Topic: A few questions about Klingon ships

[ModelsPlease]

Hi folks MP here again,I have a few questions about Klingon ships and I hope ya all can answer them for me.So here we go ...........

1) Is the B'rel (D'Gamma) the Bird of Prey or a completely different ship ? My reason for asking is this.......
The Scout measures : between 90-160 M
The B'rel Class          : 327 M

There's no way a B'rel could have been the ship in ST IV it's way too small to carry 2 whales.
I always thought B'rel = BOP now I'm unsure 

2) What is the true designation is it K22 or D12 or D13 ?

3)If the K22 is the scout and the scout is the B'rel,what the heck is the D13? The plot thickens because I have seen the scout posted as the D12 yet I found this D12 http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/klingon/cruiser_heghdas.jpg and it's listed as a cruiser

4)Does the D-32 (z'Gavva) Stronger Bird from ST VI share the same dimensions as the B'rel or is it a larger ship and if so what are it's dimensions?

5) Is the L-42 K'Vort(Z'Gavasta) Great Bird a B'rel varient or a class of it's own? I ask this because I've seen it listed both as the name of a B'rel and as a frigate,and I can't understand how when it's been speculated to be between 330M and 680M

6)The D'Tai Class Battle Cruiser measures 654 M,what is it's number,and is this the ship from "Yesterdays Enterprise " or is that the K'Vort ?

7) And finally If the D'Tai is the ship from "Yesterday's Enterprise",what dimensions do you assign to the K'Vort,if the K'Vort is it's own class ?

Or do I just assume this order of size and hull designation.......

D13    BOP        Scout   90-160M
K22    B'rel        Frigate  327M
D32    z'Gavva   
L42    K'Vort                 330-680M
(?  )   D'Tai                   654M

 
-MP

[Captain Pierce]

Ah, you've just entered the BoP minefield... 

The "official" story (from the DS9 Tech Manual, which is at best semi-canon) is that there are only two sizes of Bird-of-Prey: the B'rel, and the K'vort.  The B'rel is the original 109-meter scout version, and the K'vort is the newer 327-meter cruiser version.  (Incidentally, neither of them has received a FASA-style alphanumeric designation that I'm aware of.  The use of such designations in canon sources has been extremely limited, and often--IMO, anyway--wrong.  )  This ignores a lot of stuff--most notably the "D12" designation from "Generations" and the fact that the only time in TNG we saw a ship identified as K'vort-class it was in an alternate universe ("Yesterday's Enterprise"), and the only time we saw a ship identified as B'rel-class it was stock footage of the "K'vort-class" from "Yesterday's Enterprise"--but has generally been accepted.  It works well enough--somebody, I think it may have been DITL, proved that the whale bay would just fit inside the aft section of a 109-meter Bird-of-Prey--if you ignore a couple of episodes here and there, like the Galaxy-sized "D'Tai's" in "The Defector" and the tiny Hallmark Christmas ornamanet BoP's in "Way of the Warrior," which are only about 35 meters long compared to the Vor'cha IIRC. 

As for the "D12" from "Generations," IIRC we never see it in a shot with anything else that would allow us to get a scale reference.  Based largely on the fact that the bridge set used is the larger one made for TNG, I prefer to think that the D-12 was an earlier version of the "K'vort," or in other words the 327-meter cruiser.  (I also do this because, personally, I prefer to leave the "D" prefix for cruisers, but that's just a personal thing and not really much in the way of evidence.  )  Perhaps the D-12 was the first of the 327-meter cruisers, created instead of a new cruiser design because scaling the BoP design was somehow easier given the Klingons' environmental and economic problems after Praxis exploded. 

Hope that answers at least some of your questions, MP... 

[ModelsPlease]

Yes it did,thank you very much sir.

[Sapharite]

K22 is a scout, D11, D12, D13 were versions of the light Cruiser, B'rel is a Battlecruiser, K'Vort is a Battleship

But I like the idea of Daystrom institute: www.ditl.org Look there and learn (I mean: K'Pak B'rel K'vort D12/D13 and D'Tai in other ships section)

[Magnum357]

Ugh!  Here is one of the more notable inconsistencies of Star Trek.

In my opinion, I think Paramount just got lazy when they made all these Designations for BOP's and just threw together anything that sounded good.  I never liked the idea of the Upscaled ships of K'vort or whatever other classes where represented in Star Trek.  The only reason why the K'vort happened to be a BOP designs was that paramount didn't want to spend the money designing and building a whole bran new Klingon ship that would most likely only be filmed for a few episodes at best (this was way before 3D graphics became heavily used for CGI effects, it wasn't tell B5 became a hit when Star Trek decided to in this direction as well).  So what Paramount did was just throw a BOP ship in and claim it is a K'vort class ship.  Later, Trekkie's considered this "Cannon" and just put the claim that it is just a super up-scaled version of the BOP (ridicules!) and that is why we not only see these other up-scaled BOP classes. 

