A starfleet ship question

[Patrick Degan]

The Proxima class battleships from ST: Legacy reminded me of the Yamato class at times.

What the fuck is that thing supposed to be? Were they serious?!

[Stark]

I can go one better; the Legacy 'Akula' (ps they stole a name from SFB)



Yes, it has a dickgun.

[Patrick Degan]

I can go one better; the Legacy 'Akula' (ps they stole a name from SFB)



Yes, it has a dickgun.

Actually, the Akula makes more sense than that uberwank battleship. At least it's structure is sensibly laid-out and it doesn't have extra hulls simply for the sake of having them. Yes, the extended boom for the phaser mounting's a bit daft but even that can be rationalised. On the other hand, a catamaran battleship?! Don't even get me started on the asinine bent-pylons (in the wrong places) for the warp engines on that thing.

[Starglider]

On the other hand, a catamaran battleship?!

Argument from incredulity. What is actually wrong with the concept? 'More surface area for a given volume' is not a valid argument as Trek ships all have crazy-high SA-to-V ratios anyway. On the plus side there is the fact that major internal damage to one hull will only knock out half the ship's warp power rather than all of it (as TWoK demonstrated, back in the TOS era warp cores did not randomly explode at the first hint of combat damage).

That said, the dual engineering hulls on the Yamato make more sense, as they're clearly Excelsior class hulls and that would save money over having to design and validate an entirely new hull. The engineering sections on this ship look like custom jobs.

[CaptHawkeye]

Holy shit, those are FASA's other designs? Thank god I never went beyond Klingon Academy and Starfleet Command then. Those things are fucking deformed, with zero design lineage or structural sense between any of them.

[Patrick Degan]

On the other hand, a catamaran battleship?!

Argument from incredulity. What is actually wrong with the concept?

Additional stress points on the spaceframe, limited movement between hulls, additional mass for the engines to have to work with —those are three objections just off the top of my head. The redundancy of power sources isn't much of an argument in its favour as you could already have multiple reactors in a single engineering hull and the saucer module.

[Jade Falcon]

Holy shit, those are FASA's other designs? Thank god I never went beyond Klingon Academy and Starfleet Command then. Those things are fucking deformed, with zero design lineage or structural sense between any of them.

The Romulan and Klingon ships are the worst of the lot.

The Romulan book for the majority of them took a standard Warbird design and made made new designs that made it look as if someone had melted the original model.

90% of the Klingon book looked like pimped up D-7's.

[Themightytom]

The Proxima class battleships from ST: Legacy reminded me of the Yamato class at times.

That game had awwwwwwwkward controls but I loved that ship espite Dagan's critique because you could get four of them relatively cheap early in the game, and as long as you attacked in a group their overabundant firepower compensated for lack of shields. You could plow right in, inflict enormous damage, and withdraw the one or two that took damage before they blew up. They could win battles far into the TNG era and you could save your credits for sovereigns and Akiras.

So yes, lots of weak points, but you could drag them outt of mothballs and overwhelm an enemy because they were overgunned.

[Starglider]

Argument from incredulity. What is actually wrong with the concept?

Additional stress points on the spaceframe

But each one is less intense than the stress created by a single engineering hull of the same volume/mass. We do build catamaran ships in real life you know, and different stress pattern isn't a major problem.

limited movement between hulls

No worse than the movement between the saucer and the engineering hull in a normal Federation design; which is hardly limited anyway, there are turbolifts and a ladder for emergencies, what more do you want? The Yamato design in particular has a very low, solid 'neck' section that is probably better for both structural integrity and traversability than an Excelsior, much less a Constitution.

additional mass for the engines to have to work with

If you put an additional hull in without increasing the power of the engines then sure, but why would you do that? Unless this is a kitbash from hell this will be a comparison between two hull forms for a ship of given size/tonnage, so unless catamarans are inherently heavier than a single engineering hull of the same mass this is nonsense. I don't expect they will be, because while they have additional hull plating their internal structures will be lighter (because structural mass scales nonlinearly with hull size).

The redundancy of power sources isn't much of an argument in its favour as you could already have multiple reactors in a single engineering hull

They'd have to be at opposite ends of the hull to avoid being taken out in the same hit, which is impractical for a host of reasons.

and the saucer module.

The whole point of having an engineering hull is to separate the dangerous machinery from the crew spaces. Dual engineering hulls is a far better solution than putting a warp core (and all of its support equipment) in the middle of your habitation deck. Besides, with the impulse deck, transporters, phasers and main computer all in the saucer, I doubt there is enough volume left for a useful sized warp core.

[Patrick Degan]

Argument from incredulity. What is actually wrong with the concept?

Additional stress points on the spaceframe

But each one is less intense than the stress created by a single engineering hull of the same volume/mass. We do build catamaran ships in real life you know, and different stress pattern isn't a major problem.

