I am desperate for some images of the deck-by-deck blueprints for a Defiant-class starship. I've heard that there were some pretty nice sheets on the strategicpubdesigns.com website, but that site seems to be offline, indefinitely. Can anybody maybe post some designs, please? I would really be incredibly grateful.
The official deck plans are in the Deep Space Nine technical manual. You can probably get a copy from Amazon or eBay for barely more than the cost of shipping nowadays.
What you want is David's Schmidt's deck plans, which are no longer available. I've got a somewhat rough set of deck plans, which I will be doing up in the style of my other LCARS schematics to include in my LCARS software package, at which point I'll put them on my Web site for anyone to view and copy, as well as at Cygnus. But I haven't put the set together yet. You can see the style here (the deck plans will have more colors: http://lcars24.com/schem3.html They will be set in this outline and labeled in LCARS fonts like my other schematics. I'll probably post them here in TrekTech one deck at a time to get feedback on details.
It'd be helpful, of course, if we knew the size of the Defiant... or how many decks she actually had.
The size is vague, but the deck count is canonically established as 6 turbolift-accessible decks by a more or less readable turbolift Okudagram, or at the very least as 5 decks mentioned in dialogue. How we choose to insert these decks to the spaceframe is up to us, of course. Perhaps Deck 3 is slightly above Deck 2, and Decks 5 and 6 are at the same level but one is in the portside ventral keel while the other is in the starboard one. FWIW, the turbolift chart assigns standing-height facilities to each deck, unless we assume that the brig on Deck 6 is a lie-down space only... The presence of a standing-height Deck 5 is well established in at least two episodes, already invalidating the four-deck MSD that we see up close on screen. But the Defiant has plenty of other invalid Okudagrams about - perhaps as the result of her being a hastily cobbled-together prototype that was perhaps torn down and rebuilt to a different shape more than once. Not to mention that she's a top secret weapon yet often hosts assorted alien dignitaries; perhaps bridge displays are deliberately perverted to preserve Starfleet secrets? Timo Saloniemi
^ I've seen an 8-deck cross section of Defiant that seemed surprisingly reasonable to me. Can't find it now, though.
I bought a copy of those Defiant plans before Strategic Design Publications shut down for however long they're going to be off-line. Got what I paid for, too. Consider me a Satisfied Customer, and I hope they get back in the game again soon.
As far as I can recall the discussions, the 120-meter length of the Defiant was preferred over the 174-meter length. A perusal of past Trek Tech threads will find where that particular war was fought in the forum, with many arguments pro and con.
Here's one of the items from the Christie's auction. I notice dual hardare in each nacelle. The Freedom class has the equivalent of two nacelles in one wide nacelle housing, achieving line-of-sight codependence within that space. The figure below seems to show the same sort of setup, countering the argument that the Defiant class violates the light-of-sight rule, giving the Defiant the equivalent of four warp nacelles. None of the deck plans I've seen show this. Either way, I wonder if their not being parallel to direction of flight is an issue. I don't have the DS9 tech manual. When Jadzia said, "deck five", what she should have said was "deck two, section five," which is what the Jem'Hader elder said to the turbolift computer when taking Captain Sisko to the engine room in DS9: One Little Ship and exactly where Jadzia went after mistakenly saying, "deck five," like "That's one small step for [missing word] man, one giant leap for mankind." Audio glitch or human/Trill error. If I do deck plans, I don't want to get into more than four decks, other than the walkway in the lowest part of each nacelle that is actually a little below the level of deck four. And I like to stick to overall length of 120 meters, unless you're talking about Empress Sato's Defiant.
You're doing some great work there with the schematics, LCARS 24. You da man! Yes, I was talking about the DS9 Defiant, and I, too, subscribe to the '4-deck / 120m' baseline with the subdecks acting like expanded Jefferies' tubes. I eagerly await the prints you come up with! Thanks to all of you guys for your answers!
The DS9 Tech Manual plans are beautiful, if you can get a copy of the book you'll be satisfied with them.
According to Doug Drexler, in order to avoid the size issue, he had designed the schematic without clear labels or text, which were later added by the "Captain's Chair" people. I'm not sure if the schematic appeared onscreen in modified form, but even if it did, the MSD would have to take precedence because of its sheer number of onscreen appearances: behind Sisko on the bridge, in the engine room, in closeups, and even indirectly in the form of Doug Drexler's DS9TM blueprints. This is especially obvious if we rewatch seasons 3-7 straight through on DVD. By extension, the size would have to be roughly 120 meters, because the MSD also trumps the few inconsistent occasions where we could measure the Defiant next to other ships of known size. It's up to Doug Drexler's MSD, mainly in order to avoid contradicting frequent onscreen evidence. The only real question is how Deck 5 fits into the layout; it would be better if it were a standing-height portion of the horizontally broken-up fourth level rather than a crawlspace below, just in case someone were to make further errors.
