Star Trek: Theurgy

What if Voyager wasn't and Intrepid Class starhip

December 31, 2020, 05:20:43 AM

What if Voyager wasn't an Intrepid Class starship but was actually a Theurgy Class starship? How do you think the events in the the Delta Quadrant would have played out for the crew of Voyager?

Lets level the playing field a little by taking into account the reduced staffing, an Intrepid Class starship had a standard compliment of 200 personnel, Voyager left with 141 crew members and then gained 12 more from the Maquis. That means they were at 70.5% staffing of their intended crew prior to absorbing the Maquis crew.

Now the Theurgy Class can hold a standard compliment of 110 officers and 760 enlisted for a total of 870 Starfleet personnel, lets apply the same 70.5% reduction and that gives us 77 officers and 536 enlisted for a total of 613 personnel.

I personally believe that the MVAM would have given them a huge advantage in both resource gathering and security. However the reduced staffing may have made its operation more difficult with less personnel to manage systems, plus given what we know about the species in the Delta quadrant, hijacking one of the sections of the ship could have been a little more easy. The Theurgy Class has the advantage of maximum speed of 9.995 over Voyagers 9.975, but Voyager had a smaller frame therefore making it more agile than larger ships.

I look forward to everyones thoughts and opinions on this, I have been thinking about it a lot this past week since starting with this SIM.

Re: What if Voyager wasn't and Intrepid Class starhip

Reply #1 – December 31, 2020, 02:01:13 PM

Short version? A Theurgy-class starship would outgun damn near everything up to a Borg cube. A ship that large, that fast, that sophisticated and that stupendously powerful would scare the living daylights out of...well, everyone. Endurance would be one problem, however. Compared to more typical starship designs like the Galaxy, Sovereign and Odyssey, the Theurgy has (in my mind) considerably less endurance for long missions. The Theurgy's warp core is extremely powerful and technologically sophisticated, but that comes with considerably higher power consumption and maintenance requirements, making the Theurgy unsuited to extended operations far from Starfleet support. A Galaxy, Sovereign or Odyssey could have a mission endurance several times that of a Theurgy-class starship.

Of course, all that applies to the Intrepid too, which also has an extremely power-hungry warp core and very sophisticated technology. One of the reasons Voyager so frequently encountered supply problems (again, in my head canon) was that it simply wasn't designed for such long independent operations. A Theurgy-class starship would, I think, face the same problem, just on a different scale.

In terms of how the trip would go? In my mind, it'd be a bit more boring. Certainly, nobody in their right mind would dream of attacking a Theurgy-class starship with anything less than an entire armada. Everyone would be falling over themselves to make friends with the ridiculously overweaponed starship that just visited their space. At least, that'd be until the Borg come along, spam CTRL+V with cubes and assimilate Voyager for its super duper advanced technology.

Re: What if Voyager wasn't and Intrepid Class starhip

Reply #2 – January 01, 2021, 01:32:12 AM

All good points, however Voyager was specifically designed as a Long-range explorer vessel and the fact that they continuously ran into supply issues I think was due to the constant conflicts they were encountering. If a starship didnt get into a major battle or get their energy reserve depleted every week they could have gone much longer without the need for resupply

Re: What if Voyager wasn't and Intrepid Class starhip

Reply #3 – February 12, 2021, 02:37:23 AM

If I may chime in as a newcomer here. The points raised about resources and logistics are very real ones to keep in mind here. And not just the problem of supply and provisioning here, but also one of maintenance and repair. And I don't mean of minor fiddly bits like component parts. I'm speaking of structural parts. Actual bulk heads, struts, spars, and other pieces of the hull that make up the very frame of the ship.

Yes, Inertial dampeners keep the crew from being turned to jelly, but the ship still takes those stresses I'm sure. You have to be able to maintain, repair, and rebuild parts of the ship that are structural at certain intervals to keep the ship spaceworthy. Just like a blue-water vessel, or an aircraft, there are parts where if they fail, the vessel is completely and utterly useless.

Voyager was able to land on planets, and was small enough to make use of dockyard facilities that other races had because it just wasn't that big. A Theurgy class is huge by all observations. You have to have a dock that's significantly larger for the ship to fit in order for intense maintenance to be carried out. Honestly? a Theurgy class would have fallen apart because there just weren't shipyard facilities that large available (that we saw), and any ones that were that big? I can almost guarantee that the nations that owned them would try to Impress a Theurgy class into service, and might actually have the firepower to do so.

The alternative is construction of dockyard facilities, and probably the dismantling of them when finished. And doing that would be a massive undertaking both in personnel hours spent, resources, and time. If that were viable, it would have drastically increased the time the trip would take. That's just my two cents.