How big SHOULD the Defiant be?

[Arpy]

Why would they want a huge nuclear arsenal? As long as at least one other country has an arsenal big enough to inflict unacceptable damage, they're not useful.

As a species, it's insanity. We should be looking to denuclearize as much as possible. Instead, US-Russian relations haven't been this bad since the Cold War; now the Chinese, seeing the US gone crazy, want to be the/a superpower by 2049. That there were multiple occasions on which pure luck saved the world during systems breakdowns during the Cold War should remind us that there is no military solution to peace and the continuation of the human species as we know it.

A Galaxy is an awfully big ship. It's sort of a flaw - I wouldn't want to send 1000 people and such a huge ship on a risky mission. But TNG Enterprise was put at risk all the time.

I think one needs to consider the period the design came out of. Not in-universe(*), but in the real world. The idea for the ship came out of the mid-80's when we were thinking about what life in outer space might actually be like. If we do get out there, chances are that we won't find any aliens anywhere near us or on a comparable level, and it's going to be mostly empty, boring, and dangerous. That's a good thing (kinda). It means that we can safely spread out into space without fear of adversaries. And it should remind us how truly precious we all are in the profound nothingness beyond our thoughtless planet. In the face of all that, a Galaxy Class starship bringing life to lifelessness is, frankly, a blessing.

(* Usually the fan argument in-universe is that the Galaxy Class came out of a period of peace, one that didn't have to think about baddies after Glasnost with the Klingons. But the period is actually chock full of war and conflict with the Talarians, Cardassians, Tzenkethi, Tholians, and maybe the Jarada and the Breen. Plus fear of things going sideways with the Klingons, and Elements know what the Romulans might surprise do.)

 

[Cyfa]

With future automation, maybe a crew of one (Beverly in “Remember Me”) or none (SNW short story “Of Cabbages and Kings”) could run the ship.

- I love "Of Cabbages and Kings"! That's tonight's bedtime story sorted, thank you

As for the size of the Defiant, I prefer a small ship - about 120m as the corrected MSD seems to indicate. Any scenes in which it appears larger I put down to gravitational lensing effects affecting our view

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

She's as big or little as the plot needs her to be.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

She's as big or little as the plot needs her to be.

Yup.

Although "fairly small" is pretty consistent.

There's certainly less variation than for the BoP which has a spread of between at least ~100m to ~300m and at least in theory a range of between 35m and ~650m if you believe that DITL.org analysis:

https://www.ditl.org/article-page.php?ArticleID=23&ListID=Articles

 

[Oddish]

Given that the bulk of the Defiant class seems to be her warp engines, maybe they should make parasite craft: Defiant-level firepower, but smaller and with no warp capability. I'll bet a refitted Galaxy class ship could carry half a dozen, and spit them out when needed. Talk about your force multiplier...

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Given that the bulk of the Defiant class seems to be her warp engines, maybe they should make parasite craft: Defiant-level firepower, but smaller and with no warp capability. I'll bet a refitted Galaxy class ship could carry half a dozen, and spit them out when needed. Talk about your force multiplier...

The problem with that idea is that both the phasers and the shields are tied into the warp drive, so if you remove that then you cripple the hull.

Runabouts are a better candidate for parasite craft from the Galaxy-class.

 

[Oddish]

The problem with that idea is that both the phasers and the shields are tied into the warp drive, so if you remove that then you cripple the hull.

You don't remove it, you just don't include it in the ship's design. You replace it with a simple antimatter reactor that provides power for shields and weapons without being capable of generating a warp field. Add in double-thick ablative armor and regenerative shields, and you've got the fighting power of four, maybe six starships in your shuttle bays. And you can even leave one to guard an installation or a colony.

 

[Arpy]

I suppose you could get rid of the warp coils, the nacelles and their Bussards, and, if you do that, if you make it a sublight ship, you could get rid of the deflector dish as well, overall leaving a kind of a flying saucer shape.

I dunno if it’s smart to use sublight ships though. Isn’t that what did in the Romulan Bird-of-Prey without its cloaking device?

Also, if it’s now not so much an escort ship as much a fighter leaving a carrier, does it have to be four/six stories tall?

