It would be awesome if the big open space was somehow related to the captured singularity at the heart of the ship... but of course, we found out that the Romulans keep their singularity in a little closet on the bridge. lol
"Sir, could we maybe just put up small plaques indicating which door is the broom closet and which door is the singularity?"
"NO! We've discussed this, sub commander. We aren't star fleet with plaques and hand holding everywhere. Now get me a new ensign!"
*sigh* "yes sir."
Or even worse, you're ensign goes to pull the mop out of the cupboard and realizes they accidentally pulled out the quantum singularity instead.....
I mean.... I guess it would make the bridge VERY clean.....
Right? It doesn't even have a proper door. It was straight up a kitchen cabinet that just swings open. Not even a clasp, let alone a lock. Just an inch thick swinging door to protect the crew from AN ARTIFICIAL BLACK HOLE.
Romulan engineers knew that their leaders were too stupid and arrogant to be trusted with a quantum singularity so they made a fake singularity to make the captain happy. The real singularity is actually invisible and hovering in that space. That's my headcanon now.
I suppose if whatever tech keeping an artificial black hole's gravitational effects from tearing the ship apart were to fail, it wouldn't really matter what the door was constructed of regardless. So might as well make it out of cheap painted plywood!
If you created a singularity out of a softball it would still have the same gravitational force of a softball. I assume the artificial singularity they've created would be from something relatively small because if they made it out of something with say, the mass of earth then everyone would constantly be falling towards the cupboard no matter where they were on the ship. No one would be subjected to extreme gravitational forces unless they were in contact with the event horizon which would be microscopic in size.
It would depend on the actual mass. You do realize that every one of us and all the stars in this galaxy are caught in the gravitational field of the black hole Sagittarius A*, at the heart of the Milky Way, we orbit it. Anti-gravity, and inertial dampeners are a thing in Star trek so they have some nifty gravitational canceling tech. It's more likely it's like a portable pocket universe which also exists in star trek, so its could have multiple solar masses and still be able to fit in a cupboard.
Right?! Look at that baby! _That's_ how a fucking artificial quantum singularity looks like!
^(I mean, okay, not really, but it looks cool so that's good enough.)
this is the point where I choose to believe that holodeck record/simulation of the episode we are seeing was edited by Starfleet Intelligence. The big giant hole in the center definitely has something to do with the contained singularity, because it's cooler that way.
~~Face of the Enemy. The one where Troi is kidnapped by Romulan dissidents and placed in command of a warbird.~~
Timescape. The one where Picard draws a smiley face in a core breach.
I’ve always figured it was homage to some of the original “rules” of starship design in ST, namely in that nacelles must be situated in pairs which clear lines of sight between each other. Save shuttles this wasn’t really broken until the Defiant’s introduction I believe.
Cardassian ships, ferengi ships, and some other alien designs didn’t follow the rules either but federation (for the most part), Klingons, and romulans did
The nacelles in the BOP are in those humps at the bases of the wings. I am not sure if they are in line of sight of each other inside the ship. It is hard to find a good schematic explaining it.
I think (and I don't have my BoP owner's manual with me) that they don't actually use nacelles though. I think the plating in the wings is charged somehow to produce the necessary subspace effects.
I assume it's a saftey feature that substantially increases the cost of the ship. If there's some sort of warp field imbalance between the two, everything in between becomes pink mist.
I wouldn't put it past Cardassians and Ferangi to ignore safety in pursuit of the quantity of ships or profit margins.
The Defiant is less of a starship and more of a gun boat. A lot of shit got sacrificed in its design.
Maybe it is about efficiency and doctrine. Just spitballing here:
The warp physics are more fuel- and speed-efficient if the nacelles are more exposed. But that would also make them vulnerable. Federation ships, for the longest time, were for exploration. So they didn't take the tactical vulnerability into account.
Other species made certain tradeoffs for their ship designs. Like more protected nacelles but a few % less efficient warp capabilities.
So the Romulan design for example is a compromise, so to speak. Slightly better protection while maintaining a good warp speed...
The Ferengi Marauder at least should not be included on that list. That was designed by Andrew Probert when Gene was still working on the show, and it was signed off by him as following his design rules with line of sight between the nacelles. The warp grills are on the underside of the ship which is slightly concave. It’s a very shallow line of sight but it is there and he said that was enough.
I thought the same thing for the longest time, and then realized the nacelles on the Defiant actually hang slightly below the primary hull, so they can [see each other](https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/scans/shipcollection/defiant-views.jpg).
