Poll of the Week: Design a Starship

[Laria Herren]

Starfleet has a wide range of vessel classes at their disposal. There are large, top-of-the-line ships like Galaxy-class and Sovereign-class vessels. The Intrepid-class is a lighter long-range explorer. When going into battle a Prometheus-class or Defiant-class ship would be a welcome addition to any fleet. If you are on a scientific mission to investigate some strange phenomena you’d want to bring a Horizon-class, and an Olympic-class flying hospital is the go-to ship for a medical emergency. The Starfleet ship class lineup can adapt to a wide range of situations, but it won’t stay the same forever.

Technology is always improving both for the Federation and other states. What was the newest technology available a decade before could already be surpassed by new technology. As the current ship classes go the way of the Miranda-class or Constitution-class new ship classes will need to take their place. If Starfleet came to you and put you in charge of designing the newest addition to Starfleet’s vessel classes what kind of ship would you bring back to them? Perhaps you think there’s a shortage of ships built to defend the Federation. Others could favor smaller ships as opposed to building larger and larger explorers that outclass the current flagships. If given the chance to design a new class of starship, what kind of ship would you design?

[Kalia Qinn]

For the game, I've been ruminating on the idea of designing something that would fit in as both Base and Ship.  A Large ship that can serve as a mobile outpost of sorts.  It could go into a sector that doesn't have much Starfleet presence and set up shop.  It could serve as a diplomatic and exploration hub, but also be mobile enough that it could change location to suit the continuing story needs of the crew.

Maybe build in a sort of embedded defiant class ship that can break off and be the mission ship for the Larger hub ship (Like the Thor is for the Embassy).  Make the big ship low combat capable either through low mobility (more plausible) or low weapons (less plausible) so it's not feasible to just take the big ship to every mission.  But it would make for an interesting mix of missions available for the ship. The Big ship gets diplomatic, first contact, scientific, and serves as the Downtime hub for the crew (making it big gives the crew enough space to personalize it and make pieces of it their own without stepping on everyone's toes).  The Little ship handles the combat missions, and goes to the places where Big Ship wouldn't fit or be appropriate.

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Also, I would love a straight up Carrier kind of ship.  Take an air craft carrier and convert it to a star ship.   It can handle it's own defense, but it's offense is really it's ability to field full fighter wings at a distance.

 

~Patrick

[+ Edward Spears]

I’ve always been interested in the idea that Starfleet Medical and the Starfleet Corps of Engineers might team up to create a disaster relief team that can respond to emergencies across the Federation’s colonies and outposts. The Canadian Military has something just like that called the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) that we can deploy on very short notice to disaster sites around the world.

A team like that would need a fast ship with ample medical and manufacturing facilities, and likely fully swappable mission modules in order to respond to a myriad of natural and artificial disasters. 

[Kalia Qinn]

That would also be an interesting ship type to have.  Some kind of cut down Olympic class ship to get things started while the regular hospital ship are still in transit.

 

Game wise I wonder what a specialize ship would be like.  Limiting mission type would lead to some sense of repetition, and would limit your crew choices.  I wonder if a crew could do a "Everyone make an SCE or Science SNPC, we're doing a spin off mission this go round" kind of thing from time to time.

[+ Edward Spears]

I agree that a very specialized vessel might close some doors for story telling, but I think a good group of writers would be able to keep a lot of variety in what happens during those missions, or on the way to a mission. Plus it lets everyone get devious in designing disasters on a planetary or even system-wide scale. 

I wouldn’t force a crew of only science and engineering personnel. You still need all the fundamental staff positions to run the ship, so helm and ops are definitely in. And the ship would still have a security department. They might even specialize in crowd control since a panicked population could pose hazardous even if they don’t mean to.

[Kalia Qinn]

Oh yeah, if it was a full time ship you'd need everyone.  I would feel obligated to let prospective crew know that mission types will be skewed in a specific direction so no one felt stuck.

For the Science and Engineer only, I more meant if say My posting at the Embassy wanted to do something out of the box we could run a mission where everyone draws up a new SNPC, as we have a standalone mission on a different ship to better run a mission type that we wouldn't normally really run.  In that case, for a single mission I could see encouraging most people to draw up a specific type of character to best fit what would be happening in that stand alone mission.

[Sal Taybrim]

I adore old ships.  So I would design a ship with new insides but a classic exterior.  Because I really want to fly around in the Wrath of Khan Enterprise!! ❤️

[Dave 'Raven' Young]

Or the Excelsior Class. Love me some NX-2000 haha
I liked the idea of the Nebula Class with the interchangeable modules it could equip. Shame it looks like a Nebula Class though haha 

[+ Lilith Seir]

I like the idea of an emergency response vessel.

I've just started reading C. J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station (published 1981), that begins with the end of a war and a massive number of survivors from several collapsed space stations being dumped on one space station without the space or resources to handle them.

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

The ships are one of my favorite parts of the show and game. I love the huge ones (like the Odyssey class) – just the thought of walking through a behemoth like that and watching it sidle up next to smaller ships is so much fun! 

But I also love ships like the Olympic class, particularly thinking through the weird logistics involved in creating a hospital ship. 

[+ Saveron]

Raven, the Chariot class might be what you're looking for in terms of a ship/mobile station type. The USS Za was like a mobile station.

I love the scientific and exploration storylines, so I'd be keen for a class that fit those themes, although having served on both the Oracle and Cardiff classes, they already fit the bill pretty well. I was particularly enamoured of the USS Invicta.

My second choice would be a medical ship. It probably sounds very specialised, but I think with the potential to be going into warzones, disaster areas and disease outbreaks, there is opportunity for all kinds of storylines.

[Kalia Qinn]

For a Mobile Station kind of ship I would want a good 50 to 100 decks.  The Chariot class only has 19.  I'd want the ship to just feel massive.  Maybe some of the lower decks could be a kind of docking extension allowing other ships to dock directly with the Mobile Station.  I'm not sure.  For game purposes there would need to be some definite trade offs so it was just able to do everything.

~Patrick