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Marcus The Impudite's List Of Preposterously Dangerous Design Flaws Starfleet Vessels Should Never Have Been Allowed To Leave Spacedock With


Marcus Impudite

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Here's how TNG was explained to me, and backed up superficially by a magazine article I read:

 

TNG actually had a massive female audience by somewhere in the second season, and it grew as the writers wrote the show less like a Sci-Fi Epic and more like a Soap Opera. By the end of the shows run it was firmly a Space Opera; interestingly by most surveys ST has the highest percentage of female fans over other specific fandoms, with TNG being still the most popular of the shows overall in fandom with women liking it more than men, usually.

 

Which goes a long way to explaining why it always took an entire episode to flip the polarity on the main dish and solve the problem in the denouement while basically having a drama unfold in the previous 42 minutes.

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Another list I'm compiling, figured it would be right at home here on the Star HERO forums:

 

Marcus The Impudite's List Of Preposterously Dangerous Design Flaws Starfleet Vessels Should Never Have Been Allowed To Leave Spacedock With:

 

1) Lack Of Seatbelts: Yes, Starfleet ships come equipped with Inertia Dampeners; but if I has a nickel for every damned time they've been knocked offline and the crew has been jostled around like the balls in a Bingo hopper, I'd be independently wealthy. Cars have seatbelts. Airplanes and helicopters have seatbelts. The frickin' space shuttle had seatbelts. It's a tried and true safety technology, so it's highly illogical for starships to not have them.

 

2) Holodecks And Holodeck Characters That Can Go Lethally Haywire: As cool as the concept of a Holodeck is, who in their right mind would put such technology on the market knowing it was possible for it to kill someone? In real life, it would be a class action lawsuit waiting to happen, and the manufacturer's CEO would be doing the perp walk shortly after the first time a child gets eaten by Barney The Dinosaur. Honestly, you'd be better off just buying every member of the crew their own Play Station.

 

3) An Astonishing Lack Of Surge Protection: Some remote part of the ship takes a hit during combat and immediately a console on the bridge erupts into a fountain of sparks and the person manning said console is blown backwards about 2 meters. That makes about as much sense as your laptop violently exploding whenever someone hits your WiFi hotspot with a tack hammer.

 

4) Holding Cells In The Brig Only Have Force Fields To Keep Prisoners Contained: Brilliant idea, now every power outage we might have in that part of the ship is a potential jailbreak (the Thin Lizzy song of the same name, entirely optional).

 

 

5) All weapons systems control runs are bundled and vulnerable to point failure: HOW many times were the Galaxy-class Enterprise's weapons systems knocked out by the first volley of an engagement? Where was the secondary control system? Why couldn't they be operated by weapons techs in on-mount controls?

 

6) Where are the Transporter-delivered nukes? Why does ANY ship survive more than one second after it's shields go down?

 

 

7) Lack Of Ladders From The Bridge: How many times have we seen the bridge crew trapped because the turbolifts lose power or are overridden?

 

I have to disagree about the holodecks, though. Children are allowed to ride roller coasters, go white-water rafting, and engage in other entertainment activities with dangerous or even lethal potential, on the assumption that the equipment and the training of its crews have made them as safe as possible. Many people continue to do these things despite the occasional serious accidents that have occurred.

 

 

8) Wear a G%^!@#$ environment suit when you beam down to a completely unexplored planet: Sure, its bulkier and more uncomfortable than going in your pajamas, but how many times have away teams been jeopardized  by exposure to previously undetected alien spores, viruses, gasses, and what have you?

 

 

9) Children on a deep space explorer:  Really?  Come on, just shoot me now.....

 

 

What are we up to, ten? I like 10. We should go for 20.

 

10. The Bridge (or "Command Center") with all the upper echelon officers on duty at the same time, is located on the upper deck of the ship where it's most vulnerable to getting blown to bits along with most of the ship's chain of command. Wouldn't it make more sense to put it in the middle of the hull where it's safest?

 

This is as much a policy problem as a design flaw. The ship's CO, XO, 3rd, 4th and 5th in command should never all be on duty in the same highly vulnerable area, especially during combat. And if they weren't in the starring roles of a poorly written space opera, they wouldn't be.

 

 

You just knew I'd de-lurk to poke fun at Trek, didn't you? Well, now you do!

Sorry Marcus, but I think half you points are baltantly wrong/not thought through.

And the other half is on the "could make sense/just how it had to work for television" fence.

 

1. (Seatbelts) At the speeds at wich combat and travel took place, seatbelts were useless. About the only impact they would have is change the patterns your gluons make on the wall during a full break from Faster then Light. Speed in space is measured in hundreds of kilometers per second, not km per hour.

