What does it take?

[The Enterpriser]

What adjustments are necessary to the Starfleet's ship and personnel equipment in order for it to be considered realistic and mostly common sense? We assume that this can be done only with existing technologies. (This is more ST redesign post then ST vs SW).

I think the most common "warp core scratch" theory is a bit out of date now since we were shown that a Sovereign-class can fight without blowing up it's core (or ejecting it) in serious combat, we finally saw conventional combat in Nemesis. This is of course a stretch but perhaps they fixed their cores? It's still a bit too sensitive (remember the hit which took the Enterprise-E out of warp?)...

Your take?

[Darth Wong]

Get rid of all their personnel weapons and replace them with something that makes sense (say, with iron sights so they can AIM the fucking things, for starters).

Get rid of LCARS touch-screens and replace them with buttons and switches. Put covers over important switches.

Do not make the warp core visible. Real reactors are buried under a maze of piping, armour, etc. The only reason to make the guts of the thing visible is techno-wanking.

Helmets and body armour. We've seen how packing crates are routinely used as cover in surface battles; if a packing crate can stop phaser fire, it should be possible to design body armour. And there's simply no excuse for not using helmets.

Military discipline. Enlisted personnel who did NOT go to Starfleet Academy.

Redesign the ships so they look more like Defiant, without these long pylons everywhere.

Perhaps a better question is: what would not change if we tried to make it feel more realistic?

[The Enterpriser]

I think it would be a nice combo if they introduced holography into the main bridge, if they have holographic projectors there why not use them?

eg. Create virtual repair crewment, benefits: you get good repair personnel, they ain't goofy, they don't sleep and they only use power

More benefits include eg. replicate and immediately repair systems which are damaged (by transporting the old materials into a recycler and transporting the replicated materials back to replace the damaged ones).
This way damage is almost not seen, not all components can be replaced but rickety bridges and basic flatscreens (which refuse to functions) can be replaced.

Transporters would eat a lot of energy that way, a possible replacement would be perhaps a holographic "hunk" model which can lift and carry the equipment??? It's a bit farfetched, but Holography is a wonderful invention and Trek just uses it wrong.

This should be a secondary system as we all know what holographic systems are when it comes to safety.


BTW, how do you mean replace with buttons? Like in TWOK? Or like in ENT with buttons and touchscreen combination?

[Master of Ossus]

I think he means like a keypad.

If you are going to use holograms on the bridge, you may as well have 3D tactical projections. I imagine those would assist the captain and commanding officers tremendously over the viewscreens. In Sacrifice of Angels, Dukat and Weyoun were using a two dimensional, flat projection to coordinate a battle taking place some distane away! Three dimensional projections would offer a much better perspective of combat.

[The Enterpriser]

Yeah 3D screens are something I've been waiting on trek since way before TNG, hey take a look at ROTJ, it worked very well and it doesn't blow the budget either

It would look a lot cooler and it's very practical as well

[Darth Wong]

Holographic repair systems? Let's see; we'll replace crewers with a repair system that is itself based on fragile equipment and requires power, so it won't work if the ship is heavily damaged or low on power ... which is precisely when you need a repair system.

Better luck next idea, pal.

[The Enterpriser]

This should be a secondary system as we all know what holographic systems are when it comes to safety.

Hehe Perhaps I didn't clarify myself, like you said holographic emitters and who knows what not are easily damaged under low-power or high-damage conditions, holographic systems would be low-maintmance system for standard systems, this could allow the engineering crews to do the more important tasks.

Naturally, you can't expect holograms to work in combat, but that then almost kills the purpose of the repair system It could be used as a low-priority repair system...Hell if crewmen use it for their fantasies how hard can it be to adapt it to something useful?

It's all farfetched of course...

[Darth Wong]

Actually, I would prefer to see more decentralization and manually operated systems, which will make the ship more battleworthy.

