Ambassador & Galaxy class

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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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DarkMoineau wrote:The GCS was the first Federation ship with 9cm of armor, so the countrary would be a bigger problem.

Voyager (without armor but it's the ridiculously strong Voyager ^^), Defiant (20cm ablative armor) and Soveregin (10cm ablativ armor) against the Scimitar have suffer more damages than E-D without have a warp core compromised.
What? The GCS wasn't armoured. The Intrepids weren't armoured. We've heard nothing about the Sovs being armoured and we've heard sod-all about the Defiant's armour other than the fact it had it (and was thus considered unusual).
GrahamKennedy wrote:It really bothers me when people complain that it was easy to kill the E-D. One can certainly complain that they didn't fire back much, and I'm fine with that. But watch the battle, people. It opens with two torpedo hits straight into the E-D deflector, which means warp drive is unlikely. The next shot we see is a twin disrupter hit to a nacelle, which means warp drive is likely impossible. Count the visible hits and bangs we hear and the ship takes something like fifteen or twenty disrupter and torpedo hits. Yet it still survives long enough to evacuate the entire crew to the saucer and separate.
The problem is the fact that the E-D was destroyed, but the nature of it. If she'd taken one torpedo into the antimatter pods and blown up, no one would be complaining. It the fact that her loss, along with that of the Yamato and the half-dozen times she was nearly lost, was attributable to bad design. A simple coolant leak could only lead to a breach if the main loop was the only one. Geordi's reaction wasn't "coolant leak, shrug, that's one out of three down" it was "we're five minutes from a warp core breach and there's nothing I can do". On top of this, you've got the fact that the ejection systems require power to operate, rather than being triggered by power loss, so if the power goes down you get to sit twiddling your thumbs until the ship blows up (to be fair, this isn't unique to Trek - the Japanese have also recently discovered why relying on a power-operated emergency shutdown is a bad idea). Finally there's the computer problems - a malfunction there can create all kinds of havoc, as the Yamato discovered, and there's no failsafe or manual override.

If we were talking about Generations in isolation, then we could argue that the loss of the ship was due to extensive damage, perhaps physically jamming the warp core in place. Given the ship's long history of almost blowing up when she bloody well shouldn't have, I see no reason to give the benefit of the doubt in this case.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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There's the problem, a properly designed power system would have removed a tremendous number of stories from the writers. How can you put the ship in Jeopardy if it's not in constant danger of exploding?
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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Captain Seafort wrote:The problem is the fact that the E-D was destroyed, but the nature of it. If she'd taken one torpedo into the antimatter pods and blown up, no one would be complaining. It the fact that her loss, along with that of the Yamato and the half-dozen times she was nearly lost, was attributable to bad design. A simple coolant leak could only lead to a breach if the main loop was the only one. Geordi's reaction wasn't "coolant leak, shrug, that's one out of three down" it was "we're five minutes from a warp core breach and there's nothing I can do".
Bleah, that's another complaint I hate. I dislike technobabble as it is, I really don't need to see Geordi say "We have a coolant leak and the back up is down and the second backup is down and the auto sealing system is down and the backup to the auto sealing system is down and the AM core jettison plates were warped by the explosions and are stuck in place and... and... and..."

Far better that that stuff is simply covered by "and there's nothing I can do". There's nothing he can do because his ship's just taken an ungodly amount of damage and he's already seen all that stuff get blown up.
On top of this, you've got the fact that the ejection systems require power to operate, rather than being triggered by power loss
We have no canonical evidence that it's even possible to design them that way.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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The problem is that what you've left is only hand waves to solve anything.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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GrahamKennedy wrote:Bleah, that's another complaint I hate. I dislike technobabble as it is, I really don't need to see Geordi say "We have a coolant leak and the back up is down and the second backup is down and the auto sealing system is down and the backup to the auto sealing system is down and the AM core jettison plates were warped by the explosions and are stuck in place and... and... and..."
Or this:

*Big jet of steam, Geordi punches buttons on his desk*
Geordi: Bridge, the last coolant loop just went and the ejection systems are jammed. We're about five minutes from a warp core breach - there's nothing I can do.

