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The Trek justification is always that these are exploration vessels, and that they aren't designed with combat as their primary function. The fact that they can go toe to toe with actual warships is just due to over engineering. By way of contrast, Babylon 5 has exploration vessels that actually feel like they were designed for that function.  Designed for independent jumping, gate construction, extended operations without supply lines, these are the pinnacle of earth's ships. They have enough firepower to hold their own, but are no match for a serious battleship that doesn't have most of their systems dedicated to exploration. You see one the whole series, because they are always out in unexplored space dropping in rarely for resupply. Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Dec 5, 2021 |
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Dec 5, 2021 19:19
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galagazombie posted:Then you get to the Galaxy class. It’s launcher is fully integrated into the hull which is a nice bit of “show not tell” tech progression, but despite being like three times the size of the first two ships it still only has the same amount of torpedo launching ability. You’d think that since they fit a ton more phasers, that are themselves more powerful banks instead of the old crews emitters, they’d up the torpedoes too. Look at the gif I posted just before: the Galaxy launcher can shoot up to five torpedoes simultaneously from the one tube.
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Dec 5, 2021 23:16
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MikeJF posted:Look at the gif I posted just before: the Galaxy launcher can shoot up to five torpedoes simultaneously from the one tube. Look again it shoots one torpedo that splits apart after it has left the tube. Like one of those icbm’s that carries around six warheads on a single missile. So at least the torpedoes themselves are better than the TOS/movie era ones. Does anyone else have any gifs of 90’s trek doing cool things with torpedoes?
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Dec 6, 2021 00:57
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galagazombie posted:Torpedo launchers seem more inconsistent in-universe than phasers are. For instance the Constitution Refit has this nifty little module built into the neck, while the Miranda, a ship of the same general size, has to have this gargantuan launcher half a big as a nacelle. Yet both fire the same torpedos in the same way. Then you get to the Galaxy class. It’s launcher is fully integrated into the hull which is a nice bit of “show not tell” tech progression, but despite being like three times the size of the first two ships it still only has the same amount of torpedo launching ability. You’d think that since they fit a ton more phasers, that are themselves more powerful banks instead of the old crews emitters, they’d up the torpedoes too. I believer I read somewhere that the Miranda was a multi-role vessel, it wasn't that it needed that big module just for Torpedoes it was that the module could be swapped out depending on the ships mission. So in combat they used a Torpedo module and when exploring it could be a science module or a repair bay or whatnot. There's also this whole thing about Federation ships not being warships, like The Defiant was Starfleet's first purpose built warship which is why it was so good. All the other ships just have weapons for "defensive" purposes, if they built a Galaxy class warship it would be like the fuckin Death Star, but they don't because Starfleet isn't supposed to be a military organization.
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Dec 6, 2021 01:38
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Star Trek was also shaped by how they didn't have much budget to fool around with, so it was basically all they could do to have two spaceship models in an episode floating vaguely near eachother. Often they're even limited to just shot, reverse-shot, not even showing two ships in one frame. I think a lot of the techniques involved in more complex special effect shots of spaceships zooming around might not even have been invented yet, even if they were in the budget, and then by the time the newer shows came around, they were following the format invented in the 60s. Babylon 5 had the opportunity to do the best it could with the new technology available to it at the time. Their biggest advantage was being able to use CGI to more cheaply produce ships and then be able to reuse and duplicate models en masse, making for big, full scenes with lots of big ships and little ships zooming around all at once. The show could also use the CGI to do effects that were impossible with just miniatures, like showing ships get torn apart or having all the Earth ships have big spinning bits.  I think at times it felt a little like they were taking a brute-force approach in trying to establish things about how its setting worked to purposefully differentiate itself from Star Trek. Most ships can't go into hyperspace on their own, instead needing big gates to do so. The ships that can open their own jump points are big, but opening your own jump point is clumsy and slow, which really shows off the advantages of smaller fighters. There's even a number of worldbuilding elements that get quietly forgotten about after a while, potentially because it's too complicated to deal with them. I think the most notable one that has to do with spaceships is how the space station has a big complicated scene in the pilot about having to realign and stabilize its rotation in the pilot movie, but then it never has to ever again throughout the show.
