Another take on the Original Enterprise...

If I may ask - what is that large rectangular section at the front of the saucer - specifically, the blue panel? It looks like it might be some sort of saucer deflector system, but much larger than normal!

 

That's a common misperception.. no, it's not a deflector.

This ship is a deep-space "beyond the frontier" explorer. Unlike a Galaxy-class ship, which is a "traveling starbase," this ship is more along the lines of a "Lewis and Clark Expedition." (In my story concept, she'll have been operating outside of the Federation for several years and has just returned to known space.)

The ship has several unique features that serve this "mapping the unknown" feature. It has a massive, deployable "passive towed sensor array" (think a fishing net that expands, through structural integrity field application, into a "spider's web" of passive sensor node many times larger than the ship itself... that's what's under the lower aft fantail hatch, not a shuttlebay, by the way). The "net" allows it to collect information in a totally stealthy fashion. On the other hand, it also has a massive active scanner... think of it as a synthetic aperature radar device as an analogy... in the nose.

The forward scanner is really an outgrowth of the scanner array on the underside of the TMP ship. (There are several additional smaller copies of this in a "disk" at the prow of the secondary hull's "neck" structure, visible in the underside view you can see above. But the device you mentioned is really just an upscaling of the device seen on the underside of the TMP hull, giving it better "eyes" than any equivalent deep space vessel in service at the time. However, this is also very, very visible to other observers. If they know you're there already, or if you don't mind them knowing... use the active scanners. If you're trying to avoid being observed, use the net.

Make sense?

There is a forward deflector (a yellow disk). You may also note a smaller aft-facing deflector, though, and wonder "why?" That's primarily there to help in the control of the towed array... typically providing a slight "drag force" on the net, where there would obviously be no such thing in space in reality. It also has a defensive mode... if the ship is being pursued and fired upon, the beam has a mode which is designed to track incoming projectiles and send a pulse of gravimetric energy which can fool the warhead into believing it has impacted... thus detonating weapons at a distance. The Vega class isn't really a combat vessel (some of what you may initially think are torpedo tubes are probe launchers - reconfigurable to fire torpedoes, but with the main role of probe launching and actually mounted inside of science facilities), or tractor beams, or even braking impulse exhausts - there are two dedicated fwd quantorp launchers and three photorp launchers (2 fwd, 1 aft)). While it serves a specific role in fleet engagements as a "strike cruiser" (fly in fast, release a lot of firepower, and fly away fast to recharge and rearm, while other ships do the toe-to-toe fighting), it's not really intended as a "combat ship of the line," and if it encounters hostiles, it's main line of defense is a very pythonesque "Run away, run away!"

 

Nothing very recent... and I don't want to take this thread too far down that path (I've only posted here because the old thread on that has long since been "pruned" and only exists as a local copy on my hard drive!)

Here are a couple of very early renders showing the basics, however.

and

Oh, and besides the "regular" shuttles, this class of ship carries a single large-embarked craft which I do NOT call a "Captain's Yacht." On the Achernar, this is the cutter "Cerberus." The nacelle "wing/pylons" fold upwards for landing and for docking. The following three images show the Cerberus, sans wings, deploying. The fourth shows her with wings down.

 

I like it. I think I'd do something different with the nacelles, though, so they're not so obvious as Sovereign's turned on their sides. Something with the Bussards, probably.

 

Well, I get your point... but it was a conscious decision to make these nacelles "little sibling" designs, related to the Sovereign's nacelles.

That said, I didn't use the Sovereign nacelles... not a single detail or measurement was taken from any pre-existing work. I "eyeballed" certain things to resemble the Sovereign nacelle, but made certain that nothing was identical. These are related to the Sovereign in the same way that the engines on the TAS freighter (and TOS_R "Antares") are related to the 1701's, really.

That said... the main quibble I had with the Sovereign's nacelles was the orientation, which has always bugged the daylights out of me. Almost every other nacelle design has always been symmetrical, top to bottom (granted, with a few elements which were offset... intercoolers, or attachment points, typically)... and even the TMP engines are MOSTLY symmetrical along that direction (except for the very front and very aft regions). But the Sovereign nacelles totally abandoned that... and that just never made sense to me.

