Hypothetical Situation: The Executor

[Lord Falcon]

Let's say that during a routine patrol, the Enterprise-D comes across the Executor, floating adrift in space. They recover it for Starfleet. What would happen with an Executor-class Super Star Destroyer in the Federation's possession?

Discuss.

[Riquende]

The Federation struggle to find enough crew to man it, and instead spend decades pulling it apart to try and reverse engineer all the tech.

[Darth Tedious]

And some serious head-scratching over where it came from and how it got there.

Followed by some serious eyebrow-raising if/when they get access to any crew records and discover the thing was built and manned by humans...

[Feil]

The Federation has lots of use for studying it, but very little use for the weapon itself. Its borders are already secure, and it has little interest in expanding them by nonviolent means. Studying it yields scientific, not direct technological, advancement, since the technology is based on scientific knowledge alien to the Federation.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Federation struggle to find enough crew to man it, and instead spend decades pulling it apart to try and reverse engineer all the tech.

You think a faction with billions of people won't be able to man the Executor?

That doesn't mean they won't have problems. They may be attacked by people who want the technology.

Edited.

[Captain Seafort]

You think a faction with billions of people won't be able to man the Executor?

Probably - Starfleet is (obviously) only a tiny fraction of the total Federation population, and has to man all its current posts before finding the crew for an Ex. How would the US Navy cope if it was suddenly given a ship a few hundred times the size of a Nimitz to crew?

[bilateralrope]

Can the Federation even fuel it ?

[Stark]

Given the small size of te Federation and its likely use as a colonization ship I'm not sure they'd be concerned, assuming they can get it working without tripping some security system.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

but very little use for the weapon itself

It's the Executor, not the Eclipse.

Are there any droids on board that have any useful information, or failing that, what about the computers aboard the ship? Also, what kind of condition is the ship in, is it carrying a full load of consumables, spare parts, ammunition etc? What about fighters and ground vehicles?

When (or more likely if) they figure out how to get it moving and what kind of tech they're dealing with, they'll probably move it to some super-secret location to minimise the chances of any other power finding out about it while studying the tech. The presence of spare parts for example might accelerate the study of things like the hyperdrive, which would possibly be the easiest thing to retrofit existing ships with.

Until the Federation figure out how to build a hypermatter reactor they won't be able to use the info gained from how TLs etc work, cracking that nut would result in a whole new generation of ships. This also partly depends on gleaning any useful info via materials analysis, etc on what the ships should be made of and how to build them larger. They'd need to enlarge their shipyards to produce anything even ISD-sized, but given the likely timescales involved that probably won't be an immediate problem. With any luck they'd also pick up a few pointers on how to better design their ships, given their own ones are hardly examples of great engineering.

[Stark]

If the ship can go 250,000 ly (I beleive this is the range of the Acclmator), it can basically create a new Federation by itself. Fill it with millions of colonists and small federation ships, jump 60,000 light years, instant Federation 2.0. Even just moving heaps of people and industry to the far side of the Federation could (for instance) revolutionize the economy, reduce strategic vulnerabilities, massively outpace neighbour growth, etc.

And it'd still have enough fuel to do it again if you really needed to.

[the atom]

Until the Federation figure out how to build a hypermatter reactor they won't be able to use the info gained from how TLs etc work, cracking that nut would result in a whole new generation of ships.

I'm not sure turbolasers would be much of a boon by themselves. The power generation behind it would matter a lot more, and once they had that they could start powering their phaser arrays with it. Imagine the NDF effect a phaser could cause with 200 gigatons of energy going through it every second.....

[Darth Tedious]

Stark, that colony ship idea would totally work, they could even use some of the pre-fab, drop-it-on-the-planet Imperial Garrisons as their startup buildings.

Its borders are already
secure, and it has little interest in
expanding them by nonviolent
means.

Are the borders really that secure?
This is Enterprise-D-era, so we have stirrings in the RSE, a war with Cardassia, a Borg invasion and a really big war with the Dominion all on the horizon...

[Boeing 757]

You think a faction with billions of people won't be able to man the Executor?

Probably - Starfleet is (obviously) only a tiny fraction of the total Federation population, and has to man all its current posts before finding the crew for an Ex. How would the US Navy cope if it was suddenly given a ship a few hundred times the size of a Nimitz to crew?

Indeed. A run-of-the-mill Starfleet ship will accomodate seldom more than 500 officers, and an Executor-class star dreadnaught requires a standard crew of 250,000 people (not to mention the huge population of droids which manage the more tedious tasks on board). I can well imagine that things like cost of training officers and all the material baggage that comes along with it would be a huge hindrance in manning a ship the size of the Executor. Not that they couldn't pull it off in due time, but certainly it won't happen over night. And given that this ship is wholly alien tech to their training curricula and facilities, it could take quite a long while until they cobbled together an effective way of fitting their personnel to it.