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Dec 6, 2021 02:13
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galagazombie posted:Look again it shoots one torpedo that splits apart after it has left the tube. Like one of those icbm’s that carries around six warheads on a single missile. So at least the torpedoes themselves are better than the TOS/movie era ones. Does anyone else have any gifs of 90’s trek doing cool things with torpedoes? That's 'dispersal pattern Sierra', supposedly it was multiple standard torpedoes that would launch together and then disperse to strike the target across its whole body.
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Dec 6, 2021 02:52
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MikeJF posted:That's 'dispersal pattern Sierra', supposedly it was multiple standard torpedoes that would launch together and then disperse to strike the target across its whole body. I will never not link The Definitive Voyager Torpedo Inventory Log when I hear about Dispersal Pattern Sierra. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGxMENwq1k edit: I will also never not watch the full video any time I link it at people, apparently.
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Dec 6, 2021 05:38
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galagazombie posted:Look again it shoots one torpedo that splits apart after it has left the tube. Like one of those icbm’s that carries around six warheads on a single missile. So at least the torpedoes themselves are better than the TOS/movie era ones. Does anyone else have any gifs of 90’s trek doing cool things with torpedoes? That's not what's happening, it's five torpedoes coming out at the same time and then spreading out once they leave the launcher. And the launcher was stated in dialogue to be able to fire up to ten at a time. They never fired a simultaneous torpedo cluster in the old series or movies.
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Dec 6, 2021 16:28
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Cythereal posted:Some more Star Trek Online ships since the last time I posted any. It's cool that they got EC Henry to design this one. Wish Lucasfilm would scoop him up too.
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Dec 6, 2021 18:23
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How actually do trek torpedoes work anyway? We see there’s actually a physical torpedo that they load in the tube and perform surgery on etc. But other than that the show treats them as pew pew lasers.
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Dec 6, 2021 23:38
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galagazombie posted:How actually do trek torpedoes work anyway? We see there’s actually a physical torpedo that they load in the tube and perform surgery on etc. But other than that the show treats them as pew pew lasers. TNG era ones are basically just like real torpedoes or missiles. They have a 1.5 kg antimatter warhead that explodes on impact.
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Dec 7, 2021 00:00
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They glow, that's just the photons though.
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Dec 7, 2021 00:18
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They do have that bonus of self-replicating when left alone in a dark room, which is how Voyager was able to ... nevermind, not worth the joke.
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Dec 7, 2021 01:08
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Vavrek posted:I will never not link The Definitive Voyager Torpedo Inventory Log when I hear about Dispersal Pattern Sierra. This is the first time I've seen it, but drat what a wasted storytelling opportunity. It would have been so great if every time they fired a torpedo it was a big deal and they had to weigh the choices.
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Dec 7, 2021 03:16
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galagazombie posted:How actually do trek torpedoes work anyway? We see there’s actually a physical torpedo that they load in the tube and perform surgery on etc. But other than that the show treats them as pew pew lasers. The glow is  A retroactive reason for why they're called photon torpedoes may be because matter/antimatter explosives in space will release primarily in the form of high energy photons. (Technically in the prequel show we learn the name and tech came from when we got to see Klingon weapons on a disabled ship and the name translated as 'photonic torpedoes' and then we made our own copies, but the reasoning could still apply)
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Dec 7, 2021 04:02
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Bucnasti posted:This is the first time I've seen it, but drat what a wasted storytelling opportunity. It would have been so great if every time they fired a torpedo it was a big deal and they had to weigh the choices. That's Voyager in a nutshell really. It was basically a rehash of TNG and the premise of being lost on the other side of the galaxy was given no more than lip service most of the time. So much wasted potential.
