Topic: Federation Equinox And Horizon Class Cruisers.

[Panzergranate]

OK these are finally finished....

Star Fleet's new ships for the mid 2230's namely the Equinox and Horizon class cruisers. (Note not heavy cruisers).

Fictional history to fit into the TOS and SFB / SFC timeline....

The USS Equinox NCC-1009 was designed and launched as part of Star Fleet's quest for a warp 7 cruiser.

Using lessons learnt from the previous Confederation class heavy cruisers, itself a replacement for the venerable but slow Baton Rouge class heavy cruiser, the Equinox shared some ancestral features namely the large Impulse engine on the rear of the saucer.

In trials the Equinox failed to achieve warp 7 and only managed warp 6.6 despite much fettling. The problem was traced down to the large Inpulse drive housing causing bad warp field eddies. By this time the Horizon was also undergoing trials and managed to achieve the desired warp 7 velocity.

Despite its shortcomings the Equinox was commissioned into the fleet and completed its first 5 year exploration mission still with the large Baton Rouge style Impulse engine inplace.

The Equinox was subsequently converted to the Horizon class in 2233.

The USS Horizon NCC-1010 was a parallel project to the Equinox in Star Fleet's warp 7 cruiser programme.

It featured a smaller Impulse engine of a type already in service with smaller warships such as frigates and destroyers. Critics already expressed doubts as to whether such a small engine would be sufficient for a vessel as large as a cruiser, but in the subsequent trials the Horizon performed within Star Fleet's sublight maneuvering criteria.

Star Fleet ordered 4 more Horizon class cruisers to be built and that the Equinox should be converted to the Horizon class.

Ships in the Horizon class were numbered 1009, 1010, 1017, 1018, 1019 and 1020.

Of these both the Horizon and the Equinox were lost in skirmishes with the Klingons.

In 2245 the surviving Horizon class cruiser were rebuilt as heavy cruisers in the Constitution class, a warp 8 capable starship.

In 2068 the NCC-1017 Constellation was lost in combat with the Doomsday Machine.

Armament (Both Equinox and Horizon):

2 x Phaser 1 FX.
2 x Phaser 1 RX.
2 x Double Photon Topedo tubes FA.

Power:

2 x 12 warp.
5 x Impulse (Equinox).
4 x Impulse (Horizon).
2 x Battery.

Move cost = 0.75

Total Crew = 203

[Panzergranate]

And the Horizon pictures....

[FoaS_XC]

I plan to have fun with these :3

[Starfox1701]

The look ok from what I can see. Any way to get closer pics?

[Panzergranate]

I haven't figured how to do closer pictures yet.

The CR-1010 Horizon class being upgraded and converted to Constitution class is mentioned in the Book "Ships of the Star Fleet" volume 1.

In SFB and SFC all of the Horizon class ships are listed as Constitution class heavy cruisers and in the game the F-CA names and registery numbers either shop converts from this class or the subsequent Archon CA-1370 class.

I've always pictured the Horizon class, in my mind's eye, as looking like a cross between a Constitution and a Declaration, resembling both in key features and design.

I've had this project in mind for over a year but was more occupied making Klingon models, a few Kzinti ships and other stuff.

After seeing the postings for the pre-TOS Confederation class heavy cruiser, I figured that there would have to be a small stepping stone in design in order to show a transition stage between the Confederation and the Horizon class, which is why I also created the Equinox. This gives a smooth design evolution back to the Baton Rouge class and fowards through the Horizon towards the Archon, Constitution, Endeavor, Achenar and Tikopai class heavy cruiser that followed on.

The saucer isn't mine. It came from Anduril's Archon class USS Republic model as do the modified textures, which are by Anduril and Ghost.

The secondary hull is from Atrahasis's USS Declaration. As the Declaration is more often shown, in numerous fanon illustrations as being NCC-1031, I figured that it looks like a suitable predecessor to the classic Constitution secondary hull. I wanted the Horizon class to have a larger ship's stores and shuttle capacity than on later simpler starships.

The Impulse engine housing, on the Equinox, is from a reworked pod taken from the stock Taldren Klingon freighter in SFC 1. I know it looks crude close up but on SFC 1 unless one is piloting a shuttle or fighter past the ship, it doesn't notice that much in game.

A prediction is that somebody else will do a better version of these models, or a later version prior to conversion and upgrade to Constitution class.

The warp engines are reworked Moskva warp engines, taken from Sandman3d's Moskva. I've reworked them to match the style of numerous illustrations of pre-TOS warp engines in the period that the Horizon and Equinox appear, as opposed to just using ye stock TOS PB series warp engines. These took up most of the time spent on the project.

I've actually created quite a large number of models here. I made models of Donald Miller's pre-TOS old frigate and old Destroyer, which would have commisioned at the same time as the Texas class light cruiser, in the SFB timeline.

I'll put these up in another posting sometime.