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Post by cowboy40 on Jul 2, 2019 10:33:04 GMT -7
The Dreadnought, Franz Joseph version with backstories from Vintage Starships, is a beast that came out of the Four Years War. The Federation class was an attempt to solve weaknesses in one of the stars of the FYW, the Heston class cruiser. the Heston was over gunned, and drew to much energy for firepower. USS Federation was an attempt to solve this issue by providing a more powerful engine fit using new engine tech and so on. Star Fleet also used this upgrade to mount phaers and torpedoes on the Heston hull. What came out of the experiment would be the large capital ships of the 2260's, the Federation class would though show problems of the compromises reached in the design of this ship. Warp fields could become unbalanced, and again even with the new weapons, the excess mass of the ships, and the cramped conditions for a vessel her size, they would be considered still under powered. That said even with these problems, the ship was able to out perform the Klingon battleships of the L-13 and L-20 types.
With new technology in engineering the Star Fleet would abandon, for the most part, the concept and compromises of the dreadnought type. In the 2270's the UFP would concentrate on the new tech and produced two beasts. One with a modified standard warp engines and one with new transwarp tech. Both of these new ships, The Excelsior and the Indomitable, solved the issues that the dreadnought type suffered. These ships were able to use a balanced warp field, that helped improve the mobility of the ships, reducing the amount of power from the gird that had to be used to movement the ships. both vessels experimented with weapons, shields and other systems to increase firepower and defense.
In the 2270's, the old Federation class would be brought up to modern standards, but they would be place in reserve because the new battleships were more suited to operations. My question is: does the compromises and modifications on an existing hull make the Federation class of ships a good investment, or were they a design dead end from the start? The resulting ships still had the same basic problems of the Heston class cruiser. They were still over gunned and under powered because of all those weapons and mass created by them. The problem wasn't solved, but that said in the 2260's these ships could kick the snot out of anything they came against. They could even stand up in the assault role for engaging orbital outposts and other similar targets. So, was this design line worth the investment?
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Post by tinker on Jul 3, 2019 4:58:54 GMT -7
As the Niagara of TNG would suggest (also being a 3-nacelle design), even decades later there was still a place for ships of this configuration. We don't see many 3-nacelle ships (the Niagara being the only canon design that I know of) which would suggest there are significant drawbacks to 3-nacelle ships. Therefore, they are only used for very limited applications - where a lot of energy outweighs a possible lack of efficiency/warp dynamics. Since the Federation did not utilize dedicated warships in any serious numbers until the advent of the Borg and Dominion, this seems to be the only likely application - which would explain the rarity of such designs.
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Post by cowboy40 on Jul 3, 2019 7:08:03 GMT -7
Yes you do have point, tinker, the Federation class ships were a post war attempt to solve issues of a proven combat vessel. If you go with the backstory provided by Vintage Starships (which i do like a lot of the FYW backstory they have done), the Federations were built to increase power on the gird. This was to be accomplished by replacing laser and accelerator cannon with phaser and photon torpedoes. These weapon changes alone would have reduced power consumption, but the engineer will do what an engineer will do, decided to try to increase the power output even more by adding that compromise of the third nacelle. Problems that came from this were several. First off all the new weapons actually added more mass to the hull, as well as did the third nacelle. The shape of the warp bubble wasn't really able to fully handle propelling the beast with out becoming unstable. This instability would later be handled by software management, but well it would still show imbalances as the ships continued in service. The ships also again ran into the problem of being under powered even with the more "efficient" systems. The ships would carry better shield generators and the like that helped again manage some of the issues, but in an attempt to keep them the killers of the fleet, the compromises would continue. That said they are fun to see and play..lol
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Post by jeffwright on Jul 27, 2019 12:30:32 GMT -7
