This ships

[emperorpenguin]

There was some really bad science in TOS, remember the Squire of Gothos who could view events on Earth via his telescope?

 

[H]

There was some really bad science in TOS, remember the Squire of Gothos who could view events on Earth via his telescope?

he just had REALLY good lenses.
and some way to see things faster than light could travel, meh...

 

[emperorpenguin]

There was some really bad science in TOS, remember the Squire of Gothos who could view events on Earth via his telescope?

he just had REALLY good lenses.
and some way to see things faster than light could travel, meh...

If I recall correctly he saw Earth as it was in the time of Napoleon, due to the time it took light to travel, but he knew who Napoleon was, that's a REALLY great telescope. You don't pick them up in Toys R Us

 

[H]

There was some really bad science in TOS, remember the Squire of Gothos who could view events on Earth via his telescope?

he just had REALLY good lenses.
and some way to see things faster than light could travel, meh...

If I recall correctly he saw Earth as it was in the time of Napoleon, due to the time it took light to travel, but he knew who Napoleon was, that's a REALLY great telescope. You don't pick them up in Toys R Us

so it WWAS just really great lenses... and ability to lip read and learn french

 

[Greg Smith]

There was some really bad science in TOS,

My favourite is Spock walking around after his brain has been stolen.

 

[Target]

The ships designs need to be smartened up a bit. Just because its the way it has been for 30 yrs is pretty rubbish. Thats what it seems to me a bit.
There's new technology so use it. The models can be improved a lot. Clustering the engines is a good idea & looks a hell of a lot better than tacking on these engines in random places.
The reason im not buying is the mini's are very ugly. When i buy i get big fleets of all races. Little compulsive when it comes to this. Some are cool but too many are ugly. It won't encourage new people in, cause if i feel this way i won't be alone. Why spend money on ugly models?
I can't see why coming up with new designs almost seems blasmphemous. Bad spelling i know. I understand about they can't use designs from the other shows but there are plenty of things they could do if they want to.

 

[Ben2]

@ Ben2;

Give her an extra engine and you have a Galactic Survey Cruiser!

The GSC already exists in SFB/FC, pretty much exactly as you describe but based on a heavy cruiser hull. In SFB it has a wartime carrier role, too.

That was sort of my idea. Galactic Survey Cruisers do the finding, first contacts and discovering new races/space monsters/etc, and this sort of ship comes in and does the really boring cataloging, where you're mapping a planet before colonisation, setting up science stations, deploying weather sats, etc, etc etc. At a push it can drive away a small to medium raider, but it's for getting colony sites up and running before you get a bunch of civilians running around getting eaten by the local flora and fauna.

 

[emperorpenguin]

There was some really bad science in TOS,

My favourite is Spock walking around after his brain has been stolen.

Once you've played Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues and not only had your brain stolen, but had an argument with it that no longer seems so odd!

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

The ships designs need to be smartened up a bit. Just because its the way it has been for 30 yrs is pretty rubbish. Thats what it seems to me a bit.
There's new technology so use it. The models can be improved a lot.

And they have been improved, you should see them compared to the 2400s!

Clustering the engines is a good idea & looks a hell of a lot better than tacking on these engines in random places.

I disagree, I think bolting engines together in clusters looks absolutely stupid.

The reason im not buying is the mini's are very ugly. When i buy i get big fleets of all races. Little compulsive when it comes to this. Some are cool but too many are ugly. It won't encourage new people in, cause if i feel this way i won't be alone. Why spend money on ugly models?

That is a matter of opinion, I love the 60s design of the Feds, Klingons and Romulans. The Gorn, Tholians, and Orions look neat too, the Kzinti I don't care for however. I love how "clean" most of the ships look, very much true to the source inspiration (and that is the key thing here IMO). Just because we have the technology to make them more "Detailed" doesn't mean they should be. IMO CGI makes it too easy to add "detail" for the sake of adding detail and often ships just end up looking overly busy (the Enterprise-E is a good example of this IMO).

Overall it is very much a matter of opinion.

I can't see why coming up with new designs almost seems blasmphemous. Bad spelling i know. I understand about they can't use designs from the other shows but there are plenty of things they could do if they want to.

