Is a Federation Dreadnought possible?

[Anguirus]

^ Not that I can think of, and I think that's because if the character actually succeeded at the majority of things that he did he'd be an insufferable Gary Stu.

Even what with all the failure, he hooks up with Jadzia, is usually commanding either Defiant or DS9 at any given time, has to turn down command of the whole fucking Klingon Empire, beats up more Klingons than James Kirk, and gets to play the wise/savvy outsider to Klingons and Feddies alike. And he achieved all this from starting as a glorified Redshirt in TNG. He even gets an unflattering TVTrope named after him!

Considering the high regard other officers hold him in, though, his incompetence does wear on you. It's not new, either, in TNG he missed more often than he hit with both ship's phasers and hand units.

Although I have to point out that the blowing up Klingon civilians thing was a total frame job. Worf had no way of knowing that the Klingon Empire was wasting a whole ship in an expensive, convoluted, and ridiculous plan to discredit him rather than fighting an actual battle...if his read on the situation had been right he would have blown that battle cruiser to PIECES in one shot and gotten a nice shiny medal.

[Oskuro]

On Worf being kicked around, there's a trope (on that site) dedicated to him. Essentially, the point is to make badass baddies look more badass by being able to effortlessly bitchslap Worf around, since he's supposed to be the badassest of all.

[JGregory32]

Getting back on topic, dreadnoughts are actually named after HMS Dreadnought as in "this ship shall fear nothing." The design was seen as so advanced and powerful that every other navy began building ships along similar lines to combat HMS Dreadnought. This essentially turned into a bit of a boondoggle as the resulting ships were generally seen as to valuable to actually risk in conflict and once the carrier began to mature dreadnoughts were essentially useless.

That said the role of the Dreadnought is relatively simple, they are meant to the be the core of a fleet and engage and destroy anything smaller than themselves they can reach.

Sovereigns already fulfill that role.

There was that episode of Voyager where the Federation was experimenting with a miracle wankship that seemed to be designed to fulfill that role in some manner.

Now if only we could get a proper Federation carrier design.

BTW: In the books and other non-cannon official material there is a Drednought design, an explanation on why it is built and why the Federation doesn't move forward with it. Good book as I recall.

[Stark]

It's just a milestone class name; it's not like anyone would be building 'battleships' and 'dreadnoughts' at the same time anyway, and 'super dreadnoughts' very quickly became the standard battleship type. People who make stupid role playing games are just stupid, and it's largely the result of stupid crap like calling the Galaxy an 'explorer-class' even thuogh it can fight and win against everyone else's battleships.

[takemeout_totheblack]

I wonder how cost effective Defiant class ships are. They're small but they have all that Nth-level shielding and ablative armor in addition to those pulsed-phaser 'fuck-you' cannons and Q-torps/photorps. They're much more maneuverable than most starfleet ships and have comparable warp speed, so why not just build a swarm of then and keep them in storage until needed? Do Defiant Class ships have some sort of prohibitively expensive component I don't know about? I remember there being complaints about its drive system, but that was fairly early into it's run and the problem did really seem to come up too often.

[takemeout_totheblack]

Edit:
*didn't seem to come up too often

[Anguirus]

Now if only we could get a proper Federation carrier design.

Does the Akira not satisfy you?

[Batman]

Why would a Federation carrier design be DESIRABLE? Modern day carriers are king because
a) aircraft can move massively faster than naval ships can,
b) can go places naval ships can't, and
c) CAN kill targets massively larger and resilient than they are. The same is NOT true for Star Trek. Trek parasite craft are ROUTINELY slower than full-size starships, have completely inadequate firepower to deal with full-size starships, AND anywhere they can go, a starship can too, and FASTER.

[Vehrec]

That isn't really true; you build the biggest ships you can to get an advantage.

No you don't. You build the biggest ship you THINK YOU NEED. That very well MAY include building the biggest ships you CAN, but only because you think you NEED them. There's numerous examples in real world history where nations did exactly that-NOT build the biggest ships they could, because they didn't see any need for them.

Like the Tillman Battleship study number IV-2? With it's fifteen 18 inch guns and 80,000 tons displacement?

Yeah, unless there's a reason to take that giant step forward in cost and resources to make a huge ship, there's no impulse to do so.

