posted
I hate this ship, and whilst very bored and tired at work this morning bizarre theories on the Yeager came to mind. It's a real ship, so there has to be an explanation somewhere. And I know we're flogging a dead horse here, but I like closure damn it! And this Frankenstein won't go away.
So here goes, if you have the patience see if you can get your head around all this. I'm still trying...
This is a kitbash. It has to be. You can clearly see a conventional Intrepid, but with something entirely unconventional, almost alien sitting beneath the saucer. It's one type of ship fused onto another. The question is what, and why??
I call both the Yeager and Elkins 'Intrepid Class'. They are Intrepid Class ships, variants thereof, like the multiple (and in some ways quite different) Nebula variants, but those are all still called Nebula Class.
Perhaps the Yeager and Elkins were only one-off ships, experimental Cruisers, kind of proto-Intrepids that were rushed into service during the Dominion war campaign (as the DS9 TM says). They obviously have their own special area of expertise in the fleet, I have no idea what, but there are elements with both of these ships that are unorthodox and atypical of regular starships. Ignoring the actual 'kit components' combined for the models, the actual Starfleet ships must have a purpose behind how and why they exist...
Going by the registry number of the Yeager, being NCC-65674 it implies that it is older than the Voyager and indeed, the class prototype, USS Intrepid. This could have interesting ramifications. Being chiefly an Intrepid Class ship, the Yeager was most likely around some time before the USS Intrepid, perhaps by a 7 or 8 years, for instance. There are two possibilities why, as I see it:
1. The Yeager is a pre-Intrepid prototype study-model starship, built only once as one possible direction for the Planform SV-65 Intrepid Program to take. It failed, for whatever reason, and its evolution moved along a different path - and maybe that's where the Elkins would come in, which might have carried the provisional registry number of NX-74121, (later NCC 74121).
2. The Yeager is older starship class from the 2350's. Let's call it 'XYZ Class'. During the Dominion war Starfleet investigated what older starships they could recommission to help with the war effort. Starship production was split 50/50- on both new ships currently under construction, and the refurbishing, and weapons upgrades of already existing ships. A good number were tried and trusted starships, such as Miranda Class, that had existed in great numbers, but served today only as Training Vessels, or lay inert at starbases and surplus depots. These, and some other ships were recommissioned (some with their original names, which clashed with newer starships that had taken their names, such as the Excelsior and Nebula Class Lexingtons). With weapons upgraded as best as could be done, with the time and resources available, and skeleton crews installed, these recommissioned ships rushed to the frontline to replenish fleet numbers. (This is perhaps in the same vein as the Constellation Class Hathaway - decommissioned, inert, virtually obsolete, but still space-worthy, and with some effort and time could have been recommissioned, but it was peace time at this point in TNG, and there was no need -although they were beginning to prepare for possible Borg incursions).
So, XYZ Class, being an older class of ship, and damaged to a certain degree (but with Starfleet desperate to salvage any ship they could), was reconstituted with the spaceframe of an existing half-built Intrepid saucer, perhaps one of a discarded prototype saucer left over from the Intrepid program, but was still deemed useful and space-worthy. With no chance of being constructed as a fully operational Intrepid Class in itself, an operational, but jury-rigged secondary hull structure was installed, simply to get another warp-capable, phaser firing ship into service to take its place in the fleet. So the one-off USS Yeager and USS Elkins were born.
I wonder what awaits me at work tomorrow.... ah yes, the Curry. I'll turn my attention to that during my tea break.
-------------------- "To the Enterprise and the Stargazer. Old girlfriends we'll never meet again." - Scotty
posted
Well, since half the ship is the Maquis raider, it makes just as much sense to say that the raider is the "real" part, and that the Intrepid bit must be something else, if we're going to take that road.
It is a popular (though of course unfounded) notion that the Bradbury class was a sort of pre-Intrepid, ala your Challengers or your Springfields. Maybe she's really a Bradbury.
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posted
God I hope not. I have the Bradbury as actually starting the Intrepid family, of which the Intrepid, and possibly the Prometheus belong.
