Luna Class

[Talondor]

I was looking over the specs for the Luna Class and something struck me as not quite right. As I understand the class, it is designed for long-time, deep space exploration missions lasting three, four, even five years at a time. Operating by itself without any support from Starfleet or it's starbases and spaceports.

What struck me as odd that it had a torpedo strength of 2000, yet a phaser strength of 100. Wouldn't a ship designed to operate by itself for such a long time depend more on it's phasers then torpedoes since it could be years before it gets a chance to replenish it's torpedo supply? It also does not seem to have much in the way of hull armor and shield strength. I know the Federation is all about peaceful exploration, and I'm far from a expert of fictional Star Trek tech that would allow this discrepancy, but it seems to me to be a design flaw if it does happen to run into trouble so far from home.

[Graham Kennedy]

When the Luna was designed, they stated emphatically that it was not built specifically for combat. Thus I wanted to avoid rating it too highly on overall combat strength. It rates low in most tactical-related areas because of that. But it rates high on torpedoes because the design brief on the ship specified that it had quantum torpedoes, which I presume to be more powerful than photons.

Yes, they could run out of torpedoes. Though Voyager never seemed to have that problem, which makes me think they might have worked out a way to replicate the things. (And why not?) But like they said, it's not a combat ship. The idea behind the design is not to go out and fight frequent battles. So they don't have the magazine capacity to support frequent battles.

[Talondor]

Okay, I can see that. Primarily a ship of exploration. But you would still think they would not skimp on the shields.

[Mikey]

Not rivaling a dedicated combat ship =/= "skimping."

[Graham Kennedy]

How well armed and armoured is the USNS Pathfinder? The Lunas do pretty well in comparison.

[Mikey]

How well armed and armoured is the USNS Pathfinder? The Lunas do pretty well in comparison.

Yeah, I doubt a Pathfinder-class naval vessel would handle atmospheric entry too well.