Stats/Information on the new Enterprise

[Teaos]

It has stuff, but the space between is massive. Starships should be built like subs, stuffed crammed everywhere and people hot bunking.

The waste of space we see points and large areas of waste.

[Atekimogus]

What does recoil have to do with it? Big ships don't carry larger weapons because only they can handle the recoil. Bigger ships can carry bigger reactors. The Defiant, given it's design, seems to be about as small a package as you can get that firepower into. So in that case want more firepower, bigger ship.

Well since some battleship are only able to fire broadsides otherwise they would damage their bow I would say the principle of a cannon with an explosive discharge sure has something to do with the size of the ship and what weapons you are able to mount on them. Whereas you surly could squeeze a few type X phaser on a shuttle and fire them, if you find a way to somehow power them.

Contrary to wwII ships the big ones are not invulnerable to weapons fire from a smaller calibre, their shields still get weaker therefore, yes two cruiser could probalby bring down a battleship, why not. Phaser do not bounce of armour and even a small torpedo hurts.

WWII ships were not invulnerable to smaller ships, and quite a few died to ships far smaller than they were. However it took a great deal of skill and often luck to do it.

Lemme give you an example. Ship A is a trek era battleship. Ship's B and C are opposing trek era cruisers. Everything is equal. The total power output of B&C equals A, combined shield strength of B&C equals A, total mass of B&C equals A. The battle starts and A focuses everything on B. Well guess what. When B is dead the firepower of the B&C taskforce is halved, and A still has half it's shields left. Guess what happens to C, it's dead. That's simplifying, but the point stands, two cruisers are not the equal of one battleship.

By the same logic I could use your example and presume that a trek era cruiser does not equal 50% of shield/weaponstrength of a battleship but 75% and suddenly the outcome is a bit different.

Possibly, but do we have any real evidence the new Enterprise has "So much internal space"?

You are right, except the huge empty space we see in the engineering hull (hanger etc) there is no real evidence. But since the saucer is almost identical to the TMP one just scaled up with no visible machinery or weapons out of proportion the question arises, what do they do with the space.

[Tyyr]

Well since some battleship are only able to fire broadsides otherwise they would damage their bow I would say the principle of a cannon with an explosive discharge sure has something to do with the size of the ship and what weapons you are able to mount on them. Whereas you surly could squeeze a few type X phaser on a shuttle and fire them, if you find a way to somehow power them.

No, the reason battleships mount the big guns is simply that the guns are BIG. The turret of an Iowa class battleship masses 2,100 tons. You had to have a huge ship to mount them. Additionally the material investment of building something like that demands that you mount it on a vessel that will be able to make use of it with enough armor to last.

Why not just mount a couple big phasers on a few small hulls? Because you have the same issues. If you're going to bother putting guns that big on something it has to be able to support them and then be worth doing. The Defiant is an example of this and it works, but given how small the Defiant is and how big Starfleet can build ships it begs the question of what happens if you take a Sovergein sized ship and build it like the Defiant.

By the same logic I could use your example and presume that a trek era cruiser does not equal 50% of shield/weaponstrength of a battleship but 75% and suddenly the outcome is a bit different.

Maybe, but you're also edging awful close to just building your own battleships at that point, and you're investing significantly more resources to build your two ships than the other guy is to building his one.

You are right, except the huge empty space we see in the engineering hull (hanger etc) there is no real evidence. But since the saucer is almost identical to the TMP one just scaled up with no visible machinery or weapons out of proportion the question arises, what do they do with the space.

You can't count the hangar bay becaus 1, it's slam full of shuttles and 2, it's a functional space that's about as crowded as you can make it. As for main engineering, yes there's some open space but as someone who spends all their time maintaining a power play I'd point out that you can't just slam everything in asses and elbows and expect to be able to maintain it in the long run. Today when a major port facility is just a week, maybe two away and you're pulling into one every three to six months you can take a warship and cram everything in there. The Enterprise doesn't though, it's designed to function for extended periods away from starbase on exploration missions, they have to maintain their own equipment, and to do proper maintenance you need space. You can't fix a part if you can't get it out of the machine. For instance the coolant turbine that Scotty nearly got sucked into, you need at least as much space as the size of the rotor so you can get it out. You actually need significantly more space because of the shear complexity of something like that. You can only pack things in so tightly before they become unmaintainable.

Thre are visible weapons on the saucer, just the emitter heads. How much have we actually seen of this version of the Enterprise's saucer though. The bridge, the transporter room, and a couple of hall shots? Seems a bit premature to start assuming they don't have machinery stuffed all through the saucer.

[stitch626]

what happens if you take a Sovergein sized ship and build it like the Defiant.

