posted
Simple. Because I never want to see any Excelsiors, Mirandas, Klingon BoPs, or those horrendous FC ships ever again, because I've already seen them a million times before and I hate them.
-------------------- "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
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
I doubt it will happen Dukhat, but it would be nice.
Frankly I would love to see more of the Wolf 359 designs thrown in too. I am a bit disappointed that TNG HD has not had them in, although I concede it is just wishful thinking. In reality I never expect to see the New Orleans class, for example, or a Springfield except in bits.
That said I never really want to see a Niagara class in action. Possibly the worst BoBW kit bash. Still miles better than the Frankenstein flet though.
I am fairly confident though that if they can't HD the video or even revisit the files (which may now be history, I don't know), there is a chance they do good on shots they need to remake. But I doubt it. I am pretty sure we won't have the same problems as on B5 DVDs though.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I can live with Miranda's and Excelsior's, but I also like to see the FC ships in more detail. They have been only showed brief and/or from the distance, but I really would like to see one of them as 'Hero' ship in one episode. Ok, I know that will not happen...
Registered: Oct 2002
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quote:Originally posted by o2: I can live with Miranda's and Excelsior's, but I also like to see the FC ships in more detail. They have been only showed brief and/or from the distance, but I really would like to see one of them as 'Hero' ship in one episode. Ok, I know that will not happen...
Ok, here's why I hate Excelsiors and Mirandas so much (and to a lesser extent, the FC ships).
At the time, the DS9 producers needed massive fleet shots for the Dominion war, and the only way they could do this was with CGI. SO in order to get ships, ILM had to hand over their FC ships for remapping. While something happened to the Norway mesh and it was never used again, the Akira, Saber, Steamrunner and Miranda classes were remapped. The rest of the fleet was represented by ships whose physical models survived long enough to get scanned into CGI, which were the Defiant, Enterprise-D, and Greg Jein's Excelsior. The Nebula class Bonchune CGI model created for VOY was used later, but only for one scene.
I completely understand their limitations, budget, and time constraints, at the time. What I don't quite understand is why the bulk of the fleet consisted entirely of Mirandas and Excelsiors, with Akiras, Steamrunners and Sabers backing them up.
I'm presuming that the ships comprising the Cardassian and Dominion fleets were state-of-the-art battleships. So all Starfleet can throw at them are 75+ year old clunkers? There were like four Galaxys, one Nebula, and usually one Defiant. The rest were TMP-era ships. IMHO, this makes Starfleet look desperate.
Now I understand that the three FC ships are obviously newer, and they comprise most of the other half of the fleets. My bias with them is that I just don't like their designs, at least for the time period they're supposedly from based on their registries. And the DS9 producers were essentially forced to use them because they didn't have any other CGI-only ship models.
SO my point with this rant is that if these fleet scenes need to be redone, why would they need to use the same ship designs, and why would they have to mimic the original scenes? I would prefer to at least see a lot fewer Mirandas and Excelsiors, or even better, none at all.
-------------------- "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
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Is it so inconceivable that the current Mirandas and Excelsiors had received continuous upgrades every five years of their service lives, to the point where an Excelsior could go toe to toe with the Defiant (USS Lakota)? If their impulse engines, warp cores, hull, shielding and phasers get upgraded, it doesn't matter what their overall shape is, it's a good ship then.
Compare with Peru's Almirante Grau, laid down in the Netherlands in 1939, 74 years old and still serving.
I see where you're coming from, I would've wanted to see ten new original designs during the Dominion War Arc, that's our bread and butter around here, but a large chunk of the population and the viewer base don't care at all what the ships look like and couldn't tell the difference, so I can understand if they didn't bend over backwards to wreck their budget on design studies.
I myself was very disappointed that every Jedi in the Prequels and "Clone Wars"-show shared the same three lightsabers, with a scant few exceptions. At least they splurged on the ships. ;
[ June 19, 2013, 07:56 AM: Message edited by: Nim ]
Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Nim: Is it so inconceivable that the current Mirandas and Excelsiors had received continuous upgrades every five years of their service lives, to the point where an Excelsior could go toe to toe with the Defiant (USS Lakota)?
The thing is, O'Brien was shocked that the Lakota had been upgraded from what a normal Excelsior class ship should have had. That right there tells me that what you describe is not normal.
-------------------- "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
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
But it makes sense, if you have a large aging fleet and an impending invasion, to upgrade what you have as much as you can and as fast as you can, instead of building entirely new classes from scratch that need shakedown cruises and working out bugs.
