Starfleet Jedi

I was over at DITL, and someone had started a thread asking:
"What if Voyager had been a Nebula-class vessel instead of an Intrepid?".
Everything else is the same:
Same Captain, same Crew, same enemies, but how does having a different ship change anything?

I thought it was interesting, so here goes.

What If Voyager had been:
1)A Nebula-class?

2)A Sovereign-class?

3)A Defiant-class?

I'll come back later with my thoughts...

*Edit: Each ship gets sufficient crewmembers to be fully manned, except all the original crewmembers are there and occupy the same positions...

The Intrepid class was newer than the Nebula class, for starters if it had been the exact same crew the Nebula would be undermanned by quite a bit. You wold also be looking at older (not necessarily less powerful) weapons, sensors and shield emitter design.

I don't know how a Nebula would otherwise compare to an Interpid.

The Sovereign would have to require a bigger crew, but otherwise I think the crew would've weathered the journey better.

The Defiant would've been too small, with too few stores and too small a crew to really make it a viable journey.

1)

ILDN wrote:The Intrepid class was newer than the Nebula class, for starters if it had been the exact same crew the Nebula would be undermanned by quite a bit. You wold also be looking at older (not necessarily less powerful) weapons, sensors and shield emitter design.

While the Intrepid is newer, I never got the impression it was as powerful as a Nebula.
Remember the Nebula was designed at the same time as the Galaxy, so it has Type-X Phasers, as many torpedoes and as powerful shields.
And it has either a sensor pods for scientific missions, or a weapons' pod for military missions, so you could have added firepower.
The only advantage the Intrepid has over the Nebula, IMO, is the top speed.
But, since Voyager was expected to make the trip back in 70 years, that means it was travelling at roughly 1000C, a speed which the Nebula can easily match.
Plus, the Nebula has more ressources, a greater crew, so repairs are easier, bigger area, so it can take more punishment before failing, probably greater energy reserves as well, since it is based on the GCS which was supposed to be able to travel 5 years without refuelling.

2) The Sovereign, having the same advantages as the Nebula (more ressources, longer trip without refuelling, etc...), with more powerful weapons, and a much higher top speed (useful for the very few enemies you can't directly fight off), should weather the trip far better then the Intrepid.
It would have badly beaten the Kazon (or would have seriuosly bloodied their nose) before running off, possibly destroying 1 or 2 of the Kazon ships.
Not many opponents would have thought of fighting them.
The Vidiian would have been defeatable, the Hirogen, unless thay had swarmed in packs, would also have been defeated.
Species 8472 would have been a bit easier.
And finally, in "Endgame", a Sovereign ship with "Batmobile Armor" and "Transphasic Torpedoes"... Drool... :)

3) While the Defiant is a powerful ship and would have, with its greater agility and powerful weapons and armor, passed through the Kazon like they weren't there, it lacks so many ressources that the trip time would have doubled, the ship needing constant refuelling if only for it's weapons.
Very limited ressources means very limited crew, meaning no Delta flyer.
The torpedoes would not have been an issue here since, let's face it, a face-full of Pulse Phaser fire will do the job nicely, thank you very much...
Even 1 crewman's death would have been felt greatly, but on the upside, they wouldn't have had any space for Neelix, so that's one big plus on the Defiant side... :)

One of the most critical things that changes are the choices made by the crew with each vessel. Being able to pound the snot out of the Kazon, for example, might even have allowed the crew to save the Caretaker's array and get back home, and never have to go through the seven years of hell that they did. Conversely, if they do get stuck in the Delta Quadrant, the larger crews, greater supplies and so means that choices dealing with stopping constantly for repairs and refueling are made much, much easier, thus many story McGuffins are eliminated. Shipboard manufacturing capabilities are potentially much greater, and you don't have to work so hard to explain away where the ship stores all those shuttlecraft that constantly get crashed or destroyed in every other episode. :-)
-Mike

Praeothmin wrote: 3) While the Defiant is a powerful ship and would have, with its greater agility and powerful weapons and armor, passed through the Kazon like they weren't there, it lacks so many ressources that the trip time would have doubled, the ship needing constant refuelling if only for it's weapons.
Very limited ressources means very limited crew, meaning no Delta flyer.
The torpedoes would not have been an issue here since, let's face it, a face-full of Pulse Phaser fire will do the job nicely, thank you very much...
Even 1 crewman's death would have been felt greatly, but on the upside, they wouldn't have had any space for Neelix, so that's one big plus on the Defiant side... :)

The Defiant class starships have actually proven that they do have a rather decent staying power when it comes to mission endurance. The Valiant, for instance, was supposed to spend three months circumnavigating the Federation. It wound up having to make repairs on it's own with only a crew of cadets, and it traveled for months without support while tracking down the prototype Dominion battleship.
-Mike

I don't know about the Nebula. While it probably could go around longer before refueling the difference was not that massive - Voyager was designed to refuel every three years instead of five but it also had a higher top cruising speed which likely just uses more fuel.