Indeed they could try new things. Have any suggestions? I'm not being sarcastic here. Sketch some doodles, pitch some ideas, you never know maybe it'll get used. It is a bit of a challenge however, as there is the saying "easier said then done". :wink:



One thing I hope Star Fleet (assuming its still around) can cover a few years down the lines is the Post-Andromedan timeline, where new purpose-built "X-Ships" are being constructed (instead of testbed conversions of existing designs). The Start Fleet Universe timeline kinda "stops" here because (AFAIK) the SFB system was starting to buckle on the strain of the immensely powerful X-ships, however CTA:SF being less detailed has less to worry about that.

So if it does go in that direction there will be a whole new generation of starships utilizing X-Tech for every nation to design.

 

[Target]

Thing about clustering is don't have them the same size as normal as it does look as bad as tacking them on which it is. Maybe three smaller ones incased in a housing or along those lines.
Feds aren't to bad apart from a couple, Klingons ok, Romulan Hawk series could be cooler if they didn't tack engines everywhere on them, Sky Hawk is terrible. Think the Gorns are as bad as the Kzinti.
Being a little creative isn't that hard but it seems they are determined add engines. Thats not being creative. I guess thats my biggest bugbear. I don't care if the phaser bump isn't where it's supposed to be it's about painting & playing with a cool model. Aesthetics. I understand that people have different opinions. When my friends saw the models in the book they had very similar opinions & then they saw how they were doing the battleships with here some extra engines underneath & on the saucer. I just think they are wasting an opportunity for some nice space ship models

 

[Nerroth]

All versions of Trek had scientific blunders. A ship moving faster than light and firing an energy weapon ahead without running into its own beam, for example. And given the placement of its impulse engine and the thin warp pylons, the first thing which should happen when Enterprise fires its impulse engine is that it goes into an inverse loop; the next thing that should happen is that the warp engines fall off. (Some of this was fixed in TNG, where FTL combat happened only rarely and only involved torpedoes, and the new Enterprise's impulse engine was located half way down the neck.)

The "modern" weapons seen in the Star Fleet Universe usually have some sort of trans-light SFUnobabble when referring to their direct-fire weapons; involving warp shunts, streams of tachyons, or other such.

Plus, impulse engines in the SFU do not work the same way as in the later Franchise. Here, and impulse drive doesn't actually produce regular thrust, but forms a weak warp bubble around the ship in combat; but only enough so as to allow it to fight at high sublight speeds without running into relativistic effects.

(The onset of tactical warp, and warp-class weapons like phasers, is a key technoligical development in the historical timeline; older laser-based weapons were rapidly made obsolete once tactical warp came along, forcing a shift to trans-light weapons in order to make use of the new drive technologies.)

One thing I hope Star Fleet (assuming its still around) can cover a few years down the lines is the Post-Andromedan timeline, where new purpose-built "X-Ships" are being constructed (instead of testbed conversions of existing designs). The Start Fleet Universe timeline kinda "stops" here because (AFAIK) the SFB system was starting to buckle on the strain of the immensely powerful X-ships, however CTA:SF being less detailed has less to worry about that.

So if it does go in that direction there will be a whole new generation of starships utilizing X-Tech for every nation to design.

That may still depend on whether or not Module X2 ever gets off the ground for SFB; though it could be interesting if some of the new designs there had some sort of Mongoose input if/when being put together (so long as the issue of skirting the Franchise can be avoided, of course). That sort of thing could pay dividends in the long run.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Romulan Hawk series could be cooler if they didn't tack engines everywhere on them, Sky Hawk is terrible. Think the Gorns are as bad as the Kzinti.

The Gorns are just one design in varying sizes. They make for a very dull fleet, visually.

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

Being a little creative isn't that hard but it seems they are determined add engines. Thats not being creative.

Not creative from a visual standpoint, no. But pretty creative from the standpoint of military logistics!

In the Star Fleet Universe more Engines don't equal speed, they equal more power. The quickest way to upgrade a ship is to modify the design and add an extra engine to power more shields/weapons/whatever. This is what gives use the Federation Battle Frigate, the New Heavy Cruiser, the Klingon D5W, and other War-Era designs (which is where all these "add engines" designs originate).

Sure you could just design a whole new engine for your improved cruiser, but... there is a war going on! We don't have the time or money to design a new engine or ship, nor do we want to worry about manufacturing, shipping and supplying a whole set of new parts to the front lines. Its easier to take one of a handful of the existing engine models out there and bolt it on. Standardized parts are a huge boon to military logistics, imagine if every ship in the fleet had unique engine designs instead of "Frigate/Destroyer engine" and "Cruiser engine". This is part of the reason Fast ships are so rare, those engines are separate designs, not produced in large amounts and burn out fast.

