None none of them have been a ‘jagged monstrosity’
Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter pst
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None none of them have been a ‘jagged monstrosity’
That’s the glow from the anomaly
Nothing wrong with this rant. I actually agree with you. it also fits the design trends we have been seeing in the show for the past few shows. Ships like the Defiant, Sabre, and Prometheus fit this smaller type combat like ship.Forewarning: unintentional essay incoming.
Back on my shit again re: the Inquiry's size. I had a friend of mine throw some of the models from STO into Meshmixer, with the Inquiry set at the length of 630.94 meters given by Eaglemoss, and...
Yeah...I'm not buying it. No way in hell did they build 112+ of a ship that big. Nuh-uh. No sir-ee-bob.
At the Eaglemoss scale, the length is 630.94 meters, width is 320.3012 meters, height is 108.8373 meters and volume is 3,729,760 m^3. By comparison, the Sovereign-class is 685.2 m long, 233.1295 m wide, 87.7258 m tall, 1,785,030 m^3 in volume.
That puts the Inquiry at twice the volume of the Sovereign. Two times. And 77% of the volume of the Galaxy-class. I just don't think it plausible at that size for there to be that many.
For comparison, going by the TNG technical manual, the Galaxy Class Project was announced in 2343 and the USS Galaxy was finally launched in 2356 and was commissioned the next year -- fourteen years from project launch to the first ship getting commissioned (with the Yamato being built in parallel, apparently). And only six of the total twelve spaceframes initially constructed were built to completion initially, with the other six left as frameworks to be completed if required. If Memory Beta's to be believed, the Sov's development cycle took...okay, about 5 years, with the Sov launching in 2370 and the Enterprise-E following shortly after. Thank you, Borg, for giving Starfleet a reason to get off its ass. Even so, the -E was on a year-long shakedown cruise to get its systems tested by the time of the Battle of Sector 001.
Even if we count the changes that Starfleet may have made in regards to shipbuilding protocol, there's still a long period of testing for new and advanced starship designs. And we only ever did see, what, ten Galaxy-class starships in DS9? Maybe another batch of Galaxies was constructed after the Yamato, Enterprise-D, and Odyssey were destroyed, but those were certainly built well after the extensive testing of the initial few had been completed to truly perfect the design. Mass production's easier when you've got tried-and-tested ships built in advance, but even so, it takes quite a bit longer for large ships to be built.
Frankly, I find the scale that STO defaulted to initially -- shown here for comparison -- far more plausible for there to be 112+ of:
At 383.54 meters and with a volume of 837,853 m^3, the Inquiry as scaled in STO is a bit larger than the Intrepid-class (sitting at 344.424 m long and 641,692 m^3 in volume). Again, I find this far more plausible. Construction would go a lot faster; given the far smaller volume, there wouldn't need to be as much work done nor as many resources spent on filling out as large an interior as otherwise. Resources that would've probably been spent on one 630-long Inquiry could easily go into nearly four and a half 383-long Inquiries (that's how many times the volume of the smaller goes into the larger). Goodness knows how many Miranda-class starships were eventually built, but given that her volume (counting hull thickness and interior volume together) is a little less than half that of even the Intrepid according to EC Henry, we can reasonably assume that the Intrepid- and Miranda-classes both were easily mass-producible on account of their smaller size and proven designs. And once a design is proven effective and spaceworthy, the easier it is to reproduce.
On that latter note, I did a bit of math and came up with a rough graph extrapolating the duration of development time from volume based on the data provided by the Galaxy and Sovereign classes thereof -- the Intrepid-class was added after the fact, but if Memory Beta (again) is to be believed, a 1.775-year duration from drawing board to drydock-departure for the USS Intrepid may be feasible considering that its construction began "in the 2360s" and its launch was in 2369. By this graph, the development of the smaller, "STO-scale" Inquiry-class would take roughly two years and four months, more or less, while the "Eaglemoss-scale" Inquiry-class would require an estimated ten years and eight months to go from development to commissioning for the first ship.
I'll concede that there were significant changes to the political and technological landscape after the Galaxy-class was developed, and as such, the Galaxy-class may be an outlier I'd be wrong to count. But even so, that ship is big, and it was complex for the time. Regardless, considering it alongside post-Wolf 359 designs may have skewed the results for the Eaglemoss-scale ship. But then again, twice the volume and twice the development time to assemble the prototype may indeed track.
Apart from that, the smaller one just...feels right to me, I guess. That's part of what does it for me; it felt better at a smaller size. The bridge scales much better compared to the other vessels in this diagram; roughly the same length as the bridge structure on the Sovereign if not a bit more narrow. The shuttlebay does as well; comparable in size to that at the aft of both the Sovereign- and Intrepid-classes. Though I concede again, the viewscreen on the Zheng He's bridge is very wide, pointing possibly toward the bridge of the Eaglemoss-scale Inquiry being accurate -- which is near twice the size of the Sovereign's bridge structure.
