Potential GSU Ship

[Patrickivan]

I've been mulling this design over for quite some time now. It's a big ship- just post ST: NEM. The idea behind this is that the ship itself isn't hugely powerful. It has very respectable shields and offensive weapons, but it's big and not too terrible fast or manuverable.

Here's the thing. It has three little surprises. Like the aero shuttle and embedded captains yacht, it has three Defiant Type Class Vessels embedded into the underside. P/S/A...

I figure there wouldn't be too many of these. Mostly for long exploratory missions where support is difficult to get. It also allows this ship to essentially park and act as a starbase, letting the smaller ships do some exploratory work.

Most importantly, if there's a threat, the enemy has 4 ships to confront as opposed to one big lumbering target.

I'm not too big on these ubber ships- but a precedant has been set.

Anyway- I'm still working out the details. Primarily surrounding the nacelles, and the shape of the primary hull...

 

[Avon]

how has a precedent been set?

so basiically 3 defiants are useless for most of the time. bit of a resource waste.

just give the ship decent weapons to begin with.

 

[Patrickivan]

how has a precedent been set?

so basiically 3 defiants are useless for most of the time. bit of a resource waste.

just give the ship decent weapons to begin with.

Precendent has been set by ships getting larger as time goes by. And by ships becoming embedded within ships.

Weapons can't explore- and weapons can't flank...

 

[B.J.]

Interesting idea. Though why have 3 Defiant class ships instead of 3 ships specifically designed to be auxiliary craft to this one? They could still be the same size and general design as the Defiant, but I would think you'd want some specialization.

 

[Patrickivan]

Interesting idea. Though why have 3 Defiant class ships instead of 3 ships specifically designed to be auxiliary craft to this one? They could still be the same size and general design as the Defiant, but I would think you'd want some specialization.

Good idea- I think I was just being lazy about it...

If I do that, one thing I want to stay away from is making them look similar to the mother ship- I hated the trend of making shuttles look like the ship they were assigned to...

 

[RoJoHen]

So this is basically Starfleet's version of an aircraft carrier?

How would it be staffed? Does each support craft have its own captain and crew, and what would their jobs be when those ships aren't in use?

 

[Patrickivan]

So this is basically Starfleet's version of an aircraft carrier?

How would it be staffed? Does each support craft have its own captain and crew, and what would their jobs be when those ships aren't in use?

I've given that some consideration. And no- it's no more like an aircraft carrier than a Sovereign Class is with the Captain's gig and a small fleet of shuttles.

The command staff for the 3 detachable ships is relatively small. Each ship has a dedicated commander, XO, tactical chief, Ops officer, and engineer chief. They are responsible for their ship and overall maintenance, requesitioning general ship personnel as needed and available. The operational crew for each ship are used from general duty personnel on a rotational basis.

Of course these commanders answer to the "mother" ship Captain...

As for the "mother" ship, I am going for a larger crew than we typically see. For the size of the ship, the missions they engage in, and the extra attention needed for those three embedded ships, it's just a bigger job in general.

I'm still not set on a number yet- or even the exact size.

 

[The Axeman]

I'm not feeling this either. If you want 4 ships as a group exploring for safety, why not assign 4 ships to exploring? You would have dedicated ships and staff, less complexity and waste of resources. What is the advantage over 4 normal ships that you get from building a huge specialist ship tied to 3 other ships for its defence?

This sounds like that design someone posted a while back where his uber ship carried a mid sized cargo ship in a special bay for no good reason. It wasted a cargo ship and valuable cargo space on the uber ship.

 

[RoJoHen]

I mean, I'm not necessarily opposed to this idea, but the main ship needs a more defined purpose. Why does it need these support craft? It's one thing to have shuttles or a single larger shuttle for away missions, but why does it need 3 full-sized starships? I could maybe see it for extra long deep-space missions where resources could be an issue. Maybe the destination requires 4 ships, but for the initial long journey there's no reason to have all those ships wasting fuel and resources.

