SDN Starship Design Commentaries

[FedRebel]

I think a good first topic would be the evolution of ship safety and survivability from the earliest designs, such as old freighters such like the Horizon (ENT) to modern Galaxy and Sovereign class ships. One thing that comes to mind is the transition from modern wet-navy bulkheads and hatches that can be manually latched to (relatively) weak automated doors that are not very secure, and the reliance of forcefields in place of security and blast doors in most places. Or, as discussed in the previous thread, why there aren't any blow-out panels to redirect exploding plasma conduits AWAY from crew spaces. On a similar note, why the warp core isn't behind several layers of heavy armor with it's own blow-out panel to (hopefully) redirect the bulk of a core breach out of the ship?

Shortages of refined alloys

Budget constraints, Starfleet absolutely has to meet certain mission requirements but has a thinner "budget". Duranium has a "price tag" of some form, energy fields in theory would reduce the necessity of extensive quantities of alloy.

Omitting safety features plays into budget and propaganda. The Galaxy Class must enter service at a specific date, it must incorporate an new Warp Core design. Delays on the Warp core meant that a lot of safety features were stripped, in example, the E-D's apparent inability to EJECT THE DAMN CORE! (Seriously 5 core breaches, and all Geordie says every time "nothing I can do.") A longer standing problem would be the overall apparent inability of Federation ships to SCRAM the warp core, likely the result of harsh deadlines and shrinking budgets on new designs causing that capability to be omitted.

EPS conduits, same thing. Starfleet needs the Enterprise ready to fly on Tuesday, 'plasmatic circuit breakers' won't arrive until Wednesday, "whelp, tell Picard best of luck."

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

[Elheru Aran]

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

Doesn't mesh with the image that the Federation is trying to project, the whole post-scarcity utopia. Especially not with the lead ship of their fleet. That's the one you spend a lot of money on.

Now that doesn't mean there weren't shortcuts behind the scenes, which I can accept to a certain extent. Warp core design and integration in particular seems to be a glaring weak spot.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

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.

Yes, servicemen are going to screw like rabbits, yes, they're going to have babies, no matter how much contraceptive Starfleet puts in the replicator feedstock, but, goddamn, civilian dependents belong on starbase housing, in the friggin' rear, not living on any military ship, even if it's an AO, on even the most routine deployment. Because, bad things happen, even to an auxiliary oiler.

If one must have the two-hulled design, at least rig the engineering hull to require as little manned space as possible(all Jeffries tubes, for emergency repairs and such)and have the control stations in the saucer, or at least in the dorsal(if it has a neck), and ffs, no quarters next to where the warp core might suddenly decide to breach, and the ejection system may or may not work.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Shortages of refined alloys

Budget constraints, Starfleet absolutely has to meet certain mission requirements but has a thinner "budget". Duranium has a "price tag" of some form, energy fields in theory would reduce the necessity of extensive quantities of alloy.

Omitting safety features plays into budget and propaganda. The Galaxy Class must enter service at a specific date, it must incorporate an new Warp Core design. Delays on the Warp core meant that a lot of safety features were stripped, in example, the E-D's apparent inability to EJECT THE DAMN CORE! (Seriously 5 core breaches, and all Geordie says every time "nothing I can do.") A longer standing problem would be the overall apparent inability of Federation ships to SCRAM the warp core, likely the result of harsh deadlines and shrinking budgets on new designs causing that capability to be omitted.

EPS conduits, same thing. Starfleet needs the Enterprise ready to fly on Tuesday, 'plasmatic circuit breakers' won't arrive until Wednesday, "whelp, tell Picard best of luck."

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

Or the Hood or Titannic.

[sarcasm]Besides, how could there be budget constraints, when the Feds supposedly got rid of all money?![/sarcasm]

[Elheru Aran]

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.

