Galaxy Class Capability

[Tsukiyumi]

I recall stating that I would be pleased if he drove his pickup into a ravine...

Though I really believe it was warranted.

[Mark]

Ok....moving along. Does anyone suppose that when they upgraded the GCS, anyone thought to pop a torpedo tube anywhere in the saucer, or maybe a nacelle. I've heard it theorized that they had done so. Could the GCS of the war have been THAT upgraded?

[Aaron]

Ok....moving along. Does anyone suppose that when they upgraded the GCS, anyone thought to pop a torpedo tube anywhere in the saucer, or maybe a nacelle. I've heard it theorized that they had done so. Could the GCS of the war have been THAT upgraded?

The saucer has an aft torpedo under the docking connection already.

The nacelle though? That's just ridiculous, where would it go, how would you reload it? It's already stretching SOD that they post crew in there.

[Mark]

Ok....moving along. Does anyone suppose that when they upgraded the GCS, anyone thought to pop a torpedo tube anywhere in the saucer, or maybe a nacelle. I've heard it theorized that they had done so. Could the GCS of the war have been THAT upgraded?

The saucer has an aft torpedo under the docking connection already.

The nacelle though? That's just ridiculous, where would it go, how would you reload it? It's already stretching SOD that they post crew in there.

Since the GCS has like 30% of it's internal volume unused and standing empty (even more I'd guess on uprated modals) there's no reason they couldn't pop in a Defiant sized warp core, with a retractable nacelle.

[Aaron]

Since the GCS has like 30% of it's internal volume unused and standing empty (even more I'd guess on uprated modals) there's no reason they couldn't pop in a Defiant sized warp core, with a retractable nacelle.

What does that do for putting a tube in the nacelle?

[Tsukiyumi]

Since the GCS has like 30% of it's internal volume unused and standing empty (even more I'd guess on uprated modals) there's no reason they couldn't pop in a Defiant sized warp core, with a retractable nacelle.

What does that do for putting a tube in the nacelle?

I think he means adding a retractable nacelle to give the seperated saucer warp capability. Not a bad idea, IMO.

[Aaron]

I think he means adding a retractable nacelle to give the seperated saucer warp capability. Not a bad idea, IMO.

It's not a bad idea and should have been done from the start if they had to go with the Voltron-special.

[Mark]

Yeah...that's what I meant. Thanks for clearing that up....I had to go get my afternoon coffee to be coherant again. Could have loaded some pulse fire torpedo tubes in the saucer as well. It's got the space. And suddenly saucer seperation makes sense again

[Tsukiyumi]

It's not a bad idea and should have been done from the start if they had to go with the Voltron-special.

And, now I'm picturing a Galaxy-class Transformer...

[Aaron]

And, now I'm picturing a Galaxy-class Transformer...

Yes, we shall dub him Explodor. An Autobot naturally.

[Mark]

And, now I'm picturing a Galaxy-class Transformer...

Yes, we shall dub him Explodor. An Autobot naturally.

And if his head popped out from under the bridge, then we would finally understand after all these years, why they would put the most critical of all ships systems in the least defensable location on the ship, with a big red bullseye painted on it and with a sign saying "shoot us here".

[Atekimogus]

First I would like to say hello to all since this is my first post.

nd if his head popped out from under the bridge, then we would finally understand after all these years, why they would put the most critical of all ships systems in the least defensable location on the ship, with a big red bullseye painted on it and with a sign saying "shoot us here".

I might be wrong but one of the reasons is probably that the bridge-module is supposed to be....modular. Also it probably doesn't make much difference where the bridge is located if the ship is hit by something able to penetrate the shields and since it also is a rather small area to hit on this big ship....well no galaxy we know of was lost because of a destroyed bridge. The battle bridge in docked mode is a bit more protected and I imagine the only reason why we hardly see them relocate to the battle bridge is because of budget restraints and the rather ugly set they were able to build.


