Next generation starship program

[biostem]

Imagine you were the head of the Starfleet design bureau, and were given carte-blanche regarding how to go about building the next generation of starships. For this scenario, this takes place a few weeks after the encounter with the Borg at Wolf 359. Assume that you only have minor improvements over the current generation of technology to work with, (so no 1-offs or alien tech). What sort of vessels would you design?


For my part, here's what I'd do:

1. Try to implement some sort of multi-warp-core system, where the power from multiple cores could be redirected to various systems as needed, or where 1 core could be held as a backup, in the event that the main 1 fails. Make sure these are passively safe, so if a system fails, it reverts to a sub-critical/non-self-sustaining condition.

2. Similar to 2 above, see if we can implement a multi-layered shielding system - either have several shields on top of each other, or have secondary shield generators that can "kick in" the moment one fails.

3. In fact, all vital system, (life support, structural integrity, intertial dampers, etc), would have redundant, isolated systems, located in spread-out parts of the ship, so no single hit can take out any major system.

4. Next, I'd try to figure out what the smallest possible package is, that we can cram all these systems into. It is important that said design be "passively strong", meaning that it can, at the very least, operate at low warp even if some systems are disabled, (like no structural integrity or significant hull damage). I'd also like to incorporate more passive systems - like hatches/doors in addition to shields. Armor plating, which can be discarded as needed, would also be good. I'd also like to incorporate modular design into the construction, so entire chunks of the ship can be quickly and easily replaced, if damaged.

5. I'd arrange weapons so that there are no angles that the ship can't fire from, and any heavier or specialized weapons would be mounted on turrets, so that the vessel need not be pointing at a target in order to use them on it.


What would your vessel(s) be like? What characteristics would be important for your designs? I'd love to hear your input.

[SpottedKitty]

The trek-tech equivalent of a circuit breaker would be nice. Many starship's bridge crew must be fed up with some random important part of the ship being hit in an attack, causing their bridge console to go kaboom in their face.

[Tribble]

Well, the Defiant, Akira, Sovereign classes etc were pretty big upgrades from the pre-Wolf 359 fleet, though chances are at least some of them and their associated tech were already "on the drawing board" when the Cube arrived. hmmm.

Alright, well at least for the Borg I'd switch tactics. Rather than trying to out-adapt them, I'd build missiles with the biggest possible yield and equip them with a basic warp drive, so in addition to the energy released by the detonation the targeted ship would also have to deal with the mass of the missile accelerating to warp. Ramming tactics to appear to be effective, regardless of the type of ship involved. At the very least the Federation should be able build a missile with the same yield as the Cardassian Dreadnaught, which contained 1,000kg of matter and anti-matter. It's not like that's a huge technical challenge. Of course, I wouldn't include other on-board weapons since these are intended to be one-shot and should be simple and easy to mass produce, at least when compared to starships. So when the next Cube arrives at Earth I'd simply fire hundreds of missiles at it. That can't be healthy for the Cube no matter how much it tries to adapt.

[Lord Revan]

Well, the Defiant, Akira, Sovereign classes etc were pretty big upgrades from the pre-Wolf 359 fleet, though chances are at least some of them and their associated tech were already "on the drawing board" when the Cube arrived. hmmm.

Alright, well at least for the Borg I'd switch tactics. Rather than trying to out-adapt them, I'd build missiles with the biggest possible yield and equip them with a basic warp drive, so in addition to the energy released by the detonation the targeted ship would also have to deal with the mass of the missile accelerating to warp. At the very least he Federation should be able build a missile with the same yield as the Cardassian Dreadnaught, which contained 1,000kg of matter and anti-matter). It's not like that's a huge technical challenge. Of course, I wouldn't include other on-board weapons since these are intended to be one-shot and should be simple and easy to mass produce, at least when compared to starships. So when the next Cube arrives at Earth I'd simply fire hundreds of missiles at it. That can't be healthy for the Cube no matter how much it tries to adapt.

well the missile idea assumes you have infinite resources, bare in mind the that Dreadnaught missile was singular and Cardassians never tried to do something similar again, suggesting that that design was not resource efficient.

also there's no chance in hell you'd get Federation Council to approve something like that, it's way too militaristic for them.

as for my design, I'd start with a ship that's about the size of the Intrepid or classic connie to get enough space for the multi-core systems and reduncies to be actually effective and still have room for the typical stuff federation ships have for exploration and scientific studies. Federation ships already have back-ups the problem with the is that they're not isolated so that solid hit at the right spot can take out a system and its back ups.

