What ships SHOULD they have used in the Dominion War?

[Macintosh]

And yet we also saw all of the most modern ships to date in those scenes, with the two exceptions of the Sovereign and the Intrepid, for obvious real-world production reasons.

And we saw hundreds of Excelsiors, Mirandas, and "variants". Never mind that they were all older than the Ambassador, Challenger, Cheyenne, Freedom, New Orleans, Niagara, Norway Olympic, and Springfield classes, all of which had been already established.

 

[Arpy]

I’m okay with most of the 359 ships not being seen again. They weren’t designed to much cobbled together as background scraps. For me they’d need major refits to pass muster. The two closest to okay for me are the Cheyenne and New Orleans Classes. The Challenger and Freedom Classes are godawful. I get what they were going for with them, the Niagara, etc (placing nacelles in novel configurations to easily distinguish ships from one another), but they need work. I don’t think proper designers doubt that, but some fans sure do seem to. Same with ships like the Norway, the Yeager, and others not meant to be looked at too closely.

That said, and my personal preferences for the fleet, again, on page 1 of this thread, I think another way they could have gone is fleets with a handful of Galaxy and Nebulas in the center, more Ambassadors and Akiras around them, and a lot of Prometheus, Steamrunner, Saber Class starships around them. There could have been a handful of Excelsior Refits like the Lakota still in service as well, and some Constellation Class ships (with their many space doors) as troop and shuttle transports. We didn’t see those kinds of support craft in the battles but I imagine they were there, including Sydney Class transports and Olympic Class hospital ships.

I’m not a fan of the fighters we saw being used against capital ships—convenient how no one else used fighters, eh? But for smaller ships they could have used Nova Class starships, Prometheuses in multivector assault mode (they had the digital versions), and I’d be willing to hear arguments for Maquis Raiders…I mean theyre not that small (crews of like 30), and they’re Federation designs, not Maquis specific (there are no Maquis shipyards).

Along with the Defiant itself, that’s a healthy diversity of ships without being antiquated. If they were really smart about it, they could have peppered in some of the no-no Sovereign, Intrepid, and Defiants in the far background.

And if they had the budget for it, they could have used the Curry and Centaur Classes, refits of the New Orleans and Cheyenne Classes, and maybe kept in the background or a refit version of the Norway Class—I don’t know that I actually buy the idea that the digital model was lost.

 

[Dukhat]

I’m okay with most of the 359 ships not being seen again. They weren’t designed to much cobbled together as background scraps. For me they’d need major refits to pass muster.

The Ed Miarecki models were just studies. They were meant to show the TNG producers that a larger, more detailed studio model could be constructed utilizing the Enterprise-D parts. And just like how the actual Nebula class studio model is quite different from the Melbourne study, if they had built studio models of the other designs, they would have looked different and more detailed as well.

And the study models weren't 'background scraps.' They were designed and built by a professional model maker, with plenty of time, who was paid for his work, that were only battle-damaged and used later for BoBW because they didn't have any other studio models they could damage for the scene. The DS9 kitbashes, on the other hand, were a different story. They were indeed cobbled together quickly with out-of-scale parts solely to be seen in the far background so you couldn't actually make out how bad they were.

 

[Arpy]

And the study models weren't 'background scraps.' They were designed and built by a professional model maker, with plenty of time, who was paid for his work, that were only battle-damaged and used later for BoBW because they didn't have any other studio models they could damage for the scene.

One should certainly hope he was paid for his work, but it was not to build proper ships that could stand scrutiny or that were ever used undamaged in the foreground.

 

[Dukhat]

One should certainly hope he was paid for his work, but it was not to build proper ships that could stand scrutiny or that were ever used undamaged in the foreground.

No. That was not what he was paid for. It was his job to make study models from the 1/2500 and 1/1400 scale versions of the AMT Enterprise-D model kits, so that an actual filming model could be produced based on them by someone like Greg Jein, using molds from the four-foot Ent-D filming model.

Side note: The Nebula class Phoenix filming model built by Jein was meant to have used the four-foot molds, with a larger bridge dome, windows and escape pod hatches to emulate it being a smaller ship like the New Orleans, Challenger, Cheyenne and Springfield study models were, but that didn't work out. They used the six-foot mold instead and kept the ship the same scale as the Ent-D. The idea for the Nebula class to have a pod came later as well (as the Miarecki models didn't have them; the little nacelles were added by Okuda after the fact), as someone thought the ship looked unbalanced from the back.

 

[Macintosh]

The Challenger and Freedom Classes are godawful.

The Freedom is one of my favourites!

She has a unique charm...

*Edited to fix links.

