What class of starship is this?

[SicOne]

I've never seen this ship before. In the closing seconds of the DS9 episode "Call To Arms", when the Federation/Klingon task force does their flyby, a ship of an unidentified class appears "above" the two Galaxy-class ships at the 48-second mark in this video, for about 5 seconds, and just to the right of the Defiant-class (Not THE Defiant, but the Defiant-class that accompanied the task force). Right before the cutaway to credits, several more ships of this class appear at the very top of the screen, but farther away than the first appearance. It doesn't look like anything I'm familiar with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQR1qLyG94w

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure if I get the exact ship you mean, but there are a couple of apparent Steamrunners up there that have very pronounced pylons and secondary hulls, and very subdued nacelles and consequently round-looking primary hulls, due to the lighting setup - they look almost like Constitution refits.

Here we can see the single ship above the Galaxies and next to the Defiant - or its bottom half, but enough to reveal its identity as a Steamrunner. Or at least a CGI model intended to represent that class, but if it's not accurate enough but some sort of a cheaper version, we can always call it a subclass or a new class...

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/5x26/calltoarms_939.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nightfall to-Ennien]

Definitely Steamrunner class.

 

[SicOne]

Upon further examination, it looks like bad CGI of a Steamrunner. Looked more like a Constitution-class refit with a slightly different secondary hull than a Steamrunner, though. More pronounced pylons between the nacelles and the "secondary hull" than I'm familiar with on a Steamrunner. Come to think of it, I'm not altogether sure I've seen a Steam from that angle before. If it were coming directly towards the camera it might be more distinct.

 

[Dukhat]

IIRC, "A Call to Arms" used the CGI models of the Akira, Saber and Steamrunner before they were remapped for the start of the 6th season. Therefore the ships were lower-poly here than later on in the battle scenes.

 

[Melakon]

Wasn't the original Steamrunner mesh lost after First Contact? Did they build a new version?

 

[Timo]

The Norway was both left fairly unfinished and later lost. I haven't heard of others going missing, merely being superseded by something more suited for the TV episodes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

I don't know much in the way of how such CGI productions work, but couldn't they have created a new Norway mesh from scratch?

 

[Dukhat]

I don't know much in the way of how such CGI productions work, but couldn't they have created a new Norway mesh from scratch?

Well, one can create any design from scratch, but they probably didn't bother because:

1. They already had the Akira, Steamrunner, Saber, and Miranda CGI models from ILM, the CGI Nebula class Bonchune from Voyager, and they scanned the Jein Excelsior, the Defiant, and the Enterprise-D physical models into CGI, so one more ship wouldn't have been necessary, and...

2. The Norway was a relatively simple and uninteresting design.

 

[sojourner]

Wasn't a new excelsior class cgi model created at one point?

 

[Dukhat]

Wasn't a new excelsior class cgi model created at one point?

The new Excelsior physical model Greg Jein built for VOY "Flashback" was scanned into a CGI model for the DS9 fleet scenes.

 

[varek]

Has Starfleet continued to construct carrier-ships, like the Akira-class and some of these others you have mentioned? I think it is a great idea, to carry at least one squadron of fighters aboard.

However, fighters may be more-useful in a planet's atmosphere, for bombing (torpedoing) and close-air support roles. So, only distinctly military ships might be designed for carrying them.

 

[Unicron]

There are some non-canon sources, chiefly Jackill's and Ships of the Star Fleet, which have some dedicated shuttlecarriers and through deck cruisers. Jackill's is the main source I know of that includes a wide range of small craft, including fighters.

One trick with this sort of thing is that it depends on whether you assume that other capital ships, such as cruisers, might have their own capacity to carry fighters (or to carry them under special assignments). In that case, it makes sense to have fewer dedicated carriers because the only real advantage they have is sheer numbers. This is the case with series like B5 and Star Wars, as well as Battletech, where many capital ships have some fighters.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Has Starfleet continued to construct carrier-ships, like the Akira-class and some of these others you have mentioned? I think it is a great idea, to carry at least one squadron of fighters aboard.

However, fighters may be more-useful in a planet's atmosphere, for bombing (torpedoing) and close-air support roles. So, only distinctly military ships might be designed for carrying them.

They'd have to be much smaller than the fighters we've seen onscreen to make it through the Akira's wee shuttlebay doors.

 

[Timo]

Not that much. Assuming that the cockpit really is the size of the Type 15 shuttlepod from TNG (as per the interior, which was shot using that prop), and assuming that the outer wing panels fold at the obvious lines, these things could be shot out of fairly small doors folded up and then deploy those wingtips (which preclude landing on a level surface anyway)...

The Steamrunner certainly has much bigger doors, basically Galaxy primary shuttlebay size, but even her putative "bow doors" (those fancy blue things in the bow cutout) would seem sufficient for spitting out folded-up attack craft.

...Which is another thing we ought to consider: those craft were officially "attack" units, which is classically terminology for (air)craft that don't fight other (air)craft, but instead strike at ground targets - or, just possibly, ships. It's quite possible that these fighters have no real anti-ship role or capabilities, which is why Sisko was so solemn about sending them to their deaths against Cardassian ships in the battle to retake DS9. OTOH, we've seen Steamrunners fare rather poorly in ship-to-ship: in DS9, they practically never manage to fire any weapons, and there and in ST:FC, they appear to be the ships Voted Most Likely And Numerous to Go Down in Flames in No Time Flat. Perhaps that's a match made in heaven, and Steamrunners chiefly exist to deliver those attack craft to planets in need of some attacking, much like today's LSD or LST ships (or at most LPH or LHD/LHA ships) rather than aircraft carriers...

The Akira is a different beast, frequently seen firing weapons and sometimes even scoring some results (even though funnily enough, only the Defiant and the Galaxy class ever score any actual onscreen kills in the Dominion War). Not sure if she'd really be a fightercarrier or a LHA, or even a cruiser-carrier like the old Soviet Kiev, despite having a shuttlebay or two. But I wouldn't blame Starfleet for having a "hybrid" ship type or two for frontier use, for bush wars of all sorts that could use a little bit of cruiser, a little bit of carrier, a little bit of planetary assault ship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rarewolf]

Isn't it possible the fighters were just remote controlled? Picard piloted his Runabout to its destruction in Timescape by remote. And Data the Argo's shuttle in Nemesis.

 

[Timo]

Well, Bashir and O'Brien quote the Charge of the Light Brigade specifically in relation to the plight of those fighters. Would they get that sentimental about drones?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rarewolf]

I would have that was in relation to the battle in general.

 

[Timo]

The poem is surprisingly specific a match for the onscreen events, in two ways...

If it refers to the fighters, then it is a good analogy to a specific type of troops bravely performing an attack for which they were not tactically suited and which they could never hope to complete. Light cavalry against artillery and infantry would be asymmetry similar to fighters vs. Galor formations. And the fighters did ride into an almost literal "valley" of death where the immobile superior enemy waited.

If it refers to the battle in general, then there's the fact that there were 600 Federation ships partaking... Obviously not a number picked completely at random!

Timo Saloniemi