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Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :

Shinzon never reveals where he got the Scimitar, but obviously it's a ship built by Remans. Here's the question: Where did they get it from?

They're basically slaves, and I doubt the Romulans would alow them to build their own ships. But Shinzon reveals that he commanded the Remans in battle against the Jem'Hadar during the war (from the official size as well as from the script). If the Remans are the cannon-fodder of the Star Empire, wouldn't it be logical if they manage to capture a Jem'Hadar vessel and hide it somwhere from the Romulans? (Shinzon's on their side, and if he wants to use the common "plot-to-overthrow-the-universe(TM)", he needs a mighty vessel. The Jemmies had those ships, and the similarities are striking.

Not that I want to bash Eaves uninspired design but someone has to come up with a back-story. [Wink]

picture

- Comparison: Scimitar vs. Jem'Hadar Megabug (the Valiant-killer): Notice the forward spikes, chopped-off nose and main impulse (or whatever) drives. I've also compared it to the common Dominion cruiser (the smaller sized battleship), and the wings are curved exactly like you would expect. Only difference is the length. And since we only saw 2 (3 if you cout the V-type) large Dominion ships and I'm sure there are more within similar design parameters (concidering the size of the vessels as a major difference for example), don't you think there could be one that does look even more like the Scimitar?

Of course we have to seperate "real" and "trek"-explanations. "Real" means 'Eaves is a lazy bastard', but in terms of "trek", would it make sense? [Smile]

Posted by E. Cartman (Member # 256) on :

Not very likely. The Dominion seemed to be in the business of using only basic, tried-and-true designs -- y'know, small, medium, large (and gigantic if you treat the behemoths seen in WYLB as a seperate class) to match its old doctrines.

Probably a safe bet it never faced such strong opposition before, though, so I suppose the 'Scim could be a jury-rigged tin can, hastily put together but not completed in time to see action... but you try hiding a massive battleship like that in full view of your masters.

Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :

Seriously, I'm not seeing THAT much of a similarity.

quote:
'Eaves is a lazy bastard'

How about "Eaves prefers a certain design aesthetic" instead? [Razz]

-MMoM

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :

Can't he be both?

Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :

Of course, every ship Sternbach ever designed (with the exception of the Prommie) had some kind of notch cut out of the front, but nobody ever seemed to accuse him of retreading old ideas. That and up-down terracing along X axis booms.

Posted by Fleet-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :

Hmm, I see we have a bias towards the man who designed the Sovereign Class...

Anyway, I think that it would be hard for the Remans to hide that big thing from the Romulans, especially with the Tal Shiar still around. Perhaps it was Perhaps it was built out of what the Romulans captured from the Dominion in response to the Federation building the Enterprise-E. The Galaxy Class had the D'ederex Class while the Constitution Class had the Bird of Prey. Then the Remans just stole it.

Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov:
Not that I want to bash Eaves uninspired design...

'Eaves is a lazy bastard'...

My god I'm sick of hearing this sort of shit. As far as I'm concerned, Eaves is one of the best illustrators that's ever worked on the Trek franchise. Do you think you could do better? I highly doubt it.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Weeell... [Smile]

Anyhow, it certainly isn't all that implausible that the "Reman" ship borrows heavily from other sources. A confiscated Jemmie ship is definitely a possibility, but so is reverse-engineering of Jemmie tech and application thereof to a Romulan spaceframe. And the fancy new cloak could be what the Jem'Hadar had all along - one that doesn't have fatal flaws, so nobody ever learned the Dominion had it.

OTOH, it's not all that mysterious to me that a planetful of slaves could build a mighty warship. For all we know, they build the lion's share of *all* Romulan warships. It's just that they haven't had much chance to actually fly those things before, being slaves and all that.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :

Why all this Eaves-praising here lately? Personally, I'd say I prefer other designers, but I thought the fact that Eaves designs are crap was the general consensus (at least for many people here).

Of course, it hasn't anything to do with the topic and I'd like to rreturn to it, but if you look at the Scimitar (or the Son'a, if you want to use another example), they all share more design similarities with "big bad winged and scary �ber-battleships" than truly original designs that really make sense.

It's neither up to me nor anyone else to judge whether Eaves is a stupid looser or a genius; if you like it, good, if you don't, good. I just wanted to make sure that I didn't have this old clichee in mind when I wrote the post. Or do you think it would have taken more than three posts before someone said "why don't you just say you hate the ship/Eaves/the movie/your life"?

And Mim, I think that's the best way I've ever seen to describe it. Thanks. [Smile]

Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timo:
Weeell...

