Mei'konda

Along the lines of the Oberth, I quite enjoy the TNG era followup, the Olympic class!

I think the critical thing is to consider what Section 31 could add that Starfleet Intelligence couldn't. As @Devon Romjin (Rune) wrote, essentially the whole point of them is to accomplish missions that the Federation's moral compass won't allow them to, which all by itself implies that it's impossible to maintain that sort of utopian society without someone resorting to being dirty and underhanded. If the idea is telling a spy type story, I think doing it as Intelligence rather than Section 31 allows that just as well - while adding the added challenge of a moral and good character trying to do work like that without violating what it means to be part of the Federation in the 24th century. I do think that they can potentially serve as fun bad guys now and then, but that it has to be made clear through storytelling that the Starfleet officers, the ones sticking to the values that the Federation espouses, are able to accomplish their objectives just as well or better than the Section 31 folks for the very reason that they're being true to what made the Federation strong in the first place.

"I don't deserve this! I got 'inverted!' I'm sorta kinda like a hero now!" -Sabretooth, Marvel Comics!

My Chief Engineer beat me to posting this one here. Absolutely amazing work, you two!

Edit: As I cannot be counted on two ships and I took command of the Chin'toka after posting here, I feel it's more appropriate to be counted on my own vessel!

Happy Halloween, all!

Time for the red carpet, everyone! Show off your avatars here! I always go with silly and simple.

Welcome aboard, Ensigns!

The Prometheus is kind of an odd ship in a few different ways, IMO, and having a roughly Voyager-sized ship that can do that would require Starfleet to be able to miniaturize a whoooole lot of things aside from the hull sections. Every essential system, for example, needs to be duplicated in all three sections. Warp core and associated systems, impulse engines, shield generators, weapons, logistics, and so on. If I was designing the ship, I'd probably write it as being very Defiant-like on the inside, just on a larger scale - absolutely no room for large and comfortable quarters, holodecks, science capabilities, or anything of the sort. Like @Ayiana wrote, having a minimal crew complement and a very small amount of crew quarters would free up a lot of space. It'd be interesting to see what sort of things people could come up with for the Prometheus' drawbacks to compensate for its strengths. And that's exactly the sort of thing we talk about in the ASDB, @Pholin Duyzer

Welcome aboard, Ensigns! Happy to have you!

That is all.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Federation_credit I'll leave that there. It's a short, but interesting little blurb. On one hand, we have Gene Roddenbery who said that no type of money or credit existed, but the article cites several examples of money being used. And I do think that some sort of Federation credit -must- exist, if for no other reason than the economics of trade with other races who do happen to use money. Here's a quote from the above: "Almost a century later, the Federation would have paid 1.5 million Federation credits as a lump sum and then 100,000 credits every Barzanian year for the rights to the Barzan wormhole. (TNG: "The Price") So let's assume for the moment that these credits do exist. What are they worth, then, and what are they used for? My assumption would be that, unlike our current real-life currencies, they're backed up by something real and tangible, and that they aren't meant to be hoarded like money is. The Federation wants for very little in the way of basic life requirements. If you're an alien race that isn't a Federation member but still does trade with them, your planet really needs food, and you have X number of Federation credits that you earned by sending art and luxuries that the Federation's interested in, perhaps you can then exchange those credits for vast amounts of replicated basic foods to help you get through a famine. It seems unlikely to me that individual citizens would have access to more or less of these credits than, say, a Starfleet officer, whom one could argue is a more productive member of society than someone who just chooses to live life traveling Earth in the 24th century equivalent of a RV. If that were the case, then you'd start getting a little too close to that acquisition of wealth problem, and a capitalist society. I would assume that Federation citizens (Starfleet included) have access to credits not in the form of a regular paycheck, but from a collective pool, perhaps set up to be accessible from an individual starship or colony, that citizens could draw from in order to trade them for alien goods and services. Either way, it doesn't seem like a good idea for Starfleet to let its officers have no way of paying for goods from a culture like, say, the Ferengi, where if you're not making monetary transactions, you're basically not dealing with them at all.

Cameron pretty much said it all. Thanks so much, everyone.

Welcome aboard, Ensigns! I played Cadet Nar Ylsin in your class, and we're happy to have you.

Welcome aboard, Ensigns! We're happy to have you!

Welcome to the fleet, everyone. Happy to have you, especially if some of you end up on the Veritas.

Like Evan said above, I think that Starships are more than just personal conveyance. They're mobile platforms to deal with all sorts of situations. If you're planning on exploring an area that's not particularly hospitable, then you really need your starship to support your crew. We also don't know just how transwarp beaming would work for actually retrieving someone or something from a location. How easy would it to be to scan for and find the signal of a person tens of lightyears away? There's also the potential for exponential increases in energy costs for utilizing this technology. It could be that it's really only practical and safe to send or retrieve someone from two very defined locations, sort of like the quantum entanglement communications between two set locations in the Mass Effect games. It was, after all, a big risk to send JJKirk and JJScott to the Enterprise in the 2009 Star Trek. Starships allow for a degree of flexibility and immediate response to a situation that transwarp beaming never would.

Welcome to Starfleet, Elias and Harper!

Welcome aboard, Ensign. Happy to have you!

It sure is nice when we have the luxury to choose to do things a certain way and don't have to do it the old fashioned way. We do it because we want to.

Welcome, T'Karra. Happy to have you here!

The production quality wasn't bad, for a fan film. That said, it really flew in the face of what Star Trek is all about. There was no exploration, no optimism, no hope that humanity will overcome all of its difficulties. Instead, the implication was that Starfleet is somewhat incompetent and full of traitors, and so the only people you can trust are a bunch of characters who felt like they stepped out of a bad fan-fic, flying around on a ship that might as well be called the U.S.S. Mary Sue.

Welcome aboard, Ensigns!