That is fine. Your board, your wave. Epiphany Trek departs from the timeline about mid TNG because I started writing it. The events of DS9 and Voyager do not make the cut because I wrote first. Obviously Nu Trek is not in the cut either. My timeline is closer to the FASA game, that the Trek Chronology. I freely use that however. It's on my shelf along with the other Fanboy books. I play around with pre and early Federation stuff quite a bit. It is a matter of taking ownership of you own game world.
The way this is coming along, you can see where simpler designs like the Antares and Astral Queen came from (especially the Antares design), that you designed near the beginning of the thread. Reused older ships as science vessels (or whatever the Antares was, it was called three different things in the episode, wasn't it?) and passenger transports by the time we could have seen them in TOS, if originally shown.
The more I consider it the more I think the Challenger design came on toward the end of the war. And I am envisioning a third, intermediate, design between the two I’ve done so far.
That aft 3/4 view is to die for. In terms of an intermediate design—I see this starting out as a TOS Kelvin/NX. Top over bottom nacelles…a different modularity once nacelles are no longer to be cast off/shed in an emergency. “Hey, put a lower hull in that depression and directly connect the new compact nacelles to the main hull. Wow—the swan design helped the warp dynamics immensely—next time—we’ll design that in from the start…” What Archer’s ride should have been.
How did this evolve in terms of my thinking? Reverse evolution. Although it’s never referenced in the episode “Balance Of Terror” in the James Blish adaptation there is mention of the Romulans’ ship “even looking like one of ours.” The idea being the Romulans somehow copied an Earth/Federation design, and possibly a design that was instrumental in besting the best the Romulans had at the time? The Romulan BoP only looks faintly saucer like wth nacelles atop it when seen nearly bow on and from a distance. But the closer you get the less it looks like an Earth/Federation design. So although it’s not referenced in the episode I wondered what if the Romulans had tried to imitate an Earth design yet with their own spin to it. So my initial sketches were a much simpler design, somewhat like a flattened Antares, with nacelles on the sides. Yeak, okay, but I found that meh and boring as hell. So I started playing with it to make it more interesting while still retaining that generic look particularly as seen from a distance. The added wrinkle, and visible largely from underside views, was the addition of the lower hull which made the design more interesting overall. Thats how I got here. Actually the NX-01 looks more Romulan like from a distance. That might have worked as a configuration the Romulans might try to imitate except ENT went ahead and depicted the Romulans already having a ship that looks like the BoP from “Balance Of Terror.” Funny how the BoP in Ent looks more advanced than the BoP in TOS.
I personally hope one day someone redoes Enterprise's fx with more appropriate redesigned ships, somewhat like what Adywan did/is doing with his particular edits and fixes of the original Star Wars trilogy.
I'm still following this thread with much enjoyment. I'm sure you remember these, Warped9, being an old timer. A little something I worked up along the lines you suggest back in 2014: If they had been able to use the original Romulan ship model instead of having to shoe-horn in the Klingon technology. And here's if they had the budget to build the original Matt Jefferies K-7 design; shown here as a different Star Base, rather than a reuse of the screen used K-7... This are my own 3D models, built and rendered in Strata3D. I'm currently rebuilding the TOS E from scratch in MoI 3D, incorporating more recent references, and plan to texture and light it in Blender, with visible interior spaces. Planning how the windows work with the deck arrangements has been very enlightening. M.
Although it has little to do with design I always liked the idea referenced in James Blish’s adaptation that the Earth/Romulan war was a protracted affair lasting twenty-five years. It really fed into the idea of less advanced ships engaged in a conflict over great distances.
If I may say so I think this decently captures the sense I was aiming for. Looking at Jefferies’ sketches and how he worked toward the Enterprise’s final design I think this looks convincingly pre TOS. I think it fits neatly decades after the Valiant and a century before the Enterprise. It doesn’t look like a regressed rehash of the Enterprise yet there still seem to be echoes in it.
^^ That doesn’t work for me. To be convincingly pre TOS doesn’t mean it has to look like 1950’s Saturday matinee sci-fi for kids. It doesn’t have to look like Flash Gordon. At some point down the road it could be interesting to try envision what the interiors of some of these pre TOS designs could look like.
I think this is probably one of your best designs to date. It definitely reflects that feeling of a "primitive starship" while still having elements that would evolve further in to the TOS era. Strikes me as a reasonable approach from a TOS 60s era development POV.
The vibe has been perfectly captured…If I could do my own manual..I would put Masao’s Valley Force after the TOS ship as a standard cruiser, but your ships before the TOS.
To my eye, this looks like a 50s hot-rod (“50s”, that is, relative to the 60s design the original Enterprise). The lines are simple, but streamlined and sporty. The design implies strength (perhaps even over-built strength). Marvelous!