However the Excelsior (with transwarp drive) and the Into Darkness Enterpreise did have seatbelts. But they were only used during extreme cases (like using an Experimental Drive and loos of all other protection, while aerobreaking).

 

2. (Holodeck)

Part of the holodeck technology is to actually replicate the stuff you (may) come in contact with. Without it you would hit the uncanny valley of Simulated Reality. It also allows group activities (like Baseball, Operas), something they had no proper dedicated rooms for.

And nope, disabling the Security Protocolls was not easy. For every time it happened on screen, there were thousands of hour where it did not happen.

 

3. (Surge protection)

If a crewmember is critically damaged, he can be replaced. If the warp drives containment get's critically damage from a surge you have to build a new ship. More then one of the TNG Episodes even dealt with the fact that "sacrificing a friend to save the ship" is the right course of action for a Commanding Officer.

Ships take years of time and tons of resources to build. The order of survival is: Ship, THEN single crewmembers.

 

4. (Brig FF failing)

How often did that really happen? Afaik they all had seperate Fusion generators just for this case. They needed power to operate Air Recycling anyway. And bar's can not contain any contagions. So the brig could double as Quarantine.

Better primary effect, more versatility. Seems logical to me.

 

5. (Single point of failure for weapons)

In one of the DS9 Episodes Garak tried to force-fire the Defiants weapons to start a war.

In real life computerparts that have been touched without full ESD protection can NOT be put into a Warship. Because any glitch - that might not matter in your 500$ homecomputer - could start WW3.

The weapons of Star Trek are able to casually level Cities. Posion whole Atmospheres.

Justice League Unlimited showed us what happens if you got no proper "single point of Failure" for your big gun.

 

6. Transporter Devliered Nukes:

Transporter scramblers.

There is also the whole thing that shipbattles in real life were rarely fought "to the death". Shipbattles are not massbattles like with Tanks or Infantery. Loosing one ship is a serious blow for any Navy, current or future. And if nobody wants to open that Pandora's box, nobody does.

 

7. Lack of Ladders:

Yeffreys tubes, inlcuding ladders.  Go through the whole ship. Sealing them off is often an issue during Boarding actions.

 

8. (Not using Spacesuits everytime, everywhere):

They had advanced sensors. And biofilters on the Transporters. How often did they beam down without anything contagious making it aboard?

 

9. (Children)

I explain that later in the design for the Galaxy Class/Cruisers in general.

 

10. Bridge at vulnerable place:

If it is such a bad idea, why do we keep doing that in real life? Something about it must outweigh all the problems, or we would have switched to using cameras already.

At the very least if they made thier ships modular in nature repalcing the bridge (a intentionally vital part) is easier in drydock.

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One issues comes from comparing the Exploration ships (Voyager and Enterprise D) to the Warships (Defiant, Enterprise E, anything Klingon).

 

As I see it Voyager and Enterprise D were designed like old earth cruisers: Versatility, indepdency, endurance.

The Enterprise was a Weaponsplatform, Science Lab, Cruise Liner, Diplomatic Ship and a half a dozen other things. Wich is well in line with how Cruiser have been historically designed - doing a LOT of jobs, independantly, far from home in one ship. Might end up not being that good at any given job, but in turn it is decent at many jobs.

And having a decent science/war/medical ship is better then having only a science and medical ship to go into battle with...

 

Having that much crew and such a "wide" design might seem dumb from a war prespective, but this is where the other missions come in:
Longterm missions mean you need good fuel efficiency. And I bet for thier size Voyager and Ent D easily beat the Defiant or every Klingon Bird of Prey in that category. It is worse for combat, but this is not a pure combat vessel.

 

Longterm missions also nessesatates a big and independant crew. Some sources put the Enterprise D at "400 Crew, 600 Civilians". The Enterprise was the Flagship and it visited earth how often? 2-3 times, the entire series? That is how long and far it has to stay from home during it's missions. Having children is just a normal part of living for a human being (and the numerous humanoid aliens).

 

Cruiser design&combat follows the maxime: "Outrun anything you can't outgun, outgun anything you can't outrun." So you end up showing the enemy your front or aft a lot.

The attack surface from aft and front is very minimal, considering the size. While the coverage with Phaser banks is really, really good. Those were the intended engagement directions for a Galaxy class. Same way the armor on a tank is strongest in front&turret, weakest in aft, up and down.

Back in "Generations" Klingons on Point blank range even managed to miss 2/3 of thier disruptor shoot because of that design. I would say it did it's job.

