USS Phoenix

[Teaos]

An interesting design I found while looking at Star Trek fan productions. Looks just like an Intrepid slammed into a Steam Runner.

Here is the blurg on it where I think they go a bit nuts. Especially with the crew... 10,000? If anything Starship crews seem to be getting less, the Promethius could run itself or with only a handful. So unless it carries civiies which I hope like hell they stopped doing, or troops which would be odd to do all the time, it seems way over the top.

Set 40 after Star Trek: Nemesis, this new fan film focuses on the adventures of the crew of the USS Phoenix (NCX-101138). The ‘Ascension Class ship is a massive 1,400 meters long and uses a hybrid of Romulan and Federation design, with a crew of more than 10,000. The pilot episode "Cloak & Dagger" takes place one year into the maiden voyage of the ship which has a mission of exploration and diplomacy.

Link

[Deepcrush]

Looks promising.

[Graham Kennedy]

The GCS was around 5 million tons and carried a crew of 1,000, so 1 per 5,000 tons. Voyager at 700,000 tons had a crew of about 150, which is 1 per 4,600 tons - actually about the same manning level.

At 1,400 m long and given the shape I'd guestimate this thing is about 5 times the volume of a GCS. So 10,000 crew is about twice what I'd have expected for a ship that size. Crowded, by Starfleet standards, but not absurdly so.

[Teaos]

Its not that it isnt possible, just that it isnt needed. hell after the Dominion war (which granted this is 45 years after) Starfleet would have been so pressed for officers they would probably be making ships to run with less and less crew.

[Graham Kennedy]

45 years afterwards the Dominion war wouldn't matter a damn one way or another.

As for the need, who can say? It's certainly possible to come up with reasons why they might want a large crew. Just for one, it's often been noted that Star Trek tends to treat planets and alien societies as if you can get to know them by investigating one place for a few days with a dozen or so people, but that is of course nonsensical - imagine beaming a landing party down for a week in Seattle and think you had a good take on Earth society from the experience. Perhaps this ship is intended to carry out highly intensive missions where a thousand landing parties beam down to different parts of the planet simultaneously to gain a more comprehensive view. Such an approach would easily justify 10,000 crew.

[Teaos]

45 years after the war could still matter a great deal. If in the years after the war they were forced to build ships with low crew requirements since they just didnt have the crews, then the trend just naturally continued when they were used to building ships that were highlu automated and didnt need massive crews.

[Graham Kennedy]

Even assuming they didn't have the crews available to man the ships after the Dominion war - and if anything I'd have thought it would be the other way around - there's no way they are just going to keep doing that out of habit. They'd just ramp the crew levels back to the normal levels as and when they could.

[Teaos]

Why? Crews are expensive and hard to train and maintain. If you can run a ship well off 100 people why use 300? If they got better at building and running low capacity starchips why bother going back to the old ways. Whale populations have bounced back these last few decades but that doesnt mean we are going back to burning whale oil.

[Graham Kennedy]

Crews aren't expensive when you don't use money!

You say "if you can run a ship well", but you are unlikely to be able to actually run a ship as well. Increased automation might allow a smaller crew, but that doesn't mean the smaller crew will be as effective - we saw in ST III that the Connies could be quite easily be converted to run with "a chimpanzee and two trainees" if all you want to do is cruise around, but it came with a loss of ability to do manpower intensive things like combat.

And like I said earlier, there are things that you simply can't do with automation. If your basic requirement is to be able to mount 1,000 away teams simultaneously then you need a big crew, and all the automation in the world won't change that much. Nor is there any guarantee that newer systems will necessarily lend themselves to greater automation levels - they might, they might not. The new quantum cosmic imaging system might need ten times as many people to maintain and operate as the old sensor.

[McAvoy]

Is there a need for the ship to be this big or is it for the cool factor? Never liked huge ships unless there is a valid reason behind it.

[Teaos]

I would say the only reason for huge ships is long range missions, And thats for logistical and mental health reasons. Also to project power to people you are meeting for the first time.

[Mikey]

I see GK's point about not having a crew as small as possible, but this size? Intergalactic generational missions, maybe. Otherwise, you could get multiple equally-effective ships for the same resources and manpower.

[Graham Kennedy]

Hmm, I wonder what the builders of the 3,500 ton, 850 man HMS Victory would have said if you told them that 250 years later warships would exist that massed 100,000 tons with a crew of 6,000 men.

[Teaos]

I imagin a lot of spilt tea and broken monocles.

[McAvoy]

Hmm, I wonder what the builders of the 3,500 ton, 850 man HMS Victory would have said if you told them that 250 years later warships would exist that massed 100,000 tons with a crew of 6,000 men.

Not the same thing. There is a huge difference between a sailing ship and an aircraft carrier. In terms of how it is constructed and and the weapons systems.

We don't see that.

Perhaps maybe at best it is the difference between the HMS Victory and the HMS Warrior.