Here I was wondering, *what* Admiral Nelson... Trafalgar Nelson? And then I remembered you're old and you probably watched all the Irwin Allen shows on reruns

Yes, servicemen are going to screw like rabbits, yes, they're going to have babies, no matter how much contraceptive Starfleet puts in the replicator feedstock, but, goddamn, civilian dependents belong on starbase housing, in the friggin' rear, not living on any military ship, even if it's an AO, on even the most routine deployment. Because, bad things happen, even to an auxiliary oiler.

AO? Oh, 'auxiliary oiler'? OK. Anyway, on topic:

Remember though that Starfleet, at least in early days (TOS/TNG) tried to claim that they were a "civilian" service. Of course that doesn't wash in practice, they're a military in action if not in word.

As I noted, I can accept a civilian presence, at least in TNG on the Enterprise-D and possibly TOS Enterprise; they were front line exploration craft, and the D in particular seemed to be as much a science ship as it was a explorer and warship. There was always some scientist up to something on the D, some lab with an experiment going on, observing stellar phenomena, whatever. It makes *some* sense if Starfleet is the *majority* of Federation spacecraft, and perhaps in possession of the only really long-range spacecraft. I mean, even the USN has research ships, doesn't it?

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.

Now there *may* be some efficiencies in larger designs, as Skimmer pointed out earlier. His example was wet-fleet navy; I'm not sure how well it translates to space, but it could be that the size played a part in configuring the hull for maximum warp efficiency. The Romulans do have notably large craft in their Birds of Prey, after all.

If one must have the two-hulled design, at least rig the engineering hull to require as little manned space as possible(all Jeffries tubes, for emergency repairs and such)and have the control stations in the saucer, or at least in the dorsal(if it has a neck), and ffs, no quarters next to where the warp core might suddenly decide to breach, and the ejection system may or may not work.

This I can live with. Part of the size of the secondary hull (and by extension the rest of the ship, if the parts all have to be reasonably proportionate) seems to have been due to having a vertical warp core rather than horizontal, as older designs had it. The size of the warp core seems to correlate to performance to some degree-- the Excelsior for example has a distinctly longer engineering hull than other Federation craft of its time, and it's supposed to have fancy super-duper transwarp performance, which would line up with a longer than normal horizontal warp core. The saucer for example isn't much bigger (if at all) than the Constitution refit's.

[Elheru Aran]

A few logical points come to mind:

--Size may be mandated by external influences. Warp design, force projection, maximizing available resources for long-range exploration and so forth, simple advances in ship design and power distribution.

--Computers and electronics: We don't necessarily know enough about how Trek computers work to say with confidence that they're set up the way they are because of X or Y, we can only speculate. Nevertheless, one would wonder why, after a few exploding consoles, they don't start thinking about how to set it up so consoles *don't* explode...

--Armor: If phasers and torpedoes are so ungodly powerful that it's useless... why the hell does it start making an appearance again? Hmm?

[Borgholio]

--Armor: If phasers and torpedoes are so ungodly powerful that it's useless... why the hell does it start making an appearance again? Hmm?

For this one, I would wager it's because they bumped into the Dominion...whose weapons could (at first) go straight through shields as if they weren't even there.

[Batman]

The Borg (which Defiant was originally designed to fight). They weren't bothered by shields much, either. The Dominion came quite a bit later.

[Elheru Aran]

--Armor: If phasers and torpedoes are so ungodly powerful that it's useless... why the hell does it start making an appearance again? Hmm?

For this one, I would wager it's because they bumped into the Dominion...whose weapons could (at first) go straight through shields as if they weren't even there.

The Borg (which Defiant was originally designed to fight). They weren't bothered by shields much, either. The Dominion came quite a bit later.

Ah, but if they're (more or less) the same sort of weapon-- polaron beams (for example) are basically phaser beams in a different shade of the spectrum-- then shouldn't they be as devastating against ordinary matter as a phaser would be-- therefore armour isn't going to help there either? Unless the shield weakens the weapon enough that armour might increase survivability...

[U.P. Cinnabar]

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.

Here I was wondering, *what* Admiral Nelson... Trafalgar Nelson? And then I remembered you're old and you probably watched all the Irwin Allen shows on reruns

Yep. All four of them. All four were also on during the early days of what used to be the Sci-Fi Channel. And, I'm only three years younger than Broom, so watch your mouth. You young whippersnapper.

