test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
The USS Entente
jornado
Member Posts: 918 Arc User
Warning - this post is only partially serious...
Recently (who am I kidding..... it's been always) there have been a lot of request for fanon or Reboot ships/skins in game.
I won't be beating on that dead horse, or chiming in with my feeling (I lied - the Vengeance was moronic looking, the Reboot Connie looked like it had been beaten with a fat'n'ugly stick, and most fanon ships look.... fanon. Also, the Jupiter and Typhoon are just.... ugly) on many of the requests.
Now, there are some ships, that are arguably prime universe canon (as in, seen or discussed on screen) that are also extremely ugly, and yet do not figure as prominently into these requests.
I am speaking, of course, of the Franz Joseph Technical Manual ship designs. Not only did most of the blue prints appear onscreen in the first 3 Trek films, the USS Entente, Federation Class Dreadnought was distinctly mentioned over communications chatter in TMP (who cares that the DVD deliberately muddles that line - I can still hear it on my Betamax and Laserdisc copies).
Not only was the odd, single nacelle design shown on ship readouts, someone at ILM clearly had them in mind when designing the ungainly thing at the beginning of ST2009. And not only was the Transport/Tug class also shown on readout screens, it was clearly the inspiration for the oft-used Miranda class.
If we are going to petition to add strange, funky, and utterly non-canon (Ships exclusive to STO can be considered game canon, if not actual Trek canon) oddities, I submit to you that we should also get the strange, ungainly, and arguably canon Manual designs. You know, to balance things out.
Although, I still maintain that the Federation class Dreadnought is damn sexy with a TMP skin.
Cheers!
Recently (who am I kidding..... it's been always) there have been a lot of request for fanon or Reboot ships/skins in game.
I won't be beating on that dead horse, or chiming in with my feeling (I lied - the Vengeance was moronic looking, the Reboot Connie looked like it had been beaten with a fat'n'ugly stick, and most fanon ships look.... fanon. Also, the Jupiter and Typhoon are just.... ugly) on many of the requests.
Now, there are some ships, that are arguably prime universe canon (as in, seen or discussed on screen) that are also extremely ugly, and yet do not figure as prominently into these requests.
I am speaking, of course, of the Franz Joseph Technical Manual ship designs. Not only did most of the blue prints appear onscreen in the first 3 Trek films, the USS Entente, Federation Class Dreadnought was distinctly mentioned over communications chatter in TMP (who cares that the DVD deliberately muddles that line - I can still hear it on my Betamax and Laserdisc copies).
Not only was the odd, single nacelle design shown on ship readouts, someone at ILM clearly had them in mind when designing the ungainly thing at the beginning of ST2009. And not only was the Transport/Tug class also shown on readout screens, it was clearly the inspiration for the oft-used Miranda class.
If we are going to petition to add strange, funky, and utterly non-canon (Ships exclusive to STO can be considered game canon, if not actual Trek canon) oddities, I submit to you that we should also get the strange, ungainly, and arguably canon Manual designs. You know, to balance things out.
Although, I still maintain that the Federation class Dreadnought is damn sexy with a TMP skin.
Cheers!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
lored2death wrote: »My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
Post edited by jornado on
0
Comments
the issue is the Federation class would be as decommissioned as the connie normally is. But there still is New orelans, Freedom, Niagara, and a bun of fan made designs that can work for the game.
I wouldn't want to see any of the at tier 5.5 status, but since we have tier 1, 2, 3, and 5 ships of the same general age, you can at least make the argument that they match STO canon more than fanon designs.
Again, I'm only half serious - I don't think we will see fanon/TM designs ever, but in fairness, and in homage to the ridiculous nature of these request threads, I am all for seeing a balanced treatment to ships.
Cheers.
that is one of the many problems with STO, ships too old to still be in use. however most or zen ships so i let slide. No make a TMP era game. and you better beleive i want to see Federation, Saladin, ptomley, Akula, and Constellation in here
Add to that the fact that we see an ungodly number of Mirandas and Excelsiors in service in DS9 (despite newer designs like the USS Stargazer somehow having been removed from service in pre-TNG era), and we can assume that the Starfleet's "mothball" fleet includes any number of ancient ships, just waiting for the bridge modules to be swapped out, the nacelles redesigned, and the duotronics ripped out on favor of Bio-Neural gel packs.
And don't forget, you start the game in a Miranda, have the option of a refit Connie next, and then can go into an Excelsior right after, with no visits to the C-Store.
Cheers!
Some designs were more successful than others. Miranda and Excel are very adaptable thus their long service life and you need zen store for any version of Excel
I got mine T3 Excelsior for 300.000 EC back in the day
But regarding the topic, it is true that the Federation class has been "removed" from canon. But I have to be consequent in my views and as such, I do not accept retcons. So the USS Entente is canon. It is, however, also canon that there wasn't a single appearance of it which lets us assume that it was a testbed/prototype that didn't reach line production or even action outside of trial runs.
