As for what units you want to use, (# LY/hr) would be a more relate-able every day unit of speed; similar to kph or mph which most people use when driving. As for firing ranges, according to ST:TNG Technical Manual: The maximum effective tactical range of ship's phasers is 300,000 kilometers. For scale reference, that is ~7.4861x the circumference of Earth. Voyager's Photon Torpedo has a approximate maximum range of 8 million km. Ship size really only matters in CQB between vessels; once you're outside of that range & ships are specks in the sky, it really doesn't matter how large your ship is because you're not really targeting sub-systems, you're targeting the center mass of the ship. When you're a speck in the sky in terms of targeting profile & long range combat, STL Acceleration/Deceleration & 3D maneuverability matters alot more along with how fast can you rotate your vessel to make sure you only expose the strong sides of your shield.
I know that, but for scale reference based on objects that we know about or deal with on a daily basis; the circumference of our planet is easier to relate to =D.
The Galaxy-class (or at least the War Galaxies) seem to be very good at fighting and surviving during the Dominion War. Aside from the loss of USS Odyssey at First Contact with the Jem'Hadar, no other Galaxy-class starship is known to have been lost in the war. Though it is convenient that we see none at the Second Battle of Chin'toka.
From what we have seen onscreen in the other shows and movies other than DS9, starship components must be modular to an extent, but only with closely related generations. For the Miranda to have parts that could be interchanged with a refit Enterprise type ship makes sense, as do the Wolf 359 ships, since they resemble the Galaxy-class ship design, so changing parts between them seems possible to a point. We also know that the Galaxy class modules, which were the newest at the time, could be scaled for ships of different mission profiles. The USS Firebrand of the Freedom class and the USS Princeton of the Niagara class work for me, even though the nacelles are of the Galaxy type and the saucers are of a more Ambassador-like type, because the older hull could have newer nacelles a fixed or added during a refit: TMP showed the Enterprise with either new nacelles or nacelles reworked to a new appearance. This is very different from putting older nacelles on a newer hull, in my opinion. They apparently are mostly at least semi-modular, but it seems a really stretch that they could be modular across generations of ships. I would hardly call the Yeager minor alterations to an Intrepid, or the Curry, minor alterations to an Excelsior. If I could ask Dan Curry one thing thing it would be for the he chose to use Miranda-type nacelles on the Curry instead of newer ones, knowing commercial model kits existed for some ships of the Excelsior generation and newer (he has given great interviews about other topics). did he intend the Miranda nacelles to be that, or did he imagine them as something else, a new nacelle design that there was at that time no model for? The scale issue could indicate that latter, since the TMP nacelles would be too large by comparison to the Excelsior saucer and secondary hull, but probably only Dan Curry himself could know what he intended. Did the model that was for sale a while back correct for the nacelles being bigger than they would be if those from a Miranda were used? I was about to comment that I could not see the image, but it comes up in my quote when I wet to reply. Really on the the font of the saucer looks like it would need re worked. The res seems like it was in good enough shape for standard definition television. How could the file be corrupted in the first place, in that there likely would have been multiple backup copies of the file? Often it seems on Star Trek that at warp the bigger ships are faster.
<sigh> Yes but the reason maximum effective range is one light second is because they are directed energy weapons and therefore the beam travels at the speed of light. It is a relevant measurement based on the nature of phasers themselves. Saying that it's 7.4861 times the circumference of the Earth is confusing because the circumference of the Earth is a circumstantial measurement that has nothing to do with the nature of phasers. I mean, congratulations on being able to do simple maths and all, but what is its relevance?
Multiple potential reasons: • The corruption happened when the models were converted between one software package and another • The corruption happened when the models were not updated properly between different versions of the same software • The corruption happened when the models were stored on either magnetic or optical media that deteriorated over time • There aren't any backups because sometimes studios just don't make backups, either due to procedural problems (i.e. they should but don't, because money/time/laziness/ignorance/etc) or because they explicitly forbid it (to limit the possibility of their intellectual property going walkabout). Famously, many episodes of Doctor Who don't exist any more because the BBC wiped the master tapes in the 1970s and didn't have backups, and more importantly wasn't interested in having backups due to the large amounts of space and high cost of storing magnetic tape at the time. As another example, many of the original Babylon 5 CGI assets don't exist any more because when the show ended Warner Bros demanded that the production team turn over all assets and make no backups; the production team did as was asked, and then Warner Bros either lost or destroyed them. When making subsequent Babylon 5 productions like The Lost Tales or The Road Home replacement models have had to be built by the production team or sourced from the fan community. Lastly, Star Trek concept artist John Eaves recently publicly posted an appeal for donations to help with data recovery because his "master drive" failed and he nearly lost 30 years of concept artwork... you'd think he'd have had backups, but apparently not.