Not a good analogy. For a start, we're talking about a space vessel, not a wet-navy ship or even a pleasure yacht. The stress profiles are very different. Secondly, you may notice that catamaran designs for ocean-going ships are not upscaled past a certain point: you'll never see a catamaran supertanker or aircraft carrier. Thirdly, the mass argument doesn't quite obtain: you are essentially doubling the mass load with two identical secondary hulls whereas a slightly larger single hull will not mass as much.

limited movement between hulls

No worse than the movement between the saucer and the engineering hull in a normal Federation design; which is hardly limited anyway, there are turbolifts and a ladder for emergencies, what more do you want? The Yamato design in particular has a very low, solid 'neck' section that is probably better for both structural integrity and traversability than an Excelsior, much less a Constitution.

You've essentially got a bridge linking the two hulls and no other point of contact between them. Furthermore, that is their main structural linkage and an obvious weak point for attack.

additional mass for the engines to have to work with

If you put an additional hull in without increasing the power of the engines then sure, but why would you do that? Unless this is a kitbash from hell this will be a comparison between two hull forms for a ship of given size/tonnage, so unless catamarans are inherently heavier than a single engineering hull of the same mass this is nonsense. I don't expect they will be, because while they have additional hull plating their internal structures will be lighter (because structural mass scales nonlinearly with hull size).

The additional hull with its mass practially requires additional power to drive the vessel to the same performance level as other classes with only a dual-hull configuration at most. The problem is not the scaling of structural mass to hull size, it is adding an additional mass onto the spaceframe.

The redundancy of power sources isn't much of an argument in its favour as you could already have multiple reactors in a single engineering hull

They'd have to be at opposite ends of the hull to avoid being taken out in the same hit, which is impractical for a host of reasons.

A hit serious enough to take out a reactor is likely to destroy the entire ship, so this isn't much of an argument.

and the saucer module.

The whole point of having an engineering hull is to separate the dangerous machinery from the crew spaces. Dual engineering hulls is a far better solution than putting a warp core (and all of its support equipment) in the middle of your habitation deck. Besides, with the impulse deck, transporters, phasers and main computer all in the saucer, I doubt there is enough volume left for a useful sized warp core.

No, the point of the saucer module originally was to separate the crew from radiaiton spillage from the warp engines. Besides which, since there are multiple Federation single-hull designs in which there really aren't too many alternative places you can put the main reactor, this objection doesn't obtain.

[Starglider]

Not a good analogy. For a start, we're talking about a space vessel, not a wet-navy ship or even a pleasure yacht.

Which actually makes the structural engineering easier, because nearly all the stress is associated with acceleration along one vector (the impulse engines firing), with a limited amount from warp stresses and thrusters turning the ship. Ocean ships are subjected to a much wider range of stresses.

Secondly, you may notice that catamaran designs for ocean-going ships are not upscaled past a certain point: you'll never see a catamaran supertanker or aircraft carrier.

Not yet. There's no technical reason for this, it's just that the construction cost is higher and catamarans of that size are unproven. There would be no benefit for a tanker, which doesn't need to be fast, and the cost of validating a new design is prohibitive for carriers (given the limited seakeeping benefits at that scale).

Thirdly, the mass argument doesn't quite obtain: you are essentially doubling the mass load with two identical secondary hulls whereas a slightly larger single hull will not mass as much.

Why do you keep saying this? Mass is roughly proportional to volume. For a given amount of machinery, you will need a hull or hulls of equivalent volume. The single hull will not be 'slightly larger', it will be twice the volume of either of the double hulls. As I said, two hulls uses more hull plating but thinner framing.

You've essentially got a bridge linking the two hulls and no other point of contact between them. Furthermore, that is their main structural linkage and an obvious weak point for attack.

So exactly the same as the saucer/engineering hull pylon in the Constution class then, which doesn't seem to be a weak point or particularly targetted by enemies (in fact it got shot up in Trek 2 to no structural effect). As I've already pointed out, the Yamato hull interconnect is much thicker and sturdier than any of the usual neck designs. In any case the addition of a second aft bridge between the hulls would be redundant, as most of the stress is from the impulse engine on the saucer (or in the interconnect section, for the Yamato - good placement) pulling the engineering hulls forward. There is very little lateral stress by comparison.

Unless this is a kitbash from hell this will be a comparison between two hull forms for a ship of given size/tonnage, so unless catamarans are inherently heavier than a single engineering hull of the same mass this is nonsense.

The additional hull with its mass practially requires additional power to drive the vessel to the same performance level as other classes with only a dual-hull configuration at most. The problem is not the scaling of structural mass to hull size, it is adding an additional mass onto the spaceframe.[/quote]

Are you reading my posts at all? Yes gluing on extra bits will make a ship slower, but no one designs ships like that (outside of the DS9 tech manual anyway). As with real-life ships Trek ships are probably designed to a target tonnage, or volume sufficient to enclose the required machinery, and you can either have two smaller engineering hulls or one big one, the mass will be very similar either way.

A hit serious enough to take out a reactor is likely to destroy the entire ship, so this isn't much of an argument.

