[spaceships] Enterprise NX-01

[hackbarth]

I am trying to stat the NX-01, as trek ships go, is relatively easy.

I'm using this site as a source of the stats, mainly because they have nice deckplans to go with them.

Enterprise NX-01
SM +12

Front:
[1] Adv Metallic Laminate Armor
[2] Multipurpose Array
[3] Secondary battery- 4 torpedo tubes, 6 beam plasma turrets
[4] Habitat - Cabins and Cargo spaces.
[5] Hangar Bay - Lifeboats
[6!] Ramscoop

Center
[1] Adv Metallic Laminate Armor
[2!] Light Force Screen - Polarised hull plating
[3] External Clamp - Grappler
[4] Control Room - Bridge
[5] Fuel Tank - Deuterium
[6] Fuel Tank - Deuterium
[Core] Habitat - Sickbay, Enginnering and Labs.

Rear
[1] Adv Metallic Laminate Armor
[2] Secondary Battery- 2 torpedo tubes, 6 beam plasma turrets
[3] Hangar Bay - Shuttlepods
[4] Super Conversion Torch - Impulse engine
[5!] Super Stardrive - Right Naccele
[6!] Super Stardrive - Left Naccele
[Core] Super Antimatter Reactor (provides 4 power points) - Warp Manifold

Artificial Gravity
Gravitic Compensators
High Automation

Disclaimer: This quote is the most updated version of the ship, below is my original design of the initial post.

Design features:
Artificial Gravity, of course.
High Automation, without it the crew would have to be the triple of the stated compliment.

SM +13 fits nicely with the stated mass, and the length is beliavable. Also an habitat at SM +13 makes a good fit for the multitude of labs and engineering rooms.

Front:
[1] Adv Metallic Laminate Armor
[2] Multipurpose Array - Made for treknology.
[3] Secondary battery - 4 torpedo tubes, 6 beam plasma turrets
[4] Habitat - The greater part of it is Science! Labs, offices, etc. And of course, the sickbay.
[5] Hangar Bay - For the Lifeboats
[6!] Ramscoop - The bussard Collection tanks, the front part of the nacelles, are ramscoop devices.

Center
[1] Adv Metallic Laminate Armor
[2!] Light Force Screen - Still haven't decided the best way to represent a 'polarized' hull plating. Is it a shield in all but name or a different way to say Hardened Armor?
[3] External Clamp - For the grappler.
[4] Control Room - What is trek without the bridge?
[5] Cargo Hold
[Core] Antimater Reactor - Representing the warp manifold. (provides 4 power points)

Rear
[1] Adv Metallic Laminate Armor
[2] Super Fusion torch- I will discuss this bellow.
[3]Hangar Bay - For the Shuttles.
[4] Secondary Battery - Same as in the front, but selling back 2 torpedo tubes.
[5] Fuel Tank - Deuterium.
[Core!] Super Stardrive Engine - Representing the nacelles. (consumes 2 power points)

The design is clearly unfinished. I still have one space unallocated in each section, and there is the problem with the drive performance.

Trek ships doesn't respect the laws of newtonian movement. In space they have a 'top speed' or 'cruise speed' even under impulse, when the standart laws of physics should be valid. In this case, the stated top speed for the ship is 1/3 lightspeed or 135.000.000 km/h. But GURPS Space ships give the performance of the spacecrafts in terms of delta-v and acceleration. How do I better approximate the two universes? To simply go to 1/3 lightspeed I need a delta-V of 61.500!

Also, the impulse engines are stated as being fusion torchs, consuming only deuterium. The antimatter is reserved to the stardrive engines. But no Fusion engine in the book comes close of giving enough delta-V to activate the ramscoop, unless I give the ship 4 fuels tanks, but this seems like a kludge to me. The other option is to consider them Antimater reaction pion engines, but this is not canon.

So I fudge with GURPS Spaceships or fudge with Trek canon. Can't have the best of both worlds, I guess.

Any ideas?

[Phantasm]

I'm not sure I'd place the warp nacelles as a "core" system, as by their design they're easily targeted; what I'd do is swap the warp drive and the fuel tank, putting the tank in a more heavily shielded part of the ship (the "core").

[Diomedes]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

Trek ships doesn't respect the laws of newtonian movement. In space they have a 'top speed' or 'cruise speed' even under impulse, when the standart laws of physics should be valid. In this case, the stated top speed for the ship is 1/3 lightspeed or 135.000.000 km/h. But GURPS Space ships give the performance of the spacecrafts in terms of delta-v and acceleration. How do I better approximate the two universes? To simply go to 1/3 lightspeed I need a delta-V of 61.500!

Also, the impulse engines are stated as being fusion torchs, consuming only deuterium. The antimatter is reserved to the stardrive engines. But no Fusion engine in the book comes close of giving enough delta-V to activate the ramscoop, unless I give the ship 4 fuels tanks, but this seems like a kludge to me. The other option is to consider them Antimater reaction pion engines, but this is not canon.

So I fudge with GURPS Spaceships or fudge with Trek canon. Can't have the best of both worlds, I guess.

Any ideas?