So, what you see there is my "fix" for the sovereign engine... made top-to-bottom symmetrical, which means that the entire ship's warp drive system is then symmetrical as well. My use of three "fins" per nacelles is related to my perspective on the TOS engines... that these various devices are used to provide flow-path cooling that allows the ship to steer at warp. I placed my engines so that both of the red intakes have clear line-of-sight ahead, with the assumption that each is collecting gas from one of the four quadrants ahead of the ship (right-top, right-bottom, left-top, and left-bottom).

You'll also note that I have a "control reactor rib" (ala TMP) and an inboard grill (also ala TMP) which aren't really similar to what's on the Sovereign.

Most of all, my "special effects" will make them stand out. I haven't implemented those on the model you're seeing here, but I have created the appropriate "materials" and will assign those to the surfaces in question once I bring this into Maya (once all details are modeled, including any interior work I still need to finish!). I may still do some minimal tweaking to these effects, but my level of happiness with what I've got so far is pretty high overall. These are things that are MUCH different from what you've seen on the Sovereign, and should be pretty visible in most views. What you'll be seeing here is an early copy of the nacelle, but that's where I've stored and saved my materials until I finish the physical model. These are animated effects, by the way, and are parameter-driven (I intend for the parameter to be keyed to "engine power level" in some way... not really sure yet).

 

There's an element that I've always been fond of with regards to The OS Enterprise, and The NG Enterprise: the red stripes running down the top of the hull. Obviously not racing stripes, but some kind of sensor/ transmitter/ receiver platform, or something to that effect. The fact that they're red could be any reason really though for me, the materials are inherently that colour and there's no reason to change it.

I used to think it was a visual element indicating orientation, but that's what the navigation lights are for. I also thought maybe they're refueling, docking strips of some sort, but, I don't know....

What was my point? Oh yeah- The little red circles on your ship... What are they?

 

Ah... those are hatch covers for the array of antimatter bottles. My assumption was that most starships can generate their own antimatter (~10% of the energy output of a m/am reaction can be used to "flip" that same amount of matter into antimatter), but that under most circumstances it's "easier" overall to get refueled if you've got a ready source of the stuff available. In this case you've got "hot-swappable" antimatter bottles. You can easily (and safely) eject individual bottles if one goes haywire, and can simply swap out expended bottles for fresh ones at a base facility. Heck, you could even treat this as the same general concept as the ST-09 "core ejector" sequence, since that's effectively what it would look like to eject these antimatter bottles (remember, I designed this loooong before ST-09, though).

As far as the radio system... I kink of like that, and that's one thing I've often thought of as well. I treat the linear strips on the top of the primary and secondary hulls as primary radio-frequency antenna elements, and the little red arcs on the bottom of the primary hull as well.

Now, for a long time I stewed over the silliness of the "inset ring" on the TMP B/C-deck superstructure, but (after the "wheelhouse" sequence in ST-V, by the way, which I assume is the "officer's club ballroom" at the front of B/C-deck) I eventually concluded that the inset dark grey ring on the TMP ship is the subspace antenna. I assume something smaller and less robust, but similar in function, is there for TOS... and (getting back to this thread's real topic!) for that reason, I've left a small ring inside the Deck-2 region, and have put the "communications department" facility at the front of Deck 2 on my version of the 1701.

Why make anything red? Oh, well, that's obvious. For the same reason that you don't want anyone to stand in front of a radar antenna when it's in operation (and why soldiers in the field will put their field rations in front of an antenna to heat up their food!) You want people to know not to get too close when it's powered up. By the time of TMP, they'd carried this concept even further, putting red-ringed amber "warning - stay clear" zones around RCS thrusters and phaser ports as well as providing a red "stay clear" stripe around the exterior of the subspace array, and so forth.

And on the Vega... the stripes around these round hatches are serving the same purpose... reminding people that something could pop out of these, propelled by little "escape thrusters" on the bottles, at any moment if something goes wrong, so they should stay clear. If you look closely, you can see that the vector that any of these bottles would follow when ejected would clear any other portion of the ship... the last thing you want is to eject a bottle and have it shoot right into one of the nacelles!