The only real deck 5 is about half a deck lower than deck 4, and there is no deck floor above it, because it's located in the lowest portion of each nacelle. It's like being in a slightly lower level in a different building and hardling worth referring to as deck 5. It consists of just one walkway within each nacelle and is used for maintenance purposes. And when someone mentioned deck 5 in dialog, that's not even what they were talking about. Those rare mentions of deck 5 were just errors. But again, what about the nonparallel orientation of the nacelles? Is that okay?
I drew a simple AUTOCAD scalings of the Galaxy, DS9 and Defiant. This is what I found. a. It's impossible to fit all three vessels at their proper scale as seen on screen. b. Galaxy would never fit properly in the upper pylons as we frequently see. It would be an extremely tight fit. c. Defiant is never shown less than 1/10 the station's diameter. It's always around 200 meters. d. In order for Defiant to fit between those docking latches it has to be larger than 170 meters. The Variable that really keeps changing is the station's size. Defiant aswell is scaled up to as large as a Miranda class and as small as 100 meter or less like in First Contact. Okuda's Deck plan is decidedly wrong. In order for the windows on the lower deck and on the deflector housing to be proper the ship must have 6 plus decks. There are also no turbo lifts on his plan. If his deck plan was to be believed in the LCARS then shuttle is too large to fit through the modified opening where the tractor beam was. The torpedo tubes forward are barely big enough to to a huge size object If you go by the DS9 Tech Manual the shuttle deck is somewhere in the Nacelles aswell as the aft torpedo launchers aswell not the bottom of the main hull. Nor would 3 people fit to those escape pods. Clearly a new Deck plan has to be made that actually fits the external layout which is the only consistent feature of the ship.
No law of physics prevents Deck 5 from being on the same level as Deck 4. The level isn't continuous anyway because of the large open space in the middle. Perhaps the nose section is labeled Deck 5, the port section - Deck 4, the starboard section - Deck 6. Such irregular labeling would also explain how Deck 2 could've been sealed off in "Starship Down" while everyone kept going in the engine room. The rows of lights near the shuttlepod bays need not be windows, since they haven't been shown as such in the canon. Also, some of the details on Doug Drexler's (not Mike Okuda's) schematic might have to be rethought in light of the remaining canon, but not the core layout. The turbolifts need not have been indicated. We're not clear about the size of the Chaffee (Doug Drexler says 26 feet according to his copy of the LightWave model), but even so, it's only one CG shot. The escape pods might be bigger than indicated on the diagram. The point is to devise a best fit scenario for all the inconsistencies, as opposed to coming up with a six- or eight-level layout which wouldn't stand up to scrutiny even by casual viewers. I mean, if we were to see a sequel to DS9 (not that the likelihood of that is anywhere above 0.1%), should the Defiant suddenly appear with a six-deck MSD out of nowhere, after four years of a prominent four-deck schematic? It is important to remain consistent with highly-visible evidence, and rethink only the details which appeared on a limited number of occasions.
I found this and images like it for the other three decks, labeled in German. Is this scanned from the DS9 tech manual?
Designating the same level two different deck labels would go against canon and every conceivable way of determining a ships internal arrangement. Suddenly Picards "24 deck statement" is made meaningless just for the sake of an ill conceived MSD. This is why there are Deck and Section designations As for the "to be or not to be windows" What else could they possibly be? At what point do we begin to discard the obvious because it does not fit with the established errors? Is that rational? Would it not be more rational to assume that the ship is indeed 170 - 200 meters long with 5 decks excessively spaced for the ships technology and equipment and structural points? Thus more space between decks than the average ship? @LCARS 24 Yes that is a derrivative of the DS9 manual...same picture but the LCARS is not part of the original image.
Yes, the DS9 tech manual had been translated to German. Saquist: Picard's statement must not be trusted blindly, but rather verified using other sources as well. No, we can't just use the dialogue for determining deck counts, since we must look at the physical arrangement as well: windows, MSDs, door labels. As noted, there is no law of physics prohibiting Starfleet from using irregular deck numbering on occassion. After all, computerized turbolifts and helpful labels can take anyone to the right place. Even if you don't believe this, then it is better to believe there is no Deck 5 (= error) than to ignore the ubiquitous four-deck layout. As for what else the "windows" could possibly be - I don't know, but there is no canon proof they are windows either. Modelmaker Tony Meininger probably did intend them to be windows, because the 170m size had been established before the model was built, by VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel who worked closely with Meininger, but we must somehow reinterpret them in light of the MSD. And no, we cannot assume the ship is 170m long with excessively spaced four decks, because that's worse than merely theorizing they aren't labeled regularly or that "Deck 5" is an error. Why wouldn't the omnipresent MSD show all that missing space? Why distort the scale and the placement to such an extent? That is not a best-fit solution.
Ebay certainly. There seems to be more than enough info to make deck plans for Defiant. It just comes down to deciding what works for you.