Cost cutting space ships

[Riedquat]

It should also be pointed out that after a certain point you have to put things in the field for testing. Because labs are totally controlled environments.

When you do that you don't rely on it, you keep the original systems in place too, or at least stick to situations where if things go wrong it doesn't matter. By the time trials are taking place on an in-service vessel you should be pretty confident in the thing. Make a new engine design for example (which can't be a simple drop in and keep the old ones as backup job) and the first test it's likely to do in the field won't be on the platform it'll eventually be fitted to. On the first vessel built with it it'll undergo trials first before being comissioned.

[Nealithi]

It should also be pointed out that after a certain point you have to put things in the field for testing. Because labs are totally controlled environments.

When you do that you don't rely on it, you keep the original systems in place too, or at least stick to situations where if things go wrong it doesn't matter. By the time trials are taking place on an in-service vessel you should be pretty confident in the thing. Make a new engine design for example (which can't be a simple drop in and keep the old ones as backup job) and the first test it's likely to do in the field won't be on the platform it'll eventually be fitted to. On the first vessel built with it it'll undergo trials first before being comissioned.

I am afraid at this point we are moving past my personal knowledge and I am quoting others. One a retired navy draftsman and a former navy sonarman. And new systems including experimental ones often do go in alone and on the class meant to serve. One article I read (and was argued by the navy.) had a ship's computer systems go haywire and they had to contact shore tech support to get the ship going again. New bridge layouts can't be tested with backups and so forth. As to Voyager. Again it was on a relatively short range mission. Only getting the assignment for the two reasons. Tuvok was in Janeway's crew. And Voyager was nimble enough to avoid the instability in the badlands. If the gel packs gave out, they were a stone's throw from DS9 and could reasonably expect a tow. Looking at what they were supposed to be doing. The ship was top of the line with some experimental gear and could do the job before it.

[Riedquat]

Things can slip through the cracks but by the time a ship goes into service its systems might be new but should be past the experimental stage, and it'll undergo trials before being commissioned. Bad designs can still slip through often enough it's true, with a degree of needing to get it fixed on the job, and some problems will never show up until you've got a decent amount of real-world mileage under your belt but Voyager gives the impression of being commissioned in a state where no-one really had much of an idea whether it worked or not. The only time I'd expect that would be desperate wartime measures, and even today these things are so big, expensive, and complex it's hard to see that happening.

[chaos42]

In one of the Trek sourcebooks (I forget which one), there's a paragraph explaining that during the Dominion War, many Starfleet vessels were rushed into production and sent out.

Some of the ships were mostly empty hull, with only engines, weapons, and enough life support for a skeleton crew. I think they didn't even have official names, just numerical designations.

Personally i think that this proves the federation has money its just trying to make everyone think it doesn't and the cost cutting is because the secret cabal of federation accountants are pinching credits again

[Riedquat]

In one of the Trek sourcebooks (I forget which one), there's a paragraph explaining that during the Dominion War, many Starfleet vessels were rushed into production and sent out.

Some of the ships were mostly empty hull, with only engines, weapons, and enough life support for a skeleton crew. I think they didn't even have official names, just numerical designations.

Personally i think that this proves the federation has money its just trying to make everyone think it doesn't and the cost cutting is because the secret cabal of federation accountants are pinching credits again

It demonstrates that the Federation doesn't have infinite resources. What alternative they have for managing those resources without money is conveniently ignored. Money is a pretty lousy way of doing it but once you get past a very small society no-one has come up with a practical alternative; Trek's approach of ignoring the issue isn't much of a solution.

[Deledrius]

That part is interesting, because the Federation usually appears to have limitless physical resources; the main limiting factor is construction and labor (which takes a very indirect role), and of course staffing since No Cloning Allowed.

But the losing-war setting presents an opportunity to show the Federation as having only seemingly limitless physical resources, which when under stress is revealed to still having a limit. One which is incomprehensibly high, but limited nonetheless, and they're burning through enough to actually hit that limit.

That's background for pretty good drama there, IMO. It's a shame that was never explicitly mentioned that I recall, though it was a subtext in the later seasons. Most often it only felt like it was a manpower shortage, or a matter of not rebuilding fast enough, but they missed out on the boundless Federation discovering it wasn't as boundless as everyone was accustomed to it being.

[Riedquat]

That sounds good. In the normal course of things they can meet their needs easily enough so there's no real pressure to push their limits - whatever crops up in the routine can be easily expanded for. I can perhaps accept that with ease enough to get what you want then perhaps somewhat paradoxically most people have stopped constantly wanting more (it's not entirely plausible but enough for worldbuilding). Then the culture shock of the limits being reached would make for some interesting stories in its own right.

It does beg the question as to why it's not happened before, since they've had wars before. Neither side really thinking of more than a bit of squabbling over the border areas perhaps? That wouldn't be true of the Borg but the Borg haven't proved a constant threat, there's no war of attrition there.

[chaos42]

the problem i think is they don't have a concept of the scale their working with

but it would be fun to see a series where its people who keep the federation running behind the scenes like those running supplies ect. and having to support the federation when we see something like the big offensive and they are rushing supplies around just to get enough materials to support it

[Deledrius]

Then the culture shock of the limits being reached would make for some interesting stories in its own right.

Yeah, the culture shock element would be great to explore. Seems like it would be right up DS9's alley, too, what with the whole "showing the reality behind TNG's assumptions" bit it danced around from time to time. Maybe this would have been a step too far for Berman.

the problem i think is they don't have a concept of the scale their working with

I think that's definitely true through most of Trek. Not as bad as in the JJ films or Discovery (mostly they made the mistake of stating or showing distances that don't make sense instead of just being vague), but as a whole the people writing for Trek don't really seem to consider these kinds of big picture questions unless it's specifically relevant to the needs of an episode. Generally I feel that worked out for the best, but a little bit of something like having even just a rough map in the series bibles probably wouldn't have made things too rigid.

[chaos42]

well its something i would like to see more of. like it would explain why older star ships keep getting retrofitted and kept in service, they need as many ships a possible to cover a huge amount of space. Its actually part of my personal theory of a few things and explains things they did like reusing models.

After the Kitomer accords the federation disarmed a lot but kept moderate offensive systems but the ship building funds were probably slashed (the federation uses money its just people on earth don't NEED money to live, but it exists), and while some new ships where built they didn't have the funding to construct test and make that many more ships so they got creative and started using designs they had and tried reusing the modular structures that many of them had to build different types of ships for the fleet with out having to test as much because they already knew what those structures could take in terms of stress and what could be built in them. what kind of systems. This is why so many variants of ships where made or older ships where turned into cargo ships like the miranda. It would also explain why old constitution class and oberth class where at wolf 359 its what they could get there in time. they where panicking to get anything to stop the borg and even if oberth are cannon fodder they wanted something there and anything in their eyes was better than nothing.

but thats how i see it at least after wolf 359 the funding increased and they started building better ships like the defiant. Other wise its something i think some times when i see space ships like the red dwarf that actually is mentioned in the series to be terrible ship that was originally going to be state of the art but the cut backs removed all the improvements. or the nostromo from aliens the ship is not well designed as it has loads of parts and hardware that fail them or its badly set up, not enough co2 scrubbers on board so they have to get extra on the emergency escape craft.

Now i realize a lot of these are due to writing plots but one problem i have with trek as ive gotten older, like with voyager it was so cookie cutter you could see it coming. The problems are that a lot of these things shouldn't happen, (despite neelix's cooking).