Theoretical limits of Star Trek technology for warships.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, then, what would you say are the reasons for the Borg using such a distributed system of massive multiple redundancy so successfully, if they are not the surface reasons I propose? And how would you replicate the effectiveness of that design strategy in a ship that is being operated by a normative humanoid species rather than the Collective?

[Starglider]

Well, then, what would you say are the reasons for the Borg using such a distributed system of massive multiple redundancy so successfully, if they are not the surface reasons I propose?

Ideological. They get away with it because their technology base is substantially more advanced than most of their competitors, but it's notable that the other very advanced races we see (e.g. the Voth, even the far-future Federation) use conventional ship designs. The Borg setup holds up well enough against being hammered by large numbers of much smaller ships, as the outer hull layers get trashed but no substantial damage is done to the bulk of the ship (which can then regenerate). It does not work against serious firepower from species of comparable advancement, e.g. the species 8172 bioships blow entire cubes into flaming debris fields.

Incidentally the most plausible rationalisation I've seen for Borg cube design and shape was actually in Star Trek Armada 2, where small cubes can fuse into bigger cubes. As I recall the Shatner books had the same concept but taken further, where thousands of mini cubes could fuse into progressively bigger cubes until they made a giant cube, before splitting up again as needed. The operational flexibility provided by that would be very useful for the normal Borg modus operandi (piecemeal assimilation of assorted much less advanced species), but not worth the massive performance costs in a dedicated military force facing comparable opposition.

And how would you replicate the effectiveness of that design strategy in a ship that is being operated by a normative humanoid species rather than the Collective?

Borg ships are like mecha; they only work at all because of highly advanced technology, and if you apply that same technology to conventional designs, the conventional designs will curbstomp them. Voyager's casual defeat of multiple borg cubes in 'Endgame' seems to support this.

[Starglider]

There was a steel sphere suspended right next to I think it was Ivy Mike with a layer of graphite over it, which was completely undamaged with just graphite ablation despite being directly exposed to the fireball. Granted it was something like ten feet in diameter but armour 4 meters thick would not be that difficult to accomplish I think, nor would alternating it with graphite filled spaces.

P.S. I missed the 'graphite filled spaces' part, which is a reasonable idea if we were talking about nuclear warheads. However there is a very significant difference between nuclear and AM weapons. The bulk of the radiation output of a vacuum nuclear initiation will be hard X-rays, of around 100 keV photon energy, with some neutrons and a relatively small amount of gamma. The first millimetre of steel will absorb about 75% of the X-rays; this is what allows the ablation effect to work, because a thin outer layer is superheated into plasma, while energy transfer to the bulk of the material is limited (the same principle as ablative heat shields). An AM weapon produces hard gamma at over 100 MeV (from the antiprotons, with a little soft gamma at 511 keV from the positrons), which has a half-value attenuation distance in steel of about 5m, and fast mesons, which are also extremely penetrating. Put simply, this means that the ablation strategy won't work. Not only will your armor be vaporised in bulk, it won't even prevent the guts of your ship from being cooked and strongly irradiated.

[Junghalli]

Fandom has suggested the photonic shockwave from Voyager as a reason for not having point defense on ships.

It doesn't make much sense though. Even if blowing up the bomb a ways away from your ship still hurts you, simple physics says it's going to hurt you less than it would if it was a contact detonation, and the further away you can blow up the bomb the less it'll hurt you. Remember, every time you double the distance between yourself and the explosion you reduce the amount of energy that hits your ship by a factor of 4 (assuming they aren't shaped charges).

And seriously, a hundred reactors? Two dozen engine rooms? Just like in ST where power generation scales that way!

In fairness, by the mass estimates I've been able to find her monster ship is something like 150 times the mass of a Galaxy class starship, so those reactors aren't exactly heavily miniaturized. Assuming the ship's power is supposed to scale up with mass (and it should, or else what's the point of making it so huge?) we're talking 100 reactors each individually more powerful than a Galaxy's warp core.

