Also, the Miranda and Cnstellation classes are hardly kitbashes. Even the models have custom built saucers. The designers of those classes were simply going for a generational feel and I think they did a darn nice job. It is certainly reasonable to think that there are ships out there that have similar feels to them regarding the Excelsior class and the Ambassador and others. These would not be kitbashes though just because they share some design components.

Prakesh: It's been stated in several sources that high capacity replication like that isn't possible. Certainly many of the parts are replicated and assembled. But they can't just replicate an entire ship.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

[This message has been edited by Aban Rune (edited January 11, 2000).]

Another suggestion is that the ships in question already existed prior to the war, but they were not in outer space service. Let's say the Curry was rebuilt from an old Excelsior to serve as a transport on a Starfleet depot. A department of Utopia Planitia or a smaller fleet yard could have converted several old ships in the same fashion so that the effort of rebuilding was worth while.

The Centaur belongs to a real class IMHO.

The Yeager is an Intrepid variant and has nothing to to with the Maquis raider, of course. We don't get a close look at the ship, but it would reveal (at least the *real* ship would reveal) that the engineering hull only roughly resembles the Maquis raider. Maybe the Yeager is the Intrepid forerunner, not yet with foldable nacelle pylons.

The Intrepid/Constitution kitbash is crap as it is depicted. I am quite sure now that it's actually supposed to be the Voyager prototype built by Rick Sternbach. Rick is not quite sure, but a model built by Greg Jein could have made its way to DS9. I suggest this is a distinct class and has no hull parts in common with the Intrepid.

The Constitution variant might be a tug or something like that. Since it's not built for high performance, the design might have survived much longer than the Constitution. It is possible that the tugs are actually rebuilt Constitutions. This should have happened around the year 2300, so the ships of this class wouldn't be *too* old.

The three-nacelled Excelsior is crap. I don't find any argument for the third nacelle or the upside-down saucer. It's nonsense.

DS9TM ships summary:
1 crap, to be ignored
2 "kitbash" quasi-classes
1 prototype (possibly a singulary design)
2 real classes

The Curry may not look too good (though, personally, I don't thik it looks all that bad), but the nacelles are so out-of-scale w/ the Ex. parts that there's no doubt that it isn't a SF kitbash.

I like the idea of having hanger doors on the top side of the secondary hull and having small platforms that raise up like the runabout pads on DS9. It'd look sort of like an aircraft carrier.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

It even works for the scaled-up Miranda parts in the Centaur and Curry. Most of the pieces are probably replicated and then assembled. Just go into the replicator pattern and simply change it so that the pieces are twice as large (or whatever ratio you need). Granted, you'll probably need new machinery to assemble it, but it's the same prinicple. Just rebuild the machinery twice as large. You won't have to completely redesign it.

When you think about how much time and resources SF can save by using ships that share certain basic features, it would be surprising if there weren't "kitbash" designs.

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Show me the meaning of being lonely
Is this the feeling, I need to walk in
Tell me why I can't be there where you are
There's something missing in my heart

Basically, by using "kitbash" designs, SF is keeping themselves from "re-inventing the wheel", as it were.

Maybe they are being used more in DS9 that in other series because Starfleet was desperate because the dominion was wining the war.

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http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/9268/index.html

I believe there is a quick way around the problem of internal design. Many people will point out that these designs are not from other ships because the location of rooms and systems doesn't allow it. I.e. "the neck cannot go there because it cuts the top off of the main deuterium tankage," or "you cannot put a warp core there because this area is reserved for the captain's mess." The first sentence on page 17 of the TNG Tech Manual says, "First habitat module swapout by transporter successful." Also, page 6 of the manual describes "[a] great many systems, especially the pressurized habitation sections, [being] suspended within the open spaces, essentially 'floating' on flexible ligaments . . ."

If we take the Intrepid-class for example, since we know it has 257 rooms, and we take the five-second transporter cycle, then we can say one room can be beamed out of the ship, to the transporter buffer, then to a storage area in ten seconds. One transporter can beam all of the rooms out of an Intrepid-class starship in 2,570 seconds, or a little more than forty-two minutes. We'll add some time to disengage the ligaments, take a couple of union coffee breaks, and whatever else, and we'll say one transporter can gut an Intrepid in a day if everyone works at it.

Now, we wouldn't have to fill the ship all of the way back up. We'll need a bridge, engineering, warp core, deuterium tanks, antimatter tanks, a bunk area, some form of computer core, eps conduits, probably assloads of torpedo storage bays, shield generators, a few other rooms and systems, but nothing approaching 275 rooms, and we aren't so restricted by where everything goes. Without having to work out where everything goes, straight-line, rapidly-produced conduits can be installed to mark a path from wherever the new warp core is to wherever the new nacelles are.

Externally, the changes are the biggest problem, but given the existence of so many similar ship designs, like the Galaxy/Nebula, Constitution/Miranda, it seems (as someone else mentioned) Starfleet parts could be initially designed with reconfiguration in mind. For instance, several capped-off entry points for the plasma conduits could exist along the spine and ventral surface of a nacelle. Bridges can be made between incompatible parts. An example could be the Intrepid/Constitution variant on page 155 of the DS9 Manual. The paragraph describing these ships mentions "custom assemblies fabricated by the individual fleet yards." The wing attaching the body to the nacelle is one such custom assembly, a bridge constructed to mate the body with the structurally incompatible nacelle.

