Contemplating a Star Trek fanfic- and having read The Time Wanderers recently, as well as finally getting hold of a copy of The Final Reflection albeit bundled with some gawdawful TNG crap, I think there are some interesting things to be done with differently thinking parallel universes- the problems start to emerge in the planning stages.
Astrography, demographics, economics- these are definitely problems, but they will also be part of the thrust of the story, Spoiler
what I plan to do is to turn Progressors from a basically Trotskyist parallel loose on the Federation and drag them kicking and screaming towards "from each according to his abilities", instead of just the consumerist half
, so I may as well start with the geeky fun part.
What the smeg does the Federation (and Klingon, Romulan, etc) fleet consist of? So few really official official ships that it's obviously incomplete, but past that there is just this neverending wilderness of once-official and repudiated, snuck back in again, kitbashed, nonsensically overlapping, mentioned and never seen, ships without backstories and backstories without ships, frankensteins, semi- canon ships, effects and continuity errors, fanon ranging from better-than-official-
I much prefer the Starfleet Museum http://www.starfleet-museum.org/index.htm's take on the mid- 22nd century to Enterprise's, the miserably short ranges they reckon for the early warp ships is the only serious objection, well perhaps that and Enterprise's horseshoe shaped Klingon ship that I'm inclined to write up as the thing that the Drell- series configuration replaced-
oh, yes, better than official to far far worse. In fact, it's such a shambles that if it really is like this in universe it almost certainly is the result of some kind of time war. The worst and least appropriate may be included for the purposes of being demolished or mocked, but what makes sense? I'm more than half tempted to start (as much fanon and repudiated material does) with Franz Joseph's tech manual and work up, and back, from there.
The Hero-Mobile, incidentally, is not going to be large white and triangular, that's a different project entirely.
If you think the point of the exercise is just to produce an RTS style list, then I'd prefer if you acted on that not caring, because that isn't the point at all.
So much of Trek is about and centred around the ships and the people who sail in them, Starfleet is (at some times, in some versions) where the Federation's best and brightest go, those people matter and the tools they have to use make a difference- to them, as well as the universe outside. In a lot of ways they change- remake- their wielders.
Also, from the institutional point of view, (the Klingons may be an exception), navies serve- they are armed services, they do the will of/are extensions of the will of the nation they serve.
I want to be able to look at a Starfleet fleet list and see the reflection of the will of the Federation; including, of course, where that will falls short, the compromises with practicality, the internal political compromises, the overexcited ideas, the designs by committee, the things where something changed half way through, moments when a need was misread and an idea didn't quite work out. And the times where it all came together.
Actually most of the time I consider Voyager and Enterprise almost unrelated fanfic loosely associated with Star Trek; quality is where you find it.
At the most strategic level, Starfleet looks to be built around survey and exploration more than war, at least until you get to the post-Borg environment of late TNG and on. A handful of long-range expeditionary cruisers (Constellations, Galaxies), that act as flagships and backbone. Then a much larger force of slower, less capable vessels that presumably do routine survey and patrol work within Federation space. Sometimes ships originally meant for the first role (Excelsiors) evolve into the latter (same class as of TNG).
You want an example of an over-excited idea, compromised with practicality, changed half-way through, that didn't quite work out... Excelsior is your ship. But they worked out what to do with the things eventually.
Anyway, these ships are armed, but they're very, very multirole, designed for flexibility and possibly (in some cases) with a certain amount of modularity in the hull so you can swap out mission modules for different jobs with the same hull.
We don't see dedicated warships emerging in quantity until the next big set of military menaces crop up- Cardassians, Borg, Dominion, and so on. Then you mostly get ships built along the same design lines as the old expeditionary cruisers, but with more tonnage devoted to weaponry. Often (based on my recollections) designs of that era are a bit more tightly hunkered down, too- less in the way of big struts and unnecessary volume-consuming features, and I'd hope they get smaller target profile and a stronger hull from that.
What they looked like in the pre-TOS era, very hard to guess at if we don't rely on Enterprise. I never really watched that, so I couldn't comment either way.
The Klingons? Their fleet is very much a warfleet; it's dominated by the warbirds, light agile attack craft designed to match or exceed Federation numbers and presumably outgun smaller Federation vessels. They start transitioning toward heavier battlecruisers to match the greater firepower and size of the Federation heavy expeditionary ships, presumably.
Close on 3AM here, I meant to get this finished in time to say something sensible to that suggestion; for instance that something must have happened behind the scenes in the Klingon Empire at the same time, when a scout bird of prey-
which the design history of is interesting, there's apparently a deleted scene from STIII that suggests it was intended to have been stolen from the Romulans, not supposed to be a Klingon built design at all-
has a crew of twelve to thirty, and the D7 a crew of four hundred- two of the masts of the navy (Patriotism, Promotion and Prize Money) have just gone by the board for very many junior officers, but also fewer lone wolves, fewer privateers, more control, more centralisation in the Klingon Empire. For instance.
