Miranda Classes???

[Captain Seafort]

As for the Majestic-type Dominion War Mirandas...there are some differences between them and the older Reliant models...and anyway, the ship just looks so much better with the rollbar than without.

What sort of differences.

DS9 Miranda (top)

DS9 Miranda (belly)

Reliant (top)

Reliant (belly)

I can't see any differences between the two, other than the phaser effects.

And you're right - it does look a lot better with the roll bar.

[robjkay]

As for the Majestic-type Dominion War Mirandas...there are some differences between them and the older Reliant models...and anyway, the ship just looks so much better with the rollbar than without.

What sort of differences.

[url=http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... pos=-16757]DS9 Miranda (top)

DS9 Miranda (belly)

Reliant (top)

Reliant (belly)

I can't see any differences between the two, other than the phaser effects.

And you're right - it does look a lot better with the roll bar.

The Majestic type Miranda nacells glow the Reliants does not, also the the phasers when fired are a solid stream. The Relaint had some sort of pulse phasers. Also the Majestic has an extra pair of impulse engines added where the rear torpedoes tubes were at. Guess the tubes were removed to where I guess there is no defenses to protect the rear of the ship.

Extra Impluse engines
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 43&pos=436

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 58&pos=350

Glowing Nacells
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 73&pos=194

No Glowing Nacells
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:USSBrattain.jpg

Phaser stream
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=128
[/url]

[Captain Seafort]

Thanks for those shots. Still, the DS9 Mirandas are a lot closer to the Reliant than, say, the Saratoga. Looks like they upgraded the phasers and nacelles, and shoehorned in impulse engines in place of the aft torpedo launchers, as you say. Probably to help them keep with the more modern ships.

[robjkay]

Thanks for those shots. Still, the DS9 Mirandas are a lot closer to the Reliant than, say, the Saratoga. Looks like they upgraded the phasers and nacelles, and shoehorned in impulse engines in place of the aft torpedo launchers, as you say. Probably to help them keep with the more modern ships.

True, but I would think after Worf 359 that eventually it would have been easier to just build newer state-of-the-art ships like the Defiant, Norway, Saber or Streamrunner Classes then but alot of your resources into a ship that was at its end of its life cycle.

Don't get me wrong I am sure the ship still had its uses (supply ships, scientific duties, transport and so on) but it would seem the ship was no longer a ship of the line anymore. It was not the type of ship you would see at any of the borders being it could not properly defend itself, the ship had very little military value in my opinion.

[Captain Seafort]

As I mentioned with the analogy to the Town class destroyers, while the Mirandas would get ripped apart in a fleet action, as they were during the war, they would be marginally useful - if only to give the enemy more targets. The two destroyed while escorting the Defiant bought enough time for Sisko to break through just by being there, and I can imagine them being used as convoy escorts to allow more powerful ships to be used on the front lines.

[robjkay]

Yeah but your analogy of those destroyers really does not fit, being they were not apart of the then modern navy at that time (WW2) nor were they almost a 100 year old ship. Also they did not have to participate in huge battles.

It would be like saying the Wickes & Clemens Class a 4-stacker destroyers which were built between 1917-1921 were still serving in the US Navy today. Even if they were modernized or upgraded I could not see the US Navy relying on them as a huge part of the navy. Hell we would have been apart of every joke the Soviets made.

[Captain Seafort]

The discrepancy isn't that big, due to the technological near-stasis of Trek, but they're certainly not top-of-the-line warships. If you were launching a do-or-die attack that the continuation of the war relied on, you'd send every ship you could scrape together to launch the attack. That's what Starfleet was doing.

[robjkay]

The discrepancy isn't that big, due to the technological near-stasis of Trek, but they're certainly not top-of-the-line warships. If you were launching a do-or-die attack that the continuation of the war relied on, you'd send every ship you could scrape together to launch the attack. That's what Starfleet was doing.

I understand that, but thats not the issue. What seems odd is for SF to kept operating a ship that was so old which was technology inferior compared to anything else SF had the same could be said if compared to the other races. Its not like all these ships were all in some shipyard mothballed waiting to be used, a majority of them were already in service in SF.