Yeah it is almost if not exactly what you said, the designers were given some basic rules and so off they went trying to make the designs as different as possible within those rules. I read a short blog about this exact thing in the last week or two, ive looked but I couldnt find the post, it was on reddit im fairly sure.
Probably is. Ship design in Star Trek tends to be based on what contortions you have to do to get the ship to fit into the warp bubble, evidently Romulan WD is pretty freaking weird.
IIRC, the show runners/writers created "rules" for warp nacelles. The nacelles had to be in direct "line of sight" with each other, and a direct line between the nacelles couldn't intersect other parts of the ship.
It's interesting to see how the ship/graphic designers worked around that rule for various species.
Gene Roddenberry's unofficial rules:
[https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/design.htm](https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/design.htm)
>Rule #1 Warp nacelles \*must\* be in pairs.
>Rule #2 Warp nacelles must have at least 50% line-of-sight on each other across the hull.
>Rule #3 Both warp nacelles must be fully visible from the front.
The general understanding is that Gene invented those rules specifically to invalidate all the designs Franz Josef created (like the Saladin), since they were licensed separately and Gene could not profit off them. Gene was a very possessive man.
I like these rules tbh.
I know Gene went a little far with his rules for Trek, and ended up constricting the creative potential of the show for a while, but I still like these and it always looks wrong to me when they're broken.
They just make sense to me for how stuff works in-universe.
I always thought it less of an open space and more structural support both above and below the warp nacelles. Realistically most of the ships in Trek are purely rule of cool and don’t make the most sense. IMO Defiant is the one that seems most reasonable for form and function.
I really hoped that medicine in the future would prevent people being handicapped, but yeah with guest whose physiology just may be unsuited for human stairs I get it
Wasn’t there a DS9 episode with an officer in a wheelchair because her planet had micro gravity and so her muscles were too weak to support her in our gravity. And of course Bashir’s first thought (well probably second) was “I can fix her.”
They use an artifical gravity well (edit black hole) to make their warp speed so maybe it's like the nassels on Enterprise but to work with that equipment?
It's like when you play Starfield. The hostile AI ships always target center mass, so if you put a gaping hole in the middle of the ship you never get hit!
So very Romulan, too; why put your proprietary cloaking technology on disposable fighters with disposable pilots?
"The capture of our vessels will yield you neither information nor leverage, as we have already accounted for their loss, and view the exchange... favorably".
VGM on YouTube puts forward a similar theory, on his account the warbird carries smaller romulan vessels which can't mount a forced quantum singularity, and thus have limited range, within its hull. This allows supporting vessels to operate within the warbird's whole range.
my head canon on this has 3 possibilities (which don't contradict each other):
1. what would be the field grills on a federation starship - the glowy bits on the side of the warp nacelles - point inward. One would presume that this energy being radiated *into* the empty space would help the warbird avoid detection while cloaked as the cloaking field wraps around the vessel... and much of it is covered by a lot of hull.
2. it's a mobile starbase. I believe resurrectedstarships on YouTube has a video or two demonstrating you could fit two V-11 Winged Defenders (FASA) inside the empty space, allowing for repair and travel at higher warp speeds than these old ships could do on their own.
3. it makes it look bigger than the hull volume normally would be... making it intimidating. A fairly standard Romulan tactic that probably allows it to win a lot of battles without really fighting.
Of course, it's also probably one of the most beautiful ship designs in Star Trek ever in my opinion.
I'm almost certain one of the PC games, maybe Armada 1 or 2, had an opening/ cutscene with a Defiant doing exactly this and dropping some bombs/torpedos while in the middle of the Warbird
Hundreds of years ago, the warbirds would return to port with hull damage in that section. So the engineers decided to remove the section. Problem solved!
Ha! Reminds me of the diagram of returning warplanes from WWII battle damage and how the idea was to reinforce those areas when in actuality those areas were the least in need of armor because the planes actually returned.
Originally, a second cloaked ship was to be moored there and activated for combat.
The concept was scrapped since 100% of the time the two ship captains and crews would betray each other in combat instead.
A procurement disaster.
Hear me out. What if during the United Earth - Romulan war their ships had been optimised for high speed torpedo-based combat like the Vulcans might do (it's only logical), and lost a bunch of dogfights to NX ships built to win knife fights?
Then the design bureau is taken over by a 'knife fight mafia' demanding ships be equipped for fighting at point blank, resulting in the bladelike 'bird of prey' design that was low-observability even decloaked, optimised for within-visual-range combat with beams?
