SDN Starship Design Commentaries

[Eternal_Freedom]

The Galaxies have a rather undeserved reputation for being fragile. By the time of Sacrifice of Angels, at least 13 had been built (ten at least are seen in that battle, while Enterprise, Yamato and Odyssey being lost beforehand). Out of those 13, we know for certain of only 3 losses, two of them in combat against ships that basically ignored their shields (and both those survive multiple hits from beam weapons and in the E-D's case at least two direct hits from antimatter warheads). Find me another starship class that can boast that kind of combat record.

They prove sturdy enough in Dominion War battles, dish out a lot of damage and are kept around as heavy ships near Earth after the war ends (seven are seen in the 18/27 ship fleet that meets Voyager in "Endgame"), meaning Starfleet clearly uses them for things other than just exploration and that they must be valuable in such roles.

[Lord Revan]

batch 1 upgraded Galaxies were bad but those faults were quickly fixed and really only the Yamato was lost from that first batch. The Enterprise and the Odyssey were both fixed (assuming the Odyssey was even built during the first batch) and the Odyssey lost a sizeble section of her engineering/drive section before going down. So while the reputation of GCS being overly fragile isn't totally unfounded, it's not quite deserved either as it's correct only for a small number of Galaxies for reasonbly short amount of time. we know for a fact the USS Galaxy most likely survived as far as Nemesis (a ship named USS Galaxy (IIRC) is part of fleet the USS Enterprise was suppose to meet, while we don't know for a fact that said ship is the name sake for the Galaxy-class it seems likely)

[Starglider]

Had the war dragged on for a few more years it's reasonable to expect that Sovereigns would have appeared in greater numbers. Any that were in service around the Dominion War would likely have been the centrepiece of their respective fleets in a manner analogous to the carrier battle groups we have today.

Trek doesn't seem to have the extreme role specialisation that carrier battle groups have. They use rings of semi-specialised medium-range ships to defend a very specialised long range power projection platform from threats from three different mediums: air, surface, submarine. Even the 80s surface action groups with a battleship at the centre were effectively protecting a dedicated shore bombardment ship.

The situation in Trek is more analogous to early 20th century capital ship warfare, where ships are not particularly specialised, just having different tradeoffs in weapons vs speed vs durability vs non-combat capability (at each size class). They can all do both anti-capital and planetary bombardment and all have weapons of similar range. There are a few small ships (Peregrines) in the fleet actions but they are strictly secondary, more like gunboats than fighters, and we never see them launching from carrier vessels. The weapons are mostly direct fire beams or energy pulses with some torpedoes that seem to travel in more or less fixed lines and are often fired in 'spreads'; we very rarely see a torpedo behaving like an actual missile and making significant course changes (as in the modified stealth-hunting torpedo in Star Trek 6). So very much an early 20th century model, but with 'walls of battle' instead of 'lines of battle'.

[NecronLord]

Many ships seem far larger than they need to be. The Captain and the senior officers have their own quarters, for understandable reasons- they will deal with military intelligence and other sensitive information, which must be kept out-of-sight from other crewmembers, to maintain operational security- but lower-ranking crewmembers, like Ensign What's-His-Name or Petty Officer What's-Her-Name? Four of them can easily squeeze into the huge quarters we see aboard the NCC-1701 and NCC-1701-D, so why do each and every one of them need their own quarters? That space is better used for something else- ANYTHING ELSE.

Important question. How are you going to get people to sign up to be treated well, like enlisted sailors? I'll see if I can dig up the pictures of military sealift command (civilian support service) cabins for merchant mariners compared to warship cabins for senior officers; it's quite hilarious how much more comfortable the merchant mariners are compared even to officers, let alone enlistees.

Among the major benefits used for recruiting in real-life militaries are pay, education, veterans' benefits, prestige of the service. Let's take a look at a US navy recruitment page

There are many reasons to be part of America's Navy: good pay, outstanding health-care benefits, generous vacation time, plus opportunities for advancement and travel. The Navy is also the right fit for all kinds of people and the chance to make lifelong connections. It’s a full-time commitment with lifetime benefits to your character, whether you stay in or use it for experience in a civilian career.

Pay is irrelevant in the federation, and the healthcare for the civilian population is surely as good as starfleet, travel, certainly, is a possibility, as is the well, adventure. But that's a bunch of those to join knocked off right away.

