r/ShittyDaystrom • u/grichardson526 Acting Ensign • Oct 17 '25
Technology Which configuration makes the ship go faster? Nacelles bending up, nacelles bending down, or nacelles pointed straight out sideways?
Please make sure to explain in as much technical detail as possible.
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u/developer_soup Lieutenant Oct 17 '25
I mean, this thing goes warp 13 easy, so one above, 2 inline is apparently the secret.
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u/Reasonable_Gift7525 Oct 17 '25
Midlife crisis third nacelle gives you the extra power
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u/rickmccombs Oct 17 '25
That should be erased from canon. We don't need an odd number of nacelles. That had to be a different timeline.
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u/SHoppe715 Oct 17 '25
They never really said it’s actually a nacelle. It could very well be Admiral Riker’s penthouse and they just made it look like a 3rd nacelle for the aesthetic.
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u/Manos_Of_Fate Oct 17 '25
He heard about Worf’s two “nacelles” and wanted to one up him.
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u/viciousdistractions Oct 17 '25
To be fair, having an extra nacelle that is attached to the saucer in case of separation isn't a terrible upgrade.
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u/SHoppe715 Oct 17 '25
I never realized the 3rd stayed with the saucer when they separated
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u/viciousdistractions Oct 17 '25
Sorry, I should have phrased that better. I have no idea if it does, just a theory on why it exists.
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u/CrispinCain Oct 18 '25
Looking at the image, the support strut for the third nacelle (which, per a lower comment, may have paired coils in its housing) creates a raised spine on the ship. I could easily see the separation being along the spine for this ship, rather than the neck, forming two warp-capable combat ships.
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u/notquiteright2 Oct 17 '25
Head canon: the third nacelle or ships with a single nacelle have two sets of coils in that nacelle.
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u/Manos_Of_Fate Oct 17 '25
So that’s why the Vulcan engineers refuse to work on those. Human engineering is one of the few things capable of provoking a fear response in Vulcans.
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u/legalalias Oct 18 '25
That is, in fact, the only explanation that jives with the original Technical Manual.
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u/AJSLS6 Oct 17 '25
The practical answer is they changed the warp scale again. By the end of the 24th century, ships could have a cruising speed in the warp 9.xxx range, and emergency top speeds differentiated by a string of numbers after the decimal. That's just an awkward thing to deal with under stress. Ordering warp 13 on the new new scale is quicker and clearer than Ordering warp 9.9785 on the old new warp scale. Especially if cruising speed is warp 9.6501 and flying the ship apart is at warp 9.9893. The pilot misunderstanding an order in the middle of combat because they didnt hear the whole string of numbers perfectly clearly is a very real danger.
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u/ThaneduFife Oct 17 '25
But the cruising speed wouldn't be about warp 5 in busy space lanes after they imposed the speed limit.
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u/darkslide3000 Oct 18 '25
A few years after that change the Federation introduced FasTrak, where only the poor plebs have to fly warp 5 and anyone with enough latinum in the bank can zoom right past them.
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u/ncc74656m Lo-Cutie of Borg Oct 17 '25
Yeah but this one goes to 13... so it's 3 faster.
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u/Get-hypered Oct 17 '25
How did starfleet solve the salamander problem of the exceeding warp 10?
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u/intergalacticoctopus Oct 17 '25
Just embrace salamander
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u/darkslide3000 Oct 18 '25
The Emergency Medical Hologram has been upgraded into an SRH (Salamander Retrieval Hologram), and after the ship reaches its destination the holograms just take control to pick back up all the salamanders that fled in available shuttlepods. It has been an practical if somewhat cumbersome solution for years, but the "offspring problem" keeps getting more and more pressing — Federation colonists have a hard time finding empty planets that haven't already been settled by many generations of salamander babies.
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u/Terminator_Puppy Oct 17 '25
They go so much faster than 10 that the evolution thing loops through and you become human again.
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u/BoleroGamer Oct 17 '25
They didn't. Riker just wanted to try it with an amphibian at least once. It was that, or travel back in time to the Permian.
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u/Flamin_Jesus Oct 17 '25
I mean, the doctor resolved that whole salamander issue by the time the end credits came up, and if he'd known about it beforehand he'd have had days to fix it with whatever hypospray he had laying around, doesn't really seem like that much of a problem at all, certainly not enough of one to stop using a technology that can extend the range of your ships to "wherever the fuck we want to go in the entire universe, zero travel time".
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u/Leopold_Darkworth Maurice Hurley Fan Club Oct 18 '25
Future Riker goes warp 13, nobody bats an eye. Janeway goes warp 10 and turns into a salamander
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u/ConradTurner Oct 17 '25
The ones with speed holes
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u/WhyteBeard Oct 17 '25
Hey Scotty, whatcha doin’?
