Is a Federation Dreadnought possible?

[Oskuro]

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.

The problem here is that you are equating size to power, wich does apply in classical naval terms, but is not so in Trek.

Ok, so we could argue that if all Trek ships were to be built like the Defiant, with no non-combat oriented extras, then larger ships would be necessary to house larger power generators and a greater number of weapon systems, and under that constrain the classical naming system would work. That's why size comparisons work in classical navies, since those ships were fully dedicated warships, without anything else taking up space, and thus an increase in capabilities required an increase in size.
But, in Trek, most ships are the equivalent of ocean liners with a few guns strapped on, and despite their size, no one would claim ocean liners are more powerful than smaller gunboats, and that's why a size/power classification is not accurate in this situation.

Of course, since Trek writers can't grasp this concept, I bet they make large ships more powerful than the Defiant just because size matters or something, thus making this discussion harder.

I know that the term 'battleship' feels like it should be big, but that's a gut feeling based on naval tradition, not actual reasoning. There would be similar problems with the term 'Cruiser' for example. What's the difference from ship to cruiser in space?

Also, I agree that 'warship' is the term I'd use for ships designed for war in one way or the other, for example communications vessels, or support/engineering vessels, while anything called 'battleship' should be meant to actually participate in battle. In fact, we could say that all Klingon ships are 'Warships' in one capacity or the next, while the smallish Birds of Prey are more suitable as 'Scouts' than actual 'Battleships'.

[JGregory32]

Thinking about it more it does make a sort of sense that a ship built for exploration should have a impressive weapons loadout.
Going into uncharted territory you never know when you'll encounter someone who thinks all other forms of life in the universe make good sources of Protein.
Having the weaponry necessary to survive the first encounter and report back would be vital.
It would even make sense for these ships to have very flexible weapon suites, as you will not know the capabilities of hostile ships you might encounter.
Warships and battleships on the other hand would probably use very refined and optimized weaponry suites. In this case you know who and what your going to fight and design appropriately.
Oh my god it all makes sense now! Starfleet ships aren't piles of junk but the result of a series of compromise decisions required for long range exploration.
It just sucks that exploration style ships are ALL Starfleet has to offer. Until the Defiant they literally had no ships designed as warships from the ground up. Putting Exploration ships against dedicated battleships would have to result in the Federation getting pasted across the universe.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem here is that you are equating size to power, wich does apply in classical naval terms, but is not so in Trek.

It is, it's just that it's not the only variable. Speaking roughly, you still have a relationship of the form

Militarization*size ~= ship combat power.

Large, poorly militarized ships (the Galaxy class) still beat small poorly militarized ships. Likewise for highly militarized ships- at equal militarization level, the larger ship will win one-to-one. The only confounding factor is that a poorly militarized ship with brute size on its side can matched by a smaller, but more heavily militarized ship.

I contend that "battleship" as a name should be reserved for ships that are both large and heavily militarized. The Galaxy and Sovereign classes are not battleships, because they are not militarized. The Defiant is not a battleship, either, because while it's militarized, it can lose fights to Galaxies and Sovereigns.

I mean yes, clearly a huge ship that amounts to a research vessel with some guns and an antiship missile launcher bolted on is not a battleship. But a pure warship that can lose to that armed research vessel isn't a battleship either.
________

Of course, since Trek writers can't grasp this concept, I bet they make large ships more powerful than the Defiant just because size matters or something, thus making this discussion harder.

And yet, size should matter. Even if it uses a lot of internal volume on non-military applications, a ship like the Galaxy will still have considerable firepower thanks to the space that is military. It's entirely plausible for a Galaxy to beat a Defiant, much as it's plausible for the research ship with an antiship missile launcher to sink a modern frigate if it gets its missile shots in first.

Of course, in real life the research ship is likely to get taken out in turn in a double kill, but the point remains: while the Galaxy class are not warships by today's standards, they are still armed, and fairly well armed by the standards of the setting they're in. The fact that a ship is optimized for war does not automatically make it a Galaxy-killer, if it lacks the weapons fit to do the job.

