My Sovereign-class Essay

[Judge King]

Here is an essay I wrote a few months ago on the Sovereign-class.

Sovereign Class History and Production
The Sovereign class is one of Starfleet's most advanced designs in the 24th century. It was designed as a response to the reemergence of the Romulans in interstellar affairs, contact with the Borg, and contact with the Dominion. Its development was basically one big reworking of the original concept of the ship.

Armament
In the area of weapons, the Sovereign was equipped with Type XII phaser arrays, which were normally only equipped on Starbases, weapons turrets, and planetary arrays. Over the course of the Sovereign Project, there were several attempts to adapt the Type XII phasers for the Sovereign. The first attempt overloaded the EPS Grid as did most of the other attempts. In 2368, Type XII phasers were eventually successfully implemented on the Sovereign class.

It was also equipped with quantum torpedoes which utilized zero-point energy to generate a 250 megaton explosion. The quantum torpedo was one of the successful technologies developed in the Sovereign Project initially. The Borg were able to adapt to the frequencies of phasers and photon torpedoes, however quantum torps utilized the entire spectrum and therefore make the Borg unable to completely adapt to the weapon allowing to do much more damage. The ship was also equipped with Mk6 photon torpedoes.

The turret on the underside of the Sovereign's primary hull was designed to be able of rotate and provide a greater firing arc for the QTs.

Defensive Abilities
The regenerative shields were designed in the Sovereign Project as a new type of shield that had the impressive ability to constantly recharge in the midst of battle. It took five tries to make a working shield module, however the deflector had to be enhanced to use the regenerative shields. To enhance the deflector, a gravimetric distortion package was added to the deflector system. In the first test run, the regenerative shields and enhanced deflector used up much more power than could be produced due to a 70 percent inefficiency in the shield generator and burned out. A side effect of the inefficiency was that the warp drive could only make Warp five at maximum. This wasn't solved until after the U.S.S. Prometheus was recaptured from the Romulans.

The Sovereign Class also had a tritanium double hull with 18cm thick ablative armor to give it better protection in case an enemy unit was able to collapse the shields. The ablative armor worked by vaporizing when hit by weapons fire dispersing the energy and minimizing damage to the hull. Originally, the hull was supposed to be made of duranium, but was changed at the last minute to tritanium allowing for a much stronger hull than would be possible using duranium. One of the tests conducted on the Sovereign was to ram a 450 meter long asteroid and see the damage done. There was only light damage in the form of several scratches on the paint and a few broken windows.

Warp Drive
The warp drive of the Sovereign was the second fastest in Starfleet. It utilized new technologies including warp field modulators which changed the size and shape of the warp field to allow the greatest efficiency possible in different areas. Hence, like the Intrepid class, the Sovereign had a variable geometry warp drive but without the swiveling pylons. The nacelles were intentionally made longer as a necessary modification for the variable geometry warp drive due to the numerous design differences between the U.S.S. Intrepid and the U.S.S. Sovereign. The maximum speed of the Sovereign class was originally supposed to be Warp 9.996, however the variable geometry reduced the maximum speed down to Warp 9.985.

Crew
The Sovereign class normally had a crew of 960 Starfleet personnel. The personnel that were married were allowed to bring their family on board during peacetime, however during times when war is imminent, families aren't allowed to be on-board.

Misc
The Sovereign's captains yacht is attached to the QT turret, however the yacht's windshield is protected by a tetraburnium covering when docked so that the quantum torps don't damage the windshield.
The manual steering column is the backup in case helm control is lost, however it can be used at any time to give better reaction time to the flight control officer.
The Sovereign also has a holographic viewscreen instead of the normal window viewscreen, when the USS Enterprise's was being refitted in 2375, Picard requested that the Enterprise be given a winshield viewscreen instead of keeping the holographic one.

Refit
In early 2375, the Sovereign-class began undergoing a refit to make it a match for the ships like the Dominion Battleship that existed in the Dominion fleet. Extra torpedo tubes were added to the Sovereign class so to give more torpedo coverage as well as unload more torpedoes faster to destroy enemies. Phaser arrays were also added on the nacelles to eliminate blind spots identified in the design. The nacelles and pylons were also moved forward twelve meters and upward 8 meters to increase warp drive efficiency. The Sovereign-class was also equipped with a modified version of the regenerative shields used on the Prometheus class and given a more powerful warp core so that the shields and phasers could have more power. These upgrades were very helpful during the Battle of Cardassia and the Battle of the Bassen Rift.

History
The Sovereign Project was started in late 2364 in response to the Romulans ending their isolationism. Early work was done initially as warship subtype of the Galaxy class. In 2365, the Enterprise-D encountered a Borg Cube and its weapons were ineffective against the cube. As a result, Starfleet decided on a redesign of the ship since the Galaxy-class proved almost useless against the cube. The spaceframe was the first thing completed and agreed on. In 2367, the Sovereign's spaceframe was completed an work was begun on the materials for the hull were being argued about, the Borg attacked the Federation in the Battle of Wolf 359. In late 2369, the Sovereign was finally completed an testing began. Several advancements were built during testing to update the Sovereign to meet new issues like the damage to subspace caused by warp drive. In 2370, the USS Sovereign completed testing and was deemed a failure. It was put in the mothballs and several more ships were built with more conventional shield and deflector systems so that the warp drive and other systems could function within normal parameters. On October 30, 2372, the U.S.S. Enterprise-E was completed a year, 2 months after the U.S.S. Enterprise-D was destroyed over Veridian III.

