Romulan Ship Design

[Saquist]

It wasn't as though the E didn't need more launchers.
The E had no aft launchers at all and the 2 launchers on the bottom hull was all she had. I had the turrets though.

The Enterprise had the launcher above the captain’s yacht, most prominently seen firing at the cube in FC, two more launchers forward-facing launchers under the deflector dish (I’m not sure we ever saw these fire), and two more launchers at the aft ventral end of the stardrive section, which we saw at work in Insurrection. The Enterprise already had plenty of torpedo launchers. In my view she was always a bit over-weaponed: the first launcher, above the captain’s yacht, was even unnecessary.

I don’t see the rationale for adding another aft launcher on the dorsal side of the Enterprise. Typically when ships are firing torpedoes in Star Trek, they’re at such great distances that the torpedoes’ guidance systems can take care of themselves, so just one aft launcher is necessary. This is also why we don’t have turrets on starships—although I’ve seen the captain’s yacht launcher referred to as one in fandom, I doubt that it is. It would be much simpler to have the launcher stay in one place and have the torpedoes guide themselves rather than moving the launcher with each fire.

The launchers under the deflector were fired in Nemesis...(photons)

In insurrection the aft torpedos had no exit aperture. The torpedo seemed to come from mid hull perhaps the the shuttlebay area and it's trajectory was already some 45 degrees from Enterprise's XZ axis.

Star Trek hasn't made much sense of the photon torpedo. It does frequently move quite rapidly and even increases in brightness after clearing the tube but we've also seen a slow moving weapon in DS9 which could have been shot down easily yet they don't.

I don't like the turret idea because it makes the photon torpedo less a rail gun function and more of a short gun that requires less tech. Torpedo tubes in 24th century have be portrayed as large areas of the ship thanks to Galaxy and Nebula and Intrepid.

I'm okay with making Photon turrets but the Quantum turret shouldn't been done in a turret form either and the weapon shouldn't be the same size. It has always been potrayed as a far less manuverable weapon than the photons on Defiant and Enterprise and definitly a bit slower.

No, I've never seen anything like that.
Is there a link?

http://www.ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/archive_nov08.php

Scroll to 4th November.

wow.
That is a pretty intresting Design. I like it they should really do it.

 

[Deks]

Well ... if they added more torpedo launchers (which was unnecessary compared to the phasers), then adding more TORPEDOES would have been prudent.
Running out of the entire torpedo compliment in such a short span of time during the battle with the Cimitar was idiotic at best.
What ... they had only 50 torpedoes in their compliment?
I find it hard to think they spent over 100 photon torpedoes so fast ... heck the torpedo tubes should have been shown as firing constantly.

Plus if they wanted to beef up the Sovvie, then expanding it's torpedo compliment would have been prudent.
If it was more battle ready than other exploratory ships in the fleet, then it should have been able to hold larger torpedo compliment than the Galaxy class.

Space is not a problem especially since a little Defiant can obviously hold 45 quantum torpedoes (after firing who knows how many in the battle with the Cardassian/Dominion fleet).

Dumb down the tech in order for the drama to flourish.
At least with movies they could have gotten away without dumbing anything down.

 

[Saquist]

You're right on that one.
Running dry on photons or Quantums in one fight with a ship that large is nothing more than drama.

 

[Irishman]

wow...indeed....just wow.

 

[Darkwing]

I always liked the original Bird Of Prey, and the follow-on Romulan Bird of Prey that got relabeled Klingon, as well as most of the FASA Romulan ships. The D'Deridex was somewhat underwhelming.
I liked the Valdore, hated the Scimitar, and absolutely cannot stand the Narada - it makes no sense whatsoever! It was supposedly a mining ship, but built to be spiky, menacing, and evil-looking, had more armament than most warships, and came complete with a dingy, dimly-lit shanty-town, as if inside this murderous monstrosity with power to burn for combat, there was damn-all left for life support. Say again?

It was the poster-child for terminal kewelness-factor syndrome, and should have been aborted post-haste.

 

[SonicRanger]

I... absolutely cannot stand the Narada - it makes no sense whatsoever! It was supposedly a mining ship, but built to be spiky, menacing, and evil-looking, had more armament than most warships, and came complete with a dingy, dimly-lit shanty-town, as if inside this murderous monstrosity with power to burn for combat, there was damn-all left for life support.