Short and sweet.
We have no canonical evidence that it's even possible to design them that way.
Isolate the entire warp core and antimatter pods in a plug within the ship, with one end open to space and the other as highly pressurised as you can get it, holding the entire thing in place with electromagnets, in series with the main pod containment power source (they should, of course, have local battery backup. If containment begins to fail the magnets cut out and the entire plug gets ejected. If for some reason that doesn't happen, just pull the plug, with the same result.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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Captain Seafort wrote:Or this:

*Big jet of steam, Geordi punches buttons on his desk*
Geordi: Bridge, the last coolant loop just went and the ejection systems are jammed. We're about five minutes from a warp core breach - there's nothing I can do.

Short and sweet.
If short is sweet, then what he said was shorter and sweeter.
We have no canonical evidence that it's even possible to design them that way.
Isolate the entire warp core and antimatter pods in a plug within the ship, with one end open to space and the other as highly pressurised as you can get it, holding the entire thing in place with electromagnets, in series with the main pod containment power source (they should, of course, have local battery backup. If containment begins to fail the magnets cut out and the entire plug gets ejected. If for some reason that doesn't happen, just pull the plug, with the same result.
Nice.

How do you disconnect the power transfer conduits? How do you drain them of plasma before you disconnect them? If you don't, you blow the ship up.

How do you shut down the flow from the antimatter pods? If you don't, they spew antimatter all over the place and the ship dies.

How do you exhaust any remaining antimatter in the core? If you don't then when it's ejected and lose containment it blows up, and the ship dies.

How do you vent plasma plasma from the core? If you don't then when it's ejected and lose containment it blows up, and the ship dies.

How do you seal off the power transfer conduits within the ship? If you don't then when the core is ejected they spew plasma out, and the ship dies.

How do you disconnect the power supply and computer interlinks to all these systems? I suppose you could just rip these off, at least the ship wouldn't die.

Now it gets fun.

How do you disconnect the transkinetic chamber, which processes the residual antimatter and breaks it down? Is that a difficult process? Dangerous? Time consuming? Or do you eject those with the core? After all you're this confident so I assume you know how many of them there are and how big they are and what other supporting systems may in turn be connected to them.

How do you disconnect the radiometric converters that process the theta radiation? Is THAT a difficult process? Dangerous? I assume you also know how many of these there are and how big they are and what other supporting systems may in turn be connected to them.

How about the tellerium injectors? How big are those? How are they connected? Can they just be yanked off the core?

And what about the trilithium resin waste? How do you ensure that it remains stable during the injection? If trilithium becomes unstable then the ship... well, you know.


Every piece of technology and equipment I mention above is directly from canon as being an element of Federation warp cores. No person alive today has a clue what most of them are, how they work, how big how are, etc. Since it's made up science and technology, there's not one person on the face of this Earth who is qualified to say a damn thing about it with any level of confidence.

The idea that all of this not only can but MUST be designed to automatically pop out the bottom of the ship like some demented jack-in-a-box anytime there's a problem is stupid, and the idea that the only possible explanation for it not being that way is that "those designers must be morons!" is equally stupid.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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GrahamKennedy wrote:How do you disconnect the power transfer conduits? How do you drain them of plasma before you disconnect them? If you don't, you blow the ship up.
Explosive bolts, or ensure that the connection is substantially weaker than both the conduit and the core. There's no evidence that the plasma is particularly dangerous to the ship - only to it's crew if they get a face full.
How do you shut down the flow from the antimatter pods? If you don't, they spew antimatter all over the place and the ship dies.
As I said - the entire core and it's fuel supply are contained within the ejected plug.
How do you exhaust any remaining antimatter in the core? If you don't then when it's ejected and lose containment it blows up, and the ship dies.

How do you vent plasma plasma from the core? If you don't then when it's ejected and lose containment it blows up, and the ship dies.
If you've got to the point of ejecting the core, it's going to blow up anyway. Would you rather have that happen inside the ship or a few dozen kilometres away?
How do you seal off the power transfer conduits within the ship? If you don't then when the core is ejected they spew plasma out, and the ship dies.
See above. Plasma isn't that dangerous - it will probably kill some of the crew, but that's preferable to losing the entire ship and 1000+ people.
How do you disconnect the power supply and computer interlinks to all these systems? I suppose you could just rip these off, at least the ship wouldn't die.
Exactly. This is not intended as the standard method of removing and replacing the core. This is "get the fucking thing away from us now".
Every piece of technology and equipment I mention above is directly from canon as being an element of Federation warp cores. No person alive today has a clue what most of them are, how they work, how big how are, etc. Since it's made up science and technology, there's not one person on the face of this Earth who is qualified to say a damn thing about it with any level of confidence.