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Dec 7, 2021 04:35
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Bucnasti posted:This is the first time I've seen it, but drat what a wasted storytelling opportunity. It would have been so great if every time they fired a torpedo it was a big deal and they had to weigh the choices. 1. They said "And no way to replace them." very explicitly. 2. They could've had an episode about converting part of the ship into an industrial-scale replicator, about building up their own weapons production, etc. They didn't. Instead, they had an episode about building a new shuttlecraft, one with more character. (The Delta Flyer.) I honestly think they just forgot. They forgot they didn't kill Samantha Wildman. (I'm not sure if that one's actually confirmed, but it makes so much sense.) 1000 Brown M and Ms posted:That's Voyager in a nutshell really. It was basically a rehash of TNG and the premise of being lost on the other side of the galaxy was given no more than lip service most of the time. So much wasted potential.
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Dec 7, 2021 05:40
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It's pretty direct, he gave a very long post-trek-career interview (here's a copy, the paragraphing's a bit messed up though) soon after he left Voyager where he outlined his frustrations with Voyager and the handling of the premise, and a lot of the things he says he thinks they should've done and ways they should've shown the premise then popped up in BSG, albiet in a much gritter way than what he would've done on Voyager due to the nature of the premise.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Dec 7, 2021 |
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Dec 7, 2021 05:50
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Occasionally the show remembered its own premise. The "year of hell" arc was along those lines, and good. They frequently referenced the fact that they couldn't spare using the replicators too much and that's why they had a galley chef constantly grossing everyone out with weird alien food, for example. Basically they did the same thing lots of shows do: the writers remember important facets of the premise only when it serves a particular story they want to tell, and then they ignore that facet the rest of the time because the writers didn't feel like changing whatever other stories they wanted to tell.
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Dec 7, 2021 06:20
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The original plan the writers had with Year of Hell was that they'd have a two-parter Year of Hell episode 4x05/4x06 that would cover a shorter period of time, it wouldn't get reset at the end, and the the Year of Hell would be Voyager a total wreck just being clowned on at every opportunity for the rest of the season until they manage to get fixed up around 5x01. The writers were excited for it but the producers nixed it, they wanted episodic.
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Dec 7, 2021 06:23
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Bucnasti posted:drat what a wasted storytelling opportunity. No better summary of Voyager can be written.
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Dec 7, 2021 08:18
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Grand Fromage posted:No better summary of Voyager can be written. Ah yep, sure is.
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Dec 7, 2021 12:19
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Vavrek posted:I will never not link The Definitive Voyager Torpedo Inventory Log when I hear about Dispersal Pattern Sierra. Vavrek posted:When I bring it up in conversation, because I will absolutely tell people about this video when chatting in person, one response is that, you know, they have replicators, they were able to build so much stuff ... I enjoy the Trek shows, and way more people think way more about this stuff then I do, which is why I asked about small ships with tons of weapons after the ship pictures presented earlier so sorry for the derail but I enjoyed the responses and discussion so thanks!
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Dec 7, 2021 15:35
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So in the spirit of the thread and my original question, if anyone has any "larger than a one or two person fighter" but "smaller than a tiny capital ship" pictures of ships they like, I would love to see them, and any explanations of what they are all about would be fun to see and read!
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Dec 7, 2021 15:49
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There are some materials that either are very hard to replicate, or just can't be replicated. Replicators don't create matter out of energy for the most part. Only very rarely. They start with some kind of base material and rearrange it. This goes for both food and engineering replicators
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Dec 7, 2021 16:04
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Twenty Four posted:So in the spirit of the thread and my original question, if anyone has any "larger than a one or two person fighter" but "smaller than a tiny capital ship" pictures of ships they like, I would love to see them, and any explanations of what they are all about would be fun to see and read! Lambda T4a shuttle  A rare glimpse of a non-warship in the Imperial navy. Despite this, it's still well armed and capable of defending itself from stray fighters. A souped up version serves as the final boss in Rogue Squadron.
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Dec 7, 2021 16:24
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Gozanti-class cruiser Kind of an A-10 so-ugly-it-must-be-functional-and-reliable-as-hell vibe going on with it that I love.