The Prometheus-class debuted in VOY in January 1998, I was really hoping we would see her in DS9 the final year of the show, but I suppose "competing" FX studios don't want to share designs.
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I think it was more a political decision not to use the Prometheus. This ship was unique for VOY and the producers won't gave it away for the sister show (a shame that they haven't used it more often). For the same reason the Ent-E was never shown in DS9 (although the digital model was available as well).
The only reason I can imagine that they shared the model of the Nebula was that this ship was aged from a producers point of view.
Regarding the other topic: Starfleet was always a fleet of exploration and not of war. It makes sense to me that they have more Excelsiors and Mirandas ships and not so many Defiants or Akiras.
By the way, we got new ship designs in DS9 during the Dominion War: The patrol ship, the Curry, the Centaur. But actually I don’t like them very much.
Registered: Oct 2002
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quote:Originally posted by The Ginger Beacon: I am fairly confident though that if they can't HD the video or even revisit the files (which may now be history, I don't know), there is a chance they do good on shots they need to remake. But I doubt it. I am pretty sure we won't have the same problems as on B5 DVDs though.
Well, the B5 issue is down to (apparently) Doug Netter refusing to spend the money to get Foundation Imaging a widescreen monitor. With the amount of money and attention being thrown at TNG, I can't see them getting to the CGI stuff, throwing their hands up and just up-scaling it.
I can't remember who described the issue (it might have been Mojo) but one of the thoughts when CGI replaced physical models was how much more resiliant the CGI would be. It wouldn't need storing, it wouldn't need repainting, and so on.
Of course, fast forward to the late 90s-early 2000s, and I believe we had at least 3 different CGI models used for the Galaxy-class. ILM built one for Generations. Then a new one was built for DS9. Then ANOTHER new one was built for the final episode of Enterprise. The models may not physically age, but from a software point of view they do. Unless they keep updating them all the time, it means when they go back to an old model they have to spend ages getting them to work in the new software.
I imagine the late TNG/DS9 ship stuff was all sub-HD resolution, so will have to be redone. And I kinda want them to stick with the TNG approach to that, rather than the TOS version. MAYBE change one or two ships, but if we get to Sacrifice of Angels that the fleet is suddenly made up of all new design, it would feel wrong.
(On that, have Okuda and co said what the thinking is when they start getting to the heavy CGI stuff? Are they going to have to replace EVERYTHING?)
As for the ages of the fleets... how do we know that the Cardassian ships weren't 60 year old designs? The Galaxy out-classed the Galor-class, from what I remember. The Klingons certainly didn't mind going into battle with 100 year-old ship designs...
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Nim: But it makes sense, if you have a large aging fleet and an impending invasion, to upgrade what you have as much as you can and as fast as you can, instead of building entirely new classes from scratch that need shakedown cruises and working out bugs.
Who said anything about building new ships? Starfleet already had 45+ starship classes (not even including the DS9 kitbashes and whatever decommissioned ship types were in the Qualor II surplus depot), and over half that number were seen on screen at one time or another. So, where were they all during the Dominion war fleet scenes? Why did the bulk of the fleet only contain five classes, two of which were outdated?
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: The models may not physically age, but from a software point of view they do. Unless they keep updating them all the time, it means when they go back to an old model they have to spend ages getting them to work in the new software.
Exactly. Which is why whoever said they still have the ship meshes and backgrounds, that's pretty meaningless because they were all from 20 years ago, and I'd think it would be more work trying to remap all that stuff for a newer software system than to just start from scratch with new CGI ships.
quote:MAYBE change one or two ships, but if we get to Sacrifice of Angels that the fleet is suddenly made up of all new design, it would feel wrong.
Why? It would be a more realistic representation of Starfleet as a whole, and wouldn't make Starfleet look so desperate as to be using such outdated ships for the bulk of their fleet.
quote:As for the ages of the fleets... how do we know that the Cardassian ships weren't 60 year old designs? The Galaxy out-classed the Galor-class, from what I remember.
Since it was seen that the Dominion shipyards were producing these ships brand-new, I would speculate that they weren't that old.
quote:The Klingons certainly didn't mind going into battle with 100 year-old ship designs...
Yeah, and I have an issue with that as well, since the reason why the BoP was used in the first place was because of the same early budgetary concerns TNG had. The model just happened to be lucky enough to survive being scanned into a CGI model. But I don't think it's realistic for them to still be using such outdated ships.
