remember it doesnt matter how modern/technologically advanced your class of ship is..as long as you vessel has the 'Scriptwriters dept' onboard you should be taken care of (well most of the time anyway)
Buzz
-------------------- "Tom is Canadian. He thereby uses advanced humour tecniques, such as 'irony', 'sarcasm', and werid shit'. If you are not qualified in any of these, it will be risky for you to attempt to decipher what he means. Just smile and carry on." - PsyLiam; 16th June
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which is (IMHO) a great tech write up on ship design that can be easily trek-ized.
Thanks for the link Matrix!
(I do realize that when mentioning an article current practice is to include an unrelated picture and copy and paste the article to the forum without references - but hey I'm going my own way here)
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posted
I don't have time to read the whole now, but looking at the first couple of paragraphs, this looks like a very informative article. For one thing, it places heavy emphasis on the purpose of a warship and the threats that it is designed to counter. Starfleet ships therefore should have a clearly defined purpose as well -- even the unknown and random classes like the Challenger, Centaur, Zodiac, etc...
Actually, that part about the magnitude and severity of a threat goes a long, long way towards explaining the so-called "failure" of the Galaxy-class starships. The Galaxy was essentially designed to counter the more-prevalent, low-level threats posed by pissiant races such as the Cardassians, Talarians, Tzenkethi, Tholians, etc. But they're not ready for enemies like the Borg.
Although if we were to revise that article for Starfleet, I'd think that preparing for an unlikely threat would be much higher on the priority list, given the vast amount of unknown territory in the galaxy, and the frequency with which ultra-powerful races are discovered at random intervals.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
Actually it was one of many on that board that is very informative. I was looking at the Survey of the American Standard Battleships article. Unfortunately can't post a direct link to it because for some reason the computer on won't let me see the link to it, nor copy it. It's a good board and site to reaseach various topics.
-------------------- Matrix If you say so If you want so Then do so
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posted
Minutieman: Starfleet ships must be designed to counter potential threats from the neighboring systems first. It is assumed that the Cardassians, Klingons, and the Romulans would take care of *their* threatening neighbors, which take care of their neighbors and so on.
Although we've seen ultrapowerful aliens in distant reaches, they don't seem to be interested in creating a huge empire (maybe they're benevolent, maybe they don't like running empires or maybe they simply have unseen weaknesses).
Or, maybe they tried but were stopped. The Borg and the Dominion need not be an exception -- after all, if at any time the Romulans, Feds, or the Klingons were attacked by someone threatening to overpower them, it would be in the best interest of all the neighboring races to join together for a brief period.
Boris
[ May 01, 2002, 09:20: Message edited by: Boris ]
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
I think Matrix has a point. What with the return of Voyager in TMP, the Whale Probe, Borg, Dominion, and whatever has happened off screen it would seem that the prudent SF designer would build in a certain fudge factor into the requirements.
BTW
I do like the idea of treaty limitations - hamstringing their starships to make the Romulans (or whomever) happy seems a very SF thing to do.
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posted
Remember that Starfleet is not purely a military force; we have to take into consideration the scientific capabilities of the various classes and whether they were designed for military or scientific purposes.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
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I was not trying to bring up the argument again, but merely pointing out that that point about the design intentions of a class have a great deal to do with its perceived success or failure.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
The Intrepid class might be trouble shooters, but that doesn't make it a super warship. Even the Ent-D was running trouble shooting for half of TNG, rather than actually exploring.
"and would mount weaponary at least equal to the Galaxy-class phaser and photon torpedoes" -ST:Mag
I would interpret this as mounting weaponary of equal type, and not a reflection of total firepower. The Galaxy out-guns the Intrepid by leaps and bounds.
I don't even want to think about the Yeager... And the Defiant's not a super warship, just a warship. All ships are mortal unless otherwise stated in the script.
Bah, "failure of Galaxy class", name one thing she doesn't accomplish as originally designed to do.
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posted
"The Intrepid class might be trouble shooters, but that doesn't make it a super warship. Even the Ent-D was running trouble shooting for half of TNG, rather than actually exploring."
But unlike the Enterprise, the primary mission of the Intrepid-class is troubleshooting, while the primary mission of the Galaxy-class is exploring (Troubleshooter vs. Explorer). Hence, it's more of a police cruiser class, and since the Galaxy class is a warship in wartime, the Intrepid can be informally called a super warship because it's more of a warship than the Galaxy class.
"and would mount weaponary at least equal to the Galaxy-class phaser and photon torpedoes" -ST:Mag
"I would interpret this as mounting weaponary of equal type, and not a reflection of total firepower. The Galaxy out-guns the Intrepid by leaps and bounds."
