The thingies near the bridge: Stereoscopic targeting scanners for the phaser cannon.
The fins on the nacelle pylons: waveguides for the cloaking device.
The third nacelle: Added strength to the ship's subspace field/warp bubble, and enhanced maneuverability at all speeds.
"Warp 13": Given Voyager's sustainable cruising velocity of "warp 9.975", I figured it made sense that at some point the warp scale was recalibrated, but only from warp 9 up. Warp factor 9.1 became warp factor 10, warp 9.2 became warp 11, and so on. Thus the AGT ships would be tooling along at warp 9.4 (old scale), and Intrepid-class ships would now cruise at warp 19.5 (new scale, with warp 20 being the "new warp ten").
As for the cloaking device and the decommissioning stuff, I think that's been covered well enough already in here.
--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
Registered: Feb 2001
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Ah shit, I was gonna post a pic of the AGT Enterprise micro-machine I had, but the 3rd nacelle came off and I cant find. Oh well...
Anywho, I was wondering if this beast even belongs to Starfleet anymore? Might be farfetched, but could Admiral Riker actually have "bought" the ship. Could he be like a nutty futuristic L. Ron Hubbard cruising the spaceways on his own private flagship with his most loyal of followers? That'd be some future.
Registered: Feb 2005
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Then the ship wouldn't be crewed by a bunch of fresh-faced Starfleet ensigns in uniform... No, the ship is his assigned vessel.
Starfleet apparently gives its Admirals the right to choose their own ship to get around in or for related business, which is presumably assigned to the sector their posting is at (in Riker's case, his Starbase). We always see Admirals getting ferried about in Excelsiors, which suggests lots of them would choose a ship the class of which they themselves could have commanded back in the day.
Obviously Starfleet wouldn't grant a top of the line ship to its Admirals to joyride around in, but if they needed a ship to represent their sector fleet (or a task force, etc.), then an appropriate ship would be chosen. Other Admirals (like that guy who tried to take Lal) could be more mobile in their duties, and could be permenantly assigned to that ship (though not necessarily to its command). I happen to think that the Bellerophon could have been Admiral Ross's chosen ship, for example.
quote:I happen to think that the Bellerophon could have been Admiral Ross's chosen ship, for example.
Mark
I think chosen for that mission is more likely- something fast, but not in any way threatening to the Romulans. Plus, Ross knew that things could turn sour and escalate eal quickly on his little spy-mission so he probabaly went with a captain and ship that would/could not make a bad situation too much worse.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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I'd also be the happiest if all the modifications could be explained as steps toward a single goal, such as making the Wave Motion Gun work properly. Many a real warship has been turned into a scarecrow with the installation of a new weapon system...
The writers probably intended the modifications to suggest a broader, gradual fight against time and obsolescence - but as said, this doesn't seem chronologically realistic, not unless we postulate major damage at some point.
The third nacelle is the biggest problem to me, as it is difficult to tie into the Megablaster backstory, and it doesn't appear to be a credible anti-geriatric measure when the similarly "pre-existing" (lower-than-Voyager-or-Defiant-registered) Pasteur makes do with two nacelles. In theory, it's the analogy to adding a screw to a seagoing battleship - something that actually happened a lot in reverse, as several three-screwers became two-screwers between WWI and WWII while also receiving more compact powerplants.
But hey, adding a third nacelle made perfect sense in the TOS days, if we believe in FJ and the fanverse. The very same rationale that resulted in the Federation class is no doubt at work here as well. We only have to dream up, agree on, and adopt that rationale...
The "antlers as targeting/support systems for BFG" interpretation gets my blessing, as does the "let's stuff this stuff in elevator shafts and whale pools and secondary shuttlebays and other now-unnecessary interiors before we start welding it on the outside" logic.
quote:The "antlers as targeting/support systems for BFG" interpretation gets my blessing, as does the "let's stuff this stuff in elevator shafts and whale pools and secondary shuttlebays and other now-unnecessary interiors before we start welding it on the outside" logic.
I like that idea a lot too, except that you left one part out: the "let's ignore the fact that the third nacelle almost completely blocks the main shuttlebay entrance" logic.
Registered: Nov 2000
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No it's not. Besides, the AGT has a small shuttlebay at the base of the nacelle (where anyone with sense would have re-located the aft torpedo launcher!).
If I ever decide to re-buiuld/re-paint my dreadnaught model, I'm going to eliminate the yacht, change the angle on the port/starboard nacelles to yaw farther away from the ship and eliminate the seam between the suacer and secondary hull completely: no way this design can seperate with all that stuff on there.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Timo: as does the "let's stuff this stuff in elevator shafts and whale pools and secondary shuttlebays and other now-unnecessary interiors before we start welding it on the outside" logic.
Timo Saloniemi
Maybe the Whales control the TARGETING of that big gun!!
Registered: Mar 1999
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Mabye the big gun converts the whales into energy and fires them.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Here are my two cents on the issue of the third nacelle. It could be used to
1) achieve a higher speed (by pushing more power into subspace). Right, the Pasteur could accomplish the same with two smallish nacelles. Also, the additional power must come from somewhere. The ship would probably need a second warp core for that, making it a very cluttered design (which is what it looks like though).
2) re-balance the warp field after all the other changes made to the hull. This seems counterproductive as the nacelles are usually the heaviest components of the ship.
3) compensate for a design flaw or a previous structural damage. In addition to the rebuttal of 2) I doubt that such an effort would be made to rework the ship when slight unnoticeable changes could accomplish almost the same (especially within the boundaries of Trek physics where recalibrating something and adding a bit of new hardware is usually sufficient to repair and save the ship).
4) as a testbed for nacelles. In order to test big nacelles, you need a big ship. In this case the Enterprise has likely been retired from normal duty. But then I would expect the third nacelle to be of a different, newer type.
-------------------- Bernd Schneider
Registered: Mar 1999
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All this commentary about the Captains Gig (it's not a yacht) has reminded me of something totally unrelated. One of my fun little hair-pulling projects is building the Calypso in 1:72 scale. With a removable top and full interior. Oy.
--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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