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A Brand New Shi'Kahr!
baddmoonrizin
Member Posts: 10,857 Community Moderator
We are pleased to announce that with the Summer Event we will be updating the ShiKahr variant of the Light Cruiser family to a completely redesigned and rebuilt model.
This new version of the ShiKahr has been reimagined as a mid-24th century starship, conceived as a light cruiser contemporary to the Cheyenne, Galaxy, and Nebula classes.
This model was designed and built by Eric Henry, starshipwright extraordinaire.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11520243-a-brand-new-shi'kahr!
This new version of the ShiKahr has been reimagined as a mid-24th century starship, conceived as a light cruiser contemporary to the Cheyenne, Galaxy, and Nebula classes.
This model was designed and built by Eric Henry, starshipwright extraordinaire.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11520243-a-brand-new-shi'kahr!
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It also is a total failure in conveying the sense of a coolly logical, utterly pragmatic armed utility ship which is all function with little or no attention to form that the Shi'Kahr had with its no-nonsense hard angles, obvious extensions to the rim of the saucer, and bolted-on additional pods. The new skin is slick form-over-function, which is not always a bad thing btw, but it is the total opposite of the original Shi'Kahr which leaves a bad gap in the kitbash kit.
As I said in the other thread, when the skin changes I will be regretfully dismissing the ship from the character who uses it as their main ship since it no longer fits the theme of the character, and either re-tailoring a few other ships on other characters which used Shi-Kahr parts or switching to new main ships for them too
Ruining the Shi'Kahr skin instead of just adding the new one to the stable of light cruisers of that design lineage as the latest model is almost as bad as if the devs decided to simply swap out the TNG Klingon race and make all of them DSC Klingons retroactively or arbitrarily removed whole uniform sets from the character tailor.
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The points of connection (pylons???) between the new struts and the saucer section (directly under the deflector housing) should be at the saucer, not above it (visible in SarinaMirtis's image above, behind the bridge).
The shuttle bays (if that's what they are) along the front edge of the saucer have nicely detailed landing stripes on the floor, but the skin wraps around and onto the ceiling, giving the appearance of wide windows set into the ceiling where there wouldn't even be room enough for people to be...
Any of the windows options give escape pods that are MASSIVE compared to the rest of the ship. The skins for windows need to be drastically reduced, or a new skin created specifically for this ship. These escape pods give the ship the appearance of being about the size of the old Oberth... Unless that's the point...
Just a few things I noticed about the new model...
I actually considered flying the new Shikhar with a crew using the Lower Decks uniform (from the Lobi Store)... It's really not bad, except for the details I've given above... I own the TOS-style Legendary Miranda, so it's an option I'd love to maybe use in the future...
CM
I noticed those problems too; I wonder why they were not caught by the modeler or any testers (if there were any), though I get the impression that those uprights on the top of the saucer were necessary to mate with one of the 'strut' options correctly.
I think those lit "window" things visible on the ceilings inside the forcefield covered bays are just lighting panels in the ceiling (though why they would use what was considered rather quaint tech in TOS in an all-too-TNG-era-specific ship I don't know). And what the shallow, black-painted depression over those bays is supposed to be is anyone's guess, like the similar depressions that replaced the holes in the original Shi'kahr skin further back on the saucer, those depressions do not seem to serve any useful purpose.
To be fair though, I suppose they could be some sort of landing pad/charge station for whatever they launch from those bays, for times when they want to keep them out on standby or whatever. At least that is what I consider them to be on the one ship I have that uses that new Shi'kahr saucer anyway (I had to dump all of my other ships built from that Reliant/Miranda kitbash kit because the new skin parts ruined them for the various character motifs they were in use on and there just was nothing left in the kit that worked). On the other hand, I did come up with one that works for another character that uses a different motif.
On the original Shi'kahr skin the holes at the back looked like they could have been pass-throughs for some kind toroid shaped energy field from the matching blue-glowing panels that were on the top and bottom of the saucer close behind those holes. If that is the case, then covering them with some kind of conduit would have been about the only thing that would have been more of an unnecessary waste of material than putting needless holes in the saucer, so it makes sense.
True, they are ridiculously oversized. They even look bigger than the ones on the Nova, and that is a tiny ship (a science frigate) whereas the Shi'kahr is two size-classes bigger, a light cruiser. Those "escape pods" on the Shi'kahr would be almost the size of a 7-11 (convenience store).
Now, I love me some weird kitbashing, but this is just... I dunno. Putting on other pylons doesn't line them up with the strut's connector, which arguably looks worse.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the new model, I just wish that, if possible, the model rigging had been more thoroughly tested to prevent things like this.
EDIT: spelling