I like it a lot. I feared that the ENT greeblies were forever going to be just that, greeblies. But there IS some sense behind all that. The plasma-accelerator idea is cool, and it finally gives some use to those weird Akira thingies (now called "warp core transfer output junction")on the catamaran hulls. I also like the cargo processing ideas. Rails over a ship.. that's new. Wonder if we'll ever see it in action though...
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
This is way cool. I don't much care about the detailings of the inner workings of the ship, since those run the greatest risk of getting contradicted by the writers. The identification of the outer features will in turn be contradicted by the VFX folks, but this "Swiss army knife" thing ought to reduce that risk a lot. I just hope Drexler and the VFX teams are in speaking terms...
Strange that the turbocharger thing would disappear for a while and then return for Akira only. Then again, we're not quite sure what elements of that doohickey are vital and what are not for the operation of the turbocharger. Perhaps most of them could be stored "inboard", hidden by panels and grilles, and Akira is the only ship to omit these grilles for some reason even though all ships have the doohickeys themselves. Or then Akira got the 'charger because she was originally underpowered or something.
Nice to see that the between-legs pod is a warp field regulator of some sort. The similar blue domes in other designs could easily serve the same function, while their absence (as in TNG ships) or destruction (as with the Reliant) will not completely cripple the ship.
I don't see the crane rails on the outer surface, unless the "deflector grids" are it. But there's that indentation that runs outboard of the ventral cargo doors - it might allow a 150ft crane to reach just about anywhere on the saucer. Then again, its reach might be more sorely needed on the pylons and booms which have no other access features.
The crane could move without such rails if it had a gravitic or magnetic attachment system, though. When should we see the crane? When the ship loads or offloads some cargo? We'd have to wait until an encounter with a spacedock or another Starfleet ship, then - why else would major cargo be moved? Or then the ship might take big exterior damage and need repairs (say, one nacelle goes floating away and the crane is used to fish it back).
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Yes.. I've been wondering about the Akira too. Perhaps she's just a weird side-effect of the Temporal Cold War? The Akira's starting to become the odd ship now.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
I was both glad and embarrassed that Doug Drexler actually developed a design with technical aspects which I previously couldn't believe. Well, considering that he could have designed something that doesn't only look like the Akira, but also has all the tech, he did a good job after all. And Harry is right, the Akira will be the problem to explain, since none of the NX-01 features like the supercharger or the warp field balancer would be necessary on 24th century ships.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I really like the idea of the Through Deck Cargo bay and the cranes that pop out. My one problem with all this stuff is that it's becoming kind of hard to believe they have all this space aboard such a small ship. Maybe I'm just not picturing correctly how much internal volume there is...
Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
quote:Originally posted by Harry: Yes.. I've been wondering about the Akira too. Perhaps she's just a weird side-effect of the Temporal Cold War? The Akira's starting to become the odd ship now.
The Akira has always been an odd ship, 15 launchers, 40 fighters, blah!
[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: TheF0rce ]
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Besides, we know decisively that the Akira pod has actual weapons therein...
Mark
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
I feel silly for thinking that about the Enterprise -D ... "Where do they have ROOM for all that stuff?"
Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: Besides, we know decisively that the Akira pod has actual weapons therein...
Mark
Yeah seven forward facing ones alone....*whistles
yup---odd ball of the fleet.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Well, it was designed as a gunship, after all... Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
..and a SUPER_KEWL AIRCRaFT CaRRiur! ...and a B0RG-BUSTIN WARSHIPP!
Oh, Jaeger. Such a pretty ship, and yet such repressed fanboy tendencies surfacing...
Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: Well, it was designed as a gunship, after all...
...And so was the Defiant class. But you don't see her brandishing a six-inch...uh.
Never mind the fitting them all in issue about squeezing around a dozen torp launchers into the pod alone with easy access to the torpedoes...but you can just picture a dandy sign over the door leading into the weapon's pod---"caution, do not light match inside" Or they should just put a target practice sign on the pod for enemies just like they should put one over the deflector on the Streamrunner.
Then there’s storing up to 40+ fighters [not counting shuttlecrafts] into the primary hull, where the shuttle bay sits comfortably on top a very cramped engineering [God only knows where the comp core is kept]. Though the Akira is around the length of the Nebula class, it actually only have less than half the internal space of that said class [which was designed around the same time as the Akira during the Cardassian Wars].
Now from this we can speculate, that either Starfleet during that time needed to build a ship that would scare the shit out of the Cardies, then after the war is over, they swept these ships of that era under the carpet.
