From TrekMovie: It's strangely proportioned, how the warp nacelles shoot off so far behind, but I quite like it, especially the curious paint job. Don't get quite what's going on with the deflector... As a first reveal of the design I think it works, but I hope if we get another image some time we can see her in action (alongside the Titan maybe!).
Beautiful ship; I wasn't entirely convinced by the prelim. sketch but this beauty is grace and power rolled together. A fine ship for a fine captain. Also, the 3D render spin at Trekmovie does an even better job selling the design for me, seeing it from multiple angles.
Beautiful ship. Woldn't mind seeing that on the small or big screen in the future. Probably won't, but that's besides the point.
The way I figure it, a slipstream conduit is sort of a tube shape, and the bigger the conduit, the harder it is to stabilize. So the ideal slipstream ship is long and narrow. That's just my own opinion, however. That's probably the slipstream generator.
Very impressive art work. I'm very pleased with how this has turned out It really does look up-to-date, the most advanced Starfleet design we've yet seen.
I can see that, it certainly has a javelin sort of feel to it. Though would being extra long an thin actually help navigating that sort of thing, if you bumped slightly up/down/sideways you could tip the other end of the ship into the side of the vortex. I’m thinking back and seeing Borg spheres operating quite comfortably in transwarp conduits, or Xindi superweapons in …the thingies the Xindi used… I get a bit of reverse pod racer feel from it though, the nacelles are so far back, or rather, it's so long an thin they appear far back. They look like they're being dragged along behind almost. One thing I'm curious about after looking at it a bit more: Where's the bridge?
I like the design, it kind of reminds me of an Arleigh Burke-Class destroyer in space. Low sleek lines, nicely proportioned.
Well, those are different kinds of conduits. Like I said, my theory is that slipstream conduits are hard to stabilize, and the bigger they are, the harder it gets, so you want your ship to be narrow. It's not about the relative dimensions of the ship, but the absolute maximum practical size of the conduit. If you can't practically make a stable conduit wider than, say, 200 meters, then you need to keep your ship narrower than, say, 150 meters, and so the only way to have a bigger ship within that constraint is to make it longer. By analogy, in the Stargate franchise, the maximum diameter of a ship that can pass through a Stargate is the inner diameter of the Stargate itself. So if you want to make the ship bigger, the only option you have is to make it longer. Actually the main reason I came up with this idea is as a possible explanation for why Titan hasn't been given a slipstream upgrade. Maybe it's just too wide. Maybe such an upgrade will have to wait until Starfleet devises a way of stabilizing a wider slipstream vortex. But again, that's only my personal hypothesis and I don't know if Margaret or other authors would choose to go along with it. Well, nothing wrong with that. A train can drag hundreds of cars behind it; no reason a spacecraft couldn't do the same, at least if it weren't dependent on propulsive exhaust coming out the back. And since a slipstream generator is basically a modified deflector dish, my guess is that those nacelles are for conventional warp drive to use for shorter trips. So while the ship is in slipstream, the warp nacelles might just be dead weight, in which case "dragged" might be an appropriate term.
I didn't realize how narrow the primary hull was until I saw the video. And where's the bridge? Is it tucked deeper down in the ship?
I just saw the completed Aventine pic from the SotL calendar, and I must say that it's gorgeous . I was on the fence after I saw the original rough design pic that everyone else saw, but after getting a glimpse at the completed version, my mind has been changed. I can't wait to see it on the cover of one of those Typhon Pact books .
This could be trek-lit's chance to break away from the Trek idea that the bridge needs to be a fuckin' bullseye right there on the saucer . Maybe they were smart and tucked the bridge somewhere where it won't be seen right away by their enemies. If they were smart, that is...
It's long been my intention that the bridge of the Aventine should be somewhere near the center of the primary hull on a mid-level deck — well-shielded, with no obvious location visible from outside the ship. I'll try to get that more explicitly stated in some future story.
Fuckin' Eh ! It just makes more sense to house the bridge somewhere that leaves the crew protected as opposed to painting a target on the control center of the entire ship. Thanks David
The shape is really attractive, just like the sketch. However, I don't like the big swatches of black and green on the hull; it looks a bit off -- a bit too busy, perhaps. I'd like it more if it was a lot cleaner, perhaps somewhat brighter; the elegance the shape inspired doesn't reflect in the texturing. The sovereign was busy enough, but this tops the cake.
Not bad, but I think I have to get used to the design. At first I thought someone screwed up with pic's dimensions and accidentally stretched it.
I'm assuming there's an in-universe reasoning for this radical redesign of the location of the bridge. One thing that has always been possible, IIRC, is that badly damaged bridge modules can be swapped out for a new one. This should eliminate the need for this, but what else would you put on deck one? sensor suites? perhaps another shuttle bay?