Between the Wolf 359 ships from "Best of Both Worlds", the Qualor depot, the First Contact fleet, and the DS9 kitbashes, there are several Federation starship designs that popped up and, thanks to production staff and persistence from some of y'all, we've gotten a good bead on them.
Thing is, they're almost all a little weird. Some of this is by design, to avoid confusion with the hero ship. Some of it is related to quick and dirty model-building, study model graduation, or the generally hideous design work of Eaves and friends.
Still, I'd say we all have one or more that tickle our fancy but that we'd love to amend a bit.
Case in point, I had a soft spot for the Norway until I really looked at a 3-D model and the giant wing pylons suddenly struck me. They're just so big and seemingly useless, and the nacelle connections that look like giant clamps are just awful.
I'm working on a quickie-revision of the design toward more normalcy . . . if you could revise designs of such ships, what would you do? Maybe it's to fix a problem like the New Orleans tiny shuttlebays*, or maybe something to just bring a design in line with Starfleet design principles.
The first thing I would do is obliterate every kitbash from DS9’s Frankenstein Fleet, with the exception of the Centaur. The Yeager especially pisses me off because it’s one of the stupidest designs in-universe and its components were so obviously recognizable, yet it was constantly recycled in stock footage.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
The DS9 kitbashes never bothered me all that much. They weren’t meant to be taken all that seriously, and were created just to have some damaged ships in the far background without too much scrutinization about what they were made out of. The Yeager I believe was built as an in-joke, and they probably figured that with the tiny standard-def TV screens of the time, that nobody would notice what the ship was made from.
The ships I personally would want to replace are the four FC vessels designed by Alex Jaeger: the Akira, Steamrunner, Saber and Norway. I’ve always hated those designs. No offense to Jaeger personally; he’s a fine designer. I just never cared for those four ships, or at the very least, I never cared that they were given such low registry numbers for ships that were clearly contemporaries of the Enterprise-E. While I applaud the VFX people for not just making kitbashes of the Sovereign class for that scene (like the Kelvin-inspired ships from Star Trek ‘09), I would have liked for the fleet to have consisted of ships from different time periods. Perhaps one new design from the TMP era, one from the ‘Lost Years,’ one from the TNG television era, and one from the TNG movie era.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
In a similar vain I'd give all the Constitutions in TOS 17xx-registries. Okuda had the change but stuck to Jein's asinine interpretation of the Starbase 11 registry chart.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: I'm working on a quickie-revision of the {Norway} design toward more normalcy . . .
quote:Originally posted by Spike: In a similar vain I'd give all the Constitutions in TOS 17xx-registries. Okuda had the change but stuck to Jein's asinine interpretation of the Starbase 11 registry chart.
The USS Constellation is hailing. ;-)
I kinda like having the Constitution registries spread out a bit, and the idea that the Constitution Class has some history, but yes, the idea that every ship at Starbase 11 was a Constitution is just awful. Literally, unless the argument is that every starship is a Connie and that the entire fleet is composed of just the handful of bandied-about names from the producers, there's absolutely no logic in trying to match those up.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: The first thing I would do is obliterate every kitbash from DS9’s Frankenstein Fleet, with the exception of the Centaur. The Yeager especially pisses me off because it’s one of the stupidest designs in-universe and its components were so obviously recognizable, yet it was constantly recycled in stock footage.
Basically seconded, especially on the Yeager. I don't really mind the Miranda modification ("Antares"). The modified Constitution isn't offensive at first glance like some of the others, but once you start thinking about everything that it is missing, it just gets worse and worse from a plausibility standpoint.
We keep Centaur on the condition we make the Centaur's nacelle root thingy a little less obviously a ginormous Miranda torpedo launcher (or the Excelsior bits less Excelsior-y), and erase the weird windows on the floorboards of the lower saucer.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
One thing I would fix : The misspelling that gave us "Steamrunner".
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: The ships I personally would want to replace are the four FC vessels designed by Alex Jaeger: the Akira, Steamrunner, Saber and Norway. {...} I never cared that they were given such low registry numbers for ships that were clearly contemporaries of the Enterprise-E.
The Norway kinda works as a funky 2340s or 2350s design, to me. The Saber's not quite awful . . . it was vastly improved by this guy:
I kinda hate his saucer-rounding up top, and he just totally missed de-weirdifying the nacelles themselves, even if we decided to leave them connected to the saucer for whatever odd reason.
Now, the Steamrunner can go right to hell. It is an abomination and makes children, puppies, TV commercial natives, and your god cry.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I really like this page on Bernd’s Canon Fodder site which de-Constitutionises the TOS ships using DSC classes.
And the FC ships are awesome. If they didn't exist then a) neither would Flare, and b) all we’d have would be ships that were either Constitution- or Galaxy-class kitbashes and variants.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: I really like this page on Bernd’s Canon Fodder site which de-Constitutionises the TOS ships using DSC classes.
Oh god no. I mean, I get the idea, but besides the universe-mixing, that even seems to ignore the Potemkin being visible as a Constitution and instead make it a non-Connie Discofleet class. Yikes.
Not to mention, it's all based on the Jein Starbase 11 type stuff in the first place. If you're gonna ditch visible ships, why not ditch sketchy name-registry pairings?
quote:And the FC ships are awesome. If they didn't exist then a) neither would Flare, and b) all we’d have would be ships that were either Constitution- or Galaxy-class kitbashes and variants.
