The 'pancake' has always been a blite on the shipyard. It starred at the Battle of Proctologist V, iirc, but whoever thought of adding it to the game was not using their remaining brain cells. The ship was meant to be photographed from a very specific angle, so as to convey its incredible vastness. From any other free angle, the visual distortions make it a joke.
EDIT: The ship on the left is actually one of those rare angles where the you can clearly see the visual distortions were made to cater that specific onlook. From every other angle, it looks like a cartoon anvil fell on it.
its a paper plate with pylons and engines that went on a diet for 100 years.
every time i see one, or it comes into same space as me, i either go to another map or get the eff out of there.
out of every ship in the game, this makes me want to spew vomit.
I'll take even the Universe over the 32nd century Disco stuff. At least the Universe bears a vague resemblance to a Federation starship.
hard argument there mate. i think id rather fly a shuttle than get either the universe or the toilet at this time. (yes this includes the new crab ship too)
its a paper plate with pylons and engines that went on a diet for 100 years.
Sounds like the TOS Connie.
>stupidly thin saucer section
>neck and pylons are so skinny they look like the limbs of an anorexic person
>secondary hull is like a Pringles can
Star Trek ship designs have always been rather... bad.
you got glasses on? ToS connie has a much better look, both visually and engineering wise, than a flat PoS.
we will never agree then if this is your stance, and thats ok. it appeals to some, and not others.
id resign my commission or become a frigate CPT before i ever flew a universe class. ever.
Um, by "new crab ship" are you referring to the Mars class?
its a paper plate with pylons and engines that went on a diet for 100 years.
Sounds like the TOS Connie.
>stupidly thin saucer section
>neck and pylons are so skinny they look like the limbs of an anorexic person
>secondary hull is like a Pringles can
Star Trek ship designs have always been rather... bad.
I think the word you are looking for is "elegant" (or with the bad connotation you indicate possibly "over-elegant", "insubstantial", or "flimsy"). It is a matter of personal taste, some people prefer the clean elegance of a stemmed wine glass like the TOS ship while others the solidity of a carved beer stein like the DSC version.
Roddenberry wanted the hero ship to look sleek, elegant, futuristic, and just a touch alien to contemporary eyes. Jefferies came up with the idea of using the googie aesthetic style to accomplish that, which makes sense since that style has the same properties.
The fragile look is intentional, the style was originally a way to get people to notice the restaurants and other commercial buildings built using the style and the appearance of of possible danger, even though unfounded, along with the occasional optical illusion to figure out and a back of the mind disbelief that such a structure could be built all combine to subtly grab people's attention in that way.
Jefferies used it to convey the fact that the Federation's metallurgy was incredibly advanced which helped sell the idea that it was a ship in the future, especially when some of the sets and props could not be built quite so futuristically since they were limited by the budget and by the materials Desilu had on hand for set construction. And he used the organic proportions, angles, and curves to give people an unconscious sense of the values of the Hero's organization (which at that point was not named yet).
Jefferies was quite into the design language to convey impressions (unlike the DSC designers who seem to just pull things off the shelf at random, and a mostly Star Wars shelf at that), he talked in interviews about designing the D7 with an intentionally menacing, brutally pragmatic industrial look, going with a variant of art deco to accomplish it.
He also included some shapes common on Soviet capital ships of the time, like the shape of the slab on the top of the command pod (which is a common feature of the old Soviet capital ship bridges though they are usually set in the middle of a thick tower section rather than on top of the tower) since the Klingons were the stand-in for the Soviet Union in the cold war analogy the show featured.
Na, it just looks very poorly designed, and incredibly stupid as a result.
The moment the shields go down all one has to do is
A. Target the overly exposed nacelles, which would lead to a catastrophic ship explosion
B. Target the overly exposed pylons, which would leave the ship stranded, and unable to pursue. Allowing an attacker to bypass it entirely on their way to attack a colony, starbase, or whatever.
