Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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Wish me luck
 
Fatsuit Shinji said:
The D-7s by the time of breaking into the Space Mall, have been continously upgraded, refitted, modernized, throughout their service life. Still the Klingons used them in supporting roles assisting the newer frontline ships.
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STO's Kamarag class is a good interim design between the D7/K'tinga and the Vor'cha, it obviously never appeared in the shows since it wasn't made yet but I quite like it. Maybe they were relegated to defensive roles in the Empire while the more disposable older ships and more capable newer craft were used for the offensive operations that we saw in the show.
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Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
The Federation build their heavy cruisers with the most advanced tech available. The trade-off is they are difficult to make, so they have to function alone.
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I think that the Miranda ended up being a superior design sharing while sharing a massive amount of components, so the 2nd Gen Connies ended up being shelved, converted or cannibalised for their superior cousins.
 
Midwit said:
I think that the Miranda ended up being a superior design sharing while sharing a massive amount of components, so the 2nd Gen Connies ended up being shelved, converted or cannibalised for their superior cousins.
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The Nebula also gets that kind of benefit, as they are cheaper ships that were good enough for peacetime missions. And later 2370s ships mostly followed the Defiant school of making small ships with small crew complements instead of the Galaxy do-it-all on extended time tables. Sure, the Sovereign and Galaxy still had their place, but for the purposes of patrol, the Akira, Nova, Steamrunner, Yaeger, and Defiant etc. were good enough. After all, the Prometheus class wasn't a bigger Sovereign, but 3 Defiants in a coat.
 
Midwit said:
I think that the Miranda ended up being a superior design sharing while sharing a massive amount of components, so the 2nd Gen Connies ended up being shelved, converted or cannibalised for their superior cousins.
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Just as likely it was the same situation after WWII, where there was a dozen or so U.S. Navy's Fletcher, Allen M Sumner, Gearing and older class destroyers built for every one light and heavy cruiser it had. With the Mirandas, and later Excelsiors, simply became ubiquitous due to just how many of them were built, since they been in production for almost a century. Constitutions, Constellations and other succeeding cruiser classes never had that level of mass production for so long until Nebula class cruisers went into service.
 
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Fatsuit Shinji said:
Just as likely it was the same situation after WWII, where there was a dozen or so U.S. Navy's Fletcher, Allen M Sumner, Gearing and older class destroyers built for every one light and heavy cruiser it had.
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The Miranda is technically larger than a Connie is, the destroyer comparison doesn't really work when you're talking about ships of similar tonnage and capability. The Mirandas only appear small because Starfleet decided to make everything way larger with each new generation for no good reason.
Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
cheaper ships that were good enough for peacetime missions
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The Pheonix went on a one ship rampage through Cardassian space, they were more than good enough for wartime operations.
 
Midwit said:
The Miranda is technically larger than a Connie is, the destroyer comparison doesn't really work when you're talking about ships of similar tonnage and capability. The Mirandas only appear small because Starfleet decided to make everything way larger with each new generation for no good reason.

The Pheonix went on a one ship rampage through Cardassian space, they were more than good enough for wartime operations.
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Which is why I said much earlier the Nebulas were better than the Galaxies. Nebulas were easier to build and customize and didn't have that White Elephant reputation Galaxies have. The Galaxy failed its original mission profile of extended deep space exploration with limited starbase support. The Nebulas mission profile was to patrol existing territory with limited or no reinforcements.
 
Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
Which is why I said much earlier the Nebulas were better than the Galaxies. Nebulas were easier to build and customize and didn't have that White Elephant reputation Galaxies have. The Galaxy failed its original mission profile of extended deep space exploration with limited starbase support. The Nebulas mission profile was to patrol existing territory with limited or no reinforcements.
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The fat chonkers beating the elegant cruise ship is something I didn't have on the radar, lol. Well, sometimes substance wins over style.
 
Midwit said:
The Miranda is technically larger than a Connie is, the destroyer comparison doesn't really work when you're talking about ships of similar tonnage and capability.
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I was going by the number difference between the two. Plus for reasons, Starfleet had classed the Miranda as a light cruiser. As opposed to Starfleet classifying the Constitution class as a heavy cruiser. When as you said Miranda is larger than the Constitution. On classification, over the decades the Miranda had been continously downgraded from light cruiser to destroyer and then to frigate.

Midwit said:
The Mirandas only appear small because Starfleet decided to make everything way larger with each new generation for no good reason.
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There is good reasons for each new generation being larger than the previous generation. Which follows real life modern naval reasons for doing the same. Biggest tangible reasons for it is endurance before needing to stop to refuel

Midwit said:
The Pheonix went on a one ship rampage through Cardassian space, they were more than good enough for wartime operations.
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Pheonix was able to do that rampage as the Cardassians didn't want to risk a larger escalation of hostilities between them and the Federation. As they still haven't really recovered from the previous war between them.
Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
Which is why I said much earlier the Nebulas were better than the Galaxies.
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By almost every metric, Galaxies were still better Nebulas in most categories. Except in

Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
Nebulas were easier to build and customize and didn't have that White Elephant reputation Galaxies have.
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Galaxies weren't white elephants but more appropriately what they had was a massive glass jaw. Which was eventually fixed prior to first contact with the Dominion. As opposed to the Nebulas while easier, quicker and cheaper to build, do suffer from lack of durability as compared to their more famous sibling. Given the amount of penny pinching and corner cutting shown of their interiors in TNG.
Secondly Nebula's customization is strictly to their ability to swapped out mission pods. As for the ship itself, it's what you see is what you get. So whatever the saucer section is built with, it is stuck with it until time for scheduled refit and modernization.
Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
The Galaxy failed its original mission profile of extended deep space exploration with limited starbase support.
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Galaxies didn't fail its original mission although judging the whole class by the inability of Enterprise-D to ever leave Federation space is rather unfair. Didn't help the Galaxy and Nebula were designed and built in what would be the twilight of Federation's golden age of exploration.

Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
The Nebulas mission profile was to patrol existing territory with limited or no reinforcements.
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Something which the Galaxy, older Ambassador, Excelsior and other cruisers have been able and continue to do without issues.
 
Fatsuit Shinji said:
Pheonix was able to do that rampage as the Cardassians didn't want to risk a larger escalation of hostilities between them and the Federation. As they still haven't really recovered from the previous war between them.
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I have a theory what the Cardassian encounter with the Phoenix specifically triggered in their engineering and shipwright circles (or at least confirmed what they believed). They saw this fat chonker eating Galors for breakfast and decided they needed to develop a ship that can at least survive for long enough to pin a Nebula down for reinforcements to arrive. That is what the purpose of the Keldon-class is in some not so insignificant capacity. The displacement in tonnage is smaller, but the amount of hardpoints/weapons is equal - at least as far as the DS9 technical manual is to believed.
 
I think the Pheonix rampage was the final push those Cardassians needed to get their superiors to finally let them do their jobs and make something better like the Keldon-class. Supposedly Starfleet was walking all over them during the Fed-Cardassian War. And that was with whatever ships Starfleet command had bothered to send to that conflict.
 
Fatsuit Shinji said:
I think the Pheonix rampage was the final push those Cardassians needed to get their superiors to finally let them do their jobs and make something better like the Keldon-class. Supposedly Starfleet was walking all over them during the Fed-Cardassian War. And that was with whatever ships Starfleet command had bothered to send to that conflict.
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I think there's also an interesting psychological quality to it. The Cardassians have seen what happens when a single Starfleet captain is genuinely, unapologetically FUCKED OFF about something. What they failed to do is to extrapolate that behavior from a single anomalous occurrence to actual strategy deployed by Starfleet. They didn't have an answer for when that behavior becomes sanctioned policy, which is rather amusing, because that is exactly what happened later under different circumstances outside of their control.
 
Van Darkholme said:
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Wish me luck
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I have very fond memories of building the big kits like this when I was young. Does that kit have variant parts for the Enterprise-C vs the later variants? (They tweaked the nacelle and saucer placement for all appearances post-Yesterday's Enterprise)

Midwit said:
STO's Kamarag class is a good interim design between the D7/K'tinga and the Vor'cha, it obviously never appeared in the shows since it wasn't made yet but I quite like it. Maybe they were relegated to defensive roles in the Empire while the more disposable older ships and more capable newer craft were used for the offensive operations that we saw in the show.
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STO's designs are hit and miss, but I think Thomas Morrone has a solid grasp of Trek ship aesthetics, and I'm glad he's got total creative control of the game now. I really like how the Kamarag blends the different eras, in the same way the Ambassador mixes TNG and TMP/TOS elements. A really nice design for their lost era cruisers.


Curzon Dax-sama said:
The fat chonkers beating the elegant cruise ship is something I didn't have on the radar, lol. Well, sometimes substance wins over style.
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My own rationalization is that the Galaxy, like the Constitution before it, was a boutique, highly-optimized design. They were the queens of the fleet when they launched, but progressive updates were more costly to implement as time goes on. The Miranda's/Nebula's are structurally simpler, so while they're maybe not as performant when the technology launches, they're more maintainable and upgradable. So, after a certain point, they make more sense to upgrade than the flagships.
 
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Phillip Green said:
I have very fond memories of building the big kits like this when I was young. Does that kit have variant parts for the Enterprise-C vs the later variants? (They tweaked the nacelle and saucer placement for all appearances post-Yesterday's Enterprise)
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If it's the same one I had 20 years ago, it does. All these AMT re-releases are tempting me and I have no time.
 
I'm going to be a buzzkill and say that I always thought that the Excelsior class was butt-ugly. With its fat neck, dumpy drive section, and skinny little nacelles, it looks like a bullfrog.

Give me the sleek and compact design of the Nebula or the classic Constitution refit.
 
Phillip Green said:
I have very fond memories of building the big kits like this when I was young. Does that kit have variant parts for the Enterprise-C vs the later variants? (They tweaked the nacelle and saucer placement for all appearances post-Yesterday's Enterprise)
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Just one set of nacelles, they look like how I remember the Ambassador ones looking. Does come with a lot of damage decals and an alternative decal for the USS Yamaguchi (which I'm not going to use). It's only 47 non pre-painted parts.
I'm just waiting for the LED kit to arrive.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but I also have a soft spot for the Daedalus-class
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