I like it a lot. I feared that the ENT greeblies were forever going to be just that, greeblies. But there IS some sense behind all that. The plasma-accelerator idea is cool, and it finally gives some use to those weird Akira thingies (now called "warp core transfer output junction")on the catamaran hulls. I also like the cargo processing ideas. Rails over a ship.. that's new. Wonder if we'll ever see it in action though...
posted
This is way cool. I don't much care about the detailings of the inner workings of the ship, since those run the greatest risk of getting contradicted by the writers. The identification of the outer features will in turn be contradicted by the VFX folks, but this "Swiss army knife" thing ought to reduce that risk a lot. I just hope Drexler and the VFX teams are in speaking terms...
Strange that the turbocharger thing would disappear for a while and then return for Akira only. Then again, we're not quite sure what elements of that doohickey are vital and what are not for the operation of the turbocharger. Perhaps most of them could be stored "inboard", hidden by panels and grilles, and Akira is the only ship to omit these grilles for some reason even though all ships have the doohickeys themselves. Or then Akira got the 'charger because she was originally underpowered or something.
Nice to see that the between-legs pod is a warp field regulator of some sort. The similar blue domes in other designs could easily serve the same function, while their absence (as in TNG ships) or destruction (as with the Reliant) will not completely cripple the ship.
I don't see the crane rails on the outer surface, unless the "deflector grids" are it. But there's that indentation that runs outboard of the ventral cargo doors - it might allow a 150ft crane to reach just about anywhere on the saucer. Then again, its reach might be more sorely needed on the pylons and booms which have no other access features.
The crane could move without such rails if it had a gravitic or magnetic attachment system, though. When should we see the crane? When the ship loads or offloads some cargo? We'd have to wait until an encounter with a spacedock or another Starfleet ship, then - why else would major cargo be moved? Or then the ship might take big exterior damage and need repairs (say, one nacelle goes floating away and the crane is used to fish it back).
posted
Yes.. I've been wondering about the Akira too. Perhaps she's just a weird side-effect of the Temporal Cold War? The Akira's starting to become the odd ship now.
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I was both glad and embarrassed that Doug Drexler actually developed a design with technical aspects which I previously couldn't believe. Well, considering that he could have designed something that doesn't only look like the Akira, but also has all the tech, he did a good job after all. And Harry is right, the Akira will be the problem to explain, since none of the NX-01 features like the supercharger or the warp field balancer would be necessary on 24th century ships.
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posted
I really like the idea of the Through Deck Cargo bay and the cranes that pop out. My one problem with all this stuff is that it's becoming kind of hard to believe they have all this space aboard such a small ship. Maybe I'm just not picturing correctly how much internal volume there is...
quote:Originally posted by Harry: Yes.. I've been wondering about the Akira too. Perhaps she's just a weird side-effect of the Temporal Cold War? The Akira's starting to become the odd ship now.
The Akira has always been an odd ship, 15 launchers, 40 fighters, blah!
[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: TheF0rce ]
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..and a SUPER_KEWL AIRCRaFT CaRRiur! ...and a B0RG-BUSTIN WARSHIPP!
Oh, Jaeger. Such a pretty ship, and yet such repressed fanboy tendencies surfacing...
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: Well, it was designed as a gunship, after all...
...And so was the Defiant class. But you don't see her brandishing a six-inch...uh.
Never mind the fitting them all in issue about squeezing around a dozen torp launchers into the pod alone with easy access to the torpedoes...but you can just picture a dandy sign over the door leading into the weapon's pod---"caution, do not light match inside" Or they should just put a target practice sign on the pod for enemies just like they should put one over the deflector on the Streamrunner.
Then there’s storing up to 40+ fighters [not counting shuttlecrafts] into the primary hull, where the shuttle bay sits comfortably on top a very cramped engineering [God only knows where the comp core is kept]. Though the Akira is around the length of the Nebula class, it actually only have less than half the internal space of that said class [which was designed around the same time as the Akira during the Cardassian Wars].
Now from this we can speculate, that either Starfleet during that time needed to build a ship that would scare the shit out of the Cardies, then after the war is over, they swept these ships of that era under the carpet.
Or the guy who designed it was a great, great grandson of Malcolm Reed.
Registered: Mar 2001
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And the seven forward facing torpedo strategy fits in admirably with the Federation philosophy of firing a salvo of seven torpedoes at an enemy ship, blowing her to scrap, then firing another barrage of seven torps 5 seconds afterwards to reduce the enemy scrap into atoms and simpler compounds.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 how many times you wish on the enemy vessel remains to ensure that no trace of the enemy vessel [or the space which the enemy vessel once occupied] will any longer exist in this current dimension and timeline.
heheheheheh
[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: TheF0rce ]
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posted
For clarification only, the Akira doesn't have 7 fwd launchers in the pod, but it does seem to have 7 fwd launchers in total.
The picture of the Akira in Starship Spotter, plus the earlier pic in The Magazine, confirms that the pod has 12 torpedo tubes. It can be clearly seen that there's 4 tubes per side, with 3 sides.
That leaves 3 of the supposed 15 tubes unaccounted for. I tend to think that the remaining 3 tubes are in that area on the underside of the saucer, fore of the deflector dish. We've never seen a clear picture of that area of the model, but torps are fired from the location in First Contact.
And no, I'm not an Akira loving fanboy. I'm just pointing out the facts.
As for the similarites between NX-01 and Akira - why can't we just accept that the Akira design is a homage to NX-01? I can't remember who first suggested that but it's the simplest solution. We did already have the exact same thing with Daedalus and Olympic anyway.
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