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Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

These images are from http://stardock.simplenet.com/startrek/index.html:

Spot the Breen ship! http://stardock.simplenet.com/startrek/pics/what_you_leave_behind/099.jpg

Yes, the battlecruiser is *above* the battleship: http://stardock.simplenet.com/startrek/pics/what_you_leave_behind/100.jpg

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Posted by Davok (Member # 143) on :

I guess there's some kind of spacial anomaly between the ship and the TV camera...

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Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :

Stupid question: is it true that the dominion�s battleship exists in two versions, one in "The valiant" and the superbig in the later episode? (since I can�t see these episodes myself, I have no way of knowing...)

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

The one in "Valiant" is the superbig...

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[This message has been edited by Fabrux (edited May 23, 2000).]

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Just some extra info: The Breen ship is about 300 meters long, or: just a little longer than a Miranda class but shorter than a Galor class.

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Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

pIn'a', there's the first 200-300m battlecruiser seen in the purple nebula in "In Purgatory's Shadow", then there's the 400-500m standard battlecruiser seen after said ep, then there's the 1200-1500m battleship. The "Valiant"-ship and WYLB are the same.

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Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :

It's strange how we never saw the Purgatory cruiser after that episode. Although it looks different I tend to think that it and the normal battle cruisers are meant to represent the same design in the show. Also, would I be right in thinking that the Purgatory cruiser was only built as a physical model but the normal cruiser only exists as a CGI?

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Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Actually we did see it. You can see one turning around and shooting down a Miranda class in the famous 'Sacrifice of Angels: kill the two Miranda's which are next to the Defiant' scene (which is also used in WYLB).

There are only a few 700-800m Dominion visible in most battles, like the one at the end of the SofA blockade, where the Defiant skims over the surface.

Try looking at the first wave of ships in 'Call to Arms'. One ship has a lot of bright purple colors is clearly larger, the rest are grey-ish with little or no other colors. Those grey ones are most probably the 300-400m ones.

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

What about the ships that have a pronounced anhedral to the wings? The "V-type" ships, so to say, from the wormhole scene of "Sacrifice of the Angels"?

How many truly different *designs* are there, apart from scaled-up or scaled-down ones? One could argue there are two sizes of the small attack ship, but there's just one design. And there's just one battleship design. But the midsize ships are confusing. Are there two or three designs?

Three would include two with level wings but different-sized nacelles wrt the body, one with V wings - but do the different-sized nacelles really exist, or is this just an artistic error between the Fact Files and the Encyclopedia?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

I'd say there is evidence for three seperate designs.

The standard cruiser: image.

The "Valiant" supersized cruiser: image.

The V-shaped cruiser. I didn't find an image of this one in my hasty five minute search. But it's clearly a different shape than the standard one.

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[This message has been edited by Sol System (edited May 25, 2000).]

Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

You can get a screencap from the purgatory-promo, downloadable from startrek.com. You know, print-scrn and then add in some photo-program.

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Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :

Altair: "Call of arms", got any pics of that jem hadar ship? I can�t seem to find it anywhere.

Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :

For pics of the Jem Hadar ships, check out my page: http://w1.314.telia.com/~u31412332/misc/jem.htm

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

pIn'a'Sov: Do you have bigger scans of those collored wireframes of the huge battleship?

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[This message has been edited by Altair (edited May 25, 2000).]

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

And how about clarifying the canonical terminology?

Is "Attack Ship" canonical for the small fighting vessels, or is it just from the Encyclopedia and DS9 TM? Have other designations been used in the episodes?
Which episodes?

Is "Cruiser" or "Battlecruiser" canonical for the midsize vessels? For all the variants? Or just some of them? Which episodes use the terminology?

Was the big ship in "Valiant" a "Battlecruiser" or a "Battleship"?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :

Altair: No, sorry :-( (please let me know if you find any)
Timo: Yeah, I know, it would be nice to have a streamlined terminology. Any suggestions?

