Renaissance class U.S.S. Aries

[Timo]

Me, I like the Yeager a lot. And the Elkins is conceptually interesting as well - it only needs a little more work on the nacelles. Nothing really wrong with the TOS movie style "heavy destroyer", either. And the two Excelsior/Miranda kitbashes were cool counterparts to good old Ptolemy. And the three-naceller had potential.

...Really, those 'bashes are far more attractive to me than most of the CGI ships of ST:FC.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Reverend]

I hate the Yeager. In fact I hate both of the intrepid bashes. Try as I might I can't think up a logical justification for either designs. The best I can do is that they were cast off hulls and used as counter intelligence to make the Dominion think they had these different ships in operation. Like the bogus inflatable landing craft used to confuse German aerial reconnaissance shortly before D-Day.

As for the FC ships, I've taken quite a shine to the Steamrunner ever since I decided it was a medium transport/freighter. Akira is all kinds of cool and the Sabre (or is it Saber?) is compact and functional enough. A nice replacement for the Oberth-Class (future TNG remastered artists take note!) The Norway is a bit of something and nothing; can't really get a handle on it's function.

 

[Timo]

In fact I hate both of the intrepid bashes. Try as I might I can't think up a logical justification for either designs.

Try these for size.

The Yeager could simply be to Intrepid what Miranda was to Constitution. Nacelles down rather than up, a less substantial secondary hull that lacks the big deflector dish, and two shuttlebays (the ribbed, angled vertical surfaces at the aft corners) rather than one. IMHO, the two look attractive enough side by side...

The Elkins, with its two deflectors, could in turn be an anti-Borg deflector weapon experiment, and indeed something of a "kitbash" rather than an established Starfleet design. An offensive nav deflector might be useful in conventional warfare, too, punching big holes in near-stationary targets in a lethal left-right-left-right series...

The Norway is a bit of something and nothing; can't really get a handle on it's function.

The back-front-sliding nacelles make me think that this thing needs to gradually adjust for a change in its CoG. Also, the longitudal booms that support the pylons look a bit like rails to me. So, since this ship first appears in company of the Steamrunners which I, too, think of as assault transports, perhaps the Norway is an assault barge carrier? There could be eight very massive barges stacked between the booms, and every time the Norway "lays an egg", the nacelles move one notch for perfect warp trim. (The nacelle topsides appear to have nine circles, which might be the plasma leadthroughs for each position.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

The main problem with the ships (besides that they're just plain ol' ugly), is of course the scale issues. Of the six kitbashes, only the Constitution saucer and two nacelles are consistent with logical starship design.

Curry/Raging Queen: There's absolutely no good reason why the ships' nacelles were giganto-sized versions of the Connie nacelles.

Yeager: Upscaling the Maquis raider to double or triple its original size, and then slapping it onto an Intrepid saucer is just too ridiculous to take seriously, and trying to find logical reasons to justify this is really pulling strings.

Elkins: I can live with an Intrepid saucer with a secondary hull that came from an F-15, if only because the way it was kitbashed it looks nothing like an F-15. But the oversized runabout pylons look out of place, not to mention the Connie nacelles, which have absolutely no business being built onto a ship that advanced. Perhaps if the kitbasher had used the runabout nacelles to go along with the pylons, the design might be forgivable, but alas, he didn't. But then of course you'd have extremely upscaled nacelles again.

3-nacelled Excelsior: Although the only upscaling done was the use of the Connie pylons, the design is just, BAD. I mean come on, the pod that connects the upper nacelle pylons is hanging half off the ship!

Centaur: Although there's an upscaling issue with the Miranda weapons pod and connectors, the coolness of the design makes it forgivable

 

[Timo]

Curry/Raging Queen: There's absolutely no good reason why the ships' nacelles were giganto-sized versions of the Connie nacelles.

So simply assume that the saucer was smaller than the Excelsior one - easy to do when there are no docking ports, scant portholes, and even the bridge is missing. And then assume that the same type of saucer was used on the Centaur, on which the Miranda bridge module nicely supports the idea of a small saucer, and the torpedo pack underneath offers further proof.

Yeager: Upscaling the Maquis raider to double or triple its original size, and then slapping it onto an Intrepid saucer is just too ridiculous to take seriously

Why insist that the nondescript secondary hull is a "Maquis raider", though? The real life is chock full of examples of naval merchant vessels that look exactly like each other, down to the shape of the hull, the cranes, and the superstructure, only one is three times the size of the other. And essentially, a destroyer, a cruiser and even a battleship in WWII would often have been scale models of each other.

The "Maquis raider" hull has no scale-establishing features as such, save perhaps for the aft torpedo tubes. And there's nothing wrong with large torpedo launcher muzzles for standard caliber torps, as the Galaxy class nicely demonstrates.

And I'd like to believe in at least two different sizes from the manufacturer of those Maquis ships anyway - the small two-seater flown by Ro, and the large thirty-seater flown by Eddington and Chakotay.

In short, the end result IMHO perfectly justifies the means...

3-nacelled Excelsior: Although the only upscaling done was the use of the Connie pylons, the design is just, BAD. I mean come on, the pod that connects the upper nacelle pylons is hanging half off the ship!

