The write-up will have to wait until I can find out more about how the Q-S drive is supposed to work. Currently, there's a lot of disagreement about how fast it is and how it works. The design above is derived from my Dragon class destroyer -- I figured they'd want to use a tested configuration first and then figure out how to make things work better from there. After all, the earliest jet planes looked just like prop planes at first (sans propellers, of course), until they started modding the airframes to take advantage of the engine's capabilities.

BTW, since this is a work-in-progress, I will entertain suggestions from the peanut gallery regarding configuration, layout, etc. I started with the Dragon class hull (not a direct copy, but an 80% smaller pic) because I understand that Q-S drives work best with streamlined ships.

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...

[This message has been edited by Baloo (edited February 23, 2000).]

--Baloo

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...

--Baloo

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...

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Ross: "Inter arma, enim silent leges."
Bashir: "'In the time of war the law falls silent.' Cicero. Have we become a 24th-century Rome, driven by the fact that Caesar can do no wrong?!"
-Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

Fabrux: Care to explain why you're doing that??

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E-mail Dot at: [email protected]

The first one looks way too much like the Dragon class:

I figure if the Hiryu uses Dragon class components, it would probably delete the EQT launchers in favor of more conventional armaments, and would probably require addidional internal components for the Q-S drive.

The second Hiryu proposal looks too "fat" to me in the profile (side) view.

The third one uses the hull of a Dragon class destroyer as the starting point, but adds a "blended" secondary hull (more internal space for the Q-S drive) with a larger deflector/sensor array and external nacelles specifically designed to work with the quantum slipstream propulsion system. I like the third one. Fabrux: What's funny about the front view?

--Baloo

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...

Perhaps you could pull the nacelles in the Third version closer to the hull, thus allowing the hull to pass along with less effort, and perhaps removing Fabrux's 'silly front view.' (I think it looks cool.)

I wish I had 1/10th the ideas you do, Baloo. Well, I do, I'm just extraordinarily lazy, and can't use Photoshop.

Anyway, keep up the zounds of great ideas!

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Ross: "Inter arma, enim silent leges."
Bashir: "'In the time of war the law falls silent.' Cicero. Have we become a 24th-century Rome, driven by the fact that Caesar can do no wrong?!"
-Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

If I have a difficult cut-and-paste (such as putting a nacelle partly below the saucer) I switch to Paint Shop Pro (PSP) and perform that operation. Only after the line drawing is complete do I save the drawing and move to PSP to finish it. (Which is not to say that I don't save the drawing several times before I get to this stage. )

The first thing I (try to) do is save the drawing as a GIF, then increase the colors to 16 million (or whatever the maximum is). If I don't do things that way, I risk saving a colored version of the bitmap, and should I want to use elements of that ship in a later drawing, it's really tough trying to remove the colored bits. Raising the # of colors to maximum is important, because you can't do some things in PSP (or they work cockeyed) unless you do that.

I fill in all the colors, then replace the white background of the picture with a godawful pink that I use for no other purpose. I change the background color to that pink, reduce colors to 256, and make the background color transparent. Then I save the picture (a step, I'm ashamed to admit, I still sometimes forget -- it's very frustrating to lose an hour or so's work to an act of omission!)

It isn't hard to come up with new ideas, either. The more you try, the easier it gets. For me, the hardest part is to come up with a type of ship I haven't done before. Once I know what kind of ship I want to do (and what era it's supposed to belong to -- Pre-TOS, TOS, Movie Era, TNG, or later) I know about how big to make it and what I want it to look like. Sometimes I like elements of a ship enough that they inspire a successor ship.

I've also noticed I seem to have most of my ship ideas during the winter, so perhaps it's just a symptom of a mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Perhaps I feel compelled to sit before the softly-glowing computer monitor during the short hours of winter. I have noticed some correlation between bouts of depression and creativity, so I halfway suspect that whenever I create a new ship, It's either a warning sign or perhaps self-administered therapy?

Fabrux: The nacelles are tiny in comparison to the rest of the ship because that's the way it is with the Dauntless. The primary hull is HUGE compared to the secondary hull, and the nacelles appear to be almost vestigial.

--Baloo

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...

Version 3.01 has larger nacelles, thicker, angled pylons, is stretched 10 meters, and has rounded (very slightly) corners in the top view.

--Baloo

P.S.: Since no one can agree on how Quantum Slipstream works, I speculate that it's like transwarp (as described in VLV 8. The Dauntless provided important clues with regard to how to stabilize the artificial wormhole created by the transwarp drive, reduce or eliminate the shear stresses between quantum realities and eliminate adverse time dilation effects. The Hiryu is a test-bed to demonstrate the technology.

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...

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E-mail Dot at: [email protected]

Hiryu class fast cruiser

Click on the image and the description opens in a new page.

--Baloo

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...

--Baloo

[Post-edit P.S.: Besides, I've probably made some grammatical or factual errors I won't catch until 6 months after the fact unless someone points it out to me now. Please check out the description, if only to proof-read it!

Thank you. ]

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"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
Come Hither and Yawn...