Designing the Ideal Starfleet Gunship

[Mr Bean]

Frankly focus lets Borrow a Lesson from AD



Lets build the True Missle Battleship, Aegeis 2 if you will
New design, Flat, planer however similar to Romulan ships however(IE looks like the modern plane with downsweept wings)

However the wings don't curve down they curve forward and mount as many Torp Launchers as you resonably can(Say Twelve, six per side)

Then four in a extention in the front, All Q-Torps, Massive Torp storage for this ship(At least 400 Per Launcher), You now have a bad-arse(For ST anyway) Forward Arch only 18 Launcher Ship that can pump out quad firing 72 Torps Per/sec or Roughly 9 Gigatons of Damage, still no-where near SW but this thing can womp on anything up to a Borg Cube which it can go toe to toe

Its only a Rear-defense is a Single Rear-Mounted Phaser Strip, then for over-kill, Mount 2 Defaint Style Pulse Lasers on the Front end

Or, Double the Ship

IE
Instead of a ) shape you double it which I can't show here but extend an extra wing above and below the centeral section and mount more Torp Launchers there or, just two there and instead mount six Engines ,
Two on the Main four on the Wings along with three power sources(Your Pick)
Two for Shielding, one for Everything else, or devided it how you need

A definatly good ship for ST, and I'd send it off if I could to ST writers if I though they might pay attention

[Alyeska]

You want a missile ship eh? Give it VLS tubes. You can fire massive amounts of torpedoes at first, then you can have a high refire rate because of being able to reload multiple tubes at once.

[Mr Bean]

Alyeska ask you this, anything that can take 72 Q-Torp in the ST Galaxy?

[Alyeska]

Alyeska ask you this, anything that can take 72 Q-Torp in the ST Galaxy?

Borg ships.

But with VLS tubes and a independent targeting system you can fire litterally hundreds of Torpedoes at dozens of targets all at once.

[Mr Bean]

Borg ships

Realy? How many Proton Torps killed the Cubes that first attacked the Earth(Both of them)

[Alyeska]

Borg ships

Realy? How many Proton Torps killed the Cubes that first attacked the Earth(Both of them)

In less then 5 minutes in First Contact we saw more then 2 dozen torpedoes fired against the Cube. Factor in that there was a fight for several hours and the Cube had to enter Sector 001 from a distance (Borg seem to enter the systems from a distance for some reason). Its easy to see that the Borg ship took some massive firepower before the Enterprise arrived. Hell, the Defiant wasn't even firing torpedoes anymore, it was relying on its PPCs.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

And who said i can't add some SW weaponry to her?

It's in the OP. ST starship technology only -- remember, this is supposed to be the ultimate Starfleet gunship.

[Patrick Degan]

Basically, take a Defiant hull and replace the forward deflector mount with an antimatter cannon. Sheer brute force.

[ViciousMink]

A gunship, hmm? Start with a Miranda -- love the design, and they can take a licking and keep on ticking; look what happened to the Reliant!

Replace the outrigger phaser cannons with PPCs, and load in the Q-torps. DO NOT replace the phaser mounts with phaser strips; replace them with mini-PPCs, for point-defense. Give her a cloak, of course.

Now the fun part, if they're possible.... Load on the gunships. This is where the majority of the firepower comes from. A bunch of Runabout-class ships that have small PPCs in "doorgunner charlie" mounts, a set of forward-firing heavier PPCS... and a bellyful of self-guided, shielded, anti-capship Q-torp weapons, self-guided shipkillers. They don't need much else; the Miranda-CLV will handle most of the refuelling and repair; the gunships just have to go out on their sorties with the occasional backup from the Miranda.

Mostly, ST has shown a propensity for capship battles, which is why I chose to upgrade a Miranda. If gunships aren't possible, then I'd find more ways of upgunning the Miranda. (There was a design on the Net once, called the Nighthawk, for an advanced version of the Defiant with some rather neat, Section 31-style tricks and gadgets.)[/i]

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

A gunship, hmm? Start with a Miranda -- love the design, and they can take a licking and keep on ticking; look what happened to the Reliant!

Replace the outrigger phaser cannons with PPCs, and load in the Q-torps. DO NOT replace the phaser mounts with phaser strips; replace them with mini-PPCs, for point-defense. Give her a cloak, of course.

Now the fun part, if they're possible.... Load on the gunships. This is where the majority of the firepower comes from. A bunch of Runabout-class ships that have small PPCs in "doorgunner charlie" mounts, a set of forward-firing heavier PPCS... and a bellyful of self-guided, shielded, anti-capship Q-torp weapons, self-guided shipkillers. They don't need much else; the Miranda-CLV will handle most of the refuelling and repair; the gunships just have to go out on their sorties with the occasional backup from the Miranda.

Mostly, ST has shown a propensity for capship battles, which is why I chose to upgrade a Miranda. If gunships aren't possible, then I'd find more ways of upgunning the Miranda. (There was a design on the Net once, called the Nighthawk, for an advanced version of the Defiant with some rather neat, Section 31-style tricks and gadgets.)[/i]

This is a fine idea, except that a Miranda's limited size makes it impractical as a dual-purpose ship. As a gunship, it should be fine on its own. If you want it to serve as a carrier or tanker as well, though, it's undersized. For your purposes, you'd want something larger, like an Excelsior or a refit variant of same. Also, Runabouts could make decent gunships, but not in their standard configuration. For that, you'd want a Runabout class I've seen at Sci-Fi Art.com called the Prevaricator. Here's a basic description:

Take a Danube class cockpit. Insert into an elongated Defiant class shaped spaceframe. Add Nebula style modular equipment pod up top with twin rapid-fire microtorp launchers fore, single aft, firing intelligent torps with independent tracking. Add four mini-PPCs fore, two aft. Add ablative armor and uprated shields. Assemble 9-unit strike force. Serve cold.

[Master of Ossus]

For a gunship, the Miranda or the Defiant size seems to be ideal. For more powerful ship classes, obviously a larger and heavier hull would be necessary.

[Guest]

there is no ship in the Federation fleet more powerful then a Defiant Class ship, It is armed with 4 times the weaponry of GCS, it has a cloak and mountings to incorporate Transwarp coils.

[Knife]

there is no ship in the Federation fleet more powerful then a Defiant Class ship, It is armed with 4 times the weaponry of GCS, it has a cloak and mountings to incorporate Transwarp coils.

What? It is extremely well armed for a ship of its size but I do not see any info that say's its got four times the weapons of a GCS.