Real-world first world militaries have recruitment problems. and the Federation makes even the most progressive countries today look like cultures wallowing in poverty.

And making starfleet more military might actually make it harder to recruit the talent they need.



The Federation's history with warfare, from the devastation of the Vulcans before Surak to World War 3 and the Eugenics Wars, and the pictured 'post-atomic horror' give no grounds to think that increased discipline would make recruiting any easier.

Adventure, patriotism and the desire to protect one's fellow citizens are the major reasons for joining starfleet, and by the beginning of TNG, there's no appreciable threat to the Federation, the Klingons are reliable allies, and the Romulans in seclusion; in fact the greatest threats faced by the Federation to date were ones that having a better disciplined military was barely relevant to, the likes of Vejur and the Whale Probe literally could not be defeated by any military attack whatsoever, even if the Federation beggared itself to build guns and bombs they would have been swept aside without even an effort from these. One of them was even defeated by having the right people with the right training as mutineers rescue the Earth, after it swept starfleet aside with consumate ease. Recruitment should be an absolutely key concern.

Starfleet being a civilian service with military aspects, with lots of spare capacity and specialists on board its ships, is the best way to meet overwhelming threats like Vejur or the whale probe.

Having a more accomodating vessel is well worth it if you get the talent needed to protect the Federation on board.

Yes, the Federation as of early TNG was not ready to fight a major war, and such inefficient attitudes are clearly inadequate; of course, that's the message of one of the key episodes of TNG.

You wanted to frighten us? We're frightened. You wanted to show us we were inadequate? For the moment, I grant that...

Sure enough, threats do crop up, and with a little intervention from everyone's favourite trickster god, they actually do start making efficiencies. Voyager has no civilians (at time of launch, it picks some up) nor does Defiant. Defiant even has bunks.


Tl;dr: Analysing a military as the product of a culture explains a lot about it, and in that the worldbuilding of the bloated, civilian carrying Enterprise-D is reflective of a kind of cultural confidence that gods come down and test the characters' resolve with, confonting them over such arrogance. Most militaries are designed for the last war; in that case, the last time a major federation world was threatened was this where military efficiency is worthless.


You're wrong about the TOS era though, we see enlisted quarters on the NCC-1701-A in Undiscovered Country and they're actually like what you describe:

1, 2, 3.


Bonus, the Laundry

[NecronLord]

I should also add, that even in the post Dominion War context,the value of a... let's call it a college vessel... like the Galaxy-class (though perhaps without the children) would likely come back and prove itself again the next time a high-tier technological foe like the whale probe approaches; I'd much rather have a ship carrying say, xenocultural specialists, computing analysts and translators, to one that is equally capable of military action, but is purely designed to fight, if something was coming at me that could sweep away any military force that approaches it and can only be 'understood' and placated, not defeated.

Presumably that's what the Sovereign is for.

I suspect that if extended peace looms again, and recruitment goes down, all the dedicated warships like Steamrunners and Defiants and such would be first on the docket for mothballs. And I'd even say that's the wise course; giant alien phallic AI vessels that can fuck any conceivable navy without so much as getting a dent can appear at any time.

[SpottedKitty]

Many of the ships we see post TOS are simply bigger than necessary, to the point where you could remove large amounts of internal rooms (Galaxy Class interiors, in particular, are described as 'configurable') and still be able to quarter the number of crew we see on screen.

I'm remembering a note in the TNG Tech Manual that there's still a fair amount of unused space in between the habitable rooms we see on screen — it's "for future expansion" apparently. The whole thing's braced presumably by its own dedicated SIF to prevent bits from breaking off and rattling around, but the hull volume definitely isn't as "full" as it appears on many of the published deck plans.

Come to think of it, are there any canon-ish deck plans apart from things like the big side-view display in Engineering?

[NecronLord]

Canon-ish, yes, done by Rick Sternbach and related to the tech-manual.

Canon; bits of some of the older fan-plans were used as screen displays in the TOS movies and therefore became true-canon.

But, the SIF is contextually clear as an essential, if you're saying it's not required; the ship that has SIF moves faster and fights better than one without. Lack of SIF even for things like Defiant results in defeat and death.

[FaxModem1]

Here's one that is not Trek related, why are there no guns on the underside of the Imperial Star Destroyer? Their predecessors, the Acclamations, could land, but could Star Destroyers? Why the holdover in design? What purpose does it play?