I know I basically just wrote an essay on why I think it's more plausible that the Inquiry is smaller than Eaglemoss (and by extension, CBS?) is stating it to be. I know this is basically just me headcanoning to my wit's end about a ship whose development on the production side was rushed. I know I've done all this, and I don't expect anyone to take this with anything more than a grain of salt -- or in any way seriously. Mad ramblings of a 21-year-old nerd out here. I know what I say isn't the be-all-end-all with the Inquiry. I'm just...airing my gripes, I guess. 112+ of any ship in one shot still doesn't sit well with me -- as the authors of the TNG technical manual stated, the reason they never replicated any starships "would allow us to create entire fleets of starships at the touch of a button. This might be great for Federation defense and science programs, but makes for poor drama" -- but 112+ of a smaller powerful ship would sit...a little better with me, than 112+ of a far larger one.
Sorry for the ramble.
Not to you. But the Discovery viewscreen's sharp angles and the DSC Enterprise's have never looked good to me.
I think we have different definition of jagged. Jagged mean sharp pointy. Like a set of teeth, or a broken piece of wood.
Clearly. But it's all good. 
I think I misunderstood you.
All good.
It just looks really odd. Not a good look for Starfleet vessels to have green on them, which in turn, I found extremely odd for me to have that opinion.
The Obena had completely different nacelles and pylons. Plus it’s missing the fins on the secondary hull.
All the ones seen in this episode, plus the Andromeda, Shenzhou, Yorktown and Yamato I believe.
I could see Starfleet revamping and refitting its Excelsior-class ships after the Dominion War and creating a couple of new offshoots and variants that take to heart lessons learned from the limitations of the original 2285-2375 designs and expand weapons and other defensive systems.
Gagarin, Reliant, Sutherland, Andromeda, Pathfinder, Yorktown, Cheyenne, Olympic, Nova, and Guardian
Then there's the ships made/revamped again for the Mirror Universe, though they can use Prime Universe hull detailing too. :S
For example the Cygnus-class variant of the Andromeda:
You can probably include the Adamant-class variant for the Defiant-class too:
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Well there's the ones in Picard - The Sutherland, Reliant, Gagarin and the Ross Galaxy variant.
There's also a number of others that seem to be for the new Mirror Universe storyline - Shran, Guardian, Earhart, Walker, Odyssey, Pathfinder and Andromeda/Cygnus class. They received Mirror Universe weaponry addons, but the original fed models were cleaned up at the same time.
It does go a good way to explaining why they were polishing some of the newest ships which were already top end for STO whilst some of the older ones in need of a polish missed out. I don't think we'd see all those others in Picard, but I guess it opens the door for other appearances.
Well, I think it's pretty obvious what with STO hiding the fact for a couple of years that some of their ships would be used, that we weren't going to see anything from PICARD-2 until it aired.
Now that it has, STO could add the BORG ship in at anytime.
They like to include gimmicks in their ships that relate to something that happens in the shows. So I imagine for the Stargazer at least, they'll wait until after either this season or the next finishes, so they can find inspiration for what to give it.
The Borg ship might do something later this season, or even next season as well, so it might not show up at all in STO until later to avoid spoilers.
They had the Crossfield Class model from CBS for a few months before DSC Season 1 aired, and they didn't even know about the Spore Drive yet. They actually found out by examining the 3D model that the saucer could spin. They asked their CBS contact about it too, I don't remember if they said if they got an answer or not.
Now, with the Cryptic artists working directly on Picard they may have extra inside info this time around, but still, I doubt they'll do anything until it happens on the show.
The Borg ship might do something later this season, or even next season as well, so it might not show up at all in STO until later to avoid spoilers.
They had the Crossfield Class model from CBS for a few months before DSC Season 1 aired, and they didn't even know about the Spore Drive yet. They actually found out by examining the 3D model that the saucer could spin. They asked their CBS contact about it too, I don't remember if they said if they got an answer or not.
Now, with the Cryptic artists working directly on Picard they may have extra inside info this time around, but still, I doubt they'll do anything until it happens on the show.
Drexler referred to it has an Excelsior(R) on Facebook. I assume the R means Refit.
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I know this sounds silly, but bear with me. As a lifelong starship nut, the Ross-class seriously bugs me. I love the entire fleet, and the Ross-class is, erm, interesting, but - I dunno, slapping a perfectly circular Sovereign-class deflector onto a Galaxy-class hull and calling it a refit kinda rubs me the wrong way. I've never been a fan of the Sovereign-class as it felt like a step back rather than forward in starship design lineage, and now it feels like they've taken the most graceful Starfleet design ever made and somehow made it ungraceful. I would love to know if there are any original configuration Galaxy-class ships still out there, as I feel they represented the TNG era so perfectly, and in spite of engineers and their "love to change things" mentality, the Ross-class, unlike the Enterprise-refit, seems kinda...ugly.
The rest of the fleet is amazing BTW. Loved seeing the Obena-class (I presume?) from "Lower Decks", and I was even happy to see more than one Sovereign-class despite my dislike of the design. Maube one of them is the Enterprise-E, still in service? Wonder who the captain is...
The rest of the fleet is amazing BTW. Loved seeing the Obena-class (I presume?) from "Lower Decks", and I was even happy to see more than one Sovereign-class despite my dislike of the design. Maube one of them is the Enterprise-E, still in service? Wonder who the captain is...