While I have a massive soft spot for the Nebula class (I always wanted a show with one as the lead ship), it never really showed off that it was very powerful, IMHO. Funnily enough I always had the feeling Voyager (with the intrepid class coming from a similar line of ships as the Sovereign obviously) was a massive step up for Starfleet.

A smaller ship, sure - but one that packs a mean punch (and can take one - they where shot at by just about everything and mostly came through in one piece even when the ships they fought where supposedly more powerful). Just look at some scenes where they start flinging torpedoes like mad. They damn near match a Galaxy in speed of delivery of their weapons. They regularly use multiple phaserbeams at the same time and seem to have no problems with higher warp speeds either.

Plus, unlike both the Nebula and the Galaxy it had a few tricks that made traversing the Delta quadrant much easier: it had technology to regenerate Dilithium crystals build in, it had transporters that it could use through it's own shields (and seemed more stable in general), it never needed those weird baryon sweeps that the Galaxy (and hence, the Nebula probably as well) needed every five years or so and it has a much higher top speed than any of the other ships. It also seems to be much more maneuverable and it could land on a planet for repairs and the like, which a Nebula is not known to be able to do.

This is not to say that the Intrepid class is more powerful, but I'm not so sure it's really that much less than a Nebula. My gut feeling tells me that the difference is smaller than you'd think - the technology involved is a generation ahead of what is in a Nebula/Galaxy and I for one think that counts for something as well (To paraphrase an example: "Voyager is equipped with Mark 10 torpedoes, which where not in service when the missile launched. They may just punch through").

A higher top speed does not necessarily translate into greater fuel consumption and therefore explain away the 3 versus five year or whatever refueling perioid difference between the two starship classes. For example, a Nebula or a Sovereign might use up vast greater amounts of fuel than an Intrepid simply on accound of their far greater mass... 3.5 million metric tons versus 700, 000. A five times greater difference. More powerful weapons and shields could also translate into higher power consumption. So just going by a simple set of refueling numbers is rather vauge and inconclusive by itself.
-Mike

Roondar wrote: Plus, unlike both the Nebula and the Galaxy it had a few tricks that made traversing the Delta quadrant much easier: it had technology to regenerate Dilithium crystals build in, it had transporters that it could use through it's own shields (and seemed more stable in general), it never needed those weird baryon sweeps that the Galaxy (and hence, the Nebula probably as well) needed every five years or so and it has a much higher top speed than any of the other ships. It also seems to be much more maneuverable and it could land on a planet for repairs and the like, which a Nebula is not known to be able to do.

As per "Relics", the E-D also could recomposite the dilithium crystals inside the articulation frame as well. Most of the rest of what you are describing, such as beaming through shields are tricks that the crew themselves jury-rigged up, and so as long as the crew stays the same, many of the same solutions will be applied as well to those particular situations that required them.
-Mike

1. The Galaxy's five years without refueling thing is non-canon stuff, I presume. We never heard of the Enterprise-D being refueled in her lifetime, so either she never needed it or else she got topped off at every starbase along the way. We just don't know. The best two examples we can get are from "Mark of Gideon"[TOS] ("Power's no problem; it regenerates.") or anytime when Voyager had to stop for gas. (Was there such a time? She ran out of deuterium but where was the antimatter?)

Put simply, we have no evidence that any ship has a greater fuel range than any other ship.

2. The Defiant is almost certainly a maintenance queen compared to an Intrepid. Voyager may have needed constant supervision ("Haunting of Deck Twelve", was it? Or "Macrocosm"? And how the hell am I remembering all of these names without looking?). But I rather doubt she'd be as bad off as the Defiant would've been.

Ah, that brings up a point that I hadn't previously thought of; that when each of the three substitute ships is brought to the Delta Quadrant the way Voyager was, it is likely they will also suffer extensive damage the way she did. The question is, how much will each of the substitutes take? Bigger, stronger shields and armor might make for less damage, though whatever level of damage big ships like the Nebula or Sovereign take, it will probably be much harder to repair in-situ. Thus a substitute ship might actually be slower and worse off than the Intrepid would.
-Mike

Praeothmin wrote:
While the Intrepid is newer, I never got the impression it was as powerful as a Nebula.

Never said it was.

