Eaglemoss Star Trek Starship, BSG & other starships Collection

[Sanity is Optional]

I always got the impression (in TNG/DS9/Voyager) that the Federation was portrayed as having better weapons technology, but less of a focus on battle when it came to startship design.

Which leads to better weapons and shields on less effective platforms, especially the ships that are older and not using the state-of-the-art technology.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Knight26 said:

For a peacetime mission, sure but I would hate to take one into battle.  As was shown many times, they are glass cannons.

2 hours ago, Mommar said:

Was that shown many times?

That was kind of a "depending on the writer" thing.

Star Trek: the Next Generation was the worst offender, frequently depicting Starfleet (and other) ships as so fragile that a single hit from a phaser array, disruptor, or torpedo was enough to destroy them utterly.  The Enterprise-D itself was a victim of several of the more egregious examples, seemingly exploding at the drop of a hat from damage that barely slowed previous Starfleet ships.  The USS Reliant, for instance, was barely slowed by the loss of a warp nacelle where the Enterprise-D was totally destroyed by the loss of one in a collision with the USS Bozeman.

As the effects technology improved along with the growth of the effects budget, Starfleet (and other) ships got a LOT more robust.  USS Voyager in "Year of Hell" was probably the best example, completely riddled stem to stern with battle damage and still not just flyable but combatworthy.

Nondestructive external battle damage was hard to model when ships were still being shot using physical models.  It was easier and cheaper to just have a ship explode than it was to build a model and do a dedicated effects shot for battle damage the way they had to do in "Best of Both Worlds" for the Borg cutting a chunk out of the saucer section.  CG changed the change there, so depicting severe battle damage became a lot easier.

 

 

1 hour ago, Mazinger said:

It does bring to mind the observation I heard or read once about the series not really being intellectually honest about the mission of the Federation.

In essence they are portrayed as space wandering diplomat/scientists, but yet the ships themselves have ever stronger shields and weaponry, which every few episodes they have to bust out.

You could argue the opposite as well, that the incredible defensive and offensive capabilities of Starfleet ships - which are built as vessels of exploration but which can easily go toe-to-toe with purpose-built warships - is proof in concrete form of the Federation's underlying principle that peaceful coexistence yields far greater benefits than belligerence.  Instead of being built with technology from a single species, Starfleet ships are built with the very best provided by all the Federation's members.  They can explore the galaxy and bring the Federation's message of peace and goodwill while still having the means to defend themselves should their message fall on deaf ears.

(In short, they're mighty because their message is right... whereas the Romulan, Klingon, and Borg attitude is that they're right because they are mighty.)

 

 

1 hour ago, Mommar said:

They were the only ships that were effective against Borg Cubes until specialized ships like the Defiant and the Sovereign/Streamrunner/etc were developed.  They could punch holes in Cardassian Galor vessels like they were paper.

IIRC, the showrunners had expressed a view that the success rate against the Borg was more a matter of tactics.

Starfleet met the Borg at Wolf 359 arrayed in orderly lines of battle and fought in formation.  Armed with Picard's knowledge, the Borg knew exactly where the weaknesses of those formations and ships were and took them to pieces easily.  Presenting the Borg with an orderly array of targets just made their methodical approach to battle that much easier.  The Enterprise-D's later success in confusing the Borg enough to rescue Picard was built on defiance of convention and insane troll logic, helped by the fact that the Borg didn't consider one ship to be a threat.  Starfleet's later, better result against the Borg were a product of adopting a chaotic, highly disordered battle strategy to make it harder for the Borg to predict their actions (as in First Contact).

The comparison to the Galor-class is probably unfair, since the Galor-class was more or less Cardassia's line warship... analogous to what the Excelsior and Miranda-classes were in the Dominion War.  It's not surprising at all that the Federation's state of the art flagship class outclassed them.  They were a challenge for Picard's USS Stargazer, but not so much the Enterprise-D or another of the Federation's flagship-level classes.

 

 

58 minutes ago, Sanity is Optional said:

I always got the impression (in TNG/DS9/Voyager) that the Federation was portrayed as having better weapons technology, but less of a focus on battle when it came to startship design.

Which leads to better weapons and shields on less effective platforms, especially the ships that are older and not using the state-of-the-art technology.

That much is pretty much explicitly stated on a number of occasions in multiple shows.  The USS Defiant aside, Starfleet ships are built for maximum multirole performance as vessels of exploration and scientific endeavor.  It became a bit of a recurring thing for Janeway and other Voyager crew members to have to explain to the aliens of the week that Voyager wasn't a warship despite her amazingly overpowered weapons technology by the standards of the region.

