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Finally watched this. I'm still quite convinced this ship was designed for the purpose of "This'll look cool on the big screen!" (which it did) and there wasn't a lot of thought put into the actual functionality aside from being a pretty bad-ass looking war ship.

They did hang something like fifteen torpedo launchers on it in the original design, though. That kind of speaks to somebody thinking Starfleet was upgunning.

Graham Kennedy wrote:They did hang something like fifteen torpedo launchers on it in the original design, though. That kind of speaks to somebody thinking Starfleet was upgunning.

I think it was a vive l'difference moment. That is, the hero ships have always been the biggest and the best, but still explorers at heart as evidenced by the light amount of launchers (compared to what was evidently possible with the Akira.) I feel like the Akira was someone's attempt to say, "Hey - we've only seen variations on a theme, now's our chance to show something different."

Of the four background ships (obviously not counting E-E), I think the Akira is by far the most interesting and memorable. I know we have no real evidence of a fighter wing attached to the Akiras, but the front shuttle bay is such a great look.

I have started to watch the channel. Honestly it feels overall mediocre to me.

Though I do like his analysis on the Oberth class. Starfleet's Battle Canoe.

I dont see a shuttlebay, I see windows. (Whereas the rear doors are bigger).

AlexMcpherson79 wrote:I dont see a shuttlebay, I see windows. (Whereas the rear doors are bigger).

This person believes it's a shuttlebay that spans the entire length of the saucer.

Bryan Moore wrote:Finally watched this. I'm still quite convinced this ship was designed for the purpose of "This'll look cool on the big screen!" (which it did) and there wasn't a lot of thought put into the actual functionality aside from being a pretty bad-ass looking war ship.

Old comment but you are exactly right. Post First Contact alot of Trek ships were designed without serious thought about in universe thought. Then again if you really think about it, if it wasn't a major ship like the Refit Enterprise, Reliant, E-D or Voyager not alot of thought was given to them to how their layout made sense. Like weapons or even something as simple as the Nebula's main shuttle bay.

Defiant I think was the first major ship (outside of course TOS) to have the look cool first and figure out everything else later design. E-E was partially like this and even had to address some of them in Nemesis.

Excelsior is like the Sovereign class, as good luck locating phaser arrays aside from the ones on the saucer. But that ship has issues past that too like aft shuttle bay, the bridge module etc.

I don't know but I feel that for the Akira especially - but also for the Sovereign - there seems to be assumed a LOT which actually - canonically might not be the case, e.g. that they were both "designed" for war.

And yet...we never see any Akiras or Sovereigns fighting in the Dominion War......what is more, it seems to be widely accepted that the Galaxy Class is a Cruise Ship and Sovereign/Akira are more militaristic designs......but canonically I wonder where the evidence is.

As for the Akira....while the amount of photon torpedo tubes is impressive....without knowing which type they are - e.g. how many torpedoes they are able to launch simultaniously - there is no way of telling how potent it really is. Maybe it is just the much smaller, more easy to accomodate design only able to launch one torpedo at a time.....giving it actually a much slower rate of fire altough with a better coverage......

Canonically we never see her firing a "spread". (Actually, we never ever saw a ship except the GCS being able to do that..I wonder if that ability is a dependend more on size or energy...)

As for the Sovereign....internally it looks like the Galaxy pretty much.....and when you compare models it doesn't really look like as if they dedicated more internal OR external space to military equipment, e.g. phaser strips, torpedo tubes. It really takes a close comparision of the Models to realize how much effing bigger the GCS is compared to the Sovereign, which is just very very long......
Being the most advanced ship in the fleet, as mentioned by Ryker, doesn't translate to being the most potent necessarily, the Intrepid Class also was at one point the most advanced ship in the fleet....

Given all that I wonder where these assumptions come from, especially for the sovereign class, which was soundly beaten in pretty much any movie it appeared in after First Contact....even by some backwater race like the...I don't even remember....in Insurrection.

