How are Starfleet science and exploration ships on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions? These ships for science and diplomacy full of kids and classrooms are regularly used as full fleet combatants, yet apparently Starfleet doesn't have actual warships. Imagine if US Navy survey ships were better than dedicated destroyers of other navies and you see why this is bullshit.
>>65470848Plot armor, they are the human protagonist organisation of communism.
>>65470848Plot convenience. My own homegrown fleet setting makes more sense.
>>65470856Starfleet isn't communist it's post-scarcity because of replicators. When you can convert any matter into anything you want there's no need for economies anymore. Klingons were the USSR inspired group and Romulans were Communist China
>>65470870>When you can convert any matter into anything you wantLatinumOnce you establish a limitation it stops being able to just make anything.
>>65470848It would be pretty easy to make US navy survey ships better than the dedicated warships of other navies if every nation but the US was stuck in the mid 1800s. That is basically the position Starfleet is in compared to most of its peers. Whenever Starfleet goes up against a "serious" threat where it doesn't have a decisive technological advantage (e.g. the Borg, the Dominion) this results in Starfleet getting its teeth kicked in.
>>65470848>How are Starfleet science and exploration ships on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions?Most of them aren't; your pic is meant to basically be a self-contained self-sustaining super-long-range reconnaissance vessel. It's huge, it's fast, it's well-armed, it has vast scientific observation and research facilities and it's meant to go solo into the unknown for a decade at a time. In TNG the Enterprise is the flagship of the space fleet; it isn't really doing the things it was designed to do –because that would make for boring TV for most people.
>>65470848Overbuit. An experimental exploration cutter that can be crewed by as little as 5 humanoids is somehow armed with photon torpedos
Starfleet is just that much better and more advanced than everyone else.
>>65470848Technological superiority and a relentless approach of quality over quantity.Also they did jsut striaght up build wartime austerity versions without all the civilian and exploratory stuff during the Dominion War.
>>65470885>It's huge640 meters isn't huge, it's basically a recon vessel in most settings.
>>65471100>relentless approach of quality over quantityBullshit, they never have any design breakthroughs, everything is iterative even after centuries since the discovery of warp travel. If Starfleet was designing seaships, everything would still have a sail and broadside cannons but just bigger and more curvy.
>>65470848>How are Starfleet science and exploration ships on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions?A few reasons. 1. Star Treks warship strength is not about guns and armor but energy so it is hard to compare them to real warships. Star Fleet ships have really large and powerful reactors for shields and phasers. All those science gadgets drink from the same well of power as the weapons.2. Starfleet is a space navy first and because of that, Starfleet ships are primarily warships with science and comfort tacked on. They are Officers who serve Admirals and are the ships of the line in defense of the Federation.3. Other factions warships also serve science and exploration rolls, they just don't tug their dick about it. Klingon and Romulan ships don't exactly lack for fancy sensors and instruments.4. When Star Fleet started actually building warships like the Akira and Defiant class for the wars with the Borg and Dominion, they were smaller than traditional ships like the Enterprise but packed a really big punch because they downsized all the non essentials for war.
>>65471116Saucer with bridge at the top and overly exposed engine pylons and nacelles is such a suboptimal design for tactical scenarios. Worst of all, it's anemic, it just looks weak. United Empire from Endless Space looks so much better.
>>65470848>How are Starfleet science and exploration ships on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions?In most cases they aren't when you sit down to think about it. They win by essentially being significantly larger in terms of displacement. Its only races behind them technologically such as the Cardassians can they truly fight ton for ton. Well of course till DS9 and Voyager comes around then the power scaling and consistency goes truly out the window.If you take TNG as a baseline despite the fact the Enterprise gets its ass kicked more times than Worf, then the Romulan D'deridex for example is mostly empty space so it has a relatively small crew and much lower tonnage than its size would suggest but is still considered a threat against much heavier Starfleet vessels. Everyone compares it to the Galaxy class but the true Federation equivalent here would be the likes of the Ambassador or Nebula class ships which are frankly no match for a warbird of this type. The Klingon B'Rel can be operated with tiny ass crews like legit a dozen people yet are able to punch considerably above their weight. The Federation wished they had a ship as effective as the Klingon bird of prey and they simply don't as anything that looks like it is as efficient weighs considerably more. The K'Vort classes are also another example that despite not really having much weight to them can overpower much larger vessels when working in pairs. The closest Federation equivalent here is the Excelsior class and despite being heavier would badly lose a 1vs1 fight here.