Here you have SF putting into service the Constellation, Ambassador, Cheyenne, Centaur, New Orleans, Niagara, Nebula, Galaxy to name a few but the list goes on. All of which technically superior, even the Excellsior and the Constitution (refit) were better then the Miranda. To me it does not make any sense to me to keep a ship around for such a long period of time that has little value in the over-all mission/requirments of SF operations.

I mean I understand why the Miranda was shown so many times due to bugeting, to where I guess they could not produce other ships to be shown in the episodes and all.

But its just unrealistic a ship could around that long. Again just think of those WW1 destroyers still being in service now in 2007. Even with upgrades and all they would still be of little use compared to a Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Also think of the nightmare trying to maintain these ship, it would be a nightmare just keeping them running. and do not forget the cost!

[Captain Seafort]

We were never told where all those ships came from - it may be that they were mothballed and then brought back into service. You're also assigning 20th century standards of technological advancement to a standard that hasn't changed much for centuries. As La Forge pointed out in Relics, the warp drive, shields, impulse engines and transporters of the Jenolan were virtually identical in operation to those of the E-D. It's less a case of comparing 4-stackers to Arleigh Burkes than it is Country class destroyers to Ticonderogas. The Mirandas may be outdated, but they're far from useless.

[robjkay]

We were never told where all those ships came from - it may be that they were mothballed and then brought back into service. You're also assigning 20th century standards of technological advancement to a standard that hasn't changed much for centuries. As La Forge pointed out in Relics, the warp drive, shields, impulse engines and transporters of the Jenolan were virtually identical in operation to those of the E-D. It's less a case of comparing 4-stackers to Arleigh Burkes than it is Country class destroyers to Ticonderogas. The Mirandas may be outdated, but they're far from useless.

Well we do there were still Miranda's and Excellsiors in service simple because we seen them various time in TNG and in DS9 before the Dominion war.

As far as technology there is not much of a difference between a ship from ww1 and from today compaired to a Miranda from ST: The Motion Picture to before the Dominion War. Both modern vessels are technicaly more advanced but the concept of a regular blue water vessel from ww1 is the same as today and the same would be true within ST. But there are limits to how long a ship can last where it does not make any sense keeping around.

[Mikey]

Seafort's idea makes a lot of sense. And as afar as why the Miranda frame seems to have so outlasted the Connie refit, remember also that the Miranda is a much more compact design, especially longitudinally - which means far less stresses experienced over a given time frame. And assuming that these frames were periodically revisited - hence the Soyuz-class, etc., I see no reason why they wouldn't have been around as reserve units, even to DS9 times.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

You know, although materials and exact designs have changed Navy ships have had the same basic hull design for the past 500+ years. Heck, the USS Constitution is about 200 years old and still floats. It's hardly state of the art but it is still capable of sailing and can still function exactly like it did in it's time. Now it would be pushing it to add an advanced weapon system to it, but it's possible. ("Oh look a harmless 200 year old ship. OMG! It just shot a missle at us!" Best sneak attack ever!)

Given how slowly Star Trek technology has been evolving it's quite possible to refit a hundred year old ship. Heck, a lot of navy ships could be seaworthy after a hundred years, if the Navy felt it was worth it. And even if an actual hull isn't workable, the design could still work. The basics of a hull haven't changed much. Many designs are still used, mostly for recreation but the point still stands.

[Captain Seafort]

Your point is shown even better if you take a different time period. Compare Drake's Revenge from the Armada and Nelson's Victory from Trafalgar, and they're virtually identical. Victory is a lot bigger, but the hull shape is the same, the principles of the propulsion system are identical, as are the weapons. The only differences are of scale and detail, just as the differences between the E-nil and the E-E.

[Captain Peabody]

Yeah; It's always annoyed me when people point to a tank from like the 1920's and another from today to show how 'technologically stagnant' Trek is...the truth is, this century has been something of a technological boom. As Seafort, said, if you compare technology from other time periods (how much did ship design changed from the year 1000 to the 1400's?), it really isn't that different.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

excellent points. It won't be long now before this latest revelution in technology is over. In the next 20 or 30 years I think(about the time data storage reaches the atomic level) We just have a lot of new tech and we're working out the ideal way to use it right now. Like how we figured out round wheels worked best, or how v-hulls work so well.