Stargazer would be even or greater than the SFB Ares Battleship in power generation--but not number of weapons. Both were four nacelle beasts
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Post by cowboy40 on Jul 28, 2019 6:24:11 GMT -7
Stargazer would be even or greater than the SFB Ares Battleship in power generation--but not number of weapons. Both were four nacelle beasts As for Stargazer, and the rest of the Constellation class, we have some evidence that she is a very late Kirk era design and that she was built as a cruiser. FASA treats her as a cruiser. It appears the Constellation was built to be a super cruiser of sorts. She was designed for long range missions and she was designed to have a lot of power on her grid. This made her a very tough nut to crack in the Kirk era. As they continued through the lost era, like the Excelsior, that would start to lose that toughness and become run of the mill ships during the TNG era. So no, the Constellation and her sisters were built as very expensive cruisers. Very state of the art in the 22080's, but by 2360's they were well just another ship from a earlier century that just happened to be good enough to remain in the back waters of the Federation.....Stargazer was said to be an ordinary and run down ship even when Picard commanded her. |
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Post by tinker on Jul 29, 2019 4:55:51 GMT -7
The DS9 Tech Manual had this to say about some of the four-nacelle ships:
"Specialized high-warp courier vehicles can be employed for critical missions and are able to cover the 50.3-light-year distance between the station and the UFP inner perimeter within six days. This is equivalent to Warp 9.92, and is accomplished by using alternating twin matter-antimatter reaction cores and nacelle pairs. A modified four-engine version of the Defiant pathfinder spaceframe has proven successful in surpassing the 1,000 light-year/year efficiency barrier."
The same could be true for the Constellation. It would explain why the Constellation in TNG Officer's Manual (and First Year Update) lists the ship as having "2(4)" nacelles. So it is designed as a 2-nacelle ship that has four nacelles.
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Post by cowboy40 on Jul 29, 2019 8:52:44 GMT -7
The DS9 Tech Manual had this to say about some of the four-nacelle ships: "Specialized high-warp courier vehicles can be employed for critical missions and are able to cover the 50.3-light-year distance between the station and the UFP inner perimeter within six days. This is equivalent to Warp 9.92, and is accomplished by using alternating twin matter-antimatter reaction cores and nacelle pairs. A modified four-engine version of the Defiant pathfinder spaceframe has proven successful in surpassing the 1,000 light-year/year efficiency barrier." The same could be true for the Constellation. It would explain why the Constellation in TNG Officer's Manual (and First Year Update) lists the ship as having "2(4)" nacelles. So it is designed as a 2-nacelle ship that has four nacelles. Again Tinker, as i explained earlier. the Constellation being a long range mission capable ship, able to respond in a hurry and bring in a heavy cruisers fire power. The FASA manual claims a warp 14, capable ship on the Kirk era scale. That is the burst emergency speed. Given the standard "tactical" speed of the late Kirk era was Warp 8, this leads me to believe while ships like Enterprise and Reliant could only maintain the tactical high Speed for a few hours but given the figures for the Constellation, why couldn't she maintain this on a regular basis given her speed and number of nacelle sets? Another thought related to engines on these beasts. They seem to have two impulse drives. This leads me to wonder if they rotate the warp nacelle sets, maybe they do the same with the impulse drive. Two complete and possibly independent drive units, two sets of engineering units....rotate them to maintain the speed and let the other units recover from the sustained operations? |
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Post by tinker on Aug 21, 2019 5:50:50 GMT -7
Another thought related to engines on these beasts. They seem to have two impulse drives. This leads me to wonder if they rotate the warp nacelle sets, maybe they do the same with the impulse drive. Two complete and possibly independent drive units, two sets of engineering units....rotate them to maintain the speed and let the other units recover from the sustained operations? Since impulse drives only propel the ship at sub-light speeds, why would it be necessary? If anything, the additional impulse engine(s) would aid in improving maneuverability and additional power for systems. They may even be there just as a "spare tire"? On the Excelsior II, the additional impulse engines are only used when the saucer separates from the secondary hull. So, it appears that there can be a lot of reasons for additional impulse engines. |
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