
2290s Superscout. The intent is a ship able to do everything a 2280s Saladin refit AND a 2280s Hermes refit could do, hence the larger, laminated hull of the Constellation.
This allows a full-size shuttle bay, and plenty of space for equipment. But because the complete laminated saucer is so much larger than is needed, some portions are excise, just like the Akyazi. I also went with the lower-profile Constitution saucer bulges, not the larger Constellation ones.
I know the different views don't quite line up; I used Vance and Ian Keldon parts, but had to use a pic off the internet for the saucer, I think it was originally from Star Trek the Magazine.
I also haven't yet figured out how to wrap the text on the saucer, so no names / hull numbers, just the bare bones drawing.
I was thinking about the Ianetos / Arusha / etc Superscouts mentioned in Ships of the Starfleet as commissioning in the 2290s, and wondered what they'd look like. I figured a Superscout should be faster and more capable, and threw in the idea that, since it wasn't that long ago that the Council was blocking destroyers and other scary warship types, that the admiralty would start writing the specs of superscouts to make them capable of doing the destroyer job - which leads eventually to a Galaxy class that gets called "Explorer" in one univers, and "Battleship" in another (Yesterday's Enterprise), where "explorer" essentially means "heavy cruiser optimized for exploration, but renamed to sound less like the military we pretend not to be".
So, trying to decide what Ianetos et alia might look like, I thought about Saladin / Hermes analogs using the Excelsior architecture, but wanted to see something different. Another possibility was the Ariel saucer, but it didn't feel right. So I ended up going with the Constellation analog to the Saladin / Hermes, but I also decided it had to be either two linear engines, or one ACE, and I didn't want to play withe ACE just yet. Some sources say the Saladin & Hermes were refit, no problem. Others say it couldn't work. Others say it was troubled and never say if it was eventually worked out. I decided it can be worked out, but it's more efficient and effective to just design with two nacelles instead, and an LN-52 is easier and more efficient for single-nacelle applications. A single-nacelle LN-64 has to be capable of better performance than the LN-52, or we'd never see it, but the bean counters probably hate the idea, and it should suck somewhere - something like "sure, we can beat an LN-52 by half a warp factor, but at anything over warp 4.5 we blow a lot more dilithium and antimatter than that LN-52 - and don't ask about the extra maintenance!". So a new-build ship would probably just go straight for two nacelles to begin with.
After whipping this up, I decided it'd be USS Audacity, hull number not yet assigned. I thought about Hemingway or Bolitho before I remembered a quote I heard attributed to Napoleon: "de l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace" Apparently, that was Georges Danton, not Napoleon, though.
so, thoughts, suggestions, ideas?
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