Starfleet ship class discussion! *dives in*
None of you are understanding. It's not a simple scale down, the ship design remains the same and the shell remains the same but the inside of the ship is designed for the ships specific role.
So in other words... a simple scale down.
Obviously the internals wouldn't remain exactly the same, because then you'd end up with rooms no human could fit in. You don't have to point that out, it's implied; ergo, you ARE proposing a "simple scale down."
One thing I'm sick of hearing over and over again is comparisons to Earth navies. There is NO comparison. Earth sea navies are nothing at all like a space fleet of ships especially 300 to 400 years in the future.
Exactly right. I mean, you know, other than the fact that Starfleet was designed to be kind of like a Navy in space, the naval ranks and command structure, grouping ships into fleets, classifications like "battleship" and "escort" and "scout" and whatnot, naval terminology everywhere ("full stop"), and the fact that Starfleet carries out for the Federation many functions that real navies carry out for their respective countries... yeah, other than those things, Starfleet is totally not like a real-life sea-going navy at all!
OH WAIT
All starfleet ships have the same stuff, nacelles, a deflector, a warp core, a bridge, phasers, torpedo launchers. The only difference is the size of those things and what rooms are on the inside of the ship.
And frontline US Navy warships all don't have a power plant, propulsion system, a command center (usually called... wait for it... a BRIDGE), weapons...?
And before you say "but not all Navy ships have the same weapons, yet all Starfleet ships have the same weapons", that's because the only weapons that ANY ship fielded by ANY civilization in Trek seem to ever use are phasers/disruptors and torpedoes, with few exceptions. In real life, there are a large variety of weapons for different situations and ship sizes. But even then, it's not like a cannon on a battleship that fires huge, explosive slugs capable of ripping through another battleship is
fundamentally different technology from, say, a gatling cannon mounted on an A-10 Thunderbolt. So most Navy ships have "the same basic components" in order to function as sea-going war vessels, the same way most Starfleet ships have "the same basic components" in order to function as space-going war/exploration vessels.
You could take an Intrepid class ship, scale it up and within that extra volume add the rooms that a Galaxy class has and that Intrepid scale up could replace a Galaxy class.
No, you couldn't. Others in this thread have already more than adequately explained why this simplistic "just scale it" idea would not fly. But here's another one that hasn't been touched on yet:
The Intrepid has the same as a Galaxy, it has a deflector, phasers, torp launchers, a bridge, nacelles. The only difference is size and number of rooms and number of crew.
Actually, those aren't the only differences. Internal layout - what rooms you need, how many of them you need, what equipment you need, in what sizes you can get that equipment for the required level of efficiency/power/whatever, etc, those things all play a role in design. But also, the same as the shape of a plane or boat effects how it moves through air/water, the shape of a starship has been theorized to have an effect on how it travels, at both warp and impulse. If I remember correctly (it's been a LONG time), I think the TNG tech manual was where I first saw the idea floated that for a ship of a given size, certain shapes/contours will lend themselves to more stable warp fields. And at impulse, if you want to make snappy maneuvers (turning on a dime, sudden stop, etc), then you want a well-designed hull, one that will have an easier time dealing with the stress of the maneuvers, hence you don't need to pump as much power into structural integrity fields to keep it all together. I will grant that none of this is canon per se, since no one has ever stated on screen that this is how it works, but it's not contradicted either, and seems to make sense to me. Thus, if one
accepts that idea, then you cannot simply use the same shape, scaled up and down, for different ship classes. Hell, it makes sense for more than just warp and impulse maneuvering considerations: one of Trek's many fictional background concepts is the idea that there are these two systems of forcefields - the SIF and the Inertial Dampening Field, the former of which helps hold the ship together through all these extreme velocities, and the latter of which keeps the crew from getting flattened by all these extreme velocities. And in addition, some sub-system of the SIF provides emergency forcefields when a hull breach occurs.
When you think about it, these systems would have to be very carefully calibrated for each individual ship class, since size and shape would have a huge impact on how they worked. Thus, for each given size of ship, they create a shape that will best serve a cross-section of all of the above considerations: purpose, required crew accommodations, required equipment, warp field stability, impulse maneuvering stresses, and SIF/IDF efficiency.
lorna. scaling doesn't work how you think it does. the lack of anyone agreeing with you should give you a clue.
I love how this was conveniently ignored.
Except...this is the exact same thing you've been trying to propose. That you just take a big ship and shrink it and presto, you never need more ship classes, which is ridiculous.