 

[Arpy]

No. That was not what he was paid for. It was his job to make study models from the 1/2500 and 1/1400 scale versions of the AMT Enterprise-D model kits, so that an actual filming model could be produced based on them by someone like Greg Jein, using molds from the four-foot Ent-D filming model.

Were they ever?

Side note: The Nebula class Phoenix filming model built by Jein was meant to have used the four-foot molds, with a larger bridge dome, windows and escape pod hatches to emulate it being a smaller ship like the New Orleans, Challenger, Cheyenne and Springfield study models were, but that didn't work out. They used the six-foot mold instead and kept the ship the same scale as the Ent-D. The idea for the Nebula class to have a pod came later as well (as the Miarecki models didn't have them; the little nacelles were added by Okuda after the fact), as someone thought the ship looked unbalanced from the back.

I’d be curious to see a smaller podless Nebula, but those smaller nacelles did not work.

The Freedom is one of my favourites!

Oof, one of my absolute least. Those Eaglemoss pics are the best it’s ever looked. I could write an essay about everything wrong with it. Let me guess, you liked the Saladin Class too.

 

[Dukhat]

Were they ever?

Only the Nebula was ever considered, AFAIK, based on the script for "The Wounded" which necessitated another ship contemporary to the Enterprise-D which would have been a match for the Galor-class Cardassian ship.

 

[Tomalak]

And we saw hundreds of Excelsiors, Mirandas, and "variants". Never mind that they were all older than the Ambassador, Challenger, Cheyenne, Freedom, New Orleans, Niagara, Norway Olympic, and Springfield classes, all of which had been already established.

Still not seeing the issue here. The US still heavily relies on the F-16, which was introduced in the seventies. But it's hardly the same plane due to the advanced newer models.

There are plenty of NCC-42xxx Excelsiors that we see in DS9 which are newer than some of those ships you mention, including the previously discussed Lakota that went toe-to-toe with the Defiant.

 

[Dukhat]

Still not seeing the issue here. The US still heavily relies on the F-16, which was introduced in the seventies. But it's hardly the same plane due to the advanced newer models.

There are plenty of NCC-42xxx Excelsiors that we see in DS9 which are newer than some of those ships you mention, including the previously discussed Lakota that went toe-to-toe with the Defiant.

Just because an Excelsior has a registry of 4XXXX, that's not an indication that it was newer than the other ships. For all we know, the registries are batch numbers, not chronological, and those Excelsiors were built in 2300. The only Excelsiors whose commissioning dates we know of are the Excelsior herself (2286) and the Enterprise-B (2293).

 

[Macintosh]

Those Eaglemoss pics are the best it’s ever looked.

Which is kind of the point – there's barely any images of it, and if the Freedom had been brought back for the Dominion War we'd have seen it looking much better than it did in "The Best of Both Worlds".

I could write an essay about everything wrong with it. Let me guess, you liked the Saladin Class too.

What's wrong with the Saladin? Also – you seem to not mind the Curry or the Centaur, both of which are pig-ugly and problematically-scaled kitbashes

There are plenty of NCC-42xxx Excelsiors that we see in DS9 which are newer than some of those ships you mention, including the previously discussed Lakota that went toe-to-toe with the Defiant.

The Lakota was hardly a stock Excelsior though (O'Brien: "Someone's been upgrading the Lakota's weapons... that's a lot of firepower for an Excelsior-class ship"). I also believe this shows the limitations of the Defiant-class. There seems to be this perception from some people that the Defiant is the most powerful starship Starfleet ever built, which is not the case at all. It's very powerful for its size, but its size is tiny. She's designed to swarm in fleets, not go one-on-one with a battleship. God forbid a Defiant ever tried to solo a Galaxy or a Sovereign.

Also – NCC numbers aren't chronological. We see both Galaxy-class and Nebula-class starships with registry numbers lower than NC-4xxxx; Pike says that the Discovery NCC-1031 is newer than the Enterprise NCC-1701 and it's definitely newer than the Shenzhou NCC-1227; the Steamrunner and Akira classes are explicitly post-Wolf 359 ships with lower registry numbers than the USS Galaxy NCC-70637; and the Prometheus NX-59650 is newer than the USS Voyager NCC-74656. I'd like them to be chronological too, but all on-screen evidence is that beyond a very general trend upwards over time they just aren't.

 

[Arpy]

Which is kind of the point – there's barely any images of it, and if the Freedom had been brought back for the Dominion War we'd have seen it looking much better than it did in "The Best of Both Worlds".

They’re the best it ever looked, not it’s good enough for primetime. In my estimation or in that of the people on the show that never revisited it or most of the other 359 ships. That’s not a sin.

