Topic: Donald Miller's Old Frigate & Old Destroyer For SFB.

[Panzergranate]

The problem with any electromagnetic coils is mechanical stress caused by stress flexing and heat as magnetic flux builds up and declines rapidly within them. That's why transformers, electric motors, etc. eventually fail.

Semiconductors, such as silicon chips fail due to an unpleasant phenomena refered to, in electronics engineering, as electron pathway degredation, which is similar to water flowing through limestone. Because of this internal resistances gradually decline at an exponential rate. A silicon device, in constant or regular use, has an expected reliable lifespan of 20 years. The faster a device is run, the shorter its lifespan.

An unfortunate fact of physics.

I would figure that it would be easier to swap warp nacelles and recondition them rather like the process the RAF ran with figthers during WW2. The average Spitfire or Hurricane actually had 3 engines, one in use, on ready to use and one being serviced.

When I used to drag race motorcycles, back in the late 1980's, I use three engines in a similar rotation pattern.

I would imagine that the UEN would adopt a reliable, though not the best performing warp engine design, mass produce it then fit them to whatever vessels they required to have warp drive.

According to TOS the final and decisive battle of the Romulan War is fought during 2162 over the moon Cheron, which orbits the planet Neptune in our solar system. Perhaps the Romulans were attempting to establish a base there, perhaps the UEN had a base there, who knows?? Anyway the Romulan's offensive capability is destroyed in total and a peace is negotiated.

Clearly the UEN would not need to have a completely warp driven fleet to fight within 8 light hours distance from Earth.

A vessel travelling at warp 2 would cover the distance in 2 hours.

Another issue is that for every day in space a crew requires food, water, toilet paper, air and heat to survive. A large ship requires a large crew to maintain it, which requires a large supply hold, which requires a large ship. On top of that a large ship requires a bigger engine an fuel tanks andf another vicious circle begins.

A ship can only be as large as the engine technology, for sublight travel, can reasonably propel. An unmanned ship, such as an interstellar probe,  could be larger as it doesn't have the crew and stores problems imposed on it. It only has to carry its sensor, communication equipment, computer control system, fuel and engines.

A manned ship has all of that plus the life support system and storage hold which'll have the flight duration x crew amount of food, water and toilet paper. Then there is the extra mass added by cabins and work areas.

If weapons systems are added, the mass increases further.

Short range ships, intended for space voyages of less than a month could therefore afford to be larger with a larger offensive capability.

Long range ships would be smaller and have small crews, less weapons and maybe even skip carrying a shuttlecraft.

If the UEN was intending to convert any sublight ships to warp drive then the smaller ships would offer the best options in peace time.

[Starfox1701]

According to TOS the final and decisive battle of the Romulan War is fought during 2162 over the moon Cheron, which orbits the planet Neptune in our solar system. Perhaps the Romulans were attempting to establish a base there, perhaps the UEN had a base there, who knows?? Anyway the Romulan's offensive capability is destroyed in total and a peace is negotiated.

It was 2161.  Cheron is the name of the homeworld of Lokai and Bele. This planet may have also been the site of the battle, but we don't know for sure. Charon is the a moon of Pluto, not Neptune.

Clearly the UEN would not need to have a completely warp driven fleet to fight within 8 light hours distance from Earth.

It streches credulity a bit for Earth to win a war they spent 4 years fighting bottled up in there home system. It is also a big strech the Romulans would be able to get a fleet undetected al the way to the Sol System.

Another issue is that for every day in space a crew requires food, water, toilet paper, air and heat to survive. A large ship requires a large crew to maintain it, which requires a large supply hold, which requires a large ship. On top of that a large ship requires a bigger engine an fuel tanks andf another vicious circle begins.

A ship can only be as large as the engine technology, for sublight travel, can reasonably propel. An unmanned ship, such as an interstellar probe,  could be larger as it doesn't have the crew and stores problems imposed on it. It only has to carry its sensor, communication equipment, computer control system, fuel and engines.

A manned ship has all of that plus the life support system and storage hold which'll have the flight duration x crew amount of food, water and toilet paper. Then there is the extra mass added by cabins and work areas.

If weapons systems are added, the mass increases further.

