New Orleans class

[Timo]

Probably also less capable ones...

There are some closeups of the pods at Bernd Schneider's site: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/scans/mechanics/saratoga3.jpg

The bow of the pod seems to feature a sensor dish, although we could just as well call it a superweapon. The cylinder behind the dish has some side insets that look like simple colored stripes; not very good candidates for torpedo launchers. The smaller yellow features farther aft might be side-firing torp tubes if we really wanted, though. No idea what the back end of the pod looks like...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SonicRanger]

I'm more partial towards the smallest possible size, something below 350 meters: this agrees with the saucer deck (porthole) count, more or less agrees with the superstructure deck count and, most importantly, gives this ship a distinct identity...

I agree with Timo's inclinations here.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

It's worth mentioning that Ambassador itself is not supposed to be that big. It's supposed to be 478.5 meters when scaled properly according to memoryalpha.

 

[Bill Morris]

Rick Sternbach took the trouble to post the overall length of the Ambassador class here a few months ago, after there was some talk at Drex Files of changing it slightly and I said I would change my schematic to reflect his wishes. He said he had discussed it with Mike Okuda and they had agreed to no change.

When he says it's 526 meters and not subject to change, that's good enough for me, regardless of what happened in filming.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Rick Sternbach took the trouble to post the overall length of the Ambassador class here a few months ago, after there was some talk at Drex Files of changing it slightly and I said I would change my schematic to reflect his wishes. He said he had discussed it with Mike Okuda and they had agreed to no change.

When he says it's 526 meters and not subject to change, that's good enough for me, regardless of what happened in filming.

Perhaps there's some pronoun confusion. As Gary Kerr wrote on DrexFiles, "After checking with Mike & Rick, we’ve agreed that the “retro-canon” length of the Ent-C is 1570 feet/478.5 meters. The length given in the ST Encyclopedia is simply a mistake. Thus canon is given; thus canon is taketh away." I personally will live with the 478.5 meter figure. Mike probably wanted to accept the bigger number so as not to cause a rewrite of the Encyclopedia, which won't happen in any case. Bottom line, it's all in our heads anyhow.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Bill Morris]

I do remember your saying in that previous post that Mike Okuda wanted to leave it at 526. Okay, 478.5 it is, then. And maybe that's the length Starfleet will use a few centuries from now when they draw up blueprints based on your design and build it for real.

Thanks for responding.

 

[Saquist]

True. But the Saratoga did have pods, attached to the sides of the hull. The torpedo armament could have been located in those pods; there aren't too many good locations for it in the main hull, and there aren't examples of torpedoes being fired from completely non-podded Miranda variants.

Granted that the pods don't look like they could easily sport the familiar type of torpedo launchers, either. But we know that torp tubes come in a number of different styles; on the Defiant, for example, the quantums come out of small dark slits (which were originally designed to be mere seams for detaching lifepods, but the ship got re-scaled and her surface features re-designated after the modelmakers had finished their work).

Perhaps the Saratoga side pods, which had prominent dish antennas pointing forward, had a number of torpedo bays firing to the sides or to aft?

Timo Saloniemi

Perhaps,
it is a possibility. We see torpedos come right out of the underside of the Akira in FC.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

I do remember your saying in that previous post that Mike Okuda wanted to leave it at 526. Okay, 478.5 it is, then. And maybe that's the length Starfleet will use a few centuries from now when they draw up blueprints based on your design and build it for real.

Thanks for responding.

From a plain vanilla production standpoint, once the sketches and blueprints left my drafting table, pretty much anything could and did happen to them if VFX and the producers wanted changes. Somebody kicked the Ambassador OML up 115% and didn't tell me, so it didn't occur to me to check the final filming miniature against the drawings. CGI modelers changed a few things occasionally, usually for the better. Stuff happens. It's all entertainment, and you can take or leave whatever bits interest you; I do.

In fact, I can believe that the new Enterprise is only about 1200 feet long, and that when people come on board, a gizmo shrinks them to three feet tall. You can see the little figures through the windows.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Bill Morris]

Well, this is how it appears on my Web site, as well as at Cygnus and in my software package, one of 45 Trek schematics in the same style. I could simply change the dimensions and mass and assume that's not enough difference to affect the number of decks, since there does seem to be a little difference in deck heights from one class to another, anyway.

As for the new Enterprise, I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to do any schematics from it.

 

[Disillusioned]

OML?

 

[Rick Sternbach]

OML?

Outer Mold Line.

Rick

 

[nx1701g]

As for the new Enterprise, I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to do any schematics from it.

Unfortunate.

I've heard though that there will be a Trek XI Technical Manual released in a few months though.

 

[Timo]

Perhaps, it is a possibility. We see torpedos come right out of the underside of the Akira in FC.

Umm, but the Akira model has very prominent torpedo tubes there, apparently three above the deflector dish and one underneath. They are the same sort of dark rectangles that one also sees on the Akira dorsal pod, and on select spots on the saucer as well. The Miranda model has never had anything so prominent and identifiable anywhere but in the roll bar module.

Then again, the tubes on Kirk's TOS ship were invisible. We might assume they were the same sort of holes that Archer's ENT ship had, only covered with hatches when nothing was coming out of them. It's not impossible that Kirk's movie ship and the Miranda class would retain this invisible type of tube somewhere in the saucer (perhaps behind some of those ventral saucer hatches which were never completely identified in the movies), possibly firing older, weaker torps that only see battle when the bigger main torps are not available.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Good]

I've heard though that there will be a Trek XI Technical Manual released in a few months though.

I pity the poor bastard who has to wade through the scaling shuttlebays, random transparent water pipes, and brewery communication rooms to put that thing together.

 

[nx1701g]

I've heard though that there will be a Trek XI Technical Manual released in a few months though.

I pity the poor bastard who has to wade through the scaling shuttlebays, random transparent water pipes, and brewery communication rooms to put that thing together.

Me too.

 

[Solarbaby]

I think your illustration is beautiful. What program did you use to create the Okudagram style?

 

[Bill Morris]

I think your illustration is beautiful. What program did you use to create the Okudagram style?

Long story, I guess. It'a an LCARS system that have made, but only for older Pentium computers, since it doesn't have drivers for the newer chipsets. To make a custom LCARS screen, I just have to make a list of instructions in an LCARS-specific markup language (and supply any necessary image files), and my LCARS system renders it just as a Web browser does for HTML, but using the system's own fonts and LCARS widgets. The system itself is programmed in C, and some of the code and artwork is from contributors. Only a few thousand people have it installed, because it requires its own computer, an old one that would probably otherwise be thrown away.

 

[Solarbaby]

I think your illustration is beautiful. What program did you use to create the Okudagram style?

Long story, I guess. It'a an LCARS system that have made, but only for older Pentium computers, since it doesn't have drivers for the newer chipsets. To make a custom LCARS screen, I just have to make a list of instructions in an LCARS-specific markup language (and supply any necessary image files), and my LCARS system renders it just as a Web browser does for HTML, but using the system's own fonts and LCARS widgets. The system itself is programmed in C, and some of the code and artwork is from contributors. Only a few thousand people have it installed, because it requires its own computer, an old one that would probably otherwise be thrown away.

Wow ok lol. Thanks

 

[Vance]

I've heard though that there will be a Trek XI Technical Manual released in a few months though.

I pity the poor bastard who has to wade through the scaling shuttlebays, random transparent water pipes, and brewery communication rooms to put that thing together.

Last I heard, it's more of an 'art book' closer to Starship Spotter, so don't expect detailed deck drawings or anything. (Granted, the book seems pretty slow coming out anyway, wasn't it supposed to be hitting about now?)