In the 1701, the antimatter bottle is a permanent part of the warp nacelle (at the aft end, aligned vertically). If this were to go haywire, your only option would be the one Kirk ordered Scotty to follow if necessary during "The Apple"... eject the antimatter pods and escape in the saucer section.

 

I disagree. It's not atrociously ugly. Most of it has real potential. The only thing that's making me raise one eyebrow is the extremely extended forward deflector...

"These are the voyages of the Starship Cyrano De Bergerac..."

I would really be interested in accounts of what happened aboard the class ship USS Vega. Unfortunately, what happens on the Vega stays on the Vega...

 

Just one comment to this...

IT

IS

NOT

A

DEFLECTOR.

(sigh)

 

No offense Cary, but can you get back to the TOS Enterprise assuming you haven't finished?

 

Well, ya know, I have to satisfy those who are paying me for my work, so I guess you're right.

Oh, wait... nobody's paying me for any of this. Hmmm... what to do, what to do?

Seriously, at the moment I'm doing exactly what I said I was going to do... I finished up the nacelles on the 1701, and now I'm spending a little bit of time on something else. I'll come back to the 1701 when the "fatigue" I'm feeling on that has worn off. If you're suggesting that I should simply leave this thread alone 'til I start on this model again, well, that might be a valid argument... though that'll mean that this thread will fall off the radar entirely unless people post off-topic things.

 

OK, here's a question to keep things bimbling along: Your nacelle design features the white aft end sphere as the subspace generator (or similar). But on the show there were two other designs shown before this one (most notably different being the grill in WNMHGB).
Have you developed any ideas as to how these fit into your nacelle design as well?

 

Oh yeah, absolutely... the sphere was always there, and the same "nacelle hull" was always there. The retrofits to the engines involved moving internal components around and replacing some elements.

So... the earlier versions lacked "antimatter generation." They had the antimatter bottles along the outer wall of the nacelle, under the banner, and required refueling on a regular basis. Replace my aft "antimatter storage facility" and move the sphere forward.

Why keep the "s-curve cowling?" Remember, how I have them steering at warp is by a combination of "cooling" of reaction-product flows by the intercoolers and control reactor along with "multiple supplementary injection into the sphere." In the earlier versions, the intercooler was less robust, but the available number of "injection port angles" into the sphere were greater.

The "Cage" and "WNMHGB" nacelles are almost identical. The only tweaks between the two involved the aft face of the nacelle. I presume that the original version has some form of sensor pad across the aft surface (this was an almost experimental engine technology at the time, after all). By the time WNMHGB came around, they'd removed the sensor, and added some "reaction product venting" capabilities (which ended up proving to be entirely unnecessary, were never used, and thus were removed later on when the "antimatter generation" engine nacelle refit took place.)

See, the difference between the 200-crew "pilot versions" and the 430-crew "series version," to me, is almost entirely based around the "production implementation" of elementary-level matter manipulation... replicators and "matter-state-flipping." Replicators freed up enough cargo space to permit the entire complement and resources of a planetary survey vessel to be installed in the freed-up volume. And efficient antimatter generation technology extended the range of the vessels tremendously, so that they were no longer required to stay within a month's travel or so from the nearest base at all times, as had been the case with Pike's time.

The "extended range" of the new technology was promoted to the public by virtue of a widely publicized "5-year mission" that twelve heavy cruisers, refit to the new "explorer" hybrid configuration, were sent on.

 

Brilliant! Well thought out, as always. I've never considered that the sphere was inside the nacelle in the early days, but it makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

 

Ending this thread...

There will be no further postings by me on the TrekBBS for the foreseeable future... at least not until the current management leaves.

Recently, I was subjected to another round of harassment and mistreatment... in particular, this thread:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=3581969#post3581969

which brought on this response:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=3583945&postcount=93

and then, as soon as my "suspension" for that expired, here:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=3651578#post3651578

Where Dennis blatantly (and unprovokedly) attacked me. I asked for the mod to make some comment and was blown off. As is typically the case here, he was given a free pass when he violated the BBS rules. After giving the moderator TWO WEEKS (with several PMs between myself and that moderator, as well as the board Admin, during that time) to deal with the situation, it became clear that Dennis and his little group of fanboys are once again in the "special privileges" arena. SO... I responded to his unprovoked attack on me and, as expected, was given another "week-long ban."