The Narada had no phasers or disruptors of any kind. It just had some sort of cluster bombs that are probably just 24th-century heavy demolition and mining torpedos, like what a mining ship would use to blow asteroids to dust. And once an asteroid has been pulverized, how is a mining ship going to collect and store that raw materials? Some sort of electrostatic collection would work, but for that to work, a ship would need a lot of surface area. The best way to have a lot of surface area would be to have a lot of arms and spines like that -- it'd have thousands of times the surface area of a tube. And it would still need a lot of space to store an asteroid's worth of precious elements.

 

[Saquist]

Why would you want to blow up an asteroid and have to chase down the fragments?

 

[Myasishchev]

To get at the insides--also perhaps to centrifuge it, because iron and silicon aren't worth jack, but uranium/dilithium/whatever is.

 

[Saquist]

Why when a precise beam could gut the rock.

 

[Myasishchev]

Just playing devil's advocate--it might be more difficult to cart uranium (or whatever) out of a hole than to collect it as dust. I dunno. I'm not an asteroid miner.

I still say it's actually a black hole miner, though. For the singularities which power the warbirds (or at least the D'Deridex ones, which would likely still make up the bulk of the Romulan fleet for decades to come).

 

[Timo]

My personal rationalization goes on somewhat different lines: the tentacles are there for cradling the asteroids to be mined, and there are perhaps dozens of drilling hoses rather than just the one we saw. The cluster bombs in turn are unrelated to this main mining activity, and are merely adaptations of explosive charges used for splitting open some of the larger asteroids, in a secondary mode of operations.

The thing thus becomes a passable battleship by virtue of three things: it's a big mother (for industrial reasons) and thus very durable to begin with, it has superior shielding (but only because it's from the 24th century, not because it's dedicated to defending itself against battlefleets), and it stores lots of ordnance (which is not necessarily very powerful or militarily useful in 24th century terms, but the quantity makes up for quality shortcomings, especially against 23rd century shields). In turn, it becomes invincible by virtue of possessing red matter.

Whether Nero defeated those 47 Klingons by virtue of the first three items, or by virtue of already possessing red matter, is unclear. Theoretically, even if Nero got all of his red matter from Spock Prime, he probably could have scored the Klingon victory after capturing Spock; the pacing of the movie is so hectic that it's not easy to keep track of such things.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saquist]

It was definitely before Spock Prime,
If the 25 year wait is to be...(scoff)...believed then he apparently had nothing else to do..(like save a planet) while he was waiting for a fresh infusion of (shakes head) ...red matter....

 

[Myasishchev]

The horrible thing about the 25-year gap is that there was always an easy write-around staring them in the face, if they really needed Nero to both 1)kill Kirk's father and 2)menace Jim Kirk and Spock twenty-odd years later.

Specifically, why didn't they just have the Narada fall back into the black hole? Or be purposely steered back into the black hole by Nero, hoping to get closer to Spock?

(This would also have the bonus effect of driving home the only reason why Kirk had to drive the Enterprise halfway to oblivion to kill Nero and the Narada--the Narada could easily navigate black holes...

...Probably because it was designed a black hole miner. )

 

[Salvek]

Hi to all,

Im bias here, as the Romulans and indeed the D'deridex Class Warbird were my main interests in trek.
Not only does the warbird convey power the "gap" in the middle is so Alien -so many people cannot accept as it goes against established space vessel looks
Thats why Mr Probert deserves more credit-after all this came from a link or nod to the Romulan Bird of Prey in Balance of Terror which was a painted bird symbol.

I fully agree the injustice of not seeing the d'deridex properly scaled on the big screen and its combat potential is woeful as shown-

All the other vessels in tng and ds9 stayed true to the established romulan "look"

SIGH

Well Nemesis the film where my favourite race got its big screen treatment was the kick in the groin for me

That warcriminal of a director sorry overpaid editor Baird should be hunted down and made to test out spocks brain in real life

The actual romulans in the movie came across with the exception of Donatra as halfwits

Love the Senator leaving the obvious bomb in the senate room -OMG I mean tng/ds9 the romulans were considered the most paranoid/underhanded people and masters of spying and the room in which the most powerful romulans meet has no scanners for any bombs?!-the infamous Tal Shiar dropped the ball?

sorry been a while to vent

The Valdore was at least still keeping with "Look"

The Scimitar -SIGH

First it looked like it escaped from a japanese cartoon complete with planet killing power after does transforming with its wings

But the name! an arabian Sword? And hold on this vessel is built by the remans? In secret in the home system of the warlike and paranoid empire?