 

The Saucer section made an excellent escape and emergency landing craft. And as we learned in Generations, it did that job admirably:

It survived a point blank warpcore breach, atmospheric re-entry, groundbreaking into mountains - and still brought most people alive to the ground.

 

Now compare that to the defiant:

Purely war purpose and pretty good at that. For the amount of resources and crew it needed, the firepower was excellent.

In turn:

The cabins were small and cramped. No passenger capacity and not suited for long travels. No holodeck or similar amenities.

The Medical Bay was almost useless (as Bashiir Remarked).

For most of the science and explroation stuff, they ended up using shuttles. Because they were better then the big D.

With that small deflector and cramped design, it's fuel efficiency was propably also not that good. It often had to return to base for refuelling, rearming and shore leaf.

The only defiant class ship ever seen used on a longterm mission was the Valiant. And the crew was not that stable at the time.

 

The Enterprise E is still a verstatile Cruiser. But the "combat" mission was given a much bigger focus this time.

 

The Voyager can fully land and set down on a planet. Somewhting we only saw Birds of Prey ever do.

It was remarked what a long warp endurance and fuel efficiency it had in the pilot and the cabins and amenities matched for such long missions.

If you want to get stuck on the other end of the galaxy, your would prefer it to be a Voyager or Galaxy. In a pinch a Klingon D7 and whatever the Equinox was. You really don't want to be there in a Defiant or Bird of Prey.

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A lot of the problems that are listed are just TV problems.  They have certain stylistic ways of showing that XYZ is happening, so the audience understands.  It really isn't a design flaw when Ensign Jones goes flying across the room from an impact, because if Ensign Jones didn't go flying across the room, the audience wouldn't know how much damage the ship had taken.  Presumably there are other ways to show it, but those would likely have their own problems if you looked at them with a hyper-critical eye.

 

Presumably, we're seeing a very small percentage of encounters in the Star Trek universe.  Most Federation ships probably zoom around in relative safety.  They beam down to a new planet, take their tricorder readings, and beam back up without incident.  It's only the name ships like the Enterprise that have the really weird stuff happen to them.  Or perhaps you send down your bridge officers because, in D&D terms, they're the highest level characters you've got.  They're the most likely to survive an encounter, fix whatever problem exists, etc.  Unlike real life, where the captain of a ship is probably a fairly old man, here you've got heroic captains who can punch out a Gorn.

 

We can always make pseudo-scientific explanations for things.  But we would just be making things up.  For instance, as far as the bridge being positioned on the top of the ship.  Perhaps the body of the ship doesn't add all that much protection.  We've seen disruptors blow big holes in ships, all the way through.  So maybe the physical positioning of the bridge isn't that important.  Maybe having it on top of the saucer works because there it's right beside two sets of shield generators or something.  Maybe it's better to be on the outside of the ship, next to a shield generator, than inside the ship away from one.  Unless your shields are down, in which case it sucks.  I can come up with all kinds of explanations like that, if I want to.

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Here's how TNG was explained to me, and backed up superficially by a magazine article I read:

 

TNG actually had a massive female audience by somewhere in the second season, and it grew as the writers wrote the show less like a Sci-Fi Epic and more like a Soap Opera. By the end of the shows run it was firmly a Space Opera; interestingly by most surveys ST has the highest percentage of female fans over other specific fandoms, with TNG being still the most popular of the shows overall in fandom with women liking it more than men, usually.

 

Which goes a long way to explaining why it always took an entire episode to flip the polarity on the main dish and solve the problem in the denouement while basically having a drama unfold in the previous 42 minutes.

 

Yes, if only the average episode of ST:NG had had the thrills and chills of the average maintenance job.

 

"Why aren't we getting any signal? Stupid console!" *Heavy thudding noise as someone slams their fist into a stupid console.*

"That's not going to help. Have you checked the dish?"

"There's nothing wrong with the dish. It's just not working. While it's down, can I go watch spaceball?"

"Go check the dish first."

"I --okay. I'll go check the dish."

"So the dish isn't getting any signal." *Conversation halts for dirty looks and sheepish eye contact avoidance* 

"Did you fix it?"

"Well, I took it apart. . ."

"Did that fix it?"

". . . . No. And I can't put it back together again. Maybe we can stop by Starbase Eleven? We could pop into the hardware store on the way!"

"So you just made it worse. And you have no plans to fix it. Have you looked in the manual."

"The manual? It's stupid. And it was translated badly. Now I will do a terrible imitation of a Japanese accent while muffing jokes about Japlish translations! In conclusion, dirty underwear vending machines!"

"Read the manual and find out what you did wrong."

*Much later.* "I read the manual. It looks like I should have dismantled the refibrillator before unfizzling it from the main integrating shaft."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because it was dumb and hard, and I would have missed the start of the Magnum rerun on History if I had to do it!"