C. Target the overly exposed neck. Leading to the same results as above.
D. Target the super exposed bridge module that sticks up from the top of the saucer, killing the entire command staff, and the main operation section. Leading to, again, the above.
Pretty much everything about the Connie is designed for failure. Which is probably why all the Connies we see in TOS meet horrible ends.
The Defiant and Intrepid classes are far less insulting to look at because they show at least a bit more care in their design. Even if you want a ship in the same basic configuration as the Connie, the Excelsior class is far more pleasing because it at least heavily reduces most of the obvious design problems with the Connie.
The only things more visually insulting are
A. The D'deridex because of the massive, unnecessary, dead space in the middle. Which just leaves room for a small ship to fly into it, and start dealing damage with no way to respond to it. Not to mention how awful it would make ship navigation.
B. Any Klingon ship with a neck in it. Because nothing screams "culture that has mastered war" more then a ship that can be taken out in a single shot to the neck, separating the command section from the engineering section.
I do applaud Star Trek: Into Darkness, and DSC S1, for actually exploiting these obvious design weaknesses of Federation/Klingon ships. A self aware show is always more amusing.
I'll take the Scimitar over the Connie. While the Scimitar looks goofy for its massive wings, the wings at least serve a purpose. The Connie's design serves no purpose beyond getting everyone onboard killed.
hahaha...please mate. the universe has far more pathetic weak points than the connie.
Assuming you're talking about the pylons on the Universe class, those only seem tiny in proportion to the rest of the ship. If you compare them to any other ship you will find that they are fairly large in actual size.
The Defiant and Intrepid classes are far less insulting to look at because they show at least a bit more care in their design. Even if you want a ship in the same basic configuration as the Connie, the Excelsior class is far more pleasing because it at least heavily reduces most of the obvious design problems with the Connie.
Based on your comments, it feels like you prefer almost entirely-'practical' designs. (i.e, almost nothing in Star Trek)
As for the Excelsior, I find it repulsive. It was my gold standard for "ugliest Star Fleet ship" before the Universe (and other gratuitously "future" ships) came out.
@kiralyn said: > Based on your comments, it feels like you prefer almost entirely-'practical' designs. (i.e, almost nothing in Star Trek) > He's just on, "The Mission" and playing at being a contrarian. If there is a thread on the Janeway he is likely raving about how no pylons at all is visionary. Always argumentative, rarely consistent.
> As for the Excelsior, I find it repulsive. It was my gold standard for "ugliest Star Fleet ship" before the Universe (and other gratuitously "future" ships) came out.
The Excelsior grew on me. It's design while characteristically Federation (saucer, nacelles, hull) was a departure from the Constitution that seemed intentional. It wasn't always Sulu's ship and the class was initially plugged as Enterprise' replacement. It wasn't a "bad guy" ship but it was the mean new kid in town who was going to slap the hero around and push them into a resented retirement. The Excelsior sabotage felt like the nerds sneaking into the frat house and stealing the mascot goat. From that introduction I don't think they wanted fans to "like" it.
hahaha...please mate. the universe has far more pathetic weak points than the connie.
I propose a comprimise.
Both ships are horribly designed and are just.. terrible.
was not a huge fan of excelsior
Oh carefull now.. I might have to rain the fire of the gods upon you! (kidding.. kinda. )
Obviously, tastes vary from player to player. If I had to pick what I thought were the best canon fed designs though, I go with the Sovereign and the Excelsior. My least favorite are hands down the TOS Connie and the Enterprise J. I can't stand looking at any of them.
I will say however, that I think Discovery did a great job making a terrible design look good. I actually like the Disco Connie. It's not the best design, but it's far more palatable then the original. As much as I enjoy Discovery, the Connie revamp is about the only ship outside of the Binary Stars era Fed ships that I actually like. For the most part, I don't like DISCO ships.
its a paper plate with pylons and engines that went on a diet for 100 years.