I know that the term 'battleship' feels like it should be big, but that's a gut feeling based on naval tradition, not actual reasoning. There would be similar problems with the term 'Cruiser' for example. What's the difference from ship to cruiser in space?

Easy. We just strip away the layers of extra meaning that piled onto the word over the last 150 years, and go back to the basic definition. Cruisers cruise. They go out on independent missions to police distant territory, to show the flag in foreign ports, to raid an enemy's commerce and remote installations, and so forth.

So in space, to deserve the name "cruiser," a ship should be long-range, long-endurance, and strong enough that it can be detached for independent operations. In Star Trek, the most logical ships to call "cruisers" are the ones that are relatively militarized and which can be sent on long-range exploration missions, like the Constitution class. Starfleet is, in practice, much more interested in having cruisers than battleships, which makes sense given that its main mission has a lot to do with exploration and less to do with point-blank combat in their core territory. At least, that holds true until the Borg and the Dominion show up... and I'd expect to see Starfleet coming out with larger, more heavily militarized ship designs after those enemies appear on the radar.

And from what I know of Star Trek, after a five to ten year time lag, we do.
________

The reason I keep pushing for this is that I think these categories are actually useful, so long as they are applied intelligently. They won't all apply*, but some of them are technical words that originated for a reason. And some of those reasons still hold in space warfare (at least in Trek), because you're still faced with the old naval problem of design compromises between factors like firepower, protection, and range.

*For example, there is no Star Trek equivalent to the ship category we now call "destroyers," because their capital ships don't normally rely on small escorts to deal with specialized threats.

Also, I agree that 'warship' is the term I'd use for ships designed for war in one way or the other, for example communications vessels, or support/engineering vessels, while anything called 'battleship' should be meant to actually participate in battle. In fact, we could say that all Klingon ships are 'Warships' in one capacity or the next, while the smallish Birds of Prey are more suitable as 'Scouts' than actual 'Battleships'.

Partial agreement. All Klingon ships are "warships," unless they have dedicated science vessels or merchantmen we haven't seen.

But the smaller Birds of Prey are very much intended for use in battle; it's just that they're too weak to be used against larger opponents, except in squadron strength. And unless I'm mistaken they are not scouts in the traditional sense, because they are not intended to avoid combat against comparable tonnage: their mission is not chiefly one of reconnaissance.

So it would be more accurate to use a number of other terms, like "corvette," "frigate," or "gunboat."

[Oskuro]

I think you keep ignoring my main point. The only advantage size provides is more space for gear (be it weapons, armour, power systems or ammo). Two vessels of any kind, with exactly the same amount of equipement, but different sizes, will perform differently, since the larger and thus sluggier and easier to hit vessel will be at a disadvantage.

Thus size, by itself, does not equate power, and, in fact, size is a consequence of the need for increased power, and a negative consequence at that. Impressive as a larger ship might be, it is hindered by its size.

Or, to simplfy it further, take a single torpedo launcher, a single box of ammo, a single generator and a single shield emitter, and fit them either on a Defiant sized ship, or a Galaxy sized ship, with no extras besides the size difference. Wich ship is better in terms of combat? I don't content that a large ship that uses its size to increase its capabilities (say, by having a larger broadside, for example) is more powerful, I just want to point out that size alone does not increase power.

As for the 'Battleship' definition, in this situation we are faced with a fleet (the Feds) whose ships are not optimized for combat due to their exploratory role, so it wouldn't be out of line to have a smaller, more combat oriented vessel be called a 'Battleship', because that is what it might be. What you're proposing is that a 'Battleship' should be larger than those vessels just because, wich makes no sense, since, as has been droned once and again in this thread, size is in function of your needs, not the other way around, and it is desirable to fit more firepower in a smaller ship anyhow.

Imagine for example that there's a limit to the number of weapon systems that can be linked to a warp core, and that dual core ships are too expensive to consider, in such a situation increasing the size of the ship would be entirely pointless.