"Magnum P.I. reruns on the History Channel now? The future sure is a strange --Never mind. Go dismantle the refibrillator and unfizzle the integrating shaft."

*Much later*

"Any progress?"

"Well, it sucked at first, but then I realised that if I stuck some gunk to the end of the screwdriver, I could get the darn things to stick on, and after that it was easy. Of course, then I had to clean the screws in place, but after a while it occurred to me that I needed a spray, so no-one was using the Waterpik--"

"--I was use the Waterpik--"

"--And that after you flush it with warm water for a few hours it'll be almost as good as new. So, anyway, I cleaned the rebrillator with the Waterpik, and reinstalled it. But notice these rings, here? They're installation guides. Turns out that the last time the rebrillator was reinstalled, it was onlly fixed to one of the rings, so every time the integrating shaft integrated, there was slippage --here. You see these wear marks? Anyway, I rebuilt the ring flanges with plastic aluminum."

"And?"

"The dish works. For now. Should probably get it into the shop before some space whale shoots plasma torpedoes at us again, though."

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I'm responding to Christopher here.

 

1. Seatbelts: You claimed they're useless. However, we've SEEN multiple occasions where seat belts would have prevented injury or at least kept crew at their stations, ready to respond.

 

2. Holodecks: I agree that they're necessary for training purposes, and for morale purposes on long missions. However, if it were up to me, I'd put a manual circuit breaker in the wall just outside.

 

3. Surge Protection: I hope I'm not understanding you correctly, because it looks like you're claiming that the ship NEEDS fatally exploding consoles to protect more important parts of the ship. Even if, for some reason, explosions WERE a necessary part of protecting warp cores from power surges, those explosions shouldn't be happening inside manned control consoles. Preserving control equipment and personnel is also good for keeping the ship alive. There's no good reason for the control consoles NOT to be on an isolated low-voltage power system with fiber optic links.

 

4. Brig Force Field Failure: Why not bars for containment and force fields for isolation?

 

5. Single Point of Failure for Weapons: All of your statements (except the bit about JLU) sound like reasons why it's NOT a good thing for one thing going in wrong in one place to affect all weapons. Real life military vessels typically have local direct controls for everything that can be controlled remotely.

 

6. Transporter Delivered Nukes: Transporter scramblers wouldn't stop you from TRYING to beam over a nuke. However, I agree that the Federation in particular wouldn't feel comfortable with such a severe tactic.

 

8. Not Using Spacesuits: Eh, I could go either way on this. While you're correct in observing that the failure rate of the sensors and biofilters approach is pretty low, the cost of such failure is pretty high.

 

9. Children: Not buying it. We've had cases of long deployments away from home in the real world, and people handled it without their kids.

 

10. Bridge at vulnerable place: "If it is such a bad idea, why do we keep doing that in real life?" We don't. That is, military ships don't. Civilian ships have everything controlled from the bridge, but civilian ships are not expected to engage in combat. Military ships have a bridge located for good visibility, because the bridge is used for piloting the ship in harbors and other tight spaces, where you need to see what you're about to run into. However, the ship is merely steered from the bridge--all that's up there is a wheel, a compass, and a chair for the guy giving orders to the guy at the wheel. All the ship's command and control functions, equipment, and personnel are located in the Combat Information Center, which is safely positioned in the center of the most heavily armored portion of the ship.

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I'm responding to Christopher here.

 

1. Seatbelts: You claimed they're useless. However, we've SEEN multiple occasions where seat belts would have prevented injury or at least kept crew at their stations, ready to respond.

 

2. Holodecks: I agree that they're necessary for training purposes, and for morale purposes on long missions. However, if it were up to me, I'd put a manual circuit breaker in the wall just outside.

 

3. Surge Protection: I hope I'm not understanding you correctly, because it looks like you're claiming that the ship NEEDS fatally exploding consoles to protect more important parts of the ship. Even if, for some reason, explosions WERE a necessary part of protecting warp cores from power surges, those explosions shouldn't be happening inside manned control consoles. Preserving control equipment and personnel is also good for keeping the ship alive. There's no good reason for the control consoles NOT to be on an isolated low-voltage power system with fiber optic links.

 

4. Brig Force Field Failure: Why not bars for containment and force fields for isolation?

 

5. Single Point of Failure for Weapons: All of your statements (except the bit about JLU) sound like reasons why it's NOT a good thing for one thing going in wrong in one place to affect all weapons. Real life military vessels typically have local direct controls for everything that can be controlled remotely.

