Sovereign class

[Captain Seafort]

I'd personally prefer a design that allows you to concentrate all possible fire on a single target. Perhaps something like this:

[Thorin]

Well they might well use different propulsion systems. The Romulans use a black hole!
I don't think its a case of what shape allows warp travel, but rather what shape allows the most effective warp travel, other species may not want such effective warp travel at the expense of the shape of the ship (ship shape ), such as disrupter positions or biggest area for shield generations, etc etc

[Sionnach Glic]

Seafort, you read my mind!

Well they might well use different propulsion systems. The Romulans use a black hole!

Wrong, we know for a fact that they all use subspace. (or whatever it is)

I don't think its a case of what shape allows warp travel, but rather what shape allows the most effective warp travel, other species may not want such effective warp travel at the expense of the shape of the ship (ship shape ), such as disrupter positions or biggest area for shield generations, etc etc

I'd rather not have a slight increase in speed for lessened combat ability, exposed nacelles, exposed bridge, the inability to stay in one piece without a SIF, etc.

[Thorin]

They don't use subspace, they warp normal space so that the space behind them is bigger, and the space infront smaller, so they don't have to travel as far and can thus go faster than the speed of light.
But the manner in which they warp or manipulate space time can be different. The way in which they do this has quite a high chance of directly relating to how they get their power source. As we can see, all races have different nacelles, so they clearly have different shape warp bubbles and so manipulate space time differently. This may lead to having certain ship designs the most effective.

[Graham Kennedy]

Unless we want the thread locked let's not start bringing in whose universe has the better fields of fire please.

Re the Sovereign... I love the shape of her, she's a beauty to be sure. But there are a lot of little things about her that niggle me. Most of them focus on the refitted weaponry.

There are weapons where there really shouldn't be weapons, IMO. For instance at the back of the superstructure which the bridge sits on, there's a big airlock door with a torpedo launcher right above it.



Either you have to believe that they ripped out the airlock and left the door on there for no real reason... or you have to assume that what we see on the hull is basically all there is of that launcher, with virtually no internal workings. I don't like either of those options.

And all these launchers they added seem to fire only one torp at a time... what happened to burst fire capability? If some technological advance made single fire model torps better, why aren't they being retrofitted to ships like the Gaalxy?

And there are six small phaser arrays at the aft dorsal saucer. Six! What's the point of that?! Why not two or four?

For that matter I am a little dubious about the idea of carrying both photon and quantum torpedoes on one ship. It makes the Sovereign feel like a transitional design... a testbed sort of deal... which would mean it would likely be quickly outpaced.

It also bothers me that the ship is smaller than a Galaxy. Every Enterprise had been the biggest, strongest and best of her day... until the Sovereign. I'd rather have seen it scaled up 25% or so to give twice the volume.

Incidentally that line of mine about warp 5 standing still... as far as I know I made that up. But I have read ship of the line (hated it), so it's entirely possible I copied it without realising.

[Thorin]

I don't see the problem in the Sovereign being slightly smaller. It's more advanced in every aspect - it doesn't need as much space for equipment, it has no civilian population.
A quote just came to mind - Einsteins, it was something along the lines of "any fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius to go the other way". Why make something bigger when it doesn't need to be? If everyone that was on the galaxy (apart from some civilan pleasantries) is on the Sovereign, we assume that they are all smaller and more advanced, there would just be lots of empty space if it was then rescaled up to be bigger than the Galaxy.

[Sionnach Glic]

They don't use subspace, they warp normal space so that the space behind them is bigger, and the space infront smaller, so they don't have to travel as far and can thus go faster than the speed of light.

Okay, what they did escaped me for a moment.

As we can see, all races have different nacelles, so they clearly have different shape warp bubbles and so manipulate space time differently. This may lead to having certain ship designs the most effective.

From what we know most races (with a few exceptions) use the same power source and FTL engines. For the Federations ship designs to be justified they would have to be quite a bit faster than other races. There is no evidence to suggest Federation ships are anything but slightly faster.

[Thorin]

That's true, but they all use different nacelles - by this we could quite easily assume that they all create different shape warp bubbles. From this we could then assume that each species require a certain shape ship to be most effective for that particular warp bubble shape.

[Sionnach Glic]

And why would the shape of the bubble be dependent on the species which uses it? Dominion vessels are a far more inteligent shape, what is to stop the Federation using these? I don't see any other race with their nacelles exposed on large pylons. If other races can hide them, why not the Federation?

