Who does everyone seem to hate the Galaxy Class

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-10-24 08:42pm

Dennis Toy wrote:
Yes and no. It was damage elsewhere causing the warp core itself to go critical. We know that the the damage the caused the E-D core to go critical so often has also occured on other ships without them going critical. Its safer to assume that they replaced the core itself with something that wouldn't go critical so easily. Afterall we've seen a hulk of a Galaxy burning apart without it blowing up. We've seen the USS Galaxy herself take significant damage to the secondary hull and survive (more then we can say compared to the Enterprise and Oddessy).

The Warp Core is the central issue to the Galaxy design problem and reliability. Fixing that only requires popping out the old core and inserting a fixed design.

The warp core wasnt really a deathtrap, i've seen instances that the ship actually been in battle and still the warp core didn't go critical.

canon episodes..

tin man: the ship is hit by romulan diestruptor fire and still doesnt breach, Tin man shoots a shockwave at the ship and it ROCKS! yet the core didnt explode.

Best of both worlds..... Borg uses slicing laser and cuts into the secondary hull yet the warp core doesnt breach,

Darmok: The enterprise it hit in the engines but doesnt breach.

Disaster: quantum filament hits enterprise, warp core doesnt breach.

descent: the ship is hit several times but the core doesnt breach

The Enterprise D suffered more warp core issues then any other Trek ship we have seen. Two of its sister ships were destroyed because of their warp core.

Dennis Toy · Post by **Dennis Toy** » 2004-10-24 09:33pm

near explosions but only actually 2 times did the enterprise-D exploded

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-10-24 09:36pm

Dennis Toy wrote:near explosions but only actually 2 times did the enterprise-D exploded

It is worth noting if a ship is destroyed by explosion twice, something is wrong somewhere.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-10-24 09:41pm

Your own ship blowing up isn't good. When it happens usualy you want to say that your enemy managed to hit munitions storage (and you better still shield the hell out of it). When you have to say the ENGINE blew up the whole bloody ship TWICE (and somehow the ship survived one of those), you've got problems. Perhaps you need to shield the engine as well so it doesn't take shock damage like that. Hell, the rest of Starfleet has pretty damned good safeties when you can see a burning wreck with half the ship explossively detached and yet the core didn't cook off. When your "pride of the fleet" ship class looses three of their number in a span of 7 years ALL to its engine exploding, something is wrong.

Sam Or I · Post by **Sam Or I** » 2004-10-25 05:42am

The Galaxy Class is ugly. The main reason for this is the oversized saucer section, and that is an Oval 90 degrees the wrong way. As much as that does not matter in space, to the human eye, it makes it look slow and bulky. It is wider than it is long which is kind of unsettling for humans to think like that for something that moves. Think about every human vehicle, besides some slow moving aircraft, they are longer than they are wide.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-10-25 11:16am

For Trek its more akin to outright removing the reactor and replacing it with an upgraded one.

Which addressed the myriad of faults outside of the small part that's actually ejected? Oh wait, it doesn't.

We have seen examples of the ships suffering damage far in excess to what happened in TNG. Explicit statements are not needed when we have other supporting evidence.

Way to ignore the burden of proof. So you're admitting that you've got no proof at all for these upgrades of yours really taking place? Just the ships didn't blow up. Never mind that there are a good many other explanations, some of them much simpler?

The hull modifications would be harder to work on then merely popping out an engine and putting in another.

Oh really? I'm pretty sure yanking out an engine and the multitude of internal components associated with it and replacing all of it with an entirely new one is a lot more difficult than putting on extra external components.

Incompetence by the crew did not specificaly have to do with the warp core breach examples in TNG era Trek. It often had to do with getting into the situation, but not the sitution itself.

On the contrary, Starfleet has been proven painfully negligent in combat training, damage control included. Given the number of times the Ent-D survived purely by last minute scrambles it's painfully obvious that better damage control can make a serious difference, enough to make the difference with out resorting to totally unproven modifications.

What safety factors would these be?

Oh, things like stress to the ships (got to love having to have active systems to keep the ship together), potential strain on an already twitchy powerplant, etc, etc.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-10-25 11:22am

Dennis Toy wrote:near explosions but only actually 2 times did the enterprise-D exploded

Which is two times more than a ship should. It's blown up twice! Uno explosion, dos explosion! ONCE is not an acceptable state of affairs, let alone twice. After the first time, at the very least, they should have done something. And never mind that others of the Galaxy-class have suffered catastrophic destruction do to predictable factors. Those should have triggered a class wide look at the whole thing; if it didn't Starfleet is just incompetent.

