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A lack of Jupiter at the starbase
latentred
Member Posts: 34 Arc User
I just logged out of Earth Spacedock, and what do I not see? The new ship within starbase. Considering how often new ship designs are showcased out that nice, big window, I find this to be a problem.
Unless it shows up the second I post this. In which case, ignore me!
Unless it shows up the second I post this. In which case, ignore me!
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"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
This. However, they might have just not gotten to it, and might do it later.
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
Tacofangs has a rule though,if the ship couldn't fit through spacedock doors it won't be going in so you won't see it in the main area.Although it's possible you may see it flying around Spacedock
Seeing as how it isn't a Science ship, no.
Quoted for Truth. Jupiter's too big to fit inside ESD.
Well there goes my immersion into the game. My night is ruined!!!!!!!!!
My character Tsin'xing
None of the carriers have secondary deflectors, science based or not. Sooo...not seeing your point?
So . . . a couple things.
1) It isn't trivial to swap out the ships in ESD. The actual work isn't hard, but it does take time.
The ships you fly are actually costumes we put on your character. They're roughly car sized. They are not the actual size they would be if they existed in the real world. As such, we have to create Ground Scale versions of them in order to put them into maps where you are a human. That takes a fair bit of time per costume. We have to figure out what ships we want to do, figure out the costume names for each of those, dupe out the Max files, rip out all of the extraneous costume info, scale up the ship, figure out what materials they're supposed to use, assemble it all into one object (most ships are made of many different pieces), and finally export to the game. Not a ton of work, but an hour or so per ship, or so.
Then we do the fun part, which is arranging the ships in ESD, deciding what goes where, etc. That doesn't take a ton of time, but we need to make sure everything is visible from the big window, that the ships are lit as best we can, that nothing is crashing into each other, or the station, or the orbiting shuttles.
Then, the part that takes longest, is updating Quinn's map. We take a screenshot from way, way above ESD, so we can get the positions of each ship. Then we have to go through and generate line drawings/outlines for each ship, and place those where they need to go on the texture, to match the actual ships. Then we have to figure out new names and registry numbers for each of the ships, and generate the little title cards you see in the list on Quinn's map, and flying around the Holo-ESD downstairs. This usually falls on Thomas, who enjoys it, but it's not something he's scheduled to do, so it has to be done on his own time, or in between things as he can find the time.
All of that takes at least a full day of work, sometimes more, depending on how many new ships we need to scale up. That day of work is generally not something on the schedule, so it's pieced out over many days, as I can find time to do it during the day, or it all has to be done after work in the evenings or weekends.
So, it takes a while to make it happen. As such, it's not something we do ALL the time. In fact, the Docking Bay was JUST updated a couple weeks back, after a number of people had pointed out to me that the Pathfinder had been sitting there forever. They weren't wrong, but it still took a while to find time to do it. Which leads directly into the next point. . .
2) The Jupiter was still being designed when the last ESD Docking Bay update happened. While the concept art was done, the ship art was not, so there wasn't a finished product for me to scale up. As such, it didn't make the cut, and (as per point 1), we're not going to do that whole process again, two weeks later, just to showcase the Jupiter.
3) And lastly . . . it's too big. I've been pretty diligent in making sure that the only ships that go into the docking Bay at ESD are ships that would actually fit through the doors. That means no Presidio, no Galaxy, no Odyssey, and no Jupiter. We could put it outside, and . . . maybe we will. Swapping the current Gal-X out there is significantly less work than the ships in the Bay. But that's still something we'd be doing on our own time, and I'd still need to bug Thomas to come up with an info card for it.
So... much... awesome information. Thanks for walking through the process for that. Neat stuff!
Quick nod of appreciation as well. I was at the security officer on ESD right after the udpate - and I happened to look up and was "URMAGERD COMMAND CRUISER AS FAR AS I CAN SEE!!!" That is an epic fly-by.
Thank you sir for the great explanation.
