Primitive, basic design: USS Hammerhead (NX-30062008)

[friedebarth]

I just drew my first ship design ever (which I'll scan in in a few days when I reconnect my scanner - this is btw almost torture as I have to crawl behind a massive wooden table and find the right input box on the backside of my PC), and I must say that it does look quite rubbish compared to what you guys did, especially because it's more like what you would call a "blueprint": It's lacking damn much detail. In fact, it's just the outline of the ship . Anyways, the Hammerhead is supposed to be a three-sectioned multifunction ship. One section, the "Hammerhead-Section" sits right up on the saucer section and makes the ship look like a hammerhead shark from above. Then we have the saucer section and beneath the "generations section".
Basically, this is supposed to be used for long journeys exceeding the realm of our galaxy, the snickers, erm, I mean, milky way. It has two small own nacelles which enable it to go at maximally warp 2.
The saucer section and the engineering section are basically one section on the Hammerhead and called saucer section because it has the function of a normal saucer section: to save peoples lives.
Finally we have the hammerhead section, which is the smallest but the best armed one. It has "invisible" nacelles, they are integrated into the hull and hidden by an extremely thin layer of aluminium. This is done for tricking enemies: The adversary ship's bridge crew look at the section and don't see any warp nacelles. They think: "Hey let's just wait until it has used up its shield and weapon energy, then it'll have to surrender because it can't flee." Well, bad plan, it will go onto max warp and escape to a federation base or planet.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

Okay, I'll bite:

1. That registry number is outrageously high. Unless this is a 30th century ship (and even then I think Starfleet would simply reset the number system once they get past say, 6 digits) than that registry number just doesn't work. I suggest you reverse the numbers and drop the last 3 digits.

2. I think you might want to replace "aluminum" with duranium or tritanium or something more advanced in the Trek universe. Aluminum would not hol up very well as a starship hull plating material.

3. I also don't know if hiding the fact that that section of the ship has warp capability from your enemy is a sound tactical strategy. I don't think it makes any difference to the enemy whether you can run away or not, they're going to try and destroy you as long as they have you in their sights. Maybe hidden weapons would be more useful, making the enemy think you are either unarmed or lightly equipped and as such they may be lulled into a false sense of security. Once they're in weapons range and have not reinforced their shields to withstand a full attack, you unshield your phaser cannons and torpedo tubes and use the element of surprise to your advantage. Like the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense.

I look forward to seeing your sketches, if you need help fleshing out the physical design itself myself and other posters would be willing to help out.

 

[SonicRanger]

^^^

I'll second all of those comments.

 

[Messianni]

Just a few comments:

- Maximum of warp two? For extra-galactic travel (hell, for intergalactic travel) that doesn't sound like something you'd want to restrict this ship to. From the sounds of it this is meant to be a generational ship, carrying families and all? Yeah, warp two is much too slow. At that speed it'd take years to even get from Earth to Vulcan.

- Agreed on the "hidden nacelles". Really they would still be able to probably detect a warp signature so this would be effectively useless.

 

[Squiggy]

2. I think you might want to replace "aluminum" with duranium or tritanium or something more advanced in the Trek universe. Aluminum would not hold up very well as a starship hull plating material.

Especially "extremely thin" aluminum. That's called foil and you can stick your finger through it. I'm pretty sure sensors could penetrate it as well.

 

[Messianni]

2. I think you might want to replace "aluminum" with duranium or tritanium or something more advanced in the Trek universe. Aluminum would not hold up very well as a starship hull plating material.

Especially "extremely thin" aluminum. That's called foil and you can stick your finger through it. I'm pretty sure sensors could penetrate it as well.

What? You can make hats out of it that block The Man's mind-reading waves, why not Romulan sensors too?

 

[friedebarth]

Thanks for the suggestions. The plans will probably be in tomorrow .

 

[SchwEnt]

When I read about a "hammerhead ship" in ST, my first thoughts were of course to Sternbach's Marshall class USS Patton from the Spaceflight Chronology.

Is that anything similar to your proposal?

 

[Wingsley]

NX-30062008? As in 30 June 2008?

Is this some kind of April Fool or something?

 

[Tiberius Jim]

Yeah...I meant to say in my first reply that maybe 30608 or 63008 would have worked a lot better in the Trek universe.

 

[Squiggy]

30608 would be circa Ambassador and 63008 would be circa New Orleans Class (just before Galaxy), so it wouldn't be a very futuristic design.

 

[friedebarth]

^^Top view of the hammerhead^^

^^Side view^^

^^Front view, incorrected version ruined by the bad scanner^^

^^Front view avec des corrections de moi ^^

 

[friedebarth]

New registry:
NX-806003

EDIT:

When I read about a "hammerhead ship" in ST, my first thoughts were of course to Sternbach's Marshall class USS Patton from the Spaceflight Chronology.

