The Many Miranda predecessors!

[Norsehound]

A thought experiment here.

Reading David Mack's excellent Vanguard series, we're given the TOS Miranda-class Bombay. While I like accepting the idea of the Bombay, I find it hard to accept the Miranda that far early for a number of reasons...

...one of which is because of just how many Miranda predecessors there are in that timeline, and how to reconcile all of them existing in starfleet! It's easier for me to believe the later Miranda-class is an outgrowth of the Constitution modernization, rather than a long-lived cruiser trying to compete with the D7 design for longevity.

FASA gives us the Anton class research cruisers. Examples of this class upgraded like the Reliant become the Reliant class.

Then we have Masao's awesome Pyotr Velikiy class starships, which for all intents and purposes look like TOS Mirandas without being TOS Mirandas. Vanguard also mentions the Dauntless, also a Pyotr Velikiy class, apparently existing concurrently with the Miranda.

Masao also has the Capella class, which he describes as a functional predecessor to the Miranda by being a jeep ship for the Federation. This is something that apparently the Mirandas became by the 24th century.

So with at least three classes of ship overlapping the Miranda's design space in Starfleet, how would you go about reconciling not only where and how the Miranda should exist while these other classes are there, but why does the Miranda out-last all of them?

"Starfleet used all of them" is a little too simple and uninteresting I think. Why did Starfleet authorize all of them, if that's the case? And with the Constitution already happening who gets the space for being second fiddle, and why do the other alternatives exist and had construction space?

 

[Avro Arrow]

A thought experiment here.

Reading David Mack's excellent Vanguard series, we're given the TOS Miranda-class Bombay. While I like accepting the idea of the Bombay, I find it hard to accept the Miranda that far early for a number of reasons...

Then you should go back and watch "Court Martial". The magic of Blu-Ray has showed us that the Reliant already existed in the TOS timeframe!

(And just a small point of order: There were other authors who wrote for the Vanguard series. Primarily Ward & Dilmore, but Marco Palmieri also wrote a story in "Declassified". In fact I think it was the Palmieri story that established the class of the Dauntless...)

...one of which is because of just how many Miranda predecessors there are in that timeline, and how to reconcile all of them existing in starfleet! It's easier for me to believe the later Miranda-class is an outgrowth of the Constitution modernization, rather than a long-lived cruiser trying to compete with the D7 design for longevity.

FASA gives us the Anton class research cruisers. Examples of this class upgraded like the Reliant become the Reliant class.

Then we have Masao's awesome Pyotr Velikiy class starships, which for all intents and purposes look like TOS Mirandas without being TOS Mirandas. Vanguard also mentions the Dauntless, also a Pyotr Velikiy class, apparently existing concurrently with the Miranda.

Masao also has the Capella class, which he describes as a functional predecessor to the Miranda by being a jeep ship for the Federation. This is something that apparently the Mirandas became by the 24th century.

So with at least three classes of ship overlapping the Miranda's design space in Starfleet, how would you go about reconciling not only where and how the Miranda should exist while these other classes are there, but why does the Miranda out-last all of them?

"Starfleet used all of them" is a little too simple and uninteresting I think. Why did Starfleet authorize all of them, if that's the case? And with the Constitution already happening who gets the space for being second fiddle, and why do the other alternatives exist and had construction space?

Why? The Pyotr Velikiy is a heavy cruiser. The Capella is a support ship. The Miranda is... somewhere between the two. Despite their outward similarities, they would presumably all have fairly distinct mission profiles. (And really, they don't even look all that similar to me, beyond the oversimplification of "saucer, two nacelles, and no separate secondary hull".)

And while discussing Miranda predecessors, you didn't even mention the fandom Surya class!

 

[Norsehound]

Yeah that story was "Ruins of Noble Men". I don't think Reliant was ever officially classified, was it? I always believed it was a light cruiser of some kind in comparison to the Enterprise, though it could have been rated as a heavy cruiser at an earlier date. She could have been a TOS light cruiser, but what distinction then would she have from the Pyotr Velikiy?

And you're right about the Surya! I knew about that class but overlooked it when posting. What was the Surya anyway? I know of its existance but not where it came from or where else it featured.

