What stops Starfleet from building more ships?

[Patrick Degan]

Though to bring up engines, size of a warp drive assembly may determine how it's effectiveness works. Wouldn't reactor size determine power output as well?

Who knows? There are a lot of unknowns when discussing imaginary technology after all. For all we know, the reactor itself is not the problem and it's the energy conversion equipment which is the real problem. After all, nobody ever talks about how you're supposed to efficiently get the energy out of a M/AM reaction in a sealed chamber and convert it into more useful forms. People assume that the whole system looks like this:

M/AM reaction -> Energy release -> Profit!

It must be much more complex than that. In modern nuclear power plants, the reactor is actually miniscule compared to the entire plant. Most of the bulk is taken up by support equipment.

As an aside... TOS implied very heavily that the dilithium crystals were centrally involved in the energy conversion process. I believe the early writers took the idea for thermoelectric crystal energy converters which were being designed for NASA space probes and satellites with onboard plutonium or cesium decay reactors and extrapolated from that for their designs for the Enterprise power system. Whenever the "dilithium converter assembly" was damaged or otherwise rendered inoperative, or crystals were physically removed from the system, it became impossible to draw power for the warp drive and other main systems.

On the other hand, the TNG writers ignored this altogether and turned dilithium into a substance which moderated M/AM reactions but forgot all about figuring out the necessary step of somehow turning the raw thermal output of the reactor into usable power. I don't even understand why anybody (David Gerrold or D.C. Fontana or maybe Roddenberry...) came up with the idea of using a material "moderator" in antimatter fusion to begin with when it's far more practical to control the reaction rate just by controlling the fuel flow into the intermix chamber.

[Steve]

I always thought that the dilithium crystals were part of the reaction as opposed to a moderator substance?

[Samuel]

I always thought that the dilithium crystals were part of the reaction as opposed to a moderator substance?

That doesn't work- any matter can be used for antimatter reactions.

[Stark]

In the old stuff, as they've said it was meant to be a critical element of the fuel system - in TNG (with the Technical Manual and in episodes) they decided it was 'harmonised' to allow antimatter to 'perforate' and 'moderate' the reaction in the chamber.

SOMEHOW.

[Chris OFarrell]

I don't really recall any ST episodes onscreen which say that Dilithium is used to 'moderate' the reaction (how the hell do you moderate a M/AM reaction anyway?) And I havn't read the TM in a looong time, but I always thought that the M/AM reaction was, for lack of a better explanation used in the warp core as a precursor, generating a massive surge of energy that in turn was fed into the Crystals, which then somehow spat out the *real* power of the ship. It surely appeared that way in TOS, where they still used M/AM drives, but Dilithium provided the power, even as far up as Star Trek IV where they were 'drained' by the amount of power they had to use up for the Time Warp.

Hell I remember in a Voyager episode, when their antimatter supplies basically ran down to zero, they were able to keep the 'dilithium reaction' and the core producing power by, instead of shooting M/AM into the core, using 'Thoron pulses'. At least until they ran out of the stuff.

[Stark]

Wesley in the stupid 'Enterprise fights the old ship in wargames' episode scrapes together enough 'dilithium chips' to keep the warp system running allowing them to surprise Enterprise.

[Bounty]

Wesley in the stupid 'Enterprise fights the old ship in wargames' episode scrapes together enough 'dilithium chips' to keep the warp system running allowing them to surprise Enterprise.

He still needs a container of antimatter from the Enterprise to make the ship actually go.

[Chris OFarrell]

I don't get what you're trying to say here...

The Hathaway didn't HAVE a warp drive, just tiny fragments of dilithium and no antimatter. Crusher cheated and 'borrowed' a small amount of antimatter from the Enterprise, which combined with the Crystals, powered the core for a second or two (they had deuterium, clearly, for the ships impulse fusion reactors) and provided just enough power for a warp jump.

We know antimatter + Dilithium + matter = warp drive...I don't get how this episode proves anything about Dilithium...unless I'm remembering the episode wrong. Still, the fact that Voyager pointedly ran its warp core at normal power without antimatter or matter needed, suggests strongly that the crystals are what provides the power. Its hammered quite frequently in TOS/the movies, and I don't think its ever explicitly contradicted in TNG.