During this time, I asked T'Bone to "prune" this thread... as I know that I've brought in a fair number of "hits" to the TrekBBS and I do not want to continue to contribute "hits" for advertising revenue to a place which is effectively run in this offensive and inappropriate fashion. As expected, she ignored my request entirely.

I've considered just deleting all the linked images from my Imageshack account... it's an inconvenience to me and I'd rather avoid that (I do plan on posting some of this elsewhere, on another site which is not run as a "fascist clubhouse"). I may still do so. However, I decided that for anyone really interested in this, I should let you know... because of the HORSE SHIT that the majority of the BBS staff regularly perpetrates (PTrope is one of the few who has never crossed that "one set of rules for our buddies, who get to do anything they like, and another set of "make 'em up as we go just to drive away people we don't like" rules for anyone who won't kiss their collective asses, by the way... he's not perfect but he's never crossed this particular line, and I respect him for it.)...

Well, because of this, well... I'm just tired of it, so I'll give the lying, rotten little bastards what they so clearly want. Congratulations, Dennie-boy. Keep riding on that "I wrote a story for a TV show once" thing. Congratulations, M'Sharak, for going into a spitting-frenzy anytime anyone talks back to one of your pals (and especially ST-One, who you leap seem to take an almost "overprotective mommy who'll defend her spoiled child from any consequences" attitude towards), even if they're the ones who're attacking the "backtalker" in the first place. Congratulations everyone.

This site is not a "fun place to discuss Star Trek." It's a private clubhouse for a bunch of nasty, vicious bastards to exercise some little power (even those who are prohibited by law from going within several blocks of anyplace where children can be found... and there are quite a few of those who've gravitated to this BBS, by the way, and are permitted to do anything they like by the "management"... ). It only POSES as a "fun place to discuss Star Trek." But I've seen too many people... including several MODERATORS... subjected to this same "you're not with us, so you're against us, and we'll destroy you" routine.

It's disgusting. It's not fun. It's not RIGHT. And it's not acceptable.

I strongly recommend that anyone who's experienced, or observed, this bullshit seriously consider walking away from this place. There are plenty of other sites on the 'net... sites which may be draconian about enforcing rules, or very loose about enforcing them, but which do have ONE SET OF RULES FOR EVERYONE, instead of "one to reward our friends and lovers" and "one to punish anyone who won't submit to our whims."

The TrekBBS is how it is because of the attitudes of those who run it, from the top down. I truly hope that Paramount starts to take a closer interest in this site... which, I suspect, is using the "Trek" concept in a for-profit manner, yet not paying for that privilege. A site that's "friendly and open to the community" may be considered a positive from the standpoint of PPC's legal department, but one that operates as this one does has the potential to harm the company's intellectual property... and I hope, very much, that they'll start to pay attention.

Assuming that my account isn't immediately deleted based upon my posting this, you can PM me, and I'll read those for a while. But I think I'm done being harassed and mistreated by a group which includes fascists and convicted sex offenders, and I don't plan to post anything further.

PTrope, if you find this post a problem, please feel free to do as I asked T'Bone to do, a number of days back, and simply delete the entire thread.

 

So, you're just gonna let the bastards win?

Believe it or not, flame wars like these are nothing new in fandom. The only difference is that instead of having to wait until the next issue of a fanzine or newsletter to see the next flame and respond to it, the back-and-forth can be almost instantaneous.

C'mon, we've got ships to finish.

And the best thing is to just avoid the ST XI folder entirely. Let the trolls feed on each other for a while.

 

I have to agree with CRA, the ST XI threads invariably descend into variations of "I liked it therefore you're wrong", if not poorly disguised trolling.
People who try and put their arguments across rationally in this debate (and I think Cary has done a great job in this regard, by continually emphasising that this is just his opinion, not fact) are soon swamped by a deluge of the less verbally articulate.
Such things are not fun to read and quickly get boring. Threads like this one are why I keep coming back to TrekBBS.

 

I love it whenever I get an opportunity to bust out this threadbomb:

 

Re: Ending this thread...

" 'Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la "