[Stark]

Thinking about it more it does make a sort of sense that a ship built for exploration should have a impressive weapons loadout.
Going into uncharted territory you never know when you'll encounter someone who thinks all other forms of life in the universe make good sources of Protein.
Having the weaponry necessary to survive the first encounter and report back would be vital.
It would even make sense for these ships to have very flexible weapon suites, as you will not know the capabilities of hostile ships you might encounter.
Warships and battleships on the other hand would probably use very refined and optimized weaponry suites. In this case you know who and what your going to fight and design appropriately.
Oh my god it all makes sense now! Starfleet ships aren't piles of junk but the result of a series of compromise decisions required for long range exploration.
It just sucks that exploration style ships are ALL Starfleet has to offer. Until the Defiant they literally had no ships designed as warships from the ground up. Putting Exploration ships against dedicated battleships would have to result in the Federation getting pasted across the universe.

It's almost like they should develop some kind of 'fleet' technology.

[Oskuro]

What, like the 'fleet' upgrades you had to research in GalCiv2 before you could group ships together? Too expensive, man.

[Stark]

Turns out if you're going to do long-range high-risk exploration you can build a fleet of role-specifc ships instead of one giant ship. We've even seen that several smaller warships are capable of destroying much larger ones (due to the shield mechanic) so this would probably work well.

[JGregory32]

Or, to simplfy it further, take a single torpedo launcher, a single box of ammo, a single generator and a single shield emitter, and fit them either on a Defiant sized ship, or a Galaxy sized ship, with no extras besides the size difference. Wich ship is better in terms of combat? I don't content that a large ship that uses its size to increase its capabilities (say, by having a larger broadside, for example) is more powerful, I just want to point out that size alone does not increase power.

Taking that scenario there are two tradeoffs that come immediately to mind. The first is that the Defiant might be harder to hit because of it's small size and high maneuverability but when it gets hit the odds of something important being destroyed are fairly high. The Galaxy sized ship on the other hand has the opposite problem, it's a bigger target and would get hit more often but its sheer size means it can absorb more damage than the Defiant can, if everything else is equal.
The end result is something of a tie, the Defiant will get hit less but take more damage from each hit while the Galaxy will get hit more often but suffer less damage each time.

Getting back to your point through, a larger ship SHOULD include more weapon suites than a smaller ship which would give it the ability to target and engage multiple ships at once. Something the size of a Defiant could take on a single Galaxy sized opponent at a time for instance while the Galaxy could take on multiple Defiant sized enemies at the same time.

Also in the Star Trek world of precision targeting having multiple weapon suites should give the ship the ability to target multiple critical components on a single enemy at the same time. Say aiming for the engines, bridge, and shield emitters on a single enemy all at the same time.

Size gives you more options for engagement and more options means a better chance of walking away the victor.

[Stark]

Except ST ships seldom fire at more than one target at once and one-vs-many is considered positive even with size disparity.

EDIT Actually, small enemy numbers aren't too bad apparently (probably due to alpha strike then very reduced sustained fire) but more than 3 seems to be a 'you're doomed' situation.

[Oskuro]

Taking that scenario there are two tradeoffs that come immediately to mind. The first is that the Defiant might be harder to hit because of it's small size and high maneuverability but when it gets hit the odds of something important being destroyed are fairly high. The Galaxy sized ship on the other hand has the opposite problem, it's a bigger target and would get hit more often but its sheer size means it can absorb more damage than the Defiant can, if everything else is equal.
The end result is something of a tie, the Defiant will get hit less but take more damage from each hit while the Galaxy will get hit more often but suffer less damage each time.

You're right, I hadn't considered that a less compact design makes subsytem damage less likely, but even then, the larger ship loses because it takes more energy to make it accelerate, thus it is more sluggish in its combat response.

Now, all that multitargetting falls under the category of "use extra size to add more capabilities". What I am arguing here is that size alone does not equal power. How you use that size, on the other hand, does.