Only as of the TNG era. In the TOS era, ships didn't randomly blow up as soon as the warp core was hit. Again, in TWoK the Enterprise takes major hits to the engineering section that knock out the warp core for several hours. If it had been a 'catamaran' ship this wouldn't have been possible; there would be no vector from which the Reliant could hit both cores in one pass (well, maybe directly above, depending on the design).

The whole point of having an engineering hull is to separate the dangerous machinery from the crew spaces.

No, the point of the saucer module originally was to separate the crew from radiaiton spillage from the warp engines. Besides which, since there are multiple Federation single-hull designs in which there really aren't too many alternative places you can put the main reactor, this objection doesn't obtain.

Your second point defeats your first point. If a seperate saucer isn't required for 'radiation spillage separation' (noting that the nacelle tips on the Reliant aren't any further from the saucer than they are on the Enterprise, though the bulk of the engines is), what exactly is the point of an engineering hull? In actual fact the single hull design is only used for small, cheap ships, probably because it strictly limits the power output of the warp core (it may also impact survivability due to increased vulnerability to secondary damage).

[Patrick Degan]

Not a good analogy. For a start, we're talking about a space vessel, not a wet-navy ship or even a pleasure yacht.

Which actually makes the structural engineering easier, because nearly all the stress is associated with acceleration along one vector (the impulse engines firing), with a limited amount from warp stresses and thrusters turning the ship. Ocean ships are subjected to a much wider range of stresses.

You forget torsional and transverse stresses which act on the supports constantly as they do along the whole of the spaceframe when the ship is put through any manoeuver, even just straight-line acceleration.

Secondly, you may notice that catamaran designs for ocean-going ships are not upscaled past a certain point: you'll never see a catamaran supertanker or aircraft carrier.

Not yet. There's no technical reason for this, it's just that the construction cost is higher and catamarans of that size are unproven. There would be no benefit for a tanker, which doesn't need to be fast, and the cost of validating a new design is prohibitive for carriers (given the limited seakeeping benefits at that scale).

That and the uneven load-bearing for a very large ship in rough seas which twin hulls and their interconnecting superstructure would be subjected to.

Thirdly, the mass argument doesn't quite obtain: you are essentially doubling the mass load with two identical secondary hulls whereas a slightly larger single hull will not mass as much.

Why do you keep saying this? Mass is roughly proportional to volume. For a given amount of machinery, you will need a hull or hulls of equivalent volume. The single hull will not be 'slightly larger', it will be twice the volume of either of the double hulls. As I said, two hulls uses more hull plating but thinner framing.

I keep saying this because it's two hulls, two masses. I don't see what's the difficulty here. And who says you need a single hull which is automatically twice the volume of either tandem hull unit? You're making an unfounded assumption and ignoring the fact that having twin reactor units means a shared power distribution load. They'd both be linked on the same power circuit and linked to the same fuel store, with the same control system regulating both units. The reason for such an arrangement is to generate steadier power flow without running either reactor to capacity. But in order to have that, you have to trade off on something else if you want to keep the engineering solution to the ship's design as simple as possible.

You've essentially got a bridge linking the two hulls and no other point of contact between them. Furthermore, that is their main structural linkage and an obvious weak point for attack.

So exactly the same as the saucer/engineering hull pylon in the Constution class then, which doesn't seem to be a weak point or particularly targeted by enemies (in fact it got shot up in Trek 2 to no structural effect). As I've already pointed out, the Yamato hull interconnect is much thicker and sturdier than any of the usual neck designs. In any case the addition of a second aft bridge between the hulls would be redundant, as most of the stress is from the impulse engine on the saucer (or in the interconnect section, for the Yamato - good placement) pulling the engineering hulls forward. There is very little lateral stress by comparison.

Not the same. For a start, the section which got hit by the Reliant's phasers was the thicker photorp bay section, not the dorsal itself. Secondly:



The Proxima, the ship I was primarily discussing, doesn't have a structure which is particularly better protected against bombardment of the transverse pod bridging unit, or the twin pylons supporting the saucer module for that matter. As for the SFB Yamato:



—this design is a bit better: two Excelsior secondary hulls were essentially wedded into a unified structure so they really comprise one large secondary hull, with the saucer module attached almost directly to it. It's low profile and the overall arrangement of the engineering module does make for lesser structural vulnerability than a Proxima. Even as it is, though, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say this arrangement is more advantageous than a simpler, slightly larger Excelsior secondary hull to house twin warp reactors. You have a lot of additional mass for little actual gain. And as for the alleged "justification" for this configuration:

Klingon Academy website

Suspeneded between these two secondary hulls is the assault phaser mount. One of the breakthroughs concerning this assault phaser design is that it is connected to both warp cores, allowing the single phaser to act like two and fire a second time using the second core's power output. The assault phaser is cooled by exposing some of the critical parts to the vacuum of space. Thus, while allowing for extremely fast cooling of the phaser after firing, the assault phaser is easily damaged once her shields have been breached. But, with shields comparable to small bases, most captains have nothing really to worry about.