To remain on topic I really think that the Galaxy Class is the most underestimated class in the history of star trek. Reasons are obviously the budget the series had, bad writing, federation policy and/or a combination of the three.
There are so many things we never see a galaxy do which they are supposed to be capable of. We almost never see the main hangar, we hardly see a saucer seperation, we almost never see more than one phaser array firing, the biggest photon torpedo burst we see is iirc 3-4 torpedoes out of 10, we almost never see the ship navigate during combat etc.....and for most of these things the special effects and budget restraints of the time are to blame.
Another reason I mentioned is bad writing. Afaik during the whole of trek we only see 3 galaxy class ships destroyed, the Yamato, the Enterprise and the Odyssey. The Yamato was essentially nailed by a super-alien computer virus. The class as a whole is hardly to blame for that since the same would have happened to any other ship, a contemporary romulan warbird suffered also and was iirc only saved by the enterprise. The Enterprise-D suffered hard from bad writing and I know they wanted the saucer crash scene at all costs but how she met her end was almost insulting. They never should have been able to rig Geordis Visor without anyone noticing and therefore beeing able to penetrate the Enterprises' shields. Having penetrated the enterprises shields they should have had them remodulated even before a second disrupter/torpedo hit. Not having them remodulated they should have opened up with a full phaser salvo. Not having opened up with a full phaser salvo they could have used a ten-torpedo salvo to obliberate the small bird of prey. Having not obliberated the bird of prey they instead comfortably await punishment while inventing a way to destroy the ship with only one torpedo. Well, 9 torpedos saved....Riker must have had a ferengi ancestors...... .
Another reason for the seemingly weak class is that they always are the good guys fighting against impossible odds. How the class would have fared if TNG was from a klingon or cardassian perspective? Well, a small taste could be the episode "The Wounded" were the captain of a nebula class starship guess nuts and is happily slaughtering his way through cardassian space. Ship strength seems to be proportional to the evilness of the captain.
Leaves only one thing: the Odyseey and federation policy. I always got the impression that the federation follows a strict minimum of force policy, hence we never see a galaxy open up with all phasers and hardly see them fire more then one torpedo. This seems also to be the case for the USS Odyseey. Beeing on a search and rescue mission against a nation - the dominion - without a formal war declared they seem reluctant to fully open up on the jem'hadar attack ships. We only see one phaser array firing altough at least 4-6 arrays would cover the ventral arc. We never see them fire a torpedo or hear the order to fire one. Also, no one seems to give the Odyssey credit for her thoughness. Beeing virtually naked without shields against a wing of attack ships - which were at this point not the cannon fodder of the dominion - the captain gives our heroes fives minutes for the rescue mission which - during a combat situation - is an eternity. Altough we will never know why they didn't even try to alter the course of the attack ship with a tractor beam I guess even a sovereign wouldn't have fared much better after such an ordeal.

During the dominion war the galaxy class fared much better. They do not battle plot important super-aliens/god creatures, a state of war exists so no minimum force policy and the special effects got much cheaper or the series budget was pumped up and look, during the end of the season we have beautiful galaxy blasting away with multiple phasers, torpedoes etc.... .

To conclude, in my humble opinion the galaxy class (and the contemporary nebula) is still the most beautiful and most capable ship of the federation, yes even better than a sovereign because combat is not everything. (And there is no reason why the galaxys can not be upgraded to sovereign combat lvls imho, there is more than enough space to install everything a sovereign carries twice over)

Atekimogus

[Mikey]

Welcome to the forum!

I might be wrong but one of the reasons is probably that the bridge-module is supposed to be....modular.

True; but as has been the subject of a number of discussions, the questions is: is it worth the functionality of a modular bridge to have the entire senior staff and the CCC center of a ship so vulnerable? With a few notable exceptions, many of us think "no."

*snip bit about writing*

Also true; but whatever the OOU reasons are, what's onscreen is canon, and we're looking for in-universe reasoning.

To remain on topic

Um, yeah... we really don't do that around here.

[Sionnach Glic]

Welcome to the site.

I might be wrong but one of the reasons is probably that the bridge-module is supposed to be....modular.

That's the best (IE, only) explaination that's been put forward to explain such a major flaw in the design. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work. Not only is making the most important part of the ship vulnerable to even the most pathetic guns not worth the ability to change the bridge, but there's also little real point in changing it at all. All the necessary stations are represented, so just what would they ever need to change?

The fact that all observed GCS bridges have been of the same design and that the E-D's bridge has always remained the same, despite them undertaking a couple dozen different mission types, would suggest that it's probably very difficult and time consuming to change the bridge on a GCS, leading to it being used very little in practice (like the Saucer Seperation, only more useless). This would mean that the ship has a major vulnerability, with no pay-off.

It's been suggested at times that the reason the bridge is modular yet all seem identical is that they can easily be swapped out in the event that they're destroyed in combat. But, obviously, if the bridge was burried at the centre of the ship it'd be very unlikely to take damage, unless the ship itself was utterly beyond salvage (at which point replacing the wrecked bridge is the least of your worries), so even that idea makes little real sense.

Also it probably doesn't make much difference where the bridge is located if the ship is hit by something able to penetrate the shields[...]