The idea that all of this not only can but MUST be designed to automatically pop out the bottom of the ship like some demented jack-in-a-box anytime there's a problem is stupid, and the idea that the only possible explanation for it not being that way is that "those designers must be morons!" is equally stupid.
There are only two differences between my proposed method and that shown on Voyager - 1) mine is a fail-safe design, in that it will work in less than ideal conditions, unlike the GCS model, and 2) mine involves chucking out the core, A/M pods, and most of the stuff attached to it. Voyager's system involved three taps on a console and the core got chucked out on it's own. My proposed system involves far fewer systems having to be carefully disconnected than the existing model.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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Captain Seafort wrote:
GrahamKennedy wrote:How do you disconnect the power transfer conduits? How do you drain them of plasma before you disconnect them? If you don't, you blow the ship up.
Explosive bolts, or ensure that the connection is substantially weaker than both the conduit and the core. There's no evidence that the plasma is particularly dangerous to the ship - only to it's crew if they get a face full.
You rip open the conduits attached to the warp core, and you vent the core itself as well as the conduits attached to it. That destroys the ship.
How do you exhaust any remaining antimatter in the core? If you don't then when it's ejected and lose containment it blows up, and the ship dies.

How do you vent plasma plasma from the core? If you don't then when it's ejected and lose containment it blows up, and the ship dies.
If you've got to the point of ejecting the core, it's going to blow up anyway. Would you rather have that happen inside the ship or a few dozen kilometres away?
You presume it would reach a few dozen kilometres. Given how fast a core can blow, it likely wouldn't. Congratulations, you've made an automatic suicide switch.
See above. Plasma isn't that dangerous - it will probably kill some of the crew, but that's preferable to losing the entire ship and 1000+ people.
Plasma is dangerous in proportion to how energetic it is. Some random conduit on deck 8 probably doesn't have a lot of energy in it, but the warp core main power transfer conduits go then you get a significant fraction of the warp core output in your face, and that IS enough to destroy the ship.
There are only two differences between my proposed method and that shown on Voyager - 1) mine is a fail-safe design, in that it will work in less than ideal conditions, unlike the GCS model, and 2) mine involves chucking out the core, A/M pods, and most of the stuff attached to it. Voyager's system involved three taps on a console and the core got chucked out on it's own. My proposed system involves far fewer systems having to be carefully disconnected than the existing model.
But for all we know "core, A/M pods, and most of the stuff attached to it" - the transkinetic chamber, radiometric converters, and tellerium injectors, tellerium tanks, etc - is the contents of half the engineering hull, too big and heavy to reasonably eject from the ship. What you are saying may easily be equivalent to saying "Eject the carrier's reactor core, and if that means ejecting the flight deck and hangar along with it, then so what?" Nice in theory, impossible in practice.

