Hi guys,
Been looking at the various ship designs up for "Titan-hood" for a while, and I'm one of the guys who would have liked a more "old-school classic" configuration. That said, I do think that Sean did a nice job on his ship. It definitely does look "Trek-ish."
I do agree with some of the criticisms I've seen here, and would like to suggest minor revisions for that purpose. First off, the lower-hull-mismatch issue is major, obviously, and I see your point re: the docking ports but this is also someplace I'd recommend a rethinking.
The biggest single issue I see is the impulse engine placement. Now, a lot of "treknology" has had the same basic problem, not the lead of which is the Enterprise E. But remember that impulse engines are actually fusion rocket thrusters. That's been established as canon. In other words, they follow the known Newtonian rules of physics.
What this means is that, for a ship to be able to actually fly under impulse, you need to be able to put the thrust vector DIRECTLY through the center of mass of the ship. And to steer, you need to be able to vector the thrust away from center of mass.
Any time that the thrust vector is not passing directly through the ship's center of mass, the ship will turn. This is BASIC physics, any High School graduate should know this (although, based upon the movies like "Armageddon," or "Deep Core," a lot of people in Hollywood didn't bother to attend any of their science classes!).
The original Enterprise would have met this requirement, if you assume that the warp nacelles are pretty heavy and that the secondary hull was relatively light.
Andy Probert did an amazing job with the Enterprise D in this regard, by putting three impulse thrust ports on the ship. In separated mode, the secondary hull unit would presumably be in-line with the secondary hull center of mass, and the two primary hull ones would have been symmetrical around the primary hull's center of mass. And in joined mode, well, the combined thrust would pass through the joined ship's center of mass. Of course, with multiple engine locatins, you can steer by altering the relative thrust of each location.
A three-point thrust arrangement like the Enterprise D allows for turning left, right, up, or down, without changing the actual direction of thrust at all. A two-point (like Voyager, Enterprise E, etc) requires vectoring of thrust if the ship is going to turn up or down. This is my big issue with the Enterprise E... it could NEVER go nose-down under impulse power! Voyager could vector it's pylon-mounted engines, though. Earlier ships like the TV and movie 1701, the Defiant, etc, would have to rely entirely on maneuvering jets for steering, but would have the thrust vector properly located.
Here's the deal... unless your warp nacelles are MASSLESS, your ship will not be able to maneuver with the current impulse configuration. If they fire straight ahead, the ship will just spin, nose-down, and never go anywhere. In order to fire through the ship's center of mass, They'd actually have to be firing upwards and to the fore of the ship.. and the ship would have to fly... well, rear-end-forward.
Another problem is that the impulse exhausst will scorch the paint right off the nacelle pylons. And if you ever tried to vector the thrust even slightly downwards, these engines would burn right through the pylons. If you "shielded" the pylons to protect them, you'd still be applying most of your impulse thrust against the ship itself in that case, and youu'd never get ANYWHERE.
Fortunately, there's a simple solution which will fix your problem. Use the Andy Probert Enterprise D approach.
Move the primary hull engines up a bit. Let them have a clear linear thrust path which is well clear of the pylons. Add a third (or a pair... third and fourth?) to the inside of the secondary hull fantail region. Then, you get all the advantages of discussed above and would never have to worry about vectoring thrust for steering anyway. A minor change to the design which would make it WORK, within the real laws of physics. Ideally, try to get an equilateral triangle for the arrangement.
Regarding the sensor net... if you go with the same approach I used for mine (ie, the net is actually a deployable towed-array that's actually physically a net!), don't forget to add in a deployment bay for it to be "reeled up" into, and a set of tractor and deflector beam emitters to allow manipulation of the deployed array (as well as to provide "virtual drag" to allow it to fold up behind the ship if when being retracted).
I do agree with the argument re: shields versus "catamarans." I don't mind them being there, of course... but with weapons which can allow a single starship to devastate the surface of a planet (General Order 24), it seems to me that once shields are down, cutting through an unshielded hull should be like putting a hot knife into butter. You can say that the materials are tougher than those we have today, but again we get into real laws of physics, the relationship between mass and energy, yadda yadda... bottom line, no material short of collapsed neutrons ("neutronium") could handle that sort of energy applied energy, and a one-foot-by-one-foot block of neutronium would weigh significantly more than the entire planet Earth, so that's not really practical as a building material (unless you're building a planet killer, I suppose!)
SO... keep the catamarans... they look OK in the design... but give them some other purpose. Maybe make them the primary hull's deuterium tankage, or dedicated cargo facilities, or secondary hangars, or put the primary hull fusion reactors there... hey, if you do what I suggest with the impulse engines, you could combine this "fix" with the engine one I mention above... deuterium slush tanks and primary hull impulse engines located in the "catamarans"... what do you think?
As for moving the bridge "inside," I always liked the explanation that the bridge module was detachable/replaceable, and that it was seated at the top of the main computer core (I think Shane Johnson came up with that idea, didn't he?) with the main helm console literally at the top end of the main computer's data "spine." The bridge should stay where it is, if my say counts at all!
Finally, for anyone interested in another "take," here's my own take (several more images are posted over on the S&S board). I tried to do a merge between the Constitution and Sovereign designs. It's not the Titan, or the Luna class anymore, obviously... I think you're looking at the Vega Class Exploratory Cruiser (all named after early Federation colonies which have become full members), and my "ship of choice" will be one of the names below:
Achenar
Adhara
Aldebaran
Altair
Canopus
Crucis
Deneb
Polaris
Procyon
Regulus
Sirius
Anyway, here you go..
[image]http://images.snapfish.com/344<2<8%3B23232%7Ffp64%3Dot>2357%3D%3B2<%3D474%3DXROQDF>2323%3B6676%3B736ot1lsi[/image]
[image]http://images.snapfish.com/344<2<5523232%7Ffp63%3Dot>2357%3D%3B2<%3D474%3DXROQDF>2323%3B66758988ot1lsi[/image]