There I'd look at the mission profile to see what's needed since a sovvie that's a multi-role Explorer needs different things then a Defiant class that's pure warship and nothing more.

[Mr Hugh Mann]

Beyond those suggestions already listed I would include:

Seat belts, for when the inertial dampening inevitably fails (seat belts have been seen in some designs, their application simply needs to be more uniform). Incidentally some sort of emergency securing harnesses should be available almost anywhere throughout the ship for the regular crew as well.

A warp core ejection system that actually works, for this the system would be tested in holodecks, then simulations would be carried out using an actual ship hull and a real warp core, then testing would be done with a warp core that is actually failing. Afterwards one would test the back up systems, and their back-ups, and so forth.

Shielding and armor plating on the warp core rather than simple exposure of the core to the engineering section, also the plasma coolant tanks should not be immediately accessible by personnel in engineering, which was a demonstrated flaw in the Sovereign design.

There would be no more bridges acting as bullseyes on their saucer sections, the battle bridge and the actual bridge would be one and the same, buried in the vessel. It is for reasons similar to this one that I despise most Klingon designs, the Koloth class especially.

I believe the “women and children first” design of the Galaxy Class saucer section also needs to be reconsidered, DaiMon Lurin was right about putting children in danger.

A phaser system that automatically remodulates after each firing to prolong usefulness against enemies like the Borg, this however is only a short term solution, the Borg have demonstrated the capacity to overcome this tactic in “VOY: Dark Frontier” in their combat with Species 10026.

A ship computer with better security protocols and a highly compartmentalized functionality such that one compromised system does not insure access to all other subsystems aboard.

No nacelles supported by struts far away from the body of the vessel as these present easy targets. Vessels also need to narrow the profile of their front and broadsides so as to present a minimal area of attack to their enemies.

Lastly I might stress some sort of long range launching system for munitions like tri-cobalt devices so some ships might at least try to harry a Borg vessel outside of the normal firing arcs of its disruptors (at least in a limited capacity, the Borg have been known to use longer range magnetometric guided charges in addition to their usual torpedoes).

[Zwinmar]

Step 0: All ships must have, at minimum, a double hull.
Step 1: Compartmentalization. Force fields are nice and all but don't do jack when there is no power.
Step 2: 5 point harness for bridge crew and available on all seats, and circuit breakers
Step 3: Emergency skin suit, no more pajamas, with self contained breathing apparatus, they are in the vacuum of space, act like a hull breach is always imminent.
Step 4: A proper damage control crew and all ratings cross trained into it, along with equipment stationed strategically around the ship.

The above are vital:
Also, cut down on wasted space for crew quarters, while each compartment, or at least rack, should be able to seal up in an emergency...with own beacon and air supply, possibly other emergency gear, essential its own lifeboat. Open air spaces must have a use as it places a burden on life support.

Proper training and equipment for security personnel.

[Tribble]

well the missile idea assumes you have infinite resources, bare in mind the that Dreadnaught missile was singular and Cardassians never tried to do something similar again, suggesting that that design was not resource efficient.

Of course it wasn't resource efficient. It had a life support system and more than enough space for people to wander around. It had a shield system greater than Voyager's, disruptors, quantum torpedoes, a plasma wave, and whatever tech it used to break Voyager's tractor beam. Not to mention its ridiculous computer system. And the thing was freaking huge in comparison to its payload. The only difference between it and a regular starship is that there was no chair on the bridge and it was designed to explode by default (rather than due to poor safety measures). My design would strip all that excess away, leaving just the primary weapon, enough sensors to lock onto and track its target, and perhaps a small warp drive to accelerate the missile to warp just before it hits its target and explodes. The Feds should be able to build many of them compared to building a full starship.

also there's no chance in hell you'd get Federation Council to approve something like that, it's way too militaristic for them.