Sounds like the TOS Connie.
>stupidly thin saucer section
>neck and pylons are so skinny they look like the limbs of an anorexic person
>secondary hull is like a Pringles can
Star Trek ship designs have always been rather... bad.
any advanced tech sufficiently advanced to our own will look like magic. I can see materials made mega strung, but mega slim.
'wounded sky', a TOS novel, talk how they make hulls using crystalline thread to weave into hulls. Pretty cool.
This ain't star wars, aliens or red dwarf, ya know.
Even though I can't stand the whole "detached" thing in Disco, which I also think is just for effect, because they think it's "cool" and serves no purpose...I do think it would be fun to see the original Connie and Excelsior floating free. It's totally unnecessary, but at least the ships aren't hideous, no matter how much of them is cut away. The "redesigns" are terrible, but the originals...you can't really mess those up.
Obviously, tastes vary from player to player. If I had to pick what I thought were the best canon fed designs though, I go with the Sovereign and the Excelsior.
Heh, ain't that the truth.
I really like the Sovereign. And can't stand the Excelsior - it's an ungainly, misproportioned, awkward manatee of a ship. Similar issues with the original line of Miracle Worker cruisers in STO - they gave them a similar 'fat & stubby' style that just grates on me.
The Ent-D is an interesting topic - I really wonder if it was the small TV screen back in the TNG era, but it looked perfectly fine to me. And the saucer looked round. Meanwhile, here in STO, it's this odd wide oval that just makes the whole thing seem wrong. It looks different on the HD computer screen than I remember it being on SD TV (with my admittedly shoddy memory )
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I'll probably get one of the lobby ships, or maybe the Oberth.
Or whatever TOS gooddess I can find.
I was thinking of getting a lobby ship too; but the way Cryptic has been ignoring our feedback, it didn't seem worth it any more. So, I got a D4x instead.
N.B. You'd think a D7 would look even better (I have a Legendary one), but no.
Na, it just looks very poorly designed, and incredibly stupid as a result.
The moment the shields go down all one has to do is
A. Target the overly exposed nacelles, which would lead to a catastrophic ship explosion
B. Target the overly exposed pylons, which would leave the ship stranded, and unable to pursue. Allowing an attacker to bypass it entirely on their way to attack a colony, starbase, or whatever.
C. Target the overly exposed neck. Leading to the same results as above.
D. Target the super exposed bridge module that sticks up from the top of the saucer, killing the entire command staff, and the main operation section. Leading to, again, the above.
Pretty much everything about the Connie is designed for failure. Which is probably why all the Connies we see in TOS meet horrible ends.
The Defiant and Intrepid classes are far less insulting to look at because they show at least a bit more care in their design. Even if you want a ship in the same basic configuration as the Connie, the Excelsior class is far more pleasing because it at least heavily reduces most of the obvious design problems with the Connie.
The only things more visually insulting are
A. The D'deridex because of the massive, unnecessary, dead space in the middle. Which just leaves room for a small ship to fly into it, and start dealing damage with no way to respond to it. Not to mention how awful it would make ship navigation.
B. Any Klingon ship with a neck in it. Because nothing screams "culture that has mastered war" more then a ship that can be taken out in a single shot to the neck, separating the command section from the engineering section.
I do applaud Star Trek: Into Darkness, and DSC S1, for actually exploiting these obvious design weaknesses of Federation/Klingon ships. A self aware show is always more amusing.
I'll take the Scimitar over the Connie. While the Scimitar looks goofy for its massive wings, the wings at least serve a purpose. The Connie's design serves no purpose beyond getting everyone onboard killed.
Overly exposed nacelles? You must be thinking of the TNG ships with their warp plasma lines hanging out flapping in open space, those are a classic well lit soft target just asking to be hit. The TOS Constitution nacelles were armored and those plasma assemblies were behind armored baffles on the inboard sides of the nacelles (just take a look at the model that was sent to the Smithsonian.
