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A different Discovery Class ship.

Eric Cheung

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
Inspired by another poster's thread, I've decided to stop procrastinating on posting something I've been meaning to put up here. He designed a ship called the Discovery NX-2001, and I too had a ship and class called Discovery back in the mid-90s. My uncle and I designed it after the shoddy pylons from the Star Trek VI kit for the NCC-1701-A fell off.

It was basically the engineering hull grafted directly onto the underside of the saucer. I experimented with placing the engines in different configurations before finally deciding upon placing them in a position analogous to a shuttlecraft. If I were to complete the model I would try to use the pylons from the Reliant at the same scale. I also used the engineering hull of the smaller scale NCC-1701 three ship TOS set as a mount for a TOS-style sensor dish (from a bigger NCC-1701, closer to the scale of the main model). My reasoning was that the dish in TOS was a sensor dish and the dish in the refit was a deflector dish.

It sounds like you chose almost exactly the same era for your ship of the same name. Not surprisingly it shares some design elements with mine. So here's a thread of my own ship of the same class and the same name (I was a little disappointed to learn that Star Trek: Legacy used the name for the ENT-era Conestoga ships).

I decided the name "Discovery" didn't really apply anymore because it looked utilitarian, like it was made around the time of the Excelsior, or perhaps around the time just after the Khitomer Accords (I made these modifications after I tried to replicate the battle damage from the Battle of Khitomer, so the registry reflects and early 24th century design), but from spare parts, designed for a quick production cycles as a way to supplement other forces. I kept the name because I figured the Corps of Engineers would appreciate the irony of such a name going to a class that was merely a repurposing of older parts.

I may post photos of the actual WIP model, but here's the profile I made in MS Paint using a chart from ex-astris-scientia.org.
gallery-msg-12322626201.jpg
 
Eric, generally that's a good confguration, and an alternative to the Reliant. A few observations: The overhead sensor pod pylon appears to be directly mounted in the center of the warp-engine - is that a rollbar or central pylon? The balance of the profile would be better if the engineering hull was lowered beneath a shallow fairing that rises into the lower saucer (which also moves the thrustline of the impulse engines to a safer distance above the shuttle bay, and clears the area in front of the deflector dish, with a partial trough running through the saucer's centerline). The nacelle pylons could then be elevated from the mid-deck levels to a higher point, which clears the airlocks.
 
The sensor pod is supported by two pylons, obviously this is not clear in this profile shot. The base for the pylons would be placed in the section painted black.

Discovery_topdown--gallery-msg-123229414328.jpg


Also, the reason the engineering hull is mounted there is so that the bottom dome could remain. It means that the shape of the deflector dish would probably be elliptical, perhaps one of the earliest examples of such a dish.

I inverted the top of the back of the engineering hull to give clearance to the impulse engines as shown in the below photo:

Discovery_aft--gallery-msg-123229443423.jpg


Here you can also see where I put the aft torpedo launcher. There's a similar section in the Excelsior-class ships, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a torpedo launcher. Because of this launcher I theorized that in addition to its economy, its compactness suggests it could be a precursor to the Defiant.

Maybe it was a patrol ship to enforce the treaties between the UFP and the Klingons. Obviously this ship saw a lot of action, even more than the 1701-A did in Star Trek VI.

As a result the shuttlebay isn't in the traditional section, but in the saucer, represented in the profile by the grey trapezoids. The doors on either side can open creating an open line of site, were they open at the same time. If I can get a hold of my hand-drawn MSD then I could demonstrate what I mean by some of these places.

For example there are also clamps that can separate the engineering hull from the saucer. I can't lower the engineering hull on this version of the ship, but possibly if I were to start over it could be something to contemplate.
 
Have a hard time making out the call-outs in the small print of the profile, and didn't catch the re-positioned impulse engine. Good solutions. Thought maybe the elliptical deflector dish was possibility but looked like a full circular dish buried inside the saucer. Rear torpedo tubes in same area as my Discovery design.
 
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