-------------------- "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
Registered: Jun 2000
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First, by the time we see major fleet action, Starfleet has been drastically reduced in fighting capacity. They had lost entire fleets to the Dominions superior weaponry. It's completely plausible that older ships like the Excelsior would, by the time of Homefront, have received emergency upgrades... Both as a desperation move but also to surprise the Dominion just as it did Chief Obrien. In TNG, we saw Excelsior and Miranda class ships still in service but not in front line capacity... So, after the cream of the fleet was destroyed, it was up to the reserves to step up to plate. That's what reserve fleets are for after all. Add in ships recalled from sectors not threatened by Dominion incursion and you account for the sprinkling of Sabre, Steamrunner and Akira class ships. It's possible that what we saw onscreen was the bulk of remaining Starfleet forces.
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: That's what reserve fleets are for after all. Add in ships recalled from sectors not threatened by Dominion incursion and you account for the sprinkling of Sabre, Steamrunner and Akira class ships. It's possible that what we saw onscreen was the bulk of remaining Starfleet forces.
But here's the thing about that: At the end of "A Call to Arms," we see a huge fleet, pre-war, and it was made up of the exact same type of ships the post-war fleet was made up of. This wasn't a reserve fleet, this was supposed to be the bulk of Starfleet's forces. This is where we should have seen those 45+ ship classes, but we didn't.
Now with all this said, even if these fleet scenes get remastered (and that's a big if, since we don't even know if the show will get the HD treatment), I seriously doubt new ship designs will be created. If those SOTL calendars are any indication, apparently TPTB seem to think we all still want to see Excelsiors, Mirandas, and BoPs. This is just the rantings of a starship fanboy
-------------------- "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
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Something else to consider regarding Starfleet is their timeline of readiness, or rather a lack thereof. We know that after the brief war with Cardassia, there was a time of peace and exploration. At least one whole class of Starfleet becomes officers (like Riker) during this lull in hostility. Starfleet got lazy... They were more than prepared to deal with the local powers but when the Borg tore through, it was a wake up call to upgrade. Unfortunately, that would be a monumental task with thousands of ships r throughout such a wide area while staying on guard against another Borg incursion... Small wonder the new designs are few and far between. And yes, registries aside, I consider the First Contact designs all new classes specifically made to defend against the Borg.
The Klingons had the opposite problem... They had a ton of ships owned by various houses which were old but serviceable, and which no house would retire for fear of weakening their position and being vulnerable to a rival house. The war would help the Klingons the same way a forest fire clears dead wood so new trees can grow. The Klingons would eventually come out far ahead of the other powers, I'd think.
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Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I have no problem whatsoever with a fleet composed of mostly Mirandas and Excelsiors, though I would have preferred visible updates, if even just the nacelles.
I do have a problem with 45 ship classes all running around simultaneously. Even accounting for replication, easy manufacture a la 3D printing, and so on, that is a crapload of non-interchangable parts and systems and training.
With that in mind, it makes even more sense to have your primary battlefleet be composed of a few numerous classes, and let your odd ducks stay behind.
Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
Surely, as everything else in the Empire is, things like resources are controlled by the greatest of the great houses. This suggests to me that, as it's also the great houses that do most of the fighting (or at least stand off against each other most) they are the only ones with big new capitol ships.
All the other houses make do by capturing, stealing or buying older ships, which are less efficient and less powerful. Even an older ship is more useful in this kind of economy than the resource rich caring and sharing kind in the Federation, which would not need to keep renovating old ships.
Really, I find it hard to believe that the rich Federation would bother using older ships when you consider its main goals are exploration and making new friends. While upgrades are commonly used in real life navies to extend the life of older ships, richer nations tend to get rid of ships at a faster rate, have smaller navies and move towards automation - something hard to retrofit into older designs.
Because of this I suspect that the vast majority of Starfleet prior to Wolf 359 would be ships 10 - 30 years older than the E-D, primarily of the designs that were only ever made as wreckage for that battle scene.
Many, but no where near all of these, would have been destroyed, along with several reserves of older design. Come to think of it, the Aries was referenced in a couple of TNG eps and then in the okudagram in Nemesis.
The fleet rebuilding would have no doubt been in full swing by DS9 and churning out some brand new Borg killers (the FC designs) as well as several more (perhaps upgraded versions) of the "lost era" designs. Older ships, like the Lakota, would be upgraded as an emergency measure, and not in the huge number as suggested in s5-7 of DS9. I would also expect that most of these would be destroyed in the opening battles of the Dominon War.
To me, there really is not much of a logical argument to explain the vast numbers of movie era ships (in universe that is).
As for registries? Well, I always thought the numbered the TNG ships way to high. The highest registry we see in the movies is what? 2050ish? So they built 68000 odd ships between TUC and TNG - 1000 ships a year. That just seems like a really big number to me.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
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