As for cutting the neck or struts, Jefferies has said when asked about that with the major structural parts in there that it would be easier to slice off a section of the saucer than slice the neck or struts off. Roddenberry said he always considered it a tough old battleship and the only reason it was called a cruiser at all was that NBC had fits when he used words with "war" or "battle" in them.
As for the bridge, it was no different from any other Federation mainbridge in Trek (not counting NuTrek), all of them were in the same relative position in the same sort of structure on the dorsal side of the saucer (or whatever else the primary was shaped like).
And no, they did not move the bridge down a deck between The Cage and TOS, the thing sticking way up in The Cage was the sensor suite, not the bridge itself, it was in the exact same place in both. Another myth is the "clear dome over the captain's chair" nonsense, Jefferies said the ceiling designed for TOS but not built during the series was finally seen in TMP.
It is not like the later ones where they had windows in every room like TNG, or worse yet a huge picture window from the Kelvin films onwards (they are just asking for a burning fighter-shuttle to land in their laps on the bridge with that one... ).
As for looks, some people go for clean elegant lines and natural organic golden ratio proportions, curves and angles (like the TOS Enterprise) while other people prefer other things. To me the unrelentingly stream of industrial art deco styled ships post-TOS (and almost every other sci-fi show that has ships) got old and boring long ago from my point of view for instance.
Na, it just looks very poorly designed, and incredibly stupid as a result.
The moment the shields go down all one has to do is
A. Target the overly exposed nacelles, which would lead to a catastrophic ship explosion
B. Target the overly exposed pylons, which would leave the ship stranded, and unable to pursue. Allowing an attacker to bypass it entirely on their way to attack a colony, starbase, or whatever.
C. Target the overly exposed neck. Leading to the same results as above.
D. Target the super exposed bridge module that sticks up from the top of the saucer, killing the entire command staff, and the main operation section. Leading to, again, the above.
Pretty much everything about the Connie is designed for failure. Which is probably why all the Connies we see in TOS meet horrible ends.
The Defiant and Intrepid classes are far less insulting to look at because they show at least a bit more care in their design. Even if you want a ship in the same basic configuration as the Connie, the Excelsior class is far more pleasing because it at least heavily reduces most of the obvious design problems with the Connie.
The only things more visually insulting are
A. The D'deridex because of the massive, unnecessary, dead space in the middle. Which just leaves room for a small ship to fly into it, and start dealing damage with no way to respond to it. Not to mention how awful it would make ship navigation.
B. Any Klingon ship with a neck in it. Because nothing screams "culture that has mastered war" more then a ship that can be taken out in a single shot to the neck, separating the command section from the engineering section.
I do applaud Star Trek: Into Darkness, and DSC S1, for actually exploiting these obvious design weaknesses of Federation/Klingon ships. A self aware show is always more amusing.
I'll take the Scimitar over the Connie. While the Scimitar looks goofy for its massive wings, the wings at least serve a purpose. The Connie's design serves no purpose beyond getting everyone onboard killed.
Overly exposed nacelles? You must be thinking of the TNG ships with their warp plasma lines hanging out flapping in open space, those are a classic well lit soft target just asking to be hit. The TOS Constitution nacelles were armored and those plasma assemblies were behind armored baffles on the inboard sides of the nacelles (just take a look at the model that was sent to the Smithsonian.
As for cutting the neck or struts, Jefferies has said when asked about that with the major structural parts in there that it would be easier to slice off a section of the saucer than slice the neck or struts off. Roddenberry said he always considered it a tough old battleship and the only reason it was called a cruiser at all was that NBC had fits when he used words with "war" or "battle" in them.
As for the bridge, it was no different from any other Federation mainbridge in Trek (not counting NuTrek), all of them were in the same relative position in the same sort of structure on the dorsal side of the saucer (or whatever else the primary was shaped like).