[JGregory32]

Why would a Federation carrier design be DESIRABLE? Modern day carriers are king because
a) aircraft can move massively faster than naval ships can,
b) can go places naval ships can't, and
c) CAN kill targets massively larger and resilient than they are. The same is NOT true for Star Trek. Trek parasite craft are ROUTINELY slower than full-size starships, have completely inadequate firepower to deal with full-size starships, AND anywhere they can go, a starship can too, and FASTER.

I always figured a Federation Carrier would actually carry numerous gunboat style ships, kinda a (further) cut down Defiant. Remove the sleeping quarters, medbay, shuttle, and shrink the bridge. The carrier would contain the sleeping quarters, medbays, and reloads for the Q-Torpedos.
*Edit Because the resulting gun-boats would be attached to the carrier they would not need warp-drives meaning you can save even more space and maybe go with a safer powerplant than the standard sneeze-and-it-blows-up M/AM reactor.

It might carry around ten to twenty defiants/gunboats giving it the ability to totally dominate any battlespace.

Throw in a few point defense weapons and a massive sensor system and you have something that MIGHT approach the role of a carrier.

[Revy]

There actually was a Star Trek carrier ship in the Playstation game Invasion (I think it was called), though that's not cannon. It deployed fighter craft that actually were able to go toe to toe with full sized starships, as you frequently had to fight things like a Cardassian cap ship and a Romulan Warbird. I've heard that's pretty much par for the course with space fighter video games though.

[Azron_Stoma]

As I recall there were fighters that could be described as "even more stripped down Defiant classes" in the episode "Sacrifice of Angels" I believe they are commonly called "Peregrine" fighters.

The Valkyrie Fighters in ST Invasion seemed to be more designed after the Venture Class shuttle that Data flew in Insurrection.






I designed a ship a while back, Inspired by Mikes "Engineering & Star Trek" page,

The basic principle was for a vessel designed to bring an Imperial Mindset to a Federation tech base, using the Defiant as the precedent and going from there.

The ship would be about Sovereign to Acclamator in size, and it's main weaponry would be turrets that mount 2 Torpedo launchers and 4 coaxial Pulse Phasers, practically cannibalized from a Defiant hull. rather than waste space by trying to fit the entire launcher into the turret, they would have "unsightly" barrels instead, each turret would have it's own backup fire control system.

I played with the design for quite a while, don't know if any of the sketches still exist. Without a scanner I can't exactly post them anyhow though (I could, I suppose, use paint instead).

I think I settled on 14 turrets total, 7 on the top and 7 on the bottom of the ship, superfiring to the forward arc, and no less than half of the turrets able to fire in any other direction.

2 to either side of the bridge near the rear of the ship, Though Trek ships generally like to have their bridges further from the engineering area, that's what the tower is for, which the Bridge module on the top is itself little more than an elongated Defiant docked with the rest of the ship elongated to support the CIC requirements of the mother vessel. 3 Axial ones in front of the bridge, Symetrical dorsal and ventral turret arrangement.

Also Traditional Phaser strips running along the brim trench, or single barreled Pulse Phaser Turrets.

Hull armour designed to be about 1 meter thick rather than several CM, Bridge was designed to be similar to the Abramsverse bridge
with the Viewscreen overlayed on a window. Note, I designed it long before I even heard Abrams was making a new Trek film. Electrical wiring for the consoles rather than plasma conduits so no more exploding consoles, Armoury carrying both Phaser and Projectile weaponry.

No Jefrees tubes, various hallways are dedicated to maintenance, and each system has it's own dedicated standalone computer separate from the network. can be disconnected from the network manually, then connected to the standalone system in the case of things like "contagion" or if the bridge is compromised, using the crew as the defense against takeover rather than centralized systems.

Main downsides to this design are,

Enormous Cost of the bloody thing and
Possible vulnerabilities of torpedo magazines.

Is that design too wanked out?

Also I apologize in advance if I made any grievous punctuation or grammar mistakes.

[AMT]

Why would a Federation carrier design be DESIRABLE? Modern day carriers are king because
a) aircraft can move massively faster than naval ships can,
b) can go places naval ships can't, and
c) CAN kill targets massively larger and resilient than they are. The same is NOT true for Star Trek. Trek parasite craft are ROUTINELY slower than full-size starships, have completely inadequate firepower to deal with full-size starships, AND anywhere they can go, a starship can too, and FASTER.

