Ships - Starfleet Diversity

[T'Girl]

In Take Me Out to the Holosuite, Sisko stated that 50 lightyears from DS9 there was a Vulcan Starbase. Member's starships might more easily be serviced at their own respective starbases, instead of trying to get them serviced at a "generic" starbase, such a generic base might have lag time in obtaining parts.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Ease of maintenance by having all the systems similar in design makes training easier and keeps supply lines from having too much of some uncommon compoments sitting at starbases waiting for that one races ship style to show up on the other side of the Federation.

Why would anything sit on a shelf at a starbase? C-A-R-G-O R-E-P-L-I-C-A-T-O-R

That cannot be said from trying to fit Vulcan parts into an Andorian starship.

Since we've seen at least two occasions when ROMULAN cloaking devices have been jiggered to work in Starfleet vessels fairly quickly, and engineers and science officers interface with all sorts of alien tech every week with minimal time expended, I'm not sure you can say that.

Look, I know it ISN'T the way I'm suggesting, but to argue that it *couldn't* be is just silly, since this stuff works however the writers write it. I'm only saying that I think it would be more consistent with Starfleet's philosophies and abilities as demonstrated (in, admittedly, some episodes and not in others) if it had been written the way I'm suggesting.

Plus, every time any of you suggest a problem with what I'm suggesting, for the most part all I'm seeing are arguments why it would have been better from a writing perspective. It would have required more staff to be trained on more and different equipment? GREAT! Because we don't know what most people in the Federation are doing now, as it is - showing something for more of them to do is just awesome. Room to introduce more and more interesting guest characters: Scotty can be Starfleet's best wizard with warp drives.... but who is their greatest expert on singularity drives? Maybe Scotty has to call her in to help with a particular mission? Maybe there's even a specialist on the Enterprise. Maybe that specialist or expert is a previously unseen alien. And that would be cool - potential story fodder in several different ways.

 

[Ithekro]

From a writing/production standpoint you want it all samey so you don't have to spend more for props nor have to have come up with even more technobable than you already have to to fit fifty plus alien techs mixed into multiple starships crossing your writers table if you have the show on a starbase.

(As for stuff on the shelves, it is called, "the writers need to show the audiance that they have stuff in the hold", thus bit of everything are in there even if they could just make it on the spot. Otherwise they have these large, empty, cargo bays with no purpose. No need for even one box to be in there if one could store everything is the replicator or pattern buffer.)

If you have it on a single ship, there is no point if even mentioning all the races parts since you just need to fix system A so system B works to take care of plot A while plot B is on down time until after the next comercial. You don't want to have to force another character for yet another specialty sytem, as you might not be able to get back that guest star whenever you want, nor can you be certain the audiance will like that character. The more you can put on you main cast the better as they are already getting paid and they likely want more lines and things to do on set anyway. It sometimes works to have a guest specialist, but you don't want to have to do that regularly. Having a Vulcan expert when McCoy's not around to treat Spock worked. Having Barcley on the engineering staff was not so much for specialist, but for having someone that didn't fit in very well, but could be brilliant when needed. Having specialist sciencists doing research on Enterprise came up once or twice, but usually to use them for a character driven plot with a main character, rather than them being needed to fix device B because character A doesn't have a clue what it does. Most of those were romance plots.


For 'in universe' Starfleet, they aleady intergrated all the species best stuff into their starships. Earth warp drive stylings, Andorian phaser banks, Vulcan senor arrays, Tellarite construction methods. Denobulan medical systems. Bynar computer relays. Cygnan computer personality engrams. Whole bunches of stuff. But it is fleet wide for ease of use and commonality. It makes cross training easy, and ship to ship transferes result in little transition time for new equipment. Also with so many different origin systems being used, plugging in some other piece of alien tech usually works after a bit of work by Starfleet engineers and science officers.