I think a part of it is that, after the Khitomer Accords ended the Klingon Cold War, Starfleet stopped focusing so much on combat performance since its ships were no longer heavily pulling duty as border patrol along the Klingon border.  The Enterprise-A and the Excelsior had plenty of phaser banks and well upwards of a hundred photon torpedoes apiece.  USS Voyager had plenty of phasers, but her torpedo magazine?  40.  (Not that that stopped Janeway from firing over 125 of them during the series after indicating there was no way to replace them.)  Once the Dominion War was underway, we saw even older ships like the Excelsior-class USS Lakota being upgraded with Starfleet's latest weapons technology including quantum torpedoes and new combat-ready ships coming out of the yards by the dozen (thanks to reused art assets from the recent films).

 

(The novelverse, in cooperation with the old showrunners, explicitly established that Starfleet ships adopted the shape they did with the saucer section, the separate engineering hull, and the outboard warp nacelles, because that design produced the best multi-role performance in the warp drive.  It made the warp drive more vulnerable in combat, but it made up for it by providing a more efficient warp field that allowed ships to use less energy to achieve the same warp factors, to achieve higher warp factors more readily, and more readily change warp field geometries on the fly to change course while at warp.  Vulcan ships from Enterprise are described as being very fast and efficient in a straight line thanks to their coleopteric warp coil, but have very poor versatility and turning performance.  Klingon ships with their centerline nacelles were described as more durable but far less efficient.)

[JB0]

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

USS Voyager had plenty of phasers, but her torpedo magazine?  40.  (Not that that stopped Janeway from firing over 125 of them during the series after indicating there was no way to replace them.)  

I know in several of the old books, they made an explicit point of figuring out some way to get parts to build replacements in the end of any book they fired a torpedo in.

It was almost like the book authors at the tim  cared more about the show's premise than the showrunners...

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, JB0 said:

It was almost like the book authors at the tim  cared more about the show's premise than the showrunners...

To be entirely fair, the show the showrunners shot wasn't the show the showrunners had intended to make... they were victims of the network's insistence on Voyager being TNG 2.0.

[Chronocidal]

With replicator technology involved, I always thought it was silly to say they couldn't make more in the first place.  Maybe some of the core materials and explosive components were too complex for a replicator, but I'd be astounded if they couldn't find something else reasonably destructive to fill a torpedo casing with.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Seto Kaiba]

26 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

With replicator technology involved, I always thought it was silly to say they couldn't make more in the first place.  Maybe some of the core materials and explosive components were too complex for a replicator, but I'd be astounded if they couldn't find something else reasonably destructive to fill a torpedo casing with.

Replicators were the part of Gene Roddenberry's vision for Star Trek: the Next Generation that Ron Moore and Ira Behr were least happy with.  As Ron Moore put it:

Quote

Replicators are the worst thing ever. Destroys storytelling all the time. They mean there's no value to anything. Nothing has value in the universe if you can just replicate everything, so all that goes away. Nothing is unique; if you break something, you can just make another one.

So, once Gene was out of full control over Star Trek the idea was gradually introduced that replicators were imperfect devices that were very limited in what they could produce.  There were all kinds of materials that couldn't be replicated (including a number of essential materials for starship manufacture and maintenance), some objects/devices were too complex to replicate in one piece and had to be replicated one piece/assembly at a time and assembled by hand, and that as a result of the complexity issue and nutrition-focused programming the DS9 and VOY writers favorite hobby horse: that replicated food was often easily distinguishable from the genuine article... occasionally to the extent of being unpalatable.

There was probably some material in the photon torpedoes that USS Voyager was issued that couldn't be replicated... besides the antimatter in the warhead, which Voyager wouldn't have been able to replicate but which they would've had plenty of anyway.

[Mazinger]

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

With replicator technology involved, I always thought it was silly to say they couldn't make more in the first place.  Maybe some of the core materials and explosive components were too complex for a replicator, but I'd be astounded if they couldn't find something else reasonably destructive to fill a torpedo casing with.

Using the replicators also used energy which contributed to the dilution of the total energy available from the dilithium crystals (or other "battery") which helps kickstart the anti-matter reactions.

It's not a 100% free energy system.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 minutes ago, Mazinger said:

Using the replicators also used energy which contributed to the dilution of the total energy available from the dilithium crystals (or other "battery") which helps kickstart the anti-matter reactions.