 

6. Transporter Delivered Nukes: Transporter scramblers wouldn't stop you from TRYING to beam over a nuke. However, I agree that the Federation in particular wouldn't feel comfortable with such a severe tactic.

 

8. Not Using Spacesuits: Eh, I could go either way on this. While you're correct in observing that the failure rate of the sensors and biofilters approach is pretty low, the cost of such failure is pretty high.

 

9. Children: Not buying it. We've had cases of long deployments away from home in the real world, and people handled it without their kids.

 

10. Bridge at vulnerable place: "If it is such a bad idea, why do we keep doing that in real life?" We don't. That is, military ships don't. Civilian ships have everything controlled from the bridge, but civilian ships are not expected to engage in combat. Military ships have a bridge located for good visibility, because the bridge is used for piloting the ship in harbors and other tight spaces, where you need to see what you're about to run into. However, the ship is merely steered from the bridge--all that's up there is a wheel, a compass, and a chair for the guy giving orders to the guy at the wheel. All the ship's command and control functions, equipment, and personnel are located in the Combat Information Center, which is safely positioned in the center of the most heavily armored portion of the ship.

1. Those were all cases where the existing counter measures (interial dampers) were taxed beyond thier incredibly high tollerancy. The human body can only resist around what, 10 G of acceleration? 1 G is 10m/s change of speed. Those guys opearte at 1km/s speed changes on a slow day.

That is the kind of stuff these things have to (and do!) keep up with.

Losses can't be fully avoided, unfortunately. If one happens it is better to have crew able to man said station without: releasing thier own belt. Releasing the belt of the person they want to replace. Moving the incapacitated body away, taking place.

Seatbelts would limit mobility. And not really help, because by the time they do mater them missing is your least worry.

 

2. Cutting the power was always the first thing they checked off during troubleshooting.

Unfortunately everytime they had a serious issue with the Holodeck, it also prevent them from just "turning it off and on again". Otherwise it would not have been a serious issue worthy of mention/star in the show to begin with.

Turns out the only thing more important then a circuit breaker (that they totally have) is knowing when flipping it would make the issue worse.

 

3. (Using seperate Networks) We are still putting only one 230/110 V network into our houses.

Despite the fact that this current is way within the lifethreathening/deadly range for every human. In fact we rather childproof the connectors and circuits then just using a lower damn voltage already.

How many truly seperate circuits we got in a warship? Minimum amount nessesary, or maximum feasible?

 

And one of the first things you do with military gear is find a way to turn of any safety - governers and circuit breakers in particular.

Because the 5% chance of the console exploding or having to be replaced sooner is not as dangerous as the 75-95% chance of blowing the fuse and having no working device when you really need it (totally had forgotten that reason).

 

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_emergency_power

Or the entirety of Real Life examples on this TVTropes page that deal with military gear

 

4. There is no better answer then "it looked better in Television then talking through bars".

Other answers include: Two systems have twice the chance to fail at opening. Prisioners have an intrisic value (otherwise why take them in the first place). So the chance of them escaping is not as bad as them dying because they could not be evacutated.

We saw how many jailbreaks due to failing Forcefields? And how many due to someone outside busting them out? Looks like they are quite good at keeping people inside.

 

5. Single Point of Failure for Weapons. It looks like Starfleet has a different view on the mater of firing your weapons:

 

6. After a species tried for 300 years to beam over those nukes, you would guess they relaized everyone was using transporter scramblers right? It becomes just a standart "alert yellow" or "alert red" procedure, nobody would bother mentioning or trying it anymore.

But let's also look at it from a tactical standpoint:

You have to drop your shields to beam too. And possibly move slower/match speed and velocity (it was mentioned you have to do that when beaming at warp speed). Not the smartest move in combat. Wich also explains why they don't just keep sending sabotage commandos/much smaller warheads on enemy ships every time thier enemies shields drop - it is riskier for the one beaming then the one being beamed onto.

The only times this worked in Star Trek was when they tricked the enemy into beaming the weapon aboard/to them or the enemy was excessively (or very selectively) damaged.

 

Funny enough beaming nukes was such an OP move, any SciFi where I ever saw it used quickly developed counters to it:

In Stargate Atlantis they started beaming nukes aboard wraith ships. But the Wraith somehow managed to block that. Without shields, no less!

In Schlock Mercenary they developed the Teraport Torpedo. It was fun until the Terraport area denial system became open source.

It seems likely that teleporting mater without a willing receiver is a lot harder then blocking said teleportation of mater.

 

8. Not Using Spacesuits: Unless you plan on beaming the people out of said spacesuits, they would carry just about as many germs inside.

Actually you have to have a pretty good biofiltering when beaming already. You don't want to contaminate the target world with your bacteria after all.