Starfleet is Federation style hardware. Anything else would be nationalistic on the part of individual world within the Federation. They might do that for their planetary fleets or merchants, but for Starfleet? No. They want to present a united front to the likes of the Klingons and Romulans. If the Federation Alliance had held post-Dominion War and the Klingon and Romulan Empires were eventually added into the Federation, I would expect that Federation Starships would start to include the best parts of those two empire's technologies into their starships, to which you'd get things like the Enterprise-J.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Dumbed down for lowest common denominator TV audience. Got it. I don't think I'd ever be any good at that - I'd write/direct/produce complex stories for viewers who are interested enough in the intricacies to know the names of the four Andorian genders and guess at a damaged ship's class from being shown one half of the impulse deck. Readers of this board, in other words. Might work on Netflix, but not for where the five Trek series were shown.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

So all Federation starships have a saucer for the primary hull, a dorsal connection to teh cylindrical secondary hull, two pylons to two warp engine nacelles and that's not enough diversity for you?

Have some tossed salad and scrambled eggs.

 

[Disco]

Maybe they unified the design so that Starfleet as a representative of all the races had a single look that didn't reflect one world? With a lean on the design seen in Enterprise to reflect the importance of that ship in unifying the original members of the Federation?

Well, yes. That seems to be what we've seen. But it is an emotional reason, not a logistical or logical one, and it still doesn't explain why, for instance, the Enterprise-D would not have grapplers.

Why would the D have grapplers?

 

[T'Girl]

There are very few scenarios where a handgun can beat a phaser for sheer usefulness.

The obvious advanages of a handgun is that a handgun doesn't scream out "hey, we're over here" with the first shot. That bright ribbon of light beng a distint disadvatage.

Hence why the military today don't have archery divisions etc

But armed military personnel do usual carry knives as well as firearms.


"

 

[Tarek71]

I wish that Starfleet as shown on screen represented a greater diversity of ship design, with ships of obvious Vulcan, Andorian, etc, build. I understand (and approve) that they would still need a common livery and registration system to represent a unified "face" to other polities, but the extent to which design is shared seems.... wrong. "Oh, we *greatly* value IDIC... now make sure your ships have saucers and use these warp nacelles made in Iowa."

Design diversity might have had value in different circumstances we've seen the Federation face. Even just a throwaway/background line about how the U.S.S. (random name) had a Vulcan designed ring drive which was unaffected by the Whale Probe and was standing by for evacuation would have been nice in this regard (as well as a good opportunity for the Federation President or Sarek to deliver an "I'm not abandoning Earth" sort of line).

Theres more benefit to shared design. Training, interoperability, maintenance, replacement parts, resupply and the design process itself are all easier when you have a common design. The main source of diversity should be ergonomic and environmental.

A species with the average height of Yoda might want ergonomic modifications that improve use-ability for their species, from desk, chair, access panel heights to console layout. The same for a very tall species.

And of course, Andorians might prefer the atmospheric controls set to temperatures that humans or other species might find too low for comfort. Vulcans might like it a bit too warm for some. Other species may prefer gravity that is 20% stronger or weaker, etc.

 

[T'Girl]

The environment aboard could have long term effects upon equipment, it would be design for a certain temp, atmospheric pressure, etc.

So any given piece of equipment wouldn't automatically be capable of being interchangable, even if it preformed to same basic function.

 

[TheGoodStuff]

There are very few scenarios where a handgun can beat a phaser for sheer usefulness.

The obvious advanages of a handgun is that a handgun doesn't scream out "hey, we're over here" with the first shot. That bright ribbon of light beng a distint disadvatage.

Hence why the military today don't have archery divisions etc

But armed military personnel do usual carry knives as well as firearms.


"

Have you ever heard a handgun being fired? It also screams "we are over here" with it's first shot. This, also, is ignoring my point about how much more useful a Phaser is over a handgun.

 

[fireproof78]

I wish that Starfleet as shown on screen represented a greater diversity of ship design, with ships of obvious Vulcan, Andorian, etc, build. I understand (and approve) that they would still need a common livery and registration system to represent a unified "face" to other polities, but the extent to which design is shared seems.... wrong. "Oh, we *greatly* value IDIC... now make sure your ships have saucers and use these warp nacelles made in Iowa."

Design diversity might have had value in different circumstances we've seen the Federation face. Even just a throwaway/background line about how the U.S.S. (random name) had a Vulcan designed ring drive which was unaffected by the Whale Probe and was standing by for evacuation would have been nice in this regard (as well as a good opportunity for the Federation President or Sarek to deliver an "I'm not abandoning Earth" sort of line).