By the end of 2373, there were 10 active Sovereign-class ships in the fleet. In the Battle of Tyra, the USS Legacy was one of the ships to escape. In Operation Return the Sentinel, Ticonderoga, and Musashi were part of the fleet that went to retake Deep Space Nine. The Enterprise-E was patrolling the Romulan Neutral Zone when it was attacked by several Dominion Battlecruisers only to get help from several Romulan D'deridex class ships. Sovereign-class also participated in the battle of Chin'toka. 3 weeks after Starfleet received word about the new Dominion Battleship, the Sovereign-class was ordered back to the Sol system to be refitted with a greater armament, regenerative shields (which were the primary reason for the refit and redesign), enhanced deflector system, a newer warp core, EPS system, and a redesign of the ship to accommodate the newer technologies. Most Sovereign-class ships weren't able to participate in the Battle of Cardassia because of the refit. After the Dominion War, Sovereign production was restarted and several new ships were built including the USS Hemingway. In 2379, the Enterprise-E fought the Scimitar and confirmed that the Sovereign was a comfortably ahead of equivalent Romulan designs. Sovereign production is expected to continue for several more years.

Production Run
U.S.S. Sovereign NX/NCC-73811
U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-E
U.S.S. Musashi NCC-73832
U.S.S. Republic NCC-73856
U.S.S. Davis NCC-73967
U.S.S. Legacy NCC-74173
U.S.S. Atlanta NCC-74250
U.S.S. Hawk NCC-74500
U.S.S. Independence NCC-75000
U.S.S. Sentinel NCC-75058
U.S.S. Ticonderoga NCC-75227
U.S.S. Hemingway NCC-76320
U.S.S. Hyperion NCC-76447
U.S.S. Talos NCC-76782
plus several more

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tell me what you think of it.

 

[JNG]

Here is an essay I wrote a few months ago on the Sovereign-class.

Sovereign Class History and Production
The Sovereign class is one of Starfleet's most advanced designs in the 24th century. It was designed as a response to the reemergence of the Romulans in interstellar affairs, contact with the Borg, and contact with the Dominion. Its development was basically one big reworking of the original concept of the ship.

Looking at the timeline, it seems highly likely that the U.S.S. Sovereign was already in space when the Dominion was encountered, and hence was designed many years before that—and probably was already well under construction by the time of the Borg encounters. I don't understand how Romulans reappearing would alter the design of the ship. I see nothing to support the idea that it was somehow designed to be deficient in some specific way about which starship designers would simply change their minds when reminded that Romulans still existed on the other side of the Neutral Zone. Preparation for Romulan encounters would have been a cornerstone of Starfleet planning for over a century at that point, would it not?

Armament
In the area of weapons, the Sovereign was equipped with Type XII phaser arrays, which were normally only equipped on Starbases, weapons turrets, and planetary arrays. Over the course of the Sovereign Project, there were several attempts to adapt the Type XII phasers for the Sovereign. The first attempt overloaded the EPS Grid as did most of the other attempts. In 2368, Type XII phasers were eventually successfully implemented on the Sovereign class.

Following the TNG Technical Manual, Type-11 phasers were still classified as of 2367 and only starbases and such had them. Following the DS9 Technical Manual, in 2375 the large Deep Space Nine space station had received Type-11s in a recent major rearmament. But you're suggesting that a ship type launched, at absolute latest, three years earlier (and probably several more, to allow testing of the prototype before going to construction on the class) is armed with a heretofore unknown type of phasers superior to what starbases are receiving during the time it was designed? This doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't see anything to motivate trying to stretch things and make it true, since nothing about the appearance or performance of the ship's phasers in the movies seems intended to suggest that they are some vast advancement. To quote the designer, John Eaves, "The phaser array comes straight from the Enterprise-D and Voyager designs" (page 277, ST:TNG Sketchbook: The Movies--Generations and First Contact). As roughly contemporary ships, this is only plausible. That's not to mention that we saw some phasers Starfleet came up with around that same time to try to have a more significant utility against the Borg, and they seem quite different.

It was also equipped with quantum torpedoes which utilized zero-point energy to generate a 250 megaton explosion. The quantum torpedo was one of the successful technologies developed in the Sovereign Project initially. The Borg were able to adapt to the frequencies of phasers and photon torpedoes, however quantum torps utilized the entire spectrum and therefore make the Borg unable to completely adapt to the weapon allowing to do much more damage. The ship was also equipped with Mk6 photon torpedoes.