At this point such a highly distributed network of reactors might actually just be more efficient than a single big reactor, because you might be running into serious scaling issues with a reactor 15 or 150 times as powerful as the one on one of the Federation's biggest starships.

By the way, this assumes that fusion reactors aren't bulkier and more massive than M/AM reactors of equal power. This is a huge assumption, given that Trek M/AM reactors are obviously significantly superior to fusion ones in some way or else Starfleet presumably wouldn't be going to all the trouble of using antimatter. Granted, it's possible the advantage lies entirely in the fact you need a much smaller fuel tank if you're using antimatter - but there's the whole "impulse, we can outrun them" and impulse=fusion speculation thing from TOS, which at least tentatively suggests M/AM powered ships actually do have performance advantages instead of just endurance ones. It's not exactly hugely unlikely when you consider a fusion reactor has to work hard to keep the fuel in a state where fusion actually happens, whereas with M/AM you just have to feed the reactant into the chamber and the reaction will take care of itself.

Duchess, if you're reading this, that last point may be something you want to think about. Making your ship fusion powered may entail sacrifices in performance vs. an antimatter-powered ship of the same mass.

[Stark]

Good point on scale; I'd missed that. Not sure

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There was a steel sphere suspended right next to I think it was Ivy Mike with a layer of graphite over it, which was completely undamaged with just graphite ablation despite being directly exposed to the fireball. Granted it was something like ten feet in diameter but armour 4 meters thick would not be that difficult to accomplish I think, nor would alternating it with graphite filled spaces.

P.S. I missed the 'graphite filled spaces' part, which is a reasonable idea if we were talking about nuclear warheads. However there is a very significant difference between nuclear and AM weapons. The bulk of the radiation output of a vacuum nuclear initiation will be hard X-rays, of around 100 keV photon energy, with some neutrons and a relatively small amount of gamma. The first millimetre of steel will absorb about 75% of the X-rays; this is what allows the ablation effect to work, because a thin outer layer is superheated into plasma, while energy transfer to the bulk of the material is limited (the same principle as ablative heat shields). An AM weapon produces hard gamma at over 100 MeV (from the antiprotons, with a little soft gamma at 511 keV from the positrons), which has a half-value attenuation distance in steel of about 5m, and fast mesons, which are also extremely penetrating. Put simply, this means that the ablation strategy won't work. Not only will your armor be vaporised in bulk, it won't even prevent the guts of your ship from being cooked and strongly irradiated.

Do we know how federation ships defend against repeated hits by anti-matter missiles, then? Because clearly some of them survive a considerable number of photon torpedoes.


P.S. Performance loss due to use of fusion is expected, though a hypothesized metastable metallic hydrogen would have nearly the same energy density by volume as the storage tanks on the Enterprise. That said it seems that the Federation ships derive little gain from M/AM, As Mike's analysis here is that the efficiency of the M/AM reactions they use could be as little as 1.3%--which fusion can certainly match.

[Anguirus]

By the way, this assumes that fusion reactors aren't bulkier and more massive than M/AM reactors of equal power. This is a huge assumption, given that Trek M/AM reactors are obviously significantly superior to fusion ones in some way or else Starfleet presumably wouldn't be going to all the trouble of using antimatter.

Conversely, DS9 uses fusion reactors and it ripped a large swathe through an attacking Klingon fleet. It's obviously far more powerful than, say, a Galaxy-class starship. So fusion reactors are capable of powering ship-killing phasers and powerful shields.

The Cardassians may just be really good at power generation for some reason, if we take into account Voyager's ridiculous "Dreadnaught."

I also wonder if TNG uses different M/AM technology than TMP-Enterprise. Scott seemed very confident that an uncontrolled M/AM reaction would take out V'Ger, which is larger and more powerful than almost anything else we've seen in Trek. TNG's "warp core breeches" are devastating but they don't seem to cause that much of a boom. The Feds also should be able to make much more powerful missiles to kill Borg ships amd such if they can create a highly efficient M/AM weapon (or just use LOTS of both). Of course, if you only consider the films then the E-A is much faster than any TNG ship, so obviously there are some inconsistencies/retconning.