What's wrong with the Saladin?

Lots. Like the Freedom Class, I could go on about it ant length. Additionally, Franz Joseph put together a kitbash book that is charming but not to be taken too seriously. Indeed, the Federation charter is a kitbash of the UN charter. It was meant to make it easy for fans model ships from existing kits, not to stifle the imagination or to limit critical thinking. Some fans took it more seriously because it’s all they had at the time, as youths, and were sentimentally attached thereafter.

Also – you seem to not mind the Curry or the Centaur, both of which are pig-ugly and problematically-scaled kitbashes

I started a whole thread about the Curry, but if we ever saw it proper it would look better with properly scaled and era-appropriate nacelles. The Centaur too is scaled differently in different sources and I’m happy to dump it. I wanted to give the show one or two of its original designs, and it’s about as antiquated as I’m comfortable going.

Mostly I like giving more than one ship for the era some screen time—see the fan-designed Loki, Alacrity, Terrell classes on page 1. They would all be E-B/Lakota upgraded versions. I would have suggested the Apollo Class for the Ambassador era as well (also on page 1) but there was never a model for it either. Though once the AI’s let me I’ll add a bunch more Ambassador era ships to the fleet shots especially. Preferably Probert versions.

 

[Dukhat]

You know what I really would like to have seen? A design lineage of ships from the Lost Era (i.e. designs that came after the Excelsior but before the Galaxy class family.) The visuals for TNG and DS9 would have us believe that between 2280 and 2350, the only ships Starfleet was using were the Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth, and Constellation classes from the TMP era, and the only newer design pre-Galaxy-family was the Ambassador. And I don’t mean out-of-scale kitbashes like the Curry and Raging Queen. I mean designs with thought put into them for being mid-points like both Probert and Sternbach’s versions of the Enterprise-C.

Spoiler

The Section 31 movie apparently takes place in the 2330’s, but I have absolutely no faith that the people currently in charge will show ships that look anything like how they should for the time period shown.

 

[Macintosh]

Spoiler

The Section 31 movie apparently takes place in the 2330’s, but I have absolutely no faith that the people currently in charge will show ships that look anything like how they should for the time period shown.

Oof. Yeah. Forgotten about that, It's the yikes that keeps on yikesing

 

[Macintosh]

They’re the best it ever looked, not it’s good enough for primetime. In my estimation or in that of the people on the show that never revisited it or most of the other 359 ships. That’s not a sin.

Lots. Like the Freedom Class, I could go on about it ant length. Additionally, Franz Joseph put together a kitbash book that is charming but not to be taken too seriously. Indeed, the Federation charter is a kitbash of the UN charter. It was meant to make it easy for fans model ships from existing kits, not to stifle the imagination or to limit critical thinking. Some fans took it more seriously because it’s all they had at the time, as youths, and were sentimentally attached thereafter.

I started a whole thread about the Curry, but if we ever saw it proper it would look better with properly scaled and era-appropriate nacelles. The Centaur too is scaled differently in different sources and I’m happy to dump it. I wanted to give the show one or two of its original designs, and it’s about as antiquated as I’m comfortable going.

Mostly I like giving more than one ship for the era some screen time—see the fan-designed Loki, Alacrity, Terrell classes on page 1. They would all be E-B/Lakota upgraded versions. I would have suggested the Apollo Class for the Ambassador era as well (also on page 1) but there was never a model for it either. Though once the AI’s let me I’ll add a bunch more Ambassador era ships to the fleet shots especially. Preferably Probert versions.

So you hate kitbashes and single-nacelled ships, apart from the ones you don't and think the show should have used instead; and the ugly ships you like "look better" if we saw them "proper", unlike the ships you don't, which are too ugly to live under any and all circumstances. OK. It's not a sin, true, but it is tiresome. As is your implied dig at people being "sentimentally attached" to things you've decided by fiat shouldn't be.

 

[Tomalak]

The Lakota was hardly a stock Excelsior though (O'Brien: "Someone's been upgrading the Lakota's weapons... that's a lot of firepower for an Excelsior-class ship"). I also believe this shows the limitations of the Defiant-class. There seems to be this perception from some people that the Defiant is the most powerful starship Starfleet ever built, which is not the case at all. It's very powerful for its size, but its size is tiny. She's designed to swarm in fleets, not go one-on-one with a battleship. God forbid a Defiant ever tried to solo a Galaxy or a Sovereign.

There's no reason to think that the Dominion War Excelsiors weren't upgraded to Lakota specs. Indeed, they are depicted firing the same phaser beams as the Galaxy class ships.

At the very least we can infer that their shields were upgraded to resist Dominion weaponry, or the war would have lasted days. There is every reason to think the weapons were improved too, and no real reason *not* to assume that.

