Fun with Greyscale III

[Identity Crisis]

I like the pylon changes to the Kiev, brings it more in line with the Knox/Daran family.

Starfleet really liked to try all possible weapon combinations on its frigates:
Daran - phasers
Knox - phasers + megaphasers
Kiev - phasers + photon torps
Avenger/Miranda - phasers + megaphasers + photon torps

Hmm, how about a frigate with megaphasers + photon torps but no phasers? That would be silly...

[Phoenix]

Well if were also counting SFB you forgot Drones and Plasma

[Identity Crisis]

I forgot SFB. Lucky me. ;-)
Do Fed ships ever use plasma in SFB? I know they use drones, just not very often.

[TFVanguard]

Retouched, re-biasing the lines in favour of the port-side view. I think it came out much better. Still not a 'favorite' design by any standard, but a lot more workable.

[Grimace]

My absolutely most favorite ship; the Northampton! Whenever I played Star Trek, I always wanted to be a captain of a Northampton. Great work on it, TFVanguard!

[TFVanguard]

USS Thufir Class Destroyer

While this design is a little overly complex (can anyone explain the purpose of the winglets, honestly?), the actual basics of this ship are pretty good. It's refreshing not to have to change TOO much on a FASA design. Here, I added the torpedo launchers, corrected the saucer section, and added a 'real' impulse drive to the cowling.

[AslanC]

Nice work as always.

The NOrthhampton (or USS Hulkamania) looks great!

As for the Liberty, I always added some flight decks to her "boobs" and made her a carrier

[Erik Filean]

I always did like the Thufir and Andor classes with their protected nacelles. It's not a perfect piece of design (the nacelles are protected by the housing for their own PTCs, and I don't know how you'd jettison the nacelles without having them collide with the hull), but the idea is a good one.

One thing I never noticed in the FASA manual that I see now is that the connection between the Thufir's nacelle supports and the saucer is pretty slim--the cross-section fore to aft is smaller than the diameter of the bridge module! Would it be worth thickening that just a little so it doesn't look like the saucer is going to tilt forward and snap off in a gravity well like those on oh, so many Trek starship model kits?

[Identity Crisis]

(can anyone explain the purpose of the winglets, honestly?)

Sorry, are we talking about the Enterprise-B now? ;-)

[Erik Filean]

Sorry, are we talking about the Enterprise-B now? ;-)

Maybe that's why the Enterprise-B has those winglets. "We've had modest success improving subspace 'slippage' of the hull in an optimally configured warp field when superfluous winglets are incorporated into the design. Consider the attached trial performance data from the U.S.S. Placebo...."

[Phoenix]

Guy's, don't think of them as winglets...think of then as extended crumple zones

Identity Crisis:
The Fed's had one of two plasma armed ship designs the one I have used was based on the Fed BCH, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a DD with plasma also.

TFVanguard:
Sorry to keep doing this to you...
Take a close look at the bottom of the saucer section on the Liberty side view. Then take the measurements from the top and fore views. There should be some of the |// action aft of the center saucer before leveling back out \\|//||
I hope the little dashes are understandable, they're supposed to represent the shield emitter lines under the saucer.

[Grimace]

Yeah, Phoenix has a point with the saucer section. And while I was looking at that, I noticed another "oops".

On the top view, you see the saucer section meeting with the secondary hull (upper section). From there, the secondary hull angles back until it meets the side, then shoots back to the aft end of the ship.

Now on the side view, we see the saucer section meeting up with the secondary hull, and immediately shooting back to the aft end of the ship...indicating that there isn't an angled section leading to the side portion.

[TFVanguard]

And... I hereby give up on the Liberty as is... Sorry, but the three-view pictures from FASA here were completely impossible, and I'm at a complete loss as to how to make them work. Plus, no matter how you shake it, the 'boobs' design is laughable at best... I'm going to do something more serious to it, I think... maybe using the Laweya and Overfield as a base.

[First of Two]

Probably not that helpful, but what the heck... here's a Liberty of a different color:

3-D model attempt

[TFVanguard]

USS Wilkerson Class Destroyer

Decided to add some detail to this one, just adding a new engineering section and some much-needed lines to the warp pylons. Adds a lot of character to one of the laziest of FASA's designs.



I'll retackle the Liberty sometime this week.. right now, it just bugs the hell out of me.