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STID: The ‘Other' Starship / [Spoiler]

Or as I like to call it, a BFG. (Doom reference there.)

So, supposedly, this ship requires less crew than the Enterprise to operate it. Then, why was the ship built to resemble a ship that needed crew, considering that these ships had equipment specifically built to house and sustain a crew, why not choose a shape that efficiently maximizes the potential of the automation-ness?
 
Or as I like to call it, a BFG. (Doom reference there.)

So, supposedly, this ship requires less crew than the Enterprise to operate it. Then, why was the ship built to resemble a ship that needed crew, considering that these ships had equipment specifically built to house and sustain a crew, why not choose a shape that efficiently maximizes the potential of the automation-ness?

I'll take a stab at this. The ship is essentially a roving weapons platform, so it does not need a large crew to do its primary job. However, I can envisage scenarios when transporting a large number of troops for a hostile engagement on some distant planet might make this ship useful as a very powerful (and thus not easily dissuaded) troop ship. Such a ship, whatever its ultimate purpose, clearly represents a major expenditure/consumption of resources and it would only be logical for it to have a secondary function to make that investment more manageable. As such, its shape is conducive to transport duties while maintaining its primary purpose as a roving weapons platform.
 
(defying all logic with the new much larger sets including the brewery engineering which is nearly 200 meters long alone and the new hangar which is 3 times the size of the old, not to mention the new much larger portholes and triple decker bridge cap which also has hallways and additional rooms on either side of the much larger bridge )

The actual brewery (Budweiser in Northridge, CA) is not even 200m long. Wide-angle camera lenses typically make small things look big. Besides, it was my impression that JJ's original idea was to make the "lower decks" of the ship look 'rough'. It makes a bit more sense if you imagine ALL of the secondary hull is engineering and the shuttle bay.

Also, the bridge is clearly not under the dome structure in the new ship. It's several decks below, which allows for the corridor access.

In any event, we will agree to disagree. I think it's clear someone (who likely didn't understand how big a "meter" was) screwed up in production with the shuttle bay scene, and everything else has been to justify this fact. Until they state the size of the ship *in the movie*, I'll consider anything else to be non-canon.

Actually the brewery is far bigger than 200 meters I drive by it three times a week. It's a huge complex
And you can disagree but as King Daniel more clearly demonstrates the new huge size makes sense and the original larger canon size actually makes more sense
I don't need to argue this point it's official anyway and it's a reboot as well everything is different
But it's all a world of make believe anyway so if you want your E to be comparable to the originals size then go for it brotha
I prefer mine to be able to crush Picard's puny enterprises into paste though
 
There's also the fact that in the first film when they report "at maximum warp", the HUD on the viewscreen behind says "Warp 4.25".

Which is still obviously fast enough to get them to Vulcan in a few hours instead of two days the refit E in The Motion Picture was capable of.

So three times faster would be Warp 12.75 if taken entirely literally, or if it applies just to warp and not manuvering in general.
 
The 366 size looks a little too small to me...but is it just me, or does the 735 look WAY too big?

I like to imagine that the reality is somewhere in the middle. Maybe in the 500's range. But maybe I'm wrong. (And I've heard that the ship's scale was not really very consistent from scene to scene in the last movie anyway...)

ETA: Actually on closer look, the 366 looks *about right*...maybe a wee bit small, that's all. In fact, that's probably closer to how I imagine it in my mind.

Or maybe it's a bit closer to 400...?
 
This ship is classified as a dreadnought. By definition, this ship is a combat vessel with heavy caliber weapons. It is not a transport vessel.

Our current Navy is working on building drone ships that will monitor submarines. Though they have things common to all ships, they are designed differently.

http://www.businessinsider.com/navy-wants-completely-craft-remotely-subs-submarines-2013-3

This is an example of an anti-submarine vessel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_class_littoral_combat_ship

Now, applying this to Federation starships. This Dreadnought Class starship is essentially a combat drone with limited crew interface, probably for controlling the vessel manually from a bridge. They may need a few decks for a sickbay, quarters, and mess halls. The rest of the ship would be occupied by equipment for the weapons and the engineering.

What do I know about Federation starships? They are composed of two major hull structures: a primary hull which houses and sustains the crew and a secondary hull which houses main engineering. In some classes, these two hulls are condensed into a single form.

So, when designing this new ship, why wasn't the two hulls condensed, so that there would be one hull which housed the main gun? I have seen fictional ships designed like this. In Mass Effect, there are dreadnought type ships which have a single hull housing a massive mass acceleration gun. The gun, or what I have seen of it, for this new ship looks less like a phaser, and more like a mass acceleration cannon. (I am not saying that it is a mac; it might be a fancy phaser cannon that requires rails for the launching of the "shell".)
 
Actually the brewery is far bigger than 200 meters I drive by it three times a week. It's a huge complex

The complex is bigger than 200m, but each of the buildings is about 100m long. This can be checked with google (I did). Any one of those would easily fit inside the secondary hull of a 300m long Enterprise, especially if (a) it wasn't the whole brewery building, and (b) it was only engineering and the shuttle bay in the hull.

I don't need to argue this point it's official anyway
But it's not really official. ILM claims something, but as others have pointed out their numbers bounce wildly around. Add to that the external look of the ship is identical to the TMP refit, down to the round hatches and the portholes. I personally don't trust ILM's artists when it comes to measurements in metric.