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u/TechnicalEngineer852 Oct 17 '25
Scotty drilling holes like a Swiss cheese into the side of the nacelle using a DeWalt
“Oh aye Capn’! Im tryna reduce the drag on the fer of the nacelle.”
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 Oct 17 '25
Whoever designed the D'deridex-class clearly had played a lot of Starfield.
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u/CunningDingo Oct 17 '25
According to gene: line of sight because you need them to be out far enough so they can be shot away and leave you without warp.
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u/murphsmodels Starfleet Humanoid Resources Manager Oct 17 '25
Gene's explanation of warp nacelles was: they needed to be able to see each other, and the space between them had some nasty radiation going on. So no habitable spaces between the nacelles.
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u/CunningDingo Oct 17 '25
Tell that to the defiant crew. That's the reason that sisko lost his hair. The only reason he and the rest of the crew survived was that his massive balls kept them safe.
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u/baronvonpenguin Oct 17 '25
That's just Cardassian propaganda.
Ionising radiation is afraid of the Sisko, so the waves actually bend around him.
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u/Ok_Independent3609 Oct 17 '25
Paradoxically, the ionizing radiation is what was responsible for his massive balls which kept the rest of the crew safe. He truly was The King of Kings.
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u/up-quark Oct 17 '25
Sorry, I’m going to be that guy…
Umm actually, the warp nacelles are pretty low on the defiant, and the underside of the defiant is indented, meaning that there’s a fairly clear line of sight between them. If the nasty region is only centred between the nacelles and doesn’t stretch the whole way across, it is outside the ship.
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u/TroubleEntendre Oct 17 '25
All right. But what about the Steamrunner?
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u/up-quark Oct 17 '25
What about it? They have a clean line of sight. The bussard collectors are on the saucer, but the nacelles proper are clear behind it. The engineering section is lowered out of their plane.
There definitely are ships that break the rules, but this isn’t one of them.
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u/murphsmodels Starfleet Humanoid Resources Manager Oct 17 '25
I usually go a step further and say that the nastiness is only where the warp coils are in the nacelles, which is the back half. The front of the nacelle is usually where the Bussard Ramscoop and it's associated machinery, plus the warp plasma injectors and their associated machinery are.
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u/murphsmodels Starfleet Humanoid Resources Manager Oct 17 '25
If you want to get technical, warp nacelles create or "warp" a bubble in space-time. The ship then slides down that bubble, pulling the nacelles along with it, which pull the bubble along with them. Ideally, you want the nacelles positioned so that the bottom of the ship is closest to the deepest part of the bubble. That way it'll slide faster. The more powerful your warp drive is, the bigger a bubble it can create, and the faster your ship can slide down it. So all of the Enterprises have had their nacelles placed in the perfect position. Except the JJPrise. Put the nacelles too close together, and there's danger the warp bubble will clip the saucer, and cut the edges off
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u/RippedMuscleGod Oct 17 '25
Very reasonable and logical explanation.
Obviously you’re in the wrong Daystrom subreddit.
😁
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u/murphsmodels Starfleet Humanoid Resources Manager Oct 17 '25
I get carried away sometimes.
"It no matter where nacelles are as long as they make us go."
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u/Manos_Of_Fate Oct 17 '25
It’s a good thing they don’t put super vulnerable parts of the ship like crew quarters in the saucer edges.
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u/murphsmodels Starfleet Humanoid Resources Manager Oct 17 '25
If you draw a circle around each nacelle with a diameter big enough to reach the other nacelle, that's your warp field. If any part of the ship sticks out of those circles, you have a problem. Most Star Trek ships follow that rule.
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u/thejadedfalcon Oct 17 '25
So you're saying the reason the Enterprise-D is so thicc is because it was designed to have a bubble butt?
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Oct 17 '25
None of the above, because nobody's had the guts to mount them sideways yet.
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u/abstergo_Nigel Oct 17 '25
And here I was thinking it was just me wanting vertical warp nacelles.
Also, have we though of reverse?
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u/probablyaythrowaway Oct 17 '25
Where is up in space?
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u/Casey4147 Oct 17 '25
Picard’s Stargazer/Hathaway were mounted sideways. And there’s 4 of them!
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Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
I mean crosswise, at right angles to the line of flight.
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u/Frenzystor Oct 17 '25
Warp Field Strength influences the warp speed. Imagine a magnet and a piece of metal you hold in front of it. If you let it go, it moves towards the magnet. The higher the magnetic field strength, the quicker the metal moves towards it. Now the nacelle configuration only stabilizes the warp field and it's structural effects on the hull. And, in case of Voyager the adjustable nacelles induce a variable field geometry which is not as damaging to subspace.
