A starfleet ship question

[Lord Revan]

Ok we know that Constitution-class seems to be the primary (sort of a flagship(as showing the federation "flag" rather then having flag officers on board)) for the TOS-era Federation, licenced products and fandom seems to add ships larger and/or more powefull to the fleet (before the Excelsior and other newer generation designs), so my question is what role would these other ships serve in starfleet (besides pointless starship porn and fanwank that is)?

personally I think should such ships exist it would for starfleet to say "would you please kindly bend over" to a power/nation (especially a minor one) where as a Constitution on warfooting would be saying "we are serious, stop this at once or else!"

[Starglider]

Ok we know that Constitution-class seems to be the primary (sort of a flagship(as showing the federation "flag" rather then having flag officers on board)) for the TOS-era Federation, licenced products and fandom seems to add ships larger and/or more powefull to the fleet (before the Excelsior and other newer generation designs), so my question is what role would these other ships serve in starfleet (besides pointless starship porn and fanwank that is)?

The Constitution is described as a 'heavy cruiser' in a lot of the fluff, and does in fact seem to be treated like a historical naval cruiser; it operates alone for long periods, showing the flag, responding to minor incursions, patrolling dangerous areas and executing assorted non-military missions. The large 'dreadnoughts' are described as operating like historical battleships, and this is pretty reasonable; they're held in reserve and committed to large fleet actions only. Starfleet only has a few of them because they're expensive (to build and operate) and not much use in peacetime, and Starfleet has a large peacetime role. However when it comes down to it a force of battleships will spank a force of cruisers of equivalent tonnage; Trek technology, at least in the TOS era, seems to mirror this historical situation.

[Prannon]

Has it ever been revealed what these star-dreadnaughts actually are onscreen?

[Lord Revan]

Has it ever been revealed what these star-dreadnaughts actually are onscreen?

as far as I know the Excelsior is the heaviest ship to appear onscreen and tbh to me it seemed to be a only new generation heavy cruiser (aka a replacement for the connie), pre-TNG that is.

[tim31]

The schematics were seen on a monitor, making them semi-canon. I can't remember what movie(one of the first three).

[Lord Revan]

The schematics were seen on a monitor, making them semi-canon. I can't remember what movie(one of the first three).

the first during the first bridge scene IIRC

[Knife]

Neo Trek seems to adjust that with the caterman-esque ship shown in the movie.

That said, in ST III, I believe, the Klingon's refer to the Ent as a Federation Battle Cruiser. However the designation of 'cruiser' seems to fit in the terms Starglider outlined.

[Starglider]

A lot of the 'Federation dreadnought' designs are just ugly lumps (and not even functional-ugly, like the Wars designs), but I do like this one, from the SFC/Klingon Academy games.





It's one of the few Trek EU designs that I would genuinely like to be canon.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Yeah, that battleship design looked mean and befitting what a TOS warship ought to be like. But by the time of TNG, the idea of a battleship disappeared in favour of stupid pleasure craft.

[Crazedwraith]

I've never seen that design from below before. I didn't realise it have the ventral roll bar or two deflector dishes. Pretty cool.

[Nephtys]

That's from the 'Starfleet Battles' universe right? That SFC was based off of? They had some interesting designs for varying sizes of ships analogous to WW2 classes.

Also, since SFC was mentioned, obligatory lolmissilespam.

[Solauren]

Actually, for a while, there were CANON (unlike the video games) Federation, Klingon, et all Warships.

The FASA Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator was full of ships for various roles for Star Trek (pre TOS to Movie Period), and were, at the time of publication, right up until around season 2 of TNG, canon.

If you want to see some real Federation warships, go check them out.

Real Star Trek Warships

95% the old Canon FASA ships (he didn't post all of the D-7 variants). Anything TNG is non-Canon (within the game)

Maybe the nuTrek franchise will bring them back. I so want to see some of those designs beating the tar out of each other on screen.

[Starglider]

That's from the 'Starfleet Battles' universe right? That SFC was based off of? They had some interesting designs for varying sizes of ships analogous to WW2 classes.

The stats are, but the visual design isn't; the SFB ships are all TOS-based and frankly quite ugly (and bland, the alien ships are boring 'random geometric shape assemblies'). The SFC (1 and 2) Federation ships are based on the movie era styling (Enterprise/Reliant for the older ships and Excelsior-like for the newer ones), and the alien ships are original and for the most part quite nicely done. For example I love the configuration of the Romulan Firehawk class;



Much better than the 'uglified TOS bird of prey' from SFB, but if you examine it closely, you can see the shape of the original in the central hull.

[Knife]

Meh, it has changed a lot over the years. I have an old fasa book and a lot of the designs are cool, those in the link aren't.

