Dangerous Design Flaws Starships Should Never Be Allowed To Leave The Shipyards With

[PapaPalpatine]

1) An astonishing lack of surge protection: Some distance part of the ship takes a Phaser hit and a console on the bridge bursts into a fountain of sparks, sending some nameless extra flying back 2 meters. That makes about as much sense as your laptop violently exploding in your face just because someone hit your WiFi router with a hammer.

2) No seatbelts: If I had a dime for every damned time the crew has fallen out of their chairs and been tossed around like the balls in a bingo machine whenever the ship gets blasted or hits a pocket of space turbulence, I'd be independent wealthy. Cars and trucks have seatbelts. Airplanes and helicopters have seatbelts. The space shuttle had seatbelts. No excuses.

3) Holodecks and Holodeck Characters that can go lethally berserk: Really, it would be just as well to buy every member of the crew their own PlayStation. In real life, the CEO of the company that makes Holodecks would be doing the perp walk after the first time the safeties failed and Barney the Dinosaur went Jurrassic Park on a group of toddlers.

4) Holding cells in the brig that rely solely on force fields to keep prisoners in: What a fantastic idea, now every power failure we have in that part of the ship is sure to become a jailbreak (Thin Lizzy song of the same name optional).

[MissKittyFantastico]

Well number three at least is an easy fix: buy Ferengi. Even the one time the safeties failed in seven years - due to Ops overwriting computer memory all over the station, which can hardly be blamed on the holosuite - Bashir and Garak still could've just called the door and walked out whenever they wanted, had they not been concerned for the physical patterns (which, again, should never have been in the holosuite to begin with). And all that's on top of having been maintained with basically zero budget for spare parts the whole time. That tech was solid.

This message brought to you by Ferengi Holosuites LLC.

[PapaPalpatine]

Well number three at least is an easy fix: buy Ferengi. Even the one time the safeties failed in seven years - due to Ops overwriting computer memory all over the station, which can hardly be blamed on the holosuite - Bashir and Garak still could've just called the door and walked out whenever they wanted, had they not been concerned for the physical patterns (which, again, should never have been in the holosuite to begin with). And all that's on top of having been maintained with basically zero budget for spare parts the whole time. That tech was solid.

This message brought to you by Ferengi Holosuites LLC.

True enough.

[PapaPalpatine]

5) Bridge in an obvious and vulnerable location: The upper-most deck of the saucer section, under that cute little dome? Splendid, that'll make it easy for an enemy to kill everyone on the bridge with a single photon torpedo strike.

6) No stairs or ramps to other decks: Considering how frequently real life elevators are out of order ("F@#$, even in the future nothing works!"), relying exclusively on turbo lifts to get around the ship doesn't seem like such a hot idea. Plus you lazy bastards could use the exercise.

7) No way to secure the large, dangerously heavy containers in the cargo bays: Can we at least get something so basic as nylon web cargo netting? The inertial dampeners go offline if someone so much as sneezes; so for the love of the Q Continuum, strap those damn things down already. Worf's HMO won't cover another spinal surgery.

8) Inertial dampeners that go offline if someone so much as sneezes: Seriously, were they made by the lowest bidder?

[TGLS]

6) No stairs or ramps to other decks: Considering how frequently real life elevators are out of order ("F@#$, even in the future nothing works!"), relying exclusively on turbo lifts to get around the ship doesn't seem like such a hot idea. Plus you lazy bastards could use the exercise.

Jeffery's Tubes.

[PapaPalpatine]

6) No stairs or ramps to other decks: Considering how frequently real life elevators are out of order ("F@#$, even in the future nothing works!"), relying exclusively on turbo lifts to get around the ship doesn't seem like such a hot idea. Plus you lazy bastards could use the exercise.

Jeffery's Tubes.

Granted, though have stairs and ramps would still be a good idea.

[J!!]

6) No stairs or ramps to other decks: Considering how frequently real life elevators are out of order ("F@#$, even in the future nothing works!"), relying exclusively on turbo lifts to get around the ship doesn't seem like such a hot idea. Plus you lazy bastards could use the exercise.

Jeffery's Tubes.

So whenever the elevator's down for maintenance, everyone has to go crawling thorough the tubes, dragging whatever equipment they need behind them, trying not to disrupt the people actually working in there as they squeeze past.

Suddenly going from your quarters to your station a few decks away is a commute.

"Ensign Bait, you're 13 minutes late for your shift!"
"Sorry Sir, traffic was a bitch."

[nebagram]

I always assumed the whole idea of Jeffries Tubes was to show how cramped living and working would be on a starship. Then you have the ridiculous size of the crew quarters on the E-D and I'm not so sure. I wonder how many of the E-E's crew wouldn't have been assimilated in First Contact if they had access tunnels they could actually stand up in?

[Mindworm]

4) Holding cells in the brig that rely solely on force fields to keep prisoners in: What a fantastic idea, now every power failure we have in that part of the ship is sure to become a jailbreak (Thin Lizzy song of the same name optional).

Some of us would say the lack of Phil Lynott playing over the ship's PA is a dangerous design flaw in and of itself.

[Darth Wedgius]

Every Starfleet ship that has left spacedock has done so without a corridor full of smashy hammer thingies. How do they expect to create drama without a corridor of smashy hammer thingies?
At least the Enterprise in STiD had a long open shaft that redshirts could fall down when the ship listed. See, that's how drama is made. And this means now we know why the ships always face each other right-side up; they'd run out of redshirts otherwise.