I always figured a Federation Carrier would actually carry numerous gunboat style ships, kinda a (further) cut down Defiant. Remove the sleeping quarters, medbay, shuttle, and shrink the bridge. The carrier would contain the sleeping quarters, medbays, and reloads for the Q-Torpedos.
*Edit Because the resulting gun-boats would be attached to the carrier they would not need warp-drives meaning you can save even more space and maybe go with a safer powerplant than the standard sneeze-and-it-blows-up M/AM reactor.

It might carry around ten to twenty defiants/gunboats giving it the ability to totally dominate any battlespace.

Throw in a few point defense weapons and a massive sensor system and you have something that MIGHT approach the role of a carrier.

So in other words, a Mother Ship ala Independence Day, not a carrier.

[JGregory32]

So in other words, a Mother Ship ala Independence Day, not a carrier.

Is there a functional difference between a "mothership" and a carrier?

[Themightytom]

So in other words, a Mother Ship ala Independence Day, not a carrier.

Is there a functional difference between a "mothership" and a carrier?

The Romulans had something simliar in the book "entterprise" and the Romulans called it "The mother ship." Six squadrons of six sublight war birds carried by a warp capable behemoth.

That actually seems pretty practical, offering the same advantages of "multi vector assault mode" that the Prometheus offered.

The problem is there aren't many defensive situations in which a swarm of non FTL ships offers any advantage over say, orbital platforms and space stations. Most of the trek ships draw their power from a warp core so when you strip away the FTL you're really just taking off the nacelles, The only time that wouldn't become a liability would be massive fleet engagements like Chintoka. if you decided say, to intercept the Borg Cube after wolf 359 and instead of the one Fed ship you had a mothership with a dozen parasites, the borg could just go to warp and bypass the parasites.

on the other hand, Fed tech can extend its warp field and tow things with their tractor beams. A carrier deliberately designed to do this could deploy a cloud of little defense satellites that would take forever to kill one by one, and could have some advantages in directing firepower to multiple targets or concentrating on a single target, as was demonstrated in the Multi vector assault mode. Apparently trek shields are a lot less effective when they are pummeled from three different directions.

[Oskuro]

Just wondering, what are the mass limits of transporters? Because a swarm of warp-less fighters could be deployed very quickly if it was possible to just beam them out into position (I can totally picture each fighter having a dedicated telepad on its docking bay). It would also be very useful in the aforementioned scenario where a warp-capable ship just jumps away, as having the fighters return to the mothership would be quicker. Heck, you could keep the fighters in the transporter buffer and rematerialize them in space as soon as the motehrship is back out of warp.

[Azron_Stoma]

Most of the trek ships draw their power from a warp core

Only for warp, not for shields, weapons and, of course, Impulse drives.

In TOS Doomsday machine they could still use phasers even though all the antimatter on the ship was "deactivated"

Space stations, including DS9 itself has no warp core, only a Fusion reactor, and yet it has far more firepower and shielding than any ship in the quadrant.

Runabouts and Shuttlecraft I'm not 100% sure what powers them.

of course they talk about rerouting power from the warp core to other systems from time to time, but It would seem they are very limited in how much power they can put in compared to a Fusion powered space station.

[JGregory32]

The problem is there aren't many defensive situations in which a swarm of non FTL ships offers any advantage over say, orbital platforms and space stations.

Actually if you have a mothership/carrier then it can move from defensive point to defensive point. Something that isn't really practicle with orbital platforms or space stations. Rather than having each planet or member state built fixed defenses you could have a few mothership/carriers move between sectors to respond to the threats as they emerge.

It's an old argument between fixed and mobile defense options. Both are good in certain circumstances and I don't think the argument is every really going to be settled.

[AMT]

So in other words, a Mother Ship ala Independence Day, not a carrier.

Is there a functional difference between a "mothership" and a carrier?

...I guess there isn't.

[Simon_Jester]

Battleship sized requires for there to actually BE any battleships around to judge them in relation to.

Battle. Ship. Battleship.

