Topic: What ever Happened to the Consitution and what is the difference between the Con

[Lieutenant_Q]

We had a theory here on dynaverse that the giant "Flash Light" on the Connie was either not required, or redundant, a lean machine like the Miranda or a Constellation didn't need them.  There was assemblies on the side of the deflector dish for the Constitution, that was duplicated on the upper hull of the Miranda and it is possible that those assemblies are, in fact, the Miranda's navigational deflectors.

A Link to the Model thread where we were discussing the "Mini-Deflectors".

http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163390616.0.html

[Age]

The Miranda class is a Medium class cruiser not a cl or ca.It is definely smaller than the Constie.

http://youtu.be/3EQ9cFey-3U

StarTrek Online makes it a Frigate which it not.I can see a Hermes or Saladin but those are DDs.

Often, militaries will retire a beloved, beautiful, safe design with something unpopular, ugly, and dangerous, like during WWII, the USAAF procured more B-24's than B-17's.  Having Starfleet replace Constitution Class ships with cheaper, less attractive vessels makes sense to me.

The intent of the director who specified what the Reliant needed to look like was that it looked like a fairly even match for the Big-E, and that the audience could easily tell the difference.  That's why the Miranda doesn't appear to have a deflector dish.  The Enterprise can't travel through space without this huge headlight, yet the Reliant doesn't need one at all.  WTF?  You can only make so much sense out of this.  The fact is, ST is a stew with so many cooks that you can't tell weather it's gumbo or curry.  Take what you want and leave the rest.

Starfleet were starting to bring the Excelsior class into commissioning.The Mirandas were cheaper/faster to build.It didn't take that as much of a crew like Constie.It is more economical despite what is said by Picard in First Contact.

[Tulwar]

The great value of scale models is that they help you imagine the engineering of the ship.  The thing you really notice about the Reliant is that it is a lot bigger than it appears.  The actual difference in volume between a Miranda and Constitution is not enough to put them in different weight categories, so you can lace up their gloves and put them in the same ring!

Apparently, STO gets its notion of a frigate from the FASA role playing game.  The term "frigate" in that game always caused me a lot of confusion.  In historical naval terms, a frigate is a ship that lacks the armor and firepower to be a ship of the line.  I think we can agree that the Miranda Class has sufficient weapons and defenses to be a front line combat vessel.  The next definition that I'm used to is from SFB, where a frigate is the next size down from a destroyer.  This definition goes pretty well with the modern British definition of the frigate.  If I remember correctly, in FASA, a "frigate" seems to be a cruiser sized vessel that is heavily armed and outfitted for ground assault.  Considering the two shuttle bays, this designation fits extremely well.

Since I'm into SFB and not FASA, this is another strike against the Miranda.

[Tulwar]

I prefer the style of TMP myself.  The quality difference between mid-1960's television and late 1970's cinema is night and day.  I personally wonder why producers can't bridge the notion that the original Enterprise should have looked very similar to the TMP starship all along.  For that matter, why did they have to make up the story about the Klingon's appearance?  This is theater.  We have to swallow all sorts of conventions, and all these explanations of why the modern versions don't look like 1960's TV simply draw attention to these conventions, rather than let them lie.  While I considder the TMP Enterprise the most beautiful startship model created, the JJ-prize is the absolute ugliest.

[Corbomite]

The only reason Mirandas (and other ships  like the Constellation and Nebula) don't have deflector dishes is because they look terrible on them and there is no place to paste it on and make it look good. Anything based on the original Constitution design (Excelsior, Ambassador, Galaxy) has one. The Defiant (DS9) didn't have one and no other race in the galaxy seems to need one. If they hadn't made such a big deal of naming and using it it in BOBW you could almost write it off as a localized scanner/sensor suite, which on other vessels is distributed around the hull, but on those vessels with a secondary hull is beefed up some and conveniently placed at the front end and hence their good science/patrol usage role. The "sweeping" deflector could be placed anywhere near the front and doesn't necessarily have to be huge. In fact, the whole notion of a forward facing deflector is opposed by onscreen scenes of ships traveling at high speeds backwards.

[knightstorm]

The term "frigate" in that game always caused me a lot of confusion.  In historical naval terms, a frigate is a ship that lacks the armor and firepower to be a ship of the line.  I think we can agree that the Miranda Class has sufficient weapons and defenses to be a front line combat vessel.  The next definition that I'm used to is from SFB, where a frigate is the next size down from a destroyer.  This definition goes pretty well with the modern British definition of the frigate.  If I remember correctly, in FASA, a "frigate" seems to be a cruiser sized vessel that is heavily armed and outfitted for ground assault.  Considering the two shuttle bays, this designation fits extremely well.

The term frigate has constantly changed.  During the age of sail, a frigate had a single gun-deck and was the equivalent of a cruiser while the multi-decker ships of the line were the equivalent of battleships.  During the cold war, the USN used the term for large destroyer type ships which were between destroyers and cruisers in size, while other navys used the term for destroyer escort type ships.  Most of the cold war era "frigates" were eventually reclassified as cruisers, while American destroyer escorts were reclassified as frigates.