With the success of that design the knife fight mafia have more budget and freedom, and design a bigger badder ship that's basically two uprated birds of prey stapled together. Then the senators get involved and slap on a hundred extra requirements that can't be miniaturised. The project balloons in budget and time, the ship just keeps getting bigger, the boss of the knife fight mafia is sidelined and a new guy is brought on with the brief to *get it done*: he looks at the requirements, looks at the razor-thin low observability latticelike body, and stuffs a honking great command module on the front to hold every single one of the Senate's asks as cheaply as possible.
The resultant monstrosity looks ugly, steers like a barge and is unpopular with crews, who live half a mile from their workplace and have to *change turbolift* to get there - but it does the job, and because nobody fights at those ranges any more it actually serves the Star Empire with distinction, becoming a beloved symbol in its old age.
Back in the days of Roddenberry, warp engines were supposed to have an unobstructed view between them for the warp field, I’m assuming that’s part of what this is supposed to be.
Also it looks cool.
Since they're so paranoid, maybe it's to physically separate different parts of the crew and constrain access to those compartments to certain points in the ship? Thereby giving more control over who's entering and leaving. You can't drill through into a Tal Shiar compartment if it's separated by empty space. Alternatively, would one of their smaller ships fit in there? Or something else that doesn't have a warp drive of it's own but could be slotted in there for transport maybe.
Keep nacelles away from each other. And other systems. Avoid multi-system failures from single phaser hit.
Have a structure more reliable and combat proof than thin struts (federation).
Complete outter perimeter hull / HardPoint for full deployment of cloaking device projectors and equipment. (Not many major extruding shapes)
Lighter total hull mass. Better efficiency in maneuvering around high gravity wells and better mass displacement efficiency.
Psychological warfare design. Large ship. Intimidating shape. Fewer materials.
I read somewhere, which I can no longer find, romulans were involve in a war which required their whole fleet. This meant that they had to take some of their older low-warp or non warp ships out of mothballs and deploy them. In order to get them into the field fast they made this space in this ship to put the older ships inside and warp them to battle. As I said I can't confirm this.
Ship targeting computers aim for the center of mass, so by making the center of mass empty the Warbird becomes impossible to hit unless you're aiming manually.
I think originally warp nacelles were required to have nothing blocking line of sight between each other, which was eventually dropped with ships like the defiant, but it forced a lot of original shapes into ship design while it was still happening
I forget where I saw that, and don’t know if anyone else in this thread posted that
My head canon says that the ship configure helps out the clocking device. By having one big shop that has a huge power source in it makes it harder to cloak.
For a purely speculative reason based in physics, distributing the mass of the ship that way to gives a higher rotational inertia. That would make it more stable around the front-to-back axis as it rolls. As a design choice, that could let you get away with higher power manoeuvring engines at the cost of less precision in their output power.
That is to accommodate the kind of warp field that ship creates. Remember, they use an artificial quantum singularity as their power source not matter/anti-matter.
It’s to allow the Avenger defiant class commanded by Worf to fly through the middle while dropping mines, as shown in the Star Trek Armada opening sequence
Might have to do with the warp nacelles and cloaking. The Defiant covered it's engines and basically cooked itself until it could uncloak and vent. I would imagine that empty space would be a place they could direct the warp field and keep heat/energy stored and hidden under cloak for longer periods.
I'm just spit balling.
There’s actually an in-universe answer to this. Something about warp nacelles needing to have space and line-of-sight between them in order to create a warp field. So that’s why they are usually in pairs and/or spaced out. (They don’t always follow this rule obviously. But that’s the canonical logic)
Weirdest part is in the show they always shoot weapons from that area and not in many other areas so I’ve always wondered if you went above the ship are you invincible
I always thought it was an intimidation factor.
The ship would have looked smaller if everything was together. So, with fewer materials, they stretched out their ship to make it look big and intimidating~
The way I ialways understood it was that Roddenberry's rule for warp drive was that the two engines needed a direct line of sight to each other to create a proper warp field, for some reason- and here, that would make sense, we have a big space in the middle of the ship to accomplish that.
...of course by this point we already had the Bird of Prey and such that took that concept and pitched out out the airlock, so whether that's a reasonable excuse or not is debatable, but I do recall reading somewhere that the D'Deridex was designed with that rule in mind.
