I mean, a nacelle is just a housing shell. The innards can (& often do) look completely different. Maybe it was an impromptu source of confusion to the enemy.
Imagine thinking the Ambassador-class model "wasn't suitable" for adding to the Dominion War fleet but the Yaeger or the Centaur or the Raging Queen or would fit right in...
Oh, I agree that it’s just a shell. I just don’t like anachronistic-looking things when there’s no logical reason for it. You know, like the new Titan. The AMT Enterprise-C model kit didn’t come out until 1999, during the last season of DS9. So it did not exist to be able to be used as background ships. And the actual filming model of the Ambassador class wasn’t available, having been damaged and crated away after season 1.
I remember EAS used to have "rationalized" versions of some of the Frankenships, like the Curry and Raging Queen with the nacelles shrunk down so they were to scale with the Excelsior parts. But those drawings are gone now.
He only did that with the Curry, not the Raging Queen. And it’s still in his site under the starship database.
Weren't there two physical models of the Ambassador-class though, one for the Enterprise-C type and one for the Yamagauchi/Zhukov-type? They also declined to build a CGI Ambassador which would have solved that problem. They still had other decent physical ship models at their disposal, such as the Constellation-class, which I have always believed would have made more sense than all those cannon fodder Mirandas.
I could've sworn there was an older version of that page that used to have versions of the drawings of the Curry (or Queen) with the nacelles at the right relative scale, but I just stepped through the Internet Archive, and it seems that article has always been as it is now. As @Dukhat points out, the drawing of the Curry is in the EAS Starship list, but I thought there was another page that drew more attention to the change. Maybe I was just confabulating that entry in the list with the parts in the main article talking about how several of the DS9TM drawings didn't match the models and were redone by the site.
Yes. The original Ent-C model was sold to a private collector. They had the three First Contact ships from ILM, and CG models of Jein’s “Flashback” Excelsior, the Miranda class, the Galaxy class and the Defiant class, taken from scans of the original filming models. They also had original CGI models of the Nebula class (made by Rob Bonchune) and the CG Voyager, Nova and Prometheus classes (but declined to use the latter three for whatever reason.) Apparently they felt that those 8 ship classes were enough diversity in the fleet that they didn’t need to fish the damaged Yamaguchi out of a crate somewhere to fix it and scan it as well. Actually, they had no physical models available by that time other than the Defiant and the Voyager. Most of the other ones (Constellation included) had been either carted off to places like Planet Hollywood or retired and crated up once motion control went the way of the dinosaur and CGI started taking its place.
EVERYONE forgets the Norway Huh. TIL. Thank you, that does certainly explain a few things. TBH that's how I see the Mirandas too... little more than giant drones. We already know from TNG that they had tiny crews and were heavily automated by the 2360s anyway.
Actually, according to David Stipes, ILM did give them the Norway model but for some reason they couldn’t use it. The prevailing rumor previously was that ILM lost the mesh and never gave it to the DS9 production. That’s why they used the Voyager filming model as the USS Bellerophon in DS9: the script called for a guest starship and they only had the Defiant model available. In lieu of having to relabel the Defiant model as a guest ship, or having a new ship model built, they asked the VOY producers if they could borrow their model.
Different roles I have seen suggested for the Norway: 1. Science and/or diplomatic vessel. 2. Anti-borg monitor (Venom Geek). 3. Truck (Darin Wagner). 4. First responder vessel (certifiably in game). What ever the intended role, this craft has some sort of beam weapon in the nose. In universe, this seems to be a rare ship. If not designed as a dedicated warship, its presence at the Battle of Sector 001 suggests that the Admiralty was getting desperate. Some of Starfleet's support ships may be lightly armed for self defense, as well as sporting military grade shields. Throwing them into battle would indicate desperation, as well as conforming to Dukhat's suggestion that they are legitimate ship classes.
Given that the original Steamrunner model was clearly a bit broken (there's that infamous "textures don't line up with the actual model" issue on the secondary hull, and Doug Drexler once posted images of the original Steamrunner model showing corrupted textures elsewhere too) I can entirely believe that ILM sent them the Norway model but it was corrupted to the point of being unrecoverable. Surely that's just its navigational deflector? It's like Voyager's auxiliary deflector in its nose, but larger because the Norway doesn't have a conventional secondary hull.
It was more about the sets - DS9 had moved on from physical models by season 7. They could have just used the same old Defiant corridors again and said it was any other ship (in Waltz they had stood in for the Nebula-class Honshu), but they were able to use the Voyager sets for a few days instead, which gave the episode a more unique feel and helped make Bashir seem more isolated in unfamiliar territory. As Ron Moore said: "When we started structuring the show, I called Rick Berman and Brannon Braga and Merri Howard and said, 'I'd really like to use the Voyager sets on this.' We could have reused the Defiant sets once again, saying the Bellerophon was a Defiant-class ship, but I didn't want to. I thought that using a bigger starship with a different look would make the mission seem bigger and more important. And we could save a lot of money if we went over and used their existing stuff, rather than building a new ship." Some of the Bellerophon shots are stock footage anyway, so the hurdle was really getting Berman to agree to a rare "crossing of the streams" and showing one show's lead ship in the other series. Voyager had already used the Defiant CGI model the previous year, but clearly there was still a desire to keep the Enterprise-E exclusive to the movies, and the use of the Intrepid in DS9 was a one-off.
By the time of the Battle of Sector 001, production of generalist ships-of-the-line will likely cease except for this. I figure that, in packs, these could be useful against the bug ships. This up gunned Raven was likely inspired by the border wars. One-on-one this version could likely defeat a Hideki or a Talarian warship.
Despite what that non-canon website states, the Raven-type ships are not Starfleet vessels. They are civilian ships.
Given that it's literally an upscaled Starfleet runabout with a different nacelle configuration and we've seen Oberths in both Starfleet and civilian hands (indeed the Raven itself is referred to as both the USS Raven and the SS Raven at various points), I don't see any reason to assume that. However, that's a moot point as the website specifically discusses a Starfleet variant (designated the Raven-class) of the canonical Aerie-class or Raven-type civilian vessel which sidesteps the issue IMO.
Specifically so per the article. Nope, estimated as 90m in both cases (from the Decipher RPG originally, but generally accepted), so slightly smaller than the standard Klingon Bird-of-Prey, but probably more similar to the Xhosa honestly.