quarters were also cramped in the pursuit of more cargo space, which left the captain bunking like a lieutenant.
As one commander put it: "the Constellation has the tactical systems of a larger ship, the engineering systems of a smaller ship, and the disadvantages of both." It was the result of a conscious effort by the Design Bureau to draw on the materials being otherwise scrapped in decommissioning of older starships and using similar components now that the Constitution-class was being taken out of service, and with it the Federation's main cruiser-weight patrol ship.
You can do better. The design project is opened under the temporary codename "Centaur", and your team gets to work. The first step in any design process is to decide on the spaceframe, which in this case will primarily consist of the saucer section. The saucer section will contain the ship's crew quarters and main phaser banks, as well as most of its internal space for later allocation.
You have two choices: the first is to tap into the ready supply and manufacturing of the Excelsior-class. The internal systems are well understood and economies of scale will substantially decrease both cost and complexity. It also has a powerful impulse engine attached, which is one less thing to manage later down the line. The disadvantage is that much of the Excelsior's scientific payloads and cargo spaces are outside the saucer section, which will need to be accounted for in the Centaur's bespoke secondary hull.
The second option is to build a new saucer section from scratch. While using many of the same components as the Excelsior it will nonetheless require some new manufacturing to be spun up to accommodate its unique requirements. This would make it easier to integrate new technology, but it has the risk of introducing unforeseen problems into the ship in the Prototyping Phase, solutions to which may involve making the ship more difficult to maintain or expensive to produce.
[ ] Excelsior Saucer Section (Ease of Manufacture: A)
[ ] Bespoke Saucer Section (Ease of Manufacture: C-B)
Project Centaur
Goal: Produce a medium-range cruiser with robust tactical systems and a high warp sprint factor. Design must be capable of basic collection and analysis of scientific samples.
Minimum Tactical Score: B
Minimum Scientific Score: C
Constellation-class Light Cruiser [2282]
Ease of Maintenance: C
Ease of Manufacture: A
Tactical Score: B
Scientific Score: D
Comfort Score: D
Final Score: 44/100 [Marginal]
[One Production Run of Twelve Ships - San Francisco Fleet Yards, 2282-2287]
Excelsior-class Heavy Cruiser [2285]
Ease of Maintenance: A
Ease of Manufacture: B
Tactical Score: S
Scientific Score: A
Comfort Score: B
Final Score: 76/100 [Excellent]
[Nine Production Runs - All Fleet Yards, 2290-2335+]
[X] Excelsior Saucer Section (Ease of Manufacture: A)
While the Constellation was hurt by being a hack of the Miranda, I think we can keep things more reasonable by taking the Excelsior saucer section and building the right systems around it, with less time pressure. If we look at the problems listed:
- Insufficient power generation
- Unreliable power systems
- Fiddly drive arrangement
- Insufficient crew space
All of those will be much more easily avoided when we're making a totally new back half of the ship. That's the part with the cargo storage, the power generation, and the drives. We can also add crew spaces if necessary, although IIRC Federation ships put the crew in the saucer so we'll if anything have more than necessary, and may even skip some of the secondary spaces that the Excelsior apparently has in the rear.
A more likely issue is the saucer possibly being oversized for its use and forcing the ship to be bigger/more expensive than necessary. However, since we haven't been given any explicit cost metrics and the closest thing is "Ease of Manufacture", for which reusing the Excelsior saucer would be better, I'm not very worried. Another possible issue is that it could be difficult to fit new technology; but as a second-line/rapid response ship, cost (and thus availability when one is needed) seems more important and clearly the Excelsior has been kept up to date adequately.
[X] Excelsior Saucer Section (Ease of Manufacture: A)
Considering our remit for this project looking at the stats given for the Excelsior I think it's worth using the Excelsior saucer despite how badly that method worked out in the past. Our goal here is a good fast tactical ship with limited scientific capabilities. If we go for the Excelsior saucer we're getting the main phaserbanks and crew quarters of the Excelsior, one of which is a main priority, and gambling on having to make up scientific systems and cargo space in the second section neither of which are our main priority for this class.
Maintenance A, Manufacture A, Tactical S and Comfort B would be a good place to start from. Making up a minimal Science C shouldn't be too difficult and delivering an easy to produce and maintain ship which meets the main criteria of combat capability is most of our job done.
Excelsior-class Heavy Cruiser [2285]
Ease of Maintenance: A
Ease of Manufacture: B
Tactical Score: S
Scientific Score: A
Comfort Score: B
Final Score: 76/100 [Excellent]
[x] Excelsior Saucer Section (Ease of Manufacture: A)
Interesting, but Excelsior at least is a solid design and as a capital design with a custom secondary hull (where among other things the power will be) should work out well
So how would people rate our stretch goals in terms of priority? Our remit seems to be primarily a fast warship so I think a Tactical Score of A or S with good Maintenance and Manufacturing are our priorities. Meeting the bare minimum of Scientific Score is probably enough if we over deliver on those scores and Comfort is only moderately important. Hopefully the legacy Excelsior Saucer would grant a decent B rank that wouldn't need to be compensated for. On longer deployments a low score might become a real problem but if B is the minimum armament on a warship B Comfort is probably offering decent conditions for the crew.
Project Centaur
Goal: Produce a medium-range cruiser with robust tactical systems and a high warp sprint factor. Design must be capable of basic collection and analysis of scientific samples.
Minimum Tactical Score: B
Minimum Scientific Score: C
we haven't been given any explicit cost metrics and the closest thing is "Ease of Manufacture", for which reusing the Excelsior saucer would be better, I'm not very worried.
Space Communism goes Brrrr. In all seriousness, while the Federation does technically have a universal currency (energy credits, a sensible measure of effort in an economy with accessible matter configuration tech), in practice the shipbuilding budget of the Federation appears to be a pretty RTS-style "have X resources, spend X resources" without a financial dimension that can be artificially inflated or abstracted to an 'overall cost' number.
That said, Ease of Manufacture at the higher levels can be interpreted to a scarcity of certain resources. For example the absolute psychopaths in the Starship Design Bureau plated the Sovereign-class head-to-toe in ablative armor rather than just the critical sections. The prototype would definitely qualify as a D (lowest score) there.
Fun fact: the Sovereign-class was designed post-J25 but pre-Wolf 359. They tried to stuff so many prototype technologies into it that the ship just plain didn't work. They crammed in regenerative shielding (didn't work), new sensor packages (power hog), and bio-neural gelpacks. The first prototype was such a catastrophic failure that it went into long-term drydock at around Season 6-7 of TNG. That's kinda your worst-case scenario in terms of ship design. They ripped out the experimental tech and packaged more common stuff in for the second prototype, which got renamed Enterprise and pushed into extended shakedown (a year!) after the D crashed on Veridian III. (Source: Bridge Commander Manual. There's also a letter from Geordi that is 2/3rds bitching about what a pain it was to get working and that the specs are bullshit [the man had to run the warp core at 105% standard just to power everything] and 1/3rd gushing about what a dream it was to work with).
[X] Excelsior Saucer Section (Ease of Manufacture: A)
On the one hand, we want to produce clean-sheet designs which can use all of our shiny new toys. On the other hand, re-using the Excelsior's saucer section makes a lot of sense, and starting with baby steps in testing our our new technologies also limits the scope for failure.