Voyager's three taps are what's needed to disconnect all that crap and eject the bit that actually needs ejecting.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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GrahamKennedy wrote:You rip open the conduits attached to the warp core, and you vent the core itself as well as the conduits attached to it. That destroys the ship.
Then kindly explain why Voyager was still flying around after ejecting her core twice.
You presume it would reach a few dozen kilometres. Given how fast a core can blow, it likely wouldn't. Congratulations, you've made an automatic suicide switch.
Fast? The Ticking Time BombTM routinely gives several minutes warning.
Plasma is dangerous in proportion to how energetic it is. Some random conduit on deck 8 probably doesn't have a lot of energy in it, but the warp core main power transfer conduits go then you get a significant fraction of the warp core output in your face, and that IS enough to destroy the ship.
Again, see above. Slamming the core out through the bottom of the ship, severing the conduits in the process is standard practice.
Voyager's three taps are what's needed to disconnect all that crap and eject the bit that actually needs ejecting.
Voyager's three taps are what's required to enter command authorisation.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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Captain Seafort wrote:
GrahamKennedy wrote:You rip open the conduits attached to the warp core, and you vent the core itself as well as the conduits attached to it. That destroys the ship.
Then kindly explain why Voyager was still flying around after ejecting her core twice.
Precisely because Voyager's warp core isn't a jack in a box. They did an actual proper ejection of the type you are poo-pooing, powered systems and all.
Plasma is dangerous in proportion to how energetic it is. Some random conduit on deck 8 probably doesn't have a lot of energy in it, but the warp core main power transfer conduits go then you get a significant fraction of the warp core output in your face, and that IS enough to destroy the ship.
Again, see above. Slamming the core out through the bottom of the ship, severing the conduits in the process is standard practice.
You assume that because you want to work on the assumption that the design is incompetent. I assume that it is competent and therefore assume that when they slam the core out the bottom of the ship they do so in a manner that is safe.
Voyager's three taps are what's needed to disconnect all that crap and eject the bit that actually needs ejecting.
Voyager's three taps are what's required to enter command authorisation.
Yes, and the authorisation initiates an ejection that is designed to be done in a safe manner - decouple the core from all the support systems safely and then shoot it out. Rather than your system of either just ripping it all apart, which likely blows the ship apart anyway (the suicide eject), or of trying to mount most of the engineering hull on an eject system. (Which, not incidentally, would also eject any crewmembers manning all those systems into space.)
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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GrahamKennedy wrote:Precisely because Voyager's warp core isn't a jack in a box. They did an actual proper ejection of the type you are poo-pooing, powered systems and all.
The reason I'm poo-pooing it is because it doesn't work half the time.
You assume that because you want to work on the assumption that the design is incompetent. I assume that it is competent and therefore assume that when they slam the core out the bottom of the ship they do so in a manner that is safe.
As do I. The problem is the long string of occasions when they try and dump the core and can't. It's these events that demonstrate the gross incompetence of the designers.
Yes, and the authorisation initiates an ejection that is designed to be done in a safe manner
Safe manner? You're talking about a system that frequently prevents the ship getting rid of its power-keg warp core as it's about to explode, and you call it "safe"?
Rather than your system of either just ripping it all apart, which likely blows the ship apart anyway (the suicide eject), or of trying to mount most of the engineering hull on an eject system.
As I've already said, the sorts of malfunctions we're talking about routinely give multi-minute countdowns, allowing plenty of time for the core to clear the ship, and as the existing systems bang the core straight out through the bottom of the hull in no time flat anyway the sort of complicated systems you posit, without any evidence whatsoever, are clearly neither exist nor are necessary.
(Which, not incidentally, would also eject any crewmembers manning all those systems into space.)
Actually, I would call those deaths incidental. Would you rather lose a few dozen, maybe a couple of hundred of the crew, or over a thousand plus the ship?
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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Would a core as described (loss or power means dump it) result in a core more susceptible to battle damage? Surely few photons in the right area could disrupt power flow & cause the disruption you talk about, dumping the main power core would obviously damage combat efficiency. Maybe I've missed (and I stand ready to be corrected) where loosing the main power generation unit is a good thing in battle?
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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colmquinn wrote:Would a core as described (loss or power means dump it) result in a core more susceptible to battle damage? Surely few photons in the right area could disrupt power flow & cause the disruption you talk about, dumping the main power core would obviously damage combat efficiency.
Not necessarily - it would entirely depend on how good your shielding is. Don't forget that the way this thing is wired up, if you lose power to the magnets you're also very close to losing antimatter containment.
Maybe I've missed (and I stand ready to be corrected) where loosing the main power generation unit is a good thing in battle?
It's far from a good thing, but it's an improvement on reducing the entire ship to free-floating atoms.
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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Captain Seafort wrote:
colmquinn wrote:Would a core as described (loss or power means dump it) result in a core more susceptible to battle damage? Surely few photons in the right area could disrupt power flow & cause the disruption you talk about, dumping the main power core would obviously damage combat efficiency.
Not necessarily - it would entirely depend on how good your shielding is. Don't forget that the way this thing is wired up, if you lose power to the magnets you're also very close to losing antimatter containment.
Don't forget in Generations the Klingons had a chance to fire upon an "unshilded" E-D so surely they would've hit the weakest point. Also the Khrenim would've had a field day with Fed ships, torps that pass through shields and all.

Fair point on the other part of your argument. Being in one piece is always better than in atoms, assuming there's not some cool party going on at the atoms's house :-)
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Re: Ambassador & Galaxy class

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colmquinn wrote:Don't forget in Generations the Klingons had a chance to fire upon an "unshilded" E-D so surely they would've hit the weakest point. Also the Khrenim would've had a field day with Fed ships, torps that pass through shields and all.
When I say "shielded" I mean it in the broadest sense - armour and internal bulkheads as well as your traditional deflector shields.

As for the Klingons, it wasn't until the end of the battle that they even considered targeting the bridge, so I don't think tactical nouse can be considered one of their strong points. Not that one-shot-Will did much better.
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