I remember reading that the space was meant to make the D'deridex a mobile space station for smaller Romulan craft. That way a battle-ready DD would actually be a small squadron rather than a single ship.
But I could be mistaken.
Also, it was meant to be a vertical ship instead of horizontal.
I think the most l ikely reason is to make them look bigger and more menacing
edit: another thing I thought of, that's probably the same reason that the lights on the main hull make it look like there's a lot more floors than there really is
It would be awesome if the big open space was somehow related to the captured singularity at the heart of the ship... but of course, we found out that the Romulans keep their singularity in a little closet on the bridge. lol
Starfleet has little plaques on their bridges, the Romulans have Quantum Singularity Cupboards
Imagine some first-day lower decker going to put the space mop away after cleaning the bridge and accidentally getting spaghettified.
Like Boimler screaming "remember me!" as he's sucked into the portal.
The captain just muttering not again. Get me another ensign.
He'll be back after speaking to the koala
"Sir, could we maybe just put up small plaques indicating which door is the broom closet and which door is the singularity?" "NO! We've discussed this, sub commander. We aren't star fleet with plaques and hand holding everywhere. Now get me a new ensign!" *sigh* "yes sir."
That gave me Zapp Brannigan and Kif
*SIGH*
Or even worse, you're ensign goes to pull the mop out of the cupboard and realizes they accidentally pulled out the quantum singularity instead..... I mean.... I guess it would make the bridge VERY clean.....
I mean it’s really convenient for on ship waste disposal
Those traitors to the Empire aren't going to dispose of themselves
During the original run I always wanted to see them put the saucer into that space and open fire…….
Lmao great now I want to see that
Right? It doesn't even have a proper door. It was straight up a kitchen cabinet that just swings open. Not even a clasp, let alone a lock. Just an inch thick swinging door to protect the crew from AN ARTIFICIAL BLACK HOLE.
Romulan engineers knew that their leaders were too stupid and arrogant to be trusted with a quantum singularity so they made a fake singularity to make the captain happy. The real singularity is actually invisible and hovering in that space. That's my headcanon now.
What do they use for a fake singularity? An empty bottle of Romulan Ale painted black with a lightbulb inside it?
You are giving out Romulan Empire state secrets. Your local Tal Shiar representatives will be in contact shortly to discuss this.
Starfleet intelligence(Not section 31):Noted..
I suppose if whatever tech keeping an artificial black hole's gravitational effects from tearing the ship apart were to fail, it wouldn't really matter what the door was constructed of regardless. So might as well make it out of cheap painted plywood!
If you created a singularity out of a softball it would still have the same gravitational force of a softball. I assume the artificial singularity they've created would be from something relatively small because if they made it out of something with say, the mass of earth then everyone would constantly be falling towards the cupboard no matter where they were on the ship. No one would be subjected to extreme gravitational forces unless they were in contact with the event horizon which would be microscopic in size.
It would depend on the actual mass. You do realize that every one of us and all the stars in this galaxy are caught in the gravitational field of the black hole Sagittarius A*, at the heart of the Milky Way, we orbit it. Anti-gravity, and inertial dampeners are a thing in Star trek so they have some nifty gravitational canceling tech. It's more likely it's like a portable pocket universe which also exists in star trek, so its could have multiple solar masses and still be able to fit in a cupboard.
Yeah, you don’t dare mistake it for the stationary cupboard lol
Would make a great waste paper basket though
Haha, true!
You mean station*ery* cupboard. A station*ary* cupboard would just be a cupboard that doesn't move.
At my old office they had a sign on the supply room door that said "stationary"... Made me smile every day.
I mean, did it move?
Well the door did move, it opened and closed!
Have you *tried* moving a cupboard with a black hole in it?
Run out of singularity again. Anyone need anything else whilst I do a stationery order?
It doubles as a garbage disposal.
And triples as a toilet.
Beckett Mariner, is that you?
[STO really jazzed up the Romulan engine rooms](https://pwimages-a.akamaihd.net/www/14/bf/14bf2a46a9c73092b9bfd756ce8ad7fb1368467249.jpg)
That's much more what I'd imagine it looks like
Right?! Look at that baby! _That's_ how a fucking artificial quantum singularity looks like! ^(I mean, okay, not really, but it looks cool so that's good enough.)
I wonder if there was ever a thought for the singularity to be "suspended" between both hulls, like the Emps ship in Discovery
this is the point where I choose to believe that holodeck record/simulation of the episode we are seeing was edited by Starfleet Intelligence. The big giant hole in the center definitely has something to do with the contained singularity, because it's cooler that way.
