/STG/ - Star Trek General

There's also known ships from the SFM version of the Earth - Romulan War that don't have designs up because of st-minutiae.com/articles/romulanwar/hellsgate.html

Specifically for the Romulans:
2 VINEGAR-class fighter carriers (see section 10c)*
4 TONSIL-class fuelers
3 SYRUP-class troop carriers
12 ELBOW-class escort cruisers

*10c: Battle records describe a new CABBAGE-type missile/fighter carrier. This design has been designated VINEGAR class.

Well that and st-minutiae.com/articles/romulanwar/fleet.html which is the whole damn fleet list for the UEF

st-minutiae.com/articles/romulanwar/index.html

It kills me a little knowing that this shit will probably never actually get done. All those section briefs, so full of potential.
>The Andorian Counteroffensive
>The Aftermath of Hell’s Gate
>Stage Three: Operation “Steamroller”

...

Was there ever an in universe reason for why the Vulcans gave up their ship designs for human ones?

IIRC the Vulcan Alcubierre-ring drives are a bit faster but far harder to shield properly and less maneuverable. Given how far into transwarp and QSD speeds the basic Cochrane design was taken in the 24th century I think the Vulcans made the right call.

They didn't, the Vulcans just have their ships doing their own things separate from Starfleet. Starfleet is human-dominated because it originated as an Earth organization, whereas races like Vulcans and Andorians had their own space fleets that they kept.

Starfleet uses United Earth designs, but the individual races still build their own ships to their own preferences and for their own reasons. Here's a few post-Federation founding ships we know of that the Vulcans used (though the Vulcans might not themselves have made all of them):

memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Apollo_class

memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Vulcan_cruiser_(future)

Interesting; the first one seems to have open space in a similar configuration to Romulan ships like the D'deridex.

The "Reid Fleming" and it's painted like a Holstein?

Some of those names would actually be really funny if given to dildos.

>Baikal... for the world's deepest pussy

Agreed. I'd also kill for the Paris or the Archer to get thrown in, using the designer's other works too.

>Powhatan
Should be Plowhatan

>Connie with Sovereign era parts
Ooh nice.

Those nacelles are like 90% of the reason I'd ever entertain trying to get the T6 Connie. It's just so fun to kitbash.

There are a few Klingon designs

Is that not the T1 cruiser?

T2, but close enough. But the T6 Connie can use all the bit from the TOS variant and the T2 ship.

I do like his design philosophy in terms of the progression of vessels, both Federation and Klingon, they make logical sense in how they drift towards what we see in canon.

Little Nell a Cute! CUTE!

How are escorts in STO these days?

T6 ones got recently an additional weapon slot for a special Heavy weapon, or at least they will be getting one, there is already three escorts with a heavy weapons lot in them though and they are the latest cash shop additions.

By what i have seen in images, those guns do some serious damage, at least now they do, because when they were first launched last thursday, they healed their targets instead, causing enemy ships to heal faster than they were dying.

... wut?
How did Cryptic manage to release a whole new class of Super Gun that did negative damage, and it wasn't picked up in QA?

Because Cryptic are like the tech priests of Mars, going through an ancient source code made by another group who didn't bother leaving any info on it, so each time they tweak something, add something or remove or change something, there will be side effects nobody was able to see.
For example...
>Bridge officers jumping out of their seats during map change (fixed several years ago but it was pretty prevalent for a while, popping back around every once in a while)
>Weapons, equipment and other assorted items not doing what their item description said they would do (Fixed on case to case basis, some stuff still doesn't perform as it should)
>Transparent hulls on ships and starbases, which manifested itself in a way where you could see a sun shining through bulkheads, ships and even people (Fixed during the Agents of yesterday launch)
>Players being able to use Risian clothes outside of Risa (Fixed on feddies but Klingon empire players are seemingly still able to do it or at least they can do it with characters who changed clothes to Risian clothes and never changed off of them)
>Gorn players sometimes being able to use other species customization options, resulting in Gorn with Caitian tails, buff as fuck tall Ferengi and other assorted abominations (Fixed but seems to break at a drop of a hat)

And much more i cant currently remember.

All in all, STO is like a temperate piece of equipment from 40K and all Cryptic can do is chant the rites of repair while applying sacred motor oil and hoping the machine spirit takes to them kindly this time around.

Pic related is one of those Gorn players having a blast with the broken character creator.

I call the Refit with those nacelles the Constitution Sovereign refit.

>Gorn with Caitian tails, buff as fuck tall Ferengi and other assorted abominations

...

...

...

Why are there Cardassian ships in orbit of Bajor in STO?

Bajor is now part of the Federation and the UFP is - in theory - allied with the new Cardassian government.

Because there was at least at some point a mission where you had to mediate with the Cardassians and Bajorans who were about to have a incident in Bajoran orbit.

Nowadays we instead have a revamped Cardassian story arc with pic related kinds of gems and those ships are just derelicts left behind by Cryptic who forgot to delete them or something.

STO grows closer and closer to the day I can captain a crew of Cardies with chips on their shoulders and something to prove piloting the 'Damar's Revenge'.

>Because there was at least at some point a mission where you had to mediate with the Cardassians and Bajorans who were about to have a incident in Bajoran orbit.
Just Cardassians, no Bajorans involved, and that was a good side mission. Game needs more of those.

You can already do that, if you have the EC.

250k for a Galor or 350k for a Keldon
Peanuts for alien bridge officers, customised to look like Cardies
Further peanuts for the necessary skills, etc
Antares 3 uniform using grey and black as primary colours

Boom, you have yourself a Cardassian crew.

Or you can put a few Bajoran girls in skimpy Terran Empire uniforms

Are you talking about this situation? (Probably in higher res)

Yes, though there were only 4 Cardassian ships.

Meant to post the unedited version.

Yeah, I'm just after getting a Galor for my Cardassian alt. So I'm keen altogether.

>Cardassian with an eyepatch

That's so fucking metal.

My char's a spoon with one eye. Can confirm, shit is indeed quite cash.

As it stands, I don't think the Cardassia system is even used for any missions.

That's not the big question.

How many lights are there.

Not anymore. There was one or two missions in the old Cardassian arc but they were removed.

Everyone thought this was a prelude to playable Cardassian faction. We were wrong.

>Everyone thought this was a prelude to playable Cardassian faction.
...we did? News to me.

I'd like a playable Cardassian faction, but with how few people play Klingon and Romulan as it is, it's probably never happening. The TOS "faction" is only for the first ten levels and it only happened because of TOS nostalgia. DS9 as a whole is the redheaded stepchild of the franchise, so it's extremely doubtful Cardies will ever be playable beyond the existing cross-faction ships and alien parts.

Honestly there seems to be more Romulan players than Klingons, at least from what I've seen.

>DS9 as a whole is the redheaded stepchild of the franchise
>the show that all the fans jack off over and agree was subject to the least retarded characterisation and powerlevels
>the show that was least berman'd

The show that had the least popularity among casuals, aka the tards who drop hundreds of dollars on pay store shit because they actually liked Voyager and want to play as shitty-ass Talaxians.

Those who prefer DS9 are a niche audience. And since DS9 fans are the smartest of the Trek fanbase, they also tend to call Cryptic out for bullshit and not fall for pay store/lock box jew memes. They're the correct audience when it comes to having taste in good shows, but ultimately not an audience Cryptic can cater toward when it comes to making money.

Is it wrong that I enjoyed DS9 while not begrudging those who preferred the more optimistic series their own opinions?

Voyager was less optimistic than DS9.

I was thinking more of TNG and TOS.

I have no problems with people who prefer TNG and TOS. I rank TNG and DS9 as my favorites equally. But it's a simple fact that DS9's fanbase is not as big as the fanbase for the other shows, even Enterprise if the recent Temporal Cold War circlejerk is any indication.

Now, I would very much like to be pleasantly surprised when it comes to this, but I'm not holding my breath for any DS9 love beyond what we already have.

>Temporal Cold War circlejerk

That's probably because it was an unfinished plotline so could actually go somewhere (anywhere) where as DS9 was finished and complete.

>DS9 as a whole is the redheaded stepchild of the franchise, so it's extremely doubtful Cardies will ever be playable beyond the existing cross-faction ships and alien parts.
STO was basically DS9 2.0: Borg and Undine Edition for the first few years. Sure, they threw in stuff from the other series, but the general plot and most of the references were DS9-flavored. It only really started to get away from that with LoR, when there started to be more of a mix.
It's pretty clear that the STO writers are actual Trek fans, rather than Trek writers, or devs just looking to get that easy thirsty-trekie dosh. They know what's going on in the novels generally, but know better than to do more than take harmless references from them. They do a decent-enough job sticking to show canon, but also try to expand from that and do mostly good work, within the constraints of what the game is (rather than what some people wish it were). Of course they screw it up from time to time (Geko was a mistake), but compared to what the rest of Trek has been doing in the last ten years, I'd put STO at the top of the heap, fiction-wise.

>because it was an unfinished plotline
Now now user, the TCW did have a proper ending. It was just, well, Nazis.

They'll probably get introduced as another 10-mission race the next time Cryptic runs out of ideas.

"I don't care what your god damned Federation treaty says sonny! My crew and I are boarding Terok Nor, we're going to Quarks and we're getting hammered on occupation-vintage Kanar!"

I'm not a huge fan of the interim designs from the Daedalus to the Constitution. They feel more like an animorph graphic than anything else.

New ST: Continues is out.

To be fair, that's understandable given they're both known points and it would be logical to attempt to intuit how they got from there (Daedalus) to here (Constitution). I mean, most of them are bleh, but there are a few I like. Like the Asia-class or the Paris.

I get what the designer was going for. I would just much rather that the designs focused on the refinement of a single element, like the engines. You can see that happening to an extent, I just find the directness jarring.

Like, there's not much design commonality between the Connie and the Excelsior, beyond the standard star cruiser layout. But that's fine, because Starfleet were trying out a new concept with the Excelsior. That, to me, is more satisfying.

Despite myself, I did enjoy the dogfight over New York between the Stukas and the Enterprise. It was the sort of silly that Enterprise, as a show, tended to shy away from. As a result it was quite refreshing.

Yeah, I get you. I do like the divergences from the A-to-B generally more than I do the ships that are clearly a dot on the path to the Connie. Like the Kestrel. It's an actually unique design that is a clear inspiration for things like the Saber.

It's partly thanks to the Bonaventure. She's just an ugly POS.

>memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bonaventure_(10281NCC)

Same here. But, I would say it's possible to take the same designs, rework them a little bit in places and suddenly they're immediately better.

A simple change of not having the hull paint would help a ton as that colour is hard to make look good and always has been. Even just a shift in shade can help a bunch, like a more white or grey tone rather than the beige.

The Lancaster era I think nails it with that and the Paris, as does the Constitution era with the Avenger/Predator and Capella as all great designs that really round out the fleet.
I've never liked the Daedalus though, so that era of that leading to the Wasp/Dragon is meh. Moskva/Gagarin classes I ... they need tweaking. I love the premise where they start to squish out that ball and tube look but those secondary hulls and neck need a tweak or five. Hyperion is just ugly. The Valley Forge era is so close to being great, but it's weakened by the original Enterprise traits of that oh so thin neck and the straight nacelle pylons.

And just one more thing:

If there was just one retcon I could make to reality for star trek ship design, it's that the Phase II Enterprise would replace the TOS one.

That way all the SFM stuff could have used that as the goal to develop towards.

I honestly can't say I'm overly fond of most of those designs. Maybe I'm just salty because there's no TOS Miranda in there, or maybe it's how several of them are just blatant "Constitution, but not quite" ships.

Capella can mount its nacelles below its hull, it's your Miranda stand-in.

Hm, that's actually not too bad.

Honestly, the Capella is a really nice design. I like how it's clearly a utility vessel relative to the...less adaptable designs that follow the Connie pattern.

It's like a tiny upside down Nebula

Indeed. I do like his more modular ships. The Capella and Paris are great.

That says something about the sorry state of Trek vidya/Trek in general.

Indeed.
Personally, I think Trek works best as short stories, or novellas at longest. Your typical episode is basically that (and even they tend to be broken up into A and B plots, which generally could exist independently). Even the good TOS movies weren't novel-sized. What good Trek lit I've read was basically short stories; even Garak: The Book was basically some short stories/novellas woven together into a greater novel. Crytic's blog posts are bredy gud, and their mission writing isn't bad either.
It's only when stuff gets longer that it gets into trouble. For long-term stuff you get things like Destiny or STO's Time Cop and Delta Rising arcs. Even within a single book, writers tend to stuff way too much into a story, into descriptions, into exposition, etc, which leads to stupid crap.
Part of the issue, I think, is that Trek is very visual. In a short story, you don't really have time to describe things, so you either leave it to the imagination, or just use something the audience already knows (for example, if a STO blog takes place on a Wells-class ship, you know what that looks like, and even what the bridge looks like), which makes for convenient shorthand. Novels have more room to muck up descriptions, which makes for awkward writing (like Gorn cloacas). Comics have a lot of advantages over even short stories, because they keep the shortness of it while also adding the visual element. However, comics have their own ways of telling a story, which most writers can't deal with (at least initially); also, they need good art too, which adds another entire of layer of difficulty to the success of the venture. Video games have even more potential that comics, because they are closest to what Trek was initially; but they also have more points of failure, because they need good gameplay to go with the story and art.
tl;dr good Trek is hard, harder than most fic, and few have stepped up to the challenge.

Imo, Trek is just assorted sci-fi short stories rolled up into a single universe so folks can get access to these stories without having to buy a dozen books by 5 different authors.
Lie, remember the stuff they had in TOS?
Nearly half of it was taken from some other novel or short story and just brought to the wider audences.

tl;dr Trek has always been a self contradicting setting because it tried to be a vehicle for multiple different sci-fi short stories and then after all that somebody tried to create continuity within it while pushing it as some sorta future utopia.

...

I actually don't think Delta Rising had bad writing, the problems with it were in the game mechanic issues they introduced at the same time.

Delta Rising would have been fine without the endless patrol missions. Or alternately, a reworking of each of them into a shorter arc, sort of like the Kobali. If you had all the Benthan/Hazari shit rolled into one it might make a cohesive story.

Sure, if you don't mind the tedium of ground zones filled with fucking Vaadwaur and not being able to just hand the Kobali over to them.

We don't play STO because it's good, but because it's the only supported game that scratches the itch.

I just don't play STO. It's not hard.

God, that is just the worst looking variant of that design.

I don't hate it but I'm really glad they didn't go with that. Apparently it was Berman's call to not have the Defiant look like a conventional ship.

I guess even that turd has to make a good call on occasion.

The right one is the Archer-class, I believe. A scout ship from one of the books. Cool little ship. Like a proto-runabout.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So that's where they got Nova. I have to say nice reuse of model.

>Those who prefer DS9 didn't watch Babylon 5 first

Fixed it for you. I'm not even saying that DS9 was necessarily a bad show. It's just that when you have a sci-fi series set on a space station meant as a diplomatic and mercantile meeting outpost, there's only so many stories you can tell, so DS9 and B5 both tread a LOT of the same ground. Watching one and then the other feels immensely repetitive.

...although also Babylon 5 was just plain superior in every way. It's even arguably better at being "Trek" than DS9, even.

>although also Babylon 5 was just plain superior in every way. It's even arguably better at being "Trek" than DS9, even

>anything to do with the Minbari
>Characters other than Londo and G'Karr
>Season 5

I did enjoy Babylon 5, and it handled certain topics better, I just don't get why people are so willing to ignore the dumb shit that happens in that show.

But then I guess that's just subjective taste.

Debatable, B5's digital effects have aged like milk. There's something to be said about using models until the tech was there to make it work.