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Same here, I've got no pictures as well, so if any of you find some, I'd like to have them too.

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Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :

As for the different classes of Dominion ships: they seem to be:

1) Attack Ship (the fighter / runabout sized "bug")
2) Battle Ship "1" (seen in IPS/BIL)
3) Battle Cruiser (larger version of BS, seen in CTA)
4) Dreadnought (not official) / Battle Ship "2" (the
large ship seen in SOA and Valiant)

It puzzles me why a race doesn't simply use the following, much easier system to classify a ship:

1) Light/Medium/Heavy (Destroyer)
2) Light/Medium/Heavy (Cruiser)
3) Light/Medium/Heavy (Battleship)
4) Dreadnought

(Dreadnoughts > Battleships > Cruisers > Destroyers)
...or a similar means of dividing ships into classes. After all, the current terms create some confusion as to which class contains which ship.

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Posted by Jim Phelps (Member # 102) on :

As far as models are concerned:

A physical model of the 762m long battlecruiser is seen mounted on a motion control rig in a photo from David Stipes' article in the latest magazine. It doesn't look like a V-ship to me. Also note that as far as the 300-500m size is concerned, one should be careful what we compare the ship with - we've seen some really huge Galors also, at 480m+. Does the ship look 500m next to ships other than Galors?

What is interesting is the Encyclopedia version of the picture. Have we ever seen the BC with the larger nacelles, or is this just a preliminary version placed into the book at the very last moment (the Encyclopedia didn't cover late S5 IIRC). The mistaken upside-down orientation suggests that it might have been drawn while placed on a motion-control rig (it's normal to do that to a model while filming).

Boris

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

The_Evil_Lord: The 'Valiant' ship was not seen in SOA, but in WYLB.

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Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

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Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :

Then it appears I got it wrong... I thought that the huge ship (seen at the end of the battlescenes, the Defiant skims over it) in SOA was of the same type as the ship in WYLB (but then, we didn't really get a good look at it in SOA so that is probably why I made the error).

By the way, how do "frigates" fit into the destroyer/cruiser/battleship categories, and why are some ship classes referred to as "battlecruisers" or some other "mixed" description? This would imply that there are also "normal" cruisers, and that the battle-variant is specifically designed for, well, battle.

Also, in "Conspiracy", the Ambassador class is designated as a "heavy cruiser"; but we do not know if this is a "special" combat design or if the description itself is accurate (the Galaxy class is also designated as a "heavy (exploration) cruiser" for instance, as is the Akira class). It seems that the class of the ship is determined by its relative size, rather then its combat capabilities.

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Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

The ones I use here are the standard naval ones used by modern navies. Terms like "heavy cruiser" reference size.
http://frankg.dgne.com/sfsd/classifications.html

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Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :

Boris: Would you be able to scan in the pic of the cruiser physical model? I'd love to see it. I always assumed it was CGI only.

It does seem really odd that they especially built the V-ship and then only showed it in a couple of episodes. There has to be a logical reason behind this. Maybe the physical model was damaged or something. And, was it actually the V-ships that was saw in the wormhole in "SoA"? Could it have been stock footage from "IPShadow"? I've never bothered to have a close look before.

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Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

I think the problem is the use of 2 or maybe 3 models:

1: physical: Highly detailed, lots of purple and pink lights, dark grey/almost black hull. Used as Weyouns ship, docked at DS9 several times. Also seen as the 'flagship' in 'Call to Arms'.

2: CGI: The smaller ship. Low detail. Hull is a lighter grey then Weyouns ship. Also less purple/pink lighting, also dimmer. Larger nacelles (???).

3: Early version (??): The V-ship from 'IPShadow'. The only one where we can see that the wings are folded more downwards than other version.

Note: I believe that the models used in larger space battles after 'Call to Arms' are all CGI models, due to the lack of some details.