Roondar wrote: Plus, unlike both the Nebula and the Galaxy it had a few tricks that made traversing the Delta quadrant much easier... it had transporters that it could use through it's own shields (and seemed more stable in general), it never needed those weird baryon sweeps that the Galaxy (and hence, the Nebula probably as well) needed every five years or so

All of which were either the result of gaffs due to some or all of the cast/crew of the show not paying enough attention, episode-specific plot devices never seen again, or, in most observed cases, some combination of both.

For example, I would be willing to bet that in most cases when Voyager used transporters with shields up, the writers simply forgot about that detail and no one bothered to point it out.

The baryon sweep was just an excuse to have "Die Hard onboard the Enterprise" and since we've never heard from it again, especially on something as critical as Voyager where they did not have convenient off-screen facilities to do it with, obviously B&B (the same people behind "Starship Mine") didn't think it was all that important either. (Then again, if we assume that baryon sweeps are something all warp-capable starships need, we could assume Voyager simply used an alien facility off-screen).

Since we're talking about baryon sweeps, I feel this is worth mentioning as well: yes, Mike Wong points out the problem with the entire concept of a "baryon sweep" in his TNG canon database:

this particular gaffe is legendary. Infamous. Stunning. Invent whatever superlative you like. Since protons and neutrons are both baryons, it's an obviously ridiculous idea to eliminate the ship's baryons. All you'd have left is some stray electrons.

To return to the original point, I feel that it's necessary to discount Voyager's ability to "transport through shields" as a gaff.

Mike DiCenso wrote:

Roondar wrote: Plus, unlike both the Nebula and the Galaxy it had a few tricks that made traversing the Delta quadrant much easier: it had technology to regenerate Dilithium crystals build in, it had transporters that it could use through it's own shields (and seemed more stable in general), it never needed those weird baryon sweeps that the Galaxy (and hence, the Nebula probably as well) needed every five years or so and it has a much higher top speed than any of the other ships. It also seems to be much more maneuverable and it could land on a planet for repairs and the like, which a Nebula is not known to be able to do.

As per "Relics", the E-D also could recomposite the dilithium crystals inside the articulation frame as well. Most of the rest of what you are describing, such as beaming through shields are tricks that the crew themselves jury-rigged up, and so as long as the crew stays the same, many of the same solutions will be applied as well to those particular situations that required them.
-Mike

Beaming through their own shields is not jury-rigged. It's just something that 'sovereign era ships' such as Voyager can do and earlier ships well, can not. Nor is the rest (better maneuvering, higher top speed, landing capability) jury-rigged.

ILikeDeathNote wrote:

Roondar wrote: Plus, unlike both the Nebula and the Galaxy it had a few tricks that made traversing the Delta quadrant much easier... it had transporters that it could use through it's own shields (and seemed more stable in general), it never needed those weird baryon sweeps that the Galaxy (and hence, the Nebula probably as well) needed every five years or so

All of which were either the result of gaffs due to some or all of the cast/crew of the show not paying enough attention, episode-specific plot devices never seen again, or, in most observed cases, some combination of both.

For example, I would be willing to bet that in most cases when Voyager used transporters with shields up, the writers simply forgot about that detail and no one bothered to point it out.

The baryon sweep was just an excuse to have "Die Hard onboard the Enterprise" and since we've never heard from it again, especially on something as critical as Voyager where they did not have convenient off-screen facilities to do it with, obviously B&B (the same people behind "Starship Mine") didn't think it was all that important either. (Then again, if we assume that baryon sweeps are something all warp-capable starships need, we could assume Voyager simply used an alien facility off-screen).

Since we're talking about baryon sweeps, I feel this is worth mentioning as well: yes, Mike Wong points out the problem with the entire concept of a "baryon sweep" in his TNG canon database:

this particular gaffe is legendary. Infamous. Stunning. Invent whatever superlative you like. Since protons and neutrons are both baryons, it's an obviously ridiculous idea to eliminate the ship's baryons. All you'd have left is some stray electrons.

To return to the original point, I feel that it's necessary to discount Voyager's ability to "transport through shields" as a gaff.

Right. So the ooh, hundreds of times they did that are all writer errors. Especially since they just didn't seem bothered anymore about their shields blocking their transports. Like say on the Enterprise-E where they too didn't worry about beaming through their own shields anymore.

But of course, that is just 'writer error' and hence we have to forget about it. And of course, when we have an entire episode detailing maintenance we can forget about that as well when it's inconvenient.

I'm sorry but it doesn't work that way.

Voyager's canon established they can beam through shields. And no, they didn't do it once by accident, they did so on numerous occasions across seasons. Likewise, STTNG established that Galaxy-class cruisers needed a Baryon sweep for maintenance every now and then. Like it or not, these are parts of canon.

So, deal with it and don't try to rewrite the show to prove something.

I've never heard of this stuff about Voyager beaming through shields all of the time. Got a list?