Very rough sketch of an idea I've had for a few weeks. While I do love the TOS Bird of Prey and the revamped design Atolm did for a refit, it's never sat well with me that the Bird of Prey in Star Trek III was supposed to be a Romulan vessel. Yeah it's Klingon in the film but it was built long before they'd changed the villains from the Klingons to the Romulans. For a Romulan ship though, it lacks... elegance. So, my school of thought here, is this Bird of Prey was started about the same time as the Klingon version and they had the same basic design idea down. The Klingons wanted a fast strike ship that was small and agile and could run with minimal crew and looked savage. The Romulans, growing tired of the Klingons need for barbary, went in another direction. Taking the lesson they learned from the TOS plasma weapon, they refined their weapon and bird of prey design so that it was still fearsome, but they had also started screwing around with artificial singularities to power their ships, so instead of just impulse, they had a full blown warp drive once again. To give their Bird of Prey a more elegant look, as well as provide more space for power, they built the wings in a fixed position, and using their Vulcan ancestry, built their warp engines in the spirit of the Vulcan ring ships and into the wings of their ship, leaving a very haunting glow to come off the back of the wings and a highly unusual warp signature on enemy scanners. Since the plasma weapon was taxing, even with the singularity, they added modified disruptors that they lifted from the Klingons to the center of their wings where they could draw the most power with less effort. Slightly larger than the Klingon version, which was tagged more as an aggressive scout, the ouye'Llaihr class was considered a frigate or corvette as it patrolled along the borders before the Romulans self-imposed exile through most of the 24th Century. Obviously, this is a sketch. One that I really think I want to turn into a full blown model for some Starfleet Captain to need a change of pants after getting a look at it.
Well I like where this is heading. I too, have tossed in a lot of nacelle-wing integration on many of my roms, so I approve this as well. Carry on Admiral.
Thanks! I think I'll probably be doing up a rough 3D version as a side project while I work on interiors.
Sweet! I love Roms and I think this has a lot of potential as a really great design. Please keep going
I have been dormant Trek wise for far too long. Been working on lots of non-Trek stuff and job hunting and getting my butt kicked by the holidays and work. Anyway, I haven't come up with a title for this little series yet, but it's set on a smaller scout/science vessel during the TOS run. The Zodiac class has a crew of 40, only has 5 decks, is built to take a beating if needed and deliver one and she's fast. In response to Starfleet and the Federation being kept at arms length (no warships allowed) from an area on the border of Federation, Romulan and Klingon space known as the Triangle (see the old FASA RPG for details), Starfleet Intelligence and Command came up with this idea of a non-threatening (in appearance anyway) ship to scout and help out in the area and try and bring this Neutral area under the wing of the Federation. Of course, the Orions, the free people who live in The Baker's Dozen, the Independent Klingon States, and a bunch of others that call the Triangle home have other ideas. Not to mention the Romulans and Klingons who want this area's rich resources for their own as well. Anyway, the Aries is the last built of the Zodiac class. There are 13 ships in total, the Zodiac being the first of the line and the other signs followed. I decided to go super-cartoony with my characters as I've been doing realistic renders all over the place with my fantasy and hard scifi stuff I've been working on and this is fast and fun. I went back and tuned up my TOS Throwback corridor I built. I was originally going to go pure TOS so I could use existing sets available for free but then I tossed that idea because...well I can never do anything easy. :P A Vulcan and a Tellarite have an argument in the briefing room and their Andorian Commander spaces the both of them. I know there's a punchline somewhere. :P Overall this shares some similarities to the TOS briefing room, but my own spin has been put on it. The idea is to use this as at least two other rooms, much like in TOS where it was used repeatedly for other rooms on the ship. So, Briefing Room now, Mess Hall and Lounge later? Google tells me that one of the top 5 colors for a dining area is turquoise, so here we are at the mess hall redress of the briefing room. With only a crew of 40, the mess hall here can seat half the crew for meal time while the other half works and sleeps. Yes, I may have stolen my own processor/replicator from my TOS Stateroom. :P I'm thinking the table are only going to light up when someone's sitting at them from now on and only if the crew members there request it. More to come!