Although it might be fun to beam into ESD, only to immediate suffocate as one of the Jupiter's nacelles have pierced the observation deck triggering explosive decompression. (Emergency force fields not holding as they too were the result of the lowest bidder). Probably more than a few days work to achieve, but it would end the conversation - "why don't we have the new ship inside?"
"On your own time" is a fancy word for "this is unpaid work, we do it because we love the game", right?
If memory serves the Enterprise D docked at ESD a few times in TNG. Iv never tried to dock a galaxy class in STO so im willing to take your word for it that the galaxy class is too big for the ESD doors but that begs the question. Why does ESD have smaller docking bay doors now then it had in TNG
Oh, now you're getting into the production mishaps of on-screen Trek. Dangerous territory there
The spacedock that Kirk's and Picard's Enterprises entered is one and the same model. The spacedock made for the movies was reused as-is for TNG, with no scaling of any type. So by that account, the model they used of the movie Enterprise and the model they used of the Enterprise-D were roughly the same size, to fit into the exact same dock model.
It's been fan-canoned as there being two clearly different sizes of spacedock that look otherwise identical. I'd expect that ESD is closer to the movie sizing, if only for the fact that the TNG sizing would be stupid-large on the Sol System map.
If you want a real mind-mess, check out Adm. Ross' base of operations, and see how many times that station model was reused for different sizes, purposes, flipped upside-down to look different, and so on.
A science based carrier does not a science ship make. No more than the Geneva Class is a science ship.
Jupiter is notably larger than a Galaxy class.
-3rd Commmandment of Chivalry
Actually, I think it didn't dock at Earth Space Dock. It docked at Starbases that looked like Earth Space Dock, but were placed in a different place, and the visuals don't match, since the Constitution is smaller than the Galaxy, but looks similar in size compared to these bases. The visual evidence suggests Starfleet uses the same shape but for different sizes.
The Enterprise D was not often near Earth, and the times I remember she was docked at one of those repair yard stations, if at all.
Because TNG used the same footage from Search for Spock, and just shrunk the D to match the footage.
I claim no responsibility for what happened in old ESD. Since the ESD ground revamp, I've been the one responsible for docking ships. I did put a Galaxy in there for a bit, but that was a mistake.
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No, it's not a Science Ship/Vessel. It's a Carrier.
And carriers have always had a strong Science bent in their BOff seating, with Engineering as a secondary focus, and decent Tactical to supplement their middling firepower. They've also always had Subsystem Targeting, too.
Carriers were basically the first hybridized starship class in STO. They had high HP and power, like a cruiser; they could mount the heaviest weapons in the game, like escorts; and they had strong science seating, shielding and SS targeting, like science vessels.
But they also had several weaknesses, too, mostly in the form of some of the lowest speed and maneuverability ratings in the game and low weapon mounts.
What made them unique obviously was their two hangar bays, in addition to their overall versatility. They were billed as the ultimate support ships, some of the most advanced ships a fleet could field.
In Cryptic's terms, "advanced" usually translates into "science", and Science powers were usually the go-to for some of the better healing and CC moves in the game. Ergo, basic Carriers had Science Commander BOff seats as their highest level seat.
Obviously, this can be confusing to people who are not familiar with the history of the ship class, especially since exotic Carrier types soon outnumbered the basic models of Carrier, the Vo'Quv and the Atrox T(he Sar'Theln and Recluse being more generalized in their seating).
But the reason you'll never see Secondary Deflectors (or Sensor Analysis for that matter) on Carriers is pretty much because of the fact true Carriers have two hangar bays on them. That's the biggest separation between a true Carrier and something lesser, like a Flight Deck Cruiser, Escort Carrier, or a Dreadnought. A pair of hangar bays theoretically equates to the same functionality that a Secondary Deflector would provide, albeit in a different kind of advantage.
They may already have a strong Science bend, but they're probably never gonna go that far. It is for the realm of actual Science Vessels.
The D used a Spacedock, but not Earth Space Dock. The Starbase you are thinking of is Starbase 74. The shot of the Enterprise D entering is a reuse of the film footage of the original Enterprise docking, with the D superimposed over the original.