Cerberus Class & Travel Pod

[Graham Kennedy]

Rather than necro my Border Patrol Ship thread, I figured I would post the latest renders here. I knocked up a travel pod to go with the ship, which I think came out amazingly well!

Click for much larger versions.



The Cerberus is an old ship - hence the three digit NCC number - and is intended to be a very small, fairly slow, and unprestigious one. Whilst the likes of the Enterprise are crewed by those who came top of their class at the Academy, the Cerberus is crewed by those who placed dead last - or have screwed up not quite badly enough to be discharged from Starfleet, or who have annoyed the hell out of a highly placed Admiral.

The crew affectionately refer to her as the Little Doggie, The Last Stop, the Dead End, or less affectionately as the Killer of Careers.



Changes from the earlier version include :

Added hull lines.
Changed the font on the hull text to something much closer to a real TOS font
Added window rows on the primary hull.
Added some colouring to the saucer rim.
Added airlocks/travel pod docking ports to the saucer rim; removed the bulky airlock that stuck out.
Modified the nav deflector to look more gold than yellow and of a more primitive segmented design.
Added considerable internal structure - I have a largely complete layout of the interior actually sitting inside the ship. Whilst you can't see this, it means that the exterior windows are actually in the correct place for the rooms they look into. You can even look through the windows and see tables, chairs, beds, showers, etc inside.
Added hatches under the saucer for four escape pods. You can just see the hatches in the second and third image above.
Designed escape pods! That you can't see.

Just noticed that I forgot to add in the torpedo tubes in this version, but they're mostly hidden in this angly anyway so that's not too bad.



Closer view of the Travel pod. You can see some of my Star Trek figures inside, and in the windows of the ship. These were made in MakeHuman, which lets you create pretty good articulated human figures. They were imported into blender for finishing off, most of which involved turning the "real clothes" available in MakeHuman into something that can pass for a Starfleet uniform. I also made antennae in Blender to go on the Andorian's head.



The tiny shuttlebay of the Cerberus, just large enough for a single shuttle. With typical slightly bitter humour, the crew dubbed their shuttle The Underdog.

[IanKennedy]

They look great. The only thing that looks odd is the top shot. There doesn't seem to be any glass on the top of the bridge. It's looks perfectly clear, has no reflections and no distortions if it's meant to be domed?

[Graham Kennedy]

They look great. The only thing that looks odd is the top shot. There doesn't seem to be any glass on the top of the bridge. It's looks perfectly clear, has no reflections and no distortions if it's meant to be domed?

It is domed, and there is glass, but yes, it's pretty much perfectly clear. I find that colouring the glass even slightly or giving it even a slightly different refractive index buggers it up, so I generally use "invisible" glass.

[Graham Kennedy]

Sizewise...



Cerberus against some contemporary ships. Note that even a Klingon Bird of Prey is a pretty big, tough customer to the Cerberus.

Lengthwise she's 80.5 metres from front to back - though that includes everything down to the spike on the Deflector dish. She's 42.1 metres wide at the saucer, and 30.7 metres tall. There are six decks. Total mass is 6,800 metric tons.

Designed cruise speed is Warp 5, top speed is Warp 5.5. It's a rare day when the Cerberus can actually reach either one, and demanding that the Chief Engineer hold it together somehow whilst you bust the limits is not the kind of thing this kind of ship can get away with on any day.

Two twin Type 5 phaser cannon give her a designed phaser firepower about 1/15th that of a TOS Constitution class, and shields and photons are similar in capability. When the weapons work at all, that is, which they don't always.

[mwhittington]

What was the specific purpose of this ship when it was built? If I had to guess, I'd say maybe border patrol. I also like the idea of a "voyage of the damned" ship where the worst of Starfleet end up. That would make for an interesting show, IMO.

[Graham Kennedy]

What was the specific purpose of this ship when it was built? If I had to guess, I'd say maybe border patrol.

