test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
warbirds...
mcluvin
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Seriously, why are they so ridiculously huge?
Post edited by mcluvin on
0
Comments
The D'Deridex made the Enterprise-D look moderately small.
The Valdore (before STO's renaming convention into "Mogai") from Nemesis was roughly the same size of the Enterprise-E but had a elegantly wide wingspan.
Then you have the Scimitar. Yeah.
If the Romulan ships were large from their canon sources, then they need to be large ingame.
If the two Jem'Hadar ships were their canon size than the JH Dread would be about 3-4x the size of the scimitar
*Edit* This image here: http://www.suricatafx.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/comparisontest51.jpg is a great picture showing a lot of the scales of different ships.
and you'll notice the JH dread isn't too much larger than the scimitar, but thats partly because ship scales constantly changed in DS9, especially dominion ships.
I, for one, always wanted the JHDC to be bigger in its scale with STO :cool:
A properly sized Jem'Hadar Battleship with appropriate stats would be a magnificent "boss."
Really though, probably for fear factor. If you were on the other side of one of these massive ships decloaking right in front of you in real life, you would probably need a new pair of pants.
A bigger ship means more space in the hull for engines, armor, weapons and crew. We don't know the size of the Romulan fleet but if hypothetically they have equal resources to their enemies yet Romulan ships are larger perhaps the Romulans chose to build smaller numbers of larger ships. Such a doctrine does have advantages like you have fewer ships to crew and supply.
Also we know that Romulan ships use a different power source from Starfleet or the KDF, perhaps the singularity core and its associated equipment requires more space to achieve equivalent power levels to a M/AM reactor ship. Also we know that singularity cores have a several nullifier cores that mask the signature of the singularity core so it won't be detected though the cloak so those could also take up large amounts of space.
Perhaps Romulan ships have bulkier equipment, either their technology isn't as advanced when it comes to levels of miniaturization compared to the Federation or Klingons or their equipment has to be build in such a way that so it isn't detectable while the ship is cloaked but that requires the equipment to be larger; sort of like sound isolating mounts on equipment aboard submarines. Building a ship that can cloak and be equal to one that doesn't requires a larger spaceframe to hold all the equipment.
Or maybe the Romulan engineers and designers have more of say over the budget and can get larger ships funded compared to their adversaries. All things being equal the engineers are going to want to design something bigger and complex vs smaller and simpler.
Pick whichever one you like the most.
That said...now they're just a bunch of refugee bums so I'm not sure why they're still building massive ships. Maybe they're in the thralls of denial over their collapsed empire. Old habits die hard and all that.
1) The D'deridex may have been the size it was to compensate for the big empty space in the middle. For all that it is a big ship it's useable/habitable volume is quite small.
2) The Valdore, as you say, was roughly the same size as the Enterprise E, i.e. it was not oversized.
3) The Scimitar was a beastly warship designed and built by a rogue element intent on pulling off a coup, which succeeded.
There's only 1 Romulan vessel which is oversized - the D'deridex - and that could be because of a design feature (hollow in the middle) not seen in other vessels.
system Lord Baal is dead
Between us, this has bothered me from first D'Deridex decloaked on my television. How is that remotely workable? I thought the big empty space in the middle was where they kept the black hole that powered the ship, but that is apparently kept in a cabinet next to the microwave. How do you get around in it? If your staff meeting is up in the top section, and you've left your dayplanner down in engineering, and you have to go all the way to the front along the upper neck, down the snout, (presumably officer's turf), through the structurally implausible thin corridor to the lower section, and back again. Unless they have transporters for everyone, yeesh. Can't use the sides, that's where the engines are. Maybe there's a back way through steerage.
What an inefficient design. Say what you will about the Borg, at least their ships make best use of space...
How is it workable? Technobabble, that is how
Sorry could not help myself here, had to say the joke.
