Exactly! Thank you for noticing! As a Greek cruiser that served the Allies in both World Wars, I always thought that it would be fitting for her to "serve in space" with other proud naval names like Enterprise, Yorktown, Lexington, Hornet, etc.
Warship nut... everything that floats, has big guns and a lot of armor is noticed by me As for the fine starship of the OP, quite a nice ship, I think she looks fine with the white colour scheme. as for the bridge, really modern but maybe a tad bright? If I would have to work there I'd shoot a few lights out...
Guys thank you all so much for your kind and supportive comments. They really mean a lot to me. So after I posted the picture of 'Nu Sulu' on the bridge of his ship, I thought I might as well go the whole hog and create a USS Excelsior for him. So a new paint job and couple of new warp nacelles later, and Voila! A new NCC-2000. So, if the Ascendant was basically constructed out of the crashed remains of the USS Vengeance, the Excelsior would be the second ship of it's class and would be built totally from scratch. A few design notes on the new nacelles: the old nacelles that I used for the USS Ascendant weren't actually my design. They were created for an Enterprise concept design by Brian Pimenta, so I wanted to go back and create something of my own for the Excelsior. One of the aspects I really enjoyed on Ryan Church's Enterprise were the little moulded fins at the back of the warp engines. As such, I've incorporated them here, as well as a flatter wraparound cowing on the front part. The little pincer type covers at the front were inspired by the Vengeance engines. I just wanted to make them look a bit sleeker though. Finally, the glowing vents at the top were taken from my old redesign of the Vengeance dreadnought ( http://orig14.deviantart.net/b34c/f/2013/165/a/2/attachment_5_by_calamitysi-d68yoxu.jpg ) I really liked those and I thought that they would fit in well with this design. The little chunky side structures, I envisaged as being some kind of mid-warp booster that could propel the ship to transwarp speeds. A spacedock view: Some other angled views:
I really like that look. I'd be curious to see what she'd look like with much longer nacelles, but on the other hand those work really well already.
I think we have found ourselves the nuExcelsior (not to mention the Enterprise-B) ! Great work calamity_si !
Hot damn! I already favorited your work on DA but I have to say that this is one sexy starship. 10x better than the original Vengeance could ever be IMHO! Kudos and a cookie to you!
Woo-Hoo! I've finally managed to get the Excelsior loaded onto a 3D printing site, so I thought I'd celebrate with a cool 'whooshy' shot! https://www.shapeways.com/shops/calamity-si-fi-store
And also, here's the official 'backstory' for the ship: The first ship of this class was actually built up from the remains of the wrecked USS Vengeance, after it crashed into San Francisco in 2259. Starfleet was still fairly low on ships after the fleet decimation at Vulcan by the Romulan Narada attack and although they were not in the business of manufacturing warships, the Vengeance proved that her spaceframe and abilities were simply too valuable to discard. The wreck was painstakingly removed from it's resting place and each piece was carefully examined for usable parts. A year later, when the salvage operation was complete, Starfleet was able to reuse approximately 65% of the ship (the bulk of this comprised of the saucer section) which was alone, a true testimony to the durability of the design. When the newly reconstructed vessel was finally completed, it became apparent that very little of the original ship had made it through without some kind of modification. Gone was the large tactical 'hole' in the saucer section. This had now been filled in with crew quarters and science labs. Gone were the heavy port and starboard weapons bays, filled with attack drones. In fact, much of the secondary hull was completely redesigned, whilst keeping a similar profile to that of it's predecessor. The new ship would be retrofitted for long range exploration rather than warfare. The ship was renamed the USS Ascendant and retained the size of the Vengeance and it's advanced warp capabilities. However, perhaps due to the fact that the ship was essentially a rebuild, the Ascendant was plagued with problems. The new antimatter matrix took a long time to initialise. The advanced warp drive was only able to provide short 'mid-warp boosts' - perfect for pursuit of an enemy vessel but not long range exploration. The ship also required an extensive maintenance schedule which further limited it's range. Whilst it wasn't the revolutionary ship that Starfleet had hoped for, the construction of the Ascendant proved that the design certainly had merit... The designers were eager to apply the lessons they had learnt whilst constructing the Ascendant, and the next ship slated for construction was the USS Excelsior. This time she was built entirely from scratch and as such, the designers had a chance to improve upon the warp capabilities of the previous ships. This necessitated the complete redesign of the warp nacelles , so now, instead of only being able to utilize a short 'mid warp' boost, the Excelsior was finally able to achieve higher speeds for longer periods. As the ship was naturally simpler to construct this time around, this enabled improvements to be applied across the board. When the Excelsior was launched, she had the size, speed and power to go further into deep space than any vessel had attempted before. This, coupled with her vastly improved endurance rate, finally made her the realisation of Starfleet's dreams of the 'Great Experiment' and the ideal deep space explorer.
I'm digging the sharp angular lines of the secondary hull. I didn't care for that in the ortho images you posted earlier, but with the "whoosh" effects, it looks pretty good now.
Please say you're going to do the Excelsior! While I personally love the "hole" in the Vengeance, I love this design. Well I love the Vengeance to begin with, so this is fantastic.
I remember that from Starlog: http://culttvman.com/main/brian-pimentas-ncx-2701-concept-starship/ I like the lower done on Excelsior's saucer.
Actually I didn't, I guess I hadn't been in the thread a while and all that came up was the warp picture and your description. So I thought it was the USS Ascendant, I didn't look at the name in the picture. I was too busy concentrating on the beauty of the shot. I got to scroll up and see the loveliness that is the Excelsior.