What is the Miranda-class designation and role?

[Alyeska]

The TOS Enterprise was a battlecruiser, mentioned in ST 3.
Miranda probably up close serving either as heavy cruiser or medium cruiser. Light cruiser seems little to weak, but then again the Reliant took Enterprise by surprise in ST 2.

Incorrect. In ST:3 we see a picture of the Enterprise with the title Heavy Cruiser.

[Cpt_Frank]

Heavy cruiser. Which as far as I know, is just another name for battlecruiser. But I might be wrong since English is not my 1st language.

[Isolder74]

of course I could have got the names mixed up but I'm a big Battleship buff and have read several books about how nations have used their capitol ship porrly and why.

http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/h_class.htmGraf Spee

http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/scharnhorst.htm Scharnhorst

http://www.feldgrau.com/kmsas.htmlfound this site on the Deutschland

http://www.feldgrau.com/kmshc.htmlBlucher Class

in all of these ship Hitler lied about their displaements

[Isolder74]

Heavy cruiser. Which as far as I know, is just another name for battlecruiser. But I might be wrong since English is not my 1st language.

The only real differnce between a "heavy" Cruiser and "Battle" cruiser is the displacement they usually have the same guns only the battle cruiser usually has more armor or is slightly faster

[Patrick Ogaard]

Heavy cruiser. Which as far as I know, is just another name for battlecruiser. But I might be wrong since English is not my 1st language.

The battle cruiser was a fast heavy cruiser with a main battery consisting of battleship-grade guns. Since the heavy cruiser did not carry the armor of a battleship but carried a battleship's guns, the idea was that a battle cruiser could outshoot anything but a battleship (or enemy battle cruiser), and could run away from ships it could not outshoot. It was ultimately not a successful experiment, the Hood being a prime example of what can happen when a battle cruiser is put in a position where it has to fight, in the Hood's case against the Bismarck, a heavy cruiser with battleship guns, battleship armor and, because the Nazis simply lied about its tonnage (which was already officially over the Versailles limits) nearly the displacement of a proper battleship.

For some reason, that reason obviously being coolness, the term battle cruiser has always been a favorite in science fiction.

[Isolder74]

it was over the limit truefully it really was a Battleship. displacement of 45,000 tons

[Isolder74]

the flaws of the Hood really came from the Washington treaty. I made a top limit on the tonnage a ship could have(40,000 tons). Even having a light cruiser was against the Versi Treaty. they armored the Hood Heavilly on the sides but in order to meet the Washington treaty and still have the Heavier guns they were forced to lesss armor on the decks then they really wanted. Even then the Hood barely made it a legal under the treaty.

[Patrick Ogaard]

the flaws of the Hood really came from the Washington treaty. I made a top limit on the tonnage a ship could have(40,000 tons). Even having a light cruiser was against the Versi Treaty. they armored the Hood Heavilly on the sides but in order to meet the Washington treaty and still have the Heavier guns they were forced to lesss armor on the decks then they really wanted. Even then the Hood barely made it a legal under the treaty.

Add inadequate safety systems/compartmentalization in the main battery magazines and you have an exploding ship.

[Isolder74]

the flaws of the Hood really came from the Washington treaty. I made a top limit on the tonnage a ship could have(40,000 tons). Even having a light cruiser was against the Versi Treaty. they armored the Hood Heavilly on the sides but in order to meet the Washington treaty and still have the Heavier guns they were forced to lesss armor on the decks then they really wanted. Even then the Hood barely made it a legal under the treaty.

Add inadequate safety systems/compartmentalization in the main battery magazines and you have an exploding ship.

And the Bismark getting a lucky shot just like the Japanese did on the Arizona. When the Hood was built ships didn't take many hits on the top quarter. For this reason the German purposely built into their gun tables high angle shots as standard. Also the Bismark used very high velocity guns(they loved those things almost every German gun used the principle in some way) so its penetreation power was actually better the the 16 in guns used by many of the British ships.

[Isolder74]

The Miranda appeared to be the Fed's answer to the Klingon BOP. In that it was cheap to build and yet still quite powerful. It is apparent that it has almost the same armement as the Constitution-Class but has limited science facilities. This was obviously built to fight a war with the Klingons as it seems much better suited to general combat than the Connie.

[Alyeska]

The Miranda appeared to be the Fed's answer to the Klingon BOP. In that it was cheap to build and yet still quite powerful. It is apparent that it has almost the same armement as the Constitution-Class but has limited science facilities. This was obviously built to fight a war with the Klingons as it seems much better suited to general combat than the Connie.

Actually it has greater firepower compared to the Constitution. It has twice the torpedo capability and almost as many standard phaser arrays (Miranda has 6 while the Consitution has 9), but the Miranda has 2 of those rollbar phasers (double direction at least) which showed much greater hull damage on the Constitution compared to the Enterprise's damage to the Reliant.

