Worst ship design?

[Patrick Degan]

None of the models have saucer cutouts for impulse engines.

Another problem with the modern Nebula subtypes is that the pod support obstructs access to the main shuttle bay. Anyone flying a shuttle into or out of the main bay better be wide awake unless they want to have a chunky salsa experience.

Yes, they certainly didn't think that one through when they designed the ship, did they?

[Moonshadow]

meh. My Nebula is a resin conversion of that really big GCS model from a while back. Maybe thats why it has the engines. Perhaps as someone else sugested the engines are armored like the Defiant's engines. Docking a Shuttle with a type 2 Nebula does look pretty hard however with the Type 1 it wouldn't be too difficult.

[Enlightenment]

Yes, they certainly didn't think that one through when they designed the ship, did they?

For another howler, think about where the warp core is in the GCS stardrive section, where the warp engines are mounted to the hull and how the plasma conduits connect the core to the engines. Now think about where the engine mounting brackets are on the NCS and how many twists and turns the plasma conduits would need to make. But these kind of problems are really no surprise as the Trek graphics people have never thought through how their eye candy fits in with known Trek engineering principles let alone real engineering...

[Patrick Degan]

For another howler, think about where the warp core is in the GCS stardrive section, where the warp engines are mounted to the hull and how the plasma conduits connect the core to the engines. Now think about where the engine mounting brackets are on the NCS and how many twists and turns the plasma conduits would need to make. But these kind of problems are really no surprise as the Trek graphics people have never thought through how their eye candy fits in with known Trek engineering principles let alone real engineering...

Yes, most amusing. As I've pointed out in other threads, the original Enterprise (and the ship design which immediately preceded it that we know today as the Daedelus-class starship) were designed by Walter Matt Jeffries; a Hollywood art director and set designer but who was also, like Gene Roddenberry, a former Army Air Force bomber pilot. He knew how machines were put together and how they worked. The original ship reflects this basic thinking.

When the ship was redesigned for the movies, it was handled by Andrew Probert, an art director. But he worked off of the design legacy of Mike Minor and Matt Jeffries (who first envisioned the swept-back pylon struts in the 60s). Style began to override function in the movie ship, but not grossly so.

But from TNG onward, the starship designs have been handled exclusively by art directors and graphics people who consider the style before any other criterion. If they manage to work up a design which is sensible, or close to it, it's more by random chance than deliberate plan.