posted
The DS9 Technical Manual (although regarded by most to be non-canon) shows six different "kitbashed" ships. Three have been seen although the designs were a little different, but suppose for a moment that the other kitbashes and maybe more different kitbash designs do exist. What role would they play in Starfleet? According to the Tech Manual they were quickly constructed from extra parts at various shipyards for the Dominion War. A patched together ship wouldn't be near as good in combat as a "class" ship (Galaxy, Defiant, etc.). It would be a waste of crew and parts which could be used for construction of a class ship. And the equipment wouldn't be as good as a class ship, especially that Intrepid/Constitution Variant. So that brings us to the questions: What fleet role were kitbashed ships intended to fill? And what will happen to them now with the war over? Also why did Starfleet expend extra parts on kitbashes when it could have used them on class ships?
------------------ Attempting to solve the mysteries of starships.
*Radio chatter* [Galaxy wings, attack!] [Excelsior group, cover them!] [Kitbashed ships, go fly pretty shapes with the Mirandas and draw fire!] [Do we have to, we only have cheap Maquis engines and oversized saucers....] [Thats' an order commander!]
posted
There is nothing wrong with the good kitbashes - where have the marvels of the Cheyenne and the New Orleans gone? Kitbash isn't a dirty-word... the centaur is a good ship - its when things like the Tech Manual have all these wierd parts, then it gets frustrating. I like to have 'families' of ships - i.e. New Orleans/Galaxy/Cheyenne/Nebula/Danube and Constitution refit/Constellation/Challenger/Excelsior/Sydney
but when you cross 'generations' it gets annoying. I think people have gotten the kitbash ships and the family ships mixed up...
I hate how we continually get new designs with no 'era' feel about them, we were going to see an Ambassador era ship in TNG for the Pegasus - but we missed out because of money constraints. I liked how in The Raven - the Raven was basically a Sydney for the Ambassador Era...
now I guess we are beginning to get another family of ships: Intrepid/Sovereign/Prometheus/Nova although the intrepid straddles the galaxy era and the sovereign era.
The Defiant is difficult but since it was designed between Q Who? and The Best of Both Worlds? would it be the Galaxy era - or have we already moved on to pre-soveregin?
so we've got
Daedelus Constitution (and also those Matt Jefferies designs from the TOS sketch book, which I reckon a lot of the movie series ships were based on) constitution-like: Mirandas, Challengers, Oberths
Movie Era:
Constitution Refit Oberth Refit Miranda Refit Soyuz Constellation Sydney
Post Movie/Pre Galaxy Era:
Excelsior era Excelsior Refits Centaur? Shelly/Curry?
Ambassador (there is probably a whole group of Ambassador eras - but we haven't seen them) Freedom Niagra Maquis Fighter (see below) Peregine (see below)
plus the hard to place. Akiras, Norways, Steamrunners, and Sabres... its hard to place these since they have no real common elements between each other except Sovereign era life boats... The Steamrunner has the rear part of the saucer section looking sort of Defiant-ish so maybe this was made around the same time... The Steamrunner could also be a modern oberth (design not function) i.e. the saucer section with directly attached nacelles leading to an under hung section cargo/deflector section.
Also if we go by The Raven and not Dark Frontier you can add the Raven as an Ambassadorised Sydney.
plus the Olympic Class
The Galaxy Era:
Galaxy Nebula + refits New Orleans Cheyenne Danube maybe Intrepid.
The triangular shape of the Norway Class tends to suggest a kinship with the Intrepid class...
The underhanging catamaran nacelles and pylons are a common feature between the Norway and the Akira... maybe the Norway took its designs from the Akira bussard collectors from (or gave to) the Danube bussards and helped become a test bed for the Intrepid...
The Akira Sensor pod is reminiscent of the Nebula class
The Akira Bussard collectors are reminiscent of the Olympic class.
The saucer attached nacelles of the Sabre class are reminiscent of the Defiant class...
I would put the Defiant mini Era in here: Defiant maybe pre-Defiant would be the Maquis Fighter since it has similar elements... see the small size, the twin forward "phaser canons"? the small bridge area. this was probably a Ambassador era ship - see the bridge panneling in "Caretaker". If this was an Ambassador Era design - it would fit with in with the Cardassian Wars... thus being a pre-plan for the Defiant.
The Peregrine Class - two was probably a by-product of the Cardassian wars and a sibling of the Maquis Fighter.
The Sovereing Era:
Sovereign Prometheus Nova maybe Intrepid
The escape pods of the Four FC ships also may lend these ships to being contemporary with the Sovereign class - although because of the registry number and their proximity to Earth in FC that they were all undergoing refit - refit of early classes? maybe Cardassian Wars ships that have been pulled out of mothballs, due to the impending Dominion/Klingon/Cardassian/Borg threats of the time.
Phew!
I should try a diagram.
------------------ "All the lonely people, where do they all come from" - Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles.
posted
There was a thread on this a while ago (mine actually). I think it's pretty much agreed on that the ugly ships in the back of the DS9:TM are not real. As far as the Shelley Class, the Centaur Type and Yeager Class go (the ones we've actually seen on screen), I don't think they're Starfleet Kitbashes. It makes no sense that Starfleet would throw together parts that were never designed to work together. It is more likely that and entirely possible that the Yeager, Cenatur, and Shelley were designed the way they are around the same time as the Excelsior and Intrepid respectively.
