Ambassador class growth?!

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Meste17
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Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Meste17 »

I noticed on the DITL website page concerning the Ambassador class starships (such as the famous USS Enterprise-C) that the ship was at first 526 meters in length, but now it is 564 meters in length. Did the ship just grow all of a sudden? O_O
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Captain Seafort »

Moved, since it's about the site
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Griffin »

The article says they had to use a different model after Yesterday's Enterprise, presumably the new one made for a smaller ship.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Meste17 wrote:I noticed on the DITL website page concerning the Ambassador class starships (such as the famous USS Enterprise-C) that the ship was at first 526 meters in length, but now it is 564 meters in length. Did the ship just grow all of a sudden? O_O
IIRC, we were looking over the ship page a little while back and noticed that the Ambassador length was listed as speculation. I went hunting and found a scale pic in the Encyclopedia which generated the new length.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by McAvoy »

So the new 564 meter length is based off of the Encyclopedia scale? The Ambassador picture used is different such as fhd saucer being too thin.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Well if there are official numbers or diagrams with scales on them I'm open to changing it.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by McAvoy »

I don't think there is official diagrams but a few people did notice the official one like from the Encyclopedia is wrong. Length I always thought was background info.

Not to mention using the Encyclopedia for scaling will throw off all of the lengths.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Not to mention using the Encyclopedia for scaling will throw off all of the lengths.
Throw them off as compared to what, though?

Bear in mind, there is no REAL length for these things, because the ships don't actually exist. So what the "real" length is will depend on the basis one uses as evidence to calculate it.

For example over on Ex Astris, Bernd takes the approach of treating the ships as if the model is an actual scale model of a real ship, and he attempts to scale it according to the design features. So he will use windows, deck heights, etc. If a scene on the show depicts a Bird of Prey as larger than the Enterprise-D (as in The Defector), then Bernd will simply note that as a bad scene and ignore it. Similarly, if a tech manual or scale diagram states that it's a radically different size, then will happily ignore that.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach. Whilst I may have a bit of a bash at Bernd over his opinion of the Abrams Enterprise (or the Abrams films in general), I am agog at the quality of the work he produces. In what he does, he is one of the very best in the world.

But I don't use his basis, and so my results come out differently. For me, it's what's said and seen on screen first... then what's in official works second... then fan speculations and interpretations last. So for Bernd, he will consider window sizes and deck heights and whatnot and say the Ambassador is X meters long, and this size comparison chart should be ignored.

But for me, I will say that this size comparison shows the Ambassador to be Y meters long, and so if the model doesn't quite fit that, then the Ambassador must be built with under/over sized decks and windows and whatnot.

Neither is the right approach or the wrong approach... they're just different approaches.

So.

I'm happy to make the Ambassador any length that evidence can be support. Give me a lovely clear screen shot of an Ambassador side-on to something with an accepted length, like a Galaxy class, and I'll happily scale it to that and use whatever length it gives. Or show me an encyclopedia or tech manual book that says the Ambassador is XXX meters long, and I will happily use that instead. Or show me a scale diagram in some official book that scales it to a known length, and I will use that (in fact that's how it's scaled right now).

If all that fails then I'll just go with a guestimate based on windows or whatever, or even just make up a number that seems about right.

So by all means... anybody want to argue for a different length than 564 m?
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by McAvoy »

That is fine. However are you planning on changing the Excelsior class length then? Bernd made s point in one article about that ship being much larger than the 467 meter length. Not to mention the DS9 manual gave the length as bigger than the 467 meter length as well.

The Ambassador class has always been 526 meters just like the Excelsior has always been 467 meters.

Edit: I no longer have any of my manuals anymore so maybe someone can look up the Excelsior and the Ambassador classes to see where their length comes from.

