USS Grandeur - One... More... Time!

[sojourner]

I'm actually starting to wish for a new trek (not to be confused with nutrek) ship from Vektor. I love all the existing work of course, just hankering for something fresh.

[Finn]

^speaking of new trek ships, I think it has been a while since you did one of those

[sojourner]

Eh, I don't have a fraction of the talent and have never really finished anything. I'm better at broad ideas than I am at finished product anyways. I also haven't had any ideas that even I consider worth working on lately. Too much Kerbal Space Program I think.

[largo]

sojourner wrote:

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Too much Kerbal Space Program I think.

those poor little guys. they just love a'splodin'.

[Cobalt Frost]

What are the specs on the Grandeur, length/draft/beam?

[Vektor]

Sorry guys, I had hoped to post some more WIP images for Grandeur this weekend but life had other plans. Should have something by next weekend.

[CaptainRoop]

Cobalt Frost wrote:

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What are the specs on the Grandeur, length/draft/beam?

Here you go
http://www.starshipgrandeur.org/html/grandeur.html

[Cobalt Frost]

Much obliged, good sir!

[CaptainRoop]

Cobalt Frost wrote:

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Much obliged, good sir!

You are very welcome.

[JES]

I didn't know that she was a Heavy Tactical Cruiser. I'll be sure to note that. I remember it being mentioned that she wasn't a Starfleet vessel, which is something that I think many might find radical as an idea, since the conventional notion is that the only Federation vessels with specifications approaching that of the military would be Section 31 vessels, and maybe mercenary vessels, and we all know Starfleet doesn't officially sanction the former, and the latter would most likely have equipment that might be considered illegal for civilian vessels. I suppose there might also be planetary defense vessels belonging to new member planets whose fleets have not yet been integrated into Starfleet, or replaced with Starfleet vessels. I myself find it hard to believe that the Federation would officially sanction military-grade vessels in the hands of an organization that is not a branch of Starfleet (especially what is obviously a state of the art starship), unless I am to believe that Starfleet doesn't encompass the entire Federation's permanent military organizations.

For me, the Avalon II class is still a great deal of a mystery. There are many gaps in information, such as:
I assume that there was an original Avalon class (I); how is she different from the Avalon II?
I assume that there must be a U.S.S. Avalon, which was the prototype for this class; what is her registry number?
When was the Avalon laid down, launched, and commissioned?
When was the Avalon drydocked for upgrades to Mk II specs, relaunched, and recommissioned?
How many other Avalon class vessels are there, and what are some of their names and registry numbers?
Was the Avalon designed as a Starfleet vessel, and if so, how many are registered to Starfleet, and how many more were registered to the Interstellar Task Force?

I'm also assuming that this isn't the first Non-Fleet Commission vessel to go by the name of Grandeur, otherwise there wouldn't be an A in her registry.
What happened to the original Grandeur, and what class was she?
And since this Grandeur is not a Starfleet vessel, is it probably safe to say that there might be a Starfleet vessel that carries the same name?

I'm not necessarily expecting Vector to know the answers to these questions, but I'm hoping that whoever was responsible coming up with the information pertaining to the Grandeur will have mentioned some of these things, or maybe even listed them somewhere that I'm not aware of.

[CaptainRoop]

Somewhere in all of these posts, we explain some of what you are asking about. We use to belong to a Star Trek Fan organization known as the IFT (International Federations of Trekkes). Their fictional side if you will, was the (Intergalactic Federation Taskforce). While the ships were in some senses part of Starfleet they were in a separate division, handling more dangerous missions, recons, getting needed medical supplies to certain areas, surveillance, missions and the list goes on. So some of the ships were more heavily armed then others. At the time we were NFC instead of NCC meaning we were part of Starfleet in ways just not sanction by Starfleet.

We are not with the IFT any more and thus went independent at this time, but allot of the stories we have been working on still use the premise of carrying out more dangerous missions and things like that. So we stuck with that part of it.

As you can see we are not cannon to any shows, so are ship is unique to us, of course having the usual 2 nacelles, saucer, and stardrive section, etc.

Yes, there was an original Avalon Class and the original Grandeur NFC 90125 was more or less a Scout Reconnaissance type ship, different from what you are seeing here. In our stories when the original Grandeur was for the most part badly destroyed, we were the first ones in the Avalon class line to get the full upgrade to a Heavy Tactical Cruiser. For sure more beefier, more special weapons upgrades, and so on and so fourth. Thus while there were still some regular Avalon class ships around, it was decided to keep the Class and name it Avalon Class II and like most ships that get rebuild to a different upgrade we also became the USS Grandeur NFC 90125-A

Anyway I hope that answers some of your questions. Again we, the USS Grandeur was the first to get this new Heavy Tactical Cruiser upgrade so at this time there are none besides us with this design and style. As far as the old Avalon class and the ships in our stories at the time, there were 3 named... Avalon of course, Grandeur, and the Majestic. There was other names thought of based off our Renaissance/medieval period theme, but none were ever presented.

