The calculator gave me a measurement of around 181,000 m^3, however that doesn't take into account the shuttlebay or nacelles, so probably round that up to 220,000 or so, which puts it in the middle of the Destroyer category. Not sure what that means for overall capabilities.
Ah, it seems that it's considerably smaller than I thought. I probably over-estimated the size of the central structure and under-estimated the space lost to the rounding of the corners. So a Destroyer-sized ship. Not as capable as a Light Cruiser, but that could still work quite well for a very specialized ship. This would be roughly comparable to a Saber class Destroyer in overall performance, given comparable size and technology, though with a different role function and specialization.
I had seen the phaser arrays as a secondary armament, not designed for heavy hitting, more for point defense and surgical strikes, as well as providing covering fire for the shuttles as they come into the bay. To that end the ability to retract them into the hull (with all the additional space that would take up with the mechanical doors and whatnot) is a trade off between stealth and firepower.
Yeah, that is what I figured. Secondary batteries, providing support fire and general phaser coverage, but not the big hitting power.
I'd thought about it, and I might go back and add one in if I can justify it. For the moment I see the ship designed to not be seen at all, so I get the feeling it wouldn't be designed with an aft launcher, on the reasoning that they're usually not that useful as a deterrent against pursuit and that a fast moving ship like the Pegasus shouldn't really have trouble getting its forward launchers on target.
Yeah, I can understand that. Given the size being smaller than I thought, it's more understandable, though honestly I would expect Starfleet to still stick a launcher back there just because. Modern designs rarely lack aft launchers, even ships like the Nova class.
Given how much more vertical space the Defiant has to play with for its cannons I felt that keeping them in the same power range would help make the ship more believable. The wings aren't really that thick, though they do have depth and direct access to the warp plasma system, so that does run in the Pegasus's favor. Maintenance is an interesting issue, as the wings are large enough to walk in, but it'd still be cramped (though I'd imagine not really any more than in a Defiant). That makes repairs a bit more complex than would be normal for a ship of this size, though hardly anything unmanageable.
Well, given the much smaller size than I estimated, cannons comparable to the Defiant's in performance would be about in line, particularly if they have increased operational durability (meaning you don't have to swap out components mid-battle). Given the reduced usage of the guns the Pegasus would have, maintenance would be even less of an issue, though they would still be rather maintenance-heavy weapons.
That was my thinking as well, trying to squeeze a vertical core into a ship like the Pegasus is a bit of a waste, especially when there's so much horizontal room (though the same argument can be made for the Defiant, surely a longer core would also benefit that design). I'd almost argue that it could use the same core as the Intrepid, though that'd make it a bit long, or a primary and secondary core, so that during low power times, such as stalking or laying low, only one core is active, and when needed the other core is brought online. Each core wouldn't be enough to push the ship to maximum speed, though there's no real reason they couldn't be sufficient to power the rest of the ship at full strength, especially if they shared plasma conduits (probably the weakest part of the power generation system).
Yeah, and there are probably quite a few ships that have horizontal cores in the fleet. The Defiant is small enough that you don't really need a horizontal core to get more than enough power than you need, so I can understand the vertical system. I would recommend staying away from multi-core systems. We almost never see them, so there is likely a major reason for their absence. Perhaps a scaled-down version of the Intrepid's core?
This is the same problem the Normandy has in Mass Effect, though it's never brought up during the games themselves, the buildup of heat (which is analogous to the subspace emissions the Pegasus is trying to hide) can lead to dangerous levels within the ship, forcing the Normandy to find a static sink to deplete it's stored energy into. Essentially the ships in Mass Effect store up the heat and excess energy they generate until they can reach a planet/object or space port that can discharge it safely. While Federation obviously has excellent heat management systems, as we've rarely seen a situation where they've been unable to handle anything but the most extreme conditions, it still remains an issue for a craft as specialized as the Pegasus.
Yeah, the background detail in ME is awesome. Trek doesn't have nearly the same problem with waste heat issues that ME ships do, probably because they have some tech to handily deal with it, but a ship like the Pegasus would still run into waste heat problems on extended stealth ops.