I also remember another Voyager episode has a mention that Voyagers warp engines are 'powered' by Dilithium. And a TNG episode that suggests (depending on how you interpret your technobabble) that the Warp core operates as some kind of 'subspace power tap', drawing energy from subspace directly now that I think about it...

[Bounty]

Episode names would be nice.

As for the "pulses", if you're misremembering Deadlock, they did still have antimatter in that episode, it was just getting drained twice as fast because both ships were running on the same tank. The pulses weren't used to generate power, they were used to keep the reaction going (maybe that was the cheap and easy trick to compensate for the flow rate from a leaky tank?).

[Chris OFarrell]

Addendum, I found the Voyager episode.

They kept the warp reaction going by using 'proton pulses'...

EDIT

Ask me not, but it was def Proton pulses, not antiproton. Their antimatter supply was draining, and clearly being drained before the flow reached the warp core. If it was still getting antimatter, then they wouldn't have had the problems we saw in the episode, especially at impulse speed where their power needs for antimatter and the warp core is hardly critical, it was pretty clear the antimatter was being diverted before it reached the core. If it was just a case of the two ships sipping each others antimatter supply, they wouldn't be draining THAT fast...

[Stark]

Wesley in the stupid 'Enterprise fights the old ship in wargames' episode scrapes together enough 'dilithium chips' to keep the warp system running allowing them to surprise Enterprise.

He still needs a container of antimatter from the Enterprise to make the ship actually go.

No shit? My fucking point is that the dilithium itself IS NOT FUEL. He needed fuel (antimatter) AND he needed, IN ADDITION, enough dilithium to run the reaction. Chris didn't remember them every saying 'lol moderate' in the series, and I'm pretty sure Wesley says this in this episode.

Chris, I think that in a burst of Exposition Wesley talks about how the dilithium is used; I could be dead wrong, since I haven't watched the show in a decade. I might check the sdn database, actually.

EDIT - ha. Fucking Belgians.

GEORDI: There are only minute dilithium fragments left in the holding clamps. And even if we had intact crystals, there's no anti-matter to fuel the drive.

...

WESLEY: The lining is still smooth, and we ought to be able to do something with the dilithium chips we scavenged.

GEORDI: Sure the system is functional, but without antimatter what difference does it make?

...

(Wesley sneaks some antimatter off the Enterprise)

RIKER: Assuming you can -- can you regulate the reaction?

WESLEY: There's just enough crystal to do it. We plan to channel the reaction through the chips.

The ep is 'peak performance', the circumstances were as I remembered, and I win.

[Patroklos]

As evidence, I present the USS Lakota, which was able to take on the USS Defiant evenly despite apparently being based on the old Excelsior spaceframe. Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that old spaceframes in Star Trek can't be upgraded to go nose-to-nose with modern designs? I really think Alyeska is seriously overstating the importance of the fact that the Cardassians don't bring out new spaceframes.

There was a significant volume difference between those two ships, so the Defiant may very well be far more powerful ton for ton than the Lakota, the Lakota just has more enough tons to make up for that. I am just saying there are variables to be considered in that comparison.

There is nothing to say that upgraded vessels can not be as powerful as recently produced ones. However, at some point there should be a realistic expectation that hulls will simply break down from use. I would also imagine that at some point certain older are hulls just not suitable to fully implement new technology adequately or maybe at all.

[Darth Wong]

As evidence, I present the USS Lakota, which was able to take on the USS Defiant evenly despite apparently being based on the old Excelsior spaceframe. Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that old spaceframes in Star Trek can't be upgraded to go nose-to-nose with modern designs? I really think Alyeska is seriously overstating the importance of the fact that the Cardassians don't bring out new spaceframes.

There was a significant volume difference between those two ships, so the Defiant may very well be far more powerful ton for ton than the Lakota, the Lakota just has more enough tons to make up for that. I am just saying there are variables to be considered in that comparison.

Fair enough, but the whole point of the Defiant was that it had the power of a GCS in a smaller package, and a GCS is much larger than the Lakota.

