posted
Well, I've seen the pics, time for the theories.. Centaur: I think this is pre-war (not too keen on shipbash idea, particularly not in war). Some kind of Excelcior era Miranda equivilent or predecessor to the Sabre. Curry: Again pre-war, either a transport or possibly an attempt to create a quite well armed starship with a small combat turning radius and a shield bubble smaller that a conventionally configured cruiser. Elkins: I did like the idea of it being a tug attatched to an Intrepid hull but with the reg nos on the nacelles this is impossible so I'd go with some kind of border patrol ship. The only problem is the age difference between the nacelles and the saucer, not sure how to explain this one. Medusa: I actually rather like this design; I can see no problems with it being an earlier equivilent of the Niagera. Yeager: IMO there is no way this could be a shipbash; the work in scaling up the secondary hull would take too long. It could be some kind of light cruiser derivative of the Intrepid era.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
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Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
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posted
I think we have to face this one question: How did they originally look like? Being a kitbash does not mean they are scratch-built. There was no Admiral at Utopia telling his crew 'We have two Constitution-nacelles, an Intrepid-saucer and a Miranda-rollbar, and now take those things and build a ship for me'. I think these were all 'normal' classes, some older classes, maybe even some prototype designs, but nothing built from parts left over at the yard. Then the war came and some of them were heavily damaged. Usually, you'd take them out of active service and pull them to the nearest junkyard. But since sterfleet was in need of ships, they decided to repair them - they had to become combat-ready again, no matter how. So maybe the Elkins was a ship with some common nacelles, but the ship was damaged and there were no replacement-nacelles. So Starfleet used some old Miranda-nacelles instead. It worked, the ship wouldn't win a beauty competiton, but it was space-worthy and armed. And that's all it had to be. Just an example. But I really want those ships - all those ships - to be part of Starfleet's active forces. Even if some are ugly - we can solve the problem the way I explained.
-------------------- "This is great. Usually it's just cardboard walls in a garage."
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quote:Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov: I think we have to face this one question: How did they originally look like? Being a kitbash does not mean they are scratch-built. There was no Admiral at Utopia telling his crew 'We have two Constitution-nacelles, an Intrepid-saucer and a Miranda-rollbar, and now take those things and build a ship for me'. I think these were all 'normal' classes, some older classes, maybe even some prototype designs, but nothing built from parts left over at the yard.
Then again, maybe there was. I've personally NEVER had a problem with the take-whatever's-lying-around-the-scapyard-and-make-a-ship-out-of-it idea. I kind of like it, actually. Besides, I like to go along with what is written in the official reference sources, so I'm reluctant to disregard the explanation in the Technical Manual.
quote:So maybe the Elkins was a ship with some common nacelles, but the ship was damaged and there were no replacement-nacelles. So Starfleet used some old Miranda-nacelles instead.
You're forgetting that there's NO WAY those are Miranda nacelles. They're far too huge.
quote: But I really want those ships - all those ships - to be part of Starfleet's active forces. Even if some are ugly - we can solve the problem the way I explained.
How come everybody wants this? Why can't they just be simply what they are: KITBASHES. I like 'em that way.
Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
We still have about 15 names from the Encyclopedia without a ship assigned. And maybe we'll never see the 24th century again after Nemesis. So I have no problem with assigning 6 of those names to the kitbashes. If they really are kitbashes, unique ships, there shouldn't be a problem. But some of them, the Centaur for example, look really nice. And I don't want to waste a nice design. Maybe we can say some of them were totally kitbashed while others were 'heavily damaged originals' (HDO). I'd nominated the Centaur, the Yeager and the Medusa for the HDO-category. We have far too many 23rd-century designs from diverse books and technical manuals, so we can say the Constitution-type was a kitbash. And the Shelley was a kitbash. That thing looks loke a clown with the large shoes... err nacelles. And the award for the ugliest kitbash of all times ('U.K.O.A.T.', spelled 'oh-god!') goes to: Yeager. I hate the Maquis raider. I hate the Intrepid. But most of all I hate it IF SOMEONE TAKES BOTH SHIPS AND THROWS THEM INTO A MIXER!!!