[Stark]

What the fuck? The 'Missouri' (ps, LOLGASM) mega-oberth is a fucking retarded design. SUPAH PHASOZRRR! It's entirely designed by a) kitbashing and b) around the totally broken way SFB deals with weapons. The other one (which I think is DOUBLE LOLGASM called the Yamato) is much more a regular and not stupid ST design. The names pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the kind of fatty nerds who kitbashed them, though. Amusingly I think the smallest one (the FF) is the best original design, since I don't think the Akula is an SFB original.

I'm with Starglider on the Romulan ships though; I think they're the 'new era' Romulan ships or something, they look pretty boss. The kitbashed Klingon ships are LITERALLY 'bird of prey with giant nacelle' and 'D-7 with giant nacelle' and 'two d-7s with four giant nacelles'... but have utterly hilarious fanfiction attached to them.

[CaptHawkeye]

What the fuck? The 'Missouri' (ps, LOLGASM) mega-oberth is a fucking retarded design. SUPAH PHASOZRRR! It's entirely designed by a) kitbashing and b) around the totally broken way SFB deals with weapons. The other one (which I think is DOUBLE LOLGASM called the Yamato) is much more a regular and not stupid ST design. The names pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the kind of fatty nerds who kitbashed them, though. Amusingly I think the smallest one (the FF) is the best original design, since I don't think the Akula is an SFB original.

The FASA designs were always hit or miss but I still liked em for the most part. Remember that hilarous saucer/glued nacelles DD thing that obviously inspired USS Kelvin?

Oh man, I just remembered Klingon Academy had those fucking weird Federation "battleships" the not so subtely named "Missouri" and "Yamato" classes. FASA had so little to work with when they designed their RPG. I think the only ship classes the movies and series had shown were "Constitution" and "Miranda".

I'm with Starglider on the Romulan ships though; I think they're the 'new era' Romulan ships or something, they look pretty boss. The kitbashed Klingon ships are LITERALLY 'bird of prey with giant nacelle' and 'D-7 with giant nacelle' and 'two d-7s with four giant nacelles'... but have utterly hilarious fanfiction attached to them.

The designs I remember from Klingon Academy actually made me laugh because they seemed to copy only the outline of the D-7. After that they went out the way to glue on as many warp nacelles as possible. What's funny is that "new" Trek has lots of different in movie designs that could be extrapolated into diverse and interesting warship classes.

But that won't happen because fanboys have to invent their own cocked up homegrown stuff.

[Starglider]

What the fuck? The 'Missouri' (ps, LOLGASM) mega-oberth is a fucking retarded design. SUPAH PHASOZRRR! It's entirely designed by a) kitbashing and b) around the totally broken way SFB deals with weapons. The other one (which I think is DOUBLE LOLGASM called the Yamato) is much more a regular and not stupid ST design.

I think you've got them confused. The Missouri was only in Klingon Academy, and it had one assault phaser and one 'quantum carrier beam' (and a ton of phasers and photon torpedoes). The QCB was particularly idiotic and rules based in its effects. I had one brief go with this ship, and it was ridiculously slow, unmaneuverable and had an unbalanced weapons layout. Any points it gets for physical plausibility (of having the nacelles on short pylons, though even that is inconsistent with other Federation ships) are completely lost by having the idiotic inacessible Oberth-style engineering section.

The Yamato is in SFC1, SFC2 and KA. It has a pair of assault phasers and a sensible layout of normal weapons. The assault phasers are fine; they have a narrow arc and a ridiculous cooldown, and they're supposed to be for cracking starbase shields, which they do in fact work well for. The Ent-D had a cannon like this in All Good Things and all the new (canon) Klingon ships have giant disruptors, so this is hardly unrealistic. The placement of them on the Yamato is actually sensible, slung between the two warp cores and with exposed cooling fins. The Yamato is actually fun to play with because it's actually pretty fast and maneuverable for a battleship, though the hull is weak compared to a Klingon brick (which you'd expect, looking at it).

Amusingly someone has made a video of these two designs, and you have to admit, the Yamato looks way better.

The names pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the kind of fatty nerds who kitbashed them, though.

Are you talking about Solauren's links now? The two Federation BBs were made by developers at Interplay; while it may be true that most programmers are fatty nerds, I doubt they are any moreso than the ones in the Paramount art department.

[Stark]

I think you've got them confused. The Missouri was only in Klingon Academy, and it had one assault phaser and one 'quantum carrier beam' (and a ton of phasers and photon torpedoes). The QCB was particularly idiotic and rules based in its effects. I had one brief go with this ship, and it was ridiculously slow, unmaneuverable and had an unbalanced weapons layout. Any points it gets for physical plausibility (of having the nacelles on short pylons, though even that is inconsistent with other Federation ships) are completely lost by having the idiotic inacessible Oberth-style engineering section.

The Yamato is in SFC1, SFC2 and KA. It has a pair of assault phasers and a sensible layout of normal weapons. The assault phasers are fine; they have a narrow arc and a ridiculous cooldown, and they're supposed to be for cracking starbase shields, which they do in fact work well for. The Ent-D had a cannon like this in All Good Things and all the new (canon) Klingon ships have giant disruptors, so this is hardly unrealistic. The placement of them on the Yamato is actually sensible, slung between the two warp cores and with exposed cooling fins. The Yamato is actually fun to play with because it's actually pretty fast and maneuverable for a battleship, though the hull is weak compared to a Klingon brick (which you'd expect, looking at it).