Honestly, the biggest problem with the D'Deridex is that it looks too fragile. But that's a problem that has plagued a lot of Star Trek ships, right from the beginning with the Connie. So either it's not a problem thanks to 'structural integrity fields' being mandatory for ST ships thanks to the ludicrous speeds impulse and warp drives can achieve, or everyone in the ST universe is an idiot, with the exception of whoever designed the Defiant and a handful of other, structurally sound ship designs.
Guys, guys...... it's not the ships, sector space is out of scale!
Simply, Romulans have a complex. It's part of their appeal :P
I will say this, running various STFs and fleet space missions, Things are starting to get CROWDED.
As Admiral Janeway put it: "And people are always saying space is so big." ROTFWL
Well NOT big enough evidently !
I can't tell you how many times someone in a Scimitar, Galaxy, D'Deridex ect., actually GOT CAUGHT UP with my ship ! What with the small areas of engagement and all those massive ships with horrible turn rates !
I don't recall all those accidents on screen during the Dominion war !
Click here for a graphic: http://i.imgur.com/PfMHd.jpg
Well, first of all, that big space in between is actually made so that the nacelles can 'see' each other, because in canon it was established that the pair of warp coils need some clear space in between them to function (generating fields and stuff). Well, that was the case up until someone in the series decided to trow that away and design the defiant, among others. The actual singularity is somewhere back in that big connected piece. (And btw, the singularity has always been kept in a cabinet next to the microwave, see "The Next Phase")
But yes, it isn't a very efficient design for the crew...
And back to the case, I agree with the scare factor approach. I would be a little more scared of a decloaking D'Deridex than a decloaking B'Rel
What? Half of it is wasted space just to create volume? How corbomite of the Romulans.
Which made sense even to us back during Old Trek. The matter was in one, the anti-matter was in the other, and there was like a dilithium spigot at the base of each of the pylons because that's a sizable amount of explosive material. The pylons looks ridiculously fragile, then along come the Klingons with a more sensible arrangement. (Except for the endless neck. Moving walkway?) As you say, then explain the Defiant.
The ships with three and four nacelles are just plain fugly.
as nutty as it sounds you could be right, as for the jemy dred being bigger, I agree but perhaps as a boss, I wouldnt want to fly it, the scimitar is hard enough, again as romys go most of there ships are built for combat with science etc as a secondary choice, so there gona need plenty of space for guns and armour, also they dont seem to use much in the way of beam arrays in the shows, its usual cannons and beam banks so there gona take up plenty of space, the main difference between romy and jemy dreds is what there carying, the scimitar is a heavy gun cruiser that carries fighter support and a small contingent of troops, the jemy dred is a super heavy cruiser packed with heavy beam weapons and cannons designed for pummeling a target it has no cloak so needs excessive armour and is also carrying a large quantity of jemy troops for landing or ship combat, while there both dreds, there both designed around very different parameters.
Well, they probably did it to create volume yes, scary big ships and all. Really overcompensating for their lack of real power (or other things).
Well, I never heard of the "matter in one, antimatter in the other". Which would be a bit weird because that would mean the matter and anti-matter would react to each other in the space between, and somehow that looks a little bit dangerous to me.
And yes, the pylons looked fragile, this was a decision made by Gene Roddenberry to give the expression that materials in the 23rd century are a lot stronger then they are now. Well of course it makes no sense at all in the dominion war where we see ships loosing parts of their hull with one torpedo, but we can always explain it with technobable (like "Structural Integrity Fields", wich would actually looks like secondary shields, wouldn't it?).
But let's just come to the conclusion that ships in Star Trek aren't really designed to be practical, they are designed to be cool.
the borg aren't that stupid, you know?
Pylons: now that I did hear about later. However scientifically suspect it may be today, good for Roddenberry for making a conscious forward-thinking decision. Later incarnations of Trek seemed (to me) to get more than a little careless, thus the rise of Technobabble. It certainly existed in Old Trek, but in my (suspect) memory, wasn't as pervasive and hand-wavy.
To be sure. And the Borg are artless.
Borg as a playable race, now that would be interesting, modern art in space
Given the amount of Borg equipment flying around..
>installs is Borg Cutting Beam< What? Shut up.