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3DEnterprise Era ships
Borkless171
Posts: 0Member
Recently, I've been on an Enterprise binge. Say what you will about the story quality, but in my opinion, the pre-federation earth ships just have an awesome look to them. Sadly, there's not many of these ships, so I started tinkering about with my own designs.
This is also a bit of a reimagning, inspired by Masao Okazaki's Starfleet Museum. There will be long walls of text, and departures from on-screen canon.
*ahem* without further ado, a blocked in Starfleet Corvette.
The nose of the ship, with two crew-analogs in the background. The nose will feature a deflector dish, similar to the one carried by Enterprise.
The tail is the most roughed-in area at the moment. I'm flipping between more rocket-like engines, or something closer to normal impulse drive. In any case, the impulse engines take their feed off the main fusion reactor.
- - - Fluff time!
A tiny, fusion powered ship, the Delta class was among the first to mount Dr. Archer's "Wildcat" engine. Unlike the enormous ring-shaped warp coils of the Vulcan fleet, Cochrane's original nacelles pumped highly energized plasma around a series of much tighter coils. While much more energy-efficient, allowing the Pheonix to break the light barrier using only a tiny fission reactor, it produced a dangerously unstable warp field. Even with advanced computer monitoring, Cochrane's engines could only manage warp one point eight, and then only though sheer brute force.
Archer's Wildcat engine solved the instability with two staging coils, the famous "Catamarans" where energized plasma is cajoled into behaving properly, allowing higher speeds with far less energy consumption. The Delta class, despite their diminutive size, can cruise at warp two point five, and have been known to punch it up to warp two-nine for brief periods.
This is also a bit of a reimagning, inspired by Masao Okazaki's Starfleet Museum. There will be long walls of text, and departures from on-screen canon.
*ahem* without further ado, a blocked in Starfleet Corvette.
The nose of the ship, with two crew-analogs in the background. The nose will feature a deflector dish, similar to the one carried by Enterprise.
The tail is the most roughed-in area at the moment. I'm flipping between more rocket-like engines, or something closer to normal impulse drive. In any case, the impulse engines take their feed off the main fusion reactor.
- - - Fluff time!
A tiny, fusion powered ship, the Delta class was among the first to mount Dr. Archer's "Wildcat" engine. Unlike the enormous ring-shaped warp coils of the Vulcan fleet, Cochrane's original nacelles pumped highly energized plasma around a series of much tighter coils. While much more energy-efficient, allowing the Pheonix to break the light barrier using only a tiny fission reactor, it produced a dangerously unstable warp field. Even with advanced computer monitoring, Cochrane's engines could only manage warp one point eight, and then only though sheer brute force.
Archer's Wildcat engine solved the instability with two staging coils, the famous "Catamarans" where energized plasma is cajoled into behaving properly, allowing higher speeds with far less energy consumption. The Delta class, despite their diminutive size, can cruise at warp two point five, and have been known to punch it up to warp two-nine for brief periods.
Post edited by Borkless on
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I love Enterprise, I've been rewatching the series on DVD. I'm up to the episode Minefield.
Odd you should mention Minefield though. I literally watched that yesterday!
- - -
I had a sudden burst of productivity, and hammered out some more goodies. The Hull RCS quads, impulse engines, warp nacelles, and some of the Cat detailing is all knocked in.
The Hull RCS. Might be a little much for this little bird. But operationally she splits the difference between a fighter and a true starship, and thus needs to throw her weight around more.
I roughed out a lot of the Warp Nacelle. The inner flux chillers need to be mounted, as does the end cap, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with these. The only thing that bothers me is they might be better suited on a bigger, more "modern" M/AM powered cruiser, rather than a dinky fusion corvette.
Detailed up the stern a touch. Got some cooling grilles on the Cats. (Don't ask me why those work in space. The NX-01 had them, so I'll assume there somehow needed for the wildcat system.)
