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[Star Trek] Exposit the Dialog
05-05-2009, 09:08 PM
This is an excuse/explanation for a technical design that's been wandering around my head for a while now. It has no real context or point, I just found myself typing rather than jobhunting.
"So what am I looking at?"
"These are the images captured by the Gorget of that new Galaxy variant that hit the Gideri III picket. Our own people have gone over them extensively, but we wanted an unbiased expert to check our findings."
"Hmmm... All right, give me a few hours."
*hours later*
"Overall, this new model of yours is an impressive piece of work. I'd estimate a three or four-fold improvement in combat power over the older design, while still using less than ten percent 'new design' components."
"That's a higher degree of commonality than our own initial analyses had gotten."
"Hmm, it doesn't look it, does it? But here, see, the spacing of the new primary hull phaser arrays from the basic model? The underlying structural members are laid out concentrically and further components built onto them, of course, and both sets of new arrays are at precisely the same relation to the nearest beams as the original was to its own nearest.
"The secondary hull, what we've seen of it - notice how the new forward half is vertically symmetrical as well as laterally? I'd bet you dinner it's no more than a lightly altered mirroring. The lengthwise stretching is almost exactly fifty percent - I think that they inserted 'straight' sections into the skeleton after every two of the original curved ones. And, again, the new phaser arrays line up with the inner structure in the same way as the old ones.
"The powerplant, though we can only guess at the actual configuration, is running close to exactly four times what we have for their 'new model's' output - I think that they've found a way to synchronize the powerplants and then duplicated them for this class. It'd require internal reworking, but they'd have to tear down that hull almost completely anyway in order to do what we can see they've done.
"The nacelles - they look like a completely new design, don't they? But look at the efficiency figures, here. That wobble in the power curve? I think it's a temperature difference between coils. Rather than having each coil perfectly tuned for its place in sequence, they're running matched pairs, one a little cold and one a little hot, and adapted their new model cruiser housings to fit around them. They lose a little reserve and some operating time doing it that way, but for practical purposes they pick up more by having four of the things rather than two. The mounting pylons aren't new components either - from ahead, that curve matches up with - here. They just ran more of the structure beams and assembled them differently.
"The sensors, the torpedo launchers - essentially just remountings of their known top-line systems, though from putting the turrets there, port and starboard dorsal and ventral superstructure, we know that they've moved the computer cores.
"The deflector system is a new model, though, to leave room for the new torpedo launchers outboard of it, and I doubt they'll use it anywhere else. Their 'new design' battleships are too small for it. The roll bar pod is new, though I expect them to get more use out of it. The defensive screens aren't - new, I mean - but there are certainly a lot of them.
"Overall, I'd say that the speed increase would 'only' let it keep up with a Sovereign, and maneuver speed might actually be down, depending on the exact specs of the new RCS system - but I make it at least three times the beam firepower and eleven torpedo turrets rather than two linear launchers, along with what I'd eyeball at a fourfold improvment in defense. Not a brilliant or elegant design, but a well-thought out and very formidable one."
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
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Sorry, but that post combined with your signature made me recast Star Trek: TNG, as an all-catgirl production.
...That may be worth adressing further.
Anything else on this ship design?
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The deflector dish mentioned is a round model, set in the kind of v-profile of the front of the secondary hull. The 'neck' is pretty heavily altered,
shortened vertically, so that the navigational deflector's sightline clears the bottom of the saucer by just barely enough to squeeze a torpedo launcher in
between the two, then lengthened longitudinally, with new sections built up so that there's an almost straight line from the captain's yacht dock to
the torpedo turret to the top of the dish housing and a 'streamlined' faring built up along the back, including a new, larger, and better centered
primary impulse engine. Both of the secondary shuttlebays now open out of the side of the neck rather than the back.
The new nacelles are modeled after the Akira rather than the older Galaxy, and carried below and outboard and above and inboard of their original position,
after the 'Yamato class' design seen in Klingon Academy and Starfleet Command 1 and 2, with arcing panels connecting them and serving as mounting
points for two of the secondary hull's three phaser array sets as well as secondary impulse engines. The mentioned roll bar pod is, of course, mounted
between and above from the two 'upper' nacelles. The nacelle pylons mount about the same distance back from the bow as they used to, or, in other
words, from about the middle of the engineering hull rather than its extreme rear.
...I started out annoyed at people slamming the Galaxy for having an ugly design asthetic, but things kinda grew from there.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
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Uhm, V... the Galaxy is incredibly ugly.
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This is a value judgement that, as noted, I disagree with.
Is it the same kind of 'oooh, pretty' as, say, a Sovereign? No, by no means. But there's a lot of stuff there that I like.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
CattyNebulart
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very few star trek ships strike me as pretty.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Most of the Federation ships look rather skeletal to me.... Then they go and paint them all white and light gray. Then they add red 'eye' things on
them....that utopia has an oddly necromantic feel to their ships really.
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Quote:Most of the Federation ships look rather skeletal to me.... Then they go and paint them all white and light gray. Then they add red 'eye' things on them....that utopia has an oddly necromantic feel to their ships really.
Oddly skeletal... red eyes... maybe it's based on salvaged Cylon tech?
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Quote: Oddly skeletal... red eyes... maybe it's based on salvaged Cylon tech?
Necron would be better.
