Designing the Ideal Starfleet Gunship

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

Okay, assume that you're the head of a Starfleet design team tasked with designing the ultimate Starfleet gunship. You may innovate, provided your innovation is based on known starship technology. Choose a spaceframe, propulsion system, weapons, shields, specify crew capacity, transporters, etc. Starfleet has even cleared you to use previously forbidden technology such as cloaks and subspace weapons. Above are your choices for the size of the ship.

[Mr Bean]

Defant Sized Craft, Its a @@^%@ Torp Launch, I want six Torp Launchers on the front of it, A Cloack, Fuck the Subspace, I blow you to kindom-come with plain old fire-power

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

Heh heh heh. I chose the scoutship (my personal favorite SF ship). I'd have two torp launchers front, one read underside (turret-mounted). four pusle-phasers front, four omni "strips" running the sides and a pulse unit in the rear, a Rom scoutship power source (their microsingularity capship power sources suggest they'd have equally decent power sources for small craft) powering enhanced shields, and a cloak (but not sure they have them that small). With all that extra equipment, it would only crew a single individual, most likely. But that's okay -- I don't play well with others.

[HemlockGrey]

Defiant-sized and shaped.

Four forward pulse phaser relays and four foward torplaunchers with two omnidirectional phaser turrets on the 'top' and 'bottom' of the back. Two manuvering thrusters on the 'bottom' to provide more agility.

And, a swiveling torp launcher on the back. Engines will be Romulan microsingularities. Ditch warp-capabilities to make room for improved shielding and the manuvering thrusters - the gunship will deploy from a larger Galaxy- or Sovereign- class starship.

The rear weapons will have an 'autotarget' function that can be switched on and off at will, so a sparse crew can focus on nailing their enemies while the rear weaponry discourages pursuit. As qualified crewmen seem to be slightly less rare than sheets of pure neutronium in the ST-verse, crews will undoubtly be sparse. It'll be more cost-effective, too.

The gunship will deploy from a larger ship and serve as a vanguard, blasting stationary defenses/softening up capships etc. It *might* serve to deplete fighter screens, but more I see maybe twelve of them slamming on a Galaxy, looping back, then coming around for another pass before delievering their torps for a knockout punch.

[paladin]

No matter what size the ship is, it will still suffer from the same problem all fed starships have. A warp core that explodes at the drop of a hat.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

No matter what size the ship is, it will still suffer from the same problem all fed starships have. A warp core that explodes at the drop of a hat.

Actually, that was primarily a GCS design flaw. So far, we've seen it happen on few, if any, other ships. But I suppose if you want to suggest a ship with a Fourth-of-July firecracker for a power source, you can. Me, I'll stick with a non-Brahms warp core.

[Sea Skimmer]

No matter what size the ship is, it will still suffer from the same problem all fed starships have. A warp core that explodes at the drop of a hat.

Actually, that was primarily a GCS design flaw. So far, we've seen it happen on few, if any, other ships. But I suppose if you want to suggest a ship with a Fourth-of-July firecracker for a power source, you can. Me, I'll stick with a non-Brahms warp core.

Actually we've seen almost every class of ship shown onscreen explode.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

No matter what size the ship is, it will still suffer from the same problem all fed starships have. A warp core that explodes at the drop of a hat.

Actually, that was primarily a GCS design flaw. So far, we've seen it happen on few, if any, other ships. But I suppose if you want to suggest a ship with a Fourth-of-July firecracker for a power source, you can. Me, I'll stick with a non-Brahms warp core.

Actually we've seen almost every class of ship shown onscreen explode.

Yeah, but only GCS ships seem to do it because of trivial shit setting off the warp core. Even Voyager didn't have that problem IIRC.

[Alyeska]

No matter what size the ship is, it will still suffer from the same problem all fed starships have. A warp core that explodes at the drop of a hat.

Actually, that was primarily a GCS design flaw. So far, we've seen it happen on few, if any, other ships. But I suppose if you want to suggest a ship with a Fourth-of-July firecracker for a power source, you can. Me, I'll stick with a non-Brahms warp core.

Actually we've seen almost every class of ship shown onscreen explode.

The GCS was the only one that did it often. Look at several of the ships in First Contact how they were drifty hulks, not exploded ships. Look at the Defiant, look at the ships durring the Dominion war or Voyager in Year of Hell.

The GCS had that design flaw, and it seemed to have been fixed (after a long tiem) because the USS Galaxy took some major damage at Chin'Toka but kept fighting.

[Alyeska]

Well, what would I do for my Gunships eh?

