• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Request feedback on this starship design

True, I think usually, engineers worry more about the function of the equipment they design than the aesthetics.

If it works...it works.
 
apparently, the OP is not following his thread?

LOL Yes, the OP *is* following his thread, but has not had a chance to put together an in-depth response of any substance. I intend to respond to everyone before the weekend, and add some higher-resolution pics. Thanks for your patience, guys, and for the comments so far. Keep'em coming! :)

Scott

I look forward to higher-res images. Sofar, this design is really looking good IMO.
 
Yeah, see my complaint is strictly functional. If you were to mount that unit farther aft it wouldn't be a problem. You might just not reverse the angle of the neck. Rather than turning and having it slope forward to the anatomy in question, just keep the aft-going line and the equipment would be between the nacelles (perhaps adding emphasis to the genitalia theme) but getting the whole package out of the way of the planetary sensor array.

--Alex
 
This starship class has been slowly coming together in my mind for years. I will try to address all the comments that have been made so far in this post. If you're looking for pretty pictures first, links are at the end of this post.

Cary L. Brown, the Endeavour is meant to be a contemporary of Enterprise 1701A. Below is the description of the ship given on the "Overview" section of the plans. This is as good a place to start as any:

"The Explorer class cruiser is a medium-sized starship. All vessels in this class are named after early Terran exploration vessels. The design of this class is an indirect descendant of the original MK-VII Hermes class scout. There have been numerous design improvements over the years, including an enlarged engineering section and upgraded defensive systems.

"The primary mission of this starship is long-range exploration. This vessel is designed to push back the frontiers of the Federation, gaining knowledge and scientific data as it progresses. To this end, the Explorer class starship is equipped with a wide variety of research facilities, from traditional laboratories to holographic simulators, where virtually any environment or set of conditions can be duplicated.

"This ship is also equipped with two of the new WR-07A Powell class warpshuttles. These vessels, recently introduced into the fleet, are similar to large shuttlecraft, with two major exceptions: They can be self-sustaining for months at a time, and they are capable of speeds approaching warp four. With these warpshuttles, a starship is no longer tied to a newly discovered planetary system for extended periods. A research team can be left in a warpshuttle to explore the system in depth, then rendezvous with the mothership research and data-gathering activities are concluded.

"Sad experience has taught us that, peaceful though our intentions may be, the universe at large does not share that sentiment. Therefore, every ship of the line has at least one detachment of Starfleet Marines assigned to it. In the case of the Explorer class, their facilities are housed in the secondary hull."​

I will cover further details and my design reasoning further down.

Mysterion, Here is the crew breakdown:

COMMAND:
COMMANDING OFFICER (CPT) 1
EXECUTIVE OFFICER (LTCDR) 1
HELMSMAN (LT) 6
YEOMAN (ENS) 2
CHIEF NAVIGATOR (LTCDR) 1
NAVIGATION OFFICER (LT) 6
ORDNANCE OFFICER (LT) 3
ORDNANCE SPECIALIST (ENL) 18
TOTAL 38

SCIENCES:
SCIENCE OFFICER (LTCDR) 1
ASST. SCIENCE OFFICER (LT) 1
SCIENTIST (ENS) 6
LABORATORY TECHNICIAN (ENL) 72
CHIEF SURGEON (LTCDR) 1
DOCTOR (LTCDR) 3
HEAD NURSE (LT) 1
NURSE (ENS) 21
MEDICAL TECHNICIAN (ENL) 30
TOTAL 136

ENGINEERING/OTHER:
CHIEF ENGINEER (LTCDR) 1
ASST. CHIEF ENGINEER (LT) 1
ENGINEERING OFFICER (ENS) 4
ENGINEERING SPECIALIST (ENL) 28
TRANSPORTER SPECIALIST (ENL) 15
CHIEF OF COMMUNICATIONS (LTCDR) 1
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER (ENS) 5
COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST (ENL) 11
CHIEF OF SECURITY (LTCDR) 1
SECURITY OFFICER (ENS) 5
SECURITY SPECIALIST (ENL) 30
TOTAL 106

STARFLEET MARINE DETACHMENT - SEE SFM PUBLICATION M11768-4B FOR TO&E

TOTAL 25

THE STANDARD SHIP‘S COMPLEMENT IS 76 OFFICERS, 204 CREW MEMBERS AND 25 MARINES TOTAL 305

IN EVERY CASE MINIMUM GRADES ARE SHOWN FOR EACH BILLET. INDIVIDUAL SHIPS MAY VARY
BY REASON OF INDIVIDUAL MODIFICATION.​

Albertese, The Explorer class starship is equipped with 12 phaser turrets - significantly fewer than Enterprise. I'm not sure what led you to believe there are more. Please elaborate.