The DS9 Technical Manual gives rather a detailed history on Q-torp development and doesn't mention the Sovereign class in that context. I would avoid giving megaton equivalents for torpedoes, especially since 250 sounds awfully low to me (Enterprise-D antimatter pod rupture is more in the 650-700 gigaton range, and supposedly a contemporary photon torpedo matches this) and because I am not sure people measure in terms of TNT equivalency in the 24th century.

The turret on the underside of the Sovereign's primary hull was designed to be able of rotate and provide a greater firing arc for the QTs.

I'll never know how this works, since there's sure no room to really accelerate them the way we have seen other torpedo launchers do it. Rather than handwaving the matter, some new principle for that might be a fun thing to speculate about in your article.

Defensive Abilities
The regenerative shields were designed in the Sovereign Project as a new type of shield that had the impressive ability to constantly recharge in the midst of battle. It took five tries to make a working shield module, however the deflector had to be enhanced to use the regenerative shields. To enhance the deflector, a gravimetric distortion package was added to the deflector system. In the first test run, the regenerative shields and enhanced deflector used up much more power than could be produced due to a 70 percent inefficiency in the shield generator and burned out. A side effect of the inefficiency was that the warp drive could only make Warp five at maximum. This wasn't solved until after the U.S.S. Prometheus was recaptured from the Romulans.

"Gravimetric distortion" would mean it distorts the measurement of gravity? It may be only an inexact nickname, but it's hard to see how that would improve shield effectiveness.

The Sovereign Class also had a tritanium double hull with 18cm thick ablative armor to give it better protection in case an enemy unit was able to collapse the shields. The ablative armor worked by vaporizing when hit by weapons fire dispersing the energy and minimizing damage to the hull. Originally, the hull was supposed to be made of duranium, but was changed at the last minute to tritanium allowing for a much stronger hull than would be possible using duranium. One of the tests conducted on the Sovereign was to ram a 450 meter long asteroid and see the damage done. There was only light damage in the form of several scratches on the paint and a few broken windows.

I don't know if they use paint in the 24th century, but Enterprise-D and Voyager both already used duranium and tritanium in their hulls, and as roughly contemporary designs I wouldn't have expected any planned deviation from this. I don't believe we ever heard any reference to Enterprise-E having ablative armor.

Warp Drive
The warp drive of the Sovereign was the second fastest in Starfleet. It utilized new technologies including warp field modulators which changed the size and shape of the warp field to allow the greatest efficiency possible in different areas. Hence, like the Intrepid class, the Sovereign had a variable geometry warp drive but without the swiveling pylons. The nacelles were intentionally made longer as a necessary modification for the variable geometry warp drive due to the numerous design differences between the U.S.S. Intrepid and the U.S.S. Sovereign. The maximum speed of the Sovereign class was originally supposed to be Warp 9.996, however the variable geometry reduced the maximum speed down to Warp 9.985.

Here you've basically introduced a technology superior to the number one gee-whiz factor of the Intrepid class (same benefits, no need for the hassle or visual evidence) in a ship type which cannot be but a couple of years newer at the absolute most, and which may very likely have been designed before the Intrepid class. It would mean the swiveling nacelles on the Intrepid class are obsolescent upon introduction, and while things like this happen in history from time to time, I don't know why you would feel the need to establish that. I would tend to think that such a variable geometry system was not practical on a large ship type like this, and do not feel driven to make up reasons why she would be specifically faster than the Intrepid (9.975, supposedly) anyway.

However, in a general sense, it is plausible that enhancements in warp fields could make the swiveling nacelles unnecessary some day. I wonder if they could develop a system that articulates the coils inside the nacelle structures?

Crew
The Sovereign class normally had a crew of 960 Starfleet personnel. The personnel that were married were allowed to bring their family on board during peacetime, however during times when war is imminent, families aren't allowed to be on-board.

Enterprise-D, a much bigger ship, had a working crew of 800, the 200 and change others being families. I was just curious why you think the Sovereign-class ships might have been given a larger crew complement. Decreased automation? Increased science departments to make up for missing civilian specialists?

Misc
The Sovereign's captains yacht is attached to the QT turret, however the yacht's windshield is protected by a tetraburnium covering when docked so that the quantum torps don't damage the windshield.

Were these things designed on a budget or something? There must be a way to address this so it doesn't sound as bad of a design as it actually is, though I am tempted to say something like "the less said about it, the better." A "rotating turret" for a homing weapon launcher is a little hard to understand in the first place, let alone one for which the weapons cannot be detonated near the launching ship for fear of damaging it, as was established about torpedoes in several episodes.

The manual steering column is the backup in case helm control is lost, however it can be used at any time to give better reaction time to the flight control officer.
The Sovereign also has a holographic viewscreen instead of the normal window viewscreen, when the USS Enterprise's was being refitted in 2375, Picard requested that the Enterprise be given a winshield viewscreen instead of keeping the holographic one.

What do you mean by the term "winshield viewscreen" exactly?