[knightstorm]

I think the idea of the deflector dish is that in addition to potentially posing a threat to the ships, the particles can cause sensor interference.  A ship with more powerful sensors needs to sweep away a wider area of space so it needs a dish.

[TAnimaL]

It stands to reason that in "real" starships there's no "one-size-fits-all" and those "mini-deflectors" do fit the bill. When you come down to what we see on screen, it's really only Miranda that's missing a deflector (Defiant has a small one, and Nebula clearly has one). Since we know the Connies are explorers, it's easy to assume that the dish has multiple functions, and they often used it for many other purposes on 1701D.

Whether how you split that hair between "light/medium/new heavy," Mirandas must be cruisers, and since they're smaller than a Constitution heavy cruiser, light is a easier catch-all.

[Corbomite]

You're right, I forgot about the small secondary hull on Nebulas. I've never seen schematics of Defiant and I never got the idea it had a deflector dish, just a funny looking nose. I don't know what that thing is on the front of the Stargazer. It looks like a shuttle bay, but I suppose it could be a wide deflector array.

Better examples: Both USS Grissom and USS Pasteur have no visible deflector dish or anything that could be mistaken for one. The Grissom model was used for science ships ever since its introduction.

[Lieutenant_Q]

Nebulas and Defiants both have Nav Deflectors.  The Defiant is in the nose, it's puny, but so's the ship...  The Nebula's is mounted in the same place as the Galaxy Class.  Just the Nebula didn't have a "Neck" so the deflector is basically squashed right up next to the saucer.  The only two Fed Ships that I recall that do not have deflectors are the Constellation and the Miranda.  Runabouts, I don't remember, but they are also just glorified shuttlecraft, even though Sisko did call them "Starships" in Emissary.

The Oberth, I thought there was a spot on the underside of the Secondary Hull that could be a Nav Deflector, but I can't find a good picture of that part of the ship online... maybe I'll scan through TSFS and see if I can find it or not.

[Corbomite]

http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/miranda-class-starship-uss-reliant-ncc-1864.php

I don't know how accurate these are, but this schematic shows several aux navigation deflectors (but curiously no primary that I can find) on the Miranda.

[Corbomite]

The only thing on that that looks anything deflector-like is that blue swath at the bottom of the sphere, but that is no more a "dish" than what the Stargazer has. All ships must have some kind of nav deflector, the question is does it need to be a big part of the hull.

[Tulwar]

One note about the Constitution's deflector dish:  During TOS, there was only one other fully fleshed out starship capable of high warp, and that was the Klingon battle cruiser.  That ship sported an antenna in the nose, much like the dish on the Enterprises engineering hull.  Just about everything that has been generated since ST TMP redefined this opening as a "torpedo tube."  I think I saw some old material defining the Enterprise's dish as the "deflector dish," but so much old material has been reworked that it's hard to tell which is which.  I do remember seeing diagrams pointing out the dishes as being "sensors" on both ships.

The problem I have with ST starship architecture is that half background information points out this dish as absolutely necessary for basic interstellar navigation, and it carries over on redesigns of the Federation CA for hundreds of years, consuming an enormous portion of the hull, but it only seems necessary for the hero ship.  Well the Cardasians have something like it, and then it gets used as a beam emitter, but then, they don't have proper warp engine nacelles either, do they?  The dish becomes an anachronism, just to connect the ST series together.  The Enterprise 1701-Z should not have to conform to this layout.  What this shows is that the ST franchise has spanned such a long period of time, and has had so many alien spacecraft that the strands continuity become senseless in themselves.

Whether how you split that hair between "light/medium/new heavy," Mirandas must be cruisers, and since they're smaller than a Constitution heavy cruiser, light is a easier catch-all.

A lot of use have fairly fixed ideas and have even built models of what a CL contemporary of a Constitution CA should look like, and it isn't necessarily a Miranda.

[TAnimaL]

No one is saying that there aren't other light cruisers, medium cruisers, etc. It's just that Miranda fits in there someplace instead of destroyer or frigates (unless you go with that USN Cold War definition of "frigate", which just confuses things).

Below is a pic I just snapped of my Stargazer model; it seems painfuly obvious that the front section is a deflector, similar to what they put on NX-01. Considering there are 6 other "garage doors" on the port/starboard side of Stargazer, another shuttlebay up front makes no sense at all.