Dilithium crystals don't generate or store energy, they're porous to light element matter and antimatter at extremely high temperatures and pressures so they're used to moderate the matter-antimatter pair annihilation reaction.  The matter and antimatter streams meet inside the dilithium crystal, and the resulting high-energy plasma is used to transfer that energy where it's needed.

 

15 minutes ago, Mazinger said:

It's not a 100% free energy system.

Star Trek: Voyager's writers made it out to be pretty energy-intensive, which is why Captain Janeway instituted rationing of replicator usage early on and the show maintained it through its conclusion.  Not a huge issue for a Starfleet ship operating within easy distance of a deuterium and antideuterium refueling complex, but for a ship 75,000ly from home with no easy way to refuel its all-important reserves of antideuterium, conserving energy would've been important.

(The writers proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot by having Voyager's holodecks running more or less constantly, even though replicators are a big part of what makes holodecks work.  The excuse that the holodeck's power system wasn't compatible with the rest of the ship made no sense at all.  This was made slightly worse by an apparent misconception on a number of different writers part that deuterium was rare.  Yeah, it only makes up 0.02% of hydrogen in Earth's oceans, but that's still an awful lot and it's pretty easy to convert regular hydrogen to deuterium with the right equipment... which is the entire point of bussard collectors.)

[Chronocidal]

I mean, if they had been able to just use the replicators, they wouldn't have needed a cook... take that however you like. 

If the writers had been on top of their game, anything a replicator couldn't make should have also been incompatible with the transporters, since I was under the impression they were essentially the same technology.   Then again, the transporters were proven multiple times to be sophisticated enough to replicate (and even de-age) a living human being...  

The amount of phlebotinology applied to the transporters across the span of Trek canon is truly mind-boggling if you start to connect all the dots, and imagine what they were truly capable of.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

I mean, if they had been able to just use the replicators, they wouldn't have needed a cook... take that however you like. 

Voyager's crew must suffer... that's why Neelix is the cook.

Who else could bring an entire starship to a screeching halt with nothing more than a nice sharp cheese?

 

2 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

If the writers had been on top of their game, anything a replicator couldn't make should have also been incompatible with the transporters, since I was under the impression they were essentially the same technology.   Then again, the transporters were proven multiple times to be sophisticated enough to replicate a living human being...  

Oh, they are... it's a memory/resolution issue.  Transporters deconstruct and reconstruct a person down to the quantum level, which consumes an ENORMOUS amount of memory.  The physical patterns of a handful of people were sufficient to consume all available computer core memory on Deep Space Nine's main computer and supporting systems.  The rest of the pattern had to be dumped into the capacious standalone buffers of Quark's holosuite arcade, requiring a third set of extremely powerful computers to recomposite their patterns and rematerialize them.

Because replicators have to store hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of patterns they only store that pattern data down to the molecular level and they engage in a bit of cheating when it comes to things like texture and consistency of complex structures.  That's why (according to Eddington anyway) replicated food is a always a bit off... the shortcuts which the replicators employ the provide a nutritionally complete entree that closely resembles the desired meal mean that what you get will be slightly off in terms of texture, flavor, etc.  That lower resolution is also why they can't replicate living tissue except using special experimental replicators with much higher resolution (the genetronic replicator that they used to put together a new spine for Worf).

[Kanedas Bike]

Wait, are we talking about toys still? 

I get it, we're SUPER passionate about Star Trek and the current state of affairs, but can it at least be kept to the Discovery thread if the discussion isn't about Eaglemoss and/or other Star Trek toys/ships/models? 

-b.

[JB0]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Star Trek: Voyager's writers made it out to be pretty energy-intensive, which is why Captain Janeway instituted rationing of replicator usage early on and the show maintained it through its conclusion. 

Obviously they had to ration food replication because most of their surplus energy budget went into replicating shuttles.

 

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

DS9 and VOY writers favorite hobby horse: that replicated food was often easily distinguishable from the genuine article... occasionally to the extent of being unpalatable.

Honestly, I've always attributed that to psychology. People know the source isn't identical, and convince themselves they can taste the difference. They never perform blind A/B taste tests, because "I know what I tasted."

 

Sisko's dad is exceptionally biased as a professional chef. If replicators are just fine, then he's wasting his life. Therefore, they're obviously horribly flawed and pour out inedible slop.

[DewPoint]

For me, if you can transport people without any side effects, there is very little you cannot do.  Why can you not transport up a dead crewman, rebuild then in the buffer from the image made when they transported down and essentially bring them back to life.  There should be nothing you cannot reproduce provided it can fit in a transporter.