Also, somehow it took Spock about 2 seconds to go from the shuttle bay to the bridge on the turbolift in ST09. If the enterprise is roughly 200m tall, that turbolift is moving at quite a clip. Thank god for inertial dampners...

Official is what we see on screen, otherwise people wouldn't dismiss Roddenberry's comments so readily (e.g. Klingon bumps -- he said they always had them, but a canon explanation had to be found anyway...).

But alas. No need to rehash four years ago.
 
Spock enters a turbollift at the interior end of the shuttlebay, he arrives directly at the bridge. Those two points are on a perfect diagonal, it's entirely possible there is a 45 degree shaft desgined for much more rapid transit from the bay to the bridge.

Which is something I always wanted to see since being opposite ends of the ship, during an emergency, there would need to be something for much faster travel.

The shuttlebay scene, the engineering sections, the bridge exterior 'looking in' shots, the size and amount of the dilitium reactors all show a ship nearly 500 meters long.

The pod landing on Delta Vega is detailed, whereas the object fired from the ship is smooth and bullet shaped, obviously a first stage re-entry covering for the pod Jim is in, maybe even carrying several pods if need be.

Few if any shots give reason to believe this ship is 400m or lower, and far too many give it at 500+
 
The makers of the movie say the ship is 725 meters long. They're the people who designed, modelled and detailed it. Who put it in the virtual environments. Yes, there was some camera trickery (the Enterprise was made much smaller to fit over the shipyard location - just as Kirk running into the ice cave on Delta Vega was a child running into a half-sized cave entrance), but 725m is their stated intention. It's ridiculous that some fans seem to think they know better. Who are you guys kidding?
 
If they say over Warp 10 in the cinema my brain will explode for a moment :)

Ship is 725m long. This forum nit picked the ship size to death for months/years after release.
 
The makers of the movie say the ship is 725 meters long. They're the people who designed, modelled and detailed it. Who put it in the virtual environments. Yes, there was some camera trickery (the Enterprise was made much smaller to fit over the shipyard location - just as Kirk running into the ice cave on Delta Vega was a child running into a half-sized cave entrance), but 725m is their stated intention. It's ridiculous that some fans seem to think they know better. Who are you guys kidding?

This
Nuff said
 
I don't like the 725m size, but if that's what they say it is, that's how big it is.

I will say that I don't like the design, particularly the secondary hull. The saucer looks too far back, cramped against the nacelles, and the cutaway on the lower part of the secondary comes way too far forward. It looks unbalanced, with too much visual weight on the front of the secondary hull rather than the saucer.

As for the "Dreadnaught," it looks impressive - though I do wish JJ had thrown in that third nacelle as a call-out to those of us who cut our teeth on Franz Joseph.
 
Wow! This new Dreadnaught 'beastie' of a starship looks awesome!!!!

I still prefer the NuPrise over it, in terms of design - but it looks suitably menacing for an adversary ship.

That shot against the backdrop of nebula space is awe-inspiring.

Bring on the movie!!!!

:)
 
I don't like the 725m size, but if that's what they say it is, that's how big it is.

I will say that I don't like the design, particularly the secondary hull. The saucer looks too far back, cramped against the nacelles, and the cutaway on the lower part of the secondary comes way too far forward. It looks unbalanced, with too much visual weight on the front of the secondary hull rather than the saucer.
Are people really still reciting the Catalog of Stylistic Complaints™ rather than simply saying that they'd rather it looked exactly like the Original Series Enterprise or the TMP Refit? Because none of those details are "wrong" by any other yardstick.
 
Are people really still reciting the Catalog of Stylistic Complaints™ rather than simply saying that they'd rather it looked exactly like the Original Series Enterprise or the TMP Refit? Because none of those details are "wrong" by any other yardstick.

I have zero stylistic complaints -- I like the design, and I think it's very true to the TOS/TMP refit. What I don't like is the sudden shift in scale that happens every scene. I read an interview where an ILM animator said that they scaled the ship to "whatever looked good." 725m 1200m, 30m, whatever fits in the frame.

Look, I teach college science to kids who don't have any concept about the scale of the metric system. They think a ball dropped from a table to the floor will end up with a speed of 1000 m/s. Why should I expect some animator who went to film school to understand the scale any more? They aren't engineers or architects -- they focus on aesthetics. So if something looks better being three times the size it really is, then it becomes three times the size.

The exterior of the nu-E is a carbon copy of the exterior of the TMP-E. Ergo, it is the same size. If they really wanted to scale it up, they should have made the effort to do more than resize a JPG by 200%. Grade: FAIL.
 
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I don't like the 725m size, but if that's what they say it is, that's how big it is.

I will say that I don't like the design, particularly the secondary hull. The saucer looks too far back, cramped against the nacelles, and the cutaway on the lower part of the secondary comes way too far forward. It looks unbalanced, with too much visual weight on the front of the secondary hull rather than the saucer.
Are people really still reciting the Catalog of Stylistic Complaints™ rather than simply saying that they'd rather it looked exactly like the Original Series Enterprise or the TMP Refit? Because none of those details are "wrong" by any other yardstick.

They don't have to be "wrong" for me not to like them; nor would the design have to mimic one of the previous ones in all details for me to like it.
 
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