Today we have another collection of ships from Christian Fernandez-Duque, this time five ships seen in the kit-bashed mess following the Battle of Wolf-359. This devastating battle from The Next Generation had several new spaceframes and Christian has taken them on as a design challenge.
The floating wreckage of these lost ships after the Borg attack (shown in the haunting Deviantart image at the top by jbobroony) is not a pleasant sight but these ships must once have been functioning starships with crews and missions. The Cheyenne class (a new version from my own), the Springfield class, the Freedom class (not the Star Trek Beyond class), the Challenger class, and the Niagara class are all detailed at the links below, complete with details from the Eaglemoss official guides. Bring them into your own game today!
Speaking earnestly, I would adjust your scaling system considerably. The size of a vessel should not be the only measure of how big it is or isn’t, but should also consider to some degree it’s complexity and it’s multi-functionality. The Freedom class is a prime example of this. Despite it’s length, it consists mostly of just a single saucer section and a Warp nacelle, with an extended Dorsal between them. I find it hard to believe that such a vessel would have the same complexity and capability as an Ambassador or Excelsior class. I could see it maybe being a match to a Scale 4, but more likely being a scale 3 vessel.
That’s a great point. Ship Scale is definitely an art and not a science. Christian (who wrote this) has put a lot of work into figuring out Scale based on official specs and comparisons.
He’ll probably be the first to summit when he weighs in here, though, that it can take a few tries. Let’s see his reasoning and if he has a different thought on second glance. Thanks for being part of the process!
Well, the bigger a vessel is, the more starship components required to build it, from the power conduits needed to run the entire length and breadth of the ship to the life support systems to make the entire ship habitable in the vacuum of space to the many other things needed to make a functioning starship. A larger ship is thus necessarily more “complex” than a smaller one.
Just compare the Freedom class (430 meters long) to the Constitution class (289 meters, officially Scale 4 as per the STA corebook). You’re not going to convince anyone that a ship that is 140 meters longer (and 107 years newer) than a Scale 4 Constitution class is somehow Scale 3, especially since the Constitution’s saucer and engineering section could almost fit *inside* the Freedom’s saucer alone. Size may not be the only factor in figuring out a starship’s Scale but it *is* the most determinative.