Thank you! Thanks very much! I used to draw a LOT more than I do anymore. More work on the Aries interiors Going by the logic that a smaller ship will have a smaller crew and more specified needs, a degree of automation was planned into the Aries design and a new bridge set-up was developed and implemented in the Zodiac class. This configuration would soon be deployed to the Saladin class and would be used on several ships in different forms well into the 24 century as a Battle Bridge. While ships much larger would need up to 10 stations on their bridge including the Captain, the Zodiac bridge could smoothly operate with 6 crew including her Captain. So yes, this is a minor redress of the Sephora bridge I built and released last year. I had to do some minor graphics changes to reflect the different ship design, none of which can be seen in the shot, which I find hilarious considering I was so concerned the Saladin graphics would show. I literally spent more time editing the graphics than I did posing the characters. >_< Continuing with my existing set re-dresses for the Aries, this was the Transporter Room I'd built for a hypothetical Destroyer set between the launch of the Connie in 2245 and the refit in 2271. Yeah this set is like 3 years old now and when I loaded it up in DAZ it showed it's age. Still usable, but boy have my design ideas changed a LOT since then. Rather than take the whole room back to Technology Original Standard, I opted to refurbish my consoles, both the Engineering Access Consoles and the Transporter Console itself and made them fit TOS a bit better. And a shot of the Transporter actually in use. Yes, all the lights on the panels 'work' and so do the set of three slider controls. I do need to tweak the emission settings on the central and side displays on the console though.
Thanks! Well I've been busy. First up is another redress of the Briefing Room set by swapping out a wall with another, slightly different lighting and a new paint scheme and furniture. One of the things Captain Avril Galven insisted on having on the ship, was a proper coffee dispenser. What she got was a top of the line replicator that could have any type of coffee or coffeehouse style the end user wanted. She decided to drop it in the main lounge on board the Aries so that the crew could partake in her joy as well, giving this room the moniker "Coffee Lounge" by the crew. With several comfy chairs, a nice couch, a variety of games, PADDs with all the current literature from every species aboard, as well as a nice selection of actual paper books, the "Coffee Lounge" became a favorite off-duty spot. Especially if you wanted to get a glimpse of the Captain out of uniform. A rarity indeed. I'm still a little annoyed the bookshelves reverted to an old low poly version, but I haven't fixed it yet either, so.. meh. Part of what took me so long was researching and modeling a TOS style crash cart. After some advice from both Donny and Rekkert, I ended up going my own way a bit. Some of the equipment on the cart is from a freebie set over on sharecg GeorgeHaze put up. I built a new tricorder, split the difference between the TMP version's shape and the TOS buttons and screen. New hypspray using the same dimensions as McCoy's but using some more modern ideas that got carried over into Discovery but I went with a more TOS flourish with it. Then of course a hypospray mixing device and a double heart monitor and defibrilator. And now on to Sickbay itself... In order to provide some privacy to patients in sickbay as well as a more secure and sterile environment, the USS Aries Sickbay has a lobby at the entrance with a Nurse's station, a small couch for people to wait, and a direct entrance to the Chief Medical Officer's office. Here you can see some anti-viral and anti-bacterial measures in the wall panels based loosely off the technology originally employed by the first cruisers that left Earth with warp drive to help keep down the spread of pathogens among the crew. With it's own set of doors leading into the lobby and the Exam/Operation room, the Chief Medical Officer's office on the Aries has all the amenities of any of the offices on the bigger ships. It's just lacking it's own lab, but with the advancements in scanners and tricorders, the labs are being needed less and less on the smaller ships. While there is a large window looking into the space, with the press of a few buttons, the CMO can activate a 'blind' that frost's the window over giving full privacy to a patient in for a consult or a nosy Captain that needs to but out of the CMO's business. Like it's Constitution Class counter-part, the Aries Exam room in Sickbay doubles as the OR as well as the location of the two cryo-stasis chambers on board. In the inevitable case someone dies in the line of duty, the cryo chambers can be covered with a privacy screen to double as the morgue. Like the Recovery Ward, the Exam/OR contains a crash cart with supplies in case of extreme emergency where the ship may have been over-run or bringing aboard many survivors. Here the Aries Captain is looking to get something to help her with getting a full nights sleep and no, she will not talk about the copious amounts of coffee she drinks. As the Aries is a much smaller ship, the Recovery Ward is also much smaller with only 3 beds. Each bed has privacy screens that extend out from the walls as needed and are stowed when there aren't any patients. Each bed is adjustable for height and angle, and in emergency situations, each is equipped with an anti-grav unit to easily transport a patient in the bed over to the OR or cryo-stasis. I meant to have at least one of the privacy screens out, but alas I didn't lol.
Wow! I'd spend a LOT of time in that coffee lounge The sickbay seems really well thought out, too - and I love the green (although, what would Vulcans think of it?) - but I'd hope not to spend as much time in there. Must remember not to pack my red shirt...
