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The Juno Sci-Fi Messageboard
I can easily see part of the third nacelle under the secondary hull. Greg Jein's hand is between the secondary hull and the engine. I really like the design (especially the saucer) even though I am not fond of three nacelled ships.
My only question is; where did the fellow who provided the model image and the damage schematics get all the details that were not visible in the picture and not in keeping with the fact files? He seems to have updated the fact file profiles with information that is not evidenced in the Greg Jein photo. He got the photo from the exhibition guidebook, so I assume he saw the ship in person. Does he have more images of the ship, is it all from memory, or is it a meld of the fact files information with some personal choice memories?
I would love to know more about other details of the underside of the saucer and secondary hull.
Basill
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Just a thought...A grain of salt-season to taste-lather, rinse, repeat
[This message has been edited by Basill (edited July 02, 2000).]
What picture?
Where?
Huh?
Did I miss something, or is there a lot of assumed knowledge in this thread?
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You're a Starfleet Officer. "Weird" is part of the job.
My feeligns are mixed on this. On the one hand, I really love that tri-engined Niagara design...but on the other, I never thought we'd find out if that was the real design or not, so I went ahead & made my own Merced-class design based on the general layout of the Fact Files Niagara picture.
Oh, well....since the Niagara's have t'start somewhere before 28473 (I chose 24724) & I started the Merceds at 30095....I'll just have it be a derivative design or something. It's different enough to warrant it...
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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel
[This message has been edited by Shik (edited July 18, 2000).]
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"No matter where you go, there you are."
[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited July 02, 2000).]
Enjoy!
Lance
http://thetrekker.homestead.com
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TheTrekker's Officer's Bible: A Concise Review of the Starfleet
http://thetrekker.homestead.com
Also, the phaser stripes also point to a cross between the Ambassador's small strips on the saucer and the Galaxy's single long strip. Also, I believe the nacelles sit farther back from the saucer then in the Fact Files pic. Notice no shadow cast on the saucer by the far nacelle.
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"The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey
The Fact Files diagram is also very misleading in terms of the actual size of the ship. With that Ambassador secondary hull, we are led to believe that the ship is as large as the Ambassador class, and with nacelles as large as the Galaxy class nacelles. Looking at the photo, however, we have better clues, such as the bridge size and the window arrangements, which make the overall size of the ship much smaller.
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Captain Tenille: "Oh, Simpson, you're like the son I never had."
Homer: "And you're like the father I never visit."
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June is National Accordion Awareness Month.
"People are buried however they choose to be, apparently. Unless you've never written your will, in which case your body is shipped to Meltakron V and reanimated to serve as a robot in their yttrium mines." - Simon Sizer
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It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.
I don't see any obvious shortening in the nacelles. One should note that the nacelles of the New Orleans are lenghtened, instead of all the others being shortened.
Also, I'm not convinced Masaki Taniko's renderings actually show any more detail than the photograph reveals. Instead, I think he drew "damage" to the front parts of the ventral nacelle and the secondary hull to indicate that he could not see these parts in the photo, and thus couldn't show them in the drawings without misleading people about the correct shapes of these parts of the ship. (The underside of the saucer in turn is not shown "damaged" in the front view, because that would ruin the picture since one couldn't see the true extent of the real damage - so here Taniko goes by the existing FF picture...)
All right, what is the size of the ship? We can't very well do a complete deck count from this angle, and the only parts that could be interpreted as common with known ships are the warp engines. But are they common with the Galaxy class, or the (unlenghtened) New Orleans class? Or did Greg Jein have a specific nacelle size in mind that falls between these two, and is common to the Princeton and his other model, the Firebrand (which would look rather out-of-scale if her single engine was a full Galaxy one)?
Timo Saloniemi
[This message has been edited by Timo (edited July 03, 2000).]
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"The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey
The secondary hull might be a modified Ambassador hull. I think the Ambassador model is about the same size, and was built at about the same time, so maybe two of them were built.
I noticed the seemingly flattened nacelles too, but I'm not sure about it. They might just be standard Galaxy nacelles. I think the ship is about the same size as an Ambassador, over 500m long. The window distances seem to comply with full-scale Galaxy nacelles.
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"Species 5618, human. Warp-capable, origin grid 325, physiology inefficient, below average cranium capacity, minimum redundant systems, limited regenerative abilities."
Ex Astris Scientia
Any info on the saucer bottom?
Where did I hear the line "Among the things used were [...] Enterprise components that didn't come out of the mold quite right"? Was it in Nemecek's TNG Companion? I thought these referred to components of the E-nil or E-A, but apparently the parts that belonged to those ships were "quite right" and specifically designed as "damaged" for an earlier movie appearance. Perhaps Nemecek (?) referred to E-C and E-D components instead, and Greg Jein actually had a sub-par E-C hull component in his possession, with misshaped front and aft ends?
A 500m ship with three Galaxy nacelles is a dangerous challenger to the E-D for the title of the biggest and baddest. I have difficulty inventing a backstory for the ship that would prevent it from out-shining the Galaxy class and would explain its later absence. Perhaps these would be extreme-deep-space explorers, built in small numbers - but why would one be near Earth? Perhaps three nacelles were an experiment that failed - but why would a failure remain in service with all that armament and stuff? The ship doesn't look like an overarmed "dreadnought" or anything, either - not when compared to the Miarecki ships with lower NCCs and longer (if segmented) phaser strips.