>>65471134>Saucer with bridge at the top and overly exposed engine pylons and nacelles is such a suboptimal design for tactical scenarios.Every hit is like eating a tac-nuke so once the shields go down you are cooked no matter what shape you make the ship. So long as there is a one or two emitters or torp tube pointed in the enemies direction you can pretty much funnel all the ships firepower their way. Reshaping the ship to look more tactical or aggressive buys them very little compared to their "I'm just a sweet lil science ship" act.
>muh realism
>>65471103It's big compared to most other ships the Federation builds.>>65471134Battlefleet Gothic knockoff.
>>65470880>once you run into any limitation the rest stops matteringDoes it though?
>>65471146>Every hit is like eating a tac-nuke so once the shields go down you are cooked no matter what shape you make the ship.I've heard this argument but it just doesn't add up. We've seen starships take a beating even after shields collapsed. But once the nacelles are hit, it's literally game over because the cascade rips everything.
>>65471150BG didn't invent futuristic cruiser hulls in space.
>>65471145>The Klingon B'Rel can be operated with tiny ass crews like legit a dozen people yet are able to punch considerably above their weight. The Federation wished they had a ship as effective as the Klingon bird of prey and they simply don't as anything that looks like it is as efficient weighs considerably more.Yeah, it is about on par with a larger Miranda-class though the torpedo roll bar model can probably handle one if it isn't ambushed. That said the Defiant is pretty much the Federations advanced Bird of Prey. The Klingons need to do some catching up.
>>65471103>it's basically a recon vessel in most settings.Most? It's not anything to laugh at for UNSC designs, Mass Effect, Star Wars, Babylon 5, and others that I can't remember off the top of my head.That art is also massively overscaled.
>>65471075>Starfleet is just that much better and more advanced than everyone else.They're in a rough parity with other great powers and technological overmatch with random planetary civs.
>>65471152>We've seen starships take a beating even after shields collapsed.I guess but ships in most cases usually they explode or are completely crippled with one good torpedo hit. Maybe if the ablative armor on the Defiant-class becomes more common throughout the fleet, then ship shape should be changed to be more blocky. As it is now though, the shields are like 98% of the defensive battle.
>>65471162Why would the Klingons need to catch up when they can have essentially three Bird of Preys for a single Defiant, arguably more?
>>65471134Why does your warship have rail mounts for canted sights?
>>65471180>why would the Russians need to catch up when they have 3 MiG-21's to every F-4 Phantom.Terrible attitude for a military to have, if you rest on your laurels the problem only gets worse over time.
>>65471177Shields aren't even consistent in how they're depicted. Pre-TNG, they basically just dampened the effect of weapons rather than blocking damage until they collapsed. Either way, it's dumb for them to be a ship's sole layer of defense. Point defense should be a huge one.
>>65471200The only reason Klingons didn't develop more ship types in series media is because of show budget constraints. In other media like STO, they have about as many as the Federation.
>>65471134Most fictional spacecraft designs are utterly retarded but yours isn't any better.
>>65471208>post pic of damage done while shields are down>doesn't account for the 80 year gap in technology advancement
>>65471200>Boards you>War"crimes" your medicsQapla!