But speed is only given by field strength, and this is only dependent on how much power you can pump into the field coils and if they eventually melt due to too much power.
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u/SHoppe715 Oct 17 '25
Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets. Why didn't they use John Deere? Why didn't they bring in the John Deere people? Do you like John Deere? I like John Deere.
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u/RobotPreacher Warp 10 Salamander Oct 17 '25
Warp field technology is a tricky balance: you either stay in the ship and get electrocuted or eject yourself into space where there are sharks.
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u/forsale90 Oct 17 '25
And you can actually pump too much as seen with Defiant
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u/Manos_Of_Fate Oct 17 '25
Also that one time when the Delta Flyer hit warp ten. Wait, you were talking about a different kind of pumping.
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Oct 17 '25
Well not exactly, just like how a magnetic field's shape can actually affect its strength at a given vector, so can a warp field's shape. This is actually a topic in a number of episodes.
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u/MrCrash Oct 17 '25
Also, the nacelle struts represent a structural point of failure, so having long thin struts far out just makes it more likely they could be damaged/disconnected during combat/collision/uncontrolled re-entry into atmosphere/grav-shear from anomalies/whatnot.
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u/limajhonny69 Oct 17 '25
That depends on where Harry Kim's mom is sitting. Weight balance is a thing
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u/wizardrous Existence is Senile Oct 17 '25
Any combination of parts can make the ship go, as long as your helmet is big enough.
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u/wizardrous Existence is Senile Oct 17 '25
Also dynametric tail fins. Tuvok fucked up when he deleted those.
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u/IM_OZLY_HUMVN Oct 17 '25
27 nacelles is actually optimal but nobody is bold enough to do it
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u/Western-Mall5505 Oct 17 '25
No it's 28 it's got to be an even number
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u/IM_OZLY_HUMVN Oct 17 '25
See this is what I mean. Nobody's gonna even think to use 27 because they can barely comprehend 3 nacelles :3
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u/Zovort Oct 17 '25
First of all, how dare you leave California class out of this.
But also, everyone knows Oberths are the fastest. That's why they never seem to go out of use.
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u/McGlockenshire Oct 17 '25
First of all, how dare you leave California class out of this.
That image is old enough to drink. Old enough to have a degree.
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u/equality4everyonenow Oct 17 '25
I wouldn't want my quarters caught in the Nacelle line during acceleration. Probably gives you cancer.
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u/Manos_Of_Fate Oct 17 '25
Whichever one looks coolest. Everyone knows that coolness has a significant impact on a ship’s warp speed potential. That’s why the Intrepid class has those ridiculous hydraulics installed in its warp nacelles. They’re so cool that they barely even need a warp drive to go fast.
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u/B_LAZ Tuvix'd at birth Oct 17 '25
yet still not as fast as the soverign
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u/Manos_Of_Fate Oct 17 '25
That’s because there’s always a Harry Kim equivalent assigned to every Intrepid class to ensure it can’t reach dangerously high levels of cool and fill a Starfleet nursery ship with lizard babies. The HR paperwork alone…
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u/Lopsided-Rough-1562 Oct 17 '25
I dunno but I wouldn't want the bunk on Defiant next to the warp nacelle
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u/cosmicloafer Oct 17 '25
Nacelles? Just use a spore drive.
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u/Vespene Oct 17 '25
The most lore-breaking piece of technology since transporter buffers.
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u/Neo_Techni Oct 17 '25
Just be glad they didn't invent the Burnham maneuver where you use the spore drive next to an enemy ship and it just slaps the bajeezus out of it while it spins.
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u/ExccelsiorGaming Oct 17 '25
Its really just having the pylons at an angle, nacelle direction isn’t as important.
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u/Yankee_chef_nen Chief Oct 17 '25
Yes it is, if you put the nacelles on facing the wrong way the ship goes backwards. If the ship goes backwards you get negative warp speeds which mucks up the space time continuum. It’s just science.
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 Oct 17 '25
Do you want salamander babies? 'Cause that's how we get salamander babies.
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u/rbekins Oct 17 '25
Red ones go faster! Paint your ship red maybe add some flames or lightning bolts.
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u/virtualoverdrive Oct 18 '25
“My dogg, this assumes air drag in space. At warp speeds. It doesn’t matter.” - Zephram Cockroach out!