I also went with rocket-looking exhausts for the Impulse engines, to give the impression that this a much older ship than we're used to. (How much older I'm not sure, maybe I'll retcon the Wildcat from being Henry Archer's invention.)
- - - More Fluff!
Even with the wildcat to improve fuel efficiency, a Delta is mostly ordnance and armor, with only about 15% of her volume devoted to fuel stores. This makes her much more depended on bases or refueling ships. As Starfleet's main concern at the time was Orion pirates, the limited combat range was considered a justifiable trade-off given the Delta's low cost and powerful ordnance loadout.
Ships like the Trident, Baton Rouge Class, The Patton and the others from the Space Flight Chronology is actually what we should have seen. This is similar to those. Missiles, Impulse driven Warp Drive, pre Di-lithium and laser weaponry.
I don't think there should have been an Enterprise.
These ships are closer to what we are today, visceral , sparse and rugged. It should have looked alot like sub warfare.
For this project, I'm planning on splitting the difference between the two canons. Phasers (or at least phase-canon) are the norm, but thermonuclear missiles are the go-to heavy hitter. Energy shielding is primitive, even among those species that have it. Transporters are unheard of, and all transport is done via shuttles or docking.
I'm also splitting Star Fleet and the United Earth Space Probe Agency. Star Fleet is the military arm, and gets the more advanced, better armed and armored ships like Delta or my revision of the NX class. UESPA, operates the scientific side, running research projects and deploying a handful of Daedalus class exploration cruisers. The Daedalus has its distinctive very simple look as a cost-cutting measure. More on that in a future update.
- - -
Knocked a lot more out of the good o'l Delta.
I detailed up the Warp engines. There's now visible coils on both sides of the nacelle, and the tubular roll-cage along each engine. The dorsal fins are slightly inspired by the JJprise, and the grille at the end is based off the pilot version of the TOS enterprise.
You can also see the aft RCS unit, and some roughed-in structure in the hull. I still need to finish up the nacelle/pylon interface, and add more greebles to the hull trench, but it's a lot better than it was.
Another look at the aft RCS. Not as many nozzles here, because the aft hull is mostly the Wildcat drive and fuel, moving the CG further forwards.
Speaking of the wildcat, I extended the upper Cats and sleeked them up. While the aft half of the cat is still full of plasma-stabilizers, the forward lobe serves as a cowling for the point-defense phaser turrets.
People have to realize that, with the amount of times Kirk, Picard and Sisko and Janeway messed around in the past, that Enterprise is probably in a different timeline than TOS anyway, so it's all good.
now.
- - -
Now, it seems today was a surprisingly productive day, and I got some more knocked out!
Added some fairing to the Nacelle/pylon interface.
Added a fuel-tank thingy between the Cats. Might get rid of it later, but I like how it breaks up the clean lines and makes the ship look a little fugly and primitive.
Last but not least, the Deflector! Right now, it's more TOS dish than TNG blue. Might add in some blue as a backdrop like in ENT, but I kinda like it how it is now.
I thought adding "Star Trek" to the title sucked also. Their viewer numbers were down, so they though they could add that to make sure that people knew it was a Star Trek show. Like anybody who gave a hoot about Star Trek didn't already know exactly what it was. :rolleyes:
Now, someone at F3d noticed the segmentation around the deflector, so I fixed that.
Check out the space in an average submarine for sparse and rugged.
-There should be no full corridors as such and equipment should be in every space.
-The ships shouldn't have saucer either. That's a waste of material for Early Earth (especially if you're going to put a deflector dish at the front to spoil the warp field.
-The shuttle Craft should likely be exterior ships not Interior launched. (again waste of space)
-The medicalbay and bridge are prime examples of space to excess They make it look much to easy
-No fuel constraints....just too easy. TNG-light.
