Wolf Class Starship - original/fan design

[admiral horton]

i really like this design i would add trying to add pulse phaser cannons to the design

[Jayru]

Originally Posted by admiral horton

i really like this design i would add trying to add pulse phaser cannons to the design

Why?

[XRaiderV1.7]

@admiral horton:
pulse phaser cannons, are you mad?
Jayru said this ship is an explorer, not an overgunned ship of war.........though, honestly, in times of war I could well see them being added, and then removed once the war is over.

@Jayru:
I think you have LOS clearance issues with the bussard ramscoops on them nacelles, a simple fix suggestion: add a slight curve to the pylons, that way, when the nacelles are extended for warp, they will be just low enough to have adequate LOS clearance.

by the way, will this ship be capable of planetary landings and take offs like voyager?

edit: fixed my own failure to pay attention. all is well(I hope)

[Jayru]

Originally Posted by XRaiderV1.7

...the lady said this ship is an explorer...

Lady?

Lady?

Sorry to burst any bubbles, but I'm a man - and have no plans to change that.
Possibly a gentlemen... depends on how polite I feel...
But lady, or of the female persuasion, I am not... (in fact I think I put a pic of myself up in my profile, if that means anything, or helps...)

...not an overgunned ship of war.........though, honestly, in times of war I could well see them being added, and then removed once the war is over...

Even in times of war, adding something like "pulse phasers" would put this ship in dock for far too long to be justifiable. You would be talking about rebuilding sections of the ship, and adding addtional power transfer conduits and the like. Plus you would need to reconfigure all the tactical systems to account for it, and add aditional flight systems as well, because you would changing the way in which the ship would handle tactical engagements - that may also require additional shielding, and armour for the hull. You would be turning a 318 meter long frigate into a front line assault vessel akin to the 170 meter (well, that's the "offical length") long Defiant.
From that POV, it would be simpler to actually just have them as a permanant fixture on the ship, and build them in from the start.
But my view on that is quite simple; it's over gunning the ship for no real reason. The Wolf Class is younger than the Intrepid, the Nova, the Defiant, the Prometheus - and even the Sovereign Class. It may well be that it benefited from the experiances and lessons learned from those ships, and so hence it's tactical systems are of a newer type and technology, and so therefore there would be no need to "over-gun" the ship and add "pulse phasers" or "rail-guns" or "mega-phasers" or "a quantum torpedo turret."

I think you have LOS clearance issues with the bussard ramscoops on them nacelles, a simple fix suggestion: add a slight curve to the pylons, that way, when the nacelles are extended for warp, they will be just low enough to have adequate LOS clearance.

It's the one flaw in the design that I can only get round by scrapping the design.
Annoying, but there you have it.
Droopy nacelles do not work, and require something of a major re-build of many parts (I have had a look at it). The lower part of both bussard collectors have LOS when the ship is at warp - so it's not a complete mess up on my part. Mind you, Voyager - and for that matter all Intrepid Class Starships have 0% LOS on there bussard collectors when at warp - so there must be some sort of way round this that doesn't require a major rebuild. Possibly it's what all the "wave guide" gubbings on Voyagers hull are for, to "guide" all the hydrogen atoms around the ships hull to the collectors.
The Ambassador Class survived many years with less then a 50% LOS on it's bussard collectors...
Guess it's a question of whether the ship is collecting hydrogen just from the front, or whether it's collecting hydrogen from the side... no reason why that couldn't happen... now that's lateral thinking... LOL. In all seriousness though, that idea might be worth exploring

by the way, will this ship be capable of planetary landings and take offs like voyager?

It will be able to land and take off (design permitting). Hopefully with a bit more style than Voyager...

[Jayru]

Re the earlier comment about the pulse phaser;



This ship is a 15 deck, 318 meter long, frigate - which will probubly crew around 130-150 people. It will probubly be as manouvrable as an Intrepid - possibly a bit better so (additional thrusters... and the impulse engines are better placed). The lower "hump" will contain the main navigational deflector, and the upper hump (becasue "plan a" sucked, so now going with "plan b" - that was a waste of a morning) will contain a secondary dish type array dedicated to science, and scanning (which of course in times of war suggest that this class of ship would make a good forward scout... if need be). A second set of "torpedo type" tubes will be placed in the upper "hump" (I hope) - for use as probe launchers mainly, and as a secondary torpedo system if need be.

(edit) In a one-on-one fight against an Intrepid, depending on the crew, it might win - or it might loose. I favour win, a; becasue it's my baby, and b; becasue it's newer technology. But I regognise that c; it would depend on the crew, and d; even if it won, it would come away badly damaged.

The Wolf Class was never meant to be, in any way shape or form, some sort of uber Defiant type ship. It's just too big to fly about like the Defiant did on screen. It has never, in my minds eye at least, been some sort of bad-mother of a fighten' ship that shouldn't ever be crossed or taken on. Hell, I wrote the story for the Horizon Club which saw this ship destroyed. I don't believe in "god ships," or ships that can do everything. I knew someone who fell in love () with the Promethues Class, and adopted it for his club, They added all sorts of cr@p to it, such as fighter bays, dedicated runabout bays, additional weapons and the like. And the thought hit me - the Prometheus is a fairly moderatly sized class of ship - but a lot of space must be taken up by all those docking and latch systems for the Multi-vector thingy. That, and each section has a bridge, engine room, impulse engines etc etc... and they were adding stuff to it, and all I could think was; where are people going to sleep on that ship?