BillJ and Wingsley, Cary L. Brown's comment about warp nacelle placement sounds like a good explanation to me. The truth is, they're where they are because I like them that way. :)

Winglsey, the navigational deflector is on the bottom front of the primary hull. Not very visible from the side, but very much so in the bottom plan view.

SonicRanger, I've looked at this design for years, and didn't see a dick on the ship 'til your comment! :) It's ironic that you mention those particular aircraft; I chose that color for the front of the secondary hull as an homage to that era's jet aircraft. The front houses the space/planetary sensor array, and thus needs to be "transparent to electromagnetic energy," the same as the radar domes you refer to on the F4 and A7.

I was somewhat worried about blocking the lower primary hull array with secondary hull as well, thus my reasoning for locating the SPSA at the front of that hull. There are also sensors around approximately 75% of the primary hull, as well as on the aft edge of the upper and lower dorsal. This baby is loaded to the TEETH with sensor capability.

Herkimer Jitty, that is a good idea. I think the unofficial Starfleet nickname for Endeavour will be "Biggus Dickus."

Kaiser and Mysterion, and anyone else interested in a set of plans or the manual: The plans are finished, and are available in 11x17 format ($20.00+shipping) or 24x36 format (in scale with the FJ Enterprise plans)($45.00+shipping). They both are comprised of 14 sheets, consisting of 5 exterior views, an interior cross-section, and detailed deck-by-deck plans. Schematics are also included for the WS-07A Warpshuttle, as well as all of the smaller support vehicles aboard (lifeboats, shuttles, work bees, etc.). What is currently available, though, are only in black & white. I'm working on converting them to color, but it's taking longer than I expected. Color will increase the cost somewhat as well.

I am currently working on the Crew Orientation Manual in parallel with other ongoing projects. I hope to have it done within a year. With any luck it will be a lot sooner. I'll cover the content of that in more detail at a later date.

ALSO, if anyone would be interested in modeling this design for me in 3D, I would be willing to pay for the service, if within my resources. If this is you, please let me know.

Finally, Here are some links to a few hi-res views of the ship. I apologize if the watermarks obscure too much detail; I trust that you'll understand. :)

Side Elevation:
http://starshipdynamics.com/download/01-Endeavour_side_view.jpg

Top Plan View:
http://starshipdynamics.com/download/02-Endeavour_plan_view.jpg

Bottom Plan View:
http://starshipdynamics.com/download/03-Endeavour_bottom_view.jpg

Front / Rear Elevation:
http://starshipdynamics.com/download/04-Endeavour_front-n-rear_view.jpg

Cross-section detail (still a work-in-progress color-wise):
http://starshipdynamics.com/download/x-section_detail.jpg

And, as a bit of a tease, a detail of one of the deck plan sheets, so you can see the kind of detail I like:
http://starshipdynamics.com/download/deck_plan_detail.jpg

Enjoy! Thank you so much for your kind words and comments. Please keep them coming. I'm hoping that y'all can help me keep my creative juices flowing.

If you're interested in further info, or details on other plans that I've done, please check out my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/starship.dynamics. Feel free to "Like" the page if you want to keep up with new additions there.

I also have a webpage at www.starshipdynamics.com, but it's still very much under construction at the moment.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for posting all the great info. Interesting crew breakdown. I take it the Marine Detachment is in lieu of the usual redshirts? - Whopps, there's the redshirts. Nevermind.

And, the sample of the deckplans is very nice. Am looking forward to seeing more of your work.
 
Last edited:
hmm 20 bucks isnt all that bad really for this so sometime within the next 2 months i'll purchace a copy then :)
 
Ah! those are lifeboats on the upper hull! I think most of us thought they were phaser emplacements.
 
I see she has a cloaking device. Nice!:techman:

I always thought it would be silly not to use some sort of cloaking technology for this mission profile. After all, we can track object in orbit now, and we're nowhere near warp tech yet.
 
I see she has a cloaking device. Nice!:techman:

I always thought it would be silly not to use some sort of cloaking technology for this mission profile. After all, we can track object in orbit now, and we're nowhere near warp tech yet.
Well, I wouldn't call it a "cloaking device."

I WOULD call it an "electronic countermeasures suite" or something along those lines.

Two reasons -

First, it's well-established that the Federation signed a treaty prohibiting the use of cloaking devices (which is a STUPID thing to do, but it's "canon" now)

Second, the overwhelming majority of the time, a ship on a DEFENSIVE role doesn't need to be within visual range of whatever they're looking at, and wants to be separate.