For example, why are all the weapons on the ship controlled from a central location with no local override? Suppose the control circuits from the bridge to a phaser array at the back of the ship are cut? This has happened many times in TNG, and with no local control, the phasers simply go dead.

[SWPIGWANG]

Perhaps I didn't clarify myself, like you said holographic emitters and who knows what not are easily damaged under low-power or high-damage conditions, holographic systems would be low-maintmance system for standard systems, this could allow the engineering crews to do the more important tasks.

Doctor's mobile emitter?

With their wankfest holo-programing capacity.....

Do not make the warp core visible. Real reactors are buried under a maze of piping, armour, etc. The only reason to make the guts of the thing visible is techno-wanking.

uh...ease of maintance?....wait this is trek we are talking about....... hmmm...

[Eleas]

Your take?

The warp nacelles are still too vulnerable. For that to be considered even halfway realistic, one would have to pull a Defiant on all of them.

[The Enterpriser]

Isn't it a lot more difficult to maintain a warp core when it's buried deep within the starship with armor and mazes of pipes? It would probably be accessible with jeffries tubes only, and we know how problematic they can be...

Maybe just use 10 foot blast doors?

Too bad Exocomps didn't work out

[Ghost Rider]

No more than current tech...too bad they don't even take the same levels of safety or redundancies that current tech does.

[HemlockGrey]

Transport disruptors on the ship, to scramble boarders.

Similarly, dedicated boarding-shuttles, marines, and prize crews. More compact design, no seperating saucers, no windows, and a bridge buried in the center of the ship.

Make that two or three bridges, all fully manned in the event of a battle and a clearly defined chain of command that works in such a way so that the counselor does not take command of the ship two or three steps down line.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Let "Bad Things" happen, and let the characters LEARN from it, let them have nightmares about those "Bad Things" (I don't want to go there, remember what happened). Let them have Triumphs, give them hope and inspiration, noble sacrifices, bring them Up again and again. Thus we will see continuity, continuity leads, to insight, insight leads to less/no technobable, no technobable means no reset switch, no reset swich means no B&B.

[Greylock]

1 Get rid of those Jerrys tubes there well stupid in itself , I only see it as a sign that they are welcoming invasion giving there foes ample crawl spaces to get all over there own ship , and I bet with the way those things web all over the place that it would be a great waste of space ...

2 as noted above with getting rid of those pylons , get rid of the necks as well , it makes the entire design of the ship flimsy.

3 with addition to those buttons and swiches , I would like to see manual crank valves in some operations, you know just incase the computer Is failing or scrued up that you can do repair operations without 100 percent computer assistance

4 with so many docking bays on the ship , with the runabouts I would think that they should create some kind of fighter crafts as well, having there capitol ships actually deploy fighter wings when in a battle operation.

5 completely redo the phasers to have a trigger (like the ones on the guns we have now) as well as a good grip.

[SWPIGWANG]

uhhhh.... Warp nacels and pylons exists because of the weird nature of warp drives. Saying it should be elimated is like saying we should cut wings off a 747 because it looks flimsy. There is a reason we don't use lifting bodies for all our aircraft, and the same limitation may apply to UFP warp drives.

I doubt Startrek ships can be manually flown like people suggested here. After all, forget flying a Su-47 without fly by wire. In that context, it touch screens and such might not be a liability as some might think.

[Eleas]

uhhhh.... Warp nacels and pylons exists because of the weird nature of warp drives. Saying it should be elimated is like saying we should cut wings off a 747 because it looks flimsy. There is a reason we don't use lifting bodies for all our aircraft, and the same limitation may apply to UFP warp drives.

But you can armor them and have them flush to the hull, which should be mandatory.

I doubt Startrek ships can be manually flown like people suggested here. After all, forget flying a Su-47 without fly by wire. In that context, it touch screens and such might not be a liability as some might think.

Why should that be impossible, and why should fly-by-wire necessitate touch screens?