As with the scaling problem of the Miranda rollbar on the Centaur, I tend to reject the actual modelling issues in these kitbashes. It obviously can't really be a Maquis raider on the Yeager because of the Intrepid saucer- it has to be something similar, but on a much larger scale. eg. the Galaxy saucer is very similar to a New Orleans saucer, it's the same shape. From a distance is may appear to be the same saucer exactly, but it isn't. Just a smaller variation, down-scaled, and with less decks, etc.
-------------------- "To the Enterprise and the Stargazer. Old girlfriends we'll never meet again." - Scotty
posted
From a distance, the "Yeager" "saucer" looks a lot like the Intrepid's. That doesn't mean it is, and it seems to me to be just as reasonable that it is a raider attached to some dagger-like front end as it is an Intrepid attached to some weirdo rear. Or, just as reasonable that both pieces are something else altogether, and ship always looked like it looks now. Or anything inbetween.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
If only the ship wasn't seen in the background, behind DS9 - or else we could have said it was a Maquis raider with a scaled-down Inrepid saucer for, say, warp-topology testbed purposes. . .
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: From a distance, the "Yeager" "saucer" looks a lot like the Intrepid's. That doesn't mean it is, and it seems to me to be just as reasonable that it is a raider attached to some dagger-like front end as it is an Intrepid attached to some weirdo rear. Or, just as reasonable that both pieces are something else altogether, and ship always looked like it looks now. Or anything inbetween.
Except for the fact that the studio model close ups show that the Intrepid saucer is complete with all its properly-scaled features. (Bridge, windows, et. al.)
This thread is a bit of a coincidence as I was just going to start one about the Yeager myself. What I wanted to know is who was our original source at Paramount that told us the ship was designated as "Yeager." I don't seem to remember it as being Mike Okuda, though he later commented on the fact that it clashed with the Saber-class Yeager. Did that source call it a Yeager-class vessel? How did we get "Yeager-class" as a designation for the design? We now know that the individual ship is called the Yeager, and the DS9 TM says it's an Intrepid variant, but did a Paramount source also call it Yeager-class or was that just a misunderstanding on our part?
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
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posted
The name came from Drexler or someone similar. Maybe even related via Moore, back when he had his AOL chat/board thing. And people took to calling it Yeager class for the some reason people have talked about the Centaur class or Curry/Shelly class. Because they wanted to.
And I never once saw a closeup shot of the Yeager. Surely you aren't suggesting we retreat to noncanon sources, are you?
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posted
I for one have never understood the downside of mating two hull elements of seemingly different design philosophy together. After all, that's how the Reliant was created.
The harshly angular aft half of NCC-1864 is as alien to the rounded shapes of the saucer as the greeblie-rich aft half of the Yeager is to the Intrepid design philosophy. In neither case do I have the slightest problem or complaint, aesthetically or in the pseudo-engineering sense.
The Yeager could easily be to the Voyager what the Reliant was to the Enterprise. She's just barely smaller, seems to have dedicated less of the budget to aesthetics, and carries a different balance of equipment. Like the Reliant, the Yeager increases the number of torpedo launchers while omitting the big deflector dish. Like the Reliant, she seems to have larger and somewhat clumsier impulse engines. And like the Reliant, she seems to have two side-by-side, rectangular-door shuttlebays instead of the central clamshell-door one (and like the Reliant, she never shows the shuttlebays in action, thus failing to prove they are shuttlebays at all).
The only minor downside of the Yeager is that her butt resembles a scaled-up Maquis vessel. But altered-scale hull components are standard fare in starship design anyway. And as long as the individual greeblies are at least painted differently, turning "warp grilles" to hull paneling and wise versa, I don't have that much of a problem with it.
The Yeager is a beauty compared with most of the stuff Eaves has come up with. I'm treating her as a real ship class, the justful companion to the Intrepids. And stealing the name "Griffin class" for her for the time being...
posted
Wasn't there a thread about this last year, or maybe the year before. My suggestion to explain away things like the Yeager was something like...
It is a one-off ship, brought into service during the Dominion Wars... It was probably a moth-balled test ship for Intrepid saucers, in a lead up to the Intrepid Class production. Maybe one way they did it - instead of having whole new ships like the Galaxy Class lineage - is to gamma-weld older "parts" lying around.
