From: Vice Admiral Shey ch'Tharvasse, Chief of Staff, Starfleet Command
To: Admiral Valentina Sousa, Commander, Starfleet Command
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Report 126, ONA
Ship design is the siren song for any flag officer. I've filed this for "in your spare time". If you're reading this, congrats! Also don't bother with the report, it was written by a Vulcan. Just look at the data tables.
Shey ch'Tarvasse
P.S. I also took the liberty of informing the comms division to come up with a better way to indicate a forwarded messages. It is the 24th century. We should not still be stacking forward tags.
>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<
From: Vice Admiral Rinias ch'Vohlet, Commander, Starfleet Design Bureau
To: Vice Admiral Shey ch'Tharvasse, Chief of Staff, Starfleet Command
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Report 126, ONA
Don't know if Sousa has time for this but you probably know what to do.
Rinias ch'Vohlet
>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<
To: Vice Admiral Rinias ch'Vohlet, Commander, Starfleet Design Bureau
From: Commodore Victoria Eaton, Commander, Amarkia Sector Command
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Office of Naval Architecture
Sir, found this clearing out my inbox after the change in command. Take a look if you get a chance.
Victoria Eaton
>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<
From: Commodore Rejuk en Fughut, Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
To: Commodore Victoria Eaton, Chief of Staff, Starfleet Design Bureau
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Office of Naval Architecture
Heard you're being bumped off to space again soon. If you're not too busy for terrestrial affairs, this might interest you. One of my lieutenants pushed this through the DAC on his own initiative. Apparently with the support of your old department, for what little that would be worth.
I'll have to put a word in with Suvek.
-Rejuk
>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<
From: Commander Anne Usha, Assistant Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
To: Commodore Rejuk en Fughut, Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
Subject: Fwd: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Conclusions
For your attention. Looks like the DAC produced something useful for once.
Cmdr Usha
>>>>>> Forwarded Message Follows <<<<<<
From: Lieutenant S'kuul, Design Analyst, Office of Naval Architecture
To: Commander Anne Usha, Assistant Chief, Office of Naval Architecture
Subject: Design Analysis Committee, Subcommittee 12, Report 126, Conclusions
Commander,
The criteria that should be used when designing new Starfleet ships is a long-standing argument in the lower ranks of the Ship Design Bureau. The argument even spills out onto the desks of Commodores, Admirals, or even to the Council. However, in this era, there has yet to be a concerted effort to analyze existing ship performance data and use that analysis to form ship design criteria. The Historical Analytics Subcommittee has produced this report is an attempt to rectify that mistake. We have analyzed all accessible captain's logs from the past ten years for mission assignment, mission type, and resolution method, cross-referenced with ship capabilities.
[Note: Nearest I can tell, the "subcommittee" consists of Lt. S'kuul from the ONA, Ensign Ghoshal from Analytics, and one of their old academy classmates now at the San Fran mainframe.]
Starfleet's mission is wide-ranging; any and every Starfleet ship can be expected to respond to any and every kind of mission, from the Soyuz to the Excelsiors of the Explorer Corps. While this ideal drives the actions of every ship captain, some ships simply do not have the tools to detect, respond to, or reach in time every call or anomaly. Non-response to events or anomalies that go undetected is outside the scope of this report; we have no way of tracking this data. It may also be the case that ships have endured situations that went completely unremarked in the captains' logs. Nor does this report take into account crew quality, sector command quality and methodology, or top-level command decisions or doctrine. These factors will have to be analyzed separately, and are somewhat tangential to requirement-based ship design.
In addition, a ship's performance in large-scale combat is also outside the scope of this report. Tactical performs an post-battle analysis, which has become increasingly difficult to obtain in recent years due to classification.
|
System Used
|
Total
|
Percentage
|
In Response or Detection
|
LR Comms
|
38
|
40.43%
|
|
LR Sensors
|
31
|
32.98%
|
|
SR Sensors
|
5
|
5.32%
|
In Mission Resolution
|
Sensors
|
42
|
32.56%
|
|
Sickbay
|
7
|
5.43%
|
|
Engineering and Related
|
27
|
20.93%
|
|
Nav Deflector
|
5
|
3.88%
|
|
Labs
|
10
|
7.75%
|
|
Diplomatic Facilities
|
19
|
14.73%
|
|
Weapons or Threat of Weapons
|
13
|
10.08%
|
|
Manufacturing
|
1
|
0.78%
|
|
Shield
|
1
|
0.78%
|
|
Hull
|
1
|
0.78%
|
As you can see, the speed of a ship's response depends on its long range comms systems, its long range sensors, and of course, its emergency warp speed, which is not in the data the subcommittee could access. However, the successful resolution of a ship's mission depends much more greatly on the ship's onboard equipment, be they sensors, laboratories, diplomatic facilities, sickbays, or weaponry. In the event that this equipment is inadequate, the ship will fail to resolve her mission, and depending on the mission her fate may hang on the quality of her defensive systems.
It is the opinion of this subcommittee, therefore, that ships that are able to respond quickly
must have adequate facilities to deal with every crisis they may respond to. Ships that are easily able to respond should have the sensors, laboratories, sickbays, and diplomatic facilities they need to deal with a wide array of problems. One cannot sacrifice any one area, as the fast-responding ship will respond to emergencies it is not equipped to handle. In particular, scientific facilities and equipment are of particularly great value.
On the other hand, ships that are not easily able to respond must instead have facilities to deal with a more severe degree of problems within their specialty, like the current Oberth, but risk missing certain time-critical emergencies and must deal with these emergencies after they have escalated. There is no evidence that low ability to respond places these ships at risk, rather, they simply fail to detect events needing a response. This is good for the ship, but bad for Starfleet's mission. However, a massively increased set of capabilities may enable specialist ships to respond to emergencies within their scope without bothering to increase speed or communications.
Shield and hull strength affects the survivability when things go wrong. However, it is the opinion of this subcommittee that is is better to design ships without the premise of failure. Likewise, armament is relevant in the event of an armed conflict, and the burden of combat often goes to generalist ships like cruisers, explorers, or even the Explorer Corps. It may also be possible for combat-focused ships like the Miranda, Miranda-A, Constellation, or Constellation-A to be held in reserve if Starfleet's sectors are adequately garrisoned by ships better suited to crisis response. To put it bluntly, these ships have a 25 to 30% chance of failing any given garrison mission. The jury is still out on the Centaur-A, but it may simply not have the facilities to be suited to its generalist role.
A full listing of data is available in
Appendix A. Ship-specific data is available in Appendix B. Please refer to Appendix C for a list of SDB file designs that fit this report's criteria. The full report will be filed with the DAC in our first meeting of 2312.
End Message