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How was TOS a better starfleet? They had 12 capital ships and a unknown number of Mirandas. Hardly a good military force even if the ships themselves were more practical. TNG may have screwed up ships but atleast there were enough of them.

I think he meant 'better Starfleet' in that they actually had a clue what they were doing.
Unlike TNG Starfleet.

TOS made as many errors as TNG did. They assembled a fleet of several of their capital ships and then handed control of one of them over to a computer which decided it should destroy the other ships.

i thought seafort meant better, as in terms of organisation

TOS made as many errors as TNG did.

Where did I ever say that TOS was infallable?
And at least TOS realised what the duties of a military are, and how to properly design a ship.

They assembled a fleet of several of their capital ships and then handed control of one of them over to a computer which decided it should destroy the other ships.

Like I said, I never claimed infalibility. Yes, that one move was rather stupid, but maybe their tests had suggested that this would never happen. There are plenty of cases of real life military tests giving unexpected reults.

I thought he referred to better = more concerned with getting things done than with avoiding offense to every single living thing in the galaxy.

Well we all think he ment something different.

Seafort get over here and tell us what you ment

I was indeed refering the the overall competence of TOS Starfleet. Yes, they made mistakes, but those mistakes were generally limited to specific circumstances or individuals (the M-5 debacle, Kirk's failure to raise shields when confronted by the Reliant, etc). They didn't put civilians on warships, they didn't have warp cores that blew up if you looked at them funny, and they had far better equipped ground forces - light artillery and mortars, ergonomic hand weapons, helmets and body armour.

Alright that's another subject for another thread, but is there any evidence that body armor is effective against TNG weaponry when the power level is cranked up? It would seem a lot of weight to carry just to protect against possible shrapnel. Actually I think that was in a different thread.

As for the three ships in one you're making assumptions about production I don't think are supported. For example how much more resources does it take to have a replicator crank out the extra decks for some civies or for sensors and the like? I think a lot less than the extra requirements for making four ships, one military, one science, one exploration, and one diplomacy. And again you can't just send a pure explorer/science/diplomacy ship deep outside the federation boarders or you're just asking to lose it. So you have to create a pure military, and science/military and an explorer/military.

Note that due to the apperant "bigger ships get to be faster" thing each of those three ships would take longer to get somewhere.

Finally the Federation has a pretty firm policy of "never shoot first" in most situations outside of war. And follows it up with a "target the non vital systems and then talk" policy. That adds to the fact that you want your deep space exploration/diplomacy ships to be very powerful.

And thuis marking them as a valid military target... and a possible perceived threat, whereas a more dedicated science/diplomacy ship might not appear to be a show of force.

i'd be more inclined to view the united federation of planets as benevolent science-loving egalitarians, if a miranda or nova turns up, rather than a galaxy class, which is as daunting as a d'deridex or vor'cha

Alright that's another subject for another thread, but is there any evidence that body armor is effective against TNG weaponry when the power level is cranked up?

Maybe not full power shots, but the average packing crate can take a hit pretty well.

It would seem a lot of weight to carry just to protect against possible shrapnel.

Better than nothing.

Actually I think that was in a different thread.

So do I.

And again you can't just send a pure explorer/science/diplomacy ship deep outside the federation boarders or you're just asking to lose it. So you have to create a pure military, and science/military and an explorer/military.

That's why you give them an escort.

As for the three ships in one you're making assumptions about production I don't think are supported. For example how much more resources does it take to have a replicator crank out the extra decks for some civies or for sensors and the like? I think a lot less than the extra requirements for making four ships, one military, one science, one exploration, and one diplomacy.

True, but think of how much it must cost when each of these ships is destroyed in a situation in which a specialised ship would survive.
Sure, they'd have a smaller fleet, but a far more efective one, and a far more survivable one.

Note that due to the apperant "bigger ships get to be faster" thing each of those three ships would take longer to get somewhere.

Why? Who says you can't have a large warship?

And follows it up with a "target the non vital systems and then talk" policy. That adds to the fact that you want your deep space exploration/diplomacy ships to be very powerful.

What relevance does this have on a ship on a civilian ship?
How often are they going to get into combat with an alien power?

Actually is there any possibility of a mod snipping this thread up into different topics.

I'd kind of actually like to talk about the Soverign, and I don't think that sort of discussion can survive our favorite hot topics.

Specifically just what sort of ship is the Sov. A lot of people seem to treat it as a pure military ship. I simply don't think this is the case. We see a nearly entirely(but not quite wholly) military ship in the defiant, and the Sov doesn't seem to even approach the defiant when it comes to pound for pound firepower.