You have a giant ship with no weapons coverage on the sides or ventral surface. A really bad idea.

[Tyyr]

what happens if you take a Sovergein sized ship and build it like the Defiant.

You have a giant ship with no weapons coverage on the sides or ventral surface. A really bad idea.

I meant all guns and armor. Not necessarily scale the defiant to 700m long.

[Teaos]

You can put as many phasers as you like on a ship, but if you dont have a decent sized Warp core you cant power them, and we have never seen anything to suggest the Federation can make WC's that big, infact the biggest WC seen is the GCS... which as we know has a tendency to go snap crackle and pop.

[Atekimogus]

No, the reason battleships mount the big guns is simply that the guns are BIG. The turret of an Iowa class battleship masses 2,100 tons. You had to have a huge ship to mount them. Additionally the material investment of building something like that demands that you mount it on a vessel that will be able to make use of it with enough armor to last.

Why not just mount a couple big phasers on a few small hulls? Because you have the same issues. If you're going to bother putting guns that big on something it has to be able to support them and then be worth doing. The Defiant is an example of this and it works, but given how small the Defiant is and how big Starfleet can build ships it begs the question of what happens if you take a Sovergein sized ship and build it like the Defiant.

That is basically what I was saying all along. That in ww2 you "had" to put the big guns on big ships but in the 24th century this limitation is not as strict as examples as the defiant shows. The phasers on UFP ships are really small in terms of proportion to the rest of the ship and yet, they always seem to run out of power long before the phasers are melting down which seems to indicate that there would be no point in designing even larger phasers if you cannot properly power them which leads to the question if they couldn't build ships with the same capability within smaller hulls.

Maybe, but you're also edging awful close to just building your own battleships at that point, and you're investing significantly more resources to build your two ships than the other guy is to building his one.

Maybe, maybe not. We do not know if the cost structure of space frames, warp cores etc are strictly linear. Considering that during TOS the UFP sticked to a "heavy cruiser" design maybe it was just wasteful -if not impossible - to build numbers of bigger ships.

Thre are visible weapons on the saucer, just the emitter heads. How much have we actually seen of this version of the Enterprise's saucer though. The bridge, the transporter room, and a couple of hall shots? Seems a bit premature to start assuming they don't have machinery stuffed all through the saucer.

That is true, since the saucer is almost a perfect scale up it was just my assumption that the phasers etc also have roughly the same proportions. I never said it "is" so, I think but I think this would be a reasonable guess until proven otherwise.

[Tyyr]

That is basically what I was saying all along. That in ww2 you "had" to put the big guns on big ships but in the 24th century this limitation is not as strict as examples as the defiant shows. The phasers on UFP ships are really small in terms of proportion to the rest of the ship and yet, they always seem to run out of power long before the phasers are melting down which seems to indicate that there would be no point in designing even larger phasers if you cannot properly power them which leads to the question if they couldn't build ships with the same capability within smaller hulls.

We know what you're saying is true. They got GCS sized firepower in a Defiant sized hull. I'm not arguing that.

What I'm arguing is that you could just build a bigger ship in the same style as the Defiant. There's no reason you can't build a bigger ship, with a bigger warp core, or just more warp cores, to power stronger sheilds and more powerful phasers. And that bigger ship will eat the Defiant.

Maybe, maybe not. We do not know if the cost structure of space frames, warp cores etc are strictly linear. Considering that during TOS the UFP sticked to a "heavy cruiser" design maybe it was just wasteful -if not impossible - to build numbers of bigger ships.

Economies of scale, bigger ships are typically ton for ton cheaper than smaller ships. That's held true for along time. I don't see that suddenly reversing in the future.

The Federation calls their ships cruisers because they're trying to sound warm and fuzzy. The ships they built at the time were the largest most powerful ships around, and therefore were functionally the battleships of Starfleet They've consistently built bigger and bigger ships.

That is true, since the saucer is almost a perfect scale up it was just my assumption that the phasers etc also have roughly the same proportions. I never said it "is" so, I think but I think this would be a reasonable guess until proven otherwise.

Given the massive changes we've seen in engineering, the shuttle bay, and everywhere else I'm with holding judgement until we see some proof.

[Deepcrush]

For the question of how much space a phaser takes. Look at the USS Venture. Those phasers have some large Pod like things under them that I don't remember on a standard GCS. Maybe thats a way to find out the total space needed to operate a Type X.

To the question of Battleships and size. The Defiant was impressive but remember that her small size had a problem. She was very short ranged. She was also only and EVEN match for a ship 100 years old that had been refitted.

A larger ship such as the war-GCS under going a similar refitted would have torn the Defiant apart with little effort.