>>65470848>on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions?#1 it is fiction#2 scaling, the science and cultural stuff is just bolted onto a competent warship. You're losing some cargo volume and mass for these extra features.#3 it is fiction, so some kind of volume/surface area calculations means that they're not actually sacrificing much combat performance for the extra modules.#4 science shit is dual use as sensors and weapons
The Enterprise D was the most advanced ship the Federation could put together and it was heavily suggested that it could go toe-to-toe with a Romulan Warbird which seemed like more of a standard model for the Romulan Empire. The most common ship you saw the feddies use in TNG was leftover models from the movies.In reality it was the diplomatic set-up and technology that (usually) protected the Federation. Things went south pretty quickly when the Klingons and Romulans teamed up in the two parallel universes while the Cardies seemed like a B-tier power who could put the Federation into an attrition war. Even the Ferengi were dangerous.>>65471114It was cited multiple times over the series as containing a number of revolutionary new tech. There's a similar thing with the Defiant being an experimental craft that took on lessons from fighting the Borg as a pure military vessel but it seemed like plot and better flying was what made the one we saw work.
>>65471208Abram’s 2009 movie had starfleet ships with tons of point defense lasers intercepting incoming stuff. Rare scene I liked
>>65470848STEM.
>>65471150>Battlefleet Gothic knockoff.Looks more D:FS Shivan to me.
>>65470848That's the power of diversity
>>65470880Latinum's literal only use is scarcity, though. If it had a real use then Star Trek science would render it infinite, just like everything else. It is intentionally left alone by anyone capable of ruining its purpose.
>>65471264Yes it is.
>>65471304The point is it was never explained exactly how they worked before or how it advanced since so everything is guess work.
>>65471573But he explained how it works.Shields do nothing when you turn them off. That isn't guesswork.
>>65471352>it was heavily suggested that it could go toe-to-toe with a Romulan WarbirdFederation propaganda until proven otherwise. We've never actually seen them 1v1.
>>65471579Show me in The Undiscovered Country how it worked because even with them raised we were still seeing hulls taking damage.
>>65471579>with shields still uphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V44Vw1AuS20
>>65471584>>65471598Didn't they get the shield frequencies?
>>65471611No, that's the TNG movie.>>65471598You're comparing torpedo damage with shields up vs phaser damage with shields down. Yes that's a much better example of what you're talking about than Khan's little naughty gotcha.
>>65471580Fly inside the big open space in the middle of the Warbird so you can shoot it while it can't do anything.
What is the purpose of the J?
>>65470848All that science bullshit takes a lot of energy to run. If you shut off that science bullshit in a tactical situation, you have enormous power available to reroute to shields and weapons. You are also motivated to have strong shields because you're always flying into weird space anomalies to do your science bullshit. Your weapons are just directed energy. So if you have a lot of energy, and you do, you have actually built a warship.Don't let one throwaway line from Major Kira, a propagandized outsider, convince you of an obvious lie.
>>65471598Crazy this came out in 1991, 8 years later after Return of the Jedi and 2 years before Jurassic Park. The effects look so much worse.
>>65470869You have a very powerful fleet and as a Cylon, I am demoralized.
>>65470848>How are Starfleet science and exploration ships on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions?In the same way that Japan doesn't have aircraft carriers.>Whaaaat? No, it's not a warship. See, there's the science lab; pay no attention to the torpedo magazines or the phaser banks.
>>65470848Once you're sufficiently advanced compared to your peers, pretty much any asset you have can be used to style on them up to and including janitorial staff. That's basically how Culture works in Banks' novels.
>>65471580>Federation propaganda until proven otherwiseYou DO realize the Federation represents the US and all the others are various thirdies, right?
>>65470848It's a luxury ship. It costs 3x the price of a ship of similar size that would only fulfill the executive transport/ambassadorial or science role and twice the cost of a similar capability warship. Think of it like the Zumwalt or Bradley of starships. Feature creep extreme.
>>65470848Because Starfleet are staffed and equipped by Larpers. Most Earthians live in their holodecks back on Earth and never leave the Matrix. Those who join Starfleet are social deviants who shun holodeck life and are instead given toy ships to run around in the real world. Even then, these toy ships are more than a match for most alien civs that they encounter. Look at how huge starfleet starbases are. If the Feddies wanted to, they can spam warships the size of starbases and arm it to the teeth. No race other than Q can withstand a total war Federation.