Oh, I think this looks no worse than the undercut of Constitution secondary hulls. And some of the (lacking) details can always be attributed to battle damage.

The basic idea of an Excelsior that lacks a secondary hull, in effect an "Excelsior Miranda", sounds plausible as such. That there'd be a third nacelle added requires some explaining, but I'm willing to go for that if it allows me to believe in the basic concept.

Centaur: Although there's an upscaling issue with the Miranda weapons pod and connectors, the coolness of the design makes it forgivable

Me, I'd prefer downscaling the saucer. After all, something the size of an Excelsior shouldn't have had that much trouble with one tiny Jemmie battlebug, and shouldn't necessarily have run even from three.

As for the saucertop "shuttlebay" (and the equivalent structures on the Curry/Raging Queen), no necessity of thinking that they are shuttlebays, and going through the scaling hoops that would result. They could just as well be stylish deflector dishes, what with them pointing forward like that and all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

You make good points about the smaller Excelsior hulls, especially with the larger Connie bridge module on the Centaur backing that up. However, I will say this about the Yeager: I just can't see myself saying that the secondary hull is anything except an upscaled Maquis raider. It's just too out-of-place for me. Say, if the model builder used a model of a Volkswagen Beetle as the secondary hull, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

 

[Timo]

Then again, a Federation contractor supposedly designed and built the Yeager and the Maquis ships both. Why would a Federation design element be out of place in a Federation ship? We accept "standard" saucers, nacelles and impulse assemblies in unlikely combinations, so why not accept a "standard" secondary hull as well?

(Especially when there's precedent, in the Ambassador and Niagara secondary hull essentially being upscaled Constitution ones, or the Galaxy one being an upscaled New Orleans hull...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Reverend]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Dukhat on this one. The Maquis hull is far too specific a shape to ignore. It's just barley credible that it has a smaller, shuttle sized counterpart ("Pre-emptive Strike") that there is also a cruiser sized variant AND that someone welded it to an Intrepid saucer and it is still somehow a functioning starship just pushes it over edge for me. That aside, it would also have to have two radically different warp engine designs working in tandem.
I think the cast off hull/counter intellegence idea is the only one that makes any kind of sense.
As for the Elkins, I like to turn my head, squint and pretend it's actually Sternbach's Voyager prototype (which I happen to perfer as the design for the Bradbury.)

I don't have much of a problem with the Centaur being at either Connie or Excelsior scale. There's sufficient logic to support both possibilities. So either way it's still the Renaissance class.

 

[Timo]

How is the shape too specific? In the Yeager, the outboard impulse blocks have been omitted, greeblies have been added in their place, other greeblies omitted e.g. from the wings, and the warp grillework is missing/painted over, leaving only the nacelles to represent a warp propulsion system. Apart from this, the hull is a simple flat box - one of the most rationally scaleable structures imaginable, and one that the manufacturer no doubt configures differently internally in all its applications anyway.

So essentially none of the scaling counterindications that Bernd carefully lists should apply to this particular case. The only thing that perhaps couldn't or at least shouldn't be scaled up without altering its shape is the wingtip cannon thingamabob, and the failure to omit those from the Yeager is my single misgiving with the design.

As for "welded onto an Intrepid", well, somebody welded a secondary hull to NCC-74656, too. Both sets of welders seem to have done a fairly smooth job, even if the quarterdeck of the Yeager is a bit busier.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

It's just barley credible that it has a smaller, shuttle sized counterpart ("Pre-emptive Strike") that there is also a cruiser sized variant AND that someone welded it to an Intrepid saucer and it is still somehow a functioning starship just pushes it over edge for me.

Actually, there'd be three sizes: The shuttle-sized "Preemptive Strike" version, Chakotay's raider, and then this even larger version slapped to the Intrepid saucer. Scale-wise, Chakotay's ship would still be too small against the saucer.

Of course, we could sit here all day trying to make excuses about the design, but the truth is that it was just never meant to be taken seriously. That's why it was in the far background. Someone probably built it as a practical joke, an Easter Egg, or a "Where's Waldo" type deal. If we concede this ship's existence as a true Starfleet vessel, then we must also concede that Starfleet had two ships shaped coincidentally like the Millenium Falcon during the Sector 001 battle in FC, or that Starfleet had a decommissioned ship in the Qualor II surplus depot that coincidentally looked like a mothership from the "V" miniseries.

Rev: It looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree about the Renaissance class.

 

[Reverend]

No no. Quid pro quo. I agreed with you now you have to admit I'm right.

 

[Timo]

If we concede this ship's existence as a true Starfleet vessel, then we must also concede that Starfleet had two ships shaped coincidentally like the Millenium Falcon during the Sector 001 battle in FC, or that Starfleet had a decommissioned ship in the Qualor II surplus depot that coincidentally looked like a mothership from the "V" miniseries.

But the Yeager is roughy as prominent as the Sabre on screen. What next, we have to stop pretending that the Batris type of freighter exists in the Star Trek universe because it's just a recycled bit of "V" hardware with some bits glued on?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Reverend]

He's right, that's a tricky line to walk. Hence: cast off hull.