The Xindi in Star Trek Enterprise built a planet busting weapon that was much smaller than the Death Star. That thing accomplished the same feat as the Death Star, but it arguably took far less resources and time to complete. Granted, they did have help from the future (Sphere builders) in showing them an alternate timeline that had 0 relation to their own, however, the Xindi had access to only 1 component from the year 2573, and we don't know if it was crucial part of the weapon or not (in terms of making it work). The Xindi were already a spacefaring civilization long before Humans launched the NX-01, so they could have easily had the knowledge to make a weapon that could destroy a planet in 1 shot but that didn't have to be super-large. And, let's not forget that Starfleet/Federation had the advantage of being a collaboration of multiple cultures sharing ideas/information/technology/resources without any kind of ridiculous monetary constraints (this would effectively free up technological and scientific progress to the point where it escalates by orders of magnitude and continues to do so for as long as that kind of system is in place). So it comes to no surprise that StarFleet ships in the late 24th century could easily destroy a planet with nothing more than a torpedo... (or make a planet with just 1 device the size of a torpedo back in the late 23rd century). Star Wars simply doesn't operate under this premise, and the Death Star can easily be seen as a humongous waste of resources in comparison (though to the Empire, that doesn't matter much, considering that they don't really care about sustainability it would seem). Starfleet has those capabilities and a lot more in a proverbially microscopic package in comparison - that alone should tell us that bigger isn't better .... its just bigger. Take a Borg Sphere in comparison. It's much smaller than a Cube and it can still withstand a barrage of dozens of Starfleet ships that can destroy planetary crusts in no time at all. Plus, Starfleet's priorities differ by leaps and bounds in comparison to the Empire. As it was said, the massive mushroom type Starbase shows that SF can build large structures... they just have specific uses for them. Most of their ships are (or can be) entirely self-sufficient (they certainly have the technology to do so). Starbases most likely act as both orbital complexes for people who wish to live in space in addition to being objects that also signify Starfleet's presence and can act in a defensive way too.
I'd never seen the Whitefire plans before, they're pretty cool. I wonder if you can still order a set of originals? On a similar note, that's one of the design features I like about the Kelvinverse ships - that there's a lot of machinery and the crew spaces seem tucked in around it.
I just want to have Trek ships on the size comparison chart with all these others being more than a tiny dot. Producers want visually impressive ships to capture the viewer's attention and help sales and rating figures. In naval ship design in the real world, the visual impact of a ship upon those who see it in person or by photos or videos is a design consideration. Allies need to see an impressive ship and so do potential enemies. Let us therefore impress the viewer of Star Trek with impressive though not the biggest ship but impress with appearances of our ships which benefits both our imaginary ST universe and appeal to produces of TV and film as selling the shows.
Are ... are there a lot of potential viewers who were considering going to Star Trek Beyond, but checked a comparison-of-SF-spaceships chart and determined that the Enterprise was a mere speck of light compared to the Death Star and declared, ``I can't pay money to see that''?
A few points 1.>I doubt the average audiance member cares about size comparison charts 2.>Visually impressive ships don't have to be huge to capture the audiances imagination, look at the TARDIS for example exterior wise it's quite small but a ship that can travel to any point in space and time can capture the audiances imagination. 3.>Surely you are comapring sizes against your enemies i.e UFP vs Dominion, not UFP vs Galactic Empire (from SW) And as you say appearences count, if you take SW for example and asked people to name a spaceship from it the likely responses would be in no particular order; The Millieniuum Falcon, Star Destroyer, X-Wing fighter and TIE fighter, only one is a capital ship.
Okay, a visually impressive ship doesn't have to large...I get it. Audiences respond to ships that are visually impressive, regardless of size. Unique properties of a given design might also bring in the views. Novel appearance also. I still like large ST ships although maybe we can just have 800 instead 1600 meter length ships. Concessions I guess...
Size is relative though, there's no scale in space. An Excelsior next to a Connie looks big. An Excelsior next to a Galaxy looks tiny. A Galaxy next to a Borg Cube looks tiny.
