A little of the U.S.S. Bozeman:
Soyuz class cutaway
- Thread starter Bill Morris
- Start date
Sooner or later, someone needs to decide whether those turret-looking things bolted to the hull really are giant phaser cannons or just fancy sensor arrays.
I'm sort of hoping sensors. Doesn't the lower stern turret "fire" into the lower vertex of the saucer hull...?
In my perverse little subset of the Trek universe, the enlarged bridge and the boxy additions to the aft hull are analogous to things done to today's or yesterday's naval combatants: boosted C3I facilities, allowing the (former?) combatant to serve in a fleet command or intelligence role. The third shuttlebay especially reminds me of the Tiger class helicopter cruisers, expensive Royal Navy follies of that sort... But also of the Soviet C3I-modified Sverdlov cruisers. The sensor turrets would then be related to this role, too.
If the thing is a super-duper gunship, then the additional shuttle facilities make perhaps less sense: why make the thing both big and clumsy? If her role in life is to rain devastation on targets that don't dodge much, why does she carry extra shuttles? Or is it some sort of a planetary bombardment and invasion combo?
Timo Saloniemi
In my perverse little subset of the Trek universe, the enlarged bridge and the boxy additions to the aft hull are analogous to things done to today's or yesterday's naval combatants: boosted C3I facilities, allowing the (former?) combatant to serve in a fleet command or intelligence role. The third shuttlebay especially reminds me of the Tiger class helicopter cruisers, expensive Royal Navy follies of that sort... But also of the Soviet C3I-modified Sverdlov cruisers. The sensor turrets would then be related to this role, too.
If the thing is a super-duper gunship, then the additional shuttle facilities make perhaps less sense: why make the thing both big and clumsy? If her role in life is to rain devastation on targets that don't dodge much, why does she carry extra shuttles? Or is it some sort of a planetary bombardment and invasion combo?
Timo Saloniemi
What about the early TOS weapons? The lasers/phasers from The Cage and The Man Trap? Or Kirk's phaser rifle in WNMHGB?
Hmm. The short cylinder bodies with perhaps centimeter-long protrusions for the early laser/phaser sidearms are a very poor precedent for these "50-caliber gunbarrels"... But Kirk's rifle does fit the bill.
Starfleet starship guns don't seem to have barrels anywhere, though. The Klingon BoP guns do, in what might count as a bit of continuity...
Timo Saloniemi
Starfleet starship guns don't seem to have barrels anywhere, though. The Klingon BoP guns do, in what might count as a bit of continuity...
Timo Saloniemi
Well, why would you put a .50 barrel on a pistol grip? That would look kinda silly. Even the Klingon pistols looked more 18th century flintlock pistols more than heavy artillery.
Phasers might not need long barrels. If disruptors are a type of compressed plasma weapon, they'd need a track or something to accelerate that plasma to relativistic velocities.
Umm, I meant "50 calibers long", as relating to the supposed guns of the Soyuz (although they actually appear even more elongated), not ".50 inches wide", as relating to the pistols. Sorry about the confusion.
The early TOS pistols just don't seem to have barrels in the sense of long-and-narrow: they have three studs in the forward end of a stubby cylinder body.
Quite possible. Or then the functional difference is minimal, but the Klingon version of nadions (or whatever the underlying phaser principle) for some reason needs a longer resonator (or whatever the technology). But the handheld varieties of disruptor don't seem to have barrels in the general case - only a certain specific examples do. Cardassian and Romulan weapons typically seem to make do with as short business ends as their Starfleet equivalents.
...I wonder if the Reman guns of ST:NEM were functionally related to the classic long-barreled Klingon arsenal first introduced in ST3:TSfS?
We might of course argue that most if not all starship guns do have long "barrels" - but those barrels aren't linear accelerators, and can be curved or coiled or whatever in addition to sometimes being simple straight external tubes. And in the case of the Soyuz, Starfleet just didn't bother with coiling the tubes internally in the already cramped turrets, but exposed them in the simplest possible manner.
Timo Saloniemi
The early TOS pistols just don't seem to have barrels in the sense of long-and-narrow: they have three studs in the forward end of a stubby cylinder body.
Quite possible. Or then the functional difference is minimal, but the Klingon version of nadions (or whatever the underlying phaser principle) for some reason needs a longer resonator (or whatever the technology). But the handheld varieties of disruptor don't seem to have barrels in the general case - only a certain specific examples do. Cardassian and Romulan weapons typically seem to make do with as short business ends as their Starfleet equivalents.
...I wonder if the Reman guns of ST:NEM were functionally related to the classic long-barreled Klingon arsenal first introduced in ST3:TSfS?
We might of course argue that most if not all starship guns do have long "barrels" - but those barrels aren't linear accelerators, and can be curved or coiled or whatever in addition to sometimes being simple straight external tubes. And in the case of the Soyuz, Starfleet just didn't bother with coiling the tubes internally in the already cramped turrets, but exposed them in the simplest possible manner.
Timo Saloniemi
Not done, but a small update:
One source I read - the DS9 TM perhaps? - suggests that the key difference between a phaser and a disruptor is that the latter uses an unstable bolt of energy designed to literally disrupt the target surface, unlike the more controlled beam of a phaser. Hence the name, and why the Klingons might favor barrels on their weapons.