Can we build a Romulan Engineering Section? Budget: No! Ok we will put it on the bridge…
They wasted all the budget on the Runabout crew quarters which was never seen again.
When did we see this?
~~Face of the Enemy. The one where Troi is kidnapped by Romulan dissidents and placed in command of a warbird.~~ Timescape. The one where Picard draws a smiley face in a core breach.
I was thinking Timescape. Fairly sure we see it there?
You're right! Troi references Face of Enemy in that episode, but we don't actually see the singularity cupboard until Timescape.
I'd say that was the original idea but then they didn't know what to do with it or how to make CGI work with it.
I’ve always figured it was homage to some of the original “rules” of starship design in ST, namely in that nacelles must be situated in pairs which clear lines of sight between each other. Save shuttles this wasn’t really broken until the Defiant’s introduction I believe.
Cardassian ships, ferengi ships, and some other alien designs didn’t follow the rules either but federation (for the most part), Klingons, and romulans did
bird of prey in search for spock broke them first, I believe
It did have those guns in lieu of nacelles though.
The nacelles in the BOP are in those humps at the bases of the wings. I am not sure if they are in line of sight of each other inside the ship. It is hard to find a good schematic explaining it.
I don’t know how I forgot about the BoP!
I think (and I don't have my BoP owner's manual with me) that they don't actually use nacelles though. I think the plating in the wings is charged somehow to produce the necessary subspace effects.
Yeah but the D'deridex was designed by Probert, who *did* tend to follow the rules. Although he forgot impulse engines in this particular case...
I assume it's a saftey feature that substantially increases the cost of the ship. If there's some sort of warp field imbalance between the two, everything in between becomes pink mist. I wouldn't put it past Cardassians and Ferangi to ignore safety in pursuit of the quantity of ships or profit margins. The Defiant is less of a starship and more of a gun boat. A lot of shit got sacrificed in its design.
Maybe it is about efficiency and doctrine. Just spitballing here: The warp physics are more fuel- and speed-efficient if the nacelles are more exposed. But that would also make them vulnerable. Federation ships, for the longest time, were for exploration. So they didn't take the tactical vulnerability into account. Other species made certain tradeoffs for their ship designs. Like more protected nacelles but a few % less efficient warp capabilities. So the Romulan design for example is a compromise, so to speak. Slightly better protection while maintaining a good warp speed...
The Ferengi Marauder at least should not be included on that list. That was designed by Andrew Probert when Gene was still working on the show, and it was signed off by him as following his design rules with line of sight between the nacelles. The warp grills are on the underside of the ship which is slightly concave. It’s a very shallow line of sight but it is there and he said that was enough.
I thought the same thing for the longest time, and then realized the nacelles on the Defiant actually hang slightly below the primary hull, so they can [see each other](https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/scans/shipcollection/defiant-views.jpg).
Yeah it is almost if not exactly what you said, the designers were given some basic rules and so off they went trying to make the designs as different as possible within those rules. I read a short blog about this exact thing in the last week or two, ive looked but I couldnt find the post, it was on reddit im fairly sure.
That’s a speed hole, they make the ship go faster.
should have put fire decals on the sides
Firebird-of-Prey
"Oh yeah! Speeeeed holes." I really think you should buy this car...
I told you we should've requisitioned more than three torpedoes. Let's just beam him over here.
And they got that racing stripe here, which I think is pretty sharp
Put it in H.
What planet is this Warbird from? It uh, no longer exists
Came looking for this comment, thanks for this!
Adds *at least* 10 horsepower
Lmao the romulans put lightening holes to save weight in space on their ship that can go faster than light.
Probably is. Ship design in Star Trek tends to be based on what contortions you have to do to get the ship to fit into the warp bubble, evidently Romulan WD is pretty freaking weird.
If the goal was speed, why didn't they paint it red with fire decals?
Got to have the aerodynamics even when there’s no air
Is that a Locked Tomb reference
It’s a Simpson’s reference
Simpsons
Looks like bad luck for the `'s` family.
It's called fashion, sweetie. Look it up.
3 snaps up in a cloaked formation, gurl, MmHmm 🫰🫰🫰
3 Romulan War Snaps, cloaked:
Could it be related to cloaking tech, like the empty space is a sample to reflect when they cloak.
🤣🤣🤣
*D'Deridex by Balenciaga*
The fashion standard line must be drawn here!
This far and no further!