Anyway, this is what may pass for chapter 1, introducing the hero- or the villain, depending on your point of view. Disclaimers later. Spoiler
Well, Comrade, there she is. Project 918, phase III, World- Line Intruder, with the improved tactical-technical characteristics that you asked for.' the Master Shipwright proclaimed, as the slab- like little shuttle banked round the curve of it's parent star- station and the star/time- ship hovered there, free of the cradle for the first time, a swept- back, curve- lined four nacelled dart.
'As we found the mission required. The Relativity class are tough opponents; their only prominent weakness is the crews inside them.' Time-Captain First Rank Dmitri Alexeyevich Kondratyev stated. 'On many parallels we have done too thorough a job of teaching them to overcome their complacency.'
He knew, as the master shipwright did, that they were bound for the most closely contested target area of the time and culture wars; worldline cluster beta, deviation sigma two. Federation Improbably Triumphant. The yard had done their best for the ship, but the crew were still Kondratyev's problem.
'You still have a Mongol gun crew.' the Master Shipwright grumbled.
'No, I have a Klingon gun crew. They aren't the same- they're much less good with primitive weapons, and they never found their Temuchin and his four hounds.'
Easy for him to be dismissive, the shipwright thought. Kondratyev was big enough to pick most of the Klingons up with one hand- a true siberian bear of a man. As several of the Klingons had found out, he was also much faster than he looked. That gave the man an animal self- confidence that, although far from being enough for a time captain, did serve as a good foundation. The fact that most physical things were easy for him gave him more time to sharpen his brain, too.
The Ferengi Shipwright was rather a small being, and partly responsible for the security and upkeep of the giant yard- station; the Klingon weapon specialists had no personal respect for him, and in fact gave him many of his headaches. 'You wouldn't say they were no good with primitive weapons, if you had to keep them in order and clean up the mess of their brawls while the ship was being modified.'
'You wouldn't call them good if you had ever seen a mongol touman at it's work.' Kondratyev pointed out. 'I find them actually quite a shy, fragile species, essentially recovering paranoids, very slow to trust and requiring gentle bringing out of their shells. Their drinking and brawling is a defensive mechanism; overcompensation.'
He looked down at the Shipwright, saw he was being believed, and burst out laughing.'Some day I may even convince them of that. They are our fraternal socialist comrades, though, their people did invent what has become the primary weapon of the Project 918MUTTH, and they are quite useful with it when I can persuade them to cease to pretend to be blood- drinking primitives.'
'How they became so, I will never understand.' the Shipwright said. 'Their latest outburst was over a doctrinal issue- they wanted a hammer and bat'leth emblem painted on the side of the hull, and did not understand that just because it is called class war does not mean that it is appropriate to celebrate the warrior class at the expense of the denigration of the oppressed peasant.'
'There are two other advantages to having them around.' Kondratyev pointed out. 'It makes the mission more entertaining, and it reassures wonderfully. If they can grasp the elements of Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism, then anyone may.' It was the Ferengi's turn to chuckle.
As they closed on and started to bank round the World- Line Intruder, the dark, sleek ogee-ogive hull, Kondratyev did say 'Perhaps a small one there, next to the Leveller...' The sinewave- shaped time duties rated deflector dish was on the belly of the ship, facing forward as it only made structural sense to do, but there was a ring of crystalline nodes around it, what Kondratyev had called the leveller; which in a way was exactly what it did, being a more advanced- not least in controllability- version of the Klingon stasis projector.
A very useful weapon for a time traveller, especially one whose main enemies were other time travellers fighting for the shape of History. Not that the ship was short of other weapons- sometimes the fighting became very literal, alternative pasts were often surprisingly capable, and there were moments when something had to be done away with to give something better a chance to happen.
The shipwright's people had nearly destroyed themselves in how many parallels, for instance, playing the losing game of short- termist, hustling capitalism, and cheating incompetently at that; they themselves had come close to the status of a commodity, especially to the Orions who liked to keep them as amusing pets- and they had had to be pushed that far down into the abyss by a previous generation of Intruders, not a subject Kondratyev wanted to bring up, before they started to fight back; had to be given the chains before they managed to arise.
There was an opalescent silver- white shimmer across the sky; the temporal sheathing and shielding of Engels Station reacting to, resisting something changing further up the stream of history. It was not an unusual occurrence. Not many changes that profound, though.
The shipwright looked over and saw Kondratyev was grinning. 'Something to do with your mission?'
