Perhaps the space is there for a reason?

It could be that the equipment needs to be separated because of interference etc. (Like mobile phones apparently interfere with planes and medical equipment)

It's possible that by VGR times there is a way of decreasing the amount of space you need between the pieces of equipment, which would account as to why Voyager's Nacelles are actually shorter than the design would typically warrant.

Perhaps variable-geometry Nacelles have something to do with this? Voyager was the first ship that we have seen that was so equipped.

It would explain the points we have made thus far if this was true.

...

On another point, was the DX-100 designed with Vulcan help? Where else would the circular engine system come from? I don't really know much about it, other than the shape/design of it.

This is all and good, but we did get a bit off point which is the new vulcan ship. As I stated I do love the design. I would be really interested in perhaps a couple views of the interior, i.e command and control, engineering, ect even one or two of the crews quarters. Also speed, weapons, shielding. All of that would be interesting, at least to me.

To continue off-topic, I thought that the Intrepid class was specifically designed to decrease the detrimental environmental effects of warp drive (hence the official reason for the variable-geometry warp engines)

Perhaps the relatively small nacelles have something to do with this as well. Perhaps because the massive (and extremely powerful) warp fields generated by the larger engines produced such negative environmental effects?

One could explain the size of the Soverign warp nacelles as either:
1. fanboyish
2. the extra space is needed to reduce the destructive energy unleashed by such large warp coils. If the theory that the size of the warp field needed is the reason for larger nacelles, and larger warp nacelles create proportionately more damage, then a lot of equipment is probably needed to reduce these effects.

Anyway, our real topic is the Vulcan ship, which I think is very cool. I like the incremental move towards twin nacelles, Starfleet style. Perhaps the Vulcans independently reach the same conclusion that Cochrane did, and are slowly implementing it!

Stupid Vulcans, slow on time travel AND warp dynamics (and parallel universes)

Yes, this thread was originally about Jig's ship afterall. A very cool design, and I like the way that the Vulcan design lineages are carried on, but they are also more 'Federation' in design, even though should such a ship actually come into existance, it obviously wouldn't be Federation inspired. (Ie. alternate timeline)

I imagine that slowly, over time, the next stage in the advancement of the Vulcan designs would be lowering the Nacelles onto a Horizontal plane, instead of the vertical one that they currently have.

Then, even further into this possible future, the Nacelles would eventually straighten out, and become longer, until you have a Vulcan design that would look similar to the more familiar Federation designs. (Although it would be accidental)

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What exactly is 'streamlined' for Warp though? We all know elipses are standard design for Federation ships, but what about newer Starfleet Vessels such as the Prometheus?

They typically have a more triangular shape, which even though perhaps represents the next stage in Starfleet design philosophy, why wasn't this used before?

If triangular shapes are more streamlined, why is it that ellipses are found throughout Starfleet design? In fact, why are there any ships with elliptical shapes? Surely Starfleet would have done tests to find which shape is the 'best'?

Perhaps there is simply more to it than that, afterall, if variable geometry Nacelles physically minimise the amount of damage to subspace, are more efficient (Or are simply less powerful resulting in less damage) etc. could it be possible that they do other things as well, like allowing better fine control over the resulting fields? (Which would again decrease the amount of wasted energy, increasing efficiency and minimising damage to subspace)

There must be a reason for all this, although I can't think of one at the moment...[/url]

There is always the option that the designers just liked the style

I would concur that style is/was what the engineers based design on. Well that and the speed they can raise and lower shields. Other then that, as we all know shape means nothing in space.

I didn't know about this Vulcan Dreadnought, ZDarby, if what you say is true, then your theory sounds better.

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Winterhawk, the Borg do things in a totally different way to the rest of the Galaxy as far as we know - they technically don't even use Warp, they use 'Transwarp' instead. (Whatever that is meant to be in Treknobabble, from what i've heard, it's impossible!)

Just using structural integrity fields as an example, the Borg project a single, massive field ahead of the vessel whilst it is at Warp/Transwarp. Apparently because of the extreme speed (Or whatever) the fields essentially 'wrap' themselves around the ship.

As far as we know, the Federation simply use many small fields inside of the ship. They project between the internal spaces (And possibly inside the walls themselves, although I have no evidence to support this)

This is one of the reasons why the Borg could essentially do anything - they just do it differently. We know the Borg are similar to the Cardassians in that they want to be efficient. Perhaps they use a method that not only results in cheap build costs, but also results in cheap use costs as well?

We simply don't know, although we have seen the coils in some Voyager episodes. From my memory, (Remember it's as good as that of a Goldfish) they were relatively quite small pieces of tech, so they must work differently (Or be more advanced) than those of the Federation.

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Trashman, I really don't think that the Vulcan ship from BOTF will be in BOTF2, at least not as an 'official' ship. Don't worry though, i'm sure someone will mod it in eventually.

Matress,


Very interesting views. Another thing I'm interested in, will we be able to say actually send troops into another ship thusly stealing the ship.

Now I know they have that in Armada, but i was thinking it would be a lot of fun to be able to do that here also.

what do you think?

ZDarby -

I wonder if the Vulcans were thinking about the damage warp fields cause to subspace already in the 2100's?! It would be interesting, and make sense: How do you get a moving object to not tear the surrounding air/water up really badly? Streamline the form so the 'fluid' flows around it easily....Sounds a bit like the simple, efficient and streamlined warp field a ring nacelle might create...

Also, what about warp efficiency? Perhaps Vulcans are actually ahead of everyone in warp field dynamics, but have a less powerful type of reactor. So rather than develop dangerous new technologies, they increase speed by increasing the efficiency of their warp drive!

I still think it's mighty presumptious and jingoistic to have the wet-behind-the-ears humans suddenly know more about high warp speeds than a species that has been exploring for millenia If anything, the Warp 5 drive should have been given as a test for humanity, and after the NX 01's success, the humans would have been allowed to develop it further, however they wanted to as a reward, and a sort of weaning off of Vulcan dependence! That makes more sense to me, but I'm not B and/or B

I know that ftranschel!

I'm just saying that i've never seen a ship with vertical Nacelles before!

If people were looking for a unique design, that would certainly grab people's attention! 8O

An whyfor would I need to know how to spell the name of my own people? Long live Romlamn Star Empire!