There is nothing to say that upgraded vessels can not be as powerful as recently produced ones. However, at some point there should be a realistic expectation that hulls will simply break down from use. I would also imagine that at some point certain older are hulls just not suitable to fully implement new technology adequately or maybe at all.

Realistically yes, a hull which undergoes heavy strain might eventually be too worn out to continue using. However, in Star Trek, a hull can develop micro-fractures all over its entire surface in an episode of Voyager and suffer zero long-term consequences from this. The writers are obviously too fucking stupid to think of this.

[Stofsk]

As evidence, I present the USS Lakota, which was able to take on the USS Defiant evenly despite apparently being based on the old Excelsior spaceframe. Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that old spaceframes in Star Trek can't be upgraded to go nose-to-nose with modern designs? I really think Alyeska is seriously overstating the importance of the fact that the Cardassians don't bring out new spaceframes.

There was a significant volume difference between those two ships, so the Defiant may very well be far more powerful ton for ton than the Lakota, the Lakota just has more enough tons to make up for that. I am just saying there are variables to be considered in that comparison.

Fair enough, but the whole point of the Defiant was that it had the power of a GCS in a smaller package, and a GCS is much larger than the Lakota.

Really? I didn't know the Defiant has the equivalent power of a GCS.

There is nothing to say that upgraded vessels can not be as powerful as recently produced ones. However, at some point there should be a realistic expectation that hulls will simply break down from use. I would also imagine that at some point certain older are hulls just not suitable to fully implement new technology adequately or maybe at all.

Realistically yes, a hull which undergoes heavy strain might eventually be too worn out to continue using. However, in Star Trek, a hull can develop micro-fractures all over its entire surface in an episode of Voyager and suffer zero long-term consequences from this. The writers are obviously too fucking stupid to think of this.

While I agree that Voyager's stupidity knows no bounds, I kind of like the idea that space faring civilisation would have long-lived starships (long lived measuring in close-to-centuries, or at least quite-a-few decades, to use vague and nonspecific language ). Barring unforseen accidents, disasters, and damage/destruction of course. I don't know how reasonable/realistic that is, however, but it's something of a pet-like of mine.

[Captain Seafort]

Really? I didn't know the Defiant has the equivalent power of a GCS.

There's some evidence that it's actually more powerful than a GCS - in The Search the Defiant destroyed a bug with a single burst, while the Odyssey hit her attackers several times and failed to destroy one. That might simply be due to the weapons being more effective rather than more powerful, but it's certainly something to consider.

[Steve]

Really? I didn't know the Defiant has the equivalent power of a GCS.

There's some evidence that it's actually more powerful than a GCS - in The Search the Defiant destroyed a bug with a single burst, while the Odyssey hit her attackers several times and failed to destroy one. That might simply be due to the weapons being more effective rather than more powerful, but it's certainly something to consider.

I think that had more to do with the differences in how the weapon's power was applied, with the Defiant using a new "pulse phaser" system - I believe the usual term is pulse phaser cannons - that may be suited for overloading or otherwise overpowering shields set to resist regular constant-beam weapons.

Plus it's supposed to be special in that Defiant's phasers are directly powered through the warp drive or something, going from dialogue between Tom Riker and Kira in "Defiant", so they probably give more bang for the buck - cost-wise and tonnage/mass wise - than even a GCS-level phaser array. The trade off is they're less easy to aim. Larger ships have those phaser strips that can fire in variable directions, Defiant has fixed weapon emplacements so you have to point the ship directly at the target.

[Crazedwraith]

You actually don't. The Battle with the Lakota shows some serious off axis firing by the Defiant.

[Steve]

You actually don't. The Battle with the Lakota shows some serious off axis firing by the Defiant.

Hrm? I remember the Defiant dipping down toward Lakota and firing during a "top" angle shot.

[Batman]

Depends on how FAR off-axis it was. Defiant could be able to fire on anything within, say, a 150° cone straight ahead and STILL have a noticeably smaller field of fire than strip phasers on older ships, which can essentially fire anywhere the ship isn't directly in the way.

