Star Trek Federation Ships Achilles Heel

[Darrin Drader]

Can someone please explain to me why the Federation always felt it necessary to locate the bridge in a little bubble at the top of the ship? I seriously would like to know how this makes any logical sense. If the ship gets into a scrap and loses its shields, the command crew is vulnerable, sitting at the center of a bull's eye. It's easily decapitated. Besides, it isn't like that massive screen at the front of the bridge is an actual window. You could locate that thing in a warp nacelle if you wanted to and the picture wouldn't be any less clear. In an age when it's an easy matter to lock onto specific locations of an enemy vessel, how can this make any form of logical sense? Wouldn't it be a lot smarter to locate them at the heart of the vessel somewhere?

 

[Hand of Evil]

It is just because! Silly I know, but the best answer, and when you get to design a star ship you can put it, the bridge, where you want to. Same could be said for every star ship I have seen, they put the bridge where it is a target.

 

[Silver Moon]

Real Reason: It looks cool

Official Star Trek Stated Reason: The bridge is the part of the ship that will need to be updated with new technology most frequently so by placing it there the entire bridge module can be removed and a new one inserted without having to tear apart the entire ship.

 

[jhallum]

Can someone please explain to me why the Federation always felt it necessary to locate the bridge in a little bubble at the top of the ship? I seriously would like to know how this makes any logical sense. If the ship gets into a scrap and loses its shields, the command crew is vulnerable, sitting at the center of a bull's eye. It's easily decapitated. Besides, it isn't like that massive screen at the front of the bridge is an actual window. You could locate that thing in a warp nacelle if you wanted to and the picture wouldn't be any less clear. In an age when it's an easy matter to lock onto specific locations of an enemy vessel, how can this make any form of logical sense? Wouldn't it be a lot smarter to locate them at the heart of the vessel somewhere?

To add to other people's stated reasons, it's also appears that there are a second layer of shields that protect the bridge area when the ship goes to Yellow Alert (as seen in the second movie, as Reliant approaches).

 

[Alaric_Prympax]

Wouldn't it be a lot smarter to locate them at the heart of the vessel somewhere?

Because that is where the main computer core is located. It's surrounded by Sick Bay, it's supposed to be the 'safest' part of the ship. It's in the Blue Prints (yeah somewhere I've got 'D' prints) and the old TOS Star Trek Technical Manual.


Hmm... apparently I've got some Skill Points in Knowledge (Star Trek). :\

 

[mmu1]

Real Reason: It looks cool

Official Star Trek Stated Reason: The bridge is the part of the ship that will need to be updated with new technology most frequently so by placing it there the entire bridge module can be removed and a new one inserted without having to tear apart the entire ship.

... which makes so much sense in a setting with transporters. I usually try not to nitpick sci-fi shows, but anything with an associated "Technical Manual" has it coming.

I think they designed the bridge placement (and kept it throughout the various series) like that for two reasons: Looks, and precisely because they wanted to be able to threaten the bridge crew with something blasting through from the outside.

After all, ignoring the implications of the technology they have available in order to create a sense of danger is a long-standing Trek tradition.

Think about the way, for example, that Trek doctors constantly lose patients with no apparent head or brain injury, when they should be able to use transporter technology to keep the various tissues oxygentated and alive at will. Or, for that matter, have a transporter pattern of everyone in the crew on file, and when they're wounded, simply de-materialize and re-materialize them with the damaged parts replaced with pristine tissue.

And that's without even getting into the really obvious stuff, like seatbelts for bridge chairs, or body armor and something better than flashlights for away missions into hostile territory...

 

[Hand of Evil]

... which makes so much

And that's without even getting into the really obvious stuff, like seatbelts for bridge chairs, or body armor and something better than flashlights for away missions into hostile territory...

Don't get me started on transporters and personal shields! You would think that someone would have created a communicator/shield combo! Hell, it should be built into the red shirts!

 

[WhatGravitas]

Because that is where the main computer core is located. It's surrounded by Sick Bay, it's supposed to be the 'safest' part of the ship. It's in the Blue Prints (yeah somewhere I've got 'D' prints) and the old TOS Star Trek Technical Manual.


Hmm... apparently I've got some Skill Points in Knowledge (Star Trek). :\

Additionally, according to the ST:TNG manual, and some notes about the Voyager, the bridge is a self-contained module, that can be ejected as a kind of "super-lifeboat", so it has to be located on the outside of the hull.

Furthermore, the federation ships are not war vessels, but science and luxury vessel, can you explain these large rooms, replicators and holodecks in any other way?

And, of course, the main reason is: It's cool.

 

[Umbran]

Imagine, if you will, transporting an entire room of your home - so that every single wire and pipe connection fits perfectly upon arrival. Now make many of them tiny electronic things, and make the others carry lots of high-energy plasma that blows up if it gets loose.

Note how generally, they don't use transporters when precision is called for? Making sure a person winds up basically on the pad is one thing. Making sure a multi-ton object winds up perfectly fitting within a confined space is quite another.

That, aside from the energy cost, which also probably tells you why personal shields aren't common equipment in the Federation. It seems to me that Trek tech is far better at working on small things than it is at big ones.

Also, to be blunt, once a ship's shields are down, the fight is basically over anyway. Hiding deep within the ship isn't a big help. Without shields the enemy would be able to get to it if they wanted to with just a fraction more time. Burying the bridge deep within is helpful against unintended danger, on occasion. But given how often a ship thoroughly explodes after one hit with the shields down, it doesn't seem like it matters much.

 

[mmu1]

Imagine, if you will, transporting an entire room of your home - so that every single wire and pipe connection fits perfectly upon arrival. Now make many of them tiny electronic things, and make the others carry lots of high-energy plasma that blows up if it gets loose.

Note how generally, they don't use transporters when precision is called for? Making sure a person winds up basically on the pad is one thing. Making sure a multi-ton object winds up perfectly fitting within a confined space is quite another.

So making sure all those individual organs, blood vessels, capillaries, cells, molecules and atoms within a person stay aligned the way they're supposed to doesn't require precision? According to the ST background material, transporters are accurate all the way down to the quantum state of the matter they manipulate, so the idea that they'd have trouble with something as trivial as precise 3D positioning of machinery doesn't make much sense.

Trek technology is completely internally inconsistent for dramatic purposes, and that's all there really is to it.