This scenario is immediately post Wolf-359, where a single Borg Cube just wiped out 39 Starships and the Mars Defence Perimeter with ease, made Earth orbit, and was only stopped by being hacked at the very last minute (which would not work a second time). Out of all the times in Fed history where they would accept a missile program, this would probably be it. Besides, it's not like my design would be revolutionary or anything - at the end of the day its basically just a giant photon torpedo big enough to overcome Borg adaptation via brute force and via sheer numbers. If you want, they can be reclassified like the Defiant was to make them more palatable- call them "short-range tactical defence drones" or something.

I believe the “women and children first” design of the Galaxy Class saucer section also needs to be reconsidered, DaiMon Lurin was right about putting children in danger.

IMO the idea of bringing families during long-range exploration missions made sense. It was the decision to have the Enterprise do things like patrol the Neutral Zone while still keeping the families onboard that was stupid.

[The Romulan Republic]

Okay, a lot of good ideas have already been raised. I'll incorporate at least some of those, while hopefully adding some more as well. To keep this brief...

Step one: Renovate the Galaxy class, and step up production. A big, versatile ship is good for diplomacy and exploration, but the current design is a bit lacking. Add seat belts, improve warp core safety, make the holodecks safer or scrap them, and work on the exploding console issue. A military model will be built as well, with non-essential stuff removed, the shields strengthened, and the troop capacity and number of shuttles in the hangers increased. Basically a carrier/command ship for fleet actions. The new quantum torpedoes will be added to its arsenal.

Step two: Commission a new class of light, fast warships for patrols. It'll be something like the Defiant class or the Intrepid class (only smaller and without the fancy biotech. and with more torpedoes). These will be used to protect the vast reaches of Federation space and stop colonies and small ships from getting jumped by random monsters or destroyed by random anomalies with no help in sight. The new safety features and weaponry on the Galaxy class will be incorporated.

Step three: Work on a heavy shuttle/gunship along the lines of the Delta Flyer. These can be used to provide a cheap local defence forces for minor colonies, and to provide support to the big ships in fleet actions.

Step four: Pour a lot more effort into transwarp (the Federation has been playing around with it for ages without using it on a large scale) and see if we can't get the Romulans to renegotiate the cloaking ban. If possible, transwarp and cloaks will be retrofitted onto all ships.

Step five: Phase out all older classes in favour of my new fleet.

[Crazedwraith]

You know... I know in that situation that if Starfleet just does what it was going to do anyway it will survive perfectly well for at least a decade or more. (3 more years of TNG, 7 of VOY whatever the time gap to Nemesis)

Yeah, yeah, the standard laundry list of things. We all know why they don't have seatbelts or surge protectors and safety systems that go down. We know why they have massive rooms. It's a tv show.

I think the best thing I can do to keep the timeline the same as possible why still doing to improve it is wait until Siskos safely on DS9 then revive and fully fund the Defiant program. Try to get the kinks ironed out so we have more than a handful before the Dominion War. At least have the design ready to be mass produced by then.

Likewise ask for more tactical studies. Push for an active replacement program for the Mirandas and Excelsiors with combat ready types. OR at least upgrade the existing models to be combat ready. (like the Lakota, an Excelsior can go to toe to toe with a Defiant so I'd ask for a cost study of upgrades vs new models) And I've always wondered if you could shove the Defiant's pulse phasers into the same rollbar slots the Reliant had. Likewise if it's my purview push for increased Quantum torpedo production and see if we can phase out Photons for them altogether. That's probably the most efficient combat upgrade I can suggest.

But as I said at the start, aside from the Drama-based design, canonically Starfleet did this, post Wolf359 they boosted combat designs and made theirs ships and the galaxy class especially much safer. All I can do is push them to do more, faster. And in canon there may have been good reasons, politically or resource wise that they couldn't do all this.

[Simon_Jester]

For my part, here's what I'd do:

1. Try to implement some sort of multi-warp-core system, where the power from multiple cores could be redirected to various systems as needed, or where 1 core could be held as a backup, in the event that the main 1 fails. Make sure these are passively safe, so if a system fails, it reverts to a sub-critical/non-self-sustaining condition.

These may be contradictory objectives. It may well be that the reason Star Trek warp cores tend to 'fail deadly' is because they are run very close to the point of dangerous failure, precisely because the ships just plain need to run at dangerously high power to produce the needed levels of energy.

Something like what is outlined here, in other words.