[JB0]

4 minutes ago, DewPoint said:

For me, if you can transport people without any side effects, there is very little you cannot do.  Why can you not transport up a dead crewman, rebuild then in the buffer from the image made when they transported down and essentially bring them back to life.  There should be nothing you cannot reproduce provided it can fit in a transporter.

Especially given some of the transporter malfunctions they've had. Picard got turned into a child, Riker got cloned, Kirk got split into a nice guy and an a-hole, Tuvok and Neelix got combined(and then they tore the new entity apart and murdered him instead of splitting a clone)... and that's just off the top of my head.

[Kanedas Bike]

https://shop.eaglemoss.com/usa/star-trek-starships

-b.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/16/2019 at 11:41 AM, tekering said:

Respect, Sandman.  

I'll just have to make do with my Aoshima.

6 hours ago, Kanedas Bike said:

Wait, are we talking about toys still? 

I get it, we're SUPER passionate about Star Trek and the current state of affairs, but can it at least be kept to the Discovery thread if the discussion isn't about Eaglemoss and/or other Star Trek toys/ships/models? 

-b.

We did get onto a rather odd tangent there because of the surface detailing on the Aoshima Enterprise-D, didn't we?

For what it's forth, this kind of attention to detail both on the part of the original designers and the model/toy manufacturer is one of the main factors in whether or not I'll open my wallet for a particular model/toy.  I mean, look at that Aoshima Tekering posted.  With that level of detail, it looks practically as good as the original shooting model... and that thing was almost the size of a small sedan.

(Looking at my Diamond Select Enterprise-A and Enterprise-B, it feels like a weird omission to be missing some of that realistic surface detail.)

[Kanedas Bike]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

We did get onto a rather odd tangent there because of the surface detailing on the Aoshima Enterprise-D, didn't we?

For what it's forth, this kind of attention to detail both on the part of the original designers and the model/toy manufacturer is one of the main factors in whether or not I'll open my wallet for a particular model/toy.  I mean, look at that Aoshima Tekering posted.  With that level of detail, it looks practically as good as the original shooting model... and that thing was almost the size of a small sedan.

(Looking at my Diamond Select Enterprise-A and Enterprise-B, it feels like a weird omission to be missing some of that realistic surface detail.)

The Aoshima Enterprise D is by all accounts very nice, I wish that (1) they'd reissue it and (2) that they'd make an Enterprise E.

-b.

[Lolicon]

The Aoshima Enterprise is a fantastic piece that I didn't even know about until I stumbled across it at a shop in Akihabara. Amongst all the Gundam and other anime merchandise, there was a box with the Enterprise-D and Patrick Stewart's face on it, which really stood out. 

It was 20k yen back then (about $240 given the crappy exchange rate at the time),

It's too bad Aoshima hasn't put their efforts into more starships. I guess the D didn't sell as well as they had hoped.

[mechaninac]

^You pretty much addressed the last sentence of your last paragraph with the first sentence of your first paragraph.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Kanedas Bike said:

The Aoshima Enterprise D is by all accounts very nice, I wish that (1) they'd reissue it and (2) that they'd make an Enterprise E.

I'll second that.

 

8 hours ago, Lolicon said:

The Aoshima Enterprise is a fantastic piece that I didn't even know about until I stumbled across it at a shop in Akihabara. Amongst all the Gundam and other anime merchandise, there was a box with the Enterprise-D and Patrick Stewart's face on it, which really stood out. 

It was 20k yen back then (about $240 given the crappy exchange rate at the time),

I'm guessing that was a Japan exclusive?  If I'd seen an Enterprise-D kit of THAT level of quality, I'd probably have snapped it up if it was sold in the US.

 

8 hours ago, Lolicon said:

It's too bad Aoshima hasn't put their efforts into more starships. I guess the D didn't sell as well as they had hoped.

I'm struggling not to make a "wants the D" joke here.  I really am.

[Mommar]

22 hours ago, JB0 said:

Sisko's dad is exceptionally biased as a professional chef. If replicators are just fine, then he's wasting his life. Therefore, they're obviously horribly flawed and pour out inedible slop.

Fast food and tv dinners are just fine too, even good sometimes.  But if can visit a man who can make me exceptional Creole I’m leaving the Zataraine’s in the pantry. 

[JB0]

9 hours ago, Mommar said:

Fast food and tv dinners are just fine too, even good sometimes.  But if can visit a man who can make me exceptional Creole I’m leaving the Zataraine’s in the pantry. 

What if you have a box in the wall that makes exceptional creole at the press of a button?