Is that anything similar to your proposal?

Hm, never heard of that, sorry. I think you can see on the below images by Squiggyfm whether it is or not.

You don't mean this by the chance?

 

[Squiggy]

That registry is still very high. I think that'd put it in the mid 26th century.

For reference, Voyager was NCC-74656 and launched in 2371.

ETA, I took the liberty of cleaning up the scans a bit.

 

[friedebarth]

Thanks a lot, Squiggyfm!

Concerning the registry: all NX registries seem to be unlogic, eg. the USS Defiant has a higher number than the USS Prometheus, so I think I might as well keep it as 806003

 

[friedebarth]

LICENSING

And, by the way: [HIGHLIGHT]All my submissions in this thread are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Author: Frederic Sebastian Bayer[/HIGHLIGHT].

Permission is granted to copy, modify and redistribute this image, provided that the author is credited and the new version of the image is released again under the GFDL and naming the same author. These image is free to be used commercially by anyone under predefined conditions. For more information see the official license agreement.

 

[nx1701g]

Re: LICENSING

I've looked over your design and I do have some thoughts regarding it.

Firstly, in your original post and title you call it a primative design for a Starship. Is this vessel (A) part of Earth's Starfleet/United Earth Space Probe Agency? (B) If so is it meant to be one of their earliest vessels? If it is meant to be an UESPA Starship the registry number (even your new one) is incredibly high. For a Starfleet ship of the current era (2380s) it is also not exceptionally fast. Warp 2 is not even considered cruising speeds for ships in the Picard Era (that's Warp 6). Warp 2 is roughly 10 times the speed of light. At Warp Two these are the times (in Years):

0.4266140327164536 - Alpha Centauri (155 days)
9921.256574801245 - Across Milky Way (3,623,738 days)
198425.13149602493 - Reach Andromeda (72,474,779 days)

By comparison I'll do cruising speed in the Picard Era (Warp 6 - also in years)

0.010955468495560871 - Alpha Centauri (4 days)
254.7783371060668 - Milky Way (93,057 days)
5095.566742121336 - Andromeda (1,861,155 days)

And Warp 9.9 (Maximum Speed of most ships in the TNG Era)

0.0006559441697879406 - Alpha Centauri (0.23958360801504536)
15.254515576463738 - Milky Way (5,571 days)
305.09031152927474 - Andromeda (111,434 days)

All of these are if you maintain that speed as a constant (which is not possible in Trek Technology there is a limit to maximum speeds).

The hidden nacelles I could understand your idea, but they wouldn't be practical. Sensors would be able to detect the energy flow to them. You'd need some kind of dampening system to them.

The design that you have going for the ship is interesting. It is a little bit complex in appearance however. The midpoint between the design also looks incredibly flimsy in my mind but that's just a personal opinion. It's not a horrible design it could just use some polishing (plus if those questions were answered I could make a better analysis).

 

[Wingsley]

Re: LICENSING

All this assumes one accepts the velocity scale put forth by Sternbach & Okuda, rather than acknowledge the more obvious performance shown by ships in STAR TREK.

"Star Trek Maps" (Bantam, 1980) put forth a flexible means of calculating warp drive FTL velocities called Cochrane's Formula. In addition to cubing the warp factor, Cochrane's variable would be subject to change depending on environment. Cochrane's Formula was by no means ideal; Cochrane's Variable relied on the gravity of interstellar space to accentuate FTL speed. It would seem more plausible that Cochrane's Variable was affected by the presence of dark matter and/or dark energy; we saw how quickly the Enterprise dropped out of warp after entering the Negative Energy Barrier in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

I've been assuming for years that the refit Enterprise in TMP represented a major advance in warp technology; each nacelle houses two sets of warp coils as opposed to TOS when each nacelle housed only one. This would suggest that the warp-within-a-warp result would further accentuate the warp effect along the axis of motion, rendering a fourth-power effect. So Warp 7, TMP/TNG scale, would be 7 times faster than Warp 7 in TOS. This is what I assumed was meant by "linear warp drive".

Anywho, you have an interesting design there. If this is a TNG-era design, you may want to give the nacelles a little more rectangular than cylindrical shape.

 

[friedebarth]

Re: LICENSING

Hang on! Im "whooshed" with comments here.

Warp 2 is only the standalone capacity of the generation section. Altogether it can travel at Warp 9.999.

 

[GilmourD]

Re: LICENSING

Hang on! Im "whooshed" with comments here.

Warp 2 is only the standalone capacity of the generation section. Altogether it can travel at Warp 9.999.

Wait... What era is this supposed to be from?