As for the designations, I never liked the fact that the Generations labeled the BOP as a "D12".  I always considered the Designations as type of vessel the Klingon's used it for.  For example, in FASA Star Trek, the game labeled many different types of Klingon vessels with designations of K, L, D, and so forth to indicate mission type and Hull type.  I always liked the idea that D hulls represent Cruisers, K hulls represent Escort/scouts or support ships, and L indicates Frigates or possibly destroyers (Frigates in FASA where suppose to be more multi rolled then Destroyers).  And this works well with the concept that you consider the K22 B'rel as a scout ship as its hull designation seems to indicate this.

As for the K'vort, I have alway considered the ship something of a different design then what we saw in "Yesterdays Enterprise".  Maybe someday I will make a Klingon ship model of what I think the ship should have looked like in the Episode. And as Pierce indicated, we really never hear of that K'vort designation again in TNG and its quite possible the class was never designed since Yesterdays Enterprise was a different timeline during a Major Intergalactic war.

[Captain Pierce]

I think K'vort may have been used again on DS9; not sure, though.  If so, it's just another oddity to explain away, as most of the BoP's on DS9 (at least IIRC) were closer to the original 109-meter size... 

The thing is, when there wasn't money available to build a new Klingon ship (at least until Berman and Michael Piller decided to go more frequently down the Klingon road starting in S3, and the money became available to build the Vor'cha in I think S4), the SFX team's options were limited.  They could either keep using stock footage of the K't'inga from TMP (which they did at least twice, "Heart of Glory" and the one with the "sleeper" ship, or they could try and work with the BoP model for variety.  The problem then becomes one of size.  The model of the Enterprise-D was probably about the same size as that of the Enterprise/Enterprise-A (in fact, the Constellation class only exists because at the last minute the decision was made not to film the movie model for "The Battle," I assume because its size was so similar to the Ent-D.  If you look really closely, you can see that Geordi originally says "Constitituion-class ship"; "Constellation" was chosen as the class name not so much because of the USS Constitution from TOS as because it's very similar to "Consititution" ), so all of a sudden a ship that was a third of the length of the Enterprise looks half as long as the Ent-D.  I have no idea what was going on in "The Defector" with the even larger "D'Tai" BoP (as DITL calls them); perhaps the model team simply decided that the BoP's had to look bigger to appear threatening to the monstrous D'Deridex.  At any rate, I think the SFX guys did what they had to do given the time, money, and other resources they had; and, you have to admit, when they did finally get the chance to build a new Klingon model, the Vor'cha was well worth the wait... 

[ModelsPlease]

K22 is a scout, D11, D12, D13 were versions of the light Cruiser, B'rel is a Battlecruiser, K'Vort is a Battleship

But I like the idea of Daystrom institute: www.ditl.org Look there and learn (I mean: K'Pak B'rel K'vort D12/D13 and D'Tai in other ships section)

LOL Looking there was one of ther reasons I started asking these questions in the first place 
These are the sites I was looking at when I started to ponder the BOP in all her variety 
Cleeve's Staryards
http://www.staryards.com/Downloads/Ships/Klingon/3_TNG/Kling_TNG.htm
Daystrom Institute Technical Library
http://www.ditl.org/
Starship Schematic Database
http://www.shipschematics.net/

[KtHyla]

Another note: The K-22, L-42, Stronger Bird/Great Bird designations are from the old FASA PnP game, not canon (unfortunately). Paramoont nixed that pretty early in TNG's run...

[USS Mariner]

^Which is both a good thing and a bad thing, as the FASA designations are kind of screw for certain classes (L-24 Komo Val DN anyone?) Personally, I tend to use a mix of the SFB and FASA designation systems to dome up with this:

BX - Battleship
CX - Command Cruiser/Battlecruiser
DX - Heavy and Medium Cruisers
LX - Light Cruisers
FX - Destroyers
EX - "Bird's of Prey" - Escort
GX - Gunboats/Police Ships
TX - Tenders/Tugs/Freighters

*This one could be smudged into cannon, because Worf could've easily said "E12" in GEN and his tounge got in the way.

But eh, to each his own. I personally doubt TPTB will use anything other than D to identify Klink Vessels, because the writers are lazy, and sometimes the Advisors are ignored (or out of the loop, as  was the case in that one VOY ep with the K'T'Inga.*

*Mike Sussman had originally intended that ship to be Greg Jein's D7 from DS9, but it turned out that a CGI version wasn't made. Instead, they used the K'T'Inga model, and Mike was never informed till after the ep was filmed. Had he known, then he would've simply changed the "D7" to "K'T'Inga" in the script.

Though maybe it was a D7X...