And no, they did not move the bridge down a deck between The Cage and TOS, the thing sticking way up in The Cage was the sensor suite, not the bridge itself, it was in the exact same place in both. Another myth is the "clear dome over the captain's chair" nonsense, Jefferies said the ceiling designed for TOS but not built during the series was finally seen in TMP.
It is not like the later ones where they had windows in every room like TNG, or worse yet a huge picture window from the Kelvin films onwards (they are just asking for a burning fighter-shuttle to land in their laps on the bridge with that one... ).
As for looks, some people go for clean elegant lines and natural organic golden ratio proportions, curves and angles (like the TOS Enterprise) while other people prefer other things. To me the unrelentingly stream of industrial art deco styled ships post-TOS (and almost every other sci-fi show that has ships) got old and boring long ago from my point of view for instance.
To add one point to your excellent post, my understanding is that the long nacelle pylons were because Jefferies reasoned any engines powerful enough to move a ship faster than light were engines you did not want too close to the crew. Which, incidentally, makes the oh-so-practical Defiant a death trap in that sense.
Good. Jeffries did beautiful work but he was a practical designer. Very much, "Form follows function" school of design. Even on the STO models of the decks the large viewports have armoured baffles. I'd have to check to confirm but one of the revisions of the bridge between The Cage and TOS that did occur was a secondary exit from the bridge. Apparently, someone asked what happened when the "elevator" broke.
As far as design for a exploratory vessel required to fulfill a military role for the period it was designed in the Constitution is very good. The idea of modularity in shipping or in mission fits for aerospace and military operations was barely in it's infancy. It was still built on principles of fixed purposes. Any subsequent ships are a bit odd to me considering the technological capabilities of the Federation. With replicator technology at their disposal I imagined the Ent D (I thought it looked horrible) as being in, "standing reserve" with some decks that might not even exist as more than solid matter that would be adaptable to purpose as required. I don't like the final forms of 32nd century ships but their malleability across the entirety of the vessel seemed reasonable extrapolation of those possibilities. The "hard matter" of the unfinished 24th century ships might have been a consequence of inefficiencies of a still evolving technology when operating at that scale and requiring more readily available constituent matter. Structurally until utilized it might bolster a vessel's structural integrity. Another possibility might be a fixed lattice that changed matter could be "bolted" onto.
Na, it just looks very poorly designed, and incredibly stupid as a result.
The moment the shields go down all one has to do is
A. Target the overly exposed nacelles, which would lead to a catastrophic ship explosion
B. Target the overly exposed pylons, which would leave the ship stranded, and unable to pursue. Allowing an attacker to bypass it entirely on their way to attack a colony, starbase, or whatever.
C. Target the overly exposed neck. Leading to the same results as above.
D. Target the super exposed bridge module that sticks up from the top of the saucer, killing the entire command staff, and the main operation section. Leading to, again, the above.
Pretty much everything about the Connie is designed for failure. Which is probably why all the Connies we see in TOS meet horrible ends.
The Defiant and Intrepid classes are far less insulting to look at because they show at least a bit more care in their design. Even if you want a ship in the same basic configuration as the Connie, the Excelsior class is far more pleasing because it at least heavily reduces most of the obvious design problems with the Connie.
The only things more visually insulting are
A. The D'deridex because of the massive, unnecessary, dead space in the middle. Which just leaves room for a small ship to fly into it, and start dealing damage with no way to respond to it. Not to mention how awful it would make ship navigation.
B. Any Klingon ship with a neck in it. Because nothing screams "culture that has mastered war" more then a ship that can be taken out in a single shot to the neck, separating the command section from the engineering section.
I do applaud Star Trek: Into Darkness, and DSC S1, for actually exploiting these obvious design weaknesses of Federation/Klingon ships. A self aware show is always more amusing.
I'll take the Scimitar over the Connie. While the Scimitar looks goofy for its massive wings, the wings at least serve a purpose. The Connie's design serves no purpose beyond getting everyone onboard killed.
