StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Yep, that's right. It's about fucking time the Romuluns got a new ship.

Yeah, really. The new warbirds were nice and the Scimitar was incredible.

Was it? I haven't seen the movie, but from the pics, it looks like yet another ridiculous gossamer-winged toy, with enormous ratio of surface area to mass and pathetic structural rigidity by design. Did I just catch a bad-angle view of it? Are there any good pics?

Darth Wong wrote:Was it? I haven't seen the movie, but from the pics, it looks like yet another ridiculous gossamer-winged toy, with enormous ratio of surface area to mass and pathetic structural rigidity by design. Did I just catch a bad-angle view of it? Are there any good pics?

Well, let me rephrase that...they were extremely nice TREK ships. If you're going to judge vessels by being a good solid design then pretty much everything in ST is crapola.

The only pics I've seen so far are in the current issue of Star Trek Communicator. Haven't seen any on-line yet.

The point is that after 15 some odd years, the Romulans finally get a new capital ship. I mean really, the Federation has been pumping out a new ship class every week on DS9 and Voyager. Even the Klingons got a little variety in their fleets. The Romulan fleet however, up until now, has been composed of one and only one class of vessels.

Wicked Pilot wrote:The point is that after 15 some odd years, the Romulans finally get a new capital ship. I mean really, the Federation has been pumping out a new ship class every week on DS9 and Voyager. Even the Klingons got a little variety in their fleets. The Romulan fleet however, up until now, has been composed of one and only one class of vessels.

They also had the scout ships, which made it two!

They got a new ship, but it clearly sucks. Both of their new cruisers were destroyed or disabled in only a few shots from the Scimitar. The Enterprise took vastly more punishment than the Romulan ones, and appeared to have greater firepower, too.

There's a five view and two beauty shots of the Valdore on 3DGladiators:

http://www.3dgladiators.com/forums/show ... adid=18111

You need to register to view those. Is there another way?

Here's one showing the valdore. Took it off of SB.


http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/20 ... 471918.jpg

Holy fuck, that's the dumbest-looking thing I've ever seen. Don't these fucking morons who design these things even try to think of anything remotely resembling practicality? I was completely 100% right in my speculation that they would be a ridiculous gossamer-winged toy:

Yay, let's build a ship with the maximum possible surface area for any given volume, the flimsiest possible structure, and the most inefficient possible shielding system (given the sheer size of the shield it must generate to protect what is a miniscule ship by volume, relative to its bulk dimensions).

Fucking morons. My 7-year old kid could design a better ship than this.

Good, GOD that thing's pathetic. It has a lower surface-area to volume ratio than the D'Derix. No wonder it takes three hits and blows up violently.

I it both looks and is stupid, but one had a wing sheared off and neither piece exploded, though it was taken out of the fight. The second took a bunch of hits in the belly and went dead in the water but also avoided going up.

Pretty good by Star Trek standards where half the ships explode after one salvo.

Ender wrote:You need to register to view those. Is there another way?

Sorry 'bout that.

Here's the images links:

http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/20 ... 471918.jpg
http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/20 ... 471242.jpg

It's even worse than it looks in that first pic I posted. Check out the view from the front:

"Gossamer-winged" is actually quite an understatement. Small wonder one of them had a wing sheared off; one must wonder why their enemies don't always shoot for the wings.

The old warbird looks more stable than that. And that's still not saying much for stability.

It's interesting that pretty much everywhere I've seen pics of the Valdore posted it's been roundly slagged. On at least two SF-3D CG boards the promo pic was panned as an amaturish rendering of an ugly ship. On SB the reception was warm in the flaming sense. Here it's been thwacked as impractically stupid. I think this is one of the few SF ships that is close to universally disliked. Way to go Bozo and Binhead.

Darth Wong wrote:It's even worse than it looks in that first pic I posted. Check out the view from the front:

"Gossamer-winged" is actually quite an understatement. Small wonder one of them had a wing sheared off; one must wonder why their enemies don't always shoot for the wings.

It was sad, the one Valdore's wing just sort of fell off when it was hit. No secondary explosion, nothing. It was like the main body and the wing just parted company after a few disruptor hits.

......... just cause it looks cool dont mean it will work worth a crap.Lookit all the nice big robots in anime they look cool and a nice ugly boxy tank will still tear em a new bunghole

Enlightenment wrote:Way to go Bozo and Binhead.

Yeah, let's just blame B&B because it's easier! They fucked up Star Trek but it still gives no reason to mindlessly blame them for everything what is bad in modern Trek. Braga didn't even have anything do with Nemesis. This horrible looking shp is fault of the art department and the director Stuart Baird who approved it.

On the flip side, you have to remember that Star Trek ship designs are developed by the art department more an expression of cultural art than they are millitary designs (the 'Defiant'-class being the only ST design that seems to have originated as a "let's design a tough-looking ship" concept). They want to show a clear 'racial personality' in each species' ship designs.

By that criteria, the Valdore-class well fits in with the known Romulan fixation with bird-like designs in both art and space technology. Because it fits in with the race's established 'look', that is all that matters to the art department and the producers. No-one is seriously claiming that they are practical millitary designs (I would have insisted on a thicker 'wing' with more armour, for a start). However, one of those things with the T'liss bird of prey painted across the dorsal surface looks fantastic from a purely artistic point of view. That is all that matters to the Trek Powers That Be in this case.

BenRG wrote:By that criteria, the Valdore-class well fits in with the known Romulan fixation with bird-like designs in both art and space technology. Because it fits in with the race's established 'look', that is all that matters to the art department and the producers. No-one is seriously claiming that they are practical millitary designs (I would have insisted on a thicker 'wing' with more armour, for a start). However, one of those things with the T'liss bird of prey painted across the dorsal surface looks fantastic from a purely artistic point of view. That is all that matters to the Trek Powers That Be in this case.

The problem is that they're designing something which is supposed to look quasi-realistic. They have become so disconnected from reality that they don't even think of making something that looks like its designers were considering function over form. Hence, it does not look military. The military does not give a flying fuck about form; just function.

Ahh! Its the Spruce Goose!

Darth Wong wrote:The problem is that they're designing something which is supposed to look quasi-realistic.

Says who? Don't get me wrong; I'm sure that we would love them to try and make their designs look realistic from a millitary standpoint. However, the cold, hard truth is that this has never been an issue in Star Trek ship design. It is all about making pretty ships so that kids will by AMT kits by the dozen for their personal collection. If 'realistic' ever came into it, do you really think that they would have given the Enterprise refit and Enterprise-A that incredibly skinny 'neck' and tinfoil-think nacelle pylons?

Some advice: Shut down your 'reality' filter, kick back your heels and just enjoy the weird-looking ship-things.