Remember though that Starfleet, at least in early days (TOS/TNG) tried to claim that they were a "civilian" service. Of course that doesn't wash in practice, they're a military in action if not in word.

In "Tomorrow Or Yesterday," John Christopher asks Kirk "Navy or Air Force?" after he's told he's aboard the USS Enterprise, and Kirk responds "we're a combined service," or words to that effect

As I noted, I can accept a civilian presence, at least in TNG on the Enterprise-D and possibly TOS Enterprise; they were front line exploration craft, and the D in particular seemed to be as much a science ship as it was a explorer and warship. There was always some scientist up to something on the D, some lab with an experiment going on, observing stellar phenomena, whatever. It makes *some* sense if Starfleet is the *majority* of Federation spacecraft, and perhaps in possession of the only really long-range spacecraft. I mean, even the USN has research ships, doesn't it?

Two hulls that are testbeds for new technologies, and some pure reserach and exploration vessels. The USN's also used its front-line combatants(mainly destroyers, which have evolved into multi-role combatants)for research from time to time.

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.

Now there *may* be some efficiencies in larger designs, as Skimmer pointed out earlier. His example was wet-fleet navy; I'm not sure how well it translates to space, but it could be that the size played a part in configuring the hull for maximum warp efficiency.

If the firepower of a larger combatant can be more practically(and cheaply) mounted in a smaller hull, it will be, and the crew will be housed...wherever the designers and admirals decide to stick the racks.

Space, this will more likely be the case. Humongous ships are sexy to some, but, unless it's a galaxy-spanning empire, they're going to be a financial ruin to a space-faring power, to say nothing of the staffing problems, support infrastructure, fuel, etc. And, even a galaxy-spanning empire is going to run into hard limits on just how many monster ships they can build and sustain.

Unless, of course, one takes shortcuts, as Skimmer mentioned upthread. Though space is far less forgiving an enviroment than the surface of the sea(and equally as unforgiving as under the sea), that little fact won't stop the admirals and the designers, who have to appease legislative budget committees, from seeing dollar signs from cutting a few corners.

The Romulans do have notably large craft in their Birds of Prey, after all.

The Warbirds from early TOS were actually smaller than the Connies, while the Klingon hulls they started using from S3 TOS-sometime before the TNG era were slightly smaller(coming possibly from the Klinks and the Roms not stocking their ships with "useless luxuries").

The D'derridexes may be larger than the GCS hulls, because they use artificial quantum singularities(due to the demand exerted by the way their cloaking device works, maybe?), and not M/AM cores, necessitating more complicated, and larger, bulkier containment systems for the early power cores(as the Valdore/Mogai classes are smaller than the D'derridex, on par, size-wise, with the Sovereign) .

[Borgholio]

The Borg (which Defiant was originally designed to fight). They weren't bothered by shields much, either. The Dominion came quite a bit later.

Actually, Defiant wasn't built with armor. It was added after the ship was assigned to DS9 during the Dominion story arc.

[Elheru Aran]

(No argument with the rest of what you said, Cinnabar. Just want to roll with this last bit here)

The Romulans do have notably large craft in their Birds of Prey, after all.

The Warbirds from early TOS were actually smaller than the Connies, while the Klingon hulls they started using from S3 TOS-sometime before the TNG era were slightly smaller(coming possibly from the Klinks and the Roms not stocking their ships with "useless luxuries").

The D'derridexes may be larger than the GCS hulls, because they use artificial quantum singularities(due to the demand exerted by the way their cloaking device works, maybe?), and not M/AM cores, necessitating more complicated, and larger, bulkier containment systems for the early power cores(as the Valdore/Mogai classes are smaller than the D'derridex, on par, size-wise, with the Sovereign) .

