www.ditl.org

So, so far we have established that we're making a hospital/medical ship, the next question is size.

for this i'm talking about length ways, like on the size comparison images on the main site.

the options are;

Very Small (Danube etc)
Small (Defiant, nova etc)
Medium (Constitution etc)
Medium/large (excelsior, ambassador etc)
Large (Galaxy/sov etc)
Very Large (D'Deridex etc)

----results------

so, its going to be medium/large. I'll put a new poll up this weekend, sorry I didn't start the next one last weekend but I was extremely busy, and still am this week.

Medium - a bit larger than an Intrepid, 350 - 400m long. We need enough space to be able to handle a decent number of patients, and the transporters and shuttle handling facilities to be able to get them aboard, but it's also important that we retain flexibility. Something the size of a GCS would only be able to be built in very small numbers - probably only a few dozen. What we need are hundreds of these ships, so that they can be deployed widely enough to be available at short notice to deal with the disaster-relief that the E-D was frequently called upon to do, and to support the multiple simultaneous planetary offensives that a major war would involve.

The bigger the better. Any major conflict involving powers the size of the UFP is going to generate tens of thousands, even millions of casualties very quickly. For hospital ships to be of any use they need to be very large to handle mass casualties. Most modern hospital ships tend to be very large.

If its a planetary problem then no ship in the UFP's regular size range is going to make much of a difference.

Tyyr wrote:The bigger the better. Any major conflict involving powers the size of the UFP is going to generate tens of thousands, even millions of casualties very quickly.

Certainly, but a lot of those casualties can be dealt with by surface and starbase facilities. Hospital ships are there to handle the casualties in the initial stages of an invasion or emergency, before field hospitals are set up, and to transport wounded from the field hospitals back to recovery centres. You'll need a lot of capacity, but that can also be done by deploying multiple ships, which allows much greater flexibility.

For hospital ships to be of any use they need to be very large to handle mass casualties. Most modern hospital ships tend to be very large.

Given that even a "medium sized" Starfleet ship is several times the size of the Mercy-class, which can themselves carry 1000 bed patients apiece, that shouldn't be a problem

If its a planetary problem then no ship in the UFP's regular size range is going to make much of a difference.

If it's a planet-wide problem for a densely inhabited world, certainly, but if it's your typical Fed colony with only thousands or low tens of thousands of inhabitants it shouldn't be a problem - the E-D was usually capable of handling such incidents, and her capacity would be far exceeded by a dedicated design.

I'm going large. A ship like this needs to be able to handle massive amounts of causualties/sick/injured. At least with enough space to evacuate a decent sized colonly

Mark wrote:I'm going large. A ship like this needs to be able to handle massive amounts of causualties/sick/injured.

Even one the size of an Intrepid should be able to handle thousands. That's big enough for most situations - if things are more serious then just send more of them. Flexibility and reaction time are critical.

At least with enough space to evacuate a decent sized colonly

Why would you want to be able to evacuate - planets, unless someone's tossing one-shot superweapons about, are pretty robust objects. If the colony turns out to be non-viable after a disaster then bring in proper transports to ship them out, don't clog up a hospital ship. If things are that bad it'll have enough on its plate as is.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Mark wrote:I'm going large. A ship like this needs to be able to handle massive amounts of causualties/sick/injured.

Even one the size of an Intrepid should be able to handle thousands. That's big enough for most situations - if things are more serious then just send more of them. Flexibility and reaction time are critical.

At least with enough space to evacuate a decent sized colonly

Why would you want to be able to evacuate - planets, unless someone's tossing one-shot superweapons about, are pretty robust objects. If the colony turns out to be non-viable after a disaster then bring in proper transports to ship them out, don't clog up a hospital ship. If things are that bad it'll have enough on its plate as is.

Yup, what you need is basically a mobile surgical center and some intensive care beds. I mean these people are healing broken bones by waiving a light at them. Things that send someone to the hospital here are fixed in seconds in Trek.

