Dominion war - galaxies without saucer section

[bladela]

Hi

I thought, why doesn't the Federation build the galaxy class ships without the saucer section?

They would have to give up the phasers it houses and its impulse engines, but it would also significantly reduce the mass of the ship (to the advantage of maneuverability and perhaps even maximum warp speed) and it would have a smaller volume to protect with shields.

This is without counting the significant savings in materials and manpower to build it.

Any thought?

[Captain Seafort]

Because the extra power provided by the saucer's impulse engines is significant enough to be considered a tactical advantage, even with the reduced mass of the battle section alone. That was the reason Riker gave for opposing Shelby's plan to separate the saucer as a diversion in BoBW I.

There is, however, some evidence that some war-built Galaxys may have been completed without separation capability, and with additional armour protecting the separation plane, based on images of the DS9 fleet assembling at Starbase 375.

[bladela]

true

But in that case you had an already completed galaxy class, riker evaluated two different tactical decision based on the available resources.

What I mean is to see the thing from the point of view of the starfleet command, planning the activities of the shipyards, in a period of emergency in which each additional ship counted and in which the UFP went from one defeat to another: I build 5 ships with capacity 100 or 10 ships with capacity 80?

Not to mention that apart from the generators of impulse engines, the disk section seems more dedicated to scientific and diplomatic operations, useless in the middle of a battle.

The additional armour protection could also be applied to the stardrive, maybe increasing the protection of the far too ustable warp core .

Taking into account that at the end of the war nothing prevented completion (probably in my experience with far less "expense" than having to complete individual sections of an already assembled ship)

[Graham Kennedy]

Because the extra power provided by the saucer's impulse engines is significant enough to be considered a tactical advantage, even with the reduced mass of the battle section alone. That was the reason Riker gave for opposing Shelby's plan to separate the saucer as a diversion in BoBW I.

If the extra power of those engines is a truly significant factor such that it's worth keeping the saucer, one wonders why the ship was ever designed with separation capability at all.

(Of course the reality is that they decided that separating the saucer ate too much screen time and required too much in the way of effects shots of the ship sans saucer. So they stopped bothering.)

[Mikey]

Whether or not the amount of power supplied by the saucer was critical is debatable, but obviously something was optimized by having an intact saucer section - otherwise the class type would have been designed with no saucer at all.

[McAvoy]

Whether or not the amount of power supplied by the saucer was critical is debatable, but obviously something was optimized by having an intact saucer section - otherwise the class type would have been designed with no saucer at all.

I disagree. Even Worf said without the saucer the Enterprise was still formidable.

The class I think was never designed to be a battleship but a explorer first. I mean think about if it was going to be a battleship the saucer would be as small as possible but keep the long phaser strips.

The size of the saucer was most likely related to being a long range explorer. Removing the saucer and just having the stardrive section makes sense in terms of resources.

I doubt Starfleet was building them in the middle of the war, if anything they finished the ones building and then built smaller ships with maybe the Akira class being the biggest.

Dominion had numbers due to their attack ships, so Starfleet would need to counter that.

[bladela]

The class I think was never designed to be a battleship but a explorer first. I mean think about if it was going to be a battleship the saucer would be as small as possible but keep the long phaser strips.

the first batch without a doubt, not so sure about the later costructions.

I also think about the possibilities of expansion, rearm and upgrades with the internal volume of a galaxy class : imagine if in case of emergency someone of those laboratories had been replaced by, additional torpedo launchers, auxiliary warp cores or shield generators.

For all we know a galaxy could potentially become even superior than a sovereign on some aspects, given the available internal volume available, maybe not faster (in a real sea ship the maximum speed doesn't depend only on the installed power, but also on other factors such as the shape of the hull...maybe there are similar factors also for the warp drive) but stronger and better armed and still it could be a better explorer and science ship (by reinstalling the laboratories in time of peace).

I doubt Starfleet was building them in the middle of the war, if anything they finished the ones building and then built smaller ships with maybe the Akira class being the biggest.

Why doesn't they build defiants only? An ever better usage of resources and manpower. Cardassia and the other planets doesn't seems so far to ds9 and the border so the endurance limits should not be a so big problem.

The answer may be flexibility : at the end of the war the defiant is still only a warship, the galaxies (or the nebulas or Akira to a lesser extent) can be what you want...this is still Starfleet after all

[Mikey]

“Still formidable” =/= “as capable as originality configured” or “optimized”

[Graham Kennedy]

I also think about the possibilities of expansion, rearm and upgrades with the internal volume of a galaxy class : imagine if in case of emergency someone of those laboratories had been replaced by, additional torpedo launchers, auxiliary warp cores or shield generators.

We know that the war Galaxies had extra phaser strips on top of the nacelles (in reality a holdover from the modification of the model to the Galaxy X design in All Good Things). Don't think we ever saw extra strips anywhere else, though there's certainly enough space on the saucer for another couple of rings to be added.

For all we know a galaxy could potentially become even superior than a sovereign on some aspects, given the available internal volume available, maybe not faster (in a real sea ship the maximum speed doesn't depend only on the installed power, but also on other factors such as the shape of the hull...maybe there are similar factors also for the warp drive) but stronger and better armed and still it could be a better explorer and science ship (by reinstalling the laboratories in time of peace).