Did the person who actually wrote this fanservice drivel really think this through or did he essentially write it with one hand on the keyboard and one wrapped around his dick? "Shields comparable to small bases"?!?!? That gives you a range for any station as small as the Epsilon Nine listening outpost and Regula 1 and why would such stations need very powerful reactors to service their functions? What the fuck is that no-numbers bullshit even supposed to mean? Does this assclown understand the concept of the shared-load arrangement as it applies to power generation complexes? Fuck but there was a similar discussion regarding the Prometheus and the same defects with the "arguments" of the Prometheus Wanketeering Brigade show up in this attempted description of the Yamato uber-battleship: more reactors don't necessarily give you 3X, 4X, however many-X times maximum power output of the single unit and there's no way to ramp up output for those reactors without consuming fuel at a substantially greater rate. And what about this ship's capacity to dump waste heat —and I'm talking about the ship, not the assault phaser. Did this assclown even give that any more than a cursory thought before writing that spew?

The additional hull with its mass practially requires additional power to drive the vessel to the same performance level as other classes with only a dual-hull configuration at most. The problem is not the scaling of structural mass to hull size, it is adding an additional mass onto the spaceframe.

Are you reading my posts at all? Yes gluing on extra bits will make a ship slower, but no one designs ships like that (outside of the DS9 tech manual anyway). As with real-life ships Trek ships are probably designed to a target tonnage, or volume sufficient to enclose the required machinery, and you can either have two smaller engineering hulls or one big one, the mass will be very similar either way.

Are you actually thinking any of this through yourself? Ships are not built to some "target tonnage", they are built to the requirements for the role it is expected to fulfill. And structural design decisions are not a matter of choosing from a menu of options: YOU GO FOR THE SIMPLEST, MOST PRACTICAL DESIGN SOLUTION THAT IS FEASIBLE.

A hit serious enough to take out a reactor is likely to destroy the entire ship, so this isn't much of an argument.

Only as of the TNG era. In the TOS era, ships didn't randomly blow up as soon as the warp core was hit. Again, in TWoK the Enterprise takes major hits to the engineering section that knock out the warp core for several hours. If it had been a 'catamaran' ship this wouldn't have been possible; there would be no vector from which the Reliant could hit both cores in one pass (well, maybe directly above, depending on the design).

The reactor of the Enterprise was not hit: the main power couplings were cut off by the damage from the Reliant's phaser fire and the systems which converted the output from the reactor into usable power were damaged. And I'd love to hear you explain how, if one reactor unit in one engineering pod takes a direct hit and explodes, that this won't destroy the ship just because the second reactor is in the other pod. This should be interesting.

The whole point of having an engineering hull is to separate the dangerous machinery from the crew spaces.

No, the point of the saucer module originally was to separate the crew from radiaiton spillage from the warp engines. Besides which, since there are multiple Federation single-hull designs in which there really aren't too many alternative places you can put the main reactor, this objection doesn't obtain.

Your second point defeats your first point. If a seperate saucer isn't required for 'radiation spillage separation' (noting that the nacelle tips on the Reliant aren't any further from the saucer than they are on the Enterprise, though the bulk of the engines is), what exactly is the point of an engineering hull? In actual fact the single hull design is only used for small, cheap ships, probably because it strictly limits the power output of the warp core (it may also impact survivability due to increased vulnerability to secondary damage).

Perhaps I did not sufficiently clarify my statement: externally-mounted warp engines, as opposed to internal units, were for the purpose of safeguarding the crew from radiation spillage from the warp units —the hull and whatever insulation materials and shielding is incorporated protects the crew. The reactor core itself is not necessarily dangerous if the thing is properly shielded. That rationale still applies to ships of single or multi-hulled design.

[Starglider]

You forget torsional and transverse stresses which act on the supports constantly as they do along the whole of the spaceframe when the ship is put through any manoeuver, even just straight-line acceleration.

Stresses from other maneuvers are insignificant compared to impulse acceleration. The Galaxy class is supposed to be able to do up to 1000g; somewhat dubious, but Trek ships do have to accelerate at tens of gravities to achieve even the average observed feats for insystem flight. The stresses on the Consitution 'neck' pylon from the impulse deck on the saucer dragging the engineering section and warp nacelles along at many gravities of acceleration are pretty extreme; stresses caused by rotation and lateral thruster firing are trivial in comparison. If the Federation can build a pylon that can take that, the other examples seen here should be fairly straightforward.

Why do you keep saying this? Mass is roughly proportional to volume. For a given amount of machinery, you will need a hull or hulls of equivalent volume. The single hull will not be 'slightly larger', it will be twice the volume of either of the double hulls. As I said, two hulls uses more hull plating but thinner framing.

I keep saying this because it's two hulls, two masses. I don't see what's the difficulty here. And who says you need a single hull which is automatically twice the volume of either tandem hull unit?

