STID: The ‘Other' Starship / [Spoiler]

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by calamity_si, Apr 16, 2013.

  1. SonicRanger

    SonicRanger Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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  2. starfox

    starfox Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    The new ship does resemble the Sovereign class, but it at least corrects the Sovereign's fundamental design flaw (the saucer on the new ship isn't in the way of the deflector). The only detail that looks bad is the close proximity of the nacelles and the saucer.

    And it's not butt-ugly like the Abramsprise, so I'm content with it. :D
     
  3. calamity_si

    calamity_si Commander Red Shirt

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    Yeah I'll second that. Can't wait to see her from some more angles!
     
  4. Oso Blanco

    Oso Blanco Commodore Commodore

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    I like the design of the Dreadnought ship, but making it so big is a little lame. I would have liked her to be a powerful warship the same size as the Enterprise or even a bit smaller. Let's hope the movie will not look as cartoonish as that screencap where the two ships are facing each other. Looks like toys on a string!
     
  5. throwback

    throwback Captain Captain

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    WarpFactorZ,

    Ships having a similar configuration doesn't translate into them having the same size. Look at the Coast Guard cutters. They have one basic configuration, but have varying sizes from 29 to 45 meters.

    Another problem with your hypothesis is that the hanger deck of the refit Enterprise wasn't greatly increased. The ship could accommodate at best two shuttles side-by-side, port to starboard, or vice versa. This was true before the refit, and this was true after the refit. Additional shuttles were stored one deck down, according to a painting of John Eaves. In the new ship, there were two decks of shuttles on one side, and two decks of shuttles on the other side. These shuttles, due to the nature of the design of the bay, were side-by-side, stern to bow, or vice versa. The design of the bay required for a shuttle to leave its allotted space by moving forward, into the direction of the opposite side, then turning to the stern for launch.

    For me, I find it telling that the modern military navies of the world tended to avoid having large ships. The rare exceptions were the aircraft carriers. I think this might be attributable to evolutions in ship design and lessons learned from World War II when large ships proved to be the most susceptible to being attacked and destroyed by smaller ships and their auxiliaries, i.e. airplanes. On the other hand, the civilian navies tended towards larger ships. These ships were used for the transporting of people and cargo.
     
  6. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Well, the ship analogy breaks down quickly. Pretty much ALL sea-faring vessels look the same because they operate on water (it's the most efficient design for buoyancy and propulsion). So, whether it's a dingy or a supertanker, it's the same structure.

    What does change between small ships and big ships is the number of windows: those with twice as many decks have twice as many windows. The TMP-E and nu-E, however, have the same number of windows in identical placements. It was the error on the part of the animators and set designers that caused the "bigger ship" ruckus. They went for what "looks cool," instead of what would realistically fit in the space provided.

    Of course, this has been a problem with Trek forever. So, until they actually mention the size of the ship on screen, we can all be happy to believe what we want.
     
  7. trevanian

    trevanian Rear Admiral

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    The 'what looks cool vs what works' issue is pretty commonplace in the CG era. Draco in DRAGONHEAT was designed so he looked good on the ground, but had to be redesigned to look good in the air.Basicaly there was an interpenetration problem with the anatomy ... I think the story is that the wings would have torn off the body unless they fudged the engineering.

    To be fair, I think the same thing happened on occasion pre-CG. DRAGONSLAYER's dragon featured more than one model, and I believe that too related to wing issues.

    I think there is a serious advantage to having a design and then being forced to 'obey' those limitations, and that is it keeps down the 'blue sky' improvements that seem to be inflicted on designs. (even for their novel THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE, Niven & Pournelle decided to lock their ship to the 'Leif Ericson' model kit then available, and then imagine around that design limitation.) Since CG has essentially replaced traditional VFX work, that notion has gone out the porthole.

