Many more pics of VoyAger are here https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/all-of-season-2-online-now-in-french.316405/page-5#post-14768692 https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/all-of-season-2-online-now-in-french.316405/page-6#post-14769143 https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/st-prodigy-starships-technology-season-2-discussion.314788/
Why should resembling a previous ship in a lineage be a requirement for the next one? By that logic, we'd never have gotten an Excelsior class Enterprise, much less a Galaxy class or Sovereign class. I don't like trying to make new letter ships look like upgraded versions of the previous ones. That's the logic that goves us the "Constitution III class".
I definitely prefer the Voyager-A's design to the Voyager-B, but I'm not super fond of either. The A's hull is better but I dislike the nacelles and pylons. The B at least keeps the "nacelles down"-ish design of the original and feels more like a spiritual successor, but is kind of fugly. I guess we can attribute the differences in approach to being designed by the STP production team versus the STO game team.
Yes, neither design is really satisfactory to me. The A is just a mishmash of an Intrepid and a Sovereign, and the B is just a typical STO 'update' to the Intrepid class. Neither design is particularly original. I think 'originality' in starship design has gone the way of the dodo.
I will say this.... While I agree with you, the Voyager-A does make sense compared to what we've seen from starships in that era. The B does not. So the A does have that going for it.
I would attribute the A looking like a "ship of its era" to it being a kitbash of other ships of its era.
Yes, I get what you're trying to say. The A does look like a ship from that era. My issue is that it's just not that original. I remember before Lower Decks came out, and everyone was wondering what the California class Cerritos would look like. Based on the description, I thought it would be an older TMP/Lost Era-era ship that had seen better days, was kind of beaten up, and was a lot more utilitarian than, say, a Galaxy class starship. Instead, we get this barely-designed ship that looks like it's newer than the Enterprise-D, and they can't even decide on what scale it is (which is nothing new for Star Trek, admittedly.) I was hoping that we would get a new, interesting design for the Voy-A, and instead we get something that to me doesn't even look fully rendered. Like what @137th Gebirg said an another thread, it doesn't even have any windows! Also, going back to the STO Enterprise-F...if you can't tell that it's not a Sovereign class when the ship is in the far background, then your design has failed in its originality. There are some shots of the Voy-A that would make me confuse it for a Sovvie under the right circumstances.
I'm really hoping those were just "rough shots" and that the final production version has the windows. I could be wrong, though. I haven't seen the French release, and maybe this is what the Voy-A actually looks like.
The nacelles are round like older ships, and the saucer is about the size of the Ambassador’s. Either way Mike said the ships are constantly updated.
Same. It looks very strip down, utilitarian, and not as new as a Galaxy class. It reminds me of a terrible cross between a Galaxy, a Nebula and an Ambassador, though better looking than all three.
the pics are from the french release, there's no reason to assume they'd change anything for whenever it's released elsewhere
The ship takes design attributes from the Parliament class, which was new to the TNG+ era. We have never seen evidence of this in the show.
The Cerritos nacelle and dark saucer superstructure designs are DEFINITELY hallmarks of a post-TNG ship. If the California-class were really older than the Galaxy-class and were part of the same "missing era" as the Wolf 359 ships I'd expect it to look more like this: ...And I would be 100% okay with that, I think this looks great. I'd have also loved for the Cerritos to have been one of the Wolf 359 ship classes – a New Orleans, Cheyenne, or Freedom in particular.