U.S.S. Curry - WTF?

[Timo]

Why’s that? It’s smaller than most ships, especially with no stardrive.

Smaller how? She's beamier than the other two Excelsior kitbashes, because of the pylon structure. It's equally long. Having a bit less actual internal volume would not have served your purported story purpose - this would not make the ship look smaller in comparison with Sisko's.

I disagree completely.

You can't - it's the real world I'm referring to here. There, ships do come in all sizes and their hulls are identical in observable design. Basically because real ship hulls are extremely simple in geometry. Much like starship saucers, come to think of it.

They were considered the best of the lot? Certainly the Centaur is a fan-favorite, and the Curry is bigger/later-era than the Jupp, suggesting a greater threat/loss.

Might well be. Would be interesting to know. Probably won't be revealed, ever. The Curry being by Curry sounds like a good bet to me.

Except the Yeager was not an original well-crafted design like the Miranda and the biggest mismatch in Trek history?

What mismatch? She features only late 24th century components as far as can be seen.

I mean, where’d all the pristine other ships come from, if things were so dire already?

One is tempted to think that non-pristine starships don't fly straight, which is why Janeway took such great pains to repaint after each week's adventure even when stranded far away from Fleet Reviews...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Adam Buckner purposely gave the Centaur a bridge dome from the Reliant kit. When scaled to the Reliant, it actually makes the ship smaller, and considerably smaller than the Excelsior.

 

[137th Gebirg]

It would have been cool if they CG’d some of the Frankenfleet, revising some of its more questionable decisions, and including them in the battles. I mean, where’d all the pristine other ships come from, if things were so dire already?

Eaglemoss has already done that for some of them for its official ships line. The Centaur now has a scale-appropriate bridge. It looks better, but it flies in the face of my "screen-accurate" OCD.

The others we've seen have been somewhat the same as the originals, like the Yeager and Curry..

 

[Arpy]

Eaglemoss has already done that for some of them for its official ships line. The Centaur now has a scale-appropriate bridge. It looks better, but it flies in the face of my "screen-accurate" OCD.

The others we've seen have been somewhat the same as the originals, like the Yeager and Curry..

Spectacular pics, @137th Gebirg!

I just saw this one of the Curry and this one of the Spokane Class that looks like a mashup of the Centaur and Oberth configurations. That top shuttlebay segment kind of falls it apart for me, but points for creativity.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Thanks much. I can't take credit, though. The originals were done by Ben Robinson's talented team of R&D folks at Eaglemoss. I just cleaned them up for 72dpi web display.

 

[Timo]

Adam Buckner purposely gave the Centaur a bridge dome from the Reliant kit. When scaled to the Reliant, it actually makes the ship smaller, and considerably smaller than the Excelsior.

Which I fully agree with. But the bridge isn't in the episode. In fact, it's rather deliberately hidden. So the VFX folks not only could have given the ship any arbitrary scale, but in fact chose to, as the design offered no scale cues as shot. They just happened to give approximately the same scale that Buckner had intended, or perhaps a bit smaller.

The same could have been done with any of the models. But the flat and flimsy Centaur is an excellent match for the Jemmie battlebug aesthetically. Although thematically it might also have been fun to have Sisko fight not the "small" Centaur but the "old" Jupp, to the same dramatic effect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Which I fully agree with. But the bridge isn't in the episode. In fact, it's rather deliberately hidden. So the VFX folks not only could have given the ship any arbitrary scale, but in fact chose to, as the design offered no scale cues as shot. They just happened to give approximately the same scale that Buckner had intended, or perhaps a bit smaller.

The same could have been done with any of the models. But the flat and flimsy Centaur is an excellent match for the Jemmie battlebug aesthetically. Although thematically it might also have been fun to have Sisko fight not the "small" Centaur but the "old" Jupp, to the same dramatic effect.