[Stark]

DS9 also used 3 giant fusions, right? Aren't they each larger than a starship? It makes sense for it to use fusion (for obvious reasons) but it doesn't necessarily scale.

Of course that probably won't matter for a 150x Galaxy wankship.

[Batman]

Um- DS9 is mostly EMPTY SPACE so it doesn't have ROOM for power plants larger than a 'starship' (assuming 'starship' denotes something E-Nil or approximate in volume as opposed to anything that can go FTL).
As for DS9's OFFENSIVE firepower that was mostly if not exclusively photorps so power generation wouldn't really figure into it (in fact I don't recall DS9 actually HAVING phasers, but then it's been a while).

[Stark]

Isn't the entire bottom of the central hub the powerplants?

Oh sorry Batman thinks 'starship' = 'biggest starship ever built by the Federation'. Oh you meant E-nil. Isn't DS9 like, 3km across? Can't it dock Galaxy/Nebula on the outer ring? I thought the central hub was more than 800m across?

Fair point about the (laughably inaccurate) torps though - although perhaps they were fed from DS9's store of fuel for starships. God knows how they'd move it to the 20+ launchers, though.

[Junghalli]

Conversely, DS9 uses fusion reactors and it ripped a large swathe through an attacking Klingon fleet. It's obviously far more powerful than, say, a Galaxy-class starship. So fusion reactors are capable of powering ship-killing phasers and powerful shields.

Stark beat me to it. DS9 is also huge and immobile, so it can have much larger reactors than any Federation ship. That doesn't mean a fusion reactor could not be inferior to an M/AM reactor of the same size.

Of course that probably won't matter for a 150x Galaxy wankship.

Yeah, the sheer size of the thing seems rather overkill for most Alpha Quadrant opponents. For the same resources you could build ten ships and each one of them would still be able to take on 15 times its number in GCS-sized vessels, and the ten ships will have a lot more strategic flexibility than the one giant ship.

[Batman]

Isn't the entire bottom of the central hub the powerplants?
Oh sorry Batman thinks 'starship' = 'biggest starship ever built by the Federation'. Oh you meant E-nil.

Yeah, I did. That was probably why I SAID E-Nil.

Isn't DS9 like, 3km across? Can't it dock Galaxy/Nebula on the outer ring? I thought the central hub was more than 800m across?

Make up your mind. DS9 can EITHER be all all of 3 km across OR have the central hub be 800m.

[Anguirus]

As for DS9's OFFENSIVE firepower that was mostly if not exclusively photorps so power generation wouldn't really figure into it (in fact I don't recall DS9 actually HAVING phasers, but then it's been a while).

They have phasers in WotW, which kill shielded BoPs in one hit. They mostly use torpedoes though.

Stark beat me to it. DS9 is also huge and immobile, so it can have much larger reactors than any Federation ship. That doesn't mean a fusion reactor could not be inferior to an M/AM reactor of the same size.

Well sure, but it's not very big for a starbase, yet it's powerful enough to hold out against a sizable fraction of the Klingon fleet. My point isn't that fusion is just as good as M/AM in this setting...in fact I believe the contrary. I just suspect that fusion is not off the table as a primary power source for the, ah, wankship.

[Starglider]

Do we know how federation ships defend against repeated hits by anti-matter missiles, then? Because clearly some of them survive a considerable number of photon torpedoes.

Shielding, for the most part. However observed photon torpedo yield is often down in the tens to hundreds of kilotons, and actual hull hits often look more like large conventional explosions (e.g. the Klingon torpedo punching all the way through the Enterprise-A's saucer in ST6) than nuke/AM blasts. Frankly there's no good explanation for this; it doesn't make sense to use a weapon at two or three orders of magnitude below its maximum yield in situations where maximum yield is clearly desirable. Some kind of secondary shielding system within the hull (e.g. the 'polarised hull plating' in Enterprise) would make sense, but AFAIK it's never referenced. However I am assuming that your warship is going to go up against competent designs, which will be using missiles tipped with high-yield fusion devices or multi-kilo AM warheads.

