Starship Size Argument™ thread

[Crazy Eddie]

That's like saying that because a 747 can haul some freight that you don't need or want cargo versions of the plane sans passengers. You could do it, but its not optimized for either. It's why every time they try to make an all-service fighter the thing always ends up compromised up the wazoo and expensive as Hell.

Which is one of the reasons I have never believed Starfleet was a straight up "military" organization. A general-purpose starship like Enterprise makes sense as an exploration vessel, one that can fight if it has to but isn't specialized for combat and spends most of its talents on scientific research and field engineering. Contrast with combat specialists like Vengeance and Defiant, the existence of which is both rare and controversial and hard to justify except in the face of the most extreme threats. That's almost the exact opposite priority of military thinking, where the generalist designs tend to be the more controversial and have the hardest time attracting funding.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Scaling the ship up without adjusting the specific details is what makes it seem wrong & silly and implausible,

What details should they have adjusted?

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the story from the VFX people that the ship was designed to be pretty much the same scale as the original and then well into production they realized that it needed to be significantly bigger to accommodate the shuttle bay, engineering, etc. and so they just scaled down the windows and that side docking port (at least it used to be a docking port, apparently now it's a recalcitrant crewman ejection tube) and didn't bother to add more windows so that it would look like there were more decks?

The choice to make the windows larger instead of more numerous was a deliberate one. In Star Trek: The Art of the Movie there is this concept illustration of the Enterprise with more, and smaller, windows:

 

[greenlight]

What details should they have adjusted?

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the story from the VFX people that the ship was designed to be pretty much the same scale as the original and then well into production they realized that it needed to be significantly bigger to accommodate the shuttle bay, engineering, etc. and so they just scaled down the windows and that side docking port (at least it used to be a docking port, apparently now it's a recalcitrant crewman ejection tube) and didn't bother to add more windows so that it would look like there were more decks?

The choice to make the windows larger instead of more numerous was a deliberate one. In Star Trek: The Art of the Movie there is this concept illustration of the Enterprise with more, and smaller, windows:

Deliberate, how? Do they say? I've never been a fan of having the outside of the ship littered with windows, but when you keep the same number of windows in the same place and just make the ship bigger, it suggests a certain... laziness. Or lack of time (which would suggest poor planning or preparation).

Again, while I'd have preferred a ship the same size as the original, I don't mind that they've made it bigger. I just think they were sloppy in how they went about it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the story from the VFX people that the ship was designed to be pretty much the same scale as the original and then well into production they realized that it needed to be significantly bigger to accommodate the shuttle bay, engineering, etc. and so they just scaled down the windows and that side docking port (at least it used to be a docking port, apparently now it's a recalcitrant crewman ejection tube) and didn't bother to add more windows so that it would look like there were more decks?

The choice to make the windows larger instead of more numerous was a deliberate one. In Star Trek: The Art of the Movie there is this concept illustration of the Enterprise with more, and smaller, windows:

Deliberate, how? Do they say? I've never been a fan of having the outside of the ship littered with windows, but when you keep the same number of windows in the same place and just make the ship bigger, it suggests a certain... laziness. Or lack of time (which would suggest poor planning or preparation).

Again, while I'd have preferred a ship the same size as the original, I don't mind that they've made it bigger. I just think they were sloppy in how they went about it.

Again, the larger windows was a stylistic choice. The redesign with the windows resized probably looked a little strange so they kept the original window details and changed the interior textures visible through them.

Look at it from a cinematographer's point of view. You have to be a lot more concerned with what LOOKS good than anything else. If the original model looks better than the revised one, you go back to the original and make it work with fewer changes. Which is, actually, something I wish the producers of TNG had done when they built the 4-foot Enterprise model.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Deliberate, how? Do they say? I've never been a fan of having the outside of the ship littered with windows, but when you keep the same number of windows in the same place and just make the ship bigger, it suggests a certain... laziness. Or lack of time (which would suggest poor planning or preparation).

That they have concept art of the ship with lots of smaller windows shows that it was considered but ultimately rejected.

 

[Belz...]

didn't bother to add more windows so that it would look like there were more decks?

The Enterprise isn't a cruise ship, you know. There's really no need for windows at all except in case of power failure.

And the main phasers on USS Vengeance are exactly that: in Khan's final attack against the Enterprise, those two phaser banks detach from the ship and attack Enterprise independently.

Really ? I figured that's what they did but I didn't catch that in the theatre.

 

[Belz...]

Deliberate, how? Do they say?

It wasn't accidental, so it was deliberate.

