Quote:Somewhere between that and the Defiant, yeah - save for the fact that everything I've seen on the Raider suggests that it's just as much of a full-up starship as any Starfleet design. My proposal for the combat parasites is an exclusively tactical unit, which neither has nor needs the endurance to make any but the shortest of interstellar trips without assistance. The only reason I'd even include warp drive at all would be to prevent enemy ships from being able to disengage at will.
Like, say, the Maquis Raider that Chakotay and his crew were flying before they and Voyager took their little side-trip?
Anyway, I've done some figuring, courtesy of data from Ex Astris Scientia.
Sovereign class - 685m
Prometheus - 415m
Steamrunner class - ~360m
Nova class - 180m
Defiant class - ~120m
Maquis Raider - ~60m
In light of which, more data on my proposed parasite.
I think that it should be about ninety meters long, with two internal decks (the Defiant, for reference, has four) and an overall plan rather like a rhomboid pyramid - that is, essentially a flattened and scaled up Delta Flyer. 'Draft' about ten meters, 'Wingspan' between thirty and forty. Primary armarment would be six fixed pulse phasers mounted just inboard of the warp engines, backed by a pair of rapid-fire quantum torpedo launchers in the nose and three heavy strip phasers running lengthwise along the 'facets' of the hull. The navigational deflector is on the lower centerline, between the torpedo tubes, and is rather broad and shallow - about the same proportions as the Galaxy's, even if a very different look. Obviously, most of its internal volume is going to be taken up by equipment, weapons, or magazine space for the torpedo tubes.
About a third of the volume available to the crew is taken up by the Jeffries Tubes - and another third divided evenly between the bridge and the engine room. The bridge is nominally on Deck One, but in fact is about halfway between the two levels, sort of like -=. The rest of Deck One includes a shortish corridor running lengthwise along the centerline, a weapons locker, a rudimentary sickbay, and a transporter closet to port, and three small cabins along with the ship's common area (lounge/galley/living room) to starboard. Deck Two starts with another lengthwise corridor, this one all the way to the starboard side of the living areas, that runs from the bridge in the bow to Engineering in the stern. The rest of its space is occupied by the ship's lifeboat. Engineering is probably the most spacious part of the ship, being as it's got a fairly normal two-deck plan, but is still extremely cramped relative to even the Defiant.
The cabins have four beds each - bunked in pairs on either side of the compartment - but the ship's standard complement in actually only ten. The bridge has five stations - Helm, Ops, Gunnery, E.W.O., and Command - which are arranged sort of .... NRAGH! Fucking interfering EZBoard. Helm is down, forward, and center. EWO is middle-forward, port, and down. Gunnery is middle-forward, starboard, and mid-height. Command is center, middle-aft, and mid-height. Ops is aft, port, and up. They're connected by a sort of unrailed catwalk, and the -entire thing- is cantilevered out away from the compartment walls except for a few narrow structural braces... because those same walls are a Stellar Cartography-style 360 degree viewscreen. The seating is comfortable acceleration-couch type things, with seatbelts.
In the early days of the progam, your carrier ships would be refitted existing vessels - that's part of the point - but later on you'd want to be handling them with new-build hulls. Your carrier, whatever size you end up using, is going to want a lot of broad, relatively flat surfaces that you can set hardpoints into... My suggestion for an early design would be to take a Sovereign saucer, then stretch and build up its after edges somewhat, a la the Miranda or Constellation classes. Mount the warp engines (also Sovereign type, of course) in a down-and-angled-out position with integrated rollbar, sort of like a cross between the Miranda and the Akira. If my sketches are right, you'd end up with something about 2/3s the length of a Sovereign, and capable of carrying up to a dozen parasites.
Bang for your buck, ne?
Ja, -n
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."