If that is the case, then installing "fail safe" warp cores would require installing less powerful warp cores and needing two or more such cores to run the ship... which in turn conflicts with the goal of making the individual cores redundant so that you have backups.

2. Similar to 2 above, see if we can implement a multi-layered shielding system - either have several shields on top of each other, or have secondary shield generators that can "kick in" the moment one fails.

This, too, is likely to take up a great deal of space and increase maintenance requirements. It may well be that two sets of independent shield generators are less efficient than having one set of very powerful shield generators.

3. In fact, all vital system, (life support, structural integrity, intertial dampers, etc), would have redundant, isolated systems, located in spread-out parts of the ship, so no single hit can take out any major system.

Where possible this is a very desirable goal. It's unclear to what extent typical Starfleet ships lack such capability, because we see many many instances of local damage to systems that doesn't totally incapacitate the whole ship.

4. Next, I'd try to figure out what the smallest possible package is, that we can cram all these systems into. It is important that said design be "passively strong", meaning that it can, at the very least, operate at low warp even if some systems are disabled, (like no structural integrity or significant hull damage)...

This may be physically impossible- it depends on how much stress warp drive puts on the hull.

I'd also like to incorporate more passive systems - like hatches/doors in addition to shields. Armor plating, which can be discarded as needed, would also be good. I'd also like to incorporate modular design into the construction, so entire chunks of the ship can be quickly and easily replaced, if damaged.

THIS is a very very good idea. Although as a catch, if a ship is highly modular, it tends to also be highly vulnerable to being broken apart.

5. I'd arrange weapons so that there are no angles that the ship can't fire from, and any heavier or specialized weapons would be mounted on turrets, so that the vessel need not be pointing at a target in order to use them on it.

Eliminating blind spots may not be particularly important so long as the ship can maneuver, and if it can't maneuver then it's probably toast anyway. Phasers and torpedoes both tend to have quite broad firing arcs on most Starfleet vessels, in any event.

Mounting heavy weapons on turrets may greatly increase the required size of the ship- because the turret has to be small relative to the hull, and mounting an acceptably powerful weapon in a big turret thus requires a very large hull.

And given that your ships are designed to fight Borg cubes which are huge compared to anything Starfleet can build, downscaling your weapons in order to fit them into turret mounts on your ship may be a losing proposition.

You might actually want to err in the opposite direction and give your ship a spectacularly powerful fixed mount main weapon- say, specifically design the deflector dish to do stuff like emit huge pulses of radiation and fry enemy ships.

[The Romulan Republic]

Also, its not as if Borg Cubes are small, highly maneuverable targets. A fixed weapon should be quite capable of hitting one.

[Simon_Jester]

Right.

Come to think of it, a ship optimized to counter the known Borg threat, and built on a larger scale than the Defiant-class, would probably do very poorly against the Dominion with their vast numbers of relatively small attack ships. Although... do the Dominion have battleships too?

And, hm. One thing I might try with an eye to fighting the Borg is torpedo cruisers. It would be relatively easy to develop a wide variety of torpedo-type munitions that can be fired out of the tubes, and which operate on different principles so that you can't just modulate your shields to block all of them at once. Whereas it is more likely that the Borg can figure out a single adaptation that neutralizes ALL phasers or ALL tachyon beams or whatever.

Of course, with the Akiras we already have this.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Dominion did have some big ships, as did their Cardassian lackies.

As to torpedos, I've been thinking along the lines of simply shooting big kinetic missiles at them, since the Borg seem to do less well against that sort of attack.

[The Romulan Republic]

To follow up on that, what about a starship built around a single massive torpedo launcher firing big metal slugs at the greatest possible speed? Outside the box, sure, but surely within Federation capabilities.

[Crazedwraith]

Are supposed to be designing borg killers here? Or just for the fleet in general. I mean there is all of one borg attack we have to worry about.