As such, a wide availaility of Federation class ships would not be justifyable. However, star Trek Online does not follow any rhyme or reason and is an arcade shooter with Trek-ish models and skins. As such I'm all for a TOS style Federation class - whatever is canon should be in this game
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
it much like Yamato's Registry issue
It is different on the matter that the 1305 registry was clearly stated to be an production error - if this is the case I am fine with it's removal since it doesn't make sense this way and was acknowledged to be a mistake. The 24383 is hard to explain, however. since it can be seen on the physical model. In this case I let the 71806/7 simply outweigh the 24383 which is also way to low for a next generation vessel. The 6 and 7 error however... uh... maybe it was a spare saucer section and they switched it at some point, not changing the registry number on the hull?
The Entente was removed because rodenberry changed his mind and decided he doesn't want a "dreadnaught" class in Starfleet. But this is a retcon that cannot claim to be an error, so instead it would be better to find an explanation why it doesn't exist anymore and to me it is logical to assume, dedacted from source material appearances, that the class simply wasn't a success and never saw real action.
In the end I just have to be fair about this retcon because I personally don't accept the Borg retcon either. That's the issue that started the whole debate for me personally
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Well, the fact that the TM's registry numbers were used as canon in the films indicates that the Entente was one of several Federation class vessels at least, as opposed to the single Excelsior prototype, so that's at least some indication that there were more than one, but I guess the very existence of the Excel indicates that the Fed was superceded rather quickly.
Glad to have someone else take this frankly ludicrous suggestion at least partly seriously
Cheers!
Also, Roddenberry was peeved about getting insufficient credit in the tech manual, as well as Franz Joseph being more respected, at least in technical matters, by the TMP production staff. Classic Roddenberry. I'm surprised he didn't write some lyrics for the Technical Manual and demand half of the royalties.
Well, the Starfleet TM is different from the TNG manuals, however. It was the base for a game, I think, and even if some material was used in the movies, only the elements used in the movie can be considered canon. In this case, it was just the Entente of this class. The TNG manuals are actually refurbished and sold versions of the writers guide and as such *are* essentially canon if not overridden by on-screen evidence.
I love debates like this. It's the main reason for being here, actually, since the game sucks pretty bad right now XD
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I thgink Federation class lasted till about 2310 or so, which is longer than the connie
All registry numbers and names for non-story critical ships (i.e. not the Reliant, Excelsior, etc.), that is to say, the background stuff, were lifted verbatim from the technical manual.
I love these discussions as well, it really is the only reason to be here
Yes, there were a lot of Miranda, Galaxy, Akira, Nebula class ships in the big DS9, First Contact etc battles. Why? Because they were the ones the tech people had CGI models for.
Whenever I see those battles, I assume there were a couple of Nova class ships, an Excelsior or two, a couple of Intrepid's, a ton of Runabouts and whatever else Starfleet had. When the Borg came to Earth, do you not think anything capable of firing a weapon would have been given a skeleton crew and thrown in it's direction?
We know roughly when most ships were brought in, and the lack of Constitution class ships suggests that most Miranda class etc would really have been gone by later on. "Oh, they were versatile" is a cop out, a Miranda is basically a Constitution saucer, anything a Miranda can do, a Constitution can do better. It's all down to how easy it was to make/use the models, nothing else.
At the end of the day, STO is full of very high end ships and a few low level players in Nova/Miranda classes with a crew of 60-100 or so. In the "real" Starfleet, we'd probably see a crapton of freighters and a lot of smaller utility ships like the Nova, with a moderate number of "Useful" sized Intrepid etc sized ships with a crew of 100-200, and only a smaller number of the big Nebula, Galaxy class deep space cities-on-a-ship.
I've got a Sovereign so far, and I've had about 6 ships in 2 weeks (Miranda, Nova, Akira, Akira Refit, Defiant, Sovereign). None of them I spent more than a few days with, and I'm now on a big nearly-late-game ship from very late Canon. From now on, most of what's left to me are Retrofit versions of the Hero ships, or stuff that we saw once on screen or has just been completely made up. I'd rather see more of a journey through earlier, canon ships, which would make things look a lot more interesting in game.
VERY dated though in relation to STO.
Eh.... throw some Excelsior nacelles instead of the Connie refit style, smooth up the engineering hull a bit, and give it a newer material for skin and it'll blend right in with some of the other schlock in game...
the sad thing is that would be better than the last designs craptic has come out with.
Like this?
Yeah, no.
Maybe.
Yeah, no.