Timo Saloniemi
[This message has been edited by Timo (edited July 03, 2000).]
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Less detailing than and Ambassador saucer and that squarish shuttle bay at the rear of the saucer...
Andrew
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"chocolate cherries allamanda" - Datura, Tori Amos
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It is better to walk the path of the devil than to be in the path of the devil. Though it still might not be the right path.
Apparently, Starfleet in the 2330s-50s decided to see if the engine shape introduced for the New Orleanses and whatnot could be upscaled for heavy-duty work. They didn't upgrade the existing XXXXXL sized hull components too much for this experimental ship, but mainly used Ambassador hardware to cut costs. Their first attempt went a bit over the top, though, and the actual "production models" of Nebula and Galaxy classes were judged to require no more than two of the new engines.
But at least three ships of Niagara class apparently got built, so the ships couldn't be mere "X-planes" or prototypes. They probably filled a gap in Fleet strength (left by the rapid aging of the Ambassador class, or low Ambassador production numbers, or something) until the Nebulas started coming off the dockyards.
Or then they really are special-purpose ships, perhaps deep-space explorers - which, however, begs the question of why the Princeton and the Wellington would loiter anywhere near Earth.
Timo Saloniemi
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"Huh. An intelligent guard. I never would have guessed."
-Preed, Titan A.E.
No, I don't think the three-nacelled beasts really were specializing in long-range stuff. But what else can a ship with three oversized engines specialize in, then? It's not a mere prototype since three of them exist at least, it's not superheavily armed, it has no unrecognizable or extraneous components apart from the extra engine...
And if it is a regular non-specialized starship doing standard Enterprise stuff and visiting Earth now and then, then why the special engines? Especially since the similarly sized Ambassador made do with two smaller, older ones.
Timo Saloniemi
Think about it: a medium-to-large-sized vessel...massively overpowered in terms of propulsion...medium-grade weapons....the only thing it COULD be is a RRV.
For those unaware with the "rapid response vessel" concpet, it's similar to Mastercom's "space control ship" idea, where a fast medium- or large-sized ship is quickly dispatched to a hotspot area to assess the situation, provide a Starfleet presence, & basically give interim support until the more capable multi-mission ships can arrive. Usually, RRVs are frigates or cruisers; these basic types have the variant sizes & speed needed to build a RRV off of.
In the past, I've theorized that the New Orleans-class might be a RRV & I built up my Bastille-class frigate along those lines as well. Potentially, the Niagara-class could be a cruiser-sized RRV, the higher end of the subtype.
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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel
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This is how i prefer the borg... in pieces!!! -- Janeway in Dark Frontier
The ship might be a two-naceller that hauls along a third, inert nacelle as a spare... But if I were hauling a spare, I'd sure dump it before going into a battle! For a tug, the ship seems overarmed and has a saucer seemingly far too big. I'd omit a saucer from a tug altogether...
Timo Saloniemi
The USS Princeton was reluanched from spacedock to help fight the Borg at Wolf 359. She did badly becuase she was not meant to fight but to be a prototype.
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It is better to walk the path of the devil than to be in the path of the devil. Though it still might not be the right path.
Perhaps the original ship wouldn't have been just a prototype, then, but part of an operational class built in small numbers to accompany the Ambassador class. Perhaps only one vessel would have been converted into an engine testbed for the Galaxy engines.
But why would the registry of the ship change with the conversion? It wasn't even an NX registry, but a regular-service NCC one.
If the original Ambassador-like ships were just a slightly more powerful explorer class parallel to the Ambassadors, and served with distinction, Starfleet may have tried to build a new batch with newer engines to meet the same role. The new ships weren't experimental, nor complete failures, but they were *relative* failures nevertheless - and the failing wasn't understood until the first Nebulas were introduced and shown to be so much better with just two engines. By that time, Starfleet had already NCC'd the registry of the newbuild Princeton, though, and perhaps even built her a sister ship or two.
Timo Saloniemi
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It is better to walk the path of the devil than to be in the path of the devil. Though it still might not be the right path.
If the Niagara is a deep space exploration design, then the reason they would be near Earth could be because of refits. If they class is being refited as they finish their current missions it would also allow for ships within the same class having different nacelles among other features.
Dennistn
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IDIC
These ships began operations in the mid-24th century.
The structural history of these ships is unknown as there is one known example, and this example is heavily damaged.
There is no evidence that these ships did or didn't fought in the Dominion War. Considering the apparent age of this class, the possibility exists that the class did fight in the Dominion War.
On the side-
The Dominion War battle scenes in my opinion were a wasted oppurtunity. With their budget, the people at Foundation Imaging could have created battles that featured modern starships in combat against Dominion warships. When the war began, I had hopes of seeing unknown classes in operation-the Apollo, the Bradbury, etc. The CGI artists for Babylon 5 did more with less money.
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takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory
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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel
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takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory
"CHEAP THIRD WORLD IRONY!! I WON'T STAND FOR IT!!" --Duke, Maximum Proconsul of Panama, 1991
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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel