Is it the one from the original trailer where Boimler is having his off-off-uniform moment and Mariner is clad in spacewalk gear sans helmet? The big window sorta fits. Timo Saloniemi
So based on that description (and the design of the ship), I’m now wondering if the California class has been in service for quite a long time, and the Cerritos is just the newest to be commissioned. The circular hull is much more evocative of the Ambassador class than the elliptical Galaxy and Sovereign classes, or the more pointed Intrepid and Prometheus classes. Perhaps the U.S.S. California was commissioned in the 2340’s.
That’s definitely possible. Heck, the USN is still building and commissioning DDGs, and the lead ship was placed in service in 1991. Detail design of it began sometime in the 1980’s... (And IIRC there’s talk of building 40+ more of them). Cheers, -CM-
Entirely plausible! Personally I find the design a bit ugly, and my headcanon for now is that the California class are among the "Frankenstein fleet" of ugly ships that were hastily bolted together ASAP to get something out of spacedock in time for the Dominion War. She looks to me like a shortcut version of a Nebula class.
My main issue is with the StarDrive section is so low that it's somewhat blocking the line of sight between the two Nacelles. Not completely, but like the Nebula Class, there is some blockage, I wish the Star Drive was a bit higher to allow Warp Nacelle Clearance for the inner Warp Field Grilles to have clear line of sight of each other.
The only views I still don't like are front and aft. It's growing on me from dorsal, ventral, and lateral
Maybe I'm easy to please, but for some reason the Cerritos clicked with me immediately. The fact that it looks a litte cumbersome and lacks a certain grace make it more endearing to me. I like that it doesn't look huge, that the saucer is a circle and not an ellipse and that all elements seem to be put togehter a little clumsily. What's cool about the star drive/engineering section is that its general shape reminds me of the warp field stabilizer (or whatever) from the NX-01, which in turn always looked to me like they parked a Romulan bird-of-prey between the nacelles.
So.. Question.. WHERE.. is the shuttle bay? I don't see any pod bay doors for HAL to open! the MSD shows it in the Rear, but I don't see any big doors for it in the ship shots.
- Ah, that's easy to explain: Deck six (I think? The upper saucer edge deck, anyway) has two rows of windows - an upper set for "normal"-sized humanoids to gaze out of, and a lower set for the multitude of Ithenite crewpeople who serve aboard California-class ships
The more I look at that ship, the more I’m thinking that the class is a mid-point between the Ambassador and the Galaxy. It’s got the round Ambassador saucer but the deflector of the Galaxy. The nacelles are unique though and not evocative of either class. But then again we’ve seen other nacelle designs like the Cheyenne class and the Raven type that aren’t the same as the Ambassador or Galaxy types.
I kind of get the impression that the California was that midpoint workhorse tug that got pressed in to further and further service attrition happened.
Supposedly, the California class has "always" been around. If that's the case, perhaps the basic design could go back further than we think, to Kirk's or even Archer's time. I mean, the Cerritos is late TNG-era, just by the registry alone, but maybe the overall Californias have swapped out saucers and nacelles and the little drive section, ad nauseum. The original USS California would be a museum piece with NX-style hull plating and the USS Compton was a TOS-style white ship. The Riverside has a Sovereign sensibility and could overpower the Cerritos or Long Beach in a heartbeat. In STPicard's day, the Simi Valley is the latest iteration and has a very pointed arrowhead in place of an old-style saucer.
Can definitely see the half way design between the Galaxy and Ambassador. It's just a shame the nacelles couldn't have been a bit more familiar. They look like marker pens.
Well, we’d have to know if we should take the statement ‘always been around’ literally or figuratively. Literally, as you say, the class has been around since the formation of the Federation, which means that the class has been refit over a period of 200 years from a ship that looks like Archer’s NX-01 to Picard’s Enterprise-D (not to mention differences in ship sizes between those eras), which I don’t find to be very realistic. But figuratively, it would just mean that support ships have been around all this time, and the California class is just the newest type of support ship. The Cheyenne and Springfield classes had nacelles that were made from marker pens too.