posted
Bear: No sweat (translation: thank you and/or you're welcome ). I try to make my classification scheme flexible enough that if I make a mistake, it still works. Some folks try to rig their classification scheme so that their favorite ship falls into the classification they think it should, then try to force-fit the rest of the scheme around that.
I really think "explorer" isn't a description of a specific type so much as it is a description of what several kinds of ship might do. "Frigate", on the other hand, basically says nothing unless you know it's smaller than a destroyer and bigger than a corvette. Unless, of course, in *your* scheme, frigates are bigger than destroyers.
<Trivia>In the U.S. Navy, frigates were once bigger than destroyers. Then, during WW II, new destroyers were introduced that were bigger than the frigates, so they had destroyers both larger and smaller than frigates. If I'm not mistaken, some time during the 1960s, some of the tiny destroyers were "promoted" to frigates, while some frigates were "promoted" to destroyer. Complicating this, I think some destroyers were (without modification) reclassified as cruisers to bring our fleet's cruiser strength (in numbers only) to parity with the USSR's cruiser strength. Go fig.</Trivia>
--Baloo
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[This message has been edited by Baloo (edited November 04, 1999).]
posted
If any ship in Insurrection is a runabout, then the one flown by Picard and Worf!
It's almost the size of a Danube. It has impractically small entry doors for a shuttle. It carries onboard transporters similar to the Danube ones. And it has internal bulkheads, corridors and the like. Plus, it's heavily armed with aft and presumably forward (micro)torps.
Since I won't get my sales video on Insurrection until X-mas, could somebody tell me whether the craft is called a shuttle somewhere in the movie? If not, all the better...
Did the final version have any registry at all? If it did, was it NCC-1701-E/something or NCC-something?
And then on to the obligatory provoking:
I think that both Explorer and Runabout are valid ship type names comparable to Cruiser in the Starfleet system. However, Runabout and Courier could both fall under the more general term "shuttle", while vessels from Corvette/Surveyor/Escort up would be "ships". Capt. Keogh in "Jem'Hadar" does call the Peregrines "armed shuttlecraft", and seems to be at least halfway serious - so the similarly sized and equipped Danubes could also be "shuttlecraft" despite being Runabouts.
posted
The Type-11 is officially 16 metres long, not really runabout-sized. The scout was only about a metre less in length than the Danube-class ships.
------------------ Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")
). I try to make my classification scheme flexible enough that if I make a mistake, it still works. Some folks try to rig their classification scheme so that their favorite ship falls into the classification they think it should, then try to force-fit the rest of the scheme around that.
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