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Why even assume that a Sovereign's reactor is more powerful than a GCS reactor? How do you know they didn't sacrifice power output for ruggedness?

Considering the lack of any other data (as far as I'm aware), I think it's better to assume that the Federation would only stick on more phaser strips if they were able to power them.

To be sure, it's not based on much. Do we have anything else, though? It's not a rhetorical question, I really can't think of anything other than looking at how many weapons emplacements must be powered.

Howedar you are an engineer and I respect that. But how is the Federation's current procurement policy of technologically advanced busters not relevant to the Sovereign? We lack additional data and I see no reason why to hype the Sovereign up. It's not much, but it's more than "I think the Federation would not make a worse ship."

If anything, the most reasonable assumption is power generation in the same order of magnitude and the additional phaser strips are of inferior quality, like AA guns. People have already mentioned that it's unlikely all the launchers on the Sovereign are the same quality as the Galaxy. Why do I have to support a possibly miniscule increase in firepower, when the conservative estimate is to assume it's as good as a Galaxy?

As for the additional volume, more mass implies more force required. You say it's not the role of the battleship, but they are taking all the officers and probably the crew of the Galaxy, putting it on a brand new ship and if I am right they even call it a deterrence explorer, not a battleship. The Sovereign like it or not is a replacement to a Galaxy and it looks like it sacrificed certain charisteristics for others, while expected to fulfill the same role.

Darth Wong wrote:Why even assume that a Sovereign's reactor is more powerful than a GCS reactor? How do you know they didn't sacrifice power output for ruggedness?

Well, if we assume a constant power density for the design, then it should be more powerful as the Sovereign's reactor is bigger. Frankly, I can't really think of a reason why one would lower the power density, if they wanted to sacrifice power for durability it would make far more sense to simply use a smaller reactor.

A better question might be fuel supplies - the GCS has much more volume, but also has much more extra crap. Who has bigger tanks?

brianeyci wrote:Howedar you are an engineer and I respect that. But how is the Federation's current procurement policy of technologically advanced busters not relevant to the Sovereign? We lack additional data and I see no reason why to hype the Sovereign up. It's not much, but it's more than "I think the Federation would not make a worse ship."

I emphatically did not say that "the Federation would not make a worse ship."

I said that, unless we have solid evidence to the contrary, it seems silly to throw out the following assumption: the designers of the Sovereign would be unlikely to add weapons to their ship that they would not be able to power.

If anything, the most reasonable assumption is power generation in the same order of magnitude and the additional phaser strips are of inferior quality, like AA guns.

Strongly disagree. They are of the same or larger physical size (orthogonal to their length) than those on the Galaxy.

People have already mentioned that it's unlikely all the launchers on the Sovereign are the same quality as the Galaxy.

Correct. That's because these launchers are physically smaller and are in places where they couldn't easily be resupplied - that is, we have a solid reason to believe that these launchers (note some, not all on the Sovereign) are inferior to the Galaxy launchers. We do not have that line of thought on the phasers.

Note further that the total torpedo firepower of the Sovereign is almost certainly superior to the Galaxy, but that's a different mini-discussion.

Why do I have to support a possibly miniscule increase in firepower, when the conservative estimate is to assume it's as good as a Galaxy?

Because that's not the argument we're having, for a number of reasons.

First of all, this thread is explicitly about the relative quality of the two ships. Saying "the conservative estimate is to assume thye're the same" isn't a very useful statement.

Second, your "it's just as good" argument doesn't capture all of the data points effectively, as far as I'm concerned. Why does the Federation want a bunch of AA phaser strips, for example? They've never been previously threatened by fighters - the worst we've seen is Dominion attack ships, and those were handled just fine by the Galaxy once the shields were fixed. Leaving that aside, why would the AA strips be as thick or thicker than old anti-ship strips? Your argument contains a number of extraneous terms that mean it can't be properly compared in a conservative-unconservative sense with mine.

Third, what does conservative even mean in this case? The ships are different sizes, different shapes, with clearly different design priorities. You can't just say "the conservative estimate is that the new one is no better than the old one". It would be much more conservative to scale based on volume, for example. But that would result in an answer we might both find to be silly.

As for the additional volume, more mass implies more force required.

Yes, which implies more propulsive power necessary for a given level of maneuverability. This has no bearing because not only are we talking about weapons power (not propulsive), but the ships may or may not have equal maneuverability.

You say it's not the role of the battleship, but they are taking all the officers and probably the crew of the Galaxy, putting it on a brand new ship and if I am right they even call it a deterrence explorer, not a battleship.

The Federation has a long proud history of duplicitous naming. I don't see your point.