[Sapharite]

In my MOD I decided to put those BOPs into three groups. First one is K22, D11(earlier version - offspring of K22), D12, D13. Second one is B'rel and K'vort variants - all cruisers. Third group is D'tai as a battleship - lost era battleship - there was a lack of battleship in 2333-2355 so I added D'tai. The later battleship designation is being occupied by Voddieh and Negh'var.

Just simple imagination My imagination 
 
 

[Captain Pierce]

Well, by the time a decision like what model to use is made, usually the live action part of the episode is already in the can, and therefore can't really be changed.  As noted in my previous post, there is the option of "looping" (dubbing) dialogue, but if Robert Duncan McNeill had already said "D-7," the movement of his mouth isn't going to look a lot like "K't'inga," and so things start to look like a Godzilla movie.    (BTW, I know "D-7" finally became canon in "Trials and Tribbleations," but has "K't'inga" ever been said on-screen?)  Of course, the FASA fans will just make the argument that, as far as they're concerned, the K't'inga has always been a D-7, D-7M to be exact...   

This is another one of those Trek questions where there's really no "right" answer, and you can make the case for pretty much anything that you want...

[Red_Green]

Um yes I believe others have covered this B'rel, Kvort question alredy.
I'll just the sole purepose of both these Klingon ships is to be fodder for the Hydran Kingdom 

[Captain Pierce]

Except, of course, for the ones that the Hydrans "borrowed..."  Didn't TheSkinMan retexure the BoP with Hydran colors a while back? 

[Red_Green]

Except, of course, for the ones that the Hydrans "borrowed..."  Didn't TheSkinMan retexure the BoP with Hydran colors a while back? 

Yea I remember seeing that about a year and a half ago. It was Skinmans ship that someone else Hydranized. Can't recall who did the retex. Anyone elsr remember? It looked quite sharp.

[ModelsPlease]

Hmmm so if the B'rel is 329m she's bigger than the TMP Enterprise @ 305M and the D-7 @ 228M and K'Tinga @ 246M .Which would mean she was the NEW heavy cruiser of the TMP era, but she carried a significantly smaller crew then the other 2 afore mentioned Klingon ships ????  . I'm getting a headache lol.

[Sapharite]

You're wrong because B'rel is a TNG invention designed especially for TNG. As for D12 she was seen in ST2, ST3, ST4 and ST: Gens (as a old junk)

In my MOD:

In my opinion B'rel is a TNG era invention. In TOS there was K22, In TMP 1-6 there was D11, D12 (later retired because of the defected plasma coils), D13 (first one was a prototype which general Kang used during Kithomer camp peace conference). D13 maintained in service till the end of Dominion War. In my opinion these are scouts with the limited crew.

B'rel and K'vort are two different variant of the same cruiser. K'vort has more diplomatic and command capabilities and more representatie role than B'rel - the same situation was with the IKC Kronos - a K'Tinga class designed for diplomatic capabilities to carry Chancellor Gorkon. K'vort was seen to carry Kurn the brother of Worf. B'rel and K'vort are Klingon Cruisers with the Light Cruiser designations.

As for D'tai I have designated two ships. First of them was seen attacking in group of three USS Enterprise D in an alternate timeline during the encounter with Enterprise C. Second ship was seen in the group of three among Enterprise D and the Warbirds in (I forgot the details of this episode. Somebody had mentioned it in this post above). I classify those ships as a D'tai battleship.

In my opinion grouping those BOPs in such groups sounds more resonable. It solves some problems with many inconsistencies

Take care

[ModelsPlease]

Ok so what about the D32 greater bird from ST VI is that a scout @ 90-160M or was it bigger,like B'rel size,or somewhere in the middle ?

[Sapharite]

I've never heard the name D32. Where did you get that?? BTW She was a prototype. First in her class. She was mentioned by Lost era ST fan books but never ever seen on screen exept ST:VI. There is another article and another resonable explanations for BOPs in ST. Read it please:

http://www.ditl.org/datarticle.php?23

I take it she had the same size as D12. In my opinion this was not D32 but D13 seen in TNG as well but without experimental cloack

[Sapharite]

BTW:

Length                   Scaling Factor              Name Description
35 metres                   0.321                      K'pak Seen in 'Way of the Warrior'. Name is
                                                               speculation.
109 metres                    1                          Bird of Prey (D11/12/13) Actual designed size of the original
                                                               model, supported by most of the evidence from ST III/IV.
                                                               Variants of similar size appear in further films and TNG/DS9. D
                                                               numbers of all but the D12 are speculation.
327 metres                    3                          B'rel Seen and named as the B'rel in 'Rascals'. Ships of this
                                                               approximate size in TNG are assumed to be B'rel class also.
654 metres                    6                          D'tai Seen in 'The Defector'. Name is speculation.