Refit
In early 2375, the Sovereign-class began undergoing a refit to make it a match for the ships like the Dominion Battleship that existed in the Dominion fleet. Extra torpedo tubes were added to the Sovereign class so to give more torpedo coverage as well as unload more torpedoes faster to destroy enemies. Phaser arrays were also added on the nacelles to eliminate blind spots identified in the design. The nacelles and pylons were also moved forward twelve meters and upward 8 meters to increase warp drive efficiency. The Sovereign-class was also equipped with a modified version of the regenerative shields used on the Prometheus class and given a more powerful warp core so that the shields and phasers could have more power. These upgrades were very helpful during the Battle of Cardassia and the Battle of the Bassen Rift.

Enterprise-E didn't seem to fare especially well at Bassen Rift. I didn't see any Sovereign-class ships at the big battle that ended the Dominion War, if that's what you mean, although it is only fair to note that this battle used a lot of stock footage. I would probably make up a more dramatic and specific reason why the nacelle assembly had to be altered, since this must have been a tremendous amount of work and is a rather dramatic alteration for them to have made only seven years into a ship's career. Similarly, replacing the whole warp core with a more high-performance system is a big deal; I guess it's possible that they somehow invented a much better warp core in this relatively short time, but short-term developments like that always needle me a little when we're talking about a Starfleet that keeps 90-year-old ships in frontline service.

History
The Sovereign Project was started in late 2364 in response to the Romulans ending their isolationism. Early work was done initially as warship subtype of the Galaxy class. In 2365, the Enterprise-D encountered a Borg Cube and its weapons were ineffective against the cube. As a result, Starfleet decided on a redesign of the ship since the Galaxy-class proved almost useless against the cube. The spaceframe was the first thing completed and agreed on. In 2367, the Sovereign's spaceframe was completed an work was begun on the materials for the hull were being argued about, the Borg attacked the Federation in the Battle of Wolf 359.

The shape of the spaceframe was somehow expected to improve anti-Borg efficiency? "Warship subtype of the Galaxy class?" Again, the mere reminder that the Romulans exist somehow leads Starfleet to abandon existing policies and start designing warships? The then-nearly-new Galaxy class is somehow assumed deficient in this regard? There are a lot of logical leaps here I am not able to follow.


Thanks for sharing this on the BBS!

 

[Santaman]

Hmm, you fail to mention the impulse engines being inoperable since the ship was launched and it plotting around on thrusters and will do so until Starfleet refits the ship yet again so they're not aimed at pylons and nacelles..

 

[Judge King]

Here is an essay I wrote a few months ago on the Sovereign-class.

Sovereign Class History and Production
The Sovereign class is one of Starfleet's most advanced designs in the 24th century. It was designed as a response to the reemergence of the Romulans in interstellar affairs, contact with the Borg, and contact with the Dominion. Its development was basically one big reworking of the original concept of the ship.

Looking at the timeline, it seems highly likely that the U.S.S. Sovereign was already in space when the Dominion was encountered, and hence was designed many years before that—and probably was already well under construction by the time of the Borg encounters. I don't understand how Romulans reappearing would alter the design of the ship. I see nothing to support the idea that it was somehow designed to be deficient in some specific way about which starship designers would simply change their minds when reminded that Romulans still existed on the other side of the Neutral Zone. Preparation for Romulan encounters would have been a cornerstone of Starfleet planning for over a century at that point, would it not?

Armament
In the area of weapons, the Sovereign was equipped with Type XII phaser arrays, which were normally only equipped on Starbases, weapons turrets, and planetary arrays. Over the course of the Sovereign Project, there were several attempts to adapt the Type XII phasers for the Sovereign. The first attempt overloaded the EPS Grid as did most of the other attempts. In 2368, Type XII phasers were eventually successfully implemented on the Sovereign class.

Following the TNG Technical Manual, Type-11 phasers were still classified as of 2367 and only starbases and such had them. Following the DS9 Technical Manual, in 2375 the large Deep Space Nine space station had received Type-11s in a recent major rearmament. But you're suggesting that a ship type launched, at absolute latest, three years earlier (and probably several more, to allow testing of the prototype before going to construction on the class) is armed with a heretofore unknown type of phasers superior to what starbases are receiving during the time it was designed? This doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't see anything to motivate trying to stretch things and make it true, since nothing about the appearance or performance of the ship's phasers in the movies seems intended to suggest that they are some vast advancement. To quote the designer, John Eaves, "The phaser array comes straight from the Enterprise-D and Voyager designs" (page 277, ST:TNG Sketchbook: The Movies--Generations and First Contact). As roughly contemporary ships, this is only plausible. That's not to mention that we saw some phasers Starfleet came up with around that same time to try to have a more significant utility against the Borg, and they seem quite different.



The DS9 Technical Manual gives rather a detailed history on Q-torp development and doesn't mention the Sovereign class in that context. I would avoid giving megaton equivalents for torpedoes, especially since 250 sounds awfully low to me (Enterprise-D antimatter pod rupture is more in the 650-700 gigaton range, and supposedly a contemporary photon torpedo matches this) and because I am not sure people measure in terms of TNT equivalency in the 24th century.



I'll never know how this works, since there's sure no room to really accelerate them the way we have seen other torpedo launchers do it. Rather than handwaving the matter, some new principle for that might be a fun thing to speculate about in your article.