 

[Timo]

Ships of the Star Fleet gives us two predecessors to the Reliant design of ST2:TWoK - the Surya, with gullwing pylons and a backstory of having been directly derived from an earlier but distinct "heavy destroyer" class, and the Coventry, which is essentially the Reliant without a torpedo roll bar and with TOS style surface finish. There's also a hybrid of sorts, one USS Noshiro, in that work.

Jackill's fandom art adds the Benning, differing minimally from Coventry. But the backstory for all of them is that Starfleet eventually converts every surviving hull to the one and only Reliant configuration anyway. Even the Antons, apparently.

I don't have a problem with this multitude of "original" designs that eventually coalesce into the final product. Indeed, I'd very much like to add another - a TOS era class heralded by one USS Miranda, NCC-1833 (the one number no fan source appropriated), and launched before any of the others, therefore becoming the namesake for the entire extended family ultimately.

There aren't specific real world precedents to this sort of "many become one" development, but certain approximate analogies do exist, especially from the WWII era when the best of several initially largely experimental types eventually entered mass production of unprecedented scale.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

Most of the "official" unofficial sources I've read classify the Reliant as a Medium Cruiser.

An interview with Joe Jennings who helped design the Reliant went so far as to say that the Reliant was more like a cutter or a buoy tender and likely never ventured out and explored the Galaxy like the Enterprise, but rather stayed close to home and plied know territory.

 

[Timo]

...Which makes it mysterious why she should look almost identical to Kirk's ship, the two designs sharing basically all the components and systems we can identify. This runs contrary to our intuition, as real-world ships with different roles also look different.

ST3 makes a much better job at establishing the Grissom and the Excelsior as distinct from Kirk's ship in the Starfleet food chain.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

^
Indeed. I didn't take his input regarding that too seriously as he also said that the Reliant would have fewer weapons than the Enterprise, which we know isn't the case.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I don't think Reliant was ever officially classified, was it?

"Officially"? Not that I know of. Unofficially, Reliant has been classified as pretty much everything, depending on the source!

And you're right about the Surya! I knew about that class but overlooked it when posting. What was the Surya anyway? I know of its existance but not where it came from or where else it featured.

As Timo mentioned, Surya was featured in Ships of the Star Fleet, but I don't know if that was its first appearance or not. It was classified as a frigate.

Ships of the Star Fleet gives us two predecessors to the Reliant design of ST2:TWoK - the Surya, with gullwing pylons and a backstory of having been directly derived from an earlier but distinct "heavy destroyer" class, and the Coventry, which is essentially the Reliant without a torpedo roll bar and with TOS style surface finish.

Strangely, the Surya has a short hull, like the Knox, and Coventry has an extended hull, like Reliant... but it was Surya that was directly refit to the Avenger class (as SotSF called Reliant's class).

I don't have a problem with this multitude of "original" designs that eventually coalesce into the final product. Indeed, I'd very much like to add another - a TOS era class heralded by one USS Miranda, NCC-1833 (the one number no fan source appropriated), and launched before any of the others, therefore becoming the namesake for the entire extended family ultimately.

Didn't the OP already mention this? This would be the TOS-styled Miranda class as represented by Vanguard's Bombay, would it not? Or are you referring to something different?

Most of the "official" unofficial sources I've read classify the Reliant as a Medium Cruiser.

Sorry for the rant here... but every time I hear that term, it's like nails on a chalkboard. The first place I ever remember seeing it was the DS9 Technical Manual, but I've seen it online a lot since. You know what you call a ship between a light cruiser and a heavy cruiser? A cruiser. That noun doesn't always have to be modified.

The term "medium cruiser" always makes me think of someone trying to order one with their Big Mac combo, or something.

Sorry, rant over. (This wasn't directed at you specifically, Shark, just a general rant!)

 

[Timo]

As Timo mentioned, Surya was featured in Ships of the Star Fleet, but I don't know if that was its first appearance or not. It was classified as a frigate.