Yeah, again with the Dee-Dee (god what a space whale. You should check out STO sometime. Pretty ship but damn it moves like it's swimming through Jello), you have physics playing a part in why it's so big. I don't think quantum singularities have that much to do with the cloaking device given that the Federation and Klingons have used cloaks without much issue, though there might be some increase in efficiency because I dunno black holes are cool? So that's my running theory with the size of the GCS-- not only does it have a vertical warp core (necessitating a larger secondary hull and by extension everything else gets bigger) but larger sizes may have some kind of... warp flow efficiency thing going on.

Of course, as the series progress, the Galaxy Class seems to be the peak of Federation ship size-- the Sovereign is a bit longer, but flatter and thinner. Everything else, just about, is smaller. Intrepid, Norway, Steamrunner, Saber, Defiant, etc. So it definitely looks like they started shifting priorities, as we know they did thanks to the Borg and Dominion. A differing attitude towards warp ergonomics may also play a part-- look at the Sovereign and the Excelsior side-by-side, and you'll see a distinct correlation in layout and general 'feel'. (Merzo.net's -2x page is good for this)

But again, we have the simple fact that *no other culture in Star Trek has ships anywhere near Starfleet's design philosophy*. This can be rationalized away (or attempted to anyway) by suggesting that perhaps they haven't advanced as much in warp design as the Federation, I suppose... but the Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans et al. have been in space at least as long as the Federation, if not longer. So it plain doesn't make sense. Earth ships, throughout history, had a fair variety of setups, but the general hull form, the part that actually meets the water, was all pretty uniform (general oblong shape, occasionally square at the ass). We do see a general continuity in that they all use some form of warp nacelles (internal, external, whatever) and sometimes deflector, but... that's about it.

So I'm forced to conclude that the reason Starfleet ships look the way they do is more due to design principles based upon a common aesthetic philosophy rather than the physics of their version of space travel.

[Sidewinder]

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.

Ships DO need to be multirole, as unforeseen circumstances and dumb luck may force them to perform different tasks in short succession, or even multiple tasks at once. See the disaster that was the Littoral Combat Ship and its "mission modules," which effectively make each ship a one-trick pony (other mission modules are effectively useless while they're sitting at port, waiting to be installed).

Now there *may* be some efficiencies in larger designs, as Skimmer pointed out earlier. His example was wet-fleet navy; I'm not sure how well it translates to space, but it could be that the size played a part in configuring the hull for maximum warp efficiency. The Romulans do have notably large craft in their Birds of Prey, after all.

The powers in 'Star Trek' really need to determine WHY their ships need to be as big as they are- BESIDES "intimidating the enemy." What missions are the ships supposed to perform? How long is each mission expected to last? What equipment do the ships need to perform these missions? How many people are needed to operate, maintain, and repair this equipment? How much food and water is needed to keep these people alive for the duration of a mission, how much fuel is needed to keep the ship operational for the duration of a mission, how many munitions are needed to survive the number of battles a ship is expected to fight during a mission, and how big do the ships need to be to carry all these (and other) supplies?

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.

[Elheru Aran]

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.

Ships DO need to be multirole, as unforeseen circumstances and dumb luck may force them to perform different tasks in short succession, or even multiple tasks at once. See the disaster that was the Littoral Combat Ship and its "mission modules," which effectively make each ship a one-trick pony (other mission modules are effectively useless while they're sitting at port, waiting to be installed).

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.

The powers in 'Star Trek' really need to determine WHY their ships need to be as big as they are- BESIDES "intimidating the enemy." What missions are the ships supposed to perform? How long is each mission expected to last? What equipment do the ships need to perform these missions? How many people are needed to operate, maintain, and repair this equipment? How much food and water is needed to keep these people alive for the duration of a mission, how much fuel is needed to keep the ship operational for the duration of a mission, how many munitions are needed to survive the number of battles a ship is expected to fight during a mission, and how big do the ships need to be to carry all these (and other) supplies?

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.

This, right here, is an excellent point.

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. This is absurd and wasteful, unless they're using the excess space to store large amounts of replicator stock or some such bollocks.

For the cost of what it takes to build one of those, you could very easily build a large number of smaller craft that could accomplish broadly as much as we see a single Galaxy do, if not more as they would be able to be in more places at once.