"Gravimetric distortion" would mean it distorts the measurement of gravity? It may be only an inexact nickname, but it's hard to see how that would improve shield effectiveness.



I don't know if they use paint in the 24th century, but Enterprise-D and Voyager both already used duranium and tritanium in their hulls, and as roughly contemporary designs I wouldn't have expected any planned deviation from this. I don't believe we ever heard any reference to Enterprise-E having ablative armor.



Here you've basically introduced a technology superior to the number one gee-whiz factor of the Intrepid class (same benefits, no need for the hassle or visual evidence) in a ship type which cannot be but a couple of years newer at the absolute most, and which may very likely have been designed before the Intrepid class. It would mean the swiveling nacelles on the Intrepid class are obsolescent upon introduction, and while things like this happen in history from time to time, I don't know why you would feel the need to establish that. I would tend to think that such a variable geometry system was not practical on a large ship type like this, and do not feel driven to make up reasons why she would be specifically faster than the Intrepid (9.975, supposedly) anyway.

However, in a general sense, it is plausible that enhancements in warp fields could make the swiveling nacelles unnecessary some day. I wonder if they could develop a system that articulates the coils inside the nacelle structures?



Enterprise-D, a much bigger ship, had a working crew of 800, the 200 and change others being families. I was just curious why you think the Sovereign-class ships might have been given a larger crew complement. Decreased automation? Increased science departments to make up for missing civilian specialists?



Were these things designed on a budget or something? There must be a way to address this so it doesn't sound as bad of a design as it actually is, though I am tempted to say something like "the less said about it, the better." A "rotating turret" for a homing weapon launcher is a little hard to understand in the first place, let alone one for which the weapons cannot be detonated near the launching ship for fear of damaging it, as was established about torpedoes in several episodes.



What do you mean by the term "winshield viewscreen" exactly?

Refit
In early 2375, the Sovereign-class began undergoing a refit to make it a match for the ships like the Dominion Battleship that existed in the Dominion fleet. Extra torpedo tubes were added to the Sovereign class so to give more torpedo coverage as well as unload more torpedoes faster to destroy enemies. Phaser arrays were also added on the nacelles to eliminate blind spots identified in the design. The nacelles and pylons were also moved forward twelve meters and upward 8 meters to increase warp drive efficiency. The Sovereign-class was also equipped with a modified version of the regenerative shields used on the Prometheus class and given a more powerful warp core so that the shields and phasers could have more power. These upgrades were very helpful during the Battle of Cardassia and the Battle of the Bassen Rift.

Enterprise-E didn't seem to fare especially well at Bassen Rift. I didn't see any Sovereign-class ships at the big battle that ended the Dominion War, if that's what you mean, although it is only fair to note that this battle used a lot of stock footage. I would probably make up a more dramatic and specific reason why the nacelle assembly had to be altered, since this must have been a tremendous amount of work and is a rather dramatic alteration for them to have made only seven years into a ship's career. Similarly, replacing the whole warp core with a more high-performance system is a big deal; I guess it's possible that they somehow invented a much better warp core in this relatively short time, but short-term developments like that always needle me a little when we're talking about a Starfleet that keeps 90-year-old ships in frontline service.

History
The Sovereign Project was started in late 2364 in response to the Romulans ending their isolationism. Early work was done initially as warship subtype of the Galaxy class. In 2365, the Enterprise-D encountered a Borg Cube and its weapons were ineffective against the cube. As a result, Starfleet decided on a redesign of the ship since the Galaxy-class proved almost useless against the cube. The spaceframe was the first thing completed and agreed on. In 2367, the Sovereign's spaceframe was completed an work was begun on the materials for the hull were being argued about, the Borg attacked the Federation in the Battle of Wolf 359.

The shape of the spaceframe was somehow expected to improve anti-Borg efficiency? "Warship subtype of the Galaxy class?" Again, the mere reminder that the Romulans exist somehow leads Starfleet to abandon existing policies and start designing warships? The then-nearly-new Galaxy class is somehow assumed deficient in this regard? There are a lot of logical leaps here I am not able to follow.


Thanks for sharing this on the BBS!

Windshield viewscreen: I also assume that their was a windshield were the old holographic viewscreen was. You know when the Scimitar bdestroyed the viewsreen, it also looked alot like that of the Galaxy Class and not the holographic one seen on First Contact.
The Spaceframe: the Galaxy class is a huge, lumbering mass. The Sovereign design wanted reduced mass to improve accelaration.
Intrepid Nacelles: Well, Starfleet decided that it would be too much trouble to remove the swinging nacelles, so they just decided to keep that while they upgraded the warp drive.
Dominion War: They have a powerful as hell enemy they need to defeat, why wouldn't they use everything they had against them.
Type XII Phasers
Quantum Torpedo Yield: one, they are supposed to be superior to photon torpedoes. Two: Photon Torpedoes don't have nearly as much antimatter as the antimatter containment pods do.
Romulans: The thing was based on the initial scans of the Romulan Warbird, they decided that they needed to create a ship capable of dealing with those things. Later when Stephan DeSeve and Vice Proconsul M'Ret defected to the Federation, Starfleet learned that the Romulan Warbird wasn't as powerful as they believed.
Crew: In combat you want as many people as possible ready to repair the ship, keep out intruders, and replace injured and killed crew on a moments notice.
Rotating turret: Starfleet wanted torpedo coverage for the port and starboard sides so why not have a turret that rotates to cover those areas.
I'll get to this later and write a better an improved essay, okay?