In my fan fiction ideas, I have 26th century Triumphant-class starships that are 4km long (bigger than an SD, smaller than an SSD), but their primary mission is "presence reinforcement" - they are used to carry diplomats and other important people/cargo to foreign powers that the Federation has hostile or uncertain relations with, and they are sent to show the flag in systems in the Federation where the planetary governments may be colluding with the Maquis (not quite the same organization you're familiar with). In both cases, the purpose is intimidation. Having large ships just to have them is fanwankery - you need to have a story-based reason. Otherwise, superhuge super-high-tech uberships just become a reason for the reader/viewer to point at any given problem and say, "they could have used Tech A to fix that, and they should have known that, and this is stupid." It's like Superman - half the time (when poorly written, which is often), it seems like he needs to conveniently forget that he has some of the powers that he does in order to make the thing he's facing an actual challenge. And of course, his close associates also get knocked unconscious so often to avoid revealing his secret identity to them that they should have permanent brain damage. It's just dumb, and insulting to the viewer. I suspect Diane Duane felt okay about mentioning those mile-long Defender-class ships because A. she wasn't actually doing anything except mentioning them in passing as an interesting tidbit, and B. she didn't actually make them super ships, she just made them bigger because the members of the species that used them were bigger. In my case, I planned on using them a lot - in fact, my story was the story of the crew of the Triumphant - but the size of the ships isn't an advantage, it's actually a problem to overcome, as the crew gradually worked out along and along in between other story elements how corrupted the Federation and its citizens had become (not excluding themselves in some cases) and the causes for that, and began working to correct that. In a more traditional (22nd - early 25th century) story about Starfleet, they're generally trying to explore, and to do so with an open hand of friendship and just enough teeth to defend themselves. You'd really have to work out a reason for a huge ship that fits in that. The hospital thing is good, but that's probably not going to be a Trek hero ship, or at least I don't think so - not for more than a few stories, anyway. Duane's large alien thing would be neat, but probably still budget prohibitive for any length of time - at least for now - plus while we love aliens, Trek is "the human adventure". Maybe something like a phase-cloaked temporal recovery ship that does missions to explore the past by doing things like going and rescuing all of the people who would have died when Pompeii erupted, faking the needed evidence to avoid timeline corruption - a ship like that would need plenty of room for all of the people and stuff it would take onboard, plus all of the historians and medical experts and other support staff needed to help those people begin to adapt to their new lives in the 25th century? It has the benefit of providing plenty of potential problems with the people they bring aboard, plus you just know they're going to screw up and corrupt time at some point, too....
I'd really love to see some bigger ships like those I mentioned earlier. Often franchises present their own style of ship and they're all kind of the "same" in a franchise specific way. Trek, Wars, B5, MMORPG's, etc - they all have specific feels. When you remember that we're talking about aliens here with each race, they should each have very different looks and approaches to them. I feel like part of the reason all the ships are the same size or only sized relative to that series' hero ship has nothing to do with how big they really should be. And don't even get me started on smaller Federation ships having saucers. A saucer makes sense for huge ships that can accommodate the shape for crew the size of your standard humanoid, but they're a really bad shape for small ships and create wasteful ungainly layouts, purely designed for idiotic real world marketing purposes.
Just goes to show what they say about size not mattering.... ST has just celebrated its 50th anniversary, 43 of which had the connie at 288 metres, the refit at 305. Seems it's doing just fine with little ships and frankly it would be embarassing for such a crebral, meanigful franchise to lower itself by trying to engage in a contest of ship sizes, especially as CGI makes it just as easy to create 20 metre ships as it does 20km ones.
I agree that size for size alone is a bad idea. You have to serve a leginmate story purpose. That said, a large ship is more self sufficient and can operate far from Starbase and planetary support while impressing with size and styling. Fuel for years of operation, substantial repair and maintainence facilities, first rate science and mapping equipment with a variety of support craft. Just spent a couple hours perusal of Seaxplorer expeditionary yachts that are not for the timid. The 65,90 and 100 meter ships can survive and prosper in Artic ice with icebreaking hulls, personal subs, dive and rescue boats, diver support facilities, hangar for helicopters and assorted items for roughing it in luxury. Point is that luxury would define Federation ships quality of life facilities, while the large ship would have a very extensive and diverse support craft and maintanence facilities. Today's National Security Cutters are large, not to show off the size, but because a large hull is necessary for a 12,000 nautical mile range and 60? days worth of supplies, enhanced crew quarters, helicopters and stern launched fast boats as essential to carryout it's mission. For venturing into areas far from planetary and starbase support facilities and having both adequate scientific and defensive systems, the larger ship is a better deal.
Of course a larger ship requires more resources to keep it going, i.e life support. And ST ships seem to be capable of long term missions stretching in to years.
You took the words out of my mouth! Federation economy is healthy enough to support some but not too many big ships that have high potential payoffs in science, new star system mapping, friendships with new species and 'showing the flag' to distant allies and potential enemies and providing peacekeeping forces on the frontier and remember the TOS Enterprise was the largest ship in the Federation Star Fleet.
There is literally ZERO indication anywhere in Star Trek history that the TOS Enterprise was the largest ship in Starfleet, or even ONE of the largest, or even the most advanced. It wasn't even referred to as the "flagship" in TOS or any of the films.
Well, it wasn't called a flagship in any of the Prime timeline films. The Kelvin timeline Enterprise was referred to as such, though. But yes, no mention of the TOS E being the biggest anywhere.
As a smart little guy, I think a large, tall body is useful for some things. It's good for protecting against stupid bullies (or being a stupid bully), for putting books at the top of a shelf (if you don't have a step ladder), and for being a professional in some types of sport (if you didn't earn a degree at college). If you fly a Star Destroyer, you can capture Princess Leia's tiny private starship and make the audience watching the movie think you're a nasty fascist. I suppose big starships look more powerful than small starships, but large size can mean having either a single larger, more powerful weapon or a larger number of the same weapons a smaller ship has. But a large ship also means a larger crew and more bathrooms. Also, in 1937 would you have rather used a Douglas DC-3 or the Hindenburg? (These statements are not intended to be serious)