From Humble Beginnings: The United Federation of Planets，Chapter 1: The Early Years，Excerpt:

Ultimately, the decision was made to push forward with an adoption of the new antimatter based primary reactor pioneered by United Earth with the NX class. While the limit of trained personnel and fuel production would heavily bottleneck the production of these first new hulls for the best part of two decades, the decision would nonetheless set the tone for the Starfleet going forward: only the best, most cutting edge technology would be used in the vessels built for and by the Starfleet, and that character would prove again and again to be decisive even well into the modern day—a Starfleet ship, packed full of the very best the Federation could offer, would simply be pound for pound more capable than any ship had any right to be, by the standards of the other powers of the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

But the central power plant was only one half of the equation, and the confluence of four different design philosophies resulted in a significant debate on how the next generation warp nacelle would be designated. Most critically, it was determined that, rather than a bespoke design for each class of vessel, as all four of the Federation members had previously employed, a single, unitary "bolt-on" drive assembly would be designed, in anticipation of the logistical challenges of maintaining, and indeed expanding, the Starfleet going forward. The first question, of course, was the matter of the single most critical component: the actual warp coil assembly itself.

While the power team labors over the Mark Two antimatter engine, incorporating various technologies sourced from the three elder members of the Federation, the Nacelle team gets to work. There are several technologies that can be easily integrated, and a few general design features that are simply incompatible with the intended "bolt it on" one-size-fits-all usage, but there are several overall features which must be decided upon. Firstly, there is the physical arrangement of the coils themselves within the overall array. While the team anticipates that blending the latest generation Vulcan electroceramics, Andorian cooling systems, Tellarite plasma regulators, and the highly power-efficient Cochrane type array design will produce a result that is substantially greater than the sum of its parts, potentially allowing a ship to break the Warp Eight barrier all by itself, there is some debate as to how large the array itself should be. For various engineering reasons, the optimum array size for the new model will be some number of spaced four-coil sub-arrays, but the exact number per nacelle is still a matter of debate. The smallest configuration would be a set of three sub-arrays, but simulations suggest that both a median design with five arrays and a massive extra length set of ten total sub arrays would also be favorably efficient, especially for increasing the ship’s average cruise speed. Alternatively, one of the engineers has proposed a radical design with four double arrays, one wrapped around the other—the inner array would probably be vulnerable to plasma overpressure in certain conditions, but simulations suggest that such a design might leap past Warp Factor Eight and start pushing, if not exceeding, Warp Factor

Nine

, a feat that, if successful, would give the Federation the second fastest ships in either quadrant by a fair margin—though the maintenance complications and volatility risks aren’t trivial, misaligned coils in such a design could easily tear the entire nacelle apart at high warp, and the difficulty of venting plasma from the inner coil assembly could result in the entire array slagging itself or even violently exploding in the event of a major plasma overpressure scenario.

[ ] Use a basic 12 coil array Using the minimum sized array would somewhat limit the maximum dimensions of the warp field and thus the upper limit of ship size, but would be less expensive per nacelle and ease maintenance somewhat.

[ ] Use a midrange 20 coil array A midrange coil assembly would allow larger vessels without increasing maintenance needs above the expected—on the other hand, it’s not likely to see a significant performance increase over a 12 coil design in most situations.

[ ] Use a massive 40 coil array This design would put more warp coils in a single nacelle than are possessed by the Vulcan Surak class or the NX class in total, not to mention lengthening the nacelle considerably, but not only would this allow for truly ambitiously large vessels, on more typically scaled ships it would almost certainly produce, at a minimum, a very significant improvement to sustainable cruise speed. Maintenance on such a massive number of coils would be a significant challenge, however.

[ ] Use experimental 36 coil "double array" A coil-in-coil double array with 36 total coils offers tantalizing theoretical performance, perhaps even enough to leapfrog an entire warp factor and reach,or even exceed, Warp Nine. This would come, however, at a cost of significantly greater maintenance overhead and several potential added risks of, as one engineer so pithily put it, "Unplanned Rapid Disassembly." Still, if it pans out, it would represent a quantum leap forward in ship speed even for the Vulcans, who have the fastest ships among the Federation member states, and indeed much of the Alpha and Beta quadrants in general.

One Hour Voting Moratorium Please​

Last edited: Nov 26, 2025