Actualy, it does make a lot of difference. We've rarely, if ever, seen a weapon penetrate all the way through a ship's hull, even if it's unshielded. Even the most powerful ship in the AQ, the Scimitar, was only able to cause some minor surface damage and a few hull breaches when attacking the unshielded Enterprise E. If the bridge were located internaly rather than externaly, it'd be nigh on impossible to hit in combat conditions unless the ship in question was already crippled beyond its ability to fight back.

In addition, locating it internaly also makes it less vulnerable to damage from collisions, radiation, surprise attacks, etc.

[...] and since it also is a rather small area to hit on this big ship....well no galaxy we know of was lost because of a destroyed bridge.

Of course, destroying the bridge isn't just going to take down the enemy ship for good. But if you hit the bridge, you've killed the entire senior command crew of that ship. In one moment, the entire command crew, the XO, CO, Tac officer, helmsman, Chief Engineer and plenty of other vital personel are all dead. Since virtualy everything seems to be controlled from the bridge, destroying it would leave the ship without the ability to return fire until the crew in the battle bridge realises that they've lost the main bridge and take over. While that may only take about ten seconds, that extra time could mean the difference between survival and destrution.

There's also the fact that we don't know if the battle bridge is even staffed during combat. On every occasion where we've seen it, it's always been personel from the main bridge coming in to find it empty, and taking over themselves. If it's usualy left empty, then that would increase the amount of time it would take to respond to the destruction of the bridge by quite a bit.

Of course, it's also possible that on every occasion we've seen it, the command crew may have called ahead to dismiss the crew that may be normally stationed here. While odd, it makes far more sense than it being unmaned.

To remain on topic I really think that the Galaxy Class is the most underestimated class in the history of star trek. Reasons are obviously the budget the series had, bad writing, federation policy and/or a combination of the three.
There are so many things we never see a galaxy do which they are supposed to be capable of. We almost never see the main hangar, we hardly see a saucer seperation, we almost never see more than one phaser array firing, the biggest photon torpedo burst we see is iirc 3-4 torpedoes out of 10, we almost never see the ship navigate during combat etc.....and for most of these things the special effects and budget restraints of the time are to blame.

Indeed, budget constraints are the main cause of most of the problems. And that works while trying to explain things from an out-of-universe position, it's not admissible from an in-universe explaination using suspension of disbelief.

Another reason I mentioned is bad writing. Afaik during the whole of trek we only see 3 galaxy class ships destroyed, the Yamato, the Enterprise and the Odyssey. The Yamato was essentially nailed by a super-alien computer virus. The class as a whole is hardly to blame for that since the same would have happened to any other ship, a contemporary romulan warbird suffered also and was iirc only saved by the enterprise.

Indeed, the problem displayed in the Yamato Incident is hardly unique to the GCS, or even the UFP. By all indications, every other race in the galaxy suffers from the same problem.

However, that does not excuse the fact that it's an absurdly stupid design flaw to have all your computers linked together. That everyone else in the galaxy has also fallen into this pit of stupidity does not stop it from being a pit of stupidity. It just means the UFP isn't alone in its idiocy.

The Enterprise-D suffered hard from bad writing and I know they wanted the saucer crash scene at all costs but how she met her end was almost insulting. They never should have been able to rig Geordis Visor without anyone noticing and therefore beeing able to penetrate the Enterprises' shields. Having penetrated the enterprises shields they should have had them remodulated even before a second disrupter/torpedo hit. Not having them remodulated they should have opened up with a full phaser salvo. Not having opened up with a full phaser salvo they could have used a ten-torpedo salvo to obliberate the small bird of prey. Having not obliberated the bird of prey they instead comfortably await punishment while inventing a way to destroy the ship with only one torpedo. Well, 9 torpedos saved....Riker must have had a ferengi ancestors...... .

Indeed, the E-D met an insulting end.

While I utterly despise the GCS in general and the E-D in particular (something you'll quickly learn if you stick around on the forum ), such a famous and important ship deserved to meet its end in a far more fitting and glorious manner. Having it brought down by trickery by an obsolete vessel is just pathetic.

Another reason for the seemingly weak class is that they always are the good guys fighting against impossible odds. How the class would have fared if TNG was from a klingon or cardassian perspective? Well, a small taste could be the episode "The Wounded" were the captain of a nebula class starship guess nuts and is happily slaughtering his way through cardassian space. Ship strength seems to be proportional to the evilness of the captain.

Again, this is more an out-of-universe problem than an in-universe one. That said, it's perfectly possible to have an excellent series focused around a powerful ship or faction. For example, the Culture series is generaly thought to be great by most who've read it, yet they're one of (if not the) most powerful groups in all of sci-fi. If you can come up with good stories, then the power of the factions becomes more a piece of background info than the focus of the show itself.