[Boeing 757]

If the ship can go 250,000 ly (I beleive this is the range of the Acclmator), it can basically create a new Federation by itself. Fill it with millions of colonists and small federation ships, jump 60,000 light years, instant Federation 2.0. Even just moving heaps of people and industry to the far side of the Federation could (for instance) revolutionize the economy, reduce strategic vulnerabilities, massively outpace neighbour growth, etc.

And it'd still have enough fuel to do it again if you really needed to.

IIRC 250,000 LY for the Acclamator and 60,000 for the Venator. That brings up a good side point though. Even if the Federation could make the ship fully operational, where will it get hypermatter to power its systems for any worthwhile span of time? It has to create a whole new logistical industry and infrastructure both to produce the needed powersource and to supply it to the Executor wherever it may be, and with the Federation being 8000 LY from end to end that won't be such an easy task at first. I don't think that they could pull it off.

EDIT: I guess that they could just move the Executor itself to wherever they would be producing the hypermatter, so that might take care of that second problem, provided that they don't waste too much fuel zipping across the Milky Way.

[Stark]

I don't think it makes sense to use it as a regular ship anyway. I understand that weapon use chews through fuel very quickly as well, and the thousands of enemy ships it can destroy is probably less useful than its role in establishing thousands of typical 50,000 colonist worlds. Just parking it in a backwater area basically gives that area the largest starbase in the federation and should stimulate growth and shift supply chains to the Federstions benefit.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Realistically speaking, you could even strip a large number of the weapons off and fit them to different ships/starbases once the Feddies figure out how they work, and how to find hypermatter. Even if the Ex only kept a fraction (most likely a quarter) of its weapons that's still enough to do a number on anyone attacking it in ST-verse.

EDIT: But yeah, using the Ex itself as a super-colony ship/starbase hybrid is the best bet.

[Stark]

You could hopelessly overload the ship with people and material, because the flight time is probably a few hours. It'd take longer for the Federation to fill the ship than the trip itself.

[Darth Tedious]

Refitting the Ex's weapons onto Fed ships and Starbases may be a hassle.
Besides the heinous power/fuel consumption issues that Stark has already mentioned, you have the problem of running out of Tibanna.
Unless they can replicate or synthesise the stuff, blaster/turbolaser tech is only going to be useful in the short term.

[Thanas]

You really do not need 250.000 men for it.

A few thousand (or even a few dozen in one instance) were able to fly it, as long as you do not expect it to enter combat or perform complicate maneuvers. Which should not be needed for a colony ship/starbase and if need be simply hyper away.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

According to Wookieepedia, minimum crew for that kind of ship is 50,000- equivalent to 50 Galaxy-class ships, with nearly 1,600 gunners and 10,000 droids. Being a combat ship, I'm not sure what kind of sensors/science labs they have aboard- which might limit its use for exploration.

Of course, if the ship comes with a few thousand hyperdrive-capable probe droids they'd be able to chart the whole galaxy by themselves- and providing the Federation with plenty of hyperdrive units for study

[Thanas]

According to Wookieepedia, minimum crew for that kind of ship is 50,000- equivalent to 50 Galaxy-class ships, with nearly 1,600 gunners and 10,000 droids. Being a combat ship, I'm not sure what kind of sensors/science labs they have aboard- which might limit its use for exploration.

Again, that assumes combat readiness. We have seen it gotten flown by a few people (Black fleet crisis III)

[Skywalker_T-65]

Refitting the Ex's weapons onto Fed ships and Starbases may be a hassle.
Besides the heinous power/fuel consumption issues that Stark has already mentioned, you have the problem of running out of Tibanna.
Unless they can replicate or synthesise the stuff, blaster/turbolaser tech is only going to be useful in the short term.

Yeah, that's why I said 'only when they understand the tech and can get fuel'. Probably should have said Tibanna though...whoops...

And ES does bring up a valid point...if it came with hyperdrive equipped probe droids, that could be IMMENSELY useful for the Feddies.

[Eternal_Freedom]

According to Wookieepedia, minimum crew for that kind of ship is 50,000- equivalent to 50 Galaxy-class ships, with nearly 1,600 gunners and 10,000 droids. Being a combat ship, I'm not sure what kind of sensors/science labs they have aboard- which might limit its use for exploration.

Again, that assumes combat readiness. We have seen it gotten flown by a few people (Black fleet crisis III)

Also X-Wing Iron Fist where they steal the Razor's Kiss, although the lackof a ful crew doeslead indirectly to the ships destruction.