 

[Unicron]

Hmm, you fail to mention the impulse engines being inoperable since the ship was launched and it plotting around on thrusters and will do so until Starfleet refits the ship yet again so they're not aimed at pylons and nacelles..

Nonsense. The impulse engines require only the power of plot to move the ship.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

[Rotating turret: Starfleet wanted torpedo coverage for the port and starboard sides so why not have a turret that rotates to cover those areas.

Pish-posh. Torpedoes are guided weaponry. Contrary to onscreen VFX which show them behaving like cannonballs, they ARE fire and forget guided weapons. You don't need port and starboard tubes... hell I don't even see why Federation ships have AFT tubes. With combat ranges mentioned in dialogue (hundreds of thousands of kilometers), torpedo launch location is a non-issue.

 

[JNG]

Hmm, you fail to mention the impulse engines being inoperable since the ship was launched and it plotting around on thrusters and will do so until Starfleet refits the ship yet again so they're not aimed at pylons and nacelles..

Nonsense. The impulse engines require only the power of plot to move the ship.

They sure would need it to go in reverse!

Pish-posh. Torpedoes are guided weaponry. Contrary to onscreen VFX which show them behaving like cannonballs, they ARE fire and forget guided weapons. You don't need port and starboard tubes... hell I don't even see why Federation ships have AFT tubes. With combat ranges mentioned in dialogue (hundreds of thousands of kilometers), torpedo launch location is a non-issue.

Yes, and this is even more true when one considers that the only use for the port and starboard launchers would thus be at very close ranges...the same very close ranges at which it has been specified the torpedoes are not safe to use.

Windshield viewscreen: I also assume that their was a windshield were the old holographic viewscreen was. You know when the Scimitar bdestroyed the viewsreen, it also looked alot like that of the Galaxy Class and not the holographic one seen on First Contact.

By windshield, do you mean like it is an actual window of transparent aluminum or whatever on which images are projected? I guess they probably have the technical ability to pull this off. If so, the model should show if there is a window right where the viewscreen would be. I don't know off the top of my head if there is one.

(I wonder why the holographic viewscreen got the boot? I thought it was kind of neat, myself.)

The Spaceframe: the Galaxy class is a huge, lumbering mass. The Sovereign design wanted reduced mass to improve accelaration.

The Galaxy class is very big, but it's also worth noting that she was designed to separate the saucer section before battle. I do wonder if bringing the saucer's impulse engines into play simultaneously can offset her great mass for impulse maneuverability, but still it seems supported by the show that she is somewhat clunky at impulse, at least when in combined flight mode.

Dominion War: They have a powerful as hell enemy they need to defeat, why wouldn't they use everything they had against them.

With 90-year-old ships on the front lines against the Dominion, but no Sovereign-class ships, it does make you wonder. It is possible the design was not a success.

Type XII Phasers

Well, they were never established to exist. A starship having the same phasers as starbases of the era (Type-11) would be a huge deal, but I think the timeline and Eaves' description make this unlikely, aside from the comments about phaser effectiveness I made before. No effort appears to have been made to incorporate Defiant-style pulsed phaser cannons, but this is probably either because she isn't maneuverable enough to use them effectively or, even more likely, her design was already frozen and construction well underway when those weapons were ready for prime time.

Quantum Torpedo Yield: one, they are supposed to be superior to photon torpedoes. Two: Photon Torpedoes don't have nearly as much antimatter as the antimatter containment pods do.

Q-torps certainly seem superior to photon torpedoes in yield, yes. The TNG Technical Manual informs us that a photorp detonation actually has a release superior to that calculated for an antimatter pod rupture. This was a pretty big clue to readers that some amplification was coming into play. It seems as if the term "isoton" may be some sort of measurement of such amplification, considering that DS9 Tech Manual says that there was a theoretical upper limit to a matter-antimatter explosion of 25 isotons.

Romulans: The thing was based on the initial scans of the Romulan Warbird, they decided that they needed to create a ship capable of dealing with those things. Later when Stephan DeSeve and Vice Proconsul M'Ret defected to the Federation, Starfleet learned that the Romulan Warbird wasn't as powerful as they believed.

I can believe scans of that warbird might have rattled them a bit, and just wouldn't want it to sound like the ships were being handicapped before that somehow. As for the warbird being less powerful than they believed, well, it looks like those ships were a pretty big factor in the war and became a mainstay of the Romulan fleet, so I think Starfleet might have been right to be rattled by them after all!

Crew: In combat you want as many people as possible ready to repair the ship, keep out intruders, and replace injured and killed crew on a moments notice.