(Funily, this seems true also for TOS ships......internally I think even the Constitutions - which are widely accepted as being proper warships first - dedicate less internal space to weapons than later designs.)

Akira class fought in the Dominion war
In fact all but the Sovereign class from First Contact were seen on screen.

Akira just seems to be designed to look cool without working out what it's supposed to do.

Honestly if there's one thing I could 'fix' about Trek it's the absolutely absurd profusion of ship classes. There's literally like fifty different classes of Starship seen in use during TNG and beyond (not even counting shuttles and small craft), which is just ridiculous.

If I could I'd have cut the number of Federation ships about three-fold, and added three or four classes to the Klingon and Romulan fleets. The Vor'Cha is great, but I'd love to have seen an updated Bird of Prey and D7 in use during TNG. And a Romulan fleet that basically consists of tiny scoutships and giant km+ long behemoths makes no sense either.

Graham Kennedy wrote:Honestly if there's one thing I could 'fix' about Trek it's the absolutely absurd profusion of ship classes. There's literally like fifty different classes of Starship seen in use during TNG and beyond (not even counting shuttles and small craft), which is just ridiculous.

If I could I'd have cut the number of Federation ships about three-fold, and added three or four classes to the Klingon and Romulan fleets. The Vor'Cha is great, but I'd love to have seen an updated Bird of Prey and D7 in use during TNG. And a Romulan fleet that basically consists of tiny scoutships and giant km+ long behemoths makes no sense either.

I would cut it down myself even during the times when there were multiple ship classes in the world's fleets there were never this varied unless you count the one offs or the two ship classes as well.

I would definitely cut the older the classes out as part of that like the Miranda or Excelsior class ships. At best you could say the Mirandas were bought by private companies as courier ships or something.

Personally it would have been better to see classes with small incremental differences and considered a different class.

Graham Kennedy wrote:Honestly if there's one thing I could 'fix' about Trek it's the absolutely absurd profusion of ship classes. There's literally like fifty different classes of Starship seen in use during TNG and beyond (not even counting shuttles and small craft), which is just ridiculous.

If I could I'd have cut the number of Federation ships about three-fold, and added three or four classes to the Klingon and Romulan fleets. The Vor'Cha is great, but I'd love to have seen an updated Bird of Prey and D7 in use during TNG. And a Romulan fleet that basically consists of tiny scoutships and giant km+ long behemoths makes no sense either.

I also think the life span of the classes of ships is exaggerated and should be significantly cut, that a ship remains in service for a century is quite ridiculous, i'd say that 40-50 years would make more sense.

This would cut off all the miranda and most of the excelsior, but would give space to recent classes, such as akira, galaxy and others.

there are also exceptions IRL, eg Iowa, but they are exceptions, not the rule, at least for really competitive fleets and not for some minor country.

bladela wrote:

Graham Kennedy wrote:Honestly if there's one thing I could 'fix' about Trek it's the absolutely absurd profusion of ship classes. There's literally like fifty different classes of Starship seen in use during TNG and beyond (not even counting shuttles and small craft), which is just ridiculous.

If I could I'd have cut the number of Federation ships about three-fold, and added three or four classes to the Klingon and Romulan fleets. The Vor'Cha is great, but I'd love to have seen an updated Bird of Prey and D7 in use during TNG. And a Romulan fleet that basically consists of tiny scoutships and giant km+ long behemoths makes no sense either.

I also think the life span of the classes of ships is exaggerated and should be significantly cut, that a ship remains in service for a century is quite ridiculous, i'd say that 40-50 years would make more sense.

This would cut off all the miranda and most of the excelsior, but would give space to recent classes, such as akira, galaxy and others.

there are also exceptions IRL, eg Iowa, but they are exceptions, not the rule, at least for really competitive fleets and not for some minor country.

You have to look at Trek as sailing ships in space. Up to the mid - 1850's there was very little that someone from 1650 would not recognize. That a sailing ship could easily be 200 years old and still be considered a fighting ship.