Obviously this is explanation is not satisfactory from a standpoint of visual aesthetic, however I, at least, find it appealing for its nods toward real life military design and logistical perspective. The Star Fleet Universe wasn't written by Hollywood types to be flashy and cool, it was written by wargamers, some of them retired military, to feel "real" (from a certain PoV and certain extent) and the focus on logic and common-sense design helps that.

Another example is the "War era" ships. The War Cruisers are designed to be built using Destroyer sized construction berths so the Cruiser berths can be used to build Battlecruisers. The War destroyers are design to be built using frigate berths, so the destroyer berths can be used to build War Cruisers. Frigates just kind of fall by the wayside, they're too small and weak to survive the pitched fleet battles of the General War.

Its unfortunate that most newcomers to the SFU will be unaware and, likely, uninterested in such reasons that the ships look the way they do. They just want it to look "flashy and cool". There isn't anything inherently wrong with that really, just a difference of opinion and desires.

 

[Keeper Nilbog]

The Gorns are just one design in varying sizes. They make for a very dull fleet, visually.

Until they light up the sky/space with all those bright Plasma's :roll:

 

[emperorpenguin]

The Gorns are just one design in varying sizes. They make for a very dull fleet, visually.

Until they light up the sky/space with all those bright Plasma's :roll:

Or rather until they explode under Romulan plasma :twisted:

 

[Kirksfolly]

Good post GG. I don't have a background in SFU but I've 'bought into' the fluff with some background reading as I find a degree of background knowledge really enhances my own game experience, as well as developing the character of a game. Without it, I think any game becomes rather bland.

 

[Nerroth]

To follow on GG's point a little, in the case of the Hawk-series, the issue of engine use is directly tied to the Romulans' (highly strained) logistical needs. When they were drawing up plans for their new-generation ships, they had to work in as many efficiencies as they could, to get over the hurdles left by their continued use of "legacy" (Eagle-series) hulls and the "imported" (Kestrel) ships, all with an economy that was nothing like the powerhouses enjoyed by the likes of the Federation or ISC. The SparrowHawk and FireHawk use the same engines as the SkyHawk not as a mere tacking-on of parts for the sake of it, but as a necessity; they simply could not afford to build so many ships of all three classes as they did without doing so.

These demands are also why the Hawk cruisers have those rectangular pieces on either side of the secondary hull, and where the lines around the ridged back of the Skyhawk come from; these are supposed to represent modules which the Romulans can use to tailor each hull into a given variant (and back again, in the case of most SparrowHawk and SkyHawk variants). SparrowHawks built in-universe could be fitted with scout modules and sent to explore for badly-needed resources, then later return to a fleet yard to have a new pair of modules snapped in before sending it on another mission.

Although, as someone who actually likes the look of the 2500-series Hawk cruisers, I'd argue the Romulan engineers managed to make a virtue out of necessity design-wise; though, I suppose it's ironic that the Hawk hull I like the look of best has the non-standard fast engines. (And even then, the use of "common" engines allowed the Empire to also build a fast variant of the SparrowHawk; seen in SFB, but not just yet in either FC or ACtA:SF.)

 

[ErikB]

As a minis game, aesthetics are far more important to ACTA: SF than previous efforts, which had minis but only as a secondary concern.

And the goal for the difference between early and late production models should be aiming for the difference between the prototype Spitfire and Griffon engined versions!

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

And the goal for the difference between early and late production models should be aiming for the difference between the prototype Spitfire and Griffon engined versions!

So kinda like this?

The C7 is just a highly refined version of the D6 in the end, representing the lessens learned over a couple decades of building the D6/D7 series and several years of total warfare. :wink:

 

[ErikB]

So kinda like this?

Needs MOAR POWAR!!!! I mean bigger engines.

Mostly though I was thinking the D5 is one of my least favourite designs. For some reason the proportions don't work and it doesn't look as good as the D6. I like the three engine configuration, but it would look better on a different hull.

But in general I just think people should be open to designs whose principle goal is to make an attractive miniature.

Plus it is healthy to slaughter a few sacred cows every once in a while, just on principle.