Starfleet would be better off creating a new class of ablative-armored craft with an antimatter core and Defiant phasers and quantum torpedoes, that’s one or two stories tall, max. A bunch of Delta Flyers or INS scout ships or something. A Galaxy Class, even without a refit, could host maybe dozens of those. With a refit...made into a through-deck carrier...well...Battlestar Galaxia.

 

[Oddish]

Also, if it’s now not so much an escort ship as much a fighter leaving a carrier, does it have to be four/six stories tall?

My point: it doesn't. You've got the Defiant's catastrophic firepower in a ship maybe half the size of the Defiant, and you can carry several of them. No need to outfit each one with a bulky warp drive, just deploy them at your destination.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

You don't remove it, you just don't include it in the ship's design. You replace it with a simple antimatter reactor that provides power for shields and weapons without being capable of generating a warp field.

How would that work exactly?

The warp field is generated by the nacelles/warp coil, not the reactor core (the engines). Even the smallest core (a Danube-class one) is capable of providing enough power to generate a warp field and that's orders of magnitude less than the power available from the Defiant's core.

Now, on the other hand, if I'm misunderstanding your point and your intention is to remove the warp coils and supporting apparatus as other posters suggest... Then that has some possibilities, though I would consider it an even harder political sell than the Defiant apparently already was as it would be even more useless as any other than a warship than it was.

 

[Oddish]

Because the purpose of such a ship would be war. Instead of wasting ships built for exploration and research on combat, you build as many purpose built warfighters as possible. And instead of outfitting them with a bulky and expensive warp core, you build them as cheap, heavily armored, and essentially expendable parasite craft. They can travel with their warp capable host ship and be deployed for battle, or be left to picket a system: they may be good for impulse power only, but for a battle or system defense, no warp drive is needed.

It may not be as good as the Defiant, but quantity has a quality all its own.

 

[Arpy]

I mean if we’re just doing war machines, they’re not going the aircraft carrier route. What’s the point? They have AI’s. The charm of Trek is the old fashioned battleship vs battleship combat. If they’re trying to be logical about combat given their level of technology, they can skip the fighter step and go directly to drones. The real world is.

Going to Red Alert could mean hundreds of independent drones come off the mothership and deploying in a perimeter around it.

But there’s something joyless in that isn’t there? Hardware vs hardware. I’d hope that’s what real warfare becomes — we attack each other’s toys till one side runs out — but as entertainment...

 

[Weyoun 251]

I mean if we’re just doing war machines, they’re not going the aircraft carrier route. What’s the point? They have AI’s. The charm of Trek is the old fashioned battleship vs battleship combat. If they’re trying to be logical about combat given their level of technology, they can skip the fighter step and go directly to drones. The real world is.

Going to Red Alert could mean hundreds of independent drones come off the mothership and deploying in a perimeter around it.

But there’s something joyless in that isn’t there? Hardware vs hardware. I’d hope that’s what real warfare becomes — we attack each other’s toys till one side runs out — but as entertainment...

Wasn't that literally what the Section 31 craft in Discos season 2 finally did? They had those little things deployed off the larger ships and my understanding was that they were unmanned. If I'm wrong though then please correct me

 

[Oddish]

I don't like the idea of autonomous killing machines. You give an AI the ability to take life, you'd better hope it doesn't decide to take yours. Or that its electronic targeting parameters don't consider that 13-year-old kid with a sharp stick in his hands to be a threat.

I was talking about minimally crewed parasite craft: Defiant-level firepower, but cheaper to build and requiring less crew because they only have thrusters and impulse engines. Even their EMH's would only need field medic training; serious casualties could be returned to Sickbay on the main ship.

 

[Arpy]

Wasn't that literally what the Section 31 craft in Discos season 2 finally did? They had those little things deployed off the larger ships and my understanding was that they were unmanned. If I'm wrong though then please correct me

Maybe. I don’t remember the Eeeeeeevil Fleet that well.

I don't like the idea of autonomous killing machines. You give an AI the ability to take life, you'd better hope it doesn't decide to take yours. Or that its electronic targeting parameters don't consider that 13-year-old kid with a sharp stick in his hands to be a threat.

Grown adult soldiers still seem to make that mistake. And a bunch of others. Plus they come back traumatized or mutilated — or dead. Only not to have their medical expenses covered.