... And after the Avenger refit, she was specifically called a "heavy frigate", a designation famous from (and unique to) the early United States navy. Back in those days, the designation meant "heavy cruiser"... So Khan was basically matching Kirk in practice, but choosing to differ semantically.

Strangely, the Surya has a short hull, like the Knox, and Coventry has an extended hull, like Reliant... but it was Surya that was directly refit to the Avenger class (as SotSF called Reliant's class).

We might argue Starfleet saw less reason to "put right" the Coventry, as only the Surya suffered from an insufficiently short hull in desperate need of amending.

Didn't the OP already mention this? This would be the TOS-styled Miranda class as represented by Vanguard's Bombay, would it not? Or are you referring to something different?

I thought the OP was asking for various approaches to "reconciling", and mine is that among the early mix there was one variant that, rather randomly, donated the common name to the entire family - whereas the "family" thing only came to be because Starfleet took everything it had and used it as raw material for creating the common-standard movie era design.

I'm not sure whether the Bombay would be an original Miranda in my books. I mean, the motivation for that would be twofold:

1) She's not part of the other classes mentioned, because fans have already created rather complete lists of names for those.
2) She's not any of the SotSF variants, because she has rear torpedoes.

But the books do give her a registry, and that doesn't fit in the "Miranda slot" left in the SotSF registry listings (from 1833 to 1842). The Bombay is NCC-1926 instead, alas. So possibly a later batch. And possibly identical in shape to one of the batches already mentioned, just like Avenger and Cyane are identical and were distinguished by the authors mainly because they liked their registries sequential and had to deal with (sometimes misread) TOS movie registries that (they thought) represented a broader range than could be fitted within the Avenger concept.

You know what you call a ship between a light cruiser and a heavy cruiser? A cruiser.

Well, possibly. But the words "light cruiser" and "heavy cruiser" were defined with the specific intent of covering all the designs allowed under the treaty that defined those. The plain term "cruiser" had last seen use in the sailing era, where it had replaced the former "frigate" one on one; after that the errand ships had become known by more specific names, and there were no "cruisers" there, just things like "light armored cruisers" or "protected cruisers" or "armored cruisers" (to take a snapshot of an era).

We have little idea what makes or breaks a "light cruiser" in the TOS or TNG eras. Might be everything is indeed divided in three, there being "light", "medium" and "heavy" designs (even if only the first and last have been mentioned in dialogue). Might be that "battle cruiser" features in there, too (even though only Klingons have used that terminology for Starfleet ships). Might be that in the 24th century, "star cruiser" is part of the range, too (even though the usage from "Peak Performance" might be for a more generic or more specific category level, not directly competing with the "heavies" and "lights").

And yes, this definitely goes under the "general rant" category, too!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

Let's not forget InPayne's interesting little kitbash, the U.S.S. Minmus.

 

[Shawnster]

Or the Soyuz Class. According to TNG's "Cause and Effect," the USS Bozeman, NCC 1941 was lost in 2278, only to have actually fallen into a temporal rift to the TNG era of 2368. The Bozeman was lost 5 years before the 2283 date McCoy states for the Romulan Ale in Star Trek II.

If we're going to reconcile the various Miranda predecessors, we need to include the Soyuz Class.

 

[aridas sofia]

You are right that cruisers and frigates are conceptually the same animal, cruiser being the iron navy name for the wood navy's frigate. I was trying in the classification of Surya and Avenger as frigates to say they were the same as Enterprise, but different. I elaborated on that in recent times on the FRS website. I was always bothered by the lack of explanation for some ships having underslung nacelles and some having their nacelles above the saucer, but otherwise being pretty much the same. And it was Enterprise versus Reliant that most bothered me.

But I finally figured out a reasonable explanation. The nacelle is the source of the space warp. It is a giant gravity-antigravity manipulator. The deflectors are possibly antigravitational (repulsive) in nature. And the internal environment has finely tuned artificial gravity.

So the placement of nacelles either above or below the gravity plane of the saucer influences whether the ship emphasizes speed or defense. A frigate is like an ironclad. It emphasizes shielding. The cruiser emphasizes speed like a clipper. Otherwise they are generally similar.

At least, in my mind.