[Stark]

It's a totally invisible roof-mounted weapon. There's no information on it's role or capability, or even if it can fire backwards in the upper arc.

[Alyeska]

The Defiant is quite capable of off axis fire. We have seen the weapons converge on targets before. So that means they can traverse from side to side. We see the Defiant flying over the Lakota but it manages to fire on its shields. Meaning it was able to drop its weapons and fire. Now the Defiant still tends to aim towards its target, so its level of off-axis fire would appear to be limited, but it does exist.

[Darth Wong]

It could be that the Defiant's guns are still fixed-axis guns, but they can be mechanically rotated inside the housing, within the limits of available physical space. This would explain their ability to fire off-axis while also explaining why they seem to have much narrower limits of rotation than the magic all-direction emitters common on other models.

Alternatively, the guns might be long fixed-axis devices which can't rotate, but they have an electromagnetic "nozzle" at the end which can apply a slight angle to the output (possibly at the expense of focus, which would also explain their preference for close-range shooting). But since most of the acceleration and particle energy is built up before that point, there are strict limits to the amount of angular deflection possible.

[Alyeska]

It could be that the Defiant's guns are still fixed-axis guns, but they can be mechanically rotated inside the housing, within the limits of available physical space. This would explain their ability to fire off-axis while also explaining why they seem to have much narrower limits of rotation than the magic all-direction emitters common on other models.

Alternatively, the guns might be long fixed-axis devices which can't rotate, but they have an electromagnetic "nozzle" at the end which can apply a slight angle to the output (possibly at the expense of focus, which would also explain their preference for close-range shooting). But since most of the acceleration and particle energy is built up before that point, there are strict limits to the amount of angular deflection possible.

All plausible explanations, really. Whatever the reason, they typically don't use it, or use close combat. Interestingly enough, I've seen examples of the Defiant firing on a target and missing, then the next burst hits the target. The burst that missed did not converge, the burst that hit did converge. Targeting computer issues? Over-eager gunner?

[Batman]

Ranging shots made on a 'kinda-maybe' targeting solution so if it's a hit, groovy, but if not, it tells them WHY they didn't hit and how to compensate for it so the next one DOES hit perhaps?

[Simon_Jester]

As evidence, I present the USS Lakota, which was able to take on the USS Defiant evenly despite apparently being based on the old Excelsior spaceframe. Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that old spaceframes in Star Trek can't be upgraded to go nose-to-nose with modern designs? I really think Alyeska is seriously overstating the importance of the fact that the Cardassians don't bring out new spaceframes.

There was a significant volume difference between those two ships, so the Defiant may very well be far more powerful ton for ton than the Lakota, the Lakota just has more enough tons to make up for that. I am just saying there are variables to be considered in that comparison.

Fair enough, but the whole point of the Defiant was that it had the power of a GCS in a smaller package, and a GCS is much larger than the Lakota.

Yes, but a GCS uses a large fraction of its total tonnage for crew comfort, luxuries, and specialized equipment for long-distance exploration.

I don't know what the hull plans look like, the USS Lakota was receiving steady updates to its systems, and Admiral Layton had made sure it was heavily armed specifically so that he could use it in a coup attempt. The firepower gap between it and a Galaxy might not be as big as the relative tonnage would indicate.
________

Realistically yes, a hull which undergoes heavy strain might eventually be too worn out to continue using. However, in Star Trek, a hull can develop micro-fractures all over its entire surface in an episode of Voyager and suffer zero long-term consequences from this. The writers are obviously too fucking stupid to think of this.

Trek ships rely heavily on the structural integrity field, right?

I mean yes, it's risky and foolish to build a ship that can't function without active systems holding it together, but as long as you've got the active system, then you have a safety factor as far as damage to the hull itself goes. So an old (or heavily microfractured) hull might be brittle and weak compared to a new one, and yet still operable. As long as the structural integrity field holds out during anything that would put stress on the hull, the weakened hull won't break down.

And since the ship doesn't do too well without the field even with a new hull, that would make the aging of the hull noncritical to the ship's function. If the hull breaks apart entirely you're screwed, but anything less than that can be managed.