Ran into a competition over at TrekBBS and it sparked my interest. The purpose of the competition was to design non-military Trek vehicles. Basically everything *but* your standard starship/shuttle.
So something came to mind:
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Hmm, interesting design... a bit colorful for my tastes, but looking promising. A few questions though:
Why would a police ship have phasers mounted on it? That's like giving the Ocean City Police a motorboat with a 20mm cannon mounted on it... Makes no sense! It seems that this type of ship is more equivalent to a Coast Guard cutter than a common police force.
(Something very important to remember is that today's Coast Guard is military, even though they don't get the attention of the other branches. The police departments, though armed, are still civilian agencies.)
Also, having an extra-orbital police force seems something that would be more the purview of Starfleet, which has always functioned as an analogue of today's US Coast Guard as well. Although a highly populated system like Sol might need more of a presence than some of the outer colony worlds, but I'd think that such smaller-scale patrol ships would still be operated under the auspices of Starfleet.
Posted by Ahkileez (Member # 734) on :
Minutiaman: Glad you like the design. I know it's colorful, but is intended to be. Almost all police vehicles are colorfully painted. They're supposed to be instantly recognizable. Even if you go to a country you can almost instantly recognize a cop car.
It's hard to debate the merits of an idea I just had in my head here, since that wasn't the intent because this was for an art competition, but I'll try to give you my reasoning
Why do modern police cars have shotguns in the trunk? Because sometimes they need them. And yes, this borders between coast guard and police here, but not all countries on this planet operates the way the United States does. For instance, my country does not, and uses regular police and customs for interdiction. No reason to think everything in the Star Trek world operates like in the US.
As for your second assertion, regarding Starfleet acting as a coast guard, there's no evidence to support such a thing. Is it possible? I'd say so. But the suggestion of a civilian agency handling the standard criminal affairs within the Sol System is equally plausible. I can't see Starfleet needing to take on the headaches of in-system policing for every system out there, so what difference should Sol make?
I think it's a bad idea to believe that Starfleet is the be all and end all of Federation authorities.
-A
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
MM: "Why would a police ship have phasers mounted on it?"
What are they gonna use? Harsh language? If a little shit like that is supposed to be policing a system and can't get proper photons, phasers are at least a minimum, I think.
Nice design, Ahkileez, what are those knob thingies on the stern? I don't normally like tactical ships whose nacelles take up more than 30% of the surface, they make too tempting targets. Like a battleship with propellers mounted on the sides, at surface level.
Nacelles are prissy bitches, one good hit and you're stranded for days, or you explode, like with the Bozeman.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:What are they gonna use? Harsh language? If a little shit like that is supposed to be policing a system and can't get proper photons, phasers are at least a minimum, I think.
I've never heard of any police cruiser blowing a getaway car off the road. Though it *would* make police chases a lot more entertaining.
Civilian cars (or ships) aren't supposed to be armed anyway, right?
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
Well, no, but if you're dealing with criminals....
Posted by Ahkileez (Member # 734) on :
Nim: You pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as the phasers are concerned. This ship isn't going to be pulling over drunk teenagers taking the family shuttle out for a spin. They'd be catching smugglers, drug runners, serving warrents, doing customs interdiction, things like that. Not everyone's going to take to it nicely, so they have to have the ability to defend themselves. The other weapons listed there is for stopping the fleeing crook.
As for the 'knobs' at back, that's the Class-V tractor listed on the thing there. Interdiction would be a combination of things. High energy tractor beams to slow the ship, the gravity sink generator to keep them from going to warp (think interdictor cruisers from Star Wars) and the intertial amplifier to effectively multiply the ship's mass to make it more or less immovable and able to stop a larger ship or even one under power.
MinutiaMan: Most civilian vehicles aren't supposed to be armed, no. But police agencies aren't *entirely* civilian. And the phasers are mostly for defense like I said above.
Wraith: You're right, dealing with crooks changes the rules. And you can expect crooks in that era to be more sophisticated than ski-mask 7-11 robbers these days.
[ April 08, 2003, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: Ahkileez ]
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: I've never heard of any police cruiser blowing a getaway car off the road. Though it *would* make police chases a lot more entertaining.
Civilian cars (or ships) aren't supposed to be armed anyway, right?
You've never watched "World's Wildest Police Chases," then?
Cops shoot out people's tires with some regularity on that show.
Except in this case they'd be shooting out their nacelles.
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
If its supposed to be local, why does it need to be able to go Warp 7?
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
If police cars are local, why do some police cars go 300 km/h?
Posted by Ahkileez (Member # 734) on :
359: Well, the primary reason for that is I don't by that "Can't go to warp in a star system" BS. Never have, never will. There's no reason whatsoever for it.
So if these are going to be taking down crooks, all the crooks have to do is hop to warp and there ain't a thing the cops can do. But Warp 7 would match or exceed the kinds of things I see this taking on (smuggler freighters, small personal 'getaway' craft, etc.).
If you'll notice too, the impulse engines exceed the .25 max speed. Why? Well if everyone's doing .25c, how are you going to catch them? The negligible time dialation between .25 and .30 won't have that big an effect on the cops, but would give it a hell of a sprint on the crook seeing as the speed difference in that .5 is probably hundreds of thousands of k/secs.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, you're the one suggesting that a gravitational field can interfere with a warp engine. If that's the case it only makes sense to assume that being inside a star system can present a problem.
Posted by Ahkileez (Member # 734) on :
I undestand Sol System, but given your nick, you should see the irony here
As I said above somewhere, I don't buy into the 'can't go to warp in a star system' bunko. However, I do think the gravitational forces near a planet would be intense enough to prevent it. But the gravitational pull near to a planet is hundreds of thousands of times stronger than the pull between say Earth and Mars. So you're facing much, much thinner resistance between the planets.
And I think people tend to think that the planets are much closer together than they really are. Even the asteriods in the Oort cloud are thousands and millions of miles apart from eachother. you could drive your way from Pluto to Earth blindfolded and would have the same chance of hitting another planet as running over a armadillo out there.
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