Partly because because I have no knowledge of either "Klingon Academy" or "Starfleet Command 1 and 2" -- I presume they're
games -- I'm almost completely unable to visualize this ship effectively. Forming clear mental pictures has never been one of my strong points, anyway -- I
need a diagram to go with the text, or I'm lost.
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Galaxy class was the Enterprise-D.
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them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
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This isn't exactly the
layout that I was remembering from KA, but it should be close enough to give an idea.
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"Yes, and it was glorious."
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That's LIGHT-YEARS prettier than the Galaxy.
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Actually, I really don't think it's a very good image of the Yamato class. I just grabbed it as an example of the layout I was pulling from.
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I'm quite happy to be a minority on this, 'cause I think the Galaxy class was gorgeous
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"...do you mind telling me what those cylinders are that you grafted onto the Runabout are for?"
"Tactical Pods."
"Tactical pods that are longer than the ship they're mounted on? You replaced the warp nacelles with them! What use is a runabout that can't go to warp? Hell, you can't get it into a standard shuttlebay!"
"It's carrying fifty-four kilograms of anitmatter."
"...now I don't want it in a shuttlebay. What the hell were you thinking!?"
"Mostly that I liked the idea of having a couple of dozen of these descend on a Borg Cube and unleashing co-ordinated spreads of several hundred photon torpedoes."
"...How many can you get aboard if we modify the shuttlebay?"
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Personally, I don't appreciate people getting down on the aesthetics of the good old Galaxy myself, but in a ways I can see where these people are coming
from. For one, it is one of the few designs where the saucer section exceeds the 'height' of the warp nacells. In fact, the Galaxy class does so far
more than any other class I've seen, save for those with 'underslung' style nacells. Others like the Sovreign class and the ever-venerable
Excelsior class have them level with their saucer sections.
Aesthetics aside, I like the Galaxy class for what it's meant to be: an all-round ship intended for long-duration jaunts into the unknowns, complete with
interchangeable mission-specific modules. (If you never knew about that, then you never leafed through the official technical manual. I own a copy, though
it's in storage somehwere.)
On the Yamato... Those images posted earlier do it little justice. Here's an image on Photobucket that does a much better
job. It's ripped straight from KA, so it's not as good as a nice 3D render job.
I've got to admit, that ship is an absolute beast. Someone was definitely going for overkill when they concepted that sucker. What's more is that I
bet that, for it's size, it can still haul around pretty good in a furball. It certainly looks like a ship that is not to be trifled with and I now plan
on featuring this one in my stories to come.
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The Galaxy, as Enterprise 2.0, makes a lot more sense when looking at some of the concept art. These images, I feel, really show the 'missing link'
between Constitution-refit and Galaxy.
http://www.ottens.co.uk/f...k/images/TNG/ENT_New.jpg
http://www.ottens.co.uk/f...images/TNG/M_STtng04.jpg
I do agree that it doesn't have the look of a warship, but then, it wasn't supposed to. The Galaxy fits with the idea of a Federation that is only
warlike out of necessity- it's a ship of exploration, science, diplomacy, and helping those in need.
Being able to kick metric arseloads of ass is secondary.
Really, can you imagine trying to make first contact with a Yamato? The way that thing looks, Starfleet might be saying "We come in peace!", but all
the other side can see is "Shoot to kill.".
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A sufficiently Klingon-like species would appreciate the Yamato and what she represents. It honestly depends on what kind of culture you're dealing with. Just look at the Human-Minbarri First Contact - they came in with their gun ports open.
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Quote: Really, can you imagine trying to make first contact with a Yamato? The way that thing looks, Starfleet might be saying "We come in peace!", but
all the other side can see is "Shoot to kill."
There's a Trek novel came out in '88 titled Final Frontier (no relation to the movie) by Diane Carey. It involves a confrontation
between the Enterprise (1701) on her first mission, before she was even named, with the Romulans -- who take one look at the design and think:
Quote: Wicked white.... Its hulls were designed like weapons of war: battle shield, club, and lance. Even at this distance, they could see laser portals, a heavy
sensor disk, engines bigger than most whole ships, and a haughtiness that soldiers of their fabric understood very well.
... A single word might as well have been painted across the huge ship as clearly as the wings were painted across Raze.
And every man on the bridge knew that word.
Invasion.
Alien minds ... how can we know what they'll find threatening, and what they'll see as a gesture of peace?
As a side note, this book has the Romulans develop the cloaking device because Enterprise got out of a tight situation by tricking them into thinking
the Federation already had one. And James Kirk's father was Robert April's second in command on this first mission.
Oh, and thanks for the pictures; they were quite helpful, although I wasn't actually asking for them, just explaining my inadequacy. I can't even
envision my own designs properly without drawing them -- which I usually do only to figure out where the weapons emplacements
are.
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Quote: Bluemage wrote:
The Galaxy, as Enterprise 2.0, makes a lot more sense when looking at some of the concept art. These images, I feel, really show the 'missing link'
between Constitution-refit and Galaxy.
http://www.ottens.co.uk/f...k/images/TNG/ENT_New.jpg
http://www.ottens.co.uk/f...images/TNG/M_STtng04.jpg
Sorry Bluemage the links don't work for me 
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try the old Copypasta trick
Werked for me
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them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
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They're the first two pics on the bottom-right of this page:
http://www.ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/tng_1.php
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
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