"Lieutenant, confirm! Is that a federation starship or not?" "I-I-I'm not sure Captain." Imagine Starfleet encountering an unknown alien spacecraft that shared the same characterists of the consitution class . A saucer shaped hull- neck, secondary hull , nacelles and pylons and deflector dish. How would it look? I always loved the uniqueness of federation ships. They are so easily identifiable from any other fleet. But it annoys me that so many ships in Star Trek share the same basic design such as the Klingon Vorch'a class and the Romulan scout ship. Countless aliens of the week from Voyager have the same underpinning design. Everything on the constitution class is well placed in terms of engineering and ship systems- it's entirely possible that another race who had never heard of the Federation would come up with a similar design. I don't want any MSD's, cutaways or diagrams. I want an image of a Federation ship encountering this newly discovered doppleganger vessel for the first time. Don't just draw a constitution class and add alien decalls to it. It can be as alien looking as you want to take it.
Hmmmmm, this is an interesting and unique idea. For some reason a Hirogen ship immediately comes to mind...a heavily armed and armored "Constitution" look. Hmmmmmm, will have to give this one some thought. I hope you get a lot of entries. :-)
That is a very interesting idea! Too bad that classes will probably keep me too busy to devote enough time for a serious entry. Probably won't stop me from doing some sketches to see what I can come up with though.
From an in universe point of view! After all, nearly every other class of starfleet ship has followed the design, including all the enterprises with exception to it's predessesor NX-01
Well, it could also be for traditional and aesthetic reasons too. After all, if your advanced enough, you can probably use your advanced technology and architectural techniques to compensate for atmospheric and structural hurdles that you might encounter while building a ship with such a shape. After all, there is no way in our right mind that we would construct a starship with a neck, because if that goes, so would access for the secondary hull to the primary hull and vice-versa. And don't get me started about those nacelle pylons! It is more likely that if we were to build a ship that resembled a Starfleet vessel, assuming we had the technology, in the somewhat distant future, it would look more like the Bonaventure (Not the TAS one, the integrated saucer and engineering one!), though the nacelle pylons would probably look more like wings that angled upwards like low topside tail fins, meant to be sturdy and hold up the weight of those drive systems. However, if, in the very distant future, we had the technology and resources, I wouldn't be surprised if some private group with abundant money and resources were to build a life size replica of the Enterprise, assuming they had the technology to make it a practical, working replica.
Just to clarify, you want an alien ship, but specifically in the Constitution configuration? I was thinking that many people consider the Qomar ships to be similar to Federation designs, but they're not in the Connie configuration, so I'm guessing that something like those wouldn't count for this contest.
It doesnt have to match the dimensions and exact layout of the Constitution. Not even SPock could work out the odds of 2 civilisations coming up with identical ships.(Apart from that bloody Antares freighter and Miradorn raider that is) The nacelles can look totally alien and not necessarily positioned top aft. The saucer shape can mean anything really. It can be covered in greebles or extra hull parts. Or even similar to the Suliban ships when they all dock together and look like a saucer. The deflector dish doesn't need to be on front of the secondary hull. or many something that looks likes a dish but isn't a dish could be on the front. The bridge could be where the shuttlebay normally is etc. I suppose if you look at it as the silhouette looks vaguely like the constitution you should be able to work with that.
I'll have the poll up later this evening; I've been off-board for a few days, setting up and configuring a new PC in the BatCave ...
It reminds me a bit of this vessel http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?78403-My-Star-Trek-stuff