I'd rule that any large warship that is relatively optimized for combat can be called a "battleship." The Sovereign class qualifies; the Galaxy class, with its civilian accomodations and extensive science labs, does not.

Incidentally, this is the other reason why I don't think a direct analogy works re: wet navy ship roles and starfleet ship roles.
Having said that, battleships are supposed to be the 'heavy hitting' capital ships, aren't they? Well, isn't that exactly what we see Galaxy-class ships do in the Dominion war episodes of DS9?

The prewar semi-civilian Galaxies are probably not battleships, even though they are among the largest ships in known space. Galaxies built during the war may be modified for optimum firepower at the expense of their nonmilitary role, in which case they could easily be classed as battleships.

It's not just that battleships are relatively large, it's that that tonnage is all or nearly all devoted to combat.

A minor sidenote, wasn't the Defiant an actual battleship prototype? As in "once we get rid of all the useless crew space and science labs, we get a much more compact ship"?

...Hmm. I wouldn't say so. Defiant is definitely a warship, optimized for combat, but it's not all that large, nor is it capable of easily overpowering the large but less militarized ships it often has to fight (like USS Lakota). Now, if someone took a Defiant-class and scaled it up to the size of a Galaxy or Sovereign... then you've have a battleship, and probably a very powerful one.

I even explained it in baby talk for morons like you; there is nothing like the need to build a larger ship to mount larger guns to penetrate thicknesses of armour, because eveyrone can hurt everyone. Phasers are physically small. The driving force behind design appears to be FTL speed, range and power system endurance, not giant guns or huge shield generators.

There's a problem with this. By all sanity, larger ships ought to be able to generate more power than their smaller counterparts, and thus overpower a smaller enemy before that enemy can put enough power on target to generate shield breaches.

We normally see this quite well in conflicts between very large ships (like Sovereigns and Galaxies) and very small ships (like Dominion bug ships). There are exceptions that perform well against heavier ships (USS Defiant), but at least some of them are specifically advertised as having unusual firepower for their tonnage.

So there's still an incentive to build heavy capital ships if you're interested in having survivable combat platforms. Of course, this can still take a second place to other, more important concerns (as you say, FTL speed, range, and endurance).

But you would think, you would just think that after all this time the Federation would have got the idea to turn just a LITTLE bit more militaristic in the way they do things! Alas, once more we have the writers to blame for this. After all we can't have actually force of arms save the day OH NO! It always HAS to be the noble and virtuous principles of the Federation that saves things rather then, oh, lets say a fleet of battleships >_<

Hmm. I got the impression that the Federation does become a bit more militaristic and aggressive over the late 24th century. The Original Series Federation was clearly an expansionist power, and its ships were clearly warships, with (relatively) spartan crew quarters and amenities, compared to the later series. But in Next Generation and beyond, the Federation seems to have become a lot more pacifist... but they start to adapt to that after running into first the Borg and then the Dominion. By the time DS9 ends, my impression is that the Federation is starting to shake itself out as a warlike power again, with considerably more effective use of weapons and captains more willing to shoot first and philosophize later.

I wonder how cost effective Defiant class ships are. They're small but they have all that Nth-level shielding and ablative armor in addition to those pulsed-phaser 'fuck-you' cannons and Q-torps/photorps. They're much more maneuverable than most starfleet ships and have comparable warp speed, so why not just build a swarm of then and keep them in storage until needed? Do Defiant Class ships have some sort of prohibitively expensive component I don't know about? I remember there being complaints about its drive system, but that was fairly early into it's run and the problem did really seem to come up too often.

Since they use so much cutting-edge weapon technology, they're probably more expensive ton for ton than a warship armed with more traditional weapons. Also, the complicated electronics, high-energy beam weapons, and exotic power plants are probably more expensive than crew quarters and rec rooms, so a Defiant might well cost as much as the weapon and engine suite of a Galaxy, simply because for practical purposes that's exactly what it is.

[Oskuro]

Can't agree with you on the size issue, Jester. Size increase in real-life battleships was often tied to the need of fitting more guns into the ship, or allowing for a flight deck. Power generation is tied to the actual generator, so a smaller ship housing the same generator will generate the same amount of power, with the added bonus of needing less power to actually move the ship around.