[Lord Revan]

Here's one that is not Trek related, why are there no guns on the underside of the Imperial Star Destroyer? Their predecessors, the Acclamations, could land, but could Star Destroyers? Why the holdover in design? What purpose does it play?

there's no big guns but there's some weapons on the underside of the ISD, most of the shots at start of ANH came of the underside of the craft. Though I'm guessing the range of big guns is so large that you can't really exploit that gap.

[Tribble]

Here's one that is not Trek related, why are there no guns on the underside of the Imperial Star Destroyer? Their predecessors, the Acclamations, could land, but could Star Destroyers? Why the holdover in design? What purpose does it play?

there's no big guns but there's some weapons on the underside of the ISD, most of the shots at start of ANH came of the underside of the craft. Though I'm guessing the range of big guns is so large that you can't really exploit that gap.

Agreed. Also, closing to point-blank range against an ISD was considered so suicidal that nobody had really tried it until Endor. Given that only another major capital ship like a Mon Calamari Cruiser could match an ISD (of which the Rebels only had a handful) the fact that an ISD had fewer weapons on the bottom of the ship really didn't matter all that much as it still had more than enough firepower on the underside to take out most of the ships it had to deal with (like the Tantive IV).

[Sea Skimmer]

If you spread your guns around evenly you have no chance of concentrating firepower against a single enemy, and ISDs are not so large as to only expect smaller enemies as the norm. They seem pretty oriented towards fighting similar ships in a general engagement. As long as they have a high roll rate, which I would suggest is likely given overall high sublight speeds, the advantage would be in favor of concentrating the main armament, not dispersing it.

Now that doesn't solve the problem of the heavy turrets having poor arcs of fire, but I suspect these ships are more energy limited then barrel count limited anyway, and stuff like the 3km long turbolaser bolts at Endor is token evidence in favor of this. It could be said gun are for example, cooling limited. So you can channel all of your firepower say, into just one turret, but that turret then overheats and needs a lot of down time, while other turrets fire. Or else you can split fire among them with less effect, but much better volume of fire and reactions allowing for targeting weakspots of enemy ships. With the way Wars shields seem to be more of a form of armor then hit point based deflectors that might make sense, and also helps explain crap like bridges being taken out.

IIRC though some of the places gunfire comes from in ANH have never been matched to any identified gun position on the model. It might be that the ISD has a couple of big guns in the belly that are completely buried in the hull for firing dead ahead, solving the poor arcs of the main turrets problem, but then again these might only be medium weapons. The target only rated a corvette after all.

[Tribble]

I can't recall if an ISD could land on a planet. However, we do see in Force Awakens that an ISD can survive an atmospheric entry while remaining at least somewhat intact (for all we know the ship was fighting near ground level when it crashed but it's not certain), and expanded materials have ISDs capable of operating in an atmosphere. It's possible that the relative lack of weapons on the underside may have to do with that: perhaps ISDs have some extra armour / shielding there so that it can enter an atmosphere and conduct missions near ground level when needed. Is there any canon material showing an ISD operating near a planet's surface?

[Axton]

The Galaxies have a rather undeserved reputation for being fragile. By the time of Sacrifice of Angels, at least 13 had been built (ten at least are seen in that battle, while Enterprise, Yamato and Odyssey being lost beforehand). Out of those 13, we know for certain of only 3 losses, two of them in combat against ships that basically ignored their shields (and both those survive multiple hits from beam weapons and in the E-D's case at least two direct hits from antimatter warheads). Find me another starship class that can boast that kind of combat record.

They prove sturdy enough in Dominion War battles, dish out a lot of damage and are kept around as heavy ships near Earth after the war ends (seven are seen in the 18/27 ship fleet that meets Voyager in "Endgame"), meaning Starfleet clearly uses them for things other than just exploration and that they must be valuable in such roles.

On the other hand, we saw in "Case and Effect" (Season 5, Episode 18) that a low-speed collision with a Galaxy-class ship's warp nacelle can lead to the destruction of the entire ship.

Compare that to the Constellation-class ship from "The Doomsday Machine" which survived significantly more damage to a nacelle as well as to other parts of its structure, or to the Reliant from The Wrath Of Khan which had one of its nacelles entirely destroyed and survived.

Factor in, as well, the Yamato from "Contagion" (Season 2, Episode 11) which was destroyed by an alien computer virus.