[Alyrium Denryle]

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...

Well, when you consider that they are multi-roll, with tours of duty that last years with crews living on them for months and months without shore leave...

You need the labs because the primary mission of starfleet is science and exploration. Their military role is (as an institution) secondary. They perform that secondary role well because they cheat, but it is secondary.

With a mission profile like that, recreation spaces need to be provided for the crew. Bars, holodecks (which are useful for other things) etc are likely just necessary to maintain crew morale.

With respect to civilians on ships... it is a bad idea. On the other hand, there might actually be a reason for it. When they are not actively at war, again, tours of duty last for years. Their FTL system is not so fast that they can afford shorter tour lengths, they would never get to the other side of their own territory. The UFP is 8000 light years across, which is an eight year long trip to get from one side to the other. Most of the action we see in TNG and DS9 takes place in a neck, a place where federation territory is not that big across.

We rankle when our service-member family members are deployed overseas for a year. So it might be a bad idea objectively, but it might also be necessary to have families on starships when not actively at war, just to maintain crew and population morale.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I don't think quantum singularities have that much to do with the cloaking device given that the Federation and Klingons have used cloaks without much issue, though there might be some increase in efficiency because I dunno black holes are cool?

I was thinking the original cloaking devices were miniature quantum singularity cores, which allowed the ship to disappear inside their own Hawking holes. I understand if this isn't a widely-accepted theory, as I was reading Glen A. Cook's excellent Passage At Arms for the first time(1987) when seeing "Balance Of Terror" for the first time, which influenced my thinking, and, if anyone's familiar with the book, you have to admit the Climber bears a striking resemblance, operationally, though not physically, to the later Defiant.

The latter's likely a coincidence, though.

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.

I think the Excelsior from ST6 was the only instance we've seen enlisted crew quarters look anywhere near those on contemporary wet navy vessels, I honestly don't see why that would be any different for a starship/space vehicle, as space would be at a premium there as well.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Just looking at the Memory Alpha article on the Galaxy-class and the facilities located aboard reveals many facilities that are more in keeping with a cruise ship than Starfleet's flagship:

Theatre and concert hall
Salon
Relaxing area (seen once)
Replicating Centre
School classrooms.
16 Holodecks

In theory, the reason such facilities are present (as well as the scientific research labs) is because the Galaxy is meant for extended missions away from Federation core worlds. It's worth noting that when it comes to being able to afford several smaller ships instead of a GCS, Starfleet hasn't built all that many of them compared to smaller, dedicated warships such as the Akira, Norway, Steamrunner and Saber classes. Indeed, whenever we've seen large fleets during the Dominion War the smaller/older ships outnumber the Galaxies by a considerable margin- Mirandas and Excelsiors are present in significant numbers.

It is strange that when it comes to refitting ships to make them more effective in battle, it's not clear what priority Starfleet assigns to older starship classes. Mirandas and Excelsiors seem to die pretty quickly, but at the same time we see ships like the Lakota being refitted to fire Quantum Torpedoes.

The situation with the Sovereign-class is even more extreme, with the only one seen being the Enterprise. The only other that we have to assume exists is the lead ship USS Sovereign. It is generally assumed that because they naturally take considerable time/resources to build that none would have been ready before the Dominion War ended (4 years after the Enterprise-E launched since it had been around almost a year by the time FC happened).

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.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

When it comes to the quarters on a military ship it makes sense that the captain and senior officers would get the best ones (rank has its privileges after all). Certainly those aboard a ship like the Enterprise-D were more luxurious than previous generations. As Scotty pointed out in "Relics":

"Good lord man, where have you put me?"
"These are standard guest quarters sir, I can try and find something bigger if you want."
"Bigger? In my day, even an admiral would notta had such quarters aboard a starship!"

[FireNexus]

It could easily be that those ship classes are not designed for out and out war and thus don't end up on the front lines of a conflict. Miranda's and Excelsiors were designed and fielded initially in much less friendly geopolitical climate. The Galaxies and Sovereigns are able to fight because exploration can be dangerous, but they're explorer vessels largely engineered for long-term missions. They're not designed to act as weapons platforms against an equivtech civilization.