Nope. The word used is simply "equal." If A = B, then A can be substituted for B. If the phasers and photon torpedoes of the Galaxy class can be substituted for the weaponry of the Intrepid class, then one can't be inferior than another overall, if not in details.
Besides, there is no evidence that the Galaxy outguns the Intrepid by leaps and bounds. Voyager survived a lot more than the Enterprise ever faced, without ever been to a starbase. It's technology is brand new, it's maximum speed is twice that of the Galaxy class.
"I don't even want to think about the Yeager..."
Why? What is your evidence?
"And the Defiant's not a super warship, just a warship. All ships are mortal unless otherwise stated in the script."
It's a super warship because all Federation ships are warships in wartime, while the Defiant is always a warship. Again, I used an informal though accurate term. And the mortality of ships depends not on the script but on the skills of their captains as compared to the skills of the others, how good the condition of each ship is at a particular moment, etc.
posted
There's one thing that should definitely be remembered in discussions like this: the progression of a ship from "the best" to "obsolete" is by no means a linear one.
Just because a ship happens to be obsolete at time T does not mean it will REMAIN obsolete. Even more importantly, just because a property X is considered obsolete at time T1 does not mean it will be so at time T2. Real-world examples abound:
Anti-aircraft guns aboard ships? Obsolete in the sixties, or so the western navies thought. Not so today, even though the threats are harder to shoot down with guns than they were in the sixties, not easier.
Speed is life? Perhaps, but the old F-14 is TOO fast for its own good. Speed is also money, and the much, much slower F/A-18 is better suited to today's carrier aviation environment.
So there's no real reason to assume that Starfleet would want to give up older ships just because they perform poorly compared with new ones. Tomorrow, "poor" performance may become superior to "great". And new ships need not be built with superior performance - the Sovereign could have a max speed of warp 8.2, and still be superior to the Galaxies as far as current operating environment is concerned.
Of course, Starfleet is also in a superb position to mothball its temporarily-obsolete ships for reactivation when they cease to be obsolete. Wet navies can't do that - their old ships and aircraft rust out from beneath them. Oh, how modern navies wish they *could* whip out a WWII- or even WWII-vintage gun cruiser to give them artillery support in amphibious ops...
Timo Saloniemi
P.S. Concerning Defiant max. speed: I firmly believe that the maximum speed of any given starship is warp 10, TNG scale - it's just a matter of boosting the individual parts of the drive system past their set limits. In 99 cases out of 100, breaking the limits results in a kaboom. And in 999... cases out of 1000... (add digits to personal preference), Starfleet lacks the technology to break the limits in any major performance-boosting way, so warp 10 remains unattainable - but in most cases, some minor increases can be attained rather easily, if you are willing to pay the price of having a burned-out ship.
So the Defiant can go warp 9.5, but only a fool or a main character would attempt that. Warp 9.92 is probably possible as well, but even a main character is going to die in such an attempt with 99.9999% certainty. And warp 9.99999... speeds require a breakthrough even a main-character chief engineer or science officer doesn't have in his or her back pocket - unless the plot really, really requires it.
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quote:Originally posted by Boris: "The Intrepid class might be trouble shooters, but that doesn't make it a super warship. Even the Ent-D was running trouble shooting for half of TNG, rather than actually exploring."
But unlike the Enterprise, the primary mission of the Intrepid-class is troubleshooting, while the primary mission of the Galaxy-class is exploring (Troubleshooter vs. Explorer). Hence, it's more of a police cruiser class, and since the Galaxy class is a warship in wartime, the Intrepid can be informally called a super warship because it's more of a warship than the Galaxy class.
I think you might be putting too much emphasis on the "shooting" part of the term "troubleshooting". Troubleshooting takes many forms, from diplomatic squabbles to potentially hostile situations. However, in general, Galaxy Class firepower was not required for most of the troubleshooting situations we saw the Galaxy Class engage in.
One thing is pretty clear: if the Enterprise-D is any indication of what the Galaxy Class was often up to, then exploration of the distant reaches was often not their primary role.
In any case, though, the notion of Intrepids as "super-warships" makes no sense, at least not as you've described it thus far. Besides which, if the Intrepids are the Federation's troubleshooters (which suggests that they'd be relegated to duties within or very near the Federation), then when war came they'd still be troubleshooting, a la Picard and the E-E in Insurrection. Indeed, they'd have to be doing *more* troubleshooting, since other starships that often got troubleshooting duties were now taking on Dominion warships.
quote: "and would mount weaponary at least equal to the Galaxy-class phaser and photon torpedoes" -ST:Mag
"I would interpret this as mounting weaponary of equal type, and not a reflection of total firepower. The Galaxy out-guns the Intrepid by leaps and bounds."
Nope. The word used is simply "equal." If A = B, then A can be substituted for B. If the phasers and photon torpedoes of the Galaxy class can be substituted for the weaponry of the Intrepid class, then one can't be inferior than another overall, if not in details.
