No matter what time we are speaking of, no ship (be it ocean vessel or starship) has ever been designed to be good at EVERYTHING. Because it's not possible. You can't have a powerfull battleship that's also some sort of cruiseship.
ship design help.
- Thread starter surak-toc
- Start date
No matter what time we are speaking of, no ship (be it ocean vessel or starship) has ever been designed to be good at EVERYTHING. Because it's not possible. You can't have a powerfull battleship that's also some sort of cruiseship.
ok so i shall scrap some of the stuff, it shall be a cardinal class battleship, i shall stick with having the weapons array including a phase cannon, the huge shuttle bay, the best armoury, the interspecies court room, a run of the mill canteen kind of place, the state of the art medical facilities stay, add state of the art science facilities too as they are practical things to have on a battleship, but i think having some leisure facilities would be sufficient so a few holosuites would suffice and i would think some new version of the Vulcan ring thing for the cardinal class could be made and created as its impulse engines
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Some tips:
1. Don't use words like "best" and "greatest". They make the ship sound fanboi-ish and are not good story telling.
2. Five warp nacelles??? no. just no. How often in the shows/movies have we seen more than two? how often in the novels have we seen more than 3?
3. This is for some stories you're writing, right? Then the ship only needs to be capable of what you need to happen in the stories. And just barely that. Look at it this way, what's the better story, an old ship encounters something it can barely handle only through the ingenuity of the crew, or a Huge, overpowered ship encounters something and deals with it in seconds? There's a reason the Enterprise -D was breaking down so much -to add tension.
Here's an idea. Post a thread in the fan fiction forum (listed just above fan art on the main page here) asking for help with your ship. The guys in there are great at helping people develop background material for stories.
1. Don't use words like "best" and "greatest". They make the ship sound fanboi-ish and are not good story telling.
2. Five warp nacelles??? no. just no. How often in the shows/movies have we seen more than two? how often in the novels have we seen more than 3?
3. This is for some stories you're writing, right? Then the ship only needs to be capable of what you need to happen in the stories. And just barely that. Look at it this way, what's the better story, an old ship encounters something it can barely handle only through the ingenuity of the crew, or a Huge, overpowered ship encounters something and deals with it in seconds? There's a reason the Enterprise -D was breaking down so much -to add tension.
Here's an idea. Post a thread in the fan fiction forum (listed just above fan art on the main page here) asking for help with your ship. The guys in there are great at helping people develop background material for stories.
ok, i think i've come up with a design that covers everything you want:
big gun. courtroom, plenty of hangar space, etc, its all in there
sorry. couldn't resist
Damn you! You beat me to it!
Damn, thats a big gun.Getting back to the original spec- and I'd love to be enlightened on this one- I would have thought that a TNG era (lets say) Fed diplomatic/ first contact vessel would have had to have been fairly small in size so as not to scare the natives on their detection systems. I figure said ship would sacrifice armaments ('We come in peace'!) for comms and scanning equipment, but also being capable of getting the hell out fast if the natives want to be left alone or start shooting. Was that what the Oberth class was intended for, or was there a canon class of ship dedicated for that purpose?
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It sounds like you've never actually watched an episode of Star Trek before. "The first and only court of interspecies delegations and procedures"?
When the American Secretary of State visits foreign countries, he doesn't do so in a fighter plane, his aircraft might have defenses (anti-missile and ECM) but no weapons. If this ship is going to be carrying delegates you might want to deliberately create a starship that is completely unarmed.
At most a minimal small arms armory for the security detail.
And as previous stated, being a Vulcan designed craft (for their diplomats?) you may want to come up with a Vulcan sounding name, the ship should definately be built in Vulcan orbit. I can see some Federation Members not being able to build a ship of this size, but Vulcan is depicted as a major player in the Federation and should be able to handle the job.
When the American Secretary of State visits foreign countries, he doesn't do so in a fighter plane, his aircraft might have defenses (anti-missile and ECM) but no weapons. If this ship is going to be carrying delegates you might want to deliberately create a starship that is completely unarmed.
At most a minimal small arms armory for the security detail.
And as previous stated, being a Vulcan designed craft (for their diplomats?) you may want to come up with a Vulcan sounding name, the ship should definately be built in Vulcan orbit. I can see some Federation Members not being able to build a ship of this size, but Vulcan is depicted as a major player in the Federation and should be able to handle the job.
cheers for the input, will have a good think about this
FYI....
