Too many windows?

atharun18999 · October 2015

Am I the only one who thinks the smaller ships have too many windows? I look at the pilot ships and ships like the Romulan Faeht and think they have too many windows. Especially given their reduced crew compliments. I look at the Mercury pilot ships and that ship has more windows that crew it looks like.

fovrel · October 2015

Overall most ships look like they are luxury liners or office buildings on a dark afternoon. The windows itself are ugly to. From afar they do fine, to many in my view, when you zoom in you see that they are just dots on the fuselage.

The Nandi has a no-windows options. This alone makes it a great ship to fly. Hope we get this option on more ships.

atharun18999 · October 2015

fovrel wrote: »

Overall most ships look like they are luxury liners or office buildings on a dark afternoon. The windows itself are ugly to. From afar they do fine, to many in my view, when you zoom in you see that they are just dots on the fuselage.

The Nandi has a no-windows options. This alone makes it a great ship to fly. Hope we get this option on more ships.

I agree, I just look at small ships especially and I am like you have a crew of 90 but have 400 windows. The people would have to be 2 feet tall to fit that many in a ship

mustrumridcully0 · October 2015

I suspect that you underestimate the size of these ships.

bluedarky · October 2015

Average crew quarters has 3 windows (2 in living area, 1 in bedroom) that's 270 of those 400 windows accounted for at least, crew compliment is also likely to include ~10-20 non-combat personnel which aren't counted in the crew count beneath the ships health display so that's another 30-60 accounted for.

Should I carry on my count?

thunderfoot · October 2015

One of the options in the Tailor for the T6 Exploration Cruiser allows for a reduced number of windows. Which was the first thing I turned on. On my KDF and Rom ships, I usually go for the Option which at least reduces the size of the windows, if not the number. This helps.

One of the distinctive things about Fed ships since the debut of ENT-D in TNG is the large number of lit windows on them. I kinda wish they had not done so. However, it is here and it has become an accepted part of what makes a Fed ship a Fed ship, so I just live with it.

mustrumridcully0 · October 2015

It seems certainly illogical that so many windows would be lit at the same time (espeically when everyone is on active duty), but the number of windows does not have to correlate strongly with the crew size.

The Enterprise D had a lot more space than needed for a crew of 1,000 people, for example.
We probably have to assume that most Federation ships can carry a lot more people then needed to operate the ship effectively.

A luxury liner like the Queen Elizabeth is 314 m long, 36m wide and 71m high, and carries 2,283 passengers and a crew of 1,000 or more. The TOS Enterprise had this size and only 430 crewmen.

zisko · October 2015

the Galaxy class carries at max 1400 or 1600 people, 600 to 800 are duty officers the rest are either family like O'brain daughter (forgot name) or Worf son alexander or guest like Whoopi Goldberg character (forgot name). as bluedarky said about the windows for quarters, 2 in the main room 1 in the bedroom. around the time of the Enterprize-D the federation let families on board ships so that duty officers would feel like home.

mackbolan01 · October 2015

ok, who farted ???

horizons2052 · October 2015

Personally, I see zero point in having windows on starships at all, for a couple of reasons actually. First off, for the most part of your journey, there is nothing to look at. Space is 99.99% nothing, just space. Another reason is structural integrity, and I have a lot of problems with the structural appearance of many ships in the Star Trek universe. Lets take the Breen carrier as a great example. That long arm on the port side, I presume that that is the hangar deck where the ships are launched from, and though it makes sense for it to be long, imagine having an emergency at the end of it, imagine now how difficult it would be to get to, if the sickbay was all the way on the right arm, they would have to travel all the way to main super structure then all the way down the carrier arm. That makes no sense at all, just flawed ship design period. Now to the windows, in general, any hole, which is what a window is, is a weakness. So in my opinion, one window on a starship is too many windows.

atharun18999 · October 2015

bluedarky wrote: »

Average crew quarters has 3 windows (2 in living area, 1 in bedroom) that's 270 of those 400 windows accounted for at least, crew compliment is also likely to include ~10-20 non-combat personnel which aren't counted in the crew count beneath the ships health display so that's another 30-60 accounted for.

Should I carry on my count?

If you notice though we are talking about the smaller ships mostly. Take the fed pilot ships as an example. The defiant was a small ship. The Mercury class is similar in that it is small. In fact from the designs, it appears half the ship is essentially engine. How in the world are you going to have full crew quarters and families on a ship like that and thus hundreds of windows. It doesn't add up.

