Federation Class Dreadnought

[Graham Kennedy]

So, previously this was our Federation class Dreadnought size comparison picture. I knocked it up myself in Photoshop, some years ago.



Here's the new one. I knocked it up in Blender. Took approximately three days to do.



Just a slight improvement.





I went very much with the Franz Joseph design, but I did tweak a few things.

1) Joseph's diagram shows hull lines on the primary hull in places where they would be in the middle of decks, going through windows. I tweaked them slightly so that the horizontal hull lines lie level with the decks.

2) The biggest change; Joseph has a grille type affair on his nacelles. On the Enterprise they face inwards, so they're facing one another. On the Saladin, he rotated it so they face downwards. On the Federation, however, he put the girlls on the lower nacelles facing inwards as before, then put the one on the upper nacelle facing to port. This makes the nacelle look horribly unsymmetrical. You can't rotate it downwards like on the Saladin, because then it's in the way of the pylon. So I rotated it so it points upwards.

3) As before, the phaser banks on the Joseph drawings are essentially dimensionless points. So I used the same TMP-inspired ball turret design as I used for the Saladin/Hermes/Ptolemy designs. I did try designing a scaled up version, figuring that the Dreadnought had larger, more powerful phaser banks. But honestly they looked a little overwhelming.

4) More windows. Just because... more windows.

I've been very tempted to fiddle with the weapons fit of the Joseph ships. The way he did it, it's...

Hermes class Scout : 1 phaser bank (2 emitters)

Saladin class Destroyer : 3 phaser bank (6 emitters), 2 Photon torpedo tubes

Ptolemy class tug : 2 phaser banks (4 emitters)

Constitution class Cruiser : 3 phaser bank (10 emitters), 2 Photon torpedo tubes

Federation class Dreadnought : 5 phaser bank (10 emitters), 2 Photon torpedo tubes

So... the Saladin class Destroyer has the same firepower as a cruiser. The Ptolemy class Tug outguns the Hermes class Scout. And the Federation class Dreadnought has only 5 banks to the Constitution's 3, which doesn't seem much of a step up to me. Personally I'd have escalated the Constitution numbers a little and the Federation numbers more so. Still, for the sake of these designs I have gone with what the creator drew.

You could correct for this by saying that not all phaser banks or photon tubes are equal - the Saladin phasers are Type V, Constitution Type VI, Federation Type VII? Something like that. But like I said, the bigger phaser balls looked way oversized on the Federation. So I may fiddle with this and refine it over coming days.

[Mikey]

Nicely done, and thanks for limiting the changes to subtle, common-sense things. Onwe thing I've wondered about this class, which really has nothing to do with your rendering, is what's up with the second aft-facing deflector dish (which aside from not being useful enough to include on any other ship ever, eliminates a shuttlebay?)

[Captain Seafort]

Nicely done, and thanks for limiting the changes to subtle, common-sense things. Onwe thing I've wondered about this class, which really has nothing to do with your rendering, is what's up with the second aft-facing deflector dish (which aside from not being useful enough to include on any other ship ever, eliminates a shuttlebay?)

It isn't a deflector dish - it's the main sensor array. It also doesn't remove the shuttlebay - that's been moved to the forward engineering hull above the deflector.

[Graham Kennedy]

I always found it a little confusing as to whether the big front dish was a deflector, or a sensor. They seem to refer to it as being both, so I guess it's multi-function.

As for the Federation, I generally like the overall look of it, but I do have a few niggles. Having a sensor on the back is one thing - you'd think a science-biased design like the Constitution would have more use for that than a warship type, but I guess you could say that warships need to detect an enemy at a distance so it could be useful for that.

But not only does it have a dish on the back, it has THREE on the front! The main one, flanked by two more. That's a holy hell of a lot of scanning power! I think I'd have preferred to stick with one, or at most one front and back.

Also, the relocation of the hangar is a cool idea, but it puts the open hangar space right under the connecting neck - there is literally no space above the hangar in the Engineering hull. So, how do turbolifts get from the engineering hull into the neck?

The only answer I can think of is that the hangar doesn't extend all the way back to the aft edge of the neck. Which limits the length of the hangar to no more than 12-15 metres from the rear of the clamshell doors to the back wall. It seems like an ill-thought-out design to me.

Also, if the ship is in impulse flight it's fairly easy to sneak up from behind in a shuttle and have a nice low closing speed to dock. Whereas doing that from the front would require docking with a very high closing speed, or alternately matching speeds and then very, very carefully decelerating. Dockings would certainly be exciting!

[Graham Kennedy]

Huh. As I said earlier, I had fooled around with using significantly larger/more powerful phaser banks on the Federation class, and then decided to drop that idea at least for the moment. (The FJ manual simply states that each ship has phaser banks, without any clue as to whether each is the same or different to the others).

However, it appears that I've accidentally used the larger phaser bank after all! I had thought those phasers looked rather large, considering the saucer on the Federation class is so big.

So, decision time. To re-render all these with equal sized phaser banks, or to just run with different sized banks?

[McAvoy]

I would go slightly smaller. The size of them looks odd.

[McAvoy]

I always found it a little confusing as to whether the big front dish was a deflector, or a sensor. They seem to refer to it as being both, so I guess it's multi-function.

As for the Federation, I generally like the overall look of it, but I do have a few niggles. Having a sensor on the back is one thing - you'd think a science-biased design like the Constitution would have more use for that than a warship type, but I guess you could say that warships need to detect an enemy at a distance so it could be useful for that.

But not only does it have a dish on the back, it has THREE on the front! The main one, flanked by two more. That's a holy hell of a lot of scanning power! I think I'd have preferred to stick with one, or at most one front and back.

Also, the relocation of the hangar is a cool idea, but it puts the open hangar space right under the connecting neck - there is literally no space above the hangar in the Engineering hull. So, how do turbolifts get from the engineering hull into the neck?

The only answer I can think of is that the hangar doesn't extend all the way back to the aft edge of the neck. Which limits the length of the hangar to no more than 12-15 metres from the rear of the clamshell doors to the back wall. It seems like an ill-thought-out design to me.

Also, if the ship is in impulse flight it's fairly easy to sneak up from behind in a shuttle and have a nice low closing speed to dock. Whereas doing that from the front would require docking with a very high closing speed, or alternately matching speeds and then very, very carefully decelerating. Dockings would certainly be exciting!

Which is why alot of fan made designs for the Federation is more conventional. I think there is one someone did that put a huge phaser cannon instead of the dish and had two smaller ones underneath.

[Mikey]

The whole concept of multiple dishes is ridiculous. To have a dish for a main sensor array is stupid, since other contemporary classes obviously have main sensor arrays but no such second dishes. Forcing the shuttle bay to the fore end of the engineering hull is also stupid, for reasons that GK enumerated above. Finally, the little adjunct dishes? If they were truly useful, they'd appear on other classes.