More LCARS 24 schematics

[Unicron]

There is that possibility too, although I'd be inclined that a scout like the Hermes might be more inclined to carry them than the Saladin variant. Perhaps one option is that the TOS-era vessels indeed lacked dedicated shuttle/small craft facilities, but these were added as part of the movie-era designs/refits and were seen as more of a necessity by then?

At any rate, I wouldn't doubt that the complement would be far smaller than would be the case for a cruiser or frigate. I agree that such vessels would have far more need for them than the expeditionary ships.

 

[Bill Morris]

Actually, I made the above Ambassador and Saladin outlines partly to test tweaks to the antialiasing algorithm of my LCARS system. The results seem okay to me, and I couldn't resist doodling in the Saladin figure.

About the Saladin, on Trek Mania, I see the following:

U.S.S. Saladin NCC-500

Overall length: 242.5 m
Beam 127.1 m
Height: 60 m
Mass: 95,000 M.T.
Deployed: 2182

I found slightly conflicting info elsewhere. And I do have to disagree with number of decks shown previously. And I don't think it should have shuttles.

 

[Timo]

The year of deployment would appear to be in the good old FASA/SFC style that assumes TOS happened before 2200. Other fan material puts the Saladins at the 2220s, making them contemporaries of the TOS ship - even though later fan material has used the Okuda speculation that the TOS ship in fact only got built in the 2240s... Since the Okuda stuff has leaked into a couple of almost-on-screen graphics, we might do well to bet on that horse nowadays. And it'd be a bit funny if the Saladin were more than half a century older than the Constitution, even if we assume the Franz Joseph pictures only represent the latest refit standard rather than the original "as-built" guise.

The rest sounds like the way it ought to be, though, since the dimensions of the components are known from the Constitution class (insofar as anything can be "known" about fictional ships), and the relative mass matches the relative volume if we assume uniform density (again assuming we want to accept the Constitution figures as a basis, and this time noting that exact mass, unlike exact length, has never been indicated on screen even in the passing).

Yeah, let's keep shuttles out of this. If we want to add them, we can always add a dorsal shuttlebay module on a short fin. It worked for STXI...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

I found slightly conflicting info elsewhere. And I do have to disagree with number of decks shown previously. And I don't think it should have shuttles.

The 2182 year is necessarily wrong if you're sticking to 'canon' numbers. It cannot be older than 2245, since it is deliberately a Constitution class contemporary. The other stats are true with Franz Joseph's numbers.

 

[Bill Morris]

Thanks for straightening me out on the year of deployment, guys. It would be nice to be able to show a work bee or two in the cargo bay. If I'm not mistaken, the work bee as we know it was introduced in 2268, and I don't know what any earlier counterparts look like. I'm putting the cargo bay on deck 8, just forward of the bottom level of the main vertical turboshaft.

 

[Vance]

Thanks for straightening me out on the year of deployment, guys. It would be nice to be able to show a work bee or two in the cargo bay. If I'm not mistaken, the work bee as we know it was introduced in 2268, and I don't know what any earlier counterparts look like. I'm putting the cargo bay on deck 8, just forward of the bottom level of the main vertical turboshaft.

I had an old work-bee sketch somewhere, but I'm at a loss now. Clearly there was SOME sort of workbee before the 2268 version...but it probably had more lines in common with the TOS shuttlecraft and used the muted gray palette.

Cargo bay should be aft/port, next to where the 'hidden' gangway would be. It's also the best place to have the workbees exit the ship without having to invent a hangar bay specifically for them.

 

[kkozoriz1]

If I were to put a shuttlebay on a Saladin I'd modify the bubble on deck 2/3 aft and put a small hanger there.

 

[Bill Morris]

If I were to put a shuttlebay on a Saladin I'd modify the bubble on deck 2/3 aft and put a small hanger there.

That's where I thought I'd put it, too, if I wanted to give it one. Didn't Sulu and his landing party nearly freeze to death just because they didn't have shuttles yet in Season 1?

Thanks for straightening me out on the year of deployment, guys. It would be nice to be able to show a work bee or two in the cargo bay. If I'm not mistaken, the work bee as we know it was introduced in 2268, and I don't know what any earlier counterparts look like. I'm putting the cargo bay on deck 8, just forward of the bottom level of the main vertical turboshaft.

I had an old work-bee sketch somewhere, but I'm at a loss now. Clearly there was SOME sort of workbee before the 2268 version...but it probably had more lines in common with the TOS shuttlecraft and used the muted gray palette.

Cargo bay should be aft/port, next to where the 'hidden' gangway would be. It's also the best place to have the workbees exit the ship without having to invent a hangar bay specifically for them.

I don't know what you mean by "hidden" gangway. I'm the newbie in the room, surrounded by experts. The only gangway I sort of know about is inside the forward face of the pylon. I guess I shouldn't have drawn a plasma conduit there. I put the cargo bay where I see it on the New Paradigm Studios schematic. Maybe that's not where you mean. And I put in a little cargo mover, but it's too small in the figure for anyone to distinguish the make and model. So where is the cargo bay supposed to be, in relation to something in the figure?

Before drawing in more things that might be wrong, I thought I'd better work up a very tentative schematic script to make it easier for you guys to give me your learned guidance. Here it is, and it's easy for me to make changes. It's just a text file for my LCARS system to read and render.

 

[Vance]

That's where I thought I'd put it, too, if I wanted to give it one. Didn't Sulu and his landing party nearly freeze to death just because they didn't have shuttles yet in Season 1?

Actually there's a missing bit of dialog that explains that the storm was further unsafe for shuttles. Shuttles (and, hence, the hangar bay) were ALWAYS part of the Trek guide, even with the first draft.