The common factor in both events is (as this board seems to have a long history, I'm sure this has been pointed out by others, but in case it hasn't...) a lack of failure-actuated safety measures. Even 20th century household electrical systems have breaker boxes. Apparently humanity will only retain an understanding of the concept until the end of the 23rd century, but not into the 24th.

[Terralthra]

The average household electrical system isn't generating terawatts of energy, you dingus. Even megawatts of electricity getting misrouted causes explosions today. I guess the manufacturers of the power lines in question forgot breaker boxes? ::eyeroll::

Reliant very much did not survive. We have no idea how much longer she would've gone without blowing up or if she would've. As for Yamato...yeah, let me have complete control over the computers running a nuclear plant and I am 100% certain I can cause a meltdown. What sort of failsafe do you propose for antimatter containment? Your complaint seems to boil down to "the Federation shouldn't use antimatter", which, I guess, sure, but that seems like a pretty poor critique. The energy density of M/AM is obviously far higher per mass than any other power storage medium.

[NecronLord]

On the other hand, we saw in "Case and Effect" (Season 5, Episode 18) that a low-speed collision with a Galaxy-class ship's warp nacelle can lead to the destruction of the entire ship.

Compare that to the Constellation-class ship from "The Doomsday Machine" which survived significantly more damage to a nacelle as well as to other parts of its structure, or to the Reliant from The Wrath Of Khan which had one of its nacelles entirely destroyed and survived.

And sometimes cars are totally wrecked in a 30 mph crash, and sometimes they're able to remain roadworthy. Crashes vary.

Reliant very much did not survive. We have no idea how much longer she would've gone without blowing up or if she would've. As for Yamato...yeah, let me have complete control over the computers running a nuclear plant and I am 100% certain I can cause a meltdown.

There's often been an argument that they should have had 'ZOMG better antivirus' in that. People who say that don't know how antivirus software works in real life, and haven't watched the episode. The iconian probes flash lightning at a computer and then they're in, it's absolute clarketech and no conceivable anti-virus software would help.

The energy density of M/AM is obviously far higher per mass than any other power storage medium.

Including the romulan power cores; the drawback of which is that you're carting around a lot of mass.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, and to use an electrical system that doesn't result in Ensign Long Pig Done To a Turn, and blow up in bridge operators' faces every time a conduit ruptures. You know, like wiring, cabling, step-down transformers, circuit breakers and the like? I admit they're not as "shiny, cool, science-fictiony" as using volatile plasma to conduct electricity, but, it is both scaleable and actually works.

And, oh yes, realizing control systems do not require high voltage or high amperage.

Read the posts.

The most obvious explanation forwhy high-energy plasma lines are blowing up and killing console operators is NOT that the console runs on high-voltage high-amperage current. It's that for other valid engineering reasons, there needs to be a high-voltage power line running through the space behind the console, and this line happens to have shorted out through the console or exploded on its own and just blew the console out through the wall.

I'll re-phrase. On a mast away from the part of the ship where people live, work, play and slaughter the innocent.

There are actually living quarters on a GCS' engineering or stardrive hull. Quarters where civilians live, if Generations is any judge.

(one of those being evacuated from the stardrive hull is a little girl who loses her teddy bear)

The main reactor and fuel storage are too important to the ship's functionality to be stuck out on a long pole where an accident or enemy fire can easily target them and blow them off. They at least have to be wrapped in a large volume of hull to provide some reasonable degree of protection from random damage.

As to why there are civilians quartered in the engineering hull if they intend to be able to separate the engineering hull in case of a reactor explosion... Reactor explosions usually won't happen instantly, and if they did, there'd be no useful precautions you could take in any event. It may well be that when the Galaxy-class was designed, the idea was that at 'battle stations,' all the civilians would by default move into the saucer section anyway. So it didn't matter if their bedrooms were in the engineering hull, they'd be running out of there anyway as soon as a crisis occurred. As long as there's time to get everyone to their emergency stations that means they're safe, and if there isn't that much time they're not safe anyway.

That's another issue right there.

Why are there children on a starship?

I get that you probably can't avoid having a certain number of civilians on a ship as fuckoff huge as the Enterprise-D, especially when a primary assignment of the ship is scientific exploration and discovery. It's still (as much as they would like to hide the fact) a ship which is going to find itself in combat, which has to be able to defend itself, which will be getting shot at. A ship which will be hundreds or thousands of light-years away from civilization as they know it at times. It's, quite frankly, a high risk environment...