------------------ "A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx
posted
If SF made the Centaur and other kitbashes out of existing parts, it would be almost more work than to build a brand new one. First of all, they had to move the M/ARA to the saucer (in case of the Centaur) and probably the computer cores as well. Then they would have to rewire the whole thing to control it. Then you have the Jefferies tubes and the bridge controls.
(There's one way to justify this - Replicator Construction)
------------------ So small, So innocent, so young, So delicately done Grown up in your poison.
posted
Well, They could use the existing spaceframes from say the Excelsior Class saucer for example to make a Centaur type saucer. The outer structure could be almost identical while the interior would obviously be quite a bit different especially toward the back of the saucer. But the forward compartment could be almost exactly the same.
And keep in mind, the real reason we have ships like the Centaur type and the Shelley Class (both good designs in my opinion) is because the FX guys went out and bought a few AMT models and rearranged parts. If you'll notice:
Take a Reliant model's "rollbar thingy" and place it on the underside of an Excelsior model's saucer. Add a couple modified nacelles from the Excelsior model and some extra greebles for phasers and sensors, and you've got the U.S.S. Centaur. While these ships are not in scale in the Trek universe, they work perfectly for the model makers. Same holds true for the Yeager class. If you take the Voyager model's saucer and put the Maquis Raider model under it, there you go. It doesn't work if you try and use the models that are scaled to each other, but it does if you use the ones that were sold separately.
------------------ "A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx
Anyway, I don't believe they exist at all for several reasons. The most important one is that no engineer can just take a few parts and put them together to a working ship, and even if it was possible, the ship's perfomace would be moderate at most or, in other words, cannon fodder. http://www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/articles/kitbash.htm
------------------ "Naomi Wildman, sub-unit of Ensign Samantha Wildman, state your intentions." (VOY: "Infinite Regress")
posted
We all no the reason kitbshes show up on screen, but I don't understand everybodies reluctance to accept the possiblity. The miranda is one of the most widely accepted designs out there, but it is after all a kitbash, so are we to refuse the posibility that other popular designs like the excelsior don't have similar variants. I am not trying to change peoples minds, but to exclude the possiblity of so called kitbashes based on the fact that they look bad is a contradiction to the way a real fleet would function. If you needed a class of ship capable of performing a specific mission profile, and you have a proven design, it only makes sense you would go with what works. If I had never seen a trek ship in my entire life, I would think the Enterprise is the ugliest thing I ever laid my eyes on.
posted
IMHO I think that kitbashed starships do exist although it dosn't make much sense to me to build them during a war unless they were intended for a very specific job. I think some kitbashes came around during 2364 and 2366 when Federation engineers had time to design variants since it was a quiet two years, no wars. But I also accept the DS9 Tech Manual's explanation that some were built from damaged components, spare parts, etc. during the war. Well thats just what I think and what I didn't cover in the first post. :-)
------------------ Attempting to solve the mysteries of starships.
posted
No-one (I think) is saying that the kitbashed designs we've seen on screen don't exist. What we're saying is that Starfleet didn't "kitbash" them. If you have a real starship, you can't just cut it apart and put it back together a different way and expect it to work. Plus there's the fact that the pieces aren't scaled correctly. The Centaur uses a Miranda rollbar and the Curry uses Miranda nacelles. Yet, if we take the Excelsior parts to be normally sized, the Miranda parts are huge. Obviously, they were not simply cut from actual Mirandas and pasted onto parts cut from Excelsiors.
The point is, SF uses designs that have parts that look similar to other designs, but they don't actually cut those designs apart and rearrange the pieces (only the modelmakers do that). I mean, you wouldn't say that SF made the Miranda by actually disassembling a Constitution and rebuilding it in a different arrangement, would you?
------------------ "The Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich. Samuel Morse invented the Morse Code. Plato invented the plate." -Holly, Red Dwarf: "Parallel Universe"
posted
There's a precedent or two to real-world kitbashing; lots of butt-ugly designs were created for example for the Normandy landings, ships that could barely sail but still had a definite role in that specific assault. Some were prepared quite hastily by converting surplus ships or revitalizing shipwrecks.
For example, the "Constitution variant" with low-slung nacelles and type 10 phasers could have been a special "gun barge" intended to haul a special type 10 cannon to DS9 and blast through the station's shields. She would not have been capable of anything else, and would have been scrapped after the assault.
The Curry could have been a similar single-mission 'bash - an "escort carrier" made out of an Excelsior shipwreck to provide those Peregrines with some sort of long-range propulsion and nothing else (except a Peregrine would be a very tight fit into those Excelsioresque shuttlebays!). After the war, it would be scrapyards for her.
I fail to invent any good justification for the three-nacelled Excelsior or the LN-64-engined Intrepid, though. The latter could be an early prototype ship drafted to service with the addition of engines that were never designed for the ship but were sufficiently similar to the intended ones to be workable - but the former is a nightmare, requiring the designing of a whole new warp field shape just to get it warpborne.
posted
I agree that the designs are only the same at the outside and totally redesigned. But maybe they just "scan" the ship, change some vital parts, and then replicate it with some kind of huge Replicator Space Dock.
------------------ So small, so innocent, so young, so delicately done, grown up in your poison.
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