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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Peregrinus: [QB] To the Woodside Kid... Of course I'm saying the [i]Constellation[/i] and [i]Excelsior[/i] classes took a long time in development. One was the first canon quad-nacelled design, which I expect took a bit of time to straighten out. And the other was the testbed for a radical new propulsion system, so the developmental time on that would also take a while. While the [i]Federation[/i] is its own distinct design, it wasn't doing anything radically different with the existing tech of the day -- save possibly the third nacelle, which probably is easier to balance than four, going by the number of classes we've seen with each configuration, respectively. The [i]Miranda[/i] class was the 18th Cruiser design, so it precedes all of the others we're quibbling over, and is the immediate successor to the [i]Constitution[/i] class. And as an aside to fellow fandom fans out there, I've contradicted Todd Guenther about his Frigates. I rearranged things so the [i]Surya[/i]-class Frigate got refit into the [i]Knox[/i] and [i]Daran[/i] designs. And I have the [i]Miranda[/i] as a newbuild Cruiser, after the proposed [i]Coventry[/i] design was deemed too big for a Frigate. ;) The [i]Bozeman[/i] creates a slight problem at first glance, however, so here's the full breakdown: They wanted a wholly new design for the [i]Soyuz[/i] class in "Cause and Effect", but time or budget or both prevented it. So a box and some pods were added to a basic Miranda hullform, and the ship was slapped with two different registries -- NCC-1841 on the repeatedly-seen ventral saucer surface, and NCC-1941 on the never-seen dorsal saucer surface. For whatever reason, Okuda goes with the latter, and acknowledges it's a joke reference by modelmaker Greg Jein to a previous movie he'd done model work for. It is not, however, clear which registry Jein was intending to be the 'actual' ship's registry. I don't know how likely it is that he knew the shooting requirements of the model, but if he did, and knew that only the ventral number would be seen, odds are [i]that's[/i] the number he intended to represent the 'real' ship. But since we don't know, quibbling over it is pretty useless. Personally, I go with the 1841 rego. There's also no indication of what the [i]Soyuz[/i] class might have been if they'd been able to build an all-new model. As it is, it's a Cruiser, like the [i]Miranda[/i] off of which it was built. So the 'NCC' prefix is valid for the era. Next, the number. Since I go by the more-visible (hence, canon) 1841, that puts it firmly in the middle of the [i]Miranda[/i] family, between the [i]Lantree[/i] and the [i]Reliant[/i]. At first, this might appear to be another problem of Okuda's system trying to overlay Jeffries' system, but when I actually thought about it, it lends credence to something else I'd seen -- the [i]Decatur[/i]/[i]Belknap[/i] family. After the prototype and basic production configuration of this design, we've got other classes, all in the same registry range, that are simply the the basic design with either added or swapped details -- like the third nacelle of the [i]Ascension[/i] class or the [i]Miranda[/i]-style saucer added to make the [i]Athabaska[/i] class or the different engines and minor detailing mods that made the [i]Impervious[/i] class. Indeed, I intend to carry this whole family over into my "personal canon", but bumped back to the NCC-2400 range, to allow for the NCC-2500 Starfleet numbering system changeover. How I envision it working is thusly: The lead design sets the standard. In the case of the 18th Cruiser block, this is the [i]Miranda[/i]. Then, other classes that are simply modifications of that basic hullform remain in that number block, such as the [i]Soyuz[/i]. I actually like projecting a little real-world fluff into a Trek context, so I'd have a debate going on for decades among Starfleet engineers and other starship afficionados as to whether the design variation led off by the U.S.S. [i]Avenger[/i] is significant enough to warrant it being its own class. And by the time we get to TNG, the debate has been settled in favor of the "it's just a [i]Miranda[/i] variant" camp. :D One last point: All the ship silhouettes in the Operation: Retrieve charts are dorsal [i]Constitution[/i]-refit cutouts. All the ship indicators on the [i]Enterprise[/i]-B's Navigation board were [i]Excelsior[/i]-refit silhouettes. In both of those cases, all the icons were oriented in the same direction on their respective displays. And when Geordi was reconstructing what happened to create the duplicate Riker, the [i]Enterprise[/i]-D's computer called up an profile view of an [i]Ambassador[/i] to represent the [i]Excelsior[/i]-class [i]Potemkin[/i]. I find the most plausible explanation is that that's a generic 'starship' icon (for whatever era we're looking at) to be used when generating something that requires calling out a vessel's position. In other words, I have every reason to doubt the [i]Eagle[/i] in Star Trek VI was [i]Constitution[/i]-class. I also defy FJ in claiming that the [i]Republic[/i] -- while definitely a Cruiser of some stripe -- was NOT [i]Constitution[/i]-class. Which only leaves the original [i]Constellation[/i] as problematic, but I've written a short story about that that I think works pretty good... --Jonah (*whew* I do rattle on, don't I...?) [/QB][/QUOTE]
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