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I was thinking about how Starfleet would do ground combat normally and thought about how they would establish a base of operations. One of the thoughts that occured to me was that you could convert a Nebula class mission pod.

A Nebula class mission pod has approximately the following dimensions:

Length: 151.26m
Width: 171.18m
Height: 22.8m

If we use deck heights of 3.8m we can have 6 decks in this. This would give us a total floor space of 76500m². If you converted the interior of one of these, added a few thrusters to the bottom and some large doors this would serve as a very good base of operations. It would take quite a bit of design work but I think that it would be viable.

What do you guys think about it?

Long time ago a friend of mine and I designed one of these. It was essentially as you described, a Nebula mission pod with a lifting body shape that could do a re-entry and glide in like the E-D saucer did in Generations, only with a couple of mini impulse drives to give a controlled soft landing. Voila, one instant ground base and supply dump. We had some weapons and a shield system on it for defence, too. The idea was to be able to land a whole slew of troops against heavy transporter jamming and defences that might not be very survivable for shuttles.

Great mind's think alike!

Can you post your design as I would be immensely interested in seeing it.

I don't think I have them any more.

OK, thats a shame. I may have to do a design for everyone to review.

Sounds good, I look forward to it.

Main problem with this idea: Starfleet has nothing decent to put inside it.

*Cough* Lots of phasers *Cough*

alexmann wrote:*Cough* Lots of phasers *Cough*

those phasers are better spent on the ventral surface of the orbiting ship rather than on the lander. Orbital bombardment is far more effective. what is referred to in the previous post is the total lack of decent landing troops in Starfleet.

I meant hand phasers. Use it as a supply base for ground troops.

And now we get Lighthawk's point; what ground troops.

Don't know.

That's one thing that annoys me about Star Trek. Yes, the Federation is a peace-loving, idealistic, utopian society. But as they have seen from their neighbours, not everyone in the galaxy is so chummy. So surely it would be in the Federation's best interests to have an organised, trained, well-equipped ground force. Even if they operate primarily along the outer regions of the Federation.

alexmann wrote:Don't know.

And therein lies the problem. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the pod base idea, I think that's solid. It's just that the question "Can a nebula pod be made into a ground base?" is a pretty simple question: yes, it can.

The real question is "What would it take for Starfleet to build up a ground force that would need such a base?"

Not much, they have most of the technology all they need is to put it together. They could do it in a couple of years max.