A theory on the bad warp core design

[greenmm]

Yes and the Defiant is to over powered for its size yet it doesnt have warp core problems thus discounting the theory.

Which theory is that?

What if the Defiant's problem was completely different, and had something to do with:

-- the power delivery system (i.e. EPS conduits) not having the capacity to handle a full power load from the warp core
-- the warp drive nacelles didn't have the capacity to handle a full power load from the warp core
-- the phase arrays didn't have the capacity to handle full power from the warp core
-- combination of the above 3 and/or other factors

Please review the original source. A quote from DS9 "The Search Part 1" would fix your problem.

SISKO
You'll have complete access to the
ship evaluation reports, but to put
it simply... it's overgunned and
overpowered for a ship its size.
During battle drills, it nearly tore
itself apart when the engines were
tested at full capacity.


The problem was fixed in DS9 “The Sound of Her Voice” (I'll leave that for you to find) i.e. SIF was boosted for warp >9.x flight.

Ah, I see.

That points to 2 possible explanations, then:

1. The warp core was too powerful for the warp nacelles used on the Defiant -- i.e. too much power was being fed to the nacelles, which caused them to operate well above 100% rated speed, which meant the warp field they were generating was too strong for the ship's framework.

2. The nacelles could handle the power from the warp core, but they underestimated how strong the warp field would be, and it was too much for the ship's framework.

I don't have the original source, so I can't say how they would have fixed it. I can, however, hypothesize as to what their options were, as well as which one is the more likely ST choice:

1. Replace the warp core with a smaller one that produces less power. This is only good, however, if the warp core was the sole source of the problem. Even worse, if you derate the warp core, you could potentially affect the shield and phaser strength of the design, something I'm sure they wanted to avoid.

2. Replace the warp nacelles with less powerful ones. The only problem I see with this is that they would have had to either use smaller nacelles (IIRC we don't see a reduction in nacelle size) or they added additional armor to the nacelles (IIRC they don't mention doing that, do they?).

3. Restrict the amount of power that can go from the warp core to the warp nacelles. A weaker warp field would avoid the problem of the engines shaking the ship apart. The added benefit would be to not only free up more power for other systems (i.e. allowing for stronger shields, stronger/more plentiful phaser arrays), but also allow the ship to run at a lower power setting on the warp core and thus have much more reserve power available when needed. Personally, I would have thought this a great idea... but I bet they didn't use it.

4. Strengthen the ship's framework so that it can withstand the stronger warp field. This is probably the route they chose. If it was me, I would have said reinforce the bulkheads and structural members as much as possible, and perhaps even add some additional reinforcements into the hull. But since we're talking about ST, if they chose this method, they probably just added a whole lot of extra structural integrity field emitters and/or boosted the emitters they already had installed.

[greenmm]

Makes me wonder if some idiot decided that the GCS needed to be able to routinely seperate the saucer section late in the design of the GCS.

About the same time the morons decided to stick families on ships they decided that what was previously only used as a last resort would now be common place. That would explain why so many design flaws were in the GCS and why they seem to be linked to saucer seperation to varrying degrees.

What I meant about the last resort bit is based on some non-canon comic books where the Constitution class ships could separate the saucer from the engineering section by detonating explosive bolts. This was only done when abandoning the ship.

Well the separation of the saucer is mantioned in The Apple or whatever the episode is that has Vall in it. Kirk mentions it as the ship is taking damage that could destroy the ship.

The saucer separation also was thrown out as an idea in one of the pre-TNG tech manuals. Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise showed that the E-nil and E-A had the potential in emergencies to jettison the primary hull, complete with impulse engines and a short stub of the warp core, and make an emergency landing on a planet. Apparantly, it was never meant to actually do true maneuvering, though.

I'm going to agree with Isolder74, though, and bet that they added the GCS's ability to routinely separate and reattach the saucer late in the design, probably as a nod to "civilian safety" since all the civvie quarters were up there.

[greenmm]

Mmmm.... I find the scenario unlikely on the basis that if the Galaxy was actually a warship designed to combat Romulan D'Derix class ships one on one, it should have been designed to so that its warp core had LARGER margins of safety. It is possible that it was designed with power as a trade off for safety, but a warship should be designed to withstand multiple hits while remaining functional. Also, the vast array of totally uneccessary systems on the GCS (for a warship) would seem to eliminate its design to fend of Romulan vessels. I find it more likely that the power was simply needed to manage energy requirements for a variety of more typical ship's functions, including high warp speeds first achieved by the GCS.