I do love that lounge. I have plans for the arboretum too. I wanted something functional and like the other rooms I wanted some color pop. I may have overdone it here, but it's growing on me.
I started on the bigger of the 4 rooms I have left to do, Engineering, Crew Quarters, the Science Lab, and, well here's the Aries Arboretum roughed out. I'm very aware this is eating up a lot of real estate on a small 5 deck ship, but it functions as a back-up air purifier, a lounge, a place to host visiting dignitaries, and in some cases, science experiments. This is a rough take on it. I've done more work on it, but this is even more complicated than the Engineering set I'd planned. So many plants.... And that frustration and need to create a mirror for it on the opposite side of the saucer led to.... When the Zodiac Class was conceived by Admiral Nogura, it was meant to be a small, fast, tactical vessel. It was to supplement the larger bulkier vessels with something that was quick hitting and could get out fast and take a beating. While this is what they went for when they were designing the class, politics of the region known as The Triangle changed and a small yet beefy science vessel was needed in the area as the Independent worlds in the Triangle weren't going to allow Heavy Cruisers in the area from any of the Big Three. The Zodiac class fit this bill. It was a class that hadn't been seen in any kind of engagements, had a strong and versatile sensor suite, and with as fast as it was, could traverse the Triangle faster than any other ship in Starfleet. And so all Thirteen of the Zodiac class ended up there eventually. The last built of her class, the Aries, like her sister ships, had a multi-purpose room on the opposite side of the saucer from the Arboretum. Up until a week from being ready to go on active duty, this room had been completely ignored. On the Zodiac it was treated like a small quiet meditation lounge. The Pisces had gone a completely different direction with the room. That part of the Pisces still remains classified. When it came down to it, the Captain of the Aries decided that if the ship was going to be a "Science" vessel, she needed an actual Science Lab. Several requisitions later and a makeshift set of lab components was ordered and summarily dumped into the room by Operations. Her instincts paid off as the Federation Council and the Diplomatic Corps decided that the Aries was going to be the poster child for their attempt to bring the Triangle into Federation hands. She only wished she'd asked for more equipment for the lab... I'd been working on the Arboretum when I realized I'd need a room opposite that one on the saucer rim to match the windows I had there. I didn't want to do a full two deck affair again and simply re-dress the Arboretum, so I hatched a plan to 'cut' the Arboretum in half which ended up with me actually building out the mesh again from scratch as I didn't want a planter on the railing in the Science Lab. This came together pretty quickly after that as everything else here is re-purposed equipment from my other sets. The Lab Stations are reworked stations from the Civilian Scout's lab. The Science computers are lifted right out of the bridge Science station. Tricorder is recolored from Sickbay, PADDs are re-uses, etc. Trek re-purposing at it's finest. The only other thing that's really new is the telescope on that upper level looking out the windows. And yes, I know the windows wouldn't be comfortable to look out standing up. It's designed to be enjoyed from a lounge chair or couch, which never got delivered to the Science Lab.
I'm a sucker for a multi-levelled area, and these don't disappoint! I can't wait to see the aboretum full of plants - will there be enough room for a floor to ceiling height tree/triffid/Audrey II, or does the mezzanine level run the entire width of the room? The science lab as the aboretum's opposite number makes sense as this is a science vessel (nice little background write-up). But what's going on at the back? Is that a bowl full of Calvin's oatmeal that's terrorising the crew?!?
Was wondering the same ting and immediately wanted to know where the weapon's locker is at in the lab!
There is room for floor to ceiling plants depending on how they grow. No Audrey II but I'm planning to have a 'man-eating' plant at some point, cause why not?? Evil Pet Slime. One horrible gooey pet coming up. Just don't make eye contact and RUN! LOL They have it up for sale as Evil Pet Slime. I thought it would be 'fun' to study lol And now onto the completed room that started the Science Lab Like most ships of Starfleet, the Aries also has an Arboretum. Sporting a more unique design than the rest of the fleet, the Zodiac class also has a distinct Arboretum. With support for up to six biomes, the Science team has managed to make several species from across the Federation grow. All designed to help with air purification, they were also chosen for each species appreciation for the plants beauty. Aside from some basic science, and a back-up air purifier, the Arboretum also functions as a another crew lounge along with a place to host visiting dignitaries and VIPs. The front area is kept darker, partly for the Andorian vines, but also to enable more practical stargazing out of the viewports. Built everything you see here except for: The Ivy was randomly generated with Ivy Generator - an open source app - and is custom wound around the parts of the set. The rest of the plants are available from DAZ. I decided I just am not in the right mindset to model plants and went with what was available. More shots of this coming with actual characters in them