Since it's clear that starfleet doesn't have or build weapons platforms that a space frame has to be designed around, they probably deployed more Miranda's and Excelsiors during the Dominion War because with their Borg-era refits they were more valuable combat craft than the FTL science barges that were the Galaxies. Jesus, Galaxy class starships were under risk of warp core breeches if Wesley ejaculated in the holodeck nearest to main engineering.

Though I'm sure dialogue talks up the combat chops of the Galaxies, but they're only shown to be very effective against a high-end equivtech capital ship when it's a D'Deridex. And those ships are large, but apparently intentionally underpowered to enhance he effectiveness of the cloak. In fact, they say as much in The Search, if I remember correctly.

[Crazedwraith]

So if we strip out all these extra rooms and features and make the whole crew lonely and cramped and miserable... what do we actually gain from all this?

Because for all it's waste. A Galaxy and all Federation ships are highly effective against all their peer races.

[Elheru Aran]

It's possible, IMO, that there are two broad categories of Starfleet ships that they started dividing them into after TNG:
--Large 'prestige' craft such as the Galaxy and Sovereign.
--Smaller, more efficient fighting craft. Defiant, Norway, Steamrunner, etc.

You could add a third and fourth section if you like:
--Smaller exploration and science vessels (the Oberth being an example, also the Olympic hospital ship)
--Vintage vessels such as Mirandas and Excelsiors refitted with modern equipment and power plants.

The smaller ships take less time and cost less to build, but the larger ones have more capabilities and can go further/hit heavier/whatever, but cost significantly more and take longer to build.

So if we strip out all these extra rooms and features and make the whole crew lonely and cramped and miserable... what do we actually gain from all this?

Because for all it's waste. A Galaxy and all Federation ships are highly effective against all their peer races.

I don't think anybody is actually advocating that you do that to a Galaxy. I think it's more like, "they don't NEED ships to be THAT big". The Enterprise in TOS seemed to do just fine despite being about half the size of a Galaxy.

[FaxModem1]

The Enterprise D's generation of Galaxy class ships , while having a lot of problems, seemed to be beta testers. After the destruction of the Odyssey, every Galaxy class we see from then on goes toe to toe with their opponents. Operation Return, from Sacrifice of Angels, shows that the Galaxies were the seeming big guns of the Alliance fleet and were reinforcing the smaller craft in the battle. Bigger size means more power generationand thus heavier payload.

Engineers like Geordi probably worked out all the kinks of the initial concept, which led to a bit of an internal upgrade. As the Enterprise does get upgraded with additional consoles on the bridge as well as 'Oh shit' handles by the turbo lift in case of turbulence, as shown in Generations.

Though, it should be noted that this is when the E-D started having exploding consoles.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The Odyssey was ridiculously durable. It managed to survive combat unshielded against multiple Jem'Hadar scarabs, and continue fighting for long enough to rescue Sisko, then pull back. The only reason it was destroyed was because it was rammed by a ship the size of the Defiant in the engineering section.

[FaxModem1]

The Odyssey was ridiculously durable. It managed to survive combat unshielded against multiple Jem'Hadar scarabs, and continue fighting for long enough to rescue Sisko, then pull back. The only reason it was destroyed was because it was rammed by a ship the size of the Defiant in the engineering section.

True enough. My point being, did we see any Galaxies bite it after the Odyssey?

Geordi, the engineer, notes to Leah Brahms, the designer, that they've made a lot of in-the-field improvements to the ship over time. Those improvements might have been made standard for all Galaxy class ships since then.

[Sidewinder]

Why is the D'deridex so big? I suspect the lower section can separate and then serve as a very large landing craft- in short, the D'deridex was the Romulans' attempt to make a battleship that doubles as an amphibious assault ship (or whatever you call the starship equivalent)- see one real-world proposal under "amphibious battleship" here- and the large size was necessary to house and support a marine battalion.