Of course, SF could also be subscribing to the infamous "Admiral weak Hull" Fallacy, which was shown by the British to be flawed in several engagements with elements from the German fleet in both WWI and WWII, in which battle cruisers were easily defeated by slower but more heavily armed and armored ships.

I don't remember the GCS's being designed to counter the D'Derix class. They're comparable, but IIRC the Romulans hadn't been heard from for a few decades before the E-D ran into their new Warbirds. Kind of hard to build a GCS to "counter" the Warbird if the first time you see one is well after the class has begun to be built, eh?

[Isolder74]

The saucer separation also was thrown out as an idea in one of the pre-TNG tech manuals. Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise showed that the E-nil and E-A had the potential in emergencies to jettison the primary hull, complete with impulse engines and a short stub of the warp core, and make an emergency landing on a planet. Apparantly, it was never meant to actually do true maneuvering, though.

I'm going to agree with Isolder74, though, and bet that they added the GCS's ability to routinely separate and reattach the saucer late in the design, probably as a nod to "civilian safety" since all the civvie quarters were up there.

yes it seem the GCS seperation is a brain bug. I TOS they could turn the saucer into a lifeboat but it was a perminente thing. In TNG it become a massive engineering nightmare that doesn't even really get used at all. This adds to the ship's other engineering nightmares that compounds all over the ship.

[greenmm]

Something else just occurred to me...

The only fundamental difference between the warp cores from TOS era and the later warp cores is the power generated, right? And I'm assuming that's because of increases in warp nacelle power needs (faster travel = larger power output), shield strength, and phaser power, right?

So, why is it that warp cores have apparantly either a) shrunk drastically in size, or b) have more of their components hidden to the point where you have to crawl through hard-to-access Jeffries tubes?

The original engine room on the E-nil was dwarfed by the new core they came up with for the TOS movies, and was apparantly due to the increased power they needed for the newer shields, phasers, and engines... and was apparantly due as well to a 15-25 year time difference. That core was a monster, extending from engineering all the way up the neck to the impulse drive unit, and back through most of the secondary hull. Yet when we fast forward another 75 years to TNG, the GCS warp cores have apparantly shrunk in size to maybe half that size if they're lucky.

Now I don't know, maybe they were able to miniaturize some of the containment equipment, like the magnetic field emitters that keeps the antimatter from hitting matter until they want it to... but is it probable that in their efforts to make the core as powerful and as compact as possible, they had to cut so many corners on safety that it became dangerous? We know from the canon films that Khan had a direct hit on the E-nil's engineering deck, yet he only knocked out warp drive; the warp core was still stable. In contrast, the E-D would take damage numerous times that didn't even penetrate to the engineering deck, yet the warp core was in danger of breaching and/or needing to be ejected.

What's really ridiculous is that, given that the E-D had 4 to 8 times the internal volume of the E-nil/E-A design, they apparantly were so cramped for space that they had to make the warp core so small it was a danger to the ship...

[Solid Snake]

Could the TNG warp cores have something to do with the fact that warp drive messes up subspace? Maybe they found their older, safer warp designs werent powerful enough to keep up at warp with "rough terrain" So they had to abandon safety features to get around.

In a nutshell:
TNG: subspace is messed up, and more power is needed to go to warp. Most TNG era ships do at least warp seven, and the oversized cores can do warp nine. There isnt really much of a speed difference between TOS ships and most TNG ships.

[greenmm]

Could the TNG warp cores have something to do with the fact that warp drive messes up subspace? Maybe they found their older, safer warp designs werent powerful enough to keep up at warp with "rough terrain" So they had to abandon safety features to get around.

In a nutshell:
TNG: subspace is messed up, and more power is needed to go to warp. Most TNG era ships do at least warp seven, and the oversized cores can do warp nine. There isnt really much of a speed difference between TOS ships and most TNG ships.

Well, TOS era supposedly was based on the "cube of warp factor = speed in terms of lightspeed", so a Warp 7 TOS ship was traveling at 343c, while a TNG ship at Warp 7 was much faster.