>>65470848SHALLNOTBEINFRINGED
>>65470848The thing is while Starfleet ships might be individually better than anything in their class, the way Starfleet is organized means it's constantly hamstrung with undersized fleets while the Klingons or Dominion can shit out singular battlegroups that might be as big as a whole quarter of Starfleet and replace them LotGH-style if they get wrecked, which is how the Klingons beat the Federation in Yesterday's Enterprise.
>>65471352Yeah but we see most of that stuff back-ported into the Lakota, an almost hundred-year design and it is shown the Excelsior is capable of using it just as well as a Galaxy.
>>65471355>Abram’s 2009 movienot Star Trek
>>65471200I mean normally would agree but consider that space is vast and Starfleet is shown to be chronically undersized for the territory its meant to control and that at one point the Klingons had to hold the entire Dominion at bay while outnumbered 10 to 1 I think the Klingons have the right idea here.>>65471228Funny enough they also wrote the lore that Klingons also had budget constraints as an excuse to why they were using K't'ingas well past their prime and why the K'Vort existed in the first place.
>>65471898Culture a shit
>>65471824It's now double the size from when this was taken (2024). I've been busy.
>>65474594based lego autist >I also have a mini lego space fleet, it's in a plastic tub in my attic
>>65470848Not all are.The enterprise regularly gets fucked on. The original pre refit galaxy classes were very underpowered compared to their contemporaries. Even the alternate timeline ent-d couldn't stand up to 3 k'vort cruisers. Prime ent-d regularly got fucked on by a single d'deridex.By all accounts Nebulas were stronger ships because they had all the same systems as a galaxy class but in a smaller profile so their shields were substantially stronger.Galaxies were starfleet vanity projects at the height of their period of decadence.
>>65470848>How are Starfleet science and exploration ships on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions?because in a based one world military dictatorship everyone is empowered to be a force for good against the darkest and most powerful advesaries
>>65470870>convert any matter into anything you want there's no need for economies anymoreTell that to the ferengi.
Starfleet doesn't like to use the term "warship" since they are suppose to be about peace and science. But there are ships designed more for combat than science. The Defiant class ships are "escort class" ships that were meant to fight. Then you have the Prometheus Class (deep space tactical), the Sovereign Class (designed to handle threats like the Borg), and finally the Galaxy Class which is a multi-role but packs a heavy punch.
The Federation seems to priorities survivability. In shields, damage control, and repair/refit. You could draw parallels between the US navy and the IJN in WWII. US ships were often able to survive damage that a comparable Japanese ship would not have be able to because the US had superior damage control. Plotwise, it contrast well with the Klingon, Romuians, and Cardassians who are much more openly martial than Starfleet and are much more willing to sacrifice ships and crews for their causes. Also I would have loved for DS9 to have explored a Ferengi privateer fleet hired by the federation to help fight in the Dominion War. That would have been fun.
>>65470848Fucking Roddenberry was a such a sack of shit anything he "wrote" should be completely erased from history, along with Stephen King.
>>65476977Even The Dark Tower?
>>65477035Especially the Dark Tower. >The Dark Tower is the greatest crime in fiction and why we have so much Marvel faggot shit today. The Dark Tower is pretty much the Bible for shit writing.>eldritch enemy that is easily countered >cute animal sidekick >multiple universe fuckery >time travel fuckery>the author being a absolute piece of shit Stephen King is the midwit author of all time, he invented nothing, he only dressed up greater author's works in degenerate language and simple tropes.