ECM systems (that's a real, modern term, by the way) would be very effective at avoiding long-range detection, but would not provide any "visual range" protection.

Of course, that's easy to deal with as well, if you want the ship to actually be "stealthy." You can eliminate external windows and light sources and so forth (or at least make them "stealthable?") You can paint the ship's hull a very dark color. You can use "scattering" surface treatments (like we currently do on our aircraft to reduce radar returns). And NONE of those are "cloaking" in the Treknological sense.

So, give it a stealth appearance, and an ECM system, and get rid of the term "cloaking device." You'll achieve pretty much the same goal you're going for now, but you won't be in direct violation of established (if silly) Trek canon.
 
I'd actually thought of some alternate terminology for the device. How does "Quantum Dilation Field" sound? :)
 
Ah, now that I've looked at your drawings...

How many "field attraction sensors" does your ship have? I noticed only two.

That's useless. You need three, in order to be able to use these to track by location. They need to be placed in a roughly equilaterally-triangular pattern (some variation is allowable, but the equilateral triangle is the best option, all other factors being equal).

Why? Well, each of these is a magnetic sensor, right? Each can see a "vector" to whatever it is looking at. The only way to have a non-ambiguous location is to have three intersecting vectors, from three independent sources. You can get a location using two points of measurement, but this results in (typically) two possible solutions.

Am I missing a third sensor? If so... where is it? If not... you really need to add it in.
 
Okay... having reviewed the high-resolution drawings further... here are my critiques.

1) I dislike the term "Naval Construction Contract Number." For me, this will always be the "Navigational Contact Code." It just makes more sense to me. SO... if this were my work, I would simply identify it as the "ship's registry number" and leave it that way, so that those of us who think it's a "construction contract" number can read that in, and those of us who don't can read that in as well.

2)Have you given serious though to the ratio of lifeboats to crew? How about how the crew will be billeted? I get the impression that you've devoted almost as much of the ship's volume to lifeboats as you'll have available for cabins. I'd be sure to really work out the numbers, first... how many are needed to do the ship's mission, how are they billetted (four per cabin? each with a private cabin?), and how they sit in an escape pod.

This is NOT a trivial exercise... and it's something I did on the Vega. I actually ensured that there was sufficient escape-pod capacity to evacuate the entire crew, and figured out exactly how the crew was billeted.

FYI, here's my escape pod... sans top-hatch, obviously...



Now, if the ship was "leisurely and safely" being destroyed, everyone might manage to get to a lifeboat. But more likely, only a handful will even survive whatever's happening and make it to one, and then only a handful of those would survive. There's been quite a bit of debate about how useful lifeboats really are... ESPECIALLY in deep space, beyond the frontier. Unless every one has WF4 or so capability, a lifeboat ejection in deep space is just an extended death sentence, isn't it?

So... I'm really curious how deeply you've looked into the lifeboat-to-ship's-capacity balance?

3) The detection grid... sensors and scanners... seems interesting, but I'd give it a bit more definition. Don't just throw out terms... figure out WHY something is there, and what unique purpose is being fulfilled by it.

For example... on the Vega, I put a big "nose" element on the ship. That's a very-high-power active scanner array... sort of like the element on the underside of the TMP Enterprise, but several orders of magnitude more powerful and precise. I have a set of "rings" around the edge of the ship, including a small "sensor pallet" ring (but this only makes sense if you can detach the sensor pallets and bring them inside for maintenance or replacement somehow!). I also have a pair of electromagnetic "coils" in the same area, running the periphery of the saucer, to provide enhancement to the magnetic field sensing capabilities of the ship. Finally, I have a bay in the fantail of the ship which deploys a large "towed array"... normally stored on a reel, but it gets unwound, much like a fishing net is unwound, then receives "structural integrity field" energy so that it stiffens... becoming a massive passive sensor array, many times larger than the ship itself. It's towed behind the ship, and there's a small aft-facing deflector which is used to help control and steer this towed array (since there is no "drag force" in space!)

A "sensor" is a passive device... think of, for instance, an infrared camera. A "scanner" is a device which puts out some form of energy, and then uses a sensor to measure the return from that energy output. For example, think of a radar system.

So... which devices are passive sensors? Which are active scanners? Which are magnetic field (or "subspace field") devices? Which are electromagnetic radiation sensors, or particle sensors, or "tachyon sensors" or the like? WHAT DO THEY DO, AND WHY?

Just using terms like "planetary sensor array" does little to communicate what it does... or why this is different from any other sensor array on any other ship.