I realize we can come across as a bit bitchy perhaps. Thing is, every now and then someone comes along and wants help in designing what is basicly an ubership, one ship to rule them all, Megaship if you will. Something like that just doesn't make sense, since you don't want something that's perfect and will always triumph and safe the day. It's boring, it's unrealistic. It's like that character in so many fanfics, that ALWAYS has the right answer, ALWAYS wins when fighting the bad guy, ALWAYS saves the day by coming up with the solution to that difficult problem no one else in the crew could answer.
I mean, even Data, who's smarter, stronger, faster then any human, has been beaten by them, because he has weaknesses. For God's sake, he has an off-switch. Things aren't perfect in real life, and good writing/designing follows real life.
I realize we can come across as a bit bitchy perhaps. Thing is, every now and then someone comes along and wants help in designing what is basicly an ubership, one ship to rule them all, Megaship if you will. Something like that just doesn't make sense, since you don't want something that's perfect and will always triumph and safe the day. It's boring, it's unrealistic. It's like that character in so many fanfics, that ALWAYS has the right answer, ALWAYS wins when fighting the bad guy, ALWAYS saves the day by coming up with the solution to that difficult problem no one else in the crew could answer.
I mean, even Data, who's smarter, stronger, faster then any human, has been beaten by them, because he has weaknesses. For God's sake, he has an off-switch. Things aren't perfect in real life, and good writing/designing follows real life.
It sounds like you have thought of ideas just for them sounding cool. For what purpose would the Vulcans design a ship? Perhaps the Vulcans have an ulterior motive for creating the ship. That could add an intriguing mystery. Perhaps they have technology they don't want all of Starfleet knowing about and sneaked it onboard late in the building process.
I don't see why an exploration ship would need a court of delegates onboard. If a captain and crew can't be diplomatic during first contact and conflicts they have no place being in a Starfleet uniform in the firstplace. The only reason I could see it plausible in a storytelling format is if the ship was stranded in a Voyager-esque way with a party of delegates onboard. It would make good conflict and dramatic stories, something we were teased with the Maquis onboard voyager before the writers had a stroke.
I think before you look at the ship design you need to work out who the main 6-10 characters are. They need to be diverse and represent all parts of the ship. If its purely an exploration ship it needs to have a unique angle. We have had planet of the week exploration with TOS and TNG. Enterprise did this also- but it's angle was prequel- and done poorly in a lot of cases IMO. We had a space station show and a long war show. We had the ship lost show. There has to be something to make the story pop out and not seem like a clone of TNG. I think once you know who the crew are and where the story will go you can then get an idea of the ship.
As others have said already- making the ship the biggest, best and sleekest isn't very interesting. The ship is also a character in Trek series. And the ships are never invincible and have weaknesses. Often the crew overcome these with technology or cunning. Or maybe the ship really is the most amazing super ship ever made but someone has sabotaged the ship for some purpose leaving it vulnerable to a big story.
Good luck with the ship and story.
I don't see why an exploration ship would need a court of delegates onboard. If a captain and crew can't be diplomatic during first contact and conflicts they have no place being in a Starfleet uniform in the firstplace. The only reason I could see it plausible in a storytelling format is if the ship was stranded in a Voyager-esque way with a party of delegates onboard. It would make good conflict and dramatic stories, something we were teased with the Maquis onboard voyager before the writers had a stroke.
I think before you look at the ship design you need to work out who the main 6-10 characters are. They need to be diverse and represent all parts of the ship. If its purely an exploration ship it needs to have a unique angle. We have had planet of the week exploration with TOS and TNG. Enterprise did this also- but it's angle was prequel- and done poorly in a lot of cases IMO. We had a space station show and a long war show. We had the ship lost show. There has to be something to make the story pop out and not seem like a clone of TNG. I think once you know who the crew are and where the story will go you can then get an idea of the ship.
As others have said already- making the ship the biggest, best and sleekest isn't very interesting. The ship is also a character in Trek series. And the ships are never invincible and have weaknesses. Often the crew overcome these with technology or cunning. Or maybe the ship really is the most amazing super ship ever made but someone has sabotaged the ship for some purpose leaving it vulnerable to a big story.
Good luck with the ship and story.
The only interesting dramatic purpose I could see a ship like that serve is to be heralded as a great new super-advanced uber-ship with high expectations, only to ultimately fail epically at it's mission (for whatever reason) and need the plucky underdog crew that everyone looks down their noses at to save their asses.