Because a hull is built to contain a certain amount of machinery. It doesn't directly contribute to the ship's usefulness (well, other than armor, which Federation ships lack), it supports and protects the vital systems (power, weapons, shield generators, crew spaces etc) that do. For given capabilities you will need a certain mass and volume of equipment, and you are going to need a hull or hulls of that size to fit it all in.

You're making an unfounded assumption and ignoring the fact that having twin reactor units means a shared power distribution load. They'd both be linked on the same power circuit and linked to the same fuel store, with the same control system regulating both units. The reason for such an arrangement is to generate steadier power flow without running either reactor to capacity.

I find it hillarious that you accuse me of 'unfounded assumption' when stating an obvious, almost tautological premise of ship design, yet you make up a completely random design principle and somehow think that it is non-random. No reactor is run 'to capacity' unless the ship is in combat (or possibly, running at flank speed). In these cases, the maximum possible power is desired, so both reactors in a dual-core ship would also be at maximum capacity. There is no reason why a dual reactor ship would run at lower power settings on average than a single reactor ship. The former does have the advantage that one reactor can be shut down for maintenance and the ship can still operate (assuming appropriate cross connects for warp plasma) - a major reason why Nimitz class carriers have two reactors. A single reactor ship may be more mass efficient, due to economies of scale, but then the Federation seems to have trouble building really large reactors (the Galaxy class warp core was said to be a major breakthrough), so for a battleship it makes sense that they'd use two of the largest warp cores they currently have rather than trying to design one twice as powerful for a very limited production run.

So exactly the same as the saucer/engineering hull pylon in the Constution class then, which doesn't seem to be a weak point or particularly targeted by enemies (in fact it got shot up in Trek 2 to no structural effect).

Not the same. For a start, the section which got hit by the Reliant's phasers was the thicker photorp bay section, not the dorsal itself. The Proxima, the ship I was primarily discussing, doesn't have a structure which is particularly better protected against bombardment of the transverse pod bridging unit, or the twin pylons supporting the saucer module for that matter.[/quote]

The Reliant was deliberately targeting the phototorp launchers, and I doubt that provided much protection to the pylon structure, as the interior of the pod is mostly empty volume and nonstructural elements. The pod only covers the lower quarter or so of the pylon, there's plenty of area to target (a significant part of the ship's side profile) if it really was a significant weak spot. I don't like the Proxima design, but it is not really much more ridiculous than a basic Constitution class. The individual pylons are shorter, presumably thicker (assuming the whole thing is larger) and as you say there are two saucer connections, so taking out one entirely wouldn't blow the ship in half like it would for a Constitution (although it would presumably cripple mobility).

Even as it is, though, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say this arrangement is more advantageous than a simpler, slightly larger Excelsior secondary hull to house twin warp reactors.

A single secondary hull would have lower surface area to volume, which is usually a good thing. As I've noted though, Trek ships piss all over that rule for no apparent reason anyway. In practical terms, since the Yamato was an ultra-limited run, it made sense trying to save money where possible by reusing existing engineering sections (quite likely the hardest part of the ship to design, since it's crammed full of high energy systems). I think the warp nacelles are the same as the ones used by the (three-nacelle) Federation dreadnought in the same game, and it has two Miranda-style rollbar pods (likely a proven, modular component) but obviously with a new saucer and pylon structure (and no doubt some internal design changes).

You have a lot of additional mass for little actual gain.

Gah. You still haven't explained why putting machinery of given power generation (and other capabilities) in two hulls makes it magically heavier than the same thing in one hull.

And as for the alleged "justification" for this configuration:

Yes well that is fairly awful. I am not defending that, I am attacking your claim that 'catamaran' ships are any more ridiculous than a normal Federation design (i.e. the Constitution class). I also think the Yamato is pretty good as Federation designs go, from both aesthetic, practical and economic viewpoints, although that's not saying a lot.

"Shields comparable to small bases"?!?!? That gives you a range for any station as small as the Epsilon Nine listening outpost and Regula 1 and why would such stations need very powerful reactors to service their functions?

That probably works in game; all of the heavy battleships have shielding roughly equivalent to the smaller space stations. It sounds wanky but really it's just a statement of fact; if you build a big warship then it will be as powerful as a small station.

Fuck but there was a similar discussion regarding the Prometheus and the same defects with the "arguments" of the Prometheus Wanketeering Brigade show up in this attempted description of the Yamato uber-battleship: more reactors don't necessarily give you 3X, 4X, however many-X times maximum power output of the single unit and there's no way to ramp up output for those reactors without consuming fuel at a substantially greater rate.

For the Yamato, I interpreted that strictly as a Federation technological limitation; at the time of the ship's design, the Excelsior warp core was the most advanced Starfleet had. They'd sunk major resources into making the Excelsior the absolute best ship they could, and it would be decades until a similar advance occured (in the Ambassador class). If the Federation wanted a bigger ship to match the Klingon heavies without waiting decades for Ambassadors, they likely had no choice but to combine existing components. You might as well ask why the real life Enterprise had eight nuclear reactors and later ships had two; because the technology was not mature and it was an expedient means of getting a large nuclear ship launched.