It’d be an interesting war in the next hundred years that results in 350,000 friendly casualties and 0 enemy ones before they surrender. Not every situation is an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Not every new technology a Frankenstein tale.

I was talking about minimally crewed parasite craft: Defiant-level firepower, but cheaper to build and requiring less crew because they only have thrusters and impulse engines. Even their EMH's would only need field medic training; serious casualties could be returned to Sickbay on the main ship.

Yeah that’s what a lot of us wonder about.

The thing about the Defiant was that it was “overpowered” for its size. Does that mean for an “escort” or physically it was difficult to get that much firepower in a 4-6 story ship? Maybe they can’t pack that level firepower in smaller bodies.

But, then, maybe if you have a handful of smaller craft, they can equal thr power of a Defiant. You just need more of them on the main ship.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

You don't remove it, you just don't include it in the ship's design. You replace it with a simple antimatter reactor that provides power for shields and weapons without being capable of generating a warp field. Add in double-thick ablative armor and regenerative shields, and you've got the fighting power of four, maybe six starships in your shuttle bays. And you can even leave one to guard an installation or a colony.

Because the purpose of such a ship would be war. Instead of wasting ships built for exploration and research on combat, you build as many purpose built warfighters as possible. And instead of outfitting them with a bulky and expensive warp core, you build them as cheap, heavily armored, and essentially expendable parasite craft. They can travel with their warp capable host ship and be deployed for battle, or be left to picket a system: they may be good for impulse power only, but for a battle or system defense, no warp drive is needed.

It may not be as good as the Defiant, but quantity has a quality all its own.

I just don't think that this can/should exist in Star Trek, or it would already. I am referring to the idea of ships that use warp power primarily for something other than travel. I am reminded of fan designs that have numerous extra warp nacelles which are claimed to be not for movement but for power. This is kind of the opposite. I think either technologically or politically, Starfleet must have some reason no to use warp power for other uses, at least primarily.

The charm of Trek is the old fashioned battleship vs battleship combat.

There must be some reason in star Trek's future that this needs to be this way. Perhaps certain forms of automation are deemed unacceptable in deep space, and thus an "older" style of battle (fighting between a few large ships instead of many small planes/drones), has to be used again. If evidence of this is required, "The Ultimate Computer" might demonstrating just that. There is also the use of "Phaser Crews", when one would thing this kind of system could be totally automated.

 

[Arpy]

Part of me wishes that there was some massive AI war in maybe the late 21st or 22nd century. Maybe as part of the Third World War on Earth or another broader conflict in the Trek universe we just haven’t heard about, but one that explains why there isn’t more automation and AI’s and droids everywhere like in the Star Wars Universe.

I guess Control in DSC explains the AI thing, come to think of it. But something along the lines of Terminator or I, Robot or Bladerunner or Battlestar Galactica maybe.

You could explain a lot of the non-intrusiveness of Trek tech as it being designed to cater to human needs not the other way around. Mac vs PC. But there’s still room in there to add some unknown history to wonder about. Maybe even in a throwaway line while on some planet-of-the-week dealing with an android uprising.

 

[cgervasi]

I wonder if a good Star Trek series could be written around a Defiant-size ship with a few decks, shared quarters, and a handful of people. There would be no holodeck, no discussion of personnel reports, etc. It would just be a few capable people on missions of exploration, investigation, providing heavily-armed protection for Federation official travelling in dangerous areas. I feel like creative writers could take those restrictions and make a really good show.

I like the Enterprise D with its 1000 people, holodecks, apartment-style family quarters, but I would also like a show that feels more tightly focused on a few people doing Star Trek stuff.

 

[kkt]

They made a pretty good show about a starship with 430 crew aboard, no holodeck, minimal administrivia on the air, just a few capable people on missions of exploration, investigation, and occassionally muscle.

 

[matthunter]

Starfleet would be better off creating a new class of ablative-armored craft with an antimatter core and Defiant phasers and quantum torpedoes, that’s one or two stories tall, max. A bunch of Delta Flyers or INS scout ships or something. A Galaxy Class, even without a refit, could host maybe dozens of those. With a refit...made into a through-deck carrier...well...Battlestar Galaxia.

So now the enemy only has to target/inderdict a single carrier.

A dozen small warp-capable escorts/destroyers stand a higher chance of some of them getting past a blockade.