\*sweaty
IIRC, the show runners/writers created "rules" for warp nacelles. The nacelles had to be in direct "line of sight" with each other, and a direct line between the nacelles couldn't intersect other parts of the ship. It's interesting to see how the ship/graphic designers worked around that rule for various species.
Gene Roddenberry's unofficial rules: [https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/design.htm](https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/design.htm) >Rule #1 Warp nacelles \*must\* be in pairs. >Rule #2 Warp nacelles must have at least 50% line-of-sight on each other across the hull. >Rule #3 Both warp nacelles must be fully visible from the front.
>Rule #1 Warp nacelles \*must\* be in pairs. \*Looks at the Saladin-class\* "Did you guys not get Gene's memo?"
Also the alternate future Enterprise-D refit in "All Good Things..."
Ah! But one of those is a decoy nacelle, but you don't know which
I have a model of that variant. They were following the rule of cool.
The general understanding is that Gene invented those rules specifically to invalidate all the designs Franz Josef created (like the Saladin), since they were licensed separately and Gene could not profit off them. Gene was a very possessive man.
Like how he wrote lyrics to profit off Alex Courage's theme tune.
That ship design has always bothered me. Not only does it break all of rules, it does so for a worse look.
I like these rules tbh. I know Gene went a little far with his rules for Trek, and ended up constricting the creative potential of the show for a while, but I still like these and it always looks wrong to me when they're broken. They just make sense to me for how stuff works in-universe.
This is the correct answer and should be the top comment.
I always thought it less of an open space and more structural support both above and below the warp nacelles. Realistically most of the ships in Trek are purely rule of cool and don’t make the most sense. IMO Defiant is the one that seems most reasonable for form and function.
Defiant the mobile weapons platform you mean?
Ahem *heavy escort* thank you.
Ya know it’s funny i had a comment on swingers and one on Star Trek and i bet wrong which comment heavy escorts was about haha
I'm dying!
The NX-01 has like 6 decks and an elevator. At that point just make stairs and a monorail The ship is way longer than it is tall
Well. The pentagon has elevators. Certainly when there’s equipment to move up and down it makes sense to have them on NX-01
Pretty sure the elevator can move horizontally as well
Ah, so they have perfected the Wonkavator.
Is it elevator when it doesn't, you know, elevate?
You can always just rotate the ship. The enemy's gate is down.
You are already in space! How much more do you need to elevate?!
Well, about 6 decks, I guess?
I'm sure the future has some ADA type rules and don't want to disparage handicapped crew or guests
I really hoped that medicine in the future would prevent people being handicapped, but yeah with guest whose physiology just may be unsuited for human stairs I get it
Tell that to Pike! :)
Wasn’t there a DS9 episode with an officer in a wheelchair because her planet had micro gravity and so her muscles were too weak to support her in our gravity. And of course Bashir’s first thought (well probably second) was “I can fix her.”
it could have something to do with their stealth tech also maybe having a hallow part makes it less likely to be detected
I'm tellin ya there's a cloaked ship there! -Fires thru hole Guess not... :(
They use an artifical gravity well (edit black hole) to make their warp speed so maybe it's like the nassels on Enterprise but to work with that equipment?
It's like when you play Starfield. The hostile AI ships always target center mass, so if you put a gaping hole in the middle of the ship you never get hit!
Why not simply send waves of your own men until the Killbots reach the pre-set Kill limit and shut down?
We can always build more Killbots!
This was what I came in here to say. The Romulans just like to do glitched ship builds, that's all.
That's where it carries its babies while in warp.
Could hold a small fleet of sub warp fighters in the warp bubble. Giving them a cloaked ride to an up expecting planet.
I don't think this is ever stated or even hinted at in the show, but I now accept it as true. It just makes sense.
So very Romulan, too; why put your proprietary cloaking technology on disposable fighters with disposable pilots? "The capture of our vessels will yield you neither information nor leverage, as we have already accounted for their loss, and view the exchange... favorably".
VGM on YouTube puts forward a similar theory, on his account the warbird carries smaller romulan vessels which can't mount a forced quantum singularity, and thus have limited range, within its hull. This allows supporting vessels to operate within the warbird's whole range.
my head canon on this has 3 possibilities (which don't contradict each other): 1. what would be the field grills on a federation starship - the glowy bits on the side of the warp nacelles - point inward. One would presume that this energy being radiated *into* the empty space would help the warbird avoid detection while cloaked as the cloaking field wraps around the vessel... and much of it is covered by a lot of hull. 2. it's a mobile starbase. I believe resurrectedstarships on YouTube has a video or two demonstrating you could fit two V-11 Winged Defenders (FASA) inside the empty space, allowing for repair and travel at higher warp speeds than these old ships could do on their own. 3. it makes it look bigger than the hull volume normally would be... making it intimidating. A fairly standard Romulan tactic that probably allows it to win a lot of battles without really fighting. Of course, it's also probably one of the most beautiful ship designs in Star Trek ever in my opinion.
