It’s possible the Romulans patrol the Neutral Zone with ships rather than monitoring outposts. Then again, although it cannot apply here being a post TOS production, I believe Romulan outposts were referenced in first season TNG’s “The Neutral Zone.” A neutral zone in interstellar space is problematic given how vast interstellar space is. How wide can you realistically negotiate this zone to be? And how extensive would your resources have to be to properly monitor such a vast area? This problem extends to all interstellar space—how far can a planet or planets claim space as it’s territory beyond which it’s free space for anyone to travel through. This could be akin to the 5-mile limit that today’s nations can claim as their territorial waters.
Plus, all the star systems are moving in all different directions (though not much in a hundred year cycle). What was once outside the neutral zone may move into it at some point in time. Nice plot for an episode.
Who knows how long whip antennas can be—Dyson Harrop deals like lines that hit aircraft in Vietnam… Low visibility, high gain still?
The reuse was actually in "The Paradise Syndrome". The thing is, because of Hansens' line about a mile deep, I always took it that the base was totally within the asteroid, with nothing clearly seen on the surface (phasers or deflector emmiters, which weren't shown on the original studio Enterprise miniature. Deflector grids, of course, come later in time, in the Technical Manual, because of the rarely seen pencil lines on top of the saucer). I do like your speculation outside the threads' scope, about how the outposts (maybe on both sides of the Zone) might have been positioned.
Thinking about 22nd century Earth combat ships. The upper design (2 angles) could be a design that comes online later in the war. The lower design could be one of the initial ships specifically designed for the war.
I really like these designs. Firstly, I can see a submarine-like, conning tower bridge (from even older designs) shrinking into the bridge fin, plus a main deflector moving from the nose of the ship to its own pod as deflector power requirements increase with increasing warp speed. Hull is still cylindrical. For your older ship (bottom), the impulse engines still look be of the "old"-type design and not quite up to the newer "simple" impulse design. We see in the newer ship (upper) with improvements to its impulse engines, bridge structure and hull transition from cylinder to a smoother, spear-shape.
I don’t think these are fully set concepts. I feel close, but not there yet. I am also trying to envision a certain degree of evolution from the ringship Valiant to the Romulan War period. About the only thing I’m certain of is that nacelles are established by the time of the war.
While perhaps not this specifically my 22nd century Constellation is basically what I envision Earth deep space ships to look like prior to the Earth/Romulan war (I might revist/revise this design at some point). But the problem with a sphere is that it can look good from some angles, but not from others. Front front angles it looks too heavy visually, too…blunt, looking awkward and not visually effective. It doesn’t look cool. As such it’s not surprising Matt Jefferies abandoned the sphere when designing his hero ship. I tackled this concept because I have never really liked most of the Daedalus class designs I’ve seen over the years. I like a lot of my concept, but I’m still not that fond of it from the front. And note my forward hull is not a perfect sphere—I squashed it about ten percent so it’s really a fat oval. It’s a subtle and not obvious difference and yet side-by-side it made a world of difference in looking less ungainly.
So it's not just me then? Any time I've seen someone do a very well done schematic close to Matt Jeffries' original design (with all the artistic credit to all versions that they deserve , as I can't draw on computer to save myself), the bow view somehow makes the sphere look larger than when you see the plan view, even when they're on the same page! It's odd, isn't it?
From front angles the sphere becomes more prominent visually. From side or rear angles it is less prominent because you see other things to offset it.
I don’t want to get sidetracked, but I find myself thinking about what an Earth ship could look like before the warships designed for the Earth/Romulan conflict. And I find myself rejecting the spherical front section. No matter what you do with it it looks ungainly. I have something else in mind. While technically not a warship they could have been the first ships Earth used in the conflict before nwer designs were available.
A rough idea, but turning it around in my head I’m liking it. The sphere isn’t totally gone, but rather morphed into something else. This is what Earth could have had at the beginning of the war.
Hmm... This mught work out. I think I'll keep going and see if I can make something of this. I opted not to go with cylindrical nacelles, but I wanted to suggest the evolution from rings to nacelles to cylidtical nacelles. My thinking is that Earth's first purpose built combat ships will have bilateral cylinderical nacelles. That would next lead to ships with a suggestion of saucer shaped hulls.
Reminds me of the Estes U.S.S. Atlantis https://blog.untilsomebodylosesaneye.net/2019/10/where-no-one-has-gone-before.html?m=1 Drawing here https://www.rocketreviews.com/estes-uss-atlantis-3813.html https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/fantasy-scale-star-trek-uss-atlantis-gallery.17384/
Progression. Details help bring it to life and give it a vibe. Yes, that forward hull could evolve into a sphere…or not. I think this manages to look pre Starfleet. It’s an evolutionary step from the ringships to the ships of the Romulan war. I think it does kinda look ‘60s NASA inspired with something of ‘50s/‘60s sci-fi sensibility. This is still essentially a ‘60’s rocketship concept, but evolved away from the classic ‘40’s-‘50’s V2 inspired designs. I went with something other than cylinders for the nacelles because I wanted to suggest the three units as something substituting for a complete ring or rings—these units suggest needing only parts of the ring to achieve the same space warp field. I wonder if some of these ships could still be around during the TOS era. Maybe the Archon or Horizon could have been something like this. While detailing could vary I think this looks like a direction Jefferies could have pondered if he’d gone a slightly different way when designing the Enterprise. It isn’r far removed from his spherical forward hull ideas. And it doesn’t look as far future or as exotic as what he ended up with, which is rather the point of this exercise.
The above design also underlines my frustration/dislike of ENT. Instead of taking the few bits of backstory TOS had on the pre TOS period a century prior and exploring something we hadn’t seen before they opted to do a half-assed TOS reimagining with all manner of familiar fan service thrown into it. It still grates. And I still don’t care for the NX-01. *Sigh* Sorry, I shouldn’t risk derailing my own thread.
I'm looking at this and I find myself thinking about how it would look with a sphere (more a rather fat ovoid) as the front section. I'm thinking it just might work particularly if you get the size just right so it isn't too large or too small.
Maybe two whip antenna curved back to form a half loop to suggest a coming saucer? Save your big sphere-ship as the scene of the signing treaty, maybe the lower nacelle replaced with a big com-dish. The design you have here suggests a modest vessel…that’s fine. The important thing is you have the “V” for victory look with nacelles up versus the lower Romulan wings.