Ambassador class

[SicOne]

Wait a minute, folks; if I remember that thread correctly we all began to think of a 478m figure for Ambassador length, but later discussion in that forum link led to a reassessment of 526m after all.

Can someone post a link to that discussion for us to see? I may not be remembering correctly.

 

[Bill Morris]

I'm a little mixed about Jackill's torpedo placement - I always kind of figured it was in the neck. It seems more plausible on FJ's designs because of how the component shapes differ.

Oh, agreed, I just think it's interesting. IIRC, Sternbach specified them to be on the lower neck, but Greg Jein accidentally left them off the model.

Right. I guess I should move the forward torp launcher in my figure up a couple of decks but not high enough to be aming at the sensor dome.

Ah, I'd nearly forgot that little issue over at Drex's blog of the Ambassador's 'real' length a few weeks back.

Wait a minute, folks; if I remember that thread correctly we all began to think of a 478m figure for Ambassador length, but later discussion in that forum link led to a reassessment of 526m after all.

Can someone post a link to that discussion for us to see? I may not be remembering correctly.

Here's the thread where Rick Sternbach gave us a clarification about that story in the Drex Files article regarding the length of the Ambassasor class.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=82068

Apparently, we should hold off on that for now and stay with 526 meters.

 

[SicOne]

Thanks for the link, Bill. Still working on the other stuff.

 

[Praetor]

I'm a little mixed about Jackill's torpedo placement - I always kind of figured it was in the neck. It seems more plausible on FJ's designs because of how the component shapes differ.

Oh, agreed, I just think it's interesting. IIRC, Sternbach specified them to be on the lower neck, but Greg Jein accidentally left them off the model.

Right. I guess I should move the forward torp launcher in my figure up a couple of decks but not high enough to be aming at the sensor dome.

I would leave it at the very lowest point on the neck, personally, approximately where the D had hers. The AMT model kit had little 'niblets' there that I think worked fine for me.

 

[JoeRalat]

Well I think that people should stick with Rick Sternbach version. He was the one who worked on the design of the ship..I think he knows best!

 

[Praetor]

Agreed. I think he meant for them to be at the base of the neck anyway, based on earlier sketches, right?

 

[Bill Morris]

Okay, you guys know more about this than I. By earlier sketches, I guess you mean the ones in the recent article in the Drex Files that had that business about changing the dimensions.

In that drawing, at least, Rick Sternbach's drawing has a pointer to a torp launcher pretty much where I have put in my cutaway rather than up in the neck. I do recall comments in past weeks about moving it up, but I don't really remember the source.

Anyway, the article has some beautiful pictures and interesting background info, and includes those early sketches.

Here's the link:
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/enterprise-c-pictorial-deluxe/

 

[Timo]

This drawing?

http://www.starshipdatalink.net/art/images/dec-2.gif

The actual model doesn't have a torp launcher muzzle anywhere, of course - but there's a beauty shot of the ship where the base of the neck features very bright white lights where there is no window. This could be argued to be the launcher with the covers slid back for action.

Who knows, perhaps the whole ribbed forward edge of the neck is one big rolling door, optionally revealing only the lowermost launcher, or then two, or three, or then all six of them vertically stacked?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bill Morris]

Please fix the link, Timo.

 

[Praetor]

If you copy link location, it works. And for the record, LCARS, I think you have them in the right place.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well I think that people should stick with Rick Sternbach version. He was the one who worked on the design of the ship..I think he knows best!

Ed Whitefield came up with a much better design, as did Andy Probert in his original study model. I'd take their word over Sternbach's any day.

 

[RAMA]

My favorite starship of all time.

 

[JoeRalat]

Well I think that people should stick with Rick Sternbach version. He was the one who worked on the design of the ship..I think he knows best!

Ed Whitefield came up with a much better design, as did Andy Probert in his original study model. I'd take their word over Sternbach's any day.

Dude First...We are talking about the versions of the Enterprise-C seen in the show! Rick S. was the one who design that version, using Andy Probert & Ed Whitefield as a starting point. So for that Rick Sternbach KNOWS best!

Next, I never said I did not like the other versions of the Enterprise-C, in fact i am making an MSD of Andy Probert versions of the Enterprise-C. I hope to get it done, when he updates his 3d model.

Oh and one last thing! The reason for the new model was...TIME & MONEY!
It would have taken too much time and money to make Porbert's version.

 

[JNG]

^I believe the gent's name is Whitefire.

Sternbach's simplified Ambassador may have been partially the product of budget and time constraints, but I think it was very successful in creating an earlier 24th-century aesthetic and was ultimately no disappointment to the name Enterprise. To me, it seems common sense that his commentary on the only versions of the ship ever seen on screen would be of value.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well I think that people should stick with Rick Sternbach version. He was the one who worked on the design of the ship..I think he knows best!

Ed Whitefield came up with a much better design, as did Andy Probert in his original study model. I'd take their word over Sternbach's any day.

Dude First...We are talking about the versions of the Enterprise-C seen in the show! Rick S. was the one who design that version, using Andy Probert & Ed Whitefield as a starting point. So for that Rick Sternbach KNOWS best!

Sternbach knows what his intent was. Those intents are irrelevant if they didn't make it into the actual show, and they didn't. If we're extrapolating from backstage and unpublished material, then the intent of previous designs could easily be taken into account without taking the last-minute "Screw it, let's just film it and hope nobody notices" production decisions as gospel truth.

Oh and one last thing! The reason for the new model was...TIME & MONEY!
It would have taken too much time and money to make Porbert's version.

Which doesn't change the fact that Probert's model was a much better design.

 

[Praetor]

Sternbach's simplified Ambassador may have been partially the product of budget and time constraints, but I think it was very successful in creating an earlier 24th-century aesthetic and was ultimately no disappointment to the name Enterprise.

Agreed. While it lacks certain complex curves, it therefore has a rather utilitarian feel evocative of the TOS Enterprise that I quite enjoy. IMO, in-universe It helps if you think of the class as the pathfinder for the Galaxy.

 

[Timo]

And, of course, accepting Sternbach/Jein's aired E-C makes it possible for us to also believe in that other cool ship class that Probert dreamed up... Perhaps as a somewhat later vessel that represented a further step towards the Galaxy.

(As a curiosity often commented on in Ambassador-related threads, there's no canonical confirmation that the E-C or the model used for her would have represented the Ambassador class. For all we know, those ships were of the Minor Consulate Bureaucrat class, while the canonical but unseen Ambassador class heavy cruiser Horatio in "Conspiracy" actually looked like Probert's design.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

Very true. IIRC, didn't an older publication refer to the C as 'Alaska class' when it was just a wall sculpture? (Pretty sure that wasn't official or anything.)

 

[Timo]

Quite so - although of course that wall relief (coarsely) represented Probert's ship, not Sternbach's.

And since the relief didn't match the onscreen E-C, nor did any of the ships match the E-B (and even the aircraft carrier looked different from what we know the Enterprise CVN-65 looked like in ST4), there is little "proof" for the idea that these ships were intended to be Enterprises. For all we know, the art represented ships named Galaxy - or, say, ships with a relative of the originally intended Captain Thomas Holloway in command, and Picard never had the heart to have the work ripped off the wall and replaced with something more personal...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kent]

It's also supposed to have a ventral phaser array on the secondary hull, per the original drawing, but it was also left out of the design.