However, you might have something there. Wasn't there an episode of TNG where they found that the use of warp drive was creating "dead zones" in the quadrant where warp drive would no longer function at all, and forced the Federation to start imposing "speed limits" to minimize the danger?

[Col. Crackpot]

that way he doesn't need to concentrate on a plot.

"ooooh, look at the pretty explosions, maybe it it distract people from the fact that i ruined star trek"

[Solid Snake]

Crap. Forgot about the different warp factors. Well, there goes my theory.

[Master of Ossus]

Mmmm.... I find the scenario unlikely on the basis that if the Galaxy was actually a warship designed to combat Romulan D'Derix class ships one on one, it should have been designed to so that its warp core had LARGER margins of safety. It is possible that it was designed with power as a trade off for safety, but a warship should be designed to withstand multiple hits while remaining functional. Also, the vast array of totally uneccessary systems on the GCS (for a warship) would seem to eliminate its design to fend of Romulan vessels. I find it more likely that the power was simply needed to manage energy requirements for a variety of more typical ship's functions, including high warp speeds first achieved by the GCS.

Of course, SF could also be subscribing to the infamous "Admiral weak Hull" Fallacy, which was shown by the British to be flawed in several engagements with elements from the German fleet in both WWI and WWII, in which battle cruisers were easily defeated by slower but more heavily armed and armored ships.

I don't remember the GCS's being designed to counter the D'Derix class. They're comparable, but IIRC the Romulans hadn't been heard from for a few decades before the E-D ran into their new Warbirds. Kind of hard to build a GCS to "counter" the Warbird if the first time you see one is well after the class has begun to be built, eh?

I know that. When I wrote that I was responding to another poster, who claimed that the GCS was designed to counter the D'Derix, and fight against it one-on-one. I stated clearly IF the GCS was designed to counter the D'Derix. Besides, it's a nitpick. It made no attack on the actual position.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

MoO are you talking to me?



If so, the warp core not the GCS was designed to counter the Romulans.

[Alyeska]

Well IF the GCS was a counter to the Warbird, its a bloody pathetic one. The Warbird is stated at being slightly more powerful. But when you combine the fact that Warbird has a foreward weapon biass AND the Cloak, that means a Warbird can sneak up on a GCS and decloak while firing a opening volley utterly destroying the GCS. If anything the Nebula (both SWACs and Warpod versions) are the true counter to the Warbird, and that assumes the Federation even had knowledge about the Warbird when designing their ships.

[Uraniun235]

That assumes a single volley will be enough to disable or destroy a GCS. What supports such a contention?

[Alyeska]

That assumes a single volley will be enough to disable or destroy a GCS. What supports such a contention?

The fact that a Warbird is stated at being more powerful then a GCS, the power just a handful of Warbird shots have done to the E-D in the past and the fact that we have only seen forward weaponry on the Warbird.

[Darth Wong]

That assumes a single volley will be enough to disable or destroy a GCS. What supports such a contention?

Watch "Tin Man". A Warbird kicks a GCS's ass so badly it's not even funny.

PS. Back to the original subject, I still think the safety vs power trade-off theory works. Notice the USS Valiant, where the safety margins were set conservatively, and they were stuck at warp 6. So what does Nog do? Override all the safety protocols and redlines, so they can do full speed.

[Alyeska]

That assumes a single volley will be enough to disable or destroy a GCS. What supports such a contention?

Watch "Tin Man". A Warbird kicks a GCS's ass so badly it's not even funny.

PS. Back to the original subject, I still think the safety vs power trade-off theory works. Notice the USS Valiant, where the safety margins were set conservatively, and they were stuck at warp 6. So what does Nog do? Override all the safety protocols and redlines, so they can do full speed.

I think that was only partially the problem with the Valiant. It seems the Defiant class has had some historical problems comming fresh from construction. It seems that Defiant class ships need at least a month shakedown with an experienced engineering crew (which the Valiant did NOT have) to get this problem fixed.

As to the Warbird, I have to agree. It seems the Romulans funnel most of their power through a handful of forward arc weaponry. This would make the Warbird deadly in just about any 1v1 fight and easpeically deadly with decloaking surprise attacks. However it would be a problem in large fleet actions and I have shown earlier how the Galaxy class is superior in fleet combat then the Nebula. Firepower concentrations on a single arc have both an advantage and disadvantage.