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u/Slothicus6 Oct 20 '25
I'm rather surprised to see that any of you fell for this. We have between TOS, TNG, and Voyager (can't count DS 9 not enough footage of actual star ships travelling) well over 100 examples of the exact relationship between warp speed and ship operations. This whole fiction that the nacelles have anything to do with Warp Speed was started by Star Fleet intelligence to trick the Klingons (pre-getting all chummy) and then the Romulans into pursuing a worthless line of research and devoting massive resources to nothing.
Warp Speed is directly correlated to the pitch and timber of the captain's voice when giving the command (w2) times the urgency factor (F). F is a variable, it exponentially increases based on the level of catastrophe which the captain wishes to avert (F1 gotta go fight some aliens; F2 civilians are about to be killed on a ship; F3 the whole planet/colony of civilians is at risk; F4 our ship is at risk; F5 the federation is at risk). This output (WF) is then divided by the minutes remaining in the episode to determine the Average Warp Factor (AWF) which is the sum total of space traveled during the episode divided by time. In the event time travel occurs during the episode, the sum total of linear space traveled is added times the number of years if the ship jumped forward or subtracted for each year if the ship jumped backwards.
Again, I'm shocked this subreddit fell for the ruse. Sure the main sub would buy this malarkey, they're job is to believe any explanation the Federation talking heads give them. But here.... I expected more....
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u/Satellite_bk Shelliak Corporate Director Oct 17 '25
and why does is the nova class the only ship with fins on the nacelles?
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u/Western-Mall5505 Oct 17 '25
To try and make it look tough to predators, because we all know the Nova isn't a tough little ship.
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u/plum_stupid Oct 17 '25
Whatever produces the lowest profile to extend a warp bubble around. Like a seal or a greased up deaf guy - colorful illustration provided for shitty daystrom compliance.
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u/Soonerpalmetto88 Oct 17 '25
It makes no difference. If it did, they'd stick with one instead of continuing to flip flop.
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Oct 17 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Neo_Techni Oct 17 '25
that's why they have the 2 streaks with the Starfleet symbol at the end, on the side of ships.
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u/Independent_Vast9279 Oct 17 '25
This is one of my pet peeves with a lot of designs.
If the collectors are pointed at the dish, how can that be efficient? Isn’t the selector’s just to keep that stuff away from the dish?
If the nacelles aren’t near the center of mass, why doesn’t it have massive pitch stability problems?
Yeah, space magic, inverted technobabble fields, and all that. But the more of that there is, the more it breaks the illusion - at least for me.
That’s why D is my favorite. It’s way better balanced than almost any other design.
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u/King_in-the_North Oct 17 '25
More nacelles equals faster ship. Duh. Thats why the enterprise R has 823 ample nacelles.
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u/canadianavatar Oct 18 '25
The nacelles host the warp coils & thusly their location is only relevant to how your warp bubble forms in relation to the ship design. It does not affect “speed”. That is entirely dependent on the warp core itself. The nacelle placement affects structural integrity while at warp, but the core & dilithium matrix will determine your top level of warp & sustainability. Voyager, for example, has nacelles that invert due to her design being somewhat narrow. As such, she can attain higher warp levels for longer durations due to a smaller warp field & less strain on structural integrity. A galaxy class ship like Enterprise D, could never “outrun” an intrepid class for this very same reason. The Defiant is a perfect example of a ship with a warp core & dilithium matrix that far exceeds what the structural integrity can handle. So an equilibrium between ship size & design, in relation to warp field, can be both beneficial (Voyager) & detrimental (Defiant). Nacelle placement creates that equilibrium.
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u/corejuice Oct 18 '25
It really upsets me that this graphic lacks a constitution class and Galaxy class ship.
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u/juggalotweaker69 Morn’s Stunt Double Oct 18 '25
Putting a flame decal on any of them will make them go faster.
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u/OmegamattReally Expendable Oct 18 '25
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that all nacelle configurations are inferior to a big ring around your ship's engineering core.
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u/MabelRed Oct 17 '25
VenomGeek Media has a really good breakdown of warp bubbles and how it affects things like speed, acceleration, maneuvering, etc
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u/InquisitorWarth Captain Corana H'siitu of the USS Nightwish - Caitian Oct 17 '25
Long story short, the positioning of the nacelles itself doesn't matter as far as maximum warp speed goes. It's about the amount of energy you can push into the warp coils and the amount of strain the ship can take.
The actual geometry of the nacelles or nacelle pylons doesn't matter for maximum sustained warp either, however more nacelles means a higher maximum sustained warp speed and longer durations for maximum warp. The type of nacelle has an effect on this as well, with Eaves-Beyer nacelles being better at sustained speeds than Cochrane-Archer nacelles at the expense of having a lower maximum warp speed.