Short range ships, intended for space voyages of less than a month could therefore afford to be larger with a larger offensive capability.

Long range ships would be smaller and have small crews, less weapons and maybe even skip carrying a shuttlecraft.

If the UEN was intending to convert any sublight ships to warp drive then the smaller ships would offer the best options in peace time.

Can't argue with any of this

[Panzergranate]

From the concerns voiced frequently by the Romaulan commander, in the TOS episode "The Balance Of Terror", it appears that the Romulan's finest warship (A Warhawk) has a very big issue with voyage range.

From the TOS episode "The Deadly Years" we know that the Warbird has a top speed of warp 4.

If the map of the neutral zone has squares dimensioned in parsecs (3.25 light years = 1 parsec) then we have the distance, from Romulus, the Warhawk travelled to reach the asteroids, trundle around destroying a few of them (they're named) and return to Romulus.

They had enough fuel, assuming full fuel tanks, to reach the neutral zone, cause some mischief and return home. A voyage of less than a week.

Reaching Earth with a warhawk would be an impossibility in TOS without a means of refueling en route.

Regress the Romulan impulse powered warp capabilities back to ENT and the best speed a Romulan warship might achieve is between warp 3 and less than warp 4.

I kind of suspect that Earth was not an sort of direct threat from the Romulans during the Romulan War.... the logistics problems to do so would have been insurmountable. The fleet would have had more tankers and tenders than warships in it.

Perhaps the final decisive battle was around the derellict planet Cheron, which would have had to have been within a reasonable distance or Romulus for the Romulans to have ships there.

I've posed this to Atrahasis and he proposes that mobile bases would be a solution to this problem, not in the SFB sense but stations that can actually and gradually move closer to an objective across space, perhaps carrying warships with them.

There is probally a whole design and modelling project just designing the Romulan logistics support solution to supporting their warships back then. This needs its own seperate thread.

[Starfox1701]

You are perposing a warp capable starbase?

[Panzergranate]

Not so much as a starbase as a mothership.

Put yourself in the Romulan's position at anytime before the Klingon's millitary aid package.

You have ships with warp drive powered by impulse power, which limits their size due to the largest possible hull that you can throw a warp field around.

As the hull size increases so does the warp speed attainable decreases. The amount of fuel stored depends of hull size. At some point you reach a compromise between speed, range and hull size.

On the plus side space is full of interstellar hydrogen and star system have helium 3, which impulse engine use for fuel, depending on which type of fuel one prefers to use.

On the minus side it takes time to gather and has to be located in meaningfull quantities.

If you can build very large long range but slow (less than warp 2) mobile stations or mother ships that can seek out these gas clouds, collect and store these fuels in vast quantities then you can establish routes down which a fleet can travel.

These mobile stations could also carry their own warships, rather like the Andromedans in SFB, for protection, exploration and scouting purposes. Some sort of mobile refinery and fuel depot.

Just feeding it with tankers would give the same porblems that the Japanses had during WW2 with their attempts to fly in avaition fuel to the homeland. The tanker aircraft used up 3/4 of the fuel just flying it in.

The problem the pre-MAM Romulans have, as I see it, is fuel logistics.

Assuming that a Warhawk with a top speed of warp 4 (64c) travels for one week, which seems to be more than it could endure in TOS, it would cover a distance of 1.22 light years. If, during ENT, a Warbird travels at warp 3.5 (42.875c) for a week it only covers 0.87 light years.

There would clearly need to be some sort of large scale fuel acquisition and distributing system in place. It would need to be cunningly designed so as to be quickly deployable for surprise attacks against enemies, such as the Gorns. It would also need to be defendable as its loss would end all possible Romulan warship operations in the area it supplied fuel to.

These would also be the same restrictions that the UEN would be constrained by before warp 5 (125c) MAM technology became more widespread and cost effective. From what is mentioned in ENT, the UEN does not venture out very far into interstellar space, maybe 1 or 2 light years at the most, as the SS Enterprise is the the first UEN starship to travel to Terra Nova, Rigel, Vulcan and other nearby star systems. the only Earth ships to venture that far as merchant marine freighters and colonists.

As Archer tells the Nausican pirates, "This an Earth warship. Expect to see more and more of them in the future".

