collimated phaser arrays

[Santaman]

^^ You don't know much about ships don't ya, technology changes so fast even nowadays that ships who have been build a few years ago are obsolete, same with ships who were mothballed for a while, its not viable to upgrade them anymore because they're symply do not have the infrastructure to support any new equipment.

And now to Trek, you honestly believe that an Excelsior is compatible with a modern ship?

The warpcore is too weak, the warp coils inefficient the ship lacks the infrastructure for new computer equipment, you name it, its a different generation of vessels.

 

[Praetor]

I don't see how quoting abstract physics will help solve the fundamental incompatibility problems of starship power systems. The power flowing through an Excelsior may well be fundamentally different from the power flowing through an Akira, and it might be utterly impossible for one ship to even recharge the shuttles of the other, let alone swap phaser assemblies.



Timo Saloniemi

How in the hell is that even true???? What would be the point of an entire fleet that is incompatible in a most basic way?? That would make starfleet quite ineffective at rescuing other starfleet ships, and frankly nearly impossible.

OF COURSE they are compatible!! The ships are designed to be flesxible and interchangable, and, well, in case you didn't know all federation warp cores operate on the same principle: a standard dueterium brand mixing with a standard form of anti-deuterium, flowing through a dilithium (which are all the same or the process wouldn't really work.), and into standardly built warp coils.

There will be subtle differences, like different fusion reactor units, but since they all work the same way in prinicple, and all use standard starfleet hardwiring, interchanging them shouldn't be a problem. Why would starfleet build such ineffective ships.

That simply makes no sense what so ever.

I believe Timo's point is that since the Excelsior is an older design, it's possible that it would employ a different engine setup than later vessels that might be incompatible with later ships without completely replacing their power and engine systems.

Since behind the scenes what I'd call the 'TNG engne setup' where matter+antimatter-> dilithium -> plasma -> warp coils wasn't thought up until the time TNG rolled around, there is room for debate. TOS gave us a variety of different allusions to how the warp drive worked, including mentioning 'lithium' as a component in several early episodes, and suggesting at least twice that the matter and antimatter were contained outboard in the warp nacelles, and we saw dilithium in wall banks in a small room unrelated to engineering before the third season rolled around and we saw that there was actually dilithium in the pedestal in the floor of the engine room.

Then, the engine setup for TMP emerged and the intermix chamber shown there as a long swirling tube (with dilithium curiously off to one side in TWOK) was the first to resemble the TNG setup. Then, finally, with TNG, we have an explanation that's more or less been stuck with since, and via set reuse appeared in STVI as the Enteprise-A and Excelsior warp cores, and it's entirely possible that's where that setup began.

However, applying that setup to the previous incarnations amounts to little more than retcon. Based on what's on the screen, it's entirely possible that an original Constitution class warp engines produced a unique type of warp plasma compared to the later 'TNG' setup and this for all we know could be why there weren't any tooling around in the 24th century that we saw.

But all in all, it is what we see on screen that we must deal with beyond the reference materials provided via offscreen resources, or, in this case, what we don't see.

 

[Vance]

I think the problem is that we see the Excelsior class, in particular, fight and perform just about as well as a Galaxy all over the place in DS9. It's hard to accept that they're that grossly infrerior somehow in light of all the evidence shown...

So there has to be two explanations:

1) The TNG tech, despite 80 years of advancement, still just isn't all that better than what was introduced in The Search for Spock.

2) The TNG tech is that advanced, and starship older hulls which were still viable come TNG's time frame simply recieved updates of new technology which were designed to fit into existing frames. New phaser banks based on new tech, new warp drives which were 'sculpted' to be put into the LN series engines, and so on.

 

[Praetor]

I think the problem is that we see the Excelsior class, in particular, fight and perform just about as well as a Galaxy all over the place in DS9. It's hard to accept that they're that grossly infrerior somehow in light of all the evidence shown...