After the recent sub fire the Canadian docked all their subs and are inspecting them to make sure it doesn't happen again. That's how it should be done. And after the US lost Thresher we initiated a whole ongoing programs, Subsafe, to make sure such losses didn't happen again.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2004-10-25 11:25am

My vote would be to replace all galaxies with refit Soyuz-class ships. THOSE bastards kicky-the-assy.

http://www.ccdump.org/soyuzclass.html

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-10-25 11:29am

Stormbringer wrote:Those should have triggered a class wide look at the whole thing; if it didn't Starfleet is just incompetent.

You're talking about an organisation wherein children and civilians are stationed onboard warships that are routinely put on deep range exploratory patrols; when the Borg attacked, the USS Saratoga still had civilians onboard! I don't think incompetence is the issue. Such wanton disregard for personnel safety, and the endangering of innocents paints a far more damning picture IMO.

I suppose it's easier to attribute the above to incompetence rather than malice, but damn is it hard not to think that SFC is full of arseholes, at least in the early years of the TNG period.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-10-25 11:38am

Stofsk wrote:
Stormbringer wrote:Those should have triggered a class wide look at the whole thing; if it didn't Starfleet is just incompetent.
You're talking about an organisation wherein children and civilians are stationed onboard warships that are routinely put on deep range exploratory patrols; when the Borg attacked, the USS Saratoga still had civilians onboard! I don't think incompetence is the issue. Such wanton disregard for personnel safety, and the endangering of innocents paints a far more damning picture IMO.

I suppose it's easier to attribute the above to incompetence rather than malice, but damn is it hard not to think that SFC is full of arseholes, at least in the early years of the TNG period.

Ahem, they DID remove the civilians for the Dominion war.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-10-25 11:43am

Alyeska wrote:
Stofsk wrote:
Stormbringer wrote:Those should have triggered a class wide look at the whole thing; if it didn't Starfleet is just incompetent.
You're talking about an organisation wherein children and civilians are stationed onboard warships that are routinely put on deep range exploratory patrols; when the Borg attacked, the USS Saratoga still had civilians onboard! I don't think incompetence is the issue. Such wanton disregard for personnel safety, and the endangering of innocents paints a far more damning picture IMO.

I suppose it's easier to attribute the above to incompetence rather than malice, but damn is it hard not to think that SFC is full of arseholes, at least in the early years of the TNG period.
Ahem, they DID remove the civilians for the Dominion war.

After getting how many killed in the aformentioned incidents? Because right now that only shows me that they knew just what the hell they were risking and still didn't care.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-10-25 11:57am

Notice the saucer impulse engines are active. The two Galaxy's further ahead also had theirs lit up when they passed the screen. Also note the altered shuttlebay.

Saucer impulse engines active.

You can see by the red glow the saucer impulse engines are active.

Saucer impulse engines active. Also note the darkened spine on both Galaxy's.

Added phasers to the warp engines.

None of the above was standard from TNG. The saucer impulse engines were previously only used when the saucer seperated. Now any time you see the backside of a GCS all three engines are running. As you can also see there are various modifications to several Galaxy class ships. None of them minor.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-10-25 12:01pm

Stormbringer wrote:
Alyeska wrote:
Stofsk wrote: You're talking about an organisation wherein children and civilians are stationed onboard warships that are routinely put on deep range exploratory patrols; when the Borg attacked, the USS Saratoga still had civilians onboard! I don't think incompetence is the issue. Such wanton disregard for personnel safety, and the endangering of innocents paints a far more damning picture IMO.

I suppose it's easier to attribute the above to incompetence rather than malice, but damn is it hard not to think that SFC is full of arseholes, at least in the early years of the TNG period.
Ahem, they DID remove the civilians for the Dominion war.
After getting how many killed in the aformentioned incidents? Because right now that only shows me that they knew just what the hell they were risking and still didn't care.

They way I see it is they treated their ships much as we treat military bases today. Families and civilians are allowed on military bases durring times of peace, but in active war when attacks on military bases are quite possible the civilians are evacuated.

The example of the Saratoga can be argued that they didn't have time to offload the civilians. The Yamato was a tragic accident. That they happened at all is bad. Then again post Dominion War we didn't see civilians on the Enterprise-E. So I suspect they learned from their mistake. The Galaxy wasn't quite as safe as they first thought.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-10-25 12:06pm

Alyeska wrote:Ahem, they DID remove the civilians for the Dominion war.

I know; that's why I said "at least in the early TNG period."

The example of the Saratoga can be argued that they didn't have time to offload the civilians.