The other factor is actually getting these radical designs off the board. I'd assume carte blanche doesn't mean you have literally unlimited resources to work with. You have whatever budget and resources the federation had originally. You try something really radical. The design, testing and building/shakedown phases are going to be a lot longer and protracted. You'd be diverting resources that originally made the federation stronger, quicker and you might not even have the new better designs built by the time you need them. (mostly thinking Biostem's plans here)

[Starglider]

DW's humorous articles aside, if we're going to pretend the Trek universe is a consistent setting we have to assume that the engineers have some reasonable level of professional competence. You can't build an FTL starship while being ignorant of basic design principles. A few things can be explained by politics, e.g. politicians insisting the ships be as big as possible which pushes the safety margins to the limit, but realistically most can't. The Federation isn't going to build dozens of distinct classes of ships all with nacelles on pylons for no reason, there must be some very tangible advantage (e.g. energy efficiency and hence unrefueled range) to explain why they do this. If layered shields were technically possible and actually advantagous, no doubt they would already use them, and in fact some of the control panel graphics suggest they already do (e.g. Star Trek 6 shows a distinct multi-layer raise/lower shields sequence).

As for the lack of seatbelts and heavier compartmentalisation, this is probably because 99.9% of situations starships encountered would not have benefitted from them. The weekly activities of the Enterprise crew cannot be taken as typical for the rest of the fleet. Most likely if you had access to Starfleet's entire log database, you'd find that either the inertial dampers and forcefields worked and the manual backups weren't needed, or the ship was hit by overwhelming force and no backups could have forestalled total destruction. The Enterprise is a statistical anomoly in conistently taking just enough damage to bring down the shields / dampners / put small holes in the hull, but not enough to blow it to fragments / smush the crew into chunky salsa.

[Borgholio]

I wouldn't go the route of larger starships at all. I'd go for a shift towards larger numbers of smaller ships such as fighters and the 24th century version of cruise missiles. It always seems to be the case where the Feds need to scrape up whatever assets they have in the area and never have any standing fleets. If the Sol system had several thousand fighter / bomber craft, each with a payload of 2 - 4 photon or quantum torpedoes, then that would be able to defend against even a Borg cube. We've seen how constant swarm attacks can wear down a cube (ST:FC), so having several squadrons lobbing torps from all directions in a constant barrage would be quite effective. Combined with a version of the Dreadnaught missile (only smaller and more efficiently designed), there's no reason why incoming enemy fleets / cubes couldn't be hammered by high-yield warp-capable missiles when they are still several hours (or days) away from Earth.

If I was forced to stick with the existing large starship model though, I would start by removing civilians from all ships, unless they are mission critical (scientists, specialists, etc...). No children at all. They would be an added burden to the command staff in an emergency and that cannot be allowed.

Existing ships would be retrofitted with the idea of redundancy. Double hull or hull armor, airtight doors and compartments to compliment the forcefields, critical applications such as life support, warp field containment, etc...will have fully duplicated, isolated, and redundant systems. Warp core ejection will have a backup system using the tried and true method of explosive bolts with a chemical rocket strapped to the top of the thing to push it out of the ship. Everything would have a backup or duplicate system. We have such things on modern passenger airliners, so why not a starship?

Having two small cores instead of one big one would work only if each small core could power the ship fully on it's own (even if at a reduced level). If a single big core is needed then...well...that's that I guess.

As far as weapons, the effectiveness of strip phasers would have to be compared to other kinds of energy weapons such as particle beams. While strip phasers work fine in most cases, certain targets have proven to be resistant to them. Targets with heavier armor, or targets that can adapt to the weapon's frequency (such as the Borg), for instance. The best thing to do would be to augment the strip phasers with one or two large beam emplacements (either turreted or spinal mount, such as in All Good Things). This would allow ships to hit way above their weight class. Torpedo launchers would need to be improved to allow a greatly increased rate of fire. If yield can't be increased, then more simply need to be thrown at the enemy at once.

If allowed, an alternative would be to design a dedicated class of warships to perform patrol and security duties, relegating existing starships to research missions in space that is already relatively secure. A dedicated warship class would be much more efficient in combat than a ship which is expected to do research as well. Ships probing a potentially hostile frontier can be more heavily armed or be provided with an escort.

Finally, although this may be beyond my mandate, I would strongly encourage more combat training for Starfleet personnel. All crew would be required to maintain proficiency in both armed and unarmed combat styles, as well as constant training in starship combat tactics. Captains would be properly trained on how to deal with potential threats to their ship and crew as quickly as possible, not sit there and get hammered until shields are almost down before returning fire. (I can't tell you how much this pissed me off about Picard. He should have been stripped of his command for risking his ship and crew like that). I mean I get that the Federation doesn't want to appear aggressive, but for crying out loud, if someone shoots at you...fucking shoot back. You can work out any misunderstandings later once you know you won't be blown to smithereens.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Damnit, while I'm writing Borgholio ninja's me. Git

Hmm....new starship design. Taking into consideration what's been said about not having unlimited resources and limited time, that suggests that I can't realistically use designs bigger/heavier than existing hulls, nor more "radical" (for whatever value of "radical" you want to use). So, I'd use an existing hull form where possible, or as a basis at least.