-------------------- "This is great. Usually it's just cardboard walls in a garage."
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I'm back from my vacation, so I'll make this short & sweet: I've had a lot of requests for the pics, either through the Flare PM or by my email. I'm sorry if I wasn't able to reply to everyone, but I'm guessing that Bernd or someone else was able to distribute the pics while I was gone. But I'd still like to show the pics to anyone who hasn't seen them, so to make everyone's life easier, ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE PICS YET, COULD YOU PLEASE PM ME. Also, you don't have to write a message. Just write your email address in the PM title. It's easier to copy & paste that way. Also, for people who lurk here but are not members: Please email me at [email protected]. I'd really like to discontinue using my Netzero address (which my Flare email links to).
Thanks,
Mark
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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posted
The reason I left out the extra "pylons" on the Curry is that there's no evidence that they were present on the Curry configuration (as opposed to the Raging Queen configuration), and they look kind of silly (IMO).
Also, I didn't intentionally put the "neck" behind the pylon. That's just the way it turned out. I got lucky.
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Elkins: A ship that was used to test the new 'Intrepid' saucer shape hull under warp stress - using an engineering section from an older ship.
Curry: A real ship - not a kitbash
Yeager: A ship that used older engineering section again to test the 'Intrepid' shape hull and maybe to investigate the feasibility of articulating nacelles after the events of "Force of Nature". (guessing the 'maquis variant' that they used already could 'move it's wings'.
[ March 17, 2002, 23:33: Message edited by: AndrewR ]
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
Elkins: A ship that was used to test the new 'Intrepid' saucer shape hull under warp stress - using an engineering section from an older ship.
Curry: A real ship - not a kitbash
Yeager: A ship that used older engineering section again to test the 'Intrepid' shape hull and maybe to investigate the feasibility of articulating nacelles after the events of "Force of Nature". (guessing the 'maquis variant' that they used already could 'move it's wings'.
i agree with this AndrewR, quite plausible, and i too dont like the idea of throwing ship parts together to make spaceworthy and combat ready hulls. I reckon it would be more effort to do a "shipbash" than to build a common ship from like parts which are in storage.. They might have Miranda spaceframes at storage yards, sort of like that Aircraft yard in Nevada or Arizona (cant remember where exactly though). and just adding weapons components to empty spaceframes (with perhaps a warpcore already installed). i think that system would have been more feasable than trying to get parts to fit together which arent from the same ship class. IMHO the DS9 production crew should have just used familiar designs in there fleets with maybe 1 or 2 new ships - i personally think that the Raging Queen design was nice and looked acceptable even with those oversized nacelles. I also thought that the Centaur type was also a very good design. Because in real life fleets, there would probably be like 5 different ship classes at most (dont quote me on this i'm just guessing), and a Navy (even in war time) would not throw together parts from different ships to make a new ship. Sure they might use components such as hull plating but i doubt they'd take an entire conning tower of one ship and mate it with a half the hull or another ship, and another half of a different ship. At the most i'd accept the 'shipbashed' classes as original but had some heavy repair work due to damage.
Buzz
-------------------- "Tom is Canadian. He thereby uses advanced humour tecniques, such as 'irony', 'sarcasm', and werid shit'. If you are not qualified in any of these, it will be risky for you to attempt to decipher what he means. Just smile and carry on." - PsyLiam; 16th June
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posted
There is one situation where real-world navies may "shipbash" - to perform a single special mission where the seaworthiness of the ship is nonessential. To return to an old subject, CSS Virginia was a "shipbash" of sorts, and USS Monitor was no good for anything else except challenging the Virginia. And "shipbashes" of sorts played a role in amphibious actions in, say, WWII.
The situation in "A Time to Stand" may have involved a special mission for which almost unspaceworthy special-mission shipbashes were needed (a failed mission from the looks of it!). In contrast, the "regular" appearances of the Centaur (or her sisters) and the Yeager (or her sisters) are IMHO solid proof that these are not one-off special-mission 'bashes of any sort.