P.S. Performance loss due to use of fusion is expected, though a hypothesized metastable metallic hydrogen would have nearly the same energy density by volume as the storage tanks on the Enterprise.

I'd note that the metastability of metalic hydrogen is a theoretical possibility at this point; AFAIK no one is sure if this will actually work in real life. Though I suppose that makes it ideal fodder for Trek.

That said it seems that the Federation ships derive little gain from M/AM, As Mike's analysis here is that the efficiency of the M/AM reactions they use could be as little as 1.3%--which fusion can certainly match.

True. However the original Trek universe seemed to be developing towards a different basis for propulsion and power generation anyway; the 'Dauntless' quantum slipstream ship had some kind of bizarre compact power core (that looked like a lightning ball). I got the impression that this used some kind of zero point energy extraction similar to that used by quantum torpedoes, and it's quite possible that that is what powers Borg ships.

[avatarxprime]

Fandom has suggested the photonic shockwave from Voyager as a reason for not having point defense on ships.

It doesn't make much sense though. Even if blowing up the bomb a ways away from your ship still hurts you, simple physics says it's going to hurt you less than it would if it was a contact detonation, and the further away you can blow up the bomb the less it'll hurt you. Remember, every time you double the distance between yourself and the explosion you reduce the amount of energy that hits your ship by a factor of 4 (assuming they aren't shaped charges).

I think it's not about damage, but the adverse effects of the photonic shockwave. The description at Memory-Alpha is that the shockwave will disable ships that it effects, the closer the boom the more the ship is disabled. It's possible the various ST powers would rather just try to absorb or dodge the hit rather than get large sections of their ship disabled. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, because as you mention, just kill the torpedo from farther away. Maybe there is a certain safety zone in which you can kill a torp without experiencing negative effects, but after that it's better just to take the hit. Also the shockwave appears to be mostly planar for some reason.

DS9 also used 3 giant fusions, right?

According to Memory-Alpha DS9 has 6 fusion reactors that make up the entire ventral end of the central core. Based on that each is probably somewhere around the size of two Runabouts.

They have phasers in WotW, which kill shielded BoPs in one hit. They mostly use torpedoes though.

Those phasers were specifically created by the production team for WotW. According to them the phasers used by DS9 are Type XI, which are used for planetary defense. It might not be feasible to place such phasers on this ship.

[Junghalli]

P.S. Performance loss due to use of fusion is expected, though a hypothesized metastable metallic hydrogen would have nearly the same energy density by volume as the storage tanks on the Enterprise.

Remember, however, that it is mass, not volume, that's going to make a difference in achievable acceleration. Your ship, carrying around all this fuel, will be more massive than an M/AM powered ship. It will therefore require more energy to accelerate as per simple physics, and so it will either have lower acceleration and hence less tactical manueverability or it will need more power and therefore need to devote more mass and volume to engines and power plant.

Like I said, it's not unreasonable to assume that Starfleet actually has a good reason for using antimatter.

If you want to avoid antimatter maybe giving your ship a Romulan style artificial singularity power plant is something to consider.

That said it seems that the Federation ships derive little gain from M/AM, As Mike's analysis here is that the efficiency of the M/AM reactions they use could be as little as 1.3%--which fusion can certainly match.

Not quite. M/AM annihilation is 9 X 10^16 joules/kg. 1.3% of that is 1.17 X 10^15 joules/kg. That's about 1.9 times the energy density of deuterium fusion (6.2 X 10^14 joules/kg). Even at 1.3% efficiency M/AM is still the superior reaction, at least in terms of raw energy density.

That said, Mike himself said that number could also quite possibly have something to do with the mechanics of the self-destruct rather than the efficiency of the reactor.