So there has to be two explanations:

1) The TNG tech, despite 80 years of advancement, still just isn't all that better than what was introduced in The Search for Spock.

2) The TNG tech is that advanced, and starship older hulls which were still viable come TNG's time frame simply recieved updates of new technology which were designed to fit into existing frames. New phaser banks based on new tech, new warp drives which were 'sculpted' to be put into the LN series engines, and so on.

I'd say a combination of both, personally. If the Excelsior experiment set the standard for everything afterward, and it was all derivative of it, maybe it was easy enough to upgrade it later.

 

[Vance]

I tend to think that there was a lot more 'uprating' involved than simply a 'new era of Tech' from TSFS and onwards. Simply housing a new phaser bank into an existing hull seems to make more sense than assuming an 80 year old ship design (or, in some cases, well over 120 years) would still be considered viable.

It still doesn't show us why the far more complicated and intricate phaser arrays are superior enough to warrant their inclusion on the Galaxy (and similar) classes. That's the remaining mystery ... how are they really better?

 

[shipfisher]

Just a related note.

I seem to remember a reference to the NX-10521 Ambassador class prototype being launched as early as 2315, but I don't know how "canon" this was. This did involve ship registry numbers not being entirely consecutive, but I can't remember the reasoning behind why.

Starflleet ships seem to get refit quite often during their service lives. If the Amby did enter the fleet that early in the 24th century, then I like the idea of original ball turrets being swapped for strip emitters later on, though I have no info to base that assumption on.

I also remember an even more hazy reference to strip emitters being perhaps the result of a subspace weapons program that was one of the things banned by the Treaty of Algeron. The strip emitters were supposedly derived from a system that combined multiple energy beams, with various characteristics and frequencies, on each other for the purpose of rift creation to dispatch enemy ships to "who knows where". The concept was similar to the combination of different beams from the 3 1701D's in "TNG:All Good Things" causing the spatial/temporal anomoly that was the crux of the final episode. I admit this reference is very sketchy and by no means canon.

 

[Deks]

^^ You don't know much about ships don't ya, technology changes so fast even nowadays that ships who have been build a few years ago are obsolete, same with ships who were mothballed for a while, its not viable to upgrade them anymore because they're symply do not have the infrastructure to support any new equipment.

And now to Trek, you honestly believe that an Excelsior is compatible with a modern ship?

The warpcore is too weak, the warp coils inefficient the ship lacks the infrastructure for new computer equipment, you name it, its a different generation of vessels.

But let's face facts here:
Warp cores, warp coils and computers can be changed/replaced/upgraded
SF, and the Klingons in particular were seen using designs that were almost or over a century old.
One would come to the logical conclusion that they constructed their vessels initially to be upgradeable, in nut just the near future, but much later on.
The Lakota was an example of these upgrades.
Interiors can be modified to accommodate new technologies if they don't fit right off the bat.
But if we look at some of the on-screen evidence, the Excelsior is a rather large vessel, and could easily fit virtually any new (modern) warp core inside.
The upgraded Lakota was able to go on to a stand-still with the Defiant.

In order to go up against the Defiant, the shields/phasers had to be significantly enhanced.
Meaning that it's out with the old stuff and in with the new one.
It's easier to upgrade an interior of an existing vessel instead of building an entirely new ship. You spend much less time for one thing.

Making comparisons between how real-life technology is making new ships obsolete in a few years is a rather ridiculous comparison to Trek.
The Feds are centuries ahead of us in technology and differ in ways of thinking. They likely came up with star-ship designs that can support significant upgrades over a large period of time.

 

[Praetor]

Just a related note.

I seem to remember a reference to the NX-10521 Ambassador class prototype being launched as early as 2315, but I don't know how "canon" this was. This did involve ship registry numbers not being entirely consecutive, but I can't remember the reasoning behind why.