>>65476884The Federation basically existed in a universe where nearly everyone else was nerfed and those who weren't would eventually be overcome somehow because they were bad/misguided. Starfleet never had to deal with what would happen if it encountered a larger version of the Federation that was just as democratic and technologically advanced. There was always something inherently wrong with the other species and factions because otherwise the writers would have to ask questions like what would happen if UFP member worlds suddenly decided they wanted to join a bigger and better stellar organization.That's really Star Trek's biggest flaw imo, it stopped considering the possibility that the Federation inhabited a much larger setting with the dilemmas that would come with it. Every encounter was either a friend to make into a junior partner or an adversary to beat (with a few exceptions like god beings that could wipe out entire species with a thought etc). It's all so simplistic but it's also the perfect reflection of a series created at around the Fukuyama "End of History" turn of the millennium. In Gene Roddenberry's vision, the Federation really was the last and ultimate thing that would ever exist in the galaxy and eventually the universe.
>>65470848As a time traveler, I can tell you that in the future, the only things that matter on warships are their shields, their armament, and their tribble storage space. And rather than building different types, it makes more sense to combine warships with exploration ships right from the start.
>>65477200This is why Dominion War is the best arc in star trek because it actually examines what happens if the Federation and Alpha Quadrant encounter a greater power than itself.
>>65477197The greater author please? I need new material to read
>>65477263Dominion was just another flavor of Borg. Oppressive, collectivist, and not even that much more advanced. It was just more interesting because there were actually individuals in it and also bickering going on between the Dominion and Cardassians. They were just another boss fight that stopped being an issue after the Federation won. No one wanted to voluntarily join the Dominion.
>>65470848>How are Starfleet science and exploration ships on the level of or superior to dedicated warships of other factions?
>>65471134boring ass evil grey and red navy in space versus treks elevated retro saucer design.
If a hand phaser can eradicate an entire city block on max setting how come a ship phase just punches a hole through a deck or two when shields are down?
>>65477686A better shield. Plot Armor
>>65477200>end of history The Federation is put in a absolute perfect universe where they face no threat that cannot be faced by technobabble. A real Federation would have long ago been crushed by outright hostile nations, or spent itself by being stretched too thin.
>>65477268Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, S.M. Stirling, there is a bunch of good /k/ authors.
>>65471134You just shoved rocket engines onto the Zumwalt's ass. And if we're going for practicality, the bridge remains exposed instead of set into the hull.
>>65477974>Jerry Pournelle, Larry Nivenbased as fuck
>>65477967A single Borg cube set Starfleet back years destroying 40 of their ships. The Federation is weak as hell and is just lucky enough to be in a galaxy that's even weaker most of the time.
>>65477987Footfall was better.
>>65477999Yeah.
>>65477999>>65478059Shit I missed the digits, nice.
>>65477999>set Starfleet back yearsSHELBY: We'll have the fleet back up in less than a year.
>>65478026>FootfallTotal let down after the likes of Mote in God's Eye and Lucifer's Hammer. Hell, even Pournelle's rather weak Oath of Fealty was better.
>>65477200I like how all their conflicts can legit be boiled down to them encroaching on the territory of their neighbors then after several genuine attempts at being told to respect the borders act completely surprised as they get attacked for ignoring said warnings. It happened with the Klingons, happened with the Cardassians, happened with the Talarians and then it happened with the Dominion.>>65477440They really should have stuck with the original version of the Dominion which was to be a dark mirror of the Federation. They were meant to have way more species fighting for them and were doing so willingly.
>>65470848Officially starfleet wants to be seen as peaceful as the show runners are hippie dippie socio communists who think the future won't be ubi and job lotteries so the best they have is the Defiant class and quantum torpedoes but primarily photon torpedoes which are boring as shit in fiction.
>>65470870tbf Communism would hinge on fantasies like magical post-scarcity devices to make it function, so I can see why they latch on to Star-Trek and "claim" it.>>65470880Latinum isn't used for anything meaningful, and even if it was, replicators can still readily provide everything else people want/need.>>65471569It's not.
>>65476609I'm pretty sure that the Federation are just leaving latinum unreplicated to throw the Ferengi a bone, since they love money and trade so much.