It's your project of course
Shouldn't have shields at all. Should be advanced thermal protection and ablative armor for combat and one hit kills with the nukes. (of course this is too realistic and thats why it wasn't done on Enterprise)
Shields according to the TMP manual is "a highly focused spaital distortion within which an energetic graviton field is maintained." That's alot of excess power those ships shouldn't have. Even a plasma shield to attenuate incoming laser fire would cost much in the way of matter and energy.
If Enterprise were done this way it would have been much more interesting...like I was saying..sparce and rugged.
This is almost exactly what ENT (by some other name of course) should have been. I really wanted to see a more militaristic aspect. A division between the two would have been a good idea...and a more military captain than Archer...or someone more civilian with a military crew much like Seaquest DSV.
It should have been Star Fleet's first ship. It would have been fantastic to see the single Star Fleet join a Military Campaign because the captain had explored this area and the Fleet ends up relying on a civilians against the Romulan attacks...almost playing recon...lots of close calls and Earth military coming to the rescue or even the Hero ship coming in to see the after math of a precursor romulan attack
They wouldn't be Starships...just ships
(that way every Plaque that says "Enterprise" wouldn't be wrong when they called out it's number from the first"
While it would have been cool to see a super-cramped ship, it would have been an utter pain to shoot in, so I can forgive them that. There are also design concessions that aren't totally realistic, but help make everything look Star-trekish.
Regarding the launch bay, since I can't think of a single ship that has optional craft mounted exterior to the hull (excluding Captains' Yachts, which are very sturdily mounted) I'm lead to believe that bolting things externally on a warp-capable ships is bad for keeping them attached. Plus, you'd need a pressurized environment to do maintenance and so on.
As for fuel, I believe Enterprise was the first ship to mount a Matter/Antimatter warp reactor, explaining not only her speed, but her range. Though I'm not certain if this was established in canon, or just Ex-Astris speculation.
I was going for a split between highly-dramatic but technologically shaky battles like we see in the shows, and harsher combat like would happen in real life. Shields (on the rare ships that have them) are very primitive and energy-intensive. A nuke does immense amounts of damage, and just a few hits can tear though the best shielding or hull-polarization available. To defend against nukes, ships carry point-defense guns to shoot-down incoming warheads. Heavy phaser canons serve as an uninterceptable heavy-hitter.
Ship-to-ship combat is a quick and incredibly brutal process as both ships tear at each other, trying to punch an opening to get a nuke though the other's defensive screen.
Regarding shield tech, the way you describe it, it sounds like an off-shoot of Warp tech. If you can accept spacial distortions to travel FTL, why not spacial distortions to at least weaken incoming fire.
Maybe it's too much NeoBSG, but I've always tended towards a highly militarized spacefleet. And the Enterprise numbering isn't really wrong. The NCC-1701 was the first Federation starship to bear the name. The NX doesn't count because it's an earth ship.
Ultimately it would be too "difficult" to keep a TV show under more realistic constraints of the future. Trek was created to be easy on TV production. Even Trek's accelerated future like Trek is still too hard to pull off realistically. They would need so many short cuts.
Right now we only control but ONE of the FOUR known forces of the universe. To do what Trek does you need a second force, the Graviton and the ability to manipulate it. (Warp Drive) gives that power. (Thru EM) But Warp Drive and Shields are as analogous as a automobile to a Laser. Just because you have one doesn't mean you therefore have the other.
Look at the Plaque. It doesn't say "Federation" it says in each succession 3rd 4th, 5th, 6th, "Starship" to bear the name. If it was an alternate future the plaque would be different for Sovereign, 7th starship. Wasn't Archer in "Star Fleet"? Even the Time cops in DS9 say 6th Enterprise. (after ENT-E first showed up in First Contact)
I know everything gets the BSG label when we're talking non-Trek because it's more realistic without all the Energy fields and energy weapons but Trek is more unique than that. Then again...even BSG has "Gravity Plating" It's just TV's compromises to bring us a show at low cost.
- - -
Minor update. I was stumped on how to detail up the flight deck, so I turned (literally) to the belly sled.