    I don't think even physical models built for reference and scanning are all that prevalent anymore, so all the basic tenants of observing an object and the fall of light upon it as a basis for cinematographic representation are lost; you're only dealing with representations of same. ILM's way of duplicating the presence of real lights in the CGscape is a big step toward bridging this gap, but you still have to have the physical representation for them to reference; with whole-cloth CG, you don't have that essential live or physical aspect to source from, and that's why you continue to get the credibility issues that Dennis Muren has sounded off about for years. http://www.movies.com/movie-news/special-fx-arent-special-anymore/11843
     
  8. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    But let's compare the sizes of those windows, shall we?:)
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  9. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Come on. Those are in two very different locations. Do we have a shot of a window somewhere along the saucer rim of the nu-Enterprise?
     
  10. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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  11. throwback

    throwback Captain Captain

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    WarpFactorZ,

    I raised the design of the hangar deck to highlight the point that the two ships aren't the same size. I would like to hear your thoughts on this.
     
  12. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Perspective! The thin windows on the rim are much closer than the bridge viewscreen. If they seem like they're the same size in the photo, the bridge one is much bigger.
     
  13. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I already answered this. I think the hanger deck was designed to be "cool looking," and give the impression of a modern-day military-style carrier. But the problem is one can't reconcile this structure within the space provided by the smaller ship. So, their solution was "well, uh.... the ship is bigger!" But they didn't bother changing the exterior design to make it look bigger. They scaled up the JPG, so to speak. It was careless corner-cutting.
     
  14. Angry Fanboy

    Angry Fanboy Captain Captain

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    Angry Fanboy

    Post of the month! :techman:
     
  15. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ^:)
    They're the same size as the bridge window on orthographic views. You can stop kidding yourself now. Those who made it, made it that size. There is no secret smaller ship hidden for the true believers if they squint hard enough.
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2013
  16. bryce

    bryce Rear Admiral Rear Admiral


    I wonder...if we made the (baseless, mind you) assumption that the torpedo launcher on the JJ-prise is the same size as that on the refit...how big that would make the ship.

    Which points out a problem with using *one* feature for a sizing reference...depending on which feature you use, you get different sizes. (Though if you have a human figure in the shot, that helps narrow it down a bit.)

    It seems obvious to me that the ship in the movie appears to be different sizes in different scenes...so in my imagination, I'm gonna put it as maybe 1/2 again as big as the TOS ship. Maybe a wee bit less...1/3 again as big. But that's just a personal interpretation.
     
  17. throwback

    throwback Captain Captain

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    Frankly, I am surprised by WarpFactorZ's stance. As a college science teacher, I would think that he would be exposed to and using the techniques of the scientific method to form his hypothesis. However, judging by his words, I feel that he is misrepresenting himself as a scientist for he isn't using this method to form a hypothesis on the size of the Enterprise. I feel that if you are going to say that x is the same size of y that you need to say more than that x has the exact same shape as y. (This statement is already false, as there are significant differences between the two ships. A carbon copy is an exact match for the original.)

    When I raised the hangar deck observations, I was expecting that he would respond with something more in alignment with his occupation, where, if even if he is wrong, he would at least set out proofs and demonstrations of his hypothesis that x is smaller than the stated dimensions.
     
  18. Lord Garth FOI

    Lord Garth FOI Commander Red Shirt

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    This
    The f-ing thing is 725 meters , deal with it. It should really be over a 1000 meters in order for the sets and deck layout to fit properly

    Dan, do you a link to your awesome starship upscale article
     
  19. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    It's a movie. The size of the ship in relation to a ship from thirty years ago should be immaterial to ones' ability to enjoy the film.
     
  20. bryce

    bryce Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Oh hey, a not on the JJ-prise hanger deck...if you look at it, it's clearly *wider* than the one on the TOS or refit Enterprise. (It looks kinda wide and flat.) So it not simply a matter of upscaling the original hanger...this hanger is a different *shape* than the original. It's obviously a wider hanger. So if we could imagine taking the TMP refit and widening the hanger a lot, in relation to the rest of the ship, and we wouldn't have to make the ship a lot bigger. However, this hanger is also taller, yes, but maybe not all that much. So we still have to take into account that this is a wide-mouth hanger, compared to the original.