Some have pointed out that, for instance, the Excelsior/Constitution variant on page 156 of the DS9TM cannot be because the Constition nacelle is out-of-scale with the Excelsior body. I would say we should think of the terminology as descriptive more than defining. Easily, from the wording, we can liberally assume the ship is a combination of an Excelsior variant of unknown scale/arrangement and a Constitution variant of unknown scale/arrangement as opposed to an Excelsior and a Constitution, the difference between "It LOOKS like an Excelsior and a Constitution" as opposed to "It IS an Excelsior and a Constitution." Indeed, given such a view, it could be made of more than just those two ships but merely have the most in common with these two. This approach could also explain the dimensions of the Constitution variant on page 157 of the DS9TM. You quite obviously cannot start with a 300 meter long ship, reduce its length and get a ship that is sixty-four meters longer than the ship you just shortened. It has to be (and can be) read as "it LOOKS like a Constitution." The only way Sternbach could seriously present that as being parts from a 300 meter long Constitution is if he was on find-himself-dead-overdosed crack. Since I'll not assume he is overdosed and dead right now, I'll assume it's not a true Constitution but some sort of variant on the Constitution that was then again made another type of variant.

Now for the purpose of these ships. I like the previously mentioned idea that the Curry is a hastily constructed transport for fighters. Look at the WWII Pacific campaign. When the U.S. needed carriers, proven by the Japanese to be highly effective), U.S. Naval yards stopped the construction of cruisers half way through and used those partial builds to improvise aircraft carriers. When Starfleet needed carriers (small fighters having been proven interestingly effective by Maquis raider activity and even small Cardassian and Dominion ships entering the war), they looked to partial builds to come up with a solution.

It doesn't seem too crazy to me that some of these ships, though, were built just to shoot. If the enemy is coming at you with guns, and your gun just got destroyed (and there is no other gun available), pick up a stick. Some might argue that you wouldn't need to work the design kinks out of a stick, but you know what I mean. Some have brought up the fact that it would make more sense to build real ships of existing proven designs instead of going through time testing these Frankensteins. The biggest problem I see is working out things like warp geometry, and shield conformity. I don't know if it doesn't seem like it would be easier to look at computer models of possible arrangements until one works than it would be to go back to the shipyard and go all of the way back to the materials construction phase (most available materials would already have been used to construct real starships that were close enough to be put together before it was too late). Yes, some parts can be replicated, but not all of them.

It seems to make sense to me that Starfleet would have had to 1) recommission mothballed starships that can work as soon as power is supplied and crews are assigned 2) begin repairs on any partially damaged ships that can be quickly released from spacedock (think of it as engineering triage: this ship will be helped first because we can save it quickly; that one would take too long, ignore it and move on) 3) rapidly finish proven designs that are close enough to being finished using existing parts that only need to be fitted, 4) begin material construction on any proven designs that are lacking parts but close to being completed 5) look to partial builds (the unlucky ones from triage) and see if anything can be put together, 6) begin material construction for proven designs to be built from scratch.
Stage five can be divided up into 1) finding ships that are only a very small percentage incomplete and complete them with very small numbers of components from other designs, 2) begining to look for hulls that can be assembled to have as many common characteristics as possible with proven designs, so the proven design can be a starting point from which to modify a shield dynamic or warp geometry instead of coming up with one from scratch 3) make hideous Medusas and hope the computer that said they were okay isn't as faulty as the engineer's crack-adled brain.

Now if I can just absolutely wax hypthetical, just prior to the early 2360's Starfleet seemed to have some degree of war with both the Cardassians and the Tzenkethi. Then Wolf 359 occurred to spook the Federation, and now they've just recently had a war with the Klingons. For a period of nearly twenty years (say about 2355 for the first real problems with Cardassians and Tzenkethi to the end of 2374 for the Dominion war with step-ups in the program at 2365 for Wolf 359, 2372 for the Klingon war, 2373 for First Contact and 2374-2375 for the Dominion War), programs could have been in place testing possible arrangements of salvaged hulls in case Starfleet needed an emergency supply of ships that can fly and shoot with some degree of reliability. The 2372 and 2373 dates (the First Contact battle) would explain the Intrepids, but that only gives them two years to test possible mates.

Surely these ships in any of the above examples would not be as good as proven designs, but these are desparate times. Just as the U.S. carriers improvised from partial cruiser builds were not as good as would ships built from the keel up to be carriers, these ships are only the best they could do with few options.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and possibly some new ideas now that some people seem to be presenting a few more ideas supporting the possible existence of these ships as salavaged chimera monsters (yes, I like the idea that Centaur is a mythical creature that is part man and part horse while U.S.S. Centaur looks like part Excelsior, part Miranda). I'm not trying to say these ideas are great or infallible; I just hope the effort continues to contribute to the idea pool, nothing more, nothing less.

Also, as far as answering the original question goes: yes, the fighter carrier idea for the Curry is a good explanation of what that ship may have been made for (and would go a way toward explaining why it was around so early in the war; it had a clear mission requirement), but as the above says, most of the rest were probably put together as part of a dire need to protect the Federation with something that can shoot. These ships were the absolute last resort before having to build entire new ships, and the crews are unfortunately made up mostly of the people left over after every other more reliable ship was given a near-skeleton crew.