Federation Civil War

[XFozzboute]

UPDATE...
Now the warp engines are coming together.


Haveing a tough time coming up with Bussard textures but I always have trouble there.

[Cary L. Brown]

XFozzboute wrote:

---

My idea takes place maybe a decade or two after Nemesis and involves section 31 and the aliens from the episode Conspiracy.

Mine... same general timeframe, but a much more.. unusual... plot idea. But one which shares a few basics with yours...

I think we all agree... the "conventional mustachio-twirling-bad-guy" is no fun. I had hopes that JJTrek would have done a decent villain... Nero seemed like an interesting idea, but ended up barely even 2-dimensional. Khan was only interesting because he was a noble, tragic figure, not just a "twirly-baddie."

So... you've picked up on a thread done in Conspiracy... "what if you can't tell who's who." This is a common element to mine as well... but the force behind it is completely different (and would come as a huge shock to the audience when it was finally revealed, in the final season). See, the "evil alien bugs" is still a bit 2-dimensional.

For me, having a "villain" (only in the most loose sense) who really thinks that he is doing something GOOD... while doing utterly evil things... is much more interesting. AND, by the way, much more relevant to the real world we're living in.

Not being critical... just explaining why I went in a different direction. I've got a story treatment... complete with cast descriptions, a ship concept (and yes, the ship isn't guaranteed to make it all the way through the series, nor are all of the cast members guaranteed to make it through either). I'm a HUGE fan of the level of change, and of REVELATION, which was seen in, say, Babylon 5.

I want a story that literally changes everything... and in this case, in some ways "reverts" the Star Trek universe to a less technologically-obsessive time and focuses much more on the "natural, humanity-oriented" side of things. Star Trek was originally very humanity-centered (and I'm including all the alien races in "humanity"... we just don't have another term for that, do we?) With TMP, we deviated massively from that, however... and that's the biggest critique of ST-TMP - that it was almost antiseptically "anti-human" in many ways. And then with early TNG, Roddenberry fell back into the "let's pretend humans can be perfected" thing AGAIN. And it took several years for the show to recover from that, and while TNG mostly did recover, Trek as a whole became much less "human" in feel over the years.

This is the one "positive" I can throw out about JJTrek... and mind you, I don't think it was successful... but at least he TRIED to make the characters more "identifiably human." He just turned characters I'd always been able to identify with into characters I don't know, and don't necessarily want to know, and absolutely can't identify with. Like with everything else in that flick, he focused on contemporary music and cars and booze and so forth... he focused the trappings, not the core elements.

[Dac]

Cary L. Brown wrote:

---

Mine... same general timeframe, but a much more.. unusual... plot idea. But one which shares a few basics with yours...

I think we all agree... the "conventional mustachio-twirling-bad-guy" is no fun. I had hopes that JJTrek would have done a decent villain... Nero seemed like an interesting idea, but ended up barely even 2-dimensional. Khan was only interesting because he was a noble, tragic figure, not just a "twirly-baddie."

So... you've picked up on a thread done in Conspiracy... "what if you can't tell who's who." This is a common element to mine as well... but the force behind it is completely different (and would come as a huge shock to the audience when it was finally revealed, in the final season). See, the "evil alien bugs" is still a bit 2-dimensional.

For me, having a "villain" (only in the most loose sense) who really thinks that he is doing something GOOD... while doing utterly evil things... is much more interesting. AND, by the way, much more relevant to the real world we're living in.

Not being critical... just explaining why I went in a different direction. I've got a story treatment... complete with cast descriptions, a ship concept (and yes, the ship isn't guaranteed to make it all the way through the series, nor are all of the cast members guaranteed to make it through either). I'm a HUGE fan of the level of change, and of REVELATION, which was seen in, say, Babylon 5.

I want a story that literally changes everything... and in this case, in some ways "reverts" the Star Trek universe to a less technologically-obsessive time and focuses much more on the "natural, humanity-oriented" side of things. Star Trek was originally very humanity-centered (and I'm including all the alien races in "humanity"... we just don't have another term for that, do we?) With TMP, we deviated massively from that, however... and that's the biggest critique of ST-TMP - that it was almost antiseptically "anti-human" in many ways. And then with early TNG, Roddenberry fell back into the "let's pretend humans can be perfected" thing AGAIN. And it took several years for the show to recover from that, and while TNG mostly did recover, Trek as a whole became much less "human" in feel over the years.

