Found a post about this on Doug Drexler's Facebook page where VFX coordinator Judy Elkins talks about the creation of the DS9 kitbashed models for "A Time to Stand:" I do have to point out that Elkins gets a few of her facts wrong. Both the U.S.S. Fredrickson and the U.S.S. Nash were not kitbashes; the former was a reuse of Greg Jein's Excelsior model he built for VOY's 'Flashback' and the latter was a relabeling of the Jenolan model (unless there's another U.S.S. Nash that I'm not aware of.) And the Yeager had been built before the kitbashing rounds for ATTS. But we seem to have confirmation that the U.S.S. Elkins was never seen on screen. I wonder if anyone took any photos of these in-process kitbashes. It sounds like there were a lot more than the ships we already know about such as the Centaur, Curry, Raging Queen, etc., but most of them ultimately were not used.
In universe, after Wolf 359, the activation of as many vessels as possible came about. These may have been destined to be suicide type fireships…pressed into service as more of the class of 96 ships came on-line.
That's really the only logical reason why a bunch of old Excelsiors and Mirandas filled out the fleet when it was otherwise filled with newer Galaxies, Akiras, Steamrunners and Sabers (and one Defiant.)
I also always assumed most of the ships, especially the smaller miranda class, would be minimally crewed and have no frills operation solely dedicated to the conflict. A lot of astrometrics officers probably got moved to helm or ops and god only knows what happened to the exo-archeological researchers.
Given leave, or assigned to a dig on a planet, or a teaching assignment for a few years? Or don't mind playing weapons officer for the duration.
Getting back to the topic: While there seemed to be a huge effort to get many kitbashes made for the opening shot of "A Time to Stand," the end result seems to have made little use of them. We only see an Akira (CGI model), the Defiant (either the studio model or a model kit with damage), a K't'inga and some BoPs (most likely model kits), Federation fighters (studio model), the Fredrickson (Greg Jein's Excelsior studio model), two shots of the Curry (one close-up and one far away), the Raging Queen, the tug, and some random Mirandas (most likely model kits). I suppose that despite all that work, the kitbashes proved to be unpopular for use even in the far background. Too bad.
I love the USS Curry. I wish we'd gotten the chance to see that ship (or another one of its class) in prime condition. My headcanon is that the Curry and its ilk are transports for Starfleet Marines, with the forward-slung secondary hull staying behind as a troop barracks while the rest of the ship warps away.
The Curry is my personal favorite. Very strange design. I started a thread about it a while back. Hope one day we get other ships of that same configuration from different eras. Centaur is my next favorite I think. I like the forward rotated shuttle bay up top. In my head canon the Nebula’s is that way too.
I like the Curry the best as well, especially since I was in direct contact with Dan Curry about the making of the model and getting new photos of it I also thought he built the Raging Queen because those designs were very similar, but in fact Gary Hutzel built the model. Adam Buckner was involved in a discussion about the model on the RPF modeling website. He mentioned some interesting things. First, that the Centaur (or 'Buckner,' as that was the model's actual name) was originally just a standard Excelsior saucer with the Reliant weapons pod and modified Excelsior nacelles, scaled to the normal Excelsior scale (pretty much the same as the artwork of the ship in the DS9 tech manual). The greebles and the Reliant bridge were added later in an effort to scale down the ship relative to the Jem'Hadar fighter it was engaging with on screen, a request made by Hutzel. Also, there was a disconnect between the people who built the models and the Art Department who made the diagrams for the DS9 tech manual, which was why there was such a discrepancy between the design of the kitbashes and their depiction in the book.
I would have preferred to see more of the established classes (e.g. Nebulas, Ambassadors, even Intrepids and Sovereigns if allowed) but more important would be some variety in the Klingon and Romulan fleets.
At least for the Frankenstein fleet, the Enterprise-C model kit wasn't available yet, and there has never been an official Nebula class model kit. The Enterprise-E kit came out the same year as 'A Time to Stand' but probably later in the year after the scene was filmed. Obviously they used the Voyager model kit for the Yeager and Elkins, but not in a regular Intrepid class version. They also had some weird rule that they didn't like using the Intrepid or Sovereign classes in DS9 because they felt the audience would think they were the Voyager and Enterprise-E respectively, as if the audience was so stupid that they couldn't tell that there were other ships of that class in service. At the time, there was an overabundance of Reliant and Excelsior model kits easily available, plus the 1/1400 and 1/2500 Enterprise-D kits from years before. So that's why we mainly see those class of ships in the background around Starbase 375 before the move to all-CGI, and why parts from those particular model kits were primarily used for the kitbash fleet. I totally agree about the Klingon ships. They could have benefited from some kitbashing love. But the only model kit for the Romulans was the warbird (and of course the BoP from TOS, but that would have been too old a design for the late 24th century), and there really isn't all that much you can do with it other than perhaps making a version where there's only one hull instead of two.
^ Also, Ronald D. Moore later confirmed in an online chat that the studio wasn't allowing the use of the Sovereign-class model on DS9 at that time due to wanting to "save" its appearances for the big screen, at least when the TNG movies were still being made: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron041.txt
One of the things I've noticed in PIC is that they are using Polar Lights model kits for desktop models, such as the Reliant, NX-01 and Excelsior kits used as set dressing in the Picard home in flashback scenes, and Picard has a gold-painted model of the Enterprise-C in his house in the present day. While model kits will never again be used for filming actual starships, there's still a possibility of kitbashing kits to use as desktop models in the future.