Maybe that's why I take the attitude, and philiosphy I do - and why I am happy to leave room for things like crew quarters, recreation, science labs etc etc, and not put so many guns and weapons and gizmos on a ship that there's no room for people to actually live on it...

Of course, it is all make believe, so even I have to recognise that level of sadness in taking that tack...

There are pleanty of fan designed ships that are nothing more then flying guns, and a fair few of them are "Swiss Army Knives" (as in able to do eveything). I personally like fan designs that try and keep things "real" - well as real as possible when dealing with a fictional universe and the like.

Star Trek to me, has always been about the exploration - be it exploration of the "human condition" or just the universe around us. It's not combat, combat, combat all the time. The Wolf is meant to reflect the other thing that Starfleet does - seek out new life.

As to why it's called the "Wolf Class" - well, it was named after someone. One Chris Wolf, who translated all my designs and work, and who had the somewhat thankless task at the time of trying to turn 40 odd concept designs into something people could understand, becasue napkins are not good for designing ships on... no really they're not. So this "concept" was named after him, as a thank you... Nothing to do with how cool wolves actually are

I know some people are going to be dissapointed with the above, and are dissapointed with aspects of the design, and ideas behind the ship. It's not the best design out there, or even in many respects the most logical. It's something I created when I was younger, and thinner and 40 seemed to be very far away, LOL. Now I can create 3D Models it was something I had to finally be able to to see though, and I hope that those of you who "get" what I'm doing continue to enjoy it, and those that don't will see the charm in it when it's finished.

Hope that helps.



** Images from this post have been removed to save on web-space. See latest posts for images.

[Aresius]

Well, after all, Gene was striving to a philosophy of exploration.

Nice work though.

[XRaiderV1.7]

looks like I need to pay more attention when I'm reading posts................sorry for the confusion......................I think I got my wires crossed with a different site...................

[XRaiderV1.7]

I was thinking the pulse phasers could be modular, and easy to attach and easy to remove, but, she's your ship, and I respect your decision on that.

may I suggest some borg looking things be added? like on the delta flyer.

not real sure how to explain that suggestion more fully, my brain seems to have left the room for the night....................

[Jayru]

Originally Posted by Aresius

Well, after all, Gene was striving to a philosophy of exploration.

I think a lot of Trek fans loose sight of that, and now when they look at a ship it's only "cool" if it has multiply transphasic torpedo launchers, and a multi-vector attack mode, and deployable armour etc etc, and regardless of it's size - can fly around like the Defiant did, and blast everything to hell... Somewhere along the line they forgot that Trek isn't about going to war each week

Originally Posted by XRaiderV1.7

...sorry for the confusion...

No worries. It was a nice comidic moment

I was thinking the pulse phasers could be modular, and easy to attach and easy to remove, but, she's your ship, and I respect your decision on that.

may I suggest some borg looking things be added? like on the delta flyer.

There is always a way of doing something, and yes - there is a way to add "pulse phasers" to the ship, and not mess up the lines too much - and to even justify having them as well.

But (and in my case the "but" is still big, hence exercise bike time today);

When I look at how the Defiant behaved on screen, and flew about, and faught - one thing seems very clear. The FX people were treating the ship like an oversized "fighter-plane." The fixed possition pulse phasers caused a serious ammount of damage - when they hit there target (sometimes they missed). But they required the Defiant to be in front of it's target. That's when that ship was most effective.

What you have to ask yourself is; can you see a ship that's at least 3 times the mass behaving in the same way? (if it helps, try and picture Voyager with pulse phasers flying about the screen in the same way the Defiant did).

The (current) phaser armament on the Wolf is such that this ship covered from all sides, and pretty much all angles. It does not have to be directly in front of it's target to attack it. And, if I have done things right, then there are always - at least - two phaser arrays facing you no matter how you rotate the ship. Unlike the Ent-E when it launched, there are no phaser blind-spots It's ability to attack is not limited to one angle.

Torpedo coverage, well yes, those arcs are limted to fore and aft - but that's the same for most Trek ships.

I know what you are refering to, re the borg sensor thingys the Delta Flyer had. The original vessels in the "Wolf Class" were launched the year Voyager got home, so they would not have had any such items. HOWEVER, as this is a re-image of the ship in many respects, something like that could be added

Where, is another matter.

In terms of the whole modular bit; someone has pointed out that the "bays"/"humps" could be modular in design, and swaped out for different missions and the like. I'm not adverse to the idea to be honest, in spite of the "rolling-of-the-eyes" emoticon. It means changing the internal layout of the ship - and moving the warp core from where I was going to have it - but it's a possibilty I might explore.

Right, enough waffle (damn, now I'm thinking about waffles for brunch... but I have to remind myself that you don't loose weight eating waffles...). Am off to either work on those deflector bays, or play the new Sims2 Expansion...

[Aresius]

Originally Posted by Jayru

I think a lot of Trek fans loose sight of that, and now when they look at a ship it's only "cool" if it has multiply transphasic torpedo launchers, and a multi-vector attack mode, and deployable armour etc etc, and regardless of it's size - can fly around like the Defiant did, and blast everything to hell... Somewhere along the line they forgot that Trek isn't about going to war each week

Well, I second this. But I have to add, that even the combat vessels can do exploratory tasks. Otherwise these vessels would have no job in times of peace.
There are many ships that are designated exploratory cruisers, exploratory frigates, etc. But also many combat vessels as pure frigates, pure cruisers, etc.

At last about the "canon" combat vessels (Akira, Sovereign, Prometheus), you can see that the primary task of Starfleet is still exploration. Although its iportance decreased due to the wars with the Cardassians, the Dominion and the Borg. But nonetheless it exists.