Exactly so. In fact I mentioned that in the OP...

I also like the idea of a "voyage of the damned" ship where the worst of Starfleet end up. That would make for an interesting show, IMO.

I have some elements of a possible plot in mind for a story set on the Cerberus, but nothing very specific.

[mwhittington]

What was the specific purpose of this ship when it was built? If I had to guess, I'd say maybe border patrol.

Exactly so. In fact I mentioned that in the OP...

Well, now I just feel silly.

[Graham Kennedy]

What was the specific purpose of this ship when it was built? If I had to guess, I'd say maybe border patrol.

Exactly so. In fact I mentioned that in the OP...

Well, now I just feel silly.

Meh, I've done that sooooo many times.

[Graham Kennedy]

Lower saucer, now with torpedo tubes. The ship carries 48 torpedoes when fully stocked - which it usually isn't.

[mwhittington]

Wow, GK, they should at least make sure the escape pods are stocked and functional!

[Graham Kennedy]

The Cerberus alongside the USS Constitution. Such a meeting would be a very rare occurrence for the Cerberus crew, like some random private meeting General Patton.

[mwhittington]

So, from what I gather, the Cerberus is the red-headed stepchild of the fleet, unloved and repeatedly called on for menial work, am I right?

[Graham Kennedy]

So, from what I gather, the Cerberus is the red-headed stepchild of the fleet, unloved and repeatedly called on for menial work, am I right?

Exactly so.

The premise I had in mind was that it patrols a distant sector of the Federation. A lot of official maps posit a small lump of federation space kind of on the other side of Klingon/Romulan space, here :



I figure this to be kind of the "Alaska" of Federation space... a large area, somewhat undeveloped, a place where you are a hell of a lot closer to Qo'noS and Romulus than you are to Earth and Vulcan. Since it's a resource-poor region nobody regards it as all that important.

The Cerberus patrols the region around an old dilapidated Starbase. I was thinking to follow a new officer assigned to the ship. A female Andorian. Not sure why she would have been sent here... I don't see her as a screw up, more the kind of person who messed with the wrong person maybe. One thought I had was that she cheated on a test, kind of like Kirk did with the Kobayashi Maru... only in her case they just took it as cheating and sanctioned her heavily for it. But that's just one thought.

There would also need to be a maguffin... not sure what to go with for that, either. I initially figured maybe something important is found... Iconia is in that region, up towards the Romulan border part, so there could be Iconian artifacts around. But that's been done, and I kind of want to avoid high stakes. A lot of writing presumes that higher stakes equals the audience caring more about events, which is why half the movies ever made are about saving the world, but I don't think that's so. If you like or care about the characters, then having them fighting for something that's important to them is enough.

For the antagonist I had in mind a Klingon equivalent of the Cerberus... an old Bird of Prey, similarly crewed by the dishonoured, the people who failed to win battles, survived the loss of their ship, etc. I had a thought that maybe there was a personal issue going on, maybe the Cerberus crew humiliated the BoP Captain in some way, tricked him or something, causing even more dishonour. So he has a major grudge.

I hadn't really thought beyond that, though.

[Bryan Moore]

Love this. The small size and practical short- range, limited- use craft is vastly underutilized in the Trek universe.

[Graham Kennedy]

Love this. The small size and practical short- range, limited- use craft is vastly underutilized in the Trek universe.

In most sci fi universes, really. I love the "big ships are awesome!" mentality as much as anybody (my Coalition Kororra class battleships are over five kilometres long!), though I quibble with how big ships are depicted somewhat. But lately I've had considerable fascination for smaller ships. Not shuttles, actual fully functional warships... just small.

It actually got started when I watched one of my favourite WWII movies, The Cruel Sea. It's set aboard a Flower class Corvette. Two hundred feet long, less than a thousand tons, woefully inadequate for the task they were used for... the Cerberus is one of these, at least in spirit.