And what about this ship's capacity to dump waste heat —and I'm talking about the ship, not the assault phaser. Did this assclown even give that any more than a cursory thought before writing that spew?

No, but Trek writing standards are so low that even remembering that there is waste heat to be dumped is an achievement.

Are you actually thinking any of this through yourself? Ships are not built to some "target tonnage", they are built to the requirements for the role it is expected to fulfill.

Firstly, explicit target tonnages are often imposed by budget or treaty restrictions. Secondly, even when they aren't, the tonnage is quite clearly implied from capabilities. If you want X phaser emitters, Y photon torpedoes, Z shield generators, a given warp speed and a warp core to power it all, that implies machinery of a particular mass and volume. Add on your crew and cargo requirements and you have the target mass and volume the hull design team will be working to.

And structural design decisions are not a matter of choosing from a menu of options: YOU GO FOR THE SIMPLEST, MOST PRACTICAL DESIGN SOLUTION THAT IS FEASIBLE.

Except that this doesn't happen. The simplest, most practical design would look like a star destroyer (without the bridge tower). In fact a lot of the aliens in Trek do have compact bricks or blobs for their ships, but the major powers all seem to build ships with wings and pylons and multiple hulls and huge surface area to volume ratios. I don't know the reason for this, but if you're already splitting your ship into four pieces connected by flimsy pylons, five pieces isn't necessarily any worse, if it means you can use shorter and/or redundant pylons.

And I'd love to hear you explain how, if one reactor unit in one engineering pod takes a direct hit and explodes, that this won't destroy the ship just because the second reactor is in the other pod. This should be interesting.

A reactor explosion isn't necessarily devasating. Certainly real world fission reactors and realistic fusion reactors don't explode with enough force to destroy the ship; though they may well flood the nearby hull spaces with hot steam, plasma and lethal radiation. A sane A/M reactor, as people often point out here, should only contain the minimum reactants to sustain a second or two of operation. Breaching that will only wreck the immediately adjacent compartments, and dual engineering hulls can help with this (although putting them on opposite sides of a single-hull, SD-style ship would work just as well - seemingly not an option for the Federation). The real vulnerability in an A/M fueled ship is the antimatter storage system; one good hit to that and the ship is an evaporating ball of plasma. It is inexplicable (in universe - obviously it's writer idiocy) that in Trek the 'warp core' is the problem rather than the 'A/M pods', and there isn't much you can do about the problem other than armor and maybe internal shielding around the pod complex. Both the Galaxy and the Constitution Refit designs (according to the tech manuals) put the A/M pods right at the bottom of the engineering hull, adjacent to the hull plating. Which is good if you need to eject the pods due to accidental loss of containment, but should be the real weak spot for one-shotting ships in combat. I suppose this is a minor advantage of a 'catamaran' design, in that if you must do this you can at least put the A/M pods on the inner sides of the engineering hulls, where you can still eject them easily but the enemy has a much harder time hitting them (because of the very limited arcs from which you have line of sight to this part of the hull).

Perhaps I did not sufficiently clarify my statement: externally-mounted warp engines, as opposed to internal units, were for the purpose of safeguarding the crew from radiation spillage from the warp units —the hull and whatever insulation materials and shielding is incorporated protects the crew. The reactor core itself is not necessarily dangerous if the thing is properly shielded. That rationale still applies to ships of single or multi-hulled design.

Ok, so what was the point of the separate engineering section on the Constitution/Ambassador/Galaxy class again?

[Patrick Degan]

Stresses from other maneuvers are insignificant compared to impulse acceleration. The Galaxy class is supposed to be able to do up to 1000g; somewhat dubious, but Trek ships do have to accelerate at tens of gravities to achieve even the average observed feats for insystem flight. The stresses on the Consitution 'neck' pylon from the impulse deck on the saucer dragging the engineering section and warp nacelles along at many gravities of acceleration are pretty extreme; stresses caused by rotation and lateral thruster firing are trivial in comparison. If the Federation can build a pylon that can take that, the other examples seen here should be fairly straightforward.

They are not trivial if torsional stresses act to deform the main supports for a load-bearing structure. Even in straight-line acceleration, not all forces will be equal throughout a large spaceframe. The greatest force is expressed at the point where the engines are located and where the main thrust occurs, which deforms the ship to the greatest degree at that point. For all the criticism of a Constitution's design, this problem is at least minimised to an extent it is not with either a Proxima or a Yamato.

Because a hull is built to contain a certain amount of machinery. It doesn't directly contribute to the ship's usefulness (well, other than armor, which Federation ships lack), it supports and protects the vital systems (power, weapons, shield generators, crew spaces etc) that do. For given capabilities you will need a certain mass and volume of equipment, and you are going to need a hull or hulls of that size to fit it all in.