[sierracharlie]

Another parallel to the fuel logistics problem would be the advancement of naval vessels from coal, to fuel oil to nuclear power. Coal burning ships required coaling stations that drove the acquisition of islands in the Pacific for naval use. Fuel oil expanded the radius of action and improved performance with the development of the turbine. Nuclear power again improved the radius of action and improved performance and endurance.

[Starfox1701]

Jovian type Gas Giants are primaraly composed of diatomic hydrogen and appear to be fairly common. Since most trek ship apear to come with Bussard ram scoops this would seam to indicate early vessaels where heavily dependent on self gathered fuel stocks. This also means that early ships would have had to traval straight line between star systems in order to make sure they had fuel for the return trip. This also means that you Know for certain from what directions an attack will come from because tanker supported opperations over long distaince are just impractical. This means any distance greater then the unrefueled range of your ships must have a refuling station and warships devoted to its defence or be left with out a station as a means of fortifacation since without fuel your enemeys can't cross that gulf to attack you either.

One change in tactics this will cause is that base assults become way more common but now you must take the bases intacked or you cripple your own offensive operations in this area. Another is systems close to enemey territory would be practically lousey with deffense ships while more comfortably isolated systems would need all most no warships at all unless they contained a major shipyard of yours.

Another consideration is the pace of combat opperations. The main reason the NX Enterprise was given a warp 5 drive was because earlier shows (TNG) had defined exactly how fast warp speeds are so if Enterprise had been slower, say warp 2.8, it would have had a massive effect on where and when Enterprise could participate in different story arcs. Many of the episodes would have been impossible in the form shown with a slower ship.

Fusion powered starships would take weeks or months to cross distances that modern M/A powered ships can cross in hours or days. This would make any war a slow drawn out process and make atrition based styles of warfare difficult or impossible to execute. Strategic and tactical surprise would also be nearly impossible to acheive in any meaningful form as attackers of a fortified system would likly be detected several weeks before there arrival alowing renforcemts to be called up and the deffenders to be completely ready to receive them.  Victory would require years of time and the application of overwhelming time and time again. An attacker would be more likly run out of steam long befor they could complete any large conquest.

With all these limitation it's a wonder the Romulans would bother starting a war they had to know they couldn't acheve any meaningful strategic victory with. Where they that hardup for resouces. If you add in ENT and the fact that all the other races in that show have M/A power it just makes the whole thing a rolling act of stupidity and the Romulans just aren't that dumb.

[Panzergranate]

Gas giants would be the key prizes and the ownership of some would determine who had the upper hand.

In the PC game, "Sword Of The Stars", in a network and internet game, with firends, my race of Klingon / Jem Hadar parallel beings started out with attomic fission and then fusion warp drive. This gave me problem as my starships had poor range and I either had to have tankers with squadrons and fleets, station tankers all along the routes I wanted to the or ssciut out, capture and colonise star system where I could establish refueling facilities. I had as many tankers as I did warships.

It was a logistics nightmare just to move a fleet to where it was needed in order to deal with some threat to my empire, in the game. Conducting annexations and invasions took a huge number of game turns in meticulously planned logistics arrangements. 

Lets just say that eventually managing to achieve MAM technology made my life a lot easier and a lot of these tankers redundant.

Anybody who's played "Sword Of The Stars" will also understand the predicament any non-MAM warp technolgy race would find themselves in when attempting to expand or defend an empire.

For those who don't know the game, think of SFC in 3d crossed with space empire and ADB's Federation & Empire.

In ENT the Romulans are attempting to destabilise the regions they want to conquer so that small interstellar wars break out between Tellar, Vulcan and Andor.

When all the beligerents have finally weakened themselves to the point where their repective navies cannot resist a Romulan invasion, then the Romulans planned to make their move.

What they object to is Earth interfering with their sneaky plans.

I kind of picture the Romulans warships in terms of T34's verses Panthers and Tiger tanks.... weight of numbers.

It is probally cheaper and more cost effective to produce non-MAM starships than MAM ones. Plus if the Romulans were scheming and plotting their plans for a very long time, they would have been busy creating large armadas and arranging the logistics before hand.

In TNG a secret Romulan bases is supected in "The Defector" by Star Fleet. Clearly the Romulans have some history of secret bases as the Federation is immediately concerned.