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Dec 7, 2021 16:53
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You'd think the Death Star would be so big that it would just have docking facilities for entire Star Destroyers and not have to deal with those shuttles at all. The Emperor doesn't need any dinky shuttles now that he has the Death Star.
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Dec 7, 2021 16:56
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With the scale of the Death Star, I'd expect it to have full on drydocks for Star Destroyers that can do anything up to and including a complete rebuild. Support the fleet anywhere.Twenty Four posted:
There's probably replication somewhere further back to refill the armory but you don't want to be pumping large amounts of energy into that system in the middle of battle or have your torpedoes be dependent on yet another disable-able system. Plus they can fire faster than they can probably replicate. And then after replication they'd have to fuel it up - replicators don't create antimatter. And charge up the systems. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Dec 7, 2021 |
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Dec 7, 2021 17:08
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MikeJF posted:With the scale of the Death Star, I'd expect it to have full on drydocks for Star Destroyers that can do anything up to and including a complete rebuild. Support the fleet anywhere. Turns out they did! Specially-sized drydocks for each major class of capital ship in the fleet. But it turns out a subcontractor messed up the signage and they skipped QA to meet deadlines and, well, we all saw what happened when the Executor tried to put into a Victory-sized dock for repairs.
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Dec 7, 2021 17:35
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Twenty Four posted:So in the spirit of the thread and my original question, if anyone has any "larger than a one or two person fighter" but "smaller than a tiny capital ship" pictures of ships they like, I would love to see them, and any explanations of what they are all about would be fun to see and read!  The Honorverse is a big chonky data dump pile of trash, but it's my pile of trash that I like to read. In the books, in the midst of a war, they go through what is basically the aircraft carrier vs battleship fight that the US went through in the leadup to, and durring, WWII. Previously LACs (Light Attack Craft) were almost discontinued, as they had no warp capability, and died if an actual warship looked at them funny. So the Shrike was developed to be launched from a very large ship, the size of a mainline combatant. The crew I think was 12 or so? The next largest warship would be a Frigate which was maybe 10 times the length of this ship.
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Dec 7, 2021 17:51
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Anybody got any good examples of chunky medium industrial ships? Mining ships, small container ships?
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Dec 7, 2021 18:02
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SageNytell posted:Anybody got any good examples of chunky medium industrial ships? Mining ships, small container ships? Badger Mk2 from EVE online.  EVE has a large variety of small / med / large mining and transport ships. Lots of cool designs.
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Dec 7, 2021 22:09
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SageNytell posted:Anybody got any good examples of chunky medium industrial ships? Mining ships, small container ships? Babylon 5 had various ships like that: Freighter with detachable containers:  Cargo ship:  Mining survey ship: 
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Dec 7, 2021 22:16
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jeeves posted:
The Emperor doesn't but the 1000s of middle management officials and officers do.
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Dec 7, 2021 23:03
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SageNytell posted:Anybody got any good examples of chunky medium industrial ships? Mining ships, small container ships? I'm fond of the GTFr Chronos, from Descent: Freespace.  (Depicted here with the latest community-made visuals.) It's the space equivalent of a container truck.
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Dec 8, 2021 00:29
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Looks like a scooter
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Dec 8, 2021 02:49
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Vavrek posted:I'm fond of the GTFr Chronos, from Descent: Freespace. Man, that looks even more like a space scooter for a mech than the White Ark from Victory, which was pretty much that.  e:fb
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Dec 8, 2021 02:51
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Twenty Four posted:So in the spirit of the thread and my original question, if anyone has any "larger than a one or two person fighter" but "smaller than a tiny capital ship" pictures of ships they like, I would love to see them, and any explanations of what they are all about would be fun to see and read! I'm really fond of the player ships from Star Wars the Old Republic. They're all made to hold a small crew.      
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Dec 8, 2021 03:35
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I love cozy sized ships. Normandy SR-1 and Tempest from mass effect are favorites. Cruising through the stars in a cozy little flying home.
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Dec 8, 2021 04:52
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