What is the 23rd Century Starfleet?

[Vic]

I don't see a Saladin having alot of scientific labs and such not, have to make room for a M/AM reactor after all. I was more than happy to see some of Joseph's designs on the big screen. Halleluja for Paramount's definition of canon, 'cause at least those two (Saladin/Hermes and Ptolemy) are now. Those give some idea of what to expect Starfleet wise.

[Atekimogus]

Personally I think the Franz Joseph "designs" amount to nothing more than a bunch of kitbashed Connies. Sure, they are nice enough as possible filler for the TOS era but their loss is no big deal to me.

Well to be honest I think this is exactly the beauty of the designs. They are mass produced and highly modular as one would expect with a space ship design which is extreml expensive.

You just start with the saucer which is the same basic frame for all classes. Why design a "new" saucer when one basic module will also cover all the basic needs of the crew (living quarters, med section etc). From there you just mix and match what you need and change the internal layout to your needs. Scout? Clean out a few weapons and add scout equipment. Long range explorer? Add a secondary hull with additional storage room and more R&R facilities etc etc etc.

I am not a fan of kitbashes either but at least the FJ ones seem to make a lot of sense compared to some of the Frankensteins of the TNG+ era.

They are like the nebula class examples of well done kitbashes making sense because they use identical parts in different combinations and showing a common design lineage.

[Tyyr]

Kendall got it right. Even if they look similar on the outside they'd have to undergo massive changes internally to work. There's no modularity there. If you have to completely redesign the guts you're going to waste a tremendous amount of effort trying to pack components into areas they weren't originally intended to go in, rearranging things to fit around those components and so on and so forth. In the end you're better off starting over from scratch and not trying to just make the outer shells look similar.

[Atekimogus]

Kendall got it right. Even if they look similar on the outside they'd have to undergo massive changes internally to work. There's no modularity there.

I guess we must agree to disagree here since what you call massive internal changes I call a minor rearrangment of certain areas while still beeing able to use standardized mass produced parts.
If you look at todays examples -like car industry or tanks - the FJ design is very down to earth and sensible imho and like cars, even if they look completly different are still very standardized and similar under the chassis.

If you have to completely redesign the guts you're going to waste a tremendous amount of effort trying to pack components into areas they weren't originally intended to go in, rearranging things to fit around those components and so on and so forth.

Well were is it said that you need to completely redesign all the guts of the ships? A look at the TM reveals that there are quite a few areas which are completley identical to all Class 1 starships for example the bridge, medical and security area etc. . What other parts of equipment is there which needs more space/height than one deck? The main deflector is - with exception of the connie/dn - externally mounted, the warp drive system is externally highly modular (every class uses the same nacelles) and internally doesn't seem to use that much space and probably fits into the neck section, not sure though I am trying to find deckplans for the saladins.

In the end you're better off starting over from scratch and not trying to just make the outer shells look similar.

Well I think they aren't trying to make the shells look similar they just are unwilling to waste money on a completely new design - even if it would be maybe a bit more sophisticated - when there is absolutely no need for it and a minor redesign of existing parts also suffices. I mean it is not just the outer shell which is similar they are all using the same equipment. Warp nacelles, armament, deflector, planetary sensor impulse drive etc is everywhere the same and they squeeze four classes out of these parts.
Can you imagine the cost of completly redesigning four ship-classes from scratch, building the infrastructure x4 etc. and all this altough knocking down a few walls in an existing design would also suffice? (A real life example might be a MBT chassis where most of them spawn 3-4 variants or "classes" like wrecker, schooling vehicles etc.)

They way this fleet is set up they are also hugley flexible. Imagine for example some sort of m5 or doomsday debacle and the UFP suddenly is in need of heavy cruisers. Well lucky that they have a few half to 80% finished saucer sections in production which where scheduled to become transport tugs and scout ships but will now instead be produced to heavy cruiser standard.

[Captain Seafort]

the warp drive system is externally highly modular (every class uses the same nacelles) and internally doesn't seem to use that much space and probably fits into the neck section, not sure though I am trying to find deckplans for the saladins.

In Franz Joseph's designs the nacelles contain the entire drive chain - the secondary hull is simply a hangar and extra space for random stuff, not an engineering hull in the way it was depicted post-TMP Trek.

[Deepcrush]

Connie and Miranda followed by the Excelsior. The only cannon ships there for all I care about. IMO.

[Atekimogus]

In Franz Joseph's designs the nacelles contain the entire drive chain - the secondary hull is simply a hangar and extra space for random stuff, not an engineering hull in the way it was depicted post-TMP Trek.

Well that explains why I just can not find a warpcore . I must say from this point of view it also makes sense to keep the dangerous nacelles as far away from the ship as possible in comparison to the warp cores of later ships.

[Tyyr]

In Franz Joseph's designs the nacelles contain the entire drive chain - the secondary hull is simply a hangar and extra space for random stuff, not an engineering hull in the way it was depicted post-TMP Trek.

And there you go. You have to rearrange the guts of the FJ designs to start squeezing in things like the warp core, anti-matter pods, and all sort of other things. It's not modular.

The Miranda makes sense. It's got a big addition to the rear of the saucer for holding all sorts of things the secondary hull normally would have. The FJ designs just don't work that way. Everything gets crammed into the externally identical primary hull which makes little sense from an engineering standpoint.

[stitch626]

I doubt anyone would seriously claim that everything from the connie would be crammed into these other ships.

[Mikey]

Even if those components are not modular, why wouldn't they look the same? No matter what the internals look like, one nacelle (for example) should look cosmetically like another built by the same folks.

[Lighthawk]

Even if those components are not modular, why wouldn't they look the same? No matter what the internals look like, one nacelle (for example) should look cosmetically like another built by the same folks.

By that logic, all american car headlights should look the same. They don't though.

[Mikey]

But there are readily visible cosmetic similarities between all headlights of a concurrent time frame from the same brand.

[Atekimogus]

In Franz Joseph's designs the nacelles contain the entire drive chain - the secondary hull is simply a hangar and extra space for random stuff, not an engineering hull in the way it was depicted post-TMP Trek.

And there you go. You have to rearrange the guts of the FJ designs to start squeezing in things like the warp core, anti-matter pods, and all sort of other things. It's not modular.

Read again, what he said is that the entire drive chain is contained in the nacelles. There is no warp core, anti-matter pods and all sorts of other things to squeeze in. Since every variant uses the same nacelles there is no need to squeeze anything anywhere.

All you loose for the destroyer/scout/tug class are the larger rec-rooms, the swimmingpool, the gym, the hangardeck and cargospace which makes sense, since heavy cruisers are supposed to go on 5year missions, destroyers/scouts probably not.

[Deepcrush]

I doubt anyone would seriously claim that everything from the connie would be crammed into these other ships.

A chakat could do it!

[Sonic Glitch]

I doubt anyone would seriously claim that everything from the connie would be crammed into these other ships.

A chakat could do it!

Please never say that again.

However a Time Lord could do it.