PIC S3 Ships & Tech

[Ithekro]

Probably a more interesting question is design purpose. Why was the Odyssey-class so large compared to the already large Galaxy and Sovereign-class starships? It is like trying to cram the firepower of the Sovereign in with the capacity of the Galaxy. Was the Odyssey suppose to carry families on decades long voyages outside of Federation space? Because that was the Galaxy was designed to do (though never did).

The Constitution III-class starship, appears to be designed for regular exploration duties like her 23rd century counterparts. Long missions perhaps, but no more extravagant than those of Pike's and Kirkj's time. Seems like a nice point between the Excelsior and the Ambassador in terms of size, and with much better technology. Which seems like a good spot for an explorer. Large enough to do the task without being large for larges sake (like the Ambassador and Galaxy-class may have been)

 

[C.E. Evans]

Probably a more interesting question is design purpose. Why was the Odyssey-class so large compared to the already large Galaxy and Sovereign-class starships?

I always had a problem with the Odyssey-class being that big. If I'm not mistaken, the 1000+ meter length was taken from STO, which overdoes things at times, IMO. When I was writing fanfics, I scaled the design down to around 800 meters, which still allowed it to be big, but not a really massive jump from the Sovereign-class.

 

[Captain_Amasov]

The Odyssey-class has comparable firepower to the Sovereign-class, which is telling considering how old the latter ship class is by now. The size of the Odyssey and the addition of its Aquarius support craft is more down to avoiding situations you'd encounter in deep space exploration: lack of support in dire situations. The biggest and best example being what happened to the USS Voyager, and arguably the USS Equinox.

 

[Markonian]

Find the outlier

Thank you for sharing this image. Is there a larger version available?
This comparison makes the Constitution III more palatable to me as an Enterprise. It is not as tiny as I imagined.

Thanks, that helps me along the stages of grief from the denial to the acceptance phase.

 

[Space Socialist]

The Enterprise F (Odyssey class) is ugly, but at least looks like it belongs in a design lineage with the Ent-E and some extent D. The G… It’s literally the Constitution class from the TOS movies set 150 years previously! It’s like Lockheed-Martin or whomever unveiling a new 6th gen fighter jet that looks and works exactly like a WWI biplane. But worse.

 

[Tosk]

I'm no fan of the Titan becoming the Ent-G.
BUT I'll take it over the ever-stretching "design lineage" we had going from D through F.

 

[Space Socialist]

I’d have preferred it if they’d had slapped a third nacelle and weapon greeblies on the museum piece Enterprise-D and remade the AGT future Enterprise as the ‘current’ Enterprise over renaming some rusty old Constitution class. The former is fanboyish, but makes more sense than the latter…

 

[blssdwlf]

The Enterprise F (Odyssey class) is ugly, but at least looks like it belongs in a design lineage with the Ent-E and some extent D. The G… It’s literally the Constitution class from the TOS movies set 150 years previously! It’s like Lockheed-Martin or whomever unveiling a new 6th gen fighter jet that looks and works exactly like a WWI biplane. But worse.

The G is larger than the original TMP Enterprise despite having a nearly identically shaped and detailed primary hull. So it is more like Boeing unveiling an even larger and similar shaped Super Super Hornet to replace the Hornet.

 

[Tomalak]

The G is about the same size as the Enterprise-C and not far off the E.

It’s a perfectly ample ship.

 

[Dukhat]

I’ve pretty much given up hope that they’ll ever make a new Enterprise design that I will like. I haven’t been satisfied since the Enterprise-D (which includes the NX-01, the horrid crap Enterprises from the Kelvin timeline, and the DSC/SNW ship), although I will give the Ent-E some props for being totally different from its previous iteration. The STO F is just a derivative design based on the Sovereign and Intrepid classes, and the G is, well, the G.

 

[Space Socialist]

The G is larger than the original TMP Enterprise despite having a nearly identically shaped and detailed primary hull. So it is more like Boeing unveiling an even larger and similar shaped Super Super Hornet to replace the Hornet.

TO take your analogy further, it's like unveiling as Super Super Hornet to replace a jet fighter five generations more modern than a massively obsolete regular Hornet.

 

[Space Socialist]

The G is about the same size as the Enterprise-C and not far off the E.

It’s a perfectly ample ship.

In-universe, it's a design 150 years out of date. All logic has gone out the window on this one. The Titan-A/'Ent-G' should've been resting in Geordi's space museum, not rolled out as a new flagship (uwell, unless the events of The Last Generation set Starfleet's technology and fleet back literally centuries).

 

[Tomalak]

In-universe, it's a design 150 years out of date.

No it isn’t? It’s a late-24th century ship that looks superficially similar to a much smaller ship from the past. It’s the same as the Akira.

 

[Spike730]

Um, no. Not by a long shot. They changed about everyting to make the NX-01 look older than an Akira, while here the objective was clearly to keep the 23rd century look intact as much as possible.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I'd disagree only for the saucer, which is cribbed with only superficial changes to the upper and lower horizontal bits (adding assorted greeblies and the phaser strips), plus the bridge dome being effectively identical to the Sagan / Echelon and Duderstadt classes. The saucer rim, lower sensor doodads, lighting, and overall shape are identical to the TMP-era saucers, but scaled up from ~170 wide to over 250m without accounting for the windows, with the exception of the impulse assemblies. THAT's the biggest sore thumb for me, I understand that had Bill Krause known what they were doing with it (and he'd had time plus Matalas' blessing), he'd have updated more of the design accordingly. IMO the secondary hull is fine for the era (it's really in the TMP era where something like that sticks out), and the nacelles are the same family as the other newer classes, so those are fine.

