Mothball Upgrades

[Mark]

I was messing around with the calculator today, with upgrading some of the older ships, like the Connies and such, with DS9 era weapons. By putting in pulse fire quantum torpedos instead of the 2nd class torpedo systems in there now, and beefing up the weapons and shields, it didn't look to ridiculous. What do you guys think? Is it realistic to upgrade THAT much?

[Teaos]

In my opinion there ar two problems with upgrading.

One is that there is only so much you can do to an old design before it just becomes to hard to upgrade any further.

Second is that just because you can upgrade something doesnt mean you should. A lot of the time it would be a hell of a lot easier to just build a new ship than refit an old one.

[Reliant121]

Its all well and good using the calculator making the stats up, but the problem is actually implementing them.


Take the Connie refit. by the DW, it will falling apart. trying to wrench in a pulse torpedo launcher is gonna be a hellova mish mash job. it'll be even less effective than the cobbled together Frankenstein ships.

[Aaron]

You'd be putting in kit that was never designed to work with the previous generations. Look at Relics, Geordi was virtually useless on Scotty's transport and Scotty didn't recognise half the kit on the E-D, Which implies that most of the new stuff is incompatible with the previous generation. You probably could slap a QT or pulse-fire launcer in the Connie but how are you going to make it work?

[Mikey]

Even if you could make the ship structurally and electronically capable of somewhat handling the new weapons and tech (which I doubt,) the hulls are too old to make it cost-effective. You're putting SOTA (and presumably resource-intensive) tech into hulls that will only last another ten years or so.

[Aaron]

Even if you could make the ship structurally and electronically capable of somewhat handling the new weapons and tech (which I doubt,) the hulls are too old to make it cost-effective. You're putting SOTA (and presumably resource-intensive) tech into hulls that will only last another ten years or so.

You could new build hulls with the high tech kit. Honestly I always figured that the Dominion Mirandas and Excelsiors where at least in part new build hulls along with the Klingon K'Tinga varients (300 years is a little much for a ship!). Mind you you still have to integrate all the new hardware (from buttons, to power distrubution to reactor) into the hull. Most likely cheaper and easier to design from scratch.

It's not like you see many old Fletcher class DD's running around with SM-2's and gas turbines.

[Reliant121]

I thought they re-hulled them or at least rebuilt part of the hull.

[Mikey]

Perhaps; but as Kendall says, it's probably better economically and effectively to produce new designs made for the newer tech.

[Reliant121]

Of course. by the point of the DW, they were absolutely desperate for any ship they could get, be it one of the many that Utopia Planetia were churning out or one of the old warhorses lying about doing nothing special.

[Aaron]

Perhaps; but as Kendall says, it's probably better economically and effectively to produce new designs made for the newer tech.

There's a fanon bit about the Big E being stripped to the frame and being rebuilt into what we saw in TMP, though they were obviously using tech that wasn't to far ahead of what they already had. They certainly didn't use plasma conduits for console power. I rationalise it as the TOS era Federation being more resource limited than they were in later series (how often did we see Sisko or Picard negotiating with natives for dilithium?), rebuilding old ships and vehicles is often done by cash strapped nations as it appears to be cheaper than new build.

[Aaron]

Of course. by the point of the DW, they were absolutely desperate for any ship they could get, be it one of the many that Utopia Planetia were churning out or one of the old warhorses lying about doing nothing special.

If that's the case than those ships are likely needed immediately, not 18 months down the road when they finish refitting.

[Reliant121]

good point.

[Abraxas]

Well, even if they can fit on the hull, I'm sure they consume a fair bit more power, which means you need to totally upgrade the power creation and distribution systems... and it's just not whorth it to pull out a steam engine and throw in a nuclear reactor just so you can use the aegis sensor system. Or to make it a Trek analogy, it's just not whorth it to pull out your 50 year old warp core and put in a new one just so you can Type X phasers instead of Type VI.

It's just better to make a new ship - which is probably why the UFP has such a wealth of new/old designs.

They build new ships to keep pace with every pieace of new technology and keep the old ones until they litorally fall apart...

The US Navy does a better job then the UFP does. What? Did they forget common sense after a couple hundren years?

[Mikey]

Did they forget common sense after a couple hundren years?

Welcome to DITL. Please feel free to look around.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Definitely you'd have problems with integrating tech into a ship that isn't compatible with it in any way. Hell, even now a 5-6 year old computer can't be upgraded with modern components since it isn't compatible with the latest standards, which advance about every 5 seconds.