You could theoretically scale the E-C and the E-D to each other if you assume they are at the same plane distance to each other as opposed to being different due to perspective.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Graham Kennedy »

McAvoy wrote:That is fine. However are you planning on changing the Excelsior class length then? Bernd made s point in one article about that ship being much larger than the 467 meter length. Not to mention the DS9 manual gave the length as bigger than the 467 meter length as well.
With the Excelsior we had two competing official sources. Since that section of the DS9 TM is notoriously unreliable (the author admitted it was done on the rush and contains many mistakes) I went with the first figure.
The Ambassador class has always been 526 meters just like the Excelsior has always been 467 meters.
Well yes, but WHY has it "always been" 526 meters? When I noticed that I had it down unreferenced I went looking and couldn't find an official length anywhere.
Edit: I no longer have any of my manuals anymore so maybe someone can look up the Excelsior and the Ambassador classes to see where their length comes from.
I have them. I couldn't find a stated length for the Ambassador in the TNG or DS9 TMs or the Encyclopedia. That's why I went to the scale diagram in the encyclopedia.
You could theoretically scale the E-C and the E-D to each other if you assume they are at the same plane distance to each other as opposed to being different due to perspective.
I'm very dubious about trying to scale things on screenshots where they aren't nicely lined up and at equal distances, precisely because of perspective. I avoid it where possible. Take this for example :

Image

It would be a lovely shot for scaling... except that the Excelsior is clearly noticably closer to us than the Enterprise is, which renders it useless.

Or this :

Image

They're clearly on a parallel course, so you can say there would be the same degree of foreshortening due to their angle to the camera, which is great. But again one is very likely closer than the other, making it useless.

Here's the kind of shot we need :

Image

Perfect for scaling!

If you can point to an Ambassador screenshot where a good case can be made for a different length, I'm happy to take a look.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by McAvoy »

You know what? You could claim it is 638 meters in length and none of us could claim you are incorrect until we use the models as a reference.

By all means use that length I will use 526 meters as there is nothing preventing me forming doing so.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Graham Kennedy »

McAvoy wrote:You know what? You could claim it is 638 meters in length and none of us could claim you are incorrect until we use the models as a reference.
But I just explained to you at length exactly how you could do just that.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Captain Seafort »

GrahamKennedy wrote:Here's the kind of shot we need :

Image

Perfect for scaling!
Even that one looks to me that the Stargazer is closer to to the camera than the E-D, so you're only going to get an upper limit for its dimensions.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by Teaos »

I would assume they are almost the same since the beam would lock it close to place.
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Re: Ambassador class growth?!

Post by McAvoy »

Seems like there has been debate about the length already.
The first and subsequent editions of the Star Trek Encyclopedia popularized a length of 526 meters for Rick Sternbach's final design. Several years before the Encyclopedia was published, the number had been added to the internal document Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual, which also gives an imperial equivalent of 1725 feet. No reasoning has been provided for this size.

Gary Kerr calculated a second figure of 1,570 feet and a metric conversion of 478.5 meters, explaining that the Enterprise-C is just short of 35.75 inches long in the blueprints of its miniature, and that the blueprints are in scale with the four-foot miniature of the Enterprise-D. [X]wbm Kerr used 2,108 feet for the length of the latter and 48 inches for the length of the four-foot miniature, although he also determined that it was probably closer to 49.25 inches long. [X]wbm Nevertheless, Rick Sternbach fully supports the 1,570-foot calculation, saying that he worked with the same assumptions when drafting the Enterprise-C blueprints. [X]wbm

Aside from the unexplained figure of 526 meters, it is unclear whether the size implied by Rick Sternbach was deliberately changed during the original development process. His initial full-scale blueprints were blown up by 15%, which means that the final size of the miniature (41.19 inches) could have influenced the ship's conceptual size next to the Enterprise-D. [X]wbm Greg Jein does not recall scaling up the blueprints, and whoever did remains unknown. [X]wbm

Andrew Probert has stated that his original concept is exactly 1,720 feet long (524.256 meters). The number is consistent with an early TNG size comparison chart, also provided by Probert, although he did not write the 1,721-foot callout on that drawing.
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