I would work with several of the designs.

The Runabout itself is fairly large, and we know its modular. I would completely remove the rear section as well as the middle modular section. In its place would be a large magazine storage for full sized Q-Torps. It would hold aproximately 24 torpedoes. The sensor pod that could be installed would be replaced with a torpedo launching pod. It would have two launchers and both would be pre-armed. This would make a small sized craft capable of taking on mid sized ships. Makes for a useful "throw away" weapon capable of trumping larger ships.

Next I would take and modify the Defiant. It had an extremely compact Warp Core. I mean it was like only two decks on a 4 deck ship. I would scrap the shuttle bay. I would add 3 more warp cores. I would have all 4 of them set in a 4 point corner system. Sure, the fuel economy will suck, but I want the power.

Next what happens is the front of the ship is armed with 6 forward launchers. One would be placed next to each of the current ones, then the nose of the Defiant would have duel launchers installed. The PPC cannons would up upgraded to take the increased power. The shields themselves would also be upgraded to take the greater power. So now you have a heavily shielded and very powerful ship. It would be crewed with only what was required. People would be bunked in even tighter quarters. Spare room would be set up for the torpedo storage.

The aft part of the ship would be equiped with two turreted torpedo launchers (one topside, one bottomside). The sides and top and bottom of the Defiant would be covered with phaser arrays so it can still fire at off angles. Also with the added power the new Defiant would have more speed, and of course more manuevering thrusters would be added.

But with all that, the ship would have very little repair capability, not much for a crew to live on, and the fuel would run out fast. It would be docked to specially equiped Nebula class ships that had pods created that could dock 4 of these gunships while the Nebula saucer had the fuel.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

Or instead of Nebula-class refueling ships, you could have an armored freighter to run resupply outside the combat theatre, kind of like a KC-130 tanker plane in space.

[RayCav of ASVS]

The Defiant is a pretty good gunship as it is. I'd just design a smaller one with just 4 pulse lasers but that's it.

[Kamakazie Sith]

What is the fascination with Romulan microsingularities?

[Kamakazie Sith]

No matter what size the ship is, it will still suffer from the same problem all fed starships have. A warp core that explodes at the drop of a hat.

Actually, that was primarily a GCS design flaw. So far, we've seen it happen on few, if any, other ships. But I suppose if you want to suggest a ship with a Fourth-of-July firecracker for a power source, you can. Me, I'll stick with a non-Brahms warp core.

Actually we've seen almost every class of ship shown onscreen explode.

Were those explosions caused by warp core breaches? Just because a ST ship explodes doesn't mean it was caused by a core breach.

[RayCav of ASVS]

Or design a battleship based on the Nebula or even a non-defective Galaxy or Soverign, just dedicate as much space as possible to warfighting.

[Alyeska]

Or design a battleship based on the Nebula or even a non-defective Galaxy or Soverign, just dedicate as much space as possible to warfighting.

I wrote up an idea on one of those a while back. The Nebula had a freaking huge supply of torpedoes while the GCS was massively armed with Type-12 phasers.

[Howedar]

I'd go for some of all, but I'd probably stick with the Nebula if I had to choose one. I wouldn't want a ship that could fight for 5 minutes, then had to go home.

[EmperorMing]

My design would be that largest hull that could be built in the shortest amount of time and designed for ship to ship combat as its main mission.

It *will* have armour of some type (and shields). Turreted or fixed beam wapons witha limited firing arc for greater punch. Many torpedoes arrayed on all sides (most to the front) and/or a gatling type amunition based weapon system. Redundant CIC and firecontrol systems. Increased reactor output to power the weapons and shields. ECM jamming technology of some type, in addition to a cloak. High output sublight drives of some type. And if possible, it will be able to land...

[Knife]

A slightly elongaged sauser type hull that is about 200 or so meters long. The bottom of said sauser is more or less flat and the top slopes in such a way to open up the fireing arc's as much as possible.

Mount two dual pulse phasers on turrets on the port and starboard sides on both ventral and dorsal hulls. The front end of the sauser will have a notch in it that holds a quad torpedo launcher capable of firing either photon or quantam.

Every two phaser turrets will be powered by their own fusion power plant with a capability of using the impulse power as well. The main impulse engine will be on the center line in the rear of the sauser and the warp engines will be placed in armored naccels that are mounted on the rear of the sauser sort of like the bulbs on the back of a Klingon bird of Prey. The main warp core will occupy the space between the two naccels.