[Stark]

Do large ST ships show less vulnerability to subsystem damage?

[JGregory32]

Do large ST ships show less vulnerability to subsystem damage?

In ST:VI A undiscovered country we see the Enterprise get hit several times by torpedoes including one through and through without them disabling systems on the Enterprise.
Of course the Excelsior commanded by Sulu seems to take more damage from a single shot than the multiple hits on Enterprise.
Possibly a reflection that the Excelsior is a design from when hostilities are on the wan while the Constitution class is a full-up war time design.
EDIT: Here's the battle in Question.

[JGregory32]

BTW I make that 8 hits on the Enterprise 2 with the shields down.
The Excelsior seems to take only one hit.
Meanwhile the BOP absorbed eight torpedos before being destroyed. Compare that to the scene in Generations where the Enterprise-D was destroyed by two to three hits and the BOP was destroyed in one.

[Azron_Stoma]

I dunno about you but I'd count the statement "Auxiliary circuits destroyed" as sign of a disabled system.

Wasn't the BOP in Generations supposed to be of the same type as the one in STV, STIII and STIV?


Maybe photorps in TNG are 8x more powerful?

Still it's quite odd that, even as a prototype, Chang's BOP took 8 hits shields down while the Ent-A didn't take nearly as much. Unless Chang's BOP could have shields up while cloaked too. Would make a slight bit more sense, but would raise other questions.

Also no feedback on my design, is it really that bad?

[Oskuro]

Wasn't the BOP in Generations supposed to be of the same type as the one in STV, STIII and STIV?

Considering they reused a fair chunk of the footage, I'd say yes

[Oskuro]

Ghetto Edit: Here is some audiovisual evidence.

Linked because the Youtube tag doesn't like links to specific times in the video (yes, you can do that).

[Simon_Jester]

I think you keep ignoring my main point. The only advantage size provides is more space for gear (be it weapons, armour, power systems or ammo). Two vessels of any kind, with exactly the same amount of equipement, but different sizes, will perform differently, since the larger and thus sluggier and easier to hit vessel will be at a disadvantage.

Agreed; this strikes me as trivially obvious, but I don't have any other complaints about it.

As for the 'Battleship' definition, in this situation we are faced with a fleet (the Feds) whose ships are not optimized for combat due to their exploratory role, so it wouldn't be out of line to have a smaller, more combat oriented vessel be called a 'Battleship', because that is what it might be. What you're proposing is that a 'Battleship' should be larger than those vessels just because, wich makes no sense, since, as has been droned once and again in this thread, size is in function of your needs, not the other way around, and it is desirable to fit more firepower in a smaller ship anyhow.

What I'm proposing is that the Federation Navy has no battleships, if we define "battleship" to mean something consistent with what the word means in real life. They don't need battleships; they make do tolerably well with squadrons of cruisers and with large, low-militarization ships.

I don't think it's necessary to revive the term "battleship" to describe a ship like Defiant, for which that description would be misleading because Defiant is neither large (as battleships classically are) nor capable of reliably beating all opponents not of its own class (as battleships classically are).

Turns out if you're going to do long-range high-risk exploration you can build a fleet of role-specifc ships instead of one giant ship. We've even seen that several smaller warships are capable of destroying much larger ones (due to the shield mechanic) so this would probably work well.

Ideally. On the other hand, your flotilla of specialists are liable to suffer from range limitations and other problems. You might be able to make up for it by mating the flotilla with a mothership that served mainly as a giant flying deuterium tank, I guess.

You're right, I hadn't considered that a less compact design makes subsytem damage less likely, but even then, the larger ship loses because it takes more energy to make it accelerate, thus it is more sluggish in its combat response.

I'm not sure; it can also have more energy, assuming power output scales with the volume and mass dedicated to power generation.

Now, all that multitargetting falls under the category of "use extra size to add more capabilities". What I am arguing here is that size alone does not equal power. How you use that size, on the other hand, does.