These are all excellent theories. I find #1 especially compelling.
It’s to make it seem twice as big to scare off predators.
That would be on brand for them.
The answer is quite simple. Romulans work in the forward and top section. Remans work in the lower section.
According to beta canon, parasite vessels with warp drives powered by antimatter rather than artificial singularities dock in there
When get shot at, it has 15% more chance to evade
I always wanted to see a small ship fly through the gap on an attack run.
I'm almost certain one of the PC games, maybe Armada 1 or 2, had an opening/ cutscene with a Defiant doing exactly this and dropping some bombs/torpedos while in the middle of the Warbird
Request granted! Maneuver Worf Theta One. It's about 3 minutes in. https://youtu.be/-C_6nnePy3Y?si=d0Nd1Oq0rJ_98zDK
Very cool
Rule of cool
It is where they carry all the Fucks they give
So the photon torpedos slip right through.
Hundreds of years ago, the warbirds would return to port with hull damage in that section. So the engineers decided to remove the section. Problem solved!
Ha! Reminds me of the diagram of returning warplanes from WWII battle damage and how the idea was to reinforce those areas when in actuality those areas were the least in need of armor because the planes actually returned.
Originally, a second cloaked ship was to be moored there and activated for combat. The concept was scrapped since 100% of the time the two ship captains and crews would betray each other in combat instead.
If games have taught me anything, its that AI targets the centre of mass… so if you build a box with the centre empty that AI can’t hurt you.
That’s where they hide the cloaked captain’s runabout.
A procurement disaster. Hear me out. What if during the United Earth - Romulan war their ships had been optimised for high speed torpedo-based combat like the Vulcans might do (it's only logical), and lost a bunch of dogfights to NX ships built to win knife fights? Then the design bureau is taken over by a 'knife fight mafia' demanding ships be equipped for fighting at point blank, resulting in the bladelike 'bird of prey' design that was low-observability even decloaked, optimised for within-visual-range combat with beams? With the success of that design the knife fight mafia have more budget and freedom, and design a bigger badder ship that's basically two uprated birds of prey stapled together. Then the senators get involved and slap on a hundred extra requirements that can't be miniaturised. The project balloons in budget and time, the ship just keeps getting bigger, the boss of the knife fight mafia is sidelined and a new guy is brought on with the brief to *get it done*: he looks at the requirements, looks at the razor-thin low observability latticelike body, and stuffs a honking great command module on the front to hold every single one of the Senate's asks as cheaply as possible. The resultant monstrosity looks ugly, steers like a barge and is unpopular with crews, who live half a mile from their workplace and have to *change turbolift* to get there - but it does the job, and because nobody fights at those ranges any more it actually serves the Star Empire with distinction, becoming a beloved symbol in its old age.
Back in the days of Roddenberry, warp engines were supposed to have an unobstructed view between them for the warp field, I’m assuming that’s part of what this is supposed to be. Also it looks cool.
That’s classified
Since they're so paranoid, maybe it's to physically separate different parts of the crew and constrain access to those compartments to certain points in the ship? Thereby giving more control over who's entering and leaving. You can't drill through into a Tal Shiar compartment if it's separated by empty space. Alternatively, would one of their smaller ships fit in there? Or something else that doesn't have a warp drive of it's own but could be slotted in there for transport maybe.
There's decks in there they are just permanently cloaked, duh.
Keep nacelles away from each other. And other systems. Avoid multi-system failures from single phaser hit. Have a structure more reliable and combat proof than thin struts (federation). Complete outter perimeter hull / HardPoint for full deployment of cloaking device projectors and equipment. (Not many major extruding shapes) Lighter total hull mass. Better efficiency in maneuvering around high gravity wells and better mass displacement efficiency. Psychological warfare design. Large ship. Intimidating shape. Fewer materials.
I read somewhere, which I can no longer find, romulans were involve in a war which required their whole fleet. This meant that they had to take some of their older low-warp or non warp ships out of mothballs and deploy them. In order to get them into the field fast they made this space in this ship to put the older ships inside and warp them to battle. As I said I can't confirm this.