The exact quote:

The self-destruct sequence occurs in the warp core; the ship simply dumps its entire matter/antimatter storage into its warp core at once, so the limited yield of the self-destruct sequence may suggest poor efficiency for the warp core, perhaps as low as 1.3% (although Federation cultists are loathe to give up their ridiculous and unscientific 100% efficiency assumptions). It is possible that the efficiency of the self-destruct is so low precisely because so much fuel is being dumped into the warp core at once, but this means that we can establish that the range of efficiency is somewhere above 1.3% and somewhere below 100%.

[Batman]

At the risk of looking like a complete fool (and let's face it, I'm used to that ) the TM was debunked eons ago and the one time we actually SAW the self-destruct used (that I remember, namely the death of the E-Nil) doesn't say beans about the efficiency of the Warp Core what with those occurring all over the ship like modern day scuttling charges.

[Starglider]

The efficiency of the warp core must be reasonably high simply due to the fact that the ship isn't glowing red hot across its entire surface. AFAIK Trek has no 'neutrino radiators' or similar ultratech ways of dumping waste heat.

[Batman]

Ahem. Subspace?
Not that I DISAGREE, and to my knowledge it was never USED to explain how Warp cores dealt with waste heat.

[Catman]

Gene Roddenberry's ship design rules, as I recall it, were that the nacelles needed to be in pairs, symmetrical across the axis of travel, and have a line of sight on each other. The Romulan D'Deridex, Klingon Bird of Prey, and Federation fuselage with pylons are all very different solutions to get around these constraints.

The obvious solution on a ship like this is to mount them in armoured blisters forming an X along the hull. The design would end up looking like a more symmetrical version of Home One. The clever thing is that any nacelle has the line of sight to any other TWO, so you don't need to use the same pair if one of each pair gets knocked out, so even if you lose half your nacelles you'd have a 50/50 chance of still being able to go to warp under those constraints.

Something like the Defiant, then, only with 2 matched pairs of nacelles? The Defiant had some of the most defense-minded placement of warp nacelles, to my mind.

The Niagara-class shows a take on another concept, of three nacelles, with each one having a line of sight on the other two. The Freedom-class is purported to be a ship with only one nacelle. Both of these two were constructed as explicitly blown-to-shit, though, so whether either had an even number of nacelles when whole is up for grabs. Memory Alpha seems to indicate that the Kelvin's upper pylon did not house a nacelle, but again, the veracity of that is questionable.

The upper pylon doesn't house a nacelle, but rather a stardrive section. I saw it quite clearly on screen.

[Batman]

You might want to elaborate on that because a Star Trek ship's warp nacelles ARE its stardrive section.

[Stark]

He obviously means it's the engineering/powerplant section (the equivalent of the Enterprise secondary hull). The nacelles are NOT the stardrive section; they're a COMPONENT of the stardrive section.

[Batman]

Yes they are (at least as I understand it). They're absolutely POWERED by the Warp Core located in the Engineering hull, but the actual STARDRIVE parts of it are in the nacelles. Especially as we know they can, if need be, powered off the impulse reactors, which (in the case of the refit Constitution class at least) apparently are in the saucer section.

[Stark]

What? The only place in ST I've ever heard the scifi term 'stardrive' used is in the TM, to refer to the entire 'headless chicken' engineering section after separation. Are you just being a sophistic cunt and saying that the nacelles are the 'stardrive section' because they're the 'section' of the ship that 'drives' it to the 'stars'?

[Batman]

What? The only place in ST I've ever heard the scifi term 'stardrive' used is in the TM, to refer to the entire 'headless chicken' engineering section after separation. Are you just being a sophistic cunt and saying that the nacelles are the 'stardrive section' because they're the 'section' of the ship that 'drives' it to the 'stars'?

The term 'yes' comes to mind because that's EXACTLY what a stardrive is. There's exactly ZERO evidence for the Warp Core being essential to the operation of a Warp drive other than a power source.