I'm thinking a warship version of a Sovereign, assuming the design exists. Strip out anything scientific, the civvies, the children, anything luxurious, this is gonna be more like a Battlestar, built purely for combat. So:

-Bridge moved to deep inside the hull
-Windows in general phased out, crew quarters moved within the hull (not exactly new, the Connie's crew quarters didn't have windows after all)
-Engineering section revised to include a second warp core. Each will be the same size (slightly smaller than the current core if needs be). The aim is to have each core running at only 50% of maximum usually for safety, but both can be brought up to 100% in emergencies.
-Improved core ejection systems as described by others
-Add ablative armour layers to the hull. Add additional armour layers around key areas within the ship: the bridge/CIC, torpedo magazines, engineering)
-Install the most powerful shields available. If possible, add redundant shield generators (we know from, sigh, Nemesis that you can have multiple shield systems on board)
-Install a large, fixed-axis weapon under the saucer section (a la refit E-D from All Good Things). Phaser cannon most likely, though I'll leave the possibility of more exotic weapons open.
-Increase number of torpedo tubes. Nemesis gave the E-E three forwards and four aft, I'm thinking six forward and four aft for a solid punch.
-Massively increase torpedo magazine capacity, I don't want these big bastards running short on ammo.
-Add a second all-around phaser strip to the dorsal and ventral surface of the saucer. Add additional phaser mounts to all sides of the hull section and on the (reinforced) nacelle pylons
-If possible, add some ball turrets for Defiant-type pulse phasers, rigged for maximum possible coverage of the hull.
-Research mounting many smaller phaser areas as a anti-torpedo point defence system. They wouldn't be enough to hurt other starships, but against torps, shuttles, maybe birds of prey or bugships they should prove useful.

That gives me a very sturdy ship that can fight both the Borg (fixed mount, more torps etc) and the Dominion (extra phaser mounts, pulse phaser turrets, etc) and doesn't require drawing up a whole new spaceframe, nor will it require building a new yard because the design is so big. I envision these ships as being used as battleships both offensively and defensively, hence the bigger torp mags (can sustain combat for longer) and the fixed-mount phaser weapon and the extra phaser strips and turrets (to have a heavy anti-ship weapon that doesn't have expendable ammo)

That's it for new ships, though I'd also step up production of Defiants and Akiras and use them to form battle groups around these new dreadnoughts of mine.

[Borgholio]

Damnit, while I'm writing Borgholio ninja's me. Git

hehe, sorry.

I have to +1 your idea about moving the bridge. Most modern warships have their primary control center in the most heavily armored part of the ship, so that should be where control of the ship should be maintained. The Deck 1 bridge could make a great "Fair Weather" bridge or observation platform though.

Add additional armour layers around key areas within the ship

What about using the "All or Nothing" armor scheme used on battleships? Build a heavily armored citadel with various composite armor layers reinforced with forcefields, which would include all critical systems or things that would make the ship go BOOM if hit.

[Eternal_Freedom]

While it's an interesting idea, I don't see why it would have an advantage here. It's not like I'm building my ships to a weight limit after all, I'm designing the ultimate battleship, so why not have an armour hull and armoured CIC/Engines/magazines?

For that matter, putting the torp magazines in the central armoured citadel will require longer transfer mechanisms, which are un-armoured and a point of failure. The idea of armouring interior sections as well as the outer hull is also (in my mind) helpful for damage-control - say you have a serious hull breach and major fires, you know those fires won't breach the interior armour soyour magazines and fuel tanks aren't going to detonate, so you can make it home. The armoured hull is designed to help you avoid uch damage in the first place.

[biostem]

When I say "carte blanche", I mean that you won't have to worry about people vetoing your design proposals because they're too militaristic or such-and-such design doesn't have enough of a focus on exploration or science. While you don't have infinite resources to work with, assume that your designs will be bumped to the front of the list when it comes to getting engineering, testing, prototyping, and construction time/resources.