[Thorin]

Why would they? Maybe because they need them to be? Just because they use a different system, meaning the warp nacelles are on pylons, doesn't mean they can use other species systems. Why don't they use these? Because they'd have to do a major refit on a fleet just to hide a couple of nacelles...

[Mikey]

It could, possibly, be a question of the type of power generation and/or transfer. From what I gather, the warp plasma injected into Fed warp coils can be fairly dangerous, so is kept as far away from the bulk of th GP as possible; i.e., out on the pylons. Maybe other folks have safer a/o less volatile methods of power transfer. I do agree that I thought the Romulans use a singularity energy source (not a black hole as such, but...)

In addition, no other species seems to place as much regard for their people's safety, relative to other concerns, as the Federation. In other words, even if it is as dangerous for everyone to keep their nacelles conformed to the hull, perhaps nobody cares as much as the Federation. Certainly the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, etc. seem more willing to sacrifice personnel than the Feds...

[Sionnach Glic]

Maybe because they need them to be?

Why? What possible reason could there be? Its not a matter of safety as we've seen various races use the Enterprise to travel. And we've seen humans use ships of other races with no side effects.

Because they'd have to do a major refit on a fleet just to hide a couple of nacelles...

Or they could just phase out these ships. Like modern, competent, militaries.

It could, possibly, be a question of the type of power generation and/or transfer. From what I gather, the warp plasma injected into Fed warp coils can be fairly dangerous, so is kept as far away from the bulk of th GP as possible; i.e., out on the pylons.

Except this is far more dangerous. We've seen that a low velocity impact to the nacelles is enough to destroy the ship! Every time we've seen the pylons or nacelles get damaged leads to the destruction of the entire vessel. Even a collision which looks like it could barely breach the hull caused a catastrophic explosion. I'd rather risk the ocasional crewman getting immolated by a plasma related accident than risk the whole ship going up.

Maybe other folks have safer a/o less volatile methods of power transfer.

This seems very likely, when was the last time we saw an alien ship going up like that?

I do agree that I thought the Romulans use a singularity energy source (not a black hole as such, but...)

IIRC, its a 'quantum singularity'. Whatever that is...

In other words, even if it is as dangerous for everyone to keep their nacelles conformed to the hull, perhaps nobody cares as much as the Federation.

Yes, the Federation definately cares about safety. All you need to do is look at its exploding consoles, terrible designs, terrible computer safety, its....er.....yeah.
They seem to want to protect their crews, but have no idea how to!

[Captain Seafort]

And there are six small phaser arrays at the aft dorsal saucer. Six! What's the point of that?! Why not two or four?

They're probably secondary arrays, for taking out BoP-sized ships while the main arrays focus on enemy capships.

For that matter I am a little dubious about the idea of carrying both photon and quantum torpedoes on one ship. It makes the Sovereign feel like a transitional design... a testbed sort of deal... which would mean it would likely be quickly outpaced.

We've only ever seen the Defiant and the Ent-E use Q-torps, and the DS9 TM suggests that they're more difficult to manufacture, so the PTs are there for general use, while the QTs are for either finishing an enemy off, or for taking on priority targets.

It also bothers me that the ship is smaller than a Galaxy. Every Enterprise had been the biggest, strongest and best of her day... until the Sovereign. I'd rather have seen it scaled up 25% or so to give twice the volume.

We've never seen any Fed ship bigger than a Galaxy - it may represent the upper limit of their shipbuilding capabilities.

[Captain Seafort]

I do agree that I thought the Romulans use a singularity energy source (not a black hole as such, but...)

IIRC, its a 'quantum singularity'. Whatever that is...

Basically a black hole - the singularity is, IIRC, an object with zero volume but high mass at the centre of a black hole, which produces the very strong gravitational field.

In other words, even if it is as dangerous for everyone to keep their nacelles conformed to the hull, perhaps nobody cares as much as the Federation.

Yes, the Federation definately cares about safety. All you need to do is look at its exploding consoles, terrible designs, terrible computer safety, its....er.....yeah.
They seem to want to protect their crews, but have no idea how to!

Well to be fair, while Federation engineering does tend to be a touch volitile, only the early Galaxys (inculding the Ent-D) had the problem of warp cores exploding if you looked at them the wrong way.

[Thorin]

A quantum singularity is a black hole.
Did no one do physics here?