Armed with microtorpedoes, phasers, and shields.

Type 18 Pod
Length: 4.5 meters
Height: 3.1 meters
Beam: 1.8 meters
Mass: Unknown

Armed with limited phasers.

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Sisko: "We run alright, run right at them."
Smiley: "Ah, Pattern Suicide."
Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server.

Also, the shuttlecraft and runabout weights seem a too low in comparison to the TNG ship weights. If we assume that Danube is roughly boxed shaped, its volume is about 1700 cubic meters. But since its weight is only 158 tons, its density is about 0.09 tons (i.e., 90 kg) per cubic meter or about 1/10 that of water. Same with the type 10 shuttlecraft: its volume (assuming a box) is 188 cubic meters, but its weight is only 20 tons. Its density is again about 100 kg per cubic meter.

A possible explanation for this discrepancy (very dense capital ships and very airy shuttlecraft) is that capital ships and shuttlecraft must be constructed in very different ways with very different materials and equipment. An alternative explanation is that whoever thought up these figures doesn't know what they're talking about.

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

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It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.

Plus, as mentioned, the starships have very different components. For one thing, they're made of tritanium and duranium, which could easily be heavier than the stuff used now. Plus, the hulls might be thicker, to withstand warp speeds better, not to mention any particles that might get through the deflector at normal speeds.

But of course there are reasons to make ships lighter. Just because they're operating at warp speeds doesn't mean we can completely ignore mass and force relationships. Even at warp speed heavier ships should take more energy to move than lighter ships.

TSN: I don't understand your reference to gravitational effects here. Are you saying that since starships don't have to float we can make them as massive as we like?

Actually, I would expect seagoing ships to be more robustly constructed than starships. The forces exerted on your hull in the vacuum of space would probably be less than those exerted by water. Look at the lunar module, whose walls were made of foil: it would get ripped apart in either the air of the water. Hulls in Star Trek don't seem to be any thicker than those of modern ships. In Star Trek, you also have energetic shielding and structural integrity fields, which would decrease the need for strength in the materials used. The Sovereign class even does away with physical windows in some cases. Although we can't be sure what happens at warp, I don't think we've seen any indication that forces are so much stronger than those exerted by air or water.

By the way I'm proud to say I'm one of those dumb schmucks who's spent hours and hours trying to figure out how much a starship weighs. However, I can't say that the world is a better place for mine having done so...

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Shuttles might be lighter, BTW, because they're designed to work close to planets, where there's more gravity than where stasrhips usually are.

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It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.

Of course, thrusters would "work" regardless of the mass. Any thrust applied would impart some change in velocity, albeit negligable. The trouble is that the more the ship weighs, the more thrust you have to apply to create a given change in velocity. This is definitely an argument for making the ships as light as possible.

Now, if some variation of antigravity technology could be used to somehow negate the mass of a ship, then you wouldn't have to worry so much. Is this what you are thinking of when you suggest that warp technology is being used to help at impulse? That might work nicely.

Fructose: I know that you meant Paramount. I think Frank or someone mentioned a few months ago that Sternbach supposedly based the ship weights on those of modern spacecraft. Since modern spacecraft (rockets) are even less robustly built than modern surface warships and are filled mainly with fuel, I don't see how starships can weigh so much. Space probes are also flimsily built and don't have crew compartments. But I think that the established weights of Starships are way out of line (too high and too low). I think that we shouldn't accept these weights blindly and then try to rationalize Paramount's sloppiness. Now, if someone can actually show me how they calculated these masses, then I might be more willing to accept them.

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

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It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.

During the early definition phase of the Ambassador class, it was determined that the combined vehicle mass could reach at least 3.71 million metric tons. The propulsive force availabole from the highest specific-impulse (I_sp) fusion engines available or projected fell far too short of being able to to achieve the 10 km/sec² acceleration required. This neccessitated the inclusion of a compact space-time driver coil, similar to those standard in warp engine nacelles, that would perform a low-level continuum distortion without driving the vehicle across the warp threshold. The driver coil was already into computer simulation (...) and it was determined that a fusion-driven engine could move a larger mass than would normally be possible by reaction thrust alone, even with exhaust products accelerated to near lightspeed.