The Wrongs of Starship Design (TOS Version)

[Captain Robert April]

Also remember Nick Meyer's fixation on all things nautical, and taking the Horatio Hornblower comparisons a wee bit too far.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I HATE the god-damn Miranda-Class with no visible deflector but I gotta admit it has decent armaments. The Daedalus-Class is just too damn brittle looking. I hate most of the TOS/TMP-era of Klingon ships with the obvious "Shoot Here First" long, extremely thin pencil necks that look like they'd snap off if they wanted to enter an atmosphere & land somewhere for emergency repairs.

You'd think that the Klingons would've come up with a compact "Defiant-Class" of their own *first*, as they've been written-in as a warrior species, correct?

I love the NX-Class, and (god help me) the Norway-Class. My favorite of the TMP-era is Lieutenant Kevin Riley's U.S.S. Phobos (Loknar-Class, Mark 3).

The only gripe with the Luna Class is that the designer needs to bring the nacelles up a bit, I've always hated the underslung Intrepid Pathfinder-Class look of the Luna-Class USS Titan. Make the nacelles level with the saucer section, or just slightly above the edge of the saucer section.

I understand your comments about the Klingon ship's neck...but then again? I think the ship is COOL looking, and to me, as a movie goer, that means more than what is practical or not...

Rob

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Has it occurred to anyone that the long neck is probably the Klingon's attempt to create a more survivable ship with a skinnier profile, making it HARDER to hit overall?

Think about this. Probably the easiest ship in the universe to target is a Borg Cube: big block of metal, so if you have it all sensors, all you have to do is aim at its center of mass and you'll nail it. But you target a Klingon ship, the center of mass of that thing is a long skinny tube only a few dozen meters wide. You can only raise your chances of a hit by aiming for the drive section, which is a) heavily defended and b) hard to aim for since only hitting it right through the centerline will do any appreciable damage. Aiming for the command module is even harder for some of the same reasons.

The skinnier the ship, the harder it is to target; even if you get a phaser blast right through the center of your sensor fix, you can still miss.

 

[Vance]

Again, because VISUAL TARGETING is possible at objects that are hundreds of thousands of Kilometers away and move at FTL? I mean, hell, we're talking distances where by the time you see something, they're no longer there.

Please, for the love of God, ditch the stupid 'easier to target / harder to target' nonsense.

 

[Evil_Admiral]

I should have expected that.. but I was HOPING for something more useful, Ralat. :P

For me, personally, it's the 'three nacelles equals a dreadnought' scheme that I see a lot. First, it's lazy, cribbing parts from other ships and then just strapping another warp nacelle onto it. And, of course, the very idea that strapping on a third nacelle and changing nothing else suddenly changes a cruiser into a dreadnought is ludicrous, and pretty much proof positive that the 'designer' doesn't know shit about such things.

To quote the news-monster Morbo, "That is not how windmills work! Goodnight!" Even though it is non-canon, lets assume that the TNG Technical Manual represents the average systems layout for Star Fleet/Federation vessels. Then the thrid nacelle doesn't actually do anything to assist with power generation (that all comes from the M/AM reactor). All the third nacelle does is provide a more flexible warp field geometry at the expense of higher power consumption for any given warp factor. Though one would assume that a dreadnaught would have on average a more powerful M/AM reactor than say a heavy-cruiser (or even multiple reactors as in the Constellation class).

Now the aft deflector dish on the TOS dreadnaughts can perhaps be reconciled by the vague language in TOS. We didn't really have a clear idea what the deflectors did. Some dialogue indicated that they were what generated the shields, which other dialogue indicated otherwise. It wasn't until the TNG era that the deflector dish was said to be used to clear debris from the flight path (and that they were not the same thing as shields). So it could be understandable that the aft deflector on TOS dreadnaughts were meant to be the generator for the aft facing shields.

Finally, the Miranda. I don't have a real problem with it since the shields stand in for the deflector beams. Bam. End of story.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

The deflector dish serves as the long range sensor, so having one on the back makes sense as well. This is regarding the Federation design, my 2c

 

[Vanyel]

I have a possible wrong in starship design. The Constitution Class is always shown firing phasers from the underside of its saucer. Only in In A Mirror, Darkly do we see a Constitution fire phaser from a different point, in that case from the aft section right above the shuttle bay. I know we saw the Defiant fire up from under the saucer, and I want to say we saw the Enterprise do it too. So if that is the case, would that count as a design flaw?