Star Trek: Axanar

Personally, I prefer the smaller ships - find the oversized JJ verse vessels a little pointless except as rule of cool, though I like the designs themselves well enough. From what I've seen, Axanar's vessels have done a wonderful job of bridging that (for me) slightly odd visual gap between Kelvin and the TOS era ships.

 

This is usually my reply: we've only seen a small handful of TOS-era ships (if we count Grissom and Reliant). So ships as big as Kelvin COULD have existed that time, and we just didn't see them. Starfleet was certainly capable of building such large ships.

I don't mind Axanar's smaller "kelvin-style" ships TOO much (the newest versions we see in the trailer are perhaps suitably differently-styled than the Kelvin) except that with their proportions, they now have like... 3.5-4 deck saucers, which would be dwarfed by even the NX-01's saucer.

With an almost identical saucer deck count, the Kelvin's saucer was pretty clearly designed wider, but not thinner than a TOS saucer, so when it's shrunk down like this, we get a wafer-thin saucer.

Maybe if they lost the "ridge" that runs around the upper side of the saucer. That'd be the final push that would tell us "these are not the same components as the Kelvin", but the shapes (such as the circular, non-teardrop bridge module) would still hearken to the Kelvin.

 

I have been attempting to make up gaming stats for the Federation ships in Axanar based in the old FASA space combat system. It is difficult because, the ships in Anaxar are suppose to be older ships fighting in the Four Years War...a FASA thing.

Starfleet in FASA's Four Years War is armed with "lasers" and "accelerator cannons". That isn't the main problem though. The problem is that the design system was intended to make these older weapons considerably bulky and mass intensive for relatively weak and short ranged weapons compared to the later lighter and more powerful phasers and photon torpedoes that come out during the last year of the war.

It has been 30 years since FASA made their stuff up and canon has progressed. However the ideas are fine. One just has to adjust the naming style from "lasers" to "phase cannons" and "accelerator cannons" to "photonic torpedoes". Or even leaving them as phasers and photon torpedoes, just underpowered and shorter effective range than the more modern versions seen by the time Kirk has command of the Enterprise.

So, take the four Kelvin-based designs. Fit there known weapon hardpoint with FASA lasers (for the popup guns), accelerator cannons (for the rollbar mounted tubes), and since it is the last year of the war, upgrade there main beam weapons to early phasers. If one takes house rules to allow for "lasers" to not need main power to fire once (FASA lasers could fire twice per turn with double the power, but not in the same phase of the turn), than these become viable, if clunky, against the FASA Klingon designs for that era....the 400 plus D7 battlecruisers (plus hundreds of other ships)against the 100 or so Federation ships, not including the Constitutions, since they were pulled from the border for reasons. (In Axanar, they are still being built).

The USS Ares, however, is a warship. It has a lot of phaser banks, and a lot of torpedo tubes. It is difficult, though not impossible, to make the design in FASA. One cannot put the top of the line weapons on it as there are game limitations based on computer fire control capacity. But I can get it to have 16 phasers and 8 torpedoes tubes...which is all its torpedoes and slightly over half its phasers. FASA usually covering only one side of the saucer's weapons and usually ignoring secondary hull mounts. This still shows USS Ares with seven paired phaser banks on the top of the saucer and two single phasers over the hanger bay...plus at least five more paired phaser banks on the bottom side of the saucer.

 

Is the Connie in that size comparison pic from a mirror universe?

 

Star Trek: Axanar was presented in three panels at FedCon, Europe's largest Sci-fi convention.



We had filming rights and I am pleased to present our HD videos of these panels in full length.

They can be seen in this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5h4ur_aSq8NmhlQnU7E1UvnzJ0btpl5I

The playlist includes the following:
Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar Trailer 1
- With subtitles in several languages

FedCon 2014 - Star Trek: Axanar, Panel 1 of 2
- The first of two fascinating panels featuring David Gerrold, Alec Peters and Tobias Richter

FedCon 2014 - Star Trek: Axanar, Panel 2 of 2
- This second panel had a much larger audience and offers some fascinating insights into the Axanar project.

FedCon 2014 - Visual Effects of Star Trek Renegades, Phase II and Axanar
- This panel, by Tobias Richter, looks into the visual effects work he did.

If you are interested in seeing all the FedCon videos we made (including Axanar), then you can see those in our FedCon 2014 playlist, instead.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5h4ur_aSq8NeUDLXtd3kfXnUCx72hatV

Enjoy

Peter Walker
www.startrekphase2.de
www.startrekaxanar.eu

 

Another glimpse of "Star Trek Axanar" - Prelude to Axanar, our 20 minute short movie that is premiering saturday 26 in San Diego. We filmed a great speech with Tony Todd as Admiral Ramirez, and worked on the establishing shot in the Archer arena last week, filming some of our production crew as spectators.

The Archer arena is build in 3D, based on the matte painting they had in "Enterprise". Of course it´s a couple of years later, so some details may have changed, but the basic configuration is very much the same.

http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=108873&d=1405713197

 

I feel that your "Archer Arena" actually looks a great deal better than how it appeared in the show. Great work!

 

Though they still seem to match up to the size difference with the TOS Connie, that the JJ version had with the JJverse Connie.

 

"Archer Arena" looks amazing.

 

Team Peters is supposed to premiere the Prelude film this weekend at ComicCon, right? and online for contributors only also? So what about for those who didn't but still would like to see it, is there a premiere date ?

 

After this weekends premier look for us at Star Trek Vegas as well. Alot of us will be working the booth there. It will be a busy 3 weeks Spreading the word about Axanar!!!

 

Which booth at Vegas? A separate Axanar booth or the one with the costumes?

 

I finally caught up to the trailer and saw some of the behind-the-scenes interviews with the show runners, Richard Hatch, etc. on YouTube, and I must say this looks like it has the potential of being one of the best-produced fan films I've seen to date. The production values are excellent, and what few scenes that are out there show really good acting. There doesn't appear to be the forced and choppy dialog that looks like it's being read off of cue cards and audio quality levels that sound like the whole thing was recorded in a toilet like has been shown in so many other productions in the past. Eagerly awaiting progress on this.

 

Impressive, but what is the endgame ? the scope of the project seems to be more than just for the love of the Trek

 

Their main Facebook page is starting to tease about another new ship to be introduced in Axanar. It looks like we might get a fully rendered version of FASA's Marklin-class Destroyer. This was a ship that was only seen as a top view in FASA's Four Years War supplement. One of this class was suppose to be Captain Garth's command at the beginning of the war, where "Prelude to Axanar" has the USS Ares as Captain Garth's command at the end of the war.

 

One day before the official premiere of "Star Trek Axanar: Prelude to Axanar", the first of probably two Kickstarters for the main 90 minute Axanar movie has started - with an awesome start!

Check out the new, longer trailer in the Kickstarter video for our short movie "Prelude to Axanar" - the full 20 minute short movie will be available online on the 30th of july.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/194429923/star-trek-axanar

 

Axanar the film has plenty of things to look forward to, but a little tidbit mentioned in their Kickstarter page got more of my attention:

 

I don't think you're supposed to post direct fundraising links. But best of luck -- interested in seeing the project's progress!

 

Er, since that link will almost certainly be removed, for anyone looking for the link, Axanar is (X) on 210 at Star Trek Reviewed (see my signature below), then go to the Table of Contents and look for 210 or the Index and look for Star Trek: Axanar). You can find that link there. Also, I will include that link in the Headline when on July 30 they release Prelude to Axanar and I give it a Headline.