posted
*sigh* If you read the frikkin' caption for the picture...
It's a matte painting of a ship the E-D was to rendezvous with in "Encounter at Farpoint" before the decision was made to go with a physical model. Andy created the design to show a roughly contemporary "stablemate" of the Galaxy class, to show there was more to starfleet than just what we'd seen to that point.
It is also the starting point Rick Sternbach and Greg Jein used to create the Enterprise-C.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
I also recall this painting story being said for both the Hood in Farpoint, and the, er, thingy in The Naked Now. I thought the pic from the Art of Star Trek was a tiny Ambassador from the Naked Now.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
posted
Let's use a little bit of the cognitive power of our massive human brains, shall we? In the painting, the proto-Ambassador is orbiting a planet. How many planets did we see in "The Naked Now"? Okay. Let's move on now...
--Jonah
P.S. Sorry I'm a little snippy right now. I just read the latest updates on "Broken Bow" and Enterprise in general...
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
posted
Through the run of DS9's later years, we saw the Ninth Fleet, which was stationed at the base. This Fleet consisted of Akiras, Defiants, Excelsiors, Galaxies, Nebulas, Sabers, Mirandas, and Streamrunners. There were several hundred ships in the fleet.
We rarely saw or not at all the other fleets. An Ambassador or two may have been in one of those fleets.
I might be misremembering. But... eh, I dunno. Poo.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Not to mention we saw no Sovereigns either.
--Jonah
Yes, but the Sovereign-class starship was relatively new at the time - probably only the initial 6 were in service with the other 6 still in production (like the Galaxy-class).
-------------------- If you cant convince them, confuse them.
Yes, but the Sovereign-class starship was relatively new at the time - probably only the initial 6 were in service with the other 6 still in production (like the Galaxy-class).
Right, and only 6 Galaxies were ever produced. Seriously though, IIRC the real reason was just that they didn't wanna waste the Sovereign for the DS9 series, saving it only for the movies. We can make up any excuse we want for them, in fact, it's probably expected of us.
Why weren't there any visible Ambassadors during the Dominion War? Could be that by that time, all Ambassador class ships were mothballed, or re-assigned to lower threat areas (like the Klingon/Federation border). If they were all mothballed, it could be that it was simply uneconomical to re-activate them. For the manpower and resource put into reviving a single Ambassador, they might have been able to bring back maybe 3 or 4 Mirandas, or 1.5 Excelsior. The War being one of attrition, numbers might have mattered more than tonnage. If the Ambassadors were all assigned to low threat areas, they might have simply been out of position, and the Federation considered them not worth the effort of redeploying. If low threat areas means the Klingon/Federation border, the brief war between the two might have done much to thin their ranks.
-------------------- "God's in his heaven. All's right with the world."
posted
The Ambassador is built to be sturdy in war. The USS Enterprise C engaged 4 Romulan bird-of-preys long enough for the Klingons to get help to Nareenda (?) 3.
I would think that the Ambassador, if active in the 2370's, would be engaged in areas where the fighting is the most intense. The region around DS9 seemed relatively quiet during the war.
posted
Hey guys, hate to burst your bubble and complicate things even more with the Ambassadors, but you guys are forgetting the fact that aside from the 10xxx's and the 26xxx's there's also the U.S.S. Zhukov (Zuhkov) with a reg of NCC-62136.
And don't tell me it's a screw up because it's on the studio model and it's in the encyclopedia.
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
posted
The Zhukov registry is NCC -26136, it is written this way under starship chart in the Encyclodpedia. The other entry under 'Zhukov' (NCC -62136) must be an error - and it isn't the only one in the Encyclopedia.
-and you're right, NCC -62136 is on the studio model, but perhaps that's an error too (they got the Prometheus horribly wrong after all....)
[ July 07, 2001: Message edited by: The Red Admiral ]
-------------------- "To the Enterprise and the Stargazer. Old girlfriends we'll never meet again." - Scotty
posted
my personal view of the ambassadors is a bit different. i feel that they were not produced nearly as early as most people think. the ship looks way too new tech to be produced in the 2320's. i estimate that it was produced from the mid 2330's until about the time when the nebula class was produced, as by that time the galaxy class was imminent. i think that there were probably about 40 ships produced total, and that they would be a fairly substantial part of the federations capitol ship squadrons. since the galaxy class was supposed to recieve major upgrades every 20 years and the 20 year cycle makes sense, the early ambassadors would be about on par with early nebulas like the pheonix, as they would get an upgrade about 2355, and the late ambassadors, which started out at tech level similar to early nebula class ships, would get a major upgrade in 2375 or so, and would be about on par with galaxy class and later nebula class ships. whether the early ambassador class ships would get another major upgrade in 2375 is debatable: the ships would be 40 years old at this point. i think that the amabassador still lends quite a bit of punch to both the military and the exploratory wings of starfleet. of course, this is just an attempt by a rabid ambassador fan to prove the worth of his favorite class of ships.
Seriously though, IIRC the real reason was just that they didn't wanna waste the Sovereign for the DS9 series, saving it only for the movies. We can make up any excuse we want for them, in fact, it's probably expected of us. 
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