Hah, yeah as I was posting I realised I couldn't actually remember which retarded name went with which wankship. Remember, the Federation stuff is ALWAYS BETTER.

I'm not even going to start on assault phasers (ps blow up your ship lol) since you think 'something superficially similar was in an episode hundred years later' means it's okay. The Yamato having 2 (and the Feds having 2 battleship classes) is pretty much all you need to know about how horribly biased SFB was. The Klingon BB was so hopeless you could kill it in an Excelsior (although that's really down to the terrible damage model).

Are you talking about Solauren's links now? The two Federation BBs were made by developers at Interplay; while it may be true that most programmers are fatty nerds, I doubt they are any moreso than the ones in the Paramount art department.

Ha! I actually didn't know that (since they just stole so much from SFB) but the KA guys were clearly fatty nerds. Have you read the manual?

HOLY.

SHIT.

[CaptHawkeye]

Ha! I actually didn't know that (since they just stole so much from SFB) but the KA guys were clearly fatty nerds. Have you read the manual?

HOLY.

SHIT.

"The Warriors Anger class ship was designed by a man who got really angry at his captain for being a complete panzy and then kicked his ass and later blew up some ships. After this he designed an awesome ship inspired by his experience and named for his WARRIOR'S ANGER. He totally put lots of disruptors on it and gave it THREE torps cuz one was stuput. zomg zomg zomg"

[Starglider]

Hah, yeah as I was posting I realised I couldn't actually remember which retarded name went with which wankship.

Or in fact most of the pertinent details.

Remember, the Federation stuff is ALWAYS BETTER.

Actually I always played the Romulans, given a chance, because their ships are tricky to use but simply superior when played properly (in SFC this is, which was fun multiplayer, KA wasn't, though not as hillariously awful and unplayable as Starfleet Academy was multiplayer).

I'm not even going to start on assault phasers (ps blow up your ship lol)

The assault phasers were only in KA, not the SFC games (I think, they weren't in the first one anyway, the second one had all kinds of crazy secondary weapons in it). As I recall they were pretty much useless against anything other than a station or another battleship, because the hit probability was so low on smaller targets.

since you think 'something superficially similar was in an episode hundred years later' means it's okay.

It's clearly possible within canon Trek physics, what more do you want? Compared to a lot of the stuff invented for those games that's pretty good.

The Yamato having 2 (and the Feds having 2 battleship classes) is pretty much all you need to know about how horribly biased SFB was. The Klingon BB was so hopeless you could kill it in an Excelsior (although that's really down to the terrible damage model).

You're confusing KA, SFC and SFB again. In SFC, the Federation everyone has a single BB class except the Klingons, who get two (and the second one is an overgunned ubership, killable with the Romulan BB though given cunning play). KA is bizarrely the other way around, as you say the Klingons get one and the Feds get two, but remember the KA mechanics have very little connection to SFB. As for SFB itself, there have been so many ships published over the years all the major powers must have about ten battleship designs by now, albeit buried under hundreds of cruisers and frigates.

Have you read the manual? HOLY. SHIT.

Bleh. I think so. I vaguely recall it being more wanky and less plausible than the actually fairly decent ship fluff (given that it has to build on the main canon) in the SFC manual.

So you'll be following JonB's Let's Play avidly then?

[Jade Falcon]

The Klingon L-11 was funny though, a D-7 with one wing missing.

http://home.comcast.net/~ststcsolda/index.html

The Federation class Battleship if I remember right was basically the original Dreadnough concept that was seen in early non canon tech manuals.

[Patrick Degan]

You could toss out about half the FASA designs and not really miss them. Some of the most unimaginative and illogical kitbashes I've ever seen collected in one source.

[montypython]

The Proxima class battleships from ST: Legacy reminded me of the Yamato class at times.

[Batman]

The Proxima class battleships from ST: Legacy reminded me of the Yamato class at times.

Argh. That ship makes me think I need glasses.
And most of the FASA designs linked earlier are butt-ugly. Much as Trek may have failed in other areas, their ship designs mostly worked.
Well, most of them. Okay, the main ones.

[Anguirus]

Ha! I actually didn't know that (since they just stole so much from SFB) but the KA guys were clearly fatty nerds. Have you read the manual?

HOLY.

SHIT.

"The Warriors Anger class ship was designed by a man who got really angry at his captain for being a complete panzy and then kicked his ass and later blew up some ships. After this he designed an awesome ship inspired by his experience and named for his WARRIOR'S ANGER. He totally put lots of disruptors on it and gave it THREE torps cuz one was stuput. zomg zomg zomg"

That manual was a really fun read when I was fourteen.