I guess they have a little bit less space available per person than on the Galaxy- or Ambassador-class ships, but still probably pretty ritzy by 21st-century standards.

I'll get to this later and write a better an improved essay, okay?

Cool, look forward to it

 

[darkwing_duck1]

For the record, a "standard" quantum torpedo has an effective yield of ~50 isotons, which works out to ~128megatons.

 

[Timo]

...Assuming that we can trust the source for the isoton yield, and that we can trust the conversion formula.

I'm not sure that a ship this large would be designed against any single adversary in particular. Yes, some big battleships in Earth history were designed specifically to counter the threat of the previous or projected next round of battleships in the neighboring country - but the playing field in Trek would be more complex than that, and optimizing an expensive ship against one adversary might leave it handicapped against another. Especially if the target of optimization was something as exotic as the Borg.

One might argue that the Sovereign was built to be a good all-around warship and exploration vessel, just like any frontline big starship - and was then given the extra armament of a dedicated q-torp launcher, mainly because the weapon was new and the best places to fit it would be the very biggest and smallest ships (the former had the room for the modifications, while the latter could be cheaply built to feature the mods from the outset). Or one might argue that the Sovereign was indeed built "around" the first primitive q-torp launchers, much like some prominent post-WWII warships were built around the first primitive missile launchers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[darkwing_duck1]

...Assuming that we can trust the source for the isoton yield, and that we can trust the conversion formula.

Simple math using Tech Manual data. Standard photorp = 25 isotons yeild. Warhead stated to carry 1.5 kg each matter/antimatter. Plug that into a physics calculator and you get ~64 megatons yeild. Conversion factor of 2.56 x 50 isotons = ~128 megatons.

 

[Timo]

But 25 isotons isn't TNG TM language. It comes from the DS9 TM, which describes a later situation where photorp standards may have changed.

And TNG TM is probably full of deliberate disinformation on these issues anyway, to confuse threat forces - as the foreword warns us! (Seriously, the phaser yields specified are so unlikely that I wouldn't trust the torpedo ones, either.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[darkwing_duck1]

But 25 isotons isn't TNG TM language. It comes from the DS9 TM, which describes a later situation where photorp standards may have changed.

And TNG TM is probably full of deliberate disinformation on these issues anyway, to confuse threat forces - as the foreword warns us! (Seriously, the phaser yields specified are so unlikely that I wouldn't trust the torpedo ones, either.)

Timo Saloniemi

Ok, technically the isoton figure for standard torps IS in the DS9 TM BUT they are referring to the torps then in existence, those being the ones described IN the TNG TM.

And the "disinformation" bit is pure "handwavium". You can dismiss ANY data you don't like if you go down that road.

 

[Timo]

Which certainly is what I prefer to do whenever something seen on screen is at odds with the text. Such as the saucer not having warp drive (when in "Farpoint" it does have at least several hours' worth of it), or the Captain's Yacht being docked to the underside of the saucer of the E-D (when it never is seen, and something else is seen there in "Farpoint")...

The isoton/TNT-ton conversion is a bit futile anyway, because antimatter doesn't explode in the same manner as TNT does. Which might be the reason why they use isotons, rather than TNT-tons or systematic units of released energy such as Joules.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

Isotons rather don't let themselves be converted to anything we use nowadays, they did that on purpose, same with the computers and the Kiloquad thing, its to prevent some embaresement, if they had specified for example that the Ent D's computer ran on 3 Ghz had 4Gb RAM and 500 Gb diskspace then it would be pretty impressive in 1987 but nowadays thats a nice personal computer...

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Well, fortunately or unfortunately, they did (at least in the TMs). The antimatter yeilds in terms of KT/MT is a matter of basic physics. 64MT is larger than all but a handful of the nuclear devices ever detonated on Earth. (The largest being the Tzar Bomba series, estiamted in the ~90-100MT range.)

TOS established that a Constitution-class starship's impulse reactor yielded an explosion of 97.835MT overloaded, so it's not like this is a modern writer's fault...

If it makes anyone feel any better, both DS9 and Voyager established the existence of far LARGER warhead yeilds for specialized applicaitons (the former by implicaton, the latter in dialogue).

 

[JNG]

Well, fortunately or unfortunately, they did (at least in the TMs). The antimatter yeilds in terms of KT/MT is a matter of basic physics.

The torpedo yield isn't, though. As I briefly mentioned above, the Technical Manual seems to be describing some sort of enhancement as well, since it explains the release after the distributed mixing is greater than that of an antimatter pod rupture. Go ahead and figure the density of slush antideuterium (well, I *think* the antideuterium is also stored in slush form) and you can sort of ballpark how powerful the torpedo explosion must be...I think depending on how tightly you pack the stuff in there it would be upwards of seven hundred gigatons or something.

Not sure how seriously to take any of the numbers, since the figures given for the shields could not come close to withstanding any such detonations, but I'm inclined to distrust the shield figures more for that reason and find some way to interpret them differently. If the shields are only a few megawatts as the book says, then the Romulan ship weapons fire (GW) in the example spacecraft combat maneuver would have made very short work of the Enterprise.