I don't know what you mean by "hidden" gangway. I'm the newbie in the room, surrounded by experts. The only gangway I sort of know about is inside the forward face of the pylon.

The 'docking' gangway is supposed to be on the port of the saucer, right where it is on the TMP model. It's not on the TOS model, of course, but both the Defiant and Enterprise are both shown docked that way somehow. That's partially why I bother drawing the thing in all my layouts...

So where is the cargo bay supposed to be, in relation to something in the figure?

I would personally put it two decks higher than where you have it, so it has access to the gangway hatch and transporter rooms. Mileage, of course, varies widely. MOST of the Saladin's saucer should be identical to the Enterprise, of course.

 

[Bill Morris]

I don't know what you mean by "hidden" gangway. I'm the newbie in the room, surrounded by experts. The only gangway I sort of know about is inside the forward face of the pylon.

The 'docking' gangway is supposed to be on the port of the saucer, right where it is on the TMP model. It's not on the TOS model, of course, but both the Defiant and Enterprise are both shown docked that way somehow. That's partially why I bother drawing the thing in all my layouts...

So where is the cargo bay supposed to be, in relation to something in the figure?

I would personally put it two decks higher than where you have it, so it has access to the gangway hatch and transporter rooms. Mileage, of course, varies widely. MOST of the Saladin's saucer should be identical to the Enterprise, of course.

Okay, I kind of suspected you meant like the docking hatch often seen in use on the NX-01. So, okay, regardless, I'll move it up, and two decks up would be on the lower level of the rim, even though that's really a narrow ring, because of the saucer undercut.

Anything else wrong in the schematic? There must be.

 

[Vance]

Anything else wrong in the schematic? There must be.

Eh, the only thing that I see that would be an issue now would be the location of the tractor-emitter - it shouldn't go on the intercooler like that, that would be bad. Sadly the Saladin isn't the best ship for the tractor beam's 'aft/ventral' configuration. It would have to be either in the aft of the saucer or down the neck.

 

[Bill Morris]

Yeah. For that matter, I wonder how they avoid getting the deflector dish sucked into the Bussard collector.

 

[Vance]

Yeah. For that matter, I wonder how they avoid getting the deflector dish sucked into the Bussard collector.

It's too big! The bussard only picks up particulate matter when required.

And, actually, it didn't work that way AT ALL when Technical Manual was put together, the glowing part was the unit that stretched out space in relation to time. The 'bulb' in back, or grilled area, normalized it.

 

[TIN_MAN]

Clearly there was SOME sort of workbee before the 2268 version...but it probably had more lines in common with the TOS shuttlecraft and used the muted gray palette.

I always thought the "El-Baz" type shuttlepod from TNG looked suspiciously like a holdover from the TOS era? Maybe a good basic design that hasn't changed much in a hundred years or so? I could see this type of shuttlepod being a kind of all purpose design that could be used as a workbee, inpection pod, etc. etc. just add different attachments or 'sleds' and your good to go?

On the other hand, there's always Matt Jefferies little doodles of various kinds of "dock craft" to choose from.

 

[Timo]

...Although the "Jetsons" look is something Jeffries would probably have steered away from if ordered to refine his designs.

I'd argue against muted gray for old workbees: industrial yellow is always a good bet! True, the armies of the real world have some forklifts that are painted in camo green, but the navies don't paint their utility vehicles (say, carrierborne forklifts and ammo tractors) in naval gray.

Also, I'd think the workbee of the 2270s would already be a well-proven and unchanging design. It remains in service in the 2370s in DS9 and VOY, so it can't be too experimental... Just give it a bit more rounded, "1960s" or "1950s") corners and edges for its early 23rd century appearances.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bill Morris]

I always show work bees, sphinx, and shuttles in the same color in these things, and in this case it's too small in the figure to distinguish the type. Thanks, again, for the useful info, guys.

I'm still not sure if I've got everything right here. What about MAIN DEFLECTOR versus MAIN SENSOR? And what about the warp engine I've shown? Is that acceptable or not? Space for that is limited without an engineering hull. At least it has to fit on a single deck if it sits above the saucer undercut.

 

[Bill Morris]

The same questions apply when modifying the figure to represent a warp tugboat: What about MAIN DEFLECTOR versus MAIN SENSOR? And what about the warp engine I've shown? Is that acceptable or not? Space for that is limited without an engineering hull. At least it has to fit on a single deck if it sits above the saucer undercut.

 

[Sarvek]

Keep it the same as on the Saladin on the Main Deflector. In fact, you might want it to be Main Deflector/Sensor combo. As for the main engine move it slightly foreward and send the eps conduits directly down the pylons to the warp nacelles and not down the dorsal strut.

 

[Bill Morris]

Thanks, Servek. I see it as Deflector on newer schematics and Sensor Array on older ones, even in Gilso's older and new versions. I want to change the warp engines to look more like Scotty's "bairns," and moving it forward seems like a good idea. It could actually get the height of two decks if away from the saucer undercut, although they may not be necessary. And for the conduit, of course, you're right. I was hasty in kitbashing the previous drawing and missed that. Thanks for catching it.

And for the Aeon, I'm still trying to figure out what else it needs. It's scaled to 8 meters overall length, despite Tuvok's quick guess of 6 meters made under adverse conditions (a temporal rift). Warp and hyperimpulse are integrated into the same hardware (as are the pilot's seat and toilet!).

 

[Vance]

The main reason for the dish confusion is that it's officially been different things depending on what Roddenberry felt at the time. It was a 'sensor array' in the Technical Manual, a combination sensor/deflector in Making of Star Trek, and was made a Deflector ONLY come TNG.