As for cruisers and what not, yes hundreds of windows make sense but on the smaller vessels it does not.

kitsunesnout · October 2015

Windows are only a weakness if the material they are made of is weaker than the hull itself, that point only makes sense with current modern materials, for a fiction taking place hundreds of years in the future, it's not hard to believe a material could exist for windows that's just as strong as hull material itself, heck we could even have completely translucent ships if we wanted.

But even today, we are able to make incredibly strong windows for armored vehicles or fortified facilities that's nearly as good as armor itself in many cases.

centaurianalpha · October 2015

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

I suspect that you underestimate the size of these ships.

The scaling issue makes windows even more problematic; many of those window configurations would looks like walls of glass at the correct scale of many ships...

bobbydazlers · October 2015

horizons2052 wrote: »

Personally, I see zero point in having windows on starships at all, for a couple of reasons actually. First off, for the most part of your journey, there is nothing to look at. Space is 99.99% nothing, just space. Another reason is structural integrity, and I have a lot of problems with the structural appearance of many ships in the Star Trek universe. Lets take the Breen carrier as a great example. That long arm on the port side, I presume that that is the hangar deck where the ships are launched from, and though it makes sense for it to be long, imagine having an emergency at the end of it, imagine now how difficult it would be to get to, if the sickbay was all the way on the right arm, they would have to travel all the way to main super structure then all the way down the carrier arm. That makes no sense at all, just flawed ship design period. Now to the windows, in general, any hole, which is what a window is, is a weakness. So in my opinion, one window on a starship is too many windows.

in space there is no atmosphere or ambient light to mask the stars, on earth ambient light tends to illuminate any pollution, fog, clouds or anything else in the area. The result is, unless it's a very clear day most of the dimmer stars ( either because they are smaller or because they are further away ) are more difficult to see.
so in space you will have many more stars to see then on earth it would be far from nothing to look at.
even though space is 99.99% nothing you will see so much more of what is there the part that is nothing would seem insignificant.
imagine looking out of your window and seeing something like this
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/top100/
although taken by the Hubble telescope so the images on this site seem closer to earth in a starship you would not need a telescope to make them seem closer, you just have to look out of your window.
structural integrity is not an issue, with transparent aluminum you could make a thick transparent barrier that is virtually as strong as the hull, on top of that you have the deflector shield which are there to deflect anything that might potentially penetrate any weak spots away from the ship.

therealmaddmatt · October 2015

Since the sensors in STO are useless after 15km, the crew needs a lot of windows to spot nearby ships through.

One thing that occurred to me some years ago when I was modding for KA, was that it's actually odd that some of the windows on the Galaxy-class model were off at all. Except for when the plot requires it, we never see a room with it's lights off, even empty ones that the characters haven't walked into yet. It might make sense to leave them on all the time, since it's reasonable to assume that they've developed lighting systems that sip even less power than LED arrays.

Furthering the windows-as-strong-as-the-hull idea, the Federation is a culture that has the technology to manipulate matter at the molecular level -- meaning they can easily make a transparent material as strong as hull plating, and would be able to fuse hull components seamlessly, to avoid weak points that the joins would present.

And then on top of that, they kick in the SIF generators...

zero2362 · October 2015

horizons2052 wrote: »

Personally, I see zero point in having windows on starships at all, for a couple of reasons actually. First off, for the most part of your journey, there is nothing to look at. Space is 99.99% nothing, just space. Another reason is structural integrity, and I have a lot of problems with the structural appearance of many ships in the Star Trek universe. Lets take the Breen carrier as a great example. That long arm on the port side, I presume that that is the hangar deck where the ships are launched from, and though it makes sense for it to be long, imagine having an emergency at the end of it, imagine now how difficult it would be to get to, if the sickbay was all the way on the right arm, they would have to travel all the way to main super structure then all the way down the carrier arm. That makes no sense at all, just flawed ship design period. Now to the windows, in general, any hole, which is what a window is, is a weakness. So in my opinion, one window on a starship is too many windows.

Correct me if Im wrong but dosent the Star Trek universe have a substance called transparent aluminioum (brought up in Star Trek IV)? Whats to say that the windows arnt made out of that or possably some other transparent metal?

fovrel · October 2015

All this techno babble 'in the future we are that much advanced we can make bla bla bla'. Space is for a human a harsh environment. When you go there you want some protection. You want hull arround you and not something that falls appart just because systems are failling.

Most ships design in this game have features that have no purpose at all and are a waste of materials.

jorantomalak · October 2015

Has everyone forgtten Transperant aluminum ? you know the metal alloy scotty gave the forumla to some guy during the voyage home?

I would also expect there to e transparent steels and other alloys aswell perhaps the windows are made from transparent metals.

Too many windows?

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