So ive been wanting to do a Excelsior re-design for about 10 years now, but i stopped 3ding and never thought id touch it again.
And then i got hoodwinked into doing it again by hanging out on the discord. So, rather than spend time learning the program i decided to embark on an ambitious project out of the gate.
My ideal goal is to have this ship sail next to a sovereign and look like it was built in the same era, as if someone had looked at the old design and decided "i can fix this".
The excelsior, one of my favourite ships suffered from some glaring design issues.
- large space between rear of saucer and forward of the nacelles (fixed to a degree with the refit).
- The nacelle pylons never really fit with the design lineage and having themraised from the secondary hull always bothered me.
- contrasting lines that gave it less 'shootable' angles.
So here is my attempt in progress.
Posts
That too, for sure
The saucer is round oddly... it lacks definition to make that apparent maybe?
Working on Prim/secondary hull integration.
Tempted to put an impulse engine centre rear of the neck for saucer sep potential.
I’m thinking a solid Vengeance Saucer and a Decker (FASA) tail
It's a really interesting design though.. i'm liking it.. have you gotten rid of the gap in the secondary hull now?
No, i love it for the time it was set in- but there is no modernised equiv.
which gap?
Ignore me... i took your first set of images to mean that there was some negative space in the area where the nacelles joined the body... or that there were on rails of some kind... now i see that it was just the cut out for the shuttle area and the fact that there was no cap on the secondary hull.... looked interesting tho haha... i'll stop being dumb now..
I was only pulling your leg... i think this looks like a good runner for a modern take on the design...
Toying with the saucer underside atm and removed flair from the pylons.
After the dominion war, there was a shortfall in modern ships that could replace the Excelsior (fleet losses being what they were), and they were one of the backbones of the starfleet from logistics to support to glorified taxi.
If the Sovereign was an analogue to the Ticonderoga Cruiser, the excelsior was the Oliver Perry.
So the project was put forward with two proposals for the replacement and were run against eachother in a puppy race to see which had the best outcomes.
Puppy 1: Take an excelsior with good bones and strip it back to its frames an ribs and rebuild an entire ship around the skeleton.
Think the F-15 upgrade project to the F-15x with the idea of keeping as much as 70% of the original ship..
Puppy 2: A complete ground up modernisation with the idea of keeping the same size and form-factors, but built with the technology and processes of the latter half of the 24th century. (Which might mean with the ability to repurpose/modify/alter and with advancements in technology, if they cannot reuse parts of the ship, they would atleast have the resources that could be rendered into a base form to be reused on the new one.)
The Exceedence is a result of puppy #2.
I do like that historical analogies are used, and that makes me all the more certain that even while Quantum Slipstream-capable ship classes like the Vesta class make it into production, there'd probably modernized versions of the Challenger, New Orleans, Nebula, Springfield, and maybe even the Ambassador classes.
This Exceedance definitely does a better job of conveying the notion that the Federation has made huge strides in warp physics, and your explanation makes it easier to convince myself not to just accept her because she's so handsomely designed.
It does make sense that while Starfleet is breaking in the newer starship classes, that they would rebuild/modernize/new-build older frames to bolster fleet numbers, such as also using the Constitution class as Frigates and Constellation class as Escort Carriers.
The Exceedance Isn't going to be treking into the deep black - Waving the flag of the federation, and transporting flag admirals, maybe.
Changes the warp engine detail and the bussard recess.
Going for a clean-ish rebels aesthetic
slow working but ive not done organic for some time.