3DThe Defiant Alternative

Vortex5972

This is something I started about three weeks ago. Some of the Nova love here recently made me want to attempt it again, but I still can't figure out that damned back corner on the saucer. Given that, I decided to try something a little different first. This is the Defiant as it could have been. Having only one image to work from, I've been able to take a bit of artistic licence. My goal here was to stick as true as possible to the concept image, but also the idea of the Defiant.

Length of this ship is 120 meters, with 4 decks. I've used 3.5m deck heights, except for deck 3, which is 4m high. I wanted that extra bit of depth so cheated there. My rational is that engineering shall be on that deck, so the extra height is fine. I still need to figure out where to put the pulse phasers, I have some ideas, but suggestions are welcome. I've always been bugged by how the Defiant doesn't have any airlocks, but I like the way it looks when it docks with the station. I've been thinking of putting one above the torpedo launchers, right in front of the bridge. I think I may keep Nova type sensor pallets and ditch the launchers in the saucer side. May put an aft launcher in.

I've even been able to build some decent-ish phaser arrays at last. (They need redoing, gotta figure out how to taper and rib them.) I've thinking the aft saucer arrays may stay on the same level as the main ones. If not, I'll put them where they are on the concept and final Nova.

Stormcloud

not sure about the cut out in the front of the saucer section - think i would either go with a hammerhead type saucer or have a complete triangular section - other than that looking great - always felt the defiant didn't feel like a starfleet ship

evil_genius_180

The cut out is part of Rick Sternbach's original design. When he modified the design for Voyager, he turned the torpedo launchers into an auxiliary deflector.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Defiant_pathfinder

Looking goos so far, Vortex. I've always liked this design. For the pulse phasers, I'd suggest putting them where the sensor arrays are on the Equinox, to the left and right of the cut out. That's what I think is there in the Defiant Pathfinder drawing.

Vortex5972

Thanks guys. I know what you mean about the cutout, Stormcloud. I prefer the Nova refit over the standard because of the saucer shape.

Evil, they were more torpedo launchers. Apparently it was to have 6 forward launchers and be a torpedo boat. I guess the cannons hadn't been imagined by that point, but it's a change I may well make. I just don't want such a big cut out. Space is valuable here. I need to figure out how to make the RCS thrusters as well.

evil_genius_180

Yep, space is valuable. Yet, the Equinox has room for a second (unnecessary) deflector. That cracks me up.

Vortex5972

I hate secondary deflectors!! What gets me, if you look at the Nova side view, there's a clear line where you can see the secondary hull is just tacked on for the main deflector, there's no flow there. They should have left that off if they wanted the saucer deflector.

evil_genius_180

The main reason I can think of for a secondary deflector is if the ship separates. Ships like Voyager and the Equinox don't separate.

homerpalooza67

I think both Voyager and Equinox were capable of "emergency separation" (but would essentially destroy the ship), but not routine separation like the Galaxy. I could be wrong.

evil_genius_180

Separation was considered early on in the Voyager design, but later iterations of the design didn't have it. The hull is one smooth, continuous piece, there's not a separation line. Same with the Equinox. Rick Sternbach designed both ships, so I guess he just likes backup deflectors.

Aresius

Precisely, it's a backup.
Far more pronounced than the secondary deflector on the Galaxy-class, but still just the same type. A backup system....

Vortex5972

Small update. I've altered the nacelles to something a little more likable and I've done the sensor insets.

Now, those blocky things represent the cannons. I'm wondering whether to place both there (Looks like it loses a lot of sensor equipment.) or put one there, probably the outer one. Question then is, where to place the other one? There current position has a flat plane of firing, whereas the Defiant has almost its total height. I have been thinking of maybe putting them in the trench just above the deflector, which would use that space up and keep them well protected. However, they would be fairly close together there.

Deks

Overall, I like it.
The front cut with the torpedo tubes could be going less inside the saucer (maybe cut it off at the point where the phaser banks are, and the nacelle pylons could be a bit more 'beefed up'.

Other than that, I find this looks like a better Nova class (even though it was originally meant to be the Defiant).
The secondary hull in particular looks much better compared to what we got with the Nova.
This just works better.

BorgMan

That is one sexy primary deflector. Digging it!

Vortex5972

Thanks for the comments.

Deks, you're right about the pylons. Admittedly, I also agree with you about the cutout. It's a matter of deciding how close I want to stick to the initial concept. I may try and close it off a bit if I can find a way to get an airlock in there as well.

TALON_UK

Yeah, definitely some nice stuff going on here. With the phasers, I don't know the in-universe mechanics of it all, but I'd have thought having phaser cannons in the middle of a sensor palette would have a negative effect on those sensors, or at least bugger up any readings taken if the things were firing. Wouldn't it be better to find an alternative spot for the sensor palettes (or the phasers) and allow the phaser cannons to be their own distinct detail?

Vortex5972

The idea is to make a cut out to put the canon in, rather than have it directly on the palette. That way they'd be right next to the targeting sensors. I still haven't made my mind up on them yet, though.

However:

Beefed up the pylons and altered there shape slightly. Much sturdier looking now. Left the torpedo launchers but build out a nose above them. I'm thinking a pop up panel/airlock in there maybe. Not entirely sold on it yet. It certainly gives more volume (and somewhere to place the registry number), but doesn't look as aggressive.

Yes, I know about the big whole. It's a single face but I've mirrored the saucer to do the sensors.





EDIT: Also, I noticed that my hard drive has been unusually low on space the past few days. Turned out Cache BVH was on, could have sworn I'd turned it of for default. Anyway, cleared the cache and have my space back.

evil_genius_180

The whole what?