[Connor MacLeod]

Fuel: Most Star Wars ships have fusion reactors as well as hypermatter ones (I think Curtis tried explaining that as the fusion reactors helped to confine the hypermatter reactions, or something.) and a number of sources have indicated you can run hyperdrive off fusion power instead of hypermatter power. So unless we're talking something other than 'nuclear fusion', the Federation should be able to run the Executor on fusion, albeit with reduced power/performance and that can include the hyperdrive I think. Starships still need at least some hypermatter so the hyperdrive can work (ballast or something I think, I forget the ICS description of how its supposed to affect hyperspace travel and I'm too lazy to go look it up.) so there may still be some limiting factors.

Tibanna gas: Depends on whether the 'blaster/turbolaser' is of the type that uses it as ammo (the particle beam/plasma types, supposedly) or whether its just an energy amplifier/coolant (the massless/'light-based' type.)

Mounting the guns on other platforms (space station) is going ot be a huge engineering challenge because you have to find ways to power them safely (transferring power from reactor to guns without adverse effects) and recoil (if the things aren't braced properly and you try to fire them at any power, they'lll rip off the mounting and fuck up the ship, as per 'Slave Ship').


Other than that, the biggest issue I find is that in order to use the ship in any way, they need to actually learn how to run it. Making guesses with the hyperdrive (and without precise coordinates) is risky because of the danger of collisions, and unless we're going with pre-Special edition SW, I think they retconned away all the 'Star Wars speaks english' as that Aurebesh stuff, so they'd have to take time to decipher the text and language with their Universal Translator before they could start operating it. That also means that in all probability the crewing issue is not problematic, at least in the long term, because they'll have to train any crews to run the ship, and the time invested in deciphering the language and figuring out how it works should be plenty of time to train someone to operate the vessel even if they have to recruit/hire more people to do it. No matter how 'small' you think Starfleet is, they have to have at least thousands of vessels, each with hundreds of crew each, which is going to be at least around a million or so starfleet personnel (millions more like it, considering every ground and station based facility they have to staff as well.)

Likewise, the R&D benefits will accrue from simply having to figure out the language and trying to make it work, so they will probably see it benefitting their own tech and R&D in some fashion over time, even if its not immediately and it doesn't result in massive leaps forward.

If I were going to operate the ship (whether as a ace in the hole superweapon against a potential threat like the Borg or Dominion, or as a colony ship to transport populations thousands of LY away to set up new federations), I'd probably rely on fusion reactors as much as I need to and save the (more limited) hypermatter supplies for when I truly need it. Even then, until and unless I can figure out a way to maintain or repair the ship, limiting my use and reducing the performance level I operate at will probably help to preserve it, because ultimately in the 'short term' it represents a finite resource.

As an aside, all the equipment and craft onboard the ship are also going to be of immense value. TIE fighters and such alone aren't worht much, but their guns could be dismounted and more probably mounted in other craft, and if we go by ICS yields their performance is not drastically worse than some of the energy weaponry the feds pack, which would be a big asset in defenese (at least if you can mount them in ships, like say a defiant class) and given the potential number of fighters (thousands) they can carry that could be a huge asset. Same with all the projectile/warhead (concussion missile/torpedo) launchers. While the ammo supply is finite (at least in the short term) its probably still fairly plentiful and that provides yet more supplemental firepower. What's more its probably stuff of a type noone has commonly encountered before (borg adaption comes to mind.)

Even more important though are the hyperdrive capable small vessels - the shuttles and transports and the gunboats/blastboats and the like - as they represent additional hyperdrive platforms the Federation can use (again probably scores if not hundreds) and they could use them either as they are, or probably try to adapt them to larger platforms (build a ship around the smaller hyperdrive craft, or something perhaps.) These versions are also more likely to run off non-hypermatter fuel sources (again fusion) so they migth be of more immediate benefit than the Executor's drives ()at least from an R&D and maintnenace purpose.)

If it comes to the Borg and dominion war, the ground vehicle and perosnal weaponry and equipment is also bound to be a non-trivial asset in bolstering what the Feds already had at the start of the DS9 ground wars. Especially if they have any sorts of portable shield platforms of various types (not personal shields, more like small scale theatre shielding that can even be used onboard.)

There is also the communication capabilities potential of the Executor itself and its small craft (hyperwave/holonet and the subspace stuff.) because they represent another means of communication that may be faster (at least for holonet) but is also effectively unjammable (again in the short term.) Hyperwave/holonet can be power intensive, but it would be of use.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well, actually Connor, according to more obscure stuff it is possible (maybe) to power a hyperdrive (and definitely a ship...see EX-F) with Anti-Matter.

And supposedly the Jedi Starfighters Hyperdrive Ring was filled with Anti-Matter for the ballast function. So the Feddies could (potentially) replace the dwindling Hypermatter reserves with anti-matter eventually. Though it would most likely require a serious redesign of the Hyperdrive, so it wouldn't be a viable option for the Ex itself, unless they understand the tech enough.

But for the smaller ones (shuttles and gunboats) it is an interesting option.

(Source: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Antimatter )