Class Development: Galaxy + Nebula + What Else?

[Mark_Nguyen]

They're already literally at the ass-end of the saucer though, confirmed by the MSD pointing scene and the arrow in the first poster. I wonder if they're talking about their quarters or this lounge they seem to frequent.

Mark

 

[David cgc]

Yes, this is a huge ship. Larger than a Galaxy, it seems, by the deck count and all (the MSD and the exterior seem an excellent match). Even if there's no secondary hull.

There's a size comparison based on the MSD in the LDS tech thread, which suggests the Cerritos is much smaller than a Galaxy.

It's much smaller than the Galaxy, I made a quick comparison of the MSMDs using 7 decks as a scale bar:

 

[137th Gebirg]

That was a good comparison with the MSD’s. It shows how misleading the exterior shots are, then, with the three rows of windows around the edge of the saucer, making it actually seem bigger than the Galaxy.

 

[NCC-73515]

I guess the less glamorous ships have smaller windows

 

[DEWLine]

Makes sense.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

And of the Battle of Setlik III.

(We actually got one, in the SCE series, but that referred to yet third Battle of Setlik III, in the Dominion War...)

It's pretty convenient to think of the 71000 range as the last hurrah of the "Galaxy design family", and the 57000s as the first inklings of the era, with the Galaxy nacelles being one of the last things to "mature". Those marker-pen nacelles are surprisingly pretty on the "early" ships, and would well defend their place on the New Orleans as well; perhaps we could postulate a refit there as well? And, conversely, imagine that some of the Springfield and Cheyenne ships got stretched half-Galaxy nacelles eventually, too?

Those "half-size" nacelles that are seen in their slightly stretched form on the New Orleans also appear unstretched on one of the Nebula variants, namely the first one that was "beefed up" by Okuda from the Miarecki original for service as a Wolf 359 wreck and as a desktop decoration. I'd love to think that the actually belong to the smaller spacecraft that is riding piggy-back to the "actual" Nebula there, a separable assault craft of whatever. Despite their odd genesis, all the "Galaxy kids" are attractive starship designs, and the odd additions to, say, the Chekov tickle the imagination. What would these ships look without the "optional modules"? Or might they carry modules in addition to the configurations seen? It's too bad that only the Nebula was ever revisited...

Timo Saloniemi

I believe Rick stated those had been the inspiration - but the general idea was that some starship class or another had "donated" the saucers, perhaps as production surplus, perhaps as the result of a scrapping spree. And the saucers nicely speak the mid-24th century design language, allowing us not just to revel, but to slaughter birds wholesale: there's supposedly this unseen class of starships, there's this practice of building space stations out of "standard components", there's the possibility that certain other space stations are also made of starship bits, there's thus the option of believing in starships that have saucers like the modules of the Orbital Office cum Regula One...

(As for Setlik III, it's easy to think of "Tribunal" as establishing a date for that - but it actually does not. All the talk is about the release date of Boone, and I don't really see Cardassians letting their prisoners out after two weeks.)

Timo Saloniemi

I would accept that scenario. And I have no problem with design diversity even with the same generation of ships (i.e. the Oberth looks nothing like the Constitution, but they’re contemporaries.)
The issue I have with the four FC Jaeger ships is their registries vs. their design attributes.

Akira: NCC-63XXX. Sort of has design attributes of the Galaxy class family, but the angular nacelles and the escape pods fit better with the Sovereign family.

Norway: NCC-64XXX. Has no design attributes of any known ships, but the saucer underside is a cut-and-paste of the Defiant.

Saber: NCC-61XXX. Has some design attributes of the Galaxy class family but has angular nacelles and a bridge dome reminiscent of the Sovereign class.

Steamrunner: NCC-52XXX. Lowest registry of the four, has no major design attributes of any known ships but certain attributes of the Sovereign family (nacelles, escape pods.)

It’s almost like Jaeger saw the Enterprise-D and the Enterprise-E, decided to mesh the two together for some ships, and make completely different designs for others, and then for some reason give them registries that indicate that they are not new ships, but contemporaries of the BoBW kitbashes, of which the end product looks very little like those latter ships.

It’s not that I don’t think Jaeger is a good designer; I just find it hard to find a logical place for those ships. I want to think that the intent was that they were all brand-new designs, but the registries just don’t make a lot of sense if that were the case, unless registry numbers are just random.

Maybe. But if their registry numbers are chronological, then I find it hard to understand why we never saw them before FC, but then after FC we saw them all the time. That indicates to me that these ships were brand-new irregardless of their registry numbers.

I try to never miss out on the chance to share my view that the Ambassador is highly upgraded variation of the Excelsior-type ships , especially if Probert's concept of the class is considered.

Regarding the First Contact vessels, most have oval main hulls and curved, but flat, nacelles that I could imagine resemble those of the Galaxy class but with more "armor," or some kind of similar tech for that function. Using the excellent list above, in the case of the Akria and what little is known of the Norway, the nacelles look very much like those of the Galaxy class, but turned sideways.

My interpretation is that the First Contact vessels are essentially a later development of the Galaxy-class family, perhaps developed because Picard had knowledge of the Niagara and such, to change things up so that Borg would have to fight new designs, but later during the Dominion War they kept using old ships because they could.

That makes four waves of ships shown in the TNG era (trying to list ships from largest to smallest in terms of function:

1. Ambassador (and Excelsior-types), Freedom, Niagara, Centaur, other Excelsior Variants
2. Galaxy, Nebula (and variants), New Orleans, Springfield, Cheyenne, Challenger
3. (Still Galaxy,) Akira, Steamrunner, Sabre, Norway
4. Sovereign, Intrepid, Elkins, Yeager, Intrepid Concept (Bradbury), other advanced ships.

1 has round main hulls. 2 has oval main hulls. 3 has somewhat ovals except for the Norway. 4 has the arrowhead main hulls that reflected advanced ships in the TNG era.