I have some. Use the Gravitic Compensation design feature, but instead of reducing perceived acceleration, make it increase the actual acceleration by enough of a factor to reach cruising speed in a reasonable amount of time. (Probably far more than the canon 20:1.) Even though you could just shut off the engines at that point, the compensator (or the IDF) still needs to be powered up (make it a high powered system). Make the engine a bimodal fusion torch, so it functions as a derated power plant as well. That can power the IDF.

The upper limit on velocity can be rationalized as either the point at which the IDF stops working, or the speed beyond which the deflectors can no longer reliably protect from micrometeor impacts.

[hackbarth]

Well, the most shielded portions of the ship are the computer core, which in GURPS is distributed around the ship, and the sickbay, which in GURPS is part of the habitat.

The Starfleet valiantly exposes vulnerable systems like the control room, the deuterium fuel tanks and the nacelles. Even Antimatter storage isn't particularly shielded in the F deck, just forward of the hangar bay. I chose nacelles as core for the analogy with the vitals.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

Also, the impulse engines are stated as being fusion torchs, consuming only deuterium. ?

Impulse engines are not fusion torches. Note the total lack of a gigantic white-hot plume of helium behind them. They're reactionless drives, that work off fusion powerplants.

And yes, if you are going by how they actually portrayed "polarised hull plating" it's just shields. One of the things that was wrong with Enterprise.

[hackbarth]

Originally Posted by Diomedes

I have some. Use the Gravitic Compensation design feature, but instead of reducing perceived acceleration, make it increase the actual acceleration by enough of a factor to reach cruising speed in a reasonable amount of time. (Probably far more than the canon 20:1.) Even though you could just shut off the engines at that point, the compensator (or the IDF) still needs to be powered up (make it a high powered system). Make the engine a bimodal fusion torch, so it functions as a derated power plant as well. That can power the IDF.

The upper limit on velocity can be rationalized as either the point at which the IDF stops working, or the speed beyond which the deflectors can no longer reliably protect from micrometeor impacts.

I'd rather modify the GURPS delta-V of the Fusion torch to 10 times its value than introduce a rules lawyering that gives every ship 200 times its acceleration.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

One of the things that was wrong with Enterprise.

Man, don't get me started...

All these suggestions are good food for though... I will revise my design shortly, so keep them coming!

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

I am trying to stat the NX-01, as trek ships go, is relatively easy.

Impulse drives are reactionless. Exhaust is only a trace of ions not actual equal and opposite reaction. You can do away with the ramscoop then too.

Accelerations are _huge_. Getting to .33 of lightspeed at 1 G would take more than 3 months. Use Subwarp even though that actually underperforms. It's another one of those things made for Trek.

It's a peculiarity of Trek that many systems are _small_. The NX-01's phase cannons were only about 4-6 cubic feet. Cloaking devices are no bigger.

Also, compared to designs that are comparable to WWII battleships they devote only a small percentage of mass to weapons. I only remember 3 phase cannons and 2 torpedo tubes. This is explainable if the primary limit on weapons use is power rather than mass but it will still go oddly in Spaceships.

I'd use neutral particle beams for the phase cannons rather than plasma. That's just a conceptual thing though. Phase cannons (and later phasers) do huge amounts of damage (at least to inanimate objects) and again don't fit well with most ship design systems.

[Diomedes]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

Man, don't get me started...

All these suggestions are good food for though... I will revise my design shortly, so keep them coming!

That was David Johnson, not me, though I suspect he and I have many of the same complaints.

[hackbarth]

Sorry about the queotes confusion, I fixed that.

I'm working on a new design using reactionless engines (reading the text I saw that it fit much better with trek) powered by a fusion rector, and two habitats, one of them a core component, for the sickbay and labs, the other for the cabins and cargo.

I'll fiddle with the numbers when I get home, but it already looks much more trekish.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's a peculiarity of Trek that many systems are _small_. The NX-01's phase cannons were only about 4-6 cubic feet. Cloaking devices are no bigger.

Also, compared to designs that are comparable to WWII battleships they devote only a small percentage of mass to weapons. I only remember 3 phase cannons and 2 torpedo tubes. This is explainable if the primary limit on weapons use is power rather than mass but it will still go oddly in Spaceships.

I'd use neutral particle beams for the phase cannons rather than plasma. That's just a conceptual thing though. Phase cannons (and later phasers) do huge amounts of damage (at least to inanimate objects) and again don't fit well with most ship design systems.

The external mount of the phase cannons is small, but I suspect that the allocation of a hull space in GURPS represents the magazines, power supplies, and even the armory. I chose plasma because we always see the beam move between ships, and because of the close range of the trek combats. I will check the weapons chart carefully to pick the better option.

The stats on the page I linked correspond with the NX-01 at the fourth season, so it is more packed than at the beggining, when even the three phase cannons weren't operational yet.

[rogersd]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

I am trying to stat the NX-01, as trek ships go, is relatively easy.

I'm using this site as a source of the stats, mainly because they have nice deckplans to go with them.
Any ideas?

This is a great site for the NX 01! I think you should keep the ram scoop. In Star Trek Nemesis, Riker used the ram scoops in the front of the nacelle to scoop in gases which were later released later. At least I think it was Nemesis, if not I'm sure someone will correct me.