[Master of Ossus]

the Miranda has 2 of those rollbar phasers (double direction at least) which showed much greater hull damage on the Constitution compared to the Enterprise's damage to the Reliant.

Or the Miranda is more heavily armored than the Constitution we cannot be sure of which from the evidence that you presented, but the Miranda's smaller volume to engine size ratio appears to indicate that it would be more heavily armored, since neither ship appears to be much faster than the other at warp speeds (or, it could just have to do with a minimum warp-engine size on SF ships, but that is unlikely because the Constitution does have larger engines than the Miranda).

[Alyeska]

the Miranda has 2 of those rollbar phasers (double direction at least) which showed much greater hull damage on the Constitution compared to the Enterprise's damage to the Reliant.

Or the Miranda is more heavily armored than the Constitution we cannot be sure of which from the evidence that you presented, but the Miranda's smaller volume to engine size ratio appears to indicate that it would be more heavily armored, since neither ship appears to be much faster than the other at warp speeds (or, it could just have to do with a minimum warp-engine size on SF ships, but that is unlikely because the Constitution does have larger engines than the Miranda).

I am not so sure on the armor bit. The begining of the saucer and the bridge are visually identical to the Consitution. I don't see much room for more armor really. Look at the damage the Enterprise did to the Reliant when it hit the bridge, look how much damage the Reliant did to the Enterprise on its torpedo launcher.

However given its size and apparent use of many Consitution parts, I would not be surprised if it has the same power plant. It seems to have sacraficed some of the "science" capabilities of the Contisution along with the shuttle capabilities to go for a more efficent design. With the same power plant but a smaller ship you got better shields. Might be the same power, but when defending a smaller space you got more power.

The Miranda has greater torpedo capability and most likely better phasers (which is backed up by backstage info calling those mega phasers) in a smaller package with better shields. They found a way to make a better warship in a smaller package IMO. The Miranda was probably a Cruiser, maybe a Heavy Cruiser while the Excelsior became a Heavy Cruiser or BattleCruiser.

[DeceasedHorse]

Isolder is correct in that the hood's armor was heavily upgraded between the war, and was really more of a "fast battleship" than a battlecruiser at the time of its destruction. The hit was not neccesarily 'lucky' however; the hood's frame was badly strained from the added weight of all the upgrades it recieved so it was even more vunerable to plunging hits. Furthmore, the Prince of Wales hit on the Bismarck was also pretty lucky; it hit her/him (the Nazis used male pronouns for their ships) below the belt and the waterline and holed the oil tanks. The Bismarck was based on the Baden hull,a world war 1 era design, which is why is was so vunerable to air attacks.

The 'pocket battleships' were really just extremely well armer cruisers-they were far to slow at 26-28 knots to be battlecruisers and their 11-inch guns didn't fire all that fast.

[Cpt_Frank]

The battle cruiser was a fast heavy cruiser with a main battery consisting of battleship-grade guns. Since the heavy cruiser did not carry the armor of a battleship but carried a battleship's guns, the idea was that a battle cruiser could outshoot anything but a battleship (or enemy battle cruiser), and could run away from ships it could not outshoot.

Duh, I know what a bc is. I'm a navy-nut after all.

The 'pocket battleships' were really just extremely well armed cruisers-they were far to slow at 26-28 knots to be battlecruisers and their 11-inch guns didn't fire all that fast.

Glorified cruisers yet with relatively heavy armor. Hybrids.

the Nazis used male pronouns for their ships

Wrong. in German you refer to a ship as female. (die Bismarck)

[Doomriser]

1. Miranda as a battlecruiser: an interesting proposition, given the U.S.S. Reliant NCC 1864 - the real Reliant was in fact a battlecruiser IIRC.

2. The Miranda is a good counter for the D-7 IMHO

3. Being mentioned in increasing frequency are these alleged canon schematics from the TOS movies - things seen on viewscreens for example. Previously unknown TM ships, stats on existing ships, etc...
Has anyone done an extensive study on this? Are there screen caps? I am VERY interested.

[Isolder74]

Isolder is correct in that the hood's armor was heavily upgraded between the war, and was really more of a "fast battleship" than a battlecruiser at the time of its destruction. The hit was not neccesarily 'lucky' however; the hood's frame was badly strained from the added weight of all the upgrades it recieved so it was even more vunerable to plunging hits. Furthmore, the Prince of Wales hit on the Bismarck was also pretty lucky; it hit her/him (the Nazis used male pronouns for their ships) below the belt and the waterline and holed the oil tanks. The Bismarck was based on the Baden hull,a world war 1 era design, which is why is was so vunerable to air attacks.