The Sovereign like it or not is a replacement to a Galaxy and it looks like it sacrificed certain charisteristics for others, while expected to fulfill the same role.

I don't see any meaning here.

Ender wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Why even assume that a Sovereign's reactor is more powerful than a GCS reactor? How do you know they didn't sacrifice power output for ruggedness?

Well, if we assume a constant power density for the design, then it should be more powerful as the Sovereign's reactor is bigger. Frankly, I can't really think of a reason why one would lower the power density, if they wanted to sacrifice power for durability it would make far more sense to simply use a smaller reactor.

A better question might be fuel supplies - the GCS has much more volume, but also has much more extra crap. Who has bigger tanks?

Having investigated this, it turns out I was wrong. The GCS mounts a bigger reactor by a factor of 1.38

How did you determine this?

Ender wrote:Having investigated this, it turns out I was wrong. The GCS mounts a bigger reactor by a factor of 1.38

What's your source? Here's the Sovereign reactor;







I don't have an exact scaling but it looks a lot bigger than the GCS one to me;

Not to mention, the Galaxy's reactor is very different from the Sovereign's.

I am not sure if it is canon, but I remember reading one of the books, that the Sovereign had Type 12 Phasers, while the Galaxy had Type 10. I am not sure if this is canon by the way. Also, the Sovereign's warp drive supposedly faster by a few decimal points.

Also, I can't remember how effective the Galaxy class's shields were against the Borg tractor beam, but I recall the Enterprise-E shrugged them off without too much effort. I remember the Enterprise-D's shields performed somewhat poorly to Borg weaponry but I can't say if it is due to inferior shield tech or something.

Starglider wrote:

Ender wrote:Having investigated this, it turns out I was wrong. The GCS mounts a bigger reactor by a factor of 1.38

What's your source?

I scaled it off the MSDs. I figured they would be more accurate for this as they are drawn from a perspective of making everything fit, whereas scenery notoriously is not.

What makes you think the size of the reactor housing has a linear correlation to power output anyway? Most of the interior is bound to be empty space given the nature of the device anyway. It's not like a water tank.

If we're talking order-of-magnitude changes, sure. If it were ten times bigger, you'd have to assume it's much more powerful. But when we're talking about minor differences in size, it just doesn't mean anything.

Firstly, I made an error, the volume of the GCS reactor is 2.08 times greater at 462.19 m^3 compared to the Sovie's 222.47 m^3

Darth Wong wrote:What makes you think the size of the reactor housing has a linear correlation to power output anyway?

It struck me as the most conservative assumption to make. Yes there are designs that increase by greater factors (e.g the Polywell style fusion proposals which would scale by a factor of 7), and yes it is possible for a reactor to scale downward in power as it's size increases, but there is no evidence that either of those is the case. Additionally, if there was a sharp power change we would expect to see a greater gamma flux in the area due to the higher number of escapees. In the images above the Sovereign doesn't show any extra shielding or their equivalents like force fields present, so either the GCS had vastly more shielding then it needed or the radiation flux is close enough. Or they downgraded the radiation safety standards.

Most of the interior is bound to be empty space given the nature of the device anyway. It's not like a water tank.

I admit I am assuming a logical design here despite evidence to the contrary overall, but if the size of the entire chamber does not play some kind of role in its function then we need an answer for why they would make them so godawful huge. If we are willing to speculate wildly they could need to be that big if they were part particle accelerator, making the injection streams where relativistic so the gammas and x-rays would redshift to a frequency that would thermalize in the medium better. But that's just mental exercise on my part.

If we're talking order-of-magnitude changes, sure. If it were ten times bigger, you'd have to assume it's much more powerful. But when we're talking about minor differences in size, it just doesn't mean anything.

I was just noting the difference in size, not drawing conclusions from it. Interestingly, the Sovereign's volume ratio for it's reactor to bulk is far and away superior to that of the Galaxy.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:I am not sure if it is canon, but I remember reading one of the books, that the Sovereign had Type 12 Phasers, while the Galaxy had Type 10. I am not sure if this is canon by the way.

It's not canon. The Sovereign's phasers do seem to have a higher firing rate than the Galaxy's however.

Also, the Sovereign's warp drive supposedly faster by a few decimal points.

The same as Voyager (9.975) by all accounts, but then again there is less of the ship to move than the Galaxy.

Also, I can't remember how effective the Galaxy class's shields were against the Borg tractor beam, but I recall the Enterprise-E shrugged them off without too much effort. I remember the Enterprise-D's shields performed somewhat poorly to Borg weaponry but I can't say if it is due to inferior shield tech or something.

Odds are that Starfleet simply figured out how to block the Borg's weaponry more effectively after Wolf 359. The Son'a and Shinzon still managed to rip apart the Ent-E's shielding pretty quickly from what I remember.