Or these "parts" are actually for the purpose of being able to be used on various new ship designs/hull designs - without the need to develop and ENTIRE new ship each time... i.e. they want to just deal with the saucer section and it's warp-field geometry performance.
They were in desparate need for ships - and this is a WORKING ship - so they used it.
The Elkins and the Yeager might be 'sister ships'... maybe each testing a different secondary hull/nacelle configuration. Maybe there is another one out there somewhere that has an Intrepid Saucer section and a wierd-arsed engineering section that looks closer in shape to the final look of the Intrepid Class.
Maybe the Yeager was a test-bed for using articulating nacelles... on a new/larger saucer section. (Before that it might have only been the "Maquis Raider" type ships that had that ability to articulate their 'wings'.
This also leads to the possibility that they had already designed a class of ship with the Intrepid Saucer in it's final design, but along came Geordie's and those alien's revelation about the damaging effects of Warp on the fabric of space... and they had to go back to the drawing-board and they tested the idea of variable warp-field geometry. As a stop-gap they too the final saucer and nacelle designs and used an existing ship that had articulating pylons - the Marquis Raider type ship - and tested it out. It worked... they mothballed the ship and started producing the Voyager versions...
What episode had Geordie talking about the Intrepid - it was season 7... maybe the "Intrepid" originally had the non-moving nacelles... and it was out and about before Voyager came along/was finished. It had to go back and be refitted. (Only if the Intrepid mention occured before "Force of Nature" that is.
Andrew
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
All good and well... But I think there could also be a definite demand for a Yeager-style ship in regular Fleet service. Just being ugly is not reason enough for a ship to be declared a one-off oddity, as we've seen with the ST:FC vessels...
Now the Elkins is a bit more objectionable, because her nacelles come from a completely wrong era. Her secondary hull is such an extensive and finished-looking undertaking that I can't believe it would be a hasty wartime construction done to complete a half-built Intrepid as cheaply as possible.
She doesn't look like a testbed for advanced technology, either. Her engines are outdated, so those can't be the test articles. And if the intent was to test the Intrepid primary hull, why build the very extensive and streamlined secondary hull? Why not something like the Yeager stern?
Add to that the sad fact that the model is really crappy, with the primary hull out of alignment with the nacelles or the secondary hull... If that's the result of combat damage, why wasn't it fixed first, before applying those LN-64 nacelles in place of whatever nacelles the ship lost in combat?
I could just barely believe in this being a TOS movie era vessel up to her neck (with the LN-64s and the rounded deflectors defining the era). A structurally compromised and discarded Intrepid primary hull would be mated to her at a later stage for use as an inert dockside depot ship or barracks ship. Then comes the call to arms, and the harbormaster hands over his list of ships that are theoretically capable of warp drive...
posted
Hey... Wait a minute. The secondary hull of the Elkins looks a bit like one of those Mars Defense Perimeter ships. That could possibly make this a two-stage 'kitbash':
1) Nacelles of "defense probe" replaced by LN-64s, possibly because of combat damage. 2) Mating of an Intrepid saucer (of the Intrepid class U.S.S. Elkins!?) to the defense probe. The yardmaster wants to make it look good and even bothers to paint the registy number on the second-hand nacelles.
But ignoring the similarities to the raider, the Yeager class looks much more 'final' than the Elkins. The connection of the saucer is better, and the aft hull has registy numbers on it. I believe this could indeed be an advanced Intrepid prototype, probably for testing the folding pylons. Especially if we imagine those guns on top of the nacelles to be Soyuz-like sensors.
posted
The Elkin's secondary hull could be a SCE warp sled test module.
i.e. it can be hobbled together with anything - it's original intent is to attach to basically any (in this case - saucer section) and allow it to be warp-tested. It doesn't matter if it has old-style nacelles. Maybe these 'sleds' were attached to a number of unused saucer sections to make new ships.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
I actually like the Elkins, though I think the "real" nacelles are more like upside-down Sovereign nacelles than the existing Constitutions. The Yeager I think, would be fine if we say that it had all of it's hull plating in the shop for repair every time we saw it. Put some traditional-looking hull over the raider greeblies and it's fine. We never saw it close enough to tell the difference.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." --Phillip K. Dick
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Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
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posted
Hehe, I wonder if the ship is an Intrepid saucer with a scaled up Maquis raider or a Maquis raider with a scaled down Intrepid saucer...
