USS Grandeur - One... More... Time!
- Thread starter Vektor
- Start date
Is it trying to make a right turn?
Haha, nice.
You know... I kinda like the amber nacelle cap look.
The last screenie makes me expect Colin Baker's head to fly at me any second.
You know... I kinda like the amber nacelle cap look.
The last screenie makes me expect Colin Baker's head to fly at me any second.
The amber bussard collectors make me feel as if I have a color deficiency.
Never noticed that before.
sincerest apologies to all involved...
That old coot's been driving with his turn signal on for light-years!
Well done, largo.
LOL... I thought I had seen everything, largo! Funny... you should see the glove compartment on this thing! 
This is looking terrific - I'm really hoping it won't lose its sleek purposefulness being freckled with portals and escape pods. This has to be the most beautiful Starfleet ship, bar none; I think you've really shown the 'authorized' designs a thing or two, Vektor (no offense intended, Rick Sternbach 
- there's nothing that says something has to be 'beautiful' to be a great design!).
- there's nothing that says something has to be 'beautiful' to be a great design!).
I've become increasingly concerned about that myself. The Citizen and I are just beginning to hash out surface details, windows, panel lines, escape pods, etc, but I would like to find a way to reduce the usual "clutter" and maintain more of TMP-era sleekness.
This has to be the most beautiful Starfleet ship, bar none; I think you've really shown the 'authorized' designs a thing or two, Vektor (no offense intended, Rick Sternbach
That's some seriously high praise Ptrope and I thank you for it, but I'm gonna have to go with the TMP refit myself. Of course, the Grandeur takes a lot of inspiration from the refit, as well as the Ent-D, the Ent-E and even a smattering of Voyager. Standing on the shoulders of giants.
Very cool ship!!!
And Go Cubs!
And Go Cubs!
The escape pods being different colored never made much sense to me anyways, they could easily be the same color as, and flush with, the hull and only discernible from a seam around them.
Well, there's nothing that says that "escape pods must be under yellow hatches," is there? In fact, there's very little COMPELLING reason to have them in any location which is visible from outside of the ship.
There are plenty of ways of providing "escape capability" for the ship. Anything from using lots of shuttlecraft, to having little "torpedo tube coffins" with hybernation support, to having rooms of the ship itself (complete with their local hull skinning) slip out. I know you don't get to decide every detail of this ship, but if it IS going to have escape pods in the conventional sense, maybe you can try having multiple pods which launch from a single hatch (sort of a "subway cars launching on rails" concept?).
One possibility might be to "hide" escape pod hatches by making them a subtle color/specularity/something variance of the hull's main color, rather than making them stick out like a sore thumb. I'm not sure why they should be colored differently than the main hull anyway.
^^^ I like that idea. (That's what I always figured that "rust ring" on the upper surface of the TOS Enterprise saucer was... a ring of lifeboat hatches flush with the hull surface.)
To that end you could just outline the pod doors with white and red striped lines like is done on modern aircraft and ships. Just an idea.
I think the point behind the visible lifeboat hatches was to have justifiable detail on the hull. No one wants Star Wars-style nurnies all over a Starfleet ship, but there's an instinctive need in SFX people to give us little details for scale reference and to break up smooth surfaces. So in later Trek productions, there's a search for excuses for details ... escape pod hatches, phaser emitters, photon torpedo launchers. Sensor palettes, tractor emitters, transporter arrays -- until eventually we get ships like the 1701-E and 2009 Enterprise that are practically covered with nurnies.
Can I just say Vektor, I love this design, it's indeed series/movie quality... but I think the photon tubes at the front of the saucer section are a bit overkill. There's already so many weapons platforms in your design. It's a neat area for some nice detail, well cut out without being a distraction, I just think it could have another use like a sensor array or small forward shuttle bay, although that sounds a bit boring and just as redundant I guess. Mabye an open atrium with windows accross the front edge with skylights, or some other observation deck configuration.
This is more or less the direction I’m leaning in. I want to keep the escape pods, I just don’t want them to be quite so obtrusive as they are on, say, the Sovereign class.
The idea of distributed escape pods is more logical to me than shuttlecraft alone. All it takes is a few good hits on the hangar bay or key access ways leading to the bay to doom large numbers of the ship’s crew to destruction. By the same token, coffin-style escape pods seem like overkill and not very conducive to long-term survival. I think lots of escape pods designed to hold 6 or 8 people spread around the ship make the most sense, and I like the stacked escape pods concept for keeping the number of external hatches down.
I had a similar idea, though I envisioned those as blow-away hull plates that would expose the lifeboats underneath. I may still do something like that on my Modified TOS Enterprise model.
It’s a thought, but I don’t think red and white—or black and orange—stripes would help much in reducing the obtrusiveness of the escape pods unless they were very small scale. I haven’t ruled something like that out, though.
Undoubtedly true, although I would dispute the last point. The new Enterprise from Trek ‘09 was relatively sleek and uncluttered, compared to the Sovereign class and most other late 23rd century designs anyway.
They’re not photon tubes, they are “Wyvern cannons,” a kind of cross between the Defiant’s pulse phasers and the huge phaser cannon on the Enterprise-D from the TNG finale. The heavy armaments are consistent with its mission profile, which requires a ship capable of single-handedly projecting the power of an ordinary task force of two or three ships. It has a couple of other surprises along those lines in store as well.
Oh... Can you make a ship that's all atriums, observation decks, and amphitheatres (with puppets)?
That's the Enterprise -D.
This runs into the same problem as shuttlebay only escape. If the first pod in the system jams for some reason, all the pods behind it are doomed. Sea going vessels avoid this for the same reason.