The 'pocket battleships' were really just extremely well armer cruisers-they were far to slow at 26-28 knots to be battlecruisers and their 11-inch guns didn't fire all that fast.

.
The real lucky shot was from a Swordfish torpedo bomber. It hit the rudder of the Bismark jamming it forcing the ship to run in circles if that didn't hapen it would have gotten away. It was a antigue bi-plane that was so slow that the Bismarks automated Anti-aircraft batteries could not be set low enough so they simply couldn't hit them if any other plane had been used they would have been shot to pieces. The luck for the Brit's was that the Arc Royal hadn't yet upgraded its planes to Furies yet.

[Isolder74]

The Miranda appeared to be the Fed's answer to the Klingon BOP. In that it was cheap to build and yet still quite powerful. It is apparent that it has almost the same armement as the Constitution-Class but has limited science facilities. This was obviously built to fight a war with the Klingons as it seems much better suited to general combat than the Connie.

Actually it has greater firepower compared to the Constitution. It has twice the torpedo capability and almost as many standard phaser arrays (Miranda has 6 while the Consitution has 9), but the Miranda has 2 of those rollbar phasers (double direction at least) which showed much greater hull damage on the Constitution compared to the Enterprise's damage to the Reliant.

There are more types of BOP's than the one seen in ST III. There are the light cruiser sized ones. and if they existed in TWOK time period than the need for a ceap battlecruiser would be useful to the Federation.

[Alyeska]

The Miranda appeared to be the Fed's answer to the Klingon BOP. In that it was cheap to build and yet still quite powerful. It is apparent that it has almost the same armement as the Constitution-Class but has limited science facilities. This was obviously built to fight a war with the Klingons as it seems much better suited to general combat than the Connie.

Actually it has greater firepower compared to the Constitution. It has twice the torpedo capability and almost as many standard phaser arrays (Miranda has 6 while the Consitution has 9), but the Miranda has 2 of those rollbar phasers (double direction at least) which showed much greater hull damage on the Constitution compared to the Enterprise's damage to the Reliant.

There are more types of BOP's than the one seen in ST III. There are the light cruiser sized ones. and if they existed in TWOK time period than the need for a ceap battlecruiser would be useful to the Federation.

And where does this evidence come from?

[Isolder74]

Actually it has greater firepower compared to the Constitution. It has twice the torpedo capability and almost as many standard phaser arrays (Miranda has 6 while the Consitution has 9), but the Miranda has 2 of those rollbar phasers (double direction at least) which showed much greater hull damage on the Constitution compared to the Enterprise's damage to the Reliant.

There are more types of BOP's than the one seen in ST III. There are the light cruiser sized ones. and if they existed in TWOK time period than the need for a ceap battlecruiser would be useful to the Federation.

And where does this evidence come from?

i did say if

[Doomriser]

Didn't we see the light cruiser sized BOPs in TNG? They were seen on occasion in comparison to the Enterprise-D.

[Alyeska]

Didn't we see the light cruiser sized BOPs in TNG? They were seen on occasion in comparison to the Enterprise-D.

We saw the B'rel (which is likely a Frigate) and the K'vort (which would be a light cruiser). So yes. I would equate the K'vort as the light cruiser with the Vor'cha as the Heavy Cruiser and the Negh'Var as the Battleship.

[Doomriser]

Actually, the Vor'Cha is canonically referred to as a "battlecruiser" by Klingon command staff during the Dominion War Arc of DS9. I can't remember the episode offhand, but I did do a PDD of it on ASVS.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Actually, the Vor'Cha is canonically referred to as a "battlecruiser" by Klingon command staff during the Dominion War Arc of DS9. I can't remember the episode offhand, but I did do a PDD of it on ASVS.

I believe that would be the episode in which Chancellor Marty Feldman, AKA Chancellor Gowron, decides to expend something like 17 of those ships in softening up a heavily defended planet during the Dominion War before the main fleet element hits. Martok starts to have misgivings about the self-aggrandizing weasel in charge of the Klingon war effort.

[Master of Ossus]

Actually, the Vor'Cha is canonically referred to as a "battlecruiser" by Klingon command staff during the Dominion War Arc of DS9. I can't remember the episode offhand, but I did do a PDD of it on ASVS.

I believe that would be the episode in which Chancellor Marty Feldman, AKA Chancellor Gowron, decides to expend something like 17 of those ships in softening up a heavily defended planet during the Dominion War before the main fleet element hits. Martok starts to have misgivings about the self-aggrandizing weasel in charge of the Klingon war effort.

I thought he was going to send "fifteen Vor'Cha class battle cruisers" to try and CONQUER a Dominion world. Martok and Worf kind of laughed at him, knowing that the attack would fail, and then Worf challenged him for Emperor.