The main firing arc's are the forward and port and starboard firing arc's. The gunship use's torpedo barrage at range, then manuvers up close using the cover of its torpedo barrage and goes to guns. With 4 turrets able to fire forward or 4 to the starboard and or port, the ship will engage and finish off its target.

Or maybe not.

[Isolder74]

I'd use a Nebula class hull(has plenty of space) remove all but a dozen of the Luxury suite quarters. Then use the extra space to add extra power reactors and larger weapons stores. place 12 gatling quantum Torpedo tubes into the front of dish section also include the option of adding 10 more tubes in that weapons pod thing. double the phaser arrays and use pulse phaser arrays in the strips to allow them have a rapid fire capability if needed(read Point defence). Replace the warp core with a safer one and have electro-mag auto drop system so that dropping the core simply require pressing a switch to eject it.

[Moonshadow]

i'd take a class of ship seen only on a Computer display in TMP and in the Starfleet Battles Game.

I'll start off with an Old Salidin Class Destroyer( a Connie saucer and neck with a single Nacelle). I'll put Defiant style armor and shields on it. Then i'll replace her original Phasers with Pulse Phasers( that includes mounts in the front and on the sides). I'll mount 2 Torp launchers in the forward section of the saucer that can fire any kind of Torpedo, including Romulan Plasma Torps. Also i'll mount Phaser Strips in key areas all over the ship.( two on the rear of the saucer for example) Then i'll install some pop-up weapons turrets sort of like the ones on DS9( although they would be on a smaller scale). And who said i can't add some SW weaponry to her? I'll give her some good old Ion cannons for good measure. For running fights i'll mount a third Torp launcher and of course theres those phasers strips i mentioned. I'll also have one of my Ion Cannons rear mounted. Her engines will be replaced with Klingon Bird of Prey impulse engines while retaining the pre-refit Connie look. For Warp she'll have the Old nacelle gutted and refit with coils from an Intrepid class. She'll use a warp core of a completely new design thats powerful enough and won't explode if you look at it wrong. She won't require a big crew because she's only the size of a Pre-refit Connie Saucer . What space is left over from the mods will go to living quarters( modest, neither Spartan like a Defiant, nor extravagant like a Galaxy class) and a Sickbay.

[Guest]

It's been agreed in previous threads that the Miranda class was a tough wee ship. Take that hull, scrap the science shit replace the phasers with defiant style pulse phasers, and upgrade the Torp launchers to Q-Torps, Add extra poer generators ot fill the space left by thr science equipment and get the toughest armor you can find. After all it's suposed to be a gunship not destroyer or cruiser.

[Tsyroc]

I'd use a Nebula class hull(has plenty of space) remove all but a dozen of the Luxury suite quarters. Then use the extra space to add extra power reactors and larger weapons stores. place 12 gatling quantum Torpedo tubes into the front of dish section also include the option of adding 10 more tubes in that weapons pod thing. double the phaser arrays and use pulse phaser arrays in the strips to allow them have a rapid fire capability if needed(read Point defence). Replace the warp core with a safer one and have electro-mag auto drop system so that dropping the core simply require pressing a switch to eject it.

If you're going to use that platform you could also tack one of those monster sized phaser cannons that was on the "All Good Things..." version of the Enterprise-D

[Isolder74]

I'd use a Nebula class hull(has plenty of space) remove all but a dozen of the Luxury suite quarters. Then use the extra space to add extra power reactors and larger weapons stores. place 12 gatling quantum Torpedo tubes into the front of dish section also include the option of adding 10 more tubes in that weapons pod thing. double the phaser arrays and use pulse phaser arrays in the strips to allow them have a rapid fire capability if needed(read Point defence). Replace the warp core with a safer one and have electro-mag auto drop system so that dropping the core simply require pressing a switch to eject it.

If you're going to use that platform you could also tack one of those monster sized phaser cannons that was on the "All Good Things..." version of the Enterprise-D

I forgot about those things

[EmperorMing]

I'd use a Nebula class hull(has plenty of space) remove all but a dozen of the Luxury suite quarters. Then use the extra space to add extra power reactors and larger weapons stores. place 12 gatling quantum Torpedo tubes into the front of dish section also include the option of adding 10 more tubes in that weapons pod thing. double the phaser arrays and use pulse phaser arrays in the strips to allow them have a rapid fire capability if needed(read Point defence). Replace the warp core with a safer one and have electro-mag auto drop system so that dropping the core simply require pressing a switch to eject it.

If you're going to use that platform you could also tack one of those monster sized phaser cannons that was on the "All Good Things..." version of the Enterprise-D

Mmmm, spinal mount cannon...One shot ship killer!