quote:Originally posted by TSN: Besides, there are people who call the Freedom and Niagara "ugly kitbashes", but no-one's claiming that those were anything but actual SF classes.
Actually, I happily believe that those turd nodules are nothing more than old experimental testbeds of funky crap you could try with Galaxy nacelles, and that the ships were constructed by crackwhore monkeys.
Starfleet only hauled out the two of them to help fight the Borg.
G2k
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posted
Considering the nature of Wolf 359, I suspect every ship there was in fact a real, working vessel, and not something hastily grabbed out of a junkyard. Because I don't think there was time to do any junkyard grabbing.
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I hope you're not thinking of me TSN. I think that the ships at Wolf 359 are real classes... they were testbeds for the the early portion of the Galaxy Class project. Most of them were in junkyards until Starfleet pulled them out [the best things they had there].
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posted
If the Wolf 359 classes were experimental ships used in Galaxy class development, where did the crews come from? Presumably Starfleet does move the personnel at its shipyards and development areas around occasionally. Also if they're from a junkyard there is even less likelihood of crews being available at the facility.
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I think that all the ships weve seen were actual commissioned vessels of various classes that had full crews.
Why do people like this 'pulled out of mothballs' bit?.. seems a bit crap to me. As noble as so many fanboys think it is to fly in a piece of garbage, I think that Starfleet actually has its act together and had proper starships present. Why does everyone think that Starfleet is so fucking misguided that whenever a battle comes up, it just puts people in flying deathtraps? You guys have a fairly distorted view of the way things should be.
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I agree -- it should really take several days or even weeks to activate a mothballed starship. And the fleet at Wolf 359 would seem much less powerful if it were made up of a bunch of flying rejects.
No, it's much more likely that the ships were all fully integrated and active classes. However, that doesn't mean that the ships were in wide use. Some of them could be limited-run home-defense starships that were kept in Sector 001 for precisely an invasion like this.
Although... I just remembered one instance that shoots down my own argument. In "Peak Performance," Riker's away team reactivated an abandoned Constellation-class starship in 24 or 48 hours, using a skeleton crew.
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But the Hathaway proves some good things. Even though the vessel was scrap, it had a) a name b) a registry number c) was not a one off test ship designed to be scrapped, but from an established class.
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posted
I'm also with the Freedom et.al. being real, active classes. Again, just because we don't see 'em around doesn't mean they're rare or new!
One wonders however if the Sol system, being the centre of everything nice and neat in the Federation, would even *have* a junkyard or mothball fleet. It's not like the system is too small for it or anything like that.. It's just why would you have a junkyard in paradise?
posted
Man, I was really disapointed by the article in the StMag about the Freedom and Niagra. I agree with you Mark...just because we don't see them doesn't mean they are rare. I think they were so butt lazy that they said that to get out of using their brain cells to accualy think of a good history... or at least give us some clue.
We should write to them with a history for every starship, with full names and regs and have them ok it because they are too lazy to do it themselves.
Ok, so we have determined that Shelley is(or was) never a "kitbash" put together design. I agree with MM that the engineeres who disign those ships (Starfleet engineeres that is) could not just randomly stick the neck at the back with some Connie warp nacelles. So how did the ship come about? Here are som suggestion...not all of them I might agree with, but what the hell anything is possible.
1. Like the Miranda/Avenger and the Connie class's, basiclly made up the same parts...just different arangmen....the Excelsior, Shelly and Centar(sp?) class are all new class gone through the same design process made for different mission types.
2. These were mothballed ships, stripped of all equipment and weaponry. When Star Fleet saw that the Dominion War was comming, in a scramble to find ships, they take Shelley and Centars and God knows what other ships, strap them with warp cores, and whatever basic things needed to fly with a crap load of weapons and sparse crew and send them to the fleet.
3. Every thing that the Good Book said (DS9:TM) is true.
4. If you are having trouble coping with 3 read the Bible. Esp verses about being slow to anger and slow to murder of stupid bastards who decided to make us lose some sleep because they lost some.
quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike: I think that all the ships weve seen were actual commissioned vessels of various classes that had full crews.