Anyway, I think Elkins and Yeager are two entirely different things.
Yeager: Mim, I asked exactly this question when I started coming here, but obviously, the Yeager's origins are more mysterious than the class itself. Maybe it was Moore, but I have the feeling that the information cloud have the same source as the name 'Curry'.
The entire varible warp geometry thing isn't something you come up with today and start building tomorrow. If it was tht easy, Kirk's Enterprise would have had varible geometry nacelles, too. So I guess the vessel was indeed some sort of testbed. Janeway said Voyager ('s class) was the only Starfleet ship being able to navigate through the Badlands. But we already know that smaller hips like the Raider can navigte there without any problem. Next locical step? Take a rider (which is designed for these operation - hull structure, sublight engines and stuff) and put the newly designed "aerodynamic" highspeed saucer and the subspace-friendly nacelles on it, and you have a first testbed for field studies and stuff. In connection with this, I don't think the Intrepid-project was similar to the Galaxy-project for example (take mission objective and design a vessel) but rather an engineer-friendly ship to test various new systems and engines and things like that. What is Intrepids designation? Explorer? Scout? Cruiser? There isn't a single task other ships couldn't handle too, but this one got all the latest tech, many never-before seen things like biopacks, EMH, the engines or speedboat-shuttles. Same reason I think Intrepid didn't look identical to Voyager, and the reason I think Yeager, Elkins and other ships were assembled in a different way just for testing purposes because the ship was very modular, user-friendly. (Of course, you have some basic ships like Bellerophon, but who knows what gimmicks they installed on tht ship? Do you really think an Admiral would take such a vessel to romulus instead of something more powerful like a Galaxy?)
Elkins: AWACS-cruiser, bouy tender, tug, don't know. The two jet engines (sorry, 'deflectors') could be something else instead. Like tractor beam emitters or removable antimatter tanks. Or the ship was assembled with parts of old vessel (engines).
Of course, the fact that there are several ships flying around with Intrepid saucers leads to another theory: Maybe Intrepid saucers and seconary hulls are assembled in different yards and the one producing the hulls had to cancel that or was destroyed. They'd have some saucers sitting around. And instead of just throwing them away, they made something out of it. Creative minds, those engineers. Imagine the war would have lasted some years longer. I wonder what Frankenstein's we'd have gotten then. Of course, this doesn't work for the low-registry Yeager. But maybe the ship's original configuration was a Maquis-Raider hull with an Ambassador-class saucer! *double- * (I could do this stuff for hours) What if Yeager's Maquis-part was the hull of another Starfleet ship-class, and at one point that class was rendered useless in terms of reliablilty, effectivity or whatever. They threw them away, built some good-looking secondary-hulls for the lonely Ambassador-saucers and that's it. Maquis' stole the hulls from the junkyard and used them as Raiders (they also used Starfleet attack fighters, so the fact that those Raiders aren't civilian vessels shouldn't be a problem here). Later, during the war, wher the old class was our of service or whatever, Starfleet noticed how good the hulls are for fighting. They pulled out the Intrepid-saucers (see above ) �t voil�: a new kitbash was born.
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I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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posted
i myself have no problem with both ships being classes with an as yet unspecified mission profile that requires different hardware.. im sure that if someone did a nice 3d render of them, theyd look a lot morerealistic that the Amazing Technicolor Kitbash Dreamshow we went through.
I mean ,there are lots of ships that are specifically modified for different missions (aforementioned buoy tenders, minelayers, escorts, whatever) and might not be as pretty as a ship of the line.and we know and accept that Starfleet can and will reuse components Connie-refit-->Miranda-->Constellation and it seems to make sense. Are we changing our mind on THAT now?
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Of course, this doesn't work for the low-registry Yeager. But maybe the ship's original configuration was a Maquis-Raider hull with an Ambassador-class saucer! *double- 
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