 

Spoilers: chefs are gonna swear it tastes terrible, even if it is identical to their own work. And they will genuinely believe it, too.

Which was kinda my point. Whether the replicators make good food or not is irrelevant, because psychology.

[David Hingtgen]

Exactly--replicators can likely do it 98-99% as well, but people willingly pay out the nose for the "real stuff" to get that almost-imperceptible slight increase in quality.  Vs most people who'd be happy to have "98% as good as a top chef's work, in 2 secs and cheap".   

Though, with Voyager and their "replicator ration credits" perhaps replicator tech is energy-intensive (expensive) and it's actually far more efficient (though slower) to cook things traditionally?  I mean, we do tend to only ever see "flag/bridge officers" in the shows, who may be granted extra rations/energy credits to splurge on replicator food all the time.  Perhaps "the masses" on planets, and lower-ranking crew members, can't have "their fave foods, perfectly replicated all the time"?  And so seek out good cooks or have to settle for mess-halls? (Ten-Forward doesn't seem like it could handle feeding a Galaxy-class crew). 

[derex3592]

I always wondered if there was a massive "Dining Room" on Ent D somewhere that we never go to see in the show, or did people just return to their quarters for all meals and go to Ten Forward for fake alcohol/chocolate sundays and the occasional bar fight?

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, David Hingtgen said:

Exactly--replicators can likely do it 98-99% as well, but people willingly pay out the nose for the "real stuff" to get that almost-imperceptible slight increase in quality.  Vs most people who'd be happy to have "98% as good as a top chef's work, in 2 secs and cheap".   

I dunno, there are characters who aren't food snobs (e.g. Eddington, Paris, Janeway) who insist that replicators often do a pretty poor job with even simple dishes like tomato soup or pot roast.  (Janeway and replicated pot roast becomes something of a running joke in Voyager, with it being suggested as a way to fend off the Kobali.)

 

46 minutes ago, derex3592 said:

I always wondered if there was a massive "Dining Room" on Ent D somewhere that we never go to see in the show, or did people just return to their quarters for all meals and go to Ten Forward for fake alcohol/chocolate sundays and the occasional bar fight?

Very likely.  Most of the other Starfleet ships we see in the same time period usually have a mess hall, and on occasion we've seen an additional senior officer's mess and/or a captain's mess.  (Voyager's captain's mess became Neelix's kitchen.)

[Kanedas Bike]

Have you folks figured how many bathrooms there are per Starship? 

You know, because with eating comes...

-b.

[David Hingtgen]

Well, we know all the crews' quarters have them, but that's very inconvenient and a big time-waste if you work on deck 42 stbd of the Ent-D, and your quarters are like deck 4 port.  So there must be "public" ones scattered throughout.   Or maybe replicated food "breaks down almost perfectly with little waste".  

[Kanedas Bike]

2 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Well, we know all the crews' quarters have them, but that's very inconvenient and a big time-waste if you work on deck 42 stbd of the Ent-D, and your quarters are like deck 4 port.  So there must be "public" ones scattered throughout.   Or maybe replicated food "breaks down almost perfectly with little waste".  

-b.

[JB0]

26 minutes ago, Kanedas Bike said:

Have you folks figured how many bathrooms there are per Starship? 

You know, because with eating comes...

-b.

If you need to go bad enough, any room is a bathroom.

Especially airlocks.

[anime52k8]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

If you need to go bad enough, any room is a bathroom.

Especially airlocks.

just poop on the floor then vaporize it with a phaser.

[JB0]

3 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

just poop on the floor then vaporize it with a phaser.

Use the transporters to plop it into the nearest star.

[DewPoint]

I would think that it would be disassembled by the transporters or replicators and stored as raw materials for whatever is replicated next.  Last night's dinner can be today's lunch, your new pillow, or the replacement hull plate. 

[JB0]

1 hour ago, DewPoint said:

I would think that it would be disassembled by the transporters or replicators and stored as raw materials for whatever is replicated next.  Last night's dinner can be today's lunch, your new pillow, or the replacement hull plate. 

Makes sense to me. Toilets are just replicators in reverse. It's the circle of life.

[Sildani]

BBTS has an XL D’deridex-class Warbird on pre-order. 

https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/100006

[Mommar]

16 minutes ago, Sildani said:

BBTS has an XL D’deridex-class Warbird on pre-order. 

https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/100006

You just beat me to it.

Let’s not forget the Nilo Rodis concept 3 too.

https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/100018

Edited August 23, 2019 by Mommar