Also – NCC numbers aren't chronological. We see both Galaxy-class and Nebula-class starships with registry numbers lower than NC-4xxxx; Pike says that the Discovery NCC-1031 is newer than the Enterprise NCC-1701 and it's definitely newer than the Shenzhou NCC-1227; the Steamrunner and Akira classes are explicitly post-Wolf 359 ships with lower registry numbers than the USS Galaxy NCC-70637; and the Prometheus NX-59650 is newer than the USS Voyager NCC-74656. I'd like them to be chronological too, but all on-screen evidence is that beyond a very general trend upwards over time they just aren't.

Absolutely, I take the point about registries, but this goes both ways. The Akira and Steamrunner classes are not "explicitly" post-Wolf 359, that's a fan assumption. It's a very reasonable one, but it is an assumption. They could just as easily be older, pre-Galaxy designs that were upgraded.

Look, I would have loved to have seen an even more varied Starfleet in the DS9 battles, but I don't think the one that we did get was in any way problematic.

I think there's some hindsight bias here, given how the recent shows are spoiling us with ship types.

At the time the Dominion War fleets were jaw-dropping for Starship fans. We got a nice mix of the very latest ships (First Contact had only been released about seven months before we saw the incredible Call To Arms fleet) and some old favourites that we know were plentiful during TNG. It would have been really weird if the Dominion War fleets didn't include any Excelsiors! We also got to see multiple Galaxies kicking ass, which implied the existence of dozens of them across Starfleet. Again, incredible for Starship fans.

There's a parallel universe where they didn't get to use the ILM models from First Contact for whatever reason, and Starfleet lined up against the Jem'Hadar with Constellations and Oberths!

 

[Dukhat]

^To be fair, David Stipes and his crew put in a lot of work to get those CGI fleet scenes accomplished. I don’t want to sound like I’m dissing his hard work by being disappointed in the ships they used.

Now with that said, I think that if ILM didn’t have their FC models available, they would have just went with Galaxies, Excelsiors and Mirandas, as no other physical models were in their possession at the time to be scanned.* They certainly would not have come up with new designs on their own, and we still would not have seen hero ships like the Sovereign and Intrepid, as they still would have had the mandate that they didn’t want the audience to be confused into thinking they were seeing the Enterprise and Voyager. I think we would have just seen more Excelsiors and Mirandas to make up the difference.

*I’m still not sure why the CGI Nebula class model from VOY was used so infrequently in the fleet shots. We saw none of them while the fleet was in formation, only two of them once the fleet engaged in battle, and one shot of the physical model composited into the shot of the Deep Space Nine model at the end of the episode.

 

[Daedalus]

Spoiler

The Section 31 movie apparently takes place in the 2330’s, but I have absolutely no faith that the people currently in charge will show ships that look anything like how they should for the time period shown.

Hope springs eternal, and such
The bridge of the freighter they were piloting seemed suspiciously Disco, but that could just be cost-saving. I guess we'll see

 

[Arpy]

So you hate kitbashes

I started a thread about Jackill’s kitbashes and praised fans who have come up with their own. The difference is I see them as part of the fleet, not in lieu of one and certainly not when they don’t make a lick of sense.

and the ugly ships you like "look better" if we saw them "proper",

You’re taking issue with the idea of working on something to improve it? As there is a difference between hero ships and guest ships there is between quality of guest ships. I like the idea of giving interesting ideas more effort for future use. You’d never do a series on the Freedom, but you might with a revision/refit.

unlike the ships you don't, which are too ugly to live under any and all circumstances.

Ships don’t live. Try suggesting improvements on designs that you think have merit instead of taking issue with criticism of. Or even asking what the criticism is before jumping to conclusions. My main issue isn’t the Freedom and Saladin’s one nacelle as evidenced by my affection for the Loki and Preble.

As is your implied dig at people being "sentimentally attached" to things you've decided by fiat shouldn't be.

You mean having my an opinion, one you needn’t read or agree with. Unlike the reality that sentimental attachment is a thing and does influence one’s judgement. I think of my own when I think of the ships I like and the beliefs I hold as a grown man; I think the world would be a better place if we all did a little more.

 

[Dukhat]

I love kitbashes. Both the ones made for the screen and the various fan designs out there (especially @Forbin ‘s, which I always thought Paramount should have contacted to ask to use his models for far background ships). I myself enjoy kitbashing. I made a USS Tolstoy kitbash based on an unused design by Ed Miarecki, and I’m currently working on an original design also based on an unused design, for the Andromeda class USS Liberator NCC-67016 from BoBW.