What you need IMHO is a mid-sized (2-3 million tons) ship that is fast so it can get places, carries a lot of shuttles and is highly automated so that the vast majority of the crew can be medical. What I want is a bunch of doctors who can go down or beam over to another ship and do triage (which will eliminate a huge number of people coming over anyway) and surgical suites for major cases.

But I would rather have four dozen ships of that size than two dozen of the Galaxy size. Makes things much simpler to deal with IMHO.

Medium/large. Need a lot of them, but they need space for patients.

Q: When do colonies USUALLY need to be evacuated?

A: After some sort of horrible catastraphy.


People are usually wounded, frightened, and in all sorts of distress. We've seen cannon evidence that larger size doesn't effect speed and response time. Now, I'm envisioning a fully functioning floating hospital in space able to support tens of thousands refugees if needed.........not a MASH ship.

Mark wrote:People are usually wounded, frightened, and in all sorts of distress.

Most of whom probably won't be injured. Frightened and in need of aid pronto, yes, but not medical assistance.

We've seen cannon evidence that larger size doesn't effect speed and response time.

It doesn't affect the speed and response time of individual ships. Indeed, at the individual level I agree with the principle of "the bigger the better". The problem is that the bigger the ship you build, the fewer of them you'll be able to build. That will inevitably reduce overall coverage, and therefore increase the typical response time. Moreover, in a war, you need to be able to support multiple simultaneous operations. This can be better accomplished by a large number of ships. You can always assign several ships to the same operation (be it combat or disaster relief) if necessary, but you can't send one ship to several locations simultaneously.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Mark wrote:People are usually wounded, frightened, and in all sorts of distress.

Most of whom probably won't be injured. Frightened and in need of aid pronto, yes, but not medical assistance.

We've seen cannon evidence that larger size doesn't effect speed and response time.

It doesn't affect the speed and response time of individual ships. Indeed, at the individual level I agree with the principle of "the bigger the better". The problem is that the bigger the ship you build, the fewer of them you'll be able to build. That will inevitably reduce overall coverage, and therefore increase the typical response time. Moreover, in a war, you need to be able to support multiple simultaneous operations. This can be better accomplished by a large number of ships. You can always assign several ships to the same operation (be it combat or disaster relief) if necessary, but you can't send one ship to several locations simultaneously.

First point.....its not unreasonable to assume the evacuees be malnurished, dehydrated, traumatised, and so forth. Granted these are easy fixes by the 24th century, but they still require SOME supervision, if only a counsler and a tranquilzer.

Second point.....I didn't think of. I'm going to concede here because this actually makes excellent sense. The only flaw I find is that instead of having to guard one hospital ship, now you've got go guard multiple ones.

Mark wrote:First point.....its not unreasonable to assume the evacuees be malnurished, dehydrated, traumatised, and so forth. Granted these are easy fixes by the 24th century, but they still require SOME supervision, if only a counsler and a tranquilzer.

Certainly, but that can be handled by normal ships moving in supplies and trained personnel, just as it is today - it doesn't need a dedicated hospital ship.

Lets look at this logically.....the Planet Daystrom suffers a massive planetwide calamity...you've got 50,000 or so colonists, with half reported dead, injured, or missing. The local water supply is contaminated and food is scarce. You now have the option of either diverting whatever ships are in the area to assist in the evacuation, which would tie up say between 2 to 6 ships (depending of course), OR dispatch the hospital ship Hippoctraties. Which makes more sense?

The former, one of which should be a hospital ship to deal with the most seriously injured.

Why? Because of the point I made about coverage. Let's look at another scenario:

The colony on Planet Daystrom suffers an earthquake or volcanic eruption, or similar. The Hippocrates is sent to help, and takes a few days to get there from its routine patrol/casevac mission/whatever. A few days later a similar disaster happens on Planet Zog, a few dozen light years away. The Hippocrates is already tied up helping Planet Zog, and even if it could help, it would take weeks to get there.

Alternatively, if you had smaller, more numerous hospital ships, and supported them with your bog-standard Excelsiors when necessary, the hospital ship Britannic would also have been built, and would be a couple of days travel from Planet Zog, just as the Hippocrates was from Planet Daystrom. It too would be supported by whatever ships are in range

Ok....point taken 8)