[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
Starship Design Bureau
- Thread starter Sayle
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
Linked contents
- Location
- Kiel; Germany
That isn't what is the problem. Just think about the Romulan Senat Committee that o.k.ed the last new massive, gigantic Warbird just to see the Federation come up with this tiny, little ball of death.
Well, I'm hyped.It's been a long road, getting from there to here.
[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
- Location
- Hollister
[x] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
This thing is stupidly killy for its size, and will likely only grow more so as the issues with the torpedoes are ironed out. All in all, this looks like a pretty successful design.
This thing is stupidly killy for its size, and will likely only grow more so as the issues with the torpedoes are ironed out. All in all, this looks like a pretty successful design.
[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
Enthusiast#117
This is not the Profile you are looking for
- Location
- United States
[X] USS Ushaan
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
The Defiant also got caught up in a political morass on account of being intended from word go as a warship intended to be built en-mass and got loaded down with a bunch of extraneous capabilities to satisfy enough extraneous requirements to at least get the prototype built -- and suffered as a design as a result. Commander Sisko has many fine qualities even before his soft-exile to Deep Space Nine, but gracefully navigating a political environment while still grief-stricken was not one of them.
For what it's worth, I agree with you completely; I felt like I aged ten years during that argument lol.
Honestly I think the vote did the typical Quest argument thing where a fairly minor vote ("Do we make this design more future-proofed or make it more of a space U-haul for the Dominion War?" becomes symbolic for a whole load of wider things. At the same time, big and quite wide-ranging arguments (is Starfleet doctrine correct etc. etc.) are fought purely in terms of how they effect this one minor vote. It would be nice if we could avoid that in the future, and keep things a bit more grounded.
I think the main reason the project stalled is that the ship would literally rip itself apart at full impulse. It was an unworkable death-trap which might, with extra funding, have been turned into a viable combatant, or not. At a time when Starfleet was already building the Saber, Steamrunner, Akira, Norway, and other newer much more capable classes with a heavy armament. The decision to stall the project isn't hugely unreasonable, and they even let the prototype go to DS9 where its issues got sorted out.
There are many things I would say of the USS Defiant, but "loaded with extraneous capabilities" is not one of them? It is noted as being crammed full of systems normally seen on larger warships, but these were weapons, engines, shields, etc.. The shuttle bay and science lab reflect Federation doctrine and come in handy, I don't think they're the cause of it being overpowered - I think it's trying to fit the firepower of a cruiser scale ship into something the size of an Excelsior's main saucer.
Last edited:
- Location
- Most likely California
[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
Luv me some alien cultural references in my multispecies fleet
Luv me some alien cultural references in my multispecies fleet
[X] USS wolf.
Empress_Boog
Grand Empress
[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
chaotic-logic
possible impossibility
- Location
- unknown
[X] USS Ushaan. The Andorian honour duel calls back to a time where combat and survival went hand in hand.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Yeah; the Defiant's issues were basically that it was trying to load too much power onto too small of a frame. It was obviously possible to do what they were trying- that the Defiant's issues eventually got fixed is proof of that- but it needed some combination of expertise and field testing that just wasn't available during the initial prototyping.
2368: Project Saber (Retrospective)
The news that the Borg were coming was greeted with absolute dread, and for good reason. It had been five years since they last made a push for the core of the Federation, and the legacy of Wolf 359 hung heavy over everybody. But this was what the overhaul of the fleet had been designed for, to contest the Borg on equal footing. It was a motley fleet of whatever Starfleet could scrounge up in time to intercept the Borg and a second group to make a defense at the edge of the Sol system.
We owe so much to the starships that warped out to meet the Borg head-on. Under a continual two-day assault of Starfleet swooping in and then disengaging they had to drop down from Warp 9.9 to Warp 8, which gave us time to get a dozen more starships to Earth for the defence. Twenty ships harried the Cube on its way to Earth, and thirteen of them were destroyed outright. Only two actually joined the battle in Sol: the Defiant, which needs no mention besides the tragedy we didn't have more of them, and the Bozeman, an Intrepid-class which had taken so much damage that by the time the fight started all she could do was hang back and fire torpedoes. Until the Borg had enough and fired back, which was enough to knock her out for good.
I like to think the Borg weren't expecting the kind of opposition they got. It was a very different fleet that opened fire, with very different ships and very different strategies. No more coming in piecemeal to keep clear firing lines, this time it was half the fleet at any one time. Fly in, fire torpedoes, phasers on the way out, disengage for another attack wave. I was commanding the USS Shran, a dinky little Ushaan-class. You could have fit 30 of her nose-to-tail along just one axis of the Cube. But she could move like nothing else I've ever been in and those phasers had a nasty bite. The Borg learned pretty quickly that they weren't going to have a good time trying to hit her with their plasma charges or beam weapons, so they switched to using their tractor beams. Just a single hit would rip half your hull plating off, but we still managed to dodge three attempts before they managed to latch on.