But children? Children are a goddamn liability...

It's the... 24th century? They can damn well give everybody a shot that turns off their reproductive functions for a few years, and if someone goes off duty and wants to have kids, they can give them another shot and turn it right back on. I could accept taking refugees and their children aboard; I could accept a colony shipment; hell, I can even live with people being pregnant and continuing work at least until they give birth because maybe they're allergic to the contraceptive vaccine or something.

I'd say that having children aboard a permanent starbase or other fixed location is reasonable- that's comparable to real life, where soldiers posted overseas to foreign bases in reasonably secure locations will bring their families along to live on base housing.

However, warships and starbases in potentially hostile territory should not be allowing children. This is frankly an example of a problem with the mid-24th century Federation, although it is NOT a problem with their ship design as such.

And note that you see a lot less reference to children and civilians aboard as the Dominion War unfolds. The Defiant did not, on the whole, have kids aboard. And there were no kids aboard Voyager even when she was on a relatively routine mission in the Badlands, not until some of the crew started having babies due to the sheer ridiculous length of time they were away from base.

So this may be a case where the Federation took leave of its senses after roughly 100 years or so of near-total peace, and then changed its mind again after dangerous things started happening to them again.

There shouldn't be any civilians on a military ship, unless they're mission-critical experts. Even Admiral Nelson's Seaview, a "civilian research and exploration" submarine with an all-military crew and enough thermonuclear firepower to set at least part of the world on fire, wasn't this damnably stupid.

The extreme diversity of missions the Enterprise-D takes on means that the range of potentially mission-critical experts is fairly wide. While in Kirk's day, all the scientists aboard ship were uniformed Starfleet personnel, this policy appears to have been changed in the intervening century. Perhaps Starfleet decided to concentrate its own military training on creating the maximum number of experienced crew capable of operating the ship itself, and to hire civilian experts for its (vitally necessary) scientific missions.

One analogy is the 19th century "science vessel" sailing ships that went off to explore remote corners of the world, such as Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. These voyages often carried civilian academics along, if appropriate and if there were no naval officers with appropriate training present.

Which brings me to something else, though. Ships don't need to be so multi-role. I can kinda-sorta buy it with the Enterprise-D; they want to show off all their Federation Starfleet sciency swag to frontier civilizations. But most of them? No. For the cost of building an Enterprise-D, they could have built two or three smaller craft, using smaller crews but more efficient in purpose.

Ah-HA, but they do indeed have exactly that arrangement. They built only a relatively small number of large expeditionary cruisers Galaxy-class ships in the TNG/DS9 era, while building quite a lot of dedicated science vessels that are smaller and have proportionately more lab space (the Oberths and Mirandas of the 2200s, the Novas and Intrepids of the TNG era)

Eh, I'm not saying they have to be something ridiculous like a couple of torpedo tubes with warp engines attached. But they don't need to have like... 10 science labs, a greenhouse, a bar, and I don't know what else...

I would be okay with one or two super-large ships like Galaxies to perform broad multi-role exploratory missions, and a fleet of smaller ships that are more limited in function but more efficient in specific missions.

This is more or less what the Federation actually has. The Galaxies are unusual in having so much open space for luxurious quarters and recreational facilities.

One possibility is that the Galaxy-class was actually designed with extremely long exploratory missions in mind. A lot of the ship's "flaws" in having so much excess space start to make sense if they were seriously considering that she might be going out into deep space and not coming back for several years. In that case, it start to make more sense to build a ship that has accommodations for children, has a variety of recreational systems including advanced holodecks, and provides crew with large, customizable quarters and easy access to a wide variety of goods through the replicators. You need that if you're planning to wind up needing years to come back home.

The fact that we do not see the Galaxies actually being used in that role may have more to do with politics than with ship design.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Ships like the Galaxy Class are less like the Love Boat and more like K19.

https://vimeo.com/67326569

apparently not

[Eternal_Freedom]

The Galaxies have a rather undeserved reputation for being fragile. By the time of Sacrifice of Angels, at least 13 had been built (ten at least are seen in that battle, while Enterprise, Yamato and Odyssey being lost beforehand). Out of those 13, we know for certain of only 3 losses, two of them in combat against ships that basically ignored their shields (and both those survive multiple hits from beam weapons and in the E-D's case at least two direct hits from antimatter warheads). Find me another starship class that can boast that kind of combat record.

