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Trekyards is a youtube channel that does in-depth discussions of various Trek ships. They do cannon and non-cannon, including some of the more obscure ones. What's nice is that they sometimes do interviews with the people who designed the ships, talking about aspects of the design. I thought I'd post a few here, as they are really quite interesting stuff. This one is a discussion of the original design of the Ambassador class Enterprise-C, with Andrew Probert.

Whoever they'll get to design the ship for the new series I hope he/she has at least half as much knowledge and attention to detail as Andrew Probert.

Actually....I flat out would put him in charge of designing the new ship. One of the old crew for whom "continuity" isn't something to be looked up in a dictonary.

He makes so many good points about the design choices for this ship. The way the engineering hull is essentially an Excelsior hull, only widened to a more GCS-like shape and with a more GCS-like top. The weird grilled neck of the Excelsior, but with the grilling reduced. The Excelsior pair of torpedo tubes, but relocated to the same position as the GCS's single tube. And so on and so on. It completely shames the Ambassador design that we actually got.

The single thing I'd say the on-screen Ambassador has over this is the idea of the short phaser arrays. That's a nice "more primitive" array design compared to the long arrays of the GCS. Here, the ship has full length arrays just like the GCS.

Graham Kennedy wrote:He makes so many good points about the design choices for this ship. The way the engineering hull is essentially an Excelsior hull, only widened to a more GCS-like shape and with a more GCS-like top. The weird grilled neck of the Excelsior, but with the grilling reduced. The Excelsior pair of torpedo tubes, but relocated to the same position as the GCS's single tube. And so on and so on. It completely shames the Ambassador design that we actually got.

The single thing I'd say the on-screen Ambassador has over this is the idea of the short phaser arrays. That's a nice "more primitive" array design compared to the long arrays of the GCS. Here, the ship has full length arrays just like the GCS.

WEll..what made those ship designs great was that a lot of thought was put into them, things that most likely never anyone will ever see. (I remember just reading the TNG technical manual that there were so many things about the GCS we never actually saw and capabilies writers just flat out ignored.)


Today it seems it just needs to look cool. Actually that is why I am not a real fan of the sovereign class. It is beautiful and really looks cool.....but idk....it breaks with the design continuity established. Looks more like a roided Excelsior than anything that would come after the GCS.

Of course that is entirely a matter of opinion.

I have no problem with the idea that there are multiple design lineages going on at once - the Sovereign looks like a descendent of the Excelsior rather than the Galaxy class because that's that it is.

Doesn't the general shape of the Federation ships depend on the current warp field tech being used? First it was round (TOS), then longer almond-like (Excelsior), then round again (Galaxy) and now longer again... Warp field tech also being the reason that the nacelle placement keeps changing. Far from body, in close, above hull, below. flat, angled...

New weapon systems (offensive and defensive) and requirements also make changes, potentially dead-ending previous "advances"

My assumption has always been that warp field tech is akin to aerodynamics, and there's a lot of different approaches to hull shape and nacelle placement depending on what you're going for in the design. Presumably placing the nacelles up high confers one advantage, placing them down low another, and so on.

The forward "lobe" of the field shapes the primary hull, according to the TNG TM, with more elliptical shapes conferring an advantage (better efficiency?). One of the TM's suggested Galaxy successor classes had a similar shape with an even more elliptical hull :



The Sovereign seems to use the elliptical field but with the axis of the ellipse rotated 90 degrees.

All we can really do is guess, but for now the long-ellipse seems to be beating out the wide-ellipse in Federation design, for some reason. Maybe it confers more agility or acceleration or something?

Graham Kennedy wrote:
All we can really do is guess, but for now the long-ellipse seems to be beating out the wide-ellipse in Federation design, for some reason. Maybe it confers more agility or acceleration or something?

Well...the real out of universe reason is of course to make ships that look more sleek, aerodynamik and "cooler".

Exactly what I don't like, I prefer my space ships to not look like that. Hence why Constitution class is still probably my favourite design closely followed by the GCS, which - granted - is more sleek and aerodynamik but is just such a grand and elegant lady that I don't really mind.


It is hard to explain but I just like a bit of "ugliness" in those ship designs...things that give the ship a bit of character. The E-nil is not very pretty..very utilarian and somehow beautifl because of it. The GCS is sleek but rather top-heavy and looks a bit disproportioned.

But the Sovereign.....it's just too perfect imho. Aestetically I cannot find a fault with her and strangely that is why I don't like it very much. I guess I am not making much sense here but there it is.....

I've rather come to like the Nebula, myself. There's just something about that huge ship with that compact shape that appeals to me.

Maybe it has the same volume or more than the Galaxy class in a much more compact form. Looks much more balanced because of that.

Nebula is 4,443,196 m^3 compared to Galaxy's 5,820,983 m^3. So about 76% the size.

With or without the pod?

Besides, so the ship is missing the neck and the aft part of the engineering hull. Though in this case, the parts it's missing is the two torpedo launchers.

Not sure. I think that's including the weapons pod. But the pod doesn't add a whole lot of volume to the ship anyway.

Next up : A discussion of the NX Class refit that Drexler designed. This was mooted to be used in season 5 of the show, though it was an idea floating around rather than a concrete plan.

No love for this idea? I always thought it would have been a fantastic upgrade to see for the ship in season 5.