The thing that has been established in Star Trek is that fed ships have a lot of space devoted to living quarters, labs, and other non-combat oriented tasks, plus their quarters are often large and comfortable. If we were to strip a ship of those, it could, as far as power generation permits, house more guns, but upon reaching the point where the generators cannot handle more systems, you either add more generators, or get rid of the remaining space, making the ship smaller.

In other words, size is dependent on capabilities, not the other way around. The only requirement for a ship to be called a battleship is for it to be meant for battle, historical inertia regarding size categories needs not apply to spaceships.

[Simon_Jester]

I still think that a battleship should be relatively large and in the first class as far as combat ability goes. Otherwise the term "battleship" is useless because it has identical meaning to the term "warship." In which case we might as well just say "warship."

"Ship for battle" and "ship for war" could mean the same thing if you really wanted them to, but it's silly to deliberately tweak the meaning of one term when there's another that already matches the definition you want.

[JGregory32]

I still think that a battleship should be relatively large and in the first class as far as combat ability goes. Otherwise the term "battleship" is useless because it has identical meaning to the term "warship." In which case we might as well just say "warship."

What about ships that aren't designed to engage in direct combat? A carrier is a warship but because its not designed to engage another ship directly its not a battleship.

Drone Control ships are another type that come to mind, as well as mine layers both are designed to engage in warfare but not direct combat.

Warship and battleship are not always interchangeable.

[Teleros]

I still think that a battleship should be relatively large and in the first class as far as combat ability goes. Otherwise the term "battleship" is useless because it has identical meaning to the term "warship." In which case we might as well just say "warship."

Not necessarily. Battleships have traditionally been slower than frigates, cruisers etc, but in turn have been the best armed and armoured ships in a fleet. The reason past battleships have been large compared to regular warships is that they've used the extra space to pack in more big guns, armour etc... which doesn't really apply to Star Trek (or at least Starfleet), given the rather luxurious life support and whatnot in most of their big ships. As we've seen with the Defiant, strip out all of that stuff and you'll get a small ship that packs quite a punch, and if it's good enough to take on the enemy's big guns then why bother doing the same in a larger hull when you don't need to? You would have big ships designed primarily for exploration, peacekeeping and so on (ie the regular ships) which are actually larger than the various classes of warship, but less capable in combat.

[Simon_Jester]

What about ships that aren't designed to engage in direct combat? A carrier is a warship but because its not designed to engage another ship directly its not a battleship.

Drone Control ships are another type that come to mind, as well as mine layers both are designed to engage in warfare but not direct combat.

Warship and battleship are not always interchangeable.

Yes; this was kind of my point. Battleships should be powerful direct-combat specialists, because otherwise there's no reason to use the word at all rather than calling them something more generic like "warships."

There are something like half a dozen viable names for light direct-combat specialists, if we choose to use naval-inspired names at all, which we might as well if we're going to describe all these ships in English.

Not necessarily. Battleships have traditionally been slower than frigates, cruisers etc, but in turn have been the best armed and armoured ships in a fleet. The reason past battleships have been large compared to regular warships is that they've used the extra space to pack in more big guns, armour etc... which doesn't really apply to Star Trek (or at least Starfleet), given the rather luxurious life support and whatnot in most of their big ships. As we've seen with the Defiant, strip out all of that stuff and you'll get a small ship that packs quite a punch, and if it's good enough to take on the enemy's big guns then why bother doing the same in a larger hull when you don't need to? You would have big ships designed primarily for exploration, peacekeeping and so on (ie the regular ships) which are actually larger than the various classes of warship, but less capable in combat.

Fair enough, but in that case I'd argue that the Federation simply does not build battleships, because it doesn't need them. It has ships the size of what a battleship would be, but they're not combat optimized. It has ships that are combat optimized, but they're small, and are not necessarily strong enough to beat the larger non-optimized "flagship" classes (the D'Deridex, Galaxy, and Sovereign classes being examples of this).

Battleships need not be slow, but ought to at least be of the (relatively) most powerful class in direct combat. Now, if someone decided to build super-Defiants that were somewhat larger and more heavily armed, and that could reliably take on "flagship" classes, I'd be willing to call that a battleship even though it would still be smaller than the large, tubby flagships.