4) The impulse drive system is badly mislocated. It shoud be in a similar configuration, but on the UNDERSIDE of the primary hull, between bays "A" and "B."

There is some debate among fans about whether impulse (a real, newtonian-physics term, by the way) is newtonian nor not. But this was established quite clearly in the TNG Technical manual... and the 1701-D was designed with this in mind (wonderful work by Andrew Probert on that, IMHO)

Unless you're going to just come out and say that your ship's sublight propulsion system is entirely non-newtonian, the location of this is utterly unacceptable... the ship will simply spin in circles when the engines fire!

5) The location of the tractor beam on the lower pod seems... crude, honestly. I'd leave the surface of the pod "smooth" without the notch for the beam, and have the beam deployable from behind a hatch of some sort.

FYI... I find it fascinating that people see a "penis" on the ship. I see no such thing, not even now that it's been suggested. I see what someone might PROJECT that thought onto... but you could say the same for any other element of any design. If you want to see the top and bottom of the 1701 primary hull as two different breast shapes, you can see that, too... but I think it's just projection.

The shape of this area is not "phallic" in any way, really. So I recommend ignoring any such comments.
 
I'd actually thought of some alternate terminology for the device. How does "Quantum Dilation Field" sound? :)
Describe what it does, not how it does it.

If you don't like "electronic countermeasures," just use "anti-detection system" or something like that. Don't go all "technobabbly" on it.

Unless you can tell us, in detail, what a "quantum dilation field" is actually doing (and please, don't say it's "dilating quanta" :guffaw:) I'd just go with some FUNCTIONAL "stealth" term.
 
Further on the lifeboat issue. You should have more lifeboat capacity than you have crew. In most cases, if you need to use them, some will likely have already been destroyed or have access cut off. Modern day cruise liners usually have double the crew/passenger capacity in life boats.

Also, if this is a roughly TMP era design, why show the lifeboats at all?
 
So... I'm really curious how deeply you've looked into the lifeboat-to-ship's-capacity balance?

Endeavour has 123 permanent staterooms, which will accomodate 351 persons. This permits it to carry up to 71 supercargo in addition to its standard complement of 280 officers and crew. Quarters for the Marine Detachment are separate and considerably more spartan, and accommodate 25 personnel.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but there's an extra deck in the primary hull, as compared to Enterprise or Reliant. This solved my problem as far as having enough room for everything (and everyone) required for this mission profile.

There are 80 lifeboats on the ship, each with a capacity for 6 people. That's enough lifeboats for 480 personnel, on a ship with a standard crew of 305. This is in addition to 2 warpshuttles, 1 Marine Assault Craft, 3 short-range shuttles and 2 travel pods.

Nice escape pod, BTW. What program did you model it in?

...if this is a roughly TMP era design, why show the lifeboats at all?
Short version: they obviously started at some point, and being the forward-looking type that I am, I figured that it might as well start with my design. :)

4) The impulse drive system is badly mislocated. It shoud be in a similar configuration, but on the UNDERSIDE of the primary hull, between bays "A" and "B."

I've never really gotten into the argument about newtonian vs non-newtonian engines. If you look at the design of numerous Trek ships, you'll see that they very often do not fall anywhere near what would appear to be the center of mass. The original Enterprise and the refit are a perfect example of this. In my book, if it's good enough for Enterprise, it's good enough for Endeavour.

First, it's well-established that the Federation signed a treaty prohibiting the use of cloaking devices (which is a STUPID thing to do, but it's "canon" now)

There is a very good discussion of Federation use of a cloaking device here: http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=142209 I tend to agree that it makes sense that some derivation of cloaking technology (perhaps detactable by Klingon and Romulan tech but not a society at a pre-warp tech level?) would be used on a regular basis when "exploring strange new worlds." See also the references in the linked discussion to Fed observation posts in ST:N and elsewhere.

As the cloaking device field generators on Endeavour closely parallel the appearance of those on the K'Tinga class battlecruiser, the assumption is that the design is based on Klingon tech, and thus not a violation of the Treaty of Algeron.

Scott
-------
Please check out my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/starship.dynamics. Feel free to "Like" the page if you want to keep up with new additions there.
 
Last edited:
The more I see of this ship, the more I like it. Would like to see more of that cool Marine Drop Shuttle. Excellent work, Sir.
 
Last edited:
The more I see of this ship, the more I like it. Would like to see more of that cool Marine Drop Shuttle. Excellent work, Sir.

Thanks! I've never really been satisfied with the one that is in the cross-section. I'm re-working it right now; I'll share what I've got with y'all soon.
.
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top