If Hansen had deployed the fleet in Earth orbit there would have been plenty of time to evac the civvies. From a tactical standpoint, it would have also made more sense too (the Borg have only one projected path so the fleet can concentrate their firepower; they didn't do that in Wolf 359 as we see in the opening of "Emmisary", the Borg would also have to plow through the auto defences first before the Fleet hit it)

My point was that SFC was borderline inhuman in the early years; this isn't surprising, since the parasite creatures had infiltrated SFC for quite some time previous to Encounter at Farpoint ("Conspiracy" seems to imply the parasite infiltration had been a long-term affair). After a few years SFC got its shit straightened out.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-10-25 12:15pm

None of the above was standard from TNG. The saucer impulse engines were previously only used when the saucer seperated. Now any time you see the backside of a GCS all three engines are running. As you can also see there are various modifications to several Galaxy class ships. None of them minor.

Those are nifty pictures. They don't however prove that the warp core was refitted nor does it prove the impulse engines are new, just that they're being used. Should I just accept your concession on that now?

As for the modifications, they are new and they're not entirely minor. But compared to gutting and rebuilding the addition of some some armor and lighter weapons is not that suprising. Both can and have been done to warships plenty of times.

They way I see it is they treated their ships much as we treat military bases today. Families and civilians are allowed on military bases durring times of peace, but in active war when attacks on military bases are quite possible the civilians are evacuated.

They might treat them as such, but our military bases aren't prone to sinking are they? Nor are our military bases deployed to fight the enemy?

And the fact is that the civilians can be evacuated, but when has that ever been the case in a dangerous situation?

The example of the Saratoga can be argued that they didn't have time to offload the civilians. The Yamato was a tragic accident. That they happened at all is bad. Then again post Dominion War we didn't see civilians on the Enterprise-E. So I suspect they learned from their mistake. The Galaxy wasn't quite as safe as they first thought.

It sure as hell wasn't as safe. That they learned after dozens of incidents which no doubt cost plenty of lives unnecessarilly is good; had they not done it in the first place would have been far better.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2004-10-25 03:53pm

Chardok wrote:My vote would be to replace all galaxies with refit Soyuz-class ships. THOSE bastards kicky-the-assy.

http://www.ccdump.org/soyuzclass.html

I always wondered... In the ep "Cause and Effect," a Soyuz class taps the enterprise on a nacelle (impacting with its own nacelle), causing poor enterprise to explode again and again.
But what happened to the Soyuz? We don't see any explosion. We don't even see any sparks come out of it. And since the Soyuz seems to be very similar to the Miranda, does that mean that the Soyuz can take a beating like the reliant did in TWOK? If so, it would mean that E-D was killed by a fender-bender that didn't even harm the older vessel!

Man, that's pathetic.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-10-25 04:04pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:
Chardok wrote:My vote would be to replace all galaxies with refit Soyuz-class ships. THOSE bastards kicky-the-assy.

http://www.ccdump.org/soyuzclass.html
I always wondered... In the ep "Cause and Effect," a Soyuz class taps the enterprise on a nacelle (impacting with its own nacelle), causing poor enterprise to explode again and again.
But what happened to the Soyuz? We don't see any explosion. We don't even see any sparks come out of it. And since the Soyuz seems to be very similar to the Miranda, does that mean that the Soyuz can take a beating like the reliant did in TWOK? If so, it would mean that E-D was killed by a fender-bender that didn't even harm the older vessel!

Man, that's pathetic.

Well, I would assume that the Soyuz survived, as we didn't see it die, except for one problem: If it survived in each iteration, there would be several dozen copies of it produced by the anomaly.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-10-25 04:12pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote: But what happened to the Soyuz? We don't see any explosion. We don't even see any sparks come out of it. And since the Soyuz seems to be very similar to the Miranda, does that mean that the Soyuz can take a beating like the reliant did in TWOK? If so, it would mean that E-D was killed by a fender-bender that didn't even harm the older vessel!

Man, that's pathetic.

I would assume that at worse the nacelle would have been ripped off. Reliant survived that no problem, so I don't see why the Soyuz wouldn't, given the similarities.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-10-25 05:51pm

Okay, maybe I'm missing something obvious, but IIRC in 'Cause And Effect', the E_D wasn't killed by the nacelle being crushed, but by the Warp core going kablooey because of it. Which rather DOES indicate, as Alyeska said, that the problem was the Warp core all along. Given that the entire thing is designed to eject in an emergency (designed abysmally admittedly given that it usually failed to do so) a replacement of the Core (and, hopefully, the eject mechanism) should rather get rid of those problems.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2004-10-25 06:15pm

I hate the Galaxy Class because of the glaring engineering problems, the glaring Technical problems, and the whole hotel-like interior

The other reason is the fact that is has a nursery because it needs to have one! How stupid is that? Kids do not belong on a front line ship! Wives maybe but not kids! The issues brought up in favore of the families on board can be handled with crew rotations and the like. I can understand a few moral problems, but it takes a big streach to ask people to put their children in harm's way and have them not feel good about it. Will they be willing to make risks if the know jr. is on deck 18 playing in the holodeck(or whereeverit is) or in school studying?

