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There are many cases in the present day where several smaller engines are used in place of one large one.

The Saturn V rocket - five main engines, not one big one.
The Nimitz class carriers - two A4W reactors, not one bigger one.
Most large passenger jets have two, three or four engines; one engine jobs are reserved for smaller aircraft.
Same with military aircraft; one engine is used on only the smallest fighters, any of significant size has two or more. And hell, the B52 has EIGHT engines.
The Iowa class battleships have eight boilers

If anything multiple cores is safer. If one was to pop, and the Ent-D's seemed to just be waiting for a chance to, dump it and keep going with your remaining ones.

Tyyr wrote: 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 am sorry but I do not see how it is relevant how the ships were lost. It is probably my fault because my argumentation was unclear but I did not want to imply that the GCS were bad ships because they were big and some were lost but that they were huge investments and bigger ships are even bigger investments and a loss all the more catastrophic.

I imagine thats why each and every Romalun Warbird we see is huge and threatening but in the end they turn tail no matter the odds. "Hm, yes we could probably beat the Enterprise in a shooting match, but then maybe not.....is plot reason xy really worth the gamble?"

Tyyr wrote: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.

Hm....yes after reconsideration I think you are quite right. I would even go so far and say that the Sovereign isn't the counterpart to the Galaxy but the successor to the Excelsior (which even look similar imho) with the real successor to the Galaxy yet to be build.

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

Yes, I also thought he spoke about the warp core....not sure though

Tyyr wrote: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.

Well, maybe not non-viable but one large ship is never as flexible as multiple smaller ships. And every time you have to deploy a large ship on a low priority assignment you are basically just wasting resources.

Atekimogus wrote:I am sorry but I do not see how it is relevant how the ships were lost. It is probably my fault because my argumentation was unclear but I did not want to imply that the GCS were bad ships because they were big and some were lost but that they were huge investments and bigger ships are even bigger investments and a loss all the more catastrophic.

The way two were lost doesn't speak highly of the design. Rather than being lost to enemy action the Yamato was destroyed because of a computer glitch, thousands of lives lost because no one bothered to reboot the thing. The Ent-D went down to a decrepit, outdated, incredibly inferior, warbird because of a little espionage. Two of the three losses were pretty pathetic and senseless losses tend to be viewed a bit more awful than ones in which you're honestly beat.

Yes, I also thought he spoke about the warp core....not sure though

I'm pretty certain that's what he said because I was shocked when those five or six blue things came popping out.

Well, maybe not non-viable but one large ship is never as flexible as multiple smaller ships. And every time you have to deploy a large ship on a low priority assignment you are basically just wasting resources.

No arguement from me. An all battleship navy is pretty nonsensical which is why you balance out the battlewagons with a bunch of cruiser and destroyer sized ships as well.

Teaos wrote:Wasnt that just the anti-matter pods?

That's what I thought at first as well, but he DID say eject the core and we never saw anything BUT those small things come out.

Atekimogus wrote:Well, maybe not non-viable but one large ship is never as flexible as multiple smaller ships. And every time you have to deploy a large ship on a low priority assignment you are basically just wasting resources.

Which is why you have a number of smaller ships to complement it. No one's suggesting just building a fleet of battleships.

Flexibility can only go so far. There is only one effective counter to a Battleship...Another Battleship.

Exactly. A mixed fleet is always the best sollution.

Tyyr wrote:If anything multiple cores is safer. If one was to pop, and the Ent-D's seemed to just be waiting for a chance to, dump it and keep going with your remaining ones.

How though?

Isn't that just more antimatter waiting to go boom?

I'm wondering because even though they have core ejection systems they always seem to have trouble with them, so having multiple cores to eject would seem an exponentially bad thing.

(Ok, granted, the likelihood of ALL of them going kaput is probably small, but this would be a worst case scenario.)

Mark wrote:

Teaos wrote:Wasnt that just the anti-matter pods?

That's what I thought at first as well, but he DID say eject the core and we never saw anything BUT those small things come out.

Maybe the older designs were multiple sections. The long thin Warp Core is something that came in with TMP and later, Enterprise Nil did not have anything that looked like a long skinny core, same with Enterprise NX01. They looked more like the boxlike things that came out of 1701 in the Movie to escape the narada's black hole..... Maybe it is just the way the technology was pre refit

Or it could be that the militarization of starfleet led to advances in warpcore tehnology, its likely they found that in a combat situation losing one of your primary power sources by having to eject it would be devistating (obviously). there fore multiple smaller units would be able allow some redundancy in the engines. it would make sense to me, military equipment of totay uses this kind of redundancy.

Kevsha wrote:Or it could be that the militarization of starfleet led to advances in warpcore tehnology, its likely they found that in a combat situation losing one of your primary power sources by having to eject it would be devistating (obviously). there fore multiple smaller units would be able allow some redundancy in the engines. it would make sense to me, military equipment of totay uses this kind of redundancy.

now this makes alot of sense to me, more smaller is better than one larger bigger, all eggs in one basket is not always the best theory. Some things will come out in time too

LaughingCheese wrote:How though?

How? If you've got more than one core and one of them goes FUBAR the remaining ones are still usable and making power.

Isn't that just more antimatter waiting to go boom?

More than what, the ton of it you're already carrying for fuel?

Reliant121 wrote:Flexibility can only go so far. There is only one effective counter to a Battleship...Another Battleship.

Or a submarine or a torpedo/dive bomber....

Are the trailers canon? Such as the ones that show the ship under construction?