Aventine the new flagship?

[RTOlson]

Santa Claws wrote:

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I think, even though the Aventine is one of the largest and one of the most advanced ships of the fleet, it does not really have a long history like the Enterprise has, that should count a bit.

I like both views of a flagship -- a vessel representing the vanguard of the Federation and a vessel carrying the flag of a commanding officer of a fleet. Of course, in "Star Trek," we never really saw a lot of admirals or commodores commanding from single starships (although we did see Admiral Hansen in the "Best of Both Worlds.").

I view Aventine in a light similar to the original Excelsior. The Excelsior was outfitted with transwarp engines and was touted as the future of Starfleet (much to Scotty's chagrin). Only after the experimental stuff was removed and the ship was allowed to prove itself did it become the vanguard of the fleet (as evidenced by the longivity of the Excesior-class).

Did the Excelsior eventually become a "flagship?" Yes, I believe it did. The Federation is big enough to have multiple explorer-type ships carrying its banner (or flag) to the edges of the final frontier.

[LutherSloan]

Remember that Voyager couldn't get the quantum slipstream drive to work properly, and the Aventine didn't either, not until an 800-year old Erika Hernandez piloted the ship for them.

I'm not sure if regular Starfleet vessels would be able to use a quantum-slipstream drive yet. The Vesta-class is probably heavily modified to use the drive. We don't know what it looks like yet.

[Rowan Sjet]

Remember that Voyager couldn't get the quantum slipstream drive to work properly, and the Aventine didn't either, not until an 800-year old Erika Hernandez piloted the ship for them.

The Aventine crew could work it just fine, they just couldn't fly it with enough precision to land right on top of the Borg ship and conduct the ambush. That's where Hernandez came in.

[Clawhammer]

Voyager was not designed to do QSD, still it worked for a brief period of time, I guess the Vesta class ships could exchange parts/equipment easier then Voyager to experiment with it. When they have found something like a "baseline" setting, perhaps distribution to other ships could be realised. As far as I can see it, no heavy exterior modification would be involved.

It's like upgrading the CPU, you will go faster, but you still looking at the same old case.

I do think the Aventine/Vesta class should be overbuild though, so it can be used over and over again to test new setups and break new speed records. That way it would be able to serve a long time, like the Excelsior or the Miranda classes.

[Herbert]

Santa Claws wrote:

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It's like upgrading the CPU, you will go faster, but you still looking at the same old case.

That isn't a good analogy. Stable quantum slipstream drive represents a greater technological leap. It opens a much greater portion of our galaxy to exploration and colonization and greater story telling possibilities in the Star Trek universe without resorting to Caretakers Arrays or worm holes because of the distances involved.

[RTOlson]

With a quantum slipstream, Starfleet could revisit the Small Magellanic Cloud to determine the fate of the Neyel (I imagine it wouldn't be pretty, but it would be possible). Oh, there's also the matter of puncturing the galactic barrier.

[Cicero]

Christopher wrote:

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Okay, you're quoting the bolded portion directly from Wikipedia's "Flagship" entry (or rather, you're plagiarizing it -- in future, don't quote something directly without citing your source, please). But that's not always the most reliable source, and I think it's conflating multiple different uses.

From the OAD:

noun
the ship in a fleet that carries the commanding admiral.
....• the best or most important thing owned or produced by a particular organization

In strictly military terms, I think Babaganoosh is right -- a flagship is the ship on which the commander of a fleet (whether a group of ships operating jointly or simply the navy at large) is based.

The US Navy sometimes uses the term "flagship" in the context of competition or recognition of excellence, wherein the group which wins the competition or is otherwise recognized for excellence is designated the "flagship" within certain contexts. I don't think the civilian usage of the term is entirely foreign to the sea service. If anything, usage seems quite parallel.

Steve Mollmann wrote:

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I suspect there's more to it than that, otherwise Kumari or T'Plana-Hath would be the flagship.

Put differently, one might conclude that the unique role of Enterprise in the Federation's formation (perhaps coupled with the previous history of ships of the same name) might have garnered it a permanent place of honor.

RTOlson wrote:

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I like both views of a flagship -- a vessel representing the vanguard of the Federation and a vessel carrying the flag of a commanding officer of a fleet. Of course, in "Star Trek," we never really saw a lot of admirals or commodores commanding from single starships (although we did see Admiral Hansen in the "Best of Both Worlds.").

I view Aventine in a light similar to the original Excelsior. The Excelsior was outfitted with transwarp engines and was touted as the future of Starfleet (much to Scotty's chagrin). Only after the experimental stuff was removed and the ship was allowed to prove itself did it become the vanguard of the fleet (as evidenced by the longivity of the Excesior-class).

Did the Excelsior eventually become a "flagship?" Yes, I believe it did. The Federation is big enough to have multiple explorer-type ships carrying its banner (or flag) to the edges of the final frontier.