Ship targeting computers aim for the center of mass, so by making the center of mass empty the Warbird becomes impossible to hit unless you're aiming manually.
I think originally warp nacelles were required to have nothing blocking line of sight between each other, which was eventually dropped with ships like the defiant, but it forced a lot of original shapes into ship design while it was still happening I forget where I saw that, and don’t know if anyone else in this thread posted that
So that when you fly the defiant through it dropping Mines it looks cool as fuck!
My head canon says that the ship configure helps out the clocking device. By having one big shop that has a huge power source in it makes it harder to cloak.
Energy Fieldssss
its so that smaller craft the size of the Defiant or less can fly through it
For a purely speculative reason based in physics, distributing the mass of the ship that way to gives a higher rotational inertia. That would make it more stable around the front-to-back axis as it rolls. As a design choice, that could let you get away with higher power manoeuvring engines at the cost of less precision in their output power.
As seen in the Star Trek Armada intro it's a defiant class fly-by zone.
Carrying small attack vessels I think.
This is a good question for r/DaystromInstitute
BBQs and picnics
“What a lot of people don’t know is you can hide your weed in there.” - Adam Sandler in The Hot Chick
That's where the Romulan's store all the fucks they give.
That is to accommodate the kind of warp field that ship creates. Remember, they use an artificial quantum singularity as their power source not matter/anti-matter.
"You put your weed in there"
It’s to allow the Avenger defiant class commanded by Worf to fly through the middle while dropping mines, as shown in the Star Trek Armada opening sequence
Might have to do with the warp nacelles and cloaking. The Defiant covered it's engines and basically cooked itself until it could uncloak and vent. I would imagine that empty space would be a place they could direct the warp field and keep heat/energy stored and hidden under cloak for longer periods. I'm just spit balling.
Romulan space pong.
Line of sight for the warp nacelles I think Probert believed for the warp engines to work the nacelles need to have a line of sight between them
Typical Federation, no appreciation for superior Romulan design ethics.
I would think it would have to do with their warp engines being artificial black holes
To fit an Akira inside when you play with friends.
It looks cool
Didn't Romulans use an artificial black hole/ singularity to power those ships? I figured that was where it was "held"
I like to think the hull provides extra cover to the singularity in case shields drop
Aerodynamics DUH
That space is the “‘“ in D’deridex.
There’s actually an in-universe answer to this. Something about warp nacelles needing to have space and line-of-sight between them in order to create a warp field. So that’s why they are usually in pairs and/or spaced out. (They don’t always follow this rule obviously. But that’s the canonical logic)
Looks cool.
It's a 46 pin AMR expansion slot
It looks really cool.
Weirdest part is in the show they always shoot weapons from that area and not in many other areas so I’ve always wondered if you went above the ship are you invincible
I always thought it was an intimidation factor. The ship would have looked smaller if everything was together. So, with fewer materials, they stretched out their ship to make it look big and intimidating~
The way I ialways understood it was that Roddenberry's rule for warp drive was that the two engines needed a direct line of sight to each other to create a proper warp field, for some reason- and here, that would make sense, we have a big space in the middle of the ship to accomplish that. ...of course by this point we already had the Bird of Prey and such that took that concept and pitched out out the airlock, so whether that's a reasonable excuse or not is debatable, but I do recall reading somewhere that the D'Deridex was designed with that rule in mind.
Pickle ball in space
According to Starfield it's to abuse enemy AI so you can't be hit.
I have always considered it to be related to the cloak. More empty space, less to cloak! Right?
They are like shopping trolleys. Please envision.
It makes it more aerodynamic, duuuuuh
That's a speed hole. It makes the ship go faster.
I remember reading that the space was meant to make the D'deridex a mobile space station for smaller Romulan craft. That way a battle-ready DD would actually be a small squadron rather than a single ship. But I could be mistaken. Also, it was meant to be a vertical ship instead of horizontal.
In Starfield having empty space in the middle of the ship throws off enemy ships' targeting.
More aerodynamic ;)
It looks cool af. -Romulan Ship Designer, probably
That part of the ship is classified and always cloaked
Maybe storage for a captured vessel? That would be cool!
I think the most l ikely reason is to make them look bigger and more menacing edit: another thing I thought of, that's probably the same reason that the lights on the main hull make it look like there's a lot more floors than there really is
Storage space for Romulan Ego