[Atekimogus]

We know what you're saying is true. They got GCS sized firepower in a Defiant sized hull. I'm not arguing that.

What I'm arguing is that you could just build a bigger ship in the same style as the Defiant. There's no reason you can't build a bigger ship, with a bigger warp core, or just more warp cores, to power stronger sheilds and more powerful phasers. And that bigger ship will eat the Defiant.

Ok, if you put it this way I have to agree with you. It is just that I do believe that - given a certain tech level - the biggest ships you are able to build are not necessarily the best ones. A vast ship with multiple cores, starbase-shields and weapons etc. sure would eat a defiant no question but I still doubt it would be a viable design, hence my stance that the size of ships is probably limited or else they become impractical.
Correct me if I am wrong but I think we know of a grand total of 3 GCS ships lost which is imho not so bad considering the hazardous environment they are working in, yet each loss was considered a small catastrophe and this would weight even heavier with a super-ship design you described.

The Federation calls their ships cruisers because they're trying to sound warm and fuzzy. The ships they built at the time were the largest most powerful ships around, and therefore were functionally the battleships of Starfleet They've consistently built bigger and bigger ships.

I agree that the classifiction is "probably" a smokescreen if we ignore the TOS-TM dreadnaughts. (which seems reasonable). As for your last sentence, they built consistently bigger ships up to the GCS, then the trend reverses with Intrepids and Sovereigns which implies that most missions in the star trek universe can be accomplished by those ships and that there is simply no need for much larger ships, at least atm.

Given the massive changes we've seen in engineering, the shuttle bay, and everywhere else I'm with holding judgement until we see some proof.

Fair enough.

For the question of how much space a phaser takes. Look at the USS Venture. Those phasers have some large Pod like things under them that I don't remember on a standard GCS. Maybe thats a way to find out the total space needed to operate a Type X.

That is actually a good idea altough the schematics in the TNG-TM show us an emitter the form of a Y. To be honest the position of those stripes seems odd to me. The arcs of those stripes seem to be already covered and from all the things I do not want to put an emitter on the warp nacelles would be probably near the top of the list so those Pod like things under them might be energy couplings or screening you only need because of the nacelles.

[Mark]

You can put as many phasers as you like on a ship, but if you dont have a decent sized Warp core you cant power them, and we have never seen anything to suggest the Federation can make WC's that big, infact the biggest WC seen is the GCS... which as we know has a tendency to go snap crackle and pop.

However, in the new movie, Scotty ejected the core, and instead of one HUGE one, it blew out several smaller ones.......maybe THAT'S the solution!

[Teaos]

Wasnt that just the anti-matter pods?

[Sionnach Glic]

You can put as many phasers as you like on a ship, but if you dont have a decent sized Warp core you cant power them, and we have never seen anything to suggest the Federation can make WC's that big, infact the biggest WC seen is the GCS... which as we know has a tendency to go snap crackle and pop.

Then shove a bunch of smaller and more stable warp cores in.

[Teaos]

Added complexity, if you have to resort to that your better off scrapping it and building smaller better ships, ala Defiant, Akira, Intrepid, Prommy. All very solid powerful designs with smaller cores.

[Tyyr]

Correct me if I am wrong but I think we know of a grand total of 3 GCS ships lost which is imho not so bad considering the hazardous environment they are working in, yet each loss was considered a small catastrophe and this would weight even heavier with a super-ship design you described.

Consider what happened. First, these are Starfleets newest and greatest (at least when they were lost). Second they were slam full of crew as well as civilians and children. Finally they were lost to a computer glitch, enemy action, and sabotage/enemy action. It wasn't an asupicious beginning. It's not hard to see how their losses could be considered a catastrophe.

I agree that the classifiction is "probably" a smokescreen if we ignore the TOS-TM dreadnaughts. (which seems reasonable). As for your last sentence, they built consistently bigger ships up to the GCS, then the trend reverses with Intrepids and Sovereigns which implies that most missions in the star trek universe can be accomplished by those ships and that there is simply no need for much larger ships, at least atm.

The Intrepids don't point to a trend towards building smaller ships. Starfleet has always built smaller ships to back up their big ones. Mirandas, Constellations, Oberths etc. The Sovereign's gross tonnage is reduced somewhat but given the time frame of its construction it wasn't the Galaxy's successor but counterpart to it.

Wasnt that just the anti-matter pods?

I'm pretty sure he said "the warp core".

Added complexity, if you have to resort to that your better off scrapping it and building smaller better ships, ala Defiant, Akira, Intrepid, Prommy. All very solid powerful designs with smaller cores.

I think that's a bit of a leap. There's some added complexity to additional cores obviously but to say that complexity automatically makes the ship's non-viable and multiple smaller ships a better solution? Not buying it.