On Coventry versus Surya, Coventry is a more evolved idea, closer to the eventual Avenger plan. So it would sort of be Surya>Coventry>Avenger. Thus Coventry did not require the upgrade. Surya did.

 

[Timo]

If we're going to reconcile the various Miranda predecessors, we need to include the Soyuz Class.

Not necessarily. She could be a fairly modern development, retired early not because of age but because she played a special role that ceased to exist (either because the relevant threat disappeared, or the relevant technologies got outdated - the latter sounds more likely on the eve of the Big Fight that fizzled into the Khitomer peace). By the time she was first introduced, the "Miranda Question" might already have been wholly sorted out, with all the ships (save a few Coventries with one nacelle in the grave already) already commonalized into the Avenger configuration.

She's not part of the "lineage" as such, then, and definitely not a predecessor, but simply a modular option for the already unified "Miranda class".

OTOH, what to make of the supposed fact that the hull of the Bozeman says 1941 atop but 1841 at the bottom? Having this one known Soyuz be in the "Miranda Slot" of free registries would allow us to have various sorts of speculative fun. OTOH, having her be in the same slot (?) as the Bombay is also intriguing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

If we're going to reconcile the various Miranda predecessors, we need to include the Soyuz Class.

Not necessarily. She could be a fairly modern development, retired early not because of age but because she played a special role that ceased to exist (either because the relevant threat disappeared, or the relevant technologies got outdated...

Timo Saloniemi

There is a real-world equivalent of this with the early missle-subs and Radar-picket subs. The U.S. Navy refitted and retrofitted old diesel subs for this role and by the time of their completion the projects had been pretty much scrapped and the boats rendered obsolete.

 

[publiusr]

The old Tugs were the first to show underslung nacelles

 

[Timo]

Might be that propulsive warp fields and torpedo warp fields are best kept maximally separated. So when the location for one element is chosen, the one for the other is already dictated. One then wonders which is more likely to be established first...

Perhaps nacelles above or below the saucer are for ships that wish to have modular torpedo launchers, to be installed on separate pylons or arches on the opposite side of the hull - a compromise on warp to facilitate the weapons. Ships with nacelles directly behind the saucer have the best warp performance, but then the modular mount would have to go disproportionately far above or below, and a humbler fixed installation (typically on the same side of the centerline as the structure that allowed the nacelles to be placed aft of the saucer, for simplicity) is chosen.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Fardell]

Might be that propulsive warp fields and torpedo warp fields are best kept maximally separated. So when the location for one element is chosen, the one for the other is already dictated. One then wonders which is more likely to be established first...

Perhaps nacelles above or below the saucer are for ships that wish to have modular torpedo launchers, to be installed on separate pylons or arches on the opposite side of the hull - a compromise on warp to facilitate the weapons. Ships with nacelles directly behind the saucer have the best warp performance, but then the modular mount would have to go disproportionately far above or below, and a humbler fixed installation (typically on the same side of the centerline as the structure that allowed the nacelles to be placed aft of the saucer, for simplicity) is chosen.

Timo Saloniemi

Then again, Defiant fired its weapons, including torpedoes, from the nacelle cowling...

 

[Timo]

...But we could argue that quantum torpedoes are incapable of warp speeds. After all, they were never fired at FTL, or across great distances! Perhaps warp torps need to be separated, and this is why the Defiant has a separate launcher for those (and for probes, as seen) at the extreme bow.

There's also a stern launcher somewhere, as mentioned in dialogue, but our only actual sight of that in "Paradise Lost" was from an angle that didn't allow us to tell anything beyond "It's aft... Or underbelly... Or thereabouts".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

Little-known Einstein's Law of FTL Ordinance: Super-luminal weapons always travel at the speed of plot and are not in any way subject to either the laws of general or quantum physics.

 

[Timo]

Or in other words, the number of film frames it takes for the death ray or blast of doom to cross the screen from hero to villain is constant, regardless of the speeds or distances involved.

Which sort of makes me think Trek phasers and other beams are essentially weaponized transporters: the beam doesn't really travel from A to B at speed V as much as establishes a connection between A and B in time T, T being a hardware-specific constant.

Timo Saloniemi