The Shran didn't last much longer than that. Suddenly losing one of our impulse engines and half of Deck 3 was about as close to fatal as it gets. Our only saving grace was that the Borg were still deadset on reaching Earth, and they didn't stop to finish us off as we drifted out of the engagement. If you read the after-action reports you could be forgiven for thinking the Ushaan were cannon-fodder: of the sixteen Ushaan-class ships that fought in the battle, only two were still intact at the end of it. Well, I suggest you look at the logs again. Of every ship design involved in the Battle of Sector 001, it's the Ushaan that managed the longest average survival time. I can tell you it sure as hell wasn't because the Borg weren't shooting at us. We were just the best at not getting hit.
In the absence of a wave of Borg incursions, things are beginning to calm down a little at Starfleet Command. While the possibility remains an existential threat, the idea that the new ships coming out the yards should emphasise tactical performance over every other consideration is beginning to wane. Unfortunately the Defiant Program has been labelled a failure precisely because of that overemphasis compromising its basic capabilities, although Commander Sisko is on record as being optimistic that future advancements will make the design more viable.
Future or not, that means the Defiant won't be available. Starfleet is now looking at how it can more effectively use the next-generation designs you are pioneering, and has several requests. The first is for a heavy cruiser capable of more conventional warp efficiencies and general work duties while still having the latest tactical systems. The second is for a long-range science ship with advanced warp capabilities and the firepower of a medium cruiser. The last is for a rapid-response tactical cruiser with some form of innovative firepower multiplier like saucer separation.
[ ] A Heavy Cruiser (Project Akira)
[ ] A Long-Range Science Ship (Project Intrepid)
[ ] A Tactical Cruiser (Project Prometheus)
We owe so much to the starships that warped out to meet the Borg head-on. Under a continual two-day assault of Starfleet swooping in and then disengaging they had to drop down from Warp 9.9 to Warp 8, which gave us time to get a dozen more starships to Earth for the defence. Twenty ships harried the Cube on its way to Earth, and thirteen of them were destroyed outright. Only two actually joined the battle in Sol: the Defiant, which needs no mention besides the tragedy we didn't have more of them, and the Bozeman, an Intrepid-class which had taken so much damage that by the time the fight started all she could do was hang back and fire torpedoes. Until the Borg had enough and fired back, which was enough to knock her out for good.
I like to think the Borg weren't expecting the kind of opposition they got. It was a very different fleet that opened fire, with very different ships and very different strategies. No more coming in piecemeal to keep clear firing lines, this time it was half the fleet at any one time. Fly in, fire torpedoes, phasers on the way out, disengage for another attack wave. I was commanding the USS Shran, a dinky little Ushaan-class. You could have fit 30 of her nose-to-tail along just one axis of the Cube. But she could move like nothing else I've ever been in and those phasers had a nasty bite. The Borg learned pretty quickly that they weren't going to have a good time trying to hit her with their plasma charges or beam weapons, so they switched to using their tractor beams. Just a single hit would rip half your hull plating off, but we still managed to dodge three attempts before they managed to latch on.
The Shran didn't last much longer than that. Suddenly losing one of our impulse engines and half of Deck 3 was about as close to fatal as it gets. Our only saving grace was that the Borg were still deadset on reaching Earth, and they didn't stop to finish us off as we drifted out of the engagement. If you read the after-action reports you could be forgiven for thinking the Ushaan were cannon-fodder: of the sixteen Ushaan-class ships that fought in the battle, only two were still intact at the end of it. Well, I suggest you look at the logs again. Of every ship design involved in the Battle of Sector 001, it's the Ushaan that managed the longest average survival time. I can tell you it sure as hell wasn't because the Borg weren't shooting at us. We were just the best at not getting hit.
In the absence of a wave of Borg incursions, things are beginning to calm down a little at Starfleet Command. While the possibility remains an existential threat, the idea that the new ships coming out the yards should emphasise tactical performance over every other consideration is beginning to wane. Unfortunately the Defiant Program has been labelled a failure precisely because of that overemphasis compromising its basic capabilities, although Commander Sisko is on record as being optimistic that future advancements will make the design more viable.
Future or not, that means the Defiant won't be available. Starfleet is now looking at how it can more effectively use the next-generation designs you are pioneering, and has several requests. The first is for a heavy cruiser capable of more conventional warp efficiencies and general work duties while still having the latest tactical systems. The second is for a long-range science ship with advanced warp capabilities and the firepower of a medium cruiser. The last is for a rapid-response tactical cruiser with some form of innovative firepower multiplier like saucer separation.
[ ] A Heavy Cruiser (Project Akira)
[ ] A Long-Range Science Ship (Project Intrepid)
[ ] A Tactical Cruiser (Project Prometheus)
