Federation Commander

Thanks for that - I like the newer design a lot better, myself.


Not as much as I like the NCF derivation, though!

Another thing that helped the confusion was the decision to show the SSD of the NCL with the warp nacells near the edges of the saucer, rather than closer together as they are on the miniature and artwork. I could see why they did that, for it gave the ship a more squared off,compact appearance, but with the arrival the USS Reliant in TWoK, unfortunate conclusions were made by some.

Also, while Briefing #2 was published in '82, I am almost certain that the basic design was at least a year or two old at that time, given our game creator's desire to test and refine ideas.

Nerroth wrote:I wonder when the design of the NCL was changed, to give it the larger engines close to the saucer than the older version used to have...

To be specific, the design of the NCL miniature was changed, not the NCL itself. That has been unchanged for a long time. (Over time it gained a refit, then the refit was modified. The base ship is the same as the one introduced in Expansion #3 in 1982.)

The NCL miniature was changed in two ways:
1) The engines were made bigger. The reason for that is because it was determined that the engines on the earlier miniature were too small. Therefore, they were enlarged.
2) The engines were mounted closer. The reason for that is because it was heavily requested from the fan base to eliminate, as much as possible, multi-piece miniatures. Therefore, the NCL miniature was recast as a single-piece miniature. The result of making it a single piece was the closer mounting of the engines and the partial sensor dish.

I can still recall seeing art in some of the older material showing the ship as it looked pre-mini change - can't for the life of me remember where I saw it, though.

There were some cover paintings that showed the old NCL design, just like they did the old square-engine Fed frigate. They were accurate at the time - now it's known they weren't.

The practicalities of molding and durability for the minis drove a lot of things (in the case of the FF, even changing the approach [the square engines were originally thought to be easier to mold"]).

"In-universe" it's pretty easy to explain; This happens all the time with "military stuff" (the "stealth fighter" was originally thought to be a curvy, sleek machine like the "secret" Testors model-kit, it was much later shown to really be a faceted, much more primitive design).

The basic hull-form for the NCL is really not that big of a leap from the old FJS Tug from the tech manual. A saucer with two engines stuck to it was established there, the NCL and FF just removed the spindly struts and changed proportions and top/bottom symmetry around.

The movie ship took a similar path, but it's a pretty obvious path to take. Heck, originally the movie ship was drawn with the engines above the saucer; they only got slung below it when the producer misinterpreted the drawing and signed it upside down and the designers tried to incorporate what they thought were his wishes).

Wolverin61 wrote:

pinecone wrote:The miranda class in comparison the the Constitution is a Light Cruiser, not a Frigate.

I agree, but I've seen the Miranda/Avenger class called a 'frigate' in books.

You have to remeber that in actual trek, the terms frigate, cruiser, destroyer, snd such really don't mean anything. They call the Kvort (Next Gen) bird of prey a fighter!

It's the class names that mean things i.e. A dederidex can wipe the floor with anything besides a Galaxy, Vorcha, or seveal other units like that, An excelsior can defeat older klingon ships but not the new vorchas or dederidexes, the breen ship is compreable in power to a Neg'var, Ect. Ect. Ect. Frigate, Light cruiser ect. mean nothing.

Don't try to make much sense of what they did on the "silver screen". Not much regarding anything but the characters meant anything on the movies or tv series, week to week, month to month, etc.

One month the Bird of Prey is a small gunship with a 12-man crew, a year later it is a big cruiser able to pose a threat to a big Galaxy-class ship and that is made "OK" by fanfic saying it is a "different class".
In reality, it was producers too cheap to pay for the new Vorcha miniature in those early seasons.

If the writers wanted to make a giant battlewagon like a Romulan Dederidex suddenly be able to be taken out by Worf's "expertly flown, with Klingon battle-spirit" 12-man Bird of Prey... they just went ahead and did it.

The "new ship" for ST:Enterprise was going to be the TNG-era Akira-class (with no changes, literally the TNG-era ship on a show set before Kirk's time) because Berman and Bragah liked it. Doug Drexler literally had to coerce them into at least letting him change it some to at least try to have it make some "technical" sense.

The Hollywood writers don't care about the ships. To them, it a shooting set - they rarely care which one, what type, etc. "Drama" comes first to writers. Consistency comes second, if ever.