On occasion, the Cardassian weapon has also been called a "phase disruptor". Probably we're talking about roughly similar technologies with minor differences in execution - say, rifles vs. shotguns. You can build a rifle that looks like a shotgun, or a shotgun that looks like a rifle, or you can create designs that optimize the qualities of the two weapons and thus look very different from each other. You can also do a hybrid - say, a rifled flechette gun.
Speaking of the DS9 TM, a claim is made there that old phaser emitters from Soyuz class vessels were recycled in rearming DS9 after the Cardassians abandoned it to Bajor and the Federation in "Emissary". However, when we first meet DS9 in that episode, the station is armed with standard Starfleet strip phasers on the weapon sails. That doesn't jibe very well with the idea that the Soyuz would have been retired in the 2270s, long before strip phasers became a starship feature.
If we speculate that the Soyuz class was reactivated in the 24th century for strip phaser experimentation, then we must wonder why our TNG heroes did not refer to this in "Cause and Effect". Surely meeting a recent experimental design would sound less unlikely than meeting a ship that comes from the 2270s?
If, OTOH, the key component of a phaser is internal, and the strip or the ball turret is merely a minor detail added on the exterior, then this might make more sense.
To be sure, DS9 was always portrayed with Starfleet strip emitters rather than the Cardassian pyramid emitters, even when we were supposed to be looking at the old Terok Nor or the Mirror Universe version of it. But we might choose to ignore this since there weren't good closeups of the weapon sails in those flashback/Mirror episodes...
Timo Saloniemi
Speaking of the DS9 TM, a claim is made there that old phaser emitters from Soyuz class vessels were recycled in rearming DS9 after the Cardassians abandoned it to Bajor and the Federation in "Emissary". However, when we first meet DS9 in that episode, the station is armed with standard Starfleet strip phasers on the weapon sails. That doesn't jibe very well with the idea that the Soyuz would have been retired in the 2270s, long before strip phasers became a starship feature.
If we speculate that the Soyuz class was reactivated in the 24th century for strip phaser experimentation, then we must wonder why our TNG heroes did not refer to this in "Cause and Effect". Surely meeting a recent experimental design would sound less unlikely than meeting a ship that comes from the 2270s?
If, OTOH, the key component of a phaser is internal, and the strip or the ball turret is merely a minor detail added on the exterior, then this might make more sense.
To be sure, DS9 was always portrayed with Starfleet strip emitters rather than the Cardassian pyramid emitters, even when we were supposed to be looking at the old Terok Nor or the Mirror Universe version of it. But we might choose to ignore this since there weren't good closeups of the weapon sails in those flashback/Mirror episodes...
Timo Saloniemi
Interestingly, having just went over the studio pictures of this thing with a fine tooth comb, I learned a lot about this ship. The forward turret is often present wrong (as it, unfortunately is in the diagram) due to some confusion about the layout of the rear 'tank hulls' and how they line up.
I'll present the Assad here, which shows the differences in the upper and lower domes to the standard configuration, without the rest of the ship's clutter. It's about as accurate as possible with my not-good-enough art skills.
http://www.jaynz.info/images/Fed2275/Jaynz_Assad_2275.png
I'll present the Assad here, which shows the differences in the upper and lower domes to the standard configuration, without the rest of the ship's clutter. It's about as accurate as possible with my not-good-enough art skills.
http://www.jaynz.info/images/Fed2275/Jaynz_Assad_2275.png
I was following the illustration from EAS, but from the model photo at EAS I can see that the lower rotating sensor module is attached differently. Another difference is the longer landing pad for the aft suttlebay. I guess I should change the sensor module, at least.
My colors are a bit more subdued as well, more in line with the TMP color usage. The lowest dome is pretty black, for instance. Keep in mind, too, that the Soyuz is the definition of 'bash', so details will indeed look thrown on (such as the plastic robot toys painted gray and throw onto the teardrop).
I always thought that the small blips on the starboard and port sides were sensor arrays (like they were meant to be on the Saratoga) and that the two large turrets on the aft dorsal and ventral were phaser cannons.
One wonders... The Saratoga had torpedoes somewhere, or so the dialogue establishes. Since there was no dorsal pod for them, one is tempted to think the side pods were for that purpose (even if they only had aft- or sideways-firing launchers).
If so, even the Soyuz might have torps somewhere. Although I don't think all ships necessarily need those, especially if they aren't intended to fight in the front lines.
Timo Saloniemi
If so, even the Soyuz might have torps somewhere. Although I don't think all ships necessarily need those, especially if they aren't intended to fight in the front lines.
Timo Saloniemi
Jackill has them as sensor pods on the Saratoga, and omits torpedos in his stats but I tend to assume the ship probably had at least a paired mount somewhere going by the dialogue in "Emissary." FJ's vessels frequently had them on the saucer module, so perhaps the Saratoga might have had a similar and somewhat inconspicuous arrangement. Or perhaps one or two tubes forward and an aft tube.
I don't know about torpedo tubes (there might not be any) or a navigational deflector, but I'm taking the four UNICORN (Unidirectional Neural Interphasic Coaxial Optronic Reception Network) antennas to be for sensor arrays and the six external tubes on the port and starboard turrets to be phaser cannons.
Okay, maybe it's done now.
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