There's a lot of assumptions we can't really do more than guess at. A Galaxy is a good deal larger than a Sovereign - about 240% of the size in total volume. So it certainly offers a larger platform for more laboratories, more cargo space, more of everything really.

The Sovereign potentially has more advanced laboratories and sensors and computers and such, but that sort of stuff is surely pretty easy to refit. For instance I see no reason why the isolinear computer on a Galaxy couldn't be upgraded with bioneural gel packs.

But as you say, the Sovereign seems to be much faster than the Galaxy. So you could argue that it's better suited to covering large distances, that it can scan a larger area in a given time, that kind of thing. And that is something that you might struggle to refit into a Galaxy, since speed is (apparently) at least somewhat dictated by the shaping of the hull. Possibly weighing against that, the Galaxy could be updated to do "Warp 13" in All Good Things. But then who's to say that a Sovereign hull with similar tech wouldn't be able to do Warp 15?

Honestly, the Galaxy should be a viable ship for many decades to come, maybe even a century - Mirandas stayed in service for 80+ years, after all. Perhaps it will never again hold the "best in fleet" status it had in the 2360s, but still a valuable asset.

I doubt Starfleet was building them in the middle of the war, if anything they finished the ones building and then built smaller ships with maybe the Akira class being the biggest.

I don't know about that. I suppose it makes more sense to fill the dockyards up with Defiants and Akiras, likely more powerful ships and likely faster to build (almost certainly so in the Defiant's case, given the canonically tiny build time). But it would also make sense to finish off any half-built Galaxies. We certainly did start seeing more of them around in the Dominion war.

Why doesn't they build defiants only? An ever better usage of resources and manpower. Cardassia and the other planets doesn't seems so far to ds9 and the border so the endurance limits should not be a so big problem.

Hard to say. It seems like the Defiant is only suited to short missions, though Valiant argues against that. But magazine capacity may be an issue (though it certainly shouldn't be in ANY Starfleet ship! A bugbear of mine, that...), troop carrying capacity another, sensor capability, who knows what else. Defiant should have limits on its capability all over the place, else whyever did they build large ships in the first place?!

Welcome to the forum, by the way.

[bladela]

We know that the war Galaxies had extra phaser strips on top of the nacelles (in reality a holdover from the modification of the model to the Galaxy X design in All Good Things). Don't think we ever saw extra strips anywhere else, though there's certainly enough space on the saucer for another couple of rings to be added.

Exactly, or the space for one or two sovereign-style quantum torpedo launchers, after all they have added several tubes to the enterprise before Nemesis, I do not see why it should not be possible for a Galaxy.

Honestly, the Galaxy should be a viable ship for many decades to come, maybe even a century - Mirandas stayed in service for 80+ years, after all. Perhaps it will never again hold the "best in fleet" status it had in the 2360s, but still a valuable asset.

The service life of ships in star trek is almost ridiculous in some ways . Obviously the mirandas were correctly cannon fodder during the Dominion War. As if during the second world war the royal navy had deployed some men-of-war to increase their numbers.

Welcome to the forum, by the way.

thanks

[DarkMoineau]

The service life of ships in star trek is almost ridiculous in some ways . Obviously the mirandas were correctly cannon fodder during the Dominion War. As if during the second world war the royal navy had deployed some men-of-war to increase their numbers.

Yeah but look at real world. Ok it's an aircraft, but pilots of B-52 bombers are sometimes flying aircraft their father and grand father flew.

[Graham Kennedy]

It works to have ships with long lives in Trek, IMO, because the basic technology seems to be extremely stagnant. I'm sure there have been all kinds of changes in the details of the implementation, but a warp drive is a warp drive, and the ones from TOS (and even Enterprise) seem to work in exactly the same way as the ones in TNG. Contrast that to the man-o-war - sails compared to diesels and turbines, cannon compared to missiles. Fundamentally different technologies that mean you couldn't really expect to update the man-o-war to modern standards. In comparison, I see no reason why you couldn't refit a Miranda with TNG-era tech and make it a useful ship, albeit obviously not really competitive with a Nebula or Akira.

[DarkMoineau]

Technological changes are indeed the main reasons of change.

Most of the weapons used in the world today were first build in the 70's or 80's. Some even during the 50's. Of course they have new electronic but the airframe and basic principles are the same.

[bladela]

It works to have ships with long lives in Trek, IMO, because the basic technology seems to be extremely stagnant.

yeah, i think you are correct.

is the federation near a technological revolution (transwarp could meet the requirements or is it only an evolution of the warp drive?) or really technologically stagnant?

[Graham Kennedy]

The thing that irritates me is that most advanced drive tech we've seen is simply a slight variation of existing hardware. A few engine tweaks, a "transwarp coil" in place of a warp coil, and you're good to go. The technology driving the basic design of the ships isn't one that Trek seems all that interested in.

(Which is one of the things I strove hard to avoid in the Coalition universe, just because it bugs me so damn much.)

Hell, in the novelverse the Federation has cracked slipstream design enough to build functional full-on starships that have gone to the other side of the galaxy and back. What do they look like?



A somewhat more sleek version of every Trek ship ever.