I wonder what the SOV's ratio of reactor volume/nacelle volume is? I think ships like Voyager are supposed to show that speed isn't directly related to overall power running to the nacelles (rather 'warp geometry' or whatever).

Stark wrote:I wonder what the SOV's ratio of reactor volume/nacelle volume is? I think ships like Voyager are supposed to show that speed isn't directly related to overall power running to the nacelles (rather 'warp geometry' or whatever).

Couldn't tell you, for overall ship volumes I am using some results RSA has from some lightweave measuring tool. For the GCS though, apparently the narcelles were 280,204 m^3

Ender wrote:It struck me as the most conservative assumption to make. Yes there are designs that increase by greater factors (e.g the Polywell style fusion proposals which would scale by a factor of 7), and yes it is possible for a reactor to scale downward in power as it's size increases, but there is no evidence that either of those is the case.

Sure there is, if you accept the widely held perception that the Sovereign reactor is far more stable. That would imply significant design changes, not just "same design but different size".

Additionally, if there was a sharp power change we would expect to see a greater gamma flux in the area due to the higher number of escapees. In the images above the Sovereign doesn't show any extra shielding or their equivalents like force fields present, so either the GCS had vastly more shielding then it needed or the radiation flux is close enough. Or they downgraded the radiation safety standards.

Or the average time between injection and reaction has been greatly reduced through better control of particle direction, thus reducing the amount of unreacted material in the reactor at any given time, thus reducing the size of the containment field required. This would also have the effect of making the reactor much safer to operate.

I admit I am assuming a logical design here despite evidence to the contrary overall, but if the size of the entire chamber does not play some kind of role in its function then we need an answer for why they would make them so godawful huge.

The warp core is known to be a giant explosive device; this implies that at any given time, there is a considerable amount of unreacted material inside it. That alone is already rather illogical, since you would expect a reactor working with such volatile fuels to only feed in enough fuel to sustain a steady-state reaction. It implies that the reactor functions by dumping in large quantities of fuel which are held apart by internal containment fields everywhere except for a small interface where bleed-through occurs. That's a horrible design, but it fits with the known properties of the reactor and it neatly explains both its instability and large size.

If we are willing to speculate wildly they could need to be that big if they were part particle accelerator, making the injection streams where relativistic so the gammas and x-rays would redshift to a frequency that would thermalize in the medium better. But that's just mental exercise on my part.

I believe it was made clear in the show that the reactor actually houses a large quantity of matter and antimatter, held apart only by the containment field. Otherwise, why would it not be possible to shut it down safely by simply turning off the injectors?

PS. It should be noted that one hypothetical advantage of the more dangerous design would be the ability to almost instantaneously ramp up the power to arbitrary levels. A just-in-time delivery system would introduce much more lag if you need instant power now, but it has the advantage of not blowing up in your face quite as often.

Ender wrote:I figured they would be more accurate for this as they are drawn from a perspective of making everything fit, whereas scenery notoriously is not.

Props and sets directly correlate with reality, under suspension of disbelief. If the prop reactor is x metres in diameter, then the Trek reactor is that size, no if, buts or maybes - if features on the MSD don't match then the Federation exaggerated/altered the MSD to make it easier to read (it is at least partially symbolic anyway). Unfortunately though I do not have the figure x in this case; really you'd need the set blueprints.

Actually not the prop exactly, but what's depicted on screen. Models, props, whatever, can't be measured to determine on screen size. Besides, sometimes on screen information is terrible because of VFX errors and inconsistencies. I'm not saying that is the case here, but I don't think using MSD is any crime. It's not like Star Trek has a weighted canon policy, and canon isn't the same as continuity. The prop itself would be same weight as the diagram.

Strict scaling would be put La Forge in front, assume he's a height of average human being (because again height of actor is irrelevant) and scale up that way... but even then plenty of room for error.

brianeyci wrote:Actually not the prop exactly, but what's depicted on screen. Models, props, whatever, can't be measured to determine on screen size.

If you did a complete computer geometric analysis of every shot of a prop, scaling it against everything else in shot, you'd come up with the exact dimensions of the prop, pretty much by definition. The only exception to this is deliberate use of forced perspective (e.g. the Ent-nil impulse tunnels and horizontal warp core) and even there only when you're being generous. Model shots are much more difficult, because you can only reliably scale bits of the model relative to each other, and the absolute size of individual features is often highly debatable (as is the relative position of ships in space needed to scale ships against each other). But for interiors we have plenty of humans and other known objects to scale against, and unless visual effects are used if we did analyse everything geometrically, we'd arrive at the same dimensions as the physical props and sets.