I remember a bit of confusion when I came here from FASA's game years ago. Over there, a 'frigate' was a 'cruiser' that was purely combat in function.

FASA at least tried to keep consistent to themselves, but since they were tied to anything Trek popped out, they got thrown curve balls constantly (like the magic size-changing Bird of Prey, etc.). It couldn't have been easy trying to organize a room the Hollywood kids kept messing up.

hedgehobbit wrote:I believe those are Fed Frigates. (the NCL was published in 1982, see my previous post)

Back in the 80s, it seemed that SFB followed the developement of Star Trek as much as possible given their license. Another example besides the NCL, was the Feb battlecruiser which had weapon in its neck, something that wasn't in the old series but was in the movies. After TNG came out, the games started to diverge completely since TNG was so different from what had come before it.

Since then, SFB is expanding back in time with their Y modules and expanding outwards with their Omega stuff.

I'm all for Frigates!

I think the "Frigate" designation of the Reliant, Miranda, or Avenger (call it what you like) was heavily influenced by the use of the term by the USN in prior to the 1980s. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the USN commissioned ships classed as guided missile frigates which were actually AAW cruisers built on destroyer-style hulls. Some of these ships—the Bainbridge-, Truxtun-, California- and Virginia- classes—were nuclear-powered. All such ships were reclassified as guided missile cruisers (CG / CGN) or, in the case of the smaller Farragut-class, as guided missile destroyers (DDG) in 1975. The last of these particular frigates were struck from the Naval Vessel Register in the 1990s.

Back in the age of sail, Frigates were not minor warships. Some Frigates in service in the early 1800's would have been a formidible match for older 64 or even 74 gun ships. In fact, some 74s were "razeed" to make a sort of "Super Frigate" - the tope deck was removed, leaving a heavy, fast, single deck ship, armed with a powerful battery of 50+ guns.

The use of the term "Frigate" as a light or escort warship is a comparitively new development. 100 years ago, if somebody said "Frigate", in meant something very different than what it means in Navy's today. Personnally, I like the old meaning better.

Corvette is another term that seems to mean different things to different cultures and people.

Well in real life the USS Burke is a Destroyer in the USN. 31 knots and is extremely nimble. The kind that knows how to boot scoot and boogie. Many of the sister ships are Burke class destroyers and the back bone of the fleet. In SFB it is the Contstitution class Heavy Cruiser.

What I'd like to see is a book that catalogs the ships like a "Jane's Fighting Ships" catalog complete with all the specs of the ship, speeds, ship names of the class. Basically you could do it like Franz Joseph did in the Tech Manual, but include all the ships, as adapted for SFB.
It leaves you wondering what do all the ships look like top, profile, front.
All the names in the Tech manual were eventually replaced, some of those names authorized by Star Fleet went to other "class" ships. Also in it list what ships are in which fleet and where their home ports are.
Star Fleet Command doesn't like to think of itself as a military, but it really is and it would need to be to maintain order and discipline.
I would like to see a catalog with all the ships , just like FJ had it in the Tech Manual. But don't just list the Fed ships, list the other ships of the other empires as well as does "Jane's Fighting Ships." Us some really nice creative artwork like the beutiful picture I have here that was created by Ted Geibel. I think a book like that, perhaps created and designed like that included with the MASTER SHIP CHART in the desciption would be phonominal. Perhaps a product in and of itself. But that would be just my thought. And to not make them look "Cartoonish" but serious.

djdood wrote:Corvette is another term that seems to mean different things to different cultures and people.

Well if you saw the movie recenly, you saw what Jim Kirk thought of Corvettes after he trashed a classic over the cliff.

I got a classic SSD here, I was told it was one that was never going to be used, but in my SFB universe, anything conjectural is real, (So Module C4 races are not compute simulators they are real and the Feds did get PF's)
Yes I am on that side of the mirror. I have an SSD for a Fed NCL that has the top thing on it as does the Miranda class NCL, just like the movie. It has 2 forward Photons and two aft photons. Everything else is the same as the regular NCL. I've flown it, it's not a bad ship because the photon firing arcs are FH, RH, the ship's design makes it powerful in all directions.
But it only fires two photons fwd and two aft so there are some trade offs. It's fun to fly though, I use the standard NCL counter for it.