They prove sturdy enough in Dominion War battles, dish out a lot of damage and are kept around as heavy ships near Earth after the war ends (seven are seen in the 18/27 ship fleet that meets Voyager in "Endgame"), meaning Starfleet clearly uses them for things other than just exploration and that they must be valuable in such roles.

On the other hand, we saw in "Case and Effect" (Season 5, Episode 18) that a low-speed collision with a Galaxy-class ship's warp nacelle can lead to the destruction of the entire ship.

Compare that to the Constellation-class ship from "The Doomsday Machine" which survived significantly more damage to a nacelle as well as to other parts of its structure, or to the Reliant from The Wrath Of Khan which had one of its nacelles entirely destroyed and survived.

Factor in, as well, the Yamato from "Contagion" (Season 2, Episode 11) which was destroyed by an alien computer virus.

The common factor in both events is (as this board seems to have a long history, I'm sure this has been pointed out by others, but in case it hasn't...) a lack of failure-actuated safety measures. Even 20th century household electrical systems have breaker boxes. Apparently humanity will only retain an understanding of the concept until the end of the 23rd century, but not into the 24th.

The point about Yamato has already been covered by others, but the "Cause and Effect" point has given me a thought. The ship was being affected by a space anomaly that was futzing with their systems. We know the core ejection system was offline, it's quite reasonable to suppose other safety systems were also affected.

[Prometheus Unbound]

I do have a thingy on this:

The warp nacelles are full of charged plasma, right?

Say a nacelle has a positive end and a negative end, like a battery. Except also subspace something, whatever.

The Bozeman didn't just strike the nacelle, it rubbed down it, font to front. Now if you do that with a magnet to a piece of iron, you'll magnetise the iron.

I'm not saying it's a perfect analogy but is it possible it's due to some ... discharge or something unexpected, the plasma inside (which exploded and started venting) was "charged the wrong way" ?

I don't know if I'm making sense, but it wasn't a direct impact from the side - they slide down each other.


We've seen Nacelles explode before - Reliant, Enterprise A in ST3, USS Equinox, even Voyager in Timeless.

The difference in Cause and Effect was that it was two warp nacelles sliding together, presumably with the polarities reversed (as they were heading toward each other).

Could that perhaps explain it away?

The ship didn't spontaneously explode - it started leaking plasma all over the place.

Then the nacelle explodes throwing the ship out of control.

If you slow it down, it's not the warp core that blows up - the other nacelle does, interestingly. That one explodes catastrophically and with all power down, they can't contain it. 2 seconds later the warp core ( presume - it's something in Engineering) goes off.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

That's what I always found bizarre about that whole collision, that it wasn't the damaged nacelle that blew first but the opposite one. It seemed that it suffered at least one internal explosion or something to cause the ship to spin around.

In Trek, it seems to be that if a nacelle is merely disabled, warp travel is still possible at long as at least one nacelle is still functioning. But if the nacelle is partially or completely destroyed it's a different story, as shown here. It also shows that photon torpedoes can be fired forwards at warp.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh its also worth considering, maybe they would rather the bridge crew get maimed then redirecting explosions into nearby compartments that might hold vital hardware? Given the safety standards applied to away teams (none) and the generalized faith in technology over humanity so often running around in Trek that kind of decision choice might not be out of the question. I don't think they ever lost a battle because the entire bridge crew was dead...

Of course if one 120mm shell burned on the bridge everyone very much would be dead except Data, but sometimes one must pay a price for progress!

It doesn't even require a callous disregard for life or a belief in the supremacy of technology over people.

Simply a cold understanding of the fact that if a couple of crewmen die, a couple of others can take over their positions, but if a critical piece of hardware goes (life support, main computer, warp drive, etc.), everybody on board is potentially fucked.

Cold, but as a Vulcan might say, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few..."

Granted, they should have backups for critical systems, but their are still going to be situations where it is, mathematically, better to accept the possibility of losing some crew men over a critical system.

[FireNexus]

That's what I always found bizarre about that whole collision, that it wasn't the damaged nacelle that blew first but the opposite one. It seemed that it suffered at least one internal explosion or something to cause the ship to spin around.