Anyhow, it certainly isn't all that implausible that the "Reman" ship borrows heavily from other sources. A confiscated Jemmie ship is definitely a possibility, but so is reverse-engineering of Jemmie tech and application thereof to a Romulan spaceframe. And the fancy new cloak could be what the Jem'Hadar had all along - one that doesn't have fatal flaws, so nobody ever learned the Dominion had it.

OTOH, it's not all that mysterious to me that a planetful of slaves could build a mighty warship. For all we know, they build the lion's share of *all* Romulan warships. It's just that they haven't had much chance to actually fly those things before, being slaves and all that.

Timo Saloniemi

Interesting you mention the Dominion possibly having cloaking tech. We know they had this tachyon-beam weapon that was able to detect cloaked ships (the last Kor-episode comes to my mind, at least that's what I remember). The Dominion never used cloaking devices, but I'm also quite sure they had them, too.

I think the primary chalange would be to find a place where you build the ship. Even if the Remans had the ability to do so, you can't put it together in your garage.

Furthermore I'm interested in seeing how they'll do the "partial cloaking" thing (Shinzon drops the cloaking in some sectors to make Picard think he damaged his ship, later the Scimitar has only parts of the cloak online). Does this mean the ship is equipped with more than one cloak? I always thought there's just the on/off-switch for the cloak, you cannot partially drop it. If that's the case, the ship has to have more than one. (Jackill's SRM comes to my mind; two or more cloaking devices on 23rd century ships were not uncommon before TNG established that there has been a treaty of Algeron, can't remember though if other fan manuals established this, too.).

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Everybody seems to be assuming the Remans built their ship in secrecy. But AFAIK, this is not really implied in the movie (or the leaked script thereof). It could have been something ordered by the previous Praetor, even something he paid a visit to during his last laugh-at-the-laboring-slaves monthly tour of the Reman shipyards. Shinzon just confiscated the ship to his own use (and installed this superduper secret weapon of Reman design aboard).

The ability to partially decloak is indeed a novelty. I wonder why we haven't seen it used before in Trek (scenes like Chang's BoP firing and partially ruining the cloaking effect, or Kirk peering out of the doorway that hangs in midair in ST4, notwithstanding).

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :

The Scimitar and the Jemmie Battleship really don't look simmlar from the front to me.
I'm building the Dominion's biig gun right now in 2500th and from what i've seen, I'll need a whole diffrent skeletal structure for the Scimitar's "wings".
...The Dominion Battleship is waaaaay more massive in it's "wings" and has several additional nacelle-like structures underneath it's central body.
I could see the scimitar being reverse-engineered: what major power would be so dumb as to ignore the technology windfall of salvaging your enemy's battleship?

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

"Furthermore I'm interested in seeing how they'll do the 'partial cloaking' thing.... Does this mean the ship is equipped with more than one cloak? I always thought there's just the on/off-switch for the cloak, you cannot partially drop it."

In a recent ENT episode, we found out that the Suliban's cloaking devices are quite different from the ones we've seen before. They use some sort of radiation that makes things invisible. Some things in the episode are actually seen to get partially cloaked by accident. Probably, the Scimitar's cloak is based on this technology, or something similar.

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
I could see the scimitar being reverse-engineered: what major power would be so dumb as to ignore the technology windfall of salvaging your enemy's battleship?

The Dominions. They let Sisko and gang take back a new and more advanced Jem'Hadar fighter, which Starfleet studied and studied, then used it as a Trojan horse to destroy a major Ketricel white storage facility during the Dominion War. [Big Grin]

Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :

quote:
Originally posted by David Templar:
They let Sisko and gang take back a new and more advanced Jem'Hadar fighter

Since when was it "new and more advanced"? It was just an ordinary bug. Anyway, I'd hardly compare capturing a pre-crashed bug with capturing a near indestructible and massive Jemmy Battleship.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Indeed. How did "The Ship" end, BTW? The female Vorta was not killed, even though her forces committed suicide, right? She reported back to the Dominion that an intact battlebug was lying around, right? And then Sisko tractored it up and towed it back to Alpha, right? So the Dominion should have been aware that one of their ships was in enemy hands. Perhaps several were, but this one was on a pretty important report delivered by a reliable Vorta, and unlikely to be forgotten under the piles of paperwork.

Clearly, the loss of this vessel didn't prompt the Dominion into any action. Perhaps they just don't cry for spilled milk and lost tech secrets, and weren't smart enough to suspect infiltration ops (which were their own speciality, so perhaps they had a blind spot there).