Design is tricky. Sometimes you work at it and work at it and work at it and it never seems right. Other times it just seems to magically come together. My Endurance looks right in my eyes. The Challenger is…okay, but I don’t love it. It strikes me as a design that would come after the Romulan War. So, yeah, I’ve got something else percolating in the back of my mind. And I want to get these done so I can move on to the next episode.
I don't wish to risk derailing this thread by talking about the technology of a different licenced universe - not least since there's already a thread for that. Nor do I wish to go too far off-topic by referring to how many of the designs from said universe have been turned into miniatures - not least since there's already a topic for that. Even so, with some of the discussions which have taken place in this thread thus far, I thought it worth comparing and contrasting them to how things are set up over in the Star Fleet Universe, if only briefly. As a disclaimer: I don't claim to speak for anyone at ADB, though I have had a number of articles published by them. ----- The way the "standard" Alpha Octant timeline tells it, the era of the Federation Constitution-class heavy cruiser and of the Klingon D7 battlecruiser is the fourth generation of faster-than-light technology - or what the GURPS Prime Directive role-playing game system marks as Tech Level 12. Tech Level 9, the first to allow FTL travel, saw the onset of fusion-powered "Non-Tactical Warp", or "impulse" drive. As shown here, NTW-powered ships could travel approximately nine parsecs per day at a "cruising" speed, yet still had to slow to "sub-light" speeds to enter combat. This is the era in which the first Romulan War was fought. Tech Level 10 saw the onset of the first "Tactical Warp" drive: powered by matter-antimatter reactions, regulated by those all-important dilihium crystals. This allows for the first combat at (low) warp speeds. In Federation space, this "W-era" saw ships from the various "planetary" fleets receive Tactical Warp refits to their NTW starship designs, as well as the first political efforts to establish a unified Star Fleet. Tech Level 11 was the first generation designed from the keel up to incorporate Tactical Warp drive. The engines on these "Y-era" ships were more powerful than those of the preceding era. This was the era in which the first "saucer-and-nacelle" designs were constructed for use by a unified Star Fleet; not even the Terrans had fielded such designs prior to this (there is no NX-01 in the SFU). So this was seen an an important step away from the old planetary designs towards a shared and standardized template. Well, except for a rugged old Terran ship class which was more cost-effective to upgrade than to replace with a new light cruiser design... Tech Level 12 is where one sees the fabled Constitution-class; its "Franz Joseph" stablemates from the Star Fleet Technical Manual (such as the Saladin-class destroyer and the Federation-class dreadnought), plus a number of "SFU-native" designs like the Burke-class frigate. Critically, the Romulans were still mostly stuck at Tech Level 9 for much of this era; their power would remain simple impulse until a landmark treaty with the Klingon Empire saw them jump up to TL 12. ----- According to the SFU timeline, the famed "five-year mission" dramatized for tri-video took place between Y154 and Y159, while the prior incident at Talos IV took place in Y142. Star Fleet still had many of the old Terran light cruisers in service; in the TL 12 era, these were referred to as the Texas-class. Meanwhile, the Federation Police (think of them as a "Coast Guard" in space) had their own police ships which had branched off from a design lineage established by the old warp-refitted Terran destroyer. While various Federation member planets (such as Earth, Vulcan, Andor, etc.) had their own National Guards, these typically comprised of hand-me-down ships which had served in Star Fleet in the TL 11 era. As for the Klingons, they had a variety of hull types which served alongside the D7 battlecruiser: the D6 heavy cruiser (technically superseded by the D7, though one fleet yard continued to build them nonetheless), the F5 frigate, the E4 escort, and the C6 dreadnought. When the Treaty of Smarba was signed with the Romulan Star Empire, a number of old D6s would be sold to the Romulans and converted into KRs. The Romulans would install warp upgrades to their "Eagle-series" ships (turning the sub-light Warbird into the warp-powered War Eagle, for example) and convert a series of Klingon-built "Kestrel-series" designs. Over time, as they became more acquainted with Klingon technology, they would design their own "Hawk-series" ships - such as the SparrowHawk light cruiser - from the keel up. But then, the Hawks don't show up until after the events of the "five-year mission", so lie somewhat outside of the scope of this comparative study... ----- Again, I don't wish to derail any of the discussions or design choices being held in this thread. So if none of the above is deemed to be a relevant point of comparison, fair enough. Also, I'll note in passing that most Federation miniatures listed on ADB's Shapeways storefront - to include the old Terran light cruiser - are presented in both "standard" (with panel lines on the hull) and "classic" (no panel lines) iterations.