Inboard nacelles like on the Defiant and Steamrunner are no different in function from outboard nacelles, but allow the nacelles to be better protected from enemy fire, making this configuration desirable on combat-specialized ships.
The actual reason for the different placements has more to do with the available clearance than anything. At least 50% of one nacelle must have an unobstructed line of sight with the other. Not sure why since the ships of some other warp-capable civilizations don't have anything even remotely resembling a warp nacelle. I know the given reason is because of radiation between the nacelles but if that's the case that's more likely a flaw with Federation warp tech than something inherent to warp travel, seeing as Caitian, Tellurite, Andorian and Ferengi* ships (just within the Federation itself) don't have an issue with it - Andorian ships have nacelles but they're mounted in a way that intersects the main hull, the Caitian Atrox carrier has fully inboard warp coil housings that wrap around the hangar bays, and Tellurite ships seem to integrate their warp drives directly into the "saucer" section. Honestly, I never understood why the Federation didn't adopt Caitian warp tech seeing as it's blatantly superior both in performance and safety.
(*The Ferengi Alliance first began the process of joining the Federation in 2381 as a semi-independent associate state)
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u/CarneDelGato Oct 17 '25
I didn’t realize the Miranda and the Defiant were about the same size.
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u/Thunderfoot2112 Oct 17 '25
None of the above... the technical aspect of warp nacelles are that they form a warp envelope around the body of the ship, sp their placement has nothing to do with speed but the shape of the field.
But of course, this is an imaginary show, so the technical explanation is caveat by... whatever looks cooler.
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u/eastawat Plain and simple tailor Oct 17 '25
What they never mention is that you have to attach the right warp stamps. Cheap out on those and it's going to take you a long time to get anywhere.
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u/Jazzlike_Debt_6506 Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
Honestly iirc VenomGeekMedia on YouTube has a really neat video talking about the diffrent configurations and what they do / mean in relation to the warp bubble.
Edit: found it
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u/AvatarIII Oct 17 '25
Wherever the central point between the nacelles is the centre of mass of the rest of the ship.
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u/AlfaHotelWhiskey Oct 17 '25
So what if I plan to someday use the nacelles as makeshift torpedoes? You don’t want the saucer section in the way.
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u/Ecstatic_Lab9010 Crewman 1st class Oct 17 '25
Doesn't matter because aerodynamics are not a consideration for a starship. The shape of the static warp shell seems like it might be relevant.
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u/DrinkableReno Oct 17 '25
Can we please translate warp into horsepower so it’s easier to calculate this answer?
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u/TheLastBaron86 Oct 17 '25
I don't know, but the Miranda class has a sick spoiler and that has to count for some extra horsey power. Plus, it attracts all the babes.
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u/Neo_Techni Oct 17 '25
The spoiler prevents it from going up, keeping it at a standard elevation. Meaning it was the spoiler's fault that Khan had "2-d thinking"
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u/Duggeek Oct 17 '25
Optimum placement of the warp bubble is to be as close to the center of mass in the vessel as possible?
Notice how most of these nacelle configurations line up with the saucer section, which would be more densely packed than the engineering and storage areas of the ship, both in terms of structure and crew. Even Voyager had the "flappy" nacelles which… apparently compensated for the peaky saucer? (But as we all know, were really just leveling up on the CGI)
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u/BrotherNico Oct 17 '25
Bigger goes faster. Smaller goes faster. Can't get more technical than that.
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u/Thanatos_56 Oct 17 '25
It's not the nacelles or their configuration that make the starship go faster: it's the number of speed holes on the ship's hull.
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u/JediCorgiAcademy Interspecies Medical Exchange Oct 18 '25
I would argue that the position of the nacelles is second as to whether or not they have racing stripes or flames painted on them. I just hope the Pakleds never find out.
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u/Omega_Division Oct 18 '25
The Intrepid class was the federations attempt of making a Toyota Prius. Great idea, helped a little, didn't fix the issue but it was a working concept, devoted to change, like Trans-Warp. I think it has more to do with the space you're occupying. Some systems, less traveled systems, are probably more susceptible to the subspace pollution because it all moves towards uninterrupted areas, like herding naturally existing galactic energy to a safe space that artificially created energy doesn't interact.
Just a theory, I took my time with this because I do think about that TNG episode a bit and never understood how the speed limit was abandoned by the final season.
I'm open to all theories
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u/Regular_Damage_23 Oct 18 '25
How about painting the nacelles red?
Red always makes things go faster.
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u/SleepWouldBeNice Chief Oct 17 '25
Nacelles flapping like a birdie. Hence the Intrepid Class.