I would be possible for the Romulans to construct and hide covert bases and refueling depots inside another race's territory. They clearly have the technology to conceal and deceive, by ECM maskerade, ships and bases in ENT.

It is a pity that ENT never extended into its next season as it was leading up to the Romulan War, the outbreak of which would have probally have been a TV special episode or movie.

Clearly, in keeping with the Romulan ethos of being extremely and brilliantly sneaky, underhanded and ruthlessly methodical in their efficiency, the initial causes and manner with which the Romulans start the war would have made a very interesting plot to follow.

Damn studio executives....

The first episode of the cancelled season was to have "officially" introduced the Kzinti is as a protagonist and was to be called "The Kill Kenny Kats". Apart from the cartoon series and Kirk having a fight in a bar with a female Kzinti singer in ST TMP 5, there isn't any mention of them in Star Trek.

[Starfox1701]

I would be possible for the Romulans to construct and hide covert bases and refueling depots inside another race's territory. They clearly have the technology to conceal and deceive, by ECM maskerade, ships and bases in ENT.

It would have to be a one off situation otherwise UEN would know to look for a logistics base there. I mean somthing like a rouge planet in the deep range the UNE has not charted yet.

[Panzergranate]

Well discovery of such a base would be tantamount to a declaration of war on the Earth.

In Rich Sterbach's Space Flight Chronology the Romulans conduct clandestine raids of freighters and ore carriers, obviously sourcing materials that they require for advanced bases and facilities. His version has the UEN believeing, at first, that they're dealing with pirates, then highly organised pirates and then a "Pearl Harbour" attack by the Romulans on key bases and facilities wakes them up to the fact that they are at war.

His version does make logistical sense for the Romulans and was written back in 1979.

The ENT version has the Romulans destabalising the region intent on causing wars between the races there. They obviously have preparation in place ready to eventually to invade, once everybody is too weak to resist them. A similar campaign as the Dominion intended in DS9 with changling infiltrators within the various governments of the Alpha quadrant's dominant empires and coalitions.

Combining elements of both timelines would make for an interesting campaign in SFB or SFC, given suitable SSDs and models to play with.

It would have also made great Star Trek TV if it had been made into a series.

 

[Starfox1701]

Agreed it would have been much betterthen what they ultamatly came up with.

[Panzergranate]

It was obvious that the writers had never watched TOS, TNG or DS9 otherwise they would have built the plots aroun the Romulans preparing for war, rather than some unheard of invaders from another dimension, invading our galaxy.

They did start into the Romulans being up to clandestine mischief.... and then the show was cancelled.

ENT could have been so much more interesting if they'd stuck to continuity with the TOS and TNG timeline.

[Starfox1701]

Yea thats why I treat it as AR pre-TOS, not Prime pre_TOS. I use the SFM instead. I never had a copy of  Rich Sterbach's Space Flight Chronology. Sounds like an interesting read

[Panzergranate]

The Baton Rouge and Mann class cruisers come from the Space Flight Chronology.

The Daedalus in Michael Okuda's "History Of The Future" is derived from what is described in the "Space Flight Chronology" as a prototype battlecruiser that never enters service and is shelved but later contributes features to a cruiser design.... Needless to say it looks ever so close to a Daedalus with the same layout right down to the spherical command section. It is on my "to do" list.

The schematic of the SS Mariposa that Data displays on a screen in a TNG episode is also from the Space Flight Chronology. It is of a Edison class star survey vessel, in service during the early years of the UFP and in service about 10 years after ENT.

Picards office features a painting of a Hopkins class hospital ship, which is what the strange space station picture on the wall is. Yet again from the same book. Rich Sternbech is credited as the illustrator for TMP and TNG if you read the titles and was a close friend of Gene Roddenberry. Any illustrations or pictures hung on walls in TMP or TNG are by Rich Sternbech.

To any Star Trek fanatic or fan, ownership af any picture from any episode is extremely desireable and as a gift would probally elcit the same reaction as Doctor Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory) discovering that he has been given a napkin with Leonard Nimoy's DNA on it.... "Do you know what this means!! I could grow my own Leonard Nimoy!!"

[Starfox1701]

interesting and good to know