anyway, it's puzzling that a huge ship like voyager can do with a crew of 150 people. watched a reportage about the world's largest cruise liner recently, oasis of the seas(?), roughly the size of voyager. crew of 2,000+, 6,000+ passengers. must be weeks crew members don't see each other.
You're comparing a 24th century starship with a 21st century oceanic pleasure craft? A better comparison would be the 23rd century Enterprise. Voyager is a bigger ship (triple the interior volume) but gets by with a crew not much over a third in number. That's a factor of nine but lets not forget that the refit Enterprise could be operated completely automated - albeit not very well. The 24th century Prometheus on the other hand, operated just fine that way - even in a combat situation with two clueless holograms in charge.
At the time I liked the intrepid class. But, like many have said, the movable warp nacels are a major weakness. I thought I read they were variable because the Intrepid class was designed to land on planets. If they were to redesign the show, I think it would have been better if the ship was an older training vessel, like Enterprise in ST2. Most of the crew would be cadets led by seasoned command officers. Could be Constellation or Excelsior class. But being my username shows I'm partial to the Connie refit design, I would prefer to see it again. Another thing they should have done is throw the whole cloak ban out the airlock. Would have saved them a lot of trouble.
There's a part of me that will always wonder what if they had went with an older design rather than a brand-new one. I myself probably would have went with the Voyager being an aging Miranda-class ship that was perhaps on its final mission before being decommissioned when it went missing in the badlands. The writers would have made that old ship dang near invincible in the Delta Quadrant just like they did the Intrepid-class, IMO...
Which is why that would have been a HORRIBLE idea! It was bad enough seeing the Intrepid-class Voyager trading fire with Borg ships. A Miranda doing so would have pushed believability completely out the window.
Voyager did not trade fire with the Borg until after 7 was a member of her crew. One could assume Voyager would not have lasted long before 7 helped improve their defenses.
I don't care what Seven did. It's pretty hard to swallow how well the Intrepid-class Voyager stood up - damn-near impossible to swallow, really. That's one of the biggest flaws of Voyager and it's lucky enough of us stayed with the show. A Miranda doing the same - I can't speak for any other fan but I never would have stuck with it.
Voyager needed to be small enough to NOT be able to wipe the floor with everyone who even pretended to challenge them, and large enough to evade or to cream anyone who was a serious threat. To quote Admiral Patterson.... "Voyager may not be as big as a Galaxy class ship but she's quick and smart, like her Captain." Even that flight jock Tom Paris had never heard of a Starfleet ship that could safely maneuver through the plasma storms of the badlands... Voyager was the answer to that deficiency in their fleet. A larger ship also would have been able to absorb the loss of crew in "Caretaker", and not forced Janeway into a position where she had to accept Maquis crew or former convicts in senior positions. As for the nacells, I thought they were cool, and I liked the continuity with that TNG ep mentioned above. It meant Starfleet took seriously the question of protecting space from the side effects of warp drive. edited to add.... "Ohhhh, what pretty pictures, Commodore!" (Page 3)
Granted, it was hard to swallow standing up to Cubes, Tactical Cubes and Spheres. But the scout ship was believable. Year of Hell made less sense. For a year she was pounded by an enemy who's torpedoes could walk right through her shields.
Can you imagine Voyager not only being an Ambassador class ship, but also the series taking place during that era (let's say, the Enterprice C timeframe)? Encountering Klingons who are still your enemies, Romulans who tried to sabotage the peace talks with the Federation and Klingons? This would eliminate the Borg aspect, and free up for a new cheif engineer. Just random ideas off the bat.
If the Intrepid class's variable position nacelles were to deal with the effects of warp travel on space, you would think they would be fixed in that position. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with atmospheric flight. If that is the case, you would think they would only change when entering a planets atmosphere. I think they did it just to cause they thought it was cool.
The Intrepid class is easily one of my favourite Trek ships, so I'm quite happy with it. I also fail to see how having a different ship would have made any kind of substantive difference to the series (from a production standpoint). The writers told the stories they wanted to tell, and I really doubt those stories would have been any different with another design of ship.
While I am not a massive fan of the Intrepid class, I have one major gripe with it (although the same goes for the Sovereign class as well): The fact that we NEVER saw it in the major fleet actions and engagements in DS9. And yes, I know the reason, TPTB didn't want to confuse the viewers (and in the case of the Sovereign class, wanted it to remain special and exclusive to the movies). Still, it always bugged me. Then again, it's not the Intrepid class's fault On topic: I went with the Akira class, just because it's one of my favourite designs and it would have kicked the Kazon's ass during Caretaker, allowing Chakotay and his folks to stay on their own ship.
A description of the Intrepid that I read in one of the magazines described Voyager as a "scout" ship, meant for short-range scientific surveys or the occasional diplomatic mission. It's a different approach than the Enterprise-D, which could not only do long-range service but also serve as a warship in perilous times. I liked the Intrepid class. Small, elegant, obviously designed by people who prefer peace to war -- not that I would've minded seeing an Akira class.
Intrepid is also classed as a science/scout-type vessel in Star Trek Online. I think she has graceful lines; a true lady. And I always thought that little blue deflector dish was adorable. (Can a deflector dish be adorable?)
This is my issue with the Intrepid. Up until all this combat, and the subsequent ass-kicking it regularly gave the Borg, I was fine with it. After that I just became completely unbelievable. If they had just one Intrepid at Wolf 359, that cube would have been toast pretty quickly. I voted for the Nebula, but I like the idea of the Ambassador as Voyager.
Incorrect. What I got from YOH was that the Chroniton torpedoes may have had the ability to go through Voyager's shields, but they were relatively weak on delivery (and the transphasic torpedoes essentially explode from inside the ship and carry a far more impressive firepower in contrast to regular photon torpedoes because they are designed to destroy Borg ships). Besides, most SF ships can absorb several direct torpedo hits, and during YOH, Voyager was hit only a few times (if that much) during each encounter (and we also don't know how many were there exactly - plus Krenim ships were easy to kill off with a sustained phaser hit to their torpedo tubes). Furthermore, I can recall only one instance when Voyager stood up to larger Borg ships ... and that was in Unimatrix 0. It was a bit far fetched for the ship to survive as long in a firefight with a tactical cube, but Voyager never did any real harm to it and 7 was on board doing who knows what (you'd be surprised just how versatile and adaptable SF tech is). Second attack was aided by a resistance Borg sphere which put the tactical cube at a disarray a bit (nothing serious, but the queen ordered self destruct anyway). When Voyager fought against a sphere ... I recall 2 instances. One with the future drone that enhanced the shields and phasers (although I found the Borg adapting THAT fast to THOSE kinds of modifications to be unrealistic). Second instance against a sphere involved Icheb. The Sphere captured Voyager in a tractor beam and the only reason they escaped was because they beamed a torpedo inside it's shield perimeter and did moderate damage to it (enough to get away). When it was fighting a Borg cube, well, that particular Borg ship was occupied with 5 children who were out of their maturation chambers too early. The situations which Voyager found itself in virtually resulted in the ship barely getting away in one piece from the Borg (with exception of Unimatrix 0 and Dark Frontier chase scene with the Delta Flyer).