Looking good so far. I like the idea for the cut out.

Vortex5972

The whole hole.

TALON_UK

Yeah, definitely preferring what you've done with the cut out now compared to how it was, flows well and looks good from below as well as above. Also probably pretty sound tactically to not have your torpedo launchers as exposed as they were before. Previously pretty much any angle from the front would get you a shot on those launchers, now you need to come in at a very specific tight angle to get a clean shot in.

Vortex5972

I agree, so it's staying. I'm now considering leaving the cannons where they are and making the sensor pallets somewhere else. Possibly they could go either side of the registry on the nose, a little more like the Defiant than the Nova that way.

Here's a couple of more angles:

Stormcloud

could add the pulse phasers onto the side of the secondary hull

Vortex5972

YAY!! The site is working again. Haven't been able to view threads in chrome for three or four days now. Still runs a little slow but woo!!

Anyway:

I had thought of that, Stormcloud but they looked tacked on. I've put them in the Deflector trench, so they're well protected there. Hopefully some new renders up tonight.

evil_genius_180

Yeah, the site was screwed up for a few days. It wasn't working in Firefox either, on my desktop or on my tablet.

Vortex5972

I only thought of trying FF yesterday, never thought of logging in though. Didn't think that would make any difference to threads loading or not. Ah well, moving on:

WOOOOOO!!!! I've finally figured out the placements for the cannons. After a couple of days aresing about with booleans trying to create the tubes to put the saucer cannons in, I finally got it. By not using a boolean. I used on inset on the face I wanted to could into, subdivided each edge to give me 8 vertices to match the circle I was using, used a shrinkwrap set to project and that did the trick. A little pushing about of vertices and manually creating the faces and then realizing that the inset had given me a smoothing error, prompting me to subdivide edges of the original face and then merge the vertices together and BAM!! Not difficult at all. Just took a bladdy long time to get there. xD

Anyway, got that done and it's my only control loopcut at the minute to keep the circle clean. It also has a mean crease of .5.

It is a fairly narrow firing pattern compared to the original Defiant, but since this ship has arrays, I can live with it. I also started detailing the pylons, gonna need to redo that bit. I did the vents as separate objects, but think it'd be better to build them in first and then separate.









And here we have some proof of firing line. Making sure that we aren't going to blow our own dome off.

That didn't sound quite right.





A question or two here, depending how many I remember:

How many escape pods does Defiant have? I've only been able to count 8.

Does anyone know the dimensions for the escape pods? I'm thinking of using the same type.

evil_genius_180

Looking great. The narrow firing arc of the cannons isn't really an issue. Since they shot straight forward, often on DS9 you saw either the port or starboard cannons hit something small like a Jem'Hadar fighter. Very rarely would all four cannons hit. Of course, with bigger ships, that was less of an issue.

Escape pods like what the Equinox and Rhode Island had are 3m X 3m. They allegedly carried 6-10 people, depending on which design you're using. I'm not sure what size the ones on the Defiant were. The escape pods aren't marked on the Defiant deck plans but, if I'm reading the symbols correctly, it has 14 pods, 8 that launch on the dorsal side and 6 that launch on the ventral side. I'd guess they're supposed to hold 10 people a piece, because the same manual claims the ship has a 150 person evacuation limit. I'd assume that means filling all 14 pods and the 3 or so shuttlepods the ship carries to capacity.

McC

Your modeling on this looks astonishingly clean. Very nice job! The lines are freakin' great. And I love all the thought you're putting into everything!

Vortex5972

Thankyou very much. I work as low poly as possible and let the subsurf take care of the flow of things. There are some double faces that I need to take care of, though.

You'd thing the cannons could be pointed to thing rather than relying on where the nose is pointing, but I guess that's a budget issue with the physical model and not worth showing with the CGI. One thing I like about this narrow stream though is it's right in line with the torpedoes. Use the cannons to take the shields or hull plating down and lob in a few torpedoes after them.

I'll take a look at roughing some escape pods at 3x3 later this week, then. I have a rough idea of where I want them to go. The Defiant evac capacity is 150? But assuming what size for the ship? Even at 170m, I don't see it being able to carry more than two small shuttles. Even with it's self replenishing shuttles, at least Voyager had a shuttle bay and was thought out from the onset.

I also need to figure out how to build the RCS thrusters. The method I was using earlier on doesn't work with subsurf, particularly on that back corner of the saucer.

Stormcloud

looking good - now that the saucer doesn't have that ugly hole in the front do have a question about the size of the torpedo launchers though they look like they are for firing icbm's - star trek torps are pretty small little things - care to trow a human in for scaling comparison? no idea how big this ship should look

Saquist

The deflector is a HUGE improvement over the Nova/Road Island versions.

Vortex5972

Thanks, Saquist. Though admittedly, the Nova deflectors aren't hard to beat. I don't know what they were thinking when they designed them, but they're worse than the Miranda's deflector.

Stormcloud, thanks. It's definitely an improvement.

Ships size:
Length: 120m 15.6cm
Width: 71m 36.3cm
Height: 20m 15.6cm

Decks: 4

I figured that some people may be interested in some quick and dirty looks at the wireframe.







And Bob is back. Bob is 2m tall, if I'm remembering correctly.

evil_genius_180

Worse than the MIranda's deflector? That's saying a lot. I suppose next you're going to say it's worse than the Oberth or Constellation deflectors.

Thanks for a look at the pre-subdivided wires. That's good stuff.