The DS9 TM somewhat supports the idea that some sort of poorly understood enhancement is going on when it comments, without further explanation, that there is a theoretical maximum of 25 isotons for a matter/antimatter explosion. This might be suggesting an isoton is more like a measurement of the enhancement effect than it is an equivalency to some other explosive in terms of yield, and that it would only be a useful measurement for the yield when talking about warheads all loaded up with identical reactant quantities (and according to that same volume, Q-torps and photorps are the same in that respect, and the Q-torp is just a two-stage device that detonates a photon torpedo warhead to energize the second stage).

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Well, fortunately or unfortunately, they did (at least in the TMs). The antimatter yeilds in terms of KT/MT is a matter of basic physics.

The torpedo yield isn't, though. As I briefly mentioned above, the Technical Manual seems to be describing some sort of enhancement as well, since it explains the release after the distributed mixing is greater than that of an antimatter pod rupture. Go ahead and figure the density of slush antideuterium (well, I *think* the antideuterium is also stored in slush form) and you can sort of ballpark how powerful the torpedo explosion must be...I think depending on how tightly you pack the stuff in there it would be upwards of seven hundred gigatons or something.

Not sure how seriously to take any of the numbers, since the figures given for the shields could not come close to withstanding any such detonations, but I'm inclined to distrust the shield figures more for that reason and find some way to interpret them differently. If the shields are only a few megawatts as the book says, then the Romulan ship weapons fire (GW) in the example spacecraft combat maneuver would have made very short work of the Enterprise.

The DS9 TM somewhat supports the idea that some sort of poorly understood enhancement is going on when it comments, without further explanation, that there is a theoretical maximum of 25 isotons for a matter/antimatter explosion. This might be suggesting an isoton is more like a measurement of the enhancement effect than it is an equivalency to some other explosive in terms of yield, and that it would only be a useful measurement for the yield when talking about warheads all loaded up with identical reactant quantities (and according to that same volume, Q-torps and photorps are the same in that respect, and the Q-torp is just a two-stage device that detonates a photon torpedo warhead to energize the second stage).

The "enhancement" they are describing is the intermixing of the matter and antimatter to assure the maximum possible yeild from the resulting explosion. A particle of antimatter needs a particle of matter to react with in order to explode.

By way of illustration, consider a glass of milk. Add some chocolate milk powder to it. At the point of contact between powder and milk, it starts to slowly react and combine. To get the fastest reaction, and the most effective mix of powder and milk, you have to stir it to distribute the powder throughout the milk.

Likewise, in an antimatter pod rupture, only the "outermost" particles of antimatter are going to have matter to react with (the pod and surrounding structures). The rest is "wasted" as it disperses into space.

A good example of this can be seen in the destruction of the Yamato in TNG S1. When they lost containment, the resulting explosion, while visually impressive, nontheless left the entire saucer section intact enough to be blasted free of the initial reaction to melt from the resulting heat. A true mutual annihilation reaction would have left an expanding cloud of subatomic particles, not physical debris.

 

[JNG]

^

Well, the antimatter pods are 4x8 meters and made of duranium, so there's a fair bit of matter in the mix (they must tow them around with work bees and such). On the larger topic, I was not entirely certain the premixing and rate such would cover the increase as stated (it's pretty big!), so I try to leave the door open in my thinking for there to be some other possible sci-tech principles at play with the torpedoes. In particular, I will grab fast to anything that gives me some wiggle room in making sense of the strange isoton line in the DS9TM (although the interpretation I was trying for could allow us to make a bit more sense of how Borg characters on Voyager gave different isoton yields for what are seemingly the same torpedoes.)

 

[darkwing_duck1]

^

Well, the antimatter pods are 4x8 meters and made of duranium, so there's a fair bit of matter in the mix (they must tow them around with work bees and such). On the larger topic, I was not entirely certain the premixing and rate such would cover the increase as stated (it's pretty big!), so I try to leave the door open in my thinking for there to be some other possible sci-tech principles at play with the torpedoes. In particular, I will grab fast to anything that gives me some wiggle room in making sense of the strange isoton line in the DS9TM (although the interpretation I was trying for could allow us to make a bit more sense of how Borg characters on Voyager gave different isoton yields for what are seemingly the same torpedoes.)

Different size "charge" of reactants. I ran the calcs in reverse, and the 200 isoton monster photorps mentioned in Voyager would have a warhead of ~12 kg each m/am.

Each pod according to the TM holds ~100 cubic meters of antimatter. Assuming this is in liquid form and under 1 standard atmosphere pressure, that would be 99,823 kg mass of antimatter/pod.

Each pod at 100% reaction efficiency (see my prior posts as to why that reaction would NOT be 100%) would yield an explosion of ~4,288,396MT.

A fully "loaded" Galaxy class starship's AM reserve would therefore yield at maximum efficiency a total explosive equivilant of ~128,651,880MT. This is ~1.3 times the amount of force exerted by the so-called "Dinosaur killer" asteroid (10-15km wide, travelling at 20m/sec) when it hit the earth at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.