Overly exposed nacelles? You must be thinking of the TNG ships with their warp plasma lines hanging out flapping in open space, those are a classic well lit soft target just asking to be hit. The TOS Constitution nacelles were armored and those plasma assemblies were behind armored baffles on the inboard sides of the nacelles (just take a look at the model that was sent to the Smithsonian.
As for cutting the neck or struts, Jefferies has said when asked about that with the major structural parts in there that it would be easier to slice off a section of the saucer than slice the neck or struts off. Roddenberry said he always considered it a tough old battleship and the only reason it was called a cruiser at all was that NBC had fits when he used words with "war" or "battle" in them.
As for the bridge, it was no different from any other Federation mainbridge in Trek (not counting NuTrek), all of them were in the same relative position in the same sort of structure on the dorsal side of the saucer (or whatever else the primary was shaped like).
And no, they did not move the bridge down a deck between The Cage and TOS, the thing sticking way up in The Cage was the sensor suite, not the bridge itself, it was in the exact same place in both. Another myth is the "clear dome over the captain's chair" nonsense, Jefferies said the ceiling designed for TOS but not built during the series was finally seen in TMP.
It is not like the later ones where they had windows in every room like TNG, or worse yet a huge picture window from the Kelvin films onwards (they are just asking for a burning fighter-shuttle to land in their laps on the bridge with that one... ).
As for looks, some people go for clean elegant lines and natural organic golden ratio proportions, curves and angles (like the TOS Enterprise) while other people prefer other things. To me the unrelentingly stream of industrial art deco styled ships post-TOS (and almost every other sci-fi show that has ships) got old and boring long ago from my point of view for instance.
Yep, and those kelvin/disco bridge windows (which adds that Disco should be a kelvin series, not prime, we never really seen any bridge windows in ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY. In fact, I think by FC, the viewer was a big hologram.
And in Disco, season 2, we see the bridge window cracking.....not a good thing....plus seeing the Discovery getting the hull torn like paper from mere ROCKS was laughable. In the remastered "The Doomsday Machine", we see rocks shattering when impacting upon the hull of the Constellation, and that ship was practically gutted.
I'll probably get one of the lobby ships, or maybe the Oberth.
Or whatever TOS gooddess I can find.
I was thinking of getting a lobby ship too; but the way Cryptic has been ignoring our feedback, it didn't seem worth it any more. So, I got a D4x instead.
N.B. You'd think a D7 would look even better (I have a Legendary one), but no.
I'll probably get one of the lobby ships, or maybe the Oberth.
Or whatever TOS gooddess I can find.
I was thinking of getting a lobby ship too; but the way Cryptic has been ignoring our feedback, it didn't seem worth it any more. So, I got a D4x instead.
N.B. You'd think a D7 would look even better (I have a Legendary one), but no.
I am quite happy with my D7.
Does it look the same as the Legendary one? Cuz, in my memory, the original D7 was less 'red stripe-y', and had a more monotomous (better looking) skin).
Comments
Um, by "new crab ship" are you referring to the Mars class?
I think the word you are looking for is "elegant" (or with the bad connotation you indicate possibly "over-elegant", "insubstantial", or "flimsy"). It is a matter of personal taste, some people prefer the clean elegance of a stemmed wine glass like the TOS ship while others the solidity of a carved beer stein like the DSC version.
Roddenberry wanted the hero ship to look sleek, elegant, futuristic, and just a touch alien to contemporary eyes. Jefferies came up with the idea of using the googie aesthetic style to accomplish that, which makes sense since that style has the same properties.
The fragile look is intentional, the style was originally a way to get people to notice the restaurants and other commercial buildings built using the style and the appearance of of possible danger, even though unfounded, along with the occasional optical illusion to figure out and a back of the mind disbelief that such a structure could be built all combine to subtly grab people's attention in that way.