 

Star Trek is also based on the premise that most lifeforms are "carbon based oxygen breathers", with well developed medicine.

Finding a counter to a virus/bacterium when you can watch it in realtime and decode it's DNA down to the last piece is not that hard.

It needs to be something really unusual to make it into the show in the first place.

 

9. Children:

How long were those deployments? How far (communications delay) were those children & partners away? When were those deployments?

How much suspension of disbelief is needed to just roll with it?

 

10 Bridge: Earth Military vesels have the advantage of maneuvering being relatively slow and carefully. So placing them in the CIC for instant communication is not nessesary.

Also having all actors in the same place is a lot easier to shoot. I mean somehow every other SciFi show did it exactly the same way with thier "bridges". So one of those 50/50 cases, I guess.

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My $0.02

3. (Surge protection)

If a crewmember is critically damaged, he can be replaced. If the warp drives containment get's critically damage from a surge you have to build a new ship. More then one of the TNG Episodes even dealt with the fact that "sacrificing a friend to save the ship" is the right course of action for a Commanding Officer.
Ships take years of time and tons of resources to build. The order of survival is: Ship, THEN single crewmembers.

I can think of countless Trek examples of people sacrificing themselves to save the rest of the crew, but I can't think of one where they did so to save the physical ship. I can't even think of a time where that was even discussed. (I didn't watch much of Voyager or Enterprise, so can't speak to them.) OTOH, I can think of countless examples where the Captain risked the entire ship to save one person. The idea that people are easier to replace than ships is not entirely without merit in the real world, and I could see the Klingons making that call, but it's totally at odds with Starfleet's humanist utopianist outlook. After all the line is "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one" not "The needs of the hardware outweigh the needs of the crew."

 

And I bet for thier size Voyager and Ent D easily beat the Defiant or every Klingon Bird of Prey in that category. It is worse for combat, but this is not a pure combat vessel.

Not "for their size." By definition, a ship that is 100% devoted to combat should be able to out-fight a ship of the same size and comparable tech that is only 50% devoted to combat. The Enterprise D is effective because 1. it's so big that it can carry the same amount of weapons & defenses as 3 Birds of Prey and still have room left over for cruise ship stuff, 2. Starfleet tech is years/decades ahead of most of their enemies, and 3. cuz the writers say so.

 

Longterm missions also nessesatates a big and independant crew. Some sources put the Enterprise D at "400 Crew, 600 Civilians". The Enterprise was the Flagship and it visited earth how often? 2-3 times, the entire series? That is how long and far it has to stay from home during it's missions. Having children is just a normal part of living for a human being (and the numerous humanoid aliens).

That arguably made sense in TOS where the Enterprise was meant to be out exploring deep space. But by TNG time, Speed Of Plot travel os so fast there is no logical reason why the Enterprise D couldn't go home once every few months - the fact that it didn't is a narrative choice, not a logical one.

 

[seatbelts]1. Those were all cases where the existing counter measures (interial dampers) were taxed beyond thier incredibly high tollerancy.

Yes, which happened with depressing regularity. Almost weekly in TOS.

 

Losses can't be fully avoided, unfortunately. If one happens it is better to have crew able to man said station without: releasing thier own belt. Releasing the belt of the person they want to replace. Moving the incapacitated body away, taking place.

Seatbelts would limit mobility. And not really help, because by the time they do mater them missing is your least worry.

Sorry, that makes zero sense. Protect your crew from injury, and you are less likely to have to replace them, and releasing a seatbelt takes a fraction of a second. That's like people who don't want to wear seatbelts in their cars because they think it will stop them from being able to get out of the car after a crash - it's the opposite of safety.

 

4. There is no better answer then "it looked better in Television then talking through bars".

Which as Massey pointed out is the real answer to 90% of these.

 

10 Bridge: Earth Military vesels have the advantage of maneuvering being relatively slow and carefully. So placing them in the CIC for instant communication is not nessesary.

Earth vessels have a need to look out the windows - that's the only reason you need to put a bridge up high. It makes no sense in a spaceship. Sure, put all the actors in one place, but no need for that to be exposed on the exterior.

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Sorry, that makes zero sense. Protect your crew from injury, and you are less likely to have to replace them, and releasing a seatbelt takes a fraction of a second. That's like people who don't want to wear seatbelts in their cars because they think it will stop them from being able to get out of the car after a crash - it's the opposite of safety.

 

Actually it makes perfect sense and that's how the military handles thing.

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I never understood where all the "steam" came from whenever a ship took structural damage. They take a hit and steam starts venting from somewhere. What the hell are they using steam for on a 23rd century starship? "Scotty, I need more power!" "Captain, I'm shoveling coal as fast as I can!"

