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I'll vote for option b on mypart, but if we have power to spare as according to Mark, I'll gladly take all three.

Well, we have two vote for all and one vote for Option B.

I like Option C personally, the DS9-turrets

With the amount of power we have, there is no reason to exclude anything. The only thing one has to keep in mind is that during the course of battle, when she starts taking damage and losing power, then we'll start losing systems and have to prioritize what is most important to us.

Mark wrote:With the amount of power we have, there is no reason to exclude anything. The only thing one has to keep in mind is that during the course of battle, when she starts taking damage and losing power, then we'll start losing systems and have to prioritize what is most important to us.

I would think you would run into fuel issues. While the thing is much more massive than your average federation ship by volume it is not a ton bigger, just more dense if I am reading this all right.

Your fuel storage is a function of volume however. I would guess you could blow through a lot of anti-matter pretty fast if you have 8 warp cores up and running. But the more of it you have to store the more vulnerable you will be to weapons fire.

True, but warp cores buried DEEPLY inside the ship behind so many layers of defense also increase survivablity greatly. We wouldn't be running 8 warp cores all day everyday anyway. I'd imagine we'd run two for standard "condition green" ops, which would be rotated just like the nacelles to sustain her high cruising speed. The only time we'd fire them all up is when we're going to to "yellow alert" or "red alert" and we start arming tactical system.

I also have an idea for a safety measure. We saw anti-matter "deactivated" in TOS. Couldn't we use a similar tech as a failsafe for an overloading warp core, rather than just depending on the ejection system alone?

We could theoretically lose 7 of the 8 cores, and STILL retain a degree of combat ability as well as the ability to get the hell out of dodge.

In which episode was antimatter deactivated in what way?

Nomad deactivated it IIRC

Mark wrote:True, but warp cores buried DEEPLY inside the ship behind so many layers of defense also increase survivablity greatly. We wouldn't be running 8 warp cores all day everyday anyway. I'd imagine we'd run two for standard "condition green" ops, which would be rotated just like the nacelles to sustain her high cruising speed. The only time we'd fire them all up is when we're going to to "yellow alert" or "red alert" and we start arming tactical system.

I also have an idea for a safety measure. We saw anti-matter "deactivated" in TOS. Couldn't we use a similar tech as a failsafe for an overloading warp core, rather than just depending on the ejection system alone?

We could theoretically lose 7 of the 8 cores, and STILL retain a degree of combat ability as well as the ability to get the hell out of dodge.

I am not talking about the cores. I am talking about the fuel storage necessary to operate them all. You have two issues you have to deal with.

1. This is already a very dense ship packed with a lot of weapons, flight decks, maint. areas, crew and ground troops. There is likely a lot of space already spoken for.

2. It does not form the dimensons have a ton more volume than some of the bigger one warp core trek ships. It has a great deal more mass but not nearly as much more volume.

I see a problem when I look at ship schematics and they show somewhat large tanks for anti-deuterium and deuterium. The first is a safety hazard if hit obviously so the more you carry the more vulnerable you are. They are both space eaters as well. Whatever percentage of the volume of a typical starship a warp core eats up you need to multiply by 5-10 times depending on just how you lay them out here to account for the space needed by the cores, fuel storage and associated fuel handling and power distribution systems. The more spread out they are the less efficient they will be. The more concentrated the more efficient you can be but the less redundant your systems will be against battle damage.

Mark wrote:Nomad deactivated it IIRC

I think it was the Doomsday Machine, which was why they had to resort to an impulse engine overload rather than the main core.

Crap, I think your right.

I was half asleep last night

Big....space COULD be a problem, but keep in mind there also is gonna be alot of internal differences. We are talking about a ship that is three times the size of a GCS and about 3000 crew. She DOES carry a marine division, but keep in mind that alot of internal crap we saw on the GCS could be removed as needed, and not to mention all the extra/empty space in the ship.

We are NOT carrying big tanks with water for our whale crew members. We don't have individual arenas for everyones favorite combat, (ie no dedicated ambo-jitsu ring, or fencing ring), we don't have three shuttle bays in the main of the ship. We have individual flight pods for those. We don't have 20 different labs with sensor equipment, or stellar cartography, or any of those wonderful "explore the galaxy tools". That frees up alot of space.

Now, as for the fuel......since we don't actually know what a normal fuel consumption rate in ST is, it's hard to guess how much we have to have on hand. We don't go for long range deployment into deep space. We are a fighting ship, plain and simple. We are dispatched to trouble zones to eliminate the "trouble", so we are able to go and refuel, or at least have a support line of freightors refuel us if needed (Voyager seemed to be able to make her own fuel after all).

Mark wrote:Crap, I think your right.

I was half asleep last night

Big....space COULD be a problem, but keep in mind there also is gonna be alot of internal differences. We are talking about a ship that is three times the size of a GCS and about 3000 crew. She DOES carry a marine division, but keep in mind that alot of internal crap we saw on the GCS could be removed as needed, and not to mention all the extra/empty space in the ship.

We are NOT carrying big tanks with water for our whale crew members. We don't have individual arenas for everyones favorite combat, (ie no dedicated ambo-jitsu ring, or fencing ring), we don't have three shuttle bays in the main of the ship. We have individual flight pods for those. We don't have 20 different labs with sensor equipment, or stellar cartography, or any of those wonderful "explore the galaxy tools". That frees up alot of space.

Now, as for the fuel......since we don't actually know what a normal fuel consumption rate in ST is, it's hard to guess how much we have to have on hand. We don't go for long range deployment into deep space. We are a fighting ship, plain and simple. We are dispatched to trouble zones to eliminate the "trouble", so we are able to go and refuel, or at least have a support line of freightors refuel us if needed (Voyager seemed to be able to make her own fuel after all).

And if we're using Defiant style cores, those will take up less physical space as well

Are those cores capable of powering such a ship, however?

Sonic Glitch wrote:And if we're using Defiant style cores, those will take up less physical space as well

Why would we want to use Defiant cores? The ship is slow and short-legged, and while speed isn't really an issue, we do want decent endurance for this ship.

I think space will be at a huge premium once you get done stuffing everything into a ship like this. The hanger alone will be huge, not to mention facilities for handling nearly 1,000 armored vehicles and maintaining all of the above while underway. You lose a ton of internal volume just to hallways and internal sub-division as well, not to mention crew quarters and medical facilities dictated in the initial specs.

And I agree you would want to use bigger cores, though I think two new designs that are very big would be far more space efficient than 8 cores with all the associated equipment that would need to go with them and could likely be more well protected than 8. If someone breaches this hull enough to get to a warp core it won't matter if you how big they are you are likely in a lot of trouble. The only real advantage I can see to having 8 warp cores is you could eject a few and not be crippled but given the level of armor on this ship I don't see ejection as being much of an option with a dual layered armor system and a void in between.