Jefferies used it to convey the fact that the Federation's metallurgy was incredibly advanced which helped sell the idea that it was a ship in the future, especially when some of the sets and props could not be built quite so futuristically since they were limited by the budget and by the materials Desilu had on hand for set construction. And he used the organic proportions, angles, and curves to give people an unconscious sense of the values of the Hero's organization (which at that point was not named yet).
Jefferies was quite into the design language to convey impressions (unlike the DSC designers who seem to just pull things off the shelf at random, and a mostly Star Wars shelf at that), he talked in interviews about designing the D7 with an intentionally menacing, brutally pragmatic industrial look, going with a variant of art deco to accomplish it.
He also included some shapes common on Soviet capital ships of the time, like the shape of the slab on the top of the command pod (which is a common feature of the old Soviet capital ship bridges though they are usually set in the middle of a thick tower section rather than on top of the tower) since the Klingons were the stand-in for the Soviet Union in the cold war analogy the show featured.
Based on your comments, it feels like you prefer almost entirely-'practical' designs. (i.e, almost nothing in Star Trek)
As for the Excelsior, I find it repulsive. It was my gold standard for "ugliest Star Fleet ship" before the Universe (and other gratuitously "future" ships) came out.
> Based on your comments, it feels like you prefer almost entirely-'practical' designs. (i.e, almost nothing in Star Trek)
>
He's just on, "The Mission" and playing at being a contrarian. If there is a thread on the Janeway he is likely raving about how no pylons at all is visionary. Always argumentative, rarely consistent.
> As for the Excelsior, I find it repulsive. It was my gold standard for "ugliest Star Fleet ship" before the Universe (and other gratuitously "future" ships) came out.
The Excelsior grew on me. It's design while characteristically Federation (saucer, nacelles, hull) was a departure from the Constitution that seemed intentional. It wasn't always Sulu's ship and the class was initially plugged as Enterprise' replacement. It wasn't a "bad guy" ship but it was the mean new kid in town who was going to slap the hero around and push them into a resented retirement. The Excelsior sabotage felt like the nerds sneaking into the frat house and stealing the mascot goat. From that introduction I don't think they wanted fans to "like" it.
I propose a comprimise.
Both ships are horribly designed and are just.. terrible.
Oh carefull now.. I might have to rain the fire of the gods upon you! (kidding.. kinda.
Obviously, tastes vary from player to player. If I had to pick what I thought were the best canon fed designs though, I go with the Sovereign and the Excelsior. My least favorite are hands down the TOS Connie and the Enterprise J. I can't stand looking at any of them.
I will say however, that I think Discovery did a great job making a terrible design look good. I actually like the Disco Connie. It's not the best design, but it's far more palatable then the original. As much as I enjoy Discovery, the Connie revamp is about the only ship outside of the Binary Stars era Fed ships that I actually like. For the most part, I don't like DISCO ships.
any advanced tech sufficiently advanced to our own will look like magic. I can see materials made mega strung, but mega slim.
'wounded sky', a TOS novel, talk how they make hulls using crystalline thread to weave into hulls. Pretty cool.
This ain't star wars, aliens or red dwarf, ya know.
Or whatever TOS gooddess I can find.
Heh, ain't that the truth.
I really like the Sovereign. And can't stand the Excelsior - it's an ungainly, misproportioned, awkward manatee of a ship. Similar issues with the original line of Miracle Worker cruisers in STO - they gave them a similar 'fat & stubby' style that just grates on me.
The Ent-D is an interesting topic - I really wonder if it was the small TV screen back in the TNG era, but it looked perfectly fine to me. And the saucer looked round. Meanwhile, here in STO, it's this odd wide oval that just makes the whole thing seem wrong. It looks different on the HD computer screen than I remember it being on SD TV (with my admittedly shoddy memory
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"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
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I was thinking of getting a lobby ship too; but the way Cryptic has been ignoring our feedback, it didn't seem worth it any more.