[Lieutenant_Q]

Well, one thing about classifying a Miranda as a Frigate, is you have to remember that by the time of DS9, the design is over 80 years old.  It may have debuted as a Cruiser, but the ship was apparently designed to be easily refitted.  Which is why it would still be in service maybe 100 years after it first launched.  How many WWI era ships (even if they could be refitted with modern technology) would retain their previous classification?  Would a WWI era Cruiser still be able to keep up with even a Cold War era Cruiser?  Probably not, there's only so much refitting you can do to older ships.  Federation designs got bigger, and even the Excelsior, a behemoth at the time of its launch, is itself dwarfed by the Ambassador and Galaxy Classes.  Over time the Miranda, like all Starships, would eventually see a degradation in their classifications.  From Cruiser, to Light Cruiser, to eventually Destroyer or Frigate, the versatility of the Miranda to still be a somewhat effective ship even a century after it's initial launching is a testament to the ship's design and foresight of the engineers. (And the cost consciousness of the Show's producers, who spent all that money on building and designing the Reliant, and didn't want it to be a one time showing)

[Tulwar]

No one is saying that there aren't other light cruisers, medium cruisers, etc. It's just that Miranda fits in there someplace instead of destroyer or frigates (unless you go with that USN Cold War definition of "frigate", which just confuses things).

Are you deliberately trying to be obtuse?

[Age]

I would say the Miranda is a medium criuser set out to do medium type of assignments as does come with an aux. deflector dish.I did say in my other post that they were cheaper to build and crew than the Constie.

When it comes to SFC it even refers to it as medium cruiser NCM.

The size this might help you out if you look at real models of them.

Unboxing and Review of the Miranda Class USS Reliant by Konami

[Tulwar]

I would say the Miranda is a medium criuser set out to do medium type of assignments as does come with an aux. deflector dish.I did say in my other post that they were cheaper to build and crew than the Constie.

When it comes to SFC it even refers to it as medium cruiser NCM.

The size this might help you out if you look at real models of them.

I get my impressions from the big AMT models.  I grew up with SFB, and always thought of the NCL as being a Miranda.  I was expecting the Reliant to have the exact same engines as the Enterprise, but I didn't expect the Miranda to have so many more weapons.  It has 16 phaser emitters compaired to the Constitution's 12, along with a double sized torpedo bay that also fires to the rear.  With all the all gimblies, one could suspect the ship was also equipped with additional auxiliery power.  After looking it over, calling the thing a "light" or "medium" seems just wrong.  The Miranda appears to be a Constitution reworked into a dedicated warship.   When two ships are close in displacement, it is unusual to call the more heavily armed vessel "light" or "medium."  Maybe, we should call the Miranda a "battle cruiser."

This is giving me an idea to through on my personal shiplist:  A Federation battle cruiser.  It will be comparable to the F-CA, eliminating the rear hull.  I'll have to cut the phasers in 2, so I'll give it 6 P-1's and 4 P-3's.  Even as I'm putting in 2 additional APR's 8 photons are too many to charge, so the thing will have 4 photons and 4 Drn-Gs.  It'll need 2 more shuttles and a launch rate of 2.  I'll take out 4 lab, 1 tractor, 1 transporter, and 2 hull.  That is, 2 hull in addition to removing all the rear hull.  Man, this is cheesy!  Even if I don't bump up the shields, I think this might be able to take on a K-C7 by itself.  Romulans definitely don't want a taste of this bad-boy!  Now, what would the Klingons do to answer this nightmare?

In ST, the ships keep getting bigger with every director, so the military notions of destroyers and cruisers is completely meaningless.  Firesoul's shiplist also has a NCA.  SFC uses the weapon schemes from SFB and these do not mesh well with anything after TOS.

[Don Karnage]

I don't know if there any info on the firepower of the Miranda class or Reliant class or what ever you think is.

Since in ST2 the Reliant fire only the phaser on the roll bar at the Enterprise. So what are those phaser on the (saucer) for? Those on the roll bar fire forward and back, well the ship don't see that have rear phaser emitter.

In the Fasa book, they consider it to be mega phaser or like cannon phaser. Kinda weird for a small ship to be caring more firepower that a Constitution class. Regular phaser, mega phaser of cannon phaser. Well its more like regular one and still the question is "what are the one on the saucer for?" Sure the do heavy damage to the Enterprise, but it was at close range and shield down. So the Enterprise did get a kick from the Reliant.

Does that mean the Reliant is more powerful that the Enterprise? Newer ship by his number, well the number don't really see to mean its newer.

So what "official" "canon" info is there on this ship?  I will look into my link and see if I can find any info on that ship.

Now about the Defiant (tos) the explanation that the ship was send into the past of the mirror universe seem unlikely.

The Empires would have study and copy the design to make more of its kind, but that happen 100 years before kirk, during that time don't you think they would "improve the design?" Remember that in tos the mirror universe Kirk' Hurura, Scoty and Bones where send in the mirror universe aboard the ISS Enterprise and it was the same tech level with a few differences. But why would the Empires keep its level of technology at the same level during 100 years? Giving time to his enemy to arrive at the same level and able to resit him? To control you must be  stronger. So  during all that time, the enemy could "scan" the ship and "copy" that tech and able to match them. A spy could get info or someone inside the Empires sold tech info to like the Romulan empires.

[Don Karnage]

here one link: http://www.ditl.org/ship-page.php?ClassID=fedmiranda&ListID=Ships&ListOption=fed

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/search/search.cgi?Terms=miranda+class  I have not check what they have there so you can see if there anything good.

http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/miranda-beauty-shots.php blue print with no info

That all I have.