Why are the classes so dissimilar?

[ChallengerHK]

This basically comes from a respond to the FJ TM. Many people swear by it, and many people can't stand it. I always thought that the idea of modular construction made a lot of sense, however, in terms of design and construction efficiency, but aside from the Reliant/Miranda/Soyuz stuff, and (depending on your point off view) the Stargazer, nothing seems to take advantage of that concept. Indeed, ships seem to be purposefully designed to NOT be able to interchange parts.

I have my ideas, and a lot of them are head canon. I'd like to hear what other people think.

 

[Unicron]

Do you mean canon and non canon classes in general?

 

[ChallengerHK]

No, purely canon, insofar as anything called canon can still be said to exist. I don't think there's anything, for instance, made from the Sovereign class components onscreen.

 

[drt]

There’s also the Nebula, which just shuffled around Galaxy class components (because it was less expensive to reuse the molds). On that note, the Nebula never made a huge amount of sense to me, I would have at least deleted the secondary hull and made it a 24th century equivalent of the Miranda.

There are also all of the frankenships made for Wolf 359, etc., made up of various commercially available Trek kits. So there is some other canonical evidence for modular construction (potential scale issues aside).

However, once everything became CGI all modularity seems to have gone out the window since it was easy to have entirely different models.

 

[diankra]

Different manufacturers in parallel? Mercury and Gemini look very similar (despite massive internal differences), as both came from the same company, and there were proposals to keep Gemini flying for the USAF alongside Apollo (which came from another company and looked totally different).

 

[Timo]

Might well be different members contribute different designs. It's not as if a Federation that is always two steps away from waging war against itself could easily streamline...

Then again, nothing about warships ITRW has been modular and interchangeable so far. The closest we get are modular options at construction (as with the MEKO ships) or modules that are theoretically interchangeable between classes but operationally assigned to specific vessels in practice (Stanflex modules). Whenever we get an aircraft carrier that is built on a battlecruiser hull or sports battleship turbines and boilers, it's only because something went horribly wrong and the navy in question was unable to finish the battlecruiser or the battleship. A "standard" design sold overseas becomes so customized that synergy benefits approach zero; heck, the "standard" Spruance hull that was supposed to give the USN everything from ASW destroyers to mini-carriers ended up being a liability the one and only time it was utilized to build a de facto cruiser for a foreign navy and then failed to sell.

Perhaps there is a narrow time window when the world is futuristic enough to go for modularity and standardization, and it then closes with a slam when replicators make "modularity", "standardization", "streamlining" and "economy" words that one has to look up in old dictionaries (after first looking up "dictionary").

Timo Saloniemi

 

[captainkirk]

There are also all the Kelvin kitbashes we see.

 

[Forbin]

There’s also the Nebula, which just shuffled around Galaxy class components (because it was less expensive to reuse the molds). On that note, the Nebula never made a huge amount of sense to me, I would have at least deleted the secondary hull and made it a 24th century equivalent of the Miranda.

Me too.
http://www.inpayne.com/models/kitbash/trekpage_claymore.html

 

[C.E. Evans]

Well, prior to DIS, I favored an idea that during TOS Starfleet had adopted a policy of using standardized parts for its vessels, which would have both explained the TOS aesthetic after ENT and the Constitution-Miranda-Constellation family of starships.

 

[Tenacity]

I have my ideas, and a lot of them are head canon. I'd like to hear what other people think.

Different contractors, designers being of different species with their own design philosophies.