Wasn't there some supposition that the Excelsior was designated the Flagship between the decommissioning of the Enterprise-A and the launch of the Enterprise-B?

[Clawhammer]

Herbert wrote:

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That isn't a good analogy. Stable quantum slipstream drive represents a greater technological leap. It opens a much greater portion of our galaxy to exploration and colonization and greater story telling possibilities in the Star Trek universe without resorting to Caretakers Arrays or worm holes because of the distances involved.

No doubt, but I'm only referring to a ships exterior. "Case" as in computer case.

[Tino]

I also think that a flagship should be defined by its reputation and not by its technology. Otherwise, Starfleet would have to "pass the flag" all the times.

But I do wonder if the -B und -C were really flagships. To this date, I have only read a few adventures of them and they were rarely talked about on screen.

[JoeZhang]

Santa Claws wrote:

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No doubt, but I'm only referring to a ships exterior. "Case" as in computer case.

It seems to me that the answer with the quantum slip screen is outline a "control" problem - so they've worked out how to use it to go 60,000 light years but not 2000 light years, they cannot control the energy to that fine of a degree. That way, the delta Quadrant can be used again but you don't have situation where the Enterprise can be at Earth at the start of an adventure and then at the Klingon home world an instant later.

[Christopher]

JoeZhang wrote:

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It seems to me that the answer with the quantum slip screen is outline a "control" problem - so they've worked out how to use it to go 60,000 light years but not 2000 light years, they cannot control the energy to that fine of a degree. That way, the delta Quadrant can be used again but you don't have situation where the Enterprise can be at Earth at the start of an adventure and then at the Klingon home world an instant later.

That's not consistent with the depiction of quantum slipstream drive onscreen; as shown, it requires very precise calculation to keep the vortex stable, so the longer the journey, the more difficult it is.

Besides, we already have stories where the Enterprise plays hopscotch across the quadrant -- see Doors into Chaos, for instance. Or First Contact, where the E-E seemingly got from the Romulan border to Earth within a few minutes. It's been a long, long time since anyone's really bothered to obey the injunction of the original TOS and TNG writers' bibles: "Don't treat deep space like a local neighborhood." The UFP and its neighbors are already hours or days apart, at least when the story demands it. At least QSD would be a better rationalization for what's already effectively the case.

[Rowan Sjet]

Or First Contact, where the E-E seemingly got from the Romulan border to Earth within a few minutes.

The way I make sense of it is that the battle started further out from Earth than what we first saw in the movie, like Starfleet engaging the Borg at Wolf 359. Except Starfleet ships had made great improvements since then and thus, although being no more effective aggressively, were able to last much longer against the Cube than the first attack. We just missed the prolonged battle in between Enterprise setting course and them arriving at the battle because it would have taken too long to show.

Of course, this idea may not stand up too well under close scrutiny but it's how I fanwank it.

[Dayton Ward]

Cicero wrote:

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Put differently, one might conclude that the unique role of Enterprise in the Federation's formation (perhaps coupled with the previous history of ships of the same name) might have garnered it a permanent place of honor.

This is how I've always viewed the E's status as "the flagship"; sort of going hand in hand with why all Starfleet personnel now wear a variant of what was once the Enterprise's insignia (an unofficial explanation, of course, but I happen to like it). I just go with the notion that it's going to be that way until another ship and crew distinguishes themselves in a manner that eclipses the voyages of the original Enterprise.

(Not that any such shit is evah gonna happen. Not on my watch! )

[Christopher]

Dayton Ward wrote:

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This is how I've always viewed the E's status as "the flagship"; sort of going hand in hand with why all Starfleet personnel now wear a variant of what was once the Enterprise's insignia (an unofficial explanation, of course, but I happen to like it).

Except that the insignia of the 23rd-century Enterprise is now known to be a variant of an insignia used as far back as the Friendship One probe in the 21st century: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Imag...p_One_logo.jpg Perhaps it was the original UESPA logo, and the Big E's use of that insignia was a tribute to UESPA, perhaps because UESPA was (presumably) behind the program that produced the original starship Enterprise NX-01 (a ship whose own insignia wasn't really adaptable to 23rd-century Starfleet's graphic design style).

I think that's a better explanation for why the whole fleet would adopt it -- because it's a former logo of their forerunner organization. The idea that they're honoring one ship among their number never made much sense to me.

And it might explain an episode like "Court-martial" where we see other Starfleet officers already using the arrowhead insignia. Maybe it was never uniquely NCC-1701's logo to begin with. Perhaps the other emblems we saw on other ships weren't unique to those ships, but were the emblems of particular subsets of the fleet, with multiple ships and starbases using each division's insignia. Maybe Starbase 11 was a command base for the division that used the arrowhead insignia, so all the ships there were part of that same subfleet, and hence all the officers in the bar had the arrowhead emblem on their tunics.

[Dayton Ward]

Blasphemer.