I'd watch that.

"Double schnapps to the black gang, and cap the safety valve."

 

-- Adm. Souchon (iirc), commanding SMS Goeben at the opening of hostilities in WW1.

 

(The "black gang" were the coal stokers.)

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Again, I can come up with all sorts of made up explanations for things.  Maybe control panels on the bridge explode because it's just dangerous to be using any electrical devices when you get hit by phasers.  That isn't power from the ship, that's energy from the weapon that hit you.  Maybe the shields (and even the physical body of the ship) are designed to disperse the energy, spread it out over as large an area as possible.  It's supposed to be distributed evenly across the shields and throughout the ship (much better than it just punching a hole straight through you).  But you're still going to have localized energy spikes.  There might not be any way to get around that.  We see it on the bridge most often because that's where the camera is.  But it's also possible that the ship gets hit with a disruptor blast, and the ship is mostly fine, shields holding, except for a single surge of energy that blows out the light (in a big shower of sparks) in the bathroom on deck 12.

 

It would be sort of like those weird news stories where some guy is sitting on his couch, his house gets hit by lightning, and the electricity goes down through the TV antenna, jumps over to the wiring in the house, then jumps again to the heating ducts, and then runs right up his leg because his foot was resting on the metal heating vent.  It's a freak accident, except on Starfleet ships, it happens more often because they get hit a lot more frequently, and (in part) because maybe space weapons are designed to do that?  Theoretically, if you know you aren't likely to kill an enemy starship with one or two shots, maybe you adjust the frequency or something to make it more likely that the energy will channel through the ship and fry a few systems (and a few crewmembers).  You might be able to knock a few systems offline before you drop their shields below 50%.  Maybe that's why Starfleet wants triple backups of all important systems.

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One issues comes from comparing the Exploration ships (Voyager and Enterprise D) to the Warships (Defiant, Enterprise E, anything Klingon).

 

As I see it Voyager and Enterprise D were designed like old earth cruisers: Versatility, indepdency, endurance.

The Enterprise was a Weaponsplatform, Science Lab, Cruise Liner, Diplomatic Ship and a half a dozen other things. Wich is well in line with how Cruiser have been historically designed - doing a LOT of jobs, independantly, far from home in one ship. Might end up not being that good at any given job, but in turn it is decent at many jobs.

And having a decent science/war/medical ship is better then having only a science and medical ship to go into battle with...

 

Having that much crew and such a "wide" design might seem dumb from a war prespective, but this is where the other missions come in:

Longterm missions mean you need good fuel efficiency. And I bet for thier size Voyager and Ent D easily beat the Defiant or every Klingon Bird of Prey in that category. It is worse for combat, but this is not a pure combat vessel.

 

Longterm missions also nessesatates a big and independant crew. Some sources put the Enterprise D at "400 Crew, 600 Civilians". The Enterprise was the Flagship and it visited earth how often? 2-3 times, the entire series? That is how long and far it has to stay from home during it's missions. Having children is just a normal part of living for a human being (and the numerous humanoid aliens).

 

Cruiser design&combat follows the maxime: "Outrun anything you can't outgun, outgun anything you can't outrun." So you end up showing the enemy your front or aft a lot.

The attack surface from aft and front is very minimal, considering the size. While the coverage with Phaser banks is really, really good. Those were the intended engagement directions for a Galaxy class. Same way the armor on a tank is strongest in front&turret, weakest in aft, up and down.

Back in "Generations" Klingons on Point blank range even managed to miss 2/3 of thier disruptor shoot because of that design. I would say it did it's job.

 

The Saucer section made an excellent escape and emergency landing craft. And as we learned in Generations, it did that job admirably:

It survived a point blank warpcore breach, atmospheric re-entry, groundbreaking into mountains - and still brought most people alive to the ground.

 

Now compare that to the defiant:

Purely war purpose and pretty good at that. For the amount of resources and crew it needed, the firepower was excellent.

In turn:

The cabins were small and cramped. No passenger capacity and not suited for long travels. No holodeck or similar amenities.

The Medical Bay was almost useless (as Bashiir Remarked).

For most of the science and explroation stuff, they ended up using shuttles. Because they were better then the big D.

With that small deflector and cramped design, it's fuel efficiency was propably also not that good. It often had to return to base for refuelling, rearming and shore leaf.

The only defiant class ship ever seen used on a longterm mission was the Valiant. And the crew was not that stable at the time.

 

The Enterprise E is still a verstatile Cruiser. But the "combat" mission was given a much bigger focus this time.

 

The Voyager can fully land and set down on a planet. Somewhting we only saw Birds of Prey ever do.