Agreed.

[Simon_Jester]

Do large ST ships show less vulnerability to subsystem damage?

In ST:VI A undiscovered country we see the Enterprise get hit several times by torpedoes including one through and through without them disabling systems on the Enterprise.
Of course the Excelsior commanded by Sulu seems to take more damage from a single shot than the multiple hits on Enterprise.
Possibly a reflection that the Excelsior is a design from when hostilities are on the wan while the Constitution class is a full-up war time design.

Hard to say. I mean, the hit on the Excelsior clearly causes some damage, and we see damage control protocols (bulkheads being sealed), but that doesn't mean the ship has suffered crippling injury.

It's also hard to tell if Enterprise took hits that degraded her combat power; all we're sure of is that she didn't lose sensors, drive power, or torpedo launch capability outright.

[Oskuro]

Do large ST ships show less vulnerability to subsystem damage?

Technically, if you were to place a balloon inside an opaque 2m wide cardboard box, and another one inside a 10m wide box, and then try to burst them by shooting the box with a pistol, you'll have an increased chance of requiring more shots to hit the balloon in the large box.

But, of course, Trek ships (and many otehr sci-fi ships, mind you) are sometimes retarded in that hits to the crew sections seem to cause critical failures on systems that shouldn't be there in the first place.

[montypython]

From what I've heard Star Trek Online is planning Tier 6 ships, so Star Battleship type (class) vessels will be popping up there at some point.

[Azron_Stoma]

The Vo'Quv is already the Klingon's Star Destroyer wannabe, or Battlestar if you feel that's more fitting.

[Kamakazie Sith]

BTW I make that 8 hits on the Enterprise 2 with the shields down.
The Excelsior seems to take only one hit.
Meanwhile the BOP absorbed eight torpedos before being destroyed. Compare that to the scene in Generations where the Enterprise-D was destroyed by two to three hits and the BOP was destroyed in one.

Actually, the E-D took 16 hits all directly impacting the hull. At least two of those 16 were photons. It may have taken more than 16, but I only counted hits where I could hear the disrupter or impact sound.

In UDC the first torpedo fired at E-A causes hull damage despite them operating with full shields.

[Themightytom]

It should also point out that the ONE torpedo that hit Chang's ship first caused the bridge to explode and its not a very big ship I doubt that I have a secondary bridge hiding somewhere. That one shot certainly caused enough disarray for the bird of prey to just sit there while it got pummeled, while enterprise after taking multiple hits retained the ability to swing around and unleash torpedo diarreah. I think Enterprise and Excelsior were just over reacting, the bird of prey didn't require 8 torpedoes to be killed, it just didn't blow up before 8 of them hit.

A better comparison though would be a Klingon battle cruiser compared to a federation ship of similar size would it not? The federation ship devotes all that space to labs and what not the Klingon are for... battle.

The BOP in ST3 disables the enterprise via a lucky shot to the computer core, but the Enterprise's size and redundancy advantage was already impaired by the lack of a crew and existing battle damage from Kahn. Conversely, the bird of prey fully crewed and undamaged at the beginning of the battle takes damage but is not disabled by two torpedo hits while unshielded.

Another example is the 1701 versus the Romulan bird of prey. The Romulan BOP had much more powerful weapons than the enterprise and the cloaking advantage obviously but pretty much had to fold and run home because it was past its operational range. If the Enterprise had come across it earlier, like before it blew up multiple star bases, it may not have had that advantage. that would be a pretty good case for a dedicated warship of a smaller size outperforming a larger federation ship.

[Azron_Stoma]

Non-canon, but fits the role, the new STO Federation ship.

http://i.imgur.com/dS6dI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/axRV7.jpg

Called the "Imperial Class" for some reason, rather out of character for the feddies, and no prizes for guessing where the name came from in what they are trying to be like.

[The Romulan Republic]

Any more information on that class besides the name and picture? My own searches haven't turned up much so far.