Also take a number of things mentioned here and in the memory alpha article, especially regarding the Nemesis Sov

-Captain's Yacht, designed for special diplomatic missions. It could have some kind of delta flyer warship down there. But no, a relatively unarmed Yacht.

-The official cutaway poster of the vessel that was released for First Contact designates the ship as an "Explorer Type 2".

-Freaking ran out of ammo. And perhaps more importantly obviously had internal volume to spare for more.

-The arrangement of living quarters was designed to be modular, so that at any time a particular area could be reconfigured to create larger or smaller residential areas. That's from Alpha so it's probably cannon. This would seem to indicate some considerations for changing the type to crew carried, should the current mission change from near earth troubleshooter to something else.....

-and again things like windows to the outside in crew quarters, and all the stuff Rochey hates about starfleet vessels when they aren't pure military.

In short I'm proposing that the Sov isn't a pure military vessel. And is again a multirole ship, perhapse with the eventual task of deep space exploration. It's simply more militarized than previous multirole ships, due to the current needs of starfleet.

The galaxy represents the furthest starfleet went in the other direction for such a ship, going so far as to conceal its torpedo tubes. If you ask someone who doesn't know trek to point out the weapon systems on that thing they'll point to the navigational deflector and the bussard collectors, maybe the bridge. That's it. Built for a time when the Federations exploration and rapid expansion through diplomacy made them able to safely deal with their known aggressive neighbors using their larger fleet of multirole ships.

I figure the ships like the (origional) Excelsior and Connie fall somewhere between the two.

But they would all have roughly the same multirole mission profile.

Double positing in the hopes this gets split or something.

Rochey wrote:
Why? Who says you can't have a large warship?

Well nothing but once you have a large warship you're trading 1:1 for the multirole. Costing you the efficiancies proposed earlier. Same with the escorts, since I'm pretty sure one big ship is easier for them to produce than four smaller ships that have the same sum capabilities. (and they'd be slower to boot it would seem).

Rochey wrote: What relevance does this have on a ship on a civilian ship?
How often are they going to get into combat with an alien power?

If cannon is to be believed pretty darn often. Also note that a big cap ship would disuade a lot of pirate attacks that smaller ships wouldn't. For example those Hierachy aliens that went after voyager. I'm guessing they would have just let a sov or even a Galaxy sail on by. A smaller less capable ship would probably fair worse as smaller fry would see an oportunity.

sunnyside wrote:-Captain's Yacht, designed for special diplomatic missions. It could have some kind of delta flyer warship down there. But no, a relatively unarmed Yacht.

Phaser arrays are visible on the model, so it does a decent armament for its size. As for the diplomatic angle, all the yacht seemed to have was a flight deck up front with the rest of it taken up by the cargo bay. It seems pretty well designed for what Picard used it for - transporting military supllies to a plenet's surface (for when the transporters are useless).

-The official cutaway poster of the vessel that was released for First Contact designates the ship as an "Explorer Type 2".

Non-canon and therefore inadmissable as evidence.

-Freaking ran out of ammo. And perhaps more importantly obviously had internal volume to spare for more.

So? RL warships occassionally run out of ammo as well, and it's a canon fact that Stafleet could design a decent warship if their lives depended on it. The Sov's a major improvement over the Galaxy at any rate.

-The arrangement of living quarters was designed to be modular, so that at any time a particular area could be reconfigured to create larger or smaller residential areas. That's from Alpha so it's probably cannon. This would seem to indicate some considerations for changing the type to crew carried, should the current mission change from near earth troubleshooter to something else.....

I don't recall that being mentioned anywhere except in the TNG tech manual, which is non-canon. Memory Alpha, being a wiki, isn't the most reliable of sources to put it mildly.

-and again things like windows to the outside in crew quarters, and all the stuff Rochey hates about starfleet vessels when they aren't pure military.

Again, badly designed warship =/= not a warship.

The galaxy represents the furthest starfleet went in the other direction for such a ship, going so far as to conceal its torpedo tubes.

They're no more concealed than any other ship, or a modern submarine for that matter.

If you ask someone who doesn't know trek to point out the weapon systems on that thing they'll point to the navigational deflector and the bussard collectors, maybe the bridge.

An if you ask someone without knowledge of modern weapons systems to point out the wepons on a Ticonderoga they'll probably ignore the missile cell. What the layman thinks is a well-armed ship is utterly irrelevant.