It was remarked what a long warp endurance and fuel efficiency it had in the pilot and the cabins and amenities matched for such long missions.

If you want to get stuck on the other end of the galaxy, your would prefer it to be a Voyager or Galaxy. In a pinch a Klingon D7 and whatever the Equinox was. You really don't want to be there in a Defiant or Bird of Prey.

 

IIRC, the Equinox was a Nova-class starship (the same class of ship that future Harry Kim was in command of in the final

episode of ST: Voyager).

 

 

Major Tom 2009 :dyn

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Again, I can come up with all sorts of made up explanations for things.  Maybe control panels on the bridge explode because it's just dangerous to be using any electrical devices when you get hit by phasers.  That isn't power from the ship, that's energy from the weapon that hit you.

That's the explanation that makes the most sense to me.

 

I did a little research on the exploding-consoles phenomenon. It first occurred in TOS "Where No Man Has Gone Before", wherein the Enterprise hits an energy field at the edge of the galaxy, causing consoles to explode amid many electrical-like discharges. Nine crewmen die offscreen (and two contract ESP); it's already unclear whether this is from exploding consoles or the discharges.

 

It happens again in TOS "The City on the Edge of Forever", when time distortions from the Guardian at the Edge of Forever "overload the control circuits" and blow up Sulu's console in his face.

 

Exploding consoles doesn't seem to happen again until the Kobayashi Maru sequence in STII:TWOK. Here the cause is (simulated) Klingon torpedoes, and the (simulated) console explosions cause several (simulated) bridge fatalities. So now we're seeing a fictional portrayal of simulated console explosions causing pretend fatalities. Many more consoles would explode on the bridge of the Reliant by the end of the film, though, in a similar fashion. If it matters, these consoles would have been detonated primarily by Enterprise phaser fire hitting the Reliant bridge almost dead on.

 

After that exploding consoles were pretty much just an accepted trope in Trek. On the one hand, yeah, circuit breakers. On the other hand, lightning has been shown to regard fuses, suppressors, and surge protectors as suggestions to be ignored at leisure. It's not totally unreasonable to think that the energy discharged by phaser fire, antimatter torpedo detonations, time distortions, and ESP would likewise do whatever it pleased. To paraphrase The Jerk, "They hate the consoles! Stay away from the consoles!"

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  • 2 months later...

In TWOK it is implied that the Reliant's torpedo pod was manned, as the Enterprise phasered it followed immediately by a few interior frames of Khanoids getting blown up.

 

If the Reliant torpedo pod bothers you, take a close look at a picture of an Oberth class sometime. ;)

 

One of the TWC channels here ran the second ST movie not too long ago, so I took a close look at the scenes involving

the torpedo pod's destruction; the first Khanoid (to use your turn of phrase) was some poor unfortunate schumck in a

ship corridor inside the main hull, with the next one being blown off one of the 'transparent aluminum' walkways in the

Engineering section. The hit that killed Joachim (Khan's No.#2) on the Reliant's bridge was the last part of that particular

attack from the Enterprise IIRC.

 

As for the Oberth-class ships, I've not only seen the pics of the class but also heard some of the gripes made about its

design as well. I suspect that the chimpanzees that Scotty accused of having had something to do with the Enterprise's

design (or some similar complaint) in the fifth ST film got hold of the Oberth's design first.

 

 

Major Tom 2009 :snicker:

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6) Where are the Transporter-delivered nukes? Why does ANY ship survive more than one second after it's shields go down?

If you have a device that can convert 100 kg of matter into pure energy, you don't need nukes.

Nor antimatter for that matter.

http://www.edwardmuller.com/index.php?Page=calculator

Hell Just dematerialize part of the enemy's ship without an angular confinement beam.

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The ship hull contains neither the command/bridge section, nor the engines. The whole layout screams inefficiency. It maximizes travel time around the ship, renders the drive section unnecessarily vulnerable, and creates weird blind spots in fields of fire. Not to mention the extra surface area created by the design would tend to spread out the shields and make them relatively weaker. If you look at the designs for other species, Federation engineers look especially off their game.

 

What happened when they got the design right? The Defiant.

 

In the TOS Engineering and drive system(nacelles) were away from the hull for a reason to protect the crew. You cannot have compact ship like the defiant. The drive system is too dangerous. The last Anti-matter STL design I saw from RL was 480 kilometers to provide safe rad distance for the crew and necessary heat exchanges to cool the drive system.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/slowerlight.php Search for Frissbee anti-matter rocket.

 

Then there is issue as to why we would be building human crewed warships and not drones.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/misconceptions.php

 

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarship.php

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