[Sapharite]

There is no data on K'vort class. So I assume that K'vort and B'rel are the same ship or at least their variants. They had almost approximately the same size in DS9. http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/bop-size.htm

Small BoPs The design size (scale chart, window rows) of the BoP is consistent at 110m, and the screen evidence from "Star Trek III" largely supports this size. "Star Trek IV" shows the very same ship, but this time it is sometimes at most 60m. On the other hand, the BoP is capable of carrying two humpback whales, and the 60m warship could hardly have the shown huge cargo bay. This is a reason to favor a 110m size for the Bounty. Another point is that the Rotarran also works at 110m, if the Defiant is 120m long and DS9's diameter is 1100m, which corresponds to their initial design sizes. At this size it would be no problem to accommodate 36 instead of 12 crew members, even if the cargo bay remains that large. The Rotarran is somewhat larger than 110m in comparison to the Vor'cha in DS9: "Sons and Daughters", but this has to be ignored for the sake of overall consistency. Another problem is the very small BoP in DS9: "Way of the Warrior". Although it doesn't play a role in the considerations on the "real" BoP sizes, it can be exposed as careless VFX, because there has been no other 50m BoP since "Star Trek IV", and the latter was an error.

Large BoPs These ships appear in a number of TNG episodes and are scaled to sizes of 230m ("A Matter of Honor"), 320m ("Reunion", "Redemption"), 350m ("Yesterday's Enterprise", "Rascals") and more than 700m ("The Defector"). The 230m Pagh could be interpreted as a small BoP of 110m, since the screen evidence is not that definite and the ship has moveable wings. There are two feasible explanations for the other five ships:

1. The five large BoPs are considerably different and much larger types, with K'Vort class and B'rel class being evidently the same size . Due to the lacking resolution of the TV screen they nevertheless appear to have the same hull shape as the much smaller movie type (D-12 class). The large BoPs, K'Vort and B'rel, have fixed wings and they are obviously serious threats to a Vor'cha, Galaxy or D'deridex class. There is only one size of large BoPs, of course. The length is most likely around 350m. The large BoPs don't appear any more after the time of TNG, which could mean all of them, like the B'rel, are obsolete by then, while the smaller type is still in service.

2. The three large BoPs are actually the same size as the small ones, they only appear enlarged by a weird "lens aberration". Sometimes the BoPs seem to be reduced in size likewise. There might be different types or classes of BoPs, but the hull is always essentially the same. It is possible that some BoP types don't need to change to a special attack configuration of the wings and are better equipped so as to be a match for much larger ships. The only BoP size is 110m. It is a matter of taste if the absurd "Defector" BoP is included into the theory.

As a solution I choose my own way which is a result of these two articles - one Daystroms and second one Ex-Astrsix Scientias ...
BTW that BOP was carrying one whale Huback whale. Check Humback's size. We can also assume this Humback was not to old.
And remember - B'rel is a designation used first time in TNG. Nobody mentioned B'rel in TOS or TMP. B'rel is TNG invention. As for D12 - we can assume she was the ship which have been shown in ST:TMP:I-VI nad ST:VII.
The name K'vort was also mentioned in a alternate universe which was not cannon at all. It was like AGT - All Good Things. In AGT they mentioned Warp 13 which is unavailable to achieve due to the laws of physics. I do not care about alternate universes with one exeption - mirror universe - it's technology was the same exept ship called Regency and people, characters.
K'vort was also seen in DS9 and propably in normal universe during TNG espisodes. K'vort appear to have the same size as the B'rel class. As a result there are two explantaions. First one: B'rel and K'vort are the same class of ship called B'rel. Second one: B'rel and K'vort are two different variants of the same class.
D12 - a smaller Bird of prey seen in ST VII. She was retired because of the defected plasma coils. That is why she was used by Klingon Renegades. The name D13 is a speculation but truly accepted by the trekkies. Logically if there is D12 and D13 their ancestor should be designated as D11.

I do not care about FASA and other timeline ships. They are another story. I am only taking TOS, TMP (ST:I-VI), TNG, STVII, DS9, VOY, STVIII, STIX, ST X into consideration...

Take care   ???

[ModelsPlease]

Fantastic information indeed thanks. Oh BTW I got the alpha-numeric designations from here........
Starship Schematic Database
http://www.shipschematics.net/

I also used reference material from Daystrom as you have.And since you have pointed out all the size discepancies it works to my advantage so I think I'll set my Klingon BOP/B'rel varients up like this.......

BOP- TMP Era Scout
D32- X ship TMP Era
B'rel- Late TMP Heavy Cruiser (Excelsior contemporary)
Insurrection Class (Terradyhne )- (Ambassador Era)
W'ked Class BOP (WZ45)- X Ship TNG Era
K'Vort - TNG Heavy Cruiser
D'Tai   - TNG Battlecruiser
And I still have plenty 'o room for all my other Klinks 
-MP

[Sapharite]

kai


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