In this case the rooms in the secondary hull weren't sitting properly in the hull, and so light "leaked." They are just "light boxes" - rooms textured with self lit maps. Yes, if you don't set up lights properly, you can get some interesting effects, lol I love looking at physical models - that looks great! I used to build physical models, but space is at a premium in the house, so 3D computer models it is. I enjoy it.
Playing around with the texture maps on the Horizon, trying to get the shine right... Also considering rebuilding the arboretum windows so they are bigger and show more - the ones I have are ok, but I did a better job with the Clarke... Comments welcome, more soon!
I like the neck secondary hull interface. That might be a good place for the 1701-B's "cutwater" Love the placement of the impulse deck on your smaller craft...
Thank you, I was inspired by looking at Probert's original idea for the Ambassador, and wanting to build a version of the Excelsior that "worked" (from my POV).
You’ve performed voodoo @JSnaith … you’ve turned one of my least-favorite TOS movie era starship designs into one of my favorites. Excellent work!
Thank you :-) Again, sorry for the lengthy radio silence, still having work done on the house, and a few other real life things are going on. Should be back at it soon.
Talk to the hand; I haven’t published anything significant since Star Trek Day! When life gets out of your way you’ll give us more goodies.
Let’s talk about the USS Horizon – The USS Horizon NCC-3176 is a late 23rd century Oldfield Class Starship built at the newly formed Utopia Planitia Shipyards, Mars. She’s 507 meters long, with 24 decks, and has a crew of 750. The ship is fully multifunctional, and can run various different mission types, from boarder patrol to long range exploration, and diplomatic missions. The class is designated as a “Heavy Explorer.” In terms of the design history – the spaceframe is based on the failed USS Excelsior prototype. With Transwarp not possible the ship was built to fill the gap that Excelsiors would have held in the fleet. By default, the Oldfield Class sports the UTI (Unified Trans-Intermix) 51 nacelles which allow for a sustained warp speed of 12 (on the old scale). The nacelle length accommodates extra sustainer coils to allow the ship to maintain this higher speed. The real-world design history is that I wanted a ship to replace the lost Ingram/Odysseus Class starships. Having lost the physical and digital plans of the Ingram I worked from memory to create something that pays homage to the design ethos I learned from both Todd and David. I built a more practical design that incorporated a hanger bay into the hull, rather than it being an add on structure and used a few design ques from the Ingram. Having seen Andrew Probert’s realised Ambassador Class, I reshaped the “neck” (dorsal interconnector) so as to indicate that this ship would lead into that beautiful design. Phase1 – design and build a replacement for the lost Ingram/Odysseus Class starships. (complete) Phase2 – design and build a replacement shuttle to go with the new ship. (complete) Phase3 – Fix mesh errors on ship, change nacelles, add arboretum, retexture. (complete) Phase4 – Add hanger bay and rec decks. (pending) Comments welcome, more soon :-)
I look at what you've done and it brings back memories. Back in the 1980s when Todd and I decided to blueprint Excelsior and Grissom, he was going to do Grissom and I was going to do Excelsior. I struggled with it. I was trying to do what you did here - hew closer to the original than where Todd ended up going once we switched and he took over the Excelsior project. His solution was to translate it into a strict TMP design vocabulary, and I love what he did. Ingram is an incredible piece of work, and that along with his Akyazi are as much Star Trek to me as is Enterprise. I admit that I would never have thought of his approach - what you've done here... THAT'S much more the kind of thing that was in my mind at the time, yet I just couldn't translate it into blueprint form. As a result, over the years I've come to think the Excelsior design was just not salvageable without the major kind of transformation Todd did. But you've shown that by bringing in a little bit of Ingram and a little bit of Ambassador, you can tame its grotesque excesses and largely save it. Impressive. Very impressive.
Hiya :-) I remember - and still have (thanks to the cloud) the emails we exchanged when I was working on the Ingram/Odysseus. I looked back over the old threads and compiled a list of things to do, and not do, when I started this one. I was tempted to grab hold of the Ingram Blueprints (I have managed to find a copy, and they are on the way) and build from them. But I was reminded of some of the things both you are Todd said to me over the years. I was also aware that someone else has done a bang up job of building an accurate Ingram. The Movie Era is my favourite time in Trek, that and the Original Series. Mind you, these days I add Discovery and Strange New Worlds into the mix as well. But the Movie Era, yes, that's the design ethos I like, and both you and Todd have done amazing work with it. The top of the saucer, the nacelle pylons, the nacelles themselves... They share DNA with the Ingram. The base of the saucer is more Excelsior because of how the neck fits. Although I did play with a swept back neck like the Ingram. But the biggest takeaway from working with you guys over the years is the important lesson that it has to work from a practical POV. There is no point in adding something to the hull if the crew can't access it (like the Grissom). I love the Ingram design. It turned a lemon into lemonade. I'd like to think that within the history of the Horizon's design is a paragraph that states it wouldn't have happened without the Ingram. That's certainly the reality for me. It would not have happened without the sage wisdom you shared as well :-) Thank you.