Oh, my! You're not accusing Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof of *gasp* plagiarism are you now? Oh, the horror!
Weight classes of Federation starships - re-examined
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
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Oh, my! You're not accusing Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof of *gasp* plagiarism are you now? Oh, the horror!
For that matter... DS9 was an ore processing station in orbit of Bajor. In orbit! Why waste the energy of transferring UNPROCESSED ore into orbit? No wonder the Cardassians tanked their economy and industry for decades.
So what? At least it was a good thing to be influenced by, and it actually did something NO Star Trek movie/novel has ever done recently that the old show it's based on used to do; comment on current issues, in particular 9/11 and The War On Terror.
That's mainly because Piper was a Mary Sue and an all around terrible character in an otherwise entertaining story. I mention the Piper connection, though, because she doesn't actually need to BE in the story at all and it would work just as well with any of the regular crew doing all of the things she does.
Basically STID is a creative mixture of "Dreadnought!" and "Wrath of Khan", although I wouldn't be surprised if Admiral Marcus wasn't at least partially inspired by Doctor Strangelove's "General Ripper."
Every good story is inspired by other good stories, so STID certainly had that going for it. The cultural relevance wasn't lost on me either, it's one of the things I really appreciated about that flick.
That's like comparing the F-4 Phantom to the F-16 Falcon or even to the F-35 Lightning-II. They're all more or less in the same "weight" class, but the technology put the newer birds, and warships, in a whole new world.
Not exactly right. Look at German battlecruisers - they have pretty good armor (battleship-grade), but weaker firepower.
The "battlecruiser", in historical therms, is, actually the fast unbalanced capital ship. I.e. capital ship, that sacrifice some characteristics (usually armor, or firepower, or seakeeping ability) to be much faster than cotemporary battleships. The existence of World War I battlecruisers were generally the technical compromise; the 1910s technology was simply unable to combine high speed, battleship firepower & armor in reasonable-sized hull. As soon as more compact and effective powerplants became avaliable in 1930s, battlecruisers disappeared from any shipbuilding proposals, being replaced by fast battleships. Which combined speed, firepower and protection in well-balanced mix.
The "big cruisers" & "small battleships" of 1930-1940s - like French "Dunquerke", German "Sharnhorst", USN's "Alaska", and Soviet unfinished "Kronshtadt" - weren't battlecruisers. They were specific ships, designed because of limits, put on capital ships & cruiser construction by Washington Naval Treaty. Some of them were planned as "Treat-type cruisers killers", some of them - as "supercruisers", some - as "counter-supercruisers".
Not even close.
The USN reactivated "Iowa"'s, because they need large ships to carry a lot of "Tomahawk" missiles (both land-attack & anti-ship). In early 1980s, "Tomahawks" could be carried only in box-type above-deck armored launchers (called ABL - Armored Box Launcher) -
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Tomahawk-Armoured-Box-Launcher.jpg
- and those launchers were bulky and heavy. Most of USN cruisers & destroyers could only carry a pair of such things without being dangerously unstable.
The "Iowa"'s, due to their great size, could carry eight ABL's - i.e. 32 "Tomahawk" missiles. And they were in pretty good conditions. And also the marines really liked their big guns as shore support weapon.
Considering the "Iowa" vs "Kirov"... The "Iowa" have pretty little chances, frankly, even against missile-armed fast attack crafts. No armor could protect against something like "Granit" cruise missile, which dive upon target ship at Mach 3. And active defenses of "Iowa"s, even after refit, were, frankly, pathetic; their CIWS were the only weapon that could actually stop any missile.
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Not exactly. This was pretty common for Great Britain in 1880-1900s, to have some capital ships on colonial stations, to provide additional firepower for trade protection squadrons and means to blockade the opponent's colonial ports.
I agree, that hauling the ore from Bajor would make little sence, but Bajor have extensive moon system, and, if I'm not mistaken, several asteroid belts also. So, the station might be actually build to process Bajoran SYSTEM (i.e. space-based) resources.
True. But if your border patrol ships keep getting wiped out by doomsday machines, space amoebae etc., you might change your approach so the biggest ships do that work, too.
Classic Battleship vs. Battlecruiser debate.
The British approach (they DID invent the type) was to build a larger, better armed Armored Cruiser.
The German approach (partly due to British subterfuge resulting in the nearly useless Blucher) was to build a lighter armed and faster Battleship.
Jutland proved the Germans right - though all three British BCs were mainly lost due to improper storage and handling of the charges for the guns (leaving blast doors open for quick transfer, leaving charges closer to the guns - BOOM, followed by two more).
The only German Battlecruiser lost at Jutland was actually scuttled when it was clear they couldn't get her home. Another limped home on her own.
The British approach (they DID invent the type) was to build a larger, better armed Armored Cruiser.
The German approach (partly due to British subterfuge resulting in the nearly useless Blucher) was to build a lighter armed and faster Battleship.
Jutland proved the Germans right - though all three British BCs were mainly lost due to improper storage and handling of the charges for the guns (leaving blast doors open for quick transfer, leaving charges closer to the guns - BOOM, followed by two more).
The only German Battlecruiser lost at Jutland was actually scuttled when it was clear they couldn't get her home. Another limped home on her own.
Star Trek was heavily influenced by classic age of sail concepts. "Horatio Hornblower in space" is one of the common references.
The whole point of slow communications, ship out on her own, little support etc... Exactly the type of situation that many an English Frigate Captain found himself in the late 18th to early 19th century.
The whole point of slow communications, ship out on her own, little support etc... Exactly the type of situation that many an English Frigate Captain found himself in the late 18th to early 19th century.
"British!" says Lord Cochrane.
The Constitution and Galaxy classes were grossly under utilized for their mission roles as they pretty much remained in Federation territory, or not much beyond it, and could return to Earth in a reasonable amount of time. That puts into question the specifics of a five year exploratory mission.
Well, as I understood the mere concept of five-years exploratory mission, is that the ship is assigned to the frontier service and generally do exploration of near-to-frontier unexplored space (with the occasional recalls to the explored territories).
Definitely not a Super Star Destroyer - 17 kilometers or whatever, the size of Manhattan.
Star Trek is more restrained than Star Wars and I hope it stays that way.
But this - 290 meters vs 730 meters:
NuTrek ships allegedly dwarf old ones, as their saucers alone are the length of entire Constitution-class cruisers (there have been many arguments, but this forum seems to be firmly in the camp of taking the last-minute change to the official size at its word, and accepting visual evidence as supporting it). This is rather like that Defender class from "My Enemy, My Ally" - an odd shaped battleship called into a situation involving the Romulans that the Enterprise alone couldn't handle - it evoked Kelvin timeline designs, depicted with a saucer that dwarfed the Enterprise while flying in formation with her and other cruisers in a battlegroup.
The thread is basically another try at making this seem less odd:
If there were ships just as large as the Enterprise-D in every era, it goes a long way toward making the nuEnterprise seem less weird in terms of size. I know some people will argue there is no problem with it, but I would like to fit the USS Kelvin, USS Newton, etc, into both timelines if possible, because I like the designs - and it seems weird that a ship pre-dating the Constitution class would have a saucer that dwarfs when taking the old assumptions. The reason they are also huge, is because we see the nuEnterprise almost colliding with huge saucers when it enters Vulcan space.
The TOS Enterprise did (to some fans) suprisingly little exploring. It's not that it didn't do any, but it isn't like exploration was it's primary activity.
New life and new civilizations? Yeah, once in a while.
Well, what do you expect? The space is really empty, you know. And even basic exploration of just single M-class planet with biosphere would took quite a lot of relatively uneventful time.
