posted
Yeah, at the moment I'm calling it the T'Plana-Hath, I figured Starfleet had enough ships with Earth names, so these could be named after old Vulcan ships. I styled the lower nacelle registry after the writing on the Vulcan shuttle from TMP, the numbers are direct copies, the letters I made up on my own.
The other ship doesn't have a real name yet, I've been calling it the Old Orleans since I took design cues from the New Orleans, but that's not a real name by a long shot.
Registered: Mar 2004
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Not digging the Orleans- the too-rounded and very large secondary hull kinda throw me- as does the inverted nacelle end cap.
The TOS Constellation is nice but I really really hate those giant fins on the nacelles! please eliminate the fins- possibly replacing them with whatever was on the TOS Constution instead and I would be happy. What do the hatbox thingies between the nacelles represent?
Overall, though, while nicely rendered, I kinda loathe the notion that no TNG design was in any way original and it all reflects a latter-era knockoff of some TOS version. It's as though the posion which is endlessly recycled plots somehow infected not only the writing for trek but the very designers within that fictional universe. I blame Future Spock, that pointy-eared asshat.
Not to bag on you, it's just a peeve of mine- I see a LOT of people do this- make TOS and now JJverse versions of everything from the Reliant to the Akira to the Norway.
Though that being said, it's damn good to see you bac in the saddle- now maybe make us a nice TNG version of the Newton design. And a TMP era version. And an ENT version....
Hmmm...kidding aside, I would kinda like to see a Constellation rendered with Phase II nacelles and trappings- it could plausibly show a test vehicle which eventually got it's own class. You can even get snarky and make the robot parts from some G1 Transformer rather than an anime model kit!
Registered: Aug 2002
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Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. If it's worth anything, I don't think I'm going to do the pods on it, so it's not borrowing its design wholesale from the newer ship. My main goal was to do a ship of a similar type, similar looks just felt like the next logical step. I also wanted to play around with that same idea of smaller scale ships with similar design components, though in this case, since I'm not kitbashing with physical models, none of the components are actually exact matches. The endcaps aren't really doing it for me either, I wanted to see what it looked like with them slanted forward, but eh...
Anyway, tell you what, I'll try to do something that isn't specifically inspired by another design for my next one!
As for the other ship, honestly, I'm not terribly happy with the fins either, but I don't have the spacial comprehension to do up what I really want, stuff at angles really throws me. I left them as placeholders for when/if I did a 3d model, so that I'd remember to put something else on there. I had envisioned the hotbox things as some kind of advanced sensors, as is the large light on the front. I wasn't really sure how to get the same feel of being decked out with all sorts of doodads within the TOS design style. I wanted to stay true to the idea that the sensitive components are within the hull, so I've just been sticking glowy things on there, taking cues from the design of the sensor domes.
Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Hmmmm....maybe the hatbox things could be launchers for deployable subspace relays. That would work nicely for a trailblazer (proto-Constellation) scout ship- four nacelles which trade off the stresses of long duration high warp speeds while at specific distances, the ship drops out of warp to deploy a relay, test it by way of firing off a sitrep to Starfleet HQ and then moving on.
Exploration ships like the Enterprise come along into the general galactic vicinity a few weeks or months later and their subspace comms are pre-established, allowing them to explore at their leisure and report all sorts of laughably unlikely shit like giant hands grabbing the ship or whatever.
BTW, with the exception of the fins, I really like the proto-Constellation's nacelle design- thy look thinner than Constution nacelles and their endcaps look nice.
Registered: Aug 2002
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Made a few small changes on the Orleans, cut about a deck off of the secondary hull, and changed the shape slightly.
I've also done a size comparison, both of my ships to scale with each other, and approximate scale to the Enterprise. The image of the Enterprise is not mine.
I haven't had much time or energy to work on this, we've found bed bugs and have been dealing with that as the primary concern.
Registered: Mar 2004
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Hmmm...nice. Really shows just how large the Constelation class is.
The New Orleans stil needs tweaking though- it's the side view that bugs me- making a physical model of that would be impossible with that rear hangar having the squared off garage door- the top and side views can't match up well, and the side view back there really makes the hull seem like a breadbox with rounded corners...which could be a cool thing unto itself if it had landing capacity. I like the top view though- I'd just adjust the side view to reflect the landing lip and how the hangar door sits back from the lip....and add another such door to the ventral side for offloading cargo, colonist, troops or seeding Klingon worlds with millions of tribbles for shits and giggles. I'd add the turbolift behind the bridge (maybe two to be more unique), the "rust ring" and maybe a slight saucer grid, which would showcase how much smaller the saucer is than the Enterprise's.