Starflleet ships seem to get refit quite often during their service lives. If the Amby did enter the fleet that early in the 24th century, then I like the idea of original ball turrets being swapped for strip emitters later on, though I have no info to base that assumption on.

LOL at 'Amby.' But 2315 seems kinda early to me. I don't think the number is that big a deal... I've always been under the assumption that Starfleet sometimes reserves certain registry numbers (e.g. NX-2000) for big projects and by the time of their launch they may be out of sequence, which would explain why every Amby other than the Ambassador herself and the Enterprise had a registry in the NCC-26xxx range. I tried doing a graph a while back to plot the data of (mostly) confirmable registries to figure ouw what would fit where that I'm thinking I should really revisit.

But as to the refitting of turret to strips, even thogh we've discussed the apparent unwillingness on the part of Starfleet to refit every Excelsior and MIranda out there, for a class that seemed to have limited construction like the Ambassador (maybe just 12 like the original Connies?) I could see that working.

I also remember an even more hazy reference to strip emitters being perhaps the result of a subspace weapons program that was one of the things banned by the Treaty of Algeron. The strip emitters were supposedly derived from a system that combined multiple energy beams, with various characteristics and frequencies, on each other for the purpose of rift creation to dispatch enemy ships to "who knows where". The concept was similar to the combination of different beams from the 3 1701D's in "TNG:All Good Things" causing the spatial/temporal anomoly that was the crux of the final episode. I admit this reference is very sketchy and by no means canon.

That's kind of interesting, where did that come from?

 

[Tigger]

I seem to remember a reference to the NX-10521 Ambassador class prototype being launched as early as 2315, but I don't know how "canon" this was. This did involve ship registry numbers not being entirely consecutive, but I can't remember the reasoning behind why.

That date is from the TNG Technical Manual. I believe in the section about the Impulse Drive of the GCS.

 

[shipfisher]

I also remember an even more hazy reference to strip emitters being perhaps the result of a subspace weapons program that was one of the things banned by the Treaty of Algeron. The strip emitters were supposedly derived from a system that combined multiple energy beams, with various characteristics and frequencies, on each other for the purpose of rift creation to dispatch enemy ships to "who knows where". The concept was similar to the combination of different beams from the 3 1701D's in "TNG:All Good Things" causing the spatial/temporal anomoly that was the crux of the final episode. I admit this reference is very sketchy and by no means canon.

That's kind of interesting, where did that come from?

Wish I could tell you mate.

I was a quite a few links deep in a trek surfing session ( some years ago now) when I came across reference to the above on a site I never bookmarked. I've noted quite a few more "Sorry, that page is no longer available" type dead ends when doing the same more recently.

All I can suggest is perhaps googling "Treaty of Algeron" and "subspace weapons" together or apart and see where it leads.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

^^ You don't know much about ships don't ya, technology changes so fast even nowadays that ships who have been build a few years ago are obsolete, same with ships who were mothballed for a while, its not viable to upgrade them anymore because they're symply do not have the infrastructure to support any new equipment.

And now to Trek, you honestly believe that an Excelsior is compatible with a modern ship?

The warpcore is too weak, the warp coils inefficient the ship lacks the infrastructure for new computer equipment, you name it, its a different generation of vessels.

Technology doesn't advance at a consistent rate. Why are you comparing today's rapid growth, to 24th century?

How much improvement was there between 8th century ships and 9th century ships?

 

[SicOne]

That is true, as we have seen Excelsiors still serving in Starfleet, that pretty much disproves the notion that older ships become obsolete quickly. Perhaps the Excelsiors and Mirandas are far more adaptable to newer technology than the Constitutrion-refit and Ambassadors were, and that's why we saw many more of them than the latter.

And while it is true that there may not be a vast difference between ships of the 8th and 9th century, even with today's amazing technological advancement over the last century (i.e. more tech advancement over the last 100 years than in our entire history), by Trek time there may be only smaller improvements on what works best.

You'd think they'd have fixed the exploding conns by now, though...