EDIT: Whoops, clicked Submit too soon.

Leaves only one thing: the Odyseey and federation policy. I always got the impression that the federation follows a strict minimum of force policy, hence we never see a galaxy open up with all phasers and hardly see them fire more then one torpedo. This seems also to be the case for the USS Odyseey. Beeing on a search and rescue mission against a nation - the dominion - without a formal war declared they seem reluctant to fully open up on the jem'hadar attack ships. We only see one phaser array firing altough at least 4-6 arrays would cover the ventral arc.

I seriously doubt the Feds have regulations saying they can only use X% of their available firepower in a life or death situation. If they do, then they're even dumber than I already consider them (which is quite an achievement ).

The current explaination as to why we never see the various ships firing more than one array at a time is that they can only channel a set amount of power into the entire weapons system (we know all the various weapons systems are linked together, which supports this idea), thus conferring no advantage by firing more than one gun since they all work off the same power source.

Example:
Let's say a GCS has four phaser arrays which can hit an attacking ship coming from a certain angle. It can supply 10,000 TJ of firepower to the weapons system. Since all the phasers work from the same power source, this means that this 10,000 TJ is available to all of them, and can be used up by all of them.
So the GCS can either fire one phaser beam with a strength of 10,000 TJ, or four with each having a strength of 2,500 TJ, or any other combination.
As such, firing more than one gun would be of no advantage, since you're still pumping the same amount of firepower into the target.

We never see them fire a torpedo or hear the order to fire one.

It's possible her torpedo bays or the power conduits that provide them with power were damaged during the initial attack. Or perhaps they had trouble targetting vessels. Given that they were completely unknown and presumably giving off different signals, it's not unfeasable they might have had trouble locking on with their slower weapons. Or perhaps the captain judged (correctly or incorrectly, who knows) that the slow and cumbersome torpedoes would be of little use against fast moving and agile targets.

Also, no one seems to give the Odyssey credit for her thoughness. Beeing virtually naked without shields against a wing of attack ships - which were at this point not the cannon fodder of the dominion - the captain gives our heroes fives minutes for the rescue mission which - during a combat situation - is an eternity.

If three comparatively tiny ships can take down a battleship with little hassel, I consider it a major problem. That'd be like a trio of WW2 anti-sub destroyers taking down a US battleship.

Altough we will never know why they didn't even try to alter the course of the attack ship with a tractor beam I guess even a sovereign wouldn't have fared much better after such an ordeal.

On the contrary, its far greater firepower and armour would have probably allowed it to survive with minimal damage.

During the dominion war the galaxy class fared much better. They do not battle plot important super-aliens/god creatures, a state of war exists so no minimum force policy and the special effects got much cheaper or the series budget was pumped up and look, during the end of the season we have beautiful galaxy blasting away with multiple phasers, torpedoes etc.... .

During the Dominion War, it seems Starfleet got a clue and upgraded the GCS line. Given certain differences that have been observed, it's unlikely the ships participating in these battles were "classic" GCSes like the E-D.

To conclude, in my humble opinion the galaxy class (and the contemporary nebula) is still the most beautiful and most capable ship of the federation, yes even better than a sovereign because combat is not everything. (And there is no reason why the galaxys can not be upgraded to sovereign combat lvls imho, there is more than enough space to install everything a sovereign carries twice over)

We've gone over the concept of a Jack-of-all-trades style ship on the forum several times. On every occasions it's been decided that they're not a good idea if you plan on sending the ship to war.

[kostmayer]

We've gone over the concept of a Jack-of-all-trades style ship on the forum several times. On every occasions it's been decided that they're not a good idea if you plan on sending the ship to war.

I'm pretty sure there's still some dissent over that but still

Again, this is more an out-of-universe problem than an in-universe one. That said, it's perfectly possible to have an excellent series focused around a powerful ship or faction. For example, the Culture series is generaly thought to be great by most who've read it, yet they're one of (if not the) most powerful groups in all of sci-fi. If you can come up with good stories, then the power of the factions becomes more a piece of background info than the focus of the show itself.

Indeed - Blake's 7 (I need to start a thread on this show) was based around a group of rebels who happen upon the most powerful ship in the Galaxy. More over, the group included the best computer expert in the Federation (the bad guys in this series), a thief who could break into practically anything, and later a Computer so powerful it was close to omnipitent, the Federations best combat pilot, best weapons exerpt, and best gunfighter (we sensing a pattern here). It still managed to produce great watching, mainly because of the interplay between the main characters, and the great stories. Its just a matter of not making the heroes invulnerable, and not resolving every crisis just by being the best/most powerful.