Besides, there is no evidence that the Galaxy outguns the Intrepid by leaps and bounds. Voyager survived a lot more than the Enterprise ever faced, without ever been to a starbase. It's technology is brand new, it's maximum speed is twice that of the Galaxy class.
(We've seen the E-D fire five torpedoes simultaneously, all of them splitting off then impacting on a target at the same time. The TNG:TM says ten torpedoes could be fired in such a fashion from one launcher. Or, we can observe "Half a Life"(TNG), where eight torpedoes were fired in quick succession. Intrepids, meanwhile, can fire one torpedo at a time from their launchers . . . I only recall perhaps three being fired from a single launcher in quick succession.
But, suppose a strong target was facing both ships. A Galaxy could fire ten torpedoes aft (rigged to fly around and impact on target), ten torpedoes forward. Time it right, and BAM, you've got twenty photon torpedoes collapsing the enemy shields. An Intrepid, meanwhile, has, at maximum, fired a burst of twelve torpedoes (three each from four launchers), each pinging off the enemy shields within a short time, but not simultaneously. Thus, the firepower will be less, since the twelve detonations will occur over a longer period.)
3. Phaser emitters:
Galaxy 11/12
Intrepid 13
(Looks impressive, but if the number of emitter segments is any indication of the strength of the phasers (i.e. if the 200 emitter segments of the GCS dorsal saucer array would make a phaser beam twice as powerful as a 100 emitter array), then an Intrepid cannot hope to have the same amount of firepower, even if she were somehow able to concentrate all of her phasers onto one target, since all the emitters on an Intrepid (if Type X) *may only barely* equal the 200 Type X emitters of a Galaxy.
There's also the matter of phaser arc coverage. A Galaxy has a potential weakness against targets aft of the interconnecting dorsal . . . the only coverage available (assuming the primary saucer phasers cannot reach that far back) involves four phaser arrays . . . two small arrays on the upper rear of the stardrive section-side of the saucer, and two other small arrays to the port and starboard aft of the aft torpedo launcher.
However, this problem is exacerbated in the Intrepid class, which has *no* dorsal engineering hull phasers, and only two tiny arrays on the back of the saucer. We see the Vaadwuar fighters using this weakness in "Dragon's Teeth"(VOY), primarily keeping above and to the rear of Voyager. Had they been below Voyager at any point, they'd have become open to fire from the *five* phaser arrays on the bottom of the Intrepid Class engineering hull. Frankly, I'd rather have two more (or two of the bottom ones) on top.))
The only thing I can think of that might suggest that the Intrepids could, even for a moment, have similar firepower to the Galaxy Class would be those tri-cobalt torpedoes. But, that's hardly the basis of a claim that the class is equal . . . just give a Galaxy tri-cobalts, and the show's over.
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posted
Good points, all, but there's some leeway there in interpreting the on-screen evidence. For all we know, an Intrepid tube could launch 50 torpedoes in a single shot against Galaxy's ten, and Janeway simply never ordered that firing mode since she wanted to spare the torps. And other silliness like that.
If we want to inject even a smidgen of realism to this, though, it would be best to say that a smaller ship has less firepower, unless it makes sacrifices of some sort (or unless the two ships are of different categories, like a patrol boat vs. a supertanker). We have seen no sacrifices whatsoever aboard the Voyager, and no indication of a mission *fundamentally* different from that of the Galaxy class.
Small ships that outgun their bigger sisters in the real world either rely on a weapons technology that's fundamentally different from that of the big sisters (say, torpedoes against guns) or then sacrifice protection and range (usually meaning giving up ALL protection and ALL range, so that a guy with an assault rifle could sink the ship, or a standard pleasure boat could outrun it). Building a ship that sacrifices things only halfway is foolish, because it will still sink with the first or at least the second shot from a big ship, and then all that "halfway" armor and fuel has been wasted.
The Defiant looks like a ship that has made sacrifices. The Intrepid does not (unless her itty bitty nacelles were indicative of inferior warp performance, but that doesn't seem to be the case).
It's too bad that Sternbach is the guy in control of his own ship. We'd know so much better.
Well, clearly Starfleet had to have some reason for building the Intrepids. Was it because they just lacked ships in that size range? (possible!) Or ships with some specific balance of equipment? (unlikely - the Voyager has the exact same balance as all the Enterprises) Or ships with an improved overall performance? (again possible, but then we should see more of these ships and less of the older types)
Sternbach came up with one rationale, somewhat ambiguously worded - the ship "troubleshoots". He once came up with a rationale for the Galaxies, too - they "replace the Ambassadors and Oberths". We creatively interpreted the latter. Surely we can do the same with the former.
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