Star Trek Series Design Project #4: Ship

[Lt. Staplic]

So Far we've decided:
- Series will take place 20-30 years after TNG/DS9/VOY
- The series will primarily follow the Federation, however we may have plots involved and centered around The Klingon Empire and/or the Romulan Empire
- The main setting will be a Warship

This week we decide what kind of warship we want to use (remember this takes place 20-30 years after TNG):
- Akira, a heavily armed torpedo ship
- Defiant, a small heavily armed warship with cutting edge tech
- Norway, a medium armed ship designed to supplament larger warships in group engagements
- Prometheus, a deadly warship designed with the latest technology for Warfare, also includes the MVAM
- Sovereign, the premiere Warship of the TNG era
- Paladin, Our own warship, which kicks some serious arse if I do say so myself
- New Warship design, A new design recently released by Starfleet

Poll will run for 8 days

[BigJKU316]

Anyone have a link to the Paladin design?

[Lt. Staplic]

the Paladin I'll update the first post too.

[BigJKU316]

the Paladin I'll update the first post too.

While that would certainly be a nice ship I would like to think that one could do better than just getting bigger and packing on more weapons in the future. I think you need a new ship with some transitional technologies. A new type of phaser, new drive system ect would really help differentiate the show. I think the Paladin may be the ultimate TNG/DS9 era ship. I think you need to make a new leap for show 30 years in the future.

[Lt. Staplic]

30 years isn't going to see a new drive system...I also don't see them upgrading phaser systems all that much, most reasearch would go into a Phase Lance (which the Paladin does have)

[Mikey]

Indeed. We're not talking about a long elapsed time; and the Paladin design process took into account a fair bit of common-sense advancement for a couple of decades, as well as tech from the AGT future scenario. That said, I voted for an Akira-class... a very capable ship but older and less impressive than the latest models, which I think would lend itself to a grittier, more DS9 feel.

[BigJKU316]

30 years isn't going to see a new drive system...I also don't see them upgrading phaser systems all that much, most reasearch would go into a Phase Lance (which the Paladin does have)

Its a show so you could have whatever development you wanted since you would be the writer and the most important thing would be for it to be interesting rather than follow what we would guess is technically correct. I just think the Paladin would simply be looked at as another ship distinctly in the TNG era for the most part. It really has nothing new, just a lot more of it.

The ships is really a paltform for making interesting stories. If you decide the Feds have something with say a slipstream/transwarp drive then you open up the possiblity of going new places and finding new enemies, rather than basically being stuck around the same old, and pretty well known, areas of space. It gives you the chance to have a more intersting show, regardless of if it is right or not. Plus it saves us from the problem of being all by ourselves one week as the "only ship in the sector" and then showing up the next week at Earth to deal with the new problem of the week.

[Mikey]

Its a show so you could have whatever development you wanted since you would be the writer and the most important thing would be for it to be interesting rather than follow what we would guess is technically correct.

...regardless of if it is right or not.

All this is true, but we were responding to your assertion that the Paladin doesn't show enough advancement to be "futuristic" enough from the viewpoint of the previous franchises.

a slipstream/transwarp drive then you open up the possiblity of going new places and finding new enemies, rather than basically being stuck around the same old, and pretty well known, areas of space.

This is true - however, 'Trek tried the "unknown/unexplored area" deal, and failed miserably at it. In addition, "space is big. Really big." I have no issue at all with there being unseen areas within range of "traditional" propulsion.

Plus it saves us from the problem of being all by ourselves one week as the "only ship in the sector" and then showing up the next week at Earth to deal with the new problem of the week.

This is definitely correct, and has been an issue with 'Trek for a long time. However, I don't see it as an insurmountable problem, as long as the narrative and production takes this into account. It could very easily be mentioned in passing that the current scenario is x amount of time since the last.

[Lt. Staplic]

If we wanted betterch the answer is to go farther in the future not to just abitraily qssigning tech

[Tsukiyumi]

...betterch... ...abitraily qssigning...

Mobile phone again?

[BigJKU316]

If we wanted betterch the answer is to go farther in the future not to just abitraily qssigning tech

Ehh, who says it is an arbitrary guess? It is no more or less arbitrary than anything else. After all Voyager just showed up with a truckload of techs for SF to tear apart and study. They even got the slipstream thing to work for quite a while and everyone on that ship seemed borderline incompetent.

[Lt. Staplic]

...betterch... ...abitraily qssigning...

Mobile phone again?

ya I'm at school

If we wanted betterch the answer is to go farther in the future not to just abitraily qssigning tech

Ehh, who says it is an arbitrary guess? It is no more or less arbitrary than anything else. After all Voyager just showed up with a truckload of techs for SF to tear apart and study. They even got the slipstream thing to work for quite a while and everyone on that ship seemed borderline incompetent.

we don't know if the temporal prime directve will allow sf to use any of that tech

[Tyyr]

The Temporal Prime Directive isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Does it benefit the Federation as a whole? They'll allow it.

[BigJKU316]

The Temporal Prime Directive isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Does it benefit the Federation as a whole? They'll allow it.

Exactly. And more specifically to the point of being a writer, if the story necessitates the Enterprise A going to the core of the galaxy, away it goes.

That is why if I were making a new series I would just design a ship that is technically fast enough to allow the freedom of story-telling we want, rather than have to invent crap reasons to get where I might want to go in a reasonable timeframe.

[Tyyr]

Unless you desperately need to be on the other side of the galaxy why bother? The area of the galaxy that's actually been explored by Starfleet is incredibly small. Go to the Politics/Maps/Galactic page on DITL. See that little blue smear? That's the Federation. There is a massive amount of space nearby for things to happen in right near home. It's entirely possible to set the series on the frontier, have them establish that they're six months from Earth or more, maybe a month or more from the nearest starbase.

Maybe have the ship be part of a taskforce. Riding shotgun for a group of explorers moving into an interesting looking star cluster.