They just barely *might* be one-off testbeds in operational use, though. The Defiant was one, after all... But there's nothing explicitly testbed-ish about the Centaur or the Yeager, and no evidence of a NX registry on either of them (well, okay, perhaps the Centaur's registry is NX, but there's at least one non-NX ship of that class if we believe the photo and choose to ignore that this is not a screencap).
There does exist the concept of "war cruiser", a cheap-o attrition unit thrown together from easily available stuff as fast as possible. Some of the older-looking ships in the collection could be "war cruisers", built not for the Dominion war but for an earlier (Cardassian?) one if we believe in the registries.
None of the above ideas explains the Elkins very well, anyway. It's not a war cruiser if it uses the supposedly expensive Intrepid hull. It's not a likely prototype because it has the antiquated Miranda nacelles and a NCC (albeit a very high, modern one) instead of NX. But perhaps it is a special-mission vessel, a hastily built deflector weapon?
posted
New idea here... I know we're pretty much reluctant to introduce yet another ship class, when there are still quite a few left unseen, but I've been thinking about etymology and the fuzziness of available data. How about if the Centaur is the lead ship of her class (whatever her registry) and a stablemate of the Chimera class. Both Excelsior-era designs, and roughly contemporary with each other.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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quote: They just barely *might* be one-off testbeds in operational use, though. The Defiant was one, after all... But there's nothing explicitly testbed-ish about the Centaur or the Yeager, and no evidence of a NX registry on either of them (well, okay, perhaps the Centaur's registry is NX, but there's at least one non-NX ship of that class if we believe the photo and choose to ignore that this is not a screencap).
[snip]
None of the above ideas explains the Elkins very well, anyway. It's not a war cruiser if it uses the supposedly expensive Intrepid hull. It's not a likely prototype because it has the antiquated Miranda nacelles and a NCC (albeit a very high, modern one) instead of NX. But perhaps it is a special-mission vessel, a hastily built deflector weapon?
I said only the Elkins/Yeager were possible test bed ships. The others including the centaur were original ships.
The Elkins - Even if there is a registry on both nacelle and saucer - this might have only been put there when it was put into service for the Dominion war. Before that - it could have - as I said - just been used originally to do tests on the new Intrepid saucer shape. Possibly no need for a registry - or maybe even a nick-name for it's tests... nothing official - until it was actually brought into service.
The Nacelles/Engineering section I believe would have been just the 'propulsion' parts they originally needed for the tests on the saucer. (They probably used an older ship or such an assembly is built for such tests on new tech... for its age - it could have been used to test other saucer types including the Galaxy class! Just to get it to warp, you see.
Maybe the second in this group of test vessels - was the Yeager - as I mentioned this time to test variable geometry nacelles etc.
Registries/names could have been added when they were put to use for the war and could have even been the original 'older sections' or what the saucers were going to be called in a completed ship - or something new altogether.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
I'm still sticking with my idea that the Curry/Raging Queen was an attempt at a more combat oriented varient of the Excelcior, possibly from the Cardassian Wars. The Medusa, Curry and Centaurs are IMO almost certainly standard builds, along with the Connie varient (some kind of Freedom equivilent, high speed scout. BTW is there a class designation for this, I have heard Polaris used). The Yeager is either a tesbed for the 'swing wing' warp nacelles, possibly a limited batch production run. As for the Elkins i would call it either a testbed or a long range sensor/survey vessel. It is not unknown for navies to commission testbed vessels after they have completed their trials, eg. the USS Long Beach, the first nuclear powered ship. I also think it is highly probable that some of the ships could be from those mentioned but not seen classes, such as the Renaissance or Mediterainian (sp?).
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
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Captain Reynolds is said to command a destroyer in "Sacrifice of Angels". He is believed to be the same captain of the USS Centaur NCC-42043 . Additionally, we have a confirmed sighting of this type of ship in the episode prior to the one named. So, what is my conjecture?
USS Centaur NCC-42043 and her sister ships are destroyers. They have served before in other wars, most likely the Border Wars.
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