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :

Wellll...the Federation did nothing provocative with the 'bug and the Dominion was busy setting things up with Cardassia...so who knows?
...also the 'bug may have had some kind of transponder marking that was referenced like a licence plate at the white facility: that would explain why the facility raised it's shields, somewhere there was the Dominion version of a "most wanted" poster in the computer files.

.....or they thought the 'bug was (almost)on par with Federation tech and of no real consequence.
The Dominion is more advanced than the Federation but not by more than a few decades it seems. [Wink]

Posted by Daryus Aden (Member # 12) on :

If the ship was built post-war its completely logical that it would borrow heavily from the positive design traits of all ships that the Romulan fleet encountered.

Afterall, look at how similar the 4th generation planes of the USA and the USSR were in terms of both looks and capability.

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :

I think that had more to do with Russian agents "borrowing" the blueprints of certain American aircraft.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

4th generation would be F/A-18 and MiG-27/Su-27, right? (What else did the US have in the 4th gen category? The F-16?)

Not too much commonality there. Twin engines and twin tails, all right - but the Russian planes had supersonic intakes, a blended wing/hull like the older US F-15 but unlike the Hornet, and this fancy high-angle-of-attack capacity. The planes did look a bit like an F-18 in top-down satellite photos, though.

Starship builders seem to have much more liberty in choosing differing yet practical development paths than aircraft or naval ship builders. One would think that the Romulans would merely internally install whatever they stole from the others, while only minimally altering the exterior. This also jibes with how the VFX people treated "improved" ships in older Treks, out of practical necessity.

But now CGI makes it possible for ship designs to be altered drastically, or minimally, or to any degree between those. What would be the Trek-internal reason for the change? Why would ship designs suddenly become more "flexible" that way, and why would the old practice of adding external modules (that look suspiciously like altered-scale parts from other starships, aircraft or motorbikes!) or packing new stuff in old hulls be abandoned?

Would the big war simply stimulate an otherwise stagnant ship-designing business, perhaps?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Boris (Member # 713) on :

Well, let's see. The introduction of CGI would have had the following theoretical effects, assuming they can be observed onscreen:

1) Increase the diversity of basic classes by simplifying the building of new models. Examples: Equinox, Prometheus, Raven, etc.

2) Minimize obvious "refits" between individual members of a class by making damages to models nearly impossible and consequent repairs unnecessary. However, one may observe less obvious changes in lines, details and proportions as the modellers continue to tinker with their creations or rebuild models in different software.

3) Alter and standardize the composition of Starfleet by selecting certain models and maintaining the set throughout the shows.

4) Slightly change the characteristics of their motion with respect to the camera, as well as explosions.

So yes, the design and tactical departments do seem more active, not surprisingly given the relative superiority of Dominion and Borg, which can only be defeated by new designs or old designs with radical alterations. Everybody else poses a relatively constant and predictable threat.

Naturally, the increased design activity would necessarily trickle down into non-combat designs, as evidenced by the pathfinder/Nova story.

I don't think it's a coincidence -- if it weren't for the fleet shots, the CGI people would not have been hired on DS9. On the other hand, the new "Voyager" designs are probably a side effect of the consistent need for alien ships of the week, which can only be done well in CGI.

Boris

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :

....yeah, too bad that some of the least real looking ships in Trek came from Voyager: the Krenim patrol and warship and the Nihidron are awful and two dimensional...as are the Hirogin hunter ships.
I think It's either hit or miss with the CGI in Trek....and it sure dosent stop them from copying their own stuff: look at Enterprise!

Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

Unless they captured this Dominion battleship while it was being built during the final stages of the war, I cannot see how you can capture a ship that could be 'three times more powerful than a Galaxy'.

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Well, generally, you kill the people running it and then you run it.

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :

As the Dominion pulled back to Cardassia, some of their installations and ship repair facilities could have fallen to the Romulans....and with them the plans to some of their technology......although I really doubt anybody brought down one of the Battleships, much less captured one! It would take the crew from several Warbird sized ships to sieze a Battleship that size full of pissed Jem'Hadar. [Wink]

...and you know the Jem'Hadar don't flinch at suicide runs....

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :

Let's see now, Starfleet took their brand spankin' new Prometheus class starship, loaded with the best of everything, put a skeletal crew onboard, and then proceed to fly it around unescorted near the Romulan NZ where it promptly gets captured by a small band of Romulans.

No, I could not possibly see the Dominions doing this simply because The Script writes them as a bunch of logic-deprived idiots. Because, you know, those Jem'Hadars have the ability to defy idiotic scripts. Or something. [Razz]