In Trek, it seems to be that if a nacelle is merely disabled, warp travel is still possible at long as at least one nacelle is still functioning. But if the nacelle is partially or completely destroyed it's a different story, as shown here. It also shows that photon torpedoes can be fired forwards at warp.

Perhaps it was due to the fact that they were under power. Hard acceleration if memory serves. The collision could have caused some kind of stress in the opposite nacelle that resulted in a loss of plasma containment.

[Adam Reynolds]

With the way Wars shields seem to be more of a form of armor then hit point based deflectors that might make sense, and also helps explain crap like bridges being taken out.

I would actually say that shields and armor are interchangeable to some extent, with certain types of shields supplementing armor rather than replacing it entirely. Notably we see hull hits to Devastator that appear very similar to the hits against AT-AT walkers. Armor in Star Wars is likely an active system, dissipating rather than merely taking the hit. The reason that it acts like armor is that of a certain threshold of energy being needed to have an impact.

I would suggest that ISDs have pursuit and battle modes. In pursuit mode, they rely on armor and minimal shields around sensitive areas like the bridge can be raised quickly. In combat mode they likely have layered shields, with the outer shield that is permeable to fighters.

I can't recall if an ISD could land on a planet. However, we do see in Force Awakens that an ISD can survive an atmospheric entry while remaining at least somewhat intact (for all we know the ship was fighting near ground level when it crashed but it's not certain), and expanded materials have ISDs capable of operating in an atmosphere. It's possible that the relative lack of weapons on the underside may have to do with that: perhaps ISDs have some extra armour / shielding there so that it can enter an atmosphere and conduct missions near ground level when needed. Is there any canon material showing an ISD operating near a planet's surface?

In the novel Lost Stars, it was deliberately crashed in order to prevent the Rebel Alliance from getting it intact. Quite a testament to the quality of engineering given that it was as intact as it was after being deliberately crashed like that. Even more so than Invisible Hand, as that was a controlled landing.

Rebels however shows ISDs operating in atmosphere in the pilot episode I believe.

[Prometheus Unbound]

I can't recall if an ISD could land on a planet. However, we do see in Force Awakens that an ISD can survive an atmospheric entry while remaining at least somewhat intact (for all we know the ship was fighting near ground level when it crashed but it's not certain), and expanded materials have ISDs capable of operating in an atmosphere. It's possible that the relative lack of weapons on the underside may have to do with that: perhaps ISDs have some extra armour / shielding there so that it can enter an atmosphere and conduct missions near ground level when needed. Is there any canon material showing an ISD operating near a planet's surface?

Well we saw slightly smaller star destroyers taking on board troops whilst landed in Attack of the Clones, and them taking off and flying up.

They also have runways that are big enough for a capital ship to land on (albeit in an emergency).


I'm happy with ISDs doing atmospheric stuff. Maybe not dog-fighting in the atmosphere, but still.

[Simon_Jester]

That's what I always found bizarre about that whole collision, that it wasn't the damaged nacelle that blew first but the opposite one. It seemed that it suffered at least one internal explosion or something to cause the ship to spin around.

Maybe there was a power surge through the rest of the ship's electrical system? Or having one nacelle abruptly disabled in an unplanned fashion caused some kind of 'whiplash' reaction in the other, resulting in an explosive release of energy as the unbalanced forces dissipated themselves?

Not a very good explanation since you'd normally expect any safeties in the power grid to be most effective at preventing disasters farther from the point of impact, but it's better than nothing.

It doesn't even require a callous disregard for life or a belief in the supremacy of technology over people.

Simply a cold understanding of the fact that if a couple of crewmen die, a couple of others can take over their positions, but if a critical piece of hardware goes (life support, main computer, warp drive, etc.), everybody on board is potentially fucked.

Cold, but as a Vulcan might say, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few..."

Granted, they should have backups for critical systems, but their are still going to be situations where it is, mathematically, better to accept the possibility of losing some crew men over a critical system.

Well, on the Galaxy-class they actually have a backup bridge you can easily command the ship from. They even call it the "battle bridge," and it may well have been designed with the intention that if the ship expected battle, you'd send a separate group of officers down there to control the ship in case the main bridge was lost. That makes sense as a precaution even if you're not planning a saucer separation.

The Defiant-class may be too small for a backup bridge to be practical, in that the only places to put it might be so close to the main bridge that the same hit is likely to take out both compartments. I don't remember if the Intrepids have any place other than the main bridge from which you can coordinate the ship.