 

[Relayer1]

An idea I had a while ago was a very large carrier type ship with a large primary hull disc that when separated deployed as a rather smaller version of the Vanguard type space station. Part of the secondary hull detatches and becomes the cylindrical lower part of the station. The remaining spaceframe and its flight of smaller exploratory, survey and science ships are then based at the new station.

Ideal for speedy deployment in newly discovered areas...

 

[Avon]

so what to do command crews of the little ships do for possibly months at a time? sit around playing poker?

 

[sojourner]

^The same things fighter pilots do.

 

[Avon]

play volleyball?

 

[The Axeman]

On submarines the time is spent training and doing qualifications. If there's only a couple of positions above you though, there's no route to higher rank and so they end up getting a high turnaround of people. The Russians hit this problem when they went over to highly automated subs, suddenly there was only a very few officer positions so there was no promotion route and no reason to work hard. With 4 times the crew but fewer rank positions its damn hard to motivate.

 

[Patrickivan]

I'm not feeling this either. If you want 4 ships as a group exploring for safety, why not assign 4 ships to exploring? You would have dedicated ships and staff, less complexity and waste of resources. What is the advantage over 4 normal ships that you get from building a huge specialist ship tied to 3 other ships for its defence?

This sounds like that design someone posted a while back where his uber ship carried a mid sized cargo ship in a special bay for no good reason. It wasted a cargo ship and valuable cargo space on the uber ship.

The advantage that I reasoned primarily entailed having access to 3 very small ships that had the ability to not only act as a defensive role, but also act as survey ships with the larger one being the central base of operations.

While travelling to their far off destination, one large advantage also means these ships aren't engaging in operations that use fuel or resources or hours of operation maintenance.

That said- the primary reason behind it was because I wanted to take all these embedded ships that we've seen on Star Trek and do something more useful with them. And make it look cooler.

An idea I had a while ago was a very large carrier type ship with a large primary hull disc that when separated deployed as a rather smaller version of the Vanguard type space station. Part of the secondary hull detatches and becomes the cylindrical lower part of the station. The remaining spaceframe and its flight of smaller exploratory, survey and science ships are then based at the new station.

Ideal for speedy deployment in newly discovered areas...

In a way, we're not too far apart on the roles our ships would perform. Mine is just more of a conventional ship. But I like how your idea is able to set up a very established base of operations. A more long term presence.

 

[Patrickivan]

so what to do command crews of the little ships do for possibly months at a time? sit around playing poker?

Pretty much what they Starfleet crew would do spending weeks between missions. Training, maintenance, poker, recreating in facilities that modern day military don't have access too, performing emergency drills, mission preparation, and pretty much just dull daily rountine...

And probably more openly gay relations.

 

[T'Girl]

The advantage that I reasoned primarily entailed having access to 3 very small ships that had the ability to not only act as a defensive role, but also act as survey ships with the larger one being the central base of operations.

It occurs to me that, depending on how they are situated when docked to the larger ship, the weapons on the Defiant-class ship might still be able to fire, using the larger ships power systems, supplementing the larger ship's fire power. In a emergency, the docked Defiant-classes could do something similar in reverse, providing external power to the larger ship.

I'm not feeling this either. If you want 4 ships as a group exploring for safety, why not assign 4 ships to exploring?

If you think about it, the Defiant was never shown to be a long duration starship, after each mission it went back and docked with DS9. We didn't see it operate for years on end, even when it was not in combat. Maybe it couldn't? Just as the Defiant needed DS9 as a home base, the Defiant-class ships attached to this larger ship would need to have the larger ship to operate from.

Does each support craft have its own captain and crew, and what would their jobs be when those ships aren't in use?

What does Worf do when he isn't commanding the Defiant, the same with Dax when she isn't at it's helm? Well they have other jobs, other duties. And the Defiant-classes would need (as point out) training and maintenance.



American battle fleets would send out an E2 Hawkeye aircraft and then the fleet would go emissions dark, using the sensors on the Hawkeye, while they were (to a degree) invisible. Something similar could be done with the Defiant-classes, which would have more sensors than a shuttle, or something bigger like a Delta Flyer sized craft.