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-10-25 06:39pm

Okay, I've had it. The next moron to blame Starfleet's complete and utter stupidity WRT putting civilians on what aught to be warships will catch a blowdart with some REALLy nasty nonfatal (I hate being Batman) bug.
By your reasoning, if the US Navy allowed civilians on board its ships then because of this the Ticos would be a shitty design. Excuse me?
The Warp core, the silly separation function etc are valid criticisms. But blaming the idiotic policy decisions of Starfleet on the ship is, quite simply, asinine.

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2004-10-25 06:59pm

Unfortunately, idiotoic policy decisions re reflected in the ship's design - it's 5 time bigger than it needs to be. The old Constitution/Enterprise class ships functioned fine. The only reason the Galaxy is so massive is living quarters, etc, for that useless 2 thirds of it's complement.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-10-25 07:17pm

andrewgpaul wrote:Unfortunately, idiotoic policy decisions re reflected in the ship's design - it's 5 time bigger than it needs to be.

Prove it. Fit the Warp drive, impulse drive, deflector grid, photorp launchers and phaser arrays the Galaxy has on a ship that is 1/5th its size.

The old Constitution/Enterprise class ships functioned fine. The only reason the Galaxy is so massive is living quarters, etc, for that useless 2 thirds of it's complement.

Baseless speculation. I will not argue that the original Galaxy wasted a lot of its volume on those instead of using them for backup power generators etc
(while Paramount's E-D deck plans aren't canon they are pretty scary WRT the amount of space dedicated to quarters and such), but proof that that ship, with the capacities it has, could be built WITHOUT being the size it is is up to you.
Oh, and there IS no Enterprise class. It's called the Constitution refit. Unless you're talking about the pseudo-prequel.

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2004-10-25 07:35pm

Since I'm not a qualified starship designer, I sadly can't prove it. Then again, neither were the model designers at Paramount

As for unnecessary space, if you leave out the non-crew living quarters and reduce the consumables in the cargo hold by an equivalent amount, you have a great deal of empty space. re-assign any still-used space to the centre of the saucer, and voila, the saucer is smaller. Your comment

...the original Galaxy wasted a lot of its volume on those instead of using them for backup power generators etc

is asking something different - that's adding additional capacity the Galaxy didn't have.

As for being bigger than it needs to be, the x5 was a throwaway comment - how many times bigger is a Galaxy than a Constitution? They both did the same job, after all. Yes, the area of explored space on the Federation border is greater, after 80 years of expansion, but that can be resolved by building more Constitutions, Mirandas, etc.

"Enterprise class"? Been reading the Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator ship book too often, I guess

In any case, my point is that political concerns explain why some people think the Galaxy is a bad design. People don't like it because it's purpose, and therefore design and aesthetics, is compromised by poor planning. Granted, this is exacerbated by Starfleet's repeated insistence on using fully peopled Galaxies (OK, at least 1) in combat roles.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-10-25 07:45pm

andrewgpaul wrote: As for unnecessary space, if you leave out the non-crew living quarters and reduce the consumables in the cargo hold by an equivalent amount, you have a great deal of empty space. re-assign any still-used space to the centre of the saucer, and voila, the saucer is smaller.

No argument. The question is could the equipmwnt that the Galaxy has on that saucer be fitted onto the smaller one? At least for the phaser arrays the answer is likely 'no, because there would quite simply be no room for them.

As for being bigger than it needs to be, the x5 was a throwaway comment - how many times bigger is a Galaxy than a Constitution? They both did the same job, after all. Yes, the area of explored space on the Federation border is greater, after 80 years of expansion, but that can be resolved by building more Constitutions, Mirandas, etc.

Sorry, but you're wrong. By your reasoning the US would have been much better off by building shitloads of escort carriers instead of the carriers/supercarriers it did. The Constitution did the same job the Galaxy did against opponents that were of the same power. You cannot simply assume five 200,000 ton ships have the same firepower/resilience as one 1,000,000 ton ship (otherwise 5 10,000 tons WW2 light cruisers aught to have an even-money chance to kill a 50,000 ton WW2 battleship and that simply isn't going to happen).