'The preparatory barrage going in.' The time- captain explained by analogy. 'On at least one of the parallels, the world and race of Vulcan should just have ceased to exist; an essential move against the indifferentism that makes the federation's most fundamental law a covenant to allow others to suffer, an essential weakening of the defences of the federation that will give us room to change them for the better.
They are such a frustrating people, because they are half way there and determined to stay no more than half way there. They glimpse the truth, but their mysticism and lack of empathy hold them back from True Communism; perhaps there is some parallel, somewhere- perhaps this one- in which they can be persuaded.'
To the Ferengi's raised eyebrow and canted ear he added 'It is important to begin the mission in a spirit of optimism.'
'Concerning that,' the Shipwright said- the transformation, elimination, bringing into being of whole peoples were heady stuff indeed, but they were also the job of the Intruder Flotillas, so it would not do to make too much of a fuss over it. 'The mission, and the ship, still have no name.'
Officially, the intruder still would not have a name after one was picked; project and production number, that was officially all, and enough. Unofficially, in a tradition going back to the earliest days of astronautics, the mission crew would name the ship. In some cases that would be left to the ship's soviet; Kondratyev was more of an autocrat than that. He would choose.
Names tumbled through his head; appropriate people, historic events, private jokes he could have made, past great ships with a tradition worth appropriating. Varyag, Donskoy, Nevsky, Petr Velikiye- Zhdanov, Ulyanov, Chuikov- stars and battles and turning points, the adjectival names of small ships; seriously toying with the notion of Grigoriy Patyomkin before deciding on something to set a mark the crew would have to live up to.
The first choice- Spravedlivyy, Just, perhaps on another day but not after that shimmer of fissioning time. Even if you were genuinely convinced that they had done more harm than good, having to do something like that was hardly a cause for self- righteousness. Even if removing the Vulcans- by indirect and somewhat demented means apparently- would ultimately, with much further prodding, set the federation on the right path, even if it was a lesser cost, it was still a cost.
Even if you did get further with dialectical materialism and a disruptor than you did by dialectical materialism alone. Perhaps that would do for a good name after the time stream had sorted itself out, after the results were in, but for the moment- 'Nastoychivyy. Persistent.'
Ah. Interesting. And it explains why you need perspective-over-time of the Federation, certainly.
I don't think the battlecruisers ever really supplanted the birds of prey, although I may be mistaken. It was more like they became the backbone of the overall fleet, after it became clear that trying to swarm a Connie to death wasn't a good plan.
As for promotion, prize money, and patriotism... I'm willing to assume the Klingons go for prize money, but remember that they were a lot more organized and self-disciplined in the original series than as the 'warrior race' that started to emerge later on. That's how I recall it anyway.
(Don't take my word for too much)
Anyhow, it might be that the battlecruisers are the place to go if you aspire to capital command and high rank in the organization of the fleet- the soldiers. Whereas the birds of prey are more suitable for someone who just wants to go a-viking: the warriors.
The disclaimer I'd meant to put on the end of that was that I am not actually a communist; just that for complicated reasons, I happen to know some of the doctrine and jargon, and thought it might be funny. If I'm anything at all political- partyish these days, I'm probably some obscure subcult of the Scottish Monster Raving Loony Party.
Something that I should cross post in the other thread too, is the out of universe explanation for the whole nacelle thing- which is basically that Roddenberry threw those rules together specifically as a means of excluding what was actually a rich crop of fanon and semi- licensed (FASA) designs that had come up between TOS and TNG, and regaining creative control of the franchise. Which makes more sense to me than the in universe reason.
It does occur to me that because of the multiple- source thing, because of the various different takes on it all, because of shifting visions and creative control, the franchise, EU fanon and all, as a whole does an accidentally pretty good job of simulating what the results of a Time War would actually look like.
FASA did a space combat game based on Trek back in the early-mid eighties, overwritten as canon by TNG and with a very different history, a wide range of designs, some of which I am tempted by, their Klingon frigates and W- hulled version of the D-10 successor to the D-7, and others are funny- the Akiraprise argument, the Akira itself is the spitting image of the Loknar class frigate from SFB-
and with a very definite approach to warp strafing; all starships manoeuvred and fought at warp. Period. You might have to slow from cruising speed to a low factor at which the computers and weapons had time to react, usually somewhere from Warp 1-3, but that was how it was done and you had to be an idiot- or a sitting duck- to do anything else. Thus at least is one abandoned future. (Memory Beta is very useful.)
Figuring out Klingon history and how it should affect their military is an interestingly head- bending job, and I wonder if there is an expectation of progress- everyone gets a tiny zoomy thing to begin with, those who succeed move on and up to larger craft, and the aspiring star conqueror should be getting to battle cruiser command just about the time of life when youth and skill start to fade into old age and treachery? If class, command and career are tied together like that, the system could have a lot of inertia.