There's probably some important hardware in there. I haven't decided if it's part of the deflector array, phaser systems, or more warp-drive gear.
As you may have noticed, there's a docking port on the sled. This allows for resupply and crew transfer with shuttlepods or anything with a standard docking adapter. (Starfleet lacks transporter tech, and even those species that do have transporters don't trust them with organic matter.)
On the more lore-related side, I've decided that Delta class corvettes are all named after historical launch vehicles. (Saturn, Atlas, Falcon, Proton, etc) and their registration codes start with NV (Naval corVette.)
Just with all the thrusters your ship is proving to be better thought out than the ENT era ships. Properly numbered and space for combat and redundancy...(I find realism ridiculously attractive)
Fear not, there's no need to revoke your Trekkie card just yet.
Even if the ships at this time had impulse engines they actually be the type of Rocket engines they described in all the tech manuals instead of the reaction less drives they appear to be in every other Sta Trek Series.
gonna have to disagree with you there - the enterprise itself was cool looking ship - far superior to what abrams did with it!!!!!!
for once the uniforms looked practical too - casting well come on t'pol was HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT and Hoshi DAMN the show had hot women......... sex appeal aside the captain and trip and malcom were all good actors and pretty well fleshed out as characters too
the main flaw with enterprise was the plot....... individual episodes were good it was the temporal cold war and the zindi that ruined the series - also took a few liberties with klingon first contact where was the disaster and the 100 years of war? but i could forgive them that.
jj abrams certainly made a good film but i do think he could have done it without trampling all over the timeline and ruining the look of the enterprise
Well, you have a right to your opinion. Personally, I find ENT the most enjoyable of any Trek series, and the JJ movies are just plain fun.
Agreed. There's just something beautiful about how practical and slightly ugly the NX class is. She's cool for her function, not her form. I'd agree the uniforms were amazing (espcially the dress uniforms. Ties in Star Trek. Finally!), and the casting spectacular, but not about T'pol's hotness. The bowl haircut damped it for me, and the catsuit made it seem like they were trying to hard. As Hoshi proves, the standard Enterprise duty uniform can look very good on an attractive actress, trying to sex it up with that impractical catsuit made her far less attractive in my eyes. (Now... mirror T'pol...)
Um... thanks? I think?
- - -
Anyhoo, on with the updates.
You can see the window to the CO's quarters/office at the rear, and a spotlight for the hull number at the front. The pod on top has additional radio and comms gear (a ship this size is too small to carry a subspace transmitter)
Better shot of the hull lighting.
Shot inside at the CO's quarters, complete with non-existent interior and roughed-posed human mesh from Opengameart.org.
I added a personnel airlock to the lower bellysled. The docking port farther forward is used for cargo and crew transfer whilst docked, but it is not designed to be an airlock. Uising it as such requires decompressing most of the cargo bay, so a smaller airlock was installed for routine EVA work. (I'm happy with the airlock itself, but the cutout could use a little more work.)
To fill the void aft of the flight deck, I added racks of countermeasures dispensers. These can launch flares, chaff, and other countermeasures to confuse nuclear missiles, as the Delta lacks a proper point-defense system.
I also started work on the phase cannon. Ta da!
It's always OK to double post when it's your WIP thread and you're posting updates.
Definitely a compliment. I love BSG and Trek ships alike so it seems like a very interesting fusion of both.
I figured as much, kinda interesting way of phrasing it though. Jokes aside, this little bird could easily fit inside Galactica flight pod, she's smaller than even Colonial one.
- - -
I added some lights to get a better render after someone from F3D suggested such. Looks nicer, don't you think?
I also got some work on the phase cannon turrets. They're a little rough, and their cutouts in the cats need work, but this is mostly to check if the concept sketches translate into 3d well.
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The turret itself is a split between the fully-exposed gun of the NX-class and the little dome emitters of the TOS and movie Enterprise.
irony is that with star trek tech it could likely wipe the floor with galactica