Federation Commander

Interesting take on things.

Do you plan to do any of the other pre-Star Fleet Terran ships, too? (The W-era Terran ships in the three Early Years modules in SFB should all represent warp-refitted versions of their sublight hulls.)

Ravenhull wrote:The patches on the underside mark the landing gear?

Yes, or at least they could be. I don't know if it is stated anywhere that this class of ship is capable of landing, but if not then those markings could just be, well, just markings much like the triangles on the underside of the Enterprise's saucer section in TOS. They were originally intended to indicate landing gear before it was determined that the Constitution Class cannot separate or land.

Nerroth wrote:Interesting take on things.

Do you plan to do any of the other pre-Star Fleet Terran ships, too? (The W-era Terran ships in the three Early Years modules in SFB should all represent warp-refitted versions of their sublight hulls.)

I wasn't really planning on it, but I think it would be fun. I'm not an SFB player (I haven't touched the game in over a decade, and I've only played with the old TFG Designer's Edition that my dad had) or an FC player (though I'm planning on at least getting the Academy set sometime in the near future), so I'm not familiar with any other pre-Star Fleet Terran ships in the SFU. I would need some sort of visual reference to begin with.

If I remember right, they could land and take off before their warp refits. The Commando Cruiser version maintained the landing capability well into the General War, but taking off was an extended (beyond the scope of a single game) affair.

That's all just pulling from my rather troublesome memory.

Before I go on, I should note that even if you are mainly looking at them from a background/design perspective, I would definitely recommend having a look at the SFB Y-modules; they include a lot of useful information about the early Fed (and early ISC) fleets flown before the advent of unified hull designs, as well as the first generation of "new" ships which superseded them before the modern era came around.


So far, there are a number of Terran hull types in the three Early Years modules.

Two of them continue, in some shape or form, into the modern era.

In the case of the light cruiser, it started as the Province-class sublight CL, then recieved a series of warp engine refits (WCL for the first warp refit, YCL for the second, and CL for the "modern" version).

The Terran old destroyer looked, from the outside, the same as the later Fed POL; it had a very different internal configuration, however. (The original sublight DD, and the W- and Y-era upgrades, had features like armor; when the modern POL was being designed, the engineers gutted the ship design and basically built a while new ship which happened to look the same from the outside as the old Terran destroyer.)

The other Terran hulls (dreadnought, heavy cruiser and frigate) are each based on specific miniatures from Iron Crown (the developers of Silent Death), made available under an agreement between them and ADB. There is a list of exactly which ships were used for the three Terran hull types, but I don't have it to hand right now. You can see the outlines on the SSDs, and on the countersheets of modules Y2 and Y3.

(The ships of the five pre-ISC planets have the same origin; they were all based on pre-existing ICE minis. I don't have the list of those to hand either, sorry.)



As an aside, if you are interested in the Terran ship designs, I might also add that another empire in the wider Star Fleet Universe makes heavy use of Terran-derived designs; the Federal Republic of Aurora, founded when a Federation colony world was transplanted in Y130 over to the Omega Octant. They would use the CLs and POLs they had in-system at the time of transferance (as well as a few "additions" from other sources later on) as the basis of an entirely new navy.

Thanks for the information. I may look into it more. My main reason for this ship in particular has to do with the Prime Directive campaign I'm developing. I'm going to have my group come across this ship after it has been lost for over a hundred years after being disabled beyond repair during the war. The whole campaign is going to be about discovering things about the Earth-Romulan war that nobody knew about, including some things that the Romulans could use to gain an advantage over the Federation if my group doesn't stop them.

I think I'm just about done. I may want to add a few more details later, but for right now I'm pretty much set on this.

I like it.

Great work!

I really like the art too... What did you create that in?

I used Photoshop to create the textures and 3ds max to create the model. Everything was made from scratch except for the Earth seal.

Are you going to make some more ships for us to see?

Probably. Any suggestions on what to make next?
I'm thinking about making a Romulan ship from that era, but I'm not too sure how I want to distinguish it from the main era ships.

Mr_Tricorder wrote:Probably. Any suggestions on what to make next?
I'm thinking about making a Romulan ship from that era, but I'm not too sure how I want to distinguish it from the main era ships.

Please do!


The only thing I know about the old Romulan ships is that they have that same menacing warbird painted on the belly. I imagine they don't look that much different from the SFB Romulan Warbird. I LOVE the Romulan ship designs!!!!

I've started work on one and am starting a new thread for it.