My other thought is this - we know the size of the Enterprise's warp reactor, and we've seen just how small they can make a warp-capable shuttle - if you strip away everything else, what is the smallest you can make a backup warp reactor that can still safely push the ship to FTL? Could you make a fully detached unit, like a shuttle, which you can simply bring online and plug in, to provide supplemental power in the event of an emergency?

While true layered shielding may not be possible, why can't you have a second shield generator which automatically activates should the primary get knocked down/out?

In the episode with Roga Danar, he was able to angle his shuttle such that it would skip off the Enterprise's shields... I wonder if you could take advantage of this characteristic so as to have enemy vessels or other objects skip or glance off of you, thus minimizing damage.

It would be interesting to see if some sort of mass driver weapon would perform well in the ST universe...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Another thing has occurred to me. I would ensure that all ships have the right programs for that metaphasic shield system installed. I know the theory is that using those shields doesn't let you fire out of them (though was that ever stated on-screen?). The idea is that a ship can "turn turtle" if needs be, sacrificing firepower for much stronger shields temporarily. Say, one lone ship needs to wait for reinforcements, or a ship's weapons are disabled (not likely on my monster design, but possible on older ships) the computer switches over automatically to give the crew the best possible chance for survival while repairs are made.

Since "Descent" showed it can be implemented on ships without any major effort this should be simple enough, and may even help with some of the exploration missions (letting ships stay in hostile environments longer and so forth). I'd also have to conduct extensive tests to see just how effective such shields are against weapons, impacts and so on, and whether it is indeed possible to fire out of them.

[Simon_Jester]

The Dominion did have some big ships, as did their Cardassian lackies.

True. Basically, the problem is that a Borg-killer ship based on the experience of Wolf 359 will be, by nature, a capital ship-killer. The Defiant proved effective against the Dominion because it was still small and maneuverable enough to engage their little bug-ships. A big Borg-killer ship would have been a sitting duck against numerous small opponents

As to torpedos, I've been thinking along the lines of simply shooting big kinetic missiles at them, since the Borg seem to do less well against that sort of attack.

Yes, but that's only a partial solution. The impactors cannot be carried aboard a starship, because they're too big. Which means they will be based in a fixed installation and will take time, even assuming they're travelling at high warp, in order to reach any other destination. Therefore, you can't use them to carry the fight to a Borg cube or other mobile opponent far from your own star systems. They could bombard a fixed target, but I doubt they'd be good at seeking out and engaging a moving one like an enemy ship. Not from, oh, a day's flight away at Warp 8.

So you still need ships capable of engaging the Borg, or other threats like the Cardassians.

I suppose you could have a dedicated parasite carrier that launches several dozen impactors the size of a shuttlecraft, but that would be a large ship in its own right and would be vulnerable to surprise attack at close range because the missiles aren't really very effective until they've had time to build up speed.

To follow up on that, what about a starship built around a single massive torpedo launcher firing big metal slugs at the greatest possible speed? Outside the box, sure, but surely within Federation capabilities.

In other words, a big honking mass driver.

Well, there's no reason to assume the Federation doesn't know how to build a mass driver, but there are good reasons to think they've chosen not to. We've seen numerous alien species with widely different types of shipboard weapons, but they nearly all use beams rather than some kind of mass driver. And it's clearly not some kind of brainbug for them because they've independently developed numerous highly effective beam weapons based on different physical principles- if mass drivers were a good choice someone would be using them.

At a guess, it's very hard to use mass drivers effectively against maneuverable targets capable of going to warp at long range. A Borg cube is at least a big enough target, and slow enough to dodge and maneuver, that you've got a good chance of hitting it with a spinal mass driver. Most other things... not so much.

DW's humorous articles aside, if we're going to pretend the Trek universe is a consistent setting we have to assume that the engineers have some reasonable level of professional competence. You can't build an FTL starship while being ignorant of basic design principles. A few things can be explained by politics, e.g. politicians insisting the ships be as big as possible which pushes the safety margins to the limit, but realistically most can't.

Yeah, the only reason I quoted that article was because it's a plausible instance that doesn't involve the Federation's engineers and politicians being (much) stupider than we routinely see in real life anyway. The idea that the Galaxy-class, specifically, use bleeding-edge warp core technology that is prone to randomly exploding because "they needed the power" is at least credible.