Why do people like this 'pulled out of mothballs' bit?.. seems a bit crap to me. As noble as so many fanboys think it is to fly in a piece of garbage, I think that Starfleet actually has its act together and had proper starships present. Why does everyone think that Starfleet is so fucking misguided that whenever a battle comes up, it just puts people in flying deathtraps? You guys have a fairly distorted view of the way things should be.
No, I see nothing noble in flying around in pieces of garbage. I think you misunderstand where I, at least, am coming from about this.
This is not a matter of wanting to dream up some alternate view of ships at random. It is simply that in a situation where you have a butt-ugly ship which is only seen in one example, and which defies the common Starfleet technologies and aesthetics we know and love, the option is there to choose to accept the notion that the ship was a one-off, a testbed, a special-role ship, or something like that.
There is an example of this with the Defiant . . . it was built by Starfleet, set aside for a time in the Terran system, and then Sisko went to grab it when he needed it. Thus, you had an operational starship which was a one-off, until they decided to build more because damn, it rocked.
The Freedom and Niagara may have been operational starships. But, we have never seen such ships again. This suggests a small number (perhaps one), or a special-role class (which itself suggests a small number). It may also suggest that the vehicles were testbeds, given their proximity to Earth.
Further, both ships defy the common notion that ships with odd-numbers of nacelles are acceptable, and are just about the only canon examples of ships with such oddities.
Let's take a look at the Freedom. If the ship is to be scaled off of her nacelle, we have a vessel that is fairly long (around 430m). Why, then, the abnormally long 40m neck? For that matter, why put the nacelle so far backward? This makes no sense tactically, for the shield envelope for this monstrosity is going to be huge compared to other starships with similar internal volume, and predominately empty, to boot. It is apparent from starship designs that the nacelle needs to be away from the habitable areas of the ship in most cases (exception: Defiant), but unless the Freedom has no hull to speak of, she's gone too far . . . Nebula Class warp engines are far closer, and the Niagara's ventral nacelle is almost bumping the secondary hull.
Further, the useful internal volume of this ship is going to be absolutely sad. Even if the warp core is squeezed into that little Constitution-derived neck (which again makes no tactical sense (even a Pakled could figure out where to aim), and is technologically questionable), you're still going to have to have engineering facilities in the 220 meter long saucer (i.e. not much bigger than an Excelsior saucer), not to mention space for the deuterium tanks (unless an itty-bitty one is all she has, and it's in the neck, too).
What could such a thing be used for? One might argue that it could be some sort of high-warp courier, given the probable low weight of the ship compared to the warp output of that nacelle, mixed with the tactical uselessness. But, it couldn't have great range, unless the majority of the saucer section is devoted to deuterium and a big reactor to power the warp drive. Further, why make a high-warp courier with only one nacelle? That's just begging for high maintenance and frequent coil replacement. The same problems hold true if one tries to claim that the Freedom is a tug of some sort.
Maybe it's a higher-speed science ship? Perhaps, but the DS9TM suggests that even the Defiant is capable of performing a great deal of scientific investigation, even though she's a warship. Why go to all the trouble of designing and building this ugly joker?
It's not that I want to see ships pulled out of scrapyards every time Starfleet needs a fleet. I just hate to see ship designs that haven't had enough forethought put into them. In situations where I see that, I'm more than willing to take the option of believing that the floating turd we see is not one of Starfleet's finest.
G2k
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posted
If they make a ship that's aesthetically pleasing, people will question why more attention was paid to aesthetics, and not to the technological feasibility.
If they make a ship that's not aesthetically pleasing, people will call it a "floating turd".
Maybe they should just stop making ships.
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: If they make a ship that's aesthetically pleasing, people will question why more attention was paid to aesthetics, and not to the technological feasibility.
If they make a ship that's not aesthetically pleasing, people will call it a "floating turd".
Maybe they should just stop making ships.
Great! That will put me out of business all together!
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Registered: Apr 2001
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yeah if they stopped making ships then we wouldnt have anymore problems... but who are we to argue in the first place? none of us are 24th Century Starship design extraodinaires, perhaps there are some stuff within those 'floating turds' which are prupose built...
Like - Class Name: Freedom Role: Fleet defence ship in the unlikely even that the Enterprise wont arrive in time
Note: this class maybe mothballed until needed
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