Then why build more hulls than you absolutely need to?

You're making an unfounded assumption and ignoring the fact that having twin reactor units means a shared power distribution load. They'd both be linked on the same power circuit and linked to the same fuel store, with the same control system regulating both units. The reason for such an arrangement is to generate steadier power flow without running either reactor to capacity.

I find it hillarious that you accuse me of 'unfounded assumption' when stating an obvious, almost tautological premise of ship design, yet you make up a completely random design principle and somehow think that it is non-random. No reactor is run 'to capacity' unless the ship is in combat (or possibly, running at flank speed). In these cases, the maximum possible power is desired, so both reactors in a dual-core ship would also be at maximum capacity. There is no reason why a dual reactor ship would run at lower power settings on average than a single reactor ship. The former does have the advantage that one reactor can be shut down for maintenance and the ship can still operate (assuming appropriate cross connects for warp plasma) - a major reason why Nimitz class carriers have two reactors. A single reactor ship may be more mass efficient, due to economies of scale, but then the Federation seems to have trouble building really large reactors (the Galaxy class warp core was said to be a major breakthrough), so for a battleship it makes sense that they'd use two of the largest warp cores they currently have rather than trying to design one twice as powerful for a very limited production run.

Which supports your argument... how, exactly? You're the one who's insisting upon made-up shipbuilding principles to justify multiple engineering hulls when a slightly larger single hull would do.

For a start, the section which got hit by the Reliant's phasers was the thicker photorp bay section, not the dorsal itself. The Proxima, the ship I was primarily discussing, doesn't have a structure which is particularly better protected against bombardment of the transverse pod bridging unit, or the twin pylons supporting the saucer module for that matter.

The Reliant was deliberately targeting the phototorp launchers, and I doubt that provided much protection to the pylon structure, as the interior of the pod is mostly empty volume and nonstructural elements. The pod only covers the lower quarter or so of the pylon, there's plenty of area to target (a significant part of the ship's side profile) if it really was a significant weak spot. I don't like the Proxima design, but it is not really much more ridiculous than a basic Constitution class. The individual pylons are shorter, presumably thicker (assuming the whole thing is larger) and as you say there are two saucer connections, so taking out one entirely wouldn't blow the ship in half like it would for a Constitution (although it would presumably cripple mobility).

Taking out one pylon connection would put the entire unbalanced load for supporting the saucer on the remaining pylon. For fuck's sake, you don't see why this wouldn't be a problem?!

Even as it is, though, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say this arrangement is more advantageous than a simpler, slightly larger Excelsior secondary hull to house twin warp reactors.

A single secondary hull would have lower surface area to volume, which is usually a good thing. As I've noted though, Trek ships piss all over that rule for no apparent reason anyway. In practical terms, since the Yamato was an ultra-limited run, it made sense trying to save money where possible by reusing existing engineering sections (quite likely the hardest part of the ship to design, since it's crammed full of high energy systems). I think the warp nacelles are the same as the ones used by the (three-nacelle) Federation dreadnought in the same game, and it has two Miranda-style rollbar pods (likely a proven, modular component) but obviously with a new saucer and pylon structure (and no doubt some internal design changes).

Nothing about the Yamato's arrangement can be described "in practical terms". The ship is very impractical, just less so than the ridiculous Proxima.

You have a lot of additional mass for little actual gain.

Gah. You still haven't explained why putting machinery of given power generation (and other capabilities) in two hulls makes it magically heavier than the same thing in one hull.

Really? I fail to understand why the concept of carrying two identical hulls bridged by a very massive support structure connecting them being more massive than a slightly larger single hull is such a difficult one for you to grasp. Instead of two reactors sharing the same support infrastructure within one subframe, you've got two identical subframes with all their structural mass load, plus duplicated support infrastructure for the second reactor, plus the mass of the interconnecting support frame for both subframes.

"Shields comparable to small bases"?!?!? That gives you a range for any station as small as the Epsilon Nine listening outpost and Regula 1 and why would such stations need very powerful reactors to service their functions?

That probably works in game; all of the heavy battleships have shielding roughly equivalent to the smaller space stations. It sounds wanky but really it's just a statement of fact; if you build a big warship then it will be as powerful as a small station.

That's not a statement of fact since there is nothing to quantify on the basis of a very vague description.

Fuck but there was a similar discussion regarding the Prometheus and the same defects with the "arguments" of the Prometheus Wanketeering Brigade show up in this attempted description of the Yamato uber-battleship: more reactors don't necessarily give you 3X, 4X, however many-X times maximum power output of the single unit and there's no way to ramp up output for those reactors without consuming fuel at a substantially greater rate.

For the Yamato, I interpreted that strictly as a Federation technological limitation; at the time of the ship's design, the Excelsior warp core was the most advanced Starfleet had. They'd sunk major resources into making the Excelsior the absolute best ship they could, and it would be decades until a similar advance occured (in the Ambassador class). If the Federation wanted a bigger ship to match the Klingon heavies without waiting decades for Ambassadors, they likely had no choice but to combine existing components. You might as well ask why the real life Enterprise had eight nuclear reactors and later ships had two; because the technology was not mature and it was an expedient means of getting a large nuclear ship launched.