. . . and the vomitous Greg Jein AmbassaGalaxies. Love that guy's model work elsewhere, but the Niagara and Freedom are just . . . (shudders)
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
What universe mixing? They’re the same. Accept it. Or just accept that most of us don’t but it and stop bringing it up all the time because it’s irrelevant.
The Potemkin is a funny one. Okuda admits he pulled the number out of nowhere (i.e. not from anything like Jein’s old articles) so the canonicity of the registry is open to question if you ignore the blurry Op Retrieve chart. Or ignore the vague sightings of it in “The Ultimate Computer”. But just one ship out of that list being open to challenge doesn’t invalidate the others or the methodology. Nor can you accept visual retconning in the case of the TOS remasters but then use potential visual retconning in DSC to justify it being in a different universe.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lee: And the FC ships are awesome. If they didn't exist then a) neither would Flare, and b) all we’d have would be ships that were either Constitution- or Galaxy-class kitbashes and variants.
My bias against the FC ships (and I freely admit that it's my bias alone) is that if you're going to make four new starship designs, and then give them registries of 5XXXX and 6XXXX, then make them look like ships that were meant to be constructed in that era. Either that, or give them all 7XXXX or 8XXXX registries. All four of those ships had attributes of newer ships like the Sovereign and Defiant, when they really should have resembled the Galaxy class family. Not to mention that I simply find them aesthetically unpleasing. The angled nacelles and sharp edges of the saucers are just too severe for me. I prefer the curved lines of Probert and Sternbach designs.
I will say that I liked the Akira best out of the four, but then so many other people had such a hardon for that ship (and that it became the basis for the two crappiest designs in the history of Trek, the Titan and the NX-01) that I quickly lost my enthusiasm for it.
But if you love them, more power to you. I'm all for having new designs, but I think the wrong people have been given the reigns for that (I'm looking at you, John Eaves.)
[ January 21, 2022, 08:36 AM: Message edited by: Dukhat ]
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Dammit, everyone was having a good time, then knickers got in a twist. (Sigh)
Lokk, I get that some of y'all reeeeally like Discovery. That's not a crime, nor is the reverse. I didn't reference any of the Discoverse background ships in the opening post or direct any criticism their way (both from kindness and apathy), but I wouldn't have complained had someone brought them up for criticism herein. We were all having fun.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: What universe mixing? They’re the same. Accept it.
quote: stop bringing it up all the time because it’s irrelevant.
It was noted entirely tangentially. There was another similar outburst to yours by another poster recently. Not sure why y'all are so touchy about it, but since others are allowed to disagree with your opinions whenever they like I'll try to remember to also go full Cato the Censor and recommend the destruction of Carthage in every post where the universe distinction is noted. Satisfied?
quote: But just one ship out of that list being open to challenge doesn’t invalidate the others or the methodology. Nor can you accept visual retconning in the case of the TOS remasters but then use potential visual retconning in DSC to justify it being in a different universe.
Justify? I have nothing to justify nor did I make any attempt to do so. I simply pointed out that at the link you supplied, the guy ditched a visible Constitution in TOS and assigned a Discovery ship class to an existing claimed registry, basing his reasoning there and elsewhere on the same Starbase 11 registry matching that was already criticized and otherwise commented on in this thread.
If you're ditching whole-ass visible ships, then why not the association of name and registry? Just do whatever the hell you want, at that point.
That was my point, not any imagined sleight against Discovery, its quality, its ratings, its ships, its cast, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad absurdum.
Sheesh.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: My bias against the FC ships (and I freely admit that it's my bias alone)
Not really. But, it's kinda funny, 'cause the more I've looked at background ships en masse lately, the more I've realized they almost all kinda suck in some or many ways. Sometimes, the effort to make something 'different' just doesn't pay off.
quote: But if you love them, more power to you. I'm all for having new designs, but I think the wrong people have been given the reigns for that (I'm looking at you, John Eaves.)
Seconded.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
I actually liked the St(r)eamrunner better than the Akira. The Norway's a bit boring and the Saber was the ugliest Starfleet vessel until the Vengeance came along (which was replaced by Discovery and the 32nd century weird shapes).
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Spike: The Norway's a bit boring
Funny you say that. Nobody seems quite sure what the Norway's deflector area looks like, but the version I found has a big pit and the big round deflector right under the bridge.
As I rebuilt that area in my deweirdifying I ended up turning the ship upside down, and lost heart: it's a regular neckless Connie-style ship with funny deflector placement and a shorn saucer top.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
The Steamrunner class will be making a return in PIC season 2 (as an alternate universe Federation ship at least.) They are using the Eaglemoss CGI model for it, since the original model no longer exists. So if the trend is to use EM CGI models in future Trek shows, then we may end up seeing ships like the Norway that were lost after the Berman era ended. As much as I don’t like the FC ships, it makes sense to use the existing EM assets for future shows. Pretty much every Trek ship EM has made has an accompanying CGI model for it.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
And they're more often than not incorrect.
Posted by 137th Gebirg (Member # 2692) on :
Yes, but now that Trek is using Eaglemoss models on-screen, they’ve gone from being generally not-always-correct to 100% screen-accurate. Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I thought the EM Steamrunner’s deflector module looked blockier than the original. Maybe it’s just me…
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Give Eaglemoss *some* credit… they’re more accurate than many of the Fact Files diagrams. Posted by 137th Gebirg (Member # 2692) on :
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
The Yeager especially pisses me off because it’s one of the stupidest designs in-universe and its components were so obviously recognizable, yet it was constantly recycled in stock footage.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)