Nost of all though, it's the pods that it needs- you can make some nice TOS pods (whatever their purpose is, no one knows) and it would seem more "New Orleans" to me, y'know? Without the pods, it just seems like a shrinky-dink enterprise.
Registered: Aug 2002
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Just to provide a counterpoint, I actually dig the fins at least in a side view, though they'd probably look pretty silly in 3D unless the nacelles are spaced pretty far apart laterally . . . the fins would, to my sense of proportion (which is no better or worse than any other), look pretty awesome if they were, say, 85 meters wide at maximum extent in width compared to the saucer's 100, for instance. And the catching of the basic fin shape on the dorsal upright nacelle strut is a nice design cue.
I'm not a big fan of the Orleans in principle, simply because it falls into the trap of being yet another not-quite-Consitution design, and I prefer to keep that to a minimum. That said, I think the ship would fit very nicely in Masao's Museum, and perhaps even better than a not-quite-Connie design already there. The boxiness contributes to that.
I actually approve of the original variation on the nacelles . . . certainly the TMP-era Constellation had a variation on the endcap, and with these nacelles being of a different size altogether, not to mention various possibilities of technological variations that enter production (just witness the difference between Sovereign and Intrepid warp systems), I'm more than willing to entertain explorations of variations.
Jason's quite right that the "TOS version of such-and-such TNG ship" or the "ENT version of such-and-such TNG ship" has been done to death . . . I think Paramount both killed and forever reinforced that meme with the Akiraprise . . . but they're certainly fun explorations in any case.
Myself, I imagine that there might've been a TOS Miranda, for instance, but that doesn't mean there was . . . Mirandas may have been children of (or parents of) the TMP era, and the return to having all the drive systems in the saucer a la the NX Class was a spiffy new thing made possible by such-and-such advances over the old extra-hull approach, but for such-and-such reason that sort of went by the wayside, et cetera.
And hey, at least you're not using JJ-Trek design cues. Ugh. :-)
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
I was aware of the side view needing to be changed, I just hadn't done so yet.
And I'm certainly not done with the details yet, so don't worry about the lack of them presently. I had intentionally left the turbolift bump out though, the bridge structure is taller than the more traditional domes of this era. Though, now that I think about it, there's probably a practical purpose for the external access, so I may change my mind on that.
I just can't win though huh? Too derivative, and not derivative enough? Well, here's the side view fixed to match the top, with some pods. I don't know if they really fit though.
Guardian 2000:
Well, I guess I'll have to see how things turn out. As I said, I'd like to try different fins, but rendering them properly at that angle is not easy for me. I'm really not much of an artist.
I guess my thinking on the configuration was that in other eras we've seen multiple designs that follow the same general shape with different components, so I figured there would be at least some of that in this era too.
I always try to go for a little nacelle variation, there is, as you mentioned, plenty in modern designs. I never really liked how the typical route taken on TOS designs is to just take existing components and rearrange them. I was also using it to set these apart as being built at different times. The Constellation knockoff being older than the Constitution, while the New Orleans knockoff is supposed to be newer.
Well, that's the fun thing about fan designs right? You don't have to take it seriously as something that would, or even could happen in universe, it's just me goofing around on a computer. Hell, I started a TOS Excelsior once, and even I didn't consider that anything that was a likely occurrence, so much as a what-if.
As I said though, I will strive to come up with something that isn't an Era-X version of an Era-Y ship for my next design.
Registered: Mar 2004
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I dig the extra deep teacup shaped deflector on this- definitely different!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Trying something different with the pod configuration. Got rid of the lower one, and added a Miranda style bar between the upper two, with phasers. I may put something in the middle, but I didn't want to do something that would be regularly inhabited.
While I'm here, added neck windows to the T'Plana-Hath, and threw my unfinished top and bottom views in for good measure.
[ June 13, 2013, 06:22 AM: Message edited by: Captain Boh ]
Registered: Mar 2004
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Oh, I'm sorry if it came across that I was bothered, heh. I'm not always the best at interpreting, or being interpreted. Brain problems and all.
I don't think the fins have changed at all though.
Registered: Mar 2004
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