[The fandom has started poking at tweaking the design to make it more congruous with the era. Check this out, or this one. IMO what they need to do is rework the saucer rim to remove the line pattern, which screams TMP saucer more than anything else, and add some TNG or later style windows here and there to make the decks match better. Oh, and ditch the 2270s phaser turrets or replace them with a newer design equivalent for the 2400s.]

The most important aspect of the Connie III design is the proportion and arrangement of the hulls and nacelles, which echo the Constitution / Connie II much more than any other Enterprise design between them. At most angles, the way the nacelles jut above and behind the saucer, and how low and compact the secondard hull is, compare favorably to the "perfectly clean retro lines" fanboys rave about. The Duderstadt-class has the same sort of arrangement despite the relatively small secondary hull - if you turn out the lights and judge these classes by the placement of the delfectors and bussard domes, and you'll find them very similar to the classic Connie.

Mark

 

[Tomalak]

An intentionally retro aesthetic doesn’t make it “out of date”, that’s all I’m saying.

This era of Starfleet seems to have a thing for that, with the Excelsior II and Reliant class.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I agree! But even with those updates / refits / whatever, the hull designs and details are completely changed. There's no part of the Excelsior II that has been lifted from its predecessor class, and the hull proportions are all different too. In the Connie III the saucer details are not changed at all from a TMP saucer of that era. Form SHOULD follow function, and as such the saucer should not simply scale up every detail. An aircraft carrier in 2023 will have all the same general hull shapes as the refitted Essex-class ships that added an angled flight deck in the 1950s, but even if scaled up from 250 meters to 330 every single other detail would be different.

***

Dave Blass has posted the ship size chart that they used for season 3. It's fascinating that they had enough time to come up with SIX new Starfleet capital ship designs for three years of the show:

- Consitution III
- Sagan
- Echelon
- Duderstadt
- Excelsior II
- Inquiry

Plus stuff like two new shuttles and two versions of spacedock, plus a shiny new model for the Enterprise-D. Oddly, all the new designs are roughly the same size. STO and Eaglemoss models fill in the blanks for the rest of the fleet, adding in a whopping fourteen legacy and online-only Starfleet designs, in addition to everything else at the fleet museum. This is easily the most diverse Starfleet has ever been seen, in terms of active starship designs, and in such a relatively brief space of time. Across various episodes of DS9, we had maybe a dozen ship designs in total, including a selection of one-off models seen in a single episode or two. Man we're spoiled.

Mark

PS - The Akira class is in there twice? I'm not sure what the justification is. It's listed as "VFX Scale DS9", so maybe this was a reference to how they were rendered in that show?

 

[Macintosh]

I’ve pretty much given up hope that they’ll ever make a new Enterprise design that I will like. I haven’t been satisfied since the Enterprise-D (which includes the NX-01, the horrid crap Enterprises from the Kelvin timeline, and the DSC/SNW ship), although I will give the Ent-E some props for being totally different from its previous iteration. The STO F is just a derivative design based on the Sovereign and Intrepid classes, and the G is, well, the G.

Genuinely curious, are there any designs out there that you think would have made a good post-Galaxy-class Enterprise? Either of your own, or canon, or fan designs? I don't mind the Enterprise-E myself but it a kind of "pretty in a vacuous corporate soulless way", and I have always resented the way the D was killed off just to make way for it. I have never liked the Odyssey-class because it's just... weird-looking. It looks like a fat affronted duck. Pointy in the wrong places, curvy in the wrong places... it just doesn't work for me. And I have been pretty vocal about not caring for the Constitution-III/Shangri-La-II too.

Honestly, the only post-Galaxy-class design I've ever seen that immediately screams "ENTERPRISE" to me is Chris Madden's Dedication-class...

 

[Macintosh]

PS - The Akira class is in there twice? I'm not sure what the justification is. It's listed as "VFX Scale DS9", so maybe this was a reference to how they were rendered in that show?

There's been a big debate on Twitter over how big it should be so Dave Blass has included the "correct size" (the original design size used for the Eaglemoss model and elsewhere) and the "VFX size" (the size it was rendered during DS9 and PIC).

 

[blssdwlf]

TO take your analogy further, it's like unveiling as Super Super Hornet to replace a jet fighter five generations more modern than a massively obsolete regular Hornet.

Well don't forget that it is what is on the inside that counts in this case. Think of the difference between an F-15D to an F-15EX. The latter has significantly different electronics and control systems than the early models even though superficially look alike. The Titan/E-G would have modern tech compared to a Kirk-era TMP Enterprise.

But with that said, the barely altered saucer lifted straight from the TMP Enterprise and scaled up with no changes in scaling detail just stinks, IMHO.

PS - The Akira class is in there twice? I'm not sure what the justification is. It's listed as "VFX Scale DS9", so maybe this was a reference to how they were rendered in that show?

FYI, Dave Blass added this to his tweet:
"Updated chart to address the Akira Debate. Both David Stipes VXF coordinator and Doug Drexler have measured the actual VFX Model at 860ft, BUT others have it at 1532.6ft. It's played in STO as the larger size. I am naming my next Akira ship the Schrödinger because clearly both can be right, and both can be wrong."