The only thing i liked with the remans it showed there were other races in the romulan EMPIRE -but the remans as shown are nothing but soldiers

After that movie-I feared my romulans had been set up to be the punching bags of the trek verse


The new movie showed me that was true and so much more than i feared

in the hands of the genius behind a drawn out tv series about gilligans island that can teleport

The romulans lose their homeworld
turn into skinheads with tatoos
apparently liked the ancient earth movie Krull they took the bad guys ship design as your civilian mining vessel

OH wait there is backstory apparently canon that comes from the iphone prequel comic

Here we go -Spock is now an ambassdor to Romulus -Nero is a miner who witnesses the silly space disaster on remote star within the empire

They both are in the Senate advocating something be done-the romulan leadership as always post nemesis cannot do anything but disgaree

Nero the miner teams up Spock to get the Vulcans to help
Gee your basic Romulan miner is motivated

fast foward the Romulan leadership agrees the silly space disaster plot device cannot be stopped

Neros normal simple mining vessel IS THE ONLY ROMULAN SHIP Nearby romulus-heres this brilliant thing gets messy it appears there has been an evacuation of everybody on romulus except the Romulan leadership and Neros wife

WHOOPS missed that taxi must have overslept

Nero saves Leadership Fails wife -Romulan Leader tells nero to take them to super secret uber base -Nero decides as a loyal Romulan to kill them all and go to secret Romulan base

There the Romulan Military guarding the place see Nero is patriotic Miner and allow him to come into the military facilty and take what he wants -Oh looky whats that Krull spaceship thing asks nero?

Oh thats our borg tech plug and play attachment we romulans love to make you just plug you ship inside and presto you have a big ugly ship with pointy bits

nero says as a miner with other miners I know we could handle borg based technology attachments to our ship-sure says romulan officer take it

thus the Narada is born

thus nero and his miner crew now looking like bikies cruise around killing stuff like Worf and a klingon fleet

than they find out spock is aboard the la forge built jellyfish and go after him they get sucked into the plothole

and than we all the craziness that is the movie-i love that romulan miners also are experts on created black holes time travel and know that spock is coming through and when

I love how Eric bana mumbles and growls and is considered the best villian since Khan

Sorry lost it I have been silent too long


I do not even consider the narada a romulan design -its apparently romulan use of borg technolgy but the thing has no shields

is just a big fx which did its job made people go wow

 

[AthanisTree]

^^ What Salvek said: Agree!

As to the design of the Valdore, I like it but only in the sense that while it may borrow the low-slung wing sweep of the Klingon BOP (Bop bop a du dop!) and sport an overtly aggressive design and no , apparent, torpedo launcher, (Won't be installed until Tuesday?) it's... shiny. It also seemed much more up-to-date, as it were, than the D'Deridex. While the latter is still a glorious, big, powerful design it just feels rooted in the chunky design ethos of early TNG rather than the smoother, sleeker aesthetics of the Ent-E (I lurve it with full hearts)- though a big, full-fat cameo at the start of Nemesis showing the Reman Scimitar (The Narada's younger, prettier (haha) step-brother?) slicing up the Romulus defense fleet (?) may have done it justice

Scimitar... oh why, why, WHY? We didn't even get to see the main weapon fire at something... *Sigh*

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Ironic, seeing as the Ent-E and Valdore are technically chunkier than the smooth, curvy Ent-D and D'Deridex.

 

[AthanisTree]

Technically, perhaps. Sharper angles, longer and whatnot.

However, I view the Ent-E and Valdore in the same vein as the Defiant and Voyager with their pointed hulls and design emphasis upon flowing forward and *looking* speedy. To me, the Galaxies and D'Deridex's are analogous to the primary shapes of the Borg ships, strong and durable designs but deceptive as to their engine capabilities. I've read the Ship Of the Line novel's descriptions of the Ent-E as (paraphrasing heavily) looking Olympic and ready for warp even while still.

As for the Valdore and the it's 'modern' Romulan design, I think it corresponds to contemporary Starfleet designs like Sovereign, Prometheus, Nova and so on. Greater emphasis on aggression, speed, armament and whatnot. Am I barking up the wrong tree?