I think he meant take the original designs and change the nacelle's and alter engineering hull slightly.
that's not to bad. Certian better then some of Craptic's designs.
Aye, although the image you posted isn't too bad from the side, the finned, fat nacelles look like crud. If they went on a diet, and lost the fins, it would be closer to my thoughts, still not there, but closer. Sadly, I suck at all things visual, otherwise I'd sketch something.
While this is true, I cosnider the two sources different however.
Mr. Schnaubelt's works are unaffiliated with the production of the show, it's basically fan work, albeit the term ishould be used loosely since Mr. Schnaubelt himself said that he by any means was not a fan of Star Trek. But by any means, it was work that people in charge liked and, due to not having source material themselves, lifted content from to base the movies that were made basically from scratch on. So while the manual and the blueprints are entirely unofficial, those bits that made it on screen are of course official and canon. But *only* those bits.
Okuda et al. tech manuals are based on the internal design documents that were written for the shows to set the basic rules and guidelines. They are by any means official and only invalidated if something on-screen would directly contradict them, since - of course - what was on-screen tops everything else and is made canon.
As such, I personally only consider what originated from Franz Joseph's works and could be seen or heard on-screen canon, or better "official" since the very definition of the word "canon" in Star Trek excludes everything not on celluloid. I consider the TNG and DS9 TM to be official as long as their contents are not contradicted by on-screen occurences.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
THis brings in mind the Yamato issue. for the show can contradict itself. The first time we see Yamato Riker says her registry was 1305-E yet when we see the Real Yamato later it's the 7xxxx regustry because Mike okyda didn't like the original one.
According to MA's cited sources, the reason for the registry mix-up was that the episode's writer was unaware of the TNG registry scheme and used an "outdated" registry. Okuda however did create the actual model of the ship with another registry. It wasn't simply that he didn't like the classic registry but it wouldn't match the actual model. The reason why the 1305-E stayed was supposedly because the scene with Riker identifying the number was dropped from the early draft of the episode but was later used anyway without Okuda or anyone else noticing.
The 1305-E is, indeed, a full blown production error which can be designated as such. But the Yamato can also be seen - on-screen - bearing the registry NCC-24383 in an LCARS display (which nobody thought would be clearly recognizable 25 years later
While the 1305-E to me is an error and not canon, the other number mix ups cannot be explained that way in my opinion, which is why I believe that there are two vessels bearing the name. If registries indicate some kind of temporal consistency, the 24383 Yamato must be an rather old ship, comissioned somewhere between TMP and Yesterday's Enterprise. The 6/7 mix up I tried to explain earlier on with a spare saucer - Galaxies clearly had more spare parts in stock than were used and maybe they numbered the second saucer with one different digit. Or something.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Well i go with 1305-E because Enterprise CANNOT be the only ship that has such a Registry. Remember only the Galaxy and Sovereign versions of the ship are the Federation Flagship. TOS-C were not
Aslo the NEW system is so crazy that you can't make sense of it. the old system you could follow
As far as the letter-suffix goes, the Enterprise is indeed the only ship to have this to honour the exceptional ancestral line the name bears. All the other lower registry ships (which exist, we know of at least two Oberth-class vessels bearing a NCC-9xx registry, and as such predating the Enterprise) get decomissioned, but the 1701 is carried on. Remember, this is also a real life issue since it's the ship that IS Star Trek, basically.
I think the idea is that otherwise Starfleet would have only room for 9999 vessels which is not much for a quadrant spanning space faring organization, assuming that you cannot comission the 1305-A and 1305-C at the same time. As such, the TNG registry makes more sense since you got much more room for vessels. Since we don't know anything, we can only speculate. Nobody says that the numbering is linear. The numbers can very well also define certain classes of ships or sectors where they were comissioned and so on, also remember that Starfleet not only consists of a handful of Mirandas, Galaxies and Sovereigns but also freighters, utility ships and so on.
So I personally see nothing wrong with the TNG registry, although I do honour the classic one. Aftr all, a consistent TOS online game would still be one of my biggest wishes
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Nah. TNgis just more confusing. Keep the the same number but adding a letter shows timeline for that name and easier to track. and again WHY is the Enterprise so different from any other ship. the Galaxy and Soveraign could be understood but the otehrs nope. they should have all had different numbers then. sorry you can't have both and Mike and the others should have left the 1305-E
Because the name "Enterprise" has a long and distinguished heritage in Starfleet, dating back to the old United Earth Starfleet. Not to mention, before that, all the way back to the days of the Royal Navy and United States Navy.
And because of the exploits of James T. Kirk and crew, the registry number is forever associated with the name.
That's the in-universe explanation. The real world explanation is obvious.
neither is good enough to me.there had to be other ships of note.