Federation Commander

I love FC and I love their miniatures. Despite being a very expensive hobby for just a 20 year old college student.

However, after looking over many of the rather 'unknown' aliens to the average TV trekkie such as the Tholians, WYN, Seltorians, Lyrans, I feel that the miniature need better ship designs!

I look at the Seltorian and ALL the ships are pretty much the same hull with an extra necell, etc. I mean really? Come on! Same with the Andromedans

We cannot have such a failure in miniature design such as the Seltorians and the Andromedians again. It just seems plain lazy for them to produce identitical ships in different sizes..

Doh!

The ship designs for the Federation and the Klingons showed great similarity (i.e saucer + body or not + X number of nacelles for the Feds) from the earliest Star Trek sources onward. Likewise, the Klinks have their arched fusilages with nacelles plus boom no matter whether a scout or a battlecruiser (see all the movies for examples). I do not expect much variation in design, especially after seeing Earth's naval maritime architecture similarities between classes, and even nations!

I woudl ask for good models (detail, good piece fit, accuracy to the source). ABD seems to do that (although I think all the FED saucers should be like command cruiser's).

Rocky
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I have to admit I was disappointed that the Fed. BB was essentially a DN with an extra engine, but in general the Federation and the Klingons have decently designed ships.

Romulans I would say have the best variation.

However, NONE of the races are as bad as the Seltorians and the Andromedians. These two have to be pretty much the worst.

DorianGray wrote:...... It just seems plain lazy for them to produce identitical ships in different sizes.

Not really. Think about it from a tactics point of view. If all your ships are of a different design, (i.e., a wedge for frigates, cylinder for destroyers, a ball for light cruisers and cubes for heavey cruisers), then a fireing arcs will all be different. It would be hard to coordinate your attack runs.

From a training point of view, as an officer progresses up thru the ranks and moves from commanding a small ship to a large one, he'd have to re-learn how to best manuver the ship in battle. Heck, he'd have to re-learn how to get from the bridge to his quarters!

From an engineeing point of view, it's easier for the shipyard to build simular shaped ships, just scaling up or down.

As to the Selts (and to some degree, the Lyran and Gorn), they found it easiest to build ships with common parts; just add a few more bits and turn a CL into a CA.

rockyr wrote:I woudl ask for good models (detail, good piece fit, accuracy to the source). ABD seems to do that (although I think all the FED saucers should be like command cruiser's).

Actually, some painters prefer the smooth hull saucers, so ADB sells both.

DorianGray,
I'm sorry you feel that way.
But as these minis are also used for SFB, I was using the descriptions from SFB when sculpting the Selts. The ships are described as having exactly the same rear hull by class: FF and DD have the same, CL-NCA-CA-DNL have the same, BCH and DN have the same, with either one, two, or three booms depending on class. If you look at the SSD's or ship cards you will see that this is precisely how they are designed. Even each boom by class is identical. I'm sure this made it easier to construct ships so far from home.
I suspect the Andros are the same way, being so far from their actual industrial base they had to use similar forms to easily scale up or down.
However, I am glad that you found them so exactingly alike. It was pretty hard to sculpt several classes almost identically the same (small, medium and large) to make eight minis.

DorianGray wrote:We cannot have such a failure in miniature design such as the Seltorians and the Andromedians again. It just seems plain lazy for them to produce identitical ships in different sizes..

Strong words dorian. I think you could have made your point without resorting to that.

The others upthread already covered most of what I would've said. I will echo some thoughts though.

Look at modern naval ships. To the untrained-eye an Arleigh Burke class destroyer and a Ticonderoga class cruiser look the same. Pretty much any modern surface combatant look the same. To my mother, every ship (military or commercial) looks the same. Form follows function.

This applies to airplanes as well. Every modern airliner is pretty much a tube with a low-mounted wing, under-slung podded turbofan engines and a body-mounted tail. Most of the other configurations have died off as all the builders gravitated to the overall most-effective/efficient/most-marketable configuration. Again, form follows function.

I can't see why Klingons, or Seltorians, or purple-people-eaters would be any different. The math would always lead thinkers down similar paths.

In the end, SVC is the guy with the Professional Engineer certification and the years and years of experience as a defense analyst. I'm inclined to trust his take on how things would get done.

DorianGrey,

Actually the 2 cases you pointed out have very specific Reasons for what they are and why they look this way.