And... this justifies either the scheme for this ship or the author's idiotic, non-informative wank... how, exactly?

And what about this ship's capacity to dump waste heat —and I'm talking about the ship, not the assault phaser. Did this assclown even give that any more than a cursory thought before writing that spew?

No, but Trek writing standards are so low that even remembering that there is waste heat to be dumped is an achievement.

Nice but that really does not really answer the question at all, and it's fairly clear that the author didn't think.

Are you actually thinking any of this through yourself? Ships are not built to some "target tonnage", they are built to the requirements for the role it is expected to fulfill.

Firstly, explicit target tonnages are often imposed by budget or treaty restrictions. Secondly, even when they aren't, the tonnage is quite clearly implied from capabilities. If you want X phaser emitters, Y photon torpedoes, Z shield generators, a given warp speed and a warp core to power it all, that implies machinery of a particular mass and volume. Add on your crew and cargo requirements and you have the target mass and volume the hull design team will be working to.

Except the tonnage of the finished design is worked out after all the other considerations are plugged into the equation, not before.

And structural design decisions are not a matter of choosing from a menu of options: YOU GO FOR THE SIMPLEST, MOST PRACTICAL DESIGN SOLUTION THAT IS FEASIBLE.

Except that this doesn't happen. The simplest, most practical design would look like a star destroyer (without the bridge tower). In fact a lot of the aliens in Trek do have compact bricks or blobs for their ships, but the major powers all seem to build ships with wings and pylons and multiple hulls and huge surface area to volume ratios. I don't know the reason for this, but if you're already splitting your ship into four pieces connected by flimsy pylons, five pieces isn't necessarily any worse, if it means you can use shorter and/or redundant pylons.

I'm going to assume you did not read that part of your post before hitting the "submit" button. If the design requires a ship with multiple modules, the object is to attempt to reduce the number of those modules to the least number that are absolutely necessary, not conclude that "one more isn't necessarily any worse". And as for why the major Trek powers build vessels with flying substructures as opposed to something like a brick or a sphere, the most logical reason is that they must carry X number of personnel and mount X number of weapons but don't have power units capable of doing all that in a single large hull. It's a matter of squeezing as much performance out of their design limitations as they are capable of.

And I'd love to hear you explain how, if one reactor unit in one engineering pod takes a direct hit and explodes, that this won't destroy the ship just because the second reactor is in the other pod. This should be interesting.

A reactor explosion isn't necessarily devasating. Certainly real world fission reactors and realistic fusion reactors don't explode with enough force to destroy the ship; though they may well flood the nearby hull spaces with hot steam, plasma and lethal radiation. A sane A/M reactor, as people often point out here, should only contain the minimum reactants to sustain a second or two of operation. Breaching that will only wreck the immediately adjacent compartments, and dual engineering hulls can help with this (although putting them on opposite sides of a single-hull, SD-style ship would work just as well - seemingly not an option for the Federation). The real vulnerability in an A/M fueled ship is the antimatter storage system; one good hit to that and the ship is an evaporating ball of plasma. It is inexplicable (in universe - obviously it's writer idiocy) that in Trek the 'warp core' is the problem rather than the 'A/M pods', and there isn't much you can do about the problem other than armor and maybe internal shielding around the pod complex. Both the Galaxy and the Constitution Refit designs (according to the tech manuals) put the A/M pods right at the bottom of the engineering hull, adjacent to the hull plating. Which is good if you need to eject the pods due to accidental loss of containment, but should be the real weak spot for one-shotting ships in combat. I suppose this is a minor advantage of a 'catamaran' design, in that if you must do this you can at least put the A/M pods on the inner sides of the engineering hulls, where you can still eject them easily but the enemy has a much harder time hitting them (because of the very limited arcs from which you have line of sight to this part of the hull).

Why would an enemy ship have a harder time hitting a catamaran hull instead of a single one? Why can't he approach from underneath and fire to the inboard side of either hull? Or from behind and slightly below and drill through the hull with phasers? Or why not just keep drilling into either hull with phasers until hitting something critical?

Perhaps I did not sufficiently clarify my statement: externally-mounted warp engines, as opposed to internal units, were for the purpose of safeguarding the crew from radiation spillage from the warp units —the hull and whatever insulation materials and shielding is incorporated protects the crew. The reactor core itself is not necessarily dangerous if the thing is properly shielded. That rationale still applies to ships of single or multi-hulled design.

Ok, so what was the point of the separate engineering section on the Constitution/Ambassador/Galaxy class again?

Because of the requirements for additional cargo storage, hangar facilities, and greater fuel storage as well as added crew for missions of much longer endurance. Surely this was clear in the nature of the missions the Enterprise was regularly carrying out, was it not?