Been a while since I last posted anything. This here's my "Universe class" starship, named in honor of Mr. Universe. I see it as essentially a mobile starbase, which projects a delegation of Federation government bureaucrats and politicos into the farthest reaches of the known galaxy, where it camps out for years at a time. A hub of activity and commerce; a beehive of smaller ships going in and out.
Why am I getting such a "if-JJ-was-in-charge-of-Cloud-City" vibe? An interesting idea. Any other views? --Alex
I don't know ... I'm fascinated by explorations into super-sizing the original Enterprise design. "Too big" based on personal taste? Naaaahhh. I'm more curious about how big you can go before the stresses of vessel operation become too much. Before tidal forces while orbiting a class M planet threaten to rip a ship apart. Of course, that's all math intensive. At what point does size start to make the Enterprise shape less likely? Erifah's done a nice job of capturing the squashing of the ship as deck height becomes less and less significant the bigger it gets. How about the nacelles ... I'll accept that they should grow proportionately larger to move a larger vessel, but how far from the hull do they need to be? The original concept was that they were kept from inhabited volumes because of the dangerous energies involved. Do they need to kept proportionately farther from the ship the larger they get? Or will the same gap seen on NCC-1701 be sufficient? One, unrelated comment: either the title or the flattened structure triggered a sense of the Destiny from Stargate:Universe. Might it also be intended to travel to other galaxies -- possibly as a generational ship? I'm looking forward to seeing more.
I'd be interested in knowing Her specifications LO, WO, HO, crew, passengers, Mission duration, weapons etc.
I personally think its brilliant and could see something like this in the Federation. However I would like to see different angles. I dont think the straight on angle does it justice enough!
I think you need to get away from the Enterprise-J concept (it's pathetic and I'm glad that timeline was erased). The reason it looks "too big" is because it's flat and wide, there's little to no height to it, make it thicker, bulk up the nacelles especially because of it's mass, it's nacelles should probably be larger than average.
The concept reminds me of Iain Banks' "Culture" books. The whole Culture mainly consists of strongly sentient starships as big as moons, with millions of citizens living their lives aboard. These Ships sort of wander about the galaxy, and more than 90% of the trillions-large humanoid population lives on one Ship or another. Actually, I justify the (already ridiculously large) Galaxy Class with the same idea. The class was designed and built by a Starfleet and a Federation that had become accustomed to lasting peace, inexhaustible plenty, and overwhelming technological advantage. The Galaxy Class was intended as a diplomatic and cultural outpost, a mobile microcosm of the 24th Century Federation that would physically represent their values and assumptions to all who bore witness to the spectacle.
Bingo. I get my fanboy jollies out of Big Space Battles as much as the next guy, but when it comes down to it, Trek is not about Big Battles, but Big Ideas.
I happen to really dig the J. In fact, all of my recent work has been done an eye towards the J - a series of designs leading up to the J, and a few more beyond it. This particular design, (which of course isn't everyone's cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot,) turned out pretty much exactly as I had hoped for, (from the front, anyway,) flatness and all.
Back in the early 90s, I was sharing drawings of starships with friends via snail-mail. One of the concepts we speculated about was what it would be like to extend the lineage of the Starship Enterprise beyond the Enterprise-D, which was the latest one at that time. We wondered what extremely advanced starships of the 26th century and beyond would be like, say, the Enterprise-H or the Enterprise-R. One idea circulated for the Enterprise-H was a massive city-ship, morphed from the old saucer 'n cigars design concept into something that looked almost like a gigantic multi-headed mushroom. IIRC, it has a crew of thousands. I came up with a couple of similar ideas of my own. My concepts were called galaxyships, being that they were designed for intergalactic travel. My idea for a Galaxyship Enterprise-H took a couple of forms, one was a Federation-Klingon hybrid. The other had a shape similar to the Enterprise-D, but was many times larger and combined elements of Federation ships, Gommtu (TNG "Tin Man"), and the Borg. This gigantic Enterprise-R was supposed to be a living ship like "Tin Man", with a crew of many species including a resident Borg hive embedded in the ship. Both my Klingonish Enterprise-H and my "alive" Enterprise-R were built to haul a fleet of smaller starships that would be carried along for the intergalactic journey. Once the Enterprise would arrive at its destination, millions of lightyears from its home port, it would "drop anchor" in some foreign galaxy and disperse its smaller starships to explore. The Borgified, living Enterprise-R had the additional advantage of something like the multi-vector mode of separation seen in VOY; the ship could split into four warp-capable "motherships", with each one proceeding to position itself in a different corner of the foreign galaxy being explored. Smaller starships inside each mothership would be dispersed from there. I never got deep into propulsion, but I did vaguely assume these advanced galaxyships would explore the Universe using either some kind of transwarp conduit or fifth-power warp drive. One of my friends envisioned a "cities in flight" concept, which I interpreted as being like a Super Star Destroyer or Death Star, but with a mixture of Starfleet, Borg and civilians/colonists on board.
I happen to like the Ent-J too (what little we saw of it, anyway). I like the city in space concept. My first impression of the Ent-D in "Farpoint" was of a city in space, even then with a CE3K Mothership vibe. Your starship has that even more so, with the cityscape on top. One criticism, though, regarding the name (hopefully constructive). Any ship with the name Universe shouldn't be confined to a single galaxy. Just sayin'.