[JES]

CaptainRoop wrote:

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in all of these posts, we explain some of what you are asking about. We use to belong to a Star Trek Fan organization known as the IFT (International Federations of Trekkes). Their fictional side if you will, was the (Intergalactic Federation Taskforce). While the ships were in some senses part of Starfleet they were in a separate division, handling more dangerous missions, recons, getting needed medical supplies to certain areas, surveillance, missions and the list goes on. So some of the ships were more heavily armed then others. At the time we were NFC instead of NCC meaning we were part of Starfleet in ways just not sanction by Starfleet.
We are not with the IFT any more and thus went independent at this time, but allot of the stories we have been working on still use the premise of carrying out more dangerous missions and things like that. So we stuck with that part of it.

As you can see we are not cannon to any shows, so are ship is unique to us, of course having the usual 2 nacelles, saucer, and stardrive section, etc.

Yeah, I was already aware that the Grandeur and the backstory relating to her wasn't going to be canon. Still, I figured that the backstory surrounding the Avalon class would make an interesting one.

CaptainRoop wrote:

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Yes, there was an original Avalon Class and the original Grandeur NFC 90125 was more or less a Scout Reconnaissance type ship, different from what you are seeing here. In our stories when the original Grandeur was for the most part badly destroyed, we were the first ones in the Avalon class line to get the full upgrade to a Heavy Tactical Cruiser. For sure more beefier, more special weapons upgrades, and so on and so fourth. Thus while there were still some regular Avalon class ships around, it was decided to keep the Class and name it Avalon Class II and like most ships that get rebuild to a different upgrade we also became the USS Grandeur NFC 90125-A

Anyway I hope that answers some of your questions. Again we, the USS Grandeur was the first to get this new Heavy Tactical Cruiser upgrade so at this time there are none besides us with this design and style. As far as the old Avalon class and the ships in our stories at the time, there were 3 named... Avalon of course, Grandeur, and the Majestic. There was other names thought of based off our Renaissance/medieval period theme, but none were ever presented.

Is the Avalon class is only used by the same group as the Grandeur, or if Starfleet uses members of this class as well? I don't suppose it has been decided to which branches the Avalon and Majestic belong to?

I think that the history of the original Grandeur and Avalon could be interesting, and I have my hopes that maybe these details will be filled in at some point.

And yes, you have answered some of my questions, and thank you for doing so. Though I'm hoping that over time, you might eventually fill in more of the gaps behind the Avalon class's history.

[CaptainRoop]

JES wrote:

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And yes, you have answered some of my questions, and thank you for doing so. Though I'm hoping that over time, you might eventually fill in more of the gaps behind the Avalon class's history.

Without the risk of making people think we are hijacking this thread for anything but the ship itself, I will add this little bit more.

There really is not a huge Avalon Class History. When we joined IFT many years ago, we needed to come up with a name and class of ship. We did not want to use any cannon ships so my XO designed what was the old Grandeur and we were trying to think of names and Classes.

Because we both liked the Medieval period of time, Knights, Kings, Oueens, etc. And a little more importantly King Authur and the whole story, we decided that the word 'Avalon' would be a good name for the Class. Avalon as you may know was the Isle where King Arthur was laid to rest.
While a few different names came up for the name of the ship we finally settled on Grandeur. Not catching it at that exact moment, but about a day later we had found out that Grandeur was the name of King Arthur's Horse, so it all tied in beautifully.

Short of that we had never given much more thought, nor did we need too, to creating anymore back story into the Avalon Class.

Here is a link to our shuttle page where as you can see we named our compliment of type 9 and type 11 shuttles after English names representing people, places or things.
http://www.starshipgrandeur.org/html/shuttlecrafts.html

Should there ever be a need in future stories to address other ships being added to the Avalon II design then we may use other common names associated with that time period. Common well known names like, King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Guinevere and the list goes on could be used.

That is about it, I hope people watching the thread does not get upset over so much detail. If any more questions need to be asked I guess we can do those in e-mail. Thank you for your interest.

[USS Triumphant]

CaptainRoop wrote:

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That is about it, I hope people watching the thread does not get upset over so much detail.

Is there a big danger of that? I'm finding all of this interesting - seems to me that those that don't can scroll until they see more of Vektor's pretty pictures.

[Vektor]

Speaking of pretty pictures, I'm really trying to get some new WIP images up within the next couple of days. I've been doing a lot of low-level cleanup type of stuff, optimizing geometry, trimming overlaps, welding seams, fixing errors here and there, almost none of which appear in the renderings, but I do have a few additions I'm looking forward to showing. Stay tuned.