This is the one "positive" I can throw out about JJTrek... and mind you, I don't think it was successful... but at least he TRIED to make the characters more "identifiably human." He just turned characters I'd always been able to identify with into characters I don't know, and don't necessarily want to know, and absolutely can't identify with. Like with everything else in that flick, he focused on contemporary music and cars and booze and so forth... he focused the trappings, not the core elements.

Not to turn this into a JJverse thread, but, focused on contemporary music and beer? Aside from one music track on a personal music player and one "Budweiser Classic" to keep the sponsors happy, I can't think of another example of either.

Having said that, I've wanted to see something done with the Conspiracy aliens/bugs since they first showed up. So, no matter how long it takes (you've been at this for a while haven't you XFozzboute? ) I'm looking forward to what you come up with.

[JES]

I personally think that if/when the Conspiracy bugs return for another round, they will find it much more difficult to infiltrate Starfleet, the Federation government, or Section 31, because after the first time, and the Changling threat during the Dominion War, Starfleet will probably have come up with ways to better sniff them out, and if certain people start acting suspicious, well they may check. I wouldn't be surprise if they invented ways of dealing with the parasites (such as beaming them out of the infected individual, similar to how they beamed Gou'lds from those they latched onto), in case they ever returned.

I see it more likely that they will try to infiltrate less secure populations, such as distant colonies, and get them to do their bidding. War eventually breaks out with the bugs, and the issue is how does Starfleet deal with this issue? Do they treat them like any enemy, and destroy their ships, the bugs, and their hosts along with them? Or do they attempt to disable the bug's ships, try to rescue the victims from their captors, possibly at the risk of giving the bugs a chance to gain an upper hand? At which point should Starfleet be willing to allow collateral damage, and risk destroying the bugs along with those who they infected?

[XFozzboute]

UPDATE...
Added more detail to the warp engine. Given the size of the ship I don’t think I’ll be adding too much more.


Here’s a scale shot with the Enterprise. first thing I discovered is the ship is much larger than I thought. It’s about the same size as the Soval and Pierce. So I shrunk the ship down to about 127m. I like this better.

[sojourner]

So that block on top is now 1 deck high?

[XFozzboute]

By the time I'm done it might not even be that high.

[Dac]

You got any bottom views of this thing yet? So far everything has been topside.

[XFozzboute]

No. Haven't even touched the main part of the ship. Just getting the warp engines worked out and I'll figure out where to go from there.

[JES]

So she is about the size of an escort (Defiant, etc.) or surveyor (Oberth, etc.), and is meant to act as a transport or surveyor?

[XFozzboute]

That sounds about right to me. I was thinking it might take on the same role as the Oberth had.

[Herkimer Jitty]

Being blown up by the bad guy/anomaly of the week?

[JES]

Not necessarily. At least not by bad guys. I think by now, Starfleet would have learned to make their science vessels more capable of standing up to punishment from belligerent vessels, telling by how many phasers the Nova has, which is also a surveyor (and so technically one of the replacements of the Oberth class), unless the Nova is just a variant of the surveyor type (ie.: a new type of surveyor meant to go on missions closer to hostile space; the standard surveyors stay away from dangerous territories). If all else fails, this ship is smaller, probably more agile, and most likely capable of warp velocities above warp 9.0.

Anomalies on the other hand will always be dangerous. You can try to increase the power of your shields, you can have ablative armor, you can have deployed armor, you can try to make in-depth scans half a light-year away before heading close to one. But anomalies will continue to be difficult to predict, and will occasionally prove to be deathtraps, no matter how advanced, sturdy, tough, or durable your ship is.

If in doubt, you can always send in a probe (unless that cursed interference trashes that plan).

[XFozzboute]

UPDATE...
I was thinking I really need to finish up one of my ships. And I thought about my Damar class ship. All it really needed was more textures. So I’ve started on them. I did the front of the hull and most of one side. I’ll finish modelling the Keldon attachment later. So I’ll just focus on this for a few days.

[sojourner]

Not a fan of Cardassian ships, but I do admire the skill in the modelling.