Theres more benefit to shared design. Training, interoperability, maintenance, replacement parts, resupply and the design process itself are all easier when you have a common design. The main source of diversity should be ergonomic and environmental.

A species with the average height of Yoda might want ergonomic modifications that improve use-ability for their species, from desk, chair, access panel heights to console layout. The same for a very tall species.

And of course, Andorians might prefer the atmospheric controls set to temperatures that humans or other species might find too low for comfort. Vulcans might like it a bit too warm for some. Other species may prefer gravity that is 20% stronger or weaker, etc.

Training on the same systems across ships is critical to ensure you have a flexible crew. Having different species ships means that you might not have crewmembers who are rated to repair something, but they are all you have.

In contrast, if all the systems are uniform, then you can move from ship to ship with the transition being minimal, save for the actual crew interaction.

I agree that I would like to see more diversity, but I don't see Starfleet employing it because training personnel would require multiple skills and familiarity with different systems. Great for a specialist but not good if you are planning on working in stressful or combat situations.

For example, I work in a retail chain. The systems are set up to be simple enough that if I transfer to a store, I will be able to operate on the computers their, as well as in the store I started off with. If I get a tranferee from another store, I don't want to worry that they can't run the computer I have.

Uniformity is not just for the ease of production design or TV audience. Part of it is practical from a real world point of view for training.

 

[T'Girl]

Have you ever heard a handgun being fired?

I target shoot and hunt frequently, so yes I have.

It also screams "we are over here" with it's first shot.

Not in the same way a glowing piece of silly string does. The sound of a gun's report bounces off every physical object in the vicinity. An urban environment with flat walls is bad enough, in a forest it's next to impossible to identify the exact direction a shot came from.

No, a handgun can't heat a rock or stun an opponent (although there are tazer shells for shotguns now), but phasers have limitations and inabilities too.

Would a "weapons deactivator" work on something that uses a burning chemical to toss a little piece of metal at you?

 

[Ithekro]

Didn't the transporter do that to a handgun already?

 

[fireproof78]

Have you ever heard a handgun being fired?

I target shoot and hunt frequently, so yes I have.

It also screams "we are over here" with it's first shot.

Not in the same way a glowing piece of silly string does. The sound of a gun's report bounces off every physical object in the vicinity. An urban environment with flat walls is bad enough, in a forest it's next to impossible to identify the exact direction a shot came from.

No, a handgun can't heat a rock or stun an opponent (although there are tazer shells for shotguns now), but phasers have limitations and inabilities too.

Would a "weapons deactivator" work on something that uses a burning chemical to toss a little piece of metal at you?

"

There are what now? *goes to do a google search*

Also, I am pretty sure I recall handguns being deactivated at some point in one of the series. It could simply remove the ammo or the gun powder.

 

[TheGoodStuff]

Have you ever heard a handgun being fired?

I target shoot and hunt frequently, so yes I have.

It also screams "we are over here" with it's first shot.

Not in the same way a glowing piece of silly string does. The sound of a gun's report bounces off every physical object in the vicinity. An urban environment with flat walls is bad enough, in a forest it's next to impossible to identify the exact direction a shot came from.

No, a handgun can't heat a rock or stun an opponent (although there are tazer shells for shotguns now), but phasers have limitations and inabilities too.

Would a "weapons deactivator" work on something that uses a burning chemical to toss a little piece of metal at you?

See, I hunt in real life too. The sound of a handgun is very loud and very distinctive. In comparison to a relatively quiet phaser, it is nowhere near as inconspicuous. The point is, in a forrest, you wouldn't have a clue anyone fired a phaser unless you personally witnessed it.

I am also not saying Phasers have no limitations, rather I'm saying they have far more uses than a handgun.

Your weapons deactivator example overlooks the ways around a handgun: the rounds could be beamed out/metled, weapons jam etc.

 

[T'Girl]

Your weapons deactivator example overlooks the ways around a handgun: the rounds could be beamed out/metled, weapons jam etc.

But that would apply to any weapon I guess, including sharp sticks and rocks. You could beam out the internal components of a phaser (or just the whole thing).

I can't recall a "deactivator" working on a handgun, in the TAS episode The Infinite Vulcan, Kirk enters a cavern and is inform that a weapons deactivator is in effect. Kirk and party put on filter masks and spray the area with gas guns.

Nice.