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Posted by Jim Phelps (Member # 102) on :

Dax: sorry, I'm now back in the Czech Republic, freshmen year is over

. That means no scanner close by, unless I find one elsewhere.

Ok, as for the V-ship: A few years back, Frank G and I asked David Stipes (DS9 VFX supervisor for IPS) about the matter. I asked whether there's more than one type of Dominion Battlecruiser, and he said no. Frank then showed him some images, and he replied that it's all a matter of CGI vs. model discrepancies.

Given the fact that the physical model seen in the Magazine is not the V-ship, and the low likelyhood of the DS9 crew spending money on two physical models/prototypes, it seems reasonable to conclude that the V-ship is a CGI model built by VisionArt. Since DS9 was still primarily a model show in late S5, a physical model would've been definitely needed, and the modelmakers probably took the chance to refine the original shape a bit when they set to work on it.

And as far as the V-ship CGI model was concerned, it would've been modified also for consistency - if not immediately in S5, then at the latest for "Sacrifice of Angels", which is when Foundation Imaging finally built the entire alien fleet in CGI (VisionArt doesn't use LightWave, which meant that every model had to be built anew, using old CGIs as templates).

The funny thing is the size of the nacelles. Both the Fact Files and the Encyclopedia side views have the nacelles at 81% the overall length. The DS9TM version, on the other hand, has nacelles at merely 50-60% the overall length.

The interesting thing is that the Fact Files *top view* matches the DS9TM top view (nacelles at 50-60% O.L.) - it looks like Doug Drexler drew the top view because there were none in the Encyclopedia, then drew another side view to match (realizing that he'd made some errors in the first try). This time, however, he forgot to scale up the nacelles for perspective (when you're looking at the ship from the top, the nacelles are further away than the main body, and will appear smaller), and left the nacelles at 50-60% O.L. even in the side view.

Also note that the window spacing seen in Doug Drexler's side view matches a 762m O.L. I counted 7 deck spaces over 0.4cm in the DS9TM, compared it to an overall length of 13cm, and the result was something over 700m at 10' per deck.

Boris

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Ok, I think I found something here:

Look at these 2 pics, taken from pIn'a'Sovs page:

http://w1.314.telia.com/~u31412331/old1/jemwarship.jpg

http://w1.314.telia.com/~u31412331/old1/jembattleship.jpg

Both of them show much bigger nacelles in the side view.

Note this on the 'Valiant' type: The length from the front of the mid-wing torpedo launcher to the rear thing that is sticking out. This is almost the same length as the nacelle in the top view, but considerable shorter in the side view.

Given the fact that the overal length of the ship is identical in both views, it is save to say that the pictures are made with some type of weird camera lens.

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Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

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Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Check this in the first picture (the forward swept wing ship):
In the side view the front of the nacelles are closer together than the rear of the nacelles. In the front view it is the other way around. Againg the effect of some type of camera lens or something.

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Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

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Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :

Boris: No sweat about the scan. I always love to see new pics of physical models though. Anyway, I like your theory that the V-ship was originally CGI and then was modified to match the "normal" cruiser. It makes sense and fits what we know.

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Altair: The reason for the front view's showing the backs of the nacelles apparently closer together is just perspective. These pictures are as though you were actually looking at the ship. In a 2-D diagram, it wouldn't look that way.

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Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

That was my whole point

I just want to say that THAT may be the cause of the 'larger nacelle version' confusion.

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Posted by Jim Phelps (Member # 102) on :

Looks like Doug Drexler messed up by not increasing the size of the nacelles in the DS9TM side view - must have been a real crunch.

Boris

Posted by Curry Monster (Member # 12) on :

http://solareclipse.net/Channel/dom2.jpg

All of the above have been onscreen at different times. Please note that the 385 meter variant is the "V" type destroyer.

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[This message has been edited by Daryus Aden (edited May 31, 2000).]