Or the guy who designed it was a great, great grandson of Malcolm Reed. Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
And the seven forward facing torpedo strategy fits in admirably with the Federation philosophy of firing a salvo of seven torpedoes at an enemy ship, blowing her to scrap, then firing another barrage of seven torps 5 seconds afterwards to reduce the enemy scrap into atoms and simpler compounds.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 how many times you wish on the enemy vessel remains to ensure that no trace of the enemy vessel [or the space which the enemy vessel once occupied] will any longer exist in this current dimension and timeline.
heheheheheh
[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: TheF0rce ]
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
*busy coughing up blood*
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
For clarification only, the Akira doesn't have 7 fwd launchers in the pod, but it does seem to have 7 fwd launchers in total.
The picture of the Akira in Starship Spotter, plus the earlier pic in The Magazine, confirms that the pod has 12 torpedo tubes. It can be clearly seen that there's 4 tubes per side, with 3 sides.
That leaves 3 of the supposed 15 tubes unaccounted for. I tend to think that the remaining 3 tubes are in that area on the underside of the saucer, fore of the deflector dish. We've never seen a clear picture of that area of the model, but torps are fired from the location in First Contact.
And no, I'm not an Akira loving fanboy. I'm just pointing out the facts.
As for the similarites between NX-01 and Akira - why can't we just accept that the Akira design is a homage to NX-01? I can't remember who first suggested that but it's the simplest solution. We did already have the exact same thing with Daedalus and Olympic anyway.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Interesting news about the pod... I previously thought that the torps were arranged like this:
1 below fwd deflector (easy to see) 2-3 above fwd deflector (hard to see because of shadows in the ST:M artwork) 4+3 on pod fwd face (the 3 were sort of scabbed on to the pod underside below the 4) 1 to 3 per pod aft-quarter face (hard to count from the artwork)
That would give 12 to 17 tubes, and I was hoping for 14-15 because that would make it impossible for the ship to have those saucer lateral tubes that make so little sense, but would still jibe with the supposed 15-tube total (a single tube could be somewhere else altogether for all I care).
If the pod really has four launchers on every side, then there definitely isn't room for those lateral tubes in the 15 total. Then again, what about those three tubes scabbed onto the pod forward ventral part - aren't they there any more?
If so, if the pod indeed comes in variants, then I am going to claim that most of the Akiras have less overarmed pods than that! Try and disprove me - you can't see those tubes on screen (mainly because in DS9, they never fire...).
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
I think the widget below the deflector dish is a tractor emitter rather than a torp launcher.
The supposed three extra launchers on the fwd face of the pod are smaller than the 4 normal tubes above. I've always perceived the three panels as being windows.
There's definitely 4 tubes per aft face of the pod. The picture in Starship Spotter clearly shows this.
The lateral things on the saucer could be interpreted as being 2 tubes each but I prefer to think of them as bay view windows, akin to the 3 windows at the front of the pod.
Also, I agree in your thinking that not all Akiras need have these kick ass pods. Akiras in the pre-Wolf 359 times might even have had sensor only pods.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dax: As for the similarites between NX-01 and Akira - why can't we just accept that the Akira design is a homage to NX-01? I can't remember who first suggested that but it's the simplest solution. We did already have the exact same thing with Daedalus and Olympic anyway.
The reason I'll pretty much refuse to accept it in the similar manner is how the timelines match up.
Real-world: Daedalus - Olympic Akira - NX
In-show-timeline: Daedalus - Olympic NX - Akira
First Sight: Daedalus - Olympic Akira - NX
Beyond all that, we get back into the difference between similarity in structure and similiarity in detail. The Daedalus and Olympic share no similar details. The Akira and NX do share similar details.
So no bones about it, we don't have the exact same thing with the Daedalus and Olympic as we do with the Akira and NX.
I say we just drop this into the bucket of trek arguements that will never end along with TAS, old school's TMs, Warp 10, etc.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Two shuttles in drop bays on either side + Swiss-army knife approach = Defiantprise!
Yes, such an approach allows the writers to invent new things, and is quite sensible for TV models (having been used in the old Enterprise and the Babylon 5 station, to name a few). However, it also makes it very easy for the Visual Effects to forget where they put a certain system in the previous episode and move it elsewhere for the next one. We've seen this in the Defiant which fired forward and aft photon torpedoes from a bunch of different locations. Also, the forward escape pods on the Defiant are positioned a bit differently than they were on the Valiant, although clearly, the intention was to show the same hatches open.
The other problem is that they could put one thing where another has already been seen. We've seen this on the Defiant as well, where its forward hole (the 20 circular ports on the Enterprise bring it to mind) was used as a deflector emitter and a probe launcher, and possibly a phaser emitter and airlock as well. Much of this can be rationalized away, but if one is not extra careful, it can easily lead to more inconsistencies.
Nevertheless, it's good to know that they thought of everything.
[ January 26, 2002, 07:07: Message edited by: Phelps ]
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