And the fact that nearly all Starfleet ships follow the "one big warp core" design paradigm, and that nearly all Starfleet ships have at least occasional problems with the warp core being excessively reactive, suggest it isn't only the Galaxies that have this problem.

Starfleet ships' performance hinges very heavily on their ability to generate energy- even defensively that's a key part of making the ship survivable because a low-powered ship is more likely to take damage- so sure, it may be physically more durable, but it needs to be because it's going to get pounded on more than the more fragile but more energetic ship.

It's not surprising that the Federation would use the biggest, most powerful reactors available, even to the point of decreased combat survivability in the event that the shields fail, because usually when the shields fail you're screwed anyway.

I wouldn't go the route of larger starships at all. I'd go for a shift towards larger numbers of smaller ships such as fighters and the 24th century version of cruise missiles. It always seems to be the case where the Feds need to scrape up whatever assets they have in the area and never have any standing fleets...

Problem: as far as I can tell, smaller ships tend to be slower in warp- there's a reason people use starships for long range fast transportation across great distances, rather than using shuttles.

So by choosing to build swarms of fighters, you're sacrificing strategic mobility for numbers. Which is a losing proposition for an entity as large and farflung as the Federation. They already have problems with the sheer size of their territory making it hard to defend themselves, and if they had the raw manufacturing capacity to create defenses for each individual system they control, they probably would have done so.

If I was forced to stick with the existing large starship model though, I would start by removing civilians from all ships, unless they are mission critical (scientists, specialists, etc...). No children at all. They would be an added burden to the command staff in an emergency and that cannot be allowed.

Agreed; a starship officer will have to be prepared to accept years in space with little or no contact with their family (except holoconferences or whatever). But then, we already see the Federation doing this- note that we do NOT see a horde of dependents aboard Voyager or the Defiant.

Existing ships would be retrofitted with the idea of redundancy. Double hull or hull armor, airtight doors and compartments to compliment the forcefields, critical applications such as life support, warp field containment, etc...will have fully duplicated, isolated, and redundant systems. Warp core ejection will have a backup system using the tried and true method of explosive bolts with a chemical rocket strapped to the top of the thing to push it out of the ship. Everything would have a backup or duplicate system. We have such things on modern passenger airliners, so why not a starship?

Note that this is going to be a REALLY extensive refit... because you're talking about physically dismantling large chunks of the ship and replacing them structurally. This isn't a refit, it's going to be more like, take the ship apart, slide in new pieces, weld it all together into a new ship, and paint the old name back onto the hull. Might well be cheaper to just build new ships.

Torpedo launchers would need to be improved to allow a greatly increased rate of fire. If yield can't be increased, then more simply need to be thrown at the enemy at once.

We could call it... the Akira!

Finally, although this may be beyond my mandate, I would strongly encourage more combat training for Starfleet personnel. All crew would be required to maintain proficiency in both armed and unarmed combat styles, as well as constant training in starship combat tactics. Captains would be properly trained on how to deal with potential threats to their ship and crew as quickly as possible, not sit there and get hammered until shields are almost down before returning fire...

Note that this is a really good reason to keep the holodeck, because it's an excellent training tool.

[Lord Revan]

while the defiant-class ships are anomalies within Starfleet being purpose built for combat, it's true that the Intrepid-class ships doesn't have much in terms of families on board or so it seems so it's possible Starfleet changed its policy about non-essential personal on-board starships some time before the disapearce of the USS Voyager.

we should however consider that Federation is not surrounded by allies, building too militant might be seen as a "bring it!" sign by Klingons or Romulans not mention that exploration and scientific studies have been a major part of Starfleets mission so it's kind of stupid to design ships whose only purpose is to wait for the borg or what ever next threat to come around so they aren't totally a waste of resources.

[The Romulan Republic]

I do think that Wolf359 gives the Federation a reasonable pretext to build a stronger military capability without looking like they're planning to fight their neighbours. I mean, its not as if the Romulans or Klingons or Cardassians are going to want the Borg to take the Federation.

However, the exploration role is important. And I think a vessel like the Galaxy class is good for that. So like I said before, I'd keep the Galaxy class in service, with some upgrades, for that role.