In the case of the Seltorians you have to realize what they were and why the designed their ships the way they did. The Seltorians started off life as the Enforcer Slave Race to the Tholian Will in their Old Home Galaxy. The Will designed thier ships to act as cannon fodder to protect the ships of the Will in the minor skirmishes and rebellions they put down. This means very standardized simple to maintain, and resupplyn hulls were needed that were not suppose to be a match for the Tholian's own Fleet. Eventually the Seltorians were able to modify their ships and weapons allowing them to organize a successful Revolt against the Will, and then, they started executing every Tholian they could get their grasping appendages on.

This brings up to the Current FedCom/SFB Seltorian ships. The Seltorian Tribunal realized very quickly that some Tholians were getting away and escaping “Justice� so they organized Hive Ships to go after the different groups and exterminate them. Now these Hive Ships made the long journey between Galaxies and brought with them the small internal Ship Bays they were designed to carry, and a major strength of these ship yards was that they all operated on a Modular Build Philosophy. This Allowed the Seltorians to produce the maximum possible number of Ships as fast as they could, but there are a few concepts that the Seltorians never imagined they would be faced with. Things like Fighters, Gunboats, New Heavy Cruisers, Light Dreadnaughts among others were things that just did not exist to the Seltorians before they got to out Galaxy. And using their modular design the Klingons were able to show the Seltorians a few tricks to allow them to build bigger and better ships. The trade off is that they all literally look the same because they all are using the same hull section and engines just put together a little bit different.

As for the Andromedians they have almost the same problem the Seltorians had. When the Andromedian Desecrator arrive in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and set about exterminating all life. While setting up shop they had only a limited number of hulls that they seemed to use. As the advanced and starting meeting serious resistance in the Alpha and Gama Quadrants of the Milky Way they seemed to realize that they need larger and smaller ship hulls and simply seemed to have taken what works and either scaled it up or shrank it down. Visually and from the various intelligence reports it seems that the ships of all classes seem to be laid out with the same Configurations.

All this is just a long way of saying that there was a purpose design in why every ship in the Star Fleet Universe looks the way the look. Fights the way it Fights or is used the way it is. Take a little time to look around read some of the backgrounds and Histories and a lot of things will start to make a lot more since.


PS: There is another race that was very limited in Hull design they had for over 60 years and that is the Tholians. When the Tholian Holdfast swam ashore in the middle of the night and took a small radial arm of our galaxy away from the Klingons they did it with basically one type of Ship the Tholian Patrol Corvette. This Design was the only ship the Tholians had for years. Eventually they were able to obtain Disrupter Technology from the Wrecks the Klingons kept leaving thoughtfully leaving in their webs, and they began produced the Destroyer. Alittle bit more down the road they figured out a way to wield two PCs together making their Cruiser design. From there they were able to figure a way to wield 3 hulls together just before the General War Started. About 5 years into the War thy figured out how to cut a PC Hull in half and wield it back to another PC Producing a Elongated War Cruiser design. These 4 Hull Types would have been it for the Tholians if another fleeing Battle Group had not found the Holdfast during the General War, and not a moment to soon either.

PPS: John I think you did a excellent job with the Selts with the consideration that casting them required.

Although I have my favorites, I think all the SFB/FC ships are well-designed and thought out.

I'm surprised nobody picked on the Gorn yet. CA/CL/HDD/DN all are pretty similar. Same with the DD/BDD ships. Not a lot of hull designs but as for construction take a CL, add a rear saucer and you've got a CA. Makes production much easier.

Starfury wrote:I'm surprised nobody picked on the Gorn yet.

Actually, I did mention them, parenthetically.

Sgt_G wrote:

Starfury wrote:I'm surprised nobody picked on the Gorn yet.

Actually, I did mention them, parenthetically.

You're right; I missed that.

I just paint my ships different colors. so my Gorn are Gunmetal, Gray, Green, and Blue. I may do a Black fleet next.

Starfury wrote:.... I may do a Black fleet next.

Oh? Setting the Gorn aside to do some Klingons, are you?

Sgt_G wrote:

Starfury wrote:.... I may do a Black fleet next.

Oh? Setting the Gorn aside to do some Klingons, are you?

Already have some of my older Klingons done in black. A Tug w/ 2 pods and a D5.

Others have covered this, so I don't need to add anything.

I might just mention that ships SHOULD follow a racial theme. A Klingon ship should look instantly like a Klingon ship, regardless of size or details like two or three or four engines.

Those pesky Hydrans will designs all over the map drive me nuts.