When I first saw the Centaur on screen, I had no idea what it was made from. It zipped around way too fast to make out any details other than it had a circular saucer, long thin pylons and long thin nacelles, and that it was about as big as the Jem'Hadar fighter. I literally thought they built a new studio model of a small starship to match the bug in the fight because besides the Defiant (which they weren't going to use for the scene), there were really no other 'small' starships. Years later when Drexler showed me the pics and also with correspondence with Buckner, I realized the scaled-down nature of the ship. I really don't like the fact that Eaglemoss chose to scale their model to the Excelsior, because that was not Buckner's or the VFX crew's intent.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, the Miranda bits hold center stage in the actual episode. Not the bridge, for better or worse, but the torpedo pod. Having Starfleet design a "minimum ship" around the existing pod would make some sense; OTOH, having the ship be any bigger than the Miranda scale would imply gigantic torpedo tubes...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Indeed, the Miranda bits hold center stage in the actual episode. Not the bridge, for better or worse, but the torpedo pod. Having Starfleet design a "minimum ship" around the existing pod would make some sense; OTOH, having the ship be any bigger than the Miranda scale would imply gigantic torpedo tubes...

Or conversely, it’s a much larger secondary hull that just happens to resemble the pod and pylons from the Reliant. In this case, the repurposing isn’t immediately apparent since the ship moves so fast, and the parts are covered in greebles, unlike the Yeager which is clearly two completely different ships stuck together. I don’t remember if the Centaur launched any torpedos from the pod.

 

[Ithekro]

I don’t remember if the Centaur launched any torpedos from the pod.

I seem to recall it being a phaser battle only. Save maybe at warp, but you probably wouldn't see when the torpedo came from as the shot would start on the bug ship.

 

[Timo]

The very first shot to show the ship is from the warp chase, nicely showing a torpedo firing from the pod (but without a preceding glow of the torpedo tube, FWIW). The rest of the battle involves her firing a ventral bow phaser, not quite from the location where there would be an appropriate greeblie. Dialogue doesn't specify the type of weapons used at any point.

But the whole fight is indeed a blur, and so is the Centaur, for obvious reasons. Standard freeze framing still reveals the size of the bow torpedo tubes, so if there's to be an evaluation of scale on basis of ship features at all, it's gonna show giant tubes or a small ship.

The real size comparison comes from the fact that both the bug and the Starfleet ship fly past the camera in the warp chase shot, supposedly without camera movement that would confuse the perspective, and the ships are of the same approximate size there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

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[Dukhat]

It was extremely hard to see where that torpedo launched from. It almost looked like it dropped from the bottom of the ship and then shot forward.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

It was extremely hard to see where that torpedo launched from. It almost looked like it dropped from the bottom of the ship and then shot forward.

I like that idea =D

 

[Ithekro]

"We got a dozen torpedoes, matey."

"Aye, but no tube to fire them."

"We'll set their targeting sensors, arm them, and shove it out an airlock."

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I prefer the Air Wolf method where 3 Tubes pop out of a retractable enclosed cover and the missiles fire out =D

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

It was extremely hard to see where that torpedo launched from. It almost looked like it dropped from the bottom of the ship and then shot forward.

Definitely from the bottom, which is where the Reliant type pod is.

 

[Tomalak]

Looking at the clip again, it's obviously a small ship. The saucer isn't even visibly Excelsior from those shots, so I'd go with scaling to the pod and keeping her small.

 

[Arpy]

U.S.S. Endurant by Arpy

I first came up with this somewhere around 1999 and lost the originals during a hard drive backup. In an attempt to justify the configuration, in most sketches, the forward shuttlebay is replaced by a wide AWAC-like dome, similar to that on the Phoenix and fan designs like the Alacrity.

There is an aft shuttlebay where the deflector typically is and a deflector where whatever this is is. This ship is primarily a subspace research and communications analysis vessel, and, by virtue of its Excelsior parts, a highly defendable one at that.

EDIT: I uploaded two versions. 1) the image visible, with a longer (expressionistic?) forward blade, and 2) the image linked, with a slightly shorter one. Let me know which works best for you.

 

[Unicron]

Maybe it would look better if the secondary hull was shortened? No offense intended, Arpy, but I admit from my perspective it just looks weird proportionally. But I don't see a lot of need for that extra space.