The relevance is to give average readers a distance they can more easily relate to using distance references they are familiar on a daily basis. Outside of us Sci-Fi Geeks, Trekkies, & Technical Space Literate folks; the average person wouldn't understand how far light travels in 1-second. To them, it's just a very big number to attempt to comprehend. I'm trying to give them a scale they can visualize with in their minds.
And "average readers" are familiar with the circumference of the Earth? How many people do you know who have circumnavigated the globe by themselves? You posted it on this forum, for "us sci-fi greeks, Trekkies, and Technical Space Literate folks". And again, the tactically meaningful range of phasers is directly related to it being a light-second; it has nothing to do with it being seven-and-a-bit times the circumference of the Earth. I very much doubt anyone can visualise the circumference of the Earth in their minds, much less 7.4681 of anything. You're being needlessly obtuse. "300,000km" is the scale you can use to visualise it with your mind. Done. Move on. I don't care how many rods to the hogsheads your starship gets.
I mean that’s why I said “starships are traveling at thousands of miles a second, with firing ranges thousands of miles away,” to which you replied that the units I really wanted to use are light hours and the like. I don’t think we need to get bogged down in a pissing match over units of measurement. One can use whatever they’re comfortable with or that illustrates a point, or whatever other reason that might make sense.
Very roughly, yeah (a light-second is about three quarters the distance). But I agree it's a much better real-world example of how far a light-second is.
I think that makes sense in broad strokes, but I don't necessarily think it's always the case for every module/component, I would imagine there's at least some "backwards compatibility". For example, a Galaxy-Class saucer section would have different power conduits and the like than an Excelsior. However, it's at least plausible that the newer Galaxy power conduits could adjust to handle to the output of an Excelsior warp core. I would not expect, however, for the opposite to be true. Trying to slap an Excelsior saucer section into something powered by a Galaxy core and nacelles wouldn't work. Tl;dr you can probably add newer parts to older power systems, to an extent, but probably can't add newer power systems to old parts. (and even then, probably a "sometimes"... you may well be able to "hot rod" some older ships... Excelsiors seem to be suited for this.) I don't like to deal in absolutes so yeah trying to basically slap an Oberth class warp core and nacelles onto a Sovereign probably isn't going to work. And no matter the situation, the Frankenstein ship will almost certainly not perform as well as the original design.
The main reason why I don't think a larger profile, such as a Galaxy-class, is that it would be a waste of resources to churn out combat vessels. A Miranda-class type of ship is better, because, again, smaller profile. Even a modified Intrepid-class is feasible. I mean, we complain how unrealistic ship maneuvers are for some class of star ship in ST as well. Plus, given the philosophy of the Federation, you would want to have dedicated vessels for a particular mission profile, than simply assume that every ship in the fleet is the same.
i agree with what you are saying in this part I've quoted;The Freedom and Niagara classes have some components that resemble an Ambassador, but nacelles that are like those on the Galaxy class, so at least in the current generations of ships during TNG there is some ability of the older modules to work with newer nacelles, which is why I find an Exclesior hull with TMP nacelles so odd: it an older nacelle on a newer hull. Since that is likely, then what would be the reason for those ships to be laid out the way they are? (It would likely be best to just ignore the Merced-class having a hull that looks like a Miranda and assume that it is a newer hull that only "seems" like it could be from a Miranda. It would also likely best to suggest that the nacelles on the Elkins are not really TMP nacelles but something that looks similar.) That leaves mostly just the Curry not well-explained.
Maybe the Curry design partly predates the launch of Excelsior? So they had some of the new hull components completed, but the nacelle design was not finalized yet. So they used scaled up Miranda nacelles instead.
This is the first theory I have heard that would at least would explain the wrongly sized nacelles without having to simply disregard the size of some part of the model. The scaled-up Miranda nacelles might be a testbed for transwarp internal architecture and the actual Excelsior nacelles would be designed later. That still does not explain the peculiar way the parts arranged. Almost like a freighter, but with some oddities.
Not with a registry of NCC-42254. I get the impression that because most of the kitbashes utilized mainly parts from the Excelsior and Reliant model kits, and were given 3XXXX and 4XXXX registries, that most of these ships were meant to have been built during the Lost Era between 2300-2350.