N.B. You'd think a D7 would look even better (I have a Legendary one), but no.
Overly exposed nacelles? You must be thinking of the TNG ships with their warp plasma lines hanging out flapping in open space, those are a classic well lit soft target just asking to be hit. The TOS Constitution nacelles were armored and those plasma assemblies were behind armored baffles on the inboard sides of the nacelles (just take a look at the model that was sent to the Smithsonian.
As for cutting the neck or struts, Jefferies has said when asked about that with the major structural parts in there that it would be easier to slice off a section of the saucer than slice the neck or struts off. Roddenberry said he always considered it a tough old battleship and the only reason it was called a cruiser at all was that NBC had fits when he used words with "war" or "battle" in them.
As for the bridge, it was no different from any other Federation mainbridge in Trek (not counting NuTrek), all of them were in the same relative position in the same sort of structure on the dorsal side of the saucer (or whatever else the primary was shaped like).
And no, they did not move the bridge down a deck between The Cage and TOS, the thing sticking way up in The Cage was the sensor suite, not the bridge itself, it was in the exact same place in both. Another myth is the "clear dome over the captain's chair" nonsense, Jefferies said the ceiling designed for TOS but not built during the series was finally seen in TMP.
It is not like the later ones where they had windows in every room like TNG, or worse yet a huge picture window from the Kelvin films onwards (they are just asking for a burning fighter-shuttle to land in their laps on the bridge with that one... ).
As for looks, some people go for clean elegant lines and natural organic golden ratio proportions, curves and angles (like the TOS Enterprise) while other people prefer other things. To me the unrelentingly stream of industrial art deco styled ships post-TOS (and almost every other sci-fi show that has ships) got old and boring long ago from my point of view for instance.
To add one point to your excellent post, my understanding is that the long nacelle pylons were because Jefferies reasoned any engines powerful enough to move a ship faster than light were engines you did not want too close to the crew. Which, incidentally, makes the oh-so-practical Defiant a death trap in that sense.
Good. Jeffries did beautiful work but he was a practical designer. Very much, "Form follows function" school of design. Even on the STO models of the decks the large viewports have armoured baffles. I'd have to check to confirm but one of the revisions of the bridge between The Cage and TOS that did occur was a secondary exit from the bridge. Apparently, someone asked what happened when the "elevator" broke.
As far as design for a exploratory vessel required to fulfill a military role for the period it was designed in the Constitution is very good. The idea of modularity in shipping or in mission fits for aerospace and military operations was barely in it's infancy. It was still built on principles of fixed purposes. Any subsequent ships are a bit odd to me considering the technological capabilities of the Federation. With replicator technology at their disposal I imagined the Ent D (I thought it looked horrible) as being in, "standing reserve" with some decks that might not even exist as more than solid matter that would be adaptable to purpose as required. I don't like the final forms of 32nd century ships but their malleability across the entirety of the vessel seemed reasonable extrapolation of those possibilities. The "hard matter" of the unfinished 24th century ships might have been a consequence of inefficiencies of a still evolving technology when operating at that scale and requiring more readily available constituent matter. Structurally until utilized it might bolster a vessel's structural integrity. Another possibility might be a fixed lattice that changed matter could be "bolted" onto.
Yep, and those kelvin/disco bridge windows (which adds that Disco should be a kelvin series, not prime, we never really seen any bridge windows in ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY. In fact, I think by FC, the viewer was a big hologram.
And in Disco, season 2, we see the bridge window cracking.....not a good thing....plus seeing the Discovery getting the hull torn like paper from mere ROCKS was laughable. In the remastered "The Doomsday Machine", we see rocks shattering when impacting upon the hull of the Constellation, and that ship was practically gutted.
I am quite happy with my D7.
Does it look the same as the Legendary one? Cuz, in my memory, the original D7 was less 'red stripe-y', and had a more monotomous (better looking) skin).