 

[newtontomato539]

The windows were smaller. Then they were bigger.

How does screaming, "Get off my lawn!" help?

 

[M'Sharak]

The windows were smaller. Then they were bigger.

How does screaming, "Get off my lawn!" help?

And one more time: if you can't post anything but spam, you really ought to consider posting nothing at all.

 

[Gonzo]

didn't bother to add more windows so that it would look like there were more decks?

The Enterprise isn't a cruise ship, you know. There's really no need for windows at all except in case of power failure.

I agree Belz... The NuEnterprise is not a family ship like the Enterprise D and as such does not need so many windows.

A few on the forum think that because the NuEnterprise is as big as the Enterprise D then it should have the same number and size of windows which is ridiculous.

They tried it with more smaller windows and it didn't look right so they added fewer larger ones so it was deliberate and it looks fine, as I said in an earlier post the larger windows on the saucer edge could easily be corridors or large social areas.

 

[Mountie1988]

The zero-G window washers on board all the other ships on a 5-year deep space voyage...
are they redshirts, blueshirts or private contractors?

Probably they just regularly go to a star cruiser wash site on rigel VII

 

[F. King Daniel]

^When they need to clean the windows, they just dip into the nearest ocean

 

[newtontomato539]

Exactly. No more plot hole.

Of Course, there was no plot hole.

Just because something is not explained, does not make it a plot hole. tm

 

[Kevman7987]

The zero-G window washers on board all the other ships on a 5-year deep space voyage...
are they redshirts, blueshirts or private contractors?

Probably they just regularly go to a star cruiser wash site on Rigel VII

I always wondered about the enlisted crew that are on janitorial duty. Someone has to go around vacuuming the rugs in the corridors and wiping down the touch screens. Who goes and unplugs the toilets? On that point, how do Trek toilets work? Do the toilets use reverse-replicator technology?

 

[The Librarian]

The zero-G window washers on board all the other ships on a 5-year deep space voyage...
are they redshirts, blueshirts or private contractors?

Probably they just regularly go to a star cruiser wash site on Rigel VII

I always wondered about the enlisted crew that are on janitorial duty. Someone has to go around vacuuming the rugs in the corridors and wiping down the touch screens. Who goes and unplugs the toilets? On that point, how do Trek toilets work? Do the toilets use reverse-replicator technology?

I think they've mastered space roombas.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

didn't bother to add more windows so that it would look like there were more decks?

The Enterprise isn't a cruise ship, you know. There's really no need for windows at all except in case of power failure.

You're overlooking the other reason for windows on a starship: observing fish.

 

[greenlight]

Just to be clear, I wasn't arguing that a larger ship needs more windows (in fact I said that I didn't like the tendency to cover the surface with windows and preferred far fewer windows on my ships). It's just that if you design a ship at a particular size with a certain number of windows that seem to indicate a certain number of decks, and then say the ship is now twice as big without making any changes other than just scaling the windows and ports that are already there, well that just seems lazy.

As I said earlier in the thread, it really reminded me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTwz-mlJPL0

 

[Kevman7987]

Just to be clear, I wasn't arguing that a larger ship needs more windows (in fact I said that I didn't like the tendency to cover the surface with windows and preferred far fewer windows on my ships). It's just that if you design a ship at a particular size with a certain number of windows that seem to indicate a certain number of decks, and then say the ship is now twice as big without making any changes other than just scaling the windows and ports that are already there, well that just seems lazy.

As I said earlier in the thread, it really reminded me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTwz-mlJPL0

Thank you. That's what I've been trying to say as well, through two different threads no less.

 

[Belz...]

Just to be clear, I wasn't arguing that a larger ship needs more windows (in fact I said that I didn't like the tendency to cover the surface with windows and preferred far fewer windows on my ships). It's just that if you design a ship at a particular size with a certain number of windows that seem to indicate a certain number of decks, and then say the ship is now twice as big without making any changes other than just scaling the windows and ports that are already there, well that just seems lazy.

Perhaps. It's something that bothered me a bit about the resizing at first. But then I realised that the windows don't indicate decks at all. As I said, there could be zero windows on the ship. What would you say, then ?

 

[drt]

It's something that bothered me a bit about the resizing at first. But then I realised that the windows don't indicate decks at all.

Plus, it's really only noticeable in the dorsal and secondary hull, maybe all of those decks are two "primary hull" decks tall. The engineering spaces don't seem to have a traditional deck structure at all.


I'm cool with the 2x increase in the nuEnterprise's size, since they did the exact same thing with the original Jeffries ship.